A1AURY OX SLEEP AND DREAMS. 395 



they depend upon some direct emanation of power 

 from the former. Prove that such influence actually 

 issues from one living being, thus changing the con- 

 dition of another in its proximity, and we have a new 

 and wonderful element, material or spiritual, brought 

 at once into the arena of life. It is admitted, indeed, 

 that this mysterious power is possessed by few indi- 

 viduals only a limitation, if the facts be real, almost 

 as strange as the power itself. But we may at once 

 state our belief that no such peculiar power exists. 

 The operator himself cannot furnish evidence of it. 

 The effects he produces by his manipulations and other 

 devices are closely analogous, often identical, with 

 those to which individuals of a certain nervous tem- 

 perament are liable from other and very different 

 exciting causes. This, then, we apprehend to be the 

 crucial question in all that appertains to mesmeric 

 sleep, under its various aspects. The simple fact of 

 sleep thus produced was known long ago ; but it was 

 reserved for our time to erect it into a mysterious 

 principle, altering, were it real, all our views of mental 

 phenomena. 



But that it would be straying too far from our 

 subject, we might speak here of certain bolder imposi- 

 tions upon human credulity which have gained a 

 recent notoriety. Connected in some points with 

 mesmeric effects, and often admitting of similar inter- 

 pretation, they go far beyond these in their preten- 

 sions ; bringing us into contact and communication 

 with the world of deceased spirits, through the inter- 

 vention of persons mediums as they are called * 



