Published in 1640, Sorel’s La Solitude et l’Amour philosophique de Cléomède is an allegorical novel certain sections of which see the scholarly content of his own La Science universelle transcribed as part of a dreamlike fiction. This paper proposes to analyze how the reading of the novel might affect the reader’s mind so as to prepare him or her to accept not only the approach but also the content of Sorel’s encyclopedia—both of which are marked by a baroque libertine heterodoxy. In this light, identification with the novel’s characters and assimilation of the structure of their trajectories appear to be mental operations allowing Sorel to modify his reader’s mind.