to have
been generated by some process analogous to that which he saw held in
the case of man? How else could he account for its origin, if knowledge
must proceed from the known to the unknown? No one questions at all
that the worship of the human generative organs as symbols of the dual
generative principle of Nature degenerated into orgies of the most
frightful character, but the view of Nature which thus degenerated is
not, I think, an altogether unsound one, and very interesting remnants
of it are to be found in mediaeval philosophy.

These remnants are very marked in alchemy. The metals, as I have
suggested, are there regarded as types of man; hence they are
produced from seed, through the combination of male and female
principles--mercury and sulphur, which on the spiritual plane are
intelligence and love. The same is true of that Stone which is perfect
Man. As BERNARD of TREVISAN (1406-1490) wrote in the fifteenth century:
"This Stone then is compounded of a Body and Spirit, or of a volatile
and fixed Substance, and that is therefore done, because nothing in
the World can be generated and brought to light without these two
Substances, to wit, a Male and Female: From whence it appeareth, that
although these two Substances are not of one and the same species, yet
one Stone doth thence arise, and although they appear and are said to be
two Substances, yet in truth it is but one, to wit, _Argent-vive_."(1)
No doubt this sounds fantastic; but with all their seeming intellectual
follies these old thinkers were no fools. The fact of sex is the most
fundamental fact of the universe, and is a spiritual and physical as
well as a physiological fact. I shall deal with the subject as concerns
the speculations of the alchemists in some detail in a later excursion.

(1) BERNARD, Earl of TREVISAN: _A Treatise of the Philosopher's Stone_,
1683. (See _Collectanea Chymica: A Collection of Ten Several Treatises
in Chemistry_, 1684, p. 91.)

II. PYTHAGORAS AND HIS PHILOSOPHY

IT is a matter for enduring regret that so little is known to us
concerning PYTHAGORAS. What little we do know serves but to enhance
for us the interest of the man and his philosophy, to make him, in many
ways, the most attractive of Greek thinkers; and, basing our estimate
on the extent of his influence on the thought of succeeding ages, we
recognise in him one of the world's master-minds.

PYTHAGORAS was born about 582 B.C. at Samos, one of the Gr