As notes in the scale of being, one after the other, from Émile to Seraphita, gives forth its tone as it is struck by the author's all-compelling touch. The utter darkness, the twilight, and the glorious illumination of the soul succeed each other till the grand chord of assured and eternal victory over the sensuous nature is sounded. Awed and enraptured, we listen to it with Seraphita as it swells around and above us, rising higher and higher to those celestial realms where we cannot yet follow, but from whence comes to us the far-off echo which we cherish in our heart of hearts.

If the Fedora in this book is an illustration of Society -- and it would seem as if Mr. Parsons is correct in his view -- what a marvelous satire upon the cold unappreciativeness of that marble goddess for the pulsating, burning soul, that, though bare of the medium of exchange which is the current coin of her world -- money -- strives to come into it and infuse it with even a little of its own thrilling life! The ring of the current coin of the inner world, ideas, with the noble emotions they engender, falls upon ears deaf in main, which respond only when a new attraction can increase her own glory.

Society forswears thinking for sensation. "She remained silent," says Raphael, "when I told her that ideas were organized and perfected beings living in a world invisible."

His "Theory of the Will," which he had evolved