undoubtedly as good violinists as some of the younger members of the
Boston Symphony Orchestra, and perhaps better. But the old prejudice
that woman is necessarily inferior to man and for the same work should
receive less pay, is still to be reckoned with." Miss Maud Powell is
perhaps the only American woman violinist who has reached the highest
success in this country, but there are many others who have spent many
years at the best European Conservatories and who are quartet and solo
players of distinction, and yet while a male violinist of fair quality
can find employment, it is often difficult for women of equal ability
to be admitted into the best orchestras. They have to become teachers,
or to give up.
* * * * *
PADEREWSKI'S eloquent patriotic address at the Chopin Centenary
Festival has just been translated into English. He says: "Music is the
only art that actually lives. Her elements, vibration, palpitation, are
the elements of life itself." The great pianist is repeating exactly
what Katherine Tingley said many years ago. In her Râja Yoga system
of training, music is given a prominent position, and the effect upon
the character has been very marked. To produce the best results and
to avoid the undesirable ones which the ordinary musical training
sometimes engenders, great discrimination in the method of teaching is
necessary. In the Râja Yoga system of education music is taught in such
a way that the interest is sustained without the egotism and vanity of
the pupil being stimulated. Can this be said of musical training in
general?
* * * * *
FRANCE is certainly the land of great opportunities. A café singer,
M. Couyba, who, fifteen years ago was earning a precarious salary at
a Montmartre restaurant by singing his own songs, is now Minister of
Commerce in the new French cabinet.
ANCIENT CALENDARS: by Travers
Among features of the Chinese calendar we find:
The connexion of the five planets and the sun and moon in a septenate
called the Seven Regulators, with a corresponding septenary week, and
in some cases a sabbath marked as inauspicious for doing work.
The Ten Celestial Stems, representing the Father Heaven or masculine
principle.
The Twelve Earthly Branches, representing the Mother Earth or feminine
principle; also standing for the twelve houses of the zodiac, which are
of uneven size, and are denoted by symbolic animals.
The year is lunar, but its commencement is regulated by the sun, the
new year falling on the first new moon after the sun enters Aquarius.
These features are supposed to have been "introduced," mostly from
Chaldaea; but whether the Chinese got them from the Chaldees or the
Chaldees from the Chinamen, the question as to how and by whom they
were originated remains the same.
The subject of ancient calendrical systems is extensive, and no
speculation can be of much account which has not been prefaced by
an examination of the various systems. It would be pertinent, for
instance, to see what is known about the calendars which have came down
to us from the ancient Central Americans. These evince an accurate
knowledge of the periods of the celestial movements, together with
knowledge of another kind; for the Mexicans had both a civil and a
sacred year. The former was 365 days, with 13 added every 52 years; the
latter 260 days, with 13 months of 20 days each, each month divided
into 4 weeks of 5 days each.
It is evident that the entire system from which all these various
ancient systems of computation were derived was complex and profound,
and that it comprised a mathematical knowledge having sound reason at
the bottom of it, but whose keys have not yet been discovered. The
competency of the computers is shown by their ability to ascertain with
exactitude all natural cycles, such as those of the solar year and the
eclipses, when such was their purpose; and this relieves them from the
imputation that their secret and sacred years were due to ignorance
and mal-observation. These cycles were not due to ignorance, but to a
knowledge and a purpose which remains to be discovered by research free
from both theological and scientific bias.
The septenate of planets is of course a very familiar symbol in ancient
lore; the number seven was recognized as the principal key-number in
cosmic architecture. The reason why the sun and moon are included
among the number of planets is not due to ignorance; and it is evident
that such an alleged ignorance is not compatible with the knowledge
displayed in other particulars. It was due to the fact that the real
septenate of planets was esoteric, an item of arcane knowledge, and
that when the septenate was mentioned exoterically, the place of two
secret planets had to be supplied, the sun and moon being introduced
for this purpose.
The question whether the number of zodiacal signs was originally twelve
or ten receives a suggestive hint from the fact that in the above
calendar both a denary and a duodenary were used. The ten and the
twelve are combined in some of these calendars by taking their least
common multiple, 60, and using that number to designate a period of 60
years. Ten and twelve are likewise said to be combined by addition in
the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
From such gleanings of archaic science as are accessible to us, we
may infer that it consisted largely in a marvelous application of
fundamental mathematical principles to mensuration and the measurement
of time. The computers, so far from being ignorant experimenters,
were very brainy people, as we find some of their descendants to be
still. The still unexplained existence of the very ancient Âryan Hindû
astronomy of the _Sûrya-Siddhânta_ and other works, proves that, when
exact calculation of natural cycles was the object, the calculators
were fully as competent as ourselves. We must infer, then, that their
secret and sacred cycles were based on the like competence and not upon
ignorance.
As to mathematics, there are some who think that our great progress in
that science may represent merely a partial recovery of what was known
before; and that logarithms and the calculus may be but a fraction of
what has been known. And there is much yet to be found out as to the
relation between numbers and dimensions. It is hardly to be expected,
however, that a culture so recent as our own should have reached the
point that must have been attained by civilizations of such duration as
those of the past.
THE MYSTERIES OF ELEUSIS: by H. T. E.
Eleusis is sacred as one of the last, and to us best known, spots where
the Ancient Mysteries survived in publicly recognized form until the
days when corruption and dogmatism caused their withdrawal. The name
wakes an echo in the recesses of our consciousness, for do we not
belong to the same humanity as that which flourished when the Mysteries
were recognized and venerated?
In considering the Mysteries we must choose between two hypotheses.
Either the whole thing was a delusion and a fraud, or the Mysteries
held and could impart knowledge inaccessible to the outsider and
since departed from among men. To maintain the former theory we must
discredit our own judgment and invalidate all human testimony on any
subject whatever, by supposing that whole nations and ages of competent
and highly cultured people were deluded. As so well argued by Thomas
Taylor, relatively to the ancient oracles (_Century Path_, Sept. 25,
1910), such a theory is altogether preposterous. The only thing which
stands in the way of our admitting in this particular case the true
value of evidence is our own foolish vanity and juvenile insularity
as regards the merits of our own culture. We are reluctant to admit
that anything we do not know can be knowledge; any one who contradicts
us must be wrong. A fine attitude to take! Yet of late years our
confidence has somewhat wavered. For one thing we have found that
our scientific universe is not so complete as we once thought it was
and that we have merely been exploring an anteroom; but now we find
ourselves on the threshold of a vast unexplored region. For another
thing, we find a few little difficulties arising in connexion with the
management of the affairs of civilized life, which makes us a little
mistrustful of the efficiency of our knowledge. Little details like
physical health bother us; there are insurrections of vice we cannot
quell; our religion is decaying; our philosophy is composed mostly of
doubts and questionings.
The Mysteries of Eleusis date from times to us prehistoric; but our
historians have at last been forced to admit that the period of Grecian
civilization covered by our history books was but the tail end of a
period equal in culture and antiquity to those of Egypt and Chaldaea.
The rites consisted of the Greater and the Lesser Mysteries, the former
celebrated between harvest and seed-time, the latter in the spring. The
inner teachings were kept secret by effectual means; for the public
there were "dramas," in which the exoteric teachings were symbolically
presented. The institutions of all past times were based on what
filtered out through many channels from the veiled Mysteries. The
Drama can be traced back through the plays of Aeschylus and the choric
dances in honor of Dionysus to the exoteric rites of the Mysteries.
Our own religious symbolism is derived therefrom: our term "Christ,"
our sacraments, our Cross, etc., etc. The Mysteries are the eternal
root of religions. For the gateway of knowledge is Man's own inner
faculties, by which, when purified, he comes into direct relation with
the mysteries of the Unseen. Hence the preliminary requisite for the
candidate was always purification; his attainments were conditioned on
his success in that respect.
It is even so today; for none but the pure, who have given guarantees
of unselfishness and integrity, can attain. Those who lust after
knowledge without having thus earned the right to it fall into
delusions--of which also the world today is not without illustrations.
So great is the power of these words, "Mysteries" and "Eleusis," in the
inner consciousness of man, that they are even now used by "magicians"
as part of the paraphernalia which, together with rabbits and top-hats,
they carry about in their carpet bags as a means of relieving the idle
of some of their spare cash.
If anybody today thirsts after knowledge the old way is still open.
He can either belong to οἱ πολλοί, the crowd, or seek to
enrol himself of the elect. But the latter dignity is not a matter of
privilege. He can neither be admitted nor refused, except according
to his qualifications. The desire to join a movement for uplifting
humanity is the key that will open the first door. Students of
Theosophy will find that that condition has always been made essential;
see H. P. Blavatsky's writings, as also those of her successors, W. Q.
Judge and Katherine Tingley. He who desires to be initiated into the
mysteries of his own Soul must first purify his heart and mind. Thus
alone can he distinguish between the false and the true. Otherwise
he must go by the erring light of his fallible judgment and accept
teachings on the authority of the teachers. But the man who relies on
the guidance of his own pure motives will not be imposed upon and will
follow only such teachings as give him the light he seeks.
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. PART OF THE RUINS OF
ELEUSIS]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. HAINES, ALASKA]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. AN ALASKAN VALLEY]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. AN ALASKAN GLACIER]
GLACIATION, PAST AND PRESENT: by T. Henry
The stupendous effects of ice in ages long gone by have been
elaborately studied by geologists, who have given us fascinating
descriptions thereof. The enormous power of ice as an agent in
transforming the land is shown by the study of its doings at the
present day. Much has been done in this direction in the Alps, but
in America we have Alaska, which, besides the prospects of material
resources which it holds out to the future, is already affording a fine
field for the observer of nature. Here we may see glaciers at work;
and though the action of the ice-sheet at its bottom is hid from view,
what goes on at the advancing margin is evident from year to year,
and even from day to day. All the phenomena of moraines, the pushing
forward of rocks and trees, the damming up of valleys to form lakes,
the scraping up of boulder-clay, the rounding-off of the rocks, etc.,
may be witnessed; together with many details that could not easily have
been inferred from a study of the sites of past glaciation. One of the
most interesting of these effects is the way in which the glacier acts
indirectly through the force of the huge waves it produces when it
enters a river. Vast blocks from the ice-front fall off with a splash
and send up a wave and a series of waves that sweep over the bank and
into the forest beyond, achieving more erosion than ever rain or river
did. The greater erosive effects follow on brief sudden movements.
In the _National Geographical Magazine_ (Washington) for June, 1911,
there is a most interesting article recording the field-studies of the
National Geographical Society in Alaska. Many of the glaciers which
they studied had advanced during the last year or two, and others had
been retreating. The reasons why some should advance while others
retreat were not satisfactorily determined, and further study must
precede a decision in this respect. But earthquakes, of which there
were twenty-six days in September, 1899, are assigned a chief rôle. The
effect of an earthquake was to produce a sudden advance and great but
brief transformations.
One of the largest glaciers in Yakutat Bay, the Nunatak, had changed a
great deal since the year before. It had advanced decidedly, different
parts of its front having come out 700 to 1000 feet up to June 17,
1910. From 1890 to 1909 the Nunatak Glacier receded steadily, going
back over two miles and a half in this time.... The forward movement
commenced between July 6, 1909 and June 1910. This was due to the
accession of unusually large quantities of snow to the reservoirs
of this glacier by avalanches during the twenty-six days of severe
earthquakes of September, 1899.
The size of glaciers is illustrated by the following description:
On the lower Copper River is Childs Glacier, which is seriously
threatening to destroy a steel railway bridge just completed. The rate
of forward motion in Childs Glacier increased during the winter of
1909-10 so that part of the margin of the glacier changed its forward
movement from nothing to two and as much as eight feet a day....
Childs Glacier is ten to twelve miles long, not much over a mile wide
in the mountain valley, but it widens to over three miles in Copper
River Valley.
Its front is a precipitous white wall 250 to 300 feet high, and is
swept at the base by Copper River....
In August, 1909, Childs Glacier was advancing at about its normal
rate--four feet a day at a point near the north side and perhaps six
or seven feet a day in midglacier. The melting and the many icebergs
discharged from the terminal cliff at that time just about balanced
this advance, so that the front of the glacier remained in about the
same place.... During the winter and early spring of 1909-10, however,
the glacier began to advance more rapidly, buckling up the ice of the
frozen river. In June 1910 the ice-front had moved forward from 920 to
1225 feet, narrowing the river to 400 or 500 feet.
Every time the ice cliff was sufficiently undercut by the river, great
masses of ice would cascade down the front, raising a gigantic wave in
the river.... During the advance the waves washed up over a bank five
to twenty-five feet in height and rushed back 100 or 200 feet into
the alder thicket. Ice blocks, up to ten tons in weight were thrown
in among the trees. Stones a foot or two in diameter were hurled into
the thicket. Alders nine to eleven inches in diameter were stripped of
leaves and bark and bent backward or broken off short, or uprooted or
buried beneath the gravel and boulders and macerated trunks of other
trees.
The river bank, which was cut back some in the preceding year was in
1910 being fairly eaten up by the iceberg waves which crossed the
river, fifty to sixty feet by actual measurement having been removed
along the bank of the stream facing the glacier.
It was a rare opportunity to see the visible forward movement of
Childs Glacier into the forest. A series of lobes developed, though
some of them were not persistent, and at the end of these lobes the
day-to-day changes were most pronounced. Ice blocks were sliding down
the frontal slope some of them being rolled many feet into the forest;
trees were overturned, turf and grass were ploughed up and carried on
the ice of the glacier. Yet one saw and heard little of a spectacular
nature while traversing the ice-front. It was an irresistible steady
movement, but slow, as the movement of the hour hand of a clock is
slow. As impressive as anything was to find tons of ice resting where
one stood to take a photograph the day before, or to find some great
tree, 100 years old, prone on the ground with the butt beneath the
glacier, where the day before the tree was upright with the ice just
touching it.
A whole grove ... was overturned between 1909 and 1910, ...
practically not a tree remaining which was not overturned or leaning.
Peat bogs were rolled up in great bolsters five or six feet high.
Isolated trees in the peat were pushed forward a hundred feet or more
without being overturned.... In the bay east of Heather Island marine
deposits with shells are being pushed up above sea-level.
On the east margin of the glacier a lake was formed where there was
only a marginal stream.
It is evident that in ice we have an agent which in the past has played
a great part in cosmic changes and cataclysms, and may do so at any
time in the future. When we consider the changes in climate to which
the earth is believed to be liable, owing to certain cyclic changes in
the gearing of its revolving pinions, the conviction becomes stronger.
It is now generally admitted that the words "Ice Age" or "Glacial Age"
should be spelt with a final _s_ indicating the plural number; for if
there was one there were many. What we study in the north of America
and Europe is the effects of the last, or the last few, of these
periodic phenomena.
GOD AND THE CHILD
"For in Him we live and move and have our being."--_St. Paul_
God and I in space alone
And nobody else in view:
"And where are the people, oh Lord," I said,
"The earth below and the sky o'erhead
And the dead whom once I knew?"
"That was a dream," the good God said,
"A dream that seemed to be true;
There are no people living or dead,
There is no earth and no sky o'erhead,
There is only Myself--and you."
"Why do I feel no fear?" I asked,
"Meeting you here this way,
For I have sinned, I know full well--
And is there heaven and is there a hell
And is this the judgment day?"
"Nay, all are but dreams," the great God said;
"Dreams that have ceased to be.
There is no such thing as fear or sin,
There is no you and never has been--
There is nothing at all but Me."--_Selected_
POWER: by Lydia Ross, M. D.
His hearers agreed that the pastor of their ultra-fashionable church
had transcended himself that Sunday morning. This was no small praise,
for his trained mind and wide experience, his analysis of men, his
delicate wit, his eloquence, and the fervid poetry of his prayers made
the congregation regard his ordinary efforts with patronizing pride.
When he began with the beatitudes, in clear, resonant tones, his voice
seemed to radiate a grateful calm through the softly lighted interior.
Then he painted a graphic picture of the compensations of unselfish
work and sacrifice, artistically coloring the whole theme with the glow
of noble peace which comes to those who give themselves generously.
There was a responsive awakening in the cultured, ennuied minds of his
high-bred audience which was like wine to the speaker. The interest
which he had aroused reacted as a pungent mental stimulus. The very air
seemed to scintillate with new thoughts which he swiftly grasped and
clothed in vivid words.
My Lady Luxury, who had played the game of "slumming" for diversion,
breathed a little deeper in her faultless gown. The commonplace
creatures of work and weariness had never seemed quite the same kind
of flesh and blood as the members of her exclusive set. The poor were
interesting enough as authors' types or artists' models but she had
not supposed they had any of the finer feelings. She assumed that
the narrow ugliness of their lives could be no trial since they had
never known anything else. How skilfully the minister was analysing
things. After all, there was some comfort in religion when a man could
preach like that. If the homely struggles of the weary, dulled mothers
and fathers of poverty and toil had these compensating pleasures of
sacrifice, they could not complain. It really was an indifferent
matter, then, whether one gave alms or not, though of course, the
fashionable charities ought to be sustained. She was not stirred to
taste the higher sense of sacrifice so well described, but a complacent
feeling of the fitness of things came over her. How absurd the less
fortunate were to think this an unjust world. The toilers' backs were
fitted to their burdens as hers was meant for soft purple and fine
linen. This was not exactly what the minister was saying, but it suited
her to regard him as the author of her translation.
The members of the pulpit committee in their pews secretly
congratulated themselves upon their foresight in having selected this
candidate. The demands of the position were exacting, but he was equal
to them--even his physique fitted the pulpit admirably. His culture and
learning were a credit to even this patrician parish, which believed in
having the best that money could procure.
Down the central aisle was the clear-cut, immobile face of a financier
whose opinions in the money world were never discounted. His keen eyes
rested upon the speaker in admiration. Personally he played the game
of gold so intensely he forgot to calculate what life meant to the
individuals who composed "the market." He was rather hypnotized with
his own success: but he recognized his peer in this man who ruled in
his own world of thought. Why, he was making the game of life appear so
vivid and real that the whole financial play grew dull and artificial
beside it. The listener's quick eye noted the alert, interested faces
around him. Ah, it were indeed a great thing so to play upon the minds
of men and women as to win this tribute of silent, rapt attention. The
eloquent voice aroused in him no impulse of envy or of aspiration; but
his own ability inwardly saluted this master of words who could so
paint the atmosphere with sound.
A gratified flush crept into the minister's face as he looked over the
audience. Was this not ready proof of the compensations of work? He had
put his mind's best effort into this sermon, and there was not one in
the great church who was not touched, mentally.
That sense of the unreality of the market-place followed the financier
after the artistic music had ended the service. Later in the day he
wandered along the country roads in the spring sunshine, thinking of
the sermon. How dramatic it all had been and how perfect a performance!
It seemed a part of the fresh spring day as the inviting green fields
melted into his reverie and he followed the path with careless strides.