Given, then, such an influence, and sensitive subjects, and mental suggestion could produce anything in the way of illusion. Thus the explanation is subjective, not objective; it was captivation but not fascination; there was leader and led, and the former succeeded in inducing in the latter all the phantasmagoria of religious ardor. * * * * Again, the vision of the plates may be related in a larger way with what has gone before. Of the three classes of hallucinations, two have already been explicated. Joseph's father had the ordinary hallucination of dream; his grandfather that which persists into the waking state. The vision of the Three Witnesses is that form of hallucination which may occur either in the normal state, or be induced in the state of light hypnosis. The former is exemplified in day dreams; it is largely self-induced and implies some capacity or visualizing. The latter may also occur with the eyes open, but it is induced by the positive suggestion of another. * * * * * As the hypnotized soldier will hear the voice of his old commander, or the devout French peasant see his patron Saint, so was it in these manifestations. The ideas and interest which were uppermost in the mind were projected outwards. Harris had received the first "transcription of the gold plates;" Whitmer had been saturated with notions of ancient engravings; Cowdery, for weeks at a time, had listened to the sound of a voice translating the record of the Nephites. When the voice was again heard in the grove, when the four sought "by fervent and humble prayer to have a view of the plates," there is little wonder that there arose a psychic mirage, complete in every detail. Furthermore, the rotation in prayer, the failure of the first two attempts, the repeated workings of the Prophet over the doubting Harris, but served to bring out the additional incentives to the hypnotic hallucination. [19] Thus "Rational Criticism" would explain away the testimony given by the Three Witnesses. The vision of the plates, of the angel, the glory of God that shone about the Witnesses, the voice of God from the midst of the glory--all was illusion, hallucination produced by mental suggestion, on the part of the Prophet. All was chimerical, a mental mirage!