Section 1

•o/ne losopfyy
PRESENTED
TO
THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
BY
PRESENTED
TO
THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
BY
SONE PHILOSOPHY
, OF THE
HERMETiCS
ISSUED BY AUTHORITY OP THE
There are some who will see and seeing wtll perceive, /
others bearing -will understand. I /
LONDON:
MESSRS. KEGAN, PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNKR & COMPANY (LIMITED)
All Rights Reserved.
ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL,
1898
BY D. P. HATCH OF Los ANGELES, CAL. All rights reserved.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE 5
HERMETICS 7
PHILOSOPHY 9
FAITH 13
CONCENTRATION 18
PRACTICE 22
MEMORY 26
IMAGINATION 31
THE BOOK OF REVELATION 37
PRIDE AND PHILOSOPHY 41
WHO ARE THE CRANKS? 47
ONE DAY 53
SECRET GRIEF 56
COLD DESPAIR , 61
BEAUTY — ART — POWER 65
SPIRITS AND DEVILS 70
DEATH — WHAT OF IT? 73
NATURE'S JEST 79
YOUR FRIEND 83
THE ONE THING 86
THE DEVIL 9°
THE PAIRS 94
ADONAI 98
MAGIC... 103
PREFACE.
Nature has a way of concealing and revealing. She tells half her story out in the sunshine in a loud voice, and the other half in whispers underground.
She is coy like a coquette, and stern like a judge. She excites curiosity in the student, and dread in the debauchee.
She holds the man of science to her breast, but is dumb to the lover of pleasure. She scorns the victim of priestcraft and repudiates the supernatural. The Sage takes his cue from his mother; like Nature, he conceals and reveals. He who would see other than the smiling, scowling face of Hermes must search the dark places by the light of his own candle ; Hermes locks the gate between the outer and inner
Temple ; and he, only, enters the latter, who has the pass word and the key.
In reading this book please notice how the essays vary in style ; some of them falling into a weird rhapsody, others laconic and plain — The Mystic will understand the reason of the difference, while another will peruse only the words.
The barbaric splendor of Nature reveals truth and law as surely as does her terrible logic. She speaks in poetry and in prose. Facts are rarely ever naked, but often not only draped but masked. The occult eye sees straight to the heart of a fact, while the normal lens dwells on the habiliments.
Enotigh has been said save this — Man inevitably cometh unto his own.
THE HERMETICS.
Who were they ? What are they ? They were those who could speak or keep silent. They are those who whisper or shout. They believe in silver and gold. " If speech is silver silence is gold." They believe in the conservation of energy, and its transforma tion. They believe in the Unit and in the many — the special and the general. They have found the Philosopher's stone — the elixir of life. They catch glimpses of Eldo rado — the promised land. They know time and realize eternity. They comprehend distance and space. They circumscribe the square with the circle, and death with life. They teach an eternity of being, and an endless variety of form. They wed involu tion to evolution, and yesterday to tomor row. They insist on object as the mirror
of subject, and consciousness as the child of the two. They hold that Nirvana is poise —a motionless motion — the paradox of being.
To find the Hermetic out of Thibet is to discover him next door. He is as likely to be in broadcloth as in adept's robe — and as possible in London as in Benares. He is rare. Gold is not picked up without stoop ing, nor the fountain head discovered with out searching. Swine are about and pearls are treasured.
Enough, save this — The false implies the true. — Chaos, order. — The word, secrecy. — " The one thing, many."
PHILOSOPHY.
With your heart filled with emotions, your head stormy with thought; with your back on the years behind you, facing the years ahead — you, a man, stand trembling with the consciousness of self, and wonder what next.
Philosophy ! ah me ! Philosophy ! When the heart beats to the tune of love, or your brain throbs with a master-passion — Philoso phy ! you plunge headlong into life as the comet into space-living-living-living-only living.
Philosophy ! What need have you ? Your blood surges up to your heart and on to your head — you feel, you think — Philosophy ! Life is for life, you say — Philosophy ! but- but-you hav'nt it-life, only a shiver of it- only a thrill of it.
io SOME PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy brings it-life. She is beauti ful — she carries a cup in her hand — it is gold; she begs you to drink and live. She is your hand-maiden — Philosophy — the cup is pure metal — the drink is elixir — life. As man, you are mortal; you have stood in the sunshine so long you are blind. As man, you are drunk with a drop of pure life; you have listened so long to the seas, you are deaf. Philosophy brings you the cup and you drink, and you open your eyes; she waits — and you listen and hear — what — what do you see — do you hear?
Yourself- — in the sun, in the sea — your self in the sky, in the air — yourself in the winds, in the stars — yourself in the depths, in the heights — yourself in the distance — yourself nearer home — yourself in the open — yourself in the closed — yourself in the seen and unseen — yourself everywhere; yourself in her eyes — Philosophy's eyes — yourself in her voice — Philosophy's voice — yourself in the speech of the beasts, in the song of the birds, the rustling of leaves; in nothing, in something, in naught and in all;
OF THE HER ME TICS n
in negative, positive, neither and both; in you and in other, in other and you.
Life! — inward and outward, receding ad vancing, coming and going — Life ! Feeling is feeling — thinking is thinking — Life! Sleeping is sleeping — waking is waking — Life ! Living is living — dying is dying — Life!
Open the windows and breathe the fresh air — open the windows and look at the sky — open the windows and feel the soft rain — breathe — breathe — breathe full to the chest — breathe.
I've traveled the spaces by thinking — I've mounted the zenith by wishing — I've floated in air by a longing — I've melted in mist when a dreaming — I have flashed in the fire by desiring — I have blended in water by looking — I have entered a soul by aspiring. I am many or one — I am one or the many.
Each day is mine own not anothers; each day is all days, all days are each day.
I floated in blood in the veins of a bird, and beat in his heart to the tune of his wings; I sucked at the breast of a flower and dripped
12 SOME PHILOSOPHY
in the honey of bees; I spun the fine silk of a web, and tied up the knots of a snare; I have lain in the arms of a cloud and turned up my face to the sky; I died and entered the tomb, and rotted away in a corpse; I crawled through the pores of the earth in the succulent bodies of worms, and buried myself in the mire to shiver with cold in a stone. Ah ! Life and Philosophy ! Wisdom and Life!
Do you ask me the reason of all, I give you the reason of none; do you ask me the reason of none, I give you the wisdom of all.
You burn with desire and you thrill; then dip in the blood of yourself and write on the parchment a scroll, and read in the letters the words, and read in the words the command, and in the command the design, and in the design, the beginning and end; and living you read, and reading you live; and cease to be mortal, but soar as a god.
If ever the bush is on fire harken for language and hear; something is speaking — listen and listen — something is shining — the bush is on fire.
OF THE HERMETICS 13
FAITH.
We will present the subject of faith in a secondary aspect, and show you how to make out of it a mighty lever towards accomplishing results. We advise you to be alert, and in a certain sense skep tical in all save the principle upon which you found your premise.
Take as a starting point yourself, for it is not necessary to travel far from home in order to find a subject on which to work. Believing in your existence, a priori, and resting upon the fundamental consciousness of the Ego, suppose you branch out into a series of unusual experiments as to what the possibilities of that Ego are.
Most people find certain dominant tend encies uppermost, and are entirely satisfied to develop and live by them, never striving
14 SOME PHILOSOPHY
to discover hidden mines within themselves along lines where they have not taken the trouble to penetrate.
If you see a leaf floating on the wave at sea, you have some reason to think that land is near. May it not be possible that some indication as small as a leaf, floats round on the sea of your being, and you have failed to draw any conclusion from it. The mariner discovers the bit of green, and makes for the shore ; you discover the sign of unseen things and sail out into deeper waters.
The lesson we would teach is this, observe the signs, no matter how insignificant ; let them create in you a sort of conditional faith ; follow them up and see what you will discover.
The scientist is well used to this condi tional faith ; it is not absolute faith, but a suspension of judgment, an abandonment of prejudice, and a simple research based upon indications. When the miner strikes a sign of color, a certain faith is developed in him; it is conditional of course ; it is based on
OF THE HERMETICS 15
possibility, not on probability. It is quite a different thing from a man's faith in gravi tation or repulsion. It is what might be called a blind faith ; and the only excuse for its being is that in time, it will develop into a certainty or fall through altogether, in other words prove itself.
Suppose for instance, you find at some one time, that you have seen clairvoyantly, treat that as the leaf on the sea of your being ; follow it up, and be not astonished if you land on the shore of an unknown country. Your faith which was suf ficient to lead you to explore, has brought you a certainty which translates itself into an added power.
The reason that we insist on a conditional faith such as the scientist has, is this; if you blindly follow signs, so swallowed up in your belief that you are incapacitated to reason, or to think, or to bear disappoint ment, you will become fanatical, and lose your discrimination and power of judgment.
There is a faith that is prepared for either success or failure ; it is a kind of half
16 SOME PHILOSOPHY
belief in a thing, still strong enough to lead one to honest, unbiased investigation about it. It is the proper faith for one who inves tigates spiritualistic, psychic and sleight-of- hand phenomena ; a watchful, fair, consider ate faith which weighs the pros and cons in an investigation, and allows no undue influ ence to be brought to bear either for or against the result sought.
This is strictly the scientific faith, and it is the first essential in the mind of the student of Philosophy. It should be laid down as an axiom by all beginners in the pursuit of knowledge, that our desiring or not desiring a thing to be, cuts no figure in the investigation. Truth does not arrange herself to suit us, but forces us to conform to her.
If we enter the study of Philosophy with certain fixed ideas of what we would like to have, and of how we wish the Universe to be conducted, we are pretty apt to abandon the pursuit when we come to find out that Truth does not cut her clothes after a pattern of our own designing. Truth is safe enough
OF THE HERMETICS 17
and we can not improve upon her. It is our business to pursue her, and catch and hold some aspect of her if possible, otherwise we had better return to our delusions.
To find Truth we must use the scientific method, which is always founded upon a temporary faith ; a premise assumed for the time being, as a test of the possibility of the solution of the problem. This is not the supreme faith which is founded upon the principle of being, and must be the rock upon which we build up any lasting struc ture. It is the shifting faith which can be abandoned, as we find the object upon which it is fixed useful or not ; but we do insist that when you start out to explore yourself, and to discover the latent possibilities within you, that you do as Columbus did, who hoped to find a new Continent, which up to the day when the first sign of land appeared, was to him and the whole of Europe an image and a dream.
i8 SOME PHILOSOPHY
CONCENTRATION.
We urged you in the last talk to go on a voyage of discovery in yourself, and see if some waking potentiality was awaiting development. In this paper we desire to insist on the use of concentration to this effect. You who think you know how to concen trate, will find on attempt at a sustained effort how difficult it is, and how weak you are.
Look back and see how many things you have begun, how many good resolutions you have made, and how much you have attempted and failed to complete.
Youth climbs up the ladder of his own hopes and scans the prospect ; he expects to do every thing, to conquer every thing; he levels mountains of opposition in his own mind. He figures on becoming king
OF THE HERMETICS 19
of opportunity and creating it at his own bidding. Notice him ten years later sitting at the foot of the ladder of his dreams. He has spent his summers and his winters, his springs and his autumns in dabbling.
First an attempt at this and then at that, tasting here and there of everything and nourished by nothing. He starts down a road to view an object, and slips off into a byway to view something else. He gets to singing a new tune and forgets the first stanza of the old one. He knows people and forgets their names, or he knows their names and forgets their faces. He is forever experimenting and never finishing ; he rests half way up the moun tain and a positive climax is something that he knows nothing about.
Look over your life and see what you have done. You have dipped into books, but they never dipped into you. You have studied human nature and been cheated a hundred times. You have kissed a friend, and then another without reading the heart of the first. You came to the realm of
20 SOME PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy, and wandered aronnd in a maze; you plucked a leaf and threw it away ; you inhaled the perfume of a flower and passed on; you gathered a bouquet and tossed it into the stream ; you dabbled your feet in the water, and washed your face in the dew ; and then, you entered the front door of a church and passed out at the rear.
You tickled the wings of cupid, and he flew away, and sitting down on a grave you sighed ; and the next week, you danced. Such your life. Now you come to our doors and knock ; and we say to you, from behind the lock, "Can you look at the point of a pin — and look and look. Can you rest on a premise, and think and think up to the conclusion — can you pile up facts on facts to the pinnacle of a principle — can you study on one line to the very end of the question — can you act on your conclu sion as against the world — can you resist straying to the right and left when you have started towards a place or condition — can you keep on aiming with the same stone at the same spot till you hit it — can you stay
OF THE HER ME TICS 21
fixed in any pursuit any length of time, or are you a child?"
Start out with yourself and follow the leaf on the wave of your sea; follow — follow — concentrate and follow, by the blind faith of science, some sign in yourself till its value be disclosed. Be like the dog that gives chase, and is bound to be in at the death or the capture.
We tell you now, at the very inception of the study ot Philosophy, that you must have two kinds of faith; one absolute, the other secondary and changeable; also concentra tion; without these it is useless to go on.
To cultivate concentration you must prac tice. Cultivate that bull-dog tenacity to hold on to a thing till you know what it is, if you have once decided to grapple with it.