(1) Since men live but for a very short period, if their life is compared with the whole of time, they will make a most beautiful journey as it were, if they pass through life with tranquillity. This however they will possess in the most eminent degree, if they accurately and scientifically know themselves, viz. if they know that they are mortal and of a fleshly nature, and that they have a body which is corruptible and can be easily injured, and which is exposed to every thing most grievous and severe, even to their latest breath. And in the first place, let us direct our attention to those things which happen to the body; and these are pleurisy, inflammation of the lungs, phrensy, gout, stranguary, dysentery, lethargy, epilepsy, putrid ulcers, and ten thousand other diseases.

But the diseases which happen to the soul are much greater and more dire than these. For all the iniquitous, evil, illegal, and impious conduct in the life of man, originates from the passions of the soul. For through preternatural immoderate desires many have become subject to unrestrained impulses, and have not refrained from the most unholy pleasures, arising from being connected with daughters or even mothers. Many also have been induced to destroy their fathers, and their own offspring. But what occasion is there to be prolix in narrating externally impending evils, such as excessive rain, drought, violent heat and cold; so that frequently from the anomalous state of the air, pestilence and famine are produced, and all-various calamities, and whole cities become desolate?

Since therefore many such-like calamities are impendent, we should neither be elevated by the possession of corporeal goods, which may rapidly be consumed by the incursions of a small fever, nor with what are conceived to be prosperous external circumstances, which frequently in their own nature perish more rapidly than they accede. For all these are uncertain and unstable, and are found to have their existence in many and various mutations; and no one of them is permanent, or immutable, or stable, or indivisible. Hence well considering these things, and also being persuaded, that if what is present and is imparted to us, is able to remain for the smallest portion of time, it is as much as we ought to expect; we shall then live in tranquillity and with hilarity, generously bearing whatever may befal us.

(21) In this chapter we have attempted, in some degree, to expound the greatness of man's soul. He who neglects it and suffers its capacities to rust or to degenerate must necessarily be the loser in this world and the next. The true greatness of man lies in his capacity for eternal progress, otherwise in this temporal sphere he is the weakest of all things, being subject to hunger, thirst, heat, cold, and sorrow. Those things he takes most delight in are often the most injurious to him, and those things which benefit him are not to be obtained without toil and trouble. As to his intellect, a slight disarrangement of matter in his brain is sufficient to destroy or madden him; as to his power, the sting of a wasp is sufficient to rob him of ease and sleep; as to his temper, he is upset by the loss of a sixpence; as to his beauty, he is little more than nauseous matter covered with a fair skin. Without frequent washing he becomes utterly repulsive and disgraceful.

(8) But that thou may understand what manner of substance and condition all these things and births or genitures have, I will describe all in order one after another, that thou may rightly understand the ground of this Mystery.

(1) It is, necessary, however, to discuss these things particularly, and to show how they subsist, and what reason they possess. It is requisite, therefore, to understand that the universe is one animal; and that the parts in it are, indeed, separated by places, but through the possession of one nature hasten to each other. The whole collective power, however, and the cause of mixture, spontaneously draws the parts to a mingling with each other. But it is also possible for this spontaneous attraction to be excited and extended by art more than is fit. The cause itself, therefore, of this mixture extending from itself to the whole world, is good, and the source of plenitude; has the power of harmonically procuring communion, consent, and symmetry; and inserts, by union, the indissoluble principle of love, which principle retains and preserves both things that are in existence, and such as are becoming to be. But in the parts, through their separation from each other and from wholes, and because, from their own proper nature, they are imperfect, indigent, and imbecile, their mutual connection is accompanied with passion; by which, in most of them, desire and a connascent appetite are inherent.

(5) But what of sorrows, illnesses and all else that inhibit the native activity?

What of the suspension of consciousness which drugs or disease may bring about? Could either welfare or happiness be present under such conditions? And this is to say nothing of misery and disgrace, which will certainly be urged against us, with undoubtedly also those never-failing "Miseries of Priam."

"The Sage," we shall be told, "may bear such afflictions and even take them lightly but they could never be his choice, and the happy life must be one that would be chosen. The Sage, that is, cannot be thought of as simply a sage soul, no count being taken of the bodily-principle in the total of the being: he will, no doubt, take all bravely... until the body's appeals come up before him, and longings and loathings penetrate through the body to the inner man. And since pleasure must be counted in towards the happy life, how can one that, thus, knows the misery of ill-fortune or pain be happy, however sage he be? Such a state, of bliss self-contained, is for the Gods; men, because of the less noble part subjoined in them, must needs seek happiness throughout all their being and not merely in some one part; if the one constituent be troubled, the other, answering to its associate's distress, must perforce suffer hindrance in its own activity. There is nothing but to cut away the body or the body's sensitive life and so secure that self-contained unity essential to happiness."

(26) The sixth cause of disease was a misuse of faculty, organ, or function, such as overstraining a member or overtaxing the nerves. The seventh cause was the presence in the system of foreign substances, impurities, or obstructions. Under this heading must be considered diet, air, sunlight, and the presence of foreign bodies. This list does not include accidental injuries; such do not belong under the heading of disease. Frequently they are methods by which the Law of Karma expresses itself.

(20) As with bodily pain and pleasure so with the bodily desires; their origin, also, must be attributed to what thus stands midway, to that Nature we described as the corporeal.

Body undetermined cannot be imagined to give rise to appetite and purpose, nor can pure soul be occupied about sweet and bitter: all this must belong to what is specifically body but chooses to be something else as well, and so has acquired a restless movement unknown to the soul and by that acquisition is forced to aim at a variety of objects, to seek, as its changing states demand, sweet or bitter, water or warmth, with none of which it could have any concern if it remained untouched by life.

In the case of pleasure and pain we showed how upon distress follows the knowledge of it, and that the soul, seeking to alienate what is causing the condition, inspires a withdrawal which the member primarily affected has itself indicated, in its own mode, by its contraction. Similarly in the case of desire: there is the knowledge in the sensation and in the next lower phase, that described as the "Nature" which carries the imprint of the soul to the body; that Nature knows the fully formed desire which is the culmination of the less formed desire in body; sensation knows the image thence imprinted upon the Nature; and from the moment of the sensation the soul, which alone is competent, acts upon it, sometimes procuring, sometimes on the contrary resisting, taking control and paying heed neither to that which originated the desire nor to that which subsequently entertained it.

But why, thus, two phases of desire; why should not the body as a determined entity be the sole desirer?

Because there are two distinct things, this Nature and the body, which, through it, becomes a living being: the Nature precedes the determined body which is its creation, made and shaped by it; it cannot originate the desires; they must belong to the living body meeting the experiences of this life and seeking in its distress to alter its state, to substitute pleasure for pain, sufficiency for want: this Nature must be like a mother reading the wishes of a suffering child, and seeking to set it right and to bring it back to herself; in her search for the remedy she attaches herself by that very concern to the sufferer's desire and makes the child's experience her own.

In sum, the living body may be said to desire of its own motion in a fore-desiring with, perhaps, purpose as well; Nature desires for, and because of, that living body; granting or withholding belongs to another again, the higher soul.

(5) But when, on the first day, the light somewhat brake forth again, through the Word or Heart of God in the root of the nature of the body of this world, as a choosing or appropriating of the day, or as a beginning of the mobility of life, then the severe and astringent birth or geniture again obtained a glimpse or rising up of the life in the birth or geniture.

(17) But how comes it that the intuitions and the Reason-Principles of the soul are not in the same timeless fashion within ourselves, but that here the later of order is converted into a later of time- bringing in all these doubts?

Is it because in us the governing and the answering principles are many and there is no sovereign unity?

That condition; and, further, the fact that our mental acts fall into a series according to the succession of our needs, being not self-determined but guided by the variations of the external: thus the will changes to meet every incident as each fresh need arises and as the external impinges in its successive things and events.

A variety of governing principles must mean variety in the images formed upon the representative faculty, images not issuing from one internal centre, but, by difference of origin and of acting- point, strange to each other, and so bringing compulsion to bear upon the movements and efficiencies of the self.

When the desiring faculty is stirred, there is a presentment of the object- a sort of sensation, in announcement and in picture, of the experience- calling us to follow and to attain: the personality, whether it resists or follows and procures, is necessarily thrown out of equilibrium. The same disturbance is caused by passion urging revenge and by the needs of the body; every other sensation or experience effects its own change upon our mental attitude; then there is the ignorance of what is good and the indecision of a soul thus pulled in every direction; and, again, the interaction of all these perplexities gives rise to yet others.

But do variations of judgement affect that very highest in us?

No: the doubt and the change of standard are of the Conjoint ; still, the right reason of that highest is weaker by being given over to inhabit this mingled mass: not that it sinks in its own nature: it is much as amid the tumult of a public meeting the best adviser speaks but fails to dominate; assent goes to the roughest of the brawlers and roarers, while the man of good counsel sits silent, ineffectual, overwhelmed by the uproar of his inferiors.

The lowest human type exhibits the baser nature; the man is a compost calling to mind inferior political organization: in the mid-type we have a citizenship in which some better section sways a demotic constitution not out of control: in the superior type the life is aristocratic; it is the career of one emancipated from what is a base in humanity and tractable to the better; in the finest type, where the man has brought himself to detachment, the ruler is one only, and from this master principle order is imposed upon the rest, so that we may think of a municipality in two sections, the superior city and, kept in hand by it, the city of the lower elements.

(1) That which follows in the next place, descends from a divine alienation of mind to an ecstasy of the reasoning power which leads it to a worse condition, and absurdly says, “ that the cause of divination is the mania which happens in diseases .” For, as we may conjecture, it assimilates enthusiasm to the redundancy of the black bile, to the aberrations of intoxication, and to the fury which happens from mad dogs. It is necessary, therefore, from the beginning, to divide ecstasy into two species, one of which leads to a worse condition of being, and fills us with stupidity and folly; but the other imparts goods which are more honourable than human temperance. One species also deviates to a disorderly, confused, and material motion; but the other gives itself to the cause which rules over the orderly distribution of things in the world. And the one, indeed, as being deprived of knowledge, wanders from wisdom; but the other conjoins with natures that transcend all our wisdom. The one, likewise, is unstable, but the other is immutable. The one is preternatural, but the other is above nature. The one draws down the soul, but the other elevates it. And the one entirely separates us from a divine allotment, but the other connects us with it.

(14) These bear fruits of rejoicing, or of affliction, as they are sprung from holy or unholy works.

(38) Whatever springs automatically from the All out of that distinctive life of its own, and, in addition to that self-moving activity, whatever is due to some specific agency- for example, to prayers, simple or taking the form of magic incantations- this entire range of production is to be referred, not to each such single cause, but to the nature of the thing produced .

All that forwards life or some other useful purpose is to be ascribed to the transmission characteristic of the All; it is something flowing from the major of an integral to its minor. Where we think we see the transmission of some force unfavourable to the production of living beings, the flaw must be found in the inability of the subject to take in what would serve it: for what happens does not happen upon a void; there is always specific form and quality; anything that could be affected must have an underlying nature definite and characterized. The inevitable blendings, further, have their constructive effect, every element adding something contributory to the life. Then again some influence may come into play at the time when the forces of a beneficent nature are not acting: the co-ordination of the entire system of things does not always allow to each several entity everything that it needs: and further we ourselves add a great deal to what is transmitted to us.

None the less all entwines into a unity: and there is something wonderful in the agreement holding among these various things of varied source, even of sources frankly opposite; the secret lies in a variety within a unity. When by the standard of the better kind among things of process anything falls short- the reluctance of its material substratum having prevented its perfect shaping under idea- it may be thought of as being deficient in that noble element whose absence brings to shame: the thing is a blend, something due to the high beings, an alloy from the underlying nature, something added by the self.

Because all is ever being knit, all brought to culmination in unity, therefore all events are indicated; but this does not make virtue a matter of compulsion; its spontaneity is equally inwoven into the ordered system by the general law that the things of this sphere are pendant from the higher, that the content of our universe lies in the hands of the diviner beings in whom our world is participant.

(94) And then also the sweet quality presseth forth in little leaves, like a woman who is in travail and bringing forth, but the little leaves or blossoms have no more its colour and form, but the form of all the qualities; for now the sweet quality must bring forth the children of the other qualities.

(15) To him who possesses discernment, all personal life is misery, because it ever waxes and wanes, is ever afflicted with restlessness, makes ever new dynamic impresses in the mind; and because all its activities war with each other.

(4) Another reason, also, of these things may be assigned. The powers of the human passions that are in us, when they are entirely restrained, become more vehement; but when they are called forth into energy, gradually and commensurately, they rejoice in being moderately gratified, are satisfied; and from hence, becoming purified, they are rendered tractable, and are vanquished without violence. On this account, in comedy and tragedy, by surveying the passions of others, we stop our own passions, cause them to be more moderate, and are purified from them. In sacred ceremonies, likewise, by certain spectacles and auditions of things base, we become liberated from the injury which happens from the works effected by them. Things of this kind, therefore, are introduced for the sake of our soul, and of the diminution of the evils which adhere to it through generation, and of a solution and liberation from its bonds. On this account, also, they are very properly called by Heraclitus remedies , as healing things of a dreadful nature, and saving souls from the calamities with which the realms of generation are replete.

(30) But the Sweetness is like Oil or Fire, wherein the Flash continually kindles itself, so that it shines: But the Oil being sweet, and mingled with the Matrix of the Water, therefore the shining Light is steady, [constant and fixed,] and sweet: But seeing it cannot, in the Nature of the Water, continue to be an Oil only (because of the Infection of the Water) therefore it becomes thick; and the [Nature or] Kind of the Fire colours it red; and this is the Blood and the Tincture in a Creature, wherein the noble Life stands. Of the Death and of the Dying. The Gate of Affliction and of Misery.

(25) The fourth cause of disease was what the Orientals called Karma, that is, the Law of Compensation, which demanded that the individual pay in full for the indiscretions and delinquencies of the past. A physician had to be very careful how he interfered with the workings of this law, lest he thwart the plan of Eternal justice. The fifth cause was the motion and aspects of the heavenly bodies. The stars did not compel the sickness but rather impelled it. The Hermetists taught that a strong and wise man ruled his stars, but that a negative, weak person was ruled by them. These five causes of disease are all superphysical in nature. They must be estimated by inductive and deductive reasoning and a careful consideration of the life and temperament of the patient.

(7) Now the rational soul in man abounds in marvels, both of knowledge and power. By means of it he masters arts and sciences, can pass in a flash from earth to heaven and back again, can map out the skies and measure the distances between the stars. By it also he can draw the fish from the sea and the birds from the air, and can subdue to his service animals like the elephant, the camel, and the horse. His five senses are like five doors opening on the external world; but, more wonderful than this, his heart has a window which opens on the unseen world of spirits. In the state of sleep, when the avenues of the senses are closed, this window is opened and man receives impressions from the unseen world and sometimes fore-shadowings of the future. His heart is then like a mirror which reflects what is pictured in the Tablet of Fate. But, even in sleep, thoughts of worldly things dull this mirror, so that the impression it receives are not clear. After death, however, such thoughts vanish and things are seen in their naked reality, and the saying

(2) Art therefore, perceiving this innate desire thus implanted by nature, and distributed about it (art itself also being multiformly distributed about nature), variously attracts and derives it as through a channel. Hence it transfers that which in itself is orderly and arranged into the privation of order, and fills that which is beautiful and commensurate with deformity. But the venerable end in each particular thing, which is connascent with union, it transfers to another indecorous plenitude, which is an assemblage of different things according to a common passion. It likewise imparts a matter from itself, which is unadapted to the whole generation of what is beautiful, either because it does not entirely receive it, or because it transfers it to other things. It also mingles many different physical powers, which it manages as it pleases for the purposes of generation. Hence we have universally shown, that the apparatus of a venereal connexion of this kind proceeds from a certain human art, and not from a certain dæmoniacal or divine necessity.

(25) "These experiences, when they have come to one, have left him in a new state of mind, and he has never been the same man afterward. Although the keenness of the recollection has worn off, there remains a certain memory which long afterward proves a source of comfort and strength to him, especially when he feels faint of faith and is shaken like a reed by the winds of conflicting opinions and speculations. The memory of such an experience is a source of renewed strength—a haven of refuge to which the weary soul flies for shelter from the outside world which understands it not. From the writings of the ancient philosophers of all races, from the songs of the great poets of all peoples, from the preachings of the prophets of all religions and times we can gather traces of this illumination which has come to them—this unfoldment of spiritual consciousness. One tells the story in one way, the other in other terms, but all tell practically the same essential story. All who have recognized this illumination, even in a faint degree, recognize the like experience in the tale, song, or preaching of another, though centuries may roll between them. It is the song of the Soul, which when once heard is never forgotten. Though it be sounded by the crude instruments of the semi-barbarous races, or the finished instruments of the talented musician of today, its strains are plainly recognized. From Old Egypt comes the song—from India of all ages—from Ancient Greece and Rome—from the early Christian saint—from the Quaker Friend—from the Catholic monasteries —from the Mohammedan Mosque—from the Chinese Philosopher—from the legends of the American Indian hero-prophet—it is always the same strain, and it is swelling louder and louder, as many more are taking it up and adding their voices or the sounds of their instruments to the grand chorus." The student must remember that in the experiences noted above, the individual simply has flashes, or period of dawning consciousness on this Sixth Plane of Consciousness, and is not to be regarded as having entered fully and completely into its manifestations, much less as having evolved into a state in which he functions normally and habitually on this high plane. There are beings—once men—who have evolved into the higher state in which they function normally and habitually on this plane of conscious being; but these individuals are no more than mere men, and have earned the right to be called "Demi-Gods." But, even as they once were men, so all men become as they now are by the unfoldment of this higher region of Self. These flashes of consciousness from this high plane are prophetic signs and messages indicating the awakening of the higher faculties, and giving assurance of further growth and unfoldment.