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Logic 
 Taught by 
 Love 
 
Logic 
 Taught by- 
 Love 
 
 Rhythm in 
 Nature and in 
 Education 
 
 5By 
 
 MARY EVEREST BOOLE 
 
 Author of 
 "Symbolical Methods of Study" 
 "Logic of Arithmetic" "Preparation of the Child for Science," etc. 
 
 1905 
 
 LONDON 
 
 C. W. DANIEL 
 
 3, AMEN CORNER, E.C. 
 
Any creature will follow a truth as long as he thinks that it will 
 lead to something which he can approve. And what he will 
 approve will depend on the accidents of his evolution. 
 
 He alone attains to the true dignity of man, who follows rever- 
 ently in his thought whatever in practice he most disapproves, 
 whenever it seems likely to lead towards Truth. Such an one has 
 risen superior to accident ; and is, himself, an Evolver. 
 
sc. 
 
 Dedication 
 Go a 5ewisb TRefocmer 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 When Naaman the Syrian returned to his own people, after 
 his memorable visit to the Land of your forefathers, he felt that 
 Truth would seem to him, in later years, less like an impossible 
 dream if he might make his offerings to the Eternal on an altar 
 y constructed of that sacred earth over which had trodden the feet 
 K of the Reformers of Israel. The Prophet, true to his function as 
 ^ a messenger from the All-Father, respected an instinct which of 
 ^ course he, personally, could not understand. May I ask you to 
 tolerate a statement which certainly you will not understand? 
 Oj You have been to more than one writer on mathematical Logic 
 the witness that fervent devotion needs no superstition about 
 0§ persons or observances, but may be kindled by reverence for the 
 Creator Who works by laws of orderly causation. This faith of 
 -W^ Science, we are often told, is necessarily loveless and cold ; there 
 can be no fervour, it is said, without superstition or illusion. But 
 "•nL where your influence reaches, all cherished illusions loosen their 
 hold on the emotions ; for their beauty fades in the glow of your 
 impassioned love of Truth. 
 
Contents 
 
 Chap. 
 
 
 Page 
 
 I. 
 
 In the Beginning was the Logos 
 
 ... 9 
 
 II. 
 
 The Natural Symbols of Pulsation 
 
 ... 13 
 
 III. 
 
 Geometric Symbols of Progress by Pulsation 
 
 ... 20 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Sabbath of Renewal 
 
 • 36 
 
 V. 
 
 The Recovery of a Lost Instrument ... 
 
 ••• 43 
 
 VI. 
 
 Babbage on Miracle 
 
 ... 46 
 
 VII. 
 
 Gratry on Logic 
 
 ... 52 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Gratry on Study 
 
 ••■ 59 
 
 IX. 
 
 Boole and the Laws of Thought 
 
 ... 67 
 
 X. 
 
 Singular Solutions 
 
 ... 76 
 
 XL 
 
 Algebraizers 
 
 ... 79 
 
 XII. 
 
 Degenerations towards Lunacy and Crime ... 
 
 ... 85 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The Redemption of Evil 
 
 ... 91 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The Science of Prophecy 
 
 ... 96 
 
 XV. 
 
 Why the Prophet should be Lonely ... 
 
 ... 105 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Reform, False and True 
 
 ... 109 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Critique and Criticasters 
 
 ... 115 
 
 XVIII. The Sabbath of Freedom 
 
 ... 128 
 
 XIX. 
 
 The Art of Education ... 
 
 ••• 137 
 
 XX. 
 
 Trinity Myths 
 
 ... 150 
 
 XXL 
 
 Study of Antagonistic Thinkers 
 
 ... 160 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Our Relation to the Sacred Tribe 
 
 ... 163 
 
 XXIII. Progress, False and True 
 
 ... 171 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 The Messianic Kingdom 
 
 ... 175 
 
 
 An Aryan Seeress to a Hebrew Prophet 
 
 - 185 
 
 
 Appendix I. 
 
 ... 187 
 
 
 Appendix II. ... 
 
 ... 193 
 
Preface 
 
 This book will seem to some a mere medley. Is it a text-book 
 of Logic, a pious exhortation, or a treatise on Mythology ? Why 
 cannot the author choose some plan and stick to it ? 
 
 For this reason (among others) : Part of the very object of the 
 work is to call attention to the fact that our life is being disorgan- 
 ized by the monotony of our methods of teaching. To escape this 
 monotony, we are driven to seek the needful variety in multiplicity 
 of subjects of study and in conflict of opinion. Variety we must 
 have ; but we could get it more safely by alternation of attitude 
 and variety of treatment. 
 
 The most important truths are those which no one disputes ; 
 but they are now too much forgotten, precisely because, not being 
 disputed, and being monotonously taught, they are found uninter- 
 esting. In old days these truths were impressed on the mind by 
 giving variety to the manner of their exhibition. 
 
 An eminent Logician says of his own work : " I am proud of 
 having written a book on Logic, in which it is proved, among 
 other things, that the Logic of the heart has its own validity." I 
 should be proud if I could convince a single teacher that the 
 isolation of any mode of thought is misleading ; and that no 
 system of Logic can be valid unless it is able to focus together 
 various rays of Truth. 
 
 The substance of this Volume appeared in Articles in the 
 Inquirer, Journal of Education, Jewish Chronicle and Jewish 
 World of London, the Occident of Chicago, and the American 
 Israelite of Cincinnati. 
 
 My best thanks are due to the owners of the long-lost Wedg- 
 wood MSS. (recovered in 1882), for confiding them for a time to 
 me. These MSS. would not, it is thought, appeal to a sufficiently 
 wide circle of readers to make the publication of them desirable ; 
 but they supply the missing link between the Pulsation- Logic of 
 Gratry and Boole, and the most advanced medical psychology of 
 our time. 
 
VI 
 
 Preface 
 
 Though I should be sorry to seem to commit any one to my 
 views, I cannot refrain from also expressing my gratitude to those 
 who have kindly helped me in tracing the effects of Jewish discip- 
 line in promoting personal and racial longevity ; amongst others, 
 the Principals of Jews' College and the Jews' Free School ; the 
 Editors of the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish World; and, last 
 but not least, my kind and valued friend, Mr. Lazarus, late Beadle 
 of the Berkeley Street Synagogue. 
 
 The descriptions of lessons on elementary mathematics which 
 occur on pp. 117, 118, 119 and 122 appear also in "The Prepara- 
 tion of the Child for Science." 
 
 M. E. B. 
 
Logic Taught by Love 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE LOGOS 
 
 What creative Energy is, in Its own Nature, we do 
 not know ; It is The Ineffable I Am. What we do 
 know about It is the fact that It pulsates. The very 
 life of all that lives consists of some mode or other of 
 Pulsation or alternate action. Without this Pulsating 
 action, nothing grows. As the old writers said, It was 
 in the world, and the world obeyed It by compulsion 
 but knew it not. Then It made man, free to know It. 
 Man, being free, sought out many inventions, all intended 
 to substitute some fixed condition for incessant pulsation 
 in human affairs; and to substitute the worship of some 
 fixed entity for that of the Eternal Pulsator. But to 
 some few the secret W T isdom revealed Itself ; and to 
 them It gave power to become Sons of God. And all 
 the History of religion, of morals, and of Philosophy, is 
 a history of conflict between the Seers who would teach 
 the Law of Pulsation and the multitude who would 
 pervert their teaching. 
 
 All Life is pulsation ; and health is always rhythmic 
 pulsation timed in accordance with the proper rhythm 
 of the particular organ. Every baby's lungs learn this 
 at their first contact with the air ; the baby-heart has 
 caught the secret long ago by sympathetic contagion 
 from its mother's heart. Nature teaches her mighty 
 
 A 
 
i o Logic Taught by Love 
 
 secret to the baby heart and lungs ; and leaves the 
 "voluntary muscles" and the brain to learn it voluntarily. 
 We have gone but a little way yet towards finding out 
 how to do this; still the gymnast knows that much may 
 be done towards hardening limbs against fatigue and 
 disease, by a regular rhythmic alternation of extension 
 and contraction; and logicians such as Gratry (and 
 much greater men before him) knew that, to a large 
 extent, the same can be done with the mental faculties. 
 The future possibilities that open out before us as we 
 study the great Logicians of the Pulsation doctrine, are 
 overwhelming ; one hardly dares realize all that they 
 imply ; but the fact is, that the heart and lungs do 
 actually sing in their own language, the Eternal Hymn 
 — Holy, Holy, Holy is the Logos, the Hidden Wisdom, 
 the Principle of Rhythmic Pulsation, which was in the 
 beginning, is now and ever shall be, Creator of all that 
 is, Preserver of what has proved itself worthy, Purifier 
 by the destruction of all that is sluggish or disorderly. 
 The goal to which we are tending seems to be to train 
 all our faculties, one after another, to take their parts in 
 the same Chorus. The very antagonism of the masses 
 to the teachers of Pulsation is a suspension which 
 enriches the Harmony, the means by which is created 
 the possibility of the Hig: >t Rhythm. Humanity toys 
 and coquets with its own bliss ; it dares not let itself 
 know what the Logos has prepared for thosewholove Him. 
 
 For no one really doubts the doctrine o^ Pulsation. 
 Every new birth is a witness to the truth that conception 
 (whether physical or mental) is the result of re-uniting 
 at a suitable moment elements that have been suitably 
 differentiated. We all know it; but we fear to let our- 
 
In the Beginning was the Logos 1 1 
 
 selves believe. History, as the Apocalyptic Seers knew, 
 is the story of the alternate withdrawal of man's mind 
 from the Logos-doctrine and re-union with it. 
 
 That perennial Love-Story has been intertwined with 
 another, not less solemn and vital. Far back in the 
 ages a Tribe was differentiated, to be to the other races 
 of the earth what the Unseen Logos is to Humanity as 
 a whole ; the subject of incessant misunderstanding ; 
 and the object of alternate fear, dislike, contempt, and 
 superstitious reverence. We never understand the 
 People of Israel (nor can it be said that they ever 
 rightly understand us) ; but every now and then we are 
 made to feel that some magnetism is coming forth from 
 the incomprehensible Race, which acts as a solvent to 
 our metaphysical perplexities ; which is the witness to 
 and preparation for a Life higher than anything we can 
 conceive. 
 
 The complex and variable relation between Jews and 
 Gentiles, so unutterably sweet in some aspects, so bitter 
 often, so unsettled and incomprehensible always, seems 
 to be one chief means by which Humanity is being 
 made fit for the rapture of intelligent comprehension, 
 and able to look into the Face of Love. 
 
 The Race of Israel is the hereditary priesthood of 
 that Unity whose action is Pulsation. There is another 
 such priesthood : occasional, unrecognized, consecrated 
 by no hand but that of suffering, marked out by no 
 special observance except that of being always peculiar 
 everywhere ; High Priests for ever after that order to 
 which all official priesthoods are forced, sooner or later, 
 to do homage. Out of the deeps they have called ; and 
 Truth has heard. Where steady health sees solid things 
 
I 2 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 and enduring systems, the sick often perceive, instead, 
 a shimmering palpitation. 
 
 The man of whom it is said that he made the greatest 
 advance in Logic since Aristotle, said of himself, that 
 no one could do certain kinds of work unless he would 
 consent to be ill. The majority decide, of course, that 
 the perceptions of illness are " abnormal " ; in old days 
 these abnormal perceptions were called " miraculous." 
 The name matters little ; the important thing for us is 
 to see that we do not waste the gifts that God sends 
 through suffering. 
 
 Jesus, the High Priest of Pulsation, offered himself to 
 death rather than support any one-sided rights or any 
 fixed doctrine. And having been slain by one set of 
 idolaters, He was made into the object of sensational 
 worship by another set. And now, as ever, the teachers 
 of the Eternal Logos are alone on the earth ; and yet 
 we are not alone, because the Father is with us, and all 
 the Seers who went before us. 
 
 If we sorrow overmuch about the idolatry of our 
 brethren, do not we thus prove ourselves to be also 
 idolaters who would arrest the natural Pulsations ? For 
 the conflict between Seers of New Truth and the lovers 
 of fixed ideas is the very palpitation of human life, the 
 great witness to the doctrine that progress takes place 
 by pulsation. 
 
 In some of the following Chapters an attempt is made 
 to picture past episodes in the conflict between the Logos- 
 Seers and their antagonists ; in others, suggestions are 
 offered of means whereby that very conflict might 
 be converted into an orderly and peaceable mental 
 gymnastic. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NATURAL SYMBOLS OF PULSATION 
 Heaven and Earth declare the wonder of His Work. 
 
 THE History of early religions is very much a history 
 of the successive introductions into public worship of 
 various symbols, by means of which the Seers hoped to 
 make the masses realize the perpetual Flux or Pulsation 
 which underlies the phenomena of Nature. The Seer 
 perceives the Law of Pulsation by observing a certain 
 phenomenon ; that phenomenon becomes for him in- 
 teresting ; he tries to make the masses share his interest 
 in it, as a revelation of Nature's fundamental Law ; the 
 masses lose sight of the idea of pulsation, and get up 
 an idolatrous (i.e. fixed) tension on the symbol itself. 
 To the pure in heart who see the Logos, all things are 
 pure, because all things suggest the ineffable " process 
 of becoming " ; and those things are naturally sacred to 
 any man, and an object of religious reverence, which 
 most vividly suggest it to him. But to the masses 
 things are not thus pure ; because they see, in each 
 thing, not the Creative Logos, but some special quality 
 which is, or which they suppose to -be, the especial 
 characteristic of that object. Each Seer tries to break 
 up the association of special Sanctity which clings round 
 the symbol employed by his predecessor ; in all good 
 faith and innocence he tries to teach Flux-doctrine by 
 some new symbol ; and so the process begins again. 
 It has in various forms gone on throughout the History 
 not only of religion, but of all the intellectual and moral 
 
Logic Taught by Love 
 
 life of the world ; it is made intelligible by studying 
 those natural objects which at various times have been 
 associated with religious ceremonies. 
 
 The movements of the Heavenly Bodies revealed to 
 the Seers some mighty Principle of rhythmic motion ; 
 those whom they tried to indoctrinate with this idea 
 worshipped Sun and Moon and Stars. The Seers 
 erected stones to facilitate consecutive observation of 
 the heavenly motions ; the people supposed those stones 
 to be possessed of magic virtues. It would seem that 
 at some time in the world's history the process of 
 becoming was taught chiefly by reference to vegetable 
 growth. The people attached fantastic ideas to the 
 grotesque forms of certain vegetable objects. Then 
 the Seers selected for use in teaching certain trees 
 distinguished by the absence of tendency to grow into 
 suggestive shapes, and which exhibit in a severely 
 simple form the main laws of growth. 1 The idolaters 
 constituted these particular trees or plants sacred. 
 Then the Seers ordered the sacred plants to be burned 
 in homage to the Unseen Cause of growth ; the masses 
 made an idolatrous ceremonial out of the very act of 
 destroying a sacred Symbol. The Seers would seem 
 then to have turned from the vegetable, which only 
 grows, and whose growth can only be inferred, not seen, 
 to the animal, in which the life-process reveals itself by 
 visible motion. To the medical priest, who, by dissecting 
 a ram's heart, has caught the secret of the throbbing of 
 his own heart, the ram is henceforward a sacred object. 
 The mass of mankind are, however, not easily interested 
 
 i Such is the characteristic of all the sacred Trees which I have been 
 able to examine. 
 
The Natural Symbols of Pulsation 1 5 
 
 in abstruse and as yet imperfectly developed physio- 
 logical theories ; to them, a ram is — a beast of certain 
 shape. They see his form, but not the pulsating force 
 which constitutes his life ; and, of all that the enthusiast 
 has told them, they remember nothing, except that 
 when they say their prayers they are to look at a ram. 
 From that to the worship of a ram-god is an easy step 
 for the unthinking multitude. 
 
 When the sacred beast dies, Superstition makes of 
 him a mummy, so as to preserve as much of him as 
 can be preserved. The Seer orders him to be burned 
 in honour of The Unseen Giver of Life. The masses 
 attach superstitious ideas to the very fire that consumes 
 the offering. The Seer orders that part of the flesh 
 shall be consumed, not by the fire, but by the very 
 worshippers ; the masses make the meal a superstitious 
 observance. Some Seer tries to show that the important 
 thing in the beast is not his death, but the lessons drawn 
 from the palpitating entrails which reveal the secret of 
 life ; the next generation declares that the Prophet 
 drew auguries from the entrails. 
 
 Another Seer tells how mere tension on the lessons 
 of the past is idolatrous and barren, and mere following 
 of one's personal inspirations is dangerous and mis- 
 leading ; that he alone is a true Prophet by whose head 
 converge the two streams of instruction, inspiration and 
 tradition, as two birds may fly from distant points of 
 the horizon. 1 Posterity says that the great man of old 
 taught how to gather knowledge from the flight of birds. 
 
 And so on, ever round and round the same weary 
 circle, the Seers rolling up the Sisyphus-stone towards 
 
 1 Odin's birds were "Thought'' and "Tradition." 
 
1 6 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 true enlightenment ; the masses ever plunging back 
 into idolatry and carnalism. 
 
 There was in old times one practical difficulty 
 connected with the conflict, which may well account for 
 the eagerness of ancient Prophets to put an end to 
 idolatrous conceptions. To every genuine philosopher 
 the symbols of certain physical functions are among the 
 most sacred of all objects, as being the perennial witness 
 that the Logos is with man ; and not with man only, 
 but with all Creation. But the masses can see nothing 
 in these objects except the symbols of certain pleasurable 
 sensations ; and if they are taught to think intently of 
 them, they make their religion consist in the stimulation 
 of mere sensation. This has been the cause of number- 
 less disorders, and excuses much Prophetic injustice 
 and bigotry on the subject of Idolatry. 
 
 The Founders of Judaism desired that the People 
 should be taught, as far as possible, by symbols possess- 
 ing in a very marked manner the property of evanescence. 
 The Sun and Moon, the symbols of pure Light, had been 
 degraded to idolatrous purposes ; Moses seems to have 
 tried to make his people feel that some phosphorescent 
 material, which shone only rarely, was more truly sacred 
 than the Sun and moon. In fact, the Mosaic religion 
 may be described as one which abjures, as far as possible, 
 the consecration of colour-and-form manifestations 
 which are either partial or permanent; it takes, for its 
 principal symbols, manifestations which are essentially 
 evanescent; and it keeps permanently enshrined nothing 
 but revealed Laws. The writer of Genesis asserts that 
 the true symbol of God's covenant with Man is the 
 Rainbow ; which no man can capture or embalm or 
 
The Natural Symbols of Pulsation 1 7 
 
 enshrine ; which is made by the occasional breaking-up 
 of the One Light into many colours, to fade before long 
 into the Unity of White Light again ; and which, when 
 it departs, leaves nowhere in the world a trace of its 
 having existed, except on man's heart an impression 
 of spiritual beauty, and in his mind the power of 
 attaining a knowledge of the Laws of Light. 
 
 We gain a curious side-light on the early history of 
 religions by the study of Cornish legends. When, in the 
 early ages, savage tribes were converted by strangers 
 of a different religion, the priests who converted them 
 taught them to connect the memorials of their old 
 faith with the idea of evil magic. Where, therefore, we 
 find Druidic stones, believed by peasants to be relics 
 of evil magicians, we may guess that some conversionist 
 has been trying to indoctrinate people with his views. 
 In Cornwall there are distinct traces of a stratum of 
 some religion intervening between the old idolatry of 
 fixed stones and the Christian ideas imported from 
 Rome through England. The characteristic of Cornish 
 legends is that monoliths are people who would not 
 pay proper respect to the Sabbath ; and who, as 
 punishment for that crime, were arrested on their way 
 to somewhere where they wanted to go, and were struck 
 into stone to stand on the moor for ever, to show what 
 comes of not keeping Sabbath. Now when we know 
 about any preacher, that he instructs his flock to expect, 
 as the penalty for neglect of religious observances, 
 arrestatio?i ofp7-ogress, and the falling into a permanently 
 fixed position, we can form a tolerably clear idea what 
 was the main character of the religion taught by him. 
 we are not here, however, left dependent on mere 
 
1 8 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 inference, for the religious teachers who converted the 
 Cornish from their early idolatry left behind them 
 another trace besides the legend of the people who 
 would not keep Sabbath. In contrast with these evil 
 stones, there are others held sacred by the peasants 
 almost to our own day ; the so-called " logan-stones." 
 A logan-stone is one so delicately poised, that a child's 
 touch can make it sway to and fro ; yet it presently 
 returns to a position of equilibrium by virtue of its 
 natural equipoise. The name "Logan" is derived from 
 a word in use in Cornwall, to "log" i.e. to swaj\ rock y 
 vibrate. We need not ask what was the philosophy of 
 teachers who held sacred the logan-stone. 
 
 Perhaps the most impressive of all Natural Symbols 
 of progress by Pulsation is the one referred to by Jesus 
 — the Law of the circular Storm, which might be 
 suggested to any true lover of Nature by observing the 
 wheeling dust. The Spirit which guides man is like 
 the whirling wind; it blows backward in one place while 
 it is blowing forward in another ; so that you cannot 
 tell in what direction it is going as a whole, merely 
 from feeling how it blows on you. 
 
 In connection with this subject I may mention a 
 remark that has occurred to me in reading works of 
 piety. All sorts of religious writers agree in describing 
 the troubles of life as " stormy seas." The instinct of 
 some leads them to speak of taking refuge from the 
 storm in an Ark (which sways with the heaving sea, 
 and yields to its every motion); while others, on the 
 contrary, prefer to think of clinging for safety to a fixed 
 stone or cross, or other immovable object. The writers 
 of "clinging" symbolism are of the properly orthodox 
 
The Natural Symbols of Pulsation 1 9 
 
 type; if such a man should happen to disagree with the 
 ecclesiastical superior who is in authority over him, it 
 will be owing to the disturbing accident of some other 
 having gained a stronger hold on his mind. But the 
 man who, like Baxter, writes hymns about taking refuge 
 in an Ark, is normally a heretic by the very nature of 
 his mind; a natural Free-thinker, born to be a reformer 
 and an Apostle of the Hidden Logos. There are, 
 indeed, some who express the sense of trust in God 
 without reference even to an intervening Ark; they find 
 sufficient security in the very Law of the Storm itself. 
 He who is scientific enough to know the rhythmic 
 pulsation which is revealed in the Law of the Storm, 
 feels sure that it will cease when the appointed time 
 has come. Suggestions of this feeling are common in 
 the Hebrew Scriptures ; the following is a modern 
 English instance : — 
 
 " O'er this fair and blooming earth, 
 When the rushing storm has birth, 
 And the winged lightning flies, 
 And the tempest rends the skies, 
 And the sea with deafening roar 
 Rolls its strength along the shore ; 
 Yet within its limits' bound 
 Raves that storm its little round. 
 O'er the flood Jehovah reigns, 
 Ever He a King remains. 
 
 " From the sphere of human things, 
 When Peace waves her parting wings, 
 Bidding mighty Nations quail 
 At the Future's opening veil ; 
 Famine lift her withered hand, 
 Battle waste a sinking land, 
 
20 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 Social warfare, civil strife, 
 Wither all the flowers of life ; 
 Yet within its bounds assigned 
 Is that tempest's wrath confined ; 
 And in limits sealed and set 
 Human passions roll and fret ; 
 O'er the Water-flood Who reigns 
 Evermore a King remains. 
 
 " When above my fainting head 
 Gathering clouds of ill are spread, 
 Wild and dark the Heavens around, 
 Rough my path on alien ground ; 
 Still, O Lord of Hosts, in Thee 
 Shall my trust unwavering be ; 
 For the dwelling of Thy Throne 
 Is where tempests are unknown; 
 And Thy sceptre and Thy sway 
 All life's waves and storms obey ; 
 O'er the Water-flood Who reigns 
 Evermore a King remains." 
 
 George Boole. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 GEOMETRIC SYMBOLS OF PROGRESS BY PULSATION 
 
 " When He made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning, He 
 saw Wisdom ; and to man He said, The fear of the Lord is Wisdom." 
 — Job xxviii. 26 — 28. 
 
 WHILE such Seers as Moses, Isaiah, and Odin were 
 struggling to make the masses attend to the Genesis of 
 things, or process of becoming, to give them some sort 
 of faith in the very existence of any Laws of moral 
 development by reaction, certain thinkers of less actively 
 
Geometric Symbols of Progress 2 1 
 
 social and philanthropic temperament retired into soli- 
 tude to study those Laws in detail, and to impart their 
 knowledge to a few chosen pupils. Many of them 
 studied the Laws of mental development by the method 
 of mathematical analysis. The vulgar called such 
 students Wizards and other harsh names. The pursuit 
 of mathematical Logic was often forbidden ; the books 
 of "Grammarye" were burned; and sometimes the 
 writers and readers of them. At other times Wizards 
 were held in high honour. Is it not possible that the 
 famous breast-plate of Aaron, which was consulted in 
 mental difficulties, may have had inscribed on it a 
 selection of the Natural and Geometric Symbols of 
 orderly mental sequence ? 
 
 In modern times it has been assumed that the study 
 of mathematical Logic must have been " mystical " or 
 " fanciful." But in the middle of last century the Science 
 was revived by a group of writers, among the foremost 
 of whom may be mentioned Babbage, De Morgan, 
 Gratry, and Boole. These philosophers have reclaimed 
 us from bondage to the ignorant dictatorship of the 
 opponents of " Grammarye," by proving that all the 
 more important thought-processes can be illustrated 
 Algebraically. Whatever can be stated in Algebraic 
 symbols may legitimately be expressed, so far as poss- 
 ible, by mechanical action, or in diagrams. The practical 
 possibilities of Algebraic notation are, it is true, far 
 wider than those of mechanical or pictorial representation; 
 but, when a truth has once been expressed Algebraically, 
 it can no longer be considered fanciful to illustrate, by 
 motion or by diagram, as much of it as is capable of 
 such illustration. We are therefore free to teach the 
 
22 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 elements of the Higher Logic, to those unacquainted 
 with the notation of Algebra, by the same methods as 
 were used of old in schools of Free-Masonry and of 
 Prophecy. Messrs. Benjamin Betts and Howard Hinton 
 are creating a simple system of representation, by the 
 use of which the study of Logic by diagrams will some 
 day be carried much further than has ever yet been 
 possible. In this Chapter I propose to give some idea 
 of the elements of the Science which teaches geomet- 
 rically the laws of mental Pulsation. 
 
 A stone, escaping from a sling, exhibits tangential 
 motion, overcoming the counteracting force of the string. 
 According to modern definition, tangential momentum 
 is not, properly speaking, a Force. 
 
 " Let knowledge grow from more to more, yet more 
 of reverence in us dwell ; " reverence for the Light 
 vouchsafed to those who had not our advantages in the 
 way of technical knowledge. To the thinker of the far 
 back ages, these were the facts presented as a basis for 
 speculation : — 
 
 If he dropped a stone from his hand, something made 
 it fall at once, straight towards the earth. If he put it 
 in a string and whirled it, something prevented its either 
 falling as far as the string would allow, or yielding quite 
 freely to the pull of the string. If it escaped from the 
 string, something made it fly, not straight to the earth, 
 but off towards the distant horizon. What were these 
 rival somethings ? Were they warring daemons ? And 
 was his string a magic implement which altered the 
 balance of power between these unseen personalities ? 
 
 If the thinker was a Hebrew Prophet, his doctrine of 
 Unity provided him with an answer. The various 
 
Geometric Symbols of Progress 23 
 
 phenomena were not the work of rival personalities, but 
 various manifestations of the Dunamis or Power exerted 
 by The Unity Who speaks through diversities. And 
 when his confidence in that Unity had given him skill 
 to conquer an opponent, both more richly endowed by 
 Nature than himself and more amply provided with 
 material and mechanical appliances (of learning ?), he 
 went back to his sheepfold and sang under the silent 
 stars : " Oh ! how love I Thy Law ; all the day long is 
 my study in it." The knowledge of Science possessed 
 by the ancient Hebrew was no doubt very elementary ; 
 but perhaps it does his more fortunate European suc- 
 cessor no harm to reflect that, so far as it went, it was 
 sound. Nor is it bad for the over-cultured, over-special- 
 ized, over-examined little victims of advanced education 
 to have their hearts brought into sympathy with the 
 emotions of the Sacred Past, while their fingers are 
 handling its implements, and their intelligence is brought 
 into contact with its problems. The practice of playing 
 with such toys as the sling and stone, the sucking-valve, 
 the old-fashioned rope-maker's wheel, and the bandalore, 
 may be made a means of accustoming children's nerves 
 to the feeling of Nature's opposing tendencies, and may 
 prepare the organization for receiving knowledge, later 
 on, into the conscious mind. By training the hand to 
 trace out Nature's action, we train the unconscious brain 
 to act spontaneously in accordance with Natural Law ; 
 and the unconscious mind, so trained, is the best teacher 
 of the conscious mind. 
 
 Another interesting exercise is that of tracing the 
 Pentagram. Number the angles of a regular Pentagon 
 in order; and draw straight lines from I to 3, from 3 to 
 
24- 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 5, from 5 to 2, from 2 to 4, from 4 to 1. Repeat several 
 times in succession. Choose the size of the Pentagon 
 to suit the size of the hand. After some practice, the 
 Pentagram should be drawn by freehand. The exercise 
 may be varied by tracing the Heptagram, i.e. passing 
 from one point to another of a regular Heptagon in this 
 order — I, 4, 7, 3, 6, 2, 5, 1. Childish as the foregoing 
 description may seem, the tracing of these figures gives 
 a curious feeling of arriving at completeness, by a series of 
 tentative Pulsations backwards and forwards ; and in old 
 days the idea of magic attached itself to the exercise. At 
 a time when the ability to investigate the angles of 
 the Pentagram represented a high degree of mathematical 
 skill, we may imagine that some enthusiast, in a fit of 
 that tender fun which is characteristic of scientific genius, 
 conceived the idea of tracing the figure on his threshold, 
 saying to his pupils, " No lying spirit can enter, nor can 
 science degenerate into sorcery, if study is put under 
 the safe guardianship of accurate mathematics. Very 
 slight inaccuracies," he would add, " leave room for the 
 entrance of any kind of treachery and deception." 
 Later on it came to be believed that drawing a Pentagram 
 on the threshold of a study prevented Satan from 
 entering, provided it were drawn with sufficient accuracy. 
 If at any point the junction were imperfect, the devil 
 entered through the gap ! The process by which the 
 Pentagram degenerated from being the symbol of a 
 scientific accuracy which shields from temptation to 
 duplicity, into being a magic weapon of defence against 
 a personal devil, is typical of all such degradations. 
 
 We now pass from the Science which teaches Natural 
 Law by training the muscles, to that which addresses 
 
Geometric Symbols of Progress 2 5 
 
 itself more directly to the intellect, and through the 
 intellect to the soul. 
 
 The reform in the teaching of mathematics, now in 
 agitation, depends essentially on getting teachers to 
 understand that the chalk in the lecturer's hand becomes, 
 at a given moment in the lesson, a Revealer, independent 
 of (and, for the moment, superior to) the man who holds 
 it ; a Teacher of Teachers, King of Kings, and Lord of 
 Lords. Yet how easily this essential doctrine of mathe- 
 matics slips over into the slavish dogmas which ignorant 
 people connect with the so-called doctrine of Transub- 
 stantiation ! And how wisely did the English Church 
 decree that the " transubstantiated " bread shall be 
 eaten at once, not preserved as sacred ! We do not 
 wish the children to attach superstitious ideas to the 
 chalk (or bread) when the demonstration is over; but 
 if there is to be any vital reform in method we must 
 make young teachers realize that, for a few moments in 
 each lesson, he and the chalk change places ; that for 
 those moments the chalk, not he, is the true intermediary 
 (or mediator) between the Unseen Revealer and the 
 class. We cannot continue to boycott in England all 
 vital mathematical teaching, just because stupid people 
 have talked grovelling nonsense about the doctrine which 
 is its vital essence. 
 
 The manner in which a problem that baffles us when 
 treated on its own level can often be solved by bringing 
 to bear on the solution truths of a higher order than 
 that contemplated when the question was first propound- 
 ed, is well illustrated by the famous 47th Proposition of 
 Euclid. The question proposed for solution is this : — 
 Is there any constant relation between the length of 
 
 B 
 
26 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle and the 
 lengths of the sides ? We are now so familiar with the 
 solution, we have so mechanicalized the process by 
 which the answer is arrived at, that the significance of 
 both escapes us. But let us place ourselves, in imagin- 
 ation, back at the time when the question was as yet 
 unsolved and was being eagerly investigated. In study- 
 ing the earlier problems of Euclid, questions about lengths 
 of lines are settled by striking circles with compasses 
 (which is virtually a process of measuring) ; and questions 
 of area, etc., by superposition. Everything is referred 
 to certain axioms which act as a hurdle set up for the 
 purpose of giving children the exercise of climbing over 
 it. The formal Logic in the beginning of Euclid exer- 
 cises a certain mental agility ; but everything which is 
 really found out, is found out by trusting to the evidence 
 of our senses aided by some mechanical process. 
 
 But when we attempt to find a relation between the 
 hypothenuse and sides of a right-angled triangle, all 
 modes of measurement fail to show any fixed relation, 
 and appear even to show that none exists. Those who 
 were satisfied that nothing was valid except the evidence 
 of the recognized instruments probably asserted that 
 the existence of any fixed relation was disproved. 
 
 But there were true Free-Masons in those days, or 
 rather there were Free Geometers, the founders of Free- 
 Masonry ; bold, untamable spirits, who dared invoke 
 the All -Seeing Eye of the Great Unity to enlighten 
 their blindness; and who well knew that rules limiting 
 the play of the human intellect were made, chiefly, to 
 be defied. They claimed the right to seek Truth out- 
 side the limits marked by orthodox compasses ; they 
 
Geometric Symbols of Progress 27 
 
 knew that, when we find our way stopped in the order 
 of thought to which we have hitherto been confined, 
 such experience is an indication that the time has come 
 to investigate afresh the question of the relation between 
 different orders of thought. By transferring the search 
 for a relation between the hypothenuse and the sides to 
 an order of dimensions higher than that involved in the 
 original question, we find that there is a constant 
 relation, one indeed of absolute equality, between the 
 square on the hypothenuse and the squares on the sides. 
 
 Let us think with sympathy of the orthodox Geome- 
 tricians. They thought, of course, that they had 
 exhausted all the possibilities, and satisfactorily proved 
 that the constant relation sought had no existence. 
 And behold, here come dreamers, who claim the right 
 to overthrow all established boundaries of knowledge ; 
 to evade difficulties by a mere trick ; and to solve the 
 question, declared unsolvable, by reference to some 
 extra-linear order of ideas ! We can well imagine 
 their disgust. Alas for human short-sightedness ! the 
 defenders of orthodox methods are forgotten; and "the 
 dreamers, the derided, the mad, blind men who saw" 
 Truth, because they persisted in ignoring the cobweb 
 barriers raised by intellectual timidity, — these heretics 
 built the Temple dedicated by the Wise Man to The 
 Great Unity ; and they also founded the Geometry of 
 the Future. 
 
 The moral of Euclid is this : — As long as we are 
 investigating relations with no reference to any higher 
 order of ideas than is obviously involved in those 
 relations, we could make each discovery by some 
 empirical method ; a new order of thought begins at 
 
28 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 the point where we introduce into our reasoning con- 
 siderations derived from an order of thought higher 
 than that whose relations we are investigating. 
 
 Now the present condition of moral and religious 
 reasoning is about on a level with that of mathematical 
 reasoning at the time when a few bold spirits were pro- 
 posing to look for an equation between lines in the 
 region of non-linear surface ; and the majority were 
 expressing scepticism and indulging in sneers. The 
 parallel is perhaps all the more accurate, because reason- 
 ing about lines as lines is in itself, and necessarily, in a 
 sense illusory. There is no such thing in Nature as a 
 line, except the edge of a surface (nor, indeed, can there 
 be any surface except the boundary of a solid). 
 
 Thousands of years before any such definite concep- 
 tion dawned in mathematics as that to which the name 
 " dimensions" attaches itself now, it must have occurred 
 to thoughtful men to study the shadows cast by solid 
 objects. The duration of the shadow, it would be 
 observed, is not coeval with that of the substance from 
 which it is projected ; a passing cloud is sufficient to 
 obliterate it. Nor is its form solely determined by that 
 of the solid object, but partly by the position of the 
 latter relatively to the Source of Light. Pondering on 
 this would lead to experiments in shadow-producing. 
 Of the exact course of the shadow-study carried on by 
 wise men of old we have no accurate record ; but who- 
 ever is engaged in prosecuting similar investigations 
 now, is sometimes irresistibly made to feel that he is 
 going over the same ground as has been trodden by 
 some "inspired" writer of the olden time. To avoid 
 controversy, I propose here only to indicate a simple 
 
Geometric Symbols of Progress 29 
 
 method by which any person of average intellect can 
 commence the shadow-study, and introduce children to 
 it. The points of contact between us and the ancients, 
 I shall (with one important exception) leave the reader 
 to find out for himself. I will observe, however, that 
 the shadow-study was a favourite amusement of George 
 Boole ; and it would appear from the Seventh Book of 
 the Republic, that Socrates was familiar with it* 
 
 Those who are only beginning the shadow-study can 
 work most conveniently with a single light overhead. 
 Later on, combined and crossed lights can be used, and 
 in some cases it will be useful to have a movable light. 
 Place on the table a sheet of white paper. Hold 
 between the paper and the light a ring. Call attention 
 to the fact that the same ring casts a circular or an oval 
 shadow, or a straight line, according to the position in 
 which it is held. Also that the same series of shadows 
 is produced by an elliptical ring as by a circular one. 
 Either can be made to cast a shadow resembling in 
 shape the other. A straight line, however (a knitting- 
 needle for instance), cannot be made to cast a curved 
 shadow on a plane ; its shadow is always a straight line, 
 which becomes shorter as the needle is tilted up, till at 
 last it resembles a mere dot. 
 
 If a circular disk of card-board be held horizontal 
 under the light, it can be made to cast a series of 
 shadows resembling in turn each of the conic sections 
 (circle, ellipse, hyperbola, and parabola), by altering the 
 position of the paper on which the shadow is cast. The 
 same series of forms may be produced by placing a 
 
 *This detailed account of the use of these symbols for educational purposes 
 will be found in " The Preparation of the Child for Science." (Oxford : 
 Clarendon Press). 
 
3° Logic Taught by Love 
 
 lighted night-light in the bottom of a tall jar, and throw- 
 ing the shadow of the rim of the jar on surfaces held in 
 different positions. 
 
 The best paper to use is that which is ruled in small 
 squares (it can be procured at the shops which furnish 
 educational apparatus). The paper may with advantage 
 be laid on the table with its lines pointing to the cardinal 
 points of the compass ; so that a line of shadow can be 
 described by stating, e.g., that it crosses so many squares 
 from north to south, and so many from east to west. 
 
 Take a corkscrew-wire, with rings sufficiently large 
 to throw a distinct shadow. It is possible to hold it so 
 that its shadow is a mere circle ; in another position it 
 makes a mere wavy line. An ordinary spiral wire is 
 easily procured, and in practice is sufficient; but we 
 shall gain more instruction about the play of Natural 
 forces if we picture to ourselves what would be the effect 
 of using a spiral whose rings are elliptical. I shall 
 assume here that we are using an elliptical spiral. The 
 wire itself will then represent the path of a planet in 
 space ; one of its shadows pictures the path of the 
 planet round its sun or suns ; another, the path of the 
 whirling storm-wind, to which Jesus compared that of 
 Inspiration. 
 
 Let us now place our (elliptical) spiral in such a 
 position that it casts no shadow except an ellipse, and, 
 for convenience of reference, let us agree that the longer 
 axis points north and south. Let us picture to ourselves 
 a tribe of microscopic creatures, whose true destiny 
 should be to proceed upwards in the direction of the 
 coil as a whole, and who have a blind but irresistible 
 impulse to do so. They have no mode of ascending 
 
Geometric Symbols of Progress 3 1 
 
 except along the wire ; and no mode of expressing 
 statements about distance, except on the paper. They 
 have a vague, dawning consciousness of movement in 
 the up and down direction, and of distance from the 
 paper. In some, this consciousness of up and down 
 is very much more developed than in others. In some 
 it is so weak that they believe it to be mere illusion; in 
 others so strong that they fancy all other modes of 
 movement are illusion. But (we suppose) none can 
 make definite statements about motion, except by refer- 
 ence to the lines on the paper. Progress upwards, 
 therefore, is, for all of them, non-statable except in so far 
 as it is connected with motion across the surface of the 
 paper. 
 
 A group of them have climbed round a half-coil, 
 beginning at the northern extremity of the longer axis; 
 and have now arrived at its southern extremity. Their 
 actual progress has been upwards, and amounts to half 
 the distance between two coils ; their expressed and 
 apparent progress is the length of the longer axis of the 
 shadow-ellipse on the paper. Whether any individual 
 will be most conscious of his actual or of his recorded 
 progress will depend on the condition of his individual 
 consciousness. The condition common to them all is 
 this : — Such progress as is actual is not recorded ; and 
 that which is recorded and registered is not actual nor 
 permanent. 
 
 Every part of the progress which is registered will 
 have to be unmade soon after it is made. Only that 
 which is not registered is permanent. The particular 
 group of creatures under our consideration first made 
 some progress in a direction partly southward, but 
 
32 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 partly also eastward, away from the longer axis. Already 
 they have had to unmake their eastward progress and 
 come back to the longer axis. They have still, however, 
 been able to congratulate themselves on a considerable 
 amount of progress southward; and the optimists among 
 them no doubt set up a theory that, after all, true pro- 
 gress is southward, and the eastward motion was only 
 an accidental concomitant of the southward. But when 
 the extremity of the long axis is reached, a terrible 
 conflict sets in; the upward path is beginning to turn 
 towards the nort/i-west. The southward progress, there- 
 fore, is being lost ! A most dramatic novel could be 
 woven of the conflict of opinion and feeling that would 
 arise, as soon as the nature of the situation came to be 
 realized; for all the tragedy of History is summed 
 up in the prosaic fact that " the actual progress is 
 not statable; the recorded progress will all have to be 
 unmade." » 
 
 Whether the spiral wire was actually used in ancient 
 times to teach the true principle of development, will 
 perhaps never be known. In this connection it may 
 be well to notice that the Spiral of Ascent, the 
 winding pathway, would naturally be represented to the 
 early Geometrician (who lived where snakes were 
 common and corkscrew wires not yet invented) by a 
 snake coiled round a branch and hanging freely. The 
 Geometry of the snake-coil is a more advanced stage of 
 the Logic of the Divining-rod. In the fable of the rods 
 that were shown to Pharaoh, the rods of both parties 
 turned into snakes before that of the good prophet could 
 swallow those of the bad magicians. 
 
 The Pentagram and the Magic Squares and other 
 
Geometric Symbols of Progress 3 3 
 
 puzzles used by ancient ''Wizards" illustrate the same 
 principle, though less clearly. The principle itself was 
 well known to the writer of the narrative of Abraham's 
 calling. Abraham lived at a time when children were 
 recklessly sacrificed to the gods whenever the parent 
 felt prompted to do so. First he saw there was some- 
 thing wrong about that ; children were meant for 
 something better than to be killed. Next, it occurred 
 to him to think that he might be wrong after all ; ought 
 he not to hold himself ready to give his son to God if 
 God willed ? He prepared to obey — if God should will. 
 Then he was led to see that God wills to accept the 
 offering of our children in a different way; we are to 
 offer them to The Unity; but so as to hold them in 
 trust for the establishment of human society. Thus he 
 was led gradually up the spiral of revelation; at each 
 step giving up something which had seemed (though it 
 had not really been) the essence of some previous 
 revelation. 
 
 How Superstition has fastened on that standard 
 narration of spiral progress, of which Abraham is the 
 hero, it is hardly necessary to point out. 
 
 The whirling storm-wind forms an accurate diagram 
 for illustrating the relation of the ex-centric to humanity. 
 Having drawn the spiral, with tangents running in 
 various directions, one tells the pupil that the spiral 
 itself represents the methods of the orthodox Ecclesia, 
 the constituted authorities, the recognized teachers. 
 The tangents represent various paths taken by ex- 
 centrics, non-conformists, men who have received the 
 first personal inspiration, the first birth into a new 
 world ; who have cared, and dared, to go off on lines 
 
34 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 of their own, each investigating as he is impelled by 
 his own genius. 
 
 That is very well for a time ; the youth of genius 
 should find out for himself what is the direction in 
 which he is impelled to go. But before he offers his 
 gift on the National Altar, before he can really contribute 
 to the general store of Knowledge, he must pull 
 himself into line with general progress. How shall he 
 do this? 
 
 The advice usually given is, to conform to the general 
 custom, submit to the orthodox authorities. But there 
 is a better way. The normal to any tangent leads 
 towards the centre of equipoise, of balance, of calm 
 progress ; the spot where is concentrated the maximum 
 of force with the minimum expenditure of force in mere 
 useless motion. 
 
 But how can any man find certainly the true normal 
 to his own tangential direction, the path which will 
 guide his own peculiar genius towards the centre of 
 progress and of power ? 
 
 The direction given by the diagram is emphatic and 
 unmistakable. He should look out for the brother ex- 
 centric who most especially "offends" him, who is going 
 on what seems to him to be most obviously and 
 certainly the wrong road, because it leads in the opposite 
 direction to what he is sure is, for him, the path of 
 inspiration. Let him unify with that brother, call out 
 to that brother to meet him and join hands. When 
 these two meet, they will be in the centre of calm force. 
 This conversion into the normal is the second birth of 
 genius, the Regeneration which converts mere inspiration 
 into Revelation ; for inspiration is at best partial ; 
 
Geometric Symbols of Progress 35 
 
 Revelation comes at the moment of the combination of 
 opposites. 
 
 As the spiral shows, all inspirations are inadequate ; 
 and nearly all are, in themselves, actually misleading. 
 
 A dim suggestion makes itself felt as we think of the 
 spiral wire. The whole coil might, if long enough, be 
 treated as if it were a wire, and wrapped in its turn 
 round and round into a larger coil. We leave this 
 consideration to the imagination of any reader who 
 cares to pursue it. For none have more need of patience 
 and reticence than those who are teaching the art of 
 generalizing mathematical method, who are transferring 
 to the analysis of ethics and history that knowledge of 
 the human mind which is gained by mathematical 
 investigation. All the various rays of light shed by our 
 various studies came originally form One Source, and 
 are meant to be re-united ; but not till the appointed 
 time is come. The danger of premature synthesis is that 
 it leads to the vicious habit of what is called reasoning 
 by analogy ; jumping to conclusions about outer things 
 and historical events. True analogy is of use as throw- 
 ing light on Laws of Thought ; it teaches, not Truth in 
 itself but the nature of the relation of the human con- 
 sciousness to Truth. True Logic is not dogmatic about 
 facts ; it clears the ground of false conclusions, and 
 leaves The Eternal Pulsation to speak in silence to the 
 soul. 
 
 We now go back for a moment to the Tree-Symbol- 
 ism. In the Hebrew Scriptures knowledge is spoken of 
 as a Tree. In the Odin religion we are taught that: 
 Its root is the knowledge of earth and its crown is the 
 knowledge of Heaven. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SABBATH OF RENEWAL. 
 
 " The Church bells were ringing, 
 
 The Devil sat singing 
 On the stump of a rotting old tree: 
 
 1 Oh ! faith it grows cold, 
 
 And the creeds they are old, 
 And the world is nigh ready for me.' 
 
 "The bells went on ringing ; 
 
 A spirit came singing, 
 And smiled as he crumbled the tree : 
 
 'Yon wood does but perish, 
 
 New seedlings to cherish ; 
 And the world is too live yet for thee.'" 
 
 C. KlNGSLET. 
 
 EVERY now and then in History it has happened that 
 some isolated Seer has perceived afresh the vital connec- 
 tion between Mosaism (in the original intention of its 
 Founders) and the scientific doctrine of the renewal of 
 health by rhythmic pulsation. One of the most inter- 
 esting instances of such perception is the Civil Engineer 
 Boulanger, who in the last century wrote a little volume 
 entitled, VOrigine du Despotisme Oriental. 
 
 The work is so advanced in tone that one can hardly 
 believe it is anything but a very clear summary of all 
 that has been discovered since the great French Revo- 
 lution, about the respective effects of fixed mental 
 attitude in religion, and of free ventilation of religious 
 problems. It is not, however, an after-summary, but an 
 anticipation of modern investigations. The author 
 believed in a Creative Unity who is perpetually reveal- 
 
The Sabbath of Renewal 37 
 
 ing himself to man. Every man who once places his 
 feet nrmly on that high vantage-ground, becomes (intel- 
 lectually at least) a Prophet; that is to say, he is able to 
 trace accurately the course of lights not yet arisen above 
 the horizon of persons less fortunately placed. It seems 
 to this writer natural and inevitable that whoever believes 
 in the Divine Unity must be in advance of his age ; so 
 much so, indeed, that he does not understand why the 
 Jewish Prophets should be considered more inspired 
 than other deep thinkers. 
 
 The true Revelation, he considers, was given before 
 the invention of writing. The Bible is an attempt to 
 perpetuate the memory of it by writing ; the rituals of 
 savages aimed to do the same thing in a different way. 
 Truth about religion and government will be brought 
 to light whenever Judaism is frankly compared with the 
 forest and cavern rituals. In fact, his mind seems to 
 have been saturated with the idea that the germ of new 
 Truth will always be found by following up two old 
 strains of tradition to the point from which they origin- 
 ally diverged. 
 
 The second edition of the work is preceded by a letter 
 of sympathy written by Boulanger to console a brother 
 Philosopher who had been reviled and insulted by fanatics. 
 He said that those who are too far ahead of their time 
 to be understood should not puzzle contemporaries by 
 the immediate publication of their ideas, but leave their 
 work for posterity, who will be better able to appreciate it. 
 
 The key-note of the book is the intense conviction 
 that despotism is only made possible by some form or 
 other of idolatry, i. e. by the worship of some defined 
 part of the great Unity. He has a horror of both tyranny 
 
 ±93870 
 
3 8 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 and idolatry not unworthy of a Jewish Prophet. Yet 
 he cultivates a genial sympathy with both tyrants and 
 idolaters. No one, he believes, willingly invents an 
 idolatry or imposes a tyranny. All such evils grow up 
 by the degeneration of what was originally good. This 
 degeneration, he thinks, might be prevented, if free 
 access to all knowledge available at any epoch were 
 given to all persons living at that epoch. The Prophets, 
 he thinks, might have simply annihilated all false re- 
 ligions by explaining how they originated in natural 
 and cosmical appearances. Why then give an apparent 
 reality to the heathen gods by railing against them as 
 if they were real ? The true God would surely have 
 found it as easy to convince idolaters as to punish them. 
 
 He who comments thus on the great men of the past, 
 while professing to think that all accessible truth ought 
 to be made available for all men, seems to have been 
 keeping himself cool in his study, writing a treatise for 
 the benefit of a possible posterity, who would need his 
 instructions all the less for being already enlightened, 
 while his contemporaries were, all around him, sunk in 
 the most degrading slavery and superstition. He is 
 criticizing men like Isaiah and Jeremiah, who had courage 
 to enter into serious conflict with the vices of their own 
 age, at all risk of disturbing the perfect balance of their 
 own nervous systems. And here we find the answer to 
 the question, why Isaiah was more truly a Prophet than 
 Boulanger. A Prophet is a plain utter er ; i.e., he not 
 only sees truths ahead of his age, and thinks that the 
 people ought to know them, but is so filled with the love 
 of truth and right that he cannot lead a life of studious 
 calm while self-interested charlatanism is misleading the 
 
The Sabbath of Renewal 39 
 
 masses ; he feels that he must endeavour, at all cost to 
 himself, to make what he knows accessible to whoever 
 desires to learn it. In other words a man is not, in the 
 fullest sense, a Prophet, unless he is both an inspired 
 Seer, and also an actual Re-former. At all risk of over- 
 balancing himself, such a man holds out a helping hand 
 to whomsoever he sees falling into an abyss. And 
 perhaps few forms of human conceit are more cruel or 
 more blind than the lack of sympathy shown by too 
 many abstractly wise men towards mistakes into which 
 practical reformers may temporarily fall. 
 
 Boulanger paid the natural penalty of his somewhat 
 insincere optimism, and his lack of sympathy with the 
 impassioned Prophets. He committed himself to the 
 prediction that tyranny and bigotry, and therefore the 
 need for vehement resistance, were almost among the 
 things of the past ! Thirty years after his death, the 
 French Revolution exploded; proving that such Prophets 
 as Jeremiah were not yet out of date. 
 
 To return to our author. The Sabbath, he says, was 
 originally a festival of renewal, the permanent memorial 
 of a re-created world. The Law of Moses means The 
 Law adopted by a People saved from flood. When 
 a great misfortune has overtaken a country and des- 
 troyed most of the population, the remnant who escape 
 become, he says, for a time, serious and reverent ; they 
 try to express their gratitude for their preservation by 
 re-organizing society in accordance with the will of the 
 divine Law-giver as revealed in the laws of Nature. But 
 as the knowledge of Nature is, at any given epoch, 
 incomplete, the compilers of human law supplement 
 their lack of knowledge by framing provisional working- 
 
4° Logic Taught by Love 
 
 hypotheses. These hypothetical assumptions ought of 
 course to be held lightly ; men ought to keep themselves 
 always in readiness to substitute for any one of them 
 any ascertained truth. The tendency, however, of the 
 untutored mind is always towards thinking fancy more 
 sacred than fact, and doubtful episodes more divine than 
 ascertained and eternal laws. An instance of this per- 
 version occurs in the history of the Sabbath. Legislators 
 who had discovered by experience the enormous import- 
 ance to human welfare of a periodic rest from labour, 
 wishing to enforce its observance, made a fanciful guess 
 at the origin of the need which they perceived. Once 
 upon a time> the Creator made visible objects on six of the 
 days of the week, and abstained from doing so on Satur- 
 day ! Till somebody discovered a more intelligible 
 explanation, it was hoped that this one would impress 
 the Hebrew mind with the idea of keeping Sabbath. 
 The average Hebrew mind fixed itself on the one frag- 
 ment of fancy lying amid so much solid truth, with the 
 tenacity of a barnacle clinging to a rock ; and alas ! with 
 something of the short-sightedness of a barnacle, which 
 supposes itself safe because it has got tight hold of a 
 scrap of shell ! The Creator left off doing things on 
 a certain Saturday long ago ; therefore it is very wicked 
 to do certain things on Saturday. (And indeed it is 
 only too true that some Jews have so completely missed 
 the essence of the Sabbath idea as to consider it wrong 
 to carry an umbrella to Synagogue, but not wrong to 
 sit at home thinking of accounts ; wrong to write a letter 
 to an absent friend whom one has not time to correspond 
 with in the week ; but quite permissible to " cram " for 
 examinations at any subject which does not involve 
 
The Sabbath of Renewal 4 1 
 
 holding a pen.) The true object of Sabbath, the pre- 
 vention of mental stiffening and moral hardening, the 
 re-creation of moral life by change of mental attitude, is 
 too often lost sight of ; and many people know nothing, 
 and care to know nothing, of all the marvellous science 
 of periodicity by which the exceptional vitality of 
 Judaism has been created, except the one obscure and 
 doubtful statement, that, on one particular Saturday, 
 long ago, creative activity suspended its beneficent 
 operations ! 
 
 And this is a fair sample of the manner in which what 
 once were religious truths degenerate into dogmas full 
 of superstition ; the degeneration being in all cases due 
 to neglect of the study of antiquity. On this point our 
 author insists strongly. So far from the reverent study 
 of antiquity being a cause of superstition and a hindrance 
 to progress, it is the great preservative from the super- 
 stitions which grow up by the degeneration of useful 
 customs. 
 
 The refrain of the book is like the announcement of 
 a new day, a summons to awake to a richer and fuller 
 life. It is a mistake to suppose that Sabbath has any 
 necessary connection with inaction ; the very words 
 Sabbath and Jubilee (the author insists) originally meant, 
 not inaction, but renewal. This message he leaves as a 
 legacy to posterity, who, he trusts, will be able to under- 
 stand him. Cast thy seed upon the waters, and after 
 many days it shall be found ! 
 
 Boulanger describes non-idolatrous religion by a series 
 of delicate negative touches, which, so to speak, chip 
 away, one by one, the elements of idolatry; leaving pure 
 religion to reveal itself. 
 
 c 
 
4 2 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 "Idolatry does not consist, necessarily, in taking a 
 statue, an animal, or a man, as the representative of 
 God ; to define it fully, we must say that every form of 
 worship or code of law is idolatrous which takes as divine 
 that which is not divine. It is not only idolatrous to 
 treat a stone, or beast, or a mortal, as if it were God ; 
 we are also guilty of idolatry if we imagine that the 
 words of that man, or the oracles pronounced through 
 that statue are the very words and decrees of Deity. 
 We are guilty of idolatry when we prefer speculations 
 and mystical chimeras to reason and good sense ; when 
 we treat any legislative code as if it were dictated by 
 the Almighty ; when we endow with a divine character 
 the servant of a theocracy ; when we try to regulate the 
 conduct of men here below by Laws suited only to 
 Celestial beings ; when we confuse heaven with earth ; 
 when we mistake our own position and pretend to be 
 more than mortal ; and when we forsake our own place 
 as citizens of this world and subjects of the Civil 
 Government, either to tyrannize over other men in the 
 Name of God, or to live as recluses, despising or for- 
 getting our fellow-men." 
 
 I have dwelt at length on Boulanger's charming little 
 volume, because it affords a good example of the way in 
 which rational views of the Scripture religion have occa- 
 sionally been held throughout the ages, and have died 
 out owing to the prevailing ignorance about the logical 
 basis of the doctrine of progress by gradual Inspiration. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE RECOVERY OF A LOST INSTRUMENT 
 
 " Hilkiah said, I have found the Book of the Law in the House of the 
 Lord." — 2 Kings xxii. 8. 
 
 To form any adequate conception of the situation in 
 which the founders of the modern pulsation-Logic found 
 themselves, we must imagine a state of things somewhat 
 of this kind. 
 
 Suppose that in some social convulsion, every ophthal- 
 moscope were now to be destroyed, and all the men who 
 use the instrument were to perish, leaving behind a few 
 of those who had been accustomed to see it used, and to 
 clean or otherwise handle it. We must suppose a great 
 many ophthalmoscope-drawings preserved, with notes 
 proving that these purported to be drawings of the retina. 
 
 After society had settled down again, the drawings 
 might begin to attract attention. Thereupon would set 
 in fierce discussion in the medical world. There would 
 be a tradition that certain medical draughtsmen of the 
 19th century had a means of knowing what the living 
 retina looks like ; a means not accessible to ordinary 
 men. Traditions would be handed down that the con- 
 dition necessary for seeing how to do the drawings was 
 induced by holding to one's eye a certain machine. 
 These traditions would be different in form, according 
 as the servant in whose recorded reminiscences it had 
 originated had been accustomed to see his master use 
 this or that form of handle or frame. It might come 
 to be a point of faith to believe that the drawings were 
 done while the artist was wholly or partially entranced. 
 
44 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 On the other hand, some sceptics would assert that the 
 pictures were imaginary, or, at most, founded on mere 
 observations made in the dissecting-room. More acute 
 observers would see that something more than mere 
 invention had been at work, and would suppose that 
 the drawings had been the result of marvellously careful 
 induction, made by comparing the phenomena observed 
 in the dead eye with the symptoms of living patients. 
 At last, in the new civilization, someone living outside 
 the tempest of rival theories, and studying optics for 
 himself, would re-discover the principle of the ophthal- 
 moscope, make one, and actually see living retinas. At 
 once he would perceive that all existing theories alike 
 were provisional working-hypotheses, i.e. t mere expres- 
 sions of ignorance of the essential fact; and that the draw- 
 ings of the mythical 19th century artists must have been 
 really made by the use of just such an implement as his own. 
 
 Now, our discoverer of the future would probably be 
 an aimable man, willing enough to share the joy of his 
 new discovery with whoever desired to possess it ; and 
 equally willing to abstain from worrying with it persons 
 who had no such desire. The mental condition of those 
 who erect working-hypotheses into articles of faith, and 
 who like consecrated theories better than Truth, would 
 be too utterly foreign to his conceptions for him to argue 
 with them. As for those who should desire both to 
 retain their theories about the old drawings, and also to 
 use the new instrument, he would consider them differ- 
 entiated from ordinary lunatics only by not possessing 
 the sincerity of the latter. He would publish an account 
 of his discovery, for the benefit of whoever wished to 
 read about it ; and, having done so, would feel he had 
 
Recovery of a Lost Instrument 45 
 
 fulfilled his duty to society ; and would not think him- 
 self bound to disturb himself any further. 
 
 As some readers may not be acquainted with the 
 nature of the ophthalmoscope, I will tell my parable 
 over again in a simpler form. Suppose there was an 
 island, the inhabitants of which were unacquainted with 
 the principle of numeration, and therefore could only 
 write in numbers singly. They would be able to add 
 and multiply numbers only so far as they could reckon. 
 They would know what such simple numbers as " three 
 times five " make ; and very clever and persevering ones 
 might know what twelve times twelve make. But about 
 all large numbers they would have to guess ; they would 
 have opinions, and discuss, and generally turn out wrong. 
 If they had a tradition among them that certain ancestors 
 of theirs, called Moses and Isaiah, used to pronounce 
 oracularly as to what numbers " like the trees in a forest 
 for multitude " came to, when multiplied together, and 
 always turned out right, they would frame a provisional 
 working-hypothesis that Moses and I saiah were " inspired ," 
 and would argue and jangle as to the precise nature of 
 the " inspiration." Then suppose some islander found 
 out how to " carry," that fortunate individual would 
 know exactly how Moses and Isaiah made sure of their 
 results. And of course the supporters of the rival theories 
 about inspiration would join in calling him hard names ; 
 and equally of course he would not mind what they said, 
 but would go on his own way, and wait till events justified 
 his faith in Rational Arithmetic versus fanciful guesses. 
 
 Now the situation in which the modern discoverers 
 of Mathematical Logic found themselves, was very 
 much like that of our hypothetical new Helmholtz, or 
 
46 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 the island discoverer of the process of " carrying." 
 Certain ancient Prophets had discovered a means — not 
 of communicating with the Unseen (for every man, and 
 woman, and child, and beast does that, until his faculties 
 have been trampled out by the process called nowadays 
 " Education "), but — of making communication with the 
 Unseen safe, by applying a mechanical test to ascertain 
 exactly what is being communicated ; to distinguish, 
 that is to say, the Inspiration of Truth from the sug- 
 gestions of the diseased brain. The difference between 
 old Scriptural and merely poetic inspiration consists 
 precisely in the fact that the inspired men of Palestine 
 possessed such a test. The difference between Prophecy 
 and pseudo-prophecy in old times, consisted in applying 
 the test with utter fidelity, in allowing it to act with 
 mechanical accuracy. Babbage, Gratry, and Boole 
 revived that test. They published their books. Then, 
 finding themselves confronted with dishonest folly, they 
 left the world to come to its senses at its leisure. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 BABBAGE ON MIRACLE 
 "If the children of men are silent, iron and stone shall cry out Hosannah." 
 
 Charles Babbage is chiefly known to the world as the 
 inventor of a machine intended to spare the labour of 
 calculating numerical series. In the course of its con- 
 struction, he had to make a thorough study of the Laws 
 of natural sequence, so far as these are embodied in 
 processes of successive additions. But the man who 
 would think of undertaking such a task at all was sure 
 to see the importance of saturating himself with a 
 
Babbage on Miracle 47 
 
 further knowledge of Nature's series. He investigated 
 not only those mathematical series the equations of 
 which are known, and which underlie such natural 
 curves as planet-paths, lines of refraction, &c. ; but also 
 those forms of Natural sequence the mathematical 
 expressions of which have not yet been ascertained, 
 such as geologic changes, the development of plants 
 and animals, &c. He had nothing to lose or gain by 
 any conclusion to which he might be led ; he had one 
 all-absorbing end in view, the perfecting of his machine; 
 and, for that object, it mattered nothing what the Laws 
 of Nature should turn out to be ; the one desideratum 
 was that he, Babbage, should know what they were, and 
 embody them truly in the construction of his cogs and 
 wheels. One of the facts which he discovered was 
 this : — For one series (numerical or phenomenal) which 
 goes on uniformly, there are an almost infinite number 
 which either sooner or later have interruptions or 
 Singular Terms. His arguments cannot be fully entered 
 on here ; but the main result is this : — Whoever adduces 
 the inflexibility of Law to prove the improbability of 
 Miracle, only proves that he does not understand the 
 connection between Law and Phenomena. No miracle, 
 Mr. Babbage considers, could be, a priori, so improbable 
 as it is that man should learn the true law of any 
 sequence by observing an uninterrupted series of pheno- 
 mena. He says: — "It is more probable that any law, 
 at the knowledge of which we have arrived by observa- 
 tion, shall be subject to one of those violations which, 
 according to Hume's definition, 1 constitute a miracle, 
 
 1 Hume had "deduced the a priori probability against the occurrence of 
 miracle from universal experience." 
 
4 8 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 than that it should not be so subjected. . . . The class 
 of laws subject to interruption is far more extensive 
 than that of laws which are uninterrupted. It is, in 
 fact, infinitely more numerous. Therefore the probability 
 of any law with which we have become acquainted by 
 observation being part of a much more extensive law, 
 and having, to use mathematical language, singular 
 points or discontinuous functions contained within it, is 
 very large." " Miracles are not deviations from the 
 laws assigned by the Almighty for the government of 
 matter and of mind. . . . They are the exact fulfilment 
 of much more extensive laws than those we suppose to 
 exist. In fact, if we were endued with acuter senses 
 and higher reasoning faculties, they are the very points 
 we should seek to observe, as the test of any hypothesis 
 we had been led to frame concerning the nature of those 
 laws. Even with our present imperfect faculties we 
 frequently arrive at the highest confirmation of our 
 views of the laws of Nature by tracing their action 
 under singular circumstances." "A miracle may be only 
 an exact fulfilment of a general law of Nature, under 
 such singular circumstances that, to those imperfectly 
 acquainted with that law, it appears to be in direct 
 opposition to it." "All miracles are prophecies ; . . . 
 they are revelations, more or less in advance, of events 
 which, although in real accordance, are apparently in 
 direct contradiction to the laws of Nature." 
 
 The work from which the above extracts are taken 1 
 forms probably the best introduction in our language to 
 the art of inductive reasoning. It is simple in style, 
 almost entirely free from technicalities, and very reverent 
 
 1 Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. Murray. 
 
Babbage on Miracle 
 
 49 
 
 in tone. It makes no attacks on the special beliefs of 
 any sect, but confines itself to neutralizing the poisonous 
 doctrines of those who oppose Science to Religion, by 
 showing that all attacks made on Faith in the name of 
 Science must necessarily rest on a mistaken apprehension 
 of the bearing of scientific observation. There are, pro- 
 bably, out of the Scriptures, few sublimer conceptions 
 than Mr. Babbage's Vision of future rewards and punish- 
 ments ; he pictures the cruel man, not tortured by an 
 angry Deity, but mercifully awakened to true self- 
 knowledge, by being endowed with senses fine enough 
 to perceive things as God sees them ; and to hear the 
 reverberations, through the infinite ether-spaces, of the 
 long-silenced cries of his victims. It might have been 
 supposed that the book would immediately take a place 
 among educational text-books, among which it is well 
 suited to rank high. But the education of the country 
 was, in those days, in the hands of ecclesiastical parties; 
 and, by common consent, the book was ignored. 
 
 The study of Mathematics seems to have a wonderful 
 tendency both to induce religious faith and to counteract 
 the influence of dogmatists ; and the instinct of the 
 latter class seems to detect this without their being able 
 to give any rational explanation of their dislike. There 
 is a mysterious link, more easy to perceive than to 
 describe, between mathematical truth and the doctrine 
 of the Fatherhood of God in its old Mosaic sense. Of 
 course, the fact of learning at second-hand, and applying 
 to practical uses results arrived at by the investigations 
 of others, has no relation to any sort of religion ; it 
 leaves the field equally clear for dogma or for atheism. 
 But whoever has truly apprehended the nature of the 
 
5° 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 process of mathematical discovery, knows henceforth 
 that the mind in him which can go through such a 
 process is the child of the Creator. Contact with the 
 Mathesis which underlies human thought constitutes an 
 absolute revelation or unveiling of Deity. For this 
 reason mathematicians are usually disliked by priests ; 
 the true mathematician has (though in a very humble 
 manner and small degree) " seen God " ; and the slightest 
 glimpse of that vision is often sufficient to destroy the 
 possibility of believing in priest-made and partial deities. 
 Mr. Babbage says nothing against any particular doc- 
 trine ; but under all his statements there resounds 
 perpetually, as a deep harmonic undertone, the implied 
 thought : " Nature is the representation of the action of 
 those mathematical laws which can also be represented 
 by interrupted numerical series ; I have made a machine 
 which is able to represent to the eye the action of some 
 mathematical laws and the existence of certain inter- 
 rupted series ; therefore my mind is, in its own little 
 way, akin to the Creative Mind. I believe that some 
 such events as those called miraculous must have taken 
 place during some portion of the history of our planet ; 
 but my faith in God rests on no testimony concerning 
 such past wonders ; for I stand in presence of the per- 
 petual miracle that man is made in the Image of God ; 
 a sharer in His power to understand numerical law and 
 impose it on matter; a sharer in His power to apprehend 
 moral law and to be the author of joy and woe : a sharer 
 in His power to trace events to their causes ; and there- 
 fore a sharer in His own immortality. I am, by natural 
 inheritance, a child of the Living God ; and when He 
 has anything to say to me He can say it without the 
 
Babbage on Miracle 5 1 
 
 intervention of a priest." The clergy decided that Mr. 
 Babbage was " an unbeliever " ; and the then rising 
 generation lost the benefit of his aid, to the great injury 
 of . both Religion and Science — " Friends whom we 
 cannot think apart " ; but which, thanks to ecclesiastical 
 jealousies, are made to " seem each other's foe." It is 
 impossible not to detect, in the antagonism excited by 
 such work as that of Mr. Babbage, the same feelings 
 which caused some persons in an Irish town to ill-use 
 a sick and inoffensive stranger (who, as it afterwards 
 turned out, was a Jewess) ; " She says she don't want 
 the parson, nor yet the priest ; so she must be something 
 queer " — the same spirit which has made Gentiles in all 
 ages taunt Judaism with the question — " Where is thy 
 God ? " 
 
 The result of introducing Mr. Babbage's book into 
 a school, is a spontaneous development of the feeling 
 expressed in the Pentateuch: that properly taught people 
 are a nation of priests and can find God each for himself. 
 The book to which he gave the name " Ninth Bridge- 
 water Treatise" can occasionally be procured at second- 
 hand ; and whoever reads it carefully finds it the 
 entrance to a rich mine of religious truth, of a peculiarly 
 elastic and liberal kind. Its teaching leaves the mind 
 free to believe without difficulty in the existence of any 
 order of phenomena, however miraculous-seeming, for 
 which there may appear to be sufficient evidence ; but 
 destroys the inclination to address actual worship to 
 anything except the Divine Unity. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 GRATRY ON LOGIC 
 " Blessed are they that have not seen and yet believe." 
 
 Mathematical Logic used to beexpressed in Geometric 
 or quasi-Geometric diagrams. We now write it usually 
 in a terminology borrowed from Algebra. 
 
 Modern Mathematical Logic may be said to be a tree, 
 whose root is represented by the Newtonian Fluxion- 
 method ; and its trunk by the Logique of Gratry 1 ; 
 while its main branches are such works as those of 
 Babbage, De Morgan, Boole, and Hinton ; and the 
 Sciences of Quaternions and of the so-called Fourth- 
 Dimensional Mathematics. Carrying on the same simile, 
 we might add that the numerous little twigs of special 
 methods thrown off from the main boughs would have 
 all the more chance of being fruitful if they were not so 
 ready to sever their connection with the stock from 
 which they sprang. As a matter of chronology, the 
 treatises of Babbage, De Morgan, and Boole were pub- 
 lished before the first appearance of the Logique. But 
 then it must be remembered that Science is not created 
 by the printer ; books merely represent, in visible form, 
 a thought-growth which has its actual existence in the 
 Mind of Humanity ; and the chronological order in 
 which the several parts of a new Science are projected 
 on to the surface of Literature is not always identical 
 with the order in which they were evolved. Mathe- 
 matical Logic will be best understood by those who 
 
 1 Logique^ Gratry, 2 vols. Douniol, Paris. 
 
Gratry on Logic 
 
 53 
 
 master the ideas of Gratry before entering upon the 
 study of the more detailed but less philosophically 
 comprehensive treatises of the other writers referred to 
 above. As a matter of fact, neither Babbage nor Boole 
 could have done what he did had he not perceived the 
 truth of some principle analogous to that of Gratry. 
 
 And there is no greater hindrance to human progress 
 than lack of piety towards Humanity's best teachers. 
 The statement may be considered a truism ; but un- 
 fortunately we are all too prone to neglect truisms. 
 Principles so self-evident that no one disputes them, 
 occupy less attention than do theories about which it is 
 possible to get up a controversy ; and the settlement of 
 a fierce dispute is often best effected by insisting on the 
 practical recognition of some principle which everybody 
 concerned is disregarding, precisely because nobody has 
 attempted to deny its truth. I repeat : — 
 
 There is no greater hindrance to progress than lack 
 of piety towards great teachers ; this is well shown by 
 the whole history of Logic since the publication of 
 Gratry's Logique in 1855. 
 
 Any Seer of a great comprehensive Truth, such as 
 Gratry, is necessarily ahead of his age. He may be, in 
 a sense, appreciated by his contemporaries ; that is to 
 say, he may be loved for his goodness, and admired 
 because of certain secondary results of the intellectual 
 Vision which has been vouchsafed to him ; but the very 
 essence of such a man's position is that he is seeing 
 truths for which the world around him is not yet ready. 
 When Gratry was writing his Logic, he was looking 
 through the intellectual debacle which was then only 
 beginning, and beyond it, to the new-created thought- 
 
54 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 world which might arise from amid the chaos, if the 
 next generation would wisely consider its ways. No 
 reader can properly understand Gratry who does not 
 realize the nature of the cataclysm of which he was 
 watching the beginning ; and few persons in his time 
 had any adequate conception of what was coming on 
 the intellectual world. The condition of confusion 
 which he foresaw in prophetic vision, we know as an 
 indisputable and terrible fait accompli. He wrote, 
 therefore, rather for us than for his contemporaries ; to 
 them he brought, chiefly, a warning, unintelligible to 
 the majority, of stormy weather ahead ; to us he offers 
 practical pilotage through an actual hurricane. 
 
 But, alas ! how shall we persuade young men trained 
 in " the newest methods," that an Oratorian monk of 
 fifty years ago was a better logician than they ? " Gratry ? 
 oh ! no doubt he was very clever for his time. But — 
 he had not read any of our modern authorities ; what 
 can he have known of our new methods ? " The young 
 teacher, who is preparing pupils for examinations by 
 the help of the last new text-book, and who perhaps 
 hopes to make a name for himself by compiling a still 
 newer one, resents being told of one greater than the 
 author most in repute. So it happens that the writer, 
 who was hardly understood in his own day because he 
 was so far ahead of the age, is shunted into oblivion, 
 when the time comes when he could be understood, 
 because it suits the purposes of interested persons to 
 believe that he is behind their age. The main cause of 
 the chaotic condition into which our thought-life has 
 fallen, is the feverish impatience of teachers, each of 
 whom wants to make his own voice heard. But any 
 
Gratry on Logic 
 
 55 
 
 teacher who is weary of the conflict between Science 
 and Religion, between Knowledge and Faith, between 
 the valuable Lessons of Materialism and the consoling 
 belief in the spiritual world ; any teacher who sincerely 
 desires, not to make a cheap and noisy fame for himself, 
 but to find Truth and Peace for the young souls com- 
 mitted to his care, might do well to devote a quiet 
 vacation to the study of Gratry's Logique. 
 
 Our author begins by clearly recognizing that mathe- 
 matics is not so much a department of human thought 
 as the ground-plan of all sane thought; he treats mathe- 
 matical Science, not as a special set of truths, but as 
 a map of the country in which Truth is to be found. 
 He of course entirely repudiates the profane notion that 
 mathematical Logic can afford any proof or disproof of 
 religious truths ; but he shows that mathematical 
 reasoning throws light on the nature of valid proof of 
 every kind. The faculties by which the existence of 
 God is revealed to us are hyper-intellectual ; the processes 
 by which we learn spiritual truth are extra-syllogistic ; 
 and it pleases a certain school of reasoners to deny their 
 validity. Gratry shows that, but for the exercise of 
 similar faculties and the use of similar processes, we 
 could have discovered nothing of the Higher Mathematics. 
 It pleases certain Agnostics to assert that " it is im- 
 possible to reason from the finite to the Infinite." The 
 same objection was formerly made against the Integral 
 Calculus, but the Integral Calculus is now an accepted 
 fact ; and any one who cares to learn can know exactly 
 how to " integrate a finite expression to Infinity," and 
 can make sure that his results are absolutely correct. 
 No' true mathematician depends on testimony for his 
 
56 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 knowledge of mathematics ; each has within himself as 
 absolute a personal conviction of the validity of the 
 processes by which he works out his results, as if those 
 processes were purely syllogistic. None the less is that 
 conviction arrived at by a mode of mental action 
 essentially of the same nature as that far more vigorous 
 and sustained mental exercise by which we arrive at 
 a sound and rational faith in God. 
 
 " Reasoning is not one process only, it contains two 
 processes, equally valid ; but the second is by far the 
 most powerful and most fertile. The syllogistic process 
 deduces, passing from like to like. It never leaves its 
 original stand-point ; it never rises above that stand- 
 point. It develops what it originally possessed. The 
 other process, the dialectic, rises above its own starting- 
 point ; it does not merely develop the material which 
 it originally possessed, it acquires fresh material. . . . 
 This process passes from the finite to the Infinite. . . . 
 This is the process of prayer. . . .Whence it follows that 
 the human mind is capable of a process which, when it 
 is taught as a part of Logic, will give wings to Logic 
 which before had only feet. . . . The Logic of the high- 
 est philosophers, both practical and theoretical, has always 
 had wings. But the class of average thinkers exerts 
 itself chiefly in trying to cut those wings, and seems to 
 have succeeded. They must learn to recognize their 
 error, or rather their crime." The author then quotes 
 the following passage from Cournot : — " The process by 
 which the mind seizes new truths is often quite distinct 
 from that by which it connects known truths together ; 
 and most important truths have been first seen by the 
 help of that philosophic sense which precedes rigorous 
 
Gratry on Logic 
 
 57 
 
 proof." Gratry objects to Cournot speaking as if one 
 process was less rigorous than the other. And, in fact, 
 we are quite as sure what is the result of an " integration 
 to Infinity," as of what is the answer to a Rule of Three 
 sum. 
 
 Suppose that a marble is running round in an elliptical 
 groove under our eyes. Geometry enables us to investi- 
 gate the relations between the various portions of the 
 course which we see it pursue. But we know its course 
 by direct inspection. Geometry can but arrange into a 
 convenient form, information which we have gathered 
 by observation; or, at most, it shortens the processes by 
 which we acquire information. But when an Astronomer 
 has observed a small portion of the orbit of a heavenly 
 body, it disappears from his ken. He has to construct 
 in imagination its future path, guided by knowledge of 
 the hidden law of its motion. In order to do so, he 
 must resort to the method of the Infinitesimal Calculus; 
 the method thus described by Gratry : — " We have 
 analyzed the finite in order to know the infinitesimal. 
 From the knowledge given by the study of the finite, 
 we have eliminated the quality of finiteness ; what 
 remains is true for the infinitesimal ; that is to say, for 
 the analysis and knowledge of the Indivisible and the 
 Infinite. We have analyzed the discontinuous, the 
 divisible, the finite ; and have found therein the law of 
 the Continuous, the Indivisible, the Infinitesimal." 
 
 But when we know the theoretical law of the planet's 
 course, how do we know that, when we have lost sight 
 of it, it still continues to obey the Laws of Mathematics ? 
 No Syllogistic Logic can prove that it does not wander, 
 lawlessly, into space. Yet the mathematician ventures 
 
 D 
 
58 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 to construct, in imagination, its whole course. He is 
 enabled to do so by an act of Faith — faith in the Great 
 Unity Who governs Nature ; faith which is the evidence 
 of things not seen. This act of Faith is so elementary 
 and spontaneous, that only a few deep thinkers have 
 recognized it for what it is. But slight as it is, all the 
 delights and powers conferred by the Higher Mathe- 
 matics are the reward of that simple trust ! See how 
 The Unity keeps His ancient covenant with man! Eye 
 hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it yet entered into 
 the heart of man to conceive, what He hath in store for 
 those that love Him ! 
 
 And slight as is the act of faith needed to understand 
 transcendental mathematics, many are unable to perform 
 it. There are so-called mathematicians who confess 
 themselves unable to see the validity of the reasoning 
 on which the Higher Mathematics rests ; they only see 
 that it must be somehow right because predicted eclipses 
 and comets appear in due season; and they therefore 
 assume the legitimacy of the stand-point whence pre- 
 dictions are made ; but their own mental action goes no 
 deeper than working out the syllogistic consequences of 
 a knowledge which they do not properly possess. They 
 believe because they have seen prediction fulfilled. 
 Blessed are they who believe in The Unity before they 
 see. No possession of any fact which we know only 
 through the intellect or the senses can equal the inti- 
 mate and rapturous sense of Union with the Great Unity 
 which is given to him who is enabled by faith to trace 
 in imagination the exact course of a planet out of sight. 
 
 Now if persons incapable of understanding transcen- 
 dental mathematics should presume to claim from true 
 
Gratry on Study 59 
 
 mathematicians a profession of ignorance about all of 
 which they themselves are ignorant, such arrogance 
 would faintly picture that of much (so-called scientific) 
 Agnosticism. 
 
 Gratry seems to have foreseen that the Science of 
 Induction would never be developed except by the 
 unselfish co-operation of several men, each of whom 
 should be willing to subordinate his own personal work 
 to the carrying out of a common aim. Mr. Boole's 
 work was, as he gratefully acknowledged, made possible 
 by the generous and self-forgetting aid freely given to 
 him by many contemporary mathematicians ; and in 
 particular by Professor De Morgan, who seemed to take 
 a pleasure in effacing himself to bring forward the man 
 whom he might have been expected to feel a rival. 
 And one of my pleasantest recollections of Mr. Boole 
 himself, is his studying with loving and almost rapturous 
 delight the pages of the Oratorian Father, who had 
 stated with masterly and exhaustive completeness the 
 fundamental principle which he himself had been vainly 
 endeavouring to express. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 GRATRY ON STUDY 
 " Seek ye the old paths." 
 
 It is not only as showing the true nature of logical 
 evidence that Gratry throws light on the intellectual 
 problems of our day. His treatment of the question — 
 What constitutes valid evidence ? contains an answer 
 
6o Logic Taught by Love 
 
 partial, of course, but certainly sound as far as it goes, to 
 that other question : — What constitutes true Education ? 
 
 The special point in debate among teachers just now 
 is, whether Education means teaching children truths, 
 or drawing out the faculties by which man discovers 
 Truth for himself. 
 
 One of the most terrible facts with which we have to 
 deal in Education, is that on this point all the real 
 thinkers are on one side, and nearly all the practice 1 on 
 the other. Among those who are really thinking about 
 Education, the unanimity is so great as to be monotonous. 
 We have had unequivocal expressions of opinion at the 
 Education Society. Professor Maurice and James 
 Hinton (who by no means agreed in most respects) 
 were both strong on this point : — Education means 
 educing faculty, and does not mean imparting knowledge 
 or instilling opinions. Theorists say — and say very 
 truly — that no amount or kind of practice in remem- 
 bering and writing out at examinations results arrived 
 at by the investigations made by other people, con- 
 stitutes any exercise of the faculties by which truth is 
 discovered, or any adequate preparation for solving the 
 practical problems which present themselves in the 
 course of every human life. They maintain that no 
 child is really being educated, except in so far as those 
 faculties are being educed and strengthened, by the use 
 of which Truth is brought to light from amidst a chaos 
 of contradictory-seeming phenomena. 
 
 Yet some power mightier than all arguments is 
 preventing these would-be reformers from effecting their 
 
 1 This was written nearly twenty years ago. It is no longer quite true ; 
 but I let it stand. 
 
Gratry on Study 61 
 
 purpose. The practical men insist on keeping up a 
 routine of teaching things which can be tested by 
 Examination. It is easy to rail at practical men, but 
 they are the drag on our impetuosity. Magna est Veritas 
 et prevalebit. A doctrine which does not prevail is not, 
 yet, quite true. The resistance of practical men to our 
 efforts is the resistance of the calyx to the premature 
 unveiling of the imperfect corolla. Instead of railing 
 against those who oppose us, would it not be better to 
 mature our ideas and make our method complete, and 
 therefore irresistible ? 
 
 The truth is that, in the desperate struggle on behalf 
 of the principle that Education means educing faculty \ 
 the supporters of that principle are too much losing 
 sight of the vital question : — What faculties is it most 
 important to educe ? Where the advocates of Education 
 versus Examination get their own way, the result often 
 is that too much mental force is absorbed into a minute 
 and monkey-like inquisitiveness about visible pheno- 
 mena, and often the production of a skill, more wonderful 
 than useful, in the observation of certain classes of facts 
 to the neglect of all other facts ; and in the study of 
 mathematical methods of analysis of principles, to the 
 neglect of vital comprehension of the principles them- 
 selves in their bearing on human development. 
 
 Gratry is as sure as any Science-teacher of the present 
 day, that Education means educing the faculties by 
 which man discovers Truth for himself. But : — what 
 Truth ? And what faculties ? The highest object of 
 intellectual culture, according to Gratry, is to educe and 
 fortify the sense by which we perceive what the Unseen 
 Teacher is saying to us. 
 
62 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 " Do you know whom you are going to have for your 
 Teacher ? God. The time has come when you will 
 put into practice the command of Christ — 1 Call no man 
 your master on earth ; for One is your Master, even 
 God.' . . . You have heard and said that God is Light 
 and enlightens every man. Do you believe this ? If 
 so, then accept all the consequences of that belief. If 
 you believe that you have within you a Master Who 
 wills to teach you, say to this Master, as you would say 
 it to a man standing in front of you : ' Master, speak to 
 me ; I am listening.' 
 
 "But then, after you have said, 'I am listening,' you 
 must listen. This is simple, but of primary importance. 
 
 "In order to listen, we must have silence. Now who, 
 I ask, among men — especially among those who consider 
 themselves thinkers — ever secures for himself silence ? 
 
 "All day long the student listens to other men's talk; 
 or else, he talks himself ; when he is supposed to be 
 alone, he is making books talk to him as fast as his eye 
 can move along the lines of print. . . . His solitude is 
 peopled, besieged, cumbered ... by useless talkers and 
 by books which are a mere hindrance to thought. . . . 
 Believe me, one who studies thus will learn little or 
 nothing ; just because there is only one Teacher, and 
 this Teacher is within us ; because we must listen before 
 we can hear Him ; and to listen we must have silence." 
 
 Nevertheless, Gratry insists that no man is really 
 educated unless he knows, and knows well, the essential 
 principles of all the important Sciences. His list of 
 requirements seem at first sight a formidable one. The 
 cultivated man must know enough of the Higher 
 Mathematics to understand the principles of Mathe- 
 
Gratry on Study 63 
 
 matical Induction ; because " he who can understand 
 the principle of Induction will be for ever preserved 
 from atheism and materialism." (This implies a far 
 deeper acquaintance with mathematical philosophy than 
 is necessary to become a Senior Wrangler.) As for 
 Astronomy, Gratry thinks the ignorance of the public 
 about so grand a Science very strange. He mentions 
 successively, Physics, Physiology, Geology, Geography, 
 History, and Moral Science ; of each of which he 
 requires the cultivated man to know considerably more 
 than a mere smattering. Finally comes Theology. 
 Gratry is tolerant to those who differ from him in 
 opinion ; but he does not understand how it can happen 
 " that every educated man does not know by heart the 
 Articles of the Christian faith. 
 
 " If you are Christians these Articles contain the 
 details of your faith. ... If you are enemies of Chris- 
 tianity, take the trouble to know what are the statements 
 against which you are fighting ; your blows will thus be 
 dealt less at random." 
 
 Gratry has here laid bare one of the principal causes 
 of the mental confusion of our time. No man, to 
 whatever denomination he belongs, ought to be con- 
 sidered educated^ who does not know what are the 
 essential principles both of Mosaic teaching and of the 
 Catholic Faith. What, for instance, does European 
 History mean, to one who has no clear conception of 
 the nature of those thoughts and feelings which have 
 moulded our civilization ? 
 
 But the question naturally presents itself: — If we are 
 to spend a large portion of our time in listening to the 
 Voice of the Unseen, instead of reading, how can such 
 
64 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 a mass of positive information be acquired ? Gratry's 
 answer is similar in kind to that given later by Hinton, 
 but expressed in a manner both more methodical and 
 more safe than Hinton's. Gratry bids the student keep 
 perpetually by him, for his guidance, the living belief 
 that, as The Creator is One, so must the Science of that 
 which He has created be one also. " Fear neither the 
 magnitude, nor the number, nor the diversity of the 
 Sciences. Study will be simplified, harmonized and 
 fertilized, by comparing one Science with another." 
 We seem to hear Moses of old proclaiming the formula 
 of freedom and of power : — " Hear, O Israel ! The 
 divided gods enslave us ; the Deliverer from bondage 
 is the Unity." 
 
 And as we might facilitate our work by unifying the 
 Sciences into One Science, so we should also treat the 
 revelations of all times as One Eternal Truth. This is 
 best done by studying each Science according to the 
 historical method ; letting the culture of to-day flow into 
 our minds in natural sequence from that of yesterday. 
 It is vain that we rise early and late take rest, and 
 anxiously devour many books ; to those who love The 
 Great Unity, He gives knowledge even while they 
 sleep. 
 
 If any social phenomenon of our time is more 
 astounding than the ignorance of important facts dis- 
 played by many professed scientists, it is the feebleness 
 of mental grasp exhibited by many students of the 
 so-called " mental and moral " Sciences. Their thought- 
 modes suggest nothing so much as the thin rapid pulse 
 generated by exhaustion and over-excitement. This 
 singular psychic condition is clearly traceable to the 
 
Gratry on Study 65 
 
 fatigue caused by the destruction of ancient landmarks. 
 A cultivated mind shrinks indeed from acknowledging 
 as the substance of its faith any more of Truth than so 
 much as it has made its own ; but the limit of personal 
 faith is not necessarily that of historical knowledge. 
 Unity of thought is promoted, and the process of self- 
 culture enormously facilitated, by having always at hand 
 in one's memory, in a compact form, the best results of 
 the mental labour of preceding ages. A creed or 
 formulary acts as what Hinton called " an unconscious 
 constant " ; a crystallizing thread round which atoms of 
 knowledge may gradually gather, instead of being swept 
 away by every current of thought, or retained only by 
 vehement effort. Nothing makes study at once so 
 exhausting and so unprofitable as the absence of any 
 frame-work of registered propositions. Nothing, there- 
 fore, can be more fatal to intellectual progress than the 
 random destruction of those ancient formulae which 
 create, as it were, a common language between men ; 
 and between the successive epochs of life, both personal 
 and national. The attempt to acquire power and freedom 
 for intellectual pursuits by keeping oneself ignorant of 
 ancestral Theology would seem to be about on a level, 
 for practical efficacy, with the attempt to gain facilities 
 for the study of human life by living like a savage. 
 Even those who wish to explore barbarous regions find 
 that they can do so to more purpose if they carry about 
 with them, in a compact form, a judicious selection of 
 civilized appliances. Setting aside all considerations of 
 religion, the European who is not familiar with the 
 various clauses of the Athanasian Creed gives one the 
 same sense of lack of culture as does an Englishman 
 
66 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 unacquainted with Shakspere, or a Jew who has not 
 read Isaiah. 
 
 And the vicious system which is sweeping away the 
 frame-work of association by which we are connected 
 with the past, is only consistent in its folly, in that it 
 provides no substitute whereby the individual child may 
 be connected with its own past. As soon as a child 
 has passed an Examination in a certain " standard," he 
 casts aside that standard, and learns something different. 
 There is no formula which is solemnly repeated every 
 day or every week throughout his school career. Suicidal 
 blindness could no further go. 
 
 We may sum up the reflections suggested by the 
 Logique of Gratry, by saying that the feverish feebleness 
 of ephemeral Scientism is a part of that grand process 
 of Natural Selection by which irreverence, impiety, and 
 conceit are, in each age, weeded out, to leave room for 
 something more worthy to endure. Excessive special- 
 ization is always more or less idolatrous. Those who 
 alternate an intelligent interest in the Science of their 
 own day with seasons of pious meditation on the aspira- 
 tions of the mighty dead, renew their strength like 
 young eagles, and their days shall be long in the land. 
 They shall inherit the possessions of time-serving 
 idolaters. They shall attract peoples that they know 
 not, and nations who knew them not shall seek them ; 
 and great shall be the peace of their children ; for such 
 is the heritage of the servants of the Lord. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 BOOLE AND THE LAWS OF THOUGHT 
 " Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is Unity." 
 
 SIXTY years ago, logicians had concluded that it would 
 be convenient to express ordinary statements about facts 
 in some sort of Arithmetical or Algebraic notation, so 
 as to be able to work out the logical consequences of 
 premises with the same ease as we work sums. Many 
 attempts were made to create such a notation ; but none 
 of them proved satisfactory. There was in Lincoln 
 a school-master in humble circumstances, who had, 
 when a mere lad, solved for himself a problem of a very 
 different order. It had occurred to him that the Scrip- 
 ture writers must have had some reason for laying so 
 much stress on the command never to think of The 
 Great All except as a Unity. He had acquired the 
 habit of thinking of each class of things as a fraction of 
 Unity. He found that this habit simplified all study ; 
 and by strict adherence to it he had, in the very small 
 amount of leisure at his disposal, made of himself a 
 fairly good linguist, a learned metaphysician, and 
 a mathematician distinguished for the originality and 
 vigour of his methods of investigation. When, there- 
 fore, he realized what was the problem over which 
 logicians were pondering, it naturally occurred to him 
 to try on their behalf the experiment of using the 
 Arithmetical Symbol of Unity for Universe of Thought. 
 Immediately the notation fell easily into order, and all 
 the difficulties vanished. 
 
68 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 As simple obedience to the commands of the Penta- 
 teuch had enabled George Boole to solve the questions 
 which the logicians of the 19th century could not solve, 
 it seemed probable that the writers of Scripture knew 
 more than was commonly supposed about the normal 
 action of the human mind. He set himself the task of 
 making a serious study of the Laws of Thought-sequence; 
 aided by the conversation of a Jewish friend, a teacher 
 of Hebrew at Lincoln. In 1854 he published a book to 
 which he gave the title, The Laws of Thought. 
 
 A strange result ensued. The author had felt obliged 
 to show that his system was not a mere fanciful outcome 
 of religious fervour ; and, in order to do this, he had 
 interspersed his serious analysis with exhibitions of 
 delicate and skilful modes of extracting the legitimate 
 consequences from masses of premises. Those who were 
 on the look-out for a rapid method of manipulating 
 syllogisms, were at first delighted to find their problem 
 solved ; and it is impossible to speak too highly of the 
 generosity with which several eminent logicians did 
 honour to the man of whom they evidently thought only 
 as a rival in their own line. But it seems never to have 
 occurred to them that any one could care for Logic 
 except as a method of reasoning. They proceeded to 
 improve the method of the book called Laws of Thought, 
 by leaving out of it all that could throw light on the 
 Laws of Thought-Sequence ! 
 
 Mr. Stanley Jevons earned a wide-spread fame as the 
 improver of Boole's method. George Boole's own ver- 
 sion of the matter was that Mr. Jevons and he were 
 working for totally different objects, and that no inter- 
 course between them could be of the least use to either. 
 
Boole and the Laws of Thought 69 
 
 His chief anxiety seemed to be to make it impossible 
 that Mr. Jevons should appear as in any way authorized 
 by him. In later years Mr. Jevons was heard to say : 
 " Boole means something that no one has understood 
 yet; the world is not ready to understand him." The 
 solution of Mr. Jevons' perplexity might have been found 
 in the very title of the work on which he was comment- 
 ing. The symbols which such logicians as he quite 
 rightly discard from Boole's notation, because they are 
 useless and cumbersome and even misleading when 
 employed to work out logical problems, are the necessary 
 implements which those must learn to use who wish to 
 apply mathematical processes to analyze for themselves 
 the Laws of Thought. Had George Boole been chiefly 
 aiming to supply logicians with a ready-made method, 
 his method must be confessed a very bad one ; he was 
 aiming to set the example of studying the Laws of 
 Mental Action. 
 
 The nature of the change introduced by George Boole 
 into logical analysis may be summed up thus : — In 
 working a sum or equation, we seem to ourselves to be 
 only manipulating and transforming the particular 
 statements contained in the so-called "stating" of our 
 question. But these very transformations are effected 
 by means of our knowledge of certain general truths 
 about number, such, for instance, as those registered in 
 the multiplication-table. " Working " a sum means 
 combining its special statements with general state- 
 ments which are latent in the mind. Working a thought- 
 sum, then, should mean transforming its premises by 
 combining them with our general knowledge of the 
 Laws of Mental Action. And, in fact, the \ istotelian 
 
7° Logic Taught by Love 
 
 syllogism was, so far as it went, a process of this very 
 kind; it brought a certain thought-law into contact with 
 the special premises of each argument; and, by means 
 of that general law, extracted the conclusion. To make 
 Logic a more powerful instrument than it had hitherto 
 been, what was needed was not, as Gratry seems to 
 suggest, to import into it a new process, the process of 
 faith; but to extend and make freer and more vigorous 
 our use of that process ; seeing that every syllogism is, 
 so far as it goes, an act of faith in the general Laws of 
 the Creative Logos. The Aristotelian Logic was, in 
 fact, an Arithmetic of reasoning, analogous to such an 
 Arithmetic of number as might be evolved by a race 
 whose general knowledge of the Laws of Number 
 amounted to familiarity with the "twice" column of the 
 multiplication-table. 
 
 We may say then that what logicians had been 
 seeking, though without quite knowing what they sought, 
 was a Logic made wide and vigorous by using all 
 attainable knowledge of the Laws of Thought as freely 
 as, in working sums, we use our knowledge of the Laws 
 of Number. Such a Logic, it need hardly be added, is 
 yet to be created ; though George Boole did a little 
 towards laying its foundations. He brought to light 
 three great principles of mental action : — 
 
 First, that all sound thinking treats the Universe of 
 Thought as a Unity ; and classes of things as fractions 
 of Unity; and that Unity itself as a fraction of a larger 
 Unity. 
 
 Secondly, that we cannot deal logically with any 
 statement except by comparing it impartially with the 
 opposite statement. 
 
Boole and the Laws of Thought 71 
 
 Thirdly, that sound Thought is always essentially a 
 free Pulsation between extremes. All selection, whether 
 by an adult for himself, or by a teacher for his pupils, 
 should consist in selection of the question to be studied. 
 When once we have decided what we will think about, 
 we must think with perfect impartiality on both sides. 
 In mathematical language we state this by saying that 
 every sound thought-process which can be carried on 
 with respect to any element (V), depends in some way 
 or other on considering first as Unity {i.e. Universal 
 and absolute throughout the Universe of Thought), and 
 then as Zero (i.e. non-existent in the Universe of 
 Thought), and then combining the two conceptions. 
 Right conduct (it is often said) is that which keeps the 
 mean between two extremes. Now to know the mean 
 we must know the extremes. Sound thought is related 
 to correct conduct as the pulsation of a Light-ray is 
 related to the onward path of the ray. Whatever 
 hampers the free, side-ways pulsation of the wave from 
 one extreme to the other, interferes with the pure white- 
 ness of the Light ; whatever hampers the free swinging 
 of the mind between extremes of opinion, obstructs 
 man's vision of what is right in moral conduct. 
 
 A country watchmaker, being asked why being dirty 
 made a watch go fast instead of slow (as the questioner 
 would have expected), replied: "Well, you see, when the 
 wheels are clogged with dirt, it don't go ; not to say go; 
 it only niggles-like." This is the explanation of the 
 hurry and fever of life. Our minds are clogged with 
 prejudices and trammelled with superstitions ; and they 
 don't really work, they "only niggle-like." We think 
 we are giving our children freedom by presenting to 
 
7 2 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 them a mass of novel ideas, the truth of which has not 
 yet been tested, and by indoctrinating them with a mass 
 of prejudices which differ from those of our forefathers 
 chiefly by being expressed in new phraseology; it would 
 be better to present to them a few subjects of study, 
 selected according to some order which has been tested 
 by long experience; and, when once a child's attention 
 has been called to any topic, encourage him to think of 
 it with absolute freedom and utter impartiality. This, 
 and not any particular method for manipulating masses 
 of syllogisms, is the main outcome of Boole's mathe- 
 matical analysis of the Laws of Thought. It is a curious 
 compilation ; over-weighted with too great a mass and 
 variety of material. In its attempt to bring the intellect 
 and heart to work in unison, it fails to make its appeal 
 to either easily intelligible. It needs a far closer study 
 than ordinary readers can be expected to give to an 
 author. Nevertheless, it is a very amusing book, 
 because of its latent satire on those mental processes 
 which religious and ethical writers call "thinking." A 
 few quotations will make clear the author's opinion of 
 ordinary religious controversy. 
 
 " I shall examine what are the actual premises in- 
 volved ; whether those premises be expressed or implied. 
 By the actual premises I mean whatever propositions 
 are assumed in the course of the argument, without 
 being proved, and are employed as parts of the 
 foundation upon which the final conclusion is built. . . . 
 The chief practical difficulty of this inquiry will consist, 
 not in the application of the method to the premises 
 once determined, but in ascertaining what the premises 
 are. In what are regarded as the most rigorous examples 
 
Boole and the Laws of Thought 73 
 
 of reasoning applied to metaphysical questions, it will 
 occasionally be found that different trains of thought 
 are blended together ; that particular but essential parts 
 of the demonstration are given parenthetically, 01 out of 
 the main course of the argument ; that the meaning of 
 a premise may be in some degree ambiguous ; and, not 
 unfrequently, that arguments, viewed by the strict laws 
 of formal reasoning, are incorrect or inconclusive. The 
 difficulty of determining and distinctly exhibiting the 
 true premises of a demonstration " (in a book which we 
 are studying and analyzing), "may, in such cases, be very 
 considerable. But it is a difficulty which must be over- 
 come by all who would ascertain whether a particular 
 conclusion is proved or not, whatever form they may 
 be prepared or disposed to give to the ulterior process 
 of reasoning. It is a difficulty, therefore, which is not 
 peculiar to the method of" mathematical analysis, 
 " though it manifests itself more distinctly in connection 
 with this method than with any other. So intimate, 
 indeed, is this connection, that it is impossible, employing 
 the method of this treatise, to form even a conjecture as 
 to the validity of a conclusion, without a distinct 
 apprehension and exact statement of all the premises 
 upon which it rests. In the more usual course of 
 procedure " (i. e. verbal analysis), " nothing is, however, 
 more common than to examine some of the steps of 
 a train of argument, and thence to form a vague 
 general impression of the scope of the whole, without 
 any such preliminary and thorough analysis of the 
 premises which it involves. 
 
 " The necessity of a rigorous determination of the 
 real premises of a demonstration ought not to be 
 
 E 
 
74 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 regarded as an evil; especially as, when that task is ac- 
 complished, every source of doubt or ambiguity is 
 removed. In employing the method of this treatise . . . 
 the process of inference is conducted with a precision 
 which might almost be termed mechanical." — Laws of 
 Thought, ch. xiii. §§ 1,2. 
 
 " There are many special departments of science which 
 cannot be completely surveyed from within, but require 
 to be studied also from an external point of view, and 
 to be regarded in connection with other and kindred 
 subjects, in order that their full proportions may be un- 
 derstood." {Laws of Thought, ch. viii. § 1). The above 
 passage is in line with George Boole's opinion that.no 
 Church can properly be reformed from within. The 
 errors of a Church, he considered, must always be 
 attacked from without. The ideal condition, of course, 
 would be that Reformers within a Church should 
 voluntarily seek the assistance of those who look on from 
 the outside ; but George Boole could not be induced to 
 believe that such liberality was possible. 
 
 The following passage is interesting, as bearing on the 
 question of the relation between rival systems of Theology. 
 
 "If the general truths of Logic are of such a natute 
 that when presented to the mind they at once command 
 assent, wherein consists the difficulty of constructing the 
 Science of Logic ? Not in collecting the materials of 
 knowledge, but in discriminating their nature, and 
 determining their mutual place and relation. All sciences 
 consist of general truths: but of those truths, some only 
 are primary and fundamental, others are secondary and 
 derived. The laws of elliptic motion, discovered by 
 Kepler, are general truths in Astronomy, but they are 
 
Boole and the Laws of Thought 75 
 
 not its fundamental truths. And it is so in the purely 
 mathematical sciences. An almost boundless diversity 
 of theorems which are known, and an infinite possibility 
 of others as yet unknown, rest together upon the 
 foundation of a few simple axioms ; and yet these are 
 all general truths. They are truths which, to an in- 
 telligence sufficiently refined, would shine forth in their 
 own unborrowed light, without the need of those con- 
 necting links of thought, those steps of wearisome and 
 often painful deduction, by which the knowledge of them 
 is actually acquired. Let us define as fundamental 
 those laws and principles from which all other general 
 truths of science may be deduced, and into which they 
 may all be again resolved. Shall we then err in 
 regarding that as the true Science of Logic which, 
 laying down certain elementary laws, confirmed by the 
 very testimony of the mind, permits us thence to deduce, 
 by uniform processes, the entire chain of its secondary 
 consequences, and furnishes, for its practical applications, 
 methods of perfect generality ? Let it be considered 
 whether in any science, viewed either as a system of 
 truth or as the foundation of a practical art, there can 
 properly be any other test of the completeness and the 
 fundamental character of its laws, than the completeness 
 of its system of derived truths, and the generality of the 
 methods which it serves to establish. Other questions 
 may indeed present themselves. Convenience, pre- 
 scription, individual preference, may urge their claims 
 and deserve attention. But as respects the question of 
 what constitutes Science in its abstract integrity, I 
 apprehend that no other considerations than the above 
 are properly of any value." — Laws of Thought, ch. i § 5. 
 
7 6 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 It is interesting to notice that the life-law of the brain, 
 taught by Gratry, can be illustrated by means of a plain 
 forked stick. But in order to teach geometrically Boole's 
 complicated method of critical analysis, we must also 
 employ the spiral wire or snake-coil. If the writer of 
 the third Chapter of Genesis lived in our prosaic age, he 
 would perhaps formulate his caution thus : — <( Study 
 Gratry freely. But beware of allowing yourself to be 
 tempted by Boole's subtle and fascinating method ; or 
 it will surely lead you into mischief." 
 
 If he were in a specially honest frame of mind, he 
 might add : — " Because Boole's method may enable you 
 to grasp ideas quite beyond the comprehension of your 
 Rabbi (Don, Pedagogue, or Pope, as the case may be) ; 
 and therefore necessarily wicked." 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 SINGULAR SOLUTIONS 
 
 " I have made out what puts the whole subject of Singular Solutions 
 into a state of Unity." 
 
 All metaphysicians have known of the existence of 
 a law of antithesis or contradiction in Thought. " We 
 form the conception of man by contrast with that of 
 not-man ; we know good by seeing it against a back- 
 ground of evil ; the child learns to realize its own 
 personality by coming in contact with things that are 
 not itself." All this is the commonplace of metaphysics. 
 But modern mathematics is leading to the perception 
 that we need something more definite than to see x 
 
Singular Solutions 
 
 77 
 
 against a vague background of not-x ; we need the 
 special and definite antithetic conception to x within 
 the particular " Universe of Thought " to which x 
 properly belongs. And often we have to investigate 
 a class of things as forming a part of more than one 
 Universe of Thought, and contrast it with not-x in each. 
 As, for instance, we may clear up our conception of 
 " black sheep " by contrasting it, first, with " sheep that 
 are not black " ; secondly, with " black objects that are 
 not sheep " ; and so on. The Differential Calculus, 
 however, shows that the mind is feeling after even a more 
 definite mode of contrast than that indicated above. 
 We cannot truly know the Law which governs an 
 organic group of phenomena, unless we allow ourselves 
 to conceive the idea of a Singular Solution of that Law, 
 ue. y an individual which is constant in some relations as to 
 which the other individuals are variable, and variable in 
 some relations as to which the others are constant. 
 
 Now the so-called Messianic Seers are persons in 
 whom is developed to a high degree the tendency to 
 study ordinary human beings by the method of contrast 
 with an Ideal Man, a sort of Singular Solution of 
 Humanity ; of whom they speak as constant in those 
 relations to the Unseen in which we are variable, and 
 fluent in those relations to the visible as to which each 
 of us has his fixed prejudices. This Ideal Man, they 
 assert, is the indispensable Mediator between them and 
 any true knowledge of Humanity. When they have 
 jumped to the conclusion that their need of co?iceiving 
 an Ideal Man is any proof of the actual existence of 
 such an Ideal, visible or Invisible, they err, of course. 
 But, nevertheless, these Messianic Seers are neither 
 
7* 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 dreamers nor maniacs ; they are revealing, in the domain 
 of emotion, a Law which the mathematical doctrine of 
 Singular Solutions reveals to the intellect, viz. that the 
 process of conceiving an antithetical exception is a 
 necessary medium between the mind of man and any 
 very thorough comprehension of the Laws which govern 
 Humanity. 
 
 The study of the phenomenon of the Messianic Seer- 
 hood became the absorbing interest of George Boole's 
 later years. The chapter on Singular Solutions in his 
 text-book of Differential Equations contains much 
 genuine metaphysical truth expressed in mathematical 
 terminology. He made a special study of the sermons 
 of the strange preacher, F. D. Maurice ; and in the last 
 year of his life wrote : " I have made out what puts the 
 whole subject of Singular Solutions into a state of 
 Unity." What strange pulsation of thought must have 
 thrilled from the mind of the great Seer of Messianic 
 Singular Solution, into that of the logician of the Unity, 
 before those words were written, who can guess ? The 
 MS. on which George Boole was engaged at the time 
 lies undeciphered in the archives of the Royal Society ; 
 no mere mathematician can understand it : and no 
 theologian cares to try. Perhaps it may be deciphered 
 yet ; when further progress has been made in knowledge 
 of the correspondence between the normal action of the 
 human mind and its automatic expression by means of 
 notations. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 ALGEBRAIZERS 
 " The Evidence of Things not seen.'" 
 
 MUCH of the tragedy of religious conflict is due to lack 
 of comprehension of the process of Algebraization* 
 
 I have pointed out how a question which seemed, on 
 its own level, hopelessly unsolvable, is often solved at 
 once by reference to an order of considerations higher 
 than that involved in the question itself. This is 
 especially the case when a Law of Thought is appealed 
 to, to settle a discussion about things. Laws of things 
 we cannot be said really to know, except in a fumbling 
 and empirical manner ; when we have true knowledge, 
 it is because we have discovered the Law of Thought 
 which presided at the Genesis of the Things. I wish to 
 speak in all humility and reverence ; but I cannot say 
 less than I mean. We get clues, suggestions of Laws 
 of Thought, by studying things ; but whenever we truly 
 know, what we know is a Law of Thought, which we 
 have arrived at by discharging from our observation of 
 particular finite things all that made them finite and 
 particular. The elementary geometrician who first 
 conceived, the idea of the circle caught his suggestion 
 from looking at things whose forms were approximately 
 round ; but, as soon as he had discovered the law of 
 roundness within his own mind, he was able to express 
 roundness in a new material, to state it generally (by 
 scratching it on the sand) in a manner which afforded 
 no clue to the objects from which the suggestion had 
 
80 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 come to him. And the law of circularity, thus formu- 
 lated, was henceforth master within him, and governed 
 his appreciation of things. He did not test his Ideal 
 circle by comparing it with the sun or with an apple ; 
 on the contrary, he tested the circularity of a fruit by 
 comparing it with his abstract or Ideal circle. His 
 circle then was an algebraization of the round outline of 
 the sun or moon, or of a fruit. 
 
 In the same way we discover a law of number, first, 
 by thinking of some particular numbers ; but as soon as 
 we know the Law, we can state it Algebraically, i.e., in 
 a manner which conveys no information as to what 
 were the particular numbers of which we happened to 
 be thinking when we discovered it. The particular- 
 numbers suggested the law to our consciousness ; they 
 do not prove it to our reason. When once it has been 
 suggested, it carries its own evidence, independently of 
 particular numbers. And as soon as we have formulated 
 a Law thus algebraically, it is henceforth master within 
 us. Particular statements about number are referred to 
 it ; and our opinion as to the truth of those statements 
 is controlled by it. For instance, the law that one 
 number multiplied by a second always comes to the 
 same result as is obtained by multiplying the second by 
 the first was of course suggested to the consciousness 
 first by the observation of some particular pairs of 
 numbers ; but it is not proved by reference to any 
 special numbers ; it is general and algebraic. And no 
 student thoroughly understands it as a law of number 
 until he understands it in its algebraic statement : 
 ab — ba. As soon as he understands the algebraic state- 
 ment, it becomes master of his thought. 
 
Algebraizers 
 
 3 1 
 
 A similar process has been going on throughout the 
 history of religion. For instance, the idea of God as 
 Father suggested itself first in connection with the love 
 of animals or men for their progeny. But the latter 
 contains no proof oi the former. The idea is suggested 
 to the consciousness by particular facts ; but those who 
 understand it at all, accept it on its own evidence ; and 
 forthem it henceforth governs their ideas of particularfacts. 
 
 Superstition has always been trying to cumber our 
 ideas about God with the pomposity, or vengefulness, 
 or jealousy, or whatever vice happened to prevail in the 
 parents of the particular era. Philosophy has always 
 been trying to algebraize our conception of Fatherhood ; 
 to present the normal or Ideal Father ; and to induce 
 human fathers to conform their conduct to this Ideal 
 
 The difference between our imperfect and fumbling 
 knowledge of things, and our absolute and perfect 
 knowledge about Laws of Thought, has been thus de- 
 scribed : — 
 
 " The general Laws of Nature are not, for the most 
 part, immediate objects of perception. They are either 
 inductive inferences from a large body of facts, 1 the 
 common truth in which they express, or, in their origin 
 at least, physical hypotheses of a causal nature, serving 
 to explain phenomena and to predict new combinations 
 of them. They are in all cases, and in the strictest 
 sense of the term, probable conclusions ; approaching, 
 indeed, ever and ever nearer to certainty, as they receive 
 more and more of the confirmation of experience ; but 
 of the character of probability, in the strict and proper 
 sense of that term, they are never wholly divested. On 
 
 1 The author means " our mode of stating them are."' 
 
82 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 the other hand, the knowledge of the laws of mind does 
 not require as its basis any extensive collection of ob- 
 servations. The general truth is seen in the particular 
 instance, and it is not confirmed by the repetition of 
 instances. That formula of reasoning which is called 
 the dictum of Aristotle de omni et nullo expresses a 
 general truth in Logic ; now that truth is made manifest 
 in all its generality by reflection upon a single instance 
 of its application. And this is both an evidence that 
 the particular principle or formula in question is founded 
 upon some general law or laws of the mind, and an 
 illustration of the doctrine that the perception of such 
 general truths is not derived from an induction from many 
 instances, but is involved in the clear apprehension of 
 a single instance. In connection with this truth is seen 
 the not less important one that our knowledge of the 
 laws upon which the science of the intellectual powers 
 rests, whatever may be its extent or its deficiency, is not 
 probable knowledge. For we not only see in the 
 particular example the general truth, but we see it as 
 a certain truth, — a truth our confidence in which will 
 not continue to increase with increasing experience of 
 its verifications. . . . Shall we then err in regarding that 
 as the true science of Logic which, laying down certain 
 elementary laws, confirmed by the very testimony of the 
 mind, permits us then to deduce, by uniform processes, 
 the entire chain of its secondary consequences, and 
 furnishes, for its practical applications, methods of 
 perfect generality ? " 1 
 
 The author has omitted to notice one fact which, 
 from his point of view, probably seemed too self-evident 
 
 1 Boole, Laivs of Thought, ch. i. §§4, 5. 
 
Algebraizers 
 
 83 
 
 to be worth mentioning, but the ignoring of which causes 
 much confusion in Science ; viz. that whereas he who 
 is teaching a Law of things must illustrate his remarks 
 by reference to actual facts, or his whole argument falls 
 to the ground, a principle of Algebraization can just as 
 well be illustrated by reference to imaginary as to 
 real occurrences. When the law of circularity has once 
 been suggested to the mind, it matters nothing whether 
 the object which suggested it was a real or a painted 
 fruit ; nor does it matter how nearly it approximated to 
 the circular form. In the same way, the spiral law of 
 thought-progress is equally well illustrated by the 
 narrative of Abraham, whether it be a narration of actual 
 facts or an imaginary tale. 
 
 The kind of confusion which is caused in literature 
 by this principle not being understood, will be described 
 in a future Chapter. 
 
 There was a time when even mathematical algebra- 
 ization was considered impious and dangerous. We 
 have grown accustomed to it now. But the algebraizers 
 of the moral world are still the objects of the hatred of 
 other classes of men (and that is by no means the 
 worst part of their destiny, as we shall presently see). 
 Ordinarily a tolerably strong antagonism is kept up 
 between three classes : the supporters of convention, who 
 desire to make some sort of practical life possible, and 
 who object to whatever disturbs popular ideas ; the 
 so-called Free-thinkers, who refuse to acknowledge the 
 validity of convention, and who do not believe in the 
 possibility of knowing the true Law of any human 
 relation ; the Idealists, who create an ideal moral code 
 according to some standard agreeable to their feelings. 
 
84 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 These three classes, in ordinary times, hate each other 
 with very sufficient cordiality. There is a fourth class 
 — honest cautious men who have picked up their notions 
 of Logic from the study of what is called " Natural 
 Science," and who imagine that no Law can be truly known 
 unless it be generalized from a large number of instances. 
 The Algebraizer is a mark for the sneers of all four 
 classes. To the conventional he seems to be defying 
 Law, because he ignores rules made in ignorance of the 
 the true Law. To the self-styled Free-thinkers he seems 
 to be attacking freedom, because he asserts that there 
 is a Law which cannot be broken, and which will avenge 
 attempts to ignore it. To Idealists he seems to be ex- 
 tinguishing Light, because their fancy-lamps fade when 
 he dazzles them by opening the shutters and revealing 
 the Sun. And the so-called " scientific " despise him as 
 rash, because he illustrates his meaning by reference to 
 only one or two instances, which (as matters of 
 historical fact) may be of doubtful authenticity. He 
 can never do right. If he speaks, he is arrogant, in that 
 he professes to know more than other men ; if he keeps 
 silence, he is contemptuous and proud. He longs to give 
 freely that wonder of joy which has been freely given to 
 him. He longs to give freely, but Humanity will not 
 have his gift ; yet it reproaches him for hardness, in 
 that he takes no trouble to slake its thirst for the living 
 Truth. If he be of philosophic temperament, he retires 
 into his study, and confides to his wife, or perhaps to 
 some favourite dog or cat, refined satires about the 
 absurd inconsistency of mankind. But if he be tender- 
 hearted, his heart breaks, and he dies in despair. O ! 
 Jerusalem, that stonest the Prophets ! 
 
Degenerations Towards Lunacy 85 
 
 It may be, however, that he loves the Unseen Revealer 
 more than either abstract Science or concrete Humanity. 
 If so, he is preserved from both cynicism and despair. 
 He possesses his soul in patience until it pleases God to 
 make him understood. 
 
 In any case, the worst of his doom is still to come. 
 After his death some follower distorts his meaning, so 
 as to make it palatable to the unthinking masses ; and 
 uses his name to trample out truth revealed to his 
 successors. An algebraizer of our own day used often 
 to say : " One would accept being crucified ; it does not 
 last long ; but to have one's words made into an excuse 
 for trampling down the truth revealed through other 
 Seers, that is a doom to make the stoutest heart quail." 
 Of this awful torture Jesus has had eighteen centuries 
 already ; and Moses thirty- three. O ! Jerusalem, that 
 buildest the tombs of the Prophets, saying : " If we had 
 lived in our fathers' days, we would not have partaken 
 of their crimes." 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 DEGENERATIONS TOWARDS LUNACY AND CRIME 
 
 "We feel as our ancestors thought, and think as our descendants will 
 feel." — J. Jacobs. 
 
 In former Chapters I pointed out the manner in which 
 idleness and superstition fasten on successive revelations; 
 how they in each age make a concrete system of opinion 
 out of what was, in its origin, merely the garment worn 
 by the Pulsation-doctrine in the mind of some Seer. 
 But besides such degraded remains of what once were 
 
B6 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 truths as are retained in the conscious memory of men 
 and believed in as doctrines or moral codes, our very 
 nervous systems have their own unconscious memory, 
 and preserve idolatries and superstitions which have 
 died out of the conscious memory. These are constantly 
 tending to revert into consciousness. A good social 
 system provides for periodic and harmless fits of atavism. 
 Those are wise who, in holidays, throw off the social 
 trammels of their own age and revert to an older mode 
 of existence. If we live too constantly in the one thin 
 stratum of convention which we call " present custom," 
 we grow weary ; the energy relaxes in spite of us ; and 
 then at last we fall involuntarily into some stratum of 
 the past. 
 
 Books on Lunacy attribute mental disease to physical 
 causes, which produce weakness of brain-tissue. It is 
 quite true that, given an abnormal strain, the stronger 
 tissues resist it most successfully. But why should we 
 put continuous strain upon ourselves, such continuity of 
 strain being contrary to Nature ? It is the nature of 
 man to stand on his feet, not crawling ; and to exert his 
 mind to live in the present, not yielding to mere instinct. 
 But it is also his nature both to return periodically to 
 the physical position of the earth-worms, and to revert 
 occasionally to the mental position of the savage. We 
 do not wait to lie down till we have fallen from fatigue; 
 we accustom ourselves and our children to relax and 
 revert at regular intervals. Only the exceptionally weak 
 take such indulgences as lying down during the day ; 
 but mentally and morally we act as if only the exception- 
 ally weak need He down at all ! 
 
 Could I give to each reader the fearful experience 
 
Degenerations Towards Lunacy 87 
 
 which is gained by occasionally residing, for even a week 
 or two, in a mad-house, I need not plead in words ; but 
 as that is impossible, I must go on with my appeal to 
 reason and conscience. 
 
 Perhaps nothing in the conduct of our life is so 
 irrational as our attitude towards the whole subject of 
 insanity. Because the tendency to yield to certain 
 sensations in a spasmodic and irregular way is a proof 
 of mental weakness, it is inferred that those sensations 
 should be discouraged and trampled out by every device 
 in our power ; and that, when they occur, they should 
 not be heeded. The consequence is, that when they 
 occur they are often not confessed till too late ; and the 
 secret remains an extra burden on the over-taxed mind. 
 It would be as rational to suppose that, because tumb- 
 ling about in the street is a proof of ill-health, therefore 
 we should neither go to bed at proper times, nor 
 acknowledge ourselves weary, nor thank God for the gift 
 of repose. Those very nervous sensations, the yielding 
 to which in an irregular manner constitutes insanity, 
 are in reality the alphabet of a system of telegraphy by 
 which the past is striving to hold converse with us ; they 
 are the solicitations of some lost knowledge urging us 
 to re-admit it to the mind of the race that was once its 
 earthly Temple. " Behold, I stand at the door and 
 knock," says Truth ; if the visitor is ignored, his impor- 
 tunities may drive us mad indeed ; the best way to quiet 
 them is to admit him quietly, and hear what he has to 
 say. Education should assist us to do this. Many 
 teachers, however, aim at trampling out our power to 
 do it. In so far as they are successful, they only retard 
 progress. Nature, however, always provides a certain 
 
88 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 minority of neurotic sensitives, in whom latent ancestral 
 instinct is too strong to be driven out ; it reverts in spite 
 of all the attempts of teachers to suppress it, and drives 
 the subject mad. "The majority call the minority mad," 
 said one wise man ; but it would be far truer to say that 
 the majority drive the minority mad by attempting to 
 suppress truth. 
 
 Many unexplained freaks of reversion become intelli- 
 gible when we remember that any sight or sound which 
 was associated in the ancestry with certain emotions 
 tends to revive those emotions in sensitive descendants. 
 To this fact we give the name of " instinct." The cat 
 who has never before seen a dog, and the dog who has 
 never before seen a cat, get what in a man we should 
 call " a fit of homicidal mania " at sight of each other ; 
 an irrational desire to kill each other ; because their 
 ancestors had reasons, founded on knowledge and ex- 
 perience, for desiring each other's death. The young 
 beetle who sees for the first time the petal-veining which 
 is to be his honey-guide, no doubt feels throughout his 
 frame the thrill of prophecy of a joy as yet unknown. 
 He follows the guidance which he cannot understand, 
 till he finds the explanation in a new world of delight. 
 " For beast and bird have seen and heard that which 
 man knoweth not ; " because man considers his own 
 instincts fit for nothing better than to be brutally 
 trampled underfoot. Therefore, where a beetle becomes 
 harmlessly drunk with joy, a man goes mad of 
 suffering. 
 
 A dog and cat can be made devoted friends ; not, 
 however, by ignoring ancestral instinct, but by studying 
 and guiding it. 
 
Degenerations Towards Lunacy 89 
 
 Another fruitful source of insanity is the irreverence 
 of teachers for the process of Algebraization. Most 
 children have more or less of that luminous transparency 
 which enables the individual to perceive Laws of Thought 
 reflected in the workings of his own soul. As was 
 pointed out in a former Chapter, he who has thus per- 
 ceived a Law of Thought may be (and often is) abso- 
 lutely sure that he has seen a general Truth. Teachers, 
 forgetting to discriminate between Laws of Thought 
 and Laws of Things, assert that the individual is no 
 standard for the community; and that no Law of Nature 
 can be generalized from a single instance. Many intelli- 
 gent young people are thus made ashamed of the divin- 
 est gift within them, the power of spontaneous perception 
 of thought-laws ; and destroy the faculty by not using 
 it. In some, however, the tendency to Algebraization 
 is too strong to be repressed. The lad or girl, being 
 told that " common sense and logic oppose themselves 
 to the practice of generalizing from a single instance," 
 draws the conclusion that his teachers are the opponents 
 of what he feels to be the most sacred portion of his 
 mental life ; therefore he sets up a course of life openly 
 defiant of " common sense " as embodied in the advice 
 of those around him. For some years he is only 
 " eccentric " and perhaps " unmanageable " ; but the 
 strain is often too great for the brain to bear ; he has 
 never been taught to distinguish Laws of Thought from 
 Laws of Things ; he carries the practice of generalizing 
 from one instance over into the domain of things ; he 
 reasons from analogy, or jumps to conclusions from 
 mere association of ideas ; and falls into a hopeless tangle 
 of delusions ; — victim to the wilful irreverence of his 
 
 F 
 
90 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 teachers, and his own fidelity to the great truths which 
 they are trampling underfoot. 
 
 The key-note of the Science of Lunacy is struck in 
 certain organizations which a physician once described 
 to me as "the physical temperament of insanity with a 
 brain impossible to overset." To Abraham, for instance, 
 came weird impulses of reversion to savage customs and 
 a nomad life. In a weak man without faith these would 
 have developed into savagery and homicidal mania. A 
 resolute personal will would have trampled them out, 
 and by doing so injured both intellectual and moral 
 development. But Abraham knew them for what they 
 were — revelations of the Unity Who is guiding Human- 
 ity. He followed them in cautious reverence ; and was 
 led by them, not towards uselessness or crime, but into 
 higher truth. No action becomes absolutely sinful 
 except in so far as it is the result of lack of faith in the 
 Unity. Abraham discovered that sympathetic compre- 
 hension of the savagery of the past leads, up the spiral 
 of ascent, towards comprehension of the future destinies 
 of Man. He did not kill his son ; he made of him the 
 Founder of a Race. 1 
 
 In the next Chapter, I shall point out how use may be 
 made of nervous disorder (where it unfortunately exists) 
 for the development of Art. But a great deal of insanity 
 and crime might be prevented if the custom prevailed 
 of periodically casting off the conventions of civilization, 
 and reverently reverting to the piety of our savage fore- 
 fathers, who sought religious Truth direct from Nature, 
 and found it without scholastic and literary appliances. 
 Till we do this, we shall surely find madness an inevitable 
 feature of civilization. 
 
 1 See Appendix. 
 
The Redemption of Evil 9 1 
 
 Now a mad individual can be locked up and forgotten. 
 Occasionally, however, an impulse of atavism seizes on a 
 whole mass of people ; too many to be either locked up 
 or ignored. Such a mass, ignorant of ancestral history, 
 and, therefore, not knowing to what their own sensations 
 point, start some weird fantastic movement, related to 
 some portion of ancestral history much as a dream is 
 related to the past experience of the dreamer. Such 
 movements are produced by some stratum of the 
 ancestral past forcing itself into the consciousness of an 
 irreverent and forgetful posterity. A nation lives long 
 in the land which is careful to study its past ; partly 
 because such a Nation reverences the spontaneous 
 Revelations of heredity ; and does not allow priests and 
 school-masters to trample out its instincts ; and, there- 
 fore, does not go mad of atavism repressed till it 
 becomes phrensy. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE REDEMPTION OF EVIL 
 " The Bow shall be a Token." 
 
 A TRIFLING but interesting confirmation of the Pulsa- 
 tion-doctrine is to be found in a singular fact connected 
 with Art- Needlework. 
 
 Nervous disorder, at least in its beginnings, has polar 
 or antithetic phases. A fit of excitement is followed by 
 one of depression, etc. These aberrant moods affect, in 
 some degree, the colour-sense. Let any patient, who 
 has a sensitive retina but no knowledge of Art, try the 
 following experiment: — 
 
9 2 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 Collect a mass of scraps of silks and ribbon, and a 
 bundle of embroidery-silks or wools, of as many shades 
 as possible. (Any soiled or faded remnants of skeins 
 will answer). In the excited mood, tack scraps of 
 ribbon, etc., quite at random, on to some soft foundation 
 (such as a bit of soft woollen or cotton stuff). Choose 
 always whatever colour pleases the eye at the moment, 
 
 A few days later, when the mood has changed, the 
 patient should look at her work. The colouring will 
 probably appear, even to herself, hideously crude and 
 coarse. Then begin to embroider upon it, choosing 
 whatever colour pleases the eye. Before selecting a 
 needleful, fix the eyes for a few moments on the spot 
 which seems most crude ; then, suddenly, look into the 
 heap of silks and take whatever colour is found most 
 refreshing, embroidering over the selected spot freely 
 and at random. Before threading the needle again, fix 
 the eyes on whatever spot now seems crudest, and 
 choose a needleful while the eye is annoyed from gazing 
 at that one, and so on. Continue to embroider, in any 
 stitches that suit the hand, in all various moods and in 
 different phases of health, till the whole has been brought 
 to a condition in which it does not offend the eye in any 
 mood. 
 
 Experts in needlework, when they see work produced 
 under these conditions, say that it has (however rough 
 in execution) the peculiar stamp of colouring which 
 distinguishes old Eastern embroideries from all modern 
 imitations, whether Eastern or European, even the most 
 skilful. 
 
 After a time, the worker acquires the power to produce 
 at will this peculiar colouring ; and can produce it in 
 
The Redemption of Evil 93 
 
 normal health, and apply it to work containing some 
 principle of design. But, so far as I have discovered, 
 no one seems able to acquire it except by working, at 
 first, at random ; and either during illness, or when 
 worried or fatigued. Xo one can possibly acquire it 
 except by keeping the first few attempts by her for a 
 long time, and working patiently and repeatedly over 
 the same ground. The acquring of skill is much facili- 
 tated by the following method. 
 
 During the first crude colouring, think freely and 
 strongly of exciting subjects. (This would be danger- 
 ous, but for the correction to be presently indicated.) 
 Think of some exciting topic before choosing a colour ; 
 and, while using that colour, try to register on the 
 memory, in connection with that particular silk, the 
 thoughts present during its selection. When looking at 
 a crude spot for the purpose of correction, recall the 
 thoughts registered on it ; and, before choosing the silk 
 to correct with, try to formulate what some person, who 
 totally disagrees with the worker, would say on the 
 special point associated with that spot. 
 
 Of course no silly woman would be capable of this 
 vigorous moral exercise. But any one brave enough to 
 subject herself to it, will find health returning and mental 
 vigour increasing at a marvellously rapid rate. Great 
 progress in colour-skill may also be attained by it ; but 
 a few simple rules must be adhered to. 
 
 Colour freely by the mere sensuous impulse of the 
 eye, thinking meanwhile of something quite different, 
 and paying no heed to any previously learned theories 
 of Art. 
 
 Get the form, as much as possible, by the motion of 
 
94 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 the hand, not looking at the needle-point. Use the eye 
 only to select colour, and then to keep the work within 
 certain bounds. The practice of following with the 
 needle lines traced on the material with a pen or chalk 
 is fatal to colour inspiration (not necessarily to colour 
 knowledge) ; as the retina, fatigued by unnatural exer- 
 cise, loses its sensitiveness to immediate colour-impulses. 
 
 If any tracing be used, let the design be as simple as 
 possible, and purely Geometric. Trace on the back of 
 the material, and run a thread through to the front. 
 This thread will not need to be absolutely covered, as 
 it can be afterwards removed. 
 
 If gold thread be used, wind it first on a reel, till it 
 takes a curved set ; shake it off the reel, and use the 
 natural coils into which it falls, arranging these to please 
 the fancy. Avoid using gold over a tracing. Some of 
 the very ancient curves of Indian Art occur naturally 
 when Japanese gold is shaken off a reel. 
 
 If the hand is stiff, it may be loosened and trained 
 into tune with Nature's formative processes by the 
 practice of drawing the Pentagram and Heptagram. 
 I have the sanction of Dr. Maudsley for the opinion 
 (which is confirmed by my experience) that this exercise 
 is eminently suited to produce, in the muscles of the 
 hand, a kind of automatic skill, a consonance with 
 Nature's growth-processes, such as might well seem to 
 primeval peoples miraculous. The copying of actual 
 forms puts the hand into harmony with certain acci- 
 dental outcomes of Nature's Laws ; the Pentagram is an 
 Algebraization of Nature's processes of development. 
 
 A good test whether the hand is properly in tune 
 with Nature, consists in feather-stitching an irregular 
 
The Redemption of Evil 9 5 
 
 spray, in coarse silk, with the eyes shut. The spray so 
 produced should be as natural-looking as anything that 
 could be done with the eyes open. 
 
 I speak here of Needlework, that being the Art with 
 which I am familiar ; but similar principles to those 
 above explained have been applied to colour-study with 
 the brush. The fact that it is possible, by utilizing the 
 polarity of nervous disease, to produce the peculiar old- 
 Eastern colouring, and at the same time to facilitate cure 
 by unifying the antithetic phases, throws light, I think, 
 on the attitude of the Peutateuch writers, both towards 
 colour-and-form Art, and towards the question of At- 
 one-ment of error by return to the Unseen Unity. The 
 Third Commandment might, I think, be for some 
 persons paraphrased thus : — 
 
 When angry, do not indulge in blasphemous exclam- 
 ations, or in wanton and exaggerated statements ; but 
 learn to curse and swear in colours. This will relieve 
 your feelings as much as bad language could do, and 
 will neither offend your neighbours nor injure yourself. 
 It can be made a means of curing whatever evil tenden- 
 cies may be latent in your nature, by employing them 
 in the development of Artistic faculty. And be sure 
 that God will bless every attempt to put yourself into 
 line with His Creative energy ; and will, sooner or later, 
 punish every expression of evil which has no tendency 
 to further its redemption to the service of Good and Unity. 
 
 There are those who smile at any serious treatment 
 of so trivial a pursuit as Embroidery. But how can a 
 woman be sure that she has truly grasped philosophic 
 principles, unless she can employ them to improve 
 feminine and domestic occupations ? A wise man once 
 
9 6 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 asked : " How many angels stand on the point of a 
 needle ? " It is not recorded of any wise man that he 
 was conceited enough to fancy that question could be 
 lightly answered. The Father of the Calculus cautioned 
 his readers not to despise The Infinitesimal ; and a 
 greater teacher even than Newton assured us that The 
 Almighty does not disdain to reckon such trifles as the 
 hairs on our heads. The Lord's People, of old, were 
 encouraged to revel in mingling Gold and Blue and 
 Purple and Scarlet ; because it was felt that the com- 
 bination of all incongruous colours into one harmonious 
 Rainbow is a token (all the surer for being intangible 
 and evanescent) that the Forces of destruction which 
 threaten to overwhelm man shall be restrained for the 
 salvation of those who trust in the Unity of God. For 
 the Hebrew, the Rainbow was to be a token that God 
 would interpose at last on behalf of His People. But 
 our Father Odin taught that the Rainbow is a bridge, 
 by trusting to which a brave soul can, on its own feet, 
 so to speak, reach the home of the Divine. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF PROPHECY 
 
 " Truth for ever on the scaffold, 
 
 Wrong for ever on the throne. 
 But that scaffold sways the nations ; 
 
 And behind the dim Unknown 
 Sitteth God within the shadow, 
 
 Keeping watch over his own." 
 
 A GREAT deal has been said and sung about the beauty 
 of Truth, and its perpetual conflict with error. To the 
 
The Science of Prophecy 97 
 
 popular imagination Truth and Goodness represent 
 themselves as a couple of knights-errant incessantly in 
 the act of slaying certain dragons called errors and vices. 
 It is supposed that whenever any one of these is, any- 
 how, destroyed, that is always so much gained towards 
 the final triumph of Truth and Goodness over the whole 
 noxious brood. But, alas ! Truth and Morality, so far 
 as man has to do with them, are conditions of brain, of 
 a most exquisitely delicate organization. And just as 
 it is possible to cure a comparatively harmless physical 
 ailment by the use of remedies which lower vitality and 
 tend to set up a more painful and more obstinate dis- 
 ease than they cure, so it is often possible to combat 
 (and successfully combat) a bad condition of the mind 
 by the use of means which leave it an easy prey to some 
 worse condition. Those who would practice the art of 
 curing physical disease are not allowed to content them- 
 selves with studying only the immediate action of 
 remedies, so as to know what drug will neutralize what 
 symptom ; they are required to make themselves ac- 
 quainted also with the structure of the human frame, 
 and the nature of its reactions after certain modes of 
 action, and even of hereditary reactions after stimulation. 
 Those who take upon themselves to cure symptoms 
 without knowledge of reactions are empirics or quacks. 
 The>- are often wonderfully successful ; but the result 
 of trusting to them is a general depression of vital and 
 recuperative power. He only is a true physician who 
 so combats disease as to store up vitality ; and he only 
 is a true teacher who so combats evil as to store up 
 brain-vitality. Therefore the Far-Seer, i. e. the student 
 of the longer and slower mental reactions, often seems 
 
9 8 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 to be opposing something which others think good. 
 The practical result of his peculiar study is that he can 
 rarely throw himself thoroughly into any violent " move- 
 ment " for the salvation, education, enlightenment, or 
 amusement of mankind. Prophets labour for Humanity 
 in their own way ; but their way is seldom one that 
 contemporaries understand. If we wish to realize why 
 such men as H. Spencer, Renan, Maudsley, Hinton, are 
 not noted for what is called Philanthropic Zeal, we must 
 ask ourselves why men of that stamp would not have 
 joined in the popular movements of the past. There 
 was a time when wine was a new discovery. It allayed 
 certain forms of suffering ; it ministered to the heighten- 
 ing of certain faculties ; clearly, then, wine was the gift 
 of a God ; men should drink it in reverent homage to 
 the Divine Giver, and show their gratitude by doing all 
 in their power to induce others to accept the gift. Alas! 
 the Herbert Spencer of that day was only too sure that 
 there must come a reaction ; he could not become a 
 Bacchus-worshipper. By and by the bad side of the 
 alcoholism revealed itself ; Bacchus-worship was dis- 
 covered to be vice fostered by pious emotion. The new 
 philanthropists preached a crusade against wine ; for 
 what could be more clear than that wine was bad ? 
 The Renan of that day could not become an advocate 
 of total abstinence ; he told his hearers that Bacchus- 
 worship must have had its good side, or it could not 
 have enlisted so many followers. So it is now. The 
 Prophet knows that much which is called Education 
 means forcing the young brain to give off, in wasteful 
 and useless display, the latent force stored up by our 
 ancestors ; that much which is called progress in civili- 
 
The Science of Prophecy 99 
 
 zation consists in abandoning those processes of recupera- 
 tion by which scientific men of old taught the masses 
 to store up latent energy for future use. Thus he who 
 sees ahead is a sceptic always ; always a wet blanket 
 on the enthusiasms of those who only see to-morrow 
 or next year. 
 
 This gives a tone of sadness to the utterances of 
 Prophets. But the sadness is accidental, and due to 
 the fact of the subject not having been understood. 
 For in reality Prophecy is the most joyous and least 
 pessimistic of all Sciences. The Logos visits the follies 
 of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth 
 generation ; but preserves what is good, for thousands 
 of generations ; and all who know Him learn to realise 
 that such is the Law of His working. 
 
 Even this perception adds to the loneliness of the 
 Prophet ; for as he irritates others by not being able to 
 share in their sanguine expectations of immediate 
 success, so he seems to them hard-hearted because when 
 they are most gloomy he cannot despair. He sees in 
 any misfortune that may occur, only the temporary 
 penalty (long foreseen by him) of man's over-confidence. 
 Through all depression the Prophet knows that the 
 Logos punishes for a small moment, but His mercies 
 endure for ever. 
 
 Another cause that adds to the loneliness of the Far- 
 Seer is that, sooner or later, he is almost sure to discover 
 a law which the young people about him desire not to 
 believe, viz. the wastefulness of original work published 
 before the complete maturity of the author. The best 
 work is that which combines Genius with Experience ; 
 therefore the way to do the best work is to live to be 
 
IOO 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 old. Original work is healthful exercise for the young ; 
 but the work of preparing one's own work for a public 
 wears out the immature brain. Juvenile Genius is 
 impatient, and clothes its own impatience in a disguise 
 of devotion to Truth ; but it would be better if that 
 devotion took the healthy and unexhausting form of 
 studying how to complete and preserve the work of 
 predecessors. The consequence of impatience to be 
 original is that the work of genius is done without 
 experience ; and that those who have genius compar- 
 atively seldom live to gain experience. There are, 
 however, always a few who, though aware of their 
 own original power, are willing to bide their time ; and, 
 few though they may be, natural selection always puts 
 the balance of influence into their hands at last. But 
 the feverish and impatient who rush forward to early 
 success despise them for wasting time. And, unfortun- 
 ately, many of the so-called reforms of modern education 
 are taking the direction of encouraging young persons 
 to expend their mental energy on original investigation, 
 and discouraging reverent attention to the imperfect 
 work of predecessors and teachers, the completing of 
 which would be excellent preparation for more entirely 
 original investigations. " Honour thy predecessors, that 
 thy days may be long in the land" is the true secret of 
 intellectual vigour. It would seem that, in the Eastern 
 Schools of Prophecy, the younger Prophets were 
 employed as messengers and interpreters between their 
 elders and the outside world. This is excellent prepar- 
 ation for becoming, later on, Interpreters of the Unknown 
 Truth to Mankind. The true pulsation of the intell- 
 ectual life of an individual would appear to be, to utilize 
 
The Science of Prophecy i o i 
 
 the age of passion for the purpose of gaining experience 
 by helping older teachers ; then, in fully ripe age, to 
 fertilize the new generation with the best essence of 
 one's own thought. And when a Prophet denounces 
 a l< curse " on young men whom impatient ambition 
 makes neglectful of their elders, he is only speaking from 
 the same scientific stand- point as a doctor who predicts 
 future debility as the consequence of any physical sort 
 of premature indulgence. 
 
 Several portions of this work were suggested by the 
 conversations of Dr. Alfred Wiltshire, who had spent 
 many years in the study of periodicity and of occasional 
 reversal of attitude, as agents in the development of the 
 human faculties, physical and mental. The foregoing 
 paragraph is the substance of much which he said to me 
 before his disease was apparent to others, but after he 
 knew himself to be a doomed man. He told me that 
 he had made his discovery of the danger of original 
 work done young, too late to save himself ; he hoped 
 that his sorrowful experience might be of use in warning 
 others. 
 
 The nature of my work precludes the possibility of 
 specifying in detail the precise extent of my obligations 
 to my various teachers. But one motive which spurs 
 me on to complete it is the desire to keep the promise 
 I made when Dr. Wiltshire was dying ; that his children 
 should know all I could tell them of the value of their 
 father's life-work. 
 
 The most beautiful and powerful of all logical formulae 
 is also the simplest. It is the great Master Key of 
 Prophecy ; used, as such, by the mathematician Boul- 
 anger ; and handed down, (for those who have eyes to 
 
io2 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 see) from our pious forefathers in the position of the 
 Mistletoe-berry. No one who has ever used, or under- 
 stood, this solemn formula would willingly translate it 
 into common words. But so much misapprehension is 
 caused by the reticence which has been observed about 
 this and other formulae of Grammarye that I, unwill- 
 ingly, state it here : — 
 
 We find the Germ of the Future when we look back 
 to where, in the Past, a branch separated and began to 
 grow into twin-twigs. 
 
 The difference between the Far-Seer and ordinary 
 educated men may be summed up thus : — Ordinary man 
 thinks of some condition or other as in itself good, and 
 desires to make that condition permanent. If he be so 
 far educated that he consents to severe temperance in 
 such pleasures as those of food, it is because experience 
 has taught us that to make the enjoyment of such 
 pleasures short, periodic, and not too frequent, is the 
 best way to keep the system capable of enjoying what 
 are called " the higher pleasures," such as those afforded 
 by learning, religion, and the social emotions. The 
 ordinary man thinks of physical temperance as a process 
 of sacrificing the lower pleasures to the higher ; he does 
 not understand that the rhythm of temperance should 
 be kept especially in what he calls the highest. The 
 true Prophet, on the contrary, knows that nothing is 
 good except rhythmic alternation. He is no more 
 a glutton intellectually than physically ; he no more 
 desires the constant enjoyment of what is called real- 
 izing the Presence of God than he craves for unlimited 
 brandy ; he no more aspires to a Heaven of constant 
 rapture in the intercourse of Jesus and the Saints, than 
 
The Science of Prophecy 103 
 
 to a Valhalla of everlasting mead-drinking in the 
 company of ever-lovely Valkyries. He desires, for every 
 fibre of his body, and every convolution of his brain, 
 and for all the faculties which he may hereafter acquire, 
 that each may be the medium of an occasional revelation. 
 And for every revelation he is willing to abide the time 
 fixed beforehand by the Divine Revealer, from Whose 
 Hands we never escape, even if we make our bed in 
 Hell ; and to know Whom is the only Heaven that we 
 need, here or hereafter. And what he knows to be best 
 for himself, that he believes to be best for his friends. 
 He no more desires for his children incessant health or 
 prosperity than he desires for his vines a uniform 
 temperature. Therefore he seems to most people an 
 unfeeling monster. Yet he is not unfeeling. His wife 
 may perhaps desert him, 1 preferring the society of some 
 man who is less advanced in the Science of Prophecy, 
 and therefore more amusing and more outwardly 
 cheerful (perhaps even, as seen from her point of view, 
 more human and lovable). When this happens his 
 heart breaks. But even when a heart is broken, his 
 own or any one else's, the Prophet never forgets to take 
 an awful joy in the fact that such experience is 
 a Revelation. 
 
 Most men confess that they can know " God " only 
 by faith ; that all experience and actual personal know- 
 ledge would lead them no further than to know the 
 " Devil," the Destroyer, the Avenger, the Tempter, the 
 Accuser. The Prophet, too, knows this Destroyer ; he 
 differs from other men in this — that instead of inventing 
 by faith a God who does not destroy, he knows the 
 
 l Hosea. 
 
1 04 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 Eternal Destroyer as Eternal Love. Siva the destroyer, 
 he protests, is co-equal and co-eternal with Brahma the 
 Creator and Vishnu the Preserver ; and yet they are not 
 three Eternals but One Eternal ; not conflicting mysteries 
 but one Ineffable palpitation ; not rival powers but One 
 Loving Lord. 
 
 There is always about the true Prophet more or less of 
 the feeling expressed by the daughter of the Asa-race in 
 Tegner's immortal poem : " The King's daughter will not 
 condescend to snatch at joy ; for she can fling away her 
 whole life's happiness, even as a Queen can cast away her 
 mantle, and still remain just what she was, — a Queen." 
 The masses are jealous of a man to whom personal 
 happiness is but a non-essential, and whose very indiffe- 
 rence to his own fate confers on him the power of ruling 
 those hampered with personal desires, by simply waiting 
 till they have exhausted themselves in fruitless struggles 
 after the fleeting joys of earth or the unattainable bliss 
 of an imaginary Millennium. Their instinct tells them 
 that his very existence is a danger to their prosperity. 
 They crucify or burn him ; or they lock him up, at one 
 time in a gaol, at another time in a mad-house, under 
 the pretence that he " lacks the normal instincts," and 
 on the assumption that they can know which instincts 
 are " normal " and which are not so. 
 
 The Prophet's great danger is the tendency to fall 
 into a mystic acceptance of evil. His faith and patience 
 become exhausted in the struggle against other men's 
 impatience to realize good ; he forgets that the true 
 Good is not suffering, nor even the knowledge which 
 suffering brings ; but the revelation of orderly Pul- 
 sation ; and that suffering where there should be joy 
 
Why the Prophet should be Lonely 105 
 
 is as much disorder as enjoyment where abstinence 
 should be. 
 
 But underlying all that can be said about the diffi- 
 culties of Seers in their intercourse with those around 
 them, there is a latent fact of which the best physical 
 expression is perhaps the irritable spring in the plant 
 called Impatiens Noli me tangere. By means of this 
 spring, the seed is scattered, to germinate at a distance 
 from the parent plant. The Prophet's knowledge is the 
 outcome of all the most spiritual thought of his own 
 country and age ; he can have no resting-place among 
 his own people, because God means him to take a 
 message to distant countries and to future generations. 
 
 Those who devote themselves to a study of the 
 Pulsation doctrine naturally aspire to apply their know- 
 ledge to investigate the Laws of the throbbing backwards 
 and forwards of that mighty engine, a mass of men 
 animated by a common emotion. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 WHY THE PROPHET SHOULD BE LONELY 
 " It is good that one man should die for the People." 
 
 We have been hitherto tracing the evils caused by the 
 inability or unwillingness of the masses to enter into 
 the thoughts of the Seers. We must now look at the 
 other side, and try to see how dangerous to society is 
 overwillingness to listen to the utterances of inspired 
 Seers. Loneliness tends to save the Seer from becoming 
 a charlatan, and to make of him a true Reformer. It 
 
 e 
 
io6 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 is, in fact, one of the most essential aids to true Reform 
 and true Progress ; for this reason : — Suppose that 
 a reform is urgently needed in some particular. It is 
 usually impossible to say beforehand in what exact 
 mode it can best be made. Some man of genius tries 
 experiments in his own little corner of the church or of 
 society. If he is left alone to observe in peace the 
 results of his attempts, then, after many years, he and 
 those who have watched his career can say with 
 authority which of his experiments were in the right 
 direction, and which have been proved useless and need 
 not be tried again. But if persons in official positions 
 show favour to him at the beginning, it becomes the 
 fashion to imitate him. Numbers do so who have no 
 reason for it except that it is the fashion. The whole 
 thing is made a party -question ; and the thinker and 
 those who are working under him become confused by 
 counter-currents of senseless clamour. No chemist 
 could, under similar conditions, conduct experiments in 
 such simple matters as the purification of water or the 
 improvement of cast-iron ; far less can reforms in religion, 
 in society, in thought, be organized thus. Moses, the 
 great Reformer, after he had conceived his reform, is 
 said to have retired into almost loneliness for forty 
 years, and got no following till he had had time to 
 mature his plans. And, in order that the people of 
 Israel might be the true leaders in all Reform, he made 
 rules which secure to each new Reformer something of 
 the same isolation and silence ; so that his crude 
 attempts and immature conceptions may never be taken 
 up as a mere fashion. Some people think these rules 
 harsh ; but they serve very good ends. They secure 
 
Why the Prophet should be Lonely 1 07 
 
 that showy, ambitious, self-seeking men 1 (if Jews) shall 
 court advancement, either by deserting their church to 
 get on in the Gentile world, or by an affectation of 
 over-strict orthodoxy, by which they hope to win the 
 favour of their own people. Either proceeding is con- 
 temptible in itself, but does the church little harm 
 compared to what is done in other churches by showy, 
 vain men playing at Reform. A Jew does not try 
 experiments in Reform unless he is really devoted. 
 The stern Jewish discipline secures for those who are 
 trying social experiments something of the same 
 isolation and quietness as those who are trying experi- 
 ments in physical science secure for themselves by 
 locking the laboratory door till they have found out 
 what they want to know. 
 
 The scientific experiment lasts a few hours ; the 
 moral experiment the best part of a lifetime; and it 
 seems hard to be ignored and unnoticed till old age. 
 But no man should expect to sacrifice to the Lord that 
 which costs him nothing. God accepts no sacrifice 
 except that of our best. Whoever aspires to the honour 
 of righting what has got wrong in the ways of a whole 
 people must be content to be that of which the scape- 
 goat was a sign ; he must " bear upon him all their 
 iniquities into a land not inhabited," and think and 
 search in solitude as Moses himself did. The true 
 Reformer must always be a man despised and rejected, 
 in whom men see no wisdom ; he must be shipwrecked, 
 like Prospero, on a desert island, till he has perfected 
 his methods. Then he can return, to rule the kingdom 
 which is lawfully his own, the thought-realm of the 
 
 1 This was written 20 years ago. 
 
io8 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 ideal ; and the experiments of his ignorant days will 
 not have disturbed the practical work of the Church 
 among the masses who have no means of recreating the 
 past from books in the domain of ideas ; and for whom 
 therefore the destruction of consecrated habits means 
 too often spiritual death. 
 
 The sentence which condemns Reformers to com- 
 parative isolation acts like Gideon's test, in securing that 
 the work of Reform shall be left in the right hands. 
 He who has seen the Law of reaction vibrating down 
 the ages, lives henceforth under a spell ; for him, fate 
 has no terrors, solitude no loneliness, and curses no 
 meaning ; he can go on his way notwithstanding any 
 antagonism ; he knows that, whatever may happen 
 during his life, he will rule posterity from his grave. 
 Those who can be stopped had better be stopped ; they 
 have not seen God. One who knows so little about the 
 ways of the Creator that he cares what contemporaries 
 think, had better work on lines laid down beforehand ; 
 he should not go wandering off into the Infinite to seek 
 new Truth. 
 
 Tegner 1 (whose conception of the value of ecclesiastical 
 outlawry I am here following) represents the young 
 champion of Reform and of Liberty outlawed, not 
 because of any of the things which he wished or 
 intended to do, but for accidentally setting fire to an old 
 temple. He is then subjected to a variety of tests, and 
 gives such proofs of fidelity under difficult circumstances 
 that at last he is elected king of a country adjoining 
 the one from which he was banished. But the spirit of 
 his father reveals to him in a dream that he must not 
 
 1 Frithiof's Saga. 
 
Reform, False and True 109 
 
 venture to exercise even the function for which he has 
 been chosen till he has made Atonement for his involun- 
 tary crime by rebuilding the Temple to which, in his 
 rash young days, he set fire ; and the Heathen priest 
 who has heard of the lore of Judaea further instructs 
 him that, if such reparation is to be accepted as true 
 Atonement, the Temple must be dedicated, not to any 
 partial Deity, but to the Unity who speaks through 
 many messengers. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 REFORM, FALSE AND TRUE 
 "The God of your fathers will bring you out of bondage."' 
 
 The difference between True Reform and mere fashion- 
 able quackery can be illustrated by example. In the 
 beginning of the 1 9th century comparatively few English 
 people learned foreign languages. At last some sensible 
 people thought that it would be well if we in England 
 knew more of the modes of thinking of our French and 
 German neighbours. They made their children learn 
 French and German, really for a reason — in order that 
 the children should be able to converse with foreigners, 
 and to read good books written abroad. That was a 
 real Reform. Next it began to be the fashion to learn 
 French and German. People who had neither the means 
 nor the wish to procure foreign books took to neglecting 
 all sound English education. Many country parents 
 were satisfied with any sort of school in which a girl 
 learned to repeat a few foreign phrases ; they considered 
 
1 i o Logic Taught by Love 
 
 that proved she was educated in a superior and advanced 
 manner. If such silly parents had been asked why a 
 girl was to be made to pick up a smattering of French 
 in preference to learning to understand English properly, 
 they could not have told ; "the gentry make their gals 
 learn French ;" they had no better reason. That is false 
 Reform. There are Jews who are dropping that grand 
 old inheritance, the Hebrew language, in order to get 
 their children taught whatever happens to be in fashion. 
 The Reform they are preparing is that their children 
 will be formed on a lower type than that of their grand- 
 fathers ; about that, I think, there can be no sort of 
 question. Re-form should always aim at rise in type. 
 And this gives us the clue by which we can distinguish 
 false Reform from true. A monkey will do anything, 
 for no better reason than that some one else has done it 
 just before; it is the privilege of men to study the 
 memorials of the past, and to preserve them for future 
 generations. 
 
 When I was a young girl I knew a farmer, who had 
 in his house one of those old oak chests so much prized 
 by lovers of Art, covered with beautiful carvings of 
 scroll-work and flowers. The carving of one of those 
 chests must have taken some man months, perhaps 
 years, to do ; and no one could have done it at all who 
 did not really love his Art. Once done, such a piece of 
 work is a delight to successive generations, and is prized 
 as a family treasure. The farmer's mother became bed- 
 ridden, and was obliged to hire a housekeeper to manage 
 her house. This woman attended diligently to the dairy 
 and all the practical farm-duties which she understood; 
 but, not being interested in old carvings, she allowed the 
 
Reform, False and True 1 1 1 
 
 chest to become clogged with dust, so that the pattern 
 could hardly be seen. One day we called at the farm ; 
 the oak chest was missing. In its place there stood a 
 brand-new white box. We asked for the oak chest. 
 " What oak chest ?" said the housekeeper. "The one 
 that used to stand in that corner." " Oh ! that old 
 thing! Why, he wur that old and shabby and dirty, as 
 I were ashamed to see un ; and the worms had got into 
 un ; so when the painters were doing up the front o' the 
 house, I just fetched in a pail o' paint and a brush, and 
 I tuk and I gived un a nice coat o' paint ; and don't he 
 look a beauty now ?" That good woman thought she 
 had made a reform in the house, improved her mistress's 
 property. We all know that she was much mistaken. 
 Her idea of improvement was a false one. 
 
 We have not all got old carvings in our possession ; 
 but we all have charge of some valuable old things ; an 
 old language, old customs, old traditions, old modes of 
 thought which contain the stored-up mental force of our 
 forefathers, old memories, a race-history, and some form 
 or other of old religious faith. And with all these things 
 we can deal rightly, or we can deal with them wrongly. 
 Changes of some sort we must have. We must not keep 
 every kind of old lumber in our houses, or there would 
 not be room for ourselves. We have to live our own 
 lives ; and we must not so crowd up the world with 
 memorials of the past as to leave no room for the 
 present. We must sometimes make changes or there 
 could be no progress. Which changes are real Reform, 
 and which are mere foolish fashion ? Then, again, just 
 as an old carving left to itself gathers dust and damp 
 and tends to decay, so everything that is old, if left to 
 
1 1 2 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 itself, tends to become obscure and to moulder. Every- 
 thing needs care to keep it fresh. Much of our progress 
 consists in refreshing or renewing things that have grown 
 dusty with age ; the question is, How can this best be 
 done? We have then to study the two questions: What 
 is worth preserving? and : — How to preserve it ? And 
 I think that if we give a few moments' attention to con- 
 sidering how the well-meaning servant above referred to 
 came to make such a mistake as she did, and what 
 exactly was the nature of her mistake, it may help us to 
 find our way to some of the great principles by which 
 false Reform ought to be distinguished from true. 
 
 First, how came she to make the mistake? Well, 
 probably in some such way as this : — Either she herself 
 or some neighbour, when she was young, lived in 
 a room the walls of which were becoming dirty and 
 brown and scratched. By and by it occurred to some- 
 body to whitewash the walls. And everybody who 
 came in said: "How you have improved the place!" 
 And the woman, then perhaps quite a child, got out of 
 the whole affair just this idea : When something is old, 
 and brown, and dirty, and has little holes in it, the way 
 to improve it is to put on it whitewash. When she was 
 grown up and had charge of her mistress's furniture, she 
 neglected the oak chest because she took no interest in 
 it ; but all of a sudden it occurred to her that, if any 
 visitors called, it would look discreditable to have the 
 chest so dirty ; she did not care about the carving, but 
 she did not want to be disgraced in the neighbours' eyes. 
 The chest was old, and it was brown, and it had holes 
 and marks in which the dust lodged ; and it was dirty. 
 The old idea cropped up in her mind, from mere asso- 
 
Reform, False and True 1 1 3 
 
 ciation, without reflection — "whitewash it, that's the way 
 to improve it." She looked out of the window ; there 
 stood a pail of paint just handy, so she took it and did 
 the deed ; and in half an hour she had hidden from the 
 sight of his posterity the loving, painstaking labour of a 
 man who was dead and could not rise to interfere. 
 Because somebody else improved a dirty wall with white- 
 wash, she thought she could improve a dirty carving in 
 the same way; because somebody else hid accidental 
 scratches with whitewash, she hid, with paint, marks 
 made by the loving care of a skilled carver. 
 
 Now if the woman's own father had carved the chest, 
 if she remembered seeing him, when she was a child, 
 working at it evening after evening, then, after he was 
 dead, when it grew dirty and the dust began to clog the 
 pattern, she would have carefully and lovingly brushed 
 out the dust so as to make the pattern show. But she 
 had not actually seen any one at work on it ; therefore 
 it never occurred to her to remember that somebody 
 must have thought it worth while to spend time over 
 the doing of it. It never occurred to her that she was 
 blotting out the memory of the carver by destroying his 
 work. 
 
 Here, then, is one clear principle by which to judge 
 when to destroy memorials of the past, and how to 
 refresh such as we decide to preserve. We should culti- 
 vate "that power of imagination which forms so large a 
 part of the Divine Charity," by learning to think some- 
 times of our remote ancestors as if they were our imme- 
 diate parents, and of the ancestors of others as if they 
 were our own. We reverently consign to the fire many 
 things possessed or made by our own parents, which had 
 
1 1 4 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 only a temporary value, rather than leave them littering 
 about for no purpose except to -cause annoyance and 
 excite contempt ; but we preserve and restore that 
 which, by the exercise of a little care, can be made to 
 have a permanent value and do our parents credit. In 
 the same spirit we should deal with all the work of the 
 past. Our old languages, old customs, old modes of 
 religious observance, are often all that remain to tell us 
 about serious, studious, devout men of long ago. It is 
 easy to forsake old customs for the sake of following 
 new fashions ; but the consequence is, that hardly any- 
 thing then will remain to tell our grandchildren what 
 sort of people their ancestors were. And again, we 
 should try to remember that comparatively little harm 
 is done by the mere mistakes of individuals ; all the 
 most grievous mischief is caused by that massing of 
 error which we call "fashion"; the unreasoning copying 
 of what somebody else does without reflecting whether 
 it is a suitable thing for us to do. Doing something 
 new because somebody else did it, is not progress. 
 Imitation without reason is the property of monkeys, 
 not of men. Nothing is more dangerous to social order 
 than the habit of imitating at random unselected 
 examples. A thing may be very real progress when 
 some one person does it for a reason ; and the very 
 same thing may be anything but progress if somebody 
 else does it without a reason. We teach little children 
 by imitation, but that is because they are children, 
 because their reasoning powers are dormant. So we let 
 a baby crawl on all fours till it can walk. But then a 
 child has parents, who select what example they choose 
 to put before its eyes, and who protect it from crawling 
 
Critique and Criticasters 1 1 5 
 
 into the worst kinds of mud. The privilege of a grown 
 man is to stand up on his feet and not crawl, and to 
 think for himself what he ought to do, and whom he 
 ought to imitate ; and not copy the example of strangers 
 without knowing why. 1 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 CRITIQUE AND CRITICASTERS 
 ££ How beautiful are the feet of them that make Peace.'"' 
 
 We have traced some of the harm that is done by 
 prejudiced rejection of new truth ; we have also glanced 
 at the far greater harm that may be done by over hasty 
 acceptance of it. We have now to consider the question: — 
 What are the steps which might be taken with a view 
 to prepare the masses to receive in an orderly manner 
 whatever new truths about the Pulsation of Life may 
 in future be revealed ; so as to secure the greatest 
 amount of good with the least harm ? I do not propose 
 to speak of any wholesale measures which need govern- 
 mental action before they can take effect ; but only to 
 suggest possible endeavours for individuals. The 
 present Chapter will relate to the Art of Critique, and 
 address itself chiefly to those who have some experience 
 of the work of teaching elementary mathematics. Any 
 teacher of elementary mathematics might make his class 
 work a real training in the Art of true Critique ; and 
 thereby not diminish but increase his success in his own 
 proper subject. 
 
 1 Given as a lecture at the Jewish Working- Men's Club. 
 
1 1 6 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 Let us think for a few moments of the whole reading 
 public as a College, which Truth, as Head-Master, is 
 endeavouring to instruct and educate ; and of men of 
 Genius, discoverers, reformers, as assistant-masters, to 
 each of whom is committed the task of teaching the 
 subject of which he knows most. The comparison 
 would be an impertinent one, if we illustrated it by 
 reference to classes in such subjects as History or 
 Language ; because the school-teacher in such subjects 
 is obliged to require from his pupils a kind of docility 
 which readers are not expected to give to an author. 
 But every mathematical teacher who deserves the name 
 endeavours to accustom his pupils to take nothing for 
 granted till it has been proved to their own personal 
 satisfaction. The mathematician, therefore, is related 
 to his class in much the same way as a writer to his 
 readers. In my imaginary College, the various teachers 
 are in the habit of attending each other's classes when- 
 ever they wish to do so ; a practice which actually does 
 prevail to a certain extent in some schools, and with 
 the happiest results ; for the teacher who takes his place 
 among the pupils of a colleague, can, if he will, set the 
 class an excellent example of courteous and intelligent 
 questioning. But if the various teachers thought of 
 each other's work in the same spirit as the leaders of 
 Literature and Science do, and if the pupils thought 
 of their teachers as the reading public do of writers and 
 preachers, the result would be not only moral confusion, 
 but intellectual chaos. 
 
 The chief reason why courtesy, reverence, and a 
 certain kind of docility are needful for those who would 
 learn, is this : — Truth is never received into the human 
 
Critique and Criticasters 1 1 7 
 
 mind without an admixture of conventions, of what 
 may be called fictions. These fictions have to be 
 introduced, used, and then withdrawn. It would be 
 impossible to teach even so straightforward a subject as 
 mathematics without the temporary use of statements 
 which are not true to the nature of things. The history 
 of a child who is learning mathematics, like that of 
 human thought, is very much a record of alternate 
 introduction of convenient fictions and subsequent 
 analysis of their true Nature. A class, like a public, 
 tends at times to become groovy and mechanical ; to 
 mistake the accidental for the essential ; to treat neces- 
 sary aids to learning as if they were actual truths ; to 
 lose sight of the relative importance of various kinds of 
 information. A class in Botany tends to forget that 
 classification and terminology are not so much part of 
 the life of plants as circulation and fertilization ; a class 
 in Analytical Geometry forgets that the co-ordinates 
 are no part of a curve. Just so, the reading public 
 forgot, till Charles Darwin woke it up, that intermittence 
 is no necessary part of Creative Action ; although it is 
 convenient for man, for purposes of classification, to 
 imagine a series of intermittent acts. A student tends 
 to such forgetfulness in proportion as he becomes 
 mechanical in his work ; the genius of a teacher is very 
 much shown by the manner in which he contrives to 
 arouse the interest and correct the errors of a class 
 which is becoming too mechanical. 
 
 Theorists in education sometimes imagine that a good 
 teacher should not allow the work of his class to become 
 mechanical at all. A year or two of practical work in 
 a school (especially with Examinations looming ahead) 
 
1 1 8 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 cures one of all such delusions. Education involves, 
 not only teaching, but also training. Training implies 
 that work shall become mechanical ; teaching involves 
 preventing mechanicalness from reaching a degree fatal 
 to progress. We must therefore allow much of the 
 actual work to be done in a mechanical manner, without 
 direct consciousness of its meaning ; an intelligent 
 teacher will occasionally rouse his pupils to full con- 
 sciousness of what they are doing ; and if he can do so 
 without producing confusion, he may be complimented 
 and his class congratulated. 
 
 Let us now go into the subject more in detail. We 
 teach laws of curves by reference to certain straight 
 lines — tangents, co-ordinates, radii, etc. These lines 
 bear the same kind of relation to the curves which the 
 framework of sticks fastened into a pot bears to the 
 climbing plant, which is the true object of the gardener's 
 care. The plant itself is living and growing ; the 
 justification for the existence of the framework consists 
 in the fact that it would be impossible to get the true 
 enjoyment of the plant without its aid. The co- 
 ordinates form no part of what we want to teach about; 
 but we cannot learn without their help. They enable 
 us to see how the curve came into being, and whither 
 it is tending. 
 
 Suppose then that a class, while becoming skilful in 
 working problems, seems to have forgotten that the 
 axes are no part of the curve itself. The teacher may 
 wake it up by saying, " You don't imagine, surely, that 
 axes form any necessary portion of a curve. An 
 ellipse, for instance, is the path of a body moving round 
 a focus of attraction. Suppose a planet were endowed 
 
Critique and Criticasters 1 1 9 
 
 with the power of leaving a track in the sky, the track 
 would be an ellipse only, unencumbered with axes. 
 What are the axes, then ? Indications of invisible 
 forces ? Not so. No line of attraction at any point of 
 the orbit corresponds to the minor axis. The axes are 
 human devices to enable us to measure and express the 
 various elements of the orbit." " Well, but," exclaims 
 perhaps some clever pupil, " if the straight lines are 
 unreal, if they mean nothing, why were they invented, 
 and why were we made to study them ? " Such 
 reasonable criticism is a great help to the teacher. He 
 proceeds to picture the state of Astronomy in the days 
 when nothing was known of the movement of the 
 planets. He describes the first bewildered effort of the 
 human mind to represent to itself the path of these 
 wanderers. He shows how some man may have at last 
 conceived the brilliant idea of projecting imaginary 
 straight lines across the sky from one fixed constellation 
 to another, thus forming a sort of background of 
 measuring-rods ; how the constellations, with these 
 imaginary connecting lines, might be copied on a tablet, 
 and the path of the planet registered thereon from day 
 to day ; and how Science might grow up by man 
 inventing modes of measuring and registering curves 
 which the living forces of Nature were describing in 
 Space. 
 
 After such a lesson, the class goes on with its work 
 with renewed interest and quickened intelligence. But 
 how would the case be if a group of other teachers were 
 present, who should comment on the lesson in this wise? 
 One says "All the good books present curves with axes; 
 you think yourself cleverer than our best writers." A 
 
i2o Logic Taught by Love 
 
 second says, " It is perfectly crazy to attempt to teach 
 people to think of curves without axes." A third says, 
 " I really do think there is something in your view ; but 
 this much is clear : when you accepted a post in this 
 College, you undertook to use a standard text-book, 
 and to teach on ordinary lines. If you have theories 
 different from those generally accepted, you were at 
 least bound to give up your post before you began to 
 express them ; then we could have respected you. To 
 stop here and to suggest doubts to the pupils is 
 dishonest and scandalous ; and your conduct makes me 
 doubt the honesty of everything you say." A fourth 
 says, "You are right, and all the books are wrong. It 
 is a shame that children should be taught to believe 
 fictions ; away with these stupid books that have misled 
 the world so long." A fifth is indignant that the grand 
 old sages who created Astronomy should be accused of 
 inventing falsehoods to serve their own ends ; the sixth, 
 on the contrary, is angry that the time of the class 
 should be wasted on listening to, and trying to follow, 
 the mental History of a set of savages who lived before 
 Analytical Geometry had become a Science. And some 
 clever young lecturer, who happens to have heard that 
 our solar system, as a whole, is in motion, and who 
 fancies that such knowledge is his own peculiar property, 
 triumphantly asserts that the earth-path is not an ellipse, 
 but an elliptical spiral ; and that any statement based 
 on the premise that the ellipse represents a planet-path 
 must be false throughout. Now what chance would any 
 of us have of teaching anything to a class subject to 
 such interruptions of the normal current of thought ? 
 In a College where such disorder prevailed, would the 
 
Critique and Criticasters 1 2 1 
 
 pupils be in a frame of mind to receive instruction ? 
 Would the teachers themselves be likely to preserve the 
 calmness necessary for the investigation of Truth ? 
 That the picture I have drawn is no exaggerated one, 
 that those whose mission is to arouse the public to 
 a perception of the relation between the essential and 
 the accidental have to run the gauntlet of a style of 
 criticism as senseless and frivolous as I have represented, 
 no one can doubt. We are all aware of the absurdity 
 of our present modes of receiving new truth ; few, I fear, 
 are sufficiently aware of its evil effects. Therefore it is 
 well for us to reflect what effect it would have on the 
 teaching of so simple a thing as Geometry, if teachers 
 introduced into each other's classes the element which 
 is so rife in our literature. 
 
 True Critique is one of the fine Arts ; as sacred and 
 beautiful as all true Art. There is no keener pleasure 
 for a good teacher than genuine criticism from a pupil. 
 If a question is asked which shows that the teacher has 
 failed to make intelligible a fact perfectly clear to him- 
 self, even that is a source of great enjoyment. But 
 when, as sometimes happens, a remark is made which 
 proves that we have not gone deep enough into our own 
 subject, which opens up new avenues of thought, and 
 forces us to reconsider a demonstration, to re-investigate 
 a solution ; when, in fact, the relation between teacher 
 and pupil is for a time inverted, it is then that that 
 relation becomes fullest of pleasure and profit. (And 
 so of course it is, in a still higher degree, between 
 a writer and the critical reader.) But what chance 
 would a pupil have of making intelligent criticisms, or 
 of asking suggestive questions, if it were the fashion 
 
 H 
 
122 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 of the class to indulge in a carnival of absurdity 
 wherein senseless accusations were flung about at 
 random ? 
 
 Let us return to the subject of Analytical Geometry. 
 
 The tangent to an ellipse is an imaginary straight 
 line, representing the path which would be followed by 
 the body tracing the ellipse, if its connection with the 
 attracting focus were suddenly to cease. In its essence, 
 the tangent is a sublime effort of the scientific imagin- 
 ation ; it pictures the result of a sudden cessation of the 
 action of gravity. In practice the tangent is a convenient 
 line for indicating the curvature at any given point. 
 The educational sentimentalists who object to mechani- 
 calness, ought, if consistent, never to use a tangent in 
 working a problem, without stopping to realize the 
 grandeur of the idea involved. As a matter of fact, 
 such incessant strain on the imagination and on the 
 perception of the sublime is unhealthy and deadening. 
 It is far better to use tangents, mechanically, as mere 
 measuring-rods. But a good teacher will take care that 
 no pupil goes through a year's work at Analytical 
 Geometry without having been, once or twice, aroused 
 to perceive the wonderful poetic conceptions represented 
 by the lines he is using. 
 
 In our supposed disorderly College, a sentimental 
 poet might take upon himself to reprove the Geometry 
 teacher for allowing so awful a conception as the sudden 
 cessation of gravity to be degraded by being talked of 
 as a mere convenience, without due realization of its 
 horror ; a scientist holding utilitarian views might retort, 
 that the function of the instructor being to impart truth, 
 no such thing as the cessation of gravity ought ever to 
 
Critique and Criticasters 123 
 
 be mentioned before a class ; because, as a matter of 
 fact, no instance of any such event is on record. 
 
 Let us now pass to the subject of Arithmetic. Instead 
 of fictitious lines, we have here to deal with fictitious 
 statements, i.e., with statements which, if treated as 
 truths, are false, but which, when clearly understood to 
 be mere convenient fictions, do actually convey truth. 
 Such a statement, for instance, is, " Twelve pence equal 
 one shilling." No one is ever really deceived by this 
 particular statement ; but that is because all are familiar 
 with the actual coinage, and know that, as a matter of 
 objective fact, " a shilling " is not identical with " twelve 
 pennies " (in the sense in which " a dozen apples " is 
 identical with " twelve apples "). But a similar statement, 
 made about unfamiliar objects, or about abstractions, 
 might be misleading, unless the teacher took care to 
 prevent misconceptions. And even in the case of our 
 familiar coinage, it is essential to good mental discipline 
 that the pupils should occasionally be made to define 
 carefully the sense of the word " equal," in the sentence 
 " twelve pence equal one shilling," and have their 
 attention directed to the fact that, if accepted as true, 
 it becomes false ; that it contains and conveys truth only 
 while clearly understood to be a fictitious but well- 
 arranged convention. If the teacher forgets to do this, 
 he ought to be grateful to any one who reminds him of 
 his omission. 
 
 Now let us suppose that, in our imaginary College, 
 the pupils are unacquainted with the actual coinage, 
 and the teacher not sufficiently awake to the meta- 
 physical necessity for defining, for them, words the real 
 meaning of which is present to his own mind. He simply 
 
124 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 states : " Twelve pennies are one shilling." A lecturer 
 on physics may afterwards happen to make a statement, 
 the obvious outcome of which is that twelve pennies are 
 (in weight) equal to about twenty-one shillings ; and a 
 chemist might prove that silver and copper are not 
 identical, and that no amount of silver can produce the 
 medicinal properties or chemical reactions of a grain of 
 copper. Each teacher will then have made a statement, 
 judged by which his two colleagues will each have 
 spoken falsely. Such a thing is quite conceivable as 
 that a party-spirit should arise in the College; the pupils 
 each taking the side of his favourite professor, and 
 accusing the others of gross ignorance or of wilful per- 
 version of truth. The unlucky mathematician might 
 then do what he ought to have done, but forgot to do, at 
 first, i.e., point out that he was using the word "equal" 
 in a conventional sense; a sense perfectly legitimate for 
 his purpose, though legitimate only within the scope of 
 that purpose. But if party-spirit had already been 
 aroused in the matter, and angry or contemptuous 
 accusations flung about, the explanation would only add 
 to the confusion ; for the teacher would now be accused 
 by the adverse party of paltering with truth, of using 
 words in a double sense with intention to mislead ; his 
 very explanation would be quoted against him in triumph 
 as a confession of guilt. Again I ask, what chance 
 would the teachers in such a College have of discovering 
 truth, or the pupils of learning what had been discovered ? 
 
 A very prevalent form of criticasterism might be 
 parodied as follows : — The teacher states a question 
 thus: "The rate of exchange is gyid. for a franc; how 
 many francs shall I receive for so many shillings?" A 
 
Critique and Criticasters 125 
 
 colleague interrupts the lesson to ask what evidence 
 there is to show that this is the exact rate. Another 
 asserts that the last rate quoted was 9/875^. per franc; 
 and a third insists that the last quotation was 9/876^. 
 They engage in a vehement discussion of the point; but 
 all agree that such gross ignorance of facts as the teacher 
 betrays, proves him to be incompetent ; and that, as the 
 statement on which his procedure rests is proved false, 
 his whole chain of reasoning falls to the ground. 
 
 I will close these mathematical illustrations by 
 narrating an incident which actually occurred. An 
 intelligent girl, who had been badly taught arithmetic, 
 joined my class. I set her a sum about some damaged 
 articles worth, originally, £3 1 5 s. each, but which were 
 to be sold in a lump at an abatement of one pound and 
 some shillings on the price of each. She was required 
 to find what would be received for the whole. It so 
 happened that the lump sum amounted to so many 
 pounds and fifteen shillings. She came to me saying 
 that she could not get her sum right; the shillings were 
 right, but the pounds were wrong. I worked it for her; 
 beginning, of course, by subtracting the shillings of the 
 abatement from the original fifteen shillings. " But I 
 had the shillings right," she cried ; "now you are getting 
 it all wrong!" There was something very touching in 
 her dismay at seeing the poor little bit of rightness, 
 which she had secured, put wrong, and I felt like a 
 ruthless destroyer of the last refuge of an innocent soul; 
 but Arithmetic tolerates no sentimental hesitations; and 
 I had, of course, to persist. At last, by trusting in blind 
 faith to accurate Logic, we got the whole right, to her 
 great surprise. I asked her to explain her own method. 
 
i26 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 It appeared that she had first set down the original 
 price as given in the book, and then looked at the 
 answer in the end of the book, and, finding that the 
 shillings there corresponded with what stood before her 
 on her paper, she copied them straight into the "Answer" 
 place, thinking that it would be useless (and, I am sure, 
 feeling vaguely that it would be irreverent) to meddle 
 with what the book pronounced to be right. She had 
 therefore set to work to manipulate the pounds with a 
 view to get them into accordance with the official 
 standard ! Of course she failed. Of course, — from our 
 point of view ; but from hers, it seemed that adhering to 
 the book as long as you could must be the right thing to 
 do ! I was then able to explain to her a little about the 
 right use of authoritative standards ; to show her that, 
 if used as a check on results, they may often be of use 
 by revealing errors in our reasoning which might other- 
 wise have passed unperceived ; but that, if taken 
 advantage of to spare ourselves the effort of working 
 out our own problems at our own cost, they are gener- 
 ally found misleading. My pupil profited, I hope, by 
 the lesson, in more ways than one. But what chance 
 should I have had of teaching her either arithmetic, or 
 the right use of standards, or anything else, if any other 
 teacher had confused her mind, before I had half finished 
 my explanation, by reproving me for teaching her to 
 rebel against the authority of the text-book, and to work 
 sums as she liked, without reference to the only infallible 
 standard ; and by warning her that I was only pandering 
 to license and carelessness ? 
 
 "Truth for ever on the scaffold; wrong for ever on the 
 throne." The scaffold on which Truth is murdered, the 
 
Critique and Criticasters 1 27 
 
 throne on which wrong sits to rule, are built of careless, 
 irreverent, senseless criticisms. When the account of 
 the good and ill which we have done on earth is summed 
 up, the heaviest item in the account against many of us 
 will perhaps consist in the record of our idle words. 
 
 The aim of all students should be, so to pass through 
 things temporal that finally they lose not the Eternal ; 
 so to pass through temporary aids to knowledge as not 
 to miss perceiving the Eternal Truths. Only unpractical 
 dreamers suppose that Truth can be grasped without 
 adventitious and fictitious aids ; all true students know 
 that they are dependent on such aids; and their hope is 
 so to use them as not to abuse them. We are in danger 
 of becoming entangled in these adjuncts of Truth ; of 
 mistaking them for actual truths. Therefore The Unseen 
 Wisdom which guides the destinies of mankind, raises 
 up occasionally what we call "a Reformer"; whose 
 function is to give to Humanity such a lesson as I have 
 described the teacher of Analytical Geometry giving to 
 a class. The Reformer reminds us that our framework 
 of aids to investigation is not, in itself, Truth. As the 
 mathematician teaches us to see the actual path of a 
 planet, in contrast, on one hand, with the tangent con- 
 ceived by imagining an impossible state of things from 
 which the action of Gravity is suspended, and, on the 
 other hand, with the Axes which are well-arranged 
 measuring-rods, so the Reformer teaches us to look at 
 the actual Life of Humanity, in contrast, on one side, 
 with the Vision of an impossible Idea made simple by 
 the omission of certain elements, and, on the other side, 
 with that convenient mechanism by which the compre- 
 hension of our duty is facilitated for us. 
 
128 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 How our Heaven-sent Reformers are received, we 
 know : Truth on the scaffold ; and, on the throne, who- 
 ever helps us to confuse convenient fiction with fact. 
 The world is surely old enough to behave less like a class 
 of ill-bred school-boys than it has as yet done; it might 
 prepare itself to give to its future Seers a reception more 
 worthy than it has given to Seers in the past. All we 
 who are engaged in mathematical teaching may contri- 
 bute to that end, if we take pains to make our pupils 
 distinguish between Truth and the mere accessories of 
 study. We may also do something to train the rising 
 generation in a comprehension of the difference between 
 true and false criticism; we may accustom them to com- 
 bine the fearless loyalty which compels a learner to 
 express frankly his real difficulties and doubts with the 
 respectful courtesy which checks irreverent and thought- 
 less cavil. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE SABBATH OF FREEDOM. 
 
 " Let not the son of the stranger that hath joined himself to the Lord, 
 say, The Lord hath utterly separated me from His people ; for thus 
 saith the Lord : The sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the 
 Lord to serve Him, every one that keepeth the sabbath and taketh 
 hold of My covenant ; even them will I bring to My holy mountain, 
 and make them joyful in My house of prayer." 
 
 Isaiah lvi., 3-7. 
 
 If we visit a well-conducted Gymnasium in a school, 
 we find rhythmic pulsation exhibited in the exer- 
 cises in more than one form. In some, a limb is 
 sharply thrown out from the body, and immediately 
 
The Sabbath of Freedom 129 
 
 and rapidly withdrawn. In others, the pupils assume 
 slowfy some extreme and even exaggerated position ; 
 usually one which would be condemned in the class- 
 room as disorderly. Now it does not occur to the Lady 
 Principal to reprove the teacher for thus reversing the 
 orders given by her, nor to bring an accusation of 
 defying her commands and teaching the pupils to set 
 her authority at naught. On the contrary, all parties 
 concerned know that the very object of School- 
 Gymnastic is to undo the cramping effect of class-room 
 discipline. For a young child, or a wild beast, which 
 spends many hours daily in exercise, no gymnastic is 
 so good as the free play of all its limbs ; but as soon as 
 the business of life imposes the necessity for a cramping 
 specialization, mere play, during the short hours allowed 
 for relaxation, is no longer sufficient to give freedom 
 and elasticity to the frame ; the exercise must be 
 specially adapted to counteract whatever forms of 
 specialization may be imposed during the hours devoted 
 to work. Every one knows this, and nobody objects. 
 Every teacher knows that unity among the staff, so far 
 as physical education is concerned, implies, not agree- 
 ment in opinion as to the best position for girls to place 
 themselves in, but what may be called a " consensus of 
 reverence for the harmony produced by organized 
 antithesis ." Life means not this position or that, but 
 alternation of position. No faculty or organ is properly 
 fitted for its appointed work till it has trained itself, or 
 been trained, into a possibility of rhythmic action ; and 
 education means chiefly the bringing one faculty after 
 another into subjection to this cosmic law. 
 
 Long before this principle had been clearly seen to 
 
i3° Logic Taught by Love 
 
 apply to physical education, Philosophers knew that it 
 was the principle of healthy mental action. Lavs of 
 Thought are discovered far earlier in the world's history 
 than Laws of things ; for the reason given in Chapter XL, 
 viz., that every man who is capable of thinking can, if 
 he will, state the Laws of Thought with absolute exact- 
 ness and certainty ; whereas Laws of things are only 
 arrived at after centuries of observation of phenomena ; 
 and even then, as Mr. Boole explains, the statement is, 
 to the last, a hypothetical and probable one (until we 
 have succeeded in Algebraizing the Law of the becoming 
 of the things). It was known that the principle of 
 contradiction (or free pulsation) is the life of the mind, 
 many centuries before medical men had discovered that 
 in it consists the life of the muscles. Logic should be 
 to the mind what gymnastic is to the body ; a practice 
 in reversal of attitude. Yet, for some singular reason 
 not yet explained, the mass of teachers and statesmen, 
 while they encourage the application to the physical 
 life of the principle of rhythmic alternation, either deny, 
 •r more frequently ignore, that it has any place in the 
 moral life. 
 
 The reason appears to be this : — Parents, teachers, 
 and governments wish that children should develop the 
 power to assume at will any physical position. Teachers 
 and governments are content with such control of the 
 physical as enables them to secure the public safety and 
 •rder. But few teachers or governors are content with 
 safety and order in moral affairs ; they wish to retain in 
 their own hands a far greater control of mental and 
 moral action than this. The more healthily developed 
 the frame is, the easier it is to preserve a statuesque 
 
The Sabbath of Freedom 1 3 1 
 
 repose during certain specified hours; but only a 
 cramped and sickly organization can be kept continuously 
 in one position. Healthy mental gymnastic makes 
 children willing law-abiders and docile pupils during the 
 hours of lessons ; but it emancipates them, by making 
 impossible continuous interference with their mental 
 freedom. Now a privileged class can better maintain 
 its power over a sickly and vicious population than over 
 a population of orderly free-thinkers. 
 
 A detestable practice prevails in Christian England, 
 and is, I regret to say, on the increase, of teaching in 
 Sunday-school after the same method as is found on 
 week-days to answer the purpose of preparing children 
 to pass Examinations successfully. The material of the 
 lessons is changed on Sundays, the attitude is not ; for 
 the History of Rome or France is substituted that of 
 Palestine ; for the Logic of Aristotle that of Paul ; for 
 the Poetry of Shakspere that of Isaiah ; the change is 
 apparent, the monotony is terribly real. The children 
 are subject, throughout their teaching, to the same 
 grinding pressure. Surely religious people of all sorts 
 might join in trying to put a stop to this hideous pros- 
 titution of the Blessed Sabbath to the purposes of 
 making children slavish and helpless ; and claim it for 
 the purpose for which it was originally instituted, — the 
 cultivation of freedom by reversal of attitude. 
 
 As for the manner in which reversal of attitude may 
 be induced, that must depend on the subject which is 
 occupying attention during work-hours. If a boy be 
 engaged in weeding, the teacher of his Sabbath-school 
 should point out to him that crops and weeds belong 
 equally to the vegetable kingdom, and have many 
 
1 3 2 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 characteristics in common ; that the Parsnip even 
 belongs to the same class as Hemlock, and the Turnip 
 to the same class as the weed Shepherd's Purse ; that 
 the plants are equally good in the sight of God, and 
 equally interesting from the point of view of Science ; 
 that the fact of some plants being fit for human food, 
 and others useless or harmful to man, is due to an 
 accident of the human organization. The weeder 
 should be exhorted to make a practice of preparing for 
 repose by reflecting a moment on these truths as he 
 comes home from work in the evening. He should be 
 told, too, that the amount of blessing which he can thus 
 draw down on himself by meditating on The Unity of 
 plant-life, will be commensurate with the completeness 
 of his attention, during work-hours, to the business of 
 discriminating crop from weeds. 
 
 This lesson forms a good preparation for the great 
 climax of all unification. The pupil should be told that 
 the business of our life on earth consists in weeding 
 Good from that which, for man, is Evil ; and that we 
 should prepare for the Sabbath, by which the strain of 
 life is relieved, by thinking of Him of Whom it is written: 
 " I make Peace, and I create evil, saith the Lord." 
 
 For a kitchen-maid, a suitable unification would be 
 to reflect on the fact that the potato and its peel, — or 
 the cabbage and its outer leaves, — grew as one. 
 
 For a class in History, the unification might consist 
 in reflecting that the Nation whose exploits they have 
 been admiring, and whose triumphs they have been 
 sharing, is but a part of Humanity ; that every victory 
 it has won, in war,has injured some other Nation; whereas 
 every achievement it has made in Science or Art has, 
 
The Sabbath of Freedom 1 3 3 
 
 sooner or later, enriched the whole human race. This 
 act of sympathy with Mankind as a whole will be more 
 productive of vigour, in proportion as the pupils have, 
 during the History lesson itself, thrown themselves 
 more unreservedly into the emotions of the particular 
 people of whom they are reading. 
 
 At Queen's College I tried for some years the experi- 
 ment of holding, on Sunday evenings (the only available 
 time ; but the eve of Sabbath would have been more 
 suitable), a true logic-class for the resident pupils. That 
 I made many mistakes I need not say ; the whole 
 subject was, at that time, entirely in the condition of 
 pure theory ; and I had, as I went on, to find out what 
 were the practical difficulties. Moreover, the College 
 was under clerical management, and of all the staff, 
 including the council and committee, only two members 
 ever had the faintest idea what I was trying to find out, 
 or why I went to the place at all. I had therefore to 
 be very careful not to suggest doubts of the wisdom 
 either of clerical authorities generally, or of our own in 
 particular. The position was difficult, but I tried to 
 find out whatever I could. On week-days the girls had, 
 of course to attend to one subject at a time, and to look 
 at each from a prescribed point of view. On Sundays 
 I read to them any book, or allowed them to talk of any 
 subject, that seemed to interest them, and encouraged 
 the free play of their minds ; but I took care to lead the 
 conversation into the channel of finding what light one 
 subject of study throws on another. The characteristics 
 of the week-day lessons being submission and speciali- 
 zation^ I made those of the Sunday lessons free expansion 
 and unification. 
 
1 34 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 Old pupils assure me that they never discovered any 
 jarring contradiction between my views and those of 
 our clerical heads. The substance of their comments 
 is much as follows : — " I didn't know you were teaching 
 us anything on those happy Sunday evenings ; I thought 
 we were being amused, not taught. But after I left 
 College I found you had given us a power. We can 
 think for ourselves, and find out what we want to know." 
 Now what was Sabbath instituted for, and what was 
 Logic made for, except to create free-thinkers, free men 
 and women, intellectual athletes, Prophets, and, in the 
 best sense of the word, priests ? Moses wished that all 
 the Lord's People should be Priests and Prophets, even 
 as he was. 
 
 It is almost needless to remark that the result 
 indicated is due to the observance of a Sabbath of 
 Freedom, sharply contrasted with week-day discipline. 
 No such good effects follow the practice of leaving girls 
 to think at random, and to study what they choose (or 
 not study at all), all the week long. 
 
 I would never again try to teach under similar circum- 
 stances. The logician should not be a servant of 
 a clerical body. If any true mode of teaching Logic 
 became general, it would gradually modify all religious 
 teaching, and make it tend to become a training in 
 order and reverence, not an inculcation of opinions or 
 prejudices. Few clergymen would preach such sermons 
 as they now do, if they knew that their arguments were 
 subjected each week to a careful logical analysis, and 
 all the reasons for the contrary opinion to their own 
 were pointed out before the younger members of :heir 
 flock. In fact, the same change would pass over religious 
 
The Sabbath of Freedom 1 3 5 
 
 and moral teaching as has passed over the teaching of 
 physical deportment. A mother or governess now has 
 to be content with forbidding certain attitudes as 
 unsuited to the drawing-room or class-room ; she cannot 
 go through the solemn farce of forcing on the child her 
 prejudices about certain attitudes being in the abstract 
 " unladylike," when she knows that the child will 
 presently be made to assume those attitudes by order 
 of the Gymnast. So a clergyman would, if Logic were 
 properly taught, be obliged to content himself with 
 inducing in Church an attitude of reverence and 
 devotion ; he could not, with a grave countenance, 
 attempt to inculcate his own opinions or prejudices as 
 essential truths. 
 
 The command that children should honour their own 
 parents by no means implies that they are not, once 
 a week at least, to be put into an attitude of sympathy 
 with the ideas of other people. This teaching of true 
 Logic in no way tends to interfere with the submission 
 due, in matters of fact, to parents or other lawful authori- 
 ties. On the contrary, it makes submission seem less 
 harsh. Disobedience in a child is usually the result 
 either of unsatisfied craving for that reversal of physical 
 posture which is the life of the muscles, or of unsatisfied 
 longing for that antithesis of mental position whick 
 constitutes the life of the brain. When we attribute 
 naughtiness in a child to the natural depravity of his 
 own heart, we often might more truly attribute it 
 to the unnatural depravity of some adult, who has 
 made him ill by trying to prevent his reversing 
 either the physical or mental attitude in which she 
 placed him. 
 
1 3 6 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 Religious writers are expected to have something to 
 say on the subject of Incarnation. The present writer 
 mentions it here, only in order to show that she is not 
 afraid of it. 
 
 Incarnation is, necessarily, phenomenalization ; for it 
 is the manifestation of somewhat. The Incarnation 
 believed in by Christians is necessarily one-sided ; for 
 it is the manifestation of Good — of those qualities, in 
 a perfect form, which, in an imperfect condition, consti- 
 tute what we call human goodness, without any admix- 
 ture of the fierceness and lust which God created in 
 brutes, but which, in man, are evil. Neither the existence 
 nor the value of such a crowning of all phenomenalization 
 has been denied by our great mathematical Logicians. 
 Babbage and De Morgan, Gratry and Boole, concurred 
 in thinking the subject of Singular Solution worthy 
 their profoundest study. But its value is as a type- 
 model for us, an intellectual and moral guide for our 
 working-hours. The notion of substituting, on Sabbath, 
 prostrate adoration of a Manifestation of one side of 
 God, for meditation on the Ineffable and Inconceivable 
 Union of polar attributes, is one which Logic cannot 
 take seriously into account, and which Logicians can 
 find no words to characterize. 
 
 The earliest Christians kept Sabbath as Jews, and 
 consecrated the working-week by a First-day communion 
 with Jesus ; which shows that they took a logical and 
 sane view of their relation to their Master. Whatever 
 excuses priests may afterwards have made to the con- 
 science for ignoring altogether the main purpose of 
 Sabbath, the latent motive for it must have been the 
 same which had prompted all similar perversions. As 
 
The Art of Education 137 
 
 Boulanger says, 1 no inefficient government can possibly 
 maintain its place, unless the masses can be induced to 
 adopt some form of idolatry ; for the worship of The 
 Inconceivable Unity confers such elastic strength, that a 
 people accustomed to it would at once shake off any 
 government which no longer represented its own highest 
 Ideals. And every inefficient government instinctively 
 has recourse, if it can, to the device of using as tools for 
 the brutalizing of the masses, those very priests whose 
 original function was to vitalize the masses. " Priests 
 were appointed to lead man in the right road ; but in all 
 ages they have feared lest he should find it and walk in 
 it. . . . Men have believed that they could, without 
 degradation, behave as the slaves of Him Who set us 
 free ; and" (as the true God retires before such unworthy 
 homage) " they have only succeeded in becoming slaves 
 to His hypocritical Ministers." Thus does Boulanger 
 sum up the History of Religion ; and thus may be 
 summed up all that Logic can have to say about any 
 teaching of so-called Religion which aims at preparing 
 pupils for Examinations, or which adopts methods found 
 useful in preparing for examination in "secular" subjects. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE ART OF EDUCATION. 
 " The heathen say, Where is your God ?" 
 
 METHODS of teaching which, from the point of view of 
 medical psychology, are sound (i.e., those which vitalize 
 and sanitate the brain), are distinguished from vicious 
 
 1 Origine du Despotisme Oriental. 
 
1 3 8 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 methods {i.e., those which exhaust the vital powers and 
 create bad habits of mental sequence) by the fact that 
 the former are conformed to the central or fundamental 
 law of Thought-sequence. 
 
 The physiology teacher lays on his table two speci- 
 mens of the same bone ; one from which all the gelatine 
 has been boiled, and the other from which the phosphates 
 have been discharged by acid, leaving only a gelatine 
 shape. The class are instructed to examine each sepa- 
 rately, and then to form a mental picture of a bone in 
 which these two structures mutually interpenetrate each 
 other. The teacher probably supposes himself to be 
 merely illustrating the structure of bone ; but in reality 
 he is illustrating the fundamental law of sound mental 
 action. Would that all teaching was done on the same 
 model ! We should then hear very little about " break- 
 ing down from over- work in schools ! " 
 
 The bone-lesson above referred to gives the standard 
 model on a very minute scale ; education should copy 
 that model on various scales of size. The rhythmic 
 beats of alternate specialization and synthesis may vary 
 from the five minutes or so occupied by the bone-lesson, 
 to a period of a whole year; they should be of various 
 degrees of complexity; from learning to see as one, two 
 aspects of the same bit of bone, to learning to see what 
 light the year's lessons on History, Language, Mathe- 
 matics, and Physical Science throw on each other's 
 meaning. The most important rhythm would appear to 
 be one whose pulsation occupies about seven days. 
 
 Gratry has pointed out how the habit of periodic 
 synthesis of different branches of study strengthens the 
 mind and enables it to do a marvellous quantity of work 
 
The Art of Education 1 3 9 
 
 without exhaustion or injury. He also calls attention 
 to the fact that when this habit of periodic synthesis is 
 once gained, the brain does a good deal of it by some 
 process of unconscious cerebration, and even during 
 sound and refreshing sleep. 
 
 The principle on which Gratry's system, and every 
 other vitally healthy one, depends, is that mere cessation 
 of action, or even mere change of action, is not rest; rest 
 must be prepared for by antithetic action. The normal 
 sequence of the lungs is expansion, contraction, repose. 
 If we tried to make our lungs stand still at any point 
 of the cycle except the right one, such inaction would 
 not give true rest, but induce disease. So it is with all 
 our functions; each organ must not only have its period 
 of non-action, but it must be prepared for inaction by 
 completing its cycle of action, or else the inaction is not 
 sufficient rest. The true brain cycle is this : — 
 
 Forming special conceptions ; unifying those concep- 
 tions ; washing out all conceptions by thinking of The 
 Inconceivable Unity, Repose. 
 
 Sabbath and Jubilee mean not inaction^ but renewal. 
 Sabbath was, in fact, in its origin, the Festival of The 
 Unity; the true key-note was struck in the "Preparation 
 for Sabbath"; recreative rest was to be prepared for by 
 reaction against specialization, by seeking to know The 
 Unity. 
 
 If ever parents understood the Art of mental recrea- 
 tion by Unity, the school-teachers must have had reason 
 to feel that their lines had fallen in pleasant places ! 
 Teaching, especially for the more conscientious teachers, 
 is made very unsatisfactory by the general lack of recog- 
 nition of the true Art of recuperation ; for this reason: — 
 
140 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 The exercise of any organ or faculty takes place by 
 converting its latent force into active force, which is 
 then given off in the form of "function" (i.e., the action 
 appropriate to the organ or faculty). That this exercise 
 strengthens instead of weakening our faculties, is due to 
 the fact that the withdrawal of latent force by exercise 
 creates an immediate receptivity for new force, which 
 then becomes latent. And, under all ordinary conditions, 
 the new supply taken in is in excess of that given off. 
 This new supply ought to come from extra-human 
 sources (including, of course, but not exclusively consist- 
 ing of, food and air). A sound method in Education 
 means, chiefly, a method which secures that the recupera- 
 tion shall come from these extra-human sources. But a 
 teacher may be brilliantly successful at Examinations 
 without understanding how to effect this, or caring to 
 try. There are several non-legitimate ways by which 
 he may be securing his apparent success. He may be 
 draining either the physical vitality of his pupils, or those 
 intellectual faculties which are not needed for the pur- 
 suit of his own subject, or the moral faculties, especially 
 those for the exercise of which school-life affords no 
 great scope, but which will be needed for the conduct of 
 adult life. Now when a faculty is thus passively drained 
 at second hand, it suffers the same loss of force as if it 
 were itself exercised; and it is not stimulated to healthy 
 recuperation. Therefore the "successful" teacher may, 
 in reality, be either destroying the physical health of 
 his pupils, or preventing more conscientious and less showy 
 colleagues from attaining the amount of success which they 
 deserve, or preparing his pupils to be bad men and 
 women, and a source of moral corruption; or he may be 
 
The Art of Education 141 
 
 sowing the seeds of what, in later life, will develop into 
 what is even legally actual insanity. He may do any or 
 all of these things without ever uttering a word in the 
 hearing of pupils on any subject except the one he 
 professes to teach. 
 
 From all that Gratry and Boole have said, it would 
 appear that the question whether the faculties exercised 
 recuperate themselves from extra-human sources, or by 
 draining away the vitality of other faculties, especially 
 the moral stamina, depends mainly on whether the 
 synthetical work is commensurate in amount and kind 
 with the specialization, and is properly alternated with it. 
 
 The process of synthesising the work of the week is 
 by no means difficult, even for the teacher ; and to the 
 pupils it appears like mere amusement. There are two 
 reasons why it is neglected. One is that any unification 
 at all commensurate with the amount of specialization 
 now going on in schools, is looked on at present (in 
 England at least) with dread. Whenever those who 
 understand the process try to call attention to its 
 importance, the subject is almost sure to be treated, by 
 those who do not understand it, as if we were talking of 
 what is technically called " religion," and trenching on 
 ground which is the proper domain of parents and the 
 clergy. The thing which I mean (or rather which such 
 Logicians as Gratry and Boole have, in all ages, meant) 
 has no more connection with what is called " religious 
 instruction," than it has with Algebra or Grammar. 
 We mean the mental act of synthesis, which forms the 
 compensating recoil from the specialization induced by 
 study ; completing the pulsation, of which special studies 
 form one-half ; and causing whatever faculties have 
 
142 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 been used in special studies to draw their force from 
 the extra-human sources, instead of draining the vitality 
 of other faculties. At present the Sabbath, so far as it 
 is used at all, is appropriated to the teaching of the 
 special study called " religion " {i.e., the history of the 
 lives and opinions of former synthesizers) ; and no 
 adequate provision is made for mental acts of synthesis 
 on the part of the pupils themselves. Such synthesis 
 as they are taught to do, is left to chance and to indi- 
 vidual teachers. Boole's Text-Book of Differential 
 Equations is, in its way, a model of what can be done, 
 within the compass of a particular subject, towards 
 alternating special study with synthesis. But, within 
 that compass, there is no scope except for time- 
 synthesis (i.e., the study of the History of the subject), 
 which in Boole's book alternates with the study of the 
 subject itself. The book has been superseded ; more 
 modern ones serve more effectually the purpose of 
 preparing for Examinations. Gratry has received little 
 attention from ordinary teachers. His splendid analysis 
 of the effects of synthesis alternating with specialization, 
 in giving vitality, is mixed up with details of the special 
 plan of sequence in study by which he secured the 
 alternation for himself. Now Gratry's sequence could 
 not be accurately followed in any school ; it could not 
 be attempted in any school which prepared pupils for 
 Examination. Therefore commonplace teachers ignore 
 him altogether, and the course of Natural Selection 
 throws all the benefit of Gratry's discoveries into the 
 hands of teachers who have intellect enough to seize 
 his main idea and disentangle it from his special plans. 
 So with regard to Boole's text-books. The time- 
 
The Art of Education 143 
 
 synthesis (or so-called historical method), of which he 
 exhibits samples, is a very good thing in its way, failing 
 anything better. But the specialist teacher, even if he 
 knows this method, can only use it within the limits of 
 his own subject ; and it must be, at best, utterly 
 inadequate to compensate the strain of modern educa- 
 tion and restore the needed amount of energy. No one 
 was better aware of this than the Author himself. 
 Nothing is really adequate, except a periodic synthesis 
 class, in which a synthesis of all the week's work is made 
 by the pupils themselves, under the guidance of a com- 
 petent Logician. And it is essential to full success 
 that no subject which has been forced on the attention 
 of the pupils by any specialist teacher whatsoever shall 
 be forbidden ground at the Logos-class. I use the 
 word " Logos " in preference to Logic, because the latter 
 term has been taken to imply a special kind of study. 
 Logos is the old word for the thing of which I am 
 speaking, the Logic of the Logan-stone ; the blessed 
 antithesis to those fixed stones of evil magic and 
 arrested progress which show the consequence of not 
 keeping Sabbath. 
 
 The much vilipended Examination-system has the 
 great advantage of preventing the possibility of carrying 
 out the plan of any Idealist as conceived by him. It 
 forces us, therefore, if we would learn anything from 
 the ideal purists, to understand thoroughly those prin- 
 ciples of sanitation from which their plans are projected; 
 so as to be able to create our plans for ourselves 
 according to circumstances. Strange as it may sound, 
 I venture to prophesy that the Examiner will prove, in 
 the long run, the best friend of Idealism in Education, 
 
i 4 4 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 by making a clean sweep of all second-hand imitators 
 of Idealist thinkers. 
 
 The whole notion of leaving the selection of a Logos- 
 teacher to the caprice or ignorance of individual parents, 
 would be, of course, absurd. The essence of his function 
 is the re-uniting of strains of thought which have been 
 forcibly separated by the school-work. The first con- 
 dition of his performing it is that he should know 
 something of the methods employed in the School. 
 Properly speaking, the Logos-Class should be held by 
 the Head-Master or Mistress. If that is impossible the 
 substitute should be thoroughly in the confidence of the 
 Head. 
 
 A second reason why synthesis is insufficiently taught, 
 is that it gives to the teacher an appearance of mere 
 Nihilism ; he seems to be Socratically neutralizing 
 everything and actually teaching Nothing. This Nihilism 
 is only apparent; the general and ultimate effect is in the 
 highest degree both conservative and constructive. But 
 that specialist and positive teachers always feel the work 
 of the synthesizer to be antagonistic to theirs, there is no 
 denying. Long ago it was said that "the heathen" (by 
 which was then meant the antagonists of Logos-teaching) 
 said to the Prophets of the Formless and Invisible 
 Unity: "Where is your God ?" (or, where is your Good?) 
 Oken's answer to this question is almost brutal in its 
 cynical audacity: — 
 
 God = Zero. 
 
 Boole puts his statement into a less startling form ; but 
 it comes practically to the same as Oken's: x (i — x) = o; 
 which means: — When you have selected your integral 
 unity, or Universe of Thought (however large or small), 
 
The Art of Education 1 4 5 
 
 and divided it into any two sections, x and not-x, if you 
 then interpenetrate with each other the two conceptions, 
 the result is zero. If any other result presents itself, 
 your brain action has been imperfect. 
 
 The old Hindoo sages knew that we can form no idea 
 of Deity except by affirming and then denying every 
 quality in turn. A thing cannot, at one time, be black 
 and white, except of course in different parts ; yet to 
 formulate aright a statement about God, we must say 
 that He at once possesses every conceivable quality and 
 its opposite, and yet has no parts. In other words 
 God is No-Thing. 
 
 Impatient ignorance asks, of course, " Cui bono?" 
 " Who is better for the whole laborious proceeding of 
 Meditation, if there remains NOTHING to show for it ? " 
 The answer is that neither Oken's Zero, nor Boole's, 
 has any connection with negation or non-existence. 
 That Zero means : " No form, but a living Force ; No- 
 Thing, but a power of understanding, utilizing, and even 
 creating things." The result of a proper synthesis- 
 lesson is, not the knowledge of any theologic proposition 
 which can be stated in a neat sentence at a Divinity- 
 Examination ; but an increased power of understanding 
 the genesis and structure of facts generally, and an 
 improved hygienic condition of brain. The pupil, in 
 fact, gets out of the unification-lesson a supply (com- 
 mensurate with his week's work) of Creative Energy. 
 Idealists such as Gratry and Boole are too prone to 
 wonder what more any man can want, for this world or 
 the next, than just that, and then plenty more of the 
 same. Practical teachers, however, know very well that 
 man in general wants recognition by his fellow-man. He 
 
146 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 wants, in fact, success ; that visible success which can 
 only be attained by the use of some method which is, 
 metaphysically-speaking, imperfect. Beneficent Nature, 
 who implanted this desire in the teacher-mind, is wiser 
 than the Ideal purists ; she has made abundant provision 
 for its legitimate gratification. Any clever teacher has 
 a right to use any method he likes, and to become as 
 successful at Examinations as he can. It is the business 
 of the child's " Pastor " (not the preacher of a special 
 religion, but the Shepherd-servant of the Unity) to 
 harmonize all the special aberrations by a suitable 
 periodic synthesis. He will seem to neutralize the work 
 of the teachers. He will especially seem to be neutral- 
 izing the work of any teacher who either introduces 
 a new method, becomes rapidly popular, is very success- 
 ful in preparing for Examinations, or, above all, possesses 
 Genius of a showy order. Genius and originality 
 are dangerous factors in education, unless their action 
 is counteracted by a specially suitable synthesis. But 
 the more dangerous a method of teaching is when 
 not suitably counteracted, the more capable it is of 
 becoming a source of vitality when it is suitably synthe- 
 sized. The very alternation between a method which is 
 highly vicious (i.e., which rapidly produces showy 
 results), and one which is sound (i.e., produces no results 
 except accession of force), this alternation, when habitual, 
 sets up its own glorious pulsation, and generates by 
 induction a force, perhaps the very highest and most 
 vital which Humanity can command. The danger of 
 modern education does not consist in the imperfectness 
 of imperfect methods ; it is that no provision is made 
 in the mental life for alternating their use with that of 
 
The Art of Education 1 47 
 
 those perfect methods the result of which is " Nothing " 
 — except force stored up for the specialist teachers to use. 
 In the physical life it is now perfectly understood that 
 it is some teachers' business to produce no result except 
 a neutralization of the harm which is incidentally done 
 by other teachers as a necessary concomitant to the good 
 they are doing. Fifty years ago any one who had 
 ordered young ladies to put their hands on their hips, 
 then on their toes, and to assume, in fact, every position 
 condemned by their parents and teacliers as disorderly, 
 would have been supposed to be trying to undo all the 
 good work of parents and teachers, and to set children 
 against lawful authority. Now, everybody knows 
 that the very business of the Gymnast is to undo the 
 cramping effect of the positions rendered necessary by 
 the exigencies of study and of society ; and nobody 
 objects to its being done. We have all found out that 
 the Gymnasts are the friends, not the enemies, of Order. 
 We have seen the beneficial effects of gymnastic on the 
 pupils ; few notice the silent influence for good which it 
 has exerted, through the pupils, on the parents and 
 teachers ; but it has exerted an influence on us all. 
 What mother could condemn her daughter's desire for 
 reversal of physical position as "unseemly" and "unlady- 
 like," in the face of the fact that the girl will presently 
 assume the condemned posture by the orders of the 
 graceful lady who presides in the Gymnasium ? We 
 are content, now, to tell little girls that standing with 
 one's hand on one's hip is a proceeding more suited to 
 the play-room than the drawing-room. The Gymnasts 
 only profess to cure the weakness of children's muscles : 
 in reality they are helping to eradicate the irreverent 
 
1 48 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 dogmatism of parents. Let Logos-teachers boldly claim 
 the right to do for children's minds what the Gymnast 
 does for their bodies, i.e., renew vital elasticity by 
 periodic reversal of attitude, and after a time the public 
 will grow accustomed to the idea that it is some teachers' 
 business to do nothing, except vitalize the minds of 
 children by undoing other people's teaching. The 
 conceit of specialist teachers of all sorts will have to give 
 way before the Logical equation of brain-rhythm, as 
 the conceit of would-be-genteel Mammas has had to give 
 way before the Logic of muscular exercise. And we 
 cannot lay too much stress on this point : the Gymnast 
 is an absolute Nihilist ; he does Nothing — except reverse 
 the positions of the muscles ; he has no results to show, 
 except increased health and strength. The Logos or 
 Pulsation-doctrine, pure and holy as it is, may, in one 
 sense, be described as the Scavenger of our life. By 
 burning up all that is specious and false, it prevents the 
 development of those abnormal conditions which to the 
 ignorant seem like culture, but which are in reality the 
 product of corruption, the source of disease, and the 
 main cause of insanity. 
 
 Those who, of old, attempted to base National Educa- 
 tion on the principle of the Logos, or rhythmic pulsation, 
 struck the true key-note at starting. The symbol of the 
 covenant made with man by Infinite Knowledge was the 
 Rainbow ; which no man can capture or embalm or 
 enshrine ; which is made by the breaking up of the One 
 Light into many colours, to fade before long into the 
 Unity of white light again ; and leaves nowhere in all 
 the world a trace of its ever having existed, except in 
 Man's heart an impression of spiritual beauty, and in his 
 
The Art of Education 149 
 
 mind a suggestion how to discover the Laws of Light. 
 The type of mind which asks "Cui bono?" of every 
 lesson for which there is nothing to show at Examina- 
 tion is the same as the type of mind which sneers 
 because the Sacred Ark of the Hebrew Covenant con- 
 tains, practically, NOTHING — a few old-world tales 
 illustrative of a state of society long passed away; a few 
 self-evident laws of morality ; and a mass of rules, very 
 uninteresting, and to a large extent negative in form, 
 tedious to carry out, of no obvious utility, but, on the 
 contrary, in themselves a hindrance to active life. Of 
 positive information, Nothing. It is time that teachers 
 at least should be taught to understand that, though 
 man has a right to desire and procure whatever he wants, 
 the inner shrine whence Truth issues to hold converse 
 with man may not be desecrated by the presence of 
 immediately realizable results. If it be so desecrated, 
 the Blessed Guest departs. In that Ark is preserved 
 what the Rainbow leaves behind when it fades into white 
 light: — the Keys of the Infinite Store-house of Science; 
 the canons of the Art of Thinking; the Secret of the 
 Method whereby man may draw down Truth from 
 Heaven, without blighting either his body or his souL 
 Life lives in that empty Ark ; the true life of man's 
 brain. For we are the children of the Creator; not His 
 mere handiwork, made arbitrarily, unlike Himself ; but 
 the outcome of His very thought-processes ; and sanity, 
 for us, means thinking as He thinks, so far as we think 
 at all. And (if His work reveals His manner of think- 
 ing) He thinks in an incessant rhythmic pulsation of 
 alternate "positing and denying," of constructing and 
 sweeping away ; a pulsation which produces the appear- 
 
1 50 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 ance of negation and the reality of power. It is in vain 
 that we try to fight against, or to ignore, this rhythmic 
 alternation of contrary notions. If we carefully embody 
 it in our daily study, it becomes to us a source of con- 
 stant power, like the movement of our lungs. If we 
 forget it, it never forgets to sweep our work away. 
 Unless it has helped to build the mind, their labour is 
 but lost that built it. It is vain that we haste to rise 
 early, and late take rest, and devour many carefully 
 compiled text-books ; to those who love the Invisible, 
 Formless, alternate-beating Unity, the knowledge which 
 is power comes even during sleep. 1 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 TRINITY MYTHS 
 "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts." 
 
 In very old times, wise men devised a special method 
 for counteracting the dangers of specialization, a standard 
 test by which a student could judge whether his mode 
 of recuperation was suited to the nature of his special 
 dangers. Their method rested on a perception of the 
 fact that man is so organized as to perceive the Divine 
 in three principal modes : — 
 
 1. By the study of Nature, of the work of Creation, 
 the most interesting part of which, to early peoples, was 
 the observation of the Starry Heavens. God, as Creator, 
 was called by Indians Brahma, by Semitic peoples 
 Elohim, by C hristians God the Father. 
 
 1 " The Creed of Sanity." 
 
Trinity Myths 
 
 2. God is revealed as a Race- Preserver ; in the divid- 
 ing of the animal Creation by lines across which union 
 is infertile, and by other lines across which union is 
 unhealthy; and also, and chiefly, in the singular 
 differences introduced into the human body by diversities 
 of culture, of climate, and of circumstance ; and in the 
 danger of too sudden interruptions of ancestral habit. 
 God as Race-Preserver was called by the Indians Vishnu; 
 and in each country by some name special to itself. 
 The idea of the Race Preserver is embodied in the name 
 God of Israel (and perhaps also in Jehovah ; said by 
 some to be the tribal God of the pre-Mosaic Hebrews). 
 
 3. Persons of sensitive temperament and introspective 
 habits recognize the fact of an actual contact between 
 their souls and the Divine, of a personal inspiration of 
 truth which comes to them in some manner not explic- 
 able by reference either to impressions on the senses or 
 to intellectual conclusions. And, as any deep sorrow 
 or strong affection increases the capacity for receiving 
 this poetic inspiration, and as it is often increased also 
 by severe physical suffering, God, as inspirer, was 
 thought of as The Purifier by the Fire of Love and Pain; 
 called by the Indians Siva. This idea is represented 
 by the Jewish word Adonai^ and by the " Holy Spirit " 
 of our churches. 
 
 The Philosophers perceived that terrible dangers were 
 caused by the divided and over-specialized study of 
 Divine action. The worshippers of Brahma, the Creator, 
 lapse into a cold and immoral contemplation of Nature. 
 Nature contains not only beauty, but also what in man 
 would be cruelties and lust; and those who think of 
 God only as Creator, too often become indifferent to 
 
IS 2 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 moral order in human life. Moreover, as Nature has 
 many aspects, each branch of Science tends to represent 
 the Creator differently. To the imagination of the mere 
 Geometrician, the infinite means infinite space ; to the 
 student of meteoric phenomena, the infinite is represented 
 by mere force ; to the arithmetician by mere number. 
 To those of old who specially valued physical strength, 
 God was a Bull ; to those who specially valued cunning, 
 a Serpent. 
 
 On the other hand, Vishnu, the Race-Preserver, comes 
 to be thought of too much as the preserver of one's own 
 tribe. Each tribe comes to have its own preserver, 
 who fights against the preservers of other tribes. As 
 patriotism degenerates into tyranny over other nations, 
 so religious gratitude for the preservation of one's own 
 race degenerates into contempt for the divine preservers 
 of other races. 
 
 But the worst transformation is that which falls on 
 the idea of the inspirer who teaches by the fire of love. 
 Purification by fire degenerates into destruction by fire. 
 The inspirer by love and pain becomes Siva the Destroyer, 
 and then Moloch, who claims as his offering the burning 
 alive of innocent babies. It is found, too, that pain is 
 not the only condition under which the faculty for 
 receiving poetic inspiration is momentarily increased ; 
 pleasure also heightens it. Inspiration of a certain sort 
 can be got up by wine ; Siva the Inspirer is thought of 
 as Bacchus the wine-god, who is gratified by drunken 
 orgies. The Adonai-idea degenerates into Adonis, the 
 god of beauty of form, and into Aphrodite, the goddess 
 of grace ; finally into Cupid, the god of light love-fancies, 
 and Venus the goddess of vicious indulgence. 
 
Trinity Myths 
 
 r 53 
 
 And the worst thing about all these horrible fables 
 was that they embodied a certain truth ; and the attempt 
 to disprove them was futile. Gentile philosophers were 
 driven to distraction by the impossibility of making men 
 disbelieve things which, though so pernicious, were 
 somehow true to human experience. 
 
 Down into all this ghastly tangle of great truths and 
 hideous faslehoods came the mighty reformers who 
 organised the Trinity-doctrine. After an exhaustive 
 and masterly study of the process by which good 
 degenerates into evil, they discovered that falsehood 
 comes by the dividedness of truth, and that the unifi- 
 cation of all aspects of deity would infallibly purify each. 
 It is hardly too bold a metaphor, if we say that, by the 
 law of the Trinity, the various aspects of deity are 
 to be prevented from slipping down-hill in various 
 directions, by firmly linking them together at the top. 
 The Hebrew Scriptures contain a record of canons, 
 which, if observed, would set philosophy free to develop 
 indefinitely, by forever preventing it from degenerating 
 into debauch or folly. 
 
 These canons are binding as long as Judaism or 
 Humanity lasts, being founded on the nature of the 
 human mind. Jesus, when accused of disregarding the 
 law of Moses (because he had taken upon himself to 
 neglect a few minutiae of the technical rules, which he 
 considered interfered with his usefulness), truly replied 
 that heaven and earth must pass away before one jot 
 or tittle of the law should fail. 
 
 By the Law of Israel, each aspect or facet of the God- 
 idea is to be clearly presented in its purity. 
 
 I. All Creative energies are summed up in the one 
 
 K 
 
1 54 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 word Elohim. There is to be no God of Light distinct 
 from the God of darkness ; no devil who causes evil 
 contrasted with the deity who gives good ; no bull-god 
 or serpent-god, no god of thunder, or god of wind ; all 
 natural science is one, and is the worship of Elohim. 
 
 2. Homage is to be paid to the Race- Preserver, not 
 by prejudices against other virtuous and pious tribes, 
 but by abstaining, in His honour, from unnatural 
 mixtures and infertile unions. While He is to be 
 worshipped by Jews as the " God of Israel," they are to 
 remember that He cares equally for all the tribes of the 
 earth. The preservation of law and order is not to be 
 a mere cunning device for securing the supremacy of 
 one's own tribe, but a perpetual worship of Jehovah, the 
 God of all the races. 
 
 3. But especially is danger from divided and partial 
 worships to be avoided in the direction of the search 
 after inspiration. No devices are to be resorted to, to 
 heighten the sensatio?i of inspiration. Jews are to put 
 themselves en rapport with the Inspirer, only so far as 
 a holy life will attain that end. Not passion or intoxi- 
 cation, but solemnity and abstinence, are to characterize 
 their attempts to approach personally to Adonai. 
 Sacrifices are to be made to Him by fire, in his character 
 of Purifier by Fire; but none of these exhibit any 
 other connection with pain or death than is shown by 
 learning to kill animals for food in the least hardening 
 and most merciful manner possible. Jews are to inflict 
 no needless suffering, either on themselves or on other 
 creatures, for their own excitement or amusement. 
 Adonai is neither Moloch, the pain-giver, nor Adonis, 
 the lust-exciter ; but the Inspirer who purifies by love. 
 
Trinity Myths 
 
 1 55 
 
 But pure and holy as are each of these aspects of 
 deity in the Mosaic conception, still no race could be 
 trusted to preserve them in their purity, unless they 
 were seen to be different aspects of one eternal fact. 
 Hear, O Israel, the deliverer from bondage is One. The 
 same idea is expressed in a lovely old lullaby hymn, in 
 which, five times over, the name Saviour is given to the 
 grouping of the three attributes, " Elohim," " Adonai," 
 and " King " (or Orderer, or Organizer). By some 
 Christian theologians, strange to say, not only are the 
 three aspects of the God-idea made into three individuals, 1 
 three real personalities, but one of these personalities 
 alone is considered to be the Saviour ; and that one 
 was manifested in human shape to avert the wrath of 
 another. 
 
 Nothing, however, could be clearer than that each of 
 the three principal facets of the God-idea is distinctly 
 traceable in the Hebrew Scriptures ; and Jewish 
 theologians might gracefully make the admission that, 
 in that respect, Christians have seen something in their 
 sacred books which most of themselves have missed. 
 But, though individual rabbis may have failed to detect 
 the use made in the Pentateuch of the old Trinity-Myth, 
 the Synagogue ritual still enshrines it. Not only is the 
 triple Kadosh a recognition of the threefoldness of 
 religious emotion ; but each aspect of the God-idea 
 receives its special and appropriate greeting. It would 
 be impossible to convey to Jews, accustomed from 
 infancy to their worship, any notion of the impression 
 made on a Christian visitor by the difference in the tone 
 of the three strains interwoven in it : — The homage of 
 
 1 Persona means a mask, not an individual. 
 
1 56 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 astronomers to the Creator in the greetings at New 
 Year and new Moon ; the homage to the Race-Preserver, 
 God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; the homage to the 
 Eternal Reign of Love the Inspirer, in the oft-recurring 
 anthem : " Adonai reigneth, Adonai hath reigned, 
 Adonai shall reign for ever and ever." 
 
 That the startling effect of these three elements of 
 Jewish worship, so contrasted and yet so exquisitely 
 blended, should have driven Christian theologians out 
 of their senses, and into mad raptures of delight and 
 wonder, is intelligible. That they should, in consequence, 
 have written much caressing rhapsody, more poetic 
 than accurate, about the Jewish Scriptures, is pardonable; 
 there are occasions on which it is not to one's credit to 
 be able to keep quite prosaically sane ; and one's first 
 contact with the Hebrew religion is one of those 
 occasions. But the creed of Israel is very evidently 
 a caution to avoid the horrible dangers into which the 
 heathen fell by dividing the different facets of divine 
 influence ; and the statement that Moses meant Jews 
 to worship more than one Person, passes the legitimate 
 limits of even poetic license. 
 
 The true use of the Trinity-doctrine is as a standard 
 whereby to judge whether we are really getting for our 
 own minds the vitalizing influence of the Unity-doctrine. 
 Whatever facet of the God-idea is presented to us by 
 our studies, we should be careful to remember the other 
 aspects when we are preparing for repose. We should 
 remember the essential Unity between the three facets ; 
 a Unity such that we cannot keep our minds in a con- 
 dition to do justice to our own special subject, unless 
 we pay reverence to all three aspects of the Divine 
 
Trinity Myths 1 57 
 
 when we are preparing ourselves for rest. In this Trinity 
 none is afore or after other, none is greater or less than 
 another; but the whole three are co-eternal and co-equal; 
 and he that will be safe must think after this model. 
 So says that marvellous old Credo, in which, in a degene- 
 rate age, well-meaning idolaters enshrined the remnants 
 of an older Philosophy which seemed about to die out. 
 
 The Law of Moses is holy as of old, and whoever 
 speaks of it should do so with reverence. Those who 
 disregard it, do just as truly lapse into idolatry as men 
 did three thousand years ago. The mere mathematician 
 conceives of a Space or a Number ; his absorption in 
 the contemplation of which deadens his interest in other 
 forms of truth. The man who deifies natural science 
 often sinks into a mere vivisectionist, who inflicts torture 
 at random, for the gratification of an idle freak of 
 curiosity. 
 
 Adonai has his dangers too. Spiritualism and 
 aestheticism each has its own vicious modes of heighten- 
 ing the sense of inspiration. The Catholic worship of 
 Jesus and Mary, by nuns and monks respectively, often 
 degenerates into the worship of Adonis and Aphrodite, 
 under other names ; and has sometimes all the more 
 distracting effect on the imagination, for being, nowadays, 
 prevented by conventual regulations from exhaling 
 itself in physical scandals ; and the Moloch-form of fire- 
 worship still exists in the belief in an everlasting and 
 non-purifying hell. 
 
 As for the second facet or division of the God-idea, 
 Vishnu, how much better would have been the influence 
 of Christian Missionaries had they not sanctioned the 
 heathenish notion that God has given no truth except 
 
1 5 8 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 to European races ! They are as essentially worshippers 
 of a tribal God as the savages whom they would convert. 
 
 Nor are Jews guiltless of this form of idolatry. No 
 Bismarck or Stoecker could stir up epidemics of anti- 
 Semitism, were the Jews, who fidget over little details 
 of rule, equally true to the essential canons of their 
 faith ! The way in which too many Jews trust to 
 "Jehovah" to protect them from the natural consequence 
 of their own actions, is as idolatrous and heathenish as 
 is the trust of a Catholic peasant that his own special 
 saint will keep his family in health, while he neglects 
 common precautions of hygiene and morality. The 
 " God of Israel " which many Jews worship is essentially 
 an eidolon or image of character evolved within the 
 Jewish mind. Some entirely ignore that Jehovah is 
 race-preserver of other races, and that therefore all know- 
 ledge of hygienic rules discovered by Gentiles should 
 form part of the religion of Jews. They neglect to 
 worship God as Elohim or Creator, therefore they despise 
 the marvellous new knowledge which He is pouring out, 
 about the effect of the lower creatures on man, and of 
 human beings on each other. And when trouble comes 
 to them, in consequence of such ignorance, if any preacher 
 speak to them of God as Adonai, the purifier by suffering, 
 the inspirer by love, they turn away either in anger or in 
 contempt. Thus they make of themselves what in 
 medical language is called a " foreign body " in the 
 general commonwealth ; and their private virtues, and 
 family piety, and loyalty to the tribal God of Israel are 
 unavailing to prevent their being felt to be a danger to 
 the State. 
 
 Idolatry, therefore, is not at an end in Europe, among 
 
Trinity Myths 159 
 
 either Jews or Gentiles. Nor is the need for seeking 
 the cure of social ills in the worship of the great Unity 
 less than it was when Israel came out of Egypt. If we 
 were not idolaters, the educationists who are imposing 
 their cruel laws on all types of children alike, would 
 remember that the Law-maker is also a Race-Preserver, 
 and forbids a too rapid change of ancestral habits ; the 
 Salvation Army would believe that salvation means, not 
 hysteric tension on one aspect of deity, but reverence 
 for all aspects of that divine Creator, whose laws include 
 a law of reaction after violent nervous action, and a law 
 of hereditary recoil of posterity from the exaggerations 
 of a preceding generation ; sensitive and " mediumistic " 
 women would be trained in the knowledge of the orderly 
 Elohim revealed by Science ; our luxurious aesthetes 
 who worship Adonis, the Art-Inspirer, will remember 
 that the true Adonai will sooner or later purify all by 
 the fire of pain ; thus force would be stored up for the 
 solution of our practical problems, which now is being 
 wasted in the struggle to gain that which cannot satisfy. 
 The wisdom Who came out of Egypt with Moses still 
 cries to us, though few hear her voice : " Hear, O Israel, 
 and hear, O Man ; divided Gods make us slaves ; the 
 Deliverer from Bondage is Unity." 
 
 And every man, when he is about to prepare for rest 
 by worshipping The Inconceivable Unity, should re- 
 member that the true God is not a mere reflection of his 
 own personal predilections, but is equally Holy in each 
 of the three aspects under which He reveals Himself to 
 Humanity. 
 
 Another form of the Trinity-doctrine is the time- 
 division, past, present, and future. This time-trinity is 
 
160 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 just touched on in both Hebrew and Christian ritual. 
 Its essence is preserved in the myth of the three Fates, 
 called in the Odin-Legends Urda, Verdendi, and Skelda ; 
 or Was, Is-Becoming, and Shall-Be. The student who 
 takes an equal interest in the History of the Past, the 
 development of the Present, and the destinies of the 
 Future, keeps his mind balanced. If any one of them 
 be neglected, the fates become furies who avenge ; or 
 Vampires who suck away the student's life-blood and 
 make of him an evil fate to other men. If the balance 
 is duly kept by remembering all three equally in reli- 
 gious meditation, the three Fates become three Graces. 
 
 This dual aspect of the three Fates is made more 
 intelligible by reference to the dual form of the Legend 
 of the Birds who feed Seers with wisdom. These birds 
 are now doves, now ravens. They inspire peaceful 
 doctrines, or prompt to deeds of darkness and cruelty, 
 according as the Prophet does, or does not, unify their 
 several inspirations. The true Prophet is he to whose 
 head both birds come. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 STUDY OF ANTAGONISTIC THINKERS 
 " Audi Alteram Partem." 
 
 Whenever a Law of Nature is ignored, it asserts itself 
 as a destructive agent. The remedy is not to rail at 
 the Law, but to study it and enlist its action into our 
 service. The savage prays his Manitou not to send 
 storms ; the civilized man puts up a lightning-conductor 
 
Study of Antagonistic Thinkers 1 6 1 
 
 to his house, and he who knows how to do this, knows 
 also how to use electricity for the purpose of advancing 
 civilization still further. Parents are often distressed 
 at facts which mean that the young mind is violently 
 impelled to satisfy the Law of alternate action, by 
 throwing itself under the influence of some teacher 
 whose views are opposed to those of former teachers. 
 What the young mind imperatively needs is not conflict 
 of opinion but alternation of attitude and of emotion ; 
 we should try so to organize life that this relief can be 
 found without actual contradiction. Young people need 
 contact with persons who feel differently from their 
 parents; teachers might give that relief without sug- 
 gesting that the parents are mistaken or wrong. But 
 at present there is so much tension on questions of 
 opinion that, if parents select teachers whose tendencies 
 are opposite to their own, the children learn from the 
 strangers to think their parents mistaken ; whereas the 
 parent who seeks out for his children influences counter 
 to his own, gives thereby the best possible proof of 
 being in the right ; for he proves that he has more 
 confidence in the Eternal Truth of the Principle of 
 alternation than in his own special opinions. 
 
 All who live in the intimacy of great original thinkers, 
 observe how incompetent the families and intimate 
 friends of such men usually are to understand them. 
 The reason, I believe, is that men of Genius attract so 
 much attention as to destroy the mental elasticity of 
 those around them, and thus weaken their mental vigour. 
 The son of a great thinker does not acquire true vigour 
 till he throws himself out of his father's sphere of 
 influence. The psychology of the matter not being 
 
162 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 understood, the thinker thus loses the aid of those who, 
 by their very heredity, should be best able to help him. 
 
 Long observations of the families and followers of 
 original thinkers, and some experience as a secretary to 
 several such, have led me to form a plan for myself 
 which I find so useful that I venture to recommend it to 
 the notice of the children, pupils, and secretaries of men 
 of Genius. 
 
 When I find my power of understanding my employer 
 coming to an end, and myself growing weary of his 
 peculiar style, I try to find out to whom, among those 
 on his own intellectual level, he personally feels most 
 antagonistic and is most unjust. I give myself a bath 
 (so to speak) in the ideas of this rival, and (if opportunity 
 serves) in his actual personal influence. For instance, 
 supposing that I were working under Mr. Spurgeon, the 
 famous preacher, and grew tired, I should seek Mr. 
 Bradlaugh. 1 I should seek, not conflict of opinion, but 
 variety of attitude and emotion. I should not ask him 
 what he thought of the Millennium, nor talk to him about 
 Mr. Spurgeon ; but I should try to get, somehow, a bath 
 in Mr. Bradlaugh's peculiar magnetism. I should ask 
 him to go to an Oratorio with me ; and try to get him 
 to talk to me about the Future destinies of Man. When 
 the needful relaxation had been produced, this (to judge 
 from all my experience) is what would happen : — I 
 should find myself writing, without effort or fatigue, an 
 Article on the Future of Humanity, of which Mr. 
 Spurgeon (and perhaps also Mr. Bradlaugh) would say : 
 " You have expressed my meaning more exactly than I 
 
 1 I mention these two gentlemen because, as I have never studied under 
 either of them, nothing I say can be taken as personal. 
 
Our Relation to the Sacred Tribe 163 
 
 could do it; you have said what I have been trying to 
 say but could not express satisfactorily." 
 
 A little tact and a little explanation are needed to 
 induce even a Philosopher to understand why his 
 secretary or follower wants the relief of being counter- 
 magnetized by his bitterest opponent. But the result 
 being that one is better able to help each philosopher, 
 it is to be hoped that learned men will, before long, 
 grow accustomed to the idea ; and gradually induce 
 parents and teachers to generate brain-force in young 
 people by a similar unexhausting method. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 OUR RELATION TO THE SACRED TRIBE 
 
 " Israel was despised and rejected ; when we see him there is no beauty 
 that we should desire him. He is full of sorrows and acquainted with 
 grief. We hid our faces from him ; he was despised and we esteemed 
 him not. 
 
 "We thought him stricken of God ; but he was wounded for our trans- 
 gressions, and with his stripes we are healed. 
 
 " He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied; by his 
 knowledge shall he justify many ; for he makes intercession for trans- 
 gressors." 
 
 THE Path of intellectual Progress is a Pulsation between 
 the active study of Nature's variety of manifestations 
 and repose in the contemplation of The Unmanifested 
 Unity. Science and Art tend to become, every now and 
 then, entangled in and weakened by the overwhelming 
 multiplicity of sensible facts. But Nature has provided 
 us with a Sacred Tribe, subjected from Time immemorial 
 to a peculiar discipline, which somewhat unfits its 
 
164 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 members to be great Leaders in the sensuous Arts, 
 because it gives to them a strong tendency to think of 
 The Unseen Unity. The effect of this Tribe on the 
 thought-life of the world is very like what was described 
 in Chapter XIX. as the effect of the true Logos-teacher 
 on a School ; when Science has exhausted itself and 
 wandered off into too much detail, some Jew like 
 Mendelssohn or Spinoza, or some Gentile who has been 
 saturating his soul in Jewish lore, like Gratry or Boole, 
 prepares for true recuperative repose by striking afresh 
 the key-note of Sabbath, the Name of The Invisible 
 Unity. For reasons which were pointed out in Chapter 
 XIX., he who does this seems to be out of the line of 
 progress, because he ignores and neutralizes much which 
 others have been doing and which seems essential. But 
 when once we have realized that nothing is more 
 essential to progress than strong pulsation we shall lose 
 the feeling that the peculiarly Jewish type of mind is out 
 of tune with true refinement ; we shall turn to it for the 
 repose which gives new energy to all forms of culture. 
 
 The function of Judaism is perhaps best understood 
 when we remember that the early Christian asceticism 
 was not an isolated phenomenon, but a typical specimen 
 of a group of facts, the natural outcome of tendencies 
 whose action is essential to our intellectual life, but 
 whose uncontrolled action would destroy society. Of 
 these tendencies, Judaism is the corrective and controller. 
 
 In order to avoid entering into disputed questions of 
 theology, let us look at the action of these tendencies as 
 exhibited on a small scale in our own day. 
 
 James Hinton wrote a charming little book called 
 The Mystery of Pain y wherein he announced that failure 
 
Our Relation to the Sacred Tribe 165 
 
 and suffering are the greatest boons that life has to offer. 
 This and his other published works were hailed by many 
 as a new Gospel. He next proceeded to state, in con- 
 versations and in private lectures, that " Heaven looks 
 down on no sight so cursed as a happy home;" because,, 
 he said, in order to keep home happy, men ignore the 
 claims of strangers. Finally, he propounded certain 
 theories of sublime self-abnegation, which have, in one 
 way or another, been the ruin of nearly all who paid any 
 attention to them. 
 
 The career of such men becomes more intelligible, 
 when one knows that James Hinton habitually went out 
 in winter insufficiently clad, not in order to give his 
 great-coat to a beggar, but to give himself the pleasure 
 of suffering from cold. James Hinton would have been 
 a useful subordinate in any well-organized school of 
 Philosophy ; unfortunately we have in England no well- 
 organized Schools ; and a large circle set Hinton up, for 
 a time, as Leader. Now when a community has arrived 
 at such a condition that men can be set up as thought- 
 leaders who are born without the healthy appetite for 
 self-preservation which is the necessary physical basis of 
 all knowledge of the means by which society is preserved, 
 that community needs to be taken in hand and controlled 
 by the influence (one might almost say, by the magnetism) 
 of a morally sane race. In ordinary times, Judaism 
 keeps itself in the background, and leaves Gentile 
 thought to develop in its own way. But when Philosophy 
 has evaporated into the fourth dimension, when it has 
 played with the Eternal till it has shrivelled out of itself 
 the perception alike of locality and of epoch, of possi- 
 bility and of sequence, of perspective and of proportion,. 
 
1 66 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 then is a fitting occasion for Judaism to come to the 
 front. It reminds us that He Who gave to us a certain 
 limited power of sympathy with strangers, reserved for 
 Himself the luxury of limitless sympathy, precisely 
 because He is not a stranger but the Father of us all ; 
 that this Father in Heaven has placed us on earth; that 
 the particular stratum of the fourth dimension wherein 
 He has located us is that of three dimensional (i.e., 
 physical) consciousness ; that mere vague sensuous 
 sympathy, not safeguarded by Law, may be not virtue 
 but vice ; and that the Eternal, acting within the limits 
 of His own Holiness, has imposed on our faculties an 
 order in development and a sequence of action which 
 cannot be safely ignored. 
 
 We are prone to think Jews indifferent to religion 
 and careless of our well-being, because they leave us so 
 much to ourselves. Our own restless fussiness causes 
 us to think every one callous who is not incessantly 
 fidgeting about, trying to improve and convert some- 
 body else. The New Testament (to say nothing of the 
 Old) might have taught us that he is the best teacher 
 who most perfectly reflects the Divine patience and 
 willingness to suspend action. The Ideal Saviour seems 
 to be asleep, leaving others to manage the ship as they 
 will ; till they cry to him in the storm, " Master, we 
 perish." 1 In another version of the storm-myth, 2 the 
 teacher, perceiving that men would make him a 
 King by force, retires to commune with his God, and 
 leaves the disciples to go on their way alone. But 
 when it is dark and the tempest arises, they find that, 
 without using their means of transport, he has reached 
 
 1 Luke viii. 2 John vi. 
 
Our Relation to the Sacred Tribe 1 67 
 
 the same spot as themselves. When the need is sorest 
 he is found at hand, saying : " I am here ; be not afraid." 
 
 James Hinton was well aware of his own lack of 
 stability, and dreaded above all things being set up as 
 an intellectual Pope. His own instinct told him that 
 the true path of progress consists in incessant pulsation 
 between the strong and the mobile types of mind. He 
 often illustrated the relation between the two types by 
 the following Parable. Little boys and girls, he said, 
 play together indiscriminately, regardless of sex ; and 
 all copy the eldest or cleverest child. But as soon as 
 that mental difference begins to appear which is to end 
 in a possibility of fuller sympathy, it is often marked by 
 a mutual repulsion, which lasts till the time for mutual 
 understanding has come. The girls call the boys 
 " Horrid, noisy, greedy, vulgar creatures, who don't care 
 for fairy-tales and who destroy the dolls " ; and the 
 boys call the girls " Silly, sentimental molly-coddles, 
 who can't understand anything sensible." Each side 
 has a perfect right to its own opinion ; and, should the 
 quarrels become too violent, it is not of much use to 
 preach solemnly about the sinfulness of lack of charity ; 
 it is better to remind all parties that when they are 
 older they will feel differently ; and to encourage them, 
 in the meantime, to assist in each other's education. 
 Nor is it wise to put too much check on the natural 
 repulsion, by forcibly assimilating the lives of boys and 
 girls ; those young people are found ultimately of most 
 use to each other in whom the differentiation of 
 character has been allowed to develop. 
 
 This illustration surely throws light on the whole 
 relation between Jews and Aryans. People who hope 
 
1 68 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 to improve the world, either by converting Jews to 
 religions cast in the Trinitarian mould, or by depriving 
 us of the adjuncts to faith which it is natural for us to 
 seek, belong essentially to the same order of reasoners 
 as those who fancy that boys are made more refined by 
 being taught to pose in effeminate attitudes, or girls 
 more logical by being forbidden to do fancy-embroidery. 
 Those turn out best-bred who respect the individuality 
 on each side, and yet are willing to learn from each 
 other. The old fable of Narcissus tells the fate of 
 those who can love nothing but the reflection of them- 
 selves. 
 
 The stern spiritual discipline which has made Jews 
 indifferent to much which we think essential to religion, 
 the sentimental and somewhat hysterical weakness which 
 characterizes Aryan pietism, are among the means by 
 which the differentiation is being effected ; while suffi- 
 cient proof that it is still incomplete is afforded by the 
 fact that misunderstandings still arise. And perhaps 
 no antagonism could prove ultimately to have been so 
 great a misfortune, as would be the arresting of the 
 differentiation before it is complete. Europe is quarrel- 
 ling with imperfectly developed Jews ; but it long ago 
 lost its heart to the typical Jew, as seen in Vision, 
 though as yet it knows not what it was that it saw. 
 Christ, as he exists in Christian tradition, is not so 
 much the historical Jesus as personified Judaism. The 
 simple manliness of Jewish piety has so dazzled us, 
 that we have invented a whole system of theology to 
 account for its difference from our own more effeminate 
 graces. Underlying all forms of Christian doctrine, 
 there is the deep human truth that Gentile thought, 
 
Our Relation to the Sacred Tribe 1 69 
 
 with its Art and its fancy, its sensibility and its weak- 
 ness, is the " Bride of Christ," — the counterpart and 
 destined helpmeet of the pure strong Hebrew faith. 
 We Christians have got our life into confusion by 
 trying to copy our Ideal " Christ " ; we are not enough 
 like him to know how to set about it. Jews do not go 
 into ecstacies about " Jesus," because they are (potenti- 
 ally at least) himself. 1 When Judaism and Christianity 
 have discovered their true relation to each other ; when 
 we Christians, especially, have realized that our true 
 function is not so much copying Christ ourselves as 
 organizing social life so as to facilitate the development 
 of Judaism into its natural likeness to him, surely that 
 will be the Millennium prophesied of old, " the Bridal 
 of the Earth and Sky." 
 
 This may seem a romantic way of dealing with those 
 epidemics of Jew-hating, which, as a prosaic matter of 
 fact, often originate in trade jealousies and in envy of 
 the special business faculty of Jews. The true Prophet, 
 however, is not he who conjures himself into mystic 
 trances, in order that by shutting his eyes to earth he 
 may see into Heaven ; but he who looks at the facts 
 that God shows on earth by the Light which God sends 
 from Heaven. Such an one can algebraize the slightest 
 indications of progressive tendency in man. He thrills 
 with the joy of future harvests when he sees one plant 
 become more fruitful under human care ; and hears all 
 Handel's music in the tones of Jubal's lyre. And if it 
 
 1 I speak here only of Jewish reformers in religion. Of the Jews who 
 devote themselves to Finance, Commerce and Politics I have nothing to 
 say, except that they are what Europe has made of them. What Europe 
 has made of them should be carefully studied by those who are under- 
 taking the task of bringing Chinese and Hindus into contact with Western 
 civilization. 
 
 L 
 
1 70 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 be vouchsafed to him to realize something of the true 
 relation between the Aryan and the Jew, he knows 
 henceforth the meaning of Isaiah's golden dreams. 
 Those who are weak and contemptible while severed, 
 become sublime and strong when united. " II y a au 
 monde une chose sainte et sublime ; c'est l'union de 
 deux etres imparfaits. On est souvent trompe, souvent 
 blesse, et souvent malheureux ; mais on aime ; et quand 
 on est sur le bord de la tombe, on dit : — J'ai aime ; c'est 
 moi qui ai vecu, et non pas un etre factice cr66 par 
 mon orgueil et mon ennui." 
 
 This truth we all know. It lies deep down in all our 
 hearts. We Gentiles know it, but are powerless to 
 carry our knowledge into action ; for impatience clouds 
 our perceptions, and we lose Love by premature unifi- 
 cations. The unregulated indulgence of impulses of 
 Altruism destroys nerve-stamina ; and, as a consequence, 
 we find mere unreasoning dislikes stronger than our 
 faith in the Eternal Principle of Love. Jews have been 
 taught, and will at length teach us, that the Love which 
 is stronger than death and which survives the grave is 
 not to be snatched at by any emotional passion, whether 
 religious or poetic ; it is brought into our lives by in all 
 things awaiting the due time, and by the systematic 
 consecration of natural duty. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 PROGRESS, FALSE AND TRUE 
 
 "The Wind bloweth as it listeth ; and thou canst not tell whence it 
 cometh or whither it goeth." 
 
 It may seem to some readers anomalous to write the 
 words False Progress. It seems to be often ignored 
 that any such thing can exist. Many suppose that so 
 long as we are moving, we are necessarily moving 
 onwards. Others again suppose that movement is of 
 no use unless it be in the ultimately true direction ; they 
 forget that turmoil, which is useless for progress, may 
 be useful in preventing stagnation. 
 
 Nothing is more certain than that some Power beyond 
 our ken forces us to go through a great deal of false 
 Progress, i.e. of motion, the tendency of which is not in 
 the direction towards which Humanity is really tending. 
 We are constantly deceived in this matter. We think 
 we are making a progressive movement, and all the 
 while we may have been retrograding towards barbarism, 
 or making a rapid rush off on a path which we shall 
 have to retrace before we can rejoin the onward March 
 of Humanity. We have to discount our jubilation 
 about progress ; we certainly progress on the whole ; 
 but we are, at any given moment, liable to mistake for 
 progress something which is in reality the reverse. 
 
 When the Prophets saw, as we see every summer day, 
 how the wind catches up the particles of dust and carries 
 them along, whirling them round and round as it goes, 
 they felt that progress carries mankind on so ; not in 
 one straight line, but round and round, yet steadily 
 
17 2 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 moving on all the while. The same direction which is 
 really in the march of progress at one moment, is a mere 
 flying out of it, off at a tangent, at another. That is 
 why fashion is not progress. Fashion is mere imitation. 
 Now if we watch the wind-storm, we see that to go 
 East to-day may be real progress, but to go East to- 
 morrow because some one else went East yesterday 
 may be not progress but a departure from it. All the 
 outer life of the world, political, educational, social, 
 philosophic, moves onward by incessant change of 
 direction. There is no real misfortune in this ; we 
 should miss much that is valuable if we restricted our- 
 selves to going always in one direction. The danger is 
 that if we have no standard of right direction, we may 
 lose our way altogether, and fly off into isolation. 
 Therefore, just in the middle of the whirl, Providence 
 has placed one thing which moves on in a steady sweep 
 towards the ultimate Truth, and which was never meant 
 to take any part in the whirling movement to which all 
 else is subject. And that one thing is the religion of 
 Israel. It stands always in the centre of the world's 
 march, as a test of the right direction. Nothing is 
 going far wrong which keeps, as it were, well within 
 sight of that standard. And when we have gone a little 
 way wrong, it acts as a test to help us to find our way 
 back to the right path. Judaism helps the world to 
 judge of its own direction. This standard is not so 
 rigid as to make all people alike ; it leaves us all free to 
 differ in detail ; it allows Gentiles to try experiments 
 and to gain the experience that can only be acquired 
 by making mistakes and then correcting them ; but if 
 we take heed to the legacy left us by the old Prophets, 
 
Progress, False and True 173 
 
 it enables us to avoid drifting dangerously far from the 
 right road. If people were discussing which is East 
 and which is West, and one happened to catch sight of 
 the sun rising, he would listen to no further discussion ; 
 he would know which was East. And if people are 
 discussing what is true and what is false progress, and 
 one of them discovers that the road he is going is leading 
 to a clearer understanding of the religion of Israel, that 
 man has seen the Orient. 
 
 Suppose that the thought-life of an age or a Nation 
 has diverged from the march of Humanity, and its 
 philosophers cannot agree among themselves which is 
 the path back towards the line of true progress. One 
 says, " This is the way ; " and another says, " No, it is 
 that ; " and a third obstinately wants to persevere in the 
 road he is going along. But if one of them catches 
 sight of the old religion of Israel, if he finds himself 
 saying, "Now I understand the nature of the Law which 
 the old Psalmists loved ; now I know for what the 
 martyrs of Israel gave up their lives, and what gave 
 them courage," that man is troubled with no more 
 doubts. He argues no more. He lets other men go on 
 in their own road, quite certain that he is on the right 
 track at last, and that those who are turning their backs 
 on that beacon are going away from true Progress. 
 
 Perhaps the difficulty of distinguishing true progress 
 from false is never so great as in what relates to mental 
 cultivation, to refinement, to Education. It is here that 
 the admission of Jews or other persons of Asiatic origin 
 into European schools becomes most valuable as a test. 
 If I had to select a school for a Christian girl, the first 
 question I should ask would be, not how many pupils 
 
174 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 passed the Higher Examinations (for no Examination 
 is any security against flashy and unreal modes of think- 
 ing); I should ask, first, whether the Jewesses who 
 attend the school improve or deteriorate by being there; 
 whether they are found to be, on the whole, a good or a 
 bad influence. Every country and every school gets, as 
 some French writer has said, the Jews which it deserves. 
 A school or a country where Jews are found to be a 
 deteriorating influence is one where public opinion is 
 judging of progress by a false standard. 
 
 So it is on a larger scale. A Nation may seem to be 
 rushing onward in a line which is supposed to be that of 
 culture ; but if it turns out that the Asiatics who take 
 part in that culture drift out of sight of their own 
 religion, if they lose their perception of the meaning of 
 their own past, they are leaving the line of true progress; 
 and whoever is sharing the same kind of education is 
 leaving it along with them. Whatever culture produces 
 that effect on Asiatics is deadening and stupefying for 
 all parties ; it may look like improvement, but it par- 
 takes of the nature of white paint over corruption. It 
 will end by leading all parties towards impiety and 
 vulgarity — the Asiatics first, of course ; but ultimately 
 everybody else as well. But if Asiatics can throw them- 
 selves heartily into the culture of a country without 
 losing hold of their own religions, we may be sure that 
 that culture is founded on something approximately like 
 the true laws of human development. If the result of 
 successive changes in an Educational code is that Asiatics 
 can make excursions into the Science, the Literature, 
 the Philosophy of their age, and come easily back, with 
 fresh energy and fresh clearness, to the work of advancing 
 
The Messianic Kingdom 175 
 
 their own religion, then the rest of us may feel assured 
 that we are not being led far wrong; for whatever 
 movement brought about that result must have been a 
 movement towards the line of true Progress. 1 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE MESSIANIC KINGDOM 
 
 " It is a slight thing that thou shouldest restore Israel ; I will set thee for 
 a Light to the Gentiles." — Isaiah xlix. 6. 
 
 THE words " Exodus " and " Reform " have a natural 
 and vital connection ; the founders of the Mosaic system 
 intended to prepare a standing council of reformers, a 
 body capable of quietly reforming all the thought- 
 material of the world, by introducing into intellectual 
 life that rhythmic motion which is characteristic of 
 physical life. 
 
 The true Re-former is distinguished not by any 
 particular opinions or practices, but by a something, 
 impossible to define, the very presence of which makes 
 stagnant thought uncomfortable. He possesses faculties 
 which orthodoxy lacks ; he has intuitions the source of 
 which is unknown to it, the purpose and meaning of 
 which it fails to conceive, and about which it only 
 understands, vaguely, that they threaten danger to its 
 stability and peace. When the young Mazzini was 
 thrown, innocent, into prison, officialism gave this 
 account of the motives for his arrest : — 
 
 " He is a young man of remarkable talent; very fond of 
 1 Given as a lecture at the Jewish Working- Men's Club, London. 
 
176 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 solitary zvalks by night ; and habitually silent about his 
 meditations. The government does not like young men of 
 talent the subject of whose meditations is unknown to it." 
 
 The instinct of the Austrian government had dis- 
 covered that when Genius goes forth alone to listen to 
 the Voices of Nature, events are likely to occur soon 
 afterwards calculated to disturb the peace of stagnation. 
 And, as usual, tyranny forgot to inquire whether impri- 
 soning Genius is likely to cure it of a taste for liberty! 
 
 Just so, tyranny has, on many occasions, forgotten to 
 inquire whether trying to cramp the Theistic Seer-hood 
 of Judaism is likely to cure it of the habit of seeing God. 
 
 The function of Reform has hitherto been carried on 
 for the Gentile world, episodically and violently, by a 
 succession of such men as Savonarola, Bruno, Luther, 
 Cromwell, Wesley, Mazzini, Maurice, Renan and Hinton. 
 The intention of the founders of Mosaism was to organize 
 a body which should (after some centuries of preliminary 
 discipline) acquire the power of accustoming the whole 
 world to having that function performed for it as regu- 
 larly, quietly and constantly as the lungs reform the 
 blood. 
 
 Judaism, as a sect, far from becoming more intelligible 
 and more tolerated because of the progress of liberality 
 and culture, must, on the contrary, become more im- 
 possible and more intolerable with every advance in 
 civilization. It has no place in the modern world, 
 unless it is the intellectual heart-and-lungs of Humanity, 
 viz., an organ whose function is to receive all the thought- 
 material gathered by the Gentile world ; purify and 
 aerate it by submitting it to the action of that circulat- 
 ing rhythm which is characteristic of Nature's vital 
 
The Messianic Kingdom 177 
 
 processes and of the Jewish discipline ; and give it back 
 to Gentiles in the form of pure religion. Humanity- 
 can become an organic body only when its circulatory 
 apparatus becomes well established. 
 
 The possibility of performing the true function of the 
 Reformer does not depend on any particular opinion 
 about the Bible, or any other book. Nor does it depend 
 on either following or abjuring any given mode of 
 conducting ritual, nor on the possession of any special 
 item of knowledge. No persons ever performed that 
 function more efficiently than did the compilers of the 
 Pentateuch (whoever they may have been) ; in their 
 day there was no Bible, either to believe or to disbelieve. 
 Jesus performed it ; and if any fact is known about him, 
 it is that he took the ritual just as he found it ; con- 
 forming to established custom whenever his doing so 
 did not interfere with honesty or charity, and laying no 
 great stress on any details. Moses Mendelssohn may 
 be said to have been actually the heart and lungs of the 
 Berlin thought-life of his day. Now he was a learned 
 Talmudist, and his co-religionists had no fault to find 
 with his ideas of ritual. 
 
 The possibility of being a true world-reformer does 
 not depend on occupying any particular position in the 
 thought-world. The possibility of performing that 
 function at all depends on having ideas about the 
 nature of truth which are living, in contradistinction to 
 such as are dead. The possibility of performing it 
 properly depends on having ideas which are rhythmic, 
 in contradistinction to such as are jerky or lawless. 
 The nearer a man approaches to the possibility of 
 having ideas which combine the characteristics of being 
 
178 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 living and of being orderly, the more clearly he sees 
 that the main object of the founders of Mosaism was to 
 prepare a race capable of perennially keeping up those 
 quiet alternations of mental attitude which are the 
 natural purifiers of all scientific and artistic ideas, and 
 the thought-equivalent of the rhythmic movements of 
 the physical heart. 
 
 The Pentateuch is the formal ark, which contains, as 
 a Shekinah) the essential ideas of Mosaism. But one 
 can never learn any science or art by any amount of 
 study of even the best text-book, without at least 
 attempting to work some examples ; least of all can 
 that most glorious of all arts, the art of organizing 
 thought, be so learned. A child's first breath is an 
 effort, and perhaps a painful one ; but after one full 
 inhalation, the process goes on easily enough ! A rhythm 
 is always delightful to those who have once got into 
 the swing of it. A Jew only needs to get one true con- 
 ception of what living truth means ; he may then attend 
 to any honest vocation to which he is adapted ; he 
 simply cannot help purifying the thought-life of every 
 one around him ; the hereditary faculty for doing it is 
 so ingrained that it goes on without his consciousness. 
 
 Orthodox people never seem to see that their singular 
 dislike to Reformers is of the very same nature as the 
 dislike of the Egyptians to Moses ; of the professional 
 scribes to the young teacher who wanted to throw on 
 old prophecy the light of a living experience gained by 
 the attempt to realize the prophetic ideal. It is the 
 dislike of the Inquisition to Galileo ; of the medical 
 profession in Harvey's time to the doctrine of the 
 circulation of the blood ; the dislike of the stagnant 
 
The Messianic Kingdom 179 
 
 mind to whatever forces it to recognize throughout 
 creation the existence of that incessant rhythmic pulsa- 
 tion which is the appointed purifier of all that is foul, 
 the liberator of all that is enslaved. Only those who 
 doubt the power given to the Ark to keep its own place 
 as the Centre of the world's march, need fear to see its 
 accessories move round it as the earth moves round 
 the Sun. 
 
 The method suggested in the Pentateuch for the 
 cultivation of the rhythmic condition of the brain is 
 marvellous in its naive beauty, and whenever it has been 
 followed in its simplicity, according to the spirit of the 
 Founders ) it has produced results of which it is not too 
 much to say that they are properly "miraculous," i.e., 
 they are beyond anything which can be explained in 
 words, even by the person who produces them. 
 
 The essence of the rhythmic method consisted in 
 accustoming the consciousness of man to follow, by 
 alternations of thought and emotion, the rhythm of all 
 the discoverable periodicities of Nature ; especially those 
 which affect the human organization. 
 
 Many Eastern religions embodied this principle to 
 some extent, by reverently following certain of the 
 Nature-rhythms. The founders of Judaism, true to 
 their worship of Unity, seem to have aimed to embody 
 in the education of the people all that were discoverable. 
 The solar and lunar periods were, of course, to be 
 followed. Then, as the Founders knew (what many 
 good hygienists in various ages and countries have 
 discovered) that the human mind requires, for health, 
 a change of occupation and of attitude once in seven 
 days, they did not merely say, as modern doctors do, 
 
180 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 " Take a rest regularly once a week " ; they thought : 
 " The fact that there is a need for a seven days' rhythm 
 in the human organization proves that there is some 
 seven days' rhythm in the creative agency by which 
 man was brought into being." Therefore they made it 
 a matter not only of hygiene but of religion to mark 
 the seven days' rhythm by arousing, each week, impres- 
 sive and solemn forms of consciousness, as a counter- 
 action to the mechanical drudgery of the other six days. 
 They also utilized, in a similar manner, the changes in 
 family life and the epochs of National history. They 
 felt that as to a man is the regular pulsation of his heart 
 and lungs, so is, to creative wisdom, the complex 
 rhythm of Nature ; and they thought too (and were 
 they not right in so thinking?) that nothing is more likely 
 to put man into rapport with living truth than getting 
 his mind to beat in unison with the heart-beats of the 
 unseen Father. 
 
 The effect, in those comparatively rare instances in 
 which the discipline was carried out in the true spirit of 
 the Founders, was something like that which is produced 
 in the wood of a violin by the constant repetition of 
 musical notes, or in iron by lying along a magnetic 
 current. The brain of the best kind of Jew is an instru- 
 ment which catches the property of rhythmic thought 
 by constant contact with the periodic movements of 
 Nature ; and at last it becomes an instrument which, 
 when a set of facts is presented to it, the special laws of 
 which are as yet unknown, proceeds to deal with them, 
 spontaneously, according to the laws of Nature and of 
 Logic. It repeats, at every slightest touch, the true 
 rhythm of creative truth. Such a real Jew was called, 
 
The Messianic Kingdom 1 8 1 
 
 in old days, a " Prophet." Moses wished that all the 
 Lord's people should be Prophets. There was a hope 
 that some day the education of Prophets should be 
 complete ; that absolute incarnation of rhythmic grace 
 and Logic should become possible. But the idea of so 
 tuning feeling and thought into harmony with natural 
 law, that rhythmic laws, hitherto unknown, should 
 re-echo, or reveal themselves, within the brain, was too 
 overwhelming a conception to enter the average Jewish 
 mind; and unfortunately the rhythmic mode of education 
 is liable to become mechanical. The majority of Jews, 
 in all ages, have supposed that there was some special 
 duty or virtue in observing this or that festival. And, 
 of course, any idolatrous over-tension of this kind impairs 
 mental elasticity, and does away with much of the good 
 result of Jewish discipline. Therefore Judaism has 
 always hitherto been as a frost-bound landscape, 
 illuminated by a few prophetic stars. But modern 
 Science seems now touching it with her magic wand, 
 and crying : " Arise, Shine, for God hath said : ' Let 
 light be ' ; and the Shekinah of the Lord shall be 
 revealed." 
 
 Messiah's Kingdom cannot mean the rule of any one 
 Incarnation, past, present, or to come ; the possibility 
 of any such autocracy being a source of permanent 
 health or prosperity is precluded by the very form of 
 those equations according to which (whether we are 
 aware of it or not) we must think whenever we think 
 sanely. An embodied perfection, who shall spare other 
 people the trouble of thinking for themselves, by telling 
 them what they are to do and to believe, may be a 
 suitable ideal for cowards ; but no such anomaly can be 
 
182 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 the Messiah, or will be tolerated by the leaders of living 
 Science. 
 
 The vicious habit of trying to make God in the like- 
 ness of phenomena, instead of remembering that the 
 human mind was created in the likeness of God in order 
 that it might compare and organize and thus master 
 phenomena, has led to this among other grotesque and. 
 horrible results : — That because we happen to live in 
 a planetary system, in which only one focal luminary 
 has succeeded in struggling out of the condition of 
 nebulous potentiality into that of coherent fact, men 
 have jumped to the conclusion that this abortive 
 condition of our own home is a law for the whole 
 possible range of Being. Jews in old times, instead of 
 faithfully proclaiming the doctrine of Invisible Unity, 
 with all its logical consequences, invented the idea that 
 all Israel, and indeed all Humanity, is to be ruled by 
 one Messiah ! and Christians, following suit, have 
 improved on the absurdity of their former teachers, by 
 desiring to extend the dominion of their Messiah to the 
 whole Universe, and make of him the equivalent of God 
 Almighty ! Mathematicians, however, who are begin- 
 ning to spend much of their thought-life in solar systems 
 more complete than our own, the source of whose force 
 is a polar-relation between more than one sun, are 
 beginning to find that the belief in a phenomenal 
 Almighty is out of line with the most elementary 
 properties of matter and of force, with the first principles 
 of Logic and of Hygiene. The whole idea of sacred 
 phenomena is revolting to the fine mathematical instinct. 
 Love is sacred ; and whoever can make himself loved is 
 legitimately sacred to those who love him. Not any 
 
The Messianic Kingdom 183 
 
 one human King, but Love the Inspirer, shall reign for 
 ever and ever. The Messianic Kingdom will come, 
 when in every town in the world there is some beloved 
 teacher holding a divine commission to give his blessing 
 urbi et orbi, by opening the Ark of the Shemang Israel, 
 and revealing the living Shekinah, the rhythmic pulsation 
 of all life and truth. For from Zion shall the Law go 
 forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And 
 there is no superstition in believing that a man is 
 divinely commissioned to do that which we find him 
 doing unconsciously ; no progress in Science need make 
 us doubt that a baby's heart has a divine commission 
 to keep up circulation and vital heat. Wherever a man 
 is found, whose own thought-sequences have caught the 
 true rhythm of the Shemang Israel, other men are found 
 clinging lovingly round him. The time comes, at last, 
 when even the orthodox, weary of the cramping fetters 
 of a system of interpretation untrue to the Laws of 
 Nature, are ready to cry to such a teacher : " Master, 
 to whom should we go ? thou hast the words of Eternal 
 Life." And if coming to him is only allowed to mean 
 a temporary rest for the weary and heavy laden, he is 
 as willing to bid them come as the sun is to attract and 
 to enlighten. But his hold on their allegiance will be 
 not static and dead, but living and dynamic. The 
 moment that any idolatrous tension on his personality 
 or his characteristics is set up, the true teacher gives 
 new impulsion to his pupils, sending them forth on 
 their appointed path : " Why call ye me good ? 
 There is none good but One, that is God. Call no 
 man your Master on earth ; for One is your Master, 
 even The Unseen Unity. And greater work than 
 
184 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 mine shall my successors do, when I have gone to the 
 Father." 
 
 Let us choose this day whom we will serve. Phen- 
 omena, classifications, fixed rules, have proved that they 
 are powerless to unify and heal ; if The Unseen Unity 
 be God, let us worship Him, and Him only, with all our 
 hearts. The standards of the creeds have been warring 
 against each other, because they have emancipated them- 
 selves from their rightful ruler. The Crescent, the 
 symbol of the fatality of Natural Law ; the Torah, the 
 standard of obedience to rule ; the Trinity, the Ideal of 
 metaphysical classification ; the Cross, the witness to 
 the elevation of the despised ; the Crucifix, the sublimi- 
 zation of utter adoration ; each has aspired to create 
 man in its own image ; but man, who is made in the 
 Image of God, has escaped from the control of them all. 
 But now, as in the days of Moses, Science is raising 
 those Natural Symbols which are the pledge of God's 
 power to reveal the law of continuity, and of man's 
 power to reverse the lines of Separation. The Trumpet 
 has sounded to herald the Festival of Nature, when God 
 shall be sought under no roof made with hands, but 
 under the trees which He hath planted. The Water is 
 being poured forth abundantly from the golden ewer. 1 
 The Spirit of Progress and the Church of Truth say 
 come; let whoever understandeth help to spread the 
 Good News. And let him that is athirst come, and 
 whosoever will, let him take the Water of Life freely. 
 
 1 This refers to some ceremonies of the Feast of Tabernacles. 
 
FROM AN ARYAN SEERESS TO A HEBREW 
 PROPHET. 
 
 Death a Terror? Your thinking unveiled to my sight! 
 
 My heart bare before you in Heaven's own Light ! 
 
 Our vesture of flesh shed off into the grave, 
 
 And nothing between us our love to enslave ! 
 
 My own personal life has but parted us two ; 
 
 And its death, O ! my love ! will be union with you. 
 
 Death a Terror ? Yes, surely. For Love is a Fire. 
 We children of earth know not what we desire. 
 The Eternal, in passing us, stretched out His Hand 
 That we might not be lightning-struck, here, as we stand ; 
 And I think, O '. my dear one ! 'tis only too true 
 That That Hand put a veil between Gentile and Jew. 
 
 Death a Terror ? Ah ! yes ! of all terrors the King. 
 Are we fit for such bliss as that meeting may bring ? 
 The dazzle of wonder, the splendour unknown 
 Of a flash from your soul as it strikes on my own. 
 
 Then, nor female nor male, no more Gentile nor Jew, 
 
 No more check on my freedom but union with you. 
 
 M 
 
Appendix I 
 
 For those who wish to understand practically the connec- 
 tion of the method of Gratry and Boole with ancient 
 Philosophies. 
 
 INITIATION FOR PHYSIC MATHEMATICS. 
 
 LET the aspirant occasionally, when he is in any diffi- 
 culty, put himself back in imagination into pre-historic 
 times. Let him try to fancy himself an early Geologist, 
 surrounded by savages who ask him to find water. 
 
 The Geologist takes the opportunity of showing them 
 how to find the Water of Life. He says : — 
 
 " Let us seek the Great Father in our spirit ; then 
 perhaps He will show us how to supply our bodily 
 needs. 
 
 " The truth is holy and pure; and may not be taught 
 by any tree that has thorns or the likeness of the horns 
 or tail of any beast ; but only by this, the Sacred Hazel 
 (or Olive, etc.). And let us put out of our minds all 
 imperfect ideas and animal impulses ; and seek to 
 understand in straightforward simplicity. 
 
 "Separation seems to us an evil; but in reality it is 
 not so ; it is a condition of growth. Look at this tree ; 
 the branch that here has one bark-case, higher up is 
 divided into two. It must be so ; without separations 
 nothing can grow into beauty. Therefore if God sepa- 
 rates us from our friends, let us remember that separation 
 is not an evil but a means of progress. 
 
 "Man is, like the trees, subject to the Law of separa- 
 tion ; but he is not, like the trees, its slave. He is the 
 
1 8 8 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 son of the Law-giver ; and heir of His power. I hold 
 in my hand the instrument of separation ; and can inflict 
 it on anything that grows." 
 (He raises a knife.) 
 
 " Man, the Son of God, is Lord of all created things, 
 and should pay superstitious homage to none. There- 
 fore I fear not to cut this branch, though it grows on 
 the Sacred Hazel." 
 
 (He cuts the branch, and takes it by the two prongs, 
 the united end hanging downwards.) 
 
 " You call me Healer, Teacher and Counsellor ; but 
 my knowledge resides not in me. It comes from The 
 Great Unity ; and I acquire it by putting together in 
 my mind things which I see dissevered, and dissevering 
 in my mind things which I see together. In token 
 whereof I reverse this branch ; putting Unity where was 
 division, and division where Unity was." 
 
 (He reverses the wand). 
 
 " If any of you seek help from me, I bid you come 
 while I hold reversed this sacred branch of divination ; 
 in order that you may always remember that knowledge 
 comes from putting together things which we find sepa- 
 rated, and separating things which we find together. 
 
 " This knowledge is not mine, to give or to withhold; 
 it comes down from The Unseen Unity Whose servant 
 and revealer I am ; and is given, freely, to all who seek 
 it with a pure heart. In token whereof I raise this 
 branch high over your heads and mine." 
 
 (He raises the branch.) 
 
 "Now lest any should think that the Hazel has powers 
 of its own, I will cast the branch into the flames, that all 
 may witness how powerless it is to avert its own disso- 
 
Appendix I 189 
 
 lution. May the Unseen Father accept the offering of 
 ourselves and all that we have ; and deign to minister 
 to our bodily needs." 
 (He burns the branch.) 
 
 The awe-struck savages would by this time be polar- 
 ized into a "circle"; and the Magician (whose Geologic 
 insight would have been already informed by studious 
 observation) would become lucid ; and see where water 
 was. 
 
 The student should, occasionally, go over this little 
 scene in his mind ; especially when he finds himself in 
 any intellectual or moral perplexity. If he holds the 
 forked stick in his hands and actually goes through the 
 performance, especially with a freshly-cut stick, so much 
 the better. The magnetism of the fresh Hazel-Wand 
 acts as a slight additional stimulant ; much as breathing 
 doubly oxygenated air for a few minutes might do. 
 
 The modern Dowser is one in whom fidelity to the 
 Past is a physical instinct. When he goes through half 
 of this ceremony, his fingers tingle with the longing to 
 complete it. They and the Hazel mutually magnetize 
 each other, till the fork, of its own accord, completes as 
 much of the ceremony as it can. 
 
 The Psychic mathematician is one in whom fidelity 
 to the Past is a spiritual instinct. When he meditates 
 on old Ceremonies, secrets connected with the mathe- 
 matical organization of thought reveal themselves 
 in his brain. To him, what others call Time is 
 as a fourth dimension of Space ; and he sees it, 
 stretched out like a line. His Trinity is not three 
 Persons in One God, but three times in One Eternal, 
 Past, Present, and Future. And when he becomes 
 
i9° Logic Taught by Love 
 
 lucid, Time becomes foreshortened, and he sees them as 
 One ; sees them (at his best) with equal distinctness 
 and assurance. 
 
 When the aspirant has become impregnated with the 
 ideas suggested by the early and savage ceremony, he 
 may take a further step. Let him picture a band of 
 eager lovers of Liberty using the Ceremony to initiate 
 a new member. The initiator concludes it by holding 
 the rod by its tips and making it slowly revolve ; having 
 the united end alternately above and below his fingers, 
 saying : — 
 
 " I dedicate you to the cause of orderly Revolution ; 
 and the overthrow of all systems based on the mainten- 
 ance of any fixed condition of things. Let us pray 
 that the Will of God may be done on earth as it is in 
 the Heavens; that is to say, by incessant, orderly 
 Revolution. 
 
 " In the Name of The Invisible Unity, Eternal and 
 Inconceivable, Amen." 
 
 Let the aspirant go over this in his mind, when he is 
 puzzled by any political or social problem, and fix his 
 mind's eye on the spiral earth-path or moon-path. After 
 a time, he will think of things as Boole and Gratry did, 
 and understand their terminology easily. 
 
 An objection has been made to my presentment of 
 the Branch ritual, because old documents prove that 
 Ritual to have been, at various times, connected with 
 fleshly and sensuous ideas. It certainly was so. Those 
 who consider that fact a disproof of my view must have 
 approached the study of ancient systems from the out- 
 side and with minds saturated with European ideas of 
 classification and distinction. The true line of cleavage 
 
Appendix I 191 
 
 between good and bad, in religion, lies not between this 
 and that ritual, but between the simple and the per- 
 verted use of the same ritual. A Water-Dowser taught 
 me the traditional method of cutting and handling the 
 forked Divining-Rod ; and I have no hesitation in 
 affirming that what I witnessed was the remains of 
 some old and very solemn ceremony. I went through 
 the performances repeatedly with the Hazel as instructed 
 by the Dowser ; the forks were nearly all plain forked 
 sticks. Afterwards I cut forks from all kinds of shrubs 
 and trees growing in the neighbourhood of Greenstreet 
 (Kent). I got a large collection. Some were like the 
 horns of beetles, oxen, or stags ; several would serve 
 for Phallus symbols. One (from a hawthorn) had 
 a thorn out in front and a longer one behind ; and bore 
 the most extraordinary resemblance to the hind quarters 
 of an ape in a very nasty attitude. One, from a Honey- 
 suckle, showed a perfect clean fork, a miniature copy of 
 the pure Hazel fork, but with a spiral coil winding 
 round and round it — -a perfect picture of the Serpent in 
 the Tree of Knowledge. 
 
 This inference illustrates how easily the symbols of 
 a pure religion may slip over into being symbols of 
 degrading idolatry ; and how unwise it would be to 
 treat any ancient ritual as in itself and necessarily evil, 
 only because priests have perverted it. This is more 
 especially the case, because the Creator Inspirer, Who 
 descends at the moment of contact between differentiated 
 polars, is the object of worship of all inspired Genius. 
 Adonis, — the god of vicious wasteful expenditure of 
 force in the pursuit of mere sensuous pleasure, is the 
 same word as Adonai, the Fertilizing Inspirer of the 
 
19 2 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 Hebrew ; the name too sacred to be written and 
 indicated only by dots. Pan, the horrible Satyr, is 
 "the All," the Unity of Nature; identical with "The 
 I Am, the Unity " Who delivered Israel from bondage. 
 
 FORMULA FOR SOCIAL COMBINATION 
 
 THE maximum of force is got by a coalition between 
 the party rising into predominance and the class most 
 neglected and despised. In France, in the 1 8th century, 
 Philosophy was the rising power, and the proletariat 
 were almost deprived of Civil rights ; when they com- 
 bined, they swept everything before them. In England, 
 now, Science, especially psychological Science, is the 
 rising power, and the only class denied all right is the 
 class of lunatics. 
 
Appendix II 
 
 Whatever may be the faults of the Jewish people, a 
 question which need not be here discussed, they have 
 brought down to us from some remote civilization a 
 tradition of enormous value : — 
 
 The vital conviction which, during thousands of 
 years, at all times pressed upon the Israelites, was that 
 they were a " chosen people " selected out of all the 
 multitudes of the earth to perpetuate the great truth 
 that there was but one God — an illimitable, omnipotent, 
 paternal spirit who rewarded the good and punished the 
 wicked — in contradistinction from the multifarious 
 subordinate animal and bestial demi-gods of the other 
 nations of the earth. This sublime monotheism could 
 only have been the outgrowth of a high civilization, for 
 man's first religion is necessarily a worship of " stocks 
 and stones," and history teaches us that the gods 
 decrease in number as man increases in intelligence. 
 It was probably in Atlantis that monotheism was first 
 preached. The proverbs of " Ptah-hotep," the oldest 
 book of the Egyptians, show that this most ancient 
 colony from Atlantis received the pure faith from the 
 motherland at the very dawn of history : this book 
 preached the doctrine of one God, " the rewarder of the 
 good and the punisher of the wicked." (Reginald S. 
 Poole, Conteinporary Review, Aug., 1 88 1, p. 38.) "In the 
 early days the Egyptians worshipped one only God, the 
 maker of all things, without beginning and without end. 
 To the last the priests preserved this doctrine and taught 
 
i 9 4 
 
 Logic Taught by Love 
 
 it privately to a select few." (Amer. Ency., vol. vi. 
 p. 463.) The Jews took up this great truth where the 
 Egyptians dropped it, and over the heads and over the 
 ruins of Egypt, Chaldea, Phoenicia, Greece, Rome, and 
 India this handful of poor shepherds, — ignorant, debased, 
 and despised, — have carried down to our times a con- 
 ception which could only have originated in the highest 
 possible state of human society. 
 
 And even scepticism must pause before the miracle 
 of the continued existence of this strange people, wading 
 through the ages, bearing on their shoulders the burden 
 of their great trust, and pressing forward under the 
 force of a perpetual and irresistible impulse. The speech 
 that may be heard to-day in the synagogues of Chicago 
 and Melbourne, resounded two thousand years ago in 
 the streets of Rome ; and at a still earlier period, it 
 could be heard in the palaces of Babylon and the shops 
 of Thebes — in Tyre, in Sidon, in Gades, in Palmyra, in 
 Nineveh. How many nations have perished, how many 
 languages have ceased to exist, how many splendid 
 civilizations have crumbled into ruin, how many temples 
 and towers and towns have gone down into dust since 
 the sublime frenzy of monotheism first seized this extra- 
 ordinary people ? All their kindred nomadic tribes 
 have gone ; their land of promise is in the hands of 
 strangers ; but Judaism, with its offspring, Christianity, 
 is taking possession of the habitable world ; and the 
 continuous life of one people — one poor, obscure, and 
 wretched people — spans the tremendous gulf between 
 " Ptah-hotep " and this nineteenth century. 
 
 If the Spirit of which the universe is but an expression 
 — of whose frame the stars are the infinite molecules — 
 
Appendix II 195 
 
 can be supposed ever to interfere with the laws of matter 
 and reach down into the doings of men, would it not be 
 to save from the wreck and waste of time the most 
 sublime fruit of the civilization of the drowned Atlantis 
 — a belief in the one, only, just God, the father of all 
 life, the imposer of all moral obligations ? 
 
 Printed by S. Clarke, 
 Granby Roiv. Manchester. 
 
THE 
 
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 Mediaeval Alchemist. 
 
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 PEO- 
 
 PLE'S 
 
 36 pp., including Artistic 
 Paper Cover. 
 
 CLAS- 
 
 SICS. 
 
 ONE PENNY. 
 
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 No. I. Marcus Aurelius : Life According to 
 
 No. 2. Mazzini: Thoughts on Democracy. 
 
 No. 3. Epictetus: The Enchiridion. 
 
 No. 4. Rousseau: Thoughts on Education. 
 
 No. 5. Socrates: On Love. 
 
 No. 6. Emerson: On Friendship. 
 
 No. 7. Aristotle: On Happiness. 
 
 No. 8. Browne: Religio Medici. 
 
 No. 9. Mohammed: The Koran. 
 
 No. 10. Seneca: From The Epistles to Lucilius. 
 
 No. II. Shelley: Life and Morals. 
 
 No. 12. Carlyle: On Work. 
 
 No. 13. Thoreau: The Simple Life. 
 
 No. 14. Tolstoy: The Scrihes and Pharisees. 
 
 No. 15. St Augustine: Some Reflections. 
 
 No. 16. Swift: On Modern Civilization. 
 
 No. 17. Swedenborg : On Marriage. 
 
 No. 18. Bacon : Belief and Unbelief. 
 
 These Booklets are issued for the purpose of placing 
 in the hands of the masses, in a handy form, at the 
 cheapest possible price, some of the richest thoughts of 
 the world's greatest thinkers. 
 
 They are obtainable of all Newsagents. Booksellers, 
 and Railway Bookstalls throughout the United King- 
 dom, or direct from the Publisher, post free, for i$d., 
 12 issues for is. 6d., or 12 together, is. post free. 
 
 Nature. 
 
 London: C. W. DANIEL, 3 Amen Corner, E.C« 
 
LOGIC TAUGHT BY LOVE. 
 
 Rhythm in Nature and in Education. By 
 Mary Everest Boole. Crown 8vo, cloth, 
 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 THE GREATER PARABLES OF 
 TOLSTOY, 
 
 With their Interpretation, as told to his 
 Congregation. By Walter Walsh. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth, 2s. net ; paper covers, 
 is. net. 
 
 TARIFF WITHOUT TEARS. 
 
 A Primer of Taxation. Written and Illus- 
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 is. 6d. net. 
 
 CRUMBS OF VERSE, 
 
 Mainly for Chicks. By J. H. Goring, and 
 Illustrations by Evelyn Paul. New 
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 BERTHA STORIES, 
 
 And Stories told by her Uncle Gilbert. 
 By G. G. Desmond, and Nine Illustra- 
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 London : C. W. DANIEL, 3 Amen Corner, E.C 
 
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
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 JAM ™ b 
 " NOV 2 7 1953 
 
 JUN « 9 1954' 
 
 JAR 8 1958 
 
 J) AR 20 
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 JUN 5 
 
 Form L-9-15m-7,'31 
 
 SEP 2 2 1972 
 
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