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re, have been erroneous. What he had just witnessed assured him, in an unanswerable manner, that overt crimes or overt virtues were merely the good or evil employment of one or other of the five senses; that they were the bright and black spots upon the spiritual nature of man, the _faculae_ and the _maculae_, as it were, on the disc of his conscience. Satisfied, therefore, that the purity or depravity of every mortal was merely the consequence of the different purpose to which their senses had been directed, the Rosicrucian perceived the intimate relationship subsisting between the immaterial being and the physical organs. He perceived especially that those organs were the channels through which that immaterial portion of humanity was brought into communication with a material existence, was compelled to endure its miseries, or was enabled to appreciate its enjoyments. In this he recognised the veracity of that solemn assurance, that happiness is accessible, even on this earth, to all who use their senses with a virtuous discrimination. Nor had this consolatory truth been enforced merely by a barren asseveration. Balsamo had been taught the inestimable value of those senses, and the penalties of such as abused them by their vices. Five incidents, most touching, or most appalling, had reminded him of the exquisite pleasures derivable from created things, through the eyes, through the nostrils, through the ears, through the palate, and through the nerves. He had seen the anguish, moreover, of those who suffered from the deprivation of either sense, or of those who were tortured by the result of their own heinous misapplication. He had seen this in the insanity of Tiberius, in the torments of Agrippa, in the sadness of Milton, in the desolation of Mirabeau, and even in the philosophic sorrows of Beethoven. The emperor, the tetrarch, the poet, the demagogue, and the musician, crowded upon his memory, and appealed to his judgment with the same melancholy distinctness. Still the villainous predilections of the Rosicrucian contended for the mastery, although his intellect recognised the wisdom of the Vision. A fierce strife arose between his passions and his reason. Suddenly his eyes opened to the splendour of an autumn morning; and as the sunlight poured along the _Boulevard de la Madeleine_, as it gilded every blade of grass in the paddock, and streamed in golden pencils through the open window of the cottage, it glittered
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