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and human virtues--his ideal of wifehood and motherhood.

But whatever the idea that Balzac intended to convey, whether, as is generally believed, Seraphita was an androgynous being, or whether she symbolized the perfection of soul-union, our contention is that this union is not a creation of the imagination, but the accomplishment of the plan of creation--the final goal of earthly pilgrimage; the raison d'etre of love itself.

One argument against the idea that Seraphita was intended to illustrate an androgynous being, rather than a perfected human, who had her spiritual mate, is found in the words in which she refused to marry Wilfrid, although Balzac makes it plainly evident that she was attracted to Wilfrid with a degree of sense-attraction, due to the fact that she was still living within the environment of the physical, and therefore subject to the illusions of the mortal, even while her spiritual consciousness was so fully developed as to enable her to perceive and realize the difference between an attraction that was based largely upon sense, and that which was of the soul.

Wilfrid says to her:

"Have you no soul that you are not seduced by the prospect of consoling a great man, who will sacrifice all to live with you in a little house by the border of a lake?"