First and Last
FIRST AND LAST BY H. BELLOC CONTENTS ON WEIGHING ANCHOR THE REVEILLON ON CHEESES THE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY THE INVENTOR
This fragment of Lambert's investigations, which I remember from among
his essays, will throw a light on the method on which he worked. I
need not emphasize the obvious connection between this theory and the
collateral sciences projected by Gall and Lavater; they were its
natural corollary; and every more or less scientific brain will
discern the ramifications by which it is inevitably connected with the
phrenological observations of one and the speculations on physiognomy
of the other.
Mesmer's discovery, so important, though as yet so little appreciated,
was also embodied in a single section of this treatise, though Louis
did not know the Swiss doctor's writings--which are few and brief.
A simple and logical inference from these principles led him to
perceive that the will might be accumulated by a contractile effort of
the inner man, and then, by another effort, projected, or even
imparted, to material objects. Thus the whole force of a man must have
the property of reacting on other men, and of infusing into them an
essence foreign to their own, if they could not protect themselves
against such an aggression. The evidence of this theorem of the
science of humanity is, of course, very multifarious; but there is
nothing to establish it beyond question. We have only the notorious
disaster of Marius and his harangue to the Cimbrian commanded to kill
him, or the august injunction of a mother to the Lion of Florence, in
historic proof of instances of such lightning flashes of mind. To
Lambert, then, Will and Thought were _living forces_; and he spoke of
FIRST AND LAST BY H. BELLOC CONTENTS ON WEIGHING ANCHOR THE REVEILLON ON CHEESES THE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY THE INVENTOR