his brow with his hand. "If not the elements of a science, at any rate
the revelation of stupendous powers in man; at least they prove a
frequent severance of our two natures, the fact I have been thinking
out for a very long time. At last, then, I have hit on evidence to
show the superiority that distinguishes our latent senses from our
corporeal senses! _Homo duplex_!

"And yet," he went on, after a pause, with a doubtful shrug, "perhaps
we have not two natures; perhaps we are merely gifted with personal
and perfectible qualities, of which the development within us produces
certain unobserved phenomena of activity, penetration, and vision. In
our love of the marvelous, a passion begotten of our pride, we have
translated these effects into poetical inventions, because we did not
understand them. It is so convenient to deify the incomprehensible!

"I should, I own, lament over the loss of my illusions. I so much
wished to believe in our twofold nature and in Swedenborg's angels.
Must this new science destroy them? Yes; for the study of our unknown
properties involves us in a science that appears to be materialistic,
for the Spirit uses, divides, and animates the Substance; but it does
not destroy it."

He remained pensive, almost sad. Perhaps he saw the dreams of his
youth as swaddling clothes that he must soon shake off.

"Sight and hearing are, no doubt, the sheaths for a very marvelous
instrument," said he, laughing at his own figure of speech.

Always when he was talking to me of Heaven and Hell, he was wont to
treat of Nature as being master; but now, as he pronounced these last