Section 4

This presence of Holy Ghost is nothing at all dif- ferent from what men call Soul ; and here it is, and here it is only, that distinction is to be found between
40 SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
men and brutes. Soul is the Divinity as it may or does reside with men. Soul is not Ego. Soulistic knowledge is knowledge existing in that which is Knowledge itself.*
As the senses of organic life are understood to ex- press relation of man with the material, so this sense of religious life explains his connection with the imma- terial. To express it differently, and perhaps better, the one is human, the other Godly.
Here a question pertinently propounds itself to sci- entific inquiry : Can a man be without a soul ? Cer- tainly men are to be found wanting in eyes, so that they stumble. If soul be identical with the divine principle, a multitude of people are assuredly encoun- tered, in whom, to say the best of it, little is to be seen that is holy.f
What we are reading for is to find foundation. To secure it we are to begin with getting understanding of ourselves. Zoroaster is right : " He who knows himself knows all things in himself."
First. How does a man know that he exists at all ? Truly there are wonderful arguments for and against. We shall come to these, not unlikely, as we are pre- pared for them. The French philosopher, Ren6 Des- cartes, stood one time where many are not unlikely still standing. He was seeking a foundation upon which to build. He was a good Romanist. In the sense that he feared to make a mistake by aggressive- ness, few were influenced more by that cardinal prin-
* Refer to chapter on H)rpostases. f See " Man and his World."
CONCERNING MATTER, 41
ciple of scholasticism which directs that individual convictions are never to array themselves against the conclusions of Mother Church,
The state of mind of Descartes was this. He was learned to the extent of knowing the philosophies of the ages and the traditions of the church. The fault, so far as his own satisfaction was concerned, lay in want of a ground of certitude. Things were not to him self-proving. A thing that was not self-proving he held not to be a thing at all ; that is, he held it not as a truth capable of universal acceptation. A system of religion, he maintained, was only solidly to be constructed when a foundation was secure, and which foundation would bear the unyielding demands of the universal. A first fact in such a base was to be found, if found at all, in recognition of a something that should contain in itself its own verification. The something found by Descartes — the something on which is built the Cartesian system — is the famous aphorism, familiar to almost every student. ^^Cogito, ergo sum^^^ **Man thinks, therefore he is."
Not at all unfamiliar is the fact that faiths and sys- tems array honest seekers against one another. The earth holds 1,274,000,000 of inhabitants. Of these people 353,000,000 are Christians ; 8,000,000 are Jews ; 120,000,000 are Mahometans; 1,000,000 are Par- sees; 483,000,000 are Buddhists; Fetichism numbers 189,000,000 worshippers. Mighty in influence is Christ. Mighty too is Confucius. Possessed, however, of the greatest number of followers is the prince Gautama, founder of the Buddhistic religion.
He who would comprehend for himself as to every- 4*
42 SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
thing solely as a philosopher, is to start by laying aside, temporarily at least, any traditional faith of which he finds himself possessed. The intention is to depend primarily on the animal senses, finding, by the agency of these, understanding of what is learnable through them. Attained to this degree of knowledge, confusion in spiritual matters is capable of being dispelled, as are complexities in mathematical problems by the presence of demonstration.
Accepting the Cogtfo, ergo sum as expressive of cer- titude, the Being that recognizes itself is to inquire and learn as to what kind of a being it is. This learned, the Being is to pass on and inquire as to things which concern and relate it with the Universal.
Let us anticipate for a moment and consider of that which directly relates with our individual requirements and associations. An individuality, called a man, finds itself standing in the midst of a great universe. Under his feet is ground. Over his head is sky. The first is covered with growing things and with creeping and walking things. The other shows ether reaching into infinity. Suns countless, and planets in number not to be reckoned, are before him. Immensity con- fronts and confounds him.
Thus assuredly stood individuality at the beginning ; thus stands man to-day. — Man, but not all men. All see the growing and the walking things, all look on the sky, all behold immensity, but all are not con- founded. A blind mole burrowing through the ground and a man's eye scanning the heavens are the same, as to material. Flesh and grass are one. A human soul despising a passion that forces it into contact with vice
CONCERNING MATTER. 43
is of a piece with Almighty God. So, too, Ego is some- thing different from both.
Can we understand ?
Man is an individuality. There is no doubt that this Ego may stick a finger of its environment in the fire or withhold it from the flame. If the man be un- learned, no master-guard stands over warning him when infection is in the air and death is snapping at his heels. He is his own doer and undoer, his own raiser up and his own puller down, and raising up and pulling down are exactly in proportion as knowl- edge is possessed by this Individuality and as use is made of it. Man is an animal. He is also a god, or can be. He can give one to the use of the other. He can deny one relation with the other. There are men who have no souls. Science finds no conscious immortality for matter. Brain is matter. All of body is matter. To get apprehension of immortality re- quires that man learn of things which are" outside of matter.
To afford emphasis to what is to be advanced I point to this skeleton that hangs before us ;* it was brought only a few weeks back from Paris. It is an odd sug- gestion, but I want you to notice the peculiar hang of the lower extremities. I have never seen skeleton legs like these. Every time I look at these bones I incline more and more to the fancy that this man knew the Champs Elys^es well, and that life and means and pros- pects were danced away by him in the Jardin Mabille. I hold to this fancy, knowing that a Jardin Mabille sup-
* From class lectures.
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plies the almshouse and that the almshouse furnishes skeletons.
Turn your eyes to this second object. It is the em- balmed body of a woman from over whose heart have been removed the concealments of muscle and skin. There is here no soft silken raiment. No bouquet emits sweet odor. The gift of friendship, or of de- ception, glitters not out from the bosom. Where once was warmth there is now coldness. Where passion sat enthroned now is nothing but stillness. This was lifted from the chilly marble slab of a morgue and brought here.
" One more unfortunate Gone to her home."
Whence? Whither?
Turn your eyes still again to these expressions of mortality ; this time as students prepared to deal with the metaphysics of the very practical science of anat- omy. I say the metaphysics of anatomy. The meta- physics of the subject is the higher anatomy ; it is con- sideration of the something of which anatomy is the image.
Our consideration is of Matter; just here of this alone; of the matter which makes up the bodies of men and women.
*' What is this skeleton? As to answer I have no doubt. A skeleton is the bony framework of a body. The whole made up of many pieces : over two hundred in number. Any piece analyzed is found to be a com- bination of animal substance and earthy salts. Does it seem strange that a teacher of anatomy, after thirty
CONCERNING MATTER. 45
years spent in the dissecting-room, should be found admitting that he has never seen a bone?"
Here is a femur : the long and heavy thigh bone. Here are a Rosicrucian's acid bath and a slow-burning furnace \ the latter possessed of an oven from which air can be excluded. Let us get understanding of the admission.
**What is the femur?"
** The femur is a bone described as made up of a shaft, extremities, processes, ridges, and holes called foramina, and which has its being by reason of a union of gelatine, blood-vessels, lime, magnesia, and soda."
**Then there would be no bone if gelatine, blood- vessels, lime, magnesia, and soda were absent?"
*'It follows that, if these be the bone, absence of them would be absence of bone."
" But what as to the form of the bone? would this too be absent?"
**Form shows itself as one with constituents."
**With all, or with part, of constituents?"
** With all necessarily, as when part of a thing is away it is not in shape as when all were present."
" Then we are to say that part of this femur being away form could not be as when the part was not away?"
" We would say, as of chair or table, part being away, form is away ; that is, form as it represents the thing in its integrity."
" But as to what constitutes a thing : whether this be con'stituents or form?"
" Not form, surely, else figures of things would sub- serve purposes equally with things themselves."
46 SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
''A thing, then, is its constituents?'
*'It is this or it is nothing."
'* Let us see. Here is a bone just lifted from the acid bath. What shall we name this bone, and why ?'*
*' It is to be named femur because it is a bone held up a little time back, and it is as to every particular of form what it was before."
" Here, then, is a femur held up alike a little while back ; it possesses form in every particular as before ; it has just been lifted from the oven. Shall the name continue for it?"
"Undoubtedly, seeing that it is a femur."
** That is, seeing it to be femur in form, and accept- ing form, in the instance of such a thing as a bone, to be identical with presence of constituents?"
"Undoubtedly."
"Yet in the bones held up there has been removed by the acid every particle of lime, magnesia, and soda, and by the fire alike every particle of gelatine and blood-vessels. Constituents here are entirely lacking ; yet, according to the definition, bone remains?"
"It would seem proven that form and constituents are not the same."
" The form being found here remaining, while con- stituents are absent, form is to be accepted as femur?"
" Out of the showing it would seem undeniable that form and femur are one. ' '
" Constituents having disappeared, it would seem as proved that simple figure rather than substance is reality in all cases?"
"It seems proved that figure is the real and per- sistent."
CONCERNING MATTER. 4^
"Yet here the femur taken from the oven is now simply pressed in the hand, and form disappears in- stantly in a shower of dirt that falls to the floor. The femur, lifted out of the acid bath, parts as instantly with the distinctive form as manipulation rolls it into a ball which a boy may throw at freedom without re- gard to neighboring glass."
''It is demonstrated that neither substance nor form is essence."
** It is demonstrated that what is known of Matter, and its relations, are of phenomena and not of noume- non ; that to know a bone would be to know an Entity, of which shafts, processes, and foramina are simply and wholly phenomenal expressions."
**Then it is to be declared that a thing is not what it seems to be?"
**It is to be declared that nobody in the universe knows what a bone is, save as phenomenal expression is concerned. The thing we call real is only the shadow, as it were, of an essence. Presence of shadow is proof, however, of the existence of essence."
**This is explanatory of Anaxarchus's contempt for the threat of Nicocreon to bray him in a mortar?"
"It is explanatory of an estimate in which matter is held by the philosopher."
Rosicrucianism having gained a ledge or premise, holds and fixes it as a base about which to concrete or from which to depart.
As femur, or the material body at large, is concerned, the Rosicrucian comes to understand it as Essence serving temporarily the uses of Ego. What Matter is as to its reality he knows that he has no means of
48 SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
knowing, and that knowing is of no concern with wants or purposes. On the subject of Matter he is at rest, by reason of understanding its relation with him- self. The understanding he has reached is as follows :
I St. That a huncian body is of the same material as a curb-stone.
2d. That the wonderful instrument called brain finds familiar representation in the toy called a kaleido- scope ; and that one is not a bit differently immortal from the other.
3d. That there shows itself, out of a process of ex- clusion, conducted even only so far as analysis of Matter, a Something which is not matter. The analysis demonstrates the something to be of individual signi- fication; further, that body is to it what a flute or other instrument is to harmony.
4th. That as it is the office of a flute to afford har- mony voice, so, in no dissimilar manner, is it the office of brain, muscles, and bones to serve the pur- poses of Individuality, or Ego.
5th. That when Individuality is absent, body is in precisely the condition of an unoccupied house. An unoccupied house is without mission; it may as well be tumbled into its own cellar. We tumble bodies from which the Ego has gone out into a grave.
6th. That as a flute is insignificant or great, accord- ing as it is acted on by harmony, so, in like manner, body is mean or mighty, as it is occupied.
7th. That means relate with every end. That Ego requires the hands of matter with which to do, pre- cisely as knives are needed by surgeons for the accom- plishment of operations.
CONCERNING MATTER, 49
8th. That a flute or a knife is in the way of its highest meaning when it is dead to its wood or its steel, acting wholly, solely, fully in the harmony or skill that plays upon or uses it.
9th. That the sole office and meaning of human body is to serve the purposes and intentions of Ego \ that because it is found in a state of constant change it is of relation to the Self as clothes, in turn, are of relation with it, — this, and nothing different; that body is to have consideration only as a phenomenon which suits wants; that an Ego's body, or environment, is never any two hours, or even any two minutes, abso- lutely the same ; that body has its proper consideration when measured simply as a tool is viewed.
BoP€ is Matter. The whole body of a man is Mat- ter. The rolling oceans and the mighty continents are Matter. Nobody has the slightest idea what Matter is. This apparently so solid Entity is found resolva- ble, even through such crude means as the ordinary senses possessed by humans, into apparent Nothing- ness. The Senses which do the resolving show them- selves to themselves as nothing. This is science. It is irrefutable science. It is, too, the beginning and ending and intermediate of Agnosticism. The true Agnostic is one who has studied the Material, abscissio infiniti, as the manner is called, — that is, by the process of Exclusion, until he comes to repeat, but in other import than used by its author, the line of Thoreau, —
" The wind that blows is all that anybody knows."
The versatile and great scholar, Goethe, puts his con- Q d 5
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elusions in the mouth of Dr. Faustus, who is made to soliloquize as follows :
" Philosophy, ah ! and law and medicine, And, woe is me ! theology also, Now I have studied through with burning zeal ; And here I am at last, poor fool, and am Wise as I was before : professor called, And doctor, too. And now for these ten years I've led my pupils by the nose. This way and that, and up and down, and see That we can know — just nothing."
To be able with Goethe to know *' just nothing,'* and to be able with Zoroaster to know " all things in knowing one's self;" here is antipodes of distinction between Agnosticism and Rosicrucianism.
But how to know ? For the Rosicrucian there is but one way : finding out by analyzing. Tradition and faith are nothing at all to a Rosicrucian, He has his Philosopher's Stone in his process of Exclusion. Where this responds, he accepts ; where it denies, he rejects. A philosopher's stone is one with educated senses. The use of the latter is the advantage of the former.