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THE MYSTERY LANGUAGE
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that they have irrevocably disappeared--as far as the power of recovering them with certainty could reach. It is therefore possible that, in the process of transference from one set of signs to another—as when the Hebrew text was written in the square Chaldee character, in which it has ever since been handed down and preserved--the original ideographs, or word-signs, were subjected to changes which have more or less modified their primary significance ; and in any case every attempting re-interpreter must be only too painfully aware of the difficulties involved in his undertaking, and the possible errors into which he is liable to be betrayed.
I well remember how it first dawned upon me that a teaching other than that which was attributed to it by the received translations could be drawn from the Kosmogony prefixed to the book of Genesis. I found on analyzing the word-sign Aur (light) that it primarily signified " combustion " and this in its more vehement form "volcanic action.” On inaking this discovery I reconsidered the preceding statement of the antecedent condition of the earth through a similar analysis of the word-signs by which that condition was expressed.. From this I learnt that T (0) hu (thou-causing to be) signified" action," and B(0) hu (against causting to be). "reaction." That Kh (O) sh (e) c (hath deprived thee) represented " inertia''---not in the inertia of persistence of modern scientists, but the inertia of inaction or resistance to activity. That T'ho-m (Thou—" causing, them to be") pointed to an internal generative action.
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