f the channel were attracted towards the new centre. The interest
was intelligible to professed mystics; the doctrine of transcendentalism
has never had but one adversary, which is the density of the
intellectual subject, and wherever the subject clarifies, there is
idealism in philosophy and mysticism in religion. Moreover, on the part
of mystics, especially here in England, the way of that revival had been
prepared carefully, and there could be no astonishment that it came, and
none, too, that it was accompanied, as it is accompanied almost
invariably, by much that does not belong to it in the way of
transcendental phenomena. When, therefore, the rumours of Black Magic,
diabolism, and the abuse of occult forces began to circulate, there was
little difficulty in attributing some foundation to the report.

A distinguished man of letters, M. Huysman, who has passed out of
Zolaism in the direction of transcendental religion, is, in a certain
sense, the discoverer of modern Satanism. Under the thinnest disguise of
fiction, he gives in his romance of _La Bas_, an incredible and
untranslatable picture of sorcery, sacrilege, black magic, and nameless
abominations, secretly practised in Paris. Possessing a brilliant
reputation, commanding a wide audience, and with a psychological
interest attaching to his own personality, which more than literary
excellence infuses a contagious element into private views and
impressions, he has given currency to the Question of Lucifer, has
promoted it from obscurity into prominence, and has made it the vogue of
the moment. It is true that, by his vocation of novelist, he is
suspected of inventing his facts, and Dr "Papus," president of the
influential Martinist group in French occultism, states quite plainly
that the doors of the mystic fraternities have been closed in his face,
so that he can know nothing, and his opinions are consequently
indifferent. I have weighed these points carefully, but unless the
mystic fraternities are connected with diabolism, which Papus would most
rightly deny, the exclusion does not remove the opportunity of
first-hand knowledge concerning the practice of Satanism, and,
"brilliant imagination" apart, M. Huysman has proved quite recently that
he is in mortal earnest by his preface to a historical treatise on
"Satanism and Magic," the work of a literary disciple, Jules Bois. In a
criticism, which for general soberness and lucidity does not leave much
to be desire