第30章

"'Ah, what can be more in harmony with our ideas of God than to believe that he created all things by the simplest method? The Pythagorean worship of ONE, from which come all other numbers, and which represented Primal Matter; that of the number TWO, the first aggregation and the type of all the rest; that of the number THREE, which throughout all time has symbolized God,--that is to say, Matter, Force, and Product,--are they not an echo, lingering along the ages, of some confused knowledge of the Absolute? Stahl, Becker, Paracelsus, Agrippa, all the great Searchers into occult causes took the Great Triad for their watchword,--in other words, the Ternary.Ignorant men who despise alchemy, that transcendent chemistry, are not aware that our work is only carrying onward the passionate researches of those great men.Had I found the Absolute, the Unconditioned, I meant to have grappled with Motion.Ah! while I am swallowing gunpowder and leading men uselessly to their death, my former master is piling discovery upon discovery! he is soaring towards the Absolute, while I--I shall die like a dog in the trenches!'

"When this poor grand man recovered his composure, he said, in a touching tone of brotherhood, 'If I see cause for a great experiment Iwill bequeath it to you before I die.'--My Pepita," cried Balthazar, taking his wife's hands, "tears of anguish rolled down his hollow cheeks, as he cast into my soul the fiery arguments that Lavoisier had timidly recognized without daring to follow them out--""Oh!" cried Madame Claes, unable to refrain from interrupting her husband, "that man, passing one night under our roof, was able to deprive us of your love, to destroy with a phrase, a word, the happiness of a family! Oh, my dear Balthazar, did he make the sign of the cross? did you examine him? The Tempter alone could have had that flaming eye which sent forth the fire of Prometheus.Yes, none but the devil could have torn you from me.From that day you have been neither husband, nor father, nor master of your family.""What!" exclaimed Balthazar, springing to his feet and casting a piercing glance at his wife, "do you blame your husband for rising above the level of other men that he may lay at your feet the divine purple of his glory, as a paltry offering in exchange for the treasures of your heart! Ah, my Pepita," he cried, "you do not know what I have done.In these three years I have made giant strides--"His face seemed to his wife at this moment more transfigured under the fires of genius than she had ever seen it under the fires of love; and she wept as she listened to him.

"I have combined chlorine and nitrogen; I have decomposed many substances hitherto considered simple; I have discovered new metals.

Why!" he continued, noticing that his wife wept, "I have even decomposed tears.Tears contain a little phosphate of lime, chloride of sodium, mucin, and water."He went on speaking, without observing the spasm of pain that contracted Josephine's features; he was again astride of Science, which bore him with outspread wings far away from material existence.

"This analysis, my dear," he went on, "is one of the most convincing proofs of the theory of the Absolute.All life involves combustion.

According to the greater or the lesser activity of the fire on its hearth is life more or less enduring.In like manner, the destruction of mineral bodies is indefinitely retarded, because in their case combustion is nominal, latent, or imperceptible.In like manner, again, vegetables, which are constantly revived by combinations producing dampness, live indefinitely; in fact, we still possess certain vegetables which existed before the period of the last cataclysm.But each time that nature has perfected an organism and then, for some unknown reason, has introduced into it sensation, instinct, or intelligence (three marked stages of the organic system), these three agencies necessitate a combustion whose activity is in direct proportion to the result obtained.Man, who represents the highest point of intelligence, and who offers us the only organism by which we arrive at a power that is semi-creative--namely, THOUGHT--is, among all zoological creations, the one in which combustion is found in its most intense degree; whose powerful effects may in fact be seen to some extent in the phosphates, sulphates, and carbonates which a man's body reveals to our analysis.May not these substances be traces left within him of the passage of the electric fluid which is the principle of all fertilization? Would not electricity manifest itself by a greater variety of compounds in him than in any other animal?

Should not he have faculties above those of all other created beings for the purpose of absorbing fuller portions of the Absolute principle? and may he not assimilate that principle so as to produce, in some more perfect mechanism, his force and his ideas? I think so.

Man is a retort.In my judgment, the brain of an idiot contains too little phosphorous or other product of electro-magnetism, that of a madman too much; the brain of an ordinary man has but little, while that of a man of genius is saturated to its due degree.The man constantly in love, the street-porter, the dancer, the large eater, are the ones who disperse the force resulting from their electrical apparatus.Consequently, our feelings--""Enough, Balthazar! you terrify me; you commit sacrilege.What, is my love--""An ethereal matter disengaged, an emanation, the key of the Absolute.

Conceive if I--I, the first, should find it, find it, find it!"As he uttered the words in three rising tones, the expression of his face rose by degrees to inspiration."I shall make metals," he cried;"I shall make diamonds, I shall be a co-worker with Nature!""Will you be the happier?" she asked in despair."Accursed science!

accursed demon! You forget, Claes, that you commit the sin of pride, the sin of which Satan was guilty; you assume the attributes of God.""Oh! oh! God!"