The sensuousness of his temperament and the unbridled strength of his imagination inclined Balzac to mysticism in both science and religion. Animal magnetism, which from about 1820 onwards plays such a prominent part in literature, was a power in the influence of which over men's minds he had a strong belief. In _La Peau de Chagrin, Séraphita_, and _Louis Lambert_, will is defined as a force resembling steam, as "a fluid which according to its density can alter everything, even natural laws." In spite of the modernity of his intellect Balzac was enough of the Romanticist to believe in clairvoyance, and to have a leaning generally to the occult sciences. Nevertheless, in spite of the bias given to his mind by his age, the age of Romanticism, he belonged, as Victor Hugo said at his grave, "whether he knew it and desired it or not, to the mighty race of revolutionary authors." His nature and education prepared him to understand life in all its fulness, and, by virtue of this understanding, to enjoy it; but, early initiated into the corruption of society, his horrified, order-loving mind sought for a bit and bridle for erring humanity, and could find it in nothing but the restored Church. Hence the painful contradiction between sensual and aesthetic tendencies which we so often find in Balzac's writings, especially when he is treating of the relations between the sexes. It is this contradiction which gives an unpleasant, impure tone to _Le Lys dans la Vallée_ (which Balzac himself considered his masterpiece) and _Les Mémoires de deux jeunes Mariés_. And it also explains how his philosophic principles and his ecclesiastical leanings so often contradict each other. In the preface to the complete edition of his works he first asserts that man is originally neither good nor bad, and that society invariably makes him better, thus unconsciously declaring himself directly opposed to the Church's fundamental doctrine of the corruption of man by sin; a few lines farther on he extols Catholicism as the "only perfect system for the suppression of the corrupt tendencies of humanity," and demands that the education of the nation shall be entrusted to the clergy. His conviction of the existence of those "corrupt tendencies" led him almost always to regard and represent the lower classes, servants and peasants, as the enemies of the propertied class (see his comic pathos on the subject of servants in _Cousine Bette_ and his peasants in _Les Paysans_); and he enjoyed making sallies against the populace and democracy, the Liberals, the two Chambers, and parliamentary government, from the vantage ground of clericalism and absolutism. With all his great and brilliant qualities there was something wanting in Balzac, the something which goes by the name of culture. He lacked its calm, or, to be more exact, his restless, perpetually producing imaginative mind never enjoyed the calm which is a condition of culture.