THE EQUINOX
of the mystics themselves, untrained in accuracy of observation,
bring back from the fountains of light; nothing but what
quacks exploit, and dotards drivel of.
Think of what we claim! That concentration and its
results can open the Closed Palace of the King, and answer
the Riddle of the Sphinx. All science only brings us up to a
blind wall, the wall of Philosophy; here is your great Ram to
batter a breach and let in the forlorn hope of the Children of
the Curse to storm the heights of heaven.
One single trained observer with five years’ work, less
money than would build a bakehouse, and no more help than
his dozen of volunteer students could give him, would earn
himself a fame loftier than the stars, and set mankind on the
royal road to the solution of the One great problem.
Scientific Illuminism would have deserved its name, or
mysticism would have received a blow which would save
another young fool like myself from wasting his whole life on
so senseless a study and enable him to engage in the nobler
career of cheating and duping his fellows in the accredited
spheres of commerce and politics, to say nothing of the
grosser knaveries of the liberal professions.
But I have no doubts. Let the investigator study his
own brain on the lines I have laid down, possibly in the first
place with the aid of hashish or some better physical expedient,
to overcome the dull scepticism which is begotten of idleness
upon ignorance; it is useless to study the no-brain of another,
on the strength of a reputation for fraud, as the spiritualist
investigators seem to do. Your own brain is the best ; next,
the trained and vigorous brains of clever and educated men,
in perfect health, honest and wary.
88