the essay which Braid, the inventor of the word 'hypnotism,' had written
upon the subject. Braid, Elliotson, and other English inquirers of the
mid-century, were subjected to such persecutions as official science could
inflict. We read of M. Deslon, a disciple of Mesmer, about 1783, that he
was 'condemned by the Faculty of Medicine, without any examination of the
facts.' The Inquisition proceeded more fairly than these scientific
obscurantists.

Another curious example may be cited. M. Guyau, in his work 'The
Non-Religion of the Future,' argues that Religion is doomed. 'Poetic
genius has withdrawn its services,' witness Tennyson and Browning! 'Among
orthodox Protestant nations miracles do not happen.'[11] But 'marvellous
facts' _do_ happen.[12] These 'marvellous facts,' accepted by M. Guyau,
are what Hume called 'miracles,' and advised the 'wise and learned' to
laugh at, without examination. They were not facts, and could not be, he
said. Now to M. Guyau's mind they _are_ facts, and therefore are not
miracles. He includes 'mental suggestion taking place even at a distance.'
A man 'can transmit an almost compulsive command, it appears nowadays, by
a simple tension of his will.' If this be so, if 'will' can affect matter
from a distance, obviously the relations of will and matter are not what
popular science tells us that they are. Again, if this truth is now
established, and won from that region which Hume and popular science
forbid us to investigate, who knows what other facts may be redeemed from
that limbo, or how far they may affect our views of possibilities? The
admission of mental action, operative _à distance_, is, of course,
personal only to M. Guyau, among friends of the new negative tradition.

We return to Hume. He next argues that the pleasures of wonder make all
accounts of 'miracles' worthless. He has just given an example of the
equivalent pleasures of dogmatic disbelief. Then Religion is a disturbing