etrate all things; you will understand its full meaning only through
comparison. In the great cities of Europe works are produced by which the
human hand seeks to represent the effects of the moral nature as well as
those of the physical nature, as well as those of the ideas in marble. The
sculptor acts on the stone; he fashions it; he puts a realm of ideas into
it. There are statues which the hand of man has endowed with the faculty of
representing the whole noble side of humanity, or the evil side of it; most
men see in such marbles a human figure and nothing more; a few older men, a
little higher in the scale of being, perceive a fraction of the thoughts
expressed in the statue; but the Initiates in the secrets of art are of the
same intellect as the sculptor; they see in his work the whole universe of
thought. Such persons are in themselves the principles of art; they bear
within them a mirror which reflects nature in her slightest manifestations.
Well, so it is with me; I have within me a mirror before which the moral
nature, with its causes and its effects, appears and is reflected. Entering
thus into the consciousness of others I am able to divine both the future
and the past * * * though what I have said does not define the gift of
Specialism, for to conceive the nature of that gift we must possess it."

This describes in terms similar to those employed by others who possess
cosmic consciousness, the results of this inner light, which Seraphita
calls a "mirror."

And yet, with this seemingly exhaustive and lucid exposition of the effects
of Illumination, Seraphita declares that "to conceive the nature of this
gift we must possess it."

Balzac further comments upon what he terms this gift of Specialism, which
is cosmic consciousness or illumination, thus:

"The specialist is necessarily the loftiest expression of man--the link
which connects the visible to the superior worlds. He acts, he sees, he
feels through his _inner being_. The abstractive _thinks_. The instinctive
simply _acts_. Hence three degrees for man. As an instinctive he is below
the level; as an abstractive he attains it; as a specialist he rises above
it. Specialism opens to man his true career; the Infinite dawns upon
him--he catches a glimpse of his destiny."

The merely sense-conscious man is the man-animal; the abstractive man is
the average man and woman in the world to-day--the human who is evolving
out of the mental into the spiritual co