Let us cast a glance at these fundamental subjects; for they are the key
without which the secrets of magic must remain locked and hidden.
In common speech we call the realm of the material universe, Creation; but
philosophy denies its claim to that title. Man alone is Creation:
everything else is appearance. The universe appears, because man exists:
he implies the universe, but is not implied by it. We may assist our
metaphysics, here, by a physical illustration. Take a glass prism and hold
in the sunlight before a white surface. Let the prism represent man: the
sun, man's Creator: and the seven-hued ray cast by the prism, nature, or
the material universe. Now, if we remove the light, the ray vanishes: it
vanishes, also, if we take away the prism: but so long as the sun and the
prism--God and man--remain in their mutual relation, so long must the
rainbow nature appear. Nature, in short, is not God; neither is it man;
but it is the inevitable concomitant or expression of the creative
attitude of God towards man. It is the shadow of the elements of which
humanity or human nature is composed: or, shall we say, it is the
apparition in sense of the spiritual being of mankind,--not, be it
observed, of the being of any individual or of any aggregation of
individuals; but of humanity as a whole.
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