The term Intellect, as it is here taken in its highest sense, is synonymous with Wisdom, and bears the same

relation to our Intellectual Law as does this to the reasoning faculty, being the self-evident antecedent and end of its inquiry, which, according to these philosophers, is God. Pythagoras himself defined Wisdom as the science of truth which is in all beings (36); and Iamblicus in his life of this Samian, speaking of Wisdom, says that it is truly a science which is conversant with the first and most beautiful objects (i.e., the Divine Exemplars), and these undecaying, possessing invariable sameness of subsistence; but the participation of which other things also may be called beautiful (37). Proclus, Porphyry, the graceful Plotinus, and others of the Neoplatonists, too numerous to mention, dilate on the same asserted ground; and there is, according to all these philosophers, a Principle of Universal Science latent in human life, real and efficacious though cognizable only under certain conditions which they specify, and wherein reason becomes also into the substantive experience of her Law. This is that which the Egyptians, industrious searchers of Nature, proclaimed upon their temples front, that Man should know himself: and this advice was meant experimentally and ontologically, though modern fancy has slighted it and taken every ethnic fable and mythology in a profane sense. And here we are reminded of a difficulty in endeavoring to make these positions respecting the nature of true Being obvious and of drawing them into a form related to sensible intelligence. Every science is difficult to treat of to the uninitiated mind, and this kind of speculation more particularly is irrelevant to many and naturally abstruse. Those to whom nature has granted such a ray of experience in the inner life as would otherwise appear favorable to a more profound investigation, are often indifferent to the rational ground, and remain accordingly satisfied in the dreams and deluding visions of an included imagination; others more awakened to reason on the other hand, but in whom the spirit of inquiry is wholly drawn to externals, disregard as vain every proposition that does not immediately address the senses or pander to some apparent individual interest; even the most reflective and educated class have rare inducements in these days, or permission of leisure sufficient to prosecute studies of an abstract nature. But we have adverted to the independent evidence of Universals in the human intellect by way of introduction chiefly, not on their own account abstractly considered, or so much because the ancients rested their proofs of internal science thereon; but because, having once derived a rational ground of possibility, we may be better enabled to proceed with the tradition of the Hermetic mystery and more tangible effects. The doctrine of the Hebrew Kabalists is one of absolute Idealism; the whole world was before their eyes as an efflux of Mind, an emanation of the great superstantial Law of Light; and that sublime commentary the Liber Zohar, beams with the revelation of the celestial prototype in humanity; and kindling into reminiscence the fire which burns covertly throughout Holy Writ, addresses the Pentateuch to the understanding of mankind. These Rabbis explain that in pursuance of a certain arcane (though not wholly inexplicable) necessity, creation falls away always for the sake of individual manifestation, from the consciousness of its primal source; that the principle of reunion nevertheless abides in the generated life of individuals and will in process of time operate to a restitution and higher perfection than could have been accomplished if such a fall into this existence had not taken place. Treating of and interpreting as divine symbols, the relations of the Old Testament, they dignify vastly the view of the whole scheme; and placing reason over the head of authority, and inciting man to self-inquiry as the foundation and comprehending identity of every other, they unite in one beautiful system the Religion of Intellect with the Philosophy of Life. But it is above all by the supreme position which they assign to man in the scale of creation that these Kabalists arrest attention. The Form of man, says the Rabbi Ben Jochai, contains all that is in the heaven and earth --- no form, no world, could exist before the human prototype; for all things subsist by and in it: without it there would be no world, and in this sense we are to understand these words, The Eternal has founded the earth upon his wisdom. But we must distinguish the true man from him who is here apparent, for the one could not exist without the other; on that form in man, which is the Celestial Prototype, rests the perfection of faith in all things, and it is in this respect that man is said to