Some fine minds have said that man is the mirror of the universe. It is a phrase of which they have not known how to make use by application, and which they have hazarded (rattled off) like so many others without appreciating the consequences. Yet the opinion is quite just; I subscribe to it fully and I choose man, human life in its animal career, as the analogical model of passional movement, as well as of the material. I have observed and I shall not cease to repeat that the universe is one in system; it is necessary that man, the mirror of the universe, be in all his two developments, material and passional, identical with the dispositions of the universe. Let us set out from this to determine by analogy the general destiny of the human race.
In this comparative examination, we shall sometimes make use of musical terms, music being the compass of comparison in passional harmony.
Let us note beforehand that the following details, given to rebuff at first glance, are given only for the form and for some fastidious readers on method; I shall indicate at the end of the chapter more abbreviated forms in order to simplify and bring the theory of attraction within reach of the great number for whom I am writing. So that they need not be frightened by the kyrielle of definitions that follows, we shall not make use of it in the treatise. This is a chapter whose aim is to give a glimpse of the thorny details into which a complete theory would throw us, and to accommodate with the reader by the promise of expeditive formulas that will spare him the embarrassment (and spare us) of a scientific apparatus.
1st VIBRATIONS: there are two of them. Human life divides first into ascending age and descending age of approximately equal duration. On the career of a centenarian, there would be approximately fifty years of ascending vibration or