However this may be, operators of the
latest school are quite on the wrong track in
devoting themselves to the method of hyp-
notic suggestion. The leading fact of mes-
meric science which justifies this last remark
is that to which I have already referred —



112 THE RATIONALE OF MESMERISM.
the actual objective existence as a fact in na-
ture, as unequivocal as the steam in a boiler,
of the mesmeric fluid. Until people who
are on the path of this inquiry convince
themselves of this, they will be stumbling
about in the dark. It is the first all-impor-
tant leading elementary principle of the sub-
ject, and any one who attempts to dispute it
takes up a position which is first of all ab-
surd to those who, as I said before, are in
a position to see the fluid in question — as
certainly, though a much finer phenomenon
is concerned, as an engineer can see the
steam pouring out from his exhaust-tubes.
Secondly, the denial of the fluid theory is ir-
rational in face of Reichenbach's researches,
and can only be maintained by virtue of a
preliminary declaration that these researches
are falsely recorded. If it is argued that
Keichenbach is yet almost alone as an ex-
plorer in that particular range of phenom-
ena, the answer is that a positive fact, if a
fact, is still a fact in nature, though it stand
alone ; and nobody after its establishment is
entitled to construct a theory of nature with
which it is incompatible.
