VIII
THE IDOLS
For more than forty centuries it has been the effort of great minds who have attained liberty to extend this blessing to others; to liberate humanity and to teach men to see reality without fear or error, to look themselves in the face without false pride or false humility and to recognise their weakness and their strength, that they may know their true position in the universe. They have illumined the path with the brightness of their lives and their example, like the star of the magi, that mankind may have light.
Their efforts have failed. For more than forty centuries humanity has remained in bondage—I do not say to masters (for such are of the order of the flesh, of which I am not speaking here; and their chains break sooner or later) but to the phantoms of their own minds. Such servitude comes from within. We grow faint in
