James Branch Cabell took a flight into _gaie science_ when he wrote “Jurgen.” The world, according to him, is shaped by our thoughts. In the course of his earthly, infernal and celestial pilgrimage, Jurgen passed through several superimposed spheres: first that of reality from which he escaped, then that of fancy and dreams, where he lingered a long while. This upper world is not purely ideal, nor is it entirely fictitious. It is still human, too human, as Nietzsche said. It is made of the same stuff as our dreams. Above and below there are heaven and hell. If I understand “Jurgen” aright, neither the one nor the other is entirely unreal. Heaven and hell are man-made fictions. Hell is the creation of our pride and of our scruples. When he meets his father in the burning pit, Jurgen asks the demons why they torment the old man. They tell him that they cannot help it because he insists on being wicked and getting an appropriate punishment for his sins. Heaven also is filled with our pride. It is the abode of our highest expectations, a tribute of Koshchei to our high idea of ourselves. The only real universe is that of Koshchei. It is the world of things as they are, and Jurgen does not dwell very long in it. He needs his earthly comfort, his warm flannels and his carefully prepared soup. So he falls back into the world of common sense, the only one where the majority of us mortals can live, because _gaie science_ is out of the common reach. Once more the author seems to deny us the right to enter the land of fiction, which, however, he shows us as the only interesting one to live in. Let us see if the rôle which he assigned to art in his general outlook of things cannot help us to clear the contradiction. CHAPTER X _James Branch Cabell on the High Place_ In James Branch Cabell, the genealogist is barely hidden by the philosopher. The author of “Jurgen” is the only philosophical novelist in the United States to-day. At first glance, he even seems somewhat un-American. His fanciful characters dwell in a land as unreal as themselves, Poictesme, bordering upon the Land of Cocaigne and the Abbey of Thélème. (Who, previous to Cabell, had ever dared to raise an Abbey of Thélème in the land of the Puritans?) It is not easy to find the bonds of connection between the writer and his surroundings. His work is very close to European and to French models, and evidences at the same time a great knowledge of booklore as well as of humanity.