new belief found a few Swedenboigians ready to receive it.
The early and imperfect science of the eighteenth century was a much more important element. The magnetic force, which Volta and Galvani and others brought to the general notice of educated people in the eighteenth century, was peculiarly mysterious and fascinating. It was popularly regarded as a strange "fluid," stored in certain metals, capable of doing very extraordinary things. Presently it was supposed to be discovered that there was a magnetic fluid also in human beings and animals, and "animal magnetism" was discussed in every city of Europe where the ecclesiastical authorities were no longer strong enough to prevent such heresies. Certain individuals were believed to have specially large quantities of this magnetic or electric fluid, and in the first half of the nineteenth century groups of men and women formed everywhere those circles for the production of phenomena which have come to be called séances. A Dr. Mesmer, the chief apostle of animal magnetism, attracted an enormous amount of attention in France and Germany between 1770 and 1780. He could put patients into a magnetic sleep and discover their maladies. He could induce this magnetic sleep in certain specially endowed individuals (mostly women), and they developed remarkable powers of clairvoyance. This "mesmerising" went on in all the capitals of Europe, and was only interrupted by the French Revolution and the turbulent decades that followed. Others then
