Volume 2

Hypnotism and the doctors / [Richard Harte].

  • Harte, Richard.
Date:
1902-1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Hypnotism and the doctors / [Richard Harte]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    magicians worked, and says that he does not know if any of the secret brotherhood still remains on earth, but that, at all events, the obscure but tremendous forces, though now forgotten or ignored, still exist undiminished. It is not easy for anyone educated in our present scientific ideas to grasp such conceptions, which differ from our present notions in that they introduce life into everything, and accord to “ the soul ” the power to imbue the “ brute ” forces of Nature with a portion of life sufficient for the carrying out of certain purposes. Looked at with that idea in the mind, everything takes on a different aspect, somewhat like the entirely different appearance which plants would assume in the eyes of anyone who had studied botany only in a herbarium, and for the first time saw the living herbs growing in the fields, instead of cut and dried and put up in bundles. In the first place, Dupotet adopted Mesmer’s idea, that when the forces of Nature are set in motion by the will or “ soul,” the action is like that of flame, which spreads by its own energy so long as it has material to feed on. With a single match one might burn a whole city ; and even so, by setting in motion certain natural forces, a man might do great good or great harm — might create or destroy, cure or kill. Once a natural force is set going in this way (psychically instead of physically, as Science now only sets natural forces going), the soul imparts to it a kind of intelligence that causes it to do the work demanded of it. No further effort is required, but he who sets the force in motion must be ready to control it, and to arrest it, or unforeseen