Side by side with mesmerism grew another new idea which went infinitely further than the mesmerised thought-reader. It was named Spiritualism, the votaries of which professed to call up at will the departed spirits of friends, enemies, and even of persons unknown to them in life.
This new faith, for it developed into a religion seeing that once a person got thoroughly soaked with it he wanted no church to teach him the way to Heaven, he believing he had found a more direct passage than what all the parsons in Christendom could show him.
Revelations from Spirit-land were sought not only by the lower, and partially educated classes, but also by the educated members of society; practical business men being found in considerable numbers attending spirit-rapping circles. Even the editor of the Times newspaper in 1880 was claimed by the Spiritualists to be one of them.
Eventually, Spiritualism becoming unpopular by reason of its adoption by the ignorant, together with the numerous exposures of fraud on the part of its leading exponents, a new belief was found necessary for the intellectual and cultured ones of the nineteenth century.
This was borrowed from the East, the beliefs of Ancient India being pressed into service and made to appear under a new form and given the title of Theosophy.
The whole series of superstitions under whatever name they might appear—witchcraft, fortune-telling, mesmerism, spirit rapping, Mahatma power, or the new-fangled faith of Theosophy, were in reality the deep workings of the human mind, striving to fathom the secrets of nature.
The physiology and psychology of the twenty-first century explained it. It was indeed, simple enough, for everything is easy when you know it.
It was found that a subtle fluid somewhat of the nature of electricity, which was altogether imperceptible to sight, but whose presence was indicated by a very delicate gauge called a psychometer pervaded the nerve centres of all human beings. It imparted to them such a highly sensitive condition that wherever the fluid was in great abundance it gave to its possessor a corresponding amount of attraction, or influence over others.
The influence of this essence was not limited to a short distance, for propinquity was not altogether necessary for its action; for a highly endowed person could throw out an invisible stream of psycho-magnetic sympathy that would find its way for hundreds of miles till it reached the corresponding fluid of the person desired, causing such a disturbance in his nerve-centres that immediately he would commence thinking of his friend, mistress, or acquaintance, as the case might be.
From this cause came into being that well known saying—‘Talk of the Devil and he’s sure to show himself.’