Thus they thought that "two harps being
tuned alike, and one being played, the chords of the other would follow the
tune with a faint, sympathetic music." It was also believed that precious
stones sympathized with certain persons, that the stars sympathized with
men, that the efficacy of ointment depended upon sympathy, that "wounds
could be healed at a distance by an ointment whose force depended upon
sympathy, the ointment being smeared upon the weapon, not upon the wound."
Upon this belief many erroneous, superstitious and dangerous systems of
philosophy and religion were established. The natural philosophy of
Baptista Porta, or Albertus Magnus, was founded upon the principle of
sympathy. Plato applied this principle to marriage, and maintained that
"marriage was the union of two souls that once, in their preexistent state,
were one, and that sympathy urges them to union again, and sends them
unconsciously seeking it over the world." In the middle ages it was
maintained that two friends could be so moved with mutual sympathy as to
have, under certain conditions, a true and perfect knowledge of one
another's state, even when at a great distance apart. To the revival of
this erroneous view of the law of sympathy may be ascribed the theories of
Mesmerism and spiritual rappings at the present day.
Home-sympathy, viewed as a feeling and a faculty, is twofold in its nature,
viz.
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