When we remember that "Louis Lambert" was written in 1832, may we not say that in the subsequent years this science that he approached has been born in the world, and its first fruits are on every hand? May it not be possible to produce to-day the "compact, homogeneous system, run at one casting?" None of the by-gone centuries has offered a greater tribute of wisdom to a blinded and suffering world than the present. The metaphysics, not of Balzac alone, but of the many metaphysicians who have stood in the breach between Spiritualism and Materialism, have place in the homogeneous system of the present day, according as they "approach to or depart from eternal principles."

Louis' struggle between the extremes of one truth has been shared by them all; by the seeker for that which is veiled by visible matter; seekers for the forces which operated within it and the laws which govern their action; seekers for the great Initial Impulse which communicates the "breath of life" to suns and systems and souls. Their efforts have been the steps of ascent by which a grand system has been reached; and every past struggle in this direction, every present effort to see and verify the truth it offers, is part of the travail which slowly, yet steadily, forces a whole world from the womb of darkness into the living light.

The bible, which influenced Louis' early years, grew more and more a revelation of the very truths