For more than fifteen hundred years mankind has been involved between the speculations of Philosophy, on the one hand, and the creeds and dogmas of Theology, on the other.
There was also the deliberate destruction of ancient monuments, scrolls, and records, by religious fanatics. Diocletian, in A.D. 296, burned the books of the Egyptians. Cæsar burned 700,000 Rolls at Alexandria, and Leo Isaurus 300,000 at Constantinople in the eighth century. Then came the Mohammedans, who destroyed the remainder of the accessible scrolls at Alexandria. Gangs of fanatical Monks, Christian and Pagan, roamed over Europe destroying and defacing everything upon which they could lay their hands, as witnesses against their dogmas and superstitions. Even to-day, in India, it is difficult for Europeans to gain access to genuine ancient records. The records of these barbarities are still fresh in the minds of the guardians of sacred lore.
Even with such a record for thousands of years, Ecclesiasticism is as arrogant and rampant as ever to-day. The wonder is, that there is anything left but barbarism.
Two writers declare that the most ancient and valuable of the records of the Alexandrian Library were kept in secret crypts known only to the highest officials, and preserved still in secret crypts known only to the Illuminati. In Baalbec and all through the East to-day these underground temples are being explored, and even the fragments found excite wonder and admiration. Ignorant Barbarians may be destructive on general principles, but fanatical Ecclesiasticism has ever been destructive of all light, knowledge and civilization, through insane hatred or pure “cussedness”! We need only to regard intelligently what it has done, and is doing for Southern Europe to-day.
Can you wonder that the real science of the Human Soul found little recognition, or that it was denied as possible to man?
As already shown, the Science of to-day has neither recognized nor worked up to it; and the Theology of to-day covers it with fable, mystery, and miracle as of old.
In spite of both these the “Philalethean Society” exists, the “Seekers after God” were never more numerous than now, and the Magnum Opus, the Great Work, was never, in the whole history of man, more in evidence than it is to-day.
| “Truth crushed to Earth shall rise again, The Eternal years of God are hers.” |
Can it be that there is no great truth back of all these struggles and aspirations of the human soul? That there is no possible realization back of these soulful endeavors?
Is Tantalus, after all, the creator and Father of Man? inspired only by love of disappointment, defeat, and despair, in his children?