THE MODERN OCCULT. 4&7 



had exhausted the capacity of his personal attention by magnetizing 

 trees and selling magnetized water. The absent treatment represents 

 the occult 'extension movement'; and unencumbered by the hampering 

 restrictions of physical forces, superior even to wireless telegraphy, car- 

 ries its influence into the remotest homes. From ocean to ocean and 

 from North to South these absent healers set apart some hour of the 

 day when they mentally convey their healing word to the scattered 

 members of their flock. On the payment of a small fee you are made 

 acquainted with the 'soul-communion time-table' for your longitude and 

 may know when to meet the healing vibrations as they pass by. Others 

 disdain any such temporal details and assure a cure merely on payment 

 of the fee; the healer will know sympathetically when and how to trans- 

 mit the curative impulses. Poverty and bad habits as well as disease 

 readily succumb to the magic of the absent treatment. Here is the 

 hysterical edict of one of them: 'Join the Success Circle/ . . . 

 "The Centre of that Circle is my omnipotent WOED. Daily I speak 

 it. Its vibrations radiate more and more powerfully day by day. 

 As the sun sends out vibrations ... so my WOED 

 radiates Success to 10,000 lives as easily as to one." 



It is impossible to appreciate fully the extravagances of these occult 

 healers unless one makes a sufficient sacrifice of time and patience to 

 read over a considerable sample of the periodical publications with 

 which American occultism is abundantly provided. And when one has 

 accomplished this task he is still at sea to account for the readers and 

 believers who support these various systems so undreamt of in our 

 philosophy. It would really seem that there is no combination of ideas 

 too absurd to fail entirely of a following. Carlyle without special 

 provocation concluded that there were about forty million persons in 

 England, mostly fools; what would have been his comment in the face 

 of this vast array of human folly! If it be urged in rejoinder that be- 

 neath all this rubbish heap a true jewel lies buried, that the wonderful 

 cures and the practical success of these various systems indicate their 

 dependence upon an essential and valuable factor in the cure of dis- 

 ease and the formation of habits, it is possible with reservation to as- 

 sent and with emphasis to demur. Such success, in so far as it is rightly 

 reported, exemplifies the truly remarkable function of the mental factor 

 in the control of normal as of disordered physiological functions. This 

 truth has been recognized and utilized in unobtrusive ways for many 

 generations, and within recent years has received substantial elabora- 

 tion from carefully conducted experiments and observations. Specifi- 

 cally the therapeutic action of suggestion, both in its more usual forms 

 and as hypnotic suggestion, has shown to what unexpected extent such 

 action may proceed in susceptible individuals. The well-informed and 

 capable physician requires no instruction on this point; his medical 



