This brings us to the standpoint from which we have to examine hypnotism and all psychic or mental phenomena. Will, as one aspect, function, or power of Consciousness, is struggling to evolve its potencies, now benumbed and paralyzed by Its primal "fall" into matter. Thought and Feeling are likewise in the thralldom of the flesh, and are also in the course of an evolutionary effort to find their ultimate state of full and free expression. To perfect man, all three aspects of Consciousness must be rounded out or developed symmetrically. In the natural course of evolution, emotion emerges first, and we see in the limitations of the animal kingdom the effect of asymmetry in the evolution of only one aspect of Consciousness. As we have seen in the study of the Evolution of the Soul, it is the incarnation in human-animal forms of Egos which have evolved other aspects of consciousness in other worlds which causes the great and otherwise inexplicable hiatus in the evolutionary process - the missing link which so puzzles and confounds the Darwinians. Because of this asymmetry in evolution, men have will power and mental energy developed in various degrees of feebleness, and in dissimilar directions.

This accounts for the ability of one will to control another, through superior development along some particular line. This line may be in the direction of evil quite as often as in that of good; and in the case of professional hypnotizers it is almost always by the strong development of some selfish trait of the character that they are enabled to overpower those who are purer or even more intellectual than they. It is becoming strong in evil which is the origin of the power of the Black Magician.

Now, to the Theosophist, the development of the Will does not mean the empty abstraction which it conveys to the scientist. It is the becoming potent of a conscious force, having its own ratio of vibration, and using a material vehicle in a manner exactly corresponding to force on the material plane. Hence, when a hypnotizer compels another to obey his will, he has subjected him to an actual force conveyed by a vehicle of matter quite as certainly as has the prize-ighter when he "knocks out" his helpless antagonist. There are no empty abstractions or immaterial agents for a student of Theosophy, however much his scientific brother may be compelled to resort to them. The hypnotizer has directed a part of his own "nerve fluid" upon and into the nervous system of his victim, where it remains an actual force, establishing new and modifying centers of vibration, which act in obedience to the ideation which accompanied it. There has been an actual transfer of substance, force, and consciousness - a setting up of new conscious centers in a manner exactly analogous to the new centers of physical or molecular vibrations which are the result of the taking into the system of physical remedies or "medicines." No scientist nor physician has ever offered a rational explanation of the methods by which physical remedies act.

But to the Theoso- phist who recognizes vibratory motion as the universally present Force-spect of the Causeless Cause, the reason is plain. Such physical molecules establish innumerable centers of vibratory motion, which modify the vibrations of the molecules in the physiological or pathological cells of the body, according as their ratios of vibration are multiples or "chords" of these. The "selective affinity" of the physiological empiricist in explaining the action of drugs is but a formula for expressing a law of harmonic vibrations of whose real action he is quite ignorant. In like manner the will of the hypnotizer establishes innumerable force centers which prevent the consciousness of the Ego from controlling its own sense organs. It is the same kind of process as that which takes place when the vibratory centers set up by chloroform or morphine interpose actual physical obstacles between the soul and its sense organs through the "affinity" between their vibratory ratios and those of the brain molecules.

Of course, scientists will deny this. The very name "hypnotism" had its origin in this denial. The Paris Academy had solemnly "sat" upon the phenomena exhibited by Mesmer, and had pronounced them pure delusions. But the ghost refused to remain laid at their bidding, and so Braid, in the 'thirties of this century, undertook to exorcise it anew. Being honest and earnest, he was soon compelled to admit the reality of the phenomena of Mesmerism, but denied in toto that the will of another had anything to do with their production. According to his theory, the phenomena were entirely self-induced, and the will of the operator no further shares than to merely "suggest" them to the subject, who thereupon hypnotized or mesmerized himself.

Braid's assumption was eminently consistent with materialistic teachings; for if the will were merely a function of matter in a state of molecular vibration, and had no power of action outside the molecular environment which created it, then nothing could pass from the hypnotizer to the hypnotized, who must, therefore, be the sole factor in the phenomena. Proceeding upon this assumption, he renamed these "hypnotism," or the science of the sleep-ike state; from hypnos, sleep. This name has been retained by science, notwithstanding that the theory of Braid, upon which it was based, has been entirely disproven by later scientific investigations - notably those conducted by members of the same Academy which had a few years preceding pronounced Mesmerism an hallucination, or worse. As there are psychic and subjective states which can be self-iduced without the interference of any exterior will, it would seem proper to limit the name "hypnotism" to these self-induced states; reserving "Mesmerism" for those which Mesmer, in modern times at least, first demonstrated. However, that is as science may elect.

Theosophy retains both terms, calling those phenomena hypnotic which emanate from or are originated in the plane of selfishness or Kama, and those mesmeric which proceed from the higher or manasic plane. One is Black, the other White, Magic. These differ in their manner of production, in the material vehicles which they employ, and in other ways, which will be pointed out later. It will thus be seen how important a bearing the recognition of a Unit, or Center of human Consciousness, manifesting through the several vehicles composing the Septenary nature of man, has upon the proper understanding of the phenomena of hypnotism and Mesmerism, as well as various allied states, such as somnambulism, trance, thought-reading, clairvoyance, etc. A non-recognition of the one Unit, functioning differently in differing vehicles or bases, has caused the most curious speculations among the observers of these phenomena. For with every grade of depth in the hypnotic process such new and unsuspected mental powers made their appearance that it seemed the startling fact that there were several "selves" buried in the personality, distinct and distinguishable from the one we recognize. This was distinctly pointed out.