Mesmer’s metaphysics begins with gravity and tides, by which he meant the lunar tide plus other little tides from the planets plus the ever-present sun tide. These are running all at once and crisscrossing through our bodies. The self and its health is a nexus of fluid-pushes. These fluids are life fluids. Vitalism—the doctrine that life is a separate stuff from ordinary matter—was simply an axiom of Mesmer’s era.

Particular consciousness (as we know it) indeed does arise from material process. (Whether or not there is a generic consciousness is an independent question.) In either case, chemical process is decisive for conscious presence. What distinguishes vitalism from other kinds of physicalism is the identification of subjectivity with a special substance that is other than baryonic matter.

It is this direct link—identity even—between consciousness and a special sentient substance that we find distasteful today.

This position is different from that of metaphysical monism, which says that material force in general is coextensive with consciousness. Vitalism locates consciousness in a special type of substance. This thesis is no longer tenable today because all forces are species of one generic infra-force. The universe coheres, so its substance must be one.

The stuff in me is one with , or rests on, the universal stuff. The forces permeating space (such as gravity) must also permeate me. The forces’ affect on matter must also occur in me.

Here is Mesmer’s particular take on this.