e, and the usual rules of existence,
and which, even in its celebrated 'ecstatic forms,' comprehends in
itself all the awesomeness of the mysterious spirit realm. All this, I
say, I can by no means deny; but I must always look upon this process
as the blind exercise of an evil power, whose effects and results, in
spite of all theory, cannot be predicted or relied upon. Mesmerism is
somewhere defined as a dangerous weapon in the hands of a child; and
with that definition I thoroughly agree. If human beings are to set to
work to operate at will upon each other's spiritual elements, the
doctrine of the Barbarini school of spiritualists, who work purely by
faith and will, without any manipulations, seems to me to be much the
purest and most innocuous. The fixing of the firm will is a discreet
and sober question put to Nature whether the dualism of spirit is to be
established or not in any particular case; and it is she alone who
decides it and answers it. Similarly, people's magnetising themselves,
at the 'Bacquet' (as it was called) without any intervention of a
mesmerizer, may be considered less dangerous, inasmuch as no influence
of a foreign possibly hostile or hurtful spiritual principle can then
be exercised. But think of the hosts of people who now practise this
most mysterious of all sciences if it is to be called a science
light-mindedly, or in complete self-deception, where they do not do it
altogether for parade or notoriety! Bartels, in his 'Physiology and
Physics of Mesmerism,' quotes the saying of a foreign physician, in
which he expresses his surprise that the German doctors treat, and
experiment upon, mesmeric subjects, just as if they were pieces of
lifeless apparatus. Unfortunately this is perfectly true, and therefore
I prefer to disbelieve in the curative effects of mesmerism, at all
events, than to entertain the idea that the uncanny exercise and
influence of another person's spiritual principle might some day
destroy my own life beyond the possibility of remedy."

"What results," said Theodore, "from what you have said not without
much truth and profundity about mesmerism is, that you have made up
your mind, from mere dread of the consequences, never to allow any
mesmerist in the world to make any of his manipulations on the ganglia
of your back, or elsewhere. So far as regards your dread of the effect
of a foreign spiritual principle, I quite agree with you. And I beg to
be allowed by way of an illust