John Uri Lloyd

“ The sweets of Paradise can not comfort the mortal who must give up his home and family, and yet carry his earth-thought beyond. Man can not possess unalloyed joys, and blessings spiritual, and retain one backward longing for mundane subjects, and I now yearn again for my earth love, my material family. Having tasted of semi-celestial pleasures in one of the mansions of that complacent, pure, and restful sphere, I now exist in the border land, but my earth home is not relinquished, I cling as a mortal to former scenes, and crave to meet my lost loved ones. ”

“ What think you, I repeat, becomes of the torrent of light and heat and other forces that radiate from the sun, the flood that strikes the earth? It disappears, and, in the economy of nature, is not replaced by any known force or any known motion of matter. Think you that earth substance really presents an obstacle to the passage of the sun's energy? Is it not probable that most of this light producing essence, as a subtle fluid, passes through the surface of the earth and into its interior, as light does through space, and returns thence to the sun again, in a condition not discernible by man? ”

“ Not a vibration or undulation appeared in any direction. The solidity of steel was exemplified in its steady, apparently inflexible contour, and yet the pure element was so transparent that the bottom of the pool was as clearly defined as the top of the cavern above me. The lights and shades of the familiar lakes of Western New York were wanting here, and it suddenly came to my mind that there were surface reflections, but no shadows, and musing on this extraordinary fact, I stood motionless on a jutting cliff absorbed in meditation, abstractedly gazing down into that transparent depth. ”

“ Misery is a thing, misery is not a conception—pain is real, pain is not an impression. Misery and pain would still exist and prey upon mind substance were there no men, for mind also is real, and not a mere conception. The pain you have suffered has not been the pain of matter, but the pain of spirit. Matter can not suffer. Were it matter that suffered, the heated sand would writhe in agony. No; it is only mind and spirit that experience pain, or pleasure, and neither mind nor spirit can evade its destiny, even if it escape from the body. ”

“ Will the brighter thoughts of more gifted men, under such furtherings as the future may bring, perchance commune with beings who people immensity, distance disappearing before thy ever-reaching spirit? For with thee, who holdest the universe together, space is not space, and there is no word expressing time. Art thou a voice that carriest the history of the past from the past unto and into the present, and for which there is no future, all conditions of time being as one to thee, thy self covering all and connecting all together? Art thou, Gravitation, a voice? ”

“ The universe itself was freezing, and amid the desolation only my deserted intellect remained. Age after age had passed, æons of ages had fled, nation after nation had grown and perished, and in the uncounted epochs behind, humanity had disappeared. Unable to free itself from the frozen body, my own intellect remained the solitary spectator of the dead silence about. At last, beneath my vision, the moon disappeared, the stars faded one by one, and then I watched the sun grow dim, until at length only a milky, gauze-like film remained to indicate her face, and then—vacancy. ”

“ We halted a moment, and then, as a faint light overspread us, my eyeless guide directed me to look upward.
"We now stand beneath the crevice which you were told by your former guide would admit the last ray of sunlight on your path. I also say to you, this struggling ray of sunlight is to be your last for years."
I gazed above me, feeling all the wretchedness of a dying man who, with faculties intact, might stand on the dark edge of the hillside of eternity, glancing back into the bright world; and that small opening far, far overhead, seemed as the gate to Paradise Lost. ”

“ The Specter of Man's Life seized me more firmly as I struggled to escape, and holding me in its irresistible clutch absorbed my substance as a vampire might suck the blood of an infant, and while the childish dream disappeared in that hideous embrace, the miserable man awoke.
I found myself on land. The guide, seated at my side, remarked:
"You have slept."
"I have lived again," I said in bitterness.
"You have not lived at all as yet," he replied; "life is a dream, usually it is an unsatisfied nightmare." ”

“ Heat and light come and go, as vapors of water condense into rain and dissolve into vapor to return again to the atmosphere. Electricity and magnetism appear and disappear; like summer storms they move in diversified channels, or even turn and fly from contact with some bodies, seemingly forbidden to appear, but thou, Gravitation, art omnipresent and omnipotent. Thou createst motion, and yet maintainest the equilibrium of all things mundane and celestial. An attempt to imagine a body destitute of thy potency, would be to bankrupt and deaden the material universe. ”

“ He who has sorrowed and not profited by his sorrow-lesson, is unfitted for life. He who heeds best his sorrow-teacher is in closest touch with humanity, and nearest to Etidorhpa. She who has drank most deeply of sorrow's cup has best fitted herself for woman's sphere in life, and a final home of immortal bliss. I will return to thy realms, Etidorhpa, and this silken strand of sorrow wrapped around my heart, reaching from earth to Paradise and back to earth, will guide at last my loved ones to the realms beyond—the home of Etidorhpa. ”

“ As bitter is to some men's taste more pleasant than sweet, and sour is yet more grateful to others, so one man may love the beautiful, another delight in the grotesque, and a third may love to see his neighbor suffer. Amid these, the phase of love that ennobles, brings the greatest degree of pleasure and comfort to mankind, but the love that degrades is love nevertheless, by whatever name the expression of the passion may be called. Love rules the world, and typical of man's intensest, holiest love, I, Etidorhpa, stand the Soul of Love Supreme. ”

“ All about me was dead and dark, all within was still and cold, only my quickened intellect remained as in every corpse the self-conscious intellect must remain, while the body has a mortal form, for death of body is not attended by the immediate liberation of mind. The consciousness of the dead man is still acute, and he who thinks the dead are mindless, will realize his fearful error when devoid of motion he lies a corpse, conscious of all that passes on around him, waiting the liberation that can only come by disintegration and destruction of the flesh. ”

“ I was not clear upon the point, and said so. "Your memory is at fault," he continued, "if you can not recall your experiences of the day just past. Did you not attempt to interest yourself in modern book lore, to fix your mind in turn upon history, chemistry, botany, poetry, and general literature? And all these failing, did you not deliberately challenge Cicero to a practical demonstration of an old apothegm of his that has survived for centuries, and of your own free will did not you make a wager that, as an admirer of Cicero's, I am free to accept?" ”

“ If so, there must be a something farther out in those fathomless caverns, beyond mind imaginings, from which thou comest, for how could nothingness have formulated itself into a voice? The suns and universe of suns about us, may be only vacant points in the depths of an all-pervading entity in which even thyself dost exist as a momentary echo, linked to substances ponderous, destined to fade away in the inter-stellar expanse outside, where disturbances disappear, and matter and gravitation together die; where all is pure, quiescent, peaceful and dark. ”

“ Beware of materialism, the end of the science of man. Beware of the beginning of biological inquiry, for he who commences, can not foresee the termination. I say to you in candor, no man ever engaged in the part of science lore that questions the life essence, realizing the possible end of his investigations. The insidious servant becomes a tyrannical master; the housebreaker is innocent, the horse thief guiltless in comparison. Science thought begins in the brain of man; science provings end all things with the end of the material brain of man. ”

“ You must prove yourself as men are seldom proven. The journey you have commenced is far from its conclusion, and you may not be equal to its subsequent trials; prepare yourself, therefore, for a series of events that may unnerve you. If you had full confidence and faith in your guide, you would have less cause to fear the result, but your suspicious human nature can not overcome the shrinking sensation that is natural to those who have been educated as you have been amid the changing vicissitudes of the earth's surface, and you can not but be incredulous by reason of that education. ”

“ And yet there are debasing phases of love, for as love of country builds a nation, so love of pillage may destroy it. Love of the holy and the beautiful stands in human life opposed to love of the debasing and vicious, and I, Etidorhpa, am typical of the highest love of man. As the same force binds the molecules of the rose and the violet as well as those of noxious drugs, so the same soul conception may serve the love of good or the love of evil. Love may guide a tyrant or actuate a saint, may make man torture his fellow, or strive to ease his pain. ”

“ If a fine statue or a stately cathedral is a poem in marble, a masterpiece of the printer's art may be called a poem in typography. Such is Etidorhpa. In its paper, composition, presswork, illustrations, and binding—it is the perfection of beauty. While there is nothing gaudy in its outward appearance, there is throughout a display of good taste. The simplicity of its neatness, like that of a handsome woman, is its great charm. Elegance does not consist in show nor wealth in glitter; so the richest as well as the costliest garb may be rich in its very plainness. ”

“ Add thereto the fearful destruction that follows a war among nations scientific, and it will be seen that the scientific enthusiast of the present has taken the place of the misguided fanatic of the past. Let us be just. Place to the credit of religion the good that religion has done, place to the credit of science the good that science is doing, and yet do not mistake, both leave in their wake an atmosphere saturated with misery, a road whitened with humanity's bones. ”

“ Venus, the Goddess of Love, would have no place in song, and Love herself, the holiest conception of the poet, man's superlative conception of Heaven's most precious charms, would be buried with the myrtle and the rose. My name is Etidorhpa; interpret it rightly, and you have what has been to humanity the essence of love, the mother of all that ennobles. He who loves a wife worships me; she, who in turn makes a home happy, is typical of me. ”

“ Focusing the gaze of the church, kings, and the commons upon himself, in many respects the most audacious pretender that history records, he raised the Hermetic art to a dazzling height, and finally buried it in a blaze of splendor as he passed from existence beneath a mantle of shame. As a meteor streams into view from out the star mists of space, and in corruscating glory sinks into the sea, Cagliostro blazed into the sky of the eighteenth century, from the nebulæ of alchemistic [Pg 42] speculation, and extinguished both himself and his science in the light of the rising sun of materialism. ”

“ They dreamed of a "white elixir" that is yet to bless mankind, and a brighter day for man, a period of peace, happiness, long life, contentment, good will and brotherly love, and in the name of this "white elixir" they directed the world towards a vision of divine light. Even pure gold, as they told the materialistic world who worship gold, was penetrated and whelmed by this subtle, superlatively refined spirit of matter. ”

“ Standing in a library of antiquated works, one senses the shadows of a cemetery. Each volume adds to the oppression, each old tome casts the influence of its spirit over the beholder, for have not these old books spirits? The earth-grave covers the mind as well as the body of its moldering occupant, and while [Pg v] only a strong imagination can assume that a spirit hovers over and lingers around inanimate clay, here each title is a voice that speaks as though the heart of its creator still throbbed, the mind essence of the dead writer envelops the living reader. ”

“ Then I awoke and saw once more the great red sun rise from the sand-edge of my desolate world, and I became aware of a new pain, for now I perceived the fact that I experienced the sense of thirst. The conception of the impression drew my mind to the subject, and instantly intense thirst, the most acute of bodily sufferings, possessed me. When vitalized tissue craves water, other physical wants are unfelt; when man parches to death all other methods of torture are disregarded. ”

“ The canvas conceptions of earth-bred artists bring to mind no forms so strange and weird and yet so beautiful as were these compound beings. Restful beyond description was it to drink in the indescribable strains of poetry of motion that I appreciated in the movements of fair creatures I have not mentioned, and it was no less soothing to experience the soul relief wrought by the sounds about me, for musicians know no notes so sweet and entrancing. ”

“ His arms and legs were bare, and his skin, the color of light blue putty, glistened in the sunlight like the slimy hide of a water dog. He raised his head, and I shuddered in affright as I beheld that his face was not that of a human. His forehead extended in an unbroken plane from crown to cheek bone, and the chubby tip of an abortive nose without nostrils formed a short projection near the center of the level ridge which represented a countenance. There was no semblance of an eye, for there were no sockets. ”

“ As the tip of the whip-lash sends its cry through space, not while it is in motion either way, but from the point where motion ceases, the spaceless, timeless point that lies between the backward and the forward, so the soul of man leaves a cry (eternity) at the critical point. It is the death echo, and thus each snap of the life-thread throws an eternity, its own eternity, into eternity's seas, and each eternity is made up of the entities thus cast from the critical point. ”

“ I am an infidel, and believe in no spirit intangible; that which can be seen, felt, and weighed is, all else is not. Life is simply a sensation. All beyond is chimerical, less than fantastic, believed in only by dupes and weak-minded, credulous tools of knaves, or creatures of blind superstition.' He carried the finely articulated, bleached skull of a cadaver to his room, and placed it beside a marble statue that was a valued heirloom, the model of Venus of Milo. 'Both are lime compounds,' he cynically observed, 'neither is better than the other.' His friends protested. ”

“ Mind has been enabled to read the impressions that are made in and on the substance of brain convolutions, but at the same time has been and is insensible to the existence of the convolutions themselves. It is as though we could read the letters of the manuscript that bears them without having conceived of a necessity for the existence of a printed surface, such as paper or anything outside the letters. Had anatomists never dissected a brain, the human family would to-day live in absolute ignorance of the nature of the substance that lies within the skull. ”

“ Know thou, that Hermes Trismegistus did not originate, but he gave to our philosophy his name—the Hermetic Art. Evolved in a dim, mystic age, before antiquity began, it endured through the slowly rolling cycles to be bandied about by the ever-ready flippancy of nineteenth century students. It has lived, because it is endowed with that quality which never dies—truth. Modern philosophy, of which chemistry is but a fragment, draws its sustenance from the prime facts which were revealed in ancient Egypt through Hermetic thought, and fixed by the Hermetic stylus. ”