Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/143

Rh the physician in place of the patient. From the patient's point of view it instantly raises divinopathy above all other pathies on earth. Besides, it is more thoroughly logical. For why, indeed, should not the physician, if well paid for it, be expected to furnish all the elements of his cure!

IV.

We have now reached the function itself. That this is imposing in the first sense of that word, that is, impressive, the hold it has had on man sufficiently testifies; that it is imposing in the second sense, that is, a sham, is a supposition which the first view of one of these trances would suffice to dispel.

We will first take up the Ryōbu form which is the commonest one. The ceremony with which Ryōbu has surrounded the act is finely in keeping with the impressiveness of the act itself. So sense-compelling a service you shall find it hard to match in the masses of any other church. But more constraining still are the energy and the sincerity with which the whole is done. It is small wonder that the already susceptible subject feels its charm when even bystanders are stirred.