"It is only in the case of individuals who, without being fatuous, are hovering on the verge of fatuity, that the magnetic phenomena and the mesmeric prostration can be admitted to be in any considerable degree real. Real to a certain extent they may be; marvellous they certainly are not. Imbecility of the nervous system, a ready abandonment of the will, a facility in relinquishing every endowment which makes man _human_--these intelligible causes, eked out by a vanity and cunning which are always inherent in natures of an inferior type, are quite sufficient to account for the effects of the mesmeric manipulations on subjects of peculiar softness and pliancy. "In those persons of a better organized structure, who yield themselves up to the mesmeric degradation, the physical causes are less operative; but the moral causes are still more influential. In all cases the prostration is self-induced. But in the subjects of whom we have spoken, it is mainly induced by physical depravity, although moral frailties concur to bring about the condition. In persons of a superior type, the condition is mainly due to moral causes, although physical imbecility has some share in facilitating the result. These people have much vanity, much curiosity, and much credulity, together with a _weak_ imagination--that is to say, an imagination which is easily excited by circumstances which would produce no effect upon people of stronger imaginative powers. Their vanity shows itself in the desire _to astonish others_, and get themselves talked about. They think it rather creditable to be susceptible subjects. It is a point in their favor! Their credulity and curiosity take the form of a powerful wish _to be astonished themselves_. Why should they be excluded from a land of wonders which others are permitted to enter? The first step is now taken. They are ready for the sacrifice, which various motives concur to render agreeable. They resign themselves passively, mind and body, into the hands of the manipulator; and by his passes and grimaces, they are cowed pleasurably, bullied delightfully, into _so much_ of the condition which their inclinations are bent upon attaining, as justifies them, they think, in laying claim to the _whole_ condition, without bringing them under the imputation of being downright impostors. _Downright_ impostors they unquestionably are not. We believe that their condition is frequently, though to a very limited extent, _real_. We must also consider, that, in a matter of this kind, which is so deeply imbued with the ridiculous, a mesmeric patient may, and doubtless often does, justify to his own conscience a considerable deviation from the truth, on the ground of waggery or hoaxing. Why should an audience,