Is it not certain that
cooling applications, douches, baths, etc., produce great changes in
more or less acute affections of the brain? In the middle of the heat
of July when each one of your pores slowly filters out and returns to
the devouring atmosphere the glasses of iced lemonade which you have
drunk at a single draught, have you ever felt the flame of courage,
the vigor of thought, the complete energy which rendered existence
light and sweet to you some months before?
No, no; the iron most closely cemented into the hardest stone will
raise and throw apart the most durable monument, by reason of the
secret influence exercised by the slow and invisible variations of
heat and cold, which vex the atmosphere. In the first place, let us be
sure that if atmospheric mediums have an influence over man, there is
still a stronger reason for believing that man, in turn, influences
the imagination of his kind, by the more or less vigor with which he
projects his will and thus produces a veritable atmosphere around him.
It is in this fact that the power of the actor's talent lies, as well
as that of poetry and of fanaticism; for the former is the eloquence
of words, as the latter is the eloquence of actions; and in this lies
the foundation of a science, so far in its infancy.
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