Health and suggestion : the dialectics of the mind / by Ernst von Feudhtersleben ; translated and edited by Ludwig Lewisohn.

  • Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben
Date:
1919, ©1910
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health and suggestion : the dialectics of the mind / by Ernst von Feudhtersleben ; translated and edited by Ludwig Lewisohn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    duties, but achieved his end through the sheer exertion of umnnecessitated will. “I was once,”’ he tells us, “‘ inevitably exposed to the infection of a malignant fever, and warded off the disease only by means of determined volition. It is almost incredible how much, in such cases, the moral will can effect! It seems to permeate one’s whole being and to render the condition of the body active enough to repel all harmful influences. Fear is a condition of-sloth in which any enemy may take possession of us.” To instance such facts from the life of Goethe has an unique value. For in the life of that great soul all that in others is mere self-delusion was actual and objectively true. From all these examples we may conclude that life itself is but that power in the in- dividual which is able to make the external subject to an inner law, which can assimilate that which is alien and thus, though con- stantly dynamic, change only its conditions and never its essence. A bodily power of [35]