nelle so far my superior in the knowledge of all earthly
lores, that I at length came to think it possible he might be the
appointed instrument of communicating the singular intelligence that he
sought. He proposed to review the different systems built by human
thought before applying himself to the problem of finding a system of
philosophy which should include them all. His idea was, that from the
extreme negation of the so-called transcendental position--when that
position had been legitimately attained by a thoroughly conscientious
thinker--some new light must break upon the mind. His was no shrinking
from the conflict with real things to indulge in vague yearnings after
the inaccessible, but a definite effort so to place the soul and
discipline the understanding that wisdom could be realized without
process or media. Unlike most inquirers of that time, he had no love for
the abstract and the controversial, but entertained them freely as
finally discovering some path to the concrete and the unquestioned. He
declared that only to superficial persons was skepticism the terminus of
speculative deism. Let me also say this for my friend,--that his
directing stimulus to action was neither ambition nor curiosity, but
what, had it been directed to any recognized end, the world would have
called a religious principle. He was never guilty of the shallow
wickedness of seeking self-culture as an end; he sought the highest
self-culture only as a state of more passionate yearning for
regeneration.

What need to tell how I was fascinated, mesmerized, into a humble
companionship? how I became inspired with his own mighty belief in the
feasibility of the object he strove to attain? We read together certain
manuscripts of the elder Vannelle, in which, wrapt in a gorgeous
symbolism, seemed dimly to approach a great truth, which, at times,
could be faintly perceived, but never mastered. There were hints,
apparently of the deepest significance, which, when the mind endeavored
to grasp them, vanished like a vision.

Day after day, almost night after night, for five months, I passed with
Vannelle in the room I have described. And during that vivid period I
knew an intellectual intoxication which seemed the pure ecstasy of
spirit wholly delivered from the burden of the flesh. Vannelle talked
like one inspired upon the higher problems of metaphysical research,
showing, or appearing to show, in what sense the speculations of the
philosopher