Chapter II: The School (4)

Although the immense sum of $600,000 was lavished upon the monument to Prince Albert, the estimable consort of Queen Victoria, the memorial has never been regarded as a satisfactory work of art. The general design has some original and interesting features, but the structure is overloaded with gilding and mosaic, and the execution is mechanically rather than aesthetically distinguished. The statue of the Prince himself is inadequate, and the large groups of figures representing the Four Quarters of the World, Industry, etc., though they may have passed muster in the mid-Victorian period of the '60s and '70s, are not up to the artistic standard of today. London has been singularly unfortunate in the quality of its public monuments, and it is to be feared that the new Memorial to Queen Victoria which has just been unveiled, will not raise the average.

There are one hundred and nine figures on the pedestal, a large portion of which are shown in our illustrations. They include painters, poets, architects, sculptors, and some heroes and reformers. They are of far greater interest from the historical associations they arouse than from their artistic quality.

The seated figure in the center of the first illustration is the famous Sir Christopher Wren, (1632-1723) the builder of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, and pre-eminently the most distinguished British architect who has flourished since the Gothic period. He was one of the most original geniuses of the Renascence. Wren had an extraordinary field for his talents opened to him by the immense destruction caused by the Great Fire of London in 1666, and he was certainly the right man in the right place. Not only did he rebuild St. Paul's Cathedral but fifty other London churches. Up to date, St. Paul's is the largest and finest Protestant Cathedral in the world. Though open to criticism in some of its minor details and constructive arrangements, it is allowed to stand foremost among buildings of its class in Europe, St. Peter's possibly excepted.

Standing beside Wren is Inigo Jones, one of the first and most highly accomplished English architects of the Renascence. His fame chiefly rests upon his design for the palace of Whitehall, commanded by James I. The Banqueting Hall was the only part actually carried into execution. A window of this splendid building is still pointed out as the fatal one from which Charles I stepped to the block.

Vanbrugh, standing behind Wren, was the latter's famous pupil. He built Blenheim, the seat of the great Duke of Marlborough. To the right of Inigo Jones is Mansart or Mansard, the French architect whose memory is immortalized in the "Mansard roof," which he invented. Palladio and Vignola, to the extreme right, were Italian Renascence architects whose influence upon the classic revival was very great in England and France; the Palladian style being particularly followed in the former and that of Vignola in the latter country. A striking group of buildings was erected by Palladio in Vicenza, Italy, in the sixteenth century, which became the model on which a large proportion of the Renascence work in England was based.

Of the modern English architects on the left, Sir Charles Barry is the most notable. He was among the first to depart from the fashion so long prevalent of introducing Greek and Roman forms into every building of importance, and was one of the pioneers of the Gothic revival of the nineteenth century, a century without a distinctive style of its own. He designed the British Houses of Parliament, which, in spite of some weaknesses, is a striking building with an eminently picturesque sky-line.

The kneeling figure at the right of the second illustration is the great art reformer Giotto, (1276-1336) the admirable Florentine who liberated the art of painting from the stiff Byzantine traditions which had been dominant for many centuries. He exercised a lasting influence upon the arts in every part of Italy, and thereby, upon the whole western world. Carved in low relief as a background are the Dome and Campanile of Florence Cathedral, the latter being a masterpiece proving that Giotto had supreme ability as a builder in addition to his skill with the brush.

Seated beside Giotto is Arnolfo di Lapo, a successor of the celebrated Niccolo Pisano, one of the few great sculptors of the Gothic period. On Giotto's left is Brunelleschi (1377-1446), sculptor and architect. To him we owe the completion of the great Dome of Florence Cathedral, which is unequaled for beauty though not so high as several later ones. He is also noted for his treatment of the "rusticated" work on the Pitti Palace, Florence.

William of Wykeham, a great man in many walks of life, is famous in architecture for the nave of Winchester Cathedral (of which he was bishop), one of the finest examples of the Perpendicular style existing. Bramante, the next figure, (1441-1514) was the first architect of the present St. Peter's at Rome, a position afterwards held by Peruzzi, Raphael, and Michelangelo. Bramante built many palaces in Rome; his style was simple and dignified, and he adhered as far as possible to the classical forms.

Sansovino (1479-1570) is best known for his picturesque Library of St. Mark, Venice. San Gallo was another of the splendid galaxy of Florentine architects of the Renascence. Vignola, at the extreme left, was one of Michelangelo's successors in the building of St. Peter's; but unfortunately he altered the design in such a way that the great dome of Michelangelo cannot be seen from the front except at a great distance. On Vignola's right stands Delorme, the favorite architect of the French king Henri II; he is remembered chiefly as the first designer of the Palace of the Tuileries.

The third picture contains, among others, the portraits of some famous English, German and French architects of the later Middle Ages. Erwin von Steinbach (died 1318) is famous for his magnificent west front of Strasburg Cathedral, of which, unfortunately, one of the magnificent openwork steeples was never finished. The Abbé Suger was the patriotic adviser of the French kings Louis VI and VII, and was justly celebrated for his efforts for the welfare of the poorer classes at a time when their interests were generally disregarded (twelfth century).

Anthemius, to the right of the Abbé, was the great Grecian architect and mathematician who designed for Justinian (A. D. 532) the daring and original plans of St. Sophia at Constantinople. He is credited with knowing the ancient secret of making "burning-glasses" (magnifying glasses) which was not rediscovered for hundreds of years. He is also said to have understood the making of gunpowder, and the application of steam as a motive power.

The seated figure to the left in the fourth illustration is the great painter, sculptor and architect, Michelangelo. At his right are Torrigiano, his early rival, who is famous for the fine carvings on the tomb of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey; Gian di Bologna (1524-1608), a follower of Michelangelo, and Bandinelli, another rival whom he soon outdistanced. Next to Peter Vischer, (died 1524), one of the early bronze workers in Nürnberg, renowned for his tomb of St. Sebald in that city, is the erratic, bloodthirsty, gallant, and most eminent of all metal-workers, Benvenuto Cellini. His Diana of Fontainebleau, and Perseus of Florence, are his finest large works, but he principally devoted himself to smaller articles such as chased vases, etc. His autobiography is one of the most delightfully naïve "human documents" existing. In the background is a model of the Perseus.

The next seated figure is Jean Goujon, (1530-1572) one of the restorers of French sculpture as an independent art; he is well known for his decoration of the Louvre. Beside him is the martyr-artist Bernard Palissy (1499?-1589), who after sixteen years of incessant and unremunerated labor discovered a pure white enamel ground for pottery which was suitable for the application of decorative art. He was reduced to the extremity of poverty before he made his great discovery, even having to burn his furniture to feed his furnaces. But as soon as his animal sculpture in pottery became famous and prosperity began to shine upon him, he became the victim of religious persecution. Charged with being a Calvinistic preacher, it was only by the aid of powerful friends who admired his genius that he escaped for some years, and finally he was thrown into the Bastile, where he perished.

In our last illustration Michelangelo is at the extreme right. At his left stands Donatello (1386-1468) the forerunner of the greatest of the Florentines, and probably the next best known name in Italian sculpture. His most famous works are in low relief, but several of his full-sized statues, such as the St. George in Florence, are very fine. Luca della Robbia, (seated,) and Ghiberti were almost contemporary with Donatello, and, next to Michelangelo, these three are perhaps the greatest glory of Florence in sculpture. Luca della Robbia invented the process of enameling terra cotta; his groups of Singers at Florence are his most famous work. Ghiberti is chiefly known by his wonderful bronze gates to the Baptistery at Florence. Looking over Donatello's shoulder is Andrea Verrocchio (1432-1488), painter and sculptor, a follower of Donatello, and the teacher of the universal genius Leonardo da Vinci.

Niccolo Pisano, the third figure from the left is of earlier date than those hitherto mentioned. He was architect, sculptor and painter; under the inspiration of his genius sculpture was revived in Italy, and every branch of art was influenced. Imitation of nature in place of conventionalism was introduced. He is one of the few really great sculptors of the Gothic period; he may be considered really to be the forerunner of the Renascence. His most famous work, the marble pulpit in the baptistery at Pisa, was finished in 1260.

THE TWO FAIRYLANDS--A Study in the Literature of Wonder: by Kenneth Morris

I

One has been reading a fairy-tale of our own day, which has made a great stir in literary and dramatic circles, and it has given rise to certain ideas as to canons of criticism. Its name, and its author's, do not matter; there will be more freedom if they remain unmentioned.

What a charm is here! Millions of colors that never were in the rainbow nor the sea-shell; a subtle, exquisite loveliness--which yet, in the after-taste--somehow repels. Always mystery; what we call inanimate things waking to life (as they should do, indeed, in any right-minded fairy-tale); a sense of mutable, inconsequent horizons, over which no sun has ever risen or set. And, as there should be in fairy-tales, a kind of esotericism glimmering through; a meaning concealed yet obvious. Yet there is fairy gold and fairy gold. The best kind has the aspect of a petal or a pebble; but with the dawn, lo, some diamond or magical tiara. We are a little doubtful that this moon-wan opalescence will not turn out to be only a good worthy piece of Birmingham-ware. Withal, there are fine notes at the end, that touch deep centers in us; for these one can but be duly and truly thankful.

There are certainly two methods of imagination; and we find them shown forth excellently in fairy literature. By that we mean all mythology; every tale wherein non-human or magical agents play their part. It will include a good part of our poetry; Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Poe, and Tennyson all dipped into it at times, or moved habitually among its haunted valleys.

There are two roads running out from our actual world, and they run through two separate Fairy-Lands. You shall go out by your front door when the sun is shining, and come upon the one of them. It leads through a wood of daffodils--Wordsworth's and Shakespeare's daffodils--in whose company you will find yourself strangely exultant: these are they that "take the winds with beauty"; hence their jocundity and infectious mirth. Alive? Why, certainly; and wise also--only perhaps you shall not yet be allowed to pry too curiously into their counsels. All the flowers are alive in this fairyland; and they all have their own secrets, which are sunbright and beneficent. Sunbright, or sundark like the hyacinth--but still beneficent: poppy and mandragora are not allowed to grow here.

As you ride on, you shall still feel the shining of the sun and the vigor of the wind; or perhaps there will be sweet intimate grayness of clouds, or perhaps the sweetness of rain. Rain or wind, you will feel the touch of either on your face, and smell the earth-scent. There is one valley there, where the sky is always clouded and windy; the sedge is withered on the lake there, and no birds sing. But for that, you might mistake it at first for a place in the other fairyland, because of the haggard and woe-begone knight-at-arms you are to meet with, "alone and palely loitering." Keats came to this valley, and heard his whole story from him: it was this knight-at-arms who met _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_.

Like everything else in this fairy-land, it is true; in this case the beauty of its truth is awful. For you are not to suppose there are no tragedies enacted here: there are as many as there are in the world. There are a thousand wanderers in the valleys and on the mountains, who would lure you away from the sunlight and the rain. Here, often and often, it is written: "_Look not behind, or thou art lost_." Yet no ruin can come upon you that is not definitely evitable: one holds one's fate in one's own hands, and need fear nothing but himself.

In another hundred of fairyland, your road runs by over windy wolds of rye and barley, and down past the island in the river where dwells the Lady of Shalott. While she weaves her web, finding her whole delight in the pictures, note that the sun or the moon is still shining; afterwards, when she has turned and the curse has come upon her, the low skies are raining ever so heavily. By the presence of the sun and moon and wind and rain, by the earth-smell and the water-song, you shall know that you are in the fairyland of the Right Hand, and that everything about you is true. The story of the Lady of Shalott true? Why, yes; a million and a million times. A tragedy again; fairyland is full of tragedies. Yet she need not have left the web, need not have seen the bloom on the water-lilies, need not ever have looked down to Camelot.

And how nearly a tragedy is this scene too--of Titania, poor lady, falling in love with the Ass! For, if you go far enough, you shall come upon Oberon and his court; you shall find sweet Bully Bottom also, strangely wandered from his own world, and with that queer, inevitable headpiece clapped upon him. What else should he wear, in fairyland? As was said, everything is so desperately true here; and sage and simple are alike to come by their own. Should you stray here, no silk hat has potent enough magic of the modern to protect your respectability: a wandering wind will whisk it away, and you will appear in crown or ass-head, according to your merits; or perchance in a dinted, war-worn helmet, or wearing a garland of oak or laurel or bay. No one may wear any colors but his own in fairyland.

There are innumerable provinces here, reigned over by innumerable potentates; but you are to look for sun and moon and wind and rain in all of them. Perseus and Theseus and Herakles; Roland and the good knight Charlemain; Cuchullain and the Red Branch; the men of the Emperor Arthur, and Oisin and Oscar and Finn--they are all here; here are fought Moytura, Fontarabbia, Camlan. Ulysses flies the Island of Calypso anew; and Odin comes anew into the Hall of the Dwarfs. There is always a feast at Gwalas in Penfro; and the door that looks out towards Aberhenfelen and Cornwall is flung wide by Heilyn again and again--tragedy of tragedies; no one had opened that door until then, from the time the sea and the sky and that old palace were made. But hark! it is the scream of a real seagull that is blown down the hall. Innumerable are the beauties and wonders and sorrows of this region; and they are all true, true, true: you can hear the natural winds and waves always, and taste the salt of natural wind-driven spray.

Yet in a sorrowless Italy here, Saturn still is reigning: and here

The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees in the bells of thyme,
The birds in the myrtle bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass
Are as silent as ever old Tmolus was,

listening to the sweet pipings of Pan: for the Golden Age has not faded and you may come on Brugh-na-Boinne and the Hills of Arcady and the Island of the Appletrees; you may come on all the haunts of Plenydd, Alawn, Angus, Baldur, and Apollo.

II

So much, then, for the Fairyland of the Right-hand, as we may call it; there is also a Left-hand fairyland, however; and its character and denizens are altogether different.

You come to it by a road that never goes out of doors. I suspect that you lock and bar your study door, and draw the curtains, and make fearfully sure of your solitude. Then you sally forth by uncanny gateways, and come where never hay was mown. There is light there, especially at first; but the end is a dreadful darkness. The light is of a kind, indeed, that never was on land or sea; but we may be thankful for that. Our lands and seas are the wholesomer for the lack of it.

At first it is not all so different, as to let us see at once we are in no hallowed region. There is beauty, and color; but the beauty is neither from the sun nor from the moon, and the color from no dawn nor sunset, from no sky nor sea. Shifting mists may give place to a dazzling Moorish palace, or to a peasant's cottage inhabited by the dead. Mirth or sadness may lurk in such dwellings; but beware of any intimacy with them: you cannot tell what fair seeming masks the ghoul. There is no order nor established nature of things, nothing you can depend on. The fig grows on the thistle; but any hunger is better than to eat it; vines and figtrees are prolific of innumerable thorns. Gorgeous blooms prophesy only of doom and impending horror. That is, when you have journeyed some little while. At first, perhaps, they will tell no tale but of sweetness and fragrance for the senses. Luxurious poppies are on every roadside, haunted with night and dreams: but beware of the whitest lily, the deepest rose; besides these the poppies are but flower children innocent of guile.

Very early on the way to this fairyland, you shall come to Xanadu, where Kublai Khan decreed his stately pleasure-dome. A beautiful place? Yes, but mark; here Alph, the sacred river runs "through _caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea_." There is much wonder in that; but also darkness, and--incipient terror. Your true and right-hand fairyland, "bards in fealty to Apollo hold." _It_ is all "in the Face of the Sun and the Eye of Light."

For a lone reminder of better things, the forests of Xanadu do inclose sunny spots of greenery; but the heart of the place! It is "as holy and enchanted as e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman _wailing for her demon lover_." Heavens! is that your mark of holiness? They do not so reckon it in the right fairyland, where the tragedies are effects flowing from causes. And the beauty of the place? "The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves":--a scintillant mirage, a sensuous unreal efflorescence of phantasmagoria; and midst it all, "ancestral voices prophesying war."

_Christabel_, _Genevieve_, and _The Ancient Mariner_ all belong to this fairyland; the first two near the hither frontier, and the last much farther in. For one has to note how beauty wanes as the sun-known horizons recede, and how its place is taken by a new kind of harmony, a chiaroscuro of keen terror and gloom. This also holds one, as beauty does; indeed, plays on the emotion with a more compelling, because wilder and louder, touch. So we call the pictures and poems of the left-hand fairyland also beautiful, also works of Art. Some day I think we shall be wiser; our critics will use a deeper discrimination. Beauty is not that which most stirs the emotion, but that which most stirs it in a certain way. There is the evolutionary urge upward to be considered; what works against that has no real right to the name of beauty. You are to note here, that the further one travels in this dark fairyland, the more Wonder transforms itself into horror. Wonder went with us all through the bright realm, and grew from the mere wizardry of flowers and mountains, into the atmosphere of majesty that surrounds the soul and the judgments of Spiritual Law. The wizard-glow in the woodlands waxes, and resolves itself into one of the elder gods. But in the other case, the Daughter of Glamor that leads us is like the _Gwrach y Rhibyn_ in the Celtic tales; subtly luring and exquisite at first, she turns into a fearful terrifying hag, and he who accompanies her does well if he escapes with his reason.

Glamor fills both regions; the one, a clean natural magic; the other, not so decadent in the beginning, as to be wanting in some few waning rays of the sun. In either case, it is partly the sense of a certain depth in the things seen or heard; you know that the words of the poem or story stand for something more than is actually spoken. Fairy dwellings again; the grass-grown hillock that melts and reveals itself a palace of the Immortals. In the poetry of the Right-hand Fairyland, this is precisely what we find; beautiful is the seen, but infinitely more beautiful and grander that which it symbolizes or indicates. In that magical country, there is nothing not quickening with ancient truth, and all the dramas enacted are leaves out of the diary of the human soul. Hence the many tragedies, the many fallings of fate, dooms that flow out of deeds done or undone. But in the other, we find none of this. There, the esotericism is poorer than the outward form. Fate is fate there, no longer Karma. At the best there may be some moral taught; yet even then, it is doubtful if the lesson will be of supreme value. It will not equal in weight the great superstructure of art raised over it; as if one should sack the caves of the whole sea, to find some not too-precious stone. It will be an after-thought, a gem added, an excuse; not the seed and reason of the whole work. More often, it will be some mere allegory of the passions, void of truth in the deeper sense; or the deliberate esotericizing of a Sandford-and-Mertonism. Yet these will be the very best the left-hand fairyland has to offer; go a little further in, and you have simply riot on the planes of delirium. Coleridge's _Genevieve_ and Keat's _Belle Dame_ will point the difference. There is something of the same color and mystery, even a parallelism in the subject-matter of the two poems: but the first is mere sound and beauty, signifying nothing, and the second a picture of the fate of one who has been lured away by passion from the true paths of the Soul. They are surely wrong, who ascribe to Coleridge the originality, and say that Keats followed him. The truth is that the two are not comparable; Keat's voyagings were to the right hand, Coleridge's, here, to the left.

And the last places in the witch-land? The House of Usher rears itself gauntly beside its tarn there, and incontinently and dreadfully falls. It is an "ultimate dim Thule," reached by a road haunted only of evil angels. It is the home of decay, horror, and death; there is a godless phosphorescence about it.

But, you say, did not Dante wander there, and Milton? No. Whither they went, they went armed in the uprightness of spiritual strength. They made their hells somber, terrible, _august_; not glamorous or attractive. In Malebolge and Pandemonium alike, there is a certain stability also, a procession of cause and effect; there are horrors, but they are not inconsequential; they take their place in a definite scheme of things. And here is a literary touchstone; both Milton and Dante wielded that supreme quality of style which is called the _Grand Manner_, so that the mere boom and march of their verses arouses the feeling of heroism, of titan strength: a thing it was never given the decadents and drug-fed to do. Dante had his safe guide and teacher with him; as he walked through the wonders and terrors of hell, he himself was the thing most aloof and wonderful. Unscathed he might pass to his meeting with Beatrice, and walk with her in heaven as majestically, as he had walked with Virgil through hell. Milton, too, with all his limitations, remains a thing majestic for our vision; poet or politician, he is still the armed and terrible warrior of God. In his characteristic and later mood, he seeks never beauty, but always righteousness; indeed, his chief fault is that he lost sight of any unity in the two. _Comus_ and _Lycidas_ will show us from what fairyland he had graduated, to take part in the stern earthly labors of his prime.

But here is the mark of the later Coleridge, and of all true wanderers in the fairyland of the left. When they see him, "All should cry Beware, beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair." Yes--in one of his moods. But what when the inspiration had passed; when the turbulent dark glory that held them had waned from before his eyes; when the Dead Sea Fruit of his fairyland had withered, and left him to be nourished with filth and cinders? Then, too, wholesome men cry _Beware!_--but of a victim of opium, a morphiomaniac, or one sodden with cocaine; a poor wreck of a man, at sight of whom if you close your eyes, it will not be in "holy dread," but in mere sorrow and pity.

Poor Coleridge! it was laudanum, and not honey-dew or the milk of Paradise that inspired him. And perhaps we might trace all that part of the literature of wonder which comes from the dark, left-hand fairyland, to drugs; which would remove from the category of genius many a name that figures there now.

LIGHT PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL: by H. Coryn, M. D., M. R. C. S.

A metal is fixed and crystallized light, said H. P. Blavatsky--and was laughed at. Light was not then, nor is it yet, substantive, but a mode of motion--of the ether and of matter. The days when it was substantive and corpuscular, the days of Newton, had gone by.

But there are several indications of their return--with additions, the additions warranting H. P. Blavatsky's definition of a metal.

A crystal of metal consists of molecules, and they of the still smaller atoms. Each atom, in its turn, is made of the still smaller electrons or corpuscles. If these either _are_ light, or are made of even smaller bodies which are, the definition is justified. This is the suggestion, or contention, of Professor Bragg, developed at a recent lecture delivered before the English Royal Institution.

Light is regarded as a spreading etheric pulsation, waves in ether. We have it as the visible seven colors from red up to violet, and beyond visibility as the ultra-violet. Still higher etheric pulses, according to the usual theory, are the _x_-rays. Professor Bragg applies his new corpuscular theory to the last alone, though he suggests that it also includes the ultra-violet rays--in which case it must include all the rest. He thinks the _x_-rays corpuscular because of a certain behavior; but the ultra-violet rays have the same behavior--and no one doubts _their_ continuity with the lower rays down to--and far below--the red. What is the behavior on which the argument rests?

The term _x_-rays or kathode rays, as popularly used, covers three kinds of emanation in the tube or from radium. The first and grossest ingredient is ordinary matter, whirling atoms of the element helium. The next and finer, the intermediate, is electrons, corpuscles. The third and finest is _x_-rays proper, hitherto considered as merely etheric pulses. Professor Bragg calls them _gamma_ rays, restricting the other term, _x_-rays, for other rays of properties so nearly the same that he includes them in the same argument.

When _gamma_ (or _x_-) rays fall on an atom of matter they cause it to discharge one or more of its electrons or corpuscles, the intermediate of the three emanations popularly included under the term _x_-rays. In this connexion they are called _beta_ rays.

The professor points out that when _gamma_ (or _x_-) rays produce this discharge from an atom

the _beta_ rays to a large degree continue the line of motion of the _gamma_ rays, as if the latter pushed them out of the atoms; and, lastly, that the number of the _beta_ rays depends on the intensity of the _gamma_ rays.

The _gamma_ ray, entering an atom, pushes out a corpuscle, a _beta_ ray, and takes its place. It behaves, in fact, as if it were itself a corpuscle, and the word ray is not well descriptive either of it or the _beta_. Nor can it be a mere ether-pulse. The professor suggests that it is a corpuscle, an electron, which has had the ordinary negative charge of electricity proper to electrons neutralized by a positive. Then he proceeds:

Many insist that my neutral corpuscle is too material, and that something more ethereal is wanted, for it appears that ultra-violet light possesses many of the properties of _x_- and _gamma_ rays.... They propose therefore a quasi-corpuscular theory of light, _gamma_ and _x_- rays being included.... The light corpuscle which is proposed is a perfectly new postulate. It is to move with the velocity of light ... and to be capable of replacing and being replaced by an electron which possesses the same energy but moves at a slower rate, and, of course, it has to do all that the old light waves did. The whole situation is most remarkable and puzzling.

So at this rate matter consists of molecules, as before; which consist of atoms, as before; which consist of electrons, as before--but may also in part or altogether consist of still more ethereal corpuscles _which are light_.

It is but a step to the suggestion that the electrons consist of light corpuscles, standing to them as they stand to the positive or negative atom of matter. Then metals will be crystallized light.

But whence the light corpuscles? How did they manage to get born in space? An answer to this question means a step-over from science into metaphysics. If and when we have reached the last line of matter we must begin to consider _consciousness_.

Intellectual light, spiritual light--we think we are using only metaphors in those phrases. Possibly we are not. Physical light may be the last stage of higher lights. If physical light is divine thought-energy appealing to our sense, it may have passed down through higher stages at which it appeals only to mind and heart and spirit.

If we think of Cosmic Spirit as pulsing its will and thought into that passive and uniform essence which will afterwards become active and differentiated matter, condensing and precipitating it into centers for evolutionary work, we must surmise that it is these intensely conscious centers that will subsequently be suns. Science would say that this condensation would already involve the liberation of heat, that the new center must at once be hot. But that is only true of condensing matter as we know it, matter which already contains latent energy. But the kind of matter we are considering now is what _will become matter_, has no possessions nor qualities till these are conferred on it by divine ideation and will. A sun at its first stage would be luminous only to a _spiritual_ cognition--that is, it would be charged with, and radiating, divine ideation. At the _very_ first it would not be even that; it would be but a _receiving_ center--for divine thought and will.

But at last would come its first heart-beat, so to speak. Some of the aggregated substance would be pulsed out to the surface charged with accumulated energy, dissipated as corpuscular light. And now it would fall within the range of human vision. It is illuminating not only to sense but to mind; for it contains mind; and not only to mind but to spirit; for that also it contains.

Theosophy teaches that the sun's envelopes do _not_ contain the terrestrial elements _in their terrestrial condition_. It is their antetypes that are alone there, transient, in perpetual aggregation on the inner side of the envelope (towards the solar nucleus), in disintegration as light on the outer. And this light, charged with divine ideation--septenary--has the power on earth of building elements like to, but lower down than, those found in the sun's envelopes--and of destroying them. The planets owe the elements they have to the formative power in the solar light; rather say the keynotes of the elements they have, according to which keynotes the elementary matter aggregates. Besides that every molecule is crystallized and fixed light, it contains as its soul some of that light in its highest or first state. And so has every cell, every compound of cells, every living thing. If we had another kind of spectroscope we could find their antetypes too on the sun. Every cell and molecule contains latent what in man has begun to manifest--that _self_-consciousness which is a direct reflection of the absolute Self-consciousness of that point or center which is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere because the universe has a limit nowhere. That self, latent or manifest, has in man and molecule its first or highest embodiment in a layer or envelope of light in its first or highest condition. As we say, Âtman is enshrined in Buddhi.

EROS: by R. W. Machell

[Suggested on first seeing the painting by Julius Kronberg, entitled _Eros_]

I looked into the depths and saw amid the writhing forms that filled the abyss, a running stream of fire that flowed among them, and seared and shriveled some and twisted others into strange shapes, but still itself preserved its own undying energy insatiate. A monster that devoured its devotees, for at times I seemed to see it as a being having a form defined though monstrous. It fascinated me, and, as I looked longer and more intensely it took form more definite, with a strange beauty, wild and weird, yet strangely potent to attract and hold the gazer in the spell of admiration that bewildered all the mind, and fired the sense with strange thrills and throbbings of unsatisfied desires, vague but intense, painful yet so seductive that the mind, bathed in oblivion of former joys, craved only the consuming kiss of that fierce flame. The form was superhuman, but as yet I saw no face nor knew to what to liken the strange shape, so wild and yet so strangely human that it seemed a part of me when first I looked. But in a little while I knew that I was but a part of it--scarce even that, a shadow looking towards a light that must consume it. I fought against the fascination that seemed as if it would absorb my soul and scorch my mind and sweep my body into its seething vortex of undying fire; and as I fought to hold myself against the influence, it seemed as if it, that living fire, took form and features and became the image of a God with wondrous eyes that glowed as do the embers of the fire when burning clear with caverns of throbbing radiance and unresting palpitations, flushing and gleaming, or sinking into momentary dulness like a sulky face swept by a passing cloud of temper. But strange and fascinating as it was, that beauty seemed to be unable to define itself; there was a _want_ that left in the beholder a wild yearning, in itself so keen as to appear the most intense delight mingled and tinged with woe unutterable. And then I knew that this on which I gazed was a reflection of some higher thing, an _image only_ on the waves of that deep ocean in which the world and all things corporeal float formless and uncreate until the creative fire of Eros pierces its depths, and awakening all its energies into activity, mirrors itself upon the seething vortex of illusion.

Each one who looks into the depths shall see this image; they who have no heart to search the depths of beings shall feel the fire within their veins and hail the presence of a God and feed the flame with their own substance, giving their lives in acts of impious sacrifice to the consuming fires of the lower world, responsive to the passions that so insistingly demand the tribute of self-immolation on the altar of desire.

And from his place beside the throne on high the God of Love looks down and sees the distorted image of himself torturing, deceiving, and destroying all who fall beneath the spell of his pervading magic, while tears of pity for the woes of men fall silently; and he waits, divinely patient, for the hour when man shall rise from his long dream of passion, and turning his eyes up towards the Sphere of Light, shall know that he too is divine. Then shall man recognize the God of Love who stands beside the throne and call to him to show the path by which he can regain his place and once more sit upon the throne of his divinity and rule within the kingdom of the soul, the soul of all humanity.

TEMPTING COUNTERFEITS VS. REALITY: by Lydia Ross, M. D.

Visitors at Point Loma who learn something of the high moral tone of the Râja Yoga College here and of the way in which the young people are protected from evil influences, are much impressed with these educational conditions, as desirable as they are unique. Compared with the average youth's environment, which modern life keys to an ever-increasing pitch of excitement, self-indulgence, and artificiality, the serene, disciplined, natural life of the Point Loma young folk makes an atmosphere of quite another world. Even the keenest critics admit this.

The judgment, however, becomes so colored by the prevailing customs and ideas and the critical minds are so skeptical from previous failures in fulfilment, that even friendly visitors are prepared to find a flaw somewhere. So it is not surprising to hear them say: "Well, there is something wonderful here and it is the right way to live; but how will it be with these young people when they leave the school and go out to meet the unknown temptations of ordinary life? How will they stand the test?"

That question touches the point wherein the Râja Yoga method differs from prevailing educational systems, in training the pupil, not for examination day, but for _practical life_.

In analysing temptations of any kind they may be traced to a common root: the promise of giving the tempted more power--the power to feel more, to think more, to do more. This proffered power is the naturally alluring counterfeit of that conscious inner sense which longs _to be_ more.

First take the physical appetites which so often develop a mastery of the thoughtless or deliberately indulgent. The normal sense of taste enlarges the feeling of pleasure, and agreeable food stimulates the body's latent nutritive forces to an output of strength and action. Usually the desire of the alcoholic and drug habitués is not primarily for the _taste_ of the drink or the drug but for the coveted feeling of attainment that they (apparently) give, the temporary, apparent return of waning poise and power. Even when unable to stand steadily, the inebriate is convinced of his own strength and importance by the feeling of energy and largeness he has recklessly lashed into an outgoing, aimless tide of exhausting sensation. The maudlin type finds himself the central figure of a fictitious emotional sphere, while the ambitious but incompetent man basks in the pleasing delusion of his own wealth and dignity. The craving for stimulants and sedatives grows with the indulgence which weakens the will, shatters the nerves, dulls the mind, and debases the spirit. The wretched habitué feels a vital lack of selfhood and clutches at even a passing furlough for his mutilated and chaotic sense of identity.

The sense of smell is not only intensified by favorite odors, but these recall and vivify other scenes and sensations. A fragrant flower may suggest a realm of beauty and poetry and sweetness. Savory odors appeal to the sense of taste and the appetite becomes the means of still further arousing one through the memory and imagination. The degenerate nature enjoys even offensive odors as the means of making him more alive to the possibilities of his degenerate world. A dog's markedly developed olfactory sense is not attracted by aesthetic odors as he smells impartially at everything, and follows up--tempted, if you will--those odors that make him more aware of his canine capacity for sensation and action: that, in short, make him more of a dog.

The auditory sense is also the gateway to a larger range of feeling and power. The savage responds to his own defiant war-cry, and the small boy dilates with his noisy activities, as the refined expand under nature's finished rhythm of sound and the tones of inspiring music.

The eye also lights up old and new scenes of thought and feeling and the characteristic sensations are reflexly stimulated whether one seeks an exciting round of changing pictures or chooses more beautiful and useful things, whether the higher or the lower nature is appealed to, it is the larger sense of power to feel or to think or to know that is the attraction of vision.

The sensual appetites are impelling because the creative quality upon the physical plane counterfeits the unity of masculine and feminine principles in the final perfection of human consciousness. The attraction of the sexes depends upon an awakening not only to the qualities of the opposite, but also to an exaltation of the lover's sense of his or her own manhood or womanhood. Exercised merely for gratification the lower appetites fill the indulger's world with insistent desires, capable of leading to degrading depths. But when the creative energy is consciously expended along the uplifting lines of noble and altruistic endeavor it arouses in all the auto-creative sense of power, which, reproductive in its own right, has the satisfying sense of attainment. Unselfish love so far awakens the higher nature to its own richness and strength and beauty that its royal impulse to give would sacrifice the personal self in protecting and idealizing the beloved.

The temptations of ambition spring from a love of power--the power of knowledge, of courage, of beauty, of strength, of influence--those things which arouse the possessor to an enlarged or intensified sense of himself. That the ruling personal ambition too often sacrifices the greatest elements of the nature to obtain the gratification of seeming greatness does not discount the fact of the Real Self which sacrifices its lesser desires to be great.

Back of all counterfeits must be the genuine coin to give the false its spurious value. So beyond the many byways of sense and sensation wherein humanity seeks to feel and to think and to do more there is the sunlit highway of the natural soul-life wherein one grows more conscious of his divine power and possibilities. Normal growth during incarnation is not found in a repeated round of sensational climaxes, but in a progressive journey with an ever-expanding horizon where the soul dominates the nature forces within and without the body. The child who learns to know the divine reality of his dual nature inevitably comes to find that "pleasure within himself" that is satisfying in its expansive sense of power and beauty and largeness.

That the child is incapable of realizing so profound a truth as that of his divine origin is questioned by a world psychologized with centuries of false teachings of natural depravity, etc. But in the teaching of the dual nature in the Râja Yoga training that calls upon the higher side to master and utilize the force of the lower impulses, the reality of innate power becomes the satisfying keynote of daily life. In the plastic period of child growth, he should be spared the usual external distractions while acquiring the habit of looking within to "find himself." Protection from the taint of artificial life is no more enervating than the suitable care the gardener gives to seedlings while they take firm root for future growth and resistance.

Temptation can only tempt where there is lack and longing. One who has learned how to live in the fulness and richness of the reality can easily estimate the worth of any imitation, familiar or unknown. Theosophy does not haggle over theological minutiae. It broadly asserts that the divine man incarnating becomes dual in nature. Râja Yoga training confidently challenges the indwelling soul to come forth and declare itself.

LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF PYTHAGORAS: by F. S. Darrow, A. M., Ph. D. (Harv.)