Page 18 - Gnosis volume 2

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face . This constituted a sort of "safety-valve", more or less stifling the bestial instincts
in man by overwhelming him by the fatigue of daily toil.

*
* *

As the material conditions prescribed for the new era will very soon be fulfilled, it
remains to assemble the appropriate conditions on the moral plane. But one does not

generally realize what these conditions can be. For here, as elsewhere, what is new is

unknown, in short, inconceivable. Today, as in the past, man walks blindly, unless he is

enlightened - as in olden times - by the Revelation handed down to us by the true
Prophets.

However, the inertia which is a characteristic of human thought, and the secular habit

man has of referring to an established scale of values by giving it the force of a

categorical imperative, renders the task of the Prophets, difficult, thankless and
dangerous.

Comfort, the watchword of Progress, under its different aspects and in varying

degrees, suffices as a goal to the majority of the civilized men of our epoch. In these

conditions - which are ours at the moment - man accepts divine values only in small
doses, and only if they do not disturb his bourgeois or socialistic-communistic

conscience, or the material well-being he has acquired.

The danger in such an attitude lies in the fact that it is natural, and so, supported by

an elemental force. The law is explicit on this point. No man also ha-

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Genesis, III, 19.