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ROSICRUCIANISM, ALCHEMY, AND MAGIC. 201
of the Rosicrucian Society have more claim on our notice.
As in their theological views, so in these they are simply
the representatives of a certain school of thought current at
their epoch. In its aspirations, as distinguished from its
methods, this school was considerably in advance of the scien-
tific orthodoxy of the moment. Looking with piercing glance
" Into great Nature's open eye,
To see within it trembling lie
The portrait of the Deity,"
they dreamed of a universal synthesis, and combining profound
contemplation with keen observant faculties, the ex-
perimental with a priori methods, they sought to arrive at
those realities which underlie
"
phenomena, in more common
but more emblematic words," they sought for the substance
which is at the base of all the vulgar metals. Mystics in
an age of scientific and religious materialism, they were
connected by an unbroken chain with the theurgists
of the
first Christian centuries ; they were alchemists in the
spiritual sense and the professors of a divine magic.
Their
disciples, the Eosicrucians, followed closely in their foot-
steps, and the claims of the " Fanaa " and " Confessio " must
be viewed in the light of the great elder claims of alchemy
and magic. In these documents we find I. The doctrine
of the microcosmus, which considers man as containing the
potentialities of the whole universe,
or macrocosmus. Ac-
cording to Paracelsus, who first developed this suggestive
teaching from obscure hints in the Kabbalistic books, the
macrocosmus and the microcosmus are one. " They are one con-
stellation, one influence, one breath, one harmony, one time,
one metal, one fruit." Each part of the great organism acts
upon "the corresponding part of the small organism in the
same sense as the various organs of the human body are inti-