Art Magic

To arrive at a complete apprehension of truth, or that which is, we must call up the witness of that which was, that which shall be, and that which moves, as well as that which is moved upon. The anatomist who numbers up the bones, recites the names and describes the forms and functions of the tissues, organs and apparatuses which constitute the physical structure, explains nothing of the true man except the house he lives in.

The physiologist who explains the motions which proceed throughout the wonderful housekeeping processes of human life, supplements in one degree the science of anatomy, but does no more than his contemporary by way of unveiling the mystery of that being which inhabits the many-sided structure. Oh, how long! how wistfully, and yet in what agonizing yearning for light - light upon the mystery of self-knowledge, light upon the problems of who am I? what am I, whose am I? whence do I come? and whither am I bound? - has the I am of moral existence waited! Can the answer ever be rendered? If so, it must come from the realm of true knowledge, the esoteric innermost, from whence and to which the exoteric is but a temporary pilgrim! Those who have stood face to face with this esoteric sunbeam, who have beheld it vanishing behind the clouds of matter for the span of a mortal term of existence, but emerging again into the clear noonday radiance of a day which knows no night, a firmament whose unbounded vistas enshroud no mysteries, a realm of being limited only by the capacity of finite perception - such an one surely has the right to say, I know, and such an one writes and alleges he will reveal the order of Divine wisdom as manifest in human existance, and declared by the souls who have lived and struggled behind the veil, broken their way by the sword of death through its misty envelopment, and finally attained to that breadth of vision where cause and effect cohere like pearls on the unbroken thread of destiny, where past and future lie outstretched in the boundless panoramas of a never beginning, never ending present.

Any attempt to elucidate the problems of being, conducted in one direction, and by one method alone, must fail.

Those philosophers who reason from induction alone, only arrive at a mayhap perception of truth, nor do they fare any better who conduct their arguments through the half-declared processes of deduction. Both methods are essential to master the entire situation.

Theory must prompt the possibility of new discoveries, and facts must goad us on to the evolvement of new theories - even phenomena are needed to startle our self-conceit from the arrogant assumptions of half-enlightened, half-blind belief, and failures must follow on the heels of successes ere we can presume to erect a milestone on the path of destiny for the guidance of others. When every method has been exhausted, and all avenues to the way of light have been carefully traversed, then, and not till then, can the soul of man venture to affirm, I know; then, and not til then, are we in a position to challenge the bigoted adherents of a single school or a solitary method, and say, "I have entered upon a grander vista of truth than you - follow me!" Emerging from the many branching avenues of knowledge which the study of spirit and matter, fact and theory, intuition and phenomena afford, let us lay out our scheme of the Universe, and then proceed from its underlying principles to such results as their action have given shape and organic life to.