is the most perfect
example, because he was the most balanced; the most literary, in the
strict interpretation of the word.

Balzac's place in literature is due far more to his wonderful spiritual
insight, and his powerful imagination, than to his intellectuality, or to
literary style. But that he was an almost complete case of cosmic
consciousness is evident in all he wrote and in all he did. His life was
absolutely consistent with the cosmic conscious man, living in a world
where the race consciousness has not yet risen to the heights of the
spiritually conscious life.

Bucke comments upon his decision against the state of matrimony, because,
as Balzac himself declared, it would be an obstacle to the perfectibility
of his interior senses, and to his flight through the spiritual worlds, and
says: "When we consider the antagonistic attitude of so many of the great
cases toward this relation (Gautama, Jesus, Paul, Whitman, etc.), there
seems little doubt that anything like general possession of cosmic
consciousness must abolish marriage as we know it to-day."

Balzac explains this seeming aversion to the marriage state _as we know it
to-day_, in his two books, written during his early thirties, namely, Louis
Lambert and Seraphita. "Louis Lambert" is regarded as in the nature of an
autobiography, since Balzac, like his mouthpiece, Louis, viewed everything
from an inner sense--from intuition, or the soul faculties, rather than
from the standard of mere intellectual observation, analysis and synthesis.
This inner sense, so real and so thoroughly understandable to those
possessing it, is almost, if not quite, impossible of description to the
complete comprehension of those who have no intimate relationship with this
inner vision. To the person who views life from the inner sense, the soul
sense (which is the approach to, and is included in, cosmic consciousness),
the external or physical life is like a mirror reflecting, more or less
inaccurately, the reality--the soul is the gazer, and the visible life is
what he sees.

Balzac expresses this view in all he says and does. "All we are is in the
soul," he says, and the perfection or the imperfection of what we
externalize, depends upon the development of the soul.

It is this marvelously developed inner vision that makes marriage, on the
sense-conscious plane, which is the plane upon which we know marriage as it
is to-day, objectionable to Balzac.

His spirit had already