Louis Lambert — Honoré de Balzac, trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley

‘‘Wilfrid, you came to request me to resolve equations, to fly on a rain-cloud, to plunge into the fiord and reappear asa swan. If science or miracle were the end of humanity, Moses would have left you a calculus of fluxions; Jesus Christ would have cleared up the dark places of science; His apostles would have told you whence come those immepse trains of gas or of fused metals which rush revolving on a nucleus, solidifying as they seek a place in the ether, and are sometimes violently projected within range of a system where they are absorbed by a star, or crash into it by their shock, or dissolve it by the infusion of deadly vapors... St. Paul, instead of bidding you live in God, would havep. 135 explained to you that nutrition is the secret bond among all creation, and the visible bond among all living animals. In our own day, the greatest miracle would be to square the circle, a problem which you pronounce impossible, but which has no doubt been solved in the progress of worlds by the intersection of some mathematical line, whose curves are apparent to the eye of spirits elevated to the highest spheres.

‘Believe me, miracles are within us and not without us. Thus have natural effects been wrought, which the nations deemed to be supernatural. Would not God have been unjust if He had vouchsafed to show His power to some generations, and had refused it to others? The Brazen Rod belongs to all. Neither Moses nor Jacob, neither Zoroaster nor Paul, nor Pythagoras nor Swedenborg, neither the most obscure evangelists nor the most amazing of God’s ‘prophets, have been superior to what you might become. Only, nations have their day of faith. If positive science were indeed the end of all human effort, how is it—confess now— that every social community, every great centre to which men gather, is invariably broken up by Providence? If civilization were the final cause of the human species, could intelligence perish? Would it perennially continue to be a purely individual possession ?

“The greatness of all the nations that have ever been great has been founded on exceptions: when the exception ceased to be, the power was dead. Would not the Seers, the Prophets, the Evangelists, have laid their hand on science instead of relying on faith; would they not have hammered at your brains rather than have touched your hearts ? They all came to drive the nations to God; they all proelaimed the way of life in the simple words which lead to

136. BALZAC’S WORKS

the Heavenly Kingdom; and fired with love and faith, and inspired by the Word which hovers over the nations, compels them, vivifies them, and uplifts them, they never used it for any human end. Your great geniuses, poets, kings, and sages are swallowed up with their towns, and the desert has buried them under a shroud of sand; while the names of these good shepherds still are blessed and survive every catastrophe.

‘‘We can never agree on any point. Gulfs lie between us. You are on the side of darkness, I live in the true hight.

“Ts this the word you desired of me? I utter it with joy; it may change you. Know, then, that there are sciences of Matter and sciences of the Spirit. Where you see bodies, I see forces tending toward each other by a creative impulse. To me the character of a body is the sign-manual of its first principles and the expression of its properties. These principles give rise to certain affinities which elude you, but which are connected with centres. The different species to which life is distributed are unfailing springs which communicate with each other. Hach has its specific function.