CHAPTER I

CLOSING THE CIRCLE

"1

"MEN (saith an ancient Greek sentence) are tormented by the opinions they have of things, and not by the things themselves, and truly many subjects, which appear complicated and perplexing when viewed through the haze of vague opinion, portentously increased by vain repetition, become simple and clear when we have fought our way through the mist and stand honestly face to face with them.

But singular indeed is the heavy effect of custom and tradition, and the indolent tendency of every one to believe, without verification, what his neighbour asserts. Men are like those caterpillars that are often to be seen in Southern climes, that follow each other so closely that the in

1 Essays of Montaigne, vol. 11, p. 169.

if

dividual is lost in the chain-like aspect of the Community. Of this kind of linear gregariousness an amusing "modern instance" may serve for exemplification : "When visiting St. Petersburg, Bismarck noticed a Guard stationed on a grass plot near nothing and apparently guarding nothing. Finally he asked the Czar why the guard was stationed there. The Czar, when his attention was called to the position of the Guard, whom he must have seen hundreds of times before, was unable to explain it, and found himself equally surprised with Bismarck. He summoned an officer, and asked of him an explanation, with much the same result. No one knew why the guard stood on the grass plot. The Czar, becoming interested to fathom this mystery, after considerable investigation it was discovered that during the reign of some previous Czar the Czarina had discovered the first violet in the middle of that grass plot. The then Czar had stationed a Guard there to prevent people from trampling on the violet, and the Guard, once established,

had continued by force of custom ever since, although there were no longer any violets to guard."

1

To dismiss the Guard from the grass plot should be the desire and design of every Thinker, who wishes to benefit his fellowmen; and in order to show how simple and direct are the ideas that I have been endeavouring to free from their cordon of superstition and prejudice, I shall now briefly recapitulate (for the sake of variety, in reverse order) the series of subjects that have passed under discussion.

To "fetch a compass," or close the circuit of these lucubrations, it is only necessary to concede that the mystery of Genius is but a particular manifestation of the universal mystery of Mind, in the exercise of its higher power, Imagination. It follows that for the effectual working of this power the mind must be trained and sustained; the willingness and aptitude to undergo discipline

1 The Old Testament and the New Scholarship, by John P. Peters, p. 121.