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ANIMAL MAGNETISM AND MAGIC.
IN 1818, when my chief work first appeared, Animal
Magnetism had only begun to struggle into existence.
But, as to its explanation although, to be sure, some light
had been thrown upon the passive side of it, that is, upon
what goes on within the patient, by the contrast between
the cerebral and the ganglionic systems, to which Eeil had
drawn attention, having been taken for the principle of
explanation the active side, the agent proper by means of
which the magnetiser evokes all these phenomena, was
still completely shrouded in darkness. People groped
about among all sorts of material principles of explanation,
such as Mesmer s all-permeating ether, or the exhalations
from the magnetiser s skin, assumed by Stieglitz to be
the cause, &c. &c. At the utmost a nerve- spirit had been
recognised and, after all, this was but a word for an un
known thing. The truth had scarcely begun to dawn upon
a few persons, whom practice had more deeply initiated.
But I was still far from hoping for any direct corroboration
of my doctrine from Magnetism.
Dies diem docet however, and the great teacher, expe
rience, has since brought to light an important fact con
cerning this deep-reaching agent which, proceeding from
the magnetiser, produces effects apparently so contrary to
the regular course of Nature that the long lasting doubt as
to their existence, the stiff-necked incredulity, the condemna
tion of a Committee of which Lavoisier and Franklin were
members, in short, the whole opposition that Magnetism
encountered both in its first and second period (with the sola