substance. It is soul-energy, a force which, some time, carries all before it, even though it seem to pause for a while to gather new momentum. Eventually it makes its possessor the master of fate.

At this point in the development of the soul is found the bridge between two worlds -- Religion and Science, or, positive abstract truth, and comparative demonstrated truth. It is their union, approached only by that soul whose type is Louis Lambert, and consummated in Seraphita, which gives the superlative or celestial truth, the full-orbed sun whose rays are too dazzling to be borne by the purely intellectual soul that is blinded by them.

Though this bridge is pressed by many -- it is to be pressed by a multitude of feet -- it is always crossed alone; for this part of the isolation that belongs to the power to tread it. For the soul, at this stage of its development, there is the reconciliation between seeming opposites that brings completeness and wisdom; and, so far from seeking for authority, it begins to speak with it.

Louis spends three years of ceaseless study and effort in Paris, after leaving college at eighteen years of age. Having thus exhausted his small patrimony, he returns to his uncle, who is now his sole guardian, and with whom he meets the woman who afterward possesses his life. To such a nature love was intensely idealistic. For him there could be nothing less than an absolute self-surrender to the one he loved.