The imagination becomes strong through the will and the will becomes
powerful through imagination. Either of these two is the life of the
other, and if they become one and identical, they constitute a living
spirit to which nothing inferior offers resistance. In the ignorant and
doubtful, in those who do not know their own mind and doubt the result
of success, consequently in the majority of experiments carried on for
the purpose of gratifying a scientific curiosity or for some other
selfish purpose, the will and imagination are not one, but act in two
different directions. If we look with one eye to heaven and with the
other to the earth, or with one to the restoration of the patient’s
health and with the other to the profits knowledge or renown we may
receive from it ourselves, there is no unity of motive or purpose, and
consequently a lack of the principal condition for success. A physician
desirous of employing such means should therefore be of such a nobility
of character as to be above all selfish considerations, and only intent
upon doing his duty according to the commands of divine love.
Only that which comes from the heart goes to the heart; the power that
comes from the brain alone has no magic effects unless it becomes
united with that which comes from the heart. It resembles the cold and
ineffective moonlight, but it becomes a strong power by its union with
the sunshine that radiates from the centre of the heart.
“Thus the imagination becomes a spirit, and its vehicle is the body,
and in this body are generated the seeds which bear good and evil
fruits.” (“De virtute imaginativa,” III.)
IV.—SPIRITUALES.
Up to this class we have had to deal with forces which are, even if
not fully recognized, at least admitted by modern science; but now we
are going to speak of the action of a spiritual power, which, being
in the conscious possession of only a few persons, is almost entirely
unknown. This is the power which the self-conscious spirit exercises
over the unintelligent forces in nature, and which comes under the head
of “Magic,” a term whose meaning is understood only by few.
“Magic”—from _mag_, priest—means the great power of wisdom, an
attribute of the self-conscious spirit, holy or devilish according to
the purpose to which it is applied. It is therefore a power which does
not belong to the terrestrial intellectual man; but to the spiritual
man, and it may even be exercised by the latter without the external
man being aware of the source of this power acting in him. For this
reason we often see that some remedy proves very efficacious in the
hands of one physician and entirely useless in the hands of another
equally learned and intellectual. Paracelsus says:
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