11. The Magic Chain-d

But the high place is before all things necessary for such a personage, because, in these days of meanness and trickery, any message issuing from the lower ranks is suspected of interested ambition and imposture. Ye, then, who are nothing, ye who possess nothing, aspire not to be apostles or messiahs. If you have faith, and would act in accordance therewith, get possession, in the first place, of the means of action, which are the influence of rank and the prestige of fortune. In olden times gold was manufactured by science; nowadays science must be renewed by gold. We have fixed the volatile and we must now volatilize the fixed - in other words, we have materialized spirit, and we must now spiritualize matter. The most sublime utterance passes unheeded if it goes forth without the guarantee of a name - that is to say, of a success which represents a material value. What is the worth of a manuscript? That of the author's signature among the booksellers? The established reputation known as Alexandre Dumas et Cie. represents one of the literary guarantees of our time. But the house of Dumas is in repute only for the romances which are its exclusive productions. Let Dumas devise a magnificent Utopia, or discover a splendid solution of the religious problem, and no one will take it seriously, despite the European celebrity of the Panurge of modern literature. We are in the age of acquired positions, where everyone is appraised according to his social and commercial standing. Unlimited freedom of speech has produced such a strife of words that no one inquires what is said, but who has said it. If it be Rothschild, his Holiness Pius the Ninth, or even Monseigneur Dupanloup, it is something; but if it be Tartempion, it is nothing, were he even - which is possible, after all - an unrecognized prodigy of genius, knowledge and good sense. Hence to those who would say to me: If you possess the secret of great successes and of a force which can transform the world, why do you not make use of them? I would answer: This knowledge has come to me too late for myself, and I have spent over its acquisition the time and the resources which might have enabled me to apply it; I offer it to those who are in a position to avail themselves thereof. Illustrious men, rich men, great ones of this world, who are dissatisfied with that which you have, who are conscious of a nobler and larger ambition, will you be fathers of a new world, kings of a rejuvenated civilization? A poor and obscure scholar has found the lever of Archimedes, and he offers it to you for the good of humanity alone, asking nothing whatsoever in exchange. The phenomena which quite recently have perturbed America and Europe, those of table-turning and fluidic manifestations, are simply magnetic currents at the beginning of their formation, appeals on the part of Nature inviting us, for the good of humanity, to reconstitute great sympathetic and religious chains. As a fact, stagnation in the Astral Light would mean destruction to the human race, and torpor in this Secret Agent has already been manifested by alarming symptoms of decomposition and death. For example, cholera-morbus, the potato disease and the blight on the grape are traceable solely to this cause, as the two young shepherds of la Salette saw darkly and symbolically in their dream. The unlooked-for credit which awaited their narrative, and the vast concourse of pilgrims attracted by a statement so singular and at the same time so vague as that of these two children, without instruction and almost without morality, are proofs of the magnetic reality of the fact, and the fluidic tendency of the earth itself to operate the cure of its inhabitants.