Flashes of lightning are apparently all alike, but they are substantially different, one from the other. Some are harmless—give a great light, deafen one with the rumbling of thunder, and there they end. They are momentary eruptions of the senses, and nothing more. But there are others that burn, and cleave asunder all that they find in their way. From these no lightning conductor can save us. Either one is dead or is struck by lightning, which is the same as saying, electrified from head to foot by that force, which has emanated from another body which perhaps needs ours, and which perhaps we need ourselves. Reason on it if you will, attempt to destroy the new passion in the crucible of analysis. You belong to another; that other belongs to you, if, as often happens, the lightning flash has been reciprocal. ⁂ The galvanization of love also occurs in another way, not, that is to say, by fulmination, but by small and slow currents which emit no sparks, but have continuous emanation. First, a slight sympathy which touches the skin; then a deeper irritation like a tremor invades the muscles, nerves, and viscera through the epidermis, and descends until it finds something living; stopping at the marrow of the bones, since there is nothing left to electrify. Theoretically, this second mode of becoming enamoured ought to be more tenacious and more durable than the first, from the axiom that intensity is equal to extension; but practically we see a man and woman reach the same state either by fulmination or by a continuous current. It is only a question of time, whether we travel by express or slow trains; we reach the same station in safety at last! Love is so skilful and powerful a magician that he makes us his prisoners more than once in two different ways. First he strikes us, then he electrifies us slowly, and there is no human or divine power which can cure us of our passion. We are no longer individuals, we are things; we are the _perinde ac cadaver_ of the Jesuits, a member of which has conquered us. ⁂ The admirable laws of chemical affinity are well known to us, and we can follow the kindred and repellent atoms which group themselves under the exact law of numbers. But those other laws which repel and attract human hearts and bodies are, on the contrary, scarcely divined by one who has eyes to read the great book of psychology, where the letters are so minute, the writing mysterious, and even the numbering of the pages incorrect. Sympathy should be first physical, then moral, and lastly intellectual, following the highroad which leads from the less to the greater, from that which is external to that which is internal.