Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

“The angels are white.”

  I cannot express the effect produced upon me by this utterance, by the sound of the voice I had loved, whose accents, so painfully expected, had seemed to be lost for ever. My eyes filled with tears in spite of every effort. An involuntary instinct warned me, making me doubt whether Louis had really lost his reason. I was indeed well assured that he neither saw nor heard me; but the sweetness of his tone, which seemed to reveal heavenly happiness, gave his speech an amazing effect. These words, the incomplete revelation of an unknown world, rang in our souls like some glorious distant bells in the depth of a dark night. I was no longer surprised that Mademoiselle de Villenoix considered Lambert to be perfectly sane. The life of the soul had perhaps subdued that of the body. His faithful companion had, no doubt — as I had at that moment — intuitions of that melodious and beautiful existence to which we give the name of Heaven in its highest meaning.

  This woman, this angel, always was with him, seated at her embroidery frame; and each time she drew the needle out she gazed at Lambert with sad and tender feeling. Unable to endure this terrible sight — for I could not, like Mademoiselle de Villenoix, read all his secrets — I went out, and she came with me to walk for a few minutes and talk of herself and of Lambert.

  “Louis must, no doubt, appear to be mad,” said she. “But he is not, if the term mad ought only to be used in speaking of those whose brain is for some unknown cause diseased, and who can show no reason in their actions. Everything in my husband is perfectly balanced. Though he did not actively recognize you, it is not that he did not see you. He has succeeded in detaching himself from his body, and discerns us under some other aspect — what that is, I know not. When he speaks, he utters wondrous things. Only it often happens that he concludes in speech an idea that had its beginning in his mind; or he may begin a sentence and finish it in thought. To other men he seems insane; to me, living as I do in his mind, his ideas are quite lucid. I follow the road his spirit travels; and though I do not know every turning, I can reach the goal with him.

  “Which of us has not often known what it is to think of some futile thing and be led on to some serious reflection through the ideas or memories it brings in its train? Not unfrequently, after speaking about some trifle, the simple starting-point of a rapid train of reflections, a thinker may forget or be silent as to the abstract connection of ideas leading to his conclusion, and speak again only to utter the last link in the chain of his meditations.

  “Inferior minds, to whom this swift mental vision is a thing unknown, who are ignorant of the spirit’s inner workings, laugh at the dreamer; and if he is subject to this kind of obliviousness, regard him as a madman. Louis is always in this state; he soars perpetually through the spaces of thought, traversing them with the swiftness of a swallow; I can follow him in his flight. This is the whole history of his madness. Some day, perhaps, Louis will come back to the life in which we vegetate; but if he breathes the air of heaven before the time when we may be permitted to do so, why should we desire to have him down among us? I am content to hear his heart beat, and all my happiness is to be with him. Is he not wholly mine? In three years, twice at intervals he was himself for a few days; once in Switzerland, where we went, and once in an island off the wilds of Brittany, where we took some sea-baths. I have twice been very happy! I can live on memory.”

  “But do you write down the things he says?” I asked.

  “Why should I?” said she.

  I was silent; human knowledge was indeed as nothing in this woman’s eyes.

  “At those times, when he talked a little,” she added, “I think I have recorded some of his phrases, but I left it off; I did not understand him then.”

  I asked her for them by a look; she understood me. This is what I have been able to preserve from oblivion.

  I

  Everything here on earth is produced by an ethereal substance

  which is the common element of various phenomena, known

  inaccurately as electricity, heat, light, the galvanic fluid, the

  magnetic fluid, and so forth. The universal distribution of this

  substance, under various forms, constitutes what is commonly known

  as Matter.

  II

  The brain is the alembic to which the Animal conveys what each of

  its organizations, in proportion to the strength of that vessel,

  can absorb of that Substance, which returns it transformed into

  Will.

  The Will is a fluid inherent in every creature endowed with

  motion. Hence the innumerable forms assumed by the Animal, the

  results of its combinations with that Substance. The Animal’s

  instincts are the product of the coercion of the environment in

  which it develops. Hence its variety.

  III

  In Man the Will becomes a power peculiar to him, and exceeding in

  intensity that of any other species.

  IV

  By constant assimilation, the Will depends on the Substance it

  meets with again and again in all its transmutations, pervading

  them by Thought, which is a product peculiar to the human Will, in

  combination with the modifications of that Substance.

  V

  The innumerable forms assumed by Thought are the result of the

  greater or less perfection of the human mechanism.

  VI

  The Will acts through organs commonly called the five senses,

  which, in fact, are but one — the faculty of Sight. Feeling and

  tasting, hearing and smelling, are Sight modified to the

  transformations of the Substance which Man can absorb in two

  conditions: untransformed and transformed.

  VII

  Everything of which the form comes within the cognizance of the

  one sense of Sight may be reduced to certain simple bodies of

  which the elements exist in the air, the light, or in the elements

  of air and light. Sound is a condition of the air; colors are all

  conditions of light; every smell is a combination of air and

  light; hence the four aspects of Matter with regard to Man — sound,

  color, smell, and shape — have the same origin, for the day is not

  far off when the relationship of the phenomena of air and light

  will be made clear.

  Thought, which is allied to Light, is expressed in words which

  depend on sound. To man, then, everything is derived from the

  Substance, whose transformations vary only through Number — a

  certain quantitative dissimilarity, the proportions resulting in

  the individuals or objects of what are classed as Kingdoms.

  VIII

  When the Substance is absorbed in sufficient number (or quantity)

  it makes of man an immensely powerful mechanism, in direct

  communication with the very element of the Substance, and acting

  on organic nature in the same way as a large stream when it

  absorbs the smaller brooks. Volition sets this force in motion

  independently of the Mind. By its concentration it acquires some

  of the qualities of the Substance, such as the swiftness of light,

  the penetrating power of electricity, and the faculty of

  saturating a body; to which must be added that it apprehends what

  it can do.

  Still, there is in man a primordial and overruling phenomenon

  which defies analysis. Man may be dissected completely; the

  elements of Will and Mind may perhaps be found; but there still

  will remain beyond apprehension the x against which I once used

  to struggle. That x is the Word, the Logos, whose communication

  burns and consumes those who are not prepared to receive it. The

  Word is for ever generating
the Substance.

  IX

  Rage, like all our vehement demonstrations, is a current of the

  human force that acts electrically; its turmoil when liberated

  acts on persons who are present even though they be neither its

  cause nor its object. Are there not certain men who by a discharge

  of Volition can sublimate the essence of the feelings of the

  masses?

  X

  Fanaticism and all emotions are living forces. These forces in

  some beings become rivers that gather in and sweep away

  everything.

  XI

  Though Space is, certain faculties have the power of traversing

  it with such rapidity that it is as though it existed not. From

  your own bed to the frontiers of the universe there are but two

  steps: Will and Faith.

  XII

  Facts are nothing; they do not subsist; all that lives of us is

  the Idea.

  XIII

  The realm of Ideas is divided into three spheres: that of

  Instinct, that of Abstractions, that of Specialism.

  XIV

  The greater part, the weaker part of visible humanity, dwells in

  the Sphere of Instinct. The Instinctives are born, labor, and

  die without rising to the second degree of human intelligence,

  namely Abstraction.

  XV

  Society begins in the sphere of Abstraction. If Abstraction, as

  compared with Instinct, is an almost divine power, it is

  nevertheless incredibly weak as compared with the gift of

  Specialism, which is the formula of God. Abstraction comprises all

  nature in a germ, more virtually than a seed contains the whole

  system of a plant and its fruits. From Abstraction are derived

  laws, arts, social ideas, and interests. It is the glory and the

  scourge of the earth: its glory because it has created social

  life; its scourge because it allows man to evade entering into

  Specialism, which is one of the paths to the Infinite. Man

  measures everything by Abstractions: Good and Evil, Virtue and

  Crime. Its formula of equity is a pair of scales, its justice is

  blind. God’s justice sees: there is all the difference.

  There must be intermediate Beings, then, dividing the sphere of

  Instinct from the sphere of Abstractions, in whom the two elements

  mingle in an infinite variety of proportions. Some have more of

  one, some more of the other. And there are also some in which the

  two powers neutralize each other by equality of effect.

  XVI

  Specialism consists in seeing the things of the material universe

  and the things of the spiritual universe in all their

  ramifications original and causative. The greatest human geniuses

  are those who started from the darkness of Abstraction to attain

  to the light of Specialism. (Specialism, species, sight;

  speculation, or seeing everything, and all at once; Speculum, a

  mirror or means of apprehending a thing by seeing the whole of

  it.) Jesus had the gift of Specialism; He saw each fact in its

  root and in its results, in the past where it had its rise, and in

  the future where it would grow and spread; His sight pierced into

  the understanding of others. The perfection of the inner eye gives

  rise to the gift of Specialism. Specialism brings with it

  Intuition. Intuition is one of the faculties of the Inner Man, of

  which Specialism is an attribute. Intuition acts by an

  imperceptible sensation of which he who obeys it is not conscious:

  for instance, Napoleon instinctively moving from a spot struck

  immediately afterwards by a cannon ball.

  XVII

  Between the sphere of Abstraction and that of Specialism, as

  between those of Abstraction and Instinct, there are beings in

  whom the attributes of both combine and produce a mixture; these

  are men of genius.

  XVIII

  Specialism is necessarily the most perfect expression of man, and

  he is the link binding the visible world to the higher worlds; he

  acts, sees, and feels by his inner powers. The man of Abstraction

  thinks. The man of Instinct acts.

  XIX

  Hence man has three degrees. That of Instinct, below the average;

  that of Abstraction, the general average; that of Specialism,

  above the average. Specialism opens to man his true career; the

  Infinite dawns on him; he sees what his destiny must be.

  XX

  There are three worlds — the Natural, the Spiritual, and the

  Divine. Humanity passes through the Natural world, which is not

  fixed either in its essence and unfixed in its faculties. The

  Spiritual world is fixed in its essence and unfixed in its

  faculties. The Divine world is necessarily a Material worship, a

  Spiritual worship, and a Divine worship: three forms expressed in

  action, speech, and prayer, or, in other words, in deed,

  apprehension, and love. Instinct demands deed; Abstraction is

  concerned with Ideas; Specialism sees the end, it aspires to God

  with presentiment or contemplation.

  XXI

  Hence, perhaps, some day the converse of Et Verbum caro factum

  est will become the epitome of a new Gospel, which will proclaim

  that The Flesh shall be made the Word and become the Utterance of

  God.

  XXII

  The Resurrection is the work of the Wind of Heaven sweeping over

  the worlds. The angel borne on the Wind does not say: “Arise, ye

  dead”; he says, “Arise, ye who live!”

  Such are the meditations which I have with great difficulty cast in a form adapted to our understanding. There are some others which Pauline remembered more exactly, wherefore I know not, and which I wrote from her dictation; but they drive the mind to despair when, knowing in what an intellect they originated, we strive to understand them. I will quote a few of them to complete my study of this figure; partly, too, perhaps, because, in these last aphorisms, Lambert’s formulas seem to include a larger universe than the former set, which would apply only to zoological evolution. Still, there is a relation between the two fragments, evident to those persons — though they be but few — who love to dive into such intellectual deeps.

  I

  Everything on earth exists solely by motion and number.

  II

  Motion is, so to speak, number in action.

  III

  Motion is the product of a force generated by the Word and by

  Resistance, which is Matter. But for Resistance, Motion would have

  had no results; its action would have been infinite. Newton’s

  gravitation is not a law, but an effect of the general law of

  universal motion.

  IV

  Motion, acting in proportion to Resistance, produces a result

  which is Life. As soon as one or the other is the stronger, Life

  ceases.

  V

  No portion of Motion is wasted; it always produces number; still,

  it can be neutralized by disproportionate resistance, as in

  minerals.

  VI

  Number, which produces variety of all kinds, also gives rise to

  Harmony, which, in the highest meaning of the word, is the

  relation of parts to the whole.

  VII

  But for Motion, everything would be one and the same. Its

  products, identical in their ess
ence, differ only by Number, which

  gives rise to faculties.

  VIII

  Man looks to faculties; angels look to the Essence.

  IX

  By giving his body up to elemental action, man can achieve an

  inner union with the Light.

  X

  Number is intellectual evidence belonging to man alone; by it he

  acquires knowledge of the Word.

  XI

  There is a Number beyond which the impure cannot pass: the Number

  which is the limit of creation.

  XII

  The Unit was the starting-point of every product: compounds are

  derived from it, but the end must be identical with the beginning.

  Hence this Spiritual formula: the compound Unit, the variable

  Unit, the fixed Unit.

  XIII

  The Universe is the Unit in variety. Motion is the means; Number

  is the result. The end is the return of all things to the Unit,

  which is God.

  XIV

  Three and Seven are the two chief Spiritual numbers.

  XV

  Three is the formula of created worlds. It is the Spiritual Sign

  of the creation, as it is the Material Sign of dimension. In fact,

  God has worked by curved lines only: the Straight Line is an

  attribute of the Infinite; and man, who has the presentiment of