Michel de Montaigne

“ I myself knew a gentleman,
who having treated a large company at his house, three or four days after
bragged in jest (for there was no such thing) , that he had made them eat
of a baked cat; at which, a young gentlewoman, who had been at the feast,
took such a horror, that falling into a violent vomiting and fever, there
was no possible means to save her. Even brute beasts are subject to the
force of imagination as well as we; witness dogs, who die of grief for
the loss of their masters; and bark and tremble and start in their sleep ”

“ Passion gave to the son of Croesus the voice which
nature had denied him. And Antiochus fell into a fever, inflamed with
the beauty of Stratonice, too deeply imprinted in his soul. Pliny
pretends to have seen Lucius Cossitius, who from a woman was turned into
a man upon her very wedding-day. Pontanus and others report the like
metamorphosis to have happened in these latter days in Italy. And,
through the vehement desire of him and his mother:
"Volta puer solvit, quae foemina voverat, Iphis." ”

“ Should I take one to be my guide, peradventure I should not be
able to keep pace with him; and in the freedom of my liberty might
deliver judgments, which upon better thoughts, and according to reason,
would be illegitimate and punishable. Plutarch would say of what he has
delivered to us, that it is the work of others: that his examples are all
and everywhere exactly true: that they are useful to posterity, and are
presented with a lustre that will light us the way to virtue, is his own
work. ”

“ The soul of the
assailant, being disturbed with many several alarms, readily loses the
power of performance; and whoever the imagination has once put this trick
upon, and confounded with the shame of it (and she never does it but at
the first acquaintance, by reason men are then more ardent and eager, and
also, at this first account a man gives of himself, he is much more
timorous of miscarrying) , having made an ill beginning, he enters into
such fever and despite at the accident, as are apt to remain and continue
with him upon following occasions. ”

“ And 'tis for this reason
you may see why men in such cases require a mind prepared for the thing
that is to be done. Why do the physicians possess, before hand, their
patients' credulity with so many false promises of cure, if not to the
end, that the effect of imagination may supply the imposture of their
decoctions? They know very well, that a great master of their trade has
given it under his hand, that he has known some with whom the very sight
of physic would work. ”

“ For
let any one consider, whether there is any one part of our bodies that
does not often refuse to perform its office at the precept of the will,
and that does not often exercise its function in defiance of her command.
They have every one of them passions of their own, that rouse and awaken,
stupefy and benumb them, without our leave or consent. How often do the
involuntary motions of the countenance discover our inward thoughts, and
betray our most private secrets to the bystanders. ”

“ Multaque corporibus transitione nocent."
["When we look at people with sore eyes, our own eyes become sore.
Many things are hurtful to our bodies by transition."
--Ovid, De Rem. Amor., 615.]
--so the imagination, being vehemently agitated, darts out infection
capable of offending the foreign object. The ancients had an opinion of
certain women of Scythia, that being animated and enraged against any
one, they killed him only with their looks. Tortoises and ostriches
hatch their eggs with only looking on them, which infers that their eyes
have in them some ejaculative virtue. ”

“ Now all this may be attributed to the close affinity and relation betwixt
the soul and the body intercommunicating their fortunes; but 'tis quite
another thing when the imagination works not only upon one's own
particular body, but upon that of others also. And as an infected body
communicates its malady to those that approach or live near it, as we see
in the plague, the smallpox, and sore eyes, that run through whole
families and cities:--
"Dum spectant oculi laesos, laeduntur et ipsi ”

“ Francis to the force
of imagination. It is said, that by it bodies will sometimes be removed
from their places; and Celsus tells us of a priest whose soul would be
ravished into such an ecstasy that the body would, for a long time,
remain without sense or respiration. St. ”