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Furthermore, there is not one item in her statements concerning the "Open Entrance" which is not directly and provably false. It was not printed, as she indicates, under the supervision of the author; it was not printed from the original MS., nor was that MS. returned to Philalethes after it had passed through the press.
Which means, I suppose, that people have arrived at a conviction which they won't give up in order to embrace yours instead. Philalethes. Ah! if it were only a conviction based on insight. Then one could bring arguments to bear, and the battle would be fought with equal weapons. But religions admittedly appeal, not to conviction as the result of argument, but to belief as demanded by revelation.
If you conceive religion in this light, and recollect that its aims are above all practical, and only in a subordinate degree theoretical, it will appear to you as something worthy of the highest respect. Philalethes. A respect which will finally rest upon the principle that the end sanctifies the means. I don't feel in favor of a compromise on a basis like that.
For the mendacious history confuses two entirely distinct persons Eugenius and Eirenæus Philalethes. It is true that this confusion has been made frequently, and it is true also that at the beginning of my researches into the archæology of Hermetic literature I was one of its victims, for which I was sharply brought to book by those who knew better.
Think, for instance, how often a man, especially if of noble birth, will make tremendous sacrifices to perform what he has promised, motived entirely by the fact that his father has often earnestly impressed upon him in his childhood that "a man of honor" or "a gentleman" or a "a cavalier" always keeps his word inviolate. Philalethes. That's no use unless there is a certain inborn honorableness.
But suddenly his interest had faded: these phantoms fled before a rationalistic cock-crow, and Eugenius Philalethes and Robert Fludd went with Mejnour and Zanoni into a twilight forgetfulness. There was no hand to show the hidden way to the land that might be, and there were hands beckoning and voices calling him along the highway to the land that is.
Pure faith in revelation and pure metaphysics are for the two extremes, and for the intermediate steps mutual modifications of both in innumerable combinations and gradations. And this is rendered necessary by the immeasurable differences which nature and education have placed between man and man. Philalethes.
Philalethes. It is difficult to say whether there is more of sublimity or beauty in the scene around us. Nature appears at once smiling and frowning, in activity and repose. How tremendous is the volcano, how magnificent this great laboratory of Nature in its unceasing fire, its subterraneous lightnings and thunder, its volumes of smoke, its showers of stones and its rivers of ignited lava!
You're going hand in hand with ochlocracy and anarchy, the arch enemy of all legislative order, all civilization and all humanity. Philalethes. You are right. It was only a sophism of mine, what the fencing master calls a feint. I retract it. But see how disputing sometimes makes an honest man unjust and malicious. Let us stop. Demopheles.
My consolation is that, alike in controversies and in taking mineral waters, the after effects are the true ones. Demopheles. Well, I hope it'll be beneficial in your case. Philalethes. It might be so, if I could digest a certain Spanish proverb. Demopheles. Which is? Philalethes. Behind the cross stands the devil. Demopheles. Come, don't let us part with sarcasms.
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