This attempt to define gold as a symbol ends with the indication of an ubiquitous and immanent divinity in everything.  Thus it is always:  in attempting to dislodge a single voussoir from the arch of truth, the temple itself is shaken, so cunningly are the stones fitted together.  All roads lead to Rome, and every symbol is a key to the Great Mystery:  for example, read in the light of these correspondences, the alchemist’s transmutation of base metals into gold, is seen to be the sublimation of man’s lower nature into “that highest golden sheath, which is Brahman.”

Keeping the first sequence clearly in mind, let us now attempt to trace another, parallel to it:  the feminine of which the first may be considered the corresponding masculine.  Silver is a white, ductile metallic element.  In coinage it is the synonym for ready cash,—­gold in the bank is silver in the pocket; hence, in a sense, silver is the reflection, or the second power of gold.  Just as ruddy gold is correlated with fire, so is pale silver with water; and as fire is affiliated with the sun, so do the waters of the earth follow the moon in her courses.  The golden sun, the silver moon:  these commonly employed descriptive adjectives themselves supply the correlation we are seeking; another indication of its validity lies in the fact that one of the characteristics of water is its power of reflecting; that moonlight is reflected sunlight.  If gold is the mind, silver is the body, in which the mind is imaged, objectified; if gold is flamelike love, silver is brooding affection; and in the highest regions of consciousness, beauty is the feminine or form side of truth—­its silver mirror.

There are two forces in the world, one of projection, the other of recall; two states, activity and rest.  Nature, with tireless ingenuity, everywhere publishes this fact:  in bursting bud and falling seed, in the updrawn waters and the descending rain; throw a stone into the air, and when the impulse is exhausted, gravity brings it to earth again.  In civilized society these centrifugal and centripetal forces find expression in the anarchic and radical spirit which breaks down and re-forms existing institutions, and in the conservative spirit which preserves and upbuilds by gradual accretion; they are analogous to igneous and to aqueous action in the formation and upbuilding of the earth itself, and find their prototype again in man and woman:  man, the warrior, who prevails by the active exercise of his powers, and woman, “the treasury of the continued race,” who conquers by continual quietness.  Man and woman symbolize forces centrifugal and centripetal not alone in their inner nature, and in the social and economic functions peculiar to each, but in their physical aspects and peculiarities as well, for man is small of flank and broad of shoulder, with relatively large extremities, i.e., centrifugal:  while woman is formed with broad hips, narrow shoulders, and small feet