THE MINISTRY

OF

THE SPIRIT-MAN.

FIRST PART.

On Nature.

Human intelligence, by dint of focusing only on things of the external order—of which it cannot even manage to give a satisfying account of itself—shuts itself off even more from the nature of its own being than from that of the visible objects surrounding it; and yet, as soon as man ceases for a moment to observe the true character of his inward essence original: "essence intime." This refers to the soul's deep, spiritual reality, he quickly becomes entirely blind to the eternal divine source from which he descends. For if man, restored to his primitive elements The fundamental spiritual components that make up the human soul in its original state, is the witness par excellence and the positive sign by which this supreme and universal source can be known, that source must fade from our minds as soon as we remove the true mirror that has the property of reflecting it back to us.

When, subsequently, praiseworthy writers and estimable defenders of the truth wish to try to prove that there is a God, and to deduce from His existence all the resulting consequences, no longer finding this