castaneda pauwells bergier papus rampa et moi *D'une critique de Castaneda à une liberté de penser!*

Je cite :
http://magick-instinct.blogspot.com/2009/11/lethnologie-fiction-de-castaneda.html

« Commençons par le début. Le 27 juin 1968, les Presses de l'Université
de Californie publient /The Teachings of Don Juan/. Traduit en français
sous le titre /L'Herbe du Diable et la Petite Fumée/, ce fut un succès
commercial immédiat. La beat-génération, déboussolée par diverses
drogues, y trouva immédiatement une justification pseudo-traditionnelle
de l'usage des plantes hallucinogènes. Le sous-titre, /Une Voie Yaqui de
Connaissance/, était effectivement un coup de maître en publicité. Ce
sous-titre étendit nettement le champ des lecteurs (et des acheteurs
potentiels) : il ne promit pas seulement la révélation de la sagesse
d'un noble sauvage, mais encore celle d'un Peau-Rouge peu ou mal connu :
qui, en 1968, savait quoi que ce soit de précis sur les indiens yaquis,
à part quelques ethnologues très spécialisés ? »

/Rappelez vous, quelques années plus tôt vous aviez commencé à cheminer
avec le matin des magiciens de Bergier et Pauwels ; souvenez-vous
quelques mois plus tôt vous aviez couru le Tibet au prétexte du
troisième oeil et de ses prodigieux lamas... avec Rampa ; avec la
Science des Mages de Papus !/

/Continuons la lecture de la critique, il en existe d'autres, mais celle
ci suffit à ma démonstration/:

« Les Editions Universitaires font en général de petits tirages, et
rarement des bénéfices. The /Teachings of Don Juan/ eut une diffusion
aussi large qu'inhabituelle et fit sensation. En avril 1969, /Ballantine
Books/, reniflant le bestseller, faisait exploser le marché avec un
tirage à l'échelon national américain. En trois ans, 300.000 exemplaires
furent vendus, transformant un obscur étudiant en un auteur-culte
semi-scientifique, prêt à publier sa deuxième aventure et parlant déjà
d'un troisième ouvrage. Comme il avait essayé de se donner un vernis
d'authenticité grâce à son analyse structurale, il briguait maintenant
la consécration universitaire : le Doctorat en Anthropologie

…

M. Spicer, connaisseur de la culture yaqui, nous fait remarquer que
"/l'utilisation des trois plantes de pouvoir ne correspond aucunement à
notre connaissance ethnographique des Yaquis. Don Juan n'a manifestement
pas le moindre rôle dans la communauté yaqui, aucun terme yaqui n'est
mentionné, pas même en relation avec les concepts les plus
caractéristiques de la "Voie de la Connaissance/".

…

Improbables sont les promenades dans le désert pendant les mois de juin
à septembre. Même des randonneurs endurcis refuseraient de pénétrer dans
ce désert pendant l'été. La température et la sècheresse de l'air sont
telles que le corps se déshydrate en quelques heures et qu'on tombe
d'épuisement. Mais Monsieur Castaneda et Don Juan s'y promènent en
pleine canicule, grimpant des pentes et descendant dans des canyons sans
s'arrêter, piégeant des cailles et des lapins, grillant des serpents à
sonnettes. Un 19 août, Castaneda et son instructeur entrent dans un
canyon et escaladent ensuite une colline où ils se reposent dans un
endroit sans ombre.

…

Les récits de Castaneda sont parsemés de confrontations de sorciers, de
menaces d'annihilation de l'âme ou de la force vitale du "guerrier". Il
ne se prive pas de faire référence sans arrêt au coté sombre du folklore
mexicain : Don Juan peut se transformer en corbeau et le duel qui
l'oppose à une chauve-souris géante contient plutôt des références aux
portes de l'Enfer qu'à celles du Paradis ! Dans /Le Second Anneau de
Pouvoir/ il se réfère directement aux "/Diables Toltèques/",
représentants supposés d'une vieille tradition de magie précédant les
Mayas. Dans ses livres ultérieurs, Castaneda attribue à Don Juan des
idées puisées dans les vieilles hétérodoxies occidentales, le
Manichéisme ou le Gnosticisme décadents : les hommes seraient des oeufs
lumineux, condensés du "nagual" et vivant dans un monde parallèle
composé d'ombres sans aucun sens du "réel", sauf s'ils apprennent à
"/voir/" et à"/rêver/" en utilisant leur "/deuxième anneau de Pouvoir/".
En somme, Castaneda fait preuve d'une fascination morbide pour les
phénomènes de toute sorte. Dans /La Force du Silence/, son huitième
livre, cela devient de la "/folie contrôlée/". Dieu et le Diable, dit
Don Juan, ne représentent qu'une façon qu'a le /tonal/ de former un
substitut trompeur à la nostalgie du /nagual/

… »

/Que les critiques soient sur le bon terrain ou non, vous avez pu
découvrir au hasard des pages de Castaneda, votre animal de pouvoir,
lequel s'expérimente et se trouve !/

/Du coup, certains, qui ne doivent pas vivre avec de vrais animaux, ont
découvert qu'il n'y avait pas un animal de pouvoir, mais deux, mais
plusieurs... ; qu'il y avait la « voie du guerrier », la « voie du
sorcier », etc. et chacun d'emprunter une « voie » selon … son alchimie,
voie sèche, voie humide, … ; vous avez frissonné en affrontant des peurs
que vous ne connaissiez pas ou que vous supposiez ne pas connaître!/

/Que Castaneda, soit, comme Lobsang Rampa, un auteur de fictions, voilà
qui importera peu à celui qui met en fonction son imaginaire pour se
trouver lui-même, pour trouver des aspects de ses personnages, de sa
personnalité qu'il ignorait, l'important n'est-il pas de Trouver la
personne dans des voyages initiatiques réels ou imaginaires./

/De Trouver, ou de Chercher, puisque pour certains l'important n'est pas
de trouver mais bien de chercher, indéfiniment, comme si l'homme ne
pouvait poser son havresac, prendre bêche, cultiver un vrai jardin,
bâtir les murs d'une maisonnette, et s'installer pour le temps
nécessaire à « une halte », pendant que d'autres vont poursuivre
l'éternel cheminement vers ce qu'il ne faut pas trouver puisqu'ils
savent déjà que « ils l'ont caché au plus profond d'eux-mêmes »./

/Quand vous empruntez le chemin d'un autre, vous allez vers « sa halte,
sa maisonnette, son jardin, vous utilisez sa bêche », ne vous étonnez
pas si « il » vous attend ou si « il » vous rejette!/

/Que peuvent vous fournir l'exploration, souvent en labyrinthes, de ces
diverses voies, une prise de conscience, l'homme n'est pas « marqué »
pour se couler dans un moule, où il n'y a qu'à suivre... et à devenir./

/Bizarrement, des hommes se sont prêtés à ce jeu, suivre ceux qui ont
précédés ! Et encore plus bizarrement, ils n'ont pas obtenu la réponse
attendu! Et toujours aussi bizarrement, ils reviennent en disant, il n'y
a rien, ça n'existe pas ! /

/Leur exploration les aurait menés là où il y aurait le vide infini des
espaces limités./

/Alors, vous qui ressentez une capacité à embarquer sur la coquille de
noix des initiations improbables, sur les fétus de paille qui servent de
planche à voile dans les domaines de l'incertitude et de cet insolent
absolu inconnu, vous qui avez pris conscience que vous êtes apte à
laisser émaner de votre personne un rayonnement, si lumignon soit-il,
apte à vivre la mélancolie du désespoir parce que vous avez entrepris la
marche vers l'homme, vous qui aplanissez votre propre chemin à travers
les broussailles et les ronciers, vous qui taillez les pierres non pour
en faire des cubes ridicules mais pour rendre les sols cultivables ou
remblayer les chemins, vous qui sans espoir et sans désespoir êtes
devenus, au fil des ans, capables de sourire à la gloriole sans pleurer
sur vos douleurs inutilement, vous qui aimez, vous qui savez encore
souffrir, vous qui savez toujours et malgré tout tendre la main à celui
qui a besoin de la prendre sans désir de la manger,... vous! êtes-vous
prêts non pas à devenir un initié mais, à construire une initiation,
êtes-vous conscients que devenus libre de penser vous êtes devenus aptes
à poser les questions qui font bouger les choses:/

*To be, or not; to be, that is the question*

*Je suis donc je chemine*

*Je viens, je vais, je construis mon identité*

*Hier, ici, maintenant, demain, je demeure et j'agis*

*Quelle est votre vraie question?*

*Votre vrai questionnement !*

  ¶ 12:13

  boehm boehme bohm böhm behmen und so weiter BOEHME (Jacob), théosophe célèbre, et l'un des plus importants des
Mystiques modernes, né en 1575 près de Gœrlitz. mort dans cette ville,
en 1624.
D'une famille pauvre, mais honnête1, il exerça le métier de cordonnier
toute sa vie, à Gœrlitz.

Les doctrines de Boehme ont une grande parenté avec celles qui ont flori
dans l'Allemagne contemporaine, avec Schelling, Hegel, etc.
Il est presque un précurseur de Spinoza.

La première édition de ses Œuvres a paru en Hollande, par les soins de
Henri Bctke, Mais la plus complète est celle donnée par Gichtel, à
Amsterdam, en 1682 (10 vol. in-8° quelquefois réunis en 6).

[185]
1288 BOEHME( Jacob. — Des gottseeligen hoch-erleuchteten Jacob Bomens
alleThesophischen Wercke, darinnen alle theosophischen Wercke, darinnen
alle tieffe Geheimnusse Gottes, der ewigen und zeitlichen Natur und
Creatur samt dem wahren grunde christlicher Religion und der
Gottseeligkeit, nach dem apostolischen Gezengnuszoftenbahret weiden,
Theils aus des Authoris eigenen Originalen, theils aus den ersten und
nachgesehenen besten Copyen aulls fleissigste corrigiret: und in
Beyfugung etlichcr Clavim so vorhin noch nie gedruck, nebenst einem
zweyfachen Register. Amsterdam, Welstein. 1682, pet. in-8°, 6 vol.
(()-2 à 10

C'est le titre général de l'édition des Œuvres du célèbre théosophe
allemand, due aux soins de Johann Georg Gichtel : édition réunie
habituellement en 6 vol. et dont voici le détail :

1), — Un vol. avec le titre général indiqué ci-dessus, et composé de
LXXIII ff. non chiffr., avec 2 pl.
Presque tout ce volume est empli par Jacob Bohmens Lebens-Lautf. par
Abraham von Franckenberg.

2). — Morgenrotc im Aufgang, das ist : die Wurtzel oder Mutter der
Philosophiae, Astrologiae und Theologiae, aus rechtem Grunde ; oder
Beschreibung der Natur, wie alles gewesen und im Anfang worden ist : wie
die Natur und Elementa Creatrülich worden seynd :... dulch Jacob Böhme,
in Gorliz, im J. Christi 1612, .seines Alters 37 J.. Dienstag in
Pfingsten ; alles von neuem übersehen, und mit Fleisz nach des Authoris
eigenem Manuscripto corrigiret und verbessert.
Amsterdam, (Wetstein) 1682 - pet. in-8 de XXVI- 300-III pp. avec 1 PI.
[186] Autre édit. Amsterdam, 1656. in-12 de LXXII- *18pp. front. (D²-. 0002

3). — Beschreibung der drey Principien göttliches Wesens das its : von
der ohn Ursprüngewigen Gebuhrt der Dreyfaltigkeit Gottes, und wie durch
uns aus derselben sind gcschaffen worden die Engel, so wol die Himmel
auch die Sterne und Elementa... fürnemlich vom dem Menschen. woraus
ergeschaffen worden. und zu waserley Endc : und dan wie der aus seiner
ersten paradisischcn Herrligkeit gefallen in die zornige Grimmigkcit...
und dan auch was der Zorn Gottes (Sünde. Todt, Teuffel und Hölle) sey :
wie derselbe in ewigcr Ruhe. und in grosser Freude gestanden : auch wie
alles in dieser Zeit seinen Anfang genommen, und wie sichs treibet, und
cndlich wieder herden wird, durch Jacob Böhmen. Amsterdam, (Wetstein)
1682. pet. in-8 de II-448-VII pp. avec pl.
Autre :
Amsterdam. bey H. Belkio 1620, in-8 de XIV-624 pp. front. [D². 0000
4). — Hohe und tieffe Gründe von dreyfachen Leben des Menschen, nach dem
Geheimnüz der dreyen Principien gottlicher Offenbarung. Geschrieben nach
gottlicher Erleuchtung durch Jacob Böhmen. im J. 1620.
Âmsterdam. (Wetstein), 1682, pet. in-8 de II-307-III pp.. avec 2 pl.
dont une grande.

5). Viertizg Fragen von der Seellen Urstand, Essentz. Wesen. Natur und
Eigenschafft. was sie von Ewigkeit in Ewigkeit sey ; verfasset von Dr.
Balthasar Walter. Liebhaber der grossen Geheimnüssen, und beantwortet
durch Jacob Böhme dabey am Ende beygefüget ist das ungewandte Auge von
Seelen und ihrer Bildnüsz.
Amsterdam. (Wetstein) . 1682 , pet . in-8 de II-163-II pp. avec 2 pl.
dont 1 double.
|D²-. 6004 (1)

Quarante questions sur la substance, l'essence, la nature, et les
facultés de l'âme.

6). — Von der Menschwerdung Jesu Christi. wie das ewige Wort sey Mensch
worden. und von Maria der Jungfrauen, wer sie von ihrem Urstand gewesen.
und was sie sey in der Empfängnüsz ihres Sohnes Jesu Christi fur eine
Mutter worden. in drey Theil abgetheilet. Geschrieben nach gottlicher
Erleuchtung durch Jacob Böhme. in J. 1620. Amsterdam. (Wetstein) . 1682,
pet. in-8 de II-204-IV pp. avec fig. une en-tête de chaque partie. (D².
0064(2)
7). — Von Sechs Puncten hohe und tieffe Gründung, 1. wom Gewächse der
drey Principien ; was ein jedes in sich und aus sich selber für einem
Baum oder Leden gebähre...
II. von dem vermischten Baum Boses und Gutes... III. vom Urstandc des
Widerwertigkeit des Gewächses, in dehme das Leben in sich selber
streitig wird. IV. wie der heiltige und gute Baum des ewigen Lebens aus
allen Gewachsen... V. vom Baum und Lebens. Gewachse der Verderbnüsz VI.
vom Leben der Finsternüsz. darrinnen. die Teufel wohnen... durch Jacob
Böhmen. im Jahr 1620. Amsterdam. (Wetstein). 1682. pet. in-8 de II-104
pp. avec 2 pl.
Ce traité remplit les 70 premières pages, puis viennent : Eine kurtze
Erklärung nachfolg. Sechs Puncten (pp. - 77-90)- et Gründlicher Bericht
vom... Mysterio (pp. 01 et suiv.) [D². 0064 (3)
Établissement solide et profond de 6 points: 1. Des trois principes, ce
qu'est chacun en soi. et quel arbre ou quelle vie il produit de
lui-même. (Comment on doit interroger et pénétrer les fonds intimes de
la nature., etc.

8). Der Weg zu Christo, verfasset in Bneun üchlein, das 1) von wahrer
Busse ; 2) vom heiligen Gebeth : 3) ein Schlüssel gottlicher Geheimnüsse
; 4) von wahrer Gelassenheit, 5) von der Wiedergebuhrt : 6) vom
übersinnlichen Leben : 7) von [187] gottlicher Beschnuligkeit ; 8) von
der erleuchteten und unerleuchtetcn Seele ; 9) von den vier
Complixioncn. Gestellet ans gottlichen Erkäntnüsz durch Jacob Bohmc.
Amsterdam , (Wetstein), 1682 , pet. in-8 de II-245 pp. avec fig.

Ce sont les traités IX à XIV, XXIII et XXIV de l'édition de 1713.
Il existe une réimpression Martiniste de cette collection. S. I,. 1803.
in-8 6 tr. (Bodin). Autre édition ; S. L. 1635 in-12 de 243 pp. [D. 20203

9). — Bedencken über Esaiae Stifels Büchlein von dreyerley Zustand des
Menschen, im dessen New Gebuhrt Geschriben A. Chr. 1622 von Jacob Böhme.
Amsterdam (Wetstein) 1682. pet. in-8' de II-308 pp. Avec 1 fig
…
1290 BOHME. (Jacob). — L'Aurore naissante ou la Racine de la
philosophie, de l'astrologie et de la théologie ; contenant une
description de la nature, dans laquelle on explique comment tout a été
dans le commencement ; comment la nature et les éléments sont devenus
créaturels : ce que sont les deux qualités bonne et mauvaise, dont toute
chose tire son origine ; comment ces deux dualités existent et agissent
maintenant, et ce qu'elles seront à la fin des temps ; ce qu'est le
royaume de Dieu et le royaume infernal ; et comment les hommes opèrent-
créaturellement dans l'un et dans l'autre : le tout exposé avec soin,
d'après une base vraie, dans la connaissance de l'esprit, et par
l'impulsion divine : ouvrage traduit de l'allemand, de Jacob Bêhme
(sic). sur l'édit. d'Amsterdam, de 1682 : par le Philosophe inconnu
(Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin). Paris, impr. De Laran, an IX (1800). 2
vol. in-8 de lV-200. et IV-342 pp. (40 fr.). |R. 11588-9 (0-37 (g-74

1291 BOHME (Jacob). — Bedencken über Essaiae Stiffels Büchlein: …
geschrieben anno Chr. 1621 Jacob Bohmen. Amsterdam. H. Belkins. 1676
pet. in-12 de 38 pp.
1292 BOEHME (Jacob). — Le chemin pour aller à Christ, compris en neuf
petits traités réduits ici en huit, par Jacob Böhme du vieux Seidenbourg
nommé communément le Théo Philosophe Teutonique. Berlin. 1722, in-8. (40
fr.). (G-1174
…
1300 BOEHME (Jacob). — Miroir temporel de l'Éternité : auquel est
représenté, comment toutes choses, sont marquées extérieurement selon
leur forme intérieure. Comment ce monde visible, qui comprend les
astres, les animaux, végétaux et minéraux, nous conduit en celui qui est
invisible. Comment le sublime procès Philosophal nous découvre notre
Régénération. Ecrit par Jac. Boem, nommé Philosophe Teutonique, et trad.
de l'allem. en fr. par le Sr Jean Macle doct. et médecin très célèbre.
(Publié par S. L. B.). S. l. n. a. 1787. in-8 de 300 pp. dont 2 pour
l'errata.
…
1305, BOEHME (Jacob). — De la Triple vie de l'homme, selon le mystère
des trois principes de la manifestation divine, écrit d'après une
élucidation divine par Jacob Bêhme (Bœhme). autrement dit le philosophe
teutonicus. en l'année 1620, imprimé à Amsterdam en 1682, trad. de
l'allem. en français par un Ph. In. En 1793 ; (de Saint-Martin). Paris,
Migneret, 1809, in-8 de VII1-552 pp. avec 1 pl. (40 fr.).

Une des plus rares traductions de Boëhme

1306 BOEHME (Jacob). — Des trois Principes de l'essence divine, ou de
l'éternel Engendrement sans origine. De l'homme ; d'où il a été créé et
pour quelle fin: (Comment tout prend son commencement dans le temps,
comment tout poursuit son cours, et ce que tout reviendra à la fin ; par
Jacob Bèhme, du vieux Seidenbourg, nommé le philosophe Teutonique, trad.
de l'allem. sur l'édit. d'Amsterdam, de 1682 ; par le philosophe inconnu
(Saint-Martin ). Paris. imprimerie et librairie de Laran (Migneret). An
X-1802. 2 vol. in-8 de IV-XXI-350. et IV-402 pp. (40 fr.).
De la plus grande rareté. (cet ouvrage est celui qui résume le mieux
toute la doctrine de Bohm et en offre un tableau presque synthétique.
(O-58
(G-80 et 81
…

  ¶ 18:27

  WILLIAM LAW AND THE MYSTICS *CHAPTER XII *

*WILLIAM LAW AND THE MYSTICS *

To speak of mystical thought in the first half of the eighteenth century in England seems almost a contradiction in terms ; for the predominating character of that age, its outlook on life and its mind as expressed in philosophy, religion and literature, was in every way opposed to what is understood by mystical. In literature, shallowness of thought is often found combined with unrivalled clearness of expression ; in general outlook, the conception of a mechanical world made by an outside Creator; in religion and philosophy, the practically universal appeal to "rational" evidence as supreme arbiter. In no age, it would seem, have men written so much about religion, while practising it so little. The one quality in Scripture which interests writers and readers alike is its credibility, and the impression gathered by the student of the religious controversies of the day is that Christianity was held to exist, not to be lived, but, like a proposition in Euclid, only to be proved.

This view, however, of the main tendency of the time, though representative, is not complete. There is also an undercurrent of thought of a kind that never quite disappears and that helps to keep the earth green during the somewhat dry and arid seasons when rationalism or materialism gains the upper hand.

This tendency of thought is called mysticism, and it may be described in its widest sense as an attitude of mind founded upon an intuitive or experienced conviction of fundamental unity, of alikeness in all things. All mystical thought springs from this as base. The poet mystic, looking out on the natural world, rejoices in it with a purer joy and studies it with a deeper reverence than other men, because he knows it is not something called ' matter ' and alien to him, but that it is — as he is — spirit itself made visible. The mystic philosopher, instead of attempting to reason or analyse or deduce, seeks merely to tell of his vision; whereupon, words [306] generally fail him, and he becomes obscure. The religious mystic has for goal the union of himself with God, the actual contact with the Divine Presence, and he conceives this possible because man is ' a God though in the germ,' and, therefore, can know God through that part of his nature which is akin to Him.

There were many strains of influence which, in the seventeenth century, tended to foster this type of thought in England. The little group of Cambridge Platonists gave new expression to great neo-Platonic ideas, the smouldering embers of which had been fanned to flame in the ardent forge of the Florentine renascence^1 <#sdfootnote1sym>^1 ; but, in addition to this older thought, there were not only new influences from without but, also, new conditions within which must be indicated.

A strong vein of mysticism had been kept alive in Amsterdam, whither the first body of exiled separatists had gone in 1593. Elizabeth, thinking to quell independent religious thought at home, had planted nurseries of freedom in Holland, which waxed strong and sent back over seas in the next century a persistent stream of opinion and literature^2 <#sdfootnote2sym>^2 . To this can be traced the root-ideas which animated alike quakers, seekers, Behmenists, anabaptists, familists and numberless other sects which embodied a reaction against forms and ceremonies that, in ceasing to be understood, had become lifeless. They all agreed in deeming it more important to spiritualize this life than to dogmatize about the life to come. They all believed in the ' innerlight,' in the immediate revelation of God within the soul as the supreme and all-important experience. They all held that salvation was the effect of a spiritual principle, a seed quickened invisibly by God, and, consequently, they considered learning useless, or even mischievous, in dealing with the things of the spirit. So far, these various sects were mystical in thought; though, with the exception of familists, Behmenists and seekers, they cannot unreservedly be classed as mystics. Large numbers of these three sects, however, became ' children of light,' thus helping to give greater prominence to the strong mystical element in early quakerism.

It only needed the release from the crushing hand of Laud, and the upheaval of the civil war, to set free the religious revival [307] which had long been seething, and to distract England, for a time, with religious excitement. Contemporary writers refer with horror to the swarm of ' sects, heresies and schisms ' which now came into being^3 <#sdfootnote3sym> ^1 , and Milton alone seems to have understood that the turmoil was but the outward sign of a great spiritual awakening^4 <#sdfootnote4sym>^2 . Unhappily, there were few who, with him, could perceive that the 'opinion of good men is but knowledge in the making,' and that these many sects were but various aspects of one main movement towards freedom and individualism, towards a religion of the heart rather than of the head. The terrible persecutions of the quakers under Charles II^5 <#sdfootnote5sym> ^3 tended to withdraw them from active life, and to throw them in the direction of a more personal and introspective religion^6 <#sdfootnote6sym> ^4 It was then that the writings of Antoinette Bourignon, Madame Guyon and Fénelon became popular, and were much read among a certain section of thinkers, while the teachings of Jacob Boehme, whose works had been put into English between the years 1644 and 1692, bore fruit in many ways^7 <#sdfootnote7sym>^5 Whether directly or indirectly, they permeated the thought of the founders of the Society of Friends^8 <#sdfootnote8sym>^6 , they were widely read both in cottage and study^9 <#sdfootnote9sym> ^7 and they produced a distinct Behmenite sect^10 <#sdfootnote10sym>^8 . Their influence can be seen in the writings of Thomas Tryon, John Pordage, George Cheyne, Francis Lee, Jane Lead, Thomas Bromley, Richard Roach and others ; in the foundation and transactions of the [308] Philadelphian society; in the gibes of satirists^11 <#sdfootnote11sym>^1 ; in forgotten tracts; in the increase of interest in alchemy^12 <#sdfootnote12sym>^2 ; in the voluminous MS commentaries of Freher, or even in Newton's great discovery ; for *it is almost certain that the idea of the three laws of motion first reached Newton through his eager study of Boehme*.

The tracing of this mystical thought, however, during the period under discussion and later, mainly among obscure sects and little-known thinkers, would not form part of a history of English literature, were it not that our greatest prose mystic lived and wrote in the same age.

William Law had a curiously paradoxical career. After graduating as B.A. and M.A. at Cambridge, in 1708 and 1712, and being, in 1711, ordained and elected fellow of his college (Emmanuel), he refused to take the oaths of allegiance to George I, and thus lost his fellowship and vocation. Though an ardent high churchman, he was the father of methodism. Though deprived of employment in his church, he wrote the book which, of all others for a century to come, had the most profound and far-reaching influence upon the religious thought of his country. Though a sincere, and, so he believed, an orthodox Christian, he was the classic exponent of Boehme, a thinker abhorred and mistrusted alike by eighteenth century divines and by Wesleyan leaders.

About the year 1727, Edward Gibbon selected Law as tutor for his only son, the father of the historian, and, in 1730, when his pupil went abroad. Law lived on with the elder Gibbon in the ' spacious house with gardens and land at Putney,' where he was ' the much honoured friend and spiritual director of the whole family^13 <#sdfootnote13sym> ^3 '

During these years at Putney, Law's reputation as a writer became assured. He was already known as the ablest defender of nonjuror principles; the publication of /A Serious Call/ in 1729 had brought him renown, and he was revered and consulted by an admiring band of disciples. His later life was spent at his birthplace. King's Cliffe, near Stamford. He settled there in 1737 or 1740, and was joined by Hester Gibbon, the historian's aunt, and Mrs Hutcheson, a widow with considerable means. This oddly assorted trio gave themselves to a life of retirement and good deeds, the whole being regulated by Law. With a united income of over £3000 a year, they lived in the simplest fashion.

They spent large sums in founding schools and almshouses, and in general charity, which took the form of free daily distribution of food, money and clothes, no beggar being turned away from the door, until the countryside became so demoralized with vagrants that the inhabitants protested and the rector preached against these proceedings from the pulpit^14 <#sdfootnote14sym>^1 . The trouble, however, seems to have abated when the three kindhearted and guileless offenders threatened to leave the parish, and, possibly, it may have caused them to exercise a little discrimination in their giving.

Here, at King's Cliffe, after more than twenty years of residence, passed in the strictest routine of study and good works, Law died, after a short illness, almost in the act of singing a hymn.

Law's writings fall naturally into three divisions, controversial, practical and mystical. His three great controversial works are directed against a curious assortment of opponents: Hoadly, latitudinarian bishop of Bangor, Mandeville, a sceptical pessimist, and Tindal, a deistical optimist. These writers represent three main sections of the religious opinion of the day, and much light is thrown on Law's character and beliefs by the method with which he meets them and turns their own weapons against themselves.

It was a time of theological pamphleteering, and the famous Bangorian controversy is a good specimen of the kind of discussion which abounded in the days of George I. It is, on the whole, good reading, clear, pointed and even witty, and, if compared with similar controversies in the reign of Charles I, presents an admirable object lesson as to the advance made during the intervening years in the writing of English prose.

When queen Anne died, and the claims of the Stewarts were set aside in favour of a parliamentary king from Hanover, the church, committed absolutely to the hereditary, as opposed to the parliamentary, principle, found itself on the horns of a dilemma. High churchmen were forced either to eat their own words, or to refuse to take the oaths of allegiance to the new king and of abjuration to the pretender^15 <#sdfootnote15sym> ^2 . Law is a prominent example of this latter and smaller class, the second generation of non-jurors. Feeling naturally ran very high when, in answer to the posthumous [310] papers of George Hickes^16 <#sdfootnote16sym>^1 , the nonjuring bishop, who charged the church with schism, Benjamin Hoadly, bishop of Bangor, the king's chaplain, came forward as champion of the crown and church.

Hoadly was an able thinker and writer, and, in his /Preservative against the Principles and Practices of the Non-Jurors/, he attempts to justify the civil power by reducing to a minimum the idea of church authority and even that of creeds. He tells Christians to depend upon Christ alone for their religion, and not upon His ministers, and he urges sincerity as the sole test of truth. On this last point he dwells more fully and exclusively in his famous sermon. /The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ,/ preached before the king on 31 March 1717. Hoadly's pamphlet and sermon raised a cloud of controversy^17 <#sdfootnote17sym>^2 ; but by far the ablest answer he received on the part of the nonjurors was that contained in Law's Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor (1717 — 19). The bishop never replied to Law, and, indeed, he gave strong proof of his acuteness by leaving his brilliant young opponent severely alone^18 <#sdfootnote18sym> ^3 .

Law instantly detected that Hoadly's arguments tended to do away altogether with the conception of the church as a living spiritual society, and his answer is mainly directed against the danger of this tendency^19 <#sdfootnote19sym> ^4 . He begins by pointing out that there are no libertines or loose thinkers in England who are not pleased with the bishop, for they imagine that he intends to dissolve the church as a society ; and, indeed, they seem to have good grounds for their assumption, since the bishop leaves neither authorised ministers, nor sacraments, nor church, and intimates that 'if a man be not a Hypocrite, it matters not what Religion he is of^20 <#sdfootnote20sym>^5 '.

Law deals with church authority, and shows that if, as Hoadly says, regularity of ordination and uninterrupted succession be mere niceties and dreams, there is no difference between the episcopalian communion and any other lay body of teachers^21 <#sdfootnote21sym>^6 . He demolishes Hoadly's remarks on the exclusion of the papist [311] succession, and he ends the first letter by refuting the bishop's definition of prayer, as a ' calm, undisturbed address to God^22 <#sdfootnote22sym> ^1 in a passage which is one of the finest pleas in our language for the right use of passion, and which admirably sums up the fundamental difference of outlook between the mystic and the rationalist temper in the things of the spirit.

Law's next work, /Remarks on the Fable of the Bees/ (1723), is an answer to Mandeville's poem^23 <#sdfootnote23sym>^2 , the moral of which is that 'private vices are public benefits,' and Law, characteristically seizing on the fallacy underlying Mandeville's clever paradoxes, deals with his definition of the nature of man and of virtue in a style at once buoyant, witty and caustic.

/ The Case of Reason/ (1731) is Law's answer to the deists, and, more especially, to Tindal's Christianity as /Old as the Creation /(1730). To reply to such arguments as those of Tindal and the deists in general was, to a man of Law's insight and intellect, an easy task. He brings out well the fundamental difference between his and their points of view. Deists saw a universe governed by fixed laws, a scheme of creation which was 'plain and perspicuous^24 <#sdfootnote24sym>^3 ,' capable of accurate investigation, and they believed in a magnified man God outside the universe, whose nature, methods and aims were, or should be, perfectly clear to the minds of his creatures. Law saw a living universe, wrapped in impenetrable mystery, and believed in a God who was so infinitely greater than man, that, of His nature, or of the reason or fitness of his actions, men can know nothing whatsoever. Why complain of mysteries in revelation, he says, when 'no revealed mysteries can more exceed the comprehension of man, than the state of human life itself^25 <#sdfootnote25sym>^4 ' ?

Tindal asserts that the ' fitness of things ' must be the sole rule of God's actions. ' I readily grant this,' says Law, 'but what judges are we of the fitness of things? ' We can no more judge the divine nature than we can raise ourselves to a state of infinite wisdom ; and the rule by which God acts 'must in many instances be entirely inconceivable by us . . . and in no instances fully known or perfectly comprehended^26 <#sdfootnote26sym> ^5 '

In short, the fundamental assumption of the deists, that human reason is all-sufficient to guide us to truth, is the great error which [312] William Law and the Mystics Law, in his later writings especially, set himself to combat ; in his opinion, it is devilish pride, the sin by which the angels fell^27 <#sdfootnote27sym> ^1 .

In the further development of his position in /The Case of Reason/, we can see many indications of the future mystic ; for the crudely material thought of his opponent seems to have called into expression, for the first time, many of Law's more characteristic beliefs. There is, throughout, a strong sense of man's capacity for spiritual development, and a settled belief that the human mind cannot possibly know anything as it really is, but can only know things in so far as it is able to apprehend them through symbol or analogy. Things supernatural or divine, he says, cannot be revealed to us in their own nature, for the simple reason that we are not capable of knowing them. If an angel were to appear to us, he would have to appear, not as he really is, but in some human bodily form, so that his appearance might be suited to our capacities. Thus, with any supernatural or divine matter, it can only be represented to us by its likeness to something that we already naturally know^28 <#sdfootnote28sym>^2 . This is the way in which revelation teaches us, and it is only able to teach so much outward knowledge of a great mystery as human language can represent^29 <#sdfootnote29sym>^3 ; reason is impotent in face of it, and only by the spiritual faculty that exists in us can the things of the spirit be even dimly apprehended^30 <#sdfootnote30sym>^4 .

Law's practical and ethical works, A Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection (1726) and A Serious Call (1728), have been more read and are better known than any other of his writings ; moreover, they explain themselves, being independent both of local controversies and of any special metaphysic. For these reasons, comparatively little need be said about them here. Both treatises are concerned with the practical question of how to live in accordance With the teachings of Christ, and they point out with peculiar force that the way consists, not in performing this or that act of devotion or ceremony, but in a new principle of life, an entire change of temper and of aspiration.

Christian Perfection, though somewhat gloomy and austere in tone, has much charm and beauty ; but it was quite overshadowed by the wider popularity of what many consider Law's greatest work, A Serious Call, a book of extraordinary power, delightful and persuasive style, racy wit and unanswerable logic. Never have the inconsistency between Christian precept and practice been so ruthlessly exposed and the secret springs of men's hearts so [313] uncompromisingly laid bare. Never has the ideal of the Christian life been painted by one who lived more literally in accordance with every word he preached. That is the secret of /A Serious Call/; it is written from the heart, by a man in deep earnest; and in an age distinguished for its mediocrity and easygoing laxness, Law's lofty ideals acted as an electric current, setting aflame the hearts of all who came under their power.

Few books in English have wielded such an influence. John Wesley himself acknowledged that /A Serious Call/ sowed the seed of methodism^31 <#sdfootnote31sym>^1 , and, undoubtedly, next to the Bible, it contributed more than any other book to the spread of evangelicalism. It made the deepest impression on Wesley himself; he preached after its model^32 <#sdfootnote32sym> ^2 ; he used it as a text-book for the highest class at Kingswood school ; and, a few months before his death, he spoke of it as 'a treatise which will hardly be excelled, if it be equalled, in the English tongue, either for beauty of expression or for justice and depth of thought.' Charles Wesley, Henry Whitfield, Henry Venn, Thomas Scott, Thomas Adam and James Stillingfleet are among other great methodists and evangelicals who have recorded how profoundly it affected them. But it did not appeal only to this type of mind. Dr Johnson, who praised it in no measured terms, attributes his first serious thoughts to the reading of it. 'I became,' he says, ' a sort of lax talker against religion, for I did not much think against it ; and this lasted till I went to Oxford^33 <#sdfootnote33sym>^3 .' When there,

I took up Law's /Serious Call to a Holy Life/, expecting to find it a dull book (as such books generally are)... But I found Law quite an over-match for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion.

Gibbon^34 <#sdfootnote34sym>^4 and the first Lord Lyttelton (who, taking it up at bedtime, was forced to read it through before he could go to rest)^35 <#sdfootnote35sym>^5 are two among many other diverse characters who felt its force.

Such, very briefly, were Law's views and writings until middle age. Although, before that time, they do not show any marked mystical tendency, yet we know that, from his undergraduate-ship onwards, Law was a 'diligent reader' of mystical books^36 <#sdfootnote36sym> ^6 and, when at Cambridge, he wrote a thesis entitled /Malebranche, and /[314]/ the Vision of All Things in God/. There is no question that he was strongly attracted to, and probably influenced by, Malebranche's view that all true knowledge is but the measure of the extent to which the individual can participate in the universal life; that, unless we see God in some measure, we do not see anything ; and that it is only by union with God we are capable of knowing what we do know^37 <#sdfootnote37sym>^1 . On the other hand, there are points in Malebranche's philosophy — which curiously stops short of its logical conclusion — quite opposed to Law's later thought: more especially the belief, which Malebranche shared with Descartes on the one side and Locke on the other, that body and spirit are separate and contrary existences ; whereas, in Law's view, body and spirit are but inward and outward expressions of the same being^38 <#sdfootnote38sym>^2 . Among other mystics studied by Law were Dionysius the Areopagite, the Belgian and German writers Johannes Ruysbroek, Johann Tauler, Heinrich Suso and others, and the seventeenth century quietists, Fénelon, Madame Guyon and Antoinette Bourignon. The last two were much admired by Byrom, who loved to recur to them in writing and in talk ; but they were not altogether congenial to Law ; they were too diffuse, sentimental and even hysterical to please his essentially robust and manly temper. When, however, he was about forty-six (c. 1733), he came across the work of the seer who supplied just what he needed, and who set his whole nature aglow with mystical fervour. Jacob Boehme (or Behmen, as he has usually been called in England), the peasant shoemaker of Gorlitz, is one of the most amazing phenomena in an amazing age. He was the son of a herdsman, and, as a boy, helped his father to tend cattle; he was taught how to write and read, was apprenticed to a shoemaker, married the daughter of a butcher and lived quietly and humbly, troubled only by years of bitter persecution from his pastor, who stirred up the civil authorities against him. This was his outer life, sober and hard-working, like that of his fellow-seer, William Blake, but, like him also, he lived in a glory of inner illumination, by the light of which he caught glimpses of mysteries and of splendours which, even in Boehme's broken and faltering syllables, dazzle and blind the ordinary reader. He saw with the eye of his mind into the heart of things, and he wrote down so much of it as he could understand with his reason. He had a quick and supple intelligence, and an intense power of [315] visualizing. Everything appears to him as an image, and, with him, a logical process expresses itself in a series of pictures. Although illiterate and untrained, Boehme was in touch with the thought of his time, and the form of his work, at any rate, owes a good deal to it. The older speculative mysticism which rather despised nature, and sought for light from within, coming down from Plotinus through Meister Eckhart and Tauler, had, in Germany, been carried on and developed by Caspar von Schwenckfeld and Sebastian Franck ; while a revival of the still older practical or ' perceptive mysticism of the east, based on a study of the natural sciences (in which were included astrology, alchemy and magic), had been brought about by Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus, both of whom owed much to the Jewish Cabbala. These two mystical traditions, the one starting from within, the other from without, were, to some extent, reconciled into one system by the Lutheran pastor Valentin Weigel, with whose mysticism Boehme has much in common.

The older mystics — eastern and western alike — had laid supreme stress on unity as seen in the nature of God and all things. No one more fully believed in ultimate unity than did Boehme ; but he lays peculiar stress on the duality, or, more accurately, the trinity in unity, and the central point of his philosophy is the fundamental postulate that all manifestation necessitates opposition. He asserted the uniformity of law throughout all existence, physical and spiritual, and this law, which applies throughout nature, divine and human alike, is that nothing can reveal itself without resistance, good can only be known through evil, and weakness through strength, just as light is only visible when reflected by a dark body^39 <#sdfootnote39sym>^1

Thus, when God, the triune principle, or will under three aspects, desires to become manifest. He divides the will into two, the ' yes ' and the ' no,' and so founds an eternal contrast to Himself out of His own hidden nature, in order to enter into a struggle with it, and, finally, to discipline and assimilate it The object of all manifested nature is the transforming of the will which says 'no' into the will which says 'yes,' and this is brought about by seven organizing spirits or forms. The first three of these bring nature out of the dark element to the point where contact with light is possible. Boehme calls them harshness, attraction and anguish, which, in modern terms, are contraction, expansion, and rotation. The first two are in deadly antagonism, and, being [316] forced into collision, form an endless whirl of movement. These two forces, with their resultant effect, are to be found all through manifested nature, within man and without, and are called by different names : good, evil and life ; God, the devil and the world ; homogeneity, heterogeneity, strain, or the three laws of motion, centripetal and centrifugal force, resulting in rotation. They are the outcome of the 'nature' or 'no will,' and are the basis of all manifestation. They are the 'power' of God, apart from the 'love,' hence, their conflict is terrible. At this point, spirit and nature approach and meet, and, from the shock, a new form is liberated, lightning or fire, which is the fourth moment or essence ; in the spark of the lightning, all that is dark, gross and selfish in nature is consumed ; the flash brings the rotating wheel of anguish to a standstill, and it becomes a cross. A divine law is accomplished ; for all life has a double birth, suffering is the condition of joy and only in going through fire or the Cross can man reach light. With the lightning ends the development of the negative triad, and the evolution of the three higher forms then begins ; Boehme calls them light or love, sound and substance ; they are of the spirit, and, in them, contraction, expansion and rotation are repeated in a new sense^40 <#sdfootnote40sym>^1 The first three forms give the stuff or strength of being ; the last three manifest the quality of being, good or bad ; and evolution can proceed in either direction.

These principles of nature can be looked at in another way. If they are resolved into two sets of three, in the first three the dark principle which Boehme calls fire is manifested, while the last three form the principle of light. These two are eternally distinct, and, whichever is manifested, the other remains hidden. This doctrine of the hidden and manifest is peculiar to Boehme, and lies at the root of his explanation of evil. A spiritual principle becomes manifest by taking on a form or quality. The ' dark ' or harsh principle in God is not evil in itself when in its right place, i.e., when hidden, and forming the necessary basis for the light or good. But, through the fall of man, the divine order has been transgressed, and the dark side has become manifest and appears to us as evil Many chemical processes help to give a crude illustration of Boehme's thought. Suppose 'water' stands for complete good or reality as God sees it. Of the two different gases, [317] hydrogen (= evil) and oxygen (= good) each is manifested separately, with peculiar qualities of its own, but, when they combine, their original form goes 'into hiddenness,' and we get a new body ' water.' Neither of them alone is water, and yet water could not be if either were lacking.

In reading Boehme, it must not be forgotten that he has a living intuition of the eternal forces which lie at the root of all things. He is struggling to express the stupendous world-drama which is ever being enacted, in the universe without and in the soul of man within ; and, to this end, he presses into his service symbolical, biblical and alchemical terms, although he fully realizes their inadequacy. 'I speak thus,' he says, ' in bodily fashion, for the sake of my readers' lack of understanding.' Unless this be remembered, Boehme's work, in common with that of all mystics, is liable to the gravest misunderstanding. He is never weary of explaining that, although he is forced to describe things in a series of images, there is no such thing as historical succession, 'for the eternal dwells not in time^41 <#sdfootnote41sym>^1 He has to speak of the generation of God as though it were an act in time, although to do so is to use 'diabolical' (i.e., knowingly untrue) language, for God hath no beginning. Everything he describes is going on always and simultaneously, even as all the qualities he names are in everything which is manifested. 'The birth of nature takes place today, just as it did in the beginning.'

It would be impossible to give here any adequate account of Boehme's vision; but the four fundamental principles which he enunciated and emphasized may be thus summarized : will or desire as the original force; contrast or duality as the condition of all manifestation ; the relation of the hidden and the manifest ; development as a progressive unfolding of difference, with a final resolution into unity. The practical and ethical result of this living unity of nature is simple. Boehme's philosophy is one which can only be apprehended by living it Will, or desire, is the root-force in man as it is in nature and in the Godhead, and, until this is turned towards the light, any purely historical or intellectual knowledge of these things is as useless as if hydrogen were to study all the qualities of oxygen, expecting thus to become water; whereas, what is needed is the actual union of the elements.

The whole of Boehme's practical teaching, as, also, that of Law, might be summed up in the story told of an Indian sage who was importuned by a young man as to how he could find God. For [318] some time, the sage did not give any answer ; but, one evening, he bade the youth come and bathe with him in the river, and, while there, he gripped him suddenly and held his head under the water until he was nearly drowned. When he had released him, the sage asked, 'What did you want most when your head was under water?' and the youth replied, 'A breath of air.' To which the sage answered, 'When you want God as you wanted that breath of air you will find Him.'

This realization of the momentous quality of the will is the secret of every religious mystic^42 <#sdfootnote42sym>^1 ; the hunger of the soul, as Law calls it^43 <#sdfootnote43sym>^2 , is the first necessity, and all else will follow. Such was the thought of the writer who, spiritually, was closely akin to our two greatest English mystics. William Blake saw visions and spoke a tongue like that of the illuminated cobbler ; and of Law, who was not a seer^44 <#sdfootnote44sym>^3 , we learn that, when he first read Boehme's works, they put him into ' a perfect sweat. ' Only those who combine intense mystical aspiration with a clear and imperious intellect can fully realize what the experience must have been.

The two most important of Law's mystical treatises are /An Appeal to all that Doubt (1740), and The Way to Divine Knowledge/ (1752). The first of these should be read by anyone desirous of knowing Law's later thought, for it is a clear and fine exposition of his attitude with regard more especially to the nature of man, the unity of all nature and the quality of fire or desire. The later book is an account of the main principles of Boehme, with a warning as to the right way to apply them, and it was written as an introduction to the new edition of Boehme's works which Law contemplated publishing. Law's later, are but an expansion of his earlier, views ; the main difference being that, whereas, in the practical treatises (/Christian Perfection and A Serious Call/), he urges certain temper and conduct because it is our duty to obey God, or because it is right or lawful, in his later writings — Boehme having furnished the clue — he adds not only the reason for this conduct being right, but the means of attaining it, by expounding the working of the law itself. The following aspect, then, of Boehme's teaching is that which Law most consistently emphasizes.
[319]
Man was made out of the breath of God ; his soul is a spark of the Deity. It, therefore, cannot die, for it ' has the unbeginning unending life of God in it.' Man has fallen from his high estate through ignorance and inexperience, through seeking separation, taking the part for the whole, desiring the knowledge of good and evil as separate things. The assertion of self is, thus, the root of all evil ; for, so soon as the will of man ' turns to itself, and would, as it were, have a sound of its own, it breaks off from the divine harmony, and falls into the misery of its own discord.' For it is the state of our will that makes the state of our life. Hence, by 'the fall,' man's standpoint has been dislocated from the centre to the circumference, and he lives in a false imagination. Every quality is equally good, for there is nothing evil in God, from whom all comes ; but evil appears to be through separation. Thus, strength and desire in the divine nature are necessary and magnificent qualities, but when, as in the creature, they are separated from love, they appear as evil. The analogy of the fruit is, in this connection, a favourite one with both Law and Boehme. When a fruit is unripe {i.e. incomplete), it is sour, bitter, astringent, unwholesome ; but, when it has been longer exposed to the sun and air, it becomes sweet, luscious and good to eat. Yet it is the same fruit, and the astringent qualities are not lost or destroyed, but transmuted and enriched, and are thus the main cause of its goodness^45 <#sdfootnote45sym> ^1 . The only way to pass from this condition of 'bitterness' to ripeness, from this false imagination to the true one, is the way of death. We must die to what we are before we can be born anew^46 <#sdfootnote46sym>^2 ; we must die to the things of this world to which we cling, and for which we desire and hope, and we must turn towards God. This should be the daily, hourly exercise of the mind, until the whole turn and bent of our spirit 'points as constantly to God as the needle touched with the loadstone does to the north^47 <#sdfootnote47sym> ^3 .' To be alive in God, before you are dead to your own nature, is 'a thing as impossible in itself, as for a grain of wheat to be alive before it dies^48 <#sdfootnote48sym>^4 '.

The root of all, then, is the will or desire^49 <#sdfootnote49sym>^5 It is the seed of everything that can grow in us ; 'it is the only workman in nature, and everything is its work ' ; it is the true magic power. And this will or desire is always active ; every man's life is a continual state [320] of prayer, and, if we are not praying for the things of God, we are praying for something else^50 <#sdfootnote50sym>^1 For prayer is but the desire of the soul. Our imaginations and desires are, therefore, the greatest realities we have, and we should look closely to what they are^51 <#sdfootnote51sym>^2 .

It is essential to the understanding of Law, as of Boehme, to remember his belief in the reality and actuality of the oneness of nature and of Law^52 <#sdfootnote52sym>^3 . Nature is God's great book of revelation, for it is nothing else but God's own outward manifestation of what He inwardly is, and can do. The mysteries of religion, therefore, are no higher, and no deeper than the mysteries of nature^53 <#sdfootnote53sym>^4 . God Himself is subject to this law. There is no question of God's mercy or of His wrath^54 <#sdfootnote54sym> ^5 , for it is an eternal principle that we can only receive what we are capable of receiving ; and, to ask why one person does not gain any help from the mercy and goodness of God while another does gain help is ' like asking why the refreshing dew of Heaven does not do that to flint which it does to the vegetable plant^55 <#sdfootnote55sym>^6 ?'

Self-denial and mortification of the flesh are not things imposed upon us by the mere will of God : considered in themselves, they have nothing of goodness or holiness ; but they have their ground and reason in the nature of the thing, and are as ' absolutely necessary to make way for the new birth, as the death of the husk and gross part of the grain is necessary to make way for its vegetable life^56 <#sdfootnote56sym>^7 .'

Law's attitude towards learning, which has been somewhat misunderstood, is a part of his belief in the ' Light Within,' which he shares with all mystical thinkers. In judging of what he says as to the inadequacy of book knowledge and scholarship, it is necessary to call to mind the characteristics of his age and public. When we remember the barren controversies about externals in matters religious which raged all through his lifetime, and the exaltation of the reason as the only means whereby man could know anything of the deeper truths of existence, it is not surprising that, with Law, the pendulum should swing in the opposite direction, and that, with passionate insistence, he should be driven to assert the utter inadequacy of the intellect by itself in all spiritual concerns^57 <#sdfootnote57sym>^8 .

He, says Law, who looks to his reason as the true power and light of his nature, 'betrays the same Ignorance of the whole Nature, Power and Office of Reason as if he were to smell with his Eyes, or see with his Nose^58 <#sdfootnote58sym> ^1 ' All true knowledge, he urges, must come from within, it must be experienced ; and, if it were not that man has the divine nature in him, no omnipotence of God could open in him the knowledge of divine things. There cannot be any knowledge of things but where the thing itself is ; there cannot be any knowledge ' of any unpossessed Matters, for knowledge can only be yours as Sickness and Health is yours, not conveyed to you by a Hearsay Notion, but the Fruit of your own Perception^59 <#sdfootnote59sym> ^2 .'

Law, liberal scholar, clear reasoner and finished writer, was no more an enemy of learning than Ruskin was an enemy of writing and reading because he said that there were very few people in the world who got any good by either. Their scornful remarks on these subjects often mislead their readers; yet the aim of both writers was not to belittle these things in themselves, but solely to put them in their right place^60 <#sdfootnote60sym>^3 .

Law is among the greatest of English prose writers, and no one ever more truly possessed than he ' the splendid and imperishable excellence of sincerity and strength.' Those who least understand his later views, who look upon them as 'idle fancies,' and on the whole subject of his mystical thought as 'a melancholy topic ' are constrained to admit, not only that he writes fine and lucid prose in /A Serious Call/, but that, in his mystical treatises, his style becomes mellower and rises to greater heights than in his earlier work^61 <#sdfootnote61sym>^4 . The reason for this cumulative richness is that the history and development of Law's prose style is the history and development of his character. As applied to him, Buffon's epigram was strictly true. Sincerity is the keynote of his whole nature, sincerity of thought, of belief, of speech and of life. Sincerity implies courage, and Law was a brave man, never shirking the logical outcome of his convictions, from the day when he ruined his prospects at Cambridge, to the later years when he suffered his considerable reputation to be eclipsed by his espousal of an un-comprehended and unpopular mysticism. He had a keen, rather than a profound, intellect, and his thought is lightened by brilliant flashes of wit or of grim satire. On this side, his was a true [322] eighteenth century mind, logical, sane, practical, with, at the same time, a touch of whimsey, and a tendency to a quite unexpected lack of balance on certain subjects. Underneath a severe and slightly stiff exterior lay, however, emotion, enthusiasm and great tenderness of feeling. When he was still a young man, the logical and satirical side was strongest; in later years, this was much tempered by emotion and tenderness.

This description of Law's character might equally serve as a description of his style. It is strong, sincere, rhythmical, but, except under stress of feeling, not especially melodious. A certain stiffness and lack of adaptability, which was characteristic of the man, makes itself felt in his prose, in spite of his free use of italics and capital letters. Law's first object is to be explicit, to convey the precise shade of his meaning, and, for this purpose, he chooses the most homely similes, and is not in the least afraid of repetition, either of words or thoughts. A good instance of his method, and one which illustrates his disregard for iteration, his sarcastic vein and his power of expressing his meaning in a simile, is the parable of the pond in A Serious Call, which was versified by Byrom^62 <#sdfootnote62sym>^1

Again, if you should see a man that had a /large pond of water/, yet living in continual thirst, not suffering himself to drink /half a draught/, for fear of lessening his pond; if you should see him wasting his time and strength, in /fetching more/ water to his pond, always /thirsty/, yet always carrying a bucket of water in his hand, watching early and late to catch the /drops/ of rain, gaping after every cloud, and running greedily into every /mire/ and /mud/, in hopes of water, and always studying how to make every /ditch/ empty itself into his /pond/. If you should see him grow grey and old in these anxious labours, and at last end /a careful, thirsty life/, by falling into his own /pond/, would you not say, that such a one was not only the author of all his own disquiets, but was foolish enough to be reckoned amongst /idiots and madmen/ ? But yet foolish and absurd as this character is, it does not represent half the follies, and absurd disquiets of the /covetous man/.

Law's use of simile and analogy in argument is characteristic. By means of it, he lights up his position in one flash, or with dexterity lays bare an inconsistency. His use of analogies between natural, and mental and spiritual, processes is frequent, and is applied with power in his later writings, when the oneness of law in the spiritual and natural worlds became the very ground of his philosophy. He had the command of several instruments and could play in different keys. Remarks upon the /Fable of the Bees (1723), and The Spirit of Prayer/ (1749—50), while exhibiting different sides of the man, are excellent examples of the variety and [323] range of his prose. The earlier work is biting, crisp, brilliant and severely logical, written in pithy sentences and short paragraphs, containing a large proportion of words of one syllable, the printed page thus presenting to the eye quite a different appearance from that of his later work. Remarks displays to the full Law's peculiar power of illustrating the fallacy of an abstract argument, by embodying it in a concrete example. Mandeville's poem is a vigorous satire in the Hudibrastic vein, and, in Law's answer, it called out the full share of the same quality which he himself possessed. ' Though I direct myself to you,' he begins, in addressing Mandeville, ' I hope it will be no Offence if I sometimes speak as if I was speaking to a Christian.' The two assertions of Mandeville which Law is chiefly concerned to refute are that man is only an animal, and morality only an imposture. ' According to this Doctrine,' he retorts, ' to say that a Man is dishonest, is making him just such a Criminal as a Horse that does not dance.' This is the kind of unerring homely simile which abounds in Law's writing, and which reminds us of the swift and caustic wit of Mrs Poyser. Other examples could be cited to illustrate the pungency and raciness of Law's style when he is in the mood for logical refutation. But it is only necessary to glance at the first half page of /The Spirit of Prayer/ to appreciate the marked difference in temper and phrasing. The early characteristics are as strong as ever ; but, in addition, there is a tolerance, a tender charm, an imaginative quality and a melody of rhythm rarely to be found in the early work. The sentences and phrases are longer, and move to a different measure ; and, all through, the treatise is steeped in mystic ardour, and, while possessed of a strength and beauty which Plotinus himself has seldom surpassed, conveys the longing of the soul for union with the Divine.

In /A Serious Call/, Law makes considerable use of his power of character drawing, of which there are indications already in /Christian Perfection/. This style of writing, very popular in the seventeenth century, had long been a favourite method for conveying moral instruction, and Law uses it with great skill. His sketches of Flavia and Miranda, ' the heathen and Christian sister 'as Gibbon calls them, are two of the best known and most elaborate of his portraits. Law's foolish, inconsistent and selfish characters, such as the woman of fashion, the scholar, the country gentleman or the man of affairs, are more true to life, and, indeed, more sympathetic to frail humanity, than the few virtuous characters he has drawn. This is a key, perhaps, to the limitations of Law's outlook, [324] and, more especially, of his influence ; for, in his view, a man's work in the world, and his more mundane characteristics, are as nothing, so that one good person is precisely like another. Thus, a pious physician is acceptable to God as pious, but not at all as a physician^63 <#sdfootnote63sym> ^1 .

/A Serious Call/, as a whole, is a fine example of Law's middle style, grave, clear and rhythmical, with the strong sarcastic tendency restrained ; not, on the one hand, so brilliant as the /Remarks/, nor, on the other, so illumined as /The Spirit of Prayer/. Yet, it throbs with feeling, and, indeed, as Sir Leslie Stephen — himself not wholly in sympathy with it — has finely said, its ' power can only be adequately felt by readers who can study it on their knees.' One can well imagine how repugnant it would have been to the writer that such a work should be criticised or appraised from a purely literary point of view; and yet, if William Law had not been a great literary craftsman, the lofty teaching of his /Serious Call/ would not have influenced, as it has, entire generations of English-speaking people.

On the whole, the distinguishing and peculiar characteristic of Law as a prose writer is that, for the most part, he is occupied with things which can only be experienced emotionally and spiritually, and that he treats them according to his closely logical habit of mind. The result is an unusual combination of reason and emotion which makes appeal at once to the intellect and the heart of the reader.

Although Law's spiritual influence in his own generation was probably more profound than that of any other man of his day, yet he had curiously few direct followers. It is easy to see that he was far too independent a thinker to be acceptable even to the high churchmen whose cause he espoused, and, though he was greatly revered by methodists and evangelists, his later mysticism was wholly abhorrent to them^64 <#sdfootnote64sym>^2 . The most famous members of the little band of disciples who visited him at Putney were the Wesleys, John and Charles, who, two or three times yearly, used to travel the whole distance from Oxford on foot in order to consult their 'oracle^65 <#sdfootnote65sym> ^3 ' Later, however, there was a rupture between them, when Wesley, on his return from Georgia in 1738, having joined the Moravians, seems suddenly to have realized, and to have contended, in very forcible language, that, [325] although Law, in his books (/A Christian Perfection and A Serious Call/), put a very high ideal before men, he had, nevertheless, omitted to emphasize that the only means of attaining it was through the atonement of Christ^66 <#sdfootnote66sym> ^1 . This was largely the quarrel of Wesley, as, also, of the later methodists, with mysticism in general ; 'under the term mysticism,' he writes from Georgia, 'I comprehend those and only those who slight any of the means of grace^67 <#sdfootnote67sym>^2 '

George Cheyne, fashionable doctor, vegetarian and mystic, was another of Law's friends at this time ; but the most charming and most lovable of his followers was his devoted admirer, John Byrom. The relationship between these two men much resembles that of Johnson and Boswell, and we find the same outspoken brusqueness, concealing a very real affection, on the part of the mentor, with the same unswerving devotion and zealous record of details — even of the frequent snubs received — on the part of the disciple. Byrom, in many ways, reminds us of Goldsmith; he possesses something of the artless simplicity, the rare and fragrant charm, which is the outcome of a sincere and tender nature; he has many forgivable foibles and weaknesses, a delightful, because completely natural, style in prose and a considerable variety of interests and pursuits. He travelled abroad and studied medicine, and, though he never took a medical degree, he was always called Doctor by his friends; he was an ardent Jacobite, a poet, a mystic and the inventor of a system of shorthand, by the teaching of which he increased his income until, in 1740, he succeeded to the family property near Manchester.

Byrom, though a contemporary of Law at Cambridge, evidently did not know him personally until 1729, and his first recorded meeting with his hero, as, also, the later ones, form some of the most attractive passages of an entirely delightful and too little known book, /The Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom/. It is from this journal that we gather most of our information about Law at Putney, and from it that, incidentally, we get the fullest light on his character and personality.

On 15 February 1729, Byrom bought /A Serious Call/, and, on the following 4 March, he and a friend named Mildmay went down in the Fulham coach to Putney to interview the author. This was the beginning of an intimacy which lasted until Law's death, and [326] which was founded on a strong community of tastes in matters of mystical philosophy, and on the unswerving devotion of Byrom to his 'master^68 <#sdfootnote68sym> ^1 '. They met at Cambridge, where Byrom gave shorthand lessons, and Law shepherded his unsatisfactory pupil ; at Putney, in Somerset gardens and, later, at King's Cliffe^69 <#sdfootnote69sym>^2 .

Byrom, though scarcely a poet, for he lacked imagination, had an unusual facility for turning everything into rime. He sometimes wrote in very pleasing and graceful vein^70 <#sdfootnote70sym>^3 , and he had an undoubted gift of epigram^71 <#sdfootnote71sym>^4 ; but he was particularly fond of making verse paraphrases of prose writings, and especially of those of William Law. His two finest pieces of this kind are /An Epistle to a Gentleman of the Temple/ (1749), which versifies Law's /Spirit of Prayer/; and the letter on /Enthusiasm/ (1752), founded on the latter part of Law's /Animadversions upon Dr Trapp's Reply/. This last poem is written with admirable clearness and point; Law's defence of enthusiasm is one of the best things he wrote, and Byrom does full justice to it. 'Enthusiasm,' meaning, more especially 'a misconceit of inspiration^72 <#sdfootnote72sym> ^5 ' the laying claim to peculiar divine guidance or 'inner light,' resulting in anything approaching fanaticism or even emotion, was a quality equally abhorred and feared in the eighteenth century by philosophers, divines and methodists, indeed, by everyone except mystics. The first care of every writer and thinker was to clear himself of any suspicion of this 'horrid thing^73 <#sdfootnote73sym> ^6 ' Law's argument, which is to the effect that enthusiasm is but the kindling of the driving desire or will of every intelligent creature, is well summarized by Byrom: — [327]
Think not that you are no Enthusiast, then!
All Men are such, as sure as they are Men.
The Thing itself is not at all to blame
'Tis in each State of human Life the same,
...
That which concerns us therefore, is to see
What Species of Enthusiasts we be^74 <#sdfootnote74sym>^1 .

Byrom hoped that, by turning them into verse, Law's later teachings might reach a larger public^75 <#sdfootnote75sym>^2 , and, in this. Law evidently agreed with him, looking upon him as a valuable ally. Byrom's work certainly did not lack appreciation by his contemporaries; Warburton — who had no cause to love him — thought highly of it, and Wesley, who ascribes to him all the wit and humour of Swift, together with much more learning, says that in his poems are 'some of the noblest truths expressed with the utmost energy of language, and the strongest colours of poetry^76 <#sdfootnote76sym> ^3 .'

Henry Brooke^77 <#sdfootnote77sym>^4 was another writer who was deeply imbued with Boehme's thought, and his expression of it, imbedded in that curious book /The Fool of Quality/ (1766 — 70), reached, probably, a larger public than did Law's mystical treatises^78 <#sdfootnote78sym> ^5 . In many ways, Brooke must have been a charming character, original, tender-hearted, overflowing with sentiment, but entirely incapable of concentration or even continuity of thought. His book is a brave one, full of high ideals. It is an extraordinary mixture of schoolboy pranks, romantic adventures, stories — ancient and modern — ethical dialogues, dissertations on mystical philosophy, political economy, the British constitution, the relation of the sexes, the training of a gentleman and many other topics. Mr Meekly and Mr Fenton (or Clinton) are Brooke's two exponents of a very general and diluted form of 'Behmenism.' The existence of the two wills, the formation of Christ within the soul, the reflection of God's image in matter as in a mirror, the nature of beauty, of man and of God, the fall of Lucifer and the angels, and of Adam — all these things are discussed and explained in mystical language, steeped in emotion and sentiment^79 <#sdfootnote79sym>^6 .
[328]
/The Fool of Quality/ found favour with John Wesley, who reprinted it in 1781, under the title /The History of Henry Earl of Moreland/. In doing this, he reduced it from five volumes to two, omitting, as he says in his preface, ' a great part of the mystic Divinity, as it is more philosophical than Scriptural.' He goes on to speak of the book with the highest praise, 'I now venture to recommend the following Treatise as the most excellent in its kind of any that I have seen, either in the English, or any other language' ; its greatest excellence being 'that it continually strikes at the heart ... I know not who can survey it with tearless eyes, unless he has a heart of stone.' Launched thus, with the imprimatur of their great leader, it became favourite reading with generations of devout Wesleyans, and, in this form, passed through many editions^80 <#sdfootnote80sym> ^1 .

Mystics, unlike other thinkers, scientific or philosophical, have little chronological development, since mysticism can neither age nor die. They rarely found schools of thought in their own day. It is, therefore, not surprising that, in spite of various strains of a mystic tendency, the mysticism of Law and his small circle of followers had no marked influence on the main stream of eighteenth century thought. The atmosphere of the age was antagonistic to it, and it remained an undercurrent only, the impulse given by Law in this direction spending itself finally among little-known dreamers and eccentrics^81 <#sdfootnote81sym>^2 .

Later, some of the root - ideas of Boehme returned to England by way of Hegel, Schelling, Jung-Stilling and Friedrich Schlegel, or through Boehme's French disciple, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin. They influenced Coleridge^82 <#sdfootnote82sym> ^3 , and profoundly modified nineteenth century conceptions, thus preparing the way for the better understanding of mystical thought. Blake's prophetic books are only now, after a hundred years, beginning to find readers, and, undoubtedly, Law's Appeal, if it were more widely known, would, in the twentieth century, win the response for which it has long been waiting.

1 <#sdfootnote1anc> See vol. VIII, chap. x

2 <#sdfootnote2anc> 2 For an interesting detailed account of this phase
of religious life, with full references to original documents, see
Studies in Mystical Religion, 1909, by Jones, K. M., chaps. XVI and XVII.

3 <#sdfootnote3anc> See, for instance, Pagitt's /Heresiography/, 1645,
dedication to the lord mayor ; or Edwards, who, in his /Gangraena/,
1646, names 176, and, later, 23 more, ' /errors, heresies, blasphemies/.'

4 <#sdfootnote4anc> /Areopagitica, 1644/

5 <#sdfootnote5anc> 3 13,562 Friends suffered imprisonment during the
years 1661 — 97, while 198 were transported overseas and 338 died in
prison or of their wounds. See Inner Life of the Religious Societies of
the Commonwealth, by Barclay, pp. 474 — 8.

6 <#sdfootnote6anc> For further observations on early quakerism in its
connection with literature, see vol. VIII, chap. IV.

7 <#sdfootnote7anc>Charles I, who, shortly before his death, read
Boehme's Forty Questions, just then translated into English, much
admired it. See a most interesting MS letter in Latin from Francis Lee
to P. Poiret in Dr Williams's library, C 5 . 30.

8 <#sdfootnote8anc> Jacob Behmont's Books were the chief books that the
Quakers bought, for there is the Principle or Foundation of their
Religion.' A Looking Glass for George Fox, 1667, p. 5. But Boehme was
not wholly approved of even among the early quakers ; see Liner Life of
the Religious Societies, p. 479. For the influence of Boehme on Fox and
Winstauley, see Studies in Mystical Religion, pp. 494—5; cf., also.
Fox's Journal for 1648, 8th ed., vol. i, pp. 28 — 9, with Boehme's Three
Principles, chap, xx, §§ 39 — 42 ; also, life of J. B. in ' Law's
edition,' vol. i, p. xiii, or the Signatura Rerum.

9 <#sdfootnote9anc> See Way to Divine Knowledge, Law's Works, vol. vii,
pp. 84, 85 ; Byrom's Journal vol. I, part 2, pp. 560, 598 ; vol. II,
part 2, pp. 193, 216, 236, 285, 310—11, 328, 377, 380.

10 <#sdfootnote10anc> See Eichard Baxter's Autobiography, Reliquiae
Baxterianae, 1696, part I p. 77.

11 <#sdfootnote11anc> "He Anthroposophus and Floud,

And Jacob Behmen understood."

Hudibras, i, canto 1, cf. A Tale of a Tub, sect, v, and Martinus
Scriblerus, end of chap. I.

12 <#sdfootnote12anc> See Aubrey's Lives.

13 <#sdfootnote13anc> Gibbon's Memoirs, ed. Hill, G. B., 1900, p. 24.

14 <#sdfootnote14anc> 1 See Walton's Notes, p. 499. The duty on which
Law most insisted was charity ; see his defence of indiscriminate
giving, in A Serious Call, Works, vol. iv, pp. 114 — 18.

15 <#sdfootnote15anc> For an excellent illustration of the principles
and arguments on both sides, compare Law's letter from Cambridge,
written to his brother at the time, with that of his future friend Byrom
at the same date. Both are quoted by Overton, J. H., William Law, Non
juror and Mystic, 1881, pp. 13 — 16.

16 <#sdfootnote16anc> The Constitution of the Catholic Church, and the
Nature and Consequences of Schism. 1716.

17 <#sdfootnote17anc> 2 In the course of July 1717, 74 pamphlets
appeared on the subject, and, at one crisis, for a day or two, the
business of the city was at a standstill, little was done on the
Exchange and many shops were shut. See Hoadly's Works, vol. ii, pp. 385,
429 ; also Sir Leslie Stephen's English Thought in the 18th Century,
vol. ii, p. 156.

18 <#sdfootnote18anc> 3 See Hoadly's Works, vol. ii, pp. 694 — 5, where
he gives his reasons for not answering Law.

19 <#sdfootnote19anc> 4 For some of the side issues which were
vehemently discussed by other writers, Bee Leslie Stephen, vol. ii, p. 157.

20 <#sdfootnote20anc> 5 Works, vol. I, Letter 1, pp. 6, 7.

21 <#sdfootnote21anc> 6 Ibid. pp. 14, 15.

22 <#sdfootnote22anc> 1 So defined by Hoadly in his sermon /The Nature
of the Kingdom or Church of Christ/, p. 7.

23 <#sdfootnote23anc> 2 The Grumbling Hive, first printed 1705, republished with explanatory notes under the title The Fable of the Bees, 1714.

24 <#sdfootnote24anc> Christianity as Old as the Creation, p. 20.

25 <#sdfootnote25anc> 4 The Case of Reason, Works, vol. ii, p. 9.

26 <#sdfootnote26anc> 5 Ibid, p, 7.

27 <#sdfootnote27anc> 1 The Case of Reason, p. 3

28 <#sdfootnote28anc> 2 Ibid. p. 37

29 <#sdfootnote29anc> 3 Ibid. p. 39.

30 <#sdfootnote30anc> 4 Ibid. pp. 16, 17.

31 <#sdfootnote31anc> 1 Sermon CVII, Wesley's Works, 11th ed., 1856,
vol. VII, p. 194

32 <#sdfootnote32anc> 2 Letter to Law of 1738, quoted by Overton, p. 33.

33 <#sdfootnote33anc> 3 Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Hill, G.
Birkbeck, 1887, vol. i, p. 68, also vol. ii, p. 122

34 <#sdfootnote34anc> 4 Gibbon's Memoirs, ed. Hill, G. B., 1900, p. 23.

35 <#sdfootnote35anc> 5 Byrom's Journal, vol. ii, part 2, p. 634.

36 <#sdfootnote36anc> 6 See Some Animadversions upon Dr Trapp's late
Reply, Works, vol. vi, p. 319.

37 <#sdfootnote37anc> 1 See /Recherche de la Vérité/, specially livre iii, chap, vi, /Que nous voyons toutes choses en Dieu./

38 <#sdfootnote38anc> 2 See /The Spirit of Love, Works/, vol. viii, pp.
31 and 33.

39 <#sdfootnote39anc> 1 'Without contraries is no progression,' as Blake
/puts it in his development of the same thesis in The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell/.

40 <#sdfootnote40anc> 1 Boehme refers to these seven forces in all his
writings, but see his Threefold Life of Man, chap, i, §§ 23—32 ; chap,
ii, §§ 27—36, 73 ; chap, ni, § 1 ; chap, iv, §§ 5, 12 ; or Signatura
Rerum, chap, xiv, §§ 10 — 15.

41 <#sdfootnote41anc> 1 Mysterium Magnum, part i, chap, VIII.

42 <#sdfootnote42anc> 1 Cf. St Augustine, ' /To will God entirely is to
have Him/,' /The City of God/, book xi, chap. IV ; or Ruysbroek's answer
to the priests from Paris who came to consult him on the state of their
souls : '/You are as you desire to b/e.'

43 <#sdfootnote43anc> 2 ' /Hunger is all/, and in all worlds everything
lives in it, and by it.' See Law's letter to Langcake, 7 September 1751,
printed in Walton's Notes and Materials, p. 541.

44 <#sdfootnote44anc> 3 See Law's letter to W. Walker, Byrom's Journal,
vol. i, part 2, p. 559.

45 <#sdfootnote45anc> 1 /An Appeal to all that doubt or disbelieve the
Truths of the Gospel, Works/, vol. vi, pp. 27—8.

46 <#sdfootnote46anc> 2 /The Spirit of Prayer, Works/, vol. vii, p. 24.

47 <#sdfootnote47anc> 3 Ibid. p. 23.

48 <#sdfootnote48anc> 4 Ibid. p. 20.

49 <#sdfootnote49anc> 5 /The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works,/ vol. vii,
pp. 138 — 9.

50 <#sdfootnote50anc> 1 See /The Spirit of Prayer, Works/, vol. vii, pp. 150 — 1.

51 <#sdfootnote51anc> 2 /An Appeal, Works/, vol. vi, p. 169.

52 <#sdfootnote52anc> 3 Ibid. pp. 19—20.

53 <#sdfootnote53anc> 4 Ibid. pp. 69, 80

54 <#sdfootnote54anc> 5 /The Spirit of Prayer, Works/, vol. vii, pp. 23, 27.

55 <#sdfootnote55anc> 6 /The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works/, vol. vii,
p. 60.

56 <#sdfootnote56anc> 7 /The Spirit of Prayer, Work/s, vol. vii, p. 68.
See, also, ibid. pp. 91 — 2.

57 <#sdfootnote57anc> 8 See /The Way to Divine Knowledge/, Works, vol.
vii, pp. 118 — 28.

58 <#sdfootnote58anc> 1 See /The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works/, vol.
vii, pp. 50—1.

59 <#sdfootnote59anc> 2 Ibid. p. 127.

60 <#sdfootnote60anc> 3 Ibid, p. 93.

61 <#sdfootnote61anc> 3 See Bigg, Charles, in his introduction to /A
Serious Call/, pp. xxv and xxviii; also, for a view of Law's later
thought, Stephen, Leslie, /English Thought in the 18th Century, /vol.
II, pp. 405 — 9

62 <#sdfootnote62anc> 1 Cf. The Pond, in The Poems of John Byrom
(Chetham Society, 1894), part i, pp. 196—202.

63 <#sdfootnote63anc> 1 See Bigg's introduction to A Serious Call, 1899,
p. xxix.

64 <#sdfootnote64anc> 2 See Overton, chap, xxi, Law's opponents.

65 <#sdfootnote65anc> 3 Works, vol. IX, Letter ix, p. 123.

66 <#sdfootnote66anc> 1 For a full account of the relations of Wesley
and Law, and the text of their two famous letters, see Overton, pp. 80 —
92, and see, also, the account in Byrom's Journal, vol. II, part 1, pp.
268—70.

67 <#sdfootnote67anc> 2 See Byrom's Journal, vol. ii, part 1, p. 181,
and for later methodist views, The Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, by
Thomas Jackson, 1841, vol. i, pp. 52, 53, 112, 113.

68 <#sdfootnote68anc> 1 ' how much better he from whom I draw

Though deep yet clear his system — "Master Law."

/Master/ I call him...' (/Epistle to a Gentleman of the Temple/.)

69 <#sdfootnote69anc> 2 See, for an example of their conversations,
which, in the variety of its topics, and distinctive character of its
sentiments, throws much light on Law's thoughts and ideals, that of
Saturday, 7 June 1735.

70 <#sdfootnote70anc> 3 Especially in his song 'Why prithee now' (Poems,
i, 115), or his early pastoral, ' My Time, ye Muses.'

71 <#sdfootnote71anc> 4 As in the famous lines upon Handel and
Bononcini, often attributed to Swift (Poems, I, 35), and the Pretender
toast (Poems, i, 572).

72 <#sdfootnote72anc> 5 Henry More, /Enthusiasmus Triumphatus/, 1662, § 2.

73 <#sdfootnote73anc> 6 Bishop Butler, when talking once to Wesley,
exclaimed, ' Sir, the pretending to extraordinary revelation or gifts of
the Holy Ghost is a horrid thing, a very horrid thing.' For an admirable
account of ' Enthusiasm,' see The English Church in the 18th Century, by
Abbey and Overton, vol. i, chap, ix ; also a note by Ward, A. W., in
Byrom's Poems, vol. ii, pt. 1, pp. 169—79; and a note by Hill, G.
Birkbeck, in Gibbon's Memoirs, 1900, p. 22.

74 <#sdfootnote74anc> 1 Byrom's /Poems/, II, 1, pp. 190 — 1.

75 <#sdfootnote75anc> 2 ' Since different ways of telling may excite

In different minds Attention to what's right,
And men (I measure by myself) sometimes,

Averse to Reas'ning, may be taught by Rimes.' /Poems/, ii, 1, 164.

76 <#sdfootnote76anc> 3 Wesley's Journal, Monday, 12 July 1773.

77 <#sdfootnote77anc> 4 The uncle of the Henry Brooke of Dublin, who
knew Law and greatly admired him.

78 <#sdfootnote78anc> 5 Brooke also wrote a large number of plays and
poems, two of the latter being full of mystical thought. /Universal
Beauty/ (1735 — (i) and /Redemption/ (1772). As to Brooke's novels of.
vol. x, chapter III, post.

79 <#sdfootnote79anc> 6 See /The Fool of Quality/, ed. Baker, E. A., 1906, pp. 30, 31, 33, 39, 133—6, 142, 258—60, 328—30, 336, 367—9, 394.

80 <#sdfootnote80anc> 1 Wesley's alterations in wording are most
instructive and interesting, for he has not hesitated to alter as well
as to omit passages. Cf. Clinton's account of the nature of man and God
in Wesley, ed. of 1781, vol. ii, pp. 286 — 7, with Brooke, 1 vol. ed.
1906, p. 367.

81 <#sdfootnote81anc> 2 As, for instance, Francis Okely, or, later, J.
P. Greaves and Christopher Walton. There remains, however, to be traced
an influence which bore fruit in the nineteenth century. Thomas Erskine
of Linlathen was indebted to both Law and Boehme, and he, in his turn,
influenced F. D. Maurice and others.

82 <#sdfootnote82anc> 3 Coleridge also knew both Law and Boehme at first
hand ; for his appreciation of them see Biographia Literaria, chap, ix.
Aids to Reflexion, conclusion, and notes to Southey's Life of Wesley,
3rd ed., 1846, vol. i, p. 476. For his projected work on Boehme, and in
connection with his philosophy, see letter to Lady Beaumont, 1810, in
Memorials of Coleorton, ed. Knight, W., 1887, vol. ii, pp. 105—7.

  ¶ 21:28

  martinistes Saint-Martin pascalis martinez Russie point de vue d'un catholique :

C'est encore en France que se développèrent les Martinistes. Mais quel
est le fondateur de cette secte? car on peut choisir entre Saint-Martin
et Martinez, par lequel il fut initié aux mystères théurgiques11.
Martinez Pascalis, dont on ignore la patrie, que cependant on présume
être Portugais, et qui est mort à Saint Domingue en 17992, trouvait dans
la cabale judaïque la science qui nous révèle tout ce qui concerne Dieu
et les intelligences créées par lui3 2: Martinez admettait la chute des
anges, le péché originel, le Verbe réparateur, la divinité des saintes
Ecritures. Quand Dieu créa l'homme, il lui donna un corps matériel :
auparavajit ( quoi ! avant d'exister ! ), il avait un corps élémentaire
Le monde aussi était dans l'état d'élément : Dieu coordonna l'état de
toutes les créatures physiques à celui de l'homme.
Saint-Martin, né à Amboise en iy43, fit ses études à Pont-le-Voy, fut
d'abord avocat, puis officier au régiment de Foix. Etant à Bordeaux, il
eut occasion de connaître Martinez Pascalis, qu'il cite pour son premier
instituteur. Son goût ne s'accordant pas avec le tumulte des armes, il
obtint sa retraite, voyagea en Italie et en Angleterre, passa trois mois
à Lyon, puis vint se fixer à Paris où il demeura jusqu'à la révolution,
et mourut à Aulnay près Paris, en 18044.
Saint-Martin prend le titre de philosophe inconnu, en tête de plusieurs
de ses ouvrages. Le premier, qui parut en 1775, avait pour titre : Des
Erreurs et de la Vérité, ou les hommes rappelés aux vrais principes de
la science5 3. « C'est à Lyon, dit-il, que je l'ai écrit par
désœuvrement et par colère contre les philosophes ; j'étais indigné de
lire, dans Boulanger, que les religions n'avaient pris naissance que
dans la frayeur occasionnée par les catastrophes de la nature. C'est
pour avoir oublié les principes dont je traite, que toutes les erreurs
dévorent la terre, et que les «hommes ont embrassé une variété
universelle de dogmes et de systèmes. Cependant, quoique la lumière soit
faite pour tous les yeux, il est encore plus certain que tous les yeux
ne sont pas faits pour la voir dans son éclat; et le petit nombre de
ceux qui sont dépositaires des vérités que j'annonce est voué à la
prudence et à la discrétion par les engagements les plus formels. Aussi
me suis-je promis d'en user avec beaucoup de réserve dans cet écrit, et
de m'y envelopper d'un voile que les yeux, les moins ordinaires ne
pourront pas toujours percer, d'autant que j'y parle quelquefois de
toute autre chose que de ce dont je parais traiter. » II s'est ménagé,
comme on le voit, le moyen d'être inintelligible; et il s'est si bien
enveloppe, que ce qu'il y a da plus clair dans le livre, c'est le titre.
Il fit ensuite paraître son Tableau de l'ordre naturel, [Homme de désir,
Lettre sur la révolution française, un opuscule sur les Institutions
propres à fonder la morale d'un peuple, un Essai sur les signes.
Lui-même nous apprend qu'il a fait Ecce homo, d'après une notion vive
qu'il avait eue à Strasbourg. C'est dans cette ville qu'il a écrit le
Nouvel homme, à l'instigation d'un neveu de Swedenborg.
Le tome 2 de l'ouvrage intitulé : De l'esprit des choses6 1, offre clos
morceaux intéressants, par lesquels il justifie divers faits consignés
dans l'Ecriture sainte et sur lesquels les incrédules avaient formé des
objections ; par exemple, le matérialisme dont ils ont accusé Moïse.
Mais à quelques vues saines s'intercalent une foule de choses
inintelligibles, au milieu desquelles la raison s'égare.
Le Ministère de l'homme esprit, par le philosophe inconnu, parut en
180272. Dans un parallèle entre le christianisme et le catholicisme,
comme si ces deux choses n'étaient pas identiques, il s'est donné libre
carrière à dénaturer et calomnier le catholicisme, « qui n'est, dit-il,
que le séminaire, la voie d'épreuves et de travail, la région des
règles, la discipline du néophyte pour arriver au christianisme. — Le
christianisme repose immédiatement sur la parole non écrite, il porte
notre foi jusque dans la religion lumineuse de la parole divine : le
catholicisme repose, en général, sur la parole écrite ou sur l'Evangile,
et particulièrement sur la messe ; il borne la foi aux limites de la
parole écrite ou de la tradition. — Le christianisme est le terme, le
catholicisme n'est que le moyen ; le christianisme est le fruit de
l'arbre, le catholicisme ne peut en être que l'engrais ; le
christianisme n'a suscité la guerre que contre le péché, le catholicisme
l'a suscitée contre les hommes8 1. » L'auteur étaye sans doute de
quelques preuves ses assertions ? Non ; assurer d'un air tranchant, cela
lui suffit.
Saint-Martin a publié aussi un Eclair sur l'association humaine9 2. Le
philosophe inconnu, qui ne se croyait pas digne de dénouer les cordons
de Boehm10 3, s'est cru digne au moins de traduire divers écrits de ce
visionnaire : les Trois principes de l'essence divine, la Triple vie,
l'Aurore naissante. « On a voulu tout matérialiser, dit le traducteur;
mais l'époque approche où les sciences divines seront réconciliées11
avec les sciences naturelles : à force de scruter celles-ci, et de
tourmenter les éléments, on remontera à la source. L'aurore naissante
n'est que le premier bourgeon de » la branche12 4. »
On sera surpris peut-être de ne pas trouver ici un précis raisonné des
idées de S. Martin, un corps de doctrine ; mais à qui la faute? Ses
disciples contestent la faculté de l'apprécier à quiconque n'est pas
initié dans son système : tel ne l'est qu'au premier degré; tel autre au
second, au troisième. A merveille ! Mais, si le système de Votre maître
est, comme vous le prétendez, si intéressant, si avantageux pour
l'humanité, pourquoi ne pas le mettre à la portée de tout le monde? De
cette région élevée où vous le dites placé, ne pourrait-il s'abaisser
jusqu'à l'intelligence du vulgaire? — Non, répondez-vous: c'est chose
impossible. — Alors, permettez-nous d'élever des doutes sur l'importance
et l'avantage de son système ; car en fait de religion et morale, il est
dans la bonté de Dieu, et dans l'ordre essentiel des choses, que ce qui
est utile à tous, soit accessible à tous. Au surplus, Saint-Martin nous
dit : « II n'y a que le développement radical de notre essence intime
qui puisse nous conduire au spiritalisme actif13 5. » Et si ce
développement radical ne s'est pas encore opéré chez bien des gens, il
n'est pas surprenant qu'ils soient encore à grande distance du
spiritalisme actif, et que, n'étant que des hommes du torrent, ils ne
puissent comprendre l'Homme de désir.
La conformité des dogmes des Martinistes français avec ceux d'une secte
qui naquit dans l'université de Moscou vers la fin du règne de Catherine
II, et qui eut pour chef le professeur Schwarts, a fait donner le nom de
Martinistes aux membres de cette secte. Ils étaient nombreux à la fin du
XVIIIe siècle14 1.Mais ayant traduit en russe quelques-uns de leurs
écrits, et cherché à répandre leur doctrine, plusieurs furent
emprisonnés, puis élargis quand Paul monta sur le trône. Actuellement,
ils sont réduits à un petit nombre. Ils admirent Swedenborg, Boehm,
Ekartshausen, et d'autres écrivains mystiques. Ils recueillent les
livres magiques et cabalistiques, les peintures hiéroglyphiques,
emblèmes des vertus et des vices, et tout ce qui tient aux sciences
occultes. Ils professent un grand respect pour la parole divine, qui
révèle non-seulement l'histoire de la chute et de la délivrance de
l'homme, mais qui, selon eux, contient encore les secrets de la nature;
aussi cherchent-ils partout dans la Bible des sens mystiques. Tel est à
peu près le récit que faisait Pinkerton de cette secte en 1817 152.

  ¶ 17:02

  rites masonic martinism cohen & more * Rite* The Latin word ritus, whence we get the English rite, signifies an approved usage or custom, or an external observance. Vossius derives it by metathesis from the Greek ***, whence literally it signifies a trodden path, and, metaphorically, a long-followed custom. As a Masonic term its application is therefore apparent. It signifies a method of conferring Masonic light by a collection and distribution of degrees. It is. in other words, the method and order observed in the government of a Masonic system.

The original system of Speculative Masonry consisted of only the three Symbolic degrees, called, therefore, Ancient Craft Masonry. Such was the condition of Free-masonry at the time of what is called the revival m 1717. Hence, this was the original Rite or approved usage, and so it continued in England until the year 1813, when at the union of the two Grand Lodges the "Holy Royal Arch'' was declared to be a part of the system; and thus the English Rite was made legitimately to consist of four degrees.

But on the Continent of Europe, the organization of new systems began at a much earlier period, and by the invention of what are known as the high degrees a multitude of Rites was established. All of these agreed in one important essential. They were built upon the three Symbolic degrees, which, in every instance, constituted the fundamental basis upon which they were erected. They were intended as an expansion and development of the Masonic ideas contained in these degrees. The Apprentice. Fellow-Craft, and Master's degrees were the porch through which every initiate was required to pass before he could gain entrance into the inner temple which had been erected by the founders of the Rite. They were the text, and the high degrees the commentary.

Hence arises the law, that whatever may be the constitution and teachings of any Rite as to the higher degrees peculiar to it, the three symbolic degrees being common to all the Rites, a Master Mason, in any one of the Rites, may visit and labor in a Master's Lodge of every other Rite. It is only after that degree is passed that the exclusiveness of each Rite begins to operate.

There has been a multitude of these Rites. Some of them have lived only with their authors, and died when their parental energy in fostering them ceased to exert itself. Others have had a more permanent existence, and still continue to divide the Masonic family, furnishing, however, only diverse methods of attaining to the same great end, the acquisition of Divine Truth by Masonic light. Ragon, in his Tuileur Général supplies us with the names of a hundred and eight, under the different titles of Rites, Orders, and Academies. But many of these are unmasonics, being merely of a political, social, or literary character. The following catalogue embraces the most important of those which have hitherto or still continue to arrest the attention of the Masonic student.

1. York Rite.
2. Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
3. French or Modem Rite.
4. American Rite.
5. Philosophic Scottish Rite.
6. Primitive Scottish Rite.
7. Reformed Rite.
8. Reformed Helvetic Rite.
9. Fessler's Rite.
10. Schröder's Rite.
11. Rite of the Grand Lodge of the Three Globes.
12. Rite of the Elect of Truth.
13. Rite of the Vielle Bru.
14. Rite of the Chapter of Clermont.
15. Pemetty's Rite.
16. Rite of the Blazing Star.
17. Chastanier's Rite.
18. Rite of the Philalethes.
19. Primitive Rite of the Philadelphians.
20. Rite of Martinism.
21. Rite of Brother Henoch.
22. Rite of Misraim.
23. Rite of Memphis.
24. Rite of Strict Observance.
25. Rite of Lax Observance.
26. Rite of African Architects.
27. Rite of Brothers of Asia.
28. Rite of Perfection.
29. Rite of Elected Cohens.
30. Rite of the Emperors of the East and West.
31. Primitive Rite of Narbonne.
32. Rite of the Order of the Temple.
33. Swedish Rite.
34. Rite of Swedenborg.
35. Rite of Zinnendorf .
36. Egyptian Rite of Cagliostro.
37. Rite of the Beneficent Knights of the Holy City.
[627 vue 196]
These Rites are not here given in the order of date or of importance. The distinct history of each will be found under its appropriate title.

*Rite des Elus Coens, ou Prêtres*. A system adopted in 1750, but which did not attain its full vigor until twenty-five years thereafter, when Lodges were opened in Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux, and Toulouse. The devotees of Martinez Pasqualis, the founder, were called Martinistes, and were partly Hermetic and partly Swedenborgian^1 <#sdfootnote1sym> in their teachings. Martinez was a religious man, and based his teachings partly on the Jewish Kabbala and partly on Hermetic supernaturalism. The grades were as follows: 1. Apprenti; 2. Compagnon; 3. Maître; 4. Grand Elu; 5. Apprenti Coen; 6. Compagnon Coen; 7. Maître Coen; 8. Grand Architecte; 9. Grand Commandeur.

1 <#sdfootnote1anc> Il est possible d'attribuer cette erreur à une
lecture papusienne d'informations.

  ¶ 15:43

  paschalis martinez martinès de pasqually élu cohen saint-martin quelques erreurs de mackey Paschalis Martinez. The founder of a new Rite or modification of Masonry, called by him the Rite of elected Cohens or Priests. It was divided into two classes, in the first of which was represented the fall of man from virtue and happiness, and in the second, his final restoration. It consisted of nine degrees, namely:
1. Apprentice; 2. Fellow-Craft; 3. Master; 4 Grand Elect: 5. Apprentice Cohen; 6. Fellow-Craft Cohen; 7. Master Cohen; 8. Grand Architect; 9. Knight Commander.
Paschalis first introduced this Rite into some of the Lodges of Marseille, Toulouse, and Bordeaux, and afterward, in 1767, he extended it to Paris, where, for a short time, it was rather popular, ranking some of the Parisian literati among its disciples. It has now ceased to exist.

Paschalis was a German^1 <#sdfootnote1sym>, born about the year 1700, of poor but respectable parentage. At the age of sixteen he acquired a knowledge of Greek and Latin^2 <#sdfootnote2sym>. He then traveled through Turkey Arabia, and Palestine, where he made himself acquainted with the Kabbalistic learning of the Jews. He subsequently repaired to Paris, where he established his Rite.

Paschalis was the Master of St. Martin, who afterward reformed his Rite. After living for some years at Paris, he went to St. Domingo, where he died in 1779. Thory, in his histoire de la Fondation du Grand Orient de Francs (pp. 239-253), has given very full details of this Rite and of its receptions.

1 <#sdfootnote1anc> Quelle est la source de cette « erreur », une de
plus sur l'ensemble des erreurs de l'article?

2 <#sdfootnote2anc>Martinès was unable to any translation from latin to
french ! C'est à Paris avec l'abbé Fournié qu'il semble avoir traduit de
latin à français des textes importants pour son rite!

  ¶ 20:00

  past master ancien vénérable maitre passé passé maître Past. An epithet applied in Masonry to an officer who has held an office
for the prescribed period for which he was elected, and has then
retired. Thus, a Past Master is one who has presided for twelve months
over a Lodge, and the Past High Priest one who, for the same period, has
presided over a Chapter. The French use the word passé in the same
sense, but they have also the word ancien, with a similar meaning. Thus,
while they would employ Maître passé to designate the degree of Past
Master, they would call the official Past Master, who had retired from
the chair at the expiration of his term of service, an Ancien Vénérable
or Ancien Maître.

Past Master. An honorary degree conferred on the Master of a Lodge at
his installation into office. In this degree the necessary instructions
are conferred respecting the various ceremonies of the Order, such as
installations, processions, the laying of comer-stones, etc.

When a brother, who has never before presided, has been elected the
Master of a Lodge, an emergent Lodge of Past Masters, consisting of not
leas than three, is convened, and all but Past Masters retiring, the
degree is conferred upon the newly elected officer.

Some form of ceremony at the installation of a new Master seems to have
been adopted at an early period after the revival. In the ''manner of
constituting a new Lodge," as practised by the Duke of Wharton, who was
Grand Master in 1723, the language used by the Grand Master when placing
the candidate in the chair is given, and he is said to use "some other
expressions that are proper and usual on that occasion, but not proper
to be written." (Constitutions, 1738, p. 150.) Whence we conclude that
there was an esoteric ceremony. Often the rituals tell us that this
ceremony consisted only in the outgoing Master communicating certain
modes of recognition to his successor. And this actually, even at this
day, constitutes the essential ingredient of the Past Master's Degree.

The degree is also conferred in Royal Arch Chapters, where it succeeds
the Mark Master's Degree. The conferring of this degree, which has no
historical connection with the rest of the degrees, in a Chapter, arises
from the following circumstance: Originally, when Chapters of Royal Arch
Masonry were under the government of Lodges in which the degree was then
always conferred, it was a part of the regulations that no one could
receive the Royal Arch Degree unless he had previously presided in the
Lodge as Master. When the Chapters became independent, the regulation
could not be abolished, for that would have been an innovation; the
difficulty has, therefore, been obviated, by making every candidate for
the degree of Royal Arch a Past Virtual Master before his exaltation.

[Under the English Constitution this practise was forbidden in 1826, but
seems to have lingered on in some parts until 1850.]

Some extraneous ceremonies, by no means to their inventor, were at an
early period introduced into America. In 1856, the General Grand
Chapter, by a unanimous vote, ordered these ceremonies to be
discontinued, and the simpler mode of investiture to be used; but the
order has only been partially obeyed, and many Chapters still continue
what one can scarcely help calling the indecorous form of initiation
into the degree.

For several years past the question has been agitated in some of the
Grand Lodges of the United States, whether this degree is within the
jurisdiction of Symbolic or of Royal Arch Masonry. The explanation of
its introduction into Chapters, just given, manifestly demonstrates that
the jurisdiction over it by Chapters is altogether an assumed one. The
Past Master of a Chapter is only a quasi Past Master; the true and
legitimate Past Master is the one who has presided over a Symbolic Lodge.

Past Masters are admitted to membership in many Grand Lodges, and by
some the inherent right has been claimed to sit in those bodies. But the
most eminent Masonic authorities have made a contrary decision, and the
general, and, indeed, almost universal opinion now is that Past Masters
obtain their seats in Grand Lodges by courtesy, and in consequence of
local regulations, and not by inherent right.

The jewel of a Past Master in the United States is a pair of compasses
extended to sixty degrees on the fourth part of a circle, with a sun in
the center. In England it was formerly the square on a quadrant, but is
at present the square with the forty-seventh problem of Euclid engraved
on a silver plate suspended within it.

The French have two titles to express this degree. They apply Maitre
passé to the Past Master of the English and American system, and they
call in their own system one who has formerly resided over a Lodge an
Ancien Maître. The indiscriminate use of these titles sometimes leads to
confusion in the translation of their rituals and treatises.

  ¶ 18:19

  Masonry, maçonnerie meaning of a word sens d'un mot Masoney. Used in the Strassburg Constitutions, and other German works of the Middle Ages, as equivalent to the modem Masonry.
Kloss translates it by Masonhood,
Lessing derives it from masa, Anglo-Saxon, a table, and says it means a Society of the Table.
Nicolai deduces it from the Low Latin massonya, which means both a club and a key, and says it means an exclusive society or club, and so, he thinks, we get our word Masonry,
Krause traces it to mas, mass, food or a banquet.
It is a pity to attack these speculations, but we are inclined to look at Masonry as simply a corruption of the English Masonrie.
mackey encyclopaedia

ceci posé, les délires maçonniques sont amusants
ainsi, les maçons seraient les "enfants de la table ou l'on partage le pain et le vin"
certains maçons se réjouiront, d'autres vont en mourir d'envie

si maçon et messe tournent autour de la table, du plateau, ou de l'autel...

  ¶ 17:51

  empire 19e century famous men ! *THE NINETEENTH CENTURY *

*THE EMPIRE*

THE liberator Napoleon soon proved a tyrant: literature and oratory
languished under the censorship and threats of imprisonment. The
discourses of politicians were no longer heard, and Napoleon alone was
free to harangue his troops and tell them how "forty centuries looked
down on them from the Pyramids," or disguise in the language of
moderation and statesmanship the lawlessness of the usurper.

One group of men Napoleon could not crush: these were the philosophers,
the Ideologists, whom he scornfully called the *ideologues*. They were
no new invention, but the successors and disciples of Condillac,
Helvétius, and the *philosophes*; and Condorcet, and Volney, whom we
have already studied, belong to the line of filiation. But under the new
régime, these "nebulous metaphysicians," as Napoleon also called them,
still inspired by the principles of freedom which the Revolution had
failed to establish, represented the spirit of liberal opposition in
politics, literature, and philosophy, or the rights of reason
untrammelled by imperial discipline. Their influence, too, made itself
felt in many of the newly-established scientific schools and bodies: the
Normal, Central, and Polytechnic schools, the Institute. At the Normal
School, established under the Convention, the lecturers had included
Volney, no less than Saint-Pierre and La Harpe, and the mathematicians
Laplace, Lagrange, and Monge. The periodical of this school of thinkers
was the /Décade philosophique/, and the social centre was the group of
Auteuil, gathered about the widow of Condorcet and her sister, the wife
of Cabanis. The school, it may be seen, stands for the anti-religious
attitude.

The chief Ideologists were Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy, Cabanis
(1757-1808) a doctor, the friend of Franklin, the author of the
/Rapports du physique et du moral/, far from being a ''nebulous
metaphysician," swept away metaphysics, disclaimed any real knowledge of
first causes, and devoted himself to physiology and psychology. Studying
the relations between the body and "soul," with emphasis on the former
as more accessible to direct experiment, he united them and made
physiology and psychology one. He described the relation, by what was
perhaps even to him only a figure of speech, in saying that "the brain
digests impressions and secretes thought," and its function is to
produce images and group them, just as the stomach acts and reacts on
food for the production of tissues.

Destutt de Tracy (1781-1864), of Scotch origin and a collateral
descendant of the Jansenist Arnauld, had the hard-headed logical
aptitudes of both origins. His interest is in logic and the problems of
knowledge, in his /Elements d'idéologie/, his Grammar, and his Logic,
but he still rested philosophy on physiology.

Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy are but the most prominent representatives
of a whole scientific school occupied with the various divisions of the
intellectual life, so that Daunou, Fauriel^1 <#sdfootnote1sym>^1 ,
Ginguene, Raynouard in historical research, J.-B. Say in economics,
helped to introduce a better method into their fields of study. The
Ideologists are neglected today, but they belong to I the genealogy of
positive science. Cabanis was the creator of physiological psychology in
France, and he and De Tracy were the precursors, not merely of worn-out
creeds, such as the phrenology of Gall and Spurzheim, but of more vital
systems of evolution and of positivism.

The Ideologists did not represent the only philosophical [603] school of
their time. Without going so far as the mystic Saint-*Martin*, the
"philosophe inconnu" as he called himself, the translator of Jacob Bohme
and follower of Swedenborg, there were opposed to them those thinkers,
critics more than men of science, called the Traditionalists. They stood
for the reaction against the French Revolution and a return to the
spirit of Catholicism. Like those French thinkers who at the end of the
nineteenth century announced the bankruptcy of science, they proclaimed
at its beginning the failure of eighteenth-century philosophism, but
attacked it with its own tools of argumentation and reason. The chief of
these thinkers were the comte Joseph de Maistre and the vicomte de
Bonald, between whom there were great similarities, though their
conclusions were independently reached.

Joseph de Maistre (1754-1821), though a great name in French literature,
was not a Frenchman and came to Paris only once in his life for a brief
period. A native of Savoy and an official of the king of Sardinia, he
spent nearly fifteen years as minister of his sovereign in Russia. His
life was not a happy one: whether by his own fault or not, he was
constantly struggling against injustice and lack of appreciation on the
part of the king. He might seem to have about him something of the "man
with a grievance," did not the brilliancy of his conversation and the
amenity of his correspondence testify to wit and graces. His
disappointments seem, however, to have soured his view of life, and his
theory is one of cruelty and inhumanity.

Maistre is the chief religious mediaevalist of modem times. To him, much
as in the old allegorical interpretations, the world is a gross
representation of the celestial reality. The spirit of modem times was
to him anathema, and men of science called forth his curses. His
treatise on Baconian philosophy is a mass of vituperation and abuse. An
intellectual descendant of the old Scholastic and rigidly argumentative
theologians, though his /Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg/ take the form of
fluid Platonic /entretiens/, he places religion above everything else.
God rules the world by the principle of authority, not regulating every
action, but leaving to men a certain freedom that sins may be the better
punished. For by chastisement men's sins are atoned. The individual may
suffer unjustly, but he is a part of humanity undergoing retribution for
collective misdeeds. And so Maistre comes to justify warfare and the
executioner, as the agent of God, the judge, applying the lex talionis.

As God is the source of authority, on him depend the representatives of
sovereignty: the monarch in the temporal, the pope above the monarch in
the religious sphere. Maistre is the firm partisan of kingship against
any form of government which, like republicanism, implies a solution of
continuity; he is in his treatise /Du Pape/ the leader in doctrines of
"ultramontanism" and papal infallibility. Thus Maistre is the great
religious reactionary of modem times, and he did more than any one else
to create the state of mind which resulted in the proclamation of papal
infallibility in 1870. It is obvious how, at every step, Joseph de
Maistre is opposed to the spirit of the eighteenth century: to the
anti-religious Voltairianism, to Rousseau's doctrines of the
independence of primitive man and the free contract. He is no less
hostile to what seemed to him to verge on heresy in the Catholic church,
Gallicanism (De l'église gallicane), or the even worse Jansenism.

The other important Traditionalist was Louis de Bonald (1754-1840), a
cut and dried logician, who undertook to prove everything by a sort of
rule of three in which the terms were *cause, means, and effect*.
Bonald^2 <#sdfootnote2sym> considers man as passive, a /tabula rasa/
without innate ideas, just as the most pronounced Condillacian would
have done, but the active cause is God instead of sensation. The world
is created by God and in the image of God. Thus Bonald is nothing but an
inverted eighteenth-century /philosophe/, replacing by the word "God"
and thus ranging himself as a spiritualist, all that the others had
attributed to matter.

Under the Empire criticism had to be subordinate to the censorship. The
reaction against the Revolution necessitated conservative judgments and
the rule of the old Classical spirit expressed in the grand style.
Independence of mind, such as that of Mme de Staël, encountered
persecution. Moreover, by a peculiar but not unparalleled manifestation,
the fiercest political iconoclasts tended to be literary conservatives.
Therefore, Marie- Joseph Ch6nier, the former Jacobin, was entrusted by
the Academy with the drawing-up of an orthodox Tableau of literature
since 1789. The legislative bodies were reduced to impotence, the bar
and the pulpit had to re-echo the praises of Napoleon. The newspapers
were closely watched and the /Journal des Débats/, become /Journal de
l'Empire/, was alone smiled upon by authority. Among critics occupied in
rhetorical compositions on the beauties of the seventeenth-century
literature, or in reviling the audacity of the scientists, only Geoffroy
and Fontanes stand in the first rank, though Hoffman, Dussault, Feletz
had reputation in their day.

Julien-Louis Geoffroy (1743-1814), who had begun his career as the
successor of Fréron in the Année littérairey became the dramatic critic
of the Journal des Débats and the founder of the feuilleton criticism of
current dramatic literature. He was a dry and narrow as well as vicious
critic, a partisan of the seventeenth century, and particularly of
Corneille, perhaps partly because Voltaire had ventured to criticise
that poet in his Commentaire.^3 <#sdfootnote3sym> ^1

Louis Fontanes (1757-1821), who had begun his career by mild-mannered
but not immeritorious meditative poetry, became finally Grand Master of
the University and dispenser of Napoleon's literary favors.

Joseph Joubert (1754-1824), the friend of men like Fontanes and
Chateaubriand, of women of talent like Mme de Beaumont and Mme de
Vintimille, the valetudinarian and recluse, left at his death many
papers, from which in 1838 a posthumous volume [606] of fragments
afterwards enlarged, the /Pensées,/ was gathered. Joubert is but little
read by the French, and is perhaps more appreciated by the cultivated
English-speaking people as a result of Matthew Arnold's essay. But as a
moralist be deserves a place after Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, and
Vauvenargues, and his wise judgments place him high among the
interpreters of literature. His preferences were for the seventeenth
century, with reservations, as opposed to the eighteenth.

The production of novels in the Empire days was large. Napoleon was a
prolific reader of literature of a certain kind, Ossianesque in
vagueness and sentimental in plot. He could not stand Mme de Stael or
Chateaubriand for political reasons. "More novels ending in A!" he said
when /Atala/ appeared; "take it away!" But writers like Ducray-Duminil
flourished. This author, after composing placid stories for the young,
fell under the influence of translations of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels,
such as the /Mysteries of Udolpho./ His chief books, /Victor/, ou
/l'enfant de la forêt/ and /Coelina/, ou /l'enfant du mystère/, had
tremendous vogue. Ducray-Duminil's stories had the usual paraphernalia
of the English "School of Terror," ruined houses, mysterious bells,
strange disguises, imprisoned heroines, murders, and the like, all
embalmed in moralisings and virtuous instructions. Mme Cottin's no less
eminently moral but calmer stories such as Elisabeth^ are still known to
old-fashioned English readers.

There were, however, novels of a different character. Pigault-Lebrun was
the counterpart of Ducray-Duminil from the standpoint of popularity in
"improper" literature. Mme de Krüdener, the Russian Swedenborgian
mystic, was the author of /Valerie/, published in 1803, and through her
influence over the emperor Alexander of Russia, the instigator of the
Holy Alliance. Xavier de Maistre, the brother of Joseph de Maistre and
himself a general in the Russian service, wrote several works of fiction
under the influence of Sterne, such as the /Voyage autour de ma
chambre/, and the /Lépreux de la vallée d'Aoste/.

Poetry and the drama ran in a very thin stream under the Empire.
Mechanical tragedies patterned after Corneille and Voltaire were
galvanised into life by Talma, or by Mlle Georges and Mlle Mars, and
then only if they passed the censorship. They were of the type of
literature that the irreverent Romanticists were to call "vieille
perruque," because of the wigs of the old fogey conservatives faithful
to the fashions of their youth, or "pompier," because the heroes of
Classical painting and play, with their Greek or Roman helmets, fatally
suggested a French fireman's headpiece. Népomucène Lemercier's Agamemnon
in 1797 marked the real climax of the Classical school. But its
mechanical side in its degeneracy may be seen in Brifaut's play,
originally intended to be a Spanish drama named /Don Sanche/, and for
political considerations due to the war in Spain, modified under orders
from the censor, transferred to Assyria and changed without difficulty
into /Ninus II/. The greatest popular success of the period was
Raynouard's /Templiers/, in which the author drew his subject from
French history instead of from antiquity. Luce de Lancival's /Hector/
was another epoch-making play. Lemercier's /Pinto/ is looked upon as a
precursor of the historical comedy and Romantic drama, though he hated
the Romanticists. His Christophe Colomb caused riots and deaths at the
performance because of some bold rhymes and epithets. The specific
comedy writers were Picard, Alexandre Duval, and Etienne.

The poets were numerous and voluble: they had nothing to say, and said
it at great length. The Classicists wrote solemn epics drawn from
national history, as became the bards of imperial heroism, or poured
forth verses to order for state functions. Delille and his school gave
out their descriptive poetry and drawing-room treatises on agriculture.
In lyric and elegiac verse, though there was little vigor and
originality, there was less pretence. The dreamy sentiment of Millevoye,
already discussed, and of Chênedollé (1769-1833), precursors of
Lamartine, was in vogue. Chateaubriand complained of the way [608] in
which Chênedollé ransacked him for motives and inspiration.

Often the lyricism found expression in the genre troubadour, ballads and
songs of pseudo-mediaevalism, of which we have an example in English in
some of the songs of Thomas Haynes Bayly:

Gaily the troubadour
Touched his guitar,
As he came riding
Home from the war.

One writer, the marquis de Surville, even tried the experiment of
Chatterton and of Macpherson, and wrote a large collection of archaic
stanzas which were published as the authentic productions of a
fifteenth-century ancestress, Clotilde de Surville, and caused great
discussion. Macpherson's Ossian itself, still accepted without
controversy, found a translator in Baour- Lormian (1770-1854), who
likewise, in his Veillées poétiques et morales, inspired by Young,
developed the willow and cypress melancholy which was an element of the
milder form of Romanticism.

Fortunately all poetry was not given over to gloom. The witty Classicist
Andrieux (1759-1833) wrote, among other things, comedies, verse stories,
and fables, of which the Meunier de Sans-Souci remains in all
anthologies. Arnault (1766-1834) was another ambitious playwright who
won a name with posterity rather for his epigrammatic fables. The
"Caveau modeme" a successor to the eighteenth-century associations, had
as chief founder Désaugiers (1772-1827), the greatest song writer along
with Stranger; and his Monsieur et Madame Denis and Paris à cinq heures
du matin belong to the undying répertoire of the French chanson.
1 <#sdfootnote1anc> Daunou (1761-1840) initiated Sainte-Beuve into both
the literary and the philosophical traditions of the eighteenth century,
and Fauriel (1772-1844) into historical method and the widening of
knowledge and sympathy of the nineteenth. Fauriel occupied somewhat the
position of a French Herder. Cf . Portraits contemporains, Vol. IV.
2 <#sdfootnote2anc>Passage à comparer avec lcsm sur sa différenciation
entre table rase et table rasée.
3 <#sdfootnote3anc> 1. Napoleon himself liked to lay down the law with
regard to the drama besides listening to his favorite actor Talma, and
would analyse the Cornelian heroes from the standpoint of the imperial
usurper.

  ¶ 18:07

  saint-martin pasqually free-mason secret societies french revolution *SECRET SOCIETIES AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Una Pope 1911
*
THE spiritual life of nations, if it could be fully revealed, would alter many of the judgments of posterity. New interpretations of ancient tragedies and crimes, new motives for speech and action, new inspirations for revolution and war might then present themselves for the consideration of the historian. If it needs divination to discern the aspiration and desire enclosed within the ordinary human soul, how much more does it need divination to read aright the principles and incentives that lay behind historic actions ? Diviners have not written history, and professional historians have generally chosen to deal with facts, rather than with their psychological significance. Because of this preference, certain conventions have grown up amongst the writers of history, and certain obvious economic and social conflicts and conditions have been accepted as the cause of events, at the cost of repudiating that mystical and vague, but ever constant idealism, - 3 - which spurs man on towards his unknown destiny.

Especially has this been the case in dealing with the origin of the French Revolution. Nearly all secular historians have ignored the secret Utopian societies which flourished before its outbreak ; or have agreed that they had no bearing, direct or indirect, upon the actual subversion of affairs. Since the world has always been at the mercy of the idealists, and since human society has ever been the object of their unending empiricism, it is hard to believe that the greatest experiment of modern history was engineered without their co-operation. More than any other age does the eighteenth century need its psychologist, for more than any other age, if interpreted, could it illumine the horizons of generations to come.

Amongst the historians who have attempted to explain the forces which brought about the great upheaval of the eighteenth century there have been priests of the Catholic Church. To the elucidation of the great problems involved they have brought to bear knowledge and diligent research, but we must recognise that the black cassock is the uniform of an army drilled - 4 - and maintained for a specific purpose, and that purpose is war against much that the Revolution stood for. Two priests, Barruel and Deschamps, who feared the cryptic confederacies, wrote books to prove that the purpose of the secret societies before and after the great Revolution was not the betterment of the condition of the people, but the overthrow of the Church, the destruction of Christian society, and the re-establishment of Paganism. However much preparation may have been required to enfranchise thought, no great measure of organisation or mystery was or is needful to enable men to live as Pagans if they so desire, and little meaning is to be extracted from this theory unless it be realised that in some of these works freedom of thought and Paganism are interchangeable terms. Secular amateurs of the curious and unexplained have written desultory books on the same secret societies, and in the early nineteenth century the works of Mounier, de Luchet, and Robison attracted a good deal of attention ; but save for these special pleaders it has been accepted that there is little of practical moment to be noted of the connection between secret societies and the Revolution. In the - 5 - books which have appeared since that date there has been a conspicuous absence of any new material or of any fresh treatment of old theories. Many general histories of masonry have been published exalting masonic influences; but, speaking solely with reference to France, no effort has been made by any scientific or unprejudiced person outside masonry to explain the increasing membership of secret societies, the greater activity of lodges of all rites during the years that preceded the Revolution, and the sudden disappearance of those lodges in the early months of 1789. Nor has it been attempted to place these important factors in progress in right relation with the other inducements and tendencies which drove eighteenth-century France to accomplish her own liberation.

Le Couteulx de Canteleu, who wrote on the general question of the secret societies of the eighteenth century^1 <#sdfootnote1sym>,* professed to have access to documents that gave his words importance and weight, and his book, though slight in character, is one of the most interesting studies on the subject. *Papus (Gerard Encausse)* has written - 6 - on individual founders of rites and on some mystical teachers of the day, and Amiable, an eminent mason, has published a pleasant record of a particular lodge up till the year 1789, as well as a short summary of the influence of masonry on the great Revolution. The published information is fragmentary, as is to be expected in view of the nature of the subject, and the difficulty of grasping the work of the confederates as a whole is insurmountable until further light is cast upon their methods and instruments ; for though the general drift of the underground social currents has frequently been discussed, and though occasionally a microscopic inquiry has been made into ceremonial and the lives of individuals, owing either to lack of material or lack of sincerity, books dealing with these matters are incomplete and partial accounts of what, properly investigated, might prove to be a vast co-ordinated attempt at the reconstruction of society.

It has been the convention for most historians to ignore such activities, just as it has been the practice of priests to recognise in them the destroyers of all morality. Louis Blanc and Henri Martin, in their respective histories, - 7 - each devote a chapter to the discussion of secret societies. The former speaks of masonry as "a denunciation indirect but real and continuous of the miseries of the social order," as " a propaganda in action," a living exhortation." With the exception of these and a few other authors who from time to time allude to the secret societies, historians have elucidated the crisis of the eighteenth century with no estimate of their influence. Taine, of whom it may be said that his thesis occasionally determined the choice of his facts, does not number them among the origins of the new conditions in France.

The Great Revolution has been assumed to be a spontaneous national uprising against oppression, privilege, immorality in high places, and conditions of life making existence a burden for the proletariat. Such a theory would cover the rebellion that razed the Bastille and caused the clamour at Versailles, that destroyed the country houses and killed the nobles; but it does not cover the intellectual and social reforms which were the kernel of the Revolution, and its true objective. These, on the other hand, have been too easily attributed to the publication of the " Encyclopaedia," and of certain other volumes - 8 - by Beccaria, Rousseau, or Voltaire. Books were undoubtedly partially responsible for the awakening of the educated classes. The rationalist presses in Dublin, the Hague, and London, poured pamphlets into France to be sold by itinerant booksellers, who hawked them in country districts concealed beneath a thin layer of prayer-books and catechisms. But the pamphlets and books more often found their way to the public pyre than to the domestic hearth, and it can hardly be argued that these irregularly distributed volumes were directly responsible for the Revolution, though they too formed one of the contributory agencies of that cataclysm.

Men have said that liberal ideas were in the air, and that no one could so much as breathe without inhaling them ; but this suggestion is meaningless, for to say ideas are " in the air " is to say many people hold them, which is hardly a way of accounting for their being held by many people. A suggestion so unsatisfying constrains us to seek the causes of contagion in a theory of more direct contact. If a book would not set a midland village on fire to-day, how much less would it have done so in the - 9 - olden days when the poorest classes were completely unlettered ? The "Encyclopaedia " and the works of economists and philosophers made their appeal in intellectual circles, and those words of reasonableness and light scarcely could have illumined the mental twilight of the lower bourgeoisie, much less have penetrated the darkness in which the peasant classes lived. Yet the Revolution, as its results testify, was a national movement towards a new order of affairs, and not a general declension towards anarchy. Therefore, since a spontaneous upheaval is unthinkable, and the history of smaller revolutions leads us to infer that revolution is always the result of associative agitation, it probably originated in a certain co-ordination or ideas and doctrines. These ideas and doctrines must have been widely diffused and widely apprehended, yet they could not have been spread by ordinary demagogic means ; for not only was freedom of speech prohibited, but it was illegal to publish unorthodox books. The publication of the " Encyclopaedia " was forbidden in 1759, and both Frederick the Great and Catherine of Russia offered asylum to its authors. Till a few years before the Revolution - 10 - it had been the custom to silence murmuring minorities by sword or fire. In 1762 the pastor Rochette died for his opinions, and the three Protestant brothers Grenier were decapitated, ostensibly for street brawling, but in reality for their faith. Monsieur de Laraguais was presented with a "lettre de cachet" for the citadel at Metz, for reading a paper in favour of inoculation before an assembly of the Academy in Paris.^2 <#sdfootnote2sym>* His defence was that by his advocacy he hoped to preserve to France the lives of the fifty thousand persons who died annually of small-pox. So associated had imprisonment and execution become with the holding of liberal ideas that when Boulanger died almost coincidently with the publication of his book " Les Recherches sur le Despotisme Oriental," men speculated whether his death could be attributed to natural causes^3 <#sdfootnote3sym>. "Belisaire," a moral and political romance by M. de Marmontel, provoked a tumult. Bachaumont relates that the Sorbonne saw fit to protest against Chapter XV., "which treats of Tolerance."^4 <#sdfootnote4sym> In consequence the book was suppressed. "La Confession de – 11 -
Foi d'un Vicaire Savoyard " exerted an extraordinary influence in unseating existing authorities. It was what the publication of the Bible had been to Germany, an obligation to private judgment. The author of this book after this effort fell back on making laces since he could not take up his pen without making every power in Europe tremble.

How is it possible that, when such penalties threatened the efforts of writers and speakers, ideas of progress could be cherished in thousands of minds, and the passion for social regeneration flame in countless souls ? Though there was no enunciation of liberal hopes in the market-places, yet an invisible hand, as in the day of Daniel, had written in flaming letters the word " brotherhood " across the tablets of French hearts. Was the dissemination of ideas, and the diffusion of enthusiasm, to be accounted for by the spirit of the age ; or did the theory of the modern State generate spontaneously in the minds of Frenchmen ? Was the great Revolution a mere accident, or was it the inevitable result of coordinated ideas in action ? Taine was of the opinion that the doctrines propagated themselves, carried like thistle-down upon the winds of chance.
- 12 -
The obvious inference to be drawn from his opinion is that the social idealists of the eighteenth century lacked either the courage or the zeal to further their beliefs ; and that they, unlike their forerunners or their successors, were ready to entrust their hopes to the written word, and leave the rest to the gods. It is making too great a demand on human credulity to ask man to believe this, and many significant facts witness to the hitherto unestimated work of the secret societies in furthering the cause of popular emancipation. Ideas are not suddenly converted into swords. Men must have hammered patiently and hard upon the anvil of the national soul to produce the keen-edged, swift-striking blade of revolution.

"The aim of all social institutions should be the amelioration of the physical, mental and moral condition of the poorest classes," said one whom Barruel alluded to as " a demon hating Jesus Christ." The speaker was Condorcet,^5 <#sdfootnote5sym>* a man acquainted with the ideals of the secret societies. In announcing the eventual publication of the " History of the Progress of the - 13 - Human Mind," a work interrupted by his death, he spoke of the destruction of old authorities by invisible associations. " There are moments in history," said George Sand, "when Empires exist but in name, and when their only life lies in the societies that are hidden in their heart." Such a moment for France was the reign of Louis XVI.

Legends of secret societies survived in every part of Europe at the opening of the eighteenth century. They existed for the prosecution of Theurgia as well as Goetia, for masonry as well as mystical philosophy. Speaking generally, their interest did not lie in the region of politics or polemics, but in that of study, experiment, and speculation ; and their chief care was the preservation and elucidation of ancient hermetic and traditional secrets. As a rule the Church had persecuted such societies, though her prelates had frequently condescended to the study of magic, and a few among them like Pope John XXII. had spent long nights in alchemical experiment. It remained for the Utopians of the eighteenth century so to interpret the symbolism of the secret societies, so to affiliate them, and so to organise the forces of masonry, mysticism and magic, as - 14 - for a few years to unite them into a power capable not only of inspiring but of precipitating the greatest social upheaval of Christendom.

It is difficult to believe or understand, that bodies holding differing doctrines, adherents of many rites, disciples of divergent masters, ever commingled for a day in their enthusiasm for the common cause ; yet this singular and Hegelian amalgamation seems in practice to have taken place.^6 <#sdfootnote6sym> The principal force in the trinity of masonry, mysticism, and magic was masonry, and it, like many other innovations, was introduced into France from England. Just as Voltaire and Rousseau derived their philosophy from English sources, and applied the theories they absorbed in a direct manner to the life of their own country, so did the French people derive their masonic institutions from England, and apply them for purposes of social regeneration in a fashion never even contemplated in the land of their origin. The English Deists, Hume, Locke, and Toland, were responsible for the intellectual regeneration of France, just as the Legitimist lodges planted in that country after the Stuart downfall were responsible for the – 15 - many lodges of tolerance, charity, truth, and candour which disseminated the seeds of the humanitarian movement on French soil. The Pantheisticon became the model of French societies.

Until the sixteenth century masonic corporations in England and other countries consisted of three purely professional grades holding the secrets of the architectural craft, the mysteries of proportion, and the true canon of building. The epics in grey stone our cathedral towns enclose memorialise the tradition of the older masonry, and testify to the inviolability of its secret formulae. In every Catholic land, from Paris to Batalha, from Salisbury to Cologne, rise the superb conceptions of the masonic mind: serene, unchallengeable symbols of doctrines, mysteries, and myths, the venerable shrines of uncounted memories. During the sixteenth century England became the motherland of a newer masonry. Another spirit then permeated the craft; mysteries as ancient as the canon of building and the lost word of the Temple, Egyptian rites and Greek initiations, were blended with the purer traditions of the past. Rosicrucians, like Francis Bacon and Elias - 16 - Ashmole, joined the hitherto exclusively professional body. Out of this marriage of thoughts and aims arose the modern masonic system, of which England at the end of the sixteenth century alone knew the secret. So thoroughly was the old system transfused with speculative ideas that by 1703 it had been decided that the antique guild model of masonry should be abandoned for a scheme of wider comprehension, embracing men holding certain common ideals and aspirations irrespective of craft or art. By this decision masonry became really free ; though the actual bases on which the future of the new " speculative," as the development of the old " operative" masonry, was to be established, were not laid down till 1717 by a commission of the Grand Lodge of London. Sir Christopher Wren, the last of the Grand Masters of the older organisation, was followed in his great office in two successive years by foreigners A. Sayer and Desaguliers, who inaugurated a more cosmopolitan era, and assisted in weaving the strands of brotherhood between England and foreign lands.

Though legend ascribes the English Revolution and the ascendency of Cromwell to masonic - 17 - *influence, records reveal and attest that the associative facilities masonic gatherings afforded were found favourable during the Civil War to the contriving of Royalists' plots rather than to the promotion of Republican schemes. Charles II. was a mason, James II. was championed by lodges, and both the Pretenders instituted rites with the object of accomplishing their own restoration*.

The Legitimists first introduced Freemasonry into France. Lord Derwentwater, the brother of the Lord Derwentwater who had been beheaded in 1716, was one of the earliest masonic missionaries. Together with Maskelyne, Heguerty, and others, he founded the first lodge in France at Dunkerque in 1721, the year in which the Regent died. Other lodges were inaugurated in Paris in 1725, all with the intention of rallying supporters of the Stuart cause. These were granted charters from London, and were ruled over by a Grand Master, called Lord Harnwester, of whom little is known. The most interesting personality among the Legitimist votaries was Andrew Michael Ramsay, commonly called the Chevalier. The son of a baker, he was educated at Edinburgh University, -18 - and became tutor to the two sons of Lord Wemyss ; then going to the Netherlands with the English auxiliaries, he made friends with the mystical theologist Poiret, and in consequence of the latter's quietist influence, gave up soldiering, and went to consult Fenelon about his future. He soon became the Archbishop's intimate friend, as well as a convert to his Church, and remaining with him till his death found himself the legatee of all his papers, and thus the designated chronicler of his life. This life was published at the Hague in 1723, and in the following year Ramsay went as travelling tutor to the two sons of James Francis Edward. On his return to Paris he continued his tutorial work in other families, combining it with the most strenuously active masonic life. He professed to have derived his elaborate and numerous rites from Godfrey de Bouillon, and managed to popularise masonry and exalt it into a fashionable pursuit. Gradually the English lodges in Paris became a subject of curiosity and conversation in society, and so long as they remained concerned with the affairs of a foreign kingdom they were left undisturbed by the officials of their adopted – 19 - country. When, however, Frenchmen began to enrol themselves as masons, and some exclusively French lodges were founded, the newspapers alarmed the public by announcing that Freemasonry had become the vogue. Police regulations were at once issued to prohibit meetings, and Louis XV. forbade gentlemen his Court, and even threatened with the Bastille those who attended lodge gatherings. A zealous commissary of police, Jean de Lespinay, spying on a meeting held at Chapelot's inn, ordered the assembly to dissolve ; but the Duc d'Antin responded by commanding the official interloper to retire. He went meekly enough, but Chapelot was deprived of his licence a few days later, and fined a thousand francs. Masons surprised at the Hotel de Soissons were imprisoned in Fort l'Eveque, and notice was given to innkeepers that on sheltering such gatherings they made themselves liable to a fine of three thousand francs. These edicts stimulated the curiosity of the public, and every one became inquisitive as to the aims and objects of the mysterious association. Mademoiselle Cambon, an opera-singer, managed to extract a document from - 20 - her lover containing instruction on masonic ritual. It was easy then to parody their practices. Eight dancing-girls executed at her instigation a " Freemason ballet," while the Jesuits of the Dubois College at Caen made their rites the subject of a pantomime.

In 1737 the old and amiable councillor of Louis XV., Cardinal Fleury, forbade good Catholics to attend at the lodges, and the next year Clement XII. condemned Freemasonry in a bull. Notwithstanding this opposition the craft grew numerically, and under the protective influence of the Grand Master, the Duc d'Antin, some of the educational work which forms their greatest claim to historic recognition was undertaken. In 1738 the Grand Master urged all masons to help in the work of the great Encyclopaedia, and to assist in forming " that library which in one work should contain the light of all nations." He alluded in his speech to the experiment made previously in London, and appealed for subscriptions for the furtherance of the French work. His secret correspondence with enlightened sympathisers in all parts of Europe enabled him to announce to the lodges in 1740 that the advent of the great – 21 - work was eagerly awaited in every foreign land. Masonic subscription made possible the commencement of the work by Diderot in 1741. It proof were needed to show that in France, in its most corrupt days, men existed who were preaching brotherhood, love, equality, and freedom, the proof exists in the speeches of the Duc d'Antin, who was a Revolutionary half a century before the Revolution. A discourse delivered by him at the " Grande Loge solennellement assemblée, Paris " reveals his attitude and that of his associates towards the feudal society of his day ;

"Les hommes ne sont pas distingués essentiellement par la différence des langues qu'ils parlent, des habits qu'ils portent, des pays qu'ils occupent, ni des dignités dont ils sont revêtus. Le monde entier n'est qu'une grande république, dont chaque nation est une famille et chaque particulier un enfant. C'est pour faire revivre et répandre ces essentielles maximes, prises dans la nature de l'homme, que notre société fut d'abord établie. Nous voulons réunir tous les hommes d'un esprit éclairé, de moeurs douces, et d'une humeur agréable, non seulement pour – 22 - l'amour des beaux-arts mais encore plus par les grands principes de vertu, de science et de religion, ou 1'intérêt de confraternité devient celui du genre humain entier, ou toutes les nations peuvent puiser des connaissances solides, et ou les sujets de tous les royaumes peuvent apprendre à se chérir mutuellement, sans renoncer à leur patrie. . . . Quelle obligation n'a-t-on pas à ces hommes supérieurs qui, sans intérêt grossier, sans même écouter 1'envie naturelle de dominer ont imagine un établissement dont 1'unique but est la réunion des esprits et des coeurs pour les rendre meilleurs, et former dans la suite des temps une nation toute spirituelle ou sans déroger aux divers devoirs que la différence des états exige, on créera un peuple nouveau qui étant composé de plusieurs nations, les cimentera toutes, en quelque sorte par le lien de la vertu et de la science."^7 <#sdfootnote7sym>*

A well-informed person revealed to the world some of the masonic secrets of equality and tolerance.^8 <#sdfootnote8sym> The author, whose ladyhood was - 23 - probably fictitious, was merely printing and making public the aspirations of all those who were longing to assist at the eventual social regeneration of France :

" Il est très naturel de deviner le secret des francs-maçons par l'examen de ce qu'on leur voit pratiquer constamment. Ils entrent sans distinction les grands et les petits : ils se mesurent tous au même niveau ; ils mangent ensemble pèle-mêle ; ils se répandent dans le monde entier avec la même uniformité. II est donc plus que probable, concluais-je, qu'il n'est question chez eux que d'une maçonnerie purement symbolique, dont le secret consiste à bâtir insensiblement une république, universelle et démocratique, dont la reine sera la raison, et le conseil suprême 1'assemblée des sages."

When the Duc d'Antin's grand mastership ceased, a temporary debasement of masonry resulted. Great abuses crept into the craft, for under his successsor, the Comte de Clermont, lodges were irregularly established, and dignities were sold. Androgynous societies, the cause of continual scandal, were established. The Society of Jesus also endeavoured to disrupt masonic - 24 - organisation, and very speedily the " Grande Loge " split up into factions. The Comte de Clermont possibly was the servant of the Church and the real promoter of the schisms of his society. He had blended the careers of cleric and soldier in a curious manner, for though tonsured at nine years old, and subsequently dowered with rich abbeys, he was enabled later, through a Papal dispensation, to enter the army, where he quickly rose to commanding rank, and showed himself as useless a general as he afterwards proved himself a Grand Master. As his working substitutes in the " Grande Loge de France " he nominated a financier named Baure, and a dancing-master named Lacorne. For eighteen years the " Grande Loge de France " was convulsed by discord and evil practice, justifying only too accurately the strictures of the Church. It obeyed with something like relief the order of the civil authorities in 1767 to hold no further meetings, and remained quiescent till the Comte de Clermont's death in 1771. In this year it was proposed to reform its organisation thoroughly. Emissaries were sent into all parts of France to take count of the situation, and to prepare reports for the - 25 - central committee. In consequence of these reports it was decided that the association should be reorganised on a more democratic basis, every office being made annually elective. The Duc de Chartres was chosen as Grand Master, and the Duc de Luxembourg as general administrator. As the Duc de Chartres did not at once accept the Grand Mastership, he never in point of action was Grand Master of the " Loge de France," though in 1773 an assembly met, which, after confirming the elections of 1771, installed him with great solemnity in his office as head of the " Grand Orient." The meeting convened for this occasion at Folie-Titon, a " maison de plaisance," constituted the parliament of masonry, though not all the lodges consented to send representatives to it.

" Le Grand Orient n'est plus qu'un corps forme par la réunion des représentants libres de toutes les loges : ce sont les loges elles-mêmes, ce sont tous les maçons membres de ces loges, qui par la voie de leurs représentants donnent les lois ; qui les font observer d'une part et qui les observent de l'autre. Nul - 26 - n'obéit qu'à la loi qu'il s'est imposée lui-même. C'est le plus libre, le plus juste, le plus naturel, et par conséquent le plus parfait des gouvernements^9 <#sdfootnote9sym>."*

The council of the new organisation sat in the former Jesuit novitiate of the rue Pot de Fer, and worked with increasing power and industry until the outbreak of the Revolution that was to realise their ideals. A section of the "Grande Loge de France" refused to obey the " Grand Orient," and continued to operate independently. The "Empereurs d'Orient et d'Occident" and the "Chevaliers d'Orient" also worked separately, nor would they take part in the amalgamation. Later on, however, great changes took place in masonic opinion, while bonds of common interest drew together lodges that would, without the political interest, always have been divided.

* Not only was France the home of many masonic lodges, but its social system was riddled with mystical societies which gathered their initiates from among the adepts of masonic grades, and owned allegiance to no supreme - 27 - council. Swedenborg and Martinez de Pasqually always regarded masonry as a school of instruction, and considered it the elementary and inferior step that led to the higher mysteries. In consequence of their teaching it came about that a great number of sects and rites were instituted in all parts of Europe, whose unity consisted in a common masonic initiation, but whose aims, doctrines, and practices were often irreconcilable. The Martinezists, or followers of Martinez de Pasqually, were a distinctively French sect; they had lodges in Paris in 1754, and also at Toulouse, Poitiers, Marseille, and other places. The term " Illuminates " is applied to them equally with the Swedenborgians, Martinists, and several germane societies. *

Pasqually is said to have been a Rosicrucian adept. His teaching was theurgic and moral, and his avowed object was to develop the somnolent divine faculties in humanity, and to lead man to enter into communication with the invisible, by means of "La Chose," the enigmatic name he gave to the highest secret. He is chiefly interesting as having been the first to permeate the higher grades of French masonry with illuminism, an example followed afterwards - 28 - with conspicuous success by the disciples of Weishaupt. When Pasqually died in Haiti his teaching was taken up by Willermooz, a Lyonese merchant, also by the celebrated Louis Claude de Saint-Martin. Saint-Martin absorbed and developed his master's teaching in a peculiar and personal manner, and through his philosophy became an important influence on then current affairs. He had been an officer in the regiment of Foix at Bordeaux when he first became acquainted with Pasqually, and soon after meeting him he threw up his commission in the army with the object of devoting his life to meditation, and the study of Jacob Boehme. He became the mystical philosopher of the Revolution, and the book he published in 1775, " Des Erreurs et de la Vérité," produced an immense sensation, comparable to that created by the publication of " La Profession de Foi d'un Vicaire Savoyard." Like Rousseau, he believed in the infinite possibilities of man, holding that Providence had planted a religion in man's heart " which could not be contaminated by priestly traffic, nor tainted by imposture." Rousseau gave the name of conscience to " the innate principle of justice and virtue which, - 29 - independently of experience and in spite of ourselves, forms the basis of our judgments" ; Saint-Martin thought it the divine instinct. On the belief in man's essential goodness both founded their demand for social revolution, claiming an opportunity for men to be indeed men and not slaves, a chance for climbing back to that old God-designed level of happiness from which they had descended. Saint-Martin saw in such a movement the awakening of men from the sleep of death, and with deep conviction he responded to the cry " All men are priests," uttered three centuries earlier by Luther, with the cry "All men are kings!" The answer to the social enigmas of the century was whispered by him in the " ternaire sacré " of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ; and it echoed with reverberating clangor through all the lodges of France. Martinist societies were everywhere founded to study the doctrines contained in his book, and to expound the teachings of the mystical philosopher who, like Lamartine in a later day, contemplated the Revolution as Christianity applied to politics.

A volume might easily be written upon the - 30 - lodges and rites in France during this time ; and their very number makes choice of those deserving peculiar mention bewildering. The well-known "Loge des Amis Réunis," or " Philalèthes," inaugurated by " the man of all conspiracies/' Savalette de Lange, and his friends, carried on an important correspondence with lodges in every quarter of Europe. Under the pretext of pleasant gatherings and luxurious dinners these " friends of truth " prosecuted the dark and dangerous work of preparing that reformation of society which in practice became Revolution. One of the most famous, if not the most interesting, of the intellectual lodges, was that of the " Neuf Soeurs " in Paris, founded in memory of Helvetius, which, if it held a secret, held the secret of Voltaire, " Humanity and Tolerance." It was intended to be an encyclopaedic workshop, a complement to the already existing Lodge of Sciences. Since all the secondary education in France was in the hands of a clerical corporation, and the Sorbonne was dedicated to theology, the " Neuf Soeurs " organised^10 <#sdfootnote10sym> * " la Société Apollonienne." This society arranged for courses of lectures - 31 - to be given by its more eminent members ; Marmontel and Garat, for example, lectured on history, La Harpe on literature, Condorcet and De la Croix on chemistry, Fourcroy and Sue on anatomy and physiology. The improvised college did not shut its doors during the Revolution, but changed its name to " Lycée Républicain." Its professors conformed to Republican usages, and La Harpe was to be seen lecturing in a red cap.

Some useful institutions seem to have been evolved out of the conclaves of the " Neuf Soeurs," including the reformed laws of criminal procedure embodied in the Code Napoleon.^11 <#sdfootnote11sym>* The Duc de la Rochefoucauld, translator of the American Constitution, was an associate of the lodge, so was Forster, who sailed round the world with Captain Cook; Brissot, who was later condemned as leader of the Girondins, Camille Desmoulins, Fauchet, Romme, Bailly, Rabaud Saint Etienne, Danton, Andre Chénier, Dom Gerle, Paul Jones, Franklin, Guillotin, Cabanis, Petion, Siéyès, Cerutti, Hanna, and Voltaire. Together they form an illustrious company who, all in their varying ways, took [32] conspicuous shares in the work of reformation. Commemorative assemblies and processions were organised by this lodge on the occasions of the deaths of Franklin, Voltaire, and Paul Jones, the liberators. The lodge has received historic consecration at the hands of Louis Blanc, Henri Martin, and Amiable. Having accomplished a great work, it disappeared, like all the other lodges, at the opening of the Revolution.

The share that women took in promoting social changes has not received the attention it deserves. Readers of Dumas are familiar with the fact that in country districts fraternal societies welcoming members of both sexes met regularly in barns and farms ; but it does not seem to be usually recognised that apart from the " Loges de la Félicité," which had been the occasion of frequent scandal, many regular and well-conducted " lodges of adoption" for women were recognised by the " Grand Orient." *The Duchess de Bourbon, Egalite's sister*, was Grand Mistress of the adoptive lodge of " la Candeur " in 1775, and Princesse de Lamballe and Madame de Genlis also wielded the hammer. The work of these fashionable dames cannot, however, be taken seriously. It was a pastime - 33 - for them, just as were the decorous fetes held within the lodges in which both men and women participated. The entertainments were elegant and refined, often taking the form of the illustration of a virtue such as benevolence, or of homage to some humanitarian quality. For example, one day a lady discovered that a poor working woman with nine children had added to her burdens by adopting the orphan of a friend. The ladies of her lodge were enthusiastic at such generosity, and caused the poor woman to be exhibited at one of their reunions in a tableau surrounded by the ten children. After considerable acclamation she was allowed to go her way with clothes and money presented by her admirers. " Bienfaisance " was a paricularly fashionable virtue. Women of society raised altars in their rooms dedicated to this quality. The tone of society, however, was not wholly sentimental ; it was also reasonable, and it became the vogue for ladies to attend scientific lectures ; classes in drawing-rooms on mineralogy, chemistry, and physics were well attended ; ladies were no longer painted as goddesses, but as students, in laboratories, surrounded by telescopes and retorts ; Countess Voyer attended - 34 - dissections, and one of her friends wielded the scalpel with grace ; Madame de Genlis, whose self-satisfaction is almost priggish, alludes in her memoirs to the intense pleasure she derived from some geological lectures.

While the world of fashion was playing with science and masonry, the opinions and beliefs of its social inferiors were gradually crystallising into action. Serious women of the bourgeoisie and farmer classes attended meetings and discussions and taught their sons and their husbands what it meant to fight for an ideal ; and how the ternaire sacré could be translated into fact.

At the lowest computation there were seven hundred lodges in France before the Revolution, and a very large proportion of them had acknowledged " lodges of adoption " for women. It is impossible from the material published on the subject, however, to form even an approximate estimate of the number of members of either sex belonging to these associations. It was very large, but the claim to a million adherents made by the " Loge de la Candeur " in 1785 is clearly greatly in excess of actual fact. At Bayonne "La Zélèe," at Angers the " Tendre Accueil," at Saint-Malo – 35 - the "Triple Esperance," at Reims the " Triple Union" at Tours the "Amis de la Vertu" flourished. Poignant satires on credulity were delivered at the " Loge de la Parfaite Intelligence " at Liege to which the Prince Bishop and the greater part of his chapter belonged, and of which all the office-bearers were dignitaries of the Church. The system seems to have permeated every section of French national life.

Pernetti, a Benedictine, librarian of Frederick the Great, had founded a Swedenborgian brotherhood at Avignon, in company with a Polish noble Gabrionka, who by some is supposed to have been Cagliostro, and Pernetti is but an example of dozens of other missionaries. Everywhere gatherings and associations existed, separated by rites and by practices, but united in intention by their common love for and faith in the creed of brotherhood.

One thing only was needed to transform this heterogeneous collection of lodges, sects, and rites into a powerful political lever upon society, and that was a mind which could devise a common course of action or a common political understanding to unite them. Secret idealistic societies had done a wonderful work in fostering - 36 - principles and hopes and ideals, but in order to become effective in action transmutation of some kind was necessary.

Masonic writers have of late made but little allusion to the influence of the German " illuminates " on the French lodges, and are disposed to detract from the reputation of the marvellous organiser Weishaupt, Professor of Canon Law at the University of Ingoldstadt. Barruel, Louis Blanc, and Deschamps unite, however, in regarding him as the most profound of conspirators. Le Couteulx de Canteleu considers the young professor of Ingolstadt as the originator of a remarkable system, of which Von Knigge was the most able missionary. With Weishaupt alone lay the credit not only of realising the cause of the ineffectiveness of societies upon society, but of elaborating an homogeneous scheme which was destined to embrace and eventually absorb all lodges and all rites. He was no free-mason when he invented his design, but in order to study masonic methods he was received as a mason in Munich, where one Zwack, a legal member of the lodge, afterwards one of Weishaupt's confederates, sold him the ultimate secrets of masonry. Equipped with this knowledge [37] he allied himself with Von Knigge of the "Strict Observance" and caused all his own disciples to become masons. " Every secret engagement is a source of enthusiasm," said Weishaupt ; "it is useless to seek for the reasons ; the fact exists, that is enough." In conformity with this belief he recruited the new secret society which he intended should absorb all the others.

In 1776 the order of the Perfectibilists was founded. They began by creating a new world, for they purposed to work independently of existing conditions. They invented their own calendar, with new divisions of time and new names for days and periods ; they took unto themselves the appellations of Greece and Rome. Weishaupt became Spartacus, after the leader of the servile insurrection in the time of Pompey ; Von Knigge became Philo ; Zwack, Cato ; Costanzo, Diomedes ; Nicolai, Lucian. The map of Europe was re-named ; in their correspondence Munich was Athens; Austria Egypt ; and France Illyria. The organisation of the Perfectibilists was designed to enlist all professions and both sexes. It consisted of two large classes, that of "preparations" and that [38] of " mysteries." In the former there were four grades : novice, minerval, illuminate minor, and illuminate major. In the latter there were also four grades : priest, regent, philosopher, and man-king. There was also a "plant-nursery" for children, and a class in which women were trained to influence men. The associates who possessed the full confidence of Weishaupt were called Areopagites.

The order was designed as the directing instrument of that social revolution which Weishaupt and many others knew to be imminent. France was the country selected for the great experiment, and Weishaupt faced with courage the problem that students of social questions realised in the latter half of the eighteenth century would be the difficulty in any revolution. He saw like them that the future class struggle for survival and supremacy in France would lie between the bourgeoisie and the people, that the nobles would count for nothing in the contest. He knew that the commercial classes were extremely rich, that in so far as the actual administrative work went it was in the hands of the third estate, that in the event of revolution it would become the - 39 - first and perhaps the only power in the country. A consideration of the representative institutions of France before the Revolution convinces us of the fact that the actual people were unrepresented, and moreover that it was unlikely that they would ever have a voice in the management of affairs, unless their claims were enforced by well organised and wide reaching secret societies. Weishaupt's scheme was intended to prevent the bourgeoisie reaping all the revolutionary harvest. As a disciple of Rousseau he did not favour the establishment of commercial supremacy as a substitute for the old system of autocracy. "Salvation does not lie where shining thrones are defended by swords, where the smoke of the censors ascends to heaven, or where thousands of starving men pace the rich fields of harvest. The revolution which is about to break upon us will be sterile if it is not complete." He feared that the concessions of kings, and the removal of food taxes, might delude the people into the belief that all was well, and he imparted his fear to his disciples. His object in establishing the Perfectibilists was the literal realisation of Rousseau's theories. He dreamt of and schemed for a day when the - 40 - abolition of property, social authority, and nationality would be facts, when human beings would return to that happy state in which they form but one family^12 <#sdfootnote12sym>.* Being an ex-Jesuit and acquainted with the organisation of that order, he determined to adapt its system to his own scheme, to make as it were a counter-society of Jesus. All the maxims and rules of Jesuit administration were to be pushed further and applied more rigorously than had been contemplated by their inventors. Passive obedience, universal espionage, and all the dialectic of casuistry were his chosen tools, and so successful was the undertaking that in four years a system of communication and information with every part of Europe had been established. The unseen hands of the society were in all affairs, its ears in the cabinets of princes and cardinals. The Church was regarded unrelentingly as a foe, for the Perfectibilists were the enemies of institutional Christianity, and represented themselves as professors of the purest Christian Socialism. Weishaupt classed the theological and sacerdotal systems among the worst enemies of man, and in his instructions to his disciples urged that - 41 - they should be contended with as definite evils. And the Church feared him, for did he not declare that men were still slaves because they still knelt ? Did he not command the people to rise from their knees ? Abbé Deschamps, in " Les sociétés secrètes et la société," expresses his dread of the machinations of so terrible an Order, and points out that "once dechristianised the masses will claim absolute equality and the right to enjoy life ! "

Weishaupt, on the other hand, said: "He who would work for the happiness of the human race, for the contentment and peace of man, for the diminishing of discontent, should examine and then enfeeble the principles which trouble that peace, that content, that happiness. Of this class are all systems which are opposed to the ennobling and perfecting of human nature ; all systems which unnecessarily multiply the evils of the world, and represent them as greater than they really are ; all systems which depreciate the merit and the dignity of man, which diminish his confidence in his own natural forces, which decry human reason, and so open the way for imposture."

The candidate for the grade of epopt, or - 42 - priest, among the Perfectibilists was, before his initiation into the higher mysteries, introduced into a hall, wherin stood a magnificent dais surmounted by a throne. In front of the throne stood a table laden with jewels, gold coins, a sceptre, crown, and sword. " "Look,' said the epopt chief, ' if this crown and sceptre, monuments of human degradation and imbecility, tempt thee ; if thy heart is with them ; if thou wouldst help kings to oppress men, we will place thee as near a throne as thou desirest ; but our sanctuary will be closed to thee, and we shall abandon thee for ever to thy folly. If, on the contrary, thou art willing to devote thyself to making men happy and free, be welcome here. . . . Decide ! '

After decision the would-be initiate had to make a frank and detailed confession of all the actions of his life. Weishaupt thought this a very important preliminary to higher knowledge, because it gave him cognisance of personal secrets which would make betrayal of the order on the part of the novice dangerous and often impossible. The verification of the confession was proceeded with in a dark room, decorated with symbols and emblems of mystery. A - 43 - book called the " Code Scrutateur " was opened, and all the faults of the candidate, his hates, loves, confidences, and fears were read out loud. These had been extracted from the unconscious victim, or from his friends, by the " insinuating brethren," whose business it was to find out everything about every member of their society. When all this was over a curtain was drawn aside, revealing an altar surmounted by a large crucifix. The candidate was tonsured, vested with sacerdotal garments, and given the red Phrygian cap of the epopt, with these words : "Wear this cap ; it means more than the crown of kings" a prophecy verified by the Revolution.

In the lower grades of Illuminism recruits had no knowledge of such ceremonies. They were allowed to think that they were supporting orthodox Christianity and old authorities, and in this way time was gained for studying the character of recruits, and unsuitable members were weeded out. Later on, as they gradually climbed the ladder of initiation, it was revealed to them that Jesus had come to teach men reasonableness and not superstition, and that His only precepts were love of God and love - 44 - of humanity. Camilla Desmoulins invoked the "Sans-culotte Jesus " during the Revolution, claiming Him as the pattern Socialist. Jesus, the Illuminists said, came to dissipate prejudice, to spread light and wise morality, to show men how to govern themselves. He was the true liberator of man, and the teacher of equality and liberty.

It has been argued with some plausibility that since such harmless and conservative people as the Duke of Sachs-Gotha and Prince August of Sachs-Weimar were illuminates, Louis XVI. and Frederick the Great masons, the secret societies could have had no direct influence on the social upheaval, and therefore are not worthy of the serious consideration of the historian. The study of the organisation of the great secret service reveals the reason of this contention and also its futility. The lower grades of masonry and Illuminism served a double-edged purpose : that of concealing the existence of the higher grades, and that of proving the worthiness of earnest searchers after social regeneration to enter those higher grades. Mystery of any kind always attracts the weak-minded, and Illuminism allured many dupes whom it was necessary to - 45 keep at arm's length from realities. The existence of serious purpose had also studiously to be concealed from royalties and prelates, for hierarchical religion is dear to all supporters of autocracy. Yet it was politic to lull the suspicions of the conservative and governing classes by admitting them with apparent freedom and joy into the Order. It was a policy of disarmament, and Weishaupt was quite candid as to this, for anything was better for the cause than open enmity.

" If it is to our interest to have the ordinary schools on our side, it is also very important to win over the ecclesiastical seminaries and their superiors ; for in that way we should secure the best part of the country, and disarm the greatest enemies of all innovation ; and what is still better, in winning the ecclesiastics, we should have the people in our hands."

To many Perfectibilists, illuminism and masonry were but charming social amusements, signifying nothing. The doctrines of social subversion, the creeds and dogmas of sudden death, all seemed but quaint and often crude allegories ; assemblies were but the occasion of [46] fun and feasting ; men played at the comedy of equality with zest and good temper, just because it was all so impossible and unlike life. And may not autocrats like Frederick the Great and the Emperor of Austria have blindly served the enterprise of the people and have assisted in converting their own comedy into tragedy ?

Recruits for the secret service were not difficult to attract. The Lisbon earthquake had unsettled many minds. The theurgists Saint-Germain and Cagliostro flitted hither and thither like brilliant Oriental birds against the neutral background of a Europe at peace but in travail. Eagerly watched and eagerly worshipped, they performed miracles and cures that dazzled the imagination. Their magical shows, displaying sometimes conspicuous charlatanry, amazed the gaping crowds, and served to disguise their primary mission from the Courts and the governing classes.

People of all classes became nervous and disturbed. Suzanne Labrousse of Perigord^13 <#sdfootnote13sym>,* being in chapel, threw herself at the foot of the Crucifix and announced precisely the date of the convocation of the States-General. The Queen - 47 - of Prussia and her waiting-women had seen " the white lady." Crowds in the market-place of Leipzig awaited the ghost of wonder-working Schroepfer, who had shown Louis XV. in a magic mirror his successor decapitated ; for had he not promised to reappear to his disciples at a given moment after death ? Interpretations of the Apocalypse were published, and it was asserted that yet more ancient prophecies were about to be fulfilled. Men asked themselves as they met in their lodges and their homes, or as they sat round the pool of Mesmer, or consulted Cazotte, " What would be the end thereof?" Great changes were in the air; men felt the fluttering of unseen wings and the breath of unrecognised forces, their expectations kept them restless and eager.

One mind at least in France was able to contemplate with calmness the weaving of strange threads into the texture of society ; and in that mind was clearly reflected the spirit and tendency of the agitated world of action. Undismayed by portent or prophecy, the unknown philosopher meditated as he watched the shuttles darting through the giant loom of the social system, and gazed on that living tissue through [ 48 ] which in the weaving " shimmered unceasingly the irrefragable justice of God. " Saint-Martin^14 <#sdfootnote14sym> had already formulated that ternaire sacré which many were diligently and in different ways seeking to attain. Men grasped eagerly after the fruit of the travail of his soul and were satisfied. By studying his doctrines their apprehension was quickened and their efforts enhanced and spiritualised. To a great extent he transfused the masonic thought with that faith which makes the movement of mountains no impossibility. The ternaire which proved the miraculous seed-corn of the revolutionary harvest had been scattered by him broadcast over the land to germinate in the furrows of France against the reaping-time.

Meanwhile the ambassadors of Weishaupt surveyed the countries which were to be the stage of the great drama. Long before accredited Illuminist agents were sent to instruct the lodges of the Grand Orient, inaugural work seems to have been undertaken by Cagliostro and Saint-Germain. Weishaupt was too shrewd an organiser to neglect any instrument of advantage, and, estimating justly the credulity of the day, he saw the extreme importance of - 49 - securing such men as the magicians for the furtherance of his purpose.

One of his emissaries, Cagliostro, was known all over Europe as the" " Priest of Mystery," and nearly every one, however sceptical of his powers, fell before his personal charm. The Perfectibilists annexed him and initiated him into their ritual, as he himself describes, in an underground cave near Frankfort-on-the-Main. At the initiation he learnt that the first blows of the Illuminates would be aimed at France, and that after the fall of that monarchy the Church herself would be assailed. After receiving instructions and money from Weishaupt (a secret which he is said later to have confessed to the Inquisition), he proceeded to Strasburg, and there led a life of philanthropy, giving to the poor his money, to the rich his advice, to the sick his help. He was veritably adored by the people. When he went to Paris in 1781 his elegant house in the Rue Saint Claude was soon besieged by admirers. His portrait was in great request on medallions and fans, and his bust in marble and in bronze figured in the houses of the great with this inscription : "Le divin Cagliostro." He received his clients in a large room furnished with Oriental – 50 - luxury, which contained the bust of Hippocrates, the " Universal Prayer " of Pope, together with objects of necromantic design and thaumaturgic virtue. His mysterious device L.P.D. (Lilia pedibus destrue) was reputed to be full of sinister meaning for the kings of France. Marie Antoinette was deeply interested in matters and men of this nature. De Rohan entertained her with tales of Cagliostro ; she consulted Saint-Germain, and was one of the visitors who clustered round the mysterious fluid of the hypnotic doctor Mesmer, which was calculated to heal all ills, and who listened to his dictum, " There is but one health, one illness, and one remedy." Though Mesmer's experiments were rejected by the French savants of the day as worthless, they were eagerly taken up in other parts of Europe. Mesmer enforced the law of mutual dependence and of unity in the natural world, as Saint-Martin enforced the laws of mutual dependence and of unity in the spiritual world. It might well have been Saint-Martin and not Mesmer who said, "that the life of man is part of the universal movement" for they were both exponents of the truth of the solidarity of the race.
- 51 -
The Comte de Saint-Germain, another of Weishaupt's ambassadors, emerges at intervals upon the surface of affairs a brilliant and accomplished personage, and sinks again to work in the great secret service, or to sit, as tradition has it, upon his golden altar in an attitude of Oriental absorption. Saint-Germain was probably not only the secret missionary and entertainer of Louis XV., but also the agent of masonic and other societies working for the regeneration of humanity ; one life was probably only the cloak for the other.

At the great Convention of Masonry held at Wilhelmsbad in 1782 the Order of the Strict Observance was suspended, and Von Knigge disclosed the scheme of Weishaupt to the assembled representatives of the masonic and mystical fraternities. Then and there disciples of Saint-Martin and of Willermoz, as well as statesmen, scientists, magicians, and magistrates from all countries, were converted to Illuminism. Perfectibilist doctrines percolated everywhere through the lodges of Europe, and when the " Philalèthes," at the instigation of Mirabeau, became the missionary agents of Illuminism, they preached to already half- - 52 - converted audiences. The fact that Mirabeau had any connection with such schemes has been occasionally denied, partly on account of the bitter pamphlet he launched against Cagliostro and partly because in " La Monarchic Prussienne " he denounced all secret societies and asserted that they should be tolerated by no State. This proves no more than the work which Nicolai produced explaining that secret societies existed for no other purpose than to serve the Stuart cause, when all the while he was founding a club and gaining possession of newspapers, like the " Berlin Journal " and the "Jena Gazette," to further the views of the initiates. It must be remembered that everything that conduced to the welfare of the society and the furtherance of the mission was justifiable, and that by subterfuges such as these Mirabeau and Nicolai sought to avert suspicion from themselves, and to obtain peace to work with greater efficiency and freedom. Mirabeau, owing to his friendship with Nicolai while in Berlin, is said to have been initiated into the last mysteries of the Perfectibilists at Brunswick. On returning to Paris he, together with Bonneville, introduced the German doctrines at the lodge of the " Amis - 53 - Réunis."^15 <#sdfootnote15sym>* Among his auditors were the Duke of Orleans, Brissot, Condorcet, Savalette, Gregoire, Garat, Petion, Baboeuf, Barnave, Sieyes, Saint-Just, Camille Desmoulins, Hebert, Santerre, Danton, Marat, Chénier, and many other men whose names are immortalised in the annals of the Revolution. The charge of actually disseminating the doctrines throughout France was given to Bode (Aurelius) and Busch (Bayard). So well did the Perfectibilist missionaries work that by 1788 every lodge under the Grand Orient and they numbered in that year 629 is said to have been indoctrinated with the system of Weishaupt.

From the time or the inoculation of the Grand Orient of France with the German doctrines, masonry, from being a simple instrument of tolerance, humanity, and fraternity, acting in a vague and general manner on the sentiments of its adherents, became a direct instrument of social transformation. Plans of the most practical nature were discussed. A scheme for recruiting a citizen army was drawn up, and Savalette de Lange, of the royal household, is said to have been responsible for [54] its execution. At the opening of the Revolution he appeared before the municipal councillors of Paris, followed by a few men crying, " Let us save the country," thereby exciting no little emulation. "Messieurs," he said :
" Voici des citoyens que j'ai exerces a manier les armes pour la défense de la patrie ; je me suis point fait leur majeur ou leur général, nous sommes tous égaux, je suis simplement caporal, mais j'ai donne 1'exemple ; ordonnez que tous les citoyens le suivent, que la nation prenne les armes, et la liberté est invincible.^16 <#sdfootnote16sym>"*

The next day the army of the " gardes nationaux " was formed. Barruel relates that at the outbreak of the Revolution two million hands, holding pikes, torches and hatchets, were ready to serve the cause of humanity, and that this body of zealots had been created by the adepts. Whether this be a true estimate or not, many an arm which was ready in 1789 to strike a blow for liberty had been nerved by the teachings of the secret societies.

Nearly all the masonic and illuminist lodges - 55 - shrank to their smallest esoteric dimensions in 1789, and expanded exoterically as clubs and popular societies. La Loge des Neuf Soeurs, for example, became "La Société Nationale des Neuf Soeurs," a club admitting women. The Grand Orient ceased its direction of affairs. The old theoretical discussions within the lodges as to how the Revolution should be conducted, produced in action the widest divergences, and Jacobins, Girondins, Hebertists, Dantonists, Robespierrists, in consequence destroyed each other.

It has been the habit for so long to regard the Revolution as an undefined catastrophe that it is hardly possible to persuade men that at least some foreknowledge of its course and destination existed in the mind of the Illuminists. When Cagliostro wrote his celebrated letter from England in 1787 predicting for the French people the realisation of the schemes of the secret societies ; foretelling the Revolution and the destruction of the Bastille and monarchy ; the advent of a Prince Egalite, who would abolish lettres de cachet ; the convocation of the States-General ; the destruction of ecclesiasticism and the substitution of the religion of - 56 - Reason; he probably wrote of the things he had heard debated in the lodges of Paris. Prescience might also explain the remark attributed to Mirabeau, " Voilà la victime," as he indicated the King at the opening of the States-General at Versailles^17 <#sdfootnote17sym>.* Two volumes of addresses, delivered at various lodges by eminent masons, prove how truly the situation had been gauged by Condorcet and Mirabeau. In fantastic phraseology the philosopher announced at Strasbourg that in France the " idolatry of monarchy had received a death-blow from the daughters of the Order of the Templars," while the states-man uttered in the recesses of the lodge of the " Chevaliers Bienfaisants " in Paris, the levelling principles and liberal ideas which he afterwards thundered from the tribune of the Assembly.^18 <#sdfootnote18sym> The path to the overthrow of religious authority had to a great extent been made smooth by the distribution, through the lodges, of Boulanger's "Origines du Despotisme Oriental," in which religion is treated as the engine of the State and the source of despotic power. " Des Erreurs et de la Vérité," springing as it did out - 57 - of the self-consciousness of the philosopher of the Revolution, represents, more than any other book, the feeling of the mystical aspirants after a reign of brotherhood and love. It became the Talmud of such people and the classic whence they drew their opinions. Religions ? their very diversity condemns them. Governments ? their instability, their foolish ways prove how false is the base on which they rest. All is wrong, especially criminal law, for it upholds the monstrous injustice of not only killing guilt but also repentance. Saint-Martin spoke to eager ears when he spoke thus to men, men willing to believe that man alone has created evil, that God at least must be exonerated from so monstrous a charge, men willing to work for that reign of brotherhood which meant the restoration of man's lost happiness. A very curious symbol is preserved in the National Library in Paris which illustrates the decline of the sentiment and principle and faith wherein the Revolution originated. It consists of a medal struck under the Convention in which two men regard each other without demonstration of affection, and all around runs the inscription : " Sois mon frère ou je te - 58 - tue." The doctrine of brotherhood can no further go.

After considering presently available materials we must conclude that at the lowest estimate a coordinated working basis of ideas had been established through the agency of the lodges of France ; that thousands of men, unable to form a political opinion or judgment for themselves, had been awakened to a sense of their own responsibility and their own power in furthering the great movement towards a new order of affairs. It remains to the eternal credit of the workers in the great secret service to have elicited a vigorous personal response to the call of great ideals, and to have directed the enthusiasm excited to the welfare, not of individuals, but of society as a whole. The conjectural realm of the inception of political ideas is a morass into which few historians care to venture. Proved paths are lacking, the country is dark and unmapped, and a false step may ruin the reputation of years. It is to be hoped that one day a contribution to the spiritual history of the eighteenth century will be made which will neither ignore the Utopian confederacies nor attribute to them, as is the - 59 - habit of ecclesiastics, influences altogether malign.

At the great Revolution the doctrines of the lodges were at last translated from the silent world of secrecy to the common world of practice ; a few months sufficed to depose ecclesiasticism from its pedestal and monarchy from its throne ; to make the army republican, and the word of Rousseau law. The half-mystical phantasies of the lodges became the habits of daily life. The Phrygian cap of the " illuminate " became the headgear of the populace, and the adoption of the classic appellations used by Spartacus and his Aréopagites the earnest of good citizenship. Past time was broken with, and a calendar modelled on those in use among the secret confederates became the symbol of the new epoch. The ternaire Liberty, Equality, Fraternity instead of merely adorning the meeting-places of masonic bodies, was stencilled on all the public buildings of France ; and the red banner which had symbolised universal love within the lodges was carried by the ragged battalions of the people on errands of pillage and destruction.

The great subversive work had been silently - 60 - and ruthlessly accomplished in the face of popes and kings. Though the Church spread the report that Illuminates worshipped a devil, and named it Christ, and denounced masonry as the " mystery of iniquity " ; though Saint-Germain and Saint-Martin were decried by the Jesuits; though Cagliostro died in the Inquisitors' prison of Sant Angelo, and Cazotte, Egalite,
and many another agent of the secret service were guillotined ; though Weishaupt was persecuted and the German Perfectibilists suppressed ; yet the mine which had been dug under altar and throne was too deep to be filled up by either persecution or calumny.

The true history of the eighteenth century is the history of the aspiration of the human race. In France it was epitomised. The spiritual life of that nation, which was to lift the weight of material oppression from the shoulders of multitudes, had been cherished through dark years by the preachers of Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood. From the Swedenborgian stronghold of Avignon, from Martinist Lyons, from Narbonne, from Munich, and many another citadel of freedom, there flashed on the grey night of feudalism, unseen - 61 - but to the initiates, the watch-fires of great hope tended by those priests of progress who, though unable to lift the veil that shrouds the destiny of man and the end of worlds, by faith were empowered to dedicate the future to the Unknown God.
End of chapter

1 <#sdfootnote1anc>* " Les Sectes et les Societes Secretes."

2 <#sdfootnote2anc> Memoires Secret de Bachaumont," vol. i. p. 286

3 <#sdfootnote3anc> Ibid. vol. ii. p. 292.

4 <#sdfootnote4anc> Ibid. vol. iii. p. 168

5 <#sdfootnote5anc> At the Loge des Philalethes, Strasbourg, p. 41. Robison.

6 <#sdfootnote6anc> p. 344, vol. iv. Barruel

7 <#sdfootnote7anc> "Une Loge Maçonnique d'avant 1789," p. II

8 <#sdfootnote8anc> La Franc-Maçonnerie, ou révélations des mystères des
franc-maçons." Par Madame * * *

9 <#sdfootnote9anc> Une Loge Maçonnique d'avant 1789," p. 29

10 <#sdfootnote10anc> November 17, 1780.

11 <#sdfootnote11anc> " Une Loge Maçonnique d'avant 1789," p. 243.

12 <#sdfootnote12anc> Letter of Spartacus to Cato, p, 160. Robison

13 <#sdfootnote13anc> En 1784.

14 <#sdfootnote14anc> No proof of such a thing in the known papers of
Saint-Martin

15 <#sdfootnote15anc> Le Couteulx de Canteleu," p. 168.

16 <#sdfootnote16anc> Le Couteulx de Canteleu," p. 211.

17 <#sdfootnote17anc> Mémoires de Weber," vol. i. chap, ix, p. 335

18 <#sdfootnote18anc> p. 41. Robison.

  ¶ 11:39

  Guillotin Guillotine Arras Saint-Vaast *Joseph Ignace Guillotin fut « arrageois », département du Pas de
Calais, pendant les guerres révolutionnaires.*

*Pour être né à Saintes en 1738 il ne fut pas, pour autant, et ce malgré
les rumeurs persistantes, guillotiné pendant la révolution, ni après. Il
mourut, d'un anthrax, le 26 mars 1814 à Paris.*

*S'il est connu du plus grand nombre par SA guillotine, laquelle fut
très peu son invention, il a d'autres titres dont ceux de médecin (à la
faculté de médecine de Paris) et d'homme politique (élu député du tiers
état en 1789).*

*La trace la plus marquante de sa carrière révolutionnaire est autant
d'avoir proposé que le nombre de députés du tiers-état soit égal en
nombre à ceux des députés de la noblesse et du clergé, réunis, que
d'avoir proposé la réunion dans la salle du jeu de paume quand les
députés du tiers-état trouvent leur salle fermée le 19 juin 1789.*

*L'intérêt que nous portons à Guillotin commence en 1784, quand ces
messieurs de l'académie de médecine doivent rendre leur avis au roi sur
les pratiques de Mesmer.*

*Le magnétisme animal est condamné, par Guillotin, Bailly... au titre
d'immoralité publique!*

*Guillotin sera le médecin personnel du comte de Provence futur Louis
XVIII, frère du roi pendant un an.*

*Il se marie à 49 ans avec Élise Saugrain.*

*Dans les réformes proposées par les députés, la peine de mort et la
technique de la peine de mort avaient leur cahier des charges !*

*En premier, la technique varie selon le rang des personnes et leurs
finances.*

*Le noble est décapité à l'épée ; le roturier est décapité à la hache,
il n'est pas rare que l'on ne s'y reprenne en plusieurs fois, ni que la
hache ne soit émoussée parce qu'il fallait bien payer le rémouleur...
pour qu'il vous fasse le fil tranchant !*

*L'hérétique est brûlé ; le voleur roué de coups sur la roue, ou pendu ;
le régicide écartelé. *

*Rien que de petites choses qui distrayaient le badaud badaudant en
badauderie. *

*La discussion des députés, Mirabeau, Guillotin, …, porta sur l'égalité
des peines en fonction des crimes et sur une technique qui permette
d'éviter les souffrances inutiles. *

*L'idée d'égalité enclenche l'idée d'une machine à tuer, cette machine
existe déjà. Elle ne s'appelle pas, alors, la guillotine !*

*Comment situer l'objet dans le temps ?*

*Les romains, férus d'objets à trucider, l'auraient utilisée.*

*Les génois l'auraient utilisée vers 1507. *

*Elle se serait faite appeler Mannaja, Maiden, Halifax Gibbet...*

*D'où leur vint cette idée très humaine?*

*Il semble bien que Guillotin, humaniste, soucieux de la souffrance des
condamnés..., ait lui comme d'autres raisonné de ce raisonnement qui
conduit inéluctablement à une « Terreur », une « dictature », une «
tyrannie » ...*

*Ouvrons ici la parenthèse de ce raisonnement et suivons ledit
raisonnement dans sa simplicité:*

*_L'objectif _: atteindre au bonheur*

*(le bonheur est considéré comme une norme de l'existence.)*

_*Le moyen:*_

*le groupe, le pouvoir du groupe*

*(le groupe est censé représenter la collectivité, l'ensemble de
l'humanité),*

*_La prémisse_ suppose que le bien est collectif. *

*[la prémisse est la proposition faite au début du raisonnement, on en
déduit des conséquences ou des conclusions, elle est rarement démontrée
parce qu'elle est acceptée comme évidence (la prémisse a un sens précis
en logique, deux prémisses permettent de conclure un syllogisme; tout
syllogisme vrai obéit à des règles précises de fonctionnement)],*

*De là, nos humanistes, ici Robespierre en tête, mettent en place un
système qui conduit « le groupe » (en fait, un groupe parmi d'autres
groupe) à prendre le pouvoir et à donner à la collectivité (en fait une
collectivité parmi d'autres collectivités) la capacité d'être heureuse.*

*Ce premier raisonnement est suivi d'un deuxième:*

*Le raisonnement suivant consiste à chercher une cause ou des causes au
malheur de la collectivité : pendant la révolution la réponse est
simple, les nobles, le clergé.*

*De tels raisonnements ne répondent pas aux principes de l'ordre
naturel, lequel repose sur une possibilité simple: je dois survivre pour
assurer la survie de mon groupe. Quand mon groupe est en survie, comme
moi, je peux passer au stade suivant, lui assurer un confort de vie. Si
ce groupe est en confort de vie et génère des surplus, il est
intéressant de les partager avec d'autres groupes qui n'ont pas encore
atteint le stade de la survie ou le stade du confort de vie et
pourraient désirer « piller » les biens de mon groupe.*

*Que puis-je offrir à un homme en état de besoin ?*

*Mon temps, mes connaissances, mes capacités à lui apprendre les
techniques nécessaires pour qu'il devienne autonome face à ses besoins. *

*(donner un poisson, apprendre à pécher, s'assurer qu'il y a du poisson
en quantité nécessaire et suffisante...)*

*Se fixer comme idéal le bonheur des hommes, le progrès de l'humanité,
sans poser la borne de l'autonomie, s'est enclencher une dynamique de la
Terreur.*

*Se fixer un objectif de partage constitue une illusion tant que le
moyen du partage n'est pas possible.*

*Pour faire simple et concret: il est possible de partager des
connaissances avec ceux qui se donnent les moyens de les acquérir, et
qui ont été préparés pour acquérir (et utiliser) des connaissances.*

*Ainsi, je partage, librement, le temps dont je peux disposer; les
connaissances qui m'appartiennent ou les moyens de les acquérir.*

*Si je veux faire plus, il me faut plus de temps, des jours de 24 heures
relèvent de l'ordre naturel.*

*Si je veux faire plus, il me faut plus de connaissances, je reconnais
des limites à mes capacités!*

*Si je veux partager la production de mon jardin, il me faut être en
surplus et assurer une capacité à maintenir cette production!*

*Nous trouvons rapidement à nos démarches « charitables » des limites.*

*Revenons après cette digression pour comprendre la marche des
révolutionnaires, hommes des lumières, philosophes, amants de la Raison,
…, à notre guillotine.*

*Celui qui a préparé sa mise activité s'appelle Antoine Louis,
secrétaire de l'académie de chirurgie.*

*Puységur nous rappelle que sa première utilisation en France fut sur
Henri II de Montmorency, maréchal de France, à Toulouse en octobre 1632.*

*Guillotin qui avait été arrêté pendant la terreur retourne à la liberté
après la chute de Robespierre.*

*En 1794, il sert à l'Armée du Nord, il est en poste à Arras et tient
son office dans l'abbaye Saint-Vaast d'Arras*

*jusqu'à sa mort, notre humaniste se consacre à la médecine, il vaccine
contre la variole, il est chargé par le Consulat de mettre en place un
programme de santé publique, il est surtout le fondateur de la Société
des premiers médecins de Paris, ancêtre de notre Académie de médecine.*

  ¶ 16:09

  cazotte diable amoureux Martinès Nerval illuminés reine pédauque le martinisme selon augustin thierry

"C'est le système mystico-philosophique de Martinez Pasqualis,
repris et modifié plus tard par son disciple Saint-Martin, le
/philosophe inconnu/, Martinez prétendait trouver dans la Cabale juive
la science révélatrice de Dieu et des intelligences créées par lui.
D'accord sur certains points avec la tradition chrétienne, il s'en
séparait par la croyance à un état élémentaire de la nature avant la
création divine. Cazotte, raconte Gérard de Nerval, dans la belle
préface qu'il a consacrée à l'auteur du Diable amoureux, venait de
publier ce dernier ouvrage, lorsqu'il reçut la visite d'un mystérieux
inconnu, qui lui reprocha d'avoir révélé le secret des initiés et lui
conseilla de s'abstenir désormais de pareilles divulgations. Pour
innocent qu'il fut, le pauvre Cazotte dut être d'autant plus porté à
réparer la faute qui lui était attribuée, que ce n'était pas alors peu
de chose que d'encourir la haine des Illuminés, nombreux, puissants et
divisés en une foule de sectes, sociétés et loges maçonniques qui se
correspondaient d'un bout à l'autre du royaume. Accusé d'avoir révélé
aux profanes les mystères de l'initiation, il s'exposait au même sort
qu'avait subi l'abbé de Villars qui, dans /le Comte de Gabalis/, s'était
permis de livrer à la curiosité publique, sous une forme demi sérieuse,
toute la doctrine des rose-croix sur le monde des esprits. L'abbé fut un
jour trouvé assassiné sur la route de Lyon et l'on ne put qu'accuser les
sylphes ou les gnomes de cette expédition. On sait que cet épisode a
fourni à M. Anatole France le dénouement de /la Rôtisserie de la reine
Pédauque. "
/

  ¶ 16:40

  couleurs symbolique Portal *SYMBOLIQUE DES COULEURS.
Selon PORTAL
*

Au Moyen-âge comme dans l'antiquité, le choix de telle ou telle nuance
n'était pas l'effet d'un caprice; chaque couleur avait une signification
aussi tranchée qu'énergique pour s'en convaincre, il suffit de lire
l'ouvrage écrit /ex professo /sur la Symbolique des couleurs par M.
Frédéric Portal. Son livre, dont on ne saurait trop louer l'érudition et
les aperçus de haute philosophie, ressuscite cette langue primitive et
développe avec bonheur ses principes élémentaires. Grâce à cette
nouvelle voie d'investigation dans l'étude des monuments et des
peintures antiques, il est permis d'atteindre au-delà des stériles
appréciations de forme et de coloris; sous l'enveloppe matérielle et
morte, l'oeil de l'esprit découvre la pensée vivante exprimée par le
symbole.

Avant d'aborder les détails, il est nécessaire d'établir quelques
principes généraux sans lesquels il nous serait malaisé de nous faire
comprendre.

Les couleurs eurent la même signification chez tous les peuples de
l'antiquité, et l'histoire de ces mêmes peuples démontre que toutes les
religions doivent parcourir et parcourent en effet trois phases
successives : /La /première où la divinité se manifeste à l'homme sans
aucun alliage de superstition, à l'état de complète pureté; la seconde
où le culte est forcé de recourir à la majesté des temples et à la pompe
des cérémonies pour revêtir une forme sensible aux yeux des nations
qu'environnent déjà les ténèbres ; enfin la troisième, où l'homme arrivé
au dernier degré de l'abrutissement se méprend sur la valeur du symbole
qu'il divinise. De là dans la symbolique, trois langues^1
<#sdfootnote1sym> bien distinctes :

La /*langue divine*// /s'adresse d'abord à tous les hommes et leur
révèle l'existence de Dieu. La symbolique est la langue de tous les
peuples, comme la religion la propriété de chaque famille. Le sacerdoce
n'existe pas encore; chaque père de famille est roi et pontife.

La /*langue sacrée*// /prend naissance dans les sanctuaires. Elle règle
la symbolique de l'architecture, de la statuaire et de la peinture,
comme les cérémonies du culte et les costumes des prêtres : cette
première matérialisation emprisonne la langue divine sous des voiles
impénétrables.

C'est alors que la /*langue profane*// /s'empare de l'expression
matérielle des symboles ; les nations livrées à l'idolâtrie ne savent
plus remonter jusqu'à Dieu au-delà du symbole ou de l'image grossière
qui leur frappe la vue.

La couleur fut le premier moyen de transmettre la pensée et d'en
conserver la mémoire. Les Quipos du Pérou et les Cardelettes de la
Chine, teintes de/ /diverses nuances, formaient les archives de ces
peuples enfants. Les couleurs jouent un rôle encore plus important dans
les peintures mexicaines. Mais cette écriture symbolique arriva dans les
hiéroglyphes égyptiens à son plus haut degré de perfection. Vint aussi
la dégradation nécessaire ; la langue sacrée tomba dans l'oubli et la
langue profane , dernier reflet de ce brillant langage, popularise les
symboles en les matérialisant.

Si nous envisageons l'ère chrétienne, nous ne voyons pas sans surprise
les vitraux de nos cathédrales procéder de la même manière que les
peintures égyptiennes; mêmes couleurs exprimant mêmes symboles à double
signification, l'une mystique et l'autre populaire. Quand vient la
renaissance, le génie symbolique s'éteint ; la peinture n'est plus la
naïve expression du dogme sacré, elle se fait le superbe interprète de
toutes les passions humaines. La symbolique bannie de l'Église se
réfugie à la cour, et là se réveille avec une nouvelle splendeur sur les
chevaleresques armoiries. Le blason perpétue dans les familles le
glorieux [50] souvenir des actions d'éclat, mais le plus souvent la
signification primitive est méconnue et faussement appliquée^2
<#sdfootnote2sym>. A l'ère aristocratique succède la galanterie /des
/Maures, et leur mysticisme amoureux donne naissance à la langue
symbolique, telle qu'elle s'est conservée jusqu'à nos jours; les débris,
tout défigurés qu'ils sont, attestent encore sa haute origine ; mais
c'est une dernière lueur qui s'obscurcit de plus en plus, si bien que
les peintres modernes qui en ont recueilli à peine quelques traditions,
la plupart ne sauraient dire pourquoi saint Jean porte une robe verte,
le Christ et la Vierge des draperies rouges et bleues, et Dieu des
vêtements blancs comme la neige.

D'après la symbolique, deux principes donnent naissance à toutes les
couleurs, la lumière et les ténèbres, le blanc et le noir. La lumière
n'existe que par le feu dont le symbole est le rouge. Partant de cette
base, la symbolique n'admet que deux couleurs primitives : le rouge et
le blanc. Le noir, négation des couleurs, fut attribué à l'esprit des
ténèbres.

Le rouge est le symbole de l'amour divin; le blanc, le symbole de la
divine sagesse. Les couleurs secondaires ne sont autre chose que les
diverses combinaisons des deux principes : amour et sagesse.

Une particularité importante à noter, c'est que la symbolique
considérant les couleurs au point de vue mystique, idéal, les associe,
non pas d'après le résultat matériel, mais d'après leur signification
emblématique. Voilà comme, exprimant par le jaune la révélation de
l'amour et de la sagesse de Dieu, elle fait émaner cette couleur du
rouge et du blanc, bien que l'expérience démontre le contraire.

Le bleu émane de même du rouge et du blanc ; il désigne la sagesse
divine manifestée par la vie, par l'esprit ou le souffle de Dieu ; il
est le symbole de l'esprit de vérité.

Le vert formé par l'union du jaune et du bleu, indique la manifestation
de l'amour et de la sagesse dans l'acte ; c'est le symbole de la charité.

Telle est la signification des cinq couleurs primordiales dont deux
seulement sont élémentaires: La règle de leurs combinaisons ne sera pas
difficile à saisir. Les teintes secondaires reçoivent leur signification
des couleurs qui les composent ; celle qui domine donne à la nuance sa
signification générale, et celle qui est dominée la modifie. Ainsi, le
pourpre qui est d'un rouge azuré signifie l'amour de la vérité, et
l'hyacinthe qui est d'un bleu pourpré représente la vérité de l'amour.

Il est une autre règle qui prête à la langue symbolique une énergie
inconnue aux langues vulgaires, c'est la règle des oppositions. Le noir
uni aux autres couleurs leur donne une signification toute contraire.
Symbole du mal et du faux, cette couleur devient la négation de toutes
les nuances auxquelles on la mélange ; *ainsi le rouge (amour divin),
mêlé de noir, exprime l'amour infernal, l'égoïsme , la haine, enfin
toutes les passions de l'homme dégradé.*

* *Ces principes, dont on ne peut s'empêcher d'admirer le mécanisme
aussi simple qu'ingénieux, vous conduirait à trouver sans peine le sens
exprimé par les autres nuances admises dans le catalogue symbolique.

Revenons aux deux couleurs primitives pour les considérer dans les trois
langues divine, sacrée et profane.

*DU BLANC*.

/* Langue divine*. /Le blanc, unité d'où émanent les couleurs
primitives, est le symbole de Dieu, unité qui embrasse l'univers. Les
prophètes, dans leur langage toujours symbolique, voient la Divinité
revêtue d'un manteau blanc comme la neige. Dans toutes les religions de
la terre à la couleur blanche se rattache la même idée. Le dieu Pan est
aussi blanc que la neige; Osiris a des bandelettes étincelantes de
blancheur ; Jupiter est vêtu de blanc, et lorsque Jésus-Christ se
transfigure sur le Thabor, ses vêtements sont blancs /comme la neige.
/Cette couleur exprime aussi la vérité absolue.

/ *Langue sacrée*. /Le sacerdoce représente Dieu sur la terre, et dans
toutes les religions le souverain pontife porte des vêtements blancs,
symbole de la lumière incréée. Jéhovah ordonne à Aaron de n'entrer dans
le sanctuaire que vêtu de blanc. Les brahmes,les mages, les parsis, les
prêtres égyptiens,romains,scandinaves, celtes et germains, adoptèrent le
même costume. Dans la langue sacrée de la Bible, les vêtements blancs
signifient la régénération des âmes et la récompense des élus. Partout,
et dans tous les temps on a enseveli les morts d'un linceul blanc,
symbole du triomphe de l'âme sur l'empire des ténèbres. Au Japon, quand
une femme se marie, elle est censée mourir pour revivre dans son époux;
aussi elle porte la robe mortuaire blanche et son lit est disposé comme
pour les morts. Triste cérémonie qui semble dire aux parents : vous
venez de perdre votre fille.

/*Langue profane*. /Les Romains notaient les jours heureux avec de la
craie, et dans le langue grecque, /leukos, /blanc, signifie encore
heureux, agréable, gai. Les Maures désignaient par cet emblème la
pureté, la sincérité, l'innocence, la candeur. Nous tenons, dit en
France un auteur héraldique, la blancheur de nos lis pour un symbole de
pureté aussi bien que de franchise. Enfin le blanc, dont le symbole se
modifie d'après l'objet ou la personne auxquels on l'applique. peut
exprimer un grand nombre d'idées ; adressé à la/ /femme, il^- veut dire
chasteté ; à la jeune fille, virginité; au juge, intégrité ; au riche,
humilité; au prêtre, sagesse ; à l'accusé, innocence, etc.

[51]

*DU JAUNE.*

/* Langue divine*. /La chaleur et l'éclat du soleil désignent l'amour de
Dieu qui anime le coeur, et la sagesse qui éclaire l'intelligence. Le
jaune doré exprime à lui seul les deux symboles du rouge et du blanc
amour divin, sagesse divine ; mais il y joint un caractère de
manifestation et de révélation. Le soleil, l'or et le jaune, dans la
langue symbolique, sont analogues, mais non pas synonymes; ils marquent
différents degrés. Le/ /soleil naturel était l'image du soleil
spirituel, l'or figurait le soleil naturel, et le jaune était l'emblème
de l'or. Ce n'est pas sans surprise que nous voyons dans la religion
chrétienne , comme dans toutes les religions antiques, le dogme divin se
révéler par des symboles; d'où résulte une parfaite identité de/
/croyances. Unité sublime! qui, loin de/ /déposer contre le
christianisme, prouve au contraire qu'il résume en lui l'élément
impérissable de l'éternelle vérité.

/ *Langue sacrée*. /L'or et le jaune reçurent dans la langue sacrée
l'acception particulière de révélation faite par le prêtre, ou de
doctrine religieuse enseignée dans tes temples. Par ce métal et par
cette couleur on représentait encore l'initiation aux mystères, ou la
lumière révélée aux profanes. Cette signification se retrouve dès la
plus haute antiquité les pommes d'or du jardin des Hespérides ne
sont-elles pas les fruits de l'intelligence qui naissent de l'amour de
Dieu ? Saint Pierre, comme chef de l'Église, fut revêtu d'une robe
jaune, symbole de la foi. Les aliments de couleur jaune héritèrent du
même privilège; les gâteaux de miel offerts dans les sacrifices étaient
l'emblème de l'amour et de la sagesse de Dieu dont les justes font leur
nourriture. Par opposition, le soufre devint l'image énergique des
passions dépravées qui consument le coeur des impies.

/*Langue profane*. /Les langues divine et sacrée désignaient par l'or et
le jaune l'union de l'âme avec Dieu, et par opposition, l'adultère
spirituel. Dans la langue profane , cet emblème matérialisé représente
tantôt l'amour légitime, tantôt l'adultère charnel. Chez les Maures, le
jaune doré signifiait sage et bon conseil; le jaune pâle, trahison et
déception. Dans le blason l'or était l'emblème de l'amour, de la
constance, de la sagesse, et par opposition, le jaune dénote encore de
nos jours inconstance, jalousie, infidélité. — En France, on
barbouillait de jaune la porte des traîtres.

*DU ROUGE.*

/* Langue divine*//. /Le blanc est le symbole de Dieu, l'or et le jaune
indiquent le verbe ou la révélation ; le rouge et le bleu, la
sanctification ou le Saint-Esprit./ /Le rouge, pris isolément, est le
symbole du baptême de feu et d'esprit ; mais là se révèle dans toutes
les cosmogonies une triade divine dont il est impossible de/ /séparer un
seul terme. Dans son unité, Dieu crée l'univers (blanc); comme fils de
Dieu, il se révèle aux hommes (jaune) ; comme Saint-Esprit, il les
régénère par l'amour et la vérité (rouge et bleu). Qui ne serait frappé
de cette merveilleuse coïncidence Dans le bouddhisme, le brahmanisme,
dans les livres sacrés de l'Inde, de la Chine, de l'Égypte et de la
Perse, comme dans la Bible,, partant sa retrouve ce même dogme d'un seul
Dieu en trois personnes exprimées par les mêmes couleurs.

/* Langue sacrée.*// /Le feu du sacrifice était le symbole du feu
céleste qui repose dans le coeur. La couleur rouge chez les Égyptiens
était consacrée aux bons génies ; c'est pour la même raison que Jupiter
et Bacchus étaient drapés de rouge. Les artistes du Moyen-âge, fidèles
aux traditions, donnèrent toujours à Jésus-Christ des vêtements blancs
ou rouges après sa résurrection. Le rouge était donc le symbole de la
divinité et du culte. Le labarum de Constantin était pourpre ,
l'oriflamme de saint Denis pourpre azuré. Mahomet portait des robes
rouges le vendredi et les fêtes du Beyram. Le rouge, comme emblème de
droit divin, fut toujours l'attribut des pontifes, des rois, des
empereurs, des généraux et des classes privilégiées. Les cardinaux en
ont conservé les insignes. Par opposition, le symbole de l'amour divin
deviendra la marque de l'égoïsme, de l'amour infernal ; le démon sera
vêtu de rouge. De même, dans le blason, le gueule ou rouge dénote
l'ardent amour comme la haine, le courage comme la fureur, etc.

/*Langue profane*/. Dans la langue populaire de toutes les nations, la
couleur du sang fut l'emblème des combats; au Pérou, les quipos teintes
en rouge désignaient les gens de guerre. Les Spartiates, qui ne
connaissaient d'autre vertu que le courage militaire, étaient ensevelis
dans des linceuls rouges. Le rouge était nécessairement l'attribut du
dieu Mars dont le symbole spirituel, comme celui du dieu des armées chez
les Juifs, exprimait le combat de la vertu contre le vice. Il y a loin
de cette image consolante au dieu, sanguinaire dont on invoque le nom un
glaive à la main.

*DU BLEU.*

/* Langue divine.*// /L'air, dont la couleur est l'azur, le bleu
céleste, exprime dans la Bible le symbole de l'esprit saint, de la
vérité divine qui éclaire les hommes. Dans l'antiquité, le feu éthéré,
ce qui veut dire le bleu et le rouge réunis, figurait l'identification
de l'amour et de la sagesse dans le père des dieux et des hommes. Sur
les verrières du moyen fige, pendant les trois années de prédication, de
vérité et de sagesse, [52] le Messie porte une robe bleue. Le dieu Agni
dans l'Inde, symbole du feu céleste, est monté sur un /bélier /bleu,
Jupiter-Ammon a un corps bleu avec une tête de /bélier, /et Jésus,
/l'agneau /mystique, est vêtu d'une robe bleue. Rapprochements
singuliers, mais qui démontrent clairement l'unité de ce grand drame
religieux dont la manifestation, obscurcie de ténèbres par intervalles,
se renouvelle invariablement dans sa pureté primitive.

/*Langue sacrée*//. /La symbolique distingue trois cou-leurs bleues ;
l'une qui émane du rouge ; l'autre du blanc, et la troisième qui s'unit
au noir. Le bleu émané du rouge représente le feu éthéré et signifie
amour /céleste de la vérité. /Dans les mystères, il se rapporte au
baptême de feu. Le bleu émané du blanc indique les vérités de la foi ;
il se rapporte aux eaux vives de la Bible, symbole du baptême d'esprit.
Le bleu uni au noir désigne l'esprit de Dieu planant sur le chaos, il se
rapporte au baptême naturel. Ces trois nuances expriment les trois
degrés de l'initiation antique et le triple baptême chrétien. — « Pour
moi, dit saint Jean-Baptiste, je vous baptise /d'eau /pour vous porter à
la repentance ; mais celui qui vient après moi est plus puissant que moi
; c'est lui qui vous baptisera du /saint esprit /et du /feu. »
/Néanmoins ces trois degrés sont plus particulièrement figurés par le
rouge, le bleu et le vert.

/ //*Langue profane.*// /L'azur fut dans la langue divine le symbole de
la vérité éternelle ; dans la langue sacrée, de l'immortalité; et dans
la langue profane, de/ /la fidélité. Dans le blason , le bleu signifie
chasteté , loyauté, fidélité et bonne réputation.

*Du NOIR.*

Le blanc étant le symbole de la vérité absolue, le noir devait être
celui de l'erreur, du néant, de ce qui n'est pas. Lorsque Jésus-Christ
lutte contre le génie du mal, les enlumineurs du Moyen-âge le
représentent drapé en noir. La vierge Marie, qui est le symbole de
l'Église chrétienne, a souvent le visage noir sur les peintures du
douzième siècle. Dans les cérémonies de l'initiation antique, la
divinité, symbole de la beauté morale, avant de revêtir les vêtements
éclatants en signe de régénération, était d'abord drapée d'une robe de
deuil. En Égypte, cette déité s'appelait la ténébreuse Athor ; en Grèce,
Vénus la noire (symbole de l'amour divin). Par un de ces rapprochements
que nous voyons constamment se reproduire dans la religion chrétienne ,
la couleur noire de la Vierge indique le degré qui précède la
régénération ou le combat de l'Église contre les ténèbres. Chez les
Maures, le noir désignait la douleur, le désespoir, l'obscurité et la
constance. Dans le blason, la prudence, la sagesse et la /constance
/dans la tristesse et les adversités. Rouge sur noir, suivant M. Portal,
se rapporte aux divinités bienfaisantes, c'est ce qui expliquerait
l'emploi constant de ces deux couleurs dans les peintures des vases
étrusques.

*Du VERT*

/* Langue divine*//. /D'après les prophètes , de Dieu émanent trois
sphères qui remplissent les cieux ; la première sphère, ou sphère
d'amour, est rouge ; la seconde, ou sphère de sagesse, est bleue ; la
troisième, ou sphère de création, est verte. Ces trois sphères,
répondent aux trois degrés d'initiation. Sur la Bible latine du dixième
siècle, Jésus-Christ est enveloppé du limbe rouge bordé d'une bande
bleue, son auréole est rouge ; des chérubins et des anges l'environnent;
leurs auréoles sont, les unes rouges, les autres bleues, les autres
vertes. Sous les pieds du Christ est une sphère pourpre, et le
marche-pied de la divinité e,st séparé en trois bandes rouge, bleue et
verte. — Ce sont toujours les mêmes symboles reproduits sous une autre
forme.

/* Langue sacrée*//. /Quatre couleurs sont attribuées aux quatre
éléments; le rouge représente le feu, l'azur l'air, le vert l'eau, le
noir la terre. Le vert est l'image du premier degré d'initiation au
sortir du chaos et des ténèbres. Plus haut nous avons parlé de Vénus la
noire, il y avait aussi la verte Vénus, la Vénus /régénératrice, /la
Vénus Aphrogénie. Ici nous retrouvons encore les rapprochements les plus
curieux. L'apôtre saint Jean, l'initiateur aux combats spirituels , est
presque toujours vêtu d'une robe verte. Dans l'islamisme, Ali,
l'initiateur par la conquête matérielle, porte également le turban vert.
Par opposition, le vert désigne la folie. Satan et Minerve, les deux
extrêmes, sont dépeints avec des yeux verts.

/* Langue profane.* /Les légendes populaires conservent les traditions
sacrées en les matérialisant; le vert, symbole de la régénération de
l'âme, de la nouvelle naissance spirituelle, fut l'emblème de la
naissance matérielle. On a prêté à l'émeraude la vertu de hâter
l'enfantement. Le vert, symbole de l'espérance, dans l'immortalité ,
devint celui de l'espérance dans le monde ; symbole de la victoire
spirituelle, il devint celui de la victoire matérielle, et, par
opposition, il désigna chez les Grecs défaite et trahison ; chez les
Maures, il signifiait espérance, joie et jeunesse ; dans le blason,
civilité, amour, joie et abondance. Enfin dans toutes les religions
antiques et modernes, il fut et demeure le symbole de la bonne doctrine.

*COULEURS MIXTES.*

*Rose, pourpre, Hyacinthe, écarlate, Violet. Orangé, tanné, gris.*

Nous allons glisser rapidement sur les nuances dérivées des six couleurs
principales. la règle des [53] combinaisons est du reste un moyen clair
et facile de prévoir leur valeur symbolique.

*Le rose*, par exemple, est un mélange du rouge et du blanc ; le rouge
désigne l'amour divin, le blanc la sagesse divine, la réunion de ces
deux couleurs devra donc signifier : Amour de la sagesse divine. Nous
trouvons ici une analogie avec le jaune, qui exprime le même symbole,
mais à un degré supérieur. L'or, le jaune se rapportant à Dieu, à sa
révélation ; le rose indique l'homme régénéré qui reçoit la parole sainte.

*Le pourpre et l'hyacinthe* sont deux nuances d'une même couleur qu'il
serait facile de confondre, et qui cependant ont deux significations
différentes. Le pourpre était dans l'antiquité une couleur nuancée de
bleu ; dans l'hyacinthe, au contraire, c'est le bleu qui domine ;
l'hyacinthe se rapportera donc à la vérité de l'amour, et le pourpre à
l'amour de la vérité.

*L'écarlate* est une nuance composée de rouge avec une teinte de jaune;
il est, par conséquent, le symbole de l'amour spirituel, de l'amour du
Verbe ou de la parole divine. Cette couleur dans la langue symbolique
est d'un degré au-dessus du pourpre.

Jusqu'à présent, dans les couleurs mixtes, nous avons trouvé une
dominante ; mais lorsque les deux couleurs s'équilibrent comme dans le
violet, où le rouge et le bleu se font également sentir, la
signification découle des deux nuances primitives. Ainsi *le violet*
comprendra à la fois le sens du pourpre et de l'hyacinthe, l'amour de la
vérité et la vérité de l'amour ; il exprimera l'union de la bonté et de
la vérité, de l'amour et de la sagesse.

Les couleurs *safranée et orangée*, composées de jaune et de rouge,
désignèrent dès la plus haute antiquité la révélation de l'amour divin.
Bacchus, dont le mythe spirituel, et non matérialisé comme il le fut
plus tard, est le symbole de l'esprit saint, de la sanctification des
âmes, portait dans les représentations scéniques un manteau orangé. Dans
le christianisme, l'orangé désigne encore la divinité embrasant le coeur
et illuminant l'esprit des fidèles. C'est par opposition que dans la
langue profane cette couleur est devenue l'emblème de l'adultère
matériel, et dans le blason l'emblème de la dissimulation et de
l'hypocrisie.

Sous le nom de *couleur fauve, tannée*, la pauvreté des langues humaines
nous force de réunir une foule de nuances qui varient à l'infini depuis
le marron jusqu'au /feuille-morte. /Toutes ces couleurs brunes ont une
signification funeste ; dans l'antiquité et le Moyen-âge, elles furent
portées en signe de deuil. Chez les Maures, le tanné était l'emblème de
tout ce qui est /mal; /allié aux autres nuances, il leur donnait un sens
néfaste. Ainsi, vert et tanné signifiait rire et pleurs ; bleu et tanné,
patience dans l'adversité, etc.

Le mélange du blanc et du noir, ou *le gris*, fut dans le christianisme
l'emblème de la mort terrestre et de/ /l'immortalité spirituelle. De
plus, comme le blanc est le symbole de l'innocence, le noir celui de la
culpabilité, le gris, en modifiant et atténuant ces deux significations,
devient le symbole de l'innocence calomniée, noircie, succombant sous le
poids de l'injustice des hommes.

De cette longue et curieuse énumération de/ /la symbolique des couleurs,
M. Frédéric Portal s'élève jusqu'à des considérations philosophiques et
religieuses. Il est certain que si la symbolique des couleurs venait à
se populariser de nouveau, ce qui n'est pas impossible, les couleurs
dont seraient peints les vêtements de tel ou tel personnage offriraient
une ressource de plus pour frapper l'imagination et préciser d'une
manière saillante l'idée que l'artiste s'efforce de traduire aux yeux.

On ne peut refuser à la langue symbolique des couleurs une grande
souplesse jointe à une grande énergie ; par son intermédiaire, l'idée
prend un corps qui la rend plus accessible à toutes les intelligences.
Aussi la joie, le deuil, le triomphe, le mépris, la puissance, l'amour,
la haine, le désespoir, toutes les grandes passions du coeur humain
ont-elles employé cette langue expressive pour se manifester plus
vivement aux regards. Nous n'hésitons pas à le dire, si les peintres
voulaient approfondir quelque peu cette musique du coloris dont chaque
ton exprime une idée, ils en tireraient des effets aussi heureux
qu'inattendus. Les artistes du Moyen-âge ne manquaient jamais dans leurs
peintures religieuses d'accommoder la couleur des vêtements de chaque
personnage à la signification intime du fait représenté. Tout dans leurs
compositions était symbolique, jusqu'à la couleur des cheveux du Christ,
qui ils faisaient d'un blond doré, comme symbole de la plus haute
expression du divin amour.

Eugène VILLEMIN

1 <#sdfootnote1anc>Pourquoi trois ? Comment TROIS ? En pédagogie, on
faisait faire, autrefois, mais il est toujours d'actualité dans sa
simplicité, le test des trois commissions. Ce test permettait, avec
d'autres de déterminer les capacités des élèves. Être apte à faire trois
commissions sans en oublier relève souvent de l'exploit quand l'intérêt
n'y est pas, ou que la consigne est imparfaite. Notez pourtant, que même
avec des individus performants, plus vos consignes sont nombreuses,
moins elles sont exécutées, et que tout « chef » devrait se limiter à
deux « ordres ou consignes ou commissions » s'il veut être certain
qu'elles seront exécutées. La division de données en trois, limite
intellectuelle fréquente, relève d'un bon sens élémentaire, au-delà, la
majorité des individus va « oublier » la série de tâches qu'il doit
exécuter.

2 <#sdfootnote2anc> Les armoiries étaient différenciées en cinq couleurs
: azur (bleu), gueules (rouge), sable (noir), sinople (vert), et pourpre
(violet).

  ¶ 17:35