Three grand theories respecting the causes and sources of thermal springs divide the transcendental philosophers, naturalists, and physicians of Germany. These are the electro-chemical—the volcanic—and the vital. WURZER expresses the opinions of the first class thus:—“As Nature is performing her operations in her immense laboratory, she has here a _galvanic apparatus_ of immense size. Extensive masses of mountains, _perhaps_ of unfathomable depth, _probably_ form the individual plates of this voltaic column.” This is tolerably bold. While Brand and Faraday are dissolving metals by the tiny galvanic apparatus in Albemarle Street, Nature is manufacturing mineral waters at Wisbaden, Ems, and Carlsbad, on a magnificent scale! Lichtenberg, however, surpasses Wurzer in the sublimity of his ideas on this subject. “In the distilling operations of Nature, the belly of her retort sometimes lies in Africa—its neck extending all over Europe—whilst its recipient is in—Siberia.”!! Bischoff, Struve, Kastner, and others, are more moderate in their flights. They ascribe the origin of some thermal springs to volcanic operations in the bowels of the earth—of other springs to the gradual solution of their component parts in subterranean reservoirs. The third class of philosophers have boldly cut the Gordian knot, instead of untying it, and erected thermal springs and mineral waters generally into _animated beings_ which transfuse their vitality into the bodies of the spa-drinkers, and thus cure all diseases! “These and similar observations (says Dr. Peez, of Wisbaden,) compel us to admit the existence of a _peculiar vital principle in mineral waters, communicating to the human body either an attractive faculty more consonant with the medicinal component parts of the water; or, acting by itself as a healing power upon the diseased organism_.”[12] The _italics_ are those of Dr. Peez, and not mine. German mysticism could hardly be expected to go farther. But it has outdone itself, as the following extract will shew:— “The partial effect of the medicinal component parts of mineral waters is pushed back, as it were, retreating under the ægis of a general power which directly excites the autocracy of the animated animal body, and _compels it to act according to the particular quality of the mineral spring determined by its component parts_.”—(104.) Here we have a good specimen of German ideality, and transcendental mystification![13]