PREFACE vii 



mind that is crammed full of opinions to which it tena- 

 ciously clings, and only those who accept the opinions of 

 others, not as their guides, but only as their assistants, 

 and are able to rise on the wings of their own unfettered 

 genius into the region of independent thought, may receive 

 the truth. Our modern age is not without such minds. 

 The world is moving in spirals, and our greatest modern 

 philosophers are nearing a place in their mental orbit 

 where they come again into conjunction with minds like 

 Pythagoras and Plato. Only the ignorant schoolboy be- 

 lieves that he knows a great deal more than Socrates 

 and Aristotle because he may have learned some modern 

 opinions in regard to a few superficial things, or some 

 modern inventions, with which the philosophers of old may 

 not have been acquainted; but if our modern scientists 

 know more about steam-engines and telegraphs than the 

 ancients did, the latter knew more about the powers that 

 move the world, and about the communication of thought 

 at a distance without the employment of visible means. 

 If the anatomist of to-day knows more about the details 

 of the anatomy of the physical body than the ancients, 

 the ancients knew more about the attributes and the 

 constitution of that power which organises the physical 

 body, and of which the latter is nothing more than the 

 objective and visible representative. Modern science may 

 be successful in producing external appearances or mani- 

 festations with which the ancients were not acquainted ; 

 the initiates into ancient sciences could create internal 

 causes of which modem science knows nothing whatever, 

 and which the latter will have to learn if it desires to 

 progress much further. There is no resting-place in the 

 evolution of the world. There is only progression and 

 retrogression, rising or falling. If we falter at the door 



