Philosophie des hautes sciences

thor responds to all the questions asked of him, without however confusing

those that are purely physical, in order to demonstrate that Divination is a completely natural Science.

The death of Mr. de Gébelin, caused by excessive work, by internal sorrows regarding his enterprise, which totally changed its form referring to the Museum, a scientific and literary society, and finally by being in the rank of willfully insolvent debtors alongside the richest treasures of the Fatherland Science and candor, saddened me and turned me away from this object. I can say in this regard that I have been, and still am, rewarded for several sleepless nights that I employed in this work when I read it to the manes the shades or spirits of the deceased of this great Man: does he see me? does he hear me?

My feeling is that the spirit does not abandon places and Societies, etc., until after the objects are removed and others are changed; and with this senti-

not these Consultants with those who are mentally ill; for in that case, see what

ment, I explain, like the Philosophers I take as guides, a number of phenomena that have caused those who thought otherwise to reason poorly, especially when I persuade myself that the spirit informs matter, and that once delivered from the latter, this informing spirit, without necessity or need, but by a secret inclination, sometimes takes pleasure in resuming the form in which it was enslaved, which is granted to it up to certain points and to a greater or lesser degree of visibility.

To make what I was saying tangible, I offered these thirty-six wheels, of which a single one, set in motion, made all the others act; I arranged good and evil upon these wheels, and I demonstrated how the good, placed at 3, infinitely close to 4, in order to go to 5, would nevertheless not spread to this 5, if