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given as any other naturally beautiful form can be imparted by a studious contemplation in the looking-glass. All that creates, and is profoundedly active, in the inner man, must be internal, and be communicated from above; as I believe it suffers itself not to be occasioned, at least not by forethought, circumspection, or wisdom in the agent, to produce such effects. Beautiful forms, or abortions, are neither of them the work of art or study, but of intervening causes, of the quick-guiding providence, the predetermining God.

Endeavour to act upon affection instead of the senses. If thou canst but incite love, it will of itself seek and find the powers of creation; but this very love must itself be innate before it can be awakened. Perhaps, however, the moment of this awakening is not in our power; and therefore, to those who would, by plan and method, effect that which is in itself so extraordinary, and imagine they have had I know not what wise and physiological circumspection when they first awaken love, I might exclaim, in the words of the enraptured songster: "I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes and the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up nor awake my love till he please." Here behold the forming genius—“ Behold he cometh, leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills, like a young hart.";

Unforeseen moments, rapid as the lightning, in my opinion form and deform. Creation of every kind is momentaneous; the development,

nutriment, change, improving, injuring, is the work of time, art, industry, and education. Creative power suffers itself not to be studied; creation cannot be premeditated. Marks may be moulded, but living essence, within and without resembling itself, the image of God, must be created, born, "not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."

CHAP. XXVIII.

The Effects of the Imagination on the Human Form.

THAT, by the strength of imagination, there are marks communicated by mothers to children during pregnancy, is equally true and comprehensible; that there are images, animals, fruit, or other substances, on the body of the child; marks of the hand, on the very parts where the pregnant person has been suddenly touched; aversion to things which have occasioned disgust in the mother, and a continued scurvy communicated to the child by the unexpected sight of a putrid animal. So many marks on the bodies of children, arising not from imaginary but real accidents, must oblige us to own, that there is truth in that which is inconceivable. Therefore the imagination of the mother acts upon the child.

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Of the innumerable examples that might be produced, I shall cite the two following:

A woman, during the time of her pregnancy, was engaged in a card party, and only wanted the ace of spades to win all that was staked. It so happened, in the change of cards, that the so much wished-for ace was given her. Her joy at this success had such an effect upon her imagination, that the child of which she was pregnant, when born, had the ace of spades depicted in the apple of the eye, and without injury to the organ of sight.

The following anecdote is certainly true, and still more astonishing:

A lady of Reinthal had, during her pregnancy, a desire to see the execution of a man, who was sentenced to have his right hand cut off before he was beheaded. She saw the hand severed from the body, and instantly turned away and went home, without waiting to see the death that was to follow. This lady bore a daughter, who was living at the time this fragment was written, and who had only one hand. The right hand came away with the after-birth.

Moral marks as well as physical are perhaps possible. I have heard of a physician, who never failed to steal something from all the chambers through which he passed, which he would afterwards forget, and, in the evening, his wife, who searched his pockets, would find keys, snuff-boxes, etuis-cases, scissars, thimbles, spec

tacles, buckles, spoons, and other trinkets, which she restored to the owners. I have been likewise told of a child, who, at two years of age, was adopted, when begging at the door of a noble family, received an excellent education, and became a most worthy man, except that he could not forbear to steal. The mothers of these two extraordinary thieves must, during pregnancy, have had an extraordinary desire to pilfer. It will be self-evident that, however insufferable such men are in a state of society, they are rather unfortunate than wicked. Their actions may be as involuntary, as mechanical, and, in the sight of God, probably as innocent, as the customary motions of our fingers when we tear bits of paper, or do any other indifferent, thoughtless action.

The moral worth of an action must be estimated by its intention, as the political worth must by its consequences. As little injury as the ace of spades, if the story be true, did to the countenance of the child, as little probably did this thievish propensity to the heart. Such a person certainly had no roguish look, no avaricious, downcast, sly, pilfering aspect, like one who is both soul and body a thief. I have not yet seen any man of such an extraordinary character, and therefore cannot judge of his physiognomy by experience; yet we have reason previously to conclude, that men so uncommon must bear some marks in their countenance of such deviation of character.

Those extraordinary large or small persons, by us called giants and dwarfs, should perhaps be classed among these active and passive effects of the imagination. Though giants and dwarfs are not properly born such, yet it is possible, however incomprehensible, that nature may first, at a certain age, suddenly enlarge or contract herself.

We have a variety of examples, that the imagination appears not only to act upon the present, but on absence, distance, and futurity. Perhaps apparitions of the dying and the dead may be attributed to this kind of effect. Be it granted that these facts, which are so numerous, are true, and including not only the apparitions of the dead but of the living, who have appeared to distant friends, after collecting such anecdotes, and adding others on the subject of presage and prediction, many philosophical conjectures will thence arise, which may probably confirm my following proposition.

The imagination, incited by the desire and languishing of love, or inflamed by passion, may act in distant places and times. The sick or dying person, for example, sighs after an absent friend, who knows not of his sickness, or thinks of him at the time. The pining of the imagination penetrates, as I may say, walls, and appears in the form of the dying person, or gives signs of his presence similar to those which his actual presence gives. Is there any real corporeal ap.. pearances? No. The sick or dying person is

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