tive under the idea of God, it is
endowed with supernatural force and is then, as I understand it, the
alchemists' philosophical mercury and his valued salt of mercury. It is no
less his sovereign treacle, etc. (H. A., p. 53). The progress of the work
points to some kind of unity as the goal which, however, very few men
attain except in words (H. A., p. 157). The hermetic writers set up the
claim to a complete agreement in their teachings, but this agreement is
restricted to some principles of vital significance in their doctrine,
which have reference almost exclusively to a definite practice; probably
to a complete setting to work of the consciousness of duty, which is what
Kant claims to do with his categorical imperative: "An unreasoning, though
not unreasonable, obedience to an experienced, imperious sense of duty,
leaving the result to God; and this I am disposed to call the Way."

Do thy duty!
Ask not after the result of thy doing!
Without dependence thereon carry out that which is thy duty!
Whoever acts without attachment to the world, that man attains the
loftiest goal.

And the like in many places in the Bhagavad-Gita.

Now the end is perhaps the fruit of this obedience. It may be that the
steady preservation of the inward unity, which regards with composure all
external vicissitudes, leads man finally to some special experience, by
which a seal of confirmation is set upon what was first a mere trust in
the ultimate blessing of rectitude (H. A., p. 128). The hermetic
philosophers would have the conscience known as the Way or as the base of
the work, but with regard to the peculiar wonder work of alchemy
(transmutation) they place the chief value on love; it effects the
transformation of the _subject_ into the _object_ loved (H. A., p. 132).

Arabi: "It is a fundamental principle of love that thou becomest the real
essence of the beloved (God) in that thou givest up thy individuality and
disappearest in him. Blessedness is the abiding place of the divine and
holy joy." (Horten, Myst., I, p. 9.)

Similarly we find in the yoga primers that the spirit, by sinking into an
object of perception, becomes identical with the object. The object need
not be the very highest, but a gradation is possible. Arabi, too,
recognizes a gradation of objects, as they correspond, as correlates of
sinking or surrender, to the different mystical states. [Colors, etc., of
alchemy.] Two passag