slowly filters out and returns to the
devouring atmosphere the glasses of iced lemonade which you have drunk
at a single draught, have you ever felt the flame of courage, the vigor
of thought, the complete energy which rendered existence light and sweet
to you some months before?

No, no; the iron most closely cemented into the hardest stone will
raise and throw apart the most durable monument, by reason of the secret
influence exercised by the slow and invisible variations of heat and
cold, which vex the atmosphere. In the first place, let us be sure that
if atmospheric mediums have an influence over man, there is still
a stronger reason for believing that man, in turn, influences the
imagination of his kind, by the more or less vigor with which he
projects his will and thus produces a veritable atmosphere around him.

It is in this fact that the power of the actor's talent lies, as well
as that of poetry and of fanaticism; for the former is the eloquence of
words, as the latter is the eloquence of actions; and in this lies the
foundation of a science, so far in its infancy.

This will, so potent in one man against another, this nervous and fluid
force, eminently mobile and transmittable, is itself subject to the
changing condition of our organization, and there are many circumstances
which make this frail organism of ours to vary. At this point, our
metaphysical observation shall stop and we will enter into an analysis
of the circumstances which develop the will of man and impart to it a
grater degree of strength or weakness.

Do not believe, however, that it is our aim to induce you to put
cataplasms on the honor of your wife, to lock her up in a sweating
house, or to seal her up like a letter; no. We will not even attempt
to teach you the magnetic theory which would give you the power to
make your will triumph in the soul of your wife; there is not a single
husband who would accept the happiness of an eternal love at the price
of this perpetual strain laid upon his animal forces. But we shall
attempt to expound a powerful system of hygiene, which will enable you
to put out the flame when your chimney takes fire. The elegant women
of Paris and the provinces (and these elegant women form a very
distinguished class among the honest women) have plenty of means of
attaining the object which we propose, without rummaging in the arsenal
of medicine for the four cold specifics, the water-lily and the thousand
invention