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254 DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG.
sion of this element. To avoid exceeding the limits of
your journal, I omit, Gentlemen, an infinity of things
which I might here mention in support of these truths ;
amongst which I should include the respiration of ani
mals, their hunger, their thirst, their loves, the functions
of their absorbent and resorbent pores,-phenomena
which, well analysed, would be so many proofs of the
existence of animal magnetism, and would evince that,
in reality, animals are nothing but living magnets.
" Let me not, however, for what I have here said, be
suspected of being a disciple of the too celebrated Doctor
Mesmer. Believing with him in animal magnetism, the
existence of which has long since been as evident to me
as that of the sun, if I intended to make use of it, it
would be in a manner totally different from his ; as I find
in M. Mesmer’s mode many things that are not only
vicious in point of morals, but also very dangerous in a
physical respect. For want of knowing what Swedenborg
has said respecting forms, series, degrees, correspondences,
and, above all, respecting the element of man and human
spheres, this physician has abandoned himself to a blind
practice, the effects of which, sometimes good, as often
bad, and most frequently none at all, fully evince either
the incapacity of the practitioner, or the inefficacy of his
remedy. But to learn in what M. Mesmer is deficient, it
will not suffice to have read the work which I have just
been describing, but it will also be necessary to be ac
quainted with most of those which follow it : for the
indefatigable Swede continued to write upon the most
difficult and abstract subjects, and, what is peculiar to
himself, he always possessed the art of enabling all his
readers to understand them, by the method, precision,
and clearness, with which he conducted the discussion.
" Since an opportunity here offers to speak of his
works, permit me, Gentlemen, to avail myself of it, to
disabuse the public respecting the bad impressions which
have been attempted to be imposed on it concerning this
great man. Prior to his Opera Philosophica et Mine
ralia, he had already written on almost all the sciences.
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