In support of this statement it is argued that the evidence of natural reason, even in the affairs of common life, is intuition, that intuitive faith has a certainty above and independent of reason, that the subsistence of universals in the human mind includes a promise far beyond itself, and is stable proof of another subsistence, however consciously unknown. The true methods and conditions of self-knowledge are to be learned from the ancient writers. The discovery of the veritable Light of alchemy is the reward of an adequate scrutiny of true psychical experience. Alchemy proposes “such a reducation of nature as shall discover this latex without destroying her vehicle, but only the modal life; and professes that this has not alone been proved possible, but that man by rationally conditionating has succeeded in developing into action the Recreative Force.” The One Thing needful, the sole act which must be perfectly accomplished that man may know himself, is the exaltation, by the adequately purified spirit, of the cognising faculty into intellectual reminiscence. The transcendental philosophy of the mysteries entirely hinges on the purification of the whole understanding, without which they promise nothing. The end in view is identical with Hermetists, Theurgists, and with the ancient Greek mysteries alike. It is the conscious and hypostatic union of the intellectual soul with Deity, and its participation in the life of God; but the conception included in this divine name is one infinitely transcendental, and in Hermetic operations, above all, it must ever be remembered that God is within us. “The initiated person sees the Divine Light itself, without any form or figure--that light which is the true _astrum solis_, the mineral spiritual sun, which is the Perpetual Motion of the Wise, and that Saturnian Salt, which developed to intellect and made erect, subdues all nature to His will. It is the Midnight Sun of Apuleius, the Ignited Stone of Anaxagoras, the Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, the Armed Magnet of Helvetius, the Fiery Chariot of Mercaba, and the Stone with the new name written on it which is promised to him that overcometh, by the initiating Saviour of mankind.” This method of interpreting the Hermetic allegories is calculated to exalt the alchemists indefinitely in the estimation of all thinking minds. From possibly avaricious investigators of a by-way of physical science, they are transfigured into dreamers of the sublimest imaginable dream, while if that which they conceived was accomplished, they are divine and illuminated monarchs who are throned on the pinnacles of eternity, having dominion over their infinite souls.