"I would say this, that I am convinced, if we could get to the bottom of
these mysteries, we should find a living human agency."

"What! you believe it is all an imposture? for what object?"

"Not an imposture in the ordinary sense of the word. If suddenly I were
to sink into a deep sleep, from which you could not awake me, but in
that sleep could answer questions with an accuracy which I could not
pretend to when awake--tell you what money you had in your pocket--nay,
describe your very thoughts--it is not necessarily an imposture, any
more than it is necessarily supernatural. I should be, unconsciously to
myself, under a mesmeric influence, conveyed to me from a distance by a
human being who had acquired power over me by previous _rapport_."

"But if a mesmerizer could so affect another living being, can you
suppose that a mesmerizer could also affect inanimate objects: move
chairs--open and shut doors?"

"Or impress our senses with the belief in such effects--we never having
been _en rapport_ with the person acting on us? No. What is commonly
called mesmerism could not do this; but there may be a power akin to
mesmerism, and superior to it--the power that in the old days was called
Magic. That such a power may extend to all inanimate objects of matter I
do not say; but if so, it would not be against nature--it would be only
a rare power in nature which might be given to constitutions with
certain peculiarities, and cultivated by practice to an extraordinary
degree. That such a power might extend over the dead--that is, over
certain thoughts and memories that the dead may still retain--and
compel, not that which ought properly to be called the SOUL, and which
is far beyond human reach, but rather a phantom of what has been most