THE monastic or separate (sexual) state, where nature is ignored and its suggestions and the indulgence of the seductive individual appetite is held to be ruinous (to the spiritual aims of the human creature), is a dangerous--nay, almost an impossible abnegation. From the spirit-side, in this respect, nature is held abominable. Its practice is the shutting of the heavenly door. Thus fleshly incitements are AWFUL; and yet--such are the contradictions of nature--they are necessitated. We must 'whip' the body, as it were, 'into wood' before we can drive the devil therefrom. 1 We must fast and watch, and watch and fast. We must reduce our robustness into leanness. Our physical graceful, worthy or handsome 'selves', we must punish down into everything that is incapable and pitiable. We must become pitiless in our body's own maceration and mortification. Meanwhile (in faith, and in reliance on the efficacy of our penances) we grow into holiness-intensifying into SAINT-HOOD. The lights of the soul are to shine through the rents and fractures of the flagellated and punished body, until the fleshly sense or enchantment and enticement is trampled-up, through the destruction of its medium, into life other than this life.
But truly, in this view, the necessities--or rather the requirements--of nature cannot be set at naught
[paragraph continues] --cannot be contended with. Religion evades this question. Men suffer to a very grievous extent. To descend to realities in this living world of flesh of ours. Farther, however, in natural arrangements. The most cruel nervous disorders, such as the furor uterinus, hysteric spasms, and a whole train of vengeful mischiefs, chiefly attack such women as have throughout life refused the pleasures of love. Many fatal affections, such as mania, epilepsy, and so on, prey upon those of both sexes who have imposed upon themselves too severe refraining or bridling. This incidence is ingrain in nature. But the dangers resulting from the abuse of these amiable pleasures are much more formidable. Pp. 38, 39, of Curiositates Eroticæ Physiologiæ (1875). Woman's physical constitution adapts her for love. 'Excitements more numerous, and of more exquisite sense, are bestowed on Woman'--Casanova, Physiology, 1865, p. 78, quoting from Swedenborg. 'Polarity of the Two Sexes--Vito-electro galvanic. Attractive power is effected from within'--Casanova (1865), p. 25. 'The slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul'--Grindon, on 'Life'--Casanova, Physiology, p. 39. But (until proven) she is rigid, and to a certain extent (like virgins usually) insensate, and even rebelliously irresponsive.
All the 'pittoresques', to the number of twelve, invented by the Greek courtesan Cyrene, as being the best in which to signalize that particular loving mystery which has everything (enjoined) under it; all those enchanting modes of sympathy which Phyleiris and Ashyanase published, which Elephaseus composed in Leonine verse, and which afterwards the Roman Emperor Nero caused to be painted on the Walls of the Imperial Banquetting Hall, in his famous Golden Palace, by the first artists of Rome, all these
prove that women are much better adepts in the ars amandi and its mysteries than men--that they have a much keener relish for its intricacies, to which they deliver themselves up--with the chosen object--with a delight and abandon unknown to man. In short, in all the solicitation of love, women are the most inventive, assiduous, intense and persevering. Catherine the Second of Russia possessed boundless power. She set no limits to her gratification in the sensual respect. She was imperial and magnificent in her luxurious enormities. Her will was law--she was the 'modern Messalina'; she richly earned the title which was accorded to her of literally being (no small distinction in its way) 'la piū futatrice nel mondo'. But, on the other hand, there were wonderful contradictions to this state of irregular eagerness. Maria (Mariana) Coanel, wife of Juan de la Cerda, not being able to bear the absence of her husband, preferred committing suicide to yielding to the otherwise irresistible temptations of the flesh--as she found them in their occasional assaults. The extraordinary unconsciousness and ignorance of some women is remarkable--however rare; especially in these, in some respects, scarcely modest, all-knowing times. Isabella Gonzaga, the wife of the Duke of Urbino, passed two years with her husband still remaining a virgin; and so great was her ignorance of the matrimonial usage that, until enlightened, she had imagined all married women lived as she lived; and she received the new knowledge in all simplicity.
Greek pictorial and statuary art was suffused with ideas of matchless and--of immortal beauty. The curves and undulation of form, the enchanting and enchanted art which peopled Grecian landscapes with shapes of ravishment and Greek temples with wonders: the eye that saw, the hand that traced,
the taste that toned, the delicacy that softened--all was exquisite, all was successful. The most intensely poetical and subduing (nay, the most religious, moving one to tears), and the most gloriously beautiful object in the whole universe, is the naked form of a symmetrical woman. This is difficult to understand--but it is true. The reason may be--sorrow that such a glorious object--Divinity's handiwork, as a 'present' to Man--should perish. Reflect upon matter immediately following.
No wonder that the ancients made a woman (thus) in object of idolatry. In the excess--in the super-excelling--of their refinement, other ideals were reached. Beauty became bifurcated (so to express), and irregular; heated as it were into a sinister--a devilish (forbidden) temptation, for passion of taste. Excess, or a deviating superflux or overdoing, of desire supervened. Longing became delirious: because 'Lucifer', or the 'Lost One'--'Unchastened Presumption'--had passed his lightning-like availing spear of apotheosizing, enchanted, tempting DEATH through the transmuted 'human female body'; advanced and addressed in its snaring graces to Hell’s perfectness.
The 'Sexes' were 'Two'. But 'Beauty' was 'One'. Beards have naught of beauty, apart from strength. Beards are barbarous--hence their name. Hair is of the beasts, 'excrementa'; 'tentacula'. The Greek artists exercised their talents in the production of a kind of beauty mixed of that of the 'Two Sexes', merging and blending the softness and enchanting shapeliness of the one with the aggressive picturesque roundness and boldness of the other. Each (separate) was the acmé of picturelike propriety and grace. But the third 'Thing' was a 'New Thing'--otherwise a miracle--a new sensation. Hence Paris, hence Adonis,
hence Ganymede, hence the loves of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, hence the 'feminine' Bacchus, hence Hylas--hence these deities, in tresses, of neither sex, and yet of both. Greek art in this respect presents a phenomenon. As a phenomenon we must recognize and regard it. The flower is supra-natural, treasonous, and abhorrent. It is 'a flower of Hell'. Nevertheless, it is a 'flower'. And thus the idea dominates the alternate 'shaded' and 'shining' halves of the whole world; of all art; of all philosophy; of all RELIGION. Philosophy must not ignore, or affect not to see, or decline hypocritically, or too nicely (not wisely), to consider these powerful--these ALL POWERFUL--factors. This whole round of subjects intimately refers to the Rosicrucians, and to their supposed 'unintelligible' beliefs. They are intelligible enough to the 'knowing ones'; but they are not to be divulged.
The most difficult problem of the Greek artists was to exercise their talent in the production of a kind of beauty mixed with that of the Two Sexes, and time has spared some of the masterpieces. Such is the figure known under the name of the Hermaphrodite (Hermes-Aprodite; Venus-Mercury). In the classic times, both amongst the Greeks and Romans, as also in Oriental countries, a cruel and flagitious violation of nature (not supposed-so; even accepted as sacred) produced this beauty by enforcing sacrifice of a peculiar kind on young male victims. In the case of true Hermaphroditism, that which art could only effect by dispossession, nature brings about by super-addition, or rather by concurrent transformation or mutual 'coincidence'. The idea even lies 'perdue' (like a silver snake) in the supposed origin of 'Mankind. The most extraordinary ideas as to the origin of the human race have been entertained by speculative
thinkers, and by theologians. The celebrated William Law believed that the First Human Being was a creature combining the characteristics of both sexes in his own individual person. 'God created man in His own Image. In the Image of God created He him.' Some controversionists consider that there is. a LONG space due (but not allowed) between the foregoing and the succeeding: 'Male and Female created He THEM'.
'Increase and Multiply, and replenish the earth.' This command was given on the Sixth Day. Eve was not created until the Seventh Day. Hence Eve must have been born of Adam--or separated from him 'Ejus autem imago ea est quæ exhibetur, ore videlicet excellentissimo, ut sunt Arnobii verba, et specie inter virginem et puerum eximia. Catullus hoc idem voluit. Carm. 64.
Marcianus Capella, Lib. i.:
Caput autem tectum mithra Phrygem indicat.'
Laurentii Pignorii Patavini Magnæ Deum Matris Idææ et Attidis initia. Amstelodami Andreæ Frisii. MDCLXIX.
Admitting, moreover, that the term 'Day'--as used in Genesis--is employed to express an indefinite period of time, in order to form Woman, God deprived Adam of his androgyne character, and reduced him to a Being having one sex only. And here steps in a fanciful idea of some speculative thinkers; which (however extravagant) is very poetical and beautiful. They ask in specifying the question--in serious truth
a not-altogether improbable conjecture--whether the irresistible inclination and the otherwise mysterious, unaccountable drawing-together and sympathy of two persons who meet for the first time and find themselves mutually charmed (they cannot tell how or why); or who even 'hear' or 'read' of each other; whether even the continual natural inclination which impels 'man to woman' and 'woman to man' be not the spirit-reflex and the atoning 'Penance' (there is a great amount of sadness which mingles in the delight of these feelings) of the 'Original Grand Human Division'. And that this extra-natural (and yet natural) inclination which draws One Sex towards the Other be not the movements of Fate (lying down deep-buried in the necessities of things); and that the whole is the active tendency and forced (however latent, sometimes) searching through the world for the 'Missed' and 'Lost Half' (whether feminine, whether masculine), to once more embrace and supernaturally in rapture in the recognition to become ONE again? Hence, perhaps (also), that inconstancy and feebleness of decision and 'puzzled distress' ('seeing through the glass darkly') so aboundingly manifest in human nature, becoming dramatic in a thousand ways in the confusions of history--a stupendous scheme of contradictions itself.
May such affinities--and such unsuspected enchantment in this hard, practical, disbelieving world--lie mysteriously deep as the eternal secret of original human fellowship and society? And may even the amusement and the wonder of uninterested spectators and standers-by arise only from their having the unimagined fact (to them) of dream and magic being presented, while this unaccountable show is the secret foundation (as dream started at the beginning of time) of all the sentimental phenomena of the
world? In all the infinite gradations of love, and passion, and sympathy (and in the experience of their opposites), we may be witnessing the baffled attempts of the whole round of human-nature--of the succession of the generations in the centuries--life being hopelessly too short, and circumstances controlling everything; we may be seeing the efforts of the 'Halves' to recover 'Each Other'. The masculine half of mankind wandering unconsciously to find its fellow-feminine, and the female half of the human family urging (from its nature) with the still more lively and more sensitive, and more acutely disappointed at repeated failure--quest. Each sex in its half-individuality, and prosecuting through time its melancholy 'penance', straining blindly towards that 'Shadow', the complement and double of 'Itself'. Vain indeed in the nature of things must be that human search to find, in this world, the supernaturally divorced 'Half'. For that other 'Half-Self' originated in 'another world', and thence started on a 'Dream-Pilgrimage' as a Shadow, or Spirit, recognizable only through the imagination (a mischievous, deluding faculty) of a real person, to recover its other original Half in 'This World'. We doubt, indeed, whether in this world (and were the original duality of persons true) that in this state of flesh the discovery would be welcome, even were discovery and recovery possible. Such is the preordainment of fate (which has made circumstances), that the halves of this first-junction may wander all the world over and exhaust the generations, and all time, in the search, and yet never meet; save at that 'Grand Assize' or General Resurrection where impend the New Heaven and the New Earth; and at which Final Consummation the two parts of the same Unit might be united never to be sundered more--complete and
summed as. the 'One Being'--sexless in the bosom of DIVINITY; where there is 'neither marriage, nor giving in marriage'.
But the reader will find, in the latter part of the book, plausible theories--nay, cogent arguments, scarcely to be refuted--not only as to the possible (and likely) incorporation of spirits; but as to the difference of sexes among them, with natural incidents, and apparently contradictory results from their semi-spiritual, semi-bodily Rosicrucian conditions.
The idea that Adam and Eve were both originally Hermaphrodites was revived in the thirteenth century by Amaury de Chartres. He held--among other fanciful notions--that at the end of the world--both sexes should be re-united in the same person.
Some learned Rabbis asserted that Adam was created double; that is, with two bodies, one male and the other female, joined together by the shoulders; their heads (like those of Janus) looking in opposite directions. And that, when God created Eve, He only divided such body in Two. Others maintained that Adam and Eve were each of them, separately, an Hermaphrodite. Other Jewish authorities, among whom are Samuel Manasseh and Ben-Israel, are of opinion that our Great Progenitor was created with Two Bodies, and that 'HE' separated them afterwards during Adam's sleep; an opinion founded by these writers upon the second chapter of Genesis, verse 21: 'the literal translation of the Hebrew being: 'He (God) separated the Woman from his side, and substituted Flesh in her place.' This idea resembles that of Plato. Origen, St. Chrysostom, and St. Thomas believed that the Woman was not created till the Seventh Day. But the most generally received opinion is, that Adam and Eve were created on the Sixth. These particular notions--extravagant as they must be
admitted to be--as to the original 'single-dual, dual-single' characteristics of Adam and Eve are eminently Platonic--nay, cabalistic.
Plato proceeds to account for the love which some men have for some women, and vice versa. 'The males', he says, 'which are halves of an Androgyne, are much given to women; and the women, which are the halves of an Androgyne, are passionately fond of men. As for the women' (a not uncommon Case) 'who indulge an inclination for their own sex, they are the halves of the Androgyne females who were doubled, and the men who exhibit a liking for other men are the halves of the males who were also doubled. In the beginning there were three kinds of Human Beings, not only the Two which still exist (namely, the Male and the Female)--but a Third, which was composed of the Two First.' Of this last sex--or kind--nothing remains but the tradition, and the name. 'The Androgynes, for so they were called, had not only both the male and female faces, but also possessed the sexual distinctions of both. Of these creatures, likewise, nothing now exists but the name, which survives as a stigma, and which is considered infamous.' Nature had made this, the fact; as 'out of' nature. The reason assigned for the different shape of these three kinds was that 'the males were formed by the Sun; the females by the Earth; and the mixed race of Androgynes by the Moon:--which partakes both of the Sun and the Earth.'
Ecclesiastical writers declare that such an Eunuch was the Holy Evangelist, St. John, whom Jesus loved beyond all His other disciples, who lay upon Jesus’ bosom; who, while Peter tardily advanced, flew, borne on the wings of virginity, to the LORD; and penetrating into the secrets of the Divine Nativity, was emboldened to declare what preceding ages had
been ignorant of. 'In the Beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' Reynardi Opera, vol. viii. p. 252.
If the disciples of the doctrine of 'evolution' or 'selection of the fittest' are right--if your Darwins, your Huxleys, your Herbert Spencers, your Leweses, your dense unimaginative men (only specious philosophers), are correct in their deductions of correlation--'bowing-out God' 1 as it were (in sublimity of fools’ not 'mad' presumption), 'exterior of His own Creation'--then reverence, and devotion, and martyrdom, and the sacredness, and the magic of virginity, must be the merest ludicrous superstition and figment. Is MAN alone in his world? Are there OTHERS in it with him? The ancients universally held virginity as a real magic, transcendental, mysterious something, which exercised power supernaturally both through Heaven and through Earth. It was an unnatural-natural outspring set apart and sacred 'of the Gods'. None but the barbarous touch, the brutal touch, could profane it. It worked miracles.
[paragraph continues] For maidhood and virginity is a phenomenon independent of Creation, and bears through the worlds visible and invisible--the worlds immortal--the impress and seal upon its forehead of GOD’S REST, and 'Refusal', not of His ACTIVITY and 'Consent'. Hence its sacredness in all religions and under all beliefs. 'Voilà pourquoi, pendant les persécutions, il y eut tant de vierges chrétiennes outragées par leurs bourreaux, qui ne faisaient qu’appliquer l’antique loi
romaine, en vertu de la quelle une vierge ne pouvait pas être mise à mort.'--L’Antiquité la plus reculée jusqu’à nos jours, par Pierre Dufour, vol. 3, chap. i. p. 29. Bruxelles, J. Rosez, 1861. The reason for this lies very deep, and is very refined and very true. It will be seen, on adequate reflection, that the heathen executioners, in exercising their supposed human right of death-giving in law, did not dare touch the 'property of the Gods' in death, owing to their superstition; and they therefore made their victims 'things' in 'getting godhood' (so to speak) 'out of them' before the death-penalty. This was the reason why, in the old English executioners’ practice, women were always burnt or strangled at the stake, but not hanged vulgarly like men or dogs. It was a tribute to the supposed sacredness of women's characteristics, and from the fact of her (phenomenal) character. 'Les Juges Païens qui prenaient un odieux plaisir à les frapper dans ce qu’elles avaient de plus cher. Mais leur virginité était un sacrifice qu’elles offraient chastement à Dieu en échange de la couronne du martyre. "Une vierge", disait Saint-Ambroise, "peut être prostituée et non souillée." "Les vierges", dit Saint-Cyprien, "sont comme les fleurs du Jardin de Ciel".' Pierre Dufour. 'Le viol des vierges chrétiennes n’était donc dans l’origine qu’un préliminaire de la peine capitale, conformément à l’usage de la penalité romaine. Vitiatæ prius a carnifice dein strangulatæ.' Suetonius, dans la vie de Tibère: Pierre Dufour. 'L’Histoire de Prostitution'.
'Because Virgins by a received custom were not to be strangled, he caused the Hangman first to deflower a Virgin, and then to strangle her'. Tacitus. Suetonius. Edward Leigh's Analecta de Primis Cæsaribus. And when forced, the author might have added, became still more glorious flowers (or lights) of Paradise,
[paragraph continues] We live, in nature, in contradiction--in 'impossibilities' that make 'possibilities'. Our 'forms' ignore 'ourselves'. Maidhood is the possibility of bearing joy beyond compare (the human-natural joys locked therein)--the first, last, and best of this world’s pleasures--through the world; and yet withstanding the use of it. Refraining in the carrying the precious casket from 'one world' (through the world for which it is intended 'as the temptation') into 'another world'. It is the successful resistance and baffling of the Devil, who lures in this mysterious respect, with his most exquisite inducement. Hence the reason of our King Edward the Confessor being marked as the 'Saint; for he 'forbore his wife Edith'. This is the raison d'être of all triumph of the kind: Virginity in itself (strangely as it may sound for mankind), though without its infraction heaven could not be--for it is our senses that make heaven--is a Key of Heaven. Hence the inherent sacredness of the--human--'Act' all the world over; and highest so in the religions of the most civilized peoples, those which have risen to the highest refinement. Mary Magdalen was the first at the tomb of the Redeemer, and was the first to whom our Lord showed Himself. It was through a WOMAN that our race was rendered possible. This must never be forgotten.
It is not difficult to discover how inveterate the belief of their system, which seems naturally to account for everything, has become to the Materialists; who (to use a wild figure) have identified the time that has got into the watch with the reason that the watch goes. Their whole work is the falling-in-love-with and believing their own work. It would be cruel to make these men believe. It would be the dispossession of themselves, out of themselves. Their scope, and range, and judgment are an impenetrable world’s
presumption; working only from the centre outwards--as from 'particulars' to 'generals'--the false way. These accepted reasonable reasoners do not see that if God’s reasons had been man’s reasons man would never have been; because MAN has no place in reason--he is not reasonable. It is the self-assertion and the self-presumption that is at fault--mere miserable self-conceit produces these men:--volubility--and reading--provide them with a cloud of words wherewith they may (and do) confuse. They have dared in their lofty (toppling) philosophical climbing--like the men of Babel--or 'Babble', as the tongues afterwards became--forcing into their Heights of Metaphysics (as it were) to look down upon God--spying Him at His work! Impious--mad stupidity;--trusting brains, in which the Devil (or Denier) forges lies--forgetting that Darkness is only the reversed side of Light, as light is only the presented side of Darkness--and that Both are the Same. We should know no light without darkness, which shows us the light; just in the same way as we see the wrong side of the light in seeing the darkness when the welcome light appears--so to speak.
These men want contradiction. They are ruined in their own self-esteem. They are floated upward in the pride of knowledge--with wings of wax. They grape in, the débris of nature. Their knowledge is scientific knowledge. Knowledge as an acquisition to enlighten (its only use) is as ashes with the fire all out of it--fire which is faith. These philosophers are converted into the vehicle of the comprehension of their own theories: and there they rest, absorbed and occupied in these alone. Self-centred, complete, satisfied, distrustless, they fortify themselves in their triumph, and become incompetent to see aught that shall challenge their own fixed ideas. In regard to
these merely scientific people, an apt and a forcible remark has been made: 'Natural selection can only preserve such slight variations as are immediately useful. It cannot provide a savage with brain suited to the remote needs of his civilized descendants some thousands of years later.' All is progressive, and all is development, with these philosophers. They have no idea of cataclysm. When the whole world is the offspring--when the mountains, with the mutilated and the riven faces which they present to us, are the children--thunderstricken--of the INTELLIGENT (sudden to the world sometimes, snapping 'gradations' and 'evolutions' with miracle), MASTER, GUIDE and GOD of ALL! Thinkest thou that those skies have forgotten to be in earnest, because thou goest mouthing through the world like an ape?' Be what you wish to be then, and go down into the dust! Very probably your fate it may prove to be; though it may be the lot of some others to escape. By humbleness--by FAITH!
Revelation and supernatural disclosure, quite different to progress and circumstantial natural advance--as the 'nature of nature'--are to be inferred from the apparition of certain deplorable maladies--diseases which puzzle and bewilder as to their true character; which lead us astray, sometimes, as to their likeliest best treatment. The ideas of the ROSICRUCIANS as to the real (hidden and unsuspected) origin of these diseases, which seem--large as is the catalogue of maladies--so contrary to all the physiological, natural groundwork upon which (so to say) man’s health and healthy exercise of his nature expand and expound, are speculative and recherché in the extreme. Such querists ask in vain where such diseases--so momentous, so super-horrid--could have first sprung. Philosophers of this class affirm that there is nothing of
these in the true character of man. That these diseases stand aloof, and are of themselves. That they bear in themselves proofs of the indignation (intelligent) exterior to man; to some violent invasion and inversion--to some inappeasable outrage of God’s law. Flesh and blood has become an accursed--a super-accursed weed, from the devils having gained access to it. Man’s unholy passions have hurried him into an abyss of physical perdition, wherein he has obliterated his 'image' and gifts, and done things (worse than the beasts) beyond the laws of his impress; wide already as the area of the exercise of those laws was, even for evil. The penalty has pursued the original guilt through the generations and still survives; because Man has dared to intrude into the 'DISORDERS OF DARKNESS', and brought back out of ORCUS and made physical guilt and horror which were the property of the devils and within the compass of their range, alone, of accursed activity, but which were not for him--were not naturally for him. Hence the marks and tokens of this supernatural 'cancer', some of the imported effects--otherwise lying out of his reach as being far above what his limited nature could endure without utter consumption of itself--of the 'FIRST FALL'. Conquest is wide-spread just according to the weakness and incidence of the subjected. Fire finds its easy prey in dry leaves and in light combustible. These 'immortal-mortal' diseases spread and ramified, and spread and ramify (though with diminution now), with an extension, and with a vigour, just in the proportion of the necessitated surrender arising from the incompetency and inability to resist; these hitherto supersensual and supernatural terrors had found an access into this real world of BODY, and there the disaster revelled in its appropriate forms in its newly-found dominion. 'The imagination of man.
is evil continually.' There are blots and imperfections which have fastened upon Man’s very mortal composition or body. His nature is struggling to free itself of the contagion. But the poison is not poison of this world. The generations suffer in all the crowd forward--in all their procession and replication for the sin--for the unbelievable sin--for the wanton, out-of-the-way wickedness of predecessors. This is the theory as to the origin of certain diseases, which are considered 'NOT HUMAN'; but which have been conveyed-to, and are inherited by, those who have no affinity with these inflictions by their nature or by the intentions of the 'EXTERIOR PROVIDENCE'. Man has brought all this upon himself, as farther fruits and newer penalties arising from the First Great Lapse, and in farther proof, in still more degrading and still more disfiguring decadence, of the imbibing of the first sweet poison--so deliciously and yet so treacherously (lecherously) brewed by the First Great Tempter:--Nameless--Anonymous--with 'Its' Janus Mask, and offering to that 'Phenomenon', man, under 'Its' many 'Names'. Man is another ruin, perhaps, in a series of several previous ruins, of which mortality has lost all trace.
The terms superstition and science are counter-changed. In reality science may be the superstition, and superstition the truth (otherwise the 'science', assumed as truth). Scientific men are the most superstitious of any class, for they have raised an idol which they call science, and therefore truth (why, therefore, forsooth?); and they have fallen down and worshipped Science (their own ignorance) as God. They have taken themselves out of themselves, and worshipped 'themselves'--otherwise their heads, instead of their hearts; their reason (their head), which is no reason (no head) really, instead of their hearts, or
their emotions and instincts; which are true, and which are infallible--because they contradict the apparent and the reasonable, which is never true. Hence we cannot know God through God, or rather through the Intellect; but we must know God through the 'Saviour', or through the heart or affections; which entity, or sum of heart and affections, is Second God, or Man 'in the image', etc. The Third 'Person' of the Trinity is the Holy Ghost, or 'Recognition' in which 'Both' are--'Seen in the Spirit', wherein, and absorbing the 'Two Others', is interfluent, miraculous, instant union and 'ASSUMPTION' of God and Means, in 'Belief'. This is the groundwork of all religious systems. God’s anger (the 'denunciation' or the 'shaking-off' by the All-Pure and the All-Powerful) is shown in those immortal (become fleshly), or 'Spirit-Cancers' (so to speak), imported, as adaptations to the nature of physical man, into body-corporate (that is, intelligible): the supernatural become natural.
'Enfin, un des plus grands hommes qui aient porté le flambeau dans les tenèbres de l’art médical: Grand Chirurgie (liv. i. ch. 7) "La vérole", dit-il avec cette conviction que la génie peut seul donner, "a pris son origine dans le commerce impur d’un Français lépreux avec une courtisane qui avait des bubons vénériens, laquelle infecta ensuite tous ceux qui eurent affaire à elle. C’est ainsi", continue cet habile et audacieux observateur, "c’est ainsi que la vérole, provenue de la lépre et des bubons vénériens, à peu près comme la race des mulets est sortie de l’accouplement d’un cheval et d’une ànesse, se répandit par contagion dans tout l’univers." Paracelse considérait, donc, le vérole de 1494 comme "un genre nouveau dans l’antique famille des maladies vénériennes."' Pierre Dufour, tome quatrième, p. 292.
'Un saint laïque', dit Jean Baptiste van Helmont dans son Tumulus Pestis, 'tâchant de diviner pourquoi la vérole avait paru au siècle passé et non auparavant, fut ravi en esprit et eut une vision d’une jument rongée. du farcin, d’où il soupçonna qu’au siége de Naples, où cette maladie parut pour la première fois, quelque homme avait eu un commerce abominable avec une bête de cette espèce attaquée du même mal, et qu’ensuite, par un effet
de la justice divine, il avait malheureusement infecté le genre humain.' Pierre Dufour, tome quatriéme, chap. xx. p. 292.
'Manardi, Mathiole, Brassavola, et Paracelse disent que l’infection vénérienne est née de la lèpre et de la prostitution.' Pierre Dufour, tome quatrième, p. 297 (8vo edition).
Nothing can exceed the importance of the foregoing observations in regard to the welfare (bodily and spiritually) of Man; especially in these questioning, inquisitive modern times, when everything is brought to the front, and remorselessly (although often foolishly, because conceitedly) canvassed. Such names as the great (much-libelled) Paracelsus, the prince of chemists and physiologists, and that of Van Helmont, the most subtle and profound of magnetists and psychologists, secure attention among the best-informed, and carry their own consummate guarantee--the most convincingly to the adepts. MEN of REFLECTION are needed to comprehend these theories and speculations, and to weigh this evidence.
360:1 And thereout.
370:1 'Bowing-out', or 'complimenting-out'; to express in a strong figure--but not inapt.