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are intimately connected with, and dependent upon each other, which mysterious bond the ancients called sympathy. Attraction and repulsion are but analogous expressions with friendship and enmity-expansion and contractionsympathy and antipathy. In the whole kingdom of nature, the contrasts are visible, and in general so striking as to have been ever remarked not only in small but in great things. As in the atmosphere the unequal distribution of electricity produces changes in the weather, storms, and lightning, so are various powers active in fluids and in the metals and mineral substances, which manifest themselves in magnetic and electric attractions with the utmost variety of sympathy and antipathy. In the organic kingdom, these distinctions are still more manifested. Plants and animals are opponents; by medicines and poisons the special sympathies and antipathies arise. The sympathies and antipathies are as strikingly manifested in the vegetable as in the animal kingdom. The enmity existing between the rue and the cabbage is well known, as well as that the vine bends aside when cabbages are grown near to it. The male and female palm wither, according to Kircher, if the two do not grow together. Animals, and, above all, man, perceive the most delicate and distant operations of nature through the nerves, their communicators of light: thus experiencing a reciprocal condition of sympathy and antipathy.

The universal bond of reciprocal influence is, according to the ancients, the atmosphere-the ether; so that through it the influence of the stars upon earthly things, and especially upon man, takes place. For not only were the heavenly bodies perceived-not only were the revolutions upon the axes, and, with this, the centrifugal force admitted, but also the influence of the solar rays, without which the earth would be an eternal night-an unbroken sleep, without organic life of any description. It is elevating to discover that in the most ancient times man is regarded as the image of God, standing in unbroken communion with nature, not only with this earth, but with the whole of the universe. Still more, they even admitted the sympathetic and antipathetic relations of man with God, upon which the wisdom of modern

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times has been silent. "If nature did not communicate with that high world, an influence from thence upon man would be impossible. The same Creator formed the earth and the universe, herbs and animals, according to one plan, and placed in the development of human souls, the germs of such perfection, that they are thereby enabled to reach the confines of a world which is invisible to the eyes; therefore is the soul of man spiritual, and not merely intellectual, because the harmony of the more perfect future finds an echo within him; and if already upon the earth, he does not purposely close his ears to the echo, it will render him superior to all outward considerations. It is elevating to the heart to recognise in magnetism the visible striving towards those confines of the earthly senses-towards those boundaries which surround man, and withhold him from straying into those spheres from whence all that he possesses has come down to him." (D. E. Bartel, Grundzüge einer Physiologie und Physik des animalischen Magnetismus, Frank furt, 1812.)

The opposite of sympathy is antipathy-repulsion-and in man the manner of feeling and acting differently, for the minds and conditions of temperature coming in contact in man are exactly similar to the magnetic poles. That these contrasts of antipathy are much more clearly manifested in magical states was very early understood; and we perceive in magnetic appearances that antipathy is much more strikingly demonstrated than sympathy. The slightest discords in physical and psychological respects become evident, not only between persons unknown to each otherbetween unequal conditions of station and education, but also in persons acquainted with, and even related to, each other. The extended strings of the mind in nervous fevers, or magnetic subjects, produce such a sensitive condition that not only the motion of the pulse but also the variations of the mind affect them, which is never perceived in the usual state, unless there is a predominant irritability, or a certain idiosyncrasy. Those who have never had anything to do with such persons consider all this to be folly and affectation, and dispute them as much as the magical wonders, which were as well known in antiquity as the present magnetic appearances. But as these do not know

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anything of the harmony of the spheres, which "the Almighty God of Concord has arranged in social order, in the golden bands of rhythm," neither do they perceive the silent tones, and gentle breath, which is powerful in the weak, so that they are often carried away by the elevated song, and the inspiring harmony which all beings raise to God.

SECOND SECTION.

MAGNETISM AMONG THE ANCIENT NATIONS; ESPECIALLY THE
ORIENTALS, EGYPTIANS, AND ISRAELITES.

IMAGO, MAGIA, MAGNES.

ACCORDING to the observations previously made, the poeticmagical element repeats itself under many forms in the souls of individuals and nations, according to their innate national character. The revolutions of time and of peculiar individual existence produce only in outward appearance a varied manifestation in the most obscure and lowest barbarism, and in the most perverted activity of the world; while with the enlightenment of reason and morals the inward being is always and everywhere the same. For the objective is reflected upon the imagination and religious feeling, on all hands according to a common type of nature and the mind. In it the material takes the form of the supernatural; and the supernatural impresses itself upon the material through the imagination. Herein lies the broad realm of poetry, of the eternal magical imagination of the human soul, which is at home in two worlds-one spiritual and one material, and developes the elements of its activity either in itself or through external impulses. Everything, however, whether it come from its own interior, or from the external world, is but a reflected image-a phenomenon-not a being, a reality; but this semblance the imagination endeavours to represent as a reality. It is, therefore, not strange that man finds such delight in the creations of poetry and of his own ima

gination; neither is it strange that he should always regard the mere semblance as a reality, and its own creations as beautiful, whether they contain truth or fallacy. To draw the distinction requires much experience in the outward world, and self-observation of individual spiritual activity. Where this is wanting, there is in nations, as in individuals, no real acknowledgment of the magical appearances, and their laws, to be found.

As we have seen that the religious feelings are the most profoundly rooted in the subjective mind, and the highest supernatural appears in poetic contemplation, so is it easily understood that the religious culture of individuals and nations is always the first-preceding all other human institutions; for poetry and the feelings find their full expression alone in religion. Faith is rooted in the religious feelings, and expresses itself in religious customs, while the creations of poetry receive their highest dignity as realities, as works of art, as it were, only through religion, which consecrates them as living, radiant truths, as poetry itself inspires the religious feeling with the divine grace. This is the origin of all arts; before science and the embodiment of the inward conceptions of the mind, in all its branchesarchitecture, music, and painting. Magic has also been consecrated with religion, as religious customs have everywhere contained something magical.

As the world extends itself in contrasts, so is time divided in its articulation threefold-creation, being, and decay of everything temporal: youth, maturity, age, are the developments of consecutive existence, which, in its various metamorphoses, always follows certain periods, epochs, and stages. By this the varieties of age are given, in which peculiar physiological and psychological phenomena and mutations take place according to fixed types. Thus the moments follow each other in time, as atoms are placed beside each other in space, and the law of the world's development is therefore nothing else than that the designs of the Eternal should be revealed in being. But as, temporally as well as materially, each single being is limited and finite, so is the development very confined, and is nowhere perfected. It often remains stationary at a certain point, or shows active powers only in certain directions, by which it appears neither to fill up nor

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