This animal electricity is likewise a modification of what we call animal spirits, and may be termed the stimulus of society. That this was well known to the wisest of men, is evident from this adage of Solomon: “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” The want of a proper communication among animal Leyden phials is the cause of the gloom of the solitaire. The wish to partake of the benefits of the stimulus of society makes man a gregarious animal, and induces the human race to congregate in large cities, and to be fond of routs, balls, assemblies, in which the aforesaid human electric phials are beaming animal electricity in every direction, and thus a flow of animal spirits is communicated by a pleasing contagion to all present.
When we see an animal Leyden phial superabounding with animal electricity, we say it is a spirited animal. When said animal happens to be a hero, a tiger, an irritated ram cat, or a black snake intent on his game, visible flashes of electricity will blaze from the eyes, and communicate very sensible shocks to a spectator. Thus the Gaul, who was commanded to cut off the head of Marius, a celebrated Roman general, and a personage full of the most positive sort of animal electricity, received such a stroke of lightning from the battery of that hero’s head, and at the same time was so thunderstruck with the exclamation of “Tune, homo, audes occidere Caium Marium?” that the dagger dropped bloodless from the hands of the ruthless assassin. Thus Alexander, when hampered in the chief city of the Oxydracæ, kept his foes at a distance by the fire that flashed from his eyes in whole torrents of animal electricity. How often do we see a Congressional spouter, or an itinerant field preacher electrize a large assembly by repeated discharges of this mysterious fluid. In all cases of fanaticism it is mistaken for the fire of devotion, and causes grimaces, contortions, convulsions, and other strange symptoms, which, however, are easily accounted for by the theory of the “animal Leyden phial.”
But the prettiest experiments ever made with animal electricity, I have seen sometimes exhibited by a female philosopher to a levee of her admirers. On such occasions, the lady’s eyes seem to be fountains of animal electricity. This electricity, however, is not vitreous and resinous, but positive and negative. The former expressed by a glance of approbation, and the latter by a flash of disdain. The different effects which discharges of these different kinds of electricity exhibit in the subjects of experiment may be rated among the most wonderful of phenomena. The former transports a man, Southey-like, to “the atmosphere of the highest of all possible heavens,” the latter sinks him “down! down! to the Domdaniel cave at the roots of the ocean.” But as this is a branch of natural philosophy to which, for forty years, past I have not paid the least attention, I shall not attempt further to instruct your worships therein, but refer you to the experiments so delectably set forth in the poems of Little, Johannes Bonefonius, Secundus, and other adepts in that curious science.
AN ODE.[125]
Ye sons of Columbia, unite in the cause
Of liberty, justice, religion, and laws;
Should foes then invade us, to battle we’ll hie,
For the God of our fathers will be our ally!