an who plunges into these religious waters, of which the
sources are not all known, will find proofs that Zoroaster, Moses,
Buddha, Confucius, Jesus Christ, and Swedenborg had identical
principles and aimed at identical ends.

"The last of them all, Swedenborg, will perhaps be the Buddha of
the North. Obscure and diffuse as his writings are, we find in
them the elements of a magnificent conception of society. His
Theocracy is sublime, and his creed is the only acceptable one to
superior souls. He alone brings man into immediate communion with
God, he gives a thirst for God, he has freed the majesty of God
from the trappings in which other human dogmas have disguised Him.
He left Him where He is, making His myriad creations and creatures
gravitate towards Him through successive transformations which
promise a more immediate and more natural future than the Catholic
idea of Eternity. Swedenborg has absolved God from the reproach
attaching to Him in the estimation of tender souls for the
perpetuity of revenge to punish the sin of a moment--a system of
injustice and cruelty.

"Each man may know for himself what hope he has of life eternal,
and whether this world has any rational sense. I mean to make the
attempt. And this attempt may save the world, just as much as the
cross at Jerusalem or the sword at Mecca. These were both the
offspring of the desert. Of the thirty-three years of Christ's
life, we only know the history of nine; His life of seclusion
prepared Him for His life of glory. And I too crave for the
desert!"

Notwithstanding the difficulties of the task, I have felt it my duty to
depict Lambert's boyhood, the unknown life to which I owe the only happy
hours, the only pleasant memories, of my early days. Excepting during
those two years I had nothing but annoyances and weariness. Though some
happiness was mine at a later time, it was always incomplete.

I have been diffuse, I know; but in default of entering into the whole
wide heart and brain of Louis Lambert--two words which inadequately
express the infinite aspects of his inner life--it would be almost
impossible to make the second part of his intellectual history
intelligible--a phase that was unknown to the world and to me, but of
which the mystical outcome was made evident to my eyes in the course
of a few hours. Those who have not already dropped this volume, will, I
hope, understand the events I s