“In no case does it belong to man to answer similar questions,” replied Dr. P——. “We in no case know the essences of things. All that men are able to do is to observe phenomena, and from them to infer or affirm that there is and must be an agent or power which produces them. Can you tell me what is gravitation? All you can tell me is, that bodies fall or tend to the centre of the earth, and what are the laws and conditions of that tendency. What is electricity? You cannot tell me. You can only tell me that there is a certain class of phenomena, which you can trace to a certain invisible and imponderable agent, and to that invisible and unknown agent, that ‘occult power,’ as an earlier philosophy would have called it, you give the name of electricity. All you can know of it is, its existence, the laws by which it operates, the means by which you can avail yourself of it, get power over it, avert it from your house or barn when it breaks forth in the thunder-gust, or use it to drive your machinery, to convey your messages, or to solace your pain. Science calls it a fluid, but what it is in itself science knows not, for it has seen it only in its operations or effects. So with this power, or law of human nature, to which I ascribe the magnetic phenomena. All I pretend to tell is, that the law is a reality, and all I pretend to demonstrate is, that we may avail ourselves of it, and use it for the most useful and noble purposes. This is enough. All we need to know is its existence, or the purposes to which it may be applied, and how we can apply it or render it serviceable. Let man know that he has it, and then let him learn how to use it.” “But after all, I am a little frightened at the supposition of this power,” remarked Mr. Winslow. “There is something fearful in this complete subjection of one, soul and body, to the will of another. The somnambulist is, during the mesmeric trance, the slave of the mesmerizer, as much so as was the genie to the possessor of the wonderful lamp, and he may do with him or her what he pleases. Is there not danger here? May he not use his power in a base way, to gratify his passions, his lusts, his hatred, or his revenge, and with complete impunity, since the somnambulist retains no consciousness or recollection on returning to the normal state, of what passed during the magnetic slumber? Let Animal Magnetism become generally known and practised, and who could know when or where he was safe? Any one of us might at any moment fall a victim, or be made the blind instrument of the basest and most malignant passions of others.” “Those are idle fears,” replied Dr. P——; “none but virtuous men can exercise the power, or if others can, they can exercise it only for honest and benevolent purposes.”