ings we
memorize and are told by persons or books. Tomlinson of Berkeley Square
was a learned man. When we think of a learned man, we picture him as one
seated in a library surrounded by tomes that top the shelves.

Wisdom is the distilled essence of what we have learned from experience.
It is that which helps us to live, work, love and make life worth living
for all we meet. Men may be very learned, and still be far from wise.

Pythagoras was one of those strange beings who are born with a desire to
know, and who finally comprehending the secret of the Sphinx, that there
is really nothing to say, insist on saying it. That is, vast learning is
augmented by a structure of words, and on this is built a theogony.
Practically he was a priest.

Worked into all priestly philosophies are nuggets of wisdom that shine
like stars in the darkness and lead men on and on.

All great religions have these periods of sanity, otherwise they would
have no followers at all. The followers, understanding little bits of
this and that, hope finally to understand it all. Inwardly the initiates
at the shrine of their own conscience know that they know nothing. When
they teach others they are obliged to pretend that they, themselves,
fully comprehend the import of what they are saying. The novitiate
attributes his lack of perception to his own stupidity, and many great
teachers encourage this view.

"Be patient, and you shall some day know," they say, and smile frigidly.

And when credulity threatens to balk and go no further, magic comes to
the rescue and the domain of Hermann and Kellar is poached upon.

Mystery and miracle were born in Egypt. It was there that a system was
evolved, backed up by the ruler, of religious fraud so colossal that
modern deception looks like the bungling efforts of an amateur. The
government, the army, the taxing power of the State, were sworn to
protect gigantic safes in which was hoarded--nothing. That is to say,
nothing but the pretense upon which cupidity and self-hypnotized
credulity battened and fattened.

All institutions which through mummery, strange acts, dress and ritual,
affect to know and impart the inmost secrets of creation and ultimate
destiny, had their rise in Egypt. In Egypt now are only graves, tombs,
necropolises and silence. The priests there need no soldiery to keep
their secrets safe. Ammon-Ra, who once ruled the universe, being finally
exorcised by Yaveh, is now as dead as the mummie