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190 DIVINATION & AUGURY IN A MODERN LIGHT it all. The view.of the majority of scientific Hypnotists is much the same as that of Mr. Myers, as to the abnormal power of the sub-consciousness when the normal consciousness is suspended. A mesmerized subject can foresee illnesses, diagnose complaints, prophesy coming events; they have no doubts on that point. Consequently they have no difficulty in explaining thereby vaticination as mentioned in our second and third classes. But, as regards the actual existence and help in such matters of beings external to ourselves, they are mostly sceptical. Mesmerized clairvoyants so sometimes see, hear and describe such external beings invisible to the normal sight, but Dr. Charcot, like Mr. Myers, would prefer to explain that fact as a self-delusion of the sub-consciousness caused by previous misconceptions. But there is a large party of these explorers, more or less under the ban of the orthodox materialistic and scientific schools of hypnotists, who affirm that these phenomena described by clairvoyants can only be explained by the actual verdical existence of these beings and their communication with ourselves in abnormal states.
Out of the views and experiences of this last party tempered also with those of Swedenborg, arose the group we shall next consider, vis., the Modern Spiritualists. These went further than the mesmerists, in believing that these abnormal states may be induced by other means than passes and suggestions, viz., by sitting in circles, and consequent development of mediumship, and, as their mediums persisted like
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