i882.j ' Analyses of Books, 355 
These are heavy demands, but if this great branch of our 
national industry is to hold its own they must be fulfilled. We 
believe this little work will be found very widely useful, and we 
hope that the remainder of the treatises to appear under the 
auspices of the City and Guilds Institute will be conceived and 
executed in the same rational and practical spirit. 
Private Instructions in the Science and Art of Organic Magnetism. 
By Miss Chandos Leigh Hunt. Third Edition. London: 
Burns, Southampton Row. 
Books such as the one before us are, in more respedts than one, 
not unlike the first journals of exploration in an unknown region. 
On the one hand, they rouse the curiosity even of the calmest 
and most judicially-disposed reader. On the other hand, they 
suggest the doubt, how much of what is recorded is the fruit of 
pure stridt observation, how much is mere inference, drawn 
possibly from insufficient premises, and how much, possibly, is 
illusion ? The orthodox mode of treatment for works of this 
class is simple and convenient : they are dismissed as the out- 
come of ill-regulated minds, under the influence of “ dominant 
ideas.” We can scarcely accept this method as legitimate. 
Illusions, even, are psychic phenomena, and it hence falls stridtly 
within the province of Science to examine their nature, and, if 
possible, to explain their origin. Moreover, if only a small por- 
tion of what is stated in this volume should be true, — that is, 
should be a literal record of fadts and a body of fair]y-drawn 
conclusions — the subjedt is, both theoretically and pradtically, of 
the gravest importance. 
Miss Hunt defines, or rather describes, “ organic magnetism ” 
as “ an emanation arising from organisms.” She calls it 
“ organic, to distinguish it from an analogous emanation which 
surrounds inorganic things. This emanation can aptly be com- 
pared to a Spirit-vapour — in its most passive state it has a 
tendency to ascend in the atmosphere.” She adds : “ Its pecu- 
liar characteristics are derived from the nature of the thing from 
which it emanates. Some people intuitively know the character 
of a man, animal, or plant by sensing this emanation, upon which 
they found their sympathies or antipathies for its generator ; they 
intuitively feel that a man is good or bad, an animal kindly or 
vicious, a plant salutary or poisonous.” 
Several questions here suggest themselves to the reader. Is 
there any “ emanation ” arising from organisms as a class, and 
to be distinguished from some other emanation which proceeds 
from inorganic matter ? We know, of course, that many kinds 
