m while it should stop in the left, she executed his orders with
the utmost precision in the presence of the physician (Morel), who
admitted and deposed to the fact, and of several ecclesiastics. Sister de
la Purification did the same thing two or three times, causing her pulse
to beat or to stop at the command of the exorcist."

Instead of exorcist we may, without much apprehension of offending either
the reason or the belief of any candid person, read "Mesmerist." The
passes seem similar, the phenomena identical. Again, in the case of the
girls of the parish of Landes, near Bayeux, in 1732, the orders given by
the exorcists in Latin appeared to be well understood by the patients. "In
general," says Calmeil, quoting the contemporaneous account of their
possession, "during the ecstatic access, the sense of touch was not
excited even by the application of fire; nevertheless the exorcists affirm
that their patients yielded immediate attention to the thoughts which they
(the exorcists) refrained from expressing, and that they described with
exactness the interior of distant houses which they had never before
seen."

This long and varied survey of different forms of physical and mental
malady brings us to a point where we may, with some confidence, take our
stand on inductive conclusions. It seems evident, then, that all the
phenomena of animal magnetism have been from an early period known to
mankind under the various forms of divinatory ecstasy, demonopathy or
witchmania, theomania, or fanatical religious excitation, spontaneous
catalepsy, and somnambulism. That, in addition to the ordinary
manifestations of insensibility to pain, rigidity, and what is called
clairvoyance, the patients affected with the more intense conditions of
the malady have at all times exhibited a marvellous command of languages;
a seeming participation in the thoughts, sensations, and impulses of
others; a power of resisting, for some short time at least, the action of
fire; and, perhaps, a capacity of evolving some hitherto unknown energy
counteractive of the force of gravitation. That the condition of mind and
body in question can be induced by means addressed to each and all of the
senses, as well as involuntarily by way of sympathy or contagion. That the
fixing of the eyes on a particular point, as a wafer, or the umbilicus, or
on a polished ball or mirror, is one of the most general and efficacious
means of artificially inducing the condition