complained of disease which the child never thought of, and furthermore she had not the least idea the child had such feelings. To prove that I was right about the child, I told her to ask him if he did not feel so and so when he would lay his head down, and she found I was correct. These were the mother's symptoms: A heavy feeling over the eyes, a numbness in the hands, weakness in the back, and a pain going from the foot to the hip, all accompanied by a feeling of general prostration. To her every sensation was the effect of a sort of disease, yet every sensation she had the child had also, but he had not attached names to them. After playing his leg would pain him, and he would be restless at night; while the mother reasoned from the same feelings that she had spinal disease, trouble of the heart, and was liable to have paralysis. If she had been ignorant as the child of names, she would not have had the fear of these false ideas, and the child would have been well; for all its trouble came from its mother, and her trouble was from the invention of the medical faculty.
It may be asked, how could the child be affected by its mother? In the same way I was affected. To have the sense of smell or any other sense, requires no language. An odor can be perceived by a child as well as by a grown person. To every disease there is an odor, [mental atmosphere] and every one is affected by it when it comes within his consciousness. Every one knows that he can produce in himself heat or cold by excitement. So likewise he can produce the odor of any disease so that he is affected by it. I proved that I could create the odor of any kind of fruit, and make a mesmerised person taste and smell it.[1]
Ignorance of this principle prevents man from investigating the operation of the human mind. Such a course would change our whole mode of reasoning. It would destroy society as it is now and place it on another basis. In the place of hypocrisy, aristocracy and democracy, the three original elements of society, science, progress and freedom would be introduced. In his ignorant state man belongs to the lowest of the aristocracy, but as he becomes scientific he subdues this element, and then the others are not needed to sustain it. His science works out patience, his patience perseverance, and preseverance wisdom, and the fruits are
- ↑ With his subject, Lucius, 1843.
