nto will; that our sentiments are
movements of the fluid, which proceeds from us by jerks when we are
angry, and which weighs on our nerves when we are in expectation; that
the current of this king of liquids, according to the pressure of
thought and feeling, spreads in waves or diminishes and thins, then
collects again, to gush forth in flashes. He believes also that our
ideas are complete, organized beings (the theosophic notion) which
live in the invisible world and influence our destinies; that,
concentrated in a powerful brain, they can master the brains of other
people, and traverse immense distances in the twinkling of an eye. In
short, he anticipates not a little of the science of the present day,
yet mixing up the true and false in his guesses by the very exuberance
of his fancy. At the close, he gives us his vision of the universe:
"They heard the divers parts of the Infinite forming a living melody;
and, at each pause, when the accord made itself felt like a huge
respiration, the worlds, drawn by this unanimous movement, inclined
themselves towards the immense being who, from his impenetrable
centre, sent everything forth and brought it back to himself. The
light engendered melody, the melody engendered light; the colours were
light and melody, the movement was number endowed with speech; in
fine, all was at once sonorous, diaphanous, mobile; so that, all
things interpenetrating each other, distance was without obstacles,
and might be traversed by the angels throughout the depths of the
infinite. There was the fete. Myriads of angels all hastened in like
flight, without confusion, all similar, yet all dissimilar, simple as
the field-rose, vast as worlds. They were neither seen to come nor go.
On a sudden, they studded the infinite with their presence, just as
the stars shine in the indiscernible ether."

The fundamental error of _Seraphita_ is its hybridity, not to speak of
its pretentious psychology. It is neither flesh nor fowl; and,
exception made for some fine passages, more at the beginning than in
the rest of the book, it jars and irks, and amazes, but does not
captivate or persuade.

It had a great success when it came out in book form. People were
inquisitive to know the end of the story, which the _Revue de Paris_
had not given; and their eagerness had been further whetted by a
cleverly graduated series of puffs put into the newspapers. In the
first day of sale, the whole edition was cleared out of