D. APPLETON & COMPAlSIY,

846 & 348 BROADWAY.
; j
Entkked Jiccordiiif,' to act of Congress, in tho year 1608, by
I). APPLETON & CO.,
In tho Clerk's Oq^c&.of the District Court of the United States, for the ^
ADVERTISEMENT.
The writer of the following pages desires to say- that, in preparing the work, it has been no part of his design to express his individual opinions upon the topics discussed. His purpose has been to sug- gest the opinions of others, especially of a class of men scarcely recognized as existing in the world. The art they profess, called after the name of Hermes, Sermetic Philosophy, is so little known at the present day that the name of it by no means in- dicates it. The adepts profess to be, or to have been, in possession of a secret, which they call the gift of God, The art has been prosecuted under many names, among which are Alchemy, Astrology, and even Chiromancy, as well as Geomancy, Magic, &c., under all of which names it has had deluded follow- ers, who have been deceived, as those who claim to be true artists say, not by the art itself which never
4 ADVERTISEMENT.
"tlid betray the heart tliat loved it," but by their own selfisli jjassions, wliich play the Asrnodeiis with BO many that the few who escape delusion arc mysti- cal, not to say mythical, beings who are supposed to have lived uj)on dreams.
I propose now, without ])retending to solve the problem, to sugpjest the true difficulty in the study, which I take to be this, that the Aljj/ia in the art is also the Omega^ and the Omega the Alpha, and the two arc one. Hence the difficulty is something like that of finding the commencement of a circle. An- other mode of suggesting the difficulty is by saying that the object is analogous to an attempt to discover the place of that force in nature called gravity or gravitation. In mechanical calculations this force or power is referred to a certain centre, called the centre of gravity ; yet every one knows that the absolute centre is a mere i^oint and physically nothing at all, yet there is no particle of matter free from the influ- ence of this power, and every, the most infinitesimal particle, has its own centre. So is it with what the Hermetic philosophers call their Mercury^ which they say is everywhere seen in action, but nowhere in essence.
I am aware of the fact that some speculative spiritualists of the present day have much to say of what they call imponderahUs^ but I am not as yet convinced that any actual thing in the universe can
ADVERTISEMENT. 5
be an imponderable, except possibly those invisible things called thoughts and affections; yet even these, in some sense, seem to be the most powerful and j)onderable of influences, moving the entire be- ing of man in spite of prejudices and of ignorance the most absolute and immovable in themselves.
It is to little or no purpose to give a mere name to a subtle influence whose mode of action is im- known, and whose existence is only recognized through an observation of disconnected effects, our knowledge of which is chaotic and remains chaotic because no principle of action is discovered, and yet, how many of us know what life is, except precisely in this way ? We see it everywhere, " the birds of the air fly with it, the fishes of the sea swim with it, we carry it about with us everywhere," yet we know not what it is.
Let it be merely supposed now, that a recluse proposes to himself the problem. What is Life? — but, as this w^ord is common and is imagined to car- ry some meaning with it, while yet the student enters upon the study confessing his ignorance, it is thought convenient to assume another name. Let it then be called Mercury^ from some remote analogy of this sort ; that, if a small portion of this mineral be dashed upon a smooth extended surface, it will sepa- rate into an infinity of flttle globules, each one of which has the entire properties of the whole, and like
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SO many mirrors reflects so many universes^ all simi- lar to each other.
Any other wonl in place of INIercury, as Salt for example, may be used, or a word may be invented without any meaning at all, as Jlileg^ to represent the subject sought for, which is to be found not by the mere definition of a word, but by the properties or priiidples of the thing, which are to be admitted, not upon authority, but by obsei'\^ation and experience in life, always keeping in view " the possibility of na- ture," on the principle that tTiough the artist may err, '* nature when rightly handled cannot err."
With these preliminary remarks I shall proceed to the object I have in view.
E. A. H.
New York, Angust, 1858.
SWEDENBORG,
A HERMETIC PHILOSOPHER.