tendency to
nervous disease which in severe cases may lead to insanity. The word
neurotic is a general term covering affection of the nervous system. It
includes hysteria and much else beside.

On all these points practically every student of hypnotism is agreed. On
the question as to whether any one can produce hypnotism by pursuing the
right methods there is some disagreement, but not much. Dr. Ernest Hart
in an article in the British Medical Journal makes the following very
definite statement, representing the side of the case that maintains
that any one can produce hypnotism. Says he:

"It is a common delusion that the mesmerist or hypnotizer counts for
anything in the experiment. The operator, whether priest, physician,
charlatan, self-deluded enthusiast, or conscious imposter, is not the
source of any occult influence, does not possess any mysterious power,
and plays only a very secondary and insignificant part in the chain of
phenomena observed. There exist at the present time many individuals who
claim for themselves, and some who make a living by so doing, a peculiar
property or power as potent mesmerizers, hypnotizers, magnetizers, or
electro-biologists. One even often hears it said in society (for I am
sorry to say that these mischievous practices and pranks are sometimes
made a society game) that such a person is a clever hypnotist or has
great mesmeric or healing power. I hope to be able to prove, what I
firmly hold, both from my own personal experience and experiment, as I
have already related in the Nineteenth Century, that there is no such
thing as a potent mesmeric influence, no such power resident in any one
person more than another; that a glass of water, a tree, a stick, a
penny-post letter, or a lime-light can mesmerize as effectually as can
any individual. A clever hypnotizer means only a person who is
acquainted with the physical or mental tricks by which the hypnotic
condition is produced; or sometimes an unconscious imposter who is
unaware of the very trifling part for which he is cast in the play, and
who supposes himself really to possess a mysterious power which in, fact
he does not possess at all, or which, to speak more accurately, is
equally possessed by every stock or stone."

Against this we may place the statement of Dr. Foveau de Courmelles, who
speaks authoritatively for the whole modern French school. He says:

"Every magnetizer is aware that certain individuals never can induce