"'Certainly, for God is the only absolute being. However, I trust that you are not like some philosophers I met in England, France, and even in Germany, at the court of Frederick—that you do not resemble Locke, who is so popular through the praise of Voltaire—that you are not like Helvetius nor La Mettrie, whose boldness of naturalism so delighted the court of Berlin—that you do not, like them, say that man has no essential superiority over animals, trees, and stones. God, doubtless, inspires all nature as he does man; but there is order in his theodicy. There are distinctions in his conceptions, and consequently in the works which are the realisation of his thoughts. Read that great book called Genesis—that book which, though the people do not understand, they truly enough call sacred—you will see that it was by divine light establishing a difference between creatures, that his work was consummated:—"Let there be light, and there was light." You will also see that every creature having a name is a species:—"Creavit cuncta juxta genus suam et secundum speciem suam." What, then, is the peculiar form of man?'
"'I understand you. You wish to assign man a form like God.'
"'The divine trinity is found in all God's works; all reflect the divine nature, though in a special manner—in a word, each after its kind.'
"'The nature of man I will now explain to you. Ages will elapse, ere philosophers, divided as they now are, will agree in their interpretation of it. One, infinitely greater though less famous, did so correctly long ago. While the school of Descartes confines itself to pure reason, making man a natural machine, an instrument of logic—while Locke and his school make man merely a sensitive plant—while others that I might mention, absorb themselves in sentiment, making man a double egotism—if he loves, expanding him twice, thrice, or more if he has relatives; he, the greatest of all, began by affirming that man was all in one and indivisible. This philosopher was Leibnitz. He was wise, and did not participate in the contempt our age entertains for antiquity and Christianity. He dared to say there were pearls in the dung of the middle age. Pearls, indeed, there were. Truth is eternal, and all the philosophers have received it. With him then, I say, yet with an affirmation stronger than his, that man, like God, is a Trinity. This Trinity, in human language, is called Sensation, Sentiment, Knowledge. The unity of these three things forms the divine Tetraid. Thence all history emanates; thence emanates all politics. There you must recruit yourselves, as from an ever-living spring.'
"'You have passed abysses which my mind, less rapid than your own, could not pass,' said Spartacus. 'How, from the psychological explanation you have given me, can a method and rule of certainty be derived? This is my first question.'
"'Easily,' said Albert. 'Human nature being known, it must be cultivated according to its essence, if you understood that the matchless book, whence the gospels themselves are taken—I mean Genesis, attributed to Moses—was taken by him from the temples of Memphis, you would know that human dissolution, by him called the deluge, meant only the separation of the faculties of human nature, which thus emanated from unity, and thence from their connection with divine unity or intelligence, love and activity, have been eternally associated. Then you would see that every organizer must imitate Noah, the regenerator; what the holy writ calls the generations of Noah, their order and their harmony, will guide you. Thus you will find at once in metaphysical truth a certain method to cultivate human nature in every one, and a light to illumine you in relation to the true organization of associations. I will tell you, however, that I do not think the time for organization has come; there is yet too much to be destroyed.
"'I advise you rather to attend to method than to doctrine. The time for dissolution draws near; nay, it is here. Yes, the time is come when the three faculties will be disunited, and their separation destroy the social, religious, and political body. What will happen? Sensation will produce its false prophets, and they will laud sensation. Sentiment will produce false prophets, and they will praise sentiment. Knowledge will produce false prophets, and they will extol mind. The latter will be proud men, who resemble Satan; the second will be fanatics, ready to walk towards virtue, without judgment, or with rule; the others will be what Homer says became companions of Ulysses, when under the influence of Circe's ring. Follow neither of their three roads, which, taken separately, conduct, the first to the abyss of materialism, the second to mysticism, and the third to atheism. There is no sure road to virtue. This accords with complete human nature, and to human nature developed under all its aspects. Do not leave this pathway; and to keep it, ever think on doctrine and its sublime formula.'
"'You teach me things of which I have had a faint conception; yet to-morrow I will not have you to guide me in the theoretic knowledge of virtue, and thence to its practice.'
"'You will have other certain guides—above all, Genesis. Attempt to seize its meaning; do not think it an historical book, a chronological monument. There is nothing more foolish than opinion, which yet has influence everywhere with savans and pupils, and in every Christian communion. Read the gospels and Genesis; understand the first by the second, after having tested it by your heart. Strange is the chance. Like Genesis, the Gospels are believed and misinterpreted. These are important matters; yet there are others. Gather up all the fragments of Pythagoras. Study, too, the relics of the holy Theosophist, whose name I in the temple bore. Believe not, my friends, that I would voluntarily have dared to assume the venerable name of Trismegistus. The Invisibles bade me do so. The works of Hermes, now despised, and thought to be the invention of some Christian of the second or third century, contain the old Egyptian lore; yet the pedants condemn them. A day will come in which they will be explained, and then be thought more valuable than all Plato left behind him. Read Trismegistus and Plato, and those who subsequently have thought of the great Republic. Among these, I especially advise you to study the great work of Campanella. He suffered terribly for having dreamed, as you do, of human organization, founded on the true and real.
"'When I talk of written things,' said Trismegistus, 'think not, in idolatry, as the Catholics do, I make an incarnation of life in death. As I spoke of books yesterday, to-day I will speak of other relics of the past. Books—monuments, are the traces of life by which existence may be maintained. Life, however, is here; and the everlasting Trinity is better impressed on ourselves than in the writings of Plato or Hermes.'