INTRODUCTION.

Whenever a man of desireoriginal: "homme de desir." A key term in the philosophy of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, describing a person who feels a deep, spiritual longing to return to a state of divine grace and seeks to help others do the same. feels compelled to make his voice heard by mortals, he cannot help but cry out: O holy truth, what shall I tell them! You have made of me a kind of wretched victim, destined to sigh in vain for their happiness.

You have lit within me a searing fire, which corrodes my entire being at once.

I feel for the rest of the human family a zeal—or rather, an imperious need—that obsesses me and consumes me.

I can neither avoid it nor fight it, so much does it torment and master me.

To crown these ills, this unfortunate zeal is reduced to feeding on its own substance, and to devouring itself, for lack of finding a way to satisfy the hunger you have given me for the peace of souls.

It ends unceasingly in sobs that stifle the sounds of my voice.

It leaves me no respite, except to plunge me, a moment later, into new sorrows, and leave me a prey to new lamentations.

And it is in this state that you urge me to raise my voice among my fellow men!!!!!