88 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM II 



of a divine thought, in the shape of the first man, 

 make its appearance as the ne phis ultra of the 

 cosmogonical process: 



I imagine that Louis Agassiz, the genial back- 

 woodsman of the science of my young days, who 

 did more to open out new tracks in the scientific 

 forest than most men, would have been much 

 surprised to learn that he was preaching the 

 doctrine of the Cabbala, pure and simple. Ac- 

 cording to this modification of Neoplatonism by 

 contact with Hebrew speculation, the divine 

 essence is unknowable without form or attribute ; 

 but the interval between it and the world of 

 sense is filled by intelligible entities, which are 

 nothing but the familiar hypostatised abstractions 

 of the realists. These have emanated, like 

 immense waves of light, from the divine centre, 

 and, as ten consecutive zones of Sephiroth, form 

 the universe. The farther away from the centre, 

 the more the primitive light wanes, until the 

 periphery ends in those mere negations, darkness 

 and evil, which are the essence of matter. On 

 this, the divine agency transmitted through the 

 Sephiroth operates after the fashion of the Aris- 

 totelian forms, and, at first, produces the lowest of 

 a series of worlds. After a certain duration the 

 primitive world is demolished and its fragments 

 used up in making a better ; and this process is 

 repeated, until at length a final world, with man 

 for its crown and finish, makes its appearance. 



