ey were right.

[46] _Phaedo._

THE SECRET DOCTRINE

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_The value of man does not consist in the truth which he
possesses, or means to possess, but in the sincere pain which he
hath taken to find it out. For his powers do not augment by
possessing truth, but by investigating it, wherein consists his
only perfectibility. Possession lulls the energy of man, and makes
him idle and proud. If God held inclosed in his right hand
absolute truth, and in his left only the inward lively impulse
toward truth, and if He said to me: Choose! even at the risk of
exposing mankind to continual erring, I most humbly would seize
His left hand, and say: Father, give! absolute truth belongs to
Thee alone._

G.E. LESSING, _Nathan the Wise_
#/

CHAPTER IV

_The Secret Doctrine_

I

God ever shields us from premature ideas, said the gracious and wise
Emerson; and so does nature. She holds back her secrets until man is
fit to be entrusted with them, lest by rashness he destroy himself.
Those who seek find, not because the truth is far off, but because the
discipline of the quest makes them ready for the truth, and worthy to
receive it. By a certain sure instinct the great teachers of our race
have regarded the highest truth less as a gift bestowed than as a
trophy to be won. Everything must not be told to everybody. Truth is
power, and when held by untrue hands it may become a plague. Even
Jesus had His "little flock" to whom He confided much which He kept
from the world, or else taught it in parables cryptic and veiled.[47]
One of His sayings in explanation of His method is quoted by Clement
of Alexandria in his _Homilies_:

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It was not from grudgingness that our Lord gave the charge in
a certain Gospel: "_My mystery is for Me and the sons of My
house_."[48]
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This more withdrawn teaching, hinted in the saying of the Master, with
the arts of spiritual culture employed, has come to be known as the
Secret Doctrine, or the Hidden Wisdom. A persistent tradition affirms
that throughout the ages, and in every land, behind the system of
faith accepted by the masses an inner and deeper doctrine has been
held and taught by those able to grasp it. This hidden faith has
undergone many changes of outward expression, using now one set of
symbols and now another, but its central tenets have remained the
same; and necessarily so, since the ultimates of thought are ever
imm