The magnetic phenomena produced by Ganneau continued even after his death. His widow, a woman of no education and little intelligence, the daughter of an honest peasant of Auvergne, remained in the static somnambulism in which she had been placed by her husband.[367] Like the child which assumes the form of its mother’s imagination, she has become a living image of Marie Antoinette, when a prisoner at the Conciergerie. Her manners are those of a queen who is widowed and desolate for ever; a complaint sometimes escapes her, as though she were weary of her dream, but she is sovereignly indignant with any who seek to awake her. For the rest, she has no symptom of mental alienation; her outward conduct is reasonable, her life perfectly honourable and regular. Nothing is more pathetic, to our thinking, than this persistent obsession of a being fondly loved who lives again in a conjugal hallucination. Had Artemis existed literally it would be permissible to believe that Mausol was also a powerful mesmerist, and that he had gained and fixed for ever the affections of an extremely sensitive woman, outside all limits of free will and reason.
CHAPTER VI
THE OCCULT SCIENCES
The secret of the occult sciences is that of Nature herself; it is the secret of the generation of angels and worlds; it is that of God’s own omnipotence. “Ye shall be as the Elohim, knowing good and evil.” So testified the serpent of Genesis, and so did the Tree of Knowledge become the Tree of Death. For six thousand years the martyrs of science have toiled and perished at the foot of this Tree, so that it may become once more the Tree of Life.
That Absolute which is sought by the foolish and found only by the wise is the truth, the reality and the reason of universal equilibrium. Such equilibrium is the harmony which proceeds from the analogy of opposites. Humanity has sought so far to balance itself as if on one leg—now on one and now again on the other. Civilisations have sprung up and have fallen, through the anarchic alienation of despotism, or alternatively through the despotic anarchy of revolt. Here superstitious enthusiasms and there the pitiful schemes of materialistic instinct have misguided the nations; but at last it is God Himself Who impels the world towards believing reason and reasonable beliefs. We have had enough and to spare of the prophets apart from philosophy and the philosophers destitute of religion. Blind believers and sceptics are on a par with one another, and both are equally remote from eternal salvation.
In the chaos of universal doubt, and amidst the conflict of science and faith, the great men and the seers figure as sickly artists, seeking the ideal beauty at the risk of their reason and their life. Look at them now even—these sublime children. They are whimsical and nervous, like women; a shadow maims them; reason injures; they are unjust even to each other; and though assuredly on the quest of crowns, in their fantastic excesses they are the first to be guilty of that which Pythagoras forbids in one of his admirable symbols; they are the first to revile crowns and to trample them under their feet. They are fanatics of glory; but the good God has bound them by the chains of opinion, so that they may not be openly dangerous.
Genius is judged by the tribunal of mediocrity, and this judgment is without appeal, because, being the light of the world, genius is accounted as a thing that is null and dead whenever it ceases to enlighten. The ecstasy of the poet is controlled by the indifference of the prosaic multitude, and every enthusiast who is rejected by general good sense is a fool and not a genius. Do not count the great artists as bondsmen of the ignorant crowd, for it is the crowd which imparts to their talent the balance of reason.
Light is the equilibrium between shadow and brightness. Motion is the equilibrium between inertia and activity. Authority is the equilibrium between liberty and power. Wisdom is equilibrium in thought; virtue is equilibrium in the affections; beauty is equilibrium in form. Outlines that are lovely are true outlines, and the magnificence of Nature is an algebra of graces and splendours. Whatsoever is true is beautiful; all that is beautiful should be true. Heaven and hell are the equilibrium of moral life; good and evil are the equilibrium of liberty.
The Great Work is the attainment of that middle point in which equilibrating force abides. Furthermore, the reactions of equilibrated force do everywhere conserve universal life by the perpetual motion of birth and death. It is for this reason that the philosophers have compared their gold to the sun. For the same reason that same gold cures all diseases of the soul and communicates immortality. Those who have found this middle point are true and wonder-working adepts of science and reason. They are masters of the wealth of worlds, confidants and friends of the princes of heaven itself, and Nature obeys them because they will what is willed by the law which is the motive power of Nature. It is this which the Saviour of the world spoke of as the Kingdom of Heaven; this also is the Sanctum Regnum of the Holy Kabalah. It is the Crown and Ring of Solomon; it is the Sceptre of Joseph which the stars obeyed in heaven and the harvests on earth.
We have discovered this secret of omnipotence; it is not for sale in the market; but if God had commanded us to set a price thereon, we question whether the whole fortune of the buyers would seem its equivalent. Not for ourselves but for them, we should demand in addition their undivided soul and their entire life.
