Our attraction of Mesmer’s theory of animal magnetism is that it confirms our intuition that self is substance by positing a vital-magnetic fluid as the seat of consciousness. The mesmeric vocabulary community serves to establish this theory with cultic agreement. Members then reap the reward of (placebo) evidence that confirms the theory.

The truth in Mesmer’s theory of animal magnetism is the intuition by consciousness of its own substantial foundations. We cannot detect our conatus, but we feel it volitionally. Does Mesmer say this? He ought to. The self is magick, freedom, choice, will—a properly Aristotelean substance. A substance is, if it is anything, a trans-temporal existent. Aristotle locates this trans-temporal continuity in the inner life of the substance—in its subjectivity. True “substance” has an inner life—that is, it must have perception and appetition. True substance must be striving, which implies choice, feeling and the power of comparison required to make good on these. Substance proper is subject.

[This will also be good for the Chokhmah–Binah relation issue. Leibniz defines appetitions as “tendencies from one perception to another.”]