18. Philtres And Magnetisme

The excessive fear of a given thing makes it almost invariably inevitable. To describe the two curves of a circle is to meet at the same point. Nicholas Remigious, criminal judge of Lorraine, who burnt alive eight hundred women as sorcerers, beheld Magic everywhere: it was his fixed idea, his mania. He was eager to preach a crusade against sorcerers, with whom Europe, in his opinion, was swarming; in despair that his word was not taken when he affirmed that nearly everyone in the world had been guilty of Magic, he ended by declaring that he was himself a sorcerer and was burned on his own confession. To preserve ourselves against influences, the first condition is to forbid excitement to the imagination. All who are prone to exaltation are more or less mad, and a maniac is ever governed by his mania. Place yourself therefore above puerile fears and vague desires; believe in supreme wisdom and be assured that this wisdom, having given you understanding as the means of knowledge, cannot seek to lay snares for your intelligence or reason. Everywhere about you are effects proportioned to their causes; causes are directed and modified by understanding in the realm of humanity; in a word, you will find goodness stronger and more respected than evil: why then should you assume an immense unreason in the infinite, seeing that there is reason in the finite? Truth is hidden from no one. God is visible in His works, and He requires nothing contrary to its nature from any being, for He is Himself the author of that nature. Faith is confidence; have confidence, not in men who malign reason, for they are fools or impostors, but in that eternal reason which is the Divine Word, that true light which is offered like the sun to the intuition of every human creature coming into this world. If you believe in absolute reason; if you desire truth and justice before all things, you will have no occasion to fear anyone, and you will love those only who are deserving of love. Your natural light will repel instinctively that of the wicked, because it will be ruled by your will. Thus, even poisonous substances, if such are administered to you, will not affect your intelligence; ill indeed they may make you, but never criminal. What most contributes to render women hysterical is their enervating and hypocritical education; if they took more exercise, if they were instructed more frankly and fully in matters of the world, they would be less capricious and consequently less accessible to evil tendencies. Weakness ever sympathizes with vice, because vice is a weakness which assumes the mask of strength. Madness holds reason in honor, and on all subjects it delights in the exaggerations of falsehood. In the first place therefore cure your diseased intelligence. The cause of all bewitchments, the poison of all philtres, the power of all sorcerers are there. As to the possible administration of narcotics or other drugs, it is a question for the doctor and the law; but we do not think such enormities very likely to be repeated at this day. Lovelaces no longer entrance Clarissas otherwise than by their gallantries, and potions, like abductions by masked men and imprisonments in subterranean dungeons, have passed even out of our romances. They must be relegated to the Confessional of the Black Penitents or the ruins of the Castle of Udolpho.