s dark beginning in the Center as the PHUR hath, but
after the flash of fire, when the sour dark form is terrified, where the
hardness is turned into pliant sharpness, and where the second will (_viz._
the will of nature, which is called the Anguish) ariseth, there Mercurius
hath its original. For MER is the shivering wheel, very horrible, sharp,
venomous, and hostile; which assimulateth it thus in the sourness in the
flash of fire, where the sour wrathful life _ariseth_. The syllable CU is
the pressing out, of the _Anxious_ will of the mind, from Nature: which is
climbing up, and _willeth_ to be out aloft. RI is the comprehension of the
flash of fire, which in MER giveth a clear sound and tune. For the flash
maketh the tune, and it is the Salt-Spirit which _soundeth_, and its form
(or quality) is gritty like sand, and herein arise noises, sounds and
voices, and thus CU comprehendeth the flash, and so the pressure is as a
_wind_ which thrusteth, and giveth a spirit to the flash, so that it liveth
and burneth. Thus the {322} syllable US is called the burning fire, which
with the spirit continually driveth itself forth: and the syllable CU
presseth continually upon the flash."

Shades of Tauler[598] and Paracelsus,[599] how strangely you do mix! Well
may Hallam call Germany the native soil of Mysticism. Had Behmen been the
least of a scholar, he would not have divided _sulph-ur_ and _merc-ur-i-us_
as he has done: and the inflexion _us_, that boy of all work, would have
been rejected. I think it will be held that a writer from whom hundreds of
pages like the above could be brought together, is fit for the Budget. If
Sampson Arnold Mackay[600] had tied his etymologies to a mystical
Christology, instead of a mystical infidelity, he might have had a school
of followers. The nonsense about Newton borrowing gravitation from Behmen
passes only with those who know neither what Newton did, nor what was done
before him.

The above reminds me of a class of paradoxers whom I wonder that I forgot;
they are without exception the greatest bores of all, because they can put
the small end of their paradox into any literary conversation whatever. I
mean the people who have heard the local pronunciation of celebrated names,
and attempt not only to imitate it, but to impose on others their broken
German or Arabic, or what not. They also learn the vernacular names of
those who are generally spoken of in their Latin forms; at least, they
l