ause we did not
understand them. It is so convenient to deify the incomprehensible!

"I should, I own, lament over the loss of my illusions. I so much wished
to believe in our twofold nature and in Swedenborg's angels. Must this
new science destroy them? Yes; for the study of our unknown properties
involves us in a science that appears to be materialistic, for the
Spirit uses, divides, and animates the Substance; but it does not
destroy it."

He remained pensive, almost sad. Perhaps he saw the dreams of his youth
as swaddling clothes that he must soon shake off.

"Sight and hearing are, no doubt, the sheaths for a very marvelous
instrument," said he, laughing at his own figure of speech.

Always when he was talking to me of Heaven and Hell, he was wont to
treat of Nature as being master; but now, as he pronounced these last
words, big with prescience, he seemed to soar more boldly than ever
above the landscape, and his forehead seemed ready to burst with the
afflatus of genius. His powers--mental powers we must call them till
some new term is found--seemed to flash from the organs intended to
express them. His eyes shot out thoughts; his uplifted hand, his silent
but tremulous lips were eloquent; his burning glance was radiant; at
last his head, as though too heavy, or exhausted by too eager a flight,
fell on his breast. This boy--this giant--bent his head, took my hand
and clasped it in his own, which was damp, so fevered was he for the
search for truth; then, after a pause, he said:

"I shall be famous!--And you, too," he added after a pause. "We will
both study the Chemistry of the Will."

Noble soul! I recognized his superiority, though he took great care
never to make me feel it. He shared with me all the treasures of his
mind, and regarded me as instrumental in his discoveries, leaving me the
credit of my insignificant contributions. He was always as gracious as
a woman in love; he had all the bashful feeling, the delicacy of soul
which make life happy and pleasant to endure.

On the following day he began writing what he called a _Treatise on the
Will_; his subsequent reflections led to many changes in its plan and
method; but the incident of that day was certainly the germ of the work,
just as the electric shock always felt by Mesmer at the approach of
a particular manservant was the starting-point of his discoveries in
magnetism, a science till then interred under the mysteries of Isis, of
Delphi, o