Now, if we thus see the will--stated by me to be the thing in itself, the only real thing in all existence, the kernel of Nature--accomplish through the human individual, in Animal Magnetism and even beyond it, things which cannot be explained according to the causal nexus, _i.e._ in the regular course of Nature; if we find it in a sense even annulling Nature's laws and actually performing _actio in distans_, consequently manifesting a supernatural, that is, metaphysical, mastery over Nature--what corroboration better founded on fact could I desire for my doctrine? Was not even Count Szapary, a magnetiser who certainly did not know my philosophy, led by the results of his own experience, after writing the title of his book: "A word about Animal Magnetism, soul-bodies and vital essence,"[291] to add the following remarkable explanatory words: "or physical proofs that the current of Animal Magnetism is the element, and _the will the principle of all spiritual and corporeal life_?"[292]--According to this, Animal Magnetism presents itself directly as _practical Metaphysic_, which was the term used by Bacon of Verulam[293] to define Magic in his classification of the sciences: it is empirical or experimental Metaphysic.--Further, because the will manifests itself in Animal Magnetism downright as the thing in itself, we see the _principium individuationis_ (Space and Time), which belongs to mere phenomenon, at once annulled: its limits which separate individuals from one another, are destroyed; Space no longer separates magnetiser and somnambulist; community of thoughts and of motions of the will appears; the state of _clairvoyance_ overleaps the relations belonging to mere phenomenon and conditioned by Time and Space, such as proximity and distance, the present and the future. [291] Szapary, "Ein Wort über Animalischen Magnetismus, Seelenkörper and Lebensessenz" (1840). [292] "Oder physische Beweise, dass der Animalisch-magnetische Strom das Element, and _der Wille das Princip alles geistigen und Körperlichen Lebens sei_." [293] Bacon, "Instaur. Magna," L. III.