THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT. 207 



research were calculated to invite confidence. But it must be 

 confessed that the results which they had obtained, and the very 

 rudimentary evidence which they had adduced in this country, 

 were far from sufficing to persuade any but a very select band 

 of idealists that there was anything substantial either in their 

 premises or their conclusions. For the last year or two, however, 

 public attention has been invited to a series of phenomena which 

 were seriously alleged to afford positive evidence of the existence 

 of a variety of endowments of the human body, and of marvelous 

 powers of mental action, which realized some of the promised 

 wonders of " the new psychology." France was now, as in the last 

 century, the chosen land of marvel. There appears to be some- 

 thing in the temperament of the Latin race which lends itself 

 easily to neurotic disorder, to hysterical excitement, and to the 

 production of startling displays of mental eccentricity. We have 

 never been celebrated in this country, even in the middle ages, 

 for our demoniacs, our dancing hysterics, or our miraculous cures. 

 We have nothing to rival the ancient histories of St. Medard and 

 Port Royal, or the modern pilgrimages of Lourdes. But if the 

 modern hypnotists, psychists, and faith-curers are allowed the 

 full play which has recently been given to them, in infecting the 

 public mind with the follies of the " new hypnotism/' the " pro- 

 found hypnosis/' the " new mesmerism/' the " magnetization of 

 hypnotics/' and the " externalization of sensation," which they 

 have been so solemnly propounding and so profusely describing in 

 the pages of our leading newspapers and serials, we may yet see 

 here an abundant harvest of mentally disordered and pathological 

 creatures, such as have now for some years been permanently 

 on show across the Channel ; we may expect also to find our more 

 solid literature poisoned with this evil influence, as our literature 

 of romance and fiction already has been. From what I hear and 

 know of the attractions which these false phenomena, these dan- 

 gerous tricks, and this practice of mental subordination to another 

 will, are already exercising on some ladies of the upper class in 

 England and on some writers of influence, it appears high time 

 that a thorough exposure should be made of the imposture and 

 the self-deception which underlie the performances. Some of them 

 have been rehearsed before eminent British journalists on their 

 visits to Paris, and by them described in good faith, with no 

 small literary power and considerable although imperfect detail, 

 to the readers of the great English journals. The most vivid de- 

 scriptions of the modern development of the new superstitions 

 appeared in a series of articles in the Pall Mall Gazette early in 

 last December, and in the Times at the end of December and the 

 beginning of the present year. I was induced thereby to devote a 

 fortnight at the end of the year to an investigation of the facts 



