book is metaphysical construction, not religious destruc-

tion.
HARGRAVE JENNINGS.
CEAPTER. f,
DEFINITIONS AND DISTINCTIONS LEADING UP TO THE VERITIES OF PHALLICISM.
Religion is to be found alone with its sustification and explanation in the relations between the sexes. There and therein only. 'To imply that the thing “ Natural Selection,” which can only arise, as any movement forward can arise, through some power, or through something analogous to the operation of the sexes, in choice and selection; and power upon that choice and selection to multiply, and to bring into life, and to propagate like sexes, producing of themselves; to imply that this thing, ‘“ Natural Selec- tion” or the “ survival of the fittest,” is acting within the matter, so to say, is, when argued rigidly down to foun- dation results, to say that “‘ Natural Selection” is Deity itself—which begs the whole question.
Such is inevitably the fate of all the logical methods of philosophising, the Aristotelian or Baconian method, which argues from particulars to generals; this is the scientific, and the plausible way, but it is, as we have always contended, the wrong way. Once grant the premiss, and it is all over with the argument, because the question is already begged, and settled, nor can there be farther dispute. This is easily shown in the fallacy of beginning with any assumption, or by appro. priating any particular ground or foundation to commence
B
2 Phallicism.
upon. Thus, there must be some truth, or the abstrac- tion, truth, can be fixed, and become recognisable in the human reason. We assume that the human reason can become an efficient, or the foundation for truth. From this comes the fatal metaphysical error of discovering the possibility of human reason in truth, and the converse of finding a ground of truth to build upon, in human reason. Such concession at once gives science, and gives to realism all that it needs; and will admit and pass, as undoubted, all the innumerable links of any interminable chain of argument, leading anywhere, when the first touch or link or the premiss—whatever it be—is acknowledged as authentic, and a veritable thing. We are only correct when we retire imto cloudland with speculation, and at once deny the possibility of special truth, or abstract truth, or indeed any truth, “Truth” being your truth, or my truth, or any man’s truth. Where can we find the standard ?
We remember that, many years ago, Robert and William Chambers, of Edinburgh, in a review of the current philosophies, with an explanation of their varying characteristics, chose to criticise the disbelieving philo- sopher, David Hume, who seeks to expose the fallacy of that which is accepted as the clearest possible common sense and reason, namely, of the invariable tie of con- nexion between cause and effect, or the certainty of cause being followed by effect, and effect being preceded by a cause. ‘They ended with a summing up which was very efficacious and trenchant as far as it went, and seemed to lay open the whole of this apparently obvious absurdity of the great rationalist. The orthodox brothers thought their epigrammatic disposal of the question, and their
Definitions and Distinctions. 3
derisive wonder at it, complete and unanswerable ; but to what, in reality, did it all amount? To an evasion, not a resolution of the difficulty. They stated that, when Hume arrived at the end of his finely-sifted, elaborate metaphysical conclusions, and came out, at last, with such a startling climax, he only truly, and in fact, arrived at a belief, himself, and that he, who was denying the very possibility of belief, “came to a belief that there was no belief.” This was a flying jeer, a Parthian dart, of the brothers Chambers; we do not know whether any doubt of the soundness of their philosophy ever occurred to them. They evidently thought they were carrying off the philosophical colours in triumph, after the skirmish, and exposing the nonsense of disconcerted Hume, It never penetrated to the conviction of these self-satisfied commentators, guiding the public judgment as they thought, that they were not confuting Hume, but only effecting their retreat under the cover of a witticism. What was the fact? They were only mistaking an emotion for a belief. Hume did not “ believe” that there was no connexion between cause and effect. He only felt an emotion, or persuasion—a distrust whether there was, or whether there could be, necessarily and abstrac- tedly, any connexion between cause and effect.
These two distinctions, in fact, philosophically stand wide apart. It is only in the coarse metaphysical intellect that they are not kept separate. And most of the modern philosophers, because their philosophical intellects are not of the highest, and their penetration not of the refined character—nature having denied them the delicate power of analysis, or the closest discrimination, confound emotions of the heart with reasons and con-
4 Phallicism.
clusions of the intellect and the head ;—while, in fact, the head and the heart, or the reason and the affections, have been set in hopeless opposition to each other from the beginning of time. Men believe, and yet cannot be said to have faith. Men have faith (that is, know), and yet cannot be said to believe. Thus men have faith in what they cannot believe, for instance, in transubstantia- tion. And they have belief in what they can never know, that is, in the spiritual world, and in the doctrine of spirits; and in past events, which, however, did not certainly transact as related. There is, indeed, no “ fact” which cannot be argued away, and shown to be nothing. Very consolatory this, for the inhabitants of that which they presume is a real world. It has been shown, even, conclusively, that it is impossible that man can be in contact with real solidity; and that Time itself is only an abstraction.
The purport of the foregoing remarks will be the more readily seen as we advance with our theme, and recognise the religious intensity of the Phallic worship, its vitality, and its display in the Phallic monuments, both in those devoted to the solar and the lunar myths, which equally indicate the same Fire-Worship in its grand division of celestial and terrestrial adoration. In this element of “Fire” and the magical rites and formule arising out of it, all the mystic analysis and anatomy of Nature rest : and this science is genuine, as founded on the astronomy and astrology of the Chaldeans and other early nations, who were the heirs of the first knowledge or revelation.
Phallic Symbol-Structures, =e