CHAPTER III.

THE UNNATURAL.

I have already defined nature as action and not
the actor, or as the law and not the lawgiver ; and
also intimated that God — or, in other words, the
Ego called man is, when really at the apex of intel-
ligence and power, both the law and the law maker,
— or both creator and creature. These ideas are
very difficult to understand, but they are at the very
foundation of all progress, since our ideas of God
constitute the seed of our natures, or the motor of
our acts. We grow to be like that which we love
and of which we think the most ; and the attributes
with which we, in our thoughts, clothe God, slowly
but surely become our own. In our efforts to find
truth we must start upon facts ; and the fact, that
man is far, very far from being perfect in any sense
of the word whatever is very patent.

There must be intelligence far superior to any of
which we have knowledge. It is above us even as we
are above idiocy or insanity. When, in the evolution
of man, mind has reached the power of comparison,
a line or standard of excellence is established in his
very nature, above which he rises or below which
he falls.

THE UNNATURAL. 4 1

Now nature being action, it is certain that every
thoughtful person will decide in his mind upon some
acts or method of action which he considers to be
proper, right and natural. This line is the moral
standard, which separates the human from the animal
kingdom, above which man seldom rises and below
which the race grovels now, as it ever has, through
countless ages of time.

This standard is the law of God, which every re-
sponsible person makes for himself by the power of
his own thought, and which is an inexorable force,
compelling everything beneath it to think, to see, to
grow and to become greater, because better.

Thus is man a progressive being, by reason of
being unnatural ; for, if it were possible for man to
act in perfect harmony with all the forces both with-
out and within, he could not improve himself, nor
anything of his surroundings.

It is by reason of man's perception of imperfection
that the idea of improvement finds place in the
human mind. It is the pain of an empty stomach
which makes food pleasant ; and man, having had a
taste of pleasure, has become insane with the lust of
owning the whole world, and even woman herself,
although she is his mother.

Above, below and around us is a black night, in
which we are, in the main, hidden from ourselves.
The dark future conceals from our poor eyes the con-
sequences, which, demon-like, leap out with our every
act, to curse or to bless us.

42 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

In our ignorance of the future we get an imagina-
tive idea of some great good to be derived from doing
some certain thing. Immediately we set about it ;
and, being led captive by the object in view, regard-
less of heat and cold, hunger or thirst, pain or
pleasure, we rush along till exhausted.

Exhaustion is disease. It is unnatural ! All
disease is unnatural. It comes from action, — the
action of a Free Will. That man has become the
most unnatural being in existence, is caused not only
by his freedom of action, but by his greater range of
action, his greater power of thought, invention, and
imagination.

If nature be considered indifferent, man antago-
nizes it in every particular. He is a being of thought,
judgment, memory, imagination, craft, love and will.
Pride and ambition are his ruling traits.

Many there be who claim that all things are
natural ; that there is no transcending nature ; that
man cannot violate or go contrary to nature's laws.
The inevitable conclusion derived from the foregoing
is, that man is a mere machine, moving only as he is
moved upon ; that there is no such thing as volition :
no high, no low, no merit or demerit, no good, no evil.
Such conclusions must be false. Why ? Because it
is contrary to experience, and every-day facts of exist-
ence. By virtue of our organization, and by virtue of
the conditions of our very being, there exists the high
and low, the above and below, etc., and any conclu-
sions of logic, which set these mundane facts aside,
are based on false premises.

THE UNNATURAL. 43

What a demon, nature or God must be, to hold us
responsible for the violation of laws, when we have
no power to help ourselves. But, they assert further,
that there is no violation of law ; that nature's laws
cannot be broken. I simply ask, do we not suffer for
the violence we do to ourselves ? Most assuredly.
Then why does nature, or God, necessity, or fate
make us suffer for doing that which we cannot help
doing ?

Man is of necessity a law maker, and, in his igno-
rance, cannot conform to nature's laws. To conform
to nature would be to revolve in an eternal circle ;
but man, in striving for the new, breaks through
the circle of ignorance and indifference, and gets
hurt in so doing. Thus he becomes diseased by his
own act.

I freely admit that he cannot help violating the
law on account of ignorance, since his whole being
is action, but each act or violation is a creation, and
is more pleasing to man because it is his own. And
furthermore, the ignorance we complain of is in our-
selves, and not in surroundings. Thus we compel
ourselves to act ; each act creates light, and light is
the object of our existence. Evil is our teacher. It
is wisely ordered that we should suffer ; for that
increases action or light, to which we are responsible,
and by which all are judged. We are nature, neces-
sity, or fate.

" Whatever is, is right ! " No, indeed ; the reverse
is nearer the truth. There is nothing true to its con-

44 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

dition ; if things were true and right, there would be
no need of improvement, and no possible room for it.
There would be no foreshadowing of a better state
of things : no aspirations, no longings, no heart -aches,
no weariness of soul. There is little of right and
truth in all things ; just enough to give us a taste of
the good, and make us dissatisfied with our present
condition, and spur us on to effort to better it.

No man can climb who is at the top of the ladder.
Truth and right are far, very far, above us, but we
get flashes and gleams of the glory occasionally,
which show us where we stand on the ladder. Hide-
ous, weird, fantastic shapes glare out of the darkness
beneath, but above us is light, truth, knowledge, love,
glory, harmony. Nature is harmony, but the unnat-
ural is discord.

Man is unnatural because he makes himself less
than nature. He pretends to love nature, but in
reality he despises it. We are creatures of art. We
are made up mainly of hereditary and acquired habits.
These have become a second nature, which we admire.
This second nature I call the unnatural. True, nature
keeps along with us in our downward course, and
fights manfully against disease ; restoring us in sleep,
and adapting itself to our vices and crimes.

It is our voluntary powers which ruin us, but it is
the involuntary which give us what little health we
have. When we forget ourselves in sweet sleep,
nature asserts itself ; and even then the abnormal
habits of our daily lives prevent her work. There is

THE UNNATURAL. 45

very little indifferent sleep. We are too intense ; the
intensity of the day disturbs the night. We cannot
forget that which we love : our daily avocations, our
graspings, our hoarding up, our over-reaching of each
other : these haunt us in our sleep. Nature must
play second. Our natural habits we are ashamed of,
and hide them away as we cover our nakedness. We
take no lesson even from innocent childhood —
glimpses of the kingdom of glory — but our earliest
recollections are pointings of the finger of shame.

To be dignified is the glory of civilization. To sup-
press natural laughter, and smile instead, is grand ;
to "put the best side out/' and to conceal the natural ;
to pretend to be greater, or better than we are ; to
think more of our looks, walk, manners, clothing, and
the wealth of which we have robbed the poor, — this
is civilization. To turn away from one poorly clad,
not deigning an answer to a civil question ; to look
coldly in the eye of a stranger, without speaking
when accosted, because you have not been intro-
duced: this is dignity; this is fashionable. To bow
down to kings, popes, priests, and the nobility ; to
shout and hurrah when they show themselves ; to
toil to support them in their pomp and idleness ;
to march in serried columns to deadly strife with
each other ; to murder each other without enmity —
this it is to be civilized.

The earth is drenched with human gore, and her
fair fields are rich with the bone-dust of humanity.
The glory of one nation is the destruction of another.

46 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

What for ? To perpetuate the damnable and un-
natural idea that some men are better than others ;
that some were made to rule while others were made
to serve. Man has made this earth one vast pande-
monium— a cesspool, out of which come malarial
vapors and malarial beings, distorted in body, de-
formed in mind, dwarfed in spirit.

Look at the diabolical crimes — the fiendish actions
of men, the wrong and outrage — at the deadly dis-
eases constantly on the increase in type and malig-
nancy — and then say, if you can, that these things
are natural. I cannot. Alas ! how we degrade na-
ture or God in the bare idea. Not willing to ac-
knowledge the responsibility that belongs to him, he,
ADAM-like, hides his nakedness behind the fig leaves,
and ascribes to fate, nature, chance or necessity the
actions of which he is ashamed.

"Forced into the world, forced through it, and
forced out again/ ' he is taught that an innocent one
will bear the blame, suffer the penalty, and take all
the responsibility of his actions ; while at the same
time he is groaning under adversity, and suffering
from disease resulting from his own acts, which he
might have avoided with a little knowledge and self-
control.

The natural and the unnatural go hand in hand, as
matter and sense, body and mind, the voluntary and
involuntary, ignorance and knowledge — the same
as the opposite poles of a magnet.

Matter and mind are the two poles of an invisible

THE UNNATURAL. 47

magnet. Mind is no more a result of matter than
matter is a result of mind. They both exist, and are
mutually dependent, not upon each other, but upon the
force residing between. In the magnet — the magic
mirror — we glimpse the supernatural, nature,
inertia, indifference, as an image of the real re-
versed. For in this whirl of atoms and worlds, and
the awful saturnalia of human passions, the real does
not appear on the surface ; hence far beneath the
scum of civilization lies the mirror all befogged, and
obscured from all eyes save those of the spirit. And
even the spirit cannot perceive the real, except as an
image or symbol — thrown by perpetual motion upon
the mirror of the mind. Nature works in and through
this outward show, but God is above and compre-
hends all. The real nature of man is covered with
filthy rags — with which he has clothed himself.

THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS,