68 
CREATURES OF MYSTERY 
biddy-hen was the true originator of blitzkrieg. Professional 
soldiers of the present day have merely modernized her art and 
applied it to the science of war. 
When we write of the rattler’s art of hypnotism we are not 
unmindful of the fact that many will be skeptical. Psychology 
and all of its related branches, of which hypnotism is one, is 
a highly complex subject—a subject which must be dealt with 
in the abstract. It is practically impossible to prove anything 
connected with it. None of the five senses seem able to lay 
hold upon it, yet the evidence of it is visible everywhere. Much 
has been learned by dissecting and studying man’s mortal being, 
but when the wisest men the earth ever produced undertake 
to search for that invisible, intangible power called life—that 
mysterious divine spark which serves to make the whole of 
man’s mortal form “click,” they find themselves up against 
impenetrable darkness, and the search ends exactly where it 
began. So when we forsake the study of that which is mortal 
about man and enter into a study of man’s mental processes 
which we call psychology we are leaving this material world 
and delving into the mysteries of the spiritual. Why worry, 
then, that we cannot comprehend it all? Why not accept the 
thought expressed by Sir Isaac Newton, discoverer of the law 
of gravitation, as he strolled with a friend upon a rock-strewn 
beach. Picking up a beautifully polished pebble of varied hue 
for a moment he gave expression to the thought that such tiny 
pebble represented all that man had ever learned concerning 
the natural laws—that an inexhaustible sea of truth lay hidden 
in the ocean’s depths. 
If it should finally be acknowledge that the reptile does 
really possess the power to hypnotize, then may we not treat 
the knowledge of such fact as another polished pebble from 
the ocean’s depths of which he spoke? 
All students of psychology will agree that the human mind 
wants a reason for almost everything when conscious or awake. 
It is known, too, that we possess a subconscious mind which 
operates when we are asleep, and that this subconscious mind 
does not want a reason for anything, but is controlled wholly 
by suggestion. The art of putting our conscious mind to sleep 
