of the other.

Mesmer's discovery, so important, though as yet so little appreciated,
was also embodied in a single section of this treatise, though Louis
did not know the Swiss doctor's writings--which are few and brief.

A simple and logical inference from these principles led him to
perceive that the will might be accumulated by a contractile effort of
the inner man, and then, by another effort, projected, or even
imparted, to material objects. Thus the whole force of a man must have
the property of reacting on other men, and of infusing into them an
essence foreign to their own, if they could not protect themselves
against such an aggression. The evidence of this theorem of the
science of humanity is, of course, very multifarious; but there is
nothing to establish it beyond question. We have only the notorious
disaster of Marius and his harangue to the Cimbrian commanded to kill
him, or the august injunction of a mother to the Lion of Florence, in
historic proof of instances of such lightning flashes of mind. To
Lambert, then, Will and Thought were _living forces_; and he spoke of
them in such a way as to impress his belief on the hearer. To him
these two forces were, in a way, visible, tangible. Thought was slow
or alert, heavy or nimble, light or dark; he ascribed to it all the
attributes of an active agent, and thought of it as rising, resting,
waking, expanding, growing old, shrinking, becoming atrophied, or
resuscitating; he described its life, and specified all its actions by
the strangest words in our language, speaking of its spontaneity, its
strength, and all its qualities with a kind of intuition which enabled
him to recognize all the manifestations of its substantial existence.

"Often," said he, "in the midst of quiet and silence, when our inner