A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century A.D. v2.c33.s1.22

v2.c33.s1.22

In the above delineation the poet has done no more than bare justice to the inward longings of an ideal alchemist, who is only an honest seeker after truth. The spiritual and thought-world has always transgressed all barriers of time and space. Kanāda, Patañjali and Nāgārjuna of India and Heraclitus, Empedocles and Plato and the rest—they all form a holy fraternity; aye, these prophets and oracles of the intellect belong to a "lofty and sequestered class," "the high-priesthood of the pure reason, the *Trismegisti*, the expounders of the principles of thought from age to age. When at long intervals we turn over their abstruse pages, wonderful seems, the calm and grand air of these few, these great spiritual lords, who have walked in the world,—these of the old religion,—dwelling in a worship which makes the sanctities of Christianity look *parvenues* and popular; for ‘persuasion is in soul, but necessity is in intellect.’ "*