This essay traces the cosmological and musical background of Franz Anton Mesmer’s theory of animal magnetism to the ancient cosmology of Timaeus of Locri, Plato’s alleged source for his Timaeus. In the 1760s, two French translations and comments of this source were produced by the Marquis d’Argens and Charles Batteux. The essay explores this relationship in two aspects of Mesmer’s theory. Firstly, the conception of the magnetic fluid as a blend between the metaphysical idea of the “soul of the world” and the imponderable fluids in physics. Secondly, the harmonic cosmos presented in Mesmer’s Théorie du monde et des êtres organisés (1784), which links the origins of the universe with the physical body, and results in a moral and ideal social order.
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