[365] I wish that it were possible to quote the moving panegyric on Ganneau in a letter addressed by Éliphas Lévi to Alexandre Erdan and printed by him in La France Mystique, vol. ii. p. 184-188. He is described as one of the élite of intelligence, an artist, a poet of original and inexhaustible eloquence. He was sometimes bizarre but never absurd or wearisome. He was, finally, one of those hearts under the inspiration of which the zealous will crucify themselves with joy for the ungrateful. Erdan once saw Ganneau addressing a crowd in the Place de la Concorde, “uplifting his great arms and raising to heaven his beautiful Christ-like head.”
[366] I suppose that this would be a St. Andrew’s cross with the addition of a vertical branch, on which would rest the head of the crucified person.
[367] There was a son of this marriage, and in 1855 M. Alexandre Erdan was inquiring what had become of him.
[368] To suggest that the Zohar exists to propound and interpret a thesis of equilibrium is like saying that the vast text is written about the legend of the Edomite Kings or that it is a violent attack on Christianity, because there is a reference to each of these subjects. The symbolism of the Balance is practically confined to a single tract imbedded in the Zohar.
[369] “God stretched forth His right hand and created the world above, and He stretched forth His left hand and created the world below.... God created the world below on the model of the world above, for the image is found beneath of all that abides on high.”—Zohar, Part II., fol. 20a.
[370] Joseph de Maistre: Soirées de St. Pétersbourg, 1821, p. 308.
[371] For the sake of completeness, I have included this preface, though from some points of view it might have been reasonably omitted altogether.