ation. The
effort being purely mental, we may say it is accompanied by
disintegration of cerebral and nervous tissue. But disintegration of
organic tissue means, as we have seen before, disengagement of specific
scents; the mesmeriser emits, then, during his operation, scents from
his own body. And as the patient's sufferings are supposed to originate
from a deficiency or alteration of his own specific scent, we can well
see how the mesmeriser, by his mesmeric or odoriferous emanations, may
effect a cure. He may supply the want of certain odoriferous substances
in the patient, or he may correct others by his own emanations, knowing,
as we do, from the experiment of Mons. Ligeois, that odorant matter does
act on odorant matter.

One remark more and I have done. By the Esoteric Doctrine we are told
that the living body is divided into two parts:

1. The physical body, composed wholly of matter in its grossest and most
tangible form.

2. The vital principle (or Jiva), a form of force indestructible, and,
when disconnected with one set of atoms, becoming attracted immediately
by others.

Now this division, generally speaking, fully agrees with the teachings
of science. I need only remind you of what I have said before with
regard to the formed tissues and structures of the body and its
formative agent the protoplasm. Formed structure is considered as
material which has already passed out of the realms of life; what lives
in it is the protoplasm. So far the esoteric conception fully agrees
with the result of the latest investigations of modern science.

But when we are told by the Esoteric Doctrine that the vital principle
is indestructible, we feel we move on occult, incomprehensible ground,
for we know that protoplasm is, after all, as destructible as the body
itself. It lives as long as life lasts, and, it may be said, it is the
only material in the body that does live as long as life lasts. But it
dies with the cessation of life. It is true it is capable of a sort of
resuscitation. For that very dead protoplasm, be it animal or
vegetable, serves again as our food, and as the food of all the animal
world, and thus helps to repair our constantly wasting economy. But for
all that it could hardly be said to be indestructible; it is
assimilable--that is to say, capable of re-entering the domain of life,
through its being taken up by a living body. But such an eventual
chance does by no means confer upon