his suspicions glanced at me. He expatiated with great
profoundness and fertility of ideas, on the uses to which a faculty
like this might be employed. No more powerful engine, he said,
could be conceived, by which the ignorant and credulous might be
moulded to our purposes; managed by a man of ordinary talents, it
would open for him the straightest and surest avenues to wealth and
power.

His remarks excited in my mind a new strain of thoughts. I
had not hitherto considered the subject in this light, though vague
ideas of the importance of this art could not fail to be
occasionally suggested: I ventured to inquire into his ideas of
the mode, in which an art like this could be employed, so as to
effect the purposes he mentioned.

He dealt chiefly in general representations. Men, he said,
believed in the existence and energy of invisible powers, and in
the duty of discovering and conforming to their will. This will
was supposed to be sometimes made known to them through the medium
of their senses. A voice coming from a quarter where no attendant
form could be seen would, in most cases, be ascribed to supernal
agency, and a command imposed on them, in this manner, would be
obeyed with religious scrupulousness. Thus men might be
imperiously directed in the disposal of their industry, their
property, and even of their lives. Men, actuated by a mistaken
sense of duty, might, under this influence, be led to the
commission of the most flagitious, as well as the most heroic acts:
If it were his desire to accumulate wealth, or institute a new
sect, he should need no other instrument.