text:  Why unavailingly seek to reduce it to a formula of which it is unsusceptible? If we ascribe it to a power already ascertained why not treat it at least as an entirely new function of that power? Why limit it to what we know when possibly it may be destined to extend the boundaries of our knowledge? Why are we to be trammelled with foregone conclusions? Yet upon these very restrictions the opponents of mesmerism insist; thus taking away from men the means of investigating the agency in question by forcing them to set about it in the wrong way