What I will now discuss approaches the miraculous, or seems to do so because it has been attempted or treated in manifold ways by sorcerers and witches.  The Voodoos, or black wizards in America, profess to be able to awaken love in one person for another by means of incantations, but admit that it is the most difficult of their feats.  Nor do I think that there is any infallible recipe for it, but that there are means of honestly aiding such affection can hardly be denied.  In the first place, he who would be loved must love—­for that is no honest love which is not sincere.  And having thus inspired himself, and made himself as familiar as possible, by quietly observing as dispassionately as may be all the mental characteristics of the one loved, let him with an earnest desire to know how to secure a return, go to sleep, and see whether the next day will bring a suggestion.  And as the old proverb declares that luck comes to many when least hoped for, so will it often happen that forethought is thus fore-bought or secured.

It is known that gifts pass between friends or lovers, to cause the receiver to think of the giver, thus they are in a sense amulets.  If we believe, as HEINE prettily suggests, that something of the life or the being of the owner or wearer has passed into the talisman, we are not far off from the suggestion that our feelings are allied.  All over Italy, or over the world, pebbles of precious stone, flint or amber, rough topaz or agate, are esteemed as lucky; all things of the kind lead to suggestiveness, and may be employed in suggestion.

What was originally known as Fascination, of which the German, FROMANN, wrote a very large volume which I possess, is simply Hypnotism without the putting to sleep.  It is direct Suggestion.  Where there is a natural sympathy of like to like, soul answering soul, such suggestion is easily established.  Among people of a common, average, worldly type who are habitually sarcastic, jeering, chaffing, and trifling, or those whose idea of genial or agreeable companionship is to “get a rise” out of all who will give and take irritations equally, there can be no sympathy of gentle or refined emotions.  Experiments, whose whole nature presupposes earnest thought, cannot be tried with any success by those who live habitually in an atmosphere of small talk and “rubbishy” associations.  Fascination should be mutual; to attempt to exert it on anyone who is not naturally in sympathy is a crime, and I believe that all such cases lead to suffering and remorse.

But where we perceive that there is an undoubted mutual liking and good reason for it, fascination, when perfectly understood and sympathetically used, facilitates and increases love and friendship, and may be most worthily and advantageously employed.  Unto anyone who could, for example, merely skim over all that I have written, catching an idea here and there, and then expect to master all, I can clearly say that I can