"It must be admitted that our excellent correspondent has set forth the claims of 'Adolphe' and 'Alexis,' and similar interesting abstractions, to the powers of omnipresence and omniscience, with great candor and becoming gravity. We are sorry that we cannot follow what many of our readers may consider so excellent an example. We have no faith in those dear creatures without surnames: we have no faith in animal magnetism, either in its lesser or in its larger pretensions; but we have an unbounded faith in the imbecility, infatuation, vanity, credulity, and knavery of which human nature is capable. And we are of opinion that there is not a single well-authenticated mesmeric phenomenon which is not fully explicable by the operation of one or more of these causes, or of the whole of them taken in conjunction. "The question in regard to mesmerism is two-fold: _first_, how is the mesmeric prostration to be accounted for? and _secondly_, how is it to be disposed of? It may be accounted for, we conceive, by the natural tendencies just recited, without its being necessary to postulate any new or unknown agency; it may be disposed of by the influence of public opinion, which would very soon put a stop to these pitiable exhibitions, and very soon extinguish the magnetizer's power and the patient's susceptibility, if it were but to visit the performers with the contempt and reprobation they deserve. A few words on each of these heads may not be out of place, as a qualifying postscript to the foregoing letter, which, in our opinion, treats the mesmeric superstition with far too much indulgence. "I. The existence of any physical force or fluid in man or in nature, by which the mesmeric phenomena are induced, has been distinctly disproved by every carefully conducted experiment. _No person was ever magnetized when totally unsuspicious of the operation of which he was the subject._ This is conclusive; because a physical agent, which never does, _of itself_ and unheralded, produce any effect, is no physical agent at all. Then, again, let certain persons be prepared for the magnetic condition, and aware of what is expected of them, and the effects are equally produced, whether the intended influence be exerted or not. It seems simply ridiculous to postulate an _odylic_ (we should like to be favored with the derivation of this word) fluid to account for phenomena which show themselves just as conspicuously when no such fluid is or can be in operation.