er to do it. But
for our will, in whose behalf we prefer this accusation, with how much
greater probability may we reproach herself with mutiny and sedition, for
her irregularity and disobedience? Does she always will what we would
have her to do? Does she not often will what we forbid her to will, and
that to our manifest prejudice? Does she suffer herself, more than any
of the rest, to be governed and directed by the results of our reason? To
conclude, I should move, in the behalf of the gentleman, my client, it
might be considered, that in this fact, his cause being inseparably and
indistinctly conjoined with an accessory, yet he only is called in
question, and that by arguments and accusations, which cannot be charged
upon the other; whose business, indeed, it is sometimes inopportunely to
invite, but never to refuse, and invite, moreover, after a tacit and
quiet manner; and therefore is the malice and injustice of his accusers
most manifestly apparent. But be it how it will, protesting against the
proceedings of the advocates and judges, nature will, in the meantime,
proceed after her own way, who had done but well, had she endowed this
member with some particular privilege; the author of the sole immortal
work of mortals; a divine work, according to Socrates; and love, the
desire of immortality, and himself an immortal demon.
Some one, perhaps, by such an effect of imagination may have had the good
luck to leave behind him here, the scrofula, which his companion who has
come after, has carried with him into Spain. And 'tis for this reason
you may see why men in such cases require a mind prepared for the thing
that is to be done. Why do the physicians possess, before hand, their
patients' credulity with so many false promises of cure, if not to the
end, that the effect of imagination may supply the imposture of their
decoctions? They know very well, that a great master of their trade has
given it under his hand, that he has known some with whom the very sight
of physic would work. All which conceits come now into my head, by the
remembrance of a story was told me by a domestic apothecary of my
father's, a blunt Swiss, a nation not much addicted to vanity and lying,
of a merchant he had long known at Toulouse, who being a valetudinary,
and much afflicted with the stone, had often occasion to take clysters,
of which he caused several sorts to be prescribed him by the physicians,
acccording to the accidents o
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