“I know not how that may be,” replied Mr. Winslow, “but there are few men that are always wise, or who never find themselves doing a foolish action. Even the greatest and wisest of our race sometimes unbend, and prove that there are points in which they are united to ordinary humanity. There is in this secret and invisible influence, to which I refer, of one man over another that has long arrested my attention. Often have I known both speaker and hearers electrified by a few commonplace words, carried away, it would seem, by a force not their own; now melted into tears; now inflamed with a pure and unearthly love; now maddened with rage; now fired with a lofty enthusiasm, swelling with heroic emotions, and panting to do heroic deeds. In these moments man is more than man; a higher than man possesses him, and he becomes thaumaturgic, works miracles, removes mountains, stops the course of rivers, heals the sick, casts out devils, moves, speaks, and acts a god. I call it the demonic element of human nature, and I think, if these mesmeric phenomena turn out to be real, they will be found to have their explanation in this mysterious and even fearful element, which the older theologians called faith, and superstition looks upon as supernatural.” “That there is some analogy between Animal Magnetism and the class of facts to which you refer, or which you have in your mind,” observed Dr. P——, “I do not deny. But, after all, what is the power which produces them? To resolve one class of facts into another, equally if not more mysterious, is not to explain them.” “But what more, my dear Doctor,” I asked, “do you yourself do? There are here two distinct questions: Is there really such a class of extraordinary phenomena as you mesmerizers assert? and if so, what is the agent or efficient cause in producing them? As to the first, I am so far satisfied as to concede that the remarkable phenomena asserted may be real; but I have not seen enough to warrant any sound induction as to their cause or general law. I must continue my observation of facts much longer, and extend it much further, before I proceed to any induction in the case. You say they are produced by the will of one acting immediately on the will of another, and through that on the organs of the person magnetized, by virtue, as you allege, of a law of human nature. Yet you do not tell us what this law is, or what is the nature of that which my reverend friend calls the demonic power of man.”