The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING This is but a theory, but a theory worth working upon until a better be derived from truer facts. Adopting it, the transfigured-realist gazes at it with wonder and then casts Theory overboard, and loads his ship with Law; postulates that every cause has its effect; and, when his ship begins to sink, refuses to jettison his wretched cargo, or even to man the pumps of Doubt, because the final result is declared by his philosophy to be unknowable. If any one cause be unknowable, be it first or last, then all causes are unknowable. The will to create is denied, the will to annihilate is denied, and finally the will to act is denied. Propositions perhaps true to the Master, but certainly not so to the disciple. Because Titian was a great artist and Rodin is a great sculptor, that is no reason why we should abolish art schools and set an embargo on clay. If the will to act is but a mirage of the mind, then equally so is the will to differentiate or select. If this be true, and the chain of Cause and Effect is eternal, how is it then that Cause A produces effect B, and Cause B effect C, and Cause A+B +C effect X. Where originates this power of production? It is said there is no change, the medium remaining alike through- out. But we say there is a change—a change of form,* and not only a change, but a distinct birth and a distinct death of form. What creates this form? Sense perception. What will destroy this form, and reveal to us that which lies behind it? times more curious than all the musings of the mystics, works of the Rosi- crucians, or the mechanical contrivances which seem to-day so fine, and which our children will disdain as clumsy” (R. B, Cunninghame Graham in his preface to “ The Canon”). * Form here is synonymous with the Hindu Mayda; it is also the chief power of the Buddhist devil, Mara, and even of that mighty devil, Choronzon. IV D 49