place, you must understand that the essence of life,
comprising the psychical, psychological and physical, permeates every
part of the living corporeal body--and that any limb, or fragment of
skin or flesh, cut off from the living corporeal body, retains the
essence of life, comprising the psychical and physical in its full
vigour and entirety. Consequently, if a person have grafted on to them
a piece of skin or flesh, or be inoculated with the blood or veins of
a tiger--then that person not merely becomes liable to all the
physical infirmities of the tiger, but may--if the counteracting
influences are not sufficiently strong--partake of all the tiger's
psychological characteristics.

"Thus, if you give a person, in whom there is a latent tendency to
drink, a drop of a drunkard's blood--in a glass of wine, or sweet, or
pill, no matter what--that person will at once take to drink.
Thus--mark you--people can be metamorphosed into libertines, suicides,
idiots and murderers. This metamorphosis can also be produced by means
of a magnet called the 'magnes microcosmi,' which is prepared from
substances that have had a long association with the human body, and
are penetrated by its vitality. Such substances are the hair and
blood. Take either one of them, and dry it in a shady and moderately
warm place, until it has lost its humidity and odour. By this process
it will have lost, too, all its mumia--that is to say, its essence of
life--and is hungry to regain it. It is now a magnes microcosmi, or a
magnet for attracting diseases and properties, and if it be placed in
close contact with a criminal or lunatic, it will be filled with his
essence of life, and may then be used as a means of infecting other
people with his pernicious qualities. Bury it under the doorstep of
the person you wish infected, or hide it in his house, or mix it well
with earth, and plant a shrub in the earth, and the vitality the
magnet took from the criminal or lunatic will pass into the plant; and
if the plant, or even flower of the plant, be given to any one, that
person--unless she or he be a person absolutely free from the germs of
vice--will be attracted to it, and greatly affected by it.

"Or again, the earth over the grave of a lunatic or criminal will
contain his essence of life, _i.e._ his vitality, which impregnates
everything around it, and if that earth be placed somewhere in the
immediate presence of a person, in whom there are latent tendenc