isis unveiled: xii (forbidden ground)

"Fire, in the ancient philosophy of all times and countries, including our own, has been regarded as a triple principle. As water comprises a visible fluid with invisible gases lurking within, and, behind all the spiritual principle of nature, which gives them their dynamic energy, so, in fire, they recognized: 1st. Visible flame; 2nd. Invisible, [...]

isis unveiled: xii (forbidden ground)

"Professor Balfour Stewart pays a very high tribute to the philosophical intuition of Herakleitus, the Ephesian, who lived five centuries before our era; the "crying" philosopher who declared that "fire was the great cause, and that all things were in a perpetual flux." "It seems clear", says the professor, "that Herakleitus must have had a [...]

isis unveiled: xii (forbidden ground)

"High above all other names in his Pantheon of Nihilism, Mr. Huxley writes that of David Hume. He esteems that philosopher's great service to humanity to be his irrefragable demonstration of "the limits of philosophical inquiry", outside which lie the fundamental doctrines "of spiritualism", and other "isms". It is true that the tenth chapter of [...]