So far from weakening the respect and awe with which mere symbols are regarded, their very obscurity and lack of meaning will ensure their position and inviolability. The vogue for mysticism in poetry, art, and religion reflects this love of symbolism. Men, from the very indolence of their minds, love to set up symbols and to worship them, without verifying the truths they are supposed to represent, for symbols are easily acquired and easily perceived, and dispense with the arduous necessity of probing reality and the mental discipline without which truth cannot be reached. The power of words and symbols is entirely independent of their real meaning. As we have already shown, the most meaningless and the most obscure phrases are, as a rule, for that very reason the most potent. Such terms as liberty, equality, democracy, socialism, etc., whose meanings are so vague that whole libraries do not exhaust their possible interpretations, are solemnly uttered as though they were magic spells, at the very sound of which all problems disappear. Symbolism and mysticism form the fanatic's charter of licence. They revel in the dim obscurity which intensifies the false brightness of their symbols. They welcome the emotional domination of their minds that they may abandon themselves to passions and feelings, and by developing their _subjective_[83] powers, infect the masses with their madness. A true metaphysics, it is well to remember, is the very antithesis of mysticism, for it aims at the elimination of symbols; its method is to co-ordinate and synthesize, and by means of the systematization of materia to penetrate through and beyond, towards a realization of direction and of value; it tests the highest powers of the intellect.