Chapter XV: {574} (3)

“Know, O, Asclepius,” says Hermes, “that as the HIGHEST ONE is the father of the celestial gods, so is man _the artisan of the gods who reside in the temples_, and who delight in the society of mortals. Faithful to its origin and nature, humanity perseveres in this imitation of the divine powers; and, if the Father Creator has made in His image the _eternal gods_, mankind in its turn makes its gods in its own image.” “And, dost thou speak of statues of gods; O, Trismegistus?” “Verily, I do, Asclepius, and however great thy defiance, perceivest thou not that these statues are endowed _with reason_, that they are animated with a soul, and that they can operate the greatest prodigies. {614} How can we reject the evidence, when we find these gods possessing the gift of predicting the future, which they are compelled to tell, when forced to it by magic spells, as through the lips of the divines and their visions?... It is the marvel of marvels that man could have invented and created gods.... True, the faith of our ancestors has erred, and in their pride they fell into error as to the precise essence of these gods ... but they have still found out that art themselves. Powerless to create soul and spirit, they evoke the souls of angels and demons in order to introduce them into the consecrated statues; and so make them preside at their Mysteries, by communicating to idols their own faculty to _do good as well as evil_.”

It is not antiquity alone which is full of evidence that the statues and idols of the gods at times exhibited intelligence and locomotive powers. Full in the nineteenth century, we see the papers recording the capers played by the statue of the Madonna of Lourdes. This gracious lady, the French Notre Dame, runs away several times to the woods adjoining her usual residence, the parish church. The sexton is obliged to hunt after the runaway, and bring her home more than once.[908] After this begins a series of “miracles,” healing, prophesying, letter-dropping from on high, and what not. These “miracles” are implicitly accepted by millions and millions of Roman Catholics; numbers of these belonging to the most intelligent and educated classes. Why, then, should we disbelieve in testimony of precisely the same character, given as to contemporary phenomena of the same kind, by the most accredited and esteemed historians—by Titus Livy, for instance? “Juno, would you please abandon the walls of Veii, and change this abode for that of Rome?” inquires of the goddess a Roman soldier, after the conquest of that city. Juno consents, and nodding her head in token of acquiescence, her statue answers: “Yes, I will.” Furthermore, upon their carrying off the figure, it seems to instantly “_lose its immense weight_,” adds the historian, and the statue seems rather to follow them than otherwise.[909]

With _naïveté_, and a faith bordering on the sublime, des Mousseaux, bravely rushes into the dangerous parallels, and gives a number of instances of Christian as well as “heathen” _miracles_ of that kind. He prints a list of such walking statues of saints and Madonnas, who lose their weight, and move about as so many living men and women; and presents unimpeachable evidence of the same, from classical authors, who described their _miracles_.[910] He has but one thought, one anxious and all-overpowering desire—to prove to his readers that {615} magic does exist, and that Christianity beats it flat. Not that the miracles of the latter are either more numerous, or more extraordinary, or suggestive than those of the Pagans. Not at all; and he is a fair historian as to facts and evidence. But, it is his arguments and reflections that are priceless: one kind of miracle is produced by God, the other by the Devil; he drags down the Deity and placing Him face to face with Satan, allows the arch-enemy to beat the Creator by long odds. Not a word of solid, evident proof to show the substantial difference between the two kinds of wonders.

Would we inquire the reason why he traces in one the hand of God and in the other the horn and hoof of the Devil? Listen to the answer: “The Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolical Church declares the miracles wrought by her faithful sons produced by the will of God; and all others the work of the spirits of Hell.” Very well, but on what ground? We are shown an endless list of holy writers; of saints who fought during their whole lives with the fiends; and of fathers whose word and authority are accepted as “word of God” by the same Church. “Your idols, your consecrated statues are the abode of _demons_,” exclaims St. Cyprian. “Yes, it is these _spirits_ who inspire your divines, who animate the bowels of your victims, who govern the flight of birds, and who, mixing incessantly falsehood with truth, render oracles, and ... operate prodigies, their object being to bring you invincibly to their worship.”[911]

Fanaticism in religion, fanaticism in science, or fanaticism in any other question becomes a hobby, and cannot but blind our senses. It will ever be useless to argue with a fanatic. And here we cannot help admiring once more the profound knowledge of human nature which dictated to Mr. Sergeant Cox the following words, delivered in the same address as before alluded to: “There is no more fatal fallacy than that the truth will prevail by its own force, that it has only to be seen to be embraced. In fact the desire for the actual truth exists in very few minds, and the capacity to discern it in fewer still. When men say that they are seeking the truth, they mean that they are looking for evidence to support some prejudice or prepossession. Their beliefs are moulded to their wishes. They see all, and more than all, that seems to tell for that which they desire; they are blind as bats to whatever tells against them. The scientists are no more exempt from this common failing than are others.”

We know that from the remotest ages there has existed a mysterious, awful science, under the name of _theopœa_. This science taught the art of endowing the various symbols of gods with temporary life and {616} intelligence. Statues and blocks of inert matter became animated under the potential will of the hierophant. The fire stolen by Prometheus had fallen down in the struggle to earth; it embraced the lower regions of the sky, and settled in the waves of the universal ether as the potential _Akâsa_ of the Hindu rites. We breathe and imbibe it into our organic system with every mouthful of fresh air. Our organism is full of it from the instant of our birth. But it becomes potential only under the influx of WILL and SPIRIT.

Left to itself, this life-principle will blindly follow the laws of nature; and, according to conditions, will produce health and an exuberance of _life_, or cause _death_ and dissolution. But, guided by the will of the adept, it becomes obedient; its currents restore the equilibrium in organic bodies, they fill the waste, and produce physical and psychological miracles, well-known to mesmerizers. Infused in inorganic and inert matter, they create an appearance of life, hence motion. If to that life an individual intelligence, a personality, is wanting, then the operator must either send his _scin-lecca_, his own astral spirit, to animate it; or use his power over the region of nature-spirits to force one of them to _infuse_ his entity into the marble, wood, or metal; or, again, be helped by human spirits. But the latter—except the vicious, earth-bound class[912]—will _not_ infuse their essence into these inanimate objects. They leave the lower kinds to produce the similitude of life and animation, and only send their influence through the intervening spheres like a ray of divine light, when the so-called “miracle” is required for a good purpose. The condition—and this is a law in spiritual nature—is purity of motive, purity of the surrounding magnetic atmosphere, personal purity of the operator. Thus is it, that a Pagan “miracle” may be by far holier than a Christian one.

Who that has seen the performance of the fakirs of Southern India, can doubt the existence of _theopœa_ in ancient times? An inveterate skeptic, though more than anxious to attribute every phenomenon to jugglery, still finds himself compelled to testify to facts; and facts that are to be witnessed daily if one chooses. “I dare not,” he says, speaking of Chibh-Chondor, a fakir of Jaffna-patnam, “describe all the exercises which he performed. There are things one _dares_ not {617} say even after having witnessed them, for fear of being charged with having been under an inexplicable hallucination! And yet, ten, nay, twenty times, I saw and saw again the fakir obtain similar results over inert matter.... It was but child’s play for our ‘charmer’ to make the flame of candles which had, by his directions, been placed in the remotest corners of the apartment, pale and become extinguished at will; to cause the furniture to move, even the sofas on which we sat, the doors to open and shut repeatedly: and all this without quitting the mat upon which he sat on the floor.

“Perhaps I will be told that I saw imperfectly. Possibly; but I will say that hundreds and thousands of persons have seen and do see what I have, and things more wonderful; has one of all these discovered the secret, or been able to duplicate these phenomena? And I can never repeat too often that all this does not occur on a stage, supplied with mechanical contrivances for the use of the operator. No, it is a beggar crouched, naked, on the floor, who thus sports with your intelligence, your senses, and all that which we have agreed among ourselves to style the immutable laws of nature, but which he appears to alter at will!

“Does he change its course? ‘No, but he makes it act by using forces which are yet unknown to us,’ say the believers. However that may be, I have found myself twenty times at similar performances in company with the most distinguished men of British India—professors, physicians, officers. Not one of them but thus summarized his impressions upon quitting the drawing-room. ‘This is something terrifying to human intelligence!’ Every time that I saw repeated by a fakir the experiment of reducing serpents to a cataleptic state, a condition in which these animals have all the rigidity of the dry branch of a tree, my thoughts have reverted to the biblical fable (?) which endows Moses and the priests of Pharaoh with the like power.”[913]

Assuredly, the flesh of man, beast, and bird should be as easily endowed with magnetic life-principle as the inert table of a modern medium. Either both wonders are possible and true, or both must fall to the ground, together with the miracles of Apostolic days, and those of the more modern Popish Church. As for vital proofs furnished to us in favor of such possibilities, we might name books enough to fill a whole library. If Sixtus V. cited a formidable array of spirits attached to various talismans, was not his threat of excommunication for all those who practiced the art, uttered merely because he would have the knowledge of this secret confined within the precincts of the Church? How would it do for his “divine” miracles to be studied and {618} successfully reproduced by every man endowed with perseverance, a strong positive magnetic power, and an unflinching will? Recent events at Lourdes (of course, supposing them to have been truthfully reported) prove that the secret is not wholly lost; and if there is no strong magician-mesmerizer concealed under frock and surplice, then the statue of Notre-Dame is moved by the same forces which move every magnetized table at a spiritual seance; and the nature of these “intelligences,” whether they belong to the classes of human, human elementary, or elemental spirits depends on a variety of conditions. With one who knows anything of mesmerism, and at the same time of the charitable spirit of the Roman Catholic Church, it ought not to be difficult to comprehend that the incessant curses of the priests and monks; and the bitter anathemas so freely pronounced by Pius IX.—himself a strong mesmerizer, and believed to be a _jetattore_ (evil eye)—have drawn together legions of elementaries and elementals under the leadership of the disembodied Torquemadas. These are the “angels” who play pranks with the statue of the Queen of Heaven. Any one who accepts the “miracle” and thinks otherwise blasphemes.

Although it would seem as if we had already furnished sufficient proofs that modern science has little or no reason to boast of originality, yet before closing this volume we will adduce a few more to place the matter beyond doubt. We have but to recapitulate, as briefly as possible, the several claims to new philosophies and discoveries, the announcement of which has made the world open its eyes so wide within these last two centuries. We have pointed to the achievements in arts, sciences, and philosophy of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Chaldeans, and Assyrians; we will now quote from an author who has passed long years in India studying their philosophy. In the famous and recent work of _Christna et le Christ_, we find the following tabulation:

“_Philosophy._—The ancient Hindus have created from the foundation the two systems of spiritualism and materialism, of metaphysical philosophy and of positive philosophy. The first taught in the Vedantic school, whose founder was Vyasa; the second taught in the Sankya school, whose founder was Kapila.

“_Astronomical Science._—They fixed the calendar, invented the zodiac, calculated the precession of the equinoxes, discovered the general laws of the movements, observed and predicted the eclipses.

“_Mathematics._—They invented the decimal system, algebra, the differential, integral, and infinitesimal calculi. They also discovered geometry and trigonometry, and in these two sciences they constructed and proved theorems _which were only discovered in Europe as late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries_. It was the Brahmans in fact who first deduced the superficial measure of a triangle from {619} the calculation of its three sides, and calculated the relations of the circumference to the diameter. Furthermore, we must restore to them the square of the hypotenuse and the table so improperly called Pythagorean, which we find engraved on the _gôparama_ of the majority of great pagodas.

“_Physics._—They established the principle which is still our own to-day, that the universe is a harmonious whole, subject to laws which may be determined by observation and experiment. They discovered hydrostatics; and the famous proposition that every body plunged in water loses of its own weight a weight equal to the volume which it displaces, is only a loan made by the Brahmans to the famous Greek architect, Archimedes. The physicists of the pagodas calculated the velocity of light, fixed in a positive manner the laws which it follows in its reflection. And finally, it is beyond doubt, from the calculations of Surya-Sidhenta, that they knew and calculated the force of steam.

“_Chemistry._—They knew the composition of water, and formulated for gases the famous law, _which we know only from yesterday, that the volumes of gas are in inverse ratio to the pressures that they support_. They knew how to prepare sulphuric, nitric, and muriatic acids; the oxides of copper, iron, lead, tin, and zinc; the sulphurets of iron, copper, mercury, antimony, and arsenic; the sulphates of zinc and iron; the carbonates of iron, lead, and soda; nitrate of silver; and powder.

“_Medicine._—Their knowledge was truly astonishing. In Tcharaka and Sousruta, the two princes of Hindu medicine, is laid down the system which Hippocrates appropriated later. Sousruta notably enunciates the principles of preventive medicine or hygiene, which he places much above curative medicine—too often, according to him, empyrical. Are we more advanced to-day? It is not without interest to remark that the Arab physicians, who enjoyed a merited celebrity in the middle ages—Averroès among others—constantly spoke of the Hindu physicians, and regarded them as the initiators of the Greeks and themselves.

“_Pharmacology._—They knew all the simples, their properties, their use, and upon this point have not yet ceased to give lessons to Europe. Quite recently we have received from them the treatment of asthma, with the datura.

“_Surgery._—In this they are not less remarkable. They made the operation for the stone, succeeded admirably in the operation for cataract, and the extraction of the fœtus, of which all the unusual or dangerous cases are described by Tcharaka with an extraordinary scientific accuracy.

“_Grammar._—They formed the most marvellous language in the world—the Sanscrit—which gave birth to the greater part of the idioms of the Orient, and of Indo-European countries.

“_Poetry._—They have treated all the styles, and shown themselves {620} supreme masters in all. Sakuntala, Avrita, the Hindu Phædra, Saranga, and a thousand other dramas have their superiors neither in Sophocles nor Euripides, in Corneille nor Shakspere. Their descriptive poetry has never been equalled. One must read, in the _Megadata_, “The Plaint of an Exile,” who implores a passing cloud to carry his remembrances to his cottage, his relatives and friends, whom he will never see more, to form an idea of the splendor to which this style has been carried in India. Their fables have been copied by all modern and ancient peoples, who have not even given themselves the trouble to color differently the subject of these little dramas.

“_Music._—They invented the gamut with its differences of tones and half-tones much before Gui d’ Arezzo. Here is the Hindu scale:

Sa—Ri—Ga—Ma—Pa—Da—Ni—Sa.

“_Architecture._—They seem to have exhausted all that the genius of man is capable of conceiving. Domes, inexpressibly bold; tapering cupolas; minarets, with marble lace; Gothic towers; Greek hemicycles; polychrome style—all kinds and all epochs are there, betokening the origin and date of the different colonies, which, in emigrating, carried with them their souvenirs of their native art.”

Such were the results attained by this ancient and imposing Brahmanical civilization. What have we to offer for comparison? Beside such majestic achievements of the past, what can we place that will seem so grandiose and sublime as to warrant our boast of superiority over an ignorant ancestry? Beside the discoverers of geometry and algebra, the constructors of human speech, the parents of philosophy, the primal expounders of religion, the adepts in psychological and physical science, how even the greatest of our biologists and theologians seem dwarfed! Name to us any modern discovery, and we venture to say, that Indian history need not long be searched before the prototype will be found of record. Here we are with the transit of science half accomplished, and all our ideas in process of readjustment to the theories of force-correlation, natural selection, atomic polarity, and evolution. And here, to mock our conceit, our apprehensions, and our despair, we may read what Manu said, perhaps 10,000 years before the birth of Christ:

“The first germ of life was developed by water and heat” (_Manu_, book i., sloka 8).

“Water ascends toward the sky in vapors; from the sun it descends in rain, from the rain are born the plants, and from the plants, animals” (book iii., sloka 76).

“Each being acquires the qualities of the one which immediately precedes it, in such a manner that the farther a being gets away from {621} the primal atom of its series, the more he is possessed of qualities and perfections” (book i., sloka 20).

“Man will traverse the universe, gradually ascending, and passing through the rocks, the plants, the worms, insects, fish, serpents, tortoises, wild animals, cattle, and higher animals.... Such is the _inferior degree_” (Ibid.).

“These are the transformations declared, from the plant up to Brahma, which have to take place in his world” (Ibid.).

“The Greek,” says Jacolliot, “is but the Sanscrit. Pheidias and Praxiteles have studied in Asia the chefs-d’œuvre of Daonthia, Ramana, and Aryavosta. Plato disappears before Dgeminy and Veda-Vyasa, whom he literally copies. Aristotle is thrown into the shade by the _Pourva-Mimansa_ and the _Outtara-Mimansa_, in which one finds all the systems of philosophy which we are now occupied in re-editing, from the Spiritualism of Socrates and his school, the skepticism of Pyrrho, Montaigne, and Kant, _down to the positivism of Littré_.”

Let those who doubt the exactness of the latter assertion read this phrase, extracted textually from the _Outtara-Mimansa_, or _Vedanta_, of Vyasa, who lived at an epoch which the Brahmanical chronology fixes at 10,400 years before our era:

“We can only study phenomena, verify them, and hold them to be relatively true, but nothing in the universe, neither by perception nor by induction, nor by the senses, nor by reasoning, being able to demonstrate the existence of a Supreme Cause, which could, at a fixed point of time, have given birth to the universe, Science has to discuss neither the possibility nor impossibility of this Supreme Cause.”

Thus, gradually but surely, will the whole of antiquity be vindicated. Truth will be carefully sifted from exaggeration; much that is now considered fiction may yet be proved fact, and the “facts and laws” of modern science found to belong to the limbo of exploded myths. When, centuries before our era, the Hindu Bramaheupto affirmed that the starry sphere was immovable, and that the daily rising and setting of stars confirms the motion of the earth upon its axis; and when Aristarchus of Samos, born 267 years B.C., and the Pythagorean philosopher Nicetè, the Syracusan, maintained the same, what was the credit given to their theories until the days of Copernicus and Galileo? And the system of these two princes of science—a system which has revolutionized the whole world—how long will it be allowed to remain as a complete and undisturbed whole? Have we not, at the present moment, in Germany, a learned savant, a Professor Shoëpfer, who, in his public lectures at Berlin, tries to demonstrate, 1, that the earth is immovable; 2, the sun is but a little bigger than it seems; and 3, that {622} Tycho-Brahe was perfectly right and Galileo perfectly wrong?[914] And what was Tycho-Brahe’s theory? Why, that the earth stands immovable in the centre of the universe, and that around it, as around its centre, the whole of the celestial vault gravitates every twenty-four hours; and finally, that the sun and moon, apart from this motion, proceed on curved lines peculiar to themselves, while Mercury, with the rest of the planets, describes an epicycloid.

We certainly have no intention to lose time nor devote space to either combating or supporting this _new_ theory, which suspiciously resembles the _old_ ones of Aristotle and even the Venerable Bede. We will leave the learned army of modern Academicians to “wash their family linen among themselves,” to use an expression of the great Napoleon. But we will, nevertheless, avail ourselves of such a good opportunity as this defection affords to demand once more of science her diploma or patents of infallibility. Alas! are these, then, the results of her boasted progress?

It was hardly more than yesterday when, upon the strength of facts within our own observation, and corroborated by the testimony of a multitude of witnesses, we timidly ventured the assertion that tables, mediums, and Hindu fakirs were occasionally levitated. And when we added that, if such a phenomenon should happen but once in a century, “without a visible mechanical cause, then that rising is a manifestation of a natural law of which our scientists are yet ignorant,” we were called “iconoclastic,” and charged, in our turn, by the newspapers, with ignorance of the law of gravitation. Iconoclastic or not, we never thought of charging science with denying the rotation of the earth on its axis, or its revolution around the sun. Those two lamps, at least, in the beacon of the Academy, we thought would be kept trimmed and burning to the end of time. But, lo! here comes a Berlin professor and crushes our last hopes that Science should prove herself exact in some one particular. The cycle is truly at its lowest point, and a new era is begun. The earth stands still, and Joshua is vindicated!

In days of old—in 1876—the world believed in centrifugal force, and the Newtonian theory, which explained the flattening of the poles by the rotatory motion of the earth around its axis, was orthodox. Upon this hypothesis, the greater portion of the globular mass was believed to gravitate toward the equator; and in its turn the centrifugal force, acting on the mass with its mightiest power, forced this mass to concentrate itself on the equator. Thus is it that the credulous {623} scientists believed the earth to rotate around its axis; for, were it otherwise, there would exist no centrifugal force, and without this force there could be no gravitation toward the equatorial latitudes. It has been one of the accepted proofs of the rotation of the earth, and it is this deduction, with several others, that the Berlin professor declares that, “in common with many other scientists,” he “rejects.”

“Is this not ridiculous, gentlemen,” he concludes, “that we, confiding in what we were taught at school, have accepted the rotation of the earth around its axis as a fact fully demonstrated, while there is nothing at all to prove it, and it _cannot_ be demonstrated? Is it not cause of astonishment that the scientists of the whole educated world, commencing with Copernicus and Kepler, should have begun by accepting such a movement of our planet, and then three and a half centuries later be searching for such proofs? But, alas! though we search, we find none, as was to be expected. All, all is vain!”

And thus it is that at one stroke the world loses its rotation, and the universe is bereaved of its guardians and protectors, the centrifugal and centripetal forces! Nay, ether itself, blown out of space, is but a “fallacy,” a myth born of a bad habit of using empty words; the sun is a pretender to dimensions to which it was never entitled; the stars are twinkling dots, and “were so expressly disposed at considerable distances from one another by the Creator of the universe, probably with the intention that they should simultaneously illumine the vast spaces on the face of our globe” says Dr. Shoëpfer.

And is it so that even three centuries and a half have not sufficed the men of exact science to construct one theory that not a single university professor would dare challenge? If astronomy, the one science built on the adamantine foundation of mathematics, the one of all others deemed as infallible and unassailable as truth itself, can be thus irreverently indicted for false pretences, what have we gained by cheapening Plato to the profit of the Babinets? How, then, do they venture to flout at the humblest observer who, being both honest and intelligent, may say he has seen a mediumistic, or magical phenomenon? And how dare they prescribe the “limits of philosophical inquiry,” to pass beyond which is not lawful? And these quarrelling hypothesists still arraign as ignorant and superstitious those giant intellects of the past, who handled natural forces like world-building Titans, and raised mortality to an eminence where it allied itself with the gods! Strange fate of a century boasting to have elevated exact science to its _apex of fame_, and now invited to go back and begin its A B C of learning again!

Recapitulating the evidence contained in this work, if we begin with the archaic and unknown ages of the Hermetic Pimander, and come down {624} to 1876, we find that one universal belief in magic has run through all these centuries. We have presented the ideas of Trismegistus in his dialogue with Asclepius; and without mentioning the thousand and one proofs of the prevalence of this belief in the first centuries of Christianity, to achieve our purpose we have but to quote from an ancient and a modern author. The first will be the great philosopher Porphyry, who several thousand years after the days of Hermes, remarks in relation to the prevailing skepticism of his century, the following: “We need not be amazed in seeing the vulgar masses (οἱ πολλοι) perceive in statues merely stone and wood. Thus it is generally with those who, ignorant in letters, find naught in _stylæ_ covered with inscriptions but stone, and in written books naught but the tissue of the papyrus.” And 1,500 years later, we see Mr. Sergeant Cox, in stating the case of the shameful prosecution of a medium by just such a blind materialist, thus expressing his ideas: “Whether the medium is guilty or guiltless ... certain it is that the trial has had the unlooked-for effect of directing the attention of the whole public to the fact that the phenomena _are asserted to_ exist, and by a great number of competent investigators are _declared to be true_, and of the reality of which every person may, if he pleases, satisfy himself by actual inspection, thus sweeping away, thus and for ever, _the dark and debasing doctrines of the materialists_.”

Still, in harmony with Porphyry and other theurgists, who affirmed the different natures of the manifesting “spirits” and the personal spirit or will of man, Mr. Sergeant Cox adds, without committing himself any further to a personal decision: “True, there are differences of opinions ... and perhaps ever will be, as to the sources of the power that is exhibited in these phenomena; but whether they are the product of the psychic force of the circle ... or, if spirits of the dead be the agents, as others say, or elemental spirits (whatever it may be) as asserted by a third party, this fact at least is established—that man is not wholly material, that the mechanism of man is moved and directed by some non-material—that is, some non-molecular structure, which possesses not merely intelligence, but _can exercise also a force upon matter_, that something to which, for lack of a better title, we have given the name of soul. These glad tidings have by this trial been borne to thousands and tens of thousands, whose happiness here, and hopes of a hereafter, have been blighted by the materialists, who have preached so persistently that soul was but a superstition, man but an automaton, mind but a secretion, present existence purely animal, and the future—a blank.”

“Truth alone,” says Pimander, “is eternal and immutable; _truth_ is the first of blessings; but truth is not and cannot be on earth: it is possible that God sometimes gifts a few men together with the faculty {625} of comprehending divine things with that of rightly understanding truth; but nothing is true on earth, for everything has matter on it, clothed with a corporeal form subject to change, to alteration, to corruption, and to new combinations. Man is not _the_ truth, for only that which has drawn its essence from itself, and remains itself, and unchangeable, is true. How can that which changes so as not to finally be recognized, be ever true? Truth, then, is that only which is immaterial and not enclosed within a corporeal envelope, that which is colorless and formless, exempt from change and alteration; that which is ETERNAL. All of that which perishes is a lie; earth is but dissolution and generation; every generation proceeds from a dissolution; the things of earth are but _appearances_ and imitations of truth; they are what the picture is to reality. The things of earth are not the TRUTH!... Death, for some persons, is an evil which strikes them with profound terror. This is ignorance.... Death is the destruction of the body; the being in it _dies not_.... The material body loses its form, which is disintegrated in course of time; the senses which animated it return to their source and resume their functions; but they gradually lose their passions and their desires, and _the spirit_ ascends to heaven to become a HARMONY. In the first zone, it leaves behind itself the faculty of increasing and decreasing; in the second, the power of doing evil and the frauds of idleness; in the third, deceptions and concupiscence; in the fourth, insatiable ambition; in the fifth, arrogance, audacity, and temerity; in the sixth, all yearning after dishonest acquisitions; and in the seventh, _untruthfulness_. The spirit thus purified by the effect on him of the celestial harmonies, returns once more to its primitive state, strong of a merit and power self-acquired, and which belongs to it properly; and only then he begins to dwell with those that sing eternally their praises of the FATHER. Hitherto, he is placed among the powers, and as such has attained to the supreme blessing of knowledge. He is become a GOD!... No, the things of earth are not the truth.”

After having devoted their whole lives to the study of the records of the old Egyptian wisdom, both Champollion-Figeac and Champollion, Junior, publicly declared, notwithstanding many biassed judgments hazarded by certain hasty and unwise critics, that the _Books of Hermes_ “truly contain a mass of Egyptian traditions which are constantly corroborated by the most authentic records and monuments of Egypt of the hoariest antiquity.”[915]

Closing up his voluminous summary of the psychological doctrines of the Egyptians, the sublime teachings of the sacred Hermetic books, and {626} the attainments of the initiated priests in metaphysical and practical philosophy, Champollion-Figeac inquires—as he well may, in view of the then attainable evidence—“whether there ever was in the world another association or caste of men which could equal them in credit, power, learning, and capability, in the same degree of good or evil? No, _never_! And this caste was subsequently _cursed_ and stigmatized only by those who, under I know not what kind of modern influences, have considered it as the enemy of men and—science.”[916]

At the time when Champollion wrote these words, Sanscrit was, we may say, almost an unknown tongue for science. But little in the way of a parallel could have been drawn between the respective merits of the Brahmans and the Egyptian philosophers. Since then, however, it has been discovered that the very same ideas, expressed in almost identical language, may be read in the Buddhistic and Brahmanical literature. This very philosophy of the unreality of mundane things and the illusion of the senses—whose whole substance has been plagiarized in our own times by the German metaphysicians—forms the groundwork of Kapila’s and Vyasa’s philosophies, and may be found in Gautama Buddha’s enunciation of the “four truths,” the cardinal dogmas of his doctrine. Pimander’s expression “he is become a god” is epitomized in the one word, _Nirvana_, which our learned Orientalists most incorrectly consider as the synonym of _annihilation_!

This opinion of the two eminent Egyptologists is of the greatest value to us if it were only as an answer to our opponents. The Champollions were the first in Europe to take the student of archæology by the hand, and, leading him on into the silent crypts of the past, prove that civilization did not begin with our generations; for “though the origins of ancient Egypt are unknown, she is found to have been at the most distant periods within the reach of historical research, with her great laws, her established customs, her cities, her kings, and gods;” and behind, far behind, these same epochs we find ruins belonging to other still more distant and higher periods of civilization. “At Thebes, portions of ruined buildings allow us to recognize remnants of still anterior structures, the materials of which had served for the erection of the very edifices which have now existed for thirty-six centuries!”[917] “Everything told us by Herodotus and the Egyptian priests is found to be exact, and has been corroborated by modern scientists,” adds Champollion.[918]

Whence the civilization of the Egyptians came, will be shown in volume II., and in this respect it will be made to appear that our deductions, though based upon the traditions of the Secret Doctrine, run parallel {627} with those of a number of most respected authorities. There is a passage in a well-known Hindu work which may well be recalled in this connection.

“Under the reign of Viswamitra, first king of the Dynasty of Soma-Vanga. in consequence of a battle which lasted five days, Manu-Vina, heir of the ancient kings, being abandoned by the Brahmans, emigrated with all his companions, passing through Arya, and the countries of Barria, till he came to the shores of Masra” (_History of India_, by Collouca-Batta). Unquestionably this Manu-Vina and Menes, the first Egyptian King, are identical.

Arya, is Eran (Persia); Barria, is Arabia, and Masra, was the name of Cairo, which to this day is called, _Masr_, Musr, and Misro. Phœnician history names Maser as one of the ancestors of Hermes.

And now we will bid farewell to thaumatophobia and its advocates, and consider thaumatomania under its multifarious aspects. In vol. II., we intend to review the “miracles” of Paganism and weigh the evidence in their favor in the same scales with Christian theology. There is a conflict not merely impending but already begun between science and theology, on the one hand, and spirit and its hoary science, magic, on the other. Something of the possibilities of the latter have already been displayed, but more is to come. The petty, mean world, for whose approving nod scientists and magistrates, priests and Christians compete, have begun their latter-day crusade by sentencing in the same year two innocent men, one in France, the other in London, in defiance of law and justice. Like the apostle of circumcision, they are ever ready to thrice deny an unpopular connection for fear of ostracism by their own fellows. The Psychomantics and the Psychophobists must soon meet in fierce conflict. The anxiety to have their phenomena investigated and supported by scientific authorities has given place with the former to a frigid indifference. As a natural result of so much prejudice and unfairness as have been exhibited, their respect for scientists is waning fast, and the reciprocal epithets bandied between the two parties are becoming far from complimentary to either. Which of them is right and which wrong, time will soon show and future generations understand. It is at least safe to prophesy that the Ultima Thulè of God’s mysteries, and the key to them are to be sought elsewhere than in the whirl of Avogadro’s molecules.

People who either judge superficially, or, by reason of their natural impatience would gaze at the blazing sun before their eyes are well fitted to bear lamp-light, are apt to complain of the exasperating obscurity of language which characterizes the works of the ancient Hermetists and their successors. They declare their philosophical treatises on magic incomprehensible. Over the first class we can afford {628} to waste no time; the second, we would beg to moderate their anxiety, remembering those sayings of Espagnet—“Truth lies hid in obscurity,” and “Philosophers never write more deceitfully than when plainly, nor ever more truly than when obscurely.” Furthermore, there is a third class, whom it would compliment too much to say that they judge the subject at all. They simply denounce _ex-cathedra_. The ancients they treat as dreamy fools, and though but physicists and thaumatophobic positivists, they commonly claim a monopoly of spiritual wisdom!

We will select Irenæus Philaletha to answer this latter class. “In the world our writings shall prove a curious-edged knife; to some they shall carve out dainties, but to others they shall only serve to cut their fingers; yet we are not to be blamed, for we do seriously admonish all who shall attempt this work that they undertaketh the highest piece of philosophy in nature; and though we write in English, yet our matter will be as hard as Greek to some, who will think, nevertheless, that they understand as well, when they misconstrue our meaning most perversely; for is it imaginable that they who are fools in nature should be wise in books, which are testimonies unto nature?”

The few elevated minds who interrogate nature instead of prescribing laws for her guidance; who do not limit her possibilities by the imperfections of their own powers; and who only disbelieve because they do not know, we would remind of that apothegm of Narada, the ancient Hindu philosopher:

“Never utter these words: ‘I do not know this—therefore it is false.’”

“One must study to know, know to understand, understand to judge.”

END OF VOLUME I.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Lightfoot assures us that this voice, which had been used in times past for a testimony from heaven, “was indeed performed by magic art” (vol. ii., p. 128). This latter term is used as a supercilious expression, just because it was and is still misunderstood. It is the object of this work to correct the erroneous opinions concerning “magic art.”

[2] Encyclical of 1864.

[3] “Fragments of Science.”

[4] See the last chapter of this volume, p. 622.

[5] “Recollections of a Busy Life,” p. 147.

[6] Henry Ward Beecher.

[7] Cocker: “Christianity and Greek Philosophy,” xi., p. 377.

[8] Gospel according to Matthew, xiii. 11, 13.

[9] “The accusations of atheism, the introducing of foreign deities, and corrupting of the Athenian youth, which were made against Socrates, afforded ample justification for Plato to conceal the arcane preaching of his doctrines. Doubtless the peculiar diction or ‘jargon’ of the alchemists was employed for a like purpose. The dungeon, the rack, and the fagot were employed without scruple by Christians of every shade, the Roman Catholics especially, against all who taught even natural science contrary to the theories entertained by the Church. Pope Gregory the Great even inhibited the grammatical use of Latin as heathenish. The offense of Socrates consisted in unfolding to his disciples the arcane doctrine concerning the gods, which was taught in the Mysteries and was a capital crime. He also was charged by Aristophanes with introducing the new god Dinos into the republic as the demiurgos or artificer, and the lord of the solar universe. The Heliocentric system was also a doctrine of the Mysteries; and hence, when Aristarchus the Pythagorean taught it openly, Cleanthes declared that the Greeks ought to have called him to account and condemned him for blasphemy against the gods,”—(“Plutarch”). But Socrates had never been initiated, and hence divulged nothing which had ever been imparted to him.

[10] See Thomas Taylor: “Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries,” p. 47. New York: J. W Bouton, 1875.

[11] Cousin, “History of Philosophy,” I., ix.

[12] “Theol. Arithme.,” p. 62: “On Pythag. Numbers.”

[13] Plato: “Parmenid.,” 141 E.

[14] See Stobœus’ “Ecl.,” i., 862.

[15] Sextus: “Math.,” vii. 145.

[16] “Metaph.,” 407, a. 3.

[17] Appendix to “Timæus.”

[18] Stob.: “Ecl.,” i., 62.

[19] Krische: “Forsch.,” p. 322, etc.

[20] Clem.: “Alex. Stro.,” v., 590.

[21] Plutarch: “De Isid,” chap. 25, p. 360.

[22] “Plato und die Alt. Akademie.”

[23] “Tusc.,” v., 18, 51.

[24] Ibid. Cf. p. 559.

[25] “Plato und die Alt. Akademie.”

[26] Ed. Zeller: “Philos. der Griech.”

[27] “Plato und die Alt. Akademie.”

[28] One of the five solid figures in Geometry.

[29] “The Sun and the Earth.”

[30] “De Ente Spirituali,” lib. iv.; “de Ente Astrorum,” book i.; and _opera omnia_, vol. i., pp. 634 and 699.

[31] Or more commonly chārkh pūjā.

[32] Persons who believe in the clairvoyant power, but are disposed to discredit the existence of any other spirits in nature than disembodied human spirits, will be interested in an account of certain clairvoyant observations which appeared in the _London Spiritualist_ of June 29, 1877. A thunder-storm approaching, the seeress saw “a bright spirit emerge from a dark cloud and pass with lightning speed across the sky, and, a few minutes after, a diagonal line of dark spirits in the clouds.” These are the _Maruts_ of the “Vedas” (See Max Müller’s “Rig-Veda Sanhita”).

The well-known and respected lecturer, author, and clairvoyant, Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten, has published accounts of her frequent experiences with these elemental spirits.

[33] Translated by Max Müller, Professor of Comparative Philology at the Oxford University, England.

[34] “Dyaríh vah pitâ, prithivi mâtâ sômah bhrâtâ âditih svásâ.”

[35] As the perfect identity of the philosophical and religious doctrines of antiquity will be fully treated upon in subsequent chapters, we limit our explanations for the present.

[36] “Rig-Veda-Anhita,” p. 234.

[37] Philostratus assures us that the Brahmins were able, in his time, to perform the most wonderful cures by merely pronouncing certain magical words. “The Indian Brahmans carry a staff and a ring, by means of which they are able to do almost anything.” Origenes states the same (“Contra Celsum”). But if a strong mesmeric fluid—say projected from the eye, and without any other contact—is not added, no magical words would be efficacious.

[38] Akiba was a friend of Aher, said to have been the Apostle Paul of Christian story. Both are depicted as having visited Paradise. Aher took branches from the Tree of Knowledge, and so fell from the true (Jewish) religion. Akiba came away in peace. See 2d Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter xii.

[39] Taley means ocean or sea.

[40] See “Aytareya Brahmanan,” 3, 1.

[41] See Pantheon: “Myths,” p. 31; also Aristophanes in “Vœstas,” i., reg. 28.

[42] The oracle of Apollo was at Delphos, the city of the δελφυς, womb or abdomen; the place of the temple was denominated the _omphalos_ or navel. The symbols are female and lunary; reminding us that the Arcadians were called Proseleni, pre-Hellenic or more ancient than the period when Ionian and Olympian lunar worship was introduced.

[43] From the accounts of Strabo and Megasthenes, who visited Palibothras, it would seem that the persons termed by him Samanean, or Brachmane priests, were simply Buddhists. “The singularly subtile replies of the Samanean or Brahman philosophers, in their interview with the conqueror, will be found to contain the spirit of the Buddhist doctrine,” remarks Upham. (See the “History and Doctrine of Buddhism;” and Hale’s “Chronology,” vol. iii., p. 238.)

[44] In their turn, the heathen may well ask the missionaries what sort of a spirit lurks at the bottom of the sacrificial beer-bottle. That evangelical New York journal, the “Independent,” says: “A late English traveller found a simple-minded Baptist mission church, in far-off Burmah, using for the communion service, and we doubt not with God’s blessing, Bass’s pale ale instead of wine.” Circumstances alter cases, it seems!

[45] “Book of Brahmanical Evocations,” part iii.

[46] Bulwer-Lytton: “Last Days of Pompeii,” p. 147.

[47] “Select Works,” p. 159.

[48] Ibid., p. 92.

[49] “Aitareya Brahmanan,” Introduction.

[50] The name is used in the sense of the Greek word ανθροπος.

[51] The traditions of the Oriental Kabalists claim their science to be older than that. Modern scientists may doubt and reject the assertion. They _cannot_ prove it false.

[52] Clement of Alexandria asserted that in his day the Egyptian priests possessed forty-two Canonical Books.

[53] “Chips from a German Work-shop,” vol. ii., p. 7. “Comparative Mythology.”

[54] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” ch. i.

[55] In another place, we explain with some minuteness the Hermetic philosophy of the evolution of the spheres and their several races.

[56] J. Burges: “The Works of Plato,” p. 207, note.

[57] From the Sanskrit text of the Aitareya Brahmanam. Rig-Veda, v., ch. ii., verse 23.

[58] Aitareya Brahmanam, book iii., c. v., 44.

[59] Ait. Brahm., vol. ii., p. 242.

[60] Ait. Brahm., book iv.

[61] Septenary Institutions; “Stone him to Death,” p. 20.

[62] See Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”

[63] See Turner; also G. Higgins’s “Anacalypsis.”

[64] Genesis, i., 30.

[65] Sir William Drummond: “Œdipus Judicus,” p. 250.

[66] The absolute necessity for the perpetration of such pious frauds by the early fathers and later theologians becomes apparent, if we consider that if they had allowed the word _Al_ to remain as in the original, it would have become but too evident—except for the initiated—that the _Jehovah_ of Moses and the sun were identical. The multitudes, which ignore that the ancient hierophant considered our _visible_ sun but as an emblem of the central, invisible, and spiritual Sun, would have accused Moses—as many of our modern commentators have already done—of worshipping the planetary bodies; in short, of actual Zabaism.

[67] Exodus, xxv., 40.

[68] “The Physical Basis of Life.” A Lecture by T. H. Huxley.

[69] Huxley: “Physical Basis of Life.”

[70] Prof. J. W. Draper: “Conflict between Religion and Science.”

[71] Bulwer’s “Zanoni.”

[72] See the Code published by Sir William Jones, chap. ix., p. 11.

[73] Pliny: “Hist. Nat.,” xxx. 1; Ib., xvi., 14; xxv., 9, etc.

[74] Pomponius ascribes to them the knowledge of the highest sciences.

[75] Cæsar, iii., 14.

[76] Pliny, xxx.

[77] Munter, on the most ancient religion of the North before the time of Odin. Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de France. Tome ii., p. 230.

[78] Ammianus Marcellinus, xxvi., 6.

[79] In some respects our modern philosophers, who think they make new discoveries, can be compared to “the very clever, learned, and civil gentleman” whom Hippocrates having met at Samos one day, describes very good-naturedly. “He informed me,” the Father of Medicine proceeds to say, “that he had lately discovered an herb never before known in Europe or Asia, and that no disease, however malignant or chronic, could resist its marvellous properties. Wishing to be civil in turn, I permitted myself to be persuaded to accompany him to the conservatory in which he had transplanted the wonderful specific. What I found was one of the commonest plants in Greece, namely, garlic—the plant which above all others has least pretensions to healing virtues.” Hippocrates: “De optima prædicandi ratione item judicii operum magni.” I.

[80] Schweigger: “Introduction to Mythology through Natural History.”

[81] Ennemoser: “History of Magic,” i., 3.

[82] “Hist. of Magic,” vol. i., p. 9.

[83] Philo Jud.: “De Specialibus Legibus.”

[84] Zend-Avesta, vol. ii., p. 506.

[85] Cassian: “Conference,” i., 21.

[86] “De Vita et Morte Mosis,” p. 199.

[87] Acts of the Apostles, vii., 22.

[88] Justin, xxxvi., 2.

[89] Molitor: “Philosophy of History and Traditions,” Howitt’s Translation, p. 285.

[90] “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 329.

[91] See “Gazette du Midi,” and “Le Monde,” of 3 May, 1864.

[92] Shakspere: “Richard III.”

[93] Literally, the _screaming_ or the howling ones.

[94] The half-demented, the _idiots_.

[95] But such is not always the case, for some among these beggars make a regular and profitable trade of it.

[96] Webster declares very erroneously that the Chaldeans called _saros_, the cycle of eclipses, a period of about 6,586 years, “the time of revolution of the moon’s node.” Berosus, himself a Chaldean astrologer, at the Temple of Belus, at Babylon, gives the duration of the sar, or sarus, 3,600 years; a neros 600; and a sossus 60. (See, Berosus from Abydenus, “Of the Chaldæan Kings and the Deluge.” See also Eusebius, and Cary’s _MS._ Ex. Cod. reg. gall. gr. No. 2360, fol. 154.)

[97] Before scientists reject such a theory—traditional as it is—it would be in order for them to demonstrate why, at the end of the tertiary period, the Northern Hemisphere had undergone such a reduction of temperature as to utterly change the torrid zone to a Siberian climate? Let us bear in mind that the _helicocentric system came to us from upper India_; and that the germs of all great astronomical truths were brought thence by Pythagoras. So long as we lack a mathematically correct demonstration, one hypothesis is as good as another.

[98] Censorinus: “De Natal Die.” Seneca: “Nat. Quæst.,” iii., 29.

[99] Euseb.: “Præp. Evan.” Of the Tower of Babel and Abraham.

[100] This is in flat contradiction of the Bible narrative, which tells us that the deluge was sent for the special destruction of these _giants_. The Babylon priests had _no_ object to invent lies.

[101] Coleman, who makes this calculation, allowed a serious error to escape the proof-reader; the length of the manwantara is given at 368,448,000, which is just sixty million years too much.

[102] S. Davis: “Essay in the Asiatic Researches;” and Higgins’s “Anacalypsis;” also see Coleman’s “Mythology of the Hindus.” Preface, p. xiii.

[103] Bunsen: “Egypte,” vol. i.