The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES ence; he shakes like one in a dream, a prey to the nightmare of his passions. The impetuous currents of instinctive life and the feeble resistances of the will form an antagonism so distinct that the qabalists hypothesized the super-foetation of souls: that is to say, they believed in the presence in one body of several souls who dispute it with each other and often seek to destroy it. Very much as the shipwrecked sailors of the Medusa, when they were disputing the possession of the too small raft, sought to sink it. It is certain that, in making one’s self the servant of any current whatever, of instincts or even of ideas, one gives up one’s personality, and becomes the slave of that multitudinous spirit whom the Gospel calls /egiov. Artists know this well enough. Their frequent evocations of the universal light enervate them. They become medzums, that is to say, sick men. The more success magnifies them in public opinion, the more their personality diminishes. They become crotchety, envious, wrathful. They do not admit that any merit, even in a different sphere, can be placed beside theirs; and, having become unjust, they dispense even with politeness. To escape this fatality, really great men isolate themselves from all comradeship, knowing it to be death to liberty. They save themselves by a proud unpopularity from the contamina- tion of the vile multitude. If Balzac had been during his life a man of a clique or of a party, he would not have remained after his death the great and universal genius of our epoch. The light illuminates neither things insensible nor closed eyes, or at least it only illuminates them for the profit of those who see. The word of Genesis, “ Let there be light!” 261