ccept as true so far as it goes, but which is evidently
incomplete. He seems to minimize personal influence too much--that
personal influence which we all exert at various times, and which he
ignores, not because he would deny it, but because he fears lending
countenance to the magnetic fluid and other similar theories. Says he:

"We have arrived at the point at which it will be plain that the
condition produced in these cases, and known under a varied jargon
invented either to conceal ignorance, to express hypotheses, or to mask
the design of impressing the imagination and possibly prey upon the
pockets of a credulous and wonder-loving public--such names as mesmeric
condition, magnetic sleep, clairvoyance, electro-biology, animal
magnetism, faith trance, and many other aliases--such a condition, I say,
is always subjective. It is independent of passes or gestures; it has no
relation to any fluid emanating from the operator; it has no relation to
his will, or to any influence which he exercises upon inanimate objects;
distance does not affect it, nor proximity, nor the intervention of any
conductors or non-conductors, whether silk or glass or stone, or even a
brick wall. We can transmit the order to sleep by telephone or by
telegraph. We can practically get the same results while eliminating
even the operator, if we can contrive to influence the imagination or to
affect the physical condition of the subject by any one of a great
number of contrivances.

"What does all this mean? I will refer to one or two facts in relation
to the structure and function of the brain, and show one or two simple
experiments of very ancient parentage and date, which will, I think,
help to an explanation. First, let us recall something of what we know
of the anatomy and localization of function in the brain, and of the
nature of ordinary sleep. The brain, as you know, is a complicated
organ, made up internally of nerve masses, or ganglia, of which the
central and underlying masses are connected with the automatic functions
and involuntary actions of the body (such as the action of the heart,
lungs, stomach, bowels, etc.), while the investing surface shows a
system of complicated convolutions rich in gray matter, thickly sown
with microscopic cells, in which the nerve ends terminate. At the base
of the brain is a complete circle of arteries, from which spring great
numbers of small arterial vessels, carrying a profuse blood supply
throughout