THE EQUINOX
anyone who is well acquainted with the analogies of Nature.
It is certain that in diluting beyond measure, or in coagulating
suddenly, the plastic medium of a subject, it is possible to
loose the body from the soul. It is sometimes sufficient to
arouse a violent anger, or an overmastering fear in anyone,
to kill him suddenly.
The habitual use of magnetism usually puts the subject
who abandons himself to it at the mercy of the magnetizer.
When communication is well-established, and the magnetizer
can produce at will slumber, insensibility, catalepsy, and so on,
it will only require a little further effort to bring on death.
We have been told as an actual fact a story whose
authenticity we will not altogether guarantee.
We are about to repeat it because it may be true.
Certain persons who doubted both religion and magnetism,
of that incredulous class which is ready for all superstitions
and all fanaticisms, had persuaded a poor girl to submit to
their experiments for a fee. This girl was of an impression-
able and nervous nature, fatigued moreover by the excesses of
a life which had been more than irregular, while she was
already disgusted with existence. They put her to sleep;
bade her see; she weeps and struggles. They speak to her of
God ; she trembles in every limb.
“No,” said she, ‘no; He frightens me ; I will not look at
Him.”
“Look at Him, I wish it.”
She opens her eyes, her pupils expand; she is terrifying.
“What do you see?”
“T should not know how to say it. . . . Oh for pity’s sake
awaken me!”
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