children. To
teach is better than to rule. We are all children in the Kindergarten of
God.

[Illustration: HYPATIA]

HYPATIA

Neo-Platonism is a progressive philosophy, and does not expect to
state final conditions to men whose minds are finite. Life is an
unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can
comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the
best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.

--_Hypatia_

HYPATIA

The father of Hypatia was Theon, a noted mathematician and astronomer of
Alexandria. He would have been regarded as a very great man had he not
been cast into the shadow by his daughter. Let male parents beware.

At that time, astronomy and astrology were one. Mathematics was useful,
not for purposes of civil engineering, but principally in figuring out
where a certain soul, born under a given planet, would be at a certain
time in the future.

No information comes to us about the mother of Hypatia--she was so busy
with housework that her existence is a matter of assumption or a priori
reasoning; thus, given a daughter, we assume the existence of a mother.

Hypatia was certainly the daughter of her father. He was her tutor,
teacher, playmate. All he knew he taught to her, and before she was
twenty she had been informed by him of a fact which she had previously
guessed--that considerable of his so-called knowledge was conjecture.

Theon taught his daughter that all systems of religion that pretend to
teach the whole truth were to a great degree false and fraudulent. He
explained to her that his own profession of astronomy and astrology was
only for other people. By instructing her in all religions she grew to
know them comparatively, and so none took possession of her to the
exclusion of new truth. To have a religion thrust upon you, and be
compelled to believe in it or suffer social ostracism, is to be cheated
of the right to make your own. In degree it is letting another live your
life. A child does not need a religion until he is old enough to evolve
it, and then he must not be robbed of the right of independent thinking
by having a fully-prepared plan of salvation handed out to him. The
brain needs exercise as much as the body, and vicarious thinking is as
erroneous as vicarious exercise. Strength comes from personal effort. To
think is natural, and if not intimidated or coerced the man will evolve
a philosophy