development, under 'magnetism,' of 'new faculties,' such as clairvoyance
and intuition, also the production of 'great changes in the physical
economy,' such as insensibility, and sudden increase of strength. The
Report declared it to be 'demonstrated' that sleep could be produced
'without suggestion,' as we say now, though the term was not then in use.
'Sleep has been produced in circumstances in which the persons could not
see or were ignorant of the means employed to produce it.'

The Academy did its best to suppress this Report, which attests the
phenomena that Hegel accepted, phenomena still disputed. Six years later
(1837), a Committee reported against the pretensions of a certain Berna,
a 'magnetiser.' No person acted on both Committees, and this Report was
accepted. Later, a number of people tried to read a letter in a box, and
failed. 'This,' says Mr. Vincent, 'settled the question with regard to
clairvoyance;' though it might be more logical to say that it settled the
pretensions of the competitors on that occasion. The Academy now decided
that, because certain persons did not satisfy the expectations raised by
their preliminary advertisements, therefore the question of magnetism was
definitely closed.

We have often to regret that scientific eminence is not always accompanied
by scientific logic. Where science neglects a subject, charlatans and
dupes take it up. In England 'animal magnetism' had been abandoned to this
class of enthusiasts, till Thackeray's friend, Dr. Elliotson, devoted
himself to the topic. He was persecuted as doctors know how to persecute;
but in 1841, Braid, of Manchester, discovered that the so-called 'magnetic
sleep' could be produced without any 'magnetism,' He made his patients
stare fixedly at an object, and encouraged them to expect to go to sleep.
He called his method 'Hypnotism,' a term which begs no question. Seeming
to cease to be mysterious, hypnotism became all but respectable, and was
being used in surgical operations, till it was superseded by chloroform.
In England, the study has been, and remains, rather _suspect_, while on
The Continent hypnotism is used both for healing purposes and in the
inquiries of experimental psychology. Wide differences of opinion still
exist, as to the nature of the hypnotic sleep, as to its physiological
concomitants, and as to the limits of the faculties exercised in or out of
the slumber. It is not even absolutely certain that the exercise of th