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

‘‘Do for God what you would have done for your ambitious schemes; what you do when you take up an art, what you did when you loved a creature more than Him, or when you were studying some secret of human knowledge. Is not God Knowledge itself, Love itself, the Fount of all poetry ? Is not His treasure a thing to covet? His treasure is inexhaustible, His poetry is infinite, His love unchangeable, His knowledge infallible and full of mysteries. Cling to nothing, then; He will give you All! Yes, in His heart you will find possessions beyond all compare with. those you leave on earth.

‘“What I tell you is the truth. You will have His power, you will be allowed to use it as you use anything that belongs to your lover or your mistress.

‘‘Alas! most men doubt, lack faith, will, and persever-

“4p. 159 ance. Though some set out on the road, they presently look back and return. Few are they who know how to choose between these two extremes—to go or to stay; heaven or the muck-heap. All hesitate. Weakness leads to wandering, passion to evil ways, vice as a habit clogs the feet, and man makes no progress toward a better state.

“Hvery being passes a preliminary life in the Sphere of Instinct, laboring with endless toil to amass earthiy treasures, only to recognize their futility at last. But how many times must we live through this first life before quitting it fit to begin another stage of triai in the Sphere of Abstractions, where the mind is exercised in false science, and the spirit is at last weary of human speech—for, matter being exhausted, the spirit prevails? How many forms must the being elect to heaven wear out, before he has learned the preciousness of silence, and of the solitude whose star-strewn steppes are the floor of the spiritual world? It is after testing and trying the void that his eyes turn to the right path. Then there are other existences to be worn through or ever he may reach the road where the Light shines.

‘‘Death marks a stage on this journey. After that, his experience is in a reversed order; it takes a whole life, perhaps, to acquire the virtues that are the antithesis of the errors in which he has previously lived.

‘““Phus, first we live the life of suffering, where torments make us thirst for love. Next comes the life of loving, where devotion to the creature teaches us devotion to the Creator; where the virtues of love, its thousand sacrifices, its angelic hope, its joys paid for by grief, its patience and resignation excite an appetite for thirgs divine. After this comes the life during which we seck,

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in silence, the traces of the Word, and become humble and charitable. Then the life of high desirc; finally, the life of prayer. There we find eternal sunshine; there are flowers, there is fruition!

“The qualities we acquire, and which shea grow up in us, are the invisible bonds binding each of these existences to the next; the soul alone remembers them, since matter has no memory for spiritual things. The mind alone preserves a tradition of former states. This unbroken legacy of the past to the present, and of the present to the future, is the secret of human genius; some have the gift of form, some the gift of number, some the gift of harmony; these are all steps in the way to the Light. Yes, whoever possesses one of these gifts, touches the infinite at one spot.

‘‘The Word, of which I have here uttered a few axioms, has been distributed over the earth, which has reduced it to powder, and infused it into its works, its doctrines, its poetry. If the tiniest speck of it shines on a work, you say, ‘This is great; this is true; this is sublime!’ And that mere atom vibrates within you, giving you a foretaste of heaven. “Thus, one has sickness, to divide him from the world; another has solitude, bringing him near to God; a third has poetry; in short, everything that throws you in on yourself, striking you and crushing you, is a ringing call from the Divine Sphere.