before its objective light. Without this, they promise nothing; with it, all.

And on this possibility, namely, of purifying the human Understanding Essence, and developing to consciousness its occult Causality, the transcendental philosophy of the mystics may be observed to hinge entirely and exceed every other. For that there is a foundation of truth in existence, is as necessary for us to admit as that we are ignorant of it; and the doubt rather remains also about the discovery of means, than the possibility of self-knowledge. To continue then, partly on the authority of the Greek philosophers and partly on some mother grounds hereafter to be disposed of, we are led to infer that the Hermetic purifications and Mysteries, celebrated in the Eastern temples and by the priests at Eleusis, were real and efficacious for the highest ends that philosophy can propose to itself, namely, the purification and perfection of human life; and that inasmuch as the object was different and immeasurably superior to those proposed by modern Mesmerism, or any other art or science of the present day, so also were the means employed (the particulars of which are further discussed under the Practice), and the administration in proportion purer, holier, and entirely scientific. For does not all our experimentalism and philosophy end in fact where the ancients began, purifying the Vital Spirit in its proper Light? Or if any one think we have been discussing all the while a mere nothing, and developing a vain imagination, we admit it; suggesting only that, That which is, in his mind, so mere a nothing, become sin that of a philosopher to be the All in all. But who will now conceive the full latitude and substantiality of this principle, or the true metaphysical use thereof? Few, very few, Philalethes said, there were in his day; and who will even inquire now, or believe that it is the very same which solved and resolved, and wisely manipulated, becomes to be the concrete Stone of philosophers; in its pure, passive expanse, a mirror of the catholic reason of nature, and the medium of that holy and sublime experience granted to man alone in the divine alliance --- Ex natura et divino factum est, as Reuchlin, in The Mirific Word, expresses it --- Divinum enim quia cum divinitate conjunctum divinas substantias facit. Take that which is least, and draw it by artifice into the true ferment of philosophers; although our metal is exteriorly dead, yet it has life within, and wants nothing more than that That which in the eyes of a philosopher is the most precious should be collected, and that That which the many set more value on be rejected; and these words are manifest without envy, says the Greek Aristhenes. O, how wonderful different and detract nothing, only in the preparation removing superfluities (18). From that which is perfect nothing more can be made; for a perfect species is not changed in its nature, neither from an utterly imperfect thing can art produce perfection; but this Universal Spirit is described as a middle substance --- passive, undetermined, susceptible of conversion and all extremes. And such accordingly we understand to be the one thing requisite, purifying and to be purified itself by itself, in turn agent and patient, which are the Hermetic luminaries; in their full representative advancement, the Sun and Moon philosophical, passing through many phases from imperfection to perfection in the true magistery. And the hermetic art would seem to consist simply in the right disposition and manipulation of this our Undetermined Subject, taking her where nature leaves, and by divers operations, to be hereafter noted, as of amalgamation, distillation, filtration, digestion, and lastly by sublimation to the Head of an appropriate Vessel, establishing her in a new and concentric Form of Light. Nor may this seem a fable to the wise, Since all things live according to their kinds; Their life is light which in them hidden lies, Discerned by the eyes of soaring minds,