if it were presented to them. They reserve the "strong meat for men,"
while others furnish the "milk for babes." They reserve their pearls of
wisdom for the few elect, who recognize their value and who wear them in
their crowns, instead of casting them before the materialistic vulgar
swine, who would trample them in the mud and mix them with their
disgusting mental food. But still these men have never forgotten or
overlooked the original teachings of Hermes, regarding the passing on of
the words of truth to those ready to receive it, which teaching is
stated in The Kybalion as follows: "Where fall the footsteps of the
Master, the ears of those ready for his Teaching open wide." And again:
"When the ears of the student are ready to hear, then cometh the lips to
fill them with wisdom." But their customary attitude has always been
strictly in accordance with the other Hermetic aphorism, also in The
Kybalion: "The lips of Wisdom are closed, except to the ears of
Understanding."

There are those who have criticized this attitude of the Hermetists, and
who have claimed that they did not manifest the proper spirit in their
policy of seclusion and reticence. But a moment's glance back over the
pages of history will show the wisdom of the Masters, who knew the folly
of attempting to teach to the world that which it was neither ready or
willing to receive. The Hermetists have never sought to be martyrs, and
have, instead, sat silently aside with a pitying smile on their closed
lips, while the "heathen raged noisily about them" in their customary
amusement of putting to death and torture the honest but misguided
enthusiasts who imagined that they could force upon a race of barbarians
the truth capable of being understood only by the elect who had advanced
along The Path.

And the spirit of persecution has not as yet died out in the land. There