Explore "A Journey Round my Room" by Xavier De Maistre on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
This chapter is for metaphysicians, and for metaphysicians only. It will throw a great light upon man's nature. It is the prism with which to analyze and decompose the human faculties, by separating the animal force from the pure rays of intellect.
It would be impossible for me to explain how I came to burn my fingers at the very onset of my journey without expounding to my reader my system of the Soul and the Animal.1 And besides, this metaphysical discovery has so great an influence on my thoughts and actions, that it would be very difficult to understand this book if I did not begin by giving the key to its meaning.