INTRODUCTION ix
When a man comes to me and asks for the Truth, I go away and practise teaching
the Differential Calculus toa Bushman ; and I answer the former only when I have
succeeded with the latter. But to withhold the Alphabet of Mysticism from the
learner is the device of a selfish charlatan. That which can be taught shall be
taught, that that which cannot be taught may at last be learnt. °
3. As a weary but victorious warrior delights to recall his battles—Forsitan
haec olim meminisse juvabit—we would linger for a moment upon the difficulties
of our task.
The question of sacred alphabets has been abandoned as hopeless. As one
who should probe the nature of woman, the deeper he goes the rottener it gets;
so that at last it is seen that there is no sound bottom. All is arbitrary ;! with-
drawing our caustics and adopting a protective treatment, we point to the beautiful
clean bandages and ask the clinic to admire! To take one concrete example:
the English T is clearly equivalent in sound to the Hebrew n, the Greek 71, the
Arabic ~, and the Coptic "J, but the numeration is not the same. Again, we have
a clear analogy in shape (perhaps a whole series of analogies), which, on comparing
the modern alphabets with primeval examples, breaks up and is indecipherable.
The same difficulty in another form permeates the question of gods.
Priests, to propitiate their local fetish, would flatter him with the title of creator ;
philosophers, with a wider outlook, would draw identities between many gods in
order to obtain a unity. Time and the gregarious nature of man have raised gods
as ideas grew more universal; sectarianism has drawn false distinctions between
identical gods for polemical purposes.
Thus, where shall we put Isis, favouring nymph of corn as she was? As the
type of motherhood? Asthe moon? As the great goddess Earth? As Nature?
As the Cosmic Egg from which all Nature sprang? For as time and place have
changed, so she 1s all of these !
What of Jehovah, that testy senior of early Genesis, that lawgiver of Leviticus,
that war-god of Joshua, that Phallus of the depopulated slaves of the Egyptians,
that jealous King-God of the times of the Kings, that more spiritual conception of
the Captivity, only invented when all temporal hope was lost, that medizval battle-
ground of cross-chopped logic, that Being stripped of all his attributes and assimi-
lated to Parabrahma and the Absolute of the Philosopher? |
Satan, again, who in Job is merely Attorney-General and prosecutes for the
Crown, acquires in time all the obloquy attaching to that functionary in the eyes
of the criminal classes, and becomes a slanderer. Does any one really think that
any angel is such a fool as to try to gull the Omniscient God into injustice to his
saints
Then, on the other hand, what of Moloch, that form of Jehovah denounced by
those who did not draw huge profits from his rites? What of the savage and
morose Jesus of the Evangelicals, cut by their petty malice from the gentle Jesus
of the Italian children? How shall we identify the thaumaturgic Chauvinist of
Matthew with the metaphysical Logos of John? In short, while the human mind
is mobile, so long will the definitions of all our terms vary.
1 All symbolism is perhaps ultimately so; there is no necessary relation in thought between
the idea of a mother, the sound of the child's cry ‘‘ Ma,” and the combination of lines ma. This,
too, is the extreme case, since ‘‘ma”’ is the sound naturally just produced by opening the lips
and breathing. Hindus would make a great fuss over this true connection; but it is very nearly
the only one. All these beautiful schemes break down sooner or later, mostly sooner.