Chapter VI. Strange Speculations of the Transcendentalists

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CHAPTER THE SIXTH

STRANGE SPECULATIONS OF THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS

'HAD Man preserved his original innocence and refused to taste of the means of that bitter and condemned knowledge (or power of recognition) of good and evil, as then there would have been none, of that physical deficiency asserted to be debited to Women, would there likewise have been no females engendered; no propagation of the human species? By some the preference of the robust to the delicate sex is accounted beyond all question as self-evident. A certain class of philosophers have made no scruple to call a woman an imperfect and even monstrous animal. These have affirmed that nature, in generation, always intends a male, and that it is only from mistake or deficiency, either of the matter or the faculty, that a woman is produced.' The oriental ethics have degraded woman to the level of a chattel. It is Christianity alone, in the discovery of the Divine Mary 'Virgin-Mother', 'Mother-Virgin'--that has elevated 'Woman', and found for 'Her' a possible place (of course as a Sexed-Sexless, Sexless-Sexed 'Idea') in Heaven--or in that state other than this state; irradiated with the 'light', breathing with the 'breath' of Divinity.

Almaricus, a doctor at Paris in the twelfth century, advances an opinion that, had the state of innocence continued, every individual of our species would have

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come into existence a complete 'MAN', and that God would have created them by Himself, as He created Adam. He theorizes that woman is. a defective animal, and that the generation of her is purely fortuitous and foreign from nature's intent. He therefore infers that there would have been no women 'in a state of innocence'. On the other hand, there exists a counterbalancing singular idea, combated by St. Austin in his City of God, Book xxii. chap. xvii.; and of which its partisans take upon themselves to say that at the universal resurrection this imperfect work (woman) will be rendered perfect by a change of sex; all the women becoming men--grace and finish being then to complete the work of the human form, which nature (in Man) only, as it were, had left coarse, unfinished, rough-hewn. These ideas resemble closely the conclusions of the alchemists (or of the Rosicrucians when applying to practical art), who declare that nature, in the production of metals, always intends the generation of gold, and that it is only from accidental diversion or interposing difficulty, or from the deficiency of the virtue or faculty, that the working out of the aim falls short, and issues (bluntly and disappointed) in another metal--the blanker, blacker, and coarser metals being, in fact, only as the 'DISEASES' of matter, which aims at clear perfect health--or as gold. Here the alchemists contend that their superhuman (in apparent-sense) science, felicitously applied, 'completes the operation', and transmutes or compels-on, 'into gold' what weaker-handed nature was compelled to 'forego' as 'iron'. Thus nature always intends the production of male (sun--gold--fire being the workman, or 'agent'); but that, in the production of female (silver as against gold--the moon--sublimated matter, or 'patient'), nature's operation miscarries; the effort degenerates

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into struggle, and struggle submits in failure. Therefore; 'Female'. But this shortcoming, when the Divine perfecting-means (in another state, and through another nature or 'mode') is applied, will be rectified. And in the universal resurrection, Women will transcend into the nobler creature, and, changing sex or ceasing sex, will become--'Woman’d-Men': Both sexes interchanging 'sex' to form the 'Angel', or rather blending sex and uniting sex--bicorporate no longer, but becoming 'Ideal'--fit spirit-populace, winnowed of materiality and of humanity. 'Unintelligible to the intellect as Music, but beautiful to the heart as Music.'

Yet it must be understood that no man’s dreams (dreams, we have elsewhere contended, quite contrary to the usual ideas, are real things) are wholly and altogether evil and vain; for that cannot be except men were utter (or outer) devils; which also cannot be so long as we live in the human nature, for Man’s Fall was not like the Fall of the Evil Angels; for these latter fell into the Dark Abyss, or Original. Wrathful Principle (the Rosicrucian 'Refuse' or 'Lees' of Creation, without, or beyond; nature and creature, and therefore there was for them no help or recovery). But, on the contrary, Men fell and were saved thereby (the Knowledge of Good and Evil), that is, into Nature and Creature, which is Man’s inexpressible happiness, as not being left destitute of Hope or the Regenerating Seed of the Woman. For there does centrally dwell in the human nature that which the wise man galls the Voice of Wisdom, or conscience-recall; which in the suggestion of the Immortal Sorrow, planted deep in the soul of man for his 'Lost Paradise' (of which the very air and hint and proof to him, is Music--Man’s Music--with its shadow of discords). And this Immortal Sorrow languishes

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to Redemption in repentance. Thus the pathetic languishment of the Saviour (and Sufferer), Jesus Christ: 'My soul is sad, even unto death!' Hence the 'Garden' of 'Agony'.

This is the Genius Optimus, the 'Soul of the Soul' and the 'Eye of the Mind'--that part incapable of damnation even in the greatest sinner (this was Cromwell's firm reliance and belief, and his last question to his attendant chaplain bore reference to the assurance of it). This is the last supernatural power which can and will defend man from all the assaults of evil angels, and unto this holy principle and benevolent upspring the dictates and the efforts of all Good Angels and Spirits do tend, it being a great part of their work and business to assist man, and to defend and preserve him from the inward incursions of the multitude of the malignant Spirits in their various degrees.

Trithemius, a noted Rosicrucian, asserts that 'never any good Angel appeared in the shape of a woman.' Van Helmont, in the ninety-third chapter of one of his books, has these words: 'If an Angel appear bearded, let him be accounted an evil one; for a Good Angel hath never appeared with a beard. The truth is, a woman is the weaker vessel, and was first in the Transgression. Therefore, that sex is an emblem of weakness and a means of seduction. And therefore there is no reason why the Good Angels, amongst whom there is no difference of sex, should elect to appear as a female; but rather, being a species of creature above humankind, they assume the shape of the most excellent of that kind (only feminine in regard of grace and beauty); and for the same reason they may appear without beards, both because ''hair is an excrement", and verges greatly, in the more conspicuous instances, to the brutish nature, as also more especially in their beardless, beautiful, glorified

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aspects, and graceful delicacy and yet power of form, to express their perpetual virgin-youth, unspoiled heavenly beauty, and immortal star-born vigour. Hair being an abhorred, tentacled, reaching-out or brute-like animal superflux--the stigma or disgrace of the glorious spark of light or nearly suffocated human entity, condemned to its earth-birthed investiture or body--it can have nothing about the parts of the "Deified Idea of Man"--or the various classes of the Blessed Angels.' The contrary of all this is to be assumed of the evil Genii or the Recusant Genii (Luciferent and yet Lucifugent), except in regard to their power or knowledge. For the 'Soul of the World' and 'Matter', and to an important one-half, the 'Means of the World'--are 'Feminine'. For Night (which is the other side of the curtain of Day) is Feminine. Thus Bœhmen and Plato; as representing all the closest-of-thought of the centuries.

All the above is the reproduction of the singular ideas of the 'Idealists' of the Middle Ages.