ised to discover
that therein was the entire case of the French sensitives and of
our poor mediums.

"A very important thought is that an hypnotic influence need not
spring from any verbal expression. We all carry with us an
influence which strikes every sensitive we meet; and if we sit
with her when she is, of course, specially passive, she must
receive a yet more marked influence. There is a photographic
curiosity now often exhibited which, I think, illustrates the
thought I want to emphasize. A family or a class can be
photographed, one by one, at exactly the same focus and on the
same negative, with a result that you have a clear and distinct
face, not of any one's personality, but that actually combines
the features of the whole into a new individual unlike any of
the sitters."

"This is the very influence we cast upon a sensitive when she
sits for us in a miscellaneous circle. We cannot say that any
one of us has powerfully affected her, but we know the entire
influence has got control and possession, and that influence
follows her, too often with irresistible power."

The publication of a work on animal magnetism by Binet and Fere of
Paris prompts the following sketch of the subject by the _Boston
Herald_, a newspaper which pays great attention to anything foreign or
anything from the old school profession, but ignores that which is
American and original. The reader will observe that the writers are
all in the dark, unable to explain the phenomena they describe.

PROGRESS OF MAGNETISM.

One of the most notable features of the scientific tendencies of the
present day is the extraordinary interest taken in the investigation
of those peculiar physical and psychical conditions attending the
states now known collectively under the name of hypnotism, varying
from lethargy, catalepsy, etc., to somnambulism. Until quite recently
these investigations have been frowned upon and tabooed in scientific
circles, and the fact that any man of scientific inclinations was
known to feel an interest in matters associated with "mesmerism" or
"animal magnetism" was sufficient to make him an object of suspicion,
and injure his good standing amongst his fellow-scientists. The result
of the so-called investigations long ago instituted by the French
Academy, pronouncing in effect the whole subject a humbug and
delusion, has lain like an interdict upon fur