In 1818, when my chief work first appeared, Animal Magnetism had only begun to struggle into existence. But, as to its explanation--although, to be sure, some light had been thrown upon the passive side of it, that is, upon what goes on within the patient, by the contrast between the cerebral and the ganglionic systems, to which Reil had drawn attention, having been taken for the principle of explanation--the active side, the agent proper by means of which the magnetiser evokes all these phenomena, was still completely shrouded in darkness. People groped about among all sorts of material principles of explanation, such as Mesmer's all-permeating ether, or the exhalations from the magnetiser's skin, assumed by Stieglitz to be the cause, &c. &c. At the utmost a nerve-spirit had been recognised and, after all, this was but a word for an unknown thing. The truth had scarcely begun to dawn upon a few persons, whom practice had more deeply initiated. But I was still far from hoping for any direct corroboration of my doctrine from Magnetism. _Dies diem docet_ however, and the great teacher, experience, has since brought to light an important fact concerning this deep-reaching agent which, proceeding from the magnetiser, produces effects apparently so contrary to the regular course of Nature that the long lasting doubt as to their existence, the stiff-necked incredulity, the condemnation of a Committee of which Lavoisier and Franklin were members, in short, the whole opposition that Magnetism encountered both in its first and second period (with the sole exception of the coarse, unintelligent condemnation without inquiry, which till very lately, prevailed in England) is quite excusable. The fact I allude to is, that this agent is nothing but the _will_ of the magnetiser. To-day not a doubt exists on this point, I believe, among those who combine practice with insight; therefore I think it superfluous to quote the numerous assertions of magnetisers in corroboration of it.[284] Time has thus not only verified Puységur's watchword and that of the older French magnetisers: "_Veuillez et croyez!_" _i.e._ "Will with belief!" but this very watchword has even developed into a correct insight of the process itself.[285] From Kieser's "Tellurismus," still probably the most thorough and detailed text book of Animal Magnetism we have, it clearly results, that no act of Magnetism can take effect without the will; on the other hand the bare will, without any outward action, is able to produce every magnetic effect. Manipulation seems to be only a means of fixing, and so to say incorporating, the will and its direction. In this sense Kieser says: "Inasmuch as the human hand--being the organ by which Man's outward activity is most visibly expressed--is the efficient organ in magnetising, manipulation arises." De Lausanne, a French magnetiser, pronounces himself with still greater precision on this point in the Fourth Book of his "Annales du