THE MODERN OCCULT. 471 



mystery attaching to the behavior of the magnet led Mesmer to call his 

 curative influence 'animal magnetism' — a conception that still prevails 

 among latter-day occultists. The principle of sympathetic vibration, 

 in obedience to which a tuning-fork takes up the vibrations of another 

 in unison with it. is violently transferred to imaginary brain vibrations 

 and to still more imaginary telepathic currents. The X-ray and wire- 

 less telegraphy are certain to be utilized in corroboration of unproven 

 modes of mental action, and will be regarded as the key to clairvoyance 

 and rapport, just as well-known electrical phenomena have given rise to 

 the notions of positive and negative temperaments and mediumistic 

 polar attraction and repulsion. All this results from the absurd applica- 

 tion of analogies; for analogies even when appropriate are little more 

 than suggestive or at least corroborative of relations or conceptions 

 which owe their main support to other and more sturdy evidence. 

 Analogy under careful supervision may make a useful apprentice, but 

 endless havoc results when the servant plays the part of the master. 



No better illustrations could be desired of the effects of mental 

 prepossession and the resulting distortion of evidence and of logical in- 

 sight, than those afforded by Spiritualism and Christian Science. In 

 both these movements the assimilation of a religious trend has been of 

 inestimable importance to their dissemination. Surely it is not merely 

 or mainly the evidences obtainable in the seance chamber, nor the irre- 

 sistible accumulation of cures by argument and thought-healings, that 

 account for the organized gatherings of Spiritualists and the costly 

 temples and thriving congregations of Christ Scientist. It is the 

 presentation of a practical doctrine of immortality and of the spiritual 

 nature of disease in conjunction with an accepted religious system, that 

 is responsible for these vast results. The 'Key to the Scriptures' has 

 immeasurably reinforced the 'Science and Health,' and brought believ- 

 ers to a new form of Christianity who never would have been converted 

 to a new system of medicine presented on purely intellectual grounds. 

 Kationality is doubtless a characteristic tendency of humanity, but logi- 

 cality is an acquired possession and one by no means firmly established 

 in the race at large. So long as we are reproved by the discipline of 

 nature and that rather promptly, we tend to act in accordance with the 

 established relations of things; and that is rationality. But the more 

 remote connections between antecedent and consequent and the devel- 

 opment of habits of thought which shall lead to reliable conclusions in 

 complex situations; and again, the ability to distinguish between the 

 plausibile and the true, the firmness to support principle in the face 

 of paradox and seeming non-conformity, to think clearly and con- 

 sistently in the absence of the practical reproof of nature — that is 

 logicality. It is only as the result of a prolonged and conscientious 

 training aided by an extensive experience and a knowledge of the his- 



