Note and Comment

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 11, 1902

Spread of Hypnotism

An evil thing spreads most rapidly in this world when disguised as a blessing to mankind. This is a guise which has been assumed by that baneful thing, hypnotism. It is extolled as a beneficent agency in which are wrapped up the most wonderful possibilities for the mental and moral improvement of the human race. An example of this teaching was noted recently in New York City, in an address given before a training school of nurses, by one Professor Quackenbos. The New York Weekly Witness makes this mention of it:—

“In it he sets forth ‘Hypno-Science’ as almost a new creative agency. It is a remedy for ‘functional disorders, nervous diseases, delusions, and imperative conceptions, moral obliquity and dis-equilibration, backwardness, and arrested development.’ By it ‘high purpose and noble endeavor have been substituted in character for carnal propensities and sordid aims, worthy ideals for bestial standards, intellectual brilliance and living interest for obtuseness

and indifference.’ It is, in fact, capable of regenerating society, for ‘through the transmission of automatic impulses to right for a few generations, it is possible by concerted philanthropic effort perceptibly to diminish crime.’

“As to education,” says the Witness, “hear this apostle of the newly discovered hope of humanity:— “In educational work the value of suggestion can hardly be overestimated. Not only may dull minds be polished, unbalanced minds adjusted, gifted minds empowered to exploit their talents, but the expanding intellect of the schoolchild may tread that royal road to learning which ancient philosophers sought for in vain; the matured mind of the scholar may be clothed with perceptive faculty, with keenest insight, tireless capacity for application, unerring taste; and the imaginative mind of painter, poet, musician, discoverer, may be invested with creative efficiency in the line of ideals which are high and true.”

Wonderful things were claimed for alcohol as a panacea for human ills, by those who first introduced its use in the distilled form. It received the name aqua vitæ, “water of life,” and was given the highest place among drugs. But what ruin it has wrought in the world, while the enthusiastic predictions made for it have remained unverified! So will it be with this new agency which claims the regenerative power that belongs alone to the gospel of God. It is a disguised agency of the evil one, brought forward for use in his final work of deception.