It may be, however, that he loves the Unseen Revealer more than either abstract Science or concrete Humanity. If so, he is preserved from both cynicism and despair. He possesses his soul in patience until it pleases God to make him understood.
In any case, the worst of his doom is still to come. After his death some follower distorts his meaning, so as to make it palatable to the unthinking masses; and uses his name to trample out truth revealed to his successors. An algebraizer of our own day used often to say: "One would accept being crucified; it does not last long; but to have one's words made into an excuse for trampling down the truth revealed through other Seers, that is a doom to make the stoutest heart quail." Of this awful torture Jesus has had eighteen centuries already; and Moses thirty-three. O! Jerusalem, that buildest the tombs of the Prophets, saying: "If we had lived in our fathers' days, we would not have partaken of their crimes."
CHAPTER XII
DEGENERATIONS TOWARDS LUNACY AND CRIME
"We feel as our ancestors thought, and think as our descendants will feel."—J. Jacobs.
In former Chapters I pointed out the manner in which idleness and superstition fasten on successive revelations; how they in each age make a concrete system of opinion out of what was, in its origin, merely the garment worn by the Pulsation-doctrine in the mind of some Seer. But besides such degraded remains of what once were