All this is possible; and, for the moment, we need not go into the matter. But that, possessing the secret of this force and of many others, transmitted from Hierophant to Candidate, or, as they say “from mouth to ear,” the experts in occult science do not divulge it and place it at the service of humanity: this is the great reproach brought against them; and for all those who are not aware that the end of Initiation is not power and material happiness but wisdom, development and the uplifting of the inner being it is the best proof that they are cheats and impostors. It may be that, driven into a corner, they are silent because they have nothing to tell us; but the argument is not so unanswerable as those who avail themselves of it are inclined to think. We shall perhaps see this before long. It is indeed not impossible that one day some accident of knowledge will place one or other of our scientists in a position analogous to that of these Masters or Initiates. To him also the terrible question of the necessary silence will then present itself. We have but lately witnessed in this war the insensate and demoniacal use which man has made of certain inventions. What will happen if other energies are placed in his hands, energies far more formidable, which we seem to be on the point of discovering and releasing? Man is not ready to know more of such matters than he now knows. The safety of the species is at stake. Humanity, which is hardly emerging from its infancy, or has only just attained the dangerous period of adolescence (it would be about sixteen or seventeen years of age, according to Dr. Jaworski’s well-supported and striking historic parallel), has already passed the limit of the inventions which it is able to assimilate or endure without incurring the risk of death. Almost all of them, from the subjection of steam and the still dubious taming of electricity, have done it incomparably more harm than good. Explosives, for example, which have helped it to build a few roads--a work which the Romans, for that matter, did quite as well as we do--to open up a few mines, to pierce a few tunnels, have cost it millions of young lives.