Magic, or the Secret System

XVI

Preface.

must be spoken in this manner. And even if some of these secret points could have been spoken in the common tongue, or rather, could have been expressed more clearly, there is nevertheless in the intellectual realm, just as in the sensory realm, a certain economy: Oekonomie, referring here to the careful, strategic distribution of spiritual truth, according to which light and shadow must be distributed for certain times and certain people.

The methodical spirit of both writings The author refers to Saint-Martin’s two major works: Of Errors and Truth and the Natural Table of Relations aims to unite what is usually kept separate, and to make a single science: Wissenschaft, used here in the older sense of a systematic, unified body of knowledge out of them all *), based on the premise that there is only one universal light in which all colors—that is, all modes of visibility—unite, so that every object then appears in its own way quite correctly and in its true relation to the whole. Upon this unification are founded the peculiar advantages of this system, which are discussed in the original: Tableau, referring to Saint-Martin's Tableau Naturel des Rapports (1782) Natural Table, Part II, pages 115–120, just as the author original: Verf., abbreviation for Verfasser also seeks to show that

*) original: Des Err. et de la vérité. p. 543. Of Errors and Truth, page 543.