The animal magnetist channeled his own universal fluid to the sick man to unobstruct his channel, therefore healing him.

             Mesmer"s study of animal magnetism prompted him to notice the strange behavior of the subjects while they were being magnetized (Burinelli63). This initiated his study of mesmerism. The subjects of magnetism convulsed and seemed to be unconscious, but they remained coherent and this greatly interested Mesmer. The Mesmeristic trance was a by-product of animal magnetism. Mesmer began to think of these patients as psychological studies, unlike an animal magnetist who strove to merely fix physical ills. He began to treat maladies of the mind such as dementia, depression and nervous conditions. .

             Animal magnetism and mesmerism were logically connected as cause and effect. While magnetizing Mesmer could throw subjects into a state between sleep and wakefulness so they could obey commands, even though their faculties had stopped functioning in the normal manner. Although not part of his original vision as a healer of physical ills, the trance of mesmerism grew in importance until it overshadowed everything else and became the essential phenomenon of the system. Mesmer understood that his will dominated the will of the patient, the cure coming about partly because he made the patient will the cure. Mesmer saw that a subject in a trance could obey his command because something deeper than ordinary consciousness was at work. He did not grasp fully the concept of the unconscious mind or realize that he was probing into deeply hidden parts of the psyche. Only after Mesmerism fully developed among unexpected lines did he comprehend the meaning of the trance(Burinelli 1!.

             16). .

             Mesmerism was evident in Hawthrone"s short stories. In "Young Goodman Brown", Hawthorne uses the forest as the origin and source of Brown"s mesmerist trance. Brown first enters the dark and gloomy forest as he takes a "dreary road", darkened by all the gloomiest trees in the forest"(75).