We move fast. The strange trials for sorcery will blossom anew; somnabules who were merely grotesque will appear in a tragic light; the coffee grounds, which so far only risked the police court, will hear their sentence at the assizes. The evil eye will figure among criminal offences. These last years of the XIXth century will have seen us step from progress to progress, till we reach at last this judicial enormity: a second Laubardemont prosecuting another Urbain Grandier.” Serious, scientific, and political papers are full of earnest discussions on the subject. A St. Petersburg “Daily” has a long _feuilleton_ on the “Bearing of _Hypnotic Suggestions_ upon Criminal Law.” “Cases of Hypnotism with criminal motives have of late begun to increase in an ever progressing ratio,” it tells its readers. And it is not the only newspaper, nor is Russia the only country where the same tale is told. Careful investigations and researches have been made by distinguished lawyers and medical authorities. Data have been assiduously collected and have revealed that the curious phenomenon,—which sceptics have hitherto derided, and young people have included among their evening _petits jeux innocents_,—is a new and terrible danger to state and society. Two facts have now become patent to law and science:— (I.) _That, in the perceptions of the hypnotised subject, the visionary representations called forth by “suggestion,” become real existing actualities, the subject being, for the moment, the automatic executor of the will of the hypnotiser; and_— (II.) _That the great majority of persons experimented upon, is subject to hypnotic suggestion._