THE BLOSSOM AND THE FRUIT:
THE TRUE STORY OF A MAGICIAN.
(Continued.)
By Mabel Collins,
Scribe of “The Idyll of the White Lotus,” and “Through the Gates of Gold.”
[Some of the readers of Lucifer have taken great exception to the love passages between Fleta and Hilary, saying that they are not up to the standard of Theosophic thought, and are out of place in the magazine. The author can only beg that time may be given for the story to develope. None of us that is born dies without experiencing human passion; it is the base on which an edifice must rise at last, after many incarnations have purified it; “it is the blossom which has in it the fruit.” Hilary is still only a man, he has not yet learned to the full the lesson of human life and human passion. Fleta promises him all that he can take and that plainly is only what she can give—the deep love of the disciple. But she cannot instantly free his eyes from the illusions caused by his own passionate heart; till he has suffered and conquered, he cannot recognise her for what she is, the pledged servant of a great master, of necessity more white-souled than any nun need be.
Another strange criticism is made, condemning portions of the story as though expressive of the author’s feelings and sentiments; whereas they are simply descriptive of the states through which Hilary is passing. They no more express the author’s feelings than do those later parts which refer to the ordeals of Fleta, the accepted disciple, express the author’s feelings. The two characters of the struggling aspirant and the advanced disciple, are studies from life. The stumbling-block of human passion which stands in Hilary’s way, is the same which lost Zanoni his high estate; in the coming chapters of “The Blossom and the Fruit,” we shall see Fleta flung back from the high estate she aims at, by this same stumbling-block, in an idealised and subtle form. She has not yet learned the bitter truth that the Occultist must stand absolutely alone, without even companionship of thought, or sympathy of feeling, at the times of the Initiations and the trials which precede them.—M. C.]