Theosophical Siftings

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Excerpt from Theosophical Siftings: T. P. S., 1889-90 From the very cradle of the greatest civilizations of Antiquity, the precious metals, Gold and Silver, have formed the basis of commercial transactions, facilitated their expansion, and contributed to the mutual intercourse and welfare of mankind. Commerce made easy leads to mutual advancement, civilization, and the spread of knowledge. Gold and Silver must necessarily, at first, have been obtained from the localities where Nature had deposited them. When their great convenience had once established them in general use as the means of obtaining this world's goods - which are considered to be not only the necessaries of life, but also the product of the toil, industry and ingenuity of some classes of men, or of the luxuries and special fruits of one richly endowed soil and climate to be transported to other countries not so favoured - it is evident that the desire of men to possess as much as possible of the precious metals would stimulate some more ambitious and cleverer than their fellows to try to imitate the processes of Nature. From what we now know to be the extreme difficulty of it, we might reasonably suppose that no one, by the exercise of a mere physical intellect, would be able to succeed in doing so. Gold is mentioned at the earliest period of history, but before the time of Hermes Trismegistus there is no early record of anyone having in this way succeeded in Chrusopoieia. Whether there are not slight evidences of its having been so performed, under peculiar circumstances, in later times, we shall allude to further on. We may take it as presumptive evidence that it was not so done, because we may be sure that if it had been many would have done it, and gold, which was then, at least, the scarcest of all metals, would have become so plentiful that the market would have been over supplied, and it would have lost its value and use as a convenient mode of exchange. The history of the primitive world gives not the slightest indication that this ever took place. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.