“These animules, atoms emanated by our souls, form a sensible atmosphere around us. Our individual soul, or divine guest, partakes more intimately in our joys and dolors, our particular inclinations and personal affections. While assisting in that, our animules have another role to play: they compose the great chain, the great network of general affections. Love broader but sometimes no less passionate, that makes itself felt by an entire people, which, on a given day, lifts them with the same enthusiastic impulse, evidently flows from them. 

“There are ideas in the air, it is often said; in the air there are animules, which imprint thousand of souls with the same impulse simultaneously, exciting them and causing them to palpitate in the magnetic milieu that is their own essence.”

Xavier-Boniface Saintine, 1864