Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/32

 weak; and in her prime at fifty years, instead of nervous and consumptive at nineteen, dead at twenty-five, and stranded on life's voyage ere it was fairly begun! If a girl's stomach, liver, and heart be diseased, her mind and morals — which depend upon the bodily state — cannot escape. Mark that, ye mothers of girls! for that mental and moral states depend upon physical conditions, cannot be doubted longer; witness the effects of intoxicating liquors! Ten murders, five fights, and half a hundred crimes beside, lurk in every gallon of whiskey — improperly — if ever properly — used. A week's neglect or wrong living may drive any girl or boy to personal vice or worse things; all of which I propose to prevent by enforcing attention to bodily health ; for the diseases of this age, mental, moral and physical— ay! even social, municipal, and national — have their foundation in the infraction of the laws of our love-nature! Nor is this state of things the result, altogether, of our own personal frailty, but is the legitimate inheritance bequeathed unto us by our ancestors. Ours is a vicarious atonement!

What is love? It is a physical, mental, almost inexplicable something inherent, that attaches us to others. But whatever it may be in the final analysis, certain it is, that its laws are the laws of MAGNETISM; for a non-magnetic person is incapable of a full, deep, rich love! Hence, the most loving are the most magnetic — [see note] — are those who either draw others unto them, or else are drawn. To be magnetic, therefore loving, you must be well, — full to the brim of royal health. We eat and drink. By the action of certain minute ganglia, there is secreted from the arterial blood an impalpable, ethereal, magnetic aura, which enters into, and invigorates the nerves and brain, giving us all the physical and other power that we have. It sometimes rushes to and fills the brain. Then we are in high spirits. At other times it rushes to the digestive organs, and then we delight in the table and the wine-cup. Or it may centre in the brain just over the eyes. — then we are clairvoyant; or back of the ears, — then we are angry; or to the pelvic organs, — then we are passional. We may have the power to flash it from our eyes, and stream it from, our fingers, — then we can fascinate others, and put them in magnetic sleep, and also relieve pain by the "laying on of hands" which is no longer, as it once was, an unscrutable miracle.