Impressions And Suggestions

"All truth is precious, if not all divine,

And what dilates the pow'rs must needs refine."

- Cowper. "Know Thyself." "The greatest study of mankind is man."

- Shakespeare.

Hypnotism is the name for mesmerism and animal magnetism. Hypnotism (from the Greek word hypnos) is the science of that sleep-like state which manifests itself by nervous phenomena. It may be produced by the influence of another or it may be self-induced. The young are more easily hypnotized than the old. Those who are concessive and passive, and who can and are willing to concentrate their attention on the intended sleep, are most susceptible. Those who cannot be hypnotized in the first seance, may yield after renewed efforts. Of the three hypnotic states, - the cataleptic, lethargic, and the somnambulistic, - the last is the most interesting. The somnambulist is a subject, a personality acting by his own impulses or obeying the will of the operator, yet with a peculiar consciousness that does not return to memory with returning wakefulness. The effects that can be produced by hypnotism are wonderful. Diseases are cured by "suggestion." Intelligence in human or in animal form can be fed and grown from a spark to a gigantic flame. The higher the intelligence the finer the culture that is needed. All intelligence has life and gathers growth in its advancement. There are certain limits beyond which even the modern physiologist finds it impossible to pass.

The world - scientific men included - had to grow before these interesting psychical facts could get orthodox-scientific recognition. They were none the less necessary in the growth from a materialistic to a psychical or spiritual view of man. No person can be justly held responsible for what he does not know. The measure of each person's ability is the just measure of his responsibility. The student of hypnotism and mental phenomena has taken to the miscoscope the cells, too, - not the cells of the asylum - but the same sort the anatomist is studying. Psychology and physiology are hand in glove. They show the elements of mental life to be associated with the lowest forms of physical life. Whatever life is, they say it is a force which always has existed and always will exist. Wherever it is associated with matter, so that matter lives, there will be motion and some activity of the kind that thought consists of. Mind is thought or intelligence, the essence of thought. The physical brain is no more capable of originating or eliminating thought than is the hand or any of the organs of the system.

What man can ever solve the great mystery of that fragile link which unites mind and body? Hypnotism, because it is a new field, demands in its investigation the greatest impartiality, the greatest freedom from prejudice; yet, hardly have we begun the study of this new phenomenon, before we are confronted by that old, hereditary fault of science - a priorism - which either simply denies all that runs contrary to prevailing opinion or which distorts facts until they fit into its system. Such doubters, who instead of enlarging their system to accommodate the facts, make the facts fit into the system, are exactly like the robber Procrustes, of whom Diodorus relates that he used to lay his victims upon the torture bed;lf they were found too short, he stretched their limbs until they fit; if, on the contrary, they happened to be too long, he simply cut off the protruding members. Procrustes is the prototype of our priorist. Hypnotism found therapeutic application in France long ago, after men, whose honesty, liability and competence cannot be doubted, had published the often surprising curative success obtained by it.

Many are unable, for sentimental reasons, to give up the old beliefs, even though they have accepted the new teaching of astronomy and biology; others draw a curtain over the dogmas and declare that action is more important than belief. The progress during the last twenty years in the healing of disease by hypnotism, and by other psychical means, has been so decidedly marked that not hundreds, but thousands, of persons are now living who have been relieved from sad afflictions by such methods. Nor are the cases few, in which relief has been given after all ordinary medical modes of treatment had failed for years. Doctor Wetter-strand, of Stockholm, has used this method of treatment in seven thousand cases; Doctor Bernheim, of Nancy, in twelve thousand cases. Both are strong endorsers of it. The latter unhesitatingly declares that the study of hypnotic suggestion should be made obligatory in all medical schools; that a physician who in these days ignores the psychical element in disease, and is ignorant of the part it plays in pathogeny and therapeutics, is no better than a horse doctor and should confine himself to veterinary practice.

Animal magnetism pervades all animal life, just as electricity pervades all inanimate nature. It is only within the last half century that man has been able to bend these forces to intelligent uses. We know that the message that comes to us over the wire has an individualized, conscious entity at the other end. Just so with the intelligence that comes to us through the channel of animal magnetism and hypnotism - there must be an intelligent entity behind it. The earliest examples of healing by animal magnetism and hypnotism within the historical period, of which detailed and abundant evidence exists, are those of the curing of king's evil, or scrofula, as well as other diseases, by the laying on of hands. This method began long before hypnotism, as such, was known, and was usually accompanied by religious services. Pliny, Tacitus and Suetonius speak of the touching of the sick having been resorted to for healing purposes. Curing by the royal touch is mentioned in Scandinavian Eddas and Sagas, and there is other evidence that the practice was known in Europe as early as the XI. and XII. centuries. The efficacy of the method was known in the early days of the Christian church, - for instance, St. Augustine healed a sick person by the laying on of hands.

King Edward the Confessor, one of the saints of the Catholic church, who ascended the throne in 1041, was the first to cure scrofulous diseases by the royal touch. The practice was introduced into France some two hundred years later. It is now being recognized that "thoughts are things"; that they are living entities and that they can be sent forth. Must we - ostrich-like - hide our eyes from the real dangers before us and thus run into a double danger? Shall we -like Martin Horkey in the times of Galileo - refuse to admit that there are any other planets besides our own, from an absurd idea that they will cause some confusion or collision against our earth?

"If the new planets were acknowledged/' said Horkey, "what a chaos would ensue." * * * "I will never concede his four new planets to that Italian, though I die for it."

The end of an important century is at hand. The earth has passed through many conflicts and disciplines during the last one hundred years; though, on the whole, the greatest of all conquests for humanity have been more in a moral or ethical sense than on the physical plane. The nineteenth century has made history that can never die while planets live and move, for it has brought to earth the most wonderful revelations of the human soul and given light on immortality that can never be quenched.