THE REVIVAL OE WITCHCRAFT. 525 



The hypnotic endormeur is very well able to explain the mira- 

 cles of faith-cure and pilgrimage by the light of his own expe- 

 rience. They result, as he explains accurately, from the reaction 

 of mind on body, the effects of imagination, of self-suggestion, or 

 of suggestion from without. Those who benefit by them are es- 

 pecially the fervent and the enthusiastic, the vividly imaginative, 

 the mentally dependent, and, above all, the hysterical — male or 

 female. But clearly, the faith-curer may retort upon the hypno- 

 tizer that they are brothers in their therapeutic results, if not in 

 their faith and philosophy. The one can work about the same 

 percentage of cures as the other — and no more ; and the interven- 

 ing apparatus, whether of magnets, mirrors, or of grottoes, only 

 serve to affect the imagination, and to supply " the external stimu- 

 lus " which is necessary. 



To this category belong also the long series of thousands of 

 asserted cures of people who wear what they are pleased to call 

 magnetic belts, or who used to wear magnetic rings, who were 

 cured by the Perkins tractors, whether of wood or of iron — they 

 are the prey of the quacks of all ages and countries. 



One essential part is, however, I conceive, that no new faculty 

 was ever yet_developed in any of these hypnotics. The frauds of 

 clairvoyance, of spirit perceptions, of gifts of language, of slate- 

 writing, of spirit-writing, of far-sight, of " communication across 

 space/' of " transfer of mental impressions/' of the development 

 of any new sense or ghost of a new sense, remain now as ever, for 

 the most part, demonstrable frauds or perhaps in a few cases self- 

 deceptions. At the Salpetriere, at Nancy, wherever the facts have 

 been impartially and critically examined, this has been the result. 

 It results once more now from my test of the subjects of the 

 Charite* and the Ecole Polytechnique. It will, I suppose, be too 

 much to expect that we shall hear no more of the " New Mesmer- 

 ism," but it will be easy for any one thus experimentally to re- 

 duce it to its true dimensions. 



Finally, as to the practical question, which has perhaps a 

 greater interest for the sociologist than any which have suggested 

 themselves up to this point. Since the hypnotist faith-curer of 

 the hospital ward and the priestly faith-curer of the grotto are in 

 truth utilizing the same human elements and employing cognate 

 resources, although masked by a different outward garb, Are may 

 ask ourselves which can approximate to the greater successes and 

 which does the least harm. 



So far as I can see, the balance is in favor of the faith-curer of 

 the chapel and the grotto. The results at least are proportion- 

 ately as numerous, and they are more rapid. Numerically there 

 are, I incline to think, more faith-cures at Lourdes than there are 

 " suggestion-cures " in the Salpetriere or the Charite*. So far as 



