Enlightenment and Esotericism in Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin’s Le Crocodile

Abstract

The following pages mean to communicate four main ideas on Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and his only novel, Le Crocodile. While Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin’s piece can be considered as developing esoteric ideas through a philosophical fiction, it also reveals a satiric intention towards academies and other authorities that consider science as the only valid way to knowledge despite the existence of a worthy tradition of spiritual understanding of the world.