Section 6

H,C, + 4CI = 4HCI + C,.
(Ethylene.) (Chlorine.) (Hydrochloric Acid.). (Carbon.)
Still, in turn, a physiologist may take this carbon and, by a process familiar to everybody who eats and digests, put it into a human limb, in form of muscle, through the road of the stomach.
He is not Rosicrucian who fails to understand through such a demonstration as here made the Oneness of material visible and invisible. Observe, a common eye sees and recognizes a body called carbon. A chemist takes this body and unites with it hydrogen gas. Now it is shown to another common eye, which sees nothing. Does not a chemist recognize the car- bon as well in its second as in its first state ? May he not invoke this invisible and will not the carbon re- materialize so as again to become seeable by the eye of a non-initiate ?
He is not Rosicrucian who finds himself confused concerning things described at the same time as known and unknown, as visible and invisible, as real and un- real. A thing is always to the Sense with which it is in correspondence what to that Sense it seems to be ; it is never anything else j solid is solid to touch, object is object to the eye.
Rosicrucianism, possessed of irrefutable conclusions as to the meaning of animal environment, under- stands-that original body is of precisely the same signification as a first suit of clothes. It understands
6
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62 SPIRITUS SANCTUS,
that attention given a first suit of clothes serves to keep no dust off a present one. It speculates, and enter- tains itself, concerning the primal materialization, but it relates its work and its uses with what is found at hand \ comprehending fully that the meaning of use and user lies wholly with the hour; that these have not, neither have had, nor can have, other relation. Come to such comprehension, as well has there been come to entire indifference as to whether or not origi- nal investiture lay in shape of monad, sloth, sapajou, or Adam. How can Rosicrucianism be else than in- different, knowing, as it does, that Matter is with man and not with man almost at the same moment ? — that, at any rate, form and manner of environment are simply tools to be used for ends; ends which vary with circumstances and conditions of surroundings; muscle being needed to fight off beasts, soul being the requirement to accomplish association with the God ?
CONCERNING /. 63;
CONCERNING I, OR EGO.
" If only you can catch me, Crito, bury me as you please."
Socrates, in the Phcedo.
For purposes of plain demonstration attention is again directed to a skeleton. Will a skeleton move of itself? It is not seen to do so. The bones consti- tuting a skeleton are found having their various move- ments by reason of muscles related with and acting on them. Muscles, then, are to be accepted as the movers about of human bodies ? Only indirectly. When nerves which are met with running into muscles are cut, move- ment stops instantly, — as in paralysis. It is then the nerves that are the movers about of human bodies? Still only indirectly. If nerves be separated from the brain they are helpless, as production of motion is concerned, as strands of cobweb would be found. It is then necessarily the brain that is producer of motion ? Still again only indirectly. Brains, human and of brutes, are to be found in number filling the great jars and occupying places upon the shelves of dissecting- rooms, but no one of them has been known to break from its confinement or change locality.
Analysis of a brain shows a construction of wonder- ful likeness to a telegraph system. Dissections of hun-
64 SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
dreds of brains, and of their allied relations of nerve- cords and ganglia, made by the writer in a long expe- rience as an anatomist, resolve the complexity into a simplicity as follows, namely, what a battery and cords are to an electrician, that exactly the nervous system is to the user of it ; again, the nervous apparatus is to the user of it precisely what a piano is to a composer and player. The understanding to be conveyed is that the nervous system is simply, wholly, absolutely an in- strument. Except that it is a more complicated in- strument as to construction, it is nothing at all dif- ferent from a shoe which serves its purpose of covering a foot, from a type-writer which makes letters in re- sponse to touches, from a wire and a battery which obey commands and convey messages, or from a violin which screams tones of anguish or laughs peals of merriment, which tones and peals are with him who draws the bow and not acts of the instrument j seeing that when instrument is separated from a player it is nothing but wood and strings.
Truly, the brain is so identified with things known to Ego that it may be likened not inaptly to many things. It is a mirror j it is a sounding-board ; it is a hewer and carrier ; it is a builder and destroyer ; it is a navigator of the sea and as well a traveller through woods ; it is the physician working at problems of diagnosis ; it is the mathematician conning over questions in figures ; it is all that exhibits individual direction and intelli- gence. Yet exactly after a like manner the battery and cords of a telegraph are to be considered. A telegraph apparatus is a messenger : it carries and brings ; it is a lamp to dark places j it is a surgeon cutting with saws ;
CONCERNING I. ^^
it is a navigator steering his vessel ; it is a musician playing on a great organ ; it is any and everything which is expressive of ofifice performed by it.
A telegraphic apparatus is means of expression, noth- ing else. A cerebral apparatus is means of expression, nothing else.
Brain is mind-instrument. Mind is instrumentation.
A brain separated from its user is little more than its bulk of water. If the bulk be squeezed to dryness be- tween the hands, or by means of a press, so completely does the mass disappear that a thimble will hold the residuum. Subject water thus obtained to the action of heat, and in a few moments this will disappear, as, in turn, will the solid residuum if subjected to a like influence.
Man says, " I see," '' I feel," '' I taste," " I smell," *'I hear." The man expresses himself correctly. Certainly it is not a simple lens called the eye that sees. A man never thinks that it is his spectacles that look. What sees is the Self, the I. Optical apparatus, whether the ordinary organ of sight, a set of prepared glasses, or what else in the line of vision, are media of communication ; nothing different, noth- ing else. The means of smell, but not smell itself, lie with a collection of delicate strings. Hearing is by means of a semi-pulpy cord. Touch is accomplished through the instrumentality of white, hard strings sev- eral feet, many of them, in length. When, on the contrary, man says, '*I am heated, I am cold, I am hungry, I am famished," he speaks incorrectly, as here are indicated conditions of the environment and not any state or need of the Ego. e 6*
C6 SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
What is the I, and where is it ?
Nothing in the circle of the Universal that can be thought about or conceived of has being apart from one of three existences, namely, Matter, Ego, and the (treating Power. Let emphatic repetition of this be made. If Anything, or Existence, be of concern to man, or, in turn, if man be concerned or related by reason of his being a living active sentient Reality v/ith any thing or things, this thing or these things are necessarily known by him in a sense which corresponds with the requirements of the relation, otherwise no such relation could possibly exist as that of use and user. The three self-proving existences are
Matter, Ego, God.
Here is occasion for a long pause. Here, at any rate, is the basis of judgment concerning all the uses and relations of the life universal; otherwise here is the philosophical weakness of Rosicrucian inductions.
Matter as represented by body is proved not to be identical with the I, for the reason, as clearly under- standable, that no animal body continues constant to its individuality any two hours or even any two min- utes ; an I that has become familiar to any neighbor- hood for a period, say, of forty-nine years, has lost and acquired seven full and complete materializations, — that is, seven bodies have come to and have left it.
I is identical with Consciousness ; that is, with That which knows itself; it is identical with nothing else. Let a reader who is not entirely clear as to this po- sition consider the proposition. *'I am an I," was the impulsive and enthused exclamation of Jean Paul Richter, as, on an occasion, standing in the door-way
CONCERNING I. 67
of the paternal house, the internal vision rushed upon him, as he describes it, '* like a flash remaining ever after luminously persistent." "For the first time,'* he says, "I had seen itself, and forever.'*
I, on the other hand, is not the Creative power, else would consciousness of fulness or completeness reside with it. Ego recognizes itself as no designer of en- vironments incomprehensible to itself. Ego perceives that it can say nothing of things as to what their reality may be, for the reason that it knows nothing of things apart from the manner in which things present them- selves to Consciousness. All that it can say, or pos- sibly know, is that a Thing is to Its use what to the sense that uses It it seems to be.
I is the ground of Certitude. Here is foundation. I is identical with Self. The concerns of a man are with what constitutes the circle of his relations ; and with nothing else. The proper study of man is man. In man is all that belongs to man and with which man belongs.
User is to be appreciated as separable from instru- ment; here is the first and chief matter; after this may come a study of mind.
The demonstration, or analyses, of a brain is never so simply, and at the same time so comprehensively, made as when an anatomist commences by drawing on a blackboard a central lobe expressive of the part known as the quadrate body. This body is a square mass sit- uated in the centre of the nervous system, and when looked at poetically impresses as serving as dais or sup- port to a mysterious arcanum resting upon it. This mysterious arcanum is the Pineal gland ; the seat, as
6S SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
maintained by the ancients, of the Soul. Surround- ing this Pineal gland on every side is what is known as the Cortical, or gray, material of the brain. This gray material is purely instrument subservient to the re- quirements and demands of a user. It is, in every sense and manner, except as its superior capabilities and ramifications deny comparison, what the evolving or force-making means of a telegrapher are. This gray material, forming what are known as the convo- lutions of the brain, is to be drawn somewhat distantly, about four inches, around the gland. A succeeding diagram is to exhibit a countless number of cords which lead from this battery, directly or indirectly, to all the avenues of the body at large, and, by means of special cords, known as special nerves, to the organs of sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste; leading to and relating with things known as external ; to and with everything, to and with every place, with which an I has to do.
A still succeeding drawing is to show in connection with the lines of these different cords a series of what are known as ganglia. These ganglia are lesser brains, or batteries, the office of which is to localize and to intensify office or meaning.
The ganglia are to find another analogy in the in- ferior offices of a telegraphic system. An inferior office receives from a main office and transmits what is received ; an inferior may receive and respond without other than a general relation with its main office. Ego is served not alone by one, but by a hundred brains ; so too is a telegraphic system served not alone by one, but by hundreds of batteries.
CONCERNING I. 69
A final drawing is to show the wonderful fact that the Pineal gland is related by means of two reins which pass out from its inside with every measurable space or point of the nervous system that has been described. An occupant, seated in the arcanum of the Pineal gland, could remain in eternal fixity, yet see, taste, smell, feel, and touch the universal.
In place of saying with the ancients that the Pineal gland is the seat of the soul, let us say that here is the seat of the Ego j or shall we say that Ego is one with Aura, and that its residence is with all atoms, as these exist for the time as environment ? It is certainly im- material as to which may be said, as assuredly nothing is known about the manner of relation. There is re- lation, however, relation as undeniable, as certain, as self-demonstrating, as relation existing between any instrument and its user.
The I, Ego, Self, differentiates and distinguishes it- self. I is itself. It is nothing else than itself.
Can men see the Ego? No mother has ever, with the common eye, seen her child, nor has wife after a like manner seen her husband, nor has sister seen a brother.* Ordinary acquaintance with an Ego is alone through what it exhibits itself to be in the acts of its environment ; these acts showing whether it is cultured or uncultured, of high or low degree, good or bad. Here, however, we are not to overlook character and temperament of environment. A great composer cannot express great conceptions
* The language here is of purely physical import, and considers the every-day relation of things ; it has a wholly objective signification.
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SFIRITUS SANCTUS.
through a corn-stalk fiddle. A massive aichitect can- not construct out of fragments of stone and sticks. A musician can write no notes if means for writing be lacking. A poet mixes his metaphors if sense be want- ing for grammar. Ego may see alone through eyes, hear alone through ears, smell alone through nose, taste alone through tongue, touch alone through skin. There is, however, a something else just here, a very great something else; men see visions when the eyes are shut, a Beethoven hears while deaf, sensitives be- hold when in a trance. Here is the meaning of Senses back of Senses. Simple illustration lies with nightly dreams. Ego in turn, as suggested, is to be known alone through its manifestations. Charity judges never of Ego in disassociation from environment. An Ego is not to be esteemed ugly by reason of having between it and the looker a noseless or a pock-marked face. Ego is not to be called mannerless where by reason of absence of seeing eyes it gives not place on a public highway. When a man is insane, where is the defect, with Ego or instrument ? Can a player play on a broken flute ?
How stupendous is greatness lying with comprehen- sible? During the period of the Middle Ages, when such disputants as William of Champeaux and Abelard discussed scholastic questions in the Sorbonne, one which arrayed scholar against scholar was this, "How many angels can stand on the point of a needle?" This question, ridiculous to any one untrained in anal- ysis, is seen by the cultured to express difference be- tween ordinary materialized Ego and Ego considered as the pure I; the first being weighable by scales, the
CONCERNING L yi
Other unseeable, intangible. The question is not a whit more out of the order of things as they exist than if the discussion had considered the possible standing- room to be found upon the roof of a house for men in ordinary environment.
Environment, and character of environment, are accident, otherwise they are something that nobody knows anything about. Here beauty and here truth to be found with Pythagoras.
" Death has no power the immortal part to slay ; That, when its present body turns to clay, Seeks a fresh home, and with unminished might Inspires another frame with life and light." *
Compensation certainly exists. The God is no re- specter of persons.
When, as it will be remembered, Socrates was about to drink the fatal hemlock, Crito, his friend, asked him how he would like to be buried. The reply is akia with the verse of Pythagoras: ** If only you can catch me, Crito, bury me as you please."
A funeral made up of pomp and parade is quite as senseless a performance as though the burial casket held a suit of old clothes ; in truth it holds nothing
different; "body is but a mingling and then a
separating of the mingled, which are called a life and a death by ignorant mortals." Mingling and sepa- rating, otherwise death and resurrection, are continuous acts.
The Ego put forth by Descartes as the foundational
* See " Man and his WorldL"
y2 SPIRITUS SANCTUS,
truth or premise, as undeniable and indisputable Cer- titude, is foundation, and there is not, nor can there be, any other. This foundation rests with the absolute in analysis ; it is Ultimate reached through a process of Exclusion, where neither datum nor data can be lacking. More than this, it is self-asserting Apriori, and thus is outside of the pale of any necessity for proof. Here is the origin of the verse of Euripides, although the Greek never heard of the philosopher :