The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE BIG STICK as his own, and so appropriate to himself the pain of the whole world” (p, 184). Here the “true-self” is the Higher Self, Atman or Augoeides, unity with which is what we have called the Great Work of the A... A... When a soldier turns philosopher we always expect good work, and Major Kelly has not failed us; and to all such as would understand Kant as well as Schopenhauer’s great work, “The World as Will and Idea”—of which an excellent English translation is published by Messrs. Paul, Trench, Triibner, we heartily recommend this masterful little volume. F. THE SIGNS AND SYMBOLS OF PRIMORDIAL MAN. By ALBERT CHURCHWARD. Swan Sonnenschein. 25s. net. The first thing one has to do is to compose oneself in a comfortable position, for this book is large and weighs I don’t know how many pounds; the next to remember that the author has an axe to grind, or at least has constituted him- self leading counsel for his client Egypt, and in a learned and most convincing argument not only proves the undoubted antiquity of his client’s claim, but that it was from Egypt, or rather Central Africa, that the human race originated, and that it is to Egyptian symbolism, and more particularly to the Ritual of the Dead, that we must go if we would rightly understand the temples, rites, cere- monies, and customs of mankind past and present. From Egypt they came and to Egypt must we go. The book is in every sense a great book, and, by the way, it forms an excel- lent seventh volume to Gerald Massey’s monumental work. Brother Wynne Westcott is very rightly condemned as displaying a peculiarly acute ignorance of both Freemasonry and Egyptology, and further on so is that chattering journalist, Mr. Andrew Lang—the Paul Carus of the British Isles. Dr. Churchward is a Freemason of a very high degree, but yet not high enough to understand that secrets that need safeguarding are no secrets at all. “L. H.” for left hand is excusable because it saves printers’ ink; but “these need no explanation to R.A.M.’s” etc., etc., is ridiculous because R.A.M.’s need not be told about it, and if you are not going to divulge this frightful secret about a “Tau” why bother to say so? Remember that “an indicible arcanum is an arcanum which cannot be revealed,” even by a R.A.M.! The Hebrew throughout is very faulty; either Dr. Churchward knows none, or else the proofs have been sadly neglected. But now let us turn to the subject over which he must have spent years of labour. Man he traces back to the Pygmies of Central Africa, these or beings very like them hundreds of thousands of years ago emigrated all over the world— they were Paleolithic man, and whether these ape-like little beings had a Mythos 341