hall man s

s tale of ye

guest he we

his even t

rit that stor

e Table an

Fate that p

e world, her

of Kismet,

e light and

thickly gat

scoff at st

the victory

paths, one

hwart the fl

he bush, the s

wind and sn

he first mus

is life an

eights where

depths where

Adam form

Maker in

bask in M

ain, in ligh

llu

e Law, he bu

e Moolah ba

e beards of

e Prophet d

Cypress t

on wavy bre

e Nargis lov

he dance o

e saffron l

e moaning

Sundowns p

l woos the

and joy in J

he Daughter

e beauteous

ring thee

senses, even th

he maidens

bloom from

fleshly blis

hrough the

hem all, I

tame, so d

riseth at

with mysel

myriad toil

he man to m

rule that

e laws for

ance wage

y self for

nce of thine

foe, thy de

y sense, and d

e ears, and bli

thing that

that ever

te Atom

thy circles

fficient f

selves exi

rld mighty a

fought the u

iants here

dust, a c

all thy dr

he fight unf

yst learn the

t all we kn

y Nature,

sfame nor h

ee the small

ing in thin

pproval see

men thou ke

y idol ot

ine own I

n Deus: Mak

s the cir

to thee an

prisoning

Ought to s

e duties me

sense, wit

an, for wha

u view the P

e misty Pas

n the thin

pride thou m

g down the r

hy future

life, to de

choice were

self feed not

m Sun and Li

loisters pave

he bones of

heart, the

e Past, the

dost, be stro

Star, nor re

d woman from

woe, be st

r Good is

f Heaven and

True, to gla

life the

ence is the

gold, the M

t something

hate or scor

he worm

hat walks in

ngel of

kind as One

at Human W

ising high

Heavens of L

of the Enochites

Humanit

niversa

and strives to

ies shall

ll things; n

warp by Fact

ar clear, tho

rage, Dream

Why and s

gods enthr

all, are si

voice, nor

hat indivi

he length of

re nowhere,

ll thou ca

he law some

be! what can

races cam

ath seen them

aw that rul

man the wi

Fates a Th

human chanc

find a fu

copy of

riddle sha

knowledge sh

be mans to s

Earth he se

all neer surcha

erd shall hu

flower and

ll deck the

e dropt by

of other l

bowl shall

te shall sou

ll mend the

breath to m

clock again

reed shall

die, and De

brutes, the

irwana* ro

gness, tis

d troubles,

ve won their

tive anni

cease! Thy

e gain the s

ld Ignoranc

serves his

o sap

come, Days

deigns to dw

of a voice

wake respo

y way with

y humble ta

rs of the

ng of the

rew:

O

TE

BD?,

s appears by his couplets. To a natural facility, a knack of language learning, he added a store of desultory various reading; scraps of Chinese and old Egyptian; of Hebrew and Syriac; of Sanskrit and Prakrit; of Slav, especially Lithuanian; of Latin and Greek, including Romaic; of Berber, the

skeleton in his cupboard, his Kas?dah or distichs. He confided to me his secret when we last met in Western IndiaI am purposely vague in specify

uch of Winter

will guard me

of age. The MS. was in the vilest Shikastah or running-hand; and, as I carrie

rsion of Humanitarianism blended with the sceptical or, as we now say, the scientific habit of mind. The religion, of which Fetishism, Hinduism and Heathendom; Jud?ism, Christianity and Islamism are mere fractions, may, methinks, be accepted by t

perception by man, called Faith; that sensus Numinis which, by inheritance or communication, is now universal except in those who force themselves to oppose it. And he evidently holds this general consent of mankind to be so far di

In the presence of the endless contradictions, which spring from the idea of a Personal Deity, with the Synthesis, the Begriff of Providence, our Agnostic takes refuge in the sentiment of an unknown and an unknowable. He objects

be in error, and raising disputes whose violence, acerbity and virulence are in inverse ratio to the importance of the disputed matter. A peculiarly active and acute observation taught him that many of these jarring families, especially those of the same blood, are par in the intellectual processes of perceptio

terrupted development; this, too, by a process, not negative and distinctive, but, on the contrary, intensely positive and constructive. I am not called upon to sit in the seat of judgment; but I may say that it would be singular if t

too much occupied with introspection; their labors have become merely physiologico-biographical, and they have greatly neglected the study of averages. For, says

be studied, not as a congeries of individuals, but as an organic whole. Hence the Zeitgeist, or historical evolution of the collective consciousness of the age, despises the obsolete opinion that Society, the State, is boun

? would account for the tardy and unsatisfactory progress of what their votaries call pure truths, by the innate imperfections of the same. Both propose a reward for mere belief, and a penalty for simple unbelief

to see the injury inflicted upon the sum of thought by the a posteriori superstition, the worship of facts, and the deification of synthesis. Lastly, came the reckless way in which Locke freed philosophy from the incubus of innate ideas. Like Luther and the leaders of the great French Revolution,

pursuit of an ideal happiness. But he is too wise to affirm or to deny the existence of another world. For life beyond the grave there is no consensus of mankind, no Catholic opinion held semper, et ubique, et ab omnibus. The intellectual faculties (perception and reflection) are mute upon the subject: they bear no testimony to facts

opposed to the Middle, the New, and the Low: it contained the Dynasties from I. to X., and it was the age of the Pyramids, at once simple, solid, and grand. When the praiser of the Past contends that modern civilization

essimism. The profound sorrow of existence, so often sung by the dreamy Eastern poe

e jour courbant

roidi sous ce

ent?t, au mili

nque au monde im

an phrases it, There is nothing new, nothing true, and it dont signify. His is a health

world, wit

ribus . . . Quam humores tumidant, esc? inflant, jejunia macerant, joci dissolvunt, tristiti? consumunt; sollicitudo coarctat, securitas hebetat, diviti? inflant et jactant. Paupertas dej

ong-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution (!) of what turn out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes; the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims and short duration. the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race so fearfully yet exactly described in

s are the irreconcilable attributes of goodness and omniscience in the supposed Creator of sin and suffering. If the one quality be predicable, the other cannot be predic

e is but

harmony no

l universal goo

deity a purely sentimental fancy, contradicted by human reason and the aspect of the world. Evil is often the active form of good; as F. W. Newman says, so likew

oak or w

ronger upon the ruins of the weaker races. Earthquakes and cyclones ravage small areas; but the former build

iversa

artial but by

our globe in the pre-Adamite days, when the tyrants of the Earth, the huge Saurians and other monsters, lived in perpetual strife, in a destructiveness of which we have

think and hide. With the author of Supernatural Religion, he holds that we gain infinitely more than we lose in abandoning belief in the reality of revelation; and he looks forward to the day when the old tyranny shall have been broken, and when th

safest wa

way is stil

future world

world they

the Sp

seguras, mas se

n Age of Science following the Golden Age

say: I tel

aith all Fai

ne less, for

e most who m

he man of simple faith is worth ninety-nine of those who hold only to the egotistic interests of their own individuality. This dark saying means (if it mean anything), that the so-called moral faculties of man, fancy and ideality, must lord it over the perceptive and reflective pow

e universal tradition any base of fact?; this craving after the secrets and mysteries of the future, the unseen, the unknown, is common to all race

seras descendi

ultra quam rog

ject of conscience and repentance will startle

ent becau

of Fate be

u please, bef

ue the deed

ine, the pipe of flesh, as depending upon the physical theory of life. Every corporeal fact and phenomenon which, like the tree, grows from within or without, is a mere product of organization; living bodies being subject to the natural law governing the lifeless and the inorganic. Whilst the religionist assures us that man is not a mere toy of fate, but a free agent responsible to himself, with work to do and duties to perform, th

stances, in making which my voice had no part. While in the womb I was an automaton; and death will find me a mere machine. Therefore not I, but the Law, or if, you please, the Lawgiver, is answerable for all my actions. Let me he

ally I differ from them: in nothing do the approaches of knowledge, my five organs of sense (with their Shelleyan interpretation), exactly resemble those of any other being. Ergo, the effect of the world, of life, of natural objects, will not

fall me. Therefore in the pursuit of perfection as an individual lies my highest, and indeed my only duty, the I being duly blended with the We. I object to be a selfless man, which to me denotes an inverted moral sense. I am bou

father? Haj? Abd? replies, I do as others do, not because the murder was done by him, but because the murderer should not be allowed another chance of murdering. He is a tiger who has tasted blood and

imply a geographical and chronological accident, which changes with every age of the world, it may deter men from seeking and securing the p

ack-whiteness and of white-blackness. A hundred generations of divines have never been able to ree the riddle; a million will fail. The difficulty is insurmountable to the Theist whose Almighty is perforce Omniscient, and as Omniscient, Prescient. But it disappears when we convert the Pers

thier, is born to be on the whole equally happy and miserable. The highest organisms, the fine porcelain of our family, enjoy the most and suffer the most

a cosa è più perfetta Più sent

n the whole, happy as the prince. Why, then, asks the objector, does man ever strive and struggle to change, to rise; a struggle which involves the idea of improving his condition? The Haj? answers, Because such is the Law under which man is born: it may be fierce as famin

li

results so

able seems

words, this p

rance of Immortality, and in visions of the final victory of good. Were Haj? Abd? a mere Theologist, he would add that Sin, not the possibility of revolt, but the revolt itself against conscience, is the primary form of evil, because it produces error, moral and intellectual. This man, who omits to read the Conscience-law, however

ars natural. But that of the milliards of human beings who have inhabited the Earth, not one should have been found invariably to choose Good, proves how insufficient is the solution. Hence no one believes in the existence of the complete man under the present state of things. The Haj? rejects all popular and myth

m portenta mentioned by the XIXth General Council, alias the First Council of the Vatican. But he only accepts it with a limitation. He cleaves to the ethical, not to the intellectual, worship of Nature, which moderns define to be an unscientific and imaginary synonym for the sum tota

n atom; that they cannot account for the transformation of physical action and molecular motion into consciousness; and vice versa, that

yle ({Greek: hylae}) or Matter may be provisionally defined as phenomena with a substructure of their own, transcendental and eternal, subject to the action, direct or indirect, of the five senses, whilst its properties present themselves in three states, the solid, the liquid, and the gaseous. To casuistical Berkeley they prefer the common sense of mankind. They ask the id

t this something else produces the brain-disturbance which is called sensation. Instinct orders us to do something; Reason (the balance of faculties) directs; and the strongest motive controls. Modern Science, by the discovery of Radiant Matter, a fourth condition, seems to conciliate the two schools. La découverte dun quatrième état de la matière, says a Reviewer, cest la porte o

ogma which could hardly belong to the brutal savages of the Stone Age. He finds it in the funereal books of ancient Egypt, whence probably it passed to the Zendavesta and the Vedas. In the Hebrew Pentateuch, of which part is still attributed to Moses, it is unknown, or, rather, it is del

of annihilation. They revolt at the notion of eternal parting from parents, kinsmen and friends. Yet the dogma of a future life is by no means catholic and universal. The Anglo-European race apparently cannot exist without it, and we have lately heard of the Aryan Soul-land. On the other hand many of the Buddhist and even the Brahman Schools preach Nirwana (comparative non-existence) and Parinirwana (absolute nothingness). Moreover, the great Turanian family, actually occupying all Eastern Asia, has ever ignor

t hard to

otism: still it is so transferred as to imply a different system of convictions. It requires a different name: to call benevolence self-love is to make the fruit or flower n

i

edience to

cannot

rdener: so the old

tus

natus es

tus

tus

TE

y the morning-breath (Dam-i-Subh), the current of air, almost imperceptible except by the increase of cold, which Moslem physiologists suppose to be the early prayer offered by Nature to the First Cause. The Ghoul-i-Biyaban (Desert-Demon) is evidently the personification of mans fears and of the dangers that surround travelling in the wilds.

sorrow numb

hear the pa

oss yon thi

ng of the

g with Shab-i-tar?k o b?m-i-mauj, etc. H?r is the plural of Ahwar, in full Ahwar el-Ayn, a maid whose eyes are intensely white where they should be white, and black elsewhere: h

iends, with wha

ond marriage

barren Reas

aughter of the

Fitzgeralds

Pantheistic dogma Ana l Hakk (I am the Truth, i.e., God), wa laysa fi-jubbat? il Allah (and within my coat is nought but God). His blood traced on the ground the first-quoted sentence. Lastly, there is a quotation from Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes, etc.: here {Greek: pa?ze} may mean sport; but the context determines the kind of sport intended. The Zahid is the literal believer in the letter of the Law, opposed to the Soofi, who believes in its spirit: hence the former is called a Zahiri (outsider), and the latter a Batini, an insider. Moses is quoted because he igno

ering; filled with no sweet perfume, but loaded with impurities; a mansion infested by age and sorrow; the seat of malady; harassed with pains; haunted with the quality of darkness (Tama-guna), and incapable of standing. The Pot and Potter began with the ancient Egyptians. Sitting as a potter at the wheel, Cneph (at Phil?) moulds clay, and gives the spirit of life to the nostrils of Osiris. Hence the Genesitic breath. Then we meet him in the Vedas, the Being by who

Erthe is wo

he hath gete a d

the hath sett

pon Erthe may be

was chosen as Deaths vehicle by the Arabs, probably because it bears the Bedouins corpse to the dis

rich; how abje

te, how wond

ong and anxious thoughts: I have purposely

xperience

g of prophe

ny croient guère; et lun des étonnements dont je ne reviens pas est de voir le bon Fénélon en parler dans son Télémaque comme sil y croyoit tout de bon: mais jespère quil mentoit alors; car enfin quelque véridique quon soit, il faut bien mentir quelquefois quand on est évêque. Man depicts himself in his gods, says Schiller. Hence the Naturgott, the deity of all ancient peoples, and with whi

ance represents Buddha in the world of Western thought, found the vision of mans unhappiness, irrespective of his actions, so overpowering that he concluded the Supreme Will to be malevolent, heartless, cowardly, and arrogant. Confucius, the Throneless ki

fear and ignorance (Carl Vogt). He now speaks as the Drawer of the Wine, the Ancient Taverner, the Old Magus, the Patron of the Mughan or Magians; all titles applied to the Soofi as opposed to the Zahid. His idols are the eidola (illusions) of Bacon, having their foundations in the very constitution of man, and therefore appropriately called fabul?. That Natures Commo

truths, fab

science vex

reat lesson

t all we kn

is in

ou say, Athen

now is nothin

next

ubstance, seq

ending, spa

e toys of m

diculous a

itely great, viz., that the idea arises from denying form to any figure; of the infinitely sma

mitted st

hou, Phenom

on to mete

e easier prob

Being or

phenomena, and cannot reach the Noumena, the things themselves. This is the scholastic realism, the residuum of a bad metaphysic, which deforms the system of Comte. With all its pretensions, it simply means that there are, or can be conceived, things in themse

selves and consequently a non-existence. Most Easterns confuse the contradictories, in which one term stands for something, and the other for nothing (e.g., ourselves and not-ourselves), with the contraries (e.g., rich and not-rich = poor), in which both terms express a something. So the positive-negative infinite is not the complement of finite, but its negation. The Western man derides the process by

different Unitarianism; Theology, with its one Creator; Pantheism with its one Spirits plastic stress; and Science with its one Energy. He is hard upon Christianity and its trinal God: I have not softened his expression ({Arabic} = a riddle), although it may offend readers. There is nothing more enigmatical to the Moslem mind than Christian Trinitarianism: all other objections they can get over, not this. Nor is he any lover of Islamism, which, like Christianity, has its ascetic Hebraism and its Hellenic hedonism; with the world of thought moving between these two extremes. The former, defined as predominant or exclusive care for the practice of right, is represented by Semitic and Arab

e-ja? ras

y a Khwan-i-yaghma (or tray of plunder) as the Per

heep themselv

ow the English nation ought to treat that set of hypocrites, imposte

Good and no Evil in the absolute sense as

ride, in errin

clearwhatever

delphà kaì Promatheías thugátaer},Chance, the sister of Order and Trust, and the daughter of Forethought. The Scandinavian Spinners of Fate were Urd (the Was, the Past), Verdandi (the Becoming, or Present), and Skuld (the To-be, or Future). He alludes to Plato, who made the Demiourgos create the worlds by the Logos (the Hebrew Dabar) or Creative Word, through the ?ons. These {Greek: Aìwnes} of the Mystics were spiritual emanations from {Greek: Aìwn}, lit. a wave of influx, an age, period, or day; hence the Latin ?vum, and the Welsh Awen, the stream of inspiration

,the present. The Zoroastrians had four, each of 3,000 years. In the first, Hormuzd, the good-god, ruled alone; then Ahriman, the

al fishes; when the Oolites produced the mighty reptile tyrants of air, earth, and sea; and when the monsters of the Eocene and Miocene p

t of the gregarious and social instincts; and so travellers have observed that the moral is the last step in mental progress. His Moors are the savage Dankali and other negroid tribes, who offer a cup of milk with one hand and stab with the other. He translates liter

doxies, that nearly all truth is temperamental to us, or given in the affections and intuitions; and that discussion and inquiry do little more than feed temperament. Our poet seems to mean that the Perceptions, when they perceive truly, convey objective truth, which is universal; whereas the Reflectives and the Sentimen

anet immota fides are evidently quotations. He derides the teaching of the First Council of the Vatican (cap. v.), all the faithful are little children listening to the voice of Saint Peter, who is the Prince of the Apostle

owledge, will and fate, Fixed fate,

ebrew Ruach and Arabic Ruh, now perverted to mean soul or spirit, simply signify wind or breath, the outward and visible sign of life. Their later schools are even more explicit. For that which befalls man befalls beasts; as the one dies, so does the other; they have all one death; all go unto one place (Eccles. iii. 19). But t

further. The idea is Bacons idola fori, omnium molestissima, the twofold illusions of language; either the n

rks that it arose (perhaps) in Egypt; and was not invented by the People of the Book. By this term Moslems denote Jews

nses. His Chain of Being reminds us of Prof. Huxleys Pedigree of the Horse, Orohippus, Mesohippus, Meiohippus, Protohippus, Pleiohippus, and Equus. He has evidently heard of modern biology, or Hylozoism, which holds its quarter-million species of living beings, animal and vegetable, to be progressive modifications of one great fundamental unity, an unity of so-called mental faculties as well as of bodily structure. And this i

eat truth. There are things which human Reason or Instinct matured, in its undeveloped state, cannot master; but Reason is a Law to itself. Therefore we are not bound to believe, or to attempt belief in, any thing which is con

icient for an intellectual (not a sentimental) being; and, therefore, that there is

limits, nor i

ace; but when

l is there mu

, when all this

eature shall

l be hell which

qually distributed among men and beasts; some enjoy much and suffer much; others the reverse. Hence Diderot declares, Sober passi

ark of ran

city fo

l capacity for pleasure, a

hat Faith is an accident of birth

religion; t

Maker act

od, and in

raising m

o naturally has the last word. The association of the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph with the Trinity, in the Roman and Greek Churches, makes many Moslems conclude that Christians believe not in three but in five Persons. So an Englishman writes of the early Fathers, They not only said that 3 = 1, and that 1 = 3: they professed to explain how

annamu The best of places for (

ng, _Al- nar wa la l-Ar_Fire (of Hell) rather than Shame,is equally condemned by the K

asking hither

sking whither

p of this fo

e memory of t

ry of the beloved one, the divin? partic

ng whose life

CLU

s practical study of

h men as pieces is

ea of wisdom is

owledge is our

y IV.

chs). We have borrowed competitive examination from the Chinese; and, in these morbid days of weak introspection and retrospection, we might learn wisdom from the sturdy old Khemites. When he sings Abjure the Why and seek the How, he r

dead, theres no

the enlightened selfishness, that says, Act well and get compound interest in a future state. The allusion to the Theist-word apparently means that the votaries of a personal Deity must believe in the absolute foreknowledge of the Omniscient in particulars as in ge

man mare, mar

e mind dies not t

fl

with Pari-nirwana or absolute annihilation. In the former also, dying gives birth to a new bein

text has nowhere been translated verbatim; in fact, a familiar European turn has been given to many sentiments which were judged too Oriental. As the metre adopted b

, va