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Page 1 of 51913 · PDF PAGE 400
POPOPOPOPDO THE EQUINOX . What is reality? . Knowledge identical with being. What is reason? The Word identical with being. What is justice ? The motive of acts identical with being. What is the absolute ? Being. Can one conceive anything superior to being? No ; but one conceives in being itself something super- eminent and transcendental. Q. POPO> 0° What is that? The supreme reason of being. Do you know it, and can you define it ? Faith alone affirms it, and names it God. Is there anything above truth? Above known truth, there is unknown trut…
1913 · PDF PAGE 380
…ICH PEOPLE OPPOSE TO IT. Tue objections which one may make against religion may be made either in the name of science, or in the name of reason, or in the name of faith. Science cannot deny the facts of the existence of religion, of its establishment and its influence upon the events of history. It is forbidden to it to touch dogma; dogma belongs wholly to faith. Science ordinarily arms itself against religion with a series of facts which it is her duty to appreciate, which, in fact, she does appreciate thoroughly, but which she con- demns stil…
1913 · PDF PAGE 364
…f in the Roman Church, when it declared in the four articles of its decree of the 12th December, 1845 : 1°.—That if faith is superior to reason, reason ought to endorse the inspirations of faith ; 2°.—That faith and science have each their separate domain, and that the one should not usurp the functions of the other; 3°.—That it is proper for faith and grace, not to weaken, but on the contrary to strengthen and develop reason ; 4°.—That the concourse of reason, which examines, not the decisions of faith, but the natural and rational bases of th…
1913 · PDF PAGE 532
…lling the good, in conformity with the knowledge of truth. The good in conformity with the true, is the just. Justice is the practice of reason. Reason is the word of reality. Reality is the science of truth. Truth is idea identical with being. Man arrives at the absolute idea of being by two roads, experience and hypothesis. Hypothesis is probable when it is necessitated by the teachings of experience; it is improbable or absurd when it is rejected by this teaching. Experience is science, and hypothesis is faith. True science necessarily admit…
1913 · PDF PAGE 401
…God, and the sacrifice of man. Q. What is this sacrifice? A. It is the willing and spontaneous surrender of right. Q.. Is this sacrifice reasonable? A. No; it is a kind of folly greater than reason, for reason is forced to admire it. Q. How does one call a man who acts according to truth, reality, reason and justice? A. A moral man. g. And if he sacrifices his interests to justice? a. A man of honour. g. Andif in order to imitate the grandeur and goodness of Providence he does more than his duty, and sacrifices his right to the good of others? …
1913 · PDF PAGE 374
…nd they will not wish to understand it. But we wish to show to the innumer- able crowd of those who doubt, that faith is attached to the reason of all the centuries, to the science of all the sages. We wish to force human liberty to respect divine authority, reason to recognize the bases of faith, so that faith and authority, in their turn, may never again proscribe liberty and reason. 76
1913 · PDF PAGE 293
…able mystery; that is to say, that He is, in all seeming, that supreme absurdity in which Tertullian believed. Necessarily absurd, since reason must renounce for ever the project of attaining to Him; necessarily credible, since science and reason, far from demonstrating that He does not exist, are dragged by the chariot of fatality to believe that He does exist, and to adore Him themselves with closed eyes. Why ?—Because this Absurd is the infinite source of reason. The light springs eternally from the eternal shadows. Science, that Babel Tower…
1913 · PDF PAGE 312
…t an explanation of the Bible by the aid of numbers, for the Bible is the book of the images of God. We shall ask numbers to give us the reason of the dogmas of eternal religion; numbers will always reply by reuniting themselves in the synthesis of unity. The following pages are simply outlines of qabalistic hypotheses; they stand apart from faith, and we indicate them only as curiosities of research. It is no part of our task to make innovations in dogma, and what we assert in our character as an initiate is entirely subordinate to our sub- mi…
1913 · PDF PAGE 397
…ience cannot bear witness, but which the very existence of the details seems to force her to recognize and to admit. Science submits the reasons of persons and things to the universal mathematical reason ; faith seeks, or rather supposes, an intelligent and absolute reason for (and above) mathematics themselves. Science demonstrates justice by justness; faith gives an absolute justness to justice, in subordinating it to Providence. One sees here all that faith borrows from science, and all that science, in its turn, owes to faith. Without faith…
1913 · PDF PAGE 310
…ences by chance, or a _providential intelligence which directs forces in order to ameliorate minds? The first hypothesis is repugnant to reason; it is pessimistic and immoral. Science and reason ought then to accept the second. Yes, Proudhon, God is an hypothesis, but an hypothesis so necessary, that without it, all theorems become absurd or doubtful. For initiates of the Qabalah, God is the absolute unity which creates and animates numbers. The unity of the human intelligence demonstrates the unity of God. The key of numbers is that of creeds,…
1913 · PDF PAGE 377
THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES it reconciles the living numbers of Pythagoras with the monadic Word of St. John ;! so much, science and reason will agree. It is then in the eyes of reason and of science them- selves the most perfect, that is to say the most complete, dogma which has ever been produced in the world. Let science and reason grant us so much; we shall ask nothing more of them. “God exists; there is only one God, and He punishes those who do evil,” said Moses. “God is everywhere; He is in us, and the good that we do to men we do it to God…
1913 · PDF PAGE 392
… an anatomical phenomenon, nor that of transubstantiation for a chemical manipulation. By what right do you exclaim “Absurd!” ? I do not reason about any of the things you know; by what right do you say that I talk unreasonably? SCIENCE. I begin to understand you, or rather, I see that I shall never understand you. This being so, let us remain separate; I shall never have need of you. FAITH. I am less proud, and I recognize that you may be useful to me perhaps. Perhaps, too, you will be very sad and very desperate without me, and I will not lea…
1913 · PDF PAGE 534
…s to abdicate life and accept the eternity of death. Axiom VII The more obstacles the will surmounts, the stronger it is. It is for this reason that Christ glorified poverty and sorrow. Axiom VIII When the will is vowed to the absurd, it is reproved by eternal reason. Axiom IX The will of the just man is the will of God himself, and the law of Nature. 236
1913 · PDF PAGE 370
…ts it or denies it, it is in humanity; it is, then, in life, it is in nature itself; it is an incontestable fact of science, and even of reason. The true religion is that which has always existed, which exists to-day, and will exist for ever. Some one may say that religion is this or that; religion is what it is. This is the true religion, and the false religions are superstitions imitated from her, borrowed from her, lying shadows of herself ! One may say of religion what one says of true art. Savage attempts at painting or sculpture are the a…
1913 · PDF PAGE 398
…ays science. “In its identity with my legitimate aspirations, reality is my dogma,” says faith. “In its identity with the Word, being is reason,” says science. “In its identity with the spirit of charity, the highest reason is my obedience,” says faith. “In its identity with the motive of reasonable acts, being is justice,” says science. “In its identity with the principle of charity, justice is Providence,” replies faith. Sublime harmony of all certainties with all hopes, of the 100
1913 · PDF PAGE 519
…e sees them; half illusion, half magnetic and nervous force. These, it seems to us, are very precise and very clear explanations. Let us reason a little with those who support the theory of apparitions from another world : Either those hands are real bodies, or they are illusions. If they are bodies, they are, then, not spirits. If they are illusions produced by mirages, either in us, or outside ourselves, you admit my argument. Now, one remark ! It is that all those who suffer from luminous congestion or contagious somnambulism, perish by a vi…
1913 · PDF PAGE 343
…ver is not without reproach is the accomplice of all evil; and whoever is not absolutely perverse, may participate in all good. For this reason an agony is always an humanitarian expiation, and every head that falls upon the scaffold may be honoured and praised as the head of a martyr. For this reason also, the noblest and the holiest of martyrs could inquire of his own conscience, find himself deserving of the penalty that he was about to undergo, and say, saluting the sword that was ready to strike him, “Let justice be done!” Pure victims of …
1913 · PDF PAGE 478
…yramid; the others saw nothing. Everybody knows that certain substances, hashish, for example, intoxicate without taking away the use of reason, and cause to be seen with an astonishing vividness things which do not exist. A great part of the phenomena of Mr. Home belong to a natural influence similar to that of hashish. This is the reason why the medium refuses to operate except before a small number of persons chosen by him- self. The rest of these phenomena should be attributed to magnetic power. To see anything at Mr. Home's séawces is not …
1913 · PDF PAGE 381
…he unknown known, the immeasurable measured, the indicible named. That is to say that dogma could only cease to be absurd in the eyes of reason to become, in the eyes of faith, science, reason and good sense in one, the most monstrous and the most impossible of all absurdities. Remain the objections of dissent. The Jews, our fathers in religion, reproach us with having attacked the unity of God, with having changed the immut- able and eternal law, with adoring the creature instead of the Creator. These heavy reproaches are founded on their perf…
1913 · PDF PAGE 395
… know now why you believe. I respect your hopes, and share your desires. But I must find by seeking; and in order to seek, I must doubt. REASON. Work, then, and seek, O Science, but respect the oracles of Faith! When your doubt leaves a gap in universal enlightenment, allow Faith to fill it! Walk distinguished the one from the other, but leaning the one upon the other, and you will never go astray.