Section 4

OF THE HERMETICS
as that of opium, he simply endures as a brave man at bay is forced to do.
Tlie philosopher tinctured with stoic grit, has no call to pose or wonder. He has braced himself for resistance, and makes a rampart in his own defense. The crowd is galled, it never forgives him, and he is dubbed by history a Balsamo, or a crank. But what cares he, it is not their opinion he seeks, but liberty.
The petty persecutions practiced by the arrogant and intolerant to-day, are a hundred times more unendurable than were the tortures of the middle ages. Under the guise of roses they manifest in thorns, under the guise of kisses they tell in poisoned breath. Sarcasm clothes itself in honeyed words, and sugar plums are quoted bitter pills.
There is a great deal of writing between the lines which one with half an eye can read. There are love-thrusts which cut, and apparent mistakes concealing an element of cruel intent. " God bless you," means now and then "God curse you," "I love you,"
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"I hate you." To answer back in these small phrases is to stoop and grovel, so you " grin and bear," but it is ceaseless, endless persecution.
There are silent martyrs ever3nvhere, who dash away rebellious tears and go bravely on while pathetically twisting sad lips to smiles; who answer half hid jeers with pleasant tones ; who neither bend nor crawly but welcome suffering rather than disgrace.
History is hoary with half told stories, and we make history every day.
There is no need to seek martyrdom, to pose. If you are strictly true to self, you are bound to bring up against it at every turn in the road. The problem is how to manage and deal with it. If you are going somewhere you cannot turn back; if the enemy is too strong for j^ou, you must suffer, suffer, suffer.
Pathos is the sombre mate of ecstacy; and athwart the shadow the sun makes its way I
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HABIT.
When you glance at the subject of this essay you will be inclined to skip it for the very title suggests monotony, uniformity, and all those conditions and states of being which make life lifeless. At this we do not wonder, for Habit is a tyrant that puts man into a refrigerator at stated intervals and freezes his ever shifting liquid of being into ice. Before he has time to melt after the imprisonment, the hour arrives for a second incarceration. So he is to all intents and purposes, continually congealed, and has comparatively little possibility of variety in his existence.
Life is only life as it is various and many- tinted. Color, form, shifting point of view and vantage, chance for combination, crea- tion, all these imply life. To be crystal- lized, set, fixed, is to be half dead — a sort
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of vivified mummy, leathery and dry — yet able to move automatically and look one way. This is a travesty on life in its full, gushing, fountain-spring sense.
Every day, every-where, we meet these walking creatures of habit, who go over the same road at exactly the same time, whose watches are regulated by standard clocks, and who never vary a second in punctuality. These people are always seeking to repeat experiences which in fact never can be repeated, and being complete failures as to living, they are amazed that so much good- ness^ sometimes called promptness, turns out as badly as it does. These " creatures of habit " wake on time, dress on time, eat on time; they open the same door at the same moment, and pass out into the street at a certain altitude of the sun. Yet there is a difference, yesterday was not like to-day, and they puzzle over this minimum^ of change. In spite of themselves there is variety, though scarcely appreciable. The leaven has saved them to a faint glow of life, and gently fermented mummies that they
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are, their muscles move. Even a clock gets out of order and refuses to pursue forever the even tenor of its way. The time comes when chaos upsets cosmos, and a new thing is wrenched from the jaws of habit.
The tendency to become fixed, to settle, is in all things; but the counterpart and oppo- site tendency is there also, and asserts at times in spite of all individual effort to the contrary.
This prelude is only a roundabout way of telling you that a habit of any kind, good or \i%A,per se is to be fought against. All your fighting will only modify the demon of crystallization, making him a little less hard and icy; he is bound to be, and man is ever in danger of losing bis true life and indi- viduality from this very fact. When the Devil has argued a man into a habit, he has one hand on him and contentedly bides his time to clutch him with the other. He knows very well the power of reiteration, and how easily man is hypnotized into automatism until he becomes as much a slave of habit, as is the unfortunate subject to the King-
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Charlatan of hypnotists. What shall we do then? Are we to be as irregular and disorderly as a street gamin ? Are we to have the habit of no habits which is the greatest habit of all ? Let me tell you that there is such a thing as that of being regu- larly irregular, or approximately regular. You have heard of that orderly disorder, which the artist knows all about; you have heard of that Japanese exquisiteness which continuously varies its own neatness and system, until you have a systematic non- system, a paradox that manifests in odd num- bers, one-sidedness — art — through which runs the strictest unity of aim.
You have listened to sonatas and rhapso- dies of the masters in music, and have noticed in them a something akin to the sounds of nature — the theme so lost in variety that you drop it to pick it up again, long after you have forgotten that it is. You have realized that nature herself manages to reveal unity in variety, when she moulds the two sides of every human face differ- ently, and no two faces exactly the same —
OF THE HERMETICS
yet tlie human runs through the human in spite of it, so that a man is never mistaken for a cow, when the sun shines.
But mani we pity him! — He tries to brace himself with the whalebone and starch of habit till he scarcely can move, when he might without difficulty change all this, and with no sacrifice of an approximate uni- formity. If he is obliged to go north every day, let him now and then cross the street or walk on the edge of the pavement, just for variety's sake! He is bound to reach his destination if he follows the compass, and by this zigzag deviation of an occasional crossing, something new is liable to give him a thrill. Perhaps there are different trees over there, or different strata in the stone, you may meet a beautiful face, a habitue of that side! The houses perhaps are not so uniform and are of a different architecture, or if you get out of the beaten path a few inches, a bit of Flora, just a smile of her, may catch your gaze, and bring a pleasure to the optic.
It takes but a little thing to turn the course
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of a running stream. These little changes even so slight, keep the blood circulating somewhat as does a draft of wine. In fact change, a bit of change is the stimulant of life. The man of habit has been told this, and accepting it as dogma, proceeds semi- annually or at stated periods to migrate to a given place, and renews his periodicities there. He has a habit o{ going away; this of course is an improvement on continuous staying, but it has not in it the full gush of life; it is too periodic and seldom.
The being who Iwes is often, to all outward appearances stationary, he may or may not travel to far countries or trot around the globe. HJs art of tincturing everything with variety has become so perfect in him, that an excursion through his own back yard teems with surprises. His conscious- ness of "The One Thing " enables him to unite each tiny gem of experience to another so different that when day ends, he dangles a chain of brilliants in iis hand, that flashes a thousand colors in the light of the setting sun. He is romantic throughout, and
OF THE HERMETICS
instead of continually spinning fairy tales to himself, lie lives and acts in his own story; may be on his front door step sniffing at a rose one moment, and holding intimate discourse with a hntterfly the next. But through it all is a line of directness, for he will go north on time, as surely as Barth rushes toward Hercules, though she spin on her axis and flirt with the Sun.
If you did but know it, you could do every- thing consciously each time with a difference, and yet apparently in the same way. The shade of variety would be appreciable only to yourself, and even though a cadet on a man- of-war, your officer would have no cause to complain. If you find it impossible in the physical to vary, because of some obligation contracted, in the mental world, at least you are king, and can conjure variety enough, to, in a degree, overcome physical monotony.
The man of habit is sterile, or if he bring forth progeny, you will find them all pat- terned from the same mould. He may pro- duce giants along certain lines, but they will be as much alike as the faces of the bronze
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Buddhas. The man of variety is prolific; his children are the offspring of genius and have the power of fascination, which is the charm of the new.
One word more; would you know the secret of the far-famed elixir of life — perpetual youth ? It is versatility — the power to coax and capture the new. It is the ever young, which means the ever new.
If you have learned to sense it, habit in the rigid aspect, is conquered, Habit "brings age — it hardens the bones till they are as brittle as glass; it withers and wrinkles the skin to old parchment — it blears the eyes and pushes them far back into the head; it turns the hair to dried patches, with the sere crispiness of withered grass; it bends the spine to the shape of the bow, and turns the voice to a metallic rattle. The new is out of sight, and dull monotony travels the beaten path to the cold chambers of the tomb. But should you drink at the fountain of youth, your blood would bound and throb with life. Your eyes ever flashing on new sights,
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would shine like those of the young. Your hair would glisten and glow like living grasses; red and white would rival each other in your clear skin, and your step would be springy and quick as that of a boy at play.
Youth is nothing other than the butterfly- chasing power, which enables one to skip across country after a chimera or a bubble, and back again in time to make a journey toward the desired goal.
Have you forgot that the star, Polaris, flashes fiery tints of red, and blue, and yellow, dazzling the eye of the mariner who heads due north on the surging sea ?
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THE FAMED ELIXIR.
" Lifers enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim," Byron sang of the mortal, but we sing of the immortal. Byron spake of man, but we talk of the god.
In the veins of the earth's subjects there runs a liquid called blood, through those of the Olympians gushed a fluid called ichor.
When Solomon founded his temple, at the innermost shrine were whispered secrets, and the never dying echo of the whisper has struck softly on the ear of the incarnate nineteenth century.
Since man caught at life, as its own object — Since the mortal discovered the god — Since the creature realized the inward creator — Since humanity was found drowned in immortality — From the knowledge of the fact that eternity out-distances time, man
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has taken the kingdom of the stars with the stormy challenge of his eyes, while his feet sink ankle deep in the excrescence of earth. Man demands, and in the very helplessness of his cry there is a ring of authority which calls for a responsive Yea from the heart of Being itself.
Man has outdone the beast in beastliness, whereby Olympic Zeus has discovered in him a rival formidable, Man's potency to vie with the Devil, implies capacity to com- pete with God.
But the famed Elixir! The dream of dreams!
The Moslem faces Mecca, the Jew Jeru- salem; Eldorado is painted on the sunset sky, and the miscalled atheist dips himself in the limpid stream of the Sierra. Hope with her six heads and twelve feet, who sits on the rock of Scylla, is watching still, and the corpses of the shipwrecked float faces upward on the sea.
An endless siege means victory. Faith prolonged brings the mountain to Moham- met, and the stars out of space to' the
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children of earth; aye more, man wrests immortality from the grim grip of mortality and takes the crest of Olympus by storm. The holy Mount is not limited to the twelve originals. With the gods man becomes one, for their food is ambrosia and their drink is elixir.
But why these metaphors and similes, can you not use Anglo-Saxon you ask; can yon not lay bare the heart of truth that we may see it beat? We answer yes, and do. He that hath eyes to see will see, but it requires a trained lens. The sailor can distinguish a sail from a patch of cloud, when the lands- man is blind. The heart of truth is so subtle and refined, so microscopic in con- struction, so far-reaching in vibration, so invisible to the eye of sense, so palpable to the eye of mind, so electric, so calm, that he only who responds to its thrill, can read its meaning. We might tell you in gross words what the elixir is, and you would bandage your eyes in horror, and stop your ears in disgust. We might explain to yon the chemistry of being, and you would seek
your closet to pray for our beniglited souls. We must touch you with gloved hands for you suspect leprosy; we must use a poet's vocabulary for you fear obscenity; we must come to you steeped in incense for your nostrils scent decay; we must insinuate truth under the guise of a harmless snake — though it in no sense resembles a dove — for you dread inoculation. Should we speak plain words you would translate them into your own soul's language, which gross- ness we desire to avoid. So we wrap the white nakedness of Truth in veils, the first, the second, the third, lest you mistake a virgin for a harlot.
Have you observed the bounding step of youth, the exuberance of life and the pre- ponderance of motion over rest ? Dawn swallows night for its breakfast, and youth makes a light meal of death. But why? Mark you these words; Virginity is insa- tiate, and life is its pabulum. Virginity is creative, and like Saturn devours its own children. Virginity knows naught of age, but has unconsciously or
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consciously, the grasp on, The One Thing." Virginity is never dwarfed by habit, but sees with keen eyes the thing it would capture, though it zigzags in the chase. The virgin bathes herself in the dew and drinks at the fountain spring; she has Strang^ gifts, her sight is clairvoyant, her touch heals the sick. But the virgfin who conceives a Christ is pure, not alone in body but in heart. Her thought is on the plane of life; she walks on the mountain ridges, and avoids the valley of death. Thus we speak — interpret you who can.
The soul has wings, but when man clips. Psyche drags her plumes. Wait 1 1 the plumes will grow again. Bury the shears in damp earth and let them rust. Psyche comes with the birds, and bees, and sucks the nipples of the plants; Psyche bathes with Diana in the running brook, and poises on wing near the bosom of earth ; she trades love glances with Cupid and kneels at the shrine of Uranian Venus.
The soul is prolific and when it moulds in matter its fingers are dainty.
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But the famed elixir! You accuse us of evading. Let us reiterate a ievt plain words: Be assured that as certainly as you have the potentiality of the devil in you, you also have the capacity of the god.
The pairs are but two poles of being, and when Lucifer left heaven he fell far. Descent implies a height to scale, but where is the ladder of Jacob which the angels walk up and down? Take a lessou from the spider; her resource is in herself. From her innermost recesses of being she finds substance, for prolongation of her life through the building of snares ; she spins the fairy web, which bleaches in the sun to a thing of art. She bridges space with exu- dation of herself and swings back and forth in the air ou the materialized essence of her own being. Do you take the hint? Can you not build the fairy house of self out of selfs exuberance? To conserve and trans- form the life essence of a soul, virgin in intent, is to store the famed elixir in the holy of holies, where only the poet-priest may enter.