return into the domain of unity. As we have observed in the _Doctrine of Magic_, Voltaire discovered that the Hebrew word for cherub signifies a bull and was highly amused at the story. He might have been less entertained, had he recognised in the angel with the head of a bull, the image of an obscure symbolism and in the revolving sword of fire those flashes of ill-understood and illusory truth which provided, after the Fall, a pretext to the idolatry of nations. The burning sword typified also that light which man knew no longer how to direct, so that, instead of governing its force, he was made subject to its fatal influence. The great magical work, understood in an absolute sense, is the conquest and direction of the burning sword, and the cherub is the angel or soul of the earth, represented invariably under the figure of a bull in the Ancient Mysteries. Hence in Mithraic symbolism, the master of light is seen vanquishing the bull of earth and plunging into his flank that sword which sets free the life, represented by drops of blood. The first consequence of Eve’s sin is the death of Abel. By separating love from understanding she separated it also from power, and this, reduced to blindness and in the bondage of earthly desires, became jealous of love and slew it. The children of Cain perpetuated the crime of their father; the daughters whom they brought into the world were disastrously beautiful but, being void of love, they were born for the damnation of angels[85] and for the scandal of the descendants of Seth. After the deluge and as a sequel to the prevarication of Ham, some part of the mystery of which has been already indicated, the children of men attempted to realise an insensate project, by constructing an universal pantacle and palace. It was a vast experiment in socialistic equality, and the phalansterium of Fourier is a sorry conception in comparison with the tower of Babel.[86] The latter was an active protestation against the hierarchy of knowledge, a citadel built against floods and tempests, a promontory from the elevation of which the deified people would soar above the atmosphere and its commotions. But one does not ascend to knowledge on ladders of stone; the hierarchic degrees of the spirit are not built with mortar like the stories of a tower. Against such a materialised hierarchy anarchy itself protested, and men ceased to understand one another—a fatal lesson and one misinterpreted utterly by those who in our own days have dreamed of another Babel. The negations of equality give answer to doctrines which are hierarchic only in the sense of brutality and materialism. Whenever the human race builds such a tower, the summit will be contested and the multitude will desert the base. To satisfy all ambitions, the summit must be broader than the base and the result an unstable edifice which will collapse at the smallest shock.