Part 71

Man is capable of a higher Love, which, marrying mind with mind and with the Universe, brings forth all that is noblest in his faculties, and lifts him beyond himself. This higher love is neither mortal nor immortal, but a power intermediate between the human and the Divine, filling up the mighty interval, and binding the Universe together. He is chief of those celestial emissaries who carry to the gods the prayers of men, and bring down to men the gifts of the gods. "He is forever poor, and far from being beautiful as mankind imagine, for he is squalid and withered; he flies low along the ground, is homeless and unsandalled; sleeping without covering before the doors and in the unsheltered streets, and possessing so far his mother's nature as being ever the companion of want. Yet, sharing also that of his father, he is forever scheming to obtain things good and beautiful; he is fearless, vehement, and strong; always devising some new contrivance; strictly cautious and full of inventive resource; a philosopher through his whole existence, a powerful enchanter, and a subtle sophist."

The ideal consummation of Platonic science is the arrival at the contemplation of that of which earth exhibits no express image or adequate similitude, the Supreme Prototype of all beauty, pure and uncontaminated with human intermixture of flesh or color, the Divine Original itself. To one so qualified is given the prerogative of bringing forth not mere images and shadows of virtue, but virtue itself, as having been conversant not with shadows, but with the truth; and having so brought forth and nurtured a progeny of virtue, he becomes the friend of God, and, so far as such a privilege can belong to any human being, immortal.

Socrates believed, like Heraclitus, in a Universal Reason pervading all things and all minds, and consequently revealing itself in ideas. He therefore sought truth in general opinion, and perceived in the communication of mind with mind one of the greatest prerogatives of wisdom and the most powerful means of advancement. He believed true wisdom to be an attainable idea, and that the moral convictions of the mind, those eternal instincts of temperance, conscientiousness, and justice, implanted in it by the gods, could not deceive, if rightly interpreted.

This metaphysical direction given to philosophy ended in visionary extravagance. Having assumed truth to be discoverable in thought, it proceeded to treat thoughts as truths. It thus became an idolatry of notions, which it considered either as phantoms exhaled from objects, or as portions of the divine pre-existent thought; thus creating a mythology of its own, and escaping from one thraldom only to enslave itself afresh. Theories and notions indiscriminately formed and defended are the false gods or "idols" of philosophy. For the word _idolon_ means _image_, and a false _mind_-picture of God is as much an idol as a false _wooden_ image of Him. Fearlessly launching into the problem of universal being, the first philosophy attempted to supply a compendious and decisive solution of every doubt. To do this, it was obliged to make the most sweeping assumptions; and as poetry had already filled the vast void between the human and the divine, by personifying its Deity as man, so philosophy bowed down before the supposed reflection of the divine image in the mind of the inquirer, who, in worshipping his own notions, had unconsciously deified himself. Nature thus was enslaved to common notions, and notions very often to words.

By the clashing of incompatible opinions, philosophy was gradually reduced to the ignominious confession of utter incapacity, and found its check or intellectual fall in skepticism. Xenophanes and Heraclitus mournfully acknowledged the unsatisfactory result of all the struggles of philosophy, in the admission of a universality of doubt; and the memorable effort of Socrates to rally the discomfited champions of truth, ended in a similar confession.

The worship of abstractions continued the error which personified Evil or deified Fortune; and when mystical philosophy resigned its place to mystical religion, it changed not its nature, but only its name. The great task remained unperformed, of reducing the outward world and its principles to the dominion of the intellect, and of reconciling the conception of the supreme unalterable power asserted by reason, with the requisitions of human sympathies.

A general idea of purpose and regularity in nature had been suggested by common appearances to the earliest reflection. The ancients perceived a natural order, a divine legislation, from which human institutions were supposed to be derived, laws emblazoned in Heaven, and thence revealed to earth. But the divine law was little more than an analogical inference from human law, taken in the vulgar sense of arbitrary will or partial covenant. It was surmised rather than discovered, and remained unmoral because unintelligible. It mattered little, under the circumstances, whether the Universe were said to be governed by chance or by reason, since the latter, if misunderstood, was virtually one with the former. "Better far," said Epicurus, "acquiesce in the fables of tradition, than acknowledge the oppressive necessity of the physicists"; and Menander speaks of God, Chance, and Intelligence as undistinguishable. Law unacknowledged goes under the name of _Chance_: perceived, but not understood, it becomes _Necessity_. The wisdom of the Stoic was a dogged submission to the arbitrary behests of one; that of the Epicurean an advantage snatched by more or less dexterous management from the equal tyranny of the other.

Ignorance sees nothing necessary, and is self abandoned to a power tyrannical because defined by no rule, and paradoxical because permitting evil, while itself assumed to be unlimited, all-powerful, and perfectly good. A little knowledge, presuming the identification of the Supreme Cause with the inevitable certainty of perfect reason, but omitting the analysis or interpretation of it, leaves the mind chain-bound in the ascetic fatalism of the Stoic. Free-will, coupled with the universal rule of Chance; or Fatalism and Necessity, coupled with Omniscience and fixed and unalterable Law,--these are the alternatives, between which the human mind has eternally vacillated. The Supernaturalists, contemplating a Being acting through impulse, though with superhuman wisdom, and considering the best courtier to be the most favored subject, combines contradictory expedients, inconsistently mixing the assertion of free action with the enervating service of petition; while he admits, in the words of a learned archbishop, that "if the production of the things we ask for depend on antecedent, natural, and necessary causes, our desires will be answered no less by the omission than the offering of prayers, which, therefore, are a vain thing."

The last stage is that in which the religion of action is made legitimate through comprehension of its proper objects and conditions. Man becomes morally free only when both notions, that of Chance and that of incomprehensible Necessity, are displaced by that of Law. Law, as applied to the Universe, means that universal, providential pre-arrangement, whose conditions can be discerned and discretionally acted on by human intelligence. The sense of freedom arises when the individual independence develops itself according to its own laws, without external collisions or hindrance; that of constraint, where it is thwarted or confined by other Natures, or where, by combination of external forces, the individual force is compelled into a new direction. Moral choice would not exist safely, or even at all, unless it were bounded by conditions determining its preferences. Duty supposes a rule both intelligible and certain, since an uncertain rule would be unintelligible, and if unintelligible, there could be no responsibility. No law that is unknown can be obligatory; and that Roman Emperor was justly execrated, who pretended to promulgate his penal laws, by putting them up at such a height that none could read them.

Man commands results, only by selecting among the contingent the pre-ordained results most suited to his purposes. In regard to absolute or divine morality, meaning the final cause or purpose of those comprehensive laws which often seem harsh to the individual, because inflexibly just and impartial to the universal, speculation must take refuge in faith; the immediate and obvious purpose often bearing so small a proportion to a wider and unknown one as to be relatively absorbed or lost. The rain that, unseasonable to me, ruins my hopes of an abundant crop, does so because it could not otherwise have blessed and prospered the crops of another kind of a whole neighboring district of country. The obvious purpose of a sudden storm of snow, or an unexpected change of wind, exposed to which I lose my life, bears small proportion to the great results which are to flow from that storm or wind over a whole continent. So always, of the good and ill which at first seemed irreconcilable and capriciously distributed, the one holds its ground, the other diminishes by being explained. In a world of a multitude of individuals, a world of action and exertion, a world affording, by the conflict of interests and the clashing of passions, any scope for the exercise of the manly and generous virtues, even Omnipotence cannot make it, that the comfort and convenience of one man alone shall always be consulted.

Thus the educated mind soon begins to appreciate the moral superiority of a system of law over one of capricious interference; and as the jumble of means and ends is brought into more intelligible perspective, partial or seeming good is cheerfully resigned for the disinterested and universal. Self-restraint is found not to imply self-sacrifice. The true meaning of what appeared to be Necessity is found to be, not arbitrary Power, but Strength and Force enlisted in the service of Intelligence. God having made us men, and placed us in a world of change and eternal renovation, with ample capacity and abundant means for rational enjoyment, we learn that it is folly to repine because we are not angels, inhabiting a world in which change and the clashing of interests and the conflicts of passion are unknown.

The mystery of the world remains, but is sufficiently cleared up to inspire confidence. We are constrained to admit that if every man would but do the best in his power to do, and that which he knows he ought to do, we should need no better world than this. Man, surrounded by necessity, is free, not in a dogged determination of isolated will, because, though inevitably complying with nature's laws, he is able, proportionately to his knowledge, to modify, in regard to himself, the conditions of their action, and so to preserve an average uniformity between their forces and his own.

Such are some of the conflicting opinions of antiquity; and we have to some extent presented to you a picture of the Ancient Thought. Faithful, as far as it goes, it exhibits to us Man's Intellect ever struggling to pass beyond the narrow bounds of the circle in which its limited powers and its short vision confine it; and ever we find it travelling round the circle, like one lost in a wood, to meet the same unavoidable and insoluble difficulties. Science with her many instruments, Astronomy, particularly, with her telescope, Physics with the microscope, and Chemistry with its analyses and combinations, have greatly enlarged our ideas of the Deity, by discovering to us the vast extent of the Universe in both directions, its star-systems and its invisible swarms of minutest animal life; by acquainting us with the new and wonderful Force or Substance we call Electricity, apparently a link between Matter and Spirit: and still the Deity only becomes more incomprehensible to us than ever, and we find that in our speculations we but reproduce over and over again the Ancient Thought.

Where, then, amid all these conflicting opinions, is the True Word of a Mason?

My Brother, most of the questions which have thus tortured men's minds, it is not within the reach and grasp of the Human Intellect to understand; but without understanding, as we have explained to you heretofore, we may and must _believe_.

The True Word of a Mason is to be found in the concealed and profound meaning of the Ineffable Name of Deity, communicated by God to Moses; and which meaning was long lost by the very precautions taken to conceal it. The true pronunciation of that name was in truth a secret, in which, however, was involved the far more profound secret of its meaning. In that meaning is included all the truth than can be known by us, in regard to the nature of God.

Long known as AL, AL SCHADAI, ALOHAYIM, and ADONAI; as the Chief or Commander of the Heavenly Armies; as the aggregate of the Forces [ALOHAYIM] of Nature; as the Mighty, the Victorious, the Rival of Bal and Osiris; as the Soul of Nature, Nature itself, a God that was but Man personified, a God with human passions, the God of the Heathen with but a mere change of name, He assumes, in His communications to Moses, the name יהוה [IHUH], and says to Him, אהיה אשר אהיה [AHIH ASHR AHIH], I AM WHAT I AM. Let us examine the esoteric or inner meaning of this Ineffable Name.

היה [HIH] is the imperfect tense of the verb To BE, of which יהיה [HIHI] is the present; אהי [AHI--א being the personal pronoun "I" affixed] the first person, by apocope; and יהי [IHI] the third. The verb has the following forms: ... Preterite, 3d person, masculine singular, היה [HIH], did exist, was; 3d person com. plural, היו [HIU] ... Present, 3d pers. masc. sing. יהיה [IHIH], once יהוא [IHUA], by apocope יהי,אהי [AHI, IHI].. Infinitive, היה, היו [HIH, HIU] ... Imperative, 2d pers. masc. sing., היה [HIH], fem. הוי [HUI] ... Participle, masc. sing., הוה [HUH], ENS--EXISTING .. EXISTENCE.

The verb is never used, as the mere logical copula or connecting word, _is, was_, etc., is used with the Greeks, Latins, and ourselves. It always implies _existence, actuality_. The _present_ form also includes the _future_ sense,... _shall_ or _may_ be or exist. And הוה and הוא [HUH and HUA] Chaldaic forms of the imperfect tense of the verb, are the same as the Hebrew היה and הוה [HUH and HIH], and mean _was, existed, became_.

Now הוא and היא [HUA and HIA] are the Personal Pronoun [Masculine and Feminine], HE, SHE. Thus in Gen. iv. 20 we have the phrase, הוא היה [HUA HIH], HE WAS: and in Lev. xxi. 9, אה אביה היא [ATH ABIH HIA], HER Father. This feminine pronoun, however, is often written הוא [HUA], and היא [HiA] occurs only eleven times in the Pentateuch. Sometimes the feminine form means IT; but _that_ pronoun is generally in the masculine form.

When either ה,ו,י, or א [Yod, Vav, He, or Aleph] terminates a word, and has no vowel either immediately preceding or following it, it is often rejected; as in ני [GI], for ניא [GIA], a valley.

So הוא-היא [HUA-HIA], He-She, could properly be written הו-הי [Hu-HI]; or by transposition of the letters, common with the Talmudists, יה-וה [IH-UH], which is the Tetragrammaton or Ineffable Name.

In Gen. i. 27, it is said, "So the ALHIM created man in His image: _in the image_ of ALHIM created He him: MALE and FEMALE created He them."

Sometimes the word was thus expressed; triangularly:

ה ו ה ה י ה י ה ו ה

And we learn that this designation of the Ineffable Name was, among the Hebrews, a symbol of Creation. The mysterious union _of God with His creatures_ was in the letter ה, which they considered to be the Agent of Almighty Power; and to enable the possessor of the Name to work miracles.

The Personal Pronoun הוא [HuA], HE, is often used _by itself_, to express the Deity, Lee says that in such cases, IHUH, IH, or ALHIM, or some other name of God, is _understood_; but there is no necessity for that. It means in such cases the Male, Generative, or Creative Principle or Power.

It was a common practice with the Talmudists to conceal secret meanings and sounds of words by transposing the letters.

The reversal of the letters of words was, indeed, anciently common everywhere. Thus from _Neitha_, the name of an Egyptian Goddess, the Greeks, writing backward, formed _Athenè_, the name of Minerva. In Arabic we have _Nahid_, a name of the planet Venus, which, reversed, gives _Dihan_, Greek, in Persian, _Nihad_, Nature; which Sir William Jones writes also Nahid. Strabo informs us that the Armenian name of Venus was _Anaitis_.

_Tien_, Heaven, in Chinese, reversed, is _Neit_, or _Neith_, worshipped at _Sais_ in Egypt. Reverse Neitha, drop the _i_, and add an _e_, and we, as before said, _Athenè. Mitra_ was the name of Venus among the ancient Persians. Herodotus, who tells us this, also informs us that her name, among the Scythians, was _Artim pasa. Artim_ is _Mitra_, reversed. So, by reversing it, the Greeks formed Artemis, Diana.

One of the meanings of _Rama_, in Sanscrit, is _Kama_, the Deity of _Love_. Reverse this, and we have _Amar_, and by changing _a_ into _o, Amor_, the Latin word for _Love_. Probably, as the verb is _Amare_, the oldest reading was _Amar_ and not _Amor_. So _Dipaka_, in Sanscrit, one of the meanings whereof is _love_, is often written _Dipuc_. Reverse this, and we have, adding _o_, the Latin word _Cupido_.

In Arabic, the radical letters _rhm_, pronounced _rahm_, signify the _trunk, compassion, mercy_; this reversed, we have _mhr_, in Persic, _love_ and the _Sun_. In Hebrew we have _Lab_, the _heart_; and in Chaldee, _Bal_, the _heart_; the radical letters of both being _b_ and _l_.

The Persic word for _head_ is _Sar_. Reversed, this becomes _Ras_ in Arabic and Hebrew, Raish in Chaldee, Rash in Samaritan, and Ryas in Ethiopic; all meaning _head, chief_, etc. In Arabic we have _Kid_, in the sense of _rule_, regulation, article of agreement, obligation; which, reversed, becomes, adding _e_, the Greek _dikè_ justice. In Coptic we have _Chlom_, a crown. Reversed, we have in Hebrew, _Moloch_ or _Malec_, a King, or he who wears a crown.

In the Kou-onen, or oldest Chinese writing, by Hieroglyphics, [Glyph] _Ge_ [_Hi_ or _Khi_, with the initial letter modified], was the Sun: in Persic. _Gaw:_ and in Turkish _Giun. Yue_, was the Moon; in Sanscrit _Uh_, and in Turkish _Ai_. It will be remembered that, in Egypt and elsewhere, the Sun was originally feminine, and the Moon masculine. In Egypt, _Ioh_ was the moon; and in the feasts of Bacchus they cried incessantly, _Euoï Sabvi! Euoï Bakhè! Io Bakhe! lo Bakhe!_

Bunsen gives the following personal pronouns for _he_ and _she_;

_He She_

Christian Aramtic Hû Hî

Jewish Aramaic Hû Hî

Hebrew Hû᾿ Hî᾿

Arabic Huwa Hiya

Thus the Ineffable Name not only embodies the Great Philosophical Idea, that the Deity is the ENS, the TO ON, the Absolute Existence, that of which the Essence is To Exist, the only Substance of Spinoza, the BEING, that never could _not_ have existed, as contradistinguished from that which only _becomes_, not Nature or the Soul of Nature, but that which created Nature; but also the idea of the Male and Female Principles, in its highest and most profound sense; to wit, that God originally comprehended in Himself all that is: that matter was not co-existent with Him, or independent of Him; that He did not merely fashion and shape a pre-existing chaos into a Universe; but that His Thought manifested itself outwardly in that Universe, which so _became_, and before _was not_, except as comprehended in Him: that the Generative Power or Spirit, and Productive Matter, ever among the ancients deemed the Female, originally were in God; and that He Was and Is all that Was, that Is, and that Shall be: _in_ Whom all else lives, moves, and has its being.

This was the great Mystery of the Ineffable Name; and this true arrangement of its letters, and of course its true pronunciation and its meaning, soon became lost to all except the select few to whom it was confided; it being concealed from the common people, because the Deity thus metaphysically named was not that personal and capricious, and as it were tangible God in whom they believed, and who alone was within the reach of their rude capacities.

Diodorus says that the name given by Moses to God was ΙΑΩ. Theodoras says that the Samaritans termed God _IABE_, but the Jews ΙΑΩ. Philo Byblius gives the form ΙΕΥΩ; and Clemens of Alexandria ΙΑΟΥ. Macrobius says that it was an admitted axiom among the Heathen, that the triliteral ΙΑΩ was the sacred name of the Supreme God. And the Clarian oracle said: "Learn thou that ΙΑΩ is the great God Supreme, that ruleth over all." The letter Ι signified Unity. Α and Ω are the first and last letters of the Greek Alphabet.

Hence the frequent expression: "I am the First, and I am the Last; and besides Me there is no other God. I am A and Ω, the First and the Last. I am A and Ω, the Beginning and the Ending, which Is, and Was, and Is to come: the Omnipotent." For in this we see shadowed forth the same great truth; that God is all in all--the Cause and the Effect--the beginning, or Impulse, or Generative Power: and the Ending, or Result, or that which is produced: that He is in reality all that is, all that ever was, and all that ever will be; in this sense, that nothing besides Himself has existed eternally, and co-eternally with Him, independent of Him, and self-existent, or self-originated.

And thus the meaning of the expression, ALOHAYIM, a _plural_ noun, used, in the account of the Creation with which Genesis commences, with a singular verb, and of the name or title IHUH-ALHIM, used for the first time in the 4th verse of the 2d chapter of the same book, becomes clear. The ALHIM is the aggregate unity of the manifested Creative Forces or Powers of Deity, His Emanations; and IHUH-ALHIM is the ABSOLUTE Existence, or Essence of these Powers and Forces, of which they are Active Manifestations and Emanations.

This was the profound truth hidden in the ancient allegory and covered from the general view with a double veil. This was the esoteric meaning of the generation and production of the Indian, Chaldean, and Phœnician cosmogonies; and the Active and Passive Powers, of the Male and Female Principles; of Heaven and its Luminaries generating, and the Earth producing; all hiding from vulgar view, as above its comprehension, the doctrine that matter is not eternal, but that God was the only original Existence, the ABSOLUTE, from Whom everything has proceeded, and to Whom all returns: and that all moral law springs not from the relation of things, but from His Wisdom and Essential Justice, as the Omnipotent Legislator. And this TRUE WORD is with entire accuracy said to have been _lost_; because its _meaning_ was lost, even among the Hebrews, although we still find the name (its real meaning unsuspected), in the Hu of the Druids and the Fo-Hi of the Chinese.

When we conceive of the Absolute Truth, Beauty, or Good, we cannot stop short at the abstraction of either. We are forced to refer each to some living and substantial Being, in which they have their foundations, some being that is the first and last principle of each.