FASCINATION 163
still be progress before the destruction, or rather before the transformation, of man. I believe we have yet to see the realization of the Messianic hope which will regenerate a long succession of centuries. I trust that the last worJ on the human species will not be that on the civilizations of Nineveh, Tyre, Babylon, Athens, Rome and Paris. I like to think that what could be taken for decrepitude is nothing more than the easy tiring of childhood. Yet even Messianism is not the doctrine of eternity; there will be, says Saint John, a new heaven and a new earth. The New Jerusalem will on’y come through new nations superior to present-day man, and there will be even further changes. When our sun is an opaque planet of which we are the satellite, who knows where we shall be then or under what form we shall be living? One thing is certain: being is being. It does not come out of some nothingness which, being nothing. can give rise to nothing; and it will not return to that nothingness from which it could not have come.
All that is has been, is and will be.
Ehied ascher Ehich. VflK ri (1 am that I am.’ Exod. 3:14)
To revert to fascination and the means of producing it, these means are entirely in the power of the will energizing itself without strain and perservering calmly.
If you do not behave extravagantly but come to a reasonable belief that you are someone big and strong, the weaklings and nonentities will necessarily take you for what you believe yourself to be. It is all a question of patience and time.
We have already said that there is a purely physical attraction which is a part of magnetism. Some individuals are naturally endowed with it and one can induce it in oneself by gradually exciting the nervous system.
The celebrated Mr Home who now and then exploited in a rather charlatan fashion this unusual faculty, possessed it without being able to account for it, his intelligence being too limited for scientific studies. The zouave, Jacob, is a naïve fascinator who believes in spirit helpers. The agile conjurer Houdin mixes fascination and dexterity. A distinguished nobleman of our acquaintance asked him one day for lessons in white magic, and
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