for them by primordial analogies and the upward tendency of all
creation. He showed his audience the workings of Nature, and assigned
a mission and a future to minerals, plants, and animals. Bible in
hand, after thus spiritualizing Matter and materializing Spirit, after
pointing to the Will of God in all things, and enjoining respect for
His smallest works, he suggested the possibility of rising by faith
from sphere to sphere.

This was the first portion of his discourse, and by adroit digressions
he applied the doctrine of his system to feudalism. The poetry
--religious and profane--and the abrupt eloquence of that period had a
grand opening in this vast theory, wherein the Doctor had amalgamated
all the philosophical systems of the ancients, and from which he
brought them out again classified, transfigured, purified. The false
dogmas of two adverse principles and of Pantheism were demolished at
his word, which proclaimed the Divine Unity, while ascribing to God
and His angels the knowledge, the ends to which the means shone
resplendent to the eyes of man. Fortified by the demonstrations that
proved the existence of the world of Matter, Doctor Sigier constructed
the scheme of a spiritual world dividing us from God by an ascending
scale of spheres, just as the plant is divided from man by an infinite
number of grades. He peopled the heavens, the stars, the planets, the
sun.

Quoting Saint Paul, he invested man with a new power; he might rise,
from globe to globe, to the very Fount of eternal life. Jacob's
mystical ladder was both the religious formula and the traditional
proof of the fact. He soared through space, carrying with him the
passionate souls of his hearers on the wings of his word, making them
feel the infinite, and bathing them in the heavenly sea. Then the