Section 2

i6 SOME MORE PHILOSOPHY
The thinker has an eye that sees, and an energy that propels. Right here we would say, that in reality he may be no stronger than another who hits nothing, but the diflference is this, the thinker directs and utilizes his power while the other dissipates and wastes.
If you have a horse and hitch him to a plow, you can make a furrow, if he runs at large he will leave but the track of his hoofs.
Thought goes under, around and into a thing — it concentrates. You look about for the thinker — one who holds to a subject until he has mastered it — but where is he? Logic is simple, but thinking is subtle. The thinker, if he appear, whirls logic with- in logic, syllogism within syllogism. He is a diver who goes to sea bottom. He calcu- lates, he compares, he hypothesizes, and theorizes, he weighs and measures, he reaches, gathers and holds, and finally he judges. The thinker juggles with induc- tion and deduction as a showman tosses knives; he hunts for facts as a miser hunts
OF THE HERMETICS 17
for gold; he steals from maternal Nature, as she endeavors to steal from him, and comes out more than even every time.
When the non-thinker comes to himself after his resuscitation from drowning in Nature's milk, he says to her after the man- ner of Christ to his mother, " What have I to do with thee ? '' The tremendous rebound to egoism from non-entity, makes him inclu- sive rather than included. He encompasses instead of being incompassed — He is master rather than child — He environs the object with his long arms of subjectivity — He is a self generating force, held to all other Egos by the merest thread — A self illuminating star dispensing light to his little coterie of planets. He is a creator manipulating laws, for lo! he thinks.
This is not what the reasoning animal does. It knows nothing of thinking in its high sense, neither do the herd of men.
The thinker in his might is a giant, star- ing over the heads of pygmies. His march is one of terror; he crushes crawling, grovel- ing life wherever he treads. He unceremon-
SOME MORE
iously peeps under tlie veil of Isis, and rudely stares the Spliinx in the eyes,
When the thinker goes rampant nations tremble. France shuddered at Rosseau, and Kngland rebelled at Spencer. Christ carried his own cross, as did Galileo and Bruno.
The thinker fights every step of the way with conventional prejudice. He goes in the crowd with his elbows out, and thins the mass with blows from his fists. He is supremely healthy ; superstition, morbid- ness and moodiness, (in its sophomoric sense ) are out of consideration.
Thought is a tonic stronger than wine; it has the elixir quality and fires the brain and nerves to a fine frenzy. He who can think or not, who is a fool and Master in one, needs no juice of the grape, nor fume of the weed. He loads himself, fires, hits and brings in his game — sometimes dead, but more often alive.
The result of thought is individualism. The thinker becomes nobody else, but all that he desires becomes him ; he includes an object as a lordly husband includes his
I
OF THE HERMETICS 19
wife. His poteutial personality is far re- moved from all that lie does not reach after, and isolate, he swings round his orbit in heaven, as though no other star were. He is unlike all else, and is styled a genius because he originates. The pressure of his hand is never forgotten — it leaves an impress which is not seen, but felt.
Let us reiterate once more, the power to give up, means the power to take again. If you have a potent individuality bolstered by thought, you can take it oflF as you would your clothes and retire to sleep and dreams in Nature's arms — naked, thoughtless — to wake, and don yourself once more, a tremendous Ego, armored and panoplied for war — an individual who spurns his mother's apron strings and starts out for himself — a conquerer taking the citadel of Nature by storm — scaling heaven, weighing stars, spanning space, building worlds. Such the thinker!
In his greed to have, to hold, to know, he wraps his heart in velvet, that the thud of its plaintive beat may escape his ears. He
20 SOME MORE PHILOSOPHY
conceals the tears iu his eyes by his cold steely gaze. He frowns on Cupid, and scoflFs at the solicitations of Venus. There is an iceberg grandeur about him, that makes the weak shiver, and flowers droop. He calcu- lates with lightning rapidity, and figures to him, mean something diflferent from symbols. His thought turns to action as soon as it is bom — and comes forth a double-faced child. He sees the smallest and the greatest aspect of a man or a country, and all that goes between extremes, is swept by his eye.
To think is but one mood of man. Another day, the man of thought may turn lover, but which ever expression is his, the whole being goes out in it.
Remember then, that he who can lose himself can find himself. The thinker means the non-thinker, and thought present, the possibility of thought absent.
OF THE HERMETICS 21
SCIENCE.
The man of science seeks data at the risk of his life; he hunts for evidence like a detective, and submits to the world his hypothesis as an officer delivers his prisoner to the judge. Without shame, he acts the spy, and brings his own, or a microscopic eye to bear on the hidden haunts of beast, bird, and insect; he boldly watches the domestic life and scandals of tiny specimens, as a giant might watch ours. He cruelly cuts open the body of the animal while still it lives, and devours the inner workings of its organs with the heartless gaze of an investigator. He enters hospitals and experiments on in- digent humanity, and after the death of a long-suflFering patient, buys his body for the dissecting table. He forgets himself in his greed for facts. He makes long marches
22 SOME MORE PHILOSOPHY
mid the dangers of the Archipelago and sleeps under the stars by the side of the savage, that he may capture a baboon, or get experience from an orang-outang. He sits up all night with the stars, and exchanges a chill for an eclipse. He ruins his eyes with the microscope and his blood with contagion. He tests medicines on him- self, and watches his own symptoms even to the point of death, for the purpose of taking notes. He is after data and he knows how to get them, and once possessing facts sufficient, he is aware how to act. He is emphatically inductive, and stores away his accumulated " stubborn things " until some day he flashes athwart the world's mind the sword-cutting glitter of a law.
This is the man of science, who finds the good of the many in the anguish of the few; who sacrifices himself with his victim, that the storehouse of knowledge may be stuflFed, and ignorance provided with a bed of ease. He sets electricity ablaze by a spark from his own brain, and sends the thoughtless crowd cross country in vehicles
OF THE HERMETICS 23
Started by his own Unit of Force. He for- gets ambition, fame, money, self; he loses his life in his riddle as the gamester does in his trap. He is as fanatic along his line, as the most ardent disciple of an anthropomobic god, and is as far superior to him as is the truth-seeker to the worshiper of idols.
Through these pioneers of the world's progress, man has advanced. He sucks the apple which the devotee of science climbed after to the topmost bough. He walks around at night by the light of fallen stars, as if no brain fiber had been taxed in knock- ing them down. He swallows his microbe- killer and rests complacently on his bed of convalescence, as if no martyr had given a life for his.
Humanity is a vampire which grows fat on the blood of sacrifice. Man warms him- self by the fire which Prometheus stole, while vultures peck at the flesh of the god.
But why all this veiled eulogy, to what purpose this rhapsody ? Take note — If man can acquire facts without, and play with the forked lightning of a principle, why not
24 SOME MORE PHILOSOPHY
within ? If the inductive method is good in the search among objects, why not also when the Ego turns about and faces the other way? Is it unscientific to look upon Self ^'^teriorly, as well as upon its manifestation ^:rteriorly, and to ramble round after data in the enclosed country, even to the risk of life as one does on foreign soil ? Why not watch the inside of the psychic house, as well as out of the windows ? Why not accu- mulate, compare, eliminate, classify, data gathered in the byways and highways of being, as well as in the streets and alleys of objective life? Why not bring the micro- scope to bear on one's self, and the telescope as well for that matter, gazing at the insects and the stars within as accurately as one scans minute life without, or sweeps exter- ior heaven ?
The man of science does but half his work, when he looks externally in one direc- tion. Has he forgot that there is space in- side as well as outside — that the perspective along the channels of being is as far-reach- ing as the prospect from source to mouth of
OF THE HER ME TICS 25
the river bed ? Has lie forgot that for Sirius without there is Sirius within, which can be dealt with by the test scale of gravitation, whose weight he can gauge by the mighti- ness of its pull ? Has he forgot the poten- tial nuclei scattered throughout his inner self, as thickly strewn as seeds on the preg- nant ground ? Has he forgot that evolution is manifesting in him, as well as without, and that he is part and parcel of earth's soul as well as of her body ?
Man, in his mad desire to stand firm- footed on the North pole, forgets that there is a South ; and though he may never plant a perpetual standard on either, it is possible to veer back and forth between both, now approximately toward one, and again toward the other, making scientific explorations in either direction, and gathering data suf&cient to fit two halves into a circle of wholeness, which stands for completed truth.
The vice of science thus far has been, to study data from its material manifestations, ^ leaving the immaterial to the clutches of the fakir and priest. The man of science
26 SOME MORE PHILOSOPHY
casts his immortal soul into the cauldron of a syllogism, where an uncanny metaphysi- cian turns it over and rolls it up and down till annihilation were preferable to its last uncertain state. But the day approaches when the cold gaze of science shall turn inward, till the balls of its eyes shall look like those of the dead, beholding things of which no sage has writ — ^facts which feiil of translation, save into action — principals which deny expression save in regeneration — potentialities inactive save in Mastership — divinity unrealized save in the god.
OF THE HER ME TICS
LOVE.
As tte sun majestically ascends heaven towards the zenith, I mark the shadows severe and solemn beneath the trees. The passionate sun with its approximately verti- cal rays, accentuates the hlacltness where weird shades gather taking grotesque forms as if Imps caught and fixed by a fiat of fate. The dispassionate gloom under the juniper bush is challenged by naught save the pas- sionate glare overhead. The Opposites defy each other, maintaining polarity in spite of increasing intensity — the more vivid the sun the deeper the shade — the pair flaunt- ing contrasts back and forth with increasing power, and foiling one another by the invin- cibility of law.
Alas IvOvel — vertical rays of fire piercing by their straight fall through the breast of matter to its very heart. Alas Hate! — -black about the roots of manifested life — cool,
28 SOME MORE PHILOSOPHY
scowling, certain. With the soft shimmer of fire on the juniper leaves, the shadows beneath utter the menacing speech of silence, and tell that which the fixed scowl on the brow of man tells when dire Hate shrouds him.
I/)ve! your mantle is many times folded, and white only where the high lights glitter.
What do you do, O man ! when the sun^s rays descend like a shower of gold on your head — What do you do, O slave of the Pairs ! when it tortures your body with fire, even to where your feet press earth — What do you do when the drops ooze from your pores to your brow, or drip from your hands? You seek the shade — You crawl under the juni- per bush and shiver with cold. You have reveled so long in passionate heat, that now you freeze in clammy sweat, and strive to hug the shadows whose indijfferent touch turns fire to ice.
What do you do when Cupid pierces you with arrows, till each wound is a fevered center of love — which like all things in- flamed, grows fetid and breeds vermin? You
OF THE HE EMETICS 29
seek the shadowy halls of Hate, and though you avoid the inner dungeon, you lie in the corridor and sujffer IndijBference to breathe his north-wind breath upon you till your putrid sores are healed.
An extreme swing of the pendulum calls for another in the opposite direction — the time piece loses it measured beat and fails to point the hour.
We are not speaking here of that soft in- dolence which calls itself love — ^which shakes hands with all mankind, pats little children on their heads, and strokes the backs of re- sponsive brutes. We are not referring to the unctious soul who drips sanctity from his finger ends on whatsoever he doth touch. We imply not that mortal who is steeped in the heat of his own blood, till he bloats with a species of self-satisfaction that re- dounds to the welfare of the world. We have no dealing here with an attenuated altruism, grandly stimulating in its essence as is the oxygen we breathe, but in its very univer- salism far removed from the mightily selfish, yet God-inspired passion known as love.
' »
30 SOME MORE PHILOSOPHY
Love, in its projectile intensity, sees but one object — It is focused persistently upon a target — It shocks the ether medium between itself and the desired, and hypnotizes its prey by the invincibleness of its will. Love gives no quarter, but slaughters and devours. Love is a bullet of passion aimed straight. Love is a stream confined twixt granite banks, rushing from source to mouth. Love is male, he is Eros — His arrows of light are fresh from the furnace fires, they are new — child of Venus and Hermes; he was bred in a nest of veils, but he tears them to pieces one by one and comes forth winged, hot and naked to be clipped and cooled by the shears and breath of Hate.
The comet drawn by the fascinating subtlety of the sun, rushes across heaven straight to the fiery core — It makes of itself an arrow sped by its own explosion — and the sun strives to gather it in, as the fisher- man hauls in his fish, but terrific as is the attraction, if the comet is a true entity, if within it glow the fires of regenerative indi- viduality, sharp and sure is its sweep about,
OF THE HERMETICS
when tte eternal mate of attraction asserts itself once more.
The law of Reaction speaks from the Sinai of man's being, and roars in his ears its everlasting decree.
Love, projectile — Ijove, selfish — L o v e , magnificent, transformed to Hate, traverses the trackless waste of heaven as does theejr- iled demon upon whose ears the gates of paradise have clanged. And you, with your puerile instinct and childish prattle, enquire, "Is this right and just — If ^Oi^ must foster bad, why live?" Be dumb, sad mortal, a moment, close your lips and look. What head is that, what form — severe as is the jagged peak towering twixt the flower-strewn vale and the land of death? Stern Neces- sity! holding Cupid by one hand, and by the other, Hate. Stem Necessityl clothed in the many colored veil which flashes like a peacock's plumes — as is earth's genius clothed in all the Nation's flags. No pity has she, and no fear. She jerks the chain of flowers that fastens winged Love to her belt
32 SOME MORE PHILOSOPHY
—She pulls hard at the gyves that bind her fast to Hate, and owns them both.
Impartial as is Justice, when Cupid flies, Hate's chain is cut.
Necessity conceived and brought forth two — a pair of twins, one black, one white — and Justice weighing, found the balance struck.
Love! Is there no middle course, you ask, some soft, dim, shadowy place where light and darkness blend — where zephyrs, cool and warm, may follow each other, as do silver doves — ^where moons fall softly on the breast of summer seas and dream their misty dreams — where neutral tints and semi-tones charm sense to happy rest — where soft, half satisfied desire enchants the nerves to rev- elrj'' in their own throbs — where life, in sen- suous ecstac3% knows all the languor of soft youth, ere feteful passion claims its own? Such course there is — and Love oft times is napping there- If j'ou but keep the boy asleep, but drug him with the scent of flow- ers, *tis welL But should he wake — Away with dream! The awful problem! now!!