8o MEMORIES OF MY LIFE 



There was a good deal of talk at that time about 

 animal magnetism. Its practice in Saxony was 

 forbidden by law, but an Austrian acquaintance in 

 Dresden invited me to his house across the frontier, 

 where I saw the elementary part of its practice, 

 namely, its inducing catalepsy and insensibility to 

 pain. I afterwards practised it at home, and 

 magnetised some eighty persons in this way ; but it is 

 an unwholesome procedure, and I have never attempted 

 it since. One experience was, however, of interest. 

 I had been assured that success was the effect of 

 strength of will on the part of the magnetiser, so at 

 first I exerted all the will-power I possessed, which 

 was fatiguing. I then, by way of experiment, inter- 

 mitted a little, looking all the time in the same way 

 as before, and found myself equally successful. So I 

 intermitted more and more, and at last succeeded in 

 letting my mind ramble freely while I maintained the 

 same owl-like demeanour. This acted just as well. 

 The safe conclusion was that the effect is purely 

 subjective on the part of the patient, and that will- 

 power on the part of the operator has nothing to do 

 with it. 



A main object of giving the foregoing brief notices 

 of notable persons with whom I had the privilege of 

 being acquainted at Cambridge, is to show the 

 enormous advantages offered by a University to those 

 who care to profit by them. The body of under- 

 graduates contains a very large majority of men of 

 mediocre gifts and tastes, but it has also a strong 

 infusion of the highest intellects of their age and 

 country, picked out of all the schools of England. 

 Among any body of young educated Englishmen 



