Well, plans are always changing, and a chance communication last night has persuaded me to set aside one book in favor of another, at least for now.
I am now engaged in translating “Des Erreurs et de la Verité” (Of Errors and Truth) by Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin. Printed in 1782, it was his first book, published under the nom de plume of the Unknown Philosopher. It will take some time (it’s not a short book!), but I will persevere!
As a foretaste, here is his definition of ‘Truth’, which contains a phrase which will be familiar to all practicing Martinists:
“One can therefore agree from now on that the current misfortune of man is not in ignoring the fact that there is a truth, but in misunderstanding the nature of this truth; because those very people who have intended to deny and destroy it never thought they could succeed without having another truth to substitute for it. And indeed, they dressed their fantastical opinions in power, in immutability, in universality: in a word, all the properties of a Being both real and existing by itself, as they felt that a Truth cannot be such without existing absolutely, being invariable and absolutely independent, containing with itself the source of its existence; since, if it had received it from another Principle, the latter could plunge it back into nothingness or inaction from which it had drawn it forth.”
