I. RALPH’S STORY…

I. RALPH’S STORY

“It was after this manner, as they say,” began Ralph, swinging himself on to a bench and pouring out for himself a tankard of our good home-brewed, as I crouched in the hay opposite to him. “Two centuries agone and thirty years or so, there dwelt in this very house which I serve—and which one day, young master, you shall rule!—Sir Gilbert de Troyes, your ancestor, and his lady, and four fair sons, and a lovely daughter. Of these sons, twain were at the wars, one was in his nurse’s lap, and another was gone to Italy, to finish his studies at Parma. Thus did the old nobles use to ruin their sons!

“This young foregoer of yours (a goodly youth!) fell in with the usual temptations of Satan. He held, with the poets, that the world is the best book for men to read; and he studied it, I ween, with diligence. Now there was a certain damsel, winsome enough, I doubt not, in the Italian style, with black hair and the devil—save the mark!—in her wandering eyes. So it came to pass that Master Gilbert, younger, wooed her for his bride, like an honest gentleman, as the old tales say he was; and so great is the power of one upright soul amongst others, that the young witch—she was but young, poor soul! and teachable—was charmed herself from her Italian ways, and vowed to love and follow only him; and the day before their marriage, she was walking with him in the streets of Parma, by night—for Master Gilbert had a governor along with him in Italy, who must be hoodwinked—when there chanced to espy them one Pietro Rinucci, a clerkly fellow (with a curse upon him!) who was even studying also at Parma, and who loved the Italian witch himself.

“This Rinucci had been favoured of the girl, and only when she saw the Englishman, with his blue eyes and his honest ways, had she scorned her countryman and left him. Rinucci, after the manner of his race-fellows, then dogged her steps, tracked her to her early meetings with young Gilbert de Troyes, who was his unsuspecting friend, and listened to their innocent ravings of love conjoined to virtue.

“Afterward, had he gone to the damsel’s poor lodging and there, with Heaven knows what direful threats! conjured her to renounce her honest lover and return to himself. The signorina was not like an English girl—she neither stormed nor yielded—she cajoled and blinded him. ‘If he would go, she would consider; perchance she did not love the Briton truly; perchance it was a whim; she knew not. Might she but think? it was a whirl, and her heart, alas! was o’er susceptible; ’twould pass; he must leave her now, at least, and she would see. Meantime Pietruccino should wear this pretty crimson ribbon of hers till they met again.’ After even such words, and for a kiss, he left her. But the cunning villain was more than her match, and waited all the next day round the corners, whence he could see her goings out and comings in. He saw her glide to her trysting-place; he followed cautiously; he heard her give a signalling whispered call; he heard it answered by a short, low whistle; young Gilbert de Troyes swung merrily round the corner and fell into his Italian sweetheart’s arms.

“He met his death, poor, noble young fellow! ’Tis an old tale repeated. I need scarce have wasted all these words upon it—but that one’s heart must needs ache at these things. In the course of nature that Italian snake, Rinucci, was bound to finish his rival there and then. So he got behind the unwary schoolboy—for the lad was, indeed, little more—and stabbed him, all too deep, in the back of the neck.

“Folk say Rinucci triumphed as he set his foot on his dying college-mate, and wiped his dagger, with a laugh, before the horror-stricken girl. Myself can scarcely believe it; he was too young in murder then for that.

“Be this as it may, certain it is that he dragged away the mourning damsel from the corpse of the man who would have saved her soul, and took her back to himself.

“A sickening story, boy. Wilt thou have more, young master? Yea? Why, there is worse to come. For Mistress Italiana—no tradition tells her name—was spirited as any gipsy woman, and full of crafty lore, such as her race delight in. She broke her heart over her English lover’s corpse; but she had still the Southern amusement left her of revenge. She concocted an evil greenish powder, and coloured Signor Pietro’s sweetmeats with it.

“The fellow ate largely, praising the daintiness of the confection. It was deadly enough, I daresay, in all conscience, but it killed him not. These reptiles live on poison; morally, ’tis certain, belike, and also physically it agreed with him. Perchance he may have felt a qualm or two, though tradition says nought of it. Anyway, the next fytte of this story shows us the mysterious disappearance of the Italian girl, of whom no word hath ever since been told.

“She left behind her, whether willingly or no, a quantity of the false seasoning, which Master Pietro had caused to be analysed, and which he seems to have carefully preserved.

“Some time after these events, we find Signor Pietro Rinucci entered into the Monastery of Dominicans at Brescia, a repentant neophyte. He had turned remorseful, no doubt, and in good time! The fellow had ever strong imaginations. He was received in due time as a brother; wore the garb of the Order, and cast his eyes down. Tradition saith he was in great turmoil of soul at this time—judge for yourself, young master, by what followed.

“One fine morning Brother Petrus was missing from his small, damp cell, and none could tell what had become of him. None, that is, save the poverty-stricken ropemaker who had supplied him with cords to scale the monastery walls; and his discretion had been paid for. The fact being, I doubt not, that discipline being ever repugnant to our young bravo’s manners, he had fled it.

“In the meantime, the news of Gilbert de Troyes’ death had been brought to these very doors, and certainly the grooms who then tended the good horses of your ancestors must, even in this saddle-room, have spent their sorrow in each other’s company. But Ambrose de Troyes, newly back from the wars, and second-born of the family, rose in his wrath, and swore to avenge his brother. For all might know that the death blow had been dealt by one Pietro Rinucci, fellow-scholar of Gilbert’s, whose absence afterward from the University had puzzled the doctors and caused inquisition into the matter.

“So away went Ambrose, the soldier, to Parma. And mind ye, Ambrose was no careless school-boy, no mean foe to a man, but a great, staunch fellow who had seen service, and who was, moreover, by Nature something stern and hard of purpose.

“But at Parma they told him Rinucci was escaped into a monastery which they named, and showed a painted portrait of him, and did so minutely, point by point, describe the man, that Ambrose swore he should know him, should he meet him in Heaven. And that was a strong assertion, note ye.

“Well, Ambrose journeyed on towards the secluded spot where the Monastery of Dominicans lay, and was enforced to rest one night at the village of Santa Rosa on his road. Having stabled his steed, refreshed it and himself, and practised his arm some moments with the good sharp sword, he slung the weapon round him and went forth for a stroll to pass the time.

“He came to the equivalent of what would be to us in England an ale-house, but some way out of the village, meet for travellers to pause and rest a moment on their way. Ambrose went in to look about him and ordered drink for himself. He lacked a companion to pledge, but looking round the little room saw no one but a moody man who seemed lost in thought, though enjoying some passing sour wine. Ambrose himself could stomach neither the fare nor the company, so he quickly got him on his way a little further; when, meeting with a simple shrine to the Virgin, the God-fearing soldier took his rosary from under his baldrick, and knelt him down to pray. For something had sore perplexed him; he had seemed to see in the features of that morose comrade at the inn the most exact resemblance of Rinucci. But Rinucci was safe at the Monastery, waiting till his time should come, and the avenger should denounce him. But even as he rose from prayer did Ambrose see a mounted messenger speeding to him, who told him breathlessly the news had just reached Santa Rosa that the Monk Petrus was escaped and roaming at large somewhere in the country.

“Then Ambrose de Troyes knew he had his man; and natheless, like the large-hearted fellow he was, he would but meet him quite alone. So he rewarded the newsbringer and sent him away. Once more he fell on his knees before our Lady’s image, and besought that his cause might find Heaven’s favour, and his action in it be in every point just and serviceable. (For he looked upon himself as sent to do such things as might cause his brother’s soul to rest in peace.) Then he went rapidly retracing his steps towards the inn again, and, led by Destiny, out came Pietro Rinucci, unarmed, to meet him. Ambrose de Troyes looked into the assassin’s eyes and knew him. Stranger still, the piercing eyes of the cunning Italian saw, in the traits of this bronzed warrior, relationship to the Gilbert who had been his friend and victim.

“‘I arrest thee, Pietro Rinucci, for the murder of my brother, Gilbert de Troyes, and, though I may not draw upon a tonsured monk (yea, I know thee through all thy false disguises!), yet, before I hale thee to the ecclesiastical courts, I will show thee, snake, what I think of thee, and of all such!’

“And Ambrose de Troyes smote the villain a shameful blow upon the face.

“Even at that instant, the monk whips me Ambrose’s sword from its scabbard, and, with the fatal dexterity of his race, ran in upon the stately Englishman and laid him, bleeding quick to death, upon the hot white road.

“‘Oh Margaret, my sister Margaret!’ the dying man raved, as if he thirsted for help from the hand that had been kind to him.

“‘A right pestilent breed of Britons! but easy to kill—easy to kill,’ quoth the Monk, as he laid down the red sword by the dying man’s side and left him alone in his agony.

“This scene was witnessed by a terrified young country-girl, who crouched behind a heap of stones, meanwhile, until the murderer’s flight, and then ran to assist De Troyes, who thought she was his sister Margaret, and said marvellous tender words, of home and of her kindness, and of the little brother he had left in the nursery.

“After this, there comes a period of Rinucci’s life of which we know but little. He seems to have raced about the country, in hiding always, but doing little harm for him. Italy, however, is debateable ground for one of her own recreant monks, so we find Messer Pietro fleeing Justice and coming over here to England. Whether he had had some of his heart-searchings that he knew so often, I know not, but deem it very likely. Here is the flaw, to my mind, in the foreigners’ constitutions. They recognize their sins as such, not so we English! We say our evil deeds are fate, congenital infirmity, ignorance, negligence, or even virtues; they say their sins are sins, and yet they do them. Had I but half the talent of sinning that Messer Pietro seems to have owned, my faith, I would have gloried in it! So did not he, however; he went to a father confessor, fell on the earth, and implored absolution—for life was still sweet to him, he said, and he would not die yet awhile.

“The father sent him for penance to travel as a pilgrim, in a white penitential garb to England, there to walk to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket, foully slain on earth by violence.

“The father did well for his mother-country, but evilly for us.

“The monk Petrus performed at all points the penalty enjoined him, and afterward, having no especial call to Italy again, he followed his roving instincts and wandered about England, even till chance brought him to this, our, town. In this country he knew no men well enough to desire to kill them; besides, at this period, one of his fits of penitence seems to have been on him. Certes, he wore the monkish habit, only different in its white colour from that of other fraternities, and the folk grew acquainted with his white figure as he roamed the land in deepest meditation, with his eyes bent upon the ground.

“Now, one day, say the chronicles (which are made up of village tales), the White Monk, as our townsfolk called him, was sitting in a thicket by a brook in which he was bathing his travelled feet, when there came by the sister of his victims, even Mistress Margaret de Troyes herself, and walked the pleasant fringes of the forest, very near to where the wanderer sat, on the further side the elders. She was accompanied by her mother and by another lady, both of whom were pressing the claims of some noble suitor upon her.

“The other ladies were in deepest mourning for Gilbert and for Ambrose, and Mistress Margaret herself, though she wore no such signs of grief, was most plainly clad in a pale, pure garb of lavender. She listened quietly to all they urged, then spoke and said:

“‘My mother, he is a light, false man. I care not for him.’

“It was protested to her, her high birth, the respect in which he would hold her for herself; above all, her fair beauty, would all ensure his faithfulness. But Margaret said:

“‘I beseech ye, press me no further. Heaven knows I wish the gentleman much good, and that he may aspire to higher things. I will pray for him, weep for him if need be; but, ladies, though I be but a simple English maiden, I hold myself all too good for such as he to marry and draw down, perchance, to like thoughts with himself. I hate all evil—not the doers, mother; but the evil. We are all weak and changeable, and I dare not come in contact of my free will with evil influence. God might punish me by weakness of resolve against infection.’

“They urged her yet once more; she might triumph and convert a soul.

“‘In truth,’ confessed fair Margaret de Troyes, ‘ye wound me sorely, dearest ladies mine! At such a time, when good Ambrose de Troyes is scarce cold in his grave, to bid his sister make her choice amongst his townsfolk; and celebrate the marriage feast with a breaking heart! My Ambrose—to think that thou, who, if I but spake of a moment’s weariness, would quickly place a cushion for my head, and sit by the hour on our window-seat chafing my feet, that thou should’st be bleeding in the death-struggles, on the hard, parched road, in a foreign land, and I be far away, not able so much as to raise thy dear head upon my knee! Oh, I loved him so tenderly, strong brother of mine! I gloried in my brown-maned soldier. We prayed together the night before he left on his sacred errand, and, at his entreaty, I laid my hand upon his head and blessed him in Our Lady’s name. He was a grave, good man; and you would have me turn my thoughts from him to that other! What though I know Ambrose to be now one of God’s angels; yet he hath left me behind him on the earth—the first unkindness he hath ever done me! And his mother and mine would have me think of wedlock!’

“The fair, pale Englishwoman bent her head, and Pietro heard her weeping.

“Well, it is but guesswork thenceforth. Folk say, in their coarse way of speaking, that the White Monk ‘loved’ the lady Margaret. Forfend! The love of such a man were an insult all too gross to offer to the memory of any Damoiselle de Troyes. Say, rather, he kindled to the worship of goodness in that form first of all.

“We know that from that hour when he first saw and heard her, Rinucci, the stained wretch, wandered ever where there was a chance to see her, even from afar. Once, indeed he even spoke with her. Under the favour of his sacred garment he dared to near her, and asked:

“‘Maiden, how say you? Is there mercy in Heaven for the worst sinners, or no?’

“‘Nay, holy father,” answered the damsel, smiling, ‘thou must be better seen in these high mysteries than I who dwell in the world, where we all need mercy. We can but hope that our God is more pitiful than are our fellow creatures to our faults.’

“‘Maiden,’ besought the White Monk further, ‘can such as thou look pityingly upon a vice-stained fellow man?’

“But Margaret wept, and answered him:

“‘Oh, father, search me not over this problem. I have lost the dearest to me in the world, two brothers, by an assassin’s hand. If that man stood before me, tell me, could I look at him forgivingly? Oh, never, father! Human nature is too weak.’

“The rencounter was over, for Pietro dared speak no more. But, according to the custom of that day, Mistress Margaret bent her fair head to receive the blessing of the holy father.

“The monk started back in horror; even he was not too base to feel that. But as the maiden still stood humbly waiting, he was forced to stretch his hands forth from the distance, and murmur: ‘Benedicite!’

“The days went by and the townsfolk noted how the White Monk wasted, and how strange he was. He would mutter to himself like a madman. He never said a word of holy import to the cottagers with whom he lodged at small cost. He ate almost nothing and appeared to spend his days in solitary musing. His conduct smacked so oddly of mania that Giles Hughson, his landlord, took to watching whither he went and what he did. He saw him always following Margaret, but seeking to avoid her if she turned where she might see him. He seemed to dread her greatly, yet, to worship her, or, at least to follow her like a lost soul looking after the light from some vanishing angel’s wing.

“Once Margaret turned and saw him, but recognised him not as the man she had spoken withal. She, taking him for a frère quetant, silently, without looking upon him, pressed into his hand money, which he took, and which was found on him when he died, as you shall hear.”

PERCY ROSS.

(To be continued.)

The following remarkable passage was published some five years ago in the Theosophist, of Madras (1883); and it is needless to call attention in more detail to the fidelity with which it is being since then verified.

Protesting against the arbitrary chronology of the Sanskritists in the question of Indian antiquity who make it dependent on the Greeks and Chandragupta—whose date is represented as “the sheet-anchor of Indian chronology” that “nothing will ever shake” (Prof. Max Müller and Weber), the author of the prophecy remarks that “it is to be feared that as regards India, the chronological ship of the Sanskritists has already broken from her moorings and gone adrift with all her precious freight of conjectures and hypotheses.” And then adds:—

“We are at the end of a cycle—geological and other—and at the beginning of another. Cataclysm is to follow cataclysm. The pent-up forces are bursting out in many quarters; and not only will men be swallowed up or slain by thousands, “new” land appear and “old” subside, volcanic eruptions and tidal waves appal; but secrets of an unsuspected past will be uncovered to the dismay of Western theorists and the humiliation of an imperious science. This drifting ship, if watched, may be seen to ground upon the upheaved vestiges of ancient civilisations, and fall to pieces. We are not emulous of the prophet’s honours: but still, let this stand as a prophecy.” (See also “Five Years of Theosophy,” p. 388.)

LOVE WITH AN OBJECT.

Some distinguished contributors to theosophical literature have of late been describing what qualities are necessary to constitute a perfect man, i.e., an Adept. They said that among other things it was absolutely and indispensably necessary, that such a being should possess Love—and not merely Love in the abstract—but love regarding some object or objects. What can they possibly mean by speaking of “love with an object,” and could there possibly be love without any object at all? Can that feeling be called love, which is directed solely to the Eternal and Infinite, and takes no cognizance of earthly illusions? Can that be love which has no object or—in other words—is the love of forms or objects the true love at all? If a man loved all things in the universe alike, without giving any preference to any of them, would not such a love be practically without any object; would it not be equal to loving nothing at all; because in such a case the individuality of any single object would be lost to sight?

A love which is directed towards all things alike, an universal love, is beyond the conception of the mortal mind, and yet this kind of love, which bestows no favours upon any one thing, seems to be that eternal love, which is recommended by all the sacred books of the East and the West; because as soon as we begin to love one thing or one being more than another, we not only detract from the rest an amount of love which the rest may rightfully claim; but we also become attached to the object of our love, a fate against which we are seriously warned in various pages of these books.

The Bhagavad Gita teaches that we should not love or hate any object of sense whatsoever, nor be attached to any object or thing, but renounce all projects and fix our thoughts solely on It, the Eternal, which is no-thing and no object of cognition for us, but whose presence can be only subjectively experienced by, and within ourselves. It says: “He is esteemed, who is equal-minded to companions, friends, enemies, strangers, neutrals, to aliens and kindred, yea to good and evil men” (Cap. vi., 14); and further on it says: “He whose soul is united by devotion, seeing the same in all around, sees the soul in everything and everything in the soul. He who sees Me (Brahmâ) everywhere and everything in Me, him I forsake not and he forsakes not me.... He who sees the same in everything—Arjuna!—whether it be pleasant or grievous, from the self-resemblance, is deemed to be a most excellent Yogin” (Cap. vi., 29, 32).

On almost every page of the Bhagavad Gita we are instructed only to direct our love to that which is eternal in every form, and let the form itself be a matter of secondary consideration. “He must be regarded as a steadfast renouncer, who neither hates nor desires.”... “In a learned and modest Brahman, in a cow, in an elephant, in a dog, and a Swapāka; they who have knowledge see the same thing.”... “Let no man rejoice in attaining what is pleasant, nor grieve in attaining what is unpleasant; being fixed in mind, untroubled, knowing Brahma and abiding in Brahma.”... “He who is happy in himself, pleased with himself, who finds also light in himself, this Yogin, one with Brahmâ, finds Nirvana in Him.”

The great Hermes Trismegistus teaches the same identical doctrine; for he says: “Rise and embrace me with thy whole being, and I will teach thee whatsoever thou desirest to know.” The Bible also tells us that “God is Love” (1. John iv., 8), and that we should love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind (Math. xxii., 37), and while it teaches that we should love nothing else but God (Math. xx., 37), who is All in All (Ephes. i., 23), yet it affirms, that this God is omnipresent, eternal and incomprehensible to the finite understanding of mortals (1. Timoth. vi., 16). It teaches this love to be the most important of all possessions, without which all other possessions are useless (1. Corinth, xiii., 2), and yet this God, whom we are to love, is not an “object” (John i., 5), but everywhere. He is in us and we in Him (Rom. xii., 5). We are to leave all objects of sense and follow Him alone (Luc. v., 2), although we have no means of intellectually knowing or perceiving Him, the great Unknown, for whose sake we are to give up house and brethren, sisters, father, mother, wife, children and lands (Mark x., 29).

What can all this mean, but that love itself is the legitimate object of love? It is a divine, eternal, and infinite power, a light, which reflects itself in every object while it seeks not the object, but merely its own reflection therein. It is an indestructible fire and the brighter it burns, the stronger will be the light and the clearer will its own image appear. Love falls in love with nothing but its own self, it is free from all other attractions. A love which becomes attached to objects of sense, ceases to be free, ceases to be love, and becomes mere desire. Pure and eternal love asks for nothing, but gives freely to all who are willing to take. Earthly love is attracted to persons and things, but Divine spiritual love seeks only that which is divine in everything, and this can be nothing else but love, for love is the supreme power of all. It holds together the worlds in space, it clothes the earth in bright and beautiful colours, it guides the instincts of animals and links together the hearts of human beings. Acting upon the lower planes of existence it causes terrestrial things to cling to each other with fond embrace; but love on the spiritual plane is free. Spiritual love is a goddess, who continually sacrifices herself for herself and who accepts no other sacrifice but her own self, giving for whatever she may receive, herself in return. Therefore the Bhagavad Gita says: “Nourish ye the gods by this and let the gods nourish you. Thus nourishing each other ye shall obtain the highest good” (Cap. iii., ii.,); and the Bible says: “To him who has still more shall be given, and from him who has not, even what he has shall be taken away” (Luke xix., 26).

Love is an universal power and therefore immortal, it can never die. We cannot believe that even the smallest particle of love ever died, only the instruments through which it becomes manifest change their form; nor will it ever be born, for it exists from eternity, only the bodies into which it shines are born and die and are born again. A Love which is not manifest is non-existent for us, to come into existence means to become manifest. How then could we possibly imagine a human being possessed of a love which never becomes manifest; how can we possibly conceive of a light which never shines and of a fire which does not give any heat?

But “as the sun shines upon the lands of the just and the unjust, and as the rain descends upon the acres of the evil-minded as well as upon those of the good”; likewise divine love manifesting itself in a perfect man is distributed alike to every one without favour or partiality. Wherever a good and perfect human being exists, there is divine love manifest; and the degree of man’s perfection will depend on the degree of his capacity to serve as an instrument for the manifestation of divine love. The more perfect he is, the more will his love descend upon and penetrate all who come within his divine influence. To ask favours of God is to conceive of Him as an imperfect being, whose love is not free, but subject to the guidance of, and preference to, mortals. To expect favours of a Mahatma is to conceive him as an imperfect man.

True, “prayer,” i.e. the elevation and aspiration of the soul “in spirit and in truth” (John xiv., 14), is useful, not because it will persuade the light to come nearer to us, but because it will assist us to open our eyes for the purpose of seeing the light that was already there. Let those who desire to come into contact with the Adepts enter their sphere by following their doctrines; seeking for love, but not for an object of love, and when they have found the former, they will find a superabundance of the latter throughout the whole extent of the unlimited universe; they will find it in everything that exists, for love is the foundation of all existence and without love nothing can possibly continue to exist.

Love—divine love—is the source of life, of light, and happiness. It is the creative principle in the Macrocosm and in the Microcosm of man. It is Venus, the mother of all the gods, because from her alone originates Will and Imagination and all the other powers by which the universe was evolved. It is the germ of divinity which exists in the heart of man, and which may develop into a life-giving sun, illuminating the mind and sending its rays to the centre of the universe; for it originates from that centre and to that centre it will ultimately return. It is a divine messenger, who carries Light from Heaven down to the Earth and returns again to Heaven loaded with sacrificial gifts.

It is worshipped by all, some adore it in one form and some in another, but many perceive only the form and do not perceive the divine spirit. Nevertheless the spirit alone is real, the form is an illusion. Love can exist without form, but no form can exist without love. It is pure Spirit, but if its light is reflected in matter, it creates desire and desire is the producer of forms. Thus the visible world of perishable things is created. “But above this visible nature there exists another, unseen and eternal, which, when all created things perish, does not perish” (Bh. G. viii. 20), and “from which they who attain to it never return.” This is the supreme abode of Love without any object, unmanifested and imperishable, for there no object exists. There love is united to love, enjoying supreme and eternal happiness within her own self and that peace, of which the mortal mind, captivated by the illusion of form, cannot conceive. Non-existent for us, and yet existing in that Supreme Be-ness, in which all things dwell, by which the universe has been spread out, and which may be attained to by an exclusive devotion.

EMANUEL.

SELF MASTERY.

(A SONNET.)

O! for the power to lay this burden low! This weight of self; to kill all vain desire To clasp to our outer selves the scorching fire, So that the God within shall live and grow! O! for the strength to face the hidden foe, To raise our being higher still and higher, To breathe the breath that Holy ones inspire, To break the bonds that bind to Earth below!

Great, Infinite Soul! that broodeth o’er us ever, Say, can the human will unaided win The Victor’s crown (and earthly bondage sever), —A Heavenly flight, triumphant over sin? O Human and Divine, forsake us never, Thine is the power by which we enter in!

DUM SPIRO, SPERO.

=Reviews.=

A MODERN MAGICIAN. A ROMANCE, by J. Fitzgerald Molloy, in Three Volumes. Ward & Downey, 12, York Street, Covent Garden.

Opinions may be greatly divided as to the merits of this book; and to those who look for unexceptionable literary style as a primary element in fiction, it may not be satisfactory. But to all those who regard ideas as the first requisite, this work will probably prove of great interest. It has been somewhat curious to note the reception with which Mr. Molloy has met. The Pall Mall Gazette, for instance, devotes considerable length to him, and somewhat smartly calls him “a novelist born, but not made”; after which it proceeds, with more apparent animus than judiciousness, to criticise the pedantic style of conversation and narrative which the author occasionally makes use of. Curiously enough, the critic selects for his worst blows the phrases used by the chief inspector of the detectives. Now, if there is one thing more common than another, it is to find the half educated, but uncultured, men of the class from which police inspectors are drawn, using the longest words and phrases, not so much as a proof of their culture, as with the object of impressing their hearers. The reviewer was perhaps right to assail Mr. Molloy for sending his hero to Scotland Yard to hunt up news of his erring wife, who, as he was perfectly aware, had fled with another man. But this, and other trifling mistakes of similar character, are venial errors, and could only be so strongly animadverted upon in a paper which devotes itself to hunting plagiarisms in impossible places, through envy of successful authors; or by a reviewer who is a personal enemy of the author. As Macintosh well said: “The critic who is discerning in nothing but faults, may care little to be told that this is the mark of unenviable disposition, but he might not feel equally easy, were he convinced that he thus gives absolute proofs of ignorance and want of taste.” To make matters worse, and more interesting to LUCIFER, the reviewer is plainly a partisan of the Society for Psychical Research, to which Mr. Molloy somewhat unfeelingly alludes as the “Society of Scientific Cackle.” The review in the Pall Mall Gazette starts with smartness and intelligence, but allows itself to run off into partisanship and prejudice. But all that is in strict keeping with the tone of a “Gazette” which generally starts useful work well, continues it badly, and ends by throwing mud out of the gutter at anybody or anything which happens to run counter to it. For instance, here is a specimen of the reviewer:

“As a story teller he (the author) is the Bobadil of fashionable mysticism: as a literary workman he is a pretentious bungler: his syntax is inconceivable, his dialogue impossible, his style a desperately careful expression of desperately slovenly thinking, his notions of practical affairs absurd, and his conception of science and philosophy a superstitious guess; yet he has an indescribable flourish, a dash of half-ridiculous poetry, a pathetic irresponsibility, a captivating gleam of Irish imagination, and, above all, an unsuspicious good nature, that compel a humane public to read his books rather than mortify him by a neglect which he has done nothing malicious to deserve.”

Such criticism can only be met from the point of view of the reviewer, by “Set a thief to catch a thief,” and from that of Mr. Molloy, by “Heaven save me from the penny-a-liners, actuated by personal animus!”

The reviewer may be allowed to have pointed out a few glaring errors in Mr. Molloy’s style and syntax, but we add that, in pointing these out, he has only exposed himself.

As regards the central figure of Benoni, the adept in the book, LUCIFER may, perhaps, say a few words. Slightly as the character is drawn, and startling as are the deeds of this personage, there is a majesty about him which commands respect, and we may congratulate Mr. Molloy on his effort. We do not entirely accord with the author in the deeds which he sets Benoni to do, but with regard to the words and precepts which he puts into the adept’s mouth, we do absolutely agree, and recommend our readers, and especially all the Theosophists, to read Mr. Molloy’s book. Here the Pall Mall reviewer—being, as said, an admiring follower of the Society for Psychical Research—again falls foul of Mr. Molloy; but we may safely quote the impressive and truthful words of Benoni, and leave the rest to others.

Amerton, the hero of the book, reproaches the adept with having seen trouble approaching him, and with having neglected to warn him. Benoni replies:

“That is true. It was not permitted that I should serve you then; to test your strength it was necessary that you should bear the trial unaided. When, some years ago. you came to me in Africa, and asked me to solve experiences which perplexed you, and later besought Amuni, the faithful One, to show you the pathway leading towards light, you but obeyed a dictate of your nature impossible to resist. That within you urged you forward to seek the sacred mysteries of life and death. But these cannot be obtained by those who are not prepared to endure with patience, and grow strong in spirit. You have suffered, and thus taken the first step towards the attainment of your desires.”

“But, surely,” said Philip, “you might have warned me.”

“I should have but inflicted additional pain on you.”

“Was there no escape?”

“None, indeed,” replied the mystic.

“Then I was destined to meet humiliation and pain.”

Benoni looked at him with mingled pity and affection in his gaze.

“A child,” he said, in his low, sonorous voice, “is grieved for a broken toy, or is humiliated by correction.”

“But you don’t compare my wrongs to a child’s grievances?”

“His sorrows are as real and bitter to him as your afflictions are to you. It is only when time has passed, he reviews his distress with wonder, seeing the pettiness of its cause. So will it be with you. Ten years hence, you will regard this grief, desolating your life, with equanimity; forty years later, you will remember it with indifference, as an item in your fate. Then shall you look back upon the brightness and darkness of your existence as one regards the lights and shadows chequering his pathway through woods in spring. How futile seem woe and joy, weighed with the consideration that all men are as shadows that fade, and as vapours which flee away.... Think, my friend,” continued the mystic earnestly, “of your existence but as a journey towards a goal, on which hardships must be suffered by the way. You are now but working out the fulfillment of your fate. Remember, those who would ascend must suffer; affliction is the flame which purifies; pain teaches compassion.” (pp. 89, 90. Vol. III.)

When asked of himself, Benoni replies:

“Misfortune cannot compass, distress overwhelm, nor disappointments assail me, because the things of the world are as naught to my senses, and man’s life seems but a dream. Before this stage affliction must have crucified the senses; self must be conquered, slain, and entombed.” (p. 91, Vol. III.)

There are other passages equally true from the occult standpoint, and we trust their readers will benefit by them and appreciate them.

As regards Amerton’s character, we see the natural, born, mystic turning aside and voluntarily taking upon himself, though warned, the bonds of married life. These become intolerable to him, and the unhappiness of two persons results. Occultism is a jealous mistress, and, once launched on that path, it is necessary to resolutely refuse to recognise any attempt to draw one back from it. Amerton wanted to crush out his natural tendencies to occultism, and failed. It is as hard to draw back from them, and turn attention solely to the things of the world, as it is, when studying occultism, to turn our attention solely to the invisible regions, and neglect absolutely the physical world.

The other characters in the novel make it light, graceful and pleasant reading. The interest is ever preserved from the first to the last scene, and certainly no one could find, in all the three volumes, one dull page in them. Moreover, Mr. Fitzgerald Molloy seems an acute observer. Some of his secondary heroes, such as the wealthy widow, Mrs. Henry Netley, a plebeian enamoured of rank and title, and Lord Pompey Rokeway, “a gay, though ancient, personage,” who uses rouge, wig, and corsets, and imagines every woman in love with him—are portraits from nature, to one who knows anything of modern society. In short, “The Modern Magician,” as a work of fiction, can fearlessly bear comparison with any of the modern productions written lately upon occult subjects, with the solitary exception of Rider Haggard’s “She,” and surpasses some in unabated interest. We might be more exacting and severe, perhaps, were it a purely theosophical work. As it stands, however, we must congratulate Mr. Molloy in having clothed the subject of mysticism in such graceful robes; had he been as good a literary workman as he is an excellent constructor of plots, the book should have met with unqualified approval. Meanwhile, we wish it the greatest success.

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“THE TWIN SOUL: A PSYCHOLOGICAL AND REALISTIC ROMANCE,” in two volumes, by an Anonymous Author. Ward & Downey, 12, York Street, Covent Garden.

This is quite another kind of literary production than the “Modern Magician,” just reviewed. It aspires to more serious and philosophical mysticism, but fails rather ungloriously. There are passages in it which, taken out of the work, especially at the beginning of Volume I., might be made the subjects of short and rather useful little treatises upon mystic theories; but, as a whole, the book is one of the most disappointing novels published for some time. It begins well, goes on from bad to worse, promises much, holds nothing, and ends nowhere, seeming to be written not as a work of fiction, but simply to ventilate the author’s ideas. These—the work being anonymous—have to be judged by the novel alone. It is rumoured that the “Twin Soul” is the occasional work of twelve years’ labour, and the disconnected character of its events bears out the rumour. Its style is pedantic, though good in writing, while the matter and plot are heavy, and delivered in a long-winded and didactic manner.

The story is that of one Mr. Rameses, an exceedingly virtuous, learned, and solemn Oriental millionaire, whose real nationality remains to the end a mystery, and whose story is narrated by a somewhat cynical English philosopher, called De Vere. The latter tells the story in the style which suits him best, and is perfectly natural. He is humorous and amusing, even if slightly ponderous. But alas for the reader! Mr. De Vere suddenly stops short at an early stage, and the story is taken up, without any apparent cause or reason, by a man unknown, who “had less sympathy with Mr. Rameses,” and who has all the defects of Mr. De Vere’s qualities, and a good many of his own besides, for he is even more ponderous and more cynical, without his humour. Mr. Rameses is a peculiar character, but, as sketched, he is quite in keeping with his Oriental origin. He believes in many theories: re-incarnation, socialism, certain occult doctrines, the possibility of recovering the memory of past incarnations, and, as a matter of course, the modern craze of the day, the theory of “twin souls.” He is perpetually in search of his “twin,” and hunts her with the pertinacity of a sleuth-hound under all forms, and in all places. Mr. De Vere is the possessor of an Assyrian collection, Egyptian papyri, and also of two female mummies—Amenophra and Lurulâ, the first the daughter of a Pharaoh, the second a priestess of Isis—of which the sarcophagi are covered with hieroglyphics, which Mr. Rameses reads with most surprising ease. The hero, claiming his memory as a palimpsest, which by certain processes clearly discovers the obliterated record of his past incarnations, cannot, in spite of this, make up his mind which of the two mummies was formerly the body of his twin-soul. Finally, he solves the doubt by declaring them both to have been the mortal casket of his beloved—with Lurulâ for choice. The reader here has great hopes held out to him that there will be a grand ceremony, at which the mummies are to be unrolled, and at which the soul of the deceased mummy will be summoned back to shuffle on a mortal coil again. Alas! such hopes are fallacious; for the ceremony never takes place, owing to Mr. Rameses falling in love with the sister of a Hindu lady married to an English baronet. After much hesitation the lady so honoured by his choice is also declared to be the vehicle of his twin-soul, i.e., to save appearances—to be a re-incarnation of the ego which formerly dwelt in the mummy or mummies. Finally, after a long-winded oration over the mystic properties of a magnificent present of jewels, Mr. Rameses wins “the fair Niona,” as she is called—who, although a Hindu, is a Zoroastrian Sun-worshipper. They are married, notwithstanding their “paganism,” according to Roman Catholic rites, and the pair start to spend the honeymoon in Egypt, where, in the Temple of Isis at Thebes, they are to be again united according to the—to them—more sacred ritual of Sun-worship. After a very interesting dream about the Deluge, which broke through an isthmus uniting Gibraltar to North Africa, and destroyed a vast civilization which occupied the floor of the present Mediterranean Sea, they arrive safely in Egypt. Here the fair Hindu of Zoroastrian persuasion and Italian name, has another interesting psychic vision, an interview with the Sphinx, which makes her incontinently faint, and lose consciousness. Then they proceed to Thebes, and, after due care, make selection of the site of the Temple of Isis. They build their bonfire and ignite it, but at the supreme moment Niona gives a gasp, faints, and this time dies outright, with as little reason for it as every other incident in the novel has. The return to Cairo is immediately commenced, and here Niona, in strict keeping with Mr. Rameses’s habits, is at once converted into a mummy. It must be rather interesting to possess the body of three defunct twin souls, and reflect upon their virtues.

The rest of the book is occupied by various disquisitions of the author, disguised flimsily under conversations of his characters on the social and political customs of the Nineteenth century. Read carefully, the conversations contain ideas, but are likely to offend on account of their length and ponderousness. As regards the construction of the book and the characters, Mr. Rameses is interesting, in spite of his solemnity and his love of mummies, and Mr. De Vere is amusing. The other dramatis personæ seem to have been created merely as pegs upon which to hang the author’s opinions. What, for instance, is the object of entering into detail upon the passionate episodes in the career of Mr. Rameses’s secretary, or the mercenary marriage of Lady Gwendoline Pierrepoint with “Old Methusaleh”? Their only excuse can be that they may serve to increase the contrast between such marriages and that with a twin soul. Taken as a whole, the ideas are interesting, and the mystic utterances in the first volume almost correct from the orthodox occult point. But the manner in which they are displayed is irritating, and this chiefly because the reader is perpetually being brought up to a point of interest, and as perpetually left disappointed.

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POSTHUMOUS HUMANITY.[129]

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Footnote 129:

Posthumous Humanity, a study of Phantoms, by Adolphe d’Assier, Member of the Bordeaux Academy of Sciences. Translated and annotated by Henry S. Olcott, President of the Theosophical Society. George Redway, London, 1887. 8vo. pp. 360.

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This is a translation from the French by Colonel H. S. Olcott, President of the Theosophical Society, of the remarkable work of that name, by a well-known savant, Adolphe d’Assier. The original work appeared a few years ago, and produced a stir both in the sceptical public and unbelieving science, and an outcry among the spiritists of France, whose pet theories about the “spirits” of the dead it upset. “Posthumous Humanity” was not only a singularly interesting work, but it was one of the first, and perhaps the loudest, of the bugle notes that heralded the last act of the fierce battle between materialistic science and spiritualism; for it ended in the virtual defeat of the former, at any rate, upon one line: it forced the hand of the majority of sceptics in the recognition of what is called in mysticism the “astral body” of man and animal, and by more pretentious than wise investigators “the phantasms of the living,” forgetting those of the dead.

That a learned member of an academy of science should, of all men, write a serious book on the phenomena of “the Borderland,” accepting as facts in nature such things as ghostly appearances, and the projection of the double, is almost a phenomenon in itself. And what makes the case the more remarkable as an indication of a new current in public opinion, is the fact that these things, which it has hitherto been the fashion to consign with a laugh or a shudder to the limbo of exploded superstitions, are treated by the author in a perfectly scientific spirit. He accounts for them, not by the usual supposition of hallucination or stupidity on the part of observers, but by an exceedingly ingenious and plausible postulation of forces at work in us, and around us, which are as little “supernatural” as any of the recognised forces of nature, or portions of man’s constitution. Not only has M. d’Assier the courage to face the probable ridicule of the wiseacres, but he has the audacity to turn the tables upon “men of science,” by actually making fun of their unmeasured pretensions, and twitting them mercilessly about their past mistakes. Not the least remarkable feature in the case is the fact that the author, who started into these researches an ardent positivist, has come out of them an ardent positivist still. He believes that what he has accomplished is to extend the reign of matter into a region previously believed to belong to spirit, thus planting the standard of positivism in a wider and more fruitful region, which he has happily reclaimed from the winds and tides of superstition. But the fact is, that although our author has gone a good deal further than most of those who start out “on their own hook” to explore the realms of the Occult, he cannot be said to have penetrated very far into the mysteries of being. He has peeped in at the door of the psychic antechamber to the spiritual world proper—the ante-chamber in which the members of Psychical Research Societies amuse themselves and others by playing blindman’s buff with hypothesis—and his interesting volume tells us of the wonderful things that go on there. The result of his researches, as he says in his Preface, is the conclusion that “posthumous humanity is, in fact, but a special example of posthumous animality, and that the latter presents itself as the immediate consequence of the living world.” Every tyro in theosophy knows that this conclusion is a fair approximation to the truth, and were man nothing but an animal of high degree, it might possibly be the whole truth. But man is an animal, plus something, and this something more, is precisely what M. d’Assier leaves entirely out of sight, as indeed he could hardly help doing if he attached any importance to remaining a Positivist. It is this something more, of whose very existence our author seems profoundly unconscious, that has the chief interest for us, for that is the spiritual and eternal part of man, in contradistinction to the psychic portion which fades away and disappears after a time, as M. d’Assier very justly declares.

It seems a pity that a learned and ingenious man, like our author, should not have begun investigations of this kind by making himself familiar with at least the bare outline of the metaphysical and psychological system that underlies the schools of philosophy of India. This system is the result of very profound research into such phenomena as our author deals with, and also into other far deeper and more important manifestations that he has not considered at all; and these researches have for thousands of years occupied, to a greater or lesser degree, almost every thinking man among races which are acknowledged to be possessed of a very high degree of intellectual acuteness and spiritual insight. Were our Western adventurers into the borderland between spirit and matter—the astral world—to take this obvious precaution, they would know that the ground over which they now laboriously make their way, has not only been traversed before, but pretty fully surveyed and mapped out, and that their supposed discoveries amount virtually to no more than a verification of results long ago obtained by others. This very needed exception in the work under review has been obviated by the translator’s notes and supplement, without diminishing the practical value of M. d’Assier’s treatise as a useful contribution to occult literature. For, as his labours do actually confirm much of the teachings of Theosophy, with regard to that part of the constitution of man, which is common to him and the animals, the work, as it now stands, is really a valuable occult treatise as to facts. The important question with the world, in these times, being not so much what is said, as who it is that says it, the fact that an incorrigible positivist, has published his belief in the actuality of a psychic plane of existence, and of the temporary survival in it after death of a certain part or principle of the animal (including man), is of the greatest help and importance to theosophy. It will probably affect public opinion far more profoundly than if a thousand Eastern sages proclaimed the same elementary fact of Occultism in chorus. No better illustration of, and testimony to, the reality of plain, broad facts in connection with wraiths, “doubles,” and other such apparitions, can be found than in d’Assier’s “Posthumous Humanity” in its new English garb, by Colonel Olcott, and with the translator’s Preface and annotations to the text. These add greatly to the value of the book for the student of Occultism. In fact, these additions serve the same purpose which a notice of the work in LUCIFER might have been expected to have in view; for they correct the author in some particulars, add additional information in others, and generally forestall the critic who writes from the Theosophical standpoint. Besides this, the translator has added a highly interesting and unique appendix, giving the opinions of numerous Hindus of various castes and sects upon psychic phenomena of that kind, collected from various parts of India, which, by itself, has considerable value to the student of mystical sciences. In conclusion, we may record almost a general opinion—save, of course, that of rank materialists—that no work yet published on the subject dealt with by our author is better calculated to reach the scientifically-minded enquirer. It is written with calmness and logical clearness that takes the scoffer’s laugh out of his mouth. It goes as far as anyone new to the subject could be reasonably expected to follow; and the direction it takes is the right one. It is preeminently the book for the too sceptical and ignorant enquirer to begin with.

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ספר יצירה, Sepher Yetzirah, The Book of Formation, and the Thirty-two Paths of Wisdom; translated from the Hebrew, and collated with Latin Versions. By Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, Bath: Robert H. Fryar, 1887.

This is a treatise of about 30 quarto pages on that well-known Hebrew occult work, the Sepher Yetzirah. It consists of an introduction, giving the historic aspects of the matter, an English translation of the Sepher Yetzirah and the Thirty-two Paths, and several pages of notes, giving remarks on and variant readings of difficult and disputed passages.

The introductory pages bear the stamp of considerable literary research, and the translation of the Book of Formation itself is intelligible and concise. But we can hardly say as much for the Thirty-two Paths, which, abstruse and difficult of comprehension in the original, are, we are afraid, no more intelligible in the translation. Owing to the unpopularity of the subject, there are readers who will be readily drawing the conclusion that Dr. Westcott himself does not altogether understand their mystical bearing and symbolism. Yet the notes on the actual text of the “Sepher Yetzirah” are valuable, and show considerable occult knowledge. But a still greater error is made by the translator. We notice that Dr. Westcott has invariably rendered the word Elohim by “God,” notwithstanding that it is a plural noun, as shown by the plural word “Chiim” joined thereto in the ninth section of the first chapter. This will, no doubt, prove grateful to the staff and readers of the Jewish World, whose editors pride themselves, against all fact and truth, on the Monotheism of their early ancestors. It cannot fail to strike the Kabalists as an unfortunate deviation from the original meaning in favour of one laboriously fabricated by both Jewish and Christian falsificators.

The “Book of Formation” is a treatise consisting of 6 chapters and 33 sections, and thus its compilation is pentacular. The 6 chapters refer to the Yetziratic World, the 6 periods of Genesis; while the 33 sections have a close analogy with the Thirty-two Paths which are added at the end of the work. It is a philosophical disquisition on the occult meanings of the ten numbers of the decimal scale, and the 22 letters of the Hebrew sacred alphabet. The first chapter deals with the numbers, which it divides into a Tetrad (symbolising Spirit, Air, Water, and Fire), and a Hexad (symbolising Height, Depth, East, West, South and North). The second chapter treats generally of the 22 letters, produced from the Air or the number 2, and divided into 3 Mother-letters, 7 double-letters, and 12 simple letters. The third chapter shows the symbolic reference of the 3 Mother-letters to Air, Water, and Fire; the fourth chapter that of the 7 double-letters to the Planets &c.; the fifth chapter that of the 12 simple letters to the signs of the Zodiac, &c.; and the sixth chapter forms the synthesis.

The 32 paths are no other than symbolical developments of the 10 Sephiroth or numbers, and the 22 letters which form the connecting links between them.

Altogether the work is interesting and worthy of careful study.

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TREBLE CHORDS.

POEMS BY CATHERINE GRANT FURLEY.

Edinburgh: R. and R. Clark.

This is an inviting little book of verse, with an ill-chosen title. Why “Treble Chords,” when the author cannot compose anything more than a single part? The octave is spanned by treble or threefold chords, but Miss Furley has not yet reached the octave of attainment! No, the book must be re-christened at its second birth; and the protest of the Girton Girl, and the more sustained poem of the Other Isolt, are assuredly good enough to interest and delight a sufficient number of women to send it into a second edition. The writer has a distinct faculty of seeing, as well as the tendency to take the “other side,” as she does in Isolt of Brittany and in Galatea to Pygmalion. The moral of the latter poem is thus presented:

“O, frequent miracle! so often seen We scarcely pause to think what it may mean— Man’s power to raise within a woman’s heart A love he does not know, nor could impart; To wake a soul within the marble breast, Then long to soothe it back to stony rest; For, though the woman’s sweeter to caress, The statue’s more convenient to possess.”

Here is a specimen of the sonnets, not the best, perhaps, but to the purpose:

CIRCE.

Men call me Circe, but my name is Love; And my cup holds the draught of sweet and sour, Of gain, joy, loss, renouncement, all the dower That woman’s love brings man. I hold above Your outstretched hand the chalice; ere you prove Its potency, bethink you; it has power To test your soul. If in a sinful hour You touch it, you shall sink as those who strove Of old to win my heart. Lo! there they be, Not men but beasts; for with impure desire They sought me, and Love holds that blasphemy; And for their sin doth bid them dwell in mire Nor know their shame. Had they been pure in thought, My cup had strengthened them and injured not.

It is but a tiny handful, this, of first flowers; not even a gathering of first-fruits. But they have the fragrance of promise, and a freshness of real rarity. Whether the fruit will set and mature must depend upon the sunshine and the rain and other surroundings of the struggling life, and on the depth of soil and strength of rootage. Of these we cannot judge; but the first-flowers are sweet and pretty and worth a word of welcome.

G. M.

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THE CREATOR, AND WHAT WE MAY KNOW OF THE METHOD OF CREATION.[130]

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Footnote 130:

The Fernley Lecture, 1887, by Dr. Dallinger. T. Woolmer, 2, Castle Street, City Road, London E.C. (1s. 6d., paper covers.)

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The above is the title of a lecture, forming the seventeenth of what are known as the “Fernley Lectures,” delivered annually, by the leading minds in the Ministry of the Wesleyan Methodist Society. This specific lecture is the latest of the series, and was delivered in Manchester, August 1st in present year, by the Rev. W. H. Dallinger, LL.D., F.R.S., Pres. R.M.S., etc., Governor of Wesley College, Sheffield.

The lecture occupies an unique position amongst its fellows, and will bear a most favourable comparison with any that have been delivered by the various Presidents of the Royal Society on the sciences of the day. For clearness of argument and lucidity of thought—as far as it goes—it is unsurpassed, and, as a specimen of the power of English language, it is a treat to all who can estimate its value. It is all this, and more, and here its significance and suggestiveness comes in, and I can do no less than characterise its delivery under the circumstances, to an auditory that represents (in the eyes of the sect itself, at all events) the purest form of Evangelical religion, as a startling phenomenon, and as such I consider a notice of it in no way out of place in a theosophical journal. That such a lecture should be allowed to be delivered and favourably received, not only by the audience, but by the Wesleyan body at large, is a “sign of the times” that the intelligent observer cannot fail to discern. It is, undoubtedly, an index finger that marks a large advance in the progress of human emancipation from the increasingly intolerable yoke of Churchianic or Ecclesiastical tyranny; and all “friends of progress” will cheerfully render to the worthy and eloquent lecturer the thanks that are due for his manly and outspoken views upon the profoundest question of the age. The strangest part is the spectacle of a “Minister of the Gospel,” himself a scientist of no mean order, proclaiming from a Methodist platform his adherence to, and acceptance of, the doctrines of Charles Darwin, as true exponents of the “Method of Creation,” which means that “Natural Selection,” and survival of the “Fittest,” accounts for the origin of species and the indefinite variety of extinct and extant animal forms of life. Why not include vegetable forms as well? Methinks the fabulous “missing link” between the vegetable and animal kingdoms may, without much difficulty, be actually spotted. Nature, as delineated by the great “Naturalist,” must have been very peevish and unkind to her worshippers, when she mocks them by destroying every vestige, even to the veriest fragmentary fossil, of this anxiously looked for and expectant missing link, between the animal (brute) and man! To my view, the continuous chain of sequential life forms, as presented in the Darwinian theory, evinces a vast number of “missing links,” and, unless these can be supplied, it will not bear the strain when tested by the unclouded intellect of man. The philosopher of Materialism may accept the Darwinian theories (for as yet they are nothing less or more) as gospel, but the spiritual philosopher will not, nor can he accept them as truth, simply because he recognises a factor, which is an abomination in the eyes of the materialistic “wise ones.” It is this factor that the eloquent and learned lecturer pleads for, without suspecting what it really is. I have reason to know that our reverend scientist regards this “Spiritual” factor with the utmost contempt. But I leave this, and pass on to notice some of the really valuable thoughts and facts that ennoble the lecture, which is addressed to “thoughtful and earnest minds, not concerned specially with questions of philosophy, metaphysics, and science, but alive to the advanced knowledge and thought of our times, and anxious to know how the great foundation of religious belief, the existence of Deity, is affected by the splendid advance of our knowledge of nature.”

This expression “existence of Deity” is conveniently elastic enough to cover the ground of argument by a scientific theologian, inasmuch as it may be taken to mean a personal God, according to sound Evangelical belief, and thus assume a plausible defence of Theism versus Atheism; or, it may admit of a much wider application to an “Unknown God”; for when the lecturer does venture to delineate the characteristic of Deity as the Creator, it is such terms as “Inscrutable Power or Creator,” “Eternal Mind,” “Infinite Intelligence,” &c., which is tantamount to saying that the Primal Cause of all that is, is unknowable; and if this is what Dr. Dallinger really means, he is at one with the Spiritual Philosopher; but this will be a curious weapon in the hands of an ecclesiastical theologian—as dangerous as it is curious. By the use of these terms the reverend author shields himself from the charge of materialistic heresy, albeit to the clear-sighted one there are several, if not many, weak and vulnerable points in the defensive armour; but if the adherents and votaries of the “faith once delivered to the saints” might be a little chary in their acceptance of him as a “sound” exponent of religious truth, yet all progressive minds will hail him as a fearless champion for the truth as delivered by the Book of Nature and interpreted by the splendid achievements of modern science.

“The study of phenomena, their succession and their classification, is the essential work of science. It has no function, and is possessed of no instrument with which to look behind or below the sequence, in quest of some higher relation. The eye and mind of the experimentalist know only of antecedent and consequent. These fill the whole circle of his research; let him find these, and he has found all.”

Here the domain of “science” is defined by a master mind, which tells us that “the researches of science are physical.” The observable, finite contents of space and time are the subjects of its analysis. Existence, not the cause of existence, succession, not the reason of succession, method, not the origin of method, are the subjects of physical research. A primordial cause cannot be the subject of experiment nor the object of demonstration. It must for ever transcend the most delicate physical re-action, the profoundest analysis, and the last link in the keenest logic. Science refuses absolutely to recognise mind as the primal cause of the sequences of matter. This is just—within the strict region of its research—for phenomena, their sequences and classification, are its sole domain. But observe; science universally puts force where the reason asks for cause. The forces affecting matter are tacitly assumed to be competent to account for every activity, every sequence, every phenomenon, and all the harmonies of universal being, a nexus for the infinite diversities and harmonies, a basis for all the equilibrium of nature, is found by modern science in force. But force is as absolutely inscrutable as mind. Force can never be known in itself; it is known by its manifestations. It is not a phenomenon, it produces phenomena. We cannot know it; but we know nothing without it. The ultimate analysis of physical science is the relations of matter and force. In irreducible terms, therefore, the final analysis of science is matter as affected by motion.

We now see, from the above excerpta, the goal to which the “splendid discoveries” of modern science lead its votaries, as portrayed by an authority that claims to speak not as other men; and if it is not a veritable dismal swamp, leading to nothing or negation; a miasma suffocating the aspirations of those who are trusting to the leadership of savants to guide them in the path that conveys them to the habitat of true wisdom and knowledge of themselves; then I can only say of such, “miserable comforters are ye all.”

But the question intervenes here: is this a true definition of the end and aim of science? It may be to the majority of the Royal Society; but I may tell those who claim to be the conservators of science, and who arrogate to themselves the right to define the boundaries of even physical science, that they do not possess the all of human intelligence, and that there are, outside their societies, men who refuse to bow the knee to the modern scientific Baal, who refuse to be cajoled by the use of terms that mystify but certainly do not enlighten. For instance, who is one wit the wiser when, having reached the end of its tether, science discovers that “matter and motion” govern and regulate all things observable by the human eye, or within the range of the human mind? To the credit of the author of the last Fernley Lecture, he sees and acknowledges the dilemma into which “materialistic” science is driven; but whether “theological” science, so ably represented by himself, can altogether evade it, is a question that I do not here stay to propound. This much, however, I may say, scientific dicta notwithstanding, there is another department of scientific research which does form the nexus—the veritable missing link—between the known and their unknown, and this is the science of psychology, which commences just where the professors of science (physical) confess themselves baffled, and are unable, or rather unwilling, to advance further in this to them terra incognita. The wilful ignoring of this by Materialistic leaders of thought ends by putting them out of court in the discussion of the profound problems arising out of the discoveries of the psychological scientist. In presence of facts, the evidence for which are world wide and as demonstrable—on their own plane or ground—as geological, or astronomical facts which the psychologist adduces, of what conceivable use are the “relations of matter and force” of the physicist, as explanatory of the laws, &c., pertaining to the new world discovered by psychological Savants?

It will be new to many of your readers to find the Rev. Dr. “hob-nobbing” with Professor Huxley, who is quoted as—not a Materialist! The learned professor appears to be indignant with those who are zealous for “the fundamental article of the faith materialistic,” who “parade force and matter as the Alpha and Omega of existence,” and says, “If I were forced to choose between Materialism and Idealism, I would elect for the latter”; and the lecturer adds, “Truly, if our choice must be between them, this is the normal alternative.” It were better had the Professor given some inkling as to what he meant by this high-sounding term “Idealism.”[131]

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Footnote 131:

Both the Idealism of Mr. Herbert Spencer, and the Hylo-Idealism of Dr. Lewins are more materialistic and atheistic than any of the honestly declared materialistic views—Buchner’s and Molaschott’s included.—[ED.]

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The author again says—“I adopt gladly the language of Professor Huxley: Belief, in the scientific sense of the word, is a serious matter, and needs, strong foundations. If it were given me to look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time to the still more remote period when the earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions, I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm from not-living matter.”

“So should I,” adds the Rev. Dr., who brings in Mr. Crooks (?), of whom the lecturer says, “I do not forget the recent and splendid service done by Mr. Crooks to the philosophical side of chemistry. It is a most subtle and exquisite means of endeavouring to deduce the method, the ‘law’ according to which what we know as the ‘chemical elements’ were built up. He obtains indications of a primitive element—a something out of which the elements were evolved. He calls it protyle or first stuff, and from its presence concludes that the elements, as we know them, have been evolved from simpler matter—or perhaps, indeed, from one sole kind of matter.” In the following sentences he tries hard to depreciate this “splendid discovery” by Mr. Crooks, the reason for which is anything but difficult to discover. Dr. Dallinger knows that Mr. Crooks published a work entitled “Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism,” containing his Experimental Investigations in Psychic Force, which he, in conjunction with his friend Huxley, thinks it beneath him to notice.

But I claim the “splendid discovery” of Mr. Crooks to be of far more transcendent importance than the learned scientist will admit. It comes marvellously near to the scientific demonstration of the ethic propounded by the “philosophy of spirit,” “There is but one life, and one substance, by which life is manifested in an infinitude of forms in all universes, from the simplest to the most complex organic.”

On this subject the Lecture contains the following eloquent, and, I may add, brilliant peroration.

“Life, it is well known, has its phenomena inherent in, and strictly confined to, a highly complex compound, with fixed chemical constituents. This compound, in its living state, is known as protoplasm. It is clear, colourless, and to our finest optical resources, devoid of discoverable structure. There is not a living thing on earth but possesses its life in protoplasm, from a microscopic fungus, to Man. To depict the properties of Life in irreducible simplicity, take one of the lowliest instances within the range of science. Let it be one of the exquisitely minute, almost infinitely prolific, and universally diffused living forms that set up, and carry on, putrefaction. The lesser of them may, when considered as solid specks, vary from the fifty-thousand-millionth of a cubic inch to the twenty-billionth of a cubic inch (evidently far beneath the unaided optic power of the human eye to see). I select one that is oval in shape. Its mission as an organism, is to break up and set free the chemical elements that had been locked up in dead organic compounds. (Query—Was this tiny creature self-generated, or was it the product of the dead organism?) Its own substance wears out by this and other means; and it has the power to renovate the waste from the dead decomposition in which it lives, constructing, in the lavatory of its protoplasm, new living matter. But more; this vital and inconceivably minute speck multiplies with astounding rapidity in two ways; by the first and common process, in the course of a minute and a half, the entire body is divided into two precisely similar bodies, each one perfect; almost immediately these again divide, and so on in geometric ratio through all the populated fluid; the rapidity of this intense and wonderful vital action transcending all thought. By this process alone, a single form may, in three hours, give rise to a population of organisms as great as the human population of the globe. This is life—whether vegetable or animal none can determine—in the simplest form in which it can be known, and which distinguish it for ever and everywhere from what is not life.”

Several equally interesting examples of recent scientific discoveries are given, but space forbids me to more than mention them. Science, as represented by the Savants, evidently believes in an unbridged chasm between the forms of life and not-life. The Scientist and Philosopher of Spirit join issue on this, for they declare that “Life is present everywhere, and in all forms, organic or non-organic, and without the presence of Life no forms—not even mineral—could be phenomenal or _ex_istent.”

Your space does not permit me to deal with more than one other, and, to many, the more important subject of Biblical records coming within the domain of science. Here is a specimen of how the learned scientist and theologian deals with the biblical account of Creation.

“And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind.’ That is the utterance of the human conception, which can alone represent to us the divine resolve to fill the earth with life—and the joy of living things. ‘And it was so.’ But what epochs of countless ages filled the incalculable interval?”[132]

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Footnote 132:

A few years—and, who knows? perhaps only few months more, and Protestant England will have reverend scientists explaining to their congregations from the pulpits that Adam and Eve were but the “missing link”—two tailless baboons.—[ED.]

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The boldness of this utterance from one in the position of the Reverend Lecturer can be well imagined. It contains the elements of combustion which need but the spark of investigation to deal a death blow to the established Churchianic dogma of Biblical infallibility in its literal sense. I conclude by repeating that such a deliverance by a ministerial representative of the Wesleyan denomination is a phenomenon that strikingly indicates the “Signs of the times,” and which shows that the emancipation of the human mind from the bonds of theological presumption is not far distant.

WILLIAM OXLEY.

Higher Broughton, Manchester, December 11th, 1887.

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ABSOLUTE MONISM; OR, MIND IS MATTER AND MATTER IS MIND. By SUNDARAM IYER, F.T.S. Madras, 1887.

Under the above title the author issues an address delivered at the last convention of the delegates of the Theosophical Society at Adyar. Metaphysicians, who note with interest all criticisms of Western psychology from the Oriental standpoint, will welcome the appearance of this extremely able and instructive brochure, which constitutes the first instalment of Absolute Monism. The object of the writer is to discuss the point whether an examination of all theories, as to relations of mind and body, “does not lead us to the Unistic theory that Mind is Matter, and Matter is Mind.” He endeavours to merge the apparent dualism of subject and object into a fundamental unity:—

“Is mind a product of organized matter? No ... for organized matter is only a combination of material particles, as is unorganized matter. How is it, then, that there is the manifestation of Mind in the one case, and not in the other?... Can subjective facts ever emerge out of a group of molecules? Never; as many times never as there are molecules in the group. And why? Because Mind cannot issue from No Mind.” (p. 13.)

The line of argument adopted versus Materialism—the doctrine that mental facts are the resultant of chemical changes in the brain; force and matter being the only Ultimates of Existence—is unquestionably forcible. Mind can never be resolved into a “bye-product” of brain activity, for several valid reasons. In the first place, in its aspect of thought, it exhibits concentration on an end, intelligence and interest in the subject under consideration, all of which characteristics, according to Tyndall and Du Bois Reymond, are necessarily absent from those remarshallings of atoms and molecules which are declared to “cerebrate out” mental phenomena! In the second place, the gulf between consciousness and molecular change has never been bridged; an admission to which the leading physicists and physiologists of the day lend all the weight of their authority. The terms “consciousness” and “matter” are expressive of things so utterly contrasted, that all attempts to deduce the former from the latter have met with signal discredit. Nevertheless, materialists assume the contrary, whenever the necessities of their philosophy demand it. Hence, we find men, like Büchner, admitting in one place that “in the relation of soul and brain, phenomena occur which cannot be explained by ... matter and force,” and elsewhere resolving mind into the “activity of the tissues of the brain,” “a mode of motion”—contradictions, the flagrancy of which is enhanced by the fact that the same author invests the physical automaton Man with a power to control his actions! Lastly, the degradation of consciousness into “brain-function” by constituting philosophers, theologians, scientists, and all alike “conscious automata”—(machines whose thoughts are determined for, not by their conscious Egos)—knocks away the basis of argument. The only resource becomes universal scepticism; a denial of the possibility of attaining truth. Can impartiality, correct thinking and agreement, be expected on the part of controversialists who form part of a comedy of Automata?

If mind is not inherent in matter, it cannot be evolved by mere nervous complexity. The combination of two chemical elements cannot result in a compound in which something more than the constituent factors are present. It is sometimes urged that, since the properties of substances are often altogether changed in the course of chemical combinations—new ones arising with the temporary lapse of the old—consciousness may be explained as a “peculiar property” of matter under some of its conditions. Mr. Sundaram Iyer meets this objection ably. “Aquosity,” it is said, is a property of oxygen and hydrogen in combination, though not in isolation. To this he answers, “chemical properties are either purely subjective facts or objectivo-subjective ones” (p. 57). They exist only in the consciousness of the percipient, and represent no external and independent reality. Psychologists of the type of Huxley would do well to recall this fact, apart from the considerations springing from other data.

Our author is loud in his praises of Panpsychism, that phase of pantheism which regards all matter as saturated with a potential psyche. He speaks of the “catholicity, sublimity and beauty ... not to say the philosophy, and logic, and truthfulness of this creed of thought.” It is, however, clear that some of the authorities he cites in support of this view, more especially Clifford, Tyndall, and Ueberweg, represent a phase of thought which is too materialistic to do justice to an elevated pantheistic concept. Clifford’s conscious mind-stuff is sublimated materialism, and Ueberweg speaks of those “sensations” present in “inanimate” objects which are “concentrated” in the human brain, as if they represented so many substances to be weighed in scales. Instructive and thoughtful as is the discussion of this subject (pp. 32-63), its value would have been increased by a survey of the pantheistic schools of German speculation, so many of whose conclusions are absolutely at one with esoteric views as to the Logos and the metaphysics of consciousness.

After discussing the primary and secondary (so-called) qualities of matter, as tabulated by Mill, Hamilton and others, Mr. Sundaram Iyer passes on the question: “What is force?”

“Force is matter ... it may be related to matter in ... four ways:—firstly, it may be an extraneous power to matter, acting upon it from without; secondly, it may be an inherent power in matter, influencing it from within, but yet distinct from the substance of matter; thirdly, it may be an innate power in matter, influencing it from within, and not distinct from the substance of matter; or fourthly, it may be a function of the substance of matter.” (p. 76-7.)

After an interesting criticism of current theories, he concludes that:—

“Function is simply the phenomenal effect of the latent cause, namely force, but never force itself. This potential existence, which is in matter, is a physical existence. If not it cannot, as shown before, produce any impression whatsoever upon or in the substance of matter.”

Matter is force and force is matter. It is not quite evident, however, whether this position is strictly reconcilable with the remark that “the primary qualities of matter are all simplifiable into ... extension and (its) motion (actual or possible).”

If force is a physical existence, and the real substance of matter at the same time, we get back no further into the mystery of what things-in-themselves really are. Physical existence remains the reality behind physical existence and the realization of matter and force, as aspects only of one basis, in no way simplifies the crux.

It is not clear, moreover, what is the exact meaning the author intends by the use of the word “force.” Is it motion—molar or molecular—or the unknown cause of motion? According to Professor Huxley, “force” is merely an expression used to denote the cause of motion, whatever that may be. We only know this cause in its aspect of motion, and cannot penetrate behind the veil in order to grasp the Noumenon of which motion is the phenomenal effect. The necessity, therefore, of recognising the fact that motion is all that falls within the cognizance of sense, forbids the (profane) scientist to use the term “force” as representative of anything but an abstraction. The question is complicated by the consideration that the substantiality of various so-called “forces” appears most probable, and that this substantiality becomes objectively real to sense, only on a plane beyond this—the domain of matter in its order of physical differentiations.

The materialistic doctrine that force merely = a motion of matter is contradicted by the fact that, as shown by Mill, motion can be temporarily neutralized. Lift a heavy weight on to a shelf and the mechanical energy expended in the act is latent in the potentiality of the weight to fall to the ground again. There is no immediate equivalent, as the attraction of the earth for the object remains the same (the now greater distance tending to diminish the amount though in a very minute degree.)

It may be further noted that, granting Mr. Sundaram Iyer’s definition of matter as “extension pure and simple,” to be correct (p. 112), it is difficult to understand how he predicates this barren content as endowed with motion (p. 83.) What moves?

The rest of the brochure is taken up with some excellent criticism of current conceptions of atoms, space and heterogenealism (a creed now so sorely wounded by Mr. Crooke’s “Protyle.”) Dealing with one of the late Mr. G. H. Lewe’s utterances, the author remarks with great truth: “By some mysterious law of occurrence the self-contradictions of the bulk of the erudite and enlightened are in point of gravity, palpableness, and number in direct proportion to their erudition and enlightenment.” With how many contrasted dicta from the pages of our Büchners, Spencers, Bains etc., etc., could this conclusion be supported.

One word before we close. Is the title of the work well chosen? It appears to us the least satisfactory sentence which has been traced by the writer’s pen. The definition of “mind as matter and matter as mind” not only offers no solution of the great psychological problem discussed, but does injustice to the contents of the work itself.

In the process of definition we “assemble representative examples of the phenomena,” under investigation and “our work lies in generalizing these, in detecting community in the midst of difference.” Now, there is no community whatever between mental and material facts. For as Professor Bain writes:

“Extension is but the first of a long series of properties all present in matter, all absent in mind ... our mental experience, our feelings and thoughts, have no extension, no place, no form[133] or outline, or mechanical division of parts; and we are incapable of attending to anything mental until we shut off the view of all that.”—“Mind and Body.” pp. 125 and 135.

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Footnote 133:

Nevertheless objectively viewed thoughts are actual entities to the occultist.

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The phenomenal contrast of mind and matter is not only at the root of our present constitution but an essential of our terrestrial consciousness. Duality is illusion in the ultimate analysis; but within the limits of a Universe-cycle or Great Manwantaræ it holds true. The two bases of manifested Being—the Logos (spirit) and Mulaprakriti, (Matter, or rather its Noumenon) are unified in the absolute reality, but in the Manvantaric Maya, under space and time conditions, they are contrasted though mutually interdependent aspects of the ONE CAUSE.

EDITORS’ NOTES.

We have a good deal of correspondence now in type, but must stand over till next month owing to lack of space.

In particular we wish to acknowledge a letter on Hylo-Idealism, signed C. N., forwarded to us by Dr. Lewins from a correspondent of his now in the East. This letter places Hylo-Idealism in a new and very different light, and its straightforward style and language are in strong contrast to the turgid effusions of such writers as G. M. McC. An extract from one of the latter’s letters to the “Secular Review” (January 7, 1888), for instance, says that “Specialism is Superficialism, and vice versa, both being fractionalism; and that the true desideratum is generalisationism (i.e. all-roundism and all-throughism), whereby and wherein the Kantian and Hegelian metaphysic may be precipitated and modern Materialism sublimed? There is only one alembic for both, and that is Solipsism—that true ‘wisdom of the ages,’ in which the profoundest thinker is at one with the little child.—G. M. McC.”!!![134]

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The following books have been received and will be noticed in due course:—

“Absolute Relativism; or, the Absolute in Relation,” by W. B. McTaggart. (W. Stewart & Co.)

“Spirit Revealed,” by Captain William C. Eldon Serjeant. (George Redway.)

“A Modern Apostle,” and other Poems, by Constance C. W. Naden. (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.)

“Manuel of Etheropathy,” by Dr. Count Manzetti.

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Footnote 134:

See also his letter under Correspondence.

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=Correspondence.=

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THE CHURCH AND THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT.

To the Editors of LUCIFER.

As it is often supposed that the clergy are required to be united as one man in teaching a doctrine called Atonement, and that this doctrine requires the clergy either to teach that “God required the blood of Jesus to be shed and offered as a sacrifice for an Atonement,” or to leave the Church if they reject it; therefore, since I reject this doctrine, it is sometimes wondered how I can either have been admitted to ordination, or, being admitted, how I can remain in, or expect to have a hearing in, the pulpits of the National Churches.

The explanation of my position is as follows:

I offered myself as a candidate for ordination much later than is usual; and one of the three beneficed clergy, whose testimonials, as to the candidate’s religious views being orthodox, each candidate is required to provide before being accepted as a candidate for examination and ordination, informed the Bishop of London (Jackson) that I did not hold Church of England views on the Atonement. The Bishop, therefore, before accepting me as a candidate, required a personal interview; when I told the Bishop, in reply to his question, whether I had any difficulty in accepting the doctrine of Atonement as taught in the second of the XXXIX. Articles, that I was entering the Church in order to teach, that it was the work of Jesus Christ to devote His life a living sacrifice to persuade us to believe that in His love, His mind, His spirit towards us, we saw (so far as it could be manifested in the human form) the love, mind, and spirit of God towards us; and that the sacrifice of Jesus consisted in His leaving nothing undone that love could do or suffer, even to drinking to its very dregs the cup of our hatred, whilst blind and ignorant, in order that we might accept and believe His testimony.

And, in addition, I told the Bishop that if the XXXIX. Articles did not allow of this teaching, and demanded of the clergy to believe and teach that “God required the blood of Jesus to be shed and offered as a sacrifice for an Atonement, either to appease God’s wrath, satisfy His justice, or propitiate His favour,” then such a doctrine was immoral, anti-Christian, contrary to the Scriptures, and made God to be no better than Shylock, a wolf, or a devil. And I dared the Bishop to refuse accepting me as a candidate.

The Bishop made no reply, neither assenting nor dissenting, and I returned to Petersham to await the result of this interview. After a day or two the Bishop’s chaplain wrote that I might consider my proposal to come to the Bishop’s examination for Orders accepted; and I was ordained without one word of comment upon the conversation at this private interview. But my first vicar only allowed me to preach three times, and then for the rest of the year he boycotted me from either preaching, reading, or even speaking in the parish, excepting only in a particular part of it. My second vicar, after allowing me to preach three times, also boycotted me entirely. I appealed to the Bishop, but he declined to interfere. So after striving in vain to find a clergyman who would allow me to preach what I was ordained to teach, I published pamphlets, and delivered them by the hundred and thousand at the church doors after the service, wherever there was a large congregation; but after a time the Bishop was appealed to to stop me; when he not only denied me, as Peter denied Jesus, but he threatened to instruct the police to prevent me; and the ruling powers at St Paul’s Cathedral did instruct the chief of the police to prevent me.

As a last resort, I write letters in the Press wherever I can find a newspaper willing to open its columns, to explain my views and appeal to the people to obtain liberty in the Church for teaching the truth of “Christ Crucified.” But so great is the opposition to this, that the chief organ of the Church and the Press (the Times) refuses even to allow me to advertise for a pulpit, on the ground that it is inadmissible; notwithstanding all the minutest details of divorce trials are freely admissible, thus proving that everything is admissible excepting one thing, viz.: the truth of Christ Crucified.

And yet the Archbishop of Canterbury has recently told the world that “the Church wishes the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, to be told,” and the Bishops of Carlisle, Durham, Peterborough, Manchester, Liverpool and Bedford, have also used words to the same effect. But although I have spent the best part of my life (17 years) in striving to find one clergyman (from the highest to the lowest), I have not found one who would allow this liberty to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, concerning Christ Crucified. And I appeal to the rulers of the Church to allow this liberty—and to the people to demand and obtain this liberty, if the rulers of the Church refuse it. For I have a letter from Canon Liddon, in which he says to me, “I can believe with all my heart, although I only know you from the two letters which you have written to me (upon my sermons), that if you were to preach, people would go to hear you as they go to hear me.” Is there not a cause then, why I should complain of being thus cruelly and unjustly boycotted for 17 years without any reason?

The chief organ of the Church and the Press (the Times) in the supposed chief Christian city in the world, refused to publish, even as an advertisement, any one of the three following appeals, on the ground that they were inadmissible. Yes, inadmissible, whilst all the minutest details of the Barrett trial, the Dilke trial, the Colin Campbell trial, the Seabright trial, and a host of others of a like nature, were all freely admissible.

I.

“A pulpit wanted, in the National Church, in which liberty will be allowed to teach the truth of Christ Crucified, openly and fearlessly, in order that it may no longer remain either a stumbling-block to the Jews, foolishness to the world, or a mystery to the teachers of it (as it is to this day, for want only of this liberty), but may verily be seen to be, as it is, and as St. Paul asserted it to be, the power of God, and wisdom of God for the salvation of all men.”

II.

“The Rev. T. G. Headley, of Petersham, S.W., appeals to the Clergy and people of the Church of England for a pulpit in which he may be allowed to preach seven sermons: I. on Unbelief; II. the Trial of Abraham; III. the Day of Judgment; IV. Mary Magdalene; V. Conversion of St. Paul; VI. Jesus, only; VII. Inspiration.”

III.

“The Rev. T. G. Headley, of Petersham, S.W., appeals to the Clergy for a pulpit in which he may be allowed to explain the mystery of Christ Crucified, that it may no longer remain a mystery.”

Rev. T. G. HEADLEY.

Manor House, Petersham, S.W.

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[This persistent refusal is the more remarkable as other preachers are allowed to teach worse, from an orthodox standpoint, of course. Is it inadmissible “to explain the mystery of Christ Crucified,” as the Rev. Mr. Headley is likely to, lest it should interfere with the explanation and description of Jehovah—“one with Christ Jesus” in the orthodox dogma—by the Rev. H. R. Haweis, M. A.? Says this truthful and cultured if not very pious orator: “At first the chief attributes of Satan were given to Jehovah. It was God who destroyed the world, hardened Pharaoh, tempted David, provoked to sin, and punished the sinner. This way of thinking lingered even as late as 700 B.C.: ‘I the Lord make peace and create evil’ (Isa. xlv. 7). We have an odd survival of this identification of God with the Devil in the word ‘Deuce,’ which is none other than ‘Deus,’ but which to us always means the Devil. As the Jew grew more spiritual he gradually transferred the devilish functions to a ‘Satan,’ or accusing spirit. The transition point appears in comparing the early passage (2 Sam. xxiv.), when God is said to ‘move’ David to number the people, with the later (1 Chron. xxi.), where Satan is said to be the instigator who ‘provoked’ the numbering. But Satan is not yet the King Devil. We can take up our Bible and trace the gradual transformation of Satan from an accusing angel into the King Devil of popular theology.”—(The Key, etc p. 22.) This, we believe, is an even more damaging teaching for the Orthodox Church than any theory about “Christ Crucified.” Mr. Headley seeks to prove Christ, the Rev. Haweis ridiculing and making away with the Devil, destroys and makes away for ever with Jesus, as Christ, also. For, as logically argued by Cardinal Ventura de Raulica, “to demonstrate the existence of Satan, is to re-establish ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL DOGMAS OF THE CHURCH, which serves as a basis for Christianity, and without which, Satan (and Jesus) would be but names”; or to put it in the still stronger terms of the pious Chevalier des Mousseaux, “The Devil is the chief pillar of Faith ... if it was not for him, the Saviour, the Crucified, the Redeemer, would be but the most ridiculous of supernumeraries, and the Cross an insult to good sense.” (See Isis Unveil. vol. i., 103; vol. ii., 14.) Truly so. Were there no Devil, a Christ to save the World from him would be hardly wanted! Yet, the Rev. Haweis says: (p. 24) “I cannot now discuss the teaching of the N. T. on the King Devil, or I might show that Jesus did not endorse the popular view of one King Devil, and ... notice the way in which our translators have played fast and loose with the words Diabolus and Satan;” adding that the Tree and Serpent worship was an Oriental cult, “of which the narrative of Adam and Eve is a Semitic form.” Is this admissible orthodoxy?—ED.]

SOCIALISM AND THEOSOPHY.

To the Editors of LUCIFER.

MESDAMES,—In the December number of LUCIFER Mr. J. B. Bright takes exception to some remarks on Socialism in an article on “Brotherhood,” which appeared in your pages a month previously.

As the writer of that article, I think it right to accept Mr. Bright’s challenge, and endeavour to replace my somewhat hasty generalisations by a more precise statement of the teachings of Theosophy, as they appear to me to bear on the question at issue.

Mr. Bright objects to my use of the phrase “materialistic Socialism.” My intention was to draw a distinction between that which “concerns itself primarily with the material or physical condition of mankind,” and that other form of purely voluntary association, springing, as regards each of its members, from a recognition of their unity of purpose, and the realisation of the idea of brotherhood, for an example of which we may turn to the communistic system of the early Christian Church. I would point out that this is not a fanciful distinction, as in the first case what is described as “a juster distribution of wealth” is the very essence of the Socialistic idea, while in the second it is only an incident, arising from the conviction that worldly possessions have in themselves no value in comparison with “the things of the spirit.” I maintain then that the teachings of Theosophy are opposed to “modern materialistic Socialism,” and I will endeavour to point out, as briefly as possible, in what this opposition consists.

There is at the outset a fundamental difference between Theosophy and Socialism in the value they attach to the “material and physical” well-being of mankind. Theosophy regards any given earth life as an infinitesimal link in the chain of lives which leads from the first glimmerings of a separate consciousness up to the very threshold of Divinity and All-knowledge. And taking the doctrines of Re-incarnation and Karma, as interacting laws, it sees in the apparent injustices of physical life, and in the inequalities of intellectual and moral development among mankind, the results of good or bad use made of opportunities in previous incarnations. The Universe is governed by the great law of Harmony, whose agent is Karma, and infractions of this law, or rebellion against it, are punished by the action of Karma, whether in the individual or the race. Thus the position of every individual in respect to his fellow men, and the position of every nation (the compound, as it were, of individual Karmas) in respect to other nations, is the direct result of previously acquired characteristics and affinities. The re-incarnation of an individual will be governed by his personal affinities; firstly, to the general Karma of his nation: secondly, to the particular circumstances of his parentage and condition in life. Theosophy therefore teaches that so far as regards his individual Karma, a man’s place in Society is what he has made it, and he has no right to cry out against the injustice of the law which he has broken, and which inexorably exacts the penalty of his default. This does not however quite hold good as regards the national or the cyclic Karma. It is quite possible that by the action of cyclic Karma injustice may be done to individuals, to be atoned for no doubt in future existences, but at the same time calculated to impede their due and regular development. The combating of this cyclic Karma, in so far as it deals unjustly with individuals, is the work of the great and wise ones of this earth, and every true Theosophist will to the best of his ability take part in the struggle. But the Socialist movement is itself a part of the cyclic Karma, and in its endeavour to rectify what seem, from its limited point of view, injustices, it cannot fail to be unjust to those the justice of whose position in life it declines to recognise. Thus it cannot be otherwise than that it should meet with opposition from those whose object is the improvement of humanity as a whole.

I must in the second place point out that the teaching of Theosophy is entirely opposed to the idea that any very great progress can be made by humanity as a whole, within the space of a few generations. Speaking of the destruction of evil in the human heart, the author of “Light on the Path” says, “Only the strong can kill it out. The weak must wait for its growth, its fruition, its death. And it is a plant which lives and increases throughout the ages. It flowers when man has accumulated unto himself innumerable existences.” This is undoubtedly Theosophical teaching, but I do not think it tallies with Mr. Bright’s view that “this self same society——contains within it all the germs of such a reconstruction of the physical environment as shall shortly place the means of spiritual and psychical regeneration within the reach of all.” It is impossible that Socialism or any other external organisation can “raise the intellectual and instinctive moral standard of the whole community to such an extent that all will, in the next generation after the Social Revolution, be amenable to the truths” of Theosophy. This would be equivalent to saying that every member of the community was prepared definitely to undertake the task of self-conquest, and it happens unfortunately that almost all the external work of Socialism is in the opposite direction. Further, it must be distinctly pointed out that this task of self-conquest must be undertaken and carried through by each man for himself, and only those who have reached a certain point in human evolution are ready for the struggle. There is one other point on which I feel some stress must be laid. It seems to me impossible that Theosophy, recognising as it does the immense gulf which exists between ordinary humanity (in which term I of course include all its followers), and those who are on the threshold of Divinity, can fail to recognise at the same time the principle of hierarchy in its best and noblest sense. I mean of course a spiritual hierarchy, but even this is incompatible with that innate hatred of domination which is so obvious in Socialism. There is no doubt some inconsistency in this hatred of domination, as in practice Socialists are prepared to substitute for the existing domination of intelligence that of mere numbers, but this, if anything, only makes the contrast between the two ideas somewhat stronger. It is only right to point out that an accepted disciple (not a mere student) practically surrenders his personal liberty, and pledges himself to obedience to those great ones who are the initiators of the Theosophical movement.

I have endeavoured thus far to particularise my general statement that the teachings of Theosophy were opposed to Socialism. I think Mr. Bright’s objections to my other statements are in effect answered in what I have already said, but I may perhaps be permitted to deal with them separately. If Mr. Bright has understood the meaning of the article on Brotherhood, he will, I think, see that whereas the Theosophical idea of brotherhood is based on the identity of the Divine spirit inherent in humanity, and thence working downwards, the brotherhood of Socialism is based on the assumption of equality on the material, or intellectual plane, and has, per se, no existence at all on the higher plane. The brotherhood of Theosophy, once rightly understood, will no doubt be manifested on the lower planes, but that does not make it the same thing as an idea of Brotherhood which begins and ends in physical existence.

As to my remark that Socialism is an attempt to interfere with the action of the Laws of Karma, I should perhaps have added the word “individual,” which, in conjunction with my reference to the parable of the talents, should make the meaning clear. Socialism aims at the levelling of classes, which is nothing else than a redistribution of the responsibilities of life. I understand the parable of the talents to indicate the true meaning of the differences in opportunities accorded to individuals during their life on earth. Every opportunity is also a responsibility, and from those to whom much is given much will be demanded. Further, responsibility is thrust upon those who can bear it, and to relieve them from it, and transfer it to the shoulders of the weaker brethren, is an interference with the laws of Karma, and can only lead to a retardation of the general evolution of humanity. I will only say in conclusion that I have endeavoured to confine my remarks to the view of Socialism advanced by Mr. Bright. It is indeed hardly necessary to point out that Theosophy can never be a party to the incitements to violence, and the appeals to the baser passions which Mr. Bright rightly deprecates, but which are unfortunately too often the stock-in-trade of the Socialist orator.

I feel that there are many points in Mr. Bright’s letter to which I should be glad to reply more in detail, but I fear that in so doing I might be considered as trenching too much on those purely political aspects of the question which are outside the scope of Theosophical work.

I am, Mesdames, Your obedient servant, THOS. B. HARBOTTLE.

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WHAT IS THEOSOPHY?

The question is answered by Schopenhauer as follows:

“... Starting from the plane of mental conception (Vorstellung), and proceeding on our way towards the attainment of objective knowledge, we shall never be able to arrive at a higher point than our own conception (imagination), i.e. of the external appearance of the object of our observation; but we shall never be able to penetrate into the interior of the things and to find out what they really are (not what they merely appear to be). So far I agree with Kant. But as a counterpoise to this truth I have called attention to another one; namely, that we are not merely the cognising subject, but we are also ourselves a part of object of our cognition, we are ourselves the Thing itself. There is consequently an interior way open to us from that self-existing and interior essence of things, which we cannot approach from the outside; a kind of subterranean passage, a secret connection, by which we by treason, as it were, may at once penetrate into a fortress which was impregnable from the outside. The Thing itself can as such enter our consciousness only in a direct manner, i.e. by becoming conscious of its own self. To attempt to know it objectively is to ask for a self-contradiction.” (The World as Will and Conception. Vol. ii., Cap. 18).

What Schopenhauer expresses in modern philosophical language might perhaps be stated in a few words by saying, that man cannot become conscious of the truth unless the truth is in him, and in that case it is not the man who recognises the truth, but the truth which recognises itself in man. He who wants to know it objectively must separate himself from it, because no one can see his own face without the help of a mirror; but if he separates himself from it, the truth exists in him no longer. It is therefore the truth itself which may become self-conscious in man, provided there exists any truth in him.

F. H.

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A NOTE OF EXPLANATION.

I would much rather suffer an unintentional misrepresentation of my meaning than take the trouble to reply, and have no desire to magnify small matters of difference. But a very critical friend calls my attention to certain statements and apparent discrepancies in the “Esoteric Character of the Gospels,” on which I will beg leave to say a word.

I find it affirmed on p. 300, in a foot-note, that “Mr. G. Massey is not correct in saying that ‘The Gnostic form of the name Chrest or Chrestos denotes the Good God, not a human original,’ for it denoted the latter, that is, a good, holy man.” But either the statement has no meaning as an answer to me, or it is based on a misunderstanding of mine.[135] I was showing that the original Christ of the Gnosis was not one particular form of human personality, like the supposed historic Christ, and that the name denoted a divine, and not a human original. I was perfectly well aware, as your quotations show, that the name was afterwards conferred on the “good” as the Chrestoi or Chrestiani. Nor do I say, or anywhere imply, that the “Karest,” or mummy-type of immortality was the only form of the Christ, as your quotations again will prove. I have written enough about that Gnostic Christ who was the Immortal Self in man, the reflection of, or emanation from, the divine nature in humanity, and in both sexes, not merely in one.[136] This is the Christ that never could become a one person or be limited to one sex. This you accept and preach; yet you can add “Still the personage (Jesus) so addressed by Paul—wherever he lived—was a great initiate, and a ‘Son of God.’”[137] But the Christos of Paul, being the Gnostic Christ, as you admit (301), it cannot be a personage named Jesus, or a great Initiate, who was addressed by him. It appears to me that in passages like these, you are giving away all that is worth contending for, and vouching for that which never has been, and never can be, proved. I have searched for Jesus many years in the Gospels and elsewhere without being able to catch hold of the hem of the garment of any human personality. Ben-Pandira we know a little of, but cannot make him out in the Christ of the Gospels. The Christ of the Gnosis can be identified, but not with any historic Jesus.

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Footnote 135:

The remark made has never been meant as “an answer,” but simply as an observation that the word “Chrestos” applied to a “good man,” a “human original,” and not to a “good God only.” If such was not the intention of Mr. Massey, and he amplifies his idea elsewhere, it was not so amplified in his article in the “Agnostic Annual.” It is, therefore, simply a bare statement of facts referring to that particular article and no more. I do not for one moment oppose Mr. Massey’s conclusions, nor doubt his undeniable learning in the direction of those particular researches, i.e., about the words “Christos” and “Chrestos.” What I say is, that he limits them to the negation of an historical Christ, and, for reasons no doubt very weighty, does not touch upon their principal esoteric meaning in the temple-phraseology of the Mysteries.—H.P.B.

Footnote 136:

This is absolutely and preeminently a Theosophical doctrine taught ever since 1875, when the Theosophical Society was founded.—[ED.]

Footnote 137:

This, I am afraid, is a misunderstanding (due, no doubt, to my own fault) on the part of our learned correspondent, of the meaning that was intended to be conveyed in the articles now criticized. If he goes to the trouble of reading over again the paragraph that misled him (see p. 307, 5th paragraph), he will, perhaps, see that it is so. That which was really meant was that, though the terms Christos and Chréstos are generic surnames, still, the personage so addressed (not by Paul, necessarily, but by any one), was a great Initiate and a “Son of God.” It is the name “Jesus,” placed in the sentence in parentheses that made it both clumsy and misleading. Whether Paul knew of Jehoshua Ben Pandira (and he must have heard of him), or not, he could never have applied the surname used by him to Jesus or any other historic Christ. Otherwise his Epistles would not have been withheld and exiled as they were. The sentence which precedes the two incriminated statements, shows that no such thing, as understood by Mr. Massey, could have been really meant, as it is said “Occultism pure and simple finds the same mystic elements in the Christian as in other faiths, though it rejects emphatically its dogmatic and historic character.” The two statements, viz., that Jesus or Jehoshua Ben Pandira whenever he lived, was a great Initiate and the “Son of God”—just as Apollonius of Tyana was—and that Paul never meant either him or any other living Initiate, but a metaphysical Christos present in, and personal to, every mystic Gnostic as to every initiated Pagan—are not at all irreconcileable. A man may know of several great Initiates, and yet place his own ideal on a far higher pedestal than any of these.—[H.P.B.]

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We do not go to the Christian Gospels to learn the true nature of the Christ, or the incarnation according to the Gnostic religion (I use this term in preference to yours of the “Wisdom-Religion,” as being more definite and explanatory; not as a religion, supposed by the Idiotai to have followed in the wake of Historic Christianity!). These were known in Egypt, more than six thousand years ago. When the monuments began the Cult of the Supreme God Atum was extant. We know not how many æons earlier, but six thousand years will do. Atum = Adam was the divine father of an eternal soul which was personated as his son, named Iu-em-hept (the Greek Imothos or Æsculapius), an image of whom used to be seen (on shelf 3,578, b. 1874), in the British Museum. He was the second Atum = Adam, and is called the “Eternal Word” in the Ritual. In external phenomena this type represented the Solar God, re-born monthly or annually in the lunar orb; in human phenomena the Christ or Son of God as the essential and eternal soul in man. But he was neither a man nor an Initiate. He was just what the Logos, the Word of Truth or Ma-Kheru, the Buddha or Christ is in other Cults.[138]

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Footnote 138:

Nor shall I dispute this statement in general. But this does not invalidate in one iota my claim. The temple priests assumed the names of the gods they served, and this is as well known a fact, as that the defunct Egyptian became an “Osiris”—was “osirified”—after his death. Yet Osiris was assuredly neither “man nor an Initiate,” but a being hardly recognised as such by the Royal Society of materialistic science. Why, then, could not an “Initiate,” who had succeeded in merging his spiritual being into the Christos state, be regarded as a Christos after his last and supreme initiation, just as he was called Chrestos before that? Neither Plotinus, Porphyry nor Apollonius were Christians, yet, according to esoteric teaching, Plotinus realized this sublime state (of becoming or uniting himself with his Christos) six times, Apollonius of Tyana four times, while Porphyry reached the exalted state only once, when over sixty years of age. The Gnostics called the “Word” “Abraxas” and “Christos” indiscriminately, and by whatever name we may call it, whether Ma-Kheru, or Christos or Abraxas, it is all one. That mystic state which gives to our inner being the impulse that attracts “the soul toward its origin and centre, the Eternal good,” as Plotinus teaches, and makes of man a god, the Christos or the unknown made manifest, is a preeminently theosophical condition. It belonged to the temple mysteries, and the teachings of the Neo-Platonists.—[H.P.B.]

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I cordially agree with “M,” a correspondent whom you quote, and wish that all our orthodox friends would as frankly face the facts. If any historic Jesus ever did claim to be the Gnostic Christ made flesh[139] once for all, he would be the supremest impostor in history.

Let us define to ourselves very strictly what it is we do mean, or we shall introduce the direst confusion into the conflict, and we shall be unable to distinguish the face of friend from foe in the cloud of battle-dust which we may raise. What I find is, that Historic Christianity was based either upon the suppression or the perversion of all that was esoteric in Gnostic Christianity. And to bring any aid from the one to the support of the other is to try and re-establish with the left hand all that you are knocking down with the right.

I am also taken to task on page 307 for alluding to the Bible as a “Magazine of falsehoods already exploded, or just going off,” by the writer who adds force to my words later on in characterizing these same writings as a “Magazine of (wicked) falsehoods”[140] (p. 178), which was going farther than I went, who do set down as much to ignorance as to knavery. What I meant was, that the “Fall of Man” in the Old Testament, is a falsification of fable, now exploded, and that the redemption from that fall, which is promised in the New, whether by an “Initiate” or “Son of God” is a fraud based on the fable, and a falsehood that is going to be exploded. There is no call to mix up the Book of the Dead, the Vedas, or any other sacred writings, in this matter. Each tub must stand on its own bottom, and the one that won’t, can’t hold water.[141]

GERALD MASSEY.

P.S. By the by, I see the Adventists, and other misleading Delusionists are all agog just now about the wonderful fulfilment of prophecy, and corroboration of historic fact, that we are now witnessing. The “Star of Bethlehem” has reappeared, so they say, to prove the truth of the Christian story. But, sad to say, it is not the star of Christ that is now visible in the south-east before sunrise every morning. It is Venus in her heliacal rising. It is Venus as the Maleess, or Lucifer as “Sun of the Morning.” This particular Star of Bethlehem—there are various others less brilliant and less noticeable—generally does return once every nineteen months or so, when the planet Venus is the Morning Star. Only the gaping camel-swallowers, who know all about the “Star of Bethlehem,” and the fulfilment of prophecy, are not up in Astronomy, and they will no doubt squirm and strain at this small gnat of real fact offered to them by way of an explanation.

G. M.

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Footnote 139:

“Christ made flesh,” would be a claim worse than imposture, as it would be absurdity, but a man of flesh assuming the Christ-condition temporarily, is indeed an occult, yet living, fact.—[ED.]

Footnote 140:

Just so, if it has been originally written to be accepted in its dead letter sense. But, as I entirely agree with Mr. Massey, that historic Christianity was based upon the suppression, and especially the perversion of that which was esoteric in gnosticism, it is difficult to see in what it is that we disagree? The perversion of esoteric facts in the gospels is not so cleverly done as to prevent the true occultist from reading the Gospel narratives between the lines.—[H.P.B.]

Footnote 141:

If Mr. G. Massey kindly waits till the conclusion of “the Esoteric character of the gospels” to criticise the statements, he may perhaps arrive at the conviction that we are not so far apart in our ideas upon this particular question as he seems to think. Of course my critic being an Egyptologist, opposed to the Aryan theory, and arriving at his conclusions only by what he finds in strictly authenticated and accepted documents—and I, as a Theosophist and an Occultist of a certain school, accepting my proofs on data which he rejects—i.e. esoteric teachings—we can hardly agree upon every point. But the question is not whether there was or never was an historical Christ, or Jesus, between the years 1 and 33 A.D.—but simply were the Gospels of the gnostics (of Marcion and others, for instance) perverted later by Christians—esoteric allegories founded on facts, or simply meaningless fictions? I believe the former, and esoteric teachings explain many of the allegories.—[H.P.B.]

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[We give room to this remarkable letter with the object of comparison. The Secularists are loud in proclaiming the modes of expression of the Theosophists as “stultic profundity,” and the Esoteric Doctrine as “a hopeless chaos,” a “rudely methodised madness.” At the same time the Hylo-Idealists are PERSONÆ GRATISSIMÆ in the “Secular Review,” and no such remarks are passed about their theories and style. Readers please to compare. “Fiat Justitia, ruat Saladinus!”—ED.]

HYLO-IDEALISM—THE SECRET OF JESUS.

“Behold, the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”

The primacy of Self is indisputable, if by reason of one fact only—that this, self-same, Self is the initial postulate of all sane philosophy. And, when Philosophy soars to Metaphysic, Scientific Analysis “takes up the wondrous tale,” and its burden is Self-hood also. All roads lead to Rome. All analysis runs into the Egoistic Synthesis. “The One [Ego] remains, the Many change and pass.” Yet the passing is only the flux and ebb of the One. In Hegel’s words, “that which passes away passes away into its own self: only the passing away passes away.” Which things are an allegory, and yet “solvitur ambulando.” A recent traveller in the United States tells us, that, in the Emerson country, he chanced upon cross-roads, and found there an apparently contradictory direction-post. One arm of it bore the inscription, “This is the way to Concord,” the other, pointing in the opposite direction, was similarly worded, “This is the way to Concord.” The Hylo-Ideal Thesis is this Ideal Concord, to be reached whether you travel by way of Eastern Idealism, or by the route of plainer Western Materialism. For, and here all contradictions are reconciled, in the one Subject-object which is Self, there is no diversity, neither Jew nor Greek, neither Idealism only, nor Materialism only, or exclusively, but all is one.[142] And in Unity there is no class distinction, no nomenclature, no “otherness,” no Ebal and Gerizim, but only the Mount of God. What the Ego is, all is.[143] It is the x of every problem and answers to any value save the spurious and indifferent one of the Dualist.

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Footnote 142:

Hence the Spirit of Non-Separateness in esoteric philosophy must be the ONE truth.—ED.

Footnote 143:

Only this “Ego” is universal, not individual: Absolute Consciousness, not the human Brain.—ED.

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I find Hylo-Idealism (Auto-centricism)—this “pearl of great price”—canvassed and examined by many modern thinkers, only to be contemptuously cast away, though it would have made each one of them in turn “richer than all his tribe.” But it was ever thus. In this rejection there is no despair in the view of the illuminati. All is ours, and paltering with the central truth of SOLIPSISM, as men have ever paltered, does not change or diminish the truth itself, or lessen the assurance of its ultimate victory, since to go from, or flee from, the Egoistic presence is an impossibility. We wander here and there, but to seek to transcend ourselves is vain. There must, sooner or later, be the resipiscentia, the coming home at last to Self, and Self only, as to the better home at last.

In this view there is no Logos—save that indisputable one, which maketh all things to every one of us—no “true Light” save that effulgent one which “lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” namely, his own creative and illuminating Egoity—sans which there is but nothingness. Such a Gospel as this should be termed the Evangel of common-sense were it not that that phrase shows only one side of the question—“Virginibus, puerisque est” but it is also the very acme of the exalted intelligence, “the last and sharpest height” of human thought where the atmosphere is all too rare for mortal breath.

The highest and the lowliest[144] are ever thus akin—“Aryan worship secreted in the Holy of Holies the utensils of the dairy.” Grasp but the centre truth of truths—that the Ego and its products are one, that every one of us spins, from his own consciousness, the web of thing and circumstance, which envelopes him—and you see at once and as it were instinctively, that in this Universe-circle of Egoity there is no “otherness” even thinkable, no lower and no higher, no difference, nothing essentially common or unclean, everything being, not so much cleansed of God, as very THEOBROMA,[145] God’s food and nutrient element, seeing that in it, and by it, and through it, we and all things CONSUBSTANTIALLY EXIST.

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Footnote 144:

Then why not term the philosophy “High-Low-Idealism” vice “Hylo-Idealism”?—ED.

Footnote 145:

“Theobroma”—the same as cacao-butter. We take exception to the phraseology, not to Dr. Lewins’ ideas.—ED.

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Thus veræ causæ and other figments are not so much unsearchable, or past finding out, as out of court or indifferent. Whether all be of God, or all be from a “clam-shell,” does not matter—does not, by one jot, affect our Thesis. Indifferently we are by origin, patricians or “gutter-snipes.” The Ego is free of the Cosmos—equal to either fortune, high or low, makes its own universe, calls it by its own name, and it “lives and moves and has its being.”

G. M. McC.

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GERALD MASSEY ON SHAKSPEARE.

Mr. Massey has sent us a circular, the contents of which should be of interest to the lovers of Shakspeare and the buyers of rare books. The writer says:

“My work on the Secret Drama of Shakspeare’s Sonnets, with Sketches of his Private Friends, and of his own Life and Character, first published in the year 1866, the Second Edition of which was issued, with a Supplement, for Subscribers in 1872, has now been out of print many years. It is frequently enquired for, and very rarely to be found in the catalogues of second-hand booksellers. Therefore I am about to reproduce the work. It will have to be re-cast and re-written where necessary, as the writing can now be more definitely done. Errors must be confessed and corrected. The new volume will be on lines similar to those of the earlier work, accentuated in many of the details, but modified in others. There will be something new and more decisive to say concerning both sets of the Sonnets, which I call the Southampton and Herbert series; and not without reason or warrant will the Comparative method be pushed much farther than before. The work will be written up to date in the light of the latest knowledge. The most recent data, the latest results of Shakspearian Siftings, will be utilised; and something will have to be said concerning the current Baconian Craze, which was no doubt foreseen by the Great Humourist when he wrote, ‘A most fine figure! To prove you a Cypher!’ is my aim to fight one last battle on this field for what I maintain to be the cause of truth and right; to entrust a final answer on the Sonnet question to the types of John Guttenberg, and leave in his safe keeping a plea that shall be heard hereafter, as a permanent memorial to the writer’s love and admiration for Shakspeare the Poet and Man. After twenty years the ground is felt to be firmer underfoot. The building will have a more concrete base. I am enabled to give a closer clinch to my conclusions, and, as I think, complete my case. Necessarily the book must be large, 700 or 800 pp. The price will be One Guinea.”

=CORRESPONDENCE=

INTERESTING TO ASTROLOGERS.

ASTROLOGICAL NOTES—No. 3.

To the Editor of LUCIFER.

Question, at London, 11.45 a.m., Feb. 26th, 1887.

Will the quesited die from his present illness?

Hearing by letter that my uncle, an octogenarian, was seriously ill from pneumonia, I drew a figure for the moment of the impression to do so, which occurred while reading the communication. His illness had commenced about February 7th, and he was now confined to his bed.

The following are the elements of the figure:—

Cusp of 10th house 0° ♓.

— 11th house 3° ♈.

— 12th house 20° ♉.

— 1st house 4° 38’♋.

— 2nd house 20° ♋.

— 3rd house 8° ♌.

Planets’ places: ♆ 25° 10’ ♉; ♅ 11° 46 R ♎; ♄ 15° 54’ R ♉. ♃ 5° 48’ R ♏; ♂ 20° 31’ 31” ♓; ☉ 7° 35’ 50” ♓; ♀ 27° 53’ 14” ♓; ☿ 23° 18’ 58” ♓; ☽ 16° 22’ 36” ♈. Caput Draconis 27° 35’ ☊; ⨁ 13 24’ ♌.

As the quesited was the 4th of my mother’s brothers and sisters, my mother being the 8th and last, I took the 10th house of the figure for herself, the 12th (or 3rd from the 10th) for her eldest brother or sister, the 2nd for the 2nd, the 4th for the 3rd, the 6th for the 4th—the quesited—and the 1st (the 8th from the 6th) for his 8th, or house of death. ♂ was lord of his first house, and ☽ of his 8th. The aspect was ☽ 25° 51’ 5” ♂, separating from the quindecile, and applying to the semisextile. As the significators were in good aspects, separating from one and applying to the other, and within orbs of both, it signified sure recovery; more especially as ♂ received ☽ by house, and was dignified by triplicity. Nevertheless, the severity of the illness was shown by Cauda Draconis in quesited’s 4th house; by ♄, lord of quesited’s 4th, posited in quesited’s 8th, retrograde, in his detriment, and in close □ to ☽, lady of quesited’s 8th and posited in his 6th. Furthermore, as ☽, the applying planet of the two significators, was in a cardinal sign and in a succeedent house of the figure, each degree signified a week; therefore as ☽ wanted 4° 8’ 55” of the perfect semisextile aspect, I judged that he would be convalescent in 4 weeks and 1 day, or March 27th. On March 29th he walked out in his garden for the first time, and fully recovered from his attack.

NEMO.

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ERRATUM.—Page 76, 2nd column, line 2, for ♍ read ♏.

LUCIFER

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VOL. I. LONDON, FEBRUARY 15TH, 1888. NO. 6.

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“WHAT IS TRUTH?”

“Truth is the Voice of Nature and of Time— Truth is the startling monitor within us— Nought is without it, it comes from the stars, The golden sun, and every breeze that blows....”

—W. THOMPSON BACON.

“... Fair Truth’s immortal sun Is sometimes hid in clouds; not that her light Is in itself defective, but obscured By my weak prejudice, imperfect faith And all the thousand causes which obstruct The growth of goodness....”

—HANNAH MORE.

“What is Truth?” asked Pilate of one who, if the claims of the Christian Church are even approximately correct, must have known it. But He kept silent. And the truth which He did not divulge, remained unrevealed, for his later followers as much as for the Roman Governor. The silence of Jesus, however, on this and other occasions, does not prevent his present followers from acting as though they had received the ultimate and absolute Truth itself; and from ignoring the fact that only such Words of Wisdom had been given to them as contained a share of the truth, itself concealed in parables and dark, though beautiful, sayings.[146]

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Footnote 146:

Jesus says to the “Twelve”—“Unto you is given the mystery of the Kingdom of God; but unto them that are without, all things are done in parables,“ etc. (Mark iv. II.)

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This policy led gradually to dogmatism and assertion. Dogmatism in churches, dogmatism in science, dogmatism everywhere. The possible truths, hazily perceived in the world of abstraction, like those inferred from observation and experiment in the world of matter, are forced upon the profane multitudes, too busy to think for themselves, under the form of Divine revelation and Scientific authority. But the same question stands open from the days of Socrates and Pilate down to our own age of wholesale negation: is there such a thing as absolute truth in the hands of any one party or man? Reason answers, “there cannot be.” There is no room for absolute truth upon any subject whatsoever, in a world as finite and conditioned as man is himself. But there are relative truths, and we have to make the best we can of them.

In every age there have been Sages who had mastered the absolute and yet could teach but relative truths. For none yet, born of mortal woman in our race, has, or could have given out, the whole and the final truth to another man, for every one of us has to find that (to him) final knowledge in himself. As no two minds can be absolutely alike, each has to receive the supreme illumination through itself, according to its capacity, and from no human light. The greatest adept living can reveal of the Universal Truth only so much as the mind he is impressing it upon can assimilate, and no more. Tot homines, quot sententiæ—is an immortal truism. The sun is one, but its beams are numberless; and the effects produced are beneficent or maleficent, according to the nature and constitution of the objects they shine upon. Polarity is universal, but the polariser lies in our own consciousness. In proportion as our consciousness is elevated towards absolute truth, so do we men assimilate it more or less absolutely. But man’s consciousness again, is only the sunflower of the earth. Longing for the warm ray, the plant can only turn to the sun, and move round and round in following the course of the unreachable luminary: its roots keep it fast to the soil, and half its life is passed in the shadow....

Still each of us can relatively reach the Sun of Truth even on this earth, and assimilate its warmest and most direct rays, however differentiated they may become after their long journey through the physical particles in space. To achieve this, there are two methods. On the physical plane we may use our mental polariscope; and, analyzing the properties of each ray, choose the purest. On the plane of spirituality, to reach the Sun of Truth we must work in dead earnest for the development of our higher nature. We know that by paralyzing gradually within ourselves the appetites of the lower personality, and thereby deadening the voice of the purely physiological mind—that mind which depends upon, and is inseparable from, its medium or vehicle, the organic brain—the animal man in us may make room for the spiritual; and once aroused from its latent state, the highest spiritual senses and perceptions grow in us in proportion, and develop pari passu with the “divine man.” This is what the great adepts, the Yogis in the East and the Mystics in the West, have always done and are still doing.

But we also know, that with a few exceptions, no man of the world, no materialist, will ever believe in the existence of such adepts, or even in the possibility of such a spiritual or psychic development. “The (ancient) fool hath said in his heart, There is no God”; the modern says, “There are no adepts on earth, they are figments of your diseased fancy.” Knowing this we hasten to reassure our readers of the Thomas Didymus type. We beg them to turn in this magazine to reading more congenial to them; say to the miscellaneous papers on Hylo-Idealism, by various writers.[147]

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Footnote 147:

e.g., to the little article “Autocentricism”—on the same “philosophy,” or again, to the apex of the Hylo-Idealist pyramid in this Number. It is a letter of protest by the learned Founder of the School in question, against a mistake of ours. He complains of our “coupling” his name with those of Mr. Herbert Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, and others, on the question of atheism and materialism, as the said lights in the psychological and physical sciences are considered by Dr. Lewins too flickering, too “compromising” and weak, to deserve the honourable appellation of Atheists or even Agnostics. See “Correspondence” in Double Column, and the reply by “The Adversary.”

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For LUCIFER tries to satisfy its readers of whatever “school of thought,” and shows itself equally impartial to Theist and Atheist, Mystic and Agnostic, Christian and Gentile. Such articles as our editorials, the Comments on “Light on the Path,” etc, etc.—are not intended for Materialists. They are addressed to Theosophists, or readers who know in their hearts that Masters of Wisdom do exist: and, though absolute truth is not on earth and has to be searched for in higher regions, that there still are, even on this silly, ever-whirling little globe of ours, some things that are not even dreamt of in Western philosophy.

To return to our subject. It thus follows that, though “general abstract truth is the most precious of all blessings” for many of us, as it was for Rousseau, we have, meanwhile, to be satisfied with relative truths. In sober fact, we are a poor set of mortals at best, ever in dread before the face of even a relative truth, lest it should devour ourselves and our petty little preconceptions along with us. As for an absolute truth, most of us are as incapable of seeing it as of reaching the moon on a bicycle. Firstly, because absolute truth is as immovable as the mountain of Mahomet, which refused to disturb itself for the prophet, so that he had to go to it himself. And we have to follow his example if we would approach it even at a distance. Secondly, because the kingdom of absolute truth is not of this world, while we are too much of it. And thirdly, because notwithstanding that in the poet’s fancy man is

“... the abstract Of all perfection, which the workmanship Of heaven hath modelled....”

in reality he is a sorry bundle of anomalies and paradoxes, an empty wind bag inflated with his own importance, with contradictory and easily influenced opinions. He is at once an arrogant and a weak creature, which, though in constant dread of some authority, terrestrial or celestial, will yet—

“... like an angry ape, Play such fantastic tricks before high Heaven As make the angels weep.”

Now, since truth is a multifaced jewel, the facets of which it is impossible to perceive all at once; and since, again, no two men, however anxious to discern truth, can see even one of those facets alike, what can be done to help them to perceive it? As physical man, limited and trammelled from every side by illusions, cannot reach truth by the light of his terrestrial perceptions, we say—develop in you the inner knowledge. From the time when the Delphic oracle said to the enquirer “Man, know thyself,” no greater or more important truth was ever taught. Without such perception, man will remain ever blind to even many a relative, let alone absolute, truth. Man has to know himself, i.e., acquire the inner perceptions which never deceive, before he can master any absolute truth. Absolute truth is the symbol of Eternity, and no finite mind can ever grasp the eternal, hence, no truth in its fulness can ever dawn upon it. To reach the state during which man sees and senses it, we have to paralyze the senses of the external man of clay. This is a difficult task, we may be told, and most people will, at this rate, prefer to remain satisfied with relative truths, no doubt. But to approach even terrestrial truths requires, first of all, love of truth for its own sake, for otherwise no recognition of it will follow. And who loves truth in this age for its own sake? How many of us are prepared to search for, accept, and carry it out, in the midst of a society in which anything that would achieve success has to be built on appearances, not on reality, on self-assertion, not on intrinsic value? We are fully aware of the difficulties in the way of receiving truth. The fair heavenly maiden descends only on a (to her) congenial soil—the soil of an impartial, unprejudiced mind, illuminated by pure Spiritual Consciousness; and both are truly rare dwellers in civilized lands. In our century of steam and electricity, when man lives at a maddening speed that leaves him barely time for reflection, he allows himself usually to be drifted down from cradle to grave, nailed to the Procrustean bed of custom and conventionality. Now conventionality—pure and simple—is a congenital LIE, as it is in every case a “simulation of feelings according to a received standard” (F. W. Robertson’s definition); and where there is any simulation there cannot be any truth. How profound the remark made by Byron, that “truth is a gem that is found at a great depth; whilst on the surface of this world all things are weighed by the false scales of custom,” is best known to those who are forced to live in the stifling atmosphere of such social conventionalism, and who, even when willing and anxious to learn, dare not accept the truths they long for, for fear of the ferocious Moloch called Society.

Look around you, reader; study the accounts given by world-known travellers, recall the joint observations of literary thinkers, the data of science and of statistics. Draw the picture of modern society, of modern politics, of modern religion and modern life in general before your mind’s eye. Remember the ways and customs of every cultured race and nation under the sun. Observe the doings and the moral attitude of people in the civilized centres of Europe, America, and even of the far East and the colonies, everywhere where the white man has carried the “benefits” of so-called civilization. And now, having passed in review all this, pause and reflect, and then name, if you can, that blessed Eldorado, that exceptional spot on the globe, where TRUTH is the honoured guest, and LIE and SHAM the ostracised outcasts? YOU CANNOT. Nor can any one else, unless he is prepared and determined to add his mite to the mass of falsehood that reigns supreme in every department of national and social life. “Truth!” cried Carlyle, “truth, though the heavens crush me for following her, no falsehood, though a whole celestial Lubberland were the prize of Apostasy.” Noble words, these. But how many think, and how many will dare to speak as Carlyle did, in our nineteenth century day? Does not the gigantic appalling majority prefer to a man the “paradise of Do-nothings,” the pays de Cocagne of heartless selfishness? It is this majority that recoils terror-stricken before the most shadowy outline of every new and unpopular truth, out of mere cowardly fear, lest Mrs. Harris should denounce, and Mrs. Grundy condemn, its converts to the torture of being rent piecemeal by her murderous tongue.

SELFISHNESS, the first-born of Ignorance, and the fruit of the teaching which asserts that for every newly-born infant a new soul, separate and distinct from the Universal Soul, is “created”—this Selfishness is the impassable wall between the personal Self and Truth. It is the prolific mother of all human vices. Lie being born out of the necessity for dissembling, and Hypocrisy out of the desire to mask Lie. It is the fungus growing and strengthening with age in every human heart in which it has devoured all better feelings. Selfishness kills every noble impulse in our natures, and is the one deity, fearing no faithlessness or desertion from its votaries. Hence, we see it reign supreme in the world and in so-called fashionable society. As a result, we live, and move, and have our being in this god of darkness under his trinitarian aspect of Sham, Humbug, and Falsehood, called RESPECTABILITY.

Is this Truth and Fact, or is it slander? Turn whichever way you will, and you find, from the top of the social ladder to the bottom, deceit and hypocrisy at work for dear Self’s sake, in every nation as in every individual. But nations, by tacit Agreement, have decided that selfish motives in politics shall be called “noble national aspiration, patriotism,” etc.; and the citizen views it in his family circle as “domestic virtue.” Nevertheless, Selfishness, whether it breeds desire for aggrandizement of territory, or competition in commerce at the expense of one’s neighbour, can never be regarded as a virtue. We see smooth-tongued DECEIT and BRUTE FORCE—the Jachin and Boaz of every International Temple of Solomon—called Diplomacy, and we call it by its right name. Because the diplomat bows low before these two pillars of national glory and politics, and puts their masonic symbolism “in (cunning) strength shall this my house be established” into daily practice; i.e., gets by deceit what he cannot obtain by force—shall we applaud him? A diplomat’s qualification—“dexterity or skill in securing advantages“—for one’s own country at the expense of other countries, can hardly be achieved by speaking truth, but verily by a wily and deceitful tongue; and, therefore, LUCIFER calls such action—a living, and an evident LIE.

But it is not in politics alone that custom and selfishness have agreed to call deceit and lie virtue, and to reward him who lies best with public statues. Every class of Society lives on LIE, and would fall to pieces without it. Cultured, God-and-law-fearing aristocracy being as fond of the forbidden fruit as any plebeian, is forced to lie from morn to noon in order to cover what it is pleased to term its “little peccadillos,” but which TRUTH regards as gross immorality. Society of the middle classes is honeycombed with false smiles, false talk, and mutual treachery. For the majority religion has become a thin tinsel veil thrown over the corpse of spiritual faith. The master goes to church to deceive his servants; the starving curate—preaching what he has ceased to believe in—hood-winks his bishop; the bishop—his God. Dailies, political and social, might adopt with advantage for their motto Georges Dandin’s immortal query—“Lequel de nous deux trompe-t-on ici?”—Even Science, once the anchor of the salvation of Truth, has ceased to be the temple of naked Fact. Almost to a man the Scientists strive now only to force upon their colleagues and the public the acceptance of some personal hobby, of some new-fangled theory, which will shed lustre on their name and fame. A Scientist is as ready to suppress damaging evidence against a current scientific hypothesis in our times, as a missionary in heathen-land, or a preacher at home, to persuade his congregation that modern geology is a lie, and evolution but vanity and vexation of spirit.

Such is the actual state of things in 1888 A.D., and yet we are taken to task by certain papers for seeing this year in more than gloomy colours!

Lie has spread to such extent—supported as it is by custom and conventionalities—that even chronology forces people to lie. The suffixes A.D. and B.C. used after the dates of the year by Jew and Heathen, in European and even Asiatic lands, by the Materialist and the Agnostic as much as by the Christian, at home, are—a lie used to sanction another LIE.

Where then is even relative truth to be found? If, so far back as the century of Democritus, she appeared to him under the form of a goddess lying at the very bottom of a well, so deep that it gave but little hope for her release; under the present circumstances we have a certain right to believe her hidden, at least, as far off as the ever invisible dark side of the moon. This is why, perhaps, all the votaries of hidden truths are forthwith set down as lunatics. However it may be, in no case and under no threat shall LUCIFER be ever forced into pandering to any universally and tacitly recognised, and as universally practised lie, but will hold to fact, pure and simple, trying to proclaim truth whensoever found, and under no cowardly mask. Bigotry and intolerance may be regarded as orthodox and sound policy, and the encouraging of social prejudices and personal hobbies at the cost of truth, as a wise course to pursue in order to secure success for a publication. Let it be so. The Editors of LUCIFER are Theosophists, and their motto is chosen: Vera pro gratiis.

They are quite aware that LUCIFER’S libations and sacrifices to the goddess Truth do not send a sweet savoury smoke into the noses of the lords of the press, nor does the bright “Son of the Morning” smell sweet in their nostrils. He is ignored when not abused as—veritas odium paret. Even his friends are beginning to find fault with him. They cannot see why it should not be a purely Theosophical magazine, in other words, why it refuses to be dogmatic and bigoted. Instead of devoting every inch of space to theosophical and occult teachings, it opens its pages “to the publication of the most grotesquely heterogeneous elements and conflicting doctrines.” This is the chief accusation, to which we answer—why not? Theosophy is divine knowledge, and knowledge is truth; every true fact, every sincere word are thus part and parcel of Theosophy. One who is skilled in divine alchemy, or even approximately blessed with the gift of the perception of truth, will find and extract it from an erroneous as much as from a correct statement. However small the particle of gold lost in a ton of rubbish, it is the noble metal still, and worthy of being dug out even at the price of some extra trouble. As has been said, it is often as useful to know what a thing is not, as to learn what it is. The average reader can hardly hope to find any fact in a sectarian publication under all its aspects, pro and con, for either one way or the other its presentation is sure to be biassed, and the scales helped to incline to that side to which its editor’s special policy is directed. A Theosophical magazine is thus, perhaps, the only publication where one may hope to find, at any rate, the unbiassed, if still only approximate truth and fact. Naked truth is reflected in LUCIFER under its many aspects, for no philosophical or religious views are excluded from its pages. And, as every philosophy and religion, however incomplete, unsatisfactory, and even foolish some may be occasionally, must be based on a truth and fact of some kind, the reader has thus the opportunity of comparing, analysing, and choosing from the several philosophies discussed therein. LUCIFER offers as many facets of the One universal jewel as its limited space will permit, and says to its readers: “Choose you this day whom ye will serve: whether the gods that were on the other side of the flood which submerged man’s reasoning powers and divine knowledge, or the gods of the Amorites of custom and social falsehood, or again, the Lord of (the highest) Self—the bright destroyer of the dark power of illusion?” Surely it is that philosophy that tends to diminish, instead of adding to, the sum of human misery, which is the best.

At all events, the choice is there, and for this purpose only have we opened our pages to every kind of contributors. Therefore do you find in them the views of a Christian clergyman who believes in his God and Christ, but rejects the wicked interpretations and the enforced dogmas of his ambitious proud Church, along with the doctrines of the Hylo-Idealist, who denies God, soul, and immortality, and believes in nought save himself. The rankest Materialists will find hospitality in our journal; aye, even those who have not scrupled to fill pages of it with sneers and personal remarks upon ourselves, and abuse of the doctrines of Theosophy, so dear to us. When a journal of free thought, conducted by an Atheist, inserts an article by a Mystic or Theosophist in praise of his occult views and the mystery of Parabrahmam, and passes on it only a few casual remarks, then shall we say LUCIFER has found a rival. When a Christian periodical or missionary organ accepts an article from the pen of a free-thinker deriding belief in Adam and his rib, and passes criticism on Christianity—its editor’s faith—in meek silence, then it will have become worthy of LUCIFER, and may be said truly to have reached that degree of tolerance when it may be placed on a level with any Theosophical publication.

But so long as none of these organs do something of the kind, they are all sectarian, bigoted, intolerant, and can never have an idea of truth and justice. They may throw innuendoes against LUCIFER and its editors, they cannot affect either. In fact, the editors of that magazine feel proud of such criticism and accusations, as they are witnesses to the absolute absence of bigotry, or arrogance of any kind in theosophy, the result of the divine beauty of the doctrines it preaches. For, as said, Theosophy allows a hearing and a fair chance to all. It deems no views—if sincere—entirely destitute of truth. It respects thinking men, to whatever class of thought they may belong. Ever ready to oppose ideas and views which can only create confusion without benefiting philosophy, it leaves their expounders personally to believe in whatever they please, and does justice to their ideas when they are good. Indeed, the conclusions or deductions of a philosophic writer may be entirely opposed to our views and the teachings we expound; yet, his premises and statements of facts may be quite correct, and other people may profit by the adverse philosophy, even if we ourselves reject it, believing we have something higher and still nearer to the truth. In any case, our profession of faith is now made plain, and all that is said in the foregoing pages both justifies and explains our editorial policy.

To sum up the idea, with regard to absolute and relative truth, we can only repeat what we said before. Outside a certain highly spiritual and elevated state of mind, during which Man is at one with the UNIVERSAL MIND—he can get nought on earth but relative truth, or truths, from whatsoever philosophy or religion. Were even the goddess who dwells at the bottom of the well to issue from her place of confinement, she could give man no more than he can assimilate. Meanwhile, every one can sit near that well—the name of which is KNOWLEDGE—and gaze into its depths in the hope of seeing Truth’s fair image reflected, at least, on the dark waters. This, however, as remarked by Richter, presents a certain danger. Some truth, to be sure, may be occasionally reflected as in a mirror on the spot we gaze upon, and thus reward the patient student. But, adds the German thinker, “I have heard that some philosophers in seeking for Truth, to pay homage to her, have seen their own image in the water and adored it instead.”...

It is to avoid such a calamity—one that has befallen every founder of a religious or philosophical school—that the editors are studiously careful not to offer the reader only those truths which they find reflected in their own personal brains. They offer the public a wide choice, and refuse to show bigotry and intolerance, which are the chief landmarks on the path of Sectarianism. But, while leaving the widest margin possible for comparison, our opponents cannot hope to find their faces reflected on the clear waters of our LUCIFER, without remarks or just criticism upon the most prominent features thereof, if in contrast with theosophical views.

This, however, only within the cover of the public magazine, and so far as regards the merely intellectual aspect of philosophical truths. Concerning the deeper spiritual, and one may almost say religious, beliefs, no true Theosophist ought to degrade these by subjecting them to public discussion, but ought rather to treasure and hide them deep within the sanctuary of his innermost soul. Such beliefs and doctrines should never be rashly given out, as they risk unavoidable profanation by the rough handling of the indifferent and the critical. Nor ought they to be embodied in any publication except as hypotheses offered to the consideration of the thinking portion of the public. Theosophical truths, when they transcend a certain limit of speculation, had better remain concealed from public view, for the “evidence of things not seen” is no evidence save to him who sees, hears, and senses it. It is not to be dragged outside the “Holy of Holies,” the temple of the impersonal divine Ego, or the indwelling SELF. For, while every fact outside its perception can, as we have shown, be, at best, only a relative truth, a ray from the absolute truth can reflect itself only in the pure mirror of its own flame—our highest SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS. And how can the darkness (of illusion) comprehend the LIGHT that shineth in it?

THE SOLDIER’S DAUGHTER.

(Judges xi., 6-xi., 39.)

In the early days of Israel’s history, whilst Israel was struggling to be a nation and a kingdom, there was a people called the Ammonites, who were making war upon the Israelites.

And we are told that the Israelites, in great distress and fear, went out of their country, into the land of Tob, to find a man named Jephthah, who was a man of mighty valour, in order to persuade him to return with them, and be the captain and leader of their army, to fight against, and save them from the Ammonites.

Now this man Jephthah was himself an Israelite by birth, but because his mother had not been legally married to his father, Gilead, the sons of Gilead’s lawful wife conspired together to drive him from his hearth, home, and country, as a disgrace to the family and to Israel; but the true reason was that they were envious and jealous of him, in like manner as the brethren of Joseph who had previously conspired against him.

For Jephthah himself was wholly innocent of having done anything to disgrace either the family or the nation. And therefore, in common justice, he ought not to have been made to suffer merely for the form and manner of his birth; over which neither Jephthah nor any of us have any control, either as to the time, when, or the manner, in which we should be born. But although Jephthah was despised and cast out as a dog, in the days of Israel’s prosperity, yet in the day of Israel’s adversity and weakness, Israel no longer allowed any mean and petty distinctions to prevent her from recognising the noble character of Jephthah, and she entreated him to forget past ill-usage, and return to be her captain and leader to save her from the Ammonites.

And as this proposal of Israel afforded Jephthah the long wished-for opportunity of returning to his country, and of establishing an honourable reputation, therefore he was not only ready to forget and forgive the insults and injuries which he had received in the past from his brethren, but he was also ready to return with them, and share their troubles and dangers, even to sacrificing his life, if need be, in order to save their lives and property.

Jephthah was the more willing to return and make this sacrifice because he had a daughter, an only daughter and child; and she was all the world to him, as he was to her; “for beside her he had neither son nor daughter,” and she had patiently and willingly suffered with him, and borne all his sorrows as her own.

But imagine the horror of Jephthah, after having saved the lives and property of his brethren and countrymen by risking his own life, at being then required, by these very brethren and countrymen, to shed the blood of his only child! Immediately after the war was over, Jephthah was required to sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering to the Lord of Battles, for having assisted Israel to overcome the Ammonites; and so great was the love of this heroine for her father, and for everything that concerned his honour and glory, that she willingly consented to be sacrificed as a burnt offering.

Can anything be conceived more heartrending and terrible than that Jephthah should thus be required by these very brethren and countrymen whom he had saved, to shed the blood of his only child as a sacrifice, in acknowledgment that he owed his victory to miraculous assistance and favour, and not to his own skill and valour?

What to him was the deliverance either of Israel or of his brethren (who had cared naught for him), if they now required him to sacrifice the only being in the world that he loved, and that loved him, and who was therefore all the world to him?

It is true that Jephthah had made a foolish and rash vow, in the mad excitement of the moment before going into battle, that if he came out of the battle victorious, he would sacrifice, as a burnt offering to the Lord, the first thing that came to meet him from his house as he returned from the battle; but when the first person that met Jephthah was his only daughter, what could that Deity be, which accepted as a sacrifice the blood of this child? What could the religion of Jephthah’s brethren and countrymen be, that allowed and required him to commit such an evil deed?

For if Jephthah had saved his brethren and countrymen from their enemies, could they not now save Jephthah from shedding the blood of his daughter as a sacrifice, in the name of religion, when the very deed itself proclaimed the religion, and their conception both of religion and of the Deity, to be evil? And if his brethren and countrymen would not save his daughter, but even required him to fulfil his vow, could not Jephthah save himself and his child by refusing to commit this evil deed? But if, in order to save his own blood from being shed as a blasphemer for an atonement, Jephthah had to flee from the country as an outcast and a criminal, whither could he flee to, that would make life worth keeping? For surely the world would be no desirable place for an honest man to live in, if he had to live at enmity with men both at home and abroad, because he had made a rash and foolish vow, which no Deity worthy of being worshipped could or would require him to perform?

Because under such a sanguinary conception of religion, and of the Deity, there was no remission, or redemption either, with, or without, the shedding of blood. If Jephthah refused to shed the blood of his daughter, then both his own and his daughter’s would be shed by his brethren and countrymen, whilst if Jephthah shed the blood of his daughter, as a sacrifice to save his own, what remission or redemption was there in this? None!

And he cried for a deliverer to save him and his daughter, from this great trouble. For he had staked his life and his all upon obtaining a position and reputation for himself and his daughter at home in Israel; and now, to give up hope of this for ever, and to shed the blood of his daughter, or again flee as an outcast—what was it but a living death to Jephthah, either way, whether he remained and sacrificed his daughter, or fled to save her?

But who, in this agonising moment of Jephthah’s trouble, could raise his voice to demand, in the name of religion, this diabolical sacrifice of his innocent child?

Yes; diabolical. For what spirit, or voice, but that of a devil or fiend could counsel men to shed the blood of this pure and noble girl? And where could the devil or fiend be found who would commit the deed itself?

Jephthah is mockingly told that he is the fiend who must sacrifice his child, as Abraham is said to have offered Isaac. And Jephthah is told that he has no one to blame but himself, for having made the vow. But who heard the vow? or who accepted the vow? Who could he, or they be, who would require the fulfilling of it?[148]

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Footnote 148:

Jehovah, of course, in his own national character of Baal, Moloch, Typhon, etc. The final and conclusive identification of the “Lord God” of Israel with Moloch, we find in the last chapter of Leviticus, concerning things devoted not to be redeemed.... “A man shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, both of man and beast.... None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed, but shall surely be put to death ... for it is most holy unto the Lord.” (See Leviticus xxvii., 28, 29, 30.)

“Notwithstanding the numerous proofs that the Israelites worshipped a variety of gods, and even offered human sacrifices until a far later period than their Pagan neighbours, they have contrived to blind posterity in regard to truth. They sacrificed human life as late as 169 B.C. (Vide “Joseph. contra Apion,” 11, 8—what Antiochus Epiphanius found in the Temple), and the Bible contains a number of such records. At a time when the Pagans had long abandoned the abominable practice, and had replaced the sacrificial man by the animal, and the ox of Dionysius was sacrificed at the Bacchic Mysteries (“Anthon,” p. 365), Jephthah is represented sacrificing his own daughter to the ‘Lord’ for a burnt-offering.” Isis Unveiled, vol ii., pp. 524, 525.

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Are they worthy of the name of brethren and countrymen who would persuade Jephthah to assassinate his daughter, in the name of religion, or even look on at such an assassination? Would it not be blasphemy to say that a good Deity required Jephthah to kill his innocent child? And would not a good Deity release Jephthah from his vow, and forbid him to sacrifice his daughter, in like manner as the Scriptures teach us Abraham was forbidden to sacrifice his son Isaac? And if it is said, it would have been faithless and sinful of Jephthah after returning from the battle victorious, to have refused the offering of his daughter as a sacrifice; yet surely to bind Jephthah to break the Sixth Commandment, and to shed innocent blood in the name of religion, would be making the Deity that required such a sacrifice to be evil, and His worshippers to be the doers of evil; and thus Jephthah would be required to sell himself to the devil.

And how could men be other than the doers of evil, and the priests of evil, who would counsel Jephthah to commit this evil deed, and be ready to commit it themselves if he hesitated? How? Whether Jephthah received any miraculous assistance or not, in the war, yet he was in no wise bound to surrender his personality and to become an abject slave to the supposed power that helped him. For Jephthah’s personal services were needed as an instrument to deliver and save the Israelites, or his services would not have been asked for. It was also possible that he might have given certain services, which even a miraculous power was unable to give—as we read in the Book of Judges that “Judah could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” (Judges i. 19.)[149]

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Footnote 149:

It is said in the “Holy Book,” that it was “the Lord (who) was with Judah,” who “could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron,” (Judges i. 19), and not “Judah” at all. This is but natural, according to popular belief and superstition that “the Devil is afraid of iron.” The strong connection and even identity between Jehovah and the Devil is ably insisted upon by the Rev. Haweis. See his “Key” (p. 22).—ED.

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And again, if all the glory of Jephthah’s victory had to be ascribed to a miraculous power, then likewise all the shame would have to be ascribed to that power also, for having ordained that Jephthah’s daughter should be the first person to meet him after the war, to pay the price of victory to Jephthah, with death to his child—for whom, alone, he coveted victory.

Victory on such terms was defeat and shame, not glory; for surely such views of religious worship must be the d’evil worship which the Psalmist speaks of (Psalm cvi., 37), and not the service or worship of a good God who would have mercy and not sacrifice, as Abraham learnt when he went out of the Philistine city into the wilderness, and communed with God alone on Mount Moriah.

But it was one thing for a single individual like Abraham, at the close of a long life, to acquire the knowledge “that God would have mercy and not sacrifice”; and quite another thing for a Town, a City, a Nation, or the World, to have acquired this knowledge in its infancy; as even Abraham only acquired this knowledge by going out of the city into the wilderness, and communing alone with God.

We can well understand how impossible it would have been for Abraham even to have attempted, on his return from the mountain, to teach the Philistines the faith or gospel (that God would have mercy and not sacrifice), from the very fact that when Jesus Christ came into the world to teach the faith or gospel, which Abraham had gone out of the world to learn, Jesus was condemned by Caiaphas to be crucified with malefactors, as a blasphemer. And to this very day this doctrine of the power of Caiaphas, the adversary of Jesus, continues to be taught as the doctrine of the Church, which it is necessary to believe in order to obtain the blessing of the Church here and of God hereafter.

Therefore it is manifestly evident that after Abraham had acquired the knowledge that God would have mercy and not sacrifice, yet he could not publish it, but could only lay it up in his heart as a secret treasure, to be disclosed in the distant future, which in the vision of his mind he saw. Meanwhile he prayed that the Lord would raise up messengers and stewards to prepare the world to receive this faith or gospel, because of its being too Herculean a task for any one person to alter suddenly the religion of a people.

For whilst priests continued to teach, and the people to believe that sacrifices of human beings were acceptable to God, how was the man who dared (suddenly and without the cloak of a parable) to reveal and publish the contrary, to escape being himself slain as a blasphemer, whose blood it would be doing God service to shed for an atonement? And until the world was sufficiently educated to declare the generation of him who should be unjustly slain (Isaiah liii.), it could only be like throwing pearls to swine for such an one to attempt the task.

Then from whence, and from whom could Jephthah, who had saved others, now look for the salvation of his daughter, or of himself, if he refused to sacrifice that daughter?

And, in the anguish of his soul, Jephthah rent his clothes, and bemoaned his trouble, whilst his daughter fled to the mountains to pour out the sorrow of her soul, during the few short days she had yet to live.

It is true that, in order to save her father from the cruel pain of assassinating his devoted child, the noble girl may have voluntarily leapt into the sulphurous flames on the burning altar; just as the noble Roman soldier Curtius on his horse leapt down into the dark and awful volcanic gulf as a sacrifice to save his countrymen.

But the more heroic and divine these persons were, the more demoniacal and diabolical must be the religion of those persons who required them thus to suffer.[150]

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Footnote 150:

And yet it is this “demoniacal and diabolical religion” that passed part and parcel into Protestantism.—ED.

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It is true that the priests of such a religion may have believed in it themselves, and may have been ready to sacrifice their own sons and daughters in like manner; but that in no wise lessens the crime, but on the contrary it intensifies it a hundred fold. How were the people to be saved from a religion, of which the priests themselves needed to be saved, whilst the priests had the sole education of the people from infancy upwards, as well as the Chief power in the State to make and unmake its laws, even to making and unmaking its kings?

Whilst the priests and rulers of the church taught such a cruel religion,[151] would not the people and priests need a Mediator to deliver and save them from practising it?

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Footnote 151:

So “the people and priests” do now. And as the late Rev. Henry Ward Beecher once said in a sermon, “could Jesus come back and behave in the streets of Christian cities as he did in those of Jerusalem, he would be declared an impostor and then confined in prison.”—ED.

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If He who mediated to deliver and save us was Himself condemned to be slain, and crucified with thieves as a blasphemer whose blood ought to be shed for an Atonement, what hope of salvation can there be for the world from such a Religion, until the people not only uplift the Crucified Jesus as having been no blasphemer, but also expose the doctrine to be evil and false which is quoted as an authority for requiring the blood of “the Just one” to be shed for an Atonement? And if it is said that we have no longer women brought like Jephthah’s daughter to be assassinated and burnt as a sacrifice, or noble men condemned to be burnt as heretics, yet we have to the present day noble men and women condemned by the Church as evil (to be accursed here and damned hereafter), simply and solely because they refuse to believe this evil doctrine of Atonement, which is oftentimes such a burden to their soul (either to accept or reject) that they are driven to the very verge of madness.

It is no uncommon thing to hear priests revile even our Queen as being no true Christian, simply because they suppose she does not believe in this evil doctrine of atonement, which is the doctrine of Caiaphas, the enemy of Christ, and not Christ’s doctrine, teaching, or gospel.

Should not such scriptural stories as these of the assassination of Jephthah’s noble daughter, of the crucifixion of Jesus, and the spilling of the blood of a whole host of martyrs, awaken men who have slumbered to rise, to hear, to see, to speak, and run to save the world from having to believe in this sanguinary doctrine, which is a stumbling-block to the Jews, foolishness to the world, and a mystery even to the teachers of it. This doctrine of Atonement can not be reconciled as either good or true; and therefore it is the cause of all progress being prevented so far as the world is dependent on the Church for progress.

Yet the man who doubts or denies the goodness of this doctrine is branded by the Church, to the present day, as a Sceptic and Atheist, whom all sound Churchmen should avoid. And for sixteen centuries the Church used its sovereign power to condemn those who rejected its doctrine of Atonement as criminals, whom it would be doing God service to burn as heretics; and the Church is only prevented from doing so now because (to its great regret) it has no longer the power which it formerly had in the days of “the Inquisition.” The doctrine remains the same still, and therefore the people owe it, as a duty to the long roll of martyrs, to expose it. For it has been the cause of much evil, and even to this day it assassinates the souls of noble men and women, who incarcerate themselves in monasteries and nunneries in the vain attempt to attain a sound belief in it.

But when the Church is willing to allow (what it has refused to the present day) liberty in the pulpit for explaining the mystery and translating the truth of a “Crucified Christ,” then it will be seen that the truth is not only a light to the Gentiles, but also the glory of Israel; and the truth shall make us free.[152] (John viii., 32.)

Adyar, 17th October, 1887. H. S. OLCOTT, P.T.S.

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Footnote 152:

Only, as such truth and freedom amounts to the Church committing suicide and burying herself with her own hands, she will never allow such a thing. She will die her natural death the day when there will not exist a man, woman or child to believe any longer in her dogmas. And this beneficent result might be achieved within her own hierarchy, were there many such sincere, brave and honest clergymen who, like the writer of this article, fear not to speak the truth—whatever may come—[ED.]

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LUNIOLATRY.

A friend has just informed me of the fact that when President Cleveland was making his recent tour through the States an old negro presented him with the left hind foot of a grave-yard rabbit, which had been killed in the dark of the moon. In making his present the negro said he had sent it because he desired the reelection of President Cleveland. “Tell him to preserve it carefully, and that as long as he keeps it he will always get there.”

The friend whom I speak of had just been reading a lecture of mine on “Luniolatry,” in which the imagery and significance of the hare and rabbit in the moon were spoken of all too briefly, and he wishes to know if I can interpret the meaning of the negro’s gift. I guess so. As previously explained the hare and the rabbit are both zootypes or living images of lunar phenomena. A rabbit pounding rice in a mortar is a Chinese sign of the moon. Swabian children are still forbidden to make the likeness of a rabbit or hare in shadow on the wall, as it would be a sin against the moon. The hare in the moon is a well-known Hindu type of Buddha. It is mythically represented that Buddha once took the form of a hare on purpose to offer himself as food for a poor famishing creature, and so the Buddha was translated in that shape to be eternized as the hare in the moon. That is one illustration of the way in which the book of external nature was filled full of mystic meanings, the essence of which escapes altogether in trying to read such things as historical, no matter whether they are related of Buddha, Horus, or Jesus. This hare or rabbit in the moon is a symbol or superstition with various races, Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, and White. When the meaning was understood it was a symbol; when the clue is lost it becomes a superstition of the ignorant; thus the ancient symbolism survives in a state of dotage with the negroes as well as with the “noble Caucasian.”

The frog in the moon was another lunar type. In a Chinese myth—that is, a symbolic representation—the lunar frog has three legs, like the Persian ass in the Bundahish. In both cases the three legs stand for three phases of the moon reckoned at ten days each in a luni-solar month of thirty days. Now it happens that the rabbit’s period of gestation is thirty days; and the early races included very curious observers amongst their naturalists, who had to think in things and express their thought in gesture-signs and zootypes before there were such things as printer’s types. Hence the frog that dropped its tail, the serpent that sloughed its skin, the rabbit with its period of thirty days, were all symbols of the moon. Enough that the rabbit was a zootype of the moon, and the rabbit is equal to the hare. Hor-Apollo tells us that when the Egyptians would denote “an opening,” they delineate a hare, because this animal always has its eyes open (B. I. 26). This can be corroborated in several ways. The name of the hare in Egyptian is “Un,” which means open, to open, the opener. It was applied to Osiris, “Un-Nefer,” in his lunar character as the good opener, otherwise the splendid or glorious hare, because “Nefer” means the handsome, beautiful, perfect, or glorious. Also the city of Unnut was that of the hare, “Un,” and this was the metropolis of the 15th Nome of Upper Egypt, which is another mode of identifying the open-eyed hare with the moon at the full, called the “Eye of Horus,” and with the woman of the moon who brings her orb to the full on the 15th day of the month (Egyptian Ritual, ch. lxxx). The hare was also a symbol of the opening period at puberty, a sign therefore of being open, unprohibited, or “it is lawful” (Sharpe). Hence the Namaqua Hottentots would only permit the hare to be eaten by those who had attained the age of the adult male. The proverb, “Somnus leporinus,” relates to the hare that sleeps with its eyes open; and in our old English pharmacopœia of the folk-lore or leech-craft, the brains and eyes of the hare are prescribed as a cure for somnolency, and a sovereign medicine for making or keeping people wide-awake. The rabbit equates with the hare, and has the same symbolical value. Now it is sometimes said that the hare-rabbit is of both sexes. So the moon was both male and female in accordance with the dual lunation. The new moon with the horns of the bull or the long ears of the ass, the rabbit, or hare was considered to be male. The dark lunation or hinder part was female. In the ancient symbolism the front or fore-part is masculine, the hinder-part or the tail is feminine. The two were head and tail in the earliest coinage as well as on the latest coins. In Egypt the South was front and is male; the North was the hinder-part and is female. Hence the old Typhon of the Northern part was denoted by the tail-piece, and it follows that Satan with the long tail is of feminine origin, and so the devil was female from the first. The same symbolism was applied to the moon. In the light half it was the male moon, in the dark half female. The new moon was the Lord of Light, the Increaser, the sign of new life, of saving and healing. The new moon was the messenger of immortality to men in the form of the hare or the rabbit. The waning moon represented the devil of darkness, the Typhonian power that said to men “even as I die and do not rise again so will it be with you.” Offerings were made to the new moon. When the moon was at the full the Egyptians sacrificed a black pig to Osiris. This represented Typhon, his conquered enemy. But in the dark half of the lunation Typhon had the upper hand when he tore Osiris into fourteen parts during the fourteen nights of his supremacy. The lunar zootype then is male in front, and female in the hinder-part of the animal. In the hieroglyphics the khepsh-leg or hind-quarter is the ideographic type of Typhon, the evil power personified. Further, the left side is female and Typhonian; the right is male. Ergo, the left hind leg of the grave-yard animal that was killed in the dark of the moon, stood for the hind (or last) quarter of the moon; literally the end of it. And if the negro laid hold of that rabbit’s foot the right way, we can read the symbol that he probably did not understand, although he knew the rabbit’s hind foot was a good fetish. It shows the survival of intended symbolism, which represents some sort of victory over the power of darkness analogous to taking the brush of the fox (another Typhonian animal) after it has been hunted to death. This was the last leg that the devil of darkness had to stand on, and so it was a trophy snatched from the Typhonian power to be worn in triumph as a token of good luck, of repetition or renewal, thence a second term.

It would be a sort of equivalent for taking the scalp of Satan, who could only be typified by the tail or hinder leg. The gift was tantamount to wishing “A Happy New Moon to You!” expressed in the language of symbolism, which was acted instead of being spoken. The negroes consider this particular talisman bequeathed by “Brer Rabbit” represents all the virtues and powers of renewal that are popularly attributed to the New Moon. But do not let me be misunderstood by those who know that in the Negro Märchen the rabbit is the good one of the typical two, and that the fox plays the Typhonian part. The rabbit or hare of the moon may be pourtrayed in two characters or in one of two. In both he is the hero, the Lord of Light and conqueror of the Power of Darkness, the rabbit, so to say, that rises again from the graveyard in or as the New Moon. The figure of the hind quarter and latter end of the dying moon is thus a type of the conquered Typhon, but the magical influence depends upon its being also a type of the conqueror, the rabbit of the resurrection or the New Moon. It is a curious coincidence that the luckiest of all Lucky Horse-Shoes in England is one that has been cast off the left hind foot of a Mare.

Lastly, this hind leg of the lunar rabbit is a fellow-type with the leg of pig that is still eaten in England on Easter Monday, which is a survival of the ancient sacrifice of the pig Typhon, in the solar or annual reckoning, as pourtrayed in the planisphere of Denderah, where we see the god Khunsu offering the pig by the leg in the disc of the full moon. It must have been a potent fetish long ages ago in Africa, and a medicine of great power according to the primitive mysteries of the dark land. It may be surmised that much of this fetishtic typology is still extant amongst the negroes in the United States, and it is to be hoped that the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington, which has done, and is doing, such good work under the direction of Major J. W. Powell in collecting and preserving the relics of the Red Men, will extend the range of its researches to the black race in America, and not leave those matters to irresponsible story-tellers.

GERALD MASSEY.

=THE BLOSSOM AND THE FRUIT=:

THE TRUE STORY OF A MAGICIAN.

(Continued.)

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BY MABEL COLLINS.

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Chapter XII

It was the day of the Princess Fleta’s wedding and the whole city was en fête.

Hilary Estanol paced the streets wildly, like a creature distracted. He had never seen her face since the day he returned from the secret monastery. He could not trust himself to go near her. He felt that the savage in him must kill, must destroy, if too much provocation were given him.

He held this savage in check as well as he could. He would not trust himself under the same roof with the woman he loved as he loved nothing else in life, and who had given him her love while she gave herself to another man. Herself! How much that meant Hilary seemed only now to know, now that he heard her marriage bells ringing, now that she was absolutely given. Yes, she had given herself away to another man. Was it possible? Hilary stood still now and again in the midst of the crowded street trying to remember the words she had said to him in that wood in the early morn when she had accepted his love. What had she taken from him then? He had never been the same since. His heart lay cold, and chill, and dull within him save when her smile or its memory woke him to life and joy. Were these gone for ever? Impossible. He was still young—a mere boy. She could not have stolen so much from him! No—he had the first right—he would be her lover still and always, to whoever else she gave herself in name. This was the point of thought to which Hilary perpetually returned. Undoubtedly she was his, and he would claim her. But obscured and excited as his mind was he had sufficient intelligence to know that his must be a secret claim even though it stood before all others. He could not go and claim her at the altar, for she had not given him any right to. What she had said was, “Take from me what you can.” Well, he could not make her his wife. He could not marry a royal Princess. She was not of his class. This being so, what could he hope for? Nothing—and yet he had her love—yes, the last kind touch of her hand, the last sweet smile on her lips, were still with him, and drove his blood rioting through his veins.

At last the procession is coming—the soldiers have already cleared the way and with their horses keep back the crowd. Hilary stands now, still as a carven figure, watching only for one face. He sees it suddenly—ah! so beautiful, so supremely beautiful, so mysterious—and everything in Heaven and earth becomes invisible, non-existent, save that one dear face. A voice rang out on the air, clear, shrill, above all other voices.

“Fleta! Fleta! My love! my love!”

What a cry! It penetrated to Fleta’s ears; it reached the ears of her bridegroom.

In the church, amid the pomp and ceremony, and the crowd of great people, Otto did a thing which made those near him stare. He went to meet his bride and touched her hand.

“Fleta,” he said, “that voice was the voice of one who loves you. What answer do you make to it?”

Fleta put her hand in his.

“That is my answer,” she said.

And so they stepped up the broad low steps to the altar. None heard what had been said except the king.

Fleta’s father was strangely unlike herself. He was a rugged, morose, sombre man, ill-disposed towards all humanity, as it would seem, save those few who held the key to his nature. Of these, his daughter was one; some said she was the only one. Others said her power lay in the fact that she was not his daughter, but a child of other parents altogether than those reputed to be hers; and that a State secret was involved in the mystery of her birth.

At all events, it was seldom indeed that the king interfered with Fleta. But he did so now, at this moment, with all the eyes of the Court upon them.

He spoke low into her ear, he stood beside her.

“Fleta,” he said, “is this marriage right?”

Fleta turned on him a face so full of torture, of deathly pain, that he uttered an ejaculation of horror.

“Say no word, my father,” she said, “it is right.”

And then she turned her head again, and fixed her glorious eyes on Otto.

What a strangely beautiful bride she was! She was dressed with extraordinary simplicity; her robe had been arranged by her own hands in long, soft lines that fell from her neck to her feet, and a long train lay on the ground behind her, but it was undecked by any lace or flowers. No flowers were in her hair, no jewels on her neck. Never had a princess been dressed so simply, a princess who was to be a queen. The Court ladies stared in amazement. But they knew well that there was a grace so supreme, a dignity so lofty, in this royal girl, that however simple her dress she outshone them all, and would outshine any woman who stood beside her.

No one heard any of what passed between the three chief actors in this scene; yet everyone was aware that there was something unusual in it. There was an atmosphere of mystery, of excitement, of strangeness. And yet what else would be possible where the Princess Fleta was concerned? In her father’s Court she was looked upon as a wild, capricious, imperious creature whose will none could resist. None would have wondered had they believed her carriage to have passed over the body of an accepted lover, now thrown aside and discarded. So did these people interpret the character of Fleta. Otto knew this, felt it, understood it; knew that those creatures of intrigue and pleasure would have thought her far less worthy had they judged her character more nearly as he did. To him she was pure, stainless, unattainable; virgin in soul and thought. This he said to her when, on leaving the cathedral, they entered a carriage together and alone. They had together passed through crowds of congratulators, nobles, great ladies, diplomats from different parts of Europe. They had bowed and smiled, and answered courteously the words addressed to them. And yet how far away were their thoughts all the while! They neither of them knew who they had met, who they had spoken to. All was lost in one absorbing thought. But it was not the same thought. No, indeed, their minds were separated widely as the poles.

Fleta was filled with the sense of a great purpose. This marriage was but the first step in a giant programme. Her thoughts had flown now from this first step and were dwelling on the end, the fulfilment; as an artist when he draws his first sketch sees in his own mind the completed picture.

Otto had but one overwhelming thought; a very simple one, expressed instantly, in the first words he uttered when they were alone:

“Fleta, you did not fancy that I doubted you? I never meant that! And yet it seemed as if there was reproach in your eyes! No, Fleta, never that. But the cry was so terrible—it cut my heart. You did not fancy I meant any doubt?—assure me, Fleta!”

“No, I did not,” replied Fleta quietly. “You know whose voice it was.”

“No—it was unrecognisable—it was nothing but a cry of torture.”

“Ah! but I knew it,” said Fleta. “It was Hilary Estanol who cried out my name.”

“He said ‘Fleta, my love, my love,’” added Otto. “Is he that?”

“Yes,” said Fleta unmoved, indeed strangely calm. “He is. More, Otto; he has loved me long centuries ago, when this world wore a different face. When the very surface of the earth was savage and untaught so were we. And then we enacted this same scene. Yes Alan, we three enacted it before, without this pomp, but with the natural splendour of savage beauty and undimmed skies. Otto, I sinned then I expiated my sin. Again and again have I expiated it. Again and again has Nature punished me for my offence against her. Now at last I know more, I see more, I understand more. The sin remains. I desired to take, to have for myself, to be a conqueror. I conquered—I have conquered since! how often! That has been my expiation: satiety. But now I will no longer enjoy. I will stand on that error, that folly, and win from it strength which shall lift me from this wretched little theatre where we play the same dramas for ever through the fond weariness of recurring lives.”

Otto had drawn back from her, and gazed intently upon her as she spoke, passion and vehemence gradually entering her low voice. As she ceased he passed his hand over his forehead.

“Fleta,” he said, “is this some spell of yours upon me? While you spoke I saw your face change, and become the face of one familiar to me, but far, far back! I smelled the intense rich scent of innumerable fruit blossoms——Fleta, tell me, are you dreaming or speaking fables, or is this thing true? Have I lived for you before, loved you, served you, ages back, when the world was young?”

“Yes,” said Fleta.

“Ah!” cried Otto suddenly, “I feel it—there is blood on you—blood on your hand!”

Fleta raised her beautiful hand, and looked at it with an infinite sadness on her face.

“It is so,” she answered. “There is blood on it, and there will be, until I have got beyond the reign of blood and of death. You held me down then, Otto; you triumphed by brute force, not knowing that in me lay a power undreamed of by you—a vital, stirring will. I could have crushed you. But already I had used my will once, and found the bitter, unintelligible suffering it produced. I determined to try and understand Nature before I again used my power. So I submitted to your tyranny; you learned to love it, and through many lives have learned to love it more. It has brought you a crown at last, and a little army of soldiers to defend it for you, and half-a-dozen crafty old diplomats who want you to keep it, and who think they can make you do just as their respective monarchs wish. Move your puppets, Otto. No such kingdom satisfies me. I mean to win my own crown. I will be a queen of souls, not of bodies; a queen in reality, not in name.”

She seemed to wrap herself in an impenetrable veil of scorn as she ceased speaking and leaned back in the carriage.

Some great emotion was stirring Otto through and through. At last he spoke; and the man seemed changed—a different being. From under the gentle manner, the docile, ready air, came struggling up the fierce spirit of opposition.

“You despise the crown you married me for? Is that so? Well, I will teach you to respect it.”

A smile dawned on Fleta’s clouded face and then was gone again in a moment. This was all the answer she vouchsafed to the kingly threat. Otto turned and looked at her steadily.

“A magnificent creature,” he said, “beautiful, and with a brain of steel, and perhaps for all I know, a heart like it. You won a great deal from me, Fleta, a little while since. Did I not submit to the masquerading of your mysterious Order? Did I not trust my life to those treacherous monks of yours, submit to be blindfolded and led into their haunt by secret ways. For what end? Ivan told me of aspirations, of ideas, of thoughts, which only sickened my soul and filled me with shame and despair. For I am a believer in order, in moral rule, in the government of the world in accordance with the principles of religion. I told you I was willing to become a member of the order; yes, because my nature is in sympathy with its avowed tenets. But its secret doctrines as I have heard them from you, as I have heard them from the man you call your master, are to me detestable. And it is for the carrying out of this unholy theory or doctrine that you propose to surrender your life? No, Fleta; you are now my queen.”

“Yes,” said Fleta. “I am now your queen. I know that I have chosen the lot willingly. You need not again tell me that I have the crown I purposed to obtain.”

At this moment they arrived at the palace. There was yet a weary mass of ceremony and speaking of polite nothings to be passed through before there was any chance of their being alone again. Otto relapsed into the pleasant and kindly manner which was habitual with him. Fleta fell into one of her abstracted moods, and the court adopted its usual policy under such circumstances—let her be undisturbed. Few of the men cared to risk the satirical answers that came readiest to her lips when she was roused out of such a mood as this.

And yet at last someone did venture to rouse her; and a smile, delicious as a burst of sunshine, came swiftly and suddenly on her mouth.

It was Hilary Estanol. Pale, worn, the mere ghost of himself, his dark eyes looking strangely large in the white face they were set in. They were fixed on her as though there were nothing else in the world to look at.

Fleta held out her hand to him; his companion—a military officer who had brought him under protest, and in some doubt, for Hilary had no friends at Court—drew back in amazement. He understood now Hilary’s importunity.

Hilary bent over Fleta’s hand and held his lips near it for an instant, but did not touch it. A sort of groan came to her ear from his lips.

“You have resigned me?” she asked in a low vibrating whisper.

“You have cast me off,” he answered.

“Be it so,” she replied, “but you have lived through it, and you now claim nothing. Is it not so? I read it in the dumb pain in your eyes.”

“Yes,” said Hilary, straightening himself and standing upright close beside her, and looking down upon her beautiful dark head. “It is so. I will not cry for the moon, nor will I weary any woman with my regret or entreaty, even you, Fleta, though it is no dishonour to humble oneself at the feet of such as you. No; I will bear my pain like a man. I came here to say good-bye. You are still something like the Fleta that I loved. To-morrow you will not be.”

“How can you tell?” she said with her inscrutable smile. “Still, I think you are right. And now that we are no longer lovers will you enter with me another bond? Will you be my comrade in undertaking the great task? I know you are fearless.”

“The great task?” said Hilary vaguely, and he put his hand to his forehead.

“The one great task of this narrow life—To learn its lesson and go beyond it.”

“Yes, I will be your comrade,” said Hilary in an even voice and without enthusiasm.

“Then meet me at two this very morning at the gate of the garden-house where you used to enter.”

It was now just midnight. Hilary noticed this as he turned away, for a little clock stood on a bracket close by. He looked at it, and looked back at Fleta. Could she mean what she said? But already the Fleta he knew had vanished; a cold, haughty, impassive young queen was accepting the uninteresting homage of a foreign minister. The guests were beginning to take their departure. Fleta and Otto did not propose to take any journey in honour of their wedding as is the custom in some places; the king opened for their use the finest set of guests’ chambers in the palace, and these they occupied, remaining among the visitors until all had departed. On the next day Otto was to take his queen home; but he had had to give way to the wishes of Fleta and her father as to the postponing of the journey.

From the great drawing-rooms Fleta went quietly away when the last guest had departed; she moved like a swift shadow noiselessly along the corridors. She entered her own room, and there began, without summoning any attendant, to hastily take off her bridal robes. On a couch was lying the white robe and cloak which she had worn when she had endeavoured to enter the hall of the mystics. These she put on, and wrapping the cloak round her turned to leave the room. As she did so she came face to face with Otto, who had entered noiselessly, and was standing in silence beside her. She seemed scarcely to notice him, but changed her direction and proceeded towards another door. Otto quickly placed himself again in her way.

“No,” he said; “you do not leave this room to-night.”

“And why?” asked Fleta, looking gravely at his set face.

“Because you are now my wife. I forbid it. Stay here, and with me. Come, let me take off that cloak, without any trouble; the white gown under it suits you even better than your wedding-dress.”

He unfastened the clasps which held the cloak together. Fleta made no opposition, but kept her eyes on his face; he would not meet her gaze, though his face was white and rigid with the intensity of his passion and purpose.

“Do you remember,” said Fleta, “the last thing that you did when you were with Father Ivan? Do you remember kneeling before him and uttering these words—‘I swear to serve the master of truth and the teacher of life——’”

“That master—that teacher!” interrupted Otto hotly. “I reserved my reason even in that incense-scented room. That master—that teacher—is my own intelligence—so I phrased it in my own mind—I recognise no other master.”

“Your own intelligence!” repeated Fleta. “You have not yet learned to use it. You did not so phrase the vow then; you only rephrased it so afterwards, when you were away, and alone, and began again to struggle for your selfish freedom. No, Otto, you have not begun to use your intelligence. You are still the slave of your desires, eaten up with the longing for power and the lust of the tyrannical soul. You do not love me—you only desire to possess me. You fancy your power is all you wish it to be. Well, put it to the test. Take this cloak from my shoulders.”

Otto came close, and took the cloak in his hands; and then a sudden passion filled him—he seized her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers—yet he did not do so, either, for the attempt was instantaneously surrendered. He staggered back, white and trembling.

Fleta stood erect and proud before him.

“That vow you took,” she said quietly, “you knew very well in the inner recesses of your soul, in your true unblinded self, to make you a slave of the Great Order. That vow may yet save you from yourself, if you do not resent it too fiercely. But remember this; I am a neophyte of that order, and you being its slave, are under my command. I am your queen, Otto, but not your wife.”

She passed him as she said this, and he made no effort to detain her; indeed, the trembling had not yet left him, and his whole strength was taken by the attempt to control it. As she reached the door he succeeded in speaking:

“Why did you marry me?”

“Did I not tell you?” she said, pausing a moment and turning to look at him. “I think I did. Because I have to learn to live on the plain as contentedly as on the mountain tops. There is but one way for me to do this, and that is to devote my life as your queen to the same great purpose it would serve were I the silver-robed initiate I desire to be. I go now to commence my work, with the aid of a lover who has learned to surrender his love.”

She moved magnificently from the room, looking much taller even than her natural height. And Otto let her go without any word or sign.

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Chapter XIII

It was a fragrant night—a night rich with sweet flower-scents, not only from the flower beds near, but coming from afar on the breeze. Hilary stood at the gate, leaning on it and looking away at the sky, where a faint streak of different light told of the sun’s coming. It was quite clear, though there had been no moonlight; one of those warm, still nights when it is easy to find one’s way, though hard to see into the face of one near by, a night when one walks in a dream amid changing shadows, and when the outer mysteriousness and the dimness of one’s soul are as one. So with Hilary; so had he walked to the gate. He waited for the woman he loved, the only woman any man could ever love, having once known her. And yet no fever burned now in his veins, no intoxication mounted from his heart to his brain. Standing there, and regarding himself and his own feelings very quietly in the stillness, it seemed to him as if he had died yesterday when that wild cry had been unknowingly uttered; as if his soul or his heart, or, indeed, his very self had gone forth in it.

A light touch was laid on his shoulder, and then the gate was opened. He passed through and walked by Fleta up the flower-bordered pathway. She moved on without speaking, her white cloak hanging loose from her neck, and her bare arms gleaming as it fell back from them.

“You who know so much tell me something,” said Hilary. “Why are you so wise?”

“Because I burned my soul out centuries ago,” said Fleta. “When you have burned out your heart you will be strong as I am.”

“Another question,” said Hilary. “Why did you fail in that initiation?”

Fleta stopped suddenly, and fixed fierce questioning eyes upon him. She was terrible in this quick rush of anger. But Hilary looked on her unmoved. It seemed to him that nothing would ever be able to move him again. Was he dead indeed that he could thus endure the scorching light of those brilliant eyes?

“What makes you ask me that?” cried Fleta in a voice of pain. “Do you demand to know?”

“Yes; I do wish to know.”

For a moment Fleta covered her face with her hands, and her whole form shrank and quivered. But only for a moment; then she dropped her hands at each side and stood erect, her queenly head poised royally.

“It is my punishment,” she said in a murmuring voice, “to discover so soon how absolute are the bonds of the Great Order; how the pupil can command the master as well as the master the pupil.”

Then she turned abruptly upon Hilary, approaching him more nearly, while she spoke in a quick, fierce voice.

“Because, though I have burned out my soul, I have not burned out my heart! Because, though I cannot love as men do, and have almost forgotten what passion means, yet I can still worship a greater nature than my own so deeply that it may be called love. I have not learned to stand utterly alone and to know myself as great as any other with the same possibilities, the same divinity in myself. I still lean on another, look to another, hunger for the smile of another. O, folly, when I know so well that I cannot find any rest while that is in me. O, Ivan, my teacher, my friend, what torture it is to wrest the image of you from its shrine within me. Powers and forces of indifferent Nature, I demand your help!”

She raised her arms as she uttered this invocation, and it struck Hilary at the moment how little like a human being she looked. She might have been the spirit of the dawn. Her voice had become unutterably weird and mournful, like the deep cry of a broken soul.

Without pausing for any answer she dropped her arms, drew her cloak around her, and walked away over the dewy grass. Hilary, as silent, as mournful, but seemingly without emotion, dropped his head and quietly followed her track. Of old—only yesterday—what an age ago!—he would have kept his eyes fixed on her shining dark hair or the movements of her delicate figure. Suddenly Fleta stopped, turned and confronted him. He raised his eyes in surprise and looked at her.

“You are no longer devoured by jealousy,” she said. “You can hear me speak as I did just now without its turning you into a savage. What has happened?”

Her eyes seemed to penetrate his impassive and languid expression, looking for the soul beneath. She was longing that his answer should be the one she needed.

“I am hopeless,” answered Hilary.

“Of what?”

“Of your love. I understand at last that you have a great purpose in your life, and that I am a mere straw on a stream. I thought I had some claim on you; I see I cannot have. I surrender myself to your will. That is all I have left to do.”

Fleta stood meditatively for a moment Then she looked up very sadly in his face.

“It is not enough,” she said. “Your gift must be a positive one.”

Then she again turned and went on her way to the house. Here everything was silent and even dark, for the shutters were all closed, and evidently the place was deserted. Fleta opened a side door with a key which was attached to her girdle; they entered and she locked it behind them. She led the way through the quiet dim house to the door of the laboratory; they entered the room in silence. It wore a quite new aspect to Hilary’s eyes, and he looked round in wonder. All was pale; there was no incense burning, no lamps were lit; the colour had gone from the walls; a faint grey light through a skylight, which had always hitherto been curtained, dimly broke on the darkness of the room which still lurked deeply in the lower part. But Hilary found enough light to see that the thing he so hated was not present; that lay figure which was to him always such a horror was gone.

“Where is it?” he said after a moment, wondering at the sense of relief with which its absence filled him.

“What?—oh! the figure. Again you ask a question which I am compelled to answer. Well, I cannot use that power at present; I have again to win the right.”

“How did you win the right before?” asked Hilary, fixing his eyes on her; a fierce desire to know this possessed him.

Fleta started, turned towards him, and for a moment the proud imperiousness which ordinarily characterised her came over her form and her features. But in another moment it was gone. She stood before him, pale, gentle and sublime.

“I will tell you,” she said in a clear yet very low voice. “By taking your life.”

Hilary looked at her in complete perplexity and bewilderment.

“Do you not remember,” she said, “that forest, that new earth and sky, all so sweet and strong, that wealth of apricot blossom that came between us and the sky? Ah, Hilary, how fresh and vivid life was then, while we lived and loved and understood not that we did either! Was it not sweet? I loved you. Yes, I loved you—loved you.”

Her voice broke and trembled. Hilary’s numbed heart suddenly sprang again to life. Never had her voice contained such tones of tenderness and passion before.

“Oh, my dear, my Fleta, you love me still—now!”

He sprang towards her, but she seemed to sweep him aside with one majestic action of her bare arm.

“With that passion,” she said, with a pale solemnity, “I can never love now. I have not forgotten entirely what such love is—no, Hilary, I have not forgotten—else how should I have found you again among the multitudes of the earth?” She held out her hand to him, and, as he clasped it, he felt it was soft and tender, that the warm life blood of a young creature responded to his touch. “I knew you by your dear eyes which once were so full of pure love for me that they were like stars in my life.”

“What came between us?” asked Hilary.

She looked strangely at him, drew her hand away, folded her cloak round her and then answered in one word:

“Passion!”

“I remember it now!” cried Hilary in sudden excitement “My God! I see your beautiful wild face before me, I see your lips as lovely as the soft blossom above us. Fleta, I loved you as men love—I hungered for you—what harm lay in that?”

“None,” she answered, standing now motionless and statue-like, wrapped in her long, white cloak, seeming like a lovely ghost rather then a living woman. “None—for men who care only to be men, to reproduce men, to be and to do nothing more than that! But I had another power within me, that seemed stronger than myself—a stirring of the dumb soul within. When that moment came, Hilary, then came the great decision, the fierce struggle between two souls hurled together out of the dimness of life, and finding light in the fever of love—yes, light!—the fire that is love makes it possible for men to live. It gives them hope, it animates them, it makes them believe in a future, it enables them to create men to fill that future.

“In those old days beneath those apricot blossoms, you and I, Hilary, were but children on this earth, new to its meaning, knowing nothing of its purpose. How could we guide ourselves? We were ignorant of the great power of sex, we were only at the beginning of its lesson. So it must be with all. They must go through with the lesson, they cannot guess it from the first! Nor could we. I did not know what I did, Hilary, my lover, when I took your life. Had I known I should only have been like a beast of prey. But I did not know. You asserted your power—you claimed me. I asserted mine—I conquered. I wanted power; and killing you as I did with that one emotion only stirring within me, I got what I longed for. Not at once—not till I had suffered patiently, not till I had struggled hard to understand myself and the force that was at work within me. And this for life after life, incarnation after incarnation. You not only loved me but you were mine—I conquered you and used your life and love for my own ends—to add to my power, to actually create the life and strength I needed. By your life, by your strength, I became a magician, read by my insight the mysteries of alchemy and the buried secrets of power. Yes, Hilary, it is so. To you I owe myself. I have become free from the common burdens of humanity, its passions, its personal desires, its weary repetitions of experiences till their edge grows blunted by long usage. I have seen the Egyptian and the Roman, men of the old superb civilisations, trying to reproduce their past pleasures, their past magnificence to-day, in this modern life. It is useless, life after life full of selfishness and pleasure, ends in the weariness of living that kills men’s souls and darkens their thought. But you and I, Hilary, have escaped from this dismal fate. I would not be content to live again as I had lived before, to use the life principle which lies in love, only for pleasure or the bringing of eidolons on to the earth. I determined to rise, to raise myself, to raise you, and out of our love perpetually to create something nobler than we ourselves. I have succeeded, Hilary, I have succeeded. We stand now before the gate of the first initiation. I tried to enter it and failed for want of strength—for want of strength, Hilary! I could not pluck my master’s image utterly out of my soul—I looked for him to lean on—at least to find comfort in seeing that face I knew. Give me strength, Hilary! Be my comrade! Help me to enter and your strength shall come back to you a hundredfold. For your reward shall be that you too shall enter with me.”

She had changed from moment to moment as she spoke. She looked like an inspired priestess—like a Divine being. Now she stood like a flame with a strange appearance, as if her whole soul and self, spirit and body, rose upwards in adoration. The dawn had come; the first rays of the sun shot through the skylight and fell on her transfigured face and gleaming hair.

Hilary looked at her as a worshipper might look at his idol.

“I am yours,” he said, “but I know not how to prove it.”

She held out her hand to him, and lowered her eyes from the light to which they had been raised until they met his.

“We must discover the great secret together, Hilary. No longer may you give yourself to me without knowledge. Hitherto our lives have been but the lives of the blossom; now we must be wise and enter the state when the fruit comes. We have to find out what that power is which the sun represents to us; to discover the pure creative power. But we have not strength yet, Hilary; alas! I dread and fear sometimes. More strength means more sacrifice.”

She drew her cloak closer round her, the light faded from her eyes and face, and turning away she went and sat down on a couch which was back in the shadow. Hilary felt a profound sense of sadness, of sympathy, of sorrow, sweep over his being. He followed her and sat down beside her. One pale hand lay on the couch, outside her cloak. He laid his upon it, and fell deep into thought. Thus they sat, silent, breathing softly, for long hours, till the sun was high. But still, even then, the room was very dim and cool, and full of shadows.

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Chapter XIV

On the next day, the same day rather, for they sat together in the laboratory till long after the sun was high, Hilary, to his own amazement, found that he had an official post in the household of the young Queen which would keep him continually about her. Indeed, he had to pack up instantly on being informed of the fact, in order to follow Fleta to her own dominions. How this had been effected none could tell—Hilary, least of all, for he saw immediately on presenting himself in King Otto’s presence that he was regarded by him with dislike and distrust. Before, Otto had scarcely noticed him. The present state of things was decidedly a change for the worse. However, Hilary had already perceived very clearly that to serve under Fleta was to serve under a hard master. And he had no longer any kind of choice. Life was inconceivable without her—without the pain caused by her difficult service. He had rather suffer that than enjoy any other kind of pleasure. And, indeed, pleasure, apart from Fleta, did not appear to him to exist.

And yet he was still capable of doubting her.

Fleta had chosen a companion of royal birth to travel with her; a young duchess who bore the same family name as Fleta herself. This girl had been reared in a nunnery, and then taken to court, where she took part in all the pageants and immediately found herself surrounded by suitors. She was not very pretty, and certainly not at all clever. To go with Fleta seemed to her delightful, as it would introduce her to a new court and a fresh series of suitors. It struck Hilary as quite extraordinary that Fleta should choose this child as her companion—not that the Duchess was any younger than Fleta—indeed, they were almost of an age; but Fleta appeared to carry within her beautiful head the wisdom of centuries, while the Duchess was a mere school-girl trained in court etiquette.

These three were to travel together in Fleta’s own favourite travelling carriage. She simply refused to travel with her husband. When he addressed her on the subject, she merely replied:

“You would weary me; and, moreover, I have work to do.”

And so they started; and as Hilary took his place, he thought of that strange drive when he and Fleta, and Father Amyot, had been the three. Recollecting this made him wonder what had become of Father Amyot; for the priest had not returned to his duties in the city. He asked Fleta, while the thought was in his mind, why Amyot was not with her now.

“He is of no use to me,” she answered coldly.

The journey was a very long and a very weary one to Hilary; for the Duchess, finding no one else to flirt with, insisted upon flirting with him; while Fleta lay back in her corner of the carriage hour after hour, with her eyes closed. What was the work she had to do? Hilary, who had overheard her answer to the King, wondered very much. And yet, as he watched her intently he saw that her face changed. It grew darker, more inscrutable, more set in purpose.

Late one evening, and when they were indeed travelling later than usual, hoping to reach their destination that same night, a curious thing happened. All day long Fleta had been silent, seemingly buried in thought; but sometimes when Hilary was watching her he noticed her lips move as if in speech. He sat opposite her whenever he could; this was not always possible, as the young Duchess would talk to him, and the carriage being very large and roomy, he had to change his position, and go nearer to her in order to carry on a conversation with any comfort. But as it grew dark the Duchess grew tired, and leaned back half asleep, for indeed they had had a long day’s journey.

Hilary withdrew himself to the corner opposite Fleta. It grew so dark he could no longer see her; they had a swinging-lamp in the roof of the carriage, but he did not want to light it unless Fleta wished it so; and, indeed, he longed for the quiet and the darkness very much. It made him feel more alone with her, he could try to follow and seize her thoughts then without the perpetual disturbance of the little Duchess’s quick eyes on him and her light voice in his ears.

He sat still and thought of Fleta—Fleta herself in her glorious beauty—sitting there opposite him shrouded by the darkness. He could endure it no longer—the man rose up in him and asserted itself—he leaned forward and put his hand upon her. He had scarcely done so when the Duchess uttered a shrill cry.

“My God!” she exclaimed, in a voice of horror, “who is in the carriage with us?”

She flung herself across and knelt upon the floor between Hilary and Fleta; her terror was so great she did not know what she was doing.

Hilary leaned across her and instantly discovered that she was right—that there was another man in the carriage besides himself.

“Oh, kill him! kill him!” cried the little Duchess, in an agony of fear; “he is a thief, a murderer, a robber!”

Hilary rose up and precipitated himself upon this person whom he could not see. A sense of self-defence, of defence of the women with him, seized him as we see it seize the animals. He discovered that this man had risen also. Blindly and furiously he attacked him, and with extraordinary strength. Hilary was young and full of vigour, but slight and not built like an athlete. Now, however, he seemed to be one. He found his adversary to be much larger and stronger than himself.

A fearful struggle followed. The carriage drove on through unseen scenery as fast as possible; Fleta could have stopped it had she thrown the window down and cried out to the postilions. But Fleta remained motionless—she might have fainted, she was so still. The little Duchess simply cowered on the ground beside her, clinging to her motionless figure. This terrified girl had not the presence of mind to think of stopping the carriage, and so obtaining help. She was too horror-struck to do anything. And, indeed, it was horrible, for the swaying struggling forms sometimes were right upon the two women, sometimes at the other side of the carriage; it was a deadly, horrible, ghastly struggle, all the more horrid for the silence. There were no cries, no exclamations, for indeed, so far as Hilary was concerned, he had no breath to spare for them. There were only gasps, and heavy breathings, and the terrible sound that comes from a man’s throat when he is fighting for his life. How long this hideous battle lasted none could tell—Hilary had no idea of the passage of time. The savage in him had now come so entirely uppermost and drowned all other consciousness, that his one thought was he must kill—kill—kill—and at last it was done. There was a moment when his adversary was below him, when he could use his whole force upon him—and then came a gasp and an unearthly cry—and silence.

Absolute silence for a little while. No one moved, no one stirred. The Duchess was petrified with horror. Hilary had sunk exhausted on the seat of the carriage—not only exhausted, but bewildered, for a host of other emotions besides savage fury began to rise within him. What—who—-was this being he had destroyed? At that moment they were urged into a gallop, for they were entering the city gates. Hilary threw down the window next him with a crash. “Lights, lights!” he cried out, “bring lights.” The carriage stopped, and there was a crowd immediately at the windows, and the glare of torches fell into the carriage, making it bright as day. The little Duchess was crouched in the corner on the ground in a dead faint. Fleta sat up, strangely white, but calm. Nothing else was to be seen, alive or dead, save Hilary himself; and so horror-struck was he at this discovery that he turned and buried his face in the cushions of the carriage, and he never knew what happened—whether he wept, or laughed, or cursed—but some strange sound of his own voice he heard with his ears.

There was a carriage full of servants behind Fleta’s carriage; when hers stopped so suddenly they all got out and came quickly to the doors.

“The Duchess has fainted,” said Fleta, rising so as to hide Hilary; “the journey has been too long. Is there a house near where she can lie still a little while, and come on later to the palace?”

Immediately offers of help were made, and the servants and those who were glad to help them carried the poor little Duchess away.

“On to the palace!” cried Fleta, and shut the door and drew down the blinds. The postilion started the horses with all speed.

Suddenly the blood in Hilary’s body began to surge and burn. Was it Fleta’s arms that clung round him? Fleta’s lips that printed warm, living kisses on his neck, his face, his hair? He turned and faced her.

“Tell me the truth,” he said. “Are you a devil?”

“No,” she answered, “I am not. I want to find my way to the pure good that governs life. But there are devils about me, and you have killed one of them to-night. Hush, calm yourself; remember what we are in the eyes of the world. For we are at the palace door, and Otto is standing there to receive us.”

She stepped out, the young queen.

Hilary followed her, stumbling, broken. He said he was ill, to those who spoke to him; and stood staring in wonder at the brilliant sight before him.

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