In his Essay on Truth, he writes: "Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition. and unpleasing to themselves? One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy "vinum dæmonum," because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie." Oliver Wendel Holmes has wittily observed, that every man has three distinct selves,-" what he imagines himself to be, what others think he is, what God knows him to be." Bacon writes: "A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. This same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily as candle-lights" (of truth). Bacon is here clearly identifying the World with plays, and with the actor's art. Or study this, from the Conference of Pleasure, written about the same time the Comedy of Errors was being acted for the first time at Gray's Inn: 66 My praise shall be dedicated to the mind itself. The mind is the man, and the knowledge of the mind. A man is but what he knoweth. The mind itself is but an accident to knowledge, for knowledge is a double of that which is." (Bacon's Works, ii. 123.) Our true self is a thing constantly denied recognition, and against which we ourselves conspire, in proportion as we allow the unpruned vines of vice to luxuriate, and envelop our souls in the Dionysiac excitements of life, be it passion or wine, folly or temptation. The mind and the body are two distinct twin characters in conflict and at cross-purposes with each other, and out of this dualism all error arises. To find our true selves, or the regeneration by restraint is the aim of a perfect life. Bacon's doctrine of the will and the understanding, which he says "turn faces and are Janus like," is simply body and intellect, in other words, the great dualism of matter and mind. Robert Fludd, the great English Rosicrucian, writes: "Concludimus igitur quod Iesus sit templi humani lapis angularis, atque ita, ex mortuis lapides vivi facti sunt homines pii, idque transmutatione reali ab Adami lapi statu in statum sua innocentiæ et perfectionis, i. e., a vili et leprosa plumbi conditione in auri pursissimi perfectionem." (Summum Bonum, 1 29, p. 37.) This is the parable of the Caskets, in the Merchant of Venice, over again. That is, the real gold is within, and not external. The kingdom of heaven is within us, not outside. This is the regeneration of the Spiritual Man! It is just what the parable of the Caskets enforces, the invisible and internal against the visible and the external. This is the Restoration (or part of it) Bacon and the Rosicrucians endlessly propose,- that is, that man should again return to his condition before the Fall, and live upright,- that is, with his entire body in subjection to his intellect and heart. The reader may perceive, that the parable of the Caskets in the Merchant of Venice is purely Alchymical or Rosicrucian. Bassanio discovers Portia's portrait (and so wins her), in the despised LEAD CASKET which contains the real gold so to speak. General Hitchcock has ably pointed out in his works (Alchymy, Remarks on, Shakespeare's sonnets, etc.,) that the expression "transmutation of metals" (particularly lead, into gold), was a mere figure of speech with the Hermetists and Alchymists, to signify regeneration through the spirit. CHAPTER VI. MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM AND BACON'S THIRTEENTH DEFICIENT OF A New World oF SCIENCES, OR MAGIA NATUR ALIS. Arcana publicata vilescunt, et gratiam prophanata amittunt. (Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosycross, 1459.) Oberon first appears in the old French romance of Huon de Bourdeaux, and is identical with Elberich, the dwarf king of the German story of Otriet in the Heldenbuch. The name Elberich, or, as it appears in the Nibelungenlied, Albrich, was changed, in passing into French, first into Auberich, then into Auberon, and finally became our Oberon. Now, it is very striking to find Bacon, under the thirteenth of his Deficients of a New World of Sciences, entitled Magia Naturalis, or Natural Magic, writing: "As for the natural magic (which flies abroad in many men's books), containing certain credulous and superstitious traditions and observations of sympathies and antipathies, and of hidden and specific properties, with some experiments commonly frivolous, strange rather for the art of conveyance and disguisement than the thing itself, surely he shall not much err, who shall say that this sort of magic, is as far differing from such a knowledge as we require as the books of the gests of Arthur of Britain, or of Hugh of Bordeaux differs from Cæsar's Commentaries in truth of story.' (p. 169, Advancement of Learning, 1640. This is the more striking, inasmuch as Oberon and Titania evidently are intended, in the play of the Midsummer Night's Dream, to depict the magical, invisible and occult powers of nature, overriding the entire mechanism or action of the play. That these two are personifications of the higher powers of nature cannot be questioned by a close observer of the text. It is owing to their quarrels "the seasons alter," and they term themselves the "parents and originals" of the elements. An important proof of the intention of the poet's mind with regard to Titania, is made manifest in the choice of her name. "The name Titania for the queen of the fairies appears to have been the invention of Shakespeare, for, as Mr. Ritson remarks, she is not so called by any other writer.' Why, however, the poet designated her by this title, presents, according to Mr. Keightly, no difficulty. 'It was,' he says, 'the belief of those days that the fairies were the same as the classic nymphs, the attendants of Diana. The fairy queen was therefore the same as Diana, whom Ovid (Met. iii. 173) styles Titania." In Chaucer's Merchant's Tale Pluto is the King of Færie, and his queen Proserpina." (Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. ThiseltonDyer, p. 4.) This theory of the identity of the fairy element with the classic nymphs, is borne out by the classic names prominent in the play,Theseus, Hyppolita, Egeus, Demetrius, Lysander, Helena and Hermia, even to the site or locality chosen-Athens! It is my conviction the fairy element has been conceived, as the magic or spiritual in nature, which gives to the world its character of all encircling wonder, and which plays fantastic tricks with our reasoning faculties, deceiving us by its invisibility and mystery, setting us at crosspurposes with ourselves and the objective world, in short, the contradictions existing between the senses and the intellect, matter and mind. It is excessively curious to refind the Rosicrucians repeating all this exactly. One of the most illustrious of the Rosicrucian Fraternity was Joseph Francis Borri, who appeared shortly after the death of John Heydon. His work La Chiave del Gabinetto contains their chief tenets. This book fell into the hands of the Abbe Villars, who founded upon it his cabalistic romance, The Count de Gabalis: "In the second conversation between the Count de Gabalis and his interlocutor, the former says, 'When you are enrolled among the number of the children of philosophy, and when your eyes are strengthened by the use of our most holy medicine, you will see that all the elements are inhabited by a race of perfect creatures, which are concealed from the general eye of humanity in consequence of the sin of Adam. That immense space which lies between the earth and heaven has inhabitants far more noble than the birds and flies. The vast seas have other dwellers than whales and dolphins; the depths of the earth are not for the moles alone; and the element of fire, nobler by far than the other three, was not made to remain void and uninhabited. "The air is filled with an innumerable multitude of beings in human shape,- proud and majestic in their appearance, but very mild in reality. They are great lovers of science, subtle, fond of rendering service to the wise, but great enemies of the foolish and the ignorant. . . . The seas and the rivers are inhabited in like manner. The ancient sages named these people the Undines or the Nymphs. The males are few among them, but the females are in great number. Their beauty is extreme, and the daughters of man cannot be compared to them. The earth is filled almost to the center with Gnomes-people smaller in stature, who guard the treasures of the mines, and keep watch over precious stones. These are very ingenious, very friendly to man, and easy to command. They furnish the children of philosophy (the Rosicrucians) with all the money they require, and think themselves sufficiently rewarded by our friendship. The Gnomides, their females, are small, but very beautiful and agreeable, and their dress is very curious. As regards the Salamanders, inhabitants of the fire, they also render service to the children of philosophy, but do not seek their company so eagerly as the others; and their wives and daughters are very rarely seen by mortal eyes. They are by far the most beautiful of the elementary spirits, being compounded of the most subtile and beautiful of all the elements. By becoming a member of our fraternity, you will be enabled to see and converse with all these glorious multitudes; you will see their mode of life, their manners, and make acquaintance with all their admirable laws. You will be charmed by the graces of their mind, much more than with the beauty of their body; but you will not be able to refrain from sorrow and pity for their miserable fate, when you learn that their soul is mortal, and that they have no hope of eternal felicity in the presence of that Supreme Being whom they know, and whom they religiously adore. They will tell you that, being composed of the purest particles of the element they inhabit, and having within them no opposite and antagonist qualities, being made but of one element, they live for thousands of years. But what is time, however great, to eternity? They must return into nothingness at last; and this thought embitters their existence, and we have great difficulty in consoling them. Our fathers, the philosophers (the founders of the Rosicrucian doctrine), speaking to God in their prayers, remembered the sorrow of the elemental people, and interceded for them; and God, whose mercy is without limits, revealed to them that the evil is not without a remedy. He inspired them with the knowledge that, as man, by the alliance of holiness which he contracts with his Maker, may be made a participator in the divinity, so may the Sylphs, the Gnomes, the Nymphs and the Salamanders, by contracting an alliance with man, be made participators in man's immortality. Thus, a Nymph or a Sylphide becomes immortal, and has a soul like man, if she can inspire one of us with love toward her; thus a Sylph or a Gnome ceases to be mortal, if one of the daughters of man will consent to marry him. And oh, my son,' continued the Count de Gabalis, 'admire the felicity of the Rosicrucians! Instead of women, whose charms wither in a few short years, and are followed by ghastly wrinkles, we ally ourselves with beauties whose charms never fade |