explaining, when Corneille says,--

"There are some secret knots, some sympathies,
By whose relations sweet assorted souls
Attach themselves the one to the other...."[11]

and when the celebrated Spanish Jesuit Balthazar Gracian spoke of the
natural relationship of minds and hearts, both the one and the other
alluded, assuredly without suspecting it, to the mixture, penetration,
and easy crossing of two atmospheres.

"I love thee not, Sabidus," wrote Martial, "and I know not why; all that
I can tell thee is, that I love thee not." Mesmerists would soon have
relieved the poet from his doubts. If Martial loved not Sabidus, it was
because their atmospheres could not intermingle without occasioning a
kind of storm.

Plutarch informs us that the conqueror of Arminius fainted at the sight
of a cock. Antiquity was astonished at this phenomenon. What could be
more simple, however? the corporeal emanations of Germanicus and of the
cock exercised a repulsive action the one on the other.

The illustrious biographer of Cheronea declares, it is true, that the
presence of the cock was not requisite, that its crowing produced
exactly the same effect on the adopted son of Tiberius. Now, the crowing
may be heard a long way off; the crowing, then, would seem to possess
the power of transporting the corporeal emanations of the king of the
lower court with great rapidity through space. The thing may appear
difficult to believe. As for myself, I think it would be puerile to stop
at such a difficulty; have we not leaped high over other difficulties
far more embarrassing?

The Marechal d'Albret was still worse off than Germanicus: the
atmosphere that made him fall into a syncope exhaled from the head of a
wild boar. A live, complete, whole wild boar produced no effect; but on
perceiving the head of the animal detached from the body, the Marechal
was struck as if with lightning. You see, gentlemen, to what sad trials
military men would be exposed, if the Mesmerian theory of atmospheric
conflicts were to regain favour. We ought to be carefully on our guard
against a ruse de guerre, of which no one till then had ever
thought,--that is, against cocks, wild boars, &c.,--for through them an
army might suddenly be deprived of its commander-in-chief. "It would
also be requisite not to entrust command," Montaigne says, "to men who
would fly from apples more than from arquebusades."

It is not only amongst the corpuscular emana