ints and diseases will be for ever
banished from the future auspicious race. Fathers rejoicing to see their
posterity of the fourth and fifth generations, will only drop like fruit
fully ripe, at the extreme point of age! Animals and plants, no less
susceptible of the magnetic power than man, will be exempt from the
reproach of barrenness and the ravages of distemper. The flocks in the
fields, and the plants in the gardens, will be more vigorous and
nourishing, and the trees will bear more beautiful and grateful fruits.
The human race, once endowed with this elementary power, will probably
rise to still more sublime and astonishing effects of nature: who indeed
is able to pronounce, with certainty, how far this salutary influence
may extend?"

"What splendid promises! What rich prospects! Messmer, the greatest of
philosophers, the most virtuous of men, the physician of mankind,
charitably opens his arms to all his fellow-mortals, who stand in need
of comfort and assistance. No wonder that the cause of magnetism, under
such a zealous apostle, rapidly gained ground, and obtained every day
large additions to the number of its converts. To the gay, the nervous,
and the dissipated of all ranks and ages, it held out the most
flattering promises. Men of the first respectability interested
themselves in behalf of this new philosophy; they anticipated in idea,
the more happy and more vigorous race which would proceed, as it were,
by enchantment, from the wonderful impulsive powers of animal magnetism.
The French were so far seduced by these flattering appearances, as to
offer the German adventurer _thirty thousand livres_ for the
communication of his secret art. He appears, however, to have understood
his own interest better than thus to dispose of his hypothetical
property, which, upon a more accurate investigation might be objected
to, as consisting of unfair articles of purchase. He consequently
returned the following answer to the credulous French ministers:

"That Dr. M. considered his art of too great importance, and the abuses
it might lead to, too dangerous for him at present to make it public;
that he must therefore reserve to himself the time of its publication,
and mode of introducing it to general use and observation--that he would
first take proper measures to initiate or prepare the minds of men, by
exciting in them a susceptibility of this great power; and that he would
then undertake to communicate his secret gr