Section 6

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uncanay eloquence, but half interpreted, to deeds of great import, for good or evil ?
When man conjures within himself he knows without question that the imagina- tions are his own; some outward suggestion perhaps calls up a train of memories which he marshals and manipulates as would a general a regiment of soldiers. One can, with a little self-investigation, easily dis- cover if the association of ideas is at the bottom of his frame of mind. Analysis is the eye by which he scans his inner self and its conditions.
In most forms of thought, man readily ascertains the first suggestions which insti- gated, and the objects, persons or memories, which suggested them ; so then eliminating in the discussion of this subject all the gen- erally understood and ascertained every day inspirations, which from their very com- monness are not called inspirations at all, let us investigate that mysterious unknown which can scarcely he denied, if one take account of himself and watch his many experiences.
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There certainly comes at times, rain from a cloudless heaven. There is now and then in a life a thunderbolt in a clear sky. Ideas strike one on occasion, as though shouted at the mental ear from the other side of earth without note of warning — messages not due, arrive at unsuspected hours — a sudden aspect of abstract idea, or consciousness of fact, creating itself out of nothing, and coming from nowhere to shock and awaken a latent potentiality. Study inwardly, on every side, to trace some faint connection of these mysterious appearances and upheavals with_ your own previously conceived ideas; inspect your environment and surrounding objects for a clue; recall former experiences and memories; try in every way to fit the new link to the previous chain of your being, but you cannot; the thought, the imagination, is as strange to you, and as far removed from what you have previously had reason to look for, as unexpected news. No one can honestly investigate himself and declare to the contrary.
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There certainly are experiences in every inner life, even the most ordinary, that can be accounted for neither by association of ideas, memory, suggestion from objective nature in its visible sense, nor verbal com- munication by word of mouth. For want of a better term, we call these sudden, &r- fetched arrivals, which startle us with shocks of surprise, inspirations; they may be unworthy, of the Devil, or a credit to an angel; the question is not of their relative badness or goodness, we simply argue that they are.
In making this statement we do not pre- tend to assert the whys and wherefores, nor do we intend to lamely explain the inner- most workings of the law of suggestion. Facts are tremendous things, and almost too much for us without any needless attempts on our part to analyze the majesty of law. We have data in overwhelming amount to prove that there is an Erratic Third method of getting wisdom which comes neither under the head of imagination nor logic. To be sure it must be some finer play of object
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upon subject than can be dealt with by eyes and ears. It is none other than the One Law, taken out of the region of sense opera- tion into that of an interplay of the outer and inner, where physical eyes and ears are not.
Through historic ti mes the Idea of Inspira- tion has been comprehended or abused. The Bible teems with " Thus saith the Lord." Mystic and Sibylline books are sacredly preserved in the archives of the various, countries, and among the Lares and Penates of nearly every home, in a volume of so-called Revelation.
We do not presume to claim here or any- where, that the final interpretation of man is found outside his own soul, or that there is really any riddle save the Sphinx of Self; but this aside. The books and inspirations exist and cannot be ignored by one who reads meaning in all things. If the written Sibyllisms are extant, how about the unwritten ones which have been handed down by word of mouth.
If inspiration be outer suggestion, other
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tlian the ordinary which is recognized by ears, eyes, and touch; if seeds of foreig^n ideas can enter tlie mind by unknown chan- nels; if after strict analysis we discover a certain percentage (very small) of abstract and concrete conceptions utterly removed from anything we have ever thought, dreamed, or had means of ascertaining; if the inexplicable goes roving round amid the internal explicable, let us tardily admit a probability that objects out of sight can reach us by a shock of vibration, and awake within a corresponding potentiality which has lain dormant for ages. Why must we need see all that there is with our eyes, or hear all that there is with our ears; are they not clumsy instruments at best ? But this is out of order, we seek no whys nor wherefores, we hunt facts.
Have you data sufficient, yon ask, to make claim to the old fashioned theory of inspira- tion, we answer yes. No honest, analytic, mathematical person has need to go beyond himself to ascertain this; or if, perchance he make no such discovery, he is the exception
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which is supposed to prove the rule. Right here, we make bold to state that the genu- ineness of an inspiration does not depend in the least upon its goodness or badness, it hinges on something Jar different. Outer unseen suggestion may be intrinsically evil or good; we make claim here only that outer unseen suggestion is. Having proved this by ourselves, having verified sudden inspiration a hundred times, by after investi- gations, we plant ourselves firmly upon the truth of inspiration carried out of sight and out of sound. And standing there we ask the question, what intrinsic sign of genuineness does it wear, how distinguish the diamond from the paste? First by proof. If a man inform you that your house is burning, you rush out and look; it is easy enough to discover if he lies. If a sudden hint or conviction is shot into your brain without apparent cause, fear or favor, and opens up a possibility of something you had never dreamed, go and verify. But this does not account for the liars you say, those who bombard one with falsehood. To be
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sure the Devil may torment you with lies; though of foreign iustigation, they lack the dignity of inspiration, because ihty amount to nothing. There is honor eveu among thieves, and evil inspiration must have at least a basis of fact, in order that it may be acted upon.
Mere suggestion either good or bad, that cannot demonstrate itself in action, is but a child's play at inspiration and not worthy of the term. A true inspiration, in its subtler form, must be capable of expressing and proving itself; evil or good, it must be based on fact, or it is a bursting bubble. Another test, an inspiration comes always as a sur- prise, a shock; there is a thrill in inspira- tion that is unobserved in the sequences from known causes. One inspired is struck by lightning, and his whole being takes fire.
Should an unseen finger write a formula upon your brain, try it. If a veritable foreign hand hath written, the formula will prove itself. A receipt for poison, it will kill you ; an invigorating potion, it will
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heal you. If the letters be scrawled in electric fire, they will leave a tattoo mark on your inner man, which will last to the day of death.
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THE FALSE PROPHET.
He has come down the perspective of time like the Wandering Jew; he changes his dress each century, and has the monopoly of fireflies and phosphorus. There is no heat in him, he steals his light like the moon. How he manages to keep going and living is readily explained by the law of polarity; as long as the inspired preach Sermons on the Mount, he must needs be,
All greatness is not of inspiration; a fire as hot may result from spontaneous com- bustion, and Moses on Sinai, for aught we know, may have originated the table of the Law,
The false prophet is neither an originator nor is he inspired in its high sense; he neither sets fire by his own flame nor by
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that caught from another; he reflects and that is all. When a Snn is flashing some- where in his constellation he holds up a silver shield, catches the rays and throws them into the faces of a curious crowd; he is the satellite ever revolving iu the system of fiery star; and serves his false purpose of a verification when the sun is out of sight. We are not such fools as to condemn him ; ie follows in the trail of the great, gather- ing the scum of humanity loitering on the way, and teaches them in echoes. Is he false? Yes, because lie poses as a genuine star, when he has scarce the dignity of a planet. Like the moon, he keeps clear of the open till the sun has departed, then puts in his appearance under cover of darkness.
If jewels were not, no lapidary would bother about paste. The false prophet, a veritable thief, prowls around the battlefield and rifles the pockets of the wounded and dead, when Truth has hit hard, and laid somebody low.
One truly inspired, or intrinsically great, excites envy and emulation, then comes the
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fakir who lights a pitch-pine stick with a lucifer match, and calls it the torch of truth. The mystery of inspiration tickles his fancy, and shrouding himself in robes interwoven with symbols, he strides forth as a high priest of the temple. He is a strange being, this false prophet, and has a fascination for an ignorant class, such as cultivate street speakers and soothsayers. Shrewdness is one of his attributes; he knows the value of mystery and wordless speech, having acquired a sort of semi-wisdom from the luminary whose light he reflects. If he lives today, he apes the Master's methods — patronizes the same tailor, and stops at the same hotel. In past times he was the monkey prophet of his particular age. The false seer is to the genuine, as the gorilla is to man, at his very best only a caricature and an object of derision. Like the crank he licks up those morsels that pamper his own vanity and has no real earnestness in him. The true seer is rare, and is generally followed by a train of fortune-tellers, charla- tans and fakirs as unreliable as the tag-end
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9S
of an army; they grade down from full-sized moons to little asteroids no bigger than your fist; they live on the pabulum of superstition, which turns itself into coin and then to bread. When not ou the road, they hang out signs and advertise their ethereal wares to those who have fat pockets and unsettled minds; they purport to read your history backward and forward, and the test of their genuiness lies in the doing. If tongues of fire sit on their heads, the miracle is apparent; if, however, they are experts in phosphorus, investigation is in order.
Be assured of this, the presence and activity of these innumerable false prophets mean something. The weird moonlight which they reflect proves beyond question, that a fiery Sirins is somewhere on the march in heaven. The more of these fakirs yon discover, the more certain you may be that the general has gone ahead.
The false prophet has his mission as surely as the Devil, and as no evil can be all evil, and no good can be a// good, the priests of Baal stand round the altar as an eternal
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foil to those others, who called down that unique fire from heaven, endowed with potency to lick up its very enemy — ^the water in the trench. The fakir emphasizes the Master, the false prophet the priest.
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"MY COUNTRY TIS OF THEE."
'Tis a strange fancy of modem times that patriotism must needs die with the advance of civilization — that generalization of thought and grasp hinges on universalism of race, language and religion ; that the Unit must needs level the Many, and variety ultimately perish in the bosom of the One.
When all mineral life shall manifest in the same species of rock; when all plant phenomena shall appear in the same form of tree; when all organized flesh shall stride about in the same type of man; when all stars shall become suns, and all suns of the same magnitude; when Monotony shall sit on a throne under the name of Unity, and shall beat down Variety to the level of a Dead Sea, then, and not till then, shall the pas- sion of patriotism go out.
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While we, of all people, seek the indis- soluble bond which binds man to man, country to country, race to race; while we trace it even in the spaces, and note how it holds planet to planet, sun to sun, constellation to constellation; while we reiterate the axiom that, as is Cosmos so is Microcosmos, yet as vehemently, as emphati- cally do we assert that the figure one, stand- ing for a celestial, indivisible unit, implies the figure two, three, four, and so on end- lessly. And though we discover constant law and eternal principle in mind, we, at the same time stumble over the divisibility and variety in matter under the guise of the shifting phenomena of change. Keeping before our mental telescope then the two suns, revolving as double or single stars according to the length of our sight, we daringly afl&rm that forever and forever there will be shades of difference in the lives and environments of animals, men, and angels, that shall necessitate variety of location and habitat. In consequence an inextinguish- able patriotism. "My Country 'tis of Thee."
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As surely as man becomes individual- ized , will the very vales, rivers and mountains of bis native soil cry out the story; not only in the architecture of its temples and palaces, but in the very poise of its mountains and the song of its streams. The environment takes on the dignity of the man; by some subtlety it catches the spell that is on him, and the very stones and grasses preach.
When I sing of my country, I sing of myself. The battle hy mn of my Republic is mine; my flag is dyed with my own heart's blood, and starred with ray very eyes; my heaven is in it, and its stainlessness is my honor. My power to be is my country's power, and an exile, I carry my land with me in a ceaseless dream.
Oh no, he who would seek to pitch all nations to the same tune, who would dress all peoples in the same garb, and in spite of a twist in the tongue, put the same words in all mouths, who would relegate all forms of worship to a portable church, is devoid the sense of variety which means also the loss of the grasp on unity; for one who is g^eat
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enough to see the center of the world's wheel will see, also, the spokes and the circumference.
That earth is tending more and more to an universal exchange of ideas I will not deny; that wires and bands of steel are on solid ground, as well as in the blue above, and the blue below, I should be a fool to ignore; I simply assert, that interchange and exchange, do not in any sense have a levelling effect, but, on the contrary, impel and substantiate a pregnant individuality. The very variety which results from exchange, emphasizes the Master in the man, by startling him into a consciousness of his Unit of Force, which, for all time, backward as well as ahead is his and his alone.
'' My Country 'tis of Thee," whether its shores are washed by two seas or encircled by one; whether its flag flaunts many colors or a lone star; whether it be edged with ice- bergs or fringed with lillies; whether its sharp crags pierce dread skies, or its laugh- ing waters are tickled by the Sun's fingers;
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whether it is poor or rich, old or young, "My Country 'tis of Thee."
A jewel on Earth's breast, mine eyes have beheld your sparkle since I first opened them to the light — precious beyond compare, though you be but a pebble — somehow you have caught the sunlight and flashed it up to me, till I have burned with your reflected fires, and in the mirror of you, all jewels have glittered. At your very bosom have I sucked the milk of a divine altruism, which thrills me with the intense egoism of its eternal mate.
There is a sword sharper than the famed blade of Damascus, keener than the glitter- ing steel of Japan; 'tis the two-edged weapon of defense, which, ground and shining, ever dangles at the belt of the individual. Quick as lightning he draws upon the enemy to his Nation's honor, which means his own, and in cleaving right and left for his country he vindicates the right of all Nations to be, and of all individuals to , live.
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CONVENTIONAL OPINION.
Do you think it easy to face about and stem the tide of Conventional Opinion ? If so, I ask you if it is easy to swim up stream ; I ask you if it is easy to fly, to walk on water, to suspend the action of poison, or prevent the oncoming of death.