void and the world crumbles away! To
materialists especially the world is full, all things hang together, are
linked, related, organized. "The world as the result of chance," said
Diderot, "is more explicable than God. The multiplicity of causes, the
incalculable number of issues presupposed by chance, explain creation.
Take the Eneid and all the letters composing it; if you allow me time
and space, I can, by continuing to cast the letters, arrive at last at
the Eneid combination."

Those foolish persons who deify all rather than admit a God recoil
before the infinite divisibility of matter which is in the nature of
imponderable forces. Locke and Condillac retarded by fifty years the
immense progress which natural science is now making under the great
principle of unity due to Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire. Some intelligent
persons, without any system, convinced by facts conscientiously studied,
still hold to Mesmer's doctrine, which recognizes the existence of a
penetrative influence acting from man to man, put in motion by the will,
curative by the abundance of the fluid, the working of which is in fact
a duel between two forces, between an ill to be cured and the will to
cure it.

The phenomena of somnambulism, hardly perceived by Mesmer, were revealed
by du Puysegur and Deleuze; but the Revolution put a stop to their
discoveries and played into the hands of the scientists and scoffers.
Among the small number of believers were a few physicians. They were
persecuted by their brethren as long as they lived. The respectable body
of Parisian doctors displayed all the bitterness of religious warfare
against the Mesmerists, and were as cruel in their hatred as it was
possible to be in those days of Voltairean tolerance. The orthodox
physician refused to consult with those who adopted the Mesmerian
heresy. In 1820 these heretics were still proscribed. The miseries and
sorrows of the Revolution had not quenched the scientific hatred. It is
only priests, magistrates, and physicians who can hate in that way.
The official robe is terrible! But ideas are even more implacable than
things.

Doctor Bouvard, one of Minoret's friends, believed in the new faith,
and persevered to the day of his death in studying a science to which
he sacrificed the peace of his life, for he was one of the chief "betes
noires" of the Parisian faculty. Minoret, a valiant supporter of
the Encyclopedists, and a formidable adversary of Desion, Mesmer's
ass