INTRODUCTION

tations of magical practices. It is for those people that these books are "dangerous treatises," for they bring the floating sticks far too close to the shore.

And yet, if the analogies based on the law of the evolution of the idea, as masterfully exposed by F. Ch. Barlet, are true, none of these schools currently in operation can claim victory. All these oppositions, all these struggles, are managing a transition, and it is to help to the best of our ability to navigate this dangerous cape that we have decided to publish hastily the summary of our works, sure as we are not to glimpse the promised land, the view of which is reserved for future generations.

Here we will be forgiven for providing a few details on the plan of this work.

For nearly six years now, we have been gathering documents and carrying out the necessary experiments for the construction of a treatise on experimental magic a scientific approach to magical operations that would have shown how all magical operations were scientific experiments performed on forces that are still little known, but very analogous in their general laws to the most active physical forces, such as magnetism referring to animal magnetism or mesmerism and electricity.

The preparation of such a work is long, and several years are still necessary for us to bring it to a successful conclusion.

However, faced with the multiplication of errors delivered in the name of magic, faced with the ridicule with which a certain author—a great artist, but a poor experimenter—covers everything related to these studies, and especially at the pressing insistence of our friends, we have decided to publish a summary as succinct and as scientific as possible of this practical part of the