Or observe Herr Doctor Mesmer, in his spacious Magnetic Halls.  Long-stoled he walks; reverend, glancing upwards, as in rapt commerce; an Antique Egyptian Hierophant in this new age.  Soft music flits; breaking fitfully the sacred stillness.  Round their Magnetic Mystery, which to the eye is mere tubs with water,—­sit breathless, rod in hand, the circles of Beauty and Fashion, each circle a living circular Passion-Flower:  expecting the magnetic afflatus, and new-manufactured Heaven-on-Earth.  O women, O men, great is your infidel-faith!  A Parlementary Duport, a Bergasse, D’Espremenil we notice there; Chemist Berthollet too,—­on the part of Monseigneur de Chartres.

Had not the Academy of Sciences, with its Baillys, Franklins, Lavoisiers, interfered!  But it did interfere. (Lacretelle, 18me Siecle, iii.258.) Mesmer may pocket his hard money, and withdraw.  Let him walk silent by the shore of the Bodensee, by the ancient town of Constance; meditating on much.  For so, under the strangest new vesture, the old great truth (since no vesture can hide it) begins again to be revealed:  That man is what we call a miraculous creature, with miraculous power over men; and, on the whole, with such a Life in him, and such a World round him, as victorious Analysis, with her Physiologies, Nervous-systems, Physic and Metaphysic, will never completely name, to say nothing of explaining.  Wherein also the Quack shall, in all ages, come in for his share. (August, 1784.)

Chapter 1.2.VII.

Contrat Social.

In such succession of singular prismatic tints, flush after flush suffusing our horizon, does the Era of Hope dawn on towards fulfilment.  Questionable!  As indeed, with an Era of Hope that rests on mere universal Benevolence, victorious Analysis, Vice cured of its deformity; and, in the long run, on Twenty-five dark savage Millions, looking up, in hunger and weariness, to that Ecce-signum of theirs ’forty feet high,’—­how could it but be questionable?

Through all time, if we read aright, sin was, is, will be, the parent of misery.  This land calls itself most Christian, and has crosses and cathedrals; but its High-priest is some Roche-Aymon, some Necklace-Cardinal Louis de Rohan.  The voice of the poor, through long years, ascends inarticulate, in Jacqueries, meal-mobs; low-whimpering of infinite moan:  unheeded of the Earth; not unheeded of Heaven.  Always moreover where the Millions are wretched, there are the Thousands straitened, unhappy; only the Units can flourish; or say rather, be ruined the last.  Industry, all noosed and haltered, as if it too were some beast of chase for the mighty hunters of this world to bait, and cut slices from,—­cries passionately to these its well-paid guides and watchers, not, Guide me; but, Laissez faire, Leave me alone of your guidance!  What market has Industry in this France?  For two things there may be market and demand:  for the coarser kind of field-fruits, since the Millions will live:  for the fine kinds of luxury and spicery,—­of multiform taste, from opera-melodies down to racers and courtesans; since the Units will be amused.  It is at bottom but a mad state of things.