dull inertia to the emission of the most terrifying gleams.

"By this system God is bereft of none of His rights. Mind, as a form
of matter, has brought me a new conviction of His greatness."

After hearing him discourse thus, after receiving into my soul his
look like a ray of light, it was difficult not to be dazzled by his
conviction and carried away by his arguments. The Mind appeared to me
as a purely physical power, surrounded by its innumerable progeny. It
was a new conception of humanity under a new form.

This brief sketch of the laws which, as Lambert maintained, constitute
the formula of our intellect, must suffice to give a notion of the
prodigious activity of his spirit feeding on itself. Louis had sought
for proofs of his theories in the history of great men, whose lives,
as set forth by their biographers, supply very curious particulars as
to the operation of their understanding. His memory allowed him to
recall such facts as might serve to support his statements; he had
appended them to each chapter in the form of demonstrations, so as to
give to many of his theories an almost mathematical certainty. The
works of Cardan, a man gifted with singular powers of insight,
supplied him with valuable materials. He had not forgotten that
Apollonius of Tyana had, in Asia, announced the death of a tyrant with
every detail of his execution, at the very hour when it was taking
place in Rome; nor that Plotinus, when far away from Porphyrius, was
aware of his friend's intention to kill himself, and flew to dissuade
him; nor the incident in the last century, proved in the face of the
most incredulous mockery ever known--an incident most surprising to
men who were accustomed to regard doubt as a weapon against the fact
alone, but simple enough to believers--the fact that Alphonzo-Maria di