On Animal Magnetism

The observations of the effects that Nature operates universally and constantly upon every individual are not the exclusive prerogative of Philosophers In this context, "Philosophers" refers to natural scientists and scholars of the Enlightenment.; universal interest turns almost all individuals into Observers. These multiplied observations, from all times and all places, leave us nothing to desire regarding their reality.

The activity of the human spirit, joined to the ambition for knowledge which is never satisfied, seeking to perfect previously acquired understandings, abandons observation and replaces it with vague and often frivolous speculations; it forms and accumulates systems which have only the merit of their mysterious abstraction; it moves insensibly away from the truth, to the point of losing sight of it, and substituting it with ignorance and superstition.

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Animal Magnetism, Nature, Philosophers, Observers, human spirit, systems, ignorance, superstition