What we have already said will make it clear, that our contention is that affinities are not necessarily soul-mates; that, in fact, we may have many and various kinds of affinities, but no one can possibly have more than one soul-mate.

Mates are two entities composing a pair. They are the two halves that make a whole. Unlike what we know of affinities, they are not merely similar; nor yet opposite, so that they attract each other because of curiosity or dissimiliarity.

They belong to each other because together they complete a perfect balance. Each supplies in the exact proportion required for balance the qualities lacking in the other.

In the event of such union, instinctive procreation will cease, and re-generation will begin. They will consciously beget souls, instead of merely providing bodies for souls to manifest upon this external plane of consciousness.

Bodily contact is not essential to this phase of sex-union, because the real conjunction is between the interior natures; and the interior nature exists independently of the physical organism.

Already the race-thought is beginning to realize interiorly. This is manifest in the daily press; in music and drama; and in all the avenues of the senses. That intangible, elusive but potential thing called "character" forms the gist of editorial advice. Everywhere we note a tendency to look below the appearance of things, and to fathom the depths of psychological analysis. For the first time in centuries the race-thought seeks the underlying cause for specific effects, instead of, as heretofore, being satisfied to deal with effects only, suppressing those that are unpleasant and extolling those that seem agreeable.

The scientist expresses it thus: "Nature is giving up her secrets to man." The metaphysician puts it this way: "The soul of man is unveiling, and soon we shall know each other in Truth." The religionist has long looked for a time when, as prophesied by St. Paul, who was above all things a spiritually-conscious person, "we shall see each other face to face; not as now through a glass, darkly."

This tendency to "get behind the scenes" as it were, to penetrate the crust of mere outward semblance, and to reveal the interior nature, may be seen even in the fashions of our clothes. Despite thunders of denunciation from the self-constituted keepers of our morals, who are not yet free from the bondage of traditional ideas of virtue and "respectability," women have insisted upon freedom of the body in dress until at last the uncorseted, short-skirted, thinly-clad woman excites little adverse comment. The fact has at last established itself that the female form has legs.

This fact was only half suspected before; men have always wanted to see exactly what was beneath those long flowing skirts; and woman has always known that she possessed at least one trump card, in the game of enslaving man to become what modern slang has so aptly labeled her "meal-ticket." She could always keep him guessing as to whether or not she had legs; and the average man, be it known, possesses a fund of curiosity far in excess of that which is proverbially ascribed to woman. Men have been known to pay the highest price, even to donning the matrimonial yoke, to satisfy their curiosity. Women have always known this, and the worldly wise mother has besought her marriageable daughter to "keep her skirts well over her ankles" if she hoped to secure a man as a permanent banker! It does sound crude expressed thus, but this is the basis upon which at least nine-tenths of the respectable marriages of society are consummated. And this is the standard which the short-sighted keepers of public morals would have us retain. They would force women to act as though their bodies are vile. They would keep the mind encumbered with the corpse of an idea of modesty, from which the spirit has long since fled. The spirit has fled from it because it was a false idea of modesty; because it was founded upon the idea that woman was an instrument of the devil himself, and that to look upon her naked form was in itself wicked, and only permitted to poor man as a concession to his own innate defilement.

The good Church at one time, not so far distant, refused to admit women to the communion table in the "holy sacrament." A fine chance has any sacrament of being holy, with one half of it missing!

The old idea of womanly modesty consisted of blushing with shame and embarrassment if by chance her ankles became exposed to the interested and curious gaze of a male. Notwithstanding this ideal of modesty, the designing and beguiling female managed to arrange just such a contretemps every time there was an eligible male within sight; if discovered, she either assumed a look of infantile innocence, or she took the opportunity to coax a becoming blush.

To be sure, this does not accurately describe all women of "the good old days." There was the other type.

Nature manifests in extremes. There was the type, fitting ancestors to those women of to-day who are outraged and shocked at the present-day fashions, which actually disclose the fact that women are anatomatically endowed with legs and hips, quite in defiance of man's inherited predilection for making this discovery under conditions that would pamper to his satiating sex-appetite. They, poor creatures, were dreadfully ashamed of being women, and they did all that was possible to conceal the fact. They, doubtless, would gladly have amputated their legs, if the ministers had so decreed, and they apologized to the world every time an unforseen circumstance uncovered a portion of these offensive legs. In fact, they denied the existence of "said members," and alluded to them tentatively and with modest hesitation, as "limbs."

"But," some will exclaim, "we cannot see any possible connection between a regenerated race, and a fashion which permits the display of the female figure upon the public streets, where men who are as yet un-regenerated, and licentious, may leer and pass vile remarks, and suggest lustful thoughts."

Few can see any connection between our so-called practical, everyday life, and the spiritual life. They look upon the spiritual life as something remote; something in the dim and ever and ever distant future. The spiritual life is supposed to be so negative that we postpone living it, as long as we possibly can; and whereas the human family has prayed and prayed, for Lo! these many ages: "Thy kingdom come upon earth," they apparently have not had the slightest idea that God would take them at their word.

They are like the old darky who called upon "de Lawd to strike him dead if he was not telling the truth," when as a matter of fact he was lying roundly. At that moment a bricklayer on the building above where Rastus was standing, dropped a brick, which struck the old darkey on the head, and he exclaimed "What's de matter, good Lawd, caint you'all take a joke?"

The Kingdom of God, from all records, whether orthodox or heterodox, has been described as the abode of angels; and angels have been pictured as nearly nude as our silly "morality" would permit. No one has as yet suggested that we compel the angels to wear hoopskirts, although "September Morn" has been compelled, by police regulation, to don a sweater.

The spiritual life awaits our cognizance, just behind the transparent veil of our limited mortal consciousness. This is the message of the "unveiling" of the female form. This is the time of woman's revealment of true modesty; true ideals. The Female Principle, representing the spiritual element in nature, hitherto shut in; covered up; hidden—is coming out.

Men must learn to be able to look upon the female form without spasms of either lustful desires; or contemptuous indifference.

There was a time when the presence of a female office-force in the business section of a city was the signal for unwarranted familiarity on the part of some of the male members of a corporation. There was a time, when women first invaded the ranks of the "down-town" business centers, that a woman's appointment to a responsible position rested upon her claims to feminine attractiveness. Now, the only question asked is, "Is she efficient?"

That which she is, in her interior nature, is the final test of her power. When men have become inured to the knowledge, so long concealed, that women have legs and that there is no more seductiveness in them than in their faces, the love of man for woman will undergo the same evolution that his estimate of her business efficiency has undergone. He will judge her by what she is in her interior nature; and his sexual desires, now manifested distractedly in mere love of the female, will become concentrated in love of the one woman to whom his soul turns in irresistible sex-attraction, as unerringly as the needle turns to the pole to which it is magnetized.

Is this fact so unmanifest? Does not everything point to it?

A few years ago, a man and a woman could not pass a day together in mutual conversation, and interest, without encroachment upon the one emotion which they were supposed to hold in common—sexual attraction.

That was indeed the whole sum and substance of communication between the two sexes, if we may except the rare instances which history has made much of, because of their rarity—women of the French salons, who have become famous for their wit and beauty, in neither of which attributes did they outstrip the average self-supporting woman of today.

But custom has slowly, but perceptibly, established the possibility of a frank and non-sentimental companionship between the male and the female, and the result is that both are much more clear as to the true character of their sentiments toward each other. Neither is blinded by the force of undifferentiated sex-attraction.

There must be some specific basis of mutual love; hence we have the vogue of the "affinity," and by the term is instantly recognized a special force of attraction, independent of undifferentiated sex alone. It is known that there is at least an assumption of an interior attraction, and we insist that affinity marriages, however incomplete as yet, are still superior in motive to that of mere marriage, where it is a case of a male and a female, united by propinquity; family considerations; commercial interests; class association; or what not.

Affinities at least have the grace to presuppose a special sex-attraction. They argue for the ultimate goal of special and permanent selection, even if they fail to reach it.

That there will be many failures during the journey from the sense-conscious life, to the soul-conscious life, is a foregone conclusion. The pathway of Love has always been a thorny one, but those who are on the high ground may look across into the rose-strewn garden, and know that the little god is aiming his arrows at the interior nature of those whom he would unite. He is not blind. His sight is illumined and he sees that the soul can unite only with its mate. True it is that "the course of true love never did run smooth," but let us hope that the time is coming when it will be less thorny.

There are no mismates in soul-union.

This truth is the "secret of secrets" of the Hermetics. It is the hidden wisdom of the initiates; the alchemical mysteries of the Ancients. It is told to us in the fairy story of the Sleeping Princess—a story which is found in the folk-lore of every country of the globe. It is the philosopher's stone, which when found, opens the door to all wisdoms.

There can be no mismates in soul-union.

Neither can there be any sexual "temptation," or desire outside of this union, when once found.

"But never shall he faint or fall Who lists to hear, o'er every fate, The sweeter and the higher call Of his true mate.

I hear it wheresoe'er I rove; She holds me safe from shame or sin; The holy temple of her love I worship in."

A time when "the twain shall be" virtually, "one flesh" and the "outside as the inside" is not a chimerical dream.

When the physical body is as much reverenced as is the spiritual; when in fact, the soul is revealed (unveiled) to our mortal consciousness; when the mind has been freed from its load of prejudices and fears and doubts and belief in sin; then we shall, indeed, truly see each other.

We do not see each other now, unless perhaps we have developed that spiritual insight which is not blinded by appearances, but which contacts the interior nature. But the revealing, the uncovering process has begun. We have come to the time so long anticipated; so earnestly promised, when "naked and unashamed" we should "re-enter the lost Paradise."

Well, the women, God bless them, are as naked as the tender morality of our police officials will permit and as unashamed as it is possible to be with the handicap of a puritanical ancestry, which was so evil-minded as to suspect God himself of sin when He formed the "wicked" body.

Prudists may howl; and legislators may legislate; but the course of the Cosmic Law which would free us and bestow upon us Peace and Love and Happiness without stint, has never been stopped, although it has been obstructed.

Let us examine some points of the Hidden Wisdom, in the light of this postulate, and see if the conclusion is not warranted.



CHAPTER VIII

THE HIDDEN WISDOM REVEALED

As we have previously observed, there is what may be termed a religious mysticism and a scientific mysticism. When viewed from the standpoint of the unprejudiced seeker, who finds the truth that is in everything, these two phases of mysticism are but photographs of the same subject taken from different points of view. So, too, mysticism itself is, in the final analysis, nothing more than a long-distance view of science.

Like the proverbial pot and kettle, which we are told made much noise over calling each other black, we find the scientist frequently disdains the mystic, and the mystic may retaliate with equal disapproval of the scientist's position. Both are right, each from his point of view. Each is looking at life from an opposite end of the same pole. The scientist looks at the effect and the mystic at the cause. In their final calculations they arrive at the same conclusion, although they call it by different names.

The scientist says that everything proceeds from the one eternal energy. The mystic perceives the spiritual co-existent with the external. Religious mysticism calls it "God's word made manifest." In reference to this definition of religious mysticism, perhaps the phraseology used by William Ralph Inge, in his "Christian Mysticism," is the best possible exposition of the position of the religious mystic, if we may separate the two phases. Inge says: "Religious mysticism may be defined as the attempt to realize the presence of the living God in the soul and in nature, or more generally as the attempt to realize in thought and in feeling the imminence of the temporal in the eternal, and the eternal in the temporal."

Which is to say exactly what the scientific mystic says, using other terminology; and likewise what the physicist says or will ultimately say, as his researches lead him into the finer and finer realms of discovery.

The scientific mystic, like Archimedes, believes that in order to measure the purpose of external creation, he must "base his fulcrum somewhere beyond."

The scientific mystic, therefore, starts from the center of the Circle; from the crux of creation; and he finds the X, which is the hypothetical base of algebraical science—the unknown quantity of which sex is the symbol. Reasoning from effect back to cause and from cause forward to effect the mystic finds the equation complete, perfect, and likewise simple; but it is simple only after we have deciphered it. Like the prize puzzles which are designed to exercise the inductive faculties, mysticism, when we have not the key, is a most tantalizing enigma. Most "practical" persons dismiss it with the same superficial idea that they entertain in regard to puzzles, saying "it is only a puzzle"—utterly ignoring the value of exercising the inductive reasoning faculties.

Fairy stories are popularly supposed to be for the entertainment and amusement of children. In reality they are the universal language of symbolism. There is not a single fairy story which has not been handed down from generation to generation, and, what is more suggestive, each story is told with astonishing lack of variation, in every tongue and throughout every nation on this earth.

The stories involving the turning of men into animals and their final restoration to human form, as a reward for some service, some sacrifice, typifies the two-fold nature of Man. He may live in his animal, or exterior nature; or he may develop his spiritual, or interior nature; through service; through unselfish love. Our limited mortal consciousness is responsible for the tendency to personify everything, instead of to realize the principles underlying all expression. God and the Devil have been the personification of the two phases of the principles of Evolution, from animal man to spiritual man.

Romulus and Remus have been presented as an actual and specific instance of twins; likewise Castor and Pollux. Almost every child instinctively alludes to himself or herself, as either "the good little me" or the "bad little me." "O, I didn't do that; it was the bad little Dorothy," or "Harold," as the case may be, is the child-like way of expressing the innate consciousness that there is an interior and an exterior nature to all of us.

The union of gods with mortals, which forms the gist of Mythological tales, symbolizes the god-like and the mortal qualities inherent in human nature. Mortals raised to the abode of the gods; and the gods descended into mortal life; symbolize the interchangeability of what we term matter and spirit—the power of transmutation of the lower into the higher life.

Volumes could be written upon the subject, and we will therefore try to confine our reviews to the symbolical traditions which deal most directly with the relations of the sexes.

In religious symbology, the story of the ark stands as the supreme type of creation, through the conjunction of the sexes.

The cherubim are, when all is said and done, nothing more, nor yet less, than spiritual children—the result of spiritual sex-union.

And in this later synoptic mysticism of the ark of the Covenant, we are informed that "every gift within the tabernacle is willingly offered." If we will but contemplate the volumes of wisdom contained within that sentence, we cannot fail to conclude that every infinitesimal particle of coercion in whatsoever shape and form, individual, economic, ethical, or religious, must be excluded from the regenerated, perfect, ideal sex-relation; otherwise we do not attain it.

If the Ancients seemed to take some of these folk-lore stories too literally, we of this "practical" age, do not take them literally enough.

We have imagined that sex, and the sex function, began and ended in the physical. This view is excusable in the case of the materialist, if there really be such a person but it is obviously a stupid view for the theologian, who regards this life as the door to spiritual life. Since sex is the cause and the result of what we know of creation; since it is the foundation of all the qualities that we know as spiritual laws; friendship; unselfishness; fidelity; paternal solicitude—it is absolutely certain that the most beautiful things we know here must have a correspondence in the life hereafter. Of these beautiful things in life, babies come first; with birds and flowers and music as fitting accessories.

But to return to the ark of the covenant. The perpetual flame on the altar (the center) is the undying Flame of spiritual love—and by that we mean sex-love, let it be understood. If we seem to repeat this too frequently it is because of the almost general habit of the race to apologize for sex-love. The erroneous idea obtains, that spiritual love is sexless. All too frequently we come across the phrase, "with a love that has in it nothing of human love," the writer evidently anxious to convey the impression of tremendous spirituality and the consequent elimination of the sex function.

And so we emphasize once more, and we may do so again, the assurance that the symbol of the never-dying flame upon the altar is typical of the never-dying spirit of sex-love. Spirit is ever symbolized by flame, as in the "flaming sword" of the archangel.

The Deity upon the seat of the altar symbolizes the bi-une Sex-principle of creation.

The reason that the Jewish people have claimed that they were "God's chosen people" is because, in their symbolism of the ark of the Covenant, all Israel was grouped under the tabernacle. The formation of the tabernacle proves that it typifies the mother's womb. The tabernacle was guarded by the priests who were sworn to purity; thus they symbolized the esoteric truth that the pure spiritual sex-union bestows immortal god-hood.

Let us take another story, that of the life-token. This is best told in the story of the Holy Grail, although it is found in all the fairy-books of all nations, in the language and form befitting the race to which it belongs.

In the original, that is in the earliest recitals of this life-token story, we find that the thing left behind, as a center (which is always guarded and protected in various ways), was a tree. Here, we have the phallic symbol as the life-token. But in the story of the Holy Grail, the cup is the life token to be guarded; it is the sacred symbol of the quest and it is of a design resembling the red rose of the Templars. This time it is the yoni—literally the chalice of the holy communion; the centre of the radiant circle, which is the answer to all the problems within the radius. It is the search for, and the finding of, the balance in counterpartal union. It is the X of Being, and only the purest and the noblest of the Knights of the "Round Table" essay the difficult quest. The "mound of Venus" is another name for the "Round Table."

Again is emphasized the necessity for purity, and this purity, although including all the spiritual qualities: fidelity; bravery; self-sacrifice; humanity; love of truth; culminates in sexual purity.

"Blessed are the pure in heart (the pulse of the soul) for they shall see God." We revise this latter part, and we say "for they shall be gods."

Let us consider the story of the "sleeping Princess." She is depicted as a princess, first of all, because she is the daughter of a king; a king is an earthly ruler, or exalted person. Esoterically, she is the daughter of the exalted God, and she is the soul. Sometimes this story is told in the male gender, but everywhere the essential points are the same.

Wagner, who is known as a Mystic, has illustrated the story in Brunhilde and Siegfried. Brunhilde is an immortal—a goddess, who renounces her immortality to become a woman.

She sleeps on the top of a high mountain and she is surrounded by a circle of flame; and here she sleeps, despite all efforts to arouse her, until awakened by the touch of Siegfried—the one human being in all the universe who could awaken the sleeping princess.

The high mountain symbolizes the highest love of which we are capable. To reach the soul of the exalted woman, typified in the fairy-story by the word princess, and later, by Wagner, as the goddess, man must be her mate. No other can enter the womb of her soul, though many may effect an entrance to the outer court.

This truth, as absolute as life itself, solves all the problems of the mystery of love and its joys and sorrows. No soul can wholly, unreservedly love the "wrong" one. Though we may love and die of the pain of unrequited loving, yet love is its own self-justification, and its own reward. The pathway of love leads up the mountain top, but no one who reaches the summit shall fail to find that for which he seeks.

The soul of man, and of woman, has been playing a game of blind-man's bluff—a fitting name for the game it is, too. Unable to see anything but the exterior nature, and longing for success in the search, we have frantically grabbed here and there, and appropriated that which we grabbed, with a self-complacency and an egotism of which little Jack Horner would be ashamed.

In the symbolical rites and ceremonies of secret orders, such as the Ancient Alchemists; the Hermetics; the Rosicrusians; and in modern times, the Free Masons, we have this story of the search for the ultimate balance of soul union, told in language veiled unless we are fit to know; but openly enough if we are fit. And in all these orders (alleged guardians of the hidden wisdom) we have varying degrees of initiation; and in each degree the initiate must undergo certain trials to prove his fearlessness; his fidelity; his fitness, in other words, for the final revealment of all, which is the initiation into the "holy of holies;" the "secret chamber" and the degree of "mastership."

In the order of Masonry, the highest degree is that of the Templar. The symbol of the Templars is the red rose on the cross, together with the star and the crescent. The star preserves the esotericism of its nomenclature, in whatever sphere it is used, namely, the power of radiating light. It stands for the radiant center. The Knights Templar sought the radiant center to complete their half circle, and when they should have found, they were to become radiant with the light of spiritual power. That they originally at least, understood the way of this initiation, is evident by the symbol of the rose and the cross—the combined phallus and yoni.

This fact is the underlying cause of the open and hereditary enmity of the Church of Rome for the modern order of Freemasons. The Church sought to specialize in the persons of the Virgin Mary and her Son the eternal principles of the "way of the cross." The temporal power of the Church could be built up only by offering a complete system of salvation within the church itself. At the same time, the utter degradation of Sex, which had reached its depths under Roman civilization, called for as complete a reversion of the ideas of the Ancient sex-worshippers, as was consistent with the truth.

Hence we find the extreme attitude of the Church opposing all reference to sex as other than a part of the temptations of the Evil One, although they did retain the central truth typified by the Holy Virgin Mother, and the pure and perfect child.

The Alchemists are supposed to have been imbued with the desire and, to some extent, at least, were regarded as having the knowledge of how to make gold. This gold-making was always accomplished by transmutation of the baser (lower) metals; also, the knowledge of how to accomplish this transmutation was possible only to one possessing "the philosopher's stone."

If we will but remember that this "philosopher's stone" was of such a purity that it was almost impossible to find it; that, although several initiates claimed to possess the stone, yet no visible proof of its existence, or of gold resulting from lead or copper, was ever offered; and again if we will realize the fine distinction between the words "found" and "discovered," and take note that the word "found" is used almost invariably in connection with those who claimed to possess the stone, we will arrive at the obvious conclusion that the secret of the Alchemists was of an interior nature. We "discover" outside of ourselves; we "find" within. Above all, the "stone of great purity" is the same that was raised at Babylon, supplanting the yoni, which is to say, the phallic symbol.

A philosopher is one who is wise in his interior nature; his wisdom is of the esoteric quality; we do not apply the term "philosopher" to either great educators, or great financiers; but to those whose activities are turned within.

The force which is manifested in the lower desires and passions, when transmuted into spiritual channels, opens the door to the golden light of illumination.

To become in reality a Prince of the Rosy Cross bestows the exaltation and the power, typified by that of an earthly prince—one who is exalted above the common man.

It is doubtful, indeed, if many of the ancient alchemists attained to this exalted degree in its true significance; and we may readily believe that in an age in which wealth was so eagerly sought; temporal power so much desired; where deception was almost general; that few lived the requisite purity of life to have accomplished the transmutation; so today there is not one in a thousand of the many who have taken the degree of "Knight Templar," who recognizes its esoteric meaning.

But words have a trick of trapping us, and we note that the word "taken" is invariably used in referring to modern Masonic initiation. Verily they have "taken" the degree in its outward semblance. They have not attained to its powers and privileges.

Nor can they do so, when they exclude the very "gate of life" from the order. They may become masons (builders of the temple), but how can they become Architects, when they have not entered the tabernacle?

In a search for hidden meanings, and for a secret tradition which is believed to be discoverable in Kabalistic and Hermetic literature, we find, if we possess true insight, the one indubitable truth, subordinating all the other symbols, namely that of the supremacy, the finality, of the sublimated sex-union, resulting in immortal mastership.

Most modern interpreters of the archives of these ancient philosophers ignore the sexual significance of the arcana, but a glimpse at the symbols will readily convince the initiated of their identity with sexual symbology.

For example in "The History of Transcendental Magic," by Eliphas Levi (Abbe Constant), translated by Arthur Edward Waite, there is a plate used to illustrate the author's theory of Alchemy, which he concludes "had two aspects, one a physical and the other a moral one." The sexual, as well as the spiritual, significance is ignored, but this may be due to a disinclination to reveal the secret meaning of the alchemical symbols, or it may be due to a materialistic tendency on the part of the compiler.

The plates, however, speak for themselves, and in one, ascribed to Basil-Valentine, an alchemist of the Fifteenth century, called "The Great Hermetic Arcanum," the supreme and significant point of the illustration, shows, within the circle of Experience, through which the initiate travels in his search for the supreme god-head, two doves, holding in their beaks a crown. The doves are perfectly matched. The crown is balanced between them, and the figure tops the circle, under the heading "regeneration."

In another plate, which the author presents as "the Philosophic Cross, or Plan of the Third Temple as prophesied by Ezekiel," we note again, that the crown of the symbolical temple represents the red rose upon a cross, within a radiant circle; beneath this is a mother-eagle with outstretched wings, shielding her little brood, and on either side a tree and a flowering rosebush.

Here is the symbol par excellence of generation. The creative function of the male and the female in procreative conjunctivity.

The employment of the eagle as a religious symbol may be traced back to the civilization of the Hittites.

Only a few years ago, two English archaeologists discovered a double-headed eagle in Asia. This was identical with those seen perpetuating religious rites and ceremonies of the sex-worshipers. An eagle holding in its talons a serpent is an emblem well known today. The origin of the adoption of the eagle as a religious, though not necessarily a "sacred," symbol by prehistoric races, may easily be imagined, if we consider that the eagle is a bird of tremendous power; and that it soars to unreachable heights; and that it unquestionably was at some time seen to swoop down and carry off the serpent, possibly even during their ceremonies of serpent-worship.

This idea becomes quite convincing when we also remember that the ceremonies of the serpent worshipers were carried on, as far as feasible, upon the mountain. We allude to this stage of religious history as "serpent worship," but when we realize the points of analogy between the serpent and the phallus it is apparent that the serpent was only the nature-emblem of generation, as manifested by the male principle.

"The eagle and the dove" is a phrase employed today to illustrate the law of antithesis, and it is more than probable that the eagle represented the lower nature of the sex-relation, in juxtaposition to the higher, as the dove is emblematical of the spiritualized aspect of sex-love. We have an analogy to that of the eagle and the dove in the Biblical allusion to "the last day; when God will separate the 'sheep from the goats,'" Here again is a pertinent reference to the sex nature. The goat is a symbol of sensuality and lust, principally because he has perverted sexual proclivities, notably that of coercion. For this reason, Classical Mythology employs the satyr, a creature half man and half goat, to typify the lowest form of the sex call in man.

On the other hand, the lamb is the type of gentleness and affection, and although in outward appearance the lamb and the goat are not dissimilar, their natures are antithetical.

In estimating the God-idea of the Ancients, many mistakes have arisen by confounding religious symbols with the "sacred" symbols. The race-mind was in its kindergarten stage, and all ideals were instilled by means of pictures—a method which even the present hour finds most effective.

In modern theological symbolism we have God and the Devil; Heaven and Hell; angels and demons, to illustrate by antithesis.

They all belong to religious symbology, but only those which teach spiritual ideals are denominated "sacred."

"Riding the goat," alleged to be the almost invariable initiatory prelude to fitness for membership in all secret orders, means, first of all, that the would-be initiate must have control over his lower sexual desires. If he cannot control the goat instincts within his nature, he stands small chance of taking the higher degrees of spiritual regeneration, through transmutation.

In another symbolic chart presenting the secrets of alchemical transmutation, we find depicted "The Gate of Eternal Wisdom," and we are further informed that this "gate" also brings "knowledge of God." The design of this cave-like aperture should betray its esoteric meaning. It is situated under a mound, upon which trees are planted. The inscriptions on the corrugated walls of the cave, are evidently designed to resemble seven lotus petals, and are set forth as the seven mysteries. Inscriptions warning against profanation of this sacred gate, and also promising eternal life and glory to the true initiate, inspire the intrepid and deter the doubtful. Of these latter, several are outside the entrance. Two are on the steps leading to the mouth of the cave but their attitude bespeaks doubt of their worthiness. Only one has penetrated to the radiant center of the aperture, and there is room for but the one to enter the radiance of the solar gate, which truly bestows a knowledge that is "of God."

Sex Symbology is a subject that calls for a large volume devoted to this special side of it, and we cannot hope to do more here than to touch a few of the almost universal proofs of the contention which is the purpose of this book, namely, that the supreme goal of life, typified in every religion, every philosophy, and in the intuitional knowledge of the human mind, is spiritual sex-union; and that this can be accomplished only by counterparts; the two halves of the bi-une god seed uniting in one immortal and complete pair—a man and a woman. Not, we must again emphasize, not in a hermaphroditic personality, but in two perfect complementaries—mates; not one but a pair.

In another exposition of Hermetic secrets we discover the amazing statement that "the alchemist is found working throughout, in conjunction with a woman of the art; they begin and they attain together."

This should be plain enough. Small chance, indeed, either would have of attaining alone. But if this suggestion is not sufficient (and either from design or from failure to comprehend the significance of it, the translator seems to have missed the point), we are introduced to a symbolical figure-study, which shows a Chalice in which the sun and the moon are personified (the solar-man and the solar-woman), with the god Vulcan (fire) seated between them. Underneath this "twain-one" symbol a mortal man and a mortal woman are kneeling on either side of a cone-shaped and dome-tipped furnace, which is lighted by a feeble candle. But their attitude of prayer bespeaks the hope that this earthly flame will be transmuted by their prayers and aspirations; by their reverential attitude toward the divine character of the function of mating, into the immortal and unquenchable flame typified by the god of fire himself.

In another series of symbolical plates, purporting to be the story of Metallic transmutation, but representing, above all, the story of manifestation from the Divine to the human and again to the spiritualized and perfected Adam and Eve—(the solar man and the solar woman), we again see that from generation to regeneration the work is accomplished by man and woman in conjunction.

These plates bear the hall-marks of Christian appropriation of Hermetic symbolism, as peculiarly applicable to the Church, but the central doctrine of salvation through sex-regeneration, is retained. Whether consciously or not, is a question.

Modern commentators and translators of alchemical literature insist that such documents are palpably related to the secret, or secrets, of metallic transmutation. That they prove the search for, if not the existence of, a "magic solvent" that resolves the baser metals into gold; but, as far as known, such a compound has not yet been discovered or, if it ever was, it has since been lost and evades all attempts at rediscovery. But if we read these alchemical treatises as they relate to transmutation of sex-love from the pro-creative function to regeneration through spiritual or counterpartal union (solar mates), we have the key to every statement.

A writer tells of an instance which is recorded among alchemical archives, where "an unknown master testified to his possession of the mystery" (supposedly of metallic transmutation), but it is added that "he had not proceeded to the work because he had failed to meet an elect woman, who was necessary thereto." In other words, applying this statement in its obviously logical sense, the unknown master knew the esoteric meaning of the alchemical postulate, but not having met his female complement, he could not testify to the results of this transmutation. An "elect woman" would hardly be necessary in the work of metallic transmutation.

Small wonder that the "alchemist" abandoned the work of turning lead and copper into gold. If he had found the key of keys, he cared little whether lead were lead, or whether gold remained gold, or melted into thin air. The golden light of illumination showed him all things in their purpose, and gold as a metal meant no more to him than did the so-called "baser" metals.

Commenting upon this statement, the translator observes: "Those Hermetic texts which bear a spiritual interpretation and are as if a record of spiritual experience, present, like the literature of physical alchemy, the following aspects of symbolism: the marriage of sun and moon; of a mystical king and queen; a union between natures which are one at the root, but diverse in manifestation; a transmutation which follows this union and an abiding glory therein."

If we will remember that the solar-man was personified by the Ancients as the sun; and the solar-woman by the moon, we have the first and salient points of the original Hermetic secrets, however much they may have degenerated from their spiritual to their physical application. The probabilities are that owing to the disapproval of the Christian Hierarchy, only the most veiled terminology was permissible. This view is more logical than is the one that the esoteric meaning was lost sight of.

The marriage of an hypothetical or "mystical king and queen" bespeaks exaltation of the two conjoining persons, male and female, but this exaltation is in consciousness, and not in mere personality. The terms "king" and "queen" are nothing more or less than symbols of an exalted (spiritualized) state.

And, in passing, we may here mention the fact that the language of lovers testifies to this intuitional realization. "My queen!" exclaims the enraptured lover, although in social station his beloved one may be only a scullery maid; and certainly, neither the beauty nor the goodness nor the wisdom of earthly kings and queens would be sufficient to inspire the comparison.

It is ever the soul calling for the mate who, when found, will exalt the "twain-one" into the immortal powers and immortal wealth imperfectly symbolized by earthly rulers, making "right royal queens and kings of common clay."

The third aspect of the symbolism tells of "an union between two natures which are one at the root, but diverse in manifestation." And the alchemist who sought the physical interpretation of this, promised that, as earth, air, and fire and water were the elements "out of which all manifestation is composed," it only remained for someone to discover the exact proportion of each of these elementary substances in a specific compound; this accomplished, copper for example, could be dissolved into its constituent parts and re-solved again in the proportions which formed gold, a thing which we are not prepared to say could not be accomplished, but a thing which we do say, would not even be attempted by one who had found the secret of the interior transmutation, because having attained to the radiant center, he would realize the "glory of the worlds," and gold, as metal, would be to him of far less value than the emerald of the grass; the pearls of dew upon the rose; the scent of the lotus; the song of birds; the laughter of children.

How vain and foolish to imagine that a philosopher would think it worth while to search for gold, as a metal. He would not even consider the ambition worthy the parchment used to preserve the record of his labors.

But to find the golden light from the radiant center of pure and unquenchable love—that were indeed worthy of ages of research. For are we not promised, the "glory of the world" if we will seek and find? And he who truly seeks will absolutely find. What is the glory of the world? Is it fame, or wealth, or lands, or gems or kingdoms?

Love is the only glory worthy of the name.

"For Life with all its yield of joy and woe And hope and fear—believe the aged friend— Is just our chance at the prize o' learning love."

When we realize the esoteric meaning of this aspect of the ancient alchemical symbol, namely, that the two halves of the one whole, manifesting diversely as male and female, are reunited, we come to the fourth aspect of the symbol mentioned, and the "transmutation which follows this union and the abiding glory therein," is the inevitable and logical sequential answer.

An abiding glory must be founded upon spiritual substantiability. Transmutation is not synonymous with, extinction, or elimination, or abandonment. We transmute the lower into the higher, the exterior into the interior, the physical into the spiritual. This is the sum and substance of the "Ancient Wisdom."

There is no eccentric change or transition from one phase or plane of life, into another. It is neither logical nor justifiable to assume that Sex is limited to the physical, or the astral or the psychic, or any other specific planes of consciousness. These planes are not distinctively separable anyway. They are merely names which we use to distinguish degrees, or limitations of consciousness.

The statement that the "two halves are reunited" is almost invariably misinterpreted to imply an annihilation, or absorption of individuality, into some sort of vaporous, formless, sexless Thing; but why this should be so misconstrued is a puzzle, any more than that bringing together the two halves of an orange which had been divided, would result in the destruction of that edible; or any more than bringing together a glove fitting the right hand and its mate fitting the left hand, would destroy the shape and usefulness of this article. The comparison may be a homely one, but it is understandable.

It takes two to make a pair. Mistake it not, and further, there is no abiding glory in this world or in the next or in any other sphere, that is not founded upon the deep, intense and eternal love of man and woman.



CHAPTER IX

WHAT CONSTITUTES SEX IMMORALITY?

The average mind, nurtured in apprehensive awe of that race fetish called Public Opinion, is inordinately afraid of words.

"Atheist," "infidel," "ungodly" are epithets which have been used as mental clubs, with temporary effect, to beat back the wave of religious and scientific Rationalism, which punctuated the last century.

These words have now lost much of their terror, even to the undeveloped consciousness of the average, because it has been shown that the God-idea which rational thought fain would substitute for the old revengeful Deity, has not annihilated the world, but quite to the contrary has resulted in a happier and higher ideal of godhood than that which the early Church postulated.

Epithets are the mental bulwarks of the powers of resistance against Evolution.

Ignorance is fearful of the unknown, and the knights of Enlightenment have ever had to fight their way through the ranks of abuse and criticism and misrepresentation.

Free-love is a phrase with which even the most intrepid advocate of rational thought hesitates to claim affiliation; and yet the goal of our highest endeavors must be a state of Society where Love, the god, is free from the mire of corruption, and the bonds of slavery.

Let us not be afraid of so harmless a thing as a word, remembering the case of the little girl who ran to her mother crying with indignation because someone had alluded to her as an "aristocrat." She did not know what the word meant, and so resented it as something undeserved.

When we examine into what the phrase free-love really means, we will not be so fearful of its sound.

To whom is this epithet most frequently applied?

Is it to the average man who is known to be a Lothario in matters of sex? Not at all. He is referred to as a "gay bachelor" or as one who is "sowing his wild oats" or some other phrase, which in no way affects his social standing.

Is it applied to women of the half-world, to recognized, and legalized prostitution? Never! It is significant of the real meaning of free-love that the term is never used in connection with what modern reform has aptly designated the "white slave" traffic, for the obvious reason that nowhere is Love so un-free; so enslaved and bound and murdered as in this phase of woman's degradation.

Nor is the term applied to unfaithful wives, because in this type of defiance of traditional sex-ethics there is always the spirit of self-accusation; a tacit, if not open, admission of wrong-doing.

We never hear the awful accusation of "free-lover" hurled at the young woman who has, what the world calls, "sinned," because, forsooth, she pays the price of her deviation from social standards (when discovered) by ostracism, and not infrequently by a broken heart, or by sinking further into the depths of bondage; and so here again it is evident that there is no freedom for whatever spirit of love actuates her conduct.

It must be admitted that the term "free-love" is applied only to those who openly claim the right to bestow their affections and indulge in the sex-relationship, independent of the marriage ceremony. It matters not whether this claim includes but one mate, or several. It is the demand that they shall not forfeit their right to respect and morality, which is resented by the many who still conform to traditional customs, and which general conformity results in investing the term "free-love" with an unpleasant odor.

Public opinion puts a premium upon deceit.

Such intimate matters as marriage and divorce are really no concern of any person other than the contracting or the "distracted" parties.

The public is too concerned with trivialities and too little with Truth. Nothing short of national insanity permits the existence of divorce-courts, and the necessity for married persons desiring to live apart, to slander and abuse each other like pickpockets before they may act upon such a decision.

Some time ago the public press was filled with the minutest details of the love story of a woman, who had lived for fifteen years hidden from the world because she loved a man well enough to pay that price.

She might have insisted that the man obtain a divorce from his wife, to whom he had been married seventeen or more years, and thus win the approval of society. But this woman placed love above all material things, and she preferred to take nothing from the wife. The love of her husband the wife did not possess and, it would seem, did not care for particularly. When through the accident of the man's death the story came to light, the press was flooded with letters from prominent club-women and from clergymen and others, stating upon what terms, if any, this love-recluse should be forgiven.

Most of them decided that she should not be forgiven; a few seemed to think that if she "repented" and lived thereafter a "pure" life, she might in time be worthy of their forgiveness.

Such a spectacle! America will yet share the reputation with England of being a nation without a sense of humor.

Eagerly the representative members of society "rush in where angels fear to tread" upon any and all occasions to air their opinions upon other people's conduct and thus prove their own virtue.

The fact that this woman was not in any position to be forgiven or unforgiven; that she was sublimely unconscious of and wholly indifferent to their opinions; that she was unaware of any necessity for either shame or repentance; seems not to have entered the silly brains of these keepers of the public morals. She had loved one man with a fidelity, a whole-heartedness, and a loftiness of self-sacrifice which are as rare as they are great in these days of pretense and hypocritical virtue, and she had paid the full price for her idealism. She did not repine or regret. She only suffered, not alone because of her unenviable notoriety, but because Death had taken her loved one from her. Surely this was indeed an evidence of real love in an unreal civilization, which should have brought out the fearless sympathy and approval of every good woman in the land. It should have been food for sermons in every pulpit in Christendom, that a modern woman preferred solitary confinement with the man she loved to the usual method of procedure, which insists upon the respectable position of wife, no matter at what cost to another.

But this is Society's estimate of Love and Truth and Virtue, and it is small wonder if real people become indifferent to Society's feelings.

If the term free-love were really synonymous with sex-promiscuity, we would hear it used in connection with those whose frequent divorces are the subject of press comment, but we do not, because by their outward concession to established ethics they subscribe to the demands of Convention.

The term, in its opprobrious sense, is almost always applied to women, because for many centuries the men have claimed their right to personal liberty in matters connected with the sex-relation, and until women of the self-respecting and educated class began to openly emulate the example of the male, there was no occasion to use the phrase. Men come under its lash only when they, too, concede to women the right to respectability notwithstanding defiance of tradition.

All of which goes to prove that the public mind is in reality sufficiently clear on the matter of distinction between sex promiscuity and free-love. It is likewise obvious that the opprobrium that attaches to the phrase is not aimed at promiscuity but at the claim to personal liberty in matters of the sex-relation and defiance of Public Opinion which demands either ostensible concurrence in its standards, or punishment for openly transgressing them.

The result of this unjust (and unfit, in the light of our other advanced ideas) attitude toward the most important function of life, has resulted in one of two lines of conduct as woman's only free choice.

Either she must resort to deception, hypocrisy and pretense, shielding her secret excursions into forbidden paths, by feigning a scorn and abhorrence for the doctrine of free-love, the while she secretly indulges her sex-nature, more or less promiscuously, or else she is forced to repress all her natural instincts, and not infrequently these instincts are abnormally strong because of pre-natal and inherited influences.

Both of these courses, the only two which are open to the average woman, are disastrous to the sex, and through them to the race, because women are the mothers of men, and any course which binds and fetters the free spirit of woman hampers race-improvement.

Repression of the natural functions of her being results in physical disease, and ultimately in mental weakness. Unnatural expression of the sex-function, under the ban of compulsion, whether through the compulsion of marriage or through the more flagrant type of commercial prostitution, is death to the best development of the race.

Women, through the urge of economic necessity, or through the religious ideal of wifely submission and fidelity to their "Lord and Master" have been compelled to develop a craftiness and an artificial "modesty" which, in most cases, passes for femininity, and deceives, as it is intended to do, the average man.

For centuries, a woman's only profession was matrimony. Her education for this profession consisted first of all of complete ignorance of all that relates to the most intimate and most vital part of her nature—the function of sex. In the occasional instances where she had inherited a degree of mentality which could not be dwarfed, she must at least feign ignorance; and so, while secretly aware of every emotion of the male, and covertly playing upon his sex-nature in her task of "catching a husband," it is small wonder that women have developed the traits of the cat animal, and are frequently both treacherous and cruel.

Indeed, it is only because the Female Principle is the attracting and conserving power of the bi-une sex-love, that she has broken through these mental fetters, and in a few rare instances has hurled defiance at the devils of convention and tradition and claims justification of her own sex-nature, and her right to her own person, despite the epithet of "free-love."

Woman's partial emancipation in some instances has, no doubt, "gone to her head," as it were, and we see many women confounding license with liberty; mistaking passion for Love; and exchanging restraint for debauchery.

The average woman is either almost entirely lacking in sex desire or she is abnormally active in that function. In truth, the same state of affairs prevails here, as in so many other phases of our modern life, namely, there is no balance. We are a civilization of extremes; we are one-sided, abnormal; distorted. We are seeking the pivotal point of our destiny, which is the soul, but few have reached that point. Those who have not, are groping through the jungles of the mental plane of consciousness, upheld on the one hand by the upward trend of their being, which seeks the level of the soul-conscious state; and held back on the other hand by the trammels of the sense-conscious type from which the race has developed to its present condition.

Those instances where women indulge in excesses are comparatively rare in proportion to numbers, and they loom large in perspective because of their very incongruity with our ideals of womanly conduct. The vast majority of women may be safely trusted to use their sex-freedom, when it shall have truly arrived, for the purpose of finding that one and only mate which their souls instinctively know to be our rightful heritage—the proverbial "pearl of great price" which insures immortality in the bliss of union with our Beloved.

Love, when freed from the illusions of sense; from the shackles of commercialism; from the bonds of error regarding the meaning and purpose of marriage; freed from selfishness and licentiousness; will solve the question of sex-promiscuity. This for the obvious reason that Love seeks its own. If left free to seek, it will find.

But, if sex promiscuity is far from being free-love, if the doctrine of sex freedom is fraught with many dangers under our present social system, it must be conceded that no one method of social evolution, thus far devised, can be recommended as ideally perfect. The best that we can hope to do is to emphasize the importance and the sacredness and the innate purity of the sex-relation, while conceding to both sexes all the personal liberty possible.

And above all, we should avoid condemnation of those who claim the right to freedom, lest we cover up a condition which can but be the better for being open to the light. Particularly should we shield women from the charge of immorality, and licentiousness, when we see them straying down the by-paths of the senses, in their quest for freedom, remembering that the centuries of repression and submission and consequent deception have left their mark upon woman's temperament.

Man has for ages boasted of his sex virility; of his conquests in what he has termed "love." Not infrequently a man's choice of a wife is the result of much seeking in the garden of Life; and much sipping of the honey from the various flowers that grow therein. Often, indeed, a man frankly tells the woman he would marry that he knows he loves her above all other women for the convincing reason that he has tried so many and none have held him. Should a woman make the same confession and draw the same conclusion, he would be horrified.

It must be admitted, then, that the term "free-lovers" is applied only to those who defy Public Opinion and claim their right to respect and morality despite their defiance of Society's false standards of morality. These standards are false because they are based upon criticism and censure of results instead of upon motives.

Society ignores, if it does not actually encourage, frivolous flirtations, and frowns most harshly upon instances of real love. It sets the seal of disapproval and ostracism upon those who, because of circumstances or possibly because of indifference to man-made laws, take their affairs into their own hands and refuse to exhibit either penitence or shame when the world discovers that they neglected the marriage ceremony. If two persons truly love each other and there is nothing to interfere with their undergoing the publicity of a marriage ceremony, well and good, unless, indeed, it is a matter of principle with them that our social customs are a fetich. But there are innumerable instances where there are obstacles to unions which to overcome would involve hardships and suffering to others, or where absurd laws prevent marriage, and where two persons loving each other, prefer to pay the price of social ostracism to separation. Such as these lose nothing by Society's disapproval, but Society does lose something by persecuting those who are independent enough and honest enough to act from motive, rather than from custom, and who insist upon maintaining their self-respect, in the face of criticism. Self-respect is not related to braggadocio.

It must be admitted that as yet there are few persons who have the courage to endure martyrdom for their convictions, which is, perhaps, just as well, because the majority are unable to distinguish between brazen shamelessness and unashamedness. The average woman will stick to the safe habit of dissembling.

Women have learned the lesson of the cat too thoroughly to jump immediately from the back-yard of Deception to the front porch of Truth.

In this one respect at least, however much she may indulge her desire for frankness in other directions, a woman will lie valiantly, self-protectingly, and continually, even though she follow in secret the example of the cat, which (seeing its master come home from the hunt with a string of birds, and displaying, with much pride and satisfaction, the results of his prowess), conceived the idea that it would also be a fine thing for her to go forth and kill the canary. But to tabby's surprise, her ability was rewarded with chastisement; whereupon she pondered the question over and over: "How can it be, that what is virtue in man is vice in a cat?"

We are not told in the story what conclusion she arrived at, but we can imagine that her conclusion was that which women have arrived at, in a similar situation, to wit: man is unjust and unreasonable, but he is also stronger than I am, and therefore, while I shall follow his example, I shall take good care to hide the feathers.

In the meantime, we are crossing the bridge that leads from the jungles of our animal nature, where prowl the beasts of deceit; greed; selfishness; sensuality; vanity; avarice; and domination; to the Heights, illumined by Love set free.

Let us not jostle and crowd each other too harshly, while we are en route.

But, of course, we are confronted with the pertinent query as to what, if any, absolute standard of morality there can be in matters of the sex relation. Freedom is so easily misconstrued into implying sex-promiscuity; and monogamy, the final survival of the various systems of marriage, has in its modern as well as in its ancient aspect so much of coercion; and coercion is cited as the insuperable obstacle to attainment of the supreme state of spiritual sex-union, that the would-be initiate becomes confused, and is lost in a maze of paradoxes.

Moral distinctions are too fine for the undeveloped man-animal, and that is the reason why man-made laws have been necessary. The objection to them is not in their original intention, but in their failure to die after they have become senile.

Moral standards are as unstable as the shifting sands of the sea.

"Our moral sentiments," say Letourneau, "are simply habits incarnate in our brain, or instincts artificially created; and thus an act reputed culpable at Paris, or at London, may be, and frequently is, held innocent at Calcutta or at Pekin."

And Emerson, the intellectual Seer, says: "There is a soul at the centre of nature and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe."

It is a colossal piece of impudent presumption, when we come to think about it, for Man to ask the Supreme, Absolute, Infinite Power to forgive him. But, if we cannot wrong the universe, we can and we do wrong ourselves and each other as mortals.

That is the whole gist of the story. We are constantly wronging ourselves and each other and calling upon God to support us in our strife when God cannot know aught save the call of Love.

The growing, evolving race, has found it necessary to establish certain loosely defined codes of morals and of social ethics, in the same way that man has bridled the horse that he may control him; incidentally, we may observe that where this bridle formerly included "blinders," it now permits the horse to see whither he is going.

Perhaps a brief survey of the standards of sexual morality which have upheld (or down-held, just as we look at it) the human race until now, may be illuminating.

It has been disputed, if, under the matriarchal system of polygamy, the moral condition of the people was higher than under the patriarchal system, and probably no satisfactory conclusion can be reached upon this point, save and except that any condition, however primitive, which permitted to the female freedom of choice, must be better than that in which she is the object of coercion. This is evident, because the degree of coercion can never, under any circumstances, be as great with the male as with the female.

Therefore, matriarchal polygamy is comparatively more nearly moral than is patriarchal polygamy, and when all is said and done, historic morality is comparative.

But from the standpoint of modern idealism matriarchal polygamy seems to be a very low estimate of moral conduct; and from the standpoint of sexual idealism it is a low standard; a standard only a degree higher than that of patriarchal polygamy—a standard which is the lineal descendant of the ethics of the marriage-by-capture period of human evolution, and from which we are today by no means free, owing to economic, religious, and ethical conditions.

There is a tacit acknowledgement on the part of the unorganized brotherhood of the Enlightened, that laws are made for the guidance of the masses. Unbridled ignorance is a dangerous force; as dangerous as an unbridled horse, unless it be that the horse exhibits intelligence enough to know where it is headed for and how to avoid obstacles en route.

And even as the laws of a community are made for the intellectually undeveloped, so the commandments were compiled for the spiritual guidance of the uninitiated.

We trust that it will not shock the sensibilities of the "pious" when we affirm and maintain and insist that the ten commandments are not "from God" in the letter of the statements, as postulated by Theology. They bear all the earmarks of the ancient Hebrew race-mind, which placed a man's "neighbor's wife" in the same category with "his ox and his ass and his house" and his other property and possessions.

There is but one commandment of the Most High God, alias Eros, and that is so interwoven into the fabric of creation that we cannot break it if we would, although we may and do break ourselves in trying to live in defiance of its immutability.

"We cannot wrong the universe!"

Our moral standards, in so far as they relate to the sexes, are at present the logical descent of Hebrew adherence to phallic worship, engrafted into the Roman outgrowth of the God-idea. Both the Hebrew and the Roman customs maintained the inferiority and the consequent subjugation of woman, despite the fact that the Roman Church exalted the Virgin as a personality; but the postulate of the Church that Mary was so exalted by a miracle, which never could be repeated, killed any forlorn hope which might have lurked within the female breast regarding a possible emulation of her example. No other woman might do more than cringe and crawl and beg and whine; or cajole and wheedle and buy the Holy Mother's intercession, which intercession, even if successful, could at best but secure her an eternal job in the Heavenly hierarchy, where, sexless, companionless, mateless, anaemic, she could look all day at a male God whom she could never presume to reach.

Rather a lonesome outlook for eternity, and it is small wonder that woman got discouraged at the prospect. The miracle is rather that she endured it so long.

But the Roman system had at least one virtue. It instilled into the mortal mind of its people a sub-conscious realization of the ideal of monogamy; not an ideal monogamy by a long way, but a monogamic ideal. They are quite different; but inasmuch as it is an outward semblance of a more spiritual conception of marriage than that of polygamy, it is the highest ideal yet realized for the many, and does duty in our present day and age, as consistent with our superior civilization.

Monogamy at least pretends to be a marriage by mutual consent; and even in the pretense there is the germ of a hope; but it would be folly to deny that underneath this appearance of marriage by mutual consent we see the remnants of the traditional idea of the right by purchase, and therefore we have the jealousy that arises by virtue of our property rights.

The right by purchase assuredly underlies our present-day marriage system, although it is disguised as economic necessity; as a religious sacrament; and as a suitable or a brilliant "catch"—a type of marriage by capture which forms the ideal of our own upper-class women and which the housemaid copies in her limited way.

Viewed from the surface evidence, the average woman of today is, as Kipling says, far "more deadly than the male." She is more unscrupulous in her methods; more unreasonable in her demands; more devoid of sentiment or sympathy; more fickle in her desires and more nagging in her complaints. But, when all is said and done, we must admit that woman is only expressing her inheritance. When she becomes balanced, the sexes will meet on common ground.

Woman's demand for better physical environment; for more comfort, and more justice; presages, after all, a higher and a more satisfactory idea of the marriage relationship. Underneath this materialistic demand, there is the silent voice of the soul calling for a more ideal marriage relation. It is the materialistic expression of a spiritual urge and will in time rise to higher ground. It is a demand for a better state than that which our grandmothers enjoyed, or endured.

We have seen in the history of marriage, that the estimate of sexual immorality has been based, all too frequently, upon woman's disregard for the rights of her husband in her person.

For centuries the burden of sustaining a sexual moral standard has rested almost wholly upon the shoulders of the women; and it is therefore natural that the present-day defiant attitude of many women toward the traditional standard should be viewed with alarm; and there is more in this thought of alarm than the mere anxiety on the part of man to hold woman to her appointed task of guardian of marital morality.

Although men may wander from the home and fireside, it is a peculiar fact that they generally hold to a mental string by which they may find their way back again, very frequently the more contented to be there for their wanderings. But with a woman it is different. Once a woman has broken loose from the ties that have bound her to her inherited post of morality-preserver, she seldom goes back again, but keeps on her way until she finds that for which she seeks, or gives up the search of her own volition.

Is this, then, evidence that it is a woman's first duty to "stay put" when matrimonial exigencies have placed her in a specific "pocket" of the matrimonial billiard-table?

We believe not; and this belief is founded upon the fact that the female principle, which is, we admit, the centralizing, centripetal force in the cosmos, is not always manifested in the form of woman. The balanced individual is bi-sexual, even as the balanced "twain-one" is bi-sexual. If man was all male principle, and woman all female principle they would not be complementary, but antithetical. Each must be balanced within himself and herself before they can merge into each other.

Affinities are numerous, but mates are found but once; otherwise, the problems that are being discussed here would never have arisen.

If, then, as has been shown in the fact that only counterpartal unions are real, eternal and spiritually indissoluble; and that only true mates can thus unite, and when thus united have no desire to wander, what becomes of our ideas of sexual infidelity?

Since the very law of the Cosmos has seen to it that we cannot be untrue to the only one who seemingly has a right to our fidelity in the sex relation and since this union can become general only by freeing love from bondage, what becomes of the laboriously built up ethics of our social intercourse?

Are they to be abandoned as of no value?

We can almost hear the storm of protest which the righteous reader may feel in duty bound to let loose at such a suggestion, if for no other reason than that protest is the accepted way of proving one's own virtuous tendencies.

In the early seventies, a woman named Virginia Woodhull brought down upon her defenseless head the un-Christian-like abuse of the Christian public by announcing a doctrine which seems to have been nothing more dreadful than that of an equal standard of morality for men and women. The poor woman died broken-hearted, it is said; and yet nothing that we can unearth regarding her personal life and habits would seem to have warranted the cruel gibes that were hurled at her. The dear old lady lived a most continent, even ascetic life.

But the world has made rapid strides since that time, and we trust that the urgent need of something reasonable and feasible upon the sex question will inspire the reader to an unprejudiced review of this chapter. We would that it were possible to supply a modicum of understanding with each copy of this volume; but since it is not, we must take our chance with the average. Let us reason together:

Expediency is the mother of morality in social organizations, which have, of necessity, unstable, ever-changing standards. These standards represent, for some, ideals yet to be attained; while for others they become mere mileposts on the path of Evolution. The individual reaches, and then passes, an accepted ideal; gradually when a sufficient number, constituting a majority, have reached this ideal, it ceases to be a standard for the social organization, and another ideal is substituted.

The laws of the cave-man called for self-restraint exercised toward his own immediate clan, and this necessity for self-restraint was based upon nothing higher than the law of self-preservation; but gradually the sphere widened; from clan to nation. So do our ethical and moral standards enlarge. Traditional concepts are not necessarily wrong, but they are almost sure to be inadequate to evolving Mankind.

Formerly, sexual morality consisted of the reservation of the person of a sister to the use of her brothers. Any infringement upon this moral code was punished by death to the woman and to her out-clannish lover.

And we have today an analogous example, although we are glad to say, it is not the highest standard; still, if one's husband or wife violates the marriage vows, it is more condonable, if the co-respondent be of the wealthy class; and in monarchies it is accounted an honor to have been selected as the king's favorite.

The institution of prostitution which exists everywhere today has its standards in the different countries; and the white races seem to think that their morality is superior to that of the Orientals because the social standing of prostitutes in the Orient is not irretrievably lost; they are permitted, in the event of marriage, to resume social equality with other women. Among white people, prostitutes have no other recourse than to sink lower and lower, until utter degradation is reached.

We believe that the Oriental view of the situation is a far higher standard of morality than is our Occidental attitude.

If there can lawfully be such an organization as is now being proposed as desirable in large cities, namely, a "morals police," it certainly should be instigated by a more sane purpose than that which is at the root of our present police guardianship.

Attempts at suppression of prostitution have hitherto been conducted on the principle that the women of that class are objectionable to the sight of our mothers and sisters and wives, and the sinfulness of the hopelessly "fallen" ones has been the theme of press and pulpit. And all the time the women of the half-world have resented this attitude as being unjust, and unfair, and hypocritical, and untenable. They have known that if the act of selling their bodies to men is a crime against the community, then more than half the feminine world is criminal. And they have contended that since the "respectable" women were neither contacted nor exploited by them, they cannot see wherein they offend society, provided the laws of sanitation and segregation are complied with.

In other words, they have said that it is none of Society's business whether they sell themselves to one man or to a number, since they must pay the penalty. And their attitude is relatively right. It is none of Society's business whether a woman is a prostitute or not, considered as an offense against Society. That is the wrong attitude toward this condition of our social disorder.

No prostitute offends you or me. She, poor creature, offends herself, and we offend her and ourselves by permitting social conditions that make for such degradation. We are conniving with her to barter her birthright of freedom and real love for food and shelter, and taint and tinsel, whenever we encourage marriage on any other ground than that of true love, and when we regard virtue as a matter of physical contact.

If we judge from the many plays which we see on the boards; if we are influenced by the press and the pulpit; we must acknowledge that the general idea of sexual morality is an absurd one. The inference is that one special organ of a woman's physical body is the sole custodian of all virtue and all morality. The accepted idea seems to be that if a woman is married her body is then the property of her husband. Her emotions, her mind, her heart, her happiness, her preferences do not count for anything. The one act is made all-important. On the husband's side, if he provides for his wife and family, he is justified in exacting the sole right to the wife's body, and although his own heart and caresses may be given to another, he justifies himself, and the wife not infrequently feels satisfied, as long as he provides well for her. What is this but prostitution? The principle is the same as in the case of the recognized prostitute, although the conditions are easier for the woman, and less cheapening of her womanhood, but the difference is only in degree.

Now, a singular idea of fidelity, a direct antithesis to the one just mentioned, prevails among prostitutes, when married either by law or by selection.

They may surrender their physical body to another, for money, and according to their idea they may yet remain true to the husband or lover, because the matter is a business transaction. The other man has only what he has purchased, namely, the physical body. But should the woman permit another man to arouse in her a sexual response; should another invade her mind, absorb her thoughts, or engage her heart, the husband is outraged and the woman realizes her unfaithfulness.

All of which goes to show that up to the present time sexual morality has in itself no absolute uniform standard by which it can be measured and satisfactorily and convincingly presented to all persons, as have other phases of morality, such as honesty, justice, mercy, generosity, friendship, fidelity to country, and self-sacrifice to the good of humanity.

And although all these moral qualities have their bearing upon sexual morality, they do not establish a uniform ideal of sexual morality. Honesty is honesty whether in Paris, London, Calcutta, or Pekin, but as has been previously observed, sexual morality is determined by local conditions.

Can there, then, be established a universal standard of sexual morality? There can, but its universal acceptance is a remote probability, albeit it will arrive some day.

First of all, the sex relation must be absolutely free from sale; coercion; or barter; whether within the respectable "sale" of matrimony or of recognized prostitution. It must be free from any erroneous idea of marital duty; it must be exalted, reverenced, deified, in all its aspects, from the impregnation of a plant, to the sexual embrace of human lovers.

An Utopian dream it appears, if we note but one side of the picture. If we consider the lightness with which so many men look upon the physical form of women; and if we realize the attitude of so many women toward men, in their conflict with life, using the age-old dowry from mother Eve, of sex, as a weapon of defense and of offense; if we listen to the ribald songs that offend our ears and nauseate our souls, not only in music-halls and on the streets, but in supposedly cultured homes; and above all if we contemplate the uncleanness of mind displayed by those who are really in earnest in their endeavor to uplift the moral tone of the world.

These latter are, by far, the worst enemies to the Regeneration of Sex. A wise man once said, "Save me from my friends; I can protect myself against my enemies"—and so it is in this instance.

Most "Civic-Leaguers" and members of "Vice-Commissions" (why that name, anyway?) are infected with the bacteria of sex-degradation. They really require a lengthy process of mental disinfection, before attempting to handle so delicate a problem as this one of sexual uplift.

A woman member of a Young People's Civic League of the second largest city in the United States recently declared in public print, of the beautiful and chaste painting "September Morn," that it was "lewd, filthy, and suggestive of unclean things." This type of woman is intrusted with the task of teaching youthful minds; polluting them with the blasphemous affirmation that the Creation of the Father-Mother God of the universe is "lewd and filthy!"

Let us get this truth implanted in our mentality, as it is inrooted in our souls, namely:

Sex is always the purest, the holiest, and the most sacred thing in the universe—because God is Him-Her-Self, bi-sexual. The righteousness of it cannot be determined by so fickle a thing as man's customs; cannot be dependent upon mortal laws. This statement, indisputable as it is, will nevertheless start a chain of thought which may lead to confusion; and it is because of this tendency to confusion that the real issue is so frequently avoided. But let us see if we may not dispel the confusion by a system of logical deduction.

One thing is certain. The present condition of the Sex-problem is sadly chaotic. If we cannot hope to clarify it to the comprehension of the average, we may at least do so for some.

One of the first objections to the acceptance of the statement that the sex relation is, per se, always right, will be found in the conclusion to which the average mind immediately jumps: "Ah, then it is right for men and women who are depraved and licentious to live as they do; it is right for husbands and wives to deceive each other, and while pretending to be faithful to their marriage vows, to secretly carry on flirtations and intrigues with other men and other women!"

Ask one hundred men or one hundred women this question: "Is the sex-relation right or wrong?"

The men will declare that it is "right sometimes and wrong sometimes." The women, almost as a unit, will do the same. Occasionally a woman will be found sufficiently illumined to give a sane answer.

Following up the thoughtless answer with the request to illustrate, and the reply will be something like this: "Well, if people are married it is right, but if they are not married it is wrong;" and even as this silly answer is given, the person answering knows that it is puerile; but since the Public Mind prefers hypocrisy to Truth, few have the temerity, and fewer yet have the capability, to utter Truth.

It would be as sensible to say that it is right for the sun to shine sometimes and wrong for it to shine some other times. It is right for the sun to shine. This is all the answer that there is, and all that is needed.

Whether the sunshine bestows life and health, or decay and death, is entirely "up to us." The sun does its part. It is fulfilling the inexorable law of Nature, and is therefore right.

But of even greater importance in the universe is this law of sex. The law is forever and always right. Our concept of it may be right or it may be diseased. As a matter of fact it is, in all too many cases, diseased. If it were not, there would be no disease in the world.

How is it possible to have a perfect flower—a healthy, normal and wholesome sprout from a diseased root?

The root of all life is sex. We have thought disease into it, and the only remedy is to change our thought toward the function. This may be done by realizing that the sex-relation is always pure, holy, sacred—the bi-une God of the universe. This statement is quite different from saying that people are always right or sacred in their sex-relations.

To say that the sex-relation is always right under the institution of marriage and always wrong outside of it, is a lie. A lie cannot bring back health to either a person or a principle. Truth is the only thing that can make us whole—and the first office of Truth, as everyone knows, is to make us free. We cannot be whole until we are free, and the essential thought to be free from, is an attempt to keep alive the lie that the righteousness of Sex, per se, depends upon marriage.

Does the libertine believe in the sacredness of sex? Never. Does the prostitute claim for herself spotless purity? If she did, she would not sell herself for money.

Do men and women who are living in secret unfaithfulness hold exalted ideals of sex?

If they did, they would not maintain a life of deceit.

These people live as they do, because they have divorced sex from love. They agree absolutely with the blind "moralists" who regard Sex as a human plaything—something which may be called bad one day and good the next, according to whether it is viewed from afar or near.

Does anyone imagine that when Society shall have established the "one standard of morality" replacing the double standard which now persecutes the woman only, for infringement upon Society's one demand, that of concealment, that the answer to sex-degradation will have been found?

A single standard is an improvement upon the old habit of stoning the woman only and letting the man go free. But why stone anybody?

History fails to record a single instance where Society has succeeded in improving either itself or its victims by the procedure. The best that can be said of the stoning habit is that it distracts attention from ourselves.

Persons who hold exalted ideas of the function of sex, realizing that a force so eternal and universal must be disassociated from man-made regulations, are not in danger.

Such as these will not foster deceit nor profligacy, any more than they will cringe and crawl under the lash of Society's disapproval, should they encounter it. They know that if they would find the highest good, they must serve Truth first of all, no matter how high the price of such devotion.



CHAPTER X

THE PATHWAY OF LOVE

Love is the Great Reality.

Everything else in this world of Experience is either tributary to love or it is an unsatisfying substitute for love; or a counterfeit of love. Love is the one cohesive, unifying, constructive force, and it is at the same time the only liberating force.

Hatred, as exemplified in warfare, may sometimes appear to free a people from the rule of a tyrant, but unless love be at the root of the "casus belli," other and more direful disasters will follow in the wake of seeming victory.

There is an erroneous idea, quite general among Christian people, that Death frees the spirit from the bonds that hold it to the mortal and the incomplete. Death only drops off the garment of the flesh; there are innumeral sheathings yet to be shed, before the soul grows the wings with which to soar to the celestial realms, where Love reigns supreme.

Love is the only power on earth or in the spheres, that can liberate us either from our own prejudices and hatreds and fears; or from the limitations and attractions of the animal-man.

Love is, indeed, the Alpha and Omega of Life. "There is no other God but Thee," has been the cry of every race on this globe, apostrophizing the unrecognized little baby-God, personified and presented to the race-mind as Horus; or as Krishna, or as Christ; but always it is Love, the Invisible, the Beautiful One, who is adored.

Ingersoll with his wonderful gift of word-painting, and inspired by that great love of humanity which characterized him, has said:

"Love is the only bow on life's dark cloud. It is the morning and evening star. It shines on the babe and sheds its radiance on the tomb. It is the mother of art; inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart; builder of every home; kindler of every fire on the hearth; it was the first dress of immortality. It fills the world with melody, for music is the voice of love. Love is the magician, the enchanter that changes worthless things to joy and makes right royal queens and kings of common clay. It is the perfume of that wonderful flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion that divine swoon, we are less than beasts, but with it—earth is Heaven and we are gods."

It would be superfluous to state here, that Love has ever been recognized as the supreme prize, lacking which all other gifts of life are worthless.

It is admitted that Love is almost the only thing in this age of commercial supremacy which can not be bought. Though it may be bartered for.

Although it be unreservedly admitted that Love is the all-powerful and magic solvent which transmutes all baser emotions into the higher, the general inference will be drawn that this type of love is not sexual. It will be termed parental; humanitarian, self-sacrificing, or altruistic love, and the point may be taken that if humanity had developed nothing higher than the love which is manifested in the sex instinct, the world would be a sorry one indeed, since sexual love, as we have witnessed its ascent from protoplasm to man, has been, in most instances, a blind urge toward personal gratification, not more lofty than the need of supplying the craving for food. This is quite true of animals, and of the lower types of animal-man; not necessarily the earliest types of men, but the lowest types, which we still have with us but happily in decreasing numbers.

But even among animals we find evidences of something vague, indefinite, but insistent which leads the animal to exhibit what we term a tendency toward selection; and in the animal also, through the exigencies of sexual love, we find parental love, and here again we note a peculiarity which ascends also into the family life of humans, namely, that in some instances what we have called the maternal love, the gentle, care-taking, guarding and protecting love, is demonstrated by the male. This is less common with the animals than with Man, but it is sometimes found and proves the existence of the evolutionary trend toward balance in the individual, as well as in the family.

If maternal love were confined strictly to the female parent, and the procreative instinct were the legitimate inheritance of the male only, we could never hope for a perfect sexual union, for the very cogent reason that the love of the male would never equal that of the female, since our capacity grows by becoming diffused.

As the world stands today, parental love takes a higher place in the life of the family, and of the nation and of the race (the family on a larger scale), than does love of husband or wife; and over and above even parental love we have been accustomed to place the love of God.

Now we know that there are many who claim that their love of this abstract God supercedes that of love for their family, but we may tacitly agree to take this statement as either an admission of fear of the Unknown or the realization that there are heights and depths of the love-principle which they have not yet penetrated, something to which the spirit soars. They intuitively recognize that there is some perfected state to which we aspire, else human love would never flower into its full possibilities.

And so when we declare that we love God above all other loves; more than wife or husband; children or parents; we are but admitting that we realize in our interior nature that we have not yet loved any human being with as great a love as we are capable of.