Confucius, long considered the oldest and wisest of all the ancient
teachers, when he was consulted upon an abtruse point of ethics, said
in effect: "Ask the ancients. I do not know." The results of modern
research are constantly undermining the first-recorded ideas concerning
the age, and the degree of scientific and religious culture of the
race, and we may well feel like turning from the authenticated
historical records with which we are familiar to ask of the old, old
world the occult meanings of the messages graven on pillar and on
chiselled stone. The records which have survived the storm and stress
of the ages bringing down to us unexpected knowledge of the lives, the
achievements, and the histories of far-off, long-buried, hidden and
lost peoples, communities, and even distinct personalities, were
carefully planned and exactly executed by those who, already perceiving
the mutability of all human life, and all its affairs, who--in a
word--realizing that "the fashion of this world passeth away," sought
to immortalize and perpetuate forever an absolute history of their own,
and kindred races, by the uprearing of vast, imperishable monuments and
temples, and abodes of men. The pyramids, majestic rock-hewn places of
worship, and subterranean crypts are but the fingerposts of destiny.
The voice of the weird spirit of "Memnon" who sits enthroned within the
awful wastes of the desert sands, moans on and on, ever the same
awe-inspiring warning. "Listen, listen, vain, evanescent, puerile
chrysalis, man! Such as thou art, so were these most ancient of days
over the history of whose toilsome, groping lives we keep forever
jealous watch and ward. As they are today, so shall ye become. A
little space, a few cycles of time, and all that lives and stalks
abroad in the full plentitude of energy and ambition shall become
resolved into the unfathomable the unreadable mysteries of the ages."
Not after such fashion shall we of this age of widespread enlightenment
write our history on the annals of the planet's life, and evolution.
All that has gone before this time--the closing in of the vast
cycle--has been, in a way, fragmentary, comet-like; the whole race of
mankind has marched around the globe again and again. The leaders--the
head--were the favored few, priests and kings, warriors and nobles; the
vast tail, the untaught, the unawakened, the ignorant, servile masses,
the grovelling slaves, but a remove from the beasts of burden.
The spur of necessity, the development of ambition, and avarice, and
the unfolding of the ego in man forced him along upon unknown paths,
kept him separate from his kind, and built up the distinct races, in
order that the individuality of each might become distinctly marked and
recognized, that each, in his own special environment, might become the
highest possible expression of what climate, soil and other influences,
incident to the natural heredity could evolve in the lives and beings
of given races of men. It is as though Nature had disported herself in
bringing to life an infinite variety and diversity among her perfected
children. But men, here and there, have always shown the golden cord
of kinship to astonish and bewilder the unwary and unthinking.
The virtue and honor of a race are considered mere superstition and a
perpetuation of injustice and wrong, or are accepted as a lesson in
charity and brotherhood. Thus is ever growing and becoming established
the entire homogeneity of the race. We have girded the earth, and
established our fiery rule in the depths of the seas; the time for the
fulfilling of a prophecy far reaching in its results is even now at
hand. "That which is spoken in the closets, shall be shouted from the
housetops." Far and wide it is whispered in secret places, lest it be
known of selfish greed or ambitious tyranny, and this it is that the
human heart conceives, and human lips proclaim: "Liberty! liberty!!
liberty!!!" Room for noble thought, freedom for grand and acceptable
work in the cause of human enlightenment, and the soul's redemption.
The whole vast aura of the earth, the illimitable ether trembles and
thrills with the majesty of the word. High above the thunder-roll of
human discontent and awful pain, blazes the lightning of thought, and
the undying aspiration of the soul. And thus shall we tell our
story--thus record the history of the now oncoming race. Not in
material emblems only, consecrated to the forces of nature; but in the
spiritual records which tell of the freeing of humanity from the
tyranny of effete religions, and the upbuilding of a new composite
race, fear free, and worshipful only of recognized universal truth.