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All this may seem, at first sight, very absurd. But the fact remains that Mesmer certainly wrought cures. And apparently he frequently succeeded in curing or greatly alleviating, where other doctors had completely failed. It is no longer possible for any instructed person to regard Mesmer as a charlatan who knowingly deluded the public for his own profit. His theories may have been partly mistaken, but his practical results were indubitable.

It is also worth noting that he treated rich and poor alike, charging the latter no fee. He was a man of great tenderness and kindness of heart, devoted to the cause of the sick and suffering; and the accounts of his patients show the unbounded gratitude which they felt towards him, and the respect in which he was held.

The orthodox doctors, of course, felt otherwise. They were envious and jealous of the foreign innovator and his success. And his fame was too great to allow of his being ignored. Consequently the Royal Society of Medicine appointed a commission to inquire into the new treatment. The finding, of course, was adverse. The investigators could not deny the cures, but they fell back on the recuperative force of nature and denied that Mesmer's treatment caused the cure.

Modern medicine is more and more coming to this conclusion--is abandoning drugging as it abandoned bleeding and cautery, and is leaving the patient to nature. This is a significant fact.

But there is good reason to believe that Mesmer's treatment was a real factor in his cures, for in many cases the patient had been treated by orthodox methods for years without effect. Perhaps, as the doctors said, it was "only the recuperative force of Nature", but if the doctors could not set that force to work, and Mesmer somehow could, he is just as much entitled to the credit of the cure as if he had done it by bleeding or drugging. However, by one sort of persecution or another, he was driven out of Paris, and more or less discredited. After a visit to England, he retired to Switzerland, where he lived in obscurity until his death in 1815.

The method was kept alive by various disciples, such as the Marquis de Puys?gur, Dupotet, Deleuze, and many more, but in an amateurish sort of way. The first-named found that in one of his patients he could induce a trance state which showed peculiar features. In trance, the man knew all that he knew when awake, but when awake he knew nothing of what had happened in trance. This second condition thus seemed to be equivalent to an enlargement of personality.

Both in England and France the medical side came to the front again, in the hands of Braid , Li?beault, Bernheim, Elliotson, and Esdaile.

The most modern opinion is pretty much the same. Dr Tuckey, who learnt his method from Li?beault himself, and who practised for twenty years in the West End of London, is convinced that the whole thing is suggestion. So is Dr Bramwell, who shares with Dr Tuckey the leading position among hypnotic practitioners in England. The latter, it may be remarked, was the first qualified medical man to write an important book on the subject in English, after Braid.

The tendency now is to give suggestions without attempting to induce actual trance. It is found with many patients that if they will make their minds passive and receptive, listening to the doctor's suggestions in an absent-minded sort of way, those suggestions--that the health shall improve and the specified symptoms disappear--are carried out. The explanation of this is "wrapped in mystery". No one knows exactly how it comes about. But it seems to be somewhat thus:

The complicated happenings within our bodies, such as the chemical phenomena known as digestion and the physical phenomena such as blood circulation and contraction of involuntary muscles, seem to imply intelligence, though that intelligence is not part of the conscious mind, for we do not consciously direct the processes. They go on all the same--for example--when we are asleep. Presumably, then, there is a mental Something in us, which never sleeps, and which runs the organic machinery. If we could get at this Something, and give it instructions, a part of the machinery which is working wrongly might get attended to and put right. Unfortunately, the ordinary consciousness is in the way. We cannot get at the mechanic in the mill, because we have to go through the office, and the managing director keeps us talking.

Well, in hypnotic trance, or even in the preoccupied "absent-minded" state, we get past the managing director--who is asleep or attending to something else--into the mill. We get at the man who really attends to the machinery. We get past the normal consciousness, and can give our orders to the "subconscious" or "subliminal"--which means "below the threshold". In Myers' phrase, suggestion is a "successful appeal to the subliminal self", but exactly how it comes about, and why the patient usually cannot do it for himself but has to have the suggestion administered by a doctor, we do not know.

However, as a matter of practical fact, the "mechanic" has his limitations, like the normal consciousness. He is not omnipotent. Consequently we cannot be sure of being able to stimulate him to the extent of a cure. It depends on his knowledge and power. But he can always do something, if we can get at him. The chief difficulty is that in many people he is inaccessible.

For instance, I have many times submitted myself to the treatment of Dr Tuckey and another medical friend, without effect. I have each time tried my best to help, making my mind as passive as I could; for I was sure that if a suggestible stage could be reached, some troublesome heart symptoms and insomnia could be alleviated. But I was never able to reach a state even approaching hypnosis. I suppose my normal consciousness could not put itself sufficiently to sleep. Being interested in the scientific aspect of the subject, my consciousness watched the process and analysed its own sensations, instead of "letting go" and subsiding out of the way.

As to the proportion of susceptible persons, observers differ. Wetterstrand and Vogt hold that all sane and healthy people are hypnotisable, and Dr Bramwell's results among strong farm labourers at Goole support that view. Patients with nervous ailments are difficult to hypnotise; out of one hundred such cases in his London practice, Dr Bramwell only influenced eighty. This is the percentage of susceptibles found by Drs Tuckey and Bernheim also.

The insane are usually unhypnotisable, probably because of their inability to concentrate their attention. Out of the 80 per cent. of sane susceptibles, only a small proportion go off into hypnotic sleep; ten according to Tuckey, rather more according to the experience of Bramwell, Forel, and Vogt. Most of the susceptible, however, though retaining consciousness, may be deprived of muscular control. For example, if told that they cannot open their eyes, they find that it is so.

The various "stages" of hypnosis shade gradually into each other, and classifications are not much good. Charcot's three stages of lethargy, catalepsy, and somnambulism are now discredited as true stages. In good subjects they are producible at will, and as observed at the Salp?tri?re they were almost certainly due to training.

It has been much debated whether a hypnotised person could be made to commit a crime. Probably not; it is difficult to be quite sure, but the evidence is on the negative side. True, a hypnotised subject will put sugar which he has been told is arsenic into his mother's tea, but his inner self probably knows well enough that it is only sugar. On the other hand, it is certain that a hypnotiser may obtain a remarkable amount of control over specially sensitive subjects, particularly by repeated hypnotisations.

I have seen hypnotised subjects who seemed almost perfect automata, obeying orders as mechanically as if they had no will of their own left. Certainly no one, either man or woman, but particularly the latter, should submit himself or herself to hypnotic treatment except by a qualified person in whom full trust can be reposed. And, even then, in the case of a woman patient, it is well for a third person to be present.

But the stories of the novelists, about subjugated wills, hypnotising from a distance, and all the rest of it, are quite without adequate foundation in fact. There is very little evidence in support of hypnosis produced at a distance, and in the one case where it did seem to occur there had been repeated hypnotisations of the ordinary kind, by which a sort of telepathic rapport was perhaps established .

Hypnotism against the will is a myth; except perhaps in here and there a backboneless person who could be influenced any way, without hypnosis or anything of the kind. The Chicago pamphleteer who wants to teach us how to get on in business by developing a "hypnotic eye" is merely after dollars. It is all bunkum.

There is a sense, however, in which hypnotic treatment can be a help in education and in strengthening the character. Backward and lazy children could probably be improved, and I know cases in which sleep-walking and other bad habits have been cured by suggestion. From this it is but a step to dipsomania, which can often be cured. Dr Tuckey reports seventy cures out of two hundred cases.

F. W. H. Myers, to whose genius doctors as well as psychologists owe their first scientific conceptions in this domain, was extremely optimistic here. He held that though we cannot expect to manufacture saints, any more than we can manufacture geniuses, there is nevertheless enough evidence to show that great things could be done.

"If the subject is hypnotisable, and if hypnotic suggestion be applied with sufficient persistency and skill, no depth of previous baseness and foulness need prevent the man or woman whom we charge with 'moral insanity', or stamp as a 'criminal-born', from rising into a state where he or she can work steadily and render services useful to the community" . Experiments on hypnotic lines ought certainly to be carried out in our prisons and reformatories. As to the formerly alleged dangers of such experimentation--dangers of hysteria, etc., alleged by the Charcot school which is now seen to have been quite on a wrong tack--they do not exist, if the operator knows his business.

Says Professor Forel: "Li?beault, Bernheim, Wetterstrand, Van Eeden, De Jong, Moll, I myself, and the other followers of the Nancy school, declare categorically that, although we have seen many thousands of hypnotised persons, we have never observed a single case of mental or bodily harm caused by hypnosis, but, on the contrary, have seen many cases of illness relieved or cured by it". Dr Bramwell fully endorses this, saying emphatically that he has "never seen an unpleasant symptom, even of the most trivial nature, follow the skilled induction of hypnosis" .

All were correctly timed by the subliminal stratum, the action being promptly carried out at the due moment. In the waking state the patient was quite incapable--as most of us would be--of calculating mentally when the periods would elapse. But the hypnotic stratum could do it, and this shows that there are intellectual powers which lie outside the field of the normal consciousness. The argument could be further supported by the feats of "calculating boys", who can sometimes solve the most complicated arithmetical problems, without knowing how they do it. They let the problem sink in, and the answer is shot up presently, like the cooked pudding in the geyser.

But these things are still in their infancy. Psychology is working at the subject, but we do not yet know enough to enable us to venture far in the direction of practical application of hypnotic methods in education. It seems likely, however, that further investigation will yield knowledge which may be of inestimable practical value in the training of minds, as well as in the curing of mental and bodily disease.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

It has been said, as a kind of jocular epigram, that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. With similar truth it may be said that Christian Science is neither Christian nor science, in any ordinary sense of those words. Still, perhaps we ought to allow an inventor to christen his own creation, even if the name seems inappropriate or likely to cause misunderstanding; and, Mrs Eddy having invented Christian Science as an organised religion--though, as we shall see, borrowing its main features from an earlier prophet--we may admit her right to give a name to her astonishing production. In order that the personal equation may be allowed for, the present writer begs to affirm that he writes as a sympathetic student though not an adherent.

Mary A. Morse Baker was born on July 16th, 1821, of pious parents, at Bow, New Hampshire. Her father was almost illiterate, rather passionate, a keen hand at a bargain, and a Puritan in religion. All the Bakers were a trifle cranky and eccentric, but some of them possessed ability of sorts, though Mary's father made no great success in life. His daughter made up for him afterwards.

In 1843 she married George Glover, who died in June, 1844, leaving her penniless. Her only child was born in the September following. After ten years of widowhood she married Daniel Paterson, a travelling dentist. In 1866 they separated, he making some provision for her. In 1873 she obtained a divorce on the ground of desertion. In 1877 she married Asa Gilbert Eddy, who died in 1882.

So much for her matrimonial experiences, which may now be dismissed, as they had no particular influence on her character and career. To prevent confusion, we will call her throughout by the name which is most familiar to us and to the world.

The chief event of Mrs Eddy's remarkable life, the event which put her on the road to fame and fortune, occurred in 1862. This was her meeting with the famous "healer", Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. This latter was an unschooled but earnest and benevolent man, who had made experiments in mesmerism, etc., and who had found--or thought he had found--that people could be cured of their ailments by "faith". He therefore began to work out a system of "mind-cure", which he embodied in voluminous MSS. Patients came to him from far and near, and he treated all, whether they could pay or not. Quimby was much above the level of the common quack, and his character commands our respect. He was a man of great natural intelligence, and was admirable in all his dealings with family, friends, and patients.

Mrs Eddy visited him at Portland in 1862, her aim being treatment for her continued ill-health. She claims to have been cured--in three weeks--though it is clear from her later letters that the cure was not complete. Still, great improvement was apparently effected, for she had been almost bedridden, with some kind of spinal or hysterical complaint, for eight years previously. But Quimby's effect on her was greater mentally even than physically. She became interested in his system, watched his treatment of patients, borrowed his MSS., and mastered his teachings. In 1864 she visited him again, staying two or three months, and prosecuting her studies. She now seemed to have formed a definite desire to assist in teaching his system. No doubt she dimly saw a possible career opening out in front of her; though we need not attribute her desire entirely to mere ambition or greed, for it is probable that Quimby did a great amount of genuine good, and his pupil would naturally imbibe some of his zeal for the relief of suffering humanity.

In 1866 Quimby died, aged sixty-four. His pupil decided to put on the mantle of her teacher, but more as propagandist and religious prophet than as healer. In this latter capacity perhaps her sex was against her. But she was poor, and prospects did not seem promising. For some time she drifted about among friends--chiefly spiritualists--preparing MSS. and teaching Quimbyism to anyone who would listen.

Though unsuccessful as healer , she certainly had the knack of teaching--had the power of inspiring enthusiasm and of inoculating others with her ideas. In 1870 she turned up at Lynn, Mass., with a pupil named Richard Kennedy, a lad of twenty-one. Her aim being to found a religious organisation based on practical results , it was necessary to work with a pupil-practitioner. Accordingly she and Kennedy took offices at Lynn, and "Dr Kennedy" appeared on a signboard affixed to a tree.

In 1881 was founded the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. This imposingly-named institution never had any special buildings, and its instructions were mostly given in Mrs Eddy's parlour, Mrs Eddy herself constituting all the faculty. Four thousand students passed through the "College" in seven years, at the end of which period it ceased to exist. The fees were usually 0 for seven lessons, as before. Few gold-mines pay as well as did the "Metaphysical College". The fact does not at first sight increase our respect for the alleged cuteness of the inhabitants of the States. But, on further investigation, the murder is out. Most of these students probably earned back by "healing" much more than they paid Mrs Eddy. Our respect for Uncle Sam's business shrewdness returns in full force.

The experiment of conducting religious services had been made by Mrs Eddy at Lynn in 1875, but the first Christian Science Church was not chartered until 1879. The Scientists met, however, in various public halls of Boston, until 1894, when a church was built. This was soon outgrown, and 10,000 of the faithful pledged themselves to raise two million dollars for its enlargement. The new building was finished in 1906. Its auditorium holds five thousand people. The walls are decorated with texts signed "Jesus, the Christ," and "Mary Baker G. Eddy"--these names standing side by side.

The following examples, culled almost at random, will further show how great is her conviction that she has the Truth, how vigorously she bulls her own stocks :

"God has been graciously fitting me during many years for the reception of this final revelation of the absolute divine Principle of scientific mental healing".

"I won my way to absolute conclusion through divine revelation, reason and demonstration".

"To those natural Christian Scientists, the ancient worthies, and to Christ Jesus, God certainly revealed the Spirit of Christian Science, if not the absolute letter".

"The theology of Christian Science is truth; opposed to which is the error of sickness, sin, and death, that truth destroys".

"Christian Science is the unfolding of true Metaphysics, that is, of Mind, or God, and His attributes. Science rests on principle and demonstration. The Principle of Christian Science is divine".

The following maybe quoted as an example of mixed good and evil, with a certain flavour of unconscious humour:

"Hate no one; for hatred is a plague-spot that spreads its virus and kills at last. If indulged, it masters us; brings suffering to its possessor throughout time, and beyond the grave. If you have been badly wronged, forgive and forget: God will recompense this wrong, and punish, more severely than you could, him who has striven to injure you".

The advice is good, but it is not new. And Mrs Eddy seemed to experience a special joy in the thought that by leaving our enemies alone they will receive from God a more effective trouncing than we with our poor appliances could administer. The ideal Christian would not want his enemies handed over to the inquisitor--he would beg for them to be let off. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" That is the Christian attitude. It is perhaps too high for ordinary mortals to attain to, but Mrs Eddy made such high claims that we are entitled to judge her by correspondingly high standards.

As to church government, there was a nominal board of directors, but Mrs Eddy had supreme power. She could appoint or dismiss at will. The Church was hers, body and soul. Probably no other religious leader ever had such an unqualified sway. The Holy Father at Rome is a mere figurehead in comparison with the late Reverend Mother.

In June, 1907, there were in all 710 branch churches. Of these, twenty-five were in Canada, fourteen in Britain, two in Ireland, four in Australia, one in South Africa, eight in Mexico, two in Germany, one in Holland, one in France, and the remainder in the States. There were also 295 societies not yet incorporated into churches. The total membership of the 710 churches was probably about 50,000. About one-tenth of these make their living by their faith. Here we come to the secret of Christian Science success.

Psychologically, Mrs Eddy is at least classified, if not entirely explained, by one word--monoideism. She was a person of one idea. These people, for whom we usually have the simpler term of "crank", are common enough. I have no personal acquaintance with the circle-squaring and perpetual-motion cranks mentioned by De Morgan , but I know a "flat-earth" crank, and am well acquainted with a "British-Israelite" crank, who seems to derive unspeakable joy--tempered only by his failure to convert me--from the thought that we Britishers are veritably the descendants of one or more of the Lost Tribes. All these people are conscious of a mission. They have had a revelation, and are anxious to impart it. Their efforts may not be due to the "last infirmity of noble mind", still less to a lower motive. They may just be built that way. The majority of them, like my Lost-Tribes friend, get no hearing because of the inflexible pragmatism of a stiffnecked and utilitarian generation. "What difference does it make whether we are the Tribes or not?" asks the man in the street. And he passes on with a shrug or a grin, according to temperament. This terrible pragmatic test makes short work of many amiable cranks. And it is just here that Christian Science scores its point; for it cures physical disease, thereby becoming intensely practical. Health is the chief "good" of life. Anything that will restore it to an ailing body commands immediate and universal respect. Christian Science therefore appeals, on its practical side, to the deepest thing in us--to the primal instinct of self-preservation. Hence its success.

It is possible to blame Mrs Eddy unjustly for her love of power as such. She was not unique in this respect. The difference is that Mrs Eddy succeeded while the others have not, and are consequently not heard of. My Lost-Tribes friend would be as autocratic as anybody if he had the chance; but his motive would not be greed of power, but rather the overmastering desire to push his cause, to proselytise, to promulgate his one idea, almost by force, if such a thing were possible. Most of us know a few fanatics of this kind. The objects of their devotion are varied--one is mad north-north-west, another south-south-east--but all suffer from a lack of balance, a lack of proper distribution of interest. Of course, we may cheerfully admit that we are all more or less specialists in our several departments, and that the line between sanity and insanity is rather arbitrary. We all seem more or less mad to those who do not agree with us.

The good and true part of Christian Science is its demonstration of the influence of mind on body, and of the usefulness of inducing mental states of an optimistic character. It may, of course, be said that we need no Mrs Eddy to tell us this. True, we don't. The great seers and poets have always taught optimism, and the influence of mind on body was medically recognised--more or less--long before even Quimby's time. But we must remember that different minds need different treatment--need their nutriment and stimulant in different forms, to suit the various mental digestions and receptive powers. Consequently, though we may prefer Browning for optimism and the doctors for hypnotic therapeutics, we need not complain if others prefer Mrs Eddy and her disciples. If they get good from their way of putting things, and if that good manifests itself in their character and life--in their total reaction on the world--by all means let them continue to walk in their chosen way. It would be wrong to try to turn them. The system "works"; therefore it is true for them. The tree is known by its fruits. And the fruits of Christian Science are undoubtedly often good. In this complex world nothing is unmixedly good, and harm is no doubt done occasionally. But, on the whole, it seems probable that Mrs Eddy, with all her hysteria and morbidities and rancours and queerness, has been a power for good in the world. Her writings meet a want which some people feel, or, rather, provide them with a useful impulse in the direction of physical and spiritual regeneration. If you can make a sick person stop brooding over his ailments and worrying over things in general, you have achieved something which enormously increases his chance of recovery; and if you can make him turn all his thoughts and energies in the direction of recovery, and all his emotional powers in the direction of love and goodwill to his fellow-men and towards God, there is no limit to the powers which may be put in operation. In spite of all our achievements in science--and they have been great--we are only, as Newton said, picking up pebbles on the sea-shore. Nature is boundless; we can fix no limits to her powers. And we know so little, really, about disease, that I am not at all prepared to deny the Christian Science claims, even with regard to organic disease. The distinction between organic and functional is in our own inabilities, not in the nature of the case; we call a disease "organic" when we find definite tissue-change, and "functional" when we do not; but in the latter case there must be some organic basis, though too small perhaps to be discoverable--say a lesion in a tiny nerve. Consequently I regard the question of Christian Science cures as entirely one of evidence. I keep an open mind. If I come across enough evidence, I will believe that it can cure tuberculosis of the lungs and other diseases, as claimed, whether I can understand how it does it or not. At present, like Dr Myers, I am not convinced; but I have seen enough of Christian Science results among my own friends to prevent me from denying anything. I merely suspend judgment. But I do believe that the power of the mind over the body is so great that almost anything is possible; and I think that the medical advance of the next half-century will be chiefly in this hitherto neglected direction. I happen to know that this, or something very near this, was the strongly-held opinion of the late Professor William James of Harvard, who, in addition to being the most brilliant psychologist of his generation, was also a qualified doctor of medicine.

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