CHAPTER II.

NATURE AND LIFE.
To define life, is to live: for in our efforts to define a thing or principle, we unconsciously become like that which we attack. Analysis without defini- tion is destruction. To define life is a herculean task. Life is a manifestation of something having power to feel which resides in an organization.
All things visible are simply effects of some hidden cause — causes are always hidden. The true mode of reasoning is from effects towards causes, which, receding as we advance, we only approximate.
Life as it looks to us is an effect of causes going before, a result of organization; but to the thinker it is the cause of the organization and all that follows its movements.
We know the uses of things we make, but of the use of the things which God makes, we are, in the main, supremely ignorant. Of this class is the phe- nomena we call life. Many learned books are written and the earth is deluged with sermons whose object is to make clear this sublime mystery of life, but their contents are merely a collection of words, — a mass of conjectures falsely called revelations.
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Who knows the quality, value and use of any form or manifestation of life ? It comes and goes as does the breath, leaving little if any trace behind, — just a name or a sign that it has been here. The in- spired apostle John said, " In the beginning was the word/' and I am of the opinion that it is also the end of the matter as well ; for what matters the mul- tiplication of names ?
Life means simply, to our dull comprehension, things in motion ; but to a deeper and more compre-^/ hensive sense it includes inertia. All is life. Even that which we call death is another name for our ignorance.
If we say that nature causes life, we misstate the fact ; for the lives we lead, make our natures. We are as we act, and do not act naturally. The motion we call life is merely the " becoming " of ourselves, or the coming into recognition of the Ego, which, stand- ing between life and death, doth regulate all motion.
The only absolute fact is that which vtefeel. All animate nature exists by reason of feeling and all the phenomena of existence leads thereto.
Mind is the sun of the Spirit, which, like the world, must needs polarize itself. At one pole are the five physical senses ; at the other pole are the intellectual senses or the powers of induction and de- duction.
Are not all these powers real ? In their sphere they are each true ; although, like heat and cold, they are opposites and war with each other.
36 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.
By virtue of these five senses the earth appears as an undulating plain, with the sun rising, moving over head, and setting at night. We are always on the top of the earth, and the heavens are above.
No mode of reasoning can make us feel that we are half of the time underneath — or standing out sideways in space. That this is owing to our rela- tionship to the earth I freely admit, but the knowl- edge we have gained through the exercise of the higher intellect sets aside the basic facts of existence, and proves them a delusion of sense. Now which is correct ? May not the facts of intellect be a de- lusion of sense, also ? There is no absoluteness in man, save his existence.
These same senses cause us to feel pleasure and pain. Is this fact a delusion of sense ? These senses tell us of the up and the down ; and that the reversal of ourselves is death. We instinctively love pleasure, which we call good, and elevate it as God. But we dread pain, and avoid it as the devil, which is low down and to be kept down, if possible. Reason as you will, sail around the globe, explore space and measure the stars, and then teach that there is no high and low, no good or evil, no up or down ; but still common sense remains — as nature remains — a solemn protest against the light of the intellect as a guide to those deep and fundamental principles of existence ; which to be of any value must bring pleasure instead of pain. Human analysis leads the soul to nothing; while the universal instinct warns
NATURE AND LIFE. 37
man of the evils of pain and death — as if creative genius has planted in man a something in which the brute shares — that causes him to dread death, and to value life.
And furthermore an instinct tells him of a nature long since forgotten, save in legend ; of the unnatural state in which he now lives, or rather suffers, and of a supernatural state to which he may attain.
The instinct or common sense of atoms, impels each to remain in its place and keep silent in obedi- ence to the law of attraction ; but the soul gives intellectual wings to dull matter, enabling it to fly even as thought flies, to mingle with the source of all life and light and to find a common relationship existing from the lowest to the highest, and common sense and common things as essential as the highest.
The lowly clod is as necessary as yonder sun and the highest sense, by virtue of its greatness, recog- nizes the kinship of all things, — even senseless ones.
Action and reaction are the great laws of nature but inertia is as necessary as they ; since the phe- nomena of motion could not exist were there nothing silent and still whereby to measure the velocity of things in motion. Now that sense which is the nearest to no sense (the inertia of atoms) is common sense, which knows nothing except what it suffers and enjoys, that is satisfied in its ignorance and bliss, which knows no future and has no aspiration, — is that sense just above blank ignorance — the sense nearest to the soul.
38 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.
There is a point where motion has a beginning — a point where there is no motion — and a center around which all things move.
We know it exists ; yet the loftiest mind has not found such a center, nor have the poles of the earth been discovered. Perhaps they will be and possibly an absolute vacuum may yet be a demonstrated fact ; but at present all things are related to each other, and there is nothing absolute except the consequences of being. These are a point of the supernatural barely protruding itself above the floor of ignorance, a gleam of light escaping through impenetrable dark- ness, or infinite being narrowing itself down from immensity to finite proportions, — points of light, of sense and of consciousness, which grow from vacancy or mere nothing, the lowest sense, to become in time and eternity, infinite again, by escaping through ignorance and darkness. Such is life, parts of one grand homogenous whole ; which cannot be particled. It is the same in worm as in man. The little life of one thing is just as potent, and as great for that thing, as the greater life is for another. If the life of one thing is immortal, then all life is. But the life may be beaten out of a thing by processes, to be explained hereafter, so that it, as a thing, has no self- supporting power.
Everything is dual — " Male and female created he them/' — darkness and light, ignorance and intelli- gence, cold and heat, evil and good, opposites, antago- nists, all go hand in hand — inseparable. There is
NATURE AND LIFE. 39
nothing known but has its opposite ; and one being given, the other may be found close at hand. Fur- thermore, the third thing, that which makes the triangle of imperfection, resides always within the two visible parts.
Two things being placed side by side are said to be in contact ; but there is always something between them, which prevents them from becoming one, for absolute contact is oneness. That which separates things is condition. Distance is condition. If all things were in like condition, they would fuse and blend so that all form would be lost. This third thing — that is not a thing — this something intan- gible and immaterial, I call the soul of things ; for by virtue of it things exist and have motion.
40 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.