gence, emanate or develop two further Sephiroth: Wisdom, the male principle, and Intelligence, the female principle; that is, on proceeding from the Crown the contraries appear, the first differentiation of things. From the union of Wisdom and Intelligence is born Knowledge; we have thus the pure Idea, Thought exteriorized, and the Voice or Speech which connects the first with the second. This first Trinity of Sephiroth is followed by another: Grace or Splendor, Justice or Severity, and their mediatrix, Beauty. Lastly the Sephiroth, mingling in Beauty, develop yet further, and produce a third group: Victory, Splendor, Foundation; and then the Sephira Empire or Royalty, which brings into existence all the Sephiroth in the visible universe.

The Sephiroth as a whole, moreover, constitute the mysterious Adam Kadmon, the primordial super-man, of whom the occultists will have much to tell us, and who himself represents the universe.

This explanation of the inexplicable, like all explanations of the sort, really explains nothing whatever, and conceals the incomprehensible beneath a flood of ingenious metaphors. Obeying, as previous religions had done, the necessity of building a bridge between the infinite and the finite, between the inconceivable and conception, instead of contenting itself, as

did India, with the renewal or the duplication of the Supreme Cause, or the Egyptian, Persia, and Neoplatonic Logos, it multiplies the bridges by multiplying the intermediaries; but numerous though they be, these ladders none the less end in the same confession of ignorance. At all events, this explanation, by concealing this fresh admission beneath a mountain of images, has the advantage of relegating to a sort of inaccessible in pace the first confession, the principal and most embarrassing admission, which places the First Cause and the existence of God beyond our reach. After the creation of the Sephiroth and of the universe the En-sof is generally forgotten; like the That of India or the Nu of Egypt, it is by preference passed over in silence; and it is but rarely that questions concerning it are asked. It is too secret, too mysterious, too incomprehensible even for a secret and mysterious doctrine like that of the cabala, and the whole attention is given solely to the emanations which the imagination attributes to it and which one seems to know because they have been given names, virtues, functions, and attributes: in a word, because man himself has created them.

4

When did the En-sof begin to project its emanations? To this question, which India

answered by the theory of the nights and days of Brahma, without beginning or end, the cabala does not give a very clear reply. "Before God created this world," it says, "He had created a great many worlds, and had caused them to disappear until the thought came to him to create this one." 1 What has become

of these vanished worlds? "It is the privilege," replies the cabala, "of the strength of the Supreme King that these worlds, which could not take shape, do not perish; that nothing perishes, even to the breath of His mouth; everything has its place and its destination, and God knows what He does with it. Even the speech of man and the sound of his voice do not lapse into non-existence; everything has its place and its dwelling." 2

And what of our world? Whither is it going? What is its destiny? The Zohar being a heteroclite production, a very late compilation, its doctrine in this respect is much less definite than that of Brahmanism; but if detached from the illogical and alien elements which often cross or divert its course, it likewise attains the stage of pantheism, and by way of pantheism it achieves the inevitable optimism. The En-sof, the Infinite, is everything; consequently everything is the En-sof. To man

1 "Zohar"; III, 61-b. 2 "Zohar"; II, 100-b.

ifest itself, the pure abstraction develops itself by means of intermediaries and, in its goodness voluntarily degrading itself, ends in thought, and in matter, which is the last degradation of thought; and when the Messianic era comes "everything will return into its root as it emerged therefrom." 1

Man, who in the "Zohar" is the center of the world and its microcosm, may from the moment of his death rejoice in this return to perfection; and his purified soul will receive the kiss of peace which "unites it anew and forever to its root, its principle." 2

And evil? Evil, in the "Zohar," as in Brahmanism, is matter. "Man, by his victory over evil, triumphs over matter, or rather subordinates the matter within him to a higher vocation; he ennobles matter, making it ascend from the extreme point to which it was relegated to the place of its origin. In him, who is the great consciousness, matter acquires consciousness of the distance that separates it from the Supreme Good, and strives to approach the latter. Through man the darkness. aspires toward the light, the multiple toward the single. The whole of nature aspires toward God.

"Through man God remakes Himself, hav

1 "Zohar"; III, 296.

2 "Zohar"; I, 68-a.

ing passed through the whole splendid divinity of living creatures. Since man is an expression epitomizing all things, when he has overcome the evil in himself he has overcome the evil in all things; he draws with him, as he climbs, all the lower elements, and his ascent entails the ascent of the whole cosmos." 1

But why was evil necessary? "Why," asks the "Zohar," "if the soul is of heavenly essence, does it descend upon the earth?" The reply to this great problem, which no religion has given, the "Zohar," in accordance with its habit when embarrassed, evades by means of an allegory: “A king sent his son into the country that he might grow strong and sound there and acquire the necessary knowledge. After some time he was informed that his son was now grown up; that he was a strong, healthy youth, and that his education was completed. He then, because he loved him, sent the queen herself to fetch him and bring him back to the palace. In the same way nature bears the King of the universe a son, the divine Soul, and the King sends him into the country, that is, the terrestial universe, in order that he may grow strong, and gain in nobility and dignity." 2

The disciples of Rabbi Simon ben Zemach Durân, one of the great scholars of the

1 S. Karppe, op. cit.; p. 478.

2 "Zohar"; I, 245.