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informed physician" should fail to remember that physiology among the rest is full of mystery --
profound, inexplicable mystery from A to Z -- and ask whether, starting from the above "truism,"
he should not throw overboard Biology and Physiology as the greatest pieces of charlatanry in
modern Science. Nevertheless, a few in the well-meaning minority of our physicians have taken
up seriously the investigation of hypnotism. But even they, having been reluctantly compelled to
confess the reality of its phenomena, still persist in seeing in such manifestations no higher a
factor at work than the purely material and physical forces, and deny these their legitimate name
of animal magnetism. But as the Rev. Mr. Haweis (of whom more presently) just said in the
Daily Graphic . . . "The Charcot phenomena are, for all that, in many ways identical with the
mesmeric phenomena, and hypnotism must properly be considered rather as a branch of
mesmerism than as something distinct from it. Anyhow, Mesmer's facts, now generally accepted,
were at first stoutly denied." And they are still so denied.
But while they deny Mesmerism, they rush into Hypnotism, despite the now scientifically
recognized dangers of this science, in which medical practitioners in France are far ahead of the
English. And what the former say is, that between the two states of mesmerism (or magnetism as
they call it, across the water) and hypnotism "there is an abyss." That one is beneficent, the other
maleficent, as it evidently must be; since, according to both Occultism and modern Psychology,
hypnotism is produced by the withdrawal of the nervous fluid from the capillary nerves, which
being, so to say, the sentries that keep the doors of our senses opened, getting anaesthetized
under hypnotic conditions, allow these to get closed. A. H. Simonin reveals many a wholesome
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STUDIES IN OCCULTISM
27
truth in his excellent work, "Solution du probleme de la suggestion hypnotique." (1) Thus he
shows that while "in Magnetism (mesmerism) there occurs in the subject a great development of
moral faculties"; that his thoughts and feelings "become loftier, and the senses acquire an
abnormal acuteness"; in hypnotism, on the contrary, "the subject becomes a simple mirror." It is
Suggestion which is the true motor of every action in the hypnotic: and if, occasionally,
"seemingly marvelous actions are produced, these are due to the hypnotizer, not to the subject."
Again . . . . "In hypnotism instinct, i.e., the animal, reaches its greatest development; so much so,
indeed, that the aphorism 'extremes meet' can never receive a better application than to
magnetism and hypnotism." How true these words, also, as to the difference between the
mesmerized and the hypnotized subjects. "In one, his ideal nature, his moral self -- the reflection
of his divine nature -- are carried to their extreme limits, and the subject becomes almost a
celestial being (un ange). In the other, it is his instincts which develop in a most surprising
fashion. The hypnotic lowers himself to the level of the animal. From a physiological standpoint,
magnetism (Mesmerism) is comforting and curative, and hypnotism, which is but the result of an
unbalanced state, is -- most dangerous."
Thus the adverse Report drawn by Bailly at the end of last century has had dire effects in the
present, but it had its Karma also. Intended to kill the "Mesmeric" craze, it reacted as a death-
blow to the public confidence in scientific decrees. In our day the Non-Possumus of the Royal
Colleges and Academies is quoted on the Stock Exchange of the world's opinion at a price
almost as low as the Non-Possumus of the Vatican. The days of authority whether human or
divine, are fast gliding away; and we see already gleaming on future horizons but one tribunal,
supreme and final, before which mankind will bow -- the Tribunal of Fact and Truth.
Aye, to this tribunal without appeal even liberal clergymen and famous preachers make
obeisance in our day. The parts have now changed hands, and in many instances it is the
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