Mind of Napoleon A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words by J. Christopher Herold

Author:J. Christopher Herold
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2016-07-19T07:00:00+00:00

ON PSEUDO SCIENCES

{187} [Conversation, 1816] Mesmer exerted his powers over a person by magnetizing him face to face. If the same person was magnetized from behind without knowing it, he felt nothing. Thus the effect was due, on the part of that person, to an aberration of the imagination, a weakness of the senses—just as a sleep walker, who at night can run along the edges of roofs without danger, because he is unafraid, would break his neck in daylight, because his senses lose control.

[Same conversation] Look at the idiotic theory of Gall [the founder of phrenology]: he attributes to certain prominences [of the skull] tendencies and crimes which are not inborn but which are merely products of society and of human conventions. What would become of the “bump of thievery” if there were no property? What of the “bump of drunkenness,” if there were no alcoholic beverages? What of the “bump of ambition,” if there were no society?

[Conversation, 1816] One never must judge a man by his physiognomy. Men must be tested to be known. How many faces I had to judge in my life! What opportunities for acquiring experience! How many denunciations, how many reports have I listened to! And indeed I made it a fixed rule never to allow myself to be influenced either by facial traits or by words.

These words must be placed against the background of the then fashionable theories of Lavater, who thought he could establish a scientific and systematic relationship between facial and moral characteristics. Napoleon’s judgment of Mesmer, Gall, and Lavater has been borne out only in a narrow sense, since their theories, faulty though they were, foreshadowed important discoveries.

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