“What can you offer to the dying woman who fears to tread alone the DARK UNKNOWN?” we are asked. Our Christian critic here frankly confesses (a.) that Christian dogmas have only developed fear of death, and (b.) the agnosticism of the orthodox believer in Christian theology as to the future post-mortem state. It is, indeed, difficult to appreciate the peculiar type of bliss which orthodoxy offers its believers in—damnation.

The dying man—the average Christian—with a dark retrospect in life can scarcely appreciate this boon; while the Calvinist or the Predestinarian, who is brought up in the idea that God may have pre-assigned him from eternity to everlasting misery, through no fault of that man, but simply because he is God, is more than justified in regarding the latter as ten times worse than any devil or fiend that unclean human fancy could evolve.

Theosophy, on the contrary, teaches that perfect, absolute justice reigns in nature, though short-sighted man fails to see it in its details on the material and even psychic plane, and that every man determines his own future. The true Hell is life on Earth, as an effect of Karmic punishment following the preceding life during which the evil causes were produced. The Theosophist fears no hell, but confidently expects rest and bliss during the interim between two incarnations, as a reward for all the unmerited suffering he has endured in an existence into which he was ushered by Karma, and during which he is, in most cases, as helpless as a torn-off leaf whirled about by the conflicting winds of social and private life. Enough has been given out at various times regarding the conditions of post-mortem existence, to furnish a solid block of information on this point. Christian theology has nothing to say on this burning question, except where it veils its ignorance by mystery and dogma; but Occultism, unveiling the symbology of the Bible, explains it thoroughly.—[Ed.]

Literary Jottings

HYLO-IDEALISM versus “LUCIFER,” and the “ADVERSARY.”

Under the head of Correspondence in the present number, two remarkable letters are published. (See Text.) Both come from fervent Hylo-Idealists—a Master and Disciple, if we mistake not—and both charge the “Adversary,” one, of a “slighting,” the other, of a “hostile notice” of Hylo-Idealism, in the September number of “Lucifer.”

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Such an accusation is better met and answered in all sincerity; and, therefore, the reply is, a flat denial of the charge. No slight—nor hostility either, could be shown to “Hylo-Idealism,” as the “little stranger” in the happy family of philosophies was hitherto as good as unknown to “Lucifer’s” household gods. It was chaff, if anything, but surely no hostility; and even that was concerned with only some dreadful words and sentences, with reference to the new teaching, and had nothing whatever to do with Hylo-Idealism proper—a terra incognita for the writer at the time. But now that three pamphlets from the pens of our two correspondents have been received in our office, for review, and carefully read, Hylo-Idealism begins to assume a more tangible form before the reviewer’s eye. It becomes easier to separate the grain from the chaff, the theory from the (no doubt) scientific, nevertheless, most irritating, words in which it is presented to the reader.

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This is meant in all truth and sincerity. The remarks which our two correspondents have mistaken for expressions of hostility, were as justified then, as they are now. What ordinary mortal, we ask, before he had time (to use Dr. Lewins’ happiest expressions) to “asself or cognose”—let alone intercranialise[[121]] (!!)—the hylo-idealistic theories, however profound and philosophical these may be, who, having so far come into direct contact with only the images thereof “subjected by his own egoity” (i.e. as words and sentences), who could avoid feeling his hair standing on end, over “his organs of mentation,” while spelling out such terrible words as “vesiculo-neurosis in conjunction with medico-psychological symptomatology,” “auto-centricism,” and the like? Such interminable, outlandish, multisyllabled and multicipital, newly-coined compound terms and whole sentences, maybe, and no doubt are, highly learned and scientific. They may be most expressive of true, real meaning, to a specialist of Dr. Lewins’ powers of thought; nevertheless, I make bold to say, that they are far more calculated to obscure than to enlighten the ordinary reader. In our modern day, when new philosophies spring out from the spawn of human overworked intellect like mushrooms from their mycelium after a rainy morning, the human brain and its capacities ought to be taken into a certain thoughtful consideration, and spared useless labour. Notwithstanding Dr. Lewins’ praiseworthy efforts to prove that brain (as far as we understand his aspirations and teachings) is the only reality in the whole kosmos, its limitations are painfully evident, on the whole. As philanthropists and theosophists, we entreat the founder of Hylo-Idealism and his disciples to be merciful to their new god, the “Ego-Brain,” and not tax too heavily its powers, if they would see it happily reign. For otherwise, it is sure to collapse before the new theory—or, let us call it philosophy—is even half appreciated by that “Ego-Brain.”