is to find the answer to the old, old question, What is Truth? and in
the degree in which we begin to recognise this we begin to approach
Truth. The realisation of Truth consists in the ability to translate
symbols, whether natural or conventional, into their equivalents; and
the root of all the errors of mankind consists in the inability to do
this, and in maintaining that the symbol has nothing behind it. The
great duty incumbent on all who have attained to this knowledge is to
impress upon their fellow men that there is an _inner side_ to things,
and that until this _inner_ side is known, the things themselves are not
known.
There is an inner and an outer side to everything; and the quality of
the superficial mind which causes it to fail in the attainment of Truth
is its willingness to rest content with the outside only. So long as
this is the case it is impossible for a man to grasp the import of his
own relation to the universal, and it is this relation which constitutes
all that is signified by the word "Truth." So long as a man fixes his
attention only on the superficial it is impossible for him to make any
progress in knowledge. He is denying that principle of "Growth" which is
the root of all life, whether spiritual intellectual, or material, for
he does not stop to reflect that all which he sees as the outer side of
things can result only from some germinal principle hidden deep in the
centre of their being.
Expansion from the centre by growth according to a necessary order of
sequence, this is the Law of Life of which the whole universe is the
outcome, alike in the one great solidarity of cosmic being, as in the
separate individualities of its minutest organisms. This great principle
is the key to the whole riddle of Life, upon whatever plane we
contemplate it; and without this key the door from the outer to the
inner side of things can never be opened. It is therefore the duty of
all to whom this door has, at least in some measure, been opened, to
endeavour to acquaint others with the fact that there is an inner side
to things, and that life becomes truer and fuller in proportion as we
penetrate to it and make our estimates of all things according to what
becomes visible from this interior point of view.
In the widest sense everything is a symbol of that which constitutes its
inner being, and all Nature is a gallery of arcana revealing great
truths to those who can decipher them. But there is a more precise
sense in which our current life is based upon symbols in regard to the
most important subjects that can occupy our thoughts: the symbols by
which we strive to represent the nature and being of God, and the manner
in which the life of man is related to the Divine life. The whole
character of a man's life results from what he really believes on this
subject: not his formal statement of belief in a particular creed, but
what he realises as the stage which his mind has actually attained in
regard to it.
Has a man's mind only reached the point at which he thinks it is
impossible to know anything about God, or to make any use of the
knowledge if he had it? Then his whole interior world is in the
condition of confusion, which must necessarily exist where no spirit of
order has yet begun to move upon the chaos in which are, indeed, the
elements of being, but all disordered and neutralising one another. Has
he advanced a step further, and realised that there is a ruling and an
ordering power, but beyond this is ignorant of its nature? Then the
unknown stands to him for the terrific, and, amid a tumult of fears and
distresses that deprive him of all strength to advance, he spends his
life in the endeavour to propitiate this power as something naturally
adverse to him, instead of knowing that it is the very centre of his own
life and being.
And so on through every degree, from the lowest depths of ignorance to
the greatest heights of intelligence, a man's life must always be the
exact reflection of that particular stage which he has reached in the
perception of the divine nature and of his own relation to it; and as we
approach the full perception of Truth, so the life-principle within us
expands, the old bonds and limitations which had no existence in reality
fall off from us, and we enter into regions of light, liberty, and
power, of which we had previously no conception. It is impossible,
therefore, to overestimate the importance of being able to realise the
symbol _for_ a symbol, and being able to penetrate to the inner
substance which it represents. Life itself is to be realised only by the
conscious experience of its livingness in ourselves, and it is the
endeavour to translate these experiences into terms which shall suggest
a corresponding idea to others that gives rise to all symbolism.
The nearer those we address have approached to the actual experience,
the more transparent the symbol becomes; and the further they are from
such experience the thicker is the veil; and our whole progress consists
in the fuller and fuller translation of the symbols into clearer and
clearer statements of that for which they stand. But the first step,
without which all succeeding ones must remain impossible, is to convince
people that symbols _are_ symbols, and not the very Truth itself. And
the difficulty consists in this, that if the symbolism is in any degree
adequate it must, in some measure, represent the form of Truth, just as
the modelling of a drapery suggests the form of the figure beneath. They
have a certain consciousness that somehow they are in the presence of
Truth; and this leads people to resent any removal of those folds of
drapery which have hitherto conveyed this idea to their minds.
There is sufficient indication of the inner Truth in the outward form to
afford an excuse for the timorous, and those who have not sufficient