Complete Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spritualism | Page 5

It may be stated here that the French and other Latin races are much more easily hypnotized than the northern races, Americans perhaps being least subject to the hypnotic influence, and next to them the English. On the other hand, the Orientals are influenced to a degree we can hardly comprehend.
WHAT IS HYPNOTISM?
We have seen that so far the history of hypnotism has given us two manifestations, or methods, that of passes and playing upon the imagination in various ways, used by Mesmer, and that of physical means, such as looking at a bright object, used by Braid. Both of these methods are still in use, and though hundreds of scientific men, including many physicians, have studied the subject for years, no essentially new principle has been discovered, though the details of hypnotic operation have been thoroughly classified and many minor elements of interest have been developed. All these make a body of evidence which will assist us in answering the question, What is hypnotism?
Modern scientific study has pretty conclusively established the following facts:
1. Idiots, babies under three years old, and hopelessly insane people cannot be hypnotized.
2. No one can be hypnotized unless the operator can make him concentrate his attention for a reasonable length of time. Concentration of attention, whatever the method of producing hypnotism, is absolutely necessary.
3. The persons not easily hypnotized are those said to be neurotic (or those affected with hysteria). By "hysteria" is not meant nervous excitability, necessarily. Some very phlegmatic persons may be affected with hysteria. In medical science "hysteria" is an irregular action of the nervous system. It will sometimes show itself by severe pains in the arm, when in reality there is nothing whatever to cause pain; or it will raise a swelling on the head quite without cause. It is a tendency to nervous disease which in severe cases may lead to insanity. The word neurotic is a general term covering affection of the nervous system. It includes hysteria and much else beside.
On all these points practically every student of hypnotism is agreed. On the question as to whether any one can produce hypnotism by pursuing the right methods there is some disagreement, but not much. Dr. Ernest Hart in an article in the British Medical Journal makes the following very definite statement, representing the side of the case that maintains that any one can produce hypnotism. Says he:
"It is a common delusion that the mesmerist or hypnotizer counts for anything in the experiment. The operator, whether priest, physician, charlatan, self-deluded enthusiast, or conscious imposter, is not the source of any occult influence, does not possess any mysterious power, and plays only a very secondary and insignificant part in the chain of phenomena observed. There exist at the present time many individuals who claim for themselves, and some who make a living by so doing, a peculiar property or power as potent mesmerizers, hypnotizers, magnetizers, or electro-biologists. One even often hears it said in society (for I am sorry to say that these mischievous practices and pranks are sometimes made a society game) that such a person is a clever hypnotist or has great mesmeric or healing power. I hope to be able to prove, what I firmly hold, both from my own personal experience and experiment, as I have already related in the Nineteenth Century, that there is no such thing as a potent mesmeric influence, no such power resident in any one person more than another; that a glass of water, a tree, a stick, a penny-post letter, or a lime-light can mesmerize as effectually as can any individual. A clever hypnotizer means only a person who is acquainted with the physical or mental tricks by which the hypnotic condition is produced; or sometimes an unconscious imposter who is unaware of the very trifling part for which he is cast in the play, and who supposes himself really to possess a mysterious power which in, fact he does not possess at all, or which, to speak more accurately, is equally possessed by every stock or stone."
Against this we may place the statement of Dr. Foveau de Courmelles, who speaks authoritatively for the whole modern French school. He says:
"Every magnetizer is aware that certain individuals never can induce sleep even in the most easily hypnotizable subjects. They admit that the sympathetic fluid is necessary, and that each person may eventually find his or her hypnotizer, even when numerous attempts at inducing sleep have failed. However this may be, the impossibility some individuals find in inducing sleep in trained subjects, proves at least the existence of a negative force."
If you would ask the present writer's opinion, gathered from all the evidence before him, he would say that while he has no belief in the existence of any magnetic fluid, or anything