Lecky, in his "History of European Morals," records the case of "the abbot-elect of St. Augustine, at Canterbury, who in 1171 was found on investigation to have seventeen illegitimate children in a single village; or, an abbot of St. Pelayo, in Spain, who in 1130 was proved to have kept no less than seventy concubines; or Henry III, Bishop of Liege, who was deposed in 1274 for having sixty-five illegitimate children." (History of European Morals. P. 350.)

If the reader remarks that "this is ancient history," he should remember that a celibate priesthood to-day have the same opportunity, through the secrecy and power of the Confessional, as ever.

I have barely touched on this disgusting but all-important question on the general thesis of Jacolliot, viz.: "The first result of the baneful domination of priests in India was the abasement and moral degradation of woman."

Rome, who derived her religious code from paganized Egypt, added celibacy to the opportunities and inducements for the degradation of woman. Rome never attained the heights from which the Brahman priesthood plunged into debauchery. Even to-day in the festivals in the Brahman temples wholesale orgies of prostitution are sometimes found, as witnessed and recorded by Jacolliot. From the first, Brahman priests have married and reared families. Their degradation and debauchery, therefore, cannot be charged to their original "Divine Revelation," but to their corruption of it.

I have given a few brief quotations among hundreds recorded by Jacolliot as to the respect and veneration accorded to woman in early Vedic times, and in the Laws of Manu.

"The Brahman may not approach the altar of sacrifice but with a soul pure, in a body undefiled.

"Spirituous liquors beget drunkenness, neglect of duty, and they profane prayer.

"The antiquity of India stands forth to establish its priority of religious legislation in prohibiting to priests the use of spirituous liquors, and especially in forbidding the pleasures of love when they are about to offer sacrifice.

"The woman whose words and thoughts and person are pure is a celestial balm.

"Happy shall he be whose choice is approved by all the good.

"It is ordained that a devotee shall choose a wife from his own class.

"The Brahman who marries a woman who is not a virgin, who is a widow, or divorced by her husband, or who is not known as a virtuous woman, cannot be permitted to offer sacrifice, for he is impure, and nothing can cleanse him from his impurities."

And Jacolliot adds, "It is not recorded, says the divine Manu, that a Brahman has ever, even by compulsion, married a girl of low class.

"Let the Brahman espouse a Brahmine, says the Veda.

"Let him take a well-formed virgin, of an agreeable name, of the graceful carriage of the swan, or of the young elephant, whose body is covered with light down, her hair fine, her teeth small, and her limbs charmingly graceful."

Jacolliot compares these early Vedic injunctions with Leviticus, Chapter XXI, and the absurdities introduced by Moses as to a "crooked nose or a squint eye."

Woman here in the West is just emerging from the slavery and degradation of ages, and she ought to know that that degradation was not the handicap of barbaric and undeveloped races, so far as the Aryan race is concerned, but a demoralization and degradation instituted by priests, in the name of religion, through which they have sought to rule the world, and so far as institutional religions are concerned, woman has had to progress in spite of them.

Without the aid and influence of woman to-day, neither Protestant nor Roman Church could exist at all, as witness almost any Sabbath service where women outnumber men often ten to one.

One day woman will be wise enough and brave enough to dictate terms, as she did ages ago in old Aryavarta. When that day comes, and the really Divine Motherhood planted in every true woman's soul is recognized by man and woman alike, God grant that she may thenceforth hold the fort till the Kali-Yuga is at full tide, and the Spiritual Evolution of our present Humanity is fully accomplished.

In the meantime the world will have learned to know Jesus, who and what he was, and how he became the Christ, and will have joined in his Divine Mission to man, as the teeming millions joined in old India under Christna ages ago.



CHAPTER IX

HERO WORSHIP AND FOLKLORE

The history of every people, of all time, and of every religion of which we have any record, reveals a similar origin, course, and destiny.

We of the present day have the advantage of these records upon which to institute comparisons, ascertain relations, and draw conclusions.

True, the partisans and postulants of all these religions at the present day will claim exception in favor of their own cult, and regard as sacrilegious and profane any attempt to institute comparisons and draw general conclusions.

Any attempt to persuade them of their error would be useless.

The essentials of their religion will not be called in question, but on the other hand, they will find that it is impossible to escape from the habitual and universal tendencies in which they are involved.

However veritable may have been the original revelations, the tendencies and habits of weaving around them the traditions and superstitions of folklore seem to have been inevitable and universal.

It is the province of Science to ascertain the facts in any given case, to institute comparisons, and to draw deductions and generalizations dispassionately and relentlessly.

It is thus that every tradition, superstition, creed, dogma, and revelation comes under review, and is placed on trial.

True science has no preconceived notion, no foregone conclusion. Each subject examined must tell its own story and in its own way, and stand or fall measured by intrinsic evidence and revealed fact.

To this tribunal every episode in the life of man and the history of the human race must at last come.

What are the facts? What do they reveal and signify?

To most religionists this method and aim of science seem as relentless and dogmatic as their own creed or dogmas.

It is a sifting and discriminative process, that, while relentless, is in the end eminently Just, and in the end will be found to be the revealer of all that is essential and true in religion itself.

In itself, science is not and never can be a religion.

It is a method only, which, like a search-light, reveals all religions in all their essentials, and places them in their true light.

Religion per se is an essential element in the nature and life of man and of the human race.

Science is a method, a way of procedure in the intelligent mind of man in its search for truth.

Religion is vital, essential, basic. It is born of the relation which inheres in the kinship of the individual intelligence to the Universal Spirit of Nature and of all life.

Science is the intelligent and rational use of the mental powers of man.

Religion is intuitional, spiritual perception, involving the heart, the affections. Man aspires, worships, adores, and by the light of Faith or intuitive conviction, recognizes that which he cannot explain and cannot get rid of if he tries.

Science is the just weight and measure of things seen, and of the natural causes of phenomena.

Religion—the evidence of things unseen. Religion, as a fact, can never be explained away by Science.

The so-called science that assumes or undertakes to do that, is materialism and nescience.

Superstition is the false interpretation of religion, and folklore and tradition are the accretions that gather around the foundations and original revelations of religion, and lead at last to obscuration and the need of a new revelation.

Each genuine new "revelation" is but the rehabilitation of the primeval religion in which accretions, false interpretations, and dogmatic assertions are cast aside.

Religion represents man's endeavor to apprehend and interpret the unseen; that "something more" and "something beyond" the visible, the sensuous, and the tangible.

It is this conscious awareness of something more and something beyond the visible and the tangible, that furnishes man with a conception of God and of the human soul. This is a natural intuition, inseparable from the awareness of self. It lies at the foundation like man's self-conscious identity, and can neither be explained nor explained away.

Here lies the root of all religions. The imagery of man's imagination, in his effort to apprehend the unseen, and to formulate the unknown, gives rise to myths, allegory, tradition, folklore, and in the end, to superstition, creed, and dogma.

Then come priestcraft, oppression, persecution. The death of religion, the deification of the revealer or Avatar, and the substitution of the priesthood as of divine authority, in place of the revealer or the revelation.

Jove, Orpheus, Jehovah, and at last Jesus, are enthroned beyond the clouds, and priest or church assume the earthly prerogative, speak in their place, assume dogmatic authority, promise heaven and happiness for obedience, and dire penalties for disobedience, and resort to persecution to maintain their authority.

The traditions, mythologies, and folklore of all the past have thus arisen. The creeds and dogmas of the present constitute the effort of man to assume exclusive dominion, and to exercise divine authority over the masses of mankind. It is only another form of the ambition of individuals for wealth, fame or power, lifting them to a "class" above the toiling, suffering, and sorrowing masses.

There are exceptional individuals all along the way, who conceive, hold, and exercise the spirit of the Master, and sink self in the service of man, and but for these the organized priesthood would be execrated by mankind long before.

The organized church deifies, where the true disciple humanizes and helps mankind in the name and in the spirit of the Master.

This is the spirit, the origin, the genius and the history of every Avatar, of Christna, and all the Buddhas, the Saviors and Redeemers of history.

The orthodox Christian of to-day, whether Catholic or Protestant, will be likely to admit the foregoing outline except as it applies to his own religion. Whereas it is abundantly proven to-day regarding his own religion as nowhere else in history.

The histories of former religions are vague, distant, and so covered over by tradition, myth, and folklore, as to be difficult to trace.

The beginnings, history, and progress of the Christian religion are comparatively nearer at hand, and the process above outlined readily demonstrable.

Not only so, but the recognition of the facts and processes is everywhere in evidence.

This fact, however, by no means ends the controversy.

Traditions, creeds, and dogmas die hard, and fight to the last extremity. Nothing else known to man fights so desperately and dies so hard as an organized priesthood, and beyond this, they are upheld by the ignorance, superstition, the fear, and the faith of the masses.

Their adherents often believe and assume that they have discovered final truths, essential and unalterable verities. They undertake to support and to maintain these by dogmatic authority, a holy book, a "thus sayeth the Lord."

"There it is, down in black and white." No further evidence is required.

To question such authority is to be damned. To believe, accept, and to conform, is to be saved.

Difference of opinion and of interpretation inevitably arise, even among those who dare not question the ultimate authority and genuineness of the original revelation. Hence arise sects, schisms, and theological warfare.

Notwithstanding all this, the original revelation becomes a matter of thorough investigation and of criticism.

The so-called "higher criticism" had already discovered errors in translation, and contradictions in interpretation, resulting in a "revised edition" of the sacred books, while under the name "Pragmatism," certain metaphysical writers and accredited teachers have undertaken to determine essential meanings and interpretations, and to submit religious revelations, creeds, dogmas, and theologies to critical analysis.

How far this analysis has gone, and how little of the original interpretation actually remains, only they are aware who keep abreast of current thought, and who with open mind care more for the simple truth than for custom, tradition, theologies, and the folklore of the past.

Dogmatic theological authority is completely undermined, and its days are numbered.[1]

With the masses there is the habitual unrest, the feeling of uncertainty, the social upheaval, with the inevitable tendency to confusion and anarchy. A new religion is already in the formative stage, a new Avatar inevitable.

It is to be less a repudiation than a revision and rehabilitation of the old religion.

People everywhere are looking for the new revelation, for the coming of Christos, for the new Avatar, and few are aware that he is already here.

It should be borne strictly in mind that in every instance in the past, the advent of the Avatar has been unattended by signs and wonders, has come upon the stage of human action in the most commonplace way, and that myth, miracle, and folklore have followed as time went on.

To the people of his time Jesus was the "son of the carpenter," whose family was obscure. He came "eating with publicans and sinners."

Jesus, the demigod of to-day, was unknown and undreamed of in Galilee. Philo Judaeus seems never to have heard of him.

What and who Jesus was, and what he did, is separated from what the church and theologians have made of him by a gulf that seems almost impassable, and yet this gulf has already been bridged and passed.

The new Avatar has for its mission the rehabilitation of Jesus as he actually existed, divested of all myth and miracle, while the mission for which he came, and the doctrines for which he lived and died are to be completely restored to mankind in their purity.

The old Hindoos would call this transformation a "reincarnation of Vishnu," a "new Avatar."

It will mean Jesus the divine Man, the master, Christos, restored to the heart of Humanity from the mysticism and miracle of monks and theologies, from the superstitions and folklore of the multitude.

This means a reconstruction and a restatement of the religion of Jesus.

Jesus remaining what he actually was and is, it will be the province of Natural Science to explain and to demonstrate by natural and spiritual law, how, without mystery or miracle, Jesus became the Master Christos and so remains to-day.

Natural Science is not the invention of man, more than is the law of gravitation, the law of equilibrium, or the binomial theorem. Man may discover these laws from the phenomena of Nature, and demonstrate their existence and mode of operation like any others.

It is a question of dispassionate and intelligent apprehension and demonstration.

All actual progress of man up to the present time lies along these lines. Beyond this all is conjecture and guess-work. Natural Science, however, is far more than modern physical science so-called. It includes physical, mental, moral, and spiritual science.

Its methods everywhere and at all times are the same.

It may theorize, but never dogmatize, and it must demonstrate at every step. Facts must not only support the theorem, but demonstrate the conclusions as inevitable, and the basis of all such actual demonstration must be a verifiable individual experience, with formulated laws and processes for its repetition, just as in physical science, in chemistry, and mathematics. Nothing less than this on any plane or in any department of investigation can enable the individual to declare "I Know."

Demonstration is the sign manual of knowledge; Dogmatism the arrogance of ignorance.

It is impossible to make these radical distinctions too clear and specific.

When this method of Natural Science is applied to the investigation of religions, tradition is separated from fact, dogma from demonstration, miracle from natural law, mythology and folklore are found to be the fabric woven by the imagination of mankind around the receding revelations, deifying their authors, and mingling fact with fable, till the originals become unrecognizable.

Romance and superstition become substitutes for simple Faith, moral law, and social Justice.

To question or to repudiate the dogmas of superstition becomes a "mortal sin," even when the most plain and specific moral or ethical obligations are entirely subverted or reversed by dogmatic authority.

It is thus that the original revelation is subverted and at last overthrown.

From first to last, the whole fabric is claimed to be "sacred and divine," and to question it, "sacrilege" and "profanation of holy things." Thus, that which seemed originally as wings to the toiling, sorrowing children of men, becomes at last a "millstone about the neck," a "burden grievous to be borne."

Then comes protest, repudiation, reform, and usually a new revelation, embodying the primitive faith, and adapting it to modern times and conditions.

This is, in brief, the history of the Avatars of Ancient India, the Buddhas and the Zoroasters of later centuries; of the Greek Orpheus; of the legends and folklore clustering around many of the sages of Israel, and though in a less miraculous fashion, of Confucius and Laotse. But most patent of all does this principle apply to the founder of the Christian religion, because less ancient and more readily verifiable.

Though no new Avatar is yet recognized, the spirit of modern science does not hesitate to repudiate myth, miracle, and superstition, and to insist on fact and natural law.

——-

[1] See President Eliot's latest utterances.



CHAPTER X

CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE

The devout and conscientious believers in the Christian Religion of to-day often view with sorrow and alarm the encroachments of modern science.

Unable to prevent these encroachments, they stubbornly resent them. Once admitted, it seems to them that nothing sacred or worthy the name of Religion would remain. To shift to other and more ancient faiths can never be considered at all, for the "higher criticism" and "pragmatism" have left them all in even a worse plight.

It seems to these devout souls like the death of religion itself, and its elimination from the life of man.

The intuitive basis and the intrinsic necessity of religion in some form have already been considered.

This point is often overlooked or ignored by the Iconoclasts.

Their position would seem to be, "Unravel the superstition, disprove the possibility of miracle, and let the deluge come if it must."

Neither pragmatism nor higher criticism has been in any large sense constructive, but more largely destructive. The really spiritual element in all religions, already referred to, is generally lost sight of.

Modern psychology is no nearer a science of the soul, than are folklore and superstition to true religion. It should be recognized and granted once for all that psychology, as a department of modern physical science, has no substitute whatever to offer in the place of Religion.

It is gathering facts, classifying, and labeling psychic phenomena.

Here and there an advanced scientist, like Sir Oliver Lodge, ignores tradition, repudiates orthodox scientific restraints, and steps over the border of actual or implied nihilism.

This smug nihilism with its superior air of scientific wisdom, is often only the opposite pole of the dogmatic certitude of the churchman. Actual knowledge of the human soul is quite as far removed from the one as from the other. Credulity and Incredulity simply annul each other; often make faces at each other; while Progress stalks alone in the middle of the road, a "tramp" or a "vagabond," like Paracelsus, "reading the leaves of the book of Nature," laughing at poverty, fleeing from persecution, yet knowing, and "becoming a light to man forever."

The consensus of opinion among the presidents and professors in the leading colleges and universities of this country, their unhesitating and unqualified denial or repudiation of the claims set up by the church regarding revelation and the basic dogmas of the Christian Religion, and which his "Holiness" of the Vatican designates as "Modernism," reveal, not only the "signs of the times," but show indisputably that modern education has shaken itself free from the superstitions of the past, and repudiated the old restraints to free thought and modern progress.

Orthodoxy in religious matters has often nothing to do in determining college curriculums, in the selection of presidents, or in filling the chairs.

Bright young men and women, the advanced students of the schools of to-day, who are to become the leaders of thought and the teachers of to-morrow, find little restraint and no formative element in the creeds and dogmas that in the past have been so much in evidence, and so constraining. Intensity of feeling has given place to breadth and inclusiveness, and under the name of "Comparative Religions," ancient faiths and modern, are classified, and studied like fossils in the different ages of the past.

The "crusader impulse" has rather settled down in each individual breast, as the master passion, to do, to dare, and to become something more and better than the individual, or than the past has hitherto known. Such a general period of intellectual activity, with so few restraints, history nowhere else records, and the world has never before known.

Here lie the elements, the impulses, and the formative stage of the new Avatar.

At this stage of our discussion it is of exceeding interest and importance to bear in mind one great fact. The average intelligent student of to-day may take this fact tentatively, reserving final judgment till accumulative evidence becomes satisfactory and conclusive.

No one who is dominated by shallow incredulity, and who attempts to close this door contemptuously, will ever arrive at the real truth. The judgment of such individuals is simply worthless, notwithstanding the smug conceit of their own opinions.

The important fact referred to, is the demonstrated existence, all through the ages, of the so-called Mysteries.

Their existence is beyond all question. What they concealed and taught is sometimes difficult to determine.

There were also the genuine and the spurious Mysteries, and a fair appreciation of their origin, purpose, methods, and genius, as illustrated by Plato, Pythagoras, Zoroaster, and nearly every great sage of antiquity, leaves no possible doubt that in these "Secret Orders" were preserved the loftiest and the most profound mental and spiritual achievements of all previous human history.

If there were no other evidence in existence at the present day except the traditions, landmarks, ritual, and Genius of Freemasonry, a careful and intelligent study of that Ancient Order would be sufficient.

Whether one Mason in a thousand to-day apprehends and realizes this fact, has nothing whatever to do with the real question. The evidence is there, and the indifference or superficial intelligence of numbers cannot alter it.



CHAPTER XI

CONCEPTIONS AND PORTENTS OF AN AVATAR

The conflict between Science and Religion has been thoroughly thrashed out during the last half century, and the "reign of law," and orderly, and progressive evolution, have made for themselves a habitation and a name that nothing is likely to overthrow.

It is recognized that every effect has a sufficient and a commensurate cause, not en bloc, but in matter, energy, mind, and spirit. Action and reaction are definite mathematical processes. The parallelogram of force tends everywhere to equilibrium and secures further action and new processes under universal law.

The "special creation" theory—everything made out of nothing by a personal God—is no longer regarded as tenable by intelligent individuals, though miracle and special providence are often included in accounting for the vicissitudes of life, just as the so-called scientist superficially and flippantly uses the word "coincidence," as though it really explained anything.

"The rational order that pervades the universe," as Prof. Huxley defined the concept and aim of scientific discovery, has steadily gained ascendancy, until it dominates and measures individual intelligence.

The criticism is still occasionally made that this means Pantheism, overlooking the fact that in all mythologies and cosmologies, an ideal and pure theism was recognized as lying back of and beyond the pantheons of the gods and the deification of the powers of Nature.

This was true in the Greek, Persian, Egyptian, and Hindoo mythologies. Back of the many, and beyond the transient and contending divinities, was the One, postulated, but unknown and changeless.

Every religion known to man, with the advancing civilization of a people, copied, modified, adopted, and adapted the mythology and folklore of some pre-existing religion and people. This is readily demonstrable with the Hebrew, Greek, and later Christian dispensations, notwithstanding the most strenuous and persistent determination to deny, disprove, and destroy the ancient records.

It is embodied in the etymology of the very names of heroes, gods, and demigods. A new language arising with any people de novo can nowhere be found.

Phonetics and picturegraphs, the various alphabets and glyphs, are mixed and modified, but never invented nor altogether changed.

Complicated as they may be, it is thus that philology, ethnology, theology, and anthropology constitute a consistent whole, the mythology and folklore of mankind. This reveals the practical unity and solidarity of the human race.

The tradition and prophecy among the ancient Hebrews of the coming of the Messiah, the portents that heralded, and the signs and wonders that preceded or accompanied his appearance, are merely translations or adaptations from previous eras, Buddhas, or Avatars.

Whether Christian or non-Christian, the object of the advent is always identical.

The light of the spirit having become enfeebled or obscured, the people are left in darkness and given over to sin and wickedness. Moral ruin seems inevitable unless there is a divine influx, a new Avatar, or Buddha, or Advent of the God-man.

God incarnates himself as the son of Mary, and Jesus says, "I am come a light into the world that whosoever believeth in me should not abide in darkness."

Christna says, "Though I am unborn, and my nature is eternal, and I am the Lord also of all creatures, yet taking control of my nature-form, I am born by my illusive power. For whenever piety decays, O son of Bharata, and impiety is in the ascendant, then I produce myself. For the protection of good men, for the destruction of evildoers, for the re-establishment of piety, I am born from age to age." (Bhagavadgita.)

The historical Buddha taught that he was only one of a long series of Buddhas, who appear at intervals in the world, and who all teach the same system. After the death of each Buddha his religion flourishes for a time and then decays, till at last it is completely forgotten and wickedness and violence rule the earth. The names of twenty-four of these Buddhas who appeared previous to Gautama have been handed down to us, just as the "second coming of Christ" is believed in and referred to among the Christians.

Even the Mohammedan Koran refers to this succession of prophets and messengers of Allah. The same is true of the Parsis.

"I have said that I first of all chose Abad, and after him I sent thirteen prophets in succession, all called Abad. By these fourteen prophets the world enjoyed prosperity."

"Tradition informs us that when these auspicious prophets and their successors behold evil to prevail among mankind, they invariably withdraw from among them—as they could not endure to behold or hear wickedness."

This is precisely what happened to Egypt after the ambitious priesthood had gained the ascendency. The Master Builders retired.

Bonwick says ("Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought"): "What is commonly called the Christ idea of humanity, thus appears to have been the hope and consolation of the ancient Egyptians so many thousand years ago."

That which thus appears and disappears, dies out and is born again, is the spiritual light in the soul of man.

The diversity of man's intellectual activities exercise, elaborate, and deepen his mental perceptions, and these largely concern the things of sense and time, his appetites, passions, desires, and ambitions.

Back of and beyond all these lie the things of the spirit. On the physical plane of life the former obscure and crowd out the latter, which are thus continually in need of renewal.

In adapting the new revelation to the conditions of life on the physical plane, it is intellectualized and theologized. Pundits and theologians undertake to explain what it all means and how it happened to be. Hence arise wrangles, disputes, and finally creeds, dogmas, and persecution.

"Men fight like devils for the love of God." This is the ultimate history of every religion known to man.

Meantime, the soul of man, a spiritual being dwelling in a material body on the physical plane, is seeking real knowledge of spiritual things.

This real knowledge is an experience of the soul. It concerns, and is comprised in, the living of a life. It is more than mind or intellect. It is knowledge gained by experience. "This only I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see."

"Whether in the body or out of the body, I know not, but I saw things impossible to utter."

Gradually man's idea of God and his conception of Nature have changed and enlarged.

Man, as a spiritual being, is part of a spiritual universe. He has been able to harmonize his concept of God and Nature progressively as he has gained larger views and deeper insight of both. He is no longer a puppet of infinite caprice, nor a somewhat "improved animal."

The idea of man as a "fallen god" with the capacity to regain his heavenly estate, is far nearer the truth.

As man advances in knowledge through the combined experiences of his spiritual nature and his physical embodiment, his beliefs change, his horizon enlarges, and his concepts become elevated and purified. The past is apprehended and utilized and the future intelligently anticipated. He begins to understand.

This means the recognition of law and order, permanency, Foundation, and stability.

The birth stories, the portents, signs and wonders that announce, accompany, or follow the birth of a Messiah or Avatar, are almost identical. A common instinct seems to have led all scripture-compilers to infer a simultaneous stimulus of nature and man upon the appearance of what the Hindoo calls an Avatar.

Men, too, seem prepared to expect such an advent as its necessary time approaches. It is an instinct which tells them that "the darkest hour precedes the dawn."

In the Christian scriptures the premonitions and birth stories are found largely in the Apocryphal books. Doubtless the copying and substitution from the lives of Christna and Buddha were too plain.

At the death of Jesus the seismic, astral, and cosmic disturbances are graphically described, as befitting the death of a god. "The veil of the temple was rent in twain," etc.

The simple fact is that mankind feels instinctively in the soul the far-reaching influences at work. The spiritual nature is stirred to its depths, and when he tries to describe what he sees and feels, his emotions, fears, or aspirations being at white heat, his imagination draws from the folklore of other times, races, and religions, to express what he so powerfully, but vaguely senses.

But beyond all this, the time of great religious revivals and social upheavals is likely to coincide with seismic disturbance, tidal waves and the like, owing to the conjunction of planets under the general law of cycles. Man is completely involved with and evolved from the bosom of Nature. His freedom is determined by knowledge and obedience to Law.

From the mystic Hymns of Orpheus, with the legends of Gods, demigods, and heroes, and the personification of the varied powers of man and nature, arose the Greek Pantheon, which, in poetic concept, romantic and dramatic embodiment and expression, as a concise and complete whole, has probably never been equaled by man.

True, every essential element, under a different name and detail, may be found elsewhere, but never equaled in concise and constructive folklore and mythology.

But running underneath all this, like a vein of gold under the mountain, was the philosophy of Plato. Grasping the One from the many, Unity from the fantastic diversity, he came to the individual experience of the human soul and its conscious mastership over the body and the things of sense and time.

Civic pride, patriotism, and heroism, walked side by side with dialectics, and the pantheon of the gods and the achievements of warriors rivaled each other on the stage, as themes for the poetic philosopher and dramatist.

Mythology and folklore here furnished a background from which the philosophy of the mysteries and the real science of life gained a hearing.

Plato and Pythagoras generalized, and with many reservations represented that which they had been taught in the mysteries of Egypt.

Greece, with its triumphs in literature, in the drama and in art, and all its magnificent civilization, knew no Avatar.

Jacolliot, in his "Bible in India," has shown conclusively that not only the whole Greek pantheon, its folklore and mythology, and even its civil code were adopted from the Laws of Manu and the far older Aryan civilization, including even the names of heroes.

The fame of Greece rests upon its Genius fo Construction in Art and Architecture and the Drama, and upon the open door it gave to Philosophy. There was no dominant priesthood to close the door of progress.

It utilized all the past and built and beautified the present.

It bequeathed no creed nor dogma to the future, and yet its civilization was transcendent and is immortal.

It had its canons of Art and of Architecture. These it demonstrated by constructive work. It illustrated, explained and exemplified, but it did not argue nor dogmatize.

The world for two thousand years has been "going back to Greece" and trying to explain how it all happened, just as we have been trying to explain Goethe's "Faust."

Genius is transcendent and immortal.

With the decline of Greece there arose the Genius of the Tiber, Imperial Rome, and the Caesars.

Rome created an Avatar out of the "Babe of Bethlehem." Having enthroned Jehovah, it proceeded to deify Jesus, and then by substitution to take the place of both.

Imperial Rome, the "Scarlet Mother of the Tiber," assumed the government and dictatorship of the world. Imperial, dogmatic, relentless, the arbiter of the fate of humanity on earth and beyond.

Here was arbitrary, relentless power at any cost, to be maintained on any terms. "The end always justified the means."

In the civilization of Greece, the Individual, the citizen was first, and association and co-operation built the State.

With Rome the Individual is nothing but a pawn, an accessory to the Church. It was and is the Church first, last, and all the time. The Individual can claim no right nor prerogative except as a concession from the Church.

The contrast is extreme and absolute between the Genius of Greece and that of Rome.

As the Genius of Greece was adapted from the older Aryan, so also was that of Rome, from the Brahmans, through Egypt.

Among the various Avatars of old India designated as "Incarnations of Vishnu," Siva "the destroyer," was often in evidence.

Rome proceeded to adopt the Hindoo Trinity—Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva—(the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer), and to so shape its creed and dogmas as to secure and maintain the power of Mother Church, simply with a change of names—"Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

It has enslaved nations and slaughtered millions in order to maintain its power. For more than fifteen hundred years it has maintained its relentless warfare against the inalienable rights of the Individual, and the inevitable progress of humanity.

It has escaped the execration of the world only by its priestly trick of deifying Jesus and sophisticating every doctrine that he taught. Supporting its pretensions by Mariolatry, the Auricular Confession, and its army of spies and inquisitors, it has dominated mankind, impoverished whole nations, devastated provinces and murdered all who opposed its progress wherever and whenever it has gained civil power.

Rome is to-day the literal and visible reincarnation of Siva, the Avatar of Destruction. She has originated nothing. Her mass and all her ritualistic mummeries are adopted from paganism at its worst stage and in its most degenerate form, and she awaits the fate that befell Egypt and all her predecessors, "Sodom, Gomorrah, and the cities of the plain."

Protestantism has hitherto "protested" only in part. Refusing Mariolatry and auricular confession, Protestantism, by accepting the miraculous conception, the deification of Jesus and the vicarious atonement, has kept Rome in countenance.

When these are swept away, and their doom is already declared by the leaders of thought in nearly all our institutions of higher learning, the Roman Avatar will stand revealed in all its nakedness and villainy to the execration of mankind. It is this "Modernism" that "His Holiness" so much fears and is trying to arrest. It is too late, unless civilization and the march of time move backward.

The most amazing thing about it all is, how the world, with its present intelligence and culture, can be so indifferent to this most aggressive, cruel, and relentless Avatar of all the ages, instead of repelling it with contempt and execration.

Thirty-seven Italian Cardinals,[2] proud and arrogant, rule the Church, elect the Pope, and assume dictatorship of the earth, as also arbiters of human destiny, here and hereafter. America, the corn-bin of this modern Egypt, by courtesy has one cardinal, just to keep her in countenance.

The effrontery is cyclopean, but our supineness and indifference are deplorable and inexcusable.

Shipping her impoverished, degraded, criminal, and priest-ridden hordes to America by the million every year, Rome is massing her army for the overthrow of our government and all our present civilization. With her dogma of obedience, her army now votes and will, by and by, fight under the dictatorship of the Cardinals at Rome. Already undermining our Public Free Schools, boycotting the public press, with their army of Jesuit spies and secret assassins of every liberty prized by man, the "merry war" goes on right under our eyes, and we sleep and dream and blindly assume that "there is no danger."

Read the history of the Crusaders, of the Protestant Reformation and of the "Holy Inquisition," and if further enlightenment is needed, study the origin, history, and denouement of all the Avatars of the past, the fate of Egypt, the cities of the plain, where paganism and a degenerate priesthood usurped the place of pure and undefiled religion, and literally wiped from the map of the world the civilizations of the past. Nemesis is written in letters of flame across the starry heavens, as an atonement for the blood of nations and the degeneracy and diabolism of an ambitious, cruel, relentless, and unrestrained priesthood. And it is all being literally repeated to-day without the novelty of a new idea, or method, or device, or motive. It is The Reincarnation of the Avatar of Siva, the Destroyer.

——-

[2] At the death of Pope Leo there were 65 Cardinals, 39 of whom were Italians.



CHAPTER XII

PORTENTS OF THE PRESENT TIME

There is no disguising nor denying the fact that during the past half century institutional religion in the West has steadily lost its hold upon the great mass of the people. Creeds and dogmas are denied and repudiated.

The "higher criticism" represents the reluctant yielding of theologians to the existing conditions. In order to maintain any hold whatever upon the people and retain a semblance of the old faith, they have revised and modified beliefs and interpretations, and relaxed completely the former demand for the confession of faith and acceptance of the old creeds. Mere general verbal assent admitting of many mental reservations is now often deemed sufficient.

In the meantime, the living of the life and the doing of the work demanded by Jesus have come more and more into demand and general recognition.

The "Emmanuel Movement," now gaining such recognition and making such rapid progress, is sufficient evidence at this point.

With the Church of Rome no such change is manifest. By keeping its people in ignorance, by condemning all change or any improvement under the name of "Modernism," and by insisting upon the dogma of infallibility and blind obedience, Rome thus far has resisted all change and refused all compromise.

The change in Protestantism represents the growth of intelligence, the recognition of the rights of conscience, and individual and intellectual freedom.

The stability so apparent in Romanism relies solely on Ignorance, Superstition, and Fear, enforced by the dogma of "Infallibility," and reinforced by the power of "Excommunication" and the penalty of "Anathema."

The unity and stability of the Roman Church, thus secured by force, will presently be found to be apparent only. It could only work and hold in the dark ages. Internal division and dissension, now known to exist, await only some fresh act of oppression, or some new abomination, or abuse of political power, to disrupt its solidarity.

In the meantime physical science has steadily advanced, opening new avenues of wealth, industry, and opportunity, and so developing the resources of this Western world.

But more important and far-reaching still have been the discoveries regarding the finer forces of nature.

The wonderful development and application of discoveries in Electricity have not only opened a new world previously unknown and unsuspected, but have seemed to endow these subtle forces almost with an intelligence of their own. Crass materialism is dead and space practically annihilated.

If a single wire or a vibrating disc cannot originate intelligent speech, it can retain, repeat, and transmit the qualities, tones and inflections of the human voice in a way that seems miraculous and uncanny. It is thus that our concepts of nature have been enlarged, refined, and actually spiritualized. "Brutal" and "dead" matter are no longer in evidence nor even mentioned.

With the advent of modern spiritualism came another group of phenomena. Making the largest allowance for fraud, self-deception, and all the vagaries of the imagination, no intelligent individual, familiar with the phenomena, will attempt to deny the extension of man's psychic world of consciousness and the manifestation of intelligence in ways and under conditions previously unknown. The identification of these intelligences, always difficult, and generally problematical, need not here be discussed at all. The facts and the phenomena are all that we are here concerned with.

The most important consideration regarding all these phenomena is that they do not develop, but on the contrary dominate the individual. They are, in fact, altogether subjective. The medium may put himself in the negative or passive condition to be controlled, but he cannot command nor control the influence nor the "entity" that influences him, and eventually he loses the power to resist it, and likewise the power of self-control.

Science demands facts, and here are facts in abundance. These facts supplement the discoveries in electricity and nature's finer forces, and pass from physics to metaphysics, from physiology to psychology, and push back the veil of the unseen, and hitherto unknown, many degrees.

The trend of all this progress, and of these discoveries, is exceedingly plain.

Our concepts of Nature, of Life, and of Man have been almost immeasurably enlarged, refined, and elevated.

Expectancy is in the air. "What next is going to happen?" is the question everywhere asked. The conditions and portents, in a general way, are those that herald a new Avatar; an Avatar now, of science rather than of religion; of knowledge rather than of faith, and this knowledge is to be of spiritual things, the foundations of which are already in evidence.

This science is not to be time-serving, but man-serving; not so much a renewal of faith as a revelation of knowledge; less anxious for the glory of God than for the elevation of man, which is the more direct and certain way of honoring Divinity.

This does not mean the decay nor the repudiation of religion, but a realization of true religion, such as heretofore prophets have foretold, revelation has forecast, and toward which humanity has toiled and journeyed in sorrow and pain; the very religion that Jesus lived and taught. "A clean life, an open mind, an unveiled spiritual perception, a brotherliness for all, and human life a journeying upward toward the realms of eternal day, 'with no night there, and no sorrow.'"

And why not? If man can conceive it, why may he not realize it? The "Old Adam" as an excuse is exploded. The "New Adam" is indeed "a quickening spirit."

Nothing is plainer nor more demonstrable at the present day than the fact that mankind is slowly but surely shaking off the traditions and the superstitions that have bound it in the past, rising above the myths and the folklore of every age and clime, and awaking as if from slumber, to behold a new day and a new world.

This awakening is even more in evidence and remarkable in the case of woman than of man. Progress here during the last decade has been such as the world has never before seen on any such scale, and it means more to the elevation of humanity than anyone has hitherto been able to forecast or to measure.

In the meantime social and economic conditions with the great masses of the people are very far from what they should be.

Unrest and confusion are strongly in evidence. On the whole, there is far less suffering and destitution than ever before. Oppression and abominations meet with quick and powerful protest from all classes, when exposed, and at least temporary relief is quick to follow.

The blame is confined to no one class, rich or poor. The equitable distribution of wealth, resources, and opportunity that have developed beyond all precedent during the last half century, requires time. Justice and equity are not dead, but everywhere in evidence, dominating mankind at large. Public sentiment was never more keen and never nearer right than to-day. There is general confusion, however, as to methods and ways and means. The cunning shark and the selfish brute resort to concealment, cunning and subterfuge, to deceive the people and often succeed for a time, only to meet with condemnation and execration later. Injustice is often in evidence, but it is neither rampant nor dominant. It stands in fear of public sentiment.

These, in brief and in outline, are the conditions, the portents, to-day, everywhere in evidence:

1. The decay of creeds and dogmas.

2. Great progress in Science, Art, and the Crafts.

3. Immense discoveries regarding Nature's finer forces and the psychical powers latent in man.

4. Great expectancy as to new revelations.

5. Unprecedented increase in wealth and the development of natural resources.

6. Enfranchisement of woman, and immense progress as to her rights and opportunities.

7. Economic Justice recognized and aimed at, and fortified by public sentiment, with strong efforts to secure and maintain it.

The present age or epoch is not one of darkness, but of light; not of discouragement, but of hope. It is neither retrograde nor stagnant, but progressive to a degree never before witnessed in the history of man on so large a scale and involving all classes and so many people at one time.

Organized or institutional religion alone is on the wane. Evidence and utility are everywhere demanded. Nothing is sacred simply because it is old; nor true merely because it is dogmatically asserted so to be.

Holy books, holy men, and holy days are matters of evidence, and not of blind credence.

What will the new religion—the new revelation—be? and whence will it come?



CHAPTER XIII

THE SEPARABLE SOUL IN FOLKLORE

Belief in a separable soul in man is virtually universal. Such belief is found amongst the lowest races, and in the few instances where it has not been clearly discovered it is admitted that it may still exist and be disguised by the native meaning of words or signs that escape the explorer.

The universality of this belief has often been urged as an evidence of its validity and proof of the soul's existence.

Modern physical science deduces this belief from the phenomena of daily life and the analogies of individual experience, thus giving precedence to material causes for mental concepts, or universal ideas. This view is, I think, entitled to the most careful consideration, but it cannot once for all be admitted, nor is it consistent with the general theory and progress of evolution that the phenomenal stands to the noumenal, the actual to the ideal, as cause to effect. These two groups of experiences are alternate and coincident; and, as to priority, it is only the old question in a new form, as to which was first, the bird that laid the egg, or the egg that hatched the bird.

This distinction is particularly pertinent to the present subject, for the reason that by the method of modern physical science, in dealing with the belief in the existence of the soul, the whole of this universal belief is swept away. Its origin is found in the ignorance, superstition, and false analogies of barbarous races, and the inference is that the belief can only linger as a remnant of superstition among civilized men. This method prejudges the whole question, and (while it must readily be admitted that the opposite method equally prejudges it), my contention is for neither the one nor the other, but for the careful consideration and final blending of both. If at first sight these two theories, which form the basis of the working hypothesis of the materialist and the spiritist, seem paradoxical and wholly irreconcilable, with careful consideration and unbiased investigation of both sides of the problem the paradox will disappear.

With both the lowest and the highest races not only do we find the existence of belief in the existence of a separable soul in man, but of ghosts, gods, genii, a spirit of the air, and hierarchies of celestial and infernal beings.

In this regard, philosophers like Plato and Pythagoras, the intellectual giants of the human race, may be said to have elaborated and specialized the rude conceptions of the Fiji Islander, and to vie with him in peopling space with invisible entities and potencies. In spite of the dictum of science, the world, intelligent and ignorant alike, believes, and will continue to believe, in the reality of the unseen universe, and the Platonic doctrine of "emanation" and the "world of divine ideas" not only begin where modern physical science leaves off, but at this very point science either begs the question, or ignores it entirely.

How things come to be what they are, and to evolve as they do, science nowhere declares. It simply takes things as it finds them, and dubs the ultimate and antecedent causation the Unknowable. The philosophy of Plato, it is true, reaches at last the unknowable and the incomprehensible, but only after revealing another universe, the metaphysical and spiritual, entirely unknown to, or ignored or derided by the materialist.

It is, however, from this invisible realm that all visible things have come forth, the two being not only under absolute and universal law, but bearing everywhere definite analogies to each other. Hence Plato says, "God geometrizes." Absolute mathematics determines the relations of atoms to suns, and the circulation of the blood in man to the revolutions of suns and solar systems.

A further general consideration remains to be noted before taking up the evidence of belief in the separable soul, and that is, the evolutionary life-wave of humanity on our earth.

The progress of man for some millions of years past has by no means been a straightforward climbing from barbarism to civilization. The wave of evolution has ebbed and flowed. While at one place man has slowly emerged from savagery, at another he has as surely sunk to it. Continents and islands have risen from and again sunk to the bottom of the sea, bearing the races of men in their upheavals or descent, and cataclysmic and seismic or volcanic upheavals have blotted out in a day the accumulated progress of centuries. The poles of the earth have shifted with results to the life of the globe more awful than the imagination can portray. Bodies of people like our North American Indians represent the remains of many peoples, as in Russia or India to-day, fragments of many nationalities are being absorbed in one.

Bearing in mind, therefore, that owing to many causes a nation may descend to barbarism or disappear entirely, we shall find everywhere the fragments and decay of the old belief no less than the dawn of the new. A noble creed, or a philosophical concept of a highly advanced race, may exist as a transformed and degrading superstition with a race, or a fragment of a people, undergoing degeneracy.

Every religion known to man has gone through just this transformation. The tendency is innate and inevitable and no civilization or religion has ever yet been able long to resist it. If we bear this in mind we shall be less surprised at anthropogeneses, cosmogeneses or psychologies found sometimes among otherwise rude or savage peoples, and be better able to understand the incongruities and lack of symmetry in their evolution. It would be easy to cite instances and draw comparisons at this point.

Bearing in mind, then, these general considerations underlying all interpretation, and nowhere more applicable than to our present subject, the following illustrations of belief in the separable soul, gleaned largely from Spencer's "Descriptive Sociology," may be of interest. It is drawn largely from the lower civilizations, as all are more or less familiar with the mythologies of the Greeks, Babylonians, Phoenicians, etc., all of which are accessible. The material available is embarrassing on account of its magnitude alone.

Oscar Peschel, in his "Races of Man," says that "perhaps the Brazilian Botocudos, of all the inhabitants of the world, are most nearly in the primitive state, and yet," he adds, "possibly we may be altogether mistaken in this regard, as their languages are very imperfectly known."

Humboldt rescued the Caribs from such an impeachment and declares that their language "combines wealth, grace, strength, and gentleness. It has expressions for abstract ideas, for Futurity, Eternity, and Existence, and enough numerical terms to express all possible combinations of our numerals." It might be noted in passing that it was these same Brazilian natives that the Portuguese settlers sought to decimate by spreading smallpox and scarlet fever amongst them, as the English colonists in Tasmania shot the natives when they had no better food for their dogs.

Hariot says that "many of the Indian natives of North and South America believe that the soul, after its separation from the body, enters into a wide path crowded with spirits which are journeying toward a region of eternal repose. They have to cross an impetuous river on a trembling wicker bridge which is very dangerous."

Some Greenlanders believe that the soul can go astray out of the body for a considerable time. Some believe that they can leave their souls at home when going on a journey, and others believe in the migration of souls.

Belief in the soul and a future state is universal among the Indians of North America. All are familiar with the tradition of the "Happy Hunting Ground." With them the future life is patterned after the present.

Schoolcraft says that the Chippewas believe that there are duplicate souls, one of which remains with the body, while the other is free to depart on excursions during sleep. After death the soul departs to the Indian Elysium and a fire is kept burning on the newly-made grave for four days, the time required for the soul to reach its destination.

The Dakotas stand in great fear of the spirits of the dead, who they think have power to injure them, and they recite prayers and give offerings to appease them.

The Mandans, according to Schoolcraft, have anticipated Prof. Lloyd's Etidorhpa, even to the beautiful maiden. They believe that they were the first people created on the earth, and that they first lived inside the globe. They raised many vines, one of which having grown up through a hole in the earth, one of the young men climbed up until he crawled out on the bank of the river where the Mandan village stands. (Jack and the bean stalk.) The young man returned to the nether world and piloted several of his companions to the outer world, and among them two very beautiful virgins. Among those who tried to get up was a very large and fat woman, who was ordered by the chiefs to remain behind. Her curiosity prompted her secretly to make the trial. The vine broke under her weight and she was badly hurt by the fall, but did not die, and was ever after in disgrace for having cut off all communication with the upper world. Those who had already ascended built the Mandan village, and when these die they expect to return to the nether world from which they came. They also believe the earth a great tortoise, and have a tradition of a universal deluge.

The Indians of Guiana believe in the immortality of the soul, as do also the Arawaks. The Brazilians are said by Spix and Martins to have had no religious belief whatever before mingling with the civilized races. The Guaranis believed in a soul which remained in the grave with the body.

The Patagonians believe in a country of the dead which they call Alhue Mapu and they kill the horses of the deceased in order that their owner may ride in Alhue Mapu.

From the beliefs of the Negritto and Malayo-Polynesian races, I glean the following: The Fuegians believe in a superior being, and in good and evil spirits, in dreams, omens, signs, etc. Fitzroy says he could not satisfy himself that they had any idea of the immortality of the soul.

The Veddahs believe in the guardianship of the spirits of the dead, who visit them in dreams and minister to them in sickness, and they have ceremonies of invocation.

Eyra says some at least of the Australians believe in the existence and separability of the soul.

The Tasmanians believed in a future life as a tradition of a primitive religion, and Bonwick says they conversed with the spirits of the dead.

The New Caledonians believe that white men are the spirits of the dead, and that they bring sickness. They believe that the soul on leaving the body goes to the Bush, and every fifth month they have a "spirit night" or "grand concert of spirits." The gods of the New Caledonians are their ancestors, whose relics they keep and idolize.

The Fijians believe in a separable soul, and dying is by them described by the same terms as sunset.

Belief in a future state among them is said by Siemann to be universal. In Fiji heaven the inhabitants plant, live in families, fight, and so repeat the incidents of life on earth. They believe that the spirit of men, while still alive, may leave the body and trouble other people when asleep.

The Sandwich Islanders believe that the spirit of the departed hovers about his former home, appears to his relatives in dreams, and they worship an image which they believe to be in some way connected with the departed. They regard the spirit of one of their ancient kings as a tutelar deity, and the king and the priest were believed to be descended from the gods.

The Tahitians believe in a separable soul which, on leaving the body, is seized by other spirits and conducted to the state of night, where it is by degrees eaten by the gods. A few escape this fate, while others, after being three times eaten, become immortal.

The Tongons believe that the human soul is the more ethereal part of the body and that it exists in Bolotoo in the form and likeness of the body the moment after death.

The Samoans believe that the spirits of the dead have power to return and to cause disease and death in other members of the family, hence all are anxious to part with the dying on good terms.

The New Zealanders believe that during sleep the mind leaves the body, and that dreams are the objects seen during its wanderings. They believe in two separate abodes for departed spirits, the sky, and the sea, and that the abodes of souls are to be approached only down the face of a steep precipice—Cape Maria Van Dieman.

The Dyaks have great difficulty in distinguishing sleep from death. They believe that the soul during sleep goes on an expedition of its own, and sees, hears, and talks. They believe in spirits, omens, and in all that occurs in dreams as real and literally true.

The Sumatrans believe in spirits and superior beings, and are said to have a vague idea of the immortality of the soul, and the Malays believe in spirits, good and bad, and seem to have a vague idea of a separable soul.

The Mexicans believed in a separable soul, and distinguished three different abodes for it after death.

Landa says the people of Yucatan have always believed more firmly in the immortality of the soul than other people, though they were less advanced in civilization. They believed that after death there would be a better life, which the soul would enjoy after its separation from the body. They worshiped their dead kings as gods. The mythology of the people of Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua is extensive and complicated and their National Book, the Popol Vuh, possesses intense interest for the student. There can be no doubt that these people believed in a separable soul, as did also the Chibchas.

It was the belief of the ancient Peruvians that the soul leaves the body during sleep, and that the soul itself cannot sleep, but that dreams are what the soul sees in the world while the body sleeps. Waitz says they believed in the transmigration of human souls into the bodies of animals.

In the case of the Arabians the primitive belief, which was Sabianism, has been altered far less by Mohammedan invasion than most persons suppose. Burton says Mohammed and his followers conquered only the more civilized Bedouins, and Baker says that the Arabs are unchanged, and that the theological opinions which they now hold are the same as those which prevailed in remote ages, and of this belief the soul and its immortality formed a part.

In general the Hill Tribes of India share in the universal belief in the soul, in spirits, gods, and devils, though of many of these tribes little is really known in modern times.

Nearly all our North American Indians (I can find no exceptions) bury objects with their dead, such as food implements, jewelry, etc., and kill the horses of the deceased that he may ride in the Happy Hunting Ground.

With the Carib's death his wife and captives were killed, and food utensils, etc., were buried with him.

A curious custom prevailed with some Brazilian tribes. After burying food, utensils, arms, etc., with the body, a month after death the body was disinterred, put in a pan over a fire, the volatile substances driven off, the black residue reduced to powder and mixed with water and drunk by the company.

The Patagonians bury all the possessions of the deceased with the body.

With the Hottentots, widows lose one joint of a finger as an offering to the deceased husband every time they re-marry.

With the Kaffirs, the hut and utensils of the deceased are burnt. The East Africans offer prayer to the dead.

The Congo people bury ornaments, utensils, arms, etc., and embalm the body after one or two years. The body of the chief must be carried in a straight line from the hut to place of burial, and if trees or huts impede the passage, they are cut down.

The Coast Negroes bury property with the body and have a ceremony like an Irish wake, as do also the Abyssinians.

With the Ashantis, gold dust and utensils are buried and human sacrifices occur.

The wives of the Fijians are strangled that they may attend their lords in the new country.

The people of Malagasy bury in vaults 10x12, and 7 feet high, and put in a large quantity of property.

With the ancient Mexicans, wives, slaves, concubines, and chaplains were slaughtered to attend the deceased.

The Arabs fasten the camels to the grave of their master.

The Todas cremate the dead and slaughter the whole herd of buffalo belonging to him, in order to secure them to him in the after life.

I have by no means given a complete category of the primitive and barbarous peoples who believe in a separate soul, and who believe in a future state much like the present and in conformity with that belief bury arms, ornaments, and utensils with the dead or place them on the grave, and who slaughter horses, camels, wives, slaves, etc., in order that the deceased may retain his possessions. How far these customs extend in case of the death of woman I do not know, but as with most of these people the women are regarded as chattels of the males, the case is doubtless very different.

Now as to the origin of these beliefs and customs, their causes naturally fall into two categories, the physical and the metaphysical. Modern biological science regards the whole question from the physical side almost exclusively, and facts and experiences that belong largely or exclusively to the metaphysical realm are warped out of their natural order to fit the theory of interpretation.

Every savage observes not only that he casts a shadow, but that shadows attend all inanimate objects that stand so as to intercept the light, and as shadows move as do objects that gives rise to the idea of animation. Hence we have genii, dryads, naiads, ghosts, angels, demons, etc. To fortify this belief we have echoes, which give voice to animate and inanimate objects. Movement and voice are the universal accompaniment of animation.

The part played by the breath, and its sudden cessation at death, are believed to contribute to the belief in invisible existences.

The beating of the heart, and its cessation at death, adds another link to the chain of phenomena, going to show that something leaves the body at death. This may be the origin of the sacrifice of the hearts of captives to the gods, or to a deceased warrior or chief as with the ancient Mexicans, with the belief that the heart is the seat of the soul, and the soul of the captive or victim shall attend the departed chief in the other world.

But the most important place should doubtless be assigned to dreams as giving rise to belief in the world of spirits. Dreams are universal amongst men, and animals like the dog also dream.

Most if not all primitive people are also aware that fasting promotes dreaming, and while many of them practice long fasting, partly, no doubt, to increase fortitude and bodily endurance, in very many cases it is known to be practiced for the purpose of promoting dreams. Beyond this voluntary fasting there is the enforced fast due to famine or the scarcity of food.

It will be noticed in many of the cases cited how much stress is laid on the phenomena of dreams and how literally they are interpreted.

Among civilized races and those wise in philosophy dreams play a very important part, and are classified as monitorial, prophetic, etc., etc. The habit in modern times of regarding dreams as altogether fantastic and unreal, is unscientific. In the mingling of the real and the apparently unreal, in the dream state, while the experience itself is always real to the dreamer, lies undoubtedly the source of many beliefs that influence the lives of men.

Dreaming must be regarded as one of the states of consciousness, and hence, of whatsoever stuff dreams are made, they represent an actual experience of the individual. No greater mistake can be made than the belief that no experience is real save that which brings us in contact with gross matter through the agency of the five senses. The world of ideas and the creations of the imagination are in fact no more evanescent than matter itself. Here impermanency differs only in time. All in time pass away.

I hold that dreams, in general, show more clearly the nature of the soul, and the experiences of the waking state show the office of the bodily organism, and that each on its own plane is as valid as the other.

In other words, "the soul is such stuff as dreams are made of." It does not hold true, nor need it, that the experiences in dreams shall be true and valid on the physical plane, though this is often the case, or that the experiences of the physical plane shall be literally repeated in dreams, which, nevertheless, frequently happens.

It is an undeniable fact that the experiences of the conscious ego in man compass the subjective no less than the objective planes of being. That the subjective avenues should be closed when the ego is functioning on the physical plane through the bodily organs by aid of the senses, is quite as remarkable as that the physical avenues should be closed when in dreams, or trance, or syncope, or under anaesthetics, the ego functions on the subjective planes.

I hold, therefore, that here, more than anywhere else, is the source of not only belief in the existence of the soul, but of the relatively uniform conceptions everywhere attained. The common experience of man on the one plane is as easily accounted for as on the other, and individual experience differs no more widely in the one case than in the other. So also is the persistence of the human type, or the genus, involved in the one case no less than in the other.

All the agencies recognized in modern evolution tend to elevation only through differentiation, and even the "eternal cell" of Weismann fails in explaining permanency of form through any physical transmission. When atavism and degeneracy are admitted as factors, as they certainly must be, the perpetuity of the human species fails from physical causes alone.

I hold the idea of a separable soul to be innate in the human consciousness, as a necessary deduction from the experience of the continuity of self-consciousness which compasses both the objective and subjective states. This deduction from experience occurs whenever the evolving ego has advanced sufficiently above the animal plane to reason on its own experience, and for this reason the belief in the separable soul is universal.

It is no more strange that the experience of the individual should be modified by traditions and the beliefs of others regarding, for example, the dream state, than that the experience of the individual should in like manner be modified or shaped by traditions and the ceremonies and usages of others on the physical plane. The bond of unity and that of diversity have one common root in humanity. What we need for larger knowledge is, I think, a recognition of the breadth and sweep of human experience. To stop either ignoring or quibbling over one-half of all our actual experience.

The inner world of thought and being is really the habitat of the soul, while the physical body, like the diving-bell, enables us to explore and gain experience on another plane which otherwise must remain to us forever unknown.

The limitations of space and time are unknown to us in dreams. These are the limitations of the fleshly casket. The consciousness of freedom, the absence of pain and sorrow even under great trial, are often experienced in the dream state. The range and character of experience in the subjective state is modified, and held in check by that of the physical plane, and the correspondence of an emotion to an idea, or of an act to a thought, ought to give us the key to the two sets of experiences and reveal the underlying basis of equilibrium.

A universal fact and a common experience argue a universal nature. Like conditions everywhere come from like causes. These are neither accidental nor incidental, nor are they left to the caprice of savages, nor to that of the more advanced civilizations.

It is not at all strange that a common experience should result in a universal belief. The range of experience and varying vicissitudes of life on the outer physical plane differ as widely as do those of the dream plane, and the conscious identity of the individual is equally preserved on both planes.

I hold that here lies the origin of belief in the existence of a soul in man, separable from the body, and the confines of matter, space, and time, in an actual experience of every individual. The beating of the heart, the phenomena of respiration, the cessation of these at death, and the shadows cast by man and inanimate bodies serve as connecting links between the experiences of the individual on the subjective and objective planes of being.

The dream state and the experiences thence derived are subjects for psychological science to investigate. The experiences allotted by du Maurier to "Peter Ibbetson" are not altogether fantastic and unwarranted, as the records of somnambulism and hypnotism abundantly prove. When we remember that nothing deserving the name of Psychology or Psychic Science exists in the western world to-day, we need not wonder why men eminent for investigations in other departments prove themselves novices and dogmatists here.

The folklore, the traditions, and the mythology of dreams would form a very interesting subject for discussion. It is true that the literature of the subject is fantastic, mixed with fable and often altogether unreliable; but these difficulties offer no more formidable bar to scientific investigation than many another problem already classified and formulated for systematic study.

I know a lady of very superior ability, the mother of a prominent jurist, who all her life has had distinct premonitions of many calamities and coming events, and there are those who dream true in every community. Fantasies, nightmare, dreams from indigestion and delirium, form a separate class where the dreamer is entangled in the meshes of the bodily functions.

Here fasting, either voluntary or enforced, comes in, and drugs known to the remotest times are found to promote and to determine the character of dreams. There are furthermore processes of mental gymnastics whereby the thinker withdraws himself from the bodily avenues of sense and functions at will on the subjective plane of being.

"When then," said Socrates, in the Phaedo, "does the soul light on the truth? for when it attempts to consider anything in conjunction with the body, it is plain that it is led astray by it."

"And surely," he continues, "the soul reasons best when none of these things disturb it, neither hearing, nor sight, nor pain, nor pleasure of any kind, but it retires as much as possible within itself, taking leave of the body, and as far as it can, not communicating or being in contact with it, it aims at the discovery of that which is."

I hold that the most valuable triumphs of science in the future lie in the realm of psychology, and that by no means the least important contribution in this direction will come from the study of Folklore, of which belief in the separable soul, and the phenomena and universality of the dream state must form a very important part.

One final consideration is suggested not without some degree of hesitation and diffidence. If there be a soul in man destined to continued existence, and if in any case perfection is the goal of evolution as formulated by Herbert Spencer for a future residue of the human race, then this soul in its essential elements is without beginning in time.

Pre-existence and evolution necessitate repeated re-embodiment on the physical plane, and the continuity of self-consciousness in man I hold to be the proof of life without beginning or end.

Viewed in this light, dreams and all subjective experiences in man must mingle reminiscences of the soul with the experiences of the present life, and the theory of innate ideas assumes a purely scientific form. We hence arrive at the intuition of the soul to account for universal belief. The experience of Socrates and the Fiji Islander agree as to the subjective plane as perfectly as in regard to the beating of the heart. They differ only in degree of evolution.



CHAPTER XIV

FROM CONFUSION TO CONSTRUCTION

A concise and detailed review of the past, in the long journey of man toward civilization and independent self-knowledge, has not been herein attempted. Only hints, here and there, and the barest outline have been undertaken.

If, however, the intelligent student will follow these clews, he will find a mass of material and abundant evidence to corroborate the general thesis.

Every great religion has had its Avatar, its Redeemer, its Christos.

Each of these religions has adapted from its predecessors and transformed the old, in whole or in part, to suit the conditions and apparent needs of the time.

Each of these revivals of religion has been instituted on account of the abominations of a dominant priesthood and the poverty and degradation of the masses. What was at first claimed and instituted as a Divine Revelation for the elevation and happiness of the whole people, has openly and shamelessly degenerated into enslavement of the masses and the creation of a despotic and arrogant class who enslaved both body and soul in the name of Religion.

Priest, Prince, and Potentate generally, united to terrorize through force, and by superstition and fear, in order to retain their power.

The reaction has invariably resulted from economic conditions, as in the case of the Protestant Reformation, when the gold sent to Rome through the shameless sale of Indulgences, threatened to impoverish the whole of Northern Europe, and Princes broke allegiance to the Priesthood in desperate self-protection.

Then, and then only, came sufficient protest and Reformation.

The religionist is apt to regard and designate Science as "profane," and Religion per se, as essentially "holy."

Nothing can be really considered "holy" that does not elevate, encourage, and inspire the whole human race and promote the Brotherhood of Man. Whenever any religion fails to do this it becomes indeed a profanation of holy things.

The only religion that ever became the inspiration of a whole people, so far as history records, was that of Christna, with the teeming millions of India. Buddhism was driven out of India by the powerful and unscrupulous Brahmans, and took refuge in Ceylon, Thibet, and adjacent provinces.

The religion of Jesus met a similar fate from the Jews and the Roman governors, until Pagan Rome adapted and transformed it on the principle of dominance and exploitation inherent in the genius of the Latin Race.

Since which time no one will pretend to claim that the Religion of Jesus has ever dominated the human race or any large part of it.

Rome to-day no more represents the religion of Jesus than the Brahmans of to-day represent that of Christna, or Buddha, or the religion of the Vedas.

Nothing is so amazing to-day as that the intelligence of the present age fails to recognize this fact.

All of these religions of the past have adapted their teaching to the multitude through parable and allegory. Nothing in literature can be found more beautiful and inspiring, and at the same time comprehensible to the commonest intelligence, than Christna's "Parable of the Fisherman."

Christna and Buddha, like Jesus, taught to their disciples a "Secret Doctrine," apprehensible only to the few. "To you it is given to know the mysteries," but to others, who are without, it is not given.

It can readily be proven from at least a half score of the early Church Fathers (see page 70 et seq. of the author's "Mystic Masonry"), that the early church practiced "Initiation," patterned after those of the Gnostics, Therapeutia and the Mysteries of Egypt, and divided their neophytes and postulants into three degrees, as in Blue Lodge Masonry to-day.

While the great mass of mankind to-day are incapable of apprehending these genuine mysteries of life, and of the individual soul of man, it is doubtful if any civilization ever existed where so many were willing and capable of understanding them as are found here in America to-day.

The reason for this and the growth of intelligence have already been outlined.

A new race is slowly forming here, designated by the ancient Wisdom as the "Fifth Race," and called the Manasic, the growth of Intelligence, or "Mind."

It is above all things important that with this development of Mind there should also develop that of Buddhi, or Loving Kindness, the essential element in the Universal Brotherhood of Man; a thing largely overlooked in the modern theory of Evolution, and ignored, or set at naught by Romanism by its dogmas, anathemas, and persecutions. Instead of the brotherhood of man, she has exhibited the cruelty and rapacity of devils. (Establishment of Roman Catholic Caste.)

This all-around development of the whole man, as essential to human evolution, is everywhere insisted upon by all the great Masters of antiquity, and is illustrated and exemplified in the genuine Greater Mysteries.

Hence, the saying in Kabala, "The wicked obey the law through fear; the wise keep the law through knowledge." The Saviors all preached and practiced the "Good Law," and obedience to legal mandates.

The explanation usually given of an Avatar by the ancient Masters, as "a descent, embodiment, or incarnation of Vishnu," who is not only the "Preserver," but the "Rejuvenator" of mankind, is rather a blind, and was an interpretation given to the common people, or the "profane."

All things—even heaven and earth—pass away, and all things are renewed.

This renewal, or regeneration, through the constructive principle of evolution, is "designed" to be continually on higher and still higher planes.

It is not the range of experience, nor the growth of intelligence alone, that elevates man, but the progressive and constructive growth of the soul, from the physical toward the spiritual plane of Being.

This actual growth means Knowledge, Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge of the Law, Obedience to its Commands, and Realization of its Rewards.

This Constructive Psychology is the growth of the Soul.

Man passes, therefore, from the age of Fable, Superstition, and Fear, to the age of Faith and Obedience, and finally to that of actual Knowledge.

This age of Knowledge—not for all of mankind, but for a larger number who are worthy and well-qualified, duly and truly prepared than was ever known at one time before—has at last dawned.

The question is continually asked, "Why do the Masters of Wisdom Conceal their Knowledge?"

The only adequate answer is that so few are ready, willing, and able to receive it in the right way, and to use and not abuse it.

Those who deny that any such knowledge has ever existed, or exists to-day, or can exist, had better waste no time over it. They cannot alter it, nor destroy it, as their predecessors have tried to do for ages, often murdering or crucifying all who were even suspected of possessing it. They might as well try to destroy the law of gravitation, or imagine that by murdering the foremost mathematician of the day that they had destroyed the science of mathematics. I am speaking of Knowledge of Spiritual things.

A new Avatar, therefore, is not simply an individual, though many individuals may understand and exemplify it—the Initiated, the Illuminati—and one man may lead in representing it.

To call it "the descent and embodiment, or Incarnation of Vishnu," in a metaphysical sense, the Spirit (generically), that renews, rejuvenates, transforms, and regenerates, is by no means an empty metaphor.

In the same sense we speak of the "Genius of Greece," or of Rome, or of Civilization.

The idea is composite, and represents an underlying and universal principle and potency.

But after all metaphor and generalization, each Avataric movement centered around an individual Man, and this Man embodied the principle and undertook the special work of an evangel, or Christos, or "Avatar," amongst men.

Not only have there been many Avatars, and many Buddhas, but when we realize the meaning of these terms and the mysteries they represent, we discover that while it may be the special mission of one, like Christna, or Buddha, or Jesus, to undertake the work of enlightening and redeeming any age; there are other Masters, or Illuminati, engaged in other work, on different planes, to promote the same general results.

The result with each of the great Saviors of mankind has been, that the common people, or the priesthood, have eventually either crucified or deified them.

In the case of Jesus they have done both. Eight separate and deliberate attempts have already been made to assassinate the present representative of the School of Natural Science, who was educated in the order of the Illuminati, and delegated by that Order to present these great truths to the world to-day.