"Ce domaine de la Suggestion est immense. Iln'yapas un seal fait de notre vie mentale qui ne puiase etre reproduit et exagere' artificiellement par ce moyen." - Binet et Frtre, Le Magnetiame Animal.

Omitting the many vague indications in earlier writers, as well as those drawn from ancient Oriental sources, We may note that Pomponatius or Pomponazzo, an Italian, horn in 1462, declared in a work entitled De naturalium effectuum admitandarum Causis seu de Incantationibus, that to cure disease it was necessary to use a strong will, and that the patient should have a vigorous imagination and much faith in the prae cantator.* Para-celsus asserted the same thing in many passages directly and indirectly. He re-garded medicine as magic and the physician as a wizard who should by a powerful will act on the imagination of the patient. But from some familiarity with the works of Paracelsus - the first folio of the first full edition is before me as I write - I would say that it would be hard to declare what his marvellous mind did not anticipate in whatever was allied to medicine and natural philosophy. Thus, I have found that long before Van Helmont, who has the credit of the discovery, Paracelsus knew how to prepare silicate of soda, or water-glass.

* L'lpnotismo di GIULIO Belfiore. Pomponatius preceded the German Jesuits, Spee and Thomasius, in ridiculing witchcraft, etc., for which reason his works were proscribed by the Church.

Hypnotism as practised at the present day and with regard to its common results, was familiar to Johann Joseph Gassner, a priest in Suabia, of whom Louis Figuier writes as follows, in his Histoire du Merveilleux dans les Temps Modernes, published in 1860 -

"Gassner, like the Englishman Valentine Greatrakes, believed himself called by divine inspiration to cure diseases. According to the precept of proper charity he began at home - that is to say on himself. After being an invalid for five or six years, and consulting, all in vain, many doctors, and taking their remedies all for naught, the idea seized him that such an obstinate malady as his must have some supernatural evil origin, or in other words, that he was possessed by a demon.

"Therefore he conjured this devil of a disorder, in the name of Jesus Christ to leave him - so it left, and the good Gass-ner has put it on record that for sixteen years after, he enjoyed perfect health and never had occasion for any remedy, spirit-ual or otherwise.

"This success made him reflect whether all maladies could not be cured by exorcism . . . The experiment which he tried on the invalids of his parish were so successful that his renown soon opened through all Suabia, and the regions round about. Then he began to travel, being called for everywhere."

Gassner was so successful that at Ratis-bon he had, it is said, 6,000 patients of all ranks encamped in tents. He cured by simply touching with his hands. But that in which he appears original, was that he not only made his patients sleep or be-come insensible by ordering them to do so, but caused them to raise their arms and legs, tremble, feel any kind of pain, as is now done by the hypnotist. "'In a young lady of good family,' * he caused laughter and weeping, stiffness of the limbs, absence of sight and hearing, and anoesthesia so as to make the pulse beat at his will."

M. Figuier and others do not seem to have been aware that a century before Gassner, a Pietro Piperno of Naples published a book in which there was a special exorcism or conjurations, as he calls them, for every known disorder, and that this possibly gave the hint for a system of cure to the Suabian. I have a copy of this work which is extremely rare, it having been put on the Roman prohibited list, and otherwise suppressed. But Gassner himself was suppressed ere long, because the Emperor, Joseph II, cloistered - that is to say, imprisoned him for life in the Monastery of Pondorf, near Batisbon. One must not be too good or Apostle-like or curative - even in the Church - which discourages trop de zile. But the general accounts of Gassner give the impression, which has not been justly conveyed, that he owed his remarkable success in curing himself and others neither to any kind of theory or faith in magnetism, or in religion, so much as unconscious suggestion aided by a powerful Will which increased with successes. To simply pray to be cured of an illness, or even to be cured by prayer, was certainly no novelty to any Catholic or Protestant in those days. The very nature of his experiments in making many people perform the same feats which are now repeated by hypnotisers, and which formed no part of a religious cure, indicate clearly that he was an observer of strange phenomena or a natural philosopher. I have seen myself an Egyptian juggler in Boulak perform many of these, as professed tricks, and I do not think it was from any imitation of French clairvoyance. He also pretended that it was by an exertion of his Will, aided by magic forms, which he read from a book that he made two boys obey him. It was probably for these tricks which savoured of magic that Gass-ner was "retired."

* L'lpnotiamo. G.Belfiore.

Having in the previous pages indicated the general method by which Will may be awakened and strengthened, that the reader may as soon as possible understand the simple principle of action, I will now discuss more fully the important topic of influencing and improving our mental powers by easily induced Attention, or attention guided by simple Foresight, and pre-resolution aided by simple auto or self-hypnotism. And I believe, with reason, that by these very simple processes (which have not hitherto been tested that I am aware of by any writer in the light in which I view them); the Will, which is the power of all powers and the main-spring of the mind, can be by means of persuasion increased or strengthened ad infinitum. It is evident that Gassner's method partakes in equal proportions of the principles of the well-known "Faith Cure," * and that of the Will, or of the passive and the active. What is wanting in it is self-knowledge and the very easily awakened forethought which, when continued, leads to far greater and much more certain results. Forethought costs little exertion, it is so calmly active that the weakest minds can employ it; but wisely employed it can set tremendous force in action.