I Man and his World; ONENESS OF NOW AND ETERNITY. A SERIES OF IMAGINARY DISCOURSES BETWEEN SOCRATES AND PROTAGORAS. By/ JOHN DARBY, AUTHOR OF " ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN," " NINETEENTH CENTURY SENSE," ETC. PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 1889. Gt a3 THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS WASHINGTON Copyright, 1889, by J. B. Lippincott Company. <^mk0^ 7 DEDICATION TO " CEBES," who may stand as representative of students generally, and par- ticularly of nine hundred young men constituting at this time the membership of the Garretsonian Society, to whom the present volume is addressed as being illustrative of lectures delivered before the resi- dent members in the winter of 1888-89 > earnest examiners as to cor- respondence in things, most of them ; sceptical as to matters in general, many of them ; believing nothing, some of them, — this book is earnestly, and with due sense of responsibility, dedicated, in confi- dence that not only will it recall interesting hours spent together in the class-room and the amphitheatre, but as well it will serve as reply to questions that must continue to offer themselves for examination. INTRODUCTION. Twenty years ago, when the writer was wholly a Platonist, he wrote, and a few years later published, the first one hundred and six pages of the present volume, under the title "Two Thousand Years After." That brochure was received by the press with a warmth that rendered the commendations a source of gratification to both publisher and author, and was the means of a quick and very satisfactory cir- culation of the work. In presenting the present addenda, which make the book of so entirely dif- ferent a character and meaning as to require other naming, the author trusts he will not be viewed as exceeding the bounds of a becoming modesty in suggesting that attempt is made, through an exhibit of the principles of things, to bring something of harmony out of the prevalent confusion of the times, and to reconcile the childish, yet destructive, differ- ences that separate people of the various sects and systems. Light is according to eyes and opportunity. To prepare the volume as it here stands, its writer left VI INTRODUCTION. disturbing influences, as these associate with the life of a busy city doctor, and lived for three months among the quiet retreats and " contemplative shades" that exist so abundantly about the locality of Swarth- more College : God, and nature, are never seen by him as closely in the town as in the country, nor does he find it as easy to see principles through brick walls as through arboring trees. The three months spent in thinking and writing the addenda were to him days of serene and unalloyed happiness. Re- lationship with Socrates, Protagoras, Cebes, and the others of the pages was much more real than was the presence of the people of the village. The writer is compelled here to risk arousing preju- dice on the part of the critics in suggesting the mean- ing of the present book to be lines between lines to his lately published work, " Nineteenth Century Sense," a book, this last named, which certainly did not please them, a matter not to be wondered at, perhaps, as impulses of the heart and psychical inferences domi- nate it rather than ordinary literary refinements in the manner of its arrangement. It is certainly not a book in accord with the hard practical sense of the times. Perception must accord, however, with state of mind. The author, for himself, has to con- fess that there are times in which the pages are as dead paper to him, while at other times, on the con- INTRODUCTION. Vll trary, something or other in the work illumines and vivifies him. Considering the invariable kindness of the book re- viewers as manifested towards all his writings with exception of the volume just named, the author asks them to re-read it in the light of the present dis- courses, and he asks for this reading when a sick hour or other favoring circumstances shall have shut out the confusing sounds of the great hurly-burly. To his students he would recommend the reading of his books in the order in which they most naturally relate: first, " Odd Hours of a Physician;" second, "Hours with John Darby;" third, " Brushland ;" fourth, "Thinkers and Thinking;" fifth, "Man and his World;" and sixth, "Nineteenth Century Sense." If such a course be pursued, no single volume of the series will be found lacking in clearness; the phi- losophy and views of life as inculcated and set forth will, after such manner of reading, show in their proper light and position, and may then be rejected or accepted as the reader shall decide. The frontispiece is a contribution to the members of the society named in the dedication, insisted on by the author's too partial and kind publishers. CONTENTS. PART I. GENERAL ARGUMENT. PAGE The Queries of Cebes concerning the Soul 14 Transmigration : a Text from Ovid 15 The Ionian Judgment 20 Reflections in a Cemetery 24 Inquiries concerning the Soul 27 Protagoras and Things 31 A Definition of Things 32 Men and Brutes 33 The Quality of Apprehension 39 Real Things and Images 42 The Cartesian System 43 Nothing Wrong in Itself 47 Idealism 52 The Creating of Things 54 THE SOUL. Seven Senses ' . . 59 Offices of the Senses 60 God and Soul one 61 Immortality 64 WHO AND WHAT IS MAN? The Entities 72 Spinoza ' 72 Locke's Definition of Soul . 74 ix X CONTENTS. PAGE Leibnitz's Definition of Mind 74 Defects of the above Definitions 74 A Watch and Intelligence . 75 Soul not a Necessary Part of Man 76 Mind and a Shadow 78 Thought a Function 78 Matter 80 Force 81 Hegelianism 82 The Becoming and Departing 83 Relation of Man with Brutes and Vegetables 86 Mind 89 Genius 91 Suffering by Negation 98 God and Men 98 The Writing on a Tombstone 106 PART II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ETERNAL NOW. Codicil 109 Quotation from " Religio Medici" ill Introductory 113 Protagoras introduced 115 The All of Now 116 To-Day's Standing-Place 118 Force 121 The Elemental 121 Soul 126 Eternity and Now one 129 Body of Man 132 Babies without either Mind or Soul 137 CONTENTS. XI I. PAGE Consciousness identical with I 143 Jean Paul Richter and his I 143 What it is that perceives 144 What it is that becomes Cold or Hungry 144 Differentiation of the I 144 Educated Sense not the Source of Complete Enlightenment . 145 Means required to see around a Circle 146 The Uses of God Sense, Egoistic Sense, Educated Sense, and Common Sense 146 A Paradigm relating to Materialization 147 Man without Concern to know Unknowable Things .... 151 Caterpillars and Men equally Immortal 152 Where Man comes from 150 Self- Abnegation the Attainment of Invulnerability .... 155 A Pure Inspiration 155 KNOWLEDGE OF SELF AND RELATION WITH THE UNIVERSAL. The Individuality called Man 157 The Beginning of Knowledge . . . 157 The Hypostases of Man 157 The Entities 157 Three Things constituting the Universal 160 Oneness yet Separability of God, Ego, and Matter .... 161 Tripartite Man 165 Many yet only One 163 Self not less Self by reason of Lack of Body or of Soul . . 163 Emptiness not a Vacuum 163 The Body occupied in the Dream State 164 Astral Body 164 Duty one with Performance of Function 165 Knowledge of Self one with Knowledge of the Universal . 167 Realists and Idealists 168 Xll CONTENTS. FROM COMPLEXITY TO SIMPLICITY. PAGE Intention of Philosophy to afford Purpose to Life 171 Understanding of Object 172 A Paradigm relating Oneness with the Many 172 Only Two Systems of Philosophy 177 Realism and Idealism 1 77 Judgment and Common Sense 178 Inexperience one with Dogmatism 179 Realism and Nominalism 180 Idealism one with Perception 183 Objectivism 185 Subjectivism 187 Materialism 188 Spiritualism 189 THE PHILOSOPHERS. Concerning the Philosophers 191 Who and What is Man ? 191 Outside seen before Inside 191 Common-Sense Perception 191 The Philosophy of Greece, India, and Egypt 192 The Start of Ontology 193 The Greek Intellectual Age 194 Mencius, Gautama, and Moses 195 Spinoza's Utterances on Origin 196 Confusion everywhere save with the Hypostases ...... 197 The Interval between Thales and Epicurus 19S Views of Zeno of Elea 199 Conclusions of Democritus 199 Greek and Indian Thinking 201 Diogenes and Evidence of Design 201 Intellectual Advance in Men 203 A Backwoodsman antipodal to a Fakir 204 Neo-Platonism 205 CONTENTS. Xlil PAGS The Modern Spiritist 206 Proclus and Faith 206 Mysticism of the Alexandrians 207 FROM CIRCUMFERENCE TO CENTRE. A Hoop the Symbol of Life and Living 209 The Unseen and the Seen 210 A Look at Foundation 212 An Eternal Now 213 Sin as existing with Matter 219 The Moons of Jupiter and the Legs of a Mite 220 Religion and the Hypostases 221 A Watch as Reminder of the Reiigious State 222 Karma and Kismet 222 Soul and Religion identical 224 Man one with Beast in Absence of Soul 224 The Doctrine of Special Providence 224 Providence never farther away than is a Man's Self from himself, or than are away the Neighbors who sur- round him 228 FROM CENTRE TOWARDS CIRCUMFERENCE. Who is Rosicrucian 231 Circumference as related with Hypostases 232 Bankers and Brokers and Candlestick-Makers 232 Tariffs 233 Commutation of Per Cent, into Capital 233 Race Discriminations 233 Selfishness neither in God nor in Matter 235 Common Good the only Good 237 Alchemists, Immortals, and Illuminati 241 The Pineal Gland as the Seat of the Ego 243 A Rosicrucian the Wisest and Richest of Men 244 Sight of Things through Different Media 245 XIV CONTENTS. TOWARDS THE SUBJECTIVE. PAGE The Altering of a Human Face 247 Looking through Clouds 248 Subjective one with Association of Ego and Imagination . 248 Iron Posts and Essence Posts 249 The Image in the Log 250 Things parted from yet kept 25 1 Seneca and Riches 253 Alp Mountains not Realities 253 The Ordinary Concerns of Men little different from Puff- Balls 255 Approach of Material, Departure of Spiritual 256 The Mystery of Nirvana 258 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER. ARGUMENT. NEARLY twenty-three hundred years ago, Socrates, whose name is familiar to all thinkers, was executed at Athens, having been con- demned by the judges because of accusations preferred by one Melitus that he disbelieved in the gods of his country, and through his teach- ings corrupted the Athenian youth. On the day in which the sentence was to be carried into effect, there were assembled in the prison his friends Echecrates, Pheedo, Apollodorus, Cebes, Simmias, and Crito, and with these Plato represents as being held the world-famous con- versation on the immortality of the soul. In the present dialogue, it has not been thought either amiss or out of keeping with nature's laws to imagine that, in the correlations or transmigrations of life, these friends should find themselves again together after the lapse of all these years, and that, possessed of the lore of the modern Positivist, the conversation should be renewed. In the original argument, as given in the Phasdo, Socrates did not succeed in satisfying fully either himself or his hearers as to the nature and meaning of the Soul. The explanation of this is that he started, and continued to the end, with a confusion existing in the confound- ing, yet at the same time an indistinct mingling, of entirely separate and distinct things. He was strictly right, as is accepted in the present volume, as to his main conception of Soul, as such conception is gotten out of analysis and comparison of the Phaedo, Phaedrus, and Republic, but he was wholly wrong in esteeming Soul to be identical with the Thing by which man has his immortality. Duality, as taught by Socrates, is the confusion as well of to-day as it was of two thou- sand years ago. The first part of this book makes but little departure from the original Socratic premise ; its subject at large is Soul ; its design to make plain that lack of soul is want of difference between man and brute. The second part passes to a philosophy founded on recognition of distinction between Soul and Ego and of the oneness of Now and Eternity. In this part the author expresses his own philosophy and religion. TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER. Socrates. It is permitted me, O Cebes, to continue with you that conversation which the good intention of Crito would have altogether prevented, had we not denied the importunities of him who prepared the poison-cup. Cebes. Nothing strange does it seem to hear again the voice. Soc. Nothing strange; for that which is heard is immortal; instruction resides not less on the lips of folly than in the speech of wisdom, and he who hears not the voice always, hears not only because that he does not listen. But heed, Cebes, and call you Phsedo, and Echerates, Apollodorus, Simmias, and Crito ; shall we not with profit take up the subject of our discourse at that point where the commands of the officer of the Eleven interrupted it? 2 13 1 14 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, Ceb. Whether the voice be false or true, whether it bears the speech of Cynosarges or deceives through the lips of a sophist, I will listen, hoping to find doubts resolved. Soc. Judge of a speech, Cebes, by the argument. This, then, is the sum of what you inquired, when, in the pen at Athens, we sat together two thousand years ago. You required it to be proved that man has a soul ; that soul is something imperishable and immor- tal; that a philosopher who is about to die, full of confidence and hope that after death he shall be far happier than if he had died after leading a different kind of life, does not entertain such confidence foolishly and vainly. You asserted, as well, that even to be able to show that a soul is something having existence, and that it is of a strong and divine nature, and that it lived before we men were born, not at all hinders, but that all such things may evince, not its immortality, but that the soul is durable, and existed an immense space of time before, and knew and did many things ; but that, for all this, it was not at all the more immortal ; but that its entrance into the body of a man is the beginning of its destruction, as though it were a disease, so that it passes through this life in wretchedness, and at last perishes in what is called death. You declared, also, that it is of no consequence whether it should come into a body once or often with respect to out OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 1 5 occasion of fear, for it is right, you said, that he should be afraid, unless he be foolish, who does not know, and cannot give a reason to prove that the soul is immortal. Such is, I think, Cebes, the sum of what you required, and what you asserted. Ceb. I do not take from, or add to it ; such things I said. Soc. Now that the centuries which have come and gone, have left behind demonstrations of which the sophists knew nothing, and of which we in our turn had as little provision — now, holding speech again together, we are able to affirm of things whereof formerly we ventured alone to insinuate. Give heed, Cebes ; to-day we shall have a demonstration which in itself carries its own voucher ; to-day we shall be made to feel that we know whereof we affirm. The centuries, my Cebes, are as vantage ground. What Thesetetus lacked as to the meaning of science is now fully comprehended, for the times have exhibited not only this meaning, but as well the end of such manner of inquiry. Let us, then, talk together from the standpoint of to-day, for after such manner it is that we have to the advantage of our discourse, that fresher knowledge to which I allude. Ceb. After whatsoever manner it best pleases you. Soc. We will have then, as a text, those lines which the poet Ovid makes as speech for Pythagoras. 1 6 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, « Death has no power the immortal soul to slay ; That, when its present body turns to clay, Seeks a fresh home, and with unminished might Inspires another frame with life and light. So I myself (well I the past recall), When the fierce Greeks begirt Troy's holy wall Was brave Euphorbus ; and in conflict drear, Poured forth my blood beneath Atrides' spear ; The shield this arm did bear, I lately saw In Juno's shrine, a trophy of that war." Heed, Crito, when all was over, as you would have it, did you catch and bury Socrates ? * You remember, my friends, that I craved you as sureties to Crito, whom I could not persuade that the body he was to bury was not Socrates, even though I argued long both for his and my own consolation. When I shall tell you what I now know, it will not seem a strange thing to learn that Socrates was a mourner with you at his own funeral. There was a something also that I held with Simmias. * After the conclusion of his discourse, Socrates proposed to bathe himself in order that such trouble might be spared those who were to prepare his body for interment. Crito, anxious to pay every respect to the master, asks Socrates if he has any com- mands to give, and among other things begs to know how he would like to be buried. Smiling, the sage replies, " Just as you please, provided you can catch me," and he then begs the others to be sureties to Crito for his absence from the body, as before, Crito had been bound to the judges for his appearance on the day of trial. OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 1 7 If I am not wrong, Simmias, we did agree, after some argument, that death consisted alone in a separation of soul from the materials of the body ; that the wisdom of the philosopher counselled him to keep the soul always as isolated from the mortal parts as possible, in order that he should secure to himself the greatest pleasure : this, we inferred ; now are we prepared to understand that which before we could not prove. Simmias. It is well recalled, Socrates. It was myself who admitted that there exist two classes of pleasures, namely, such as come of agreeable bodily sensations, and others with which bodily parts seem to have no association. Also, it was agreed to, that pure knowl- edge might only come when the soul denied all office of reason on the part of the body. It was, as well, agreed that purification consists in this, namely, in ac- customing the soul to collect itself by itself, on all sides, apart from the body, and to dwell, so far as it can, in a present and in a future, alone by itself, delivered, as it were, from the shackles of the body. Soc. If I mistake not, Simmias, it was an inference that a wise man could have no fear of death ; on the contrary, that it was the part of philosophy to court a dissolution of the mortal ties, seeing that only in such a dissolution could the soul obtain its freedom. Ceb. It is not to be forgotten, Socrates, that, dissatis- fied with this conclusion, it was even I who suggested 2* B 1 8 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, that there might be no soul apart from body — that the day in which a body dies, soul is dispersed and vanishes like breath or smoke. Soc. You say right, Cebes ; the memory of the objec- tion has not left me ; and now, with clearer vision, are we to take up the arguments where, together, we laid them down. Heed, my friend; we will get knowl- edge of the soul in learning what it is not. The cen- tury that marks our present meeting having in it a fulness of positive research, such as was not found with our master Anaxagoras, or with any that preceded him, we find ourselves as men standing upon high ground ; around us, and within us, is that which shows, with an irrefutable plainness, as it would seem, what are the meaning and end of scientific inquiry; a knowledge which we are led to perceive had first to be arrived at in order to the possibility of recognizing anything that might have existence beyond the material. Ceb. Shall we not begin with the beginning, Soc- rates ? Soc. It is well put, Cebes, seeing that they listen who were not before auditors. We recall to ourselves, and to these other, that, previous to the school of the Ionian philosophers, — of which Thales was the founder, — man had not attempted any inquiry into himself or into the manner or matter of his composition ; the world was ac- cepted by him as he found it, and, like unto a tree or OR A TALK IN A CE METER Y. 1 9 rock, he rested in that in which he found nutrition and development. But to Thales came the inclination leading to inquiry, " Who and what is Thales? ' ' This, we remember, was the question ever present with the sage. But Thales could find on the earth, or in the universe, nothing which seemed to him so potent and so omnipresent as moist- ure. Water, he declared, therefore, — and, as it would seem, most naturally and plausibly, — to be the one component of the world. A man, he said, was made up of water, the earth is water, the gods themselves are water; and all was well argued and well spoken, for according to the light so was the judgment. Next we are to refer to Anaximenes, the successor, shall we call him, of Thales. The pupil of Anaximander did not agree, however, with his predecessor. A some- thing more persistent than water he thought Air to be ; so in this element, — as he considered it, — he affirmed was to be found the one component of man and world and God. Wherever life is, there also, said Anaxi- menes, is to be found respiration; where no air is, there is death. Ceb. And Heraclitus denied the conclusions of both his Ionian brothers. Soc. Well remembered, Cebes ; the Ephesian did in truth differ widely from those who went before in their conclusions. Fire, he affirmed to be the one component 20 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, of the world. A spontaneous force and activity resided, he said, in fire : Neither by God, nor by man, is God or man or world ; all are of an ever-living fire, in due measure self-enkindled, and in due measure self-extin- guished. Yet see, O Cebes, all the Ionians agreed in this, namely, that there existed a universal principle, this principle abiding the same, no matter how multi- tudinous the changes ; and, indeed, in this lies the gist of the Ionian philosophy. Sim. We are right, Socrates, in accepting . that the error of this school lay in the unreliability of the means employed by it to understand ? Soc. We are right indeed, Simmias. The Ionians recognized no source of knowledge apart from the senses of the organic man : what these senses exhibited to them they affirmed to be truth. Thus, the Ionian philosophy means the judgment that comes of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, of general and special touch ; these being the senses that pertain to man as an animal, and being the instruments employed by the school, which we consider, to acquire its conclusions. But, even in the far-away days, it was not a difficult matter for us to perceive the fallacies of Ionian judgments, in- asmuch as it was of self-exhibition that truth resided not in the judgments of senses simply animal in their import j for while it was that a man might very well say what any certain thing appeared to him to be, yet very OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 21 little inquiry elicited that no two men could possibly see the same thing in exactly the same manner ; just as it is not seen of any two that in physiognomy they exactly resemble each other. To the Ionians we are to give, however, a credit which justly belongs to them, for having opened the epoch of philosophic inquiry (all other people rested in some theology or mythology), but this award is all that belongs to them. And who, Simmias, are we to honor for an advancing step, if not Diogenes? for from whom, if not from the Apollonian, got the great Anaxagoras that cue which enabled him to declare that, while it might very well be that Anax- imenes was right in teaching that the world was made of air, yet the universe was seen to be full of the ex- pressions of arrangement, and that such direction could not possibly reside in a simple ? See, said the Greek, all that man looks upon is found to be ordered in the best and most beautiful manner ; and without Reason this would be impossible. It must be, therefore, that the air is a compound, and in it resides consciousness. Ceb. Neither are we to forget, Socrates, that noble " Argument of Design " made by yourself, which to-day seems as impressive as when, two thousand years back. Xenophon wrote it out for the Athenians. Soc. We may let that go, Cebes ; yet no more right- fully was I in debt a cock to Esculapius than does the philosopher of to-day owe an oblation to the Lydian 22 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, Anaxagoras. We are not to detract from credit due Diogenes; but we may not fail to recognize in the Lydian the planter of that seed out of which have grown the umbrageous branches under which discourse the modern peripatetics. All, said Anaxagoras, was chaos until intelligence (Mind) entered into matter. Yet heed, Cebes, for here we are to make mention of the paradox of the citizen of Clazomenae. Agreeing with the Ionians, he taught, as you remember, that all knowl- edge comes through the senses ; opposing the Ionians, and agreeing with Xenophanes, he declared that all knowledge received through the senses is delusive. Was he right, Cebes, in the first, or in the last, of his premises ? Or, of possibility, is the paradox more seem- ing than real ? Ceb. Why not, Socrates ? Soc. It is to be assumed that reason leads not to truth ; this, because office is to be denied to reason save as such office is an associate of the senses. Reason is a thing wholly and strictly influenced by the character of brain organization, and it is the case, as has most wisely been affirmed by the eleatic Parmenides, that the highest degree of thought comes from the highest de- gree of brain organization. How, then, should it be otherwise than that reason is a false measure, seeing that it is a something dependent on the accidents of a construction, and not a thing immutable and unchange- able in itself? OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 2$ Ceb. But what is to be the argument, Socrates ? Soc. This, Cebes : that reason cannot be a reliable staff upon which to lean, seeing that by no possibility can this show the same thing in the same manner to any two persons. That it is not by means of a man's mind that he can come to know himself: yet that there exists a means through which a man may as surely arrive at such knowledge, as that the almighty God is a self-acquainted entity. Ceb. To know thus much, Socrates, would seem to possess one with the wisdom of life. Soc. It was not unlikely so esteemed by the oracle. Give heed, Cebes, and you too, Simmias, and Apollo- dorus, and all others who would make an excursion. It was one of no less repute than our other master, Pythagoras, who persisted in declaring that in the number One was to be settled the principle of existence. Has any one understood the Samian ? Did the mathe- matician comprehend himself ? Come, my friends ; it is in the arcana of nature, and not amid the marts of these busy moderns that to-day we find ourselves. Let us, unmindful of aberrant lessons, set ourselves to the contemplation of that wherein exists, and out of which arises, all instruction. Let us renew our converse con- cerning the Soul — for if it be that any among us shall find himself assisted to the apprehension of this Totality, then in truth must it be that life may con- 24 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, tain no mysteries, or possess no riddles, the solutions to which this favored one shall not find within himself. It is a place of quiet and profound peace, this in which we find ourselves. A cemetery, people call it ; these many stones scattered around cover, they say, dust that is dead. Ah ! happy provision of nature that all this earth has lost understanding of fevers that preyed on it and which consumed it — yet that it is dust for which new wings are fledging. But wisdom is not in a grave, Cebes, and therefore may not arise out of it. Yet, of all seats to be sought by the contemplative, none may have preference over that where tombstones are found under the willows. Heed, my friends ; here evidently is the grave of one who consumed the privileges of existence in eating, drinking, and sleeping. Perhaps his dog rots with him. Why not ? a dog eats and drinks and sleeps, and then rots. — "Was born" — "Died" — this is all the history. Here is a monument, a mauso- leum made up of many pieces ; perhaps it represents well the life of the sleeper — a piece here, and a piece there, stolen from the happiness of other people. There are blurs in the marble — not fewer, perhaps, than were in the life — yet, as marble turns to dust, white and black go together — the black spots are fading as well from the mold beneath. Nature will again try the quarry — hoping for better productions. Here lies one, pronounced by his marble, an orator. OR A TALK IN A CEMETER Y. 2$ No memories tell us beyond the name. Has his breath, Cebes, gone with the winds, and has not Anaximenes his own ? This is the grave of one who wrote many books, but nothing has been left above ground; it is a grave, indeed, Cebes, and so Matter must try in fresh form for immortality, — the many verses were lines from the mind ; mind is a function of the brain ; a brain is dust — no soul moved the fingers of this writer. How great, my friends, must have been the wealth that reared the pile we now look upon : yet the name it bears has no familiar sound. — A life, no doubt, was this, which took into itself a multitude of other lives — consuming them, not for immortality, but for the purposes of nature — correlating, correlating, yet all to no end, — and so all these many lives which lie beneath the stone have alone the meaning of the mold of the trunk of this great cherry-tree, which, in its season, produced not, and which, as is fitting, rots not less humbly than the man as it lies in the shade of his marble. Yet, perhaps, another period shall serve to unite the dust of man and tree, and who will deny that something may not come of the union? — A cherry, perhaps; or, maybe, a man of such stature that the God shall find fitting residence in him — who shall say? What a great multitude of graves, and yet, all name- 3 26 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, less, — but this is in the way of nature : a million seeds of the thistle-down scattered broadcast ; a million ova given to the waters running in from the sea. Which of the multitude of seeds shall produce a plant? which ovum bring forth a fish ? It is a blessed privilege of man, my friends, that he lives not after the manner of the chance of thistle-down or fish. The man that craves immortality may possess himself of it, and in exact proportion with his craving and his longing will he share of it ; and when immortality comes to a man, then has come, as well, eternity. So it is that in each day such a man experiences the fulness of living; a day, to such an one, is as a thousand years, and a thousand years might not seem different from a day; the mortal has become subjective to the immortal, and the physical man ceases to have concern or care about what are called life and death, for to his consciousness has come the knowledge that in these there is no dis- tinction. The man whom the God individualizes has lost himself in God ; his harmony is in the hand that strikes the chords of his organism. Such a man loses con- sciousness of himself inexact proportion as the God occu- pies him. Is it to be wondered at that such become in- different to the body ? Is a God to be ornamented with a silken hat and shoe-buckles ? Or is he to be esteemed singular in that his ways differ from those of animals? And the difference in men lies simply in this, that OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 2J some cry diligently to the God that they may be occu- pied ; but others deny the God, and will not let them- selves be merged into him \ and so, remaining as all other purely matter and force composed things, these may not, of possibility, find themselves of different constitution or signification. To such, death would seem to mean just what disintegration means to a stone, or what decomposition means to the dog or horse. There is here nothing that can retain a sense of individuality, and when we bury such from our sight we have given their personality to nature. Of all inquiries which it concerns men to make, that is the most important which considers the soul. " Ignoratur enim, quae sit natura animi : Nati sit : an, contra, nascentibus insinuetur ; Et simul intereat nobiscum morte diremter; An tenebras Orci visat, vastaque lacunas, An pecudes alias divinitas insinuet se." And is the poet right in thus declaring man's igno- rance of himself? Whether the soul be born with a man, or be infused into him at birth ? Whether it dies with the body and with the material returns to earth ? Or whether it passes into other animals ? Not right, but wrong, is he ; for it does expose itself that a soul may be known as is a body, and he who finds himself 28 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, attuned may turn his eyes inward and apprehend it. This did Plotinus and his fellow mystics make plain at a period allied with the time when Phsedo conversed with us ; for did not the soul of Philo come to a sur- face where it was seen of such as might behold it ? And has not this same thing been observed, only, how- ever, after a different manner, by the wise Lucretius, who declares for a nature that is corporeal of the mind ? Corpoream naturam animi esse necesse est Corporis quoniam telis istique laborat. It is not unknown to us, Cebes, neither was it un- familiar in the olden time, that philosophy, whether theological, positive, or metaphysical, advances only, and always, towards a single something, which some- thing is felt and recognized to be all things in itself — the origin and cause of life — the entity, of which images and signs are the expression. And furthermore, the learned fail not to understand that while multitu- dinous names are applied by the ages to this entity — to this abstract something — yet it has ever had, and may only continue to have, a common meaning and signifi- cation to all. Thus, whether the appellation be ' ' God, ' ' as used by ourselves; "One," as it was named by Pythagoras; "Mind," as our master Anaxagoras called it; or whatever the title employed — as "Idea" by our pupil Plato; Ormus, by the Persian; "Brama" OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 2g by the Indian ; Zeus, as by the Macedonian : or, to come to these modern people, "Idee," as by the Ger- man Hegel ; "Substance," as by the wonderful Spinoza — no matter what the name, a common thing and prin- ciple stands out and forth as the representative, and through no argument may this one be resolved into the many, except as such many pertain to phenomena. Heed, Cebes; if I am wrong as to this conclusion, are their none amongst you who will refute me ? Truly are we not without learning sufficient to a refutation, if any refutation there be. Have we not together studied "De Rerum Natura," peering with Lucretius through lights and shadows? Have we not with Shungie plucked from the orbit, and eaten, the left eye of a great chief with hope of increasing the outlook of our own ? What has Plutarch told of Osiris and Isis that we do not know? And what has Vishnu Purana spoken of Brahm that we have not comprehended? Have we not heeded the Yasna, drank of the waters of the Talmud, and with a "John" searched through the mysteries of the Logos ? Notice the great rock, Cebes, upon whose broad face we now sit holding discourse ; see the sun-illumined stream winding its way amid the green things of its shores ; look at the brown ridges in the ploughed land out of which just now are rising the potato stems ; behold yon clump of deep-tangled briars in which the birds are holding high revel. And still 3* 30 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, as well, Cebes, let memory carry thy gaze to that water on which together we have so often looked from the Piraeus ; these things, to me, Cebes, are living beings. Is not the soul, said Bharata to Sauriva's king, one, uniform, perfect, exempt from birth, omnipresent, un- decaying, mode of true knowledge, disassociated with unrealities ? Ignorance alone it is which enables Maya to impress the mind with sense of individuality ; for as soon as that is dispelled, it is known that severalty exists not, and that there is nothing but one individual whole. Ceb. I, for one, listen not further, if it is designed to show that severalty exists not. Soc. Foolish Cebes, are we not in ourselves argument to the contrary? What everlasting peace, Cebes, seems the fixedness of this great stone ; how the potato stems seem as if coming forth to a feast of sunshine, and which indeed they do ; how glad-voiced are the birds in the briar-tangle. I think, as we sit here, Cebes, that these things are as though the Omnipresent has said, I will be all voice, all ear, all eye. For think you, Cebes, that God could exist, and not be glad ? And is not creation glad ? In what resides gladness, if not in fitness? And is not all fitted? Winter to summer, spring to harvest ; the water to the valley ; the tuber to the earth; birds to briar-tangles, and the rock to solidity? — But this touches not our argument. Heed, my friend, I will show you something not less strange OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 3 1 than severalty existing in individuality. Follow closely, else will you not understand me. Ceb. The argument is to show "Who, and what is man," past, present, and to come. Soc. You are right, Cebes ; what he is, what he has been, and what he will be. Ceb. By an a priori or an a posteriori showing. Soc. By both — backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards. Imprimis, Cebes, it may not be denied, and must therefore be admitted, that the judgments made by a Thing cannot pass beyond that which is the capability possessed by the Thing to form or make a judgment. Such capability, as belonging to man — to the natural man — is seen to reside in the number, character, and nature of the Senses : therefore, man's means of know- ing, having existence alone in the senses, he can opine of the world only as the world exhibits itself through these senses. Ceb. This is not to be denied. Soc. Judgment, then, is as the media which shows the thing that is to be judged ? Ceb. Why not? Soc. It Was one of not less repute than Protagoras who affirmed, " that things are what they seem to be. 11 Is this right, Cebes ? Ceb. It would seem to be right, Socrates. 32 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, Soc. When a man looks upon the earth through a piece of red-colored glass, the ground is seen to be red ; or if the pigment be blue, then is everything blue ; or if green, then all is green. Is the thing looked upon, Cebes, of all these shades ? Ceb. By Jupiter, it may be none of them. Soc. Then are we to say that the sophist is wrong, and that a thing is not necessarily what it seems to be? Ceb. This may but be right ; but what say you, Soc- rates, that a thing is ? Soc. I would put it in this way : A thing is, to the uses a\rj, the head, KapSCa, the heart, irvevfuav, the lung, Jfirap, the liver, 7rov?, a foot, — aAyos, pain. THE ETERNAL NOW. 1/5 pies of the converse, implying that a person is not able, or ingenuous, or well ordered, or lodged, or loyal. " It seems, then, to be the case," said Philippides, "that a common word expresses all the conditions named while itself is none of them?" "You say correctly," responded Hippocrates. "Are we to say, then, of the first portion of the word disease, namely, dis," asked Philippides, "that it is other than a converse? and if not other, does it imply else than absence of ease?" "Certainly it implies alone absence of ease," replied the physician. " Concerning ease," asked Philippides, " is this other than absence of pain ?" " It is assuredly absence of pain," admitted Hippocrates. " Pain, or anything of similar meaning, being absent from a per- son," asked Philippides, "we are to say that such a one is not sick?" " Of course such a one is not sick," said the physician. "Then ease," queried Philippides, "is the state of not being sick?" "It is the state of not being sick," reluctantly admitted Hippocrates. "How, then," asked Philippides, "are there many states of not being sick, or only one?" The physician would not answer. "A man being sick," said Philip- pides, " is so, as you leave us to understand, simply by reason of not being well, or, using the other word, not at ease, a state expressed by the little conversing parti- cle dis, which, conjoined with the suffix, yields the word dis-ease. How say you, Hippocrates, is there 1/6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF more than one Dis and more than one Ease?" Hip- pocrates, with lofty disdain, replied that disease stood for a variety of causes. " As many as you please," re- torted Philippides; "but unless the plural of the pro- fession is better defined than is its singular, the show of treatment will be apt to prove worse than the grammar." Hippocrates, controlling an anger that showed in his eye, asked Philippides if he would dispense with the use of the term disease. "Not so," replied the philoso- pher. " No more expressive one could be coined ; fault is alone with misuse. To analyze the word is, as it seems to me, to secure measure of its employment. All sick persons are in a common condition of not being at ease, therefore are in the state of disease. Here is a first theorem. Following this is a natural second, namely, all sick persons are sick by reason of the presence of a something expressed in the dis. Third, diagnosis is one with discovery and appreciation of the dis. Fourth, removal of Dis leaves Ease remaining. In the four is the circle of all that constitutes medicine." Echecrates. Why, really, Protagoras, you lay off the subject as I should like to hear it from a professor if myself a student of medicine. It seems, handleable. First, condition. Second, cause of condition. Third, removal of cause of condition. Fourth, cure existing in removal of cause of condition. THE ETERNAL NOW. 177 Prot. It is paradigmatic of a simplicity residing with things at large, Echecrates, as these become under- stood. Hippocrates having his subject in hand has it yet not at his finger-ends. In understanding he misunderstands. A hundred ideas are required by him to fill the place of one. Philosophy at large is capable of like concentration. In place of hundreds of systems there are in reality but two. Holding this in mind we may surely hope to master our subject. Ech. And pray, Protagoras, what names do you give these two systems ? Prot. The one is Realism, the other Idealism. By the first is meant little different than if one should say of a tree or an idea that it is itself and nothing else, the other maintains that things are not at all in themselves but are one with him who perceives or imagines them. To an idealist a cow seen in a dream is exactly one with a cow met with in a pasture. Ech. Why, Protagoras, are you not bringing us again face to face with the original arguments, namely, one side maintaining that " things are what they seem to be," the other that "things are only what they seem to be to the senses that use them" ? Prot. There are alone these two sides. Men see things differently by reason of difference in means used by them. There is sight through outer eyes and sight through inner eyes. There is, as already has 178 THE PHILOSOPHY OF been defined, Common sense, and Educated sense, and Egoistic sense, and Soul sense. To be in possession of these four means of recognition enables one to see around a circle ; with which circle alone is complete- ness of understanding. The strongest of these means of understanding lies with Soul sense. The weakest is with Common sense. Judgments at large are perceptions as lying with Common sense. By Common-sense judgments are meant opinions existing in the simple exercise of sight, taste, touch, smell, and hearing. This definition is to be appreciated in order that contrast be made with Educated sense ; the meaning of this latter lying with exercise of the reasoning faculty, the two characters of judgments separating themselves according to extent or lack of experiences. Educated sense, if serving no other purpose, shows the absolute unreliability of esti- mates put on things by Common sense. So far as the simple use of eyes and ears is concerned, cultivation, or the growing of experiences, quickly discovers that a man is to hesitate before declaring as to seeing what he sees or hearing what he hears. A mother may not truly say that she sees her own child.* Ech. The last is true enough. She sees Matter; that is, she sees the environment of her child's Ego. * See " Nineteenth Century Sense." THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 79 Prof. Your brightness, Echecrates, commends itself. It would hardly be necessary or indeed seem desirable to speak of stones lying upon a road that some driver is to pass over if one could be sure of his not running against them. Philosophy, unhappily, is a way that has been crowded with stones. One occupying or assuming the place of adviser cannot be sure these stones will not be run against ; on the contrary, he may be very sure they will be, and that wheels and axles will get twisted and splintered out of all usefulness by reason of them. To "Common sense," everything being accepted to be what it seems to be, there is no place for confu- sion ; an apple is an apple, a peach is a peach, a brick is a brick. To Educated sense, everything showing itself to be not at all what it seems to be, confusion is everywhere; the taste and smell and color of apple and peach are not at all in the fruits, but in a percipi- ent ; a brick is a phenomenon existing in the noumenon of Matter, needing alone to be analyzed that it disap- pear as though treated in a dream out of which the dreamer has awakened. Common-sense people know everything, — in their own estimation. Educated- sense people are led to doubt as to anything being known, — this out of their learning. The inexperienced are what is to be called dog- matists. An old-time remark of the master is not 180 THE PHILOSOPHY OF forgotten by us : " Men are ready with an opinion on a subject in proportion to their ignorance of it." People not experienced in analysis naturally assume that what they see, smell, taste, hear, and feel of things, this the things are. A dogmatist, to make il- lustration, is one who prides himself on being of no higher import than sheep or swine ; this in truth if not in description. Dogmatism is the natural con- dition. Common sense and dogmatism are one. A philosopher grows from nowhere if not from a Common- sense man. Let us, then, follow steps taken by the philosophers, and let us go needfully and understandingly, for it is no idea with a seeker after wisdom simply to glean words, but what he desires is to get hold of that which opens to him the meaning of himself. Realism. It is to be put down that so soon as men progressed to the experience of thinking — i.e., to com- paring — they divided into two classes, the one find- ing its designation as Realist, the other as Nominalist. A Realist maintains that names stand identical with things named. A Nominalist, on the contrary, dis- avows general conceptions, or universals, as these are set forth by names. Realism is one with what Plato means by his "Idea." Realism declares, as did Plato, that figure is nothing but one with expression of a thing, as THE ETERNAL NOW. l8l though he might say of a model that its purpose is to show a reality of which it is representation. It con- tends, to enlarge the example, that there is such a thing as virtue or vice or holiness or unholiness. Let us for a single moment consider such an issue out of dogmatism. Assuming a dogmatist, or natural man, to judge of objects through the common senses, is it not to be taken for granted that Ideas would come to offer themselves to him after a similar manner with objects ? Hence Ideas, or Ideals, as existing with Re- alism: Idea, for example, of ferocity or mildness, of good or bad, of circumference or centre. Is it not a practice even with the general philosopher to speak of colors as Red or Green or Yellow or Violet, as in not unlike manner the capital letter is used by him in expressing ugliness, beauty, vice, virtue, evil, good? Consider the weakness, Echecrates. Color is certainly not a thing apart from what is colored, while to assert that a thing is ugly or beautiful is to say nothing of it but as it shows to the taste of one who looks. If Cebes is giving attention he will recall what Critias told him of the debate between the master and myself at the house of Callias, where realism received a quietus that should have rendered the condemnation of Roscelin a disgrace to the first century, to say nothing of the eleventh. While Plato was a Realist, the master is a Nominal- 16 1 82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ist. Nominalism, as the opposite of Realism, rejects universals. The meaning of things, according to it, exists wholly by relation. There is neither zenith nor nadir save as these associate with the time of day at which a man looks upward or downward. Good to- day may very readily be bad to-morrow. Names are breaths. While the realist holds that names have cor- respondent existences, that ugliness and beauty and vice and virtue and unholiness and holiness are things in themselves, the nominalist derides his inferred short- sightedness. A nominalist, carrying his system to its ultimate, could as justly as honestly deny to-morrow what is asserted to-day, justification lying with changes that a single twenty-four hours may have brought about. Nominalism is thoroughly combative of the fixed as this exists in realism. It is no system or religion for sciolists or what these moderns term churchmen. It seems, however, both defensible and irrefutable as to its premises and positions. Ech. Are you not wrong, Protagoras, in assuming the master to deny universals? Certainly God and Matter are universals to him. Perhaps, however, this is not what you mean ? Prot. It is hardly fair to decide for the master while sleep closes his ears and shuts in his tongue. He denies universals except as to these two, and if this be borne in mind his nominalism stands forth clear as the THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 83 mid-day sun. The master's nominalism carries to Idealism.* Idealism. Idealism is the doctrine that things are, to the senses which use them, what to the senses they seem to be ; that they are never anything else. With this system things are not in themselves, but are in the something apart from themselves that perceives them. Idealism is Ego as maker of things at will. An Ideal- ist is optimist or pessimist by reason solely of himself; he being creator of externals. A thing, ill to taste or smell, or other sense, cultivated into agreeableness, is one with a thing made over ; the idealist is his own maker or unmaker of things. Idealism denies verifica- tion as one with a rule of fixity, recognizing, as it as- sumes to do, that rule is never elsewhere than with a percipient. An Idealist is the world in himself. There is no world external to Ego. Idealism, finding that rocks and the everlasting hills are resolvable into an intangible essence, which essence is void and form- less, denies all reality save as Ego, being percipient, is reality. Things are representations of ideas. Man's self is the creator of ideas. What is thought is the true and only existent. The world exists not to a man who sleeps without dreaming, as in like manner it would not exist to one dead and not resurrected. * See this book, p. 41. '184 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Ech. If memory plays me not a trick, the mas- ter quotes Plato in a class that seems to correspond closely, if not identically, with what is here defined as Idealism. Prot. No wonder, Echecrates, that you miss the dis- tinction, for it is no difficult matter to* refine it away entirely. Try again for the general idea. Realism holds for reality in ideas, that is, that ideas are one with so-called real things ; the idea of a tree one with a tree. Idealism, on the contrary, holds that neither tree nor idea of tree is elsewhere than with an Ego that sees or imagines the tree. Plato, scarcely in agreement with either pure Realism or Idealism, claimed reality as existing alone with the Idea. See- ing, for example, the model of a thing, he would seem to be right in declaring it representation and not the thing itself, which being admitted, the thing would at once stand forth as Idea. Models, might Plato have said, are made and disappear over and over, but Es- sence, or Ideal, of which they are models, remains unchanged and unchanging. Here, Echecrates, with two conditions for a judg- ment of the world, we stand where four were appor- tioned by you for the circle of medicine. EcJi. But, my dear Protagoras, consider the books and the philosophers ! Prot. Here again is our revolution, Echecrates. THE ETERNAL NOW. 185 Find the books and the philosophers where you will, whether in Asia, Europe, or the other continents, all are, after some manner or other, Realists or Idealists ; this for the overriding reason that there is nothing else for them to be. Ech. You refine happily, and to the making of things plain and easy, Protagoras, yet, as Socrates still sleeps, and indeed, as shown by his heavy snoring, is in no way disturbed by our talk, I must beg you con- tinue, if perchance there is more to be said.* Prot. Let us, then, replace the terms Realism and Idealism respectively with the words Objectivism and Subjectivism. Objectivism. Taking here no heed of what was given as a definition of Realism, we are to expose Objectivism as assertion of object. Object is external as reality. Philosophers of the objective school restrict their attention and examinations to things as things offer themselves to the senses. Objects are one with a * The interested reader if laying down the volume in hand at this page and supplementing it with the book "Thinkers and Thinking" will find thinkers and thinking reviewed from Thales, B.C., to writers of the present day. See also Plato's " Republic," beginning of seventh book ; also the '« Phaedo." See also Schopenhauer's criticism of the Kantian philosophy, beginning of his second book. 16* 1 86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF non-ego; that is, objects are other than what I is. Object is one with science ; the meaning of science being analysis of object. An Objectist holds himself as an observer observing an object that is not himself. Observing is assumed to furnish an observer with truth, truth being assumed in turn to lie in correspondence of order and ideas, and sequence as to phenomena. All purely scientific observers are Objectists. Such deride speculation related with the processes of de- duction holding strictly to the inductive manner of Aristotle.* Such, however, fail to notice that the data from which they start lie nowhere else than with as- sumptions out of the Ego. Relating to such finality Philippides has the following. A baby grandson said he would buy a woodpecker. " Where," asked Philip- pides, "is the money to come from?" "From the mother," answered the boy. "And from where will the mother get the money?" queried Philippides. " Out of the bank," said the boy. "And where does the bank get it ?" asked the philosopher. The grand- son, appealing to the mother, repeated her answer, "Out of the people." "And where," continued Philippides, "do the people get it?" Reply, after a similar manner, was, " Out of the miners." "And * Inductive : denoting inferences led up to by preceding steps ; getting to an up -stairs room by means of its steps; learning of a thing through its analysis. THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 87 where do the miners get it?" persisted Philippides. Boy and mother both laughed, the latter's reply being imitated by the child, that " the miners get it out of the earth." "And now," said Philippides, "tell where the earth gets it." Reply was hard to be re- peated by the little tongue, " Her gets it out of a con- catenation of circumstances," was the answer. It is not different with the Objectists : object with them comes as to its finality out of a concatenation of cir- cumstances, and thus they find themselves fallen into the lap of Idealism. Subjectivism. Alike unheeding a definition of Idealism, Subjectivism is to be exposed as the opposite to Objectivism. Subjective is one with Ego. External is in seeming, not in reality. Man is creator. Creation disappears as man ceases to create. World is much or little, wide or narrow, high or deep to a man according to his personal creational activity. The system is that of identity of subject and object. Now, Ego exists nowhere else but in Ego. Subjectivism, in its essence, is to be most simply illustrated by likening it with dream-life. A man awakening from a dream denies the world in which he has lived while yet unable to deny the living in it. Subjectivism makes of existence a continuous dream. A man unable to live in a sub- jective sense is one with what might in truth be called the dead. Not to feel and know and understand sub- 1 88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF jectivism is one with feeling and knowing and under- standing nothing. Living and not being subjective as to consciousness, is one with sleeping and being dead as in absence of dreaming. Absolute sleeping is one with absolute rest from creating. Let us now pass to the two most modern synonymes : Materialism and Spiritualism. Materialism. Unheeding the definitions given of Realism and Objectivism, Materialism is to be de- scribed as an aspect of opinion that denies Existence outside of Matter. Self-consciousness, while necessarily accepted by it, has yet alone to it the signification of a bubble as this develops out of effervescence, the latter, in turn, being resultant of chemical change lying with relation. God is not, nor is Ego, per se. Universal lies with Matter. With Matter lives a law of phenom- enal change tending to evolution. Cause of change is cause. Intelligence is named in this system Causality. What Causality is, Materialism has no other name for than cause. Recognizing as a basis for its system what it calls Matter, it assumes this to possess in itself power to ascend from a particle of dirt to human capability. Objective, in this system, is its own observer, knowl- edge is one with the thing known.* Materialism is the basis of science. Overlooking the incongruity of law * Here it is not easy to separate Materialism from Idealism. THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 89 existing independent of lawgiver, not unheeding it, for Materialism denies law or lawgiver outside of Matter itself, it is the system that pertains to worfc of chemist or mechanic. Materialism loses itself the moment recognition is reached that Matter itself is a thing that the physical senses cannot take hold of. Spiritualism. Still alike unheeding definitions given of Idealism and Subjectivism, Spiritualism is to be expressed as one with what is meant by recogni- tion of Ego, its meaning and its capabilities. The word used by it in the Occident to express man is Spirit, meaning by this, Ego. The word it employs in the Orient is Astral. Spiritualism is not the re- ligious incident, or association, for it relates quite as much with inferior animals as with superior men. A spiritualist, as a philosopher, holds God and Matter as relative associates of the Ego, or selfhood. Ego, to him, is in no sense the body, nor is it God. I is I. Ego, or Astral, is the existence he considers. If a man be a spiritualist of degree he is found to gradually lose sense of Matter and to walk the ground as one in a daze, this out of the reason that he lives with what unspiritual people call imagination, which imagination is to him sight of an eye from which a cataract has been removed and which by reason of an unencumbered or unveiled sight that has been reached lets him see things as he believes them to be. In a word, he sees selves 190 THE PHILOSOPHY OF and things, not as these show to the ordinary man, through representations or models, but as Idea, or reality, which are the things themselves. The sense by which a spiritualist sees is the Egoistic, and not Common sense, nor Educated sense, nor God sense. He is by nature, or through concentration, clairvoyant and clairaudient. Seeing and hearing what are neither seen nor heard by the masses, reputation of singularity, if not indeed of lunacy, quickly attaches itself to him, they who relate with the attaching lacking perception to recognize that what is here derided is one with what is applauded as met with in people who see pots and kettles and who make models of them under the name of inventions. Spiritualism is absolutely one with what, for lack of better term, may be called the ism of the dream state. To be asleep or dead is, to a Spiritualist, one with being awake or alive. Ego is the thing to be con- cerned about, not body. In spiritualism is under- standing of ascending and not staying ascended, and, as well, of descending and not staying descended. This is all, Echecrates ; and in considering the defi- nitions given we will stand, I think, in agreement as to there being but two ways of looking at things, — namely, from an outside and from an inside. I think, as well, we will stand agreeing that confusion is not at all in itself, but in the mixing of ways. THE ETERNAL NOW. I9I THE PHILOSOPHERS. Protagoras. Now concerning the philosophers. Having separated philosophy into the two aspects of Realism and Idealism, which, on analysis, are found to differ in words rather than in facts from Objectivism and Subjectivism, or Materialism and Spiritualism, we are led naturally to a conclusion that these two di- rections are the windows of outlook for the lookers. Too much credit is hardly to be given Thales, from whom Anaxagoras got his cue, and in turn the master here, Socrates, from him, for that first and great ques- tion which set his age to thinking, and which, it is perceived, holds uppermost place to-day, — namely, "Who and what is Thales?" in other words, who and what is a man ? Outside is seen before inside. It is to be premised that philosophy started with observation of surface. Common sense, or, to express this better, the common senses, begin consideration of things as these offer themselves to sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing. Inside is reached with the question as to who or what I92 THE PHILOSOPHY OF it is that looks on outside. This question is inferred to have offered itself first to Thales.* Greece and India and Egypt are closely related, if indeed not inextricably mixed, as to the opening epoch of philosophy. The times of Thales and his school are, as these moderns reckon, from before the Christ six hundred years down to four hundred. Pre- vious to the Ionians there is nothing but what comes under the head of primitive. True, the condition was not " that of general incoherence, as this relates with absence of ideas," but there was such lack of anything like analytical or scientific thinking that men dreamt not of living otherwise than in the shadow of a mytho- logical pantheon which their fathers had built and pro- vided with gods. Whatever the Biblical Adam might have known of his creator, it is evident enough that his descendants left the knowledge in the garden of Eden, — hence gods corresponding with phenomena. Turn where man will, to Greece, to India, to Egypt, or to China, there is found nothing but " Common * Philosophy is one with inquiry. Thales opened the epoch. Be- fore him were none of whom he might learn. He could turn no- where but toward Nature, and here he did turn, seeking to learn of her the mysteries of being. Of God, as an intelligence, as has been suggested by Hegel, he could have had no conception. He believed in God, but these were many, and of generation. A god developed from water as did a tree. See " Thinkers and Thinking," p. 62. THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 93 sense" before the pre-Christian seventh century ; that is to say, men accepted things as being what they showed themselves. It is a curious fact that Ontol- ogy* started, apparently, in many places at the same time, or almost at the same time, — this start being ex- pressed by Educated sense in one direction, and by Egoistic or perhaps Soul sense in the other. These were as separate, yet scarcely distinct, currents repre- senting what later came to be called Realism and Idealism. Culmination of the original Realism is in Aristotle. Idealism shows its distinction in Philo. f The former made short work of the subject of origin. "Matter is origin," he says; "Matter always has been and will be. Matter has end, yet each end is begin- ning to a new end. End is form, and the absolute form is spirit. J" Philo, the man of Soul, saw in Mat- * Ontology. "The science, or thinking, that inquires into the essential nature and relation of things." f In the judgment of many, Zeno would no doubt be named in place of Philo. % Aristotle, as to this, is comprehended better in Spinoza than in himself, just as, in turn, the Jew is best understood by him who is ac- quainted with the Stagirite. " Substance is the sum of the all. Sub- stance is the cause of itself; its being concludes existence in itself; substance is the positive ; substance is nature ; substance is God. By God I understand the ABSOLUTE Infinite Being ; in other words, God is substance constituted by an infinity of attributes, each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence.'* I n 17 194 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ter not cause, but emanation out of cause : " Matter is God, yet God is not Matter." The two are later a great sea in Des Cartes.* "There are two other substances," teaches the Breton, " beside the Primal, created by the Primal, these being Mind (thought) and Matter (body)." Cebes. He meant by mind Ego, did he not? Prot This. Ceb. So I think you two hold alike ? Prot. This, again. Ceb. As the premise of the Breton relates with the Hypostases it seems a solid foundation. Prot. There is none other that is without confusion. It is as that which proves common rest to diving fishes and flying birds. Schools and systems depart- ing from it come back. A road that is a circle neces- sarily returns on itself. Here is Origin, Cebes: let it be assumed demonstrated until later you feel your- self at liberty to deny or compelled to accept. The Greek intellectual age began, as we understand, with Thales, and ended practically with Aristotle ; the latter being a pupil of Plato. The date of the birth of the former was, before the Christ, 640; the latter was born three hundred years later. The contempo- * See for Aristotle, Philo, Des Cartes, and Spinoza, the book *' Thinkers and Thinking." Modern positivistic studies are best made in Auguste Comte. Idealism finds its happiest exponent in Berkeley. THE ETERNAL NOW. 195 rary of Plato and Aristotle in China was Mencius, who, as philosopher, was the successor of Confucius, the latter being born five hundred and fifty-one years be- fore the Christ. Gautama, the Buddha of India, that Buddha whose teachings are hope and inspiration to over four hundred millions of people, came into the flesh, or was incarnated, to use the Indian word, about the same time with Thales. The name of Moses sug- gests itself. Moses was born thirty-three hundred years ago. Whatever was the learning of the Egyp- tians of his time, there is little doubt but that it was possessed by this describer of the creation. Manetho, an historian and high-priest, commences his writings by an introduction of Menes, the first king of Egypt and founder of the first thirty dynasties. Before Menes the country was ruled, he tells us, by gods and demi- gods. Menes appears upon the stage of Egyptian his- tory, indefinitely, two or three thousand years before the era of the Christians. He is credited with having introduced worship of the gods. A people arrived at the pantheistic conception, if at all analytical, shortly reaches the monotheistic conception. Ceb. I see ! Gods signify God, as children a father. Prot. Moses, who is the just successor of the dynas- ties, wrote certainly as a pure monotheist. " In the beginning," commences his cosmogony, "God cre- ated the heavens and the earth." Passing through the IC/> THE PHILOSOPHY OF centuries down to the modern questioning of Spinoza, it comes to be asked, "Of what, or out of what, did God create the heavens and the earth?" "Accept- ing," said Spinoza, "that in the beginning was God (let us here name it Origin), that God was the All and the Everything, that he was the omnipresent Univer- sal, how," he asked, "could even the God create out of himself a thing unlike himself?" Ceb. Why, Protagoras, here are Aristotle and Philo brought to a common platform. It seems to make little difference as to whether the primal is named Matter, as by the Stagirite, Substance, as by the Jew, or God, as by Moses, and Philo, and the moderns. Prot. Why, no, Cebes, seeing that as to both God and Matter alike we are unable to know what they are ; that is, we neither know nor can know anything about them save as they exhibit and stand to us through phenomena. Ceb. I assume you to mean, Protagoras, that they are to us as are boards to a carpenter? Prot. Exactly ; for use, as use is found to lie with them. A Jewish historian, Josephus, stands interme- diate to Moses and Spinoza, being practically contem- poraneous with the Christ ; necessarily after the times of Thales and Anaxagoras and Plato and Aristotle, and as necessarily a philosopher in the sense of being learned. Taking up this subject, which he assumes THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 97 to be as unimportant as unknowable, he says, in the preface of a history he has written of the Jews, " Moses wrote enigmatically, sometimes allegorically, and sometimes in plain words." In other plain words, Josephus did not know what to make of Moses' cosmogony.* Ceb. Will you not speak plainly here, Protagoras ? Prot. Josephus and Moses were two. The former may not have possessed Soul sense, the latter might. If the difference existed, speech and view could not possibly be the same. In Moses is recital, not demon- stration. To know, or to rest in assurance that one knows, is to be dogmatic. Moses is dogmatism itself. For myself I have not the slightest interest in any story about creation. I am not interested, because of failing to see that the Something or Nothing out of which creation is created is of relation or con- cern to me otherwise than as it stands to the uses of senses that have to do with it. Ceb. This seems to me Aristotle's way of looking at the matter. Prot. Confusion is everywhere, save with the hypos- tases. Sense, or Thing, appeals to Sense or Thing. Matter acts in Matter. Ego acts in Ego. Soul acts in God. Conjoined, as in man, the three are man's self, his world, his God. * Cosmogony. Origin or creation of the universe. I 7 * I9# THE PHILOSOPHY OF Ceb. Assuredly, Protagoras, neither the Common senses, the Educated senses, Egoistic sense, nor Soul sense gets hold of any but the three things consti- tuting the human hypostasis. Prot. This for the reason that there is nothing else ; hence universal and man are one ; hence, again, the study of universal is one with study of a man's self. This is what Zoroaster meant in his declaration that " in knowledge of Self is understanding of the world." Shall I go on ? Or perhaps with this declaration of indifference as climax your interest stops and you are become as the horse in a bark-mill ? Ceb. It does indeed seem like to an around and around, any and every place being equally good as start or ending. But pray go on, that more of these philosophers may show themselves. Prot. In the interval between Thales and Epicurus there talked and wrote as thinkers who invite men- tion Xenophanes, Zeno, Empedocles, Democritus, and Pyrrho. The first of these, in his conception of beginning, struck the hypostasis God, this being the opposite to the hypostasis of Aristotle.* " To conceive Origin as incipient, and not Self-existent, he held as impossible. Nothing can be produced from Nothing. 'Whence, therefore,' he asked, 'was Origin produced? * Hypostasis, singular. Hypostases, plural. THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 99 From itself? No; for then it must already have been in existence to produce itself, otherwise it would have been produced from nothing. Hence primary law. Origin is self-existent ; if self-existent, consequently eternal.' "* Zeno, not the Stoic, but him of Elea, is also to be credited for catching conception of hypostases. Out of Reason, he held, idea of Being is obtained. Out of use of the senses many things are found to exist. Zeno used the word God, not Being : the latter was the term of Parmenides : there is dif- ference alone in the calling, however; Origin, God, Being, mean the same thing. Empedocles appealed to Reason for his knowledge and denied the reliability of the senses. By reason he meant inspiration as this is receivable by Egoistic sense,f or, if this is not exactly what he meant, there is but the other thing he could mean, Soul sense. Such conclusion is not unaccept- able, because it maintains the knowing of Like by Like. Democritus was he who spent a great patri- mony in pursuit of knowledge. His conclusions are closely akin with those of the modern Berkeley. Sen- sation he affirmed to be one with truth, in other words, one with a thing sensed. Interest in Democritus lies * Lewes. The word used by this author is Being, in place of Origin. \ For illustration of this see chapter on Mediums and Sensitives in " Nineteenth Century Sense." 200 THE PHILOSOPHY OF with a famous question put by him, — namely, " How does a man see things external to himself?" This query directs to the sense of sight. Here was an era in philosophy. What has gone before shows plainly real or seeming division here of realists and idealists, the one holding that things are what they seem to be, the other denying that a thing is anything but what it appears to be to a sense that uses it.* Simmias. A question just here, Protagoras. We understand you as agreeing with the master that "a thing is to the sense that uses it what to the sense it seems to be" ? Prot. You understand aright : it is certainly this. Sim. Arsenic is white and sugar is white : what if the first be mistaken for the latter? Prot. I fear, Simmias, you will never make a phi- losopher : white is white, and not the poison or sweet of arsenic or sugar. Sim. You speak truth, Protagoras, yet discourage me. Arsenic, as you hint, and as cannot fail to be seen from the hint, relates with Educated, and not with Common, sense. Let Democritus go, and the others as well ; nothing seems to be learned in discussing them. Prot. You are to be agreed with, Cebes ; that is, considering the principles of knowledge in our pos- * See " Thinkers and Thinking," or, much better, see " Principles of Knowledge," by Berkeley. THE ETERNAL NOW. 201 session.* A moment, however, before letting them go. Greek thought, as starting with the Ionians, was Realistic ; Indian thought is Idealistic. These two characters of outlook we have analyzed. Tracing from Thales until Anaxagoras is reached, men and the world and the gods are found esteemed as expressions of water or air or fire. Anaxagoras related with Diogenes in inferring that there must exist somewhere and after some manner something that is apart from material and with which must reside a directing or supervising quality, as, look where the eyes will, as said Diogenes, there "evidence of design is to be seen." It is no offence to the master to hint that the God of Socrates is different only as a higher conception from what Anaxagoras named "Mind" and Diogenes called the "Soul" of the air.f * Reference is here to associate books, " Thinkers and Thinking" and " Nineteenth Century Sense." f Diogenes of Apollonia follows Anaximenes, whose doctrine of origin differed from that of Thales alone in that air, and not water, was esteemed the principle of life. The date of birth of Diogenes is given as 460 before Christ. The air, as announced by his predecessor, he accepted as the principle of life, but he widened the outlook by pointing out an analogy with what he called soul ; he meaning by this what in the present volume has been illustrated by the watch-inventor in relation with the running of watches. The air, he said, may be the principle of life only as there resides with it a vital force. The air is therefore soul ; it is a living and intelligent being. See " Thinkers and Thinking," p. 65. 202 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Greek thought may have reached India, in a phi- losophical sense, only with the times of Diogenes and Anaxagoras, for, commence where one will, with this people the something that is occult is found to have pre- cedence of what is open ; subjective is always before objective, otherwise closely related with it. India is looked to as the land where Soul sense and Egoistic sense show esoteric development as this exists in abne- gation of the materialistic : God is highest, Matter is lowest ; hence India is the home of Theosophy, a doc- trine in which all comes out of Theos, or God, and all goes back into him. Difference between Greek and Indian speculations is fully expressed in difference existing to-day, and as, no doubt, difference will continue to exist so long as men vary as to age, education, or inspirations, or, to put this more justly, as things to be measured are judged through the varying media of Common sense, Educated sense, Egoistic sense, and Soul sense : Long sight and Short sight cannot see alike, nor does a god, who looks from above, see as does a caterpillar, which looks from below. Ceb. Do you imply, Protagoras, that the philoso- phers here in this "two thousand years after" are akin with the others of the Eternal Now who talked and wrote two thousand years earlier? Prot. I imply that philosophy is philosophy just as THE ETERNAL NOW. 20 3 Now is Now, so there can be no difference save as just pronounced : the material people of to-day are one with the material people of all times and places, and the spiritual are of similar import ; men can believe nothing else but that they see what they see and that they hear what they hear ; and what is seen and heard by men differs necessarily with the means of seeing and hearing used by them. Men advance, however ; hence discussion of things on different planes. The famous Upanishads of India commence with songs to a Deity, passing from these to ceremonies, and only finally to logic. With logic is necessarily philosophy. Systems multiply with the system-makers, and as the thinkers so the thinking. Ceb. Did we understand, then, incorrectly, Protag- oras, in accepting you to say a little time back that there are but two systems ? Prot. I am happily corrected in a bad way of ex- pressing a thing. What I mean is that a carpenter may and does take of the same kind of wood and makes out of it large variety. At the present epoch the systems of Philosophy to which the name Indian is to be applied are six in number. All are Idealistic in the sense of being pantheistic. The first, the San- khya, deals with the question of the Ionians ; it con- siders evolution. The last is the Maya; it discusses the existence and meaning of illusions. An interme- 204 THE PHILOSOPHY OF diate is the Yoga; it inculcates asceticism. For my- self, I esteem the Indian as the highest expression of a subjective philosopher, inasmuch as he has reached consonance of esoteric situation and inclination. A backwoodsman of this America in which we find our- selves is a philosopher in proportion as he is antipodal to an Indian fakir; that is, as his consonance of situa- tion and inclination is exoteric : one gives to the world his most in pointing with withered arm towards self- abnegation, the other is best employed in felling trees and grubbing roots. Realism and Idealism, or, to use the modern words, Materialism and Spiritualism, go as does a seesaw. Which is up, or which down, depends entirely on impulse as related with situation. The foot of an American seldom touches anything but the material. The foot of the Indian spurns mostly everything but the immaterial. American and Indian represent all the philosophers. Ceb. But as to the schools and the classes of phi- losophers ? Prot. Hist, Cebes ! You ask as one who has not lived, or, having lived, has not observed or inquired. You remember Gorgias who called himself a rheto- rician ? You recall too, no doubt, having heard that the orator named his the art of arts, and that, on this, the master quickly made felt that he was not differ- THE ETERNAL NOW. 205 ent from a man who might contend that one o'clock is all the hours of a day, when, in fact, of itself it is nothing. We are to find the thing little different with schools and systems outside of that common day and night in which we have viewed them. Every- thing is Outside or Inside; and these, being fully scanned, are found nothing different from a circle, which, while in a sense it may be said to be possessed of outside and inside, yet is seen to have the one and the other by reason of a common line. However, consider, if you please, before leaving the subject, the school of the Neo-Platonists, who refined some- what on the master through Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Porphyry in passing from logic to a mysticism which latter lies not elsewhere than with the Subjective ; a condition living, in turn, with assertion and recogni- tion of Ego. Neo-Platonism is one with Alexandrian- ism. Its founder was Plotinus, a common porter of Alexandria. Passing through centuries, this system is found absolutely one with the Spiritualism of to-day. It is one with the enunciation of Paracelsus and of Jacob Boehm. Going intermediately, it is difficult to separate it from that of which it is commonly deemed the antago- nist, Christianity. It is one, after close manner, both with the Yoga and Maya systems of the Indians.* * " Plotinus blushed because he had a body: contempt of human personality could go no further. What was offered in exchange? iS 206 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Alexandrianism, as expressive of evolution, is a natural result, arising out of a mingling of Realism and Idealism. Philo, a true predecessor of Plotinus, was educated both in the Objectivism of the Greeks and the Subjectivism of the Indians. These schools had alike true ideas, yet they seemed in conflict, and led, therefore, to scepticism. With Philo, and his successors, lay reconciliation. The Greeks talked of outside and the Indians of inside. Here was the con- fusion. The modern Spiritist, who unwittingly calls The ecstatic perception ; the absorption of personality in that of the Deity, — a Deity inaccessible to knowledge as to love, — a Deity which the soul can only attain by a complete annihilation of its personal- ity." Let this, which is a philosophical writer's (of the Comte school, Lewes) conception of Philo, be compared with the lesson living with the lily sprays as given on page 155 of this book : Soul and God one. See also Soul, " Nineteenth Century Sense." See also " Thinkers and Thinking," p. 159. " Faith," says Proclus, " is above all science. Mercury, the messen- ger of Jove, reveals to us Jove's paternal will, and thus teaches us science, and, as the author of all investigation, transmits to us, his disciples, the genius of invention. The science which descends into the soul from above is more perfect than any science obtained by investigation ; that which is excited in us by other men is far less perfect. Invention is the energy of the soul. The science which de- scends from above fills the soul with the influence of higher causes. The gods announce it to us by their presence and by illuminations, and discover to us the order of the universe." See definition of truth of this and of its meaning in Soul sense. THE ETERNAL NOW. 207 himself Spiritualist, is a jumble of Subjectist and Ob- jectist, a person having hold of Thales' hand on one side and the hand of Philo on the other : he is con- fused and lost by reason of not understanding that his hands hold different things. The mysticism of the Alexandrians, Cebes, is the delight and comfort of all intelligence that reaches to the hypostases. Dialectics having evolved the hypos- tases, Ego is at once as a hawk with its hood off.* Here the modern Berkeley and the more modern Schopenhauer. Here these new people, Kant and Fichte. Here Bacon, and Des Cartes, and Spinoza, and Malebranche. Here Locke. f Ceb. Hist, Protagoras ! You run back and forth as doth a hound upon the scent. * Neo-Platonism is defined happily by Flemming as that which despairs of the regular progress of science ; it believes that we may attain directly, without the aid of the senses or reason, and by an immediate intuition, the real and absolute principle of all truth, God. It finds God either in nature, and hence a physical and naturalistic mysticism, or in the soul, and hence a moral and metaphysical mys- ticism. It has also its historical views, and in history it considers especially that which represents mysticism in full and under its most regular form, — that is, religions ; and it is not to the letter of religions, but to their spirit, that it clings. See " Thinkers and Thinking," p. 156. f " The mind hath no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate." — LOCKE. 208 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Prot. You hit it exactly, Cebes. In like manner doth one tag after the Realists, finding these modern positivists improved in nothing on Anaxagoras save that they have looked out more of the wheels within wheels. In similar way too are we to speak of the Agnostics of to-day, recognizing them to be but a repetition of Pyrrho's voice.* Sim. If the things be in name and not in matter, why double more, Protagoras? for myself, I prefer coming back to that eternal Now in which I perceive to lie the systems and philosophers in a sense little different from a long snake turned into a hoop by reason of its tail being stuffed into its mouth. Prot. To look immediately around is to see all there is to see. To listen is to hear all there is to hear. To taste, to smell, to touch, is to taste, smell, and touch all that is to be smelled, tasted, and touched. Now stands still. Nothing has been seen, heard, tasted, smelled, or touched but is one with what is. * Let your language be, " It may be so," " Perhaps," " Such as it is is possible," " I assert nothing, not even that I assert nothing." See " Thinkers and Thinking," p. 150. THE ETERNAL NOW. 209 FROM CIRCUMFERENCE TOWARDS CENTRE. Protagoras. Concerning a snake with its tail stuffed into its mouth, forming a hoop and affording a centre. A hoop, Cebes, is the symbol both of life and living. A hoop goes round and round in a circle. Going round and round, it yet moves forward or backward, otherwise it confusedly wriggles and falls. Is it thus, or is it not thus, with a hoop ? Cebes. There is but one answer to make : it is as you say. Prot. What as to the earth, which is a great globe ? does this also go round and round, and does it at the same time move forward and backward in an orbit ? Ceb. This is also as you say. Prot. And how does it show as regards man? Does a man go round and round in a circle ? that is, does he go to bed and get up, labor and rest, eat and fast, talk and keep silent, show temper and then ami- ability, act the sage and play the fool ? doing in turn 18* 210 THE PHILOSOPHY OF all these things, departing from them, and coming back to them ? Ceb. I think that in such respects, Protagoras, men at large are alike with the individual man : All live in such a circle. Prot. And is it to be agreed, Cebes, that as a hoop has a centre, around and about which it revolves, and the same as to the earth, it cannot be dissimilar with man? Ceb. You mean Ego as his centre ? Prot. Nothing else could be meant. Body of man and rim of hoop are of similar meaning. See you anything besides centre and rim, Cebes, in a hoop ? Ceb. What more is there to see ? Prot. Why, surely, Cebes, you do not overlook that the rim must rest upon something, otherwise it would fall quickly enough into the centre. It is as well the case that this support must be of a strength to bear fifteen pounds multiplied by every square inch contained in the circumference of the rim ; that is to say, a hoop having a rim measuring a thousand square inches, the something which forms this intermediate between rim and centre must equal in supporting power fifteen thousand pounds. Ceb. According to this, the unseen part of a hoop is fifteen times greater than what is called the hoop* ? Prot. We must needs say this; and we are to ap- THE E TERNAL NOW. 211 preciate as well that unseen is exhibited as not synonymous with absence. Ceb. What is this third attribute of a hoop ? Prot. Why, air, of course. This rests upon the centre of the hoop, which is one with saying that it rests upon itself, while, in turn, the rim rests upon it. Ceb. And what is it, Protagoras, that, in like im- portance, relates body of man and his Ego ? Prot. You have used the right word, Cebes. Had you said "manner" instead of "importance," the answer would not have been of significance. As hoop is not hoop without the three conditions of centre, rim, and air, so man is not man without the three conditions of Ego, body, and soul. Ceb. Would you say, Protagoras, that what the im- portance of air contained in the circumference of a hoop is to the combined importance of centre and circumference, that also is soul in its relation to the Ego and body of a man ? Prot. This, multiplied by that which is the differ- ence between animal and man; for you understand, Cebes, that absence of soul is presence of animal. Ceb. Protagoras, you do indeed supply hints for our furnishing. The common sense of sight sees nothing between the rim of a hoop and its centre; after like manner it is to be assumed that through Soul sense alone may a man apprehend that inter- 2 1 2 THE PHIL OSOPH Y OF mediate of his hypostases which distinguishes itself as the God part of his combination. Prot. I think we are prepared to go on. Ceb. Since the talk regarding the hypostases we have tried closely and clearly to consider this self- exposing relation of things, recognizing that if details are to be appreciated, principles are first to be under- stood. This course we were urged to, first by the Master, and later by our desires for a kind of knowl- edge which we find growing more and more beautiful and satisfying as we advance. Phsedo, who is our library, as Crito is our purse, has been the means for our excursion, and together we have sat into the nights quite regardless of sleep by reason of interest in expositions which clearly support your assertion that Realism and Idealism are the sole two windows of outlook on the Universal. Prot. How wise you are, Cebes ! Different as the thing seems, most people begin building in the air rather than upon the ground. Let us now look at our foundation, for in this we have place for a corner- stone, which, when laid, is unyielding support to all that goes atop of it ; this not at all like the resting of earth upon an elephant, and this in turn upon a tor- toise, and this still in turn upon a serpent. Our corner-stone is not less a reality than is support through the relationship of gravitation, — a thing which, THE E TERNAL NOW. 2 1 3 like to air, is not seeable by eye or touchable by hand, yet which is stronger and of greater weight than all the suns and planets of the Universe combined. Ceb. The corner-stone is Now ? Prot. To emphasize it, Cebes, let us imagine a pyramid millions of times broader and higher and older than that of Cheops, and let us imagine the stone- cutting instruments of all the earth made into one, and in turn let us imagine this instrument forever engaged in cutting and deepening a line reading "An Eternal Now." This, Cebes, may faintly express idea of the stu- pendous significance of the line as its meaning re- lates with a man's understanding of himself, and of his relation with the Universal. In application of Oneness as to Now and Eternity is disappearance of confusions of all kinds, together with all mysteries. What could remain to confound when highest height and lowest depth and greatest length and widest breadth are one with the man standing in their midst ? Here is no to-morrow to consider, no yesterday to perplex. Here is Oracle with voice ever unmuffled. Here God and devil and heaven and hell are one with a man's self. Attained to understanding of this oneness of Now and Eternity, and of the oneness of Man's hypostases with the hypostases of the Universal, 2 1 4 THE PHIL O SO PHY OF how insignificant and unimportant become the dis- putes of philosophers and the diversities of systems ! Does not even the simple man comprehend that an outside implies inside, as, in turn, inside may not exist separated from outside ? Seeing Now to be one with Eternity, and the hypostases of Man to be one with the hypostases of the Universal, is seeing the whole. Ceb. Concerning this Eternal Now, Protagoras? Prot. It, and its relations, alone remain to be con- sidered. But how say you, Cebes ? If a man is not in an Eternal Now, are we to declare that he is not in it? Ceb. It would not be easy to say anything else. Prot. What as to Consciousness? would you say that if a man is unconscious he is not conscious? Ceb. This, truly. Prot. And would you say, reversing this, that a man being conscious he is not unconscious? Ceb. Nothing else is to be said. Prot. How as to oneness of consciousness or uncon- sciousness with being or not being? Ceb. Assuredly consciousness is the same as "to be," while unconsciousness is one with "not to be." Prot. Such being the case, immortality is to be declared one with continuous consciousness ? Ceb. Necessarily this. THE ETERNAL NOW. 215 Prot, And we may not say that consciousness exists elsewhere than with consciousness ? Ceb. It would be impossible for it to exist save in itself. Prot. How is it just now with Cebes? is he con- scious ? Ceb. We have agreed, Protagoras, that Ego and Consciousness are identical, and certainly Cebes is Ego. Prot. Then, if a consciousness, which is one with Cebes, is immortal, that is, if Cebes is immortal by reason of being a conscious existence, this conscious- ness is to continue unbroken ? Ceb. Assuredly this. Prot What continues unbroken is That which Cebes knows as himself? in other words, what con- tinues unbroken is a That which now is? Ceb. This, Protagoras, otherwise there is no pres- ent Cebes. Prot. We are, then, agreed that unconsciousness is the reverse of consciousness, — the one being identical with non-existence, the other identical with existence ? Ceb. Quite agreed. Prot. Turning this around, I am to say that we are one in a conclusion that consciousness is immortal by reason of its being one with Ego, which Ego is an Entity, or simple, the entities, or simples, being pure existences, consequently immortal ? 2 1 6 THE PHIL OS OPHY OF Ceb. In truth, Protagoras, the argument must be held perfect, if doubt is entirely absent as regards the persistent nature of an entity. Prot. Are we, then, to opine that doubt is not ab- sent from Cebes ? Ceb. Pardon, Protagoras, it is just away. I had momentarily overlooked the noumenal nature of the parts composing the hypostases. Prot. To be wanting in appreciation and under- standing of the Noumena is indeed one with finding nothing in the argument of the hypostases. Let still other nights be spent with Phaedo.* Ceb. But you esteem argument existing in the hy- postases unbreakable ? Prot. To break it is one with denying hunger when one is hungry, consciousness when consciousness is present, and God when the construction and rhythm of the world are looked at. Ceb. Might it not indeed be said, Protagoras, that proof of it lies with the Self that finds itself asking after proof? Prot. Put it as you please, Cebes, yourself holds it all. Shall we go on ? Ceb, I beg that the unnecessary interruption be pardoned. * Phenomena, or manifestations, are impossible save as they come out of, and go back into, Noumenon. THE E TERNAL NOW. 2 1 7 Prot. Let us, then, put the things together. Cebes exists. He exists now. Cebes is Ego. Ego is a simple. Simple is immortal. Cebes is immortal by reason of being a simple. Immortal is one with un- broken existence. Unbroken existence is not possibly else than continuous existence. Ergo, Now and Eter- nity are the same. Ceb. I fear, Protagoras, you will scarcely excuse me, but question here offers. Eternity and Now accepted as one, what is gained in replacing a familiar with an unfamiliar term ? Prot. Your last more than excuses the questions put together. The word Eternity has been made the saddest misnomer of language. It is at one and the same time the bugaboo, the land of promise, the will-o'-the-wisp, and the cheat of mankind. " Man never is, but always to be blest." In like manner, he never is, but always to be curst. Now, there not being anything else, or time, or space, save what now is, man is to recognize that he joys or cheats himself always and forever as he relates with a Now that is with him. This he may not get away from. Heed, Cebes ! Compelled to recognize the oneness of Eternity and Now, could it be otherwise than that heaven and hell are with That which alone is ? Might it as well be otherwise than that heaven, k 19 2 1 8 THE PHIL O SO PHY OF or the absence of it, is anything or any place save as it is one with presence or absence of God in the hypostases ? for surely, as has before been consid- ered, presence of God is identical with existence of heaven.* Ceb. This accords with what you quoted of the three lily-sprays as representing difference existing with men and the manner of creating difference. f Prot. The sprays, Cebes, are become my Zeus, my Christ, my Gautama, my Mencius, my Confucius, my Mahomet, my all of the philosophers and systems of philosophy, my entire and sole religion, my whole knowledge of pain and pleasure, my bad genius in times of temptation and my good daemon in hours of succor; in a word, this dream of a modern is become my sole and only lifter-up and puller-down. Heed closely, Cebes : temptation is with Matter ; Salvation is with Soul. Ego is chooser. To yield to Matter is to descend ; to cling by Soul is to ascend. Ceb. You have called this dream an inspiration, Protagoras : what do you mean by this ? Prot. That which a man looks towards after right manner, he sees. When, for a year, a month, a week, a day, or even a single hour, the Ego is concentrated * See " The Unpardonable Sin," in "Nineteenth Century Sense/' f See in this book page 155. Also see " Nineteenth Century Sense." THE ETERNAL NOW. 2ig on considering the divine part of the hypostases, this suddenly brightens and enlarges and begins the show- ing forth of beautiful and unfamiliar images, these images enlarging and increasing as to size and signifi- cation proportionally with the concentration. This dream is an inspiration in the sense that Mahomet's camel is a revelation. Lying down in sleep is one with Freedom of Ego to visit Olympus or Hades. Ceb. I think I grasp what is meant. The things of the sea are different from the things of the land, and whether one or the other of the kinds are seen de- pends entirely on the direction in which the eyes are turned. Prot. This, and the nature of the eyes. Ceb. Sin, as existing with Matter, is not plain to me, Protagoras. What is there in Matter that is bad ? Prot. Nothing at all, Cebes, save in the sense that ditch-water is warm and insipid, while spring-water is cool and refreshing. Things are relative. It is sin against intelligence to relate with Matter in the shape of a tall tree during the time of a thunder-storm. Not to relate with Matter in the shape of a tall tree when the power of the sun threatens a heat-stroke is alike sin against intelligence. Ceb. Your convictions are in accord with the master's. " Nothing," he maintains, " is good or bad in itself." 220 a THE PHILOSOPHY OF Prot. You, Cebes, and the rest of you are to scan the thing for yourselves ; the words should be, not good and bad, but expedient and inexpedient. Echecrates. Pardon, Protagoras, may I ask a few- questions? Prot. Good Echecrates, you have asked so few that Cebes may well give way. Ech. Considering that the earth upon which man finds himself compares with the universe of earths as does a single drop of water with all the seas, may it not be that an unduly restricted view is being taken of the things we consider? This I urged to Phsedo, but he maintains denial to lie with the hypos- tases. Prot. Phsedo I will assume to be acquainted with the revelations of both microscope and telescope ? Phsedo. I have used the instruments with large profit as to inlook and outlook, Protagoras. Prot. How is it, Phsedo, with the moons of Jupiter and the legs of a mite ? Are the two alike in their way? Pho3. If by alike you mean correspondence with relations, then does it show not different but that as much ingenuity has been expended on the construc- tion of the one as the other. Prot. And how does a moon of Jupiter show as compared with the moon of the earth ? THE ETERNAL NOW. 221 Phce. As moons they are the same in the sense of being alike reflectors of light that falls upon them. Prot. You have seen a rhinoceros, Phaedo. How do the legs of such a brute compare with those of the mite ? Phce. I have dissected both, Protagoras, and what the one set is that the other is. Prot. Passing from a moon to a mite, Echecrates, and finding the two practically alike in that both are equally suited to purpose, would it seem unfair to assume like equality as existing in all the region sepa- rating Cassiopeia's chair from the planet Uranus ? Ech. It certainly seems to be as you suggest. Prot. Answer candidly, Echecrates. Is there not question back as to a heaven and hell existing some- where among the stars ? Ech. You have read me, Protagoras. Prot. Why hesitation ? We are to ask Phaedo if the telescope shows a man, like unto ourselves, in the moon, or a maiden, like unto Lais, in Cassiopeia's chair. If the answer be yes, then there are heaven and hell in the two places. If he reply no, then nothing is known about the thing. Hist, Echecrates ! Religion becomes a simple matter in presence of the hypostases, and as absence of religion is reverse of its presence this also is found easy to measure. What is, in truth, the former of these states, compares in illustration with 19* 222 THE PHILOSOPHY OF the winding and regulating of a watch. The God, like Time-of-day, is everywhere : men and watches are about alike as to the respective holdings. My own watch is my own reminder, not only as to the Time-of- day, but as to the state of my religion. The condition of my watch, which happens not to be good for hold- ing its office of Time, and the relativity of my hypos- tases, which, I fear, is even worse as holder of the office of God, give me large concern and require much look- ing after. In finding my watch an hour or two be- hind, which is generally the case, I am reminded of the other matter, which, it is to be confessed, is com- monly found much farther behind. Ceb. Not to interrupt, I think a bad watch is to be called a good possession under such circumstances. Prot. Circle and orbit, Echecrates, are one with constant change : so it is the case that going not forward is one with going backward. Now is Now. But Now, in like manner as it is Now, is not to be imagined of other relation with any probable begin- ning or any possible ending. Ech. A million years being imagined to have passed, you imply the man to be exactly in a state forward or backward as he has advanced or retrograded as to work ? Prot. Karma is Kismet.* Other being the case, man • Karma, work. Kismet, result of work. THE ETERNAL NOW. 22$ is not his own maker or unmaker. Consider, Echec- rates. How stands the matter with yourself? What as to the Now of Athens and the Now of Philadelphia? The question is not more easily settled than is the weight of salt. Look at the matter after other manner. How compare Echecrates' hypostases of to-day and yesterday ? How compare the parts as to a decade of years back and the present year? Is Ego lightening itself with Soul or is it burdening itself with Matter? That which has strongest voice speaks the loudest. Ask yourself, Echecrates, as to heaven and hell. Ech. But I ask further of you. Prot. Perhaps you could not ask better. Of a truth I may not deny knowledge of both, and if it be that the places are separated as are the antipodes I make the voyage, even at the present time, with the quick- ness that suffices for a man at large to decide between a good and a bad action. Like knows like. A cum- bersome body makes itself felt as an impediment at every step. A man with excess of Soul as to his hy- postases has trouble to keep upon the ground. Soul is controlling principle. As it is in the hypostases, the man goes right. As it is away, he goes without godly direction. In presence of the meaning of the hypostases it is silly to pray " lead us not into tempta- tion,' 7 for this is one with pronouncing God to be devil; the word is leave: " leave us not in tempta- 224 THE PHILOSOPHY OF tion." Understanding, Echecrates, as we do in our comprehension of the hypostases, what it is that stays or leaves, a man is not at loss as to where the ear is to which he appeals. A body may appeal to Ego not to be left to its automatism in presence of a precipice. Ego and body may appeal to Soul not to be left with- out higher and more reliable direction than is inherent in themselves when in presence of a temptation, — di- rection, in both cases, as is to be appreciated, that is within and not without. Prayer to be saved from temptation is unnecessarily loudly uttered where voice is given it. Is it not beautiful, Echecrates, that the God is commandable even as Time-of-day is at a man's command? No man doubts that Time-of-day is commandable, or that it is otherwise than at his in- stant and immediate service if it please him to hold such relation with it. Let a point be esteemed iterated and reiterated. Soul and religion are identical. As Soul is present in the hypostases of a man, let him be heathen, Jew, or Christian, the man is religious. Soul lacking, the man is beast, let his title be pope or infidel. Ech. You are letting in light, Protagoras, on the confusion lying with the doctrine, of Special Provi- dence as this, after the common fashion, relates the care of the God with the afflictions of men. Prot. The doctrine of Special Providence, as ordi- THE ETERNAL NOW. 22$ narily taught and understood, shows the God so mer- ciless that the preacher of it is wise in employing the physician's art to keep him out of such hands long as is possible. Philippides, discoursing on this matter, tells the story of one of these preachers who came to his garden with the view of securing food for the win- ter's table. "I shared with him," said the philoso- pher, "as to land, sunshine, and in seed. As to differ- ence, he prayed and I hoed. When the fall came, all the food was found on my side of the garden." O Echecrates ! consider this thing well. A diphtheritic babe strangles and struggles and smothers though an enveloping atmosphere is filled with the supplications of a heart-torn mother. Rivers overflow their boun- daries, drowning pitilessly all of life that happens to be in the way. Earthquakes engulf, crushing and tearing the bodies of men and women and children into shape- less masses of flesh and bone. Pestilence settles down upon a land, and good and bad alike burn up with fever or shrink away in collapse. The stand-point of Special Providence being the basis of judgment, confusion grows worse confounded when the strangling of the diphtheritic babe, the drown- ings by overflowing rivers, the crushing and tearing by earthquakes, and the burning and shrinking by pesti- lence come to be contrasted with the cooing, crowing voice of babyhood, the refreshment living with springs P 226 THE PHILOSOPHY OF that flow out of the hill-sides, the stable mountains and valleys affording habitations to men, the salubrious air filling to overflowing with health and vitality the bodies that breathe it ! Truly, truly, Echecrates, by the people who are mistaught as to Special Providence the God is beyond finding out. Ech. I accept you to mean, Protagoras, that Provi- dence implies the use of the legs if one requires to run, and the use of a hoe if the need is food. Prot. Why, Echecrates, are not legs and arms one with means for running and hoeing? Does not turning from prayer to medicine bring ease to the strangling babe? To keep from drowning is aught required but to walk away from a river? Is an earth- quake likely other than confined gas seeking a vent that could be given it through a hole bored into the earth? To drive away pestilence is not the killing of microbes found better than whining in the way of supplication ?* Ech. We are certainly not to understand you, Pro- tagoras, as denying appeal to God in times of afflic- tion? Prot. As implied in your way of putting it, Echec- rates, you are. Philippides tells a story about an old woman, that applies. Being as devout as she was * See " Hours with John Darby." THE ETERNAL NOW. 227 ignorant, and as ignorant as she was prejudiced, she had herself remembered many times in the Mass, while days without number she had appealed at the Stations. Finding no relief, she had turned infidel. In this state she had applied to a doctor, who, after recognizing that her pain lay in a diseased nerve, which required to be cut, told her that her misfortune as to response related with the missing of a Station, which Station was himself. "Imagine," said Philippides, "what effect would be produced on an ignorant old woman by a declaration which placed a common mortal on a footing with Christ as he passed along on that bloody way which meant expiation for the sins of the world." Ech. Stop, stop, Protagoras 1 let the woman and her pain go ! In what consisted the distinctiveness of the Christ? Ceb. I must interrupt, Protagoras. Your sprays of lilies are suddenly become to me what they are to you. I see everything clearly. Prot. The others may want to hear the conclusion of Philippides' story. The old woman shrank away horrified, as, before her, the Jews shrank away from the Christ concerning whom Echecrates asks, and as later the inhabitants of Zurich shrank away from Paracelsus and they of Gorlitz from Jacob Bohme, and still later as they of Amsterdam ostracized the God-filled man, 228 THE PHIL OSOPH Y OF Benedict Spinoza.* Philippides recounts a simple sur- gical performance which cured the woman, restoring her to comfort and her family. Ceb. How plain it is ! Prot. As it seems so to you, Cebes, let it be accepted the same as to the others. Curing and hoe- ing are one. A garden, and not a station, is the place to find potatoes. Garden and station are, however, one with the ways and the means of the God. Philip- pides' doctor was one with a station, inasmuch as he was means to ends. Ech. And you would say, Protagoras, that means and ends are alike one with a Providence that fails of response never but as misunderstood ? Prot. It is ignorance, Echecrates, verging on stu- pidity, that lives in the presence of so beautiful a Providence such a life of misunderstanding. Is it not plain, Echecrates, that the Providence which responds to prayer is never farther away than is a man's self from himself, or than are away the neighbors who surround him ? Not to hoe is not to have potatoes. Not to cultivate Ego is to lack saving intelligence. The breaking up of a body before its time, or out of the natural order, is one with ignorance on the part of the doctors, otherwise one with self-abuse of the * See foot-note, "Thinkers and Thinking," p. 198. THE ETERNAL NOW. 229 individual. Consider, Echecrates ! Man and the Uni- versal are one. In the perfect law of a perfect God man is his own Providence, his own earth, his own heaven and hell. Join with me, Echecrates, and all who will, in adoration of the God who is ourselves, yet who is not ourselves. 20 " He is Rosicrucian, whosoever, or wheresoever, that is favored with perception of surface within surface and of face beneath face. He is to know himself as not Rosicrucian who sees nothing of lines between lines, or who is without recognition of the openness in occult. He is to know himself as not Rosicrucian who is without desire to meditate or unravel. He is not Rosi- crucian whose needs find full supply in the materialistic." — Nineteenth Century Sense. 231 232 THE PHILOSOPHY OF FROM CENTRE TOWARDS CIRCUMFERENCE. Protagoras. Looking towards circumference, Echec- rates, is one with considering capability, while, in turn, considering capability is one with measuring hypos- tases. Echecrates. I hardly understand. Prot. Well, you understand, not hardly, but surely, that a man is wholly according to his hypostases, and that, in turn, hypostases are according to culti- vation ? Let us begin again by saying that looking towards circumference means considering the associa- tions of a circle that revolves about a centre. Con- sider, Echecrates ! Is it or is it not the case that the rim of a hoop may be blackened and defiled by pitch or made bright and shining by other things ? Ech. You imply that circumference of the man will be of relation, as to nature and character, with the part developed in the hypostases ? Prot. This, exactly. This, necessarily. Ech. Comparing an ordinary man and the Christ ? Would this express what you would have understood ? For example, what goes to the rim of the hoop of bankers and brokers and candlestick-makers ? THE ETERNAL NOW. 233 Prof. You help me along. Of such, Paracelsus says, though not exactly in these words, that the lowest phase of alchemy is with commutation of per cent, into capi- tal, its highest phase the transformation of vice into virtue. Ech. And what, Protagoras, would Paracelsus have said, think you, of the rim of these modern " trust- makers' ' ? Prot. Whist, Echecrates ! What think you is to be said by one, who is not absolute lunatic, of boom- erangs, and of the throwers of them ? Ech. Is it under the same head that things like tariffs are to be estimated ? Prot. Tariffs, being acts which feed one people re- gardless of the starvation of others, are alike with boomerangs and with commutation of per cent, into capital. Boomerangs are the instruments of savages. Commutation of per cent, into capital is not by any means calculation influenced always strictly by justice and brotherly love. Cebes. Hist, Protagoras ! You hint unpopular doc- trine. What, may I ask, are we to say of a rim plastered with refusals of a bite from a plentiful loaf to such as starve on a mouthful of rice ? Prot. The earth is the God's, and the fulness thereof; trusts, and tariffs, and race discriminations are the antipodes as much of Educated as of Soul 20* 234 THE PHILOSOPHY OF sense; they are one with the contraries of mercy and justice, and they are bound to breed retaliation not less largely than does a dead dog maggots. Ech. Whether or not it prove apropos, you are touch- ing great questions. Truly it shows not otherwise, ac- cording to such estimate, than that the moderns are holding themselves incessantly and tirelessly at work on the making of a whirlwind ! Prot. What a whirlwind can do when made has been often enough felt. We may let this alone, how- ever, so far as others than ourselves are concerned ; the commuters, the trust-makers and tariff-makers, though listeners would be no hearers. A boomerang-thrower is susceptible to no argument but that return of the instrument which knocks out his brains. Ech. Surely, Protagoras, you have thought enough on these things to have lighted on a remedy? Prot. Why, Echecrates, as all things are with the hypostases, this might not be elsewhere. What say you is not being cultivated by the people of whom we talk ? Ech. Truly, Protagoras, the meaning of the dream shows greater and greater. I am to say, as you have suggested, for there is nothing else to say, that the Soul part is not being cultivated, and that it is being allowed to fade and wither from both sight and influence. Prot. You say right, Echecrates. Remedy is not elsewhere than in turning to that which is the meaning ' THE ETERNAL NOW. 2$$ of the Christian's Christ. Hist ! What do you say is the meaning of a big-bodied man ? Ech. I would define it as lying with excess of Matter in the hypostases. Prot. And how would you define a selfish man ? Ech. This I esteem is best done in the process of exclusion. A selfish man has his selfishness neither in Matter nor in God. Prot. And what definition is to be found for a godly man ? Ech. It is not difficult. A godly man is propor- tioned by the God .existing in his hypostases. Prot. In proportion, then, as a man is godly, he sees after godly fashion ? Ech. Necessarily this. Prot. To be fat, or muscular, in contrast to being spiritual * or godly, is to be weighted down, conse- quently to have vision restricted to an animal plane ? Ech. This, also. Prot. Is it, then, difficult to understand what is im- plied by turning to the Christ ? Hist, Cebes ! What was the example of the Christ ? Did he look up or down ? Did he consider self or other selves ? What think you was meant by him in that assertion, " My kingdom is not of this world"? Was he found bur- * Meaning by spiritual, Egoistic. 23O THE PHILOSOPHY OF dening himself with the " things that moths corrupt and thieves break through and steal" ? Consider fur- ther. Is higher expression of the purpose of the God to be found than as set forth in the actions of the Christ ? "I and my Father are one" is no misnomer. Ceb. But you imply that hypostases of the Christ and of men are the same ? Prof. The same, with difference ; the first being mostly Soul, the other being principally Animal. Here and here alone, Cebes, is absence of mystery and con- fusion. Is not the Christ a solved riddle to him who understands the hypostases? Is he not, on the other hand, an unappreciable and, as well, an unmeaning myth to one who, not comprehending the hypostases, does not know how man becomes or has been born one with God ? Is not the confusion of incarnation, viewed in the light of the hypostases, one with a ghost of the night seen in the presence of a risen sun ? Is it any more difficult to apprehend in this light the Christ than it is to comprehend a prize-fighter, — the one standing for Soul, the other for muscle ? You are right, Echecrates, in accepting the dream as revelation. Ech. The master, on the conclusion of his discourse, wrote the lines to be seen on this neighboring tomb- stone. Do these not very well cover the ground of man's relationship with man?* * See conclusion of first part. THE ETERNAL NOW. 2tf Prot. I will add one for the eyes of the commuters, the trust- and the tariff-makers, and, as well, for the workers, for these last are, in truth, more frequently the destroyers than the helpers of themselves : Common Good is the only Good. Ceb. Knowing you of old, as I do, Protagoras, I perceive you to be leading to a something not yet said. Prot. You are right, Cebes. The something is that mankind at large are as blind leaders of the blind. The capitalist faults the worker, and the worker blames the capitalist. One is equally wrong with the other. Capital represents means for development, and work implies the same thing. As it has pleased men to leave that equal provision of the Father " When every rood of ground maintained its man," it is the part of wisdom to make the best of what has followed. The circle will, however, sooner or later bring back the rood. There is no true material wealth but as this relates with turnips and wheat and corn. Sooner or later the man in the mine will conclude that sunshine is better than darkness ; he of the factory that the "sights and sounds" of nature are of cheerier im- port than the monotony and whir of spindles.* In * See " Brushland," a book treating of country life and living on the principle of the rood ; being experiences of the writer. 238 THE PHILOSOPHY OF the mean time the workingman adds links to his chain, as, offensively, he combats with capital, while, on the other hand, capital digs at and undermines its own foundation, as it considers labor and its requirements from any other stand-point than that of the line written upon the tombstone :* Common Good is the only Good. Ceb. Is there no wisdom with men ? Prot. It is found in little degree elsewhere than with those apt to be esteemed by Common-sense people least knowing, with the illuminati of the order of the Rosi- crucians, for example. Ech. I have heard, Protagoras, of the estimation in which you hold these people, and that you pronounce them the only true philosophers. Prot. You have heard not incorrectly. Rosicru- cianism has as its true definition the getting of judg- ments through the process of exclusion. A Rosicru- cian is one who tries all things and holds fast by what is found best. The advancement of humanity, wherein it has truly advanced, has its history fully expressed in this class of people, different as the thing may seem to such as, like Hippocrates, see in a seething crucible nothing but a metal that is being melted, or in a retort * Fault may be condoned in the ignorant, but is without excuse in the educated. THE ETERNAL NOW. 239 only the leaves of plants as these are undergoing distil- lation. Rosicrucianism is simply name. To express it, as it appeals to me, would be to begin equally signifi- cantly with Hercules and his club as with Rosenkreuz and his laboratory. The term is one with evolution, — not exactly of philosopher's stone out of spectro- scopic homceomeriae,* or of man out of ape, but of an Immortal out of an Alchemist, and of an Illuminatus out of an Immortal. Seneca's lines are expressive : " The wit of man is not able to tell the blindness of human folly in taking so much more care of our for- tunes, our houses, and our money than we do of our lives." Heraclitus has a phrase in the same direction that reads two ways: "The ass prefers thistles to gold."f Ceb. A word, if you please, about these Rosicru- cians, Protagoras ; that is, if it lead not away as to the discourse, for I am entirely without knowledge of them, nor have I memory of having heard the master speak the name. * " The homoeomeriae are elementary seeds of infinite variety out of which everything is made." — ANAXAGORAS. f" If a man eats the flesh of an animal, the animal flesh becomes human flesh ; if an animal eats human flesh, the latter becomes animal flesh. A man whose Ego is absorbed by his animal desires is an animal, and if it amalgamates with God he is an angel." — Paracelsus. 240 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Prot. It leads not away, but rather towards what is well to be said as application of the things talked about. Socrates has no occasion to heed a name, himself being a born illuminate. With people who rest in words, Rosicrucianism stands for a school the disciples of which consumed themselves and their lives in a search after the philosopher's stone. With people who recognize in the experiences of scholars materialistic, intellectual, and spiritual development, a Rosicrucian is one with any and every man who seeks to find what there is to find, and to know what there is to know.* Ceb. According to this, we ourselves, being in- quirers, are Rosicrucians ? Prot. This, unless you like the word " Socratists' ' as well, or, what is synonymous with both, " Seekers after Understanding." Ceb. I see ! It is principles, not professors. Prot. This, exactly. Yet if thinkers, aside from thinking, invite, curious study is found in reading the writings of a class named Occultists, these being people *"He is Rosicrucian who lives in looking at the nature of things and in getting understanding of one's relations with himself and with the universal ; getting at the secret of transmuting bars of lead into gold, the composition of that elixir vitse the drinking of which renders the drinker immortal, and in studying into that illumination which discovers that true knowledge consists in ' knowing that you know what you know and that you do not know what you do not know.' " See " Nineteenth Century Sense." THE ETERNAL NOW. 24 1 who are a mystery to the namers in the sense that a lens-grinder is, in his art, a riddle to the maker of crude glass, or, to express this differently, as Educated sense is confusion to Common sense, and as Egoistic and Soul senses are confusion to the other two. Not to become Rosicrucian is to remain fool ; just as not to remain animal is to become man or God. Be not deceived, Cebes, men are Alchemists, Immortals, or Illuminati according as they stand to development, and as they " mind the light." * * What is known as Rosicrucianism of the books divides itself into three periods: 1. The times and experiences of the Alchemists. 2. The times and experiences of the Immortals. 3. The times and experiences of the Illuminati. The first represents a purely material- istic view of life, in which the getting of material possessions, or what Lucian exhibits as encumbrances, presents itself as highest good ; this is the Alchemical age, when the scholars were engaged in private and mystical laboratories in experiments directed to the transmuting of the baser metals into gold. The second period expresses an intel- lectual advance, in which it is recognized that death is more to be feared than gold is to be valued ; this is the " Immortal" age ; herbs took the place of metals in experiments directed to the discovery of an elixir that should save its possessor from dying. The third period is the state of to-day. In search after an elixir vitae discovery was practically made of distinction between body and Ego ; here was the birth of Illuminati. Ego is found to need neither elixir vitae nor liquor adolescentiae, it being both immortal and continuously beautiful in and of itself. " Mind the Light." See " Odd Hours of a Physician." L q 21 242 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Ceb. Would you say that the bankers, the brokers, the trust- and tariff-makers, as we find them among these moderns, and as well the workers, are not Illuminati ? Prot. The bankers, the brokers, the trust- and tariff- makers, and the workers are to say for themselves what they are. You have not forgotten, I am sure, that warning story told by Er when he came back from Hades?* Let this pass, however. In looking at the brain of a man, Rosicrucianism, as it has been defined, * A reader who will turn to the concluding pages of Plato's " Re- public" will find the question of Cebes answered in Er's account of retribution. " For every one of all the crimes and all the personal injuries committed by men, they suffer a tenfold retribution," etc. (ioth Book.) Lucian, in his "Dialogues of the Dead," has much of interest and concern in the same direction : " Charon. Now listen to me, good people, — I'll tell you how it is. The boat is but small, as you see, and somewhat rotten and leaky withal ; and if the weight gets to one side, over we go ; and here you are crowding in all at once, and with lots of baggage, every one of you. If you come on board here with all that lumber, I suspect you'll repent of it afterwards, — especially those who can't swim. " Mercury. What's best for us to do, then, to get safe across ? " CHA. I'll tell you. You must all strip before you go in, and leave all those encumbrances on shore ; and even then the boat will scarce hold you all. And you take care, Mercury, that no soul is admitted that is not in light marching order, and who has not left all his en- cumbrances, as I say, behind. Just stand at the gangway and over- haul them, and don't let them go in till they've stripped." — Transla- tion by Rev. W. Lucas Collins, M.A, THE ETERNAL NOW. 243 finds what is to be esteemed an anatomical ultimate in a little pink body of such position and relation as to create the thought that it associates in no indirect way with all other parts of the mass, and as well, by means of the Sense-nerves, with all that is external. This body is the pineal gland. It is here that our ancients located the Soul, and that, later, Des Cartes fixed the habitation of the Ego. Let us think of an iron post. Phaedo could tell us that no two particles of iron rest against each other, but that they are separated by an intervening essence. This being fact, it follows that an iron post is a double ; that is, if we imagine the iron particles removed without disturbance of the inter- mediate essence there would remain a post not less a reality than when in the character known as iron ; an only difference would be that the essence post could not be put to the uses of Common-sense people.* Now, whether it is, or is not, the case that the pineal gland or the general inter-molecular space of the body is the habitation of the Ego, or Astral, a thing we know nothing about, it is undeniable that there is Ego, or Astral, and that this is Itself, and not its habitation. Ceb. This is so clearly exhibited in the hypostases as not to need further showing. * Referring to p, 98 of "Nineteenth Century Sense," the reader will find demonstration of this as made in an analysis of human bones. See also same book, p. 113. 244 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Prot. Illumination, as to Rosicrucianism, means such recognition as here admitted. A seeker after knowledge when arrived at a point assumed as now occupied by ourselves has left him alone study of self. As scientist he has analyzed Matter, and as theo- logian he has apprehended Soul. Self is the interest and concern that remain. Here is beginning of de- parture from Common sense and from Common-sense people. A Rosicrucian, as Alchemist, is yet near enough to the bankers, the brokers, the candlestick- makers, and the workers not to allow of difference being perceived : hence he remains, in the estimation of these people, a man of judgment and of parts. A Rosicru- cian, on the contrary, as Illuminatus, is as one occu- pying the antipodes, being of the enviable few who have everything while seeming to have nothing. Such a one owns the earth, though he lack title-deeds for the showing of his holdings. In the estimation of the bankers and brokers and candlestick-makers an illuminate Rosicrucian is a man laboring under hallu- cinations. Ceb. But you would say, Protagoras, that he is the wisest of men ? Prot. The wisest and the richest, Cebes, for his needs go never beyond his ability to produce, nor is he burdened by impedimenta. Ceb. When dreaming I seem never less myself than THE ETERNAL NOW. 245 when awake, nor do the things with which I relate seem less real. Is this something of what you mean, Protagoras ? Ech. A few months back, Protagoras, I was at the house of one of these moderns, and while seated in front of a window-blind observed six rivet-heads hold- ing the hinge to the frame. As my eyes rested on these pieces of iron there was an instant change of them into six human faces of a type so godly that I have never before nor since seen anything that has given me more pleasure. Is this, also, something of what you mean ? Simmias. I find, Protagoras, that in listening to organ music all care and anxiety leave me, and I become as one borne upon wings. Is this, as well, anything as to what you mean? Prot. It needs only that an iron post be considered, to understand that what is suggested is one with what is implied. Common sense sees the world at large as a post is seen by it ; that is, it sees surface only. Other means are required for other sight. Educated sense, being a condition expressive of a state in ad- vance of Common sense, knows an essence post through induction; it cannot, however, see it : sight is not clear enough. Egoistic sense sees an essence post : this with the keenness of a poet's sight of couplets and the musician's hearing of strains. Soul sense takes 24O THE PHILOSOPHY OF hold of the God as a hand grasps and holds its fellow- hand ; it puts certainty in place of faith. Ceb. You suggest, Protagoras, the sparkle that is hidden in an uncut diamond. Ech. Butterflies, as well, that lie in cocoons. Sim. I was thinking of light and heat, as these make up the larger portion of lumps of black coal. Prot How is it ? Shall a man not believe that he sees what he sees, or may he doubt that he has heard what he has heard? Let us look at our own follies and at the follies of other people. 21* As for my own face, I perceive it to alter more by reason of acts than of age, and by comparing what is seen in my glass with pictures made of me at varying times, I get measure of my loss or gain. 247 248 THE PHILOSOPHY OF TOWARDS THE SUBJECTIVE. Protagoras. If, Cebes, and Echecrates, and all of you, we find ourselves arrived at a sufficient develop- ment, our parting hour may be celebrated by a look through the clouds. Looking through clouds is one with inquiring into the Subjective. In turn, paradoxical as is the manner of the putting, inquiring into the Subjective is one with placing what is ordinarily deemed unreal in place of the so-called real. Subjective is one with associa- tion of Ego and imagination. In other words, it is one with state of mind as painter of the pictures of a man's circumstances. Bringing the idea half-way be- tween Egoistic and Common sense perception, thus relating what are called intangible and tangible, Subjective is not inaptly to be defined as unseeable wind that dashes and scatters seeable spider-webs and houses, — curiously enough, the latter more easy of demolition by it than the former. Changing a figure, we may consider essence posts ; understanding, as surely we do, that in such objects THE ETERNAL NOW. 249 we see not only things that are as much real as are the iron bodies, but as well definition of what is meant by Paracelsus, the Rosicrucian, in that aphorism of his, that "the beginning of wisdom is the beginning of supernatural power." Cebes. Apropos, Protagoras ! Another saying of Paracelsus comes to our advantage : " A wood-carver takes a piece of wood and carves out of it whatever he may have in his mind ; likewise the imagination may create something out of the essence of life." * Prot. It is well recalled ; it defines entirely what is meant by the Subjective. Understanding, as we may not help but do, that image is for him who can cut it out of the wood, and not for him who cannot or will not cut it, we surely are to fault nothing or nobody but self if we lack an image. Even more than this, as there exist a material post within a material post, and a spiritual post within the material posts, so in like manner and of like nature image exists within images, and, this being the case, one may possess and see what he does not so much as either carve or mate- rialize. Posts, whether of iron or of essence, are not realities, but strictly phenomena ; that is, they are ex- pressions of Matter formed into a temporary likeness. Anything that is handleable by the senses of organic * See chapter on Visions, " Nineteenth Century Sense." 250 THE PHILOSOPHY OF life is nothing but phenomenon. What is truly real is not of relation with man's organic senses, and were it not that the world possesses other than Common-sense people the world could come to no exposition of itself; Common sense is strictly one with the office of hewers of wood and drawers of water. Ceb. Regarding Visions ? Prof. A Vision is one with an Imagination. As, for example, first there is a log of wood, then there is an image. An image bought of a carver and carried away both goes and remains ; the latter for the reason that the wood, and the carving, are not at all essence, but alone image and sign. Ceb. That which is sold is not, then, parted from ? Prot. Hist, Cebes ! You will not deny an image that comes out of a log, nor may you deny an image that exists uncut in the imagination of a wood-carver ? Is thought less thought that it be put not in words ? In like manner, is image less image that it remain un- materialized? Wood-carvers are Subjectists; they are not makers of anything, but are simply beholders and catchers of things; they are mediums, or materializers. Everything that has an external has, necessarily, an in- ternal. Images are everywhere that an internal is, but the seers and catchers are few. Sounds fill the air, but ears in general have drums too thick for response to other vibrations than are made by the ringing of bells * THE ETERNAL NOW, 25 1 and the firing of cannon. What a wood-carver parts with in selling an image is one with what an inventor sells in parting with a model. As concerns things gotten and parted from, an illus- tration is complete in that paying and receiving of money where a dozen people indebted to a like amount, the one to the other, sit in a circle, a coin representing the exact amount of the debt being the only piece among them. Number one, having the coin, pays it to number two, to whom he stands in- debted for the amount. Number two passes it to number three, liquidating through it a second debt. Three hands it in turn to four, so four to five, and five to six, and so on until twelve is reached. Twelve gives it to one, from whom it started on the round. The debts, all of them, are now fully and justly paid, while the coin, having undergone twelve transferences, is as it was and where it was. Is it not to be seen, Cebes, that the thing would have been the same if a word, and not a coin, had been used ? Ceb. I think your illustration is another paradigm, Protagoras. Prot. Why, life itself is wholly paradigm, Cebes ; as though nature had purpose in placing always a certain restriction of view on the senses of men, to an end of securing work that would be apt to remain unaccom- plished without existence of such misunderstanding. 252 THE PHILOSOPHY OF Look, for example, at the bankers and brokers and candlestick-makers. Do these, after consuming years in a sacrifice of all that is morally healthy and most desirable, carry their dearly-paid-for money away in coffins? or do they, on the contrary, hand it back into a general around and around? What object nature has in practising such deception as this last is hard to understand ; not harder, however, than to un- derstand why workingmen decide against freedom in the country in favor of slavery in the towns. How unenviable are all such to a Subjectist ! Yes, Cebes, all is paradigm. What, for example, as to Timon rich and Timon poor? Timon remains. So, too, remain the things called riches and poverty. For Timon to grow out of self into the universal is one with grow- ing out of the possibility of change as to circum- stances. To own nothing is alike with owning every- thing. End being never anything else than beginning to another end, living gets never away from a circle. In the circle is the all. In the night the sun is at the antipodes; at mid-day it is overhead. Dark- ness and light, moisture and heat, effort and rest, are the life of the earth. It is good to lie down, and not less good to rise up. Are we to agree otherwise than with our brother philosopher of Cordova, that "it is the excellency of a great man to ask nothing and to want nothing, and to say, I THE ETERNAL NOW. 2$$ will have nothing to do with fortune that repulses Cato and prefers Vatinius" ? The master, if awake, might not willingly hear the commendation, but are we not to recognize the fortune of Cato greater than that of Vatinius, in that he had it in him to remark that, when surrounded by the wrecks made in the con- tentions of Pompey and Csesar, it was to the discourse held in the pen at Athens he could alone turn for con- solation? Riches, as Seneca hath it, " is not to increase fortune, but to retrench appetite. A bull contents him- self with one meadow, and one forest is enough for a thousand elephants ; but the little body of a man de- vours more than all living creatures. We do not eat to satisfy hunger, but ambition ; we are spiritually dead while bodily alive, and our houses are so much our tombs that a man might write our epitaphs upon our very doors." Ceb. You imply that to sit with folded hands is to make riches equally with the burden-bearers ? Prot. Well, let us consider. Material possessions are not realities, but appearances. Does any man con- tinue to hold material possessions? Are the rugged and towering Alp mountains anything but unrealities ? Is a stream of lightning other than the extreme op- posite of what it is commonly taken to be? Is a man's body not everybody else's property quite as much as it is his own, and, when viewed physiologi- 254 THE PHILOSOPHY OF cally, or from the distance of centuries, does it differ much, as to its coming and going, from a flash-light? To eat, and to be surfeited with eating, are different things. Work, and being exhausted by working, are not the same. Prudent care and miserly greed are antipodes. Looking out for self, and caring for no- body beside self, is difference between wisdom and foolishness. Cultivating the material and denying the spiritual is one with chaining eyes and nose to the ground. How blessed are we to esteem ourselves that, like to Pythagoras, we have our lessons in our experi- ences ! Recall, Cebes, the words of the master to Crito, " If only you can catch me, Crito, bury me as you please." The words were not understood in that other Now in which they were spoken, but they are plain enough to-day. How silly seems the grief of that yesterday at Athens in the light of to-day at Philadelphia !. How wise, in the light of to-day, shows the refusal of the master to burden himself with the cares and anxieties of possessions in the yes- terday ! Ceb. According to this, pity rather than condem- nation is to go out to the commuters, the trust- and tariff-makers ? Prot. If all except themselves were Subjectists, this would be a relation held towards them. Unfortu- nately, the burdens that such insist on enlarging and THE ETERNAL NOW. 255 bearing get in the way of other people and incommode them. So far as ourselves are concerned, we are to save being jostled by keeping out of the way. Truly, Cebes, you are right, however, — censure is not to be unmodified by pity. How the unfortunates are seen to stumble and sweat as they run hither and thither in and out of their houses intent on purposes which are one with a falling down to-day of what was built yesterday ! Hist, Cebes ! Are we to take credit to ourselves in seeing, as we do, that the thing is a puff-ball? or is it the case that what we behold is by reason of ab- sence of the crowd, and not anything at all on the part of nature or of our experiences? How can a man look out or up when a surging mass of people and the walls and tent-roof of a circus are about and over him ? Is it otherwise when the crowds and the walls of a street hem one in? Who is he that is brave enough to understand clothes when patched breeches rub against shiny broadcloth? Is it different as to a measuring of flesh-making potatoes, that cost little, and palate-tickling fruits, that cost much ? Is it not the same as to a beer of sweet-bitter taste made of " pumpkins or parsnips or walnut-tree chips" when contrasted with the price and prestige of biting tart wines grown in the dug-out trenches of the Rhine hills? It is not as to what is best, but what is said and 256 THE PHILOSOPHY OF thought of things. A subjective sight or sound is one with a ghost to him who is wholly an Objectist. A single piece of silver held before an eye is capable of shutting out visions of opened seals as these were seen by John at Patmos. No occultist is any longer a money-changer. Approach of material is departure of spiritual. Are we to give offence, or take it, in reflecting on the arts of the money-changers ? View- ing the thing, as we have done, all the way along the line from Athens to Philadelphia, in what respect have we found this business different from the rearing and falling of ant-hills ? — and, indeed, in what respect have we found the toilers different from the insects? Let us stretch ourselves upon the sward, Cebes, and, while having about us the sweet sights and sounds of a nature that is every bit our own and that is not to be taken from us, let us in sympathy meditate on an hallucination that esteems happiness and living to lie with the counting of notes, the reckoning of pieces of silver, or the making of things not needed ; not forgetting, however, that the bankers and brokers and candlestick-makers reverse the matter and esteem the hallucination as lying with us. Ceb. You made a departure from supernatural power and from visions, Protagoras. I should like much to learn of the true and the false as to these things. THE ETERNAL NOW. 2^7 Prot. You recall me to good purpose. The wood- carver cuts his image from a log. So diamond-cutters open windows in stones, disclosing brilliant hidden lights. A little science, acting on pieces of black coal, annihilates space. Are we prepared to deny reality to these things, or that they are hidden until exposed ? It is nothing different with the faces seen on the rivet-heads by Echecrates, nor with the uplifting ex- perienced by Simmias as organ-music lightens him. Things are to the senses what the senses are able to make out of them ; they are never anything else. There is no sparkle of diamond to a blind man, nor any uplifting by music of an internally deaf one. Supernatural power is one with understanding, it is not anywhere else, and this, in turn, is one with capability. How a man lives accords with how he elects to live. To look continuously at mud is to see never the sky. To plaster up eyes and ears is to see or hear nothing, as, on the contrary, to open them widely, and refine them, is to see and hear pro- portionally. Ceb. Do you believe, Protagoras, really, and not sophistically, that ourselves are ghosts? Prot. Whist, Cebes ! Is this not two thousand years after? and do we not talk together? Exactly what we are, that everybody is who has had a funeral. And the same exactly is everybody who has r 22* 258 THE PHILOSOPHY OF had no funeral. Life and death are wholly one, as surely has been made plain. As to-day we know our- selves, in like manner shall we know ourselves forever. As we seem doing to-day, this it would seem is to go on forever, in that sense in which it appears to be of accord with the continuous Now that we have known and are to continue to know. This is truth ; other- wise our argument is not a demonstration, but a lie. Beautiful ! glorious ! inexpressibly satisfying ! is the prescience of the God. As to change, consider what is happily said of this by Antoninus : " Is any man afraid of change? What, then, is more pleasing or more suitable to the universal nature ? And canst thou take a bath unless the wood undergoes a change ? And canst thou be nourished unless the food undergoes a change? And can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change? Dost thou not see, then, that for thyself to change is just the same, and equally necessary for the universal nature?" To di- rect change, Cebes, is, however, another matter from that simple mingling and separating of mingled which is the destiny of things at large as these consist of matter. Here, Cebes, is other aspect of Subjectivism, and here is commencement of departure from high into higher and from higher to highest: here is from God back into God ; here the secret and mystery of Nirvana. THE ETERNAL NOW. 259 [As continuation of the present work and as free opening of the Subjective, as this relates with the inquiries made by Cebes in his last few questions, follows the book " Nineteenth Cen- tury Sense." The volumes relate as lines between lines. Reading is to commence with the ninth chapter, the subject of which is " The character of mediums and sensitives and means of intercourse with the higher planes of the world." The book being read from this ninth chapter to its end, the illusions and disillusions treated of in the beginning of the work will be properly understood and measured. In this book the hypostases will be found discussed with much fulness.] }*£* Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Sept. 2004 PreservationTechnologie: A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIO 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111