Enigma

“ Nevertheless these places are drawn upon the map, and we may depict our feelings also by reflection, and after the manner of analysis. The reality is ever shifting about. How intangible it is, always escaping our eager grasp! The enigma of enigmas is to know the exact moment at which a wound gapes in the heart, one of those wounds which in mine have never closed. ”

“ Yet, should a poet compose his Diction entirely of such words, the result would be either an enigma or a barbarous jargon: an enigma if composed of metaphors, a barbarous jargon if composed of foreign words. For the essence of an enigma consists in putting together things apparently inconsistent and impossible, and at the same time saying nothing but what is true. ”

“ Ignorance inevitably led to error, and false views to false practices. In the sympathetic environment thus developed, the occultist flourished and displayed the impressive insignia of exclusive wisdom. His attitude was that of one seeking to solve an enigma, to find the key to a secret arcanum ”

“ Both enigma and puzzle may be applied to any matter difficult of answer or solution, enigma conveying an idea of greater dignity, puzzle applying to something more commonplace and mechanical; there are many dark enigmas in human life and in the course of providence ”

“ The universe appeared to him like an immense malady; everywhere he felt fever, everywhere he heard the sound of suffering, and, without seeking to solve the enigma, he strove to dress the wound. ”

“ Why is it that when you awake to the world of realities you nearly always feel, sometimes very vividly, that the vanished dream has carried with it some enigma which you have failed to solve? ”

“ For if the Divine Being condescends at all to hold intercourse with men, it cannot be doubted that he will do so, not only in a language known to them, but in a manner perfectly accordant to the rules and proprieties of the medium he designs to employ. Now the prophecies in question not merely belong to the general class of symbolic writing, but there is to be discerned in them, very plainly, the specific style of the enigma, which, in early ages, was a usual mode of embodying the most important and serious truths. ”

“ And so often does this happen that desire to solve the riddle becomes a pain,—that you finally find yourself making supplication to the Presence,—addressing to it questions which it will never answer directly, but only by a smile or by words having no relation to the asking,—words enigmatic, which make mysterious agitation in old forsaken fields of memory ... even as a wind betimes, over wide wastes of marsh, sets all the grasses whispering about nothing. ”

“ Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to take interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. ”

“ A taste for enigmas is a primitive manifestation of the thirst for knowledge in general, and thus akin to the very primum mobile of all intellectual progress, but in its legitimate forms that propensity might exert its functions on an ample field within the domain of the strictly physical sciences. ”

“ I can only write in enigmas, so that if my letter be intercepted on land or water, he who may read it shall understand nothing: all things encompass their king, from whom they draw their being, he being the source of all good things—second for those which are second and third for those which are third. ”

“ The tales deal chiefly with those elemental problems of the mysteries of life,—pain, the unknown, the strange kinship of man and beast in the struggle for existence,—the enigmas which occur chiefly to the primitive folk on the backwoods fringe of civilization, and they arrest attention for their sincerity, their freshness of first-hand knowledge, and their superior craft. ”

“ Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue. ”

“ You have heard that the Great Mystery is everywhere. He is in the earth and the water, heat and cold, rocks and trees, sun and sky; and He is also in us. When the spirit departs, that too is a mystery, and therefore we do not speak aloud the name of the dead. There are wonders all about us, and within, but if we are quiet and obedient to the voice of the spirit, sometime we may understand these mysteries! ”

“ Albeit, in those orbs to which the demons of my rank have admission, there be greater adumbrations of some transcendent Mystery than here, yet have I never seen that Mystery itself, and know not if it be male or female. Aeons ago, when I was young and incautious, when the world was new and bright, and there were more stars than now, I, too was attracted by this Mystery, and sought after it in all accessible spheres. But failing to find the thing itself, I soon grew weary of embracing its shadows, and took to the pursuit of illusions less insubstantial. ”

“ I ask you: where has the mystery been hiding all these years?"
"That is a question I shall not try to answer, Mr. Rhodes. It is my belief. however, that the mystery has never been hiding,—using the word, that is, in its literal signification." ”

“ You looked again and again, and the longer that you looked the more certain became your belief that you were on the verge of discovery. If you could approach the mysterious legend from a slightly different point of view, or look at it from another distance, the clew to the puzzle would be seized, and the words would stand forth clear and legible in your sight. But the clew never had been discovered, and the motto, if there was one, remained unread. ”

“ The confusion in the barbaric mind between the objective and the subjective, and between the name [Pg 169] and the person or thing, which has been illustrated in the foregoing pages, will enable us to see more clearly how the like confusion must enter into the interpretation of such occult and compound phenomena as dreams, and all their kind.
They supply the conditions for exciting and sustaining that feeling of mystery which attends man’s endeavour to get at the meaning of his surroundings. ”

“ The little mysteries are all embraced in the big Mystery, which would not be mysterious if we had the power to understand it. I was always that kind of a sceptic which believes in there being a reason for everything. When I was a girl I saw ghosts—unmistakably visible ghosts—and even in their presence, certain that they could not be flesh and blood creatures, and paralysed with horror to know it, I was able to keep this attitude of mind. ”

“ In other words, "mystery," which we derive from the Greek word quoted, means neither more nor less than a secret revealed and explained to us. A man of mature years and finished education knows that which no school-boy can comprehend. To the elder a secret has been revealed. He is in possession of the mystery. To the younger it is yet a secret, not incomprehensible, but which can only be attained in the progress of learning. ”

“ Readers will complain, I doubt not, of the very mythical and mysterious dénouement of a story which began by things so gross and palpable as field-sports and pauperism. But is it not true that, sooner or later, ‘omnia exeunt in mysterium’? Out of mystery we all came at our birth, fox-hunters and paupers, sages and saints; into mystery we shall all return . . . at all events, when we die; probably, as it seems to me, some of us will return thither before we die. ”

“ When one gets a certain distance in the study one comes to the conclusion that there is a great deal more in it than meets the eye. It is a vast subject, and I think the most profoundly occult mystery extant and undeciphered. ”

“ There has been the hope that by going back to our nurse’s or our mother’s knee we may find the secret of human destinies. But above and beyond this folk-lore appeals to all that which goes to make romance: the myth, the saga, the legend, combine with the mysterious lore of the unseen which lies at the root of what we term superstition. ”

“ Not a scroll of the mysteries, but the mysteries themselves would for that hour at least lie before me revealed; even the innermost and most awful—the power which now we shrink from thought of—which rimmed the void with shores, and lighted the darkness, and out of nothing appointed the universe. ”

“ The sense of mystery arises when something excites wonder, wonder gives place to curiosity, curiosity is baffled, and wonder returns with fear. The magical power of an inert object, such as a black pebble or a shark’s tooth, or of a bone that is pointed towards a victim, or of a spear that is swung but not thrown, and nevertheless inflicts a wound, though an invisible one, is something unknown, or mysterious. ”

“ In exchange for the mystery we have truth, which excites other emotions and ideas. Moreover, the mystery is only pushed further back. We cannot tell what the elements really are; they will never be more than symbols to us, and all nature at bottom will ever remain a mystery to us: an organised illusion. ”

“ I can remember each thought of the many which flitted through my brain, with a distinctness so vivid that it sometimes seems as though some occult influence had photographed them upon the page of memory. ”

“ The first Mystery wherein the Creature consists is the all-essential Mystery, and the other in the forth-going Spirit is its Propriety, and a self-ful Will. Has not every Angel its own peculiar Spirit, which is generated out of its own Mystery, which has its Original out of Eternity? ”

“ Can mystery be separable from sublime or profound greatness, when viewed through human powers? Are not height, and depth, and space, and air, all mysterious [Pg 186] to your minds, when beyond the reach of the eye? Is not darkness alone profoundly mysterious? ”

“ As, sometimes, in a nightmare events crowd upon each other's heels with a conviction of dreadfulest reality, yet some inconsistent detail accuses the whole display of incompleteness and disguise, so the events that now followed, though they actually happened, persuaded the mind somehow that the detail which could explain them had been overlooked in the confusion, and that therefore they were but partly true, the rest delusion. ”

“ CXI.—ABSURDITY AND INUTILITY OF THE MYSTERIES FORGED IN THE SOLE INTEREST OF THE PRIESTS.
What is a mystery? If I examine the thing closely, I discover very soon that a mystery is nothing but a contradiction, a palpable absurdity, a notorious impossibility, on which theologians wish to compel men to humbly close the eyes; in a word, a mystery is whatever our spiritual guides can not explain to us. ”

“ Nay, thou wilt attempt laughter; whoso recognises the unfathomable, all-pervading domain of Mystery, which is everywhere under our feet and among our hands; to whom the Universe is an Oracle and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattle-stall,—he shall be a delirious Mystic ”

“ The chain of evidence on which hangs, as I have so often said, the sole hypothesis by which I can account for the mysterious occurrences that form the subject of our inquiry, is not only of a purely circumstantial character, but also of a nature at once so delicate and so complicated that the failure of a single link would render the remainder altogether worthless. ”

“ If we consider the particular part which miracles have played in human history, we find precisely the phenomena which might have been expected if miracles, instead of being considered as real occurrences, were recognized as the mistakes or creations of ignorance and superstition during that period in which "reality melted into fable, and invention unconsciously trespassed on the province of history." ”

“ Some of the operations of living bodies are understood,—as the heart's action in the mechanical propulsion of the blood; others, and the greater number, are mysterious, as the whole process of germination and growth. Now the existence of the contrast between things plainly understood, and things not understood, gives one distinct meaning to the term Mystery. In some cases, a mystery is formed by an apparent contradiction, as in the Theological mystery of Free-will and Divine Foreknowledge ”

“ What other wondrous mysteries lie concealed, wrapped around by that soft pure flame, mysteries that shall lie hidden until some inspired eye shall be waiting, looking upward at the moment when God’s hand shall draw back the shining veil for an instant, and let him read the glowing secret. ”

“ The same species of organic derangement which, as a continued habit of his deranged vision, presented the subject of our last tale with the successive apparitions of his cat, his gentleman-usher, and the fatal skeleton, may occupy, for a brief or almost momentary space, the vision of men who are otherwise perfectly clear-sighted. Transitory deceptions are thus presented to the organs which, when they occur to men of strength of mind and of education, give way to scrutiny, and their character being once investigated, the true takes the place of the unreal representation. ”

“ And so our little tour into the occult is ended and we return into the glare of common things—things which we know and can touch and find a practical use for. If only a little of this light we hold so cheap were to illumine the tenebrous fastnesses we have just left, then, perhaps we, in our dull worldly way, might be able to assimilate the mystic to the common, the unseen to the seen, the unknown to the known. ”

“ Those hide-and-seek, half-glimpsed, eerie phantasies that are hidden deep in every man’s subconscious mind were in the ascendancy to-night. They had been implanted in the germ-plasm a thousand thousand generations gone, they were a dim and mystic heritage from the childhood days of the race, the fear and the dreads and horrors of those dark forests of countless thousands of years ago, and they still lie like a shadow over the fear-cursed minds of some of the more savage peoples. ”