150 BAILLY. 
see, gentlemen, to what sad trials military men would be 
exposed, if the Mesmerian theory of atmospheric con- 
flicts were to regain favour. We ought to be carefully 
on our guard against a ruse de guerre, of which no one 
till then had ever thought,—that is, against cocks, wild 
boars, &¢c.,—for through them an army might suddenly 
be deprived of its commander-in-chief. “It would also 
be requisite not to entrust command,” Montaigne says, 
“to men who would fly from apples more than from 
arquebusades.” 
It is not only amongst the corpuscular emanations of 
living animals that the Mesmerists asserted conflicts to 
occur. They unhesitatingly extended their speculations 
to dead bodies. Some ancients dreamt that a catgut cord 
made of a wolf’s intestines would never strike in uni- 
son with one made from a lamb’s intestine; a discord of 
atmospheres renders the phenomenon possible. It is still 
a conflict of corporeal emanations that explains the other 
aphorism of an ancient philosopher: “The sound of a 
drum made with a wolf’s skin takes away all sonorous- 
ness from a drum made with a lamb’s skin.” 
Here I pause, Gentlemen. Montesquieu said: “ When 
God created the brains of human beings, he did not in- 
tend to guarantee them.” 
To conclude: Servan’s witty, piquant, agreeably writ- 
ten pamphlet was worthy under this triple claim of the 
reception with which the public honoured it; but it did 
not shake, in any one part, the lucid, majestic, elegant 
report by Bailly. The magistrate of Grénoble has said, 
that in his long experience he had met men accustomed 
to reflect without laughing, and other men who only 
wished to laugh without reflecting. Bailly thought of 
the first class when he wrote: his memorable report. 
