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images as two-dimensional arrays of pixel values. This extra coverage
will be particularly helpful for students taking an AP/CS A course
because of the heavy emphasis on two-dimensional arrays on the AP
exam.

Expanded self-checks and programming exercises. Many chapters have


received new self-check problems and programming exercises. There
are roughly fifty total problems and exercises per chapter, all of which
have been class-tested with real students and have solutions provided for
instructors on our web site.

Since the publication of our third edition, Java 8 has been released. This new
version supports a style of programming known as functional programming
that is gaining in popularity because of its ability to simply express complex
algorithms that are more easily executed in parallel on machines with
multiple processors. ACM and IEEE have released new guidelines for
undergraduate computer science curricula, including a strong
recommendation to cover functional programming concepts.

We have added a new Chapter 19 that covers most of the functional concepts
from the new curriculum guidelines. The focus is on concepts, not on
language features. As a result, it provides an introduction to several new Java
8 constructs but not a comprehensive coverage of all new language features.
This provides flexibility to instructors since functional programming features
can be covered as an advanced independent topic, incorporated along the
way, or skipped entirely. Instructors can choose to start covering functional
constructs along with traditional constructs as early as Chapter 6. See the
dependency chart at the end of this section.

The following features have been retained from previous editions:

Focus on problem solving. Many textbooks focus on language details


when they introduce new constructs. We focus instead on problem
solving. What new problems can be solved with each construct? What
pitfalls are novices likely to encounter along the way? What are the most
common ways to use a new construct?

Emphasis on algorithmic thinking. Our procedural approach allows us to


emphasize algorithmic problem solving: breaking a large problem into
smaller problems, using pseudocode to refine an algorithm, and
grappling with the challenge of expressing a large program
algorithmically.

Layered approach. Programming in Java involves many concepts that


are difficult to learn all at once. Teaching Java to a novice is like trying
to build a house of cards. Each new card has to be placed carefully. If
the process is rushed and you try to place too many cards at once, the
entire structure collapses. We teach new concepts gradually, layer by
layer, allowing students to expand their understanding at a manageable
pace.

Case studies. We end most chapters with a significant case study that
shows students how to develop a complex program in stages and how to
test it as it is being developed. This structure allows us to demonstrate
each new programming construct in a rich context that can't be achieved
with short code examples. Several of the case studies were expanded
and improved in the second edition.

Utility as a CS1+CS2 textbook. In recent editions, we added chapters


that extend the coverage of the book to cover all of the topics from our
second course in computer science, making the book usable for a two-
course sequence. Chapters 12–19 explore recursion, searching and
sorting, stacks and queues, collection implementation, linked lists,
binary trees, hash tables, heaps, and more. Chapter 12 also received a
section on recursive backtracking, a powerful technique for exploring a
set of possibilities for solving problems such as 8 Queens and Sudoku.

Layers and Dependencies


Many introductory computer science books are language-oriented, but the
early chapters of our book are layered. For example, Java has many control
structures (including for-loops, while-loops, and if/else-statements), and
many books include all of these control structures in a single chapter. While
that might make sense to someone who already knows how to program, it can
be overwhelming for a novice who is learning how to program. We find that
it is much more effective to spread these control structures into different
chapters so that students learn one structure at a time rather than trying to
learn them all at once.

The following table shows how the layered approach works in the first six
chapters:

Control Programming
Chapter Data Input/Output
Flow Techniques
procedural
1 methods String literals println, print
decomposition
definite variables, local variables, class
2 loops expressions, constants,
(for) int, double pseudocode
console input, 2D
return
3 using objects parameters graphics
values
(optional)
conditional char pre/post conditions, printf
4
(if/else) throwing exceptions
indefinite
assertions, robust
5 loops boolean
programs
(while)
token/line-based file
6 Scanner file I/O
processing

Chapters 1–6 are designed to be worked through in order, with greater


flexibility of study then beginning in Chapter 7. Chapter 6 may be skipped,
although the case study in Chapter 7 involves reading from a file, a topic that
is covered in Chapter 6.

The following is a dependency chart for the book:


Supplements
http://www.buildingjavaprograms.com/

Answers to all self-check problems appear on our web site and are accessible
to anyone. Our web site has the following additional resources for students:

Online-only supplemental chapters, such as a chapter on creating


Graphical User Interfaces

Source code and data files for all case studies and other complete
program examples

The DrawingPanel class used in the optional graphics Supplement 3G

Our web site has the following additional resources for teachers:

PowerPoint slides suitable for lectures

Solutions to exercises and programming projects, along with homework


specification documents for many projects

Sample exams and solution keys

Additional lab exercises and programming exercises with solution keys

Closed lab creation tools to produce lab handouts with the instructor's
choice of problems integrated with the textbook

To access protected instructor resources, contact us at


authors@buildingjavaprograms.com. The same materials are also available at
http://www.pearsonhighered.com/cs-resources. To receive a password for this
site or to ask other questions related to resources, contact your Pearson sales
representative.

MyProgrammingLab
MyProgrammingLab is an online practice and assessment tool that helps
students fully grasp the logic, semantics, and syntax of programming.
Through practice exercises and immediate, personalized feedback,
MyProgrammingLab improves the programming competence of beginning
students who often struggle with basic concepts and paradigms of popular
high-level programming languages. A self-study and homework tool, the
MyProgrammingLab course consists of hundreds of small practice exercises
organized around the structure of this textbook. For students, the system
automatically detects errors in the logic and syntax of code submissions and
offers targeted hints that enable students to figure out what went wrong, and
why. For instructors, a comprehensive grade book tracks correct and
incorrect answers and stores the code inputted by students for review.

For a full demonstration, to see feedback from instructors and students, or to


adopt MyProgrammingLab for your course, visit the following web site:
http://www.myprogramminglab.com/

VideoNotes

We have recorded a series of instructional videos to accompany the textbook.


They are available at the following web site: www.pearsonhighered.com/cs-
resources

Roughly 3–4 videos are posted for each chapter. An icon in the margin of the
page indicates when a VideoNote is available for a given topic. In each video,
we spend 5–15 minutes walking through a particular concept or problem,
talking about the challenges and methods necessary to solve it. These videos
make a good supplement to the instruction given in lecture classes and in the
textbook. Your new copy of the textbook has an access code that will allow
you to view the videos.
Acknowledgments
First, we would like to thank the many colleagues, students, and teaching
assistants who have used and commented on early drafts of this text. We
could not have written this book without their input. Special thanks go to
Hélène Martin, who pored over early versions of our first edition chapters to
find errors and to identify rough patches that needed work. We would also
like to thank instructor Benson Limketkai for spending many hours
performing a technical proofread of the second edition.

Second, we would like to thank the talented pool of reviewers who guided us
in the process of creating this textbook:

Greg Anderson, Weber State University

Delroy A. Brinkerhoff, Weber State University

Ed Brunjes, Miramar Community College

Tom Capaul, Eastern Washington University

Tom Cortina, Carnegie Mellon University

Charles Dierbach, Towson University

H.E. Dunsmore, Purdue University

Michael Eckmann, Skidmore College

Mary Anne Egan, Siena College

Leonard J. Garrett, Temple University

Ahmad Ghafarian, North Georgia College & State University

Raj Gill, Anne Arundel Community College


Michael Hostetler, Park University

David Hovemeyer, York College of Pennsylvania

Chenglie Hu, Carroll College

Philip Isenhour, Virginia Polytechnic Institute

Andree Jacobson, University of New Mexico

David C. Kamper, Sr., Northeastern Illinois University

Simon G.M. Koo, University of San Diego

Evan Korth, New York University

Joan Krone, Denison University

John H.E.F. Lasseter, Fairfield University

Eric Matson, Wright State University

Kathryn S. McKinley, University of Texas, Austin

Jerry Mead, Bucknell University

George Medelinskas, Northern Essex Community College

John Neitzke, Truman State University

Dale E. Parson, Kutztown University

Richard E. Pattis, Carnegie Mellon University

Frederick Pratter, Eastern Oregon University

Roger Priebe, University of Texas, Austin

Dehu Qi, Lamar University


John Rager, Amherst College

Amala V.S. Rajan, Middlesex University

Craig Reinhart, California Lutheran University

Mike Scott, University of Texas, Austin

Alexa Sharp, Oberlin College

Tom Stokke, University of North Dakota

Leigh Ann Sudol, Fox Lane High School

Ronald F. Taylor, Wright State University

Andy Ray Terrel, University of Chicago

Scott Thede, DePauw University

Megan Thomas, California State University, Stanislaus

Dwight Tuinstra, SUNY Potsdam

Jeannie Turner, Sayre School

Tammy VanDeGrift, University of Portland

Thomas John VanDrunen, Wheaton College

Neal R. Wagner, University of Texas, San Antonio

Jiangping Wang, Webster University

Yang Wang, Missouri State University

Stephen Weiss, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Laurie Werner, Miami University


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Dianna Xu, Bryn Mawr College

Carol Zander, University of Washington, Bothell

Finally, we would like to thank the great staff at Pearson who helped produce
the book. Michelle Brown, Jeff Holcomb, Maurene Goo, Patty Mahtani,
Nancy Kotary, and Kathleen Kenny did great work preparing the first edition.
Our copy editors and the staff of Aptara Corp, including Heather Sisan, Brian
Baker, Brendan Short, and Rachel Head, caught many errors and improved
the quality of the writing. Marilyn Lloyd and Chelsea Bell served well as
project manager and editorial assistant respectively on prior editions. For
their help with the third edition we would like to thank Kayla Smith-Tarbox,
Production Project Manager, and Jenah Blitz-Stoehr, Computer Science
Editorial Assistant. Mohinder Singh and the staff at Aptara, Inc., were also
very helpful in the final production of the third edition. For their great work
on production of the fourth edition, we thank Louise Capulli and the staff of
Lakeside Editorial Services, along with Carole Snyder at Pearson. Special
thanks go to our lead editor at Pearson, Matt Goldstein, who has believed in
the concept of our book from day one. We couldn't have finished this job
without all of their hard work and support.

Stuart Reges

Marty Stepp
Break through
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Through the power of practice and immediate personalized feedback,
MyProgrammingLab helps improve your students' performance.

Programming Practice
With MyProgrammingLab, your students will gain firs-hand programming
experience in an interactive online environment.

Immediate, Personalized Feedback


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Graduated Complexity
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sophistication of the exercises increase gradually but steadily.
Dynamic Roster
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Pearson eText
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reserved. HELO88173 · 11/15

LOCATION OF VIDEO NOTES IN THE TEXT

www.pearsonhighered.com/cs-resources

Chapter 1 Pages 31, 40


Chapter 2 Pages 65, 74, 89, 97, 110
Chapter 3 Pages 141, 156, 161, 167
Chapter 3G Pages 197, 215
Chapter 4 Pages 243, 251, 278
Chapter 5 Pages 324, 327, 329, 333, 356
Chapter 6 Pages 396, 409, 423
Chapter 7 Pages 458, 465, 484, 505
Chapter 8 Pages 535, 547, 555, 568
Chapter 9 Pages 597, 610, 626
Chapter 10 Pages 672, 677, 686
Chapter 11 Pages 716, 729, 737
Chapter 12 Pages 764, 772, 809
Chapter 13 Pages 834, 837, 843
Chapter 14 Pages 889, 896
Chapter 15 Pages 930, 936, 940
Chapter 16 Pages 972, 979, 992
Chapter 17 Pages 1037, 1038, 1048
Chapter 18 Pages 1073, 1092
Brief Contents
1. Chapter 1 Introduction to Java Programming 1

2. Chapter 2 Primitive Data and Definite Loops 63

3. Chapter 3 Introduction to Parameters and Objects 137

4. Supplement 3G Graphics (Optional) 196

5. Chapter 4 Conditional Execution 238

6. Chapter 5 Program Logic and Indefinite Loops 315

7. Chapter 6 File Processing 387

8. Chapter 7 Arrays 443

9. Chapter 8 Classes 530

10. Chapter 9 Inheritance and Interfaces 587

11. Chapter 10 ArrayLists 662

12. Chapter 11 Java Collections Framework 715

13. Chapter 12 Recursion 754

14. Chapter 13 Searching and Sorting 832

15. Chapter 14 Stacks and Queues 884

16. Chapter 15 Implementing a Collection Class 922

17. Chapter 16 Linked Lists 965

18. Chapter 17 Binary Trees 1017


Exploring the Variety of Random
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metaphysics, inverting the usual mode of definition given by our
erudite scholars, call the invisible types the only reality, and
everything else the effects of the causes, or visible prototypes—
illusions. However contradictory their various elucidations of the
Pentateuch may appear on their surface, every one of them tends to
show that the sacred literature of every country, the Bible as much
as the Vedas or the Buddhist Scriptures, can only be understood and
thoroughly sifted by the light of Hermetic philosophy. The great
sages of antiquity, those of the mediæval ages, and the mystical
writers of our more modern times also, were all Hermetists. Whether
the light of truth had illuminated them through their faculty of
intuition, or as a consequence of study and regular initiation, virtually,
they had accepted the method and followed the path traced to them
by such men as Moses, Gautama-Buddha, and Jesus. The truth,
symbolized by some alchemists as dew from heaven, had
descended into their hearts, and they had all gathered it upon the
tops of mountains, after having spread clean linen cloths to receive
it; and thus, in one sense, they had secured, each for himself, and in
his own way, the universal solvent. How much they were allowed to
share it with the public is another question. That veil, which is
alleged to have covered the face of Moses, when, after descending
from Sinai, he taught his people the Word of God, cannot be
withdrawn at the will of the teacher only. It depends on the listeners,
whether they will also remove the veil which is “upon their hearts.”
Paul says it plainly; and his words addressed to the Corinthians can
be applied to every man or woman, and of any age in the history of
the world. If “their minds are blinded” by the shining skin of divine
truth, whether the Hermetic veil be withdrawn or not from the face of
the teacher, it cannot be taken away from their heart unless “it shall
turn to the Lord.” But the latter appellation must not be applied to
either of the three anthropomorphized personages of the Trinity, but
to the “Lord,” as understood by Swedenborg and the Hermetic
philosophers—the Lord, who is Life and Man.
The everlasting conflict between the world-religions—Christianity,
Judaism, Brahmanism, Paganism, Buddhism, proceeds from this
one source: Truth is known but to the few; the rest, unwilling to
withdraw the veil from their own hearts, imagine it blinding the eyes
of their neighbor. The god of every exoteric religion, including
Christianity, notwithstanding its pretensions to mystery, is an idol, a
fiction, and cannot be anything else. Moses, closely-veiled, speaks
to the stiff-necked multitudes of Jehovah, the cruel, anthropomorphic
deity, as of the highest God, burying deep in the bottom of his heart
that truth which cannot be “either spoken of or revealed.” Kapila cuts
with the sharp sword of his sarcasms the Brahman-Yoggins, who in
their mystical visions pretend to see the highest one. Gautama-
Buddha conceals, under an impenetrable cloak of metaphysical
subtilties, the verity, and is regarded by posterity as an atheist.
Pythagoras, with his allegorical mysticism and metempsychosis, is
held for a clever impostor, and is succeeded in the same estimation
by other philosophers, like Apollonius and Plotinus, who are
generally spoken of as visionaries, if not charlatans. Plato, whose
writings were never read by the majority of our great scholars but
superficially, is accused by many of his translators of absurdities and
puerilities, and even of being ignorant of his own language;[510] most
likely for saying, in reference to the Supreme, that “a matter of that
kind cannot be expressed by words, like other things to be
learned;”[511] and making Protagoras lay too much stress on the use
of “veils.” We could fill a whole volume with names of misunderstood
sages, whose writings—only because our materialistic critics feel
unable to lift the “veil,” which shrouds them—pass off in a current
way for mystical absurdities. The most important feature of this
seemingly imcomprehensible mystery lies perhaps in the inveterate
habit of the majority of readers to judge a work by its words and
insufficiently-expressed ideas, leaving the spirit of it out of the
question. Philosophers of quite different schools may be often found
to use a multitude of different expressions, some dark and
metaphorical—all figurative, and yet treating of the same subject.
Like the thousand divergent rays of a globe of fire, every ray leads,
nevertheless, to the central point, so every mystic philosopher,
whether he be a devotedly pious enthusiast like Henry More; an
irascible alchemist, using a Billingsgate phraseology—like his
adversary, Eugenius Philalethes; or an atheist (?) like Spinoza, all
had one and the same object in view—man. It is Spinoza, however,
who furnishes perhaps the truest key to a portion of this unwritten
secret. While Moses forbids “graven images” of Him whose name is
not to be taken in vain, Spinoza goes farther. He clearly infers that
God must not be so much as described. Human language is totally
unfit to give an idea of this “Being” who is altogether unique.
Whether it is Spinoza or the Christian theology that is more right in
their premises and conclusion, we leave the reader to judge for
himself. Every attempt to the contrary leads a nation to
anthropomorphize the deity in whom it believes, and the result is that
given by Swedenborg. Instead of stating that God made man after
his own image, we ought in truth to say that “man imagines God after
his image,”[512] forgetting that he has set up his own reflection for
worship.
Where, then, lies the true, real secret so much talked about by the
Hermetists? That there was and there is a secret, no candid student
of esoteric literature will ever doubt. Men of genius—as many of the
Hermetic philosophers undeniably were—would not have made fools
of themselves by trying to fool others for several thousand
consecutive years. That this great secret, commonly termed “the
philosopher’s stone,” had a spiritual as well as a physical meaning
attached to it, was suspected in all ages. The author of Remarks on
Alchemy and the Alchemists very truly observes that the subject of
the Hermetic art is man, and the object of the art is the perfection of
man.[513] But we cannot agree with him that only those whom he
terms “money-loving sots,” ever attempted to carry a purely moral
design (of the alchemists) into the field of physical science. The fact
alone that man, in their eyes, is a trinity, which they divide into Sol,
water of mercury, and sulphur, which is the secret fire, or, to speak
plain, into body, soul, and spirit, shows that there is a physical side
to the question. Man is the philosopher’s stone spiritually—“a triune
or trinity in unity,” as Philalethes expresses it. But he is also that
stone physically. The latter is but the effect of the cause, and the
cause is the universal solvent of everything—divine spirit. Man is a
correlation of chemical physical forces, as well as a correlation of
spiritual powers. The latter react on the physical powers of man in
proportion to the development of the earthly man. “The work is
carried to perfection according to the virtue of a body, soul, and
spirit,” says an alchemist; “for the body would never be penetrable
were it not for the spirit, nor would the spirit be permanent in its
supra-perfect tincture, were it not for the body; nor could these two
act one upon another without the soul, for the spirit is an invisible
thing, nor doth it ever appear without another garment, which
garment is the soul.”[514]
The “philosophers by fire” asserted, through their chief, Robert
Fludd, that sympathy is the offspring of light, and “antipathy hath its
beginning from darkness.” Moreover, they taught, with other
kabalists, that “contrarieties in nature doth proceed from one eternal
essence, or from the root of all things.” Thus, the first cause is the
parent-source of good as well as of evil. The creator—who is not the
Highest God—is the father of matter, which is bad, as well as of
spirit, which, emanating from the highest, invisible cause, passes
through him like through a vehicle, and pervades the whole universe.
“It is most certain,” remarks Robertus di Fluctibus (Robert Fludd),
“that, as there are an infinity of visible creatures, so there is an
endless variety of invisible ones, of divers natures, in the universal
machine. Through the mysterious name of God, which Moses was
so desirous of him (Jehova) to hear and know, when he received
from him this answer, Jehova is my everlasting name. As for the
other name, it is so pure and simple that it cannot be articulated, or
compounded, or truly expressed by man’s voice ... all the other
names are wholly comprehended within it, for it contains the property
as well of Nolunty as volunty, of privation as position, of death as life,
of cursing as blessing, of evil as good (though nothing ideally is bad
in him), of hatred and discord, and consequently of sympathy and
antipathy.”[515]
Lowest in the scale of being are those invisible creatures called by
the kabalists the “elementary.” There are three distinct classes of
these. The highest, in intelligence and cunning, are the so-called
terrestrial spirits, of which we will speak more categorically in other
parts of this work. Suffice to say, for the present, that they are the
larvæ, or shadows of those who have lived on earth, have refused all
spiritual light, remained and died deeply immersed in the mire of
matter, and from whose sinful souls the immortal spirit has gradually
separated. The second class is composed of the invisible antitypes
of the men to be born. No form can come into objective existence—
from the highest to the lowest—before the abstract ideal of this form
—or, as Aristotle would call it, the privation of this form—is called
forth. Before an artist paints a picture every feature of it exists
already in his imagination; to have enabled us to discern a watch,
this particular watch must have existed in its abstract form in the
watchmaker’s mind. So with future men.
According to Aristotle’s doctrine, there are three principles of
natural bodies: privation, matter, and form. These principles may be
applied in this particular case. The privation of the child which is to
be we will locate in the invisible mind of the great Architect of the
Universe—privation not being considered in the Aristotelic
philosophy as a principle in the composition of bodies, but as an
external property in their production; for the production is a change
by which the matter passes from the shape it has not to that which it
assumes. Though the privation of the unborn child’s form, as well as
of the future form of the unmade watch, is that which is neither
substance nor extension nor quality as yet, nor any kind of
existence, it is still something which is, though its outlines, in order to
be, must acquire an objective form—the abstract must become
concrete, in short. Thus, as soon as this privation of matter is
transmitted by energy to universal ether, it becomes a material form,
however sublimated. If modern science teaches that human thought
“affects the matter of another universe simultaneously with this,” how
can he who believes in an Intelligent First Cause, deny that the
divine thought is equally transmitted, by the same law of energy, to
our common mediator, the universal ether—the world-soul? And, if
so, then it must follow that once there the divine thought manifests
itself objectively, energy faithfully reproducing the outlines of that
whose “privation” was first born in the divine mind. Only it must not
be understood that this thought creates matter. No; it creates but the
design for the future form; the matter which serves to make this
design having always been in existence, and having been prepared
to form a human body, through a series of progressive
transformations, as the result of evolution. Forms pass; ideas that
created them and the material which gave them objectiveness,
remain. These models, as yet devoid of immortal spirits, are
“elementals,“properly speaking, psychic embryos—which, when their
time arrives, die out of the invisible world, and are born into this
visible one as human infants, receiving in transitu that divine breath
called spirit which completes the perfect man. This class cannot
communicate objectively with men.
The third class are the “elementals” proper, which never evolve
into human beings, but occupy, as it were, a specific step of the
ladder of being, and, by comparison with the others, may properly be
called nature-spirits, or cosmic agents of nature, each being confined
to its own element and never transgressing the bounds of others.
These are what Tertullian called the “princes of the powers of the
air.”
This class is believed to possess but one of the three attributes of
man. They have neither immortal spirits nor tangible bodies; only
astral forms, which partake, in a distinguishing degree, of the
element to which they belong and also of the ether. They are a
combination of sublimated matter and a rudimental mind. Some are
changeless, but still have no separate individuality, acting
collectively, so to say. Others, of certain elements and species,
change form under a fixed law which kabalists explain. The most
solid of their bodies is ordinarily just immaterial enough to escape
perception by our physical eyesight, but not so unsubstantial but that
they can be perfectly recognized by the inner, or clairvoyant vision.
They not only exist and can all live in ether, but can handle and
direct it for the production of physical effects, as readily as we can
compress air or water for the same purpose by pneumatic and
hydraulic apparatus; in which occupation they are readily helped by
the “human elementary.” More than this; they can so condense it as
to make to themselves tangible bodies, which by their Protean
powers they can cause to assume such likeness as they choose, by
taking as their models the portraits they find stamped in the memory
of the persons present. It is not necessary that the sitter should be
thinking at the moment of the one represented. His image may have
faded many years before. The mind receives indelible impression
even from chance acquaintance or persons encountered but once.
As a few seconds exposure of the sensitized photograph plate is all
that is requisite to preserve indefinitely the image of the sitter, so is it
with the mind.
According to the doctrine of Proclus, the uppermost regions from
the zenith of the universe to the moon belonged to the gods or
planetary spirits, according to their hierarchies and classes. The
highest among them were the twelve ŭper-ouranioi, or supercelestial
gods, having whole legions of subordinate demons at their
command. They are followed next in rank and power by the
egkosmioi, the intercosmic gods, each of these presiding over a
great number of demons, to whom they impart their power and
change it from one to another at will. These are evidently the
personified forces of nature in their mutual correlation, the latter
being represented by the third class or the “elementals” we have just
described.
Further on he shows, on the principle of the Hermetic axiom—of
types, and prototypes—that the lower spheres have their
subdivisions and classes of beings as well as the upper celestial
ones, the former being always subordinate to the higher ones. He
held that the four elements are all filled with demons, maintaining
with Aristotle that the universe is full, and that there is no void in
nature. The demons of the earth, air, fire, and water are of an elastic,
ethereal, semi-corporeal essence. It is these classes which officiate
as intermediate agents between the gods and men. Although lower
in intelligence than the sixth order of the higher demons, these
beings preside directly over the elements and organic life. They
direct the growth, the inflorescence, the properties, and various
changes of plants. They are the personified ideas or virtues shed
from the heavenly ulê into the inorganic matter; and, as the
vegetable kingdom is one remove higher than the mineral, these
emanations from the celestial gods take form and being in the plant,
they become its soul. It is that which Aristotle’s doctrine terms the
form in the three principles of natural bodies, classified by him as
privation, matter, and form. His philosophy teaches that besides the
original matter, another principle is necessary to complete the triune
nature of every particle, and this is form; an invisible, but still, in an
ontological sense of the word, a substantial being, really distinct from
matter proper. Thus, in an animal or a plant, besides the bones, the
flesh, the nerves, the brains, and the blood, in the former, and
besides the pulpy matter, tissues, fibres, and juice in the latter, which
blood and juice, by circulating through the veins and fibres,
nourishes all parts of both animal and plant; and besides the animal
spirits, which are the principles of motion; and the chemical energy
which is transformed into vital force in the green leaf, there must be
a substantial form, which Aristotle called in the horse, the horse’s
soul; Proclus, the demon of every mineral, plant, or animal, and the
mediæval philosophers, the elementary spirits of the four kingdoms.
All this is held in our century as metaphysics and gross
superstition. Still, on strictly ontological principles, there is, in these
old hypotheses, some shadow of probability, some clew to the
perplexing “missing links” of exact science. The latter has become so
dogmatical of late, that all that lies beyond the ken of inductive
science is termed imaginary; and we find Professor Joseph Le Conte
stating that some of the best scientists “ridicule the use of the term
‘vital force,’ or vitality, as a remnant of superstition.”[516] De Candolle
suggests the term “vital movement,” instead of vital force;[517] thus
preparing for a final scientific leap which will transform the immortal,
thinking man, into an automaton with a clock-work inside him. “But,”
objects Le Conte, “can we conceive of movement without force? And
if the movement is peculiar, so also is the form of force.”
In the Jewish Kabala, the nature-spirits were known under the
general name of Shedim and divided into four classes. The Persians
called them all devs; the Greeks, indistinctly designated them as
demons; the Egyptians knew them as afrites. The ancient Mexicans,
says Kaiser, believed in numerous spirit-abodes, into one of which
the shades of innocent children were placed until final disposal; into
another, situated in the sun, ascended the valiant souls of heroes;
while the hideous spectres of incorrigible sinners were sentenced to
wander and despair in subterranean caves, held in the bonds of the
earth atmosphere, unwilling and unable to liberate themselves. They
passed their time in communicating with mortals, and frightening
those who could see them. Some of the African tribes know them as
Yowahoos. In the Indian Pantheon there are no less than
330,000,000 of various kinds of spirits, including elementals, which
latter were termed by the Brahmans the Daityas. These beings are
known by the adepts to be attracted toward certain quarters of the
heavens by something of the same mysterious property which
makes the magnetic needle turn toward the north, and certain plants
to obey the same attraction. The various races are also believed to
have a special sympathy with certain human temperaments, and to
more readily exert power over such than others. Thus, a bilious,
lymphatic, nervous, or sanguine person would be affected favorably
or otherwise by conditions of the astral light, resulting from the
different aspects of the planetary bodies. Having reached this
general principle, after recorded observations extending over an
indefinite series of years, or ages, the adept astrologer would require
only to know what the planetary aspects were at a given anterior
date, and to apply his knowledge of the succeeding changes in the
heavenly bodies, to be able to trace, with approximate accuracy, the
varying fortunes of the personage whose horoscope was required,
and even to predict the future. The accuracy of the horoscope would
depend, of course, no less upon the astrologer’s knowledge of the
occult forces and races of nature, than upon his astronomical
erudition.
Eliphas Levi expounds with reasonable clearness, in his Dogme et
Rituel de la Haute Magie, the law of reciprocal influences between
the planets and their combined effect upon the mineral, vegetable,
and animal kingdoms, as well as upon ourselves. He states that the
astral atmosphere is as constantly changing from day to day, and
from hour to hour, as the air we breathe. He quotes approvingly the
doctrine of Paracelsus that every man, animal, and plant bears
external and internal evidences of the influences dominant at the
moment of germinal development. He repeats the old kabalistic
doctrine, that nothing is unimportant in nature, and that even so
small a thing as the birth of one child upon our insignificant planet
has its effect upon the universe, as the whole universe has its own
reäctive influence upon him.
“The stars,” he remarks, “are linked to each other by attractions
which hold them in equilibrium and cause them to move with
regularity through space. This net-work of light stretches from all the
spheres to all the spheres, and there is not a point upon any planet
to which is not attached one of these indestructible threads. The
precise locality, as well as the hour of birth, should then be
calculated by the true adept in astrology; then, when he shall have
made the exact calculation of the astral influences, it remains for him
to count the chances of his position in life, the helps or hindrances
he is likely to encounter ... and his natural impulses toward the
accomplishment of his destiny.” He also asserts that the individual
force of the person, as indicating his ability to conquer difficulties and
subdue unfavorable propensities, and so carve out his fortune, or to
passively await what blind fate may bring, must be taken into
account.
A consideration of the subject from the standpoint of the ancients,
affords us, it will be seen, a very different view from that taken by
Professor Tyndall in his famous Belfast address. “To supersensual
beings,” says he, “which, however potent and invisible, were nothing
but species of human creatures, perhaps raised from among
mankind, and retaining all human passions and appetites, were
handed over the rule and governance of natural phenomena.”
To enforce his point, Mr. Tyndall conveniently quotes from
Euripides the familiar passage in Hume: “The gods toss all into
confusion, mix everything with its reverse, that all of us, from our
ignorance and uncertainty, may pay them the more worship and
reverence.” Although enunciating in Chrysippus several Pythagorean
doctrines, Euripides is considered by every ancient writer as
heterodox, therefore the quotation proceeding from this philosopher
does not at all strengthen Mr. Tyndall’s argument.
As to the human spirit, the notions of the older philosophers and
mediæval kabalists while differing in some particulars, agreed on the
whole; so that the doctrine of one may be viewed as the doctrine of
the other. The most substantial difference consisted in the location of
the immortal or divine spirit of man. While the ancient Neo-platonists
held that the Augoeides never descends hypostatically into the living
man, but only sheds more or less its radiance on the inner man—the
astral soul—the kabalists of the middle ages maintained that the
spirit, detaching itself from the ocean of light and spirit, entered into
man’s soul, where it remained through life imprisoned in the astral
capsule. This difference was the result of the belief of Christian
kabalists, more or less, in the dead letter of the allegory of the fall of
man. The soul, they said, became, through the fall of Adam,
contaminated with the world of matter, or Satan. Before it could
appear with its enclosed divine spirit in the presence of the Eternal, it
had to purify itself of the impurities of darkness. They compared “the
spirit imprisoned within the soul to a drop of water enclosed within a
capsule of gelatine and thrown in the ocean; so long as the capsule
remains whole the drop of water remains isolated; break the
envelope and the drop becomes a part of the ocean—its individual
existence has ceased. So it is with the spirit. As long as it is
enclosed in its plastic mediator, or soul, it has an individual
existence. Destroy the capsule, a result which may occur from the
agonies of withered conscience, crime, and moral disease, and the
spirit returns back to its original abode. Its individuality is gone.”
On the other hand, the philosophers who explained the “fall into
generation” in their own way, viewed spirit as something wholly
distinct from the soul. They allowed its presence in the astral capsule
only so far as the spiritual emanations or rays of the “shining one”
were concerned. Man and soul had to conquer their immortality by
ascending toward the unity with which, if successful, they were finally
linked, and into which they were absorbed, so to say. The
individualization of man after death depended on the spirit, not on his
soul and body. Although the word “personality,” in the sense in which
it is usually understood, is an absurdity, if applied literally to our
immortal essence, still the latter is a distinct entity, immortal and
eternal, per se; and, as in the case of criminals beyond redemption,
when the shining thread which links the spirit to the soul, from the
moment of the birth of a child, is violently snapped, and the
disembodied entity is left to share the fate of the lower animals, to
gradually dissolve into ether, and have its individuality annihilated—
even then the spirit remains a distinct being. It becomes a planetary
spirit, an angel; for the gods of the Pagan or the archangels of the
Christian, the direct emanations of the First Cause, notwithstanding
the hazardous statement of Swedenborg, never were or will be men,
on our planet, at least.
This specialization has been in all ages the stumbling-block of
metaphysicians. The whole esoterism of the Buddhistical philosophy
is based on this mysterious teaching, understood by so few persons,
and so totally misrepresented by many of the most learned scholars.
Even metaphysicians are too inclined to confound the effect with the
cause. A person may have won his immortal life, and remain the
same inner-self he was on earth, throughout eternity; but this does
not imply necessarily that he must either remain the Mr. Smith or
Brown he was on earth, or lose his individuality. Therefore, the astral
soul and terrestrial body of man may, in the dark Hereafter, be
absorbed into the cosmical ocean of sublimated elements, and
cease to feel his ego, if this ego did not deserve to soar higher; and
the divine spirit still remain an unchanged entity, though this
terrestrial experience of his emanations may be totally obliterated at
the instant of separation from the unworthy vehicle.
If the “spirit,” or the divine portion of the soul, is preëxistent as a
distinct being from all eternity, as Origen, Synesius, and other
Christian fathers and philosophers taught, and if it is the same, and
nothing more than the metaphysically-objective soul, how can it be
otherwise than eternal? And what matters it in such a case, whether
man leads an animal or a pure life, if, do what he may, he can never
lose his individuality? This doctrine is as pernicious in its
consequences as that of vicarious atonement. Had the latter dogma,
in company with the false idea that we are all immortal, been
demonstrated to the world in its true light, humanity would have been
bettered by its propagation. Crime and sin would be avoided, not for
fear of earthly punishment, or of a ridiculous hell, but for the sake of
that which lies the most deeply rooted in our inner nature—the desire
of an individual and distinct life in the hereafter, the positive
assurance that we cannot win it unless we “take the kingdom of
heaven by violence,” and the conviction that neither human prayers
nor the blood of another man will save us from individual destruction
after death, unless we firmly link ourselves during our terrestrial life
with our own immortal spirit—our God.
Pythagoras, Plato, Timæus of Locris, and the whole Alexandrian
school derived the soul from the universal World-Soul; and the latter
was, according to their own teachings—ether; something of such a
fine nature as to be perceived only by our inner sight. Therefore, it
cannot be the essence of the Monas, or cause, because the anima
mundi is but the effect, the objective emanation of the former. Both
the human spirit and soul are preëxistent. But, while the former
exists as a distinct entity, an individualization, the soul exists as
preëxisting matter, an unscient portion of an intelligent whole. Both
were originally formed from the Eternal Ocean of Light; but as the
theosophists expressed it, there is a visible as well as invisible spirit
in fire. They made a difference between the anima bruta and the
anima divina. Empedocles firmly believed all men and animals to
possess two souls; and in Aristotle we find that he calls one the
reasoning soul—νοῦς, and the other, the animal soul—ψυχή.
According to these philosophers, the reasoning soul comes from
without the universal soul, and the other from within. This divine and
superior region, in which they located the invisible and supreme
deity, was considered by them (by Aristotle himself) as a fifth
element, purely spiritual and divine, whereas the anima mundi
proper was considered as composed of a fine, igneous, and ethereal
nature spread throughout the universe, in short—ether. The Stoics,
the greatest materialists of ancient days, excepted the Invisible God
and Divine Soul (Spirit) from any such a corporeal nature. Their
modern commentators and admirers, greedily seizing the
opportunity, built on this ground the supposition that the Stoics
believed in neither God nor soul. But Epicurus, whose doctrine
militating directly against the agency of a Supreme Being and gods,
in the formation or government of the world, placed him far above
the Stoics in atheism and materialism, taught, nevertheless, that the
soul is of a fine, tender essence, formed from the smoothest,
roundest, and finest atoms, which description still brings us to the
same sublimated ether. Arnobius, Tertullian, Irenæus, and Origen,
notwithstanding their Christianity, believed, with the more modern
Spinoza and Hobbes, that the soul was corporeal, though of a very
fine nature.
This doctrine of the possibility of losing one’s soul and, hence,
individuality, militates with the ideal theories and progressive ideas of
some spiritualists, though Swedenborg fully adopts it. They will never
accept the kabalistic doctrine which teaches that it is only through
observing the law of harmony that individual life hereafter can be
obtained; and that the farther the inner and outer man deviate from
this fount of harmony, whose source lies in our divine spirit, the more
difficult it is to regain the ground.
But while the spiritualists and other adherents of Christianity have
little if any perception of this fact of the possible death and
obliteration of the human personality by the separation of the
immortal part from the perishable, the Swedenborgians fully
comprehend it. One of the most respected ministers of the New
Church, the Rev. Chauncey Giles, D.D., of New York, recently
elucidated the subject in a public discourse as follows: Physical
death, or the death of the body, was a provision of the divine
economy for the benefit of man, a provision by means of which he
attained the higher ends of his being. But there is another death
which is the interruption of the divine order and the destruction of
every human element in man’s nature, and every possibility of
human happiness. This is the spiritual death, which takes place
before the dissolution of the body. “There may be a vast
development of man’s natural mind without that development being
accompanied by a particle of love of God, or of unselfish love of
man.” When one falls into a love of self and love of the world, with its
pleasures, losing the divine love of God and of the neighbor, he falls
from life to death. The higher principles which constitute the
essential elements of his humanity perish, and he lives only on the
natural plane of his faculties. Physically he exists, spiritually he is
dead. To all that pertain to the higher and the only enduring phase of
existence he is as much dead as his body becomes dead to all the
activities, delights, and sensations of the world when the spirit has
left it. This spiritual death results from disobedience of the laws of
spiritual life, which is followed by the same penalty as the
disobedience of the laws of the natural life. But the spiritually dead
have still their delights; they have their intellectual endowments and
power, and intense activities. All the animal delights are theirs, and
to multitudes of men and women these constitute the highest ideal of
human happiness. The tireless pursuit of riches, of the amusements
and entertainments of social life; the cultivation of graces of manner,
of taste in dress, of social preferment, of scientific distinction,
intoxicate and enrapture these dead-alive; but, the eloquent
preacher remarks, “these creatures, with all their graces, rich attire,
and brilliant accomplishments, are dead in the eye of the Lord and
the angels, and when measured by the only true and immutable
standard have no more genuine life than skeletons whose flesh has
turned to dust.” A high development of the intellectual faculties does
not imply spiritual and true life. Many of our greatest scientists are
but animate corpses—they have no spiritual sight because their
spirits have left them. So we might go through all ages, examine all
occupations, weigh all human attainments, and investigate all forms
of society, and we would find these spiritually dead everywhere.
Pythagoras taught that the entire universe is one vast system of
mathematically correct combinations. Plato shows the deity
geometrizing. The world is sustained by the same law of equilibrium
and harmony upon which it was built. The centripetal force could not
manifest itself without the centrifugal in the harmonious revolutions
of the spheres; all forms are the product of this dual force in nature.
Thus, to illustrate our case, we may designate the spirit as the
centrifugal, and the soul as the centripetal, spiritual energies. When
in perfect harmony, both forces produce one result; break or damage
the centripetal motion of the earthly soul tending toward the centre
which attracts it; arrest its progress by clogging it with a heavier
weight of matter than it can bear, and the harmony of the whole,
which was its life, is destroyed. Individual life can only be continued if
sustained by this two-fold force. The least deviation from harmony
damages it; when it is destroyed beyond redemption the forces
separate and the form is gradually annihilated. After the death of the
depraved and the wicked, arrives the critical moment. If during life
the ultimate and desperate effort of the inner-self to reunite itself with
the faintly-glimmering ray of its divine parent is neglected; if this ray
is allowed to be more and more shut out by the thickening crust of
matter, the soul, once freed from the body, follows its earthly
attractions, and is magnetically drawn into and held within the dense
fogs of the material atmosphere. Then it begins to sink lower and
lower, until it finds itself, when returned to consciousness, in what the
ancients termed Hades. The annihilation of such a soul is never
instantaneous; it may last centuries, perhaps; for nature never
proceeds by jumps and starts, and the astral soul being formed of
elements, the law of evolution must bide its time. Then begins the
fearful law of compensation, the Yin-youan of the Buddhists.
This class of spirits are called the “terrestrial” or “earthly
elementary,” in contradistinction to the other classes, as we have
shown in the introductory chapter. In the East they are known as the
“Brothers of the Shadow.” Cunning, low, vindictive, and seeking to
retaliate their sufferings upon humanity, they become, until final
annihilation, vampires, ghouls, and prominent actors. These are the
leading “stars” on the great spiritual stage of “materialization,” which
phenomena they perform with the help of the more intelligent of the
genuine-born “elemental” creatures, which hover around and
welcome them with delight in their own spheres. Henry Kunrath, the
great German kabalist, has on a plate of his rare work, Amphitheatri
Sapientiæ Æternæ, representations of the four classes of these
human “elementary spirits.” Once past the threshold of the sanctuary
of initiation, once that an adept has lifted the “Veil of Isis,” the
mysterious and jealous goddess, he has nothing to fear; but till then
he is in constant danger.
Although Aristotle himself, anticipating the modern physiologists,
regarded the human mind as a material substance, and ridiculed the
hylozoïsts, nevertheless he fully believed in the existence of a
“double” soul, or spirit and soul.[518] He laughed at Strabo for
believing that any particles of matter, per se, could have life and
intellect in themselves sufficient to fashion by degrees such a
multiform world as ours.[519] Aristotle is indebted for the sublime
morality of his Nichomachean Ethics to a thorough study of the
Pythagoric Ethical Fragments; for the latter can be easily shown to
have been the source at which he gathered his ideas, though he
might not have sworn “by him who the tetractys found.”[520] Finally,
what do we know so certain about Aristotle? His philosophy is so
abstruse that he constantly leaves his reader to supply by the
imagination the missing links of his logical deductions. Moreover, we
know that before his works ever reached our scholars, who delight in
his seemingly atheistical arguments in support of his doctrine of fate,
these works passed through too many hands to have remained
immaculate. From Theophrastus, his legator, they passed to Neleus,
whose heirs kept them mouldering in subterranean caves for nearly
150 years;[521] after which, we learn that his manuscripts were
copied and much augmented by Apellicon of Theos, who supplied
such paragraphs as had become illegible, by conjectures of his own,
probably many of these drawn from the depths of his inner
consciousness. Our scholars of the nineteenth century might
certainly profit well by Aristotle’s example, were they as anxious to
imitate him practically as they are to throw his inductive method and
materialistic theories at the head of the Platonists. We invite them to
collect facts as carefully as he did, instead of denying those they
know nothing about.
What we have said in the introductory chapter and elsewhere, of
mediums and the tendency of their mediumship, is not based upon
conjecture, but upon actual experience and observation. There is
scarcely one phase of mediumship, of either kind, that we have not
seen exemplified during the past twenty-five years, in various
countries. India, Thibet, Borneo, Siam, Egypt, Asia Minor, America
(North and South), and other parts of the world, have each displayed
to us its peculiar phase of mediumistic phenomena and magical
power. Our varied experience has taught us two important truths,
viz.: that for the exercise of the latter personal purity and the
exercise of a trained and indomitable will-power are indispensable;
and that spiritualists can never assure themselves of the
genuineness of mediumistic manifestations, unless they occur in the
light and under such reasonable test conditions as would make an
attempted fraud instantly noticed.
For fear of being misunderstood, we would remark that while, as a
rule, physical phenomena are produced by the nature-spirits, of their
own motion and to please their own fancy, still good disembodied
human spirits, under exceptional circumstances, such as the
aspiration of a pure heart or the occurrence of some favoring
emergency, can manifest their presence by any of the phenomena
except personal materialization. But it must be a mighty attraction
indeed to draw a pure, disembodied spirit from its radiant home into
the foul atmosphere from which it escaped upon leaving its earthly
body.
Magi and theurgic philosophers objected most severely to the
“evocation of souls.” “Bring her (the soul) not forth, lest in departing
she retain something,” says Psellus.[522]

“It becomes you not to behold them before your body is


initiated,
Since, by always alluring, they seduce the souls of the
uninitiated,”

says the same philosopher, in another passage.[523]


They objected to it for several good reasons. 1. “It is extremely
difficult to distinguish a good dæmon from a bad one,” says
Iamblichus. 2. If a human soul succeeds in penetrating the density of
the earth’s atmosphere—always oppressive to her, often hateful—
still there is a danger the soul is unable to come into proximity with
the material world without that she cannot avoid; “departing, she
retains something,” that is to say, contaminating her purity, for which
she has to suffer more or less after her departure. Therefore, the
true theurgist will avoid causing any more suffering to this pure
denizen of the higher sphere than is absolutely required by the
interests of humanity. It is only the practitioner of black magic who
compels the presence, by the powerful incantations of necromancy,
of the tainted souls of such as have lived bad lives, and are ready to
aid his selfish designs. Of intercourse with the Augoeides, through
the mediumistic powers of subjective mediums, we elsewhere speak.
The theurgists employed chemicals and mineral substances to
chase away evil spirits. Of the latter, a stone called Μνίζουριν was
one of the most powerful agents.

“When you shall see a terrestrial demon approaching,


Exclaim, and sacrifice the stone Mnizurin,”

exclaims a Zoroastrian oracle (Psel., 40).


And now, to descend from the eminence of theurgico-magian
poetry to the “unconscious” magic of our present century, and the
prose of a modern kabalist, we will review it in the following:
In Dr. Morin’s Journal de Magnétisme, published a few years since
in Paris, at a time when the “table-turning” was raging in France, a
curious letter was published.
“Believe me, sir,” wrote the anonymous correspondent, “that there
are no spirits, no ghosts, no angels, no demons enclosed in a table;
but, all of these can be found there, nevertheless, for that depends
on our own wills and our imaginations.... This mensabulism[524] is an
ancient phenomenon ... misunderstood by us moderns, but natural,
for all that, and which pertains to physics and psychology;
unfortunately, it had to remain incomprehensible until the discovery
of electricity and heliography, as, to explain a fact of spiritual nature,
we are obliged to base ourselves on a corresponding fact of a
material order....
“As we all know, the daguerreotype-plate may be impressed, not
only by objects, but also by their reflections. Well, the phenomenon
in question, which ought to be named mental photography,
produces, besides realities, the dreams of our imagination, with such
a fidelity that very often we become unable to distinguish a copy
taken from one present, from a negative obtained of an image....
“The magnetization of a table or of a person is absolutely identical
in its results; it is the saturation of a foreign body by either the
intelligent vital electricity, or the thought of the magnetizer and those
present.”
Nothing can give a better or a more just idea of it than the electric
battery gathering the fluid on its conductor, to obtain thereof a brute
force which manifests itself in sparks of light, etc. Thus, the electricity
accumulated on an isolated body acquires a power of reaction equal
to the action, either for charging, magnetizing, decomposing,
inflaming, or for discharging its vibrations far away. These are the
visible effects of the blind, or crude electricity produced by blind
elements—the word blind being used by the table itself in
contradistinction to the intelligent electricity. But there evidently
exists a corresponding electricity produced by the cerebral pile of
man; this soul-electricity, this spiritual and universal ether, which is
the ambient, middle nature of the metaphysical universe, or rather of
the incorporeal universe, has to be studied before it is admitted by
science, which, having no idea of it, will never know anything of the
great phenomenon of life until she does.
“It appears that to manifest itself the cerebral electricity requires
the help of the ordinary statical electricity; when the latter is lacking
in the atmosphere—when the air is very damp, for instance—you
can get little or nothing of either tables or mediums....
“There is no need for the ideas to be formulated very precisely in
the brains of the persons present; the table discovers and formulates
them itself, in either prose or verse, but always correctly; the table
requires time to compose a verse; it begins, then it erases a word,
corrects it, and sometimes sends back the epigram to our address ...
if the persons present are in sympathy with each other, it jokes and
laughs with us as any living person could. As to the things of the
exterior world, it has to content itself with conjectures, as well as
ourselves; it (the table) composes little philosophical systems,
discusses and maintains them as the most cunning rhetorician
might. In short, it creates itself a conscience and a reason properly
belonging to itself, but with the materials it finds in us....

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