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We are told in a note at the commencement of this book that it is an abbreviated translation of La Magie Dévoilée written by Baron Du Potet De Sennevoy in 1852. We find, however, that nearly half the book is taken up with an Introductory Essay and Biographical Notice, evidently by the Editor and Translator, A. H. E. Lee.
The account of Du Potet's experiments (the abbreviated translation), which by the way could just as easily have been obtained from the original work by anyone interested in the history of magnetism, is of very little interest except from an historical point of view. One almost feels that the book has been produced for the sake of the essay.
The essayist says that psycho-analysis approaches the mystery half revealed by Animal Magnetism, but he complains that analysts are not even theists, and therefore cannot go far in their researches. He refers to the word 'libido' as hideous modern jargon (p. 58), but on p. 59 the following phrase would seem to fit more accurately the use of the word jargon. The essayist says, 'That which is gross affects the outer senses: that which is mental, the inner, and so on to the final "projection" of the Reason towards Intelligibles, by which we are magnetized back, or religated, to the super-substantial source of all'. This is the sort of language in which most of the book is couched.