CHAPTER I.

General Notions and Principles.

1. MAN has the faculty of exercising a salutary influence upon his fellow men by directing toward them, through his will, the principle that animates us and makes us live.

2. We give this faculty the name of magnetism: it is an extension of the power that all living beings possess to act upon those of their own organs that are subject to the will.

3. We perceive this faculty only through its results, and we only make use of it insofar as we will it.

4. Therefore, the first condition for magnetizing is to will it.

5. Since we cannot understand how one body acts upon another at a distance without there being something between them that establishes communication, we suppose that a substance emanates from the one who is magnetizing which carries itself onto the one being magnetized, in the...