the law and the word by t. troward _late divisional judge, punjab. honorary member of the medico-legal society of new york. first vice-president international new thought alliance_ author of the "edinburgh lectures on mental science," etc. new york robert m. mcbride & company copyright, by s.a. troward _published, may, eighth printing, june, _ the law and the word printed in the united states of america. contents chapter page foreword iii i some facts in nature ii some psychic experiences iii man's place in the creative order iv the law of wholeness v the soul of the subject vi the promises vii death and immortality viii transferring the burden foreword thomas troward an appreciation how is one to know a friend? certainly not by the duration of acquaintance. neither can friendship be bought or sold by service rendered. nor can it be coined into acts of gallantry or phrases of flattery. it has no part in the small change of courtesy. it is outside all these, containing them all and superior to them all. to some is given the great privilege of a day set apart to mark the arrival of a total stranger panoplied with all the insignia of friendship. he comes unannounced. he bears no letter of introduction. no mutual friend can vouch for him. suddenly and silently he steps unexpectedly out of the shadow of material concern and spiritual obscurity, into the radiance of intimate friendship, as a picture is projected upon a lighted screen. but unlike the phantom picture he is an instant reality that one's whole being immediately recognizes, and the radiance of fellowship that pervades his word, thought and action holds all the essence of long companionship. unfortunately there are too few of these bright messengers of god to be met with in life's pilgrimage, but that judge troward was one of them will never be doubted by the thousands who are now mourning his departure from among us. those whose closest touch with him has been the reading of his books will mourn him as a friend only less than those who listened to him on the platform. for no books ever written more clearly expressed the author. the same simple lucidity and gentle humanity, the same effort to discard complicated non-essentials, mark both the man and his books. although the spirit of benign friendliness pervades his writings and illuminated his public life, yet much of his capacity for friendship was denied those who were not privileged to clasp hands with him and to sit beside him in familiar confidence. only in the intimacy of the fireside did he wholly reveal his innate modesty and simplicity of character. here alone, glamoured with his radiating friendship, was shown the wealth of his richly-stored mind equipped by nature and long training to deal logically with the most profound and abstruse questions of life. here indeed was proof of his greatness, his unassuming superiority, his humanity, his keen sense of honour, his wit and humour, his generosity and all the characteristics of a rare gentleman, a kindly philosopher and a true friend. to judge troward was given the logician's power to strip a subject bare of all superfluous and concealing verbiage, and to exhibit the gleaming jewels of truth and reality in splendid simplicity. this supreme quality, this ability to make the complex simple, the power to subordinate the non-essential, gave to his conversation, to his lectures, to his writings, and in no less degree to his personality, a direct and charming naïveté that at once challenged attention and compelled confidence and affection. his sincerity was beyond question. however much one might differ from him in opinion, at least one never doubted his profound faith and complete devotion to truth. his guileless nature was beyond ungenerous suspicions and selfish ambitions. he walked calmly upon his way wrapped in the majesty of his great thoughts, oblivious to the vexations of the world's cynicism. charity and reverence for the indwelling spirit marked all his human relations. tolerance of the opinions of others, benevolence and tenderness dwelt in his every word and act. yet his careful consideration of others did not paralyze the strength of his firm will or his power to strike hard blows at wrong and error. the search for truth, to which his life was devoted, was to him a holy quest. that he could and would lay a lance in defence of his opinions is evidenced in his writings, and has many times been demonstrated to the discomfiture of assailing critics. but his urbanity was a part of himself and never departed from him. not to destroy but to create was his part in the world. in developing his philosophy he built upon the foundation of his predecessors. no good and true stone to be found among the ruins of the past, but was carefully worked into his superstructure of modern thought, radiant with spirituality, to the building of which the enthusiasm of his life was devoted. to one who has studied judge troward, and grasped the significance of his theory of the "universal sub-conscious mind," and who also has attained to an appreciation of henri bergson's theory of a "universal livingness," superior to and outside the material universe, there must appear a distinct correlation of ideas. that intricate and ponderously irrefutable argument that bergson has so patiently built up by deep scientific research and unsurpassed profundity of thought and crystal-clear reason, that leads to the substantial conclusion that man has leapt the barrier of materiality only by the urge of some external pressure superior to himself, but which, by reason of infinite effort, he alone of all terrestrial beings has succeeded in utilizing in a superior manner and to his advantage: this well-rounded and exhaustively demonstrated argument in favour of a super-livingness in the universe, which finds its highest terrestrial expression in man, appears to be the scientific demonstration of judge troward's basic principle of the "universal sub-conscious mind." this universal and infinite god-consciousness which judge troward postulates as man's sub-consciousness, and from which man was created and is maintained, and of which all physical, mental and spiritual manifestation is a form of expression, appears to be a corollary of bergson's demonstrated "universal livingness." what bergson has so brilliantly proven by patient and exhaustive processes of science, judge troward arrived at by intuition, and postulated as the basis of his argument, which he proceeded to develop by deductive reasoning. the writer was struck by the apparent parallelism of these two distinctly dissimilar philosophies, and mentioned the discovery to judge troward who naturally expressed a wish to read bergson, with whose writings he was wholly unacquainted. a loan of bergson's "creative evolution" produced no comment for several weeks, when it was returned with the characteristic remark, "i've tried my best to get hold of him, but i don't know what he is talking about." i mention the remark as being characteristic only because it indicates his extreme modesty and disregard of exhaustive scientific research. the bergson method of scientific expression was unintelligible to his mind, trained to intuitive reasoning. the very elaborateness and microscopic detail that makes bergson great is opposed to judge troward's method of simplicity. he cared not for complexities, and the intricate minutiæ of the process of creation, but was only concerned with its motive power--the spiritual principles upon which it was organized and upon which it proceeds. although the conservator of truth of every form and degree wherever found, judge troward was a ruthless destroyer of sham and pretence. to those submissive minds that placidly accept everything indiscriminately, and also those who prefer to follow along paths of well-beaten opinion, because the beaten path is popular, to all such he would perhaps appear to be an irreverent iconoclast seeking to uproot long accepted dogma and to overturn existing faiths. such an opinion of judge troward's work could not prevail with any one who has studied his teachings. his reverence for the fundamental truths of religious faith was profound, and every student of his writings will testify to the great constructive value of his work. he builded upon an ancient foundation a new and nobler structure of human destiny, solid in its simplicity and beautiful in its innate grandeur. but to the wide circle of judge troward's friends he will best and most gloriously be remembered as a teacher. in his magic mind the unfathomable revealed its depths and the illimitable its boundaries; metaphysics took on the simplicity of the ponderable, and man himself occupied a new and more dignified place in the cosmos. not only did he perceive clearly, but he also possessed that quality of mind even more rare than deep and clear perception, that clarity of expression and exposition that can carry another and less-informed mind along with it, on the current of its understanding, to a logical and comprehended conclusion. in his books, his lectures and his personality he was always ready to take the student by the hand, and in perfect simplicity and friendliness to walk and talk with him about the deeper mysteries of life--the life that includes death--and to shed the brilliant light of his wisdom upon the obscure and difficult problems that torment sincere but rebellious minds. his artistic nature found expression in brush and canvas and his great love for the sea is reflected in many beautiful marine sketches. but if painting was his recreation, his work was the pursuit of truth wherever to be found, and in whatever disguise. his life has enriched and enlarged the lives of many, and all those who knew him will understand that in helping others he was accomplishing exactly what he most desired. knowledge, to him, was worth only what it yielded in uplifting humanity to a higher spiritual appreciation, and to a deeper understanding of god's purpose and man's destiny. a man, indeed! he strove not for a place, nor rest, nor rule. he daily walked with god. his willing feet with service swift were shod-- an eager soul to serve the human race, illume the mind, and fill the heart with grace-- hope blooms afresh where'er those feet have trod. paul derrick. the law and the word chapter i some facts in nature if i were asked what, in my opinion, distinguishes the thought of the present day from that of a previous generation, i should feel inclined to say, it is the fact that people are beginning to realize that thought is a power in itself, one of the great forces of the universe, and ultimately the greatest of forces, directing all the others. this idea seems to be, as the french say, "in the air," and this very well expresses the state of the case--the idea is rapidly spreading through many countries and through all classes, but it is still very much "in the air." it is to a great extent as yet only in a gaseous condition, vague and nebulous, and so not leading to the practical results, both individual and collective, which might be expected of it, if it were consolidated into a more workable form. we are like some amateurs who want to paint finished pictures before they have studied the elements of art, and when they see an artist do without difficulty what they vainly attempt, they look upon him as a being specially favoured by providence, instead of putting it down to their own want of knowledge. the idea is true. thought _is_ the great power of the universe. but to make it practically available we must know something of the principles by which it works--that it is not a mere vaporous indefinable influence floating around and subject to no known laws, but that on the contrary, it follows laws as uncompromising as those of mathematics, while at the same time allowing unlimited freedom to the individual. now the purpose of the following pages, is to suggest to the reader the lines on which to find his way out of this nebulous sort of thought into something more solid and reliable. i do not profess, like a certain negro preacher, to "unscrew the inscrutable," for we can never reach a point where we shall not find the inscrutable still ahead of us; but if i can indicate the use of a screw-driver instead of a hatchet, and that the screws should be turned from left to right, instead of from right to left, it may enable us to unscrew some things which would otherwise remain screwed down tight. we are all beginners, and indeed the hopefulness of life is in realizing that there are such vistas of unending possibilities before us, that however far we may advance, we shall always be on the threshold of something greater. we must be like peter pan, the boy who never grew up--heaven defend me from ever feeling quite grown up, for then i should come to a standstill; so the reader must take what i have to say simply as the talk of one boy to another in the great school, and not expect too much. the first question then is, where to begin. descartes commenced his book with the words "cogito, ergo sum." "i think, therefore i am," and we cannot do better than follow his example. there are two things about which we cannot have any doubt--our own existence, and that of the world around us. but what is it in us that is aware of these two things, that hopes and fears and plans regarding them? certainly not our flesh and bones. a man whose leg has been amputated is able to think just the same. therefore it is obvious that there is something in us which receives impressions and forms ideas, that reasons upon facts and determines upon courses of action and carries them out, which is not the physical body. this is the real "i myself." this is the person we are really concerned with; and it is the betterment of this "i myself" that makes it worth while to enquire what our thought has to do in the matter. equally true it is on the other hand that the forces of nature around us do not think. steam, electricity, gravitation, and chemical affinity do not think. they follow certain fixed laws which we have no power to alter. therefore we are confronted at the outset by a broad distinction between two modes of motion--the movement of thought and the movement of cosmic energy--the one based upon the exercise of consciousness and will, and the other based upon mathematical sequence. this is why that system of instruction known as free masonry starts by erecting the two symbolic pillars jachin and boaz--jachin so called from the root "yak" meaning "one," indicating the mathematical element of law; and boaz, from the root "awáz" meaning "voice" indicating personal element of free will. these names are taken from the description in i kings vii, and ii chron. iii, of the building of solomon's temple, where these two pillars stood before the entrance, the meaning being that the temple of truth can only be entered by passing between them, that is, by giving each of these factors their due relation to the other, and by realizing that they are the two pillars of the universe, and that no real progress can be made except by finding the true balance between them. law and personality--these are the two great principles with which we have to deal, and the problem is to square the one with the other. let me start, then, by considering some well established facts in the physical world which show how the known law acts under certain known conditions, and this will lead us on in an intelligible manner to see how the same law is likely to work under as yet unknown conditions. if we had to deal with unknown laws as well as unknown conditions we should, indeed, be up a gum tree. fancy a mathematician having to solve an equation, both sides of which were entirely made up of unknown quantities--where would he be? happily this is not the case. the law is one throughout, and the apparent variety of its working results from the infinite variety of the conditions under which it may work. let us lay a foundation, then, by seeing how it works in what we call the common course of nature. a few examples will suffice. hardly more than a generation ago it was supposed that the analysis of matter could not be carried further than its reduction to some seventy primary chemical elements, which in various combinations produced all material substances; but there was no explanation how all these different elements came into existence. each appeared to be an original creation, and there was no accounting for them. but now-a-days, as the rustic physician says in molière's play of the "médecin malgré lui," "nous avons changé tout cela." modern science has shown conclusively that every kind of chemical atom is composed of particles of one original substance which appears to pervade all space, and to which the name of ether has been given. some of these particles carry a positive charge of electricity and some a negative, and the chemical atom is formed by the grouping of a certain number of negatively charged particles round a centre composed of positive electricity around which they revolve; and it is the number of these particles and the rate of their motion that determines the nature of the atom, whether, for instance, it will be an atom of iron or an atom of hydrogen, and thus we are brought back to plato's old aphorism that the universe consists of number and motion. the size of these etheric particles is small beyond anything but abstract mathematical conception. sir oliver lodge is reported to have made the following comparison in a lecture delivered at birmingham. "the chemical atom," he said, "is as small in comparison to a drop of water as a cricket-ball is compared to the globe of the earth; and yet this atom is as large in comparison to one of its constituent particles as birmingham town-hall is to a pin's head." again, it has been said that in proportion to the size of the particles the distance at which they revolve round the centre of the atom is as great as the distance from the earth to the sun. i must leave the realization of such infinite minuteness to the reader's imagination--it is beyond mine. modern science thus shows us all material substance, whether that of inanimate matter or that of our own bodies, as proceeding out of one primary etheric substance occupying all space and homogeneous, that is being of a uniform substance--and having no qualities to distinguish one part from another. now this conclusion of science is important because it is precisely the fact that out of this homogeneous substance particles are produced which differ from the original substance in that they possess positive and negative energy and of these particles the atom is built up. so then comes the question: what started this differentiation? the electronic theory which i have just mentioned takes us as far as a universal homogeneous ether as the source from which all matter is evolved, but it does not account for how motion originated in it; but perhaps another closely allied scientific theory will help us. let us, then, turn to the question of vibrations or waves in ether. in scientific language the length of a wave is the distance from the crest of one wave to that of the wave immediately following it. now modern science recognizes a long series of waves in ether, commencing with the smallest yet known measuring . micron, or about / , of an inch, in length, measured by professor schumann in , and extending to waves of many miles in length used in wireless telegraphy--for instance those employed between clifden in galway and glace bay in nova scotia are estimated to have a length of nearly four miles. these infinitesimally small ultra-violet or actinic waves, as they are called, are the principal agents in photography, and the great waves of wireless telegraphy are able to carry a force across the atlantic which can sensibly affect the apparatus on the other side; therefore we see that the ether of space affords a medium through which energy can be transmitted by means of vibrations. but what starts the vibrations? hertz announced his discovery of the electro-magnetic waves, now known by his name, in ; but, following up the labours of various other investigators, lodge, marconi and others finally developed their practical application after hertz's death which occurred in . to hertz, however, belongs the honour of discovering how to generate these waves by means of sudden, sharply defined, electrical discharges. the principle may be illustrated by dropping a stone in smooth water. the sudden impact sets up a series of ripples all round the centre of disturbance, and the electrical impulse acts similarly in the ether. indeed the fact that the waves flow in all directions from the central impulse is one of the difficulties of wireless telegraphy, because the message may be picked up in any direction by a receiver tuned to the same rate of vibration, and the interest for us consists in the hypothesis that thought-waves act in an analogous manner. that vibrations are excited by sound is beautifully exemplified by the eidophone, an instrument invented, i believe, by mrs. watts-hughes, and with which i have seen that lady experiment. dry sand is scattered on a diaphragm on which the eidophone concentrates the vibrations from music played near it. the sand, as it were, dances in time to the music, and when the music stops is found to settle into definite forms, sometimes like a tree or a flower, or else some geometrical figure, but never a confused jumble. perhaps in this we may find the origin of the legends regarding the creative power of orpheus' lyre, and also the sacred dances of the ancients--who knows! perhaps some critical reader may object that sound travels by means of atmospheric and not etheric waves; but is he prepared to say that it cannot produce etheric waves also. the very recent discovery of transatlantic telephoning tends to show that etheric waves can be generated by sound, for on the th of october, , words spoken in new york were immediately heard in paris, and could therefore only have been transmitted through the ether, for sound travels through the atmosphere only at the rate of about miles an hour, while the speed of impulses through ether can only be compared to that of light or , miles in a second. it is therefore a fair inference that etheric vibrations can be inaugurated by sound. perhaps the reader may feel inclined to say with the irishman that all this is "as dry as ditch-water," but he will see before long that it has a good deal to do with ourselves. for the present what i want him to realize by a few examples is the mathematical accuracy of law. the value of these examples lies in their illustration of the fact that the law can always be trusted to lead us on to further knowledge. we see it working under known conditions, and relying on its unchangeableness, we can then logically infer what it will do under other hypothetical conditions, and in this way many important discoveries have been made. for instance it was in this way that mendeléef, the russian chemist, assumed the existence of three then unknown chemical elements, now called scandium, gallium and germanium. there was a gap in the orderly sequence of the chemical elements, and relying on the old maxim--"natura nihil facit per saltum"--nature nowhere leaves a gap to jump over--he argued that if such elements did not exist they ought to, and so he calculated what these elements ought to be like, giving their atomic weight, chemical affinities, and the like; and when they were discovered many years later they were found to answer exactly to his description. he prophesied, not by guesswork, but by knowledge of the law; and in much the same way radium was discovered by professor and madame curie. in like manner hertz was led to the discovery of the electro-magnetic waves. the celebrated mathematician clerk-maxwell had calculated all particulars of these waves twenty-five years before hertz, on the basis of these calculations, worked out his discovery. again, neptune, the outermost known planet of our system was discovered by the astronomer galle in consequence of calculations made by leverrier. certain variations in the movements of the planets were mathematically unaccountable except on the hypothesis that some more remote planet existed. astronomers had faith in mathematics and the hypothetical planet was found to be a reality. instances of this kind might be multiplied, but as the french say "à quoi bon?" i think these will be sufficient to convince the reader that the invariable sequence of law is a factor to be relied upon, and that by studying its working under known conditions we may get at least some measure of light on conditions which are as yet unknown to us. let us now pass on to the human subject and consider a few examples of what is usually called the psychic side of our nature. walt whitman was quite right when he said that we are not all included between our hat and our boots; we shall find that our modes of consciousness and powers of action are not entirely restricted to our physical body. the importance of this line of enquiry lies in the fact that if we do possess extra-physical powers, these also form part of our personality and must be included in our estimate of our relation to our environment, and it is therefore worth our while to consider them. some very interesting experiments have been made by de rochas, an eminent french scientist, which go to show that under certain magnetic conditions the sensation of physical touch can be experienced at some distance from the body. he found that under these conditions the person experimented on is insensible to the prick of a needle run into his skin, but if the prick is made about an inch-and-a-half away from the surface of the skin he feels it. again at about three inches from this point he feels the prick of the needle, but is insensible to it in the space between these two points. then there comes another interval in which no sensation is conveyed, but at about three inches still further away he again feels the sensation, and so on; so that he appears to be surrounded by successive zones of sensation, the first about an inch-and-a-half from the body, and the others at intervals of about three inches each. the number of these zones seems to vary in different cases, but in some there are as many as six or seven, thus giving a radius of sensation, extending to more than twenty inches beyond the body. now to explain this we must have recourse to what i have already said about waves. the heart and the lungs are the two centres of automatic rhythmic movement in the body, and each projects its own series of vibrations into the etheric envelope. those projected by the lungs are estimated to be three times the length of those projected by the heart, while those projected by the heart are three times as rapid as those projected by the lungs. consequently if the two sets of waves start together the crest of every third wave of the rapid series of short waves will coincide with the crest of one of the long waves of the slower series, while the intermediate short waves will coincide with the depression of one of the long waves. now the effect of the crest of one wave overtaking that of another going in the same direction, is to raise the two together at that point into a single wave of greater amplitude or height than the original waves had by themselves; if the reader has the opportunity of studying the inflowing of waves on the seabeach he can verify this for himself. consequently when the more rapid etheric waves overtake the slower ones they combine to form a larger wave, and it is at these points that the zones of sensation occur. if the reader will draw a diagram of two waved lines travelling along the same horizontal line and so proportioned that the crest of each of the large waves coincides with the crest of every third wave of the small ones, he will see what i mean: and if he then recollects that the fall in the larger waves neutralizes the rise in the smaller ones, and that because this double series starts from the interior of the body the surface of the body comes just at one of these neutralized points, he will see why sensation is neutralized there; and he will also see why the succeeding zones of sensation are double the distance from each other that the first one is from the surface of the body; it is simply because the surface of the body cuts the first long wave exactly in the middle, and therefore only half that wave occurs outside the body. this is the explanation given by de rochas, and it affords another example of that principle of mathematical sequence of which i have spoken. it would appear that under normal conditions the double series of vibrations is spread all over the body, and so all parts are alike sensitive to touch. i think, then, we may assume on the basis of de rochas' experiments and others that there are such things as etheric vibrations proceeding from human personality, and in the next chapter i will give some examples showing that the psychic personality extends still further than these experiments, taken by themselves, would indicate--in fact that we possess an additional range of faculties far exceeding those which we ordinarily exercise through the physical body, and which must therefore be included in our conception of ourselves if we are to have an adequate idea of what we really are. chapter ii some psychic experiences the preceding chapter has introduced the reader to the general subject of etheric vibration as one of the natural forces of the universe, both as the foundation of all matter and as the medium for the transmission of energy to immense distances, and also as something continually emanating from human beings. in the present chapter i shall consider it more particularly in this last aspect, which, as included in our own personality, very immediately concerns ourselves. i will commence with an instance of the practical application of this fact. some years ago i was lunching at the house of lady ---- in company of a well-known mental healer whom i will call mr. y. and a well-known london physician whom i will call dr. w. mr. y. mentioned the case of a lady whose leg had been amputated above the knee some years previously to her coming under his care, yet she frequently felt pains in the (amputated) knee and lower part of the left leg and foot. dr. w. said this was to be attributed to the nerves which convey to the brain the sensation of the extremities, much as a telegraph line might be tapped in the middle, and mr. y. agreed that this was perfectly true on the purely physical side. but he went on to say, that accidentally putting his hand where the amputated foot should have been he felt it there. then it occurred to him that since there was no material foot to be touched, it must be through the medium of his own psychic body that the sensation of touch was conveyed to him, and accordingly he asked the lady to imagine that she was making various movements with the amputated limb, all of which he felt, and was able to tell her what each movement was, which she said he did correctly. then, to carry the experiment further, he reversed the process and with his hand moved the invisible leg and foot in various ways, all of which the lady felt and described. he then determined to treat the invisible leg as though it were a real one, and joined up the circuit by taking her left foot in his right hand and her right foot (the amputated one) in his left, with the result that she immediately felt relief; and after successive treatments in this way was entirely cured. a well authenticated case like this opens up a good many interesting questions regarding the psychic body, but the most important point appears to me to be that we are able to experience sensation by means of it. in this case, however, and those mentioned in the preceding chapter, the physical body was actually present, and if we stopped at this point, we might question whether its presence was not a _sine qua non_ for the action of the etheric vibrations. i will therefore pass on to a class of examples which show that very curious phenomena can take place without the physical body being on the spot. there are numerous well verified cases of the kind to be found in the records of the society for psychical research and in other books by trustworthy writers; but it may perhaps interest the present reader to hear one or two instances of my personal experience which, though they may not be so striking as some of those recorded by others, still point in the same direction. my first introduction to scotland was when i delivered the course of lectures in edinburgh which led to the publication of my first book, the "edinburgh lectures on mental science." the following years i gave a second course of lectures in edinburgh, but the friends who had kindly entertained me on the former occasion had in the meanwhile gone to live elsewhere. however, a certain mr. s., whose acquaintance i had made on my previous visit, invited me to stay with him for a day or two while i could look round for other accommodation, though, as it turned out, i remained at his house during the whole month i was in edinburgh. i had, however, never seen his house, which was on the opposite side of the town to where i had stayed before. i arrived there on a tuesday, and mr. s. and his family at once met me with the question: "what were you thinking of at ten o'clock on sunday evening?" i could not immediately recall this, and also wanted to know the reason of their question. "we have something curious to tell you," they replied, "but first try to remember what you were thinking of at ten o'clock on sunday evening--were you thinking about us?" then i recollected that about that time i was saying my usual prayers before going to bed and had asked that, if i could stay only a day or two with mr. s., i should be directed to a suitable place for the remainder of the time. "that explains it," they replied; and then they went on to tell me that at the hour in question mr. s. and his son, a young man of about twenty, had entered their dining-room together and seen me standing leaning against the mantel-shelf. they were both hard-headed scotchmen engaged in business in edinburgh, and certainly not the sort of people to conjure up fanciful imaginings, nor is it likely that the same fancy should have occurred to both of them; and therefore i can only suppose that they actually saw what they said they did. now i myself was in london at the time of this appearance in edinburgh, of which i had no consciousness whatever; at the same time the fact of my being seen in edinburgh exactly at the time when my thought, in prayer, was centred upon mr. s.'s house (which i had not then seen) is a coincidence suggesting that in some way my thought had made itself visible there in the image of my external personality. in this case, as i have said, i was not conscious of my psychic visit to edinburgh, but i will now relate a converse instance, which occurred in connection with my first visit there. at that time i had never been in scotland, and so far as i knew was never likely to go there. i was wide awake, writing in my study at norwood, where i then lived, when i suddenly found myself in a place totally unknown to me, where stood the ruins of an ancient abbey, part of which, however, was still roofed over and used as a place of worship. i felt much interested, and among other things i noted a latin inscription on a tablet in one of the walls. there seemed to be an invisible guide showing me over the place, who then pointed out a long low house opposite the abbey, and said: "this is the house of the clergyman of the abbey"; and i was then taken inside the house and shown a number of antique-looking rooms. then i came to myself, and found i was sitting at my writing-table in norwood. i had, however, a clear recollection of the place i had seen, but no idea where it was, or indeed whether any such place really existed. i also remembered a portion of the latin inscription, which i at once wrote down in a note-book, as my curiosity was aroused. as i have said, i had no reason at that time to suppose i should ever go to scotland, but some weeks later i was invited to lecture in edinburgh. another visitor in the house where i was a guest there, was the wife of the county court judge of cumberland, and i showed her and our hostess the part of the latin inscription i had retained, and suggested that perhaps it might exist somewhere in edinburgh. however nothing answering to what i had seen was to be found, so we relegated the whole thing to the region of unaccountable fancies, and thought no more about it. the judge's wife took her departure before me, and kindly invited me to spend a few days at their residence near carlisle on my return journey, which i did. one day she drove me out to see lanercost abbey, one of the show-places of the neighbourhood, and walking round the building i found in one of the walls the latin inscription in question. i called mrs. ----, who was a little way off, and said: "look at this inscription." she at once replied: "why! that is the very inscription we were all puzzling over in edinburgh!" it turned out to be an inscription in memory of the founder of the abbey, dating from somewhere in the eleven-hundreds. the whole place answered exactly to what i had seen, and the long low parsonage was there also. "i should have liked you to see it inside," said mrs. ----, "but i have never met the vicar, though i know his mother-in-law, so we must give it up." we were just entering our carriage when the garden-gate opened, and who should come out but the mother-in-law. "oh, mrs. ----," she said, addressing the judge's wife, "i am here on a visit and you must come in and take tea." so we went in and were shown over the house, much as i had been in my vision, and some portions were so old that, among other rooms, we were shown the one occupied by king edward i on his march against scotland in the year , when the scottish regalia was captured, and the celebrated crowning-stone was brought to england and placed in westminster abbey, where it has ever since remained--a stone having an occult relation to the history of the british and american peoples of the highest interest to both, but as there is already an extensive literature on this subject i will not enter upon it here. i will now relate another curious experience. we had only recently taken up our residence at norwood, when one day i was seated in the dining-room, but suddenly found myself in the hall, and saw two ladies going up the stairs. they passed close to me, and turning round the landing at the top of the stairs passed out of sight in a perfectly natural manner. they looked as solid as any one i have ever seen in my life. one of them was a stout lady with a rather florid complexion, apparently between forty-five and fifty, wearing a silk blouse with thin purple and white stripes. leaning on her arm was a slightly-built old lady with white ringlets, dressed all in black and wearing a lace mantilla. i noticed their appearance particularly. the next moment i found i was really sitting in the dining-room, and that the ladies i had seen were nothing but visionary figures. i wondered what it could mean, but as we had only recently taken the house, thought it better not to mention it to any of my family, for fear of causing them alarm. but a few days later i mentioned it to a mrs. f. who i knew had had some experience in such matters, and she said: "you have seen either some one who has lived in the house or who is going to live there." then the matter dropped. about a month later my wife arranged by correspondence for a certain miss b. to come as governess to our children. when she arrived there was no mistaking her identity. she was the stout lady i had seen, and the next morning she came down to breakfast dressed in the identical blouse with purple and white stripes. there was no mistaking her, but i was puzzled as to who the other figure could be whom i had seen along with her. i resolved, however, to say nothing about the matter until we became better acquainted, lest she should think that my mind was not quite balanced. i therefore held my peace for six months, at the end of which time i concluded that we knew enough of each other to allow one another credit for being fairly level-headed. then i thought, now if i tell her what i saw she may perhaps be acted upon by suggestion and imagine a resemblance between the unknown figure and some acquaintance of hers, so i will not begin by telling her of the vision, but will first ask if she knows any one answering to the description, and give her the reason afterwards. i therefore took a suitable opportunity of asking her if she knew any such person, describing the figure to her as accurately as i could. her look of surprise grew as i went on, and when i had finished she explained with astonishment: "why, mr. troward, where _could_ you have seen my mother? she is an invalid, and i am certain you have never seen her, and yet you have described her most accurately." then i told her what i had seen. she asked what i thought was the explanation of the appearance, and the only explanation i could give was, that i supposed she was on the look-out for a post and paid us a preliminary visit to see whether ours would suit her, and that, being naturally interested in her welfare, her mother had accompanied her. perhaps you will say: "what came of it?" well, nothing "came of it," nor did anything "come" of my psychic visits to edinburgh and lanercost abbey. such occurrences seem to be simple facts in nature which, though on some occasions connected with premonitions of more or less importance, are by no means necessarily so. they are the functioning of certain faculties which we all possess, but of the nature of which we as yet know very little. it will be noticed that in the first of these three cases i myself was the person seen, though unaware of the fact. in the last i was the percipient, but the persons seen by me were unconscious of their visit; and in the second case i was conscious of my presence at a place which i had never heard of, and which i visited some time after. in two of these cases, therefore, the persons, making the psychic visit, were not aware of having done so, while in the third, a memory of what had been seen was retained. but all three cases have this in common, that the psychic visit was not the result of an act of conscious volition, and also, that the psychic action took place at a long distance from the physical body. from these personal experiences, as well as from many well authenticated cases recorded by other writers, i should be inclined to infer that the psychic action is entirely independent of the physical body, and in support of this view i will cite yet another experience. it was about the year , when i was a young assistant commissioner in the punjab, that i was ordered to the small up-country station of akalpur,[ ] and took possession of the assistant commissioner's bungalow there. on the night of our arrival in the bungalow, my wife and i had our charpoys--light indian bedsteads--placed side by side in a certain room and went to bed. the last thing i remembered before falling asleep, was seeing my wife sitting up in bed, reading with a lamp on a small table beside her. suddenly i was awakened by the sound of a shot, and starting up, found the room in darkness. i immediately lit a candle which was on a chair by my bedside, and found my wife still sitting up with the book on her knee, but the lamp had gone out. "take me away, take me into another room," she exclaimed. "why, what is the matter?" i said. "did you not see it?" she replied. "see what?" i asked. "don't stop to ask any questions," she replied; "get me out of this room at once; i can't stop here another minute." i saw she was very frightened, so i called up the servants, and had our beds removed to a room on the other side of the house, and then she told me what she had seen. she said: "i was sitting reading as you saw me, when looking round, i saw the figure of an englishman standing close by my bedside, a fine-looking man with a large fair moustache and dressed in a grey suit. i was so surprised that i could not speak, and we remained looking at each other for about a minute. then he bent over me and whispered: 'don't be afraid,' and with that there was the sound of a shot, and everything was in darkness." "my dear girl, you must have fallen asleep over your book and been dreaming," i said. "no, i was wide awake," she insisted; "you were asleep, but i was awake all the time. but you heard the shot, did you not?" "yes," i replied, "that is what woke me--some one must have fired a shot outside." "but why should any one be shooting in our garden at nearly midnight?" my wife objected. it certain seemed strange, but it was the only explanation that suggested itself; so we had to agree to differ, she being convinced that she had seen a ghost, and that the shot had been inside the room, and i being equally convinced that she had been dreaming, and that the shot had been fired outside the house. the next morning the owner of the bungalow, an old widow lady, mrs. la chaire, called to make kindly enquiries as to whether she could be of any service to us on our arrival. after thanking her, my wife said: "i expect you will laugh at me, but i cannot help telling you there is something strange about the bungalow"; and she then went on to narrate what she had seen. instead of laughing the old lady looked more and more serious as she went on, and when she had done asked to be shown exactly where the apparition had appeared. my wife took her to the spot, and on being shown it old mrs. la chaire exclaimed: "this is the most wonderful thing i have ever heard of. eighteen years ago my bed was on the very spot where yours was last night, and i was lying in it too ill to move, when my husband, whom you have described most accurately, stood where you saw him and shot himself dead." this statement of the widow convinced me that my wife had really seen what she said she had, and had not dreamed it; and this experience has led me to make further enquiries into the nature of happenings of this kind, with the result, that after carefully eliminating all cases which could be accounted for in any other manner, i have found myself compelled to admit a considerable number of instances of what are called "ghosts," on the word of persons whose veracity and soundness of judgment i should not doubt on any other subject. it is often said that you never meet any one who has himself seen a ghost, but only those who have heard of somebody else seeing one. this i can entirely contradict, for i have met with many trustworthy persons of both sexes, who have given me accounts of such appearances having been actually witnessed by themselves. in conclusion, i may mention that i was telling this story some twenty years later to a colonel fox, who had known the unfortunate man who committed suicide, and he said to me: "do you know what were the last words he said to his wife?" "no," i replied. "the very same words he spoke to your wife," said colonel fox. this is the story i refer to in my book "bible mystery and bible meaning" as that of "the ghost that i did not see." i do not attempt to offer any explanation of it, but merely give the facts as they occurred, and the reader must form his own theory on the subject; but the reason i bring in this story in the present connection is, that in this instance there could be no question of the physical body contributing to the psychic phenomenon, since the person seen had been dead for nearly twenty years; and coupling this fact with the distance from the physical body at which the psychic action took place in the other cases i have mentioned, i think there is a very strong presumption that the psychic powers can, and do, act independently of the physical body; though of course it does not follow from this that they cannot also act in conjunction with it. on the other hand, a comparison of the present case with those previously mentioned, fails to throw any light on the important question whether the deceased feels any consciousness of the action which the percipient sees, or whether what is seen is like a sort of photograph impressed upon the atmosphere of a particular locality, and visible only to certain persons, who are able to sense etheric wave-lengths which are outside the range of the single octave forming the solar spectrum. it throws no light on this question, because, in the case of my being seen by mr. s. in edinburgh and that of miss b. and her mother being seen by me at norwood, none of us were conscious of having been at those places; while in the case of my psychic visit to lanercost abbey, and other similar experiences i have had, i have been fully aware of seeing the places in question. the evidence tells both ways, and i can therefore only infer that there are two modes of psychic action, in one of which the person projecting that action, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, experiences corresponding sensations, and the other in which he does not; but i am unable to offer any criterion by which the observer can, with certainty, distinguish between the two. it appears to me, that such instances as those i have mentioned, point to ranges of etheric action beyond those ordinarily recognized by physical science, but the principle seems to be the same, and it is for this reason that i have taken the modern scientific theory of etheric vibration as our starting-point. the universe is one great whole, and the laws of one part cannot contradict those of another; therefore the explanation of such queer happenings is not to be found by denying the well-ascertained laws of nature on the physical plane, but by considering whether these laws do not extend further. it is on this account that i would lay stress on the mathematical side of things, and have adduced instances where various discoveries have been made by following up the sequence indicated by the laws already known, and which have thus enabled us to fill up gaps in our knowledge, which would otherwise stop, or at least seriously hinder, our further progress. it is in this way that jachin helps boaz, and that the undeviating nature of law, so far from limiting us, becomes our faithful ally if we will only allow it to do so. i think, then, that the scientific idea of the ether, as a universal medium pervading all space, and permeating all substance, will help us to see that many things which are popularly called supernatural, are to be attributed to the action of known laws working under, as yet, unknown conditions, and therefore, when we are confronted with strange phenomena, a knowledge of the general principles involved, will show us in what direction to look for an explanation. now applying this to the present subject, we may reasonably argue, that since all physical matter is scientifically proved to consist of the universal ether in various degrees of condensation, there may be other degrees of condensation, forming other modes of matter, which are beyond the scope of physical vision and of our laboratory apparatus. and similarly, we may argue, that just as various effects can be produced on the physical plane, by the action of etheric waves of various lengths, so other effects might be produced on these finer modes of matter, by etheric waves of other lengths. and in this connection we must not forget that a gap occurs between the "dark heat" groups and the hertzian group, consisting of five octaves of waves, the lengths of which have been theoretically calculated, but whose action has not yet been discovered. here we admittedly have a wide field for the working of known laws under as yet unknown conditions; and again, how can we say that there are not ranges of unknown waves, yet smaller than the minute ultra-violet ones, which commence the present known scale, or transcending those largest ones, which bear our messages across the atlantic? mathematically, there is no limit to the scale in either direction; and so, taking our stand on the demonstrated facts of science, we find, that the known laws of nature point to their continuation in modes of matter and of force, of which we have as yet no conception. it is therefore not at all necessary to spurn the ground of established science to spread the wings of our fancy; rather it affords us the requisite basis from which to start, just as the aeronaut cannot rise without a solid surface from which to spring. now if we realize that the ether is an infinitely subtle fluid, pervading all space, we see that it must constitute a connecting link between all modes of substance, whether visible or invisible, in all worlds, and may therefore be called the universal medium; and following up our conception of the continuity of law, we may suppose that trains of waves, inconceivably smaller or greater than any known to modern science, are set up in this medium, in the same way as the electro-magnetic waves with which we are acquainted; that is, by an impulse which generates them from some particular point. in the region of finer forces we are now prospecting, this impulse might well be the desire or will of the spiritual entity which we ourselves are--that thinking, feeling, inmost essence of ourself, which is the "noumenon" of our individuality, and which, for the sake of brevity we call our "ego," a latin word which simply means "i myself." this idea of spiritual impulse is quite familiar to us in our every-day talk. we speak of an impulsive person, meaning one who acts on a sudden thought without giving due heed to consequences; so in our ordinary speech we look upon thought as the initial impulse, only we restrict this to the case of unregulated thought. but if unregulated thought acts as a centre of impulse, why should not regulated thought do the same? therefore we may accept the idea of thought as the initial impulse, which starts trains of waves in the universal medium, whether with or without due consideration, and having thus recognized its dynamic power, we must learn to make the impulsions we thus send forth intelligent, well defined, and directed to some useful purpose. the operator at some wireless station does not use his instruments to send out a lot of jumbled-up waves into the ether, but controls the impulsions into a definite and intelligible order, and we must do the same. on some such lines as these, then, we may picture the desire of the ego as starting a train of waves in the universal medium, which are reproduced in corresponding _form_ on reaching their destination. as with the electro-magnetic waves, they may spread all round, just as ripples do if we throw a stone into a pond; but they will only take form where there is a correspondence able to receive them. this is what in the language of electrical engineers is called "syntony," which means being tuned to the same rate of vibration, and no doubt it is from some such cause, that we sometimes experience what seem inexplicable feelings of attraction or repulsion towards different persons. this also appears to furnish a key to thought-transference, hypnotism, and other allied phenomena. if the reader questions whether thought is capable of generating impulses in the etheric medium i would refer him to the experiment mentioned in chapter xiv of my "edinburgh lectures on mental science," where i describe how, when operating with dr. baraduc's biometer, i found that the needle revolved through a smaller or large arc of the circle, in response to my mental intention of concentrating a smaller or larger degree of force upon it. perhaps you will say that the difference in the movement of the needle depended on the quantity of magnetism that was flowing from me, to say nothing of other known forces, such as heat, light, electricity, etc. well, that is precisely the proposition i am putting forward. what caused the difference in the intensity of the magnetic flow was my intention of varying it, so that we come back to mental action as the centre of impulsion from which the etheric waves were generated. if, then, such a demonstration can be obtained on the plane of purely physical matter, why need we doubt that the same law will work in the same way, in respect of those finer modes of substance, and wider ranges of etheric vibrations, which, starting from the basis of recognized physical science, the law of continuity would lead to by an orderly sequence, and which the occurrence of what, for want of a better name, we call occult phenomena require for their explanation? before passing on to the more practical generalizations to be drawn from the suggestions contained in this chapter, i may advert to an objection sometimes brought by the sceptical in this matter. they say: "how is it that apparitions are always seen in the dark?" and then they answer their own question by saying, it is because superstitious people are nervous in the dark and imagine all sorts of things. then they laugh and think they have disposed of the whole subject. but it is not disposed of quite so easily, for not only are there many well attested cases of such appearances in broad daylight, but there are also scientific facts, showing that if we are right in explaining such happenings by etheric action, such action is more readily produced at night than in the presence of sunlight. in the early part of marconi made some experiments on board the american liner _philadelphia_, which brought out the remarkable fact that, while it was possible to transmit signals to a distance of fifteen hundred miles during the night, they could not be transmitted further than seven hundred miles during the day. the same was found to be the case by lieutenant solari of the italian navy, at whose disposal the ship _carlo alberta_ was placed by the king of italy in , for the purpose of making investigations into wireless telegraphy; and summing up the points which he considered to have been fully established by his experiments on board that ship, he mentions among them the fact, that sunlight has the effect of reducing the power of the electro-magnetic waves, and that consequently a greater force is required to produce a given result by day than by night. here, then, is a reason why we might expect to see more supernatural appearances, as we call them, at night than in the day--they require a smaller amount of force to produce them. at the same time, it is found that the great magnetic waves which cover immense distances, work even more powerfully in the light than in the dark. may it not be that these things show, that there is more than a merely metaphorical use of words, when the bible tells us of the power of light to dissipate, and bring to naught, the powers of darkness, while the light itself is the great power, using the forces of the universe on the widest scale? perhaps it is none other than the continuity of unchanging universal principles extending into the mysterious realms of the spiritual world. chapter iii man's place in the creative order in the preceding chapters we have found certain definite facts,--that all known matter is formed out of one primordial universal substance,--that the ether spreading throughout limitless space is a universal medium, through which it is possible to convey force by means of vibrations,--and that vibrations can be started by the power of sound. these we have found to be well established facts of ordinary science, and taking them as our starting-point, we may now begin to speculate as to the possible workings of the known laws under unknown conditions. one of the first things that naturally attract our attention is the question,--how did life originate? on this point i may quote two leading men of science. tyndall says: "i affirm that no shred of trustworthy experimental testimony exists, to prove that life in our day has ever appeared independently of antecedent life"; and huxley says: "the doctrine of biogenesis, or life only from life, is victorious along the whole line at the present time." such is the testimony of modern science to the old maxim "omne vivum exvivo." "all life proceeds from antecedent life." think it out for yourself and you will see that it could not possibly be otherwise. whatever may be our theory of the origin of life on the physical plane, whether we regard it as commencing in a vivified slime at the bottom of the sea, which we call protoplasm, or in any other way, the question of how life got there still remains unanswered. the protoplasm being material substance, must have its origin like all other material substances, in the undifferentiated etheric universal substance, no particle of which has any power of operating upon any other particle until some initial vibration starts the movement; so that, on any theory whatever, we are always brought back to the same question: what started the condensation of the ether into the beginnings of a world-system? so whether we consider the life which characterizes organized matter, or the energy which characterizes inorganic matter, we cannot avoid the conclusion, that both must have their source in some original power to which we can assign no antecedent. this is the conclusion which has been reached by all philosophic and religious systems that have really tried to get at the root of the matter, simply because it is impossible to form any other conception. this living power is what we mean when we speak of the all-originating spirit. the existence of this spirit is not a theological invention, but a logical and scientific ultimate, without predicating which, nothing else can be accounted for. the word "spirit" comes from the latin "spiro" "i breathe," and so means "the breath," as in job xxxiii, ,--"the spirit of god hath made me, and the breath of the almighty hath given me life"; and again in ps. xxxiii, --"by the word of the lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth." in the opening chapter of genesis, we are told that "the spirit of god moved upon the face of the waters." the words rendered "the spirit of god" are, in the original hebrew "rouah Ælohim," which is literally "the breathing of god"; and similarly, the ancient religious books of india, make the "swára" or great breath the commencement of all life and energy. the word "rouah" in genesis is remarkable. according to rabbinical teaching, each letter of the hebrew alphabet has a certain symbolic significance, and when examined in this manner, the root from which this word is derived conveys the idea of expansive movement. it is the opposite of the word "hoshech," translated "darkness" in the same passage of our bible, which is similarly derived from a root conveying the idea of hardening and compressing. it is the same idea that is personified in the zendavesta, the sacred book of the ancient persians, under the names of ormuzd, the spirit of light; and ahriman, the spirit of darkness; and similarly in the old assyrian myth of the struggle between the sun-god and tiámat, the goddess of darkness. this conception of conflict between two opposite principles, light and darkness, compression and expansion, will be found to underlie all the ancient religions of the world, and it is conspicuous throughout our own scriptures. but it should be borne in mind that the oppositeness of their nature does not necessarily mean conflict. the two principles of expansion and contraction are not necessarily destructive; on the contrary they are necessary correlatives to one another. expansion alone cannot produce form; cohesion must also be present. it is the regulated balance between them that results in creation. in the old legend, if i remember rightly, the conflict is ended by tiámat marrying her former opponent. they were never really enemies, but there was a misunderstanding between them, or rather there was a misunderstanding on the part of tiámat so long as she did not perceive the true character of the spirit of light, and that their relation to one another was that of co-operation and not of opposition. thus also st. john tells us that "the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not" (john i, ). it is this want of comprehension that is at the root of all the trouble. the reader should note, however, that i am here speaking of that primeval substance, which necessarily has no light in itself, because there is as yet no vibration in it, for there can be no light without vibration. we must not make the mistake of supposing that matter is evil in itself: it is our misconception of it that makes it the vehicle of evil; and we must distinguish between the darkness of matter and moral darkness, though there is a spiritual correspondence between them. the true development of man consists in the self-expansion of the divine spirit working through his mind, and thence upon his psychic and physical organisms, but this can only be by the individual's _willingness to receive_ that spirit. where the hindrance to this working is only caused by ignorance of the true relation between ourselves and the divine spirit, and the desire for truth is present, the true light will in due course disperse the darkness. but on the other hand, if the hindrance is caused by _unwillingness_ to be led by the divine spirit, then the light cannot be _forced_ upon any one, and for this reason jesus said: "this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. for every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. but he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in god" (john iii: - ). in physical science these things have an exact parallel in "ohm's law" regarding the resistance offered by the conductor to the flow of the electric current. the correspondence is very remarkable and will be found more fully explained in a later chapter. the primary darkness, both of substance and of mind, has to be taken into account, if we would form an intelligent conception of the twofold process of involution and evolution continually at work in ourselves, which, by their combined action, are able to lead to the limitless development both of the individual and of the race. according to all teaching, then, both ancient and modern, all life and energy have their source in a primary life and energy, of which we can only say that it is. we cannot conceive of any time when it was not, for, if there was a time when no such primary energizing life existed, what was there to energize it? so we are landed in a _reductio ad absurdum_ which leaves no alternative but to predicate the eternal existence of an all-originating living spirit. let us stop for a moment to consider what we mean by "eternal." when, do you suppose, twice two began to make four? and when, do you suppose, twice two will cease to make four? it is an eternal principle, quite independent of time or conditions. similarly with the originating life. it is above time and above conditions--in a word it is _undifferentiated_ and contains in itself the _potential_ of infinite differentiation. this is what the eternal life is, and what we want for the expansion of our own life is a truer comprehension of it. we are like tiámat, and must enter into intelligent and loving union with the spirit of light, in order to realize the infinite possibilities that lie before us. this is the ultimate meaning of the maxim "omne vivum ex vivo." we see, then, that the material universe, including our own bodies, has its origin in the undifferentiated universal substance, and that the first movement towards differentiation must be started by some initial impulse, analogous to those which start vibrations in the ether known to science; and that therefore this impulse must, in the first instance, proceed from some living power eternal in itself, and independent of time and conditions. now all the ancient religions of the world concur, in attributing this initial impulse to the power of sound; and we have seen, that as a matter of fact, sound has the power of starting vibrations, and that these vibrations have an exact correspondence with the quality of the sound, what we now call synchronous vibration. at this point, however, we are met by another fact. cosmic activity takes place only in certain definite areas. solar systems do not jostle each other in space. in a word the sound, which thus starts the initial impulse of creation, is guided by intelligent selection. now sounds, directed by purposeful intention, amount to words, whether the words of some spoken language or the tapping of the morse code--it is the meaning at the back of the sound that gives it verbal significance. it is for this reason, that the concentration of creative energy in particular areas, has from time immemorial been attributed to "the word." the old sanskrit books call this selective concentrative power "vach," which means "voice," and is the root of the latin word "vox," having the same meaning. philo, and the neo-platonists of alexandria who follow him, call it "logos," which means the same; and we are all familiar with the opening verses of st. john's gospel and first epistle in which he attributes creation to "the word." now we know, as a scientific fact, that solar systems have a definite beginning in the gyration of nebulous matter, circling through vast fields of interstellar space, as the great nebula in andromeda does at the present day. Æons upon æons elapse, before the primary nebula consolidates into a solar system such as ours is now; but science shows, that from the time when the nebula first spreads its spiral across the heavens, the mathematical element of law asserts itself, and it is by means of our recognition of the mathematical relations between the forces of attraction and repulsion, that we have been able to acquire any knowledge on the subject. i do not for an instant wish to suggest that the spiritual power has not continued to be in operation also, but a centre for the working of a cosmic law being once established, the spiritual power works through that law and not in opposition to it. on the other hand, the selection of particular portions of space for the manifestation of cosmic activity, indicates the action of free volition, not determined by any law except the obvious consideration of allowing room for the future solar system to move in. similarly also with regard to time. spectroscopic analysis of the light from the stars, which are suns many of them much greater than our own, shows that they are of various ages--some quite young, some arrived at maturity, and some passing into old age. their creation must therefore be assigned to different epochs, and we thus see the originating spirit exercising the powers of selection and volition as to the time when, as well as to the place where, a new world-system shall be inaugurated. now it is this power of inauguration that all the ancient systems of teaching attribute to the divine word. it is the passing of the undifferentiated into differentiation, of the unmanifested into manifestation, of the unlocalized into localization. it is the ushering in of what the brahminical books call a "manvantara" or world-period, and in like manner our bible says that "in the beginning was the word." the english word "word" is closely allied to the latin word "verbum" which signifies both _word_ and _verb_. grammarians tell us that the verb "to be" is a verb-substantive, that is, it does not indicate any action passing from the subject to the object. now this exactly describes the spirit in its eternity. we cannot conceive of it except as always being; but the distribution of world-systems both in time and space shows that it is not always cosmically active. in itself, apart from manifestation, it is pure beingness, if i may coin such a word; and it is for this reason that the divine name announced to moses was "i am." but the fact that creation exists, shows that from this substantive pure being there flows out a verb active, which reproduces in action, what the i am is in essence. it is just the same with ourselves. we must first _be_ before we can _do_, and we can _do_ only to the extent to which we _are_. we cannot express powers which we do not possess; so that our doing necessarily coincides with the quality of our being. therefore the divine verb reproduces the divine substantive by a natural sequence. it is _generated_ by the divine "i am," and for this reason it is called "the son of god." so we see that the verb, the word, and the son of god, are all different expressions for the same power. creative vibration in the universal substance can, therefore, only be conceived of, as being inaugurated by the "word" which _localizes_ the activity of the spirit in particular centres. this idea, of the localization of the spirit through the "word," should be fully realized as the energizing principle on the scale of the macrocosm or "great world," because, as we shall find later on, the same principle acts in the same way on the scale of the microcosm or "small world," which is the individual man. this is why these things have a personal interest for us, otherwise they would not be worth troubling about. but a mistake to be avoided at this point, is that of supposing that the "word" is something which dictates to the spirit when and where to operate. the "word" is the word of the spirit itself, and not that of some higher authority, for the spirit being first cause there can be nothing anterior to dictate to it; there can be nothing before that which is first. the "word" which centralizes the activity of the spirit, is therefore that of the spirit itself. we have an analogy in our own case. if i go to new york the first movement in that direction is that of my thought or desire. it is true that in my present state of evolution i have to follow the usual methods of travel, but so far as my thought is concerned, i have been there all the time. indeed, such a case as the one i have mentioned, of my being seen in edinburgh while i was physically in london, seems to point to the actual transference of some part of the personality to another locality, and similarly with my visit to lanercost abbey; and the reader must remember, that such phenomena are by no means uncommon--they are the natural action of some part of our personality, and must therefore follow some natural law, even though we may at present know very little of how it works. we see, therefore, both from _a priori_ reasoning, and from observed facts, that it is the word, thought, or desire of the spirit, that localizes its activity in some definite centre. the student should bear this in mind as a leading principle, for he will find that it is of general application, alike in the case of individuals, of groups of individuals, and of entire nations. it is the key to the relation between law and personality, the opening of the grand arcanum, the equilibrating of jachin and boaz, and it is therefore of immediate importance to ourselves. we may take, then, as a starting-point for further enquiry, the maxim that volition creates centres of spiritual activity. but perhaps you will say: "if this be true, what word or words am i to employ?" this is a question which has puzzled a good many people before you. this "word" which so many have been in search of, has been variously called "the lost word," "the word of power," "the schemhammaphorasch or secret name of god," and so on. a quaint jewish legend of the middle ages says that the "hidden name" was secretly inscribed in the innermost recesses of the temple; but that, even if discovered, which was most unlikely, it could not be retained because, guarding it, were sculptured lions, which gave such a supernatural roar as the intruder was quitting the spot, that all memory of the "hidden name" was driven from his mind. jesus, however, says the legend, knew this and dodged the lions. he transcribed the name, and cutting open his thigh, hid the writing in the incision, which, by magical art, he at once closed up; then, after leaving the temple, he took the writing out and so retained the knowledge of the name. in this way the legend accounts for his power to work miracles. jesus, indeed, possessed the word of power, though not in the way told in the legend, and he repeatedly proclaimed it in his teaching:--"according to your faith be it unto you"--"verily, i say unto you, whosoever shall say to this mountain, 'be thou taken up and cast into the sea'; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that what he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith" (mark xi, ). and similarly in the old testament we are told that the word is nigh to us, even in our hearts and in our mouth (deut. xxx, ). what keeps the word of power hidden, is our belief that nothing so simple could possibly be it. at the same time, simple though it be, it has law and reason at the back of it, like everything else. the ancient egyptians seem to have had clearer ideas on this subject than we have. "the name was to the egyptians the _idea_ of the thing, without which it could not exist, and the knowledge of which therefore gave power over that which answered to it." "the _idea_ of the thing represented its _soul_."[ ] this is the same conception as the "archetypal ideas" of plato, only carried further, so as to apply, not only to classes, but to each individual of the class, and, as we shall see later, there is a good deal of truth in it. put broadly, the conception is this--every external fact must have a spiritual origin, an internal energizing principle, which causes it to exist in the particular form in which it does. the outward fact is called the phenomenon, and the corresponding inward principle is called the noumenon. the dictionary definition of these two words is as follows: "phenomenon--the appearance which anything makes to our consciousness as distinguished from what it is in itself." "noumenon--an unknown and unknowable substance or thing as it is in itself--the opposite to the phenomenon or form through which it becomes known to the senses or the understanding" (chambers' twentieth century dictionary). whether the dictionary be right in saying that the "noumena" of things are entirely unknowable, the reader must decide for himself; but the present book is an attempt to learn something about the "noumena" of things in general, and of ourselves in particular, and what i want to convey is, that the "noumenon" of anything is its essence, _in terms of the universal energy and the universal substance, in their relation to the particular form in question_. probably the latin word "nomen," a name, is derived from this greek word, and in this sense everything has its "hidden name"; and the region in which thought-power works, is this region of spiritual beginnings. it deals with "hidden names"--that inward essence which determines the outward form of things, persons, and circumstances alike; and it is in order to make this clearer, that i have commenced by sketching briefly the general principles of substance and energy as now recognized by modern science. if i have made my meaning clear, you will see that what is wanted is not the knowledge of particular words, but an understanding of general principles. at the same time i would not assert that the reciting of certain forms of words, such as the indian "mantras" or the word aum, to which oriental teachers attach a mystic significance, is entirely without power. but the power is not in the words _but in our belief in their power_. i will give an amusing instance of this. on several occasions i have been consulted by persons who supposed themselves to be under the influence of "malicious magnetism," emanating in some cases from known, and in others from unknown, sources; and the remedy i have prescribed has been this. look the adverse power, mentally, full in the face, and then assuming an attitude of confidence say "cock-a-doodle-doo." the enquirers have sometimes smiled at first, but in every case the result has been successful. perhaps this is why Æsculapius is represented as accompanied by a cock. possibly the ancient physicians were in the habit of employing the "cock-a-doodle-doo" treatment; and i might recommend it to the faculty to-day as very effective in certain cases. now i do not think the reader will attribute any particularly occult significance to "cock-a-doodle-doo." the power is in the mental attitude. to "cock-a-doodle-doo" at any suggestion is to treat it with scorn and derision, and to assume the very opposite of that receptive attitude which enables a suggestion to affect us. that is the secret of this method of treatment, and the principle is the same in all cases. it matters, then, very little what particular words we use. what does matter is the intention and faith with which we use them. but perhaps some reader will here take the rôle of cross-examining counsel, and say: "you have just said it is a case of synchronous vibration--then surely it is the actual sound of the particular syllables that counts--how do you square this with your present statement?" the answer is that the law is always the same, but the mode of response to the law is always according to the nature of the medium in which it is operating. on the plane of physical matter the vibrations are in tune with physical sounds, as in the experiments with the eidophone; and similarly, on the plane of ideas or "noumena," the response is in terms of that plane. the word which creates "noumena," or spiritual centres of action, must itself belong to the world of "noumena," so that it is not illogical to say that it is the intention and faith that counts, and not the external sound. in this is the secret of the power of thought. it is the reproduction, on the miniature scale of the individual, of the same mode of power that makes the worlds. it is that power of personality, which, combined with the action of the law, brings out results which the law alone could never do--as the old maxim has it, "nature unaided fails." this brings us to another important question--is not the creative power of the word limited by the immutability of the law? if the law cannot be altered in the least particular, how can the word be free to do what it likes? the answer to this is contained in another maxim: "every creation carries its own mathematics along with it." you cannot create anything without at the same time creating its relation to everything else, just as in painting a landscape, the contour you give to the trees will determine that of the sky. therefore, whenever you create anything, you thereby start a train of causation, which will work out in strict accordance with the sort of thought that started it. the stream always has the quality of its source. thought which is in line with the unity of the great whole, will produce correspondingly harmonious results, and thought which is disruptive of the great principle of unity, will produce correspondingly disputive results--hence all the trouble and confusion in the world. our thought is perfectly free, and we can use it either constructively or destructively as we choose; but the immutable law of sequence will not permit us to plant a thought of one kind, and make it bear fruit of another. then the question very naturally suggests itself: why did not god create us so that we could not think negative or destructive thoughts? and the answer is: because he could not. there are some things which even god cannot do. he cannot do anything that involves a contradiction in terms. even god could not make twice two either more or less than four. now i want the student to see clearly why making us incapable of wrong-thinking would involve a contradiction in terms, and would therefore be an impossibility. to see this we must realize what is our place in the order of the universe. the name "man" itself indicates this. it comes from the sanscrit root mn, which, in all its derivatives, conveys the idea of measurement, as in the word mind, through the latin _mens_, the faculty which compares things and estimates them accordingly; moon, the heavenly body whose phases afford the most obvious standard for the periodical measurement of time; month, the period thus measured; "man," the largest of the indian weights; and so on. man therefore means "the measurer," and this very aptly describes our place in the order of evolution, for it indicates the relation between personal volition and immutable law. if we grant the truth of the maxim "nature unaided fails" the whole thing becomes clear, and the entire progress of applied science proves the truth of this maxim. to recur to an illustration i have employed in my previous books, the old ship-builders thought that ships were bound to be built of wood and not of iron, because wood floats in water and iron sinks; but now nearly all ships are made of iron. yet the specific gravities of wood and iron have not altered, and a log of wood floats while a lump of iron sinks, just the same as they did in the days of drake and frobisher. the only difference is, that people thought out the _underlying principle_ of the law of flotation, and reduced it to the generalized statement that anything will float, the weight of which is less than that of the mass displaced by it, whether it be an iron ship floating in water, or a balloon floating in air. so long as we restrict ourselves to the mere recollection of observed facts, we shall make no progress; but by carefully considering _why_ any force acted in the way it did, under the particular conditions observed, we arrive at a generalization of principle, showing that the force in question is capable of hitherto unexpected applications if we provide the necessary conditions. this is the way in which all advances have been made on the material side, and on the principle of continuity we may reasonably infer that the same applies to the spiritual side also. we may generalize the whole position thus. when we first observe the working of the law under the conditions spontaneously provided by nature, it appears to limit us; but by seeking the _reason_ of the action exhibited under these limited conditions, we discover the principle, and true nature, of the law in question, and we then learn from the law itself, what conditions to supply in order to give it more extended scope, and direct its energy to the accomplishment of definite purposes. the maxim we have to learn is that "every law _contains in itself_ the principle of its own expansion," which will set us free from the limitation which that law at first appeared to impose upon us. the limitation was never in the law, but in the conditions under which it was working, and our power of selection and volition enables us to provide new conditions, not spontaneously provided by nature, and thus to _specialize_ the law, and disclose immense powers which had always been latent in it, but which would for ever remain hidden unless brought to light by the co-operation of the personal factor. the law itself never changes, but we can _specialize_ it by realizing the principle involved and providing the conditions thus indicated. this is our place in the order of the universe. we give definite direction to the action of the law, and in this way our personal factor is always acting upon the law, whether we know it or not; and the law, under the influence thus impressed upon it, is all the time re-acting upon us. now we cannot conceive any limit to evolution. to suppose a point where it comes to an end is a contradiction in terms. it is to suppose that the eternal life principle is used up, which is to deny its eternity; and, as we have seen, unless we assume its eternity, it is impossible to account either for our own existence or that of anything else. therefore, to say that a point will ever be reached where it will be used up, is as absurd as saying that a point will be reached where the sequence of numbers will be used up. evolution, the progress from lower to higher modes of manifestation of the underlying principle of life, is therefore eternal, but, in regard to the human race, this progress depends entirely on the extent to which we grasp the principles of the law of our own being, and so learn to specialize it in the right direction. then if this be our place in the universal order, it becomes clear that we could not occupy this place unless we had a perfectly free hand to choose the conditions under which the law is to operate; and therefore, in order to pass beyond the limits of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, and reach the status of being persons, and not things, we must have a freedom of selection and volition, which makes it equally possible for us to select either rightly or wrongly; and the purpose of sound teaching is to make us see the eternal principles involved, and thus lead us to impress our personality upon the law, in the way that will bring out the infinite possibilities of good which the law, rightly employed, contains. if it were possible to do this by an automatic law, doubtless the creative wisdom would have made us so. this is why st. paul says: "if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law" (gal. iii, ). note the words "a law _given_," that is to say, imposed by external command; but it could not be. the laws of the universe are cosmic. in themselves they are _impersonal_, and the infinite possibilities contained in them, can only be brought out by the co-operation of the personal factor. it is only as we grasp the true relation between jachin and boaz, that we can enter into the temple either of our own individuality, or of the boundless universe in which we live. the reason, therefore, why god did not make us mechanically incapable of wrong thinking, is simply because the very idea involves a contradiction in terms, which negatives all possibility of creation. the conception lands us in a _reductio ad absurdum_. therefore, we are free to use our powers of personality as we will, only we must take the consequences. now one error we are all very apt to fall into, is the mistaken use of the will. its proper function is to keep our other faculties in line with the law, and thus enable us to specialize it; but many people seem to think that by force of will they can somehow manage to coerce the law; in other words, that by force of will they can sow a seed of one kind and make it bear fruit of another. the spirit of life seeks to express itself in our individuality, through the three avenues of reason, feeling, and will; but as in the masonic legend of the murder of hiram abif, the architect of solomon's temple, it is beaten back on the side of reasoning, by the plummet of a logic based on false premises; on the side of feeling, by the level of conventional ideas; and on the side of will, by the hammer of a short-sighted self-will, which gives the finishing blow; and it is not until the true perception of the principle of life is resurrected within us, that the temple can be completed according to the true plan. it should be remembered that the will is _not_ the creative faculty in us. it is the faculty of conception that is the creative agent, and the business of the will is to keep that faculty in the right direction, which will be determined by an enlightened reason. conception creates ideas which are the seed, that, in due time, will produce fruit after its own kind. in a broad sense we may call it the imaging faculty, only we must not suppose that this necessarily implies the visualizing of mental images, which is only a subsidiary mode of using this faculty. an "immaculate conception" is therefore the only means by which the new liberated man can be born in each of us. the sequence is always the same. the will holds the conception together, and the idea thus formed gives direction to the working of the law. but this direction may be either true or inverted; and the impersonal law will work constructively or destructively, according to the conception which it embodies. in this way, then, will-power may be used to hold together an inverted conception--the conception that our personal force of will is sufficient to bear down all opposition. but this mental attitude ignores the fact, that the fundamental principle of creative power is the wholeness of the creation; and that, therefore, the idea of forcing compliance with our wishes, by the power of our individual will, is an inverted conception, which, though it may appear to succeed for a time, is bound to fail eventually, because it antagonizes the very power it is seeking to use. this inverted use of the will is the basis of "black magic," a term some readers will perhaps smile at, but which is practised at the present day to a much greater extent than many of us have any idea of--not always, indeed, with a full consciousness of its nature, but in many ways which are the first steps on the left-hand path. its mark is the determination to act by self-will, rather than using our will to co-operate with that continuous forward movement of the great whole, which is the will of god. this inverted will entirely misses the point regarding the part we are formed to play in the creative order, and so we miss the development of our own individuality, and retrograde instead of going forward. but if we work _with_ the law instead of against it, we shall find that our word, that is to say our conception, will become more and more the word of power, because it specializes the general law in some particular direction. the law will serve us exactly to the extent to which we first observe the law. it is the same in everything. if the electrician tries to go counter to the fundamental principle, that the electric current always flows from a higher to a lower potential, he will be able to do nothing with it; but let him observe this fundamental law and there is nothing that electricity will not do for him within the field of its own nature. in this sense, then, of specializing the general law in a particular direction, we may lay down the maxim that "the law flows from the word, and not _vice versa_." when we use our word in this way, not as expressing a self-will that seeks to crush all that does not submit to it, but as a portion, however small, of the universal cause, and therefore with the desire of acting in harmony with that cause, then our word becomes a constructive, instead of a destructive power. its influence may be very small at first, because there is still a great mass of doubt at the back of our mind, and every doubt is, in reality, a negative word warring against our affirmative word; but, by adhering to our principle, we shall gradually gain experience in these things, and the creative value of our word will grow accordingly. chapter iv the law of wholeness it may seem a truism to say that the whole is made up of its parts, but all the same we often lose sight of this in our outlook on life. the reason we do so is because we are apt to take too narrow a view of the whole; and also because we do not sufficiently consider that it is not the mere arithmetical sum of the parts that makes the whole, but also the harmonious agreement of each part with all the other parts. the extent of the whole and the harmony of the parts is what we have to look out for, and also its objective; this is a universal rule, whatever the whole in question may be. take, for instance, the case of the artist. he must start by having a definite objective, what in studio phrase is called a "motif"; something that has given him a certain impression which he wants to convey to others, but which cannot be stated as an isolated fact without any surroundings. then the surroundings must be painted so as to have a natural relation to the main motif; they must lead up to it, but at the same time they must not compete with it. there must be only one definite interest in the picture, and minor details must not be allowed to interfere with it. they are there only because of the main motif, to help to express it. yet they are not to be treated in a slovenly manner. as much as is seen of them must be drawn with an accuracy that correctly suggests their individual character; but they must not be accentuated in such a way as to emphasize details to the detriment of the breadth of the picture. this is the artistic principle of unity, and the same principle applies to everything else. what, then, is the "motif" of life? surely it must be, to express its own livingness. then in the true order all modes of life and energy must converge towards this end, and it is only our short-sightedness that prevents us from seeing this,--from seeing that the greater the harmony of the whole life, the greater will be the inflow of that life in each of the parts that are giving it expression. this is what we want to learn with regard to ourselves, whether as individuals, classes or nations. we have seen the cosmic workings of the law of wholeness in the discovery of the planet neptune. another planet was absolutely necessary to complete the unity of our solar system, and it was found that there is such a planet, and similarly in other branches of natural science. the law of unity is the basic law of life, and it is our ignorant or wilful infraction of this law that is the root of all our troubles. if we take this law of unity as the basis of our thought we shall be surprised to find how far it will carry us. each part is a complete whole in itself. each inconceivably minute particle revolves round the centre of the atom in its own orbit. on its own scale it is complete in itself, and by co-operation with thousands of others forms the atom. the atom again is a complete whole, but it must combine with other atoms to form a molecule, and so on. but if the atom be imperfect as an atom, how could it combine with other atoms? thus we see that however infinitesimal any part may be as compared with the whole, it must also be a complete whole on its own scale, if the greater whole is to be built up. on the same principle, our recognition that our personality is an infinitesimal fraction of an inconceivably greater life, does not mean that it is at all insignificant in itself, or that our individuality becomes submerged in an indistinguishable mass; on the contrary, our own wholeness is an essential factor towards the building up of the greater whole; so that as long as we keep before us the building up of the great whole as the "main motif," we need never fear the expansion of our own individuality. the more we expand, the more effective units we shall become. we must not, however, suppose that unity means uniformity. st. paul puts this very clearly when he says, if the whole body be an eye, where would be the hearing, etc. ( cor. xii, ). how could you paint a picture without distinction of form, colour, or tone? diversity in unity is the necessity for any sort of expression, and if it be the case in our own bodies, as st. paul points out, how much more so in the expressing of the eternal life through endless ages and limitless space! once we grasp this idea of the unity and progressiveness of life going on _ad infinitum_, what boundless vistas of possibility open before us. it would be enough to stagger the imagination were it not for our old friends, the law and the word. but these will always accompany us, and we may rely upon them in all worlds and under all conditions. this law of unity is what in natural science is known as the law of continuity, and the ancient wisdom has embodied it in the hermetic axiom "sicut superius, sicut inferius; sicut inferius, sicut superius"--as above, so below; as below, so above. it leads us on from stage to stage, unfolding as it goes; and to this unfolding there is no end, for it is the eternal life finding ever fuller expression, as it can find more and more suitable channels through which to express itself. it can no more come to an end than numbers can come to an end. but it _must_ find suitable channels. let there be no mistake about this. perhaps some one may say: cannot it _make_ suitable channels for any sort of expression that it needs? the answer is, that it can, and it does so up to a certain point. as we have seen, the word, thought, or initial impulse of the ever-living spirit starts a centre of cosmic activity in which the mathematical element of law at once asserts itself; thenceforward everything goes on according to certain broad principles of sequence. this is a generic creation, creation according to _genera_ or classes, like the "archetypal ideas" of plato. this creation is governed by a law of averages, and the legal maxim "de minimis non curat lex"--the law cannot trouble about minorities--applies to it. this generic law keeps the class going, and slowly advancing, simply as a class, but it can take no notice of individuals as such. as tennyson puts it in "in memoriam," speaking of nature: "so careful of the type she seems, so careless of the single life." this mode of creation reaches its highest level, at any rate in our world, in genus homo, or the human race. we also, as a race, are under the law of averages. the race continues to exist, but from the moment of birth the individual life is liable to be cut short in a hundred different ways. in producing man, however, generic creation has produced a _type_ having a mental and physical constitution capable of perceiving the underlying principle of _all_ creation, that is, of seeing the relation between the word and the law. we cannot conceive creation by type going further than this. by the nature of this type every human being has the potential of a further evolution, which will set it free from bondage to an impersonal law of averages, by specializing it through the power of the word, that is, by bringing the personal factor to bear upon the impersonal factor, and so unfolding the possibilities which can be achieved by their united activities. we have the power of using the word so as to specialize the action of the law, not by altering the law, which is impossible, but by realizing its principle, and enabling it to work under conditions which are not spontaneously provided by nature, but are provided by our own selection. the _capacity_ for this exists in all human beings, but the practical application of this capacity depends on our recognition of the principles involved; and it is for this reason that i commenced this book by citing instances of the combined working of law and personality in purely physical science. i wanted first to convince the reader from well ascertained facts, that the law contains infinite possibilities, but that this can only be brought out through the operation of the mind of man. it is here that we find the value of the maxim "nature unaided fails." the more we consider this maxim and the principle of unity and continuity, the clearer it will become, that limitation is no part of the law itself, but results only from our own limited comprehension of it; and that st. james uses no meaningless phrase, but is stating a logical and scientific truth, when he speaks of "the perfect law of liberty" (jas. i, ). what we have to do is, to follow this up, not by petulant self-assertion, but by quietly considering the why and wherefore of the whole thing. in doing so we can fortify ourselves with another maxim, that "principle is not limited by precedent." when we spread the wings of thought and speculate as to future possibilities, our conventionally-minded friends may say we are talking bosh; but if you ask them why they say so, they can only reply that the past experience of the whole human race is against you. they do not speak like this in the matter of flying-machines or carriages that go without horses; they say these are scientific discoveries. but when it comes to the possibilities of our own souls, they at once set a limit to the expansion of ideas, and do not see that the scientific principle of discovery is not confined to laboratory experiments. therefore, we must not let ourselves be discouraged by such arguments. if our friends doubt our sanity, let them doubt it. the sanity of such men as galileo and george stephenson was doubted by their contemporaries, so we are in good company. at the same time we must not neglect to look after our own sanity. we must know some intelligible reason for our conclusions, and realize that however unexpected, they are the logical carrying out of principles which we can recognize in the creation around us. if we do this we need not fear to spread the wings of fancy, even though some may not be able to accompany us; only we must remember that we are using wings. fancy, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, has really no wings; it is like a balloon that just floats wherever any passing current of air may drive it. the possession of wings implies power to direct our flight, and fancy must be converted into trained imagination, just as the helpless balloon has been superseded by navigable air-craft. it must be "the scientific imagination"; and the "scientific imagination" carried into the world of spiritual causation becomes the word of power, and its power is derived from the fact that it is always working according to law. then we may go on confidently, because we are following the same universal principles by which all creation has been evolved, only now we are specializing its action from the standpoint of our own individuality, according to the ancient teaching that man, the microcosm, repeats in himself all the laws of the macrocosm, or great world, around him. as we begin to see the truth of these things, we begin to transcend the simply generic stage. that first stage is necessary to provide a starting-point for the next. the first stage is that of bondage to law. it could not be otherwise for the simple reason that you must learn the law before you can use it. then from the stage of generic creation we emerge into that of individual creation, in which we attain liberty through knowledge of the law of our own being; so that it is not a mere theological myth to talk of a new creation, but it is the logical outcome of what we now are, if, to our recognition of the power of the law we add the recognition of the power of the word. chapter v the soul of the subject we may now turn to speculate a little on some conceivable application of the general principle we have been considering. it seems to me that, as a result of the generic creation of which i have just spoken, there is in everything what, for want of a better name, i may call "the soul of the subject." creation being by type, everything must have a _generic_ basis of being in the cosmic law, not peculiar to that individual thing, but peculiar to the class to which it belongs, an adaptation of the cosmic soul for the production of all things belonging to that particular order, in fact, what makes them what they are and not something else. now just because this basis is generic and common to the whole genus that is built upon it, it is not specific, but it acquires _localization through form_; the form being that of the class to which it belongs, thus producing the individual of that class, whether a cat or a cabbage. it is this underlying _generic_ being of the thing, that i want the student to understand by "the soul of the subject." in fact we may call it the noumenon or essential being of the class, as distinguished from the specific characteristics that differentiate the individual from others of the same class. it follows from this that this _generic_ soul has no individuality of its own, and consequently is open to receive impressions from any source that can penetrate the sheath of outward form and specific characteristic that envelopes it. at the same time it is a manifestation of cosmic law, and so cannot depart from its own class-nature, and therefore any influence that may be impressed upon it from some other source will always show itself _in terms of the sort of generic soul that is thus impressed_; for instance, it would be impossible so to impress a dog as to make it write a book; and we may therefore generalize the statement, and lay down the rule, that "every _im_press receives _ex_pression in terms of the medium through which it is expressed." this becomes almost a self-obvious truism when put into plain language like this; thus, if i paint a picture in oils, my impression is conveyed in terms of this medium, and if i paint one in water-colours my conception will be conveyed in terms of that medium, and the methods of handling will be perfectly different in the two pictures. this applies all round; and if we keep this generalization in mind, it will render many things clear, especially in psychic matters, which would otherwise seem puzzling. now we ourselves are included in the general creation, and consequently we have in us a generic or _type basis_ of personality, which is entirely impersonal. this is not a contradiction in terms, though it may look like one. we belong to the class genus homo, the distinctive quality of which is personality, that is to say, the possession of certain faculties which constitute us persons, and not things or animals; but at the same time this merely generic personality is common to all mankind, and is not that which distinguishes one individual from another, and in this sense it is impersonal; so we may call it our cosmic or impersonal personality. now it is upon this cosmic element, inherent in all things from mineral to man, that thought-power acts, because, being impersonal, it has no private purpose of its own with which to oppose the suggestion that is being impressed upon it. the only thing is, that according to the rule just laid down, the response will always be in terms of the cosmic element which we have thus set in motion. therefore on the human plane it will always be in terms of personality. the whole thing comes to this, that we impart to this impersonal element the reflection of our own personality, and thereby create in it a certain personality of its own, which will express itself in terms of the inherent nature of the impersonal factor, which we have thus temporarily invested with a personal quality; we are continually doing this unconsciously, either for good or ill; but when we come to understand the law of it, we must try so to regulate the habitual current of our thoughts, that even when we are not using this power intentionally, they may only exercise a beneficial influence. in our normal state this cosmic element in ourselves is so closely united with our more conscious powers of volition and reasoning, that they constitute a single unity; and this is how it should be, only, as we shall see later on, with a difference. but there are certain abnormal states which are worth considering, because they make clearer the existence in us of this impersonal self, which in academical language is called the subliminal consciousness. the work of the subliminal consciousness exhibits itself in various ways, such as clairvoyance, clair-audience, and conditions of trance; all of which either occur spontaneously, or are induced by experimental means, such as hypnotism; but the similarity of the phenomena in either case shows, that it is the same faculty that is in evidence. in those hypnotic experiments in which the operator merely makes the subject do some external act, we get no further than the fact that the person's individual will has been temporarily put to sleep, and that of the hypnotist has taken its place; still even this shows a power of impressing upon the subliminal consciousness a personal quality of its own, but it does not enable it to exhibit its own powers. the object of such experiments is, to exhibit the powers of the hypnotist, not to investigate the powers of the subliminal personality, which is of more importance in the present connection. but where the hypnotist employs his power of command to tell the subliminal self of the patient to exercise its own powers, merely directing it as to the subject upon which it is to be exercised, very wonderful powers indeed are exhibited. places unknown to the percipient are accurately described; correct accounts are given of what people are doing elsewhere; the contents of sealed letters are read; the symptoms of disease are diagnosed and suitable remedies sometimes prescribed; and so on. distance appears to make no difference. in many cases time also does not count, and historical events of long ago, with the details of which the seer had no acquaintance, are accurately described in all their minutiæ, which have afterwards been corroborated by contemporary documents. nor are cases wanting in which events still future have been correctly predicted, as, for example, in cazotte's celebrated prediction of the french revolution, and of the fate that awaited each member of a large dinner-party when it should occur--though this was a spontaneous case, and not under hypnotism, which perhaps gives it the greater value. the same powers are shown in spontaneous cases also, of which my own experiences related in a previous chapter may serve as a small example; but as there are many books exclusively devoted to the subject i need not go into further details here. if the reader be curious for further information, i would recommend him to read gregory's "letters on animal magnetism." it was published some fifty years ago, and, for all i know, may be out of print, but if the reader can procure it, he will find that it is a book to be relied upon, the work of a professor of chemistry in the university of edinburgh, who investigated the matter calmly with a thoroughly trained scientific mind. but what i want the reader to lay hold of is the fact, that whether the action occur spontaneously or be induced by experimental means, these powers actually exist in us, and therefore in reckoning up the faculties at our disposal they must not be omitted. in our more usual condition however, these faculties are subordinate to those which put us in touch with the every-day world, and i cannot help thinking, that at our present stage this is the best place for them. in this place they have a special function to perform, which i will speak of in another chapter, and in the meanwhile for my own part i should prefer to leave their development to the ordinary course of nature, neither stimulating them by hypnotic influence, or auto-suggestion, nor repressing them if they manifest themselves of their own accord. however, every one must follow his or her own discretion in this matter; the only thing is, do not deny the existence of these faculties in yourself because you may not consciously exercise them, for they hold a very important place in our complex personality. all such evidence on the subject as has come my way, appears to me to point to the fact, that it is through this impersonal or cosmic portion of our mind that thought-power operates upon us, whether in the form of telepathy, or of healing treatment, or in any other way; and it is through this channel also that thought currents, not specially directed towards ourselves, nevertheless affect us, just as the first wireless telephone message sent on september , , from the office of the american telephone company in new york, and directed to san francisco, was simultaneously heard at san diego, at darien in panama, and even as far away as pearl island, honolulu, in the pacific ocean. we sometimes pick up messages which are not intended for us; so we must keep our receiver in perfect syntony of reciprocal vibration with the stations from which we require to receive messages, to the exclusion of others which would produce confusion. but i have strayed a little from our present point, which is rather that of giving out influence than of receiving it. through the instrumentality of this impersonal cosmic soul we can send out our thought for the healing of disease, for the suggestion of good and happy ideas, and for many other beneficial purposes; though the extent of the result will of course be considerably influenced by the mental attitude of the recipient, which is therefore a factor to be reckoned with. but this power of sending out a subtle influence, call it magnetism or what you will, is not confined to operations upon the human subject. two ladies of my acquaintance experimented on two rose-trees, which, to all appearances, were both in equally good condition. they daily blessed one and cursed the other, with the result that at the end of a month the anathematized plant had withered up from the roots, while the other was in an abnormally flourishing condition. nor are we entirely without scientific backing even in such a case as this; for professor bose tells us in his work on the "response of metals," that not only can they be poisoned by certain chemicals, so as to deprive them of their normal qualities, but that they can be mesmerized into a similar condition. such facts as these therefore give considerable support to the theory of the existence in everything of a "soul of the subject," which responds after its own manner to the power of human thought. in what manner, then, is this influence conveyed? it is here that our study of etheric waves comes to our assistance, by carrying the same principle further, and picturing the working of the known law under unknown conditions. it will at least enable us to form a working hypothesis. i have stated that our actual commercial application of the etheric waves extends from the ultra-violet waves used in photography, and measuring only / , of an inch, to those measuring many miles employed in wireless telegraphy; but this practical application by no means exhausts the conceivable possibilities of etheric vibrations; for not only do we find a gap of five octaves of as yet unknown waves between the dark heat group and the hertzian group, but mathematically there is no limit to the greatness or smallness of the waves, and the scale may be prolonged indefinitely in either direction. nor is this to be wondered at; for if we consider that vibration is not a progress of individual particles from one place to another, but the alternate rising and falling of the substance at the same point, and that the ether is a homogeneous and universally present substance, it is obvious that there is nothing to limit the minuteness or the greatness of the intervals at which the rising and falling will occur. therefore we have an unlimited field for our imagination to play about in. then, if we further reflect that all forms are built up of denser or finer aggregations of ether, and that what determines the generic form of anything is its cosmic soul, or the generating principle of the _class_ to which it belongs, it follows that this soul must have a corresponding form, however inconceivably fine may be the etheric condensation which thus differentiates it from other souls, and prevents it from all being mixed up together in an indistinguishable mass. if now, we combine these two facts, that the soul of anything must have a form, however fine, and that there is no limit either to the greatness or the minuteness of etheric vibrations, we can draw certain deductions from these premises. it is an established fact of ordinary science that, however closely particles of any substance may seem to cohere, they are in reality separated by interstices through which etheric waves can penetrate. the principle may be illustrated by the power of the x-rays to penetrate apparently solid bodies, such as iron. then, if we combine with this the fact, that there is no limit to the minuteness of etheric waves, we see that however fine may be the particles constituting any form, it is always possible to have etheric waves still finer and thus able to penetrate that form and set up vibrations in it. it is our familiarity with the denser modes of matter that makes it difficult for us to grasp the idea of these finer activities; but there is nothing in what we know of the denser modes to contradict the conception; on the contrary, it is just by what we have learned of these denser modes that we reach the principles on which these further conceptions are founded. looking at this, therefore, in the light of a mathematical proposition, there is absolutely no limit to the fineness of any form, or to its susceptibilities to etheric vibrations. finally, to this add the power of the word to start trains of etheric vibration, and you get the following series: the word starts the etheric waves; these waves produce corresponding vibration in the soul of the subject; and the soul of the subject in turn communicates corresponding vibration to its body. we may thus explain the creative power of thought on the basis of recognizable law, and so we believe, because we know _why_ we believe, not because somebody else has told us so. doubt is still the creative action of thought, only it is creating negatively; so it is helpful to feel that we have some reason for confidence in the power of the word. there are a great many "thomases" among us, and as one of the number i shall be glad if i can help my "brother tommies" to get a grip of the why and wherefore of the things which appear at first sight so fantastic and improbable. but the conception we are considering is not limited to concrete entities, whether persons or things. it applies to abstractions also, and it is for this reason that i have called it the "soul of the subject." we often speak of the "soul of music," or the "soul of poetry," and so on. thus our ordinary talk stands on the threshold of a great mystery, which, however, is simple enough in practice. if you want to get a clearer view of any subject than you have at present, address yourself mentally to the abstract soul of that subject, and ask it to tell you about itself, and you will find that it will do so. i do not say that it will do this in any miraculous manner, but what you already know of the subject will range itself into a clearer order, and you will see connections that have not previously occurred to you. then again, you will find that information of the class required will begin to flow towards you through quite ordinary channels, books, newspapers, or conversation, without your especially laying yourself out to hunt for it; and again, at other times, ideas will come into your mind, you do not know how, but illuminating the subject with a fresh light. i cannot explain how all this takes place. i can only say from personal experience that it happens. but of course we must not throw aside ordinary common-sense. we must sort out the information that comes to us, and compare it with our previous knowledge; in fact we must _work_ at it: there is no premium for laziness. nor must we expect to receive by a sudden afflatus a complete acquaintance with some subject of which we are entirely ignorant. i do not say that such a thing is altogether impossible, for i cannot venture to limit the possibilities of the universe; but it is certainly not to be looked for in the ordinary course. i have sometimes been shown specimens of "inspirational painting" done by persons said to be entirely ignorant of art, and the ignorance is very apparent on the face of the work. i dare say an artist may be inspired in the production of a picture, but the technical training comes first, and the inspiration afterwards. the same i believe to be true of all other subjects, so that we come back to the maxim of the power always expressing itself in terms of the instrument through which it works. with this reservation, however, it appears to me, that every class of subject has a sort of soul of its own with which we can put ourselves _en rapport_ by, so to say, mentally unifying our own personality with its abstract principle. we are told by some teachers, that we can in the same way even construct entities in the nature of our thought, and possessing a personality of their own with which we have endowed them. whether this be the case i cannot say--i do not know all the secrets of the invisible. but if our thoughts do not create personal entities able to hang "on their own hook," they create forces which come to much the same thing. they start waves in the universal etheric medium, which, like the electro-magnetic waves of telegraphy, spread all round from the point of initial impulse, and are picked up whenever a centre happens to be attuned to a similar rate of vibration, and each new centre energizes these vibrations again with a fresh impulse of its own; so in this way thought-currents become very real things. such, then, is the power of our word, whether spoken or only dwelt upon in thought, to impress itself upon the impersonal element around us, whether in persons or things. we cannot divest it of the power, though we may intensify its action by deliberate use of it, with knowledge of the principle involved, and therefore, whether consciously or unconsciously, we are sending out the influence of our personality all the time. now the more we know of these things the greater becomes our responsibility, and i would therefore solemnly warn the reader against any attempt to use the powers now indicated to the injury of any other person, or for the purpose of depriving any one else of that liberty of action which he would wish to enjoy himself. such use of our mental powers is in direct opposition to the law of unity which i have spoken of; and since that law is the basic principle of the whole universe, any opposition to it places us in antagonism with a force immeasurably greater than ourselves. our thought always continues to be creative; but in destructive use it becomes creative for destructive forces, and, since it has its origin in our own personality, we are certain sooner or later to feel its effects, on the principle that every action always produces a corresponding reaction. as we have seen, the law knows nothing of persons, but acts automatically in strict accord with the nature of the power which has set it in motion. under negative conditions the great law of the universe becomes your adversary, and must continue to be so, until by your altered mode of thought you put yourself in line with it. but on the other hand, if our intention be to co-operate with the great law, we shall find that in it also exists a mysterious "soul of the subject," which will respond to us, however imperfectly we may understand its _modus operandi_. it is the intention that counts, not the theoretical knowledge. the knowledge will grow by experience and meditation, and its value is measured entirely by the intention that is at the back of it. chapter vi the promises we have now, i hope, laid a sufficiently broad foundation of the relation between the law and the word. the law cannot be changed, and the word can. we have two factors, one variable, and the other invariable; so that from this combination any variety of resultants may be expected. the law cannot be altered, but it can be specialized, just as iron can be made to float by the same law by which it sinks. now let us try to figure out in our imagination an ideal of the sort of results we should want to bring out from these two factors. in the first place i think we should like to be free from all worry and anxiety; for a life of continual worry is not worth living. and in the second we should like always to have something to look forward to and feel an interest in; for a life entirely devoid of all interest is also not worth living. but, granted that these two conditions be fulfilled, i think we should all be well pleased to go on living _ad infinitum_. now can we conceive any combination of the law and the word which would produce such results? that is the question before us. the first step is to generalize our principle as widely as possible, for the wider the generalization, the larger becomes the scope for specialization. the invariable factor we already know. it is the law, always creating in accordance with the word that sets it in motion, whether constructive or destructive; so what we really have to consider is the sort of word (i.e. thought or desire) which will set the law working in the right direction. it must be a word of confidence in its own power; otherwise by the hypothesis of the case it would be giving contradictory directions to the law, or to borrow a simile from what we have learnt about waves in ether, it would be sending out vibrations that would cancel one another and so produce no effect. then it must be a word that does not compromise itself by antagonizing the law of unity, and so producing disruptive forces instead of constructive ones. and finally, we must be quite sure that it really is the right word, and that we have been making no mistake about it. if these conditions be fulfilled the logical result will be entire freedom from anxiety. similarly with regard to maintaining a continued interest in life. we must have a continued succession of ideals, whether great or small, that will carry us on with something always just ahead of us; and we must work the ideals out, and not let them evaporate in dreams. if these conditions be fulfilled we have before us a life of never-ending interest and activity, and therefore a life worth living. where then are we to find the word which will produce these conditions: perfect freedom from anxiety and continual, happy interest? i do not think it is to be found in any way but by identifying our own word with the word which brings all creation into existence, and keeps it always moving onward in that continuous forward movement which we call evolution. we must come back to the old teaching, that the macrocosm is reproduced in the microcosm, with the further perception that this identity of principle can only be produced by identity of cause. law cannot be other than eternal and self-demonstrating, just as × must eternally = ; but it remains only an abstract conception until the creative word affords it a field of operation, just as twice two is four remains only a mathematical abstraction until there is something for you to count; and accordingly, as we have already seen, all our reasoning concerning the origin of creation, whether based on metaphysical or scientific grounds, brings us to the conception of a universal and eternal living spirit localizing itself in particular areas of cosmic activity by the power of the word. then, if a similar creative power is to be reproduced in ourselves, it must be by the same method: the localizing of the same spirit in ourselves by the power of the same "word." then our word, or thought, will no longer be that of separate personality, but that of the eternal spirit finding a fresh centre from which to specialize the working of the law, and so produce still further results than that of the first or simply cosmic and generic creation, according to the two maxims that "nature unaided fails," and that "principle is not limited by precedent." i want to make this sequence clear to the student before proceeding further: . localization of the spirit in specific areas of creative activity. . cosmic or generic creation, including ourselves as a race resulting from this, and providing both the material and the instruments for carrying the work further by _specializing the original creative power_ through individual thought, just as in all cases of scientific discovery. . then, since what is to be specialized through our individual thought is the word of the originating power itself, in order to do this we must think in terms of the originating word, on the general principle, that any power must always exhibit itself in terms of the instrument through which it works. this, it appears to me, is a clear logical sequence, just as a tree cannot make itself into a box, unless there be first the idea of a box which does not exist in the tree itself, and also the tools with which to fashion the wood into a box; while on the other hand there could never be any box unless there be first a tree. now it is just such a sequence as this that is set before us in the bible, and i do not find it adequately set forth in any other teaching, either philosophical or religious, with which i am acquainted. some of these systems contain a great deal of truth, and are therefore helpful as far as they go; but they do not go the whole way, and for the most part stop short at the first or simply cosmic creation; or, if they attempt to pass beyond this, it is on the line of making unaided power of the individual the sole means by which to do so, and thus in fact always keeping us at the merely generic level. such a mode of thought as this, fails to meet the requirements of our conception of a happy life as one entirely exempt from fear and anxiety. in like manner also it fails to meet the first requirements of the whole series, viz.: the word should be certain of itself; and if it be not certain of itself we have no assurance that it may not eventually disappoint our hopes. in short, this mode of thought leaves us to bear the whole burden from which we want to escape. so it is not good enough; we must look for something better. now this something better i find in the _promises_ contained in the bible, and it is this that to my mind distinguishes our own scriptures from the sacred books of all other nations, and from all systems of philosophy. i do not at all ignore the current objections to the possibility of divine promises, but i think that on examination they will be found to be superficial and resulting from want of careful enquiry into the true nature of the promises themselves. how is it possible for the laws of the universe to make exceptions? how can god act by individual favouritism unless it be either through sheer caprice, or by the individual managing to get round him in some way, either by supplying some need which he cannot supply for himself, in which case god is of limited power, or else by flattering him, in which case he is the apotheosis of absurd vanity. the two are really the same question put in different ways--the question of individual exceptions to the general law. the answer is that there are no individual exceptions to the general law; but there are very various degrees of realization of the principle of the law, and the more a man works with the principle the more the law will work for him; so that the finer his perception of the principle becomes, the more he will appear to be an exception to the law as commonly recognized. edison and marconi are not capriciously favoured by the laws of nature, but they know more about them than most of us. now it is just the same with the bible promises. they are promises according to law. they are based upon the widest generalization and hence lead to the highest specialization through the combined action of the law and the word--jachin and boaz, the two pillars of the universe. these promises comprise all sorts of desirable things: health of body, peace of mind, earthly prosperity, prolongation of life, and, finally, even the conquest of death itself; but always on one condition: perfect "confidence in the power of the all-originating spirit in response to our reliance on the word." this is what the bible calls faith; and it is perfectly logical when we understand the principle of it, for every thought of doubt is, in effect, the utterance of a word which produces negative results by the very same law by which the word of faith produces positive ones. this is the only condition which the bible imposes for the fulfilment of its promises, and this is because it is inherent in the nature of the law by which their fulfilment is to be brought about. a few texts will suffice as examples of the bible promises, and no doubt most of my readers are familiar with many others; but it would be worth while to read the bible through, marking all such texts, and classifying them according to the sort of promises they contain. read, for instance, job xxii, , etc. this is a most remarkable passage containing among other things the promise of earthly wealth; or again job v, , etc., where we find promises of protection in time of danger, power over material nature, and prolonged life. while in job xxxiii, , etc., there is promise of return to youth, a promise which is repeated in psalm ciii, . again in isaiah lxi, , etc., there is the promise of immensely extended physical life, death at the age of one hundred being counted so premature as to resemble that of an infant, and the normal standard of age being compared to a tree which lives for centuries; and the same passage also promises immediate answer to prayers. the psalms are full of such promises, and they are scattered throughout the bible. now there is an unfortunate tendency among people who read their bible with reverence, to what they call "spiritualize" such passages as these, which means that they do not believe them. they say such things are impossible; and therefore they must have some other meaning, and accordingly they interpret the words metaphorically, as referring to something to be experienced in another life, but quite impossible in this one. of course there are spiritual equivalents to these things, and the teaching of the bible is, that they are the outward correspondences of inward spiritual states; but to "spiritualize" them in the way i am speaking of, is nothing but unbelief in the power of god to work on the plane of nature. how such readers square their opinion with the fact that god has created nature, i do not know. even in the animal world we find wonderful instances of longevity. if an elephant be not overworked before he is twenty, he is in full working power up to eighty, and will then be capable of light work for another twenty years, after which he may yet enjoy another twenty years of quiet old age as the reward of his labours, while crocodiles and tortoises have been known to live for centuries. if then such things be possible in the ordinary course of nature in the animal world, why need we doubt the specializing power of the word to produce far greater results in the case of man? it is because we will not accept the maxim, that "principle is not limited by precedent" in regard to ourselves, though we see it demonstrated by every new scientific discovery. we rely more on the past experience of the race, than on the creative power of god. we call him almighty, and then say that in his book he promises things which he is not able to perform. but the fault is with ourselves. we limit "the holy one of israel," and as a consequence get only so much as by our mental attitude we are able to receive--again the old maxim that "power can only work in terms of the instrument it works through." i do not say that it is at all easy for us to completely rid ourselves of negative race-thought ingrained into us from childhood, and subtly playing upon that generic impersonal self in us of which i have spoken, and which readily responds to those thought-currents to which we are habitually attuned. it is a matter of individual growth. but the promises themselves contain no inherent impossibility, and are logical deductions from the principles of the creative law. if the power of the spirit over things of the material plane be an impossibility, then by what power did jesus perform his miracles? either you must deny his miracles, or you must admit the power of the spirit to work on the material plane--there is no way out of the dilemma. perhaps you may say: "oh, but he was god in person!" well, all the promises affirm that it is god who does these things; so what it is possible for god to do at one time, it is equally possible for him to do at all times. or perhaps you hold other theological views, and will say that jesus was an exception to the rest of the race; but, on the contrary, the whole bible sets him forth as the example--an exception certainly to men as we now know them, but the example of what we all have it in us to become--otherwise what use is he to us? but apart from all argument on the subject we have his own words, telling us that those who believe in him, i.e., believe what he said about himself--shall be able to do works as great as his own, and even greater (john xiv, ). for these reasons it appears to me that on the authority of the bible itself, and also on metaphysical and scientific grounds we are justified in taking such promises as those i have quoted in a perfectly literal sense. then there are promises of the power that will attend our utterance of the word. "thou shalt also decree a thing and it shall be established unto thee" (job xxii, ). "all things are possible unto you" (mark ix, ). "whosoever ... shall believe that what he sayeth cometh to pass, he shall have whatsover he sayeth" (mark xi, ), and so on. other passages again promise peace of mind. "thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is staid on thee, because he trusteth in thee" (isaiah xxvi, ). "let him take hold of my strength that he may make peace with me" (isaiah xxvii, ). st. paul speaks of "the god of peace" in many passages, e.g., rom. xv, ; cor. xiii, ; thess. v, , and hebr. xiii, ; and jesus, in his final discourse recorded in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of st. john's gospel, lays peculiar stress on the gift of peace. and lastly there are many passages which promise the overcoming of death itself; as for instance job xix, - ; john viii, , and x, , and xi, and ; hebr. ii, and ; cor. xv, - ; tim. i, ; rom. vi, ("the gift of god is eternal life in jesus christ, our lord"). "god commanded the blessing, even life for evermore" (ps. cxxxiii, ). now i hope the reader will take the trouble to look up the texts to which i have referred, and not be lazy. i am sure he would do so if he were promised a ten pound note or a fifty dollar bill for his pains, and if these promises are not all bosh, there is something worth a good deal more to be got by studying them. just run through the list: health, wealth, peace of mind, safety, creative power, and eternal life. you would be willing to pay a good premium to an insurance office that could guarantee you all these. well, there is a company that does this without paying any premium, and its name is "god and co., unlimited"; the only condition, is that you yourself have to take the part of "co." and it is not a sleeping partnership, but a wide-awake one! so i hope you will take the trouble to look up the texts; but at the same time you must remember that the reading of single texts is not sufficient. if you take any isolated phrase you choose, without reference to the rest of the book, there is no nonsense you cannot make out of the bible. you would not be allowed to do that sort of thing in a court of law. when a document is produced in evidence, the meaning of the words used in it are very carefully construed, not only in reference to the particular clause in which they occur, but also with reference to the intention of the document as a whole, and to the circumstances under which they were written. the same word may mean very different things in different connections; for instance i remember two reported cases in one of which the word "spanish" meant a certain sort of leather, and in the other a kind of material used in brewing; and in like manner particular texts are to be interpreted in accordance with the gist of the bible as a whole. this is just the mistake the jews made, of building up theories on particular texts, and which jesus corrected when he said: "search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and these are they which testify of me" (john v, ), or, as the revised version puts it: "ye search the scriptures because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me," which appears to be the better rendering. the words "ye think" is the key to the whole passage. he says in effect: "you fancy that eternal life is to be found in the book. it is not to be found in the book, but in what the book tells you about, and here i am as a living example of it." it is just the same with everything else. no book can do more than tell you about a thing; it cannot produce it. you may study the cookery book from morning till night, but that will not give you your dinner. what jesus meant was, that we should read the scriptures in the same way we should read any other book of practical instruction. first think what it is all about; then look at the nature of the general principles involved, and then see what instruction the book gives you for their practical application. _then go and do it_. and remember also a further difference between reading about a thing and doing it. a book is for everybody, and can therefore, only give general instruction; but when you come to do the thing you will always find it works with some personal modifications,--not departures from the general principles you have read about, but specializations of them--and in this way you will learn much that is not to be got out of books, even the best. i remember many years ago, when i was much younger, asking one of our leading water-colour artists,[ ] how he would recommend me to study landscape painting, and he said: "practise continually from nature, and you will learn more than any one can teach you; that is how i have learnt, myself." on the subject, then in question, he said just what jesus did: "here i am as a practical example of what i tell you." and another thing is, that the more you think principles out for yourself and try to observe them in practice, the clearer the meaning of your book will become to you. i have a few excellent books on painting, but i had no idea how excellent they were when i first got them; practical experience has taught me to find much more in them than i did at first, for now i understand better what they are talking about. well, that is the way to read the bible, neither despising it as worthless tradition, nor treating the mere letter of it with superstitious veneration; both extremes are to be equally avoided. in fact the bible tells us so itself: "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life" ( cor. iii, ); this, of course, does not mean that the letter can be tampered with, any more than a judge can alter the wording of a document put in evidence; it must be interpreted in the general sense of the document as a whole; and when the letter is thus vivified by the spirit, it will be found fully to express it. but we require to enter into the spirit of it first. now it appears to me, that taken in this way, the bible is an exceedingly practical book, and that is why i want the reader to get at some general principles which he will find, _mutatis mutandis_, equally applicable all round, whether to electricity, or to life, and whatever may be the subject-matter, it will always be found to resolve itself into a question of the relation between law and personality. if now we read the bible promises in the light of the general principles we have considered in the earlier pages, we shall find that they are all promises according to law. they are statements of the results to be obtained by a truer realization of the principles of law and personality than we have hitherto apprehended. we must always bear in mind that the law is set in motion by the word. the word does not _make_ the law, but gives it something to work upon, so that without the word there could be no manifestation of the law, a truth embodied in the maxim, that "every creation carries its own mathematics along with it." if the reader remembers what i have said in the chapter of "the soul of the subject," he will see that the principle involved, is that of the susceptibility of the impersonal to suggestions from the personal. this follows of course from the very conception of impersonality; it is that which has no power of selection and volition, and which is therefore without any power of taking an initiative on its own account. in a previous chapter i have pointed out that the only possible conception of the inauguration of a world-system, resolves itself into the recognition of one original and universal substantive life, out of which proceeds a corresponding verb, or active energy, reproducing in action what the substantive is in essence. on the other hand there must be something for this active principle to work in; and since there can be nothing anterior to the universal life or energy, both these factors must be potentially contained in it. if, then, we represent this eternal substantive life by a circle with a dot in the centre, we may represent these two principles as emerging from it by placing two circles at equal distance below it, one on either side, and placing the sign "+" (plus) in one, and the sign "-" (minus) in the other. this is how students of these subjects usually map out the relation of the _prima principia_, or first abstract principles. the sign "+" (plus) indicates the active principle, and the sign "-" (minus) the passive principle. if the reader will draw a little diagram as described, it will help to make what follows clearer. necessarily the initiative must be taken by the active principle; and the taking of initiative implies selection and volition, that is to say, the essential qualities of personality; and passivity implies the converse of all this, and therefore is impersonality. the two principles in no way conflict with one another, but are polar opposites, like the positive and negative plates of a battery, or the two ends of a magnet. they are complementary to one another, and neither can work without the other. a little consideration will show that this is not a mere fancy, but a self-obvious generalization, the contrary to which it is impossible to conceive. it is simply the case of the box which cannot come into existence without the activity of the carpenter and the passivity of the wood. from such considerations as this the deep thinkers of old times posited the generating of a world-system by the interaction of what they named animus dei, the active principle, and anima mundi, or soul of the universe, the passive principle--the one personal, and the other impersonal; and by the hypothesis of the case the only mode of activity possible to anima mundi is response to animus dei. but the same impersonal passivity must also make anima mundi receptive likewise to lesser and more individualized modes of personality, and it becomes, so to say, fecundated by the ideas thus impressed upon it. in every case "the word is the seed." we may picture this planting of an idea or "word" in the cosmic soul as acting very much like the initial impulse that starts a train of waves in ether, and these thought-waves are reproduced in corresponding forms; or, to recur to the simile of seed, the cosmic soul acts like the soil and gives it nourishment. looking at it in this way the old exponents of these things regarded the active principle as masculine, and the passive as feminine, the one generating and the other nutritive, corresponding to the words _rouah_ and _hoshech_, the expansion and compression principles in the hebrew text of the opening verses of genesis. if then we posit this impersonal soul of the universe as the living principle dwelling in the substance of the etheric universal medium it will account for a good many things. if it be asked why we should assume the presence of a living principle in the universal substance the answer is in the maxim "quod ex vivo vivum," what proceeds from life is living. then as we see by our diagram, anima mundi equally with animus dei proceeds from the original substantive of life, and therefore, on the principle of the above maxim, that like produces like, anima mundi must also be a living thing whose vehicle is the universal substance. we may picture then, the response of the indwelling soul of the universal medium to our thought, as starting corresponding vibrations in the substance of the medium, just as our own thought, acting through the vibratory system of our nerves, causes our body to make the movement we intend. but perhaps you will say: how can this be, seeing that by the hypothesis the soul of the universe is impersonal, and therefore unintelligent? well, it is just this fact of having no thought of its own, that enables us to impress our thought upon it and cause it, so to say, to "take on" an intelligence relatively to the subject of our thought, much in the same way that the impersonal soul in the human subject "takes on" or reflects the thought of the hypnotist, and not infrequently develops it to a far greater extent than the original thought of the operator expressed. such a hypothesis--and i think some such hypothesis is needed to account for any creation at all--throws light on the _modus operandi_ of the bible promises. we plant the word of the promise in the womb of anima mundi, and if we do not uproot it by using the same power adversely, it is bound to come to fruition in due course, by the same law by which the world-systems are formed; and if we are to believe that the word of the promise is not our own word, but the word of god, then our thought of it is imbued with a corresponding power as we hand it over to anima mundi. thus the promises fulfil themselves automatically, in accordance with the principles of the relations between law and personality, and they do so, _not in our own power_, but by the power of the word of god. this, then, gives us at least an intelligible working hypothesis of the rationale of the bible promises. the measurement of their fulfilment is exactly proportional to our belief in them, not from any unintelligible cause, and still less from any unreasoning feat of a capricious deity, but by the working of an intelligible law. if any of my readers happens to be an electrician, he will find an exact parallel in what is known as ohm's law. such readers will be familiar with the formula c = e/r, but for the benefit of those to whom this formula may be unintelligible, i will give a few words of explanation. c means the current of electricity which is to be delivered for any work that is to be done. e stands for the electro-motive force which generates the current; and r is the resistance offered to the current by the conductor, such as the wires through which it flows. if there be no resistance, the full amount of current generated would be delivered. but without any conductor no current could be delivered, and therefore there must be _some_ resistance, and so the full power of the electro-motive force can never be delivered by the current. the amount that will be delivered is the original power of the electro-motive force divided by the resistance. the resistance therefore acts as a restricting force, limiting the extent to which the power of the original electro-motive force shall be delivered at the point where the work is to be done, but at the same time no delivery at that point could be effected without it; so the resistance also has a necessary part to play in the working of the circuit. now if we want to translate the formula c = e/r into terms of spiritual force we may put it thus: e stands for the limitless potential of the eternal spirit; c stands for the current flowing from it; and r stands for the localizing quality of our thought. we cannot entirely dispense with this localizing quality, for our whole purpose is to transmute the _unlimited_, undifferentiated power, which subsists in the eternal substantive of spirit, into a particular differentiated mode of action, which therefore implies a corresponding centralization. this is the proper function of our thought. it is this compressing power which, as i said above, the hebrew renders by the word "_hoshech_" in the opening verses of genesis, and which is the necessary complementary to the converse expanding power or "_rouah_." it takes the co-operation of the two to produce any results. restricted, then, to its proper function our r or condensing quality is an essential factor in the work. but if it be allowed to take the form of doubt or unbelief, then it renders the flow of the current from the spirit ineffective to the extent to which the doubt is entertained; and if doubt be allowed to degenerate into total unbelief and denial of the power of the spirit, we thereby cancel the originating force altogether. to put it in terms of the electrical formula, we make r greater than e, in which case no current can flow. we thus find that the words "according to your faith be it unto you" are actually the statement of a mathematical law, having nothing vague about them. this may be a somewhat original application of ohm's law, but the parallel is so exact, that i cannot help thinking it will appeal to some of my readers who may be conversant with electrical science. for those who are not, a simpler simile may be, that you cannot deliver a more powerful stream of water than the bore of the pipe through which it flows will admit of; or, to employ a legal truism, delivery on the part of the donor must be met by acceptance on the part of the donee before a deed of gift can become operative; or, in still simpler language, "you may take a horse to the water but you can't make him drink." we see, then, that there is a law of faith, and that faith is not a denial of the universal reign of law, but the perception of its widest generalization, and therefore giving scope to its highest specialization. the opposition between faith and law, of which st. paul so often speaks, is the opposition between this broad view of the ultimate principle of the creative law and that narrower view of restriction by particular laws, which prevents us from grasping the law of faith; but that he does not deny the _principle_ of law, that is the relation between c and e, is clear from his own statement in rom. viii, where he says: "the law of the spirit of life in christ jesus sets me free from the law of sin and death;" in other words: the law of the good sets us free from the law of evil; and for the same reason st. james says, that the perfect law is the law, of liberty (jas. i, ). of course if we suppose that faith is something contrary to the law of the universe we at once import into our thought the negative quality which entirely vitiates our action. we rightly perceive that the laws of the universe can never be altered, and if our notion of faith be, that it is an attempt to work in contradiction to these laws, the best definition we can give it is that given by the little girl in the sunday school, who said that "faith is trying to make yourself believe what you know is not true." the reason for such a misconception is, that it entirely omits one of the factors in the calculation. it considers, only the law, and gives no place to the word in the scheme of things. yet we do not carry this misconception into the sciences of chemistry and electricity. we take the immutability of the law as the basis of these sciences, but we do not expect the immutable law to produce a photographic apparatus, or an electric train, without the intervention of a reasoning and selective power which specializes the fundamental general law into particular uses. we do not look to the law for those powers of reasoning and selection, through which we make it work in all the highly complex ways of our ordinary commercial applications of it--we know better than that. we look to personality for this. in our every-day pursuits we always act on the maxim that "nature unaided fails," and that the infinite possibilities stored up in the law, can only be brought to light by a power of reasoning and selection working through the law. this co-operation of the personal with the impersonal is the law _of_ the law; and since the law is unchangeable, this law _of_ the law must also be unchangeable, and must therefore apply on all planes, and through all time--the law, that without co-operation of the law and the word nothing can be brought into existence, from a solar system to a pin; while on the other hand there is no limit to what can be got out of the law by the operation of the word. if the student will look at the bible promises in the light of the general principles, he will find that they are perfectly logical, whether from the metaphysical or from the scientific standpoint, and that their working is only from the same law through which all scientific developments are made. if this be apprehended it will be clear that the word of faith is not "trying to make ourselves believe what we know is not true," but, as st. paul puts it, it is "giving substance to things not yet seen" (heb. xi, , r.v.). chapter vii death and immortality i think most of my readers will agree with me, that the greatest of all the promises is that of the overcoming of death, for, as the greater includes the less, the power which can do _that_ can do anything else. we think that there are only two things that are certain in this world--death and taxes, and no doubt, under the ordinary past conditions, this is quite true; but the question is: are they really inherent in the essential nature of things; or are they not the outcome of our past limited, and often inverted modes of thought? the teaching of the bible is that they are the latter. on the subject of taxes the master says: "render unto cæsar the things that are cæsar's" (matth. xxii, ), but on another occasion he said that the children of the king were not liable to taxation (matth. xvii, ). however we may leave the "taxes" alone for the present, with the remark that their resemblance to death consists in both being, under present conditions, regarded as compulsory. under other conditions, however, we can well imagine "taxes" disappearing in a unity of thought which would merge them in co-operation and voluntary contribution; and it appears to me quite possible for death to disappear in like manner. in whatever way we may interpret the story of eden, whether literally, or if, like some of the fathers of the church such as origen, we take it as an allegory, the result is the same--that death is not in the essence of man's creation, but supervened as the consequence of an inverted mode of thinking. the creative spirit thought one way, and eve thought another; and since the thought of the creating spirit is the origin of life, this difference of opinion naturally resulted in death. then, from this starting-point, all the rest of the bible is devoted to getting rid of this difference of opinion between us and the spirit of life, and showing us that the spirit's opinion is truer than ours, and so leading us to adopt it as our own. the whole thing turns on the obvious proposition, that if you invert the cause you also invert the effect. it is the principle that division is the inversion of multiplication, so that if × = then you cannot escape from the consequence that / = . the question then is, which of the two opinions is the more reasonable--that death is essentially inherent in the nature of things, or that it is not? probably ninety-nine out of a hundred readers will say, the whole experience of mankind from the earliest ages proves that death is the unchangeable law of the universe, and there have been no exceptions. i am not quite sure that i should altogether agree with them on this last point; but putting that aside, let us consider whether it really is the essential law of the universe. to say that this is proved by the past experience of the race, is what logicians call a _petitio principii_--it is assuming the whole point at issue. it is the same argument which our grandfathers would have used against aerial navigation--no one had ever travelled in the air, and that proved that no one ever could. my father, who was a junior officer in india when the first railway was run in england, used to tell a story of one of his senior officers, who, on being asked what he thought of the rapidity of the new mode of travelling, said he thought it was "all a damned lie," which opinion appeared to him to settle the whole question. but i hope that none of my readers will hold the same opinion regarding the overcoming of death, even though they might express it in more polite language. at any rate it may be worth while to examine the theoretical possibility of the idea. to begin with, it involves a self-contradiction to say that the energy of any force can stop the working of that force. if a force stops working, it is for one of two reasons, either that the supply of it is exhausted, or that it is overcome by an opposite and neutralizing force. but we have seen that the originating cause of all things can only be an inexhaustible power of life, and therefore the hypothesis of it becoming exhausted is eliminated; and similarly, since all the forces of the universe proceed from this source, it is impossible for any of them to have a nature diametrically opposite to that of the source from which they flow. so the alternative must be eliminated also. accordingly, the outflow, undifferentiated, of life and energy from the eternal substantive of spirit, is never stopped _by its own current_ in any of its differentiated streams; it is impossible for a current to be stopped by its own flow, whether it be a current of electricity, steam, water, or anything else. what then does stop the flow of any sort of current? it is the resistance or _inertia_ of the channel through which it flows; so that we come back to the formula of ohm's law, c = e/r as a general proposition applicable to any conceivable sort of energy. the neutralizing power then, is not that of the flowing of any sort of energy, but the rigidity, or inertia of the medium through which the energy has to make its way; thus bringing us back to _rouah_ and _hoshech_, the expansive and compressive principles of the opening verses of genesis. it is the broad scientific generalization of the opposition between ertia, or energy, and inertia, or absence of energy; and since, for the reasons just given, ertia cannot go against itself, the only thing that can stop it is inertia. now the components of the human body are simply various chemical elements--so much carbon, so much hydrogen, etc., as any textbook on the subject will tell you; and although, of course, every sort of substance is the abode of ceaseless _atomic_ energy, we all recognize that merely atomic energy is not that of the powers of thought, will, and perception, which make us organized mentalities instead of a mere aggregation of the various substances exposed to view in a biological museum, as constituting the human body--you might take all these substances in their proper proportions, and shake them up together, but you would not make an intelligent man of them. we are therefore safe in saying that the physiological body represents the principle of inertia in us, while the something that thinks in us represents the principle of ertia. the balance of power between the life principle in us and the death principle, is then, necessarily, a question of the balance between these two, the spirit and the flesh, or ertia and inertia. why then does the balance preponderate to the life-side for a certain length of time, and then go over to the opposite side? now this brings us to the distinction which the old writers drew, between the "vital soul" of any living thing and the spirit. their conception of the "vital soul" was very much the same as i have set forth in the chapter on "the soul of the subject." it is the individual's particular share of the cosmic soul or anima mundi, whether it be an individual tree, or an individual person; and the ordinary maximum length of time, during which the vital soul will be able to overcome the inertia of its physical vehicle, depends upon the particular class to which the individual belongs. what the ordinary maximum is in regard to any species is a matter of experience, and it is in this way that we have fixed the usual limit of human life at three-score years and ten. now it is here that we shall begin to profit by some knowledge about the invisible part of ourselves. the actual molecules of our body, as i have just said, are only so much dead matter. this inert material is pulled about in various directions by strings which we call muscles, according to the movements we wish our bodies to make, and these muscles are set in motion by the vibrations of the nerves.[ ] but what is it that occasions these vibrations of the nerves? here we begin to pass beyond the limits of official science, though not beyond the limits of recognizable law. we have to recognize the existence of an etheric body acting as an intermediary between intention, desire, or (in the case of human beings) thought of the soul and the physical vibrations of the nerves. this is why, in an earlier chapter, i have drawn attention to our power of sending out etheric vibrations beyond the limits of the physical body, as in the case of de rocha's experiments. such experiments show that there is in us something not composed of dense matter, which is able to convey vibrations to dense matter; and it is this something which we speak of as the etheric body. but if we wish to trace the links by which our thought operates upon the physical body, we find ourselves compelled to postulate yet another intermediary, what i have spoken of as the "vital soul"--a vehicle which does not _consciously think_, but in which what we may call race-consciousness becomes centred in the individual. this race-consciousness is none other than the ever-present "will-to-live" which is the basis of physical evolution--that automatically acting principle--which causes plants to turn towards the sun, animals to seek their proper food, and both animals and men to try instantly to escape from immediate danger. it is what we call instinct which does not reason. i may give a laughable experience of my own to illustrate the fact that conscious reason is not the method of this faculty. once when on leave from india i was walking along a street in london in the heat of a summer's day and suddenly noticed just at my feet a long dark thing apparently wriggling across the white glare of the pavement. "snake!" i exclaimed, and jumped aside for all i was worth, and the next moment was laughing at myself for not recollecting that cobras were not common objects in the london streets. but it looked just like one, and of course turned out to be nothing but a piece of rag. well, instinct did its duty even if it did make a fool of me; but there is certainly no conscious reasoning in the matter, only the automatic action of inherent law--"self-preservation is the first law of nature." this vital soul, then, is the seat of all those instincts which go towards the preservation of the individual's physical body, and towards the propagation of the race; and it is on this account that our theosophical friends call it the "desire body" or, to use the indian term "kama rupa." it acts with conscious intention, but not with conscious _reasoning_. it is thus distinguished on the one hand from the etheric body, which is a mere vehicle for finer vibrations than can take place in the denser matter of the physical body, but which has _no intention_; and on the other from the _mind_ which acts by conscious reasoning, and it thus forms an intermediary between the two. the importance of recognizing the place of this higher intermediary in the ascending scale of living principle is, that for all practical purposes the animal world does not rise higher than this in the scale. it is true that in particular instances we find the first dawning of the mental faculty in an animal, but it is only very faint; so this does not affect the broad general principle. the point to be noted is that up to this stage human beings are built on the same lines as animals, and what distinguishes us, is the addition in ourselves of a higher factor,--that of the reasoning mind exercising the power of conscious thought. now it is the direction of this thought that influences the three lower factors. the sequence, going upwards, is as follows:--movement is communicated to the physical body by the etheric body; and movement is communicated to the etheric body by the vital soul; then, in proportion as the purely instinctive action of the vital soul is controlled by the conscious thought, so its action upon the two lowest principles is modified. here, then, is the crucial point. in what direction is the conscious thought going to modify the action of the three principles that are below it? if it takes the soul of mere racial desire and the physical body as its standard of thought, then it naturally follows that it cannot raise it any higher. it has descended to _their_ level and so cannot pour any stream of life into it, on the simple principle that no current can ever flow from a lower to a higher level, whether the difference in level be that of actual elevation, as in the case of water, or different in potential, as in the case of electricity. on the other hand if the conscious mind recognizes that itself proceeds from some higher source, it looks to receive life from that source, and its thought is modified accordingly, and in turn re-acts correspondingly upon the lower principles. if this is clear to the student, he will now see how it is that by limiting our conception of life to the current ideas entertained by the race, we impress these ideas on our three lower principles. it is true that these three principles are not capable of reasoning themselves, but the highest of them, the vital soul, has its action modified by the reasoning principle above it, and so communicates to the two lowest principles corresponding waves of vibration. and in this connection we must remember the distinction between the two systems of nerves; the voluntary system connected with the brain and forming the medium of all voluntary action, and the involuntary, or sympathetic system connected with the solar plexus and controlling all the automatic actions of the body, and thus being the agent of that continual renewal of the physical organism which is always going on, and keeps in existence for a life time a body which begins to disintegrate immediately the soul has left it.[ ] now it is through this inner builder of the body that our thought re-acts upon our physical organism. the response is purely automatic, for the simple reason that there is no original thinking power in the three lower principles; the action is that of the law as directed by thought or word. in this way then, it appears to me, the personal in us acts upon the impersonal in us; and if we assume, as i think we may, that this action takes place by means of etheric waves, we have, on general scientific principles, a clue to what we read in the bible about the transmutation of the body. the theory of the constitution of the atom shows us that its nature is determined by the number of its particles and their rate of revolution, and that a change in the rate of revolution results in the throwing off of some of the particles. then the number of particles being altered, there results a change in the distribution of the positive and negative charges within the sphere of the atom, since they must always exactly balance one another; and this change in the distribution of the positive and negative charges must instantly result in a corresponding change in the geometrical configuration of particles constituting the atom. that the particles automatically arrange themselves into groups of different geometrical form within the sphere of the atom, has been demonstrated both mathematically and experimentally by professor j.j. thompson,[ ] these geometrical forms resulting of course from the balance of attraction and repulsion between the positive and negative charges of the particles. that the transmutation of one substance into another is not a mere dream of the mediæval alchemists is now already shown by modern science. under suitable conditions an atom of radium breaks down into atoms of another sort known as radium emanations, and these again break down into yet another sort of atoms to which the name of radium emanations x has been given, while radium emanation also gives rise to the atom of helium (n.k. ). thorium also behaves in the same manner, transmuting into atoms called thorium x, which again change into atoms of another sort to which the name of thorium emanations has been given and these in turn transmute into atoms of yet another kind, known as thorium emanations x. the same is the case also with uranium which, however, so far as is yet known, undergoes only one transmutation into what is known as uranium x. the transmutation of one sort of atom into another is therefore not a mere visionary fancy, but an established fact; and although our laboratory experiments in this direction may not as yet have gone very far, they have gone far enough to show that a law of transmutation does exist in nature. then, since the difference between one sort of atom and another results from the difference and arrangement of their particles, and the difference in the number and arrangement of the particles results from the difference in the speed of their rotation, and this again results from the difference in the energy or rate of vibration of the particles, we come back to different rates of etheric vibrations as the commencement of the whole series of changes; and as is proved by the facts of wireless telephoning, different rates of etheric vibrations can be set in motion by the varying sounds of the human voice, even on the physical plane. may it not be then, that by the same law, vibrations of other wave-lengths, yet unknown to science, will be set in motion by the unspoken word of our thought? the substance known as polonium, even by its near approach to an electric bell, causes it to ring, and if etheric waves can thus be started by an inanimate substance, why should we suppose that our thought has less power, especially when metaphysically we cannot avoid the conclusion that the whole creation must have its origin in the divine thought? from such considerations as these, i think we may reasonably infer that if the mind be illuminated by a range of thought coming from a higher mind, there is no limit to the power which may thus be exercised over the material world, and that therefore st. paul's statement regarding the transmutation of the present physical body, is one which should be included in the circle of our ideas, as being within the scope of the laws of the universe when their action is specialized by the power of the word ( cor. xv); and similarly with regard to other statements to the same effect contained in the bible. what is wanted is the realization of a greater word than that which we form from the current experience of the race. the race has formed its word on the basis of the lower principles of our being, and if we are to advance beyond this, the law of the subject clearly indicates that it can only be by adopting a more fundamental word, or idea, than that which we have hitherto thought to include the entire range of possibilities. the law of our further evolution demands a word not formed from past experiences, but based upon the eternal principle of the all-originating life itself. and this is in strict accord with scientific method. if we had always allowed ourselves to be ruled by past experiences we should still be primitive savages; and it is only by the gradual perception of underlying principles, that we have attained the degree of civilization we have reached to-day; so what the bible puts before us is simply the application to the life in ourselves of the maxim that "principle is not limited by precedent." now the bible promises serve to put us on the track of this principle: they suggest lines of enquiry. and the enquiry leads to the conclusion that the two ultimate factors are the law and the word. what we have missed hitherto is the conception of the limitless possibilities of the law, and the limitless power of the word. on one occasion the master said to the jews "ye know not the scriptures neither the power of god" (matth. xxii, ) and the same is the case with ourselves. the true "scripture" is the "scriptura rerum" or the law indelibly written in the nature of things, and the written scriptures are true only because they contain the statement of the principle of the law. therefore until we see the principle of the law we "know not the scriptures." on the other hand, until we see the principle of the operation of the word through the law, we do not know "the power of god"; and it is only as we come to perceive the interaction of the law and the word that we see the beginning of the way that leads to life and liberty. but although it is evident from the text just quoted, as well as from other intimations in his epistles, that st. paul fully grasped the principle of the transmutation of the body, he himself tells us that he has not yet realized it in practice. he says he has not yet "attained to the resurrection from the dead," but is still pressing on towards its attainment (ph. iii, ). and it is to be remarked that he is not here speaking of a general "resurrection _of_ the dead," but, as the word _exanastasis_ in the original greek indicates, of a special resurrection from among the dead; this indicates an _individual_ achievement, not merely something common to the whole race. from this and other passages it is evident that by "the dead" it means those whose conception of life is limited to the four lower principles, thus #unifying# the mind with the three principles which are below it; and the same idea is expressed in a variety of ways all through the bible. this therefore shows that he is quite aware that knowledge of a principle does not enable us then and there to attain the completeness of the application, and if this be the case with st. paul, we cannot be surprised to find it the same with ourselves. but on the other hand knowledge of the principle is the first step towards getting it to work. well, st. paul is dead and buried, and so i suppose will most of us be in a few years; so the question confronts us, what becomes of us then? as milton puts it in "il penseroso" we want: "to unsphere the spirit of plato and unfold what worlds or what vast regions hold the immortal mind that hath forsook her mansion in the fleshly nook." yes, this is a question of deep personal interest to us; but as i cannot speak from experience, i will restrict myself to seeing whether we can form any sort of general hypothesis on the basis of the principles we have recognized. what then is likely to survive? the physical body is of course disintegrated by the chemistry of nature. the etheric body probably continues to retain its form longer, because it is a condensation of etheric particles wrought together by the etheric waves sent out by the vital soul, and is therefore not subject to the laws of chemical affinity. the vital soul, being the race-principle of life in the individual,--that principle which automatically seeks to preserve the individual from disintegration,--probably survives longer still, until, ceasing to receive any reflex vibrations from the body, it grows gradually weaker in its sense of individual guardianship, and so is eventually absorbed into the group-soul or generic essence of the class to which it belongs. this is probably what happens in the case of animals for want of any higher vivifying principle, and would be the same with us were it not for the fact of having such a higher principle. in our case i should imagine that the influx of etheric waves, received from the thought action of the mind, would have the effect of continuing to impress the vital soul with a sense of individuality, in terms of its own plane, which would prevent it from being absorbed into the group-soul so long as the vital current from the mind continued to reach it. but eventually that current would cease to reach it, and in some cases, because the individual mind that governed it would gradually realize that its connection with the physical plane had ceased, and in others, because through a higher illumination the mind had, of its own volition, turned its thought in another direction. in either case, on the ceasing of the influx of that vitalizing current, the vital soul of the human being would likewise be absorbed into the cosmic soul, or anima mundi. how long the processes of the disintegration of the etheric body, and absorption of the vital soul may take, is a question on which i can offer no opinion beyond saying that certain psychic phenomena suggest that in some cases they may take a long period of time. but for the reasons i have now given, it appears to me that the permanently surviving factor is the thinking mind which is our real self, and is positively our centre of consciousness after the physical body has been put off. by the facts of the case its consciousness is no longer affected by vibrations received from the physical body; and therefore, to the extent to which our idea of life has been centred in that body, we shall feel its loss. if our motto has been "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die" we shall feel very dead indeed--a living death, a consciousness of being cut off from all that constituted our enjoyment of life--a thirst for the satisfaction of our customary ideas, which we have no power to quench; and, in proportion as our habitual mode of thought is raised above that lowest level, so will our sense of loss be less. then, by the same law, if our habitual mode of thought is turned towards pure, beautiful, and helpful ideals, we shall feel no loss at all, for we shall carry our own ideals with us, and, i hope, see them more clearly by reason of their disentanglement from mundane considerations. in what precise way we may then be able to work out our ideals i will not now stop to discuss. what we want first is a reasonable theory, based upon the principle of that universal law which is only varied in its actions by the conditions under which it works; so, instead of speculating as to precise details, we may generalize the question of how we can work out the good ideals which we carry over with us, and put it this way:--our ideas are embodied in thoughts; thoughts start trains of etheric waves, which waves induce reciprocal action whenever they meet with a receiver capable of vibrating synchronously with them, and so eventually the thought becomes a fact, and our helpful and beautiful ideal becomes a work of power, whether in this world or in any other. now it is to the forming of such ideals that the bible, from first to last is trying to lead us. from first to last it is working upon one uniform principle, that the thought is the word, that the word sets in motion the law, and that when the law is set in motion it acts with mathematical precision. the bible is a handbook of instruction for the use of our creative power of thought, and this is the sequence which it follows--one definite method, so fundamental in its nature, that it applies equally to the making of a packing-case or the making of a solar system. now we have formed a generalized conception, based on this universal method, of the sort of consciousness we are likely to have when we pass out of the physical body. then our thought naturally passes on to the question what will happen after this? it is here that some theory of the reconstitution of the physical body appears to me to hold a most important place in the order of our evolution. let us try to trace it out on the general lines of the creative power of thought indicated above, the keynote to which is that the law is specialized by the word, and cannot of itself bring out the infinite possibilities contained in it without such specializing, just as in all scientific development of ordinary life. the clue to the whole question is, that our place in the universal order is to develop the infinite resources of the original life and substance into actual facts. "nature unaided fails." the personal factor must co-operate with the impersonal, alike for setting up an electric bell, or for the furtherance of cosmic evolution; and the reason it is so is, because it could not possibly be otherwise. if now we start by recognizing this as our necessary place in the progressive order of the universe, i think it will help us to form a reasonable theory as to the reconstruction of the body. first of all, why have we any physical body at all? as a matter of fact we have one, and no amount of transcendental philosophizing will alter the fact, and so we may conclude that there is some reason for it. we have seen the truth of the maxim "omne vivum ex vivo," and therefore that all particular forms of life are differentiations of the one basic life. this means a localizing of the life-principle in individual centres. the formation of a centre implies condensation; for where there is no condensation the energy, whether electricity or life, is simply _dispersed_ and _achieving no purpose_. therefore distinctness from the undifferentiated original life is a necessity of the case. consequently the higher the degree of consciousness of individuality, the greater must be the consciousness of _distinctness of personality_. we say of a "wobbly" sort of person: "that fellow is no use, you can't depend on him." we say of a person whose ideas, intentions, and methods are subject to continual variations under all sorts of outside influences, whether of opinions or circumstances, that he has "no backbone," meaning that he is in want of individuality. he has no real thought of his own, and so has no word of power by which to co-operate with the law; therefore, to the extent to which this is the case with any of us, we are of no use in furthering the unfoldment of evolution, whether in ourselves or anywhere else. now we talk a lot about evolution or the _un_-folding, but we seem often not to realize that there must be something to unfold; and that therefore _in_-volution, or the concentration of the life-principle, must be a condition precedent to its _e_-volution. this process of involution must therefore be a process of gradually increasing concentration of the life-principle, by association with denser and denser modes of the universal substance. then, on the principle of vibration, the less dense the substance in which the life is immersed, the more it must be subject to being stirred by vibratory currents other than those produced by the conscious action of the ego, or inherent life, of the individuality that is being formed. but "_the sum of the vibrations in anything determines the mode, power, and direction of its action_"; therefore, the less the ego be concentrated through association with a dense vehicle, the more "wobbly" it must be, and consequently the less able to take any effective part in the further work of creation. but in proportion as the ego builds up an _individual_ _will_, the more it gets out of the "wobbly" state--or, to refer once more to the idea of etheric waves--it becomes able to select what vibrations it will receive, and what vibrations it will send out. the involution of the ego into the physical body, such as we at present know it, is therefore a necessity of the case, if any effective individuality is to be brought into existence, and the work of creation carried on instead of being cut short, not for want of material, but for want of workmen capable of using the tools of the builders' craft--the law as "strength" and the word as "beauty." the descending arc of the circle of being is therefore that of the involution of spirit into denser and denser modes of substance,--a process called in technical language by the greek name "eleusin," and the process continues until a point is reached where spirit and substance are in equal balance, which is where we are now. then comes the tug of war. which of the two is to predominate? they are the expansive and constrictive primal elements, the "rouah" and "hoshech" of the hebrew genesis. if the constrictive element be allowed to go further than giving necessary form to the expansive element, it imprisons the latter. the condensation becomes too dense for the ego to receive or send forth vibrations according to its free will, and so the individuality becomes lost. if the condensation process be not carried far enough, no individuality can be built up, and if it be carried too far, no individuality can emerge; so in both cases we get the same result that there is no one to speak the word of power without which "nature unaided fails." thus we are now exactly at the bottom of the circle of being. we have completed the descending arc and reached the point where the realization of the distinctness of conscious individuality enables us to choose our own line, whether that of progressing through the stages of the ascending arc of being, or of falling out from the living circle of progression, at least for a period, into what is sometimes mystically spoken of as "the moon," or (in descending order) the "eighth sphere," and which is called in scripture "the outer darkness,"--the rigidity which stops the action of life. therefore it is with regard to this stage of our career that the bible lays so much stress on the conflict between the spirit and the flesh--it is a fact in the course of our evolution, and the purpose of the bible is to teach us how to move forward along the ascending arc of the circle of being, so as to build up individualities which will be able to use the tools of intelligence and will in the great work of evolution, both personal and cosmic. now what is shown diagrammatically as the ascending arc of the circle of life is the return from its lowest point, or the _full consciousness of personal distinctness_, gained through _the material body_, back to its highest point or the originating life itself. this is the truth embodied in the parable of the prodigal son. it is a cosmic truth, and this return journey is technically called by the green name "anaktorion." it is the rising-again, that is from matter to spirit, and is the resurrection principle. but what is accomplished by the journey of the ego round the circle of life? _a new centre_ of intelligence and volition is established; from this the creative word of power can be spoken--a _complete man_ has been brought into existence, who can take a _free and intelligent_ part in the further work of creation, by his understanding of the interaction between the law and the word. the "volume of the sacred law" lies open before us, and the vibratory power of the word to give effect to it is the "blazing star" that illuminates its contents, and so we become fellow-workers with the great architect of the universe. for these reasons it appears to me that our self-recognition in a physical body is a necessary step in our growth. but why should the reconstruction of a physical body be either necessary or desirable? the answer is as follows: obviously self-recognition is the necessary basis for all use of those powers of selection and volition by which the impersonal law is to be specialized so as to bring to light its limitless potentialities; and self-recognition means the recognition of our personal distinctness from our environment. therefore it must always mean the possessing of a body as a vehicle, by means of which to act upon that environment, and to receive the corresponding reaction from it. in other words it must always be a body constituted in terms of the plane upon which we are functioning. but it does not follow that we should always be tied down to one plane. on the contrary, the very conception of the power of the word to specialize the action of the law, implies the power of functioning on any plane we choose; but always subject to the law, that if we want to act on any particular plane in _propria persona_, and not merely by influencing some other agent, we can only do so by assuming a body in terms of the nature of that plane. therefore, if we want to act on the physical plane, we must put on a physical body. but when we have fully grasped the power of the word we cannot be tied to a body. we shall no longer regard it as composed of so many chemical elements, but we shall see beyond them into the real primary etheric substance of which they are composed, and so by our volition shall be able to put the physical body on or off at pleasure,--that at least is a quite logical deduction from what we have learnt in the preceding pages. seen in this light the "resurrection body" is not the old body resuscitated, but a new body, just as real and tangible as the old one, only not subject to any of its disabilities,--no longer a limitation, but the ever ready instrument for any work we may desire to do upon the physical plane. but perhaps you will say, "why should we want to have anything more to do with the physical plane? surely we have had enough of it already!" yes; in its old sense of limitation; but not in the new sense of a world of glorious possibilities, a new field for our creative activities; not the least of which is the helping of those who are still in those lower stages which we have already passed through. i think if we realize the position of the fully risen man, we shall see that he is not likely to turn his back upon the earth as a rotten, old thing. therefore a new physical body is a necessary part of his equipment. if, then, we take it as a general principle, that for self-recognition upon any plane a body in terms of that plane is a necessity, this will throw some light on the bible narrative of our lord's appearances after his resurrection. it is noteworthy that he himself lays stress on the body as an integral part of the individuality. when the disciples thought they had seen an apparition he said: "handle me and see that it is i _myself_, and _not_ a spirit, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see i have" (luke xxiv, ). this very clearly states that the spirit without a corresponding body is not the complete "i myself"; yet from the same narrative we gather that the solid body in which he appeared is able to pass through closed doors, and to be disintegrated and re-integrated at will. now on the electronic theory of the constitution of matter which i have spoken of in the earlier part of this book, there is nothing impossible in this; on the contrary it is only the known law of synchronous vibration carried into those further ranges of wave-lengths which, though not yet produced by laboratory experiment, are unavoidably recognized by the mathematicians. in this way then the resurrection of the body appears to me to be the legitimate termination of our present stage of existence. what further developments may follow, who shall say? for we must remember that the end of one series is always the commencement of another--that is the doctrine of the octave. but this is far enough to look forward in all conscience. as to _when_ the completion of our present stage of evolution will be attained, it is impossible even to hazard a guess; but that the _individual_ attainment of such a resurrection is not dependent on any particular date in the world's history, is clearly the teaching of scripture. when martha said to jesus that she knew her brother would rise again "at the last day," he ignored the question of "the last day," and said "i am the resurrection and the life" (st. john xi, ); and similarly st. paul puts it forward as a thing to be attained (ph. iii, ). it is not a resurrection _of_ the dead but _from among_ the dead that st. paul is aiming at--not an "anastasis ton nekron," but an "anastasis _ek_ ton nekron." doubtless there are other passages of scripture which speak of a general resurrection, which to some will be a resurrection to condemnation (st. john v, ), a resurrection to shame and everlasting contempt (dan. xii, ). this is a subject upon which i will not attempt to enter--i have a great many things to learn, and this is one of them; but if the bible statements regarding resurrection are to be taken as a whole, these passages cannot be passed over without notice. on the other hand the bible statements regarding _individual_ resurrection are there also, and the general principle on which they are based becomes clear when we see the fundamental relation between the law and the word. only we must remember that the word that can thus set in motion the law of life, and make it triumph over the law of death, cannot be spoken by the limited personality which only knows itself as john smith or mary jones. we must attain a larger personality than that, before we can speak the word. and this larger personality is not just john smith or mary jones magnified; that is the mistake we are all so apt to fall into. mere magnification will not do it. a square will continue to be a square however large you make it; it will never become a circle. but on the other hand, there is such a thing as stating the area of a circle in the form of a square; and when we learn to regard our square as not existing on its own account, but as an expression of the circle in another form, our attention will be directed to the circle first, as the generating figure, and _then_ to the square as a particular mode of expressing the same area. if we look at it in this way we shall never mistake the square for the circle, but we shall see that as the circle grows, the corresponding square will grow with it. it is this dependence of the square on the circle that makes all the difference, and makes it a living, growing square. for the true circle represents infinitude. it is not bounded by a limiting circumference as in the merely symbolic geometrical figure, but is rather represented by the impulse which generates an ever widening circle of electro-magnetic waves; and when we realize this, our square becomes a living thing. the "word" that we speak with this recognition is no longer ours, but his who sent us--the expression, on the plane of individuality, of the thought that sent us into existence and so it is the "word of life." this is the true resurrection of the individual. chapter viii transferring the burden the more we grow into a clear perception of what is really meant by "squaring the circle," the freer we shall find ourselves from the burden of anxiety. we shall rise to a larger generalization of the law of cause and effect. we shall learn in all things to reach out to first cause as operating through the channels of secondary causation,--"causa causas" as producing, and therefore controlling "causa causata"--and so we cease to worry about secondary causes. on the plane of the lower personality we see certain facts, and argue that they are bound to produce certain results, which would be quite true if we really saw _all_ the facts; or, again, allowing that in any particular case we actually did see all the facts as they now exist, we can either deny the operation of first cause, or recognize its infinite capacity for creating new facts. therefore, whatever may be the nature of our anxiety, we should endeavour to dispel it by the consideration that there may be already existing other facts we do not know of, which will produce a different result from the one we fear, and that in any case there is a power which can produce new facts in answer to our appeal to it. but i can imagine some one saying to us, "you bumptious little midget, do you think first cause is going to trouble itself about you and your petty concerns? do you not know that first cause works by universal law, and makes no exceptions?" well, i would not have written this book if i did not suppose that first cause works by universal law, and it is just because it does so that i believe it _will_ work for me and my concerns. the law makes no exceptions, but it can be specialized through the power of the word. then our sceptic says, "what, do you think _your_ word can do that?" to which i reply, "it is not my word because i am not using it in my lower personality, as john smith or mary jones, but in that higher personality which recognizes only one all-embracing personality and itself as included in that." which comes first, the law or the word? the distribution of the solar systems in space, the localization of the spirit in specific areas of cosmic activity, proclaims the starting of all manifestation through the "word." then the operation of law follows with mathematical precision, just as when we write × we cannot avoid getting as the result--only there is no reason why we should not write × and so get instead of . let it be borne in mind that the law flows from the word, and not _vice versa_, and you have got the clue to the enigma of life. how far we shall be able to make practical use of this clue depends, of course, on our acceptance of its principle. the directing power of the word is _inherent_ in the word, and we cannot alter it. _it is the law_ of _the law_, and so, like any other law, it cannot be broken, but its action can be inverted. we cannot deprive the word of its efficacy, but our denial of it as the word of expansion is equivalent to an affirmation of it as the word of contraction, and so the law acts towards us as a limitation. but the fault is not in the law, but in the way we use the word. now if the reader grasps this, he will see that the less we trouble ourselves about what appear to us to be the visible and calculable causes of things, the freer we must become from the burden of anxiety; and as we advance step by step to a clearer recognition of the true order of cause and effect, so all intermediate causes will fade from our view. only the two extremes of the sequence of cause and effect will remain in sight. first cause, moving as the word, starting a sequence, and the desired result terminating it, as the word taking form in fact. the intermediate links in the chain will be there, but they will be seen as effects, not causes. the wider the generalization we thus make, the less we shall need to trouble about particulars, knowing that they will form themselves by the natural action of the law; and the widest generalization is therefore, to state not what we want to _have_, but what we want to _be_. the only reason we ever want to _have_ anything, is because we think it will help us to be something--something more than we are now; so that the "having" is only a link in the chain of secondary causes, and may therefore be left out of consideration, for it will come of itself through the natural workings of the law, set in operation by the word as first cause. this principle is set forth in the statement of the divine name given to moses (ex. iii, - ). the name is simply "i am"--it is being, not having--the having follows as a natural consequence of the being; and if it be true that we are made in the likeness and image of god, that is to say on the same principle, then what is the law of the divine nature must be the law of ours also--and as we awake to this we become "partakers of the divine nature" ( pet. i, ). what we really want, therefore, is to _be_ something--something more than we are now; and this is quite right. it is our consciousness of the continually generative impulse of the eternal living spirit, which is the _fons et origo_ (fountain and source) of all differentiated life working within us for ever more and more perfect individual expression of all that is in itself. if the reader remembers what i said at the beginning of this book about the verb substantive of being, he will see that each of us is in truth a "word (verbum) of god." let not the orthodox reader be shocked at this--i am only saying what the bible does. look up the following passages: "i will write upon him the name of my god and my own new name" (rev. xiii, ). "i saw, and behold a lamb standing on the mount zion (note, the word zion means the principle of life), and with him a hundred and forty and four thousand, having his name and the name of his father written on their foreheads" (rev. xiv, ). "his name shall be on their foreheads" (rev. xxii, ). read particularly the whole passage rev. xix, - , where we are expressly told that the name in question is "the word of god"; and that this name is the one put upon those who follow their leader, is shown by the same description being given of the followers as of the leader. they all ride upon "white horses," and the "horse" is the symbol of the intellect. also in the case of the leader, the peculiarity of his name is that "no one knows it but himself," and in rev. ii, , exactly the same thing is said of the "new name" to be given "to him that overcometh." again, in isaiah lxii, , "thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the lord shall name"; and again in num. vi, , "they shall put my name upon the children of israel." then as the meaning of that name "the word of god." in ps. cxix, : "thy word is true from the beginning," and jesus said: "thy word is truth" (john xvii, ). this also corresponds with the description in rev. xix, - where another name for "the word of god" is "faithful and true"; and the same metaphor of the truth "_riding into action_" is contained in ps. xlv, , . "gird thy sword upon thy thigh, o most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty; and in thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth." the same symbol of "riding" also occurs in ps. lxviii: "extol him that rideth upon the heavens," "sing praises to him that rideth upon the heaven of heavens which were of old (i.e., _ab initio_); lo, he doth send out his voice and that a mighty voice"--and the word "voice" is the hebrew word [hebrew: "k[=o]l"], meaning "sound" or "word"--so that here again we have the idea of "the word" riding into action. once more--"thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name" (ps. cxxxviii, ), thus repeating the idea of the word as the name. in other passages we have the idea of the word as a weapon. "the sword of the spirit which is the word of god" (eph. vi, ), which answers to the description in revelations of the sword proceeding out of the mouth of the word; and we have the same metaphor of the word riding into action in habakkuk iii, and . "thou didst ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salvation. thy bow was made quite naked ... even thy word"; and similarly those that oppose the word are "killed with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth." in other passages we have the word put before us as a defence. "his truth shall be thy shield and buckler" (ps. xci, ); and again "the name of the lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and is safe" (prov. xviii, ); and we have already seen that this name is "the word of god"; and similarly in ps. cxxiv, : "our help is in the name of the lord, who made heaven and earth." lastly, we get "the word" as the final deliverance from all ill; "into thy hand i commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, o lord god of truth" (ps. xxxi, ). and the reason of all this is because "his truth endureth to all generations" (ps. c, ); it is everlasting, changeless principle. "by the word of the lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth" (ps. xxxiii, ), as is also said of the word in the opening of st. john's gospel and first epistle. now a careful comparison of these and similar passages will make it clear that the sequence presented to us is as follows: the "word" is the passing of the verb substantive of being into action. it is always the same in principle, on whatever scale, and therefore applies to ourselves also, so that each one of us is a "word of god." we are this by the very essence of our being, and that is why the first thing we are told about man is, that he is made in the image and likeness of god. but how far any of us will become a really effective "word," depends upon our acceptance of the new name which is ready to be bestowed upon each one. "to as many as _receive_ him, to them gives he power to become sons of god, even to them that believe on his name" (john - ). we get the new name by realizing the truth, which truth is that we ourselves are included in the name, and that name is called "the word of god." the meaning of which becomes clear if we remember that the spiritual name of anything is its "noumenon" or essential being, which is manifested through its "phenomenon" or outward reproduction in form; so that the true order is first our "name" or essential being, then our "word" or active manifestation of this essential being, then the "truth" or the unchangeable law of being passing into manifestation--and these three are one. then when we see that this is true of ourselves, not because of some arbitrary favouritism making us exceptions to the human race, but because it is the working on the plane of human individuality of the same power and the same law by which the world has come into existence, we can see that we have here a principle which we can trust to work as infallibly as the principle of mathematics; and that therefore the desire to become something more than we now are is nothing else than the eternal spirit of life seeking ever fuller expression. the correction which our mode of thinking needs therefore is to start with being, not with having, and we may then trust the having to come along in its right order; and if we can get into this new manner of thinking, what a world of worry it will save us! if we realize that the law flows from the word, and not vice versa, then the law of attraction must work in this manner, and will bring to us all those conditions through which we shall be able to express the more expanded being towards which we are directing our word; and as a consequence, we shall have no need to trouble about forcing particular conditions into existence--they will grow spontaneously out of the seed we have planted. all we have to do now, or at any time, is to take the conditions that are ready to hand and use them on the lines of the sort of "being" towards which we are directing our thought--use them just as far as they go at the time, without trying to press them further--and we shall find by experience that out of the present conditions thus used to-day, more favourable conditions will grow in a perfectly natural manner to-morrow, and so on, day by day, until, when later on we look back, we shall be surprised to find ourselves expressing all, and more than all, the sort of "_being_" we had thought of. then, from this new standpoint of our being, we shall continue to go on in the same way, and so on _ad infinitum_, so that our life will become one endless progress, ever widening as we go on. and this will be found a very quiet and peaceful way, free from worry and anxiety, and wonderfully effective. it may lead you to some position of authority or celebrity; but as such things belong to the category of "having" and not of "being" they were not what you aimed at, and are only by-products of what you have become in yourself. they are conditions, and like all other conditions should be made use of for the development of still more expanded "being"; that is to say, you will go on working on the more extended scale which such a position makes possible to you. but the one thing you would not try to do with it would be to "boss the show." the moment you do this you are no longer using the word of the larger personality, and have descended to your old level of the smaller personality, just john smith or mary jones, ignorant of yourselves as being anything greater. it is true your word still directs the operation of the law towards yourself--it always does this--but your word has become inverted, and so calls into operation the law of contraction instead of the law of expansion. a higher position means a wider field for usefulness--that is all; and to the extent to which you fit yourself for it, it will come to you. so, if you content yourself with always speaking in your thought the creative word of "being" from day to day, you will find it the way of peace and the secret of a happy life--by no means monotonous, for all sorts of unexpected interests will be continually opening out to you, giving you scope for all the activities of which your present degree of "being" renders you capable. you will always find plenty to do, and find pleasure in doing it, so you need never be afraid of feeling dull. but perhaps you will say: "how am i to know that i am not speaking my own word instead of that of the creative spirit?" well, the word of the smaller personality is always based on the idea of possessing, and the word of the spirit is always based on the idea of becoming--that is the criterion. and also, if we base our speaking of the word on the promises of spirit, we may be sure that we are on the right track. we may be sure of it, because when we come to analyze these promises we shall find that they are all statements of the creative law of being, and the nature of this law is obvious from the facts of the visible creation. these things are not true because they are written in the bible, but the bible is true because these things are written in it. the more we examine the bible promises, the more they will impress themselves upon us as being promises according to law; and since the law can never be broken, we can feel quite secure of it, subject to the one condition that we do not stop the law from working to the fulfilment of the promise, by our own inverted use of the word. but if we take the _word of the promise_ and make it our own word, then we know that we are speaking the right word, which will so specialize the action of the law, as to produce the fulfilment of the promise. apart from the word there is no foundation. in all other systems we have either law without will, or will without law. then we know that we are not speaking of ourselves, but are speaking the word of the power that sent us into the world. the law alone cannot fulfil the promises. it is in itself cosmic and impersonal, and, as every scientific discovery amply demonstrates, it needs the co-operation of the personal factor to bring out its latent possibilities; so that the word is as necessary as the law for the fulfilment of the promises; but if the word which we speak is that of the creating spirit, we may reckon it as being just as certain in its operation as the law, and the two together form an infallible power. but there is one thing we must not forget, and this is the law of growth. if the law which we plant is the seed, then we must allow time for it to grow; we must leave it alone and go about our business as usual, and the seed we have sown will spring and grow up of itself, we know not how, a truth which we have been told by the master himself (mark iv, , ). we must not be like children who plant a seed one day, and dig it up the next to see whether it is growing. our part is to plant the seed, not to make it grow,--the creative law of life will do that. it is for this reason that the bible gives us such injunctions as "study to be quiet" ( thess. iv, ). "he that believeth shall not make haste" (is. xxviii, ). "in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength" (is. xxx, ). to make ourselves anxious as to whether the word we have planted will fructify is just to dig it up again, and then of course it will not grow. the fundamental maxim, then, which we must always keep in mind is that "every creation carries its own mathematics along with it," and that therefore "the law flows from the word, and not _vice versa_;" and consequently "_the word is the foundation of every creative series_," whether that series be great or small, cosmic or individual, constructive or destructive. every series commences with intention; and remember the exact meaning of the word. it is from the two latin words "in," towards, and "tendere," to stretch, and it therefore means a "reaching out in a certain direction." this "reaching out in a certain direction" is the conception of ourself as arrived at the destination towards which our thought tends, and is therefore _the conceiving of an idea_, and our formulated idea is stated, if only mentally, in words--and the termination of the series is the realization of the idea in actual fact. therefore it is equally true of every series, whether it be the creation of a lady's blouse or the creation of a world, that "in the beginning is the word"--the word is _the point of origination_. then, since the word is the point of origination, what is our conception of the best thing we can originate with it? there is a great variety of opinion as to what is desirable; and it is only natural and right that it should be so, for otherwise we should be without any individuality, which means that we should have no real life in us--in fact such a world is unthinkable; it would be a world that had ceased to move, it would be a dead world. so it is the varied conception of "the good" that makes the world go on. uniformity means reducing things to one dead level. but on the other hand there must be unity--unity of action resulting from unity of purpose, otherwise the world logically terminates in internecine strife. if then the world is to go on, it can only be by means of unity expressing itself in variety, and therefore the question is: what is the _unifying desire_ which underlies all the varieties of expression? it is a very simple one--it is just to enjoy living. our ideas of an enjoyable life may be very various, but that is what we all really want; so what we want to get at is: what is the basis of an enjoyable life? i have no hesitation in saying that the secret of enjoying life is _to take an interest in it_. the opposite of livingness is deadness, that is, inertia and stagnation. dying of "ennui" is a very real thing indeed, and if we would not die of this malady we must have an interest in life that will always keep going on. now for anything to interest us we must enter into the spirit of it. if we do not enter into the spirit of a game it does not interest us; if we do not enter into the spirit of a book, it does not interest us, we are bored to death with it; and so on with everything. so from our own experience we may lay down the maxim that "to enjoy anything we must enter into the spirit of it," and if this be so, then, to enjoy the "living quality of life" we must enter into the spirit of life itself. i say the "living quality of life" so as to dissociate it from all ideas of particular conditions; because what we are trying to get at is the fundamental principle of life which creates conditions, and not the reflex of sensations, whether physical or mental, which any particular set of conditions may induce in us for the time being. in this way we come back to the initial proposition with which we started--that the origin of everything is only to be found in a universal ever-living spirit, and that our own life proceeds from this spirit in accordance with the maxim "omne vivum ex vivo." thus we are logically brought to the conclusion that the ultimate desire of all humanity is to consciously enter into the spirit of life as it is _in itself_, antecedently to all conditions. this is the widest of all generalizations, and so opens the door to the highest of all specializations; for it is a scientific fact that the more widely we can generalize the principle of any law, the more highly we can specialize its working. it is only as our conception of it is limited that any law limits us. a principle _per se_ is always undifferentiated, and capable of any sort of differentiation into particular modes of expression that are not in opposition to the principle itself; and it is true of the principle of life as of all others. there is therefore no limit to its expression except that which inverts it,--that is to say, anything which tends towards death; and, accordingly, what we have to avoid is the negative mode of thought, which starts an inverted action of the law, logically resulting in destructiveness instead of constructiveness. but the mistake we make from not seeing the basic principle of the whole thing, is that of looking to the conditions to form the life, instead of looking to the life to form the conditions; and therefore what we require is a _standard of measurement_ for our thought, by which we shall be able to form _the perfect word_ which will set in motion the law of cause and effect in such a manner as to fulfil that _basic desire of life_ which is common to all humanity. the perfect word must therefore fulfil two conditions--it must have the essential quality of the undifferentiated eternal life, and it must have the essential quality of "genus homo." it must say with horace "homo sum; nihil humani mihi alienum puto" (i am man; i regard nothing human as alien to myself). when we think it out carefully, there is no escaping the conclusion that this must be the essential quality of the perfect word we are in search of. it is the final logical inference from all that we have learnt regarding the interaction between law and personality, that the perfect word must combine in itself the quality of each--it must be at once both human and divine. of course all my readers know where the description of such a word is to be found; but what i want them to realize is the way in which we have now reached a similar description of the perfect word. we have not accepted it unquestioningly as the teaching of a scholastic theology, but have arrived at it by a course of careful reasoning from the facts of physical nature and from our experience of our own mental powers. this way of getting at it makes it really our own. we know what we mean by it, and it is no longer a mere traditional form of words. it is the same with everything else; nothing becomes our own by being just told about it. for instance, if i show an artist a picture, and he tells me that a boat in it is half a mile away from the spectators, i may accept this on his authority, because i suppose he knows all about it. but if next day a friend shows me a picture of a bit of coast with a fishing-boat in the distance, and asks me how far off that boat is, i am utterly stumped because i do not know how the artist was able to judge the distance. but if i understand the principle, i give my friend a very fair approximation of the distance of the boat. i work it out like this. i say:--the immediate foreground of the picture shows an amount of detail which could not be seen more than twenty yards away, and the average size of such details in nature shows that the bottom edge of the picture must measure about ten yards across. then from experience i know that the average length of craft of the particular rigging in the picture is, say, about eighty feet, and i then measure that this length goes sixteen and a half times across the picture on the level where the boat is situated, and so i know that a line across the picture at this level measures x - / = ft. = yards. then i make the calculation: yds.: yds.:: yds.: the distance required to be ascertained x / = yds. yds. = mile and / = yds. therefore i know that the boat in the picture is represented as being about half a mile from the spectator. i really know the distance and do not merely guess it, and i know _how_ i know it. i know it simply from the geometrical principle that with a given angle at the apex of a triangle the length of a perpendicular dropped from the apex to the base of the triangle will always bear the same ratio to the length of the base, whatever the size of the triangle may be. in this way i know the distance of the boat in the picture by combining mathematics and my own observation of facts--once again to co-operation of law and personality. now a familiar instance like this shows the difference between being told a thing and really knowing it, and it is by an analogous method that we have now arrived at the conclusion that the perfect word is a combination of the human and the divine. we have definite reasons for seeing this as the ultimate fact of human development--the power to give expression to the perfect word--, and that this follows naturally from the fact of our own existence and that of some originating source from which we derive it. but perhaps the reader will say: how can a word take form as a person? well, words which do not eventually take form as facts only evaporate into thin air, and we cannot conceive the divine ideals of man doing this. therefore the expression of the perfect word on the plane of humanity must take substance in the form of humanity. it is not the manifestation of any limited personality with all his or her idiosyncrasies, but the manifestation of the basic principle of humanity itself common to us all. to quote dryden's words--but in a very different sense to that intended in "absolom and achitophel,"--such a one must be "not one, but all mankind's epitome." the manifestation must be the perfect expression of that fundamental life which is the root desire in us all, and which is therefore called "the desire of all nations." here then we have reached (haggai ii, ) the foundation fact of human personality. it is the eternal "will-to-live," as schopenhauer calls it, which works subconsciously in all creation; therefore it is the root from which all creation springs. in the atom it becomes atomic energy, in the plant it becomes vegetable life, in the animal it becomes animal life, and in man it becomes personal life, and therefore, if a perfect standard of the eternal life is to be set before us, it must be in terms of human personality. but some one will say: why should we need such a standard? the answer is that since the working of the law towards each of us is determined by our mode of thought, we require to be guarded against an inverted use of the word. "ignorantia legis nemini excusat" (ignorance of the law does not excuse you from its operation), is a scientific, as well as a forensic maxim, for the law of cause and effect can never be altered. our ignorance of the laws of electricity will not prevent us from being electrocuted if we get into the circuit of some powerful voltage. therefore, because the law is _impersonal_ and knows no exceptions, and will bring us either life or death according to the direction which we give it by our word, it is of the first importance for us to have a standard by which to measure the word expressed through our own personality. this is why st. paul speaks of our growing to "the measure of the stature of the fulness of christ," (eph. iv, ) and why we find the symbol of "measurement" so frequently employed in the bible. therefore, if a great scale of measurement for our word is to be exhibited, it can only be by its presentation in human form. then if the purpose be to establish such a standard of measurement, the scale must be expressed in units of the same denomination as that of our own nature--you cannot divide miles by ampères--and it is because the scale of our potential being is laid out in the same denomination as that of the spirit of life itself that we can avail ourselves of the standard of "the word made flesh." when this is clearly seen it removes those intellectual difficulties which so many feel with regard to the doctrine of the atonement. if we want to avail ourselves of the bible promises on the basis of the bible teaching, we cannot throw the teaching overboard. as i have said before, if a doctrine is to be rightly interpreted, it must be interpreted as a whole, and in one form or another the doctrine of the atonement is the pivot point of the whole bible. to omit it is like trying to play "hamlet" with hamlet left out, and you may put your bible out on the rubbish-heap. how, then, does the atonement come in? here are the usual intellectual difficulties. to whom is the sacrifice offered? to god or to the devil? if it be to the devil, then the devil is a greater power than god. if it be to god, then how can a god who demands a sacrifice of blood be love? and in either case how can guilt be transferred from one person to the other? now as a matter of fact none of these questions arise. they are beside the real point at issue, which is: how can we so combine the personal action of the word with the impersonal action of the law, as to make the law become to us the law of life instead of the law of death (rom. viii, )? let us recur to the principles which we have worked out. the law flows from the word and not _vice versa_--it acts for good or ill according to the quality of the word which calls it into action. therefore to get the law of life we must speak the word of life. then, on the principle of "omne vivum ex vivo," the word of fundamental basic life, which is not subject to conditions because it is antecedent to all conditions, can only be spoken through consciousness of participating in the eternal life which is the "fons et origo" of all particular being. therefore, to be able to speak this word we must have a foundation of assurance that we are in no way separated from the eternal life, and since this foundation is required for all men, it must be broad enough to accommodate all grades of perceptions. theologically the separation from the eternal life is said to be caused by "sin." but what do we mean by "sin"? we can only judge of what a thing _is_ by what it _does_; and so, if "sin" is that which prevents the inflowing of the eternal life, which we know is the root of our individual being, then it must be the transgression of the inherent law of our own being. the truth is that we live simultaneously in two worlds, the visible and the invisible, just as trees draw their life from the earth beneath and from the air and light above, and the transgression consists in limiting ourselves only to the lower world, and thereby cutting ourselves off from the essential part of our own life, that which _really lives_. we do not realize the true function of the three lower principles of our nature, viz.: vital spirit, etheric body, and outward form; the function of which is to give concentration to the current of spiritual life flowing from the eternal spirit, and thus enable the undifferentiated life to differentiate itself into individual consciousness, which will be able to specialize the action of the law into higher manifestations than it can produce without the co-operation of personality. on the analogy of ohm's law our error is making our "_r_" so rigid that it ceases to be a conductor, and so no current is delivered and no work done. this is the true nature of sin, and it is this opposition of our _r_ to e.m.f. or eternal motive force that has to be removed. we have to realize the true function of our r, as the channel through which the e.m.f. is enabled to carry on its work. when we awake to the fact that our true place in the order of the universe is to be fellow-workers with god in carrying on the work of creation, then we see that hitherto we have entirely missed the purpose of our calling, and have misused the divine image in which we were created; and therefore we want an assurance that our past errors will not stand in the way of our future advance into continually fuller participation in the divine creative work, which, in virtue of our true nature should be our rightful inheritance. that our future destiny is to actually take an individual part, however small, in guiding the great work of evolution, may not be evident to us in the earlier stages of our awakening; but what is clear as a matter of feeling, but not yet intellectually, is, that in some way or other we have been cutting ourselves off from the great source of light, and that what we therefore want, is to be re-united to it. what is wanted, then, is something which will give us a firm ground of assurance that we _are_ re-united to it, and that that something must be of such a nature as never to lose anything of its efficiency at any stage of our progress--it must cover the whole ground. now, if we think deeply upon this question, we shall gradually come to see that this expansive quality is to be found in the doctrine of the atonement. it meets all the needs of our spiritual nature in a way that no other theory does, and responds to every stage of our progress. there is only one thing that will prevent it working, and that is, saying that we have no need of it. that is why st. john said, that if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us ( john i, ). but the more we come into the light of truth, and realize that sin is everything that is not in accordance with the law of our own essential being as related to the eternal life, the more we shall see, not only that we have transgressed the law in the past, but also that even now we are very far from completely fulfiling it; and the more light we get the more clearly we shall see this to be the case. therefore, whatever may be the stage of our mental development, the assurance which we all need for the basis of our new life is that of the removal of sin--the sins of the past, and the daily errors of the present. we may form various theories, each to our own satisfaction, as to _how_ this takes place. for instance we may argue that, since "the word" is the undifferentiated potential of humanity, every human soul is included in the self-offering of christ, and that in him we ourselves suffered on the cross. or we may say that our confession that such an offering is needed amounts to our participation in it. or we may say with st. paul that, as in adam all are sinners, so in christ all are made free from sin ( cor. xv, ). that is, taking adam and christ as the representatives of two orders of men. or we may fall back on the statement "sacrifice and burnt offerings thou wouldst not" (ps. xl, ), and on jesus' own explanation of his death, that he offered himself in testimony to the truth--that is, that the eternal life will no more exercise a retrospective vengeance upon us for our past misunderstanding of it, than would electricity or any other force. we may explain the _modus operandi_ of the great offering in any of these ways, for the scripture presents it in all of them--but the great thing is to accept it; for by the nature of our mental constitution, such an acceptance, whether with or without an intellectual explanation, affords the assurance which we stand in need of; and building upon the foundation we can safely rear the edifice of our future development. also it affords us a continual safeguard in all the further stages of our evolution. as our psychic consciousness increases, we become more and more responsive to psychic stimulus whether that stimulus proceed from a good or evil influence; and therefore the recognition of our redemption in christ surrounds us with a protecting barrier, through which no evil spirit or malign influence can pass; so that, resting upon this truth, we need never be in fear of any such invasion, but shall at all times be clothed with the whole armour of god (eph. vi, ). from whatever point of view we regard it, we therefore find in the one offering once made for the sin of the whole world, a standpoint such as is provided by no other teaching, whether religious or philosophical; and we shall see on examination that it is not an arbitrary decree for which we can give no account, but that it is based on the psychological constitution of man--a provision so perfectly adapted to our requirements at every stage of our evolution, that we can only attribute it to the divine wisdom acting through one, who by perfect love, thus willingly offered himself, in order to provide the foundation of complete assurance for all who recognize their need of it. on this basis, then, of reunion with the eternal source of life, all the promises of the bible are found to be according to law--that is, according to the inherent law of our being; so that, in the laying of this foundation, we find the supreme manifestation of the interaction between the law and the word, which, when its significance is apprehended, opens out vistas of limitless possibilities to the individual and to the race. but the race, as a whole, is yet very far from apprehending this, and for the most part has no perception of spiritual causation. where some dim perception of spiritual causation is beginning to emerge, it is very frequently inverted, because people only apprehend it as giving them an additional power of exercising compulsion over their fellow-men, and thus depriving them of that individuality which it is the one purpose of evolution to develop. this is because people do not look beyond the three lower principles of life, those principles which animals have in common with man; and consequently the higher principle of mind, which distinguishes man, is brought down to the lower level, so that the man is distinguished from the beast only by the possession of intellectual faculties, which by their perversion make him not merely a beast, but a devil of a beast. therefore the recognition of psychic powers, when not safeguarded by the higher principles of truth, plunges man even deeper into darkness than does a simple materialism; and so the two go hand in hand on the downward path. there is abundant evidence that this is increasingly the case at the present day; and therefore it is that the bible promises culminate in the promise of the return of him who offered himself in order to lay the foundation of peace. as i have said before, we must either take the bible as a whole, or reject it entirely. we cannot pick and choose what pleases us, and refuse what does not. no legal document could be treated in this way; and in like manner the bible is one great whole, or else it is just--"skittles." therefore, if that divine "word" was manifested to save the world from destruction, by opening the way for the _individual_ through recognition of his true relation to god, then it is only a reasonable carrying out of the same thought that, when the bulk of mankind fail to realize the beneficent use of these powers, and persist in using them invertedly, the same being should again appear to save the race from utter self-destruction, but not by the same method, for that would be impossible. the individual method is that of individual self-recognition in the light of truth; but that cannot be _forced_ upon any one. the headlong downward career of the race as a whole cannot therefore be stopped _vi et armis_, and this can only be done by first letting it have a bitter experience of what intellect, depraved to the service of the beast in man, leads to, and then forcibly restraining those who persist in this madness. therefore a second coming of the divine man is a logical sequence to the first, and equally logical, this second coming must be as one who will rule the nations with irresistible power; so that men, reflecting upon the evils of the past, and enquiring into their cause, may be led to see that cause in the inverted action of the law of their own being, and may therefore learn so to renew their thoughts in accordance with the divine thought as to bring them into the glorious liberty of the sons of god. this, then, is the promise we have to look forward to at the present day, and though it might not be wise to speculate as to the precise time and manner of its fulfilment, there can be no doubt as to the nature of the general principles involved; and i trust the reader has at least learned from this book that principles unfold themselves with unfailing accuracy, though it depends on our word, or mental attitude, in what way their unfoldment will affect us personally. for such reasons as these, it appears to me, that the current objections to the doctrine of atonement are entirely beside the mark. they miss the whole point of the thing. punishment for sin? of course there is punishment for sin so long as it is persisted in. it is the natural working of the law of cause and effect. forgiveness of sin? of course there is forgiveness of sin as soon as, through knowledge, we make a right use of the law of our own being. it could not be otherwise. it is the natural working of the law of cause and effect. "this is the covenant that i will make with them after those days, saith the lord, i will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will i write them; and their sins and iniquities will i remember no more" (heb. x, ); and similarly in jer. xxxi, , from which the writer of the epistles to the hebrews quotes this. "now the lord is the spirit" ( cor. iii, , r.v.), i.e., the originating spirit of life, and therefore "my laws" means the inherent law of the originating principle of being, so that here we have a plain statement that the realization of the true law of our being _ipso facto_ results in the cancelling of all our past errors. when once we see the principle of it the whole sequence becomes perfectly plain. there is nothing arbitrary in all this. it results naturally from a new mode of thought producing a new order of consciousness; and it is written that "if any man be in christ he is a new creature" or, as it says in the margin, "a new creation" ( cor. v, ), and on the principle that "every creation carries its own mathematics with it," every such man has passed from the law of death into the law of life. the full fruition may not yet be visible--we must allow for the law of growth--but the principle is in him and has become the central, generating point of his consciousness, and is therefore bound, sooner or later, to develop into perfect manifestation by the law of its own nature. if the principle be accepted it will work all the same, whether we accept it by simple trust in the written word, or whether we analyze the grounds of our trust; just as an electric bell will ring when you press the button, whether you are an electrical engineer or not. but there will be this difference, that if you _are_ an electrical engineer you will see the principle implied in the ringing of the bell, and you will find in it the promise of infinite possibilities which it is open to you to develope; and in like manner, the more clearly you see the relation which necessarily exists between yourself and the all-originating living spirit, the more clear it will become to you, that this relation opens up an endless vista of boundless potentialities which can never be exhausted. this is the true nature of the bible promises; they were not made by some external deity about whose ideas we can never have any certainty, but by the indwelling god, who is at once the life, the law, and the substance of all things, and therefore they are promises according to law, containing in themselves the principle of their own fulfilment. but, as i trust the reader is now convinced, the law can fulfil the promise which is latent in it only by the co-operation of the word; that is, the personal factor which provides the necessary conditions for the law to work under; and therefore, if the promise is to be fulfilled, we must meet the all-originating life, the "premium mobile," not only on the plane of law, but on the plane of personality also. this becomes evident if we consider that this originating life must be _entirely undifferentiated_ in itself; for otherwise it could not be the origin of all differentiated modes of life and energy. as long as we find differentiation, on however wide a scale, we have not arrived at first cause. there will still be something further back, out of which the differentiations have proceeded; and it is this "something" which is at the back of "everything" that we are in search of. therefore the originating spirit must be _absolutely undifferentiated_, and consequently the personal factor in ourselves must be the differentiation into individuality of a quality eternally subsisting in the all-originating undifferentiated spirit. then, since our individual differentiation of this quality must depend on the mode of our recognition of it, it follows that a standard of measurement is needed, and the standard is presented to us in the form of the personality around whom the whole bible centres, and who, as the standard of the divine infinitude differentiating himself into units of individual personality, can only be described as at once the son of god and the son of man. if we see that the eternal life, by reason of its non-differentiation in itself, must needs become to each of us _exactly what we take it to be_, then it follows that in order to realize it on our own plane of personality we must see it _through the medium of personality_, and it is therefore not a theological figment, but the supreme psychological truth that no man can come to "the father"--that is, to the parent spirit--except through the son (john xiv, ). when we see the reason at the back of it, the bible becomes a new book to us, and we learn that the interpretation of it is not to be found in learned commentaries, but in ourselves. then we find that it is indeed the book of promises, not vague and uncertain, but logical and scientific, teaching us how to combine the instrumentality of the law with the freedom of the word; so that through the perfect word, manifested as the perfect man, we reach the perfect law, and find that the perfect law is the law of liberty. the end footnotes: [ ] for various reasons i am not giving the actual names of places and persons in this story. [ ] "out of egypt" by miss crouse. gorham press, boston, u.s.a. [ ] r.w. allen. [ ] see chapters on "body, soul, and spirit" in my "edinburgh lectures on mental science." [ ] see "edinburgh lectures." [ ] "new knowledge." the present edition of light on the path is a verbatim reprint of the edition (george redway, london) in which later edition the notes by the author first appear. the comments, which are not in the edition, are here taken directly from _lucifer_, volume i, - , where they were first published. also in this volume we reprint verbatim the original edition ( ) of through the gates of gold by the same author, together with a commentary by william q. judge taken from his magazine, _the path_, march, . *light on the path* _a treatise_ written for the personal use of those who are ignorant of the eastern wisdom, and who desire to enter within its influence _written down by_ m.c. _with notes by the author_ *light on the path* light on the path i these rules are written for all disciples: attend you to them. before the eyes can see, they must be incapable of tears. before the ear can hear, it must have lost its sensitiveness. before the voice can speak in the presence of the masters it must have lost the power to wound. before the soul can stand in the presence of the masters its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart. . kill out ambition. . kill out desire of life. . kill out desire of comfort. . work as those work who are ambitious. respect life as those do who desire it. be happy as those are who live for happiness. seek in the heart the source of evil and expunge it. it lives fruitfully in the heart of the devoted disciple as well as in the heart of the man of desire. only the strong can kill it out. the weak must wait for its growth, its fruition, its death. and it is a plant that lives and increases throughout the ages. it flowers when the man has accumulated unto himself innumerable existences. he who will enter upon the path of power must tear this thing out of his heart. and then the heart will bleed, and the whole life of the man seem to be utterly dissolved. this ordeal must be endured: it may come at the first step of the perilous ladder which leads to the path of life: it may not come until the last. but, o disciple, remember that it has to be endured, and fasten the energies of your soul upon the task. live neither in the present nor the future, but in the eternal. this giant weed cannot flower there: this blot upon existence is wiped out by the very atmosphere of eternal thought. . kill out all sense of separateness. . kill out desire for sensation. . kill out the hunger for growth. . yet stand alone and isolated, because nothing that is imbodied, nothing that is conscious of separation, nothing that is out of the eternal, can aid you. learn from sensation and observe it, because only so can you commence the science of self-knowledge, and plant your foot on the first step of the ladder. grow as the flower grows, unconsciously, but eagerly anxious to open its soul to the air. so must you press forward to open your soul to the eternal. but it must be the eternal that draws forth your strength and beauty, not desire of growth. for in the one case you develop in the luxuriance of purity, in the other you harden by the forcible passion for personal stature. . desire only that which is within you. . desire only that which is beyond you. . desire only that which is unattainable. . for within you is the light of the world--the only light that can be shed upon the path. if you are unable to perceive it within you, it is useless to look for it elsewhere. it is beyond you; because when you reach it you have lost yourself. it is unattainable, because it for ever recedes. you will enter the light, but you will never touch the flame. . desire power ardently. . desire peace fervently. . desire possessions above all. . but those possessions must belong to the pure soul only, and be possessed therefore by all pure souls equally, and thus be the especial property of the whole only when united. hunger for such possessions as can be held by the pure soul; that you may accumulate wealth for that united spirit of life, which is your only true self. the peace you shall desire is that sacred peace which nothing can disturb, and in which the soul grows as does the holy flower upon the still lagoons. and that power which the disciple shall covet is that which shall make him appear as nothing in the eyes of men. . seek out the way. . seek the way by retreating within. . seek the way by advancing boldly without. . seek it not by any one road. to each temperament there is one road which seems the most desirable. but the way is not found by devotion alone, by religious contemplation alone, by ardent progress, by self-sacrificing labor, by studious observation of life. none alone can take the disciple more than one step onward. all steps are necessary to make up the ladder. the vices of men become steps in the ladder, one by one, as they are surmounted. the virtues of man are steps indeed, necessary--not by any means to be dispensed with. yet, though they create a fair atmosphere and a happy future, they are useless if they stand alone. the whole nature of man must be used wisely by the one who desires to enter the way. each man is to himself absolutely the way, the truth, and the life. but he is only so when he grasps his whole individuality firmly, and, by the force of his awakened spiritual will, recognises this individuality as not himself, but that thing which he has with pain created for his own use, and by means of which he purposes, as his growth slowly develops his intelligence, to reach to the life beyond individuality. when he knows that for this his wonderful complex separated life exists, then, indeed, and then only, he is upon the way. seek it by plunging into the mysterious and glorious depths of your own inmost being. seek it by testing, all experience, by utilizing the senses in order to understand the growth and meaning of individuality, and the beauty and obscurity of those other divine fragments which are struggling side by side with you, and form the race to which you belong. seek it by study of the laws of being, the laws of nature, the laws of the supernatural: and seek it by making the profound obeisance of the soul to the dim star that burns within. steadily, as you watch and worship, its light will grow stronger. then you may know you have found the beginning of the way. and when you have found the end its light will suddenly become the infinite light. . look for the flower to bloom in the silence that follows the storm not till then. it shall grow, it will shoot up, it will make branches and leaves and form buds, while the storm continues, while the battle lasts. but not till the whole personality of the man is dissolved and melted--not until it is held by the divine fragment which has created it, as a mere subject for grave experiment and experience--not until the whole nature has yielded and become subject unto its higher self, can the bloom open. then will come a calm such as comes in a tropical country after the heavy rain, when nature works so swiftly that one may see her action. such a calm will come to the harassed spirit. and in the deep silence the mysterious event will occur which will prove that the way has been found. call it by what name you will, it is a voice that speaks where there is none to speak--it is a messenger that comes, a messenger without form or substance; or it is the flower of the soul that has opened. it cannot be described by any metaphor. but it can be felt after, looked for, and desired, even amid the raging of the storm. the silence may last a moment of time or it may last a thousand years. but it will end. yet you will carry its strength with you. again and again the battle must be fought and won. it is only for an interval that nature can be still. these written above are the first of the rules which are written on the walls of the hall of learning. those that ask shall have. those that desire to read shall read. those who desire to learn shall learn. peace be with you. ii out of the silence that is peace a resonant voice shall arise. and this voice will say, it is not well; thou hast reaped, now thou must sow. and knowing this voice to be the silence itself thou wilt obey. thou who art now a disciple, able to stand, able to hear, able to see, able to speak, who hast conquered desire and attained to self-knowledge, who hast seen thy soul in its bloom and recognised it, and heard the voice of the silence, go thou to the hall of learning and read what is written there for thee. . stand aside in the coming battle, and though thou fightest be not thou the warrior. . look for the warrior and let him fight in thee. . take his orders for battle and obey them. . obey him not as though he were a general, but as though he were thyself, and his spoken words were the utterance of thy secret desires; for he is thyself, yet infinitely wiser and stronger than thyself. look for him, else in the fever and hurry of the fight thou mayest pass him; and he will not know thee unless thou knowest him. if thy cry meet his listening ear, then will he fight in thee and fill the dull void within. and if this is so, then canst thou go through the fight cool and unwearied, standing aside and letting him battle for thee. then it will be impossible for thee to strike one blow amiss. but if thou look not for him, if thou pass him by, then there is no safeguard for thee. thy brain will reel, thy heart grow uncertain, and in the dust of the battlefield thy sight and senses will fail, and thou wilt not know thy friends from thy enemies. he is thyself, yet thou art but finite and liable to error. he is eternal and is sure. he is eternal truth. when once he has entered thee and become thy warrior, he will never utterly desert thee, and at the day of the great peace he will become one with thee. . listen to the song of life. . store in your memory the melody you hear. . learn from it the lesson of harmony. . you can stand upright now, firm as a rock amid the turmoil, obeying the warrior who is thyself and thy king. unconcerned in the battle save to do his bidding, having no longer any care as to the result of the battle, for one thing only is important, that the warrior shall win, and you know he is incapable of defeat--standing thus, cool and awakened, use the hearing you have acquired by pain and by the destruction of pain. only fragments of the great song come to your ears while yet you are but man. but if you listen to it, remember it faithfully, so that none which has reached you is lost, and endeavor to learn from it the meaning of the mystery which surrounds you. in time you will need no teacher. for as the individual has voice, so has that in which the individual exists. life itself has speech and is never silent. and its utterance is not, as you that are deaf may suppose, a cry: it is a song. learn from it that you are part of the harmony; learn from it to obey the laws of the harmony. . regard earnestly all the life that surrounds you. . learn to look intelligently into the hearts of men. . regard most earnestly your own heart. . for through your own heart comes the one light which can illuminate life and make it clear to your eyes. study the hearts of men, that you may know what is that world in which you live and of which you will to be a part. regard the constantly changing and moving life which surrounds you, for it is formed by the hearts of men; and as you learn to understand their constitution and meaning, you will by degrees be able to read the larger word of life. . speech comes only with knowledge. attain to knowledge and you will attain to speech. . having obtained the use of the inner senses, having conquered the desires of the outer senses, having conquered the desires of the individual soul, and having obtained knowledge, prepare now, o disciple, to enter upon the way in reality. the path is found: make yourself ready to tread it. . inquire of the earth, the air, and the water, of the secrets they hold for you. the development of your inner senses will enable you to do this. . inquire of the holy ones of the earth of the secrets they hold for you. the conquering of the desires of the outer senses will give you the right to do this. . inquire of the inmost, the one, of its final secret which it holds for you through the ages. the great and difficult victory, the conquering of the desires of the individual soul, is a work of ages; therefore expect not to obtain its reward until ages of experience have been accumulated. when the time of learning this seventeenth rule is reached, man is on the threshold of becoming more than man. . the knowledge which is now yours is only yours because your soul has become one with all pure souls and with the inmost. it is a trust vested in you by the most high. betray it, misuse your knowledge, or neglect it, and it is possible even now for you to fall from the high estate you have attained. great ones fall back, even from the threshold, unable to sustain the weight of their responsibility, unable to pass on. therefore look forward always with awe and trembling to this moment, and be prepared for the battle. . it is written that for him who is on the threshold of divinity no law can be framed, no guide can exist. yet to enlighten the disciple, the final struggle may be thus expressed: hold fast to that which has neither substance nor existence. . listen only to the voice which is soundless. . look only on that which is invisible alike to the inner and the outer sense. peace be with you. notes _note on rule ._--ambition is the first curse: the great tempter of the man who is rising above his fellows. it is the simplest form of looking for reward. men of intelligence and power are led away from their higher possibilities by it continually. yet it is a necessary teacher. its results turn to dust and ashes in the mouth; like death and estrangement it shows the man at last that to work for self is to work for disappointment. but though this first rule seems so simple and easy, do not quickly pass it by. for these vices of the ordinary man pass through a subtle transformation and reappear with changed aspect in the heart of the disciple. it is easy to say, i will not be ambitious: it is not so easy to say, when the master reads my heart he will find it clean utterly. the pure artist who works for the love of his work is sometimes more firmly planted on the right road than the occultist, who fancies he has removed his interest from self, but who has in reality only enlarged the limits of experience and desire, and transferred his interest to the things which concern his larger span of life. the same principle applies to the other two seemingly simple rules. linger over them and do not let yourself be easily deceived by your own heart. for now, at the threshold, a mistake can be corrected. but carry it on with you and it will grow and come to fruition, or else you must suffer bitterly in its destruction. _note on rule _.--do not fancy you can stand aside from the bad man or the foolish man. they are yourself, though in a less degree than your friend or your master. but if you allow the idea of separateness from any evil thing or person to grow up within you, by so doing you create karma, which will bind you to that thing or person till your soul recognises that it cannot be isolated. remember that the sin and shame of the world are your sin and shame; for you are a part of it; your karma is inextricably interwoven with the great karma. and before you can attain knowledge you must have passed through all places, foul and clean alike. therefore, remember that the soiled garment you shrink from touching may have been yours yesterday, may be yours tomorrow. and if you turn with horror from it, when it is flung upon your shoulders, it will cling the more closely to you. the self-righteous man makes for himself a bed of mire. abstain because it is right to abstain--not that yourself shall be kept clean. _note on rule ._--these four words seem, perhaps, too slight to stand alone. the disciple may say, should i study these thoughts at all did i not seek out the way? yet do not pass on hastily. pause and consider awhile. is it the way you desire, or is it that there is a dim perspective in your visions of great heights to be scaled by yourself, of a great future for you to compass? be warned. the way is to be sought for its own sake, not with regard to your feet that shall tread it. there is a correspondence between this rule and the th of the nd series. when after ages of struggle and many victories the final battle is won, the final secret demanded, then you are prepared for a further path. when the final secret of this great lesson is told, in it is opened the mystery of the new way--a path which leads out of all human experience, and which is utterly beyond human perception or imagination. at each of these points it is needful to pause long and consider well. at each of these points it is necessary to be sure that the way is chosen for its own sake. the way and the truth come first, then follows the life. _note on rule _.--seek it by testing all experience, and remember that when i say this i do not say, yield to the seductions of sense in order to know it. before you have become an occultist you may do this; but not afterwards. when you have chosen and entered the path you cannot yield to these seductions without shame. yet you can experience them without horror: can weigh, observe and test them, and wait with the patience of confidence for the hour when they shall affect you no longer. but do not condemn the man that yields; stretch out your hand to him as a brother pilgrim whose feet have become heavy with mire. remember, o disciple, that great though the gulf may be between the good man and the sinner, it is greater between the good man and the man who has attained knowledge; it is immeasurable between the good man and the one on the threshold of divinity. therefore be wary lest too soon you fancy yourself a thing apart from the mass. when you have found the beginning of the way the star of your soul will show its light; and by that light you will perceive how great is the darkness in which it burns. mind, heart, brain, all are obscure and dark until the first great battle has been won. be not appalled and terrified by this sight; keep your eyes fixed on the small light and it will grow. but let the darkness within help you to understand the helplessness of those who have seen no light, whose souls are in profound gloom. blame them not, shrink not from them, but try to lift a little of the heavy karma of the world; give your aid to the few strong hands that hold back the powers of darkness from obtaining complete victory. then do you enter into a partnership of joy, which brings indeed terrible toil and profound sadness, but also a great and ever-increasing delight. _note on rule ._--the opening of the bloom is the glorious moment when perception awakes: with it comes confidence, knowledge, certainty. the pause of the soul is the moment of wonder, and the next moment of satisfaction, that is the silence. know, o disciple, that those who have passed through the silence, and felt its peace and retained its strength, they long that you shall pass through it also. therefore, in the hall of learning, when he is capable of entering there, the disciple will always find his master. those that ask shall have. but though the ordinary man asks perpetually, his voice is not heard. for he asks with his mind only; and the voice of the mind is only heard on that plane on which the mind acts. therefore, not until the first twenty-one rules are past do i say those that ask shall have. to read, in the occult sense, is to read with the eyes of the spirit. to ask is to feel the hunger within--the yearning of spiritual aspiration. to be able to read means having obtained the power in a small degree of gratifying that hunger. when the disciple is ready to learn, then he is accepted, acknowledged, recognised. it must be so, for he has lit his lamp, and it cannot be hidden. but to learn is impossible until the first great battle has been won. the mind may recognise truth, but the spirit cannot receive it. once having passed through the storm and attained the peace, it is then always possible to learn, even though the disciple waver, hesitate, and turn aside. the voice of the silence remains within him, and though he leave the path utterly, yet one day it will resound and rend him asunder and separate his passions from his divine possibilities. then with pain and desperate cries from the deserted lower self he will return. therefore i say, peace be with you. my peace i give unto you can only be said by the master to the beloved disciples who are as himself. there are even some amongst those who are ignorant of the eastern wisdom to whom this can be said, and to whom it can daily be said with more completeness. regard the three truths. they are equal. part ii _note on sect. ii_--to be able to stand is to have confidence; to be able to hear is to have opened the doors of the soul; to be able to see is to have attained perception; to be able to speak is to have attained the power of helping others; to have conquered desire is to have learned how to use and control the self; to have attained to self-knowledge is to have retreated to the inner fortress from whence the personal man can be viewed with impartiality; to have seen thy soul in its bloom is to have obtained a momentary glimpse in thyself of the transfiguration which shall eventually make thee more than man; to recognise is to achieve the great task of gazing upon the blazing light without dropping the eyes and not falling back in terror, as though before some ghastly phantom. this happens to some, and so when the victory is all but won it is lost; to hear the voice of the silence is to understand that from within comes the only true guidance; to go to the hall of learning is to enter the state in which learning becomes possible. then will many words be written there for thee, and written in fiery letters for thee easily to read. for when the disciple is ready the master is ready also. _note on rule _.--look for it and listen to it first in your own heart. at first you may say it is not there; when i search i find only discord. look deeper. if again you are disappointed, pause and look deeper again. there is a natural melody, an obscure fount in every human heart. it may be hidden over and utterly concealed and silenced--but it is there. at the very base of your nature you will find faith, hope, and love. he that chooses evil refuses to look within himself, shuts his ears to the melody of his heart, as he blinds his eyes to the light of his soul. he does this because he finds it easier to live in desires. but underneath all life is the strong current that cannot be checked; the great waters are there in reality. find them, and you will perceive that none, not the most wretched of creatures, but is a part of it, however he blind himself to the fact and build up for himself a phantasmal outer form of horror. in that sense it is that i say to you--all those beings among whom you struggle on are fragments of the divine. and so deceptive is the illusion in which you live, that it is hard to guess where you will first detect the sweet voice in the hearts of others. but know that it is certainly within yourself. look for it there, and once having heard it, you will more readily recognise it around you. _note on rule ._--from an absolutely impersonal point of view, otherwise your sight is colored. therefore impersonality must first be understood. intelligence is impartial: no man is your enemy: no man is your friend. all alike are your teachers. your enemy becomes a mystery that must be solved, even though it take ages: for man must be understood. your friend becomes a part of yourself, an extension of yourself, a riddle hard to read. only one thing is more difficult to know--your own heart. not until the bonds of personality are loosed, can that profound mystery of self begin to be seen. not till you stand aside from it will it in any way reveal itself to your understanding. then, and not till then, can you grasp and guide it. then, and not till then, can you use all its powers, and devote them to a worthy service. _note on rule ._--it is impossible to help others till you have obtained some certainty of your own. when you have learned the first rules and have entered the hall of learning with your powers developed and sense unchained, then you will find there is a fount within you from which speech will arise. after the th rule i can add no words to what is already written. my peace i give unto you. [greek: d] these notes are written only for those to whom i give my peace; those who can read what i have written with the inner as well as the outer sense. comments i "before the eyes can see they must be incapable of tears." it should be very clearly remembered by all readers of this volume that it is a book which may appear to have some little philosophy in it, but very little sense, to those who believe it to be written in ordinary english. to the many, who read in this manner it will be--not caviare so much as olives strong of their salt. be warned and read but a little in this way. there is another way of reading, which is, indeed, the only one of any use with many authors. it is reading, not between the lines but within the words. in fact, it is deciphering a profound cipher. all alchemical works are written in the cipher of which i speak; it has been used by the great philosophers and poets of all time. it is used systematically by the adepts in life and knowledge, who, seemingly giving out their deepest wisdom, hide in the very words which frame it its actual mystery. they cannot do more. there is a law of nature which insists that a man shall read these mysteries for himself. by no other method can he obtain them. a man who desires to live must eat his food himself: this is the simple law of nature--which applies also to the higher life. a man who would live and act in it cannot be fed like a babe with a spoon; he must eat for himself. i propose to put into new and sometimes plainer language parts of "light on the path"; but whether this effort of mine will really be any interpretation i cannot say. to a deaf and dumb man, a truth is made no more intelligible if, in order to make it so, some misguided linguist translates the words in which it is couched into every living or dead language, and shouts these different phrases in his ear. but for those who are not deaf and dumb one language is generally easier than the rest; and it is to such as these i address myself. the very first aphorisms of "light on the path," included under number i, have, i know well, remained sealed as to their inner meaning to many who have otherwise followed the purpose of the book. there are four proven and certain truths with regard to the entrance to occultism. the gates of gold bar that threshold; yet there are some who pass those gates and discover the sublime and illimitable beyond. in the far spaces of time all will pass those gates. but i am one who wish that time, the great deluder, were not so over-masterful. to those who know and love him i have no word to say; but to the others--and there are not so very few as some may fancy--to whom the passage of time is as the stroke of a sledge-hammer, and the sense of space like the bars of an iron cage, i will translate and re-translate until they understand fully. the four truths written on the first page of "light on the path," refer to the trial initiation of the would-be occultist. until he has passed it, he cannot even reach to the latch of the gate which admits to knowledge. knowledge is man's greatest inheritance; why, then, should he not attempt to reach it by every possible road? the laboratory is not the only ground for experiment; _science_, we must remember, is derived from _sciens_, present participle of _scire_, "to know,"--its origin is similar to that of the word "discern," to "ken." science does not therefore deal only with matter, no, not even its subtlest and obscurest forms. such an idea is born merely of the idle spirit of the age. science is a word which covers all forms of knowledge. it is exceedingly interesting to hear what chemists discover, and to see them finding their way through the densities of matter to its finer forms; but there are other kinds of knowledge than this, and it is not every one who restricts his (strictly scientific) desire for knowledge to experiments which are capable of being tested by the physical senses. everyone who is not a dullard, or a man stupefied by some predominant vice, has guessed or even perhaps discovered with some certainty, that there are subtle senses lying within the physical senses. there is nothing at all extraordinary in this; if we took the trouble to call nature into the witness box we should find that everything which is perceptible to the ordinary sight, has something even more important than itself hidden within it; the microscope has opened a world to us, but within those encasements which the microscope reveals, lies a mystery which no machinery can probe. the whole world is animated and lit, down to its most material shapes, by a world within it. this inner world is called astral by some people, and it is as good a word as any other, though it merely means starry; but the stars, as locke pointed out, are luminous bodies which give light of themselves. this quality is characteristic of the life which lies within matter; for those who see it, need no lamp to see it by. the word star, moreover, is derived from the anglo-saxon "stir-an," to steer, to stir, to move, and undeniably it is the inner life which is master of the outer, just as a man's brain guides the movements of his lips. so that although astral is no very excellent word in itself, i am content to use it for my present purpose. the whole of "light on the path" is written in an astral cipher and can therefore only be deciphered by one who reads astrally. and its teaching is chiefly directed towards the cultivation and development of the astral life. until the first step has been taken in this development, the swift knowledge, which is called intuition with certainty, is impossible to man. and this positive and certain intuition is the only form of knowledge which enables a man to work rapidly or reach his true and high estate, within the limit of his conscious effort. to obtain knowledge by experiment is too tedious a method for those who aspire to accomplish real work; he who gets it by certain intuition, lays hands on its various forms with supreme rapidity, by fierce effort of will; as a determined workman grasps his tools, indifferent to their weight or any other difficulty which may stand in his way. he does not stay for each to be tested--he uses such as he sees are fittest. all the rules contained in "light on the path," are written for all disciples, but only for disciples---those who "take knowledge." to none else but the student in this school are its laws of any use or interest. to all who are interested seriously in occultism, i say first--take knowledge. to him who hath shall be given. it is useless to wait for it. the womb of time will close before you, and in later days you will remain unborn, without power. i therefore say to those who have any hunger or thirst for knowledge, attend to these rules. they are none of my handicraft or invention. they are merely the phrasing of laws in super-nature, the putting into words truths as absolute in their own sphere, as those laws which govern the conduct of the earth and its atmosphere. the senses spoken of in these four statements are the astral, or inner senses. no man desires to see that light which illumines the spaceless soul until pain and sorrow and despair have driven him away from the life of ordinary humanity. first he wears out pleasure; then he wears out pain--till, at last, his eyes become incapable of tears. this is a truism, although i know perfectly well that it will meet with a vehement denial from many who are in sympathy with thoughts which spring from the inner life. _to see_ with the astral sense of sight is a form of activity which it is difficult for us to understand immediately. the scientist knows very well what a miracle is achieved by each child that is born into the world, when it first conquers its eyesight and compels it to obey its brain. an equal miracle is performed with each sense certainly, but this ordering of sight is perhaps the most stupendous effort. yet the child does it almost unconsciously, by force of the powerful heredity of habit. no one now is aware that he has ever done it at all; just as we cannot recollect the individual movements which enabled us to walk up a hill a year ago. this arises from the fact that we move and live and have our being in matter. our knowledge of it has become intuitive. with our astral life it is very much otherwise. for long ages past, man has paid very little attention to it--so little, that he has practically lost the use of his senses. it is true, that in every civilization the star arises, and man confesses, with more or less of folly and confusion, that he knows himself to be. but most often he denies it, and in being a materialist becomes that strange thing, a being which cannot see its own light, a thing of life which will not live, an astral animal which has eyes, and ears, and speech, and power, yet will use none of these gifts. this is the case, and the habit of ignorance has become so confirmed, that now none will see with the inner vision till agony has made the physical eyes not only unseeing, but without tears--the moisture of life. to be incapable of tears is to have faced and conquered the simple human nature, and to have attained an equilibrium which cannot be shaken by personal emotions. it does not imply any hardness of heart, or any indifference. it does not imply the exhaustion of sorrow, when the suffering soul seems powerless to suffer acutely any longer; it does not mean the deadness of old age, when emotion is becoming dull because the strings which vibrate to it are wearing out. none of these conditions are fit for a disciple, and if any one of them exist in him it must be overcome before the path can be entered upon. hardness of heart belongs to the selfish man, the egotist, to whom the gate is forever closed. indifference belongs to the fool and the false philosopher; those whose lukewarmness makes them mere puppets, not strong enough to face the realities of existence. when pain or sorrow has worn out the keenness of suffering, the result is a lethargy not unlike that which accompanies old age, as it is usually experienced by men and women. such a condition makes the entrance to the path impossible, because the first step is one of difficulty and needs a strong man, full of psychic and physical vigor, to attempt it. it is a truth, that, as edgar allan poe said, the eyes are the windows for the soul, the windows of that haunted palace in which it dwells. this is the very nearest interpretation into ordinary language of the meaning of the text. if grief, dismay, disappointment or pleasure, can shake the soul so that it loses its fixed hold on the calm spirit which inspires it, and the moisture of life breaks forth, drowning knowledge in sensation, then all is blurred, the windows are darkened, the light is useless. this is as literal a fact as that if a man, at the edge of a precipice, loses his nerve through some sudden emotion he will certainly fall. the poise of the body, the balance, must be preserved, not only in dangerous places, but even on the level ground, and with all the assistance nature gives us by the law of gravitation. so it is with the soul, it is the link between the outer body and the starry spirit beyond; the divine spark dwells in the still place where no convulsion of nature can shake the air; this is so always. but the soul may lose its hold on that, its knowledge of it, even though these two are part of one whole; and it is by emotion, by sensation, that this hold is loosed. to suffer either pleasure or pain, causes a vivid vibration which is, to the consciousness of man, life. now this sensibility does not lessen when the disciple enters upon his training; it increases. it is the first test of his strength; he must suffer, must enjoy or endure, more keenly than other men, while yet he has taken on him a duty which does not exist for other men, that of not allowing his suffering to shake him from his fixed purpose. he has, in fact, at the first step to take himself steadily in hand and put the bit into his own mouth; no one else can do it for him. the first four aphorisms of "light on the path," refer entirely to astral development. this development must be accomplished to a certain extent--that is to say it must be fully entered upon--before the remainder of the book is really intelligible except to the intellect; in fact, before it can be read as a practical, not a metaphysical treatise. in one of the great mystic brotherhoods, there are four ceremonies, that take place early in the year, which practically illustrate and elucidate these aphorisms. they are ceremonies in which only novices take part, for they are simply services of the threshold. but it will show how serious a thing it is to become a disciple, when it is understood that these are all ceremonies of sacrifice. the first one is this of which i have been speaking. the keenest enjoyment, the bitterest pain, the anguish of loss and despair, are brought to bear on the trembling soul, which has not yet found light in the darkness, which is helpless as a blind man is, and until these shocks can be endured without loss of equilibrium the astral senses must remain sealed. this is the merciful law. the "medium," or "spiritualist," who rushes into the psychic world without preparation, is a law-breaker, a breaker of the laws of super-nature. those who break nature's laws lose their physical health; those who break the laws of the inner life, lose their psychic health. "mediums" become mad, suicides, miserable creatures devoid of moral sense; and often end as unbelievers, doubters even of that which their own eyes have seen. the disciple is compelled to become his own master before he adventures on this perilous path, and attempts to face those beings who live and work in the astral world, and whom we call masters, because of their great knowledge and their ability to control not only themselves but the forces around them. the condition of the soul when it lives for the life of sensation as distinguished from that of knowledge, is vibratory or oscillating, as distinguished from fixed. that is the nearest literal representation of the fact; but it is only literal to the intellect, not to the intuition. for this part of man's consciousness a different vocabulary is needed. the idea of "fixed" might perhaps be transposed into that of "at home." in sensation no permanent home can be found, because change is the law of this vibratory existence. that fact is the first one which must be learned by the disciple. it is useless to pause and weep for a scene in a kaleidoscope which has passed. it is a very well-known fact, one with which bulwer lytton dealt with great power, that an intolerable sadness is the very first experience of the neophyte in occultism. a sense of blankness falls upon him which makes the world a waste, and life a vain exertion. this follows his first serious contemplation of the abstract. in gazing, or even in attempting to gaze, on the ineffable mystery of his own higher nature, he himself causes the initial trial to fall on him. the oscillation between pleasure and pain ceases for--perhaps an instant of time; but that is enough to have cut him loose from his fast moorings in the world of sensation. he has experienced, however briefly, the greater life; and he goes on with ordinary existence weighted by a sense of unreality, of blank, of horrid negation. this was the nightmare which visited bulwer lytton's neophyte in "zanoni"; and even zanoni himself, who had learned great truths, and been entrusted with great powers, had not actually passed the threshold where fear and hope, despair and joy seem at one moment absolute realities, at the next mere forms of fancy. this initial trial is often brought on us by life itself. for life is after all, the great teacher. we return to study it, after we have acquired power over it, just as the master in chemistry learns more in the laboratory than his pupil does. there are persons so near the door of knowledge that life itself prepares them for it, and no individual hand has to invoke the hideous guardian of the entrance. these must naturally be keen and powerful organizations, capable of the most vivid pleasure; then pain comes and fills its great duty. the most intense forms of suffering fall on such a nature, till at last it arouses from its stupor of consciousness, and by the force of its internal vitality steps over the threshold into a place of peace. then the vibration of life loses its power of tyranny. the sensitive nature must suffer still; but the soul has freed itself and stands aloof, guiding the life towards its greatness. those who are the subjects of time, and go slowly through all his spaces, live on through a long drawn series of sensations, and suffer a constant mingling of pleasure and of pain. they do not dare to take the snake of self in a steady grasp and conquer it, so becoming divine; but prefer to go on fretting through divers experiences, suffering blows from the opposing forces. when one of these subjects of time decides to enter on the path of occultism, it is this which is his first task. if life has not taught it to him, if he is not strong enough to teach himself and if he has power enough to demand the help of a master, then this fearful trial, depicted in zanoni, is put upon him. the oscillation in which he lives, is for an instant stilled; and he has to survive the shock of facing what seems to him at first sight as the abyss of nothingness. not till he has learned to dwell in this abyss, and has found its peace, is it possible for his eyes to have become incapable of tears. ii "before the ear can hear, it must have lost its sensitiveness." the first four rules of "light on the path" are, undoubtedly, curious though the statement may seem, the most important in the whole book, save one only. why they are so important is that they contain the vital law, the very creative essence of the astral man. and it is only in the astral (or self-illuminated) consciousness that the rules which follow them have any living meaning. once attain to the use of the astral senses and it becomes a matter of course that one commences to use them; and the later rules are but guidance in their use. when i speak like this i mean, naturally, that the first four rules are the ones which are of importance and interest to those who read them in print upon a page. when they are engraved on a man's heart and on his life, unmistakably then the rules become not merely interesting, or extraordinary, metaphysical statements, but actual facts in life which have to be grasped and experienced. the four rules stand written in the great chamber of every actual lodge of a living brotherhood. whether the man is about to sell his soul to the devil, like faust; whether he is to be worsted in the battle, like hamlet; or whether he is to pass on within the precincts; in any case these words are for him. the man can choose between virtue and vice, but not until he is a man; a babe or a wild animal cannot so choose. thus with the disciple, he must first become a disciple before he can even see the paths to choose between. this effort of creating himself as a disciple, the re-birth, he must do for himself without any teacher. until the four rules are learned no teacher can be of any use to him; and that is why "the masters" are referred to in the way they are. no real masters, whether adepts in power, in love, or in blackness, can affect a man till these four rules are passed. tears, as i have said, may be called the moisture of life. the soul must have laid aside the emotions of humanity, must have secured a balance which cannot be shaken by misfortune, before its eyes can open upon the super-human world. the voice of the masters is always in the world; but only those hear it whose ears are no longer receptive of the sounds which affect the personal life. laughter no longer lightens the heart, anger may no longer enrage it, tender words bring it no balm. for that within, to which the ears are as an outer gateway, is an unshaken place of peace in itself which no person can disturb. as the eyes are the windows of the soul, so are the ears its gateways or doors. through them comes knowledge of the confusion of the world. the great ones who have conquered life, who have become more than disciples, stand at peace and undisturbed amid the vibration and kaleidoscopic movement of humanity. they hold within themselves a certain knowledge, as well as a perfect peace; and thus they are not roused or excited by the partial and erroneous fragments of information which are brought to their ears by the changing voices of those around them. when i speak of knowledge, i mean intuitive knowledge. this certain information can never be obtained by hard work, or by experiment; for these methods are only applicable to matter, and matter is in itself a perfectly uncertain substance, continually affected by change. the most absolute and universal laws of natural and physical life, as understood by the scientist, will pass away when the life of this universe has passed away, and only its soul is left in the silence. what then will be the value of the knowledge of its laws acquired by industry and observation? i pray that no reader or critic will imagine that by what i have said i intend to depreciate or disparage acquired knowledge, or the work of scientists. on the contrary, i hold that scientific men are the pioneers of modern thought. the days of literature and of art, when poets and sculptors saw the divine light, and put it into their own great language--these days lie buried in the long past with the ante-phidian sculptors and the pre-homeric poets. the mysteries no longer rule the world of thought and beauty; human life is the governing power, not that which lies beyond it. but the scientific workers are progressing, not so much by their own will as by sheer force of circumstances, towards the far line which divides things interpretable from things uninterpretable. every fresh discovery drives them a step onward. therefore do i very highly esteem the knowledge obtained by work and experiment. but intuitive knowledge is an entirely different thing. it is not acquired in any way, but is, so to speak, a faculty of the soul; not the animal soul, that which becomes a ghost after death, when lust or liking or the memory of ill deeds holds it to the neighborhood of human beings, but the divine soul which animates all the external forms of the individualized being. this is, of course, a faculty which indwells in that soul, which is inherent. the would-be disciple has to arouse himself to the consciousness of it by a fierce and resolute and indomitable effort of will. i use the word indomitable for a special reason. only he who is untameable, who cannot be dominated, who knows he has to play the lord over men, over facts, over all things save his own divinity can arouse this faculty. "with faith all things, are possible." the skeptical laugh at faith and pride themselves on its absence from their own minds. the truth is that faith is a great engine, an enormous power, which in fact can accomplish all things. for it is the convenant or engagement between man's divine part and his lesser self. the use of this engine is quite necessary in order to obtain intuitive knowledge; for unless a man believes such knowledge exists within himself how can he claim and use it? without it he is more helpless than any drift-wood or wreckage on the great tides of the ocean. they are cast hither and thither indeed; so may a man be by the chances of fortune. but such adventures are purely external and of very small account. a slave may be dragged through the streets in chains, and yet retain the quiet soul of a philosopher, as was well seen in the person of epictetus. a man may have every worldly prize in his possession, and stand absolute master of his personal fate, to all appearance, and yet he knows no peace, no certainty, because he is shaken within himself by every tide of thought that he touches on. and these changing tides do not merely sweep the man bodily hither and thither like drift-wood on the water; that would be nothing. they enter into the gate-ways of his soul, and wash over that soul and make it blind and blank and void of all permanent intelligence so that passing impressions affect it. to make my meaning plainer i will use an illustration. take an author at his writing, a painter at his canvas, a composer listening to the melodies that dawn upon his glad imagination; let any one of these workers pass his daily hours by a wide window looking on a busy street. the power of the animating life blinds sight and hearing alike, and the great traffic of the city goes by like nothing but a passing pageant. but a man whose mind is empty, whose day is objectless, sitting at that same window, notes the passers-by and remembers the faces that chance to please or interest him. so it is with the mind in its relation to eternal truth. if it no longer transmits its fluctuations, its partial knowledge, its unreliable information to the soul, then in the inner place of peace already found when the first rule has been learned--in that inner place there leaps into flame the light of actual knowledge. then the ears begin to hear. very dimly, very faintly at first. and, indeed, so faint and tender are these first indications of the commencement of true actual life, that they are sometimes pushed aside as mere fancies, mere imaginings. but before these are capable of becoming more than mere imaginings, the abyss of nothingness has to be faced in another form. the utter silence which can only come by closing the ears to all transitory sounds comes as a more appalling horror than even the formless emptiness of space. our only mental conception of blank space is, i think, when reduced to its barest element of thought, that of black darkness. this is a great physical terror to most persons, and when regarded as an eternal and unchangeable fact, must mean to the mind the idea of annihilation rather than anything else. but it is the obliteration of one sense only; and the sound of a voice may come and bring comfort even in the profoundest darkness. the disciple, having found his way into this blackness, which is the fearful abyss, must then so shut the gates of his soul that no comforter can enter there nor any enemy. and it is in making this second effort that the fact of pain and pleasure being but one sensation becomes recognisable by those who have before been unable to perceive it. for when the solitude of silence is reached the soul hungers so fiercely and passionately for some sensation on which to rest, that a painful one would be as keenly welcomed as a pleasant one. when this consciousness is reached the courageous man by seizing and retaining it, may destroy the "sensitiveness" at once. when the ear no longer discriminates between that which is pleasant or that which is painful, it will no longer be affected by the voices of others. and then it is safe and possible to open the doors of the soul. "sight" is the first effort, and the easiest, because it is accomplished partly by an intellectual effort. the intellect can conquer the heart, as is well known in ordinary life. therefore, this preliminary step still lies within the dominion of matter. but the second step allows of no such assistance, nor of any material aid whatever. of course, i mean by material aid the action of the brain, or emotions, or human soul. in compelling the ears to listen only to the eternal silence, the being we call man becomes something which is no longer man. a very superficial survey of the thousand and one influences which are brought to bear on us by others will show that this must be so. a disciple will fulfil all the duties of his manhood; but he will fulfil them according to his own sense of right, and not according to that of any person or body of persons. this is a very evident result of following the creed of knowledge instead of any of the blind creeds. to obtain the pure silence necessary for the disciple, the heart and emotions, the brain and its intellectualisms, have to be put aside. both are but mechanisms, which will perish with the span of man's life. it is the essence beyond, that which is the motive power, and makes man live, that is now compelled to rouse itself and act. now is the greatest hour of danger. in the first trial men go mad with fear; of this first trial bulwer lytton wrote. no novelist has followed to the second trial, though some of the poets have. its subtlety and great danger lies in the fact that in the measure of a man's strength is the measure of his chance of passing beyond it or coping with it at all. if he has power enough to awaken that unaccustomed part of himself, the supreme essence, then has he power to lift the gates of gold, then is he the true alchemist, in possession of the elixir of life. it is at this point of experience that the occultist becomes separated from all other men and enters on to a life which is his own; on to the path of individual accomplishment instead of mere obedience to the genii which rule our earth. this raising of himself into an individual power does in reality identify him with the nobler forces of life and make him one with them. for they stand beyond the powers of this earth and the laws of this universe. here lies man's only hope of success in the great effort; to leap right away from his present standpoint to his next and at once become an intrinsic part of the divine power as he has been an intrinsic part of the intellectual power, of the great nature to which he belongs. he stands always in advance of himself, if such a contradiction can be understood. it is the men who adhere to this position, who believe in their innate power of progress, and that of the whole race, who are the elder brothers, the pioneers. each man has to accomplish the great leap for himself and without aid; yet it is something of a staff to lean on to know that others have gone on that road. it is possible that they have been lost in the abyss; no matter, they have had the courage to enter it. why i say that it is possible they have been lost in the abyss is because of this fact, that one who has passed through is unrecognisable until the other and altogether new condition is attained by both. it is unnecessary to enter upon the subject of what that condition is at present. i only say this, that in the early state in which man is entering upon the silence he loses knowledge of his friends, of his lovers, of all who have been near and dear to him; and also loses sight of his teachers and of those who have preceded him on his way. i explain this because scarce one passes through without bitter complaint. could but the mind grasp beforehand that the silence must be complete, surely this complaint need not arise as a hindrance on the path. your teacher, or your predecessor may hold your hand in his, and give you the utmost sympathy the human heart is capable of. but when the silence and the darkness comes, you lose all knowledge of him; you are alone and he cannot help you, not because his power is gone, but because you have invoked your great enemy. by your great enemy, i mean yourself. if you have the power to face your own soul in the darkness and silence, you will have conquered the physical or animal self which dwells in sensation only. this statement, i feel, will appear involved; but in reality it is quite simple. man, when he has reached his fruition, and civilization is at its height, stands between two fires. could he but claim his great inheritance, the encumbrance of the mere animal life would fall away from him without difficulty. but he does not do this, and so the races of men flower and then droop and die and decay off the face of the earth, however splendid the bloom may have been. and it is left to the individual to make this great effort; to refuse to be terrified by his greater nature, to refuse to be drawn back by his lesser or more material self. every individual who accomplishes this is a redeemer of the race. he may not blazon forth his deeds, he may dwell in secret and silence; but it is a fact that he forms a link between man and his divine part; between the known and the unknown; between the stir of the marketplace and the stillness of the snow-capped himalayas. he has not to go about among men in order to form this link; in the astral he _is_ that link, and this fact makes him a being of another order from the rest of mankind. even so early on the road towards knowledge, when he has but taken the second step, he finds his footing more certain, and becomes conscious that he is a recognised part of a whole. this is one of the contradictions in life which occur so constantly that they afford fuel to the fiction writer. the occultist finds them become much more marked as he endeavors to live the life he has chosen. as he retreats within himself and becomes self-dependent, he finds himself more definitely becoming part of a great tide of definite thought and feeling. when he has learned the first lesson, conquered the hunger of the heart, and refused to live on the love of others, he finds himself more capable of inspiring love. as he flings life away it comes to him in a new form and with a new meaning. the world has always been a place with many contradictions in it, to the man; when he becomes a disciple he finds life is describable as a series of paradoxes. this is a fact in nature, and the reason for it is intelligible enough. man's soul "dwells like a star apart," even that of the vilest among us; while his consciousness is under the law of vibratory and sensuous life. this alone is enough to cause those complications of character which are the material for the novelist; every man is a mystery, to friend and enemy alike, and to himself. his motives are often undiscoverable, and he cannot probe to them or know why he does this or that. the disciple's effort is that of awakening consciousness in this starry part of himself, where his power and divinity lie sleeping. as this consciousness becomes awakened, the contradictions in the man himself become more marked than ever; and so do the paradoxes which he lives through. for, of course man creates his own life; and "adventures are to the adventurous" is one of those wise proverbs which are drawn from actual fact, and cover the whole area of human experience. pressure on the divine part of man re-acts upon the animal part. as the silent soul awakes it makes the ordinary life of the man more purposeful, more vital, more real, and responsible. to keep to the two instances already mentioned, the occultist who has withdrawn into his own citadel has found his strength; immediately he becomes aware of the demands of duty upon him. he does not obtain his strength by his own right, but because he is a part of the whole; and as soon as he is safe from the vibration of life and can stand unshaken, the outer world cries out to him to come and labor in it. so with the heart. when it no longer wishes to take, it is called upon to give abundantly. "light on the path" has been called a book of paradoxes, and very justly; what else could it be, when it deals with the actual personal experience of the disciple? to have acquired the astral senses of sight and hearing; or in other words to have attained perception and opened the doors of the soul, are gigantic tasks and may take the sacrifice of many successive incarnations. and yet, when the will has reached its strength, the whole miracle may be worked in a second of time. then is the disciple the servant of time no longer. these two first steps are negative; that is to say they imply retreat from a present condition of things rather than advance towards another. the two next are active, implying the advance into another state of being. iii "before the voice can speak in the presence of the masters." speech is the power of communication; the moment of entrance into active life is marked by its attainment. and now, before i go any further, let me explain a little the way in which the rules written down in "light on the path" are arranged. the first seven of those which are numbered are sub-divisions of the two first unnumbered rules, those with which i have dealt in the two preceding papers. the numbered rules were simply an effort of mine to make the unnumbered ones more intelligible. "eight" to "fifteen" of these numbered rules belong to this unnumbered rule which is now my text. as i have said, these rules are written for all disciples, but for none else; they are not of interest to any other persons. therefore i trust no one else will trouble to read these papers any further. the first two rules, which include the whole of that part of the effort which necessitates the use of the surgeon's knife, i will enlarge upon further if i am asked to do so. but the disciple is expected to deal with a snake, his lower self, unaided; to suppress his human passions and emotions by the force of his own will. he can only demand assistance of a master when this is accomplished, or at all events, partially so. otherwise the gates and windows of his soul are blurred, and blinded, and darkened, and no knowledge can come to him. i am not, in these papers, purposing to tell a man how to deal with his own soul; i am simply giving, to the disciple, knowledge. that i am not writing even now, so that all who run may read, is owing to the fact that super-nature prevents this by its own immutable laws. the four rules which i have written down for those in the west who wish to study them, are as i have said, written in the ante-chamber of every living brotherhood; i may add more, in the ante-chamber of every living or dead brotherhood, or order yet to be formed. when i speak of a brotherhood or an order, i do not mean an arbitrary constitution made by scholiasts and intellectualists; i mean an actual fact in super-nature, a stage of development towards the absolute god or good. during this development the disciple encounters harmony, pure knowledge, pure truth, in different degrees, and, as he enters these degrees, he finds himself becoming part of what might be roughly described as a layer of human consciousness. he encounters his equals, men of his own selfless character, and with them his association becomes permanent and indissoluble, because founded on a vital likeness of nature. to them he becomes pledged by such vows as need no utterance or framework in ordinary words. this is one aspect of what i mean by a brotherhood. if the first rules are conquered, the disciple finds himself standing at the threshold. then if his will is sufficiently resolute his power of speech comes; a two-fold power. for, as he advances now, he finds himself entering into a state of blossoming, where every bud that opens throws out its several rays or petals. if he is to exercise his new gift, he must use it in its two-fold character. he finds in himself the power to speak in the presence of the masters; in other words, he has the right to demand contact with the divinest element of that state of consciousness into which he has entered. but he finds himself compelled, by the nature of his position, to act in two ways at the same time. he cannot send his voice up to the heights where sit the gods till he has penetrated to the deep places where their light shines not at all. he has come within the grip of an iron law. if he demands to become a neophyte, he at once becomes a servant. yet his service is sublime, if only from the character of those who share it. for the masters are also servants; they serve and claim their reward afterwards. part of their service is to let their knowledge touch him; his first act of service is to give some of that knowledge to those who are not yet fit to stand where he stands. this is no arbitrary decision, made by any master or teacher or any such person, however divine. it is a law of that life which the disciple has entered upon. therefore was it written in the inner doorway of the lodges of the old egyptian brotherhood, "the laborer is worthy of his hire." "ask and ye shall have," sounds like something too easy and simple to be credible. but the disciple cannot "ask" in the mystic sense in which the word is used in this scripture until he has attained the power of helping others. why is this? has the statement too dogmatic a sound? is it too dogmatic to say that a man must have foothold before he can spring? the position is the same. if help is given, if work is done, then there is an actual claim--not what we call personal claim of payment, but the claim of co-nature. the divine give, they demand that you also shall give before you can be of their kin. this law is discovered as soon as the disciple endeavors to speak. for speech is a gift which comes only to the disciple of power and knowledge. the spiritualist enters the psychic-astral world, but he does not find there any certain speech, unless he at once claims it and continues to do so. if he is interested in "phenomena," or the mere circumstance and accident of astral life, then he enters no direct ray of thought or purpose, he merely exists and amuses himself in the astral life as he has existed and amused himself in the physical life. certainly there are one or two simple lessons which the psychic-astral can teach him, just as there are simple lessons which material and intellectual life teach him. and these lessons have to be learned; the man who proposes to enter upon the life of the disciple without having learned the early and simple lessons must always suffer from his ignorance. they are vital, and have to be studied in a vital manner; experienced through and through, over and over again, so that each part of the nature has been penetrated by them. to return. in claiming the power of speech, as it is called, the neophyte cries out to the great one who stands foremost in the ray of knowledge on which he has entered, to give him guidance. when he does this, his voice is hurled back by the power he has approached, and echoes down to the deep recesses of human ignorance. in some confused and blurred manner the news that there is knowledge and a beneficent power which teaches is carried to as many men as will listen to it. no disciple can cross the threshold without communicating this news, and placing it on record in some fashion or other. he stands horror-struck at the imperfect and unprepared manner in which he has done this; and then comes the desire to do it well, and with the desire thus to help others comes the power. for it is a pure desire, this which comes upon him; he can gain no credit, no glory, no personal reward by fulfilling it. and therefore he obtains the power to fulfil it. the history of the whole past, so far as we can trace it, shows very plainly that there is neither credit, glory, nor reward to be gained by this first task which is given to the neophyte. mystics have always been sneered at, and seers disbelieved; those who have had the added power of intellect have left for posterity their written record, which to most men appears unmeaning and visionary, even when the authors have the advantage of speaking from a far-off past. the disciple who undertakes the task, secretly hoping for fame or success, to appear as a teacher and apostle before the world, fails even before his task is attempted, and his hidden hypocrisy poisons his own soul, and the souls of those he touches. he is secretly worshiping himself, and this idolatrous practice must bring its own reward. the disciple who has the power of entrance, and is strong enough to pass each barrier, will, when the divine message comes to his spirit, forget himself utterly in the new consciousness which falls on him. if this lofty contact can really rouse him, he becomes as one of the divine in his desire to give rather than to take, in his wish to help rather than be helped, in his resolution to feed the hungry rather than take manna from heaven himself. his nature is transformed, and the selfishness which prompts men's actions in ordinary life suddenly deserts him. iv "before the voice can speak in the presence of the masters, it must have lost the power to wound." those who give merely passing and superficial attention to the subject of occultism--and their name is legion--constantly inquire why, if adepts in life exist, they do not appear in the world and show their power. that the chief body of these wise ones should be understood to dwell beyond the fastnesses of the himalayas, appears to be a sufficient proof that they are only figures of straw. otherwise why place them so far off? unfortunately, nature has done this and not personal choice or arrangement. there are certain spots on the earth where the advance of "civilization" is unfelt, and the nineteenth century fever is kept at bay. in these favored places there is always time, always opportunity, for the realities of life; they are not crowded out by the doings of an inchoate, money-loving, pleasure seeking society. while there are adepts upon the earth, the earth must preserve to them places of seclusion. this is a fact in nature which is only an external expression of a profound fact in super-nature. the demand of the neophyte remains unheard until the voice in which it is uttered has lost the power to wound. this is because the divine-astral life[a] is a place in which order reigns, just as it does in natural life. there is, of course, always the center and the circumference as there is in nature. close to the central heart of life, on any plane, there is knowledge, there order reigns completely; and chaos makes dim and confused the outer margin of the circle. in fact, life in every form bears a more or less strong resemblance to a philosophic school. there are always the devotees to knowledge who forget their own lives in their pursuit of it; there are always the flippant crowd who come and go--of such, epictetus said that it was [as] easy to teach them philosophy as to eat custard with a fork. the same state exists in the super-astral life; and the adept has an even deeper and more profound seclusion there in which to dwell. this place of retreat is so safe, so sheltered, that no sound which has discord in it can reach his ears. why should this be, will be asked at once, if he is a being of such great powers as those say who believe in his existence? the answer seems very apparent. he serves humanity and identifies himself with the whole world; he is ready to make vicarious sacrifice for it at any moment--_by living not by dying for it_. why should he not die for it? because he is part of the great whole, and one of the most valuable parts of it. because he lives under laws of order which he does not desire to break. his life is not his own, but that of the forces which work behind him. he is the flower of humanity, the bloom which contains the divine seed. he is, in his own person, a treasure of the universal nature, which is guarded and made safe in order that the fruition shall be perfected. it is only at definite periods of the world's history that he is allowed to go among the herd of men as their redeemer. but for those who have the power to separate themselves from this herd he is always at hand. and for those who are strong enough to conquer the vices of the personal human nature, as set forth in these four rules, he is consciously at hand, easily recognised, ready to answer. [footnote a: of course every occultist knows by reading eliphas lévi and other authors that the "astral" plane is a plane of unequalized forces, and that a state of confusion necessarily prevails. but this does not apply to the "divine astral" plane, which is a plane where wisdom, and therefore order, prevails.] but this conquering of self implies a destruction of qualities which most men regard as not only indestructible but desirable. the "power to wound" includes much that men value, not only in themselves, but in others. the instinct of self-defense and of self-preservation is part of it; the idea that one has any right or rights, either as a citizen, or man, or individual, the pleasant consciousness of self-respect and of virtue. these are hard sayings to many; yet they are true. for these words that i am writing now, and those which i have written on this subject, are not in any sense my own. they are drawn from the traditions of the lodge of the great brotherhood, which was once the secret splendor of egypt. the rules written in its ante-chamber were the same as those now written in the ante-chamber of existing schools. through all time the wise men have lived apart from the mass. and even when some temporary purpose or object induces one of them to come into the midst of human life, his seclusion and safety is preserved as completely as ever. it is part of his inheritance, part of his position, he has an actual title to it, and can no more put it aside than the duke of westminster can say he does not choose to be the duke of westminster. in the various great cities of the world an adept lives for a while from time to time, or perhaps only passes through; but all are occasionally aided by the actual power and presence of one of these men. here in london, as in paris and st. petersburgh, there are men high in development. but they are only known as mystics by those who have the power to recognise; the power given by the conquering of self. otherwise how could they exist, even for an hour, in such a mental and psychic atmosphere as is created by the confusion and disorder of a city? unless protected and made safe their own growth would be interfered with, their work injured. and the neophyte may meet an adept in the flesh, may live in the same house with him, and yet be unable to recognise him, and unable to make his own voice heard by him. for no nearness in space, no closeness of relations, no daily intimacy, can do away with the inexorable laws which give the adept his seclusion. no voice penetrates to his inner hearing till it has become a divine voice, a voice which gives no utterance to the cries of self. any lesser appeal would be as useless, as much a waste of energy and power, as for mere children who are learning their alphabet to be taught it by a professor of philology. until a man has become, in heart and spirit, a disciple, he has no existence for those who are teachers of disciples. and he becomes this by one method only--the surrender of his personal humanity. for the voice to have lost the power to wound, a man must have reached that point where he sees himself only as one of the vast multitudes that live; one of the sands washed hither and thither by the sea of vibratory existence. it is said that every grain of sand in the ocean bed does, in its turn, get washed up on to the shore and lie for a moment in the sunshine. so with human beings, they are driven hither and thither by a great force, and each, in his turn, finds the sunrays on him. when a man is able to regard his own life as part of a whole like this he will no longer struggle in order to obtain anything for himself. this is the surrender of personal rights. the ordinary man expects, not to take equal fortunes with the rest of the world, but in some points, about which he cares, to fare better than the others. the disciple does not expect this. therefore, though he be, like epictetus, a chained slave, he has no word to say about it. he knows that the wheel of life turns ceaselessly. burne jones has shown it in his marvellous picture--the wheel turns, and on it are bound the rich and the poor, the great and the small--each has his moment of good fortune when the wheel brings him uppermost--the king rises and falls, the poet is _fêted_ and forgotten, the slave is happy and afterwards discarded. each in his turn is crushed as the wheel turns on. the disciple knows that this is so, and though it is his duty to make the utmost of the life that is his, he neither complains of it nor is elated by it, nor does he complain against the better fortune of others. all alike, as he well knows, are but learning a lesson; and he smiles at the socialist and the reformer who endeavor by sheer force to re-arrange circumstances which arise out of the forces of human nature itself. this is but kicking against the pricks; a waste of life and energy. in realizing this a man surrenders his imagined individual rights, of whatever sort. that takes away one keen sting which is common to all ordinary men. when the disciple has fully recognised that the very thought of individual rights is only the outcome of the venomous quality in himself, that it is the hiss of the snake of self which poisons with its sting his own life and the lives of those about him, then he is ready to take part in a yearly ceremony which is open to all neophytes who are prepared for it. all weapons of defense and offense are given up; all weapons of mind and heart, and brain, and spirit. never again can another man be regarded as a person who can be criticized or condemned; never again can the neophyte raise his voice in self-defense or excuse. from that ceremony he returns into the world as helpless, as unprotected, as a new-born child. that, indeed, is what he is. he has begun to be born again on to the higher plane of life, that breezy and well-lit plateau from whence the eyes see intelligently and regard the world with a new insight. i have said, a little way back, that after parting with the sense of individual rights, the disciple must part also with the sense of self-respect and of virtue. this may sound a terrible doctrine, yet all occultists know well that it is not a doctrine, but a fact. he who thinks himself holier than another, he who has any pride in his own exemption from vice or folly, he who believes himself wise, or in any way superior to his fellow men, is incapable of discipleship. a man must become as a little child before he can enter into the kingdom of heaven. virtue and wisdom are sublime things; but if they create pride and a consciousness of separateness from the rest of humanity in the mind of a man, then they are only the snakes of self re-appearing in a finer form. at any moment he may put on his grosser shape and sting as fiercely as when he inspired the actions of a murderer who kills for gain or hatred, or a politician who sacrifices the mass for his own or his party's interests. in fact, to have lost the power to wound, implies that the snake is not only scotched, but killed. when it is merely stupefied or lulled to sleep it awakes again and the disciple uses his knowledge and his power for his own ends, and is a pupil of the many masters of the black art, for the road to destruction is very broad and easy, and the way can be found blindfold. that it is the way to destruction is evident, for when a man begins to live for self he narrows his horizon steadily till at last the fierce driving inwards leaves him but the space of [a] pin's-head to dwell in. we have all seen this phenomenon occur in ordinary life. a man who becomes selfish isolates himself, grows less interesting and less agreeable to others. the sight is an awful one, and people shrink from a very selfish person at last, as from a beast of prey. how much more awful is it when it occurs on the more advanced plane of life, with the added powers of knowledge, and through the greater sweep of successive incarnations! therefore i say, pause and think well upon the threshold. for if the demand of the neophyte is made without the complete purification, it will not penetrate the seclusion of the divine adept, but will evoke the terrible forces which attend upon the black side of our human nature. v "before the soul can stand in the presence of the masters, its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart." the word soul, as used here, means the divine soul, or "starry spirit." "to be able to stand is to have confidence"; and to have confidence means that the disciple is sure of himself, that he has surrendered his emotions, his very self, even his humanity; that he is incapable of fear and unconscious of pain; that his whole consciousness is centered in the divine life, which is expressed symbolically by the term "the masters"; that he has neither eyes, nor ears, nor speech, nor power, save in and for the divine ray on which his highest sense has touched. then he is fearless, free from suffering, free from anxiety or dismay; his soul stands without shrinking or desire of postponement, in the full blaze of the divine light which penetrates through and through his being. then he has come into his inheritance and can claim his kinship with the teachers of men; he is upright, he has raised his head, he breathes the same air that they do. but before it is in any way possible for him to do this, the feet of the soul must be washed in the blood of the heart. the sacrifice, or surrender of the heart of man, and its emotions, is the first of the rules; it involves the "attaining of an equilibrium which cannot be shaken by personal emotion." this is done by the stoic philosopher; he, too, stands aside and looks equably upon his own sufferings, as well as on those of others. in the same way that "tears" in the language of occultists expresses the soul of emotion, not its material appearance, so blood expresses, not that blood which is an essential of physical life, but the vital creative principle in man's nature, which drives him into human life in order to experience pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow. when he has let the blood flow from the heart he stands before the masters as a pure spirit which no longer to incarnate for the sake of emotion and experience. through great cycles of time successive incarnations in gross matter may yet be his lot; but he no longer desires them, the crude wish to live has departed from him. when he takes upon him man's form in the flesh he does it in the pursuit of a divine object, to accomplish the work of "the masters," and for no other end. he looks neither for pleasure nor pain, asks for no heaven, and fears no hell; yet he has entered upon a great inheritance which is not so much a compensation for these things surrendered, as a state which simply blots out the memory of them. he lives now not in the world, but with it: his horizon has extended itself to the width of the whole universe. karma consider with me that the individual existence is a rope which stretches from the infinite to the infinite and has no end and no commencement, neither is it capable of being broken. this rope is formed of innumerable fine threads, which, lying closely together, form its thickness. these threads are colorless, are perfect in their qualities of straightness, strength, and levelness. this rope, passing as it does through all places, suffers strange accidents. very often a thread is caught and becomes attached, or perhaps is only violently pulled away from its even way. then for a great time it is disordered, and it disorders the whole. sometimes one is stained with dirt or with color, and not only does the stain run on further than the spot of contact, but it discolors other of the threads. and remember that the threads are living--are like electric wires, more, are like quivering nerves. how far, then, must the stain, the drag awry, be communicated! but eventually the long strands, the living threads which in their unbroken continuity form the individual, pass out of the shadow into the shine. then the threads are no longer colorless, but golden; once more they lie together, level. once more harmony is established between them; and from that harmony within the greater harmony is perceived. this illustration presents but a small portion--a single side of the truth: it is less than a fragment. yet, dwell on it; by its aid you may be led to perceive more. what it is necessary first to understand is, not that the future is arbitrarily formed by any separate acts of the present, but that the whole of the future is in unbroken continuity with the present as the present is with the past. on one plane, from one point of view, the illustration of the rope is correct. it is said that a little attention to occultism produces great karmic results. that is because it is impossible to give any attention to occultism without making a definite choice between what are familiarly called good and evil. the first step in occultism brings the student to the tree of knowledge. he must pluck and eat; he must choose. no longer is he capable of the indecision of ignorance. he. goes, on, either on the good or on the evil path. and to step definitely and knowingly even but one step on either path produces great karmic results. the mass of men walk waveringly, uncertain as to the goal they aim at; their standard of life is indefinite; consequently their karma operates in a confused manner. but when once the threshold of knowledge is reached, the confusion begins to lessen, and consequently the karmic results increase enormously, because all are acting in the same direction on all the different planes: for the occultist cannot be half-hearted, nor can he return when he has passed the threshold. these things are as impossible as that the man should become the child again. the individuality has approached the state of responsibility by reason of growth; it cannot recede from it. he who would escape from the bondage of karma must raise his individuality out of the shadow into the shine; must so elevate his existence that these threads do not come in contact with soiling substances, do not become so attached as to be pulled awry. he simply lifts himself out of the region in which karma operates. he does not leave the existence which he is experiencing because of that. the ground may be rough and dirty, or full of rich flowers whose pollen stains, and of sweet substances that cling and become attachments--but overhead there is always the free sky. he who desires to be karmaless must look to the air for a home; and after that to the ether. he who desires to form good karma will meet with many confusions, and in the effort to sow rich seed for his own harvesting may plant a thousand weeds, and among them the giant. desire to sow no seed for your own harvesting; desire only to sow that seed the fruit of which shall feed the world. you are part of the world; in giving it food you feed yourself. yet in even this thought there lurks a great danger which starts forward and faces the disciple, who has for long thought himself working for good, while in his inmost soul he has perceived only evil; that is, he has thought himself to be intending great benefit to the world while all the time he has unconsciously embraced the thought of karma, and the great benefit he works for is for himself. a man may refuse to allow himself to think of reward. but in that very refusal is seen the fact that reward is desired. and it is useless for the disciple to strive to learn by means of checking himself. the soul must be unfettered, the desires free. but until they are fixed only on that state wherein there is neither reward nor punishment, good nor evil, it is in vain that he endeavors. he may seem to make great progress, but some day he will come face to face with his own soul, and will recognise that when he came to the tree of knowledge he chose the bitter fruit and not the sweet; and then the veil will fall utterly, and he will give up his freedom and become a slave of desire. therefore be warned, you who are but turning toward the life of occultism. learn now that there is no cure for desire, no cure for the love of reward, no cure for misery of longing, save in the fixing of the sight and hearing upon that which is invisible and soundless. begin even now to practise it, and so a thousand serpents will be kept from your path. live in the eternal. the operations of the actual laws of karma are not to be studied until the disciple has reached the point at which they no longer affect himself. the initiate has a right to demand the secrets of nature and to know the rules which govern human life. he obtains this right by having escaped from the limits of nature and by having freed himself from the rules which govern human life. he has become a recognised portion of the divine element, and is no longer affected by that which is temporary. he then obtains a knowledge of the laws which govern temporary conditions. therefore you who desire to understand the laws of karma, attempt first to free yourself from these laws; and this can only be done by fixing your attention on that which is unaffected by those laws. *through the gates of gold* *through the gates of gold* *a fragment of thought* prologue every man has a philosophy of life of his own, except the true philosopher. the most ignorant boor has some conception of his object in living, and definite ideas as to the easiest and wisest way of attaining that object. the man of the world is often, unconsciously to himself, a philosopher of the first rank. he deals with his life on principles of the clearest character, and refuses to let his position be shattered by chance disaster. the man of thought and imagination has less certainty, and finds himself continually unable to formulate his ideas on that subject most profoundly interesting to human nature,--human life itself. the true philosopher is the one who would lay no claim to the name whatever, who has discovered that the mystery of life is unapproachable by ordinary thought, just as the true scientist confesses his complete ignorance of the principles which lie behind science. whether there is any mode of thought or any effort of the mind which will enable a man to grasp the great principles that evidently exist as causes in human life, is a question no ordinary thinker can determine. yet the dim consciousness that there is cause behind the effects we see, that there is order ruling the chaos and sublime harmony pervading the discords, haunts the eager souls of the earth, and makes them long for vision of the unseen and knowledge of the unknowable. why long and look for that which is beyond all hope until the inner eyes are opened? why not piece together the fragments that we have, at hand, and see whether from them some shape cannot be given to the vast puzzle? chapter i the search for pleasure i we are all acquainted with that stern thing called misery, which pursues man, and strangely enough, as it seems at first, pursues him with no vague or uncertain method, but with a positive and unbroken pertinacity. its presence is not absolutely continuous, else man must cease to live; but its pertinacity is without any break. there is always the shadowy form of despair standing behind man ready to touch him with its terrible finger if for too long he finds himself content. what has given this ghastly shape the right to haunt us from the hour we are born until the hour we die? what has given it the right to stand always at our door, keeping that door ajar with its impalpable yet plainly horrible hand, ready to enter at the moment it sees fit? the greatest philosopher that ever lived succumbs before it at last; and he only is a philosopher, in any sane sense, who recognises the fact that it is irresistible, and knows that like all other men he must suffer soon or late. it is part of the heritage of men, this pain and distress; and he who determines that nothing shall make him suffer, does but cloak himself in a profound and chilly selfishness. this cloak may protect him from pain, it will also separate him from pleasure. if peace is to be found on earth, or any joy in life, it cannot be by closing up the gates of feeling, which admit us to the loftiest and most vivid part of our existence. sensation, as we obtain it through the physical body, affords us all that induces us to live in that shape. it is inconceivable that any man would care to take the trouble of breathing, unless the act brought with it a sense of satisfaction. so it is with every deed of every instant of our life. we live because it is pleasant even to have the sensation of pain. it is sensation we desire, else we would with one accord taste of the deep waters of oblivion, and the human race would become extinct. if this is the case in the physical life, it is evidently the case with the life of the emotions,--the imagination, the sensibilities, all those fine and delicate formations which, with the marvellous recording mechanism of the brain, make up the inner or subtile man. sensation is that which makes their pleasure; an infinite series of sensations is life to them. destroy the sensation which makes them wish to persevere in the experiment of living, and there is nothing left. therefore the man who attempts to obliterate the sense of pain, and who proposes to maintain an equal state whether he is pleased or hurt, strikes at the very root of life, and destroys the object of his own existence. and that must apply, so far as our present reasoning or intuitive powers can show us, to every state, even to that of the oriental's longed-for nirvana. this condition can only be one of infinitely subtiler and more exquisite sensation, if it is a state at all, and not annihilation; and according to the experience of life from which we are at present able to judge, increased subtility of sensation means increased vividness,--as, for instance, a man of sensibility and imagination feels more in consequence of the unfaithfulness or faithfulness of a friend than can a man of even the grossest physical nature feel through the medium of the senses. thus it is clear that the philosopher who refuses to feel, leaves himself no place to retreat to, not even the distant and unattainable nirvanic goal. he can only deny himself his heritage of life, which is in other words the right of sensation. if he chooses to sacrifice that which makes him man, he must be content with mere idleness of consciousness,--a condition compared to which the oyster's is a life of excitement. but no man is able to accomplish such a feat. the fact of his continued existence proves plainly that he still desires sensation, and desires it in such positive and active form that the desire must be gratified in physical life. it would seem more practical not to deceive one's self by the sham of stoicism, not to attempt renunciation of that with which nothing would induce one to part. would it not be a bolder policy, a more promising mode of solving the great enigma of existence, to grasp it, to take hold firmly and to demand of it the mystery of itself? if men will but pause and consider what lessons they have learned from pleasure and pain, much might be guessed of that strange thing which causes these effects. but men are prone to turn away hastily from self-study, or from any close analysis of human nature. yet there must be a science of life as intelligible as any of the methods of the schools. the science is unknown, it is true, and its existence is merely guessed, merely hinted at, by one or two of our more advanced thinkers. the development of a science is only the discovery of what is already in existence; and chemistry is as magical and incredible now to the ploughboy as the science of life is to the man of ordinary perceptions. yet there may be, and there must be, a seer who perceives the growth of the new knowledge as the earliest dabblers in the experiments of the laboratory saw the system of knowledge now attained evolving itself out of nature for man's use and benefit. ii doubtless many more would experiment in suicide, as many now do, in order to escape from the burden of life, if they could be convinced that in that manner oblivion might be found. but he who hesitates before drinking the poison from the fear of only inviting change of mode of existence, and perhaps a more active form of misery, is a man of more knowledge than the rash souls who fling themselves wildly on the unknown, trusting to its kindliness. the waters of oblivion are something very different from the waters of death, and the human race cannot become extinct by means of death while the law of birth still operates. man returns to physical life as the drunkard returns to the flagon of wine,--he knows not why, except that he desires the sensation produced by life as the drunkard desires the sensation produced by wine. the true waters of oblivion lie far behind our consciousness, and can only be reached by ceasing to exist in that consciousness,--by ceasing to exert the will which makes us full of senses and sensibilities. why does not the creature man return into that great womb of silence whence he came, and remain in peace, as the unborn child is at peace before the impetus of life has reached it? he does not do so because he hungers for pleasure and pain, joy and grief, anger and love. the unfortunate man will maintain that he has no desire for life; and yet he proves his words false by living. none can compel him to live; the galley-slave may be chained to his oar, but his life cannot be chained to his body. the superb mechanism of the human body is as useless as an engine whose fires are not lit, if the will to live ceases,--that will which we maintain resolutely and without pause, and which enables us to perform the tasks which otherwise would fill us with dismay, as, for instance, the momently drawing in and giving out of the breath. such herculean efforts as this we carry on without complaint, and indeed with pleasure, in order that we may exist in the midst of innumerable sensations. and more; we are content, for the most part, to go on without object or aim, without any idea of a goal or understanding of which way we are going. when the man first becomes aware of this aimlessness, and is dimly conscious that he is working with great and constant efforts, and without any idea towards what end those efforts are directed, then descends on him the misery of nineteenth-century thought. he is lost and bewildered, and without hope. he becomes sceptical, disillusioned, weary, and asks the apparently unanswerable question whether it is indeed worth while to draw his breath for such unknown and seemingly unknowable results. but are these results unknowable? at least, to ask a lesser question, is it impossible to make a guess as to the direction in which our goal lies? iii this question, born of sadness and weariness, which seems to us essentially part of the spirit of the nineteenth century, is in fact a question which must have been asked all through the ages. could we go back throughout history intelligently, no doubt we should find that it came always with the hour when the flower of civilization had blown to its full, and when its petals were but slackly held together. the natural part of man has reached then its utmost height; he has rolled the stone up the hill of difficulty only to watch it roll back again when the summit is reached,--as in egypt, in rome, in greece. why this useless labor? is it not enough to produce a weariness and sickness unutterable, to be forever accomplishing a task only to see it undone again? yet that is what man has done throughout history, so far as our limited knowledge reaches. there is one summit to which, by immense and united efforts, he attains, where there is a great and brilliant efflorescence of all the intellectual, mental, and material part of his nature. the climax of sensuous perfection is reached, and then his hold weakens, his power grows less, and he falls back, through despondency and satiety, to barbarism. why does he not stay on this hill-top he has reached, and look away to the mountains beyond, and resolve to scale those greater heights? because he is ignorant, and seeing a great glittering in the distance, drops his eyes bewildered and dazzled, and goes back for rest to the shadowy side of his familiar hill. yet there is now and then one brave enough to gaze fixedly on this glittering, and to decipher something of the shape within it. poets and philosophers, thinkers and teachers,--all those who are the "elder brothers of the race,"--have beheld this sight from time to time, and some among them have recognised in the bewildering glitter the outlines of the gates of gold. those gates admit us to the sanctuary of man's own nature, to the place whence his life-power comes, and where he is priest of the shrine of life. that it is possible to enter here, to pass through those gates, some one or two have shown us. plato, shakespeare, and a few other strong ones have gone through and spoken to us in veiled language on the near side of the gates. when the strong man has crossed the threshold he speaks no more to those at the other side. and even the words he utters when he is outside are so full of mystery, so veiled and profound, that only those who follow in his steps can see the light within them. iv what men desire is to ascertain how to exchange pain for pleasure; that is, to find out in what way consciousness may be regulated in order that the sensation which is most agreeable is the one that is experienced. whether this can be discovered by dint of human thought is at least a question worth considering. if the mind of man is turned upon any given subject with a sufficient concentration, he obtains illumination with regard to it sooner or later. the particular individual in whom the final illumination appears is called a genius, an inventor, one inspired; but he is only the crown of a great mental work created by unknown men about him, and receding back from him through long vistas of distance. without them he would not have had his material to deal with. even the poet requires innumerable poetasters to feed upon. he is the essence of the poetic power of his time, and of the times before him. it is impossible to separate an individual of any species from his kin. if, therefore, instead of accepting the unknown as unknowable, men were _with one accord_ to turn their thoughts towards it, those golden gates would not remain so inexorably shut. it does but need a strong hand to push them open. the courage to enter them is the courage to search the recesses of one's own nature without fear and without shame. in the fine part, the essence, the flavor of the man, is found the key which unlocks those great gates. and when they open, what is it that is found? voices here and there in the long silence of the ages speak to answer that question. those who have passed through have left words behind them as legacies to others of their kin. in these words we can find definite indications of what is to be looked for beyond the gates. but only those who desire to go that way read the meaning hidden within the words. scholars, or rather scholiasts, read the sacred books of different nations, the poetry and the philosophy left by enlightened minds, and find in it all the merest materiality. imagination glorifying legends of nature, or exaggerating the psychic possibilities of man, explains to them all that they find in the bibles of humanity. what is to be found within the words of those books is to be found in each one of us; and it is impossible to find in literature or through any channel of thought that which does not exist in the man who studies. this is of course an evident fact known to all real students. but it has to be especially remembered in reference to this profound and obscure subject, as men so readily believe that nothing can exist for others where they themselves find emptiness. one thing is soon perceived by the man who reads: those who have gone before have not found that the gates of gold lead to oblivion. on the contrary, sensation becomes real for the first time when that threshold is crossed. but it is of a new order, an order unknown to us now, and by us impossible to appreciate without at least some clew as to its character. this clew can be obtained undoubtedly by any student who cares to go through all the literature accessible to us. that mystic books and manuscripts exist, but remain inaccessible simply because there is no man ready to read the first page of any one of them, becomes the conviction of all who have studied the subject sufficiently. for there must be the continuous line all through: we see it go from dense ignorance up to intelligence and wisdom; it is only natural that it should go on to intuitive knowledge and to inspiration. some scant fragments we have of these great gifts of man; where, then, is the whole of which they must be a part? hidden behind the thin yet seemingly impassable veil which hides it from us as it hid all science, all art, all powers of man till he had the courage to tear away the screen. that courage comes only of conviction. when once man believes that the thing exists which he desires, he will obtain it at any cost. the difficulty in this case lies in man's incredulity. it requires a great tide of thought and attention to set in towards the unknown region of man's nature in order that its gates may be unlocked and its glorious vistas explored. that it is worth while to do this whatever the hazard may be, all must allow who have asked the sad question of the nineteenth century,--is life worth living? surely it is sufficient to spur man to new effort,--the suspicion that beyond civilization, beyond mental culture, beyond art and mechanical perfection, there is a new, another gateway, admitting to the realities of life. v when it seems as if the end was reached, the goal attained, and that man has no more to do,--just then, when he appears to have no choice but between eating and drinking and living in his comfort as the beasts do in theirs, and scepticism which is death,--then it is that in fact, if he will but look, the golden gates are before him. with the culture of the age within him and assimilated perfectly, so that he is himself an incarnation of it, then he is fit to attempt the great step which is absolutely possible, yet is attempted by so few even of those who are fitted for it. it is so seldom attempted, partly because of the profound difficulties which surround it, but much more because man does not realize that this is actually the direction in which pleasure and satisfaction are to be obtained. there are certain pleasures which appeal to each individual; every man knows that in one layer or another of sensation he finds his chief delight. naturally he turns to this systematically through life, just as the sunflower turns to the sun and the water-lily leans on the water. but he struggles throughout with an awful fact which oppresses him to the soul,--that no sooner has he obtained his pleasure than he loses it again and has once more to go in search of it. more than that; he never actually reaches it, for it eludes him at the final moment. this is because he endeavors to seize that which is untouchable and satisfy his soul's hunger for sensation by contact with external objects. how can that which is external satisfy or even please the inner man,--the thing which reigns within and has no eyes for matter, no hands for touch of objects, no senses with which to apprehend that which is outside its magic walls? those charmed barriers which surround it are limitless, for it is everywhere; it is to be discovered in all living things, and no part of the universe can be conceived of without it, if that universe is regarded as a coherent whole. and unless that point is granted at the outset it is useless to consider the subject of life at all. life is indeed meaningless unless it is universal and coherent, and unless we maintain our existence by reason of the fact that we are part of that which is, not by reason of our own being. this is one of the most important factors in the development of man, the recognition--profound and complete recognition--of the law of universal unity and coherence. the separation which exists between individuals, between worlds, between the different poles of the universe and of life, the mental and physical fantasy called space, is a nightmare of the human imagination. that nightmares exist, and exist only to torment, every child knows; and what we need is the power of discrimination between the phantasmagoria of the brain, which concern ourselves only, and the phantasmagoria of daily life, in which others also are concerned. this rule applies also to the larger case. it concerns no one but ourselves that we live in a nightmare of unreal horror, and fancy ourselves alone in the universe and capable of independent action, so long as our associates are those only who are a part of the dream; but when we desire to speak with those who have tried the golden gates and pushed them open, then it is very necessary--in fact it is essential--to discriminate, and not bring into our life the confusions of our sleep. if we do, we are reckoned as madmen, and fall back into the darkness where there is no friend but chaos. this chaos has followed every effort of man that is written in history; after civilization has flowered, the flower falls and dies, and winter and darkness destroy it. while man refuses to make the effort of discrimination which would enable him to distinguish between the shapes of night and the active figures of day, this must inevitably happen. but if man has the courage to resist this reactionary tendency, to stand steadily on the height he has reached and put out his foot in search of yet another step, why should he not find it? there is nothing to make one suppose the pathway to end at a certain point, except that tradition which has declared it is so, and which men have accepted and hug to themselves as a justification for their indolence. vi indolence is, in fact, the curse of man. as the irish peasant and the cosmopolitan gypsy dwell in dirt and poverty out of sheer idleness, so does the man of the world live contented in sensuous pleasures for the same reason. the drinking of fine wines, the tasting of delicate food, the love of bright sights and sounds, of beautiful women and admirable surroundings,--these are no better for the cultivated man, no more satisfactory as a final goal of enjoyment for him, than the coarse amusements and gratifications of the boor are for the man without cultivation. there can be no final point, for life in every form is one vast series of fine gradations; and the man who elects to stand still at the point of culture he has reached, and to avow that he can go no further, is simply making an arbitrary statement for the excuse of his indolence. of course there is a possibility of declaring that the gypsy is content in his dirt and poverty, and, because he is so, is as great a man as the most highly cultured. but he only is so while he is ignorant; the moment light enters the dim mind the whole man turns towards it. so it is on the higher platform; only the difficulty of penetrating the mind, of admitting the light, is even greater. the irish peasant loves his whiskey, and while he can have it cares nothing for the great laws of morality and religion which are supposed to govern humanity and induce men to live temperately. the cultivated gourmand cares only for subtle tastes and perfect flavors; but he is as blind as the merest peasant to the fact that there is anything beyond such gratifications. like the boor he is deluded by a mirage that oppresses his soul; and he fancies, having once obtained a sensuous joy that pleases him, to give himself the utmost satisfaction by endless repetition, till at last he reaches madness. the bouquet of the wine he loves enters his soul and poisons it, leaving him with no thoughts but those of sensuous desire; and he is in the same hopeless state as the man who dies mad with drink. what good has the drunkard obtained by his madness? none; pain has at last swallowed up pleasure utterly, and death steps in to terminate the agony. the man suffers the final penalty for his persistent ignorance of a law of nature as inexorable as that of gravitation,--a law which forbids a man to stand still. not twice can the same cup of pleasure be tasted; the second time it must contain either a grain of poison or a drop of the elixir of life. the same argument holds good with regard to intellectual pleasures; the same law operates. we see men who are the flower of their age in intellect, who pass beyond their fellows and tower over them, entering at last upon a fatal treadmill of thought, where they yield to the innate indolence of the soul and begin to delude themselves by the solace of repetition. then comes the barrenness and lack of vitality,--that unhappy and disappointing state into which great men too often enter when middle life is just passed. the fire of youth, the vigor of the young intellect, conquers the inner inertia and makes the man scale heights of thought and fill his mental lungs with the free air of the mountains. but then at last the physical reaction sets in; the physical machinery of the brain loses its powerful impetus and begins to relax its efforts, simply because the youth of the body is at an end. now the man is assailed by the great tempter of the race who stands forever on the ladder of life waiting for those who climb so far. he drops the poisoned drop into the ear, and from that moment all consciousness takes on a dulness, and the man becomes terrified lest life is losing its possibilities for him. he rushes back on to a familiar platform of experience, and there finds comfort in touching a well-known chord of passion or emotion. and too many having done this linger on, afraid to attempt the unknown, and satisfied to touch continually that chord which responds most readily. by this means they get the assurance that life is still burning within them. but at last their fate is the same as that of the gourmand and the drunkard. the power of the spell lessens daily as the machinery which feels loses its vitality; and the man endeavors to revive the old excitement and fervor by striking the note more violently, by hugging the thing that makes him feel, by drinking the cup of poison to its fatal dregs. and then he is lost; madness falls on his soul, as it falls on the body of the drunkard. life has no longer any meaning for him, and he rushes wildly into the abysses of intellectual insanity. a lesser man who commits this great folly wearies the spirits of others by a dull clinging to familiar thought, by a persistent hugging of the treadmill which he asserts to be the final goal. the cloud that surrounds him is as fatal as death itself, and men who once sat at his feet turn away grieved, and have to look back at his early words in order to remember his greatness. vii what is the cure for this misery and waste of effort? is there one? surely life itself has a logic in it and a law which makes existence possible; otherwise chaos and madness would be the only state which would be attainable. when a man drinks his first cup of pleasure his soul is filled with the unutterable joy that comes with a first, a fresh sensation. the drop of poison that he puts into the second cup, and which, if he persists in that folly, has to become doubled and trebled till at last the whole cup is poison,--that is the ignorant desire for repetition and intensification; this evidently means death, according to all analogy. the child becomes the man; he cannot retain his childhood and repeat and intensify the pleasures of childhood except by paying the inevitable price and becoming an idiot. the plant strikes its roots into the ground and throws up green leaves; then it blossoms and bears fruit. that plant which will only make roots or leaves, pausing persistently in its development, is regarded by the gardener as a thing which is useless and must be cast out. the man who chooses the way of effort, and refuses to allow the sleep of indolence to dull his soul, finds in his pleasures a new and finer joy each time he tastes them,--a something subtile and remote which removes them more and more from the state in which mere sensuousness is all; this subtile essence is that elixir of life which makes man immortal. he who tastes it and who will not drink unless it is in the cup finds life enlarge and the world grow great before his eager eyes. he recognises the soul within the woman he loves, and passion becomes peace; he sees within his thought the finer qualities of spiritual truth, which is beyond the action of our mental machinery, and then instead of entering on the treadmill of intellectualisms he rests on the broad back of the eagle of intuition and soars into the fine air where the great poets found their insight; he sees within his own power of sensation, of pleasure in fresh air and sunshine, in food and wine, in motion and rest, the possibilities of the subtile man, the thing which dies not either with the body or the brain. the pleasures of art, of music, of light and loveliness,--within these forms, which men repeat till they find only the forms, he sees the glory of the gates of gold, and passes through to find the new life beyond which intoxicates and strengthens, as the keen mountain air intoxicates and strengthens, by its very vigor. but if he has been pouring, drop by drop, more and more of the elixir of life into his cup, he is strong enough to breathe this intense air and to live upon it. then if he die or if he live in physical form, alike he goes on and finds new and finer joys, more perfect and satisfying experiences, with every breath he draws in and gives out. chapter ii the mystery of threshold i there is no doubt that at the entrance on a new phase of life something has to be given up. the child, when it has become the man, puts away childish things. saint paul showed in these words, and in many others which he has left us, that he had tasted of the elixir of life, that he was on his way towards the gates of gold. with each drop of the divine draught which is put into the cup of pleasure something is purged away from that cup to make room for the magic drop. for nature deals with her children generously: man's cup is always full to the brim; and if he chooses to taste of the fine and life-giving essence, he must cast away something of the grosser and less sensitive part of himself. this has to be done daily, hourly, momently, in order that the draught of life may steadily increase. and to do this unflinchingly, a man must be his own schoolmaster, must recognise that he is always in need of wisdom, must be ready to practise any austerities, to use the birch-rod unhesitatingly against himself, in order to gain his end. it becomes evident to any one who regards the subject seriously, that only a man who has the potentialities in him both of the voluptuary and the stoic has any chance of entering the golden gates. he must be capable of testing and valuing to its most delicate fraction every joy existence has to give; and he must be capable of denying himself all pleasure, and that without suffering from the denial. when he has accomplished the development of this double possibility, then he is able to begin sifting his pleasures and taking away from his consciousness those which belong absolutely to the man of clay. when those are put back, there is the next range of more refined pleasures to be dealt with. the dealing with these which will enable a man to find the essence of life is not the method pursued by the stoic philosopher. the stoic does not allow that there is joy within pleasure, and by denying himself the one loses the other. but the true philosopher, who has studied life itself without being bound by any system of thought, sees that the kernel is within the shell, and that, instead of crunching up the whole nut like a gross and indifferent feeder, the essence of the thing is obtained by cracking the shell and casting it away. all emotion, all sensation, lends itself to this process, else it could not be a part of man's development, an essential of his nature. for that there is before him power, life, perfection, and that every portion of his passage thitherwards is crowded with the means of helping him to his goal, can only be denied by those who refuse to acknowledge life as apart from matter. their mental position is so absolutely arbitrary that it is useless to encounter or combat it. through all time the unseen has been pressing on the seen, the immaterial overpowering the material; through all time the signs and tokens of that which is beyond matter have been waiting for the men of matter to test and weigh them. those who will not do so have chosen the place of pause arbitrarily, and there is nothing to be done but let them remain there undisturbed, working that treadmill which they believe to be the utmost activity of existence. ii there is no doubt that a man must educate himself to perceive that which is beyond matter, just as he must educate himself to perceive that which is in matter. every one knows that the early life of a child is one long process of adjustment, of learning to understand the use of the senses with regard to their special provinces, and of practice in the exercise of difficult, complex, yet imperfect organs entirely in reference to the perception of the world of matter. the child is in earnest and works on without hesitation if he means to live. some infants born into the light of earth shrink from it, and refuse to attack the immense task which is before them, and which must be accomplished in order to make life in matter possible. these go back to the ranks of the unborn; we see them lay down their manifold instrument, the body, and fade into sleep. so it is with the great crowd of humanity when it has triumphed and conquered and enjoyed in the world of matter. the individuals in that crowd, which seems so powerful and confident in its familiar demesne, are infants in the presence of the immaterial universe. and we see them, on all sides, daily and hourly, refusing to enter it, sinking back into the ranks of the dwellers in physical life, clinging to the consciousnesses they have experienced and understand. the intellectual rejection of all purely spiritual knowledge is the most marked indication of this indolence, of which thinkers of every standing are certainly guilty. that the initial effort is a heavy one is evident, and it is clearly a question of strength, as well as of willing activity. but there is no way of acquiring this strength, or of using it when acquired, except by the exercise of the will. it is vain to expect to be born into great possessions. in the kingdom of life there is no heredity except from the man's own past. he has to accumulate that which is his. this is evident to any observer of life who uses his eyes without blinding them by prejudice; and even when prejudice is present, it is impossible for a man of sense not to perceive the fact. it is from this that we get the doctrine of punishment and salvation, either lasting through great ages after death, or eternal. this doctrine is a narrow and unintelligent mode of stating the fact in nature that what a man sows that shall he reap. swedenborg's great mind saw the fact so clearly that he hardened it into a finality in reference to this particular existence, his prejudices making it impossible for him to perceive the possibility of new action when there is no longer the sensuous world to act in. he was too dogmatic for scientific observation, and would not see that, as the spring follows the autumn, and the day the night, so birth must follow death. he went very near the threshold of the gates of gold, and passed beyond mere intellectualism, only to pause at a point but one step farther. the glimpse of the life beyond which he had obtained appeared to him to contain the universe; and on his fragment of experience he built up a theory to include all life, and refused progress beyond that state or any possibility outside it. this is only another form of the weary treadmill. but swedenborg stands foremost in the crowd of witnesses to the fact that the golden gates exist and can be seen from the heights of thought, and he has cast us a faint surge of sensation from their threshold. iii when once one has considered the meaning of those gates, it is evident that there is no other way out of this form of life except through them. they only can admit man to the place where he becomes the fruit of which manhood is the blossom. nature is the kindest of mothers to those who need her; she never wearies of her children or desires them to lessen in multitude. her friendly arms open wide to the vast throng who desire birth and to dwell in forms; and while they continue to desire it, she continues to smile a welcome. why, then, should she shut her doors on any? when one life in her heart has not worn out a hundredth part of the soul's longing for sensation such as it finds there, what reason can there be for its departure to any other place? surely the seeds of desire spring up where the sower has sown them. this seems but reasonable; and on this apparently self-evident fact the indian mind has based its theory of re-incarnation, of birth and re-birth in matter, which has become so familiar a part of eastern thought as no longer to need demonstration. the indian knows it as the western knows that the day he is living through is but one of many days which make up the span of a man's life. this certainty which is possessed by the eastern with regard to natural laws that control the great sweep of the soul's existence is simply acquired by habits of thought. the mind of many is fixed on subjects which in the west are considered unthinkable. thus it is that the east has produced the great flowers of the spiritual growth of humanity. on the mental steps of a million men buddha passed through the gates of gold; and because a great crowd pressed about the threshold he was able to leave behind him words which prove that those gates will open. chapter iii the initial effort i it is very easily seen that there is no one point in a man's life or experience where he is nearer the soul of things than at any other. that soul, the sublime essence, which fills the air with a burnished glow, is there, behind the gates it colors with itself. but that there is no one pathway to it is immediately perceived from the fact that this soul must from its very nature be universal. the gates of gold do not admit to any special place; what they do is to open for egress from a special place. man passes through them when he casts off his limitation. he may burst the shell that holds him in darkness, tear the veil that hides him from the eternal, at any point where it is easiest for him to do so, and most often this point will be where he least expects to find it. men go in search of escape with the help of their minds, and lay down arbitrary and limited laws as to how to attain the, to them, unattainable. many, indeed, have hoped to pass through by the way of religion, and instead they have formed a place of thought and feeling so marked and fixed that it seems as though long ages would be insufficient to enable them to get out of the rut! some have believed that by the aid of pure intellect a way was to be found; and to such men we owe the philosophy and metaphysics which have prevented the race from sinking into utter sensuousness. but the end of the man who endeavors to live by thought alone is that he dwells in fantasies, and insists on giving them to other men as substantial food. great is our debt to the meta-physicians and transcendentalists; but he who follows them to the bitter end, forgetting that the brain is only one organ of use, will find himself dwelling in a place where a dull wheel of argument seems to turn forever on its axis, yet goes nowhither and carries no burden. virtue (or what seems to each man to be virtue, his own special standard of morality and purity) is held by those who practise it to be a way to heaven. perhaps it is, to the heaven of the modern sybarite, the ethical voluptuary. it is as easy to become a gourmand in pure living and high thinking as in the pleasures of taste or sight or sound. gratification is the aim of the virtuous man as well as of the drunkard; even if his life be a miracle of abstinence and self-sacrifice, a moment's thought shows that in pursuing this apparently heroic path he does but pursue pleasure. with him pleasure takes on a lovely form because his gratifications are those of a sweet savor, and it pleases him to give gladness to others rather than to enjoy himself at their expense. but the pure life and high thoughts are no more finalities in themselves than any other mode of enjoyment; and the man who endeavors to find contentment in them must intensify his effort and continually repeat it,--all in vain. he is a green plant indeed, and the leaves are beautiful; but more is wanted than leaves. if he persists in his endeavor blindly, believing that he has reached his goal when he has not even perceived it, then he finds himself in that dreary place where good is done perforce, and the deed of virtue is without the love that should shine through it. it is well for a man to lead a pure life, as it is well for him to have clean hands,--else he becomes repugnant. but virtue as we understand it now can no more have any special relation to the state beyond that to which we are limited than any other part of our constitution. spirit is not a gas created by matter, and we cannot create our future by forcibly using one material agent and leaving out the rest. spirit is the great life on which matter rests, as does the rocky world on the free and fluid ether; whenever we can break our limitations we find ourselves on that marvellous shore where wordsworth once saw the gleam of the gold. when we enter there all the present must disappear alike,--virtue and vice, thought and sense. that a man reaps what he has sown must of course be true also; he has no power to carry virtue, which is of the material life, with him; yet the aroma of his good deeds is a far sweeter sacrifice than the odor of crime and cruelty. yet it may be, however, that by the practice of virtue he will fetter himself into one groove, one changeless fashion of life in matter, so firmly that it is impossible for the mind to conceive that death is a sufficient power to free him, and cast him upon the broad and glorious ocean,--a sufficient power to undo for him the inexorable and heavy latch of the golden gate. and sometimes the man who has sinned so deeply that his whole nature is scarred and blackened by the fierce fire of selfish gratification is at last so utterly burned out and charred that from the very vigor of the passion light leaps forth. it would seem more possible for such a man at least to reach the threshold of the gates than for the mere ascetic or philosopher. but it is little use to reach the threshold of the gates without the power to pass through. and that is all that the sinner can hope to do by the dissolution of himself which comes from seeing his own soul. at least this appears to be so, inevitably because his condition is negative. the man who lifts the latch of the golden gate must do so with his own strong hand, must be absolutely positive. this we can see by analogy. in everything else in life, in every new step or development, it is necessary for a man to exercise his most dominant will in order to obtain it fully. indeed in many cases, though he has every advantage and though he use his will to some extent, he will fail utterly of obtaining what he desires from lack of the final and unconquerable resolution. no education in the world will make a man an intellectual glory to his age, even if his powers are great; for unless he positively desires to seize the flower of perfection, he will be but a dry scholar, a dealer in words, a proficient in mechanical thought, and a mere wheel of memory. and the man who has this positive quality in him will rise in spite of adverse circumstances, will recognise and seize upon the tide of thought which is his natural food, and will stand as a giant at last in the place he willed to reach. we see this practically every day in all walks of life. wherefore it does not seem possible that the man who has simply succeeded through the passions in wrecking the dogmatic and narrow part of his nature should pass through those great gates. but as he is not blinded by prejudice, nor has fastened himself to any treadmill of thought, nor caught the wheel of his soul in any deep rut of life, it would seem that if once the positive will might be born within him, he could at some time not hopelessly far distant lift his hand to the latch. undoubtedly it is the hardest task we have yet seen set us in life, that which we are now talking of,--to free a man of all prejudice, of all crystallized thought or feeling, of all limitations, yet develop within him the positive will. it seems too much of a miracle; for in ordinary life positive will is always associated with crystallized ideas. but many things which have appeared to be too much of a miracle for accomplishment have yet been done, even in the narrow experience of life given to our present humanity. all the past shows us that difficulty is no excuse for dejection, much less for despair; else the world would have been without the many wonders of civilization. let us consider the thing more seriously, therefore, having once used our minds to the idea that it is not impossible. the great initial difficulty is that of fastening the interest on that which is unseen. yet, this is done every day, and we have only to observe how it is done in order to guide our own conduct. every inventor fastens his interest firmly on the unseen; and it entirely depends on the firmness of that attachment whether he is successful or whether he fails. the poet who looks on to his moment of creation as that for which he lives, sees that which is invisible and hears that which is soundless. probably in this last analogy there is a clew as to the mode by which success in this voyage to the unknown bourn ("whence," indeed, "no traveller returns") is attained. it applies also to the inventor and to all who reach out beyond the ordinary mental and psychical level of humanity. the clew lies in that word "creation." ii the words "to create" are often understood by the ordinary mind to convey the idea of evolving something out of nothing. this is clearly not its meaning; we are mentally obliged to provide our creator with chaos from which to produce the worlds. the tiller of the soil, who is the typical producer of social life, must have his material, his earth, his sky, rain, and sun, and the seeds to place within the earth. out of nothing he can produce nothing. out of a void nature cannot arise; there is that material beyond, behind, or within, from which she is shaped by our desire for a universe. it is an evident fact that the seeds and the earth, air, and water which cause them to germinate exist on every plane of action. if you talk to an inventor, you will find that far ahead of what he is now doing he can always perceive some other thing to be done which he cannot express in words because as yet he has not drawn it into our present world of objects. that knowledge of the unseen is even more definite in the poet, and more inexpressible until he has touched it with some part of that consciousness which he shares with other men. but in strict proportion to his greatness he lives in the consciousness which the ordinary man does not even believe can exist,--the consciousness which dwells in the greater universe, which breathes in the vaster air, which beholds a wider earth and sky, and snatches seeds from plants of giant growth. it is this place of consciousness that we need to reach out to. that it is not reserved only for men of genius is shown by the fact that martyrs and heroes have found it and dwelt in it. it is not reserved for men of genius only, but it can only be found by men of great soul. in this fact there is no need for discouragement. greatness in man is popularly supposed to be a thing inborn. this belief must be a result of want of thought, of blindness to facts of nature. greatness can only be attained by growth; that is continually demonstrated to us. even the mountains, even the firm globe itself, these are great by dint of the mode of growth peculiar to that state of materiality,--accumulation of atoms. as the consciousness inherent in all existing forms passes into more advanced forms of life it becomes more active, and in proportion it acquires the power of growth by assimilation instead of accumulation. looking at existence from this special point of view (which indeed is a difficult one to maintain for long, as we habitually look at life in planes and forget the great lines which connect and run through these), we immediately perceive it to be reasonable to suppose that as we advance beyond our present standpoint the power of growth by assimilation will become greater and probably change into a method yet more rapid, easy, and unconscious. the universe is, in fact, full of magnificent promise for us, if we will but lift our eyes and see. it is that lifting of the eyes which is the first need and the first difficulty; we are so apt readily to be content with what we see within touch of our hands. it is the essential characteristic of the man of genius that he is comparatively indifferent to that fruit which is just within touch, and hungers for that which is afar on the hills. in fact he does not need the sense of contact to arouse longing. he knows that this distant fruit, which he perceives without the aid of the physical senses, is a subtler and a stronger food than any which appeals to them. and how is he rewarded! when he tastes that fruit, how strong and sweet is its flavor, and what a new sense of life rushes upon him! for in recognising that flavor he has recognised the existence of the subtile senses, those which feed the life of the inner man; and it is by the strength of that inner man, and by his strength only, that the latch of the golden gates can be lifted. in fact it is only by the development and growth of the inner man that the existence of these gates, and of that to which they admit, can be even perceived. while man is content with his gross senses and cares nothing for his subtile ones, the gates remain literally invisible. as to the boor the gateway of the intellectual life is as a thing uncreate and non-existent, so to the man of the gross senses, even if his intellectual life is active, that which lies beyond is uncreate and non-existent, only because he does not open the book. to the servant who dusts the scholar's library the closed volumes are meaningless; they do not even appear to contain a promise unless he also is a scholar, not merely a servant. it is possible to gaze throughout eternity upon a shut exterior from sheer indolence,--mental indolence, which is incredulity, and which at last men learn to pride themselves on; they call it scepticism, and talk of the reign of reason. it is no more a state to justify pride than that of the eastern sybarite who will not even lift his food to his mouth; he is "reasonable" also in that he sees no value in activity, and therefore does not exercise it. so with the sceptic; decay follows the condition of inaction, whether it be mental, psychic, or physical. iii and now let us consider how the initial difficulty of fastening the interest on that which is unseen is to be overcome. our gross senses refer only to that which is objective in the ordinary sense of the word; but just beyond this field of life there are finer sensations which appeal to finer senses. here we find the first clew to the stepping-stones we need. man looks from this point of view like a point where many rays or lines centre; and if he has the courage or the interest to detach himself from the simplest form of life, the point, and explore but a little way along these lines or rays, his whole being at once inevitably widens and expands, the man begins to grow in greatness. but it is evident, if we accept this illustration as a fairly true one, that the chief point of importance is to explore no more persistently on one line than another: else the result must be a deformity. we all know how powerful is the majesty and personal dignity of a forest tree which has had air enough to breathe, and room for its widening roots, and inner vitality with which to accomplish its unceasing task. it obeys the perfect natural law of growth, and the peculiar awe it inspires arises from this fact. how is it possible to obtain recognition of the inner man, to observe its growth and foster it? let us try to follow a little way the clew we have obtained, though words will probably soon be useless. we must each travel alone and without aids, as the traveller has to climb alone when he nears the summit of the mountain. no beast of burden can help him there; neither can the gross senses or anything that touches the gross senses help him here. but for a little distance words may go with us. the tongue recognises the value of sweetness or piquancy in food. to the man whose senses are of the simplest order there is no other idea of sweetness than this. but a finer essence, a more highly placed sensation of the same order, is reached by another perception. the sweetness on the face of a lovely woman, or in the smile of a friend, is recognised by the man whose inner senses have even a little--a mere stirring of--vitality. to the one who has lifted the golden latch the spring of sweet waters, the fountain itself whence all softness arises, is opened and becomes part of his heritage. but before this fountain can be tasted, or any other spring reached, any source found, a heavy weight has to be lifted from the heart, an iron bar which holds it down and prevents it from arising in its strength. the man who recognises the flow of sweetness from its source through nature, through all forms of life, he has lifted this, he has raised himself into that state in which there is no bondage. he knows that he is a part of the great whole, and it is this knowledge which is his heritage. it is through the breaking asunder of the arbitrary bond which holds him to his personal centre that he comes of age and becomes ruler of his kingdom. as he widens out, reaching by manifold experience along those lines which centre at the point where he stands embodied, he discovers that he has touch with all life, that he contains within himself the whole. and then he has but to yield himself to the great force which we call good, to clasp it tightly with the grasp of his soul, and he is carried swiftly on to the great, wide waters of real living. what are those waters? in our present life we have but the shadow of the substance. no man loves without satiety, no man drinks wine without return of thirst. hunger and longing darken the sky and make the earth unfriendly. what we need is an earth that will bear living fruit, a sky that will be always full of light. needing this positively, we shall surely find it. chapter iv the meaning of pain i look into the deep heart of life, whence pain comes to darken men's lives. she is always on the threshold, and behind her stands despair. what are these two gaunt figures, and why are they permitted to be our constant followers? it is we who permit them, we who order them, as we permit and order the action of our bodies; and we do so as unconsciously. but by scientific experiment and investigation we have learned much about our physical life, and it would seem as if we can obtain at least as much result with regard to our inner life by adopting similar methods. pain arouses, softens, breaks, and destroys. regarded from a sufficiently removed standpoint, it appears as medicine, as a knife, as a weapon, as a poison, in turn. it is an implement, a thing which is used, evidently. what we desire to discover is, who is the user; what part of ourselves is it that demands the presence of this thing so hateful to the rest? medicine is used by the physician, the knife by the surgeon; but the weapon of destruction is used by the enemy, the hater. is it, then, that we do not only use means, or desire to use means, for the benefit of our souls, but that also we wage warfare within ourselves, and do battle in the inner sanctuary? it would seem so; for it is certain that if man's will relaxed with regard to it he would no longer retain life in that state in which pain exists. why does he desire his own hurt? the answer may at first sight seem to be that he primarily desires pleasure, and so is willing to continue on that battlefield where it wages war with pain for the possession of him, hoping always that pleasure will win the victory and take him home to herself. this is but the external aspect of the man's state. in himself he knows well that pain is co-ruler with pleasure, and that though the war wages always it never will be won. the superficial observer concludes that man submits to the inevitable. but that is a fallacy not worthy of discussion. a little serious thought shows us that man does not exist at all except by exercise of his positive qualities; it is but logical to suppose that he chooses the state he will live in by the exercise of those same qualities. granted, then, for the sake of our argument, that he desires pain, why is it that he desires anything so annoying to himself? ii if we carefully consider the constitution of man and its tendencies, it would seem as if there were two definite directions in which he grows. he is like a tree which strikes its roots into the ground while it throws up young branches towards the heavens. these two lines which go outward from the central personal point are to him clear, definite, and intelligible. he calls one good and the other evil. but man is not, according to any analogy, observation, or experience, a straight line. would that he were, and that life, or progress, or development, or whatever we choose to call it, meant merely following one straight road or another, as the religionists pretend it does. the whole question, the mighty problem, would be very easily solved then. but it is not so easy to go to hell as preachers declare it to be. it is as hard a task as to find one's way to the golden gate! a man may wreck himself utterly in sense-pleasure,--may debase his whole nature, as it seems,--yet he fails of becoming the perfect devil, for there is still the spark of divine light within him. he tries to choose the broad road which leads to destruction, and enters bravely on his headlong career. but very soon he is checked and startled by some unthought-of tendency in himself,--some of the many other radiations which go forth from his centre of self. he suffers as the body suffers when it develops monstrosities which impede its healthy action. he has created pain, and encountered his own creation. it may seem as if this argument is difficult of application with regard to physical pain. not so, if man is regarded from a loftier standpoint than that we generally occupy. if he is looked upon as a powerful consciousness which forms its external manifestations according to its desires, then it is evident that physical pain results from deformity in those desires. no doubt it will appear to many minds that this conception of man is too gratuitous, and involves too large a mental leap into unknown places where proof is unobtainable. but if the mind is accustomed to look upon life from this standpoint, then very soon none other is acceptable; the threads of existence, which to the purely materialistic observer appear hopelessly entangled, become separated and straightened, so that a new intelligibleness illumines the universe. the arbitrary and cruel creator who inflicts pain and pleasure at will then disappears from the stage; and it is well, for he is indeed an unnecessary character, and, worse still, is a mere creature of straw, who cannot even strut upon the boards without being upheld on all sides by dogmatists. man comes into this world, surely, on the same principle that he lives in one city of the earth or another; at all events, if it is too much to say that this is so, one may safely ask, why is it not so? there is neither for nor against which will appeal to the materialist, or which would weigh in a court of justice; but i aver this in favor of the argument,--that no man having once seriously considered it can go back to the formal theories of the sceptics. it is like putting on swaddling-clothes again. granting, then, for the sake of this argument, that man is a powerful consciousness who is his own creator, his own judge, and within whom lies all life in potentiality, even the ultimate goal, then let us consider why he causes himself to suffer. if pain is the result of uneven development, of monstrous growths, of defective advance at different points, why does man not learn the lesson which this should teach him, and take pains to develop equally? it would seem to me as if the answer to this question is that this is the very lesson which the human race is engaged in learning. perhaps this may seem too bold a statement to make in the face of ordinary thinking, which either regards man as a creature of chance dwelling in chaos, or as a soul bound to the inexorable wheel of a tyrant's chariot and hurried on either to heaven or to hell. but such a mode of thought is after all but the same as that of the child who regards his parents as the final arbiters of his destinies, and in fact the gods or demons of his universe. as he grows he casts aside this idea, finding that it is simply a question of coming of age, and that he is himself the king of life like any other man. so it is with the human race. it is king of its world, arbiter of its own destiny, and there is none to say it nay. who talk of providence and chance have not paused to think. destiny, the inevitable, does indeed exist for the race and for the individual; but who can ordain this save the man himself? there is no clew in heaven or earth to the existence of any ordainer other than the man who suffers or enjoys that which is ordained. we know so little of our own constitution, we are so ignorant of our divine functions, that it is impossible for us yet to know how much or how little we are actually fate itself. but this at all events we know,--that so far as any provable perception goes, no clew to the existence of an ordainer has yet been discovered; whereas if we give but a very little attention to the life about us in order to observe the action of the man upon his own future, we soon perceive this power as an actual force in operation. it is visible, although our range of vision is so very limited. the man of the world, pure and simple, is by far the best practical observer and philosopher with regard to life, because he is not blinded by any prejudices. he will be found always to believe that as a man sows so shall he reap. and this is so evidently true when it is considered, that if one takes the larger view, including all human life, it makes intelligible the awful nemesis which seems consciously to pursue the human race,--that inexorable appearance of pain in the midst of pleasure. the great greek poets saw this apparition so plainly that their recorded observation has given to us younger and blinder observers the idea of it. it is unlikely that so materialistic a race as that which has grown up all over the west would have discovered for itself the existence of this terrible factor in human life without the assistance of the older poets,--the poets of the past. and in this we may notice, by the way, one distinct value of the study of the classics,--that the great ideas and facts about human life which the superb ancients put into their poetry shall not be absolutely lost as are their arts. no doubt the world will flower again, and greater thoughts and more profound discoveries than those of the past will be the glory of the men of the future efflorescence; but until that far-off day comes we cannot prize too dearly the treasures left us. there is one aspect of the question which seems at first sight positively to negative this mode of thought; and that is the suffering in the apparently purely physical body of the dumb beings,--young children, idiots, animals,--and their desperate need of the power which comes of any sort of knowledge to help them through their sufferings. the difficulty which will arise in the mind with regard to this comes from the untenable idea of the separation of the soul from the body. it is supposed by all those who look only at material life (and especially by the physicians of the flesh) that the body and the brain are a pair of partners who live together hand in hand and react one upon another. beyond that they recognise no cause and therefore allow of none. they forget that the brain and the body are as evidently mere mechanism as the hand or the foot. there is the inner man--the soul--behind, using all these mechanisms; and this is as evidently the truth with regard to all the existences we know of as with regard to man himself. we cannot find any point in the scale of being at which soul-causation ceases or can cease. the dull oyster must have that in him which makes him choose the inactive life he leads; none else can choose it for him but the soul behind, which makes him be. how else can he be where he is, or be at all? only by the intervention of an impossible creator called by some name or other. it is because man is so idle, so indisposed to assume or accept responsibility, that he falls back upon this temporary makeshift of a creator. it is temporary indeed, for it can only last during the activity of the particular brain power which finds its place among us. when the man drops this mental life behind him, he of necessity leaves with it its magic lantern and the pleasant illusions he has conjured up by its aid. that must be a very uncomfortable moment, and must produce a sense of nakedness not to be approached by any other sensation. it would seem as well to save one's self this disagreeable experience by refusing to accept unreal phantasms as things of flesh and blood and power. upon the shoulders of the creator man likes to thrust the responsibility not only of his capacity for sinning and the possibility of his salvation, but of his very life itself, his very consciousness. it is a poor creator that he thus contents himself with,--one who is pleased with a universe of puppets, and amused by pulling their strings. if he is capable of such enjoyment, he must yet be in his infancy. perhaps that is so, after all; the god within us is in his infancy, and refuses to recognise his high estate. if indeed the soul of man is subject to the laws of growth, of decay, and of re-birth as to its body, then there is no wonder at its blindness. but this is evidently not so; for the soul of man is of that order of life which causes shape and form, and is unaffected itself by these things,--of that order of life which like the pure, the abstract flame burns wherever it is lit. this cannot be changed or affected by time, and is of its very nature superior to growth and decay. it stands in that primeval place which is the only throne of god,--that place whence forms of life emerge and to which they return. that place is the central point of existence, where there is a permanent spot of life as there is in the midst of the heart of man. it is by the equal development of that,--first by the recognition of it, and then by its equal development upon the many radiating lines of experience,--that man is at last enabled to reach the golden gate and lift the latch. the process is the gradual recognition of the god in himself; the goal is reached when that godhood is consciously restored to its right glory. iii the first thing which it is necessary for the soul of man to do in order to engage in this great endeavor of discovering true life is the same thing that the child first does in its desire for activity in the body,--he must be able to stand. it is clear that the power of standing, of equilibrium, of concentration, of uprightness, in the soul, is a quality of a marked character. the word that presents itself most readily as descriptive of this quality is "confidence." to remain still amid life and its changes, and stand firmly on the chosen spot, is a feat which can only be accomplished by the man who has confidence in himself and in his destiny. otherwise the hurrying forms of life, the rushing tide of men, the great floods of thought, must inevitably carry him with them, and then he will lose that place of consciousness whence it was possible to start on the great enterprise. for it _must_ be done knowingly, and without pressure from without,--this act of the new-born man. all the great ones of the earth have possessed this confidence, and have stood firmly on that place which was to them the one solid spot in the universe. to each man this place is of necessity different. each man must find his earth and his own heaven. we have the instinctive desire to relieve pain, but we work in externals in this as in everything else. we simply alleviate it; and if we do more, and drive it from its first chosen stronghold, it reappears in some other place with reinforced vigor. if it is eventually driven off the physical plane by persistent and successful effort, it reappears on the mental or emotional planes where no man can touch it. that this is so is easily seen by those who connect the various planes of sensation, and who observe life with that additional illumination. men habitually regard these different forms of feeling as actually separate, whereas in fact they are evidently only different sides of one centre,--the point of personality. if that which arises in the centre, the fount of life, demands some hindered action, and consequently causes pain, the force thus created being driven from one stronghold must find another; it cannot be driven out. and all the blendings of human life which cause emotion and distress exist for its use and purposes as well as for those of pleasure. both have their home in man; both demand their expression of right. the marvellously delicate mechanism of the human frame is constructed to answer to their lightest touch; the extraordinary intricacies of human relations evolve themselves, as it were, for the satisfaction of these two great opposites of the soul. pain and pleasure stand apart and separate, as do the two sexes; and it is in the merging, the making the two into one, that joy and deep sensation and profound peace are obtained. where there is neither male nor female neither pain nor pleasure, there is the god in man dominant, and then is life real. to state the matter in this way may savor too much of the dogmatist who utters his assertions uncontradicted from a safe pulpit; but it is dogmatism only as a scientist's record of effort in a new direction is dogmatism. unless the existence of the gates of gold can be proved to be real, and not the mere phantasmagoria of fanciful visionaries, then they are not worth talking about at all. in the nineteenth century hard facts or legitimate arguments alone appeal to men's minds; and so much the better. for unless the life we advance towards is increasingly real and actual, it is worthless, and time is wasted in going after it. reality is man's greatest need, and he demands to have it at all hazards, at any price. be it so. no one doubts he is right. let us then go in search of reality. iv one definite lesson learned by all acute sufferers will be of the greatest service to us in this consideration. in intense pain a point is reached where it is indistinguishable from its opposite, pleasure. this is indeed so, but few have the heroism or the strength to suffer to such a far point. it is as difficult to reach it by the other road. only a chosen few have the gigantic capacity for pleasure which will enable them to travel to its other side. most have but enough strength to enjoy and to become the slave of the enjoyment. yet man has undoubtedly within himself the heroism needed for the great journey; else how is it martyrs have smiled amid the torture? how is it that the profound sinner who lives for pleasure can at last feel stir within himself the divine afflatus? in both these cases the possibility has arisen of finding the way; but too often that possibility is killed by the overbalance of the startled nature. the martyr has acquired a passion for pain and lives in the idea of heroic suffering; the sinner becomes blinded by the thought of virtue and worships it as an end, an object, a thing divine in itself; whereas it can only be divine as it is part of that infinite whole which includes vice as well as virtue. how is it possible to divide the infinite,--that which is one? it is as reasonable to lend divinity to any object as to take a cup of water from the sea and declare that in that is contained the ocean. you cannot separate the ocean; the salt water is part of the great sea and must be so; but nevertheless you do not hold the sea in your hand. men so longingly desire personal power that they are ready to put infinity into a cup, the divine idea into a formula, in order that they may fancy themselves in possession of it. these only are those who cannot rise and approach the gates of gold, for the great breath of life confuses them; they are struck with horror to find how great it is. the idol-worshipper keeps an image of his idol in his heart and burns a candle always before it. it is his own, and he is pleased at that thought, even if he bow in reverence before it. in how many virtuous and religious men does not this same state exist? in the recesses of the soul the lamp is burning before a household god,--a thing possessed by its worshipper and subject to him. men cling with desperate tenacity to these dogmas, these moral laws, these principles and modes of faith which are their household gods, their personal idols. bid them burn the unceasing flame in reverence only to the infinite, and they turn from you. whatever their manner of scorning your protest may be, within themselves it leaves a sense of aching void. for the noble soul of the man, that potential king which is within us all, knows full well that this household idol may be cast down and destroyed at any moment,--that it is without finality in itself, without any real and absolute life. and he has been content in his possession, forgetting that anything possessed can only by the immutable laws of life be held temporarily. he has forgotten that the infinite is his only friend; he has forgotten that in its glory is his only home,--that it alone can be his god. there he feels as if he is homeless; but that amid the sacrifices he offers to his own especial idol there is for him a brief resting-place; and for this he clings passionately to it. few have the courage even slowly to face the great desolateness which lies outside themselves, and must lie there so long as they cling to the person which they represent, the "i" which is to them the centre of the world, the cause of all life. in their longing for a god they find the reason for the existence of one; in their desire for a sense-body and a world to enjoy in, lies to them the cause of the universe. these beliefs may be hidden very deep beneath the surface, and be indeed scarcely accessible; but in the fact that they are there is the reason why the man holds himself upright. to himself he is himself the infinite and the god; he holds the ocean in a cup. in this delusion he nurtures the egoism which makes life pleasure and makes pain pleasant. in this profound egoism is the very cause and source of the existence of pleasure and of pain. for unless man vacillated between these two, and ceaselessly reminded himself by sensation that he exists, he would forget it. and in this fact lies the whole answer to the question, "why does man create pain for his own discomfort?" the strange and mysterious fact remains unexplained as yet, that man in so deluding himself is merely interpreting nature backwards and putting into the words of death the meaning of life. for that man does indeed hold within him the infinite, and that the ocean is really in the cup, is an incontestable truth; but it is only so because the cup is absolutely non-existent. it is merely an experience of the infinite, having no permanence, liable to be shattered at any instant. it is in the claiming of reality and permanence for the four walls of his personality, that man makes the vast blunder which plunges him into a prolonged series of unfortunate incidents, and intensifies continually the existence of his favorite forms of sensation. pleasure and pain become to him more real than the great ocean of which he is a part and where his home is; he perpetually knocks himself painfully against these walls where he feels, and his tiny self oscillates within his chosen prison. chapter v the secret of strength i strength to step forward is the primary need of him who has chosen his path. where is this to be found? looking round, it is not hard to see where other men find their strength. its source is profound conviction. through this great moral power is brought to birth in the natural life of the man that which enables him, however frail he may be, to go on and conquer. conquer what? not continents, not worlds, but himself. through that supreme victory is obtained the entrance to the whole, where all that might be conquered and obtained by effort becomes at once not his, but himself. to put on armor and go forth to war, taking the chances of death in the hurry of the fight, is an easy thing; to stand still amid the jangle of the world, to preserve stillness within the turmoil of the body, to hold silence amid the thousand cries of the senses and desires, and then, stripped of all armor and without hurry or excitement take the deadly serpent of self and kill it, is no easy thing. yet that is what has to be done; and it can only be done in the moment of equilibrium when the enemy is disconcerted by the silence. but there is needed for this supreme moment a strength such as no hero of the battlefield needs. a great soldier must be filled with the profound convictions of the justness of his cause and the rightness of his method. the man who wars against himself and wins the battle can do it only when he knows that in that war he is doing the one thing which is worth doing, and when he knows that in doing it he is winning heaven and hell as his servitors. yes, he stands on both. he needs no heaven where pleasure comes as a long-promised reward; he fears no hell where pain waits to punish him for his sins. for he has conquered once for all that shifting serpent in himself which turns from side to side in its constant desire of contact, in its perpetual search after pleasure and pain. never again (the victory once really won) can he tremble or grow exultant at any thought of that which the future holds. those burning sensations which seemed to him to be the only proofs of his existence are his no longer. how, then, can he know that he lives? he knows it only by argument. and in time he does not care to argue about it. for him there is then peace; and he will find in that peace the power he has coveted. then he will know what is that faith which can remove mountains. ii religion holds a man back from the path, prevents his stepping forward, for various very plain reasons. first it makes the vital mistake of distinguishing between good and evil. nature knows no such distinction; and the moral and social laws set us by our religions are as temporary, as much a thing of our own special mode and form of existence, as are the moral and social laws of the ants or the bees. we pass out of that state in which these things appear to be final, and we forget them forever. this is easily shown, because a man of broad habits of thought and of intelligence must modify his code of life when he dwells among another people. these people among whom he is an alien have their own deep-rooted religions and hereditary convictions, against which he cannot offend. unless his is an abjectly narrow and unthinking mind, he sees that their form of law and order is as good as his own. what then can he do but reconcile his conduct gradually to their rules? and then if he dwells among them many years the sharp edge of difference is worn away, and he forgets at last where their faith ends and his commences. yet is it for his own people to say he has done wrong, if he has injured no man and remained just? i am not attacking law and order; i do not speak of these things with rash dislike. in their place they are as vital and necessary as the code which governs the life of a beehive is to its successful conduct. what i wish to point out is that law and order in themselves are quite temporary and unsatisfactory. a man's soul passes away from its brief dwelling-place, thoughts of law and order do not accompany it. if it is strong, it is the ecstasy of true being and real life which it becomes possessed of, as all know who have watched by the dying. if the soul is weak, it faints and fades away, overcome by the first flush of the new life. am i speaking too positively? only those who live in the active life of the moment, who have not watched beside the dead and dying, who have not walked the battlefield and looked in the faces of men in their last agony, will say so. the strong man goes forth from his body exultant. why? because he is no longer held back and made to quiver by hesitation. in the strange moment of death he has had release given him; and with a sudden passion of delight he recognises that it is release. had; he been sure of this before, he would have been a great sage, a man to rule the world, for he would have had the power to rule himself and his own body. that release from the chains of ordinary life can be obtained as easily during life as by death. it only needs a sufficiently profound conviction to enable the man to look on his body with the same emotions as he would look on the body of another man, or on the bodies of a thousand men. in contemplating a battlefield it is impossible to realize the agony of every sufferer; why, then, realize your own pain more keenly than another's? mass the whole together, and look at it all from a wider standpoint than that of the individual life. that you actually feel your own physical wound is a weakness of your limitation. the man who is developed psychically feels the wound of another as keenly as his own, and does not feel his own at all if he is strong enough to will it so. every one who has examined at all seriously into psychic conditions knows this to be a fact, more or less marked, according to the psychic development. in many instances, the psychic is more keenly and selfishly aware of his own pain than of any other person's; but that is when the development, marked perhaps so far as it has gone, only reaches a certain point. it is the power which carries the man to the margin of that consciousness which is profound peace and vital activity. it can carry him no further. but if he has reached its margin he is freed from the paltry dominion of his own self. that is the first great release. look at the sufferings which come upon us from our narrow and limited experience and sympathy. we each stand quite alone, a solitary unit, a pygmy in the world. what good fortune can we expect? the great life of the world rushes by, and we are in danger each instant that it will overwhelm us or even utterly destroy us. there is no defence to be offered to it; no opposition army can be set up, because in this life every man fights his own battle against every other man, and no two can be united under the same banner. there is only one way of escape from this terrible danger which we battle against every hour. turn round, and instead of standing against the forces, join them; become one with nature, and go easily upon her path. do not resist or resent the circumstances of life any more than the plants present the rain and the wind. then suddenly, to your own amazement, you find you have time and strength to spare, to use in the great battle which it is inevitable every man must fight,--that in himself, that which leads to his own conquest. some might say, to his own destruction. and why? because from the hour when he first tastes the splendid reality of living he forgets more and more his individual self. no longer does he fight for it, or pit its strength against the strength of others. no longer does he care to defend or to feed it. yet when he is thus indifferent to its welfare, the individual self grows more stalwart and robust, like the prairie grasses and the trees of untrodden forests. it is a matter of indifference to him whether this is so or not. only, if it is so, he has a fine instrument ready to his hand; and in due proportion to the completeness of his indifference to it is the strength and beauty of his personal self. this is readily seen; a garden flower becomes a mere degenerate copy of itself if it is simply neglected; a plant must be cultivated to the highest pitch, and benefit by the whole of the gardener's skill, or else it must be a pure savage, wild, and fed only by the earth and sky. who cares for any intermediate states? what value or strength is there in the neglected garden rose which has the canker in every bud? for diseased or dwarfed blossoms are sure to result from an arbitrary change of condition, resulting from the neglect of the man who has hitherto been the providence of the plant in its unnatural life. but there are wind-blown plains where the daisies grow tall, with moon faces such as no cultivation can produce in them. cultivate, then, to the very utmost; forget no inch of your garden ground, no smallest plant that grows in it; make no foolish pretence nor fond mistake in the fancy that you are ready to forget it, and so subject it to the frightful consequences of half-measures. the plant that is watered to-day and forgotten to-morrow must dwindle or decay. the plant that looks for no help but from nature itself measures its strength at once, and either dies and is re-created or grows into a great tree whose boughs fill the sky. but make no mistake like the religionists and some philosophers; leave no part of yourself neglected while you know it to be yourself. while the ground is the gardener's it is his business to tend it; but some day a call may come to him from another country or from death itself, and in a moment he is no longer the gardener, his business is at an end, he has no more duty of that kind at all. then his favorite plants suffer and die, and the delicate ones become one with the earth. but soon fierce nature claims the place for her own, and covers it with thick grass or giant weeds, or nurses some sapling in it till its branches shade the ground. be warned, and tend your garden to the utmost, till you can pass away utterly and let it return to nature and become the wind-blown plain where the wild-flowers grow. then, if you pass that way and look at it, whatever has happened will neither grieve nor elate you. for you will be able to say, "i am the rocky ground, i am the great tree, i am the strong daisies," indifferent which it is that flourishes where once your rose-trees grew. but you must have learned to study the stars to some purpose before you dare to neglect your roses, and omit to fill the air with their cultivated fragrance. you must know your way through the trackless air, and from thence to the pure ether; you must be ready to lift the bar of the golden gate. cultivate, i say, and neglect nothing. only remember, all the while you tend and water, that you are impudently usurping the tasks of nature herself. having usurped her work, you must carry it through until you have reached a point when she has no power to punish you, when you are not afraid of her, but can with a bold front return her her own. she laughs in her sleeve, the mighty mother, watching you with covert, laughing eye, ready relentlessly to cast the whole of your work into the dust if you do but give her the chance, if you turn idler and grow careless. the idler is father of the madman in the sense that the child is the father of the.man. nature has put her vast hand on him and crushed the whole edifice. the gardener and his rose-trees are alike broken and stricken by the great storm which her movement has created; they lie helpless till the sand is swept over them and they are buried in a weary wilderness. from this desert spot nature herself will re-create, and will use the ashes of the man who dared to face her as indifferently as the withered leaves of his plants. his body, soul, and spirit are all alike claimed by her. iii the man who is strong, who has resolved to find the unknown path, takes with the utmost care every step. he utters no idle word, he does no unconsidered action, he neglects no duty or office however homely or however difficult. but while his eyes and hands and feet are thus fulfilling their tasks, new eyes and hands and feet are being born within him. for his passionate and unceasing desire is to go that way on which the subtile organs only can guide him. the physical world he has learned, and knows how to use; gradually his power is passing on, and he recognises the psychic world. but he has to learn this world and know how to use it, and he dare not lose hold of the life he is familiar with till he has taken hold of that with which he is unfamiliar. when he has acquired such power with his psychic organs as the infant has with its physical organs when it first opens its lungs, then is the hour for the great adventure. how little is needed--yet how much that is! the man does but need the psychic body to be formed in all parts, as is an infant's; he does but need the profound and unshakable conviction which impels the infant, that the new life is desirable. once those conditions gained and he may let himself live in the new atmosphere and look up to the new sun. but then his must remember to check his new experience by the old. he is breathing still, though differently; he draws air into his lungs, and takes life from the sun. he has been born into the psychic world, and depends now on the psychic air and light. his goal is not here: this is but a subtile repetition of physical life; he has to pass through it according to similar laws. he must study, learn, grow, and conquer; never forgetting the while that his goal is that place where there is no air nor any sun or moon. do not imagine that in this line of progress the man himself is being moved or changing his place. not so. the truest illustration of the process is that of cutting through layers of crust or skin. the man, having learned his lesson fully, casts off the physical life; having learned his lesson fully, casts off the psychic life; having learned his lesson fully, casts off the contemplative life, or life of adoration. all are cast aside at last, and he enters the great temple where any memory of self or sensation is left outside as the shoes are cast from the feet of the worshipper. that temple is the place of his own pure divinity, the central flame which, however obscured, has animated him through all these struggles. and having found this sublime home he is sure as the heavens themselves. he remains still, filled with all knowledge and power. the outer man, the adoring, the acting, the living personification, goes its own way hand in hand with nature, and shows all the superb strength of the savage growth of the earth, lit by that instinct which contains knowledge. for in the inmost sanctuary, in the actual temple, the man has found the subtile essence of nature herself. no longer can there be any difference between them or any half-measures. and now comes the hour of action and power. in that inmost sanctuary all is to be found: god and his creatures, the fiends who prey on them, those among men who have been loved, those who have been hated. difference between them exists no longer. then the soul of man laughs in its strength and fearlessness, and goes forth into the world in which its actions are needed, and causes these actions to take place without apprehension, alarm, fear, regret, or joy. this state is possible to man while yet he lives in the physical; for men have attained it while living. it alone can make actions in the physical divine and true. life among objects of sense must forever be an outer shape to the sublime soul,--it can only become powerful life, the life of accomplishment, when it is animated by the crowned and indifferent god that sits in the sanctuary. the obtaining of this condition is so supremely desirable because from the moment it is entered there is no more trouble, no more anxiety, no more doubt or hesitation. as a great artist paints his picture fearlessly and never committing any error which causes him regret, so the man who has formed his inner self deals with his life. but that is when the condition is entered. that which we who look towards the mountains hunger to know is the mode of entrance and the way to the gate. the gate is that gate of gold barred by a heavy bar of iron. the way to the threshold of it turns a man giddy and sick. it seems no path, it seems to end perpetually, its way lies along hideous precipices, it loses itself in deep waters. once crossed and the way found it appears wonderful that the difficulty should have looked; so great. for the path where it disappears does but turn abruptly, its line upon the precipice edge is wide enough for the feet, and across the deep waters that look so treacherous there, is always a ford and a ferry. so it happens in all profound experiences of human nature. when the first grief tears the heart asunder it seems that the path has ended and a blank darkness taken the place of the sky. and yet by groping the soul passes on, and that difficult and seemingly hopeless turn in the road is passed. so with many another form or human torture. sometimes throughout a long period or a whole lifetime the path of existence is perpetually checked by what seem like insurmountable obstacles. grief, pain, suffering, the loss of all that is beloved or valued, rise up before the terrified soul and check it at every turn. who places those obstacles there? the reason shrinks at the childish dramatic picture which the religionists place before it,--god permitting the devil to torment his creatures for their ultimate good! when will that ultimate good be attained? the idea involved in this picture supposes an end, a goal. there is none. we can any one of us safely assent to that; for as far as human observation, reason, thought, intellect, or instinct can reach towards grasping the mystery of life, all data obtained show that the path is endless and that eternity cannot be blinked and converted by the idling soul into a million years. in man, taken individually or as a whole, there clearly exists a double constitution. i am speaking roughly now, being well aware that the various schools of philosophy cut him up and subdivide him according to their several theories. what i mean is this: that two great tides of emotion sweep through his nature, two great forces guide his life; the one makes him an animal, and the other makes him a god. no brute of the earth is so brutal as the man who subjects his godly power to his animal power. this is a matter of course, because the whole force of the double nature is then used in one direction. the animal pure and simple obeys his instincts only and desires no more than to gratify his love of pleasure; he pays but little regard to the existence of other beings except in so far as they offer him pleasure or pain; he knows nothing of the abstract love of cruelty or of any of those vicious tendencies of the human being which have in themselves their own gratification. thus the man who becomes a beast has a million times the grasp of life over the natural beast, and that which in the pure animal is sufficiently innocent enjoyment, uninterrupted by an arbitrary moral standard, becomes in him vice, because it is gratified on principle. moreover he turns all the divine powers of his being into this channel, and degrades his soul by making it the slave of his senses. the god, deformed and disguised, waits on the animal and feeds it. consider then whether it is not possible to change the situation. the man himself is king of the country in which this strange spectacle is seen. he allows the beast to usurp the place of the god because for the moment the beast pleases his capricious royal fancy the most. this cannot last always; why let it last any longer? so long as the animal rules there will be the keenest sufferings in consequence of change, of the vibration between pleasure and pain, of the desire for prolonged and pleasant physical life. and the god in his capacity of servant adds a thousand-fold to all this, by making physical life so much more filled with keenness of pleasure,--rare, voluptuous, aesthetic pleasure,--and by intensity of pain so passionate that one knows not where it ends and where pleasure commences. so long as the god serves, so long the life of the animal will be enriched and increasingly valuable. but let the king resolve to change the face of his court and forcibly evict the animal from the chair of state, restoring the god to the place of divinity. ah, the profound peace that falls upon the palace! all is indeed changed. no longer is there the fever of personal longings or desires, no longer is there any rebellion or distress, no longer any hunger for pleasure or dread of pain. it is like a great calm descending on a stormy ocean; it is like the soft rain of summer falling on parched ground; it is like the deep pool found amidst the weary, thirsty labyrinths of the unfriendly forest. but there is much more than this. not only is man more than an animal because there is the god in him, but he is more than a god because there is the animal in him. once force the animal into his rightful place, that of the inferior, and you find yourself in possession of a great force hitherto unsuspected and unknown. the god as servant adds a thousand-fold to the pleasures of the animal; the animal as servant adds a thousand-fold to the powers of the god. and it is upon the union, the right relation of these two forces in himself, that man stands as a strong king, and is enabled to raise his hand and lift the bar of the golden gate. when these forces are unfitly related, then the king is but a crowned voluptuary, without power, and whose dignity does but mock him; for the animals, undivine, at least know peace and are not torn by vice and despair. that is the whole secret. that is what makes man strong, powerful, able to grasp heaven and earth in his hands. do not fancy it is easily done. do not be deluded into the idea that the religious or the virtuous man does it! not so. they do no more than fix a standard, a routine, a law, by which they hold the animal in check. the god is compelled to serve him in a certain way, and does so, pleasing him with the beliefs and cherished fantasies of the religious, with the lofty sense of personal pride which makes the joy of the virtuous. these special and canonized vices are things too low and base to be possible to the pure animal, whose only inspirer is nature herself, always fresh as the dawn. the god in man, degraded, is a thing unspeakable in its infamous power of production. the animal in man, elevated, is a thing unimaginable in its great powers of service and of strength. you forget, you who let your animal self live on, merely checked and held within certain bounds, that it is a great force, an integral portion of the animal life of the world you live in. with it you can sway men, and influence the very world itself, more or less perceptibly according to your strength. the god, given his right place, will so inspire and guide this extraordinary creature, so educate and develope it, so force it into action and recognition of its kind, that it will make you tremble when you recognise the power that has awakened within you. the animal in yourself will then be a king among the animals of the world. this is the secret of the old-world magicians who made nature serve them and work miracles every day for their convenience. this is the secret of the coming race which lord lytton foreshadowed for us. but this power can only be attained by giving the god the sovereignty. make your animal ruler over yourself, and he will never rule others. epilogue secreted and hidden in the heart of the world and in the heart of man is the light which can illumine all life, the future and the past. shall we not search for it? surely some must do so. and then perhaps those will add what is needed to this poor fragment of thought. through the gates of gold from _the path_, march, the most notable book for guidance in mysticism which has appeared since _light on the path_ was written has just been published under the significant title of _through the gates of gold_. though the author's name is withheld, the occult student will quickly discern that it must proceed from a very high source. in certain respects the book may be regarded as a commentary on _light on the path_. the reader would do well to bear this in mind. many things in that book will be made clear by the reading of this one, and one will be constantly reminded of that work, which has already become a classic in our literature. _through the gates of gold_ is a work to be kept constantly at hand for reference and study. it will surely take rank as one of the standard books of theosophy. the "gates of gold" represent the entrance to that realm of the soul unknowable through the physical perceptions, and the purpose of this work is to indicate some of the steps necessary to reach their threshold. through its extraordinary beauty of style and the clearness of its statement it will appeal to a wider portion of the public than most works of a theosophical character. it speaks to the western world in its own language, and in this fact lies much of its value. those of us who have been longing for something "practical" will find it here, while it will probably come into the hands of thousands who know little or nothing of theosophy, and thus meet wants deeply felt though unexpressed. there are also doubtless many, we fancy, who will be carried far along in its pages by its resistless logic until they encounter something which will give a rude shock to some of their old conceptions, which they have imagined as firmly based as upon a rock--a shock which may cause them to draw back in alarm, but from which they will not find it so easy to recover, and which will be likely to set them thinking seriously. the titles of the five chapters of the book are, respectively, "the search for pleasure," "the mystery of threshold," "the initial effort," "the meaning of pain," and "the secret of strength." instead of speculating upon mysteries that lie at the very end of man's destiny, and which cannot be approached by any manner of conjecture, the work very sensibly takes up that which lies next at hand, that which constitutes the first step to be taken if we are ever to take a second one, and teaches us its significance. at the outset we must cope with sensation and learn its nature and meaning. an important teaching of _light on the path_ has been misread by many. we are not enjoined to kill out sensation, but to "kill out _desire_ for sensation," which is something quite different. "sensation, as we obtain it through the physical body, affords us all that induces us to live in that shape," says this work. the problem is, to extract the meaning which it holds for us. that is what existence is for. "if men will but pause and consider what lessons they have learned from pleasure and pain, much might be guessed of that strange thing which causes these effects." "the question concerning results seemingly unknowable, that concerning the life beyond the gates," is presented as one that has been asked throughout the ages, coming at the hour "when the flower of civilization had blown to its full, and when its petals are but slackly held together," the period when man reaches the greatest physical development of his cycle. it is then that in the distance a great glittering is seen, before which many drop their eyes bewildered and dazzled, though now and then one is found brave enough to gaze fixedly on this glittering, and to decipher something of the shape within it. "poets and philosophers, thinkers and teachers, all those who are the 'elder brothers of the race'--have beheld this sight from time to time, and some among them have recognized in the bewildering glitter the outlines of the gates of gold." those gates admit us to the sanctuary of man's own nature, to the place whence his life-power comes, and where he is priest of the shrine of life. it needs but a strong hand to push them open, we are told. "the courage to enter them is the courage to search the recesses of one's own nature without fear and without shame. in the fine part, the essence, the flavor of the man, is found the key which unlocks those great gates." the necessity of killing out the sense of separateness is profoundly emphasized as one of the most important factors in this process. we must divest ourselves of the illusions of the material life. "when we desire to speak with those who have tried the golden gates and pushed them open, then it is very necessary--in fact it is essential--to discriminate, and not bring into our life the confusions of our sleep. if we do, we are reckoned as madmen, and fall back into the darkness where there is no friend but chaos. this chaos has followed every effort of man that is written in history; after civilization has flowered, the flower falls and dies, and winter and darkness destroy it." in this last sentence is indicated the purpose of civilization. it is the blossoming of a race, with the purpose of producing a certain spiritual fruit; this fruit having ripened, then the degeneration of the great residuum begins, to be worked over and over again in the grand fermenting processes of reincarnation. our great civilization is now flowering and in this fact we may read the reason for the extraordinary efforts to sow the seed of the mystic teachings wherever the mind of man may be ready to receive it. in the "mystery of threshold," we are told that "only a man who has the potentialities in him both of the voluptuary and the stoic has any chance of entering the golden gates. he must be capable of testing and valuing to its most delicate fraction every joy existence has to give; and he must be capable of denying himself all pleasure, and that without suffering from the denial." the fact that the way is different for each individual is finely set forth in "the initial effort," in the words that man "may burst the shell that holds him in darkness, tear the veil that hides him from the eternal, at any moment where it is easiest for him to do so; and most often this point will be where he least expects to find it." by this we may see the uselessness of laying down arbitrary laws in the matter. the meaning of those important words, "all steps are necessary to make up the ladder," finds a wealth of illustration here. these sentences are particularly pregnant: "spirit is not a gas created by matter, and we cannot create our future by forcibly using one material agent and leaving out the rest. spirit is the great life on which matter rests, as does the rocky world on the free and fluid ether; whenever we can break our limitations we find ourselves on that marvellous shore where wordsworth once saw the gleam of the gold." virtue, being of the material life, man has not the power to carry it with him, "yet the aroma of his good deeds is a far sweeter sacrifice than the odor of crime and cruelty." "to the one who has lifted the golden latch the spring of sweet waters, the fountain itself whence all softness arises, is opened and becomes part of his heritage. but before this can be reached a heavy weight has to be lifted from the heart, an iron bar which holds it down and prevents it from arising in its strength." the author here wishes to show that there is sweetness and light in occultism, and not merely a wide dry level of dreadful karma, such as some theosophists are prone to dwell on. and this sweetness and light may be reached when we discover the iron bar and raising it shall permit the heart to be free. this iron bar is what the hindus call "the knot of the heart"! in their scriptures they talk of unloosing this knot, and say that when that is accomplished freedom is near. but what is the iron bar and the knot? is the question we must answer. it is the astringent power of self--of egotism--of the idea of separateness. this idea has many strongholds. it holds its most secret court and deepest counsels near the far removed depths and centre of the heart. but it manifests itself first, in that place which is nearest to our ignorant perceptions, where we see it first after beginning the search. when we assault and conquer it there it disappears. it has only retreated to the next row of outworks where for a time it appears not to our sight, and we imagine it killed, while it is laughing at our imaginary conquests and security. soon again we find it and conquer again, only to have it again retreat. so we must follow it up if we wish to grasp it at last in its final stand just near the "kernel of the heart." there it has become "an iron bar that holds down the heart," and there only can the fight be really won. that disciple is fortunate who is able to sink past all the pretended outer citadels and seize at once this _personal devil_ who holds the bar of iron, and there wage the battle. if won there, it is easy to return to the outermost places and take them by capitulation. this is very difficult, for many reasons. it is not a mere juggle of words to speak of this trial. it is a living tangible thing that can be met by any real student. the great difficulty of rushing at once to the centre lies in the unimaginable terrors which assault the soul on its short journey there. this being so it is better to begin the battle on the outside in just the way pointed out in this book and _light on the path_, by testing experience and learning from it. in the lines quoted the author attempts to direct the eyes of a very materialistic age to the fact which is an accepted one by all true students of occultism, that the true heart of a man--which is visibly represented by the muscular heart--is the focus point for spirit, for knowledge, for power; and that from that point the converged rays begin to spread out fan-like, until they embrace the universe. so it is the gate. and it is just at that neutral spot of concentration that the pillars and the doors are fixed. it is beyond it that the glorious golden light burns, and throws up a "burnished glow." we find in this the same teachings as in the upanishads. the latter speaks of "the ether which is within the heart," and also says that we must pass across that ether. "the meaning of pain" is considered in a way which throws a great light on the existence of that which for ages has puzzled many learned men. "pain arouses, softens, breaks, and destroys. regarded from a sufficiently removed standpoint, it appears as a medicine, as a knife, as a weapon, as a poison, in turn. it is an implement, a thing which is used, evidently. what we desire to discover is, who is the user; what part of ourselves is it that demands the presence of this thing so hateful to the rest?" the task is, to rise above both pain and pleasure and unite them to our service. "pain and pleasure stand apart and separate, as do the two sexes; and it is in the merging, the making the two into one, that joy and deep sensation and profound peace are obtained. where there is neither male nor female, neither pain nor pleasure, there is the god in man dominant, and then is life real." the following passage can hardly fail to startle many good people: "destiny, the inevitable, does indeed exist for the race and for the individual; but who can ordain this save the man himself? there is no clew in heaven or earth to the existence of any ordainer other than the man who suffers or enjoys that which is ordained." but can any earnest student of theosophy deny, or object to this? is it not a pure statement of the law of karma? does it not agree perfectly with the teaching of the bhagavat-gita? there is surely no power which sits apart like a judge in court, and fines us or rewards us for this misstep or that merit; it is we who shape, or ordain, our own future. god is not denied. the seeming paradox that a god exists within each man is made clear when we perceive that our separate existence is an illusion; the physical, which makes us separate individuals, must eventually fall away, leaving each man one with all men, and with god, who is the infinite. and the passage which will surely be widely misunderstood is that in "the secret of strength." "religion holds a man back from the path, prevents his stepping forward, for various very plain reasons. first, it makes the vital mistake of distinguishing between good and evil. nature knows no such distinctions." religion is always man-made. it cannot therefore be the whole truth. it is a good thing for the ordinary and outside man, but surely it will never bring him to the gates of gold. if religion be of god how is it that we find that same god in his own works and acts violating the precepts of religion? he kills each man once in life; every day the fierce elements and strange circumstances which he is said to be the author of, bring on famine, cold and innumerable untimely deaths; where then, in the true, can there be any room for such distinctions as right and wrong? the disciple, must as he walks on the path, abide by law and order, but if he pins his faith on any religion whatever he will stop at once, and it makes no matter whether he sets up mahatmas, gods, krishna, vedas or mysterious acts of grace, each of these will stop him and throw him into a rut from which even heavenly death will not release him. religion can only teach morals and ethics. it cannot answer the question "what am i?" the buddhist ascetic holds a fan before his eyes to keep away the sight of objects condemned by his religion. but he thereby gains no knowledge, for that part of him which is affected by the improper sights has to be known by the man himself, and it is by experience alone that the knowledge can be possessed and assimilated. the book closes gloriously, with some hints that have been much needed. too many, even of the sincerest students of occultism, have sought to ignore that one-half of their nature, which is here taught to be necessary. instead of crushing out the animal nature, we have here the high and wise teaching that we must learn to fully understand the animal and subordinate it to the spiritual. "the god in man, degraded, is a thing unspeakable in its infamous power of production. the animal in man, elevated, is a thing unimaginable in its great powers of service and of strength," and we [are] told that our animal self is a great force, the secret of the old-world magicians, and of the coming race which lord lytton foreshadowed. "but this power can only be attained by giving the god the sovereignty. make your animal ruler over your self, and he will never rule others." this teaching will be seen to be identical with that of the closing words of _the idyll of the white lotus_: "he will learn how to expound spiritual truths, and to enter into the life of his highest self, and he can learn also to hold within him the glory of that higher self, and yet to retain life upon this planet so long as it shall last, if need be; to retain life in the vigor of manhood, till his entire work is completed, and he has taught the three truths to all who look for light." there are three sentences in the book which ought to be imprinted in the reader's mind, and we present them inversely: "secreted and hidden in the heart of the world and the heart of man is the light which can illumine all life, the future and the past." "on the mental steps of a million men buddha passed through the gates of gold; and because a great crowd pressed about the threshold he was able to leave behind him words which prove that those gates will open." "this is one of the most important factors in the development of man, the recognition--profound and complete recognition--of the law of universal unity and coherence." the higher powers of mind and spirit by ralph waldo trine author of "in tune with the infinite," etc. london g. bell and sons, ltd. first published may reprinted november . reprinted , , , . printed in great britain by robert maclehose and co. ltd. the university press, glasgow foreword we are all dwellers in two kingdoms, the inner kingdom, the kingdom of the mind and spirit, and the outer kingdom, that of the body and the physical universe about us. in the former, the kingdom of the unseen, lie the silent, subtle forces that are continually determining, and with exact precision, the conditions of the latter. to strike the right balance in life is one of the supreme essentials of all successful living. we must work, for we must have bread. we require other things than bread. they are not only valuable, comfortable, but necessary. it is a dumb, stolid being, however, who does not realize that life consists of more than these. they spell mere existence, not abundance, fullness of life. we can become so absorbed in making a living that we have no time _for living_. to be capable and efficient in one's work is a splendid thing; but efficiency _can be made_ a great mechanical device that robs life of far more than it returns it. a nation can become so possessed, and even obsessed, with the idea of power and grandeur through efficiency and organisation, that it becomes a great machine and robs its people of the finer fruits of life that spring from a wisely subordinated and coordinated individuality. here again it is the wise balance that determines all. our prevailing thoughts and emotions determine, and with absolute accuracy, the prevailing conditions of our outward, material life, and likewise the prevailing conditions of our bodily life. would we have any conditions different in the latter we must then make the necessary changes in the former. the silent, subtle forces of mind and spirit, ceaselessly at work, are continually moulding these outward and these bodily conditions. he makes a fundamental error who thinks that these are mere sentimental things in life, vague and intangible. they are, as great numbers are now realising, the great and elemental things in life, the only things that in the end really count. the normal man or woman can never find real and abiding satisfaction in the mere possessions, the mere accessories of life. there is an eternal something within that forbids it. that is the reason why, of late years, so many of our big men of affairs, so many in various public walks in life, likewise many women of splendid equipment and with large possessions, have been and are turning so eagerly to the very things we are considering. to be a mere huckster, many of our big men are finding, cannot bring satisfaction, even though his operations run into millions in the year. and happy is the young man or the young woman who, while the bulk of life still lies ahead, realises that it is the things of the mind and the spirit--the fundamental things in life--that really count; that here lie the forces that are to be understood and to be used in moulding the everyday conditions and affairs of life; that the springs of life are all from within, that as is the inner so always and inevitably will be the outer. to present certain facts that may be conducive to the realisation of this more abundant life is the author's purpose and plan. r. w. t. _sunnybrae farm, croton-on-hudson, new york._ contents chapter page i. the silent, subtle building forces of mind and spirit ii. soul, mind, body--the subconscious mind that interrelates them iii. the way mind through the subconscious mind builds body iv. the powerful aid of the mind in rebuilding body--how body helps mind v. thought as a force in daily living vi. jesus the supreme exponent of the inner forces and powers: his people's religion and their condition vii. the divine rule in the mind and heart: the unessentials we drop--the spirit abides viii. if we seek the essence of his revelation, and the purpose of his life ix. his purpose of lifting up, energising, beautifying, and saving the entire life: the saving of the soul is secondary; but follows x. some methods of attainment xi. some methods of expression xii. the world war--its meaning and its lessons for us xiii. our sole agency of international peace, and international concord xiv. the world's balance-wheel the higher powers of mind and spirit i the silent, subtle building forces of mind and spirit there are moments in the lives of all of us when we catch glimpses of a life--our life--that is infinitely beyond the life we are now living. we realise that we are living below our possibilities. we long for the realisation of the life that we feel should be. instinctively we perceive that there are within us powers and forces that we are making but inadequate use of, and others that we are scarcely using at all. practical metaphysics, a more simplified and concrete psychology, well-known laws of mental and spiritual science, confirm us in this conclusion. our own william james, he who so splendidly related psychology, philosophy, and even religion, to life in a supreme degree, honoured his calling and did a tremendous service for all mankind, when he so clearly developed the fact that we have within us powers and forces that we are making all too little use of--that we have within us great reservoirs of power that we have as yet scarcely tapped. the men and the women who are awake to these inner helps--these directing, moulding, and sustaining powers and forces that belong to the realm of mind and spirit--are never to be found among those who ask: is life worth the living? for them life has been multiplied two, ten, a hundred fold. it is not ordinarily because we are not interested in these things, for instinctively we feel them of value; and furthermore our observations and experiences confirm us in this thought. the pressing cares of the everyday life--in the great bulk of cases, the bread and butter problem of life, which is after all the problem of ninety-nine out of every hundred--all seem to conspire to keep us from giving the time and attention to them that we feel we should give them. but we lose thereby tremendous helps to the daily living. through the body and its avenues of sense, we are intimately related to the physical universe about us. through the soul and spirit we are related to the infinite power that is the animating, the sustaining force--the life force--of all objective material forms. it is through the medium of the mind that we are able consciously to relate the two. through it we are able to realise the laws that underlie the workings of the spirit, and to open ourselves that they may become the dominating forces of our lives. there is a divine current that will bear us with peace and safety on its bosom if we are wise and diligent enough to find it and go with it. battling against the current is always hard and uncertain. going with the current lightens the labours of the journey. instead of being continually uncertain and even exhausted in the mere efforts of getting through, we have time for the enjoyments along the way, as well as the ability to call a word of cheer or to lend a hand to the neighbour, also on the way. the _natural, normal life_ is by a law divine under the guidance of the spirit. it is only when we fail to seek and to follow this guidance, or when we deliberately take ourselves from under its influence, that uncertainties arise, legitimate longings go unfulfilled, and that violated laws bring their penalties. it is well that we remember always that violated law carries with it its own penalty. the supreme intelligence--god, if you please--does not punish. he works through the channel of great immutable systems of law. _it is ours to find these laws._ that is what mind, intelligence, is for. knowing them we can then obey them and reap the beneficent results that are always a part of their fulfilment; knowingly or unknowingly, intentionally or unintentionally, we can fail to observe them, we can violate them, and suffer the results, or even be broken by them. life is not so complex if we do not so continually persist in making it so. supreme intelligence, creative power works only through law. science and religion are but different approaches to our understanding of the law. when both are real, they supplement one another and their findings are identical. the old hebrew prophets, through the channel of the spirit, perceived and enunciated some wonderful laws of the natural and normal life--that are now being confirmed by well-established laws of mental and spiritual science--and that are now producing these identical results in the lives of great numbers among us today, when they said: "and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, this is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the left." and again: "the lord is with you, while ye be with him; and if ye seek him, he will be found of you; but if ye forsake him, he will forsake you." "thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee; because he trusteth in thee." "the lord in the midst of thee is mighty." "he that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the almighty." "thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee." "commit thy way unto the lord: trust also in him and he shall bring it to pass." now these formulations all mean something of a _very definite nature_, or, they mean nothing at all. if they are actual expressions of fact, they are governed by certain definite and immutable laws. these men gave us, however, no knowledge of _the laws_ underlying the workings of these inner forces and powers; they perhaps had no such knowledge themselves. they were intuitive perceptions of truth on their part. the scientific spirit of this, our age, was entirely unknown to them. the growth of the race in the meantime, the development of the scientific spirit in the pursuit and the finding of truth, makes us infinitely beyond them in some things, while in others they were far ahead of us. but this fact remains, and this is the important fact: if these things were actual facts in the lives of these early hebrew prophets, they are then actual facts in our lives right now, today; or, if not actual facts, then they are facts that still lie in the realm of the potential, only waiting to be brought into the realm of the actual. these were not unusual men in the sense that the infinite power, god, if you please, could or did speak to them alone. they are types, they are examples of how any man or any woman, through desire and through will, can open himself or herself to the leadings of divine wisdom, and have actualised in his or her life an ever-growing sense of divine power. for truly "god is the same yesterday, and today, and forever." his laws are unchanging as well as immutable. none of these men taught, then, how to recognise the divine voice within, nor how to become continually growing embodiments of the divine power. they gave us perhaps, though, all they were able to give. then came jesus, the successor of this long line of illustrious hebrew prophets, with a greater aptitude for the things of the spirit--the supreme embodiment of divine realisation and revelation. with a greater knowledge of truth than they, he did greater things than they. he not only did these works, but he showed how he did them. he not only revealed _the way_, but so earnestly and so diligently he implored his hearers to follow _the way_. he makes known the secret of his insight and his power: "the words that i speak unto you i speak not of myself: but the father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." again, "i can of my own self do nothing." and he then speaks of his purpose, his aim: "i am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly." a little later he adds: "the works that i do ye shall do also." now again, these things mean something of a very definite nature, or they mean nothing at all. the works done, the results achieved by jesus' own immediate disciples and followers, and in turn their followers, as well as in the early church for close to two hundred years after his time, all attest the truth of his teaching and demonstrate unmistakably the results that follow. down through the intervening centuries, the teachings, the lives and the works of various seers, sages, and mystics, within the church and out of the church, have likewise attested the truth of his teachings. the bulk of the christian world, however, since the third century, has been so concerned with various theories and teachings _concerning_ jesus, that it has missed almost completely the real vital and vitalising teachings _of_ jesus. we have not been taught primarily to follow his injunctions, and to apply the truths that he revealed to the problems of our everyday living. within the last two score of years or a little more, however, there has been a great going back directly to the teachings of jesus, and a determination to prove their truth and to make effective their assurances. also various laws in the realm of mental and spiritual science have become clearly established and clearly formulated, that confirm all his fundamental teachings. there are now definite and well-defined laws in relation to thought as a force, and the methods as to how it determines our material and bodily conditions. there are now certain well-defined laws pertaining to the subconscious mind, its ceaseless building activities, how it always takes its direction from the active, thinking mind, and how through this channel we may connect ourselves with reservoirs of power, so to speak, in an intelligent and effective manner. there are now well-understood laws underlying mental suggestion, whereby it can be made a tremendous source of power in our own lives, and can likewise be made an effective agency in arousing the motive powers of another for his or her healing, habit-forming, character-building. there are likewise well-established facts not only as to the value, but the absolute need of periods of meditation and quiet, alone with the source of our being, stilling the outer bodily senses, and fulfilling the conditions whereby the voice of the spirit can speak to us and through us, and the power of the spirit can manifest in and through us. a nation is great only as its people are great. its people are great in the degree that they strike the balance between the life of the mind and the spirit--all the finer forces and emotions of life--and their outer business organisation and activities. when the latter become excessive, when they grow at the expense of the former, then the inevitable decay sets in, that spells the doom of that nation, and its time is tolled off in exactly the same manner, and under the same law, as has that of all the other nations before it that sought to reverse the divine order of life. the human soul and its welfare is the highest business that any state can give its attention to. to recognise or to fail to recognise the value of the human soul in other nations, determines its real greatness and grandeur, or its self-complacent but essential vacuity. it is possible for a nation, through subtle delusions, to get such an attack of the big head that it bends over backwards, and it is liable, in this exposed position, to get a thrust in its vitals. to be carried too far along the road of efficiency, big business, expansion, world power, domination, at the expense of the great spiritual verities, the fundamental humanities of national life, that make for the real life and welfare of its people, and that give also its true and just relations with other nations and their people, is both dangerous and in the end suicidal--it can end in nothing but loss and eventual disaster. a silent revolution of thought is taking place in the minds of the people of all nations at this time, and will continue for some years to come. a stock-taking period in which tremendous revaluations are under way, is on. it is becoming clear-cut and decisive. ii soul, mind, body--the subconscious mind that interrelates them there is a notable twofold characteristic of this our age--we might almost say: of this our generation. it is on the one hand a tremendously far-reaching interest in the deeper spiritual realities of life, in the things of the mind and the spirit. on the other hand, there is a materialism that is apparent to all, likewise far-reaching. we are witnessing the two moving along, apparently at least, side by side. there are those who believe that out of the latter the former is arising, that we are witnessing another great step forward on the part of the human race--a new era or age, so to speak. there are many things that would indicate this to be a fact. the fact that the _material alone_ does not satisfy, and that from the very constitution of the human mind and soul, it cannot satisfy, may be a fundamental reason for this. it may be also that as we are apprehending, to a degree never equalled in the world's history, the finer forces in nature, and are using them in a very practical and useful way in the affairs and the activities of the daily life, we are also and perhaps in a more pronounced degree, realising, understanding, and using the finer, the higher insights and forces, and therefore powers, of mind, of spirit, and of body. i think there is a twofold reason for this widespread and rapidly increasing interest. a new psychology, or perhaps it were better to say, some new and more fully established laws of psychology, pertaining to the realm of the subconscious mind, its nature, and its peculiar activities and powers, has brought us another agency in life of tremendous significance and of far-reaching practical use. another reason is that the revelation and the religion of jesus the christ is witnessing a _new birth_, as it were. we are finding at last an entirely new content in his teachings, as well as in his life. we are dropping our interest in those phases of a christianity that he probably never taught, and that we have many reasons now to believe he never even thought--things that were added long years after his time. we are conscious, however, as never before, that that wonderful revelation, those wonderful teachings, and above all that wonderful life, have a content that can, that does, inspire, lift up, and make more effective, more powerful, more successful, and more happy, the life of every man and every woman who will accept, who will appropriate, who will live his teachings. look at it, however we will, this it is that accounts for the vast number of earnest, thoughtful, forward looking men and women who are passing over, and in many cases are passing from, traditional christianity, and who either of their own initiative, or under other leadership, are going back to those simple, direct, god-impelling teachings of the great master. they are finding salvation in his teachings and his example, where they _never could_ find it in various phases of the traditional teachings _about_ him. it is interesting to realise, and it seems almost strange that this new finding in psychology, and that this new and vital content in christianity, have come about at almost identically the same time. yet it is not strange, for the one but serves to demonstrate in a concrete and understandable manner the fundamental and essential principles of the other. many of the master's teachings of the inner life, teachings of "the kingdom," given so far ahead of his time that the people in general, and in many instances even his disciples, were incapable of fully comprehending and understanding them, are now being confirmed and further elucidated by clearly defined laws of psychology. speculation and belief are giving way to a greater knowledge of law. the supernatural recedes into the background as we delve deeper into the supernormal. the unusual loses its miraculous element as we gain knowledge of the law whereby the thing is done. we are realising that no miracle has ever been performed in the world's history that was not through the understanding and the use of law. jesus did unusual things; but he did them because of his unusual understanding of the law through which they could be done. _he_ would not have us believe otherwise. to do so would be a distinct contradiction of the whole tenor of his teachings and his injunctions. ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free, was his own admonition. it was the great and passionate longing of his master heart that the people to whom he came, grasp the _interior meanings_ of his teachings. how many times he felt the necessity of rebuking even his disciples for dragging his teachings down through their material interpretations. as some of the very truths that he taught are now corroborated and more fully understood, and in some cases amplified by well-established laws of psychology, mystery recedes into the background. we are reconstructing a more natural, a more sane, a more common-sense portrait of the master. "it is the spirit that quickeneth," said he; "the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that i speak unto you, _they_ are spirit and _they_ are life." shall we recall again in this connection: "i am come that ye might have life and that ye might have it more abundantly"? when, therefore, we take him at his word, and listen intently to _his_ words, and not so much to the words of others about him; when we place our emphasis upon the fundamental spiritual truths that he revealed and that he pleaded so earnestly to be taken in the simple, direct way in which he taught them, we are finding that the religion of the christ means a clearer and healthier understanding of life and its problems through a greater knowledge of the elemental forces and laws of life. ignorance enchains and enslaves. truth--which is but another way of saying a clear and definite knowledge of law, the elemental laws of soul, of mind, and body, and of the universe about us--brings freedom. jesus revealed essentially a spiritual philosophy of life. his whole revelation pertained to the essential divinity of the human soul and the great gains that would follow the realisation of this fact. his whole teaching revolved continually around his own expression, used again and again, the kingdom of god, or the kingdom of heaven, and which he so distinctly stated was an inner state or consciousness or realisation. something not to be found outside of oneself but to be found _only within_. we make a great error to regard man as merely a duality--mind and body. man is a trinity,--soul, mind, and body, each with its own functions,--and it is the right coordinating of these that makes the truly efficient and eventually the perfect life. anything less is always one-sided and we may say, continually out of gear. it is essential to a correct understanding, and therefore for any adequate use of the potential powers and forces of the inner life, to realise this. it is the physical body that relates us to the physical universe about us, that in which we find ourselves in this present form of existence. but the body, wondrous as it is in its functions and its mechanism, is not the life. it has no life and no power in itself. it is of the earth, earthy. every particle of it has come from the earth through the food we eat in combination with the air we breathe and the water we drink, and every part of it in time will go back to the earth. it is the house we inhabit while here. we can make it a hovel or a mansion; we can make it even a pig-sty or a temple, according as the soul, the real self, chooses to function through it. we should make it servant, but through ignorance of the real powers within, we can permit it to become master. "know ye not," said the great apostle to the gentiles, "that your body is the temple of the holy ghost which is in you, which ye have of god, and ye are not your own?" the soul is the self, the soul made in the image of eternal divine life, which, as jesus said, is spirit. the essential reality of the soul is spirit. spirit--being--is one and indivisible, manifesting itself, however, in individual forms in existence. divine being and the human soul are therefore in essence the same, the same in quality. their difference, which, however, is very great--though less in some cases than in others--is a difference _in degree_. divine being is the cosmic force, the essential essence, the life therefore of all there is in existence. the soul is individual personal existence. the soul while in this form of existence manifests, functions through the channel of a material body. _it is the mind that relates the two._ it is through the medium of the mind that the two must be coordinated. the soul, the self, while in this form of existence, must have a body through which to function. the body, on the other hand, to reach and to maintain its highest state, must be continually infused with the life force of the soul. the life force of the soul is spirit. if spirit, then _essentially one_ with infinite divine spirit, for spirit, being, is one. the embodied soul finds itself the tenant of a material body in a material universe, and according to a plan as yet, at least, beyond our human understanding, whatever may be our thoughts, our theories regarding it. the whole order of life as we see it, all the world of nature about us, and we must believe the order of human life, is a gradual evolving from the lower to the higher, from the cruder to the finer. the purpose of life is unquestionably unfoldment, growth, advancement--likewise the evolving from the lower and the coarser to the higher and the finer. the higher insights and powers of the soul, always potential within, become of value only as they are realised and used. evolution implies always involution. the substance of all we shall ever attain or be, is within us now, waiting for realisation and thereby expression. the soul carries its own keys to all wisdom and to all valuable and usable power. it was that highly illumined seer, emanuel swedenborg, who said: "every created thing is in itself inanimate and dead, but it is animated and caused to live by this, that the divine is in it and that it exists in and from the divine." again: "the universal end of creation is that there should be an external union of the creator with the created universe; and this would not be possible unless there were beings in whom his divine might be present as if in itself; thus in whom it might dwell and abide. to be his abode, they must receive his love and wisdom by a power which seems to be their own; thus, must lift themselves up to the creator as if by their own power, and unite themselves with him. without this mutual action no union would be possible." and again: "every one who duly considers the matter may know that the body does not think, because it is material, but the soul, because it is spiritual. all the rational life, therefore, which appears in the body belongs to the spirit, for the matter of the body is annexed, and, as it were, joined to the spirit, in order that the latter may live and perform uses in the natural world.... since everything which lives in the body, and acts and feels by virtue of that life, belongs to the spirit alone, it follows that the spirit is the real man; or, what comes to the same thing, man himself is a spirit, in a form similar to that of his body." spirit being the real man, it follows that the great, central fact of all experience, of all human life, is the coming into a conscious, vital realisation of our source, of our real being, in other words, of our essential oneness with the spirit of infinite life and power--the source of all life and all power. we need not look for outside help when we have within us waiting to be realised, and thereby actualised, this divine birthright. browning was prophet as well as poet when in "paracelsus" he said: truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise from outward things, whate'er you may believe. there is an inmost centre in us all, where truth abides in fulness; and around wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, this perfect, clear perception--which is truth. a baffling and perverting carnal mesh binds it, and makes all error: and, to know rather consists in opening out a way whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, than in effecting entry for a light supposed to be without. how strangely similar in meaning it seems to that saying of an earlier prophet, isaiah: "and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, this is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the left." all great educators are men of great vision. it was dr. hiram corson who said: "it is what man draws up from his sub-self which is of prime importance in his true education, not what is put into him. it is the occasional uprising of our sub-selves that causes us, at times, to feel that we are greater than we know." a new psychology, spiritual science, a more commonsense interpretation of the great revelation of the christ of nazareth, all combine to enable us to make this occasional uprising our natural and normal state. no man has probably influenced the educational thought and practice of the entire world more than friedrich froebel. in that great book of his, "the education of man," he bases his entire system upon the following, which constitutes the opening of its first chapter: "in all things there lives and reigns an eternal law. this all-controlling law is necessarily based on an all-pervading, energetic, living, self-conscious, and hence eternal, unity.... _this unity is god._ all things have come from the divine unity, from god, and have their origin in the divine unity, in god alone. god is the sole source of all things. all things live and have their being in and through the divine unity, in and through god. all things are only through the divine effluence that lives in them. the divine effluence that lives in each thing is the essence of each thing. "it is the destiny and life work of all things to unfold their essence, hence their divine being, and, therefore, the divine unity itself--to reveal god in their external and transient being. it is the special destiny and life work of man, as an intelligent and rational being, to become fully, vividly, conscious of this essence of the divine effluence in him, and therefore of god. "the precept for life in general and for every one is: _exhibit only thy spiritual, thy life, in the external, and by means of the external in thy actions, and observe the requirements of thy inner being and its nature._" here is not only an undying basis for all real education, but also the basis of all true religion, as well as the basis of all ideal philosophy. yes, there could be no evolution, unless the essence of all to be evolved, unfolded, were already involved in the human soul. to follow the higher leadings of the soul, which is so constituted that it is the inlet, and as a consequence the outlet of divine spirit, creative energy, the real source of all wisdom and power; to project its leadings into every phase of material activity and endeavour, constitutes the ideal life. it was emerson who said: "every soul is not only the inlet, but may become the outlet of all there is in god." to keep this inlet open, so as not to shut out the divine inflow, is the secret of all higher achievement, as well as attainment. there is a wood separated by a single open field from my house. in it, halfway down a little hillside, there was some years ago a spring. it was at one time walled up with rather large loose stone--some three feet across at the top. in following a vaguely defined trail through the wood one day in the early spring, a trail at one time evidently considerably used, it led me to this spot. i looked at the stone enclosure, partly moss-grown. i wondered why, although the ground was wet around it, there was no water in or running from what had evidently been at one time a well-used spring. a few days later when the early summer work was better under way, i took an implement or two over, and half scratching, half digging inside the little wall, i found layer after layer of dead leaves and sediment, dead leaves and sediment. presently water became evident, and a little later it began to rise within the wall. in a short time there was nearly three feet of water. it was cloudy, no bottom could be seen. i sat down and waited for it to settle. presently i discerned a ledge bottom and the side against the hill was also ledge. on this side, close to the bottom, i caught that peculiar movement of little particles of silvery sand, and looking more closely i could see a cleft in the rock where the water came gushing and bubbling in. soon the entire spring became clear as crystal, and the water finding evidently its old outlet, made its way down the little hillside. i was soon able to trace and to uncover its course as it made its way to the level place below. as the summer went on i found myself going to the spot again and again. flowers that i found in no other part of the wood, before the autumn came were blooming along the little watercourse. birds in abundance came to drink and to bathe. several times i have found the half-tame deer there. twice we were but thirty to forty paces apart. they have watched my approach, and as i stopped, have gone on with their drinking, evidently unafraid--as if it were likewise their possession. and so it is. after spending a most valuable hour or two in the quiet there one afternoon, i could not help but wonder as i walked home whether perchance the spring may not be actually happy in being able to resume its life, to fulfil, so to speak, its destiny; happy also in the service it renders flowers and the living wild things--happy in the service it renders even me. i am doubly happy and a hundred times repaid in the little help i gave it. it needed help, to enable it effectively to keep connection with its source. as it became gradually shut off from this, it weakened, became then stagnant, and finally it ceased its active life. containing a fundamental truth deeper perhaps than we realise, are these words of that gifted seer, emanuel swedenborg: "there is only one fountain of life, and the life of man is a stream therefrom, which if it were not continually replenished from its source would instantly cease to flow." and likewise these: "those who think in the light of interior reason can see that all things are connected by intermediate links with the first cause, and that whatever is not maintained in that connection must cease to exist." there is a mystic force that transcends any powers of the intellect or of the body, that becomes manifest and operative in the life of man when this god-consciousness becomes awakened and permeates his entire being. failure to realise and to keep in constant communion with our source is what causes fears, forebodings, worry, inharmony, conflict, conflict that downs us many times in mind, in spirit, in body--failure to follow that light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, failure to hear and to heed that voice of the soul, that speaks continually clearer as we accustom ourselves to listen to and to heed it, failure to follow those intuitions with which the soul, every soul, is endowed, and that lead us aright and that become clearer in their leadings as we follow them. it is this guidance and this sustaining power that all great souls fall back upon in times of great crises. this single stanza by edwin markham voices the poet's inspiration: at the heart of the cyclone tearing the sky, and flinging the clouds and the towers by, is a place of central calm; so, here in the roar of mortal things i have a place where my spirit sings, in the hollow of god's palm. "that the divine life and energy _actually lives in us_," was the philosopher fichte's reply to the proposition--"the profoundest knowledge that man can attain." and speaking of the man to whom this becomes a real, vital, conscious realisation, he said: "his whole existence flows forth, softly and gently, from his inward being, and issues out into reality without difficulty or hindrance." there are certain faculties that we have that are not a part of the active thinking mind; they seem to be no part of what we might term our _conscious intelligence_. they transcend any possible activities of our regular mental processes, and they are in some ways independent of them. through some avenue, suggestions, intuitions of truth, intuitions of occurrences of which through the thinking mind we could know nothing, are at times borne in upon us; they flash into our consciousness, as we say, quite independent of any mental action on our part, and sometimes when we are thinking of something quite foreign to that which comes to, that which "impresses" us. this seems to indicate a source of knowledge, a faculty that is distinct from, but that acts in various ways in conjunction with, the active thinking mind. it performs likewise certain very definite and distinct functions in connection with the body. it is this that is called the _subconscious mind_--by some the superconscious or the supernormal mind, by others the subliminal self. just what the subconscious mind is no man knows. it is easier to define its functions and to describe its activities than it is to state in exact terms what it is. it is similar in this respect to the physical force--if it be a physical force--electricity. it is only of late years that we know anything of electricity at all. today we know a great deal of its nature and the laws of its action. no man living can tell exactly what electricity is. we are nevertheless making wonderful _practical applications_ of it. we are learning more _about it_ continually. some day we may know what it _actually is_. the fact that the subconscious mind seems to function in a realm apart from anything that has to do with our conscious mental processes, and also that it has some definite functions as both directing and building functions to perform in connection with the body, and that it is at the same time subject to suggestion and direction from the active thinking mind, would indicate that it may be the true connecting link, the medium of exchange, between the soul and the body, the connector of the spiritual and the material so far as man is concerned. iii the way mind through the subconscious mind builds body when one says that he numbers among his acquaintances some who are as old at sixty as some others are at eighty, he but gives expression to a fact that has become the common possession of many. i have known those who at fifty-five and sixty were to all intents and purposes really older, more decrepit, and rapidly growing still more decrepit both in mind and body, than many another at seventy and seventy-five and even at eighty. history, then, is replete with instances, memorable instances, of people, both men and women, who have accomplished things at an age--who have even begun and carried through to successful completion things at an age that would seem to thousands of others, in the captivity of age, with their backs to the future, ridiculous even to think of accomplishing, much less of beginning. on account of a certain law that has always seemed to me to exist and that i am now firmly convinced is very _exact_ in its workings, i have been interested in talking with various ones and in getting together various facts relative to this great discrepancy in the ages of these two classes of "old" people. within the year i called upon a friend whom, on account of living in a different portion of the country, i hadn't seen for nearly ten years. conversation revealed to me the fact that he was then in his eighty-eighth year. i could notice scarcely a change in his appearance, walk, voice, and spirit. we talked at length upon the various, so-called, periods of life. he told me that about the only difference that he noticed in himself as compared with his middle life was that now when he goes out to work in his garden, and among his trees, bushes, and vines--and he has had many for many years--he finds that he is quite ready to quit and to come in at the end of about two hours, and sometimes a little sooner, when formerly he could work regularly without fatigue for the entire half day. in other words, he has not the same degree of endurance that he once had. among others, there comes to mind in this connection another who is a little under seventy. it chances to be a woman. she is bent and decrepit and growing more so by very fixed stages each twelvemonth. i have known her for over a dozen years. at the time when i first knew her she was scarcely fifty-eight, she was already bent and walked with an uncertain, almost faltering tread. the dominant note of her personality was then as now, but more so now, fear for the present, fear for the future, a dwelling continually on her ills, her misfortunes, her symptoms, her approaching and increasing helplessness. such cases i have observed again and again; so have all who are at all interested in life and in its forces and its problems. what is the cause of this almost world-wide difference in these two lives? in this case it is as clear as day--the mental characteristics and the mental habits of each. in the first case, here was one who early got a little philosophy into his life and then more as the years passed. he early realised that in himself his good or his ill fortune lay; that the mental attitude we take toward anything determines to a great extent our power in connection with it, as well as its effects upon us. he grew to love his work and he did it daily, but never under high pressure. he was therefore benefited by it. his face was always to the future, even as it is today. this he made one of the fundamental rules of his life. he was helped in this, he told me in substance, by an early faith which with the passing of the years has ripened with him into a demonstrable conviction--that there is a spirit of infinite life back of all, working in love in and through the lives of all, and that in the degree that we realise it as the one supreme source of our lives, and when through desire and will, which is through the channel of our thoughts, we open our lives so that this higher power can work definitely in and through us, and then go about and do our daily work without fears or forebodings, the passing of the years sees only the highest good entering into our lives. in the case of the other one whom we have mentioned, a repetition seems scarcely necessary. suffice it to say that the common expression on the part of those who know her--i have heard it numbers of times--is: "what a blessing it will be to herself and to others when she has gone!" a very general rule with but few exceptions can be laid down as follows: the body ordinarily looks as old as the mind thinks and feels. shakespeare anticipated by many years the best psychology of the times when he said: "it is the mind that makes the body rich." it seems to me that our great problem, or rather our chief concern, should not be so much how to stay young in the sense of possessing all the attributes of youth, _for the passing of the years does bring changes_, but how to pass gracefully, and even magnificently, and with undiminished vigour from youth to middle age, and then how to carry that middle age into approaching old age, with a great deal more of the vigour and the outlook of middle life than _we ordinarily do_. the mental as well as the physical helps that are now in the possession of this our generation, are capable of working a revolution in the lives of many who are or who may become sufficiently awake to them, so that with them there will not be that--shall we say--immature passing from middle life into a broken, purposeless, decrepit, and sunless, and one might almost say, soulless old age. it seems too bad that so many among us just at the time that they have become of most use to themselves, their families, and to the world, should suddenly halt and then continue in broken health, and in so many cases lie down and die. increasing numbers of thinking people the world over are now, as never before, finding that this is not necessary, that something is at fault, that that fault is in ourselves. if so, then reversely, the remedy lies in ourselves, in our own hands, so to speak. in order to actualise and to live this better type of life we have got to live better from both sides, both the mental and the physical, this with all due respect to shakespeare and to all modern mental scientists. the body itself, what we term the physical body, whatever may be the facts regarding a finer spiritual body within it all the time giving form to and animating and directing all its movements, is of material origin, and derives its sustenance from the food we take, from the air we breathe, the water we drink. in this sense it is from the earth, and when we are through with it, it will go back to the earth. the body, however, is not the life; it is merely the material agency that enables the life to manifest in a material universe for a certain, though not necessarily a given, period of time. it is the life, or the soul, or the personality that uses, and that in using shapes and moulds, the body and that also determines its strength or its weakness. when this is separated from the body, the body at once becomes a cold, inert mass, commencing immediately to decompose into the constituent material elements that composed it--literally going back to the earth and the elements whence it came. it is through the instrumentality or the agency of thought that the life, the self, uses, and manifests through, the body. again, while it is true that the food that is taken and assimilated nourishes, sustains and builds the body, it is also true that the condition and the operation of the mind through the avenue of thought determines into what shape or form the body is so builded. so in this sense it is true that mind builds body; it is the agency, the force that determines the shaping of the material elements. here is a wall being built. bricks are the material used in its construction. we do not say that the bricks are building the wall; we say that the mason is building it, as is the case. he is using the material that is supplied him, in this case bricks, giving form and structure in a definite, methodical manner. again, back of the mason is his mind, acting through the channel of his thought, that is directing his hands and all his movements. without this guiding, directing _force_ no wall could take shape, even if millions of bricks were delivered upon the scene. so it is with the body. we take the food, the water, we breathe the air; but this is all and always acted upon by a higher force. thus it is that mind builds body, the same as in every department of our being it is the great builder. our thoughts shape and determine our features, our walk, the posture of our bodies, our voices; they determine the effectiveness of our mental and our physical activities, as well as all our relations with and influence or effects upon others. you say: "i admit the operation of and even in certain cases the power of thought, also that at times it has an influence upon our general feelings, but i do not admit that it can have any direct influence upon the body." here is one who has allowed herself to be long given to grief, abnormally so--notice her lowered physical condition, her lack of vitality. the new york papers within the past twelve months recorded the case of a young lady in new jersey who, from _constant_ grieving over the death of her mother, died, fell dead, within a week. a man is handed a telegram. he is eating and enjoying his dinner. he reads the contents of the message. almost immediately afterward, his body is a-tremble, his face either reddens or grows "ashy white," his appetite is gone; such is the effect of the mind upon the stomach that it literally refuses the food; if forced upon it, it may reject it entirely. a message is delivered to a lady. she is in a genial, happy mood. her face whitens; she trembles and her body falls to the ground in a faint, temporarily helpless, apparently lifeless. such are the intimate relations between the mind and the body. raise a cry of fire in a crowded theatre. it may be a false alarm. there are among the audience those who become seemingly palsied, powerless to move. it is the state of the mind, and within several seconds, that has determined the state of these bodies. such are examples of the wonderfully quick influence of the mind on the body. great stress, or anxiety, or fear, may in two weeks' or even in two days' time so work its ravages that the person looks ten years or even twenty years older. a person has been long given to worry, or perhaps to worry in extreme form though not so long--a well-defined case of indigestion and general stomach trouble, with a generally lowered and sluggish vitality, has become pronounced and fixed. any type of thought that prevails in our mental lives will in time produce its correspondences in our physical lives. as we understand better these laws of correspondences, we will be more careful as to the types of thoughts and emotions we consciously, or unwittingly, entertain and live with. the great bulk of all diseases, we will find, as we are continually finding more and more, are in the mind before being in the body, or are generated in the body through certain states and conditions of mind. the present state and condition of the body have been produced primarily by the thoughts that have been taken by the conscious mind into the subconscious, that is so intimately related to and that directs all the subconscious and involuntary functions of the body. says one: it may be true that the mind has had certain effects upon the body; but to be able _consciously_ to affect the body through the mind is impossible and even unthinkable, for the body is a solid, fixed, material form. we must get over the idea, as we quickly will, if we study into the matter, that the body, in fact anything that we call material and solid, is really solid. even in the case of a piece of material as "solid" as a bar of steel, the atoms forming the molecules are in continual action each in conjunction with its neighbour. in the last analysis the body is composed of cells--cells of bone, vital organ, flesh, sinew. in the body the cells are continually changing, forming and reforming. death would quickly take place were this not true. nature is giving us a new body practically every year. there are very few elements, cells, in the body of today that were there a year ago. the rapidity with which a cut or wound on the body is replaced by healthy tissue, the rapidity with which it heals, is an illustration of this. one "touches" himself in shaving. in a week, sometimes in less than a week, if the blood and the cell structure be particularly healthy, there is no trace of the cut, the formation of new cell tissue has completely repaired it. through the formation of new cell structure the life-force within, acting through the blood, is able to rebuild and repair, if not too much interfered with, very rapidly. the reason, we may say almost the sole reason, that surgery has made such great advances during the past few years, so much greater correspondingly than medicine, is on account of a knowledge of the importance of and the use of antiseptics--keeping the wound clean and entirely free from all extraneous matter. so then, the greater portion of the body is really new, therefore young, in that it is almost entirely this year's growth. newness of form is continually being produced in the body by virtue of this process of perpetual renewal that is continually going on, and the new cells and tissues are just as new as is the new leaf that comes forth in the springtime to take the place of and to perform the same functions as the one that was thrown off by the tree last autumn. the skin renews itself through the casting off of used cells (those that have already performed their functions) most rapidly, taking but a few weeks. the muscles, the vital organs, the entire arterial system, the brain and the nervous system all take longer, but all are practically renewed within a year, some in much less time. then comes the bony structure, taking the longest, varying, we are told, from seven and eight months to a year, in unusual cases fourteen months and longer. it is, then, through this process of cell formation that the physical body has been built up, and through the same process that it is continually renewing itself. it is not therefore at any time or at any age a solid fixed mass or material, but a structure in a continually changing fluid form. it is therefore easy to see how we have it in our power, when we are once awake to the relations between the conscious mind and the subconscious--and it in turn in its relations to the various involuntary and vital functions of the body--to determine to a great extent how the body shall be built or how it shall be rebuilt. mentally to live in any state or attitude of mind is to take that state or condition into the subconscious. _the subconscious mind does and always will produce in the body after its own kind._ it is through this law that we externalise and become in body what we live in our minds. if we have predominating visions of and harbour thoughts of old age and weakness, this state, with all its attendant circumstances, will become externalised in our bodies far more quickly than if we entertain thoughts and visions of a different type. said archdeacon wilberforce in a notable address in westminster abbey some time ago: "the recent researches of scientific men, endorsed by experiments in the salpétrière in paris, have drawn attention to the intensely creative power of suggestions made by the conscious mind to the subconscious mind." iv the powerful aid of the mind in rebuilding body--how body helps mind "the body looks," some one has said, "as old as the mind feels." by virtue of a great mental law and at the same time chemical law we are well within the realm of truth when we say: the body ordinarily is as old as the mind feels. every living organism is continually going through two processes: it is continually dying, and continually being renewed through the operation and the power of the life force within it. in the human body it is through the instrumentality of the cell that this process is going on. the cell is the ultimate constituent in the formation and in the life of tissue, fibre, tendon, bone, muscle, brain, nerve system, vital organ. it is the instrumentality that nature, as we say, uses to do her work. the cell is formed; it does its work; it serves its purpose and dies; and all the while new cells are being formed to take its place. this process of new cell formation is going on in the body of each of us much more rapidly and uniformly than we think. science has demonstrated the fact that there are very few cells in the body today that were there twelve months ago. the form of the body remains practically the same; but its constituent elements are in a constant state of change. the body, therefore, is continually changing; it is never in a fixed state in the sense of being a solid, but is always in a changing, fluid state. it is being continually remade. it is the life, or the life force within, acting under the direction and guidance of the subconscious or subjective mind that is the agency through which this continually new cell-formation process is going on. the subconscious mind is, nevertheless, always subject to suggestions and impressions that are conveyed to it by the conscious or sense mind; and here lies the great fact, the one all-important fact for us so far as desirable or undesirable, so far as healthy or unhealthy, so far as normal or aging body-building is concerned. that we have it in our power to determine our physical and bodily conditions to a far greater extent than we do is an undeniable fact. that we have it in our power to determine and to dictate the conditions of "old age" to a marvellous degree is also an undeniable fact--if we are sufficiently keen and sufficiently awake to begin early enough. if any arbitrary divisions of the various periods of life were allowable, i should make the enumeration as follows: youth, barring the period of babyhood, to forty-five; middle age, forty-five to sixty; approaching age, sixty to seventy-five; old age, seventy-five to ninety-five and a hundred. that great army of people who "age" long before their time, that likewise great army of both men and women who along about middle age, say from forty-five to sixty, break and, as we say, all of a sudden go to pieces, and many die, just at the period when they should be in the prime of life, in the full vigour of manhood and womanhood and of greatest value to themselves, to their families, and to the world, is something that is _contrary to nature_, and is one of the pitiable conditions of our time. a greater knowledge, a little foresight, a little care in _time_ could prevent this in the great majority of cases, in ninety cases out of every hundred, without question. abounding health and strength--wholeness--is the natural law of the body. the life force of the body, acting always under the direction of the subconscious mind, _will build, and always does build_, healthily and normally, unless too much interfered with. it is this that determines the type of the cell structure that is continually being built into the body from the available portions of the food that we take to give nourishment to the body. it is affected for good or for bad, helped or hindered, in its operation by the type of conscious thought that is directed toward it, and that it is always influenced by. of great suggestive value is the following by an able writer and practitioner: "god has managed, and perpetually manages, to insert into our nature a tendency toward health, and against the unnatural condition which we call disease. when our flesh receives a wound, a strange nursing and healing process is immediately commenced to repair the injury. so in all diseases, organic or functional, this mysterious healing power sets itself to work at once to triumph over the morbid condition.... cannot this healing process be greatly accelerated by a voluntary and conscious action of the mind, assisted, if need be, by some other person? i unhesitatingly affirm, from experience and observation, that it can. by some volitional, mental effort and process of thought, this sanative colatus, or healing power which god has given to our physiological organism, may be greatly quickened and intensified in its action upon the body. here is the secret philosophy of the cures effected by jesus christ.... there is a law of the action of mind on the body that is no more an impenetrable mystery than the law of gravitation. it can be understood and acted upon in the cure of disease as well as any other law of nature." if, then, it be possible through this process to change physical conditions in the body even after they have taken form and have become fixed, as we say, isn't it possible even more easily to determine the type of cell structure that is grown in the first place? the ablest minds in the world have thought and are thinking that if we could find a way of preventing the hardening of the cells of the system, producing in turn hardened arteries and what is meant by the general term "ossification," that the process of aging, growing old, could be greatly retarded, and that the condition of perpetual youth that we seem to catch glimpses of in rare individuals here and there could be made a more common occurrence than we find it today. the cause of ossification is partly mental, partly physical, and in connection with them both are hereditary influences and conditions that have to be taken into consideration. shall we look for a moment to the first? the food that is taken into the system, or the available portions of the food, is the building material; but the mind is always the builder. there are, then, two realms of mind, the conscious and the subconscious. another way of expressing it would be to say that mind functions through two avenues--the avenue of the conscious and the avenue of the subconscious. the conscious is the thinking mind; the subconscious is the doing mind. the conscious is the sense mind, it comes in contact with and is acted upon through the avenue of the five senses. the subconscious is that quiet, finer, all-permeating inner mind or force that guides all the inner functions, the life functions of the body, and that watches over and keeps them going even when we are utterly unconscious in sleep. the conscious suggests and gives directions; the subconscious receives and carries into operation the suggestions that are received. the thoughts, ideas, and even beliefs and emotions of the conscious mind are the seeds that are taken in by the subconscious and that in this great _realm of causation_ will germinate and produce of their own kind. the chemical activities that go on in the process of cell formation in the body are all under the influence, the domination of this great all-permeating subconscious, or subjective realm within us. in that able work, "the laws of psychic phenomena," dr. thomas j. hudson lays down this proposition: "that the subjective mind is constantly amenable to control by suggestion." it is easy, when we once understand and appreciate this great fact, to see how the body builds, or rather is built, for health and strength, or for disease and weakness; for youth and vigour, or for premature ossification and age. it is easy, then, to see how we can have a hand in, in brief can have the controlling hand in, building either the one or the other. it is in the province of the intelligent man or woman to take hold of the wheel, so to speak, and to determine as an intelligent human being should, what condition or conditions shall be given birth and form to and be externalised in the body. a noted thinker and writer has said: "whatever the mind is set upon, or whatever it keeps most in view, that it is bringing to it, and the continual thought or imagining must at last take form and shape in the world of seen and tangible things." and now, to be as concrete as possible, we have these facts: the body is continually changing in that it is continually throwing out and off, used cells, and continually building new cells to take their places. this process, as well as all the inner functions of the body, is governed and guarded by the subconscious realm of our being. the subconscious can do and does do whatever it is _actually_ directed to do by the conscious, thinking mind. "we must be careful on what we allow our minds to dwell," said sir john lubbock, "the soul is dyed by its thoughts." if we believe ourselves subject to weakness, decay, infirmity, when we should be "whole," the subconscious mind seizes upon the pattern that is sent it and builds cell structure accordingly. this is one great reason why one who is, as we say, chronically thinking and talking of his ailments and symptoms, who is complaining and fearing, is never well. to see one's self, to believe, and therefore to picture one's self in mind as strong, healthy, active, well, is to furnish a pattern, is to give suggestion and therefore direction to the subconscious so that it will build cell tissue having the stamp and the force of healthy, vital, active life, which in turn means abounding health and strength. so, likewise, at about the time that "old age" is supposed ordinarily to begin, when it is believed in and looked for by those about us and those who act in accordance with this thought, if we fall into this same mental drift, we furnish the subconscious the pattern that it will inevitably build bodily conditions in accordance with. we will then find the ordinarily understood marks and conditions of old age creeping upon us, and we will become subject to their influences in every department of our being. whatever is thus pictured in the mind and lived in, the life force will produce. to remain young in mind, in spirit, in feeling, is to remain young in body. growing old at the period or age at which so many grow old, is to a great extent a matter of habit. to think health and strength, to see ourselves continually growing in this condition, is to set into operation the subtlest dynamic force for the externalisation of these conditions in the body that can be even conceived of. if one's bodily condition, through abnormal, false mental and emotional habits, has become abnormal and diseased, this same attitude of mind, of spirit, of imagery, is to set into operation _a subtle and powerful corrective agency that, if persisted in, will inevitably tend to bring normal, healthy conditions to the front again_. true, if these abnormal, diseased conditions have been helped on or have been induced by wrong physical habits, by the violation of physical laws, this violation must cease. but combine the two, and then give the body the care that it requires in a moderate amount of simple, wholesome food, regular cleansing to assist it in the elimination of impurities and of used cell structure that is being regularly cast off, an abundance of pure air and of moderate exercise, and a change amounting almost to a miracle can be wrought--it may be, indeed, what many people of olden time would have termed a miracle. the mind thus becomes "a silent, transforming, sanative energy" of great potency and power. that it can be so used is attested by the fact of the large numbers, and the rapidly increasing numbers, all about us who are so using it. this is what many people all over our country are doing today, with the results that, by a great elemental law--divine law if you choose--_many_ are curing themselves of various diseases, _many_ are exchanging weakness and impotence for strength and power, _many_ are ceasing, comparatively speaking, are politely refusing, to grow old. thought is a force, subtle and powerful, and it tends inevitably to produce of its kind. in forestalling "old age," at least old age of the decrepit type, it is the period of middle life where the greatest care is to be employed. if, at about the time "old age" is supposed ordinarily to begin, the "turn" at middle life or a little later, we would stop to consider what this period really means, that it means with both men and women a period of life where some simple readjustments are to be made, a period of a little rest, a little letting up, a temporary getting back to the playtime of earlier years and a bringing of these characteristics back into life again, then a complete letting-up would not be demanded by nature a little later, as it is demanded in such a lamentably large number of cases at the present time. so in a definite, deliberate way, youth should be blended into the middle life, and the resultant should be a force that will stretch middle life for an indefinite period into the future. and what an opportunity is here for mothers, at about the time that the children have grown, and some or all even have "flown"! of course, mother shouldn't go and get foolish, she shouldn't go cavorting around in a sixteen-year-old hat, when the hat of the thirty-five-year-old would undoubtedly suit her better; but she should rejoice that the golden period of life is still before her. now she has leisure to do many of those things _that she has so long wanted to do_. the world's rich field of literature is before her; the line of study or work she has longed to pursue, she bringing to it a better equipped mind and experience than she has ever had before. there is also an interest in the life and welfare of her community, in civic, public welfare lines that the present and the quick-coming time before us along women's enfranchisement lines, along women's commonsense equality lines, is making her a responsible and full sharer in. and how much more valuable she makes herself, also, to her children, as well as to her community, inspiring in them greater confidence, respect, and admiration than if she allows herself to be pushed into the background by her own weak and false thoughts of herself, or by the equally foolish thoughts of her children in that she is now, or is at any time, to become a back number. life, as long as we are here, should mean continuous unfoldment, advancement, and this is undoubtedly the purpose of life; but age-producing forces and agencies mean deterioration, as opposed to growth and unfoldment. they ossify, weaken, stiffen, deaden, both mentally and physically. for him or her who yearns to stay young, the coming of the years does not mean or bring abandonment of hope or of happiness or of activity. it means comparative vigour combined with continually larger experience, and therefore even more usefulness, and hence pleasure and happiness. praise also to those who do not allow any one or any number of occurrences in life to sour their nature, rob them of their faith, or cripple their energies for the enjoyment of the fullest in life while here. it's those people _who never allow themselves in spirit to be downed_, no matter what their individual problems, surroundings, or conditions may be, but who chronically bob up serenely who, after all, _are the masters of life_, and who are likewise the strength-givers and the helpers of others. there are multitudes in the world today, there are readers of this volume, who could add a dozen or a score of years--teeming, healthy years--to their lives by a process of self-examination, a mental housecleaning, and a reconstructed, positive, commanding type of thought. tennyson was prophet when he sang: cleave then to the sunnier side of doubt, and cling to faith beyond the forms of faith! she reels not in the storm of warring words, she brightens at the clash of "yes" and "no," she sees the best that glimmers through the worst, she feels the sun is hid but for a night, she spies the summer through the winter bud, she tastes the fruit before the blossom falls, she hears the lark within the songless egg, she finds the fountain where they wailed "mirage." v thought as a force in daily living some years ago an experience was told to me that has been the cause of many interesting observations since. it was related by a man living in one of our noted university towns in the middle west. he was a well-known lecture manager, having had charge of many lecture tours for john b. gough, henry ward beecher, and others of like standing. he himself was a man of splendid character, was of a sensitive organism, as we say, and had always taken considerable interest in the powers and forces pertaining to the inner life. as a young man he had left home, and during a portion of his first year away he had found employment on a mississippi steamboat. one day in going down the river, while he was crossing the deck, a sudden stinging sensation seized him in the head, and instantly vivid thoughts of his mother, back at the old home, flashed into his mind. this was followed by a feeling of depression during the remainder of the day. the occurrence was so unusual and the impression of it was so strong that he made an account of it in his diary. some time later, on returning home, he was met in the yard by his mother. she was wearing a thin cap on her head which he had never seen her wear before. he remarked in regard to it. she raised the cap and doing so revealed the remains of a long ugly gash on the side of her head. she then said that some months before, naming the time, she had gone into the back yard and had picked up a heavy crooked stick having a sharp end, to throw it out of the way, and in throwing it, it had struck a wire clothesline immediately above her head and had rebounded with such force that it had given her the deep scalp wound of which she was speaking. on unpacking his bag he looked into his diary and found that the time she had mentioned corresponded exactly with the strange and unusual occurrence to himself as they were floating down the mississippi. the mother and son were very near one to the other, close in their sympathies, and there can be but little doubt that the thoughts of the mother as she was struck went out, and perhaps _went strongly out_, to her boy who was now away from home. he, being sensitively organised and intimately related to her in thought, and alone at the time, undoubtedly got, if not her thought, at least the effects of her thought, as it went out to him under these peculiar and tense conditions. there are scores if not hundreds of occurrences of a more or less similar nature that have occurred in the lives of others, many of them well authenticated. how many of us, even, have had the experience of suddenly thinking of a friend of whom we have not thought for weeks or months, and then entirely unexpectedly meeting or hearing from this same friend. how many have had the experience of writing a friend, one who has not been written to or heard from for a long time, and within a day or two getting a letter from that friend--the letters "crossing," as we are accustomed to say. there are many other experiences or facts of a similar nature, and many of them exceedingly interesting, that could be related did space permit. these all indicate to me that thoughts are not mere indefinite things but that thoughts are forces, that they go out, and that every distinct, clear-cut thought has, or may have, an influence of some type. thought transference, which is now unquestionably an established fact, notwithstanding much chicanery that is still to be found in connection with it, is undoubtedly to be explained through the fact that _thoughts are forces_. a positive mind through practice, at first with very simple beginnings, gives form to a thought that another mind open and receptive to it--and sufficiently attuned to the other mind--is able to receive. wireless telegraphy, as a science, has been known but a comparatively short time. the laws underlying it have been in the universe perhaps, or undoubtedly, always. it is only lately that the mind of man has been able to apprehend them, and has been able to construct instruments in accordance with these laws. we are now able, through a knowledge of the laws of vibration and by using the right sending and receiving instruments, to send actual messages many hundreds of miles directly through the ether and without the more clumsy accessories of poles and wires. this much of it we know--_there is perhaps even more yet to be known_. we may find, as i am inclined to think we shall find, that thought is a form of vibration. when a thought is born in the brain, it goes out just as a sound wave goes out, and transmits itself through the ether, making its impressions upon other minds that are in a sufficiently sensitive state to receive it; this in addition to the effects that various types of thoughts have upon the various bodily functions of the one with whom they take origin. we are, by virtue of the laws of evolution, constantly apprehending the finer forces of nature--the tallow-dip, the candle, the oil lamp, years later a more refined type of oil, gas, electricity, the latest tungsten lights, radium--and we may be still only at the beginnings. our finest electric lights of today may seem--will seem--crude and the quality of their light even more crude, twenty years hence, even less. many other examples of our gradual passing from the coarser to the finer in connection with the laws and forces of nature occur readily to the minds of us all. the present great interest on the part of thinking men and women everywhere, in addition to the more particular studies, experiments, and observations of men such as sir oliver lodge, sir william ramsay, and others, in the powers and forces pertaining to the inner life is an indication that we have reached a time when we are making great strides along these lines. some of our greatest scientists are thinking that we are on the eve of some almost startling glimpses into these finer realms. my own belief is that we are likewise on the eve of apprehending the more precise _nature_ of thought as a force, the methods of its workings, and the law underlying its more intimate and everyday uses. of one thing we can rest assured; nothing in the universe, nothing in connection with human life is outside of the realm of law. the elemental law of cause and effect is absolute in its workings. one of the great laws pertaining to human life is: as is the inner, so always and inevitably is the outer--cause, effect. our thoughts and emotions are the silent, subtle forces that are constantly externalising themselves in kindred forms in our outward material world. like creates like, and like attracts like. as is our prevailing type of thought, so is our prevailing type and our condition of life. the type of thought we entertain has its effect upon our energies and to a great extent upon our bodily conditions and states. strong, clear-cut, positive, hopeful thought has a stimulating and life-giving effect upon one's outlook, energies, and activities; and upon all bodily functions and powers. a falling state of the mind induces a chronically gloomy outlook and produces inevitably a falling condition of the body. the mind grows, moreover, into the likeness of the thoughts one most habitually entertains and lives with. every thought reproduces of its kind. says an authoritative writer in dealing more particularly with the effects of certain types of thoughts and emotions upon bodily conditions: "out of our own experience we know that anger, fear, worry, hate, revenge, avarice, grief, in fact all negative and low emotions, produce weakness and disturbance not only in the mind but in the body as well. it has been proved that they actually generate poisons in the body, they depress the circulation; they change the quality of the blood, making it less vital; they affect the great nerve centres and thus partially paralyse the very seat of the bodily activities. on the other hand, faith, hope, love, forgiveness, joy, and peace, all such emotions are positive and uplifting, and so act on the body as to restore and maintain harmony and actually to stimulate the circulation and nutrition." the one who does not allow himself to be influenced or controlled by fears or forebodings is the one who ordinarily does not yield to discouragements. he it is who is using the positive, success-bringing types of thought that are continually working for him for the accomplishment of his ends. the things that he sees in the ideal, his strong, positive, and therefore creative type of thought, is continually helping to actualise in the realm of the real. we sometimes speak lightly of ideas, but this world would be indeed a sorry place in which to live were it not for ideas--and were it not for ideals. every piece of mechanism that has ever been built, if we trace back far enough, was first merely an idea in some man's or woman's mind. every structure or edifice that has ever been reared had form first in this same immaterial realm. so every great undertaking of whatever nature had its inception, its origin, in the realm of the immaterial--at least as we at present call it--before it was embodied and stood forth in material form. it is well, then, that we have our ideas and our ideals. it is well, even, to build castles in the air, if we follow these up and give them material clothing or structure, so that they become castles on the ground. occasionally it is true that these may shrink or, rather, may change their form and become cabins; but many times we find that an expanded vision and an expanded experience lead us to a knowledge of the fact that, so far as happiness and satisfaction are concerned, the contents of a cabin may outweigh many times those of the castle. successful men and women are almost invariably those possessing to a supreme degree the element of faith. faith, absolute, unconquerable faith, is one of the essential concomitants, therefore one of the great secrets of success. we must realise, and especially valuable is it for young men and women to realise, that one carries his success or his failure with him, that it does not depend upon outside conditions. there are some that no circumstances or combinations of circumstances can thwart or keep down. let circumstance seem to thwart or circumvent them in one direction, and almost instantly they are going forward along another direction. circumstance is kept busy keeping up with them. when she meets such, after a few trials, she apparently decides to give up and turn her attention to those of the less positive, the less forceful, therefore the less determined, types of mind and of life. circumstance has received some hard knocks from men and women of this type. she has grown naturally timid and will always back down whenever she recognises a mind, and therefore a life, of sufficient force. to make the best of whatever present conditions are, to form and clearly to see one's ideal, though it may seem far distant and almost impossible, to believe in it, and to believe in one's ability to actualise it--this is the first essential. not, then, to sit and idly fold the hands, expecting it to actualise itself, but to take hold of the first thing that offers itself to do,--that lies sufficiently along the way,--to do this faithfully, believing, knowing, that it is but the step that will lead to the next best thing, and this to the next; this is the second and the completing stage of all accomplishment. we speak of fate many times as if it were something foreign to or outside of ourselves, forgetting that fate awaits always our own conditions. a man decides his own fate through the types of thoughts he entertains and gives a dominating influence in his life. he sits at the helm of his thought world and, guiding, decides his own fate, or, through negative, vacillating, and therefore weakening thought, he drifts, and fate decides him. fate is not something that takes form and dominates us irrespective of any say on our own part. through a knowledge and an intelligent and determined use of the silent but ever-working power of thought we either condition circumstances, or, lacking this knowledge or failing to apply it, we accept the rôle of a conditioned circumstance. it is a help sometimes to realise and to voice with henley: out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, i thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul. the thoughts that we entertain not only determine the conditions of our own immediate lives, but they influence, perhaps in a much more subtle manner than most of us realise, our relations with and our influence upon those with whom we associate or even come into contact. all are influenced, even though unconsciously, by them. thoughts of good will, sympathy, magnanimity, good cheer--in brief, all thoughts emanating from a _spirit of love_--are felt in their positive, warming, and stimulating influences by others; they inspire in turn the same types of thoughts and feelings in them, and they come back to us laden with their ennobling, stimulating, pleasure-bringing influences. thoughts of envy, or malice, or hatred, or ill will are likewise felt by others. they are influenced adversely by them. they inspire either the same types of thoughts and emotions in them; or they produce in them a certain type of antagonistic feeling that has the tendency to neutralise and, if continued for a sufficient length of time, deaden sympathy and thereby all friendly relations. we have heard much of "personal magnetism." careful analysis will, i think, reveal the fact that the one who has to any marked degree the element of personal magnetism is one of the large-hearted, magnanimous, cheer-bringing, unself-centred types, whose positive thought forces are being continually felt by others, and are continually inspiring and calling forth from others these same splendid attributes. i have yet to find any one, man or woman, of the opposite habits and, therefore, trend of mind and heart who has had or who has even to the slightest perceptible degree the quality that we ordinarily think of when we use the term "personal magnetism." if one would have friends he or she must be a friend, must radiate habitually friendly, helpful thoughts, good will, love. the one who doesn't cultivate the hopeful, cheerful, uncomplaining, good-will attitude toward life and toward others becomes a drag, making life harder for others as well as for one's self. ordinarily we find in people the qualities we are mostly looking for, or the qualities that our own prevailing characteristics call forth. the larger the nature, the less critical and cynical it is, the more it is given to looking for the best and the highest in others, and the less, therefore, is it given to gossip. it was jeremy bentham who said: "in order to love mankind, we must not expect too much of them." and goethe had a still deeper vision when he said: "who is the happiest of men? he who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though it were his own." the chief characteristic of the gossip is that he or she prefers to live in the low-lying miasmic strata of life, revelling in the negatives of life and taking joy in finding and peddling about the findings that he or she naturally makes there. the larger natures see the good and sympathise with the weaknesses and the frailties of others. they realise also that it is so consummately inconsistent--many times even humorously inconsistent--for one also with weaknesses, frailties, and faults, though perhaps of a little different character, to sit in judgment of another. gossip concerning the errors or shortcomings of another is judging another. the one who is himself perfect is the one who has the right to judge another. by a strange law, however, though by a natural law, we find, as we understand life in its fundamentals better, such a person is seldom if ever given to judging, much less to gossip. life becomes rich and expansive through sympathy, good will, and good cheer; not through cynicism or criticism. that splendid little poem of but a single stanza by edwin markham, "outwitted," points after all to one of life's fundamentals: he drew a circle that shut me out-- heretic, rebel, a thing to flout, but love and i had the wit to win: we drew a circle that took him in! vi jesus the supreme exponent of the inner forces and powers: his people's religion and their condition in order to have any true or adequate understanding of what the real revelation and teachings of jesus were, two things must be borne in mind. it is necessary in the first place, not only to have a knowledge of, but always to bear in mind the method, the medium through which the account of his life has come down to us. again, before the real content and significance of jesus' revelation and teachings can be intelligently understood, it is necessary that we have a knowledge of the conditions of the time in which he lived and of the people to whom he spoke, to whom his revelation was made. to any one who has even a rudimentary knowledge of the former, it becomes apparent at once that no single saying or statement of jesus can be taken to indicate either his revelation or his purpose. these must be made to depend upon not any single statement or saying of his own, much less anything reported about him by another; but it must be made to depend rather upon the whole tenor of his teachings. jesus put nothing in writing. there was no one immediately at hand to make a record of any of his teachings or any of his acts. it is now well known that no one of the gospels was written by an immediate hearer, by an eye-witness. the gospel of mark, the oldest gospel, or in other words the one written nearest to jesus' time, was written some forty years after he had finished his work. matthew and luke, taken to a great extent from the gospel of mark, supplemented by one or two additional sources, were written many years after. the gospel of john was not written until after the beginning of the second century after christ. these four sets of chronicles, called the gospels, written independently one of another, were then collected many years after their authors were dead, and still a great deal later were brought together into a single book. the following concise statement by professor henry drummond throws much light upon the way the new testament portions of our bible took form: "the bible is not a book; it is a library. it consists of sixty-six books. it is a great convenience, but in some respects a great misfortune, that these books have always been bound up together and given out as one book to the world, when they are not; because that has led to endless mistakes in theology and practical life. these books, which make up this library, written at intervals of hundreds of years, were collected after the last of the writers was dead--long after--by human hands. where were the books? take the new testament. there were four lives of christ. one was in rome; one was in southern italy; one was in palestine; one in asia minor. there were twenty-one letters. five were in greece and macedonia; five in asia; one in rome. the rest were in the pockets of private individuals. theophilus had acts. they were collected undesignedly. in the third century the new testament consisted of the following books: the four gospels, acts, thirteen letters of paul, i john, i peter; and, in addition, the epistles of barnabas and hermas. this was not called the new testament, but the christian library. then these last books were discarded. they ceased to be regarded as upon the same level as the others. in the fourth century the canon was closed--that is to say, a list was made up of the books which were to be regarded as canonical. and then long after that they were stitched together and made up into one book--hundreds of years after that. who made up the complete list? it was never formally made up. the bishops of the different churches would draw up a list each of the books that they thought ought to be put into this testament. the churches also would give their opinions. sometimes councils would meet and talk it over--discuss it. scholars like jerome would investigate the authenticity of the different documents, and there came to be a general consensus of the churches on the matter." jesus spoke in his own native language, the aramaic. his sayings were then rendered into greek, and, as is well known by all well-versed biblical scholars, it was not an especially high order of greek. the new testament scriptures including the four gospels, were then many hundreds of years afterwards translated from the greek into our modern languages--english, german, french, swedish, or whatever the language of the particular translation may be. those who know anything of the matter of translation know how difficult it is to render the exact meanings of any statements or writing into another language. the rendering of a _single word_ may sometimes mean, or rather may make a great difference in the thought of the one giving the utterance. how much greater is this liability when the thing thus rendered is twice removed from its original source and form! the original manuscripts had no punctuation and no verse divisions; these were all arbitrarily supplied by the translators later on. it is also a well-established fact on the part of leading biblical scholars that through the centuries there have been various interpolations in the new testament scriptures, both by way of omissions and additions. reference is made to these various facts in connection with the sayings and the teachings of jesus and the methods and the media through which they have come down to us, to show how impossible it would be to base jesus' revelation or purpose upon any single utterance made or purported to be made by him--to indicate, in other words, that to get at his real message, his real teachings, and his real purpose, we must find the binding thread if possible, the reiterated statement, the repeated purpose that makes them throb with the living element. again, no intelligent understanding of jesus' revelation or ministry can be had without a knowledge of the conditions of the time, and of the people to whom his revelation was made, among whom he lived and worked; for his ministry had in connection with it both a time element and an eternal element. there are two things that must be noted, the moral and religious condition of the people; and, again, their economic and political status. the jewish people had been preeminently a religious people. but a great change had taken place. religion was at its lowest ebb. its spirit was well-nigh dead, and in its place there had gradually come into being a pharisaic legalism--a religion of form, ceremony. an extensive system of ecclesiastical tradition, ecclesiastical law and observances, which had gradually robbed the people of all their former spirit of religion, had been gradually built up by those in ecclesiastical authority. the voice of that illustrious line of hebrew prophets had ceased to speak. it was close to two hundred years since the voice of a living prophet had been heard. tradition had taken its place. it took the form: moses hath said; it has been said of old; the prophet hath said. the scribe was the keeper of the ecclesiastical law. the lawyer was its interpreter. the pharisees had gradually elevated themselves into an ecclesiastical hierarchy who were the custodians of the law and religion. they had come to regard themselves as especially favoured, a privileged class--not only the custodians but the dispensers of all religious knowledge--and therefore of religion. the people, in their estimation, were of a lower intellectual and religious order, possessing no capabilities in connection with religion or morals, dependent therefore upon their superiors in these matters. this state of affairs that had gradually come about was productive of two noticeable results: a religious starvation and stagnation on the part of the great mass of the people on the one hand, and the creation of a haughty, self-righteous and domineering ecclesiastical hierarchy on the other. in order for a clear understanding of some of jesus' sayings and teachings, some of which constitute a very vital part of his ministry, it is necessary to understand clearly what this condition was. another important fact that sheds much light upon the nature of the ministry of jesus is to be found, as has already been intimated, in the political and the economic condition of the people of the time. the jewish nation had been subjugated and were under the domination of rome. rome in connection with israel, as in connection with all conquered peoples, was a hard master. taxes and tribute, tribute and taxes, could almost be said to be descriptive of her administration of affairs. she was already in her degenerate stage. never perhaps in the history of the world had men been so ruled by selfishness, greed, military power and domination, and the pomp and display of material wealth. luxury, indulgence, over-indulgence, vice. the inevitable concomitant followed--a continually increasing moral and physical degeneration. an increasing luxury and indulgence called for an increasing means to satisfy them. messengers were sent and additional tribute was levied. pontius pilate was the roman administrative head or governor in judea at the time. tiberius cæsar was the roman emperor. rome at this time consisted of a few thousand nobles and people of station--freemen--and hundreds of thousands of slaves. even her campaigns in time became virtual raids for plunder. she conquered--and she plundered those whom she conquered. great numbers from among the conquered peoples were regularly taken to rome and sold into slavery. judea had not escaped this. thousands of her best people had been transported to rome and sold into slavery. it was never known where the blow would fall next; what homes would be desolated and both sons and daughters sent away into slavery. no section, no family could feel any sense of security. a feeling of fear, a sense of desolation pervaded everywhere. there was a tradition, which had grown into a well-defined belief, that a deliverer would be sent them, that they would be delivered out of the hands of their enemies and that their oppressors would in turn be brought to grief. there was also in the section round about judæa a belief, which had grown until it had become well-nigh universal, that the end of the world, or the end of the age, was speedily coming, that then there would be an end of all earthly government and that the reign of jehovah--the kingdom of god--would be established. these two beliefs went hand in hand. they were kept continually before the people, and now and then received a fresh impetus by the appearance of a new prophet or a new teacher, whom the people went gladly out to hear. of this kind was john, the son of a priest, later called john the baptist. after his period of preparation, he came out of the wilderness of judæa, and in the region about the jordan with great power and persuasiveness, according to the accounts, he gave utterance to the message: repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. forsake all earthly things; they will be of avail but a very short time now, turn ye from them and prepare yourselves for the coming of the kingdom of god. the old things will speedily pass away; all things will become new. many went out to hear him and were powerfully appealed to by the earnest, rugged utterances of this new preacher of righteousness and repentance. his name and his message spread through all the land of judea and the country around the jordan. many were baptised by him there, he making use of this symbolic service which had been long in use by certain branches of the jewish people, especially the order of the essenes. among those who went out to hear john and who accepted baptism at his hands was jesus, the son of joseph and mary, whose home was at nazareth. it marks also the beginning of his own public ministry, for which he evidently had been in preparation for a considerable time. it seems strange that we know so little of the early life of one destined to exert such a powerful influence upon the thought and the life of the world. in the gospel of mark, probably the most reliable, because the nearest to his time, there is no mention whatever of his early life. the first account is where he appears at john's meetings. almost immediately thereafter begins his own public ministry. in the gospel of luke we have a very meagre account of him. it is at the age of twelve. the brief account gives us a glimpse into the lives of his father and his mother, joseph and mary; showing that at that time they were not looked upon as in any way different from all of the inhabitants of their little community, nazareth, the little town in galilee--having a family of several sons and daughters, and that jesus, the eldest of the family, grew in stature and in knowledge, as all the neighbouring children grew; but that he, even at an early age, showed that he had a wonderful aptitude for the things of the spirit. i reproduce luke's brief account here: "now, his parents went to jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover. and when he was twelve years old, they went up to jerusalem, after the custom of the feast. and when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child jesus tarried behind in jerusalem: and joseph and his mother knew not of it. but they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day's journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintances. and when they found him not, they turned back again to jerusalem, seeking him. and it came to pass that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions. and all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. "and when they saw him they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and i have sought thee sorrowing. and he said unto them, how is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that i must be about my father's business? and they understood not the saying which he spake unto them. and he went down with them, and came to nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. and jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with god and man." nothing could be more interesting than to know the early life of jesus. there are various theories as to how this was spent, that is, as to what his preparation was--the facts of his life, in addition to his working with his father at his trade, that of a carpenter; but we know nothing that has the stamp of historical accuracy upon it. of his entire life, indeed, including the period of his active ministry, from thirty to nearly thirty-three, it is but fair to presume that we have at best but a fragmentary account in the gospel narratives. it is probable that many things connected with his ministry, and many of his sayings and teachings, we have no record of at all. it is probable that in connection with his preparation he spent a great deal of time alone, in the quiet, in communion with his divine source, or as the term came so naturally to him, with god, his father--god, our father, for that was his teaching--my god and your god. the many times that we are told in the narratives that he went to the mountain alone, would seem to justify us in this conclusion. anyway, it would be absolutely impossible for anyone to have such a vivid realisation of his essential oneness with the divine, without much time spent in such a manner that the real life could evolve into its divine likeness, and then mould the outer life according to this ideal or pattern. vii the divine rule in the mind and heart: the unessentials we drop--the spirit abides that jesus had a supreme aptitude for the things of the spirit, there can be no question. that through desire and through will he followed the leadings of the spirit--that he gave himself completely to its leadings--is evident both from his utterances and his life. it was this combination undoubtedly that led him into that vivid sense of his life in god, which became so complete that he afterwards speaks--i and my father are one. that he was always, however, far from identifying himself as equal with god is indicated by his constant declaration of his dependence upon god. again and again we have these declarations: "my meat and drink is to do the will of god." "my doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me." "i can of myself do nothing: as i hear i judge; and my judgment is righteous; because i seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me." and even the very last acts and words of his life proclaim this constant sense of dependence for guidance, for strength, and even for succour. with all his divine self-realisation there was always, moreover, that sense of humility that is always a predominating characteristic of the really great. "why callest thou me good? there is none good but one--that is god." it is not at all strange, therefore, that the very first utterance of his public ministry, according to the chronicler mark was: the kingdom of god is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. and while this was the beginning utterance, it was the keynote that ran through his entire ministry. it is the basic fact of all his teachings. the realisation of his own life he sought to make the realisation of all others. it was, it is, a call to righteousness, and a call to righteousness through the only channel that any such call can be effective--through a realisation of the essential righteousness and goodness of the human soul. an unbiased study of jesus' own words will reveal the fact that he taught only what he himself had first realised. it is this, moreover, that makes him the supreme teacher of all time--counsellor, friend, saviour. it is the saving of men from their lower conceptions and selves, a lifting of them up to their higher selves, which, as he taught, is eternally one with god, the father, and which, when realised, will inevitably, reflexly, one might say, lift a man's thoughts, acts, conduct--the entire life--up to that standard or pattern. it is thus that the divine ideal, that the christ becomes enthroned within. the christ-consciousness is the universal divine nature in us. it is the state of god-consciousness. it is the recognition of the indwelling divine life as the source, and therefore the essence of our own lives. jesus came as the revealer of a new truth, a new conception of man. indeed, the messiah. he came as the revealer of the only truth that could lead his people out of their trials and troubles--out of their bondage. they were looking for their deliverer to come in the person of a worldly king and to set up his rule as such. he came in the person of a humble teacher, the revealer of a mighty truth, the revealer of the way, the only way whereby real freedom and deliverance can come. for those who would receive him, he was indeed the messiah. for those who would not, he was not, and the same holds today. he came as the revealer of a truth which had been glimpsed by many inspired teachers among the jewish race and among those of other races. the time waited, however, for one to come who would first embody this truth and then be able effectively to teach it. this was done in a supreme degree by the judæan teacher. he came not as the doer-away with the law and the prophets, but rather to regain and then to supplement them. such was his own statement. it is time to ascend another round. i reveal god to you, not in the tabernacle, but in the human heart--then in the tabernacle in the degree that he is in the hearts of those who frequent the tabernacle. otherwise the tabernacle becomes a whited sepulchre. the church is not a building, an organisation, not a creed. the church is the spirit of truth. it must have one supreme object and purpose--to lead men to the truth. i reveal what i have found--i in the father and the father in me. i seek not to do mine own will, but the will of the father who sent me. everything was subordinated to this divine realisation and to his divine purpose. the great purpose at which he laboured so incessantly was the teaching of the realisation of the divine will in the hearts and minds, and through these in the lives of men--the finding and the realisation of the kingdom of god. this is the supreme fact of life. get right at the centre and the circumference will then care for itself. as is the inner, so always and invariably will be the outer. there is an inner guide that regulates the life when this inner guide is allowed to assume authority. why be disconcerted, why in a heat concerning so many things? it is not the natural and the normal life. life at its best is something infinitely beyond this. "seek ye first the kingdom of god and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." and if there is any doubt in regard to his real meaning in this here is his answer: "neither shall they say, 'lo here' or 'lo there' for behold the kingdom of god is within you." again and again this is his call. again and again this is his revelation. in the first three gospels alone he uses the expression "the kingdom of god," or "the kingdom of heaven," upwards of thirty times. any possible reference to any organisation that he might have had in mind, can be found in the entire four gospels but twice. it would almost seem that it would not be difficult to judge as to what was uppermost in his mind. i have made this revelation to you; you must raise yourselves, you must become _in reality_ what _in essence_ you really are. i in the father, and the father in me. i reveal only what i myself know. as i am, ye shall be. god is your father. in your real nature you are divine. drop your ideas of the depravity of the human soul. to believe it depraves. to teach it depraves the one who teaches it, and the one who accepts it. follow not the traditions of men. i reveal to you your divine birthright. accept it. it is best. behold all things are become new. the kingdom of god is the one all-inclusive thing. find it and all else will follow. "whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of god? or with what comparison shall we compare it? it is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth; but when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches; so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it." "whereunto shall i liken the kingdom of god? is it like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened?" seek ye first the kingdom, and the holy spirit, the channel of communion between god your source, and yourselves, will lead you, and will lead you into all truth. it will become as a lamp to your feet, a guide that is always reliable. to refuse allegiance to the holy spirit, the spirit of truth, is the real sin, the only sin that cannot be forgiven. violation of all moral and natural law may be forgiven. it will bring its penalty, for the violation of law carries in itself its own penalty, its own punishment--_it is a part of law_; but cease the violation and the penalty ceases. the violation registers its ill effects in the illness, the sickness, of body and spirit. if the violation has been long continued, these effects may remain for some time; but the instant the violation ceases the repair will begin, and things will go the other way. learn from this experience, however, that there can be no deliberate violation of, or blaspheming against any moral or natural law. but deliberately to refuse obedience to the inner guide, the holy spirit, constitutes a defiance that eventually puts out the lamp of life, and that can result only in confusion and darkness. it severs the ordained relationship, the connecting, the binding cord, between the soul--the self--and its source. stagnation, degeneracy, and eventual death is merely the natural sequence. with this divine self-realisation the spirit assumes control and mastery, and you are saved from the follies of error, and from the consequences of error. repent ye--turn from your trespasses and sins, from your lower conceptions of life, of pleasure and of pain, and walk in this way. the lower propensities and desires will lose their hold and will in time fall away. you will be at first surprised, and then dumfounded, at what you formerly took for pleasure. true pleasure and satisfaction go hand in hand,--nor are there any bad after results. all genuine pleasures should lead to more perfect health, a greater accretion of power, a continually expanding sense of life and service. when god is uppermost in the heart, when the divine rule under the direction of the holy spirit becomes the ruling power in the life of the individual, then the body and its senses are subordinated to this rule; the passions become functions to be used; license and perverted use give way to moderation and wise use; and there are then no penalties that outraged law exacts; satiety gives place to satisfaction. it was edward carpenter who said: "in order to enjoy life one must be a master of life--for to be a slave to its inconsistencies can only mean torment; and in order to enjoy the senses one must be master of them. to dominate the actual world you must, like archimedes, base your fulcrum somewhere beyond." it is not the use, but the abuse of anything good in itself that brings satiety, disease, suffering, dissatisfaction. nor is asceticism a true road of life. all things are for use; but all must be wisely, in most cases, moderately used, for true enjoyment. all functions and powers are for use; but all must be brought under the domination of the spirit--the god-illumined spirit. this is the road that leads to heaven here and heaven hereafter--and we can rest assured that we will never find a heaven hereafter that we do not make while here. through everything runs this teaching of the master. how wonderfully and how masterfully and simply he sets forth his whole teaching of sin and the sinner and his relation to the father in that marvellous parable, the parable of the prodigal son. to bring it clearly to mind again it runs: "a certain man had two sons: and the younger of them said to his father, father, give me the portion of goods that falleth _to me_. and he divided unto them his living. and not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey to a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. and when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. and he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. and he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. and when he came to himself, he said, how many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and i perish with hunger! i will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, father, i have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. and he arose and came to his father. "but when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell upon his neck, and kissed him. and the son said unto him, father, i have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. but the father said to his servants, bring forth the best robe and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. and they began to be merry. now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing. and he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant. and he said unto him, thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound. and he was angry and would not go in: therefore came his father out, and entreated him, and he answering said to his father, lo, these many years do i serve thee, neither transgressed i at any time thy commandment; and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that i might make merry with my friends: but as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. and he said unto him, son, thou art ever with me, and all that i have is thine. it was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found." it does away forever in all thinking minds with any participation of jesus in that perverted and perverting doctrine that man is by nature essentially depraved, degraded, fallen, in the sense as was given to the world long, long after his time in the doctrine of the fall of man, and the need of redemption through some external source outside of himself, in distinction from the truth that he revealed that was to make men free--the truth of their divine nature, and this love of man by the heavenly father, and the love of the heavenly father by his children. to connect jesus with any such thought or teaching would be to take the heart out of his supreme revelation. for his whole conception of god the father, given in all his utterances, was that of a heavenly father of love, of care, longing to exercise his protecting care and to give good gifts to his children--and this because it is the _essential nature_ of god to be fatherly. his fatherhood is not, therefore, accidental, not dependent upon any conditions or circumstances; it is essential. if it is the nature of a father to give good gifts to his children, so in a still greater degree is it the nature of the heavenly father to give good gifts to those who ask him. as his words are recorded by matthew: "or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? if ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" so in the parable as presented by jesus, the father's love was such that as soon as it was made known to him that his son who had been lost to him had returned, he went out to meet him; he granted him full pardon--and there were no conditions. speaking of the fundamental teaching of the master, and also in connection with this same parable, another has said: "it thus appears from this story, as elsewhere in the teaching of jesus, that he did not call god our father because he created us, or because he rules over us, or because he made a covenant with abraham, but simply and only because he loves us. this parable individualises the divine love, as did also the missionary activity of jesus. the gospels know nothing of a national fatherhood, of a god whose love is confined to a particular people. it is the individual man who has a heavenly father, and this individualised fatherhood is the only one of which jesus speaks. as he had realised his own moral and spiritual life in the consciousness that god was his father, so he sought to give life to the world by a living revelation of the truth that god loves each separate soul. this is a prime factor in the religion and ethics of jesus. it is seldom or vaguely apprehended in the old testament teaching; but in the teaching of jesus it is central and normative." again in the two allied parables of jesus--the parable of the lost sheep, and the parable of the lost coin--it is his purpose to teach the great love of the father for all, including those lost in their trespasses and sins, and his rejoicing in their return. this leads to jesus' conception and teaching of sin and repentance. although god is the father, he demands filial obedience in the hearts and the minds of his children. men by following the devices and desires of their own hearts, are not true to their real nature, their divine pattern. by following their selfish desires they have brought sin, and thereby suffering, on themselves and others. the unclean, the selfish desires of mind and heart, keep them from their higher moral and spiritual ideal--although not necessarily giving themselves to gross sin. therefore, they must become sons of god by repenting--by turning from the evil inclinations of their hearts and seeking to follow the higher inclinations of the heart as becomes children of god and those who are dwellers in the heavenly kingdom. therefore, his opening utterance: "the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of god is at hand; repent ye, and believe the gospel." love of god with the whole heart, and love of the neighbour, leading to the higher peace and fulfilment, must take the place of these more selfish desires that lead to antagonisms and dissatisfactions both within and without. all men are to pray: forgive us our sins. all men are to repent of their sins which are the results of following their own selfish desires,--those of the body, or their own selfish desires to the detriment of the welfare of the neighbour. all men are to seek the divine rule, the rule of god in the heart, and thereby have the guidance of the holy spirit, which is the divine spirit of wisdom that tabernacles with man when through desire and through will he makes the conditions whereby it can make its abode with him. it is a manifestation of the force that is above man--it is the eternal heritage of the soul. "now the lord is the spirit and where the spirit of the lord is, there is liberty." and therein lies salvation. it follows the seeking and the finding of the kingdom of god and his righteousness that jesus revealed to a waiting world. and so it was the spirit of religion that jesus came to reveal--the real fatherhood of god and the divine sonship of man. a better righteousness than that of the scribes and the pharisees--not a slavish adherence to the law, with its supposed profits and rewards. get the motive of life right. get the heart right and these things become of secondary importance. as his supreme revelation was the personal fatherhood of god, from which follows necessarily the divine sonship of man, so there was a corollary to it, a portion of it almost as essential as the main truth itself--namely, that all men are brothers. not merely those of one little group, or tribe or nation; not merely those of any one little set or religion; not merely those of this or that little compartment that we build and arbitrarily separate ourselves into--but all men the world over. if this is not true then jesus' supreme revelation is false. in connection with this great truth he brought a new standard by virtue of the logic of his revelation. "ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. but i say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your father which is in heaven." struggling for recognition all through the old testament scriptures, and breaking through partially at least in places, was this conception which is at the very basis of all man's relationship with man. and finally through this supreme master of life it did break through, with a wonderful newborn consciousness. the old dispensation, with its legal formalism, was an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. the new dispensation was--"but i say unto you, love your enemies." enmity begets enmity. it is as senseless as it is godless. it runs through all his teachings and through every act of his life. if fundamentally you do not have the love of your fellow-man in your hearts, you do not have the love of god in your hearts and you cannot have. and that this fundamental revelation be not misunderstood, near the close of his life he said: "a new commandment i give unto you, that ye love one another." no man could be, can be his disciple, his follower, and fail in the realisation of this fundamental teaching. "by this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another." and going back again to his ministry we find that it breathes through every teaching that he gave. it breathes through that short memorable prayer which we call the lord's prayer. it permeates the sermon on the mount. it is the very essence of his summing up of this discourse. we call it the golden rule. "whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." not that it was original with jesus; other teachers sent of god had given it before to other peoples--god's other children; but he gave it a new emphasis, a new setting. _he made it fundamental._ so a man who is gripped at all vitally by jesus' teaching of the personal fatherhood of god, and the personal brotherhood of man, simply can't help but make this the basic rule of his life--and moreover find joy in so making it. a man who really comprehends this fundamental teaching can't be crafty, sneaking, dishonest, or dishonourable, in his business, or in any phase of his personal life. he never hogs the penny--in other words, he never seeks to gain his own advantage to the disadvantage of another. he may be long-headed; he may be able to size up and seize conditions; but he seeks no advantage for himself to the detriment of his fellow, to the detriment of his community, or to the detriment of his extended community, the nation or the world. he is thoughtful, considerate, open, frank; and, moreover, he finds great joy in being so. i have never seen any finer statement of the essential reasonableness, therefore, of the essential truth of the value and the practice of the golden rule than that given by a modern disciple of jesus who left us but a few years ago. a poor boy, a successful business man, straight, square, considerate in all his dealings,--a power among his fellows, a lamp indeed to the feet of many--was samuel milton jones, thrice mayor of toledo. simple, unassuming, friend of all, rich as well as poor, poor as well as rich, friend of the outcast, the thief, the criminal, looking beyond the exterior, he saw as did jesus, the human soul always intact, though it erred in its judgment--as we all err in our judgments, each in his own peculiar way--and that by forbearance, consideration, and love, it could be touched and the life redeemed--redeemed to happiness, to usefulness, to service. notwithstanding his many duties, business and political, he thought much and he loved to talk of the things we are considering. his brief statement of the fundamental reasons and the comprehensive results of the actual practice of the golden rule are shot through with such fine insight, such abounding comprehension, that they deserve to become immortal. he was my friend and i would not see them die. i reproduce them here: "as i view it, the golden rule is the supreme law of life. it may be paraphrased this way: as you do unto others, others will do unto you. what i give, i get. if i love you, really and truly and actively love you, you are as sure to love me in return as the earth is sure to be warmed by the rays of the midsummer sun. if i hate you, ill-treat you and abuse you, i am equally certain to arouse the same kind of antagonism towards me, unless the divine nature is so developed that it is dominant in you, and you have learned to love your enemies. what can be plainer? the golden rule is the law of action and reaction in the field of morals, just as definite, just as certain here as the law is definite and certain in the domain of physics. "i think the confusion with respect to the golden rule arises from the different conceptions that we have of the word love. i use the word love as synonymous with reason, and when i speak of doing the loving thing, i mean the reasonable thing. when i speak of dealing with my fellow-men in an unreasonable way, i mean an unloving way. the terms are interchangeable, absolutely. the reason why we know so little about the golden rule is because we have not practised it." was mayor jones a christian? you ask. he was a follower of the christ--for it was he who said: "by this shall all men know ye are my disciples, if ye love one another." was he a member of a religious organisation? i don't know--it never occurred to me to ask him. thinking men the world over are making a sharp distinction in these days between organised christianity and essential christianity. the element of fear has lost its hold on the part of thinking men and women. it never opened up, it never can open up the springs of righteousness in the human heart. he believed and he acted upon the belief that it was the spirit that the master taught--that god is a god of love and that he reveals himself in terms of love to those who really know him. he believed that there is joy to the human soul in following this inner guide and translating its impulses into deeds of love and service for one's fellow-men. if we could, if we would thus translate religion into terms of life, it would become a source of perennial joy. it is not with observation, said jesus, that the supreme thing that he taught--the seeking and finding of the kingdom of god--will come. do not seek it at some other place, some other time. it is within, and if within it will show forth. make no mistake about that,--it will show forth. it touches and it sensitises the inner springs of action in a man's or a woman's life. when a man realises his divine sonship that jesus taught, he will act as a son of god. out of the heart spring either good or evil actions. self-love, me, mine; let me get all i can for myself, or, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself--the divine law of service, of mutuality--the highest source of ethics. you can trust any man whose heart is right. he will be straight, clean, reliable. his word will be as good as his bond. personally you can't trust a man who is brought into any line of action, or into any institution through fear. the sore is there, liable to break out in corruption at any time. this opening up of the springs of the inner life frees him also from the letter of the law, which after all consists of the traditions of men, and makes him subject to that higher moral guide within. how clearly jesus illustrated this in his conversations regarding the observance of the sabbath--how the sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath, and how it was always right to do good on the sabbath. i remember some years ago a friend in my native state telling me the following interesting incident in connection with his grandmother. it was in northern illinois--it might have been in new england. "as a boy," said he, "i used to visit her on the farm. she loved her cup of coffee for breakfast. ordinarily she would grind it fresh each morning in the kitchen; but when sunday morning came she would take her coffee-grinder down into the far end of the cellar, where no one could see and no one could hear her grind it." he could never quite tell, he said, whether it was to ease her own conscience, or in order to give no offence to her neighbours. now, i can imagine jesus passing by and stopping at that home--it was a home known for its native kindly hospitality--and meeting her just as she was coming out of the cellar with her coffee-grinder--his quick and unerring perception enabling him to take in the whole situation at once, and saying: "in the name of the father, aunt susan, what were you doing with your coffee-grinder down in the cellar on this beautiful sabbath morning? you like your cup of coffee, and i also like the coffee that you make; thank god that you have it, and thank god that you have the good health to enjoy it. we can give praise to the father through eating and drinking, if, as in everything else, these are done in moderation and we give value received for all the things that we use. so don't take your grinder down into the cellar on the sabbath morning; but grind your coffee up here in god's sunshine, with a thankful heart that you have it to grind." and i can imagine him, as he passes out of the little front gate, turning and waving another good-bye and saying: "when i come again, aunt susan, be it week-day or sabbath, remember god's sunshine and keep out of the cellar." and turning again in a half-joking manner: "and when you take those baskets of eggs to town, aunt susan, don't pick out too many of the large ones to keep for yourself, but take them just as the hens lay them. and, aunt susan, give good weight in your butter. this will do your soul infinitely more good than the few extra coins you would gain by too carefully calculating"--aunt susan with all her lovable qualities, had a little tendency to close dealing. i think we do incalculable harm by separating jesus so completely from the more homely, commonplace affairs of our daily lives. if we had a more adequate account of his discourses with the people and his associations with the people, we would perhaps find that he was not, after all, so busy in saving the world that he didn't have time for the simple, homely enjoyments and affairs of the everyday life. the little glimpses that we have of him along these lines indicate to me that he had. unless we get his truths right into this phase of our lives, the chances are that we will miss them entirely. and i think that with all his earnestness, jesus must have had an unusually keen sense of humour. with his unusual perceptions and his unusual powers in reading and in understanding human nature, it could not be otherwise. that he had a keen sense for beauty; that he saw it, that he valued it, that he loved it, especially beauty in all nature, many of his discourses so abundantly prove. religion with him was not divorced from life. it was the power that permeated every thought and every act of the daily life. viii if we seek the essence of his revelation, and the purpose of his life if we would seek the essence of jesus' revelation, attested both by his words and his life, it was to bring a knowledge of the ineffable love of god to man, and by revealing this, to instil in the minds and hearts of men love for god, and a knowledge of and following of the ways of god. it was also then to bring a new emphasis of the divine law of love--the love of man for man. combined, it results, so to speak, in raising men to a higher power, to a higher life,--as individuals, as groups, as one great world group. it is a newly sensitised attitude of mind and heart that he brought and that he endeavoured to reveal in all its matchless beauty--a following not of the traditions of men, but fidelity to one's god, whereby the divine rule in the mind and heart assumes supremacy and, as must inevitably follow, fidelity to one's fellow-men. these are the essentials of jesus' revelation--the fundamental forces in his own life. his every teaching, his every act, comes back to them. i believe also that all efforts to mystify the minds of men and women by later theories _about_ him are contrary to his own expressed teaching, and in exact degree that they would seek to substitute other things for these fundamentals. i call them fundamentals. i call them his fundamentals. what right have i to call them his fundamentals? an occasion arose one day in the form of a direct question for jesus to state in well-considered and clear-cut terms the essence, the gist, of his entire teachings--therefore, by his authority, the fundamentals of essential christianity. in the midst of one of the groups that he was speaking to one day, we are told that a certain lawyer arose--an interpreter of, an authority on, the existing ecclesiastical law. the reference to him is so brief, unfortunately, that we cannot tell whether his question was to confound jesus, as was so often the case, or whether being a liberal jew he longed for an honest and truly helpful answer. from jesus' remark to him, after his primary answer, we are justified in believing it was the latter. his question was: "master, which is the great commandment in the law?" jesus said unto him, "thou shalt love the lord thy god with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. this is the first and great commandment. and the second is like unto it. thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." here we have a wonderful statement from a wonderful source. so clear-cut is it that any wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot mistake it. especially is this true when we couple with it this other statement of jesus: "think not that i am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; i am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." we must never forget that jesus was born, lived, and died a jew, the same as all of his disciples--and they never regarded themselves in any other light. the _basis_ of his religion was the religion of israel. it was this he taught and expounded, now in the synagogue, now out on the hillside and by the lake-side. it was this that he tried to teach in its purity, that he tried to free from the hedges that ecclesiasticism had built around it, this that he endeavoured to raise to a still higher standard. one cannot find the slightest reference in any of his sayings that would indicate that he looked upon himself in any other light--except the overwhelming sense that it was his mission to bring in the new dispensation by fulfilling the old, and then carrying it another great step forward, which he did in a wonderful way--both god-ward and man-ward. we must not forget, then, that jesus said that he did not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil them. we must not forget, however, that before fulfilling them he had to free them. the freedom-giving, god-illumined words spoken by free god-illumined men, had, in the hands of those not god-illumined, later on become institutionalised, made into a system, a code. the people were taught that only the priests had access to god. they were the custodians of god's favour and only through the institution could any man, or any woman, have access to god. this became the sacred thing, and as the years had passed this had become so hedged about by continually added laws and observances that all the spirit of religion had become crushed, stifled, beaten to the ground. the very scribes and pharisees themselves, supposed to minister to the spiritual life and the welfare of the people, became enrobed in their fine millinery and arrogance, masters of the people, whose ministers they were supposed to be, as is so apt to be the case when an institution builds itself upon the free, all-embracing message of truth given by any prophet or any inspired teacher. it has occurred time and time again. christianity knows it well. it is only by constant vigilance that religious freedom is preserved, from which alone comes any high degree of morality, or any degree of free and upward-moving life among the people. it was on account of this shameful robbing of the people of their divine birthright that the just soul of jesus, abhorring both casuistry and oppression under the cloak of religion, gave utterance to that fine invective that he used on several occasions, the only times that he spoke in a condemnatory or accusing manner: "now do ye, pharisee, make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. woe unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them.... woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.... woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered." and here is the lesson for us. it is the spirit that must always be kept uppermost in religion. otherwise even the revelation and the religion of jesus could be compressed into a code, with its self-appointed instruments of interpretation, the same as the pharisees did the law and the prophets that he so bitterly condemned, with a bravery so intrepid and so fearless that it finally caused his death. no, if god is not in the human soul waiting to make himself known to the believing, longing heart, accessible to all alike without money and without price, without any prescribed code, then the words of jesus have not been correctly handed down to us. and then again, confirming us in the belief that a man's deepest soul relation is a matter between him and his god, are his unmistakable and explicit directions in regard to prayer. it is so easy to substitute the secondary thing for the fundamental, the by-thing for the essential, the container for the thing itself. you will recall that symbolic act of jesus at the last meeting, the last supper with his disciples, the washing of the disciples' feet by the master. the point that is intended to be brought out in the story is, of course, the extraordinary condescension of jesus in doing this menial service for his disciples. "the feet-washing symbolises the attitude of humble service to others. every follower of jesus must experience it." one of the disciples is so astonished, even taken aback by this menial service on the part of jesus, that he says: thou shall never wash my feet. jesus answered him, "if i wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." in oriental countries where sandals are worn that cover merely the soles of the feet, it was, it is the custom of the host to offer his guest who comes water with which to wash his feet. there is no reason why this simple incident of humble service, or rather this symbolic act of humble service, could not be taken and made an essential condition of salvation by any council that saw fit to make it such. things just as strange as this have happened; though any thinking man or woman _today_ would deem it essentially foolish. it is an example of how the spirit of a beautiful act could be misrepresented to the people. for if you will look at them again, jesus' words are very explicit: "if i wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." but hear jesus' own comment as given in john: "so after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, know ye what i have done to you? ye call me master and lord: and ye say well; for so i am. if i then, your lord and master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet. for i have given you an example, that ye should do as i have done to you. verily, verily, i say unto you, the servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. if ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." it is a means to an end and not an end in itself. the spirit that it typifies is essential; but not the act itself. the same could be rightly said of the lord's supper. it is an observance that can be made of great value, one very dear and valuable to many people. but it cannot, if jesus is to be our authority, and if correctly reported, be by any means made a fundamental, an essential of salvation. from the rebuke administered by jesus to his disciples in a number of cases where they were prone to drag down his meanings by their purely material interpretations, we should be saved from this. you will recall his teaching one day when he spoke of himself as the bread of life that a man may eat thereof and not die. some of his jewish hearers taking his words in a material sense and arguing in regard to them one with another said: "how can this man give us his flesh to eat?" hearing them jesus reaffirming his statement said: "verily, verily, i say unto you, except ye eat of the flesh of the son of man, and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves.... for my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." his disciples, likewise, prone here as so often to make a literal and material interpretation of his statements, said one to another: "this is a hard saying; who can hear him?" or according to our idiom--who can understand him? jesus asked them squarely if what he had just said caused them to stumble, and in order to be sure that they might not miss his real meaning and therefore teaching, said: "it is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that i speak unto you, _they_ are spirit, and _they_ are life." try as we will, we cannot get away from the fact that it was the words of truth that jesus brought that were ever uppermost in his mind. he said, follow me, not some one else, nor something else that would claim to represent me. and follow me merely because i lead you to the father. so supremely had this young jewish prophet, the son of a carpenter, made god's business his business, that he had come into the full realisation of the oneness of his life with the father's life. he was able to realise and to say, "i and my father are one." he was able to bring to the world a knowledge of the great fact of facts--the essential oneness of the human with the divine--that god tabernacles with men, that he makes his abode in the minds and the hearts of those who through desire and through will open their hearts to his indwelling presence. the first of the race, he becomes the revealer of this great eternal truth--the mediator, therefore, between god and man--in very truth the saviour of men. "if a man love me," said he, "he will keep my words: and my father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.... if ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as i have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love." it is our eternal refusal to follow jesus by listening to the words of life that he brought, and our proneness to substitute something else in their place, that brings the barrenness that is so often evident in the everyday life of the christian. we have been taught _to believe in_ jesus; we have not been taught _to believe_ jesus. this has resulted in a separation of christianity from life. the predominating motive has been the saving of the soul. it has resulted too often in a selfish, negative, repressive, ineffective religion. as jesus said: "and why call ye me, lord, lord, and do not the things which i say?" we are just beginning to realise at all adequately that it was _the salvation of the life_ that he taught. when the life is redeemed to righteousness through the power of the indwelling god and moves out in love and in service for one's fellow-men, the soul is then saved. a man may be a believer in jesus for a million years and still be an outcast from the kingdom of god and his righteousness. but a man can't believe jesus, which means following his teachings, without coming at once into the kingdom and enjoying its matchless blessings both here and hereafter. and if there is one clear-cut teaching of the master, it is that the life here determines and with absolute precision the life to come. one need not then concern himself with this or that doctrine, whether it be true or false. later speculations and theories are not for him. jesus' own saying applies here: "if any man will do his will he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of god." he enters into the kingdom, the kingdom of heaven here and now; and when the time comes for him to pass out of this life, he goes as a joyous pilgrim, full of anticipation for the kingdom that awaits him, and the master's words go with him: "in my father's house are many mansions." by thus becoming a follower of jesus rather than merely a believer in jesus, he gradually comes into possession of insights and powers that the master taught would follow in the lives of those who became his followers. the holy spirit, the divine comforter, of which jesus spoke, the spirit of truth, that awaits our bidding, will lead continually to the highest truth and wisdom and insight and power. kant's statement, "the other world is not another locality, but only another way of seeing things," is closely allied to the master's statement: "the kingdom of god is within you." and closely allied to both is this statement of a modern prophet: "the principle of christianity and of every true religion is within the soul--the realisation of the incarnation of god in every human being." when we turn to jesus' own teachings we find that his insistence was not primarily upon the saving of the soul, but upon the saving of the life for usefulness, for service, here and now, for still higher growth and unfoldment, whereby the soul might be grown to a sufficient degree that it would be worth the saving. and this is one of the great facts that is now being recognised and preached by the forward-looking men and women in our churches and by many equally religious outside of our churches. and so all aspiring, all thinking, forward-looking men and women of our day are not interested any more in theories about, explanations of, or dogmas about jesus. they are being won and enthralled by the wonderful personality and life of jesus. they are being gripped by the power of his teachings. they do not want theories about god--they want god--and god is what jesus brought--god as the moving, the predominating, the all-embracing force in the individual life. but he who finds the kingdom of god, whose life becomes subject to the divine rule and life within, realises at once also his true relations with the whole--with his neighbour, his fellow-men. he realises that his neighbour is not merely the man next door, the man around the corner, or even the man in the next town or city; but that his neighbour _is every man and every woman in the world_--because all children of the same infinite father, all bound in the same direction, but over many different roads. the man who has come under the influence and the domination of the divine rule, realises that his interests lie in the same direction as the interests of all, that he cannot gain for himself any good--that is, any essential good--at the expense of the good of all; but rather that his interests, his welfare, and the interests and the welfare of all others are identical. god's rule, the divine rule, becomes for him, therefore, the fundamental rule in the business world, the dominating rule in political life and action, the dominating rule in the law and relations of nations. jesus did not look with much favour upon outward form, ceremony, or with much favour upon formulated, or formal religion; and he somehow or other seemed to avoid the company of those who did. we find him almost continually down among the people, the poor, the needy, the outcast, the sinner--wherever he could be of service to the father, that is, wherever he could be of service to the father's children. according to the accounts he was not always as careful in regard to those with whom he associated as the more respectable ones, the more respectable classes of his day thought he should be. they remarked it many times. jesus noticed it and remarked in turn. we find him always where the work was to be done--friend equally of the poor and humble, and those of station--truly friend of man, teaching, helping, uplifting. and then we find him out on the mountain side--in the quiet, in communion--to keep his realisation of his oneness with the father intact; and with this help he went down regularly to the people, trying to lift their minds and lives up to the divine ideal that he revealed to them, that they in turn might realise their real relations one with another, that the kingdom of god and his righteousness might grow and become the dominating law and force in the world--"thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." it is this kingdom idea, the divine rule, the rule of god in all of the relations and affairs of men on earth that is gripping earnest men and women in great numbers among us today. under the leadership of these thinking, god-impelled men and women, many of our churches are pushing their endeavours out into social service activities along many different lines; and the result is they are calling into their ranks many able men and women, especially younger men and women, who are intensely religious, but to whom formal, inactive religion never made any appeal. when the church begins actually to throw the golden rule onto its banner, not in theory but in actual practice, actually forgetting self in the master's service, careless even of her own interests, her membership, she thereby calls into her ranks vast numbers of the best of the race, especially among the young, so that the actual result is a membership not only larger than she could ever hope to have otherwise, but a membership that commands such respect and that exercises such power, that she is astounded at her former stupidity in being shackled so long by the traditions of the past. a new life is engendered. there is the joy of real accomplishment. we are in an age of great changes. advancing knowledge necessitates changes. and may i say a word here to our christian ministry, that splendid body of men for whom i have such supreme admiration? one of the most significant facts of our time is this widespread inclination and determination on the part of such great numbers of thinking men and women to go directly to jesus for their information of, and their inspiration from him. the beliefs and the voice of the laymen, those in our churches and those out of our churches, must be taken into account and reckoned with. jesus is too large and too universal a character to be longer the sole possession, the property of any organisation. there is a splendid body of young men and young women numbering into untold thousands, who are being captured by the personality and the simple direct message of jesus. many of these have caught his spirit and are going off into other lines of the master's service. they are doing effective and telling work there. remember that when the spirit of the christ seizes a man, it is through the channel of present-day forms and present-day terms, not in those of fifteen hundred, or sixteen hundred, or even three hundred years ago. there is a spirit of intellectual honesty that prevents many men and women from subscribing to anything to which they cannot give their intellectual assent, as well as their moral and spiritual assent. they do not object to creeds. they know that a creed is but a statement, a statement of a man's or a woman's belief, whether it be in connection with religion, or in connection with anything else. but what they do object to is dogma, that unholy thing that lives on credulity, that is therefore destructive of the intellectual and the moral life of every man and every woman who allows it to lay its paralysing hand upon them, that can be held to if one is at all honest and given to thought, only through intellectual chicanery. we must not forget also that god is still at work, revealing himself more fully to mankind through modern prophets, through modern agencies. his revelation is not closed. it is still going on. the silly presumption in the statement therefore--"the truth once delivered." it is well occasionally to call to mind these words by robert burns, singing free and with an untrammelled mind and soul from his heather-covered hills: here's freedom to him that wad read, here's freedom to him that wad write; there's nane ever feared that the truth should be heared but them that the truth wad indict. it is essential to remember that we are in possession of knowledge, that we are face to face with conditions that are different from any in the previous history of christendom. the christian church must be sure that it moves fast enough so as not to alienate, but to draw into it that great body of intellectually alive, intellectually honest young men and women who have the christ spirit of service and who are mastered by a great purpose of accomplishment. remember that these young men and women are now merely standing where the entire church will stand in a few years. remember that any man or woman who has the true spirit of service has the spirit of christ--and more, has the religion of the christ. remember that jesus formulated no organisation. his message of the kingdom was so far-reaching that no organisation could ever possibly encompass it, though an organisation may be, and has been, a great aid in actualising it here on earth. he never made any conditions as to through whom, or what, his truth should be spread, and he would condemn today any instrumentality that would abrogate to itself any monopoly of his truth, just as he condemned those ecclesiastical authorities of his day who presumed to do the same in connection with the truth of god's earlier prophets. and so i would say to the church--beware and be wise. make your conditions so that you can gain the allegiance and gain the help of this splendid body of young men and young women. many of them are made of the stock that jesus would choose as his own apostles. among the young men will be our greatest teachers, our great financiers, our best legislators, our most valuable workers and organisers in various fields of social service, our most widely read authors, eminent and influential editorial and magazine writers as well as managers. many of these young women will have high and responsible positions as educators. some will be heads and others will be active workers in our widely extended and valuable women's clubs. some will have a hand in political action, in lifting politics out of its many-times low condition into its rightful state in being an agent for the accomplishment of the people's best purposes and their highest good. some will be editors of widely circulating and influential women's magazines. some will be mothers, true mothers of the children of others, denied their rights and their privileges. make it possible for them, nay, make it incumbent upon them to come in, to work within the great church organisation. it cannot afford that they stay out. it is suicidal to keep them out. any other type of organisation that did not look constantly to commanding the services of the most capable and expert in its line would fall in a very few months into the ranks of the ineffectives. a business or a financial organisation that did not do the same would go into financial bankruptcy in even a shorter length of time. by attracting this class of men and women into its ranks it need fear neither moral nor financial bankruptcy. but remember, many men and women of large calibre are so busy doing god's work in the world that they have no time and no inclination to be attracted by anything that does not claim their intellectual as well as their moral assent. the church must speak fully and unequivocally in terms of present-day thought and present-day knowledge, to win the allegiance or even to attract the attention of this type of men and women. and may i say here this word to those outside, and especially to this class of young men and young women outside of our churches? changes, and therefore advances in matters of this kind come slowly. this is true from the very nature of human nature. inherited beliefs, especially when it comes to matters of religion, take the deepest hold and are the slowest to change. not in all cases, but this is the general rule. those who hold on to the old are earnest, honest. they believe that these things are too sacred to be meddled with, or even sometimes, to be questioned. the ordinary mind is slow to distinguish between tradition and truth--especially where the two have been so fully and so adroitly mixed. many are not in possession of the newer, the more advanced knowledge in various fields that you are in possession of. but remember this--in even a dozen years a mighty change has taken place--except in a church whose very foundation and whose sole purpose is dogma. in most of our churches, however, the great bulk of our ministers are just as forward-looking, just as earnest as you, and are deeply desirous of following and presenting the highest truth in so far as it lies within their power to do so. it is a splendid body of men, willing to welcome you on your own grounds, longing for your help. it is a mighty engine for good. go into it. work with it. work through it. the best men in the church are longing for your help. they need it more than they need anything else. i can assure you of this--i have talked with many. they feel their handicaps. they are moving as rapidly as they find it possible to move. on the whole, they are doing splendid work and with a big, fine spirit of which you know but little. you will find a wonderful spirit of self-sacrifice, also. you will find a stimulating and precious comradeship on the part of many. you will find that you will get great good, even as you are able to give great good. the church, as everything else, needs to keep its machinery in continual repair. help take out the worn-out parts--but not too suddenly. the church is not a depository, but an instrument and engine of truth and righteousness. some of the older men do not realise this; but they will die off. respect their beliefs. honest men have honest respect for differences of opinion, for honest differences in thought. sympathy is a great harmoniser. "differences of opinion, intellectual distinctions, these must ever be--separation of mind, but unity of heart." i like these words of lyman abbott. you will like them. they are spoken out of a full life of rich experience and splendid service. they have, moreover, a sort of unifying effect. they are more than a tonic: "of all characters in history none so gathers into himself and reflects from himself all the varied virtues of a complete manhood as does jesus of nazareth. and the world is recognising it.... if you go back to the olden time and the old conflicts, the question was, 'what is the relation of jesus christ to the eternal?' wars have been fought over the question, 'was he of one substance with the father?' i do not know; i do not know of what substance the father is; i do not know of what substance jesus christ is. what i do know is this--that when i look into the actual life that i know about, the men and women that are about me, the men and women in all the history of the past, of all the living beings that ever lived and walked the earth, there is no one that so fills my heart with reverence, with affection, with loyal love, with sincere desire to follow, as doth jesus christ.... "i do not need to decide whether he was born of a virgin. i do not need to decide whether he rose from the dead. i do not need to decide whether he made water into wine, or fed five thousand with two loaves and five small fishes. take all that away, and still he stands the one transcendent figure toward whom the world has been steadily growing, and whom the world has not yet overtaken even in his teachings.... i do not need to know what is his metaphysical relation to the infinite. i say it reverently--i do not care. i know for me he is the great teacher; i know for me he is the great leader whose work i want to do; and i know for me he is the great personality, whom i want to be like. that i know. theology did not give that to me, and theology cannot get it away from me." and what a basis as a test of character is this twofold injunction--this great fundamental of jesus! all religion that is genuine flowers in character. it was benjamin jowett who said, and most truly: "the value of a religion is in the ethical dividend that it pays." when the heart is right towards god we have the basis, the essence of religion--the consciousness of god in the soul of man. we have truth in the inward parts. when the heart is right towards the fellow-man we have the essential basis of ethics; for again we have truth in the inward parts. out of the heart are the issues of life. when the heart is right all outward acts and relations are right. love draws one to the very heart of god; and love attunes one to all the highest and most valued relationships in our human life. fear can never be a basis of either religion or ethics. the one who is moved by fear makes his chief concern the avoidance of detection on the one hand, or the escape of punishment on the other. men of large calibre have an unusual sagacity in sifting the unessential from the essential as also the false from the true. lincoln, when replying to the question as to why he did not unite himself with some church organisation, said: "when any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification of membership, the saviour's condensed statement of the substance of both law and gospel: thou shalt love the lord thy god with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself, that church shall i join with all my heart and soul." he was looked upon by many in his day as a non-christian--by some as an infidel. his whole life had a profound religious basis, so deep and so all-absorbing that it gave him those wonderful elements of personality that were instantly and instinctively noticed by, and that moved all men who came in touch with him; and that sustained him so wonderfully, according to his own confession, through those long, dark periods of the great crisis, the fact that in yesterday's new york paper--sunday paper--i saw the notice of a sermon in one of our presbyterian pulpits--lincoln, the christian--shows that we have moved up a round and are approaching more and more to an essential christianity. similar to this statement or rather belief was that of emerson, jefferson, franklin, and a host of other men among us whose lives have been lives of accomplishment and service for their fellow-men. emerson, who said: "a man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. in every work of genius we recognise our own rejected thoughts. they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." emerson, who also said: "i believe in the still, small voice, and that voice is the christ within me." it was he of whom the famous father taylor in boston said: "it may be that emerson is going to hell, but of one thing i am certain: he will change the climate there and emigration will set that way." so thought jefferson, who said: "i have sworn eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the minds of men." and as he, great prophet, with his own hand penned that immortal document--the declaration of american independence--one can almost imagine the galilean prophet standing at his shoulder and saying: thomas, i think it well to write it so. both had a burning indignation for that species of self-seeking either on the part of an individual or an organisation that would seek to enchain the minds and thereby the lives of men and women, and even lay claim to their children. yet jefferson in his time was frequently called an atheist--and merely because men in those days did not distinguish as clearly as we do today between ecclesiasticism and religion, between formulated and essential christianity. so we are brought back each time to jesus' two fundamentals--and these come out every time foursquare with the best thought of our time. the religion of jesus is thereby prevented from being a mere tribal religion. it is prevented from being merely an organisation that could possibly have his sanction as such--that is, an organisation that would be able to say: this is his, and this only. it makes it have a world-wide and eternal content. the kingdom that jesus taught is infinitely broader in its scope and its inclusiveness than any organisation can be, or that all organisations combined can be. ix his purpose of lifting up, energising, beautifying, and saving the entire life: the saving of the soul is secondary; but follows we have made the statement that jesus did unusual things, but that he did them on account of, or rather by virtue of, his unusual insight into and understanding of the laws whereby they could be done. his understanding of the powers of the mind and spirit was intuitive and very great. as an evidence of this were his numerous cases of healing the sick and the afflicted. intuitively he perceived the existence and the nature of the subjective mind, and in connection with it the tremendous powers of suggestion. intuitively he was able to read, to diagnose the particular ailment and the cause of the ailment before him. his thought was so poised that it was energised by a subtle and peculiar spiritual power. such confidence did his personality and his power inspire in others that he was able to an unusual degree to reach and to arouse the slumbering subconscious mind of the sufferer and to arouse into action its own slumbering powers whereby the life force of the body could transcend and remould its error-ridden and error-stamped condition. in all these cases he worked through the operation of law--it is exactly what we know of the laws of suggestion today. the remarkable cases of healing that are being accomplished here and there among us today are done unquestionably through the understanding and use of the same laws that jesus was the supreme master of. by virtue of his superior insight--his understanding of the laws of the mind and spirit--he was able to use them so fully and so effectively that he did in many cases eliminate the element of time in his healing ministrations. but even he was dependent in practically all cases, upon the mental cooperation of the one who would be healed. where this was full and complete he succeeded; where it was not he failed. such at least again and again is the statement in the accounts that we have of these facts in connection with his life and work. there were places where we are told he could do none of his mighty works on account of their unbelief, and he departed from these places and went elsewhere. many times his question was: "believe ye that i am able to do this?" then: "according to your faith be it unto you," and the healing was accomplished. the laws of mental and spiritual therapeutics are identically the same today as they were in the days of jesus and his disciples, who made the healing of sick bodies a part of their ministration. it is but fair to presume from the accounts that we have that in the early church of the disciples, and for well on to two hundred years after jesus' time, the healing of the sick and the afflicted went hand in hand with the preaching and the teaching of the kingdom. there are those who believe that it never should have been abandoned. as a well-known writer has said: "healing is the outward and practical attestation of the power and genuineness of spiritual religion, and ought not to have dropped out of the church." recent sincere efforts to re-establish it in church practice, following thereby the master's injunction, is indicative of the thought that is alive in connection with the matter today.[a] from the accounts that we have jesus seems to have engaged in works of healing more during his early than during his later ministry. he may have used it as a means to an end. on account of his great love and sympathy for the physical sufferer as well as for the moral sufferer, it is but reasonable to suppose that it was an integral part of his announced purpose--the saving of the life, of the entire life, for usefulness, for service, for happiness. and so we have this young galilean prophet, coming from an hitherto unknown jewish family in the obscure little village of nazareth, giving obedience in common with his four brothers and his sisters to his father and his mother; but by virtue of a supreme aptitude for and an irresistible call to the things of the spirit--made irresistible through his overwhelming love for the things of the spirit--he is early absorbed by the realisation of the truth that god is his father and that all men are brothers. the thought that god is his father and that he bears a unique and filial relationship to god so possesses him that he is filled, permeated with the burning desire to make this newborn message of truth and thereby of righteousness known to the world. his own native religion, once vibrating through the souls of the prophets as the voice of god, has become so obscured, so hedged about, so killed by dogma, by ceremony, by outward observances, that it has become a mean and pitiable thing, and produces mean and pitiable conditions in the lives of his people. the institution has become so overgrown that the spirit has gone. but god finds another prophet, clearly and supremely open to his spirit, and jesus comes as the messiah, the divine son of god, the divine son of man, bringing to the earth a new dispensation. it is the message of the divine fatherhood of god, god whose controlling character is love, and with it the divine sonship of man. an integral part of it is--all men are brothers. he comes as the teacher of a new, a higher righteousness. he brings the message and he expounds the message of the kingdom of god. all men he teaches must repent and turn from their sins, and must henceforth live in this kingdom. it is an inner kingdom. men shall not say: behold it is here or it is there; for, behold, it is within you. god is your father and god longs for your acknowledgment of him as your father; he longs for your love even as he loves you. you are children of god, but you are not true sons of god until through desire the divine rule and life becomes supreme in your minds and hearts. it is thus that you will find the kingdom of god. when you do, then your every act will show forth in accordance with this divine ideal and guide, and the supreme law of conduct in your lives will be love for your neighbour, for all mankind. through this there will then in time become actualised the kingdom of heaven on the earth. he comes in no special garb, no millinery, no brass bands, no formulas, no dogmas, no organisation other than the kingdom, to uphold and become a slave to, and in turn be absorbed by, as was the organisation that he found strangling all religion in the lives of his people and which he so bitterly condemned. what he brought was something infinitely transcending this--the kingdom of god and his righteousness, to which all men were heirs--equal heirs--and thereby redemption from their sins, therefore salvation, the saving of their lives, would be the inevitable result of their acknowledgment of and allegiance to the divine rule. how he embraced all--such human sympathy--coming not to destroy but to fulfil; not to judge the world but to save the world. how he loved the children! how he loved to have them about him! how he loved their simplicity, and native integrity of mind and heart! hear him as he says: "verily i say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of god as a little child, he shall not enter therein"; and again: "suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of god." the makers of dogma, in evolving some three hundred years later on the dogma of the inherent sinfulness and degradation of the human life and soul, could certainly find not the slightest trace of any basis for it again in these words and acts of jesus. we find him sympathising with and mingling with and seeking to draw unto the way of his own life the poor, the outcast, the sinner, the same as the well-to-do and those of station and influence--seeking to draw all through love and knowledge to the father. there is a sense of justice and righteousness in his soul, however, that balks at oppression, injustice, and hypocrisy. he therefore condemns and in scathing terms those and only those who would seek to place any barrier between the free soul of any man and his god, who would bind either the mind or the conscience of man to any prescribed formulas or dogmas. honouring, therefore the forms that his intelligence and his conscience allowed him to honour, he disregarded those that they did not. like other good jewish rabbis, for he was looked upon during his ministry and often addressed as rabbi, he taught in the synagogues of his people; but oftener out on the hillsides and by the lake-side, under the blue sky and the stars of heaven. giving due reverence to the law and the prophets--the religion of his people and his own early religion--but in spirit and in discriminating thought so far transcending them, that the people marvelled at his teachings and said--surely this a prophet come from god; no man ever spoke to us as he speaks. by the ineffable beauty of his life and the love and the winsomeness of his personality, and by the power of the truths that he taught, he won the hearts of the common people. they followed him and his following continually increased. through it all, however, he incurred the increasing hostility and the increasing hatred of the leaders, the hierarchy of the existing religious organisation. they were animated by a double motive, that of protecting themselves, and that of protecting their established religion. but in their slavery to the organisation, and because unable to see that it was the spirit of true religion that he brought and taught, they cruelly put him to death--the same as the organisation established later on in his name, put numbers of god's true prophets, jesus' truest disciples to death, and essentially for the same reasons. jesus' quick and almost unerring perception enabled him to foresee this. it did not deter him from going forward with his message, standing resolutely and superbly by his revelation, and at the last almost courting death--feeling undoubtedly that the sealing of his revelation and message with his very life blood would but serve to give it its greatest power and endurance. heroically he met the fate that he perceived was conspiring to end his career, to wreck his teachings and his influence. he went forth to die clear-sighted and unafraid. he died for the sake of the truth of the message that he lived and so diligently and heroically laboured for--the message of the ineffable love of god for all his children and the bringing of them into the father's kingdom. and we must believe from his whole life's teaching, not to save their souls from some future punishment; not through any demand of satisfaction on the part of god; not as any substitutionary sacrifice to appease the demands of an angry god--for it was the exact opposite of this that his whole life teaching endeavoured to make known. it was supremely the love of the father and his longing for the love and allegiance, therefore the complete life and service of his children. it was the beauty of holiness--the beauty of wholeness--the wholeness of life, the saving of the whole life from the sin and sordidness of self and thereby giving supreme satisfaction to god. it was love, not fear. if not, then almost in a moment he changed the entire purpose and content, the entire intent of all his previous life work. this is unthinkable. in his last act he did not abrogate his own expressed statement, that the very essence of his message was expressed, as love to god and love to one's neighbour. he did not abrogate his continually repeated declaration that it was the kingdom of god and his righteousness, which brings man's life into right relations with god and into right relations with his fellow-men, that it was his purpose to reveal and to draw all men to, thereby aiding god's eternal purpose--to establish in this world a state which he designated the kingdom of heaven wherein a social order of brotherliness and justice, wrought and maintained through the potency of love, would prevail. in doing this he revealed the character of god by being himself an embodiment of it. it was the power of a truth that was to save the life that he was always concerned with. therefore his statement that the son of man has come that men might have life and might have it more abundantly--to save men from sin and from failure, and secondarily from their consequences; to make them true sons of god and fit subjects and fit workers in his kingdom. conversion according to jesus is the fact of this divine rule in the mind and heart whereby the life is saved--the saving of the soul follows. it is the direct concomitant of the saved life. in his death he sealed his own statement: "the law and the prophets were until john; since that time the kingdom of god is preached, and every man presseth into it." through his death he sealed the message of his life when putting it in another form he said: "verily, verily, i say unto you, he that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation: but is passed from death unto life." in this majestic life divinity and humanity meet. here is the incarnation. the first of the race consciously, vividly, and fully to realise that god incarnates himself and has his abode in the hearts and the lives of men, the first therefore to realise his divine sonship and become able thereby to reveal and to teach the divine fatherhood of god and the divine sonship of man. in this majestic life is the atonement, the realisation of the at-one-ment of the divine in the human, made manifest in his own life and in the way that he taught, sealed then by his own blood. in this majestic life we have the mediator, the medium or connector of the divine and the human. in it we have the saviour, the very incarnation of the truth that he taught, and that lifts the minds and thereby the lives of men up to their divine ideal and pattern, that redeems their lives from the sordidness and selfishness and sin of the hitherto purely material self, and that being thereby saved, makes them fit subjects for the father's kingdom. in this majestic life is the full embodiment of the beauty of holiness--whose words have gone forth and whose spirit is ceaselessly at work in the world, drawing men and women up to their divine ideal, and that will continue so to draw all in proportion as his words of truth and his life are lifted up throughout the world. x some methods of attainment after this study of the teachings of the divine master let us know this. it is the material that is the transient, the temporary; and the mental and spiritual that is the real and the eternal. we must not become slaves to habit. the material alone can never bring happiness--much less satisfaction. these lie deeper. that conversation between jesus and the rich young man is full of significance for us all, especially in this ambitious, striving, restless age. abundance of life is determined not alone by one's material possessions, but primarily by one's riches of mind and spirit. a world of truth is contained in these words: "life is what we are alive to. it is not a length, but breadth. to be alive only to appetite, pleasure, mere luxury or idleness, pride or money-making, and not to goodness and kindness, purity and love, history, poetry, and music, flowers, god and eternal hopes, is to be all but dead." why be so eager to gain possession of the hundred thousand or the half-million acres, of so many millions of dollars? soon, and it may be before you realise it, all must be left. it is as if a man made it his ambition to accumulate a thousand or a hundred thousand automobiles. all soon will become junk. but so it is with all material things beyond what we can actually and profitably use for our good and the good of others--and that we actually do so use. a man can eat just so many meals during the year or during life. if he tries to eat more he suffers thereby. he can wear only so many suits of clothing; if he tries to wear more, he merely wears himself out taking off and putting on. again it is as jesus said: "for what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own life?" and right there is the crux of the whole matter. all the time spent in accumulating these things beyond the reasonable amount, is so much taken from the life--from the things of the mind and the spirit. it is in the development and the pursuit of these that all true satisfaction lies. elemental law has so decreed. we have made wonderful progress, or rather have developed wonderful skill in connection with things. we need now to go back and catch up the thread and develop like skill in making the life. little wonder that brains are addled, that nerves are depleted, that nervous dyspepsia, that chronic weariness, are not the exception but rather the rule. little wonder that sanitariums are always full; that asylums are full and overflowing--and still more to be built. no wonder that so many men, so many good men break and go to pieces, and so many lose the life here at from fifty to sixty years, when they should be in the very prime of life, in the full vigour of manhood; at the very age when they are capable of enjoying life the most and are most capable of rendering the greatest service to their fellows, to their community, because of greater growth, experience, means, and therefore leisure. jesus was right--what doth it profit? and think of the real riches that in the meantime are missed. it is like an addled-brain driver in making a trip across the continent. he is possessed, obsessed with the insane desire of making a record. he plunges on and on night and day, good weather and foul--and all the time he is missing all the beauties, all the benefits to health and spirit along the way. he has none of these when he arrives--he has missed them all. he has only the fact that he has made a record drive--or nearly made one. and those with him he has not only robbed of the beauties along the way; but he has subjected them to all the discomforts along the way. and what really underlies the making of a record? it is primarily the spirit of vanity. when the mental beauties of life, when the spiritual verities are sacrificed by self-surrender to and domination by the material, one of the heavy penalties that inexorable law imposes is the drying up, so to speak, of the finer human perceptions--the very faculties of enjoyment. it presents to the world many times, and all unconscious to himself, a stunted, shrivelled human being--that eternal type that the master had in mind when he said: "thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required of thee." he whose sole employment or even whose primary employment becomes the building of bigger and still bigger barns to take care of his accumulated grain, becomes incapable of realising that life and the things that pertain to it are of infinitely more value than barns, or houses, or acres, or stocks, or bonds, or railroad ties. these all have their place, all are of value; but they can never be made the life. a recent poem by james oppenheim presents a type that is known to nearly every one:[b] i heard the preacher preaching at the funeral: he moved the relatives to tears telling them of the father, husband, and friend that was dead: of the sweet memories left behind him: of a life that was good and kind. i happened to know the man, and i wondered whether the relatives would have wept if the preacher had told the truth: let us say like this: "the only good thing this man ever did in his life, was day before yesterday: _he died_.... but he didn't even do that of his own volition.... he was the meanest man in business on manhattan island, the most treacherous friend, the crudest and stingiest husband, and a father so hard that his children left home as soon as they were old enough.... of course he had divinity: everything human has: but he kept it so carefully hidden away that he might just as well not have had it.... "wife! good cheer! now you can go your own way and live your own life! children, give praise! you have his money: the only good thing he ever gave you.... friends! you have one less traitor to deal with.... this is indeed a day of rejoicing and exultation! thank god this man is dead!" an unknown enjoyment and profit to him is the world's great field of literature, the world's great thinkers, the inspirers of so many through all the ages. that splendid verse by emily dickinson means as much to him as it would to a dumb stolid ox: he ate and drank the precious words, his spirit grew robust, he knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was dust; he danced along the dingy days, and this bequest of wings was but a book! what liberty a loosened spirit brings! yes, life and its manifold possibilities of unfoldment and avenues of enjoyment--life, and the things that pertain to it--is an infinitely greater thing than the mere accessories of life. what infinite avenues of enjoyment, what peace of mind, what serenity of soul may be the possession of all men and all women who are alive to the inner possibilities of life as portrayed by our own prophet, emerson, when he said: oh, when i am safe in my sylvan home, i tread on the pride of greece and rome; and when i am stretched beneath the pines, where the evening star so holy shines, i laugh at the lore and pride of man, at the sophist schools and the learned clan; for what are they all in their high conceit, when man in the bush with god may meet? it was he who has exerted such a world-wide influence upon the minds and lives of men and women who also said: "great men are they who see that spirituality is stronger than any material force: that thoughts rule the world." and this is true not only of the world in general, but it is true likewise in regard to the individual life. one of the great secrets of all successful living is unquestionably the striking of the right balance in life. the material has its place--and a very important place. fools indeed were we to ignore or to attempt to ignore this fact. we cannot, however, except to our detriment, put the cart before the horse. things may contribute to happiness, but things cannot bring happiness--and sad indeed, and crippled and dwarfed and stunted becomes the life of every one who is not capable of realising this fact. eternally true indeed is it that the life is more than meat and the body more than raiment. all life is from an inner centre outward. as within, so without. as we think we become. which means simply this: our prevailing thoughts and emotions are never static, but dynamic. thoughts are forces--like creates like, and like attracts like. it is therefore for us to choose whether we shall be interested primarily in the great spiritual forces and powers of life, or whether we shall be interested solely in the material things of life. but there is a wonderful law which we must not lose sight of. it is to the effect that when we become sufficiently alive to the inner powers and forces, to the inner springs of life, the material things of life will not only follow in a natural and healthy sequence, but they will also assume their right proportions. they will take their right places. it was the recognition of this great fundamental fact of life that jesus had in mind when he said: "but rather seek ye the kingdom of god; and all these things shall be added unto you,"--meaning, as he so distinctly stated, the kingdom of the mind and spirit made open and translucent to the leading of the divine wisdom inherent in the human soul, when that leading is sought and when through the right ordering of the mind we make the conditions whereby it may become operative in the individual life. the great value of god as taught by jesus is that god dwells in us. it is truly emmanuel--god with us. the law must be observed--the conditions must be met. "the lord is with you while ye be with him; and if ye will seek him, he will be found of you." "the spirit of the living god dwelleth in you." "if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of god, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. but let him ask in faith, nothing wavering." that there is a divine law underlying prayer that helps to release the inner springs of wisdom, which in turn leads to power, was well known to jesus, for his life abundantly proved it. his great aptitude for the things of the spirit enabled him intuitively to realise this, to understand it, to use it. and there was no mystery, no secret, no subterfuge on the part of jesus as to the source of his power. in clear and unmistakable words he made it known--and why should he not? it was the truth, the truth of this inner kingdom that would make men free that he came to reveal. "the words that i speak unto you i speak not of myself: but the father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." "my father worketh hitherto and i work.... for as the father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the son to have life in himself.... i can of mine own self do nothing." as he followed the conditions whereby this higher illumination can come so must we. the injunction that jesus gave in regard to prayer is unquestionably the method that he found so effective and that he himself used. how many times we are told that he withdrew to the mountain for his quiet period, for communion with the father, that the realisation of his oneness with god might be preserved intact. in this continual realisation--i and my father are one--lay his unusual insight and power. and his distinct statement which he made in speaking of his own powers--as i am ye shall be--shows clearly the possibilities of human unfoldment and attainment, since he realised and lived and then revealed the way. were not this divine source of wisdom and power the heritage of every human soul, distinctly untrue then would be jesus' saying: "for every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened." infinitely better is it to know that one has this inner source of guidance and wisdom which as he opens himself to it becomes continually more distinct, more clear and more unerring in its guidance, than to be continually seeking advice from outside sources, and being confused in regard to the advice given. this is unquestionably the way of the natural and the normal life, made so simple and so plain by jesus, and that was foreshadowed by isaiah when he said: "hast thou not known? hast thou not heard that the everlasting god, the lord, the creator of the ends of the earth fainteth not, neither is weary? he giveth power to the faint and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. but they that wait upon the lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint." not that problems and trials will not come. they will come. there never has been and there never will be a life free from them. life isn't conceivable on any other terms. but the wonderful source of consolation and strength, the source that gives freedom from worry and freedom from fear is the realisation of the fact that the guiding force and the moulding power is within us. it becomes active and controlling in the degree that we realise and in the degree that we are able to open ourselves so that the divine intelligence and power can speak to and can work through us. judicious physical exercise induces greater bodily strength and vigour. an active and alert mental life, in other words mental activity, induces greater intellectual power. and under the same general law the same is true in regard to the development and the use of spiritual power. it, however, although the most important of all because it has to do more fundamentally with the life itself, we are most apt to neglect. the losses, moreover, resulting from this neglect are almost beyond calculation. to establish one's centre aright is to make all of life's activities and events and results flow from this centre in orderly sequence. a modern writer of great insight has said: "the understanding that god is, and _all there is_, will establish you upon a foundation from which you can never be moved." to know that the power that is god is the power that works in us is knowledge of transcendent import. to know that the spirit of infinite wisdom and power which is the creating, the moving, and the sustaining force in all life, thinks and acts in and through us as our own very life, in the degree that we consciously and deliberately desire it to become the guiding and the animating force in our lives, and open ourselves fully to its leadings, and follow its leadings, is to attain to that state of conscious oneness with the divine that jesus realised, lived and revealed, and that he taught as the method of the natural and the normal life for all men. we are so occupied with the matters of the sense-life that all unconsciously we become dominated, ruled by the things of the senses. now in the real life there is the recognition of the fact that the springs of life are all from within, and that the inner always leads and rules the outer. under the elemental law of cause and effect this is always done--whether we are conscious of it or not. but the difference lies here: the master of life consciously and definitely allies himself in mind and spirit with the great central force and rules his world from within. the creature of circumstances, through lack of desire or through weakness of will, fails to do this, and, lacking guiding and directing force, drifts and becomes thereby the creature of circumstance. one of deep insight has said: "that we do not spontaneously see and know god, as we see and know one another, and so manifest the god-nature as we do the sense-nature, is because that nature is yet latent, and in a sense slumbering within us. yet the god-nature within us connects us as directly and vitally with the being and kingdom of god within, behind, and above the world, as does the sense-nature with the world external to us. hence as the sense-consciousness was awakened and established by the recognition of and communication with the outward world through the senses, so the god-consciousness must be awakened by the corresponding recognition of, and communication with the being and kingdom of god through intuition--the spiritual sense of the inner man.... the true prayer--the prayer of silence--is the only door that opens the soul to the direct revelation of god, and brings thereby the realisation of the god-nature in ourselves." as the keynote to the world of sense is activity, so the keynote to spiritual light and power is quiet. the individual consciousness must be brought into harmony with the cosmic consciousness. paul speaks of the "sons of god." and in a single sentence he describes what he means by the term--"for as many as are led by the spirit of god, they are the sons of god." an older prophet has said: "the lord in the midst of thee is mighty." jesus with his deep insight perceived the identity of his real life with the divine life, the indwelling wisdom and power,--the "father in me." the whole course of his ministry was his attempt "to show those who listened to him how he was related to the father, and to teach them that they were related to the same father in exactly the same way." there is that within man that is illumined and energised through the touch of his spirit. we can bring our minds into rapport, into such harmony and connection with the infinite divine mind that it speaks in us, directs us, and therefore acts through us as our own selves. through this connection we become illumined by divine wisdom and we become energised by divine power. it is ours, then, to act under the guidance of this higher wisdom and in all forms of expression to act and to work augmented by this higher power. the finite spirit, with all its limitations, becomes at its very centre in rapport with infinite spirit, its source. the finite thereby becomes the channel through which the infinite can and does work. to use an apt figure, it is the moving of the switch whereby we connect our wires as it were with the central dynamo which is the force that animates, that gives and sustains life in the universe. it is making actual the proposition that was enunciated by emerson when he said: "every soul is not only the inlet, but may become the outlet of all there is in god." significant also in this connection is his statement: "the only sin is limitation." it is the actualising of the fact that in him we live and move and have our being, with its inevitable resultant that we become "strong in the lord and in the power of his might." there is perhaps no more valuable way of realising this end, than to adopt the practice of taking a period each day for being alone in the quiet, a half hour, even a quarter hour; stilling the bodily senses and making oneself receptive to the higher leadings of the spirit--receptive to the impulses of the soul. this is following the master's practice and example of communion with the father. things in this universe and in human life do not happen. all is law and sequence. the elemental law of cause and effect is universal and unvarying. in the realm of spirit law is as definite as in the realm of mechanics--in the realm of all material forces. if we would have the leading of the spirit, if we would perceive the higher intuitions and be led intuitively, bringing the affairs of the daily life thereby into the divine sequence, we must observe the conditions whereby these leadings can come to us, and in time become habitual. the law of the spirit is quiet--to be followed by action--but quiet, the more readily to come into a state of harmony with the infinite intelligence that works through us, and that leads us as our own intelligence when through desire and through will, we are able to bring our subconscious minds into such attunement that it can act through us, and we are able to catch its messages and follow its direction. but to listen and to observe the conditions whereby we can listen is essential. jesus' own words as well as his practice apply here. after his admonition against public prayer, or prayer for show, or prayer of much speaking, he said: "but thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy father which is in secret; and thy father which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly." now there are millions of men, women, and children in the world who have no closets. there are great numbers of others who have no access to them sometimes for days, or weeks, or months at a time. it is evident, therefore, that in the word that has been rendered closet he meant--enter into the quiet recesses of your own soul that you may thus hold communion with the father. now the value of prayer is not that god will change or order any laws or forces to suit the numerous and necessarily the diverse petitions of any. all things are through law, and law is fixed and inexorable. the value of prayer, of true prayer, is that through it one can so harmonise his life with the divine order that intuitive perceptions of truth and a greater perception and knowledge of law becomes his possession. as has been said by an able contemporary thinker and writer: "we cannot form a passably thorough notion of man without saturating it through and through with the idea of a cosmic inflow from outside his world life--the inflow of god. without a large consciousness of the universe beyond our knowledge, few men, if any, have done great things.[c] i shall always remember with great pleasure and profit a call a few days ago from dr. edward emerson of concord, emerson's eldest son. happily i asked him in regard to his father's methods of work--if he had any regular methods. he replied in substance: "it was my father's custom to go daily to the woods--_to listen_. he would remain there an hour or more in order to get whatever there might be for him that day. he would then come home and write into a little book--his 'day-book'--what he had gotten. later on when it came time to write a book, he would transcribe from this, in their proper sequence and with their proper connections, these entrances of the preceding weeks or months. the completed book became virtually a ledger formed or posted from his day-books." the prophet is he who so orders his life that he can adequately listen to the voice, the revelations of the over soul, and who truthfully transcribes what he hears or senses. he is not a follower of custom or of tradition. he can never become and can never be made the subservient tool of an organisation. his aim and his mission is rather to free men from ignorance, superstition, credulity, from half truths, by leading them into a continually larger understanding of truth, of law--and therefore of righteousness. it was more than a mere poetic idea that lowell gave utterance to when he said: the thing we long for, that we are for one transcendent moment. to establish this connection, to actualise this god-consciousness, that it may not be for one transcendent moment, but that it may become constant and habitual, so that every thought arises, and so that every act goes forth from this centre, is the greatest good that can come into the possession of man. there is nothing greater. it is none other than the realisation of jesus' injunction--"seek ye first the kingdom of god and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." it is then that he said--do not worry about your life. your mind and your will are under the guidance of the divine mind; your every act goes out under this direction and all things pertaining to your life will fall into their proper places. therefore do not worry about your life. when a man finds his centre, when he becomes centred in the infinite, then redemption takes place. he is redeemed from the bondage of the senses. he lives thereafter under the guidance of the spirit, and this is salvation. it is a new life that he has entered into. he lives in a new world, because his outlook is entirely new. he is living now in the kingdom of heaven. heaven means harmony. he has brought his own personal mind and life into harmony with the divine mind and life. he becomes a coworker with god. it is through such men and women that god's plans and purposes are carried out. they not only hear but they interpret for others god's voice. they are the prophets of our time and the prophets of all time. they are doing god's work in the world, and in so doing they are finding their own supreme satisfaction and happiness. they are not looking forward to the eternal life. they realise that they are now in the eternal life, and that there is no such thing as eternal life if this life that we are now in is not it. when the time comes for them to stop their labours here, they look forward without fear and with anticipation to the change, the transition to the other form of life--but not to any other life. the words of whitman embody a spirit of anticipation and of adventure for them: joy, shipmate, joy! (pleas'd to my soul at death i cry) one life is closed, one life begun, the long, long anchorage we leave, the ship is clear at last, she leaps. joy, shipmate, joy! they have an abiding faith that they will take up the other form of life exactly where they left it off here. being in heaven now they will be in heaven when they awake to the continuing beauties of the life subsequent to their transition. such we might also say is the teaching of jesus regarding the highest there is in life here and the best there is in the life hereafter. xi some methods of expression the life of the spirit, or, in other words, the true religious life, is not a life of mere contemplation or a life of inactivity. as fichte, in "the way toward the blessed life," has said: "true religion, notwithstanding that it raises the view of those who are inspired by it to its own region, nevertheless, retains their life firmly in the domain of action, and of right moral action.... religion is not a business by and for itself which a man may practise apart from his other occupations, perhaps on certain fixed days and hours; but it is the inmost spirit that penetrates, inspires, and pervades all our thought and action, which in other respects pursue their appointed course without change or interruption. that the divine life and energy actually lives in us is inseparable from religion." how thoroughly this is in keeping with the thought of the highly illumined seer, swedenborg, is indicated when he says: "the lord's kingdom is a kingdom of ends and uses." and again: "forsaking the world means loving god and the neighbour; and god is loved when a man lives according to his commandments, and the neighbour is loved when a man performs uses." and still again: "to be of use means to desire the welfare of others for the sake of the common good; and not to be of use means to desire the welfare of others not for the sake of the common good but for one's own sake.... in order that man may receive heavenly life he must live in the world and engage in its business and occupations, and thus by a moral and civil life acquire spiritual life. in no other way can spiritual life be generated in man, or his spirit be prepared for heaven." we hear much today both in various writings and in public utterances of "the spiritual" and "the spiritual life." i am sure that to the great majority of men and women the term spiritual, or better, the spiritual life, means something, but something by no means fully tangible or clear-cut. i shall be glad indeed if i am able to suggest a more comprehensible concept of it, or putting it in another form and better perhaps, to present a more clear-cut portraiture of the spiritual life in expression--in action. and first let us note that in the mind and in the teachings of jesus there is no such thing as the secular life and the religious life. his ministry pertained to every phase of life. the truth that he taught was a truth that was to permeate every thought and every act of life. we make our arbitrary divisions. we are too apt to deny the fact that the lord is the lord of the week-day, the same as he is the lord of the sabbath. jesus refused to be bound by any such consideration. he taught that every act that is a good act, every act that is of service to mankind is not only a legitimate act to be done on the sabbath day, but an act that _should_ be performed on the sabbath day. and any act that is not right and legitimate for the sabbath day is neither right nor legitimate for the week-day. in other words, it is the spirit of righteousness that must permeate and must govern every act of life and every moment of life. in seeking to define the spiritual life, it were better to regard the world as the expression of the divine mind. the spirit is the life; the world and all things in it, the material to be moulded, raised, and transmuted from the lower to the higher. this is indeed the law of evolution, that has been through all the ages and that today is at work. it is the god-power that is at work and every form of useful activity that helps on with this process of lifting and bettering is a form of divine activity. if therefore we recognise the one divine life working in and through all, the animating force, therefore the life of all, and if we are consciously helping in this process we are spiritual men. no man of intelligence can fail to recognise the fact that life is more important than things. life is the chief thing, and material things are the elements that minister to, that serve the purposes of the life. whoever does anything in the world to preserve life, to better its conditions, who, recognising the divine force at work lifting life up always to better, finer conditions, is doing god's work in the world--because cooperating with the great cosmic world plan. the ideal, then, is men and women of the spirit, open and responsive always to its guidance, recognising the divine plan and the divine ideal, working cooperatively in the world to make all conditions of life fairer, finer, more happy. he who lives and works not as an individual, that is not for his good alone, but who recognises the essential oneness of life--is carrying out his share of the divine plan. a man may be unusually gifted; he may have unusual ability in business, in administration; he may be a giant in finance, in administration, but if for self alone, if lack of vision blinds him to the great divine plan, if he does not recognise his relative place and value; if he gains his purposes by selfishness, by climbing over others, by indifference to human pain or suffering--oblivious to human welfare--his ways are the ways of the jungle. his mind and his life are purely sordid, grossly and blindly self-centred--wholly material. he gains his object, but by divine law not happiness, not satisfaction, not peace. he is outside the kingdom of heaven--the kingdom of harmony. he is living and working out of harmony with the divine mind that is evolving a higher order of life in the world. he is blind too, he is working against the divine plan. now what is the divine call? can he be made into a spiritual man? yes. a different understanding, a different motive, a different object--then will follow a difference in methods. instead of self alone he will have a sense of, he will have a call to service. and this man, formerly a hinderer in the divine plan, becomes a spiritual giant. his splendid powers and his qualities do not need to be changed. merely his motives and thereby his methods, and he is changed into a giant engine of righteousness. he is a part of the great world force and plan. he is doing his part in the great world work--he is a coworker with god. and here lies salvation. saved from self and the dwarfed and stunted condition that will follow, his spiritual nature unfolds and envelops his entire life. his powers and his wealth are thereafter to bless mankind. but behold! by another great fundamental law of life in doing this he is blessed ten, a hundred, a millionfold. material prosperity is or may become a true gain, a veritable blessing. but it can become a curse to the world and still more to its possessor when made an end in itself, and at the expense of all the higher attributes and powers of human life. we have reason to rejoice that a great change of estimate has not only begun but is now rapidly creeping over the world. he of even a generation ago who piled and piled, but who remained ignorant of the more fundamental laws of life, blind to the law of mutuality and service, would be regarded today as a low, beastly type. i speak advisedly. it is this obedience to the life of the spirit that whitman had in mind when he said: "and whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud." it was the full flowering of the law of mutuality and service that he saw when he said: "i saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth. i dream'd that it was the new city of friends. nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love; it led the rest. it was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city and in all their looks and words." it is through obedience to this life of the spirit that order is brought out of chaos in the life of the individual and in the life of the community, in the business world, the labour world, and in our great world relations. but in either case, we men and women of christendom, to be a christian is not only to be good, but to be good for something. according to the teachings of the master true religion is not only personal salvation, but it is giving one's self through all of one's best efforts to actualise the kingdom of heaven here on earth. the finding of the kingdom is not only personal but social and world-affirming--and in the degree that it becomes fully and vitally personal will it become so. a man who is not right with his fellow-men is not right and cannot be right with god. this is coming to be the clear-cut realisation of all progressive religious thought today. since men are free from the trammels of an enervating dogma that through fear made them seek, or rather that made them contented with religion as primarily a system of rewards and punishments, they are now awakening to the fact that the logical carrying out of jesus' teaching of the kingdom is the establishing here on this earth of an order of life and hence of a society where greater love and cooperation and justice prevail. our rapidly growing present-day conception of christianity makes it not world-renouncing, but world-affirming. this modern conception of the function of a true and vital christianity makes it the task of the immediate future to apply christianity to trade, to commerce, to labour relations, to all social relations, to international relations. "and, in the wider field of religious thought," says a writer in a great international religious paper, "what truer service can we render than to strip theology of all that is unreal or needlessly perplexing, and make it speak plainly and humanly to people who have their duty to do and their battle to fight?" it makes intelligent, sympathetic, and helpful living take the place of the tooth and the claw, the growl and the deadly hiss of the jungle--all right in their places, but with no place in human living. the growing realisation of the interdependence of all life is giving a new standard of action and attainment, and a new standard of estimate. jesus' criterion is coming into more universal appreciation: he that is greatest among you shall be as he who serves. through this fundamental law of life there are responsibilities that cannot be evaded or shirked--and of him to whom much is given much is required. it was president wilson who recently said: "it is to be hoped that these obvious truths will come to more general acceptance; that honest business will quit thinking that it is attacked when loaded-dice business is attacked; that the mutuality of interest between employer and employee will receive ungrudging admission; and, finally, that men of affairs will lend themselves more patriotically to the work of making democracy an efficient instrument for the promotion of human welfare. it cannot be said that they have done so in the past.... as a consequence, many necessary things have been done less perfectly without their assistance that could have been done more perfectly with their expert aid." he is by no means alone in recognising this fact. nor is he at all blind to the great change that is already taking place. in a recent public address in new york, the head of one of the largest plants in the world, and who starting with nothing has accumulated a fortune of many millions, said: "the only thing i am proud of--prouder of than that i have amassed a great fortune--is that i established the first manual training school in pennsylvania. the greatest delight of my life is to see the advancement of the young men who have come up about me." this growing sense of personal responsibility, and still better, of personal interest, this giving of one's abilities and one's time, _in addition to one's means_, is the beginning of the fulfilment of what i have long thought: namely, the great gain that will accrue to numberless communities and to the nation, when men of great means, men of great business and executive ability, give of their time and their abilities for the accomplishment of those things for the public welfare that otherwise would remain undone, or that would remain unduly delayed. what a gain will result also to those who so do in the joy and satisfaction resulting from this higher type of accomplishment hallowed by the undying element of human service! you keep silent too much. "have great leaders, and the rest will follow," said whitman. the gift of your abilities while you live would be of priceless worth for the establishing and the maintenance of a fairer, a healthier, and a sweeter life in your community, your city, your country. it were better to do this and to be contented with a smaller accumulation than to have it so large or even so excessive, and when the summons comes to leave it to two or three or to half a dozen who cannot possibly have good use for it all, and some of whom perchance would be far better off without it, or without so much. by so doing you would be leaving something still greater to them as well as to hundreds or thousands of others. significant in this connection are these words by a man of wealth and of great public service:[d] "on the whole, the individualistic age has not been a success, either for the individual, or the community in which he has lived, or the nation. we are, beyond question, entering on a period where the welfare of the community takes precedence over the interests of the individual and where the liberty of the individual will be more and more circumscribed for the benefit of the community as a whole. man's activities will hereafter be required to be not only for himself but for his fellow-men. to my mind there is nothing in the signs of the times so certain as this. "the man of exceptional ability, of more than ordinary talent, will hereafter look for his rewards, for his honours, not in one direction but in two--first, and foremost, in some public work accomplished, and, secondarily, in wealth acquired. in place of having it said of him at his death that he left so many hundred thousand dollars it will be said that he rendered a certain amount of public service, and, incidentally, left a certain amount of money. such a goal will prove a far greater satisfaction to him, he will live a more rational, worthwhile life, and he will be doing his share to provide a better country in which to live. we face new conditions, and in order to survive and succeed we shall require a different spirit of public service." i am well aware of the fact that the mere accumulation of wealth is not, except in very rare cases, the controlling motive in the lives of our wealthy men of affairs. it is rather the joy and the satisfaction of achievement. but nevertheless it is possible, as has so often proved, to get so much into a habit and thereby into a rut, that one becomes a victim of habit; and the life with all its superb possibilities of human service, and therefore of true greatness, becomes side-tracked and abortive. there are so many different lines of activity for human betterment for children, for men and women, that those of great executive and financial ability have wonderful opportunities. greatness comes always through human service. as there is no such thing as finding happiness by searching for it directly, so there is no such thing as achieving greatness by seeking it directly. it comes not primarily through brilliant intellect, great talents, but primarily through the heart. it is determined by the way that brilliant intellect, great talents are used. it is accorded not to those who seek it directly. by an indirect law it is accorded to those who, forgetting self, give and thereby lose their lives in human service. both poet and prophet is edwin markham when he says: we men of earth have here the stuff of paradise--we have enough! we need no other stones to build the stairs into the unfulfilled-- no other ivory for the doors-- no other marble for the floors-- no other cedar for the beam and dome of man's immortal dream. here on the paths of every day-- here on the common human way, is all the stuff the gods would take to build a heaven; to mould and make new edens. ours the stuff sublime to build eternity in time! this putting of divinity into life and raising thereby an otherwise sordid life up to higher levels and thereby to greater enjoyments, is the power that is possessed equally by those of station and means, and by those in the more humble or even more lowly walks of life. when your life is thus touched by the spirit of god, when it is ruled by this inner kingdom, when your constant prayer, as the prayer of every truly religious man or woman will be--lord, what wilt thou have me to do? my one desire is that thy will be my will, and therefore that thy will be done in me and through me--then you are living the divine life; you are a coworker with god. and whether your life according to accepted standards be noted or humble it makes no difference--you are fulfilling your divine mission. you should be, you cannot help being fearless and happy. you are a part of the great creative force in the world. you are doing a man's or a woman's work in the world, and in so doing you are not unimportant; you are essential. the joy of true accomplishment is yours. you can look forward always with sublime courage and expectancy. the life of the most humble can thus become an exalted life. mother, watching over, cleaning, feeding, training, and educating your brood; seamstress, working, with a touch of the divine in all you do--it must be done by some one--allow it to be done by none better than by you. farmer, tilling your soil, gathering your crops, caring for your herds; you are helping feed the world. there is nothing more important. "who digs a well, or plants a seed, a sacred pact he keeps with sun and sod; with these he helps refresh and feed the world, and enters partnership with god." if you do not allow yourself to become a slave to your work, and if you cooperate within the house and the home so that your wife and your daughters do not become slaves or near-slaves, what an opportunity is yours of high thinking and noble living! the more intelligent you become, the better read, the greater the interest you take in community and public affairs, the more effectively you become what in reality and jointly you are--the backbone of this and of every nation. teacher, poet, dramatist, carpenter, ironworker, clerk, college head, mayor, governor, president, ruler--the effectiveness of your work and the satisfaction in your work will be determined by the way in which you relate your thought and your work to the divine plan, and coordinate your every activity in reference to the highest welfare of the greater whole. however dimly or clearly we may perceive it great changes are taking place. the simple, direct teachings of the christ are reaching more and more the mind, are stirring the heart and through these are dominating the actions of increasing numbers of men and women. the realisation of the mutual interdependence of the human family, the realisation of its common source, and that when one part of it goes wrong all suffer thereby, the same as when any portion of it advances all are lifted and benefited thereby, makes us more eager for the more speedy actualising of the kingdom that the master revealed and portrayed. it was sir oliver lodge who in this connection recently said: "those who think that the day of the messiah is over are strangely mistaken; it has hardly begun. in individual souls christianity has flourished and borne fruit, but for the ills of the world itself it is an almost untried panacea. it will be strange if this ghastly war fosters and simplifies and improves a knowledge of christ, and aids a perception of the ineffable beauty of his life and teaching; yet stranger things have happened, and whatever the churches may do, i believe that the call of christ himself will be heard and attended to by a larger part of humanity in the near future, as never yet it has been heard or attended to on earth." the simple message of the christ, with its twofold injunction of love, is, when sufficiently understood and sufficiently heeded, all that we men of earth need to lift up, to beautify, to make strong and godlike individual lives and thereby and of necessity the life of the world. jesus never taught that god incarnated himself in him alone. i challenge any man living to find any such teaching by him. he did proclaim his own unique realisation of god. intuitively and vividly he perceived the divine life, the eternal word, the eternal christ, manifesting in his clean, strong, upright soul, so that the young jewish rabbi and prophet, known in all his community as jesus, the son of joseph and mary and whose brothers and sisters they knew so well,[e] became the firstborn--fully born--of the father. he then pleaded with all the energy and love and fervour of his splendid heart and vigorous manhood that all men should follow the way that he revealed and realise their divine sonship, that their lives might be redeemed--redeemed from the bondage of the bodily senses and the bondage of merely the things of the outer world, and saved as fit subjects of and workers in the father's kingdom. otherwise for millions of splendid earnest men and women today his life-message would have no meaning. to make men awake to their real identity, and therefore to their possibilities and powers as true sons of god, the father of all, and therefore that all men are brothers--for otherwise god is not father of all--and to live together in brotherly love and mutual cooperation whereby the divine will becomes done on earth as it is in heaven--this is his message to we men of earth. if we believe his message and accept his leadership, then he becomes indeed our elder brother who leads the way, the word in us becomes flesh, the christ becomes enthroned in our lives,--and we become co-workers with him in the father's vineyard. xii the world war--its meaning and its lessons for us whatever differences of opinion--and honest differences of opinion--may have existed and may still exist in america in regard to the great world conflict, there is a wonderful unanimity of thought that has crystallised itself into the concrete form--_something must be done in order that it can never occur again_. the higher intelligence of the nation must assert itself. it must feel and think and act in terms of internationalism. not that the feeling of nationalism in any country shall, or even can be eradicated or even abated. it must be made, however, to coordinate itself with the now rapidly growing sense of world-consciousness, that the growing intelligence of mankind, aided by some tremendously concrete forms of recent experience, is now recognising as a great reality. that there were very strong sympathies for both the allied nations and for the central powers in the beginning, goes without saying, how could it be otherwise, when we realise the diverse and complex types of our citizenship? one of the most distinctive, and in some ways one of the most significant, features of the american nation is that it is today composed of representatives, and in some cases, of enormous bodies of representatives, numbering into the millions, of practically every nation in the world. there are single cities where, in one case twenty-six, in another case twenty-nine, and in other cases a still larger number of what are today designated as hyphenated citizens are represented. the orderly removal of the hyphen, and the amalgamation of these splendid representatives of practically all nations into genuine american citizens, infused with american ideals and pushed on by true american ambitions, is one of the great problems that the war has brought in a most striking manner to our attention. not that these representatives of many nations shall in any way lose their sense of sympathy for the nations of their birth, in times of either peace or of distress, although they have found it either advisable or greatly to their own personal advantage and welfare to leave the lands of their birth and to establish their homes here. the fact that in the vast majority of cases they find themselves better off here, and choose to remain and assume the responsibilities of citizenship in the western republic, involves a responsibility that some, if not indeed many, heretofore have apparently too lightly considered. there must be a more supreme sense of allegiance, and a continually growing sense of responsibility to the nation, that, guided by their own independent judgment and animated by their own free wills, they have chosen as their home. there is a difference between sympathy and allegiance; and unless a man has found conditions intolerable in the land of his birth, and this is the reason for his seeking a home in another land more to his liking and to his advantage, we cannot expect him to be devoid of sympathy for the land of his birth, especially in times of stress or of great need. we can expect him, however, and we have a right to demand his _absolute allegiance_ to the land of his adoption. and if he cannot give this, then we should see to it that he return to his former home. if he is capable of clear thinking and right feeling, he also must realise the fundamental truth of this fact. there are public schools in america where as many as nineteen languages are spoken in a single room. our public schools, so eagerly sought by the children of parents of foreign birth, in their intense eagerness for an education, that is offered freely and without cost to all, can and must be made greater instruments in converting what must in time become a great menace to our institutions, and even to the very life of the nation itself, into a real and genuine american citizenship. our best educators, in addition to our clearest thinking citizens, are realising as never before, that our public-school system chiefly, among our educational institutions, must be made a great melting-pot through which this process of amalgamation must be carried on. we are also realising clearly now that, as a nation, we have been entirely too lax in connection with our immigration privileges, regulations and restrictions. we have been admitting foreigners to our shores in such enormous quantities each year that we have not been able at all adequately to assimilate them, nor have we used at all a sufficiently wise discrimination in the admission of desirables or undesirables. we have received, or we have allowed to be dumped upon our shores, great numbers of the latter whom we should know would inevitably become dependents, as well as great numbers of criminals. the result has been that they have been costing certain localities millions of dollars every year. but entirely aside from the latter, the last two or three years have brought home to us as never before the fact that those who come to our shores must come with the avowed and the settled purpose of becoming real american citizens, giving full and absolute allegiance to the institutions, the laws, the government of the land of their adoption. if any other government is not able so to manage as to make it more desirable for its subjects to remain in the land of their birth, rather than to seek homes in the land with institutions more to their liking, or with advantages more conducive to their welfare, that government then should not expect to retain, even in the slightest degree, the allegiance of such former subjects. a hyphenated citizenship may become as dangerous to a republic as a cancer is in the human body. a country with over a hundred hyphens cannot fulfil its highest destiny. we, as a nation, have been rudely shaken from our long dream of almost inevitable national security. we have been brought finally, and although as a nation we have no desire for conquest or empire, and no desire for military glory, and therefore no need of any great army or navy for offensive purposes, we have been brought finally to realise that we do, nevertheless, stand in need of a national strengthening of our arm of defence. a land of a hundred million people, where one could travel many times for a sixmonth and never see the sign of a soldier, is brought, though reluctantly, to face a new state of affairs; but one, nevertheless, that must be faced--calmly faced and wisely acted upon. and while it is true that as a nation we have always had the tradition of non-militarism, it is not true that we have had the tradition of military or of naval impotence or weakness. preparedness, therefore, has assumed a position of tremendous importance, in individual thought, in public discussion, and almost universally in the columns of the public press. one of the most vital questions among us then is, not so much as to how we shall prepare, but how shall we prepare adequately for defensive purposes, in case of any emergency arising, without being thrown too far along the road of militarism, and without an inordinate preparation that has been the scourge and the bane of many old-world countries for so many years, and that quite as much as anything has been provocative of the horrible conflict that has literally been devastating so many european countries. it is clearly apparent that the best thought in america today calls for an adequate preparation for purposes of defence, and calls for a recognition of facts as they are. it also clearly sees the danger of certain types of mind and certain interests combining to carry the matter much farther than is at all called for. the question is--how shall we then strike that happy balance that is the secret of all successful living in the lives of either individuals or in the lives of nations? all clear-seeing people realise that, as things are in the world today, there is a certain amount of preparedness that is necessary for influence and for insurance. as within the nation a police force is necessary for the enforcement of law, for the preservation of law and order, although it is not at all necessary that every second or third man be a policeman, so in the council of nations the individual nation must have a certain element of force that it can fall back upon if all other available agencies fail. in diplomacy the strong nations win out, the weaker lose out. military and naval power, unless carried to a ridiculous excess does not, therefore, lie idle, even when not in actual use. our power and influence as a nation will certainly not be in proportion to our weakness. although righteousness exalteth a nation, it is nevertheless true that righteousness alone will not protect a nation--while other nations are fully armed. national weakness does not make for peace. righteousness, combined with a spirit of forbearance, combined with a keen desire to give justice as well as to demand justice, if combined with the power to strike powerfully and sustainedly in defence of justice, and in defence of national integrity, is what protects a nation, and this it is that in the long run exalteth a nation--_while things are as they are_. while conditions have therefore brought prominently to the forefront in america the matter of military training and military service--an adequate military preparation for purposes of defence, for full and adequate defence, the best thought of the nation is almost a unit in the belief that, for us as a nation, an immense standing army is unnecessary as well as inadvisable. no amount of military preparation that is not combined definitely and completely with an enhanced citizenship, and therefore with an advance in real democracy, is at all worthy of consideration on the part of the american people, or indeed on the part of the people of any nation. pre-eminently is this true in this day and age. observing this principle we could then, while a certain degree of universal training under some system similar to the swiss or australian system is being carried on, and to serve _our immediate needs_, have an army of even a quarter of a million men without danger of militarism and without heavy financial burdens, and without subverting our american ideas--providing it is an industrial arm. there are great engineering projects that could be carried on, thereby developing many of our now latent resources; there is an immense amount of road-building that could be projected in many parts of, if not throughout the entire country; there are great irrigation projects that could be carried on in the far west and southwest, reclaiming millions upon millions of acres of what are now unproductive desert lands; all these could be carried on and made even to pay, keeping busy a large number of men for half a dozen years to come. this army of this number of men could be recruited, trained to an adequate degree of military service, and at the same time could be engaged in profitable employment on these much-needed works. they could then be paid an adequate wage, ample to support a family, or ample to lay up savings if without family. such men leaving the army service, would then have a degree of training and skill whereby they would be able to get positions or employment, all more remunerative than the bulk of them, perhaps, would ever be able to get without such training and experience. an army of this number of trained men, somewhat equally divided between the atlantic and the pacific seaboards, the bulk of them engaged in regular constructive work, _work that needs to be done and that, therefore, could be profitably done_, and ready to be called into service at a moment's notice, would constitute a tremendous insurance against any aggression from without, and would also give a tremendous sense of security for half a dozen years at least. this number could then be reduced, for by that time several million young men from eighteen years up would be partially trained and in first-class physical shape to be summoned to service should the emergency arise. in addition to the vast amount of good roads building, whose cost could be borne in equal proportions by nation, state and county--a most important factor in connection with military necessity as well as a great economic factor in the successful development and advancement of any community--the millions of acres of now arid lands in the west, awaiting only water to make them among the most valuable and productive in all the world, could be used as a great solution of our immigration problem. up to the year when the war began, there came to our shores upwards of one million immigrants every twelve months, seeking work, and most of them homes in this country. the great bulk of them got no farther than our cities, increasing congestion, already in many cases acute, and many of them becoming in time, from one cause or another, dependents, the annual cost of their maintenance aggregating many millions every year. with these vast acres ready for them large numbers could, under a wise system of distribution, be sent on to the great west and southwest, and more easily and directly now since the panama canal is open for navigation. allotments of these lands could be assigned them that they could in time become owners of, through a wisely established system of payments. many of them would thereby be living lives similar to those they lived in their own countries, and for which their training and experience there have abundantly fitted them. they would thus become a far more valuable type of citizens--landowners--than they could ever possibly become otherwise, and especially through our present unorganised hit-or-miss system. they would in time also add annually hundreds of millions of productive work to the wealth of the country. the very wise system that was inaugurated some time ago in connection with the coast defence arm of our army is, under the wise direction of our present secretary of war, to be extended to all branches of the service. for some time in the coast artillery service the enlisted man under competent instruction has had the privilege of becoming a skilled machinist or a skilled electrician. now the system is to be extended through all branches of the military service, and many additional trades are to be added to the curricula of the trade schools of the army. the young man can, therefore, make his own selection and become a trained artisan at the same time that he serves his time in the army, with all expenses for such training, as well as maintenance, borne by the government. he can thereby leave the service fully equipped for profitable employment. this will have the tendency of calling a better class of young men into the service; it will also do away with the well-founded criticism that army life and its idleness, or partly-enforced idleness, unfits a man for useful industrial service after he quits the army. if this same system is extended through the navy, as it can be, both army and navy service will meet the american requirement--that neither military nor naval service take great numbers of men from productive employment, to be in turn supported by other workers. instead of so much dead timber, they are all the time producing while in active service, and are being trained to be highly efficient as producers, when they leave the service. under this system the federal government can build its own ordnance works and its own munition factories and become its own maker of whatever may be required in all lines of output. we will then be able to escape the perverse influence of gain on the part of large munition industries, and the danger that comes from that portion of a military party whose motives are actuated by personal gain. if the occasion arises, or if we permit the occasion to arise, kruppism in america will become as dangerous and as sinister in its influences and its proportions, as it became in germany. another great service that the war has done us, is by way of bringing home to us the lesson that has been so prominently brought to the front in connection with the other nations at war, namely, the necessity of the speedy and thorough mobilisation of all lines of industries and business; for the thoroughness and the efficiency with which this can be done may mean success that otherwise would result in failure and disaster. we are now awake to the tremendous importance of this. it is at last becoming clearly understood among the peoples and the nations of the world that, as a nation, we have no desire for conquest, for territory, for empire--we have no purposes of aggression; we have quite enough to do to develop our resources and our as yet great undeveloped areas. a few months before the war broke, i had conversations with the heads or with the representatives of leading publishing houses in several european countries. it was at a time when our mexican situation was beginning to be very acute. i remember at that time especially, the conversation with the head of one of the largest publishing houses in italy, in milan. i could see plainly his scepticism when, in reply to his questions, i endeavoured to persuade him that as a nation we had no motives of conquest or of aggression in mexico, that we were interested solely in the restoration of a representative and stable government there. and since that time, i am glad to say that our acts as a nation have all been along the line of persuading him, and also many other like-minded ones in many countries abroad, of the truth of this assertion. by this general course we have been gaining the confidence and have been cementing the friendship of practically every south american republic, our immediate neighbours on the southern continent. this has been a source of increasing economic power with us, and an element of greatly added strength, and also a tremendous energy working all the time for the preservation of peace. one can say most confidently, even though recognising our many grave faults as a nation, that our course along this line has been such, especially of late years, as to inspire confidence on the part of all the fair-minded nations of the world. our theory of the state, the theory of democracy, is not that the state is above all, and that the individual and his welfare are as nothing when compared to it, but rather that the state is the agency through which the highest welfare of all its subjects is to be evolved, expressed, maintained. no other theory to my mind, is at all compatible with the intelligence of any free-thinking people. otherwise, there is always the danger and also the likelihood, while human nature is as it is, for some ruler, some clique, or factions so to concentrate power into their own hands, that for their own ambitions, for aggrandisement, or for false or short-sighted and half-baked ideas of additions to their country, it is dragged into periodic wars with other nations. nor do we share in the belief that the state is above morality, but rather that identically the same moral ideals, precepts and obligations that bind individuals must be held sacred by the state, otherwise it becomes a pirate among nations, and it will inevitably in time be hunted down and destroyed as such, however great its apparent power. nor do we as a nation share in the belief that war is necessary and indeed good for a nation, to inspire and to preserve its manly qualities, its virility, and therefore its power. were this the only way that this could be brought about, it might be well and good; but the price to be paid is a price that is too enormous and too frightful, and the results are too uncertain. we believe that these same ideals can be inculcated, that these same energies can be used along useful, conserving, constructive lines, rather than along lines of destruction. a nation may have the most colossal and perfect military system in the world, and still may suffer defeat in any given while, because of those unseen things that pertain to the soul of another people, whereby powers and forces are engendered and materialised that make defeat for them impossible; and in the matter of big guns, it is well always to remember that no nation can build them so great that another nation may not build them still greater. national safety does not necessarily lie in that direction. nor, on the other hand, along the lines of extreme pacificism--surely not as long as things are as they are. the argument of the lamb has small deterrent effect upon the wolf--as long as the wolf is a wolf. and sometimes wolves hunt in packs. the most preeminent lesson of the great war for us as a nation should be this--there should be constantly a degree of preparedness sufficient to hold until all the others, the various portions of the nation, thoroughly coordinated and ready, can be summoned into action. thus are we prepared, thus are we safe, and there is no danger or fear of militarism. in a democracy it should, without question, be a fundamental fact that hand in hand with equal rights there should go a sense of equal duty. a call for defence should have a universal response. so it is merely good common-sense, good judgment, if you please, for all the young men of the nation to have a training sufficient to enable them to respond effectively if the nation's safety calls them to its defence. it is no crime, however we may deprecate war, to be thus prepared. for young men--and we must always remember that it is the young men who are called for this purpose--for young men to be called to the colours by the tens or the hundreds of thousands, unskilled and untrained, to be shot down, decimated by the thoroughly trained and skilled troops of another nation, or a combination of other nations, is indeed the crime. never, moreover, was folly so great as that shown by him or by her who will not see. and to look at the matter without prejudice, we will realise that this is merely policing what we have. it is meeting force with adequate force, _if it becomes necessary_, so to meet it. this is necessary until such time as we have in operation among nations a thoroughly established machinery whereby force will give place to reason, whereby common sense will be used in adjusting all differences between nations, as it is now used in adjusting differences between individuals. our period of isolation is over. we have become a world-nation. equality of rights presupposes equality of duty. in our very souls we loathe militarism. conquest and aggression are foreign to our spirit, and foreign to our thoughts and ambitions. but weakness will by no means assure us immunity from aggression from without. universal military training up to a reasonable point, and the joint sense of responsibility of every man and every woman in the nation, and the right of the national government to expect and to demand that every man and woman stand ready to respond to the call to service, whatever form it may take--this is our armour. all intelligent people know that the national government has always had the power to draft every male citizen fit for service into military service. it is not therefore a question of universal military service. the real and only question is whether these or great numbers of these go out illy prepared and equipped as sheep to the shambles perchance, or whether they go out trained and equipped to do a man's work--more adequately prepared to protect themselves as well as the integrity of the nation. it is not to be done for the love or the purpose of militarism; but recognising the fact that militarism still persists, that with us it may not be triumphant should we at any time be forced to face it. there are certain facts that only to our peril as well as our moral degradation, we can be blind to. said a noted historian but a few days ago: "i loathe war and militarism. i have fought them for twenty years. but i am a historian, and i know that bullies thrive best in an atmosphere of meekness. as long as this military system lasts you must discourage the mailed fist by showing that you will meet it with something harder than a boxing glove. we do not think it good to admit into the code of the twentieth century that a great national bully may still with impunity squeeze the blood out of its small neighbours and seize their goods." we need not fear militarism arising in america as long as the fundamental principles of democracy are preserved and continually extended, which can be done only through the feeling of the individual responsibility of every man and every woman to take a keen and constant interest in the matters of their own government--community, state, national, and now international. we must realise and ever more fully realise that in a government such as ours, the people are the government, and that when in it anything goes wrong, or wrongs and injustices are allowed to grow and hold sway, we are to blame. universal military training has not militarised switzerland nor has it australia. it is rather the very essence of democracy and the very antithesis of militarism. "let each son of freedom bear his portion of the burden. should not each one do his share? to sacrifice the splendid few-- the strong of heart, the brave, the true, who live--or die--as heroes do, while cowards profit--is not fair!" many still recall that not a few well-meaning people at the close of the civil war proclaimed that, with upwards of two million trained men behind him, general grant would become a military dictator, and that this would be followed by the disappearance of democracy in the nation. but the mind, the temper, the traditions of our people are all a guarantee against militarism. the gospel, the hallucination of the shining armour, the will to power, has no attraction for us. we loathe it; nor do we fear its undermining and crushing our own liberties internally. nevertheless, it is true that vigilance is always and always will be the price of liberty. there must be a constant education towards citizenship. there must be an alert democracy, so that any land and sea force is always the servant of the spirit; for only otherwise it can become its master--but otherwise it will become its master. xiii our sole agency of international peace, and international concord the consensus of intelligent thought throughout the world is to the effect that just as we have established an orderly method for the settlement of disputes between individuals or groups of individuals in any particular nation, we must now move forward and establish such methods for the settlement of disputes among nations. there is no civilised country in the world that any longer permits the individual to take the law into his own hands. the intelligent thought of the world now demands the definite establishment of a world federation for the enforcement of peace among nations. it demands likewise the definite establishment of a permanent world court, backed by adequate force for the arbitrament of all disputes among nations--unable to be adjusted by the nations themselves in friendly conference. we have now reached the stage in world development and in world intercourse where peace must be internationalised. our present chaotic condition, which exists simply because we haven't taken time as yet to establish a method, must be made to give place to an intelligently devised system of law and order. anything short of this means a periodic destruction of the finest fruits of civilisation. it means also the periodic destruction of the finest young manhood of the world. this means, in turn, the speedy degeneration of the human race. the deification of force, augmented by all the products and engines of modern science, is simply the way of sublimated savagery. the world is in need of a new dispensation. recent events show indisputably that we have reached the parting of the ways, the family of nations must now push on into the new day or the world will plunge on into a darker night. there is no other course in sight. i know of no finer words penned in any language--this time it was in french--to express an unvarying truth than these words by victor hugo: "there is one thing that is stronger than armies, and that is an idea whose time has come." never before, after viewing the great havoc wrought, the enormous debts that will have to be paid for between fifty and a hundred years to come, the tremendous disruptions and losses in trade, the misery and degradation stalking broadcast over every land engaged in the war--scarcely a family untouched--never before have nations been in the state of mind to consider and to long to act upon some sensible and comprehensive method of international concord and adjustments. if this succeeds, the world, including ourselves, is the gainer. if this does not succeed, though the chances are overwhelmingly in its favour, then we can proclaim to the assembled nations that as long as a state of outlawry exists among nations, that then no longer by chance but by design, we as a nation will be in a state of preparedness broad and comprehensive enough to defend ourselves against the violation of any of the rights of a sovereign nation. it is only in this way that we can show a due appreciation of the struggles and the sacrifices of those who gave us our national existence; it is only in this way that we can, retain our self-respect, that we can command the respect of other nations _while things are as they are_; that we can hope to retain any degree of influence and authority for the diplomatic arm of our government in the council of nations. every neutral nation has suffered tremendously by the war. every neutral nation will suffer until a new world-order among nations is projected and perfected. we owe a tremendous duty to the world in connection with this great world crisis and upheaval. diligently should our best men and women, those of insight and greatest influence, and with the expenditure of both time and means, seek to further the practical working out of a world federation and a permanent world court. public opinion should be thus aroused and solidified so that the world knows that we stand as a united nation back of the idea and the plan. the divine right of kings has gone. it holds no more. we hear now and then, it is true, some silly statement in regard to it, but little attention is paid to it. the divine right of priests has gone except in the minds of the few remaining ignorant and herdable ones. the divine right of dynasties--or rather of dynasties to persist--seems to die a little harder, but it is well on the way. we are now realising that the only divine right is the right of the people--and all the people. never again should it be possible for one man, or for one little group of men so to lead, or so to mislead a nation as to plunge it into war. the growth of democracy compelling the greater participation of all the people in government must prohibit this. so likewise the close relationship of the entire world now must make it forever impossible for a single nation or a group of nations for any cause to plunge a whole world or any part of it into war. these are sound and clear-visioned words recently given utterance to by james bryce: "however much we condemn reckless leaders and the ruthless caste that live for war, the real source of the mischief is the popular sentiment behind them. the lesson to be learned is that doctrines and deep-rooted passions, whence these evils spring, can only be removed by the slow and steady working of spiritual forces. what most is needed is the elimination of those feelings the teachings of which breed jealousy and hatred and prompt men to defiance and aggression." humanity and civilisation is not headed towards ab the cave-man, whatever appearances, in the minds of many, may indicate at the present time. humanity will arise and will reconstruct itself. great lessons will be learned. good will result. but what a terrific price to pay! what a terrific price to pay to learn the lesson that "moral forces are the only invincible forces in the universe"! it has been slow, but steadily the world is advancing to that stage when the individual or the nation that does not know that the law of mutuality, of cooperation, and still more the law of sympathy and good will, is the supreme law in real civilisation, real advancement, and real gain--that does not know that its own welfare is always bound up with the welfare of the greater whole--is still in the brute stage of life and the bestial propensities are still its guiding forces. prejudice, suspicion, hatred, national big-headedness, must give way to respect, sympathy, the desire for mutual understanding and cooperation. the higher attributes must and will assert themselves. the former are the ways of periodic if not continuous destruction--the latter are the ways of the higher spiritual forces that must prevail. significant are these words of one of our younger but clear-visioned american poets, winter bynner: whether the time be slow or fast, enemies, hand in hand, must come together at the last and understand. no matter how the die is cast, or who may seem to win-- we know that we must love at last-- why not begin? the teaching of hatred to children, the fostering of hatred in adults, can result only in harm to the people and the nation where it is fostered. the dragon's tooth will leave its marks upon the entire nation and the fair life of all the people will suffer by it. the holding in contempt of other people makes it sometimes necessary that one's own head be battered against the wall that he may be sufficiently aroused to recognise and to appreciate their sterling and enduring qualities. the use of a club is more spectacular for some at least than the use of intellectual and moral forces. the rattling of the machine-gun produces more commotion than the more quiet ways of peace. all of the powerful forces in nature, those of growth, germination, and conservation, the same as in human life are quiet forces. so in the preservation of peace. it consists rather in a high constructive policy. it requires always clear vision, a constantly progressive and cooperative method of life and action; frank and open dealing and a resolute purpose. it is won and maintained by nothing so much in the long run as when it makes the golden rule its law of conduct. slowly we are realising that great armaments--militarism--do not insure peace. they may lead away from it--they are very apt to lead away from it. peace is related rather to the great moral laws of conduct. it has to do with straight, clean, open dealing. it is fostered by sympathy, forbearance. this does not mean that it pertains to weakness. on the contrary it is determined by resolute but high purpose, the actual and active desire of a nation to live on terms of peace with all other nations; and the world's; recognition of this fact is a most powerful factor in inducing and in actualising such living. our own achievement of upwards of a hundred years in living in peaceable, sympathetic and mutually beneficial relations with canada; canada's achievement in so living with us, should be a distinct and clear-cut answer to the argument that nations need to fortify their boundaries one against another. this is true only where suspicion, mistrust, fear, secret diplomacy, and secret alliances hold instead of the great and eternally constructive forces--sympathy, good will, mutual understanding, induced and conserved by an international joint commission of able men whose business it is to investigate, to determine, and to adjust any differences that through the years may arise. here we have a boundary line of upwards of three thousand miles and not a fort; vast areas of inland seas and not a war vessel; and for upwards of a hundred years not a difference that the high joint commission has not been able to settle amicably and to the mutual advantage of both countries. i know that in connection with this we have an advantage over the old-world nations because we are free from age-long prejudices, hatreds, and past scores. but if this great conflict does not lead along the lines of the constructive forces and the working out of a new world method, then the future of europe and of the world is dark indeed. surely it will lead to a new order--it is almost inconceivable that it will not. the golden rule is a wonderful developer in human life, a wonderful harmoniser in community life--with great profit it could be extended as the law of conduct in international relations. it must be so extended. its very foundation is sympathy, good will, mutuality, love. the very essence of jesus' entire revelation and teaching was love. it was not the teaching of weakness or supineness in the face of wrong, however. there was no failure on his part to smite wrong when he saw it--wrong taking the form of injustice or oppression. he had, as we have seen, infinite sympathy for and forbearance with the weak, the sinful; but he had always a righteous indignation and a scathing denunciation for oppression--for that spirit of hell that prompts men or organisations to seek, to study, to dominate the minds and thereby the lives of others. it was, moreover, that he would not keep silent regarding the deadly ecclesiasticism that bore so heavily upon his people and that had well-nigh crushed all their religious life whence are the very springs of life, that he aroused the deadly antagonism of the ruling hierarchy. and as he, witnessing for truth and freedom, steadfastly and defiantly opposed oppression, so those who catch his spirit today will do as he did and will realise as duty--"while wrong is wrong let no man prate of peace!" peace? peace? peace? while wrong is wrong let no man prate of peace! he did not prate, the master. nay, he smote! * * * * * hate wrong! slay wrong! else mercy, justice, truth, freedom and faith, shall die for humankind.[f] nor did the code and teachings of jesus prevent him driving the money-changers from out the temple court. it was not for the purpose of doing them harm. it was rather to do them good by driving home to them in some tangible and concrete form, through the skin and flesh of their bodies, what the thick skins of their moral natures were unable to comprehend. the resistance of wrongdoing is not opposed to the law of love. as in community life there is the occasional bully who has sometimes to be knocked down in order that he may have a due appreciation of individual rights and community amenities, so among nations a similar lesson is sometimes necessary in order that it or its leaders may learn that there are certain things that do not pay, and, moreover, will not be allowed by the community of nations. making might alone the basis of national policy and action, or making it the basis of settlement in international settlements, but arouses and intensifies hatred and the spirit of revenge. so in connection with this great world crisis--after it all then comes the great problem of reorganisation and rehabilitation, and unless there comes about an international concord strong and definite enough to prevent a recurrence of what has been, it would almost seem that restoration were futile; for things will be restored only in time to be destroyed again. no amount of armament we know now will prevent war. it can be prevented only by a definite concord of the nations brought finally to realise the futility of war. to deny the possibility of a world league and a world court is to deny the ability of men to govern themselves. the history of the american republic in its demonstration of the power and the genius of federation should disprove the truth of this. here we have a nation composed of forty-eight sovereign states and with the most heterogeneous accumulation of people that ever came together in one country, let alone one nation, and great numbers of them from those nations that for upwards of a thousand years have been periodically springing at one another's throats. enlightened self-government has done it. the real spirit and temper of democracy has done it. but it must be the preservation of the real spirit of democracy and constant vigilance that must preserve it. prejudice, suspicion, hatred on the part of individuals or on the part of the people of one nation against the people of another nation, have never yet advanced the welfare of any individual or any nation and never can. the world war is but the direct result of the type of peace that preceded it. the militarist argument reduced to its lowest terms amounts merely to this: "for two nations to keep peace each must be stronger than the other." representative men of other countries do not resent our part in pressing this matter and in taking the leadership in it. but even if they did they would have no just right to. there is, however, a very general feeling that the american republic, as the world's greatest example of _successful federation_, should take the lead in the world federation. this is now going to be greatly fostered by virtue of one great good that the world war will eventually have accomplished--the doom and the end of autocracy. dynasties and privileged orders that have lived and lived alone on militarism, will have been foreclosed on. the people in control, in an increasingly intelligent control of their own lives and their own governments, will be governed by a higher degree of self-enlightenment and mutual self-interest than under the domination or even the leadership of any type of hereditary ruling class or war-lord. in some countries autocracy in religion, through the free mingling and discussions of men of various nationalities and religious persuasions, will be again lessened, whereby the direct love and power of god in the hearts of men, as jesus taught, will have a fuller sway and a more holy and a diviner moulding power in their lives. it was during those long, weary years coupled with the horrible crimes of the thirty years' war that the science of international law began to take form, the result of that notable work, "de jure belli ac pacis," by grotius. it is ours to see that out of this more intense and thereby even more horrible conflict a new epoch in human and international relations be born. as the higher powers of mind and spirit are realised and used, great primal instincts impelling men to expression and action that find their outlet many times in war, will be transmuted and turned from destruction into powerful engines of construction. when a moral equivalent for war of sufficient impelling power is placed before men, those same virile qualities and powers that are now marshalled so easily for purposes of fighting, will, under the guidance and in the service of the spirit, be used for the conserving of human life, and for the advancement and the increase of everything that administers to life, that makes it more abundant, more mutual, and more happy. and god knows that the call for such service is very great. * * * * * and even now comes the significant word that the long, the too long awaited world's bill of rights has taken form. the intelligence and the will of righteous men, duly appointed as the representatives of fourteen sovereign nations, has asserted itself, and the beginning has been made, without which there can be neither growth nor advancement. the constitution of the world league has taken form. it is not a perfect instrument; but it will grow into as perfect an instrument as need be for its purpose. changes and additions to it will be made as times and conditions indicate. partisanship even with us may seek to defeat it. there is no question, however, but that the sober sense of the american people is behind it. one of the most fundamental results, we might say purposes of the great world war, was to end war. it means now that the world's unity and mutuality and its community of interests must be realised and that we build accordingly. it means that the world's peace must be fostered and preserved by the use of brains and guided by the heart; or that every brute force made ghastly and deadly to the n_th_ degree that modern science can devise, be periodically called in to settle the disputes or curb the ambitions that will disrupt the peace of the world. the common people the world over are desiring as near as can be arrived at, some surety as to the preservation of the world's peace; and they will brook no interference with a plan that seems the most feasible way to that end. the whole world is in that temper that gives significance to the words of president wilson when a day or two ago he said: "any man who resists the present tides that run in the world will find himself thrown upon a shore so high and barren that it will seem as if he had been separated from his human kind forever." unless, he might have added--he has and can demonstrate a better plan. the two chief arguments against it, that it will take away from our individual rights and that it will lead us into entangling alliances, no longer hold--for we are entangled already. we are a part of the great world force and it were futile longer to seek to escape our duties as such. they are as essential as "our rights." it is with us now as a nation as it was with that immortal group that gathered to sign our declaration of independence, to whom franklin said: "we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." it is well for americans to recall that the first league of nations was when thirteen distinct nationalities one day awoke to the fact that it were better to forget their differences and to a great extent their boundaries, and come together in a common union. they had their thirteen distinct armies to keep up, in order to defend themselves each against the other or against any combination of the others, to say nothing of any outside power that might move against them. jealousies arose and misunderstandings were frequent. so zealous was each of its own rights that when the constitutional convention had completed its work, and the constitution was ready for adoption, there were those who actually left the hall rather than sign it. they were good men but they were looking at stern facts and they wanted no idealism in theirs. good men, some animated by the partisan spirit, it is true, earnest in their beliefs--but unequipped with the long vision. their names are now recalled only through the search of the antiquarian. infinitely better it has been found for the thirteen and eventually the forty-eight to stand together than to stand separately. the thirteen separate states were farther separated so far as means of communication and actual knowledge of one another were concerned, than are the nations of the world today. it took men of great insight as well as vision to formulate our own constitution which made thirteen distinct and sovereign states the united states of america. the formulation of the constitution of the world league has required such men. as a nation we may be proud that two representative americans have had so large a share in its accomplishment--president wilson, good democrat, and ex-president taft, good republican. the greatest international and therefore world document ever produced has been forged--it awaits the coming days, years, and even generations for its completion. and we accord great honour also to those statesmen of other nations who have combined keen insight born of experience, with a lofty idealism; for out of these in any realm of human activities and relations, whatever eventually becomes the practical, is born. xiv the world's balance-wheel it was lincoln who gave us a wonderful summary when he said: "after all the one meaning of life is to be kind." love, sympathy, fellowship is the very foundation of all civilised, happy, ideal life. it is the very balance-wheel of life itself. it gives that genuineness and simplicity in voice, in look, in spirit that is so instinctively felt by all, and to which all so universally respond. it is like the fragrance of the flower--the emanation of its soul. interesting and containing a most vital truth is this little memoir by christine rossetti: "one whom i knew intimately, and whose memory i revere, once in my hearing remarked that, 'unless we love people, we cannot understand them.' this was a new light to me." it contains indeed a profound truth. love, sympathy, fellowship, is what makes human life truly human. cooperation, mutual service, is its fruitage. a clear-cut realisation of this and a resolute acting upon it would remove much of the cloudiness and the barrenness from many a life; and its mutual recognition--and action based upon it--would bring order and sweetness and mutual gain in vast numbers of instances in family, in business, in community life. it would solve many of the knotty problems in all lines of human relations and human endeavour, whose solution heretofore has seemed well-nigh impossible. it is the telling oil that will start to running smoothly and effectively many an otherwise clogged and grating system of human machinery. when men on both sides are long-headed enough, are sensible enough to see its practical element and make it the fundamental basis of all relationships, of all negotiations, and all following activities in the relations between capital and labour, employer and employee, literally a new era in the industrial world will spring into being. both sides will be the gainer--the dividends flowing to each will be even surprising. there is really no labour problem outside of sympathy, mutuality, good-will, cooperation, brotherhood. injustice always has been and always will be the cause of all labour troubles. but we must not forget that it is sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other. misunderstanding is not infrequently its accompaniment. imagination, sympathy, mutuality, cooperation, brotherhood are the hand-maidens of justice. no man is intelligent enough, is big enough to be the representative or the manager of capital, who is not intelligent enough to realise this. no man is fit to be the representative of, or fit to have anything to do with the councils of labour who has not brains, intelligence enough to realise this. these qualities are not synonyms of or in any way related to sentimentality or any weak-kneed ethics. they underlie the soundest business sense. in this day and age they are synonyms of the word practical. there was a time and it was not so many years ago, when heads and executives of large enterprises did not realise this as fully as they realise it today. a great change has already taken place. a new era has already begun, and the greater the ability and the genius the more eager is its possessor to make these his guiding principles, and to hasten the time when they will be universally recognised and built upon. the same is true of the more intelligent in the rank and file of labour, as also of the more intelligent and those who are bringing the best results as leaders of labour. there is no intelligent man or woman today who does not believe in organised labour. there is no intelligent employer who does not believe in it and who does not welcome it. the bane of organised labour in the past has too often been the unscrupulous, the self-seeking, or the bull-headed labour leader. organised labour must be constantly diligent to purge itself of these its worst enemies. labour is entitled to the very highest wage, or to the best returns in cooperative management that it can get, and that are consistent with sound business management, as also to the best labour conditions that a sympathetic and wise management can bring about. it must not, however, be unreasonable in its demands, neither bull-headed, nor seek to travel too fast--otherwise it may lose more than it will gain. it must not allow itself to act as a shield for the ineffective worker, or the one without a sense of mutuality, whose aim is to get all he can get without any thought as to what he gives in return, or even with the deliberate purpose of giving the least that he can give and get away with it. where there is a good and a full return, there should be not only the desire but an eagerness to give a full and honest service. less than this is indicative of a lack of honest and staunch manhood or womanhood. it is incumbent upon organised labour also to remember that it represents but eight per cent of the actual working people of this nation. whether one works with his brains, or his hands, or both, is immaterial. nor does organised labour represent the great farming interests of the country--even more fundamentally the backbone of the nation. the desirable citizen of any nation is he or she who does not seek to prosper at the expense of his fellows, who does not seek the advancement of his group to the detriment of all other groups--who realises that none are independent, that all are interdependent. he who is a teacher or a preacher of class-consciousness, is either consciously or unconsciously--generally consciously and intentionally--a preacher of class-hatred. there is no more undesirable citizen in any nation than he. "do you know why money is so scarce, brothers?" the soap box orator demanded, and a fair-sized section of the backbone of the nation waited in leisurely patience for the answer. a tired-looking woman had paused for a moment on the edge of the crowd. she spoke shortly. "it's because so many of you men spend your time telling each other why, 'stead of hustling to see that it ain't!" he is a fair representative of the class-consciousness, class-hatred type. again he is represented by the theorist constitutionally and chronically too lazy to do honest and constructive work either physically or mentally. again by the one who has the big-head affliction. or again by the one afflicted with a species of insanity or criminality manifesting of late under the name of bolshevism--a self-seeking tyranny infinitely worse than czarism itself. its representatives have proved themselves moral perverts, determined to carry out their theories and gain their own ends by treachery, theft, coersion, murder, and every foul method that will aid them in reducing order to chaos--through the slogan of rule or ruin. through brigandage, coersion, murder, it gets the funds to send its agents into those countries whose governments are fully in the hands of the people, and where if at any time injustice prevails it is solely the fault of the people in not using in an intelligent and determined manner the possessions they already have. or putting it in another way, on account of shirking the duties it is morally incumbent upon them as citizens of free governments to perform. in america, whose institutions have been built and maintained solely by the people, our duty is plain, for orderly procedure has been and ever must be our watch-word. vigilance is moreover nowhere required more than in representative government. whenever the red hand of anarchy, bolshevism, terrorism raises itself it should be struck so instantly and so powerfully that it has not only no time to gain adherents, but has no time to make its escape. it should be the federal prison for any american who allows himself to become so misguided as to seek to substitute terrorism and destruction for our orderly and lawful methods of procedure, or quick deportation for any foreigner who seeks our shores to carry out these purposes, or comes as an agent for those who would do the same. organised labour has never occupied so high a position as it occupies today. that the rank and file will for an instant have commerce with these agencies, whatever any designing leader here and there may seek to do, is inconceivable. that its organisations will be sought to be used by them is just as probable. its duty as to vigilance and determination is pronounced. and unless vigilant and determined the set-backs it may get and the losses it may suffer are just as pronounced. the spirit and temper of the american people is such that it will not stand for coersion, lawlessness, or any unfair demands. public opinion is after all the court of last resort. no strike or no lockout can succeed with us that hasn't that tremendous weapon, public opinion, behind it. the necessity therefore of being fair in all demands and orderly in all procedure, and in view of this it is also well to remember that organised labour represents but eight per cent of the actual working people of this nation. the gains of organised labour in the past have been very great. it is also true that the demands of organised labour even today are very great. in true candor it must also be said that not only the impulse but the sincere desire of the great bulk of employers is in a conciliatory way to grant all demands of labour that are at all consistent with sound economic management, even in many cases to a great lessening of their own profits, as well as to maintain working conditions as befits their workers as valuable and honoured members of our body politic, as they naturally are and as they so richly deserve. for their own welfare, however, to say nothing of the welfare of the nation, labour unions must purge themselves of all anarchistic and destructive elements. force is a two-edged sword, and the force of this nation when once its sense of justice and right is outraged and its temper is aroused, will be found to be infinitely superior to any particular class, whether it be capital or whether it be labour. organised labour stands in the way to gain much by intelligent and honest work and orderly procedure. and to a degree perhaps never before equalled, does it stand in a position to lose much if through self-deception on its own part or through unworthy leadership, it deceives itself in believing itself superior to the forces of law and order. in a nation where the people through their chosen representatives and by established systems of procedure determine their own institutions, when agitators get beyond law and reason and lose sight too completely of the law of mutuality, there is a power backed by a force that it is mere madness to defy. the rights as well as the power of all the people will be found to be infinitely superior to those of any one particular group or class--clear-seeing men and women in any democratic form of government realise that the words mutuality and self-interest bear a very close relationship. the greatest gains in the relations between capital and labour during the coming few years will undoubtedly be along the lines of profit-sharing. some splendid beginnings are already in successful operation. there is the recognition that capital is entitled initially to a fair return; again that labour is entitled to a good and full living wage--when both these conditions are met then that there be an equal division of the profits that remain, between the capital and the skill and management back of the capital invested on the one hand, and labour on the other. without the former labour would have no employment in the particular enterprise; without the workers the former could not carry on. each is essential to the other. labour being not a commodity, as some material thing merely to be bought and sold, but the human element, is entitled to more than a living wage. it has human aspirations, and desires and needs. it has not only its present but its own and its children's future to safeguard. when it is thus made a partner in the business it becomes more earnest and reliable and effective in its work, less inclined to condone the shiftless, the incompetent, the slacker; more eager and resolute in withstanding the ill-founded, reckless or sinister suggestions or efforts of an ill-advised leadership. capital or employer is the gainer also, because it is insured that loyal and more intelligent cooperation in its enterprise that is as essential to its success as is the genius and skill of management. taking a different form but proving most valuable alike for management and capital on the one hand, and its workers on the other, is the case of one of our great industrial plants, the largest of its kind in the world and employing many thousands of workers, where already a trifle over forty per cent. of its stock is in the hands of the workers. their thrift and their good judgment have enabled them to take advantage of attractive prices and easy methods of payment made them by the company's management. there are already many other concerns where this is true in greater or less proportion. these are facts that certain types of labour agitators or even leaders as well as special pleaders for labour, find it convenient to forget, or at least not to mention. the same is true also of the millions that are every year being paid out to make all working conditions and surroundings cheerful, healthful, safe; in various forms of insurance, in retiring pensions. through the initiative of this larger type of employer, or manager of capital, many hundreds of thousands both men and women and in continually increasing numbers, are being thus benefited--outside and above their yearly wage or salary. a new era in connection with capital and labour has for some time been coming into being; the era of democracy in industry has arrived. the day of the autocratic sway on the part of capital has passed; nor will we as a nation take kindly to the autocratic sway of labour. it is obtaining a continually fuller recognition; and cooperation leading in many lines to profit-sharing is the new era we are now passing into. though there are very large numbers of men of great wealth, employers and heads of industrial enterprises, who have caught the spirit of the new industrial age upon which we have already begun to enter, and who are glad to see labour getting its fairer share of the profits of industry and a larger recognition as partners in industry, there are those who, lacking both imagination and vision, attempt to resist the tide that, already turned, is running in volume. they are our american bourbons, our american junkers. they are, considering the ominous undercurrents of change, unrest and discontent that are so apparent in the entire industrial and economic world today, our worst breeders and feeders of bolshevism and lawlessness. if they had their way and their numbers were sufficiently large, the flames of bolshevism and anarchy would be so fed that even in america we would have little hope of escaping a great conflagration. they are the ones who are determined to see that their immense profits are uncurtailled, whose homes must have ten bathrooms each; while great numbers of their workers without whom they would have to close up the industry--hence their essential partners in the industry though not in name--haven't even a single bath-room and with families as large and in many cases larger. they are they who must have three or four homes each, aggregating in the millions to build and to maintain. they are they who cannot see why workmen should discuss such things among themselves, or even question them, though in many cases they are scarcely able to make ends meet in the face of continually advancing or even soaring prices, who never enjoy a holiday, and are unable to lay up for the years to come, when they will no longer be "required" in industry. they are they therefore who have but little if any interest or care for even the physical well-being of their workers, say nothing of their mental and spiritual well-being and enjoyments--beyond the fact that they are well enough fed and housed for the next day's work. they are they who when it is suggested that, recognizing the change and the run of the tide, they be keen-minded enough to anticipate changing conditions and organize their business so that their workers have some joint share in its conditions and conduct, and some share in its profits beyond a mere living wage, reply--"i'll be damned if i do." it doesn't require much of a prophetic sense now however, to be able to tell them--they'll be damned if they don't. there is reason to rejoice also that for the welfare of american institutions, the number of this class is continually decreasing. did they predominate, with the unmistakable undercurrents of unrest, born of a sense of injustice, there would be in time, and in a shorter time than we perhaps realize, but one outcome. steeped in selfishness, making themselves impervious to all the higher leadings and impulses of the soul--less than men--they are not only enemies of their own better selves, but enemies of the nation itself. bolshevism in russia was born, or rather was able to get its hold, only through the long generations of czarism and the almost universal state of ignorance in which its people were held, that preceded it. the great preponderance and the continually growing numbers of men with imagination, with a sense of care, mutuality, cooperation, brotherhood, in our various large enterprises is a force that will save this and other nations from a similar experience. i have great confidence in the russian people. its soul is sound; and after the forces of treachery, incompetence and terrorism have spent themselves, and the better elements are able to organize in sufficient force to drive the beasts from its borders, it will arise and assert itself. there will be builded a new russia that will be one of the great and commanding nations of the world. in the meantime it affords a most concrete and valuable lesson to us and to all other nations--to strike on the one hand, the forces of treachery and lawlessness the moment they show themselves, and on the other hand, to see that the soil is made fertile for neither their entrance nor growth. the strong nation is that in which under the leadership of universal free education and equal opportunities, a due watch is maintained to see that the rights of all individuals and all classes are nurtured and carefully guarded. in such a government the nation and its interests is and must be supreme. then if built upon high ethical and moral standards where mutuality is the watch-word and the governing principle of its life, its motto might through right, power through justice, it becomes a fit and effective member of the society of nations. internationalism is higher than nationalism, humanity is above the nation. the stronger however the individual nation, the stronger necessarily will be the society of nations. love, sympathy, fellowship, is not inconsistent with the use of force to restrain malignant evil, in the case of nations as in the case of individuals. where goodness is weak it is exploited and becomes a victim of the stronger, when, devoid of a sense of mutuality, it is conscienceless. strength without conscience, goodness, ungoverned by the law of mutuality, becomes tyranny. in seeking its own ends it violates every law of god and man. for the safety therefore of the better life of the world, for the very safety and welfare of the society of nations, those nations that combine strength with goodness, strength with good-will, strength with an ever-growing sense of mutuality, which is the only law of a happy, orderly, and advancing human life, must combine to check the power of any people or nation still devoid of the knowledge of this law, lest goodness, truth and all the higher instincts and potentialities of life, even freedom itself perish from the earth. this can be done and must be done not through malice or hatred, but through a sense of right and duty. there is no more diabolical, no more damnable ambition on the part of individuals, organizations or nations than to rule, to gain domination over the minds and the lives of others either for the sake of power and domination or for the material gain that can be made to flow therefrom. as a rule, however, it is both. there is nothing more destructive to the higher moral and ethical life of the individual or the organization controlled by this desire, nothing so destructive to the life of the one or ones so dominated, and as a consequence to the life of society itself as this evil and prostituting desire and purpose. where this has become the clearly controlling motive, malignant and deep-seated, if in the case of a nation, then it is the duty of those nations that combine strength with character, strength with goodness, to combine to check the evil wrought by such a nation. if by persuasion and good-will, well and good. if not, then through the exercise of a restraining force. this is not contrary to the law of love, for the love of the good is the controlling motive. it is only thus that the higher moral law which for its growth and consummation is dependent upon individuals, can grow and gain supremacy in the world. intellectual independence and acumen, combined with a love of truth, goodness, righteousness, love and service for others, is the greatest aid there can be in carrying out the divine plan and purpose in the world. the sword of love therefore becomes the sword of righteousness that cuts out the cancerous growth that is given from to by malignant ill will; the sword of righteousness that strikes down slavery and oppression; the sword of righteousness therefore that becomes the sword of civilization. it is a weapon that does not have to be always used however; for when its power is once clearly understood it is feared. its deterrent power becomes therefore infinitely more effective than in its actual use. so in any new world settlement, any nation or group that is not up to this moral world standard, that would seek to impose its will and its institutions upon any other nations for the sake of domination, or to rob them of their goods, must be restrained through the federated power of the other nations, not by forcing their own beliefs or codes or institutions upon it, but by restraining it and making ineffective any ambitions or purposes that it may plan, or until its people whatever its leadership may be, are brought clearly and concretely to see that such methods do not pay. that jesus to whom we ultimately go for our moral leadership, not only sanctioned, but used and advocated the use of righteous force, when malignant evil in the form of self-seeking sought domination, either intellectual or physical, for its own selfish gain and aggrandizement, is clearly evidenced by many of his own sayings and his own acts. so within the nation during this great reconstruction period, these are times that call for heroic men and women. in a democracy or in any representative form of government an alert citizenship is its only safety. with a vastly increased voting population, in that many millions of women citizens are now admitted to full citizenship, the need for intelligent action and attention to matters of government was never so great. great numbers will be herded and voted by organizations as well as by machines. as these will comprise the most ignorant and therefore the herdable ones, it is especially incumbent upon the great rank and file of intelligent women to see that they take and maintain an active interest in public affairs. politics is something that we cannot evade except to the detriment of our country and thereby to our own detriment. politics is but another word for government. and in a sense we the individual voter are the government and unless we make matters of government our own concern, there are organizations and there are groups of designing men who will steal in and get possession for their own selfish aggrandizement and gain. this takes sometimes the form of power, to be traded for other power, or concessions; but always if you will trace far enough, eventual money gain. or again it takes the form of graft and even direct loot. the losses that are sustained through a lowered citizenship, through inefficient service, through a general debauchery of public institutions, through increased taxation to make up for the amounts that are drawn off in graft and loot are well nigh incalculable--and for the sole reason that you and i, average citizens, do not take the active personal interest in our own matters of government that we should take. clericalism, tammanyism, bolshevism, syndicalism--and all in the guise of interest in the people--get their holds and their profits in this way. it is essential that we be locally wise and history wise. any class or section or organization that is less than the nation itself must be watched and be made to keep its own place, or it becomes a menace to the free and larger life of the nation. even in the case of a great national crisis a superior patriotism is affected and paraded in order that it may camouflage its other and real activities. when at times we forget ourselves and speak of rights rather than duties in connection with our country, it were well to recall and to repeat the words of franklin: "the sun never repents of the good he does nor does he ever demand a recompense." not only is constant vigilance incumbent upon us, but realising the fact that the boys and the girls of today are the citizens of tomorrow--the nation's voters and law-makers--it is incumbent upon us to see that american free education through american free public schools, is advanced to and maintained at its highest possibilities, and kept free from any agencies that will make for a divided or anything less than a whole-hearted and intelligent citizenship. the motto on the shakespeare statue at leicester square in london: "there is no darkness but ignorance," might well be reproduced in every city and every hamlet in the nation. late revelations have shown how even education can be manipulated and prostituted for ulterior purposes. parochial schools whether protestant, catholic, jewish, or oriental, have no place in american institutions--and whether their work is carried on in english or in a foreign language. they are absolutely foreign to the spirit of our institutions. they are purely for the sake of something less than the nation itself. blind indeed are we if we are not history-wise. criminal indeed are we to allow any boys or girls to be diverted to them and to be deprived of the advantages of a better schooling and being brought under the influences of agencies that are thoroughly and wholly american. american education must be made for american institutions and for nothing less than this. the nation's children should be shielded from any power that seeks to get possession of them in order at an early and unaccountable age to fasten authority upon them, and to drive a wedge between them and all others of the nation. the nation has a duty to every child within its borders. to fail to recognize or to shirk that duty, will call for a price to be paid sometime as great as that that has been paid by every other nation that did not see until too late. sectarianism in education stultifies and robs the child and nullifies the finest national instincts in education. it is for but one purpose--the use and the power of the organization that plans and that fosters it. our government profiting by the long weary struggles of other countries, is founded upon the absolute separation of church and state. this does not mean the separation of religion in its true sense from the state; but keeping it free from every type of sectarian influence and domination. it is ours to see that no silent subtle influences are at work, that will eventually make the same trouble here as in other countries, or that will thrust out the same stifling hand to undermine and to throttle universal free public education, and the inalienable right that every child has to it. our children are the wards of and accountable to the state--they are not the property of any organization, group or groups, less than the state. we need the creation of a strong federal department of education of cabinet rank, with ample means and strong powers to be the guiding genius of all our state and local departments of education, with greater attention paid to a more thorough and concrete training in civics, in moral and ethical education, in addition to the other well recognized branches in public school education. it should have such powers also as will enable it to see that every child is in school up to a certain age, or until all the fundamentals of a prescribed standard of american education are acquired. a recent tabulation made public by a federal deputy commissioner of naturalization has shown that a little over one tenth, in round numbers, , , , of our population is composed of unnaturalized aliens. even this however tells but a part of the story; for vast numbers of even those who have become naturalized, have in no sense become americanized. speaking of this class an able editorial in a recent number of one of our leading new york dailies has said: "of the millions of aliens who have gone through the legal forms of naturalization a very large proportion have not in any sense been americanized, and, though citizens, they are still alien in habits of thought, in speech and in their general attitude toward the community. "there are industrial centres not far from new york city that are wholly foreign. there are sections of this city that--except as the children through the schools and association with others of their own age yield to change--are intensely alien. "to penetrate these barriers and open new avenues of communication with the people who live within them is no longer a task to be performed by individual effort. americanization is a work that must be undertaken and directed on a scale so extensive that only through the cooperation of the states and the federal government can it be successfully carried out. it cannot longer be neglected without serious harm to the life and welfare of the nation." some even more startling facts are given out in figures by the department of the interior, figures supplied to it by the surgeon general's office of the army. the war department records show that . per cent. of the draft army examined by that department's agents were unable to read and understand a newspaper, or to write letters home. in one draft in new york state in may, , . per cent. were classed as illiterate. in one draft in connection with south carolina troops in july, , . per cent. where classed as illiterate. in one draft in connection with minnesota troops in july of the same year, . per cent. were classed as illiterate. in other words it means for example that in new york state we have in round numbers , men between and years of age who are illiterate. the same source reveals the fact that in the nation in round numbers over , , are either illiterate or without a knowledge of our language. the south is the home of most of the wholly uneducated, the north of those of foreign speech. and in speaking of this class a recent editorial in another representative new york daily, after making mention of one industrial centre but a few miles out of new york city, in new jersey, where nearly out of every cannot read english, has said: "such people may enjoy the advantages america offers. of its spirit and institutions they can comprehend nothing. they are the easy dupes of foreign agitators, unassimilable, an element of weakness in the social body that might easily be converted into an element of strength. many of them have the vote, controlled by leaders interested only in designs alien to america's welfare. "the problem is national in scope * * *. the best way to keep bolshevism out of america is to reduce ignorance of our speech and everything else to a minimum. however alert our immigration officers may be, foreign agents of social disorder are sure to pass through our doors, and as long as we allow children to grow up among us who have no means of finding out the meaning of our laws and forms of government the seeds of discontent will be sown in congenial soil." profoundly true also are the following words from an editorial in still another new york daily in dealing with that great army of , illiterates within the state, or rather that portion of them who are adults of foreign birth: "the first thing to do is to teach them, and make them realize that a knowledge of the english language is a prerequisite of first class american citizenship. * * * the wiping out of illiteracy is a foundation stone in building up a strong population, able and worthy to hold its own in the world. with the disappearance of illiteracy and of the ignorance of the language of the country will also disappear many of the trouble-breeding problems which have held back immigrants in gaining their fair share of real prosperity, the intelligence and self-respect which are vital ingredients in any good citizenship. real freedom of life and character cannot be enjoyed by the man or woman whose whole life is passed upon the inferior plane of ignorance and prejudice. teach them all how to deserve the benefits of life in america, and they will soon learn how to gain and protect them." it is primarily among the ignorant and illiterate that bolshevism, anarchy, political rings, and every agency that attempts through self-seeking to sow the seeds of discontent, treachery, and disloyalty, works to exploit them and to herd them for political ends. no man can have that respect for himself, or feel that he has the respect due him from others as an honest and diligent worker, whatever his line of work, who is handicapped by the lack of an ordinary education. the heart of the american nation is sound. through universal free public education it must be on the alert and be able to see through bourbonism and understand its methods on the one hand, and bolshevism on the other; and be determined through intelligent action to see that american soil is made uncongenial to both. our chief problem is to see that democracy is made safe for and made of real service to the world. our american education must be made continually more keenly alive to the great moral, ethical and social needs of the time. thereby it will be made religious without having any sectarian slant or bias; it will be made safe for and the hand-maid of democracy and not a menace to it. vast multitudes today are seeing as never before that the moral and ethical foundations of the nation's and the world's life is a matter of primal concern to all. we are finding more and more that the simple fundamentals of life and conduct as portrayed by the christ of nazareth not only constitutes a great idealism, but the only practical way of life. compared to this and to the need that it come more speedily and more universally into operation in the life of the world today, truly "sectarian peculiarities are obsolete impertinences." our time needs again more the prophet and less the priest. it needs the god-impelled life and voice of the prophet with his face to the future, both god-ward and man-ward, burning with an undivided devotion to truth and righteousness. it needs less the priest, too often with his back to the future and too often the pliant tool of the organisation whose chief concern is, and ever has been, the preservation of itself under the ostensible purpose of the preservation of the truth once delivered, the same that jesus with his keen powers of penetration saw killed the spirit as a high moral guide and as an inspirer to high and unself-centred endeavour, and that he characterised with such scathing scorn. there are splendid exceptions; but this is the rule now even as it was in his day. the prophet is concerned with truth, not a system; with righteousness, not custom; with justice, not expediency. is there a man who would dare say that if christianity--the christianity of the christ--had been actually in vogue, in practice in all the countries of christendom during the last fifty years, during the last twenty-five years, that this colossal and gruesome war would ever have come about? no clear-thinking and honest man would or could say that it would. we need again the voice of the prophet, clear-seeing, high-purposed, and unafraid. we need again the touch of the prophet's hand to lead us back to those simple fundamental teachings of the christ of nazareth, that are life-giving to the individual, and that are world-saving. we speak of our christian civilisation, and the common man, especially in times like these, asks what it is, where it is--and god knows that we have been for many hundred years wandering in the wilderness. he is thinking that the kingdom of god on earth that the true teachings of jesus predicated, and that he laboured so hard to actualise, needs some speeding up. there is a world-wide yearning for spiritual peace and righteousness on the part of the common man. he is finding it occasionally in established religion, but often, perhaps more often, independently of it. he is finding it more often through his own contact and relations with the man of nazareth--for him the god-man. there is no greater fact in our time, and there is no greater hope for the future than is to be found in this fact. jesus gave the great principles, the animating spirit of life, not minute details of conduct. the real church of christ is not an hierarchy, an institution, it is a brotherhood--the actual establishing of the kingdom of god in moral, ethical and social terms in the world. among the last words penned by dr. john watson--ian maclaren--good churchman, splendid writer, but above all independent thinker and splendid man, were the following: "was it not the chief mistake and also the hopeless futility of pharisaism to meddle with the minute affairs of life, and to lay down what a man should do at every turn? it was not therefore an education of conscience, but a bondage of conscience; it did not bring men to their full stature by teaching them to face their own problems of duty and to settle them, it kept them in a state of childhood, by forbidding and commanding in every particular of daily life. pharisaism, therefore, whether jewish or gentile, ancient or modern, which replaces the moral law by casuistry, and the enlightened judgment of the individual by the confessional, creates a narrow character and mechanical morals. freedom is the birthright of the soul, and it is by the discipline of life the soul finds itself. it were a poor business to be towed across the pathless ocean of this world to the next; by the will of god and for our good we must sail the ship ourselves, and steer our own course. it is the work of the bible to show us the stars and instruct us how to take our reckoning * * *. "jesus did not tell us what to do, for that were impossible, as every man has his own calling, and is set in by his own circumstances, but jesus has told us how to carry ourselves in the things we have to do, and he has put the heart in us to live becomingly, not by pedantic rules, but by an instinct of nobility. jesus is the supreme teacher of the bible and he came not to forbid or to command, but to place the kingdom of god as a living force, and perpetual inspiration within the soul of man, and then, to leave him in freedom and in grace to fulfil himself."[g] we no longer admit that christ is present and at work only when a minister is expounding the gospel or some theological precept or conducting some ordained observance in the pulpit; or that religion is only when it is labelled as such and is within the walls of a church. that belonged to the chapter in christianity that is now rapidly closing, a chapter of good works and results--but so pitiably below its possibilities. so pitiably below because men had been taught and without sufficient thought accepted the teaching that to be a christian was to hold certain beliefs about the christ that had been formulated by early groups of men and that had come down through the centuries. the chapter that is now opening upon the world is the one that puts christ's own teachings in the simple, frank, and direct manner in which he gave them, to the front. it makes life, character, conduct, human concern and human service of greater importance than mere matters of opinion. it makes eager and unremitting work for the establishing of the kingdom of god, the kingdom of right relations between men, here on this earth, the essential thing. it insists that the telling test as to whether a man is a christian is how much of the christ spirit is in evidence in his life--and in every phase of his life. gripped by this idea which for a long time the forward-looking and therefore the big men in them have been striving for, our churches in the main are moving forward with a new, a dauntless, and a powerful appeal. differences that have sometimes separated them on account of differences of opinion, whether in thought or interpretation,[h] are now found to be so insignificant when compared to the actual simple fundamentals that the master taught, and when compared to the work to be done, that a great interallied church movement is now taking concrete and strong working form, that is equipping the church for a mighty and far-reaching christian work. a new and great future lies immediately ahead. the good it is equipping itself to accomplish is beyond calculation--a work in which minister and layman will have equal voice and equal share. it will receive also great inspiration and it will eagerly strike hands with all allied movements that are following the same leader, but along different roads. britain's apostle of brotherhood and leader of the brotherhood movement there, rev. tom sykes, who has caught so clearly the master's own basis of christianity--love for and union with god, love for and union with the brother--has recently put so much stimulating truth into a single paragraph that i reproduce it here: "the emergence of the feeling of kinship with the unseen is the most arresting and revealing fact of human history. * * * _the union with god_ is not through the display of ritual, but the affiliation and conjunction of life. we do not believe we are in a universe that has screens and folds, where the spiritual commerce of man has to be conducted on the principle of secret diplomacy. the universe is frank and open, and god is straightforward and honourable. _in making the spirit and practice of brotherliness_ the test of religious value, we are at one with him who said: 'inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the least--ye do it unto me.' _we touch the father when we help his child._ jesus taught us not to come to god asking, art thou this or that? but to call him father and live upon it. do not admit that many of our brotherhood meetings are in 'neutral' or 'secular' halls and buildings! 'where two or three gather in my name, there am i.' where he is, there is hallowed ground." we need a stock-taking and a mobilisation of our spiritual forces. but what, after all, does this mean? search as we may we are brought back _every time_ to this same man of nazareth, the god-man--son of man and son of god. and gathering it into a few brief sentences it is this: jesus' great revelation was this consciousness of god in the individual life, and to this he witnessed in a supreme and masterly way, because this he supremely realised and lived. faith in him and following him does not mean acquiring some particular notion of god or some particular belief about him himself. it is the living in one's own life of this same consciousness of god as one's source and father, and a living in these same filial relations with him of love and guidance and care that jesus entered into and continuously lived. when this is done there is no problem and no condition in the individual life that it will not clarify, mould, and therefore take care of; for "[greek transliteration: mê merimnate tê psychê hymôn]"--do not worry about your life--was the master's clear-cut command. are we ready for this high type of spiritual adventure? not only are we assured of this great and mighty truth that the master revealed and going ahead of us lived, that under this supreme guidance we need not worry about the things of the life, but that under this divine guidance we need not think _even of the life itself_, if for any reason it becomes our duty or our privilege to lay it down. witnessing for truth and standing for truth he again preceded us in this. but this, this love for god or rather this state that becomes the natural and the normal life when we seek the kingdom, and the divine rule becomes dominant and operative in mind and heart, leads us directly back to his other fundamental: thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. for if god is my father and if he cares for me in this way--and every other man in the world is my brother and he cares for him in exactly the same way--then by the sanction of god his father i haven't anything on my brother; and by the love of god my father my brother hasn't anything on me. it is but the most rudimentary commonsense then, that we be considerate one of another, that we be square and decent one with another. we will do well as children of the same father to sit down and talk matters over; and arise with the conclusion that the advice of jesus, our elder brother, is sound: "therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." he gave it no label, but it has subsequently become known as the golden rule. there is no higher rule and no greater developer of the highest there is in the individual human life, and no greater adjuster and beautifier of the problems of our common human life. and when it becomes sufficiently strong in its action in this, the world awaits its projection into its international life. this is the truth that he revealed--the twofold truth of love to god and love for the neighbour, that shall make men free. the truth of the man of nazareth still holds and shall hold, and we must realise this adequately before we ask or can expect any other revelation. we are in a time of great changes. the discovery of new laws and therefore of new truth necessitates changes and necessitates advances. but whatever changes or advances may come, the divine reality still survives, independent of jesus it is true, but as the world knows him still better, it will give to him its supreme gratitude and praise, in that he was the most perfect revealer of god to man, of god in man, and the most concrete in that he embodied and lived this truth in his own matchless human-divine life; and stands as the god-man to which the world is gradually approaching. for as goethe has said--"we can never get beyond the spirit of jesus." love it is, he taught, that brings order out of chaos, that becomes the solvent of the riddle of life, and however cynical, skeptical, or practical we may think at times we may be, a little quiet clear-cut thought will bring us each time back to the truth that it is the essential force that leads away from the tooth and the claw of the jungle, that lifts life up from and above the clod. love is the world's balance-wheel; and as the warming and ennobling element of sympathy, care and consideration radiates from it, increasing one's sense of mutuality, which in turn leads to fellowship, cooperation, brotherhood, a holy and diviner conception and purpose of life is born, that makes human life more as it should be, as it must be--as it will be. i love to feel that when one makes glad the heart of any man, woman, child, or animal, he makes glad the heart of god--and i somehow feel that it is true. as our household fires radiate their genial warmth, and make more joyous and more livable the lot of all within the household walls, so life in its larger scope and in all its human relations, becomes more genial and more livable and reveals more abundantly the deeper riches of its diviner nature, as it is made more open and more obedient to the higher powers of mind and spirit. do you know that incident in connection with the little scottish girl? she was trudging along, carrying as best she could a boy younger, but it seemed almost as big as she herself, when one remarked to her how heavy he must be for her to carry, when instantly came the reply: "he's na heavy. he's mi brither." simple is the incident; but there is in it a truth so fundamental that pondering upon it, it is enough to make many a man, to whom dogma or creed make no appeal, a christian--and a mighty engine for good in the world. and more--there is in it a truth so fundamental and so fraught with potency and with power, that its wider recognition and projection into all human relations would reconstruct a world. _i saw the mountains stand silent, wonderful, and grand, looking out across the land when the golden light was falling on distant dome and spire; and i heard a low voice calling, "come up higher, come up higher, from the lowland and the mire, from the mist of earth desire, from the vain pursuit of pelf. from the attitude of self: come up higher, come up higher."_ _james g. clark_ footnotes: [footnote a: the emmanuel movement in boston in connection with emmanuel church, inaugurated some time ago under the leadership and direction of two well-known ministers, dr. worcester and dr. mccomb, and a well-known physician, dr. coriat, and similar movements in other cities is an attestation of this. that most valuable book under the joint authorship of these three men: "religion and medicine," moffat, yard and company, new york, will be found of absorbing interest and of great practical value by many. the amount of valuable as well as interesting and reliable material that it contains is indeed remarkable.] [footnote b: "war and laughter," by james oppenheim--the century company, new york.] [footnote c: henry holt in "cosmic relations."] [footnote d: from a notable article in the new york "times magazine," sunday, april , , by george w. perkins, chairman mayor's food supply commission.] [footnote e: is not this the carpenter, the son of mary, the brother of james, and joses, and of juda, and simon? and are his sisters not here with us?--mark : .] [footnote f: from that strong, splendid poem "buttadeus," by william samuel johnson.] [footnote g: "god's message to the human soul"--_revell_.] [footnote h: the thought of the layman in practically all of our churches is much the same as that of mr. lloyd george when he said: "the church to which i belong is torn with a fierce dispute; one part says it is baptism _into_ the name of the father, and the other that it is baptism _in_ the name of the father. i belong to one of these parties. i feel most strongly about this. i would die for it, but i forget which it is."] * * * * * transcriber's notes made minor punctuation, spelling, and hyphenation changes for consistency. corrected the following typos: page : changed pharasaic to pharisaic. (come into being a pharisaic legalism) page : changed subconsious to subconscious. (the slumbering subconsious mind) page : changed independant to independent. (guided by their own independant judgment) page : changed terriffic to terrific. (what a terriffic price to pay to learn the lesson) page : changed symathy to sympathy. (he had, as we have seen, infinite symathy for and forbearance) page : changed accompaniament to accompaniment. (misunderstanding is not infrequently its accompaniament.) page : changed viligant to vigilant. (and unless viligant and determined) page : changed tyrany to tyranny. (ungoverned by the law of mutuality, becomes tyrany.) page : changed malignent to malignant. (the use of force to restrain malignent evil,) page : changed inaliable to inalienable. (the inaliable right that every child has) page : changed impertinances to impertinences. ("sectarian peculiarities are obsolete impertinances.") page : changed chrisitianity to christianity. (chrisitianity of the christ) page : changed heirarchy to hierarchy. (the real church of christ is not an heirarchy,) page : changed that to than. (human service of greater importance that mere matters of opinion.) modern religious cults and movements works by gaius glenn atkins _modern religious cults and movements_ dr. atkins has written a noteworthy and valuable book dealing with the new cults some of which have been much to the fore for a couple of decades past, such as: faith healing; christian science; new thought; theosophy and spiritualism, etc. $ . _the undiscovered country_ dr. atkins' work, throughout, is marked by clarity of presentation, polished diction and forceful phrasing. a firm grasp of the elemental truths of christian belief together with an unusual ability to interpret mundane experiences in terms of spiritual reality. $ . _jerusalem: past and present_ "one of the books that will help to relieve us of the restless craving for excitement, and to make clear that we can read history truly only as we read it as 'his story'--and that we attain our best only as the hope of the soul is realized by citizenship in 'the city of god.'"--_baptist world._ $ . _pilgrims of the lonely road_ "a very unusual group of studies of the great mystics, and shows real insight into the deeper experience of the religious life."--_christian work._ $ . _a rendezvous with life_ "life is represented as a journey, with various 'inns' along the way such as day's end, week's end, month's end, year's end--all suggestive of certain experiences and duties." paper, cts. modern religious cults and movements by gaius glenn atkins, d.d., l.h.d. _minister of the first congregational church, detroit, mich. author of "pilgrims of the lonely road," "the undiscovered country," etc._ new york chicago fleming h. revell company london and edinburgh copyright, , by fleming h. revell company new york: fifth avenue chicago: north wabash ave. london: paternoster square edinburgh: princes street _to e.m.c._ _whose constant friendship through changing years has been like the fire upon his hearthstone, a glowing gift and a grateful memory_ introduction the last thirty years, though as dates go this is only an approximation, have witnessed a marked development of religious cults and movements largely outside the lines of historic catholicism and protestantism. one of these cults is strongly organized and has for twenty years grown more rapidly in proportion than most of the christian communions. the influence of others, more loosely organized, is far reaching. some of them attempt to give a religious content to the present trend of science and philosophy, and, generally, they represent the free movement of what one may call the creative religious consciousness of our time. there is, of course, a great and constantly growing literature dealing with particular cults, but there has been as yet apparently no attempt to inquire whether there may not be a few unexpectedly simple centers around which, in spite of their superficial differences, they really organize themselves. what follows is an endeavour in these directions. it is really a very great task and can at the best be only tentatively done. whoever undertakes it may well begin by confessing his own limitations. contemporaneous appraisals of movements upon whose tides we ourselves are borne are subject to constant revision. one's own prejudices, no matter how strongly one may deal with them, colour one's conclusions, particularly in the region of religion. the really vast subject matter also imposes its own limitations upon even the most sincere student unless he has specialized for a lifetime in his theme; even then he would need to ask the charity of his readers. ground has been broken for such an endeavour in many different directions. broadly considered, william james' "varieties of religious experience" was perhaps the pioneer work. professor james' suggestive analyses recognize the greatly divergent forms religious experience may take and establish their right to be taken seriously as valid facts for the investigator. the whole tendency of organized christianity--and protestantism more largely than catholicism--has been to narrow religious experience to accepted forms, but religion itself is impatient of forms. it has its border-lands, shadowy regions which lie between the acceptance of what sabatier calls "the religions of authority" on the one hand and the conventional types of piety or practical goodness on the other. those who find their religion in such regions--one might perhaps call them the border-land people--discover the authority for their faith in philosophies which, for the most part, have not the sanction of the schools and the demonstration of the reality of their faith in personal experience for which there is very little proof except their own testimony--and their testimony itself is often confused enough. but james made no attempt to relate his governing conceptions to particular organizations and movements save in the most general way. his fundamentals, the distinction he draws between the "once-born" and the "twice-born," between the religion of healthy-mindedness and the need of the sick soul, the psychological bases which he supplies for conversation and the rarer religious experiences are immensely illuminating, but all this is only the nebulæ out of which religions are organized into systems; the systems still remain to be considered. there has been of late a new interest in mysticism, itself a border-land word, strangely difficult of definition yet meaning generally the persuasion that through certain spiritual disciplines--commonly called the mystic way--we may come into a first-hand knowledge of god and the spiritual order, in no sense dependent upon reason or sense testimony. some modern movements are akin to mysticism but they cannot all be fairly included in any history of mysticism. neither can they be included in any history of christianity; some of them completely ignore the christian religion; some of them press less central aspects of it out of all proportion; one of them undertakes to recast christianity in its own moulds but certainly gives it a quality in so dealing with it which cannot be supported by any critical examination of the gospels or considered as the logical development of christian dogma. here are really new adventures in religion with new gospels, new prophets and new creeds. they need to be twice approached, once through an examination of those things which are fundamental in religion itself, for they have behind them the power of what one may call the religious urge, and they will ultimately stand as they meet, with a measure of finality, those needs of the soul of which religion has always been the expression, or fall as they fail to meet them. but since some limitation or other in the types of christianity which are dominant amongst us has given them their opportunity they must also be approached through some consideration of the christianity against which they have reacted. unsatisfied needs of the inner life have unlocked the doors through which they have made their abundant entry. since they also reflect, as religion always reflects, contemporaneous movements in philosophy, science, ethics and social relationship, they cannot be understood without some consideration of the forces under whose strong impact inherited faiths have, during the last half century, been slowly breaking down, and in answer to whose suggestions faith has been taking a new form. a rewarding approach, then, to modern religious cults and movements must necessarily move along a wide front, and a certain amount of patience and faith is asked of the reader in the opening chapters of this book: patience enough to follow through the discussion of general principles, and faith enough to believe that such a discussion will in the end contribute to the practical understanding of movements with which we are all more or less familiar, and by which we are all more or less affected. g.g.a. _detroit, michigan._ contents i. forms and backgrounds of inherited christianity certain qualities common to all religions--christianity historically organized around a transcendent god and a fallen humanity--the incarnation; the cross the supreme symbol of western theology--the catholic belief in the authority of an inerrant church--the protestant church made faith the key to salvation--protestantism and an infallibly inspired bible--the strength and weakness of this position--evangelical protestantism the outcome--individual experience of the believer the keystone of evangelical protestantism--readjustment of both catholic and protestant systems inevitable. ii. new forces and old faiths the far-reaching readjustments of christian faith in the last fifty years--the reaction of evolution upon religion--the reaction of biblical criticism upon faith--the average man loses his bearings--the new psychology--the influence of philosophy and the social situation--an age of confusion--the lure of the short cut--popular education--the churches lose authority--efforts at reconstruction--an age of doubt and a twilight-zone in history--the hunger of the soul and the need for faith--modern religious cults and movements: their three centers about which they have organized themselves. iii. faith healing in general the bases of faith and mental healing--cannon's study of emotional reactions--the two doors--the challenge of hypnotism--changed attention affects physical states--the power of faith to change mental attitudes--demon possession--the beginnings of scientific medicine--the attitude of the early and medieval church--saints and shrines--magic, charms, and the king's touch: the rise of the faith healer. iv. the approach to christian science and mary baker eddy mesmerism--the scientific investigation of mesmerism--mesmerism in america; phineas quimby an important link in a long chain--quimby is led to define sickness as wrong belief--quimby develops his theories--mary baker eddy comes under his influence--outstanding events of her life: her early girlhood--her education: shaping influences--her unhappy fortunes. she is cured by quimby--an unacknowledged debt--she develops quimby's teachings--begins to teach and to heal--early phases of christian science--she writes "science and health" and completes the organization of her church. v. christian science as a philosophy christian science a philosophy, a theology, a religion and a system of healing--the philosophic bases of christian science--it undertakes to solve the problem of evil--contrasted solutions--the divine mind and mortal mind--the essential limitations of mrs. eddy's system--experience and life--sense-testimony--the inescapable reality of shadowed experience. vi. christian science as a theology science and health offered as a key to the scriptures--it ignores all recognized canons of biblical interpretation--its conception of god--mrs. eddy's interpretation of jesus christ--christian science his second coming--christian science, the incarnation and the atonement--sin an error of mortal mind--the sacraments disappear--the real power of christian science. vii. christian science as a system of healing and a religion christian science the application of philosophy and theology to bodily healing--looseness of christian science diagnosis--the power of mental environment--christian science definition of disease--has a rich field to work--a strongly-drawn system of psycho-therapy--a system of suggestion--affected by our growing understanding of the range of suggestion--strongest in teaching that god has meaning for the whole of life--exalts the power of mind; the processes--is not big enough for the whole of experience. viii. new thought new thought difficult to define--"the rediscovery of the inner life"--spinoza's quest--kant reaffirms the creative power of mind--utilitarianism, deism and individualism--the reactions against them--new england transcendentalism--new thought takes form--its creeds--the range of the movement--the key-words of new thought--its field of real usefulness--its gospel of getting on--the limitations and dangers of its positions--tends to become a universal and loosely-defined religion. ix. the return of the east upon west. theosophy and kindred cults historic forces carried early christianity west and not east--the west rediscovers the east; the east returns upon the west--chesterton's two saints--why the west questions the east--pantheism and its problems--how the one becomes the many--evolution and involution--theosophy undertakes to offer deliverance--but becomes deeply entangled itself--the west looks to personal immortality--the east balances the accounts of life in a series of reincarnations--theosophy produces a distinct type of character--a "tour de force" of the imagination--a bridge of clouds--the difficulties of reincarnation--immortality nobler, juster and simpler--pantheism at its best--and its worst. x. spiritualism the genesis of modern spiritualism--it crosses to europe--the beginnings of trance-mediumship--the society for psychical research begins its work--confronts difficulties--william james enters the field--the limitations of psychical investigation--the society for psychical research gives intellectual standing to spiritism--the very small number of dependable mediums--spiritism a question of testimony and interpretation--possible explanations of spiritistic phenomena--myers' theory of mediumship--telepathy--controls--the dilemma of spiritism--the influence of spiritism--the real alternative to spiritism--the investigations of Émile boirac--geley's conclusions--the meaning of spiritism for faith. xi. minor cults: the meaning of the cults for the church border-land cults--bahaism--the bab and his successors--the temple of unity--general conclusions--the cults are aspects of the creative religious consciousness of the age--their parallels in the past--the healing cults likely to be adversely influenced by the scientific organization of psycho-therapy--new thought will become old thought--possible absorption of the cults by a widening historic christianity--christianity influenced by the cults--medical science and the healing cults--a neglected force--time and the corrections of truth. i the forms and backgrounds of inherited christianity chronologically the point of departure for such a study as this is the decade from to . this is only an approximation but it will do. it was a particularly decorous decade. there was no fighting save on the outposts of colonial empires, the little wars of soldiers three and barrack room ballads--too far away for their guns to be heard in the streets of capital cities, but lending a touch of colour to newspaper head-lines and supplying new material for rising young writers. it was the decade of triumphant democracy and triumphant science and triumphant industrialism and, among the more open-minded, of triumphant evolution. western civilization was sure of its forces, sure of its formulæ, sure of its future; there were here and there clouds no bigger than a man's hand against particularly luminous horizons, but there was everywhere a general agreement that they would be dissolved by the force of benign development. the world seemed particularly well in hand. the churches generally shared this confidence. catholicism and protestantism had reached a tacit working agreement as to their spheres of influence and were even beginning to fraternize a little. the divisive force of protestantism seemed to have spent itself. since alexander campbell--dead now for a decade and a half--no protestant sect of any importance had been established. the older denominations had achieved a distinctive finality in organization and doctrine. evolution and biblical criticism were generally the storm centers of controversy and though these controversies were severe enough they produced no schisms in the churches themselves. a few religious leaders were urging a more thoroughgoing social interpretation and application of the teachings of jesus; such as these were really looked upon with more suspicion than the propagandists of a liberal theology. we see now with almost tragic clearness that, beneath the surface of the whole interrelated order of that tranquil afternoon of the victorian epoch, there were forces in action working toward such a challenge of the accepted and inherited as cultures and civilizations are asked to meet only in the great crises of history and bound to issue, as they have issued in far-flung battle lines, in the overthrow of ancient orders and new alignments along every front of human interest. it will be the task of the historians of the future who will have the necessary material in hand to follow these immense reactions in their various fields and they will find their real point of departure not in dates but in the human attitudes and outlooks which then made a specious show of being final--and were not final at all. just there also is the real point of departure for a study like this. we may date the rise of modern religious cults and movements from the last decades of the nineteenth century, but they are really reactions not against a time but a temper, an understanding of religion and a group of religious validations which had been built up through an immense labour of travailing generations and which toward the end of the last century were in the way of being more seriously challenged than for a thousand years (and if this seems too strong a statement the reader is asked to wait for at least the attempted proof of it). we shall have to begin, then, with a state of mind which for want of a better name i venture to call the representative orthodox religious consciousness of the end of the nineteenth century. that this consciousness is christian is of course assumed. it is protestant rather than catholic, for protestantism has supplied the larger number of followers to the newer religious movements. to begin with, this representative religious consciousness was by no means simple. professor james harvey robinson tells us that the modern mind is really a complex, that it contains and continues the whole of our inheritances and can be understood only through the analysis of all the contributive elements which have combined to make it what it is and that the inherited elements in it far outweigh more recent contributions. the religious mind is an equally complex and deep-rooted inheritance and can best be approached by a consideration of the bases of religion. _certain qualities common to all religions_ we are but pilgrims down roads which space and time supply; we cannot account for ourselves in terms of what we know to be less than ourselves, nor can we face the shadow which falls deeply across the end of our way without dreaming, at least, of that which lies beyond. whence? whither? and why? are insurgent questions; they are voices out of the depths. a very great development of intelligence was demanded before such questions really took definite shape, but they are implicit in even the most rudimentary forms of religion, nor do we outgrow them through any achievement of science or development of philosophy. they become thereby, if anything, more insistent. our widening horizons of knowledge are always swept by a vaster circumference of mystery into which faith must write a meaning and beyond which faith must discern a destiny. religion begins, therefore, in our need so to interpret the power manifest in the universe[ ] as to come into some satisfying relationship therewith. it goes on to supply an answer to the dominant questions--whence? whither? why? it fulfills itself in worship and communion with what is worshipped. such worship has addressed itself to vast ranges of objects, fulfilled itself in an almost unbelievable variety of rites. and yet in every kind of worship there has been some aspiration toward an ideal excellence and some endeavour, moreover, of those who worship to come into a real relation with what is worshipped. it would need a detailed treatment, here impossible, to back up so general a statement with the facts which prove it, but the facts are beyond dispute. it would be equally difficult to analyze the elements in human nature which lead us to seek such communion. the essential loneliness of the soul, our sense of divided and warring powers and the general emotional instability of personality without fitting objects of faith and devotion, all contribute to the incurable religiosity of human nature. [footnote : i have taken as a working definition of religion a phrase quoted by ward fowler in the introduction to his gifford lectures on "the religious experience of the roman people." "religion is the effective desire to be in right relationship to the power manifesting itself in the universe." this is only a formula but it lends itself to vital interpretations and is a better approach to modern cults, many of which are just that endeavour, than those definitions of religion just now current which define it as a system of values or a process of evaluation.] the value which religion has for those who hold it is perhaps as largely tested by its power to give them a real sense of communion with god as by any other single thing, but this by no means exhausts the value of religion for life. all religions must, in one way or another, meet the need of the will for guidance and the need of the ethical sense for right standards. religion has always had an ethical content, simple enough to begin with as religion itself was simple. certain things were permitted, certain things prohibited as part of a cult. these permissions and prohibitions are often strangely capricious, but we may trace behind taboo and caste and the ceremonially clean and unclean an always emerging standard of right and wrong and a fundamental relationship between religion and ethics. religion from the very first felt itself to be the more august force and through its superior authority gave direction and quality to the conduct of its devotees. it was long enough before all this grew into decalogues and the sermon on the mount and the latter chapters of paul's great letters to his churches and our present system of christian ethics, but we discover the beginning of the lordship of religion over conduct even in the most primitive cults. we shall find as we go on that this particular aspect of religion is less marked in modern religious cults and movements than either the quest for a new understanding of god or new answers to the three great questions, or the longing for a more satisfying communion with god. they accept, for the most part, the generally held standards of christian conduct, but even so, they are beginning to develop their own ethical standards and to react upon the conduct of those who hold them. as has been intimated, however, the appeal of religion goes far deeper than all this. if it did no more than seek to define for us the "power not ourselves" everywhere made manifest, if it did no more than answer the haunting questions: whence? and whither? and why?, if it did no more than offer the emotional life a satisfying object of worship and communion with the divine, supplying at the same time ethical standards and guiding and strengthening the will in its endeavour after goodness, it would have done us an immense service. but one may well wonder whether if religion did no more than this it would have maintained itself as it has and renew through the changing generations its compelling appeal. more strong than any purely intellectual curiosity as to a first cause or controlling power, more haunting than any wonder as to the source and destiny of life, more persistent than any loneliness of the questing soul is our dissatisfaction with ourselves, our consciousness of tragic moral fault, our need of forgiveness and deliverance. this longing for deliverance has taken many forms. henry osborn taylor in a fine passage has shown us how manifold are the roads men have travelled in their quest for salvation.[ ] "for one man shall find his peace in action, another in the rejection of action, even in the seeming destruction of desire; another shall have peace and freedom through intellectual inquiry, while another must obey his god or love his god and may stand in very conscious need of divine salvation. the adjustment sought by confucius was very different from that which drew the mind of plato or led augustine to the city of god. often quite different motives may inspire the reasonings which incidentally bring men to like conclusions.... the life adjustment of the early greek philosophers had to do with scientific curiosity.... they were not like gotama seeking relief from the tedious impermanence of personal experience any more than they were seeking to insure their own eternal welfare in and through the love of god, the motive around which surged the christian yearning for salvation. evidently every religion is a means of adjustment or deliverance." [footnote : "deliverance," pp. and .] professor james in his chapter on the sick souls deals most suggestively with these driving longings and all the later analyses of the psychology of conversion begin with the stress of the divided self. the deeper teaching of the new testament roots itself in this soil. the literature of confession is rich in classic illustrations of all this, told as only st. augustine more than a thousand years ago or tolstoy yesterday can tell it. no need to quote them here; they are easily accessible for those who would find for their own longings immortal voices and be taught with what searching self-analysis those who have come out of darkness into light have dealt with their own sick souls. every religion has in some fashion or other offered deliverance to its devotees through sacrifice or spiritual discipline, or the assurance that their sins were atoned for and their deliverance assured through the sufferings of others. all this, needless to say, involves not only the sense of sin but the whole reach of life's shadowed experiences. we have great need to be delivered not only from our divided selves but from the burdens and perplexities of life. religion must offer some explanation of the general problem of sorrow and evil; it must, above all, justify the ways of god with men. generally speaking, religion is very greatly dependent upon its power so to interpret the hard things of life to those who bear them that they may still believe in the divine love and justice. the generality of doubt is not philosophical but practical. we break with god more often than for any other reason because we believe that he has not kept faith with us. some of the more strongly held modern cults have found their opportunity in the evident deficiency of the traditional explanation of pain and sorrow. religion has really a strong hold on the average life only as it meets the more shadowed side of experience with the affirmation of an all-conquering love and justice in which we may rest. broadly considered, then, the elements common to all religions are such as these: a satisfying interpretation of the power manifest in the universe, the need of the mind for an answer to the questions whence? and whither? and why?, the need of the emotional life for such peace as may come from the consciousness of being in right relationship and satisfying communion with god, the need of the will and ethical sense for guidance, and a need including all this and something beside for spiritual deliverance. the representative religious consciousness of the end of the nineteenth century in which we find our point of departure for the religious reactions of the last generation naturally included all this, but implicitly rather than explicitly. the intellectually curious were more concerned with science and political economies than the nature or genesis of religion, while the truly devout, who are not generally given to the critical analysis of their faith, accepted it as a divine revelation needing no accounting for outside their bible. moreover such things as these were not then and never can be held abstractly. they were articulate in creeds and organized in churches and invested with the august sanction of authority, and mediated through old, old processes of religious development. _christianity historically organized around the conception of a transcendent god and a fallen humanity_ for in its historic development religion has naturally taken distinctly divergent forms, conditioned by race, environment, the action and reaction of massed experience and by the temper and insight of a few supremely great religious leaders. but centrally, the whole development of any religion has been controlled by its conception of god and, in the main, three different conceptions of god give colour and character to the outstanding historic religions. pantheistic religions have thought of god as just the whole of all that is; they widen the universe to the measure of the divine, or narrow the divine to the operations of the universe. pantheism saturates its whole vague content with a mystical quality of thought, and colours what it sees with its own emotions. the religions of the divine immanence conceive god as pervading and sustaining all that is and revealing himself thereby, though not necessarily confined therein. the religions of the divine transcendence have believed in a god who is apart from all that is, who neither begins nor ends in his universe, and from whom we are profoundly separated not only by our littlenesses but by our sin. all this is a bare statement of what is almost infinitely richer as it has been felt and proclaimed by the devout and we shall see as we go on how the newer religious movements take also their colour and character from a new emphasis upon the nature of god, or else a return to understandings of him and feelings about him which have been lost out in the development of christianity. historically christian theology, particularly in the west, has centered around the conception of a transcendent god. as far as doctrine goes christianity took over a great inheritance from the jew, for arrestingly enough the jew, though he belongs to the east, had never anything in common with eastern pantheism. on the contrary we find his prophets and lawgivers battling with all their force against such aspects of pantheism as they found about them. the god of the old testament is always immeasurably above those who worshipped him in righteousness and power; he is their god and they are his chosen people, but there is never any identification of their will with his except in the rare moments of their perfect obedience. true enough, through the insight of the prophets and particularly the experience of psalmists, this conception of the apart-god became increasingly rich in the persuasion of his unfailing care for his children. none the less, the hebrew god is a transcendent god and christianity inherits from that. christianity took over what judaism refused--jesus christ and his gospel. but out of the immeasurable wealth of his teaching apostolic thinking naturally appropriated and made most of what was nearest in line with the prophets and the lawgivers of their race. judaism refused christ but the twelve apostles were jews and the greatest of the group--st. paul--was a jewish rabbi before he became a christian teacher. he had been nurtured and matured in the schools of his people and though he was reborn, in renunciations and obediences distinctly christian, there were in his very soul inherited rigidities of form in conformity to which he recast his faith. more distinctly than he himself could ever have known, he particularized the gospel of jesus christ. doubtless his own experience was the deeper directing force in all this. theologies always, to begin with, are the molten outpouring of some transforming experience and they are always, to begin with, fluid and glowing. such glowing experiences as these are hard to communicate; they, too, soon harden down and we inherit, as cold and rigid form, what was to begin with the flaming outcome of experience. st. paul's own struggle and the bitterness of a divided self which issued in his conversion naturally gave content to all his after teaching. he worked out his system strangely apart from the other group of disciples; he had probably never heard a word of christ's teaching directly from christ's lips; he naturally fell back, therefore, upon his jewish inheritance and widened that system of sacrifices and atonements until he found therein not only a place for the cross but the necessity for it. he made much, therefore, of the sense of alienation from god, of sin and human helplessness, of the need and possibility of redemption. _the incarnation as the bridge between god and man; the cross as the instrument of man's redemption. the cross the supreme symbol of western theology_ here, then, are the two speculative backgrounds of historic christianity,--god's apartness from man in an inconceivable immensity of lonely goodness, man's alienation from god in a helpless fallen estate. for the bridging of the gulf between god and his world christianity offers the incarnation; for the saving of man from his lost estate christianity offers the cross. the incarnation is the reëntry of god into a world from which, indeed, according to the christian way of thinking, he has never been entirely separate, but from which he has, none the less, been so remote that if ever it were to be rescued from its ruined condition there was needed a new revelation of god in humanity; and the atonement is just the saving operation of god thus incarnated. eastern christianity has made most of the incarnation. the great greek theologies were built around that. they exhausted the resources of a language particularly fitted for subtle definition in their endeavour to explain the mystery of it, and, after more than a century of bitter debate about the nature and person of christ, contented themselves with affirming the reality both of the human and divine in his nature, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance, nor indeed making clear in any truly comprehensible way the truth which they so sought to define, or the faith to which they so passionately held. but though their keen dialectic broke down under the burden they laid upon it, they did, nevertheless, keep alive just that confidence in god as one come into human life and sharing it and using it, without which there would have been in all the faith and thinking of the west for more than a thousand years an unbridged and unbridgeable gulf between god and man. indeed, when we turn back again to the great greek symbols with that conception of the immanence of god which the truer insights of our own time have done so much to supply, we find these old forms and phrases unexpectedly hospitable to our own interpretations. if the western church had been more strongly influenced by the philosophical insight of the early eastern church, western christendom might have been saved from a good deal of that theological hardness from which great numbers are just now reacting. but western christendom took the cross for the central symbol of its faith. what would have happened to western christendom without augustine we do not know, and it is idle to try to guess, but europe in its religious thinking followed for a thousand years the direction he gave it. his theology is only the travail of his soul, glowing and molten. his confessions reveal to us more clearly than any other record we have paganism becoming christian. in the travail of his spirit we see something vaster than his own conversion, we see the formulation of new spiritual experiences, the birth of new spiritual relationships, the growth of new moral orders and consecrations. he bridges for us the passages between paganism and christianity. he reveals what rebirth meant for men to whom it was no convention but an agonizing recasting of both the inner and outer life. he shows us what it meant to put aside the inheritances and relationships of an immemorial order and to stand as a little child untaught, undisciplined and unperfect in the presence of the new. the spiritual attitude which augustine attained was to be for long the dominant spiritual attitude of europe, was to govern medieval conceptions, inspire medieval actions, colour with its flame the mystic brooding of the medieval mind. in the end the sovereignty of god became for augustine supreme and over against this he set with strong finality man's hopeless fallen state. he was doubtless in debt to st. paul for these governing conceptions but they took new character as they passed through the alembic of his own experience. "the one pervading thought of the greek fathers concerning the redemptive work of christ is that men are thereby brought into unity with god. they do not hesitate to designate this unity to be as a deification ... they dwell on the idea that we become partakers of the divine nature."[ ] the emphasis here is not so much upon sin to be atoned for or punishment to be avoided, as reconciliation to be achieved. [footnote : fisher, "history of christian doctrine," p. .] after augustine the interpretations of the cross take a new direction. now men are thereby not so much to be made partakers of the divine nature as to be saved from hell. the explanations of the way in which this salvation is really achieved change with the changing centuries but through shifting theologies there is one constant. all men are lost and foredoomed to an eternal punishment from which they are saved only in that christ suffered for them and they, through their faith and obedience, have availed themselves of his vicarious death. the varying theological interpretations are themselves greatly significant as if here were something whose meanings no single explanation could exalt, something to be felt rather than understood. the cross so seen is the symbol at once of love and need, of moral defeat and moral discipline, of suffering helplessness and overcoming goodness. we cannot overstate the influence of this faith upon the better part of western civilization. it has kept us greatly humble, purged us of our pride and thrown us back in a helplessness which is, after all, the true secret of our strength, upon the saving mercy of god. the story of it, simply told, has moved the hard or bitter or the careless as nothing else can do. its assurances of deliverance have given new hope to the hopeless and a power not their own to the powerless. it has exalted as the very message of god the patient enduring of unmerited suffering; it has taught us how there is no deliverance save as the good suffer for the bad and the strong put their strength at the service of the weak; it has taught us that the greatest sin is the sin against love and the really enduring victories for any better cause are won only as through the appeal of a much enduring unselfishness new tempers are created and new forces are released. nor is there any sign yet that its empire has begun to come to an end. _the catholic church offered deliverance in obedience to the authority of an inerrant church_ nevertheless the preaching of the cross has not commonly taken such forms as these; it has been rather the appeal of the church to the individual to escape his sinful and hopeless estate either through an obedient self-identification with the church's discipline and an unquestioning acceptance of the church's authority, or else through an intellectual acceptance of the scheme of redemption and a moral surrender to it. here are really the two lines of approach through the one or the other of which christianity has been made real to the individual from the time of st. paul till our own time. during the early formative period of the church it was a matter between the individual and his god. so much we read in and between the lines of the pauline epistles. as far as any later time can accurately recast the thought and method of a far earlier time evangelical protestant theology fairly interprets st. paul. faith--a big enough word, standing for both intellectual acceptance and a kind of mystic receptivity to the love and goodness and justice of god revealed in the cross of christ--is the key to salvation and the condition of christian character. it is also that through which religion becomes real to the individual. but since all this lays upon the individual a burden hard enough to be borne (as we shall see when we come back to protestantism itself) the church, as her organization became more definite and her authority more strongly established, took the responsibility of the whole matter upon herself. she herself would become responsible for the outcome if only they were teachable and obedient. the catholic church offered to its communicants an assured security, the proof of which was not in the fluctuating states of their own souls but in the august authority of the church to which they belonged. as long, therefore, as they remained in obedient communion with their church their souls were secure. the church offered them its confessional for their unburdening and its absolutions for their assurance, its sacraments for their strengthening and its penances for their discipline and restoration. it took from them in spiritual regions and maybe in other regions too, the responsibility for the conduct of their own lives and asked of the faithful only that they believe and obey. the church, as it were, "stepped down" religion to humanity. it did all this with a marvellous understanding of human nature and in answer to necessities which were, to begin with, essential to the discipline of childlike peoples who would otherwise have been brought face to face with truths too great for them, or dismissed to a freedom for which they were not ready. it was and is a marvellous system; there has never been anything like it and if it should wholly fail from amongst us there will never be anything like it again. and yet we see that all this vast spiritual edifice, like the arches of its own great cathedrals, locks up upon a single keystone. the keystone of the arch of catholic certainty is the acceptance of the authority of the church conditioned by belief in the divine character of that authority. if anything should shake the catholic's belief in the authority of his church and the efficacy of her sacraments then he is left strangely unsheltered. strongly articulated as this system is, it has not been untouched by time and change. to continue our figure, one great wing of the medieval structure fell away in the protestant reformation and what was left, though extensive and solid enough, is still like its great cathedrals--yielding to time and change. the impressive force and unity of contemporaneous catholicism may lead us perhaps to underestimate the number of those in the catholic line who, having for one reason or another lost faith in their church, are now open to the appeal of the newer movements. for example, the largest non-catholic religious group of poles in detroit are russellites. there are on good authority between three and four thousand of them. _the protestant church made faith the key to salvation with conversion the test for the individual of the reality of his religious experience_ if religion has been made real to the catholic through the mediation of his church, protestantism, seeking to recreate the apostolic church, has made the reality of religion a matter between the individual and his god. and yet protestantism has never dared commit itself to so simple a phrasing of religion as this, nor to go on without authorities of its own. protestantism generally has substituted for the inclusive authority of the catholic church the authority of its own creeds and fundamentally the authority of the bible. as far as creeds go protestantism carried over the content of latin christianity more largely than we have generally recognized. luther was in direct line with augustine as augustine was in direct line with st. paul, and luther's fundamental doctrine--justification by faith--was not so much a rewriting of ancient creeds as a new way of validating their meaning for the individual. faith, in our common use of the term, has hardened down into an intellectual acceptance of protestant theologies, but certainly for st. paul and probably for luther it was far more vital than this and far more simple. it was rather a resting upon a delivering power, the assurance of whose desire and willingness to deliver was found in the new testament. it was an end to struggle, a spiritual victory won through surrender. the latin catholic system had come to impose upon such tempers as luther's an unendurable amount of strain; it was too complex, too demanding, and it failed to carry with it necessary elements of mental and spiritual consent. (st. paul had the same experience with his own judaism.) what luther sought was a peace-bringing rightness with god. he was typically and creatively one of william james' "divided souls" and he found the solution for his fears, his struggles and his doubts in simply taking for granted that a fight which he was not able to win for himself had been won for him in the transaction on the cross. he had nothing, therefore, to do but to accept the peace thus made possible and thereafter to be spiritually at rest. now since the whole of the meaning of the cross for christianity from st. paul until our own time is involved in this bare statement and since our theologies have never been able to explain this whole great matter in any doctrinal form which has secured universal consent, we must simply fall back upon the statement of the fact and recognize that here is something to be defined in terms of experience and not of doctrine. the validating experience has come generally to be known as conversion, and conversion has played a great part in evangelical protestantism ever since the reformation. it has become, indeed, the one way in which religion has been made real to most members of evangelical churches. so sweeping a statement must be somewhat qualified, for conversion is far older than luther;[ ] it is not confined to protestantism and the protestant churches themselves have not agreed in their emphasis upon it. yet we are probably on safe ground in saying that religion has become real to the average member of the average protestant church more distinctly through conversion than anything else. [footnote : but rather in the discipline of the mystic as an enrichment of the spiritual life than as a door to the communion of the church.] conversion has of late come up for a pretty thoroughgoing examination by the psychologists, and their conclusions are so generally familiar as to need no restatement here. william james, in a rather informal paragraph quoted from one of his letters, states the psychologist's point of view more simply and vividly than either he or his disciples have defined their position in their more formal works. "in the case of conversion i am quite willing to believe that a new truth may be supernaturally revealed to a subject when he really asks, but i am sure that in many cases of conversion it is less a new truth than a new power gained over life by a truth always known. it is a case of the conflict of two self-systems in a personality up to that time heterogeneously divided, but in which, after the conversion crisis, the higher loves and powers come definitely to gain the upper hand and expel the forces which up to that time had kept them down to the position of mere grumblers and protesters and agents of remorse and discontent. this broader view will cover an enormous number of cases psychologically and leaves all the religious importance to the result which it has on any other theory."[ ] [footnote : letters of william james, vol. ii, p. .] in luther, augustine and st. paul, and a great fellowship beside, this stress of the divided self was both immediate and intense. such as these through the consciousness of very real fault--and this is true of augustine and st. paul--or through a rare spiritual sensitiveness and an unusual force of aspiration--and this is true of many others--did not need any conviction of sin urged upon them from the outside. they had conviction enough of their own. but all these have been men and women apart, intensely devout by nature, committed by temperament to great travail of soul and concerned, above all, for their own spiritual deliverance. but their spiritual sensitiveness is by no means universal, their sense of struggle not a normal experience for another type of personality. the demand, therefore, that all religious experience be cast in their particular mould, and that religion be made real to every one through the same travail of soul in which it was made real to them, carries with it two very great dangers: first, that some semblance of struggle should be created which does not come vitally out of experience; and second, that the resultant peace should be artificial rather than true, and therefore, should not only quickly lose its force but really result in reactions which would leave the soul of the one so misled, or better perhaps, so mishandled, emptier of any real sense of the reality of religion than to begin with. _protestantism found its authority in an infallibly inspired bible_ now this is too largely what has happened in evangelical protestantism. the "twice-born" have been set up as the standard for us all; they have demanded of their disciples the same experience as those through which they themselves have passed. since this type of religious experience has always been the more ardent and vivid, since the churches in which least has been made of it have generally tended to fall away into routine and some want of real power, we have had, particularly since jonathan edwards in america and the wesleys in england, a recurrent insistence upon it as the orthodox type of religious experience. partly through inheritance and partly in answer to its own genius protestantism has built up a system of theology tending to reproduce the sequence of conviction of sin, aspiration, repentance, and conversion by doctrinal pressure from the outside. the foundations of it all are in the new testament and somewhat in the old, but what has been built upon these foundations has been either too extended or too one-sided. in order to include in one general sense of condemnation strong enough to create an adequate desire for salvation, all sorts and conditions of people, theology has not only charged us up with our own sins which are always a sad enough account, but it has charged us up with ancestral and imputed sins. this line of theology has been far too rigid, far too insistent upon what one may call the facts of theology, and far too blind to the facts of life. it has made much of sin in the abstract and sometimes far too little of concrete sin; it has made more of human depravity than social justice; it has failed to make allowance for varieties of temper and condition; it is partly responsible for the widespread reaction of the cults and movements of our own time. since so strongly an articulate system as this needed something to sustain it, protestantism has constantly supported itself in the authority of the old and new testaments. it displaced one authority by another, the authority of the church by the authority of the book, and in order to secure for this authority an ultimate and unquestioned power it affirmed as the beginning and the end of its use of the scriptures their infallibility. the growth of protestant teaching about the bible has necessarily been complicated but we must recognize that protestant theology and protestant tradition have given the bible what one may call read-in values. at any rate after affirming the infallibility of the text protestantism has turned back to the text for the proof of its teaching and so built up its really very great interrelated system in which, as has already been said, the power of religion over the life of its followers and the reality of religion in the experiences of its followers locked up on just such things as these: first, the experiences of conversions; second, conversion secured through the processes of protestant indoctrination, backed up by the fervent appeal of the protestant ministry and the pressure of protestant church life; and third, all this supported by an appeal to the authority of the bible with a proof-text for every statement. all this is, of course, to deal coldly and analytically with something which, as it has worked out in religious life, has been neither cold nor analytical. underneath it all have been great necessities of the soul and issuing out of it all have been aspirations and devoutnesses and spiritual victories and new understandings of god and a wealth of love and goodness which are a part of the imperishable treasures of humanity for three centuries. this faith and experience have voiced themselves in moving hymns, built themselves into rare and continuing fellowships, gone abroad in missionary passion, spent themselves for a better world and looked unafraid even into the face of death, sure of life and peace beyond. but behind the great realities of our inherited religious life one may discover assumptions and processes less sure. _the strength and weakness of this position_ once more, this inherited faith in the bible and the systems which have grown out of it have been conditioned by scientific and philosophic understandings. the protestant doctrine of the infallibility of the bible assumed its authority not only in the region of religion but in science and history as well. the inherited theologies really went out of their way to give the incidental the same value as the essential. there was no place in them for growth, correction, further revelation. this statement may be challenged, it certainly needs to be qualified, for when the time for adjustment and the need of adjustment really did come the process of adjustment began to be carried through, but only at very great cost and only really by slowly building new foundations under the old. in fact the new is not in many ways the old at all, though this is to anticipate. it is directly to the point here that the whole scheme of religion as it has come down to us on the protestant side till within the last fifty years was at once compactly interwrought, strongly supported and unexpectedly vulnerable. the integrity of any one part of its line depended upon the integrity of every other part; its gospel went back to the fall of man and depended, therefore, upon the biblical theory of the creation and subsequent human history. if anything should challenge the scientific or historical accuracy of the book of genesis, the doctrine of original sin would have either to be discarded or recast. if the doctrine of original sin were discarded or recast, the accepted interpretations of the atonement went with it. with these changed or weakened the evangelical appeal must either be given new character or lose force. a system which began with the fall on one side went on to heaven and hell on the other and even heaven and hell were more dependent upon ancient conceptions of the physical structure of the world and the skies above it than the church was willing to recognize. the doctrine of eternal punishment particularly was open to ethical challenge. _evangelical protestantism the outcome of the whole process_ of course all this is rather an extreme statement of the situation fifty years ago. the churches did not all agree in insisting upon a conversion; some evangelic churches were beginning to place their emphasis upon christian nurture; they sought what is secured for the emotionally twice-born through guided growth and a larger dependence upon normal spiritual conditions, though they were at least one with their brethren in believing that those who come into christian discipleship must in the end be greatly changed and conscious of the change; they too must possess as an assurance of the reality of their religious life a sense of peace and spiritual well-being. the high anglican church approached the latin catholic church in its insistence upon sacramental regeneration. this wing of the church believed and believes still that baptism truly administered and the holy communion also administered in proper form and accepted in due obedience by priests belonging to some true succession, possess a mystic saving power. just why all this should be so they are perhaps not able to explain to the satisfaction of any one save those who, for one reason or another, believe it already. but those who cannot understand sacramentarianism may dismiss it far too easily, for though there be here danger of a mechanical formulism, the sacraments themselves may become part of a spiritual discipline through which the lives of men and women are so profoundly changed as in the most clear case of conversion, manifesting often a spiritual beauty not to be found in any other conception of christian discipleship. our differences here are not so great as we suppose them. there have always been liberal reactions within the church herself, tending either toward relaxation of discipline or the more rational and simple statements of doctrine. what has been so far said would not be true of unitarianism and universalism in the last century. but these movements have been somehow wanting in driving power, and so, when all these qualifications are made, evangelical protestantism has resulted in a pretty clearly recognizable type. the representative members of the representative evangelical churches all had a religious experience; some of them had been converted after much waiting at the anxious seat, or long kneeling at the altar rail; others of them had been brought through christian teaching to the confession of their faith, but all of them were thereby reborn. they were the product of a theology which taught them their lost estate, offered them for their acceptance a mediatorial and atoning christ, assured them that through their faith their salvation would be assured, and counselled them to look to their own inner lives for the issue of all this in a distinct sense of spiritual peace and well-being. if they doubted or questioned they were answered with proof-texts; for their spiritual sustenance they were given the services of their churches where preaching was generally central, and exhorted to grow in grace and knowledge through prayer and much reading of their bible. _the individual experience of the believer the keystone of evangelical protestantism. its openness to disturbing forces_ now fine and good as all this was it was, as the event proved, not big enough to answer all the needs of the soul, nor strong enough to meet the challenge of forces which were a half century ago shaping themselves toward the almost entire recasting of great regions of human thought. it was, to begin with, unexpectedly weak in itself. evangelical protestantism, as has been noted, throws upon the members of protestant churches a larger burden of individual responsibility than does the catholic church. the typical evangelical protestant has had little to sustain him in his religious life save his sense of reconciliation with god, from whom possibly he never vitally thought himself to have been estranged, and a consequent spiritual peace. his church promises him nothing except teaching, inspiration, comradeship, an occasion for the confession of his faith and some opportunity for service. his ministers are only such as he; they may exhort but they dare not absolve. he is greatly dependent, then, for his sense of the reality of religion upon his own spiritual states. if he is spiritually sensitive and not too much troubled by doubt, if he possesses a considerable capacity for religious understanding, if his bible is still for him the authoritative word of god, if his church meets his normal religious needs with a reasonable degree of adequacy, if he is resolute in purpose and if he has no excessively trying experiences in the face of which his faith breaks down, and if the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, or the strain of poverty do not too much distract him (and this is a long and formidable list of ifs) then he is faithful in his church relationships and personally devout. he grows in grace and knowledge and the outcome of it all is a religious character admirable in manifold ways, steadfast and truthful in good works. * * * * * the fact that in spite of all hindrances the protestant churches do go on, registering from decade to decade a varying statistical growth with a strongly organized life and a great body of communicants who find in the religious life thus secured to them the true secret of interior peace and their true source of power, is itself a testimony to the massive reality of the whole system. and yet the keystone of the great structure is just the individual experience of the individual believer, conditioned upon his longing for deliverance and his personal assurance that he has found, through his faith in his church's gospel, what he seeks. if anything should shake the protestant's confidence in his creed or his bible, or if his own inner experiences should somehow fail in their sense of sustaining reality, then all the structure of his religion begins to weaken. if one may use and press a suggestive figure, here is a religious structure very much like gothic architecture; its converging arches of faith and knowledge lock up upon their keystones and the thrust of the whole great structure has been met and conquered by flying buttresses. in other words, sustaining forces of accredited beliefs about science, history and human nature have been a necessary part of the entire system and the temple of faith thus sustained may be weakened either through some failure in the keystone of it which is inner experience, or the flying buttresses of it which are these accepted systems of science, history, philosophy and psychology. _readjustment of both catholic and protestant systems inevitable_ out of such elements as these, then, through such inheritances and disciplines the representative religious consciousness of american protestantism of the end of the nineteenth century had been created. it rooted itself in elements common to all religion, it inherited practically the whole content of the old testament, it invested hebraic systems of sacrifice with typical meanings and jewish prophecy with a mystic authority. it was in debt to st. paul and augustine for its theology. its cosmogony was , years old and practically uninfluenced by modern science, or else at odds with it. it was uncritical in its acceptance of the supernatural and trained on the whole to find its main line of evidence for the reality of religion in the supernatural. it made more of the scheme of deliverance which st. paul found in the crucifixion of jesus than the ethics of the gospels. it was mystic in its emphasis upon an inner testimony to the realities it offered. for the protestant it locked up unexpectedly upon the infallible authority of the bible and for the catholic upon the inerrancy of the church. it was out of the current of the modern temper in science and philosophy generally. its conceptions of the probable fate of the world were jewish and of the future life were medieval, and perhaps the strangest thing in it all was the general unconsciousness of its dependence upon assumptions open to challenge at almost every point and the process of profound readjustment upon the threshold of which it stood. it is almost impossible to disentangle the action of the two sets of strain which have within the last half century been brought to bear upon it. each has reacted upon the other. perhaps the best thing to do is to consider the forces which for the last two generations have been challenging and reshaping inherited faiths, and then to consider the outcome of it all in the outstanding religious attitudes of our own time. ii new forces and old faiths within the last fifty years particularly the fundamentals of the christian faith have not only come up for reëxamination but have been compelled to adapt themselves to facts and forces which have gone farther toward recasting them than anything for a millennium and a half before. the reformation went deep but it did not go to the bottom. there are differences enough in all reason between protestantism and catholicism, but their identities are deeper still. the world of martin luther and john calvin was not essentially different in its outlook upon life from the world of augustine and athanasius. the world of jonathan edwards was much the same as the world of john calvin and the world of apparently much the same as the world of jonathan edwards. there was, of course, an immense difference in the mechanism with which men were working but an unexpectedly small difference in their ruling ideas. _the readjustments of christian faith more far-reaching in the last fifty years than for a thousand years before; science releases the challenging forces_ we should not, of course, underestimate the contribution of the reformation to the breaking up of the old order. it left the theologies more substantially unchanged than protestantism has usually supposed, but it did mark the rise of changed attitudes toward authority. the reformers themselves did not accept without protest the spirit they released. they imposed new authorities and obediences upon their churches; they distrusted individual initiative in spiritual things and the more democratic forms of church organization. john calvin sought in his institutes to vindicate the law-abiding character of his new gospel; luther turned bitterly against the german peasants in their demand for a most moderate measure of social justice; the anglican leaders exiled the pilgrims; the puritan drove the quaker out of boston through an instinctive distrust of inward illumination as a safe guide for faith and religious enthusiasm as a sound basis for a new commonwealth. but the spirit was out of the bottle and could not be put back. the right of the individual to make his own religious inquiries and reach his own religious conclusions was little in evidence for almost two hundred years after the reformation, partly because the reactions of the post-reformation period made the faithful generally content to rest in what had already been secured, partly because traditional authority was still strong, and very greatly because there was neither in history, philosophy nor science new material upon which the mind might exercise itself. we may take , almost exactly two hundred years after the final readjustments of the reformation period, as the point of departure for the forces which have so greatly modified our outlook upon our world and our understanding of ourselves; not that the date is clean-cut, for we see now how many things had already begun to change before darwin and the origin of species. darwin's great achievement is to have suggested the formula in which science and history have alike been restated. he had no thought at all that what he was doing would reach so far or change so much. he simply supposed himself, through patient and exhaustive study, to have accounted for the rich variety of life without the supposition of a special creation for each form. but the time was ripe and longing for what he supplied and his hypothesis was quickly taken and applied in almost every field of thought. nor does it greatly matter that darwinism has been and may be still greatly modified. we have come under the spell of evolution. our universe is no longer a static thing; it is growing and changing. our imaginations are impressed by long sequences of change, each one of them minute in itself but in the mass capable of accounting for immense transformations. darwin's initiative released the scientific temper which has been the outstanding characteristic of our own age. the physicist, the chemist and the biologist re-related their discoveries in the light of his governing principle and supplied an immense body of fact for further consideration. geology was reborn, the records of the rocks came to have a new meaning, every broken fossil form became a word, maybe a paragraph, for the retelling of the past of the earth. astronomy supplied cosmic backgrounds for terrestrial evolution and physics became a kind of court of appeal for both. the physicist proclaimed the conservation of energy, reduced seeming solidities to underlying force and resolved force itself into ultimate and tenuous unities. the processes thus discovered and related seemed to be self-sufficient. no need to bring in anything from the outside; unbroken law, unfailing sequence were everywhere in evidence. where knowledge failed speculation bridged the gap. one might begin with a nebula and go on in unbroken sequence to plato or shakespeare without asking for either material, law or force which was not in the nebula to begin with. man himself took his own place in the majestic procession; he, too, was simply the culmination of a long ascent, with the roots of his being more deeply in the dust than he had ever dreamed and compelled to confess himself akin to what he had aforetime scorned. _the reaction of evolution upon religion_ all our old chronologies became incidental in a range of time before which even imagination grew dizzy. we found fragments of the skulls of our ancestors in ancient glacial drifts and the traditional , years since creation hardly showed on the dial upon which geology recorded its conclusions. there is no need to follow in detail how all this reacted upon religion. the accepted religious scheme of things was an intricately interlocking system irresistible in its logic as long as the system remained unchallenged in its crucial points. if these should begin to be doubted then the christian appeal would have lost, for the time at least, a most considerable measure of its force. the inner peace which we have already seen to be the keystone of the protestant arch grew in part out of the sense of a universal condemnation from which the believer was happily saved; this in turn was conditioned by the unquestioned acceptance of the genesis narrative. we can see clearly enough now that christianity, and protestant christianity especially, really depended upon something deeper than all this. still for the time being all these things were locked up together and once the accepted foundations of theology began to be questioned far-reaching adjustments were inevitable and the time of readjustment was bound to be marked by great restlessness and confusion. the evolutionary hypothesis profoundly affected man's thought about himself. it challenged even more sharply his thought about god. atheism, materialism and agnosticism are an old, old trinity, but they had up to our own time been at the mercy of more positive attitudes through their inability to really answer those insurgent questions: whence? whither? and why? creation had plainly enough demanded a creator. when napoleon stilled a group of debating officers in egypt by pointing with a napoleonic gesture to the stars and saying, "gentlemen, who made all these?" his answer had been final. paley's old-fashioned turnip-faced watch with its analogies in the mechanism of creation had supplied an irresistible argument for a creation according to design and a designing creator. but now all this was changed. if napoleon could have ridden out from his august tomb, reassembled his officers from the dust of their battlefields and resumed the old debate, the officers would have been apparently in the position to answer--"sire, they made themselves." our universe seemed to be sufficient unto itself. we have reacted against all this and rediscovered god, if indeed we had ever lost him, but this ought not to blind those who have accomplished the great transition to the confusion of faith which followed the popularization of the great scientific generalizations, nor ought it to blind us to the fact that much of this confusion still persists. christian theism was more sharply challenged by materialism and agnosticism than by a frankly confessed atheism. materialism was the more aggressive; it built up its own great system, posited matter and force as the ultimate realities, and then showed to its own satisfaction how everything that is is just the result of their action and interaction. nor did materialism pause upon the threshold of the soul itself. consciousness, so conceived, was a by-product of the higher organization of matter, and we ourselves a spray flung up out of the infinite ocean of being to sparkle for a moment in the light and then fall back again into the depths out of which we had been borne. those who so defined us made us bond-servants of matter and force from birth to death though they drew back a little from the consequences of their own creeds and sought to save a place for moral freedom and responsibility and a defensible altruism. it is doubtful if they succeeded. materialism affected greatly the practical conduct of life. it offered its own characteristic values; possession and pleasure became inevitably enough the end of action, and action itself, directed toward such ends, became the main business of life. science offered so fascinating a field for thought as to absorb the general intellectual energy of the generation under the spell of it; the practical application of science to mechanism and industry with the consequent increase in luxury and convenience, absorbed the force of practical men. it naturally went hard with religion in a world so preoccupied. its foundations were assailed, its premises questioned, its conclusions denied, its interests challenged. the fact that religion came through it at all is a testimony both to the unconquerable force of faith and the unquenchable need of the soul for something greater than the scientific gospel revealed or the achievements of science supplied. _the reaction of biblical criticism upon faith_ the first front along which the older faith met the impact of new forces was scientific; the second drive was at a more narrow but, as far as religion goes, an even more strategic front. the bible had to submit to those processes of inquiry and criticism which had so greatly altered the scientific outlook. the old and new testaments, as has been said, supplied really the basal authority for the whole protestant order, and speaking merely as a historian one is well within the facts when one says that even before the enlightenment of the last two generations the traditional way of thinking about the bible had not proved satisfactory. the more free-minded were conscious of its contradictions; they could not reconcile its earlier and later moral idealisms; they found in it as much to perplex as to help them. some of them, therefore, disowned it altogether and because it was tied up in one bundle with religion, as they knew religion, they disowned religion at the same time. others who accepted its authority but were unsatisfied with current interpretations of it sought escape in allegorical uses of it. (we shall find this to be one of the distinct elements in christian science.) but after all it did answer the insistent questions, whence? and whither? and why? as nothing else answered them. therefore, in spite of challenge and derelict faith and capricious interpretations and forced harmonies it still held its own. directly science began to offer its own answers to whence? and whither? and why? curiosity found an alternative. science had its own book of genesis, its own hypothesis as to the creation of man, its own conclusions as to his ascent. these had a marvellously emancipating and stimulating power; they opened, as has been said, vast horizons; they affected philosophy; they gave a new content to poetry, for the poet heard in the silences of the night: "Æonian music measuring out the steps of time--the shocks of chance-- the blows of death." the challenge of science to the book of genesis specifically and to the miraculous narratives with which both the old and the new testaments are veined more generally, doubtless stimulated biblical criticism, but the time was ripe for that also. the beginnings of it antedate the scientific renaissance, but the freer spirit of the period offered criticism its opportunity, the scientific temper supplied the method and the work began. inherited faith has been more directly affected by biblical criticism than by the result of scientific investigation and the generalizations based thereon. the bible had been the average man's authority in science and history as well as faith. that statement naturally needs some qualification, for before evolution took the field it was possible not only to reconcile a fair knowledge of the natural sciences with the bible, but even, as in the argument for design, to make them contributory to bible teaching. but evolution changed all that and it was really through the impact of the more sweeping scientific conclusions upon his bible that the average man felt their shock upon his faith. if he had been asked merely to harmonize the genesis of the new science with the genesis of the old testament he would have had enough to occupy his attention, though perhaps he might have managed it. the massive mind of gladstone accomplished just that to its own entire satisfaction. but the matter went deeper. a wealth of slowly accumulated knowledge was brought to bear upon the scriptures and a critical acumen began to follow these old narratives to their sources. there is no need here to follow through the results in detail. they[ ] were seen to have been drawn from many sources, in some cases so put together that the joints and seams were plainly discernible. one wonders how they had so long escaped observation. the bible was seen to contain contributory elements from general ancient cultures; its cosmogony the generally accepted cosmogony of the time and the region; its codes akin to other and older codes. it contained fragments of old songs and the old lore of the common folk. it was seen to record indisputably long processes of moral growth and spiritual insight. its prophets spoke out of their time and for their time. it was plainly enough no longer an infallible dictation to writers who were only the automatic pens of god, it was a growth rooted deep in the soil out of which it grew and the souls of those who created it. the fibres of its main roots went off into the darkness of a culture too long lost ever to be quite completely understood. it was no longer ultimate science or unchallenged history. [footnote : the old testament narratives particularly. the results of new testament criticism have not yet fully reached the popular mind.] we have come far enough now to see that nothing really worth while has been lost in this process of re-interpretation, and much has been gained. if, as the french say in one of their luminous proverbs, to understand is to pardon, to understand is also to be delivered from doubts and forced apologies and misleading harmonies and the necessity of defending the indefensible. in our use of the bible, as in every other region of life, the truth has made us free. it possesses still--the bible--the truth and revelation and meaning for life it always possessed. we are gradually realizing this and gaining in the realization. but the bible has been compelled to meet the challenge of an immensely expanded scientific and historical knowledge. we have had to test its supposed authority as to beginnings by astronomy, geology and biology; we have had to test its history by the methods and conclusions of modern historical investigation. the element of the supernatural running through both the old and new testaments has been compelled to take into account that emphasis upon law and ordered process which is, perhaps more than any other single thing, the contribution of science to the discipline of contemporaneous thought. _the average man loses his bearings_ the whole process has been difficult and unsettling. there was and is still a want of finality in the conclusions of biblical scholars. it needed and needs still more study than the average man is able to give to understand their conclusions; it needed and it needs still a deal of patient, hard, clear-visioned thinking to win from the newer interpretations of the bible that understanding and acceptance of its value which went with the inherited faith. the more liberal-minded religious teachers doubtless very greatly overestimate the penetration of popular thought already accomplished, by what seems to them a familiar commonplace. the new testament is still, even for the scholar, a challenging problem. conclusions are being bitterly contested and where the specialist is himself in doubt the average man is naturally in utter confusion. the more conservative communions neither accept nor teach the results of the higher criticism, and so it reaches the body of their communicants only as rumour and a half-understood menace to the truth. religion is naturally the most conservative thing in the world and even when we think ourselves to have utterly changed our point of view something deeper than mere intellectual acceptance protests and will not be dismissed. we pathetically cling to that to which we, at the same time, say good-bye. the average man somewhat affected by the modern scientific spirit is greatly perplexed by the miraculous elements in the bible and yet he still believes the bible the word of god with an authority nothing else possesses. in fact, by a contradiction easy enough to understand, what puzzles him most seems to him the clearest evidence of the supernatural character of the narrative itself. his religion is not so much the interpretation of what he does understand as the explanation of what he does not understand. if he gives up the supernatural his faith goes with it, and yet the other side of him--the scientifically tempered side--balks at the supernatural. it is hard to know what to do with such a temper. indeed, just this confused temper of believing and doubting, with miracles for the storm center, has offered a rich field for those interpretations of the miraculous, particularly in the new testament, in terms of faith and mental healing, to which christian science and new thought are so much given. we may conclude in a sentence by saying that since the infallibility of the bible was one of the flying buttresses which upheld the inherited structure of religion, those changes and confusions which have grown out of two generations of biblical criticism have greatly affected the popular faith. _the new psychology both a constructive and disturbing influence_ a third influence tending to break up the stability of the old order has been the new psychology. so general a statement as this needs also to be qualified, for, suggestively enough, the new psychology has not so much preceded as followed the modern multiplication of what, using james' phrase, we may call the "varieties of religious experience." it has been, in part, a widening of our conclusions as to the mind and its processes to make room for the puzzling play of personality which has revealed itself in many of these experiences. hypnotism necessarily antedated the interest of psychology in the hypnotic state; it compelled psychology to take account of it and for the explaining of hypnotism psychology has been compelled to make a new study of personality and its more obscure states. the psychologists have been far more hospitable to the phenomena of mental healing than have the faculties of medicine. they took them seriously before the average doctor would even admit that they existed. their study led them to a pretty thoroughgoing consideration of the power of suggestion upon bodily states, and eventually to formulate, as they have been able, both the laws of suggestion and the secret of its power. telepathy and psychic phenomena generally have also offered a rich field to the student of the abnormal and psychology has broadened its investigations to include all these conditions. that is to say, the border-land phenomena of consciousness as stressed and manifested in the more bizarre cults have really supplied the material upon which the new psychology has been working, and the psychologist to-day is seriously trying to explain a good many things which his predecessors, with their hard and fast analyses of the mind and its laws, refused to take seriously. they concede that a complete psychology must have a place in it for the abnormal as well as the normal, and for the exceptional as well as for the staid and universally accepted. those who have been fathering new religions and seeking to make the abnormal normal have been quick to avail themselves of the suggestions and permissions in the new psychology. once we have crossed the old and clearly defined frontiers, almost anything seems possible. personality, we are now taught, is complex, far-reaching, and is really, like a floating iceberg, more largely below the sea level of consciousness than above it. how far it extends and what connections it makes in these its hidden depths, no one of us may know. normal consciousness, to change the figure, is just one brilliantly illuminated center in a world of shadow deepening into darkness. the light grows more murky, the shadows more insistent, as we pass down, or out, or back from that illumined center. we cannot tell how much of the shadow is really a part of us, nor do we dare to be dogmatic about what may, or may not, there be taking place. indeed, we may fill the shadows with almost anything which caprice or desire may suggest. our curiously inventive minds have always loved to fill in our ignorances with their creations. we formerly had the shadowed backgrounds of the universe to populate with the creatures of our fear or fancy, but now, strangely enough, since science has let in its light upon the universe psychology has given us the subconscious as a region not yet subdued to law or shot through with light. and the prophets of new cults and border-land movements have taken advantage of this. "since there is," they say in substance, "so much in life of which we are not really conscious, and since there are hints within us of strange powers, how can we set limits to what we may either be or do, and may not one man's caprice be as reasonable as another man's reason?" the popularization of the new psychology has thus created a soil finely receptive to the unusual. without understanding what has been accomplished in the way of investigation, and with little accurate knowledge of what has actually been tested out, there is amongst us a widespread feeling that almost anything is possible. here also we may end in a sentence by saying that present-day psychology with its wide sweep of law, its recognition of the abnormal, its acceptance of and insistence upon the power of suggestion, its recognition of the subconscious and its tendency to assign thereto a great force of personal action, has broken down old certainties and given a free field to imagination. it has, more positively, taught us how to apply the laws of mental action to the more fruitful conduct of life, and so supplied the basis for the cults which make much of efficiency and self-development. it has also lent new meaning to religion all along the line. _the influence of philosophy and the social situation_ how far contemporaneous philosophy has affected inherited faith or supplied a basis for new religious development, is more difficult to say. beyond debate philosophic materialism has greatly influenced the religious attitude of multitudes of people just as the reactions against it have supplied the basis for new religious movements. pragmatism, affirming that whatever works is true, has tended to supply a philosophic justification for whatever seems to work, whether it be true or not, and it has beside tended to give us a world where little islands of understandings have taken, as it were, the place of a continuous continent of truth. the tendencies of the leaders of new cults have been to take the material which science and psychology have supplied and build them into philosophies of their own; they have not generally been able or willing to test themselves by the conclusions of more disciplined thinkers. new thought has undoubtedly been affected by the older idealisms--berkeley's for example--while james and royce have supplied congenial material. the movements are generally selective. new thought uses james' applied psychology and possibly royce's absolute, but does not consistently confine itself to any one system. philosophy also has been itself of late working in a pretty rarified region. its problems have not been the problems of the common mind. it has been trying to find out how we know, to relate the inner and the outer world, and in general to account for things which the average man takes for granted, and in the understanding of which he is more hindered than helped by the current philosophy of the schools. it takes philosophy a good while to reach the man in the street, and even then its conclusions have to be much popularized and made specific before they mean much for him. we shall know better fifty years from now what philosophy is doing for religion and life than we know to-day. there are, however, as has been said, aspects of philosophy which religion generally is beginning to take into account. the failure of christianity to create for itself a distinctly christian environment has also had much to do with dissolving old religious stabilities. strongly felt social injustices are releasing forces of discontent and creating a fertile soil for revolutionary experiment, though it must be said that modern religious cults and movements have not gained so much from this particular form of discontent as have those movements which look toward radical social readjustment. but the whole situation has created a shaken state of public opinion. the fierceness of modern competition, industrially and economically, finally carried through to the tragic competition of a world war, has put our tempers on edge. the extremes of wealth and poverty and the baffling fluctuations in modern industry have brought the existing order into disrepute. the very great number of the socially unfit and the grievous number of social misfits, along with crime and poverty and the deposit of human sediment in our cities, not only trouble men of good will but create a human element easily misled. such conditions as these are in such painful contrast with the ideals of the gospel, the spirit of christianity and even the potential productive force of modern society as to lead many to believe that something is radically wrong. many are persuaded that christianity as now organized and led is socially sterile; they have withdrawn themselves from the church; many of them have become its mordant critics; the more extreme of them have disowned religion as well as its organized form, and the violently radical would dethrone any conception of the divine and take the word god out of our vocabulary. this extreme group has not for the most part associated itself with the new religious movement, but here at least has been a disintegrating force. _an age of confusion_ in such ways as these, then, the accepted religious order identified with historic catholicism and protestantism has in the last fifty years been greatly altered. science, biblical criticism, psychology and philosophy, and social unrest have all had their share in making people impatient of the inherited order, or doubtful or defiant of it. we have been asked to relate our old creeds and confidences to new insights and understandings. the old answers to the questions whence? and whither? and why? have been challenged by new answers; our horizons have been pushed back in every direction and a strange sense of mystery both in personality and the external order has perplexed and stimulated us. along with all this and in no little way growing out of it, has gone impatience of discipline and an undue haste to gain the various goods of life. evolution misled us, to begin with. if the longing for deliverance be one of the driving forces in religious life, then the vaster scientific conclusions of the latter part of the nineteenth century offered a new definition of deliverance. it was not, after all, so much in the travail of the soul as in a serene and effortless self-commitment to a power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness, that we were to be saved. we had only to push out upon tides which asked of us neither rudder nor oar, to be brought to our appointed havens. how greatly we have been disillusioned in all this and how bitterly we have been taught that life is not so much a drifting with the tide as making brave headway against it, we all know well enough to-day. somewhere back of a vast deal in these modern religious cults and movements, is the smug optimism, now taking one form and now another, which was the misleading bequest of the nineteenth century to the twentieth. the great scientific discoveries and their application to the mechanism of life led the nineteenth century to believe that nothing was impossible. everything we touched became plastic beneath our touch save possibly ourselves; there seemed to be no limit to what man might do and he consequently assumed that there was no limit to what he might become. he disassociated his hopes from both his disciplines and experiences; everything seemed not only possible but easily possible. a general restlessness of temper, due in part to the breaking up of the inherited order, in part to the ferment of new ideas and in part to a general relaxing of discipline, began to manifest itself. the demoralizing influence of migratory populations ought not to be overlooked in this connection. in all the western nations there has been an outstanding growth of industrial city populations due to changing economic conditions. the steadying influences of old environments have been lost, the influence of the new environment is too stimulating at its best and demoralizing at its worst. our cities are not kind to home life; too often they do not supply a proper physical setting for it. the specialization of hard driven industries takes the creative joy out of work and leads to an excess of highly commercialized pleasure. the result is the modern city worker, never living long enough in one place to create for himself a normal social environment, always anxious about his economic future, restless, too largely alternating between strenuous work and highly coloured pleasure and much open, through temperament and circumstance, to the appeal of whatever promises him a new experience or a new freedom. _the lure of the short cut_ dean inge in a recent study of the contribution of the greek temper to religion has drawn a strong, though deeply shadowed picture of the disorganization of modern life through such influences as these. "the industrial revolution has generated a new type of barbarism, with no roots in the past. for the second time in the history of western europe, continuity is in danger of being lost. a generation is growing up, not uneducated, but educated in a system which has little connection with european culture in its historical development. the classics are not taught; the bible is not taught; history is not taught to any effect. what is even more serious, there are no social traditions. the modern townsman is _déraciné_: he has forgotten the habits and sentiments of the village from which his forefathers came. an unnatural and unhealthy mode of life, cut off from the sweet and humanizing influences of nature, has produced an unnatural and unhealthy mentality, to which we shall find no parallels in the past. its chief characteristic is profound secularity or materialism. the typical town artisan has no religion and no superstitions; he has no ideals beyond the visible and tangible world of senses."[ ] [footnote : "the legacy of greece," p. .] writing as an englishman dean inge did not note the equally unsettling influence of migratory races. the european peasant in detroit or chicago or new york is still more _déraciné_. he has not only left the soil in whose culture his ancestors had been established for generations, he has left the tradition and the discipline which have made him what he is. the necessary readjustments are immensely difficult. for the first generation they are largely a dumb puzzle, or a dull, aching homesickness or a gray laborious life whose outcome must be often strangely different from their dreams, but for the second generation the whole experience is a heady adventure in freedom not easy to analyze though social workers generally are agreed that the children of the immigrant, belonging neither to the old nor the new, are a disturbing element in american life. a city like detroit, in which this is being written, where both movements combine, the american country and village dweller coming to a highly specialized industrial center and the european immigrant to an entirely new environment, illustrates the complex issue of the whole process. it is just to note that the catholic immigrant, finding in his church the one homelike thing, is often a better catholic in america than he was at home. a protestant writer without accurate information would not dare to generalize on the religious dislocation of the second catholic generation. but there must be a very great loss. the large non-churched elements in our population must be in part due to catholic disintegration as they are certainly due to protestant disintegration. and new movements find their opportunity in this whole group. in general, society, through such influences, has grown impatient of discipline, scornful of old methods, contemptuous of experience and strangely unwilling to pay the price of the best. the more unstable have surrendered themselves to the lure of the short cut; they are persuaded that there are quick and easy roads to regions of well-being which had before been reached only through labour and discipline and much travail of body, mind and soul. _popular education has done little to correct current confusions_ nor has the very great extension of popular education really done much to correct this; it seems rather to intensify it, for education shared and shares still the temper of the time. our education has been more successful generally in opening vistas than in creating an understanding of the laws of life and the meaning of experience; it has given us a love of speculation without properly trained minds; it has furnished us with the catch words of science and philosophy but has not supplied, in the region of philosophy particularly, the corresponding philosophic temper. it has, above all, been fruitful in unjustified self-confidence, particularly here in america. we have confused a great devotion to higher education and the widespread taking of its courses with the solid fruition of it in mental discipline. america particularly has furnished for a long time now an unusual opportunity for bizarre and capricious movements. nothing overtaxes the credulity of considerable elements in our population. whatever makes a spacious show of philosophy is sure to find followers and almost any self-confident prophet has been able to win disciples, no matter to what extremes he goes. this has not been equally true of older civilizations with a more clearly defined culture or a more searching social discipline. something must be lacking in the education of a people in which all this is so markedly possible. the play of mass psychology (one does not quite dare to call it mob psychology) also enters into the situation. democracy naturally makes much of the verdict of majorities. any movement which gains a considerable number of adherents is pretty sure to win the respect of the people who have been taught to judge a cause by the number of those who can be persuaded to adopt it. this generally unstable temper, superficial, restless, unduly optimistic, open to suggestion and wanting in the solid force of great tradition has joined with the recasting of science, theology, psychology and philosophy, to open the door for the entrance of new religions, and in general, to so unsettle the popular mind as to make almost anything possible. _the churches lose authority_ in the field of religion certain well-defined consequences have either followed or accompanied the whole process. there has been, to begin with, a loosening of church ties. the extent of all this has been somewhat covered up by the reasonable growth of the historic churches. in spite of all the difficulties which they have been called upon to face, the statistics generally have been reassuring. the churches are attended in the aggregate by great numbers of people who are untroubled by doubts. such as these have little sympathy with the more restless or troubled, and little patience with those who try to understand the restless and troubled; they do not share the forebodings of those who look with a measure of apprehension upon the future of christianity. as far as they recognize disturbing facts at all they are very much like carlyle who, when told that christianity was upon its last legs, said, "what of that? christianity has always been upon its last legs." and perhaps their simple faith and hope are more to the point than many opposing attitudes. the churches have grown faster than the population, or at least they had at the last census. more than that, there has been a marked increase in church activity. the churches are better organized; they are learning the secret of coöperation; they are reaching out in more directions and all of them, even the more democratic, are more hard driven from the top. the result of all this has been a great show of action, though it is difficult now to say whether the real results of this multiplied activity have been commensurate in spiritual force and ethical fruitage with the intensity of their organized life. (the writer thinks not.) but through all this we discern, nevertheless, a marked weakening of authority as far as the church goes and a general loosening of ties; though the churches in the regions of finance and organization drive harder than they used to drive, in the matter of creed and conduct they are driving with an easy rein. denominational loyalties are relaxed; there is much changing from one denomination to another and within the denominations and individual churches there is, of course, a substantial proportion of membership which is only nominal. _efforts at reconstruction within the church_ there are those who view with apprehension the whole future of religion. they believe that the foundations of the great deep are breaking beneath us, that christianity must be profoundly recast before it can go on prevailingly, and they are reaching in one direction and another for constructive changes, but all this within the frontiers of historic christianity and the church. they want church unity but they still want a church; they want a new theology but still a theology; they want new applications of religion but still substantially the old religion. there was more of this during the war than just now. such a book as orchard's "future of religion," perhaps the most thoughtful analysis of conditions given us for a long time, was born of the war itself and already many of its anticipations seem to miss the point. such expectations of wholesale religious reconstruction leave out of account the essential conservatism of human nature, a conservatism more marked in religion than anywhere else. there is also a strong and telling group which is seeking so to recast and interpret inherited faiths as to make them more consonant to modern needs and more hospitable to new understandings. such as these have accepted gladly the tested conclusions of science, the results of biblical criticism and the revealing suggestion of both psychology and philosophy; they have sought to disentangle the essential from the unessential, the enduring from the transient. they have found in science not the foe but the friend of religion. those intimations of unfailing force, those resolutions of the manifold phases of action and reality toward which science is reaching have seemed to them a discovery of the very presence and method of god, and they have found in just such regions as these new material for their faith. they have dealt reverently with the old creeds, for they have seen that the forms which christianity has taken through the centuries have grown out of enduring experiences and needs never to be outgrown, and that their finality is the finality of the deep things of the soul itself. they have been able, therefore, to make new truth tributary to old faith and to interpret the central affirmations of christianity in terms of present-day facts. they have sought to share their conclusions with others and they have really been able to carry christianity through the transitional period of the last fifty years and continue it open-minded, strongly established, reverent and enriched rather than impoverished. what they have done has been doubly hard, once through the sheer difficulty of the task itself, and once through the hostile and too often abusive temper with which they and their endeavours have been opposed. none the less, they have saved for christendom a reasonable faith. science has of late gone half-way to meet them. it is rather painfully revising a good many of its earlier conclusions and on the whole walking rather humbly just now before its god, recognizing that the last word has not yet really been said about much of anything. _an age of doubt and a twilight-zone in history_ but the apparently unchanged traditions of the older forms of faith and the relatively strong position of the church must not blind us to the generally disorganized condition of religion to-day. there is much in evidence a body of doubt which clouds the outlook of multitudes upon religion generally. beyond debate a kind of eclipse of faith began to draw across the western world so early as the middle of the last century. the militant skepticism of the brilliant group of younger poets who sang their defiances in the first two decades of the nineteenth century to a world which professed itself duly shocked, is wholly different from the sadness with which the more mature singers of two generations later announce their questioning and their disillusionment. the difference is just the difference between shelley and matthew arnold. there is a philosophic depth in this later music which the former wholly lacked. arnold speaks for his time when he announces himself as standing between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born. a profound disillusionment expressed itself in great ranges of later nineteenth century literature and confirmed the more sensitive and despairing in a positive pessimism, strangely contrasted to the self-assertive temper of the science and industry of the period. it would need a pretty careful analysis to follow all this to its roots. something of it no doubt was due to the inability of poet and philosopher to reconcile their new understanding of life and the universe with the old religious forms but more of it was likely due to some deep exhaustion of spiritual force, an exhaustion which has from time to time marked transitional periods in the development of cultures and civilizations. there have always been twilight zones in history, times in which the force of the old had spent itself and nothing new had come to take its place. we are beginning to see now that we too have been passing through a twilight zone whose contrasts are all the more dramatic through the more than tropic swiftness with which the high lights of the victorian period darkened into the distractions and disillusionments of our own time. the best one can say is that there was on the part of the more sensitive a widespread anticipation of all this, as if the chill of a coming shadow had fallen first of all upon them, and beyond debate, not a little of the doubt which has been so marked a feature of the last two generations in literature generally, and in the attitude of a great number of people toward religion, has been due to just this. _the hunger of the soul and the need for faith persist_ and yet, since religion is so inextinguishable a thing, changing forces and attitudes have still left untouched the hunger of the soul and the need of men for faith. indeed the very restlessness of the time, the breaking up of the old orders, the failure of the old certainties, has, if anything, deepened the demand for religious reality and there has been in all directions a marked turning to whatever offered itself as a plausible substitute for the old, and above all a turning to those religions which in quite clearly defined ways promise to demonstrate the reality of religion through some sensible or tangible experience. if religion will only work miracles and attest itself by some sign or other which he who runs may read there is waiting for it an eager constituency. we shall find as we go on how true this really is, for the modern religious cult which has gained the largest number of followers offers the most clearly defined signs and wonders. if religion cures your disease and you are twice persuaded, once that you really are cured and once that religion has done it, then you have something concrete enough to satisfy anybody. or if, perplexed by death and with no faith strong enough to pierce that veil through a persuasion of the necessity of immortality established in the very nature of things, you are offered a demonstration of immortality through the voices and presences of the discarnate, then, once more, you have something concrete enough, if only you were sure of it, to settle every doubt. and finally, if the accepted religions are too concrete for you and if you desire a rather vague and poetic approach to religion made venerable by the centuries and appealingly picturesque through the personalities of those who present it, you have in some adaptation of oriental faith to occidental needs a novel and interesting approach to the nebulous reality which passes in the eastern mind for god, an approach which demands no very great discipline and leaves a wide margin for the play of caprice or imagination. _modern religious cults and movements find their opportunity in the whole situation. the three centers about which they have organized themselves_ there has been, then, as the outcome of the complex of forces which we have been considering, a new approach to religion distinctive in our own time and in general taking three directions determined by that against which it has reacted, or perhaps more positively by the varying character of what it seeks. a pretty careful analysis of modern religious cults and movements shows that they have organized themselves, in action and reaction, around three centers definitely related to three outstanding deficiencies of inherited faith. i say deficiencies, though that is of course to beg the question. we saw earlier in this study how religion everywhere and always grows out of some of the few central and unexpectedly simple, though always supremely great, needs and how the force of any religion waxes or wanes as it meets these needs. religion is real to the generality of us as it justifies the ways of god to man and reveals the love and justice of god in the whole of personal experience. religion is always, therefore, greatly dependent upon its power to reconcile the more shadowed side of experience with the divine love and power and goodness. it is hard to believe in a providence whose dealings with us seem neither just nor loving. faith breaks down more often in the region of trying personal experience than anywhere else. all this is as old as the book of job but it is none the less true because it is old. the accepted theology which explained sin and sorrow in terms of the fall of man and covered each individual case with a blanket indictment justified by the condemnation of the whole of humanity has lost its force. it depended, to begin with, on a tradition of human beginnings which has not borne examination, and it was beside, in spite of all the efforts to defend it, profoundly unethical. calvinistic theology, moreover, made a difficult matter worse by assuming for every individual a predestined fate reaching beyond death itself which a man was powerless to escape. those chapters in the long story of theology which record the turning and groping of minds--and souls--enmeshed in this web of their own weaving and more deeply entangled still in the challenging experiences of life itself are among the most pathetic and arresting in the whole story of human thought. we ought to recognize more clearly than we have generally done and confess more frankly that our inherited explanations of the problems of pain and sorrow have been markedly unsatisfactory and have greatly contributed to the justifiable reaction against them. one group of modern religious cults and movements, then, has found its opportunity just here. christian science and kindred cults are just an attempt to reconcile the love and goodness of god with pain, sickness, sorrow, and to a lesser degree with sin. how they do this remains to be seen, but the force of their appeal depends upon the fact that a very considerable and constantly growing number of people believe that they have really done it. such cults as these have also found a place for the new testament tradition of healing; they have also appealed strongly to those who seek a natural or a pseudo-natural explanation for the miraculous elements in religion generally. they have been expectedly reinforced by the feeling for the bible which strongly persists among those who are not able to find in the inherited protestant position that real help in the bible which they had been taught they should there find, and who are not, on the other hand, sufficiently acquainted with the newer interpretations of it to find therein a resolution for their doubts and a vital support for their faith. finally, christian science and kindred cults offer a demonstration of the reality of religion in health and happiness, and generally, in a very tangible way of living. here, then, is the first region in which we find a point of departure for modern religious cults and movements. spiritualism organizes itself around another center. religion generally demands and offers a faith in immortality. we are not concerned here with the grounds which various religions have supplied for this faith or the arguments by which they have supported it. generally speaking, any religion loses ground as it fails to convince its adherents of immortality, or justify their longings therefor. any religion supplying clear and indisputable proof of immortality will command a strong following and any seeming demonstration of immortality not particularly associated with this or that religious form will organize about itself a group of followers who will naturally give up pretty much everything else and center their entire interests upon the methods by which immortality is thus supposed to be demonstrated. now modern spiritualism comes in just here. it professes to offer a sure proof of immortality to an age which is just scientific enough to demand something corresponding to scientific proof for the support of its faith and not scientific enough to accept all the implications of science, or to submit to its discipline. theosophy and kindred cults are generally a quest for deliverance along other than accepted christian lines; they substitute self-redemption for christian atonement, and deliverance through mystical disciplines for that forgiveness of sin and assurance of salvation in which christianity has found its peace. there is, of course, a vast deal of action and reaction between the newer movements themselves and between the new faith and the old. there are elements common to all religions; there are frontiers where all religions meet and somewhat merge; at some point or other almost every faith touches its contrary or becomes uncertain and shifts its emphasis. religion is always dependent upon changing tempers and very greatly upon varying personalities; it is always in flux, impatient of definitions and refusing the rigid boundary lines within which we attempt to confine it. though it be clearly possible, therefore, to find three distinct points of departure for the whole of the border-land cults and religions, there is running through them all a certain unity of driving force. they are in general a quest for a new type of religious reality; they are largely due to certain marked inadequacies of the more accepted religious teachings and to the want of the more accepted religious experiences to satisfy certain types. they have come to light in our own time through the failure of authority in both catholicism and protestantism, through the failure of the accepted understandings of the bible to satisfy those who are still persuaded that it has a real message and through the reaction of the modern spirit upon religious attitudes. they owe much to the deficiency of the traditional explanation of sin, sorrow and suffering; they owe something to the failure of christianity to create a christian environment; and they owe not a little to the natural longing for some positive assurance of life after death, as well as to the quest of the soul for deliverance and its longing for a satisfying communion with god. and they are reinforced in every direction by the restless and unsettled temper of a time subject to great changes of habit and outlook through the breaking up of old industrial and social orders and the impact of new forces driving in from every direction. we shall need to relate these conditioning causes more definitely to the various cults and movements as we go on to study them, but here at least are the backgrounds against which they must be studied and the lines of testing down which they must be followed. we shall begin in our more detailed study of these movements with the modern religious quest for health and healing. but even here we shall find it worth while to trace broadly the history of faith and mental healing. iii faith healing in general those cults which are either founded upon faith healing or involve it have a long ancestry. george barton cutten's very suggestive book[ ] makes that clear enough and supplies an informing mass of detail. medical science and psychology have been slow to take into account the facts thus submitted, but they have of late made amends for their somewhat unaccountable delay, and we have now reached certain conclusions about which there is little controversy except, indeed, as to the range of their application. beneath all faith healing and kindred phenomena there are three pretty clearly defined bases. first, the action or reaction of mind upon body; second, the control of mental attitudes by the complex of faith; and, as an interrelated third, the control of the lower nerve centers by suggestion. [footnote : "three thousand years of mental healing."] _the bases of faith and mental healing_ there is an almost baffling interplay of what one may call these three controlling principles, and the exhaustive discussion of the whole subject demands the knowledge of the specialist. but we do know, to begin with, that just as there are demonstrated bodily approaches to both the mental and spiritual aspects of life, so there are equally undeniable mental and even spiritual approaches to physical conditions. we have here to fall back upon facts rather than upon a definite knowledge of what happens in the shadowy border-land across which the mind takes over and organizes and acts upon what is presented to it by the afferent nervous system. nothing, for example, could be really more profound than the difference between waves of compression and rarefaction transmitted through the luminiferous ether and the translation of their impact into light. somewhere between the retina of the eye, with its magic web of sensitive nerve ends, and the proper registering and transforming regions of the brain something happens about which science can say no final word. what happens in the case of light is equally true of sound and tactual sensation. that vivid and happy consciousness of well-being which we call health is just the translation of normal balances, pressures and functionings in the mechanism of the body into an entirely different order of phenomena. health is a word of manifold meaning and if its foundations are established in the harmonious coöperation of physical processes, its superstructure rises through mental attitudes into what, for want of a more clearly defined word, we call spiritual states. two orders meet and merge within us. above a world of idea, insight, desire and subordination of means to ends, the whole driven by the will and saturated with emotion, a world which has its contacts with the unseen and eternal and derives its strength from the truly immaterial; below a world of material and forces in subjection to the laws of physics and chemistry and involved in the processes of the conservation and transformation of physical energy, and consciousness the clearing-house for the whole. _cannon's study of emotional reactions upon physical states_ this interplay of body and mind has of late been made the subject of careful and long continued experimentation with a special reference to the reactions of strong emotion upon bodily states, particularly as registered in chemical changes. these experiments have been carried on with an almost incredible patience and attention to detail under the most difficult circumstances, and their conclusions seem final. professor walter b. cannon of harvard university has recently put the result of such investigation at our service in a most interesting way.[ ] (it ought to be said, however, that a similar series of experiments repeated at the laboratories of the university of chicago failed to produce the same results.) [footnote : "bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear and rage," quoted without page references.] strong emotion affects almost every physical region, modifies almost every physical function. the normal secretion of digestive fluids is greatly increased by hunger (though here, of course, hunger itself may have a physical basis) and also by what the investigator calls sham feeding--food, that is, taken by an animal and so deflected as not to pass into the digestive tract at all stimulates the gastric flow quite as much as if it were actually received into the stomach. on the other hand unhappy emotional disturbance greatly retards the digestive processes. pain, for example, results in pronounced inhibitions of the secretion of gastric juice while happy emotional states produce naturally the opposite effect. pain is often accompanied by nausea, indeed the nausea of a sick headache may be only secondary, induced by a pain springing from quite another source than retarded digestion. professor cannon's experiments are most interesting as he traces the variations of the flow of adrenal secretion induced by emotion and then retraces the effect of the chemical changes so produced upon bodily and mental states. the secretion of adrenin[ ] is greatly increased by pain or excitement. the percentage of blood sugar is also greatly increased by the same causes. the heaviness of fatigue is due, as we know, to poisonous uneliminated by-products resulting from long continued or over-taxing exertion of any sort. under the influence of fatigue the power of the muscles to respond to any kind of stimulus is greatly reduced. (it is interesting to note, however, that muscular fibre detached from the living organism and mechanically stretched and relaxed shows after a period the same decrease in contractability under stimulation.) on the other hand any increase in adrenal secretion results in renewed sensitiveness to stimulation, that is by an increased power of the muscle to respond. falling blood pressures diminish proportionately the power of muscular response. rising blood pressure is effective "in largely restoring in fatigued structures their normal irritability" and an increase of adrenin seems to raise blood pressure by driving the blood from the interior regions of the body "into the skeleton muscles which have to meet, by extra action, the urgent demands of struggle or escape." [footnote : i follow cannon in the form of this word.] adrenin is of real use in counteracting the effects of fatigue or in enabling the body to respond to some unusual call for effort. the coagulation of the blood is also affected by the same agent, that is, it coagulates very much more rapidly.[ ] coagulation is also hastened by heightened emotion; a wound does not bleed so freely when the wounded one is angry or excited. a soldier, then, in the stress of combat is not only rendered insensible to fatigue and capable of abnormal activity, but his wounds are really not so dangerous as they would otherwise be. there are here suggestions of elemental conditions having to do with struggle and survival, conditions which play their very great part in the contests of life. [footnote : cannon thinks, however, that this effect is produced indirectly.] emotions set free, as has been said, larger percentages of sugar which are immediately utilized by the muscles in heightened or fatiguing effort. all these experiments point very clearly to reservoirs of power, both physical and mental, upon which we may draw in times of stress and under emotional excitement.[ ] such emotionally induced chemical actions and reactions as have been indicated release these stored energies, render us for the time being unconscious of fatigue and even guard us against the too rapid exhaustion of vital power. whatever heightens emotion, therefore, modifies the very chemical structure of the body. [footnote : excessive emotional reactions upon bodily states may explain, as cannon suggests, the more obscure phenomena of religious frenzy such as the ceremonial dances of savages, the "danse macabre" of the middle ages, the feats of the whirling dervishes, the jumping and shouting of revivalism; also, maybe, the modern jazz.] _the two doors_ there are other changes as well. the breath is quickened, the lungs are expanded, waste products are very much more rapidly eliminated and so in answer to summoning states of the soul the body as a whole readjusts itself in marvellous subtle forms, mobilizing all its forces for the contests which the emotion anticipates, or indeed which the emotion itself calls out. and if all this seems unduly technical it is only to bear out with something like a scientific accuracy the statements made a little earlier that two orders meet and merge within us and that the reactions of our loves, our fears, or our longings upon our bodily processes may be stated in terms of the test tube and the chemist's scale. such changes as are thus registered react in turn upon mental attitudes. fatigue produces mental depression. an accumulation of uneliminated waste darkens all our horizons; irritability of mind and soul attend physical irritability; any unhappy modification in the balance of the physical registers automatically an equally unhappy modification in the balance of the psychic. most of us, as we come to know ourselves better, recognize marked alterations even in spiritual states which we are taught to refer to physical condition, but just as truly altered spiritual conditions produce altered physical states. there is an endless give and take and there are, therefore, two doors of approach to our pains, wearinesses and sicknesses. _the challenge of hypnotism_ medicine, surgery and hygiene as at present organized largely approach personal well-being from the physical side. they have for their support a body of fact and a record of accomplishment which cannot be put out of court without sheer intellectual stultification. modern medicine has been so massively successful in dealing with disease on the basis of a philosophy which makes everything, or nearly everything, of the body and nothing or next to nothing of the mind, that medicine was in danger of becoming more sheerly materialistic than almost any other of our sciences; physics and chemistry had their backgrounds in which they recognized the interplay of realities too great for their formulæ and forces too subtle for their most sensitive instruments. but medicine was almost in the way of forgetting all this when it was compelled--and that for its own good--to take account of an entirely different set of forces. this was, to begin with, as far as the modern scientific approach is concerned, first made clearly apparent in hypnotism. hypnotism seems to be such a modification of normal mental conditions under the power of commanding suggestion as really for the time being to focus consciousness and mental action generally in one suggested line. a new set of inhibitions and permissions are thus imposed upon normal consciousness. attention is withdrawn from the usual frontiers (if one may use the word) to which, consciously or subconsciously, it has always been directed and centered upon one single thing.[ ] [footnote : sidis defines hypnosis as the disassociation of the superior and inferior nerve centers. they commonly work in perfect harmony, their blended unity forming one conscious personality. "in hypnosis the two systems or nervous centers are disassociated, the superior centers and the upper consciousness are inhibited or better cut off, split off from the rest of the nervous system with its organic consciousness, which is thus laid bare, open to the influence of external stimuli or suggestions.... in hypnotic trance ... we have direct access to man's organic consciousness and through it to organic life itself."... if we broaden this last sentence to include not only organic consciousness but the deeper strata of personality in which not only individual but perhaps racial experience is bedded, we have the key to a vast range of obscure phenomena. sidis believes that "strong permanent impressions or suggestions made on the reflex organic consciousness of the inferior centers may modify their functional disposition, induce trophic changes, and even change organic structure" and this in a sentence is probably what lies behind all faith and mental healing.--"the psychology of suggestion," pp. and .] the hypnotized person becomes, therefore, unconscious of any reporting agencies outside the field of his abnormally focused attention. normal conditions of pain or pleasure cease for the time to become real. attention has been forced entirely out of normal channels and given a new direction. then we discover, strangely enough, that though those messages of the afferent nerves cease to have any effect upon the subject, the imaginings of the subject carried back along outgoing lines produce the most unexpected results in physical states. if a postage stamp be placed upon the hand of the hypnotized subject and he be told that the stamp is a mustard plaster, the stamp reddens the skin and presently raises a blister. in other words, heightened and intensified expectant attention is able to produce the same results as an irritating agency.[ ] [footnote : experiments by krafft-ebing and forel. to be taken with caution. see jacoby, "suggestion and psycho-therapy," p. .] _changed attention affects physical states_ we are concerned here chiefly with the fact and it is a fact capable of far-reaching application. of course the nature and extent of the changes thus produced are the battlegrounds of the two schools. medical science is quite willing to admit that while functional action may thus be modified no real organic changes can be produced. there is a border-land so much still in shadow that no final word can be said about the whole matter, but it is incontestably true that modifications of attention have a reflex in the modification of physical states. a pain which is not registered does not, for the time being at least, exist, and if the attention can either through hypnotism or by a persistent mental discipline be withdrawn from disturbing physical reports, then the conditions which produce them will at least be left to correct themselves without interference from consciousness and since the whole tendency of disturbed physical organism is to correct itself, the whole process probably goes on more quickly as it certainly goes on with less discomfort if attention is withdrawn.[ ] the assumption of health is a tremendous health-giving force and if the condition to be remedied is really due to a mental complex which needs only some strong exertion of the will or readjustment of attitude to change, then marvellous results may follow changed mental and spiritual states. the apparently dumb may speak, the apparently paralyzed rise from their beds, the shell-shocked pull themselves together and those under the bondage of their fears and their pains be set free. there are so many illustrations of all this that the fact itself is not in debate. [footnote : organic changes (the storm center of the controversy) may possibly be induced through a better general physical tone. such changes would not be directly due to suggestion but to processes released by suggestion. organic change may certainly be checked and the effect of it overcome by increased resistance. so much conservative physicians admit. how far reconstruction thus induced may go is a question for the specialist.] _the power of faith to change mental attitudes_ now since mental attitudes so react upon bodily states, whatever strongly controls mental attitudes becomes a very great factor in mental healing. there is a long line of testimony that what may be called the complex of faith does just this with unique power, for faith implies supernatural intervention. if there be anywhere an all-prevailing power whose word is law and we could really be persuaded that such a power had really intervened--even if it actually had not--on our behalf and brought its supernatural resource to bear upon our troubled case, then we should have a confidence more potent in the immediate transformation of mental attitudes than anything else we could possibly conceive. if we really believed such a power were ready to help us, if we as vividly expected its immediate help, then we might anticipate the utmost possible therapeutic reaction of mind upon body. a faith so called into action should produce arresting results, and this as a matter of investigation is true. in following through the theories of faith healing we may take here either of two lines. the devout may assert a direct divine interposition. god is. he has the power and the will; all things are plastic to his touch; he asks only faith and, given faith enough, the thing is done and there is no explaining it. those who believe this are not inclined to reason about it; in fact it is beyond reason save as reason posits a god who is equal to such a process and an order in which such results can be secured. this is rather an achievement of faith than reason but the christian church generally has held such a faith--a faith sustained by the testimony which favours it and unaffected by the testimony which challenges it. the scientific temper which seeks economy in all its explanations and asks only for a cause sufficient for the effect and which is, moreover, constantly trying to relate the unknown to the known, takes another line and finds in faith healing just one more illustration of the power of mind over body. this does not exclude god but it discovers him in resident forces and finds in law the revelation of his method. the conclusions, then, to which we are generally coming may not only be reconciled with a devout faith, they may, when followed through, enrich faith; but they do subdue the whole great matter to a sequence of cause and effect and they are gradually finding a satisfactory explanation for what has heretofore been deeply involved in mystery. just as hypnotism, through the very dramatic abnormality of it, in altering the sensitiveness of those physical tracts from which attention is withdrawn or in producing physical effects through suggestive focusing, has helped us to understand the part which attention plays in the flux of physical states, so our later studies of the subconscious help us here. we do know that a great deal may really take place in personality of which consciousness takes no account. consciousness in its most active phases is alert, purposeful and preoccupied with the immediate concern of the moment. consciousness heeds commands and takes account of such conditions as strongly assert themselves, but does not in its full drive take much account of suggestion unless the suggestion possesses unusual force. suggestions usually need leisurely turning over in the mind and the mind commonly refers them--often without knowing it--to those regions of mental action which lie beneath the threshold of strongly focused consciousness. but suggestion does not thereby cease to work. it starts processes all its own which go on till they are worked through. after a longer or shorter period of incubation the outcome of suggestion is lifted into the light of consciousness, often to produce results all the more striking because we cannot explain them to ourselves or any one else. all this does not withdraw such phenomena from the realm of law; it only clothes them with the mystery of the unknown and extends the fields in which they may operate. proper suggestion let fall into these unknown depths or improper suggestion as well, becomes an incalculable force in shaping the ends of life. we have here, then, well attested truths or laws--it is difficult to know what to call them--which help us to understand the bases of faith healing or mental healing by suggestion. now directly we turn to such records as remain to us we find that such forces as these have been in action from the very beginning. all disease was in early times referred generally to spirit possession. if only the evil spirit could be exorcised the patient would get well and the priest was, of course, the proper person to undertake this. religion and medicine were, therefore, most intimately united to begin with and healing most intimately associated with magic. the first priests were doctors and the first doctors were priests and what they did as priests and what they did as doctors were alike unreasonable and capricious. the priest and his church have very unwillingly surrendered the very great hold over the faithful which this early association of medicine and religion made possible. any order or institution which can approach or control humanity through the longing of the sick for health, has an immense and unfailing empire. _demon possession the earliest explanation of disease_ there are, says cutten, three fairly well defined periods in the history of medicine. the first, beginning as far back as anything human begins and coming down to the end of the second century; the second, ending with the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries; and the third from perhaps the sixteenth century on. the second period, he adds, was by far the most sterile and stationary of the three "largely due to the prohibitive attitude of the church. the science of medicine, then, is almost wholly the result of the investigations and study of the last period. this means that medicine is one of the youngest of the sciences, while from the very nature of the case it is one of the oldest of the arts." demon possession was, as has been said, the earliest explanation of disease. this would naturally be true of a time almost wholly wanting in any conception either of law or any relation of cause and effect beyond the most limited regions of experience. since the only cause of which man had any real knowledge was his own effort he peopled his world with forces more or less like himself, except that they were invisible, who operated practically the whole of natural phenomena. there was a spirit for every place and every happening; spirits for fields and hearths, thresholds and springs. some of them were friendly, some of them naturally unfriendly, but they were everywhere in existence, everywhere in action and naturally if they were unfriendly they would from time to time and in various most curious ways get into the body itself and there do any amount of mischief. the priest-doctor's task, therefore, was to get them out. he might scare them out, or scold them out, or pray them out, or trick them out. he would use his medicine as much to make the place of their temporary abode uncomfortable for the demon as remedial for the patient and, indeed, the curious and loathsome things which have been used for medicines might well disgust even a malevolent demon. one thing stands out very clearly and that is that whatever the medicine did or left undone, it worked through its influence upon the mind of the patient and not through any real medicinal value. _the beginnings of scientific medicine_ of course along with all this would go a kind of esoteric wisdom which was part of the stock in trade of the healer. there were charms, incantations and magic of every conceivable sort. the medicine man of uncivilized or even half-civilized peoples really makes medicine for the mind rather than the body. there were, however, gleams of scientific light through all this murky region. the egyptians knew something of anatomy though they made a most capricious use of it and there must have been some knowledge of hygienic methods; the prohibitions of leviticus, for example, and of the jewish law generally for which the jew must have been, as far as medical science is concerned, somewhat in debt to the egyptian and the chaldean, really have sound hygienic reasons behind them. the greeks began with demons but they ended with something which approached true science. the real contribution of greece, however, seems to have been on the positive rather than the negative side. they made much of health as an end in itself, had gods and goddesses of physical well-being. the greek had constantly held before him such an ideal of physical excellence as had never before been approached and has never since been equalled. he seems to have been abstemious in eating; he practiced the most strenuous physical exercises; he lived a wholesome outdoor life, and so created a civilization in which health very largely took care of itself. an examination of what records remain to us hardly sustains the accepted opinion that the greeks had made substantial advances along purely scientific lines,[ ] but at any rate as far as medicine goes, there is little to choose between the greece of the fourth century before christ and the europe of the sixteenth century after, save that the life of the greek was far more normal, temperate and hygienic and the mind of the greek more open, sane and balanced. [footnote : probably too strong a statement. for an opposite view strongly supported by a scholar's research see singer's article in "the legacy of greece" (oxford press), p. .] plato anticipated conclusions which we are just beginning to reach when he said, "the office of the physician extends equally to the purification of mind and body. to neglect the one is to expose the other to evident peril. it is not only the body which, by sound constitution, strengthens the soul, but the well regulated soul, by its authoritative power, maintains the body in perfect health." whether the best classic civilization made, consciously, its own this very noble insight of plato, the best classic civilization did secure the sound mind and the sound body to an extent which puts a far later and far more complex civilization to shame. perhaps the greatest contribution of the greek to this whole great subject was his passion for bodily well-being and his marvellous adaptation of his habits and type of life to that end. he did, moreover, separate religion, magic and medicine to some appreciable extent and he gave us at least the beginnings of a medical profession, approaching medicine from the scientific rather than the religious or traditional point of view. even though his science was a poor enough thing, his doctors were none the less doctors and the medical profession to-day is entirely within its right when it goes back to hippocrates for the fathering of it. _the attitude of the early and medieval church_ christianity changed all this and on the whole for the worse. and yet that statement ought to be immediately qualified, for christianity did bring with it a very great compassion for suffering, a very great willingness to help the sick and the needy. the gospels are inextricably interwoven with accounts of the healing power of the founder of christianity. all the later attitude of christianity toward disease must be considered in the light of this fact. we owe to christianity the first real hospitals, the first really compassionate and unselfish care for the sick and impulses which, as they have finally worked out, have had more to do with giving quality and direction to medicine and particularly in investing the whole practice of medicine with its true atmosphere than any other single force. and yet all this has been a long, long time coming true and for almost , years the church and its authorities were a hindrance rather than a help and that for two or three outstanding reasons. christianity, to begin with, sadly underestimated physical values in its overinsistence upon spiritual values. the body was at best but the tabernacle of the soul and the soul being the chief concern, whatever happened to the body was of little importance. the body was not only underestimated, it was scorned and abused, starved and scourged; it was the seat of unholy influences and impulses; its natural longings were at the best under suspicion, at the worst under absolute condemnation. christianity, speaking through the church, took immense care for its spiritual hygiene, though even here it went wrong because it forgot plato's noble word, but it failed utterly in physical hygiene. then again sickness and suffering were for the church but the manifest punishment of some sin known or concealed. to interfere, therefore, was in some way to defeat the justice of god. pestilences were inscrutable providences; they were the wrath of god made manifest. in the face of so stupendous a calamity anything man might do was not only futile but impertinent. by a strange contradiction early and medieval christianity, while making little of the body, nevertheless strongly opposed any study of anatomy which depended upon post-mortems or dissection. this probably because of their belief in the resurrection of the body. any mutilation of the body after death would be a real handicap in the day of resurrection. but behind all this, equally real though intangible, was the desire of the church to have the whole of life under its own direct control. it instinctively feared methods of thought or processes of investigation not directly a part of its own imperial administration of life. some subtle distrust of the human reason went along with all this. as a result the church, in the main, threw herself against the more independent processes of scientific thought, sought to subdue all the facts of life to her creeds and understandings and so became a real hindrance to any pursuit of truth or any investigation of fact which lay outside the region of theological control. how largely all this retarded growth and knowledge and the extension of human well-being it is difficult to say, but the fact itself is well established. _saints and shrines_ for one thing early christianity continued the belief in demoniac possession. by one of those accidents which greatly influence history the belief in demon possession was strongly held in palestine in the time of christ and the gospel narratives reflect all this in ways upon which it is not necessary to enlarge. the gospels themselves lent their mighty sanction to this persuasion and there was nothing in the temper of the church for more than a thousand years afterward to greatly modify it. indeed the temper of the church rather strengthened it. origen believed that demons produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruptions of the air and pestilences. they hover concealed in clouds in the lower atmosphere and are attracted by the blood and incense which the heathen offered them as gods. according to st. augustine all diseases of christians are to be ascribed to these demons and the church fathers generally agreed with these two, the greatest of them all. it was, therefore, sinful to do anything but trust to the intercession of the saints. the objection of the church to dissection which is, of course, the indispensable basis for any real knowledge of anatomy was very slowly worn down. the story of andreas vesalius whom andrew white calls the founder of the modern science of anatomy is at once fascinating and illuminating. he pursued his studies under incredible difficulties and perhaps could never have carried them through without the protection of charles v whose physician he was. he was finally driven out, a wanderer in quest of truth, was shipwrecked on a pilgrimage to the holy land and in the prime of his life and strength "he was lost to the world." but he had, none the less, won his fight and the opposition of the church to the scientific study of anatomy was gradually withdrawn. but every marked advance in medical science had really to fight the battle over again. the sorbonne condemned inoculation, vaccination had slowly to fight its way and even the discovery of anesthetic, perhaps the greatest single blessing ever given surgery, met with no little theological obstruction. it is only fair to say in this connection that so stupid a conservatism has been by no means the sole possession of the church and the clergy. medicine has been upon occasion almost as conservative and the difficulties which sir joseph lister encountered in his endeavour to win the london hospitals for asepsis and anti-sepsis were quite as bitter. the difficulties were of a piece with the opposition of the church to scientific advancement. after all a conservatism of this sort is a matter of temperament rather than creed or class. but if the church was strangely slow to give place to medicine and surgery, the church sought, through agencies and methods of its own, to cure disease. it is impossible to follow through in detail the long story though it all bears upon the line we are following through its massive testimony to the power of mind over body. since the church believed in demon possession it sought to cure by exorcism and there are in the ritual of the church, as the ritual has finally taken form, offices growing out of this long, long battle against evil spirits which have now little suggestion of their original purpose. the sign of the cross was supposed to have commanding power, the invocation of the triune deity had its own virtue, the very breathing of the priest was supposed to influence the evil spirit and he fled defeated from the touch of holy water. the church possessed, as was everywhere then believed, not only a prevailing power over demons, but a supernatural power all her own for the healing of disease. this power was associated with saints and relics and shrines. during the lifetime of the saint this power was exercised through direct saintly interposition. after the death of the saint it was continued in some relic which he left behind him, or some shrine with which he had been particularly associated. there grew up gradually a kind of "division of labour among the saints in the middle ages." each saint had its own peculiar power over some bodily region or over some particular disease. and so the faithful were guarded by a legion of protecting influences against everything from coughs to sudden death. there is almost an unimaginable range of relics. parts of the true cross possessed supreme value. st. louis of france was brought back almost from death to life by the touch of the sacred wood. the bones and hairs of saints, rings which they had worn and all such things as these had value and to prove that the value was not resident in the relic but in the faith with which the relic was approached we have reported bones of saints possessing well authenticated healing value, later proved to have been the bones not of men but of animals. there have been sacred springs and consecrated waters almost without number. they will still show you in canterbury cathedral stones worn by the feet of countless pilgrims seeking at the shrine of thomas à becket a healing to the reality of which those who wore away those stones bore testimony in a variety of gifts which made the shrine of à becket at one time one of the treasure houses of christendom. "the two shrines at present best known are those of lourdes in france and ste. anne de beaupré in the province of quebec. lourdes owes its reputed healing power to a belief in a vision of the virgin received there during the last century. over , persons visit there each year." charcot, it is worth noting, had confidence enough not in the shrine but in the healing power of faith to send fifty or sixty patients to lourdes every year. his patients were, of course, the mentally and nervously unbalanced. the french government supervises the sanitary conditions at lourdes and a committee of doctors have undertaken some examination of the diseased who visit the shrine for the guidance of their profession. ste. anne de beaupré owes its fame to certain wrist bones of the mother of christ. _magic, charms, and the king's touch: the rise of the faith healer_ religious faith is not always necessary--any faith will do. charms, amulets, talismans have all played their part in this long compelling story. the various metals, gems, stones and curious and capricious combinations of pretty much every imaginable thing have all been so used. birth girdles worn by women in childbirth eased their pain. a circular piece of copper guarded against cholera. a coral was a good guard against the evil eye and sail-cloth from a shipwrecked vessel tied to the right arm was a preventive as well as a cure for epilepsy. there is almost no end to such instances. the list of charms and incantations is quite as curious. there are forms of words which will cure insomnia and indeed, if one may trust current observation, forms of words not primarily so intended may still induce sleepfulness. the history of the king's touch as particularly helpful in epilepsy and scrofula, though useful also for the healing of various diseases, is especially interesting. this practice apparently began with edward the confessor in england and st. louis in france and was due to the faith of those who came to be touched and healed in the divine right and lonely power of the king. it is significant that the practice began with these two for they, more than any kings of their time or most kings since, were really men of rare and saintly character. curiously but naturally enough the english have denied any real power in this region to french kings and the french have claimed a monopoly for their own sovereigns. the belief in the king's touch persisted long and seems toward the end to have had no connection with the character of the monarch, for charles ii did more in this line than any one who ever sat on an english throne. during the whole of his reign he touched upward of , people. andrew white adds that "it is instructive to note, however, that while in no other reign were so many people touched for scrofula and so many cures vouched for, in no other reign did so many people die of the disease." along with the king's touch went the king's gift--a piece of gold--and the drain upon the royal treasury was so considerable that after the reign of elizabeth the size of the coin was reduced. special coins were minted for the king's use in that office and these touching pieces are still in existence. william iii refused to take this particular power seriously. "god give you better health and more sense," he said as he once touched a patient. in this particular instance the honest skepticism of the king was outweighed by the faith of the suppliant. we are assured that the person was cured. the royal touch was discontinued after the death of queen anne. the list of healers began early and is by no means ended now. the power of the healer was sometimes associated with his official station in the church, sometimes due to his saintly character and often enough only to a personal influence, the fact of which is well enough established, though there can be in the nature of things no finality in the estimate of his real efficacy. george fox performed some cures; john wesley also. in the seventeenth century one valentine greatrakes seems to have been the center of such excitements and reported healings as alexander dowie and others in our own time and it is finally through the healer rather than the saint or the king or shrine or relic that we approach the renaissance of mental and faith healing in our own time. iv the approach to christian science and mary baker eddy there is, however, another stage in this long line of development which needs to be considered since it supplies a double point of departure; once for the most outstanding healing cult in our time--christian science--and once for the greatly enlarged use of suggestion in modern medical practice, and that is mesmerism and "animal magnetism." _mesmerism a point of departure for modern healing cults_ paracelsus[ ] may be taken as a starting point just here. he is known in the history of medicine "for the impetus he gave to the development of pharmaceutical chemistry, but he was also the author of a visionary and theosophic system of philosophy." he believed in the influence of the stars upon men, but he enlarged upon the old astrologic faiths. "he believed the human body was endowed with a double magnetism, one portion attracted to itself the planets and was nourished by them, the result of which was the mental powers, the other portion attracted and disintegrated the elements, from which process resulted the body." his world, therefore, was a world of competitive attractions. he believed the well had an influence over the sick through magnetism and used the magnet in his practice. [footnote : a german-swiss physician and alchemist, b. , d. . these quotations, partly from authorities on faith healing and partly from the history of spiritualism, illustrate the underground connection in this whole region.] "this dual theory of magnetic cures, that of the magnetic influence of men on men and of the magnet on man, was prevalent for over a century." "it is, then, upon these ideas--the radiation from all things, but especially the stars, magnets and human bodies, of a force which would act in all things else, and which was in each case directed by the indwelling spirit, together with the conception of a perpetual contact between reciprocal and opposing forces--that the mysticism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries mainly depends."[ ] [footnote : podmore, "modern spiritualism," vol. i, p. . i am in debt also to cutten for general information and some quoted paragraphs.] these ideas were adopted by a group of men who are now only names for us. the phenomena of magnetism fascinated them and supplied them analogies. there is, they thought, an all-prevailing magnetic influence which binds together not only celestial and terrestrial bodies, but all living things. life and death were for them simply the registry of the ebbing and flowing of these immaterial tides and they ended by conceiving a vital fluid which could be communicated from person to person and in the communication of which the sick could be healed--the driftwood of their lore has come down to us on the tides of time; we still speak of magnetic personalities--and they sought in various ways to control and communicate these mysterious forces. one of them invented steel plates which he applied to the body as a cure for disease. he taught his system to mesmer who made, however, one marked advance upon the technique of his predecessors and gave his name to his methods; he produced his results through physical contacts and passes. but he shared with his predecessors and stated with that compact clearness of which the french language is so capable even when dealing with obscure matters, that there is a "fluid so universally diffused and connected as to leave nowhere any void, whose subtlety is beyond any comparison and which by its nature is capable of receiving, propagating and communicating all impressions of movement.... this reciprocal action is subject to mechanical laws at present unknown."[ ] this fluid in its action governs the earth and stars and human action. [footnote : price's "historique de facts relatifs du magnétisme animal," quoted by podmore.] he originated the phrase "animal magnetism" and was, though he did not know it, the originator of hypnotism; until well within our own time mesmerism was the accepted name for this whole complex group of phenomena. the medical faculties examined his claims but were not willing to approve them, but this made no difference in mesmer's popularity. he had so great a following as to be unable to deal with them personally. he deputed his powers to assistants, arranged a most elaborate apparatus and surrounded his whole procedure with a dramatic setting of stained glass, mirrored and scented rooms and mysterious music. the result of it all naturally, as far as his patients were concerned, was marked excitements and hysterias. they had often to be put into padded rooms. and yet the result of all this murky confusion was said to be numbers of marked cures. he was investigated by the french government and two commissions presented their reports, neither of which was favourable. imagination, not magnetism, they said, accounted for the results. his popularity wore away markedly when he undertook to explain his method and reveal his secrets. he left paris in and lapsed into obscurity. _the scientific investigation of mesmerism in france_ as has been said, there are two lines of development growing out of mesmer and his methods. ten years after mesmer left paris alexandre bertrand pointed out that after the elimination of errors due to fraud or mal-observation, the results which mesmer and his associates had produced were due not to animal magnetism, but to expectation induced by suggestion and intensified by the peculiar setting which mesmer had contrived for his so-called treatments. the schools of medicine were slow to follow out bertrand's discovery and it was not until something like twenty years later, through the studies of braid, that hypnotism began to be taken seriously. but once the matter was brought broadly before them, the doctors began to follow it through. charcot, in the salpêtriére, used hypnotic suggestion for the correction of abnormal mental and nervous states. the psychologists took up the matter and hypnotic suggestion has come to be not only a legitimate subject for the investigation of the student and an accepted method in correction of abnormal mental states, but as it were a window through which we are beginning to see deeply into unsuspected depths and intricacies of personality. modern faith healing cults, however, have not come to us down this line, though the studies of bertrand, braid, charcot, du bois and their associates supply the interpretative principles for any real understanding of them. mesmerism naturally appealed to the type of mind most easily attracted by the bizarre and the mysterious. there are always amongst us the credulous and curious who find little enough either to awe or inspire them in the broad sweep of law, or in such facts as lie open to the light of reason. such as these are impatient of discipline, eager to free themselves from the sequence of cause and effect; they are impressed by the occult powers and seek short cuts to health, or goodness, or wisdom. they delight to build up, out of their own inner consciousness, systems which have little contact with reality and which, through their very tenuousness, are as incapable of disproof as through their disengagement from normal experience they are capable of verification. they are the people of what the alienist calls the "idée fixe." everything for them centers about one idea; they have one key and one only to the marvellous complexity of life. such a temper as this naturally disassociates them from reality and makes them contemptuous of contradictory experiences. _mesmerism is carried to america; phineas quimby an important link in a long chain_ america has been far too rich in such a temper as this and it was never more so than in the forties and the fifties of the last century. mesmerism crossed the ocean and while braid and later bernheim and charcot were following it through on sound, psychological lines and bringing to bear upon it great insight and scientific discipline, it fell here into the hands of charlatans and adventurers. phineas parkhurst quimby, best known for his connection with mary baker eddy, hardly deserves the name of charlatan, though he was dangerously near being just that. he belonged to the border-land regions in thought and propaganda and he did give to the whole complex movement which we have been considering a direction which has played a relatively great part in its later development. he had a shrewd mind which ranged over wide regions; he is a pretty typical example of the half-disciplined, forceful and original personality which has played so large a part in american life. the new england of his time--quimby was born in new hampshire and spent his life in maine--was giving itself whole-heartedly to a mysticism bounded on the one side (its higher and more representative side) by emerson and the transcendentalists and on the other by healers, prophets of strange creeds and dreamers of utopias. phrenology, mind reading, animal magnetism, clairvoyance, all had their prophets. quimby belongs to this succession. his education was meagre, he did not even know how to spell according to the dictionary or punctuate according to the grammar.[ ] he had his own peculiar use of words--a use by which mary baker eddy was doubtless greatly influenced. he had marked mechanical ability and a real passion for facts. he was an original thinker, little in debt to books for his ideas though he was undoubtedly influenced by the temper of his environment to which reference has already been made. he had a speculative, but not a trained interest in religion and dealt freely with the orthodoxy of his time constrained by no loyalty to the accepted faith and no critical knowledge of its content. "truth" and "science" were characteristic words for him and he shared his speculations and conclusions freely with his disciples. [footnote : what is here said of quimby is condensed from dresser's "the quimby manuscripts."] _quimby is led to define sickness as wrong belief_ in his early thirties he was supposed to be dying of consumption and suffered much from excessive medication. he recovered through an emotional crisis but does not seem to have followed out the possible suggestion of his recovery. he turned instead to mesmerism and travelled about with one lucius burkmer over whom he had strong hypnotic influence. when hypnotized burkmer (or burkman) claimed the power to look as through a window into the bodies of quimby's patients and discover, often with illuminating detail, their condition; a good many reputed cures followed. the testimonials to these cures and to the strange powers of burkmer are themselves an arresting testimony to the lengths people go in the face of what they do not understand. "i have good reason to believe that he can discern the internal structure of an animal body and if there be anything morbid or defective therein detect and explain it.... he can go from point to point without passing through intermediate space. he passes from belfast [maine] to washington or from the earth to the moon ... swifter than light, by a single act of volition."[ ] [footnote : "the quimby manuscripts," p. .] quimby had too alert an intelligence to rest content with the merely occult. he came to believe that burkmer only saw what the patient thought, could do no more than describe the patient's idea of his own state, or else report the "common allopathic belief about the disease in question," and the cure, he was persuaded, was not in the medicine prescribed but in "the confidence of the doctor or medium." (note that quimby here associates the cures produced by the medical faculty and his own cures in one sweeping generalization.) what he was really dealing with then was "belief." it might be the belief of the doctor or the patient or the belief of his friends--but sickness was only "belief." this also was a sweeping generalization but it becomes intelligible as we follow the process by which quimby reached his conclusions and it helps us to understand the significance of belief as one of the key words of christian science. quimby was led to identify sickness and wrong beliefs through this analysis of mesmeric diagnosis and health and right belief through his own experiences as a healer. he had no training to help him to an understanding of the real facts which lay behind the belief in sickness. he became a skillful diagnostician of states of mind and a healer of such diseases as could be so treated. but he knew, scientifically, no more of what lay behind it all than a ploughman may know of what lies beneath the furrows he turns. _quimby develops his theories_ mrs. eddy took over the catch-words of his system and its loose assumptions, and a reasonably careful comparison of the quimby manuscripts and "science and health" shows not only mrs. eddy's fundamental and never honestly acknowledged and finally categorically denied indebtedness to quimby, but the confusion which quimby's rather striking and original philosophy suffered at her hands. beginning with his persuasion that health and sickness are phases of belief quimby discarded mesmerism altogether and addressed himself to the minds of his patients. he had doubtless a keen intuitive knowledge of human nature and its morbid fancies and he was dealing generally with neurotic temperaments over which he exercised a strong and helpful power of suggestion. his explanation of disease--that it is a wrong belief--becomes grotesque enough when he comes down to detail. this, for example, is his diagnosis of bronchitis--"you listen or eat this belief or wisdom [evidently that bronchitis is real] as you would eat your meals. it sets rather hard upon your stomach; this disturbs the error of your body and a cloud appears in the sky.... the elements of the body of your belief are shaken, earth is lit up by the fire of your error, the heat rises, the heaven or mind grows dark ... the lightning of hot flashes shoot to all parts of the solar system of your belief. at last the winds or chills strike the earth or surface of the body, a cold clammy sensation passes over you. this changes the heat into a sort of watery substance which works its way into the channels and pores to the head and stomach."[ ] [footnote : "quimby manuscripts," p. .] this is quimby at his worst but beneath it is the germ of the method and philosophy which have attained so luxurious a growth--the explaining, that is, of disease in terms of wrong belief. inevitably in the elaboration of all this quimby reached out to include religion and theology and even created his own distinctive metaphysics. he distinguished between the mind and spirit; he must of course discover in personality a power superior to fluctuating mental attitudes. he called his system a science since he was trying to reduce it to a system and discover its laws. he found a parallel to what he was doing in the narratives of healing in the christian gospels and claimed christ as the founder of his science.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] all belief opposed to his was "error"; "truth" was naturally opposed to error. he subordinates the testimony of the senses to the necessities of his system; he defines god variously as wisdom, as truth, possibly as principle though his use of the word principle is far more intelligible than mrs. eddy's.[ ] he increasingly identifies his system and the teachings of jesus and ends by calling it "christian science."[ ] [footnote : "the quimby manuscripts," p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] in substance in the more than closely printed pages of the quimby manuscripts as now edited we discover either the substance or the suggestion of all that mrs. eddy later elaborated. now all this, confused as it is, brings us to the threshold of a distinct advance in mental and faith healing. _mary baker eddy comes under quimby's influence_ practically faith and mental healing had depended, till quimby took it up, upon persons or objects. the saint or the healer worked through personal contact; the shrine must be visited, the relic be touched. such a system was naturally dependent upon accidents of person or place; it would not be widely extended nor continued nor made the basis of self-treatment. but if what lay behind the whole complex group of phenomena could be systematized and given real power of popular appeal through its association with religion it would possess a kind of continuing independence, conditioned only by the willingness of people to be persuaded of the truth of its philosophy or to answer to its religious appeal. it would then become a mental and spiritual discipline to be written into books and taught by the initiated. as far as it could be associated with religion it would become the basis of a cult and it would have an immense field. all difficult or chronic or obscure illnesses would offer an opportunity to its propagandists, and the necessary obscurities and irrationalities of such a system would simply be, for the minds to which it would naturally appeal, added elements of power. any system which has sickness for its field and credulity for its reinforcement and a specious show of half truth for its philosophic form and religion to give its sanction and authority is assured, to begin with, of a really great following. its very weaknesses will be its strength. it will work best as it is neither clear nor simple--though it must make a show of being both. and if, in addition, there is somewhere at the heart of it force and truth enough to produce a certain number of cures it will go on. what it fails to do will be forgotten or ignored in the face of what it really does do. now quimby, through his own native force and such a combination of circumstances as occurs only once in long periods of time, stood upon the threshold of just such a revolution in the history of faith and mental healing as this. he anticipated the method and supplied the material, but he either did not or could not popularize it. he was not selfish enough to monopolize it, not shrewd enough to commercialize it, and, maybe, not fanatic enough to make it a cult. he was more interested in his own speculations than in making converts and without one of those accidents which become turning points in a movement nothing would have probably come of his work save its somewhat vague and loose continuance in the thought and teaching of a small group. (it is doubtful if new thought, which as we shall see grew out of his work through his association with the dressers, would have come to much without the stimulus of christian science against which it reacted.) some one was needed to give the whole nebulous system organization and driving force and above all to make a cult of it. _outstanding events of her life: her early girlhood_ mary baker eddy did just this and christian science is the result. it is idle to calculate the vanished alternatives of life but in all probability she never would have done it without quimby. she and her followers would do far better to honestly recognize this indebtedness. it would now make little difference with either the position of their leader or the force of their system but it would take a pretty keen weapon out of the hands of their critics and give them the added strength which thoroughgoing honesty always gives to any cause. there is, on the other hand, little likelihood that quimby's persuasions would ever have carried beyond the man himself if he had not found in mrs. eddy so creative a disciple. the outstanding facts of mary baker eddy's life are too well known to need much retelling here. the story of her life and the history of christian science as told by georgine milmine in _mcclure's magazine_ during the years of - is final. it is based upon thorough investigation, original documents and an exhaustive analysis of facts. the facts brought out in the various litigations in which mrs. eddy and the church have been involved confirm both the statements and conclusions of this really distinctive work. the official life by sibyl wilbur (whose real name seems to be o'brien) is so coloured as to be substantially undependable. it touches lightly or omits altogether those passages in mrs. eddy's life which do not fit in with the picture which mrs. eddy herself and the church desire to be perpetuated. mrs. eddy was descended from a shrewd, industrious and strongly characterized new england stock. her father was strongly set in his ways, narrow and intense in his religious faith. mary baker was a nervous, high-strung girl, unusually attractive in personal appearance, proud, precocious, self-conscious, masterful. she was subject to hysterical attacks which issued in states of almost suspended animation. her family feared these attacks and to prevent them humoured her in every way. in due time she joined the tilton congregational church. she says herself that she was twelve years old at the time, but the records of the church make her seventeen. the range of her education is debated. mrs. eddy herself claims a rather ambitious curriculum. "my father," she says, "was taught to believe that my brain was too large for my body and so kept me out of school, but i gained book knowledge with far less labour than is usually requisite. at ten years of age i was familiar with lindley murray's grammar, as with the westminster catechism and the latter i had to repeat every sunday. my favourite studies were natural philosophy, logic and moral science. from my brother albert i received lessons in the ancient tongues, hebrew, greek and latin. after my discovery of christian science most of the knowledge i gleaned from school books vanished like a dream. learning was so illumined that grammar was eclipsed. etymology was divine history, voicing the idea of god in man's origin and signification. syntax was spiritual order and unity. prosody the song of angels and no earthly or inglorious theme."[ ] [footnote : "retrospection and introspection," .] _her education: shaping influences_ it is not fair to apply critical methods to one who confesses that most of the knowledge she had gleaned from school books vanished like a dream, but there is much in mrs. eddy's writing to bear out her statement. those who knew her as a girl report her as irregular in attendance upon school, inattentive during its sessions and far from knowing either greek or latin or hebrew. "according to these schoolmates mary baker completed her education when she had finished smith's grammar and reached long division in arithmetic." the official biography makes much of an intellectual friendship between the rev. enoch corser, then pastor of the tilton congregational church, and mary baker. "they discussed subjects too deep to be attractive to other members of the family. walking up and down in the garden, this fine old-school clergyman and the young poetess as she was coming to be called, threshed out the old philosophic speculations without rancour or irritation."[ ] [footnote : "the life of mary baker eddy," sibyl wilbur, th edition. christian science publishing company.] there is little reason to doubt her real interest in the pretty rigid calvinistic theology of her time. indeed, we could not understand her final line of religious development without taking that into consideration. milmine suggests other forces which would naturally have influenced a sensitive and curious girl; for example, the current interest in animal magnetism, a subject which dominated certain aspects of her thinking to the end. milmine suggests also that she may have been considerably influenced by the peculiar beliefs of the shakers who had a colony near tilton. the shakers regarded ann lee, their founder, as the female principle of god and greater than christ. they prayed always to "our father and mother which art in heaven." they called ann lee the woman of the apocalypse, the god-anointed woman. for her followers she was mother ann, as mary baker was later mother eddy. ann lee declared that she had the gift of healing. the shakers also made much of a spiritual illumination which had the right of way over the testimony of the senses. the shakers called their establishment the church of christ and the original foundation the mother church. the shakers forbade audible prayer and enjoined celibacy. there are parallels enough here to sustain milmine's contention that mary baker was at least largely influenced by suggestions from her peculiar group of neighbours. _her unhappy fortunes. she is cured by quimby. an unacknowledged debt_ mary baker married george washington glover at the age of twenty-two. she was soon left a widow and her only son was born after his father's death. the story of the years which follow is unhappy. she was poor, dependent upon relatives whose patience she tried and whose hospitality was from time to time exhausted. her attacks of hysteria continued and grew more violent. her father sometimes rocked her to sleep like a child. the tiltons built a cradle for her which is one of the traditions of this unhappy period of her life. she tried mesmerism and clairvoyance and heard rappings at night. she married again, this time a dr. daniel patterson, a travelling dentist. he never made a success of anything. they were miserably poor and his marriage was no more successful than most of his other enterprises. he was captured, though as a civilian, during the civil war and spent one or two years in a southern prison. futile efforts were made at a reconciliation and in mrs. patterson obtained a divorce on the grounds of desertion. meanwhile she had been separated from her son, of whom she afterward saw so little that he grew up, married and made his own way entirely apart from his mother. in mrs. patterson's physical condition was so desperate that she appealed to quimby. her husband had had some interest in homeopathy and she was doubtless influenced by the then peculiar theories of the homeopathic school. (indeed she claimed to be a homeopathic practitioner without a diploma.) she had had experience enough with drugs to make her impatient and suspicious of current methods of orthodox medication. under quimby's treatment she was physically reborn and apparently spiritually as well. it is necessary to dwell upon all these well-known details to understand what follows and the directions which her mind now took. milmine's analysis is here penetrating and conclusive. she had always been in revolt against her environment. her marriages had been unhappy; motherhood had brought her nothing; she had been poor and dependent; her strong will and self-assertive personality had been turned back upon herself. she had found no satisfaction in the rigid theologies of the time. she had sought help from accepted religion and religion had had nothing to give her. we have to read between the lines and especially to evaluate all this period in the light of "science and health" itself to reconstruct the movement of her inner life, but beyond a doubt her thought had played about the almost tragic discrepancy between her own experiences and the love and goodness of god. she had known pain and unhappiness in acute forms and had found nothing in what she had been taught ample enough to resolve her doubts or establish her faith. she found in quimby's philosophy a leading which she eagerly followed. now for the first time she is really set free from herself. a truer sense of dramatic values would have led mrs. eddy herself to have made more of the unhappy period which began to come to an end with her visit to quimby and would lead her disciples now to acknowledge it more honestly. it is a strong background against which to set what follows and give colour by contrast to her later life. the twice-born from saul of tarsus to john bunyan have dwelt much upon their sins and sorrows, seeking thereby more greatly to exalt the grace of god by which they had been saved. mary baker eddy came strongly to be persuaded that she had saved herself and consequently not only greatly underestimated her debt to quimby, but emptied her own experiences of dramatic contrasts to make them, as she supposed, more consistent, and her disciples have followed her. as a matter of fact, though her life as a whole is not an outstanding asset for christian science and is likely to grow less so, one must recognize the force of a conviction which changed the neurotic mrs. patterson of the fifties and sixties into the masterful and successful woman of the eighties and nineties. she belongs also to the fellowship of the twice-born and instead of minimizing the change those who seek to understand her, as well as those who seek to exalt her, would do well to make more of it. she did that herself to begin with. no master ever had for a time a more grateful disciple. she haunted quimby's house, read his manuscripts, wrote letters for the paper, "dropped into verse" and through her extravagance "brought ridicule upon quimby and herself." quimby died in , accompanied to his last resting place by a tribute in verse from his grateful pupil. mrs. eddy had at the time apparently no thought of continuing his work except in a most modest way. she wrote julius dresser who had come under quimby's influence, suggesting that he would step forward into the place vacated. "i believe you would do a vast amount of good and are more capable of occupying his place than any other i know of."[ ] she asked dresser's help in recovering from a fall which she had just had on the ice and which had so injured her, as she supposed, to make her the helpless cripple that she was before she met quimby. this fall is worth dwelling upon for a bit, for it really marks a turning place in mrs. eddy's life. in her letter to dresser she says that the physician attending "said i have taken the last step i ever should, but in two days i got out of my bed alone and will walk."[ ] sometime later in a letter to the _boston post_ mrs. eddy said, "we recovered in a moment of time from a severe accident considered fatal by the regular physicians." there is a considerable difference between two days and a moment of time and the expression of a determination to walk in the dresser letter and the testimony to an instantaneous cure in the _boston post_ letter. dr. cushing, the physician who attended mrs. eddy at the time, gives still a third account. he treated her, he says, over a period of almost two weeks and left her practically recovered. he also attended her in a professional capacity still later and offers all this in a sworn statement on the basis of his record books. there is a very considerable advantage in a philosophy which makes thought the only reality, for, given changing thought and a complacent recollection, facts may easily become either plastic or wholly negligible. [footnote : "a history of the new thought movement," dresser, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._] _she develops quimby's teachings along lines of her own_ the real significance of this much debated but otherwise unimportant episode is that it seems to have thrown mrs. eddy upon her own resources, for now that quimby was dead she begins to develop what she had received from him through both experience and teaching along lines of her own. she had found a formula for the resolution of problems, both physical and mental, which had hag-ridden her for years. she had a natural mental keenness, a speculative mind, a practical shrewdness (the gift of her new england ancestors) and an ample field. the theology, the medical science and indeed the philosophy or psychology of the new england of the sixties contributed strongly, through their limitations, to the growth of bizarre systems which had in them elements of truth. we shall need to come back to this again in any evaluation of christian science as a whole, but we cannot understand the rapid development of the movement of which christian science was just one aspect without taking all this into consideration. medicine itself has been greatly revolutionized within the last fifty years. while mary baker glover patterson eddy was finding her unhappy way through border-land regions into a cloudy light, louis pasteur, sitting, in the phrase of huxley, "as humbly as a little child before the facts of life," was making those investigations in bacteriology which were to be, in some ways, the greatest contribution of the nineteenth century to the well-being of humanity. he was following patiently the action of microscopic organisms, especially in their relation to health, discovering the secret of contagion and infection, outlining methods of defense against the attacks of these invisible armies, finding the true basis for inoculation, extending its operation, robbing hospitals of their terrors and surrounding surgery with safeguards heretofore undreamt of, literally performing miracles (in his control of swine plague and the like), and for the want of another subject preparing to experiment upon himself for the prevention of hydrophobia, and in doing it all in the most simple and humble way, naively unconscious of his own fame and living from first to last in a noble and comparative poverty which contrasts dramatically with the material well-being for which mrs. eddy was so eager. nothing of this had ever come into mrs. eddy's field or those whom she addressed. with all the aid which the modern physician has at his control, diagnosis is still a difficult matter, physicians confess it themselves. there is still, with all the resource of modern medical science, a residuum of hopeless and obscure cases which baffle the physician. that residuum was very much larger fifty years ago than it is now. _she begins to teach and to heal_ the typical protestant religious experience, as we have seen, was not great enough to contain all the facts of life. the molten passion of an earlier calvinism had hardened down into rigidities which exalted the power of god at the cost of human helplessness. there was no adequate recognition among the devout of the sweep of law. everything that happened was a special providence and it was hard enough to fit the trying facts of life into an understanding of divine love when there was apparently so much in life in opposition to divine love. a very great deal of the ferment of the time was just the endeavour to find some way out of all this and the group of which mrs. eddy was a part were really the first to try to find their way out except as roads of escape which were, on the whole, not ample enough had been sought by the theological liberalism of the time of which unitarianism was the most respectable and accepted form. there are, as has been said, curious underground connections through all this region. we find homeopathy, spiritualism, transcendentalism, theological liberalism and faith healing all tied up in one bundle. the line which mrs. eddy now came to follow is, on the whole, clear enough. she becomes in her turn teacher and healer, giving her own impress and colour to what she called the science she taught, claiming it more and more as her own and not only forgetting, but denying as she went on, her indebtedness to any one else. the whole thing gradually became in her mind a distinct revelation for which the ages had been waiting and this revelation theory is really the key to the contradictions and positive dishonesties which underlie the authorized account of the genesis of christian science. she associated herself with one of the more promising of her pupils who announced himself as dr. kennedy, with mrs. eddy somewhat in the background. kennedy was the agent, mrs. eddy supplied him with the material of what was a mixed method of teaching and healing. she had always been desperately poor; now for the first time she had a respectable bank account. there were corresponding changes in her personality and even her physique. she began to give lessons, safeguarding her instructions from the very first in such ways as to make them uncommonly profitable. her pupils paid $ for the course and agreed also to give her a percentage of the income from their practice. in the course of litigation which afterward follows, the courts pronounced that they did not find in her course of instruction anything which could be "in any way of value in fitting the defendant as a competent and successful practitioner of any intelligible art or method of healing the sick." the court, therefore, was of the opinion that "consideration for the agreement had wholly failed." in a sense the court was mistaken. mrs. eddy was giving her disciples something which, whether it fitted them to be competent and successful practitioners of any intelligible art or method of healing the sick, or no, was of great financial advantage both to them and to their teacher. she afterward raised her tuition fee to $ and stated that god had shown her in multitudinous ways the wisdom of this decision. _early phases of christian science_ everything was, to begin with, a matter of personal relationship between mrs. eddy and her students. they constitute a closely related group, the pupils themselves extravagant in their gratitude to their teacher. there were, of course, schisms, jealousies, recriminations, litigation, but none the less, the movement went on. the first attempt at organization was made at lynn in . a hall was rented, meetings were held in the evening, the society was known as the "christian scientists" and as an organization christian science came into the world. the first edition of "science and health" was also published in . there was difficulty in finding a publisher; those who assisted mrs. eddy financially were losers in the enterprise. they were never reimbursed, though "science and health" afterward became the most remunerative single publication in the world. two years later mrs. glover (for after her divorce from patterson she had taken her earlier married name) married gilbert eddy and so took the name by which she is best known to the world. there is much in this period of mrs. eddy's life to indicate that she had not yet reached an inner serenity of faith. she was never able to free herself from a perverted belief in animal magnetism or mesmerism which showed itself in fear rather than faith. she believed herself persecuted and if she did not believe in witchcraft she believed in something curiously like it. indeed, to mrs. eddy belonged the rather curious distinction of having instigated the last trial for witchcraft in the united states and with a fitting sense of historic propriety she staged it at salem. the judge dismissed the case, saying that it was not within the power of the court to control the defendant's mind. the case was appealed, the appeal waived and the whole matter rests as a curious instance in the records of the salem court. mrs. eddy does not appear as the plaintiff in the case. the complainant is one of her students, but mrs. eddy was behind the complaint, the real reason for which is apparently that the defendant had refused to pay tuition and royalty on his practice and was interfering with the work of the group of which mrs. eddy was leader. the incident has value only as showing the lengths to which the mind may be led once it has detached itself from the steadying influences of experience-tested reality. it is interesting also to note that in one way and another mrs. eddy and her church have been involved in more litigation than any other religious teacher or religious movement of the time. _she writes "science and health" and completes the organization of her church_ nothing apparently came of the first tentative organization in . the first incorporated church of christ scientist was chartered in with twenty-six charter members and boston as its seat. meetings of this church were held, to begin with, in lynn and boston, but lynn was not friendly to the new enterprise and the boston group became the center of further growth. mrs. eddy left lynn finally in and during all the next period the history of christian science is the history of the mother church in boston and of the massachusetts metaphysical college. mrs. eddy suffered no dissent, her pupils either followed or left her. she was the controlling force in the whole movement. she began to surround herself with a certain mystery and delighted in theatrical effects. she had written and rewritten "science and health" until it began to take final form. the _journal of christian science_ became the official organ of mrs. eddy's movement as "science and health" was its gospel. the movement reached beyond boston and new england and invaded the west. it was now so outstanding as to create general public interest. the churches began to take notice of it and indeed, whatever has been for the last twenty years characteristic of christian science was then actively in action. what follows is the familiar story of mrs. eddy's own personal movements, her withdrawal to concord, her growing detachment from the movement which she nevertheless ruled with an iron hand, the final organization of the church itself along lines wholly dictated by its leader, the deepening of public interest in the movement itself, mrs. eddy's removal from concord to newton and her death. she left behind her the strongest and most driving organization built up by any religious leader of her time. of all those, who since the wesleys have inaugurated and carried through a distinct religious movement, only alexander campbell is in the same class with mrs. eddy and campbell had behind him the traditional force of the protestantism to which he gave only a slightly new direction and colouring. mrs. eddy's contributions are far more distinct and radical. we need, then, to turn from her life, upon whose lights and shadows, inconsistencies and intricacies, we have touched all too lightly, to seek in "science and health" and the later development of christian science at once the secret of the power of the movement and its significance for our time. v christian science as a philosophy christian science has a considerable group of authorized publications and a well-conducted department of publicity. its public propaganda is carried on by means of occasional lectures, always extremely well advertised and through its reading rooms and periodicals. its unadvertised propaganda is carried on, naturally, by its adherents. every instance of obscure or protracted illness offers it an opportunity and such opportunities are by no means neglected. but the supreme authority in christian science is mary baker eddy's work "science and health." this is read at every sunday service and is the basis of all lectures and explanatory advertisements. in general its exponents do not substantially depart from the teachings of its book, nor, such is the discipline of the cult, do they dare to. there are doubtless such modifications of its more extreme and impossible contentions as every religion of authority experiences. christian science cannot remain unaffected by discussion and the larger movements of thought. but it has not as yet markedly departed from the doctrines of its founder and must thereby be judged. the book in its final form represents a considerable evolution. the comparison of successive editions reveals an astonishing amount of matter which has been discarded, although there has been no real modification of its fundamental principles. references to malicious animal magnetism which fill a large place in the earlier editions, are almost wholly wanting in the last, and there has been a decided progress toward a relative simplicity of statements. the book is doubtless much in debt to mrs. eddy's literary adviser, mr. wiggins, who brought to the revision of mrs. eddy's writings a conscientious fidelity. one needs to stand a good ways back from the book itself in order at all to get any balanced view of its philosophy but, so seen, its fundamentals are almost unexpectedly simple. _christian science a philosophy, a theology, a religion and a system of healing; general conditions which have lent it power_ christian science is offered as a philosophy, a theology, a religion and a method for the practical conduct of life and it needs to be considered under each of these four heads. it demands also for any proper understanding of it the backgrounds of mrs. eddy's peculiar temperament and checkered history. it is a growth. for her fundamentals mrs. eddy is, beyond reasonable debate, in debt to quimby and in some ways quimby's original insights have suffered at her hands. none the less, in its final form "science and health" is what mrs. eddy has made it and it is what it is because she was what she was. she shared with her own generation an absorbing interest in fundamental theological problems. she inherited a religion which has reduced the whole of life to rigid and on the whole too narrow theological formulæ. she was not able to fit her experience into the formula which her faith supplied and yet, on the other hand, her faith exercised a controlling influence over her life. she was in a small and pathetic way a kind of nineteenth century job grappling with the old, old question given sin and, above all, pain and suffering to find god. she could not adjust either divine love or a just divine sovereignty to what she herself had been called upon to bear. a natural tendency toward the occult and the desperate willingness of the hopelessly sick to try anything which promises a cure, led her in many directions. so much her biography explains. quimby was the first teacher she found whose system seemed to offer any key at all to the intellectual and spiritual puzzle in which she found herself and when his system seemed to be proved for her by her recovery from a chronic abnormal state, she thereafter followed and elaborated what he suggested. here a certain natural shrewdness and ingenuity of mind stood her in good stead. she was helped by her own ignorances and limitations. if she had been a trained thinker, familiar with a wide range of philosophic speculation, she would never have dared write so dogmatically; if she had been a great philosopher with the philosopher's inclusive vision, she would never have dared build so much on foundations so narrow. mrs. eddy was, unconsciously to herself, a type. she thought and felt for multitudes of perplexed people unable to reconcile the more trying experiences of life with what faith they had in the love and goodness of god, unable on the other side to find the love and goodness of god in the wide sweep of law and the orderly sequence of cause and effect, and incapable under any circumstances of the patient analysis needed to trace to all their sources the threads of their strangely mingled webs of life; impressionable folk under the spell of words; speculative; at once credulous and skeptical; intellectually alert enough to want to do their own thinking and not intellectually disciplined enough to do it well; persuaded that the bible has both a message and authority and unable to find in their traditional interpretation of it either a satisfying message or an adequately directing authority; impatient of discipline and pathetically eager for some short cut to happiness and well-being. in a very signal way mrs. eddy has spoken and written for this type particularly in american life. her very style a liability as it is, when tested by either logic or the accepted standards of good writing, has, nevertheless, been an asset with those who have made her their prophetess. the secret of mrs. eddy's power and the power of her system after her is most largely in her essential intellectual and spiritual kinship with such a temper and intellectual status as this, but she possessed also a real measure of creative capacity, a marked reach of speculative power, rare shrewdness and a masterful temper. mrs. eddy believed herself to have found her system in the old and new testaments--but she did not. she gradually built it up out of the suggestions which had been given her to begin with; she gave it colour and direction from her own experiences; she proved it to her own satisfaction in the healings which seemed to result from it, then fitted it all as best she could into the framework of her inherited christian faith and read its meanings back into the scriptures. it is a pseudo-philosophy pseudo-christianized (if one may use the word) by a curious combination of ingenuity, devotion, main strength and even awkwardness. and though christian science is carrying on to-day as a religion rather than as either a philosophy or a system of healing, it will stand or fall on the intellectual side as a philosophy and not as a religion. _the philosophic bases of christian science_ it is professedly an idealistic monism based on carefully selected facts and depending for its proof upon certain results in the experience of those who accept it. an idealism because there is for mrs. eddy no reality save in mind, a monism because there is for mrs. eddy only one reality and that is god. for a definition of god she offers only synonyms and affirmations though here perhaps she follows only the usual procedure of theology. god is divine principle, life, truth, love, soul, spirit, mind--and all these capitalized, for it makes a vast difference in the philosophy of christian science whether such familiar words as these are spelled with a capital letter or not. it would be possible from mrs. eddy's own words to pretty effectually prove what has been more than once claimed: that christian science does not offer a personal god, but all our terminology in this region is necessarily somewhat loose, though hers is excessively so. some of her definitions of god are as personal as the westminster catechism or the thirty-nine articles. the writer believes, however, after such dispassionate consideration of the philosophy of christian science as he is able to give, that it would make absolutely no difference in its philosophic basis whether god were conceived as a person or not. if the god of christian science be taken merely as the exaltation of an abstract idealism or a philosophic absolute everything would be secured which is otherwise secured. up to a certain point christian science marches with other idealistic systems. from plato down we have had philosophers a plenty, who have sought to build for us a universe whose only realities are mind and its attributes, or perhaps more technically, consciousness and its content. it is truly a difficult enough matter to relate the world without and the world within, once we begin thinking about it (though happily and in the practical conduct of life this is not so hard as the philosophers make out, otherwise we should be in a hopeless state), and it is natural enough for one type of mind to simplify the problem by making the world within the only world. nor have there been wanting those who have sought to reduce everything to a single reality whether matter or mind, and ever since we have had theology at all a perplexed humanity has been seeking to reconcile the goodness and the power of god with the sin and sorrow of our troubled world. but christian science parts company soon enough with this great fellowship of dreamers and philosophers and takes its own line. it affirms consciousness and its content to be the only reality; it affirms the divine mind to be the ultimate and all-conditioning reality; it affirms love and goodness to be the ultimate qualities of the divine mind, but it meets the problem of sin and evil by denying them any reality at all. (here it is in more or less accord with certain forms of mysticism.) but even as christian science cuts this gordian knot it creates for itself another set of difficulties and involves itself in those contradictions which will eventually be the undoing of it as a philosophy. _it undertakes to solve the problem of evil. contrasted solutions_ what christian science is seeking is an ideal order with a content of unqualified good and it secures this by denying the reality of every aspect of experience which either challenges or contradicts its own idealism. what is distinctive, then, in christian science is not its affirmations but its denials. all systems of philosophic idealism face practically the same problem and offer various solutions. they most commonly resolve evil of every sort--and evil is here used in so wide a way as to include sin and pain and sorrow--into an ultimate good. evil is thus an "unripe good," one stage in a process of evolution which, when it has had its perfect and all-transforming way, will reveal both moral and physical evil to have been no evil at all but simply aspects of life, trying enough at the time and puzzling enough when taken by themselves, but having their own distinct and contributory value when considered in their relation to the final whole. such an approach as this does not in any wise diminish for the individual either the reality of pain or the unhappy consequences of sin, but it does ask him to judge the wisdom and love of god not by their passing phases but by their outcome in the wealth and worth of character. robert browning sang this sturdily through a long generation riding down its difficulties by the sheer force of an unconquerable optimism and subduing argument to lyric passion. "the evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound; what was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; on the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round. "and what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence for the fullness of the days? have we withered or agonized? why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence? why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?" others affirm the self-limitation of god.[ ] in his respect for that human freedom which is the basis of self-regulated personal action and therefore an essential condition of character, he arrests himself, as it were, upon the threshold of human personality and commits his children to a moral struggle justifying the inevitable incidents of moral defeat by the greatness of the ends to be attained. a vast deal of what we call evil--broadening evil to include not only moral defeat but also pain--is either a consequence or a by-product of what henry churchill king calls the fight for character. such a solution as this is consistent with the love of god and the moral order; whether it is consistent with a thoroughgoing monism or not is another question. william james doubted it and so frankly adopted pluralism--which is perhaps just a way of saying that we cannot reconcile the contending forces in our world order with one over-all-controlling power--as his solution of the problem. [footnote : walker, for example, in his extremely suggestive spiritual monism and christian theism.] josiah royce has valiantly maintained, through long and subtle argument, the goodness of the whole despite the evil of the incidental. "all finite life is a struggle with evil. yet from the final point of view the whole is good. the temporal order contains at no one moment anything that can satisfy. yet the eternal order is perfect. we have all sinned, and come short of the glory of god. yet in just our life, viewed in its entirety, the glory of god is completely manifest. these hard sayings are the deepest expressions of the essence of true religion."[ ] he finds the root of evil in the dissatisfaction of the finite will--a dissatisfaction which on the other hand is the secret of the eventual triumph of good. [footnote : "the world and the individual," royce, vol. ii, chap. --passim.] we suffer also through our involution with "the interests and ideals of vast realms of other conscious and finite lives whose dissatisfactions become part of each individual man's life when the man concerned cannot at present see how or why his own ideals are such as to make these dissatisfactions his fate." we suffer also through our associations with nature, none the less "this very presence of evil in the temporal order is the condition of the perfection of the eternal order." he dismisses definitely, in an argument still to be quoted, the conclusion of the mystic that an "experience of evil is an experience of unreality ... an illusion, a dream, a deceit" and concludes: "in brief, then, nowhere in time is perfection to be found. our comfort lies in the knowledge of the eternal. strengthened by that knowledge, we can win the most enduring of temporal joys, the consciousness that makes us delight to share the world's grave glories and to take part in its divine sorrows,--sure that these sorrows are the means of the eternal triumph, and that these glories are the treasures of the house of god. when once this comfort comes home to us, we can run and not be weary, and walk and not faint. for our temporal life is the very expression of the eternal triumph." one may gravely question whether philosophy has ever so completely made out its case as professor royce thinks. he is affirming as the reasoned conclusion of philosophy what is rather a faith than a demonstration, but none the less, all honest thinking has hitherto been brave enough to recognize the reality of evil and to test the power of god and his love and goodness not by the actuality of present pain, or the confusion of present sin, but rather by the power which he offers us of growing through pain to health or else so bearing pain as to make it a real contribution to character and of so rising above sin as to make penitence and confession and the struggle for good and the achievement of it also a contribution to character. so st. paul assures us that all things work together for good for those that love god. "the willingness," says hocking, "to confront every evil, in ourselves and outside ourselves, with the blunt, factual conscience of science; willingness to pay the full causal price for the removal of the blemish; this kind of integrity can never be dispensed with in any optimistic program."[ ] [footnote : "the meaning of god in human experience," p. .] sir henry jones takes the same line. "the first requisite for the solution of the contradiction between the demand of religion for the perfection of god, and therefore the final and complete victory of the good in the other, is the honest admission that the contradiction is there, and inevitable; though possibly, like other contradictions, it is there only to be solved."[ ] [footnote : "a faith that enquires," p. .] _the divine mind and mortal mind_ christian science solves this problem, as has been said, by denying the reality of evil, but since we have an abundance of testimony to pain and sickness, mrs. eddy goes a step farther. she denies the reality of the testimony of the senses wherever pain and sickness are concerned.[ ] (mrs. eddy's denial of the reality of sin is hardly parallel to her denial of the reality of physical ills.) and here the word comes in which is made to carry a heavier load than any one poor word was ever burdened with before. all that is involved in the recognition of physical ills and indeed all that is involved in the recognition of the material side of existence is error. (once fairly on her road mrs. eddy makes a clean sweep of whatever stands in her way.) what one may call the whole shadowed side of experience is not only ignored, it is denied and yet before it can be explained away it has to be explained. it is, in brief, for mrs. eddy and her followers the creation of mortal mind. mortal mind, she says, "is nothing claiming to be something; mythology; error creating other errors; a suppositional material sense; ... that which neither exists in science nor can be recognized by the spiritual sense; sin; sickness; death."[ ] [footnote : "science and health," last edition, pp. , , , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] mortal mind is that side of us which accepts our entanglement in the facts and forces of the world order and upon mortal mind so vaguely conceived mrs. eddy throws the whole burden of responsibility for all the unhappy aspects of experience and conditioning circumstances. she gives it a surprising range of creative power. it has created everything mrs. eddy does not like or believe in. in other words, there is not one reality but two, one the reality of well-being, the other the reality of unhappiness and suffering, but according to mrs. eddy the first reality is the only real reality, the second is an unreal reality which we ourselves create through false beliefs and which we may escape at any moment by simply shifting the center of our creative idealism. mrs. eddy makes what she means by mortal mind reasonably clear through endless repetition and some analysis, but she never for a moment accounts for its existence. it is no creation of what she calls the divine mind; indeed she says in substance that god is not conscious of it at all; it lies entirely outside the range of his knowledge. (page .) god is good. since he is good he cannot have created nor be responsible for, nor even recognize pain, sorrow or suffering. "the divine mind cannot suffer" (page , also page ), "is not responsible for physical and moral disasters" (page ). god did not create matter (the father mind is not the father of matter) (page ), for matter means pain and death, nor do such things as these belong in any way to the order of the divine mind. they have no admitted reality in mrs. eddy's scheme of a true idealism. man is "god's spiritual idea" and since he belongs by right to an order in which there is neither sin nor sorrow nor death, such things as these have no reality for him save as he admits them. what really admits them is mortal mind, the agent of another system of belief in which humanity has in some way, which is never really explained, become entangled, and we may apparently escape from the one order to the other simply by a change in our beliefs. for all the shadowed side of life has reality only as we accept or believe in it; directly we cease to believe in it or deny it it ceases to be. it is, as near as one can make out, a myth, an illusion, whose beginnings are lost in obscurity and which, for the want of the revelation vouchsafed through her, has been continued from age to age by the untaught or the misled. for example, arsenic is not a poison, so we are told again and again. it is only a poison because people think it is;[ ] it began to be a poison only because people thought it was, it continues to be a poison only because the majority of people think it is now and, such is the subtle and far-reaching influence of mind upon mind, it will continue to be a poison as long as any one continues to believe it to be. directly we all believe that arsenic is not a poison it will be no poison. poisons, that is, are the creation of mortal mind. pain is pain only through the same mistaken belief in the reality of it. "by universal consent mortal belief has constituted itself a law to bind mortals to sickness, sin and death." and so on at great length and almost endless repetition. [footnote : page .] _the essential limitations of mrs. eddy's system_ since matter conditions us who were born to be unconditioned and since matter is apparently the root of so many ills, the seat of so many pains, matter goes with the rest. mrs. eddy is not always consistent in her consideration of matter; sometimes she confines herself to saying that there is neither sensation nor life in matter--which may be true enough save as matter both affords the material for sensation and conditions its forms, which is an immense qualification,--but again and again she calls matter an illusion. consistently the laws of physics and chemistry should disappear with the laws of hygiene and medicine, but mrs. eddy does not go so far as that though it would be difficult to find a logical stopping place once you have taken this line. mortal mind is apparently the source of all these illusions. mrs. eddy's disposal of matter, along with her constant return to its misleading mastery in experience is an outstanding aspect of her book. the writer is inclined to believe that mrs. eddy's formula: "there is ... no matter in life and no life in matter," is an echo of tyndall's famous utterance--made about the time she was working with her system--that he found "in matter the promise and potency of all life." there is surprisingly little reference in "science and health" to philosophic or scientific sources. cutter's physiology is quoted in some editions--an old textbook which the writer remembers to have found among his mother's school books. there are a few references to popular astronomy, but in general for mrs. eddy modern science does not exist except in the most general way as the erroneous expression of error and always with a small "s" as against the capital "s" of her own system. nor does she show any knowledge of other philosophic idealisms nor any acquaintance with any solution of the problems she was facing save the commonplaces of evangelical orthodoxy. "science and health" knows nothing also of any medical science save the empirical methods of the medical science of and . but she cannot have been wholly uninfluenced--being a woman of an alert mind--by the controversy which, in the seventies and eighties, was raging about a pretty crass and literal materialism, and her writings probably reflect--with a good deal of indirection--that controversy. here is a possible key to a good many things which are otherwise puzzling enough. she is, in her own fashion, the defender of an idealistic interpretation of reality and experience. now all idealistic systems have had to dispose of matter in some way. in general idealists find in matter only the reflection in consciousness of the material which sense experience supplies, and since the raw material is in every way so different from the mental reflection, the idealist may defend his position plausibly in assuming matter to be, in its phenomenal aspects, really the creation of thought. but he must account for the persistency of it and the consistency of experience so conditioned. he does this by assuming the whole interrelated order to be held, as it were, in solution, in some larger system of thought which really supplies for us our environment and if he be both devout and consistent he calls this the thought god.[ ] in this way he solves his problem--at least to his own satisfaction--and even supplies a basis for theistic faith. but he does not deny the working reality of his so-called material experiences nor does he, like mrs. eddy, accept one aspect of this experience and deny the other. this is philosophically impossible. [footnote : so royce in "the world and the individual."] a thoroughgoing theistic monism must find in matter some aspect or other of the self-revelation of god. it may be hard pressed to discover just how the psychical is "stepped down" to the physical. (that is the essential difficulty in all creationism.) but something must be assumed to get a going concern in any department of thought and there is much in that resolution of matter into force and force into always more tenuous and imponderable forms--which is the tendency of modern science--to render this assumption less difficult to the rational imagination than perhaps any other we are asked to make. when the final elements in matter have become electrons and the electron is conceived as a strain in a magnetic field and thus the "cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which is inherent," become the projection into sensibly apprehended form of the flux of an infinite and eternal energy, it is not hard to define that energy in terms of a divine will. indeed it is hard not to do just that. but there is no place in such a resolution as this for the conclusions of "science and health." or we may accept in one form or another a dualism in which the practical mind is generally content to rest. according to this point of view we have to do with a reality which may be known under two aspects. it is the chemical action and interaction of elements--and the mind which measures and combines them; it is the physical action and interaction of force--and the mind which directs the process. biologically "the living creature gives an account of itself in two ways. it can know itself as something extended and intricately built up, burning away, moving, throbbing; it can also know itself as the seat of sensation, perceptions, feelings, wishes, thoughts. but there is not one process, thinking, and another process, cerebral metabolism (vital processes in nerve-cells); there is a psycho-physical life--a reality which we know under two aspects. cerebral control and mental activity are, on this view, different aspects of one natural occurrence. what we have to do with is the unified life of a psycho-physical being, a body-mind or mind-body."[ ] in short there is no philosophy or science outside the covers of her own book to which mrs. eddy may turn for support and though this does not prove the case against her--she might be right and the whole disciplined thought of her time be wrong--this latter supposition is so improbable as to rule it out of court. [footnote : j.a. thomson, "the outline of science," p. .] the materialism against which she contends has ceased to exist. the matter which she denies does not exist in the sense of her denial. there was, even when she was writing, a line of which she was apparently wholly ignorant which has since been immensely developed, and of all this there is naturally no reflection at all in her work. it is more hopelessly out of touch with the laborious and strongly established conclusions of modern thought in every field than the first chapters of genesis for there one may, at least, substitute the science of to-day for the science of , years ago and still retain the enduring insights of the faith then voiced, but there is no possible accommodation of "science and health" to either the science or the philosophy of the twentieth century. it must be left to a consistent christian scientist to reconcile his gospel with the freer movements of the world of which he is still a citizen--though perhaps this also might be urged against a deal of contemporaneous christian faith--but it is all an arresting testimony to the power of the human mind to organize itself in compartments between which there is no communication. _experience and life_ beyond all this is the fact of which "science and health" takes no account--the conditioning of conscious life and working experience by its material environment however conceived. this is true of every phase of life and all our later emphasis upon the power of the mind in one direction and another to escape this conditioning scarcely affects the massive reality of it. christian science makes no attempt at all to escape this--save in the region of physical health--or else it provides an alibi in the phrase, "i have not demonstrated in that region yet." but it does not thus escape the limitation imposed upon us all and if we may dare for a moment to be dogmatic, it never will. at the best we live in a give and take and if, through discipline and widening knowledge, we may push back a little the frontiers which limit us, and assert the supremacy of soul over the material with which it is so intimately associated, we do even this slowly and at great cost and always in conformity with the laws of the matter we master. there is a body of evidence here which can no more be ignored than gravitation, and we best dispose of association of personality with the material fabric of the body and the world of which it is a part, not by denying their mutual interdependence but by discovering therein the laws and methods of an infinite wisdom. here are ministries through which we come to consciousness of ourselves, here are materials upon which we exercise our power, here are realities which hold us fast to normal and intelligible lives, here are masters whose rule is kind and servants whose obediences empower us. they condition our happinesses as well as our unhappinesses and supply for us the strings of that harp of the senses upon which the music of life is played. life really gains its spiritual content through the action and interaction of the aspiring self upon its environment--whether that environment be intimate as the protest of a disturbed bodily cell or remote as orion and the pleiades.[ ] the very words which mrs. eddy uses would be idle if this were not so and though a thoroughgoing defender of her system may read into its lines a permission for all this, the fundamentals of her system deny it. [footnote : "and i am inclined to think that the error of forgetting that spirit in order to be real or that principles, whether of morality, religion or knowledge, must be exemplified in temporal facts, is a no less disastrous error than that of the sciences which have not learned that the natural, when all the meaning of it is set free, blossoms into the spiritual like the tree into flower. religion and philosophy and science also have yet to learn more fully that all which can possibly concern man, occupy his intelligence or engage his will, lies at the point of intersection of the natural and spiritual."--"a faith that enquires," p. .] christian science breaks down both philosophically and practically just here. it is none the less a dualism because it denies that it is. it confronts not one but two ranges of reality; it gains nothing by making mortal mind the villain in the play. it is compelled to admit the existence of the reality which it denies, even in the fact of denying it. what we deny exists for us--we could not otherwise deny it. royce has put all this clearly, strongly, finally. "the mystic first denies that evil is real. he is asked why, then, evil seems to exist. he replies that this is our finite error. the finite error itself hereupon becomes, as the source of all our woes, an evil. but no evil is real, hence no error can be real, hence we do not really err even if we suppose that evil is real. here we return to our starting point and could only hope to escape by asserting that it is an error to assert that we really err or that we really believe error to be real, and with a process thus begun there is indeed no end, nor at any stage in this process is there consistency."[ ] all this is subtle enough, but if we are to make our world by thinking and unthinking it, all this is unescapably true. [footnote : "the world and the individual," vol. ii, p. .] when, moreover, you have reduced one range of experience to illusion there is absolutely nothing to save the rest. if evil is error and error evil and the belief that evil is an illusion is itself an illusion what is there to guarantee the reality of good? the sword with which mrs. eddy cut the knot of the problem of evil is two-edged. if the optimist denies evil for the sake of good and points for proof to the solid coherency of the happier side of life, the pessimist may as justly deny good for the sake of evil and point for proof to the solid coherency of the sadder side of life; he will have no trouble in finding his facts. if sickness is a dream then health is a dream as well. once we have taken illusion for a guide there is no stopping until everything is illusion. the eastern mystic who went this road long before mrs. eddy and who thought it through with a searching subtleness of which she was incapable, reached the only logical conclusion. all experience is illusion, entire detachment from action is the only wisdom, and absorption in an unconscious something which only escapes being nothing is our appointed destiny: "we are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep." _sense-testimony cannot be accepted for health and denied for sickness_ christian science, then, is not monism, it is rather a dualism; it confronts not one but two ranges of reality and it is compelled to admit the existence of the reality which it denies, even the fact of denying it, for it is a philosophical axiom that what we deny exists for us--we could not otherwise deny it. denial is the recognition of reality just as much as affirmation. to repeat, it is this continuous interwoven process of trying to reconcile the one-sided idealism of christian science with the necessity of its argument and the facts of life which gives to "science and health" what one may call its strangely bifocal character, though indeed this is a somewhat misleading figure. one has the same experience in reading the book that one has in trying to read through glasses which are out of focus; you are always just seeing and just missing because mrs. eddy herself is always just seeing and just missing a really great truth. this fundamental inconsistency penetrates the whole system even down to its practical applications. christian science denies the testimony of the senses as to sickness and yet accepts them as to health. it goes further than this, it accepts the testimony of the senses of other people--physicians, for example, in accepting their diagnosis. the edition of "science and health" published in offers in chapter eighteen a hundred pages of testimonials sent in by those who have in various ways been helped by their faith. these letters are shot through and through with a recognition of the testimony of the senses which no explanation can possibly explain away. "i was afflicted with a fibroid tumour which weighed not less than fifty pounds, attended by a continuous hemorrhage for eleven years." if the senses have any language at all, this is their language. a growth cannot be known as a fibroid tumour without sense testimony, nor its weight estimated without sense testimony, nor a continuous hemorrhage be recorded, or its cessation known without sense testimony, nor can epilepsy be diagnosed, nor bilious attacks recognized without sense testimony. on page a grateful disciple bears witness to the healing of a broken arm, testimony to said healing being demonstrated by a visit to a physician's office "where they were experimenting with an x-ray machine. the doctor pointed out the place as being slightly thicker at that part, like a piece of steel that had been welded." in other words, christian science cannot make out its case without the recognition of the veracity of a sense testimony, whose truth its philosophy denies. mrs. eddy seems to dismiss all this in one brief paragraph. "is a man sick if the material senses indicate that he is in good health? no, for matter can make no conditions for man. and is he well if the senses say he is sick? yes, he is well in science, in which health is normal and disease is abnormal."[ ] if mrs. eddy and her followers believe so specious a statement as that, to set them free from an inconsistency which is central in their whole contention, they are welcome to their belief, but the inconsistency still remains. you can go far by using words in a pickwickian sense but there is a limit. a consistent idealism is philosophically possible, but it must be a far more inclusive and deeply reasoned idealism than christian science. the most thoroughgoing idealisms have accepted the testimony of the senses as a part of the necessary conduct of life as now conditioned. anything else would reduce us to unspeakable confusion, empty experience of its content, dissolve all the contacts of life and halt us in our tracks for we cannot take a step safely without the testimony of the senses and any scheme of things which seeks to distinguish between the varying validities of sense testimony, accepting only the evidence of the senses for health and well-being and denying the dependability of whatever else they register, is simply an immense caprice which breaks down under any examination. [footnote : page . it is only fair to say that mrs. eddy is hampered by her own want of clear statement. the phrase (so often used in "science and health") "in science" is probably in her mind equivalent to "in the ideal order" and if mrs. eddy had clearly seen and clearly stated what she is groping for: that the whole shadowed side of life belongs to our present world of divided powers and warring forces and unfinished enterprises, that god has something better for his children toward which we are being led through the discipline of experience and that we may therefore seek to conceive and affirm this ideal order and become its citizens in body, mind and soul, she would have escaped a perfect web of contradiction and been in line not only with the great philosophies but with historic christian faith. but then christian science would not be christian science.] _the inescapable reality of shadowed experience_ evil does not cease to be because it is denied. the acceptance of sense testimony is just as necessary in the region of pain and sickness as in driving a motorcar down a crowded street and the hypothesis of a misleading mortal mind, instead of explaining everything, demands itself an explanation. what mrs. eddy calls mortal mind is only the registry of the dearly bought experience of the race. we began only with the power to feel, to struggle, to will and to think. we have been blind enough and stupid enough but we are, after all, not unteachable and out of our experience and our reflections we have created the whole splendid and dependable body of human knowledge. what we know about pain is itself the outcome of all the suffering of our kind. we began with no developed philosophy nor any presuppositions about anything. experience reflects encompassing realities which we are able to escape only as we make their laws our ministers. we did not give fire the power to burn, we discovered that only in the school of the touch of flame. we did not give edged steel the power to cut, we found that out through death and bleeding wounds. we did not give to poisons their deadly power, our attitude toward them is simply the outcome of our experience with them. conditioned as we are by those laws and forces with which this present existence of ours is in innumerable ways inextricably interwoven, our tested and sifted beliefs are only the outcome of an action and interaction of recipient or creative personality upon its environment old as human consciousness, and if in all this we have become persuaded of pain and suffering and shadowed experience, it is only because these are as real as any elements in experience can possibly be. to attempt to write them out or deny them out or juggle them out in any kind of way save in bravely meeting them and humbly being taught by them and in the full resource of disciplined power getting free from them by removing the causes which create them, is to cheat ourselves with words, lose ourselves in shadows which we mistake for light and even if in some regions we seem to succeed it is only at the cost of what is more bitter than pain and more deadly than wounds--the loss of mental and spiritual integrity. this is a price too great to pay for any mere healing. vi christian science as a theology "science and health" is offered, among other things, as a key to the scriptures, and along with her interpretation of both the old and the new testaments in terms of her peculiar philosophy mrs. eddy rewrites the great articles of the christian creeds. a careful student of mrs. eddy's mental processes is able in this region to understand them better than she understood them herself. she had, to begin with, an inherited reverence for the bible as an authority for life and she shared with multitudes of others a difficulty to which reference has already been more than once made. for what one may call the typical protestant consciousness the bible is the final revelation of god, governing, if only we can come to understand it, both our faith and our conduct of life, but the want of a true understanding of it and, above all, the burdening of it with an inherited tradition has clouded its light for multitudes of devout souls. _science and health offered as a key to the scriptures_ such as these have been almost pathetically eager to accept any interpretation, no matter how capricious, which seemed to read an intelligible meaning into its difficult passages, or reconcile its contradictions, or make it a more practical guide in the conduct of life. any cult or theory, therefore, which can seem to secure for itself the authority of the bible has obtained directly an immense reinforcement in its appeal to the devout and the perplexed, and mrs. eddy has taken full advantage of this. her book is veined with scripture references; two of her chapters are expositions of biblical books (genesis and revelation); and other chapters deal with great doctrines of the church. _it ignores all recognized canons of biblical interpretation. illustrations_ mrs. eddy naturally sought the authority for her philosophy between the covers of the scriptures. beyond debate her teachings have carried much farther than they otherwise would, in that she claims for them a scriptural basis, and they must be examined in that light. now there are certain sound and universally recognized rules governing the scholarly approach to the old and new testaments. words must be taken in their plain sense; they must be understood in their relation to their context. a book is to be studied also in the light of its history; the time and place and purpose of its composition, as far as these are known, must be considered; no changes made in the text save through critical emendation, nor any translations offered not supported by accepted texts, nor any liberties be taken with grammatical constructions. by such plain tests as these mrs. eddy's use of the scriptures will not bear examination. she violates all recognized canons of biblical interpretation on almost every page.[ ] [footnote : this is a brief--and a christian scientist may protest--a summary dismissal of the claim of "science and health" to be a "key to the scriptures." but nothing is gained--save of the unnecessary lengthening of this chapter--in going into a detailed examination of her method and conclusions. she has insight, imagination, boundless allegorical resource, but the whole bible beneath her touch becomes a plastic material to be subdued to her peculiar purpose by omissions, read-in meanings and the substantial and constant disregard of plain meanings. to the student the whole matter is important only as revealing the confusion of the popular mind which receives such a method as authoritative.] her method is wholly allegorical and the results achieved are conditioned only by the ingenuity of the commentator. it would require a body of citation from the pages of "science and health," not possible here, to follow through mrs. eddy's peculiar exegesis. one needs only to open the book at random for outstanding illustrations. for example, genesis : , "and god said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters." the word "firmament" has its own well established connotation gathered from a careful study of all its uses. we can no more understand the earlier chapters of genesis without an understanding of hebrew cosmogony than we can understand dante without a knowledge of medieval cosmogony. but, given this knowledge which is the common possession of all sound scholarship, we can at least understand what the passage means, even though we have long left behind us the naïve conception of the vaulted skies to which it refers. all this is a commonplace not worth repeating at the cost of the white paper upon which it is printed, save as the ignoring of it leads to such an interpretation of the passage as that which mrs. eddy offers: "spiritual understanding by which human conception material mind is separated from truth is the firmament. the divine mind, not matter, creates all identities and they are forms of mind, the ideas of spirit apparent only as mind, never as mindless matter nor the so-called material senses" (page ). comment is not only difficult but impossible in the face of a method like this. if such an interpretation were an exception it might seem the unfair use of a hypercritical temper to quote this particular expression of mrs. eddy's mind. but her whole treatment of scripture suffers from the same method. everything means something else. the ark is "the idea, or reflection of truth, proved to be as immortal as its principle." babel is "self-destroying error"; baptism is "submergence in spirit"; canaan is "a sensuous belief"; dan (jacob's son) is "animal magnetism"; the dove is "a symbol of divine science"; the earth is "a type of eternity and immortality"; the river euphrates is "divine science encompassing the universe and man"; evening "the mistiness of mortal thought"; flesh "an error, a physical belief"; ham (noah's son) is "corporeal belief"; jerusalem "mortal belief and knowledge obtained from the five corporeal senses"; night, "darkness; doubt; fear"; a pharisee, "corporeal and sensuous belief"; river is "a channel of thought"; a rock is "a spiritual foundation"; sheep are "innocence"; a sword "the idea of truth."[ ] [footnote : glossary, p. --passim.] mrs. eddy does not hesitate to make such textual modifications of passages as suit her purpose and even when she is not dealing with her texts in such ways as these, she is constantly citing for her proofs passages which cannot by any recognized canon of interpretation possibly be made to mean what she says they mean. beneath her touch simple things become vague, the psalms lose their haunting beauty, even the lord's prayer takes a form which we may reverently believe the author of it would not recognize. "our father: mother god, all harmonious, adorable one, thy kingdom is come; thou art ever present. enable us to know--as in heaven, so on earth--god is omnipotent, supreme. give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections; and love is reflected in love; and god leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, disease and death. for god is infinite, all power, all life, truth, love, over all and all." _its conception of god_ it was quite as inevitable that she should undertake to fit her speculations into the fabric of the theology in which she and most of her followers had been trained, as that she should try to secure for her speculation the weight of the authority of the bible. she would have to take for her point of departure the centrality of christ, the outstanding christian doctrines, markedly the incarnation and the atonement and she would need somehow to dispose of the sacraments. all this is inevitably implied in the persistent designation of her whole system as a christian system. the chapter headings in "science and health" and the sequence of chapters are the key to the movement of her mind; they are determined by her association of interests. marriage is on the same level with prayer, atonement and the eucharist, and animal magnetism with science, theology and medicine. it is hard to know where to begin in so confused a region. she is handicapped, to begin with, by the rigidity of her idealism and actually by her limitation both of the power and personality of god. this statement would probably be as sharply contradicted by mrs. eddy's apologists as anything in this study, but it is not hastily made. philosophically he is for mrs. eddy only an exalted ideality into relation with which we may think ourselves by a change in our system of belief. actually, as we shall see, this conception yields to emotional and devotional needs--it is bound to--but in theory it is unyielding. now the accepted christian conception of god is entirely different. both the old and new testaments conceive a god who is lovingly and justly conscious of all our need, who is constantly drawing near to us in manifold appeals and approaches and who has, above all, in the incarnation made a supreme and saving approach to humanity. he is no more rigid than love is rigid; his attitude toward us, his children, changes as the attitude of a father toward the changing tempers of a child. now all this may be true or it may be only the dream of our strangely sensitive personalities, but whether it be true or not, it is the christian conception and any denial of this or any radically different substitution for it cannot call itself christian save as it writes into the word christian connotations to which it has heretofore been utterly strange. _mrs. eddy's interpretation of jesus christ_ mrs. eddy begins, therefore, with the handicap of a philosophy which can be adjusted to christian theology only through fundamental modifications of that theology. it is hard to systematize the result. mrs. eddy distinguishes between jesus and christ. her conception of jesus is reasonably clear whether it be historically true or not, but her conception of the christ is vague and fluctuating. jesus was apparently the first christian scientist, anticipating, though not completely, its philosophy and demonstrating its practices. his teachings are so interpreted as to be made to yield a christian science content. when he urged the commandment: "thou shalt have no other gods before me" what he really meant was, "thou shalt have no belief of life as mortal; thou shalt not know evil, for there is one life."[ ] "he proved by his deeds that christian science destroys sickness, sin and death. our master taught no mere theory, doctrine or belief; it was the divine principle of all real being which he taught and practiced."[ ] "he taught his followers the healing power of truth and love"[ ] and "the proofs of truth, life and love which jesus gave by casting out error and healing the sick, completed his earthly mission."[ ] "the truth taught by jesus the elders scoffed at because it demanded more than they were willing to practice."[ ] they, therefore, crucified him and he seemed to die, but he did not. apparently he was not dead when he was entombed and his three days in the tomb gave him "a refuge from his foes, a place in which to solve the great problem of being." in other words he demonstrated his own healing in the tomb. "he met and mastered, on the basis of christian science, the power of mind over matter, all the claims of medicine, surgery and hygiene. he took no drugs to allay inflammation; he did not depend upon food or pure air to resuscitate wasted energies; he did not require the skill of a surgeon to heal the torn palms and bind up the wounded side and lacerated feet, that he might use those hands to remove the napkin and winding sheet and that he might employ his feet as before."[ ] [footnote : page . all citations from last edition.] [footnote : page .] [footnote : page .] [footnote : page .] [footnote : page .] [footnote : page .] "his disciples believed jesus to be dead while he was hidden in the sepulchre, whereas he was alive, demonstrating within the narrow tomb the power of the spirit to overrule mortal, material sense." his ascension was a final demonstration in which he "rose above the physical knowledge of his disciples and the material senses saw him no more." he attained this perfection of demonstration only gradually and he left behind him an incomplete revelation which was to wait for its full illumination for the coming of mrs. eddy and christian science. perhaps more justly he left behind him, according to mrs. eddy and her followers, a body of teaching which could not be clearly understood until she came to complete the revelation. at any rate, christian science is really his second coming. _christian science his second coming_ in an advertisement printed in the new york _tribune_ on january , , augusta e. stetson says: "christ in christian science is come to the understanding of those who looked for his reappearing." and if certain sentences which follow mean anything, they mean that, in the thought of mrs. eddy's followers, she completes what jesus began and fulfills the prophecy of his reappearing. "her earthly experience runs parallel with that of her master; understood in a small degree only by the few who faintly see and accept the truth, she stood during her earthly mission and now stands on the mount of spiritual illumination toward whose heights no feet but those of the blessed master have so directly toiled, first in agony and finally, like jesus christ the masculine representative of the fatherhood of god, she as the feminine representative of the motherhood of god, will appear in triumphant demonstration of divine power and glory as the combined ideal man in god's image and likeness." and, indeed, there are not wanting intimations in "science and health" which give to mrs. eddy a certainty in this region which jesus himself did not possess. he falters where she firmly trod. no need to dwell upon the significant omissions which such an interpretation of the historic jesus as this demands. the immensely laborious and painstaking scholarship which has sought, perplexedly enough it must be confessed, to discover behind the gospel narratives the fundamental facts and realities of his life, is entirely ignored. mrs. eddy has no place for the social aspects of the teachings of christ, indeed his whole system of ethic could be "blacked out"; as far as her teaching is concerned it would make absolutely no difference. mrs. eddy distinguishes, in theory at least though there is no consistency in her use of terms, between jesus and the christ. "jesus is the human man, and christ is the divine idea; hence the duality of jesus, the christ" (page ). "jesus is the name of the man who, more than all other men, has presented christ, the true idea of god, healing the sick and the sinning and destroying the power of death" (page ). "in an age of ecclesiastical despotism, jesus introduced the teaching and practice of christianity ... but to reach his example and test its unerring science according to his rule, ... a better understanding of god as divine principle, love, rather than personality or the man jesus, is required" (page ). it is difficult enough to know just what this means, but as one stands far enough back from it all it seems to reduce jesus historically to the first outstanding christian science teacher and healer. "jesus established what he said by demonstration, thus making his acts of higher importance than his words. he proved what he taught. this is the science of christianity. jesus _proved_ the principle, which heals the sick and casts out error, to be divine" (page ). he is, therefore, historically of chiefest value as the demonstrator of christian science, the full philosophy of which apparently awaited a later revelation. "christ is the ideal truth, that comes to heal sickness and sin through christian science, and attributes all power to god" (page ). "he unveiled the christ, the spiritual idea of divine love" (page ). the christ of christian science, then, is an ideal truth, a spiritual idea, apparently an abstraction. but mrs. eddy is not consistent in her use of these two names. on one page christ is "the spiritual idea of divine love"; on the next page "we need christ and him crucified" (page ), though how an ideal truth or a spiritual idea could possibly be crucified we are not told. in many of her passages mrs. eddy uses the familiar phrase, jesus christ, in apparently its ordinary connotations. _the incarnation: christian theology and christian science belong really to different regions_ the incarnation is disposed of in the same vague way. "those instructed in christian science have reached the glorious perception that god is the only author of man. the virgin mother conceived this idea of god and gave to her ideal the name of jesus."[ ] "the illumination of mary's spiritual sense put to silence material law and its order of generation, and brought forth her child by the revelation of truth. the holy ghost, or divine spirit, overshadowed the pure sense of the virgin-mother with the full recognition that being is spirit."[ ] "jesus was the offspring of mary's self-conscious communion with god."[ ] now all this is neither honest supernaturalism nor the honest acceptance of the normal methods of birth. it is certainly not the equivalent of the gospel account whether the gospel account be accepted or rejected. to use a phrase which has come into use since "science and health" was written, this is a "smoke screen" under cover of which mrs. eddy escapes the necessity of either accepting or denying the testimony of the gospels. [footnote : page .] [footnote : page .] [footnote : page .] something of this, one must confess, one may find in not a little religious teaching old and new, but it is doubtful if there is anywhere so outstanding an instance of what one may call the smoke screen method in the consideration of the incarnation, as in the passages just quoted. as a matter of fact all this is simply the attempt to fit the idealistic dualism, which is the real philosophic basis of christian science and which, in so far as it is capable of explanation at all, can be as easily explained in two pages as two hundred, into the theology in which mrs. eddy was nurtured and which was a background common to both herself and her disciples. christian science would carry far less weight in the race it is running if it frankly cut itself clear of a theology with which it has fundamentally no affinity. this indoctrination of an idealistic dualism with a content of christian theology probably heightens the appeal of the system to those who are most at home in a new faith as they discover there the familiar phrases of their older faith, but it weakens the fundamental christian science apologetic. i think, however, we ought justly to recognize this as simply an inevitable aspect in the transition of christian science from the orthodox faith and experience of historic christianity to a faith and experience of its own. seen as a curious half-truth development made possible by a whole group of forces in action at the end of the nineteenth century, christian science is reasonably intelligible, but as a system of doctrine built upon the hitherto accepted bases of christian fact and teaching, it is not intelligible at all and the long controversy between the christian theologian and the christian science lecturer would best be ended by recognizing that they have so little in common as to make attack and counter-attack a movement in two different dimensions. the one thing which they have in common is a certain set of words and phrases, but these words and phrases have such entirely different meanings on the one side and the other as to make the use of them hopelessly misleading. _the atonement. the cross of christian science and the cross of theology_ there are passing references to the cross in "science and health," but the word is used generally in a figurative and sentimental way. mrs. eddy's cross is simply the pain of being misunderstood and criticised in the preaching and practice of christian science, though indeed the cross of jesus was also the outcome of hostilities and misunderstandings and a final and terribly fierce method of criticism. one feels that mainly she is thinking of her own cross as a misunderstood and abused woman and for such suggestion she prefers the cup as a figure to the cross. as for the atonement "every pang of repentance and suffering, every effort for reform, every good thought and deed will help us to understand jesus' atonement for sin and aid its efficacy."[ ] "wisdom and love require many sacrifices of self to save us from sin." all this seems to be in line with the moral theory of the atonement until we see that in such a line as this there is no recognition of the fact that again and again we suffer and that largely for others, and when she adds that "its [the atonement] scientific explanation is that suffering is an error of sinful sense which truth destroys, and that eventually both sin and suffering will fall at the feet of everlasting love" (page ), those passages cancel one another, for if suffering be "an error of sinful sense" it is hard to see how any pang of it can help us to understand jesus' atonement unless his suffering be also "an error of sinful sense," and this is to reduce the atonement to a like error. [footnote : page .] in another connection mrs. eddy finds the efficacy of the crucifixion "in the practical affection and goodness it demonstrated for mankind." but this turns out to be nothing more than that the crucifixion offers christ a needed opportunity for the instruction of his disciples to triumph over the grave. but since in another connection we are told he never died at all (chapter atonement and eucharist, paragraph "jesus in the tomb") even this dissolves into unreality. moreover the "eternal christ in his spiritual selfhood never suffered."[ ] whichever road she takes here mrs. eddy reaches an impasse. it ought to be said, in justice to mrs. eddy, that her treatment of the atonement reflects the difficulty she found in the theology in which she had been trained as a girl and that there are many true insights in her contentions. she was at least seeking a vital and constructive interpretation and doubtless her observations, confused as they are, have been for her followers a real way out of a real difficulty. here, as in so many other regions, "science and health" is best understood by its backgrounds. [footnote : a curious and far-off echo of early docetism which also in its own way reduced christ's suffering to a simple seeming to suffer.] as a matter of fact there is in christian science absolutely no soil in which to plant the cross as the cross is understood in christian theology. there is no place in christian science for vicarious atonement, whether by god or man; there is little place in christian science for redemptive suffering; there is a rather narrow region in which suffering may be considered as instructive, a guide, perhaps, to lead us out of unhappy or shadowed regions into the regions of physical and, maybe, spiritual and moral well-being, and to quench the love of sin.[ ] mrs. eddy sometimes speaks of christ as the saviour but if her system be pressed to a logical conclusion she must empty the word of all the associations which it has hitherto had and make it simply the equivalent of a teacher or demonstrator. [footnote : page . but this is to recognize the reality of suffering. mrs. eddy is here on the threshold of a great truth--that suffering is an aspect of education--but she goes no further.] _sin an error of mortal mind_ sin along with sickness and death are the projections of mortal error, the creations of mortal mind; sin, sickness and death are to be classified as effects of error. christ came "to destroy the belief of sin." all this is to root sin simply in the mind. no intimation at all here of the part which a perverted will may play in the entanglements of life; no intimation of the immense force of the emotional side of life; no intimation here of the immense part which sheer selfishness plays. mrs. eddy's sin is far too simple. there is, once more, a sound reason for that. mrs. eddy is twice-born, if you will, but the struggle from which she finally emerged with whatever measure of victory she attained was not fought out with conscience as the field of battle, or in the final reconciliation of a divided self finding unity and peace on some high level. if mrs. eddy's true struggle was of the soul and not of complaining nerves she has left no record of it anywhere. it was rather the reaction of a speculative mind against the new england theology. her experience is strangely remote from the experience of saul of tarsus, or augustine, or john bunyan. this is not to deny that in the practical outcome of christian science as evidenced in the life of its adherents there is not a very real power of helpful moral adjustment, but the secret of that must be sought in something else than either its philosophy or its theology. christian theologians themselves have been by no means agreed as to what sin really is. under their touch it became too often a theological abstraction rather than entanglement of personality caught in manifold urgencies and pulled this way and that by competing forces battling in the will and flaming in passion and desire. but a sin which has no reality save through a mistaken belief in its existence is certainly as far from the fact of a world like ours as is a sin which is only one factor in a scheme of redemption. but at any rate, if sin have no reality except our mistaken persuasion that it be true and if we are delivered from it directly we cease to believe in it and affirm in the stead of it the reality of love and goodness, then while there may be in such a faith as this both the need and possibility of the recasting of our personal lives, there is in it neither need nor possibility of the christian doctrine of the atonement. naturally since man is incapable of sin, sickness and death, he is unfallen, nor is "his capacity or freedom to sin any part of the divine plan." "a mortal sinner is not god's man. mortals are the counterfeits of immortals; they are the children of the wicked one, or the one evil which declares that man begins in dust or as a material embryo" (page ). here also is an echo from an early time and a far-off land. it is not likely that mrs. eddy ever heard of mani or manicheeism, or knew to what a travail of soul st. augustine was reduced when he fought his way through just a kindred line of teaching which, to save god from any contact with or responsibility for evil, affirmed our dual genesis and made us on one side children of darkness and on the other the children of light, without ever really trying to achieve in a single personality any reconciliation of two natures drawn from two entirely different sources. nor does mrs. eddy know that one eusebius, finding much evidence of this faith in the christianity of the fourth century, dismissed it briefly enough as "an insane heresy." heresy it certainly was for all those who were fighting their way out of their paganism into an ordered christian faith and whether it be insane or no, it is of all the explanations which have been offered for the presence of evil in a world supposedly ruled by the love and goodness of god, the one which will least bear examination. it has been dead and buried these thousand years. we may deny, if we are so minded, any freedom of the will at all, so involving ourselves in an inevitable sequence of cause and effect as to make us also simply weather-vanes driven east or west by winds of inheritance and environment which we have no power to deflect and to which we can only choose to respond. but to deny us the freedom to sin and so to shut us up to a determinism of goodness is no more in accord with the facts than to deny us the power to be good and shut us up to a determinism of sin. if we are free at all we are free in all directions. _the sacraments disappear. mrs. eddy's theology a reaction from the rigid evangelicism of her youth_ "science and health" deals in the same radical way with the sacraments. nothing at all, apparently, is made of baptism save that mrs. eddy says our baptism is a purification from all error. in her account of the last supper the cup is mostly dwelt upon and that only as showing forth the bitter experience of jesus. the bread "is the great truth of spiritual being, healing the sick" and the breaking of it the "explaining" it to others. more is made of what is called the last spiritual breakfast with the disciples by lake galilee than of the last supper in the upper room. "this spiritual meeting with our lord in the dawn of a new light is the morning meal which christian scientists commemorate" (page ). "our bread," she says, "which cometh down from heaven, is truth; our wine, the inspiration of love" (page ). all this is of a piece with the general allegorical use of the old and new testaments in "science and health," but it is a marked departure from the sacrament of the lord's supper even in the simple memorial way in which it is kept by non-liturgical churches. mrs. eddy's theology, then, is in part a reaction from the hard phrasing of the evangelical doctrines in which she was trained and it is indeed in part a reaching out toward the interpretation of these doctrines in terms of life and experience, but as a theology it is extraordinarily loose and even though the familiar phrases of protestant and catholic faiths are employed, what is left is wholly out of the current of the main movement of christian theology heretofore. the central articles of the historic creeds practically disappear under mrs. eddy's treatment. here, then, is a philosophy which will not bear examination, a use of scripture which can possibly have no standing in any scholarly fellowship, and a theology which empties the central christian doctrines of the great meanings which have heretofore been associated with them. and yet in spite of all this, christian science gets on and commends itself to so considerable a number of really sincere people as to make it evident enough that it must have some kind of appealing and sustaining power. where, then, is the hiding of its power? partly, of course, in its spaciousness. there are times when a half-truth has a power which the whole truth does not seem to possess. half truths can be accepted unqualifiedly; they are capable of a more direct appeal and if they be skillfully directed toward needs and perplexities they are always sure of an acceptance; they make things too simple, that is one secret of their hold upon us. this, of course, is more largely true among the spiritually undisciplined and the mentally untrained, but even the wisest folk find it easier upon occasion to accept a half truth which promises an easy satisfaction or deliverance than a whole truth which needs to be wrestled with and may be agonized over before it brings us into some better estate. _the real power of christian science is in neither its philosophy nor its theology_ we have already seen what predisposing influences there were in the breaking down of what we have called the accepted validations of historic christianity--due, as we have seen also, to many contributing causes--to offer unusual opportunity to any new movement which promised deliverance. but one must seek the conditions which have made possible so many strange cults and movements in america, not only in the breakdown of the historic faiths, but also in the state of popular education. democracy tends, among other things, to lead us to value a movement by the number of people whom it is able to attract. we are, somehow, persuaded that once a majority has accepted anything, what they have accepted must be true and right. even a strong minority always commands respect. any movement, therefore, which succeeds in attracting a considerable number of followers is bound to attract others also, just because it has already attracted so many. one has only to listen to the current comment on christian science to feel that this is a real factor in its growth. democracy believes in education, but has not commonly the patience to make education thoroughgoing. its education is very much more likely to be a practical or propaganda education than such training as creates the analytical temper and supplies those massive backgrounds by which the departures of a day are always to be tested. in america particularly there is an outstanding want of background. it needs history, philosophy, economic understanding and a wealth of racial experience to give to any people either the power to quickly discriminate between the truth and the half-truth, or to carry itself with poise through a transitional period. but one may not dispose of the distinct hold of christian science upon its followers by such generalizations. the real inwardness of no religion can ever be known from its theology. a sincere devotion may attend a most deficient theology and we need to be charitable in judging the forms which other people's faith takes. what seems unreasonable to one may seem quite right to another and whatever carries a sincere faith deepening into a positive spiritual experience accomplishes for the moment its purpose. these studies of christian science are severe--for one must deal with it as honestly as he knows how--but the writer does not mean that they should fail in a due recognition of the spiritual sincerity of christian scientists. we must therefore go in to what is most nearly vitally central in the system to find the real secret of its powers. it continues and grows as a system of healing and a religion. vii christian science as a system of healing and a religion christian science practice is the application of its philosophy and theology to bodily healing. this is really the end toward which the whole system is directed. "science and health" is an exposition of mrs. eddy's system as a healing force. her philosophy and theology are incidental, or--if that is not a fair statement--they both condition and are conditioned by her system of healing. there is hardly a page in her book without its reference to sickness and health. her statements are consequently always involved and one needs to stand quite back from them to follow their outline. here, as elsewhere, one may read deeply and indirectly between the lines attitudes and beliefs against which she is reacting. her reactions against the environment of her girlhood and early womanhood affect her point of view so distinctly that without the recognition of this a good deal of what she says is a puzzle without a key. _christian science the application of philosophy and theology to bodily healing_ she had been taught, among other things, that sickness is a punishment for sin. one may safely assume this for the theology of her formative period fell back upon this general statement in its attempt to reconcile individual suffering and special providence. one ought not justly to say that mrs. eddy ever categorically affirms that she had been taught this, or as categorically denies the truth of it, but there are statements--as for example page --which seem to imply that she is arguing against this and directing her practitioners how to meet and overcome it. this perhaps accounts for the rather difficult and wavering treatment of sin and sickness in a connection where logically sickness alone should be considered. mrs. eddy would not naturally have thus associated sin and sickness had they not been associated for her in earlier teaching and yet, as has been said, all this is implicit rather than explicit. the key to a great deal in "science and health" is not in what the author says, but in the reader's power to discover behind her statements what she is "writing down." her system is both denial and affirmation. in the popular interpretation of it quite as much is made of denial and the recognition of error as of its more positive aspects, but in the book there is a pretty constant interweaving of both the denial of evil and the affirmation of well-being. there is a sound element of wisdom in many of her injunctions, but more needed perhaps fifty years ago than now. we must remember constantly that mrs. eddy is writing against the backgrounds of a somber theology, a medical practice which relied very greatly on the use of drugs which was at the same time limited in its materia medica and too largely experimental in its practice. she was writing before the day of the trained nurse with her efficient poise. the atmosphere of a sick room is not naturally cheerful and generally both the medical procedure and the spiritual comfort of the sick room of the fifties and sixties did very little to lighten depression. when, therefore, mrs. eddy urges, as she does, an atmosphere of confidence and sympathy she is directly in the right direction. _looseness of christian science diagnosis_ as we pass beyond these things which are now commonplace, what she says is not so simple. it is difficult to say how far the healing which attends upon christian science is in her thought the result of divine power immediately in exercise, and how far it is the outcome of disciplines due to the acceptance of her theology and philosophy. it is hard also to distinguish between the part the healer plays and the contribution of the subject. there is no logical place in christian science practice for physical diagnosis. "physicians examine the pulse, tongue, lungs, to discover the condition of matter, when in fact all is mind. the body is the substratum of mortal mind, and this so-called mind must finally yield to the mandate of immortal mind" (page ). the result of this in practice is that the christian science healer accepts either the diagnosis of the medical schools, reported second-hand or else the patient's own statement of his condition. needless to say there is room for very great looseness of diagnosis in such a practice as this. the actuality of sickness must be recognized neither directly nor indirectly. the sickness must not be thought or talked. here also, as far as the patient is concerned, is a procedure of undebated value. it all comes back, as we shall see presently, to suggestion, but any procedure which frees the patient from depressing suggestion and substitutes therefor an encouraging suggestion is in the right direction. at the same time those who are not christian scientists would rather stubbornly believe that somebody must recognize the fact of sickness or else we cannot begin to set in action the machinery for curing it, even if that machinery be christian science itself, and we do not change this rather stubborn fact by covering sickness with the blank designation error. even the error is real for the time being.[ ] [footnote : the writer once received an unexpected sidelight on the practice of the christian science healer in this connection. he once enjoyed the friendship of a christian science healer with whom he often played golf. he called this healer up one morning to make an appointment. his voice was not recognized over the telephone and he was mistaken for a patient. the reply came back in professional tones--"and what error are you suffering from this morning?" when he answered that his own particular error was his persuasion that he could play golf the telephone atmosphere was immediately changed.] the results of fear are constantly dwelt upon and this too is in the right direction. much is made of the creative power of mind in that it imparts purity, health and beauty (page ). when mrs. eddy says on page that disease is expressed not so much by the lips as in the functions of the body she is making one of those concessions to common sense which she makes over and over again, but when she attempts to explain how erroneous or--as one may venture to call it--diseased belief expresses itself in bodily function one is reminded of quimby. temperature, for example, is wholly mental. mrs. eddy's reason for believing this is apparently because "the body when bereft of mortal mind at first cools and afterward it is resolved into its primitive mortal elements." "mortal mind produces animal heat and then expels it through the abandonment of a belief or increases it to the point of self-destruction" (page ). fever is a mental state. destroy fear and you end fever. in all this there is a profound ignorance of the real causes of fever which helps us to understand the marked deficiencies of the whole system. there is nowhere any recognition of the body as an instrument for the transformation and conservation and release of energy real as a dynamo. there is nowhere any recognition of the commonplaces of modern medical science in the tracing of germ infections. true enough, medical science had hardly more than begun when "science and health" was first written to redefine fevers in terms of germ infection and the consequent disorganization of the balance of physical functionings, and the oxidation of waste materials real as fire on a hearth, but that is no reason why such ignorance should be continued from generation to generation. _the power of mental environment_ in general, christian science practice as indicated in "science and health" is a strange mingling of the true, the assumed and the false; its assumptions are backed up by selected illustrations and all that challenges it is ignored. disease is unreal because mind is not sick and matter cannot be (page ). but mind is "the only i, or us, divine principle, ... life, truth, love; deity, which outlines but is not outlined" (page ). in other words mind is an ideal affirmation which mrs. eddy assumes to underlie human experience and possibly to reveal itself through human experience, and it certainly does not follow that while an ideal affirmation is not sick, a human being involved in the necessary relationships of our present material existence may not be. mrs. eddy never clearly distinguishes between what a speculative mind may affirm and actual experience report. her dialectic is a constant wrestling with reality in a range of statement which involves her in many contradictions. she recognizes what she denies and denies what she recognizes and, in a lawyer's phrase, constantly changes the venue. but through and behind it all is an intelligible method. confidence is to be reëstablished, fear is allayed, the sufferer from error led to commit himself to healing forces. these healing forces are not consistently defined. sometimes they are the "power of the mind to sustain the body" (page ); sometimes "the power of christian science" (page ), or "the power of truth" (page ) or divine spirit, or her book itself. "continue to read and the book will become the physician, allaying the tremor which truth often brings to error when destroying it" (page ). mrs. eddy sometimes anticipates in a vague way the reaction of thought and emotion upon physiological function to which cannon has given such careful attention, but her definite statements are strangely inadequate. "what i term _chemicalization_ is the upheaval produced when immortal truth is destroying erroneous mortal belief. mental chemicalization brings sin and sickness to the surface, forcing impurities to pass away, as is the case with a fermenting fluid" (page ).[ ] she recognizes the limits of christian science practice when she advises her followers to leave surgery and the adjustment of broken bones and dislocations to the fingers of a surgeon until the advancing age admits the efficacy and supremacy of mind (page ). [footnote : compare "the quimby manuscripts," p. .] great care is to be taken as to the patient's mental environment. mrs. eddy's constant emphasis upon this explains the excessive separatist nature of christian science. more than almost any other of its cults it separates its followers from those who do not belong to the cult. they cannot, naturally, attend churches in which the reality of disease is recognized; they must have their own nurses as well as their own healers; in certain regions they must confine their reading to their own literature; their children must be educated, on their religious side, in their own cult schools and they cannot consistently associate themselves with remedial movements which assume another philosophy as their basis. it is difficult for a detached observer to see how a consistent christian scientist reconciles the general conclusions of a modern scientific education with the presuppositions of his cult. that he does this is one more testimony to a power which indeed is exercised in many other fields than the field of christian science to keep in the practical conduct of life many of our governing conceptions in different and apparently water-tight compartments. _christian science defines disease as a belief which if treated as an error will disappear_ the answer to such a line of criticism is, of course, in the familiar christian science phrase that perfect demonstration has not yet been achieved in the regions in which the christian scientist appears to be inconsistent. but beyond this is the rather stubborn fact that in some of these regions demonstration never will be realized; christian science is confined to the field in which suggestion may operate. mrs. eddy is most specific about diseases, concerning which the medical practice of her time was most concerned and in the light of later medical science most ignorant--fever, inflammation, indigestion, scrofula, consumption and the like. these are all beliefs and if treated as error they will disappear. even death is a dream which mind can master, though this doubtless is only mrs. eddy's way of affirming immortality. she hardly means to say that death is not a fact which practically has to be reckoned with in ways more final and unescapable than any other fact in life. as dr. campbell morgan once said: "if you have the misfortune to imagine that you are dead, they will bury you." mrs. eddy concludes her chapter on christian science practice with an allegory which she calls a mental court case, the suggestion of which is to be found in one of the quimby manuscripts.[ ] since this manuscript is dated it anticipates mrs. eddy by almost thirteen years. the setting is like the trial of faithful and christian in the town of vanity fair as recorded in bunyan's "pilgrim progress." doubtless memories of mrs. eddy's reading of that deathless allegory are reproduced in this particular passage which the author is inclined to believe she wrote with more pleasure than anything else ever turned out by her too facile pen. personal sense is the plaintiff, mortal man the defendant, false belief the attorney for personal sense, mortal minds, materia medica, anatomy, physiology, hypnotism, envy, greed and ingratitude constitute the jury. the court room is filled with interested spectators and judge medicine is on the bench. the case is going strongly against the prisoner and he is likely to expire on the spot when christian science is allowed to speak as counsel for the defense. he appeals in the name of the plaintiff to the supreme court of spirit, secures from the jury of the spiritual senses a verdict of "not guilty" and with the dismissal of the case the chapter on christian science practice ends. [footnote : "the quimby manuscripts," p. .] _christian science has a rich field to work_ now what can finally be said of the whole matter? in general, two things. recognizing the force and reality of psycho-therapy christian science gets its power as a healing system from the great number of people who are open to its appeal and the shrewd combination of elements in the appeal itself. in spite of our great advance in medical knowledge and practice and in spite of the results of an improved hygiene there remains in society at large a very great deposit of physical ill-being sometimes acute, sometimes chronic, sometimes clearly defined, sometimes vague, badly treated cases, hopeless cases and a great reach of cases which are due rather to disturbed mental and moral states than to ascertainable physical causes. illness has its border-land region as well as thought and the border-land faiths make their foremost appeal to those who, for one reason or another, live in border-land physical states. and, to repeat, the number of those who belong to this group is unexpectedly large. naturally such as these grasp at anything which offers help; they supply to the manufacturer of cure-all drugs their clientele; they fill printed pages with testimonials of marvellous cures achieved where the regular medical faculty had been helpless; they crowd about every faith healer; they are the comrades of the pilgrims to lourdes and ste. anne de beaupré; they belong to the fellowship of those who, in the middle ages, haunted shrines and sought out relics and asked to be touched by kings. we discover their forebears in the pages of the gospels and as far back as any records go we see this long, pathetic procession of the hopeless or the handicapped seeking help. and again and again they get it, for we have also seen that, given faith enough either in a saint or a shrine or a system, psycho-therapy with certain subjects and in certain cases does heal. but this type of healing depends upon no one philosophy or no single force except indeed those obscure forces which are released by suggestion. while this was being written certain evangelistic faith healers in the city of detroit were sending out broadsides of testimonials to their healings, as definite in detail as the testimonials in "science and health," or the _christian science journal_, and yet the basal principles by which these men have claimed to work are as different from the basal principles of christian science as east is from west. while this is being revised coué, the apostle of suggestion according to the nancy school, is besieged in new york by those who have been led to hope for healing through the success of his method. whether the relic be true or false does not matter if only the relic be believed in. _one of the most strongly-drawn systems of psycho-therapy ever offered_ now christian science is one of the most strongly drawn psycho-therapeutic agencies ever offered. most faith healing systems heretofore have depended upon some place, some thing, some healer. here is a system capable of the widest dissemination and dependent only upon a book and its interpreters. it universalizes what has heretofore, for one reason or another, been localized. it is shrewdly organized, as far as propaganda goes, and effectively directed. it is widely advertised by its friends--and its critics. its temples, for beauty and dignity, put to shame most protestant churches. its rituals combine in an unusual way the simple and the dramatic. it is so fortunately situated as to be able to keep finance--which is a trying element in protestant church life--in the background. its followers have that apostolic fervour which attaches to movements sure of their divine commission and not yet much worn by time. it possesses distinctly one of sir henry jones' hall-marks of religion. "it impassions the spirit of its disciples and adds consequence to the things it sanctions or condemns." it draws upon deeply established christian reverences and faiths. it secures for its authority the persistent but perplexed faith in the bible which the average protestant inherits and for those who believe in it the force of this authority is no wise weakened by the fact that by every sound canon of biblical interpretation it is illicit. its very dogmatism is an asset. it could not do its work if it were less sure. the confusions of the systems which try the critically minded are a contribution to the devout who find in them an added opportunity for faith. its experience meetings create enthusiasm and confidence. it is, in short, more than any one of the movements we are here considering, a clearly defined cult whose intensities, limitations and mystic assurances all combine to produce among its disciples the temper most favourable to suggestion and it locks up on its force as a system of healing. an accurate analysis of what it actually accomplishes would require an immense and probably impossible labour--a knowledge of each case, an accurate diagnosis when even for the trained diagnostician the thing is difficult enough, and the following up of all reported cases. the medical faculty would probably have done better to have taken such movements as these more seriously and to have brought to them a trained investigation which, except in the case of lourdes, has never even been attempted. doubtless there is looseness and inconsistency in the whole system. almost any one who has had a practical observation of the working of christian science has knowledge enough not only of looseness and inconsistency but of what seems to the non-christian science mind positive untruth. something, however, must always be allowed here for the way in which the mind acts under excitement and for the way in which delusion deludes. all this combines to make any final judgment in this region difficult, but there still remains, after all qualification, an arresting solidity of achievement. christian science does work, especially with the self-absorbed, the neurotic and those who have needed, above all, for their physical deliverance, a new access to faith and courage. christian science practitioners have also an unusual opportunity in what may be called moral rehabilitation with physical consequences. the physician has a better chance with the bodies of his patients than with their souls; the minister a better chance with the spiritual needs of his parishioners than with their bodies and habits; the christian science practitioner to an unusual extent has the whole of life under his control and it ought in all fairness to be conceded that this power is helpfully employed. the very discipline of christian science is itself a therapeutic. there are really a good many things which become non-existent directly you begin to act as if they did not exist. an atmosphere in which no one refers to his ailment and every one to his well-being is a therapeutic atmosphere. psychologists have taught us that if we go through the motions of being happy we are likely to have an access of happiness; if we go through the motions of being unhappy we have an access of misery. if we go through the motions of being well, very often we achieve a sound measure of health. _but it is fundamentally a system of suggestion_ all this has been so strongly dwelt upon of late as to make any extended consideration of it unnecessary here, as indeed any extended consideration is impossible for any one save a specialist. what we are more concerned with is the way in which the discipline and philosophy of christian science produce their results. the answer to this question is as plain as anything can be in our present state of knowledge, for essentially, as a healing force, christian science stands or falls with the therapeutic power of suggestion. it is a strongly drawn system of psycho-therapy because it is a strongly drawn system of suggestion. its suggestion involves assumptions which are sometimes philosophy, sometimes theology, and more commonly a baffling interplay of the two. but the outcome of it all is the practical persuasion on the part of the patient that he is not sick and does not need so much to get well as to demonstrate that he is well, and that in this demonstration he has an absolute force on his side. to this end the whole body of affirmation, persuasion, assumption, suggestion and technique of christian science is directed. as one tries to analyze these separate elements they are, taken singly, inconsistent, often unverifiable and often enough, by any tests at all save the tests of christian science, positively untrue. but as mrs. eddy has combined them and as they are applied in practice they do possess an undeniable power. they are not dependent, as has been said, fundamentally upon persons or things or places. here is a coherent system, the force of which may be felt when it is not understood and it bears upon the perplexed or the impressionable with very great power. it would be appreciably weakened if any one of its constituent elements were taken out of it. but fundamentally it can do no more than any other system of suggestion, unquestionably accepted, can do. _it is bound to be affected by our growing understanding of the ranges of suggestion_ a deal of water has gone under the bridge since mary baker eddy began her work. what was then almost wholly involved in mystery is now beginning to be reduced to law. the psychology of suggestion is by no means clear as yet, nor are the students of it agreed in their conclusions, but we do know enough about the complex character of consciousness, the actuality of the subconscious and the reaction of strongly held attitudes upon bodily states to be in the way, generally, of freeing this whole great matter from the priest, the healer, the charlatan or the prophet of strange cults and referring it hereafter for direction and employment to its proper agents--the physician, the expert in disordered mental conditions and the instructed spiritual adviser. it is now generally agreed that suggestion, however induced, may positively affect bodily function. if it is a wrong suggestion its effects are hurtful, right suggestion its effects are helpful. now since a vast range of physical maladjustments--and this may be broadened to include nervous maladjustments as well--is functional, suggestive therapeutics have a far-reaching and distinct field. when christian science or any other healing cult reports cures in this field, those cures, if verified by sufficient testimony, may be accepted as accomplished. those who have accomplished them may take what credit they will for their own agency in the matter, but for all that the cure is no testimony at all to the truth or falsity of their system. it proves only that those helped have believed it. the matter of organic healing is more difficult. medical science does not generally admit the possibility of organic change through suggestion. there may be, however, a real difference of opinion as to whether a particular trouble is functional or organic. here is a border-land not so much of fact as of diagnosis. a cure may be reported as of an organic trouble when the basal diagnosis was wrong and it was only functional, but the body possesses undoubtedly the power of correcting or at least of limiting organic disease. tuberculosis is an organic disease but it is again and again limited and finally overcome without the knowledge of the subject. post-mortem examinations may reveal scars in the lungs and so reflect processes only thus brought to light. whatever serves general physical well-being may greatly help the body in eliminating disease and securing a going measure of physical health. in such indirect ways as these suggestion may, therefore, while not acting directly upon diseased organism, contribute most distinctly to arrest organic disease. thoughtful physicians are ready to concede this and thus open a door for a measure of organic healing which technically their science denies. a very revealing light has been let in upon this whole region by hypnotism. some of the students of hypnotism are inclined to go as far as to admit organic change under hypnotic suggestion. "strong, persistent impressions or suggestions made on the reflex organic consciousness of the inferior centers may modify their functional disposition, induce trophic changes, and even change organic structures."[ ] [footnote : sidis, "the psychology of suggestion," p. .] christian science, then, as a healing agency has a great field for there are always folk enough to heal. it has a method, a discipline highly effective in producing changed mental and spiritual states and, strangely enough, it is all the more effective because it is so narrowly true. those to whom it makes its appeal are, for the most part, not capable of analyzing through to their sources its fundamental inveracities, nor would they be inclined to do that if they were able. its vagueness and its spacious rhetoric really give it power. it does produce results and probably one case of physical betterment has a prevailing power which a chapter of criticisms cannot overcome and, more than that, one case of physical betterment may screen a dozen in which nothing happened at all. for christian science has in this region two alibis which can always be brought into action, the most perfect ever devised. if it fails to cure it is either because the one who was not cured lacked faith, or because of the erroneous belief of some one else. a system which believes that the toxic effect of poisons depends upon the vote of the majority in that arsenic will cease to be a poison when everybody ceases to think of it as a poison and will be a poison as long as anybody believes it is, is perfectly safe even if it should fail to cure a case of arsenical poison, for until facts and experience cease to weigh at all there will always be some one somewhere believing that arsenic is a poison and that one will be the scapegoat for the system. _as a religion it is strongest in teaching that god has meaning for the whole of life_ christian science is, however, more than a system of mental therapeutics, it is also a religion and due allowance must be made in any just appraisal of it for the way in which it has made religion real to many for whom religion had ceased to have a working reality. it needs to be said on one side that a good deal of christian science religion is really taking the ark of god to battle, using religion, that is, for comfort, material prosperity, health and just such tangible things. but christian science meets a demand of the time also just here. our own age, deeply entangled in material satisfactions, has no mind to postpone the satisfactions of religion to a future life. the monk and, indeed, the generality of the devout in the medieval church sought in self-limited earthly joy a proper discipline for the soul and a state in contrast to which the felicities for which they paid so great a price should be the more welcome. the devout of mary baker eddy's time, though inclined to find in material well-being a plain mark of divine favour, none the less accepted sickness and sorrow as from the hand of god and prayed that with a meek and lowly heart they might endure this fatherly correction and, having learned obedience by the things they suffered, have a place amongst those who, through faith and patience, inherit his presence. but our own time is not so eager to inherit promises as to enter into possession. a religion which does not demonstrate itself in actual well-being is under suspicion. the social passion now much in evidence among the churches grows out of this as well as the many cults which seek the proof of the love of god in health, happiness and prosperity. and indeed all this is natural and right enough. if religion be real the fruits of it should be manifest, though whether these are the more significant and enduring fruits of the spirit may be questioned. a religion which demonstrates itself in motor-cars and generous incomes and more than comfortable raiment may be real enough to those who profess it, but its reality is not quite the reality of the religion of the sermon on the mount. christian science is in line with a distinct contemporaneous demand to demonstrate god's love in about the terms of jacob's famous vow at bethel--"if god will be with me and will keep me in this way that i go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on so that i come again to my father's house in peace, then shall the lord be my god." this is a far cry from the noble protestation of job which sounds still across the years: "though he slay me, still will i trust in him." and yet the more sensitive and richly endowed among the followers of mary baker eddy have found in christian science other values than these. they have passed, by a sort of saving instinct, beyond its contradictions and half-truths to what is centrally best in the whole system. god, that is, has a meaning for life not hereafter but now, not in creeds but in experience, not alone in hard disciplinary ways, but in loving and intimate and helpful ways. true enough, this is no monopoly of christian science; christianity holds this truth in fee simple. but unfortunately, in ways which it is perfectly possible to trace, the great emphases of christianity have in the past been too largely shifted from this. there has been and still is in most protestant churches too much reticence about the meaning of god for the individual life and maybe too great hesitation in really using to the full the proffer of divine power. the accepted understandings of the place of pain and suffering in life have been, as it were, a barrier between the perplexed and their god; his love has not, somehow, seemed sufficiently at the service of men, and though christian science secures the unchallenged supremacy of the love of god by emptying it of great ranges of moral meaning and shutting away therefrom all the shadowed side of life, it has probably justified the love of god to multitudes who have, for one reason and another, heretofore questioned it and they have discovered in this new-found sense of god's love and presence, a reality and wealth of religious experience which they had never known before. _it exalts the power of mind but ignores too largely the processes by which mind realizes its ideals_ there is also in christian science practice and philosophy the apprehension of a real truth which new thought formulates much more clearly. mind is creative. (not alone mind with a capital "m" but our own every-day, human, small "m" mind.) the trouble is that christian science hopelessly short-circuits the creative process. our human world is finally what we make it through our insight, our understanding and above all by our sense of values, but the actual achievement of changed purposes in a changed world is a process whose immensity is not even so much as hinted at in "science and health." christian science too largely ignores and seems commonly to deny the whole disciplinary side of life with its inevitable accompaniment of failure, fault and pain. pain is no delusion; pain is the sign of something gone wrong in the great business of normal physical life. nor is sin only an unreality which "seems real to human erring belief"; sin is a sign that something has gone wrong in the struggle for a normal, disciplined, moral life. nor is the whole body of evil simply a shadow to be dismissed as easily as one turns one's back upon some darkness and faces toward the light; evil is the sign of something gone wrong, or something not yet attained in the massive progress of a humanity which combines in itself so many discordant elements, which has so long a way to go and so much to learn and so many things to conquer as it struggles upward toward a happier state. christian science cannot in the end be true to the great facts of experience, which have a power beyond the force of any assertion to countervail, unless it is false to mary baker eddy's philosophy, nor can it be true to its philosophy without impoverishing moral and spiritual endeavour. it is hard to find a place in the system--taken rigidly--for sympathy or tenderness or the richest of human qualities, or for those elements of wealth in character contributed by pain bravely borne or sorrow uncomplainingly accepted. there is little place in christian science for the beatitudes and less still for that fine courage which is itself the one assured victory which the hard beset may win on any field of battle. the writer believes that while this severe judgment is justified by "science and health," it is not justified by the practical outcome of the cult in the lives of many of its disciples. they are in devotion and kindness the equal of many in the church and superior to some. their loyalty to their church rebukes a good deal of orthodox easy-going. all of which proves at least that life is bigger than our theories about it and in the end subdues those who would make the best of it, to communities of experience and understanding in which we are all strangely kin. for, after all, unpleasant things cannot be thought out; they must be fought out and dug out and lived out. the whole redemptive force of society in thoroughgoing and far-reaching ways must be brought to bear upon the very sources of all the evil side of life, and the bare philosophy of christian science is not equal to this task. _is not big enough for the whole of experience_ it is doubtful if christian science has ever made an appreciable change in the mortality statistics of any city and yet if the public health department were to permit for forty-eight hours the milk or water supply of a city to be polluted, statistics would disclose that within ten days. this is only an illustration but it does illustrate. we must work if we are to dig up the roots of evil things and get a better growth in their stead and anything which attempts to substitute for this a denial of the reality of the evil, a mystical religious attitude and a mere formula of faith, no matter how oft repeated or how sincerely accepted, or indeed no matter how efficacious in certain selected regions among certain selected groups, is on the whole not a contribution to human well-being. very likely mrs. eddy's followers in the practical conduct of their lives are already recognizing this and gradually, and maybe unconsciously, adapting themselves to it. there are already signs of certain processes of conformity to the necessities of experience; these are likely to go farther. if christian science follows the history of such movements in the past, it will, after having made its own distinct assertion of whatever measure of truth it contains, be gradually swept back into the main current of religion and practice. it will maintain a nominal distinctness, but in the general conduct of life it will lose its more outstanding characteristics and become largely a distinction without a difference. milmine, in her thoughtful criticism of christian science at the end of her history says that the future of christian science stands or falls with psycho-therapy. that is true only on the one side. as far as christian science has true religious insights and approaches it will go on in spite of what happens to psycho-therapy, though there is enough in psycho-therapy to assure its future within well-defined regions if that were all. something bigger than psycho-therapy will finally judge and dismiss christian science to its own place--life and experience will do that--and it is safe to say that in the end christian science will have to come to terms with a truth bigger than its own, with a body of experience which cannot be dealt with on the selective process of taking what you want and denying the rest, and more than that, it will have to come to terms with the whole great matter of an intellectual, moral and spiritual struggle governed by law and conditioned by the vaster world of which we are a part. this is not to deny that christian science and allied teachings have made contributions of real value to our common problem. it is only to affirm that here is something not big enough for the whole either of truth or experience. viii new thought new thought has been defined as "an attitude of mind, not a cult." it is really both. it is necessary to include it in this study because it is a cult; it is hard justly to appraise it because it is an attitude of mind. attitudes of mind are as elusive as the play of light on running water. we can estimate their force and direction only as we have an understanding of the main currents of thought by which they are carried along and as far as new thought goes these main currents are far older than the cult itself. _new thought difficult to define; "an attitude of mind, not a cult"_ new thought has never had an apostolic succession or a rigid discipline or a centralized organic form. this has given to it a baffling looseness in every direction, but has, on the other hand, given it a pervasive quality which christian science does not possess. it has a vast and diffuse literature and so merges into the general movement of contemporaneous thought as to make it difficult to find anywhere a distinct demarcation of channels. new thought is either a theology with a philosophic basis or a philosophy with a theological bias. it is centrally and quite distinctly an attempt to give a religious content to the present trend of science and philosophy, a reaction against old theologies and perhaps a kind of nebula out of which future theologies will be organized. for a great theology is always the systematic organization of a complex of forces, a massive structure wrought through the years by manifold builders subduing a rich variety of material to their purposes. the teaching of the scriptures, old traditions, the needs of worship and organization, political and social circumstances, changing moral ideals, the trend of philosophies and sciences, the challenge of schisms and heresies, the sanctifying power of blind custom and the mystical authority of the church itself all combine to make a theology. once a great theology is so constituted it possesses an immense power over life. it shapes character and ideals and gives direction to faith, orders effort and so becomes, as it were, a mould into which souls and societies are cast. theologies may be changed, in fact they are always in the way of being changed, but they yield slowly to transforming forces. nothing is so persistent as organized faith and yet the very strength of a great theology is always its weakness. it is never really anything else than a crystallization of past forces. the experiences which voice themselves in theology have cooled and hardened down; the philosophy which is implicit in theology is past philosophy; the science implicit in theology is senescent science. there is always in evidence, then, in the regions of theology a disturbing pressure occasioned by the reaction of contemporaneous movements in science and philosophy and understandings of life generally upon these old and solidly established inherited forms. currents of thought are always, as it were, running past the great formulæ since thought is free and formulæ are rigid, and then returning upon them. from time to time this movement gathers great force. the old has been rigid so long, the new is so insistent that the conflict between them fills an age with its clamour, stresses souls to its travail, breaks down ancient forms without immediately building up their equivalent, and contributes uncertainties and restlessnesses everywhere in evidence. now this is exactly what has been happening in the region of religion in the last thirty years. an inherited order, strongly fashioned and organized and long essentially unchanged, has been compelled to take account of the forces about it. certainly theology is not so static as an earlier paragraph would seem to indicate, none the less the great theological centralities do possess an immense power of resistance. we have already seen how little protestantism had changed since the reformation until it met the full impact of modern science and philosophy. we have had really until our own time and still largely continue a theology with the creation story of the ancient hebrews, the outlook upon life of the age of the apostles, the philosophy of the greek fathers, st. augustine's conception of human nature and the expectation of the end of the world and the issues of history of the jewish apocalypse given a christian interpretation. true enough, there are in all this precious and timeless qualities but there is also through all the fabric of our formulated faith the interweaving of such understandings as those who shaped our creeds had, of law and history and truth. any far-reaching change, then, in philosophy or science was bound to profoundly affect religion and even forty years ago far-reaching modifications of the old order were overdue. new thought is just one outcome of the tremendous impact of contemporaneous thought upon our inherited theology; a detached fragment or rather group of fragments, for even as a cult new thought, as has been said, is loosely organized and its varying parts have in common only a common drift. yet that drift is significant for it has beneath it the immense force of a philosophy which has been gathering head for more than a century. it is to this, therefore, that we ought to address ourselves for any understanding of the changed outlook upon life which is carried, as it were, from the surface of profounder tides. _"the rediscovery of the inner life"_ josiah royce dismisses the whole of philosophy from spinoza to kant in one single pregnant phrase. he calls it "the rediscovery of the inner life." it is along this line that modern philosophy and religion approach each other. religion has always been the setting forth of the inner life in terms of its relationship to god and the proofs of the reality of religion have always been found in the experiences of the soul. the mystic particularly made everything of the inner life; he lived only in its realities. for the sake of its enrichment and its empowerment he subjected himself to rigorous disciplines. its revelations were to him all sufficient, for having found god therein he asked for nothing beside. wherein, then, is this new mysticism, or better, this new cult of the inner life different from the old? it is not easy to answer that question in a paragraph, though it is easy to feel the answer in any comparison of the great classics of mysticism--which are mostly spiritual autobiographies--and new thought literature. to turn from st. augustine to dresser, or from st. theresa to trine is to change spiritual and intellectual climates. there is in the modern literature little reflection of such spiritual struggle as fills the great confessions with the agony of embattled souls, nor any resolution of such struggle into the peace of a soul "fully awake as regards god but wholly asleep as regards things of this world and in respect of herself." this testimony of st. theresa is illuminating as a contrasting background for new thought. there the soul is very much awake, both as regards things of this world and in respect of herself. these new cults of the inner life are far more self-conscious than the old and far more self-analytical. they seek to discern the laws in answer to which they act and utilize those laws in the practical conduct of life. they are always either appealing to underlying philosophies or else trying to make a philosophy of their own. mysticism made everything of god and nothing of itself. it plotted its mystic way but knew nothing of psychology. new thought seeks to discover in psychology a road to god. the centers of mysticism were emotional; the centers of new thought are intellectual. all these cults are far more akin to gnosticism than mysticism, though they are saved, yet not wholly, from the lawlessness of gnosticism by a pretty constant return to the outstanding conclusions of science and philosophy. _spinoza's quest_ now if we seek to discover the real genesis of the movement and trace its development we would better begin, so deep are the roots of things, with spinoza rather than quimby. here the deeper currents, upon the surface of which new thought moves, take their rise and here also we return to royce's phrase--"the rediscovery of the inner life"--and the philosopher who inaugurated the philosophic quest for just this discovery. spinoza was one of the last of the mystics and the first of the modern philosophers. he shared with the mystics of an earlier time a consuming sense of the futility of life save as life perfected itself in contemplations of an eternal excellency and communion with something far greater than itself. "after experience had taught me," he says (and this is quoted from royce's "spirit of modern philosophy"), "that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile, seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad except in so far as the mind is affected by them, i finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else, whether there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme and unending happiness." now there is in all this a strangely modern note--dissatisfaction with what is offered by the commonplace and the accepted, a great emphasis upon the mind as the key to the readjustments of life, a quest for some single formula which would offer "continuous, supreme and unending happiness." this is exactly what mary baker eddy and all the other perplexed and bodily broken "seekers" who gathered about quimby were really wanting and this is what, for one reason or another, the proffered religious experiences of their time failed to secure them. "this was, then," to quote royce, "the beginning of spinoza's pilgrim's progress." (as indeed it is the beginning of every pilgrim's progress.) "but now, for what distinguishes him from other mystics and makes him a philosopher and not a mere exhorter, he has his religious passion, he must reflect upon it ... the philosopher must justify his faith." we have no need here to follow spinoza along all the way, difficult and misty enough, by which he sought to justify his faith. the outstanding fact is enough. he is a mystic who reasons his way through where the elder mystic has felt his way through, and the goal which he finally reaches, though it be the goal which the earlier mystics had found by other roads,--the loss of self in god--is none the less such an achievement of reason as spinoza was able to compass. _kant reaffirms the creative power of mind_ so this polisher of lenses bequeathed to the century which followed him its greatest inheritance and set for it its greatest task: the inner life as the supreme concern of the philosopher and the discovery of its laws and the interpretations of its realities the supreme task of philosophy. those who continued his work began far enough, apparently, from the point where he left off and went a road strangely remote from his. having taken the inner life for their study they sought to lay bare its very foundations. nowadays, if we are so minded, we dictate to machines which write our words curiously enough in shallow lines upon wax cylinders and when the cylinders are full shave off the fragile record and begin again. this is what the eighteenth century did for the mind. it reduced it to a virgin surface, it affirmed the reality of nothing except the impressions thereupon registered by what sense supplied. we owe to experience and to experience only "all that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it [the white paper of the mind] with an almost endless variety." we have nothing with which to begin but sensation; we have nothing to go on with but reflection. "these two, namely external, material things as the objects of sensation, and the operations of our own minds within as the objects of reflection, are the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings."[ ] such things as these are perhaps enough to begin with, but they are not enough to go on with as our thinkers soon enough discover. some way must be found to relate the material thus supplied and to build it up into a glowing, continuous, reasonable and conscious inner life. [footnote : locke, "essay concerning the human understanding."] so in turn the philosophers laboured at their problem. they made much not only of reflection but of association; they found a place for memory and imagination; they discovered that we may as truly define experience in terms of ideas as of sensation; they discovered finally that by no possible process even of the most ingenious reasoning can you get the full wealth of life out of a mind which was nothing more to begin with than a piece of white paper, any more than you can get hamlet (if we may suppose shakespeare to have used a dictaphone) out of a wax cylinder, a needle and a diaphragm. so kant ended what spinoza began, by reaffirming the creative power of the mind itself. it does far more than passively receive, it interprets, organizes, contributes, creates. true enough, it is not an unconditioned creator, it has laws of its own in obedience to which it finds both its freedom and its power. it must take the material which experience supplies and yet, in its higher ranges, in the regions of conduct and faith, that is, where conscience has become the guide and the necessities of the soul the law, we do possess the power in enfranchising obediences and splendid adventures of faith to make a world rich in goodness, power and peace. and here, once more, there is a strangely modern note. life is a pilgrim's progress. we are set out to discover "whether there might be some real good, the discovery and attainment of which would enable us to enjoy continuous, supreme and unending happiness." and we do possess the power within ourselves, if only we may discover the controlling laws and release effective forces, to come at least a stage nearer our goal. all this makes for that exaltation of the creative self which is so marked a characteristic of present-day attitudes and which is perhaps the distinctive affirmation of new thought. _utilitarianism, deism and individualism the practical outcome of a great movement_ but it needed time for all this to work itself out. the philosophic basis for it had been supplied but it is a far cry from philosophy to the practical conduct of life. kant's transcendental philosophy needed a deal of working over before it became practicable for the man in the street. and to begin with what was deepest in the philosophy of the enlightenment led in unexpected directions. "while the practical tendencies of all speculative thought inevitably appear in the opinions and customs of a general public far removed from their sources, it is particularly true of the philosophy of the enlightenment, that its influences had no small part in shaping the popular point of view concerning the moral, religious and political convictions of that age."[ ] utilitarianism, deism and individualism were, says hibben, the popular and practical outcome of the whole movement,--utilitarianism in ethics, deism in religion, individualism in politics. these three growths--and they have borne a deal of bitter fruit in the last one hundred years--grow out of one soil. in general they are due to locke's sensationalism, hume's skepticism, a new emphasis upon reason as opposed to revelation and the self-sufficiency of the individual. if conscious life is nothing but sensation worked over and built up, then pleasurable sensations are the best we can aspire to, happiness is the end of the quest. so utilitarianism defined goodness in terms of happiness and gave to conduct generally a grasping, greedy quality for which we have paid over and over again in the disappointments and disillusionments of an age, which, supposing itself to have discovered the true secret of well-being, found too much of its seeming happiness only dead sea fruit. [footnote : hibben, "the philosophy of the enlightenment," p. .] _they bear a bitter fruit: the reactions against them_ deism in its reaction against religion as merely revelation and in its endeavour to find a rational basis for faith set god apart from his world, detached, unheeding and offering no real recourse to a travailing humanity between whom and himself it built a rigid fabric of impersonal law. the individualism of the eighteenth century was partly a reaction against old despotisms of church and state--and a declaration of independence. it was in part a pride of accomplishment and a new affirmation of the self-sufficiency of the questing reason. there was in it also a sound recognition of the worth of personality of which the world then stood in need and which has since supplied a foundation for a saving passion for education and human well-being. but individualism as practically applied by the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century--unexpectedly reinforced as it was by aspects of darwinism--stressed the right of the strong and the doom of the weak. it made competition the law of economic development, the survival of the fittest the goal of a life of struggle. consciously or unconsciously the politics, industry and religion of the nineteenth century were greatly influenced by these outstanding conceptions. no need to say how utterly they have broken down. they have made for the deepening strife of classes and of nations, they have essentially defeated the bright promise of a time which seemed to have more to hope for than almost any other great period of history. and yet they were never unchallenged. they were challenged by the essential spirit of christianity; they were challenged by the poets who found that they could shape no songs out of such stuff as this; they were challenged by philosophers who sought to build for themselves and for us a world more free and true; they were challenged by a group of great novelists who created out of the wealth of their imagination characters and situations in which love and human worth had their way in spite of a thousand obstacles. they were challenged by prophets of a better world, the ruskins and carlyles who soundly rated the ethics of selfishness and the political economies of competition and the politics of self-assertion and who stirred deeply the more sensitive of their time. and finally they were challenged, and here we begin to approach again the genesis of new thought, by a philosophic movement which found its point of departure in certain great aspects of earlier thinking which had been much obscured by the difficult forms in which it had been stated: the supremacy, that is, of the soul over all its surroundings. now this return to what we may call the creative and controlling power of spiritual forces is the key to the modern approach to life. we do not understand, it may be, the meaning of our own terms. spirit is a vague enough word but we do know that the initiative is with desire and purpose and understanding. these are positive and masterful; they are by no means free; they are conditioned by the vaster order of which they are a part, none the less our human world is plastic to their touch and our material world as well. carlyle has chanted all this gustily enough but there is kindling truth in his stormy music. "thus, like some wild flaming, wild thundering train of heaven's artillery does this mysterious mankind thunder and flame in long-drawn, quick succeeding grandeur through the unknown deep. earth's mountains are levelled and her seas filled up in our passage. can the earth which is but dead in a vision resist spirits which have reality and are alive?" _new england transcendentalism. quimby again and the dressers_ curiously enough this quotation from a book which nowadays nobody likely reads save perhaps in some college course on early victorian literature, brings us within sight of the beginnings of new thought. a little group of english and american thinkers, part philosophers, part poets, part rebels against the established order, anticipated trained students in their return upon the higher and more positive side of an older philosophy. they made much of the inner life, its powers and its possibilities; they affirmed the creative power of the soul; they conceived life to lie plastic to the touch of vision and desire; they thought themselves to be standing upon the threshold of a new world. they were impatient of discipline; they dreamed impossible things and gave their dreams the authority of reality. they were hard enough to understand and they sorely tried practical plodding folk, but they kindled their time and released forces which are yet in action. new england, through a group of adventurous thinkers of whom emerson was the most distinguished, responded strongly to transcendentalism. another group, as has been said, responded strongly to mesmerism and spiritism, which were also a part of the ferment of the time in which christian science and new thought (i use new thought here in the technical sense) find their source. and finally, quimby, who is a rather unexpectedly important link in a long chain,--important, that is, to the student of modern cults--reacted against mesmerism, felt and thought his way toward some understanding of the force of suggestion in abnormal states, applied his conclusion to faith and mental healing and gathered about him--as has been said before--a little group of disciples who have between them released far-reaching movements. mrs. eddy and the dressers were the outstanding members of this little group of disciples. mrs. eddy soon dissociated herself from the others and she supplied in "science and health" a distinctive philosophy to her movement. she organized it into a church; she imposed upon it a distinctive discipline. no little of the power of christian science is due to this narrow rigidity which is itself the projection of the personality of mary baker eddy. but christian science did not carry with it the whole of the group which had come under quimby's influence, nor indeed all of those who came under mary baker eddy's influence. there was during all the formative period of these modern cults a perpetual process of schism. we have as a result, then, two divergent movements related in underground ways, though as marked in difference as in resemblance, both of them beginning about the same time, both of them reactions against accepted religious forces and validations, both of them with a marked therapeutic content, both of them adventures in the conduct of life. in the summary which follows i am in debt to dresser's recent "history of the new thought movement." the name new thought was chosen as the title of a little magazine devoted to mental healing, published in in melrose, mass. "the term became current in boston through the organization of the metaphysical club in . about the same time it was used by mr. c.p. patterson in his magazine _mind_ and in the title of two of his books." other names were suggested--in england, higher thought; in boston, higher life; in new york the little group was for a time known as the circle of divine ministry; in the west the movement was known as divine science or practical christianity. there were groups also which called themselves the home of truth or the society of silent unity. _new thought takes form_ new thought, as has been said, lacks the definite direction which christian science has always had. its organizations have grown up quietly, more or less irregularly and have had always a shifting character. "the first new thought society with a regular leader and organization in boston was the church of the higher life established in ."[ ] the metaphysical club was an outgrowth of the new thought group in boston. dresser gives a list of the original members, chiefly significant through the presence among them of some of quimby's disciples and others whose books have since held a high place in new thought literature. there were manifest connections between the movement and liberal (particularly unitarian) theology. [footnote : all citations in this section are from dresser's "history of new thought," unless otherwise indicated.] the first new thought convention was held in boston in (there had been earlier conventions of the disciples of divine science--a related movement--in western cities) and the second in new york city in . the new york convention was the first to make any general statement of the "purposes" of the league. we find on the new york program one swami abhedananda, lecturer on the vedanta philosophy. here is an early indication of the return of eastern religions upon the west which is also one of the marked characteristics of the religious development of our time. we do not need to follow through in detail the list of successive conventions with their topics and their speakers. the group is not so large but that the same names reappear. there are marked attempts in the earlier conventions to associate leaders in recognized schools of philosophy and theology with the movement. one does not discover this tendency in the later convention lists. the local groups throughout the country have had varying fortunes. they have from time to time changed their names and naturally their leaders. the west has responded perhaps more strongly than the atlantic seaboard. the movement is particularly strong on the pacific coast. there are no available statistics and generalizations are of doubtful value. the cincinnati and kansas city groups are offered by dresser as typical organizations, but they seem on the whole to be exceptional rather than typical. the strength of the new thought movement is not in its organization but in its influence. "in england as in america interest was aroused by christian science, then came a gradual reaction and the establishment of independent branches of the movement." "it is difficult," says dresser, "to obtain information pertaining to the influence of new thought literature in foreign languages." the more significant new thought books, however, have been variously translated and widely sold. new thought leaders sometimes advise their disciples to retain their old church associations and the movement has naturally tended to merge in religious liberalism generally and to become only an aspect of the manifold religious gropings of a troubled time. in the constitution and by-laws of the new thought alliance, published in , the purposes of the society are "to teach the infinitude of the supreme one, divinity of man and his infinite possibilities through the creative power of constructive thinking and obedience to the voice of the indwelling presence which is our source of inspiration, power, health and prosperity." we discover here the same tendency toward the deification of capital letters which we have already noted in christian science. _its creeds_ in the international new thought alliance went further than at any other time before in the direction of a creed and set forth the following series of affirmations: "we affirm the freedom of each soul as to choice and as to belief, and would not, by the adoption of any declaration of principles, limit such freedom. the essence of the new thought is truth, and each individual must be loyal to the truth he sees. the windows of his soul must be kept open at each moment for the higher light, and his mind must be always hospitable to each new inspiration. "we affirm the good. this is supreme, universal and everlasting. man is made in the image of the good, and evil and pain are but the tests and correctives that appear when his thought does not reflect the full glory of this image. "we affirm health, which is man's divine inheritance. man's body is his holy temple. every function of it, every cell of it, is intelligent, and is shaped, ruled, repaired, and controlled by mind. he whose body is full of light is full of health. spiritual healing has existed among all races in all times. it has now become a part of the higher science and art of living the life more abundant. "we affirm the divine supply. he who serves god and man in the full understanding of the law of compensation shall not lack. within us are unused resources of energy and power. he who lives with his whole being, and thus expresses fullness, shall reap fullness in return. he who gives himself, he who knows, and acts in his highest knowledge, he who trusts in the divine return, has learned the law of success. "we affirm the teaching of christ that the kingdom of heaven is within us, that we are one with the father, that we should judge not, that we should love one another, that we should heal the sick, that we should return good for evil, that we should minister to others, and that we should be perfect even as our father in heaven is perfect. these are not only ideals, but practical, every-day working principles. "we affirm the new thought of god as universal love, life, truth, and joy, in whom we live, move and have our being, and by whom we are held together; that his mind is our mind now, that realizing our oneness with him means love, truth, peace, health and plenty, not only in our own lives but in the giving out of these fruits of the spirit to others. "we affirm these things, not as a profession, but practice, not in one day of the week, but in every hour and minute of every day, sleeping and waking, not in the ministry of the few, but in a service that includes the democracy of all, not in words alone, but in the innermost thoughts of the heart expressed in living the life. 'by their fruits ye shall know them.' "we affirm heaven here and now, the life everlasting that becomes conscious immortality, the communion of mind with mind throughout the universe of thought, the nothingness of all error and negation, including death, the variety of unity that produces the individual expressions of the one-life, and the quickened realization of the indwelling god in each soul that is making a new heaven and a new earth." we discover in this creed a more distinct recognition of ideals and truths which inherited christianity supplied than in the earlier statements of purpose. in the annual address of the president there is distinct reference to the relation of the new thought gospel to the churches. "i am asked often: what is the relation of this movement to the church? this is not a new religion. it is not an institution seeking to build itself up for the mere sake of the institution. we do not ask anybody to leave the church. we ask them to become better members of their churches than before. new thought is designed to make people better and more efficient in whatever relation of life they may find themselves. in other words: 'new thought teaches men and women only the old common-sense doctrine of self-reliance and belief in the integrity of the universe and of one's own soul. it dignifies and ennobles manhood and womanhood.' the main idea on which christianity is founded is that of communion with god, that of worshipping god in spirit and in truth. this is the very corner-stone of those modern movements that recognize men and women as the living temples of the god within.... i predict that this new interpretation and new understanding will become universal in the new age which is now dawning." a further paragraph, however, reveals the synthetic character of the movement. "it is the realization in practical affairs of the teachings not only of the nazarene, but of every other great religious teacher since the world began; for in their essence these teachings are fundamentally alike; and the new thought and other new spiritual movements are but the efforts to apply, in our relations one with another, these simple and sublime truths." _the range of the movement_ i have quoted at length from these programs, affirmations and this one address to indicate the range of the movement as it has found official expression. we must look, however, to the literature of the movement as a whole for a full understanding of its reach and influence. the literature in general falls into three classes: ( ) books concerned mostly about healing; ( ) books which instruct as to character, spiritual states and fullness of life; ( ) what one may call success books which apply new thought to business and the practical conduct of life. the lines of demarcation between these three types of books is, of course, not clear and there is a material which is common to all of them, but the distinction thus suggested is real. as a principle of healing new thought differs from christian science in almost the whole range of its assumptions. it does not deny the reality of matter, not the reality of suffering, nor does it distinguish, as does christian science, between the divine mind and the mortal mind. there are, according to new thought, healing forces which may be trusted to do their remedial work in us, if only we surrender ourselves to them and let them have their way. there is nothing in new thought which quite corresponds to the "demonstration" of christian science. it would seem to an impartial observer that christian science asks of its disciples an intensity of positive effort which new thought does not demand. dresser, for example, believes all suffering to be the result of struggle. directly we cease to struggle we cease to suffer, provided, of course, that our cessation is in the direction of relaxation and a trust in a higher power. in some regions, however, christian science and new thought as therapeutic agents work along the same line, but where christian science denies new thought ignores. here new thought makes more use of psychological laws; it follows james generally in its psychology, as it follows emerson in its thought of the over-soul, though in this region emerson's detached serenity of faith is given body in an insistence upon the divine immanence for which new thought is in debt to the suggestions and analogies of modern science. new thought makes much of the shifting of attention and its disciplines are rather the disciplines of the mystic than the disciplines of the christian scientist. it seeks in substance to ascertain the laws of mind in action and then, through the utilization of this knowledge, to secure health, happiness and prosperity. it makes much, of course, of the centrality of mind both in well-being and pain. it hardly goes so far as to say that pain is an error in belief, but it does say that pain is a matter of consciousness and that as we are masters of consciousness we are masters of pain. it believes in thought transference and absent treatment, but it is perhaps more conservative in the cases which it is willing to undertake than christian science and recognizes the limitations of the healer. _the key-words of new thought_ its key-words are harmony, realization, affirmation and poise. just here new thought is a strangely interwoven web. it makes much of "vibration" and "friction." it is evidently under the spell of the wave theory of light and heat. it is most dependable in its analysis and application of laws of mental action, most undependable in trying to account for the relation of mind to body and in its explanation of the physical phenomena of disease. fatigue, for example, "is evidently due to the calling of power into a new direction. it [evidently the power] comes into contact with dense matter, with an uncultivated portion of the being, physical as well as mental, and meeting with resistance friction of some sort is the natural result." one has only to compare a statement like that with cannon's careful study of bodily changes under emotional states, to see the difference between speculation controlled by analogy and the illuminating experimental methods of modern science. when dresser adds that "we shall eliminate disease not by fighting it, not by studying its causes, or doctoring its physical effects, but by seeing the wisdom of the better way," he is on dangerous ground, for if we are not to study the causes of disease but to take as our guide the serene generalizations of a speculative mind we are shutting in our faces one of the doors by which we enter into that knowledge of the mind of god, of which new thought makes so much. how shall we know the mind of god except as we ask endless patient and careful questions of every revelation of the divine method, whether in sickness or health? new thought, however, takes a far more constructive view of suffering than christian science. for new thought suffering is at least disciplinary and instructive: it compels reflection: it brings us to a knowledge of the law. it is certainly, therefore, just and it may be kind. indeed, new thought occasionally goes so far as to say that suffering is also a revelation of love and must be so accepted and entertained. its general conclusions in this region are far more safe than its insistence upon vibration and friction and its spacious technicalities. when dresser says that there is a difference "between ignoring a trouble, between neglecting to take proper care of ourselves and that wise direction of thought which in no way hinders while it most surely helps to remedy our ills," he is on perfectly safe ground. when he adds that there is a strong reason for believing that "there is a simple, natural way out of every trouble, that kind nature, which is another name for an omniscient god, is ever ready to do her utmost for us" he is speaking with a wise and direct helpfulness, though here as generally new thought errs on the side of too great a simplification. there is a way out of every trouble but it is not always simple, it is often laborious and challenging. we have accomplished marvels in the matter of tropical sanitation but the way out has been anything but simple. it has involved experimentations which cost the lives of physicians who offered themselves for humanity as nobly as any soldier on any battlefield; it involved the sweat of hard driven labour digging drainage ditches, the rebuilding of the foundations of cities and a thousand cares and safeguards. if new thought wishes to dismiss such a process as this with the single adjective "simple" it may do as it pleases, but this is not simplicity as the dictionary defines it. _its field of real usefulness_ all that way of thinking of which new thought is just one aspect is fatally open to criticism just here. it ignores the immense travail of humanity in its laborious pilgrimage toward better things and it is far too ready to proclaim short-cuts to great goals when there never have been and never will be any short-cuts in life. none the less, trust and quietness of mind and soul and utter openness to healing, saving forces are immense healing agents and in its emphasis thereupon new thought has recalled us to that which in the very intensity of life's battles we are in the way of forgetting. and beyond doubt, in that obscure range of diseases which are due to the want of balanced life--to worry, fear, self-absorption and over-strain--the methods of new thought have a distinct value. in general, as one follows the history and literature of new thought one finds that, though it began with a group more interested in healing than anything else, healing has come to play a progressively less important part in the development of the movement and the larger part of its literature deals with what one might call perhaps the laws of mental and spiritual hygiene. the principles implicit in new thought as a healing cult carry of their own weight into other regions. it is important enough to get well--that goes without saying--but it is more important to keep well. good health on the whole is a kind of by-product. we suffer as distinctly from spiritual and mental maladjustments as from physical. we suffer also from the sense of inadequacy, the sense, that is, of a burdening disproportion between our own powers and the challenge of life. new thought has addressed itself increasingly to such states and problems as this. here it ceases to be a cult or a method of healing and has become a most considerable influence and here also it in general takes the direction of and is identified with what is truest in the christian religion, what is sanest and most clear visioned in present-day thinking. the typical books just here are trine's "in tune with the infinite" and a similar literature. _its gospel of getting on_ another application of new thought is in the direction of personal efficiency. there is a considerable literature in this region. it does not specifically call itself new thought but it is saturated with the new thought fundamentals and has distinctly the new thought outlook. marden is the most popular and prolific writer in this connection and the titles of his books are suggestive--"keeping fit," "selling things," "the victorious attitude," "training for efficiency," "getting on," "self-investment," "be good to yourself," "he can who thinks he can," "character," "opportunity," "an iron will." something like this has, of course, been done before but the modern efficiency literature moves along a wider front than earlier books and makes a fuller use of the new psychology. all this literature dwells strongly upon the driving power of a self-assertive personality strongly controlled by will, single visioned and master of its own powers. it suggests lines of approach by which other people's wills can be overcome, their interest aroused or their coöperation secured. quotation is almost impossible--there is such an abundance of material and much of it is commonplace. it takes a deal of padding to make shelves of books out of the familiar and generally accepted truisms which are the "sermon on the mount" and the "beatitudes" of this gospel of personal efficiency. keep fit, keep at it, assert yourself, never admit the possibility of failure, study your own strength and weakness and the strength and weakness of your competitor and success is yours. look persistently on the bright side of every situation, refuse to dwell on the dark side, recognize no realities but harmony, health, beauty and success. it is only just to say that success is generously defined and the disciples of this new thought are asked also to live in the finer senses--the recognition of beauty and friendship and goodness, that is--but on the whole the ideal character so defined is a buoyant optimist who sells his goods, succeeds in his plans and has his own way with the world. it is the apotheosis of what james called "the religion of healthy-mindedness"; it all fits easily into the dominant temper of our time and seems to reconcile that serving of two masters, god and getting on, which a lonely teacher long ago thought quite impossible. naturally such a movement has a great following of disciples who doubtless "have their reward." so alluring a gospel is sure to have its own border-land prophets and one only has to study the advertisements in the more generally read magazines to see to what an extent all sorts of short-cuts to success of every sort are being offered, and how generally all these advertisements lock up upon two or three principles which revolve around self-assertion as a center and getting-on as a creed. it would be idle to underestimate the influence of all this or, indeed, to cry down the usefulness of it. there is doubtless a tonic quality in these applications of new thought principles of which despondent, hesitating and wrongly self-conscious people stand greatly in need. _the limitations and dangers of its positions_ but there is very great danger in it all of minimizing the difficulties which really lie in the way of the successful conduct of life, difficulties which are not eliminated because they are denied. and there is above all the very great danger of making far too little of that patient and laborious discipline which is the only sound foundation upon which real power can possibly be established. there is everywhere here an invitation to the superficial and, above all, there is everywhere here a tendency toward the creation of a type of character by no means so admirable in the actual outcome of it as it seems to be in the glowing pages of these prophets of success. self-assertion is after all a very debatable creed, for self-assertion is all too likely to bring us into rather violent collisions with the self-assertions of others and to give us, after all, a world of egoists whose egotism is none the less mischievous, though it wear the garment of sunny cheerfulness and proclaim an unconquerable optimism. but at any rate new thought, in one form or another, has penetrated deeply the whole fabric of the modern outlook upon life. a just appraisal of it is not easy and requires a careful analysis and balancing of tendencies and forces. we recognize at once an immense divergence from our inherited forms of religious faith. new thought is an interweaving of such psychological tendencies as we have already traced with the implications and analogies of modern science. the god of new thought is an immanent god, never clearly defined; indeed it is possible to argue from many representative utterances that the god of new thought is not personal at all but rather an all-pervading force, a driving energy which we may discover both in ourselves and in the world about us and to which conforming we are, with little effort on our own part, carried as upon some strong, compelling tide. the main business of life, therefore, is to discover the direction of these forces and the laws of their operation, and as far as possible to conform both character and conduct, through obedience to such laws, into a triumphant partnership with such a master force--a kind of conquering self-surrender to a power not ourselves and yet which we may not know apart from ourselves, which makes not supremely for righteousness (righteousness is a word not often discovered in new thought literature) but for harmony, happiness and success. _it greatly modifies orthodox theology_ such a general statement as this must, of course, be qualified. even the most devout whose faith and character have alike been fashioned by an inherited religion in which the personality of god is centrally affirmed, find their own thought about god fluctuating. so great a thing as faith in god must always have its lights and shadows and its changing moods. in our moments of deeper devotion and surer insight the sense of a supreme personal reality and a vital communion therewith is most clear and strong; then there is some ebbing of our own powers of apprehension and we seem to be in the grip of impersonal law and at the mercy of forces which have no concern for our own personal values. new thought naturally reflects all this and adds thereto uncertainties of its own. there are passages enough in new thought literature which recognize the personality of god just as there are passages enough which seem to reduce him to power and principle and the secret of such discrepancies is not perhaps in the creeds of new thought, but in the varying attitudes of its priests and prophets. one may say, then, that the god of new thought is always immanent, always force and law and sometimes intimate and personal. however this force may be defined, it carries those who commit themselves to it toward definite goals of well-being. the new thought of to-day reflects the optimistic note of the scientific evolution of a generation ago. it is not exactly "god's in his heaven, all's right with the world," but it is the affirmation of streams of tendency whose unfailing direction is toward happiness and success. if an element of struggle be implied in the particular sort of salvation which new thought preaches, it is not at least clearly brought out. there has been amongst us of late a new and a very dearly bought recognition of the element of struggle which seems to be implicit in all life. the optimistic evolutionary philosophy in which new thought roots itself is on the whole justified neither by history nor the insight of those who have been most rich in spiritual understanding, nor, indeed, by the outcome of that philosophy in our own time. the happy confidence that we do not need to struggle, but rather to commit ourselves to forces which make automatically for happiness and well-being, has only involved us more deeply in a struggle where in some ways the smug happiness and well-being of representative new thought literature seem more remote than ever. this elimination of the element of moral struggle and the need for deliverance which has so greatly coloured the older theologies gives a distinct character to new thought theology. there is no place in it for a scheme of redemption; there is no place in it for atonement, save as atonement may be conceived as a vicarious sharing of suffering incident to all struggle for better things; there is no place in it for the old anthropologies of christian theology. it has on the whole little to say about sin. says allen, in a very thoughtful short article on new thought in hastings' "encyclopedia of religion and ethics," "new thought excludes such doctrines as the duality of man and god, miracles in the accepted sense, the forgiveness of sins and priestly mediation. it seeks to interpret the world and nature as science has recorded them, but also to convey their finer and esoteric meanings to the human understanding. the fundamental purpose of religion and science is the same--namely, the discovery of truth." "new thought does not teach the moral depravity of man. such thoughts demoralize and weaken the individual. miracles, in the accepted sense, new thought does not conceive as possible in a universe of law. the only miracles are phenomena not understood, but nevertheless the result of law. it applies the pragmatic test to every religion and philosophy. are you true? what do you give to a man to carry to his daily task?" "new thought recognizes no authority save the voice of the soul speaking to each individual. every soul can interpret aright the oracles of truth." _tends to become a universal and loosely-defined religion_ worship becomes, therefore, contemplation rather than adoration, and a vast deal of the liturgical material which christianity specifically has heretofore supplied becomes useless for this cult. christian hymnology would need much editing before it would serve new thought purposes; the whole conception of prayer would need to be altered. naturally, then, on its more distinctly religious side new thought is at once fluctuating and incomplete. it is the proclamation, to quote one of its spokesmen, of a robust individualism and, in the individual, mind is supreme. right thinking is the key to right living. new thought affirms the limitless possibilities of the individual. here perhaps it is more loose in its thinking than in any other region. it makes free use of the word "infinite" and surrounds itself with an atmosphere of boundless hope as alluring as it is vague. the interest of new thought is most largely in the present tenses of life; its future in an eternal progress which should, of course, imply immortality. new thought is hospitable to truth from whatever source derived. it is particularly hospitable to the suggestions of oriental religions and, as far as it has taken form as a distinct religious movement, it is becoming more and more markedly a kind of syncretism, a putting together of religious elements drawn from widely universal sources and it patently seeks nothing less than a universal religious fellowship in which the values of all true faith are recognized and which is to be under the control of what science has to say about the world without and psychology of the world within. in a sentence new thought is an outstanding aspect of the unconquerably religious in human nature, seeking to subdue to its own ends and inform with its own spirit the new material which science, psychology and comparative religion have put at our service in the last two generations. if new thought diverges from the accepted christian theology in many ways, it runs parallel in other regions with what is enduringly true in the gospels, and it runs parallel also with not a little of that endeavour after theological reconstruction which is loosely known as the new theology. we are generally under a compulsion to reconstruct our creeds and adapt our religious thinking to whatever is true about us in our understanding of our world and its history and its mechanism and the laws of our own lives. theology must take account of a creative evolution and a humanity which has struggled upward from far-off beginnings along a far-flung front and the findings of science and the intimations of psychology. it will need a deal of pioneering to find roads through these new regions and such adventurous souls as seek new paths, with a daring disregard for ancient landmarks and a true passion to find religious meanings in new facts and forces, are really serving us all. there is the danger, however, that in the very freedom of their speculation they may be too impatient of old experiences and hallowed certainties, for these old experiences themselves are deeply rooted and testify to realities which we may be compelled to let in by the window, once we have put them out at the door. ix the return of the east upon the west theosophy and kindred cults _historic forces carried early christianity west and not east. the far-reaching results of this process_ christianity in its beginning belonged neither to the east nor the west; it was born where they met and its subsequent development was greatly governed by the direction of the dominant tides of historical development. but from the beginning of the christian era the main currents of human action flowed west and they carried christianity with them. it is, therefore, outstandingly an occidental development. this is not to minimize the influence of the east in the earlier phases of christianity. there was doubtless a measure of give and take, some blowing of the winds of the spirit in changing directions across vast regions and a confused time, which carried the germinal forces from one religion to another. but in the main, christianity, to use gardner's fine phrase, was baptized into the forms and forces of the west. i say in the main, for asia minor was in the time of st. paul the meeting place of manifold religions and his first gentile converts brought with them into their new faith a very great deal of what their old faiths had made them. there was, generally, in the apostolic world a very great longing for a spiritual deliverance and a mystic temper which easily took over and transformed those elements in christianity which lent themselves to mystic interpretations. something of this we discover in the pauline epistles themselves; paul's use of the word "mystery" shows how he adapted his teaching to the understanding of those to whom he addressed himself. to quote gardner: "in the growth and spread of popular superstition, if we may call them by so harsh a name, we may well discern a gradual preparation for christianity.... these religions stand toward christianity, to continue my biological comparison, as the wings of a penguin stand toward those of an eagle, and it is surely no slight on christianity to say that it met the blind longings of a pagan nation and showed them a path toward which they had, for long generations, been trying to find their way. the religious needs which were very imperfectly met by the initiations and ceremonies and prayers of the cults of the pagan saving deities found a complete and perfect satisfaction from faith in an exalted christ."[ ] [footnote : "the growth of christianity," gardner, p. . for fuller treatment with suggestive detail see fraser "the golden bough," chapter .] christianity could not do this really very great thing without at the same time being affected by that which it, in a measure, took over and completed. the influence of asia upon christianity is, therefore, a very real influence. one can only wonder what would have happened had the course of empire been east instead of west. christianity might then have been carried into india and china and through long centuries been given so distinctly an oriental content as to have taken on a character radically different from its western form. but this did not happen. to follow gardner's figure still farther, it was baptized into greek philosophy and roman imperialism and the power of the nascent nations of western europe, and into the medieval spirit, and so we have become its heirs. more than that, the east took its own way, uninfluenced by the west, until two entirely different types of culture, civilization, religion and approach to reality had been developed, as far apart as the east is from the west, and each, until almost our own time, substantially uninfluenced by the other. _the west rediscovers the east; the east returns upon the west_ given the contacts of the modern world this massive isolation of cultures could not continue. the east and the west were bound to meet and religion was bound to be affected by their meeting. western christianity has for more than a hundred years now been sending its missionaries to the orient and oriental religions are beginning to send their missionaries to the west. more justly the return of the east upon the west is not so much in a missionary propaganda, though there is a measure of that, as in a more subtle indoctrination of western speculation by the fascination and mystery of the eastern cults. it is not possible to follow this process in detail but it has gone on long enough now for us to begin to see the outcome of it and to appraise its force. it began with new thought. one discovers oriental names on the programs of new thought conventions; the vedanta philosophy was expounded by east indian speakers at the greenacre conference in maine in the late nineties; b.f. mills was lecturing on oriental scriptures in ; and a lecture on the vedanta philosophy appears on the program of the second convention of the international metaphysical league held in new york city in the year . the new thought movement in england naturally reflected the same tendency to look for light to eastern speculation even more markedly than the american movement. all this was natural enough because new thought, once divorced from inherited christianity and committed to pure speculation about the sources and meanings of life, was sure to find out that the orient had been doing just this for a thousand years. two things happened. first, new thought welcomed eastern teachers to its conventions in the hope of receiving thereby some measure of enlightenment, and second, many of these seekers, finding that the east had a wealth of speculation compared with which the west is poor indeed, took over the eastern cults bodily, gave themselves up to their study and became their ardent devotees and missionaries. generalizations are always dangerous and though the east has, until the west began to exploit it, remained practically unchanged, the west has changed so often that whatever one may say about it must immediately be qualified. but, on the whole, eastern and western life are organized around utterly different centers. the west in its present phase is predominantly scientific. our laboratories are perhaps the distinguishing hall-mark of our civilization. we are always asking questions of the outside world; we are hungry for facts; we are always seeking to discover the law and direction of physical force; we have taken small account, comparatively, of our own inner states, but we have taken immense account of the universe of which we are a part and the forces which play around us. our realities are what we touch and see. we have given to our sight an immense increase of searching power through the microscope and telescope, but we are slow to venture beyond what they reveal to us. we have increased the sensitiveness of our touch through the instruments of our laboratories. we have organs to sensibly register the vibrations of an etheric force and even to weigh light. but we are slow to recognize any range of reality not thus revealed to us. we have gained in such ways a really illuminating understanding of the physical universe; we have formulated its laws, chronicled its sequence and made it in a marvellous way the instrument of our material well-being. if we have speculated at all it has been rather in the direction of the ultimate nature of matter and force, as these have supplied us material for speculation, than in any other direction. we have been generally and soundly suspicious of conclusions which cannot be verified by the scientific method, and so have built about ourselves restraining limitations of thought which we are wholesomely unwilling to pass. we have found our real joy in action rather than meditation. our scientific achievements have supplied material for our restless energy and our restless energy has urged us on to new achievement. true enough, there has been of late signs of a changing temper. we are beginning to discover that science has marked limitations; there are ranges of reality of which our laboratories can make no possible report which we are beginning to take into account. but in a large way the matured western outlook upon life has been conditioned by the scientific interpretation of the universe. _chesterton's two saints_ the east has taken an entirely different line; its laboratories have been the laboratories of the soul. the east has had little concern about outside things; it has had an immense concern for its own inner life. the east has made little attempt to master outer forces; it has been generally content to let them have their way with it, realizing, maybe, that after all what the outside world can do for the inner life is negligible compared with what the soul can do for itself. race and climate and the sequence of history have all conspired to produce this temper. the history of the east is a strange combination of drive and quiescence; its more vigorous races have had their periods of conquest and fierce mastery, but sooner or later what they have conquered has conquered them and they have accepted, with a kind of inevitable fatalism, the pressure of forces which they were powerless to subdue to their own weakening purposes. they have populated their lands to the limit and accepted the poverty which a dense population without scientific resource, on a poor soil and in a trying climate, inevitably engenders. the more helpless have fallen back upon fate and accepted with a pathetic resignation their hard estate, asking only to be freed from the weariness of it. "it is better," says an eastern proverb, "to sit than to stand, it is better to lie than to sit, it is better to sleep than to lie, and death is the best of all." there is an immensity of weariness and disillusionment in such an interpretation of life, which needs no comment. but the eastern mind is subtle and speculative, possessing a peculiar penetrating power; and, for the want of any other field in which to act, it turned in upon itself. chesterton has both hit and missed the immense difference between the east and the west in one of his brilliant paragraphs.[ ] "no two ideals could be more opposite than a christian saint in a gothic cathedral and a buddhist saint in a chinese temple. the opposition exists at every point; but perhaps the shortest statement of it is that the buddhist saint always has his eyes shut, while the christian saint always has them very wide open. the buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with sleep. the medieval saint's body is wasted to crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully alive. there cannot be any real community of spirit between forces that produced symbols so different as that. granted that both images are extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be a real divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances. the buddhist is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards; the christian is staring with a frantic intentness outwards. if we follow that clue steadily we shall find some interesting things." [footnote : "orthodoxy," p. .] but to follow chesterton's own method, the saint with the open eyes may still be blind while the saint with his eyes shut may really see a vast deal, and the east has seen much. whether what it sees be true or not, is another matter, but there is no denying the range of his conjecture. the eastern saint has sought to answer for himself and in his own way those compelling questions which lie behind all religion--whence? and whither? and why? he, too, has sought to come into right relations with the power which manifests itself in the universe and he has sought, with an intensity of effort to which the west is strange, for a real communion with the power he has discovered. and above all, he has sought deliverance. _why the west questions the east_ he has not been so conscious of the need of forgiveness, since forgiveness plays no great part in his understanding of the sequences of life, but he is anxious enough to be set free from pain and weariness and at his best he has traced the relation of moral cause and effect far more analytically than his western brother. he has, indeed, introduced greatly speculative elements in his balancing of life's accounts, but the west has done that also, for the accounts of life persistently refuse to be balanced unless something beyond ordinary experience is taken into account. the longing of the east for deliverance has, on the whole, however, been less theological and more simple than the longing of the west. the west has been led to turn to the east for teaching and deliverance through a combination of forces. i have noticed already the very direct way in which new thought, once committed to free speculation about life and god, found congenial guidance in the eastern cults, but other elements enter. the west has begun to share something of the disillusionment of the east; so many things which promised to deliver us have seemingly failed us. our sciences have immeasurably enlarged our knowledge and increased our power; they have added to our material well-being; they have worked their miracles for us; but they have brought us neither peace nor true happiness. they have instead added their own disturbances to our other perplexities and they have ultimately simply extended the frontiers of the mysterious and given a new and vaster quality to our problems. our democracies and our humanitarian movements have shown us that the keys both to liberty and progress are still in human nature and not in forms of organization and government. as our civilizations have grown older and particularly as they have wasted themselves in war, some shadow of the age-old weariness of the east has begun to fall across our western world. we have also reacted strongly against materialism in thought and life; we have begun to see, as has been said, how the need and force of personality have the right to assert themselves against the dominance of things. we are beginning to recognize the right of religion and philosophy to suggest terms to science, and all these tendencies have combined to produce a considerable group of people who, having found, for one reason or another, no real satisfaction in their inherited christianity, have welcomed the eastern solution of the problems of life, or else have positively turned to the east in the hope of discovering what western christianity has not been able to give them. one should add also that the pure love of speculation which is one of the phases of modern thought has made an opening in the west for the east. if unlimited speculation is the main business of life, the east has certainly everything to offer us, and for warning, as we shall presently see, as well as for guidance. _pantheism and its problems_ the older eastern religions are, to begin with, pantheistic. we have seen how religion generally in its development takes form and content from its governing conception of god. we have seen also that there are three governing conceptions of god: he is conceived as transcendent or immanent, or else he is simply identified with the range and force of the universe. pantheism is generally the creation of brooding wonder and uncritical thought; pantheism feels rather than thinks; it accepts rather than seeks to explain. it may be devout enough but its devotion is passive rather than active. pantheism is never scientific in the accepted sense of that term; it has little concern for law; it explains by personalizing the forces with which it has to deal; it is akin to the temper which finds some animating spirit in all natural phenomena. the flow of waters, the growth of things, the drift of clouds across the sky are all, for pantheism, simply the revelation of the action of some indwelling spirit or other, without which they could neither exist nor go on. at its worst pantheism issues in a grotesque mythology and an inconceivable multiplication of divinity; the gods in the hindu pantheon are numbered by the thousands. at its best pantheism issues in a kind of mystic poetry and creates a devotee sensitive as tagore to the fugitive gleams of beauty through the murk of things, voicing his prayers and insights in rare phrases which are, on the whole, in arresting contrast to the actuality of life about him. western devotion has been caught by the mystic and poetical character of pantheism and is, on the whole, strangely blind to its actual outcome in the life of its devotees. we all feel the suggestion of it in certain of our tempers. if we should take out of much of our finest poetry suggestions akin to the suggestions of pantheism at its best, we should leave even western poetry strangely poor, and we have beside, particularly in the contemplation of rare natural beauty, a feeling of kinship with the spirit which clothes itself in dawn and twilight, or speaks through the rhythmic beat of sea waves, or lifts itself against the skyline in far blue mountain summits, which helps us to understand this old, old faith. and if modern cults had done nothing more than appropriate the poetry of pantheism they would have lent only a touch of oriental colour to the somberness of western life. but theosophy and kindred cults have gone farther, since pantheism itself must go farther. directly you have identified creation and the creative power so intimately as pantheism does, then you are under bonds, if you have any curiosity at all or any speculative force, to try to explain the ways in which a god, who is just to begin with all that there is, has managed to reveal himself in such an infinitude of minute and sometimes ungodlike ways. so pantheism has its own scheme, not of creation, for there is no place in pantheism for creation, but rather of emanation. eastern thought substitutes for the cosmogony of the old testament which simply carries the world back to a creative god and seeks to go no farther, and for the methods of western science which carries creation back to ultimate force and is unable to go any farther, an entirely different system. _how the one becomes the many_ a paragraph in mrs. besant's "the ancient wisdom" (page ) may help us here. "coming forth from the depths of the one existence, from the one beyond all thought and all speech, a logos, by imposing on himself a limit, circumscribing voluntarily the range of his own being, becomes the manifested god, and tracing the limiting sphere of his activity thus outlines the area of his universe. within that sphere the universe is born, is evolved, and dies; it lives, it moves, it has its being in him; its matter is his emanation; its forces and energies are currents of his life; he is immanent in every atom, all-pervading, all-sustaining, all-evolving; he is its source and its end, its cause and its object, its centre and circumference; it is built on him as its sure foundation, it breathes in him as its encircling space; he is in everything and everything in him. thus have the sages of the ancient wisdom taught us of the beginning of the manifested worlds." it is not, of course, fair to say that here is something entirely different from the line of western scientific and philosophic thought or wholly alien to elements in modern christianity.[ ] the real problem of modern theism is to connect what science discovers with what faith assumes. the broader generalization of science resolves action and existence into the unities of an underlying and self-conserving force which grows more and more subtle and tenuous as we follow it from molecules to atoms, from atoms to eons and electrons, and even discern beneath these something more impalpable than themselves, and there must be some way in which a creative power conceived by faith in terms of personality has released the forces which have built themselves into the universe. the difference is, however, that christian theism refuses completely to identify god and his universe. [footnote : indeed this is a better commentary on the prologue to the gospel of john and certain passages of colossians than most of the orthodox theologies, and the self-limitation of god is the key to the moral freedom of the individual.] there is, after all, a profound distinction between creating and becoming. theosophy undertakes to explain for us how "the one beyond all thought and all speech" has become us and our universe. it attempts also to provide a way by which we, who are entangled, to our pain and sorrow, in the web of things thus woven, may escape from it and lose ourselves again in the one. it takes the wheel for its symbol in more senses than one. everything is a turning and returning and we ourselves are bound upon the wheel, carried down or up and finally to be set free, only by the acceptance of a certain discipline of life. theosophy, then, is both speculative and practical. its speculations take an immense range necessarily; it is no simple thing to follow the one from the depths of his hidden existence to our earth-born lives and the forces which flow about them. only an expert deeply versed in eastern literature would be able to say whether mrs. besant follows her eastern masters faithfully in reporting their conclusions, but she has plainly availed herself of many of the terms and suggestions of modern science in interpreting them to us. if one could use a figure borrowed from electricity, the one is "stepped-down" through a series of planes and manifestations. theosophy makes much of sevens--no use to ask why--and bridges the gulf between ultimate and present realities by a series of seven planes in which what is coarsest in the plane above becomes the germ of what is finest in the plane beneath. even so, the one does not directly touch even the highest of these seven planes. (theosophy is, first of all, a study in descents and not in ascents; ascent comes later.) there are between the one and the topmost plane three emanations (but perhaps we would better let mrs. besant speak to us herself): "the self-unfolding of the logos in a threefold form: the first logos the root of all being, from him the second manifesting the two aspects of life and form, then the third logos, the universal mind, that in which all archetypically exists, the source of beings, the fount of fashioning energies."[ ] [footnote : "the ancient wisdom," p. .] _evolution and involution_ it would seem to the uninitiated that all this is a kind of smoke-screen of words to conceal our real ignorance of what we can never know and really have no need to know. it is evidently just an attempt to bridge the abyss between the immaterial and the material. if theosophy wishes to bridge this abyss with conjecture, well and good, but its conjectures really leave us more deeply perplexed than we should be if we frankly recognized and accepted the limitations of our ignorance. once within sight of the topmost of her seven planes, mrs. besant goes on a little more definitely though she confesses "of what occurs on the two higher planes of the universe, the seventh and the sixth, we can form but the haziest conception." each plane has what she calls its own "spirit matter"; this spirit matter becomes coarser as we descend; each plane is an emanation from the plane above it and the spirit matter of each plane winds one more veil around those emanations of the immaterial one in whom or which the whole process took its beginning. theosophy does not speak of evolution as it attempts to account for our material world, it speaks of involution. here it reverses what is most distinctive in modern western religious thought as far as modern western religious thought has accepted evolution. for us evolution, if we seek to give it a theistic content, is god making manifest, in the vast ascent of form and existence, an always fuller revelation of himself. our familiar phrase "the self-revelation of god" posits a power which can never for a moment be contained in all that is, but which may always be more clearly known as we follow his creative record from stage to ascending stage. a grass blade is a richer revelation than a crystal, a bird than a grass blade; personality is almost infinitely richer than the lower forms, some personalities are more perfectly the instruments of the divine self-revelation than others, and christian faith accepts in jesus christ the supreme self-revelation of god in terms of human experience. _theosophy undertakes to offer deliverance to the entangled soul_ but theosophy reverses all this. as the one comes down from emanation to emanation and from plane to plane he is always more deeply entangled in the veil of things, until on our last and lowest plane he is seven times enwrapped and smothered. we must not, however, confuse this last and lowest plane with our little world, or even our universe; these are but sensible aspects of it and they are really the manifestation of the deeply enwrapped divine trying to struggle up and out again and so building our realities about us and eventually bringing us, with all our conscious powers, into being. (here the theosophist has more in common with the evolutionist than one or two of the preceding paragraphs would seem to indicate.) if we follow the figure of the wheel our present plane, the last and lowest of them all, is really the turning point of the wheel; now it begins to turn back upon that from which it descended, and according to theosophy our practical human task is so to avail ourselves of its upward movement as to be carried back with it toward the high planes of perfect being. theosophy undertakes to account for personality as it accounts for our sensible universe and along much the same line of speculation. just as the whole physical plane on which our world exists has really somewhere deep wrapped up within it some emanation of the one from whom everything flows out, so our true selves, which have really come down from the one and should thence return, are wrapped up so deeply as also to be near lost and smothered with, nevertheless, the power to get themselves unwrapped. our wrappings are our bodies, but we do not begin to understand theosophy if we think of body in the ordinary sense; our physical body is only one and that the coarsest of the seven veils, for there are seven here also, in which the true soul is enmeshed. we have really seven bodies and we are not any one of them though each of them is useful and each one of them puts us in touch with a certain order of existence. some of these bodies are mortal, others of them belong to the truly enduring order. now we are lost here unless we recognize the profound difference between all our usual ways of thinking or talking and the wisdom of theosophy. theosophy begins at the top and comes down, at least until it reaches our present world; it also begins at the inside and works out. we think of our physical bodies as the instruments, on one side at least, through which the physical world communicates with us, but for the theosophist they are only instruments through which we communicate with the world. not quite so, however, for theosophy recognizes the give and take of experience. the soul may slip out of the physical body in sleep and it--our physical body--is at the best a stupid, imprisoning, misleading sort of a husk which has its practical uses but ought by no means to be taken too seriously.[ ] its coarse matter may be refined by discipline and diet and apparently the physical body of a vegetarian is a finer instrument than the physical body of one who feeds on the flesh of animals. [footnote : for a striking modern phrasing of this see edward carpenter's free verse "the stupid old body."] _but becomes deeply entangled itself_ the physical body has also an etheric double which duplicates in a more subtle way the constitution of the physical body. this is the vehicle of the life force, whatever that means. the physical body and its double are in a rough way the vehicles of the give and take of physical existence, but for the experiences of pain and pleasure and for the dwelling place of the passions, desires and emotions, we have an astral body. here the theosophist makes much use of vibrations and colours, and apparently our changing play of emotion is reflected in a play of colour which puts the chameleon to shame and makes us in our most excited moment rivals of the rainbow itself. the astral body shows upon occasion browns, dark reds and greens and their combinations, lit from time to time with flashes of scarlet. our better feelings reveal themselves in finer colours; rose indicates love, blue, religious feeling, yellow, intelligence, and violet, spirituality. the theosophist believes that we can be trained to see all this and illustrates it in coloured plates which are, to the uninitiated, not over convincing. beside the body of physical existence and the astral body we possess also a mental body. this is the seat of thought and mental action. in a sentence, maybe, the theosophist is trying to say that we have a body for each phase of personality through which we come into contact with the finer realities of the ascending planes of existence, and that the matter of these bodies is more subtly refined as we pass from mere sensation to higher spiritual states. so within the astral body there is the mental body which, says mrs. besant, is of finer material than the astral as the astral is finer than the physical. this is the body which answers by its vibrations to our changes of thought. the mental body may be refined by fitting disciplines as it is coarsened by evil thoughts. these thoughts may become "veritable diseases and maimings of the mental body incurable during its period of life." these bodies we discard in due time, the physical at death and the astral when ready to enter the heaven world. what becomes of the mental body mrs. besant does not say. beyond these are bodies which belong to man's timeless existence, curiously named and obscurely defined. there is apparently a causal body which is possibly the vehicle of will and, more involved still, a super-spiritual body which is the reality of god deep within us, and the carrier and vehicle of our supreme and enduring personal values. all this is a curious enough mingling of psychology, a subtle materialism, and unbounded speculation; it is equally beyond proof and denial, though for the proof of it the theosophist offers the testimony of those whose senses are so refined by peculiar disciplines as to see in and about physical form a play of light and colour which are themselves the revelation of mental and emotional states. we literally go about, according to this testimony, "trailing clouds of glory" or of gloom. while for the denial of it there is the deep-seated protest of western reason, that personality, complex as it is, cannot possibly be so bafflingly complex as this. _the west accepts suffering as a challenge and looks to personal immortality for victory_ we are, therefore, according to the theosophist, emanations from the divine; deeply enveiled and much enshrouded within us is a timeless and changeless self descended from the mysterious all which lies back of all things and under high compulsion to seek again, in some vast turning of the wheel of being, that from which we sprang. theosophy becomes more understandable in its practical reaction upon life, for this many veiled self is deeply involved in forces and states to which it is not really akin, and since it suffers greatly in being so involved the end of existence is, in discipline and ascent, to be set free from the pain and weariness of conscious existence, and to be absorbed in the changeless peace of that ultimate reality out of which we have issued and back again to which we are destined to go. we cannot be insensible to the vast scope of such a speculation as this for in one form or another there are, in all religion and in the deeper yearnings of life, elements akin to it. the order of which we are a part bears hard upon the soul. no one who meditates deeply upon the strangeness of human destiny can fail to recognize the arresting estate of sensitive personality enmeshed in laws and forces which drive on with so little apparent consideration for those who are caught in the turning of their wheels, or ridden down in their drive. western faith has generally seen in this situation a challenge to personality to assert its own supremacy over the impersonal and subject its encompassing order to the high purposes of the soul. if we are wounded in the fight we take our wounds as good soldiers; if the forces which face us are challengingly strong we fall back upon our deeper resources and in the end assert our own vaster powers. we accept the conditions of the struggle as a part of the discipline of life and in our braver moments win from the fight itself those elements of personal steadfastness which, matured in character, give moral meaning to the endeavour, and though we anticipate an ultimate release and blessed compensation for the present travail of our souls, we find that release and those compensations in a personal immortality which attends the termination of the individual life in the present order, and continues that life conscious, free and triumphant in an immortal order, and even there we ask neither to be released from effort nor denied progress. we challenge the fortunes of the unknown in the poet's phrase, and seek "other heights in other lives, god willing." _the east balances the accounts of life in a series of reincarnations_ but just as the east casts the glamour of its speculation over the processes by which we have come to be where and what we are, so it casts the glamour of its speculation over the process of our release. the west stakes everything on the issue of one individual life even if death ends it, or else it assumes a conscious continuity of life rich in memory and persistent in individuality in whatever progress lies beyond the grave. those whom dante saw ascending from terrace to terrace of the mount of purgation were in all stages continuously and truly themselves. they knew the faults for which they made atonement and looked back with unclouded vision along all the stages by which they had climbed. the east makes little of the continuity of individual life and everything of the sequence of individual lives. it offers for the solution of our problem of ultimate destiny and also for its solution of the problem of pain and sorrow and manifest inequality in human states, two simple and unescapable laws--the law of moral consequence and the law of reincarnation. the east and the west both believe that "whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap" but the west believes he gathers his harvests of pain or punishment in a continuity of conscious existence, the vaster part of which is lived beyond death, with no rebirth and with no travelling again the light or shadowed ways of earth and time. the christian west believes also in redemption which is just that sharing of god in the process which makes faith and repentance definite and saving elements in the struggle of the soul. the east believes in a series of reincarnations, each reincarnate state taking its character from the quality of the life before. the fact that the doors of recollection are shut and locked between each incarnate existence makes no difference to the east. if a man has lived well and justly and followed his light, he will hereafter be born higher up; if he has loved darkness because his deeds are evil, he will be born into some low estate; he may descend into the beast or ascend into the saint. he will pay for present injustice with future suffering-- "or reach a hand through time to catch the far-off interest of tears" even though he have no conscious remembrance of the faults for which he atones, or the sorrow for which he is recompensed. if he is steadfast through countless rebirths, the slow turning wheel will bear him higher and higher until he begins to ascend the successive planes, discovering in each plane for which he has fitted himself a new wealth and reality of existence, until at last he is lost in the infinite existence and his struggle is ended. perhaps the word "struggle" as here used is wrong. deliverance for the east is not so much struggle as acquiescence. for the theosophist desire is the master mischief maker. desire leads us in wrong directions, complicates our spiritual problems and thrusts us against the turn of the wheel. we are rather, according to the theosophist, to reduce desire to its simplest terms, thereby freeing ourselves from restlessness, above all taking care not to hurt or embitter others. _theosophy produces a distinct type of character_ there is no denying that here is a faith capable of producing a distinctive type of character. it tends at its best toward an extreme conscientiousness and an always excessive introspection; it creates also a vast and brooding patience. "in countries where reincarnation and karma [the law of cause and effect] are taken for granted by every peasant and labourer, the belief spreads a certain quiet acceptance of inevitable troubles that conduces much to the calm and contentment of ordinary life. a man overwhelmed by misfortunes rails neither against god nor against his neighbours, but regards his troubles as the result of his own past mistakes and ill-doings. he accepts them resignedly and makes the best of them.... he realizes that his future lives depend on his own exertions and that the law which brings him pain will bring him joy just as inevitably if he sows the seed of good. hence a certain large patience and philosophic view of life tending directly to social stability and to general contentment."[ ] [footnote : "the ancient wisdom," besant, p. .] if such a faith as this be informed with humaneness and be deeply tempered with the principle of sacrifice, it may, and does, result in a distinct type of real goodness. it is possibly a good faith for helpless and more or less despairing folk, though it likely creates many of the evils from which it desires to escape. the very reach and subtlety and even splendour of its speculation will make a strong appeal to minds of a certain type. two elements in the whole system doubtless account for what hold it has upon the western mind. it does offer, to begin with, a coherent explanation of the problem of pain and sorrow. as we have seen more than once in this study, western christianity has been deficient just here. the accepted explanations of the shadowed side of life have not been great enough to meet the facts. practically every cult we have studied has found its opportunity just here. christian science solves the problem by denying the essential reality of pain and disease. new thought believes in an underlying and loving good to which life may be so attuned as to bring us generally into the current of health and happiness. theosophy accepts pain, sorrow and all unhappy forces and explains them as the inevitable result of wrong action either in this or a previous existence. _theosophy a "tour de force" of the imagination_ christian science saves the justice and affirms the love of god by making him just a god with apparently no concern for and no participation in the shadowed side of life. new thought saves the love and justice of god by discovering in pain and unhappiness our lack of harmony with him. theosophy meets the whole shadowed order along its full front and explains everything in terms of compensation. now there is much in this to appeal to our modern temper. directly we recognize the scales in which the consequences of our actions are weighed as being so sensitive that not even a thought can be thrown in the one balance without disturbing the equilibrium, directly we recognize ourselves as involved in a sweep of law from whose consequences there is no possible escape, we have at least a consistent scheme in which there is room for no evasion, and if we balance the manifold inequalities of one life by what has been done or left undone in some previous life, we are always able to add weight enough to the scales to make them hang level. true enough, there is nothing to guide us here but imaginative ingenuity, but it is always possible to imagine some fault in a previous existence which we pay for in pain or loss or disappointment, or some good deed done in a previous existence which accounts for our happy fortune in this. and so justice is saved if only by a tour de force of the imagination. (mrs. besant, for example, explains the untimely death of a child as a penalty due the parents for unkindness to a child in an earlier incarnation.) the speculative aspects of theosophy also appeal to tempers which love to dream without accepting the laborious discipline of a truly reasoned speculation. to quote a phrase of macaulay's quoted in turn by william james in one of his letters, there is a type of mind "utterly wanting in the faculty by which a demonstrated truth is distinguished from a plausible supposition," and there has been amongst us of late a marked increase of this type of mind. there has been up to our own time no great amount of such speculation as this in the west. it is not native to the occidental temper and it has been held in control by our scientific approach to the facts of our world and our experiences therein. we have demanded for our speculations generally the demonstration of fact and this has heretofore held us to a rather narrow range, but that widening of the frontiers of the possible which has attended the new psychology with its emphasis upon the subconscious, along with the rather baffling character of psychic phenomena, has opened the flood gates and released a tide of speculation which goes far beyond the proved fact and accepts no limits but its own ingenious audacity. we have already seen how evident deficiencies in the discipline of present-day education and the loose state of mind too much in evidence amongst us has contributed to all this. there are everywhere a great number of perplexed people who want to believe something and find it far easier to believe in dreams and guesses and cloud-built systems than in restraining facts or even the rather clearly demonstrated realities of the moral order, and such as these have found a wealth of material in eastern speculation. _a bridge of clouds_ in trying to appraise the truth of theosophy we have to disentangle the system and the needs and the seekings which lead its adherents to accept it. these needs and seekings are, after all, near and familiar; they are only our old questions whence? and whither? and why? theosophy is at least the attempt to really answer some of the questions which western science is either content or compelled to leave unanswered. the creative point of contact between personality and matter and force is deeply enwrapped in mystery. orthodox christianity has been content to affirm the facts of creation without asking any questions at all as to its methods. it has affirmed the omnipotence of the creator and has found in his omnipotence a satisfactory resting place. god is great enough to do what has been done and the detail of it is rather an affair for god than man. scientific speculation generally has gone back as far as it can go in the resolution of its forces and laws and recognized its own limitations, leaving the rest to the theologian and the philosopher. the result has been a gap which has not been bridged over. theosophy has undertaken to bridge that gap. but, examined more carefully, one sees that the abyss has been crossed by nothing more solid than a fabric of cloudy speculation. true enough these speculations are ingenious and touched with suggestive light, but they are strangely insubstantial. after all they do absolutely nothing more than our western affirmation of the immanence of god in life and force and law, and our western thought has the advantage alike in simplicity, in scientific basis and reverent self-restraint. we might as well recognize, and be done with it, that there are questions here which in all human probability are insoluble. there are elements of mystery in life and the universe beyond our present and likely our future power to definitely resolve. in the end faith can do nothing more than rest in god and accept as an aspect of life itself the necessary limits of our position. our organized knowledge all too quickly brings us to regions where faith and faith alone completes the inquiry. but on the other hand, a faith which too far outruns either in the reach or audacity of its speculation those elements which organized knowledge supplies and reason validates, loses itself in futilities or else misleads us altogether. eastern speculation is too far beyond either ordered knowledge or right reason to be of any practical use in the fruitful conduct of life. believing too much does just as much harm as believing too little. theosophy's seven planes and ascending emanations and sevenfold veils and all the rest really explain nothing. on the other hand they tempt their faithful to take conjecture for reality; they create a credulous and uncritical temper; they are hostile to that honest dealing with fact which is just one condition of getting on at all. a brave confession of ignorance is often more truly reverent than knowing too many things which are not so. as we approach more nearly the reality of things as they are we find them always unexpectedly simple. the burden of proof is always upon the murky and the complex. those who try to escape the difficulties in which our deeper understanding of the world order and our own personalities involve us, by taking refuge in eastern occultism are on the wrong line. _the difficulties of reincarnation_ the same criticism holds true of reincarnation. it is involved in hopeless difficulties. there are apparent injustices and inequalities in life--so much is beyond debate--but we have in general, if we are honest enough to follow it through, the clue to even these. we are all parts of a struggling and, we trust, ascending order, an order which on the whole is not so greatly concerned for the individual as we are concerned for ourselves. we are hampered by our ignorance and we are deeply involved one with the other. the orthodox theology which blames everything upon sin as an abstraction is not convincing, but sin as the projection of wrong desires, through self-will, into the field of human action is a fact to be constantly reckoned with. the individual and social consequences of it are enormous, nor can they be confined either to one individual or one generation. heredity continues weakness as well as strength. a vast deal of our bitter reaping is due to the wrong or foolish sowing of others, though fortunately we share the good as well as the bad. the laws of heredity will account for a vast deal in any one generation; the laws of social action and reaction for a great deal of the rest, and there is finally not a little for which we ourselves are responsible. a good many of our problems ought to be approached from the point of view of the well-being of humanity generally and not our own individual destiny. we may safely trust our individual destiny to brave and unselfish living. i ought not to test what i do or leave undone by its effect upon me in some future reincarnation; i ought to test it by the effect which it has now upon the world of which i am a part, upon the generation which is to follow me and upon the quality of my own present life. true enough, the theosophist and myself find ourselves here in substantial agreement as to many of the things which a man ought practically to do to secure a happier future, but i maintain that the motives just named are far more solid and worthy motives than the camouflaged selfishness of theosophy, and they are certainly in far deeper accord with the ascertained facts of life. if we recognize that the more shadowed side of life is partly the result of social and individual development conditioned by weakness, ignorance and sin, if we recognize that the present reaps what the past has sown, if we recognize that we suffer for the faults of others and that no one of us may hope to climb far until his neighbour climbs with him, if we recognize that pain and suffering are disciplinary, illuminating, educative, and finally, if we recognize that we do possess the power to take all the more difficult elements in experience and subdue them to an increased wealth of personality, we have really all the elements in hand for the solution of the problem of pain and sorrow in terms of action and understanding, and we do not need a series of reincarnations to help us out. reincarnation really explains, as it claims to explain, neither the exceptional individual nor the apparently unmerited sufferings of the individual, and it has beside inescapable difficulties of its own. it has to parallel the course of human existence with a range of supernal existence for which there is absolutely no proof; it has to numerically equalize birth and death--and these are not equal in an increasing terrestrial population--or else it has to assume, as it does of course, on other planes a storehouse of souls from which to draw. and more than that, it involves itself in a perfect tangle of heavenly bookkeeping. here is the best mrs. besant can do to explain the difficulties of reincarnation. "we have seen that man during his passage to physical death loses, one after the other, his various bodies.... these are all disintegrated and their particles remixed with the materials of their several planes.... at this stage, then, only the man himself is left, the labourer who has brought his harvest home and has lived upon it till it is all worked up into himself. the dawn of a new life begins."[ ] [footnote : "the ancient wisdom," p. --passim.] to condense, he now proceeds to build up for himself a new body for his coming life on the lower mental level. "this again exactly represents his desire nature, faithfully reproducing the qualities he evolved in the past; ... thus the man stands fully equipped for his next incarnation.... meanwhile action external to himself is being taken to provide him with a physical body suitable for the expression of his qualities.... all this is done by certain mighty spiritual intelligences often spoken of as the lords of karma because it is their function to superintend the working out of causes continually set going by thoughts, desires and actions. they hold the threads of destiny which each man has woven, and guide the reincarnating man to the environment determined by his past. the race, the nation, the family thus determined, what may be called the mould of the physical body ... is built within the mother's womb by the agency of an elemental, the thought of the karmic lords being its motive power." the difficulties which this statement evades are enormous, its conjectures are even more enormous. this is the subversion of all the facts of biology and heredity to a capricious scheme, built up just to answer a few practical questions--why do we differ? why do we suffer? why are we happy? surely there are far more simple and reasonable answers to these questions than the answer of theosophy, and the willingness of so many people to rest in such an answer as this can prove only one of two things--the capacity of the mind for credulity or the arresting failure of those whose business it is to interpret life to the perplexed, to have even begun their task. _immortality a nobler, juster and simpler balancing of life's account-book_ if there be a want of opportunity in our present existence for a true balancing of the scales of justice, and if some future existence be needed to make things right, then the christian doctrine of immortality has an immense advantage over the reincarnations of theosophy. we have no right to underestimate the difficulties of a reasonable faith in immortality, but they are simplicity itself as compared with the difficulties of reincarnation, for reincarnation must answer every question which the possibility of immortality raises and answer even more difficult questions of its own. it is far simpler to believe that having survived the shock of death we go on with the same essential individuality we had before death, than to believe that having survived we are sent back again through the gates of birth and are really reincarnated in another individuality. more than that, the christian belief in immortality is more ethical. the action and reaction of life have real meaning for me only as i know and remember. no theosophic evasion can take the force out of this. if i consciously connect to-day's pain with yesterday's pain with the folly or fault of a previous existence of which i am really unconscious, the chain has been broken and no speculative question can supply the missing link. very likely the accepted christian doctrine of the finality of life after death has given theosophy an opportunity in the west. protestantism particularly has allowed absolutely no place after death for repentance, has offered no new chance to the adventuring soul; its hell and its heaven have been final states. catholicism has eased the strain of this with purgatory, a belief wholly without scriptural basis, but nevertheless evolved in answer to great necessities of life. we need neither purgatory nor reincarnation; we need only the recognition of what is so centrally a part of any conception of immortality as to make one wonder why we have so greatly missed it; the reasonable confidence, that is, that we really go on very much as we left off here. if there be in a future existence--and there must be if there be a future existence--any room for repentance born of a clearer recognition of fault and new and holier purposes born of a clearer understanding of the true values of life, then we shall go on in a truly moral process of growth, availing ourselves always of the teachings of experience and working toward the true well-being of our souls, and if the mercy and justice of god be not the figment of our imagination those who have been hardly dealt with here will be given new opportunity, the deficient and the handicapped released from what weighed them down will find a new departure, and the justices of eternity complete what time began. all this will be accomplished not in a series of existences, separated one from the other by abysms of forgetfulness, but in a remembered continuity of life deepening through endless growth. if this be only faith and speculation it is at least a far more reasonable faith and speculation than the alternative which theosophy offers. theosophy is a side issue in the real solution of the problems of life. _pantheism at its best--and its worst_ finally, though this is possibly unfair, eastern pantheism generally must be tested by its fruits. we ought not, if we are to deal justly with it, to ignore its better side. the east at its best has been strong in a type of life wanting in the west; the east has been rich in patience and gentleness and in consideration for every kind of life, even the ant in the dust or the beast in the jungle. the east at its best has weighed conduct in delicate balances and traced the play of cause and effect in character far, far beyond the west; it has been content with simple things and found its true wealth in the inner life. it has willingly, for the sake of truth and goodness, subjected itself to disciplines, some of which are admirable, others of which are loathsome. it has at its best ventured everything for the well-being of the soul, even when it has misconceived that well-being. it has had little of the hard driving quality of the west. not a little of the teaching of jesus fits in better with the temper and devotion of the orient than the competitive materialism of the occident. it is easily possible to pass not a little of the gospels through the interpretation of eastern mysticism and find therein arresting correspondences. for example, a little book called "at the feet of the master" by a young indian student, has in it a wealth of insight and an understanding of the balanced conduct of life which is wanting in a good many of the western interpretations of life, but none the less, things must be judged by their massed outcome and the massed outcome of eastern pantheism does not commend itself. the larger part of the religious literature of the east is upon a distinctly lower level than those parts of it which are brought to us by its devotees, and when pantheism--and the basis of all eastern speculation is pantheistic--comes down from its high places and begins practically to express itself in worship and the conduct of the crowd, then it is such as to give us pause. what kipling calls "the sculptured horrors" of the carved fronts of the temples in benares are no accident; they are simply the logical outcome of a faith which lifts the whole to the level of the divine and has nothing beyond to correct what is by what ought or ought not to be. almost inevitably pantheistic religions unduly exalt those powers which make for fertility of field and the increase of life. as they do this they have on their side the elemental forces in human nature. when we begin to make gods of what after all must be sternly subordinated to higher things, and the east has done this in spite of its mystics and its dreamers, then we are not only in danger of sculpturing symbolic horrors on the fronts of our temples but of setting up therein strange altars to strange gods who are best worshipped by strange rites. all this, inevitably enough, has given to eastern worship a more than earthly character, and has invested with the sanction of religion forces which it must always be the business of religion to subordinate and control. along with all this has gone a grotesque mythology and an inconceivable multiplication of divinity. since no one but an expert can hope to understand the complexities of a faith like this, the east has developed a priestly class which bears harder upon its devotees and at the same time more contemptuously separates itself from them than perhaps any priestly class in the world. if the east is to return upon the west in substituting a refined and more or less mystic pantheism for the sterner forms of western faith, we ought at least to understand what it is which, with all its implications, is beginning to set up its altars amongst us. no one can follow the theosophic religion of the west without recognizing how largely western theosophy avails itself of western science and informs itself with what christianity has given to the west. if these were taken out of it it would be hopeless. since, therefore, its speculations carry us beyond reason or science, since its solution of the problems of life is far too complex, since whatever is good in it may be found more richly and simply in what we already possess and since the practical outcome of it in the east itself is an arrested civilization which has many depths but few heights, one must inevitably conclude that theosophy has no real meaning for those who possess already the knowledge which we have so laboriously gained and the faith and insight which christianity has brought us. x spiritualism practically all the newer cults are quests in one general direction but down more or less specific roads. christian science and new thought are endeavours after health and well-being and the endeavour also to reconcile the more shadowed experiences of life with the love and goodness of god. theosophy and kindred cults are quests for illumination and spiritual deliverance along other than the accepted lines of christian "redemption." spiritualism is practically the quest for the demonstration of immortality through such physical phenomena as prove, at least to those who are persuaded by them, the survival of discarnate personality. all these movements involve in varying degrees the abnormal or the supernormal. they imply generally another environment for personality than the environment which the ordered world of science supplies, and other laws than the laws of which it takes account. they are one in affirming the mastery of the psychical over the physical. they either affirm or imply faculties which do not depend upon the senses for their material; they suggest a range of personality which, if the facts which they supply are sound, demands a very considerable recasting of our accepted beliefs about ourselves. christian science and new thought confine themselves largely to the present term of life, though christian science affirms strongly enough that death is an error of the mortal mind. new thought places a shifting emphasis upon immortality. spiritualism centers wholly upon the phenomena of the discarnate life, upon the power of the discarnate to communicate with us and upon our power to receive and interpret their communications. spiritualism, or spiritism, the name its adherents prefer, is, however, by no means so simple as this definition of it. it may be anything from the credulity which accepts without question or analysis the trick of a medium, to the profound speculation of meyer or hyslop or the new adventures in psychology of Émile boirac and his french associates. it may be a cult, a philosophy or an inquiry; it may organize itself in forms of worship and separate itself entirely from the churches. it may reinforce the faith of those who remain in their old communions. spiritism has a long line of descent. the belief that the spirit may leave the body and maintain a continued existence is very old. mr. herbert spencer finds the genesis of this belief in dreams. since primitive men believed themselves able, in their dreams, to wander about while the body remained immobile and since in their dreams they met and spoke with their dead, they conceived an immaterial existence. the spirit of a dead man, having left the body, would still go on about its business. they, therefore, set out food and drink upon his grave and sacrificed his dogs, his horses or his wives to serve him in his disembodied state. all this is familiar enough and perhaps the whole matter began as mr. spencer suggested, though it by no means ends there. the animism which grew out of this belief characterizes a vast deal of early religion, penetrates a vast deal of early thinking. primitive man lived in a world constantly under the control of either friendly or hostile spirits and the really massive result of this faith of his is registered in regions as remote as the capricious genders of french nouns and the majestic strophes of the hebrew psalms, for the genders are the shadowy survivals of a time when all things had their spirits, male or female, and the psalms voice the faith for which thunder was the voice of god and the hail was stored in his armoury. it would take us far beyond the scope of our present inquiry to follow down this line in all its suggestive ramifications. animism, medieval witchcraft and the confused phenomena of knocks, rappings and the breaking and throwing about of furniture and the like reported in all civilized countries for the past two or three centuries, supply the general background for modern spiritualism. (the whole subject is fully treated in the first and second chapters of podmore.) _the genesis of modern spiritualism_ modern spiritualism does not, however, claim for itself so ancient an ancestry. in mysterious knockings were heard in the family of john d. fox at hydesville, n.y. they appeared to have some purpose behind them; the daughters of the family finally worked out a code: three raps for yes, one for no, two for doubt, and lo, a going concern was established. it is interesting to note that mysterious noises had been about a century before heard in the family of the wesleys in epworth rectory, england. these noises came to be accepted quite placidly as an aspect of the interesting domestic life of the wesleys. it has usually been supposed that hattie wesley knew more about it than she cared to tell and, as far as the illustrious founders of methodism were concerned, there the matter rests. but the fox sisters became professional mediums and upon these simple beginnings a great superstructure has been built up. the modern interest in spiritualism thus began on its physical side and in general the physical phenomena of spiritualism have become more bizarre and complex with the growth of the cult. raps, table tiltings, movements of articles of furniture, playing upon musical instruments, slate writing, automatic writing, of late the ouija board, materialization, levitation, apparent elongation of the medium's body, are all associated with spiritism. it was natural that the voice also should become a medium of communication, though trance mediumship belongs, as we shall see, to a later stage of development. incidentally the movement created a kind of contagious hysteria which naturally multiplied the phenomena and made detached and critical attitudes unduly difficult. for reasons already touched upon, america has been strongly predisposed to phases of public opinion which in their intensity and want of balance have the generally accepted characteristics of hysteria. some of them have been religious, great awakenings, revivals and the like. these in their more extreme form have been marked by trances, shoutings and catalepsy and, more normally, by a popular interest, strongly emotionalized, which may possess a real religious value. other religious movements have centered about the second coming of christ and the end of the world. many of these peculiar excitements have been political. the whole offers the psychologists a fascinating field and awaits its historian.[ ] yet the result is always the same. the critical faculty is for the time in abeyance; public opinion is intolerant of contradiction; imposture is made easy and charlatans and self-appointed prophets find a credulous following. movements having this genesis and history are in themselves open to suspicion. [footnote : sidis has a résumé of social epidemics in part three of his work on the "psychology of suggestion."] _it crosses to england and the continent_ the american interest in spiritualism from to belongs distinctly to this region. the fox sisters have been generally discredited, but what they began carried on. in a mrs. hayden and a little later a mrs. roberts introduced raps and table turnings to england. there, and more particularly on the continent, spiritualism met and merged with a second line of development which in turn reacted upon american spiritualism, and, in america, released movements on the surface wholly unrelated to spiritism. in france to a degree and in germany strongly mesmerism lent itself to spiritistic interpretations. i quote podmore, who is commenting upon the trance utterances of a mrs. lindquist: "it is to be noted that the ascription of these somnambulic utterances to spirit intelligences was in the circumstances not merely easy but almost inevitable. the entranced person was in a state obviously differing very widely from either normal sleep or normal wakefulness; in the waking state she herself retained no recollection of what happened in the trance; in the trance she habitually spoke of her waking self in the third person, as of some one else; the intelligence which manifested in the trance obviously possessed powers of expression and intellectual resources in some directions far greater than any displayed by the waking subject. add to this that the trance intelligence habitually reflected the ideas in general and especially the religious orthodoxy of her interlocutors; that on occasion she showed knowledge of their thoughts and intentions which could not apparently have been acquired by normal means; that she was, in particular, extraordinarily skillful in diagnosing, prescribing for, and occasionally foretelling the course of diseases in herself and others--the proof must have seemed to the bystanders complete."[ ] [footnote : "modern spiritualism," podmore, vol. i, p. .] _the beginnings of trance-mediumship_ we have here plainly enough the beginnings of trance mediumship. it needed only unstable personalities, capable of self-induced trance states, so to widen all this as to supply the bases of spiritistic faith and the material for the immensely laborious investigation of the society for psychical research. in the main, however, french interest in mesmerism and animal magnetism took a more scientific turn and issued in the brilliant french studies in hypnotism. spiritualism has made little headway in catholic countries. the authority of the church is thrown so strongly against it as to prohibit the interest of the credulous and the penetrating minds of the southern european scientists have been more concerned with the problems of abnormal personality than the continued existence of the discarnate. the interest in germany took another line. there was less scientific investigation of hypnotism and trance states as abnormal modifications of personality and far more interest in clairvoyance and spirit existence. men whose names carried weight accepted the spiritistic explanation of phenomena ranging from broken flower pots to ghosts. very likely the german tendency toward mysticism and speculation explains this. jung followed swedenborg and the mystics generally in affirming a psychic body, but was a pioneer in associating it with the luminiferous ether in a range of speculation which in our time supplies an hypothetical scientific basis for the environment of the discarnate. (so sir oliver lodge.) podmore concludes that the foundations of modern spiritualism were laid by the german magnetists of the first half of the nineteenth century. the movement developed along these lines till . once broadly in action it touches at one point or another the whole region of the occult. many spiritualists found in theosophy, for which existence is the endless turning of a wheel, a cycle of death and rebirth, a pseudo-philosophic support for their belief. spiritualism appealed naturally to the lovers of the mystic and the unusual and it associated itself, to a degree, with extreme liberalism in the general development of religion. (on the whole, however, as far as religion goes, spiritualism has created a religion of its own.) its advocates were likely to be interested in phrenology, advanced social experiments, or modification of the marriage laws. spiritualistic phenomena themselves became more varied and complex; trance mediumship became a profession with a great increase of performers; slate writing was introduced and finally materialization was achieved. all this might mean that the spirits were growing more adept in "getting through," the mediums more adept in technique, or else, which is more likely, that latent abnormal aspects of personality were being brought to light through suggestion, imitation and exercise. but no concerted effort was made by trained and impartial observers to eliminate fraud, collect data and reach dependable conclusions. this has been finally attempted by the society for psychical research and the results of their laborious investigations are now at the service of the student of the occult. _the society for psychical research begins its work_ the weight which attaches to the names of many english and some american members of the society, the carefully guarded admission of some of them that there is in the whole region a possible residue of phenomena which indicate communication between the living and the discarnate and the profoundly unsettling influence of the war, really account for the renewed interest in spiritualism in our own time. in a few englishmen, one of them a famous medium--stainton moses--formed a psychological society for the investigation of supernormal phenomena. (in general all this account of the history of spiritualism is greatly condensed from podmore and hill and the reader is referred to their works without specific reference.) this first group dissolved upon the death of one of its members--though that would seem to have been a good reason for continuing it--and in professor (afterward sir) william barrett, who had already done some experimenting and had brought hypnotism and telepathy to the notice of the british association for the advancement of science, consulted stainton moses with the view of founding a society under better auspices and the society for psychical research was organized, with professor henry sidgwick as first president. the society undertook, according to its own statement: . an examination of the nature and extent of any influence which may be exerted by one mind upon another, otherwise than through the recognized sensory channels. . the study of hypnotism and mesmerism, and an inquiry into the alleged phenomena of clairvoyance. . a careful investigation of any reports, resting on testimony sufficiently strong and not too remote, of apparitions coinciding with some external event (as for instance a death) or giving information previously unknown to the percipient, or being seen by two or more persons independently of each other. . an inquiry into various alleged phenomena apparently inexplicable by known laws of nature, and commonly referred by spiritualists to the agency of extra-human intelligences. . the collection and collation of existing materials bearing on the history of these subjects.[ ] [footnote : "spiritualism," hill, p. .] they sought also "to approach these various problems without prejudice or prepossession of any kind and in the same spirit of exact and unimpassioned inquiry which has enabled science to solve so many problems, once not less obscure nor less hotly debated." as a matter of fact the region is the most obscure which inquiry has ever been called to enter. a noble rationality pervades the whole normal material order, causes can be controlled, effects anticipated, laws formulated and above all, the hypotheses of science are, if true, always capable of a luminous and splendid verification. the disciplined intellect moves through it all with a sense of "at-homeness" which is itself a testimony to profound correspondences between the human mind and the order with which, during its long, long unfolding, it has been associated in intimacies of action and reaction too close to be adequately set forth in words. but the mind does not rest easily in the region which spiritism claims for its own. _the difficulties it confronts_ of course this is to beg the whole question. the more scientifically minded spiritualists might fairly enough answer that they are attempting to discover the laws of the occult and reduce an anarchical system to order, that our feeling of strangeness in these regions is only because of our little contact with them. there are, they claim, undeveloped aspects of personality which we have had as yet little occasion to use, but which would, once they were fully brought into action, give us the same sense of rapport with a super-sensible order that we now have in our contact with the sensible order. the crux of the whole contention is probably just here and in view of what has heretofore been accomplished in discovering and formulating the laws of the physical universe and in reducing an immense body of apparently unrelated facts to order, there is doubtless possible a very great systematization of psychical phenomena, even the most obscure. nor may we readily set bounds to the measure of human development. but at any rate the statement with which this paragraph began is true. the region which the society for psychical research set out to explore is obscure and is, as yet, so far from yielding to investigation that the investigators are not even agreed as to their facts, let alone the conclusions to be drawn from. the proceedings of the society literally fill volumes (thirty-two); it would require a specialist to follow them through and an analysis here impossible, rightly to evaluate them. when such careful investigators as hill and podmore, dealing with the same body of fact, differ constantly and diametrically in their conclusions, it is evident that the facts so far collected have not cumulative force enough to establish in the generality of disciplined minds a substantial unanimity of conviction. there are far too many alternatives in the interpretation of the facts and, in general, the personal equation of the investigator colours the conclusions reached. of course this is, in a measure, true in every field of investigation, but it is outstandingly true in psychical research. _william james enters the field_ for some years the society was mainly occupied with hypnotism and thought transference, with occasional reports on "apparitions, haunted houses, premonitions, automatic writing, crystal vision and multiple personality." professor william james' experiment with mrs. piper carried the society over into the field of trance mediumship. james had a sound scientific interest in every aspect of the play of human consciousness and was earlier than any of his contemporaries awakened to the psychological value of abnormal mental states. he also loved fair play. he made his first report on mrs. piper in . he was unable, he said, "to resist the conviction that knowledge appeared in her trances which she had never gained by the ordinary waking use of her eyes, ears and wits.... what the source of this knowledge may be, i know not, and have not a glimmer of explanatory suggestion to make, but from admitting the fact of such knowledge i can see no escape." in a letter to flourney dated august , , james says of later investigations: "it seems to me that these reports open a new chapter in the history of automatism.... evidently automatism is a word that covers an extraordinary variety of fact." the reports of mrs. piper's sittings fill a large place in the society's records. dr. richard hodgson and professor hyslop were finally led to accept her trance utterances and writings as spiritistic revelations. podmore, after a most careful analysis, concludes that "mrs. piper's trance utterances indicate the possession of some supernormal power of apprehension, at least the capacity to read the unspoken and even unconscious thoughts and emotions of other minds."[ ] he is willing to admit that if any case in the whole history of spiritualism points at communication with the spirits of the dead, hers is that case, but he adds, "to other students of the records, including the present writer, the evidence nevertheless appears at present insufficient to justify the spiritualistic view even of a working hypothesis." "i cannot point to a single instance in which a precise and unambiguous piece of information has been furnished, of a kind which could not have proceeded from the medium's own mind, working upon the materials provided in the hints let drop by the sitter."[ ] [footnote : "modern spiritualism," podmore, vol. ii, pp. - .] [footnote : "modern spiritualism," podmore, vol. ii, p. .] _the limitations of the scientist in psychical investigation_ it is impossible in this study to follow through the records of the society. a representative group of its members, some of them men whose names carry weight in other regions, have been led by their investigations to adopt the spiritistic hypothesis. significantly, however, it is generally the scientist and not the psychologist who commits himself most strongly to spiritism. he is strongly impressed, as was sir william crookes, by phenomena of one sort or another which do not come under his laws, and he assigns to them causes which lie altogether out of his field. indeed the temper and training of the scientist handicap him in all psychical investigations. he has only one of two alternatives: to explain what he sees in terms of what his laboratories have told him, or else in terms of forces with which he is not familiar. his training in careful experimentation may fit him to test and isolate physical phenomena, but if they cannot be explained in terms of the forces and laws with which he is familiar his conclusions are no more authoritative than the conclusions of any other reasonably intelligent man. he may, therefore, lend the weight of a great name to conclusions--or conjectures--entirely outside his own province. the element of trickery in the ordinary professional séance is notorious.[ ] the ordinary physical phenomena of spiritism have almost without exception been duplicated by conjurers--many of whom have mystifying tricks of their own no medium can duplicate and even the most unusual phenomena, such as home's apparent ability to handle fire unburnt and his levitation can be paralleled in savage rites or the performance of indian fakirs, to which no professedly spiritistic explanation is attached. in many instances a trained conjurer would be far more apt to detect fraud than a trained scientist. he would at least know where to look for a probable explanation. [footnote : carrington, "the psychical phenomena of spiritualism," pp. and .] _the society for psychical research gives intellectual standing to their investigations_ if the explanations of the whole group of phenomena is not in the known resident forces about us it is presumably in powers or aspects of personality not yet fully known. here the psychologist is a better witness than the scientist and it is significant that psychologists have been slower to accept the spiritistic hypothesis than the scientist. hyslop is an exception but the extent to which hyslop has of late gone in some of his reported utterances would seem to indicate that he has passed far beyond the bonds of the scientific. and indeed, the whole tendency of those who let themselves go strongly with the spiritistic tide is exactly in this direction. it ought, however, to be said that even these members of the s.p.r. who have become spiritistic have generally been savingly conservative in their conclusions. at any rate, the work of the society for psychical research has given intellectual standing to what was before a sort of hole and corner affair under suspicion twice: first, because of the character of those involved, second, because of the character of what they revealed. it is difficult for one not predisposed toward the occult and even strongly prejudiced against it to deny in alleged spiritistic phenomena a challenging residuum which may in the end compel far-reaching modifications in the conclusions both of science and psychology. by one set of tests this residuum is unexpectedly small. one of the canons of the s.p.r. is to reject the work of any medium once convicted or strongly suspected of fraud. there is a vast literature in this region through whose outstanding parts the writer has for a good while now been trying to find his way, often enough ready to quote the pope in the ring and the book. "i have worn through this sombre wintry day with winter in my soul ... over these dismalest of documents" the reports of sittings cover weary pages of murky statement; the descriptions of the discarnate life are monotonously uniform and governed almost without exception by old, old conceptions of planes and spheres. there is always a preponderance of the trivial--though the advocates of spiritism claim, and the justice of this claim must be allowed, that this is inevitable and that only through the veridical character of the inconsequential can the consequential be established. moreover, the impartial student working over the records should at least recognize the pathetic importance which those, believing themselves to be in touch with their own dead, naturally attach to even the most trivial instances. this sense of really being in touch, itself entirely subjective, probably carries over ninety-nine out of every hundred who finally become spiritists. it would be foolish to ignore the contributive force of this sense. in one form or another it is the last element in our recognition of our friends, and it never can be judged externally. but on the other hand a recognition of the unwarranted lengths to which--with lonely longing behind it--it may carry even the best poised minds, must give us pause in accepting any conclusion thus reached. _the very small number of dependable mediums_ spiritistic literature is endlessly diffuse, but on the other hand the more dispassionate students rest their case on an unexpectedly small body of undiscredited evidence. mrs. piper, home and stainton moses are the mediums with whom the case of the s.p.r. really stands or falls. home was never detected in fraud and was non-professional. sir william crookes' experiments in these physical phenomena were carried on with him as medium. his work, however, was generally done for a small group of already convinced followers and their testimony, while sincere and generally consistent, may often have been influenced in ways of which they themselves were not conscious. podmore thinks them to have been unduly suggestible and offers hallucinations as an alternative hypothesis. stainton moses was respected in his private life, a teacher, a clergyman and a private tutor. his specialties were the introduction of a great variety of articles--apports as they are called--at his sittings, levitation, table-tipping and automatic writing and the direct voice. his control was known as "imperator" and this ghostly commander fills a large place in the s.p.r. literature. "imperator" had a strong homiletic instinct (remember that moses was a clergyman) and communicated first and last through automatic writing, a considerable exposition of the spiritualistic creed, the larger part of which could have been preached from any liberal pulpit with no other effect on the hearers than to win their assent to blameless commonplaces--or, possibly, put them to sleep. mrs. piper affords the strongest evidence of what podmore calls "some supernormal power of apprehension" in the entire history of trance mediumship. she was for years under the constant observation of a capable group by no means unanimously sympathetic with the spiritistic hypothesis, and has never been detected in fraud. she contributed a very great amount of information to her sitters which she apparently could not and did not obtain from known sources. there are no physical phenomena in connection with her work. the records of her séances fill a large place in the proceedings of the s.p.r. and the case for spiritism could be more safely rested with her than any other medium. but the point here is that these three--home, moses and mrs. piper--supply the larger part of material which the really trained investigators of the last forty years are at all willing to take seriously. if there have been only three mediums in forty years who have commanded the general confidence--and podmore does not feel absolutely sure of home--of the group whose judgment the rest of us have to depend upon, we have a situation in which the average untrained seeker dealing with the average medium can have no sound confidence at all. the whole region is shot through and through with uncertainties, deceits and alternative hypotheses. _spiritism a question of testimony and interpretation_ it is all fundamentally a matter of testimony. we have, or we have not, a body of fact for which we are in debt to observation. the observation may be first hand--as in sir oliver lodge's sittings where he reports what he saw and heard. it may be second hand as the cases reported in the larger part of the authoritative literature of psychic phenomena. (second hand, that is, for the authors and those who depend upon them.) trustworthy observation is probably more difficult here than in any region of investigation. the whole situation is unfavourable; low lights and high emotion, the instinctive tendency to read into the facts a desired content even in watching them, the possibility of hallucinations and forms of hypnosis, all combine to render human testimony unreliable and introduce errors of observation. nowhere can we be less sure of our facts and even when the facts are admitted the interpretation of them still remains, and here the room for difference is equally great. at best we are dealing with forces not yet subdued to law, phenomena for which normal experience supplies no parallel. it is all a region of intimations and possible permissions, but never for a moment of inevitable conclusions. one must go slow enough in offering any opinion at all. the writer recognizes and accepts, to begin with, a preponderance of dependable testimony for physical phenomena not to be explained in terms of any force with which science is now familiar. in this he goes beyond podmore who would eliminate all physical phenomena from the problem, and fully as far as carrington. but sir william crookes never admitted entire error in this region,[ ] and the conclusions of geley (though he cites in part eusapia palladino, who is more or less discredited) point in the same direction. his studies of materialization are so vivid as to be uncanny and his photographs a series of documents which still await explanation.[ ] there would seem to be a possible exercise of personal force not dependent upon muscular pull or pressure, bodily movements operating against known laws and even the building of this mysterious force into complete or fragmentary body-like forms. [footnote : see carrington, "the physical phenomena of spiritualism," p. .] [footnote : geley, "from the unconscious to the conscious."] on the psychical side there is dependable evidence for information conveyed by supernormal means across considerable spaces--possibly long distances and the power to secure and report information not gained in any normal way. these are bare statements capable of great amplification. but they cover the ground. _three possible explanations of so-called spiritistic phenomena_ admitting the facts, there are three possible explanations. first, the daimonistic. there are, according to this theory, in the unseen world--wherever and whatever that may be--an order of beings akin to ourselves, either less or more highly developed, mischievous or benign. this is an old, old belief; it has pervaded animistic religions, fathered witchcraft, persisted in the belief of demoniac control, enriched folk lore, filled the friendly silences of the night with terror and haunted humanity. now it has found its renaissance in the full blaze of twentieth century science. "it seems not improbable," says sir william barrett, "that many of the _physical_ manifestations witnessed in a spiritualistic séance are the product of human-like but not really human intelligence--good or bad daimonia they may be, _elementals_ some have called them, which aggregate round the medium; drawn from that particular plane of mental and moral development in the unseen which corresponds to the mental and moral plane of the medium."[ ] this is, with little enough alteration, the very point from which we set out in the remote dawn of our endeavour to interpret the mystery of the world about us. the only difference is that sir william has his daimon for a tipping table and the savage had his for a flowing spring. sir william may be right but primitive man was wrong. the whole trend of science heretofore has been to eliminate capricious and isolated elements from observed phenomena and include them in a sweep of law for whose operation the resident forces in the universe and human personality are seen to be sufficient. the daimonistic hypothesis has always up to this time been proved not only unnecessary but positively misleading. it belongs to a region where proof and disproof are equally impossible, but the weight of experience and especially all our truer understandings of ourselves and our world, dearly bought through the intellectual travail of our race, are against it. to accept it is really to turn back the clock and populate the unseen again with the creation of our fears or our fancies. it is at the best the too easy solution of a challenging problem, at the worst an aspect of that renaissance of superstition which is one of the strangest characteristics of our own time. [footnote : "on the threshold of the unseen," p. .] the second explanation is spiritistic. there are unseen presences but they are the discarnate who seek in the more trivial phenomena to bring themselves to our attention and in the more important to assure us of their continued existence and satisfy their longing and ours in renewed personal contacts. given a faith in immortality, this explanation is natural enough--even inevitable. if the discarnate still live they must remember and desire. death does not end affection on our side. it should not end affection on their side. there must be, moreover, what one may call a discarnate status--an order, that is, of relationships and activities in which discarnate personality realizes and expresses itself. our racial curiosities about the state of the dead are quenchless. every religion has its creeds, its dreams, its assurances. from the nirvana of the buddhist to the ardent paradise of the mohammedan, faith and longing have built their structure and peopled it with their dead. great ranges of literature are coloured by such speculations. christian hymnology is instinct with them and not a little of our noblest poetry. we have set our hells over against our heavens and opposed their terror to celestial splendours. modern spiritualism has to head it the whole drive of such speculations as these. for if the generality have been content to leave the solution of the very great difficulties which any faith in immortality involves, to the demonstrations of eventual experience, and rest in what is really the poetry of their faith, others either more curious or more credulous seek the testimony of the senses. such as these naturally find what they seek in the phenomena of trance mediumship. they believe that the discarnate are constantly seeking to penetrate the veil between their order and ours and avail themselves of every opportunity to recall themselves to the memory of the incarnate. _myers' theory of mediumship_ f.w.h. myers undertakes to describe how this may be done from the point of view of the spirit. "seeking then for some open avenue, it discerns something which corresponds to a _light_--a glimmer of translucency in the confused darkness of our material world. this 'light' indicates a _sensitive_--a human organism so constituted that a spirit can temporarily _inform_ or _control_ it, not necessarily interrupting the stream of the sensitive's ordinary consciousness; perhaps using a hand only, or perhaps, as in mrs. piper's case, using voice as well as hand, and occupying all the sensitive's channels of self-manifestation." there are, naturally, in all this unescapable elements of speculation. as a matter of fact anything which we may imagine about the discarnate life may be almost unbelievably wide of the mark. memory more than anything else is the binding force in personality. we know ourselves to be in the morning what we were when we went to sleep the night before, simply because memory reassembles immediately the continuing elements of our individual existences. more than that, we are greatly helped by our surroundings; everything which meets us in the morning has associations by which memory is served and, therefore, by the almost automatic process of putting together what we remember and surrendering ourselves to the suggestions of what we see and meet we find our places in a waking, working world and go about our business. if we were to awake in a totally strange world where nothing was in any degree at all similar to the world in which we went to sleep, we might find ourselves so sadly puzzled as to doubt our own identity, even though memory persisted in its identifying suggestion. and if in addition to this we found ourselves without the contribution of physical sensation to which we have always been used--sightless, soundless, touchless--one can easily imagine a shock in the face of which even the most strongly centered personality would give way. and yet such changes as this probably only faintly indicate the adjustments which the discarnate are called upon to meet. it is as if we were asked to argue or to imagine from one dimension to another. these are difficulties, of course, which attend any conception of immortality, but we usually escape them by refusing to follow through what they involve and taking refuge in a free poetic imagination sustained by faith and enriched by tradition. in the face of all this myers' supposition, ingenious as it is, can do no more than repeat the more prosaic assumption which is the basis of spiritism, and that is that the discarnate naturally desire to communicate with those whom they have left, one hardly dares say behind them for even that simple word introduces suppositions which may have no meaning at all, and would naturally avail themselves of any possible opportunity. the whole process, if it be a process, must lie in the region of suggestion. if there be a telepathy between the living it is not impossible that there should be a telepathy between the living and the discarnate. _telepathy: between the living or the living and the discarnate?_ there might be thus a kind of eager pressing of the departed against the doors which had been shut and not quite locked behind them, taking the form of more or less obscure suggestion to which the medium would be sensitive and so recreate in ways at which we can only guess some hint of the voice or presence of the discarnate. the suggestion would come from the other side. the form in which it is given to our world would be the contribution of the medium. as far as there is any possible explanation of the facts of trance mediumship as a revelation from the dead it is somewhere here. telepathy between the living is fairly well enough established to make this a not impossible hypothesis, and even materialization might be accounted for in the same way. sir oliver lodge is inclined to discover in the luminiferous ether an environment in which discarnate personality could function. but this is pure supposition, though others have adopted it. walker, for example, in his extremely suggestive work on monism and christian theism. but he suggests the ether only as a help to the imagination in meeting the difficulties of an immortal existence--the old heaven and hell having been made astronomically and geologically impossible. but if einstein should upset the hypothesis of the ether all this would go the way of the heaven and hell of dante. we cannot eliminate, however, in a supposition so vague as this the contributive elements supplied by the friends themselves to whom the communication is supposed to be addressed and by whom it is certainly interpreted, for if the trance medium is open to suggestion from the discarnate side, the medium must be equally open to suggestion from the living, a suggestion likely to be very much stronger, more distinct, more compelling. the real crux of the whole problem is the disentanglement of these possible lines of suggestion and the assignment of them to their true sources. we may, the writer believes, eliminate as far as their evidential value is concerned, all physical phenomena. in doing this we need not necessarily deny the reality of some of the physical phenomena but the larger part of the residue which might possibly be left after the elimination of fraud on the part of the medium and unintentional misrepresentation on the part of the witnesses is so utterly meaningless as to have no value at all. the only physical phenomena which can have any direct bearing on spirit communication are the tappings and table tippings which can by a deal of ingenuity be made to spell out a message or answer questions yes or no. the same question as to the source of the suggestion enters here. even if we admit the taps to spell out a message, we have still to decide from whom the message comes and the messages alleged to be contributed through the voice are so much more full and intelligible as to leave the whole question standing or falling with the credibility of voice trance mediumship. _controls_ the usual machinery of a séance creates suspicion. most mediums have controls. nothing is more capricious than these controls. they may be people who really never existed at all. the genesis of mrs. piper's control, dr. phinuit, is suggestive. "it would appear that mrs. piper in had visited for advice a professional clairvoyant whose leading control claimed to be a frenchman named finné, or finnett."[ ] when mrs. piper was later seen by william james, a french doctor had succeeded in obtaining almost exclusive control and his name was reported to be phinuit. beyond debate, as far as name goes, here is a kind of transmuted suggestion. the finnett of the french clairvoyant, who may or may not have really lived, becomes the phinuit of mrs. piper, for whose existence there is apparently no testimony at all. [footnote : podmore's "modern spiritualism," vol. ii, p. .] the controls have sometimes been indians and indeed almost any one may appear as a control--longfellow, for example, or mrs. siddons, or bach or vanderbilt. in a region where disproof and proof are equally impossible this element of capricious control is suspicious. it is much more likely to be some obscure casting up of the medium's mind, through lines of association of which the medium is utterly unconscious, than to represent the personalities so named. in raymond the control is one moonstone, or a little indian girl called freda or feda, who speaks of herself in the third person and who reports a great many silly things in a very silly way. it is possible, of course, to say that these thus named are spirit mediums as necessary for the transfer of suggestion from the discarnate order as mediums seem to be in the incarnate order, and that abnormal personalities are as much needed on one side as the other through the abnormality of the whole process. but this is patently to beg the question. there is room in the whole process for the trivial, even the inconsequential. as the advocates of spiritism have urged, identification very often turns on apparently trivial things but it is difficult to justify the very great element of the capricious and actually foolish which enters so largely into the records of all sittings. it would seem as if death robbed grave personalities of their gravity, the strong of their force and the wise of their wisdom, and this is so hard to believe as to make us wonder whether we are not really dealing with something which belongs to an entirely different region and is open to an entirely different line of explanation. but beyond such considerations as these, which may or may not have force, there remains the graver question still--the question of the identification of the sources from which the intelligible residue of communications is received. if we fall back upon suggestion there are always two general sources of suggestion--the incarnate and the discarnate, and among the incarnate themselves there are manifold sources of suggestion. the sitter may be unconsciously supplying the material which the medium is receiving, recasting and giving back again, or the medium may be reporting what is received from other incarnate sources than the sitter. (this, of course, when we have eliminated all that might possibly be contributed by the medium.) _the dilemma of spiritism_ anything, therefore, which is known to the living may be the source of the medium's information. only those things, therefore, which are utterly unknown to the living anywhere, which cannot possibly have been known by the medium himself or herself, can be finally and conclusively a testimony to communications from the dead. but unless the information thus received is known to the living, its truth or falsity can never be proved or disproved. this is the dilemma which spiritism is finally brought to face and from this dilemma there is absolutely no escape. it does not forbid the conclusions which may be drawn from a seeming preponderance of evidence, but it does forbid absolute certainty, for, to repeat, if the information is to be verified it must be verified by the living, which proves that some one does possess it and may have communicated it--if we assume such communication to be possible--to the medium. on the other hand, if no one at all possesses the information, then we may never be sure that it is real information, or anything else than a creation of an excited imagination. there is one test here which, if it were really made under absolutely dependable conditions, conditions, that is, in no wise open to suspicion or misunderstanding, might be final. if a message written before death and so sealed as to be unknown to any one save the one who wrote it, could be correctly reported, it would have, everything else being right, an immense force. (though even here clairvoyance--for which, on the whole, there is a pretty dependable evidence--might afford the true explanation.) f.w.h. myers left such a message as this. in january, , he sent sir oliver lodge a "sealed envelope, in the hope that after his death the communication contained in the envelope would be able to be given by means of a medium. many different messages obtained by a well-known medium, madame verrall, and coming supposedly from frederick myers, led them to believe that they represented this communication. the envelope was opened in december, , and 'it was found that there was no resemblance between its actual contents and what was alleged by the script to be contained in it.'"[ ] if there is any authentic case of this final test being successfully maintained, the writer does not know it. there are instances of hidden articles discovered, but these tests by no means possess the same force of testimony. [footnote : boirac, "the psychology of the future," p. .] we may assume, then, that we have no absolute demonstration of spirit communication. we have only a very complex group of phenomena capable of varying explanations. any fair-minded student of the whole subject must recognize that men who have had ample opportunity for first hand investigation, not hasty in their conclusions and in some instances of very great intellectual force, have taken an opposite view. they have felt the testimony to be both sound and sufficient. there is an unescapable personal equation here which probably finally determines divergent attitudes. as has been said before, those generally who have accepted the spiritistic explanation have been led to do so through communications in which they discovered some personal note or touch, to which they themselves would be hospitably susceptible and which would have far less weight with those whose affections and previous associations were not thus involved. this does not necessarily prove their conclusions to have been false. perhaps just this personal element is necessary to give final meaning to what otherwise is so perplexing and even contradictory. the dogmatism which shuts the door squarely in the face of spiritism is as unreasonable, as unscientific, as the credulity which opens the door wide and accepts everything which comes through. _the influence of spiritism upon its adherents_ there are other considerations which bear more or less indirectly upon this difficult matter, but which have their weight. in general, those who have whole-heartedly accepted spiritism have been unable thereafter to maintain the balanced detachment which they urge upon others. they tend to become unduly credulous; they force their explanation beyond its necessary limits; they tend to become persons of the idée fixe type; they become sponsors for extravagant stories, and, in general, lead those who are influenced by their position or name far beyond the limits which impartial investigation, even on the part of those sympathetic, has as yet justified. those descriptions of the discarnate state, moreover, which reach us through mediums are undependable. there is a machinery of planes and spheres and emanations and reincarnations which is not at all peculiar to spiritism but belongs to the fringes of the occult in every manifestation of it, which is perpetually recurrent in modern spiritualistic literature. we are on the frontiers of a region where the reason which steadies us in the practical conduct of life and guides us in an order with which we are familiar through age-old inheritances, has no value at all. our very terminology ceases to have any meaning. a generous creative imagination may build for itself what cities it will of habitation, furnish them as it desires and try to conceive, as it has power, the experiences and progressions of the discarnate, but to invest these imaginations with evidential accuracy is to break down all the limits between the dependable and the undependable. and finally, though this is rather a commonplace observation than an aspect of our investigation, there is little to be gained in the necessary business of solid living by such an interweaving of the two worlds as spiritism carries with it. one life at a time is plainly enough all that we are equal to. those who surrender themselves to such conclusions and inquiries are in very great danger of being so detached from the actualities of the present order as to become themselves errant and eccentric spirits, finding their true interests in endless séances and investigations which have no practical bearing upon life as it now is. _the real alternative to spiritism_ the writer's observation of the effect of much going to mediums upon those whom he has personally known leads him to distrust the whole matter and possibly to react too strongly against it. a discriminating critic has said that spiritualism is not spiritualism at all, but a subtle materialism, in that it is the effort to verify the reality of the spiritual in terms of the material. it is, therefore, just one more unexpected aspect of the hard skepticism of the time, which trusts nothing it cannot hear, or see, or touch. a faith which is not solidly established in reason, which does not continue and complete in its own regions what we know and understand, is a cloud-built faith, but a faith, on the other hand, which refuses to adventure beyond the limits of the senses is a faith too largely empty of any noble content. if the phenomena under examination, then, cannot be explained in terms of animism and if the spiritistic hypothesis is gravely open to question, what explanation is left? in what follows the writer has been greatly influenced by the suggestion of the students of abnormal personality generally, and partly by the work of certain frenchmen who, with french logic and brilliancy of insight, are working toward far-reaching psychological restatements and even to recasting of the accepted scientific understandings of matter and force. maeterlinck says somewhere in substance that our universe is as tightly sealed as a sphere of steel and that whatever happens inside must be explained in terms of its own resident forces, and, in general, the whole of science and the weight of experience are on maeterlinck's side. of course this assumes that a good many things have been put inside this sphere to begin with. speaking in terms of religion, this does not shut god out of the world, but it does shut up life and experience to conformity with their own laws and forces them to explain their phenomena in terms of their own content. in a sentence, just as the resident forces of the outside world have been heretofore sufficient, in the measure that we have been able to discover them, to explain all the phenomena of the outside world, it is reasonable to believe that the content of personality is sufficient to explain all personal phenomena, whether normal or abnormal, and that it is to ourselves and not to the discarnate that we have to look for the explanation of the phenomena of alleged spiritism. _the investigations of Émile boirac_ the men who are working along this line, particularly geley and Émile boirac, by no means deny the phenomena, but they offer another solution. boirac, particularly, finds his point of departure in hypnotism and suggestibility. now here is a continuation of the line of approach and interpretation which cleared up the whole confused matter of mesmerism. we have already seen how the french investigators found the explanation of what mesmer and those who followed him have been able to accomplish, not in magnetic influence or any such thing, but in the remarkable changes produced in personality by exterior or autosuggestion, and just as this was the key to the phenomena of mesmerism, it is more likely than anything else to prove the key to the explanation of the phenomena of spiritualism, for these are really nothing more than simply aspects of the trance state, however induced. it is not necessary to follow, in this connection, boirac's analysis of the phenomena attendant upon the trance state, or to consider his theories as to hypnosis itself. he believes that there are in our personalities hidden forces which, in the normal conduct of life, are not brought into action. they are no necessary part of our adjustment to our working environment; on the whole they complicate rather than simplify the business of living and they are best--though this is not his statement but the writer's conclusion from the whole matter--they are best left unawakened. what we are normally is the outcome of the adjustment of personality to those creative and shaping forces in response to which life is most happily and usefully carried on. but when the waking self and normal self is for the moment put in abeyance and new forces are evoked from the "vasty deep" of our souls, we are capable of an entirely different set of manifestations. first of all, those usually associated with the hypnotic state which do not need to be further considered here--a great docility to suggestion, unconsciousness to pain and the like. we have also the possibility of powers which boirac calls magnetoidal. "these appear to involve the intervention of forces still unknown, distinct from those that science has so far discovered and studied, but of a physical nature and more or less analogous to the radiating forces of physics: light, heat, electricity, magnetism, etc."[ ] [footnote : boirac, "the psychology of the future," p. . some recent french investigations seem to indicate that this force--myers' telekinesis--operating through barriers, changes the magnetic properties of that through which it passes. carrington, the most skeptical student in this region, is inclined to admit its existence. see "the physical phenomena of spiritualism," p. .] under this general head he considers animal magnetism, what is known generally as mesmerism, the power, that is, to create hypnotic states in others; the phenomena of telepathy "comprising numerous varieties, such as the transmission or penetration of thought, the exteriorization of the sensitiveness, psychometry, telepathy, clairvoyance or lucidity, etc.," and finally states "where physical matter appears to exert over animate beings, especially human beings, an action that does not seem to be explicable by any physical or chemical properties already known." he believes also that there is in human beings a radiating influence susceptible of being exercised at a distance over other animate beings or else upon inanimate objects. he finds in trance mediumship all the elements which enter into any hypnotic state. "the trance is produced and developed spontaneously, without the intervention of any visible operator, under the sole effect of the nervous and mental conditions in which the medium is placed, and among which the _belief in spirits_ and the expectation of their intervention would appear to play a considerable part."[ ] the italicized words "a belief in spirits" are extremely significant. in the entranced personality there is the suggestion, already strongly established, that whatever is experienced during the trance will be due to spirit intervention or revelation. this introduces the element of expectant attention. we know on the physical side of what expectant attention is capable. it becomes a real factor in all faith healing; it may produce, either for the better or the worse, far-reaching changes in physical states and it is perfectly possible for such an expectant attention once fully in action in the trance--given of course, to begin with, the attitude and interests of the medium in a waking state--to create all the machinery of controls, revelation and the like, which characterize trance mediumship. [footnote : boirac, "the psychology of the future," p. .] boirac finds, therefore, in spiritism a complex determined by certain particular nervous and mental states into which there enter, in one form or another, almost all the facts of abnormal psychology and he believes that science, faithful to the principle of economy, should consider the alleged phenomena of spiritism, until proved to the contrary, reducible to facts of the preceding orders. he does not call the spiritistic hypothesis impossible; he does believe it ought not to be called in until every other explanation has been examined and found inadequate and he is not inclined to believe that we have as yet exhausted other possible explanations. one man's authority here is by no means final. f.w.h. myers has taken into consideration many of the facts upon which boirac dwells and on the whole has reached a different conclusion. but, in general, the more deeply we advance into the region of abnormal personality and the phenomena of hypnotic and related states, the more reason there seems to be for believing that there are resident in human personality powers which, if at once evoked and released, are sufficient to account for all mediumistic revelations without assuming that they come from the discarnate. _geley's conclusions_ geley has gone much farther in some directions here than any one else. he is more concerned with the physical phenomena. he has a striking series of photographs of materialization, the authenticity of which it is difficult to doubt. he finds an ascending series in abnormal psychology from neuropathic states to mediumship with gradations which intensify the abnormal or the supernormal, but in which the continuity of development is never broken. his analyses here are both keen and suggestive and tend to confirm the conclusions of other students that we have resident in human personality elements which are adequate to the explanation of any phenomena which have been as yet presented. as far as the physical phenomena go, he cites experiments which seem to reveal "threads of substance and rigid rods, sometimes visible, sometimes invisible, proceeding from the fingers of the medium" and serving as a real mechanism for the movement of distant and sometimes quite heavy articles. he argues from this that there is a possible exteriorization of power which may itself be governed by ideas and believes also that such facts as this will eventually compel us to recast our conceptions of matter and force and profoundly affect biology and all evolutionary theories. the whole matter is necessarily obscure, but such studies do give a new direction and a larger significance to our whole subject matter. in substance the spiritistic hypothesis is inadequate; it is too simple, too easy. we are evidently only upon the threshold of the whole subject. all conclusions are necessarily inconclusive; there is no region in which one has less right to be dogmatic. the bearing of it all upon immortality seems to the writer to be not at all where the spiritists place it. if human personality has in itself such latent powers, if there are these extensions of a mysterious force which operate beyond our normal mechanism, if there are contacts of consciousness deeper than consciousness itself in which information is given and received outside normal methods of communication, we are led to conceive that what for want of a better name we call spirit has an unexpected range and force. we are by no means so shut in by the walls of the material and the sensible as we have heretofore supposed. there is a transcendence of spirit over matter and materially imposed conditions which must give us pause. if, in the murky ways which have been brought to our attention, spirit can transcend matter, we have at least one more reason for affirming its supremacy and one more suggestion of a force or a reality which may be able to survive even the dissolution of matter itself. in other words, here is a line of testimony, richly suggestive, though by no means clear, to the power of the soul to make its own conditions, and what is immortality but just this? the phenomena of so-called spiritism, while not as yet justifying spiritualism, certainly make a dogmatic materialism increasingly different. those of us who are as anxious for a sustaining faith in immortality as any of our comrades in the great quest may possibly be, but who are as yet unwilling to accept their conclusions, may nevertheless find in this subject matter which is common both to us and to them, the permission to believe that that which is most distinctly ourselves possesses enduring possibilities. if it may from time to time break through in curious ways the walls which now shut it in, may it not in some very real way pass through the gate which death opens and still continue in such a richness of consciousness and identity as to organize for itself another life beyond the grave? _the meaning of spiritism for faith_ faith may find its permissions and witnesses in many regions. the writer believes that faith in immortality finds an added permission in this region also. beyond debate, there are laws which we now but dimly discern and possible forces which only now and again touch the coasts of our present experience, as tides which sweep in from distant and mysterious seas. beyond debate, we may not confine the interplay of mind with mind to purely physical channels, and under exceptional circumstances effects may be produced whose causes we have not yet been able to tabulate. our conscious lives are rooted deeper than we dream. they reach out in directions which we do not ourselves know. it may well be, therefore, that they ascend to heights whose summits we do not see, and possess a permanence independent of the body which they inhabit, or the things of seeming sense which surround them, and it may be also that what is now occult and perplexing and capricious may in the future become as truly an organized science as the alchemy and the astrology of the middle ages have become the chemistry and astronomy of our own time. beyond this one may assert the wholesome commonplace that the main business of living is in the region of the known and the normal. it is for our own well-being that the veil hangs dark between this world and the next. an order in which there was constant passing and repassing would be impossible. it would be either one thing or the other. it does demoralize us to be always searching after the secrets of the unseen. might it not demoralize those who have passed through the veil to be always trying to come back? surely the most fitting preparation for what awaits us hereafter is the brave conduct of life under those laws and conditions which are the revelation of the whole solid experience of our race. beyond this it is difficult to go and beyond this it is not necessary to go. xi minor cults: the meaning of the cults for the church _border-land cults_ the cults which we have so far considered are the outstanding forms of modern free religious movements, but they do not begin to exhaust the subject matter. even the outstanding cults have their own border-lands. new thought is particularly rich in variants and there are in all american cities sporadic, distantly related and always shifting movements--groups which gather about this or that leader, maintain themselves for a little and then dissolve, to be recreated around other centers with perhaps a change of personnel. the masonic temple in chicago is said to be occupied on sundays all day long by larger or smaller groups which may be societies for ethical culture or with some social program or other, or for the study of oriental religions. one would need to attend them all and saturate himself far more deeply than is possible for any single investigator in their creeds or their contentions to appraise them justly. their real significance is neither in their organization, for they have little organization, nor in their creed, but in their temper. they represent reaction, restlessness and the spiritual confusion of the time. they can be explained--in part at least--in terms of that social deracination to which reference has already been made. they represent also an excess of individualism in the region of religion and its border-lands. an examination of the church advertisement pages in the newspapers of new york, detroit, chicago or san francisco reveals their extent, their variety and their ingenuity in finding names for themselves. on sunday, february th, the detroit papers carried advertisements of vedanta, spiritist and spiritualist groups (the spiritist group calls itself "the spirit temple of light and truth"), the ultimate thought society, the first universal spiritual church, the church of psychic research, the philosophical church of natural law, unity center, the culture of isolan, theosophy, divine science center, and lectures on divine metaphysics. their leaders advertise such themes as: the opulent consciousness, the law of non-attachment, psychic senses and spirituality, the continuity of life, the spiritualism of shakespeare, the voiceless code of the cosmos, the godlikeness of divine metaphysics in business. their themes are not more bizarre, it must be confessed, than some of the topics announced for the orthodox churches. (indeed the church advertisement page in cities whose churches indulge generously in display advertisements is not altogether reassuring reading.) but, in general, this list which can be duplicated in almost any large city is testimony enough to a confusion of cults and a confusion of thought. as far as they can be classified, according to the scheme of this study, they are variants of new thought, theosophy and spiritualism. if they were classified according to william james' "varieties of religious experience" they would be seen as mystical rather than rational, speculative rather than practical. fort newton, who speaks of them perhaps more disrespectfully than they deserve as "bootleggers in religion," finds in these lesser movements generally a protest against the excessively external in the life of the church to-day and a testimony to the quenchless longing of the soul for a religion which may be known and lived out in terms of an inner experience. but this certainly is not true of all of them. _bahaism_ there is, however, one other larger and more coherent cult, difficult to classify, which deserves a more extended notice. that is bahaism, which, as it is now taking form, is a leaven rather than a cult. it is an attempt after spiritual unity and the reduction of religion to very simple and inclusive forms and a challenge to the followers of religions widely separated on the surface to be more true to what is deepest in their faith. it has a long and stirring history and curiously enough is drawn from mohammedan sources. its basal literatures are arabic and persian, "so numerous and in some cases so voluminous that it would hardly be possible for the most industrious student to read in their entirety even those which are accessible, a half dozen of the best known collections in europe." we find its genesis, historically, in certain expectations long held by persian mohammedans akin to jewish messianic expectations held before and at the time of christ. there has been, we know, a tradition of disputed succession in mohammedanism ever since the death of the prophet. persian mohammedans believed the true successor of mohammed to have been unjustly deprived of his temporal supremacy and they trace a long line of true successors whose divine right would some day be recognized and reëstablished. perhaps we might find a parallel here among those englishmen who believe that the true succession of the english throne should be in the house of the stuarts, or those royalists in france who champion the descendants of one or the other former reigning houses. but the persian faithful have gone farther than that. they believe that the last true successor of mohammed who disappeared in the tenth century never died, but is still living in a mysterious city, surrounded by a band of faithful disciples and "that at the end of time he will issue forth and 'fill the earth with justice after it has been filled with iniquity.'" a parallel here would be the old stories of frederick barbarossa who waits in his cave for the proper time to come forth and reassert his imperial power. this curious persian belief has worked itself out in a time scheme much like the time schemes of other apocalyptic beliefs, the detail of which is difficult enough. but in substance this hidden and true successor of the prophet has had from time to time those through whom he reveals himself to the faithful and makes known his will, and these are known as babs or gates; "the gate, that is, whereby communication was reopened between the hidden one and his faithful followers." the practical outcome of this would be that any one who could convince persian mohammedans that he was the bab or "gate" would possess a mystic messianic authority. such a confidence actually established would give him an immense hold over the faithful and make him a force to be reckoned with by the mohammedan world. _the bab and his successors_ as far as our own present interest is concerned, the movement dates from when a young persian merchant announced himself as the bab. if we are to find a parallel in christianity he was a kind of john the baptist, preparing the way for a greater who should come after him, but the parallel ends quickly, for since the mohammedan messiah did not appear, his herald was invested with no little of the authority and sanctity which belonged to the hidden one himself. the career of the first bab was short-- to . he was only twenty-four years old at the time of his manifestation, thirty when he suffered martyrdom and a prisoner during the greater part of his brief career. the practical outcome of his propaganda was a deal of bloody fighting between antagonistic mohammedan factions. the movement received early that baptism of blood which gives persistent intensity to any persecuted movement. his followers came to regard him as a divine being. after his execution his body was recovered, concealed for seventeen years and finally placed in a shrine specially built for that purpose at st. jean d'acre. this shrine has become the holy place of bahaism. during one period of his imprisonment he had opportunity to continue his writings, correspond with his followers and receive them. he was thus able to give the world his message and we find in his teachings the germ of the gospel of bahaism. before his death he named his successor--a young man who had been greatly drawn to him and who seemed by his youth, zeal and devotion to be set apart to continue his work. to this young man the bab sent his rings and other personal possessions, authorized him to add to his writings and in general to inherit his influence and continue his work. this young man was recognized with practical unanimity by the babis as their spiritual head. owing to his youth and the secluded life which he adopted, the practical conduct of the affairs of the babi community devolved chiefly on his elder half-brother baha'u'llah. what follows is a confused story of schism, rival claimants and persecution but the sect grew through persecution and the control of it came in into the hands of baha'u'llah. during the greater part of his life baha'u'llah was either an exile or a prisoner. from until his death in he was confined with seventy of his followers in the penal colony of acca on the mediterranean coast. meanwhile the faith which centered about him changed character; he was no longer a gate or herald, he was himself a "manifestation of god" with authority to change all earlier teaching. he really universalized the movement. beneath his touch religion becomes practical, ethical, less mystic, more universal. he was possessed by a passion for universal peace and brotherhood. he addressed letters to the crowned heads of europe asking them to cooperate in peace movements. it has been suggested that the czar of russia was influenced thereby and that we may thus trace back to baha'u'llah the peace movement which preceded the war. pilgrims came and went and through their enthusiasms the movement spread. after his death there was the renewal of disputes as to the proper succession and consequent schisms. the power came finally into the hands of abdul-baha who was kept under supervision by the turkish government until . he was freed by the declaration of the new constitution and carried on thereafter with real power a worldwide propaganda. he had an unusual and winning personality, spoke fluently in persian, arabic and turkish and more nearly than any man of his time filled the ideal rôle of an eastern prophet. he died in november, , and was buried on mt. carmel--with its memories of elijah and millenniums of history--his praises literally being sung by a most catholic group of mohammedans, jews and eastern christians. _the temple of unity_ bahaism as it is held in america to-day is distilled out of the writings and teachings of baha'u'llah and abdul-baha. naturally enough, in the popularization of it its contradictions have been reconciled and its subtleties disregarded. what is left fits into a variety of forms and is in line with a great range of idealism. the twelve basic principles of bahaism as announced in its popular literature are: the oneness of mankind. independent investigations of truth. the foundation of all religions is one. religion must be the cause of unity. religion must be in accord with science and reason. equality between men and women. prejudice of all kinds must be forgotten. universal peace. universal education. solution of the economic problem. an international auxiliary language. an international tribunal. a program inclusive enough for any generous age. these principles are substantiated by quotations from the writings of abdul-baha and the teachings of baha'u'llah. many things combine to lend force to its appeal--the courage of its martyrs, its spaciousness and yet at the same time the attractiveness of its appeal and its suggestion of spiritual brotherhood. since the movement has borne a kind of messianic expectation it adjusts itself easily to inherited christian hopes. there are real correspondences between its expected millennium and the christian millennium. how far its leaders, in their passion for peace and their doctrine of non-resistance and their exaltation of the life of the spirit, are in debt to the suggestions of christianity itself, or how far it is a new expression of a temper with which the orient has always been more in sympathy than the west, it would be difficult to say, but in some ways bahaism does express--or perhaps reproduces--the essential spirit of the gospels more faithfully than a good deal of western christianity as now organized. those members of christian communions which are attracted to bahaism find in it a real hospitality to the inherited faith they take over. it is possible, therefore, to belong to the cult and at the same time to continue one's established religious life without any very great violence and indeed with a possible intensification of that life. it is difficult, therefore, to distinguish between bahaism as it is held by devout groups in america, so far as ethics and ideals go, from much that is distinctive in the christian spirit, though the influence of bahaism as a whole would be to efface distinctions and especially to take the force out of the christian creeds. chicago, or rather wilmette, is now the center of the movement in america and an ambitious temple is in the way of being constructed there, the suggestion for whose architecture is taken from a temple in eskabad, russia. this is to be a temple of universal religion, symbolizing in its architecture the unities of faith and humanity. "the temple with its nine doors will be set in the center of a circular garden symbolizing the all-inclusive circle of god's unity; nine pathways will lead to the nine doors and each one coming down the pathway of his own sect or religion or trend of thought will leave at the door the dogmas that separate and, under the dome of god's oneness, all will become one.... at night it will be brilliantly lighted and the light will shine forth through the tracery of the dome, a beacon of peace and unity rising high above lake michigan." this study has led us into many curious regions and shown to what unexpected conclusions the forces of faith or hope, once released, may come, but surely it has revealed nothing more curious than that the old, old controversy as to the true successor of mohammed the prophet should at last have issued in a universal religion and set the faithful to building a temple of unity on the shores of lake michigan. if this work were to be complete it should include some investigation of the rituals of the cults. they are gradually creating hymns of their own; their public orders of service include responsive readings with meditations on the immanence of god, the supremacy of the spiritual and related themes. in general they dispense with the sacraments; they have no ecclesiastical orders and hardly anything corresponding to the catholic priesthood or the protestant ministry, though the christian science reader has a recognized official place. they meet in conferences; they depend largely upon addresses by their leaders. spiritualistic movements organize themselves around séances. they use such halls as may be rented, hotels, their own homes; they have not generally buildings of their own save the christian science temples which are distinctive for dignity of architecture and beauty of appointment in almost every large city. _general conclusions; the limitations of the writer's method_ it remains only to sum up in a most general way the conclusions to which this study may lead. there has been a process of criticism and appraisal throughout the whole book, but there should be room at the end for some general statements. the writer recognizes the limitations of his method; he has studied faithfully the literature of the cults, but any religion is always a vast deal more than its literature. the history of the cults does not fully tell their story nor does any mere observation of their worship admit the observer to the inner religious life of the worshippers. life always subdues its materials to its own ends, reproduces them in terms of its own realities; there are endless individual variations, but the outcome is massively uniform. religion does the same thing. its materials are faiths and obediences and persuasions of truth and expectations of happier states, but its ultimate creations are character and experience, and the results in life of widely different religions are unexpectedly similar. both theoretically and practically the truer understanding or the finer faith and, particularly, the higher ethical standards should produce the richer life and this is actually so. but real goodness is everywhere much the same; there are calendared saints for every faith. there is an abundant testimony in the literature of the cults to rare goodnesses and abundant devotion, and observation confirms these testimonies. something of this is doubtless due to their environment. the western cults themselves and the eastern cults in the west are contained in and influenced by the whole outcome of historic christianity and they naturally share its spirit. if the churches need to remember this as they appraise the cults, the cults need also to remember it as they appraise the churches. multitudes of catholics and protestants secure from a religion which the cults think themselves either to have corrected or outgrown exactly what the cults secure--and more. such as these trust god, keep well, go happily about their businesses and prove their faith in gracious lives. there is room for mutual respect and a working measure of give and take on both sides. the writer is inclined to think the churches at present are more teachable than the more recent religious movements. for a long generation now the churches have been subject to searching criticism from almost every quarter. the scientist, the sociologist, the philosopher, the publicist, the discontented with things as they are and the protagonist of things as they ought to be, have all taken their turn and the church generally, with some natural protest against being made the scapegoat for the sins of a society arrestingly reluctant to make the church's gospel the law of its life, has taken account of its own shortcomings and sought to correct them. the cults are as yet less inclined to test themselves by that against which they have reacted. but this is beside the point. the movements we have been studying can only be fairly appraised as one follows through their outcome in life and that either in detail or entirety is impossible. but it is possible to gain from their literature a reasonable understanding of their principles and interrelations and this the writer has sought to do. _the cults are aspects of the creative religious consciousness of the age_ certain conclusions are thus made evident. these movements are the creation of the religious consciousness of the time. they are aspects of the present tense of religion. since religion is, among other things, the effective desire to enter into right relationships with the power which manifests itself in the universe there are two variants in its content; first, our changing understanding of the power itself and second, our changing uses of it. the first varies with our knowledge and insight, the second with our own changing sense of personal need. though god be the same yesterday, to-day and forever, our understandings of him cannot and ought not to be the same yesterday, to-day and forever. our faith is modified by, for example, our scientific discoveries. when the firmament of hebrew cosmogony has given way to interstellar spaces and the telescope and the spectroscope plumb the depths of the universe, resolving nebulæ into star drifts, faith is bound to reflect the change. the power which manifests itself in the universe becomes thereby a vaster power, operating through a vaster sweep of law. our changed understandings of ourselves must be reflected in our faith and our ethical insights as well. and because there is and ought to be no end to these changing understandings, religion itself, which is one outcome of them, must be plastic and changing. what we ask of god is equally subject to change. true enough, the old questions--whence? whither? and why? are constant. as we know ourselves to be living in a world which is less than a speck in an immensity wherein the birth and death of suns are ephemeral, we may rightly distrust our own value for the vaster order. we shall, therefore, the more insistently ask whence? and whither? and why? but, none the less, there is always a shifting emphasis of religious need. our own time is manifestly more concerned about well-being in the life that now is than a happy issue in the life which is to come. temperament also qualifies experience. the mystic seeks conscious communion with god as an end in itself; the practical temper asks the demonstration of the love of god in happy material conditions. in general, action and reaction govern this whole region. the puritan was supremely concerned about his own salvation and the struggle consequent thereto; his descendants were chiefly interested in the extension of knowledge and the conquest of the physical order and we react against this in a new return upon ourselves and the possibilities of personality. now these changing understandings of the power which manifests itself in the universe on the one side and our own changing senses of need on the other, give to religion a constantly fluctuating character and what is most distinctively religious in any period must be the outcome of the combination of these two variants. what an age asks of the god whom it knows colours the whole of its religious life. these cults and movements do not wholly represent the creative religious consciousness of our time, of course; a great deal of that same creative religious consciousness has given new quality to the organizations and orthodoxies of the churches. but within the frontiers of historic christianity it has been rather the working over of the deposit of faith than an actual adventure in the making of religion. the cults and movements have not been thus limited. they have challenged old understandings, broken away from the older organizations and taken their own line, using such material as seems proper for their purpose. they are not wholly independent of the past; some of them have taken the immemorial speculations of the east for their point of departure though introducing therein a good many of the permissions or conclusions of modern science and something of the spirit of christianity itself. those taking their departure from christianity have claimed rather to reinterpret and modernize it than to supplant it by their own creations. yet when all this is recognized these cults and movements are particularly the creation of our own time. so accepted, they reveal strongly the persistence of religion. all these conjectures and confidences and reachings through the shadows are just a testimony that few are content to go on without some form of religion or other. all religion has, in one phase or another, gone through much the same process. there has been for every religion a time when it took new form out of older elements, a time when the accepted religions had little enough sympathy for and understanding of what was taking place about them while those committed to new quests were exultant in the consciousness of spiritual adventure and discovery and heard the morning stars sing together for joy. what is thus begun must submit always to the testimony of time. in the end a religion is permanent as it meets the great human needs and adjusts itself to their changing phases. it is imperial and universal as it meets these needs supremely. if in addition it be capable of organization, if there be within it room for expansion, and if, on the whole, it justifies itself by the outcome of it in life and society it will persist, and if it persists through a long period of time and creates for itself literatures, dogmas and authorities, it becomes as nearly fundamental as anything can be in this world. it creates cultures, shapes civilizations, colours art, establishes ideals and fills the whole horizon of its devotees. if a religion is to endure it must meet a wide range of need; it must be plastic and yet invest itself with the sanctions of history. for the conservative it must possess the note of authority and at the same time promise freedom to the liberal. it must persuade the forward-looking that it holds within itself the power to meet changing conditions. it must offer a satisfying experience to the mystic and the practically minded and deliverance to the despairing. it must be able to build into its structure new sciences and philosophies and yet it must touch the whole of life with some sense of the timeless, and above all, it must include the whole of life, nor depend upon particularized appeals or passing phases of thought. historic christianity has more nearly met all these tests than any other religion, for though under the stress of meeting so great a variety of needs and conditions it has organized itself into forms as different as latin catholicism and the society of the friends, so losing catholicity of organization, it has secured instead a catholicity of spirit and a vast elasticity of appeal which are the secret of its power and the assurance of its continuing and enduring supremacy. _their parallels in the past_ now by such tests as these what future may one anticipate for such cults as we have been studying? are they likely to displace the historic forms of christianity, will they substantially modify it, or will they wear away and be reabsorbed? evidently one of these three things must happen. this is not the first time in the western world that historic and authoritative christianity has been challenged. we should have, perhaps, to go back to the fourth century to find an exact parallel and then we should find in the vast and confused movement of gnosticism an unexpected parallel to a great deal of what is happening about us. gnosticism was the effort of a reason excessively given to speculation, undisciplined and greatly unrestrained by any sense of reality to possess and transform the church. various forces combined to build its fabric of air-born speculation and though for the time it gave the patristic church the hardest fight of its existence, the discipline of the church was too strong for it. its own weaknesses proved eventually its undoing and gnosticism remains only as a fascinating field of study for the specialist, only a name if even so much as that for the generality of us and valuable chiefly in showing what speculation may do when permitted at will to range earth and sky, with a spurious rationalism for pilot and imagination for wings. there have been, beside, in the history of the church many other movements possessing a great staying power and running in some cases for generations alongside the main current of religious development, until they finally disappeared with the changing centuries. arguing from such historical precedents as these one might easily assume a like fate for the gnosticism of our own time, and yet a note of caution is needed here for there are divisive religious movements which have as yet neither failed nor been absorbed in that from which they took their departure. the expectation of the catholic church that protestantism will spend its force and be lost again in the majestic fabric of latin catholic christianity as it is continued amongst us, is as far from realization to-day, or farther, than at any time in the last years. we need to remember also that conditions change. the right of individual initiative and judgment once secured in the region of religion is not likely ever to be lost. a good many divergent movements have literally been whipped back into line or else put out in fire and blood. nothing of that sort is likely to happen now. no student of history should be blind to the sequence of action and reaction. a period of excessive dependence upon authority may follow a period of undue self-assertion, but it is not likely that we shall ever find recreated exactly the conditions of the past or that religion can hereafter be held, as it has heretofore, in relatively well marked channels under the stress of accepted authorities. prophecy is hazardous business but it is safe to assume that these modern religious cults and movements represent the beginnings of a freer, more diffused, less formal religious faith. the peculiar cults themselves may reach their term but the temper which produced them is likely to continue and with other groupings of forces produce something in the future which will at least be their parallel. _the healing cults likely to be adversely influenced by the scientific organisation of psycho-therapy_ as far as the fortunes of the distinctive cults themselves go, one's conclusions may be less tentative. for the most part the foundations upon which they are built are not big enough to carry an ample and secure structure. they have been made possible not only by marked limitations in historic religion itself, but also by contemporaneous tempers which, one may sincerely hope, are self-limiting, and this is said not through undue prejudice against the cults themselves, but simply because one is loath to believe that the want of critical faculty which has made some of these cults possible will not in the end yield to experience and a really sounder education. since, moreover, some of them--and christian science, preëminently--depend upon faith and mental healing, whatever helps us to a clearer understanding of the nature and limits of psycho-therapy will greatly affect their future. all faith healing cults have heretofore depended very greatly upon the atmosphere of mystery with which they have been able to surround themselves. the fact that they have been able to secure results with no very clear understanding of the way in which the results have been secured has invested them with awe and wonder, so essential to every religion. but as psycho-therapy itself becomes organized, works out its laws, develops its own science and particularly as the knowledge of all this is extended and popularized, they will lose their base of support. for this reason the writer believes that the final explanation of all faith and mental healing in terms of some form of suggestion which is just now strongly in evidence will prove a distinct service to us all. the intimate association of religion and healing has, on the whole, been good neither for religion nor health. of course, this statement will probably be sharply challenged but it is maintained in the face of possible challenge. as far as religion goes it has withdrawn the interest of the religious, thus influenced, from the normal expressions of the religious life to border-land regions; it has stressed the exceptional rather than the sweep of law, and the occult rather than the luminously reasonable. where it has failed in individual cases, as it is bound to fail, it has left those thus disillusioned without any sound basis for their faith and generally has driven them away from religion altogether. it has tempted religious teachers to win a hearing by signs and wonders. even the founder of the christian religion grew weary of this, as the records show plainly enough, in that he saw his true work to be thereby not helped but hindered, and if this be true of the founder it is by so much the more true of his followers. on the scientific side this temper has hindered honest thinking, laborious investigation and that specialization which is absolutely necessary to the furtherance of any great division of human effort. medicine made little progress until it got itself free of the church. specifically the average minister is neither by training nor temperament fitted for healing work and those laymen who have assumed that office have generally been wanting in balance and self-restraint. this is not to deny the reality of a power not ourselves making for health and well-being generally, or the power of faith, or the efficacy of prayer. least of all is god, upon this understanding, to be shut out of life. but the power not ourselves which makes for faith and healing is best known through laborious investigation, the discovery of methods and obediences to ascertained law. when we have clearly come to see the nature of psycho-therapy, the occult authority of healing cults will in the end yield to this understanding and the cults themselves be greatly weakened or displaced. one must recognize, on the other hand, the staying power of any well-established religious system. through nurture and those profound conservatisms which hold more tenaciously in the region of religion than anywhere else, it is possible to continue from generation to generation the unreasonable or the positively untrue, and this holds in the church as well as outside it. none the less, the most coherent systems must reckon with their own weaknesses. christian science may have before it a long period of solid going or even marked growth, but its philosophy will at last yield to the vaster sweep of a truer philosophic thought. its interpretations of historic christianity will come up again and again for examination until their fallacies become apparent and its force as a system of psycho-therapy will be modified by simpler and more reasonable applications of the same power. _new thought will become old thought_ new thought is likely to take a different course but it also will have to reckon with changing sciences and philosophies. what is new thought to-day will be old thought to-morrow; it will be challenged by new expressions of the spirit which begot it. it will endure, therefore, only as it is open, flexible and possesses a great power of accommodation. but as long as understandings and ideals are fluid, as long as religion is under bonds to take account of all the elements which must be incorporated in it in order to enlarge and continue it, as long, in short, as the human spirit outgrows fixed forms in any region there is likely to be in religion itself something corresponding to the new thought of to-day, but this will be true only as new thought is not a cult at all but something larger--a free and creative movement of the human spirit. of all these cults it has made the soundest contribution to religion as a whole. it is also more easily assimilated, more easily absorbed. its own distinct field will be limited by the increasing hospitality of christian thought to contemporaneous truth. a wholly open-minded church will go a long way toward taking from new thought its raison d'être. its future depends, therefore, very largely upon the open-mindedness of the older and more strongly established forms of religion. the future of spiritualism is greatly open to conjecture. we have already seen the alternatives which spiritualism is called upon to face and the uncertainties which attend its conclusions. a fuller understanding of the possibilities of abnormal personality and the reach of automatism are likely to work against spiritualism. if we find ascertainable causes for its phenomena resident within personality itself there will be no need of calling in the other world in order to explain what is happening in this. on the other hand, if there should evidence an increasing and tested body of facts which can be explained only in terms of spiritistic communications, spiritualism will naturally make headway. but we are certainly standing only upon the threshold of a scientific interpretation of spiritistic phenomena and until the whole region has been very much more carefully worked through and far more dependable facts are in hand, one can only say that spiritism is a hypothesis which may or may not be verified, and attend the outcome. it is hard to believe that theosophy and kindred speculation will ever get a strong hold upon the practical western mind. it owes what force it has either to an excessive love of the speculative on the part of a few, or else to that particular temper which always wants something else and something new, or else to wearinesses and misunderstandings of the more shadowed side of life. theosophy is greatly at the mercy of the positive, practical temper; it will always find a prevailing competitor in the christian doctrine of immortality. whatever, moreover, explains the apparent inequalities of life in more simple and reasonable terms will cut the roots of it. the movement toward religious syncretism of which bahaism is just now the expression will not be so easy to dispose of. there will always be a temper impatient of the past, eager for unity, anxious for something big and interpenetrating. historically this temper has from time to time emerged, particularly in the latter phases of roman paganism, and there is likely to be a larger interchange of religious faith and understanding in the future than there has been in the past. in general, this desire for a universal religion, simple and wanting in distinctive characters, follows a weakening of conviction, a loss of passion for accepted forms. if anything should deepen again amongst us in religion what corresponds just now to the passion for nationality these more general religious quests would suffer. a strong feeling for a church or a creed or one's own movement would displace them. they have, on the other hand, in their favour the general tendency of all religion toward simplicity, the reduction of faith, that is, to a few broad and generally shared elements. but there is no reason to anticipate a speedy breakdown of what one may call particularist religion and the substitution therefor of a faith built up out of many diverse elements and held in common by widely separated tempers. _there is likely to be some absorption of the cults by a widening historic christianity_ if the past supplies analogy or suggestion there will be some tendency for the cults and movements to be reabsorbed by the dominant religious forms from which they have broken off. a careful analysis of this statement would involve the consideration of a finality of christianity as now held in the western world. that is impossible in the range of a study like this. any general statement is of course coloured by the temper of the one who makes it and to a certain extent begs the whole great question. but a careful and dispassionate examination of present-day cults would seem to indicate that they really have nothing to offer which the dominant christianity does not possess either explicitly or implicitly. there is a solidity of human experience behind its forms and creeds which cannot be lightly left out of account. they represent the travail of twenty centuries and have behind them far older confidences and hopes. if christianity should widen itself to the full limit of its possibilities, it would leave little room for that which seeks to supplant it and would meet the needs which have begotten the cults in far richer and more reasonable ways. as far as the cults are mistakenly distinctive, as far as they cannot stand a careful examination, they represent what must be corrected and cannot be absorbed. christianity can absorb new thought far more easily than christian science. theosophy in its extremer forms it cannot absorb at all. it is more hospitable to the quest for a universal religion for it seeks itself to be a universal religion and can never achieve its ideal unless it takes account of the desire for something big enough to include the whole of life, east as well as west, and to make room within itself for a very great variety of religious tempers. _but christianity is being influenced by the cults_ if christianity is not to reabsorb the cults in their present form, it must, as has been said over and over again, take account of them and it is not likely to go on uninfluenced by them. already it has yielded in some directions to their contentions. if it feels itself challenged by them it must meet that challenge not so much by intolerance as by the correction of conditions which have made them possible, and here its most dependable instruments are education and self-examination. there is need of a vast deal more of sheer teaching in all the churches. the necessity for congregations and the traditions of preaching conspire to make the message of the church far less vital than it ought to be. preaching is too much declamation and far too much a following of narrow and deeply worn paths. the cults themselves represent a craving for light, especially in the regions of pain and loss. historic christianity has lost out because it has made religion too self-centered, not that the cults are a corrective here, for they are even more self-centered--that is one of their great faults. the individual is not the center of the world; he is part of a larger order concerned for great ends for which his life can only be contributory. the church and the cults together have forgotten too largely that life is sacred only as we lose it. we need in the churches generally a braver personal note and a very much larger unself-centeredness. it is interesting to note that the movement of the cults, with the possible exception of new thought, has been away from rationalism rather than in the direction of it. this is a consideration to be taken into account. it would seem on the surface of it to indicate that what people are wanting in religion is not so much reason as mysticism and that for the generality religion is most truly conceived in terms not of the known but of the unknown. if the christian church is to meet the challenge of the cults with a far more clearly defined line of teaching, it is also to meet the challenge of the cults with a warmer religious life, with the affirmation of an experience not so much tested by crises and conversions as by the constant living of life in the sense of the divine--to use jeremy taylor's noble phrase: in the practice of the presence of god. the weakness of the cults is to have narrowed the practice of the presence of god to specific regions, finding the proof of his power in health and well-being. if we can substitute therefor the consciousness of god in the sweep of law, the immensity of force, the normal conduct of life, in light and understanding, in reason as well as mysticism and science as well as devotion, we shall have secured a foundation upon which to build amply enough to shelter devout and questing souls not now able to find what they seek in the churches themselves and yet never for a moment out of line with what is truest and most prophetic in christianity itself. sir henry jones has a paragraph in his "faith that enquires" distinctly to the point just here. "the second consideration arises from the greatness of the change that would follow were the protestant churches and their leaders to assume the attitude of the sciences and treat the articles of the creeds not as dogmas but as the most probable explanation, the most sane account which they can form of the relation of man to the universe and of the final meaning of his life. the hypothesis of a god whose wisdom and power and goodness are perfect would then be tried and tested, both theoretically and practically, and, i believe, become thereby ever the more convincing. the creed would be not merely a record of an old belief to be accepted on authority, but a challenge to the skeptic and the irreligious. the church, instead of being a place where the deliverances of ancient religious authorities are expounded, and illustrated by reference to the contents of one book and the history of one nation--as if no other books were inspired and all nations save one were god-abandoned--the church would be the place where the validity of spiritual convictions are discussed on their merits, and the application of spiritual principles extended; where enquiring youths would repair when life brings them sorrow, disappointment or failure, and the injustice of man makes them doubt whether there be a god, or if there be, whether he is good and has power, and stands as the help of man. recourse to their certified spiritual guides, knowing that full and sympathetic justice will be done to all their difficulties, ought to be as natural to them as their recourse to the physical laboratory or the workshop of the mechanician when an engine breaks down."[ ] [footnote : "a faith that enquires," p. .] _medical science should take a more serious account of the healing cults_ not only the churches but the schools and particularly medical science need to take account of the cults. they constitute perhaps one of the sharpest indictments of present-day education. many of their adherents are nominally educated above the average. they have secured for what they follow the authority which always attaches, in the american mind, to the fact that those who champion any movement are college bred, and yet the want of clear vision, the power to distinguish and analyze, along with the unexpected credulities which are thus made manifest, seem to indicate arresting deficiencies in popular education. it has left us unduly suggestible, much open to mass movement, at the mercy of the lesser prophets and wanting in those stabilities and understandings upon which a sound culture is to be built. when we consider what they are capable of believing who have had college or university training, we must conclude either that contemporaneous education is wanting in the creation of sound mental discipline, or else that we have a strange power of living in water-tight compartments and separating our faith wholly from our reason. the cults which are organized around faith and mental healing at once challenge and in a measure indict modern medical science. in many directions all these movements are reactions against an excessive materialism; they affirm the power of personality as against its environment, testify that the central problems of life may be approached from the spiritual as well as from the physical and material side. it would not for a moment be fair to say that modern medicine is ignoring this. there has probably always been a considerable element of mental healing in any wise medical practice. but on the whole, the marvellous successes and advances in medical science within the last thirty years and the very great success which has attended the definition of all diseases in terms of physical disarrangement has led physicians generally unduly to underestimate or ignore the undoubted power of faith and mind over bodily states. even as a matter of scientific investigation medicine as a whole has not taken this line of approach seriously enough. the society for psychical research has something to teach the medical faculties just here. that society, as we have seen, set out in the most rigorous and scientific way possible to find out first of all just what actual facts lay behind the confused phenomena of spiritualism. they have given a long generation to just that. as they have finally isolated certain facts they have, with a good deal of caution, undertaken to frame hypotheses to account for them and so, with the aid of the students of abnormal personality, they are gradually bringing a measure of order into the whole region. medical science on the whole has not done this in the region of faith and mental healing. we are, therefore, far too uncertain of our facts. a good deal of this is open to correction. if a society for psycho-therapeutic research should be organized, which would follow up every report of healings with an accurate care, beginning with the diagnosis and ending with the actual physical state of the patient as far as it could be ascertained by the tests at their disposal, they could greatly clarify the popular mind, prevent a vast deal of needless suffering, save the sick from frustrated hope and secure for their own profession a distinct reinforcement and an increased usefulness. _a neglected force_ if they thus find--as is likely--that the real force of psycho-therapy has been largely overestimated, that imagination, wrong diagnosis and mistaken report as to the actual physical condition have all combined to produce confidences unjustified by the facts, we should begin to come out into the light. and if, on the other hand, they found a body of actual fact substantiating psycho-therapy they would do well to add courses therein to the discipline of their schools.[ ] the whole thing would doubtless be a matter for specialization as almost every other department of medicine demands specialization. every good doctor is more or less a mental healer, but every doctor cannot become a specialist in psycho-therapy, nor would he need to. [footnote : but this is already being done.] temperamental elements enter here very largely. but we might at least take the whole matter out of the hands of charlatans and the half-informed and establish it upon a sound scientific basis. there is, beyond debate, a real place for the physician who utilizes and directs the elements of suggestion. they have gone farther, on the whole, in this direction in france and switzerland than we have in america. evidently we are standing only upon the threshold of marked advances along these lines. psycho-therapy can never be a substitute for a medical science which deals with the body as a machine to be regulated in its processes, defended against hostile invasion or reinforced in its weaknesses, but there is also another line of approach to sickness. a catholic medical science will use every means in its power. _the cults must be left to time and the corrections of truth_ beyond such general considerations as these there is little to be said. the christian churches will gain nothing by an intolerant attitude toward expressions of faith and spiritual adventures beyond their own frontiers. just as there is a constant selective process in answer to which the historic churches maintain their existences, a selective process controlled by association and temper, in that some of us are naturally catholics and some protestants, there are tempers which do not take kindly to inherited organization, authority or creed. such as these are seekers, excessive perhaps in their individuality, but none the less sincere in their desire for a faith and religious contact which will have its own distinct meaning for their own lives. and if there may seem to some of us elements of misdirection or caprice or unreason in their quests, it is perhaps in just such ways as these that advances are finally made and what is right and true endures. if nothing at all is to be gained by intolerance, nothing more is to be gained by an unfair criticism and, in general, all these movements must be left to the adjustments of time and the corrections of truth. we began this study by defining religion as the effective desire to be in right relation with the power which manifests itself in the universe. how vast this power is we are just beginning to find out. how various we are in our temperaments and what unsuspected possibilities there are in the depths of personality we are also just beginning to find out. there is possible, therefore, a vast variation of contact in this endeavour to be in right relation with the power which faith knows and names as god. in an endeavour moving along so wide a front there is room, naturally, for a great variety of quest. when we have sought rightly to understand and justly to estimate the more extreme variants of that quest in our own time, we can do finally no more than, through the knowledge thus gained, to try in patient and fundamental ways to correct what is false and recognize and sympathize with what is right and leave the residue to the issue of the unresting movements of the human soul, and those disclosures of the divine which are on their godward side revelation and on their human side insight, understanding and obedience. _printed in the united states of america_ striking addresses * * * * * _john henry jowett, d.d._ god our contemporary a series of complete addresses $ . . among the pulpit-giants of to-day dr. jowett has been given a high place. every preacher will want at once this latest product of his fertile mind. it consists of a series of full length sermons which are intended to show that only in god as revealed to us in jesus christ can we find the resources to meet the needs of human life. _sidney berry, m.a._ revealing light $ . . a volume of addresses by the successor to dr. jowett at carr's lane church, birmingham, the underlying aim of which is to show what the christian revelation means in relation to the great historic facts of the faith and the response which those facts must awaken in the hearts of men to-day. every address is an example of the best preaching of this famous "preacher to young men." _frederick c. spurr_ _last minister of regent's park chapel, london._ the master key a study in world-problems $ . . a fearless, clearly-reasoned restatement of the terms of the christian gospel and its relation to the travail through which the world is passing. mr. spurr is a man in the vanguard of religious thought, yet just as emphatically as any thinker of the old school, he insists on one physician able to heal the wounds and woes of humanity. _russell h. conwell, d.d._ _pastor baptist temple, philadelphia._ unused powers $ . . to "acres of diamonds," "the angel's lily," "why lincoln laughed," "how to live the christ life," and many other stirring volumes, dr. conwell has just added another made up of some of his choicest addresses. dr. conwell speaks, as he has always spoken, out of the experimental knowledge and practical wisdom of a man, who having long faced the stark realities of life, has been exalted thereby. _gaius glenn atkins, d.d._ _minister of the first congregational church, detroit, michigan._ the undiscovered country $ . . a group of addresses marked by distinction of style and originality of approach. the title discourse furnishes a central theme to which those following stand in relation. dr. atkins' work, throughout, is marked by clarity of presentation, polished diction and forceful phrasing. timely essays and studies * * * * * _newell dwight hillis_ _author of "great books as life-teachers."_ great men as prophets of a new era $ . . dr. hillis' latest book strikes a popular chord. it fairly pulses with life and human sympathy. he has a large grasp of things and relations, a broad culture, a retentive memory and splendid imagination, and there are few writers to-day with so large an audience assured in advance. the subjects include: dante; savonarola; william the silent; oliver cromwell; john wesley; john milton; garibaldi; john ruskin, etc. _thos. r. mitchell, m.a., b.d._ the drama of life a series of reflections on shakespeare's "_seven ages_." introduction by nellie l. mcclung. $ . . a fresh, stimulating discussion of old themes. mr. mitchell handles his subject with unusual directness, bringing to its discussion clarity of thought and lucidity of expression which has already won the enthusiastic endorsement of sir william robertson nicoll, chas. w. gordon, d.d., (ralph connor) archdeacon cody and prof. francis g. peabody. _d. macdougall king, m.b._ _author of "the battle with tuberculosis."_ nerves and personal power some principles of psychology as applied to conduct and health. with introduction by hon. w.l. mackenzie king. $ . premier king says: "my brother has, i think helped to reinforce christian teaching by showing wherein recent medical and scientific researches are revealing the foundations of christian faith and belief in directions hitherto unexplored and unknown.--the world needs the assurance this book can scarcely fail to bring." _rev. r.e. smith waco, texas._ christianity and the race problem $ . . a sane, careful study of the race problem in the south, written by a born southerner, the son of a slave-owner and confederate soldier. mr. smith has lived all his life among negroes, and feels that he is capable of seeing both sides of the problem he undertakes to discuss. problems of today * * * * * _george mccready price, m.a._ poisoning democracy a study of the present-day socialism. $ . professor price shows that the conditions prevailing to-day are due largely to the acceptance of various socialistic and evolutionary theories termed "new" theology. no more terrific moral and religious indictment of socialism has ever been presented. _albert clarke wyckoff_ sense of christian science $ . a deadly, withering attack on christian science enfilading its every position. mr. wyckoff's searching analysis of the pretensions, errors, follies, and non-sense of so-called christian science should prove as convincing as it is unanswerable. _allen w. johnston_ the roman catholic bible and the roman catholic church foreword by david j. burrell, d.d. $ . a book that examines the cardinal doctrines as taught by the church of rome, such as the invocation of saints, purgatory, indulgences, worship of mary, the holy eucharist, etc. etc., and indicates the dissimilarity between this body of teaching and holy writ. new editions. _i.m. haldeman_ can the dead communicate with the living? $ . "needless to say, dr. haldeman holds no brief for spiritism. a book that is awakening everyone to the peril of 'spiritualism' among christians."--_christian work._ _james m. gray, d.d._ spiritism and the fallen angels from a biblical viewpoint. $ . "beginning with a review of the present-day revival of spiritism and how to meet it, dr. gray harks back to origins, the baleful influence of the cult from the earliest recorded history of the human race." _s.s. times._ standard reference works * * * * * _g.b.f. hallock editor of "the expositor."_ a modern cyclopedia of illustrations for all occasions nineteen hundred and thirty-eight illustrations. $ . . a comprehensive collection of illustrative incidents, anecdotes and other suggestive material for the outstanding days and seasons of the church year. the author, well-known to the readers of "_the expositor_," has presented a really valuable handbook for preachers, sunday school superintendents and all christian workers. _james inglis_ the bible text cyclopedia a complete classification of scripture texts. new edition. large vo, $ . "more sensible and convenient, and every way more satisfactory than any book of the kind we have ever known. we know of no other work comparable with it in this department of study."--_sunday school times._ _angus-green_ cyclopedic handbook to the bible _by joseph angus. revised by samuel g. green._ new edition. pages, with index, $ . . "the best thing in its line."--_ira m. price, univ. of chicago._ "holds an unchallenged place among aids to the interpretation of the scriptures."--_baptist review and expositor._ "of immense service to biblical students."--_methodist times._ the treasury of scripture knowledge _introduction by r.a. torrey_ consisting of , scripture references and parallel passages. pages. vo. cloth. $ . . "bible students who desire to compare scripture with scripture will find the 'treasury' to be a better help than any other book of which i have any knowledge."--_r.r. mcburney, former gen. sec., y.m.c.a., new york._ _a.r. buckland, editor_ universal bible dictionary pages. vo. cloth. $ . . _dr. campbell morgan_ says: "clear, concise, comprehensive. i do not hesitate to say that if any student would take the bible, and go through it book by book with its aid, the gain would be enormous." church work * * * * * _roger w. babson author of "fundamentals of prosperity," etc._ new tasks for old churches cloth, $ . . paper, c. suggestions for the solution of to-day's problems, clear-cut and courageous. babson has little sympathy with the arguments of self-interest of business men or with the outworn methods of the church in industrial communities. his sole interest is in the physical, social, and spiritual salvation of the men, women, and children in our industrial centres. _pres. william allen harper_ _author of "the new church for the new time" etc._ the church in the present crisis $ . . hon. josephus daniels says: "dr. harper has ably presented the demand that the church shape the thought and life of the future. the world, having tried everything else, is becoming convinced that no golden rule alone will be the savior. dr. harper wisely stresses study of the bible, the christian leaven in education, the duty to look difficult problems in the face and solve them by application of the christian religion. it is a book of faith with wise directions and guidance." _rev. albert f. mcgarrah_ _author of "modern church management."_ money talks stimulating studies in christian stewardship. $ . . ministers and laymen, who desire to present convincingly the principles and practices which should govern christians in getting and using money, will find here a wealth of fresh material, popular in style, yet deeply inspiring in tone. a companion volume to "modern church finance" and "modern church management." _lyman edwyn davis, d.d., ll.d._ _editor "methodist recorder."_ democratic methodism in america a topical survey of the methodist protestant church. $ . . a history of the methodist protestant church from its founding in , pointing out the various links in the chain of circumstances which lead to the organization of the methodist protestant church and the fundamental principles which prompted and justified the movement. it constitutes a vigorous and ably-argued plea for "mutual rights" methodism. bible study * * * * * _p. whitwell wilson_ _author of "the christ we forget"_ the _church_ we forget. a study of the life and words of the early christians. vo, cloth, net the author of "the christ we forget" here furnishes a companion-picture of the earliest christian church--of the men and women, of like feelings with ourselves, who followed christ and fought his battles in the roman world of their day. "here again," says mr. wilson, "my paint-box is the bible, and nothing else--and my canvas is a page which he who runs may read." _c. alphonso smith, ph.d., ll.d._ _head of the department of english in the u.s. naval academy, annapolis. md._ key-note studies in key-note books of the bible mo, cloth, net the sacred books dealt with are genesis, esther, job, hosea, john's gospel, romans, philippians, revelation. "no series of lectures yet given on this famous foundation have been more interesting and stimulating than these illuminating studies of scriptural books by a layman and library expert."--_christian observer._ _george d. watson, d.d._ god's first words studies in genesis, historic, prophetic and experimental. mo, cloth, net dr. watson shows how god's purposes and infinite wisdom, his plan and purpose for the race, his unfailing love and faithfulness are first unfolded in the book of genesis, to remain unchanged through the whole canon of scripture. dr. watson's new work will furnish unusual enlightment to every gleaner in religious fields, who will find "god's first words" to possess great value and profit. _everett pepperrell wheeler, a.m._ _author of "sixty years of american life," etc._ a lawyer's study of the bible its answer to the questions of to-day. mo cloth, net mr. wheeler's main proposition is that the bible, when wisely studied, rightly understood and its counsel closely followed, is found to be of inestimable value as a guide to daily life and conduct. to this end mr. wheeler examines its teachings as they relate to sociology, labor and capital, socialism, war, fatalism, prayer, immortality. a lucid, helpful book. thoughts i met on the highway words of friendly cheer from "the life books" by ralph waldo trine new york dodd, mead & company copyright by ralph waldo trine * * * * * by ralph waldo trine "the life books" in the hollow of his hand the new alinement of life the land of living men what all the world's a-seeking in tune with the infinite; or fullness of peace, power and plenty the higher powers of mind and spirit. this mystical life of ours a volume of selections for each week through the year, from the author's complete works. the "life" booklets on the open road thoughts i met on the highway the winning of the best the greatest thing ever known every living creature character-building thought power dodd, mead & company new york * * * * * thoughts are forces--like builds like and like attracts like. thoughts of strength both build strength from within and attract it from without. thoughts of weakness actualize weakness from within and attract it from without. courage begets strength, fear begets weakness. and so courage begets success, fear begets failure. * * * * * any way the old world goes happy be the weather! with the red thorn or the rose singin' all together! don't you see that sky o' blue! good lord painted it for you reap the daisies in the dew singin' all together! springtime sweet, an' frosty fall happy be the weather! earth has gardens for us all, goin' on together. sweet the labor in the light, to the harvest's gold and white-- till the toilers say "good night," singin' all together! * * * * * there is no quality that exerts more good, is of greater service to all mankind during the course of the ordinary life, than the mind and the heart that goes out in an all-embracing love for all, that is the generator and the circulator of a genuine, hearty, wholesome sympathy and courage and good cheer, that is not disturbed or upset by the passing occurrence little or great, but that is serene, tranquil, and conquering to the end, that is looking for the best, that is finding the best, and that is inspiring the best in all. there is moreover, no quality that when genuine brings such rich returns to its possessor by virtue of the thoughts and the feelings that it inspires and calls forth from others and that come back laden with their peaceful, stimulating, healthful influences for you. * * * * * out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, i thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul. in the fell clutch of circumstance i have not winced nor cried aloud. under the bludgeoning of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed. beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade, and yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me, unafraid. it matters not how strait the gate how charged with punishment the scroll, i am the master of my fate; i am the captain of my soul. _william earnest henley_ * * * * * thought is the great builder in human life: it is the determining factor. continually think thoughts that are good, and your life will show forth in goodness, and your body in health and beauty. continually think evil thoughts, and your life will show forth in evil, and your body in weakness and repulsiveness. think thoughts of love, and you will love and will be loved. think thoughts of hatred, and you will hate and will be hated. each follows its kind. * * * * * every day is a fresh beginning, every morning is the world made new; you who are weary of sorrow and sinning, here is a beautiful hope for you, a hope for me and a hope for you. all the past things are past and over, the tasks are done, and the tears are shed. yesterday's errors let yesterday cover; yesterday's wounds, which smarted and bled, are healed with the healing which night has shed. every day is a fresh beginning, listen, my soul, to the glad refrain, and, spite of old sorrow and older sinning, and puzzles forecasted, and possible pain, take heart with the day and begin again. * * * * * each morning is a fresh beginning. we are, as it were, just beginning life. we have it _entirely_ in our own hands. and when the morning with its fresh beginning comes, all yesterdays should be yesterdays, with which we have nothing to do. sufficient is it to know that the way we lived our yesterday has determined for us our today. and, again, when the morning with its fresh beginning comes, all tomorrows should be tomorrows, with which we have nothing to do. sufficient to know that the way we live our today determines our tomorrow. simply the first hour of this new day, with all its richness and glory, with all its sublime and eternity-determining possibilities, and each succeeding hour as it comes, but _not before_ it comes--this is the secret of character building. this simple method will bring any one to the realization of the highest life that can be even conceived of, and there is nothing in this connection that can be conceived of that cannot be realized somehow, somewhen, somewhere. * * * * * the poem hangs on the berry-bush when comes the poet's eye, and the whole street is a masquerade when shakespeare passes by. * * * * * this same shakespeare, whose mere passing causes all this commotion, is the one who put into the mouth of one of his creations the words: "the fault, dear brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." and again he gave us a great truth when he said: "our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt." there is probably no agent that brings us more undesirable conditions than fear. we should live in fear of nothing, nor will we when we come fully to know ourselves. an old french proverb runs: "some of your griefs you have cured, and the sharpest you still have survived; but what torments of pain you endured from evils that never arrived." fear and lack of faith go hand in hand. the one is born of the other. tell me how much one is given to fear, and i will tell you how much he lacks in faith. fear is a most expensive guest to entertain, the same as worry is: so expensive are they that no one can afford to entertain them. we invite what we fear, the same as, by a different attitude of mind, we invite and attract the influences and conditions we desire. * * * * * to remain in nature always sweet and simple and humble, and therefore strong. "whatever the weather may be," says he, "whatever the weather may be, it's the songs ye sing, an' the smiles ye wear, that's a-makin' the sun shine everywhere." _james whitcomb riley_ * * * * * sweetness of nature, simplicity in manners and conduct, humility without self-abasement, give the truly kingly quality to men, the queenly to women, the winning to children, whatever the rank or the station may be. the life dominated by this characteristic, or rather these closely allied characteristics, is a natural well-spring of joy to itself and sheds a continual benediction upon all who come within the scope of its influence. it makes for a life of great beauty in itself, and it imparts courage and hope and buoyancy to all others. * * * * * there is no thing we cannot overcome; say not thy evil instinct is inherited, or that some trait inborn makes thy whole life forlorn; and calls down punishment that is not merited. back of thy parents and grandparents lies the great eternal will! that too is thine inheritance,--strong, beautiful, divine, sure lever of success for one who tries. earth has no claim the soul cannot contest; know thyself part of the eternal source; naught can stand before thy spirit's force: the soul's divine inheritance is best. * * * * * thought is at the bottom of all progress or retrogression, of all success or failure, of all that is desirable or undesirable in human life. the type of thought we entertain both creates and draws conditions that crystallize about it, conditions exactly the same in nature as is the thought that gives them form. thoughts are forces, and each creates of its kind, whether we realize it or not. the great law of the drawing power of the mind, which says that like creates like, and that like attracts like, is continually working in every human life, for it is one of the great immutable laws of the universe. for one to take time to see clearly the things one would attain to, and then to hold that ideal steadily and continually before his mind, never allowing faith--his positive thought-forces--to give way to or to be neutralized by doubts and fears, and then to set about doing each day what his hands find to do, never complaining, but spending the time that he would otherwise spend in complaint in focusing his thought-forces upon the ideal that his mind has built, will sooner or later bring about the full materialization of that for which he sets out. * * * * * beauty seen is never lost, god's colors all are fast; the glory of this sunset heaven into my soul has passed,-- a sense of gladness unconfined to mortal, date or clime; as the soul liveth, it shall live beyond the years of time. beside the mystic asphodels shall bloom the home-born flowers, and new horizons flush and glow with sunset hues of ours. _whittier_ * * * * * would you remain always young, and would you carry all the joyousness and buoyancy of youth into your maturer years? then have care concerning but one thing,--how you live in your thought world. it was the inspired one, gautama, the buddha, who said,--"the mind is everything; what you think you become." and the same thing had ruskin in mind when he said,--"make yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts. none of us as yet know, for none of us have been taught in early youth, what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought--_proof against all adversity_." and would you have in your body all the elasticity, all the strength, all the beauty of your younger years? then live these in your mind, making no room for unclean thought, and you will externalize them in your body. in the degree that you keep young in thought will you remain young in body. and you will find that your body will in turn aid your mind, for body helps mind the same as mind helps body. * * * * * there is a sacred something on all ways-- something that watches through the universe; one that remembers, reckons and repays, giving us love for love, and curse for curse. _edwin markham_ * * * * * the power of every life, the very life itself, is determined by what it relates itself to. god is immanent as well as transcendent. he is creating, working, ruling in the universe today, in your life and in mine, just as much as he ever has been. we are too apt to regard him after the manner of an absentee landlord, one who has set in operation the forces of this great universe, and then taken himself away. in the degree, however, that we recognize him as immanent as well as transcendent, are we able to partake of his life and power. for in the degree that we recognize him as the infinite spirit of life and power that is today, at this very moment, working and manifesting in and through all, and then, in the degree that we come into the realization of our oneness with this life, do we become partakers of, and so do we actualize in ourselves the qualities of his life. in the degree that we open ourselves to the inflowing tide of this immanent and transcendent life, do we make ourselves channels through which the infinite intelligence and power can work. * * * * * the robber is robbed by his riches; the tyrant is dragged by his chain; the schemer is snared by his cunning, the slayer lies dead by the slain. _edwin markham_ * * * * * this is the law of prosperity: when apparent adversity comes, be not cast down by it, but make the best of it, and always look forward for better things, for conditions more prosperous. to hold yourself in this attitude of mind is to set into operation subtle, silent, and irresistible forces that sooner or later will actualize in material form that which is today merely an idea. but ideas have occult power, and ideas, when rightly planted and rightly tended, are the seeds that actualize material conditions. never give a moment to complaint, but utilize the time that would otherwise be spent in this way in looking forward and actualizing the conditions you desire. suggest prosperity to yourself. see yourself in a prosperous condition. affirm that you will before long be in a prosperous condition. affirm it calmly and quietly, but strongly and confidently. believe it, believe it absolutely. expect it,--keep it continually watered with expectation. you thus make yourself a magnet to attract the things that you desire. don't be afraid to suggest. * * * * * they might not need me--yet they might, i'll let my heart be just in sight. a smile so small as mine might be precisely their necessity. _emily dickinson_ * * * * * the grander natures and the more thoughtful are always looking for and in conversation dwelling on the better things in others. it is the rule with but few, if any exceptions, that the more noble and worthy and thoughtful the nature, the more it is continually looking for the best there is to be found in every life. instead of judging or condemning, or acquiring the habit that eventually leads to this, it is looking more closely to and giving its time to living more worthily itself. it is in this way continually unfolding and expanding in beauty and in power; it is finding an ever-increasing happiness by the admiration and the love that such a life is always, even though all unconsciously, calling to itself from all sources. it is the life that pays by many fold. * * * * * we just shake hands at meeting with many that come nigh we nod the head in greeting to many that go by-- but welcome through the gateway our few old friends and true; then hearts leap up, and straightway there's open house for you. old friends. there's open house for you! _gerald massey_ * * * * * many times the struggles are greater than we can ever know. we need more gentleness and sympathy and compassion in our common human life. then we will neither blame nor condemn. instead of blaming or condemning we will sympathize. "comfort one another. for the way is often dreary and the feet are often weary, and the heart is very sad. there is a heavy burden bearing, when it seems that none are caring, and we half forget that ever we were glad. "comfort one another with the hand-clasp close and tender. with the sweetness love can render, and the looks of friendly eyes. do not wait with grace unspoken, while life's daily bread is broken-- gentle speech is oft like manna from the skies." and then when we fully realize the fact that selfishness is at the root of all error, sin, and crime, and that ignorance is the basis of all selfishness, with what charity we come to look upon the acts of all. it is the ignorant man who seeks his own ends at the expense of the greater whole. it is the ignorant man, therefore, who is the selfish man. * * * * * to get up immediately when we stumble, face again to the light, and travel on without wasting even a moment in regret. * * * * * we are on the way from the imperfect to the perfect; some day, in this life or some other, we shall reach our destiny. it is as much the part of folly to waste time and cripple our forces in vain, unproductive regrets in regard to the occurences of the past as it is to cripple our forces through fears and forebodings for the future. there is no experience in any life which if rightly recognized, rightly turned and thereby wisely used, cannot be made of value; many times things thus turned and used can be made sources of inestimable gain; ofttimes they become veritable blessings in disguise. * * * * * 'tis the sweetest thing to remember if courage be on the wane. when the cold, dark days are over-- why, the birds go north again. _ella higginson_ * * * * * nothing is more subtle than thought, nothing more powerful, nothing more irresistible in its operations, when rightly applied and held to with a faith and fidelity that is unswerving,--a faith and fidelity that never knows the neutralizing effects of doubt and fear. if one have aspirations and a sincere desire for a higher and better condition, so far as advantages, facilities, associates, or any surroundings or environments are concerned, and if he continually send out his highest thought forces for the realization of these desires, and continually water these forces with firm expectation as to their fulfillment, he will sooner or later find himself in the realization of these desires, and all in accordance with natural laws and forces. we are born to be neither slaves nor beggars, but to dominion and to plenty. this is our rightful heritage, if we will but recognize and lay claim to it. * * * * * one who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, never doubted clouds would break, never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake. _robert browning_ * * * * * will is the steady directing power: it is concentration. it is the pilot which, after the vessel is started by the mighty force within, puts it on its right course and keeps it true to that course. will is the sun-glass which so concentrates and so focuses the sun's rays that they quickly burn a hole through the paper that is held before it. the same rays, not thus concentrated, not thus focused, would fall upon the paper for days without any effect whatever. will is the means for the directing, the concentrating, the focusing, of the thought-forces. thought under wise direction,--this it is that does the work, that brings results, that makes the successful career. one object in mind which we never lose sight of; an ideal steadily held before the mind, never lost sight of, never lowered, never swerved from,--this, with _persistence_, determines all. nothing can resist the power of thought, when thus directed by will. * * * * * to stand by one's friend to the uttermost end, and fight a fair fight with one's foe; never to quit and never to twit, and never to peddle one's woe. _george brinton chandler_ * * * * * the fearing, grumbling, worrying, vascillating do not succeed in anything and generally live by burdening, in some form or another, someone else. they stand in the way of, they prevent their own success; they fail in living even an ordinary healthy, normal life; they cast a blighting influence over and they act as a hindrance to all with whom they at any time come in contact. the pleasures we take captive in life, the growth and advancement we make, the pleasure and benefit our company or acquaintanceship brings to others, the very desirability of our companionship on the part of others--all depend upon the types of thought we entertain and live most habitually with. * * * * * no one could tell me where my soul might be. i searched for god but god eluded me. i sought my brother out and found all there. _ernest crosby._ * * * * * in the degree that we love will we be loved. thoughts are forces. each creates of its kind. each comes back laden with the effect that corresponds to itself and of which it is the cause. "then let your secret thoughts be fair-- they have a vital part, and share in shaping words and moulding fate; god's system is so intricate." if our heart goes out in love to all with whom we come in contact, we inspire love and the same ennobling and warming influences of love always return to us from those in whom we inspire them. there is a deep scientific principle underlying the precept--if you would have all the world love you, you must first love all the world. * * * * * it was only a glad "good morning!" as she passed along the way, but it spread the morning glory over the livelong day. * * * * * by example and not by precept. by living, not by preaching. by doing, not by professing. by living the life, not by dogmatizing as to how it should be lived. there is no contagion equal to the contagion of life. whatever we sow, that shall we also reap, and each thing sown produces of its kind. we can kill not only by doing another bodily injury directly, but we can and we do kill by every antagonistic thought. not only do we thus kill, but while we kill we suicide. many a man has been made sick by having the ill thoughts of a number of people centered upon him; some have been actually killed. put hatred into the world and we make it a literal hell. put love into the world and heaven with all its beauties and glories becomes a reality. not to love is not to live, or it is to live a living death. the life that goes out in love to all is the life that is full, and rich, and continually expanding in beauty and in power. such is the life that becomes ever more inclusive, and hence larger in its scope and influence. * * * * * give us men! strong and stalwart ones: men whom highest hope inspires, men whom purest honour fires, men who trample self beneath them. men who make their country wreathe them as her noble sons, worthy of their sires, men who never shame their mothers, men who never fail their brothers, true, however false are others: give us men--i say again, give us men! _the bishop of exeter_ * * * * * _not repression, but elevation._ would that this could be repeated a thousand times over! _no, a knowledge of the spiritual realities of life prohibits asceticism, repression, the same as it prohibits license and perverted use. to err on the one side is just as contrary to the ideal life as to err on the other._ all things are for a purpose, all should be used and enjoyed; but all should be rightly used, that they may be fully enjoyed. it is the all-around, fully developed we want,--not the ethereal, pale-blooded man and woman, but the man and woman of flesh and blood, for action and service here and now,--the man and woman strong and powerful, with all the faculties and functions fully unfolded and used, all in a royal and bounding condition, but all rightly subordinated. the man and the woman of this kind, with the imperial hand of mastery upon all,--standing, moving thus like a king, nay, like a very god,--such is the man and such is the woman of power. such is the ideal life: anything else is one-sided, and falls short of it. * * * * * high thought and noble in all lands help me; my soul is fed by such, but oh, at the touch of life and hands-- the human touch! warm, vital, close, life's symbol dear,-- these need i most, and now and here. _richard burton_ * * * * * thoughts of strength both build strength from within and attract it from without. thoughts of weakness actualize weakness from within and attract it from without. courage begets strength, fear begets weakness. and so courage begets success, fear begets failure. it is the man or the woman of faith, and hence of courage, who is the master of circumstances, and who make his or her power felt in the world. it is the man or the woman who lacks faith and who as a consequence is weakened and crippled by fears and forebodings, who is the creature of all passing occurences. what one lives in his invisible thought world he is continually actualizing in his visible material world. if he would have any conditions different in the latter he must make the necessary change in the former. a clear realization of this great fact would bring success to thousands of men and women who all about us are now in the depths of despair. it would bring health, abounding health and strength to thousands now diseased and suffering. it would bring peace and joy to thousands now unhappy and ill at ease. * * * * * i stay my haste, i make delays, for what avails this eager pace? i stand amid eternal ways, and what is mine shall know my face asleep, awake, by night or day, the friends i seek are seeking me; no wind can drive my bark astray, nor change the tide of destiny-- the waters know their own, and draw the brooks that spring in yonder height; so flows the good with equal law unto the soul of pure delight. the stars come nightly to the sky; the tidal wave unto the sea; nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high, can keep my own away from me. _john burroughs_ * * * * * the thing that pays, and that makes for a well balanced, useful, and happy life, is not necessarily and is not generally a somber, pious morality, or any standard of life that keeps us from a free, happy, spontaneous use and enjoyment of all normal and healthy faculties, functions, and powers, the enjoyment of all innocent pleasures--use, but not abuse, enjoyment, but enjoyment through self-mastery and not through license or perverted use, for it can never come that way. look where we will, in or out and around us, we will find that it is the middle ground--neither poverty nor excessive riches, good wholesome use without license, a turning into the bye-ways along the main road where innocent and healthy god-sent and god-intended pleasures and enjoyments are to be found; but never getting far enough away to lose sight of the road itself. the middle ground it is that the wise man or woman plants foot upon. * * * * * for evil poisons; malice shafts like boomerangs return, inflicting wounds that will not heal while rage and anger burn. * * * * * tell me how much one loves and i will tell you how much he has seen of god. tell me how much he loves and i will tell you how much he lives with god. tell me how much he loves and i will tell you how far into the kingdom of heaven,--the kingdom of harmony, he has entered, for "love is the fulfilling of the law." and in a sense love is everything. it is the key to life, and its influences are those that move the world. live only in the thought of love for all and you will draw love to you from all. live in the thought of malice or hatred, and malice and hatred will come back to you. and so love inspires love; hatred breeds hatred. love and good will stimulate and build up the body; hatred and malice corrode and tear it down. love is a savor of life unto life; hatred is a savor of death unto death. "there are loyal hearts, there are spirits brave, there are souls that are pure and true; then give to the world the best you have, and the best will come back to you. "give love, and love to _your_ heart will flow, a strength in your utmost need; have faith, and a score of hearts will show their faith in _your_ word and deed." * * * * * the kind of a man for you and me! he faces the world unflinchingly, and smiles as long as the world exists, with a knuckled faith and force like fists: he lives the life he is preaching of, and loves where most is the need of love; and feeling still, with a grief half glad, that the bad are as good as the good are bad, he strikes straight out for the right--and he is the kind of a man for you and me! _james whitcomb riley_ * * * * * after a certain age is reached in any life, the prevailing tone and condition of that life is the resultant of the mental habits of that life. if one have mental equipment sufficient to find and to make use of the science of thought in its application to scientific mind and body building, habit and character building, there is little by way of heredity, environment, attainment of which he or she will not be the master. one thing is very certain--the mental points of view, the mental tendencies and habits at twenty-eight and thirty-eight will have externalized themselves and will have stamped the prevailing conditions of any life at forty-eight and fifty-eight and sixty-eight. * * * * * who puts back into place a fallen bar. or flings a rock out of a traveled road, his feet are moving toward the central star, his name is whispered in the gods' abode. _edwin markham_ * * * * * we need changes from the duties and the cares of our accustomed everyday life. they are necessary for healthy, normal living. we need occasionally to be away from our friends, our relatives, from the members of our immediate households. such changes are good for us; they are good for them. we appreciate them better, they us, when we are away from them for a period, or they from us. we need these changes to get the kinks out of our minds, our nerves, our muscles--the cobwebs off our faces. we need them to whet again the edge of appetite. we need them to invite the mind and the soul to new possibilities and powers. we need them in order to come back with new implements, or with implements redressed, sharpened, for the daily duties. we need periods of being by ourselves--_alone_. sometimes a fortnight or even a week will do wonders for one, unless he or she has drawn too heavily upon the account. the simple custom, moreover, of taking an hour, or even a half hour, _alone in the quiet_, in the midst of the daily routine of life, would be the source of _inestimable gain_ for countless numbers. * * * * * i know not where his islands lift their fronded palms in air; i only know i cannot drift beyond his love and care. _whittier_ * * * * * we need more faith in everyday life--faith in the power that works for good, faith in the infinite god, and hence faith in ourselves created in his image. and however things at times may seem to go, however dark at times appearances may be, the knowledge of the fact that "the supreme power has us in its charge as it has the suns and endless systems of worlds in space," will give us the supreme faith that all is well with us, the same as all is well with the world. "thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee." there is nothing firmer, and safer, and surer than deity. then, as we recognize the fact that we have it in our own hands to open ourselves ever more fully to this infinite power, and call upon it to manifest itself in and through us, we will find in ourselves an ever increasing sense of power. for in this way we are working in conjunction with it, and it in turn is working in conjunction with us. we are then led into the full realization of the fact that all things work together for good to those that love the good. * * * * * earth breaks up, time drops away, in flows heaven with its new day. _browning_ the heart of the new thought written by ella wheeler wilcox associate editor of "new thought." eleventh thousand published by the psychic research company temple chambers temple ave., e.c., london, eng. copyright the psychic research company. all rights reserved. notice: this work is protected by copyright, and simultaneous initial publication in united states of america, canada, great britain, france, germany, russia and other countries. all rights reserved. publishers' preface this book is noteworthy as an interpretation of "new thought." that which was vague, mystic, unreal, has become, in the hands of mrs. wilcox, a lovable philosophy of simplest construction. the backbone of this philosophy is the power of right thought. startling as are some of the tenets expressed, they are provably true here and now. it is possible that the very simplicity of this book will encourage careless criticism from those who believe that genius and ambiguity are twin. but mrs. wilcox is ever the voice of the people: what she says is practical; what she thinks is clear; what she feels is plain. let the people judge this book. contents: let the past go the sowing of the seed old clothes high noon obstacles thought force opulence eternity morning influences the philosophy of happiness a worn out creed common sense literature optimism preparation dividends royalty heredity invincibility faces the object of life wisdom self-conquest the important trifles concentration destiny sympathy the breath generosity woman's opportunity balance the heart of the new thought let the past go do not begin the new year by recounting to yourself or others all your losses and sorrows. let the past go. should some good friend present you with material for a lovely garment, would you insult her by throwing it aside and describing the beautiful garments you had worn out in past times? the new year has given you the fabric for a fresh start in life, why dwell upon the events which have gone, the joys, blessings and advantages of the past! do not tell me it is too late to be successful or happy. do not tell me you are sick or broken in spirit, the spirit cannot be sick or broken, because it is of god. it is your mind which makes your body sick. let the spirit assert itself and demand health and hope and happiness in this new year. forget the money you have lost, the mistakes you have made, the injuries you have received, the disappointments you have experienced. real sorrow, the sorrow which comes from the death of dear ones, or some great cross well borne, you need not forget. but think of these things as sent to enrich your nature, and to make you more human and sympathetic. you are missing them if you permit yourself instead to grow melancholy and irritable. it is weak and unreasonable to imagine destiny has selected you for special suffering. sorrow is no respecter of persons. say to yourself with the beginning of this year that you are going to consider all your troubles as an education for your mind and soul; and that out of the experiences which you have passed through you are going to build a noble and splendid character, and a successful career. do not tell me you are too old. age is all imagination. ignore years and they will ignore you. eat moderately, and bathe freely in water as cold as nature's rainfall. exercise thoroughly and regularly. be alive, from crown to toe. breathe deeply, filling every cell of the lungs for at least five minutes, morning and night, and when you draw in long, full breaths, believe you are inhaling health, wisdom and success. anticipate good health. if it does not come at once, consider it a mere temporary delay, and continue to expect it. regard any physical ailment as a passing inconvenience, no more. never for an instant believe you are permanently ill or disabled. the young men of france are studying alchemy, hoping to learn the secret of the transmutation of gold. if you will study your own spirit and its limitless powers, you will gain a greater secret than any alchemist ever held; a secret which shall give you whatever you desire. think of your body as the silver jewel box, your mind as the silk lining, your spirit as the gem. keep the box burnished and clear of dust, but remember always that the jewel within is the precious part of it. think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. a whole, clear, glorious year lies before you! in a year you can regain health, fortune, restfulness, happiness! push on! achieve, achieve! the sowing of the seed when you start in the "new thought" do not expect sudden illumination. do not imagine that you are to become perfectly well, perfectly cheerful, successful, and a healer, in a few days. remember all growth is slow. mushrooms spring up in a night, but oaks grow with deliberation and endure for centuries. mental and spiritual power must be gained by degrees. if you attained maturity before you entered this field of "new thought" it is folly to suppose a complete transformation of your whole being will take place in a week--a month--or a year. all you can reasonably look for is a gradual improvement, just as you might do if you were attempting to take up music or a science. the new thought is a science, the science of right thinking. but the brain cells which have been shaped by the old thoughts of despondency and fear, cannot all at once be reformed. it will be a case of "try, try again." make your daily assertions, "i am love, health, wisdom, cheerfulness, power for good, prosperity, success, usefulness, opulence." never fail to assert these things at least twice a day; twenty times is better. but if you do not attain to all immediately, if your life does not at once exemplify your words, let it not discourage you. the saying of the words is the watering of the seeds. after a time they will begin to sprout, after a longer time to cover the barren earth with grain, after a still longer time to yield a harvest. if you have been accustomed to feeling prejudices and dislikes easily, you will not all at once find it easy to illustrate your assertion, "i am love." if you have indulged yourself in thoughts of disease, the old aches and pains will intrude even while you say "i am health!" if you have groveled in fear and a belief that you were born to poverty and failure, courage and success and opulence will be of slow growth. yet they will grow and materialize, as surely as you insist and persist. declare they are yours, right in the face of the worst disasters. there is nothing so confuses and flustrates misfortune as to stare it down with hopeful unflinching eyes. if you waken some morning in the depths of despondency and gloom, do not say to yourself: "i may as well give up this effort to adopt the new thought--i have made a failure of it evidently----." instead sit down quietly, and assert calmly that you are cheerfulness, hope, courage, faith and success. realize that your despondency is only temporary; an old habit, which is reasserting itself, but over which you will gradually gain the ascendency. then go forth into the world and busy yourself in some useful occupation, and before you know it is on the way, hope will creep into your heart, and the gray cloud will lift from your mind. physical pains will loosen their hold, and conditions of poverty will change to prosperity. your mind is your own to educate and direct. you can do it by the aid of the spirit, but you must be satisfied to work slowly. be patient and persistent. old clothes as you go over your wardrobe in the spring or fall, do not keep any old, useless, or even questionable, garments, for "fear you might need them another year." give them to the ragman, or send them to the county or city poor house. there is nothing that will keep you in a rut of shabbiness more than clinging to old clothes. it is useless to say that you cannot afford new garments. it is because you have harped upon this idea that you are still in straitened circumstances. you believe neither in god or yourself. possibly you were brought up to think yourself a mere worm of earth, born to poverty and sorrow. if you were, it will of course require a continued effort to train your mind to the new thought, the thought of your divine inheritance of all god's vast universe of wealth. but you can do it. begin by giving away your old clothes. there may be people, poor relations, or some struggling mother of half-clad children, to whom your old garments will seem like new raiment, and to whom they will bring hope and happiness. as a rule, it is not well to give people your discarded clothing. it has a tendency to lower their self-respect and to make them look to you, instead of to themselves, for support. it all depends upon whom the people are and how you do it. if you can find employment for them, and arouse their hope and self-confidence and ambition, it is better than carloads of clothing or furniture or provisions. but little children, suffering from cold, or hard-working, over-taxed men and women, will not be harmed, and may be temporarily cheered and encouraged by your gifts. no matter if you still need your frayed-out garments--do not keep them. your thoughts of poverty and trouble have impregnated them so that you will continue to produce the same despondent mind stuff while you wear these garments. get rid of them, and believe that you are to soon procure fresh, becoming raiment. rouse all your energies, and go straight ahead with that purpose in mind. you will be surprised to find how soon the opportunity presents itself for you to obtain what you need. there is new strength, repose of mind and inspiration in fresh apparel. god gives nature new garments every season. we are a part of nature. he gives us the qualities and the opportunities to obtain suitable covering for our changing needs, if we believe in the one, and use the other. when i read of a wealthy man who boasts that he has worn one hat seven years, or a woman in affluent circumstances who has worn one bonnet for various seasons, i feel sorry for their ignorance and ashamed of their penuriousness. look at the apple-tree, with its delicate spring drapery, its luxurious summer foliage, its autumn richness of coloring, its winter draperies of white! surely the creator did not intend the tree to have more variety than man! the tree trusts, and grows, and takes storm and sun as divinely sent, and believes in its right to new apparel, and it comes. it will come to you if you do the same. high noon every woman who passes thirty ought to keep her brain, heart and mind alive and warm with human sympathy and emotion. she ought to interest herself in the lives of others, and make her friendship valuable to the young. she should keep her body supple, and avoid losing the lines of grace: and she should select some study or work to occupy her spare hours and to lend a zest to the coming years. every woman in the comfortable walks in life can find time for such a study. no woman of tact, charm, refinement and feeling need ever let her husband, unless she has married a clod, become indifferent or commonplace in his treatment of her. man reflects to an astonishing degree woman's sentiments for him. keep sentiment alive in your own heart, madam, and in the heart of your husband. if he sees that other men admire you he will be more alert to the necessity of remaining your lover. take the happy, safe, medium path between a gray and a gay life by keeping it radiant and bright. read and think and talk of cheerful, hopeful, interesting subjects. avoid small gossip, and be careful in your criticism of neighbors. sometimes we must criticise, but speak _to_ people whose faults you feel a word of counsel may amend, not _of_ them to others. make your life after it reaches its noon, glorious with sunlight, rich with harvests, and bright with color. be alive in mind, heart and body. be joyous without giddiness, loving without silliness, attractive without being flirtatious, attentive to others' needs without being officious, and instructive without too great a display of erudition. be a noble, loving, lovable woman. it is never too late in life to make anew start. no matter how small a beginning may be, it is so much begun for a new incarnation if it is cut off here by death. if i were one hundred years old, and in possession of my faculties, i would not hesitate to undertake a new enterprise which offered a hope of bettering my condition. thought is eternal in its effects, and every hopeful thought which enters the mind sets vibrations in motion, which shall help minds millions of miles distant and lives yet unborn. it is folly to mourn over a failure to provide opportunities and luxuries for children. we have only to look at the children of the rich, to see how little enduring happiness money gives, and how seldom great advantages result in great characters. the majority of the really great people of the world, in all lines of achievement, have sprung from poverty. i do not mean from pauper homes, but from the homes where only the mere necessities of life could be obtained, and where early in their youth the children felt it necessary to go into the world and make their own way. self-dependence, self-reliance, energy, ambition, were all developed in this way. how rarely do we find these qualities in the children of wealth. how rarely do great philosophers, great statesman, great thinkers and great _characters_ develop from the wealthy classes. pauperism--infant labor--the wage-earning women--are all evils which ought to be abolished. but next to that evil i believe the worst thing possible for a human soul is to be born to wealth. it is an obstacle to greatness which few are strong enough to surmount, and it rarely results in happiness to the recipient. obstacles however great the obstacles between you and your goal may be or have been, do not lay the blame of your failure upon them. other people have succeeded in overcoming just as great obstacles. remove such hindrances from the path for others, if you can, or tell them a way to go around. even lead them a little distance and cheer them on. but so far as you yourself are concerned, do not stop to excuse any delinquency or half-heartedness or defeat by the plea of circumstance or environment. the great nature makes its own environment, and dominates circumstance. it all depends upon the amount of force in your own soul. while you apply this rule to yourself and make no scapegoat of "fate," you must have consideration for the weakness of others, and you must try and better the conditions of the world as you go along. you are robust and possessed of all your limbs. you can mount over the great boulder which has fallen in the road to success, and go on your way to your goal all the stronger for the experience. but behind you comes a one-legged man--a blind man--a man bowed to the earth with a heavy burden, which he cannot lay down. it will require weeks, months, years of effort on their part to climb over that rock which you surmounted in a few hours. so it is right and just for you to call other strong ones to your aid and roll the boulder away or blast it out of the path. that is just exactly the way you should think of the present industrial conditions. in spite of them, the strong, well-poised, earnest and determined soul can reach any desired success. but there are boulders in the road which do not belong there, boulders which cause hundreds of the pilgrims who are lame or blind or burdened, to fall by the wayside and perish. it is your duty to aid in removing these obstacles and in making the road a safe and clear thoroughfare for all who journey. do not sit down by the roadside and say you have been hindered by these difficulties, that is to confess yourself weak. do not mount over them and rush to your goal and say coldly to the throngs behind you, "oh, everybody can climb over that rock who really tries--didn't i?" that is to announce yourself selfish and unsympathetic. no doubt the lame, the blind and the burdened _could_ attain the goal despite the rocks if they were fired by a consciousness of the divine force within them; that consciousness can achieve _all things under all circumstances_. but there will always be thousands of pilgrims toiling wearily toward the goal who have not come to this realization. if there are unjust, unfair and unkind restrictions placed about them, see to it that you do all in your power to right what is wrong. but never wait to attain your own success because of these restrictions or obstacles. believe absolutely in your own god-given power to overcome anything and everything. think of yourself as performing miracles with god's aid. desire success so intensely that you attract if as the magnet attracts the steel. help to adjust things as you go along, but never for a moment believe that the lack of adjustment can cause you to fail. thought force your spirit and mine are both part of the stupendous cause. we have always been, and always will be. first in one form, then in another. every thought, word and deed is helping decide your next place in the creator's magnificent universe. you will be beautiful or ugly, wise or ignorant, fortunate or unfortunate, according to what use you make of yourself here and now. unselfish thoughts, training your mind to desire only universal good, the cultivation of the highest attributes, such as love, honesty, gratitude, faith, reverence and good will, all mean a life of usefulness and happiness in another incarnation, as well as satisfaction and self-respect in this sphere. even if you escape the immediate results of the opposite course of action here, you must face the law of _cause and effect_ in the next state. it is inevitable. god, the maker of all things, does not change his laws. "as you sow you reap." "as a man thinketh so is he." there is no "revenge" in god's mind. he simply makes his laws, and we work our destinies for good or ill according to our adherence to them or violation of them. each one of us is a needed part of his great plan. let each soul say: "he has need of me or i would not be. i am here to strengthen the plan." remember that always in your most discouraged hours. the creator makes no mistakes. there is a divine purpose in your being on earth. think of yourself as necessary to the great design. it is an inspiring thought. and then consider the immensity of the universe and how accurately the maker planned it all. do not associate with pessimists. if you are unfortunate enough to be the son or daughter, husband or wife of one, put cotton (either real or spiritual) in your ears, and shut out the poison words of discouragement and despondency. no tie of blood or law should compel you to listen to what means discomfort and disaster to you. get out and away, into the society of optimistic people. before you go, insist on saying cheerful, hopeful and bright things, sowing the seed, as it were, in the mental ground behind you. but do not sit down to see it grow. never feel that it is your duty to stay closely and continuously in the atmosphere of the despondent. you might as well think it your duty to stay in deep water with one who would not make the least effort to swim. get on shore and throw out a life-line, but do not remain and be dragged under. if you find any one determined to talk failure and sickness and misfortune and disaster, walk away. you would not permit the dearest person on earth to administer slow poison to you if you knew it. then why think it your duty to take mental potions which paralyze your courage and kill your ambition? despondency is one phase of immorality. it is blasphemous and an insult to the creator. you are justified in avoiding the people who send you from their presence with less hope and force and strength to cope with life's problems than when you met them. do what you can to change their current of thought. but do not associate intimately with them until they have learned to keep silent--at least, if they cannot speak hopefully. learn how to walk, how to poise your body, how to breathe, how to hold your head, how to focus your mind on things of universal importance. believe your tender, loving thoughts and wishes for good to all humanity have power to help the struggling souls of earth to rise to higher and better conditions. no matter how limited your sphere of action may seem to you and how small your town appears on the map, if you develop your mental and spiritual forces through _love thoughts_ you can be a power to move the world along. rise up and realize your strength. not only will you be more useful and happy, but you will grow more beautiful and keep your youth. opulence do not go through the world talking poverty and asking every one you deal with to show you special consideration because you are "poor" and "unfortunate." if you do this with an idea of saving a few dollars here and there, you will always have to do it, because you are creating poverty conditions by your constant assertions. it is a curious fact that the people who are always demanding consideration in money matters demand the best that is going at the same time. i have known a woman to make a plea for cut prices in a boarding house because she was so poor, yet she wanted the sunniest room and the best location the house afforded. it is the charity patients who make the most complaint of a physician's skill or a nurse's attention. if you cannot afford to do certain things, or buy certain objects, don't. but when you decide you must, decide, too, that you will pay the price, and make no whining plea of poverty. there are two extremes of people in the world, one as distasteful as the other. one is represented by the man who boasts of the costliness of every possession, and invites the whole world to behold his opulence and expenditure. his clothes, his house, his servants, his habits, seem no different to the observer from his neighbor's, yet, according to his story, they cost ten times the amount. the other extreme is the man who dresses well, lives well, enjoys all the comforts and pleasures of his associates, yet talks poverty continually, and expects the entire community to show him consideration in consequence. another thing to avoid is the role of the chronically injured person. we all know him. he has a continual grievance. he has been cheated, abused, wronged, insulted, disappointed and deceived. we wonder how or why he has managed to exist, as we listen to the story of his troubles. no one ever treats him fairly, either in business or social life. everybody is ungrateful, unkind, selfish, and he could not be made to believe that these experiences were of his own making. all of us meet with occasional blows from fate, in the form of insults, or ingratitude, or trickery from an unexpected source. but if we get nothing else but those disappointing experiences from life, we may rest assured the fault lies somewhere in ourselves. we are not sending out the right kind of mental stuff, or we would get better returns. you never can tell what your thoughts will do in bringing you hate or love, for thoughts are things, and their airy wings are swift as a carrier dove. they follow the law of the universe-- each thing must create its kind, and they speed o'er the track to bring you back whatever went out from your mind. in the main, we must of necessity get from humanity what we give to it. if we question our ability to win friends or love, people will also question it. if we doubt our own judgment and discretion in business, others will doubt it, and the shrewd and unprincipled will take the opportunity given by our doubts of ourselves, to spring upon us. if in consequence we distrust every person we meet, we create an unwholesome and unfortunate atmosphere about ourselves, which will bring to us the unworthy and deceitful. stand firm in the universe. believe in yourself. believe in others. if you make a mistake, consider it only an incident. if some one wrongs you, cheats, misuses or insults you, let it pass as one of the lessons you had to learn, but do not imagine that you are selected by fate for only such lessons. keep wholesome, hopeful and sympathetic with the world at large, whatever individuals may do. expect life to use you better every year, and it will not disappoint you in the long run. for life is what we make it. eternity do you know what a wonderfully complicated thing a human being is? every feature, every portion of your body, every motion you make, reflects your mental organization. i know a woman past middle life who has always been on the opposite side of every question discussed in her presence. she was agnostic with the orthodox, reverential with atheists, liberal with the narrow, bigoted with the liberal. whatever belief any one expressed on any subject, she invariably took the other extreme. she loved to disagree with her fellow-men. it was her pastime. now, to walk with that woman in silence is merely to carry on a wordless argument. you cannot regulate your steps so they will harmonize with hers. she will be just ahead or just behind you, and if you want to turn to the left, she pulls to the right. a promenade with her is more exhausting than a day's labor. she is not conscious of it, and would think anyone very unreasonable and unjust who told her of her peculiarities. i know a woman who all her life has been looking afar for happiness and peace and content, and has never found any of them, because she did not look in her own soul. she was a restless girl, and she married, believing in domestic life lay the goal of her dreams. but she was not happy there, and sighed for freedom. she wanted to move, and did move, once, twice, thrice, to different points of the united states. she was discontented with each change. she is to-day possessed of all comforts and luxuries which life can afford, yet she is the same restless soul. she likes to read, but it is always the book which she does not possess which she craves. if she is in the library with shelves book-filled, she goes into the garret and hunts in old boxes for a book or a paper which has been cast aside. if she is in a picture gallery, she wants to go to the window and look out on the street, but when she is on the street it bores her, and she longs to go in the house. if a member of the family is absent, she gets no enjoyment out of the society of those at home; yet when that absent one returns her mind strays elsewhere, seeking some imagined happiness not found here. i wonder if such souls ever find it, even in the spirit realm, or if they go on there seeking and always seeking something just beyond. it is a great gift to learn to enjoy the present--to get all there is out of it, and to think of to-day as a piece of eternity. begin now to teach yourself this great art if you have not thought of it before. to be able to enjoy heaven, one must learn first to enjoy earth. morning influences what do you think about the very first thing in the morning? your thoughts during the first half-hour of the morning will greatly influence the entire day. you may not realize this, but it is nevertheless a fact. if you set out with worry, and depression, and bitterness of soul toward fate or man, you are giving the key note to a day of discords and misfortunes. if you think peace, hope and happiness, you are sounding a note of harmony and success. the result may not be felt at once, but it will not fail to make itself evident eventually. control your morning thoughts. you can do it. the first moment on waking, no matter what your mood, say to yourself: "i will get all the comfort and pleasure possible out of this day, and i will do something to add to the measure of the world's happiness or well-being. i will control myself when tempted to be irritable or unhappy, i will look for the bright side of every event." once you say these things over to yourself in a calm, earnest way, you will begin to feel more cheerful. the worries and troubles of the coming day will seem less colossal. then say: "i shall be given help to meet anything that comes to-day. everything will be for the best. i shall succeed in whatever i undertake. i cannot fail." do not let it discourage you if the moment you leave your room you encounter a trouble or a disaster. this usually happens. when we make any boasts, spiritually or physically, we are put to the test. the occult forces about us are not unlike human beings. when a school-boy boasts of his strength, and says he can "lick any boy in school," he generally gets a chance to prove it. when we declare we are brave enough to overcome any fate, we find our strength put to the test at once. but that is all right. prove your words to be true. regard the troubles and cares you encounter as the "punching bags" of fate, given you to develop your spiritual muscle. go at them with courage and keep to your morning resolve. by and by the troubles will lessen, and you will find yourself master of circumstances. the philosophy of happiness there are natures born to happiness just as there are born musicians, mechanics and mathematicians. they are usually children who came into life under right pre-natal conditions. that is, children conceived and born in love. the mother who thanks god for the little life she is about to bring to earth, gives her child a more blessed endowment than if it were heir to a kingdom or a fortune. as the majority of people, however, born under "civilized" conditions, are unwelcome to their mothers, it is rarely we encounter one who has a birthright of happiness. youth possesses a certain buoyancy and exhilaration which passes for happiness, until the real disposition of the individual asserts itself with the passing of time. good health and strong vitality are great aids to happiness; yet that they, wealth and honors added, do not produce that much desired state of mind we have but to look about us to observe. one who is not born a musician needs to toil more assiduously to acquire skill in the art, however strong his desire or great his taste, than the natural genius. so the man not endowed with joyous impulses needs to set himself the task of acquiring the habit of happiness. i believe it can be done. to the sad or restless or discontented being i would say: begin each morning by resolving to find something in the day to enjoy. look in each experience which comes to you for some grain of happiness. you will be surprised to find how much that has seemed hopelessly disagreeable possesses either an instructive or an amusing side. there is a certain happiness to be found in the most disagreeable duty when you stop to realize that you are getting it out of the way. if it is one of those duties which has the uncomfortable habit of repeating itself continually, you can at least say you are learning patience and perseverance, which are two great virtues and essential to any permanent happiness in life. do not anticipate the happiness of to-morrow, but discover it in to-day. unless you are in the profound depths of some great sorrow, you will find it if you look for it. think of yourself each morning as an explorer in a new realm. i know a man whose time is gold, and he carefully arranged his plans to take three hours for a certain pleasure. he lost his way and missed his pleasure, but was full of exuberant delight over his "new experience." "i saw places and met with adventures i might have missed my whole life." he was a true philosopher and optimist and such a man gets the very kernel out of the nut of life. i know a woman who had since her birth every material blessing, health, wealth, position, travel and a luxurious home. she was forever complaining of the cares and responsibilities of the latter. finally she prevailed upon the family to rent the home for a series of years and to live in hotels. now she goes about posing as a martyr, "a homeless woman." it is impossible for such a selfishly perverted nature to know happiness. a child should be taught from its earliest life to find entertainment in every kind of condition or weather. if it hears its elders cursing and bemoaning a rainy day the child's plastic mind is quick to receive the impression that a rainy day is a disaster. how much better to expatiate in its presence on the blessing of rain, and to teach it the enjoyment of all nature's varying moods, which other young animals feel. happiness must come from within in order to respond to that which comes from without, just as there must be a musical ear and temperament to enjoy music. cultivate happiness as an art or science. a worn out creed i have a letter from an "orthodox christian," who says the only hope for humanity lies in the "old-fashioned religion." then he proceeds to tell me how carefully he has studied human nature, "in business, in social life, and in himself," and that he finds it all vile--selfish--sinful. of course he does, because he studies it from a false and harmful standpoint, and looks for "the worm of earth" and "the poor, miserable sinner," instead of the _divine_ man. we find what we look for in this world. i have always been looking for the noble qualities in human beings, and i have found them. there are great souls all along the highway of life, and there are great qualities even in the people who seem common and weak to us ordinarily. one of the grandest souls i know is a man who served his term in prison for sins committed while in drink. he was not "born bad", he simply drifted into bad company and formed bad habits. he paid the awful penalty of five years behind prison bars, but the divine man within him asserted itself, and today i have no friend i feel prouder to call that name. mr. john l. tait, secretary of the central howard association, of chicago, writes me regarding his knowledge of ex-convicts: according to my experience with a number of men of this class during the last two years, more than per cent of them are worthy of the most cordial support and assistance. if this can be said of men who have been criminals, surely humanity is not so vile as my "orthodox" correspondent would have me believe. a "christian" of that order ought to be put under restraint, and not allowed to associate with mankind. he carries a moral malaria with him, which poisons the air. he suggests evil to minds which have not thought it. he is a dangerous hypnotist, while pretending to be a disciple of christ. the man who believes that all men are vicious, selfish and immoral is _projecting pernicious mind stuff_ into space, which is as dangerous to the peace of the community as dynamite bombs. the world has been kept back too long by this false, unholy and blasphemous "religion." it is not the religion of christ--it is the religion of ignorant translators, ignorant readers. thank god, its supremacy is past. a wholesome and holy religion has taken its place with the intelligent progressive minds of the day, a religion which says: "i am all goodness, love, truth, mercy, health. i am a necessary part of god's universe. i am a divine soul, and only good can come through me or to me. god made me, and he could make nothing but goodness and purity and worth. i am the reflection of all his qualities." this is the "new" religion; yet it is older than the universe. it is god's own thought put into practical form. common sense if you are suffering from physical ills, ask yourself if it is not your own fault. there is scarcely one person in one hundred who does not over eat or drink. i know an entire family who complain of gastric troubles, yet who keep the coffee pot continually on the range and drink large quantities of that beverage at least twice a day. no one can be well who does that. almost every human ailment can be traced to foolish diet. eat only two meals in twenty-four hours. if you are not engaged in active physical labor, make it one meal. drink two or three or four quarts of milk at intervals during the day to supply good blood to the system. you will thrive upon it, and you will not miss the other two meals after the first week. and your ailments will gradually disappear. meantime, if you are self-supporting, your bank account will increase. think of the waste of money which goes into indigestible food! it is appalling when you consider it. heaven speed the time when men and women find out how little money it requires to sustain the body in good health and keep the brain clear and the eye bright! the heavy drinker is to-day looked upon with pity and scorn. the time will come when the heavy eater will be similarly regarded. once find the delight of a simple diet, the benefit to body and mind and purse, and life will assume new interest, and toil will be robbed of its drudgery, for it will cease to be a mere matter of toiling for a bare existence. again, are you unhappy? stop and ask yourself why. if you have a great sorrow, time will be your consoler. and there is an ennobling and enriching effect of sorrow well borne. it is the education of the soul. but if you are unhappy over petty worries and trials, you are wearing yourself to no avail; and if you are allowing small things to irritate and harass you and to spoil the beautiful days for you, take yourself in hand and change your ways. you can do it if you choose. it is pitiful to observe what sort of troubles most unhappy people are afflicted with. i have seen a beautiful young woman grow care lined and faded just from imagining she was being "slighted" or neglected by her acquaintances. some one nodded coldly to her, another one spoke superciliously, a third failed to invite her, a fourth did not pay her a call, and so on--always a grievance to relate until one is prepared to look sympathetic at sight of her. and such petty, petty grievances for this great, good life to be marred by! and all the result of her own disposition. had she chosen to look for appreciation and attention and good will she would have found it everywhere. then, about your temper? is it flying loose over a trifle? are you making yourself and every one else wretched if a chair is out of place, or a meal a moment late, or some member of the family is tardy at dinner, or your shoe string is in a tangle or your collar button mislaid? do you go to pieces nervously if you are obliged to repeat a remark to some one who did not understand you? i have known a home to be ruined by just such infinitesimal annoyances. it is a habit, like the drug or alcohol habit--this irritability. all you need do is to stop it. keep your voice from rising, and speak slowly and calmly when you feel yourself giving way to it. realize how ridiculous and disagreeable you will be if you continue, what an unlovely and hideous old age you are preparing for yourself. and realize that a loose temper is a sign of vulgarity and lack of culture. think of the value of each day of life, how much it means and what possibilities of happiness and usefulness it contains if well spent. but if you stuff yourself like an anaconda, dwell on the small worries and grow angry at the least trifle, you are committing as great and inexcusable a folly as if you flung your furniture and garments and food and fuel into the sea in a spirit of wanton cruelty. you are wasting life for nothing. every sick, gloomy day you pass is a sin against life. get health, be cheerful, keep calm. clear your mind of every gloomy, selfish angry or revengeful thought. allow no resentment or grudge toward man or fate to stay in your heart over night. wake in the morning with a blessing for every living thing on your lips and in your soul. say to yourself: "health, luck, usefulness, success, are mine. i claim them." keep thinking that thought, no matter what happens, just as you would put one foot before another if you had a mountain to climb. keep on, keep on, and suddenly you will find you are on the heights, luck beside you. whoever follows this recipe _cannot fail_ of happiness, good fortune and a useful life. but saying the words over _once_ and then drifting back to anger, selfishness, revenge and gloom will do no good. the words must be said over and over, and _thought_ and _lived_ when not said. literature the world is full of "new thought" literature. it is helpful and inspiring to read. it is worth many dollars to any one who will _live_ its philosophy. i talked to a man who has been studying along these lines for some years. "oh, i know all that philosophy," he said; "it is nothing new. i am perfectly familiar with it." yet this man was continually allowing himself to grow angry over the least trifle; he was quick to see and speak of the faults in others; he was demanding more of those he associated with in the way of consideration and justice than he was willing to give, and he was untidy in his person and improvident in his use of money. now it is the merest waste of time for this man to read "new thought" literature or practice "deep breathing", since he will not put into daily and hourly practice what is taught by the new religion. he is like the orthodox christian who mumbles through the lord's prayer and then goes forth to do exactly as he would not be done by in business, social and domestic life. _man is what he thinks_. not what he says, reads or hears. by persistent thinking you can undo any condition which exists. you can free yourself from any chains, whether of poverty, sin, ill health or unhappiness. if you have been thinking these thoughts half a lifetime you must not expect to batter down the walls you have built, in a week, or a month, or a year. you must work and wait, and grow discouraged and stumble and pick yourself up and go on again. you cannot in an hour gain control over a temper which you have let fly loose for twenty years. but you can control it eventually, and learn to think of a burst of anger as a vulgarity like drunkenness or profanity, something you could not descend to. if you have allowed yourself to think despondent thoughts and believe that poverty and sickness were your portion for years, it will take time to train your mind to more cheerful and hopeful ideas; but you can do it by repeated assertions and by reading and thinking and living the beautiful new thought philosophy. optimism not long ago i read the following gloomy bit of pessimism from the pen of a man bright enough to know better than to add to the mental malaria of the world. he said: life is a hopeless battle in which we are foredoomed to defeat. and the prize for which we strive "to have and to hold"--what is it? a thing that is neither enjoyed while had, nor missed when lost. so worthless it is, so unsatisfying, so inadequate to purpose, so false to hope and at its best so brief, that for consolation and compensation we set up fantastic faiths of an aftertime in a better world from which no confirming whisper has ever reached us out of the void. heaven is a prophecy uttered by the lips of despair, but hell is an inference from history. this is morbid and unwholesome talk which can do no human being any good to utter, or listen to. but it can depress and discourage the weak and struggling souls, who are striving to make the best of circumstances, and it can nerve to suicide the hand of some half-crazed being, who needed only a word of encouragement and cheer to brace up and win the race. this is the unpardonable sin--to talk discouragingly to human souls, hungering for hope. when the man without brains does it, he can be pardoned for knowing no better. when the man with brains does it, he should be ashamed to look his fellow mortals in the eyes. it is a sin ten times deeper dyed than giving a stone to those who ask for bread. it is giving poison to those who plead for a cup of cold water. fortunately the remarks above quoted contain not one atom of truth! the writer may speak for himself, but he has no right to speak for others. it is all very well for a man who is marked with smallpox to say his face has not one unscarred inch on the surface of it. but he has no premises to stand upon when he says there is not a face in the world which is free from smallpox scars. life is not "a hopeless battle in which we are doomed to defeat." life is a glorious privilege, and we can make anything we choose of it, if we begin early and are in deep earnest, and realize our own divine powers. nothing can hinder us or stay us. we can do and be whatsoever we will. the prize of life is not "a thing which is neither enjoyed while had nor missed when lost." it is enjoyed by millions of souls to-day--this great prize of life. i for one declare that for every day of misery in my existence i have had a week of joy and happiness. for every hour of pain, i have had a day of pleasure. for every moment of worry, an hour of content. i cannot be the only soul so endowed with the appreciation of life! i know scores of happy people who enjoy the many delights of earth, and there are thousands whom i do not know. of course "life is not missed when lost"--because it is never lost. it is indestructible. life ever was, and ever will be. it is a continuous performance. it is not "worthless" to the wholesome, normal mind. it is full of interest, and rich with opportunities for usefulness. when any man says his life is worthless, it is because he has eyes and sees not, and ears and hears not. it is his own fault, not the fault of god, fate or accident. if every life seems at times "unsatisfactory" and "inadequate" it is only due to the cry of the immortal soul longing for larger opportunities and fewer limitations. neither is life "false to hope." he who trusts the divine source of life, shall find his hopes more than realized here upon earth. i but voice the knowledge of thousands of souls, when i make this assertion. i know whereof i speak. all that our dearest hopes desire will come to us, if we believe in ourselves as rightful heirs to divine opulence, and work and think always on those lines. if "no whisper has ever reached us out of the void" confirming our faith in immortality, then one-third of the seemingly intelligent and sane beings of our acquaintance must be fools or liars. for we have the assertion of fully this number that such whispers have come, besides the biblical statistics of numerous messages from the other realm. "as it was in the beginning, is now and shall be ever more, world without end, amen." preparation every day i hear middle-aged people bemoaning the fact that they were not given advantages or did not seize the opportunities for an education in early youth. they believe that their lives would be happier, better and more useful had an education been obtained. scarcely one of these people realizes that middle life is the schooltime for old age, and that just as important an opportunity is being missed or ignored day by day for the storing up of valuable knowledge which will be of great importance in rendering old age endurable. youth is the season to acquire knowledge, middle life is the time to acquire wisdom. old age is the season to enjoy both, but wisdom is far the more important of the two. by wisdom i mean the philosophy which enables us to control our tempers, curb our tendency to severe criticism, and cultivate our sympathies. the majority of people after thirty-five consider themselves privileged to be cross, irritable, critical and severe, because they have lived longer than the young, because they have had more trials and disappointments, and because they believe they understand the world better. those are excellent reasons why they should be patient, kind, broad and sympathetic. the longer we live the more we should realize the folly and vulgarity of ill-temper, the cruelty of severe criticism and the necessity for a broad-minded view of life, manners, morals and customs. unless we adapt ourselves to the changing habits of the world, unless we adopt some of the new ideas that are constantly coming to the front, we will find ourselves carping, disagreeable and lonely old people as the years go by. the world will not stand still for us. society will not wear the same clothes or follow the same pleasures, or think the same thoughts when we are eighty that were prevalent when we were thirty. we must keep moving with the world or stand still and solitary. after thirty we must seize every hour and educate ourselves to grow into agreeable old age. it requires at least twenty years to become well educated in book and college lore. if we begin to study at seven we are rarely through with all our common schools, seminaries, high schools and colleges have to offer under a score of years. the education for old age needs fully as many years. we need to begin at thirty to be tolerant, patient, serene, trustful, sympathetic and liberal. then, at fifty, we may hope to have "graduated with honors" from life's school of wisdom, and to be prepared for another score or two of years of usefulness and enjoyment in the practice of these qualities. instead of wasting our time in bemoaning the loss of early opportunities for obtaining an education, let us devote ourselves to the cultivation of wisdom, since that is free to all who possess self-control, will power, faith and perseverance. begin to-day, at home. be more tolerant of the faults of the other members of your household. restrain your criticisms on the conduct of your neighbors. try and realize the causes which led some people who have gone wrong to err. look for the admirable qualities in every one you meet. sympathize with the world. be interested in progress, be interested in the young. keep in touch with each new generation, and do not allow yourself to grow old in thought or feeling. educate yourself for a charming old age. there is no time to lose. dividends our thoughts are shaping unmade spheres, and, like a blessing or a curse, they thunder down the formless years and ring throughout the universe. the more we realize the tremendous responsibility of our mental emanations the better for the world and ourselves. the sooner we teach little children what a mighty truth lies in the bible phrase "as a man thinketh, so is he," the better for future generations. if a man thinks sickness, poverty and misfortune, he will meet them and claim them all eventually as his own. but he will not acknowledge the close relationship, he will deny his own children and declare they were sent to him by an evil fate. walter atkinson tells us that "he who hates is an assassin." every kindergarten and public school teacher ought to embody this idea in the daily lessons for children. it may not be possible to teach a child to "love every neighbor as himself," for that is the most difficult of commandments to follow to the letter; but it is possible to eliminate hatred from a nature if we awaken sympathy for the object of dislike. that which we pity we cannot hate. the wonderful intelligence which set this superb system of worlds in action must have been inspired by love for all it created. so much grandeur and magnificence, so much perfection of detail, could only spring from love. whatever is out of harmony in our little world has been caused by man's substituting hate and fear for love and faith. every time we allow either hate or fear to dominate our minds we disarrange the order of the universe and make trouble for humanity, and ourselves. it may be a little late in reaching us, but it is sure to come back to the mind which sent forth the cause. every time we entertain thoughts of love, sympathy, forgiveness and faith we add to the well-being of the world, and create fortunate and successful conditions for ourselves. those, too, may be late in coming to us--but they will come. right thinking is not attained in a day or a week. we must train the mind to reject the brood of despondent, resentful, fearful and prejudiced thoughts which approach it, and to invite and entertain cheerful, broad and wholesome thoughts instead, just as we overcome false tones and cultivate musical ones in educating the voice for singing. when we once realize that by driving away pessimistic, angry and bitter thoughts we drive away sickness and misfortune to a great extent, and that by seeking the kinder and happier frame of mind we seek at the same time success and health and good luck, we will find a new impetus in the control of our mental forces. for we all love to be paid for our worthy deeds, even while we believe in being good for good's sake only. and nothing in life is surer than this: right thinking pays large dividends. _think_ success, prosperity, usefulness. it is much more profitable than thinking self-destruction or the effort at self-destruction for that is an act which aims at an impossibility. you can destroy the body, but the _you_ who suffers in mind and spirit will suffer still, and live still. you will only change your location from one state to another. you did not make yourself, you cannot unmake yourself. you can merely put yourself among the spiritual tramps who hang about the earth's borders, because they have not prepared a better place for themselves. suicide is cheap, vulgar and cowardly. because you have made a wreck of a portion of this life, do not make a wreck of the next. mend up your broken life here, go along bravely and with sympathy and love in your heart, determined to help everybody you can, and to better your condition as soon as possible. men have done this after fifty, and lived thirty good years to enjoy the results. do not feel hurt by the people who slight you, or who refer to your erring past. be sorry for them. i would rather be a tender-hearted reformed sinner than a hard-hearted model of good behavior. i would rather learn sympathy through sin than never learn it at all. there is nothing we cannot live down, and rise above, and overcome. there is nothing we cannot be in the way of nobility and worth. royalty we get what we give. i have never known this rule to fail in the long run. if we give sympathy, appreciation, goodwill, charitable thoughts, admiration and love--we receive all these back from humanity in time. we may bestow them unworthily, as the sower of good seed may cast it on a rocky surface, but the winds of heaven will scatter it broadcast, and, while the rock remains barren, the fields shall yield a golden harvest. _the seed must be good_, however. if i say to myself without any real regard for another in my heart, "i want that person to like me, i will do all in my power to please him," i need not be surprised if my efforts fail or prove of only temporary efficacy. neither need i feel surprised or pained if i find by-and-by that other people are bestowing policy friendship upon me, actions with no feeling for a foundation. no matter how kind and useful i make my conduct toward an individual, if in my secret heart i am criticising him severely and condemning him, i must expect criticism and condemnation from others as my portion. we reap what we sow. some harvests are longer in growing than others, but they all grow in time. servility in love, or friendship, or duty, is never commendable. i do not believe god himself feels complimented when the beings he created as the highest type of his workmanship declare themselves worthless worms, unworthy of his regard! we are heirs of god's kingdom, and rightful inheritors of happiness, and health, and success. what monarch would feel pleasure in having his children crawl in the dust, saying, "we are less than nothing, miserable, unworthy creatures?" would he not prefer to hear them say, proudly: "we are of royal blood"? we ought always to believe in our best selves, in our right to love and be loved, to give and receive happiness, and to toil and be rewarded. and then we should bestow our love, our gifts and our toil with no anxious thought about the returns. if we chance to love a loveless individual, to give to one bankrupt in gratitude, to toil for the unappreciative, it is but a temporary deprivation for us. the love, the gratitude and the recompense will all come to us in time from some source, or many sources. it cannot fail. heredity american parents, as a rule, can be put in two extreme classes, those who render the children insufferably conceited and unbearable by overestimating their abilities and overpraising their achievements, and those who render them morbid and self-depreciating by a lack of wholesome praise. it is rare indeed, when we find parents wise and sensible enough to strengthen the best that is in their children by discreet praise, and at the same time to control the undesirable qualities by judicious and kind criticism. i heard a grandmother not long ago telling callers in the presence of a small boy what a naughty, bad child he was, and how impossible it seemed to make him mind. wretched seed to sow in the little mind, and the harvest is sure to be sorrow. i have heard parents and older children, expatiate on the one stupid trait and the one plain feature of a bright and handsome child, intending to keep it from forming too good an opinion of itself. to all young people i would say, cultivate a belief in yourself. base it on self-respect and confidence in god's love for his own handiwork. say to yourself, "i will be what i will to be." not because your human will is all-powerful, but because the divine will is back of you. analyze your own abilities and find what you are best fitted to do. then get about the task of doing your chosen work to the very best of your ability, and do not for an instant doubt your own capabilities. perhaps they may be dwarfed and enfeebled by years of morbid thought; but if you persist in a self-respecting and self-reliant and god-trusting course of thinking your powers will increase and your capabilities strengthen. it is no easy matter to overcome a habit of self-depreciation. it is like straightening out a limb which has been twisted by a false attitude or correcting a habit of sitting round-shouldered. it requires a steady and persistent effort. when the depressing and doubtful thoughts come drive them away like malaria-breeding insects. say, "this is not complimentary to my maker. i am his work. i must be worthy of my own respect and of that of others. i must and will succeed." invincibility if we persistently desire good things to come to us for unselfish purposes, and at the same time faithfully perform the duties which lie nearest, we will eventually find our desires being realized in the most unexpected manner. our thought force has proved to be a wedge, opening the seemingly inaccessible wall of circumstance. to read good books, to think and ponder on what you read, to cultivate every agreeable quality you observe in others, and to weed from your nature every unworthy and disagreeable trait, to study humanity with an idea of being helpful and sympathetic, all these efforts will help you to the ultimate attainment of your wishes. it is a proven fact that if we devote a few moments each day to reaching exercises, standing with loose garments and stretching the body muscles to reach some point above us, we increase our stature. just so if we mentally and spiritually are continually reaching to a higher plane we are growing. every least thought of the brain is a chisel, chipping away at our characters, and our characters are building our destinies. the incessant and persistent demand of our hearts and minds must be granted. that mental chisel during a trolley ride through a thrifty new england locality, where church spires were almost as plentiful as trees, i studied the faces of the people who came into the car during my two hours' journey. the day was beautiful, and all along the route our numbers were recruited by bevies of women, young, middle aged and old, who were bent on shopping expeditions or setting forth to make social calls. they went and came at each village through which our coach of democracy passed, and they represented all classes. the young girls were lovely, as young girls are the world over: their complexion possessed that soft tender luster, peculiar to seashore localities, for the salty breath of father neptune is the greatest of cosmetics. many of the young faces were formed in classic mould, their features clearly cut and refined, and severe, like the thoughts and principles of their ancestors. often i observed a mother and some female relative, presumably an aunt, in company with a young relative; and always the sharpening and withering process of the years of set and unelastic thought was discernible upon their faces, which had once been young, and classic and attractive. in the entire two hours i saw but three lovely faces which were matured by time. i saw scores of well-dressed and evidently well-cared-for women of middle age, whose countenances were furrowed, drawn, pinched, sallow, and worn, beyond excuse; for time, sorrow, and sickness are not plausible excuses for such ravages upon a face god drew in lines of beauty. time should mature a woman's beauty as it does that of a tree. sorrow should glorify it as does the frost the tree, and sickness should not be allowed to lay a lingering touch upon it, until death calls the spirit away. without question the great majority of the women i saw were earnest orthodox christians. i heard snatches of conversation regarding church and charities and i have no doubt that each woman among them believed herself to be a disciple of christ. yet where was the result of the loving, tender, sweet spirit of christ's teaching? it surely was not visible upon those pinched and worried faces? and those faces were certain and truthful chronicles of the work done by the minds within. one face said to me in every line, "i talk about god's goodness and loving-kindness, but i worry over the dust in the spare room, i fret about our expenses, i am troubled about my lungs, and i fear my husband has an unregenerate heart. i never know an hour's peace, for even in my sleep, i worry, worry, worry, but of course i know i will be saved by the blood of christ!" another said, "i am in god's fold, well and safe, but i hate and despise my nearest neighbor, for she wears clothes that i am sure she cannot pay for, and her children are always dressed better than mine. i quarrel with my domestics, and am always in trouble of some kind, just because human beings are so full of sin and no one but myself is ever right. i shall be so glad to leave this world of woe and go to heaven, but i hope i will not meet many of my present acquaintances there!" another said, "if i only had good health--but i was born to sickness and suffering, and it is god's will that i should suffer!" oh the pity of it, and to imagine this is religion! thank god the wave of "new thought" is sweeping over the land, and washing away those old blasphemous errors of mistaken creeds. the "new thought" is to give us a new race of beautiful middle-aged and old people. to-day in any part of the land among rich, poor, ignorant or intellectual, orthodox or materialists the beautiful mature face is rarer than a white blackbird in the woods. it is impossible to be plain, ugly, or uninteresting in late life, if the mind keeps itself occupied with right thinking. the withered and drawn face of fifty indicates withered emotions and drawn and perverted ambitions. the dried and sallow face tells its story of dried up sympathies and hopes. the furrowed face tells of acid cares eating into the heart. all this is irreligious! yet all this prevails extensively in our most conservative and churchy communities. he who in truth trusts god cannot worry. he who loves god and mankind, cannot become dried and withered at fifty, for love will re-create his blood, and renew the fires of his eye. he who understands his own divine nature will grow more beautiful with the passing of time, for the god within will become each year more visible. the really reverent soul accepts its sorrows as blessings in disguise, and he who so accepts them is beautified and glorified by them, within and without. are you growing more attractive as you advance in life? is your eye softer and deeper, is your mouth kinder, your expression more sympathetic, or are you screwing up your face in tense knots of worry? are your eyes growing hopeless and dull, is your mouth drooping at the corners, and becoming a set thin line in the centre, and is your skin dry, and sallow, and parched? study yourself and answer these questions to your own soul, for in the answer depends the decision whether you really love and trust god, and believe in your own immortal spirit, or whether you are a mere impostor in the court of faith. the object of life what do you believe to be the object of your life? to be happy and successful, perhaps you are thinking, even if you do not answer in those words. that is the idea of the many. meanwhile others, who have been educated in the melancholy faith of their ancestors, believe the object of this life is to be miserable, poor, and full of sorrow, that they may wear a crown of glory hereafter. but the clear thinker and careful observer must realize that there is one and only one main object in life--_the building of character_. he who sets out in early youth with that ambition and purpose, and keeps to it, will not only attain his object, but he will, too, attain happiness and true success--for there is no such thing as failure for the man or woman of character. we often apply the two words character and success, unworthily. we speak of a man of "much character" when he is merely self-assertive and stubborn, and we call a man successful, who has accumulated a fortune, or achieved fame and a position, by doubtful methods. then what is character, and what is success? character is the result of the cultivation of the highest and noblest qualities in human nature, and putting those qualities to practical use. success is the conquest of the lower and baser self, and the ability to be useful to one's fellow men. there are men of brain, wealth and position who are failures, and there are men of limited abilities and in humble places who are yet successful, inasmuch as they make the utmost of themselves, and their opportunities. it makes no difference how lowly your sphere in life may be, and no matter how limited your environment, you can build your character if you will. you need no outlay of money, no assistance from those in power, no influence. character building must be done alone, and by yourself. the ground must be cleansed of debris, and the structure must be erected stone by stone. it is dull, slow, hard work, especially the preparation. all preparation is drudgery. when this little whirling globe of ours began to cool in space think what a task lay before it! think of the mass of chaos, which had to slowly shape itself into mighty, green, glad and snow-capped mountains, fertile vales, and noble forests. each one of us is a little world, whirling alone on an individual orbit, but the divine power is within us, to grow into symmetry, beauty, and perfection if we only realize it. and the happiness of the work, once we begin it, is beyond the power of description. there is no other satisfaction can compare with that of looking back across the years and finding that you have grown in self-control, in charity of judgment, in a sense of justice, in generosity, and in unselfishness. if you are conscious of this growth, let no lack of material success for one moment disturb you. that will come, enough for your need, in time. the man of symmetrically developed character is never a pauper. he is never dependent for more than a temporary period. to possess character is to be useful, and to be useful is to be independent, and to be useful and independent, is to be happy, even in the midst of sorrow; for sorrow is not necessarily unhappiness. the man who has made the development of a noble and harmonious character the business of his life, accepts his sorrows as means of greater growth, and finds in them an exaltation of spirit which is closely allied to happiness. to such a nature, absolute wretchedness would only be possible through the loss of self-respect; the lowering of an ideal or the failure of a principle. would you be happy and successful? then set yourself to _build character_. seek to be worthy of your own highest commendation. wisdom a great many people are attracted to the new thought of the day, by its declaration of our right to material wealth, and by its claim that the mind of man can create, command, and control conditions which produce wealth. there is no question concerning the truth of this claim. but woe unto him who cultivates his mental and spiritual powers only for this purpose. his gold shall turn to dross, his pleasure to dead sea fruit. he shall be as one who drags a beautiful garment through the mud of the streets, and while clothed in purple and fine linen is yet a repulsive object. into the great scheme of existence, as first conceived by the creator, money did not enter. he made this beautiful universe, and all that it contains was meant for the enjoyment of his creatures. there was no millionaire and no pauper soul created by god. each soul contains the spark of the divine spirit, and by the realization of that spark, and all it means, whatever is desired by mortal man may come to him. but wise is he who remembers the injunction, "seek first the kingdom of heaven and all other things shall be added unto you." wise is he who understands the meaning of the words, "unto him that hath, more shall be given." not until you obtain the faculty of being happy through your spiritual and mental faculties, independent of material conditions, not until you learn to value wealth only as a means of helpfulness, can you safely turn your powers of concentration upon the idea of opulence. to demand, assert, and command wealth for its mere sensual benefits, to focus your mind upon it because you desire to shine, lead, and triumph, is to play spiritual football with spiritual dynamite. you may obtain what you seek, you may accumulate riches, but at the cost of all that is worth living for. the merely ignorant, or stupid, or wholly material man who stumbles into a fortune, through inheritance, dogged persistent industry, or chance, may enjoy it in his own fashion, and do no harm in the world. but the man who knows and who has developed his spiritual powers only for the purpose of commanding material gain, might better have a millstone tied about his neck. for he makes himself a spiritual outcast, and his money shall never bring him happiness. make, therefore, your assertion of opulence the last in your list, as you make love first. call unto yourself spiritual insight, absolute unselfishness, desire for universal good, wisdom, justice, and usefulness, and last of all opulence. think of yourself as possessed of all these qualities before you picture financial independence. for without love for your kind, without the desire for usefulness and the spiritual insight and the wisdom to be just before being generous, your money would bring you only temporary pleasure, and would do the world no good. neither should you labor under the impression that god's work is lying undone because you have no fortune to command and wisely distribute where most needed. rest assured if you do the work which lies nearest to you, relieve such distress as is possible to you, and keep your faith in the ultimate justice of god's ways, that the world will move on, and humanity will slowly attain its destined goal, even if you never become a millionaire. self conquest every new idea, or supposed new idea, is a light which attracts the moths. the "new thought" is no exception. about it flutter hysterical women, unbalanced men: the erratic and the irresponsible. the possibilities of performing miracles, of healing the sick, hypnotizing the well, transforming poverty into wealth, and changing age to youth, are the rays of light which flicker through the darkness and draw them into the circle of radiance. the self-indulgent fat woman subscribes to new thought literature, pays for a course of lectures, and goes forth into the ranks of the unbelievers, proclaiming her power to become a sylph, and to cause others to become sylphs. the extravagant and inconsiderate rush forth after having heard a discourse upon the power of mind over matter, and declare that they possess the secret of accumulating a fortune by occult means. the lovers of the marvelous believe that they will become great healers in a brief space of time. not one of these moth converts realizes that the very first step to take in the direction of "new thought" is self-conquest. the gourmand does not know that self-indulgence and a gross appetite are incompatible with mental or spiritual growth, and will be insurmountable obstacles in her path toward symmetry. the spendthrift does not take into consideration the fact that good sense, thrift and industry, must aid his mental assertion of wealth, and the miracle lover does not understand that something greater and more difficult is required than a mere wish to heal before healing powers can be obtained. that the physical body and material conditions can be dominated by the divine spirit in man, is an incontrovertible fact. but first, last and always, the lesser self must be subjugated, and the weak and unworthy qualities overcome. the woman who desires to reduce her flesh cannot do so by reading occult literature, or joining mystic circles, or attending lectures, unless she permeates herself so thoroughly with spiritual truths that she no longer craves six courses at dinner, and three meals a day, and unless she overcomes her dislike for exercise. the man who wishes to control circumstances must love better things than money before he can succeed. he must love, and respect, and believe in his creator, and trust the divine man within himself, and he must illustrate this love and trust by his daily conduct, and in his home circle, and in his business relations. once in a century, perhaps, is a man born with great powers already developed to heal the sick, or to do other seeming miracles. such beings are old souls, who have obtained diplomas in former lives; but the majority of us are still in school, and we cannot become "seniors" until we pass through the lower grades. we must change ourselves before we can change material conditions: we must heal our own thoughts and make them sane and normal, before we can heal bodily disease in others. it is not an immediate process. i have heard an old lady declare that she "got religion" in the twinkling of an eye, and she believed all people would be damned and burn in hell fire, who did not pass through this sudden illumination. it is possible that the religion which can worship a god cruel enough to burn his children in fire, can only be obtained in the twinkling of an eye; but the reverent, wholesome, and beautiful religion of "new thought" must be grown into little by little, through patience, faith, and practice. all that it claims to do it can do, but not instantaneously, not rapidly. we must first make ourselves over; after absolute control of our minds has been obtained, then, and only then, may we hope to influence circumstances and health. the important trifles you will find, in the effort to reach a higher spirituality in your daily life, that the small things try your patience and your strength more than the greater ones. home life, like business life, is composed of an accumulation of trifles. there are people who bear great sorrows with resignation, and seem to gain a certain dignity and force of character through trouble, but who are utterly vanquished by trivial annoyances. the old-fashioned orthodox "christian" was frequently of this order. death, poverty, and misfortune he bore without complaining, and became ofttimes a more agreeable companion in times of deepest sorrow. he regarded all such experiences as the will of god, and bowed to them. yet, if his dinner was late, his coffee below the standard, if his eye-glasses were misplaced, or his toe trodden upon, he become a raging lion, and his roar drove his affrighted household into dark corners. there have been neighborhood angels, who watched beside the dying sinner, sustained orphans and widows, and endured great troubles sublimely like martyrs. but if a dusty shoe trod upon a freshly washed floor, or husband or child came tardily to the breakfast-table, or lingered outside the door after regulation hour for retiring--lo, the angel became a virago, or a droning mosquito with persistent sting. the new philosophy demands serenity and patience through small trials, as well as fortitude in meeting life's larger ills. it demands, too, that we seek to avoid giving others unnecessary irritation by a thoughtless disregard of the importance of trifles. a man is more likely to keep calm if he wakes in the night and discovers that the house is on fire, than he is if, on being fully prepared to retire, he finds the only mug on the third story is missing from his wash-stand, or the cake of toilet-soap he asked for the day before has been forgotten. a mother bears the affliction of a crippled child with more equanimity than she is able to bring to bear upon the continual thoughtlessness of a strong one. to be kind, means to be thoughtful. the kindest and most loving heart will sometimes forget and be careless; but it cannot be perpetually forgetful and careless of another's wishes and needs, even in the merest trifles. concentration the new thought includes _concentration of thought_, in its teaching; and he who learns that important art is not liable to frequently forget small or large duties. it is he who scatters, instead of concentrates his mind powers, who keeps himself and others in a state of continual irritation by forgetting, mislaying, and losing, three petty vices which do much to mar domestic or business life. concentration is a most difficult acquirement for the mature mind which has been allowed to grow in the habit of thought scattering. wise is the mother, and as sure as wise, who teaches her child to finish each task begun before attempting another, for that is the first step in concentration. prentice mulford, that great and good pioneer in the field of practical new thought, tells us to apply our whole mental powers to whatever we do, even if it is merely the tying of a shoe, and to think of nothing else until that shoe is tied, then to utterly forget the shoe string, when we turn to another duty or employment. the next lesson in concentration he gives us, is to repeat the word often, to impress it upon the mind. and then to declare each day that "concentration is mine" will aid still farther in the acquisition of this great and important quality. meanwhile, since we can be so fortunate as to always surround ourselves with others who have acquired it, the student of the higher philosophy must learn to be serene and self-poised when he encounters life's pigmy worries. he must carry his religion into his bedroom and his office, and not forget it utterly when he loses his collar-button, or misses his car, or finds his office boy has taken a parcel to the wrong address. to build character necessitates a constant watch upon ourselves. the new thought is not a religion of sundays, but of every day. destiny never say that you wish your situation were different! never wish you had some other person's life or troubles or worries. accept your own as a _working basis_, the best for you. then go ahead and _change whatever_ displeases you. remember you are the maker and moulder of your own destiny. you do not recall the fact, but you brought about the present conditions of your destiny in former incarnations. even if you do not believe this, you must acknowledge that _you are here_, and that the situation in which you find yourself seems to be inevitable for the present. but it is not inevitable for the future, unless you lie down in the furrow and whine, and wish you were a millionaire, or a genius, and rail at the partiality of providence. there is no partiality in the universe. the whole scheme is well balanced. if you were allowed to change lots with anyone on the face of the earth, you would complain and find fault in a short time. one of our best known millionaires, born to opulence, complains that he has been robbed of the privilege of making his own fortune. he is no happier than you. his confession betrays his weakness of character just as your repining and fault-finding betrays yours. the real worth-while character thanks god for its destiny and says, "i will show the world what i can do with my life." not long ago there was a great trotting-race at brighton beach. the blind conqueror "rythmic" won five consecutive races. think of it! he did not, like a mortal man, shrink back and say "i am blind--that is a terrible destiny--i am cursed of god--i will not try to win the race." he just trusted the hand of the _master at the reins_, did his best, and won the honors of the season. we are all blind racers on the track of earth. the king, the millionaire, the statesman, the lawmaker, the beggar, the laborer, the cripple, we are all in the dark. the only thing is to trust the hand of the master, and _do our best_. believe your position is the right starting point for _you_, merely the starting point. it is the shapeless block of stone from which you are to fashion the perfect statue. or it is the mere mud from which you are to mould the clay image, and later that is to be put into enduring marble. what is uglier or more unattractive than mud? yet think of the glorious conceptions which it imprisons. take the mud of your present environment and thank god for it, and make the image of the future you desire. you can do it--you must do it--you will do it. sympathy are you of a sympathetic nature? if so, do not let your sympathies help to add to the world's miseries. that may seem a strange expression, but it can be explained if you will listen. much of the misery in the world is the result of imagination. all of it is the result of selfishness and ignorance. but hundreds and thousands of people believe themselves sick, sorrowful and poverty stricken, who would be well, glad and prosperous, if they only thought themselves so. every time you pour out your sympathy upon these self-made sufferers, you add to their burden of wrong thought, and make it just so much more difficult for them to rise out of their troubles. i do not believe all the misfortune in the world is caused by wrong thinking in this life, or can be done away with by right thinking. the three-year-old child who toddles in front of a trolley car and loses a leg, while the tired mother is bending over the washtub to keep the wolf of hunger at bay, cannot be blamed for wrong thinking as the cause of its trouble. neither can the deaf mute or the child born blind or deformed. we must go farther back, to former lives, to find the first cause of such misfortunes. no "new thought," no amount of optimistic theology or philosophy can restore the child's leg, or ears, or eyes. it is utter nonsense to say that miracles like these can be performed. there are scores of individuals whom we meet handicapped in life's race by such dire calamities that we spontaneously pour forth our sympathy. but, even to these, it were kinder and wiser to give diverting thoughts, and a new outlook, and to open up avenues for pleasure, and entertainment, and profit, in place of tears and condolence. sympathy, without alleviating actions to a sufferer, is like a cloud without rain to the parched earth. but the great majority of people whom we encounter are making their own crosses, and we who offer them sympathy, and condolence, are but adding to the burden's weight. i do not recommend coldness, indifference, or ridicule as a substitute for sympathy. but instead of leading the sick man on to tell you the details of his illness, and to describe all his symptoms, while your own body responds with sympathetic aches and pains as you listen, it is kinder to divert his attention to some cheerful and merry topic, or to refer to some case like his own which resulted in perfect restoration to health. instead of going down into his underground cave of depression, bring him out into the wholesome sunlight of your own healthful state, even if for a moment only, and impress upon his mind that health belongs to him, and must return to him. to the man in business trouble the same advice applies. tell him you are sorry for him, but do not take on his despondency to prove it. talk of the future and all the possibilities it holds for a determined man or woman. make him laugh. speak of trouble as the gymnasium where our moral muscles are developed. answer him that everything he desires is his if he will be persistent and determined in demanding his own. if you put force in your words you will leave an impression. do not go away from the house of trouble in tears, but leave the troubled ones you called upon smiling as you depart. that is true sympathy. the breath a man reproved me for my interest in new thought creeds. "the old religion i learned at my mother's knee is good enough for me!" he said. "it is good enough for anybody!" yet this man's mother had always "enjoyed poor health," as the old lady expressed it, and the man himself was forever talking of his diseases, his ill luck, his poverty, which he said he had been enabled to endure only through the sustaining power of the religion "learned at his mother's knee." it would be difficult to convince the man that had his mother taught him the creed of the "new religion" he could have changed all these unfortunate conditions. life-long ill health would have been impossible for his mother, or for him. the old fashioned religion allowed and still allows a human being to breathe like a canary bird. little children go to sunday-school all their young lives, and grow up to be devout church members, and never hear one word about the importance of _deep breathing_. possibly you may think breathing lessons belong to physical culture, and have no place in religious teachings. there is where you err. in order to develop your whole being, you must learn how to control body and mind through the spirit. thousands of years ago, men who gave their entire lives to the study of these things learned the great importance of deep breathing as an aid to religious meditation. by this practice, systematically observed, the body is calmed, the mind is brought into subjection, and the spirit rises into control. and in addition, absolute health is achieved. a large portion of our physical ailments result from unused lung cells, and consequent imperfect circulation of the blood. fill the lungs full--every cell--with fresh air, two or three times daily, and do not overload the digestive organs, and sickness will fly away to the dark regions where it belongs. at least ten minutes morning and night should be given to the breathing exercises. sit upright in a comfortable chair, alone, facing the east in the morning and the west at night, because great magnetic force comes from the direction of the sun. have a window or a door opening to the outer air. place your hands lightly on your knees, and close your eyes and mouth. leave your spine free, not touching the chair. wear no compressing garments or bands. inflate the chest and abdominal regions as you inhale deep breaths through the nostrils, while counting seven slowly. exhale while you count seven. repeat this exercise seven times. think as you inhale of whatever qualities you would like to possess, and believe that you are inhaling them. select seven qualities--love, health, wisdom, usefulness, power to do good, success, opulence--will cover the average human desires. the very unworldly will substitute spiritual knowledge for opulence. fill your mind with the idea that you are drawing in these qualities with your breaths, and exhaling all that is weak or unworthy. after a few moments you will be conscious of a security and peace new and uplifting. and after a few weeks of steady, persistent practice of these exercises, you will find life growing more beautiful to you, and your strength will be increased tenfold, both physically and spiritually. generosity have you ever observed how invariably your "last dollar" is restored to you, with additions, when you have given it for some worthy purpose? even if the purpose did not prove to be a worthy one, yet if you thought it so, and gave your last dollar with spontaneous sympathy and good will, you were not long left penniless. money is much like a man. if you do not hold it too jealously it returns to you the more readily. never hesitate to give aid where you feel there is sore and pressing need, for fear you will be left in want yourself. you will not be. this does not mean that indiscriminate charity is commendable. it does not mean that you should lend money to everyone who asks, or lift and carry the burdens of everyone who is ready to lean upon you. it is as wrong to encourage the man addicted to the vice of borrowing, as the one with the vice of alcohol or drugs. one depends upon his acquaintances to tide him over hard places, instead of upon his own strength of character, and the other depends upon stimulants for the same purpose. the too ready lender is almost as great an evil to humanity as rum or opium, since he too helps a man to kill his own better nature and destroy his self-respect. if you were able and willing to pay rents of all the poor people you know, and clothe their children, you would soon produce a condition of settled pauperism among them. large and frequent favors of a financial nature are an injury to anyone, even if it is your son or brother. let no man lean on anyone save god and his own divine self. but little helps, when they are unexpected, arouse hope and awaken new faith and new ambition in a discouraged soul. look about you for such souls, the worn and weary father of a brood of hungry children, the widow struggling with adverse fate in an effort to clothe and educate a child, the tired shop girl who uses all her earnings to sustain her parents, the ambitious boy or girl eager for a chance in life, and the poor cripple or invalid seeking health. you will find them all about you. do not be afraid to use a dollar here or there to give these worthy ones a happy surprise, no matter how poor you are. it is an insult to the opulent creator to suppose you will suffer want and poverty if you help those who are in temporary misfortune. you will not. ofttimes we read and hear of the open-handed generous man who "helped everybody," and who "never refused to aid a needy brother," and who ended his life in penury because of his generosity. never believe these tales until you investigate them. invariably you will find not generosity but extravagance and utter lack of forethought, caused the man's financial ruin. i recall a gifted young woman who gave freely to all who asked her assistance and who died a lingering death as a charity patient in a hospital. yet this young woman had expended ten dollars on foolish and rapid living where she gave one in charity; it was her wasteful extravagance, not her open heart of sympathy, which made her a pauper. it has been my observation that dollars planted in the soil of benevolence grow into harvests of prosperity. the man who is not afraid to use his small means to assist others need not fear poverty. woman's opportunity the greatest opportunity to better the world which can come to any woman is through the experience of maternity. the power of prenatal influence which a mother possesses is awe-inspiring to realize. it has been said upon excellent authority that napoleon's mother read roman history with absorbing interest during the months preceding his birth. think of the nations and the centuries influenced by that one woman's mental concentration! the geography of the world was changed by her power of focused thought. in all probability napoleon's mother did not know what she was doing; she was not conscious of the destiny her mind was shaping for her unborn child, nor of the law governing such conditions. women have been strangely ignorant of this vital truth; until recent years it has not been considered a "proper" theme for tongue or pen, and to-day the great majority of young women marry absolutely uninformed upon the subject of prenatal influence. men are equally oblivious of any knowledge regarding the matter, and consequently make no special effort to keep the expectant mother of their offspring happy, hopeful, or free of anxiety and worry during this period. often they do not strive to aid them in their own attempts to bestow a desirable temperament upon the unborn child, but heedlessly and needlessly aggravate or grieve the mind which is stamping its impress upon an unborn soul. it is just here that the "new thought" can perform its greatest miracles of good. even the woman who has not been enlightened upon the law of ante-birth-influence will, if a true disciple of the religion of right-living, bring healthy and helpful children into the world, because her normal state of mind will be inclusive of those three qualities; and her continued and repeated assertions of her own divine nature will shape the brain of her child in optimistic and reverential mould. there is the old law of the continual falling of the drop of water upon the stone to be verified in the spiritual plane. continual assertions of a mother that her child will be all that she desires it to be, will wear away the stone of inherited tendencies, and bring into physical being a malleable nature wholly amenable to the after influences and efforts she may bring to bear upon it. it is a tremendous responsibility which rests upon the woman who knows she is to be a mother of a human being. a hundred ancestors may have contributed certain qualities to that invisible and formless atom which contains an immortal soul, yet the mother's mind has the power to remake and rebuild all those characteristics, and to place over them her own dominating impulse, whether for good or ill. surely, if success in the arts or the sciences is worthy of years of devoted attention and interested effort, the moulding of a noble human being is worth eight or nine months of concentrated thought and unflagging zeal of purpose. every expectant mother should set herself about the important business god has entrusted her with, unafraid, and confident of her divine mission. she should direct her mind into wholesome and optimistic channels; she should read inspiring books and think loving and large thoughts. she should pray and aspire! and always should she carry in her mind the ideal of the child she would mother, and command from the great source of all opulence the qualities she would desire to perpetuate. and they will be given. balance avoid all strained and abstruse language, when conversing with people who may not have entered this realm of thought. do not allow anyone to think of you as a lunatic, or a crank, unnecessarily. of course there are people in the world who consider everyone a lunatic who holds an opinion differing from their own. but it can do you, or your philosophy, no good to thrust its most difficult phases before the minds of the unawakened, by vague and high flown expressions. i once chanced to call upon a lady who had, quite unknown to me, entered upon the study of christian science. she remarked to me, almost as soon as the greetings were exchanged, "i had a claim to meet for three days this week, but i have come through it and am victorious." i supposed the lady referred to some business matter, perhaps a legal affair, and waited an explanation. after considerable rambling conversation, i managed to grasp the fact that the woman had been sick in the house three days, but now was well. she considered her illness a mere "claim" her "mortal mind" had made which she had to meet and combat. all this sort of talk is very ridiculous. we need not talk about every ailment which attacks us as we move along toward the condition of perfect health which belongs to us! but if we do speak of indisposition, let us use common sense language. what we want to realize is, that we are in the body, but that the spirit can control bodily conditions, if we give it the ascendency, to the extent of keeping us well, moral, useful, and comfortable even in the midst of sickness, vice, indolence and poverty. we can rise above these false elements, and subjugate them. meanwhile we cannot live without food, clothes and money. despise and ignore these vulgar things as we may assume to do, we yet must have them. it brings only ridicule upon ourselves and our ideas to make this pretense of despising the necessities of life. to make them secondary in our thoughts to spiritual knowledge is right and wise, but this is better illustrated by our lives and conduct than by our words. in tune with the infinite or fullness of peace, power, and plenty by ralph waldo trine author of "what all the world's a-seeking," "the greatest thing ever known," "every living creature." _within yourself lies the cause of whatever enters into your life. to come into the full realization of your own awakened interior powers, is to be able to condition your life in exact accord with what you would have it._ seventy-seventh thousand in england and america london george bell & sons first english edition, dec. reprinted april and october february and june ; april ; january preface. there is a golden thread that runs through every religion in the world. there is a golden thread that runs through the lives and the teachings of all the prophets, seers, sages, and saviours in the world's history, through the lives of all men and women of truly great and lasting power. all that they have ever done or attained to has been done in full accordance with law. what one has done, all may do. this same golden thread must enter into the lives of all who today, in this busy work-a-day world of ours, would exchange impotence for power, weakness and suffering for abounding health and strength, pain and unrest for perfect peace, poverty of whatever nature for fullness and plenty. each is building his own world. we both build from within and we attract from without. thought is the force with which we build, for thoughts are forces. like builds like and like attracts like. in the degree that thought is spiritualized does it become more subtle and powerful in its workings. this spiritualizing is in accordance with law and is within the power of all. everything is first worked out in the unseen before it is manifested in the seen, in the ideal before it is realized in the real, in the spiritual before it shows forth in the material. the realm of the unseen is the realm of cause. the realm of the seen is the realm of effect. the nature of effect is always determined and conditioned by the nature of its cause. to point out the great facts in connection with, and the great laws underlying the workings of the interior, spiritual, thought forces, to point them out so simply and so clearly that even a child can understand, is the author's aim. to point them out so simply and so clearly that all can grasp them, that all can take them and infuse them into every-day life, so as to mould it in all its details in accordance with what they would have it, is his purpose. that life can be thus moulded by them is not a matter of mere speculation or theory with him, but a matter of positive knowledge. there is a divine sequence running throughout the universe. within and above and below the human will incessantly works the divine will. to come into harmony with it and thereby with all the higher laws and forces, to come then into league and to work in conjunction with them, in order that they can work in league and in conjunction with us, is to come into the chain of this wonderful sequence. this is the secret of all success. this is to come into the possession of unknown riches, into the realization of undreamed-of powers. r.w.t. contents. i. prelude ii. the supreme fact of the universe iii. the supreme fact of human life iv. fullness of life--bodily health and vigor v. the secret, power, and effects of love vi. wisdom and interior illumination vii. the realization of perfect peace viii. coming into fullness of power ix. plenty of all things--the law of prosperity x. how men have become prophets, seers, sages, and saviours xi. the basic principle of all religions--the universal religion xii. entering now into the realization of the highest riches fullness of peace, power, and plenty. prelude. the optimist is right. the pessimist is right. the one differs from the other as the light from the dark. yet both are right. each is right from his own particular point of view, and this point of view is the determining factor in the life of each. it determines as to whether it is a life of power or of impotence, of peace or of pain, of success or of failure. the optimist has the power of seeing things in their entirety and in their right relations. the pessimist looks from a limited and a one-sided point of view. the one has his understanding illumined by wisdom, the understanding of the other is darkened by ignorance. each is building his world from within, and the result of the building is determined by the point of view of each. the optimist, by his superior wisdom and insight, is making his own heaven, and in the degree that he makes his own heaven is he helping to make one for all the world beside. the pessimist, by virtue of his limitations, is making his own hell, and in the degree that he makes his own hell is he helping to make one for all mankind. you and i have the predominating characteristics of an optimist or the predominating characteristics of a pessimist. we then are making, hour by hour, our own heaven or our own hell; and in the degree that we are making the one or the other for ourselves are we helping make it for all the world beside. the word heaven means harmony. the word hell is from the old english _hell_, meaning to build a wall around, to separate; to be _helled_ was to be shut off from. now if there is such a thing as harmony there must be that something one can be in right relations with; for to be in right relations with anything is to be in harmony with it. again, if there is such a thing as being _helled_, shut off, separated from, there must be that something from which one is held, shut off, or separated. the supreme fact of the universe. the great central fact of the universe is that spirit of infinite life and power that is behind all, that animates all, that manifests itself in and through all; that self-existent principle of life from which all has come, and not only from which all has come, but from which all is continually coming. if there is an individual life, there must of necessity be an infinite source of life from which it comes. if there is a quality or a force of love, there must of necessity be an infinite source of love whence it comes. if there is wisdom, there must be the all-wise source behind it from which it springs. the same is true in regard to peace, the same in regard to power, the same in regard to what we call material things. there is, then, this spirit of infinite life and power behind all which is the source of all. this infinite power is creating, working, ruling through the agency of great immutable laws and forces that run through all the universe, that surround us on every side. every act of our every-day lives is governed by these same great laws and forces. every flower that blooms by the wayside, springs up, grows, blooms, fades, according to certain great immutable laws. every snowflake that plays between earth and heaven, forms, falls, melts, according to certain great unchangeable laws. in a sense there is nothing in all the great universe but law. if this is true there must of necessity be a force behind it all that is the maker of these laws and a force greater than the laws that are made. this spirit of infinite life and power that is behind all is what i call god. i care not what term you may use, be it kindly light, providence, the over soul, omnipotence, or whatever term may be most convenient. i care not what the term may be as long as we are agreed in regard to the great central fact itself. god, then, is this infinite spirit which fills all the universe with himself alone, so that all is from him and in him, and there is nothing that is outside. indeed and in truth, then, in him we live and move and have our being. he is the life of our life, our very life itself. we have received, we are continually receiving our life from him. we are partakers of the life of god; and though we differ from him in that we are individualized spirits, while he is the infinite spirit including us as well as all else beside, _yet in essence the life of god and the life of man are identically the same, and so are one_. they differ not in essence, in quality; they differ in degree. there have been and are highly illumined souls who believe that we receive our life from god after the manner of a divine inflow. and again, there have been and are those who believe that our life is one with the life of god, and so that god and man are one. which is right? both are right; both right when rightly understood. in regard to the first: if god is the infinite spirit of life behind all, whence all comes, then clearly our life as individualized spirits is continually coming from this infinite source by means of this divine inflow. in the second place, if our lives as individualized spirits are directly from, are parts of this infinite spirit of life, then the degree of the infinite spirit that is manifested in the life of each must be identical in quality with that source, the same as a drop of water taken from the ocean is, in nature, in characteristics, identical with that ocean, its source. and how could it be otherwise? the liability to misunderstanding in this latter case, however, is this: in that although the life of god and the life of man in essence are identically the same, the life of god so far transcends the life of individual man that it includes all else beside. in other words, so far as the quality of life is concerned, in essence they are the same; so far as the degree of life is concerned, they are vastly different. in this light is it not then evident that both conceptions are true? and more, that they are one and the same? both conceptions may be typified by one and the same illustration. there is a reservoir in a valley which receives its supply from an inexhaustible reservoir on the mountain side. it is then true that the reservoir in the valley receives its supply by virtue of the inflow of the water from the larger reservoir on the mountain side. it is also true that the water in this smaller reservoir is in nature, in quality, in characteristics identically the same as that in the larger reservoir which is its source. the difference, however, is this: the reservoir on the mountain side, in the _amount_ of its water, so far transcends the reservoir in the valley that it can supply an innumerable number of like reservoirs and still be unexhausted. and so in the life of man. if, as i think we have already agreed, however we may differ in regard to anything else, there is this infinite spirit of life behind all, the life of all, and so, from which all comes, then the life of individual man, your life and mine, must come by a divine inflow from this infinite source. and if this is true, then the life that comes by this inflow to man is necessarily the same in essence as is this infinite spirit of life. there is a difference. it is not a difference in essence. it is a difference in degree. if this is true, does it not then follow that in the degree that man opens himself to this divine inflow does he approach to god? if so, it then necessarily follows that in the degree that he makes this approach does he take on the god-powers. and if the god-powers are without limit, does it not then follow that the only limitations man has are the limitations he sets to himself, by virtue of not knowing himself? the supreme fact of human life. from the great central fact of the universe in regard to which we have agreed, namely, this spirit of infinite life that is behind all and from which all comes, we are led to inquire as to what is the great central fact in human life. from what has gone before, the question almost answers itself. _the great central fact in human life, in your life and in mine, is the coming into a conscious, vital realization of our oneness with this infinite life, and the opening of ourselves fully to this divine inflow_. this is the great central fact in human life, for in this all else is included, all else follows in its train. in just the degree that we come into a conscious realization of our oneness with the infinite life, and open ourselves to this divine inflow, do we actualize in ourselves the qualities and powers of the infinite life. and what does this mean? it means simply this: that we are recognizing our true identity, that we are bringing our lives into harmony with the same great laws and forces, and so opening ourselves to the same great inspirations, as have all the prophets, seers, sages, and saviours in the world's history, all men of truly great and mighty power. for in the degree that we come into this realization and connect ourselves with this infinite source, do we make it possible for the higher powers to play, to work, to manifest through us. we can keep closed to this divine inflow, to these higher forces and powers, through ignorance, as most of us do, and thus hinder or even prevent their manifesting through us. or we can intentionally close ourselves to their operations and thus deprive ourselves of the powers to which, by the very nature of our being, we are rightful heirs. on the other hand, we can come into so vital a realization of the oneness of our real selves with this infinite life, and can open ourselves so fully to the incoming of this divine inflow, and so to the operation of these higher forces, inspirations, and powers, that we can indeed and in truth become what we may well term, god-men. and what is a god-man? one in whom the powers of god are manifesting, though yet a man. no one can set limitations to a man or a woman of this type; for the only limitations he or she can have are those set by the self. ignorance is the most potent factor in setting limitations to the majority of mankind; and so the great majority of people continue to live their little, dwarfed, and stunted lives simply by virtue of the fact that they do not realize the larger life to which they are heirs. they have never as yet come into a knowledge of the real identity of their true selves. mankind has not yet realized that the real self is one with the life of god. through its ignorance it has never yet opened itself to the divine inflow, and so has never made itself a channel through which the infinite powers and forces can manifest. when we know ourselves merely as men, we live accordingly, and have merely the powers of men. when we come into the realization of the fact that we are god-men, then again we live accordingly, and have the powers of god-men. _in the degree that we open ourselves to this divine inflow are we changed from mere men into god-men_. a friend has a beautiful lotus pond. a natural basin on his estate--his farm as he always calls it--is supplied with water from a reservoir in the foothills some distance away. a gate regulates the flow of the water from the main that conducts it from the reservoir to the pond. it is a spot of transcendent beauty. there, through the days of the perfect summer weather, the lotus flowers lie full blown upon the surface of the clear, transparent water. the june roses and other wild flowers are continually blooming upon its banks. the birds come here to drink and to bathe, and from early until late one can hear the melody of their song. the bees are continually at work in this garden of wild flowers. a beautiful grove, in which many kinds of wild berries and many varieties of brakes and ferns grow, stretches back of the pond as far as the eye can reach. our friend is a man, nay more, a god-man, a lover of his kind, and as a consequence no notice bearing such words as "private grounds, no trespassing allowed," or "trespassers will be prosecuted," stands on his estate. but at the end of a beautiful by-way that leads through the wildwood up to this enchanting spot, stands a notice bearing the words "all are welcome to the lotus pond." all love our friend. why? they can't help it. he so loves them, and what is his is theirs. here one may often find merry groups of children at play. here many times tired and weary looking men and women come, and somehow, when they go their faces wear a different expression,--the burden seems to be lifted; and now and then i have heard them when leaving, sometimes in a faint murmur, as if uttering a benediction, say, "god bless our brother-friend." many speak of this spot as the garden of god. my friend calls it his soul garden, and he spends many hours in quiet here. often have i seen him after the others have gone, walking to and fro, or sitting quietly in the clear moonlight on an old rustic bench, drinking in the perfume of the wild flowers. he is a man of a beautifully simple nature. he says that here the real things of life come to him, and that here his greatest and most successful plans, many times as by a flash of inspiration, suggest themselves to him. everything in the immediate vicinity seems to breathe a spirit of kindliness, comfort, good-will, and good cheer. the very cattle and sheep as they come to the old stone-fence at the edge of the grove and look across to this beautiful spot seem, indeed, to get the same enjoyment that the people are getting. they seem almost to smile in the realization of their contentment and enjoyment; or perhaps it seems so to the looker-on, because he can scarcely help smiling as he sees the manifested evidence of their contentment and pleasure. the gate of the pond is always open wide enough to admit a supply of water so abundant that it continually overflows a quantity sufficient to feed a stream that runs through the fields below, giving the pure mountain water in drink to the cattle and flocks that are grazing there. the stream then flows on through the neighbors' fields. not long ago our friend was absent for a year. he rented his estate during his absence to a man who, as the world goes, was of a very "practical" turn of mind. he had no time for anything that did not bring him direct "practical" returns. the gate connecting the reservoir with the lotus pond was shut down, and no longer had the crystal mountain water the opportunity to feed and overflow it. the notice of our friend, "all are welcome to the lotus pond," was removed, and no longer were the gay companies of children and of men and women seen at the pond. a great change came over everything. on account of the lack of the life-giving water the flowers in the pond wilted, and their long stems lay stretched upon the mud in the bottom. the fish that formerly swam in its clear water soon died and gave an offensive odor to all who came near. the flowers no longer bloomed on its banks. the birds no longer came to drink and to bathe. no longer was heard the hum of the bees; and more, the stream that ran through the fields below dried up, so that the cattle and the flocks no longer got their supply of clear mountain water. the difference between the spot now and the lotus pond when our friend gave it his careful attention was caused, as we readily see, by the shutting of the gate to the pond, thus preventing the water from the reservoir in the hills which was the source of its life, from entering it. and when this, the source of its life, was shut off, not only was the appearance of the lotus pond entirely changed, but the surrounding fields were deprived of the stream to whose banks the flocks and cattle came for drink. in this do we not see a complete parallel so far as human life is concerned? in the degree that we recognize our oneness, our connection with the infinite spirit which is the life of all, and in the degree that we open ourselves to this divine inflow, do we come into harmony with the highest, the most powerful, and the most beautiful everywhere. and in the degree that we do this do we overflow, so that all who come in contact with us receive the effects of this realization on our part. this is the lotus pond of our friend, he who is in love with all that is truest and best in the universe. and in the degree that we fail to recognize our oneness with this infinite source, and so close, shut ourselves to this divine inflow, do we come into that state where there seems to be with us nothing of good, nothing of beauty, nothing of power; and when this is true, those who come in contact with us receive not good, but harm. this is the spot of the lotus pond while the farm was in the hands of a renter. there is this difference between the lotus pond and your life and mine. it has no power in itself of opening the gate to the inflow of the water from the reservoir which is its source. in regard to this it is helpless and dependent upon an outside agency. you and i have the power, the power within us, to open or to close ourselves to this divine inflow exactly as we choose. this we have through the power of mind, through the operation of thought. there is the soul life, direct from god. this it is that relates us to the infinite. there is, then, the physical life. this it is that relates us to the material universe about us. the thought life connects the one with the other. it is this that plays between the two. before we proceed farther let us consider very briefly the nature of thought. thought is not, as is many times supposed, a mere indefinite abstraction, or something of a like nature. it is, on the contrary, a vital, living force, the most vital, subtle, and irresistible force there is in the universe. in our very laboratory experiments we are demonstrating the great fact that thoughts are forces. they have form, and quality, and substance, and power, and we are beginning to find that there is what we may term a _science of thought_. we are beginning also to find that through the instrumentality of our thought forces we have creative power, not merely in a figurative sense, but creative power in reality. everything in the material universe about us, everything the universe has ever known, had its origin first in thought. from this it took its form. every castle, every statue, every painting, every piece of mechanism, everything had its birth, its origin, first in the mind of the one who formed it before it received its material expression or embodiment. the very universe in which we live is the result of the thought energies of god, the infinite spirit that is back of all. and if it is true, as we have found, that we in our true selves are in essence the same, and in this sense are one with the life of this infinite spirit, do we not then see that in the degree that we come into a vital realization of this stupendous fact, _we, through the operation of our interior, spiritual, thought forces, have in like sense creative power_? everything exists in the unseen before it is manifested or realized in the seen, and in this sense it is true that the unseen things are the real, while the things that are seen are the unreal. the unseen things are _cause_; the seen things are _effect_. the unseen things are the eternal; the seen things are the changing, the transient. the "_power of the word_" is a literal scientific fact. through the operation of our thought forces we have creative power. the spoken word is nothing more nor less than the outward expression of the workings of these interior forces. the spoken word is then, in a sense, the means whereby the thought forces are focused and directed along any particular line; and this concentration, this giving them direction, is necessary before any outward or material manifestation of their power can become evident. much is said in regard to "building castles in the air," and one who is given to this building is not always looked upon with favor. but castles in the air are always necessary before we can have castles on the ground, before we can have castles in which to live. the trouble with the one who gives himself to building castles in the air is not that he builds them in the air, but that he does not go farther and actualize in life, in character, in material form, the castles he thus builds. he does a part of the work, a very necessary part; but another equally necessary part remains still undone. there is in connection with the thought forces what we may term, the drawing power of mind, and the great law operating here is one with that great law of the universe, that like attracts like. we are continually attracting to us from both the seen and the unseen side of life, forces and conditions most akin to those of our own thoughts. this law is continually operating whether we are conscious of it or not. we are all living, so to speak, in a vast ocean of thought, and the very atmosphere around us is continually filled with the thought forces that are being continually sent or that are continually going out in the form of thought waves. we are all affected, more or less, by these thought forces, either consciously or unconsciously; and in the degree that we are more or less sensitively organized, or in the degree that we are negative and so are open to outside influences, rather than positive, thus determining what influences shall enter into our realm of thought, and hence into our lives. there are those among us who are much more sensitively organized than others. as an organism their bodies are more finely, more sensitively constructed. these, generally speaking, are people who are always more or less affected by the mentalities of those with whom they come in contact, or in whose company they are. a friend, the editor of one of our great journals, is so sensitively organized that it is impossible for him to attend a gathering, such as a reception, talk and shake hands with a number of people during the course of the evening, without taking on to a greater or less extent their various mental and physical conditions. these affect him to such an extent that he is scarcely himself and in his best condition for work until some two or three days afterward. some think it unfortunate for one to be sensitively organized. by no means. it is a good thing, for one may thus be more open and receptive to the higher impulses of the soul within, and to all higher forces and influences from without. it may, however, be unfortunate and extremely inconvenient to be so organized unless one recognize and gain the power of closing himself, of making himself positive to all detrimental or undesirable influences. this power every one, however sensitively organized he may be, can acquire. this he can acquire through the mind's action. and, moreover, there is no habit of more value to anyone, be he sensitively or less sensitively organized, than that of occasionally taking and holding himself continually in the attitude of mind--i close myself, i make myself positive to all things below, and open and receptive to all higher influences, to all things above. by taking this attitude of mind consciously now and then, it soon becomes a habit, and if one is deeply in earnest in regard to it, it puts into operation silent but subtle and powerful influences in effecting the desired results. in this way all lower and undesirable influences from both the seen and the unseen side of life are closed out, while all higher influences are invited, and in the degree that they are invited will they enter. and what do we mean by the unseen side of life? first, the thought forces, the mental and emotional conditions in the atmosphere about us that are generated by those manifesting on the physical plane through the agency of physical bodies. second, the same forces generated by those who have dropped the physical body, or from whom it has been struck away, and who are now manifesting through the agency of bodies of a different nature. "the individual existence of man _begins_ on the sense plane of the physical world, but rises through successive gradations of ethereal and celestial spheres, corresponding with his ever unfolding deific life and powers, to a destiny of unspeakable grandeur and glory. within and above every physical planet is a corresponding ethereal planet, or soul world, as within and above every physical organism is a corresponding ethereal organism, or soul body, of which the physical is but the external counterpart and materialized expression. from this etherealized or soul planet, which is the immediate home of our arisen humanity, there rises or deepens in infinite gradations spheres within and above spheres, to celestial heights of spiritualized existence utterly inconceivable to the sense man. embodiment, accordingly, is two-fold,--the physical being but the temporary husk, so to speak, in and by which the real and permanent ethereal organism is individualized and perfected, somewhat as 'the full corn in the ear' is reached by means of its husk, for which there is no further use. by means of this indestructible ethereal body and the corresponding ethereal spheres of environment with the social life and relations in the spheres, the individuality and personal life is preserved forever." the fact of life in whatever form means the continuance of life, even though the form be changed. life is the one eternal principle of the universe and so always continues, even though the form of the agency through which it manifests be changed. "in my father's house are many mansions." and surely, because the individual has dropped, has gone out of the physical body, there is no evidence at all that the life does not go right on the same as before, not commencing,--for there is no cessation,--but commencing in the other form, exactly where it has left off here; for all life is a continuous evolution, step by step; there one neither skips nor jumps. there are in the other form, then, mentalities and hence lives of all grades and influences, the same as there are in the physical form. if, then, the great law that like attracts like is ever operating, we are continually attracting to us from this side of life influences and conditions most akin to those of our own thoughts and lives. a grewsome thought that we should be so influenced, says one. by no means, all life is one; we are all bound together in the one common and universal life, and especially not when we take into consideration the fact that we have it entirely in our own hands to determine the order of thought we entertain, and consequently the order of influences we attract, and are not mere willowy creatures of circumstance, unless indeed we choose to be. in our mental lives we can either keep hold of the rudder and so determine exactly what course we take, what points we touch, or we can fail to do this, and failing, we drift, and are blown hither and thither by every passing breeze. and so, on the contrary, welcome should be the thought, for thus we may draw to us the influence and the aid of the greatest, the noblest, and the best who have lived on the earth, whatever the time, wherever the place. we cannot rationally believe other than that those who have labored in love and with uplifting power here are still laboring in the same way, and in all probability with more earnest zeal, and with still greater power. "and elisha prayed, and said, lord, i pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. and the lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain _was full of horses and chariots of fire_ round about elisha." while riding with a friend a few days ago, we were speaking of the great interest people are everywhere taking in the more vital things of life, the eagerness with which they are reaching out for a knowledge of the interior forces, their ever increasing desire to know themselves and to know their true relations with the infinite. and in speaking of the great spiritual awakening that is so rapidly coming all over the world, the beginnings of which we are so clearly seeing during the closing years of this, and whose ever increasing proportions we are to witness during the early years of the coming century, i said, "how beautiful if emerson, the illumined one so far in advance of his time, who labored so faithfully and so fearlessly to bring about these very conditions, how beautiful if he were with us today to witness it all! how he would rejoice!" "how do we know," was the reply, "that he is not witnessing it all? and more, that he is not having a hand in it all,--a hand even greater, perhaps, than when we _saw_ him here?" thank you, my friend, for this reminder. and, truly, "are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation?" as science is so abundantly demonstrating today,--the things that we see are but a very small fraction of the things that are. the real, vital forces at work in our own lives and in the world about us are not seen by the ordinary physical eye. yet they are the causes of which all things we see are merely the effects. thoughts are forces; like builds like, and like attracts like. for one to govern his thinking, then, is to determine his life. says one of deep insight into the nature of things: "the law of correspondences between spiritual and material things is wonderfully exact in its workings. people ruled by the mood of gloom attract to them gloomy things. people always discouraged and despondent do not succeed in anything, and live only by burdening some one else. the hopeful, confident, and cheerful attract the elements of success. a man's front or back yard will advertise that man's ruling mood in the way it is kept. a woman at home shows her state of mind in her dress. a slattern advertises the ruling mood of hopelessness, carelessness, and lack of system. rags, tatters, and dirt are always in the mind before being on the body. the thought that is most put out brings its corresponding visible element to crystallize about you as surely and literally as the visible bit of copper in solution attracts to it the invisible copper in that solution. a mind always hopeful, confident, courageous, and determined on its set purpose, and keeping itself to that purpose, attracts to itself out of the elements things and powers favorable to that purpose. "every thought of yours has a literal value to you in every possible way. the strength of your body, the strength of your mind, your success in business, and the pleasure your company brings others, depends on the nature of your thoughts. . . . in whatever mood you set your mind does your spirit receive of unseen substance in correspondence with that mood. it is as much a chemical law as a spiritual law. chemistry is not confined to the elements we see. the elements we do not see with the physical eye outnumber ten thousand times those we do see. the christ injunction, 'do good to those who hate you,' is based on a scientific fact and a natural law. so, to do good is to bring to yourself all the elements in nature of power and good. to do evil is to bring the contrary destructive elements. when our eyes are opened, self-preservation will make us stop all evil thought. those who live by hate will die by hate: that is, 'those who live by the sword will die by the sword.' every evil thought is as a sword drawn on the person to whom it is directed. if a sword is drawn in return, so much the worse for both." and says another who knows full well whereof he speaks: "the law of attraction works universally on every plane of _action_, and we attract whatever we desire or expect. if we desire one thing and expect another, we become like houses divided against themselves, which are quickly brought to desolation. determine resolutely to expect only what you desire, then you will attract only what you wish for. . . . carry any kind of thought you please about with you, and so long as you retain it, no matter how you roam over land or sea, you will unceasingly attract to yourself, knowingly or inadvertently, exactly and only what corresponds to your own dominant quality of thought. thoughts are our private property, and we can regulate them to suit our taste entirely by steadily recognizing our ability so to do." we have just spoken of the drawing power of mind. faith is nothing more nor less than the operation of the _thought forces_ in the form of an earnest desire, coupled with expectation as to its fulfillment. and in the degree that faith, the earnest desire thus sent out, is continually held to and watered by firm expectation, in just that degree does it either draw to itself, or does it change from the unseen into the visible, from the spiritual into the material, that for which it is sent. let the element of doubt or fear enter in, and what would otherwise be a tremendous force will be so neutralized that it will fail of its realization. continually held to and continually watered by firm expectation, it becomes a force, a drawing power, that is irresistible and absolute, and the results will be absolute in direct proportion as it is absolute. we shall find, as we are so rapidly beginning to find today, that the great things said in regard to faith, the great promises made in connection with it, are not mere vague sentimentalities, but are all great scientific facts, and rest upon great immutable laws. even in our very laboratory experiments we are beginning to discover the laws underlying and governing these forces. we, are now beginning, some at least, to use them understandingly and not blindly, as has so often and so long been the case. much is said today in regard to the will. it is many times spoken of as if it were a force in itself. but will is a force, a power, only in so far as it is a particular form of the manifestation of the thought forces; for it is by what we call the "will" that thought is focused and given a particular direction, and in the degree that thought is thus focused and given direction, is it effective in the work it is sent out to accomplish. in a sense there are two kinds of will,--the human and the divine. the human will is the will of what, for convenience' sake, we may term the lower self. it is the will that finds its life merely in the realm of the mental and the physical,--the sense will. it is the will of the one who is not yet awake to the fact that there is a life that far transcends the life of merely the intellect and the physical senses, and which when realized and lived, does not do away with or minify these, but which, on the contrary, brings them to their highest perfection and to their powers of keenest enjoyment. the divine will is the will of the higher self, the will of the one who recognizes his oneness with the divine, and who consequently brings his will to work in harmony, in conjunction with the divine will. "the lord thy god _in the midst of thee_ is mighty." the human will has its limitations. so far and no farther, says the law. the divine will has no limitations. it is supreme. all things are open and subject to you, says the law, and so, in the degree that the human will is transmuted into the divine, in the degree that it comes into harmony with and so, acts in conjunction with the divine, does it become supreme. then it is that "thou shalt decree a thing and it shall be established unto thee." the great secret of life and of power, then, is to make and to keep one's conscious connection with this infinite source. the power of every life, the very life itself, is determined by what it relates itself to. god is immanent as well as transcendent. he is creating, working, ruling in the universe today, in your life and in mine, just as much as he ever has been. we are too apt to regard him after the manner of an absentee landlord, one who has set into operation the forces of this great universe, and then taken himself away. in the degree, however, that we recognize him as immanent as well as transcendent, are we able to partake of his life and power. for in the degree that we recognize him as the infinite spirit of life and power that is today, at this very moment, working and manifesting in and through all, and then, in the degree that we come into the realization of our oneness with this life, do we become partakers of, and so do we actualize in ourselves the qualities of his life. _in the degree that we open ourselves to the inflowing tide of this immanent and transcendent life, do we make ourselves channels through which the infinite intelligence and power can work_. it is through the instrumentality of the mind that we are enabled to connect the real soul life with the physical life, and so enable the soul life to manifest and work through the physical. the thought life needs _continually_ to be illumined from within. this illumination can come in just the degree that through the agency of the mind we recognize our oneness with the divine, of which each soul is an individual form of expression. this gives us the inner guiding which we call intuition. "intuition is to the spiritual nature and understanding practically what sense perception is to the sensuous nature and understanding. it is an inner spiritual sense through which man is opened to the direct revelation and knowledge of god, the secrets of nature and life, and through which he is brought into conscious unity and fellowship with god, and made to realize his own deific nature and supremacy of being as the son of god. spiritual supremacy and illumination thus realized through the development and perfection of intuition under divine inspiration, gives the perfect inner vision and direct insight into the character, properties, and purpose of all things to which the attention and interest are directed. . . . it is, we repeat, a spiritual sense opening inwardly, as the physical senses open outwardly; and because it has the capacity to perceive, grasp, and know the truth at first hand, independent of all external sources of information, we call it intuition. all inspired teaching and spiritual revelations are based upon the recognition of this spiritual faculty of the soul, and its power to receive and appropriate them. . . . conscious unity of man in spirit and purpose with the father, born out of his supreme desire and trust, opens his soul through this inner sense to immediate inspiration and enlightenment from the divine omniscience, and the co-operative energy of the divine omnipotence, under which he becomes a seer and a master. "on this higher plane of realized spiritual life in the flesh the mind holds the impersonal attitude and acts with unfettered freedom and unbiased vision, grasping truth at first hand, independent of all external sources of information. approaching all beings and things from the divine side, they are seen in the light of the divine omniscience. god's purpose in them, and so the truth concerning them, as it rests in the mind of god, are thus revealed by direct illumination from the divine mind, to which the soul is opened inwardly through this spiritual sense we call intuition." some call it the voice of the soul; some call it the voice of god; some call it the sixth sense. it is our inner spiritual sense. in the degree that we come into the recognition of our own _true_ selves, into the realization of the oneness of our life with the infinite life, and in the degree that we open ourselves to this divine inflow, does this voice of intuition, this voice of the soul, this voice of god, speak clearly; and in the degree that we recognize, listen to, and obey it, does it speak ever more clearly, until by-and-by there comes the time when it is unerring, _absolutely unerring_, in its guidance. fullness of life--bodily health and vigor. god is the spirit of infinite life. if we are partakers of this life, and have the power of opening ourselves fully to its divine inflow, it means more, so far as even the physical life is concerned, than we may at first think. for very clearly, the life of this infinite spirit, from its very nature, can admit of no disease; and if this is true, no disease can exist in the body where it freely enters, through which it freely flows. let us recognize at the outset that, so far as the physical life is concerned, _all life is from within out_. there is an immutable law which says: "as within, so without; cause, effect." in other words, the thought forces, the various mental states and the emotions, all have in time their effects upon the physical body. some one says: "i hear a great deal said today in regard to the effects of the mind upon the body, but i don't know as i place very much confidence in this." don't you? some one brings you sudden news. you grow pale, you tremble, or perhaps you fall into a faint. it is, however, through the channel of your mind that the news is imparted to you. a friend says something to you, perhaps at the table, something that seems very unkind. you are hurt by it, as we say. you have been enjoying your dinner, but from this moment your appetite is gone. but what was said entered into and affected you through the channel of your mind. look! yonder goes a young man, dragging his feet, stumbling over the slightest obstruction in the path. why is it? simply that he is weak-minded, an idiot. in other words, _a falling state of mind is productive of a falling condition of the body_. to be sure minded is to be sure footed. to be uncertain in mind is to be uncertain in step. again, a sudden emergency arises. you stand trembling and weak with fear. why are you powerless to move? why do you tremble? and yet you believe that the mind has but little influence upon the body. you are for a moment dominated by a fit of anger. for a few hours afterwards you complain of a violent headache. and still you do not seem to realize that the thoughts and emotions have an effect upon the body. a day or two ago, while conversing with a friend, we were speaking of worry. "my father is greatly given to worry," he said. "your father is not a healthy man," i said. "he is not strong, vigorous, robust, and active." i then went on to describe to him more fully his father's condition and the troubles which afflicted him. he looked at me in surprise and said, "why, you do not know my father?" "no," i replied. "how then can you describe so accurately the disease with which he is afflicted?" "you have just told me that your father is greatly given to worry. when you told me this you indicated to me cause. in describing your father's condition i simply connected with the cause its own peculiar effects." fear and worry have the effect of closing up the channels of the body, so that the life forces flow in a slow and sluggish manner. hope and tranquillity open the channels of the body, so that the life forces go bounding through it in such a way that disease can rarely get a foothold. not long ago a lady was telling a friend of a serious physical trouble. my friend happened to know that between this lady and her sister the most kindly relations did not exist. he listened attentively to her delineation of her troubles, and then, looking her squarely in the face, in a firm but kindly tone said: "forgive your sister." the woman looked at him in surprise and said: "i can't forgive my sister." "very well, then," he replied, "keep the stiffness of your joints and your kindred rheumatic troubles." a few weeks later he saw her again. with a light step she came toward him and said: "i took your advice. i saw my sister and forgave her. we have become good friends again, and i don't know how it is, but somehow or other from the very day, as i remember, that we became reconciled, my troubles seemed to grow less, and today there is not a trace of the old difficulties left; and really, my sister and i have become such good friends that now we can scarcely get along without one another." again we have effect following cause. we have several well-authenticated cases of the following nature: a mother has been dominated for a few moments by an intense passion of anger, and the child at her breast has died within an hour's time, so poisoned became the mother's milk by virtue of the poisonous secretions of the system while under the domination of this fit of anger. in other cases it has caused severe illness and convulsions. the following experiment has been tried a number of times by a well-known scientist: several men have been put into a heated room. each man has been dominated for a moment by a particular passion of some kind; one by an intense passion of anger, and others by different other passions. the experimenter has taken a drop of perspiration from the body of each of these men, and by means of a careful chemical analysis he has been able to determine the particular passion by which each has been dominated. practically the same results revealed themselves in the chemical analysis of the saliva of each of the men. says a noted american author, an able graduate of one of our greatest medical schools, and one who has studied deeply into the forces that build the body and the forces that tear it down: "the mind is the natural protector of the body. . . . every thought tends to reproduce itself, and ghastly mental pictures of disease, sensuality, and vice of all sorts, produce scrofula and leprosy in the soul, which reproduces them in the body. anger changes the chemical properties of the saliva to a poison dangerous to life. it is well known that sudden and violent emotions have not only weakened the heart in a few hours, but have caused death and insanity. it has been discovered by scientists that there is a chemical difference between that sudden cold exudation of a person under a deep sense of guilt and the ordinary perspiration; and the state of the mind can sometimes be determined by chemical analysis of the perspiration of a criminal, which, when brought into contact with selenic acid, produces a distinctive pink color. it is well known that fear has killed thousands of victims; while, on the other hand, _courage is a great invigorator_. "anger in the mother may poison a nursing child. rarey, the celebrated horse-tamer, said that an angry word would sometimes raise the pulse of a horse ten beats in a minute. if this is true of a beast, what can we say of its power upon human beings, especially upon a child? strong mental emotion often causes vomiting. extreme anger or fright may produce jaundice. a violent paroxysm of rage has caused apoplexy and death. indeed, in more than one instance, a single night of mental agony has wrecked a life. grief, long-standing jealousy, constant care and corroding anxiety sometimes tend to develop insanity. sick thoughts and discordant moods are the natural atmosphere of disease, and crime is engendered and thrives in the miasma of the mind." from all this we get the great fact we are scientifically demonstrating today,--that the various mental states, emotions, and passions have their various peculiar effects upon the body, and each induces in turn, if indulged in to any great extent, its own peculiar forms of disease, and these in time become chronic. just a word or two in regard to their mode of operation. if a person is dominated for a moment by, say a passion of anger, there is set up in the physical organism what we might justly term a bodily thunder-storm, which has the effect of souring, or rather of corroding, the normal, healthy, and life-giving secretions of the body, so that instead of performing their natural functions they become poisonous and destructive. and if this goes on to any great extent, by virtue of their cumulative influences, they give rise to a particular form of disease, which in turn becomes chronic. so the emotion opposite to this, that of kindliness, love, benevolence, good-will, tends to stimulate a healthy, purifying, and life-giving flow of all the bodily secretions. all the channels of the body seem free and open; the life forces go bounding through them. and these very forces, set into a bounding activity, will in time counteract the poisonous and disease-giving effects of their opposites. a physician goes to see a patient. he gives no medicine this morning. yet the very fact of his going makes the patient better. he has carried with him the spirit of health; he has carried brightness of tone and disposition; he has carried hope into the sick chamber; he has left it there. in fact, the very hope and good cheer he has carried with him has taken hold of and has had a subtle but powerful influence upon the mind of the patient; and this mental condition imparted by the physician has in turn its effects upon the patient's body, and so through the instrumentality of this mental suggestion the healing goes on. "know, then, whatever cheerful and serene supports the mind, supports the body, too. hence the most vital movement mortals feel is _hope_; the balm and life-blood of the soul." we sometimes hear a person in weak health say to another, "i always feel better when you come." there is a deep scientific reason underlying the statement. "the tongue of the wise is health." the power of suggestion so far as the human mind is concerned is a most wonderful and interesting field of study. most wonderful and powerful forces can be set into operation through this agency. one of the world's most noted scientists, recognized everywhere as one of the most eminent anatomists living, tells us that he has proven from laboratory experiments that the entire human structure can be completely changed, made over, within a period of less than one year, and that some portions can be entirely remade within a period of a very few weeks. "do you mean to say," i hear it asked, "that the body can be changed from a diseased to a healthy condition through the operation of the interior forces?" most certainly; and more, this is the natural method of cure. the method that has as its work the application of drugs, medicines and external agencies is the artificial method. the only thing that any drug or any medicine can do is to remove obstructions, that the life forces may have simply a better chance to do their work. _the real healing process must be performed by the operation of the life forces within_. a surgeon and physician of world-wide fame recently made to his medical associates the following declaration: "for generations past the most important influence that plays upon nutrition, the _life principle_ itself, has remained an unconsidered element in the medical profession, and the almost exclusive drift of its studies and remedial paraphernalia has been confined to the action of matter over mind. this has seriously interfered with the evolutionary tendencies of the doctors themselves, and consequently the psychic factor in professional life is still in a rudimentary or comparatively undeveloped state. but the light of the nineteenth century has dawned, and so the march of mankind in general is taken in the direction of the hidden forces of nature. doctors are now compelled to join the ranks of students in psychology and follow their patrons into the broader field of mental therapeutics. there is no time for lingering, no time for skepticism or doubt or hesitation. _he who lingers is lost, for the entire race is enlisted in the movement_." i am aware of the fact that in connection with the matter we are now considering there has been a great deal of foolishness during the past few years. many absurd and foolish things have been claimed and done; but this says nothing against, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the great underlying laws themselves. the same has been true of the early days of practically every system of ethics or philosophy or religion the world has ever known. but as time has passed, these foolish, absurd things have fallen away, and the great eternal principles have stood out ever more and more clearly defined. i know _personally_ of many cases where an entire and permanent cure has been effected, in some within a remarkably short period of time, through the operation of these forces. some of them are cases that had been entirely given up by the regular practice, _materia medica_. we have numerous accounts of such cases in all times and in connection with all religions. and why should not the power of effecting such cures exist among us today? the _power does exist_, and it will be actualized in just the degree that we recognize the same great laws that were recognized in times past. one person may do a very great deal in connection with the healing of another, but this almost invariably implies co-operation on the part of the one who is thus treated. in the cures that christ performed he most always needed the co-operation of the one who appealed to him. his question almost invariably was, "dost thou believe?" he thus stimulated into activity the life-giving forces within the one cured. if one is in a very weak condition, or if his nervous system is exhausted, or if his mind through the influence of the disease is not so strong in its workings, it may be well for him for a time to seek the aid and co-operation of another. but it would be far better for such a one could he bring himself to a vital realization of the omnipotence of his own interior powers. one may cure another, but to be _permanently healed_ one must do it himself. in this way another may be most valuable as a teacher by bringing one to a clear realization of the power of the forces within, but in every case, in order to have a permanent cure, the work of the self is necessary. christ's words were almost invariably,--go and sin no more, or, thy sins are forgiven thee, thus pointing out the one eternal and never-changing fact,--that all disease and its consequent suffering is the direct or the indirect result of the violation of law, either consciously or unconsciously, either intentionally or unintentionally. suffering is designed to continue only so long as sin continues, sin not necessarily in the theological, but always in the philosophical sense, though many times in the sense of both. the moment the violation ceases, the moment one comes into perfect harmony with the law, the cause of the suffering ceases; and though there may be residing within the cumulative effects of past violation, the cause is removed, and consequently there can be no more effects in the form of additions, and even the diseased condition that has been induced from past violation will begin to disappear as soon as the right forces are set into activity. there is nothing that will more quickly and more completely bring one into harmony with the laws under which he lives than this vital realization of his oneness with the infinite spirit, which is the life of all life. in this there can be no disease, and nothing will more readily remove from the organism the obstructions that have accumulated there, or in other words, the disease that resides there, than this full realization and the complete opening of one's self to this divine inflow. "i shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live." the moment a person realizes his oneness with the infinite spirit he recognizes himself as a spiritual being, and no longer as a mere physical, material being. he then no longer makes the mistake of regarding himself as body, subject to ills and diseases, but he realizes the fact that he is spirit, spirit now as much as he ever will or can be, and that he is the builder and so the master of the body, the house in which he lives; and the moment he thus recognizes his power as master he ceases in any way to allow it the mastery over him. he no longer fears the elements or any of the forces that he now in his ignorance allows to take hold of and affect the body. the moment he realizes his own supremacy, instead of fearing them as he did when he was out of harmony with them, he learns to love them. he thus comes into harmony with them; or rather, he so orders them that they come into harmony with him. he who formerly was the slave has now become the master. the moment we come to love a thing it no longer carries harm for us. there are almost countless numbers today, weak and suffering in body, who would become strong and healthy if they would only give god an opportunity to do his work. to such i would say, _don't shut out the divine inflow_. do anything else rather than this. open yourselves to it. invite it. in the degree that you open yourselves to it, its inflowing tide will course through your bodies a force so vital that the old obstructions that are dominating them today will be driven out before it. "my words are life to them that find them, and health to all their flesh." there is a trough through which a stream of muddy water has been flowing for many days. the dirt has gradually collected on its sides and bottom, and it continues to collect as long as the muddy water flows through it. change this. open the trough to a swift-flowing stream of clear, crystal water, and in a very little while even the very dirt that has collected on its sides and bottom will be carried away. the trough will be entirely cleansed. it will present an aspect of beauty and no longer an aspect of ugliness. and more, the water that now courses through it will be of value; it will be an agent of refreshment, of health and of strength to those who use it. yes, in just the degree that you realize your oneness with this infinite spirit of life, and thus actualize your latent possibilities and powers, you will exchange dis-ease for ease, inharmony for harmony, suffering and pain for abounding health and strength. and in the degree that you realize this wholeness, this abounding health and strength in yourself, will you carry it to all with whom you come in contact; for _we must remember that health is contagious as well as disease_. i hear it asked, what can be said in a concrete way in regard to the practical application of these truths, so that one can hold himself in the enjoyment of perfect bodily health; and more, that one may heal himself of any existing disease? in reply, let it be said that the chief thing that can be done is to point out the great underlying principle, and that each individual must make his own application; one person cannot well make this for another. first let it be said, that the very fact of one's holding the thought of perfect health sets into operation vital forces which will in time be more or less productive of the effect,--perfect health. then speaking more directly in regard to the great principle itself, from its very nature, it is clear that more can be accomplished through the process of realization than through the process of affirmation, though for some affirmation may be a help, an aid to realization. in the degree, however, that you come into a vital realization of your oneness with the infinite spirit of life, whence all life in individual form has come and is continually coming, and in the degree that through this realization you open yourself to its divine inflow, do you set into operation forces that will sooner or later bring even the physical body into a state of abounding health and strength. for to realize that this infinite spirit of life can from its very nature admit of no disease, and to realize that this, then, is the life in you, by realizing your oneness with it, you can so open yourself to its more abundant entrance that the diseased bodily conditions--effects--will respond to the influences of its all-perfect power, this either quickly or more tardily, depending entirely upon yourself. there have been those who have been able to open themselves so fully to this realization that the healing has been instantaneous and permanent. the degree of intensity always eliminates in like degree the element of time. _it must, however, be a calm, quiet, and expectant intensity, rather than an intensity that is fearing, disturbed, and non-expectant_. then there are others who have come to this realization by degrees. many will receive great help, and many will be entirely healed by a practice somewhat after the following nature: with a mind at peace, and with a heart going out in love to all, go into the quiet of your own interior self, holding the thought,--i am one with the infinite spirit of life, the life of my life. i then as spirit, i a spiritual being, can in my own real nature admit of no disease. i now open my body, in which disease has gotten a foothold, i open it fully to the inflowing tide of this infinite life, and it now, even now, is pouring in and coursing through my body, and the healing process is going on. realize this so fully that you begin to feel a quickening and a warming glow imparted by the life forces to the body. believe the healing process is going on. believe it, and hold continually to it. many people greatly desire a certain thing, but expect something else. they have greater faith in the power of evil than in the power of good, and hence remain ill. if one will give himself to this meditation, realization, treatment, or whatever term it may seem best to use, at stated times, as often as he may choose, and then _continually hold himself in the same attitude of mind_, thus allowing the force to work continually, he will be surprised how rapidly the body will be exchanging conditions of disease and inharmony for health and harmony. there is no particular reason, however, for this surprise, for in this way he is simply allowing the omnipotent power to do the work, which will have to do it ultimately in any case. if there is a local difficulty, and one wants to open this particular portion, in addition to the entire body, to this inflowing life, he can hold this particular portion in thought, for to fix the thought in this way upon any particular portion of the body stimulates or increases the flow of the life forces in that portion. it must always be borne in mind, however, that whatever healing may be thus accomplished, effects will not permanently cease until causes have been removed. in other words, _as long as there is the violation of law, so long disease and suffering will result_. this realization that we are considering will have an influence not only where there is a diseased condition of the body, but even where there is not this condition it will give an increased bodily life, vigor, and power. we have had many cases, in all times and in all countries, of healing through the operation of the interior forces, entirely independent of external agencies. various have been the methods, or rather, various have been the names applied to them, but the great law underlying all is one and the same, and the same today. when the master sent his followers forth, his injunction to them was to heal the sick and the afflicted, as well as to teach the people. the early church fathers had the power of healing, in short, it was a part of their work. and why should we not have the power today, the same as they had it then? are the laws at all different? identically the same. why, then? simply because, with a few rare exceptions here and there, we are unable to get beyond the mere letter of the law into its real vital spirit and power. it is the letter that killeth, it is the spirit that giveth life and power. every soul who becomes so individualized that he breaks through the mere letter and enters into the real vital spirit, _will have the power_, as have all who have gone before, and when he does, he will also be the means of imparting it to others, for he will be one who will move and who will speak with authority. we are rapidly finding today, and we shall find even more and more, as time passes, that practically all disease, with its consequent suffering, has its origin in perverted mental and emotional states and conditions. _the mental attitude we take toward anything determines to a greater or less extent its effects upon us_. if we fear it, or if we antagonize it, the chances are that it will have detrimental or even disastrous effects upon us. if we come into harmony with it by quietly recognizing and inwardly asserting our superiority over it, in the degree that we are able successfully to do this, in that degree will it carry with it no injury for us. no disease can enter into or take hold of our bodies unless it find therein something corresponding to itself which makes it possible. and in the same way, no evil or undesirable condition of any kind can come into our lives unless there is already in them that which invites it and so makes it possible for it to come. the sooner we begin to look within ourselves for the cause of whatever comes to us, the better it will be, for so much the sooner will we begin to make conditions within ourselves such that only _good_ may enter. we, who from our very natures should be masters of all conditions, by virtue of our ignorance are mastered by almost numberless conditions of every description. do i fear a draft? there is nothing in the draft--a little purifying current of god's pure air--to cause me trouble, to bring on a cold, perhaps an illness. the draft can affect me only in the degree that _i myself_ make it possible, only in the degree that i allow it to affect me. we must distinguish between causes and mere occasions. the draft is not cause, nor does it carry cause with it. two persons are sitting in the same draft. the one is injuriously affected by it, the other experiences not even an inconvenience, but he rather enjoys it. the one is a creature of circumstances; he fears the draft, cringes before it, continually thinks of the harm it is doing him. in other words, he opens every avenue for it to enter and take hold of him, and so it--harmless and beneficent in itself--brings to him exactly what he has empowered it to bring. the other recognizes himself as the master over and not the creature of circumstances. he is not concerned about the draft. he puts himself into harmony with it, makes himself positive to it, and instead of experiencing any discomfort, he enjoys it, and in addition to its doing him a service by bringing the pure fresh air from without to him, it does him the additional service of hardening him even more to any future conditions of a like nature. but if the draft was cause, it would bring the same results to both. the fact that it does not, shows that it is not a cause, but a condition, and it brings to each, effects which correspond to the conditions it finds within each. poor draft! how many thousands, nay millions of times it is made the scapegoat by those who are too ignorant or too unfair to look their own weaknesses square in the face, and who instead of becoming imperial masters, remain cringing slaves. think of it, what it means! a man created in the image of the eternal god, sharer of his life and power, born to have dominion, fearing, shaking, cringing before a little draft of pure life-giving air. but scapegoats are convenient things, even if the only thing they do for us is to aid us in our constant efforts at self-delusion. the best way to disarm a draft of the bad effects it has been accustomed to bring one, is first to bring about a pure and healthy set of conditions within, then, to change one's mental attitude toward it. recognize the fact that of itself it has no power, it has only the power you invest it with. thus you will put yourself into harmony with it, and will no longer sit in fear of it. then sit in a draft a few times and get hardened to it, as every one, by going at it judiciously, can readily do. "but suppose one is in delicate health, or especially subject to drafts?" then be simply a little judicious at first; don't seek the strongest that can be found, especially if you do not as yet in your own mind feel equal to it, for if you do not, it signifies that you still fear it. that supreme regulator of all life, _good common sense_, must be used here, the same as elsewhere. if we are born to have dominion, and that we are is demonstrated by the fact that some have attained to it,--and what one _has_ done, soon or late all _can_ do,--then it is not necessary that we live under the domination of any physical agent. in the degree that we recognize our own interior powers, then are we rulers and able to dictate; in the degree that we fail to recognize them, we are slaves, and are dictated to. we build whatever we find within us; we attract whatever comes to us, and all in accordance with spiritual law, for all natural law is spiritual law. the whole of human life is cause and effect; there is no such thing in it as chance, nor is there even in all the wide universe. are we not satisfied with whatever comes into our lives? the thing to do, then, is not to spend time in railing against the imaginary something we create and call fate, but to look to the within, and change the causes at work there, in order that things of a different nature may come, for there will come exactly what we cause to come. this is true not only of the physical body, but of all phases and conditions of life. we invite whatever comes, and did we not invite it, either consciously or unconsciously, it could not and it would not come. this may undoubtedly be hard for some to believe, or even to see, at first. but in the degree that one candidly and open-mindedly looks at it, and then studies into the silent, but subtle and, so to speak, omnipotent workings of the thought forces, and as he traces their effects within him and about him, it becomes clearly evident, and easy to understand. and then whatever does come to one depends for its effects entirely upon his mental attitude toward it. does this or that occurrence or condition cause you annoyance? very well; it causes you annoyance, and so disturbs your peace merely because you allow it to. you are born to have absolute control over your own dominion, but if you voluntarily hand over this power, even if for a little while, to some one or to some thing else, then you of course, become the creature, the one controlled. to live undisturbed by passing occurrences you must first find your own centre. you must then be firm in your own centre, and so rule the world from within. he who does not himself condition circumstances allows the process to be reversed, and becomes a conditioned circumstance. find your centre and live in it. surrender it to no person, to no thing. in the degree that you do this will you find yourself growing stronger and stronger in it. and how can one find his centre? by realizing his oneness with the infinite power, and by living continually in this realization. but if you do not rule from your own centre, if you invest this or that with the power of bringing you annoyance, or evil, or harm, then take what it brings, but cease your railings against the eternal goodness and beneficence of all things. "i swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete; the earth remains jagged and broken only to him who remains jagged and broken." if the windows of your soul are dirty and streaked, covered with matter foreign to them, then the world as you look out of them will be to you dirty and streaked and out of order. cease your complainings, however; keep your pessimism, your "poor, unfortunate me" to yourself, lest you betray the fact that your windows are badly in need of something. but know that your friend, who keeps his windows clean, that the eternal sun may illumine all within and make visible all without,--know that he lives in a different world from yours. then, go wash your windows, and instead of longing for some other world, you will discover the wonderful beauties of this world; and if you don't find transcendent beauties on every hand here, the chances are that you will never find them anywhere. "the poem hangs on the berry-bush when comes the poet's eye, and the whole street is a masquerade when shakspeare passes by." this same shakspeare, whose mere passing causes all this commotion, is the one who put into the mouth of one of his creations the words: "the fault, dear brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." and the great work of his own life is right good evidence that he realized full well the truth of the facts we are considering. and again he gave us a great truth in keeping with what we are considering when he said: "our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by _fearing_ to attempt." there is probably no agent that brings us more undesirable conditions than fear. we should live in fear of nothing, nor will we when we come fully to know ourselves. an old french proverb runs "some of your griefs you have cured, and the sharpest you still have survived; but what _torments of pain_ you endured from evils that never arrived." fear and lack of faith go hand in hand. the one is born of the other. tell me how much one is given to fear, and i will tell you how much he lacks in faith. fear is a most expensive guest to entertain, the same as worry is: so expensive are they that no one can afford to entertain them. _we invite what we fear, the same as, by a different attitude of mind, we invite and attract the influences and conditions we desire_. the mind dominated by fear opens the door for the entrance of the very things, for the actualization of the very conditions it fears. "where are you going?" asked an eastern pilgrim on meeting the plague one day. "i am going to bagdad to kill five thousand people," was the reply. a few days later the same pilgrim met the plague returning. "you told me you were going to bagdad to kill five thousand people," said he, "but instead, you killed fifty thousand." "no," said the plague. "_i killed only five thousand_, as i told you i would; _the others died of fright_." fear can paralyze every muscle in the body. fear affects the flow of the blood, likewise the normal and healthy action of all the life forces. fear can make the body rigid, motionless, and powerless to move. not only do we attract to ourselves the things we fear, but we also aid in attracting to others the conditions we in our own minds hold them in fear of. this we do in proportion to the strength of our own thought, and in the degree that they are sensitively organized and so influenced by our thought, and this, although it be unconscious both on their part and on ours. children, and especially when very young, are, generally speaking, more sensitive to their surrounding influences than grown people are. some are veritable little sensitive plates, registering the influences about them, and embodying them as they grow. how careful in their prevailing mental states then should be those who have them in charge, and especially how careful should a mother be during the time she is carrying the child, and when every thought, every mental as well as emotional state has its direct influence upon the life of the unborn child. let parents be careful how they hold a child, either younger or older, in the thought of fear. this is many times done, unwittingly on their part, through anxiety, and at times through what might well be termed over-care, which is fully as bad as under-care. i know of a number of cases where a child has been so continually held in the thought of fear lest this or that condition come upon him, that the very things that were feared have been drawn to him, which probably otherwise never would have come at all. many times there has been no adequate basis for the fear. in case there is a basis, then far wiser is it to take exactly the opposite attitude, so as to neutralize the force at work, and then to hold the child in the thought of wisdom and strength that it may be able to meet the condition and master it, instead of being mastered by it. but a day or two ago a friend was telling me of an experience of his own life in this connection. at a period when he was having a terrific struggle with a certain habit, he was so continually held in the thought of fear by his mother and the young lady to whom he was engaged,--the engagement to be consummated at the end of a certain period, the time depending on his proving his mastery,--that he, very sensitively organized, _continually_ felt the depressing and weakening effects of their negative thoughts. he could always tell exactly how they felt toward him; he was continually influenced and weakened by their fear, by their questionings, by their suspicions, all of which had the effect of lessening the sense of his own power, all of which had an endeavor-paralyzing influence upon him. and so instead of their begetting courage and strength in him, they brought him to a still greater realization of his own weakness and the almost worthless use of struggle. here were two who loved him dearly, and who would have done anything and everything to help him gain the mastery, but who, ignorant of the silent, subtle, ever-working and all-telling power of the thought forces, instead of imparting to him courage, instead of adding to his strength, disarmed him of this, and then added an additional weakness from without. in this way the battle for him was made harder in a three-fold degree. fear and worry and all kindred mental states are too expensive for any person, man, woman, or child, to entertain or indulge in. fear paralyzes healthy action, worry corrodes and pulls down the organism, and will finally tear it to pieces. nothing is to be gained by it, but everything to be lost. long-continued grief at any loss will do the same. each brings its own peculiar type of ailment. an inordinate love of gain, a close-fisted, hoarding disposition will have kindred effects. anger, jealousy, malice, continual fault-finding, lust, has each its own peculiar corroding, weakening, tearing-down effects. we shall find that not only are happiness and prosperity concomitants of righteousness,--living in harmony with the higher laws, but bodily health as well. the great hebrew seer enunciated a wonderful chemistry of life when he said,--"as righteousness tendeth to life, so he that pursueth evil, pursueth it to his own death." on the other hand, "in the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death." the time will come when it will be seen that this means far more than most people dare _even to think as yet_. "it rests with man to say whether his soul shall be housed in a stately mansion of ever-growing splendor and beauty, or in a hovel of his own building,--a hovel at last ruined and abandoned to decay." the bodies of almost untold numbers, living their one-sided, unbalanced lives, are every year, through these influences, weakening and falling by the wayside long before their time. poor, poor houses! intended to be beautiful temples, brought to desolation by their ignorant, reckless, deluded tenants. poor houses! a close observer, a careful student of the power of the thought forces, will soon be able to read in the voice, in the movements, in the features, the effects registered by the prevailing mental states and conditions. or, if he is told the prevailing mental states and conditions, he can describe the voice, the movements, the features, as well as describe, in a general way, the peculiar physical ailments their possessor is heir to. we are told by good authority that a study of the human body, its structure, and the length of time it takes it to come to maturity, in comparison with the time it takes the bodies of various animals and their corresponding longevity, reveals the fact that its natural age should be nearer a hundred and twenty years than what we commonly find it today. but think of the multitudes all about us whose bodies are aging, weakening, breaking, so that they have to abandon them long before they reach what ought to be a long period of strong, vigorous middle life. then, the natural length of life being thus shortened, it comes to be what we might term a race belief that this shortened period is the natural period. and as a consequence many, when they approach a certain age, seeing that as a rule people at this period of life begin to show signs of age, to break and go down hill as we say, they, thinking it a matter of course and that it must be the same with them, by taking this attitude of mind, many times bring upon themselves these very conditions long before it is necessary. subtle and powerful are the influences of the mind in the building and rebuilding of the body. as we understand them better it may become the custom for people to look forward with pleasure to the teens of their second century. there comes to mind at this moment a friend, a lady well on to eighty years of age. an old lady, some, most people in fact, would call her, especially those who measure age by the number of the seasons that have come and gone since one's birth. but to call our friend old, would be to call black white. she is no older than a girl of twenty-five, and indeed younger, i am glad to say, or i am sorry to say, depending upon the point of view, than _many_ a girl of this age. seeking for the good in all people and in all things, she has found the good everywhere. the brightness of disposition and of voice that is hers today, that attracts all people to her and that makes her so beautifully attractive to all people, has characterized her all through life. it has in turn carried brightness and hope and courage and strength to hundreds and thousands of people through all these years, and will continue to do so, apparently, for many years yet to come. no fears, no worryings, no hatreds, no jealousies, no sorrowings, no grievings, no sordid graspings after inordinant [transcriber's note: inordinate?] gain, have found entrance into her realm of thought. as a consequence her mind, free from these abnormal states and conditions, has not externalized in her body the various physical ailments that the great majority of people are lugging about with them, thinking in their ignorance, that they are natural, and that it is all in accordance with the "eternal order of things" that they should have them. her life has been one of varied experiences, so that all these things would have found ready entrance into the realm of her mind and so into her life were she ignorant enough to allow them entrance. on the contrary she has been wise enough to recognize the fact that in one kingdom at least she is ruler,--the kingdom of her mind, and that it is hers to dictate as to what shall and what shall not enter there. she knows, moreover, that in determining this she is determining all the conditions of her life. it is indeed a pleasure as well as an inspiration to see her as she goes here and there, to see her sunny disposition, her youthful step, to hear her joyous laughter. indeed and in truth, shakspeare knew whereof he spoke when he said,--"it is the mind that makes the body rich." with great pleasure i watched her but recently as she was walking along the street, stopping to have a word and so a part in the lives of a group of children at play by the wayside, hastening her step a little to have a word with a washerwoman toting her bundle of clothes, stopping for a word with a laboring man returning with dinner pail in hand from his work, returning the recognition from the lady in her carriage, and so imparting some of her own rich life to all with whom she came in contact. and as good fortune would have it, while still watching her, an old lady passed her,--really old, this one, though at least ten or fifteen years younger, so far as the count by the seasons is concerned. nevertheless she was bent in form and apparently stiff in joint and muscle. silent in mood, she wore a countenance of long-faced sadness, which was intensified surely several fold by a black, sombre headgear with an immense heavy veil still more sombre looking if possible. her entire dress was of this description. by this relic-of-barbarism garb, combined with her own mood and expression, she continually proclaimed to the world two things,--her own personal sorrows and woes, which by this very method she kept continually fresh in her mind, and also her lack of faith in the eternal goodness of things, her lack of faith in the love and eternal goodness of the infinite father. wrapped only in the thoughts of her own ailments, and sorrows, and woes, she received and she gave nothing of joy, nothing of hope, nothing of courage, nothing of value to those whom she passed or with whom she came in contact. but on the contrary she suggested to all and helped to intensify in many, those mental states all too prevalent in our common human life. and as she passed our friend one could notice a slight turn of the head which, coupled with the expression in her face, seemed to indicate this as her thought,--your dress and your conduct are not wholly in keeping with a lady of your years. thank god, then, thank god they are not. and may he in his great goodness and love send us an innumerable company of the same rare type; and may they live a thousand years to bless mankind, to impart the life-giving influences of their own royal lives to the numerous ones all about us who stand so much in need of them. would you remain always young, and would you carry all the joyousness and buoyancy of youth into your maturer years? then have care concerning but one thing,--how you live in your thought world. this will determine all. it was the inspired one, gautama, the buddha, who said,--"the mind is everything; what you think you become." and the same thing had ruskin in mind when he said,--"make yourself nests of pleasant thoughts. none of us as yet know, for none of us have been taught in early youth, what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought,--_proof against all adversity_." and would you have in your body all the elasticity, all the strength, all the beauty of your younger years? then live these in your mind, making no room for unclean thought, and you will externalize them in your body. in the degree that you keep young in thought will you remain young in body. and you will find that your body will in turn aid your mind, for body helps mind the same as mind builds body. you are continually building, and so externalizing in your body conditions most akin to the thoughts and emotions you entertain. and not only are you so building from within, but you are also continually drawing from without, forces of a kindred nature. your particular kind of thought connects you with a similar order of thought from without. if it is bright, hopeful, cheerful, you connect yourself with a current of thought of this nature. if it is sad, fearing, despondent, then this is the order of thought you connect yourself with. if the latter is the order of your thought, then perhaps unconsciously and by degrees you have been connecting yourself with it. you need to go back and pick up again a part of your child nature, with its careless and cheerful type of thought. "the minds of the group of children at play are unconsciously concentrated in drawing to their bodies a current of playful thought. place a child by itself, deprive it of its companions, and soon it will mope and become slow of movement. it is cut off from that peculiar thought current and is literally 'out of its element.' "you need to bring again this current of playful thought to you which has gradually been turned off. you are too serious or sad, or absorbed in the serious affairs of life. you can be playful and cheerful without being puerile or silly. you can carry on business all the better for being in the playful mood when your mind is off your business. there is nothing but ill resulting from the permanent mood of sadness and seriousness,--the mood which by many so long maintained makes it actually difficult for them to smile at all. "at eighteen or twenty you commenced growing out of the more playful tendency of early youth. you took hold of the more serious side of life. you went into some business. you became more or less involved in its cares, perplexities and responsibilities. or, as man or woman, you entered on some phase of life involving care or trouble. or you became absorbed in some game of business which, as you followed it, left no time for play. then as you associated with older people you absorbed their old ideas, their mechanical methods of thinking, their acceptance of errors without question or thought of question. in all this you opened your mind to a heavy, care-laden current of thought. into this you glided unconsciously. that thought is materialized in your blood and flesh. the seen of your body is a deposit or crystallization of the unseen element ever flowing to your body from your mind. years pass on and you find that your movements are stiff and cumbrous,--that you can with difficulty climb a tree, as at fourteen. your mind has all this time been sending to your body these heavy, inelastic elements, making your body what now it is. . . . "your change for the better must be gradual, and can only be accomplished by bringing the thought current of an all-round symmetrical strength to bear on it,--by demanding of the supreme power to be led in the best way, by diverting your mind from the many unhealthy thoughts which habitually have been flowing into it without your knowing it, to healthier ones. . . . "like the beast, the bodies of those of our race have in the past weakened and decayed. this will not always be. increase of spiritual knowledge will show the cause of such decay, and will show, also, how to take advantage of a law or force to build us up, renew ever the body and give it greater and greater strength, instead of blindly using that law or force, as has been done in the past, to weaken our bodies and finally destroy them." full, rich, and abounding health is the normal and the natural condition of life. anything else is an abnormal condition, and abnormal conditions as a rule come through perversions. god never created sickness, suffering, and disease; they are man's own creations. they come through his violating the laws under which he lives. so used are we to seeing them that we come gradually, if not to think of them as natural, then to look upon them as a matter of course. the time will come when the work of the physician will not be to treat and attempt to heal the body, but to heal the mind, which in turn will heal the body. in other words, the true physician will be a teacher; his work will be to keep people well, instead of attempting to make them well after sickness and disease comes on; and still beyond this there will come a time when each will be his own physician. in the degree that we live in harmony with the higher laws of our being, and so, in the degree that we become better acquainted with the powers of the mind and spirit, will we give less attention to the body,--no less _care_, but less _attention_. the bodies of thousands today would be much better cared for if their owners gave them less thought and attention. as a rule, those who think least of their bodies enjoy the best health. many are kept in continual ill health by the abnormal thought and attention they give them. give the body the nourishment, the exercise, the fresh air, the sunlight it requires, keep it clean, and then think of it as little as possible. in your thoughts and in your conversation never dwell upon the negative side. don't talk of sickness and disease. by talking of these you do yourself harm and you do harm to those who listen to you. talk of those things that will make people the better for listening to you. thus you will infect them with health and strength and not with weakness and disease. to dwell upon the negative side is always destructive. this is true of the body the same as it is true of all other things. the following from one whose thorough training as a physician has been supplemented by extensive study and observations along the lines of the powers of the interior forces, are of special significance and value in this connection: "we can never gain health by contemplating disease, any more than we can reach perfection by dwelling upon imperfection, or harmony through discord. we should keep a high ideal of health and harmony constantly before the mind. . . . "never affirm or repeat about your health what you do not wish to be true. do not dwell upon your ailments, nor study your symptoms. never allow yourself to be convinced that you are not complete master of yourself. stoutly affirm your superiority over bodily ills, and do not acknowledge yourself the slave of any inferior power. . . . i would teach children early to build a strong barrier between themselves and disease, by healthy habits of thought, high thinking, and purity of life. i would teach them to expel all thoughts of death, all images of disease, all discordant emotions, like hatred, malice, revenge, envy, and sensuality, as they would banish a temptation to do evil. i would teach them that bad food, bad drink, or bad air makes bad blood; that bad blood makes bad tissue, and bad flesh bad morals. i would teach them that healthy thoughts are as essential to healthy bodies as pure thoughts to a clean life. i would teach them to cultivate a strong will power, and to brace themselves against life's enemies in every possible way. i would teach the sick to have hope, confidence, cheer. our thoughts and imaginations are the only real limits to our possibilities. no man's success or health will ever reach beyond his own confidence; as a rule, we erect our own barriers. "like produces like the universe through. hatred, envy, malice, jealousy, and revenge all have children. every bad thought breeds others, and each of these goes on and on, ever reproducing itself, until our world is peopled with their offspring. the true physician and parent of the future will not medicate the body with drugs so much as the mind with principles. the coming mother will teach her child to assuage the fever of anger, hatred, malice, with the great panacea of the world,--love. the coming physician will teach the people to cultivate cheerfulness, good-will, and noble deeds for a health tonic as well as a heart tonic; and that a merry heart doeth good like a medicine." the health of your body, the same as the health and strength of your mind, depends upon what you relate yourself with. this infinite spirit of life, this source of all life, can from its very nature, we have found, admit of no weakness, no disease. come then into the full, conscious, vital realization of your oneness with this infinite life, open yourself to its more abundant entrance, and full and ever-renewing bodily health and strength will be yours. "and good may ever conquer ill, health walk where pain has trod; 'as a man thinketh, so is he,' rise, then, and think with god." the whole matter may then be summed up in the one sentence, "god is well and so are you." you must awaken to the knowledge of your _real being_. when this awakening comes, you will have, and you will see that you have, the power to determine what conditions are externalized in your body. you must recognize, you must realize yourself as one with infinite spirit. god's will is then your will; your will is god's will, and "with god all things are possible." when we are able to do away with all sense of separateness by living continually in the realization of this oneness, not only will our bodily ills and weaknesses vanish, but all limitations along all lines. then "delight thyself in the lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart." then will you feel like crying all the day long, "the lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, i have a goodly heritage." drop out of mind your belief in good things and good events coming to you in the future. come _now_ into the real life, and coming, appropriate and actualize them _now_. remember that only the best is good enough for one with a heritage so royal as yours. "we buy ashes for bread; we buy diluted wine; give me the true,-- whose ample leaves and tendrils curled among the silver hills of heaven, draw everlasting dew." the secret, power, and effects of love. this is the spirit of infinite love. the moment we recognize ourselves as one with it we become so filled with love that we see only the good in all. and when we realize that we are all one with this infinite spirit, then we realize that in a sense we are all one with each other. when we come into a recognition of this fact, we can then do no harm to any one, to any thing. we find that we are all members of the one great body, and that no portion of the body can be harmed without all the other portions suffering thereby. when we fully realize the great fact of the oneness of all life,--that all are partakers from this one infinite source, and so that the same life is the life in each individual, then prejudices go and hatreds cease. love grows and reigns supreme. then, wherever we go, whenever we come in contact with the fellow-man, we are able to recognize the god within. we thus look only for the good, and we find it. it always pays. there is a deep scientific fact underlying the great truth, "he that takes the sword shall perish by the sword." the moment we come into a realization of the subtle powers of the thought forces, we can quickly see that the moment we entertain any thoughts of hatred toward another, he gets the effects of these diabolical forces that go out from us, and has the same thoughts of hatred aroused in him, which in turn return to the sender. then when we understand the effects of the passion, hatred or anger, even upon the physical body, we can see how detrimental, how expensive this is. the same is true in regard to all kindred thoughts or passions, envy, criticism, jealousy, scorn. in the ultimate we shall find that in entertaining feelings of this nature toward another, we always suffer far more than the one toward whom we entertain them. and then when we fully realize the fact that selfishness is at the root of all error, sin, and crime, and that ignorance is the basis of all selfishness, with what charity we come to look upon the acts of all. it is the ignorant man who seeks his own ends at the expense of the greater whole. it is the ignorant man, therefore, who is the selfish man. the truly wise man is never selfish. he is a seer, and recognizes the fact that he, a single member of the one great body, is benefited in just the degree that the entire body is benefited, and so he seeks nothing for himself that he would not equally seek for all mankind. if selfishness is at the bottom of all error, sin, and crime, and ignorance is the basis of all selfishness, then when we see a manifestation of either of these qualities, if we are true to the highest within us, we will look for and will seek to call forth the good in each individual with whom we come in contact. when god speaks to god, then god responds, and shows forth as god. but when devil speaks to devil, then devil responds, and the devil is always to pay. i sometimes hear a person say, "i don't see any good in him." no? then you are no seer. look deeper and you will find the very god in every human soul. but remember it takes a god to recognize a god. christ always spoke to the highest, the truest, and the best in men. he knew and he recognized the god in each because he had first realized it in himself. he ate with publicans and sinners. abominable, the scribes and pharisees said. they were so wrapped up in their own conceits, their own self-centredness, hence their own ignorance, that they had never found the god in themselves, and so they never dreamed that it was the real life of even publicans and sinners. in the degree that we hold a person in the thought of evil or of error, do we suggest evil and error to him. in the degree that he is sensitively organized, or not well individualized, and so, subject to the suggestions of the thought forces from others, will he be influenced; and so in this way we may be sharers in the very evil-doing in which we hold another in thought. in the same way when we hold a person in the thought of the right, the good, and the true, righteousness, goodness, and truth are suggested to him, and thus we have a most beneficent influence on his life and conduct. if our hearts go out in love to all with whom we come in contact, we inspire love, and the same ennobling and warming influences of love always return to us from those in whom we inspire them. there is a deep scientific principle underlying the precept--if you would have all the world love you, you must first love all the world. in the degree that we love will we be loved. thoughts are forces. each creates of its kind. each comes back laden with the effect that corresponds to itself and of which it is the cause. "then let your secret thoughts be fair-- they have a vital part, and share in shaping words and moulding fate; god's system is so intricate." i know of no better practice than that of a friend who continually holds himself in an attitude of mind that he continually sends out his love in the form of the thought,--"dear everybody, i love you." and when we realize the fact that a thought invariably produces its effect before it returns, or before it ceases, we can see how he is continually breathing out a blessing not only upon all with whom he comes in contact, but upon all the world. these same thoughts of love, moreover, tokened in various ways, are continually coming to him from all quarters. even animals feel the effects of these forces. some animals are much more sensitively organized than many people are, and consequently they get the effects of our thoughts, our mental states, and emotions much more readily than many people do. therefore whenever we meet an animal we can do it good by sending out to it these thoughts of love. it will feel the effects whether we simply entertain or whether we voice them. and it is often interesting to note how quickly it responds, and how readily it gives evidence of its appreciation of this love and consideration on our part. what a privilege and how enjoyable it would be to live and walk in a world where we meet only gods. in such a world you can live. in such a world i can live. for in the degree that we come into this higher realization do we see only the god in each human soul; and when we are thus able to see him in every one we meet, we then live in such a world. and when we thus recognize the god in every one, we by this recognition help to call it forth ever more and more. what a privilege,--this privilege of yours, this privilege of mine! that hypocritical judging of another is something then with which we can have nothing to do; for we have the power of looking beyond the evolving, changing, error-making self, and seeing the real, the changeless, the eternal self which by and by will show forth in the full beauty of holiness. we are then large enough also to realize the fact that when we condemn another, by that very act we condemn ourselves. this realization so fills us with love that we continually overflow it, and all with whom we come in contact feel its warming and life-giving power. these in turn send back the same feelings of love to us, and so we continually attract love from all quarters. tell me how much one loves and i will tell you how much he has seen of god. tell me how much he loves and i will tell you how much he lives with god. tell me how much he loves and i will tell you how far into the kingdom of heaven,--the kingdom of harmony, he has entered, for "love is the fulfilling of the law." and in a sense love is everything. it is the key to life, and its influences are those that move the world. live only in the thought of love for all and you will draw love to you from all. live in the thought of malice or hatred, and malice and hatred will come back to you. "for evil poisons; malice shafts like boomerangs return, inflicting wounds that will not heal while rage and anger burn." every thought you entertain is a force that goes out, and every thought comes back laden with its kind. this is an immutable law. every thought you entertain has moreover a direct effect upon your body. love and its kindred emotions are the normal and the natural, those in accordance with the eternal order of the universe, for "god is love." these have a life-giving, health-engendering influence upon your body, besides beautifying your countenance, enriching your voice, and making you ever more attractive in every way. and as it is true that in the degree that you hold thoughts of love for all, you call the same from them in return, and as these have a direct effect upon your mind, and through your mind upon your body, it is as so much life force added to your own from without. you are then continually building this into both your mental and your physical life, and so your life is enriched by its influence. hatred and all its kindred emotions are the unnatural, the abnormal, the perversions, and so, out of harmony with the eternal order of the universe. for if love is the fulfilling of the law, then these, its opposites, are direct violations of law, and there can never be a violation of law without its attendant pain and suffering in one form or another. there is no escape from this. and what is the result of this particular form of violation? when you allow thoughts of anger, hatred, malice, jealousy, envy, criticism, or scorn to exercise sway, they have a corroding and poisoning effect upon the organism; they pull it down, and if allowed to continue will eventually tear it to pieces by externalizing themselves in the particular forms of disease they give rise to. and then in addition to the destructive influences from your own mind you are continually calling the same influences from other minds, and these come as destructive forces augmenting your own, thus aiding in the tearing down process. and so love inspires love; hatred breeds hatred. love and good will stimulate and build up the body; hatred and malice corrode and tear it down. love is a savor of life unto life; hatred is a savor of death unto death. "there are loyal hearts, there are spirits brave, there are souls that are pure and true; then give to the world the best you have, and the best will come back to you. "give love, and love to _your_ heart will flow, a strength in your utmost need; have faith, and a score of hearts will show their faith in _your_ word and deed." i hear it said,--how in regard to one who bears me hatred, towards whom i have entertained no such thoughts and feelings, and so have not been the cause of his becoming my enemy? this may be true, but the chances are that you will have but few enemies if there is nothing of an antagonistic nature in your own mind and heart. be sure there is nothing of this nature. but if hatred should come from another without apparent cause on your part, then meet it from first to last with thoughts of love and good-will. in this way you can, so to speak, so neutralize its effects that it cannot reach you and so cannot harm you. love is positive, and stronger than hatred. hatred can always be conquered by love. on the other hand, if you meet hatred with hatred, you simply intensify it. you add fuel to the flame already kindled, upon which it will feed and grow, and so you increase and intensify the evil conditions. nothing is to be gained by it, everything is to be lost. by sending love for hatred you will be able so to neutralize it that it will not only have no effect upon you, but will not be able even to reach you. but more than this, you will by this course sooner or later be able literally to transmute the enemy into the friend. meet hatred with hatred and you degrade yourself. meet hatred with love and you elevate not only yourself but also the one who bears you hatred. the persian sage has said, "always meet petulance with gentleness, and perverseness with kindness. a gentle hand can lead even an elephant by a hair. reply to thine enemy with gentleness. opposition to peace is sin." the buddhist says, "if a man foolishly does me wrong i will return him the protection of my ungrudging love. the more evil comes from him the more good shall go from me." "the wise man avenges injuries by benefits," says the chinese. "return good for evil, overcome anger by love; hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love," says the hindu. the truly wise man or woman will recognize no one as an enemy. occasionally we hear the expression, "never mind; i'll get even with him." will you? and how will you do it? you can do it in one of two ways. you can, as you have in mind, deal with him as he deals, or apparently deals, with you,--pay him, as we say, in his own coin. if you do this you will get even with him by sinking yourself to his level, and both of you will suffer by it. or, you can show yourself the larger, you can send him love for hatred, kindness for ill-treatment, and so get even with him by raising him to the higher level. but remember that you can never help another without by that very act helping yourself; and if forgetful of self, then in most all cases the value to you is greater than the service you render another. if you are ready to treat him as he treats you, then you show clearly that there is in you that which draws the hatred and ill-treatment to you; you deserve what you are getting and should not complain, nor would you complain if you were wise. by following the other course you most effectually accomplish your purpose,--you gain a victory for yourself, and at the same time you do a great service for him, for which it is evident he stands greatly in need. thus you may become his saviour. he in turn may become the saviour of other error-making, and consequently care-encumbered men and women. many times the struggles are greater than we can ever know. we need more gentleness and sympathy and compassion in our common human life. then we will neither blame nor condemn. instead of blaming or condemning we will sympathize, and all the more we will "comfort one another, for the way is often dreary, and the feet are often weary, and the heart is very sad. there is a heavy burden bearing, when it seems that none are caring, and we half forget that ever we were glad "comfort one another with the hand-clasp close and tender, with the sweetness love can render, and the looks of friendly eyes. do not wait with grace unspoken, while life's daily bread is broken-- gentle speech is oft like manna from the skies." when we come fully to realize the great fact that all evil and error and sin with all their consequent sufferings come through ignorance, then wherever we see a manifestation of these in whatever form, if our hearts are right, we will have compassion, sympathy and compassion for the one in whom we see them. compassion will then change itself into love, and love will manifest itself in kindly service. such is the divine method. and so instead of aiding in trampling and keeping a weaker one down, we will hold him up until he can stand alone and become the master. but all life-growth is from within out, and one becomes a true master in the degree that the knowledge of the divinity of his own nature dawns upon his inner consciousness and so brings him to a knowledge of the higher laws; and in no way can we so effectually hasten this dawning in the inner consciousness of another, as by showing forth the divinity within ourselves simply by the way we live. by example and not by precept. by living, not by preaching. by doing, not by professing. by living the life, not by dogmatizing as to how it should be lived. there is no contagion equal to the contagion of life. whatever we sow, that shall we also reap, and each thing sown produces of its kind. we can kill not only by doing another bodily injury directly, but we can and we do kill by every antagonistic thought. not only do we thus kill, but while we kill we suicide. many a man has been made sick by having the ill thoughts of a number of people centred upon him; some have been actually killed. put hatred into the world and we make it a literal hell. put love into the world and heaven with all its beauties and glories becomes a reality. not to love is not to live, or it is to live a living death. the life that goes out in love to all is the life that is full, and rich, and continually expanding in beauty and in power. such is the life that becomes ever more inclusive, and hence larger in its scope and influence. the larger the man and the woman, the more inclusive they are in their love and their friendships. the smaller the man and the woman, the more dwarfed and dwindling their natures, the more they pride themselves upon their "exclusiveness." any one--a fool or an idiot--can be exclusive. it comes easy. it takes and it signifies a large nature to be universal, to be inclusive. only the man or the woman of a small, personal, self-centred, self-seeking nature is exclusive. the man or the woman of a large, royal, unself-centred nature never is. the small nature is the one that continually strives for effect. the larger nature never does. the one goes here and there in order to gain recognition, in order to attach himself to the world. the other stays at home and draws the world _to him_. the one loves merely himself. the other loves all the world; but in his larger love for all the world he finds himself included. verily, then, the more one loves the nearer he approaches to god, for god is the spirit of infinite love. and when we come into the realization of our oneness with this infinite spirit, then divine love so fills us that, enriching and enrapturing our own lives, from them it flows out to enrich the life of all the world. in coming into the realization of our oneness with the infinite life, we are brought at once into right relations with our fellowmen. we are brought into harmony with the great law, that we find our own lives in losing them in the service of others. we are brought to a knowledge of the fact that all life is one, and so that we are all parts of the one great whole. we then realize that we can't do for another without at the same time doing for ourselves. we also realize that we cannot do harm to another without by that very act doing harm to ourselves. we realize that the man who lives to himself alone lives a little, dwarfed, and stunted life, because he has no part in this larger life of humanity. but the one who in service loses his own life in this larger life, has his own life increased and enriched a thousand or a million fold, and every joy, every happiness, everything of value coming to each member of this greater whole comes as such to him, for he has a part in the life of each and all. and here let a word be said in regard to true service. peter and john were one day going up to the temple, and as they were entering the gate they were met by a poor cripple who asked them for alms. instead of giving him something to supply the day's needs and then leaving him in the same dependent condition for the morrow and the morrow, peter did him a real service, and a real service for all mankind by saying, silver and gold have i none, but such as i have i give unto thee. _and then he made him whole_. he thus brought him into the condition where he could help himself. in other words, the greatest service we can do for another is to help him to help himself. to help him directly might be weakening, though not necessarily. it depends entirely upon circumstances. but to help one to help himself is never weakening, but always encouraging and strengthening, because it leads him to a larger and stronger life. there is no better way to help one to help himself than to bring him to a knowledge of himself. there is no better way to bring one to a knowledge of himself than to lead him to a knowledge of the powers that are lying dormant within his own soul. there is nothing that will enable him to come more readily or more completely into an awakened knowledge of the powers that are lying dormant within his own soul, than to bring him into the conscious, vital realization of his oneness with the infinite life and power, so that he may open himself to it in order that it may work and manifest through him. we will find that these same great truths lie at the very bottom of the solution of our social situation; and we will also find that we will never have a full and permanent solution of it until they are fully recognized and built upon. wisdom and interior illumination. this is the spirit of infinite wisdom, and in the degree that we open ourselves to it does the highest wisdom manifest itself to and through us. we can in this way go to the very heart of the universe itself and find the mysteries hidden to the majority of mankind,--hidden to them, though not hidden of themselves. in order for the highest wisdom and insight we must have absolute confidence in the divine guiding us, but not through the channel of some one else. and why should we go to another for knowledge and wisdom? with god is no respect of persons. why should we seek these things second hand? why should we thus stultify our own innate powers? why should we not go direct to the infinite source itself? "if any man lack wisdom let him ask of god." "before they call i will answer, and while they are yet speaking, i will hear." when we thus go directly to the infinite source itself we are no longer slaves to personalities, institutions, or books. we should always keep ourselves open to suggestions of truth from these agencies. we should always regard them as agencies, however, and never as sources. we should never recognize them as masters, but simply as teachers. with browning, we must recognize the great fact that-- "truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise from outward things, whate'er you may believe. there is an inmost centre in us all, where truth abides in fullness." there is no more important injunction in all the world, nor one with a deeper interior meaning, than "to thine own self be true." in other words, be true to your own soul, for it is through your own soul that the voice of god speaks to you. this is the interior guide. this is the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. this is conscience. this is intuition. this is the voice of the higher self, the voice of the soul, the voice of god. "thou shalt hear a voice behind thee, saying: this is the way, walk ye in it." when moses was on the mountain it was after the various physical commotions and manifestations that he heard the "still, small voice," the voice of his own soul, through which the infinite god was speaking. if we will but follow this voice of intuition, it will speak ever more clearly and more plainly, until by and by it will be absolute and unerring in its guidance. the great trouble with us is that we do not listen to and do not follow this voice within our own souls, and so we become as a house divided against itself. we are pulled this way and that, and we are never _certain_ of anything. i have a friend who listens so carefully to this inner voice, who, in other words, always acts so quickly and so fully in accordance with his intuitions, and whose life as a consequence is so absolutely guided by them, that he always does the right thing at the right time and in the right way. he always knows when to act and how to act, and he is never in the condition of a house divided against itself. but some one says, "may it not be dangerous for us to act always upon our intuitions? suppose we should have an intuition to do harm to some one?" we need not be afraid of this, however, for the voice of the soul, this voice of god speaking through the soul, will never direct one to do harm to another, nor to do anything that is not in accordance with the highest standards of right, and truth, and justice. and if you at any time have a prompting of this kind, know that it is not the voice of intuition; it is some characteristic of your lower self that is prompting you. reason is not to be set aside, but it is to be continually illumined by this higher spiritual perception, and in the degree that it is thus illumined will it become an agent of light and power. when one becomes thoroughly individualized he enters into the realm of all knowledge and wisdom; and to be individualized is to recognize no power outside of the infinite power that is back of all. when one recognizes this great fact and opens himself to this spirit of infinite wisdom, he then enters upon the road to the true education, and mysteries that before were closed now reveal themselves to him. this must indeed be the foundation of all true education, this evolving from within, this evolving of what has been involved by the infinite power. all things that it is valuable for us to know will come to us if we will but open ourselves to the voice of this infinite spirit. it is thus that we become seers and have the power of seeing into the very heart of things. there are no new stars, there are no new laws or forces, but we can so open ourselves to this spirit of infinite wisdom that we can discover and recognize those that have not been known before; and in this way they become new to us. when in this way we come into a knowledge of truth we no longer need facts that are continually changing. we can then enter into the quiet of our own interior selves. we can open the window and look out, and thus gather the facts as we choose. this is true wisdom. "wisdom is the knowledge of god." wisdom comes by intuition. it far transcends knowledge. great knowledge, knowledge of many things, may be had by virtue simply of a very retentive memory. it comes by tuition. but wisdom far transcends knowledge, in that knowledge is a mere incident of this deeper wisdom. he who would enter into the realm of wisdom must first divest himself of all intellectual pride. he must become as a little child. prejudices, preconceived opinions and beliefs always stand in the way of true wisdom. conceited opinions are always suicidal in their influences. they bar the door to the entrance of truth. all about us we see men in the religious world, in the world of science, in the political, in the social world, who through intellectual pride are so wrapped in their own conceits and prejudices that larger and later revelations of truth can find no entrance to them; and instead of growing and expanding, they are becoming dwarfed and stunted, and still more incapable of receiving truth. instead of actively aiding in the progress of the world, they are as so many dead sticks in the way that would retard the wheels of progress. this, however, they can never do. such always in time get bruised, broken, and left behind, while god's triumphal car of truth moves steadily onward. when the steam engine was still being experimented with, and before it was perfected sufficiently to come into practical use, a well-known englishman--well known then in scientific circles--wrote an extended pamphlet proving that it would be impossible for it ever to be used in ocean navigation, that is, in a trip involving the crossing of the ocean, because it would be utterly impossible for any vessel to carry with it sufficient coal for the use of its furnace. and the interesting feature of the whole matter was that the very first steam vessel that made the trip from england to america, had among its cargo a part of the first edition of this carefully prepared pamphlet. there was only the one edition. many editions might be sold now. this seems indeed an amusing fact; but far more amusing is the man who voluntarily closes himself to truth because, forsooth, it does not come through conventional, or orthodox, or heretofore accepted channels; or because it may not be in full accord with, or possibly may be opposed to, established usages or beliefs. on the contrary-- "let there be many windows in your soul, that all the glory of the universe may beautify it. not the narrow pane of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays that shine from countless sources. tear away the blinds of superstition: let the light pour through fair windows, broad as truth itself and high as heaven. . . . tune your ear to all the worldless music of the stars and to the voice of nature, and your heart shall turn to truth and goodness as the plant turns to the sun. a thousand unseen hands reach down to help you to their peace-crowned heights, and all the forces of the firmament shall fortify your strength. be not afraid to thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole." there is a great law in connection with the coming of truth. it is this: whenever a man or a woman shuts himself or herself to the entrance of truth on account of intellectual pride, preconceived opinions, prejudices, or for whatever reason, there is a great law which says that truth _in its fullness_ will come to that one from no source. and on the other hand, when a man or a woman opens himself or herself fully to the entrance of truth from _whatever_ source it may come, there is an equally great law which says that truth will flow in to him or to her from all sources, from all quarters. such becomes the free man, the free woman, for it is the truth that makes us free. the other remains in bondage, for truth has had no invitation and will not enter where it is not fully and freely welcomed. and where truth is denied entrance the rich blessings it carries with it cannot take up their abode. on the contrary, when this is the case, it sends an envoy carrying with it atrophy, disease, death, physically and spiritually as well as intellectually. and the man who would rob another of his free and unfettered search for truth, who would stand as the interpreter of truth for another, with the intent of remaining in this position, rather than endeavoring to lead him to the place where he can be his own interpreter, is more to be shunned than a thief and a robber. the injury he works is far greater, for he is doing direct and positive injury to the very life of the one he thus holds. who has ever appointed any man, whoever he may be, as the keeper, the custodian, the dispenser of god's illimitable truth? many indeed are moved and so are called to be teachers of truth; but the true teacher will never stand as the interpreter of truth for another. the _true teacher_ is the one whose endeavor is to bring the one he teaches to a true knowledge of himself and hence of his own interior powers, that he may become his own interpreter. all others are, generally speaking, those animated by purely personal motives, self-aggrandizement, or personal gain. moreover, he who would claim to have all truth and the only truth, is a bigot, a fool, or a knave. in the eastern literature is a fable of a frog. the frog lived in a well, and out of his little well he had never been. one day a frog whose home was in the sea came to his well. interested in all things, he went in. "who are you? where do you live?" said the frog in the well. "i am so and so, and my home is in the sea." "the sea? what is that? where is that?" "it is a very large body of water, and not far away." "how big is your sea?" "oh, very big." "as big as this?" pointing to a little stone lying near. "oh, much bigger." "as big as this?" pointing to the board upon which they were sitting. "oh, much bigger." "how much bigger, then?" "why, the sea in which i live is bigger than your entire well; it would make millions of wells such as yours." "nonsense, nonsense; you are a deceiver and a falsifier. get out of my well. get out of my well. i want nothing to do with any such frogs as you." "ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free," is the promise. ye shall close yourselves to truth, ye shall live in your own conceits, and your own conceits shall make fools and idiots of you, would be a statement applicable to not a few, and to not a few who pride themselves upon their superior intellectual attainments. idiocy is arrested mental growth. closing one's self for whatever reason to truth and hence to growth, brings a certain type of idiocy, though it may not be called by this name. and on the other hand, another type is that arrested growth caused by taking all things for granted, without proving them for one's self, merely because they come from a particular person, a particular book, a particular institution. this is caused by one's always looking without instead of being true to the light within, and carefully tending it that it may give an ever-clearer light. with brave and intrepid walt whitman, we should all be able to say-- "from this hour i ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, going where i list, my own master total and absolute, listening to others, considering well what they say, pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, gently, but with undeniable will divesting myself of the holds that would hold me." great should be the joy that god's boundless truth is open to all, open _equally_ to all, and that it will make each one its dwelling place in proportion as he earnestly desires it and opens himself to it. and in regard to the wisdom that guides us in our daily life, there is nothing that it is right and well for us to know that may not be known when we recognize the law of its coming, and are able wisely to use it. let us know that all things are ours as soon as we know how to appropriate them. "i hold it as a changeless law, from which no soul can sway or swerve, we have that in us which will draw whate'er we need or most deserve." if the times come when we know not what course to pursue, when we know not which way to turn, the fault lies in ourselves. if the fault lies in ourselves then the correction of this unnatural condition lies also in ourselves. it is never necessary to come into such a state if we are awake and remain awake to the light and the powers within us. the light is ever shining, and the only thing that it is necessary for us diligently to see to is that we permit neither this thing nor that to come between us and the light. "with thee is the fountain of life; in thy light shall we see light." let us hear the words of one of the most highly illumined men i have ever known, and one who as a consequence is never in the dark, when the time comes, as to what to do and how to do it. "whenever you are in doubt as to the course you should pursue, after you have turned to every outward means of guidance, _let the inward eye see, let the inward ear hear_, and allow this simple, natural, beautiful process to go on unimpeded by questionings or doubts. . . . in all dark hours and times of unwonted perplexity we need to follow one simple direction, found, as all needed directions can be found, in the dear old gospel, which so many read, but alas, _so few interpret_. 'enter into thine inner chamber and shut the door.' does this mean that we must literally betake ourselves to a private closet with a key in the door? if it did, then the command could never be obeyed in the open air, on land or sea, and the christ loved the lakes and the forests far better than the cramping rooms of city dwelling houses; still his counsels are so wide-reaching that there is no spot on earth and no conceivable situation in which any of us may be placed where we cannot follow them. "one of the most intuitive men we ever met had a desk in a city office where several other gentlemen were doing business constantly and often talking loudly. entirely undisturbed by the many various sounds about him, this self-centred, faithful man would, in any moment of perplexity, draw the curtains of privacy so completely about him that he would be as fully enclosed in his own psychic aura, and thereby as effectually removed from all distractions as though he were alone in some primeval wood. taking his difficulty with him into the mystic silence in the form of a direct question, to which he expected a certain answer, he would remain utterly passive until the reply came, and never once through many years' experience did he find himself disappointed or misled. intuitive perceptions of truth are the daily bread to satisfy our daily hunger; they come like the manna in the desert day by day; each day brings adequate supply for that day's need only. they must be followed instantly, for dalliance with them means their obscuration, and the more we dally the more we invite erroneous impressions to cover intuition with a pall of conflicting moral phantasy born of illusions of the terrence will. "one condition is imposed by _universal law_, and this we must obey. put all wishes aside save the one desire to know _truth_; couple with this one demand the fully consecrated determination to follow what is distinctly perceived as truth immediately it is revealed. no other affection must be permitted to share the field with this all-absorbing love of _truth_ for its own sake. obey this one direction and never forget that expectation and desire are bride and bridegroom and forever inseparable, and you will soon find your hitherto darkened way grow luminous with celestial radiance, for with the heaven within, all heavens without incessantly co-operate." this may be termed going into the "silence." this it is to perceive and to be guided by the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. this it is to listen to and be guided by the voice of your own soul, the voice of your higher self. the soul is divine and in allowing it to become translucent to the infinite spirit it reveals all things to us. as man turns away from the divine light do all things become hidden. there is nothing hidden of itself. when the spiritual sense is opened, then it transcends all the limitations of the physical senses and the intellect. and in the degree that we are able to get away from the limitations set by them, and realize that so far as the real life is concerned it is one with the infinite life, then we begin to reach the place where this voice will always speak, where it will never fail us, if we follow it, and as a consequence where we will always have the divine illumination and guidance. to know this and to live in this realization is not to live in heaven hereafter, but to live in heaven here and now, _today and every day_. no human soul need be without it. when we turn our face in the right direction it comes as simply and as naturally as the flower blooms and the winds blow. it is not to be bought with money or with price. it is a condition waiting simply to be realized, by rich and by poor, by king and by peasant, by master and by servant the world over. all are equal heirs to it. and so the peasant, if he find it first, lives a life far transcending in beauty and in real power the life of his king. the servant, if he find it first, lives a life surpassing the life of his master. if you would find the highest, the fullest, and the richest life that not only this world but that any world can know, then do away with the sense of the separateness of your life from the life of god. hold to the thought of your oneness. in the degree that you do this you will find yourself realizing it more and more, and as this life of realization is lived, you will find that no good thing will be withheld, for all things are included in this. then it will be yours, without fears or forebodings, simply to do today what your hands find to do, and so be ready for tomorrow, _when it comes_, knowing that tomorrow will bring tomorrow's supplies for the mental, the spiritual, and the physical life. remember, however, that tomorrow's supplies are not needed until tomorrow comes. if one is willing to trust himself _fully_ to the law, the law will never fail him. it is the half-hearted trusting to it that brings uncertain, and so, unsatisfactory results. nothing is firmer and surer than deity. it will never fail the one who throws himself wholly upon it. the secret of life then, is to live continually in this realization, whatever one may be doing, wherever one may be, by day and by night, both waking and sleeping. it can be lived in while we are sleeping no less than when we are awake. and here shall we consider a few facts in connection with sleep, in connection with receiving instruction and illumination while asleep? during the process of sleep it is merely the physical body that is at rest and in quiet; the soul life with all its activities goes right on. sleep is nature's provision for the recuperation of the body, for the rebuilding and hence the replacing of the waste that is continually going on during the waking hours. it is nature's great restorer. if sufficient sleep is not allowed the body, so that the rebuilding may equalize the wasting process, the body is gradually depleted and weakened, and any ailment or malady, when it is in this condition, is able to find a more ready entrance. it is for this reason that those who are subject to it will take a cold, as we term it, more readily when the body is tired or exhausted through loss of sleep than at most any other time. the body is in that condition where outside influences can have a more ready effect upon it, than when it is in its normal condition. and when they do have an effect they always go to the weaker portions first. our bodies are given us to serve far higher purposes than we ordinarily use them for. especially is this true in the numerous cases where the body is master of its owner. in the degree that we come into the realization of the higher powers of the mind and spirit, in that degree does the body, through their influence upon it, become less gross and heavy, finer in its texture and form. and then, because the mind finds a kingdom of enjoyment in itself, and in all the higher things it becomes related to, _excesses_ in eating and drinking, as well as all others, naturally and of their own accord fall away. there also falls away the desire for the heavier, grosser, less valuable kinds of food and drink, such as the flesh of animals, alcoholic drinks, and all things of the class that stimulate the body and the passions rather than build the body and the brain into a strong, clean, well-nourished, enduring, and fibrous condition. in the degree that the body thus becomes less gross and heavy, finer in its texture and form, is there less waste, and what there is is more easily replaced, so that it keeps in a more regular and even condition. when this is true, less sleep is actually required. and even the amount that is taken does more for a body of this finer type than it can do for one of the other nature. as the body in this way grows finer, in other words, as the process of its evolution is thus accelerated, it in turn helps the mind and the soul in the realization of ever higher perceptions, and thus body helps mind the same as mind builds body. it was undoubtedly this fact that browning had in mind when he said: "let us cry 'all good things are ours, nor soul helps flesh, more now, than flesh helps soul.'" sleep, then, is for the resting and the rebuilding of the body. the soul needs no rest, and while the body is at rest in sleep the soul life is active the same as when the body is in activity. there are some, having a deep insight into the soul's activities, who say that we travel when we sleep. some are able to recall and bring over into the conscious, waking life the scenes visited, the information gained, and the events that have transpired. most people are not able to do this and so much that might otherwise be gained is lost. they say, however, that it is in our power, in proportion as we understand the laws, to go where we will, and to bring over into the conscious, waking life all the experiences thus gained. be this, however, as it may, it certainly is true that while sleeping we have the power, in a perfectly normal and natural way, to get much of value by way of light, instruction, and growth that the majority of people now miss. if the soul life, that which relates us to infinite spirit, is always active, even while the body is at rest, why may not the mind so direct conditions as one falls asleep, that while the body is at rest, it may continually receive illumination from the soul and bring what it thus receives over into the conscious, waking life? this, indeed, can be done, and is done by some to great advantage; and many times the highest inspirations from the soul come in this way, as would seem most natural, since at this time all communications from the outer, material world no longer enter. i know those who do much work during sleep, the same as they get much light along desired lines. by charging the mind on going to sleep as to a particular time for waking, it is possible, as many of us know, to wake on the very minute. not infrequently we have examples of difficult problems, problems that defied solution during waking hours, being solved during sleep. a friend, a well-known journalist, had an extended newspaper article clearly and completely worked out for her in this way. she frequently calls this agency to her aid. she was notified by the managing editor one evening to have the article ready in the morning,--an article requiring more than ordinary care, and one in which quite a knowledge of facts was required. it was a matter in connection with which she knew scarcely anything, and all her efforts at finding information regarding it seemed to be of no avail. she set to work, but it seemed as if even her own powers defied her. failure seemed imminent. almost in desperation she decided to retire, and putting the matter into her mind in such a way that she would be able to receive the greatest amount of aid while asleep, she fell asleep and slept soundly until morning. when she awoke her work of the previous evening was the first thing that came into her mind. she lay quietly for a few minutes, and as she lay there, the article, completely written, seemed to stand before her mind. she ran through it, arose, and without dressing took her pen and transcribed it on to paper, literally acting simply as her own amanuensis. the mind acting intently along a particular line will continue so to act until some other object of thought carries it along another line. and since in sleep only the body is in quiet while the mind and soul are active, then the mind on being given a certain direction when one drops off to sleep, will take up the line along which it is directed, and can be made, in time, to bring over into consciousness the results of its activities. some will be able very soon to get results of this kind; for some it will take longer. quiet and continued effort will increase the faculty. then by virtue of the law of the drawing power of mind, since the mind is always active, we are drawing to us even while sleeping, influences from the realms kindred to those in which we in our thoughts are living before we fall asleep. in this way we can put ourselves into relation with what ever kinds of influence we choose and accordingly gain much during the process of sleep. in many ways the interior faculties are more open and receptive while we are in sleep than while we are awake. hence the necessity of exercising even greater care as to the nature of the thoughts that occupy the mind as we enter into sleep, for there can come to us only what we by our own order of thought attract. we have it entirely in our own hands. and for the same reason,--this greater degree of receptivity during this period,--we are able by understanding and using the law, to gain much of value more readily in this way than when the physical senses are fully open to the material world about us. many will find a practice somewhat after the following nature of value: when light or information is desired along any particular line, light or information you feel it is right and wise for you to have, as, for example, light in regard to an uncertain course of action, then as you retire, first bring your mind into the attitude of peace and good-will for all. you in this way bring yourself into an harmonious condition, and in turn attract to yourself these same peaceful conditions from without. then resting in this sense of peace, quietly and calmly send out your earnest desire for the needed light or information; cast out of your mind all fears or forebodings lest it come not, for "in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength." take the expectant attitude of mind, firmly believing and expecting that when you awake the desired results will be with you. then on awaking, before any thoughts or activities from the outside world come in to absorb the attention, remain for a little while receptive to the intuitions or the impressions that come. when they come, when they manifest themselves clearly, then act upon them without delay. in the degree that you do this, in that degree will the power of doing it ever more effectively grow. or, if for unselfish purposes you desire to grow and develop any of your faculties, or to increase the health and strength of your body, take a corresponding attitude of mind, the form of which will readily suggest itself in accordance with your particular needs or desires. in this way you will open yourself to, you will connect yourself with, and you will set into operation within yourself, the particular order of forces that will make for these results. don't be afraid to voice your desires. in this way you set into operation vibratory forces which go out and which make their impress felt somewhere, and which, arousing into activity or uniting with other forces, set about to actualize your desires. no good thing shall be withheld from him who lives in harmony with the higher laws and forces. there are no desires that shall not be satisfied to the one who knows and who wisely uses the powers with which he or she is endowed. your sleep will be more quiet, and peaceful, and refreshing, and so your power increased mentally, physically, and spiritually, simply by sending out as you fall asleep, thoughts of love and good-will, thoughts of peace and harmony for all. in this way you are connecting yourself with all the forces in the universe that make for peace and harmony. a friend who is known the world over through his work along humane lines, has told me that many times in the middle of the night he is awakened suddenly and there comes to his mind, as a flash of inspiration, a certain plan in connection with his work. and as he lays there quietly and opens himself to it, the methods for its successful carrying out all reveal themselves to him clearly. in this way many plans are entered upon and brought to a successful culmination that otherwise would never be thought of, plans that seem, indeed, marvelous to the world at large. he is a man with a sensitive organism, his life in thorough harmony with the higher laws, and given wholly and unreservedly to the work to which he has dedicated it. just how and from what source these inspirations come he does not fully know. possibly no one does, though each may have his theory. but this we do know, and it is all we need to know now, at least,--that to the one who lives in harmony with the higher laws of his being, and who opens himself to them, they come. visions and inspirations of the highest order will come in the degree that we make for them the right conditions. one who has studied deeply into the subject in hand has said: "to receive education spiritually while the body is resting in sleep is a perfectly normal and orderly experience, and would occur definitely and satisfactorily in the lives of all of us, if we paid more attention to internal and consequently less to external states with their supposed but unreal necessities. . . . our thoughts make us what we are here and hereafter, and our thoughts are often busier by night than by day, for when we are asleep to the exterior we can be wide awake to the interior world; and the unseen world is a substantial place, the conditions of which are entirely regulated by mental and moral attainments. when we are not deriving information through outward avenues of sensation, we are receiving instruction through interior channels of perception, and when this fact is understood for what it is worth, it will become a universal custom for persons to take to sleep with them the special subject on which they most earnestly desire particular instruction. the pharaoh type of person dreams, and so does his butler and baker; but the joseph type, which is that of the truly gifted seer, both dreams and interprets." but why had not pharaoh the power of interpreting his dreams? why was joseph the type of the "truly gifted seer?" why did he not only dream, but had also the power to interpret both his own dreams and the dreams of others? simply read the lives of the two. he who runs may read. in all true power it is, after all, living the life that tells. and in proportion as one lives the life does he not only attain to the highest power and joy for himself, but he also becomes of ever greater service to all the world. one need remain in no hell longer than he himself chooses to; and the moment he chooses not to remain longer, not all the powers in the universe can prevent his leaving it. one can rise to any heaven he himself chooses; and when he chooses so to rise, all the higher powers of the universe combine to help him heavenward. when one awakes from sleep and so returns to conscious life, he is in a peculiarly receptive and impressionable state. all relations with the material world have for a time been shut off, the mind is in a freer and more natural state, resembling somewhat a sensitive plate, where impressions can readily leave their traces. this is why many times the highest and truest impressions come to one in the early morning hours, before the activities of the day and their attendant distractions have exerted an influence. this is one reason why many people can do their best work in the early hours of the day. but this fact is also a most valuable one in connection with the moulding of every-day life. the mind is at this time as a clean sheet of paper. we can most valuably use this quiet, receptive, impressionable period by wisely directing the activities of the mind along the highest and most desirable paths, and thus, so to speak, set the pace for the day. each morning is a fresh beginning. we are, as it were, just beginning life. we have it _entirely_ in our own hands. and when the morning with its fresh beginning comes, all yesterdays should be yesterdays, with which we have nothing to do. sufficient is it to know that the way we lived our yesterday has determined for us our today. and, again, when the morning with its fresh beginning comes, all tomorrows should be tomorrows, with which we have nothing to do. sufficient to know that the way we live our today determines our tomorrow. "every day is a fresh beginning, every morn is the world made new; you who are weary of sorrow and sinning, here is a beautiful hope for you, a hope for me and a hope for you. "all the past things are past and over, the tasks are done, and the tears are shed. yesterday's errors let yesterday cover; yesterday's wounds, which smarted and bled, are healed with the healing which might has shed. * * * * * * "let them go, since we cannot relieve them, cannot undo and cannot atone. god in his mercy receive, forgive them! only the new days are our own. today is ours, and today alone. "here are the skies all burnished brightly; here is the spent earth all reborn; here are the tired limbs springing lightly to face the sun and to share with the morn in the chrism of dew and the cool of dawn. "every day is a fresh beginning, listen, my soul, to the glad refrain, and, spite of old sorrow and older sinning, and puzzles forecasted, and possible pain, take heart with the day and begin again." simply the first hour of this new day, with all its richness and glory, with all its sublime and eternity-determining possibilities, and each succeeding hour as it comes, but _not before_ it comes. this is the secret of character building. this simple method will bring any one to the realization of the highest life that can be even conceived of, and there is nothing in this connection that can be conceived of that cannot be realized somehow, somewhen, somewhere. this brings such a life within the possibilities of _all_, for there is _no one_, if really in earnest and if he really desires it, who cannot live to his highest for a single hour. but even though there should be, if he is _only earnest in his endeavor_, then, through the law that like builds like, he will be able to come a little nearer to it the next hour, and still nearer the next, and the next, until sooner or later comes the time when it becomes the natural, and any other would require the effort. in this way one becomes in love and in league with the highest and best in the universe, and as a consequence, the highest and best in the universe becomes in love and in league with him. they aid him at every turn; they seem literally to move all things his way, because forsooth, he has first moved their way. the realization of perfect peace. this is the spirit of infinite peace, and the moment we come into harmony with it there comes to us an inflowing tide of peace, for peace is harmony. a deep interior meaning underlies the great truth, "to be spiritually minded is life and peace." to recognize the fact that we are spirit, and to live in this thought, is to be spiritually minded, and so to be in harmony and peace. oh, the thousands of men and women all about us weary with care, troubled and ill at ease, running hither and thither to find peace, weary in body, soul, and mind; going to other countries, traveling the world over, coming back, and still not finding it. of course they have not found it and they never will find it in this way, because they are looking for it where it is not. they are looking for it without when they should look within. peace is to be found only within, and unless one find it there he will never find it at all. peace lies not in the external world. it lies within one's own soul. we may travel over many different avenues in pursuit of it, we may seek it through the channels of the bodily appetites and passions, we may seek it through all the channels of the external, we may chase for it hither and thither, but it will always be just beyond our grasp, because we are searching for it where it is not. in the degree, however, that we order the bodily appetites and passions in accordance with the promptings of the soul within will the higher forms of happiness and peace enter our lives; but in the degree that we fail in doing this will disease, suffering, and discontent enter in. to be at one with god is to be at peace. the child simplicity is the greatest agency in bringing this full and complete realization, the child simplicity that recognizes its true relations with the father's life. there are people i know who have come into such a conscious realization of their oneness with this infinite life, this spirit of infinite peace, that their lives are fairly bubbling over with joy. i have particularly in mind at this moment a comparatively young man who was an invalid for several years, his health completely broken with nervous exhaustion, who thought there was nothing in life worth living for, to whom everything and everybody presented a gloomy aspect, and he in turn presented a gloomy aspect to all with whom he came in contact. not long ago he came into such a vital realization of his oneness with this infinite power, he opened himself so completely to its divine inflow, that today he is in perfect health, and frequently as i meet him now he cannot resist the impulse to cry out, "oh, it is a joy to be alive." i know an officer on our police force who has told me that many times when off duty and on his way home in the evening, there comes to him such a vivid and vital realization of his oneness with this infinite power, and this spirit of infinite peace so takes hold of and so fills him, that it seems as if his feet could scarcely keep to the pavement, so buoyant and so exhilarated does he become by reason of this inflowing tide. he who comes into this higher realization never has any fear, for he has always with him a sense of protection, and the very realization of this makes his protection complete. of him it is true,--"no weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper;" "there shall no ill come nigh thy dwelling;" "thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee." these are the men and the women who seem to live charmed lives. the moment we fear anything we open the door for the entrance of the actualization of the very thing we fear. an animal will never harm a person who is absolutely fearless in regard to it. the instant he fears he opens himself to danger; and some animals, the dog for example, can instantly detect the element of fear, and this gives them the courage to do harm. in the degree that we come into a full realization of our oneness with this infinite power do we become calm and quiet, undisturbed by the little occurrences that before so vex and annoy us. we are no longer disappointed in people, for we always read them aright. we have the power of penetrating into their very souls and seeing the underlying motives that are at work there. a gentleman approached a friend the other day, and with great show of cordiality grasped him by the hand and said, "why, mr. ------, i am so glad to see you." quick as a flash my friend read him, and looking him steadily in the eye, replied, "no, you are mistaken, you are not glad to see me; but you are very much disconcerted, so much so that you are now blushing in evidence of it." the gentleman replied, "well, you know in this day and age of conventionality and form we have to put on the show and sometimes make believe what we do not really feel." my friend once more looked him in the face and said, "again you are mistaken. let me give you one little word of advice: you will always fare better and will think far more of yourself, always to recognize and to tell the truth rather than to give yourself to any semblance of it." as soon as we are able to read people aright we will then cease to be disappointed in them, we will cease to place them on pedestals, for this can never be done without some attendant disappointment. the fall will necessarily come, sooner or later, and moreover, we are thus many times unfair to our friends. when we come into harmony with this spirit of peace, evil reports and apparent bad treatment, either at the hands of friends or of enemies, will no longer disturb us. when we are conscious of the fact that in our life and our work we are true to that eternal principle of right, of truth, of justice that runs through all the universe, that unites and governs all, that always eventually prevails, then nothing of this kind can come nigh us, and come what may we will always be tranquil and undisturbed. the things that cause sorrow, and pain, and bereavement will not be able to take the hold of us they now take, for true wisdom will enable us to see the proper place and know the right relations of all things. the loss of friends by the transition we call death will not cause sorrow to the soul that has come into this higher realization, for he knows that there is no such thing as death, for each one is not only a partaker, but an eternal partaker, of this infinite life. he knows that the mere falling away of the physical body by no means affects the real soul life. with a tranquil spirit born of a higher faith he can realize for himself, and to those less strong he can say-- "loving friends! be wise and dry straightway every weeping eye; what you left upon the bier is not worth a single tear; 'tis a simple sea-shell, one out of which the pearl has gone. the shell was nothing, leave it there; the pearl--the soul--was all, is here." and so far as the element of separation is concerned, he realizes that to spirit there are no bounds, and that spiritual communion, whether between two persons in the body, or two persons, one in the body and one out of the body, is within the reach of all. in the degree that the higher spiritual life is realized can there be this higher spiritual communion. the things that we open ourselves to always come to us. people in the olden times expected to see angels and they saw them; but there is no more reason why they should have seen them than that we should see them now; no more reason why they should come and dwell with them than that they should come and dwell with us, for the great laws governing all things are the same today as they were then. if angels come not to minister unto us it is because we do not invite them, it is because we keep the door closed through which they otherwise might enter. in the degree that we are filled with this spirit of peace by thus opening ourselves to its inflow does it pour through us, so that we carry it with us wherever we go. in the degree that we thus open ourselves do we become magnets to attract peace from all sources; and in the degree that we attract and embody it in ourselves are we able to give it forth to others. we can in this way become such perfect embodiments of peace that wherever we go we are continually shedding benedictions. but a day or two ago i saw a woman grasp the hand of a man (his face showed the indwelling god), saying, "oh, it does me so much good to see you. i have been in anxiety and almost in despair during the past few hours, but the very sight of you has rolled the burden entirely away." there are people all around us who are continually giving out blessings and comfort, persons whose mere presence seems to change sorrow into joy, fear into courage, despair into hope, weakness into power. it is the one who has come into the realization of his own true self who carries this power with him and who radiates it wherever he goes,--the one who, as we say, has found his centre. and in all the great universe there is but one centre,--the infinite power that is working in and through all. the one who then has found his centre is the one who has come into the realization of his oneness with this infinite power, the one who recognizes himself as a spiritual being, for god is spirit. such is the man of power. centred in the infinite, he has thereby, so to speak, connected himself with, he has attached his belts to, the great power-house of the universe. he is constantly drawing power to himself from all sources. for, thus centred, knowing himself, conscious of his own power, the thoughts that go from his mind are thoughts of strength; and by virtue of the law that like attracts like, he by his thoughts is continually attracting to himself from all quarters the aid of all whose thoughts are thoughts of strength, and in this way he is linking himself with this order of thought in the universe. and so to him that hath, to him shall be given. this is simply the working of a natural law. his strong, positive, and hence constructive thought is continually working success for him along all lines, and continually bringing to him help from all directions. the things that he sees, that he creates in the ideal, are through the agency of this strong constructive thought continually clothing themselves, taking form, manifesting themselves in the material. silent, unseen forces are at work which will sooner or later be made manifest in the visible. fear and all thoughts of failure never suggest themselves to such a man; or if they do, they are immediately sent out of his mind, and so he is not influenced by this order of thought from without. he does not attract it to him. he is in another current of thought. consequently the weakening, failure-bringing thoughts of the fearing, the vacillating, the pessimistic about him, have no influence upon him. the one who is of the negative, fearing kind not only has his energies and his physical agents weakened, or even paralyzed through the influence of this kind of thought that is born within him, but he also in this way connects himself with this order of thought in the world about him. and in the degree that he does this does he become a victim to the weak, fearing, negative minds all around him. instead of growing in power, he increases in weakness. he is in the same order of thought with those of whom it is true,--and even that which they have shall be taken away from them. this again is simply the working of a natural law, the same as is its opposite. fearing lest i lose even what i have i hide it away in a napkin. very well. i must then pay the price of my "fearing lest i lose." thoughts of strength both build strength from within and attract it from without. thoughts of weakness actualize weakness from within and attract it from without. courage begets strength, fear begets weakness. and so courage begets success, fear begets failure. it is the man or the woman of faith, and hence of courage, who is the master of circumstances, and who makes his or her power felt in the world. it is the man or the woman who lacks faith and who as a consequence is weakened and crippled by fears and forebodings, who is the creature of all passing occurrences. within each one lies the cause of whatever comes to him. each has it in his own hands to determine what comes. everything in the visible, material world has its origin in the unseen, the spiritual, the thought world. this is the world of cause, the former is the world of effect. the nature of the effect is always in accordance with the nature of the cause. what one lives in his invisible, thought world, he is continually actualizing in his visible, material world. if he would have any conditions different in the latter he must make the necessary change in the former. a clear realization of this great fact would bring success to thousands of men and women who all about us are now in the depths of despair. it would bring health, abounding health and strength to thousands now diseased and suffering. it would bring peace and joy to thousands now unhappy and ill at ease. and oh, the thousands all about us who are continually living in the slavery of fear. the spirits within that should be strong and powerful, are rendered weak and impotent. their energies are crippled, their efforts are paralyzed. "fear is everywhere,--fear of want, fear of starvation, fear of public opinion, fear of private opinion, fear that what we own today may not be ours tomorrow, fear of sickness, fear of death. fear has become with millions a fixed habit. the thought is everywhere. the thought is thrown upon us from every direction. . . . to live in continual dread, continual cringing, continual fear of anything, be it loss of love, loss of money, loss of position or situation, is to take the readiest means to lose what we fear we shall." by fear nothing is to be gained, but on the contrary, everything is to be lost. "i know this is true," says one, "but i am given to fear; it's natural to me and i can't help it." can't help it! in saying this you indicate one great reason of your fear by showing that you do not even know yourself as yet. you must know yourself in order to know your powers, and not until you know them can you use them wisely and fully. don't say you can't help it. if you think you can't, the chances are that you can't. if you think you can, and act in accordance with this thought, then not only are the chances that you can, but if you act fully in accordance with it, that you can and that you will is an absolute certainty. it was virgil who in describing the crew which in his mind would win the race, said of them,--they can because they think they can. in other words, this very attitude of mind on their part will infuse a spiritual power into their bodies that will give them the strength and endurance which will enable them to win. then take the thought that you _can_; take it merely as a seed-thought, if need be, plant it in your consciousness, tend it, cultivate it, and it will gradually reach out and gather strength from all quarters. it will focus and make positive and active the spiritual force within you that is now scattered and of little avail. it will draw to itself force from without. it will draw to your aid the influence of other minds of its own nature, minds that are fearless, strong, courageous. you will thus draw to yourself and connect yourself with this order of thought. if earnest and faithful, the time will soon come when all fear will loose its hold; and instead of being an embodiment of weakness and a creature of circumstances, you will find yourself a tower of strength and a master of circumstances. we need more faith in every-day life,--faith in the power that works for good, faith in the infinite god, and hence faith in ourselves created in his image. and however things at times may seem to go, however dark at times appearances may be, the knowledge of the fact that "the supreme power has us in its charge as it has the suns and endless systems of worlds in space," will give us the supreme faith that all is well with us, the same as all is well with the world. "thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee." there is nothing firmer, and safer, and surer than deity. then, as we recognize the fact that we have it in our own hands to open ourselves ever more fully to this infinite power, and call upon it to manifest itself in and through us, we will find in ourselves an ever increasing sense of power. for in this way we are working in conjunction with it, and it in turn is working in conjunction with us. we are then led into the full realization of the fact that all things work together for good to those that love the good. then the fears and forebodings that have dominated us in the past will be transmuted into faith, and faith when rightly understood and rightly used is a force before which nothing can stand. materialism leads naturally to pessimism. and how could it do otherwise? a knowledge of the spiritual power working in and through us as well as in and through all things, a power that works for righteousness, leads to optimism. pessimism leads to weakness. optimism leads to power. the one who is centred in deity is the one who not only outrides every storm, but who through the faith, and so, the conscious power that is in him, faces storm with the same calmness and serenity that he faces fair weather; for he knows well beforehand what the outcome will be. he knows that underneath are the everlasting arms. he it is who realizes the truth of the injunction, "rest in the lord, wait patiently for him and he shall give thee thy heart's desire." all shall be given, simply given, to him who is ready to accept it. can anything be clearer than this? in the degree, then, that we work in conjunction with the supreme power do we need the less to concern ourselves about results. to live in the full realization of this fact and all that attends it brings peace, a full, rich, abiding peace,--a peace that makes the present complete, and that, going on before, brings back the assurance that as our days, so shall our strength be. the one who is thus centred, even in the face of all the unrest and the turmoil about us, can realize and say-- * * * * "i stay my haste, i make delays, for what avails this eager pace? i stand amid eternal ways, and what is mine shall know my face. "asleep, awake, by night or day, the friends i seek are seeking me; no wind can drive my bark astray, nor change the tide of destiny. * * * * "the waters know their own, and draw the brooks that spring in yonder height; so flows the good with equal law unto the soul of pure delight "the stars come nightly to the sky; the tidal wave unto the sea; nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high, can keep my own away from me." coming into fullness of power. this is the spirit of infinite power, and in the degree that we open ourselves to it does power become manifest in us. with god all things are possible,--that is, in conjunction with god all things are possible. the true secret of power lies in keeping one's connection with the god who worketh all things; and in the degree that we keep this connection are we able literally to rise above every conceivable limitation. why, then, waste time in running hither and thither to acquire power? why waste time with this practice or that practice? why not go directly to the mountain top itself, instead of wandering through the by-ways, in the valleys, and on the mountain sides? that man has absolute dominion, as taught in all the scriptures of the world, is true not of physical man, but of _spiritual man_. there are many animals, for example, larger and stronger, over which from a physical standpoint he would not have dominion, but he can gain supremacy over even these by calling into activity the higher mental, psychic, and spiritual forces with which he is endowed. whatever can't be done in the physical can be done in the spiritual. and in direct proportion as a man recognizes himself as spirit, and lives accordingly, is he able to transcend in power the man who recognizes himself merely as material. all the sacred literature of the world is teeming with examples of what we call miracles. they are not confined to any particular times or places. there is no age of miracles in distinction from any other period that may be an age of miracles. whatever has been done in the world's history can be done again through the operation of the same laws and forces. these miracles were performed not by those who were more than men, but by those who through the recognition of their oneness with god became god-men, so that the higher forces and powers worked through them. for what, let us ask, is a miracle? is it something supernatural? supernatural only in the sense of being above the natural, or rather, above that which is natural to man in his ordinary state. a miracle is nothing more nor less than this. one who has come into a knowledge of his true identity, of his oneness with the all-pervading wisdom and power, thus makes it possible for laws higher than the ordinary mind knows of to be revealed to him. these laws he makes use of; the people see the results, and by virtue of their own limitations, call them miracles and speak of the person who performs these apparently supernatural works as a supernatural being. but they as supernatural beings could themselves perform these supernatural works if they would open themselves to the recognition of the same laws, and consequently to the realization of the same possibilities and powers. and let us also remember that the supernatural of yesterday becomes, as in the process of evolution we advance from the lower to the higher, from the more material to the more spiritual, the common and the natural of today, and what seems to be the supernatural of today becomes in the same way the natural of tomorrow, and so on through the ages. yes, it is the god-man who does the things that appear supernatural, the man who by virtue of his realization of the higher powers transcends the majority and so stands out among them. but any power that is possible to one human soul is possible to another. the same laws operate in every life. we can be men and women of power or we can be men and women of impotence. the moment one vitally grasps the fact that he can rise he will rise, and he can have absolutely no limitations other than the limitations he sets to himself. cream always rises to the top. it rises simply because _it is the nature of cream to rise_. we hear much said of "environment." we need to realize that environment should never be allowed to make the man, but that man should always, _and always can_, condition the environment. when we realize this we will find that many times it is not necessary to take ourselves out of any particular environment, because we may yet have a work to do there; but by the very force we carry with us we can so affect and change matters that we will have an entirely new set of conditions in an old environment. the same is true in regard to "hereditary" traits and influences. we sometimes hear the question asked, "can they be overcome?" only the one who doesn't yet know himself can ask a question such as this. if we entertain and live in the belief that they cannot be overcome, then the chances are that they will always remain. the moment, however, that we come into a realization of our true selves, and so of the tremendous powers and forces within,--the powers and forces of the mind and spirit,--hereditary traits and influences that are harmful in nature will begin to lessen, and will disappear with a rapidity directly in proportion to the completeness of this realization. "there is no thing we cannot overcome; say not thy evil instinct is inherited, or that some trait inborn makes thy whole life forlorn, and calls down punishment that is not merited. "back of thy parents and grandparents lies the great eternal will! that too is thine inheritance,--strong, beautiful, divine, sure lever of success for one who tries. * * * * * * "there is no noble height thou canst not climb; all triumphs may be thine in time's futurity, if, whatso'er thy fault, thou dost not faint or halt; but lean upon the staff of god's security. "earth has no claim the soul cannot contest; know thyself part of the eternal source; naught can stand before thy spirit's force; the soul's divine inheritance is best." again there are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to others. do you want to be a power in the world? then be yourself. don't class yourself, don't allow yourself to be classed among the second-hand, among the _they-say_ people. be true to the highest within your own soul, and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded upon _principle_. those things that are founded upon principle will be observed by the right-minded, the right-hearted man or woman, in any case. don't surrender your individuality, which is your greatest agent of power, to the customs and conventionalities that have gotten their life from the great mass of those who haven't enough force to preserve their individualities,--those who in other words have given them over as ingredients to the "mush of concession" which one of our greatest writers has said characterizes our modern society. if you do surrender your individuality in this way, you simply aid in increasing the undesirable conditions; in payment for this you become a slave, and the chances are that in time you will be unable to hold even the respect of those whom you in this way try to please. if you preserve your individuality then you become a master, and if wise and discreet, your influence and power will be an aid in bringing about a higher, a better, and a more healthy set of conditions in the world. all people, moreover, will think more of you, will honor you more highly for doing this than if you show your weakness by contributing yourself to the same "mush of concession" that so many of them are contributing themselves to. with all classes of people you will then have an influence. "a great style of hero draws equally all classes, all extremes of society to him, till we say the very dogs believe in him." to be one's self is the only worthy, and by all means the only satisfactory, thing to be. "may it not be good policy," says one, "to be governed sometimes by one's surroundings?" what is good policy? to be yourself, first, last, and always. "this above all,--to thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." "when we appeal to the supreme and our life is governed by a principle, we are not governed either by fear of public opinion or loss of others' approbation, and we may be sure that the supreme will sustain us. if in any way we try to live to suit others we never shall suit them, and the more we try the more unreasonable and exacting do they become. the government of your life is a matter that lies entirely between god and yourself, and when your life is swayed and influenced from any other source you are on the wrong path." when we find the kingdom within and become centred in the infinite, then we become a law unto ourselves. when we become a law unto ourselves, then we are able to bring others to a knowledge of laws higher than they are governed or many times even enslaved by. when we have found this centre, then that beautiful simplicity, at once the charm and the power of a truly great personality, enters into our lives. then all striving for effect,--that sure indicator of weakness and a lack of genuine power,--is absent. this striving for effect that is so common is always an indicator of a lack of something. it brings to mind the man who rides behind a dock-tailed horse. conscious of the fact that there is not enough in _himself_ to attract attention, in common with a number of other weaklings, he adopts the brutal method of having his horse's tail sawed off, that its unnatural, odd appearance may attract from people the attention that he of himself is unable to secure. but the one who strives for effect is always fooled more than he succeeds in fooling others. the man and the woman of true wisdom and insight can always see the causes that prompt, the motives that underlie the acts of all with whom he or she comes in contact. "he is great who is what he is from nature and who never reminds us of others." the men and the women who are truly awake to the real powers within are the men and women who seem to be doing so little, yet who in reality are doing so much. they seem to be doing so little because they are working with higher agencies, and yet are doing so much because of this very fact. they do their work on the higher plane. they keep so completely their connection with the infinite power that _it_ does the work for them and they are relieved of the responsibility. they are the care-less people. they are care-less because it is the infinite power that is working through them, and with this infinite power they are simply co-operating. _the secret of the highest power is simply the uniting of the outer agencies of expression with the power that works from within_. are you a painter? then in the degree that you open yourself to the power of the forces within will you become great instead of mediocre. you can never put into permanent form inspirations higher than those that come through your own soul. in order for the higher inspirations to come through it, you must open your soul, you must open it fully to the supreme source of all inspiration. are you an orator? in the degree that you come into harmony and work in conjunction with the higher powers that will speak through you will you have the real power of moulding and of moving men. if you use merely your physical agents, you will be simply a demagogue. if you open yourself so that the voice of god can speak through and use your physical agents, you will become a great and true orator, great and true in just the degree that you so open yourself. are you a singer? then open yourself and let the god within pour forth in the spirit of song. you will find it a thousand times easier than all your long and studied practice without this, and other things being equal, there will come to you a power of song so enchanting and so enrapturing that its influence upon all who hear will be irresistible. when my cabin or tent has been pitched during the summer on the edge or in the midst of a forest, i have sometimes lain awake on my cot in the early morning, just as the day was beginning to break. silence at first. then an intermittent chirp here and there. and as the unfolding tints of the dawn became faintly perceptible, these grew more and more frequent, until by and by the whole forest seemed to burst forth in one grand chorus of song. wonderful! wonderful! it seemed as if the very trees, as if every grass-blade, as if the bushes, the very sky above, and the earth beneath, had part in this wonderful symphony. then, as i have listened as it went on and on, i have thought. what a study in the matter of song! if we could but learn from the birds. if we could but open ourselves to the same powers and allow them to pour forth in us, what singers, what movers of men we might have! nay, what singers and what movers of men _we would have_! do you know the circumstances under which mr. sankey sang for the first time "the ninety and nine?" says one of our able journals: "at a great meeting recently in denver, mr. ira w. sankey, before singing 'the ninety and nine,' which, perhaps, of all his compositions is the one that has brought him the most fame, gave an account of its birth. leaving glasgow for edinburg with mr. moody, he stopped at a news-stand and bought a penny religious paper. glancing over it as they rode on the cars, his eye fell on a few little verses in the corner of the page. turning to mr. moody he said, 'i've found my hymn.' but mr. moody was busily engaged and did not hear a word. mr. sankey did not find time to make a tune for the verses, so he pasted them in his music scrapbook. "one day they had an unusually impressive meeting in edinburg, in which dr. bonar had spoken with great effect on 'the good shepherd.' at the close of the address mr. moody beckoned to his partner to sing. he thought of nothing but the twenty-third psalm, but that he had sung so often. his second thought was to sing the verses he had found in the newspaper, but the third thought was, how could it be done when he had no tune. then a fourth thought came, and that was to sing them anyway. he put the verses before him, touched the keys of the organ, opened his mouth and sang, not knowing where he was going to come out. he finished the first verse amid profound silence. he took a long breath and wondered if he could sing the second the same way. he tried and succeeded; after that it was easy to sing it. when he finished the hymn the meeting was all broken down and the throngs were crying. mr. sankey says it was the most intense moment of his life. mr. moody said he never heard a song like it. it was sung at every meeting, and was soon going over the world." when we open ourselves to the highest inspirations they never fail us. when we fail to do this we fail in attaining the highest results, whatever the undertaking. are you a writer? then remember that the one great precept underlying all successful literary work is, _look into thine own heart and write. be true. be fearless. be loyal to the promptings of your own soul_. remember that an author can never write more than he himself is. if he would write more, then he must be more. he is simply his own amanuensis. he in a sense writes himself into his book. he can put no more into it than he himself is. if he is one of a great personality, strong in purpose, deep in feeling, open always to the highest inspirations, a certain indefinable something gets into his pages that makes them breathe forth a vital, living power, a power so great that each reader gets the same inspirations as those that spoke through the author. that that's written between the lines is many times more than that that's written in the lines. it is the spirit of the author that engenders this power. it is this that gives that extra twenty-five or thirty per cent that takes a book out of the class called medium and lifts it into the class called superior,--that extra per cent that makes it the one of the hundred that is truly successful, while the ninety-nine never see more than their first edition. it is this same spiritual power that the author of a great personality puts into his work, that causes it to go so rapidly from reader to reader; for the only way that any book circulates in the ultimate is from mouth to mouth, any book that reaches a large circulation. it is this that many times causes a single reader, in view of its value to himself, to purchase numbers of copies for others. "a good poem," says emerson, "goes about the world offering itself to reasonable men, who read it with joy and carry it to their reasonable neighbors. thus it draws to it the _wise and generous souls_, confirming their secret thoughts, and through their sympathy _really publishing itself_." this is the type of author who writes not with the thought of having what he writes become literature, but he writes with the sole thought of reaching the hearts of the people, giving them something of vital value, something that will broaden, sweeten, enrich, and beautify their lives; that will lead them to the finding of the higher life and with it the higher powers and the higher joys. it most always happens, however, that if he succeeds in thus reaching the people, the becoming literature part somehow takes care of itself, and far better than if he aimed for it directly. the one, on the other hand, who fears to depart from beaten paths, who allows himself to be bound by arbitrary rules, limits his own creative powers in just the degree that he allows himself so to be bound. "my book," says one of the greatest of modern authors, "shall smell of the pines and resound with the hum of insects. the swallow over my window shall interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also." far better, gentle sage, to have it smell of the pines and resound with the hum of insects than to have it sound of the rules that a smaller type of man gets by studying the works of a few great, fearless writers like yourself, and formulating from what he thus gains a handbook of rhetoric. "of no use are the men who study to do exactly as was done before, who can never understand that _today is a new day_." when shakspeare is charged with debts to his authors, landor replies: "yet he was more original than his originals. he breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life." this is the type of man who doesn't move the world's way, but who moves the world his way. i had rather be an amanuensis of the infinite god, as it is my privilege literally to be, than a slave to the formulated rules of any rhetorician, or to the opinions of any critic. oh, the people, the people over and over! let me give something to them that will lighten the every-day struggles of our common life, something that will add a little sweetness here, a little hope there, something that will make more thoughtful, kind, and gentle this thoughtless, animal-natured man, something that will awaken into activity the dormant powers of this timid, shrinking little woman, powers that when awakened will be irresistible in their influence and that will surprise even herself. let me give something that will lead each one to the knowledge of the divinity of every human soul, something that will lead each one to the conscious realization of _his own divinity_, with all its attendant riches, and glories, and powers,--let me succeed in doing this, and i can then well afford to be careless as to whether the critics praise or whether they blame. if it is blame, then under these circumstances it is as the cracking of a few dead sticks on the ground below, compared to the matchless music that the soft spring gale is breathing through the great pine forest. are you a minister, or a religious teacher of any kind? then in the degree that you free yourself from the man-made theological dogmas that have held and that are holding and limiting so many, and in the degree that you open yourself to the divine breath, will you be one who will speak with authority. in the degree that you do this will you study the prophets less and be in the way of becoming a prophet yourself. the way is open for you exactly the same as it has ever been open for anyone. if when born into the world you came into a family of the english-speaking race, then in all probability you are a christian. to be a christian is to be a follower of the _teachings_ of jesus, the christ; to live in harmony with the same laws he lived in harmony with: in brief, _to live his life_. the great central fact of his teaching was this conscious union of man with the father. it was the complete realization of this oneness with the father on his part that made jesus the christ. it was through this that he attained to the power he attained to, that he spake as never man spake. he never claimed for himself anything that he did not claim equally for all mankind. "the mighty works performed by jesus were not exceptional, they were the natural and necessary concomitants of his state; he declared them to be in accordance with unvarying order; he spoke of them as no unique performances, but as the outcome of a state to which all might attain if they chose. as a teacher and demonstrator of truth, according to his own confession, he did nothing for the purpose of proving his solitary divinity. . . . the life and triumph of jesus formed an epoch in the history of the race. his coming and victory marked a new era in human affairs; he introduced a new because a more complete ideal to the earth, and when his three most intimate companions saw in some measure what the new life really signified, they fell to the earth, speechless with awe and admiration." by coming into this complete realization of his oneness with the father, by mastering, absolutely mastering every circumstance that crossed his path through life, even to the death of the body, and by pointing out to us the great laws which are the same for us as they were for him, he has given us an ideal of life, an ideal for us to attain to _here and now_, that we could not have without him. _one has conquered first; all may conquer afterward_. by completely realizing it first for himself, and then by pointing out to others this great law of the at-one-ment with the father, he has become probably the world's greatest saviour. don't mistake his mere person for his life and his teachings, an error that has been made in connection with most all great teachers by their disciples over and over again. and if you have been among the number who have been preaching a dead christ, then for humanity's sake, for christ's sake, for god's sake, and i speak most reverently, don't steal the people's time any longer, don't waste your own time more, in giving them stones in place of bread, dead form for the spirit of living truth. in his own words, "let the dead bury their dead." come out from among them. teach as did jesus, _the living christ_. teach as did jesus, _the christ within_. find this in all its transcendent beauty and power,--find it as jesus found it, then you also will be one who will speak with authority. then you will be able to lead large numbers of others to its finding. this is the pearl of great price. it is the type of preacher whose soul has never as yet even perceived the _vital spirit_ of the teachings of jesus, and who as a consequence instead of giving this to the people, is giving them old forms and dogmas and speculations, who is emptying our churches. this is the type whose chief efforts seem to be in getting men ready to die. the germans have a saying, never go to the second thing first. we need men who will teach us first how to live. living quite invariably precedes dying. this also is true, that when we once know how to live, and live in accordance with what we know, then the dying, as we term it, will in a wonderfully beautiful manner take care of itself. it is in fact the only way in which it can be taken care of. it is on account of this emptying of our churches, for the reason that the people are tiring of mere husks, that many short-sighted people are frequently heard to say that religion is dying out. religion dying out? how can anything die before it is really born? and so far as the people are concerned, religion is just being born, or rather they are just awaking to a vital, every-day religion. we are just beginning to get beyond the mere letter into its real, vital spirit. religion dying out? impossible even to conceive of. religion is as much a part of the human soul as the human soul is a part of god. and as long as god and the human soul exist, religion will never die. much of the dogma, the form, the ceremony, the mere letter that has stood as religion,--and honestly, many times, let us be fair enough to say,--this, thank god, is rapidly dying out, and never so rapidly as it is today. by two methods it is dying. there is, first, a large class of people tired of or even nauseated with it all, who conscientiously prefer to have nothing rather than this. they are simply abandoning it, the same as a tree abandons its leaves when the early winter comes. there is, second, a large class in whom the divine breath is stirring, who are finding the christ within in all its matchless beauty and redeeming power. and this new life is pushing off the old, the same as in the spring the newly awakened life in the tree pushes off the old, lifeless leaves that have clung on during the winter, to make place for the new ones. and the way this old dead leaf religion is being pushed off on every hand is indeed most interesting and inspiring to witness. let the places of those who have been emptying our churches by reason of their attempts to give stones for bread, husks and chaff for the life-giving grain, let their places be taken even for but a few times by those who are open and alive to these higher inspirations, and then let us again question those who feel that religion is dying out. "it is the live coal that kindles others, not the dead." let their places be taken by those who have caught the inspiration of the divine breath, who as a consequence have a message of mighty value and import for the people, who by virtue of this same fact are able to present it with a beauty and a power so enrapturing that it takes captive the soul. then we will find that the churches that today are dotted here and there with a few dozen people will be filled to overflowing, and there will not be even room enough for all who would enter. "let the shell perish that the pearl may appear." we need no new revelations as yet. we need simply to find the vital spirit of those we already have. then in due time, when we are ready for them, new ones will come, but not before. "what the human soul, all the world over, needs," says john pulsford, "is not to be harangued, however eloquently, about the old, accepted religion, but to be permeated, charmed, and taken captive by _a warmer and more potent breath of god than they ever felt before_. and i should not be true to my personal experience if i did not bear testimony that this divine breath is as exquisitely adapted to the requirements of the soul's nature as a june morning to the planet. nor does the morning breath leave the trees freer to delight themselves and develop themselves under its influence than the breath of god allows each human mind to unfold according to its genius. nothing stirs the central wheel of the soul like the breath of god. the whole man is quickened, his senses are new senses, his emotions new emotions; his reason, his affections, his imagination, are all new-born. the change is greater than he knows; he marvels at the powers in himself which the breath is opening and calling forth. he finds his nature to be an unutterable thing; he is sure therefore that the future must have inconceivable surprises in store. and herein lies the evidence, which i commend to my readers, of the existence of god, and of the eternal human hope. let god's breath kindle new spring-time in the soul, start into life its deeply buried germs, lead in heaven's summer; you will then have as clear evidence of god from within as you have of the universe from without. indeed, your internal experience of life, and illimitable hope in god will be nearer to you, and more prevailing, than all your external and superficial experience of nature and the world." there is but one source of power in the universe. whatever then you are, painter, orator, musician, writer, religious teacher, or whatever it may be, know that to catch and take captive the secret of power is so to work in conjunction with the infinite power, in order that it may continually work and manifest through you. if you fail in doing this, you fail in everything. if you fail in doing this, your work, whatever it may be, will be third or fourth rate, possibly at times second rate, but it positively never can be first rate. absolutely impossible will it be for you ever to become a master. whatever estimate you put upon yourself will determine the effectiveness of your work along any line. as long as you live merely in the physical and the intellectual, you set limitations to yourself that will hold you as long as you so live. when, however, you come into the realization of your oneness with the infinite life and power, and open yourself that it may work through you, you will find that you have entered upon an entirely new phase of life, and that an ever increasing power will be yours. then it will be true that your strength will be as the strength of ten because your heart is pure. "o god! i am one forever with thee by the glory of birth; the celestial powers proclaim it to the utmost bounds of the earth. "i think of this birthright immortal, and my being expands like a rose, as an odorous cloud of incense around and above me flows. "a glorious song of rejoicing in an innermost spirit i hear, and it sounds like heavenly voices, in a chorus divine and clear. "and i feel a power uprising, like the power of an embryo god; with a glorious wall it surrounds me, and lifts me up from the sod." plenty of all things--the law of prosperity. this is the spirit of infinite plenty, the power that has brought, that is continually bringing, all things into expression in material form. he who lives in the realization of his oneness with this infinite power becomes a magnet to attract to himself a continual supply of whatsoever things he desires. if one hold himself in the thought of poverty, he will be poor, and the chances are that he will remain in poverty. if he hold himself, whatever present conditions may be, continually in the thought of prosperity, he sets into operation forces that will sooner or later bring him into prosperous conditions. the law of attraction works unceasingly throughout the universe, and the one great and never changing fact in connection with it is, as we have found, that like attracts like. if we are one with this infinite power, this source of all things, then in the degree that we live in the realization of this oneness, in that degree do we actualize in ourselves a power that will bring to us an abundance of all things that it is desirable for us to have. in this way we come into possession of a power whereby we can actualize at all times those conditions that we desire. as all truth exists _now_, and awaits simply our perception of it, so all things necessary for present needs exist _now_, and await simply the power in us to appropriate them. god holds all things in his hands. his constant word is, my child, acknowledge me in all your ways, and in the degree that you do this, in the degree that you live this, then what is mine is yours. jehovah-jireh,--the lord will provide. "he giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not." he giveth liberally to all men who put themselves in the right attitude to receive from him. he forces no good things upon any one. the old and somewhat prevalent idea of godliness and poverty has absolutely no basis for its existence, and the sooner we get away from it the better. it had its birth in the same way that the idea of asceticism came into existence, when the idea prevailed that there was necessarily a warfare between the flesh and the spirit. it had its origin therefore in the minds of those who had a distorted, a one-sided view of life. true godliness is in a sense the same as true wisdom. the one who is truly wise, and who uses the forces and powers with which he is endowed, to him the great universe always opens her treasure house. the supply is always equal to the demand,--equal to the demand when the demand is rightly, wisely made. when one comes into the realization of these higher laws, then the fear of want ceases to tyrannize over him. are you out of a situation? let the fear that you will not get another take hold of and _dominate_ you, and the chances are that it may be a long time before you will get another, or the one that you do get may be a very poor one indeed. whatever the circumstances, you must realize that you have within you forces and powers that you can set into operation that will triumph over any and all apparent or temporary losses. set these forces into operation and you will then be placing a magnet that will draw to you a situation that may be far better than the one you have lost, and the time may soon come when you will be even thankful that you lost the old one. recognize, working in and through you, the same infinite power that creates and governs all things in the universe, the same infinite power that governs the endless systems of worlds in space. send out your thought,--thought is a force, and it has occult power of unknown proportions when rightly used and wisely directed,--send out your thought that the right situation or the right work will come to you at the right time, in the right way, and that you will recognize it when it comes. hold to this thought, never allow it to weaken, hold to it, and continually water it with firm expectation. you in this way put your advertisement into a psychical, a spiritual newspaper, a paper that has not a limited circulation, but one that will make its way not only to the utmost bounds of the earth, but of the very universe itself. it is an advertisement, moreover, which if rightly placed on your part, will be far more effective than any advertisement you could possibly put into any printed sheet, no matter what claims are made in regard to its being "the great advertising medium." in the degree that you come into this realization and live in harmony with the higher laws and forces, in that degree will you be able to do this effectively. if you wish to look through the "want" columns of the newspapers, then do it not in the ordinary way. put the higher forces into operation and thus place it on a higher basis. as you take up the paper, take this attitude of mind: if there is here an advertisement that it will be well for me to reply to, the moment i come to it i will recognize it. affirm this, believe it, expect it. if you do this in full faith you will somehow feel the intuition the moment you come to the right one, and this intuition will be nothing more nor less than your own soul speaking to you. when it speaks then act at once. if you get the situation and it does not prove to be exactly what you want, if you feel that you are capable of filling a better one, then the moment you enter upon it take the attitude of mind that this situation is the stepping-stone that will lead you to one that will be still better. hold this thought steadily, affirm it, believe it, expect it, and all the time be faithful, _absolutely faithful_ to the situation in which you are at present placed. if you are _not_ faithful to it then the chances are that it will not be the stepping-stone to something better, but to something poorer. if you are faithful to it, the time may soon come when you will be glad and thankful, when you will rejoice, that you lost your old position. this is the law of prosperity: when apparent adversity comes, be not cast down by it, but make the best of it, and always look forward for better things, for conditions more prosperous. to hold yourself in this attitude of mind is to set into operation subtle, silent, and irresistible forces that sooner or later will actualize in material form that which is today merely an idea. but ideas have occult power, and ideas, when rightly planted and rightly tended, are the seeds that actualize material conditions. never give a moment to complaint, but utilize the time that would otherwise be spent in this way in looking forward and actualizing the conditions you desire. suggest prosperity to yourself. see yourself in a prosperous condition. affirm that you will before long be in a prosperous condition. affirm it calmly and quietly, but strongly and confidently. believe it, believe it absolutely. expect it,--keep it continually watered with expectation. you thus make yourself a magnet to attract the things that you desire. don't be afraid to suggest, to affirm these things, for by so doing you put forth an ideal which will begin to clothe itself in material form. in this way you are utilizing agents among the most subtle and powerful in the universe. if you are particularly desirous for anything that you feel it is good and right for you to have, something that will broaden your life or that will increase your usefulness to others, simply hold the thought that at the right time, in the right way, and through the right instrumentality, there will come to you or there will open up for you the way whereby you can attain what you desire. i know of a young lady who a short time ago wanted some money very badly. she wanted it for a good purpose; she saw no reason why she shouldn't have it. she is one who has come into an understanding of the power of the interior forces. she took and held herself in the attitude of mind we have just pointed out. in the morning she entered into the silence for a few moments. in this way she brought herself into a more complete harmony with the higher powers. before the day closed a gentleman called, a member of a family with which she was acquainted. he asked her if she would do for the family some work that they wanted done. she was a little surprised that they should ask her to do this particular kind of work, but she said to herself, "here is a call. i will respond and see what it will lead to." she undertook the work. _she did it well_. when she had completed it there was put into her hands an amount of money far beyond what she had expected. she felt that it was an amount too large for the work she had done. she protested. they replied, "no; you have done us a service that transcends in value the amount we offer to pay you." the sum thus received was more than sufficient for the work she wished to accomplish. this is but one of many instances in connection with the wise and effective use of the higher powers. it also carries a lesson,--don't fold your hands and expect to see things drop into your lap, but set into operation the higher forces and then take hold of the first thing that offers itself. do what your hands find to do, _and do it well_. if this work is not thoroughly satisfactory to you, then affirm, believe, and expect that it is the agency that will lead you to something better. "the basis for attracting the best of all the world can give to you is to first surround, own, and live in these things in mind, or what is falsely called imagination. all so-called imaginings are realities and forces of unseen element. live in mind in a palace and gradually palatial surroundings will gravitate to you. but so living is _not_ pining, or longing, or complainingly wishing. it is when you are 'down in the world,' calmly and persistently seeing yourself as up. it is when you are now compelled to eat from a tin plate, regarding that tin plate as only the certain step to one of silver. it is not envying and growling at other people who have silver plate. that growling is just so much capital stock taken from the bank account of mental force." a friend who knows the power of the interior forces, and whose life is guided in every detail by them, has given a suggestion in this form: when you are in the arms of the bear, even though he is hugging you, look him in the face and laugh, but all the time keep your eye on the bull. if you allow all of your attention to be given to the work of the bear, the bull may get entirely out of your sight. in other words, if you yield to adversity the chances are that it will master you, but if you recognize in yourself the power of mastery over conditions then adversity will yield to you, and will be changed into prosperity. if when it comes you calmly and quietly recognize it, and use the time that might otherwise be spent in regrets, and fears, and forebodings, in setting into operation the powerful forces within you, it will soon take its leave. faith, absolute dogmatic faith, is the only law of true success. when we recognize the fact that a man carries his success or his failure with him, and that it does not depend upon outside conditions, we will come into the possession of powers that will quickly change outside conditions into agencies that make for success. when we come into this higher realization and bring our lives into complete harmony with the higher laws, we will then be able so to focus and direct the awakened interior forces, that they will go out and return laden with that for which they are sent. we will then be great enough to attract success, and it will not always be apparently just a little ways ahead. we can then establish in ourselves a centre so strong that instead of running hither and thither for this or that, we can stay at home and draw to us the conditions we desire. if we firmly establish and hold to this centre, things will seem continually to come our way. the majority of people of the modern world are looking for things that are practical and that can be utilized in every-day life. the more carefully we examine into the laws underlying the great truths we are considering, the more we will find that they are not only eminently practical, but in a sense, and in the deepest and truest sense, they are the only practical things there are. there are people who continually pride themselves upon being exceedingly "practical," but many times those who of themselves think nothing about this are the most practical people the world knows. and, on the other hand, those who take great pride in speaking of their own practicality are many times the least practical. or again, in some ways they may be practical, but so far as life in its totality is concerned, they are absurdly impractical. what profit, for example, can there be for the man who, materially speaking, though he has gained the whole world, has never yet become acquainted with his own soul? there are multitudes of men all about us who are entirely missing the real life, men who have not learned even the a, b, c of true living. slaves they are, abject slaves to their temporary material accumulations. men who thinking they possess their wealth are on the contrary completely possessed by it. men whose lives are comparatively barren in service to those about them and to the world at large. men who when they can no longer hold the body,--the agency by means of which they are related to the material world,--will go out poor indeed, pitiably poor. unable to take even the smallest particle of their accumulations with them, they will enter upon the other form of life naked and destitute. the kindly deeds, the developed traits of character, the realized powers of the soul, the real riches of the inner life and unfoldment, all those things that become our real and eternal possessions, have been given no place in their lives, and so of the real things of life they are destitute. nay, many times worse than destitute. we must not suppose that habits once formed are any more easily broken off in the other form of life than they are in this. if one voluntarily grows a certain mania here, we must not suppose that the mere dropping of the body makes all conditions perfect. all is law, all is cause and effect. as we sow, so shall we also reap, not only in this life but in all lives. he who is enslaved with the sole desire for material possessions here will continue to be enslaved even after he can no longer retain his body. then, moreover, he will have not even the means of gratifying his desires. dominated by this habit, he will be unable to set his affections, for a time at least, upon other things, and the desire, without the means of gratifying it will be doubly torturing to him. perchance this torture may be increased by his seeing the accumulations he thought were his now being scattered and wasted by spendthrifts. he wills his property, as we say, to others, but he can have no word as to its use. how foolish, then, for us to think that any material possessions _are ours_. how absurd, for example, for one to fence off a number of acres of god's earth and say they are _his_. nothing is ours that we cannot retain. the things that come into our hands come not for the purpose of being possessed, as we say, much less for the purpose of being hoarded. they come into our hands to be used, to be wisely used. we are stewards merely, and as stewards we shall be held accountable for the way we use whatever is entrusted to us. that great law of compensation that runs through all life is wonderfully exact in its workings, although we may not always fully comprehend it, or even recognize it when it operates in connection with ourselves. the one who has come into the realization of the higher life no longer has a desire for the accumulation of enormous wealth, any more than he has a desire for any other _excess_. in the degree that he comes into the recognition of the fact that he is wealthy within, external wealth becomes less important in his estimation. when he comes into the realization of the fact that there is a source within from which he can put forth a power to call to him and actualize in his hands at any time a sufficient supply for all his needs, he no longer burdens himself with vast material accumulations that require his constant care and attention, and thus take his time and his thought from the real things of life. in other words, he first finds the _kingdom_, and he realizes that when he has found this, all other things follow in full measure. it is as hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, said the master,--he who having nothing had everything,--as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. in other words, if a man give all his time to the accumulation, the hoarding of outward material possessions far beyond what he can possibly ever use, what time has he for the finding of that wonderful kingdom, which when found, brings all else with it. which is better, to have millions of dollars, and to have the burden of taking care of it all,--for the one always involves the other,--or to come into the knowledge of such laws and forces that every need will be supplied in good time, to know that no good thing shall be withheld, to know that we have it in our power to make the supply always equal to the demand? the one who enters into the realm of this higher knowledge, never cares to bring upon himself the species of insanity that has such a firm hold upon so many in the world today. he avoids it as he would avoid any loathsome disease of the body. when we come into the realization of the higher powers, we will then be able to give more attention to the real life, instead of giving so much to the piling up of vast possessions that hamper rather than help it. it is the medium ground that brings the true solution here, the same as it is in all phases of life. wealth beyond a certain amount cannot be used, and when it cannot be used it then becomes a hindrance rather than an aid, a curse rather than a blessing. all about us are persons with lives now stunted and dwarfed who could make them rich and beautiful, filled with a perennial joy, if they would begin wisely to use that which they have spent the greater portion of their lives in accumulating. the man who accumulates during his entire life, and who leaves even all when he goes out for "benevolent purposes," comes far short of the ideal life. it is but a poor excuse of a life. it is not especially commendable in me to give a pair of old, worn-out shoes that i shall never use again to another who is in need of shoes. but it is commendable, if indeed doing anything we ought to do can be spoken of as being commendable, it is commendable for me to give a good pair of strong shoes to the man who in the midst of a severe winter is practically shoeless, the man who is exerting every effort to earn an honest living and thereby take care of his family's needs. and if in giving the shoes i also give myself, he then has a double gift, and i a double blessing. there is no wiser use that those who have great accumulations can make of them than wisely to put them into life, into character, _day by day while they live_. in this way their lives will be continually enriched and increased. the time will come when it will be regarded as a disgrace for a man to die and leave vast accumulations behind him. many a person is living in a palace today who in the real life is poorer than many a one who has not even a roof to cover him. a man may own and live in a palace, but the palace for him may be a pool-house still. moth and rust are nature's wise provisions--god's methods--for disintegrating and scattering, in this way getting ready for use in new forms, that which is hoarded and consequently serving no use. there is also a great law continually operating whose effects are to dwarf and deaden the powers of true enjoyment, as well as all the higher faculties of the one who hoards. multitudes of people are continually keeping away from them higher and better things because they are forever clinging on to the old. if they would use and pass on the old, room would be made for new things to come. hoarding always brings loss in one form or another. using, wisely using, brings an ever renewing gain. if the tree should as ignorantly and as greedily hold on to this year's leaves when they have served their purpose, where would be the full and beautiful new life that will be put forth in the spring? gradual decay and finally death would be the result. if the tree is already dead, then it may perhaps be well enough for it to cling on to the old, for no new leaves will come. but as long as the life in the tree is active, it is _necessary_ that it rid itself of the old ones, that room may be made for the new. opulence is the law of the universe, an abundant supply for every need if nothing is put in the way of its coming. the natural and the normal life for us is this,--to have such a fullness of life and power by living so continually in the realization of our oneness with the infinite life and power that we find ourselves in the constant possession of an abundant supply of all things needed. then not by hoarding but by wisely using and ridding ourselves of things as they come, an ever renewing supply will be ours, a supply far better adapted to present needs than the old could possibly be. in this way we not only come into possession of the richest treasures of the infinite good ourselves, but we also become open channels through which they can flow to others. how men have become prophets, seers, sages, and saviours. i have tried thus far to deal fairly with you in presenting these vital truths, and have spoken of everything on the basis of our own reason and insight. it has been my aim to base nothing on the teachings of others, though they may be the teachings of those inspired. let us now look for a moment at these same great truths in the light of the thoughts and the teachings as put forth by some of the world's great thinkers and inspired teachers. the sum and substance of the thought presented in these pages is, you will remember, that the great central fact in human life is the coming into a conscious, vital realization of our oneness with the infinite life, and the opening of ourselves fully to this divine inflow. i and the father are one, said the master. in this we see how he recognized his oneness with the father's life. again he said, the words that i speak unto you i speak not of myself: but the father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. in this we see how clearly he recognized the fact that he of himself could do nothing, only as he worked in conjunction with the father. again, my father works and i work. in other words, my father sends the power, i open myself to it, and work in conjunction with it. again he said, seek ye first the kingdom of god and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. and he left us not in the dark as to exactly what he meant by this, for again he said. say not lo here nor lo there, know ye not that the kingdom of heaven is within you? according to his teaching, the kingdom of god and the kingdom of heaven were one and the same. if, then, his teaching is that the kingdom of heaven is within us, do we not clearly see that, putting it in other words, his injunction is nothing more nor less than, come ye into a conscious realization of your oneness with the father's life. as you realize this oneness you find the kingdom, and when you find this, all things else shall follow. the story of the prodigal son is another beautiful illustration of this same great teaching of the master. after the prodigal had spent everything, after he had wandered in all the realms of the physical senses in the pursuit of happiness and pleasure, and found that this did not satisfy but only brought him to the level of the animal creation, he then came to his senses and said, i will arise and go to my father. in other words, after all these wanderings, his own soul at length spoke to him and said, you are not a mere animal. you are your father's child. arise and go to your father, who holds all things in his hands. again, the master said, call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your father, which is in heaven. here he recognized the fact that the real life is direct from the life of god. our fathers and our mothers are the agents that give us the bodies, the houses in which we live, but the real life comes from the infinite source of life, god, who is our father. one day word was brought to the master that his mother and his brethren were without, wishing to speak with him. who is my mother and who are my brethren? said he. whosoever shall do the will of my father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother. many people are greatly enslaved by what we term ties of relationship. it is well, however, for us to remember that our true relatives are not necessarily those who are connected with us by ties of blood. our truest relatives are those who are nearest akin to us in mind, in soul, in spirit. our nearest relatives may be those living on the opposite side of the globe,--people whom we may never have seen as yet, but to whom we will yet be drawn, either in this form of life or in another, through that ever working and never failing law of attraction. when the master gave the injunction, call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your father, which is in heaven, he here gave us the basis for that grand conception of the fatherhood of god. and if god is equally the father of all, then we have here the basis for the brotherhood of man. but there is, in a sense, a conception still higher than this, namely, the oneness of man and god, and hence the oneness of the whole human race. when we realize this fact, then we clearly see how in the degree that we come into the realization of our oneness with the infinite life, and so, every step that we make godward, we aid in lifting all mankind up to this realization, and enable them, in turn, to make a step god-ward. the master again pointed out our true relations with the infinite life when he said, except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. when he said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of god, he gave utterance to a truth of far greater import than we have as yet commenced fully to grasp. here he taught that even the physical life can not be maintained by material food alone, but that one's connection with this infinite source determines to a very great extent the condition of even the bodily structure and activities. blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see god. in other words, blessed are they who in all the universe recognize only god, for by such god shall be seen. said the great hindu sage, manu, he who in his own soul perceives the supreme soul in all beings, and acquires equanimity toward them all, attains the highest bliss. it was athanasius who said, even we may become gods walking about in the flesh. the same great truth we are considering is the one that runs through the life and the teachings of gautama, he who became the buddha. people are in bondage, said he, because they have not yet removed the idea of _i_. to do away with all sense of separateness, and to recognize the oneness of the self with the infinite, is the spirit that breathes through all his teachings. running through the lives of all the mediaeval mystics was this same great truth,--union with god. then, coming nearer to our own time, we find the highly illumined seer, emanuel swedenborg, pointing out the great laws in connection with what he termed, the divine influx, and how we may open ourselves more fully to its operations. the great central fact in the religion and worship of the friends is, the inner light,--god in the soul of man speaking directly in just the degree that the soul is opened to him. the inspired one, the seer who when with us lived at concord, recognized the same great truth when he said, we are all inlets to the great sea of life. and it was by opening himself so fully to its inflow that he became one inspired. all through the world's history we find that the men and the women who have entered into the realm of true wisdom and power, and hence into the realm of true peace and joy, have lived in harmony with this higher power. david was strong and powerful and his soul burst forth in praise and adoration in just the degree that he listened to the voice of god and lived in accordance with his higher promptings. whenever he failed to do this we hear his soul crying out in anguish and lamentation. the same is true of every nation or people. when the israelites acknowledged god and followed according to his leadings they were prosperous, contented, and powerful, and nothing could prevail against them. when they depended upon their own strength alone and failed to recognize god as the source of their strength, we find them overcome, in bondage, or despair. a great immutable law underlies the truth, blessed are they that hear the word of god and do it. then follows all. we are wise in the degree that we live according to the higher light. all the prophets, seers, sages, and saviours in the world's history became what they became, and consequently had the powers they had, through an entirely natural process. they all recognized and came into the conscious realization of their oneness with the infinite life. god is no respecter of persons. he doesn't create prophets, seers, sages, and saviours as such. he creates men. but here and there one recognizes his true identity, recognizes the oneness of his life with the source whence it came. he lives in the realization of this oneness, and in turn becomes a prophet, seer, sage, or saviour. neither is god a respecter of races or of nations. he has no chosen people; but here and there a race or nation becomes a respecter of god and hence lives the life of a chosen people. there has been no age or place of miracles in distinction from any other age or place. what we term miracles have abounded in all places and at all times where conditions have been made for them. they are being performed today just as much as they ever have been when the laws governing them are respected. mighty men, we are told they were, mighty men who walked with god; and in the words "who walked with god" lies the secret of the words "mighty men." cause, effect. the lord never prospers any man, but the man prospers because he acknowledges the lord, and lives in accordance with the higher laws. solomon was given the opportunity of choosing whatever he desired; his better judgment prevailed and he chose wisdom. but when he chose wisdom he found that it included all else beside. we are told that god hardened pharaoh's heart. i don't believe it. god never hardens any one's heart. pharaoh hardened his own heart and god was blamed for it. but when pharaoh hardened his heart and disobeyed the voice of god, the plagues came. again, cause, effect. had he, on the contrary, listened,--in other words, had he opened himself to and obeyed the voice of god, the plagues would not have come. we can be our own best friends or we can be our own worst enemies. in the degree that we become friends to the highest and best within us, we become friends to all; and in the degree that we become enemies to the highest and best within us, do we become enemies to all. in the degree that we open ourselves to the higher powers and let them manifest through us, then by the very inspirations we carry with us do we become in a sense the saviours of our fellow-men, and in this way we all are, or may become, the saviours one of another. in this way you may become, indeed, one of the world's redeemers. the basic principle of all religions--the universal religion. the great truth we are considering is the fundamental principle running through all religions. we find it in every one. in regard to it all agree. it is, moreover, a great truth in regard to which all people can agree, whether they belong to the same or to different religions. people always quarrel about the trifles, about their personal views of minor insignificant points. they always come together in the presence of great fundamental truths, the threads of which run through all. the quarrels are in connection with the lower self, the agreements are in connection with the higher self. a place may have its factions that quarrel and fight among themselves, but let a great calamity come upon the land, flood, famine, pestilence, and these little personal differences are entirely forgotten and all work shoulder to shoulder in the one great cause. the changing, the evolving self gives rise to quarrels; the permanent, the soul self unites all in the highest efforts of love and service. patriotism is a beautiful thing; it is well for me to love my country, but why should i love my own country more than i love all others? if i love my own and hate others, i then show my limitations, and my patriotism will stand the test not even for my own. if i love my own country and in the same way love all other countries, then i show the largeness of my nature, and a patriotism of this kind is noble and always to be relied upon. the view of god in regard to which we are agreed, that he is the infinite spirit of life and power that is back of all, that is working in and through all, that is the life of all, is a matter in regard to which all men, all religions can agree. with this view there can be no infidels or atheists. there are atheists and infidels in connection with many views that are held concerning god, and thank god there are. even devout and earnest people among us attribute things to god that no respectable men or women would permit to be attributed to themselves. this view is satisfying to those who cannot see how god can be angry with his children, jealous, vindictive. a display of these qualities always lessens our respect for men and women, and still we attribute them to god. the earnest, sincere heretic is one of the greatest friends true religion can have. heretics are among god's greatest servants. they are among the true servants of mankind. christ was one of the greatest heretics the world has ever known. he allowed himself to be bound by no established or orthodox teachings or beliefs. christ is preëminently a type of the universal. john the baptist is a type of the personal. john dressed in a particular way, ate a particular kind of food, belonged to a particular order, lived and taught in a particular locality, and he himself recognized the fact that he must decrease while christ must increase. christ, on the other hand, gave himself absolutely no limitations. he allowed himself to be bound by nothing. he was absolutely universal and as a consequence taught not for his own particular day, but for all time. this mighty truth which we have agreed upon as the great central fact of human life is the golden thread that runs through all religions. when we make it the paramount fact in our lives we will find that minor differences, narrow prejudices, and all these laughable absurdities will so fall away by virtue of their very insignificance, that a jew can worship equally as well in a catholic cathedral, a catholic in a jewish synagogue, a buddhist in a christian church, a christian in a buddhist temple. or all can worship equally well about their own hearth-stones, or out on the hillside, or while pursuing the avocations of every-day life. for true worship, only god and the human soul are necessary. it does not depend upon times, or seasons, or occasions. anywhere and at any time god and man in the bush may meet. this is the great fundamental principle of the universal religion upon which all can agree. this is the great fact that is permanent. there are many things in regard to which all cannot agree. these are the things that are personal, non-essential, and so as time passes they gradually fall away. one who doesn't grasp this great truth, a christian, for example, asks "but was not christ inspired?" yes, but he was not the only one inspired. another who is a buddhist asks, "was not buddha inspired?" yes, but he was not the only one inspired. a christian asks, "but is not our christian bible inspired?" yes, but there are other inspired scriptures. a brahmin or a buddhist asks, "are not the vedas inspired?" yes, but there are other inspired sacred books. your error is not in believing that your particular scriptures are inspired, but your error is--and you show your absurdly laughable limitations by it--your inability to see that other scriptures are also inspired. the sacred books, the inspired writings, all come from the same source,--god, god speaking through the souls of those who open themselves that he may thus speak. some may be more inspired than others. it depends entirely on the relative degree that this one or that one opens himself to the divine voice. says one of the inspired writers in the hebrew scriptures, wisdom is the breath of the power of god, and _in all ages_ entering into holy souls she maketh them friends of god and prophets. let us not be among the number so dwarfed, so limited, so bigoted as to think that the infinite god has revealed himself to one little handful of his children, in one little quarter of the globe, and at one particular period of time. this isn't the pattern by which god works. of a truth i perceive that god is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that revereth god and worketh righteousness is accepted of him, says the christian bible. when we fully realize this truth we will then see that it makes but little difference what particular form of religion one holds to, but it does make a tremendous difference how true he is to the _vital_ principles of this one. in the degree that we love self less and love truth more, in that degree will we care less about converting people to our particular way of thinking, but all the more will we care to aid them in coming into the full realization of truth through the channels best adapted to them. the doctrine of our master, says the chinese, consisted solely in integrity of heart. we will find as we search that this is the doctrine of every one who is at all worthy the name of master. the great fundamental principles of all religions are the same. they differ only in their minor details according to the various degrees of unfoldment of different people. i am sometimes asked, "to what religion do you belong?" what religion? why, bless you, there is only one religion,--the religion of the living god. there are, of course, the various creeds of the same religion arising from the various interpretations of different people, but they are all of minor importance. the more unfolded the soul the less important do these minor differences become. there are also, of course, the various so-called religions. there is in reality, however, but one religion. the moment we lose sight of this great fact we depart from the real, vital spirit of true religion and allow ourselves to be limited and bound by form. in the degree that we do this we build fences around ourselves which keep others away from us, and which also prevent our coming into the realization of universal truth; there is nothing worthy the name of truth that is not universal. there is only one religion. "whatever road i take joins the highway that leads to thee," says the inspired writer in the persian scriptures. "broad is the carpet god has spread, and beautiful the colors he has given it." "the pure man respects every form of faith," says the buddhist. "my doctrine makes no difference between high and low, rich and poor; like the sky, it has room for all, and like the water, it washes all alike." "the broad minded see the truth in different religions; the narrow minded see only the differences," says the chinese. the hindu has said, "the narrow minded ask, 'is this man a stranger, or is he of our tribe?' but to those in whom love dwells, the whole world is but one family." "altar flowers are of many species, but all worship is one." "heaven is a palace with many doors, and each may enter in his own way." "are we not all children of one father?" says the christian. "god has made of one blood all nations, to dwell on the face of the earth." it was a latter-day seer who said, "that which was profitable to the soul of man the father revealed to the ancients; that which is profitable to the soul of man today revealeth he this day." it was tennyson who said, "i dreamed that stone by stone i reared a sacred fane, a temple, neither pagoda, mosque, nor church, but loftier, simpler, always open-doored to every breath from heaven, and truth and peace and love and justice came and dwelt therein." religion in its true sense is the most joyous thing the human soul can know, and when the real religion is realized, we will find that it will be an agent of peace, of joy, and of happiness, and never an agent of gloomy, long-faced sadness. it will then be attractive to all and repulsive to none. let our churches grasp these great truths, let them give their time and attention to bringing people into a knowledge of their true selves, into a knowledge of their relations, of their oneness, with the infinite god, and such joy will be the result, and such crowds will flock to them, that their very walls will seem almost to burst, and such songs of joy will continually pour forth as will make all people in love with the religion that makes for every-day life, and hence the religion that is true and vital. adequacy for life, adequacy for everyday life here and now, must be the test of all true religion. if it does not bear this test, then it simply is not religion. we need an everyday, a this-world religion. all time spent in connection with any other is worse than wasted. the eternal life that we are now living will be well lived if we take good care of each little period of time as it presents itself day after day. if we fail in doing this, we fail in everything. entering now into the realization of the highest riches. i hear the question, what can be said in a concrete way in regard to the method of coming into this realization? the facts underlying it are, indeed, most beautiful and true, but how can we actualize in ourselves the realization that carries with it such wonderful results? the method is not difficult if we do not of ourselves make it difficult. the principal word to be used is the word,--open. simply to open your mind and heart to this divine inflow which is waiting only for the opening of the gate, that it may enter. it is like opening the gate of the trough which conducts the water from the reservoir above into the field below. the water, by virtue of its very nature, will rush in and irrigate the field if the gate is but opened. as to the realization of our oneness with this infinite life and power, after seeing, as i think we have clearly seen by this time, the relations it bears to us and we to it, the chief thing to be said is simply,--realize your oneness with it. the open mind and heart whereby one is brought into the receptive attitude is the first thing necessary. then the earnest, sincere desire. it may be an aid at first to take yourself for a few moments each day into the quiet, into the silence, where you will not be agitated by the disturbances that enter in through the avenues of the physical senses. there in the quiet alone with god, put yourself into the receptive attitude. calmly, quietly, and expectantly desire that this realization break in upon and take possession of your soul. as it breaks in upon and takes possession of the soul, it will manifest itself to your mind, and from this you will feel its manifestations in every part of your body. then in the degree that you open yourself to it you will feel a quiet, peaceful, illuminating power that will harmonize body, soul, and mind, and that will then harmonize these with all the world. you are now on the mountain top, and the voice of god is speaking to you. _then, as you descend, carry this realization with you_. live in it, waking, working, thinking, walking, sleeping. in this way, although you may not be continually on the mountain top, you will nevertheless be continually living in the realization of all the beauty, and inspiration, and power you have felt there. moreover, the time will come when in the busy office or on the noisy street you can enter into the silence by simply drawing the mantle of your own thoughts about you and realizing that there and everywhere the spirit of infinite life, love, wisdom, peace, power, and plenty is guiding, keeping, protecting, leading you. this is the spirit of continual prayer. this it is to pray without ceasing. this it is to know and to walk with god. _this it is to find the christ within_. this is the new birth, the second birth. first that which is natural, then that which is spiritual. it is thus that the old man adam is put off and the new man christ is put on. this it is to be saved unto life eternal, whatever one's form of belief or faith may be; for it is life eternal to know god. "the sweet by and by" will be a song of the past. we will create a new song--"the beautiful eternal now." this is the realization that you and i can come into this very day, this very hour, this very minute, if we desire and if we will it. and if now we merely set our faces in the right direction, it is then but a matter of time until we come into the full splendors of this complete realization. to set one's face in the direction of the mountain and then simply to journey on, whether rapidly or more slowly, will bring him to it. but unless one set his face in the right direction and make the start, he will not reach it. it was goethe who said: "are you in earnest? seize this very minute: what you can do, or dream you can, begin it; boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. only engage and then the mind grows heated; begin and then the work will be completed." said the young man, gautama siddhârtha, i have awakened to the truth and i am resolved to accomplish my purpose,--verily i shall become a buddha. it was this that brought him into the life of the enlightened one, and so into the realization of nirvana right here in this life. that this same realization and life is within the possibilities of all here and now was his teaching. it was this that has made him the light bearer to millions of people. said the young man, jesus, know ye not that i must be about my father's business? making this the one great purpose of his life he came into the full and complete realization,--i and the father are one. he thus came into the full realization of the kingdom of heaven right here in this life. that all could come into this same realization and life here and now was his teaching. it was this that has made him the light bearer to millions of people. and so far as practical things are concerned, we may hunt the wide universe through and we shall find that there is no injunction more practical than, seek ye first the kingdom of god and his righteousness and all other things shall be added unto you. and in the light of what has gone before, i think there is no one who is open to truth and honest with himself who will fail to grasp the underlying reason and see the great laws upon which it is based. personally i know lives that have so fully entered into the kingdom through the realization of their oneness with the infinite life and through the opening of themselves so fully to its divine guidance, that they are most wonderful concrete examples of the reality of this great and all-important truth. they are people whose lives are in this way guided not only in a general way, but literally in every detail. they simply live in the realization of their oneness with this infinite power, continually in harmony with it, and so continually in the realization of the kingdom of heaven. an abundance of all things is theirs. they are never at a loss for anything. the supply seems always equal to the demand. they never seem at a loss in regard to what to do or how to do it. their lives are care-less lives. they are lives free from care because they are continually conscious of the fact that the higher powers are doing the guiding, and they are relieved of the responsibility. to enter into detail in connection with some of these lives, and particularly with two or three that come to my mind at this moment, would reveal facts that no doubt to some would seem almost incredible if not miraculous. but let us remember that what is possible for one life to realize is possible for all. this is indeed the natural and the normal life, that which will be the every-day life of every one who comes into and who lives in this higher realization and so in harmony with the higher laws. this is simply getting into the current of that divine sequence running throughout the universe; and when once in it, life then ceases to be a plodding and moves along day after day much as the tides flow, much as the planets move in their courses, much as the seasons come and go. all the frictions, all the uncertainties, all the ills, the sufferings, the fears, the forebodings, the perplexities of life come to us because we are out of harmony with the divine order of things. they will continue to come as long as we so live. rowing against the tide is hard and uncertain. to go with the tide and thus to take advantage of the working of a great natural force is safe and easy. to come into the conscious, vital realization of our oneness with the infinite life and power is to come into the current of this divine sequence. coming thus into harmony with the infinite, brings us in turn into harmony with all about us, into harmony with the life of the heavens, into harmony with all the universe. and above all, it brings us into harmony with ourselves, so that body, soul, and mind become perfectly harmonized, and when this is so, life becomes full and complete. the sense life then no longer masters and enslaves us. the physical is subordinated to and ruled by the mental; this in turn is subordinated to and continually illumined by the spiritual. life is then no longer the poor, one-sided thing it is in so many cases; but the three-fold, the all-round life with all its beauties and ever increasing joys and powers is entered upon. thus it is that we are brought to realize that the middle path is the great solution of life; neither asceticism on the one hand nor license and perverted use on the other. everything is for use, but all must be wisely used in order to be fully enjoyed. as we live in these higher realizations the senses are not ignored but are ever more fully perfected. as the body becomes less gross and heavy, finer in its texture and form, all the senses become finer, so that powers we do not now realize as belonging to us gradually develop. thus we come, in a perfectly natural and normal way, into the super-conscious realms whereby we make it possible for the higher laws and truths to be revealed to us. as we enter into these realms we are then not among those who give their time in speculating as to whether this one or that one had the insight and the powers attributed to him, but we are able _to know_ for ourselves. neither are we among those who attempt to lead the people upon the hearsay of some one else, but we know whereof we speak, and only thus can we speak with authority. there are many things that we cannot know until by living the life we bring ourselves into that state where it is possible for them to be revealed to us. "if any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine." it was plotinus who said, the mind that wishes to behold god must itself become god. as we thus make it possible for these higher laws and truths to be revealed to us, we will in turn become enlightened ones, channels through which they may be revealed to others. when one is fully alive to the possibilities that come with this higher awakening, as he goes here and there, as he mingles with his fellow-men, he imparts to all an inspiration that kindles in them a feeling of power kindred to his own. we are all continually giving out influences similar to those that are playing in our own lives. we do this in the same way that each flower emits its own peculiar odor. the rose breathes out its fragrance upon the air and all who come near it are refreshed and inspired by this emanation from the soul of the rose. a poisonous weed sends out its obnoxious odor; it is neither refreshing nor inspiring in its effects, and if one remain near it long he may be so unpleasantly affected as to be made even ill by it. the higher the life the more inspiring and helpful are the emanations that it is continually sending out. the lower the life the more harmful is the influence it continually sends out to all who come in contact with it. each one is continually radiating an atmosphere of one kind or the other. we are told by the mariners who sail on the indian seas, that many times they are able to tell their approach to certain islands long before they can see them by the sweet fragrance of the sandalwood that is wafted far out upon the deep. do you not see how it would serve to have such a soul playing through such a body that as you go here and there a subtle, silent force goes out from you that all feel and are influenced by; so that you carry with you an inspiration and continually shed a benediction wherever you go; so that your friends and all people will say,--his coming brings peace and joy into our homes, welcome his coming; so that as you pass along the street, tired, and weary, and even sin-sick men and women will feel a certain divine touch that will awaken new desires and a new life in them; that will make the very horse as you pass him turn his head with a strange, half-human, longing look? such are the subtle powers of the human soul when it makes itself translucent to the divine. to know that such a life is within our living here and now is enough to make one burst forth with songs of joy. and when the life itself is entered upon, the sentiment of at least one song will be: "oh! i stand in the great forever, all things to me are divine; i eat of the heavenly manna, i drink of the heavenly wine. "in the gleam of the shining rainbow the father's love i behold, as i gaze on its radiant blending of crimson and blue and gold. "in all the bright birds that are singing, in all the fair flowers that bloom, whose welcome aromas are bringing their blessings of sweet perfume; "in the glorious tint of the morning, in the gorgeous sheen of the night, oh! my soul is lost in rapture, my senses are lost in sight." as one comes into and lives continually in the full, conscious realization of his oneness with the infinite life and power, then all else follows. this it is that brings the realization of such splendors, and beauties, and joys as a life that is thus related with the infinite power alone can know. this it is to come into the realization of heaven's richest treasures while walking the earth. this it is to bring heaven down to earth, or rather to bring earth up to heaven. this it is to exchange weakness and impotence for strength; sorrows and sighings for joy; fears and forebodings for faith; longings for realizations. this it is to come into fullness of peace, power, and plenty. this it is to be in tune with the infinite. [illustration: book cover] the life radiant by lilian whiting author of "the world beautiful," "the spiritual significance" "the world beautiful in books," "kate field, a record," "boston days," etc. "follow it, follow it, follow the gleam." boston little, brown, and company to arvilla delight meeker (mrs. nathan cook meeker) in whose beautiful life patience has done her perfect work, and whose unfaltering and joyful faith in god reveals impressive truth in the life radiant of holy living these pages are inscribed with the devotion of lilian whiting contents. page the golden age lies onward. the supreme illumination creating the new world eliminating anxieties heaven's perfect hour love and good will the diviner possibilities the weight of the past discerning the future. a determining question in proportion to power the ethereal realm. a scientific fact a glorious inauguration finer cosmic forces health and happiness a new force the service of the gods the power of the exalted moment. obey the vision the open door interruptions as opportunities the charm of companionship a summer pilgrimage in arizona a tragic idyl of colorado a remarkable mystic the momentous question the nectar of the hour. a profound experience the law of prayer conduct and beauty the divine panorama also the holy ghost, the comforter the life radiant. "_i am merlin who follow the gleam._" * * * * * _know well, my soul, god's hand controls whate'er thou fearest; round him in calmest music rolls whate'er thou hearest._ _what to thee is shadow, to him is day, and the end he knoweth. and not on a blind and aimless way the spirit goeth._ whittier. the golden age lies onward. "the golden age lies onward, not behind. the pathway through the past has led us up: the pathway through the future will lead on, and higher." the life radiant is that transfiguration of the ordinary daily events and circumstances which lifts them to the spiritual plane and sees them as the signs and the indications of the divine leading. every circumstance thus becomes a part of the revelation; and to constantly live in this illuminated atmosphere is to invest all experiences with a kind of magical enchantment. life prefigures itself before us as a spiritual drama in which we are, at once, the actors and the spectators. the story of living goes on perpetually. the days and the years inevitably turn the pages and open new chapters. nothing is ever hopeless, because new combinations and groupings create new results. the forces that determine his daily life are partly with man and partly with god. they lie in both the seen and the unseen. we are always an inhabitant of both realms, and to recognize either alone and be blind to the other is to deprive ourselves of the great sources of energy. the divine aid, infinite and all-potent as it is, capable at any moment of utterly transforming all the conditions and transferring them to a higher plane, is yet limited by the degree of spiritual receptivity in the individual. as one may have all the air that he is able to breathe, so may one have all the aid of the holy spirit which he is capable of receiving. man can never accept so gladly and so freely as god offers; but in just the proportion to which he can, increasingly, lift up his heart in response, to that degree god fills his life with a glory not of earth. "man may ask, and god may answer, but we may not understand, knowing but our own poor language, all the writing of his hand." science has discovered the existence of that incalculable energy, the ether, interpenetrated in the atmosphere. electro-magnetic currents of power beyond all conception are revealed, and when intelligently recognized by some happy genius, like that of marconi, they begin to be utilized in the service of human progress. now as this ethereal energy which is only just beginning to be recognized can be drawn upon for light, for heat, for motor power, for communication, just as this hitherto undreamed-of power can be drawn upon for the fundamental needs of the physical world, so, correspondingly, does there exist the infinite reservoir of spiritual energy which god freely opens to man in precisely the proportion in which he recognizes and avails himself of its transforming power. and in this realm lies the life radiant. if this transfiguration of life could only be experienced by the aid of wealth and health and all for which these two factors stand, it would not be worth talking about. we hear a great deal of the "privileged classes" and of "fortunate conditions," as if there were certain arbitrary divisions in life defined by impassable boundaries, and that he who finds himself in one, is unable to pass to another. never was there a more fatally erroneous conception. in the spiritual world there are no limits, no boundaries, no arbitrary divisions. just so far as the soul conquers, is it free. conquer ignorance, and one enters the realm of education, of culture; conquer vice, and he enters into the realm of virtue; conquer impatience and irritability and bitterness, and their result in gloom and despondency, and he enters into the realm of serenity and sweetness and exaltation with their result in power of accomplishment. the life radiant can be achieved, and is within the personal choice of every individual. one may place himself in relation with this infinite and all-potent current of divine energy and receive its impetus and its exhilaration and its illumination every hour in the day. the toiler in manual labor may lead this twofold life. on the visible side he is pushing onward in the excavation of a tunnel; he is laying the track of a new railroad; he is engaged in building a house; he stands at his appointed place in a great factory,--but is this all? his real work lies both in the visible and in the invisible. on the one hand he is contributing to the material resources of the world, and he is earning his wage by which to live; on the other hand he is developing patience, faithfulness, and judgment,--quantities of the spiritual man and possessions of the spiritual life which extend the spiritual territory. faithfulness to the immediate duty creates a larger theatre for duty. there are not wanting examples that could be named of statesmen,--senators, governors, and others in high places, to say nothing of the supreme example of a lincoln; there are not wanting examples of professional men in high and important places who initiated their work by any humble and honest industrial employment that chanced to present itself at the moment. conquering this rudimentary realm, they passed on to others successively. integrity is a spiritual quantity, and it insures spiritual aid. the cloud of witnesses is never dispersed. the only imprisonment is in limitations, and limitations can be constantly overcome. the horizon line of the impossible recedes as we advance. in the last analysis nothing is too sublime or too beautiful to be entirely possible. its attainment is simply a question of conditions. these conditions lie in entering into this inner realm of spiritual energy in which the personal will is increasingly identified with the will of god. like an echo of celestial music are these lines by sully-prudhomme:-- "the lilies fade with the dying hours, hushed is the song-bird's lay; but i dream of summers and dream of flowers that last alway." nor is this only the day-dream of a poet. the summers and flowers that last alway are a very immediate treasure which one has only to perceive, to grasp, to recognize, and to realize. "surely," exclaimed the psalmist, "goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and i shall dwell in the house of the lord forever." this dwelling in "the house of the lord" is by no means a figure of speech. nor is it to be regarded as some ineffable privilege to be--possibly to be--enjoyed after that change we call death. its real significance is here and now. one must dwell in "the house of the lord" to-day, and every day. the "house of the lord" is a beautiful figurative expression for that spiritual atmosphere in which one may perpetually live, and in which it is his simple duty both to live and to radiate to all around him. in these summer days of , in this golden dawn of the twentieth century, the world is echoing with wonder in the discovery of a new and most mysterious force in nature,--radium. science is, at this date, powerless to analyze or explain its marvellous power. the leading scientists of the world of learning--sir william crookes, sir oliver lodge, and professor curie (who, with mme. curie, has the honor of being its discoverer)--believe that in radium will be found the true solution of the problem of matter. radium gives off rays at the speed of one hundred and twenty thousand miles a second, and these rays offer the most extraordinary heat, light, and power. yet with this immense radiation it suffers no diminution of energy; nor can any scientist yet discern from what source this power is fed. a grain of it will furnish enough light to enable one to read, and, as professor j. j. thomson has observed, it will suffer no diminution in a million years. it will burn the flesh through a metal box and through clothing, but without burning the texture of the garments. the rays given out by radium cannot be refracted, polarized, or regularly reflected in the way of ordinary light, although some of them can be turned aside by a magnet. professor curie has reported to the french academy of science that half a pound of radium salts will in one hour produce a heat equal to the burning of one-third of a foot of hydrogen gas. this takes place, it must be remembered, without any perceptible diminution in the radium. it emits heat maintaining a temperature of . degrees fahrenheit above its surroundings. it evolves sufficient heat to melt more than its own weight of ice every hour. radium projects its rays through solid substances without any perceptible hindrance and burns blisters through a steel case. the light is pale blue. down in the deepest pitchblende mines, where particles of radium have been hidden away since the creation of the world, they are still found shining with their strange blue light. the radium electrons pass through the space which separates every molecule in a solid body from another. the scientific theory is that no two molecules in any body, however dense, actually touch. the relative power of radium to the x-ray is as six to one. the rays of radium have one hundred thousand times the energy of those of uranium and over one hundred times the energy of barium radiation. the scarcity of the metal will be understood when it is stated that there is far less radium in pitchblende than gold in ordinary sea water. radium colors glass violet; transforms oxygen into ozone, white phosphorus to red; electrifies various gases and liquids, including petroleum and liquid air. professor sir william crookes, the world's greatest living physicist and experimental scientist, said of radium in the june of this :-- "in total darkness i laid a piece of pitchblende--the ore from which radium is extracted--face down upon a sensitized plate, and let it act with its own light for twenty-four hours. the result was a photograph, where the black pitchblende appeared light owing to the emanations from the radium contained in it. the photograph also shows these going off into space from the sides of the specimen. "radium is dangerous to handle. once i carried a tiny piece of radium in my waistcoat pocket to a soirée at the royal society, and on reaching home found a blister in my side. the blisters from radium may take months to get well, as the injurious effect goes so deep. now i carry a thick lead box just large enough to hold the little brass case in which i keep the radium itself. there it lies--a little, tawny, crystalline patch. there would hardly be a larger quantity together in one box anywhere in england. "there are several kinds of emanations from radium. photographs similar to those produced by the roentgen ray tube and induction coil can be got by means of the emanations from a small quantity of radium. i took a screen made of zincblende, which will phosphoresce when the emanations of radium fall upon it. i then painted upon it, in a solution of radium, the word 'radium.' in the dark this screen (about three inches by four inches) gives off sufficient light to read by. but the most striking way of showing the emanations is by the little contrivance i call a spinthariscope. in this a zinc sulphide screen is fitted at the end of a short brass tube, with a speck of radium about a millimeter away from it. looking in the dark through the lens at the other end one sees a regular bombardment of the screen by the emanations. the phenomena of radium require us to recast many of our ideas of matter, electricity, and energy, and its discovery promises to realize what for the last hundred years have been but day-dreams of philosophy. "although the fact of emission of heat by radium is in itself sufficiently remarkable, this heat is probably only a small portion of the energy radium is constantly sending into space. it is at the same time hurling off material particles which reveal their impact on a screen by luminous scintillations. stop these by a glass or mica screen, and torrents of roentgen rays still pour out from a few milligrams of radium salt in quantity to exhibit to a company all the phenomena of roentgen rays, and with energy enough to produce a nasty blister on the flesh, if kept near it for an hour." it is hardly possible to contemplate this remarkable element in the world of nature without recognizing its correspondence in the world of spirit. if an element radiates perpetual light, heat, and power with no loss of its own inherent energy, so the spirit can radiate love, sympathy, sweetness, and inspiration with no diminution of its own quality. science may be unable to recognize the medium from which radium is fed; but religion recognizes the medium from which the spirit draws its sustenance in the power of god. the human will merged in the divine will is invincible. there is no ideal of life which it may not realize, and this realization is in the line of the inevitable and is experienced with the unerring certainty of a mathematical demonstration. yet, when one comes to examine the actual average attitude of humanity toward this subject of the divine will, one finds it is largely that of a mere gloomy and enforced resignation, even at its best, and, at its worst, of distrust and rebellion to the will of god. it seems to be held as the last resort of desperation and despair, rather than as the one abounding source of all joy and success and achievement. the average individual holds a traditional belief that he ought, perhaps, to be able sincerely to wish that god's will be done, but as a matter of fact he far prefers his own. the petition is, in his mind, invariably associated with seasons of great sorrow, disaster, and calamity, when, having apparently nothing else to hope for, a prayer is offered for the will of god! it is somewhat vaguely held to be the appropriate expression for the last emergency, and that it implies resigning one's self to the most serious and irreferable calamity. there is also a nebulous feeling that while the will of god may be entirely appropriate to the conditions and circumstances of the aged, the poor, the unfortunate, and the defective classes, it is the last thing in the world to be invoked for the young, the gifted, the strong, and the brilliant orders of society. it is tacitly relegated to a place in some last hopeless emergency, and not to a place in the creative energy of the most brilliant achievement. now, as a matter of profoundest truth, this attitude is as remote from the clear realization of what is involved in the will of god as would be the conviction that the flying express train or the swift electric motor cars might be suitable enough for the aged, and the weary, and the invalid, and the people whose time was of little consequence, but that the young, the radiant, the eager, the gifted, the people to whom time was valuable, must go by their own conveyances of horse or foot under their immediate personal control. this fallacy is no more remote from truth than is the fallacy that the will of god is something to be accepted with what decorum of resignation one may, only when he cannot help it! on the contrary, the will of god is the infinitely great motor of human life. its power is as incalculably greater over the soul than that of radium over other elements, as it is higher in the scale of being; as spirit rather than substance; and the life radiant is really entered upon when one has come absolutely to merge all his longing and desire into the divine purposes. it is like availing one's self of the great laws of attraction and gravitation in nature. with the human will identified with the divine will, every day's experience becomes invested with the keenest zest and interest. the events that may arise at any moment enlist the energy and fascinate the imagination. the consciousness of union with god produces an exquisite confidence in the wise and sweet enchantment of life; the constant receptivity of the soul to the influence and the guiding of the holy spirit make an atmosphere ecstatic, even under the most commonplace or outwardly depressing circumstances. celestial harmonies thrill the air. in this divine atmosphere--the soul's native air--every energy is quickened. the divine realm is as truly the habitat of the spiritual man--who, temporarily inhabiting a physical body that he may thus come into relations with a physical world, is essentially a spiritual rather than a physical being--as the air is the habitat of the bird, or the water of the fish. when the divine statement is made, "without me ye can do nothing," it is simply that of a literal fact. the gloom, the depression, the irritation that so often prevail and persist in mental conditions, do not arise, primarily, from any outward trial or perplexity; they are the result--the inevitable result--of the soul's lack of union with god; the lack of that _rapport_ between the spirit of man and the divine spirit in which alone is exhilaration and joy. when this union is forged, when the human will rests perfectly in the divine will, one then absolutely knows, with the most positive and literal conviction, that "all things work together for good to them that love god." the assurance is felt with the unchallenged force of a mathematical demonstration. not merely that the pleasant and agreeable things work together for good, but _all_ things--pain, loss, sorrow, injustice, misapprehension. then one realizes in his own experience the significance of the words, "we glory in tribulation, also." one has heard all one's life, perhaps, of "the ministry of sorrow," and similar phrases, and he has become a trifle impatient of them as a sort of incantation with which he has little sympathy. at the best, he relegates this order of ministry to the rank and file of humanity; to those whose lives are (to his vision) somewhat prosy and dull; and for himself he proposes to live in a world beautiful, where stars and sunsets and flames and fragrances enchant the hours, where, with his feet shod with silver bells, he is perpetually conscious of being "born and nourished in miracles." he is perfectly confident that every life can be happy, if it will; and he regards sorrow as a wholly stupid and negative state which no one need fall into if only he have sufficient energy to generate a perpetual enchantment. thus he dances down the years like the daffodils on the morning breeze, singing always his hymn to the radiant goddess: "the fairest enchants me, the mighty commands me," pledging his faith at the altar of perpetual adoration that one has only but to believe in happiness and make room for it in his life in order to live in this constant exhilaration. then, one day, he awakens to find his world in ruins. sorrow, pain, loss, have come upon him, and have come in the one form of all others that seems most impossible to bear. if it were death, even of the one dearest on earth, he would be sustained by divine consolations. if it were financial deprivation, he could meet it with fortitude and accept goethe's counsel to "go and earn more." if it were any one of various other forms of trial, he reflects, there would be for his pain various forms of consolation; but the peculiar guise it has assumed paralyzes him with its baffling power, its darkness of eclipse. the element of hopelessness in it,--his own utter inability to understand the cause of the sorrow which is literally a thunderbolt out of a clear sky,--plunges him almost into despair. he had endeavored to give the best, but the result is as if he had given the worst; he had come to rely on a perfect and beautiful comprehension and sympathy, but he is confronted with the most inexplicable misapprehension of all his motives, the most complete misunderstanding of all his aspirations and prayers. this, or other combinations and conditions of which it may serve as a type, is one of the phases of human experience. if pain were only the inevitable result of conscious and intentional wrong-doing, then might one even learn to refrain from the error and thus avoid the result. but a deeper experience in life, a more profound insight into the springs of its action, reveal that pain, as well as joy, falls into experience as an event encountered on the onward march, rather than as being, invariably, conditions created by ourselves. in the final analysis of being, we may have created the causes sometime and somewhere; but in the immediate sense we fail to discern the trace of our own action. a joy, a radiance undreamed of, suddenly drops into a day, making it a memorable date forever; a joy that transmutes itself into exaltation and a higher range of energy. naturally, we count such an experience divine, and offer our gratitude to god, the giver of all blessings. but a tragedy of sorrow, a darkness of desolation impenetrable and seemingly final, also falls suddenly into a day, and inexpressible amazement and incredulity that it can be real are added to the pain. but it is real. the sunshine has vanished; the stars have hidden their light; the air is leaden where once it was all gold and rose and pearl; one is alone in the desert, in a loneliness that no voice sounds through, in an anguish that no human sympathy can reach or sustain. all that made life worth the living has been inexplicably withdrawn; and how, then, shall he live? and _why_ shall he live? he may even question. the springs of energy are broken and his powers are paralyzed. whatever he has hitherto done, whatever he has tried or hoped to do in the joyous exaltation of the days that have vanished from all save memory, he can do no longer. it is not a question of choice, not a decision that he would not still continue his efforts; but it is the total impossibility of doing so that settles down upon him like a leaden pall. the blind cannot see, the deaf cannot hear, the dumb cannot speak, the paralyzed cannot walk,--no matter how gladly they would fulfil these functions. so he looks at his own life. his world is in ruins, and he has no power to ever rebuild it again. in such conditions the problem of suicide may arrive like a ghastly spectre to confront the mind. it is a spectre that, according to statistics, is alarmingly prevalent. the statisticians talk of periods of it as "an epidemic." both science and religion take note of it, discuss its bearing upon life, its tendency and its possible prevention. it is seen as the result of both great and of trivial causes. it is seen to follow a great sin, and to be the--terribly mistaken--refuge of a great sorrow. and the remedy lies,--where? it can hardly lie elsewhere than in a truer understanding of the very nature of life itself. the only remedy will be found in the larger general understanding that life cannot be extinguished. one may destroy his physical _body_,--he can do that at any moment and by an infinite variety of methods. but he cannot destroy _himself_. he may deprive himself of the instrument that was given to him for use in the physical world; he cannot escape from the duties that he should have fulfilled when he had the means of doing so in the use of this instrument we call the body. if science and religion could clearly teach the awful results that follow suicide, the terrible isolation and deprivation in which the spiritual being who has thrown away his instrument of service finds himself, it would be the one effective cure for a demoralizing tendency. if one has sinned, sometime and somewhere must he meet the consequences. he cannot escape them by escaping from his body, and the sooner he meets them, in repentance and atonement, the sooner will he work out to better and brighter conditions. if one encounters disaster or great personal sorrow, what then? one does not throw away all his possibilities of usefulness because he is himself unhappy. if he does do this he is ignoble. life is a divine dream. it is a divine responsibility, primarily between each soul and god. it is one's business to live bravely, with dignity, with faith, with generosity of consideration and good will, with love, indeed, which is the expression of the highest energy. yet, with his personal world in ruins, what shall he do? he must learn that supreme lesson of all time and eternity,--the lesson to accept and to joyfully embrace the will of god as thus revealed to him, in an inscrutable way. * * * * * [sidenote: the supreme illumination.] until he shall learn to accept this experience as divine, and offer his gratitude to god for pain as sincerely as he offered it for experiences of joy and of beauty, he cannot enter upon the life radiant. for the radiant life is only achieved through these mingled experiences as all equally accepted from the divine power. "ah, when the infinite burden of life descendeth upon us, crushes to earth our hopes, and under the earth in the graveyard, then it is good to pray unto god, for his sorrowing children turns he ne'er from the door, but he heals and helps and consoles them. yet is it good to pray when all things are prosperous with us; pray in fortunate days, for life's most beautiful fortune kneels before the eternal's gate, and with hands inter-folded, praises, thankful and moved, the only giver of blessings." the life radiant comes when one can as sincerely thank god for pain as for joy; when, after long groping in the darkness, clinging, indeed, to his faith in god (for without that he could not live an hour, though that faith be totally without sight), he suddenly realizes how a great sorrow has wrought in him a great result; that it has perfected and crystallized all that was nebulous in his faith, and that it has absolutely brought him into perfect rest in the divine will; that it has forged that indissoluble link which forevermore identifies his will with the will of god, and thus opens to him a realm fairer far than a "world beautiful"--even a world divine. only in this finer ether is revealed to him the life radiant; in the atmosphere made resplendent and glorious by this revelation of the soul's union with god. it is a life only experienced after one who has seen before him the promised land is led into the wilderness instead, and who, standing there in the midst of denial, and defeat, and desolation, can rejoice in the sea of glass mingled with fire through which he must pass. only in this supreme surrender of the soul to god; only in this rapture of union with the divine power, lies the life radiant. it is a glory not of earth; it is the instant crystallization of an intense and infinite energy that pours itself into every need of the varied human life. it is the igniting of a spark that flashes its illumination on every problem and perplexity. it is the coming to "know god" in the sense meant by saint paul, and thus to enter into the eternal life. for the eternal life is not a term that implies mere duration. it implies present conditions. the eternal life is now. it is a spiritual state, and implies the profound and the realized union with god, rather than a prolongation of existence through countless ages. only the eternal life can thus prolong itself. the life of the spirit is alone immortal. * * * * * [sidenote: creating the new world.] "the soul looketh steadily forward, creating a world before her, leaving worlds behind her," and "the web of events is the flowing robe in which she is clothed." that union of energy and will which we call the soul is capable of creating a new world every day, and any adequate perception of the life that now is, as well as that which is to come, suggests consolation for the ills of the day and leads one into the atmosphere of peace and joy. when one comes into any clear realization of this life of the spirit,--of its infinite outlook, its command of resources,--the entanglement with trifles falls off of itself. not unfrequently a great deal of time and energy is totally wasted in endeavoring to combat or to conquer the annoyances and troubles that beset one; that weight his wings and blind his eyes and render him impervious and unresponsive to the beauty and joy of life. nine times out of ten it is far better to ignore these, to put them out of sight and out of mind, and press on to gain the clearer atmosphere, to create the new world. "the whole course of things goes to teach us faith. we need only obey. there is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. why need you choose so painfully your place, and occupation, and associates, and modes of action and of entertainment? certainly there is a possible right for you that precludes the need of balance and wilful election. for you there is a reality, a fit place and congenial duties. place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment. then you put all gainsayers in the wrong. then you are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. if we will not be marplots with our miserable interferences, the work, the society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better than now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and still predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as do now the rose, and the air, and the sun." the poet declares that "sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things," but there is a certain morbidness in even the sensitive delicacy and intensity of feeling that broods too deeply over the past. it is a great art to learn to let things go--let them pass. they are a part of the "flowing conditions." even the pain and sorrow that result from failures and changes in social relations; loss of friends, the vanishing of friendships in which one had trusted,--even this phase of trial, which is truly the hardest of all, can be best endured by closing the door of consciousness on it, and creating a new world by that miracle-working power of the soul. friendships that hold within themselves any permanent, any spiritual reality, come to stay. "only that soul can be my friend which i encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which i do not decline and which does not decline to me, but, native of the same celestial altitude, repeats in its own all my experience." life has too many claims and privileges and resources to waste it in lamentations. let one look forward, not backward. fairy realms of enchantment beckon him on. these "flowing conditions of life" are, really, the conditions of joy, of exhilaration, of stimulus to energy rather than the reverse. they invest each day, each week, each year, with the enchantment of the unknown and the untried. they produce the possibility of perpetual hope, and continuity of hope is continuity of endeavor. without hope, faith, and courage, life would be impossible; and courage and all power of energy and endeavor depend entirely upon hope and faith. if a man believes in nothing and is in a state of despair and not hope, his energies are paralyzed. but hope lends wings,--hope and faith are creative, and can both control and change the trend of events. circumstances are but the crude material, which is subject to any degree of transformation by the alchemy of faith. "when a god wishes to ride, every chip and stone will bud and shoot out winged feet to carry him," and it is hope and faith that give the power of the gods. there is, perhaps, no adequate realization on the part of humanity of the enormous extent to which the forces in the unseen mingle with the forces of the seen, and thus complete the magnetic battery of action. life approaches perfection in just the degree to which it can intelligently and reverently avail itself of this aid which is a divine provision. it is not only after death that the soul "stands before god." the soul that does not stand before god, now and here, in the ordinary daily life, does not even live at all, in any true sense. "i am come that ye might have _life_," said jesus, "and have it more abundantly." it is only as one holds himself receptive to the divine currents that he has life, and it rests with himself to have it "more abundantly" every day and hour. this constant communion with jesus, this living in constant receptivity to the divine energy, includes, too, the living in telepathic communion with those who have gone on into the unseen world. the spirituality of life is conditioned on so developing our own spiritual powers by faith and prayer and communion with god, that one is sensitive to the presence and responsive to the thought of friends who have been released from the physical life. shall phillips brooks, the friend and helper and wise counsellor when here, be less so now that he has entered into the next higher scale of being? shall the friend whom we loved, and who was at our side in visible presence yesterday, be less our friend because his presence is not visible to us to-day? why is it not visible? simply because the subtle spirit-body is in a state of far higher vibration than the denser physical body, and the physical eye can only recognize objects up to a certain vibratory degree. it is a scientific fact. musicians and scientists know well that above a certain pitch the ear cannot recognize sound; it becomes silence. but as saint paul says, "there is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body," and the spiritual body also has its organs of sight and hearing. clairvoyance and clairaudience are as natural, when the spiritual faculties are sufficiently developed, as are the ordinary sight and hearing. even when there is no clairvoyance and clairaudience, in the way of super-normal development, the mind kept in harmonious receptivity to the divine world may be telepathically in more or less constant communion with those in the unseen. "the power of our own will to determine certain facts is, itself, one of the facts of life," says professor josiah royce. the power of our own will is but another name for spiritual power--that positive force to which all events and circumstances are negative. * * * * * "there never was a right endeavor but it succeeded," says emerson. "patience and patience, we shall win at the last. we must be very suspicious of the deceptions of the element of time. it takes a good deal of time to eat or to sleep, or to earn a hundred dollars, and a very little time to entertain a hope and an insight which becomes the light of our life. we dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart!--it seems to say,--there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize will be the transformation of genius into practical power." [sidenote: eliminating anxieties.] a large percentage of the anxieties and perplexities of daily experience could be eliminated at once and struck off the balance, never to return again, if life were but viewed aright, and held in the scale of true valuations. nothing is more idle than to sell one's soul for a mess of pottage; for the pottage is not worth the price. seen in the most practical, every-day light, it is a bad bargain. not only is it true that a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things that he possesseth, but, conversely, as a rule, the greater the mass of things the less the life. the spiritual energy becomes clogged and fettered and strangled amid its entanglement with things. the very power of finance, that might and that ought to insure its possessor a certain peace of mind, a liberation from petty anxieties, and a power to devote himself to higher aims, too often reverses this and chains him as to a wheel. recently there arrived at a fashionable hotel a family whose command of finance might have redeemed every day from the sordid and from any anxious efforts, and enabled them to live in the realm of high thought, of generous and beautiful expressions of sympathy and love to all. their visit might have made the time a glorified interlude to every one with whom they came in contact by its radiation of hope and happiness and sympathy and good cheer. instead, each and all, individually and collectively, were entangled in possessions,--weighted down with _things_, and quite illustrating the terse little couplet of emerson,-- "things are in the saddle and ride mankind." the things which rode these unfortunate beings--for the multi-millionaires may not unfrequently be so classed--were masses of jewels, that could not be worn and enjoyed because too elaborate to be suitable, and so must be instantly consigned to the safe. such part of these treasures as were in use, and left in rooms, suffered from losses or theft. they caused more or less vexation, anger, discord, and fret in general to the owners and every one concerned, until the onlooker was ready to exclaim, "if this is the price of diamonds and rubies and pink pearls, and rich and rare gems in general, let one escape the tyranny of purple and fine linen, and take simplicity and its accompanying peace of mind." after a certain limit of ordinary comfort, great possessions seem to enslave rather than to liberate. if the price of costly jewels is peace of mind, as well as a cheque of imposing figures, then, indeed, let one keep his peace of mind, and go without the necklace. it is often curious to see how little imagination goes into the spending of colossal fortunes. the possessors simply build more houses than they can live in; each one has more space and more impedimenta than he knows what to do with, and the multiplication of all these possessions results in perpetual anxieties, and fret, and worry, until one would prefer a crust and a garret, and his spiritual freedom, to any such life as that entailed by the golden shower of fortune. "are you rich? rich enough to help somebody?" there is the test. the diamond and ruby necklace, whose chief use seems to be to incite anxieties, would give some aspiring youth or maiden a college course. the costly ring left carelessly on the bureau, tempting theft, would give a gifted young girl just the study in a musical conservatory that she needs, or would make a young artist happy and encouraged by buying his picture, and some one else might be made happy and helped on to new endeavor by having the gift of the picture. money can be transmuted into spiritual gifts, and only when thus used is it of much importance in promoting any real comfort or enjoyment or stimulus to progress. the event, the thing, is purely negative, and only when acted upon by force of spirit does it become positive. let one go on through the days doing the beautiful thing in every human relation. life is a spiritual drama, perpetually being played. the curtain never goes down. the actors come and go, but the stage is never vacant. to inform the drama with artistic feeling, with beauty, with generous purpose, is in the power of every one. it depends, not on possessions, but on sympathy, insight, and sweetness of spirit. these determine the life radiant. * * * * * "i will wait heaven's perfect hour through the innumerable years." [sidenote: heaven's perfect hour.] the saving grace of life is the power to hold with serene and steadfast fidelity the vision, the ideal, that has revealed itself in happier hours; to realize that this, after all, is the true reality, and that it shines in the spiritual firmament as the sun does in the heavens, however long the period of storm and clouds that obscure its radiance. the tendency to doubt and depression is often as prevalent as an epidemic. in extreme cases it becomes the suicidal mania; in others it effectually paralyzes the springs of action and leaves its victim drifting helplessly and hopelessly with the current; and any such mental tendency as this is just as surely a definite evil to be recognized and combated as would be any epidemic of disease. to rise in the morning confronting a day that is full of exacting demands on his best energies; on his serenest and sunniest poise; that require all the exhilaration and sparkle and radiance which have vanished from his possession, and yet to be forced, someway and somehow, to go through his appointed tasks,--no one can deny that here is a very real problem, and one that certainly taxes every conceivable force of will far more than might many great and visible calamities. for all this form of trial is invisible and very largely incommunicable, and it is like trying to walk through deep waters that are undiscerned by those near, but which impede every step, and threaten to rise and overwhelm one. the poetic and artistic temperament is peculiarly susceptible to this form of trial. in work of an industrial or mechanical nature, a certain degree of will force alone will serve to insure its accomplishment whether one "feels in the mood" or not. the mood does not greatly count. but in work of any creative sort, the mood, the condition of mind, is the determining factor. and is it within human power, by force of will alone, to call up this working mood of radiant energy when all energy has ebbed away, leaving one as inert as an electric machine from which the current has been turned off? and yet--and yet--the saving gift and grace of life and achievement comes, in that there is a power higher than one's own will, on which one may lay hold with this serene and steadfast fidelity. physicians and scientists have long since recognized that intense mental depression is as inevitably an accompaniment of _la grippe_ as are its physical symptoms, and the more fully the patient himself understands this, and is thus enabled to look at it objectively, so to speak, the better it is for him. the feeling is that he has not a friend on earth, and, on the whole, he is rather glad of it. he feels as if it were much easier to die than to live,--not to say that the former presents itself to him as far the preferable course. so he envelops himself in the black shadows of gloom, and, on the whole, quite prefers drawing them constantly deeper. and this is very largely the semi-irresponsible state of illness combined with ignorance of the real nature of the malady. the knowledge of how to meet it with a degree of that "sweet reasonableness" which should invest one's daily living, is knowledge that can hardly come amiss. one must treat it as a transient visitation of those "black spirits or white, blue spirits or gray," which are to be exorcised by keeping close to beautiful thought,--to something high, poetic, reverent. "thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee" is one of the most practical aids in life. it can be relied upon more fully than the visit of the physician. from the bible, from the poets, one may draw as from a sustaining fountain. as this intense depression is a mental feature of the disease it must be met by mental methods,--of resolutely holding the thoughts to high and beautiful themes; by allying the imagination with serene and radiant ideals. emerson is the greatest of magicians. his words will work marvels. his thought is as luminous as a roentgen ray. "heaven's perfect hour" is sure to sometime dawn if one but keep his face turned toward the morning. "heaven's perfect hour" is within one's own possibilities of creation, if he live aright and think aright; and with joy and radiance may he make it his perpetual experience; although it is the supreme anomaly in life that the social relations which are designed to offer the profoundest joy, the most perfect consolation for disaster or sorrow, and to communicate the happy currents of electrical energy, are yet those which not unfrequently make themselves the channel of the most intense suffering. there is something wrong in this. the friendships of life, all forms and phases and degrees through which regard and friendship reveal themselves, are the one divinest, perhaps it may be said are the only, part of life on earth that is absolutely divine, and the divine element should communicate perpetual joy. this is the ideal view of the entire panorama of social interchange and social relations, and being the purest ideal, it is also the most intensely and absolutely real. for nothing is real, in the last analysis, save that which is ideal; and nothing is ideal that is not a spiritual reality. then the question recurs,--how is it possible, how can it be accounted for that the one phase of suffering which seems past even trying to endure, comes through the sources which should radiate only joy and blessedness? the old proverb, "save me from my friends," is founded on a certain basis of fact. "twenty enemies cannot do me the mischief of one friend," rather cynically, but perhaps not wholly untruly, said gail hamilton. for it certainly is not the avowed enemy, or the person to whom one is indifferent, who has the power to greatly harm or pain him. so far as injury goes, emerson is probably right when he says, "no one can work me injury but myself." misrepresentation, misinterpretation, there may be, but in the long run truth is mighty, and will, and does, prevail. one need not greatly concern himself with misinterpretations, but, rather, only with striving to live the life of truth and righteousness. perhaps one cause of much of the unhappiness and suffering that not infrequently invests relations that should only be those of joy and peace and mutual inspiration, is an over and an undue emphasis on material things. now, when viewed in the light of absolute truth, material things are of simply no consequence at all. they do not belong to the category of realities. money, possessions,--the mere goods and chattels of life,--are, even at their best appraisal, a mere temporary convenience. as a convenience they fill a place and are all very well. as anything beyond that they have no place at all in one's consciousness. whatever luxury they can offer is simply in using them to the best advantage, and human nature is so constituted that this best advantage is usually more closely connected with those who are dear to one than it is with himself. for himself alone, what does he want that money, mere money, can buy? he wants and needs the average conditions of life, in the "food, clothing, and shelter" line; he needs and requires certain conditions of beauty, of harmony, of gratification of tastes and enlargement of opportunities,--all these are legitimate needs, and are part of the working conditions of life; of the right development and progress which one is in duty bound to make, both for his own personal progress and as the vantage ground of his efforts for usefulness. beyond that, the luxury of life lies in doing what the heart prompts. the one heavenly joy of life is in the enlargement of social sympathies; it is in the offering of whatever appreciation and devotion it is possible to offer to those whose noble and beautiful lives inspire this devotion. to have this accepted--not because it is of intrinsic value, not because it is of any particular importance _per se_, but because it is the visible representation of the spiritual gift of reverence, appreciation, and devotion--is the purest happiness one may experience, and that which inspires him anew to all endeavor and achievement. to have it refused or denied is to have the golden portals close before one and shut him out in the darkness. why, the heavenly privilege, the infinite obligation, is on the part of him who is permitted to offer his tribute of love and devotion, expressed, if it so chances, in any material way,--and he is denied his sweetest joy if this privilege be denied him. there are gifts that are priceless, but they are not of the visible and tangible world. they are the gifts of sympathy, of intuitive comprehension, of helpful regard; and, curiously, these--the priceless and precious--are never regarded as too valuable for acceptance, while regarding the material and temporal, which, at best, are the merest transient convenience, there will be hesitation and pain. and this hesitation arises, too, from the most beautiful and delicately exquisite qualities, but it produces the pain that is "----the little rift within the lute, that by and by will make the music mute." there is in life a proportion of pain and jarring that is inevitable, probably, to the imperfect conditions with which the experience on earth is temporarily invested; and because of this, all the range of friendship should be held apart as divine, and any interchange of material gifts should not receive this undue emphasis, but be regarded as the mere incidental trifle of momentary convenience, while all the regard and devotion that may lie behind should give its mutual joy as free and as pure as the fragrance of a rose. of all that a friend may be emerson so truly says:-- "i fancied he was fled,-- and, after many a year, glowed unexhausted kindliness like daily sunrise there. my careful heart was free again. o friend, my bosom said, through thee alone the sky is arched, through thee the rose is red; all things through thee take nobler form." that alone is what all the loves and friendships of life are for,--that through their ministry life may take on nobler form. "i fancied he was fled." but a friendship that is true cannot flee; it is, by its very quality and nature, abiding. it may be silent forever; it may be invisible, inaudible, immaterial, impersonal; but once forged it is of the heavenly life, the heavenly language, and the word of the lord abideth forever! * * * * * [sidenote: love and good will.] the stress and storm of life, however, fade away very largely before the power of simple love and good will, which is the key to all situations and the solution of all problems. "how shall i seem to love my people?" asked a french king of his confessor. "my son, you _must_ love them," was the reply. when there is genuineness one does not need to engage in the elaborate and arduous labor of counterfeiting qualities and manufacturing appearances, and it is really easier--to say nothing of its being a somewhat more dignified process--to _be_ what one wishes the world to regard him, than it is to endeavor to merely produce the effect of it. doctor holmes had a bit of counsel for those who were out at sea,--that they should not waste any energy in asking how they looked from the shore; and the suggestion is not an infelicitous one in its general application to life. it is quite enough for one to keep his feet, as best he may, set on the upward and onward way, without concerning himself too much as to the effect of his figure in the landscape. the energy that goes towards attitudinizing is always wasted, while that which expends itself on the legitimate fulfilment of tasks contributes something of real importance to life. and so, any significance of achievement seems to be exactly conditioned by the degree of energy involved--the finer the energy, the more potent the achievement. it would seem as if all the noble order of success hinged on two conditions,--the initial one of generating sufficient energy, and the second that of applying it worthily. the present age is characterized as that in which new forms of force appear,--in both the physical and the spiritual realms of life. what a marvel is the new chemical force, thermite, of which the first demonstration in america was made in , by the columbia university chemical society in new york. here is a force that dissolves iron and stone. an extremely interesting account of this new energy appeared in the "new york herald," in which the writer vivifies the subject by saying of thermite:-- "under its awful lightning blaze granite flows like water and big steel rails are welded in the twinkling of an eye.... the interior of mount pelee, whose fiery blast destroyed st. pierre in a moment and crumbled its buildings into dust, would be cool compared with this temperature of °. it would melt the white mountains into rivers of liquid fire. nothing could withstand its consuming power.... and what makes this stupendous force? the answer seems incredible as the claims for the force itself. it is produced by simply putting a match to a mixture of aluminum filings and oxide of chromium, both metallic, and yet, as by magic, a mighty force is instantly created." the writer describes the discovery and processes at some length, and adds:-- "such are the wonders of chemistry suggesting emerson's claim, 'thought sets men free.' by a simple process--flame applied to metal filings--prison bars melt and vaulted dungeons flow like water." the article closes with this wonderful paragraph:-- "by chemistry the pale-faced modern faust, working in his laboratory, makes metals out of clay and many marvellous combinations. what they will do when skilfully proportioned and exposed to heat, the story related gives a hint,--accounting, as it were, for the forces at work in space, creating heat and electricity, making suns burn with indescribable fury, colliding with peaceful planets, mixing their metals in a second of time,--and new worlds seem to leap into vision, balls of molten fire sweeping through space; vast cyclones of flame, making pelee a cold-storage vault by comparison. all this seems simple enough as explained by modern chemistry, giving men unlimited power, making them gods, as it were, to first master themselves and then the universe." this description of the new force, whose intensity is almost beyond realization, is hardly less remarkable than is the energy described; and it lends itself, with perfect rhythm of correspondence, to analysis on the side of the spiritual forces of life. "cast thyself into the will of god and thou shalt become as god" is one of the most illuminating of the mystic truths. the "will of god" is the supreme potency, the very highest degree of energy, in the spiritual realm, which is the realm of cause, while the outer world is the realm of effects. now if one may so ally himself to the divine will as to share in its all-conquering power, he partakes of creative power and eternal life, now and here, just in proportion to the degree to which he can identify his entire trend of desire and purpose with this infinite will. this energy is fairly typified in the physical world by the stupendous new force called "thermite," and it is as resistless as that attraction which holds the stars in their courses and the universe in their solar relations. * * * * * [sidenote: the diviner possibilities.] it is a fallacy to suppose that it is a hardship and a trial to live the more divine and uplifting life, and that ease and pleasure are only to be found in non-resistance to the faults and defects of character. the truth is just the opposite of this, and the twentieth century will reveal a fairly revolutionary philosophy in this respect. heretofore poet and prophet have always questioned despondently,-- "does the road wind up hill all the way?" as if to wind up hill were the type of trial, and the "descent of avernus" were the type of joy. does the road wind up hill? most certainly, and thereby it leads on into the purer light, the fairer radiance, the wider view. does one prefer to go down hill into some dark ravine or deep mountain gorge? it is a great fallacy that it is the hardship of life to live in the best instead of in the worst. it is the way of the _transgressor_ which is hard--not of him who endeavors to follow the divine leading. the deeper truth is that the moment one commits all his purposes and his aspirations into the divine keeping he connects himself by that very act with a current of irresistible energy; one that reinforces him with power utterly undreamed of before. there is no limit to the power one may draw from the unseen universe. "it is possible, i dare to say," says a thoughtful writer, "for those who will indeed draw on their lord's power for deliverance and victory, to live a life on which his promises are taken as they stand and found to be true. it is possible to cast every care on him daily, and to be at peace amidst the pressure. it is possible to see the will of god in everything, and to find it not a sigh but a song. it is possible in the world of inner act and motion to put away all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and evil speaking, daily and hourly. it is possible, by unreserved resort to divine power, under divine conditions, to become strongest at our weakest point; to find the thing which yesterday upset all our obligations to patience, an occasion to-day, through him who loveth us and worketh in us, for a joyful consent to his will and a delightful sense of his presence. these things are divinely possible." one very practical question that cannot but confront the world at the present time is as to whether there is any relation between religion, in its highest and most inclusive and spiritually uplifting sense, and the possibility of communication between those in this life and those who have passed through the change we call death and have entered on the next round of experience. it is a fact--albeit a rather curious and unaccountable one--that organized religion, as a whole, has been largely opposed to the idea of possible communication between what is currently termed the living and the dead. yet when one focusses the question to a matter of personal individuality, it does not stand the test. take, for instance, the revered name of a man who was universally recognized as one of the greatest spiritual leaders the world has known,--phillips brooks. when he was the rector of trinity church, or the bishop of the massachusetts diocese, no one who sought his companionship or counsel would have been regarded as being wrong to do so. now,--always provided that there is full conviction of immortality,--why should it be wrong to seek his companionship or counsel from the unseen life? death has no power over the essential individuality. indeed, in being freed from the physical body, the spiritual man becomes only more powerful, and with his power acting from a higher plane of energy. regarding ourselves as spiritual beings,--and if we are not that we are nothing,--regarding ourselves as _temporarily inhabiting_ a physical body, but in no sense identified with it save as we use this body for our instrument of communication with the physical world; what more logical or natural than that the spiritual being, not yet released from his physical body, should hold sweet and intimate communion with the spiritual being that _has_ been released from this physical environment? telepathy has already become a recognized law. that mind to mind, spirit to spirit, flashes its messages here in this present life, is a fact attested by too great an array of evidence to be doubted or denied. now the spiritual being who is released from the physical body is infinitely more sensitive to impression, more responsive to mental call, than was possible in conditions here. the experimental research and investigation in psychology, as shown in such work as that of professor münsterberg of harvard in the university laboratory, reveals increasingly that the brain is an electric battery of the most potent and sensitive order; that it generates electric thought waves and receives them. does it lose this power by the change called death? is this power only inherent in the physical structure? on the contrary, professor william james has demonstrated with scientific accuracy in his book called "human freedom," that this is not the case. if, then, intellectual energy survives the process of death,--and if it does not then there is no immortality,--the communication between those in the unseen and those in the seen is as perfectly natural as is any form of companionship or of social life here. as all kinds of people live, so all kinds of people die, and the mere fact of death is not a transforming process, spiritually. he who has not developed the spiritual faculties while here; who has lived the mere life of the senses with the mere ordinary intelligence, or without it, but never rising to the nobler intellectual and moral life--is no more desirable as a companion because he has died than he was before he died. and the objection to any of the ordinary _seance_ phenomena is, that whatever manifestations are genuine proceed very largely, if not entirely, from this strata of the crude and inconsequential, if not the vicious, with whom the high-minded man or woman would not have associated in life, and after death their presence would be quite as much to be deplored. granted all these exceptions. one may sweep them off and clear the decks. then what remains? there remains the truth of the unity of the spiritual universe; of the truth that the mere change of death is not a revolutionary one, transforming the individual into some inconceivable state of being and removing him, in a geographical sense, into some unrevealed region in space; there remains the truth that life is evolutionary in its processes; that there is no more violent and arbitrary and instantaneous change by the event of death, than there is in the change from infancy into childhood, from childhood into manhood. there remains the truth that the ethereal and the physical worlds are inter-related, inter-blended; that man, now and here, lives partially in each, and that the more closely he can relate himself to the diviner forces by prayer, by aspiration, by every thought and deed that is noble and generous and true, and inspired by love, the more he dwells in this ethereal atmosphere and is in touch with its forces and in companionship with his chosen friends who have gone on into that world. there is nothing in this theory that is incompatible with the teachings of the church, with all that makes up for us the religious life. on the contrary, it vitalizes and reinforces that life. this life of the spirit must be in god. let one, indeed, on his first waking each day, place his entire life, all his heart, mind, and faculties, in god's hands; asking him "to take entire possession, to be the guide of the soul." thus one shall dwell hourly, daily, in the divine atmosphere, and spirit to spirit may enjoy their communion and companionship. the experience of personal spiritual companionship between those here and those on the next plane of life is included in the higher religious life of the spirit while living here on earth. it vivifies and lends joy to it; for the joy of sympathetic companionship is the one supreme and transcendent happiness in life. and to live in this atmosphere requires one absolute and inevitable condition, the constant exercise of the moral virtues,--of truth, rectitude, generosity, and love. the life held amenable to these, the life which commits itself utterly into the divine keeping, is not a life of hardship; the "road that winds up hill" is the road of perpetual interest and exhilaration. it is a fatal fallacy to invest it with gloom and despair. it is the only possible source of the constant, intellectual energy of life, of sweetness, of joy, of happiness. the only standard which is worthy for one to hold as that by which he measures his life is the divine one illustrated in the character of jesus. to measure one's quality of daily life by this is always to fall short of satisfactory achievement; and still there is always the realization that its achievement is only a question of persistence and of time. it is the direction in which one is moving that determines his final destination. there is the deepest inspiration to the soul in taking for one's perpetual watchword, "be ye therefore perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect." not that this divine state is attained; but there is perpetual aid in the conviction that one's self--his spiritual self--_can_ "press on to the high calling of god." man is a divine being; the divine life is his only true life. the deepest loyalty to the divine ideal involves, however, not only the striving after perfection, but the charity for imperfection. to denounce evil is a part of rectitude; to condemn sin is a moral duty; but to condemn the sinner is not infrequently to be more deeply at fault than is he who thus offended. an illustration of this point has recently been before the public. a new york clergyman preached on easter sunday a sermon that was not his own. he gave no credit to its writer. the sermon was published, and a minister of another church, recognizing it, at once proceeded to "expose" the matter in the daily press. not only did he call public attention to the error, but he did it in a manner that seemed to rejoice in the opportunity; a manner so devoid of sorrow or sympathy as to fill the reader with despair at such an exhibition. rev. e. walpole warren fittingly rebuked the evident malice with which the fault was exposed, and quoted the words of saint paul in the injunction: "brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye who are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted." to have gone, in a spirit of love, privately and quietly, and pointed out the error, would have been christian-like; to exult in it must be described by a very different term. devotion to truth is good, but it is "speaking the truth in love" that is the ideal. it is even possible to convey questioning, counsel, encouragement, or reproach without the spoken word; to send the message by the law of suggestion from mind to mind. the mental intimation will reach the one to whom it is sent if the conditions for telepathy are observed, for thought is far more penetrative than the roentgen ray, and the atmosphere is magnetic, and carries it as the wire does the electric current. all these finer conditions are beginning to make themselves felt as practicable forces. humanity is becoming "plastic to the spirit touch;" sensitive to those vibrations too fine to be registered by the outward ear. "thought is the wages for which i sell days," said emerson. thought is the motor of the future. "as a man thinketh, so is he," is one of the most practical and literal truths. it is only by the divine law that one can measure the ethics of companionship. the frequent experiences in life of broken friendships; of those alliances of good will, of mutual sympathies and mutual enjoyment, that, at last, some way became entangled amid discords and barriers, and thus come to a disastrous end,--such experiences could be escaped were life lived by the diviner standards. friendship need never deteriorate in quality if each lives nobly. if one conceives of life more nobly and generously than the other, it may become, not a means of separation and alienation, but a means and measure of just responsibility. there are friendships whose shipwreck is on the rock of undue encroachment on one side and undue endurance--which has not the noble and spontaneous character of generosity--on the other. one imposes, the other is imposed on,--and so things run on from bad to worse, till at last a crisis comes, and those who had once been much to each other are farther apart than strangers. in such circumstances there has been a serious failure,--the failure of not speaking the truth in love. the failure on the part of the one more spiritually enlightened toward the one less enlightened. one should no more consent that his friend should do an ignoble thing than he should consent to do an ignoble thing himself. he should hold his friend in thought to the divine standard. he should conceive of him nobly and expect from him only honor and integrity. "those who trust us educate us," says george eliot; and still more do they who hold us in the highest thought draw us upward to that atmosphere through which no evil may pass. each one is his brother's keeper, and life achieves only its just and reasonable possibilities when it is held constantly amenable to the divine ideal,--when it is lived according to that inspiring injunction of phillips brooks: "be such a man, live such a life, that if all lives were like yours earth would be paradise." let one put aside sorrow and enter into the joy and radiance. "omit the negative propositions. nerve us with incessant affirmatives." if biography teaches any lesson, it is that the events which occur in life are of far less consequence than the spirit in which they are received. it is the attitude of mental receptivity which is the alchemy to transmute events and circumstances into experience, and it is experience alone which determines both the quality and the trend of life. it is in activity; in doing and giving and loving, that the joy of life must be sought. and it is joy which is the normal condition rather than depression and sadness, as health and not illness is the normal state. disease and sadness are abnormal, and if one finds himself "blue," it is his first business to escape from it, to change the conditions and the atmosphere. the radiant life is the ideal state, both for achievement as well as for that finer quality of personal influence which cannot emanate from gloom and depression. "everything good is on the highway," said emerson, and the first and only lasting success is that of character. it may not be, for the moment, exhilarating to realize that one's ill fortune is usually the result of some defect in his selection, or error in his judgment, but, on the other hand, if the cause of his unhappiness lies in himself, the cause of his happiness may also lie with himself, and thus it is in his power to so transform his attitude to life as to reverse the gloom and have the joy and sweetness rather than the bitterness and sadness of life. everything, in the last analysis, is a matter of temperament. nothing is hopeless, for life is infinite, and new factors can be evolved whose working out will create the new heaven and the new earth. * * * * * here, in the earth life, we have it in our power to seize our future destination.--fichte. [sidenote: the weight of the past.] one of the most inspiring injunctions of saint paul is that in which he bids us to "lay aside every weight." poet and prophet have always recognized the weight of the past as a serious problem. one has made all sorts of mistakes; he is entangled in the consequences of his "errors and ignorances," if not in his sins, and how can he enter on a life radiant with this burden? well does sidney lanier express this feeling in the stanzas:-- "my soul is sailing through the sea, but the past is heavy and hindereth me, the past hath crusted cumbrous shells that hold the flesh of cold sea-mells about my soul. the huge waves wash, the high waves roll, each barnacle clingeth and worketh dole, and hindereth me from sailing! "old past, let go and drop i' the sea till fathomless waters cover thee! for i am living, but thou art dead; thou drawest back, i strive ahead the day to find. thy shells unbind! night comes behind, i needs must hurry with the wind and trim me best for sailing." there is no question but that the past is heavy and hindereth every one. its "cumbrous shells" cling like dead weights around man, and keep him from the larger, freer life. "man is not by any means convinced as yet of his immortality," says sir edwin arnold; "all the great religions have in concert more or less positively affirmed it to him; but no safe logic proves it, and no entirely accepted voice from some farther world proclaims it." the one proof, of course, so far as absolute evidential demonstration goes, lies in the communication from those who have passed through death. there unfolds an increasingly impressive mass of logical probabilities that point to but one conclusion to every student of science and of spiritual laws. biology offers its important testimony. the law of the conservation of forces,--of motion and matter,--which is definitely proven by actual demonstration, suggests with a potency which no one can evade that intellect, emotion, and will--the most intense and resistless forces of the universe--can hardly be extinguished when the forces of matter persist. the study of the nature of the ether alone pours a flood of illumination on the theory of an ethereal world,--a theory with which all the known facts of science and psychology accord, and with which they range themselves. rev. doctor newman smyth says that the facts disclosed by a study of biology, as well as the theories advanced by some trained biologists, fairly open the new and interesting question whether death itself does not fall naturally under some principle of selection and law of utility for life? "it is of religious concern as well as of scientific interest," he continues, "for us to learn, as far as possible, all the facts and suggestions which microscopic researches may bring to our knowledge concerning the minute processes or most intimate and hidden laws of life and death. for if we, children of an age of questioning and change, are to keep a rational faith in spiritual reality,--strong and genuine as was our fathers' faith according to their light, ours must be a faith that shall strike its roots deep down into all knowledge, although light from above alone may bring it to its perfect christian trust and sweetness.... the least facts of nature may be germinal with high spiritual significance and beauty." the twentieth century leads faith to the brink of knowledge. the deepest spiritual feeling must perpetually recognize that faith alone--christ's words alone--are enough for every human soul; but faith grows not less, but more, when informed by knowledge. when man measures and weighs the star and discovers their composition; when he sends messages without visible means, then he may believe with fichte, that "here, in the earth life, we have it in our power to seize our future destination." mr. weiss objected to any (possible) evidential demonstration of immortality, because (as he said), "if you owe your belief in immortality to the assumed facts of a spiritual intercourse, your belief is at the mercy of your assumption.... it is merely an opinion derived from phenomena." but this reasoning would not hold good regarding any other trend of knowledge; the vital necessity of the soul to lay hold on god and immortality is not lessened, but rather deepened and reinforced by understanding, when knowledge goes hand in hand with faith. and the one supreme argument of all is that a truer knowledge of man's spiritual being--now and here--with a truer conception of his destiny in the part of life immediately succeeding the change of death, would make so marvellous a difference in all his relations on earth, in all his conceptions of achievement, and would, as sir edwin arnold says, "turn nine-tenths of the sorrows of earth into glorious joys and abolish quite as large a proportion of the faults and vices of mankind." the past is heavy with misconceptions of the simple truths of life and immortality as jesus taught them. the present seeks to throw off these "cumbrous shells." death is the liberator, the divinely appointed means for ushering man into the more real, the more significant life, whose _degree_ of reality and significance depends wholly on ourselves; which is simply the achievement--better or poorer--which man creates now and here, in the same manner in which the quality of manhood and womanhood depends wholly on the degree of achievement in childhood and youth. we do not "find," but instead, create our lives. as we are perpetually creating, we are perpetually making them anew. if we must, this year, live out the errors that we made last year, there is an encouragement rather than a penalty in the fact, as this truth argues that if we now enter on a loftier plane and realize in outward life a nobler experience, we shall, next year, or in some future time, find ourselves entirely free from the weight of the errors we have abandoned, the mistakes we have learned not to make, and the entanglements that our "negligences and ignorances" created. if we have caused our own sorrow, we can cause our own joy. for the golden age lies onward. discerning the future. _as the sun, ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image in the atmosphere, so often do the spirits of great events stride on before the events, and in to-day already walks to-morrow._ * * * * * _there exist moments in the life of man when he is nearer the great soul of the world than is man's custom, and possesses freely the power of questioning his destiny._ --coleridge. * * * * * think of the power of anticipation everywhere! think of the difference it would make to us if events rose above the horizon of our lives with no twilight that announced their coming. god has given man the powers which compel him to anticipate the future _for something_. --phillips brooks. the unexpected and the unaccountable play so large a part in human life that they may well incite study. it is not conceivable that man should always remain at the mercy of events without conscious and intelligent choice in selecting and grouping them. is there no roentgen ray that will pierce the horizon of the future and disclose to us what lies beyond? of course it is a sort of stock-in-trade, axiomatic assertion, that if it were intended for man to know the future god would have revealed it to him; and as it is not thus revealed, it is unwise, or unlawful, or immoral to seek to read it. on the same principle and with just as much logic, it might be solemnly declared that we have no right to endeavor to surprise any of the secrets of the universe; that if it had been intended for us to know the weight and composition of the stars, to understand the laws that hold them in their courses, or to know what is conquered by the scientist in geology, or chemistry, or anything else, that the knowledge would have been ready made, and as it is not so, it is not lawful for man to explore any of these territories of the unknown. or this assertion could be carried to a still further absurdity, and construed that if man had been intended to read he would have been born with the knowledge, and have had no need of learning the alphabet; or that if god had intended man to dwell in cities they would have sprung up spontaneously like forests. as a matter of fact, the extending of the horizon line of knowledge in every direction is man's business in this part of life; and why, indeed, if he can weigh and measure the stars in space, shall he not be able to compel some magic mirror to reveal to him his future? as it is, we all tread on quicksands of mystery, that may open and engulf us at any instant. it is simply appalling when one stops to think of it,--to realize the degree to which all one's achievements, and possibilities, and success, and happiness depend on causes apparently outside his own control. one awakens to begin the day without the remotest idea of what that day holds for him. all his powers of accomplishment, all his energy, all his peace of mind,--even the very matter of life or death hangs in the balance, and the scales are to him invisible and intangible. the chance of a moment may make or mar. a letter, a telegram, with some revelation or expression that paralyzes all his powers; the arrival of an unforeseen friend or guest, a sudden summons to an unexpected matter,--all these and a thousand other nebulous possibilities that may, at any instant, fairly revolutionize his life, are in the air, and may at any moment precipitate themselves. is not the next step in scientific progress to be into the invisible and the unknown? doctor loeb conceived the idea that the forces which rule in the realm of living things are not different from the forces that we know in the inanimate world. he has made some very striking and arresting experiments with protoplasm and chemical stimuli and opened a new field of problems in biology. if the physical universe can be so increasingly explored, shall not the spiritual universe be also penetrated by the spiritual powers of man? there is no reason why clairvoyance should not be developed into a science as rational as any form of optical research or experiment. not an exact science, like mathematics, for the future is a combination of the results of the past with the will and power and purposes of the individual in the present, and of those events that have been in train and are already on their way. it is a sort of spiritual chemistry. but it seems reasonably clear that all the experiences on this plane have already transpired in the life of the spirit on the other plane of that twofold life that we live, and they occur here because they have already occurred there. they are precipitated into the denser world after having taken place in the ethereal world. and so, if the vision can be cultivated that penetrates into this ethereal world, the future can thereby be read. it is the law and the prophets. now as the present largely determines the future, the things that shall be are partly of our own creation. "we shape ourselves the joy or fear of which our coming life is made, and fill our future's atmosphere with sunshine or with shade." there are no conditions of being that are not plastic to the potency of thought. as one learns to control his thought he controls the issues of life. he becomes increasingly clear in intuition, in perceptions, and in spiritual vision. as the planets and the stars and the solar systems are evolved out of nebulae through attraction and motion and perpetual combination, so the present and the future is evolved for each individual out of his past, and he is perpetually creating it. nothing is absolute, but relative,--"no truth so sublime but that it may become trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts." there is no relationship, no casual meeting, no accident or incident of the moment, however trivial it may seem, but that is a sign, a hint, an illustration of the human drama, perpetually moving onward, and demanding from each and all insight, as well as outlook, and a consciousness of the absolute realities involved in the manifestation of the moment. "the present moment is like an ambassador which declares the will of god," says the writer of a little catholic book of devotions; "the events of each moment are divine thoughts expressed by created objects," and the one serious hindrance, it may be, to the acceptance of events in this spirit, lies in the fact of not being prepared for their acceptance. the problem of life, then, resolves itself into the question of so ordering one's course of living as to be prepared to receive the event of the moment; but the entire rush and ceaseless demands of the life of the present form the obstacle in the way of this harmonious recognition. one cannot accept the event of the moment because he is absorbed in the event of yesterday, or last week, and his life is not, thereby, "up-to-date." to be always behindhand is to be under a perpetual and ever-increasing burden. empedocles under mt. etna was no more imprisoned than is the life of to-day which is filled with the things of yesterday. yet where does the remedy lie? it is the problem of the hour. "in nature every moment is new," says emerson, and it is that sense of freshness and exhilaration that one needs in order successfully to enter into the experiences of the present hour. the world of mechanism keeps pace in the most curiously interesting way with the world of thought. inventions came as material correspondences to the immaterial growth and demand. when in the middle of the nineteenth century the human race had achieved a degree of development that made swift communication essential to the common life, the telegraph and the ocean cable were invented; or it might rather be said, the laws that make them possible were discerned, and were taken advantage of to utilize for this purpose. the constant developments in rapid transit, in the instantaneous conveniences of telephonic communication, and, latest of all, in wireless telegraphy, are all in the line of absolute correspondence with the advancing needs of humanity. more than a decade ago doctor edward everett hale made the prediction in an article in "the forum" that writing (in the mechanical sense) would become a lost art, and that the people of future centuries would point to us as "the ancients," who communicated our ideas by means of this slow and clumsy process. according to doctor hale's vision, the writing of all this present period would come to be regarded in much the same light as that in which we look at the egyptian hieroglyphics or the papyrus. at that time the phonograph, if invented, was not in any way brought to the practical perfection of the present, and telepathy was more a theory than an accepted fact; but doctor hale has the prophetic cast of mind, and already his theory is more in the light of probability than that of mere possibility. the demands of modern life absolutely require the development of some means of communication that shall obviate the necessity of the present laborious means of handwriting. there is needed the mechanism that shall transfer the thought in the mind to some species of record without the intervention of the hand. whether the phonograph can be popularized to meet this need; whether some still finer means that photograph thought shall be evolved, remains to be seen. thought is already photographed in the ether, but whether this image can be transferred to a material medium is the question. that telepathy shall yet come to be so well understood; its laws formulated as to bring it within the range of the definite sciences, there can be no doubt; but this result can only attend a higher development of the spiritual power of humanity. in its present status telepathy is seen as a result of wholly unconscious and unanalyzed processes that open a new region of life and a new range of possibilities. it is the discovery of a new keyboard, so to speak, in the individual, enabling him to still more "live in thought," and to "act with energies that are immortal." science is continually revealing the truth that the world, the solar system, the infinite universes are all created as the theatre of man's evolutionary development. as emerson so truly says, "the world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh." "the discovery of the future" was the title of an interesting lecture by mr. h. g. wells, given in london early in , before the royal institute, in which the subject was speculatively discussed, and in the course of his lecture mr. wells said:-- "along certain lines, with certain limitations, he argued, a working knowledge of the things of the future was practicable and possible. as during the past century the amazing searchlights of inference had been passed into the remoter past, so by seeking for operating causes instead of for fossils the searchlight of inference might be thrown into the future. the man of science would believe at last that events in a. d. were as fixed, settled, and unchangeable as those of a. d. , with the exception of the affairs of man and his children. it is as simple and sure to work out the changing orbit of the earth in future until the tidal drag hauls one unchanging face at last toward the sun, as it is to work back to its blazing, molten past. we are at the beginning of the greatest change that humanity has ever undergone. there will be no shock, as there is no shock at a cloudy daybreak. we are creatures of twilight, but out of our minds and the lineage of our minds will spring minds that will reach forward fearlessly. a day will come--one day in the unending succession of days--when the beings now latent in our thoughts, hidden in our loins, shall stand on this earth as one stands on a footstool, and they shall laugh and reach out their hands among the stars." mr. wells is a disciple of darwin, and he is applying to the life of humanity certain laws of evolution. in this lecture he argued that great men are merely "the images and symbols and instruments taken at haphazard by the incessant, consistent forces behind them. they were the pen nibs which fate used in her writing, and the more one was inclined to trust these forces behind individuals, the more one could believe in the possibility of a reasoned inductive view of the future that would serve us in politics, morals, social contrivances, and in a thousand ways." the lecturer argued that "a deliberate direction of historical, economic, and social study toward the future, and a deliberate and courageous reference to the future in moral and religious discussion, would be enormously stimulating and profitable to the intellectual life." one incalculable aid in thus throwing a spiritual searchlight forward and discussing the future is the realization embodied by dr. lyman abbott, that there is no death, and no dead; that the entire universe is life; and that we are encompassed round about by invisible companions and friends; sustained, guided, helped by forces that we see not. to see the future as clearly as we see the past, what does it require? saint paul tells us that "spiritual things are spiritually discerned." the future is visible to the spiritual sight. no one doubts but that the future is known to god, for it is he who creates and controls it. and man is the child of god, and his true life is in co-operating with god in every form of the higher activity. so far as he may co-operate with god he becomes, himself, a creative force; making, shaping, and determining this future, and thus, to an increasing degree, he becomes aware of it, or sees it, before it is realized on the outward plane. the day is not, indeed, distant, when humanity will live far less blindly than now. as man develops his psychic self and lives the life of the spirit,--the life of intellect and thought and purpose and prayer, rather than the life of the senses, he will perceive his future. to just the degree that one lives in the energies which are immortal does he perceive the future. knowledge penetrates into the unknown and the unseen. leverrier postulated neptune long before his "long-distance" theory was verified. the intelligent recognition of the unseen forces and unseen presences, the intelligent conception of the manner in which these unseen forces are working out the problems of destiny, alone enables one to consciously combine with them; to enter into the processes of evolution as an intelligent factor, and thus redeem his individual life to harmony, beauty, and happiness. * * * * * [sidenote: a determining question.] the question confronts one as a very determining problem in life,--can man control his circumstances? to go deeper still, can he create them? or is he the product of his environment? is every life just that which it is made? or does there work, under all our human will and endeavor, a force resistless as gravitation and as constant as attraction? a writer, considering this subject, thus expresses his own convictions:-- "i believe that every life is the exact and necessary outcome of its _environment_, and that there is in reality not one particle of actual freedom in this respect from the cradle to the grave. i cannot here go into any extended proof of my position. the syllogism may be stated as follows: "every phenomenon is the necessary result of pre-existing causes: "life is but a succession of phenomena. "therefore every life is necessarily determined by pre-existing causes. "i do not see how the conclusion can be escaped that from the time we open our eyes upon the world and receive our first impressions, we are thrust forward between insurmountable walls of fate that leave no room for freedom. it is true that so far as external or objective forces are concerned we may be, as a rule, under no compulsion to follow one more than another; but _subjectively_ we are in no sense free, because the peculiar way in which the _will_ will act under given conditions must depend upon the preponderating _subjective_ force. to hold otherwise is to contend that a lesser force can overcome a greater,--which is absurd." certainly the problem as to the degree to which environment determines life is an interesting one, but may it not be reversed and stand as the problem to what degree life controls and fashions the environment? does not the environment change with the life in a corresponding evolutionary process? "every spirit builds its house." then, too, the thing we call life is not composed exclusively of character and circumstances. there enters into it a third element,--that of the unknown. the environment of tennyson, for instance, in his early youth, was that of the limited, even though thoughtful and refined life of the son of a country clergyman of modest means; as his powers expanded and developed his environment kept pace with it in extension of breadth. is it not, then, true that a life really belongs to the environment it creates for himself, rather than to that in which it is first nurtured? "it doth not yet appear what we shall be" applies to the possibilities of life in the present as well as in that future which lies beyond the change we call death. the divine electric spark leaps through the atmosphere and communicates its kindling power. the inner force of the spirit works outward and begins to shape and fashion its own world. environment is simply another name for that series "of the more stately mansions" that each one may build according to the power that worketh in him. a great sorrow comes; or an overwhelming joy, on which one rises to heights of ecstasy, to the very mount of transfiguration itself, and thus transcends all former limits and creates his new environment, whose walls are transparent to the sunrise flame and through which the glory enters in. what has he to do with that far-away, opaque, limited environment into which he was born? no more than has the giant oak, tossing its branches under the stars, to do with the acorn cup out of which it sprang. let one realize, ever so faintly, even, the miracle of possibilities that may unfold, and his life is uplifted into a richness and a peace, and a serene confidence that carries with it the essential essence of all that is best and noblest in its past, and all that is potential in its infinite future. the problem evolves into a definite work to be fulfilled, and this work, in turn, leads to another problem involving its demonstration, in actual performance, as well; and by this alternation life progresses,--growing ever larger and deeper and more exalted with its increasing power. in this way man produces his circumstances--creates his outer conditions. his successive environments become the expressions of his inner life and energy in their series of development and growth. but this growth, this development, may be stimulated or retarded. it depends entirely upon the degree to which one may relate himself to the spiritual energy of the divine atmosphere, ever ready to pour itself, with unlimited power, through every receptive channel. and this energy is the divine will, and entering into it man does not lose his own free choice, but only enters into that which makes his conscious choice vital and magnetic with infinite power of achievement. maurice maeterlinck offered a fascinating contribution to this range of discussion, in the course of which he said:-- "one would say that man had always the feeling that a mere infirmity of his mind separates him from the future. he knows it to be there, living, actual, perfect, behind a kind of wall, around which he has never ceased to turn since the first days of his coming on this earth. or rather, he feels it within himself and known to a part of himself; only, that importunate and disquieting knowledge is unable to travel, through the too narrow channels of his senses, to his consciousness, which is the only place where knowledge acquires a name, a useful strength, and, so to speak, the freedom of the human city. it is only by glimmers, by casual and passing infiltrations, that future years, of which he is full, of which the imperious realities surround him on every hand, penetrate to his brain. he marvels that an extraordinary accident should have closed almost hermetically to the future that brain which plunges into it entirely, even as a sealed vessel plunges, without mixing with it, into the depths of a monstrous sea that overwhelms it, entreats it, teases it, and caresses it with a thousand billows." time and space are the two dimensions which differentiate the physical and the spiritual worlds; the higher the degree of spiritual development and advancement, the less is the individual limited and hampered and fettered by these two conditions. one may get a certain analogy on it by realizing to how much greater extent the infant or the child is bound by the conditions of space and time than is the man or the woman. to the child the idea of the next year is, practically, an eternity; while the man calmly and confidently makes his plans for the next year, or for five years or ten years later; with a matter-of-course assurance. the next year to the man is not so remote as the next day is to the child. so by this analogy it is not difficult to realize that when one is released from the physical world and advances into the realm of the subtle and potent forces of the ethereal world, with his faculties responsive to the larger environment,--it is not difficult to realize that he is increasingly free from these conditions that are so strong in their power of limitation over the mortal life. "it is," continues maurice maeterlinck, "quite incomprehensible that we should not know the future. probably a mere nothing, the displacement of a cerebral lobe, the resetting of broca's convolution in a different manner, the addition of a slender network of nerves to those which form our consciousness,--any one of these would be enough to make the future unfold itself before us with the same clearness, the same majestic amplitude as that with which the past is displayed on the horizon, not only of our individual life? but also of the life of the species to which we belong. a singular infirmity, a curious limitation of our intellect, causes us not to know what is going to happen to us, when we are fully aware of what has befallen us. from the absolute point of view to which our imagination succeeds in rising, although it cannot live there, there is no reason why we should not see that which does not yet exist, considering that that which does not yet exist in its relation to us must necessarily have its being already, and manifest itself somewhere. if not, it would have to be said that, where time is concerned, we form the centre of the world, that we are the only witnesses for whom events wait so that they may have the right to appear and to count in the eternal history of causes and effects. it would be as absurd to assert this for time as it would be for space,--that other not quite so incomprehensible form of the twofold infinite mystery in which our whole life floats." the latest progress in this new century is that of overcoming space. it is being overcome; it is being almost annihilated. when on the atlantic coast we call up a friend in chicago and speak with him any hour; when we cable across three thousand miles of water and receive a speedy reply; when wireless telegraphy wafts its message through the etheric currents of the air; when the electric motor is about to revolutionize all our preconceived ideas of distance and journeyings,--we see how space is being dominated and is no longer to be one of the conditions that limit man's activities. to a degree, overcoming space is also overcoming time. in an essay of emerson's, written somewhere in the middle of the nineteenth century, he speaks of something as being worth "going fifty miles to see." fifty miles, at that time, represented a greater space than three thousand miles represent at the present. regarding the condition of space maeterlinck further says: "space is more familiar to us, because the accidents of our organism place us more directly in relation with it and make it more concrete. we can move in it pretty freely, in a certain number of directions, before and behind us. that is why no traveller would take it into his head to maintain that the towns which he has not yet visited will become real only at the moment when he sets his foot within their walls. yet this is very nearly what we do when we persuade ourselves that an event which has not yet happened does not yet exist." the only explanation of certain phases of the phenomena of life is in the theory that life is twofold; that what we call life--in the sense of experiences and events and circumstances--is simply the result, the precipitation into the physical world, of the events and experiences that have already occurred to us on the spiritual side of life, and that they occur here _because_ they have occurred there. maeterlinck says further (in this paper entitled "the foretelling of the future"): "but i do not intend, in the wake of so many others, to lose myself in the most insoluble of enigmas. let us say no more about it, except this alone,--that time is a mystery which we have arbitrarily divided into a past and a future, in order to try to understand something of it. in itself, it is almost certain that it is but an immense, eternal, motionless present, in which all that takes place and all that will take place takes place immutably, in which to-morrow, save in the ephemeral mind of man, is indistinguishable from yesterday or to-day." the question is raised by mr. maeterlinck as to whether the clairvoyant who foretells to one future events gets his knowledge from the subliminal consciousness of the person himself. he relates a series of experiences that he had in paris with all sorts and degrees of the professed seers, and he says:-- "it is very astonishing that others can thus penetrate into the last refuge of our being, and there, better than ourselves, read thoughts and sentiments at times forgotten or rejected, but always long-lived, or as yet unformulated. it is really disconcerting that a stranger should see further than ourselves into our own hearts. that sheds a singular light on the nature of our inner lives. it is vain for us to keep watch upon ourselves, to shut ourselves up within ourselves; our consciousness is not water-tight, it escapes, it does not belong to us, and though it requires special circumstances for another to install himself there and take possession of it, nevertheless it is certain that, in normal life, our spiritual tribunal, our _for intérieur_,--as the french have called it, with that profound intuition which we often discover in the etymology of words,--is a kind of _forum_, or spiritual market place, in which the majority of those who have business there come and go at will, look about them and pick out the truths, in a very different fashion and much more freely than we would have to this day believed." mr. maeterlinck reiterates that it is incredible that we should not know the future. the truth is that it is even more than incredible; it is unpardonably stupid, and the great desideratum is to so develop and unfold the spiritual faculties that they will discern the experiences on the spiritual side,--those which will, later on, precipitate themselves into the mortal life, and that will be "knowing the future." that is to say, if we can read our spiritual past, we then know our earthly future; for that which _has_ been, in the inner experience, _shall be_, in the outer experience. mr. maeterlinck says:-- "i cannot think that we are not qualified to know beforehand the disturbances of the elements, the destiny of the planets, of the earth, of empires, peoples, and races. all this does not touch us directly, and we know it in the past, thanks only to the artifices of history. but that which regards us, that which is within our reach, that which is to unfold itself within the little sphere of years, a secretion of our spiritual organism, that envelops us in time, even as the shell or the cocoon envelops the mollusc or the insect in space; that, together with all the external events relating to it, is probably recorded in that sphere. in any case, it would be much more natural that it were so recorded than comprehensible that it be not. there we have realities struggling with an illusion; and there is nothing to prevent us from believing that, here as elsewhere, realities will end by overcoming illusion. realities are what will happen to us, having already happened in the history that overhangs our own, the motionless and superhuman history of the universe. illusion is the opaque veil woven with the ephemeral threads called yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, which we embroider on those realities. but it is not indispensable that our existence should continue the eternal dupe of that illusion. we may even ask ourselves whether our extraordinary unfitness for knowing a thing so simple, so incontestable, so perfect and so necessary as the future, would not form one of the greatest subjects for astonishment to an inhabitant of another star who should visit us.... "moreover, we must not believe that the march of events would be completely upset if we knew it beforehand. first, only they would know the future, or a part of the future, who would take the trouble to learn it; even as only they know the past, or a part of their own present, who have the courage and the intelligence to examine it. we should quickly accommodate ourselves to the lessons of this new science, even as we have accommodated ourselves to those of history. we should soon make allowance for the evils we could not escape and for inevitable evils. the wiser among us, for themselves, would lessen the sum total of the latter; and the others would meet them half-way, even as now they go to meet many certain disasters which are easily foretold. the amount of our vexations would be somewhat decreased, but less than we hope; for already our reason is able to foresee a portion of our future, if not with the material evidence that we dream of, at least with a moral certainty that is often satisfying; yet we observe that the majority of men derive hardly any profit from this easy fore-knowledge. such men would neglect the counsels of the future, even as they hear, without following it, the advice of the past." not to know the future is extremely inconvenient, to say the least, and it may present itself as the next most needed advance in progress. the question is in the air; the demand for its solution may increase, and demands penetrate the unknown and reconstruct it for the higher use of man. meanwhile, as mr. maeterlinck continues:-- "our life must be lived while we wait for the word that shall solve the enigma, and the happier, the nobler our life, the more vigorous shall it become, and we shall have the more courage, clear-sightedness, boldness to seek and desire the truth.... we should live as though we were always on the eve of the great revelation, and we should be ready with welcome, with, warmest and keenest and fullest, most heartfelt and intimate welcome. and whatever the form it shall take on the day that it comes to us, the best way of all to prepare for its fitting reception is to crave for it now, to desire it as lofty, as perfect, as vast, as ennobling as the soul can conceive. it must needs be more beautiful, glorious, and ample than the best of our hopes. for when it differs therefrom or even frustrates them, it must of necessity bring something nobler, loftier, nearer to the nature of man, for it will bring us truth. to man, though all that he value go under, the intimate truth of the universe must be wholly, pre-eminently admirable. and though on the day it unveils, our meekest desires turn to ashes and float on the wind, still there shall linger within us all we have prepared; and the admirable will enter into our soul, the volume of its waters being as the depth of the channel that our expectation has fashioned." * * * * * [sidenote: in proportion to power.] may it not be that the degree to which one is enabled to dominate his own life in the sense of controlling and selecting and grouping its outer events is precisely in proportion to the spiritual power that he has achieved? nor has this spiritual power any conceivable relation to what is currently known as occultism, or a thing to be attained by any series of prescribed outer actions. there has sprung up a species of literature with explicit directions for "concentration" and "meditation" and one knows not what,--directions to spend certain hours of the day gazing upon a ten-penny nail or something quite as inconsequential, and a more totally demoralizing and negative series of performances can hardly be imagined. but all this is not even worth denunciation. the only real spiritual power is that of the union of the soul with the divine. "lift up your hearts." "we lift them up unto the lord." in these lines lies the secret of all that makes for that mental and moral energy whose union is spiritual power. the question of what happens to one daily and constantly, as weeks and months go on, is the one most practical question of life. in it is involved all one's personal happiness as well as all his power for usefulness. to feel that this ever-flowing current of events is something entirely outside one's own choice or volition is to stand helpless--if not hopeless--before the spectacle of life. it is out of this aimless and chaotic state that resort is had to the seeking of all kinds of divination, omens, prophecies, and foreshadowings, with the result of more and more completely separating the individual from his legitimate activities and endeavor, and leading him to substitute for spiritual realities a mere false and mirage-like outlook,--and instead of that rational activity and high endeavor that create events and increasingly control their conditions, there is merely an impatient and restless expectation of something or other that may suddenly occur to transform the entire outlook. the unforeseen events do occur, and they are the crowning gift and grace and sweetness of life. but they are the product, the result, the fine inflorescence of intense spiritual activity, not of stagnation and idleness. "it might almost be said that there happens to one only that which he desires," says maeterlinck: "it is time that on certain external events an influence is of the feeblest, but we have all-powerful action on that which these events shall become in ourselves--in other words on their spiritual part, on what is radiant, undying within them.... there are those with whom this immortal part absorbs all; these are like islands that have sprung up in the ocean; for they have found immovable anchorage whence they issue commands that their destiny must needs obey.... whatever may happen is lit up by their inward life. when you love, it is not your love that forms part of your destiny, but the knowledge of self that you will have found, deep down in your love--this it is that will help you to fashion your life. if you have been deceived, it is not the deception that matters, but the forgiveness whereto it leads, and the loftiness, wisdom, completeness of this forgiveness--by these shall your life be steered to destiny's haven of brightness and peace; by these shall your eyes see more clearly.... let us always remember that nothing befalls us that is not of the nature of ourselves. there comes no adventure but means to our soul the shape of our every-day thoughts.... and none but yourself shall you meet on the highway of fate.... events seem as the watch for the signal we hoist from within." the inner life that is lived--the life of thought, purpose, aspiration, and prayer--dominates and determines the outer life. it creates it. and when one feels helplessly drifting, at the mercy of events, his only safety lies in a more positive and abounding energy; in deeper purpose and a firmer grasp on his work, a higher and diviner trend to his thought, and a closer clinging to the divine promises. "in man," says balzac, "culminates a visible finite universe; in him begins a universe invisible and infinite,--two worlds unknown to each other." but one's life always belongs far more to his future than to his past. he is more closely and truly related to that which he shall be than to that which he has been; as the flower, the plant, the tree, is in more intimate and vital relation with the air and sunshine than with the dark ground in which the seed germinated. it retains its hold on the kingdom of the earth, but it has achieved a new and a higher relation with the kingdom of the air. man's relations with the invisible and the infinite universe are his truest and most determining relations. and these are governed and are constantly extended by his power of will. the power of will is so akin to the divine energy that it is the power through which, and by means of which, the closest relation with the divine energy can be effected. man, by the power of will, unites his life with the life of god; he so relates himself to the divine energy that he becomes receptive to it, and when this irresistible force pours itself into his life all nobler realizations become possible; all sublimest aspiration may express itself in the daily quality of life, and fulfil its visions in actual tasks and deeds. nothing is ever hopeless. there is no situation nor complication that has not its key simply in lifting up the heart to god; in willing, through prayer, to work, as well as to walk, with him; and in praying, through power of will brought to bear in all its resistless intensity of aspiration, that the power of god may work through all the conditions of the human life. the subjective or subliminal self is capable of extending the mental faculties in a way almost undreamed of by the ordinary consciousness. "there is in the mind a faculty," says a writer on this subject, "which, if it receives the correct impression, is able to correct the mental and physical life of a person and produce a manifest impression on his environment, the secret of which is conscious and concentrated attention under direction of the will of the individual. "the subjective mind is a distinct entity. it occupies the whole human body, and, when not opposed in any way, it has absolute control over all the functions, conditions, and sensations of the body. while the objective mind has control of all our voluntary functions and motions, the subjective mind controls all the silent, involuntary, and vegetative functions. this subjective mind can see without the use of physical eyes. it perceives by intuition. it has the power to communicate with others without the use of ordinary physical means. it can read the thoughts of others. it receives intelligence and transmits it to people at a distance. distance offers no resistance against the successful missions of the subjective mind. it never forgets anything, it never sleeps. it is capable of sustaining an existence independent of the body. it never dies. it is the living soul." that "distinct entity" which has been called the "subjective mind" is probably more accurately defined as the real person, the man himself, the immortal being who inhabits for a time the physical body. the development of this immortal self by an intellectual and moral and religious progress is the real business of life,--the _raison d'être_ of man's sojourn on earth. there is no more important truth to be grasped at the present time than that this culture and development of the spiritual self, or this spiritualization of life, is in no sense a matter of incantations and mysterious rites, but is only to be achieved through faith in god, through prayer and the constant uplifting of the spirit to the divine. the inspiration of life lies in the unceasing effort to unite all the conscious inner life with the divine will and guidance. the problem that presents itself to the instructors of the deaf, dumb, and blind is in this development and liberation of the spiritual self, that the psychic powers may, to some extent, take the place of the outer senses that are closed. the physical mechanism of communication with the visible world is defective, and that perception, which is spiritual sight, must overcome blindness; that swift recognition which is spiritual hearing must overcome deafness; and the wonderful delicacy and intense keenness that these perceptions develop in those with defective senses is itself an incontrovertible proof of the reality of the inner spiritual being that for a time inhabits the physical body. the observation of the deaf and blind leads one to see that sight and hearing in all people vary in degree, and that a vast number of people are partially defective in these senses, and that all mankind are defective beyond a given point. there are vibrations too fine to be detected by the human ear; and the sight of the eye is, as is well known, entirely limited to a certain degree of distance even in those whose eyesight is the keenest. clairvoyance and clairaudience are considered as abnormal and phenomenal gifts, and as in no way conceivable, nor even desirable, as general and usual powers for every one. yet what are they but the sight and hearing of the spiritual man, the development of the powers of the subtle body transcending those of the physical body? this ethereal or psychic body is in correspondence with the ethereal world. it is formed to be an inhabitant of that world in which it finds itself the moment it is released by death. but if sufficiently developed to take command, so to speak, while here, of the will and the consciousness and all the mechanism of the physical body, it then brings to bear upon practical, daily life all this infinite and irresistible energy of the higher planes with which it is in receptive relation. then, whether in the body or out of the body matters little in the responsive communion with those who have passed through death. "could the spiritual vision of the present man be unfolded but for a moment, to realize the mighty forces of nature that will one day be at his command, he would become dizzy at the contemplation of such wondrous possibilities," says a recent writer. "the electro-magnetic energy that holds worlds in their orbits, and neutralizes the power of gravitation, is but one of those powers that awaits the growing genius of man to utilize. the magnetic force is the attractive or centripetal power; the electric force is the repellent or centrifugal power. a machine will be invented, in the near future, that will combine these into a single electro-magnetic force, and with this force the power of gravitation will be neutralized. then the world's traffic will be as readily carried in the air as now it is upon the ground. the forces of the universe await only the dissipation of ignorance, selfishness, and greed to bless and harmonize the world." the outlook for the twentieth century in its grandeur; in the unfolding and expanding powers of man, and the new and deeper insights into the hidden forces of nature, can hardly be exaggerated. we stand on the threshold of a new heaven and a new earth. the drama of life is to be uplifted to a higher plane, to the realm of beauty and blessedness and radiance and joy. the ethereal realm. it is henceforth open to science to transcend all we now think we know of matter and to gain new glimpses of a profounder scheme of cosmic law. --sir william crookes. * * * * * _we exist also in a world of ether;--that is to say, we are constructed to respond to a system of laws,--ultimately continuous, no doubt, with the laws of matter, but affording a new, a generalized, a profounder conception of the cosmos. so widely different, indeed, is this new aspect of things from the old, that it is common to speak of the ether as a newly-known environment. on this environment our organic existence depends as absolutely as on the material environment, although less obviously. in ways which we cannot fathom, the ether is at the foundation of our physical being. perceiving heat, light, electricity, we do but recognise in certain conspicuous ways,--as in perceiving the "x rays" we recognise in a way less conspicuous,--the pervading influence of ethereal vibrations which in range and variety far transcend our capacity of response._ _within, beyond, the world of ether,--as a still profounder, still more generalized aspect of the cosmos,--must lie, as i believe, the world of spiritual life. that the world of spiritual life does not depend upon the existence of the material world i hold as now proved by actual evidence. that it is in some way continuous with the world of ether i can well suppose. but for our minds there must needs be a "critical point" in any such imagined continuity; so that the world where life and thought are carried on apart from matter, must certainly rank again as a new, a =metetherial= environment. in giving it this name i expressly imply only that from our human point of view it lies after or beyond the ether, as metaphysic lies after or beyond physics. i say only that what does not originate in matter or ether originates =there=; but i well believe that beyond the ether there must be not one stage only, but countless stages in the infinity of things._ --human personality. * * * * * the glorious consummation toward which organic evolution is tending is the production of the highest and most perfect psychical life.--john fiske. the recognition of the untold force of thought is productive of marvellous results and opens as unlimited possibilities as the discovery and the increasing application of the power of electricity. the force of thought--the most intense potency in the universe--has always existed, as has that of electricity. it only awaited recognition. telepathy is just as entirely the manifestation of a law as is gravitation; and gravitation existed long before it was recognized. the entire question of the conduct of life is included in the true development and right use of thought. the entire problem of achievement, of success, lies in it. the supreme end of all religious teaching is the culture of right thought. it is the power that determines all social relations, all opportunities for usefulness, and all personal achievement. the right thought opens the right door. there is absolutely no limit to its power, and each individual may increase and strengthen his grasp of it and develop it to an indefinite and unforeseen degree. one actual method of the use of thought is to use it, creatively, for the immediate future. the time that is just before one is plastic to any impress. it has not yet taken form in events or circumstances, and it can, therefore, be controlled and determined. one may sit quietly and alone for a little time at night, calling up all his thought force, and by means of it create the next day. the events of the day will follow the impression made by the thought. one can thus will himself, so to speak, with the successful currents. he can create his atmosphere and environment, and can open wide the portals of his life to beauty and happiness. the law of telepathy is as supreme in the spiritual universe as are the laws of gravitation and attraction in the physical universe. the law that holds the constellations in their courses is not more in absolute evidence than that which governs the flashes of perception between two persons in a finer and more subtle communication than words, spoken or written, could possibly convey. but while there is no law more universally and impressively in evidence, there is also no law so totally unformulated, so entirely, it would seem, outside the domain of conscious recognition and will. one endeavors to send a telepathic message to his friend--and no impress is made. again, when he has made no effort at all, nor even thought of trying, the telepathic message is received. the magnetic sensitiveness of the spirit to thought currents is astounding. it has long seemed to many persons that the very air conveyed messages--and so it does. one may "call up" another, in either this world or in the ethereal world, at any time, simply by directing to him a strong current of thought. the thousand little things generally ranked as coincidence are really illustrations of this law. one thinks intently of a friend whom, perhaps, he has not met, or heard from, for years, and, presto, a letter, or the person himself appears. one can settle misunderstandings, convey counsel, entreaty, instruction, or comprehension,--all by the quality of the thought he sends forth. all this is a part of the phenomena of spiritual life. we must not make the mistake of imagining we become spiritual beings only by death. we are spiritual beings now and here, and our real life is, even in the present, in the spiritual world, and carried on by means of spiritual forces. everything which is intellectual and moral is of the spirit. such men as edison and tesla and marconi are dealing with the higher spiritual forces. when cyrus field laid the atlantic cable, it was a work of the spiritual rather than of the physical world. so are the vast works of commerce, of transportation, of building, the discovery of new countries, and the promulgation of the higher civilization in every form. we must not regard spiritual life as limited to mere religious or devotional rites and ceremonies. these have their place, and an important one; but they are included among a thousand other things that make up the life of the spirit. man is primarily and permanently a spiritual being, and only incidentally and temporarily a physical being. still the further problem confronts us: how shall we consciously and intelligently control telepathic communication as we now control our communication by speech, letters, or telegrams? a curious instance of unconscious and unaccountable telepathy is the following: there were two individuals who had never met, but who held some mutually antagonistic conceptions of each other,--conceptions that were, too, perhaps more or less mutually erroneous, and this condition had lasted over a prolonged period of time. then one of these persons had the experience of waking in the night, simply engulfed in an overwhelming wave of tender and compassionate feeling toward the other: seeing, as if with spiritual vision, a nature unstrung, hardly responsible, and one that invited only the most infinite tenderness and care. this wave of new and perfectly clear perception was like a magnetic trance. it was an hour of absolute spiritual clairvoyance, and the evidence was furnished by a letter received, the next morning, from a mutual friend, which entirely substantiated and corroborated the telepathic impression that had been experienced in the night. now the scientific question is: from whence did this impression proceed? was it direct telepathy between the two persons concerned? was it a clairvoyant reading of the letter that was en route during the night? who can decide? the special point here is that these most vivid and intense experiences are largely, if not entirely, encountered unconsciously. they suddenly--come. one asks for them--and they do not come? now how are we to pluck out the heart of the mystery? the moment one realizes himself as a spiritual being, belonging by right to the spiritual world; one whose true interests are in and of that realm, and to whom communion with the divine is the very breath of existence, the one elixir of life, that moment he asserts himself aright. from that hour his life becomes a significant factor in true progress. prayer may be a formal and ceremonial act, and mean nothing: it may be the absolute surrender of one's soul to the divine, when it enters behind the veil into the very glory of god. this spiritual truth is closely linked with certain scientific facts. the scientists have theories of inner ether by means of which psychic power is conveyed and which translate it into action, as the wire translates the electric current to express a message. a scientist asserts a new theory that there are no varying states of ether, but that all space is filled with matter in various states of vibration; and that what we had heretofore called air and ether is simply all one substance in degrees of lower and higher range. it is conceivable that this latest idea may approximate to the truth more than any previous theory. no one has yet discovered those forces of nature by means of which sense relates itself to spirit. there is certainly some great law, still unrecognized and unformulated, which acts, and which is acted upon by human beings, irrespective of any physical means; but why these laws sometimes do and sometimes do not produce given results, no one can tell. there are other existing laws in the physical world that transcend scientific scrutiny. the marvellous results of chemical combinations, the miracle nature of electricity and all its phenomena, fade into absolute nothingness beside the higher marvels of the action of spirit. the crude and merely approximate truth must be that in each human being is a part of the divine being; that this divine element may be nurtured and strengthened by living in its native atmosphere of spiritual life,--in the atmosphere of peace, joy, and love; and that this potency of god and of man, so far as he relates himself to god, can act upon that substance that fills all space; that this substance, whether it be ether, or whether it be matter differentiated in degree of vibration, is intensely susceptible, in the most infinitely delicate way, to thought, which acts upon it as physical force can act on physical matter. to realize intelligently one's relatedness to god, and one's own power over this subtle matter, whatever it be that fills all space, is to arise in newness of life. it is to realize one's self as a spiritual being, here and now, and an inhabitant of the spiritual world. it is to realize that one's relation to the physical world is a merely incidental thing,--a fact that has its purpose, its responsibilities, as a phase of development, and which it is most important to use aright; but which is inevitably transient. day-dreams, the habitual meditations that go on of themselves in the mind, are prophecies and potencies. they are the creative factors of future states. "out of the heart are the issues of life." it is a question of degree,--so much love, so much force to act upon outer affairs. he who finds his currents of thought verging to the unkind, the ungenerous, the inimical; whose mind, in its unconscious action, is in a discordant state, fretting at circumstances, or persons,--is doing himself the gravest injury. he is creating, on the unseen side, which is the most potent and determining side, conditions which he must live out sooner or later. it would seem, if one may judge from the data of telepathic experiences, that the power belongs to the sub-conscious self, or, as we may prefer to call it, to the spiritual self, and does not relate itself to the conscious intellectual life and the conscious will. if this deduction is true--what then? can we not relate our consciously intelligent life to our unconscious spiritual life? not only, indeed, that we may, but that we must,--for it is the next step in spiritual advancement. the time has come in the era of progress when humanity begins to realize its spiritual development. all the signs of the times point it out. the discoveries of higher laws constantly being made, are an impressive attestation that register the movement. with the new century came in tesla's discovery of the vacuum tube and its wonderful light; and hardly a week later came the announcement of the discovery of a perpetual light found by a certain chemical combination placed in a glass globe, which, when the air was exhausted and the globe sealed, would burn as long as the globe lasts. the discoverer claims that there is but one force in all nature,--that of vibration; that all space is pervaded by matter, which is energy. certainly the world is on the eve of new revelations, and life is to be lifted up, even here and now, to the divine plane. perhaps the most practical counsel in the way of determining one's own future control of these telepathic conditions is conveyed in the words: "begin now the eternal life of trustful consecration and sanctified service, consciously drawing your innermost life from god." this absolute personal control of each man over his own future lies in a twofold power: the one being that integrity, moral purpose, aspirations, have a creative power of the most potent character; and the other being in that one attracts to himself the spiritual companionship and sympathetic co-operation of just such quality as his own. there is an objection, often made to the faith in the companionship and communion with those in the unseen,--that only those of a lower order in the life beyond death are attracted into the sphere of this world. nothing could be more remote from the truth. one might as well refuse all social intercourse with those in this world, on the plea that if he have companionship at all it would be of a lower order, and therefore he will have none. now the order of one's companions and associates depends on himself. if he is noble and exalted, he does not attract nor is he attracted to the base and the unworthy: and only more deeply and unfailingly does this law hold true in the realm of spirit. one attracts to himself from the unseen world companionship of the same order and quality as that of his own spirit, with the exception that in proportion to the purity of his aspiration does this quality of companionship come to him of a still higher order than his own. thus one creates his own world. he need not abjectly feel that he must accept sorrow, trial, defeat, and disaster at the moment, because compensation somewhere awaits him. the law of transmutation supersedes the law of compensation. one may bring to bear, at the moment, the potent force that transforms all: that changes dullness into radiance, trial into joy, depression into exaltation. and how? simply by bringing to bear on the events and conditions of the hour the intense and creative potency of spiritual power. by means of this we shall certainly gain those "new glimpses of a profounder scheme of cosmic law" to which sir william crookes refers and which his vision discerns as open to science. * * * * * [sidenote: a scientific fact.] it is a scientific fact that any vibration set up in the ether persists to an unlimited degree, communicating itself to that which is in correspondence with its rate of vibration. this, of course, is the explanation of the phenomena involved in wireless telegraphy, and is equally the explanation of the phenomena involved in telepathy. at a meeting of the society of arts in may of , professor ayrton, commenting on marconi's system, said that we "are gradually coming within thinkable distance of the realization of a prophecy he had ventured to make four years before, at a time when, if a person wanted to call to a friend he knew not where, he would call in a very loud electro-magnetic voice, heard by him who had the electro-magnetic ear, silent to him who had it not. 'where are you?' he would say. a faint reply would come, 'i am at the bottom of a coal mine, or crossing the andes, or in the middle of the atlantic.' or, perhaps, in spite of all the calling, no reply would come, and the person would then know that his friend was dead. think of what this would mean, of the calling which goes on every day from room to room of a house, and then think of that calling extending from pole to pole,--not a noisy babble, but a call audible to him who wants to hear, and absolutely silent to all others. it would be almost like dreamland and ghostland,--not the ghostland cultivated by a heated imagination, but a real communication from a distance, based on true physical laws." yet even this speculation fails to keep pace with the advance of truth, for there is no death, in the sense in which professor ayrton refers to it here, as a state of unconsciousness which no message can reach, and from which no reply can come. on the contrary, that transformation we call death is a condition of far more intense consciousness, of being far more alive and far more responsive to the call and the thought. we are learning to realize the literal truth of the phrase in the bible, "dead in trespasses and sins." so far as one is in sins and faults and defects he is dead. spiritual vitality is in goodness alone. so far as one endeavors to follow after righteousness, to achieve and live in truth, honor, and love, he is alive; so far as he fails in this he is dead, and this, quite irrespective of the fact as to whether he is in or out of his physical body. this present world has its dead people walking around, it is true: eating, drinking, dressing, travelling, taking part in the average activities of daily life, but dead, all the same, or, at most, only partially alive,--the "dead souls," as gogol well terms them. the vital truth of immortality is to be immortal now, to-day; to be spiritually alive, spiritually conscious, and with this achieved, whether in or out of the body is immaterial. that becomes a mere detail of no special significance. given the condition of spiritual vitality, and the electro-magnetic call would receive its reply from the friend who had "shed" his body. sir william preece, in a recent address before the royal society, remarked:-- "if any of the planets be populated (say mars) with beings like ourselves, having the gift of language and the knowledge to adapt the great forces of nature to their wants, then if they could oscillate immense stores of electrical energy to and fro in electrical order, it would be possible for us to hold communication, by telephone, with the people of mars." it is hardly a bolder or more startling speculation to contemplate the establishment of intelligent and definite communication with mars than it would have been, a half-century ago, to contemplate communication across three thousand miles of ocean without visible means. an evening's observation of the heavens, made recently through the great telescope of the naval observatory in washington, revealed, in one of its phases, a sunrise in the moon. one gazed at the dark edge of a mountain range to see it suddenly grow light; to see the illumination increase both in area and intensity, precisely like a sunrise over a mountain range here on earth. the spectacle was as suggestive as it was sublime. it brought the observer into a new relation to the universe. the sun that lights the earth was then rising on the moon. one realized a new conception of the unity of the solar system. now it is this unity in the universe that scientists are everywhere affirming. this is the new note in science, and it is only one aspect of this truth to realize that wireless telegraphy and telepathy are both manifestations of the same principle,--that of setting up a magnetic disturbance in the ether, by utilizing the electricity in etheric currents. thought is the most potent form of energy, and given the conditions of a certain _rapport_ between two minds, and the result is the same as that discerned and verified by marconi, in setting up two instruments that are attuned to each other. in the end telepathy will take entire precedence of all other forms of communication. it will supersede the telegraph, the telephone, the cable, and wireless telegraphy. it will serve every demand, public and private. distance will interpose no obstacle or difficulty, for thought overcomes space and time. we are spiritual beings here and now. we are living in a spiritual universe. we are entering in more and more to the grasp and knowledge of spiritual appliances, and we can only say, reverently, that "it doth not yet appear what we shall be." is thought, itself, photographed on the ether? does the vibration of the spoken word linger in the place where it is uttered? the question cannot but recur to one after recognizing phenomena that, apparently, point to this solution,--when, for instance, a caller comes, and, taking the chair of a preceding guest, repeats, substantially, the same words that the other had spoken regarding some subject or event. this is something that frequently occurs. just what is the explanation? do thoughts register themselves magnetically on the air, and is this magnetic writing perceived, unconsciously, by one sensitive to it? the question is certainly one of curious interest. again, are the daily occurrences of life pre-destined? how far do we make our own life? how far is it made for us? an individual was led in dreams one night through rooms that seemed to have granite walls, to be very bare, cold, and vast. the next evening he was leaving on a journey, and did start; but after he had taken his seat in the palace car, the discovery of a mistake caused him hastily to leave the train before it started, and return. in consequence of the mistake discovered he was obliged to seek a certain official in a great granite building, whose interior had, heretofore, been entirely unknown to him. entering it, his way led through the same cold, vast, bare rooms that the preceding night in dreams he had traversed. now the mistake that delayed his journey and brought about these results was not even his own mistake, but one made by another person. was all this series of events--trifles of no importance in themselves, but very curious in their combination--foreordained? and if not, how was it that they were partly perceived, in the passive state of sleep, twenty-four hours before they occurred? it often seems true that the spirit, in the unconscious condition of sleep, has a certain clairvoyance, and looks out beholding and reporting to the consciousness the immediate future; but if the events it reports were not already formed, how could they be seen? the question involves many psychic complexities. there can be little question that the atmosphere is electric, magnetic, and conducts thought from mind to mind, as the wire does the electric current. the higher spirituality to which the race has advanced enables one to perceive and experience this truth more or less, some to a great degree, some only in a minor; but some sort of perception is universal, and is seen as phenomena, or as indications of the working of spiritual laws, according to the individual who recognizes it. one of these striking phases may be seen in the experience that results from absence and separation. let two persons who are mutually sympathetic and responsive to each other meet, and they at once strike the chord of ardent social enjoyment in their companionship, and the note of prelude to an enthusiastic friendship. let a sudden separation come in the external world, and the mutual spiritual experience is strangely full of color, of vital sympathy, of vivid perceptions. evidently, the spirits of each meet and mingle, independent of the fact that a thousand miles of distance lie between the individuals. what is distance to the spiritual being? it is not an element which bears any significance to that part of the nature which has transcended time and place. in such an experience as this, and one that occurred recently between two persons, one writes to the other:-- "i talk to you incessantly. i find currents from my life continually running out like telegraph wires to yours." and a letter written by the other person, crossing this one on the way, had borne a message something to the effect:-- "i go about companioned by you. far more actually present you are to me than those by whom i am surrounded. everything i read and think keeps referring itself to you for response." between these two persons telepathy was working perfectly. absence and separation made no blank, but rather a season filled with the most intense and direct sense of psychical communion. they were meeting--spirit to spirit--more closely, more clearly, indeed, than would have been possible had they been dwelling under one roof. for personality, and all the incidents and accidents and interruptions hinder rather than help actual companionship, when it is on this higher plane of spirit to spirit in mutual, swift, unerring response. in this phase of actual experience may we not find a hint from which to study the words of jesus to his disciples,--"it is expedient for you that i go away." through that mystic silence that fell between them on his departure from the visible world, there thrilled the sense of a communion so near, so exalted, so divinely sweet, that it could never have been theirs in the external life. to give this it was expedient that he should go away. here we find the key to the separations that must occur between friends by the demands of life, or that occur by death, but that may be in either case infinitely deeper in spiritual communion. the friend with whom we are in any real relations is nearer, even when the ocean rolls between, than one in the same room can be with whom we are not in special sympathy; and one who has gone into the invisible world is nearer still, as out of the realm of pure spirit the communion is still stronger and more direct and more intense. for this is "a universe of reciprocal forces." the very ether is the medium of communication between spirit and spirit. marconi has recently completed a new wonder in the shape of a ship detector. by means of this instrument the course of any ship having one aboard can be traced, wherever she may be in mid-ocean. it acts on the principle of the wireless telegraph, but does not require a wireless plant to operate it. no operator is needed on the ship, the shore stations locating the ships by a system of tunings. it is proposed to install this system on the leading liners, and the home office can thus know at every moment the exact position of a ship and note her progress as she moves along her course. should the vessel become disabled it will become noted, and by means of the chart her position can be known and assistance can be sent to her. here is one of the most marvellous among the new illustrations of the finer forces. but this "ship detector," which acts on the principle of wireless telegraphy, is less potent than are the electric forces in every human being, if it were known how to control and utilize these to serve the purposes of perception. for perception is a faculty that may far transcend both sight and hearing. perception is a faculty of the soul--often undeveloped; rarely developed to anything like its full possibilities, but capable of locating objects or of discerning persons and events, or of apprehending states of mind in others, regardless of space, as the ship's detector and the shore stations become aware of each other through their relation of finer vibrations. a recent experimenter in electric and super-physical force, m. tessier d'helbaicy, states this theory: "taking as his premise the fundamental law of physical science, that all chemical reaction is accompanied by a generation of heat and electricity, he said to himself that the human body, with the innumerable and incessant chemical reactions presented by all its cells, should create a thermo-electric pile of great power. in any case, the austrian savant, reichenbach, in his remarkable series of experiments, has already proved, fifty years ago, that we radiate electric waves of a special kind, visible in the dark under certain conditions, and these present positive and negative poles." this being granted, m. d'helbaicy has measured the yielding power of the human machine in heat and electricity, and has compared these with what the heat industrial machines can do, such as those run by steam, dynamos, and electric piles. [sidenote: a glorious inauguration.] the new year of was inaugurated by the scientific success of the most remarkable, the most marvellous achievement of any age,--that of wireless telegraphy. "before you write i will have demonstrated the success of wireless communication," exclaimed marconi, early in ; and ten days before the dawning of the year he named, the achievement was an undisputed success. it is so marvellous a thing that thought, without visible mechanism, can be flashed through the air, across the ocean, and record itself, that the success of marconi can be held as nothing less than sublime. it is the most impressive of all the realizations of the past decade in entering on the unseen and intangible potencies. it has become a familiar thing to see the cars in city streets, and carriages move swiftly by a motor power that is invisible to the eye; a power that no one can analyze or detect save in its effects and its results. it has become so familiar a thing that one can carry on a conversation with a friend at a thousand miles' distance, that one forgets how wonderful it really is. within the memory of men still living is the time when it required forty days to make the voyage to europe, and to obtain, or to send, news between the two countries. now, within forty minutes, the news is flashed under the ocean. all these discoveries that annihilate time and space are simply the result of the evolution of life to higher stages; of the advance of man into the ethereal realm. for is not the underlying and fundamental truth this: that all is spirit? one may talk of "the spiritual life," but there is no other life! withdraw the spiritual element, and there is no life at all! the difference, then, between the physical and the material worlds is only a difference of degree,--as ice-water, steam, and vapor are only different degrees and conditions of the same element. progress is the transformation of the physical into the spiritual; of the lower and cruder and denser life into the finer, the more potent, the more ethereal. energy is proportioned in potency to its ethereal aspects. in its cruder and denser form there is only a low degree of potency, and in its more ethereal forms is there higher potency. the ox-team is a dense and crude form of potency, and the electric motor is the more ethereal and intense form of energy. now the progress of humanity is unfailingly registered by its advance into the employment of the ethereal forces and the more intense energies, as these form conditions that react upon life. how far more intelligent a nation may be when its facilities for swift intercommunication foster and stimulate and instantly disseminate the knowledge of all events, discoveries, and experiences; and when its facilities for swift transportation facilitate all economic and social intercourse! judged, then, by their unfailing measurements, how significant was the triumphal achievement of wireless telegraphy on the eve of the dawn of . if telepathy is "the science of the soul's interchange with god--of the interchange of the thought of one soul with another;" if it "reveal that realm of consciousness where all god's thought is interpreted to the soul:" if "its vibration never dies out of the atmosphere of thought;" the discovery of this great law must indeed take precedence of that of any other achievement of the past century. the nature of human personality holds the secret of spiritual evolution. it doth not yet appear what man may be; but the increasing knowledge of his powers; the development of those heretofore latent and unrecognized, are combining to throw a new illumination on not only the aspects, but the purposes of life. man is coming into enlightenment concerning the environment of the spiritual world as one more immediately controlling him, as well as one far more profound and significant, than the environment of matter and of ether. as things go, the chief emphasis has always been placed upon the material environment. man has not infrequently been willing to sell his soul for a mess of pottage--his chief concern being, not the loss of his soul, but the gain of the pottage. he has been willing to exchange the entire devotion of all his energies for a finer and more resplendent quality of food, clothing, and shelter,--for a palace in which to live, for private cars and steam yachts in which to go about, and all the paraphernalia accessible to the multi-millionaire. but it is not all that these possessions typify which constitutes his most important environment. it is that degree of the spiritual world with which his own quality of spiritual life is fitted to ally itself. "the life of the organism consists in its power of interchanging energy with that of its environment," says frederic w. h. myers,--"of appropriating by its own action some fraction of that pre-existent and limitless power. we human beings exist, in the first place, in a world of matter," he continues, "whence we draw the obvious sustenance of our bodily functions. we exist also in a world of ether; that is to say, we are constructed to respond to a system of laws, ultimately continuous, no doubt, with the laws of matter, but affording a new, a generalized, a profounder conception of the cosmos. on this environment our organic existence depends as absolutely as on the material environment, although less obviously,--but ... within, beyond the world of ether, as a still profounder, still more generalized aspect of the cosmos, must lie, as i believe, the world of spiritual life." this world of spiritual life, a deeper reality, a profounder realm of energy than the ethereal world, is the true environment of the spirit even while embodied in physical form; and the secret of all success, of all achievement, of all progress, of all happiness, is to discover increasing means by which we may thus relate ourselves to our native realm. science and psychical research are supplementing religion; are, indeed, incorporating themselves into religion as vital factors of the spiritual progress of humanity. far from being hostile elements to the revelation of the divine power given in the bible, they explain, they extend, they interpret that revelation. as archdeacon wilberforce so finely points out, god is ever the same, "but what men see of him changes,--changes without contradiction of the past conceptions." * * * * * "it was a definite promise of god that he should unfold, develop, spiritualize the conceptions of the early christian faith, revealing gradually, as men should be able to assimilate them, higher, nobler views of the nature, character, and purpose of the eternal father," continued archdeacon wilberforce in a memorable sermon preached in westminster abbey, and he added:-- "it is, i suppose, inevitable that timid hearts, rooted in the traditions of the past, iron-bound in antiquated definitions, should imagine that the foundations of faith are shaken. they forget that the christ told us that when his visible presence was removed he would speak by his spirit, as he had only delivered the preliminaries of his full message; that there were truths yet to be unfolded which men would receive and assimilate as the generations succeeded one another,--'as the thoughts of men widened with the progress of the suns.' i have been told by experts that the astronomers who built those marvels of antiquity, the pyramids of the nile, pierced a slanting shaft through the larger pyramid which pointed direct to the pole-star, and that in those days had you gazed heavenward through the shaft into the eastern night, the pole-star alone would have met your eye. it was in the ages of the past, it was when the southern cross was visible from the british isles. slowly, imperceptibly, the orientation of the planet has changed. did you now look up into the midnight sky through the shaft in the great pyramid you would not see the pole-star; new brilliant space-worlds would shine down on you. but the heavens have not altered, and the shaft of the pyramid is not guilty, so to speak, of unorthodoxy. a new view of the heavens has quietly come, for the earth's axis has changed its place. similarly, it is the work of the spirit of the ascended jesus to advance the axis of the church of god from glory to glory. conceptions of the universal soul once prominent before the telescope of human faith and aspiration grow, enlarge, expand. he changeth not; he is ever the same. and these conceptions will change until knowledge, in the sense of the acquisition of facts, shall be no more, and intuitive perception of the transcendent majesty of the universal life shall fill our souls forever." in these latter days one may hold all his old faith and add to it knowledge, as saint paul himself enjoins. one of these powers of the spiritual man now being rapidly developed is that of telepathy. we shall learn to _talk in thought_, as well as in oral speech. we shall learn to "call up" the friend at a distance, or the friend in the unseen, as unmistakably as we now call up a friend by telephone. time and space are the limits which define the terrestrial life as distinct from the celestial. but man is, primarily, a celestial being. he is, first of all, a spirit, belonging to the spiritual world, and only secondarily and temporarily a denizen of earth. he can regain, to some extent, at least, his celestial faculties. for centuries he has accepted imprisonment in the senses. his release is at hand. he has but to assert his own pre-eminence as a spiritual being with spiritual powers. he has but to exert these in order to prove to himself their existence, and to develop them to their increasing use. extension of power over the material universe, more wonderful and more potent, and more all-comprehending than even marconi's wonderful wireless telegraphy, is at hand. "it doth not yet appear what we shall be;" but that man can create and control his destiny to an increasing extent, is true. it is the evolution of religion,--of that faith which has added to itself knowledge. thought is the highest manifestation of energy; and when man learns to live in thought he acts upon all his environment with energies that are immortal. professor leavenworth of the state university observatory in minnesota photographed the new asteroid eros at a distance estimated to be some thirty-six millions of miles,--a distance that renders it impossible to discern this planet even through the strongest telescope. exact mathematical calculation had worked out the problem of the location of eros, and the sensitive photographic plate caught it, even though it is beyond the power of the telescope. this scientific fact illustrates perfectly the way in which an unseen universe exists about us, registering its existence on the sensitive plate of spiritual impression. science has long since established the truth of the different rates of vibration that characterize different things. the reason that the psychic (or spiritual) body of those who have passed from the physical to the ethereal world is unseen is simply that the ethereal body is in a state of vibration too high for the eye to follow. stephen phillips expresses a deep scientific truth when he says:-- "i tell you we are fooled by the eye, the ear; these organs muffle as from that real world that lies about us." yet in every human being there lies latent the inner sight and the inner hearing, which can be increasingly developed by psycho-physical culture; by such habits of life as make the physical body more flexible, more subtle, and which thus raise to a far higher rate its degree of vibration, and enable the organs of sight and hearing to be far less "muffled" than they are in those who live more in the mere life of the senses. this unseen world that lies about us may be explored; the unseen friends who encompass us may be recognized by those who will so live as to develop the psychic senses, and so as to allow the psychic body to take greater control of its physical instrument; this unseen world is simply the natural continuation of the physical universe in the scale of evolution. science is every day penetrating its space, and the horizon line of mystery constantly recedes. what is wireless telegraphy but one of those marvels which a decade ago we should have considered as quite beyond the horizon line of our experimental knowledge, and as belonging to the unrevealed mysteries of the spiritual universe? the ordinary trolley car of to-day--moving without visible means--would have been regarded as a miracle a century ago. there is no hard and fast line between the physical and the ethereal worlds. they melt into one another and are determined only by degrees. any element may exist as a solid, a liquid, a gas, or in the etheric condition, and one state is no less real than another. the trend of progress is leading humanity constantly into the realm of finer forces; of more subtle forms of expression. the trend of progress is constantly discarding the more ponderous and clumsy for the subtle, the swift, and the more ethereal form of mechanism. instead of the stage coach, with two, four, or six horses, we have the automobile; instead of the sailing ship, the twin-screw propeller; instead of stoves or fireplaces, with fuel to be carried in and refuse to be carried out, we have the hot-water radiator, and are on the eve of having heat, as we already have light, from electricity. now when science provides the explanation of this ethereal universe surrounding and interpenetrating that in which we live and psychic science begins to explore it and formulate its means and methods, there are persons who object on the ground of its "materializing heaven." if one were to inquire as to what this idea of heaven is he would probably receive no more definite reply than that it was supposed to be a condition of playing on golden harps and waving palm branches. the figurative pictures of the new testament have largely been accepted as literal ones, and it may be an open question as to which condition would be the more "material," that of walking golden streets, waving branches of palms and devoting one's time to the harp, or the life that prefigures itself as a development and expansion of our present intellectual, artistic, and spiritual life. "unless some insight is gained into the psychical side of things, some communications realized with intelligences outside our own, some light thrown upon a more than corporeal descent and destiny of man," wrote frederick w. h. myers in that monumental work entitled "human personality," which offers a rich mine of suggestion, "it would seem that the shells to be picked up on the shore of the ocean of truth will ever become scantier, and the agnostics of the future will gaze forth ever more hopelessly on that gloomy and unvoyageable sea. for vast as is the visible universe, infinite as may have been the intelligence that went to its evolution, yet while viewed in the external way in which we alone can view it--while seen as a product and not as a plan--it cannot possibly suggest to us an indefinite number of universal laws. such cosmic generalizations as gravitation, evolution, correlation of forces, conservation of energy, though assuredly as yet unexhausted, cannot, in the nature of things, be even approximately inexhaustible." [sidenote: finer cosmic forces.] the entire trend of progress is toward the continued discovery of finer cosmic forces and their utilization in practical affairs. within the past five years this tendency has strikingly demonstrated itself. the evolution of the ways and means of travel offers, in itself, an impressive illustration of this tendency. the visitor to the musée cluny in paris will find, among the masses of relics of an historic pass, the state carriages used in the time of louis xv. and marie antoinette. they are incredibly clumsy and gigantic,--the carriage itself mounted on four great wheels, two of which are very large, with the two front ones smaller,--the entire vehicle occupying about twice the space of a modern conveyance, and its weight must be something to reckon with. several of these are standing in the cluny and offer a strange contrast with the carriages of to-day. but when these, with their lumbering motion, are contrasted,--not merely with the modern carriage, but with the flying automobile,--one realizes, indeed, the evolution in the methods of local transportation. again, let one compare the traditions of the sailing vessels on which passengers crossed to europe within the memory of men still living,--the forty days' passage between boston and liverpool which is well within the memory of doctor hale,--with the passage on this latest floating palace of the ocean, the kaiser wilhelm ii.,--and he realizes how far science has penetrated into the more subtle forces, where lightness and speed take the place of clumsy device and slow motion. to go up to the hurricane deck of the wonderful kaiser wilhelm and look down through the openings on the six mighty engines, with their intense throb of vibration day and night, is to behold an object lesson in the possibilities of motion. with the precision and the persistence of fate, the great beams fly up--and down. the vibration pervades the entire vast spaces of the great steamer. it becomes like an electric current, a thing of life, to be missed when one leaves the steamer as if one had left there a part of his own life. there is an exhilaration in it that communicates itself to mind and body. it is like a dynamo generating vitality. and still more swift and subtle methods of loco-motion are in the air. doctor albertson, an electrical engineer of the royal university of denmark, has an invention for a railroad train without wheels to make a speed of three hundred miles an hour. "two things defeated the attainment of speed above the present maximum (sixty miles an hour)," says a writer in the "new york herald," and these are specified as "the dead weight of the train, and aerial resistance. "now comes the announcement that there has been discovered a method of abolishing the dead weight of the train, leaving only aerial resistance to be contended with. if this can be done, as mr. albertson asserts, half of the battle is won, and the world may yet be able to travel on the earth's surface with the much-dreamed-of speed of hundreds of miles an hour. for many years the great principle of magnetism has been known to electricians and used in practical work by laymen. steel companies have found the magnet useful in lifting huge metal girders. at one end of their lifting apparatuses they have placed a magnet which, when charged, grips the steel bars and lifts them, no matter how great their weight. it has been noticed that a magnet would move to come in contact with the steel bar as soon as it arrived within the drawing radius, carrying any amount of weight with it which happened to be attached at the time. "it is this principle which doctor albertson sought to make use of--the lifting power of a magnet when attracted to a fixed rail of steel. he arranged a series of magnets under a miniature car running on a steel railway track. the magnets were insulated and attached to the bottom of the car so that they came under the rail and about an inch below it. then he turned on enough electricity to make the magnets active. they rose upward toward the rail, lifting the car bodily in the air. the weight of the train was thus simply overcome!" the electro-magnetic train has demonstrated its principle to the satisfaction of scientific engineers. professor roberts, in charge of the chemical works at niagara falls, says of it:-- "it is the electrical discovery of the age, and so simple in application that the marvel is that it has escaped us so long. the lightening power of magnetism has been known for years, the greatest saving power to overcome gravity, but it seems it had to wait for doctor albertson to discover it." the air-ship promises, however, to eclipse the greatest and swiftest of latter-day steamers. the air, rather than the ocean, is to be navigated. all these marvellous developments in scientific activity correspond to the developments of man's mental and spiritual powers. telepathy establishes its communication from spirit to spirit, as wireless telegraphy establishes its sending of messages without visible means. on both planes,--the physical and the psychical,--the subtle and finer forces are being utilized, and the horizon line of the unknown continually recedes before the progress of man. sir oliver lodge, ll.d., presented a new phase of the problem of personality in an address in london, in the following statement of a speculative belief:-- "to tell the truth, i do not myself hold that the whole of any one of us is incarnated in these terrestrial bodies; certainly not in childhood; more, but perhaps not so very much more, in adult life. what is manifested in this body is, i venture to think likely, only a portion--an individualized, a definite portion--of a much larger whole. what the rest of me may be doing, for these few years while i am here, i do not know, perhaps it is asleep; but probably it is not so entirely asleep with men of genius; nor, perhaps, is it all completely inactive with the people called 'mediums.' "imagination in science is permissible, provided one's imaginations are not treated as fact, or even theory, but only as working hypotheses,--a kind of hypotheses which, properly treated, is essential to the progress of every scientific man. let us imagine, then, as a working hypothesis, that our subliminal self--the other, the greater part of us--is in touch with another order of existence, and that it is occasionally able to communicate, or somehow, perhaps unconsciously, transmit to the fragment in the body something of the information accessible to it. this guess, if permissible, would contain a clue to a possible explanation of clairvoyance. we should then be like icebergs floating in an ocean, with only a fraction exposed to sun and air and observation: the rest--by far the greater bulk--submerged and occasionally in subliminal contact, while still their peaks, their visible peaks, were far separate." that which doctor lodge expresses in the form of a speculative theory is by many realized as an actual experience; an absolute consciousness that over and above and outside of the ordinary intelligent consciousness is another being more one's self than is his conscious self; with whom he is in a very varied degree of communion; clearer and more immediate at times; clouded, confused, even shut off by some dense state at others; intermittent always, yet often sufficiently clear and impressive to compel his attention to the phenomena and compel recognition of the truth. in fact, as one comes into still clearer recognition of this "other" self,--which is far more the true self than is the lower and lesser manifestation,--one comes to absolutely realize that his larger, higher, more comprehensive life is being lived in this higher realm, or condition, and that his entire being on the plane of the lower consciousness is a series of effects of which the causes lie in this other larger and more real life. that is, the individual has two lives not precisely corresponding in chronological sequence. the experiences of the day are his because, _before the day has dawned_, they have been the experiences of the higher life lived in the larger realm. the spiritual self has realized that train of experiences in the spiritual realm; therefore, and as a result inevitable, these experiences precipitate themselves into the physical life, and are manifested on the physical plane of being. one does a given thing to-day, or meets a given event, _because_ his spiritual or subliminal or even real self has already done that thing or met that event on the higher plane. the real being is all the time dwelling in the more real world. as all planes of life are spiritual planes,--even that which we call the physical, being but the cruder and denser quality of the spiritual,--it makes the theory clearer to designate the realm just above our present one as the ethereal. in this ethereal realm dwells the ethereal body. a certain portion of its consciousness animates the physical structure and works through the physical brain. it lies with ourselves as to how closely we may establish the relation between the higher and the lower self. this relation may constantly be increased in the degree of receptivity of the lower to the higher self by living the life of the spirit. and what is the life of the spirit? the life of joy and peace; and the life of study, thought, and endeavor; the life of both intellectual and spiritual culture; the life in which the physical body is subordinated to its true place as a mechanism, an instrument for carrying out the will of the spiritual self. thus, by study, thought, and prayer, may one more and more consciously and entirely control and determine his active life, and constantly refine and exalt it in quality. as this is done its potency increases, for spirit alone is power. of telepathy doctor lodge says:-- "telepathy itself, however, is in need of explanation. an idea or thought in the mind of one person reverberates, and dimly appears in the mind of another. how does this occur? is it a physical process going on in some physical medium or ether connecting the two brains? is it a primary physiological function of the brain, or is it primarily psychological? if psychological only, what does that mean? perhaps it may not be a direct immediate action between the two minds at all; perhaps a third intelligence is in communication with both." will this theory furnish the basis for a true interpretation of telepathy? the relations between the individual and the forces of the ethereal realm are also determining as regards health. [sidenote: health and happiness.] for health and illness are by no means the mere and exclusive consideration of the physical life. health, in its complete significance, is mental and even moral, and involves, in its higher aspects, the entire question of the spiritual life. health, successful achievement, and happiness are an indissoluble trinity, when interpreted in their full integrity and in their inter-relations. ideally considered, they are in closest interpenetration. as a matter of actual fact each is often partially manifest,--good physical health without any special achievement; or a high degree of achievement with defective health; or both, without much resultant happiness; or happiness even, without outward success or physical health, resulting only from a deeper spiritual insight and recognition of eternal laws. still, ideally considered, as this world goes, health should be the basis of successful achievement, and this achievement should rest on health; and the union of both should produce the inflorescence of happiness; for the true sense of all successful achievement is in that it makes for the forces of righteousness, and a successful swindler or criminal could hardly be included under these general definitions. and so, to have good health, and to achieve good and noble work, must produce a good degree of personal happiness as inevitably as that certain numerical combinations produce certain numerical results. so much we may concede. the question is then before us: how can we secure and hold unvarying, from day to day, from year to year, this basis of physical health on which the superstructure of all endeavor and realization must rest? just how shall one be well and keep well? it is certainly a question not restricted to the physician nor yet to the metaphysician. for health is not merely a physical condition. it is the question of the poise, the harmony of the entire psychical being. professor john d. quackenbos has recently said of hypnotism:-- "investigations extending over many years have led me to a belief in the dual personality of man--that is, each human unit exists in two distinct states of superior consciousness. one of these states is called the primary or superliminal consciousness,--the personality by which a man is known to his objective associates, which takes cognizance through the senses of the outside world, and carries on the ordinary business of every-day life. the second or subliminal personality is the superior spiritual self, the man's own oversoul, which automatically superintends all physical functions and procedures, and influences mental and moral attitudes. "it happens to be a fact of mind that in sleep--natural or induced--this subliminal or submerged self may be brought into active control of the objective life. my experiments have forced me to the conclusion that there is no difference as regards suggestibility between natural sleep and the so-called hypnotic trance. in the induced sleep the subject is in _rapport_ exclusively with the operator; in natural sleep only with his own objective self, perhaps with a multitude of discarnate personalities, who think and feel in common with him, and, in case he be of superior parts, possibly with all well-wishing extra-human intelligences." here we have the basis of truth. that condition of vigor, poise, vitality, and harmony which we call good health depends on the degree of control exercised over the physical body by that "second or subliminal personality, the superior spiritual self, the man's own oversoul, which," as doctor quackenbos so truly observes, "superintends all physical functions and procedures, and influences mental and moral attitudes." the problem, then, becomes that of bringing the psychical body into this receptive relation to the physical self? how shall the perfect spiritual supremacy be established? this question reveals, of itself, to how great a degree health is a mental and moral as well as a physical affair. perhaps the initial step is that of clearly realizing--of holding the luminous conception--of one's self as a spiritual being in the psychical body, _temporarily inhabiting_ a physical body,--a spiritual being using as its instrument a physical body so long as it is at work in the physical world, or on the physical plane. one may thus conceive of his physical body as being really as objective as is the pen of the writer; the palette and brushes of the painter; the machine, or mechanism, or instrument used by any one. and the moment one learns to thus hold the physical instrument objectively, he thus brings it under the control of thought. he is no longer so a part of it; so entangled and involved in it that he cannot control it. the moment he holds this clear, vivid mental realization of it as his instrument, he is in command. this may be illustrated by an electric car and a motor-man. if the man were bound up and entangled among the cogs and wheels he could not guide and control the car; but in his place, free from all its mechanism, his hand on the motor, the course and the degree of speed obeys his mental direction applied through his control. this realization of the true relation of the spiritual man to his body is the initial condition of health, and this involves as a matter of course the spiritual relations with the divine power, and receptivity to the infinite energy. it also involves an intelligent care of the physical mechanism. a clogged pen would repress the recording of the noblest sonnet or epic; a defective brush, or pigment, would ruin the picture of the greatest artist; a broken wire would prevent the transmission of the most important telegraphic or cable message. and so, however intelligently and completely one holds the faith of supremacy of the spiritual over the physical, he must realize the absolute necessity of fidelity to hygienic laws. food, in its quantity and quality; bathing, exercise, fresh air, sleep,--these are the conditions on which the state of the physical mechanism depends, and which involve that perfection of health which determines exhilaration, power, achievement, and happiness. canon scott holland of st. paul's cathedral has ably discussed these new problems of the finer forces in the ethereal realm; and in a discourse entitled "other world activities" he drew the following analogy:-- "the text is from the book of daniel, a book which takes us into a world of visions and trances and mystical imagery. there is a world within the world; a life beyond life. that world is not only the sphere of god, but of recognizable beings, meditating presences subject to rule, with organization and degrees, activities and authorities. it is a host, a kingdom, swayed by law and purpose. in the bible there is much of this, learnt probably by the hebrews from their captors. they had gone far afield: their horizon had been widened: they had been taught how to enter largely into this mysterious region. but, fortunately, they dealt soberly with this weltering flood of occult knowledge. these hosts of unseen presences are marshalled into order: they are not mere genii, fantastic and magical; they pass under the control of the sole directive will of the most high. they are solemn instruments of spiritual destiny: they are semi-human, and the record is, 'one like unto a man touched me.'" canon holland proceeds to arraign modern teachings. "we have drifted from this tremendous reality," he says. "we have tried to isolate the field of known experience, and to cut it off from disturbing supernatural imaginings. we have set ourselves to purge out from our scheme of things anything that seemed to interfere with it. the unseen was the unknown and the unknowable. but our agnostic programme has broken down. facts have been too much for it. the isolation desired by it is impossible. in and out of the life that we can cover with our rationalized experiences, there are influences, forces, powers which are forever at work, and belong to a world beyond our scientific methods. we float in a mysterious ether to which no physical limitations apply. sounds, motions, transmit themselves through this medium, under conditions which transform our whole idea of what space or time they mean. through and beyond the semi-physical mystery, a world of spiritual activity opens upon us. it has capacities of which we have never dreamed. it allows of apparent contact of spirit with spirit, in spite of material distance and physical obstruction. there are modes of communication which are utterly unintelligible to our ordinary scientific assumptions, yet which actual experience tends more and more to verify." yes, as canon holland well says, "facts have been too much" for those who would cling to the old and the less intelligent ideas of the future life. the ethereal world will even cease to be mysterious before advancing scientific investigation and knowledge. through the ether, as canon holland notes, sounds and motions transmit themselves "under conditions which transform our whole idea of what space or time may mean." in the realm of present life the same assertion may be made. who can contemplate wireless telegraphy without having opened to him a range of activities and conditions undreamed of heretofore? "we become sure," continues canon holland, "that both above and below our normal consciousness we are in touch with mysteries that travel far, and that we lie open to spiritual acts done unto us from a far distance, that we assimilate intimations and intuitions that reach us by inexplicable channels. "this world of spirit powers and activities has been opened afresh; and now even physical science is compelled to recognize the evidence for it, and a new psychological language is coming into being to describe its phenomena. we are only slowly recovering our hold upon this life of mystic intuition, of exalted spiritual communications; we are only beginning to recognize the abnormal and exceptional spiritual condition with which saint paul was familiar, when, whether in the body or out of it, he could not say,--god only knows,--he was transported to the third heaven and heard unutterable things." this remarkable sermon is an initiation of a new era of religious teaching. the light is breaking and the full illumination is only a question of time. life is exalted in its purpose and refined in its quality by holding the perpetual consciousness of the two worlds in which we dwell; by the constant realization that "the spirit world around this world of sense floats like an atmosphere...." this atmosphere is all peopled, and it is magnetic with intelligence. every spirit-call for aid, for guidance, for support, is answered. if a man fall on a crowded street in the city, how instantaneous is the aid that cares for him. he is lifted and conveyed tenderly to his home, or to a hospital, or to some temporary resting-place if the ill be but a slight one. strangers or friends, it matters not, rush to his rescue. this, which occurs in the tangible and visible world, is but a feeble illustration of the more profound tenderness, the clearer understanding, the more potent aid that is given instantly to man from the unseen helpers and friends in this spirit world which floats like an atmosphere around this world of sense. it is all and equally the help of god; it is the divine answer to the call; but the heavenly father works through ways and means. if a man fall on the street god does not cause a miracle to be wrought and a bed to descend from the clouds, but he works through the sympathies of the bystanders. is it not equally conceivable that the appeal for leading and for light sent into spirit spheres meets the response of spirit-aid; that it awakens the interest and the infinite tenderness and care of those who have passed from this life into that of the next stage beyond, and that they are, according to their development and powers, co-workers with god, even as we who are yet on earth aim and pray to be? now it is just this faith that is so largely pervading the religious world to-day. spirituality includes all the convictions that constitute ethics. spirituality is the unchanging quality in all forms of organized religion. and it is found, in greater or in less degree, in every sect and every creed. outward forms come and go; they multiply, or they decrease, and the change in the expression of religious faith is a matter largely determined by the trend of general progress; but the essentials of religion, under all organized forms, remain the same, for the essential element is spirituality. in and around copley square in boston, within the radius of one block, are several denominations whose order of worship varies, the one from another. the baptist believes in immersion as the outer sign of the inner newness of life; the episcopalian holds dear his ritual; the unitarian and the presbyterian, and perhaps a half-dozen other sects in close proximity (which express the various forms of what they call "new thought"), each and all exist and have their being by virtue of the one essential faith held in common by all,--the one aim to which all are tending,--that of the spiritualization of life. the larger recognition of the spiritual universe includes the recognition of this interpenetration of the life in the seen and the unseen. every thought and decision is like an action on the spiritual side. a thought has the force of a deed, and there is a literal truth in the line,-- "the good, though only thought, has life and breath;" and in lowell's words:-- "ah! let us hope that to our praise good god not only reckons the moments when we tread his ways, but when the spirit beckons." the thought-life is, indeed, the most real of the two lives, and dominates the other. the events and achievements, held in thought and will, precipitate themselves into outer circumstance and action. to live in this perfect sympathy of companionship with the forces and the powers of the unseen world is to dwell amid perpetual reinforcement of energy, solace, and sustaining aid, and with faith vitalized by spiritual perception. all scientific problems are ethical, and even spiritual, problems. they are discoveries in the divine laws. "can man by searching find out god?" apparently he approaches constantly to this possibility, and finds that "--through the ages one increasing purpose runs, and the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns." every succeeding century brings humanity to a somewhat clearer perception of the nature of the divine creation. however slowly, yet none the less surely, does the comprehension of man and his place in the universe and his oneness with the divine life increase with every century. jonathan edwards taught that while nature might reflect the divine image, man could not, as he was in a "fallen" state, until he was regenerated. putting aside the mere dogma involved in the "fall" of man, the other matter--that of regeneration, of redemption--is undeniable, even though we may interpret this process in a different manner from that of the great eighteenth-century theologian. the redemption, the regeneration of man, lies in faith. in that is the _substance_ through which and by means of which man comes into conscious communion with god. it is by the intense activity possible to this mental attitude that he conquers the problems of the universe, that he advances in knowledge, and advances in the increasing capacity to receive the divine messages and to follow the divine leadings. * * * * * [sidenote: a new force.] of late years a new force has been discovered in the line of ethico-spiritual aid in the higher order of hypnotism, as discovered and practiced by doctor quackenbos, who may, indeed, without exaggeration, be called the discoverer of this higher phase of applied suggestion. "i have been brought," he says, "into closest touch with the human soul. first objectively; subsequently in the realm of subliminal life, where, practically liberated in the hypnotic slumber from its entanglement with a perishable body, it has been open to approach by the objective mind in which it elected to confide, dynamically absorptive of creative stimulation by that mind, and lavish in dispensing to the personality in _rapport_ the suddenly apprehended riches of its own higher spiritual nature." of the nature of this power, we again find doctor quackenbos saying: "hypnotic suggestion is a summoning into ascendancy of the true man; an accentuation of insight into life and its procedures; a revealing, in all its beauty and strength and significance, of absolute, universal, and necessary truth; and a portraiture of happiness as the assured outcome of living in consonance with this truth." the learned doctor regards hypnotism, indeed, as "a transfusion of personality." the truth is that there lies in every nature forces which, if recognized and developed, would lift one to higher planes and induce in him such an accession of activities and energies as to fairly transform his entire being and achievement. this would be effected, too, on an absolutely normal plane. the development of the spiritual faculties is just as normal as is that of the intellectual. and it is to this development that we must look for the true communion with those who have passed into the unseen. the objective life must be spiritualized. the soul can come into a deeper realization of its own dignity and the worth of its higher nature; can discern the spiritual efficiency, the energy commensurate to every draft upon it. all, however, that is done by the highest phase of hypnotism, as exerted by doctor quackenbos, can be done by auto-suggestion. the soul has only to call upon its own higher forces. it has only to act from love and compassion,--from sympathy and generous aims, and all the infinite power of the divine world is at its service. * * * * * [sidenote: the service of the gods.] "we had letters to send; couriers could not go fast enough, not far enough; broke their wagons, foundered their horses; bad roads in spring, snowdrifts in winter, heats in summer; could not get the horses out of a walk. "but we found out that the air and earth were full of electricity, and always going our way--just the way we wanted to send. _would he take a message?_ just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; would carry it in no time. only one doubt occurred one staggering objection--he had no carpet bag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so much as a mouth, to carry a letter. but, after much thought and many experiments, we managed to meet the conditions, and to fold up the letter in such invisible, compact form as he could carry in those invisible pockets of his, never wrought by needle and thread--and it went like a charm. "now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chores done by the gods themselves. that is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. the forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day, and cost us nothing." with his wonderful insight into conditions, emerson thus expresses a provision of conditions that are now being realized to an even greater degree than he consciously knew, although he unconsciously foretold them. now it is wireless telegraphy that is the ultimate fulfilment of what he saw,--the method that will reduce to practical realization his counsel to hitch one's wagon to a star, and "see his chores done by the gods themselves." it is not only humanity--civilization--the onward sweep and march by the progress of the world, but the individual life also that can take advantage of "the might of the elements." the one irresistible element is the power of will, the power that results from the perfect uniting of the human will with the divine will. people talk of fate, and conditions, and burdens, and limitations. they are all merely negative, and are easily and instantly subject to the infinite and irresistible potency of the will brought to bear upon them. on the threshold of any endeavor when one takes account of his possessions and conditions,--material and immaterial; when he again, from a new vantage ground, surveys his future, it is his salvation and success to realize the depth and height of his own personal power over his own life. "there are points from which we may command our life, when the soul sweeps the future like a glass, and coming things, full freighted with our fate, jut out on the dark offing of the mind." but when these points appear they must be taken advantage of at the moment. they are the result of an occultation of events that may never occur again within the limits of a lifetime. the swift intuition that leaps over all conceivable processes is the heaven-appointed monitor. it is the divine voice speaking. it is the word which must be obeyed. when one "... by the vision splendid is on his way attended," he must give heed to the vision or it vanishes and returns no more. we need a new, a deeper, a far more practical realization that the ideals and visions which flash before us are the real mechanism of life; that they are the working model by which one is to pattern his experience, in outward selection and in grouping by means of his own force of will. somewhere has emerson said,-- "all is waste and worthless till arrives the wise selecting will," which is, to the potential circumstances, like a magnet introduced among filings that suddenly attracts to itself and draws all into related and orderly groups. circumstances are thus amenable to the power of will brought to bear that selects, arranges, combines, after the pattern of the revealed ideal held in view. each individual life may "borrow the might of the elements." man is created, not only in the image of god, but with god-like faculties and potency, which, if he but truly relate them to the divine potency, if he unite his will with god's will, there is then no limit, no bound to that which he may achieve. in one of the most wonderful creations of vedder, the artist shows us the figure of a woman whose eyes are closed, and whose hands, lying in her lap, are inextricably entangled amid crewels and threads that bind and hold them. but one sees, also, that she has but to open her eyes, and lift her hands, and all the entanglement would fall off of itself. the picture offers the most typical lesson of life. all imprisonment of conditions is dissolved into thin air the instant one impresses his own will-power on the affairs and circumstances of his life. he _can_ do that which he _desires_ to do. the desire has only to be intensified into conscious, intelligent choice, into absolute will,--and all the minor barriers melt away and are no more. every life may hitch its wagon to a star. it may borrow the might of the elements. it has but to resolve to hold its ideal firmly and clearly in mind, and it will then be realized as the sculptor's dream in clay is realized in the marble. "all things are yours," said saint paul. one has but to take his own; to wisely and clearly select the elements and combine them by that irresistible potency of mental magnetism and energy. the power of the exalted moment. "the salvation of christ is the complete occupation of the human life by the divine life." _it is in our best moments, not in our worst moments, that we are most truly ourselves. oh believe in your noblest impulses, in your purest instincts, in your most unworldly and spiritual thoughts! you see man most truly when he seems to you to be made for the best things. you see your true self when you believe that the best and purest and devoutest moment which ever came to you is only the suggestion of what you were meant to be and might be all the time. believe that, o children of god! this is the way in which a soul lives forever in the light which first began to burn around it when it was with jesus in the holy mount._--phillips brooks. the power of the exalted moment is the very motor of human life. the exalted moment is the dynamo that generates the working energy. the moment itself fades; it passes into the region of memory where its true service is to shine, with the unfailing continuance of radium, as a perpetual illumination of life. it is the greatest, the saddest, the most hopelessly fatal error that can be made,--to cast away from one the exalted moment because it has not fulfilled itself in outer condition and circumstance. vision and prophecy are given by god for a working model, which the long patient days--days of monotony, of trial, of commonplace work under commonplace conditions, amid commonplace people and events--are yet to fashion and fulfil. these are the material,--the ordinary events, the commonplace daily duty. the perplexity of problems rather than the clear grasping of their significance; the misunderstanding and the misconstruction of motive that make the tragedy of life; the interpretation of evil where one only meant all that was true, and sympathetic, and appreciative, and holy; the torture and trial, where should be only sweetness of spirit and true recognition,--of all these are the days made; all these are a part of "the flowing conditions of life," which it is the business, the responsibility, the personal duty, to transmute into noble living, into poetry and ecstasy and exaltation, and into that perfect faith in god that can truly say, "though he slay me, yet will i trust in him." though he slay all that made life seem worth the living; the enchantment, the response of sympathy; recognition rather than misconstruction,--though all these be obscured in what may seem a total eclipse,--still let one not forget "the gleam;" still let one keep faith with the power of the exalted moment. it came from god and held its deep significance. it laid upon its beholder consecration of divinest aspiration and unfaltering effort. "if i could uncover the hearts of you who are listening to me this morning," said phillips brooks, in a memorable sermon, "i should find in almost all--perhaps in all--of them a sacred chamber where burns the bright memory of some loftiest moment, some supreme experience, which is your transfiguration time. once on a certain morning you felt the glory of living, and the misery of life has never since that been able quite to take possession of your soul. once for a few days you knew the delight of a perfect friendship. once you saw for an inspired instant the idea of your profession blaze out of the midst of its dull drudgery. once, just for a glorious moment, you saw the very truth, and believed it, without the shadow of a cloud. and so the question comes,--what do they mean? what value shall i give to those transformation experiences?" on the personal answer to that question depends all the success or the failure; all the nobleness or the unworthiness of the individual life. no one can estimate too ardently, or too earnestly, the spiritual salvation of keeping faith with the exalted moment,-- "delayed, it may be, for more lives yet, through worlds i shall traverse--not a few, with much to learn and much to forget"-- ere the golden hour of fulfilment shall come; but faith in the exalted moment is but another name for faith in god. the great truth of life--that which we may well hold as its central and controlling and dominating truth--is that "our best moments are not departures from ourselves, but are really the only moments in which we have truly been ourselves." these moments flash upon the horizon of the soul and vanish; they image themselves before us as in vision, and fade; but the fact of their appearance is its own proof of their deep reality. they are the substance compared with which all the lower and lesser experiences are mere phantasmagoria. and this fulfilment is not found, but made. it is a spiritual achievement. so let one not reject, or ignore, or be despairing before undreamed-of, unexplained, and incomprehensible forms of trial, but know that it is trial that worketh patience; know that "no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." "it was given unto me," wrote dante in the _vita nuova_, "to behold a very wonderful vision; wherein i saw things that determined me." it may be given to any one at any time to behold the vision. circumstances are fluidic and impressionable, and take on any form that the mental power has achieved sufficient strength to stamp, and because of this--which is the explanation of the outward phenomena whose significance, on the spiritual side, is all condensed in prayer--one need never despond or despair. at any instant he can so unite his own will with the divine will that new combinations of event and circumstance will appear in his life. a writer on this line of thought has recently said:-- "there is an elemental essence--a strange living essence--which surrounds us on every side, and which is singularly susceptible to the influence of human thought. "this essence responds with the most wonderful delicacy to the faintest action of our minds or desires, and this being so, it is interesting to note how it is affected when the human mind formulates a definite, purposeful thought or wish." there is a phase of occult thought represented at its best by mr. c. w. leadbeater of london, and at its worst by a host of miscellaneous writers, whose speculations are more or less grotesque and devoid of every claim to attention, who materialize thought and purpose, and invest it with an organism which they name "an elemental," and one finds mr. leadbeater saying things like this, of the results of an intensely held thought:-- "the effect produced is of the most striking nature. the thought seizes upon the plastic essence, and moulds it instantly into a living being of appropriate form,--a being which when once thus created is in no way under the control of its creator, but lives out a life of its own, the length of which is proportionate to the intensity of the thought or wish which called it into existence. it lasts, in fact, just as long as the thought force holds it together." mr. leadbeater continues:-- "still more pregnant of results for good or evil are a man's thought about other people, for in that case they hover not about the thinker, but about the object of the thought. a kindly thought about any person or any earnest wish for his good will form and project toward him a friendly artificial elemental; if the wish be a definite one, as, for example, that he may recover from some sickness, then the elemental will be a force ever hovering over him to promote his recovery, or to ward off any influence that might tend to hinder it, and in doing this it will display what appears like a very considerable amount of intelligence and adaptability, though really it is simply a force acting along the line of the least resistance--pressing steadily in one direction all the time, and taking advantage of any channel that it can find, just as the water in a cistern would in a moment find the one open pipe among a dozen closed ones, and proceed to empty itself through that." this train of speculation, which if one is to reject he must first confront, is demoralizing. it leads nowhere save into mental quagmires and quicksands. it leads into materiality and not into spirituality. of course with all this the one question is as to whether such conceptions are true; but judged by intuition, which is the roentgen ray of spirit--judged by the data reached by scholars and thinkers, by psychologists and scientists--it has no claim to recognition. that thought is the most intense form of energy, its potency far exceeding that of even electricity, is certainly true, and that one can think himself--or another person--into new and different outward phases and circumstances is most true. tesla, in a paper discussing the problem of how to increase the sum of human energy, considers the possibility of the existence of organized beings under conditions impossible for us. "we cannot even positively assert that some are not present in this, our world, in the very midst of us," he says, "for their constitution and life manifestation may be such that we are unable to perceive them." this speculative possibility opens the gate to the scientific recognition of the truth that "all the company of heaven" may companion us, here and now, in the terrestrial life, invisible, intangible, inaudible to the perceptions of sense. it may largely be through their ministry and mediation that the unforeseen and unexpected opportunities, privileges, gifts fall upon man,--gifts that the gods provide. dreams, visions, and ideals are given that they may be realized. the vision is projected from the higher spiritual realm as the working model, the pattern of the life here. a dream is something to be carried out; not put aside and neglected and lost in over-lying and ever-accumulating stratas of experience. the dream, once clearly recognized, becomes a personal responsibility. it has been revealed for a purpose. it is the divine revelation to the individual life, and these visions are given to the individual as well as to humanity, and they are the most significant occurrences in the entire experience of life. to once clearly recognize this divine ideal, this glorious vision of possibilities that shines once and for all upon the individual, and then to turn away from it and leave it unrealized in the outward life: to put it by, because the effort to transform the vision into external and visible conditions is surrounded with difficulties and invested with perplexities, is to wander into the maze of confusion. difficulties are merely incidental. they are neither here nor there. if god give the dream he will lead the way. if he gives it, he means something by it, and its significance should be appreciated and taken into life as a working energy. it is the will of the lord, and to pray sincerely that the divine will be done, is also to accept the obligation of entering into the doing of it. indeed, difficulties and perplexities in the way do not count and should not. briars and brambles there will always be, but one's path lies onward all the same. who would relinquish a right purpose because its achievement were hard? all the more should he press on and gain the strength of the obstacles that he overcomes. doctor william t. harris says, "realize your ideals quickly." that is, an ideal is a responsibility; it is the working model that god has set before the individual; the pattern after which and by which he shall shape his life. if he accept and follow it with fidelity and energy; with that energy born of absolute faith in the divine leading,--he will find himself miraculously led; he will find that the obstacle which appears so insurmountable in perspective vanishes as he comes near; that a way is made, a path appears. it chanced to the writer of these papers to take a long day's stage drive one summer through the colorado mountain region. for a distance of forty-five miles the solitary road wound on and on, ever ascending through the dreamy, purple mountains. the entire route was a series of vistas that apparently came to an abrupt end at the base of an insurmountable height. the mountain wall seemed to utterly arrest progress, as it rose across the ascending valley through which the driver urged his "four-in-hand," and no way to pass beyond the next mountain ahead could possibly be discerned. but as the stage drew near, a way, unseen before, revealed itself, and the winding road found its outlet and onward course in another valley opening by a natural pass between the hills, and one that apparently in its turn was as inevitably blocked at its end by another mountain range. it was a constant interest to watch the changing landscape and discover the new ways that constantly came in sight as fast as the need for them came. that day amid the dreamy purple of the colorado mountains was one to translate itself into renewed trust in the divine guidance on the journey of life. some wonderful words of phillips brooks seemed to write themselves on the air:-- "look up, poor soul, out of the valley and know that on the top of yonder shining mountain lies folded safe the secret of your life, the oracle which would, if you could read it, solve all your mysteries and tell you just exactly how you ought to live. look up out of the valley and know that it is there; and then turn back again into the valley, for in the valley is the home where you must live, and you can never read the oracle which you know is there upon the mountain top." that day, alone with the mountains and with god, was one to leave its impress forever upon life. it was a day of solutions as well as of impressions--of solutions of the problem of living. one has but to follow the path that god has revealed to him, and however insurmountable the difficulties that seem to hedge him in and to limit his progress, they vanish as they are drawn near, and a way is revealed. [sidenote: obey the vision.] to forsake a dream as being impracticable and impossible of realization is to take the wrong turning in life, like one who leaves the mountain road,--which winds in and out of the passes, on and on, and leads to a definite place at last,--and, because he sees an apparently impassable mountain wall across the path, forsakes this and wanders off into some other valley and defile that looks more open, but in whose mazes he loses himself and makes no progress toward his true destination. no,--when the vision shines suddenly upon one's life, it is god's call to him to realize in it outward expression. the difficulties that hedge it round about will vanish as he approaches them. a dream is given to be realized. it is the working model that god sends into one's life for that full expression which alone is at once his best service and truest success. it is the common daily work of fulfilling duties add meeting claims. "not by the exceptional," says maeterlinck, "shall the last word ever be spoken; and, indeed, what we call the sublime should be only a clearer, profounder insight into all that is perfectly normal." it is of service, often, to watch those on the peaks who do battle; but it is well, too, not to forget those in the valley below who fight not at all. as we see all that happens to these whose life knows no struggle; as we realize how much must be conquered in us before we can rightly distinguish their narrower joys from the joy known to them who are striving on high, then, perhaps does the struggle itself appear to become less important; but, for all that, we love it the more. this normal fulfilment of the due claims of ordinary life leads to that order of success which is a beautiful and desirable one, and which is almost a universal aim and purpose. aspirations and energy are its factors, and these are of all various and varying degrees of excellence according to the specific aim in view. success itself, therefore, is merely a representative term, and may be used regarding almost every variety of achievement, from the triumphant winning of a game of football, the making of a great fortune, the attainment of professional or political rank, the production of great art, the acquirement of world-wide fame, or the achievement of character that is potent for fine and ennobling influence. all these are typical of myriad forms of the thing the world calls success, and while it involves a vast amount of competition, of selfishness, of greed, of injustice, it is yet a matter of the progress of humanity that each individual should strive after the highest form of attainment that he is capable of conceiving. in the long run, and as a general principle, this is advantageous and desirable. it involves and indeed develops many of the lower and baser qualities; but these are the tares among the wheat, and the wheat is essential. the great enterprise that builds a railway across the continent, tunneling under mountains, or climbing the precipitous inclines; that inaugurates a new steamer line, or that exerts itself for the founding of institutions for culture or technical instruction; that concerns itself with municipal reforms and improvements,--all these expressions of energy are manifestations of successful effort, and are necessary to the onward march of civilization. yet the visible achievement is not, after all, the realization of the highest ideal of success. the conditions of success may best be approached by a clearly defined idea of what success itself means, what it stands for to us, what proportion of our real life it represents. success is the watchword of american life--one might almost, indeed, say that it is made the test of our national life to a far greater degree than in any other country. the elements are well defined in emerson's phrase of "the _flowing_ conditions of life." they are, indeed, more than merely plastic and malleable; they are fluid, flowing, and the constant advance into higher states of life is precisely in proportion to the mental and moral force of the individual brought to bear upon them. even this assertion, however, is to hold in the light of the true conception of success itself. we see a man whose life is conspicuously that of mental and moral force, working faithfully and ably day by day, year by year, and yet never being free from certain financial anxieties, if not financial needs; while his neighbor, who is neither very learned nor able, nor yet in any wise remarkable in his moral development, is living much after the fashion of midas, whose touch turned everything to gold. but is gold the test of success? the panorama of life is a complicated one. it used to be the fashion of the novelists to represent the world of riches and fashion as the world devoid of sympathy and love, and often, indeed, as devoid even of moral principle; while the world of poverty and toil was held up as composed of men and women whose lives were all unselfishness and sacrifice, and as those who truly followed the example of him who was meek and lowly of heart. but the panorama of actual life reveals no such sharply defined divisions as that. virtue and vice are not checked off into special and separate regions; wealth has its greatness of mind and beneficence of sympathy and love, and poverty has its selfishness and cruelty and injustice. other things being equal, the command of unlimited means may be so used as to make it one of the great blessings of life, and this fact is attended and illustrated by such an increasing array of evidence as to make the statement merely the trite one of every-day fact. again, that prominence in affairs that we call position is good if rightly used, and to an increasing degree it is so used. _noblesse oblige_ is the watchword of modern life. "success in thyself, which is best of all." that line from a poem of emerson's most clearly defines true success. the "power of conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, and the power of social life and manners,"--to achieve such power as is thus enumerated by matthew arnold, and adding to it that which is greater than all, and that without which all else is useless and unvitalized, the power of the divine energy received through prayer,--these are the powers and achievements that tend to the true and only success,--the success of character. new conceptions of the old watchwords of life are in the air. in "culture" president eliot of harvard sees new points of view; he finds a new definition of the cultivated man, who is not, in this twentieth-century reading of the term, to be "a weak, critical, fastidious creature, vain of a little exclusive information or of an uncommon knack in latin verse or mathematical logic; he is to be a man of quick perceptions, broad sympathies, and wide affinities, responsive but independent, self-reliant but deferential, loving truth and candor, but also moderation and proportion, courageous but gentle, not finished but perfecting." "the situation that has not its ideal was never yet occupied by man," well said goethe; and perhaps one of the greatest aids to both achievement and happiness would be to recognize this ideal as the standard placed before one, the model after which he is to fashion his life, because he is, now and here, in the divine presence, because now and here he "stands before god." nor is this too sublime a test for the trivialities of every day. as a matter of truth, nothing is trivial that has to do with the life of the spirit. the petty irritations, impatience, vexations, and disappointments of life are things that affect one's spiritual quality, that make or mar his higher self, that accelerate or retard his progress in the upward way, according as these feelings are allowed to take control or are resolutely conquered. the occurrences that excite them are, to the life of the spirit, like the "gifts" in a kindergarten,--they are the object lessons by means of which growth and progress are attained. now, if one can conceive of his life, every day, every hour, as lived in the very presence of the divine; if he can realize himself at all times as "standing before god," how this recognition transforms all the conditions and circumstances! the drama of living is instantly lifted up to a higher plane. that which was hard becomes easy; that which was sad, or dull, or unattractive, becomes invested with interest. one is living, not unto himself, but unto god. he is living within that marvellous, all-enfolding charm and radiance. he is an actor in the great spiritual drama, and he feels the stimulus of playing his part nobly and well. and they who have gone behind the curtain come forth and minister to him. he is aware of the courage of companionship. "'mortal,' they softly say, 'peace to thy heart. we, too, yes, mortal, have been as thou art.'" voices unheard by the outer ear speak to the soul; presences unseen by the eye are yet felt, giving their sympathy and stimulus. it is good to remember that it is not only after death that the soul stands before god; that here and now is the heavenly test to which life must be held amenable; here and now must one make his thought and his acts those that know only the ideals of love and generosity and sweetness and courage. one may thus call up all his higher forces to meet misunderstandings with patience and with love: to meet adverse fortune with courage and with stronger and more intense endeavor; to live above the tide of jar or fret so as to dwell in perpetual radiance and sunshine of spirit. this is to "stand before god" here and now, through the days and the experiences of the life that is, as well as to anticipate standing before his presence in that which is to come. * * * * * [sidenote: the open door.] visions and enthusiasms are the only true guides in life. to keep true to the ideal dream that in some rare and exalted moment falls upon the soul, is to set one's steps toward that success which lies in fulfilment. such dreams may be obscured by passing clouds; they may become entangled with the transient and the trivial; but nothing that is temporary holds over them any power to disintegrate or to destroy, for they are made of heavenly revealings and illuminations. the ideal that reveals itself in a sudden vision of the higher harmonies and achievements possible to human life is but another name for the opportunity which shakespeare defines,--the opportunity that, if one fail to accept it, vanishes, to leave all the remainder of life "bound in shallows and in miseries." there is something about hesitation and reconsiderations that is curiously fatal to successful achievement. good fortune is in going on,--not in going back. the parable of lot's wife, who turned into a pillar of salt because she looked back, is by no means inapplicable to the life of to-day. let one on whom the vision has shone look backward instead of forward and he becomes paralyzed and immovable. he has invoked inimical influences. he is impeded by the shallows and the miseries. he has withdrawn himself from all the heavenly forces that lead him on. the fidelity to the vision is the vital motor. it gives that exhilaration of energy which makes possible the impossible. "the americans have many virtues," said emerson, "but they have not faith and hope. i know no two words whose meaning is more lost sight of. we use these words as if they were as obsolete as selah. and yet they have the broadest meaning and the most cogent application. the opening of the spiritual senses," continues emerson, "disposes men even to greater sacrifices, to leave their signal talents, their means and skill of procuring a present success, their power and their fame,--to cast all things behind in the insatiable thirst for divine communications. a purer fame, a greater power, rewards the sacrifice." each recurring new year is an open door. however arbitrary are the divisions of time, there is inspiration and exaltation in standing on the threshold of an untried year, with its fresh pages awaiting record. it is, again, the era of possibilities. the imaginative faculty of the soul must, indeed, be "fed with objects immense and eternal." life stretches before one in its diviner unity,--even in the wholeness of the life that is and that which is to come. there is not one set of motives and purposes to be applied to this life, and another set to that which awaits us. this is the spiritual world, here and now, and it is the business of man to live divinely in it; to be responsive to the enthusiasms that enchant his thought; to be faithful to the vision that beckons him on. it is well to drop the old that one may seize the new. progress lies in a successive series of new conditions. let one give all and ask for nothing,--let him yield himself wholly to the overpowering enthusiasm; let him not look backward from his vision of the morning star and the promised land, and thus shall the new year fulfil itself in ever widening glory and that enchanting loveliness which invests the higher fulfilments of life. * * * * * [sidenote: interruptions as opportunities.] "to work, to help and to be helped, to learn sympathy through suffering, to learn faith by perplexity, to reach truth through wonder,--behold! this is what it is to prosper, this is what it is to live," said phillips brooks. when herbert spencer produced his great "data of ethics" he did not consider in it the ethics of interruptions which sometimes assume a formidable place in the strenuous life. one is perhaps exceptionally patient and tolerant when it is a question of great trial or calamity, and not infrequently very impatient with the trifling annoyances and demands and interruptions that occur. yet, is there not just here a richness of opportunity in the aim to "do good to all men" that may often be unrecognized? a writer who may be pressed for time finds in his mail-matter a number of personal requests from strangers. one package contains manuscripts, perhaps, which a woman in montana entreats shall be read and returned with advice or suggestion. some one in texas wants a paragraph copied that he may use it in compiling a calendar. an individual in indiana has a collection of autographs for sale and begs to know of the ways and means for disposing of them. and an author in arizona desires that a possible publisher be secured for her novel; and so the requests run on. strictly speaking, perhaps, no one of these has any real right to thus tax the time and energy of a stranger; but is there not another side to it? here are an array of interruptions, but why not give them another name--that of opportunities? one has, perhaps, his theories and his convictions regarding the service of humanity. he holds it to be a duty,--a privilege. he believes that it is through entering into this service that he may even co-operate with god in the onward progress. to "help humanity" is a very attractive and high-sounding term. but what is humanity? is it not, after all, composed of individuals? and here are individuals to be helped; here they are, with their several individual requests, and the injunction of the apostle suggests itself, "_as ye have therefore opportunity_, ... do good unto all men." do not the interruptions assume a new form, and are they not, thereby, transfigured into glad and golden opportunity? and it is the will of god,--that great, resistless, and unceasing force, working underneath all our human wills--it is the will of god manifesting itself in small things as well as in those that seem outwardly more important, that has grouped all these special things together and sent them on an especially busy morning. shall not one rejoice and recognize that the need of another is brought as a privilege to himself? the blessedness of giving is not limited to cheques and bank-bills. there are gifts that far transcend these,--gifts of patience, sympathy, thought, and counsel, and (such is the blessedness of the divine law) these are gifts that the poorest can give. the need on the one side may be the luxury on the other, for it invites sympathetic comprehension and the enlargement of friendly relations. and as for one's time,--even in a full and busy life,--it is not so much time that one requires as it is right conditions. an hour will do the work of a day, when the conditions are harmonious; and nothing so increases the degree of spiritual energy as the glow and ardor and joy of doing some little service for another. in this lies the real blessedness, the real luxury of life, and one reads the profound significance in the words of maeterlinck: "it is well to believe that there needs but a little more courage, more love, more devotion to life, a little more eagerness, one day to fling open wide the portals of joy and truth." these qualities redeem the temporal to the immortal, for immortality is a condition of the soul, not a definite period in time. the soul, now and here, may put on immortality. life is, after all, an affair of the immortal self, and it is the invisible powers which are its stay, its guide, and its inspiration. we live and move and have our being on the divine side of things. we only live--in any true sense--as we are filled with the heavenly magnetism. "thou hast made known to me the ways of life; thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance," says the apostle. here is the true gospel to live by. there _are_ "ways of life;" even through toil and trial they shall be reached. the one is eternal, the other temporal. it is unwise to lay too much stress on the infelicities of the moment. exaltation alone is real; depression is unreal. the obstacle before one is not intended to stop progress, but to stimulate new energies to the overcoming. "by living so purely in thought and in deed as to prevent the interposition of any barrier between his phenomenal and substantial self; and by steadfastly cultivating harmonious relations between these two,--by substantiating the whole of his system to the divine central will, whose seat is in the soul,--the man gains full access to the stores of knowledge laid up in his soul, and attains to the cognition of god and the universe." among the "devastators of a day" there is encountered, however, a vast army of persons who advertise themselves vociferously as being wonder-workers of human life. according to their insistent proclamations, poverty is a "disease," and is to be cured by a course of correspondence lessons; beauty, address, gifts and graces and power, are secrets of which they hold the key; even death, too, is but another mental malady and is easily to be overcome by their recipes. all these fraudulent representations--as absurd as they are false--are but the gross distortion of the underlying truth that thought creates conditions and controls results. thought cannot transform poverty into wealth by means of six lessons; but the right quality of thought can set in motion the causes which, carried on to fulfilment, result in an increasing prosperity and welfare. one may thus achieve the top of his condition through serenity and poise of spirit, and thus be enabled to see events and combinations in their true perspective. he is not overwhelmed and swept into abysses of despair because some momentary disaster has occurred, but he regards it in its relative significance to the general trend of matters, and thus remains master of the situation. still, if there are spurious claims to the power of the magician, and if these claims, paraded by the idle, invade disastrously the realms of the industrious in a continual procession of interruptions, there is something, too, to be said on the side of another--and a very genuine sort of wonder-working,--to transmute these interruptions into opportunities. individuality is the incalculable factor in life, and it is one, too, that must be fully allowed for, if one would proceed as harmoniously as possible among the unseen brambles and pitfalls that may beset his onward pathway. a very large proportion of the discords of life arise from the failure to take into consideration the special qualities in their special grouping that determine the person with whom one has to do,--qualities which are, practically, unalterable, and must simply be accepted and borne with as best one may. there is the person, for instance, who is always and invariably behind time in every movement of his life. he leaves undone the things that ought to be done, until there is little use in doing them at all. he exhausts the patience and excites the irritability of his friend, who is, by nature, prompt and always up with the hour. there is the person who, from some latent cause in his character, always manages badly; who reduces all his own affairs to confusion; who contrives to waste more money, time, and energy than industry and energy can produce; whose normal condition is a crisis of disaster, and who, if extricated from this seventy times seven, will contrive to fall into it again. all these, and a thousand variations on characters of this type, we see around us, or within ourselves, constantly, and a liberal proportion of the trial or discord incident to family life, or to friendship and companionship, is simply in constantly demanding of another that which he cannot give, which he does not possess. to ask of the habitual procrastinator that he shall be prompt; or of the defective manager that he shall keep his affairs in order and make the most and the best out of his possessions, is totally useless. in the evolutionary progress of life, he will probably, sometime and somewhere, learn wisdom and do better; but habit and temperament are not liable to meet a sea change into something new and strange all in the flash of a moment, and it is worse than useless to demand this, or to be irritated, or impatient, or even too sorrowful, because of this fact. there are things that cannot be cured,--at least, not immediately. therefore they must be endured. when one once makes up his mind to the acceptance of this theory it is astonishing to see how it simplifies the problem. the philosophy is merely to do one's own part, but not to make any superhuman effort to do the other person's part also. let it go. there is no use in making a _casus belli_ of the matter. nothing is ever helped by irritation over it,--even the irritation of generosity and love, which seeks only the good of the other. there is, for instance, the procrastinating correspondent. you write, and you want a reply, and you want it straightway. on your own part you would make it with the promptness and despatch of the united states mail itself, but your correspondent is not constructed after the fashion of a galvanic battery, and although he means to respond at once, he doesn't. he has not the temperamental apparatus that works in that way. he has, perhaps, a thousand qualities that are better, finer, more important, but he does not happen to have that particular one. what then? shall you make his life and your own a burden with complaint and reproach? by no means. let it pass. it is a part of his individuality, and cannot--at the moment, at least--be altered. this one must frankly accept as the defect of his friend. but recognizing the defect need not blind one to the thousand virtues that his friend possesses. in fact, as we have each and all our individual sins, negligences, and weaknesses, we may well limit our zeal for reform to our own needs, at least until we have achieved such perfection that we are entitled to require perfection on the part of our associates. to the orderly, thrifty type of new england temperament nothing is more incompatible with sympathy than the bad management of the person not endowed with "faculty," as mrs. stowe well expresses it. and it must be conceded that a lack of the power essential to dominate the general affairs of life and keep them in due subordination and order, is an unmistakable draft on the affections. it is a problem as to just how far aid and sympathy do any good, and not infrequently the greater the real care and affection, the greater, too, is the irritation and the annoyance. but even the annoyance born of tender interest and love, it is better not to feel too keenly. let one do what he can,--do all that is reasonable and right to assist in counterbalancing the ills that arise from defective management, and then let it pass, and not take it into his mind as a source of constant anxiety. we have all our lessons to learn, and every failure brings its own discipline as the inevitable result. "regret calamities if you can thereby help the sufferer," as emerson so well says; "if not, attend to your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired." * * * * * [sidenote: the charm of companionship.] of society, in the true sense, social life offers comparatively little. in the midst of ceremonial assembling one is starved for companionship. one may live in the very heart of what is held to be a brilliant social season and be as unutterably lonely as if in a desert solitude. indeed, the latter offers compensations which the former denies. there is a great deal of companionship, however unrecognized, in the cloud of witnesses that encompass us round about, and whose presence is less vividly felt in the gleam and glitter of ceremonial society. the more general assemblages of clubs, teas, and receptions are so incorporated into the social system that no one could cancel these if he would, nor would he if he could. they have their uses. all exchange of human sympathies is good, even if it be somewhat superficial and spectacular. the more exclusive dinners are not without their special charm as occasions when conversation becomes possible on a less unsatisfactory scale than the exchange of inanities in crowded receptions. yet, with due recognition of the stimulus and the brilliancy that may flash from a select group of people, the deeper truth remains that it is only in a more personal companionship that is found the supreme luxury of life, and that companionship is a relation existing solely between two, refusing its spell when that number is increased. nothing is less considered by society than companionship. it is considered an unheard-of waste of time to devote an entire evening to one guest, when, indeed, five, ten, or fifty might be warmed, lighted, and fed in the same time. the fashionable hostess invites her friends to pay off her social debts. if she can pay off fifty or five hundred--in the time that she would give to one, she felicitates herself on her clever management. the idea of inviting her friends because she really wishes to talk with them would bewilder her. she does not converse; she "receives." she arrays herself in her smartest gown, and her social interchange with each guest consists in a graceful greeting and a no less graceful adieu, followed by an epoch of private gratitude that the required entertainment is over. she consults her visiting list and conscientiously arranges for her next reception, or dinner, or dance, in the fulfilment of what she is pleased to call her social duties. and all this, however superficial or spectacular it may be, has its place, and serves, with more or less success, to promote social meeting, preliminary acquaintance, out of which the choicest friendships sometimes spring. but it is quite possible to concede that certain formalities and ceremonial observances have their legitimate place without conceding that they monopolize the resources of social enjoyment. when one comes to that--it is quite another matter. the supreme gift and grace and enchantment of life is in sympathetic companionship. and this, in its truer sense, is a relation of spirit, an elective affinity, rather than a mere concurrence of intellectual or artistic tastes. it is quite possible for two persons to like sargent's pictures, or to draw the line at the inane "society" play without, after all, finding themselves in any relations of especial sympathy. "only that soul can be my friend," said emerson, "which i encounter on the line of my own march; that soul to which i do not decline, and which does not decline to me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience." margaret fuller defined this sympathy as that of beings born under the same star. but phrases are of little worth,--the experience eludes all definitions and defies all phrasings. it exists by divine right, or it does not exist at all. it is a law unto itself. it is a recognition that has to do with the inward springs of thought and action. companionship is the inflorescence of social life,--its finest result, its most exquisite and perfect ideal. but it requires a certain degree of fitness. it requires the choice organization, the nobler and the finer degree of spiritual development. the crude person can pass well enough in a social assemblage, but only the choicer individuality is fit for that finer and more subtle relation of companionship. yet this highest realization of social enjoyment is, for the most part, relegated to shreds and patches of time. the mornings must be given to lectures, readings, receptions, clubs, and teas; the evenings must be devoted to dinners, dances, opera, concerts, plays, or musicales. for communion of friend with friend, spirit with spirit, there is no time. the crowning joy of life, in its possibilities for sympathetic companionship, is ignored. for companionship is a spiritual joy, and society recognizes only the spectacular pleasures. the finer order of social life for which the world were well lost, awaits its evolution. * * * * * "the life a man lives and the life he ought to live belong together. the real and the ideal lie side by side in the thought of god." the distractions of life are every day's tragedy. the mutilation of purpose, the disintegration of time, the neutralization of all endeavor, which result from the perpetual occurrence of the unforeseen, cannot but prefigure itself as a theme for meditation to the worker who looks back on a day, a week, a month, an entire season, in which "the flighty purpose" has never been overtaken. the calendar has the inexorableness of fate. the day, the month, goes by, unrelenting. it may be shattered with feeble and inexpressive demands, but all the same it is gone, and it is unreturning. whether freighted richly with the essential, or merely burdened with the ineffectual, it is equally irretrievable. this involves a problem of life full of spiritual perplexity. certainly, no man liveth to himself, or, if he does, his living is a selfish and worthless thing. certainly a man _is_ his brother's keeper--to a degree. the poet whose dream is about to crystallize in verse is assured that life is more than art, and that to sustain the spirits of the depressed caller who appears at that precise instant, with the unfailing instinct with which the depressed do invariably appear at a literary crisis,--he is assured that this act is a "nobler poem" than any he could write. and such is the tremendous impression that the gospel in the air of the service of humanity makes on us all, that he dare not disregard this possibility. he is not absolutely sure, it is true, that he is "serving humanity" in this individual instance, but he is not at all sure that it is _not_ true; and he reflects that other days are coming, when, perhaps, by some divine dispensation, the depressed caller will _not_ appear! but there are no days on which he, or his prototype, is not on hand, and so the problem ever remains a present, an immediate, and, alas! an insoluble one. for this is an age when the depressed, who have nothing to do, require, to sustain their drooping spirits, the sympathetic ministrations of those who are too busy to indulge in the languid luxury of gentle and romantic sadness. in fact, they feel a certain inalienable right to demand that current of sympathetic interest which otherwise would express itself in the specific work in which one is engaged. "you desire to 'serve humanity,' do you?" the depressed caller says, virtually, as he fixes the mere worker with his glittering eye. "well, i am humanity. what is a book compared to a human soul? here, before you, in living personality, is a need. can you forsake it for abstract literature?" if the unfortunate worker has any species of the new england conscience he is at a disadvantage. he has nothing to say for himself. there are behind him more than two centuries of his ancestors who have preached and practiced self-sacrifice, generosity, love. in one sense he is even enfeebled by his ethical nature. it possesses him, rather than enables him to clearly and consciously possess it. he feels a certain magnetic attraction to the fulfilment of a definite purpose; but after all, the world is full of purposes and of far greater and abler persons than himself to carry them on; and perhaps this particular appeal is from one of those "little ones" whom the christ he holds in reverence bids him care for first of all. perhaps the immediate human need should take precedence over specific work. perhaps it _is_ a real human need. "treat the people as if they were real," said emerson; "perhaps they are so." and so he becomes the victim rather than the master of his own diviner life. he sees through a glass darkly. he is not in the least sure that he can do any good, but he is fearful he may do evil. and so he espouses what is really a negative side; a side of blind chance; a mere spiritual gambling, so to speak, and throws his stakes on the side of what _may_ be useful, as he cannot prove to himself that it is not, and his life becomes a poor, mean, weak, ineffectual thing. he recalls sir hugo's counsel to daniel deronda: "be courteous, be obliging, dan; but don't give yourself over to be melted down for the tallow trade." he becomes sadly conscious that his entire time, purpose, energies are being simply, with his own dull consent, "melted down for the tallow trade," and that he himself is by way of being on a far more perilous margin than that of any one of the gently depressed spirits who devastate his days, and command him to create for them,--not energy, purpose, will,--but, instead, external conditions in which they may more luxuriously enjoy their romantic languor and their comforting consciousness of superior qualities. now is it not more than an open question that when temptation assumes the masque of "service," it is no less temptation, and that it is evil disguised as good? the woman who reads the infinitely uplifting sermons of rev. doctor charles g. ames; who solaces what she is pleased to call her soul in that marvelously great work, "the expansion of religion," by rev. doctor e. winchester donald; who is excited--and mistakes it for being aroused--by rev. doctor philip moxom's noble book called "the religion of hope;" or who entertains similar emotions over recent new and great and uplifting books by rev. doctor george a. gordon or rev. doctor lyman abbott, or many another, often evolves the pleasing fantasy that all she requires for producing the same quality of work is the illumination of personal interviews or personal correspondence with them. "surely," she reasons, "these men are servants of the lord, and i am one of the least of these whose needs they are divinely commanded to serve. is not the life more than meat? should not the minister break off his morning meditation--an abstract thing, at best--to see me, who needs an immediate infusion of encouragement?" and the tragedy of this is that the worker, who is true to his own purpose,--through good report or through ill report,--to the duties he is divinely commissioned to perform, is not infrequently entirely misunderstood. the woman who sends him a voluminous manuscript, accompanying pretty phrasings regarding his work, and modestly requesting that he shall read it, give his "views" on it, and decide just what editor or publisher will be rejoiced to issue it,--and who receives her pages of outpouring back by return mail with a note, however courteous, expressing his inability to fulfil this commission,--this woman becomes, as a rule, the enemy of the person who declines to be "melted down for the tallow trade." she may do no particular harm, but the antagonism is there. this, however, could be borne; but the nature sensitive to shades of human need is always liable to torture itself because of any failure to meet a specific demand. and this torture is disintegrating to that force of positive energy which a special work requires. is there not, then, a need for the gospel of one's own endeavor? that a given line of work, plainly revealed in hours of mystic communion with the divine, indicated by the subtle trend of circumstance and condition,--is there not a need of realizing so clearly that it is the duty apportioned to the one fitted for it, that it shall inspire fidelity and reverence,--even at the risk of what the unthinking may describe as selfish absorption? for there are vast varieties of ministering for ministering spirits. the work of the social settlement is divine; but the poet and the painter, if they produce poems and paintings, cannot devote their time to its work. and the poems and the pictures have their value, as well as service in giving food and clothing to those in need. the special gift does require special conditions, and it is not selfish to insist on those conditions, when the special work is held as unto the lord. it often requires more heroism, more faith, more love to deny than to accede to a given request. to yield is often easy; to be steadfast to one's own purpose, shining like a star upon the horizon, is not infrequently very difficult. * * * * * [sidenote: a summer pilgrimage in arizona.] no pilgrimage of the crusaders of old could be more impressive in its spiritual results than that which can be made to-day to the grand cañon of the colorado in arizona. the majesty and sublimity of the scene suggest another world, not, indeed, an "inferno," but a "paradiso." it is a sea of color, a very new jerusalem, on which one looks down from the rim of this titanic chasm. it is a vision not less wonderful than that beheld by saint john in the isle of patmos. the term "cañon" is a misnomer for this supreme marvel of earth. one journeys to it anticipating a colossal variation on cheyenne canon or the royal gorge. instead, what does the tourist see? the ridge of a vast mountain-chain over two hundred miles in length split asunder in a yawning chasm eighteen miles in width and over seven thousand feet deep; one in which a thousand niagaras would be lost; in which a cliff that, relatively to the scene, does not impress one as especially lofty, yet which exceeds in height the eiffel tower in paris; and another which does not arrest special attention, yet is taller than the washington monument. but the splendor of apparent architectural creations arrests the eye. "solomon's temple," the "temple of vishnu," and altars, minarets, towers, pagodas, colonnades, as if designed by architectural art, lie grouped in wonderful combinations of form and color. "an inferno, swathed in soft, celestial fires; a whole chaotic underworld, just emptied of primeval floods, and waiting for a new creative word; a boding, terrible thing, unflinchingly real, yet spectral as a dream, eluding all sense of perspective or dimension, outstretching the faculty of measurement, overlapping the confines of definite apprehension. the beholder is at first unimpressed by any detail; he is overwhelmed by the _ensemble_ of a stupendous panorama, a thousand square miles in extent, that lies wholly beneath the eye, as if he stood upon a mountain peak instead of the level brink of a fearful chasm in the plateau whose opposite shore is thirteen miles away. a labyrinth of huge architectural forms, endlessly varied in design, fretted with ornamental devices, festooned with lace-like webs formed of talus from the upper cliffs, and painted with every color known to the palette in pure transparent tones of marvellous delicacy. never was picture more harmonious, never flower more exquisitely beautiful. it flashes instant communication of all that architecture and painting and music for a thousand years have gropingly striven to express. it is the soul of michael angelo and of beethoven. "the spectacle is so symmetrical, and so completely excludes the outside world and its accustomed standards, it is with difficulty one can acquire any notion of its immensity. were it half as deep, half as broad, it would be no less bewildering, so utterly does it baffle human grasp. something may be gleaned from the account given by geologists. what is known to them as the grand cañon district lies principally in northwestern arizona, its length from northwest to southeast in a straight line being about one hundred and eighty miles, its width one hundred and twenty-five miles, and its total area some fifteen thousand square miles. its northerly beginning, at the high plateaus in southern utah, is a series of terraces, many miles broad, dropping like a stairway step by step to successively lower geological formations, until in arizona the platform is reached which borders the real chasm and extends southward beyond, far into the central part of that territory. it is the theory of geologists that ten thousand feet of strata have been swept by erosion from the surface of this entire platform, whose present uppermost formation is the carboniferous; the deduction being based upon the fact that the missing permian, mesozoic, and tertiary formations, which belong above this carboniferous in the series, are found in their place at the beginning of the northern terraces referred to. the theory is fortified by many evidences supplied by examination of the district, where, more than anywhere else, mother earth has laid bare the secrets of her girlhood. the climax in this extraordinary example of erosion is, of course, the chasm of the grand cañon proper, which, were the missing strata restored to the adjacent plateau, would be sixteen thousand feet deep. the layman is apt to stigmatize such an assertion as a vagary of theorists, and until the argument has been heard it does seem incredible that water should have carved such a trough in solid rock. it is easier for the imagination to conceive it as a work of violence, a sudden rending of earth's crust in some huge volcanic fury; but it appears to be true that the whole region was repeatedly lifted and submerged, both under the ocean and under a fresh-water sea, and that during the period of the last upheaval the river cut its gorge. existing as the drainage system of a vast territory, it had the right of way, and as the plateau deliberately rose before the pressure of the internal forces, slowly, as grinds the mills of the gods, through a period to be measured by thousands of centuries, the river kept its bed worn down to the level of erosion; sawed its channel free, as the saw cuts the log that is thrust against it. tributaries, traceable now only by dry lateral gorges, and the gradual but no less effective process of weathering, did the rest." in the innermost depths of this colossal chasm runs the colorado river. descending the stupendous crags and terraces by one of the two or three "trails," the traveller at last stands upon a sandy rift confronted by nearly vertical walls many hundred feet high, at whose base a black torrent pitches in a giddying onward slide that gives him momentarily the sensation of slipping into an abyss. "with so little labor may one come to the colorado river in the heart of its most tremendous channel, and gaze upon a sight that heretofore has had fewer witnesses than have the wilds of africa. dwarfed by such prodigious mountain shores, which rise immediately from the water at an angle that would deny footing to a mountain sheep, it is not easy to estimate confidently the width and volume of the river. choked by the stubborn granite at this point, its width is probably between two hundred and fifty and three hundred feet, its velocity fifteen miles an hour, and its volume and turmoil equal to the whirlpool rapids of niagara. its rise in time of heavy rain is rapid and appalling, for the walls shed almost instantly all the water that falls upon them. drift is lodged in the crevices thirty feet overhead." descending to this ledge the tourist "can hardly credit powell's achievement, in spite of its absolute authenticity. never was a more magnificent self-reliance displayed than by the man who not only undertook the passage of the colorado river, but won his way. and after viewing a fraction of the scene at close range, one cannot hold it to the discredit of three of major powell's companions that they abandoned the undertaking not far below this point. the fact that those who persisted got through alive is hardly more astonishing than that any should have had the hardihood to persist. for it could not have been alone the privation, the infinite toil, the unending suspense in constant menace of death that assaulted their courage; these they had looked for; it was rather the unlifted gloom of those tartarean depths, the unspeakable horrors of an endless valley of the shadow of death, in which every step was irrevocable.... "not the most fervid pictures of a poet's fancy could transcend the glories revealed in the depths of the cañon; inky shadows, pale gildings of lofty spires, golden splendors of sun beating full on façades of red and yellow, obscurations of distant peaks by veils of transient shower, glimpses of white towers half drowned in purple haze, suffusions of rosy light blended in reflection from a hundred tinted walls. caught up to exalted emotional heights, the beholder becomes unmindful of fatigue. he mounts on wings. he drives the chariot of the sun." the language is not yet invented that can suggest any adequate idea of the grand cañon. nor can it be painted or photographed, or in any way pictorially reproduced in a manner to afford any suggestion, even, of its sublimity in design and its perpetual enchantment of color. one beholds the temples and towers and mosques and pagodas glowing in rose-red, sapphire blue, with emerald and amber and amethyst, all blending, and swimming, apparently, in a sea of purple, or of pearl gray mist, the colors flashing through like flame under alabaster. the sunlight changes as the day wears on, and so this play of color changes,--glowing, fading, paling, flaming. watching these magical effects from dawn to sunset, watching the panorama of color as it deepens into mysterious shadows and spectral illusions under the moonlight, one can only say, "what hath god wrought!" to contemplate this marvellous and sublime spectacle is to come into a new perception of the divine creation. * * * * * formerly almost as inaccessible as the himalayas, the grand cañon in arizona can now be reached by the most luxurious methods of modern travelling. from williams, on the santa fé road, a branch line of sixty miles runs over the rolling mesas to the "bright angel" hotel at the "bright angel trail." the journey is enchanted by beautiful views of the san francisco mountains seen through a purple haze. the entire journey through arizona offers one of the most unique experiences of a lifetime. is this "the country god forgot"? the vast stretch of the plains offer effects as infinite as the sea. the vista includes only land and sky. the cloud forms and the atmospheric effects are singularly beautiful. as one flies on into arizona this wonderful color effect in the air becomes more vivid. mountains appear here and there: the journey is up a high grade, and one realizes that he is entering the altitudes. a special feature of interest in arizona is the town of flagstaff, famous for the great lowell observatory, established there by percival lowell, a nephew of the noble john lowell, who founded the lowell institute in boston. professor percival lowell is a man of broad and varied culture, a great traveller, who has familiarized himself with most things worth seeing in this sublunary sphere, and has only failed to explore mars from reasons quite beyond his own control. at his own expense he has founded here an observatory, with a telescope of great power, by means of which he is making astronomical researches of the greatest value to science. the special advantage of arizona in astronomical study is not the altitude, but in the fact that there is the least possible vibration in the air here. mr. lowell's work makes flagstaff a scientific centre of cosmopolitan importance, and scholars and great scientists from all over the world are constantly arriving in the little arizona mountain town to visit the observatory. flagstaff has no little archæological interest, also; the famous cliff dwellings of the zuni tribe, which frank cushing explored and studied so deeply, are within a few miles of the town, located on the summit and sides of an extinct volcano. they now present the appearance of black holes, a few yards deep, often surrounded with loose and broken stone walls, and broken pottery abounds all over the vicinity. the most remarkable group of the cliff dwellers is to be seen in walnut cañon, eight miles from flagstaff. this is one of the deep gorges, the cliffs rising several hundred feet above the valley; and they are sheer terraced walls of limestone, running for over three miles. in these terraces, in the most singularly inaccessible places, are dozens of the cliff dwellings. some of them are divided into compartments by means of cemented walls, and they retain traces of quite a degree of civilization. the petrified forests of arizona are a most extraordinary spectacle, with its acres of utter desolation in its giant masses of dead trees lying prostrate on the ground. arizona is a land of the most mysterious charm. the grand cañon alone is worth a pilgrimage around the world to see,--a spectacle so bewildering that words are powerless to suggest the living, changing picture. "long may the visitor loiter upon the rim, powerless to shake loose from the charm, tirelessly intent upon the silent transformations until the sun is low in the west. then the cañon sinks into mysterious purple shadow, the far shinumo altar is tipped with a golden ray, and against a leaden horizon the long line of the echo cliffs reflects a soft brilliance of indescribable beauty, a light that, elsewhere, surely never was on sea or land. then darkness falls, and should there be a moon, the scene in part revives in silver light, a thousand spectral forms projected from inscrutable gloom; dreams of mountains, as in their sleep they brood on things eternal." [sidenote: a tragic idyl of colorado.] i hung my verses in the wind, time and tide their faults may find. all were winnowed through and through, five lines lasted sound and true; five were smelted in a pot than the south more fierce and hot; these the siroc could not melt, fire their fiercer flaming felt, and the meaning was more white than july's meridian light. sunshine cannot bleach the snow, nor time unmake what poets know. have you eyes to find the five which five hundred did survive? --emerson. not only verses, but lives, are "winnowed through and through," and time and tide reveal their faults and their virtues. in the history of the state of colorado there is one man whose life and work stand out in noble pre-eminence; whose character is one to inspire and to reward study as an example of intellectual and moral greatness. this man is nathan cook meeker, the founder of the town of greeley, colorado; the founder and for many years the editor of the greeley "tribune;" later appointed by president hayes, in a somewhat confidential capacity, the indian commissioner at white river, where he died the death of a hero, and where, marking the spot of the tragic massacre, the town of meeker now stands, among the mountains of the snowy range. mr. meeker, who is one of the heroes of pioneer civilization, founded this town in the very desert of sand and sage-brush. its first inception is a wonderful idyl of the extension of progress into the unknown west. the vision of the bands of singing angels in the air that fell upon the shepherds in the judean plains was hardly more wonderful than the vision out of which the town of greeley arose from the desert. on a december night in the late sixties mr. meeker found himself one evening standing under the brilliant starry skies of colorado near the foot of pike's peak. the marvellous splendor of the scene filled his mind with sublime picturings. in the very air before him he seemed to see a city arise in the desert--a city of beautiful ideals, of high purposes, of temperance, education, culture, and religion. the vision made upon him that permanent impression which the heavenly vision, revealed for one instant to a life, forever makes, however swiftly it may be withdrawn; however deep and dark the eclipse into which it fades and seems forever lost. to mr. meeker had been granted the angelic vision. the ideal had been revealed, and it was revealed in order that it might be realized in the outer and actual world. he felt the power, the nameless thrill of enchantment that pervades this wonderful country. one who is a poet in heart and soul has said of this pike's peak region:-- "over the range is another world--a happy valley hundreds of miles in extent, fenced in with beauty and joy; palisaded with god's own temples; roofed with crystal and gold, and afloat in dream life; perpetual youth in thought and growth--all of it life to the soul; music and rapture to the weary traveller of earth. oh, the leaping ecstasy of it by day and by night, and at the dawn!" this indescribable ecstasy of the colorado air communicated itself to mr. meeker. he went home to new york; he called a meeting in cooper institute; horace greeley presided, and mr. meeker outlined his plans to the large audience. he presented them, also, in full detail in the columns of the "tribune," and the result was that in he led a colony of some seven hundred to this most favorable site--now mid-way between two state capitols--fifty miles north of denver and fifty miles south of cheyenne; he laid out the town with broad boulevards and double rows of shade-trees while yet they lived in tents, and the shade-trees seen in his imagination are now an established fact. greeley is to-day a town embowered in trees. the first work was to dig a canal at a cost of sixty thousand dollars, this being the initial experiment of upland irrigation. such is, in outline, the history of greeley, which the colony desired to name meeker--for its founder--but which horace greeley's friend and associate editor insisted should bear its present name. greeley is known as the "garden city" of colorado, and that it was founded in faith and in ideals has been a determining fact in its quality of life and its phenomenal progress. nathan cook meeker was born in the "western reserve," in ohio, in , coming of the order of people whom emerson characterized as those "who go without the new carpet and send the boy to college." behind him were a long list of distinguished ancestry, men who through successive generations had stood for achievements. mr. meeker in his youth taught school, went into journalism, was connected with the new york "mirror," and later was associated with george d. prentice on the louisville "journal," now the "courier-journal," edited by the brilliant henry watterson. a versatile writer in both prose and verse, he wrote two or three books, one of which he dedicated to president pierce. he married a woman of great force and exaltation of character, a native of connecticut, and a descendant of elder brewster. she shared his aims and ideals. in the decade of - horace greeley, who was always waving his divining rod to see if it indicated the proximity of genius, discovered mr. meeker, and invited him to become the agricultural editor of the "tribune," succeeding solon robinson. mr. meeker's work made a strong impression on the reading public of the day, and even emerson inquired as to the authorship of some of mr. meeker's editorial work, which won the appreciation of the concord seer. in mr. meeker made a trip to the west for the "tribune," writing a series of valuable letters embodying his observations of the country. it was during this journey that the night came which lends itself to imaginative picturing with dramatic vividness when, just after christmas, he stood in the garden of the gods near the foot of pike's peak, while the stars of the colorado skies blazed above him, and, as if by a flash of vision saw a town arise in the desert. the vision fell upon him like an inspiration. founding towns seemed, indeed, to run in the family, as one of his ancestors had founded the town of elizabeth, new jersey, naming it after his wife. mr. meeker returned to the tribune office with his dream of a beautiful city to arise out of the sand and sage-brush of the desert. an idealist himself, mr. meeker had also the good fortune of having married a woman capable of sharing ideal dreams and of rising to the heights of sacrifice, and she, too, embraced his new enthusiasm. "go ahead," replied mr. greeley, when mr. meeker mentioned his new project, "the 'tribune' will back you." a meeting was then called in cooper institute, as before stated, horace greeley presiding, and john russell young entering into the idea with sympathy. mr. meeker presented his project of a union colony to establish itself in colorado. of the conditions he said:-- "the persons with whom i would be willing to associate must be temperance men and ambitious to establish good society, and among as many as fifty, ten should have as much as ten thousand dollars each, or twenty should have five thousand dollars each, while others may have from two thousand to one thousand dollars and upward. for many to go so far without means could only result in disaster." the members were to each contribute one hundred and fifty-five dollars to a fund to purchase and prepare the land. it was in april of that the committee made the purchase of forty thousand acres, located between the cache la poudre and the south platte rivers, twenty-five miles from the rocky mountains and in full sight of long's peak. greeley has a beautiful situation, and a perfection of climate that perhaps exists hardly anywhere else in all colorado. whatever the heat of the day, the nights are cool. the days are so bright, so beautiful, that they seem a very foretaste of paradise. in the spring of the seven hundred members of union colony, with their families, arrived. mr. meeker further stipulated:-- "in particular should moral and religious sentiments prevail, for without these qualities man is nothing. at the same time tolerance and liberality should also prevail. one thing more is equally important. happiness, wealth, and the glory of a state spring from the family, and it should be our aim and a high ambition to preserve the family pure in all its relations, and to labor with the best efforts life and strength can give to make the home comfortable, to beautify and to adorn it, and to supply it with whatever will make it attractive and loved." he added: "i make the point that two important objects will be gained by such a colony. first, schools, refined society, and all the advantages of life in an old country; while, on the contrary, where settlements are made by the old method, people are obliged to wait twenty, forty, or more years. second, with free homesteads as a basis, with the sale of reserved lots for the general good, the greatly increased value of real estate will be for the benefit of all the people, and not for schemers and speculators. in the success of this colony a model will be presented for settling the remainder of the vast territory of our country." every deed granted forbade the sale of intoxicating liquors. the town was founded in the purest moral ideals of education, culture, faith, and prayer, and greeley is everywhere pointed out to the tourist in colorado as one of the most interesting features of the centennial state. of the town mr. meeker himself said in one of his letters to the "tribune": "individuals may rise or fall, may live or die; property may be lost or gained; but the colony as a whole will prosper, and the spot on which we labor so long as the world stands will be a centre of intelligence and activity." in mr. meeker was appointed commissioner from colorado to the centennial exposition. he was strongly talked of for congress, but his destiny led elsewhere. early in the seventies he founded "the greeley tribune," which he edited with conspicuous ability, making it the leading country paper of that part of the state. the indian troubles became a prominent problem of the government in the decade of the seventies, and this question deeply engaged mr. meeker's attention. he had his own theories regarding their treatment--ideas much in advance of his time, and which in some respects have been adopted in the best indian legislation in washington within the past two years. one point in mr. meeker's policy was that "work should go hand in hand and to some extent precede school education"--an insight comprising much of the truth taught to-day by the more eminent leaders of industrial education, and one which the recent indian legislation, during the fifty-seventh congress, has recognized. mr. meeker believed that the indian could be advanced into the peaceful arts of civilized life, and this aim he held with conspicuous courage and fidelity. with a desire to carry out these theories, mr. meeker applied for and received, under president hayes, the post of commissioner to the utes on white river in colorado, his appointment being, as before stated, of a somewhat confidential nature, and charged with more important responsibilities than are usually included in this office. mr. meeker entered on the duties of this position with much that same high and noble purpose that inspired general armstrong in his work at hampton. general hall of colorado, who is said to be the most authoritative historian of that state, thus wrote of mr. meeker's entrance on the agency at white river. "in the spring of mr. meeker, founder of union colony and the now beautiful city of greeley, at his own solicitation was appointed resident agent, succeeding several who had attempted to carry this benevolent enterprise into effect, but without material success. he was a venerable philanthropist, eminently representing the humanitarian school of the atlantic seaboard, under the example of horace greeley, whom he revered above all the public men of his time. "thoroughly imbued with the purpose of educating, refining, and christianizing the wild rovers of the mountains, and longing for an opportunity to put his cherished theories into practice, confident of his ability to bring about a complete transformation of their lives and character, he entered upon the work with deep enthusiasm. his ideals were splendid, eminently worthy of the man and the cause; but, unhappily, he had to deal with savages, of whose natures he was profoundly ignorant. he took with him his wife and youngest daughter, josephine, and also a number of mechanics from union colony to aid in the great work of regeneration and redemption." the honorable alva adams of pueblo, colorado, ex-governor of the state, writing of nathan cook meeker, said:-- "meeker was a patriot, and no soldier upon the field of battle was more loyal, and no one in the annals of our country has ever made a more awful sacrifice than the meekers. but i need not tell the story. back of it is the incompetent treatment of the indians that was responsible for the meeker massacre. upon the government rests the blood and outrage of the meekers. nor can i recall that the indians were ever adequately punished for the crime. it is a black spot." mrs. meeker entered into the views and the work of her husband in this new field with sympathetic comprehension and sustaining aid. their youngest daughter, josephine, who shared the idealism of the family, opened a free school for the indians. mr. meeker encountered peculiar difficulties over a period of several months, during which he appealed, unsuccessfully, for government aid and protection. general william t. sherman, in his report ( ) to the secretary of war, alludes to these troubles; general pope was familiar with the situation, and major thornburg, at fort steele, held himself ready to send protection to mr. meeker at a day's notice; but the government failed to give that notice. the tragedy came swiftly and suddenly, like the fates in a greek drama, and on september , , mr. meeker was brutally massacred, his wife and daughter were taken into captivity, where, for twenty-three days, until rescued by general adams, they endured unspeakable sufferings, and the agency buildings and their contents were burned. to the awful spectacle of her husband's mutilated body, his wife--a woman of gentle birth and breeding--was led by the indians, in their savage cruelty, to thus first learn of the tragedy. through her agony of tears she pleaded to be allowed to stop and kiss the cold lips of him whose faithful, tender companion and wife she had been for thirty-five years. this last sacred consolation was denied her. with diabolical glee they reviled her tears and her prayers. her daughter josephine, a girl of twenty, with the evangeline type of face, was torn from her arms and hurried away into a deep, lonely cañon, which is now called "josephine valley." mrs. meeker herself was shot in her hip and left lame for life. she was thrust on a horse without even a saddle and carried off into the lonely mountains in this terrible captivity. yet so sublime is the character of mrs. meeker in her deep religious feeling that in this moment of supreme desolation,--her husband's murdered body left alone on the ground; her daughter snatched from her arms; her home in smoking ruins behind her,--so remarkable is her character in its religious exaltation, that even in this hour of supreme agony she could say, "_though he slay me_, yet will i trust in him!" a little mountain town of some five hundred inhabitants, named meeker, for the heroic man who there met his tragic death, now marks the site of the massacre. even at this day it is forty-five miles from the nearest railroad station, rifle, on the denver and rio grand scenic route. the little town reminds one of florence, italy, in the way it is surrounded by amethyst mountains, and the white river on which it is located is far more beautiful than the turbid arno. the name of nathan cook meeker is held in the greatest reverence by the people of the entire region. on an august afternoon more than twenty years after this tragedy a visitor to colorado stood on the site of the massacre under a sky whose intense blue rivalled that of italy. with the peaceful flow of the river murmuring in the air and the hum of insects in the purple-flowered alfalfa, the tragic scene seemed to rise again and impressed its lesson,--the ethical lesson of apparent defeat, disaster, and death in the outer and temporal world, while, on the spiritual side, it was triumph and glory and the entrance to the life more abundant. the man might be massacred,--the idea for which he stood cannot die. it rises from the apparent death and is resurrected in the form of new and nobler and more widely pervading ideals which communicate their inspiration to all humanity. in the cemetery of greeley lie buried the body of mr. meeker and of his daughter josephine, whose early death followed close upon the tragedy. the aged widow, now in her eighty-ninth year, still survives, occupying her home in this colorado town. mrs. meeker retains all her clearness of intellect; all her keen interest in the affairs of the day. she reads her daily newspapers, writes letters that are models of beautiful thought and exquisite feeling, and still continues to write the verse which through life has been the natural expression of her poetic nature. mrs. meeker writes verses as a bird sings--with a natural gift full of spontaneous music. the work of nathan cook meeker in all that makes for industrial and social progress and moral ideals contributed incalculable aid to colorado. all over the state the tourist is asked, "have you seen greeley? that is our ideal town." during all the years of mr. meeker's residence in colorado he remained a staff correspondent of the "tribune." horace greeley went to the west and visited the colony; and in the fine high school building of greeley to-day, there hang, side by side, the portraits of horace greeley and nathan cook meeker. in this world in which we live events are not finished when they have receded into the past. they persist in the texture of life. they stand for certain fulfilments, and, like banquo's ghost, they will "not down" until their complete significance is worked out to its final conclusion. "say not the struggle naught availeth." it always avails. it matters little as to amassing of possessions; but it matters greatly as to the purity of a man's motives and the degree to which he keeps faith with his ideals. unfalteringly, even unto death, did nathan cook meeker keep faith with those ideals that revealed themselves to him. a noble work like that of mr. meeker is like the seed sown which is not quickened except it die. sown in weakness, it is raised in power; sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. the three years of the ministry of jesus on earth ended in defeat, disaster, and death. was his life thereby a failure? who has won the triumph's evidence--pilate or christ? lincoln had to die that the nation might live. heroism is forever being crowned with martyrdom. all life is better to-day for every noble individual life that has been lived in the world. nathan cook meeker was one who literally gave his life to lofty ideals, and this hero whom the silver state holds in honor and reverence merits the recognition of the nation. * * * * * [sidenote: a remarkable mystic.] "the only affections which live eternally are those of the soul--those which have struck deep into the man and made part of his inmost being. the loves of the earthly mind die with it and form no part of the permanent man.... to enter the heavenly sphere and to come into communion with souls a generated state is necessary. there are four atmospheres surrounding us, and only in the highest of these do we find the freed soul. interior knowledge, earnest aspiration, and purity of thought and life, are the keys by which alone can be opened the gates of the inmost and highest sphere. the lowest is enlightened by the natural sun. it is that of the present life of the body. the next is enlightened by the astral or magnetic light, and it is that of the sidereal body. the next is that of the soul, and it is enlightened by the spiritual sun. and the highest is the immediate presence of god." since the days of jacob behmen there have been no such remarkable series of mystic writings as are contained in the two volumes called "the perfect way" and "clothed with the sun," by doctor anna kingsford. her belief and her illuminations were crystallized in the affirmation, "life is the elaboration of soul through the varied transformations of matter." she saw the entire purpose of creation to be the evolution and elaboration of the soul. very little is generally known of doctor kingsford. she was descended from an old italian family, one of whom had been the architect of the vatican, and, on her mother's side, from mingled german and irish ancestry. she was the daughter of john bonus, born in england in , and she married, in , algernon godfrey kingsford, who subsequently took orders in the english church. three years later mrs. kingsford entered the catholic communion, and some years afterward she studied medicine in paris and received her degree. she is said to have been very beautiful, with great talent in painting and in music, a poet of lyric gifts, and from her childhood she saw visions and dreamed dreams. she died in , and is buried in atcham, near shrewsbury, where her husband had his parish. in doctor kingsford delivered in london, before drawing-room audiences, comprising representatives of literature, art, fashion, and the peerage,--audiences inclusive of the most notable people in london, the nine lectures that are published under the title of "the perfect way," and at the time these lectures inspired a profound interest. their central theme is the pre-existence and perfectibility of the soul. "the intuition," she says, "is that portion of the mind whereby we are enabled to gain access to the interior and permanent region of our nature, and there to possess ourselves of the knowledge which in the long ages of her past existence the soul has made her own. for that in us which perceives and permanently remembers is the soul. and all that she has once learned is at the service of those who duly cultivate relations with her." and those relations, she taught, are cultivated by living so purely in thought and deed as to prevent the interposition of any barrier between the phenomenal (or the outer) and the substantial (or the inner) self; and by steadfastly cultivating harmonious relations between those two, by subordinating the whole system to the divine will,--thus does one gain full access to the stores of knowledge in the soul. doctor kingsford further explains:-- "for, placed as is the soul between the outer and the inner mediator, between the material and the spiritual, she looks inwards as well as outwards, and by experience learns the nature and method of god; and according to the degree of her elevation, purity, and desire, sees, reflects, and transmits god. it is in virtue of the soul's position between the worlds of substance and of phenomenon, and her consequent ability to refer _things_ to their essential _ideas_, that in her, and her alone, resides an instrument of knowledge competent for the comprehension of truth, even the highest, which she only is able to behold face to face. it is no hyperbole that is involved in the saying, 'the pure in heart see god.' true, the _man_ cannot see god. but the divine in man sees god. and this occurs when, by means of his soul's union with god, the man becomes 'one with the father', and beholds god _with the eyes of god_.... "and he to whom the soul lends her ears and eyes, may have knowledge not only of his own past history, but of the past history of the planet, as beheld in the pictures imprinted in the magnetic light whereof the planet's memory consists. for there are actually ghosts of events, manes of past circumstances, shadows on the protoplasmic mirror, which can be evoked. "but beyond and above the power to read the memory of himself or of the planet, is the power to penetrate to that innermost sphere wherein the soul obtains and treasures up her knowledge of god. this is the faculty whereby true revelation occurs. and revelation, even in this, its highest sense, is, no less than reason, a natural appanage of man, and belongs of right to man in his highest and completest measure of development." doctor kingsford was an evolutionist, holding that development along evolutionary lines is a true doctrine, but she held that this development was not of the original substance, because that, being infinite and eternal, is always perfect; and that the development lay in the manifestation of the qualities of that substance, in the individual. "the highest product, man," she said, "is the result of the spirit working intelligently within. but man attains his highest and becomes perfect _only through his own voluntary_ co-operation with the spirit." doctor kingsford regarded jesus as a spiritual ideal and an eternal verity, and religion as an ever-present actuality. we find her saying:-- "for every man makes his own fate, and nothing is truer than that character is destiny. it is by their own hands that the lines of some are cast in pleasant places, of some in vicious, and of some in virtuous ones, so that there is nothing arbitrary or unjust. but in what manner soever a soul conducts itself in one incarnation, by that conduct, by that order of thought and habit, it builds for itself its destiny in a future incarnation. for the soul is enchained by these prenatal influences, which irresistibly force it into a new nativity at the time of such conjunction of planets and signs as oblige it into certain courses and incline it strongly thereto. but if the soul oppose itself to these influences and adopt some other course,--as it well may to its own real advantage,--it brings itself under a 'curse' for such period as the planets and ruling signs of that incarnation have power. but though this means misfortune in a worldly sense, it is true fortune for the soul in a spiritual sense. for the soul is therein striving to atone and make restitution for the evil done in its own past; and thus striving, it advances towards higher and happier conditions. wherefore man is, strictly, his own creator, in that he makes himself and his conditions, according to the tendencies he encourages. the process of such reformation, however, may be a long one. for tendencies encouraged for ages cannot be cured in a single lifetime, but may require ages for their cure. and herein is a reflection to make us as patient towards the faults of others as we ought to be impatient of our own faults." the entire interpretation of life, as given by doctor kingsford in these books, is remarkable, and is one of singular clearness in tracing the law of cause and effect. * * * * * [sidenote: the momentous question.] "the question for man most momentous of all is whether or no he has an immortal soul; or--to avoid the word immortal, which belongs to the realm of infinities--whether or no his personality involves any element which can survive bodily death. in this direction have always lain the gravest fears, the farthest reaching hopes, which could either oppress or stimulate mortal minds.... the method of modern science--that process which consists in an interrogation of nature entirely dispassionate, patient, systematic ... has never yet been applied to the all-important problem of the existence, the powers, the destiny of the human soul." the rev. doctor alexander whyte of edinborough, one of the few greatest and most celebrated preachers in europe, said, in a sermon recently delivered in london, that the spiritual, like the physical life, required constant sustenance. doctor whyte dwelt with marked emphasis on the important truth that no one who does not give at least one hour of the day to the concentration of thought on the higher purposes of life, and devote himself, essentially and especially, to aspiration and prayer, can live aright, and live up to his higher possibilities. doctor whyte especially recommended the last hour before sleep as the best season for this uplift of the soul to its native atmosphere. "it is not necessary," he said, "that one should be kneeling, in the attitude of prayer, all the time. walk about. go out and look at the stars. read, if you prefer, some ennobling book. but, in whatever form thought and meditation may take, keep the key held to the divinest melody of life. in that way shall the spiritual life gather its rich strength and infinite energy." the principle is one that every life which has given to the world noble results, has acted upon, consciously or unconsciously, as may be. no one can live, in the sense of that life which is alone worth the living, without definite and constant periods of seeking that refreshment which is found in communion with god, and in setting one's spiritual forces in touch anew with the infinite spiritual energy. poet and prophet have emphasized this truth. stephen phillips, in his poem of "the dead soul," touches it most impressively. without its own sustenance from the spiritual world, how could it survive? "she felt it die a little every day, flutter more wildly and more feebly pray." the soul is ever "imploring dimly something beautiful," and it must have this or its powers remain latent and undeveloped. "not in dead matter do we live," said lord kelvin, in his recent address before the british scientists, "but we live and move in the creative and directing power that science compels to be accepted as an article of faith. we are forced to believe, with absolute confidence, in a directive power,--in an influence other than the physical, dynamic, and electric powers. science is not antagonistic to religion, but a help to religion," he added; "science positively affirms creative power, and makes every one feel a miracle in himself." the soul has certainly a door into infinite beauty, and through the portals must it fare forth to renew its activities in its own atmosphere. the question as to whether the individual survives bodily death is one that the twentieth century will answer with no unmistakable reply. the investigation into the very nature of man is one possible on strictly scientific lines, whose results agree with and confirm all that faith has intuitively divined. this investigation--pursued in many ways--is best of all pursued in keeping some hour apart, each day, for absolute _re_union and _com_munion with the holy spirit. to lift up the heart to god in deepest aspiration and prayer is to come into an increasing knowledge of one's own spiritual self, and into increasing harmony with the divine world in whose atmosphere, alone, we live and breathe and have our being. in love and sympathy lie the daily solution of all the problems of the spiritual life. these are the divine attributes, and they are as indispensable to life to-day as they were when christ walked in galilee. compassion and love are the handmaids of hope and faith and joy. the heart to sympathize, the love to aid, lead on to the radiant atmosphere of happiness. there is a deep and impressive significance in the lesson of the music-drama of "parsifal." "only those of pure heart can be strong." and that "the knights in the play were saved by parsifal _who was willing to encounter anything_." this alone is the diviner quality of love,--to be willing to "encounter anything;"--to meet pain, disaster, defeat, if so it be the appointed way to serve. there is a consecration in pain that purifies and refines and exalts all effort. it may be the very divine sign and seal of approval when the way leads to personal sacrifice rather than to personal joy. "the magi," it is said, "have but to follow their star in peace.... the divine action marvellously adjusts all things. the order of god sends each moment the appropriate instrument for its work, and the soul, enlightened by faith, finds all things good, desiring neither more nor less than she possesses." one may tread,--not the "whole round of creation," as browning phrases it, but a minor segment of it, at least, and come back with added and more profound conviction that happiness is a condition of the spirit; that "the soul is ceaselessly joyful"; that the incidents and accidents of the outward life cannot mar nor lessen that sense of higher peace and joy and harmony which is the atmosphere of any true spiritual life. one may recognize and affirm this truth by spiritual intuition, and he may then be led through many phases of actual tests in actual life; he may, for a time, lose his hold on it and come to say that happiness is a thing that depends on so many causes outside one's own control; that illness, death, loss of friends, adverse circumstances, failures and trials of all kinds may come into his experience, and that one is at the mercy of all these vicissitudes. can the individual be happy, he will ask, when all that made happiness is taken away? can he be happy if he has lost all his worldly goods? or if death has taken those nearest and dearest to him? or if the separations of life, far harder to bear than those of death, have come into his experience with their almost hopeless sense of desolation? and yet, until he has learned to answer these questions with the most triumphant affirmative, he has not learned the measure nor sounded the depth of a true and noble order of happiness. the difference is that of being safely on board a great steamer when wind and wave are tempest-tossed, or of being helpless in the raging waters. the storm may be precisely the same; the tempest may rage as it will, but safe and secure in the cabin or stateroom, the voyager does not mind its fury. truly may this analogy be held in life. it is possible to emerge from the winds and waves; to enter so entirely into the sense of security in the divine; to hold so absolutely the faith in the divine leading, that even in the midst of trial and loss and deprivation and sorrow, one shall come to _know_, through his own experience, that "the soul is ceaselessly joyful." for it is one thing to accept a truth theoretically, to believe it intuitively, and another to prove it through experience that shall test the quality of faith and conviction. learning this supreme truth of life through outward experiences as well as though inner revelation, is a victory of the will that may even make itself an epoch, a landmark, in spiritual progress. one of the great discourses of phillips brooks had for its theme the lesson of not laying too much stress on the recognition of one's motives or on any return of sympathetic consideration. "let me not think," said bishop brooks, "that i get nothing from the man who misunderstands all my attempts to serve him and who scorns me when i know that i deserve his sympathy. ah! it would be sad enough if only the men who understood us and were grateful to us when we gave ourselves to them had help to give us in return. the good reformer whom you try to help in his reform, and who turns off from you contemptuously because he distrusts you, seeing that your ways are different from his, does not make you happy,--he makes you unhappy; but he makes you good, he leads you to a truer insight, a more profound unselfishness. and so (it is the old lesson), not until goodness becomes the one thing that you desire, not until you gauge all growth and gain by that, not until then can you really know that the law has worked, the promise has been fulfilled. with what measure you gave yourself to him, he has given himself--the heart of himself, which is not his favor, not his love, but his goodness, the real heart of himself to you. for the rest you can easily wait until you both come to the better world, where misconceptions shall have passed away and the outward forms and envelopes of things shall correspond perfectly with their inner substances forever." in the last analysis one comes to realize that happiness is a condition depending solely on the relation of his soul to god; that neither life, nor death, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any living creature can separate him from it, because happiness and the love of god are one and identical, and it is not in the power of this world to give, or to take away, this sense of absolute oneness with the divine life that comes when man gives himself, his soul and body, his hopes and aspirations and ideals, in complete consecration to the will of god. for this alone is happiness. it may not be ease nor pleasure, but it is that ceaseless joy of the soul that may be the daily experience of every human being. and to gain the deep inner conviction of this sublime truth is worth whatever it may cost of tears or trial or desolation of spirit. it is the threshold of joy. it is the initiation into a higher spiritual state which one may gain during his progress on earth as well as in heaven. in fact, no one is really fitted for the highest privileges and sweetness he may crave, until he has learned to live well, to live joyfully, without these. no one is fitted _for_ joy until he can live well _without_ joy. it is the law and the prophets. the nectar of the hour. i share the good with every flower, i drink the nectar of the hour. --emerson. * * * * * _if we knew how to greet each moment as the manifestation of the divine will we could find in it all the heart could desire. nor what indeed is more reasonable, more perfect, more divine, than the will of god? can its infinite value be increased by the paltry difference of time, place, or circumstance? the present moment is always filled with infinite treasures; it contains more than one is capable of receiving. faith is the measure of these blessings; in proportion to your faith will you receive. by love also are they measured; the more your heart loves the more it desires, and the more it desires the more it receives. the will of god is constantly before you as an unfathomable sea, which the heart cannot exhaust; only in proportion as the heart is expanded by faith, confidence, and love can it receive of its fulness.... the divine will is an abyss of which the present moment is the entrance; plunge fearlessly therein and you will find it more boundless than your desires._--the rev. j. p. de caussade, in "holy abandonment." * * * * * "the moment we desire god and his will, that moment we enjoy them, and our enjoyment corresponds to the order of our desires." what though the bough beneath thee break? remember, thou hast wings. --victor hugo. to enter into the will of god is an initiation of such power and beauty that language falters in any effort to interpret this supreme experience. it can be indicated only in the words of the poet:-- "i share the good with every flower, i drink the nectar of the hour." that wonderful test of seeing every event of life from the point of view of the will of god simply transforms and revolutionizes the entire scale of human experience. it simplifies all perplexities, it offers the solution for all problems. it illuminates the small and the apparently insignificant occurrences which, nevertheless, contrive to play so large and often so determining a part in our days, as well as places in high relief the great questions that beset one in his varied round. the little book from which the extract on the preceding page is taken--a catholic book of devotion--is one of the most illuminating in all spiritual literature. it offers to one instruction and guidance in that life which alone is progress, peace, and joy,--and one who comes to use it daily will place it almost next to the bible in its practical and almost miraculous helpfulness. catholic or protestant,--what matters it so that one who listens may hear the word? it is in no wise necessary to embrace catholicism in order to concede that some of the most vital literature of the spiritual life is written by the priests and thinkers of that communion; and it is good to take help wherever one can find it,--regardless of sect or creed. a french priest, preaching in an impassioned and sublime abandon of enthusiasm; caught up in a rapture of the heavenly life, poured out these wonderful words to audiences that thronged the dim shades of saint sulpice, in paris. his theme was the consecration of life to the divine will. he called upon all humanity to recognize that this divine will is revealed,--not exclusively in the cloister or the silence, but in the common trend of daily life. "the field is the world." "all things," said this priest, "may further the soul's union with god; all things perfect it, save sin, and that which is contrary to duty;" and he added: "when god thus gives himself to a soul, all that is ordinary becomes extraordinary; therefore it is that nothing appears of the great work which is going on in the soul; the way itself is so marvellous that it needs not the embellishment of marvels which belong not to it. it is a miracle, a revelation, a continuous enjoyment of god, interrupted only by little faults; but in itself it is characterized by the absence of anything remarkable, while it renders marvellous all ordinary and sensible things." the entire discourse was a fervent and illuminating illustration of how god's will reveals itself through the most common things. "o divine action," père de caussade exclaims, "i will cease to prescribe to thee hours or methods; thou shalt be ever welcome. o divine action, thou seemest to have revealed to me thy immensity. i will walk henceforth in thy infinity. no longer will i seek thee within the narrow limits of a book, or the life of a saint, or a sublime thought. no longer will i seek thy action alone in spiritual intercourse. for since the divine life labors incessantly and by means of all things for our advancement, i would draw my life from this boundless reservoir. the will of god imparts to its every instrument an original and incomparable action. we do not sufficiently regard things in the supernatural light which the divine action gives them. we must always receive and worthily meet the divine action with an open heart, full confidence and generosity: for to those who thus receive it, it can work no ill. the divine action killeth while it quickeneth; the more we feel death, the firmer our faith that it will give life." these words invest the truth of the constant revelation of god's will through ordinary events, with a burning intensity and vividness that can hardly fail to leave a permanent impress upon the reader. there is probably no thoughtful observer of the phenomena of life with whom spiritual aspiration is ever present, who is not often honestly puzzled as to what extent the ordinary tide of events that attend him must be accepted as the will of god, and to what degree he should modify these by his own power of will in selection and grouping. he is engaged, for instance, in important work. to what extent should he yield to the "devastator of the day"? to what extent should he allow his general onward course of pursuits and interests to be deflected or changed by the unforeseen events that attend his pathway? it may be accepted as a fundamental truth that good sense, good judgment, discretion, poise, are not unworthy to be ranked among the christian virtues. jesus was eminently sane. he was no fanatic. he gave both by precept and example the ideal of a rational and reasonable life. the individual has no right to rush off and kill himself because his dearest hope is denied or his most cherished purpose defeated. nor has he any more right to commit what may be called intellectual suicide, by relinquishing his aspirations and endeavors, merely because things go wrong, or because he thinks they are wrong. the conditions of life are not necessarily wrong because contrary to what one might desire. perhaps it is the desire itself which was wrong, and the conditions which are right; and which are the expression of god's will and are thus to be joyfully accepted. the test of all circumstances and influence lies in unchanging fidelity, in unswerving allegiance to the divine ideal of life. the "devastator of a day" need not be welcomed to make unlimited waste of time and energy that have their due channels, but the interruption may be met with patience and sweetness, as well as with firmness of purpose in declining to be turned aside from the duty in hand. the adverse circumstances of life,--loss of money, of friends, disaster in one way or another, that may come without visible relation to any error on one's own part,--shall not such adverse conditions teach a divine lesson of patience and incite new springs of energy to overcome trial, and to gain by it a higher spiritual vantage-ground on which to live? cannot even denial and defeat be held as developing qualities that might otherwise lie latent? may they not teach the divinest lesson of all,--the one most invaluable to human life,--absolute trust in god? gaining this, the soul really gains all that it was sent on earth to learn through all the varied phenomena of joy and sorrow, of triumph and failure. there is a common expression of one's "embracing religion and turning away from the world." it is a contradiction of terms. the world is the place in which any real religion is tested and proved, and it is there that the soul must recognize and receive the divine action. in the marvellous sermons of père lacordaire are found suggestions that might well serve as a daily manual on this sublime and vital truth of the relation between the will of god and the daily experience. these sermons are among the world's treasures of help toward a higher spirituality. the argument of père de caussade--one equally entitled to consideration--is that god reveals himself to us now, in ordinary events, as mysteriously and as adorably and with as much reality as in the great events of history or in the holy scriptures. "when the will of god reveals itself to a soul manifesting a desire to wholly possess her," says père de caussade, "if the soul freely gives herself in return, she experiences most powerful assistance in all difficulties; she then tastes by experience the happiness of that coming of the lord, and her enjoyment is in proportion to the degree in which she has learned to practice that self-abandonment which must bring her at all moments face to face with this ever adorable will." the entire philosophy of this is that the events of life are the language in which god speaks to us. the thought is as simple as it is impressive, and it is yet so great as to be fairly epoch-making in its complete realization. and it is more than an open question whether, even to a large majority of the most prayerful and ardent of christian believers, there is not still a new aspect of life revealed in this simple acceptance of the common details of the day, the events of the hour, as the divine language which is to be read and followed. because there is a more or less widespread conviction that events, circumstances, conditions are things to be battled with, in case they are not agreeable, and that there is a signal virtue in overcoming them. nor is this conviction without value, too, and a large measure of truth, for aspiration and achievement must always be among the vital forces in creating the immediate future; and we must create the future as well as accept the present. "thou speakest, lord, to all mankind by general events. thou speakest to each one in particular by the events of his every moment." père de caussade proceeds to say:-- "but instead of respecting the mystery of thy words and hearing thy voice in all the occurrences of life, they only see therein chance, the acts, the caprice of men; they find fault with everything; they would add to, diminish, reform. they revere the word of the lord, but have they no respect for words which are not conveyed by means of ink and paper, but by what they have to do and suffer from moment to moment,--do these words merit nothing?" this handwriting on the wall in the guise of the daily events is a message to be read by faith alone. just here is the parting of the ways. one fares forth in a certain direction, intent on a given accomplishment, and unforeseen circumstances arise that hinder, annoy, delay, or prevent the fulfilment of the intention. from one point of view, one would say that interruptions and disasters were things to be overcome as speedily as possible, and that the virtue lay in pressing on. but the theory of life so wonderfully set forth by this great preacher teaches, instead, that these very obstacles, delays and embarrassments are a signal and an important thing in and of themselves; that they are nothing less than the divine voice; the appointed means through which the voice of god speaks to us; that each moment, each hour, is just as valuable during delay and enforced pause as it could be for the most strenuous action, because,--the only important thing we have to do in this life is to bring our own will into harmony with the will of god; to learn to recognize his leading and to _love_ this leading. nor does this interpretation of the divine purposes of life lead the least in the world to inertia and dull passivity. on the contrary, it is, in essence, the theory to do all one can, ceaselessly and constantly; but, having done this, then await the results in a believing trust which is peace and love of harmony. the larger part of the events and circumstances that have to do with our lives are not under our personal control. no man liveth to himself. regarding this large part of our lives that are not under our personal control, there is a perpetual tendency to fret, to worry, to impatience, to irritation, or to despondency, and the consequent loss of that cheerfulness and radiant exhilaration in which one should live if he live aright. could one, then, regard all this part of his life which he cannot change, nor hasten, nor delay, nor alter in the slightest degree, one way or the other,--could he but recognize all this as the divine language and meet it,--not only with resignation but with that joyful acceptance of perfect faith which absolutely realizes the oneness of the will between himself and god,--then would not life gain, at once, immeasurably in peace and happiness? "can the divine will err?" questions père de caussade. "can anything that it sends be amiss? but i have this to do; i need such a thing; i have been deprived of the necessary means; that man thwarts me in such good works; this illness overtakes me when i most need my health." the answer is: "no; the will of god is all that is absolutely necessary to you, therefore you do not need what he withholds from you--you lack nothing. if you could read aright these things which you call accidents, disappointments, misfortunes, contradictions, which you find unreasonable, untimely, you would blush with confusion, but you do not reflect that all these things are simply the will of god." the life of faith, that perfect faith which is perfect peace, consists in this ever-present recognition, and, tested by its results,--tested by the absolute peace and the larger energy which is liberated by the cheerful and believing rather than the sad and distrusting state of mind,--tried by all those tests of actual experience, this attitude of perfect faith is the attitude most favorable to progress and achievement. * * * * * [sidenote: a profound experience.] renunciation is a word that stands for a great experience, and it is, perhaps, too often conceived of as relating to the material rather than to the spiritual life. the question as to whether one shall give up this or that article, or practice, during lent, for instance, is sometimes in the air,--always with the saving clause that the renunciation is merely temporal, and if given up for forty days in the year, is to be fully enjoyed and revelled in on the other three hundred and twenty-five,--a clause that degrades a religious theory to a purely material plane. if it is better for one's command of his higher powers not to take coffee, for instance, during lent, then it is better not to take it for the greater proportion of the year aside from lent. if it is better to be gentle, tolerant, forgiving, and generous for forty days, it is still better to be so for three hundred and sixty-five days. there is really something absolutely absurd as well as repellent in the apparent acceptation that to live the higher, sweeter, fuller, nobler life is a penitential affair,--to be endured but not enjoyed, and limited chiefly to lenten periods and the special holy days of the christian church. for religion is the life, the continual life of every hour and moment, and consists in the quality of that constant life. the offices of religion, the ceremonial forms, are quite another matter. they have their place, and a most important one. the gathering together at stated hours and periods for the devotions of religious worship is so great an aid to the christian life as well to be ranked indispensable to the community and the nation; and while it is true that the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life, yet the letter, rightly interpreted, is filled with the spirit, and conveys it to us. the cry of certain reformers (?) that society has outgrown the church, has little claim to consideration, for the church itself is a progressive institution, and moves forward and enlarges itself with still larger revelations of the divine truth. the great opportunities for renunciation come not in the guise of temporal and material things; whether one shall eat or drink this thing or the other; whether he shall forego the theatre, or deprive himself of music, or array himself in sackcloth and ashes, or in purple and fine linen. the real question comes in the guise of the spiritual problems. one comes to know, for instance, of an act of his neighbor's which is really one of treachery and betrayal of trust. circumstances arise in which he could put his finger upon the evidential chain revealing this lapse from integrity. shall he do it? perhaps in the spiritual vista three ways open to him. the one would be to reveal the affair publicly; but this is crude if not cruel, and to touch the spring that precipitates discord and controversy is hardly less disastrous than to precipitate war. discord only engenders evil, and it never produces good results. evil things must, of course, be resisted, and combat inevitably results,--but discord for the sake of revealing some one's inadvertences is invariably disastrous as well as morally wrong. then there is the method of seeking the person directly, and laying before him his error, thus giving him the opportunity of any extenuating explanation, and protecting his reputation in the genuineness of true friendship, from the world. and this course is often the wisest as well as the noblest, and really requires more heroism than the former one. yet, after these there is still another, and it is absolutely the most potent, the most successful in its results, the most truly uplifting for all concerned. has one been wronged, or misrepresented, or in any way injured? let him commit it all, unreservedly, to the very immediate, the very real, the infinitely potent power of the divine world. let him, as his own form of personal renunciation, absolutely forgive whatever annoyance or injury he has received, and let him pray, not for any vengeance against the wrong-doer, but that the divine love and light would so envelop and direct the one who has erred as to enable him to free his own spirit from whatever fault he had been led into, and to rise into such regions of spiritual life that never again would he repeat it. how beautiful is the counsel given by whittier:-- "my heart was heavy, for its trust had been abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong. so, turning gloomily from my fellow-men, one summer sabbath day i strolled among the green mounds of the village burial-place; where, pondering how all human love and hate find one sad level, and how, soon or late, wronged and wrong-doer, each with meekened face, and cold hands folded over a still heart, pass the green threshold of our common grave, whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart, awed for myself, and pitying my race, our common sorrow, like a mighty wave, swept all my pride away, and trembling i forgave!" forgiveness,--forgiveness in love, and in readiness to aid and to rejoice in all future success of the one who had erred,--is not this the highest renunciation of the christian life? is it not this which is set before us in the progress of spirituality? mutual forgiveness, mutual aid, mutual trust and sustaining, realizing that we all err and need to be forgiven even as we need to forgive,--shall we not in these touch the _blessedness_ of sacrifice rather than its barren husk, and find in it that "soul of happiness" which should be the perpetual atmosphere of the higher life? for "this is the life eternal--to know thee, the only true god," and humanity knows god just in proportion to the degree in which it is able to partake of the divine spirit and translate its religious aspiration into practical guidance for the affairs of the day. probably the one solution of the problem of life in all its intricacies and its perplexing and baffling experiences lies in that trust in god which is the soul's absolute surrender to the divine will. even in this solution, however, perplexities not unfrequently lie, from the fact that it is not always easy to separate that inevitableness which runs through human affairs from the results that we, ourselves, produce by our own series of choices and our habitual currents of thought. "a good will has nothing to fear," says père de caussade; "it can but fall under that all-powerful hand which guides and sustains it in all its wanderings. it is this divine hand which draws it toward the goal when it has wandered therefrom, which restores it to the path. the work of the divine action is not in proportion to the capacity of a simple, holy soul, but to her purity of intention; nor does it correspond to the means she adopts, the projects she forms, the counsel she follows. the soul may err in all these, and this not rarely happens; but with a good will and pure intention she can never be misled. when god sees this good disposition he overlooks all the rest, and accepts as done what the soul would assuredly do if circumstances seconded her good will." nevertheless, as things go in this world, the good will may encounter the most peculiarly trying experiences. the most entire and absolute devotion of thought and interest, of love, friendship, regard,--whatever may be,--pouring itself out lavishly, asking nothing but to give of the best the soul conceives, meets the experience of total indifference in return. had it given coldness instead of ardent regard, selfish scheming instead of infinite and vital interest and absorbing devotion, the result could not be less devoid of response or recognition. nor is this, perhaps, as life goes, an exceptional experience, though the multiplication of instances does not tend to make any single one less bitter or less tragically sad. loss is common, but that statistical truth does not make one's own losses less disastrous or less difficult to bear. yet, accepting all these experiences that are encountered as absolute facts in life, facts from which there is no appeal, and for which, alas, there is no mitigation, what remains? one may feel as if he would gladly give up the whole business of trying to live at all, but that is not a matter that is optional with the individual. one has to live out his appointed days in this phase of being, and it is only the person of defective intellect as well as defective moral power who will not take the gift of life and make the best--not the worst--of it. mr. longfellow's familiar lines, "not enjoyment and not sorrow is our destined end or way; but to act, that each to-morrow find us further than to-day," have often been pronounced trite, but they contain a vital philosophy. it is not enjoyment, or the reverse, which is the aim; but development. and the culture of the soul lies in these mingled experiences; in the baffled efforts, the devotion that gives itself without return or response,--it lies in the doing and the giving, and not in the receiving. nor does one fare onward uncompanioned by the friends and helpers unseen, as well as by those in this visible world. "'mortal,' they softly say, 'peace to thy heart! we, too, yes, mortal, have been as thou art, hope-lifted, doubt-depressed, seeing in part; tried, troubled, tempted, sustained as thou art.'" the spiritual faith and that courage and persistence of energy which is the fruition of faith,--and which are both results of the recognition and acceptance of the great truth so luminously revealed by bishop brooks when he says, "jesus never treated his life as if it were a temporary deposit of the divine life on the earth, cut off and independent of its source; he always treated it as if it lived by its association with the father's life, on which it rested,"--this faith and courage go forward to complete themselves in exhilaration, in firmness of purpose, and in actual achievement. one finds that he not only gains the strength of that which he overcomes, but that he gains a higher plane of life altogether, a more exalted view and a purer atmosphere by accepting cheerfully and lovingly the discipline of denial and limitation, and using the experience as a stepping-stone, and not as an obstacle to his endeavors. there are three ways of meeting the disappointments and denials that are--for the most part--somewhat inevitable to every human life: one of sheer despair, of the relinquishing of every effort, and, in the extreme degree of this feeling, resorting to the apparent extinction of life by suicide; the second, of resignation, that is still, however, a hopeless and passive and negative state, in which the man anchors himself to some mere platitudes of submission to the divine will, misunderstanding and misinterpreting and misapplying the great and sublime law of obedience and translating it into conditions of spiritual and mental inactivity that are only a degree less degrading than the cowardice and ignorance that rushes into suicide; and the third, of learning the great lesson involved in the disappointment. submission to the divine will is all very well; it is one of the sublimest of the divine laws; but it is not fulfilled by a hopeless and inert evasion of all the duties and demands of life,--it is, instead, in its integrity and its deep significance, fulfilled by the _joyful_ acceptance of the leading, the _willing_ surrender that opens a still wider view and a still more vital faith in the divine wisdom. another way in which denial and defeat and thwarted desires or plans can be met is one still higher and greater, and is that path by which true spiritual advancement is made. this is, not despair and hopelessness because an apparently impassable wall arises across the pathway; not even mere content, and cordial or joyful submission however noble that attitude may be; but there is a loftier state in which the denial can be met; it is not merely an acceptance of god's manifest leading that is so informed with faith that it becomes ceaselessly joyful, but it is to even discern in limitation, in denial, new and sublime opportunities. one's dearest hopes are suddenly, by circumstances and conditions entirely outside his control, totally cut off. what then? at that moment an entire world of new possibilities opens, and it rests with the man himself to develop these into something far greater than the scope of his former hope or expectation could reveal. he can bring to bear a power of spiritual energy that shall transform the very ill-fortune itself into one transcendently beautiful and even angelic. he can lift all the factors of his individual problem to the divine plane of love. for love is the spiritual alchemy,--not merely the love for friends and for those near and dear to us; not merely the love for those who are agreeable and winning and whose high qualities inspire it,--but love, love and good will for all. the command to love one's enemies is not an idle nor even an impossible one. the whole law--the whole philosophy, it may be--of life can be read in the counsel, "as ye have therefore opportunity, do good unto all men." do good,--do the right thing, the kind, the generous thing, regardless of return (for which one usually cares little or not at all), or even of recognition (for which one usually cares a great deal), regardless of the recognition,--let the good be done. let one, finding himself suddenly confronted by disaster or defeat, resolve: all that has been, every factor and every circumstance that has led up to this moment, shall be for good and never for evil. it shall be for good to each and all and every one involved in it. even loss or sadness shall be transmuted into gain and joy on a higher than the mere earthly plane. for life "shall be kept open, that the father's life may flow through it." always may one realize the profound truth that "the going down of the walls between our life and our lord's life, though it consisted of the failure of our dearest theories and the disappointment of our dearest plans,--that, too, could be music to us if through the breach we saw the hope that henceforth our life was to be one with his life, and his was to be ours." prayer, in its relation to god and the divine laws; its practical effect upon the immediate events of life, and its power to transform the spiritual self, is one of the great problems of the intellectual and the scientific as well as of the religious life. one day a prayer seems absolutely and undoubtedly answered,--the relation between the prayer and the fulfilment being too direct to admit of classing it under coincidence; and again the purpose that is made a continual supplication perhaps recedes from the realm of the possible to that of the impossible, and the more fervent the entreaty, the more absolute and hopeless seems the denial. by means of which, it may be, one learns a very high spiritual lesson,--that of not desiring any specific event or fulfilment, but of praying, instead, to be kept in harmony with the divine laws, to be enabled to make his life a means of aid and true service to others, and to think as little as possible about any special conditions for himself. "he that loseth his life shall find it," is the affirmation of a very deep philosophy as well as of sacred truth. to entirely emancipate one's mind from thoughts of himself, and to fill it with the inspiration and the sweetness and exhilaration of making his life a quest after every good, and an increasing means for service to humanity, is the only way to find it in the truest and largest sense. so, for the most part, the highest use of prayer is not to ask for the specific gift or event. in a work entitled "esoteric christianity" by annie besant there is a chapter on prayer in which we find mrs. besant saying:-- "in the invisible world there exist many kinds of intelligences, which come into relationship with man,--a veritable jacob's ladder, on which the angels of god ascend and descend, and above which stands the lord himself. some of these intelligences are mighty spiritual powers, others are exceedingly limited beings, inferior in consciousness to man. this occult side of nature is a fact recognized by all religions. all the world is filled with living things, invisible to fleshy eyes. the invisible worlds interpenetrate the visible, the crowds of intelligent beings throng round us on every side. some of these are accessible to human requests and others are amenable to the human will. christianity recognizes the existence of the higher classes of intelligences under the general name of angels, and teaches that they are 'ministering spirits;' but what is their ministry, what the nature of their work, what their relationship to human beings?--all that was part of the instruction given in the lesser mysteries, as the actual communication with them was enjoyed in the greater, but in modern days these truths have sunk into the background. for the protestant the ministry of angels is little more than a phrase." * * * * * [sidenote: the law of prayer.] mrs. besant notes that it seems almost impossible for the ordinary student to discover the law according to which a prayer is or is not productive. "and the first thing necessary in seeking to understand this law," she says, "is to analyze prayer itself." mrs. besant classifies prayers as: ( ) those which are for definite worldly advantages; ( ) those which are for help in moral and intellectual difficulties, and for spiritual growth; and lastly, those which consist in meditation on, and adoration of, the divine perfection; and then we find her saying:-- "in addition to all these man is himself a constant creator of invisible beings, for the vibrations of his thoughts and desires create forms of subtle matter, the only life of which is the thought or the desire which ensouls them; he thus creates an army of invisible servants who range through the invisible worlds seeking to do his will. yet, again, there are in the world human helpers, who work there in their subtle bodies while their physical bodies are sleeping, whose attentive ear may catch a cry for help. and to crown all, there is the ever-present, ever-conscious life of god himself, potent and responsive at every point of his realm,--that all-pervading, all-embracing, all-sustaining life of love, in which we live and move. as naught that can give pleasure or pain can touch the human body without the sensory nerves carrying the message of its impact to the brain centres, so does every vibration in the universe, which is his body, touch the consciousness of god, and draw thence responsive action. nerve cells, nerve threads, and muscular fibres may be the agents of feeling and moving, but it is the man who feels and acts; so may myriads of intelligences be the agents, but it is god who knows and answers. nothing can be so small as not to affect that delicate omnipresent consciousness, nothing so vast as to transcend it." in the most literal sense we live and move and have our being in the realm of spiritual forces. "our life is hid with christ in god." that assertion is no mere mystic phase, but a plain and direct assertion of an absolute spiritual truth. our real life, all our significant action, is in the invisible realm, and the manifestation in the physical sphere is simply the results and effects of which the processes and causes are all in the ethereal world. prayer, in all its many and varied phases, is simply activity on the spiritual side, and because of this it is the motor of life. it is the key to that intense form of energy which is the divine life, and its highest development is reached when the soul asks only for one thing,--the one that includes all others,--that of union with god. "anxiety and misgiving," wrote fénelon, "proceed solely from love of self. the love of god accomplishes all things quietly and completely; it is not anxious or uncertain. the spirit of god rests continually in quietness. perfect love casteth out fear. it is in forgetfulness of self that we find peace. happy is he who yields himself completely, unconsciously, and finally to god. listen to the inward whisper of his spirit and follow it--that is enough; but to listen one must be silent, and to follow one must yield." the quiet and perfect obedience to the divine will, taught by fénelon, has nothing in common with a mere passive and blind acceptance of events as they occur. obedience to the heavenly vision is not in standing still, but in following. it finds its best expression in energy and not in inactivity. the more absolutely one abandons himself to the divine will, the more unceasingly will he fill every hour with effort toward the working out of the higher and the more ideal conditions. an ideal once revealed is meant to be realized. that is the sole reason for its being revealed at all, and the way of life is to unfalteringly work toward its realization. it is a curious fact that there can be no achievement of life so improbable or so impossible that it cannot be realized by the power--the absolutely invincible power--of mental fidelity. let one hold his purpose in thought, and the unseen forces thus generated are working for it day and night. like one of the new inventions in electricity, so thought--a force infinitely more potent than electricity--sets up a certain rate of vibration in the spiritual atmosphere and works as with irresistible sway. the individual who is held to possess great strength of will is, really, simply the one capable of holding the thought, of keeping a certain tenacity of purpose. this power alone redeems one from living on shifting sands, and being perhaps, at last, engulfed and swallowed up in the quicksands of his own shattered visions and ideals, which never grew to fulfilment because of his infirmity of will and his closing his eyes to the star that had shone in his firmament. the very pain and trial and multiplying obstacles that one may encounter who definitely sets his steps along a certain way, are only helps, not hindrances. one gains the strength of that which he overcomes. he transforms obstacles into stepping-stones. for we live and move and have our being in an ethereal atmosphere, which is universal, and which unerringly registers every thought and every energy, and transmutes these into living forces. thought is creative, and if the thought be held with sufficient intensity, it acts upon every element that has to do with the final achievement. imagination--which is simply clairvoyant vision--discerns the ideal in the dim distance, and thought is the motive force by means of which it is achieved. to be "infirm of will" is, therefore, the greatest of misfortunes, as it inevitably produces complete failure in all the affairs of life. however hopeless a certain combination of events may look, it really is not so. nothing is ever hopeless, because nothing is final. conditions are forever flowing like a river, and may be modified and transformed at any moment. failure or success is optional with the individual, for each lies in character, and is not a matter of possessions or external conditions. to become cynical, despondent, indifferent, is failure, and one has no moral right to fall to that level. associations that induce these feelings should be abandoned. the happy conditions of life are to be had on the same terms. the fretful, the ill-tempered, the selfish, the exacting, must, somewhere and some way, learn their lesson and grow toward the light; but their influence should not be allowed to poison the spiritual atmosphere. it is neither a moral duty, nor is it even true sympathy to share the gloom and depression generated by these qualities. the inward whisper of the spirit is the summons to a nobler plane on which all the higher powers find their expression. it is a fatal mistake to enter into the dark and unreasoning moods of every unfortunately constituted person. to do this habitually is to so deplete the forces of the spirit that one has nothing left. let one keep his heart and mind in the currents of the divine power; let him actively follow the vision that is revealed to him, and he shall achieve and realize his ideals. it is the law and the prophets. a force as resistless as that of the attraction that holds the stars in their courses will lead him on. "the love of god accomplishes all things quietly and completely." the mystic truth that lies enfolded in the words, "cast thyself into the will of god and thou shalt become as god," is one of marvellous potency. to achieve the state of absolute peace and reconcilement with the divine will is to achieve poise and power. for to be thus "cast into the will of god" means no mere languid acquiescence or hopeless, despairing acceptance; it means no merely negative and passive state that accepts the will of god for lack of sufficient stamina to assert its own will. but, instead, it means an intelligent recognition of the divine order; it means the will to gain the higher plane of life; it means the glad entering into a new and finer atmosphere charged with the utmost potency, and to become so receptive to it, so much a part of this energy as to command its expression in various forms of activity. the "will of god" is, indeed, the atmosphere of heavenly magnetism; it is liberation, not captivity; it is achievement, not renunciation. people talk about being "resigned" to the will of god; as well might they phrase being "resigned" to paradise! that has been an inconceivably false tradition that repeated the prayer, "thy will be done," as if it were the most sorrowful, instead of the most joyful, petition. there is another phase of experience into which those of a certain sensitiveness of temperament are apt to fall when encountering the loss or pain that, in one form or another, seems a part of the discipline of the present life; a phase that can only be described as spiritual loneliness and desolation, in which no effort seems possible. it is an experience portrayed in the following stanzas:-- "i see a spirit by thy side, purple-winged and eagle-eyed, looking like a heavenly guide. though he seems so bright and fair, ere thou trust his proffered care, pause a little, and beware! if he bid thee dwell apart, tending some ideal smart in a sick and coward heart; in self-worship wrapped alone, dreaming thy poor griefs are grown more than other men have known; though his words seem true and wise, soul, i say to thee, arise, he is a demon in disguise!" it is a phase in which one feels his own peculiar sorrow as the most unendurable of all. perhaps it is--but one _must_ abandon that point of view. "that way madness lies." his life may be desolate, but he must not allow himself to meditate on that conviction. it is moral as well as mental disaster, and as life is a divine responsibility, not to be evaded because things in general go wrong, one has no right to live in less than his best expression every day and hour. in darkness and desolation, even, one may find a spiritual exaltation. such a period in life may be like that of the seed, isolated and buried in the ground--that it may germinate and grow; that it may spring up in leaf and flower and fruit, and reach out to life and light with multiplied forces in the transfiguration of new power. a period that seems empty and devoid of stimulus may be, after all, that of highest potency. when nothing crystallizes into events, all the elements are plastic to the impress of spiritual energy. "cast thyself into the will of god." this is the crucible from which is distilled the alembic of power. one may stamp the image of noblest achievement upon this plastic period. it is the time in which to create on the spiritual side. to live in poise, and beauty, and harmony is the finest of all the fine arts. it is, in itself, the occupation of life. "i am primarily engaged to myself," said emerson, "to be a public servant of the gods; to demonstrate to all men that there is good will and intelligence at the heart of things, and ever higher and yet higher leadings. these are my engagements. if there be power in good intention, in fidelity, and in toil, the north wind shall be purer, the stars in heaven shall glow with a kindlier beam, that i have lived." it is in the will of god that perfect serenity and joy shall be found. "in his will is our peace," says dante. the acceptance of this profound truth is the absolute key to all harmony and happiness. when sorrow is felt as a dark cloud, a crushing weight, the energies are paralyzed; but when one can rise above this inertia and cease questioning that which he regards as a mysterious and--in all humility--undeserved calamity; when he can simply accept it as an expression of the divine action that is moulding the soul, and thus leave it all in peace of spirit; when, forgetting the past, he can press onward to the things that are before,--then, indeed, does he receive of the true ministry of pain. "every consecration made in the darkness is reaching out toward the light, and in the end it must come into the light, strong in the strength which it won in its life and struggle in the dark." there is a great renewal and regeneration of life in the actual realization of saint paul's admonition as to forgetting the things that are behind to press onward to those before. one should force himself, simply by an act of will and by his rational convictions of the beauty and value of life, to let go past experiences that chain him to sorrow, and, instead, link himself in that magnetism of spiritual apprehension possible to achieve, to the enchantment and power of the future. even the most tragic sorrows lose their hold over one if he will reflect that these, as well as his joys, are alike expressions of the divine will. "seek you," said a devout catholic priest, "the secret of union with god? there is none other than to avail yourselves of all that he sends you. you have but to accept all that he sends, and let it do its work in you.... no created mind or heart can teach you what this divine action will do in you; you will learn it by successive experiences. your life unceasingly flows into this incomprehensible abyss, where we have but to love and accept as best that which the present moment brings, with perfect confidence in this divine action which of itself can only work you good." when the divine action comes in the guise of joy and happiness, one is swift to give thanks. but when it comes in the guise of pain, shall he not also see in it the expression of god's will, and accept it with that absolute confidence in the wisdom and beneficence of the divine action that is, in itself, peace and sweetness? for it is a "light affliction which is but for a moment," and the promise is ours that it "worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." and this is not merely nor mostly a religious enthusiasm; it is the only practical working basis on which one whom experiences touch deeply can live at all. without this philosophy sorrow would undermine the health and paralyze all the energy that should express itself in achievements. but the secret of joy is hidden in pain. "for what god deigns to try with sorrow he means not to decay to-morrow; but through that fiery trial last when earthly ties and bonds are past." an experience that receives this test must hold deep significance. let one accept it,--not only with patience and trust, but triumphantly, radiantly, as in the exquisite realization of the divine words: "for ye have need of patience, that after ye have done the will of god, ye shall receive the promise." and the promise is sure if the conditions have been fulfilled. it is only a question of time. even heaven itself is but "the perfect sight of christ," and why shall not this radiant vision flash upon us, now and here in the earthly life, and make heaven of every day? it is not merely by the change called death that we enter into the spiritual world. the turn of thought, the thrill of love and sacrifice and generous outgoing, carries one, at any instant, into the heavenly life. it is only the qualities that find there their native atmosphere which give beauty, depth, and significance to this human life. it is only as one lives _divinely_ that he lives at all,--only as one recognizes "the perfect sight of the christ" that he recognizes the full scope of his responsibility and enters on his truest experiences. * * * * * [sidenote: conduct and beauty.] matthew arnold dwells often upon "our need for conduct, our need for beauty;" and he finds the springs of the supply to be, not in the "strenuous" life, always at high pressure and extreme tension, but in the thoughtful leisure, in the serenity of repose, in the devotion to poetry and art. "how," he questions, "are poetry and eloquence to exercise the power of relating the modern results of natural science to man's instinct for conduct, his instinct for beauty? and here again i answer that i do not know _how_ they will exercise it, but that they can and will exercise it i am sure. i do not mean that modern philosophical poets and modern philosophical moralists are to come and relate for us, in express terms, the results of modern scientific research to our instinct for conduct, our instinct for beauty. but i mean that we shall find, as a matter of experience, if we know the best that has been thought and uttered in the world, we shall find that the art and poetry and eloquence of men who lived, perhaps, long ago, who had the most limited natural knowledge, who had the most erroneous conceptions about many important matters,--we shall find that this art, and poetry, and eloquence, have, in fact, not only the power of refreshing and delighting us, they have also the power,--such is the strength and worth, in essentials, of their author's criticism of life,--they have a fortifying, and elevating, and quickening, and suggestive power, capable of wonderfully helping us to relate the results of modern science to our need for conduct, our need for beauty." life has a tendency to become far too "strenuous" with the best one can do, even; and the need is not for greater pressure of intensity, but for greater receptivity of intellectual and spiritual refreshment; for a calmer trust and a loftier faith. the joy of faith in its inspiration and emotion is wonderfully renewed from the divine word. "the lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy god thy glory." the gospels are full of these positive and radiant assurances that invest faith with the most absolute joy of confidence and positiveness of trust. these assurances meet the eye and enter the heart with the certainty of a personal message, directly given from god. and it is in this realm of the higher thought, of that culture of the soul which is the true object and aim of the temporary life on earth, that the relief from the too strenuous pressure of affairs must be found. the human soul is so constituted that it cannot live unless it breathes its native air of inspiration and joy and divineness. it is stifled in the "strenuous" lower life, its energies are paralyzed unless it seek renewal at the divine springs. it is this strenuousness of latter-day life, unrelieved by love and by prayer; unrelieved by the spiritual luxury of loving service and outgoing thought; this strenuous attitude, intent on getting and greed and gain and personal advantage, that, at last, ends in the discords and the crimes, the despair and the suicides, whose records fill the daily press. the cure for all these ills is to be found only in the higher life of conduct and of beauty. "thou shalt show me the way of life: thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance." here, and here alone, is the cure, the relief, the leading into peace and serenity and exaltation. it is not that the "fierce energy" of life is in excess, but that its application is in wrong and unmeaning directions. let the soul find its true refreshment and infinitely sustaining tide of energy in god, and immediately "old things have passed away," and "all have become new," and life is full of exhilaration and joy. "every day we ought to renew our purpose, saying to ourselves: this day let us make a sound beginning, for what we have hitherto done is naught." every day is a new and definite re-entrance upon life. nor is it worth while to linger too much on the mistakes, the errors of yesterday. true, the consequences of errors and mistakes linger in life until they are worked out; but the working out is, after all, only a question of time and of unfaltering persistence in the upward way, and thus a new foundation of life is laid: "old things have passed away and all things have become new." it is in the serene and joyous exaltation of life alone that one truly lives; in that sweetness of mutual trust and generous aims and over-flowing love that radiates its joy and beauty to all with whom it comes in contact, and which is perpetually fed and perpetually renewed by the constant communion of the soul with god. on the new year's eve of there was a wonderful phenomenon transpiring in the stellar universe, which continued during several weeks. that night was one of the utmost beauty. the air was as clear as crystal, and the constellation of orion gleamed and sparkled like a colossal group of diamonds against an azure background. the entire sky was a scene of unparalleled grandeur and magnificence. the superb constellations of orion and ursa major (familiarly known as the "dipper") blazed with an intense brilliancy that seemed the very incarnation and concentration of electric vitality. five of the stars in ursa major were then receding from our atmosphere at the rate of twenty thousand miles a second; the other two were approaching; and the phenomenon of these weeks was in the changing aspect of that constellation which the astronomers hold will require some two thousand years to complete. then will ursa major, as seen from the earth, be entirely changed. such facts as these, and the speculation they suggest, offer to us a new basis for the contemplation of life. if it require a period of two thousand years to produce the appreciable change of grouping in a constellation whose stars are moving at the rate of twenty thousand miles a second, this fact indicates to us the infinite spaces and the unlimited time in which the universe moves onward in its appointed path. with the individual life, as with the star,--it is the direction in which it is moving that determines the results. in this truth lies infinite encouragement. let one set his feet in the upward way, and keep steadfastly to his aim; let him keep unfaltering faith with his ideals,--and his success in whatever direction he is moving, his ultimate achievement of every aim he follows, is assured. it becomes simply a question of time when the entire aspect of his life shall be changed even as that of constellations in their appointed course. it is in this manner alone that one may control his life,--not by the working of an instantaneous miracle, but by absolute fidelity to a definite ideal of progressive change. "quicksand years that whirl me i know not whither, your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and elude me, only the theme i sing, the great and strong-poss'd soul, eludes not, one's self must never give way--that is the final substance--that out of all is sure, out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains? when shows break up what but one's self is sure?" the "quicksand years" whirl away many things. schemes dissolve and vanish; new combinations constantly arise; every day is, indeed, a new beginning, and "every morn is the world made new." but a purpose that remains unchanged amid all the shifting scenery of perpetual new environments must eventually fulfil itself. the stars in their courses fight for it. the celestial laws insure its final goal. "out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains? when shows break up, what but one's self is sure?" one has this sure self only in proportion as he relates his life to the divine life. the only permanence is to be found in the currents of divine energy, infinite and exhaustless. there are many ways of watching the new year in; but the somewhat unique personal experience of welcoming it on that eve of , gazing at the vast expanse of the brilliant skies through the windows of a sleeping-car, had its claim to beauty and sacredness. the rush of the train gave a sense of almost floating out into the ethereal spaces. there was a detachment from earth that hardly comes even in the sacred service of the church on that mystic midnight of a new year. one seemed alone with the infinite powers, and a new and deeper trust in the giver of all good was inspired. the beautiful lines of whittier came to memory:-- "i know not what the future hath of marvel and surprise, assured alone that life and death his mercy underlies." thus might one remember and dream while flying on under the new year's skies, and realize anew that any trend of thought is inevitably creating its future. auto-suggestion is the most potent of forces, and the assertion that "as a man thinketh so is he," is literally true. as he thinketh, so he _shall_ be, also; and he can thus think himself into new conditions and attract to himself new forces. he has the power to keep his feet set in this upward pathway, and so sure as is the destiny of the stars and the constellations on their course through the heavenly spaces, so sure is his own arrival at the point toward which he is moving, and his achievement of the supreme end he holds steadfastly in view. thus life will be to him no period of mere "quicksand years," but, instead, a series of advancing realization and beautiful states. ideals may be swiftly realized by the accelerated energy of concentration and prayer, and the secret of transformation from defeat and denial to the perfect hour of triumph and happiness lies, for each one, within his own keeping. "one's self must never give way--that is the final substance." * * * * * [sidenote: the divine panorama.] "do we not all wish that we could live our lives over again in the light of our present experience?" remarked rev. doctor charles gordon ames; "but this is just what god lets us do." here, in a word, was that divine panorama of the completeness of life revealed; the part of it lived in this present phase of experience being infinitely less in its relation, compared to the whole, than is one day in its relation to the longest life possible on earth. one day out of seventy, eighty, ninety years, would not seem so much; yet this entire period of even the longest life on earth, in its relative proportion to the life of all the eternities, is far less than is one day out of a lifetime in its proportional relation to immortality. this spiritual panorama suggests its infinite energy of hope; it reinforces courage; it reveals in the most impressive manner the significance of living. for it is the tendency which always determines the result. there can hardly be a question but that distrust of conditions is a fatal element in all effort and achievement. depression might, indeed, well take its place among the seven deadly sins that dante names. there are serious errors whose effect is less disastrous than is that of habitual depression of spirits. mental power is one's working capital, and the degree of power depends, absolutely, on the quality of thought, or, as the phrase goes, on "the state of mind." conditions determine events, but conditions are plastic to thought. on them one may stamp the impress. if he persist in regarding himself as a victim to fate and his life as a sacrifice and burnt offering, he can very soon work this conception into actuality. he can--indeed he will, and he inevitably must--become that which he continually sees himself, in mental vision. but if he will take his stand, with poise and serenity, on spiritual truth; if he will amend his life according to spiritual laws; if he will accept failure as merely a stepping-stone to ultimate success,--as "the triumph's evidence,"--ill fortune can establish no dominant power over his life. that things have gone wrong is only, after all, a proof that they _may_ go right. the consequences of error or mistake warn one not to make the same error or mistake again; and therefore the consequences, however unpleasant or sad at the moment, are really educative in their nature, and their very trial or pain becomes, if truly recognized, a friendly and redemptive power. then, too, time is a variable factor. it is degree, not duration, that it means. the consequences of an error may be accepted and annulled swiftly. intensity of feeling will condense a year, an eternity, even, into an hour. and the "new day," days in which, as doctor ames so charmingly wrote,-- "--god sets for you a fair clean page to write anew the lesson blotted hitherto,"-- a new day may be a new lifetime as well as that "next life" beyond the change we call death. how wonderfully emerson unfolds the magic possible to a day. "one of the illusions," he says, "is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. _write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year._ no man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is doomsday. there are days which are the carnival of the year. the angels assume flesh, and repeatedly become visible. the imagination of the gods is excited, and rushes on every side into forms. yesterday not a bird peeped; the world was barren, peaked, and pining: to-day 't is inconceivably populous; creation swarms and meliorates." the speculative idea that immortality is an achievement rather than a gift is not new, but whenever it is formulated, as in a recent sermon by rev. doctor parkhurst, it startles many people and arouses antagonism, so far as it is not truly understood. yet it has its deepest aspects of spiritual truth, and it is the idea constantly, persistently, and most impressively taught by saint paul throughout the entire gospels. we are constantly besought to _lay hold_ on the eternal life; to press forward toward immortal things; to be renewed in the spirit; to "put on the new man, which after god is created in righteousness and true holiness; to follow him, who is the life, the truth, the way." the entire teaching of the gospels is one forcible system of active and unfaltering endeavor in the growing achievement of spirituality, which determines immortality. it is the exact accountant--measure for measure. so much spirituality, so much immortality. nor does this assertion partake in the slightest degree of the nature of a metaphysical problem, to be comprehended only by the theologian and the philosopher. it is the most simple, clear, and direct of propositions. we all accept saint paul's assertion that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven. so far as one lives only in the processes of the physical life he is not living the life of those spiritual energies which alone lay hold on immortality. there is a certain degree of intelligent consciousness that is inseparable from this physical life; an intelligence that buys and sells, and bargains and calculates on the physical plane, and is sufficient to produce a certain rational status of life. there are not wanting individuals who never rise above this plane. they may, and often do, acquire possessions and even power on the limited plane of the outward life; they may even have some formal and ceremonial religious observances which they mistake for christianity, but which are the framework ready and able to inspire them if filled with the spirit, but which, to them, remain empty and dead. the man whose body, simply, occupies his church pew on sunday, and who on monday proceeds to cheat his neighbor, is not, we will all agree, the man who has really entered into the true privileges offered by the church. the sacrament of sunday must become the consecration of monday. unless this be true the man has not _laid hold_ on immortality. so we see that this lower plane of considerable intelligence and consciousness, related exclusively to the visible and the tangible, must be eliminated from our conceptions of immortality. there is nothing at all in this that can possibly survive death. doctor john fiske gives a fine and comprehensive definition of that degree of achievement which is above the level of death when he says:-- "in the highest of creatures the divine immanence has acquired sufficient concentration and steadiness to survive the dissolution of the flesh, and assert an individuality untrammelled by the limitations which in the present life everywhere persistently surround it." here we have the initial truth. the acquirement of "sufficient concentration and steadiness to survive the dissolution of the flesh,"--_and_ "to assert an individuality untrammelled by the limitations of the present life,"--when man has progressed so far as this, then, and then alone, has he _achieved_ immortality. he has laid hold on its initial phase. for immortality is infinite beyond conception. it is as infinite as space, and as the idea of god. to have achieved enough of this "concentration and steadiness"--which is merely another phrase for spirituality--to survive death, is no more achieving immortality, in its wholeness and completeness, than learning the alphabet is the achievement of scholarship in its infinite resources. it cannot be conceived of as complete, but, instead, as an endless chain of infinite possibilities, of ever new and ever widening vistas. one of the noblest men and loftiest thinkers of the day, referring, in a private letter, to this sermon of doctor parkhurst that inspired such wide discussion, thus wrote:-- "that paragraph from doctor parkhurst expresses my idea regarding immortality. there must be a master (good) thought or passion. it is the angel with wings that wafts the soul where the man most longed to be in life,--with the purest and best. 'as one thinks, so he shall be,' is sound doctrine. all this embodies what i once read of sappho, who counselled her pupils to cultivate their thoughts and grow, or they would have nothing to carry with them, nothing to make a soul of, nothing to survive the grave. "i believe that on this idea rests the scheme of life through faith in christ. as he is the highest, the ideal, the supreme, the soul finds rest in him, and there grows into a life that death cannot annihilate. in the presence of the great master passion, with the soul thrilling with nobleness, as when dying for another, burned at the stake for righteousness' sake, the spirit goes straight to god, into the infinite bosom, an angel fit for only heaven. "if the soul hungers and thirsts for god it will reach him. if, at the last moment, a man's whole nature cries longingly in faith to christ,--that will save him, waft him, draw him into the divine abode. and this explains the christian plan of so-called salvation. faith in christ is the master passion, and love the magnet that draws the soul to its own kind. it may be set down as true that vice and sin have no vitality. wickedness is death. virtue and love of god are life." but the question recurs just here, is there absolutely no possibility of immortality for him who does not advance beyond a certain conscious and partly automatic intelligence on the physical plane? does the gate of possibilities, does the door of opportunity close with this brief mortal life? to that question science as well as faith answers "no." the law of evolution is the law of eternal possibility and opportunity. the spark of immortality--the divine spark, implanted by god, when he made man in his image,--this is eternal in its nature, and unquestionably survives death. but immortality is the result of man's co-operation with the divine. god has implanted the spark. he has placed man in an environment of discipline and of opportunity. the individual _may be_ whatever he, himself, decides and chooses to be. not all in an hour, or in a year; not, perhaps, even in this entire lifetime; but sometime and somewhere he who is unfaltering in his allegiance to his ideal shall realize it at last. and the degree of immediateness and celerity with which he realizes it depends entirely on the degree of spiritual energy that he brings to bear on his purpose. the higher the potency, the swifter the result. * * * * * [sidenote: also the holy ghost, the comforter.] science as well as ethics recognizes the reality of the unseen potencies. science is, indeed, pointing the way. "the influence of the holy spirit, exquisitely called the comforter," says professor william james, "is a matter of actual experience, as solid a reality as that of electro-magnetism," and he adds:-- "the further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely understandable world. name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. so far as an ideal impulse originates in this region (and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing it in a way for which we cannot otherwise account); we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong. yet the unseen region in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in the world. when we commune with it, work is absolutely done upon our finite personality, for we are turned into new men, and consequences in the way of conduct follow in the natural world upon our regenerative change. but that which produces effects in another reality must be termed a reality itself, so i feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal." not unreal. on the contrary, the unseen is the realm of that which is alone real and abiding. the positiveness of the divine life is a quality that has too little recognition from the world of philosophy and speculation. it is an infinite reservoir of infinite energy, from which may be drawn at any moment, peace, courage, and power. "man can learn to transcend the limitations of finite thought at will. the divine presence is known through experience. the turning to a higher plane is a distinct act of consciousness. it is not a vague twilight, or semi-conscious experience. it is not an ecstasy. it is not a trance. it is not super-consciousness in the vedantic sense. it is not due to self-hypnotization. it is a perfectly calm, sane, sound, rational, common-sense shifting of consciousness from the phenomena of sense perception to the phenomena of seer-ship, from the thought of self to a distinctively higher realm. for example, if the lower self be nervous, anxious, tense, one can in a few moments compel it to be calm. this is not done by a word simply. nor is it done by hypnotism. it is by the exercise of power. one feels the spirit of peace as definitely as heat is perceived on a hot summer day. the power can be as surely used as the sun's rays can be focussed and made to do work, to set fire to wood." in these words there is very clearly set forth a certain spiritual achievement of a definite nature. it is simply the act of liberating the spiritual self from entanglement with the lower self,--the summoning into ascendency of the higher powers. this intense degree of spiritual energy may be achieved with the force and suddenness of a special creation. the physical universe in which man finds himself is not only surrounded by the spiritual universe, but the two are so absolutely interpenetrated that he may live in both, and, as a matter of fact, whoever lives the life of the spirit does live now and here, as an inhabitant of both these realms. the spiritual universe is the reservoir of energy. "the things that are seen are temporal, but those that are unseen are eternal," and faith, as _the substance_ of those things not seen, is a definite potency which is practically related to daily affairs. that is to say, it is an absolute power, by means of which one can fulfil the practical duties of every day. the degree of one's ability to draw from this energy and assimilate it into his life measures his degree of success. doctor ostwald, a german scientist, claims that in energy he has discovered the actual bridge, the missing link, between mind and matter, between the spiritual and the physical worlds; that it is a bridge "which covers the chasm between force and substance," and "which is of a nature sufficiently manifest to embrace the totality of our experiences, the interior as well as the exterior." doctor ostwald claims that there is an immaterial factor, one endowed with neither weight nor mass, which in a quantitative way is just as unchangeable as the mass and weight of material substances, and which, exactly like these, can undergo qualitative transformations of all kinds. he holds that energy may be converted from every one of its forms into every other, and its power of transformation is therefore unlimited, and that every change which takes place in the outer world, and every process, may be described by a statement of the kind and amount of energy that has undergone conversion. this conception of energy is a very clear and remarkable one, placing it as the infinite power from which any form of force, spiritual or mechanical, can be derived. in the moral universe the true expression of this energy upon which one may draw infinitely lies in service. it is in so enlarging the personal sphere of life as to include the widest possible range of sympathy and comprehension. the mystic spirit is full of value in reaching out into the realm of spiritual forces, but when these forces are gained they must be applied. the old religious idea used to include a great deal of discussion about saving the soul; but the larger spiritual enlightenment of to-day sees that the phrase "saving the soul" implies a present condition,--the state of love, sympathy, service, by which the soul is saved to-day, and not a vague condition to be only realized in some remote eternity. _now_ is the day of salvation. the success of life lies not in possessions; it lies in keeping the harmonious and perfectly receptive relation with the spiritual realm of forces, and using these forces in every duty and need and opportunity that presents itself. as for always compassing desires, or achieving the possession of this thing or that, is in reality immaterial. the best things in life are often the things one does not have; but they produce effects in the visible world, and often, just in proportion as the things themselves remain in the ethereal realm, is the potency of the effects they produce in the physical realm. this other dimension of existence is one with which the final reckoning must be made. it is no longer length of days, but intensity of energy, that determines results. not length of time, but intensity of purpose, energy of action,--in these lie the secret of achievement. the power that lies in brief moments is the power required for effective life and work. emerson truly says that we talk of the shortness of life, but that life is unnecessarily long. degree and not duration is the test of power in any work, and the application of this truth to the ordinary affairs of life would render it possible to have every day hold in itself the value of a week or a month as usually estimated. the entire trend of progress is toward that intensity of creative energy that fairly speaks things into being. a business man has now on his desk a long-distance telephone, connecting him with far-away cities; he answers his letters by speaking into the phonograph; his typewriting clerk copies them from this, and an hour of his morning represents as much accomplishment as by the old and slower methods would have required days; and thus time is constantly made more valuable. the discoveries in nature are in a perfect correspondence with the advancing requirements of human life. the deeper researches of science are revealing the absolute unity of the entire universe. the earth and the most remote stars are composed of the same matter. the wonderful discovery of spectrum analysis by kirchoff and bunsen in has shown that the whole stellar universe is made up of the same chemical materials as those with which we are familiar upon the earth. a part of the dazzling brilliance of the noonday sun is due to the vapor of iron floating in his atmosphere, and the faint luminosity of the remotest cloudlike nebula is the glow of just such hydrogen as enters into every drop of water that we drink.... "... the generalization of the metamorphosis of forces, which was begun a century ago by count rumford when he recognized heat as a mode of molecular motion, was consummated about the middle of the century, when doctor joule showed mathematically just how much heat is equivalent to just how much visible motion, and when the researches of helmholtz, mayer, and faraday completed the grand demonstration that light and heat and magnetism and electricity and visible motion are all interchangeable one into the other, and are continually thus interchanging from moment to moment." it is not a far cry from these scientific data to the recognition that force, in all its various forms of manifestation, proceeds from the same energy, and that the curious manifestation of it in radium is explained by the possibility that this substance is merely a remarkable conductor of this intense energy in the ether. the human organism may make itself increasingly a conductor and transmitter of this energy, and the secret of coming into perfectly harmonious relations with this energy is the secret of all achievement. "life is a search after power," says emerson, "and this is an element with which the world is so saturated,--there is no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged,--that no honest seeking goes unrewarded.... all power," he adds, "is of one kind; a sharing of the nature of the world." with his characteristically marvellous insight, emerson has, in this paragraph, recognized the truth that, in these latter days, is a matter of absolute scientific discovery. the "life that now is and that which is to come" are no more definitely separable than are the periods of childhood and youth, or youth and manhood. the advance is by evolutionary progress, with no sudden, or visible, change from day to day. the life that now is creates and determines the life that is to come. a man is what he is to-day because of the life he lived yesterday, and last year, and a decade, or several decades, ago. that which we call life--environment, circumstances, conditions--is the sum of the expression of all its past experiences, thought, aspirations, energy, or the lack of thought, aspirations, and energy. one's life is in his own hands; it is subject to his own will power, to his own energy of aspiration. he must aspire and go forward or he will degenerate. there is no possibility of an epoch that is stationary. both in any form of work or art, as well as in mental and spiritual life, one must constantly go forward, or he will find himself going backward. even a pianist as great as paderewski must keep his fingers in practice on the keyboard every day. the painter cannot long absent himself from his canvas without losing in his art. the thinker, the student, must be forever conquering new realms. science is demonstrating the actual existence of another world, transcending, pervading, surrounding this one; a world which interpenetrates our own,--the ethereal in the atmospheric,--and there is one part of the personality of man that dwells continually on this ethereal side. the physical body only conveys a partial expression of the entire being. the spiritual self lived long before it tenanted this present body, and it will continue to live after it has discarded this body. the life that is constantly proceeds to create the life that is to come. in this ethereal world,--which interpenetrates our atmosphere and in which the higher part of man's being continually dwells,--there are stored the finer forces which humanity is now discovering and learning to use. in this realm spirit speaks to spirit, telepathically. the power to thus communicate is an attribute of the spirit, and, whether in or out of the body, does not seem to affect the power. in this ethereal realm are the currents that make possible wireless telegraphy. the grouping and combination of these finer and more intense potencies result in great inventions. this realm is, in short, the miracle world; but a miracle is not something outside the laws of nature. indeed, as phillips brooks truly said, "a miracle is an essential part of the plan of god." it is simply an occurrence under the higher laws, and on a higher plane. the great truths of spiritual life are pouring themselves out to this age with larger revelations of god. they teach the deepening necessity for constant love, for larger service, for a more complete consecration to the divine life that may contribute more and more of usefulness to the human life. to achieve that "closer walk with god" that alone gives power, one must constantly seek larger fields of effort and endeavor, and bring himself face to face with great problems. to live the higher life, the life of the spirit, is not to seek cloistered seclusion, but to enter into all the great opportunities, the difficulties, the privileges, or the penalties, that attend every real endeavor. in this, alone, does one find the life more abundant. in this, alone, lies the secret of making noble the life that now is and glorifying that which is to come. the profound significance, and the illumination brought to the problem of living by simply giving one's self entirely, with belief, and love, and joy, to the will of god, is an experience that transcends human language. too often has the acceptance of god's will been held to be a spirit of the abandonment of despair, or of the mere inertia that ceases from striving and from aspiration. on the contrary, it is the most intense form of action. it embodies the loftiest aspiration. it compels the highest degree of energy. it calls into play every intellectual faculty; it arouses and inspires. it is the regeneration of the individual. he does not know what life is; he does not even begin to live, at all, in any sense worth the name, until he lives and moves and has his being in the will of god. it is, indeed, as professor carl hilty has said, a sense of initiative and power. "what is the happy life?" questions professor hilty. "it is a life of conscious harmony with the divine order of the world, a sense, that is to say, of god's companionship.... the better world we enter is, indeed, entered by faith and not by sight; but this faith grows more confident and more supporting, until it is like an inward faculty of life itself. to substitute for this a world of the outward senses is to find no meaning in life which can convey confidence. faith in god," continues professor hilty, "is a form of experience, not a form of proof.... here then, is the first step toward the discovery of the meaning of life. it is an act of will, a moral venture, a listening to experience. no man can omit this initial step, and no man can teach another the lesson which lies in his own experience. the prophets of the old testament found an accurate expression for this act of will when they described it as a 'turning,' and they went on to assure their people of the perfect inward peace and the sense of confidence which followed this act. 'look unto me and be ye saved,' says isaiah; 'incline your ear and come unto me; hear, and your soul shall live.' from that time to this, thousands of those who have thus changed the direction of their wills have entered into the same sense of peace; while no man who has thus given his will to god has ever felt himself permanently bewildered or forsaken. "here, also, in this free act of the will is attained that sense of liberty which is described as righteousness. it is a sense of initiative and power, as though one were not wholly the subject of arbitrary grace, but had a certain positive companionship with god.... this step once taken both the world in which one lives and one's own personal life get a clear and intelligible meaning." mrs. browning has a line in "aurora leigh" that runs,-- "and having tried all other ways, to just try god's." ignorance and blindness may "try all other ways," and they prove unavailing. there is no success, there is no happiness, there is no progress, until there is the clear inner recognition and the profound and loving and joyful acceptance of the divine will; of coming into such perfect acceptance of it as to make one's own will identified with its harmony. thus, when jesus said, "i am the way, the truth, and the life," he simply expressed a fact that cannot be negatived nor ignored. it is an actual, a positive law, as impossible to evade as the law of gravitation. one may refuse "the way, the truth, and the life," and wander in bewilderment and inaction; but he will never be able to achieve worthy work, or personal peace, until he accepts and lives by this law. as professor hilty so well says, this, alone, gives life an intelligent meaning. "as one follows the way, he gains, first of all, courage, so that he dares to go on in his search. he goes still further, and the way opens into the assurance that life, with all its mystery, is not lived in vain. he pushes on, and the way issues into health, not only of the soul, but even of the body; for bodily health is more dependent on spiritual condition than spiritual condition is on bodily health; and modern medicine can never restore and assure health to the body if it limit its problem to physical relief alone. nor is even this the end of the 'way' of christ. here alone is positive social redemption.... finally, the way is sure to lead every life which follows it, and is willing to pay the price for the possession of truth, into the region of spiritual peace." thus, in the end, "out of the midst of evil, issues at last the mastery of the good." thus moral progress itself is the witness of god. living by this faith, life becomes strong, serene, and radiant. "the magi have but to follow their star in peace.... the divine action marvellously adjusts all things. the order of god sends each moment the appropriate instrument for its work; and the soul, enlightened by faith, finds all things good, desiring neither more nor less than she possesses." one of the great discourses of phillips brooks had for its theme the lesson of not laying too much stress on the recognition of one's motives or on any return of sympathetic consideration. "let me not think," said doctor brooks, "that i get nothing from the man who misunderstands all my attempts to serve him, and who scorns me when i know that i deserve his sympathy. ah! it would be sad enough if only the men who understood us and were grateful to us when we gave ourselves to them had help to give us in return. the good reformer whom you try to help in his reform, and who turns off from you contemptuously because he distrusts you, seeing that your ways are different from his, he does not make you happy,--he makes you unhappy; but he makes you good, he leads you to a truer insight, a more profound unselfishness. and so (it is the old lesson), not until goodness becomes the one thing that you desire, not until you gauge all growth and gain by that, not until then can you really know that the law has worked, the promise has been fulfilled. with what measure you gave yourself to him, he has given himself--the heart of himself,--which is not his favor, not his love, but his goodness, the real heart of himself to you. for the rest you can easily wait until you both come to the better world, where misconceptions shall have passed away, and the outward forms and envelopes of things shall correspond perfectly with their inner substances forever." in the last analysis one comes to realize that happiness is a condition depending solely on the relation of his soul to god; that neither life, nor death, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any living creature can separate him from it, because happiness and the love of god are one and identical, and it is not in the power of this world to give, or to take away, this sense of absolute oneness with the divine life that comes when man gives himself, his soul and body, his hopes and aspirations and ideals, in complete consecration to the will of god. for this alone is the life radiant. it may not be ease or pleasure, but it is that ceaseless joy of the soul that may be the daily experience of every human being. and to gain the deep inner conviction of this sublime truth is worth whatever it may cost of tears or trial. it is the threshold of joy. it is the initiation into a higher spiritual state which one may gain in his progress while on earth as well as in heaven. in fact, no one is really fitted for the highest privileges and sweetness he may crave until he has learned to live well, to live joyfully, without them. no one is fitted for joy until he can live well _without_ joy. it is the law and the prophets. one may tread,--not the "whole round of creation," as browning phrases it, but a minor segment of it, at least, and come back with added and more profound conviction that happiness is a condition of the spirit; that "the soul is ceaselessly joyful;" that the incidents and accidents of the outward life cannot mar nor lessen that sense of higher peace and joy and harmony which is the atmosphere of any true spiritual life. one may recognize and affirm this truth by spiritual intuition, and he may then be led through many phases of actual tests in actual life; he may for a time lose his hold on it and come to say that happiness is a thing that depends on so many causes outside one's own control; that illness, death, loss of friends, adverse circumstances, failures and trials of all kinds, may come into his experience, and that one is at the mercy of all these vicissitudes. can the individual be happy, he will ask, when all that made happiness is taken away? can he be happy if he has lost all his worldly goods? or if death has taken those nearest and dearest to him? or if the separations of life, far harder to bear than those of death, have come to him? and yet, until he has learned to answer these questions with the most triumphant affirmative, he has not learned the measure nor sounded the depth of a true and noble order of happiness. the difference is that of being safely on board a great steamer when wind and wave are tempest-tossed, or of being helpless in the raging waters. the storm may be precisely the same; the tempest may rage as it will, but safe and secure in the cabin or stateroom, the voyager does not mind its fury. and truly may this analogy be held in life. it is possible to emerge from the winds and waves; to enter so entirely into the sense of security in the divine; to hold so absolutely the faith in the divine leading, that even in the midst of trial and loss and deprivation and sorrow, one shall come to _know_, through his own experience, that "the soul is ceaselessly joyful." for it is one thing to accept a truth theoretically, or believe it intuitively, and another to prove it through experience that shall test the quality of faith and conviction. learning this supreme truth of life through outward experiences as well as through inner revelation is a victory of the will that may even make itself an epoch, a landmark, in spiritual progress. it is the complete recognition of that invincible aid given to the soul through the "ever-present" aid of the holy ghost, the comforter. "jesus, the christ, this one perfect character, has come into the world and lived in it; filling all the moulds of action, all the terms of duty, and love, with his own divine manners, works, and charities," wrote doctor horace bushnell. "all the conditions of our life are raised thus by the meaning he has shown to be in them and the grace he has put upon them. the world itself is changed and is no more the same that it was; it has never been the same since jesus left it. the air is charged with heavenly odors, and a kind of celestial consciousness, a sense of other worlds, is wafted on us in its breath. it were easier to untwist all the beams of light in the sky, separating and expunging one of the colors, than to get the character of jesus, which is the real gospel, out of the world." the one deepest need of the world to-day; the one deepest need of each individual, is the more actual realization of the personality of christ. the perspective of nineteen hundred years only brings more vividly before the mind, more close to the spiritual apprehension, the personal holiness of jesus, and enforces the truth that shall redeem humanity,--the practical possibility of the increasing achievement of this personal holiness for every man and woman. "because i live ye shall live also," he said. but what is it to live? certainly, something far above and beyond mere existence. life, in its true sense, is to know god. this is the life eternal. no one can "know god" save in just the degree to which he lives god's life,--the divine life,--and in the degree to which he is living the divine life does he live the life eternal. the life eternal may be lived to-day as well as after death, in some vague eternity. the life eternal is simply the life of spiritual qualities. it is the life in which truth, honor, integrity, sacrifice, patience, and love abound, and in which all that is selfish and false is cast out. now, however exalted a definition of the present, daily life this may seem to be, it is in no sense an impossible one. the more exalted is one's standard for the perpetual quality of his life, the more stimulating it becomes. the exalted ideal inspires; the low standard depresses. an invincible energy sweeps instantly through the atmosphere to sustain him who allies himself with his noblest ideals. a force that disintegrates and baffles sweeps down upon him who abandons his nobler ideals, and substitutes for them the mere selfish, the commonplace, or the base. the "choose ye this day whom ye will serve" is no merely abstract phrase or trick of rhetoric. every hour is an hour of destiny. every hour is an hour of choice. legions of angels are in the unseen world surrounding humanity. not one thought, one aspiration, one prayer, is unheard and unnoted. no conditions or circumstances are sordid or material unless he whom they invest make them so by sordid and material thought; by turning away from that life of the spirit whose very reality is made and is tested by these circumstances. "all the conditions of life are raised," says doctor bushnell, in the extract quoted above, "by the meaning he has shown to be in them, and the grace he has put upon them." might not one, with profit, dwell for a moment upon this statement? there is a current sweeping through latter-day life and reflecting itself largely in miscellaneous literature, to the effect that what the writers are pleased to call "success in life" is achieved by self-reliance; that a man must believe in himself; and the final triumph is illustrated as that of the man who begins as an errand boy at two dollars a week and ends as a multi-millionaire. between these two points in space the arc of success subtends, according to this order of literature, and the word is: make a million, or a hundred millions of dollars,--honestly if you can, dishonestly if you must, but, at all events, the point is to "arrive." now there is both a most demoralizing fallacy and a strong and valuable truth mixed up in these exhortations. "trust thyself," said emerson; "every heart vibrates to that iron string." "i thank whatever gods there be for my unconquerable soul," sings william ernest henley, and he closes with the ringing lines,-- "i am the captain of my fate, i am the master of my soul." and emerson and henley are right--so far as they go. and the man who has been industrious, and economical, and has accumulated a fortune, has, at all times, some elements that are right; and rigid economy is far better than selfish indulgence. but whether a rigid economy is always a virtue--depends. "there is that scattereth, yet increaseth." whether it is nobler to increase one's bank account at the expense of all the personal expansion of life, through study, social life, travel,--all that makes up a choice and fine culture, and at the expense of depriving one's self of the untold luxury of service, as needs come in view,--is certainly an open question, and one in which there is a good deal to say for other uses of money than that of establishing an impressive bank account; but leaving this aspect of the problem, one returns to that phase of it represented by self-reliance. it is a great hindrance to the infinite development of man to conceive of courage and self-reliance as capacities or powers of his own rather than as fed from the divine energy. a stream might as well cut itself off from its source, and from its tributaries, and expect to flow on, in undiminished current to the sea, as for man to regard courage and force of will as generated in himself. thus he dwarfs and hinders all his spiritual powers that are found to lay hold upon god. thus he stifles himself, rather than open his windows into the pure air. "all the conditions of life are raised by the meaning jesus has shown to be in them." certainly, it was not for nothing that christ came into the conditions of the human life. his experience on earth comprehended every privation, every limitation, known to the physical life. not only these,--but he experienced every phase of sorrow, of trial, of mental pain, of spiritual anguish. he was misunderstood, he was misrepresented, he was assailed and crucified. he understood the needs of the body as well as of the spirit. he had no contempt nor condemnation for comfort, prosperity, or wealth, in and of themselves. he simply regarded them as means to an end, and if nobly used to noble ends, life was the better for whatever phases and factors of power it possessed. but he taught the truth that here we have no continuing city; that this temporary sojourn on earth is designed as a period in which to develop qualities rather than to heap up accumulations. "what shall it profit a man," he well said, "if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" so here was a man, living the earthly and physical life; comprehending all the earthly and physical problems involved in relation with the physical world; not ignoring or denying them like a mere fanatic, but estimating them in the true scale of values,--here was a man who by his experience and example proved that personal holiness of life is not incompatible with personal attention to every detail of human affairs. jesus did not isolate himself in a monastic cell in order to live the life of the spirit. he practically taught that the very supreme test of the life of the spirit is to live it in the heart of human activities. it is in the resistless tide of daily affairs,--in the office of the lawyer, the journalist, the physician, the architect; in the studio of the artist, in the counting-room, the bank, the salesroom, and the market-place, that the life of personal holiness is possible, and it is possible to man because jesus, taking upon himself the human life, so lived it in these very circumstances and under these conditions. christ and his all-quickening life remain in the world. they did not leave it with his physical death. they remain as the incorruptible, the glorious, the priceless possession of every man and woman to-day. to this divine example of a perfect character revealed in the guise of the human life, each individual in the world to-day can turn, as the most practical ideal by which to shape his own life and to ultimately realize the command, "be perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect." if this transcendent ideal were not a possibility for the soul, surely god would not have given it as an idle command; but man, as a spiritual being, is designed to live the spiritual life, and this life is that of perpetual spiritual progress and ideal achievement; of entering into that golden atmosphere in which he shall not only "--dream of summers and dream of flowers that last alway," but find, in an ever-increasing degree, that the dream is merged into the profoundest reality of experience. "present suffering is not enjoyable," said the late rev. doctor maltbie davenport babcock, "but life would be worth little without it. the difference between iron and steel is fire, but steel is worth all it costs. iron ore may think itself senselessly tortured in the furnace, but when the watch-spring looks back it knows better. david enjoyed pain and trouble no more than we do, but the time came when he admitted that they had been good for him. though the aspect of suffering is hard, the prospect is hopeful.... the tests of life are to make, not break us. the blow at the outward man may be the greatest blessing to the inner man. if god, then, puts, or permits, anything hard in our lives, be sure that the real peril, the real trouble, is what we shall lose if we flinch or rebel." doctor babcock's words suggest that there is perhaps nothing in all the divine teachings that is less understood and less accepted than the assertion of saint paul, "we glory in tribulation also." the general reader of the gospels and epistles--even the prayerful and reverent reader--relegates this expression to some abstract conditions, as something that might do very well for saint paul and a rudimentary civilization; as something that might be a very appropriate and decorous sentiment for saint sebastian on his gridiron, or saint catherine keeping her vigils in the vast and gloomy old church in siena, but which certainly can bear no relation and hold no message for the modern reader. for the electric life of the hour,--full of color and vitality; throbbing with achievement; the life that craves prosperity as its truest expression, and finds adversity a poor and mean failure quite unsuitable to a man of brilliant gifts and energy; the life that believes in its own right of way and mistakes possessions for power,--what has _it_ to do with "tribulation" except to refuse it? if it comes it is met with indignant protest rather than as a phase of experience in which to "glory;" it is evaded, if possible; and if it cannot be evaded it is received with rebellion, with gloom, with despondency, and perhaps, at last, an enforced and hopeless endurance, which is not, by the way, to be mistaken for resignation. endurance is a passive condition that cannot, and does not even try, to help itself. resignation, in its true reading, is wholly another matter; it is active, it is alive, it is conscious and intelligent and in joyful co-operation with the will of god. it is no poor and negative mental state; it is rich in vitality and in hope, as well, for in its absolute identification of itself, this human will with the divine will, it enters into a kingdom of untold glory, whose paths lead by the river of life to the noblest and most exalted heights of achievement and of undreamed-of joy. if this be true of resignation, what shall be said of tribulation,--of glorying in tribulation? a man awakens to find himself in poverty instead of in wealth; his possessions suddenly swept away; or from health, he, or some one whose life is still dearer to him than his own, prostrated with illness; or to find himself unjustly accused or maligned, or misunderstood, or to encounter some other of the myriad phases of what he calls misfortune and tribulation. how is he to endure it? how is he to go on, living his life, in all this pain, perplexity, trial, or annoyance, much less to "glory" in this atmosphere of tribulation? one is engaged, it may be, in a work for which it would seem that peace of mind and joy and radiance were his only working capital; his essential resources; and suddenly these vanish, and his world is in ruins. clouds of misapprehension envelop him round about, and he can neither understand, himself, what has produced them, nor can he, by any entreaty or appeal, be permitted the vantage ground of full and clear explanation. and his energies are paralyzed; the golden glory that enfolded his days investing them with a magical enchantment, has gone, and a leaden sky shuts him into a gloomy and leaden atmosphere. it is not only himself, but his work; not only what he may feel, but what, also, he may not accomplish. and his work is of a nature that is not only his own expression, his contribution to the sum of living, but one which involves responsibility to others, and some way,--well or ill, as may be,--it must be done. shall he, _can_ he, "glory" in this paralyzing pain and torture that so mysteriously has fallen upon him,--whose causes do not, so far as he can discern, lie in his own conduct, but in some impenetrable mystery of misapprehensions and misunderstandings; a tangled labyrinth to which he is denied the clue? can he, indeed, facing all this torture and tragedy, with all that made the joy and light of life withdrawn,--can he encounter this form of tribulation with serene poise, with unfaltering purpose, with an intense and exalted faith? it is "not enjoyable," indeed, as doctor babcock, in the quotation above, at once concedes; but that the experience has a meaning,--a very profound meaning, one must believe; and believing this, he must feel that the responsibility rests on himself to accept this new significance that has, in an undreamed-of way, fallen into his life; to read its hidden lesson; to transmute it, by the miracle of divine grace, into something fairer and sweeter; to let its scorching fire make steel of that which was only iron. to accept, to believe, to _feel_ this, in every fibre of his nature, is to "glory" in the tribulation. it is to extract its best meaning, and to go on in life better equipped than before. "the tests of life are to _make_ and not _break_ us." here is the truer view, and one that reveals the divine significance in all mysteries of human experience. beyond all these views, also, is that inflorescence of joy that springs from this more complete identification of one's own will with that of the divine. one comes into the full glow and beauty of that wonderful assurance of jesus: "these things have i spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." this fulness of joy is a condition freely offered for perfect acceptance. the varied experiences are, as browning has said, "just a stuff to try the soul's strength on." the kingdom of heaven lies open to all; it is _at hand_, not waiting afar in some vague futurity. shall we not enter to-day into this kingdom of heaven which is at hand? shall we not enter to-day into the very joy of the lord? pain and sorrow may invest the conditions of the moment, but they are forces which are transmuting the inconsequential into the significant; the common and trivial into the exalted and the sublime. the discord is merged into sublime harmonies that thrill the air; the glory of the lord shines round about, and we enter into its illumination; we are ascending the mount of vision and the soul looketh steadily onward, discerning the beauty of holiness, in whose transfiguration gleams the fairest ideal revealed to humanity,--even the life radiant. index. abbott, rev. dr. lyman, , . academy of science, . adams, hon. alva, his tribute to nathan cook meeker, . ----, general, . africa, . albertson, dr., his invention, , , . altar of perpetual adoration, . ames, dr. charles gordon, his uplifting sermons, , , . andes, the, . arizona, , . armstrong, gen. samuel chapman, . arno, the, . arnold, sir edwin, , . ----, matthew, , . atlantic, the, . ---- cable, . ---- coast, . "aurora leigh," . austrian, . avernus, . ayrton, prof. w. e., , . babcock, rev. dr. maltbie davenport, his noble words, , , . balzac, honoré de, . "banquo," . baptist belief, . beethoven, . behmen, jacob, . besant, annie, her theories on prayer, , , . bible, the, . bonus, john, . boston, , . brewster, elder, . "bright angel trail, the," . british isles, . brooks, rt. rev. dr. phillips, , , , , , , , , , . browning, elizabeth barrett, . ----, robert, , . bunsen, dr. robert wilhelm, . bushnell, rev. dr. horace, . cache la poudre, . carboniferous, . centennial exhibition, the, , . chemical society, . cheyenne, . ---- cañon, , , . chicago, . christmas, . "clothed with the sun," . colorado river, . ----, state of, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . columbia university chemical society, . congress, . connecticut, . cooper institute, , . copley square, . cosmos, the, . "courier journal," , . crookes, sir william, , . crusaders, the, . "culture," . curie, professor, radium discovered by, , . ----, madame, , . cushing, frank, . daniel, book of, . "daniel deronda," . dante, , . "data of ethics," . darwin, dr. charles, . de caussade, père, , , , , . denver, . denver and rio grande railroad, . discovery of the future, . donald, rev. dr. e. winchester, . divine creation, . ---- love, , . ---- perfection, . ---- pressure, , . ---- truth, . ---- word, . ---- will, , . echo cliffs, . edison, thomas, . edwards, jonathan, . egyptian, . eiffel tower, . electricity, . eliot, president charles w., . elizabeth, . emerson, ralph waldo, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . empedocles, . england, . episcopalian, . eros, . "esoteric christianity," . europe, , . "evangeline," . evolution, . "expansion of religion," . faraday, michael, . faust, . fénelon, . fichte, johann gottlieb, . field, cyrus, . fiske, dr. john, consummation of organic evolution, ; degree of achievement above the level of death, . flagstaff, ; cosmopolitan influence of, . florence, . foretelling of the future, . fort steele, . "forum, the," article of edward everett hale in, . fuller, margaret, defines social sympathies, . galilee, . garden of the gods, . german, . "giver of all good," . goethe, . gogol, . gordon, rev. dr. george a., . grand cañon of the colorado, , , , , . greek, . greeley, horace, presided at meeting in cooper institute, ; invited nathan cook meeker to place on "tribune," ; encouraged founding of town, , ; portrait of, . ----, town of, founded by nathan cook meeker, , ; beautiful situation of, ; interest of, , . "----, tribune, the," founding of, . hale, rev. dr. edward everett, prediction of, , ; memory of, . hall, general, writes of nathan cook meeker, . hamilton, gail, . harris, dr. william torrey, . harvard, , . hayes, hon. rutherford b., appoints nathan cook meeker indian commissioner, , . heavenly vision, . helbaicy, m. tessier d', theory of, , . helmholtz, hermann ludwig, . henley, william ernest, . hilty, carl, his ideas on happiness, . himalayas, . holland, canon scott, discussions of, ; arraigns modern teachings, , ; characterizes the ether, . holmes, dr. oliver wendell, counsel of, . holy spirit, the, , . "hope of religion," . hugo, victor, lines of, . "human freedom," . "human personality," , . humanity, . indian, the, . indian commissioner, . indiana, . indians, legislation for, , , , . isles of patmos, . italy, . jacob's ladder, . james, prof. william, demonstration of, ; depicts power of the holy spirit, . jesus, . joule, dr., . kaiser wilhelm ii., the, . kelvin, lord, . kerchsoff, . kingsford, dr. anna, née bonus, remarkable mystic writings of, ; marriage of, ; theories of, , ; remarkable interpretation of life of, . lacordaire, père, . lanier, sidney, . latin, . leadbeater, c. w., . leavenworth, professor, . lent, . leverrier, urbain john joseph, . "life radiant, the," , , , , , . , , . lincoln, abraham , . liverpool, . lodge, sir oliver, ; new problems presented, by, , , ; his theories regarding telepathy, . loeb, dr., . london, , , . longfellow, henry wadsworth, . long's peak, . lot, . louis xv., . lowell institute, . lowell, james russell, . ----, john, . ---- observatory, . ----, prof. percival, his astronomical work, , . maeterlinck, maurice, the future discussed by, , , , ; theories of, , ; insights of, , . magi, the, , . marconi, guglielmo, genius of, , ; system of, ; ship detector of, ; predictions of, fulfilled, . marie antoinette, . mars, , . massachusetts, diocese of, . ----, bishop of, . mayer, julius robert von, . meeker, arvilla delight, née smith (mrs. nathan cook meeker), , , . ----, nathan cook, town of greeley, colo., founded by, ; visions of, , ; outlines plans, ; birth of, ; editorial work of, praised by emerson, ; municipal principles of, , , ; appointed commissioner to centennial exposition, ; "the greeley tribune" founded by, ; indian policy of, , ; difficulties encountered by, ; massacre of, ; estimation of, , ; work of, ; noble ideals of, . ----, josephine, , , , . mesozoic age, . michael angelo, . mont pelee, , . montana, . morning star, . mount etna, . ---- of transfiguration, . ---- of vision, . moxom, rev. dr. philip, . münsterberg, prof. hugo, . musée cluny, the, , . myers, frederic, w. h. , . nature, . naval observatory, . neptune, . new england, . new jersey, . new jerusalem, . new testament, . new year, the, , , . new york, . "new york herald," , . "---- mirror," . "---- tribune," . niagara, , , . nile, observatory, the minnesota university, . ohio, . orion, . ostwald, dr., . paderewski, ignace, . paradise, . "paradiso," . paris, , , , . parkhurst, rev. dr., , . "parsival," . permian, . phillips, stephen, , . pierce, hon. franklin, . pike's peak, , , . pope, general, . powell, major john w., . preece, sir william, . prentice, george d., . presbyterian, . promised land, . protestant, . prudhomme, sully, . psychical research, . pueblo, . pyramids, , . quackenbos, dr. john d., , , . reichenbach, anton benedict, remarkable experiments of, . roberts, professor, electrical work of, . robinson, solon, . rocky mountains, the, . roentgen ray, , , . royal gorge, . ---- institute, . ---- society, . ---- university of denmark, . royce, prof. josiah, . rumford, count, experiments of, . saint john, . ---- paul, the two bodies described by, ; counsel of, ; spiritual things discerned by, , , ; admonitions of, , , ; cathedral of, . ---- pierre, . ---- sulpice, . san francisco, . santa fé road, . secretary of war, the, . shakespeare, . sherman, gen. w. t., . shinumo altar, . silver state, the, . sir hugo, . smyth, rev. dr. newman, . snowy range, the, . society of arts, . solomon's temple, . south platte river, . southern cross, . spencer, herbert, . spirit, whisper of the, . state university observatory, minnesota, . stowe, mrs. harriet, née beecher, . tennyson, lord alfred, . tertiary, . tesla, nicola, ; discovery of, ; human energy discussed by, . texas, . "the gleam," . "the inferno," . "the country god forgot," . "the perfect way," , . "the world beautiful," . thompson, prof. j. j., . thornburg, major, . titanic, . trinity church, . twentieth century, , . union colony, , , , . unitarian, . united states, . universe, . unseen, the, . ursa major, , . utah, . utes, the, . vatican, the, . vedantic, . vedder, elihu, . "vita nuova," . walnut cañon, . warren, rev. dr. walpole, . washington, , . washington monument, . watterson, col. henry, . wells, h. g., theories of, on foretelling the future, , . west, the, . western reserve, the, . westminster abbey, . white mountains, the, . white river, , , , . whittier, john greenleaf, , . whyte, rev. dr. alexander, . wilberforce, rev. dr. basil, archdeacon of westminster, , . will of god, , . young, john russell, . zuni, . * * * * * _lilian whiting's works_ the world beautiful. first series the world beautiful. second series the world beautiful. third series after her death. the story of a summer the spiritual significance kate field: a record from dreamland sent. verses of the life to come a study of elizabeth barrett browning the world beautiful in books boston days the life radiant * * * * * the world beautiful by lilian whiting i know of no volumes of sermons published in recent years which are so well fitted to uplift the reader, and inspire all that is finest and best in his nature, as are the series of essays entitled "the world beautiful," by lilian whiting.--b. o. flower, _in the coming age_. the world beautiful (first series) mo. cloth, $ . . decorated cloth, $ . . comprising: the world beautiful; friendship; our social salvation; lotus eating; that which is to come. the world beautiful about which she writes is no far-off event to which all things move, but the every-day scene around us filled by a spirit which elevates and transforms it.--prof. louis j. block, in _the philosophical journal_. no one can read it without feeling himself the better and richer and happier for having done so.--_the independent_. the world beautiful (second series) mo. cloth, $ . . decorated cloth, $ . . comprising: the world beautiful; our best society; to clasp eternal beauty; vibrations; the unseen world. the style is at once graceful and lively. every touch is fresh.--_zion's herald_. the world beautiful (third series) mo. cloth, $ . . decorated cloth, $ . . comprising: the world beautiful; the rose of dawn; the encircling spirit-world; the ring of amethyst; paradisa gloria. the thoughtful reader who loves spiritual themes will find these pages inspiring.--_chicago inter-ocean_. * * * * * after her death the story of a summer by lilian whiting, author of "the world beautiful," etc. mo. cloth, $ . . decorated cloth, $ . . comprising: what lacks the summer? from inmost dreamland; past the morning star; in two worlds; distant gates of eden; unto my heart thou livest so; across the world i speak to thee; the deeper meaning of the hour. my conviction is that every preacher, reformer, religious editor, and christian worker should read the books by lilian whiting.--rev. w. h. rogers, in _the christian standard_. "after her death" has given me the light and help i have so long craved; it has given me comfort and strength which _no other_ book has ever done.--cordelia l. commore. * * * * * from dreamland sent verses of the life to come by lilian whiting. new edition, with additional verses, mo. cloth, extra, $ . . decorated cloth, $ . . lilian whiting's verse is like a bit of sunlit landscape on a may morning.--_boston herald_. graceful, tender, and true, appealing to what is best in the human heart.--_the independent_. i never saw anything on earth before which looked so much as if just brought from heaven by angel hands as this new edition of "from dreamland sent." in the golden sunshine of an italian morning i have heard the silver trumpets blow. this exquisite book reminds me of them.--sarah holland adams. * * * * * kate field: a record by lilian whiting. author of "the world beautiful," "a study of elizabeth barrett browning," etc. with several portraits of miss field, including one by elihu vedder. mo. cloth, extra. $ . . contents childhood and circumstance. an interesting heredity; family letters; mr. and mrs. field's stage life; death of joseph m. field; the mother and daughter. early youth. aspirations and studies; interest in art and literature; ardent devotion to music. florentine days. at villa bellosguardi; enthusiasm for italy; george eliot and the trollopes; walter savage landor; at casa guidi with the brownings. lecturing and writing. intense energy of purpose; john brown's grave; ristori, fechter, and the drama; planchette's diary; death of eliza riddle field. europe revisited. among london celebrities; in spain with castelar; music and drama; professor bell and the telephone; the shakespeare memorial. a significant decade. return to america; failures and renewed effort; the mormon problem; alaska and the golden gate; fame and friends. "kate field's washington." a unique enterprise; miss gilder's friendship; charming life in the capitol; the columbian exposition; france decorated kate field. crossing the bar. a journey of destiny; life and studies in hawaii; noble and generous work; the angel of death. in retrospect. universal appreciation and love; the strange ordering of circumstance; a sculptured cross in mount auburn; death only an event in life. * * * * * the spiritual significance or, death as an event in life by lilian whiting. author of "the world beautiful," "boston days," etc. mo. cloth, $ . . decorated cloth, gilt top, $ . . comprising: the spiritual significance; vision and achievement; between the seen and the unseen; psychic communication; the gates of new life. it suggests and hints at the ultimate significance of scientific investigation with relation to the totality of thought in a very fresh and suggestive way.... the spirit of her book, like that of its predecessors, is admirable.--_the outlook_. a book from her pen means new flashes of insight, a revelation of spiritual truth almost emersonian in kind.--_chicago chronicle_. * * * * * the world beautiful in books by lilian whiting. mo. cloth, $ . _net_. decorated cloth, $ . _net_. the careful and repeated reading of "the world beautiful in books" would be a liberal education.--_philadelphia telegraph_. it is like a greek urn filled with priceless relics. hundreds of brains, ancient and modern, are daintily picked of their best thoughts, and there is scarcely a page that is not enriched with some rifled treasure. it is, in fact, concentrated food for select minds.--_chicago post_. to read it is like being taken informally into a great assemblage of poets, romancers, and thinkers, while all are at their best, and being introduced to them by a near friend of all.--_the era_, philadelphia. * * * * * boston days the city of beautiful ideals, concord and its famous authors, the golden age of genius, dawn of the twentieth century. by lilian whiting. author of "the world beautiful," etc. with portraits and other illustrations. mo. decorated cloth, $ . _net_. all the famous names associated with boston pass in review before the reader of this apotheosis of the intellectual life of massachusetts.--_the boston herald_. the book is full of fascination of the intrinsic sort, by virtue of the material of which it is made up, and miss whiting has fulfilled her task with special literary grace and discretion.--_albany argus_. a volume to place on the same shelf with the "yesterdays with authors" of the late james t. fields and the "literary friends and acquaintances" of william d. howells.--_cleveland plain dealer_. * * * * * the life radiant by lilian whiting, mo. cloth, $ . _net_. decorated cloth, $ . _net_. in this book miss whiting aims to portray a practical ideal for daily living that shall embody the sweetness and exaltation and faith that lend enchantment to life. it is, in a measure, a logical sequence of "the world beautiful," leading into still diviner harmonies. * * * * * little, brown, & company, publishers washington street, boston, mass. none none as a man thinketh by james allen author of "from passion to peace" _mind is the master power that moulds and makes, and man is mind, and evermore he takes the tool of thought, and, shaping what he wills, brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills:-- he thinks in secret, and it comes to pass: environment is but his looking-glass._ authorized edition new york contents thought and character effect of thought on circumstances effect of thought on health and the body thought and purpose the thought-factor in achievement visions and ideals serenity foreword this little volume (the result of meditation and experience) is not intended as an exhaustive treatise on the much-written-upon subject of the power of thought. it is suggestive rather than explanatory, its object being to stimulate men and women to the discovery and perception of the truth that-- "they themselves are makers of themselves." by virtue of the thoughts, which they choose and encourage; that mind is the master-weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance, and that, as they may have hitherto woven in ignorance and pain they may now weave in enlightenment and happiness. james allen. broad park avenue, ilfracombe, england as a man thinketh thought and character the aphorism, "as a man thinketh in his heart so is he," not only embraces the whole of a man's being, but is so comprehensive as to reach out to every condition and circumstance of his life. a man is literally _what he thinks,_ his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts. as the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them. this applies equally to those acts called "spontaneous" and "unpremeditated" as to those, which are deliberately executed. act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruits; thus does a man garner in the sweet and bitter fruitage of his own husbandry. "thought in the mind hath made us, what we are by thought was wrought and built. if a man's mind hath evil thoughts, pain comes on him as comes the wheel the ox behind.... ..if one endure in purity of thought, joy follows him as his own shadow--sure." man is a growth by law, and not a creation by artifice, and cause and effect is as absolute and undeviating in the hidden realm of thought as in the world of visible and material things. a noble and godlike character is not a thing of favour or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long-cherished association with godlike thoughts. an ignoble and bestial character, by the same process, is the result of the continued harbouring of grovelling thoughts. man is made or unmade by himself; in the armoury of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself; he also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace. by the right choice and true application of thought, man ascends to the divine perfection; by the abuse and wrong application of thought, he descends below the level of the beast. between these two extremes are all the grades of character, and man is their maker and master. of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul which have been restored and brought to light in this age, none is more gladdening or fruitful of divine promise and confidence than this--that man is the master of thought, the moulder of character, and the maker and shaper of condition, environment, and destiny. as a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, man holds the key to every situation, and contains within himself that transforming and regenerative agency by which he may make himself what he wills. man is always the master, even in his weaker and most abandoned state; but in his weakness and degradation he is the foolish master who misgoverns his "household." when he begins to reflect upon his condition, and to search diligently for the law upon which his being is established, he then becomes the wise master, directing his energies with intelligence, and fashioning his thoughts to fruitful issues. such is the _conscious_ master, and man can only thus become by discovering _within himself_ the laws of thought; which discovery is totally a matter of application, self analysis, and experience. only by much searching and mining, are gold and diamonds obtained, and man can find every truth connected with his being, if he will dig deep into the mine of his soul; and that he is the maker of his character, the moulder of his life, and the builder of his destiny, he may unerringly prove, if he will watch, control, and alter his thoughts, tracing their effects upon himself, upon others, and upon his life and circumstances, linking cause and effect by patient practice and investigation, and utilizing his every experience, even to the most trivial, everyday occurrence, as a means of obtaining that knowledge of himself which is understanding, wisdom, power. in this direction, as in no other, is the law absolute that "he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened;" for only by patience, practice, and ceaseless importunity can a man enter the door of the temple of knowledge. effect of thought on circumstances man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, _bring forth._ if no useful seeds are _put_ into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will _fall_ therein, and will continue to produce their kind. just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts. by pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life. he also reveals, within himself, the laws of thought, and understands, with ever-increasing accuracy, how the thought-forces and mind elements operate in the shaping of his character, circumstances, and destiny. thought and character are one, and as character can only manifest and discover itself through environment and circumstance, the outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state. this does not mean that a man's circumstances at any given time are an indication of his _entire_ character, but that those circumstances are so intimately connected with some vital thought-element within himself that, for the time being, they are indispensable to his development. every man is where he is by the law of his being; the thoughts which he has built into his character have brought him there, and in the arrangement of his life there is no element of chance, but all is the result of a law which cannot err. this is just as true of those who feel "out of harmony" with their surroundings as of those who are contented with them. as a progressive and evolving being, man is where he is that he may learn that he may grow; and as he learns the spiritual lesson which any circumstance contains for him, it passes away and gives place to other circumstances. man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself. that circumstances grow out of thought every man knows who has for any length of time practised self-control and self-purification, for he will have noticed that the alteration in his circumstances has been in exact ratio with his altered mental condition. so true is this that when a man earnestly applies himself to remedy the defects in his character, and makes swift and marked progress, he passes rapidly through a succession of vicissitudes. the soul attracts that which it secretly harbours; that which it loves, and also that which it fears; it reaches the height of its cherished aspirations; it falls to the level of its unchastened desires,--and circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own. every thought-seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind, and to take root there, produces its own, blossoming sooner or later into act, and bearing its own fruitage of opportunity and circumstance. good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bad fruit. the outer world of circumstance shapes itself to the inner world of thought, and both pleasant and unpleasant external conditions are factors, which make for the ultimate good of the individual. as the reaper of his own harvest, man learns both by suffering and bliss. following the inmost desires, aspirations, thoughts, by which he allows himself to be dominated, (pursuing the will-o'-the-wisps of impure imaginings or steadfastly walking the highway of strong and high endeavour), a man at last arrives at their fruition and fulfilment in the outer conditions of his life. the laws of growth and adjustment everywhere obtains. a man does not come to the almshouse or the jail by the tyranny of fate or circumstance, but by the pathway of grovelling thoughts and base desires. nor does a pure-minded man fall suddenly into crime by stress of any mere external force; the criminal thought had long been secretly fostered in the heart, and the hour of opportunity revealed its gathered power. circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself no such conditions can exist as descending into vice and its attendant sufferings apart from vicious inclinations, or ascending into virtue and its pure happiness without the continued cultivation of virtuous aspirations; and man, therefore, as the lord and master of thought, is the maker of himself the shaper and author of environment. even at birth the soul comes to its own and through every step of its earthly pilgrimage it attracts those combinations of conditions which reveal itself, which are the reflections of its own purity and, impurity, its strength and weakness. men do not attract that which they _want,_ but that which they _are._ their whims, fancies, and ambitions are thwarted at every step, but their inmost thoughts and desires are fed with their own food, be it foul or clean. the "divinity that shapes our ends" is in ourselves; it is our very self. only himself manacles man: thought and action are the gaolers of fate--they imprison, being base; they are also the angels of freedom--they liberate, being noble. not what he wishes and prays for does a man get, but what he justly earns. his wishes and prayers are only gratified and answered when they harmonize with his thoughts and actions. in the light of this truth, what, then, is the meaning of "fighting against circumstances?" it means that a man is continually revolting against an _effect_ without, while all the time he is nourishing and preserving its _cause_ in his heart. that cause may take the form of a conscious vice or an unconscious weakness; but whatever it is, it stubbornly retards the efforts of its possessor, and thus calls aloud for remedy. men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound. the man who does not shrink from self-crucifixion can never fail to accomplish the object upon which his heart is set. this is as true of earthly as of heavenly things. even the man whose sole object is to acquire wealth must be prepared to make great personal sacrifices before he can accomplish his object; and how much more so he who would realize a strong and well-poised life? here is a man who is wretchedly poor. he is extremely anxious that his surroundings and home comforts should be improved, yet all the time he shirks his work, and considers he is justified in trying to deceive his employer on the ground of the insufficiency of his wages. such a man does not understand the simplest rudiments of those principles which are the basis of true prosperity, and is not only totally unfitted to rise out of his wretchedness, but is actually attracting to himself a still deeper wretchedness by dwelling in, and acting out, indolent, deceptive, and unmanly thoughts. here is a rich man who is the victim of a painful and persistent disease as the result of gluttony. he is willing to give large sums of money to get rid of it, but he will not sacrifice his gluttonous desires. he wants to gratify his taste for rich and unnatural viands and have his health as well. such a man is totally unfit to have health, because he has not yet learned the first principles of a healthy life. here is an employer of labour who adopts crooked measures to avoid paying the regulation wage, and, in the hope of making larger profits, reduces the wages of his workpeople. such a man is altogether unfitted for prosperity, and when he finds himself bankrupt, both as regards reputation and riches, he blames circumstances, not knowing that he is the sole author of his condition. i have introduced these three cases merely as illustrative of the truth that man is the causer (though nearly always is unconsciously) of his circumstances, and that, whilst aiming at a good end, he is continually frustrating its accomplishment by encouraging thoughts and desires which cannot possibly harmonize with that end. such cases could be multiplied and varied almost indefinitely, but this is not necessary, as the reader can, if he so resolves, trace the action of the laws of thought in his own mind and life, and until this is done, mere external facts cannot serve as a ground of reasoning. circumstances, however, are so complicated, thought is so deeply rooted, and the conditions of happiness vary so, vastly with individuals, that a man's entire soul-condition (although it may be known to himself) cannot be judged by another from the external aspect of his life alone. a man may be honest in certain directions, yet suffer privations; a man may be dishonest in certain directions, yet acquire wealth; but the conclusion usually formed that the one man fails _because of his particular honesty,_ and that the other _prospers because of his particular dishonesty,_ is the result of a superficial judgment, which assumes that the dishonest man is almost totally corrupt, and the honest man almost entirely virtuous. in the light of a deeper knowledge and wider experience such judgment is found to be erroneous. the dishonest man may have some admirable virtues, which the other does, not possess; and the honest man obnoxious vices which are absent in the other. the honest man reaps the good results of his honest thoughts and acts; he also brings upon himself the sufferings, which his vices produce. the dishonest man likewise garners his own suffering and happiness. it is pleasing to human vanity to believe that one suffers because of one's virtue; but not until a man has extirpated every sickly, bitter, and impure thought from his mind, and washed every sinful stain from his soul, can he be in a position to know and declare that his sufferings are the result of his good, and not of his bad qualities; and on the way to, yet long before he has reached, that supreme perfection, he will have found, working in his mind and life, the great law which is absolutely just, and which cannot, therefore, give good for evil, evil for good. possessed of such knowledge, he will then know, looking back upon his past ignorance and blindness, that his life is, and always was, justly ordered, and that all his past experiences, good and bad, were the equitable outworking of his evolving, yet unevolved self. good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results. this is but saying that nothing can come from corn but corn, nothing from nettles but nettles. men understand this law in the natural world, and work with it; but few understand it in the mental and moral world (though its operation there is just as simple and undeviating), and they, therefore, do not co-operate with it. suffering is _always_ the effect of wrong thought in some direction. it is an indication that the individual is out of harmony with himself, with the law of his being. the sole and supreme use of suffering is to purify, to burn out all that is useless and impure. suffering ceases for him who is pure. there could be no object in burning gold after the dross had been removed, and a perfectly pure and enlightened being could not suffer. the circumstances, which a man encounters with suffering, are the result of his own mental in harmony. the circumstances, which a man encounters with blessedness, are the result of his own mental harmony. blessedness, not material possessions, is the measure of right thought; wretchedness, not lack of material possessions, is the measure of wrong thought. a man may be cursed and rich; he may be blessed and poor. blessedness and riches are only joined together when the riches are rightly and wisely used; and the poor man only descends into wretchedness when he regards his lot as a burden unjustly imposed. indigence and indulgence are the two extremes of wretchedness. they are both equally unnatural and the result of mental disorder. a man is not rightly conditioned until he is a happy, healthy, and prosperous being; and happiness, health, and prosperity are the result of a harmonious adjustment of the inner with the outer, of the man with his surroundings. a man only begins to be a man when he ceases to whine and revile, and commences to search for the hidden justice which regulates his life. and as he adapts his mind to that regulating factor, he ceases to accuse others as the cause of his condition, and builds himself up in strong and noble thoughts; ceases to kick against circumstances, but begins to _use_ them as aids to his more rapid progress, and as a means of discovering the hidden powers and possibilities within himself. law, not confusion, is the dominating principle in the universe; justice, not injustice, is the soul and substance of life; and righteousness, not corruption, is the moulding and moving force in the spiritual government of the world. this being so, man has but to right himself to find that the universe is right; and during the process of putting himself right he will find that as he alters his thoughts towards things and other people, things and other people will alter towards him. the proof of this truth is in every person, and it therefore admits of easy investigation by systematic introspection and self-analysis. let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life. men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance. bestial thoughts crystallize into habits of drunkenness and sensuality, which solidify into circumstances of destitution and disease: impure thoughts of every kind crystallize into enervating and confusing habits, which solidify into distracting and adverse circumstances: thoughts of fear, doubt, and indecision crystallize into weak, unmanly, and irresolute habits, which solidify into circumstances of failure, indigence, and slavish dependence: lazy thoughts crystallize into habits of uncleanliness and dishonesty, which solidify into circumstances of foulness and beggary: hateful and condemnatory thoughts crystallize into habits of accusation and violence, which solidify into circumstances of injury and persecution: selfish thoughts of all kinds crystallize into habits of self-seeking, which solidify into circumstances more or less distressing. on the other hand, beautiful thoughts of all kinds crystallize into habits of grace and kindliness, which solidify into genial and sunny circumstances: pure thoughts crystallize into habits of temperance and self-control, which solidify into circumstances of repose and peace: thoughts of courage, self-reliance, and decision crystallize into manly habits, which solidify into circumstances of success, plenty, and freedom: energetic thoughts crystallize into habits of cleanliness and industry, which solidify into circumstances of pleasantness: gentle and forgiving thoughts crystallize into habits of gentleness, which solidify into protective and preservative circumstances: loving and unselfish thoughts crystallize into habits of self-forgetfulness for others, which solidify into circumstances of sure and abiding prosperity and true riches. a particular train of thought persisted in, be it good or bad, cannot fail to produce its results on the character and circumstances. a man cannot _directly_ choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances. nature helps every man to the gratification of the thoughts, which he most encourages, and opportunities are presented which will most speedily bring to the surface both the good and evil thoughts. let a man cease from his sinful thoughts, and all the world will soften towards him, and be ready to help him; let him put away his weakly and sickly thoughts, and lo, opportunities will spring up on every hand to aid his strong resolves; let him encourage good thoughts, and no hard fate shall bind him down to wretchedness and shame. the world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colours, which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the exquisitely adjusted pictures of your ever-moving thoughts. "so you will be what you will to be; let failure find its false content in that poor word, 'environment,' but spirit scorns it, and is free. "it masters time, it conquers space; it cowes that boastful trickster, chance, and bids the tyrant circumstance uncrown, and fill a servant's place. "the human will, that force unseen, the offspring of a deathless soul, can hew a way to any goal, though walls of granite intervene. "be not impatient in delays but wait as one who understands; when spirit rises and commands the gods are ready to obey." effect of thought on health and the body the body is the servant of the mind. it obeys the operations of the mind, whether they be deliberately chosen or automatically expressed. at the bidding of unlawful thoughts the body sinks rapidly into disease and decay; at the command of glad and beautiful thoughts it becomes clothed with youthfulness and beauty. disease and health, like circumstances, are rooted in thought. sickly thoughts will express themselves through a sickly body. thoughts of fear have been known to kill a man as speedily as a bullet, and they are continually killing thousands of people just as surely though less rapidly. the people who live in fear of disease are the people who get it. anxiety quickly demoralizes the whole body, and lays it open to the entrance of disease; while impure thoughts, even if not physically indulged, will soon shatter the nervous system. strong, pure, and happy thoughts build up the body in vigour and grace. the body is a delicate and plastic instrument, which responds readily to the thoughts by which it is impressed, and habits of thought will produce their own effects, good or bad, upon it. men will continue to have impure and poisoned blood, so long as they propagate unclean thoughts. out of a clean heart comes a clean life and a clean body. out of a defiled mind proceeds a defiled life and a corrupt body. thought is the fount of action, life, and manifestation; make the fountain pure, and all will be pure. change of diet will not help a man who will not change his thoughts. when a man makes his thoughts pure, he no longer desires impure food. clean thoughts make clean habits. the so-called saint who does not wash his body is not a saint. he who has strengthened and purified his thoughts does not need to consider the malevolent microbe. if you would protect your body, guard your mind. if you would renew your body, beautify your mind. thoughts of malice, envy, disappointment, despondency, rob the body of its health and grace. a sour face does not come by chance; it is made by sour thoughts. wrinkles that mar are drawn by folly, passion, and pride. i know a woman of ninety-six who has the bright, innocent face of a girl. i know a man well under middle age whose face is drawn into inharmonious contours. the one is the result of a sweet and sunny disposition; the other is the outcome of passion and discontent. as you cannot have a sweet and wholesome abode unless you admit the air and sunshine freely into your rooms, so a strong body and a bright, happy, or serene countenance can only result from the free admittance into the mind of thoughts of joy and goodwill and serenity. on the faces of the aged there are wrinkles made by sympathy, others by strong and pure thought, and others are carved by passion: who cannot distinguish them? with those who have lived righteously, age is calm, peaceful, and softly mellowed, like the setting sun. i have recently seen a philosopher on his deathbed. he was not old except in years. he died as sweetly and peacefully as he had lived. there is no physician like cheerful thought for dissipating the ills of the body; there is no comforter to compare with goodwill for dispersing the shadows of grief and sorrow. to live continually in thoughts of ill will, cynicism, suspicion, and envy, is to be confined in a self made prison-hole. but to think well of all, to be cheerful with all, to patiently learn to find the good in all--such unselfish thoughts are the very portals of heaven; and to dwell day by day in thoughts of peace toward every creature will bring abounding peace to their possessor. thought and purpose until thought is linked with purpose there is no intelligent accomplishment. with the majority the bark of thought is allowed to "drift" upon the ocean of life. aimlessness is a vice, and such drifting must not continue for him who would steer clear of catastrophe and destruction. they who have no central purpose in their life fall an easy prey to petty worries, fears, troubles, and self-pityings, all of which are indications of weakness, which lead, just as surely as deliberately planned sins (though by a different route), to failure, unhappiness, and loss, for weakness cannot persist in a power evolving universe. a man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. he should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. it may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought-forces upon the object, which he has set before him. he should make this purpose his supreme duty, and should devote himself to its attainment, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. this is the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought. even if he fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the _strength of character gained_ will be the measure of _his true_ success, and this will form a new starting-point for future power and triumph. those who are not prepared for the apprehension of a _great_ purpose should fix the thoughts upon the faultless performance of their duty, no matter how insignificant their task may appear. only in this way can the thoughts be gathered and focussed, and resolution and energy be developed, which being done, there is nothing which may not be accomplished. the weakest soul, knowing its own weakness, and believing this truth _that strength can only be developed by effort and practice,_ will, thus believing, at once begin to exert itself, and, adding effort to effort, patience to patience, and strength to strength, will never cease to develop, and will at last grow divinely strong. as the physically weak man can make himself strong by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts can make them strong by exercising himself in right thinking. to put away aimlessness and weakness, and to begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment; who make all conditions serve them, and who think strongly, attempt fearlessly, and accomplish masterfully. having conceived of his purpose, a man should mentally mark out a _straight_ pathway to its achievement, looking neither to the right nor the left. doubts and fears should be rigorously excluded; they are disintegrating elements, which break up the straight line of effort, rendering it crooked, ineffectual, useless. thoughts of doubt and fear never accomplished anything, and never can. they always lead to failure. purpose, energy, power to do, and all strong thoughts cease when doubt and fear creep in. the will to do springs from the knowledge that we _can_ do. doubt and fear are the great enemies of knowledge, and he who encourages them, who does not slay them, thwarts himself at every step. he who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure. his every thought is allied with power, and all difficulties are bravely met and wisely overcome. his purposes are seasonably planted, and they bloom and bring forth fruit, which does not fall prematurely to the ground. thought allied fearlessly to purpose becomes creative force: he who _knows_ this is ready to become something higher and stronger than a mere bundle of wavering thoughts and fluctuating sensations; he who _does_ this has become the conscious and intelligent wielder of his mental powers. the thought-factor in achievement all that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts. in a justly ordered universe, where loss of equipoise would mean total destruction, individual responsibility must be absolute. a man's weakness and strength, purity and impurity, are his own, and not another man's; they are brought about by himself, and not by another; and they can only be altered by himself, never by another. his condition is also his own, and not another man's. his suffering and his happiness are evolved from within. as he thinks, so he is; as he continues to think, so he remains. a strong man cannot help a weaker unless that weaker is _willing_ to be helped, and even then the weak man must become strong of himself; he must, by his own efforts, develop the strength which he admires in another. none but himself can alter his condition. it has been usual for men to think and to say, "many men are slaves because one is an oppressor; let us hate the oppressor." now, however, there is amongst an increasing few a tendency to reverse this judgment, and to say, "one man is an oppressor because many are slaves; let us despise the slaves." the truth is that oppressor and slave are co-operators in ignorance, and, while seeming to afflict each other, are in reality afflicting themselves. a perfect knowledge perceives the action of law in the weakness of the oppressed and the misapplied power of the oppressor; a perfect love, seeing the suffering, which both states entail, condemns neither; a perfect compassion embraces both oppressor and oppressed. he who has conquered weakness, and has put away all selfish thoughts, belongs neither to oppressor nor oppressed. he is free. a man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. he can only remain weak, and abject, and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts. before a man can achieve anything, even in worldly things, he must lift his thoughts above slavish animal indulgence. he may not, in order to succeed, give up all animality and selfishness, by any means; but a portion of it must, at least, be sacrificed. a man whose first thought is bestial indulgence could neither think clearly nor plan methodically; he could not find and develop his latent resources, and would fail in any undertaking. not having commenced to manfully control his thoughts, he is not in a position to control affairs and to adopt serious responsibilities. he is not fit to act independently and stand alone. but he is limited only by the thoughts, which he chooses. there can be no progress, no achievement without sacrifice, and a man's worldly success will be in the measure that he sacrifices his confused animal thoughts, and fixes his mind on the development of his plans, and the strengthening of his resolution and self-reliance. and the higher he lifts his thoughts, the more manly, upright, and righteous he becomes, the greater will be his success, the more blessed and enduring will be his achievements. the universe does not favour the greedy, the dishonest, the vicious, although on the mere surface it may sometimes appear to do so; it helps the honest, the magnanimous, the virtuous. all the great teachers of the ages have declared this in varying forms, and to prove and know it a man has but to persist in making himself more and more virtuous by lifting up his thoughts. intellectual achievements are the result of thought consecrated to the search for knowledge, or for the beautiful and true in life and nature. such achievements may be sometimes connected with vanity and ambition, but they are not the outcome of those characteristics; they are the natural outgrowth of long and arduous effort, and of pure and unselfish thoughts. spiritual achievements are the consummation of holy aspirations. he who lives constantly in the conception of noble and lofty thoughts, who dwells upon all that is pure and unselfish, will, as surely as the sun reaches its zenith and the moon its full, become wise and noble in character, and rise into a position of influence and blessedness. achievement, of whatever kind, is the crown of effort, the diadem of thought. by the aid of self-control, resolution, purity, righteousness, and well-directed thought a man ascends; by the aid of animality, indolence, impurity, corruption, and confusion of thought a man descends. a man may rise to high success in the world, and even to lofty altitudes in the spiritual realm, and again descend into weakness and wretchedness by allowing arrogant, selfish, and corrupt thoughts to take possession of him. victories attained by right thought can only be maintained by watchfulness. many give way when success is assured, and rapidly fall back into failure. all achievements, whether in the business, intellectual, or spiritual world, are the result of definitely directed thought, are governed by the same law and are of the same method; the only difference lies in _the object of attainment._ he who would accomplish little must sacrifice little; he who would achieve much must sacrifice much; he who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly. visions and ideals the dreamers are the saviours of the world. as the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers. humanity cannot forget its dreamers; it cannot let their ideals fade and die; it lives in them; it knows them as the _realities_ which it shall one day see and know. composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage, these are the makers of the after-world, the architects of heaven. the world is beautiful because they have lived; without them, labouring humanity would perish. he who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it. columbus cherished a vision of another world, and he discovered it; copernicus fostered the vision of a multiplicity of worlds and a wider universe, and he revealed it; buddha beheld the vision of a spiritual world of stainless beauty and perfect peace, and he entered into it. cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all, heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built. to desire is to obtain; to aspire is to, achieve. shall man's basest desires receive the fullest measure of gratification, and his purest aspirations starve for lack of sustenance? such is not the law: such a condition of things can never obtain: "ask and receive." dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil. the greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. the oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. dreams are the seedlings of realities. your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an ideal and strive to reach it. you cannot travel _within_ and stand still _without._ here is a youth hard pressed by poverty and labour; confined long hours in an unhealthy workshop; unschooled, and lacking all the arts of refinement. but he dreams of better things; he thinks of intelligence, of refinement, of grace and beauty. he conceives of, mentally builds up, an ideal condition of life; the vision of a wider liberty and a larger scope takes possession of him; unrest urges him to action, and he utilizes all his spare time and means, small though they are, to the development of his latent powers and resources. very soon so altered has his mind become that the workshop can no longer hold him. it has become so out of harmony with his mentality that it falls out of his life as a garment is cast aside, and, with the growth of opportunities, which fit the scope of his expanding powers, he passes out of it forever. years later we see this youth as a full-grown man. we find him a master of certain forces of the mind, which he wields with worldwide influence and almost unequalled power. in his hands he holds the cords of gigantic responsibilities; he speaks, and lo, lives are changed; men and women hang upon his words and remould their characters, and, sunlike, he becomes the fixed and luminous centre round which innumerable destinies revolve. he has realized the vision of his youth. he has become one with his ideal. and you, too, youthful reader, will realize the vision (not the idle wish) of your heart, be it base or beautiful, or a mixture of both, for you will always gravitate toward that which you, secretly, most love. into your hands will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts; you will receive that which you earn; no more, no less. whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts, your vision, your ideal. you will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration: in the beautiful words of stanton kirkham davis, "you may be keeping accounts, and presently you shall walk out of the door that for so long has seemed to you the barrier of your ideals, and shall find yourself before an audience--the pen still behind your ear, the ink stains on your fingers and then and there shall pour out the torrent of your inspiration. you may be driving sheep, and you shall wander to the city-bucolic and open-mouthed; shall wander under the intrepid guidance of the spirit into the studio of the master, and after a time he shall say, 'i have nothing more to teach you.' and now you have become the master, who did so recently dream of great things while driving sheep. you shall lay down the saw and the plane to take upon yourself the regeneration of the world." the thoughtless, the ignorant, and the indolent, seeing only the apparent effects of things and not the things themselves, talk of luck, of fortune, and chance. seeing a man grow rich, they say, "how lucky he is!" observing another become intellectual, they exclaim, "how highly favoured he is!" and noting the saintly character and wide influence of another, they remark, "how chance aids him at every turn!" they do not see the trials and failures and struggles which these men have voluntarily encountered in order to gain their experience; have no knowledge of the sacrifices they have made, of the undaunted efforts they have put forth, of the faith they have exercised, that they might overcome the apparently insurmountable, and realize the vision of their heart. they do not know the darkness and the heartaches; they only see the light and joy, and call it "luck". they do not see the long and arduous journey, but only behold the pleasant goal, and call it "good fortune," do not understand the process, but only perceive the result, and call it chance. in all human affairs there are _efforts,_ and there are _results,_ and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. chance is not. gifts, powers, material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort; they are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized. the vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart--this you will build your life by, this you will become. serenity calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. it is the result of long and patient effort in self-control. its presence is an indication of ripened experience, and of a more than ordinary knowledge of the laws and operations of thought. a man becomes calm in the measure that he understands himself as a thought evolved being, for such knowledge necessitates the understanding of others as the result of thought, and as he develops a right understanding, and sees more and more clearly the internal relations of things by the action of cause and effect he ceases to fuss and fume and worry and grieve, and remains poised, steadfast, serene. the calm man, having learned how to govern himself, knows how to adapt himself to others; and they, in turn, reverence his spiritual strength, and feel that they can learn of him and rely upon him. the more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good. even the ordinary trader will find his business prosperity increase as he develops a greater self-control and equanimity, for people will always prefer to deal with a man whose demeanour is strongly equable. the strong, calm man is always loved and revered. he is like a shade-giving tree in a thirsty land, or a sheltering rock in a storm. "who does not love a tranquil heart, a sweet-tempered, balanced life? it does not matter whether it rains or shines, or what changes come to those possessing these blessings, for they are always sweet, serene, and calm. that exquisite poise of character, which we call serenity is the last lesson of culture, the fruitage of the soul. it is precious as wisdom, more to be desired than gold--yea, than even fine gold. how insignificant mere money seeking looks in comparison with a serene life--a life that dwells in the ocean of truth, beneath the waves, beyond the reach of tempests, in the eternal calm! "how many people we know who sour their lives, who ruin all that is sweet and beautiful by explosive tempers, who destroy their poise of character, and make bad blood! it is a question whether the great majority of people do not ruin their lives and mar their happiness by lack of self-control. how few people we meet in life who are well balanced, who have that exquisite poise which is characteristic of the finished character! yes, humanity surges with uncontrolled passion, is tumultuous with ungoverned grief, is blown about by anxiety and doubt only the wise man, only he whose thoughts are controlled and purified, makes the winds and the storms of the soul obey him. tempest-tossed souls, wherever ye may be, under whatsoever conditions ye may live, know this in the ocean of life the isles of blessedness are smiling, and the sunny shore of your ideal awaits your coming. keep your hand firmly upon the helm of thought. in the bark of your soul reclines the commanding master; he does but sleep: wake him. self-control is strength; right thought is mastery; calmness is power. say unto your heart, "peace, be still!" none distributed proofreaders the edinburgh lectures on mental science by thomas troward late divisional judge, punjab the writer affectionately dedicates this little volume to his wife foreword. this book contains the substance of a course of lectures recently given by the writer in the queen street hall, edinburgh. its purpose is to indicate the _natural principles_ governing the relation between mental action and material conditions, and thus to afford the student an intelligible starting-point for the practical study of the subject. t.t. march, . contents. i.--spirit and matter. ii.--the higher mode of intelligence controls the lower iii.--the unity of the spirit iv.--subjective and objective mind v.--further considerations regarding subjective and objective mind vi.--the law of growth vii.--receptivity. viii.--reciprocal action of the universal and individual minds ix.--causes and conditions x.--intuition xi.--healing xii.--the will xiii.--in touch with subconscious mind xiv.--the body xv.--the soul xvi.--the spirit i. spirit and matter. in commencing a course of lectures on mental science, it is somewhat difficult for the lecturer to fix upon the best method of opening the subject. it can be approached from many sides, each with some peculiar advantage of its own; but, after careful deliberation, it appears to me that, for the purpose of the present course, no better starting-point could be selected than the relation between spirit and matter. i select this starting-point because the distinction--or what we believe to be such-- between them is one with which we are so familiar that i can safely assume its recognition by everybody; and i may, therefore, at once state this distinction by using the adjectives which we habitually apply as expressing the natural opposition between the two--_living_ spirit and _dead_ matter. these terms express our current impression of the opposition between spirit and matter with sufficient accuracy, and considered only from the point of view of outward appearances this impression is no doubt correct. the general consensus of mankind is right in trusting the evidence of our senses, and any system which tells us that we are not to do so will never obtain a permanent footing in a sane and healthy community. there is nothing wrong in the evidence conveyed to a healthy mind by the senses of a healthy body, but the point where error creeps in is when we come to judge of the meaning of this testimony. we are accustomed to judge only by external appearances and by certain limited significances which we attach to words; but when we begin to enquire into the real meaning of our words and to analyse the causes which give rise to the appearances, we find our old notions gradually falling off from us, until at last we wake up to the fact that we are living in an entirely different world to that we formerly recognized. the old limited mode of thought has imperceptibly slipped away, and we discover that we have stepped out into a new order of things where all is liberty and life. this is the work of an enlightened intelligence resulting from persistent determination to discover what truth really is irrespective of any preconceived notions from whatever source derived, the determination to think honestly for ourselves instead of endeavouring to get our thinking done for us. let us then commence by enquiring what we really mean by the livingness which we attribute to spirit and the deadness which we attribute to matter. at first we may be disposed to say that livingness consists in the power of motion and deadness in its absence; but a little enquiry into the most recent researches of science will soon show us that this distinction does not go deep enough. it is now one of the fully-established facts of physical science that no atom of what we call "dead matter" is without motion. on the table before me lies a solid lump of steel, but in the light of up-to-date science i know that the atoms of that seemingly inert mass are vibrating with the most intense energy, continually dashing hither and thither, impinging upon and rebounding from one another, or circling round like miniature solar systems, with a ceaseless rapidity whose complex activity is enough to bewilder the imagination. the mass, as a mass, may lie inert upon the table; but so far from being destitute of the element of motion it is the abode of the never-tiring energy moving the particles with a swiftness to which the speed of an express train is as nothing. it is, therefore, not the mere fact of motion that is at the root of the distinction which we draw instinctively between spirit and matter; we must go deeper than that. the solution of the problem will never be found by comparing life with what we call deadness, and the reason for this will become apparent later on; but the true key is to be found by comparing one degree of livingness with another. there is, of course, one sense in which the quality of livingness does not admit of degrees; but there is another sense in which it is entirely a question of degree. we have no doubt as to the livingness of a plant, but we realize that it is something very different from the livingness of an animal. again, what average boy would not prefer a fox-terrier to a goldfish for a pet? or, again, why is it that the boy himself is an advance upon the dog? the plant, the fish, the dog, and the boy are all equally _alive_; but there is a difference in the quality of their livingness about which no one can have any doubt, and no one would hesitate to say that this difference is in the degree of intelligence. in whatever way we turn the subject we shall always find that what we call the "livingness" of any individual life is ultimately measured by its intelligence. it is the possession of greater intelligence that places the animal higher in the scale of being than the plant, the man higher than the animal, the intellectual man higher than the savage. the increased intelligence calls into activity modes of motion of a higher order corresponding to itself. the higher the intelligence, the more completely the mode of motion is under its control: and as we descend in the scale of intelligence, the descent is marked by a corresponding increase in _automatic_ motion not subject to the control of a self-conscious intelligence. this descent is gradual from the expanded self-recognition of the highest human personality to that lowest order of visible forms which we speak of as "things," and from which self-recognition is entirely absent. we see, then, that the livingness of life consists in intelligence--in other words, in the power of thought; and we may therefore say that the distinctive quality of spirit is thought, and, as the opposite to this, we may say that the distinctive quality of matter is form. we cannot conceive of matter without form. some form there must be, even though invisible to the physical eye; for matter, to be matter at all, must occupy space, and to occupy any particular space necessarily implies a corresponding form. for these reasons we may lay it down as a fundamental proposition that the distinctive quality of spirit is thought and the distinctive quality of matter is form. this is a radical distinction from which important consequences follow, and should, therefore, be carefully noted by the student. form implies extension in space and also limitation within certain boundaries. thought implies neither. when, therefore, we think of life as existing in any particular _form_ we associate it with the idea of extension in space, so that an elephant may be said to consist of a vastly larger amount of living substance than a mouse. but if we think of life as the fact of livingness we do not associate it with any idea of extension, and we at once realize that the mouse is quite as much alive as the elephant, notwithstanding the difference in size. the important point of this distinction is that if we can conceive of anything as entirely devoid of the element of extension in space, it must be present in its entire totality anywhere and everywhere--that is to say, at every point of space simultaneously. the scientific definition of time is that it is the period occupied by a body in passing from one given point in space to another, and, therefore, according to this definition, when there is no space there can be no time; and hence that conception of spirit which realizes it as devoid of the element of space must realize it as being devoid of the element of time also; and we therefore find that the conception of spirit as pure thought, and not as concrete form, is the conception of it as subsisting perfectly independently of the elements of time and space. from this it follows that if the idea of anything is conceived as existing on this level it can only represent that thing as being actually present here and now. in this view of things nothing can be remote from us either in time or space: either the idea is entirely dissipated or it exists as an actual present entity, and not as something that _shall_ be in the future, for where there is no sequence in time there can be no future. similarly where there is no space there can be no conception of anything as being at a distance from us. when the elements of time and space are eliminated all our ideas of things must necessarily be as subsisting in a universal here and an everlasting now. this is, no doubt, a highly abstract conception, but i would ask the student to endeavour to grasp it thoroughly, since it is of vital importance in the practical application of mental science, as will appear further on. the opposite conception is that of things expressing themselves through conditions of time and space and thus establishing a variety of _relations_ to other things, as of bulk, distance, and direction, or of sequence in time. these two conceptions are respectively the conception of the abstract and the concrete, of the unconditioned and the conditioned, of the absolute and the relative. they are not opposed to each other in the sense of incompatibility, but are each the complement of the other, and the only reality is in the combination of the two. the error of the extreme idealist is in endeavouring to realize the absolute without the relative, and the error of the extreme materialist is in endeavouring to realize the relative without the absolute. on the one side the mistake is in trying to realize an inside without an outside, and on the other in trying to realize an outside without an inside; both are necessary to the formation of a substantial entity. ii. the higher mode of intelligence controls the lower. we have seen that the descent from personality, as we know it in ourselves, to matter, as we know it under what we call inanimate forms, is a gradual descent in the scale of intelligence from that mode of being which is able to realize its own will-power as a capacity for originating new trains of causation to that mode of being which is incapable of recognizing itself at all. the higher the grade of life, the higher the intelligence; from which it follows that the supreme principle of life must also be the ultimate principle of intelligence. this is clearly demonstrated by the grand natural order of the universe. in the light of modern science the principle of evolution is familiar to us all, and the accurate adjustment existing between all parts of the cosmic scheme is too self-evident to need insisting upon. every advance in science consists in discovering new subtleties of connection in this magnificent universal order, which already exists and only needs our recognition to bring it into practical use. if, then, the highest work of the greatest minds consists in nothing else than the recognition of an already existing order, there is no getting away from the conclusion that a paramount intelligence must be inherent in the life-principle, which manifests itself _as_ this order; and thus we see that there must be a great cosmic intelligence underlying the totality of things. the physical history of our planet shows us first an incandescent nebula dispersed over vast infinitudes of space; later this condenses into a central sun surrounded by a family of glowing planets hardly yet consolidated from the plastic primordial matter; then succeed untold millenniums of slow geological formation; an earth peopled by the lowest forms of life, whether vegetable or animal; from which crude beginnings a majestic, unceasing, unhurried, forward movement brings things stage by stage to the condition in which we know them now. looking at this steady progression it is clear that, however we may conceive the nature of the evolutionary principle, it unerringly provides for the continual advance of the race. but it does this by creating such numbers of each kind that, after allowing a wide margin for all possible accidents to individuals, the race shall still continue:-- "so careful of the type it seems so careless of the single life." in short, we may say that the cosmic intelligence works by a law of averages which allows a wide margin of accident and failure to the individual. but the progress towards higher intelligence is always in the direction of narrowing down this margin of accident and taking the individual more and more out of the law of averages, and substituting the law of individual selection. in ordinary scientific language this is the survival of the fittest. the reproduction of fish is on a scale that would choke the sea with them if every individual survived; but the margin of destruction is correspondingly enormous, and thus the law of averages simply keeps up the normal proportion of the race. but at the other end of the scale, reproduction is by no means thus enormously in excess of survival. true, there is ample margin of accident and disease cutting off numbers of human beings before they have gone through the average duration of life, but still it is on a very different scale from the premature destruction of hundreds of thousands as against the survival of one. it may, therefore, be taken as an established fact that in proportion as intelligence advances the individual ceases to be subject to a mere law of averages and has a continually increasing power of controlling the conditions of his own survival. we see, therefore, that there is a marked distinction between the cosmic intelligence and the individual intelligence, and that the factor which differentiates the latter from the former is the presence of _individual_ volition. now the business of mental science is to ascertain the relation of this individual power of volition to the great cosmic law which provides for the maintenance and advancement of the race; and the point to be carefully noted is that the power of individual volition is itself the outcome of the cosmic evolutionary principle at the point where it reaches its highest level. the effort of nature has always been upwards from the time when only the lowest forms of life peopled the globe, and it has now culminated in the production of a being with a mind capable of abstract reasoning and a brain fitted to be the physical instrument of such a mind. at this stage the all-creating life-principle reproduces itself in a form capable of recognizing the working of the evolutionary law, and the unity and continuity of purpose running through the whole progression until now indicates, beyond a doubt, that the place of such a being in the universal scheme must be to introduce the operation of that factor which, up to this point, has been, conspicuous by its absence--the factor, namely, of intelligent individual volition. the evolution which has brought us up to this standpoint has worked by a cosmic law of averages; it has been a process in which the individual himself has not taken a conscious part. but because he is what he is, and leads the van of the evolutionary procession, if man is to evolve further, it can now only be by his own conscious co-operation with the law which has brought him up to the standpoint where he is able to realize that such a law exists. his evolution in the future must be by conscious participation in the great work, and this can only be effected by his own individual intelligence and effort. it is a process of intelligent growth. no one else can grow for us: we must each grow for ourselves; and this intelligent growth consists in our increasing recognition of the universal law, which has brought us as far as we have yet got, and of our own individual relation to that law, based upon the fact that we ourselves are the most advanced product of it. it is a great maxim that nature obeys us precisely in proportion as we first obey nature. let the electrician try to go counter to the principle that electricity must always pass from a higher to a lower potential and he will effect nothing; but let him submit in all things to this one fundamental law, and he can make whatever particular applications of electrical power he will. these considerations show us that what differentiates the higher from the lower degree of intelligence is the recognition of its own self-hood, and the more intelligent that recognition is, the greater will be the power. the lower degree of self-recognition is that which only realizes itself as an entity separate from all other entities, as the _ego_ distinguished from the _non-ego_. but the higher degree of self-recognition is that which, realizing its own spiritual nature, sees in all other forms, not so much the _non-ego_, or that which is not itself, as the _alter-ego_, or that which is itself in a different mode of expression. now, it is this higher degree of self-recognition that is the power by which the mental scientist produces his results. for this reason it is imperative that he should clearly understand the difference between form and being; that the one is the mode of the relative and, the mark of subjection to conditions, and that the other is the truth of the absolute and is that which controls conditions. now this higher recognition of self as an individualization of pure spirit must of necessity control all modes of spirit which have not yet reached the same level of self-recognition. these lower modes of spirit are in bondage to the law of their own being because they do not know the law; and, therefore, the individual who has attained to this knowledge can control them through that law. but to understand this we must inquire a little further into the nature of spirit. i have already shown that the grand scale of adaptation and adjustment of all parts of the cosmic scheme to one another exhibits the presence _somewhere_ of a marvellous intelligence, underlying the whole, and the question is, where is this intelligence to be found? ultimately we can only conceive of it as inherent in some primordial substance which is the root of all those grosser modes of matter which are known to us, whether visible to the physical eye, or necessarily inferred by science from their perceptible effects. it is that power which, in every species and in every individual, becomes that which that species or individual is; and thus we can only conceive of it as a self-forming intelligence inherent in the ultimate substance of which each thing is a particular manifestation. that this primordial substance must be considered as self-forming by an inherent intelligence abiding in itself becomes evident from the fact that intelligence is the essential quality of spirit; and if we were to conceive of the primordial substance as something apart from spirit, then we should have to postulate some other power which is neither spirit nor matter, and originates both; but this is only putting the idea of a self-evolving power a step further back and asserting the production of a lower grade of undifferentiated spirit by a higher, which is both a purely gratuitous assumption and a contradiction of any idea we can form of undifferentiated spirit at all. however far back, therefore, we may relegate the original starting-point, we cannot avoid the conclusion that, at that point, spirit contains the primary substance in itself, which brings us back to the common statement that it made everything out of nothing. we thus find two factors to the making of all things, spirit and--nothing; and the addition of nothing to spirit leaves _only_ spirit: x + = x. from these considerations we see that the ultimate foundation of every form of matter is spirit, and hence that a universal intelligence subsists throughout nature inherent in every one of its manifestations. but this cryptic intelligence does not belong to the particular _form_ excepting in the measure in which it is physically fitted for its concentration into self-recognizing individuality: it lies hidden in that primordial substance of which the visible form is a grosser manifestation. this primordial substance is a philosophical necessity, and we can only picture it to ourselves as something infinitely finer than the atoms which are themselves a philosophical inference of physical science: still, for want of a better word, we may conveniently speak of this primary intelligence inherent in the very substance of things as the atomic intelligence. the term may, perhaps, be open to some objections, but it will serve our present purpose as distinguishing _this_ mode of spirit's intelligence from that of the opposite pole, or individual intelligence. this distinction should be carefully noted because it is by the response of the atomic intelligence to the individual intelligence that thought-power is able to produce results on the material plane, as in the cure of disease by mental treatment, and the like. intelligence manifests itself by responsiveness, and the whole action of the cosmic mind in bringing the evolutionary process from its first beginnings up to its present human stage is nothing else but a continual intelligent response to the demand which each stage in the progress has made for an adjustment between itself and its environment. since, then, we have recognized the presence of a universal intelligence permeating all things, we must also recognize a corresponding responsiveness hidden deep down in their nature and ready to be called into action when appealed to. all mental treatment depends on this responsiveness of spirit in its lower degrees to higher degrees of itself. it is here that the difference between the mental scientist and the uninstructed person comes in; the former knows of this responsiveness and makes use of it, and the latter cannot use it because he does not know it. iii the unity of the spirit. we have now paved the way for understanding what is meant by "the unity of the spirit." in the first conception of spirit as the underlying origin of all things we see a universal substance which, at this stage, is not differentiated into any specific forms. this is not a question of some bygone time, but subsists at every moment of all time in the _innermost_ nature of all being; and when we see this, we see that the division between one specific form and another has below it a deep essential unity, which acts as the supporter of all the several forms of individuality arising out of it. and as our thought penetrates deeper into the nature of this all-producing spiritual substance we see that it cannot be limited to any one portion of space, but must be limitless as space itself, and that the idea of any portion of space where it is not is inconceivable. it is one of those intuitive perceptions from which the human mind can never get away that this primordial, all-generating living spirit must be commensurate with infinitude, and we can therefore never think of it otherwise than as universal or infinite. now it is a mathematical truth that the infinite must be a unity. you cannot have two infinites, for then neither would be infinite, each would be limited by the other, nor can you split the infinite up into fractions. the infinite is mathematically essential unity. this is a point on which too much stress cannot be laid, for there follow from it the most important consequences. unity, as such, can be neither multiplied nor divided, for either operation destroys the unity. by multiplying, we produce a plurality of units of the same scale as the original; and by dividing, we produce a plurality of units of a smaller scale; and a plurality of units is not unity but multiplicity. therefore if we would penetrate below the outward nature of the individual to that innermost principle of his being from which his individuality takes its rise, we can do so only by passing beyond the conception of individual existence into that of the unity of universal being. this may appear to be a merely philosophical abstraction, but the student who would produce practical results must realize that these abstract generalizations are the foundation of the practical work he is going to do. now the great fact to be recognized about a unity is that, _because_ it is a single unit, wherever it is at all the _whole_ of it must be. the moment we allow our mind to wander off to the idea of extension in space and say that one part of the unit is here and another there, we have descended from the idea of unity into that of parts or fractions of a single unit, which is to pass into the idea of a multiplicity of smaller units, and in that case we are dealing with the relative, or the relation subsisting between two or more entities which are therefore _limited by each other_, and so have passed out of the region of simple unity which is the absolute. it is, therefore, a mathematical necessity that, because the originating life- principle is infinite, it is a single unit, and consequently, wherever it is at all, the _whole_ of it must be present. but because it is _infinite_, or limitless, it is everywhere, and therefore it follows that the _whole_ of spirit must be present at every point in space at the same moment. spirit is thus omnipresent _in its entirety_, and it is accordingly logically correct that at every moment of time _all_ spirit is concentrated at any point in space that we may choose to fix our thought upon. this is the fundamental fact of all being, and it is for this reason that i have prepared the way for it by laying down the relation between spirit and matter as that between idea and form, on the one hand the absolute from which the elements of time and space are entirely absent, and on the other the relative which is entirely dependent on those elements. this great fact is that pure spirit continually subsists in the absolute, whether in a corporeal body or not; and from it all the phenomena of being flow, whether on the mental plane or the physical. the knowledge of this fact regarding spirit is the basis of all conscious spiritual operation, and therefore in proportion to our increasing recognition of it our power of producing outward visible results by the action of our thought will grow. the whole is greater than its part, and therefore, if, by our recognition of this unity, we can concentrate _all_ spirit into any given point at any moment, we thereby include any individualization of it that we may wish to deal with. the practical importance of this conclusion is too obvious to need enlarging upon. pure spirit is the life-principle considered apart from the matrix in which it takes relation to time and space in a particular form. in this aspect it is pure intelligence undifferentiated into individuality. as pure intelligence it is infinite responsiveness and susceptibility. as devoid of relation to time and space it is devoid of individual personality. it is, therefore, in this aspect a purely impersonal element upon which, by reason of its inherent intelligence and susceptibility, we can impress any recognition of personality that we will. these are the great facts that the mental scientist works with, and the student will do well to ponder deeply on their significance and on the responsibilities which their realization must necessarily carry with it. iv. subjective and objective mind. up to this point it has been necessary to lay the foundations of the science by the statement of highly abstract general principles which we have reached by purely metaphysical reasoning. we now pass on to the consideration of certain natural laws which have been established by a long series of experiments and observations, the full meaning and importance of which will become clear when we see their application to the general principles which have hitherto occupied our attention. the phenomena of hypnosis are now so fully recognized as established scientific facts that it is quite superfluous to discuss the question of their credibility. two great medical schools have been founded upon them, and in some countries they have become the subject of special legislation. the question before us at the present day is, not as to the credibility of the facts, but as to the proper inferences to be drawn from them, and a correct apprehension of these inferences is one of the most valuable aids to the mental scientist, for it confirms the conclusions of purely _a priori_ reasoning by an array of experimental instances which places the correctness of those conclusions beyond doubt. the great truth which the science of hypnotism has brought to light is the dual nature of the human mind. much conflict exists between different writers as to whether this duality results from the presence of two actually separate minds in the one man, or in the action of the same mind in the employment of different functions. this is one of those distinctions without a difference which are so prolific a source of hindrance to the opening out of truth. a man must be a single individuality to be a man at all, and, so, the net result is the same whether we conceive of his varied modes of mental action as proceeding from a set of separate minds strung, so to speak, on the thread of his one individuality and each adapted to a particular use, or as varied functions of a single mind: in either case we are dealing with a single individuality, and how we may picture the wheel-work of the mental mechanism is merely a question of what picture will bring the nature of its action home to us most clearly. therefore, as a matter of convenience, i shall in these lectures speak of this dual action as though it proceeded from two minds, an outer and an inner, and the inner mind we will call the subjective mind and the outer the objective, by which names the distinction is most frequently indicated in the literature of the subject. a long series of careful experiments by highly-trained observers, some of them men of world-wide reputation, has fully established certain remarkable differences between the action of the subjective and that of the objective mind which may be briefly stated as follows. the subjective mind is only able to reason _deductively_ and not inductively, while the objective mind can do both. deductive reasoning is the pure syllogism which shows why a third proposition must necessarily result if two others are assumed, but which does not help us to determine whether the two initial statements are true or not. to determine this is the province of inductive reasoning which draws its conclusions from the observation of a series of facts. the relation of the two modes of reasoning is that, first by observing a sufficient number of instances, we inductively reach the conclusion that a certain principle is of general application, and then we enter upon the deductive process by assuming the truth of this principle and determining what result must follow in a particular case on the hypothesis of its truth. thus deductive reasoning proceeds on the assumption of the correctness of certain hypotheses or suppositions with which it sets out: it is not concerned with the truth or falsity of those suppositions, but only with the question as to what results must necessarily follow supposing them to be true. inductive reasoning; on the other hand, is the process by which we compare a number of separate instances with one another until we see the common factor that gives rise to them all. induction proceeds by the comparison of facts, and deduction by the application of universal principles. now it is the deductive method only which is followed by the subjective mind. innumerable experiments on persons in the hypnotic state have shown that the subjective mind is utterly incapable of making the selection and comparison which are necessary to the inductive process, but will accept any suggestion, however false, but having once accepted any suggestion, it is strictly logical in deducing the proper conclusions from it, and works out every suggestion to the minutest fraction of the results which flow from it. as a consequence of this it follows that the subjective mind is entirely under the control of the objective mind. with the utmost fidelity it reproduces and works out to its final consequences whatever the objective mind impresses upon it; and the facts of hypnotism show that ideas can be impressed on the subjective mind by the objective mind of another as well as by that of its own individuality. this is a most important point, for it is on this amenability to suggestion by the thought of another that all the phenomena of healing, whether present or absent, of telepathy and the like, depend. under the control of the practised hypnotist the very personality of the subject becomes changed for the time being; he believes himself to be whatever the operator tells him he is: he is a swimmer breasting the waves, a bird flying in the air, a soldier in the tumult of battle, an indian stealthily tracking his victim: in short, for the time being, he identifies himself with any personality that is impressed upon him by the will of the operator, and acts the part with inimitable accuracy. but the experiments of hypnotism go further than this, and show the existence in the subjective mind of powers far transcending any exercised by the objective mind through the medium of the physical senses; powers of thought-reading, of thought-transference, of clairvoyance, and the like, all of which are frequently manifested when the patient is brought into the higher mesmeric state; and we have thus experimental proof of the existence in ourselves of transcendental faculties the full development and conscious control of which would place us in a perfectly new sphere of life. but it should be noted that the control must be _our own_ and not that of any external intelligence whether in the flesh or out of it. but perhaps the most important fact which hypnotic experiments have demonstrated is that the subjective mind is the builder of the body. the subjective entity in the patient is able to diagnose the character of the disease from which he is suffering and to point out suitable remedies, indicating a physiological knowledge exceeding that of the most highly trained physicians, and also a knowledge of the correspondences between diseased conditions of the bodily organs and the material remedies which can afford relief. and from this it is but a step further to those numerous instances in which it entirely dispenses with the use of material remedies and itself works directly on the organism, so that complete restoration to health follows as the result of the suggestions of perfect soundness made by the operator to the patient while in the hypnotic state. now these are facts fully established by hundreds of experiments conducted by a variety of investigators in different parts of the world, and from them we may draw two inferences of the highest importance: one, that the subjective mind is in itself absolutely impersonal, and the other that it is the builder of the body, or in other words it is the creative power in the individual. that it is impersonal in itself is shown by its readiness to assume any personality the hypnotist chooses to impress upon it; and the unavoidable inference is that its realization of personality proceeds from its association with the particular objective mind of its own individuality. whatever personality the objective mind impresses upon it, that personality it assumes and acts up to; and since it is the builder of the body it will build up a body in correspondence with the personality thus impressed upon it. these two laws of the subjective mind form the foundation of the axiom that our body represents the aggregate of our beliefs. if our fixed belief is that the body is subject to all sorts of influences beyond our control, and that this, that, or the other symptom shows that such an uncontrollable influence is at work upon us, then this belief is impressed upon the subjective mind, which by the law of its nature accepts it without question and proceeds to fashion bodily conditions in accordance with this belief. again, if our fixed belief is that certain material remedies are the only means of cure, then we find in this belief the foundation of all medicine. there is nothing unsound in the theory of medicine; it is the strictly logical correspondence with the measure of knowledge which those who rely on it are as yet able to assimilate, and it acts accurately in accordance with their belief that in a large number of cases medicine will do good, but also in many instances it fails. therefore, for those who have not yet reached a more interior perception of the law of nature, the healing agency of medicine is a most valuable aid to the alleviation of physical maladies. the error to be combated is not the belief that, in its own way, medicine is capable of doing good, but the belief that there is no higher or better way. then, on the same principle, if we realize that the subjective mind is the builder of the body, and that the body is subject to no influences except those which reach it through the subjective mind, then what we have to do is to impress _this_ upon the subjective mind and habitually think of it as a fountain of perpetual life, which is continually renovating the body by building in strong and healthy material, in the most complete independence of any influences of any sort, save those of our own desire impressed upon our own subjective mind by our own thought. when once we fully grasp these considerations we shall see that it is just as easy to externalize healthy conditions of body as the contrary. practically the process amounts to a belief in our own power of life; and since this belief, if it be thoroughly domiciled within us, will necessarily produce a correspondingly healthy body, we should spare no pains to convince ourselves that there are sound and reasonable grounds for holding it. to afford a solid basis for this conviction is the purpose of mental science. v. further considerations regarding subjective and objective mind. an intelligent consideration of the phenomena of hypnotism will show us that what we call the hypnotic state is the _normal_ state of the subjective mind. it _always_ conceives of itself in accordance with some suggestion conveyed to it, either consciously or unconsciously to the mode of objective mind which governs it, and it gives rise to corresponding external results. the abnormal nature of the conditions induced by experimental hypnotism is in the removal of the normal control held by the individual's own objective mind over his subjective mind and the substitution of some other control for it, and thus we may say that the normal characteristic of the subjective mind is its perpetual action in accordance with some sort of suggestion. it becomes therefore a question of the highest importance to determine in every case what the nature of the suggestion shall be and from what source it shall proceed; but before considering the sources of suggestion we must realize more fully the place taken by subjective mind in the order of nature. if the student has followed what has been said regarding the presence of intelligent spirit pervading all space and permeating all matter, he will now have little difficulty in recognizing this all-pervading spirit as universal subjective mind. that it cannot _as universal mind_ have the qualities of objective mind is very obvious. the universal mind is the creative power throughout nature; and as the originating power it must first give rise to the various _forms_ in which objective mind recognizes its own individuality, before these individual minds can re-act upon it; and hence, as pure spirit or _first cause_, it cannot possibly be anything else than subjective mind; and the fact which has been abundantly proved by experiment that the subjective mind is the builder of the body shows us that the power of creating by growth from within is the essential characteristic of the subjective mind. hence, both from experiment and from _a priori_ reasoning, we may say that where-ever we find creative power at work there we are in the presence of subjective mind, whether it be working on the grand scale of the cosmos, or on the miniature scale of the individual. we may therefore lay it down as a principle that the universal all-permeating intelligence, which has been considered in the second and third sections, is purely subjective mind, and therefore follows the law of subjective mind, namely that it is amenable to any suggestion, and will carry out any suggestion that is impressed upon it to its most rigorously logical consequences. the incalculable importance of this truth may not perhaps strike the student at first sight, but a little consideration will show him the enormous possibilities that are stored up in it, and in the concluding section i shall briefly touch upon the very serious conclusions resulting from it. for the present it will be sufficient to realize that the subjective mind in ourselves is _the same_ subjective mind which is at work throughout the universe giving rise to the infinitude of natural forms with which we are surrounded, and in like manner giving rise _to ourselves also_. it may be called the supporter of our individuality; and we may loosely speak of our individual subjective mind as our personal share in the universal mind. this, of course, does not imply the splitting up of the universal mind into fractions, and it is to avoid this error that i have discussed the essential unity of spirit in the third section, but in order to avoid too highly abstract conceptions in the present stage of the student's progress we may conveniently employ the idea of a personal share in the universal subjective mind. to realize our individual subjective mind in this manner will help us to get over the great metaphysical difficulty which meets us in our endeavour to make conscious use of first cause, in other words to create external results by the power of our own thought. ultimately there can be only one first cause which is the universal mind, but because it is universal it cannot, _as universal_, act on the plane of the individual and particular. for it to do so would be for it to cease to be universal and therefore cease to be the creative power which we wish to employ. on the other hand, the fact that we are working for a specific definite object implies our intention to use this universal power in application to a particular purpose, and thus we find ourselves involved in the paradox of seeking to make the universal act on the plane of the particular. we want to effect a junction between the two extremes of the scale of nature, the innermost creative spirit and a particular external form. between these two is a great gulf, and the question is how is it to be bridged over. it is here, then, that the conception of our individual subjective mind as our personal share in the universal subjective mind affords the means of meeting the difficulty, for on the one hand it is in immediate connection with the universal mind, and on the other it is immediate connection with the individual objective, or intellectual mind; and this in its turn is in immediate connection with the world of externalization, which is conditioned in time and space; and thus the relation between the subjective and objective minds in the individual forms the bridge which is needed to connect the two extremities of the scale. the individual subjective mind may therefore be regarded as the organ of the absolute in precisely the same way that the objective mind is the organ of the relative, and it is in order to regulate our use of these two organs that it is necessary to understand what the terms "absolute" and "relative" actually mean. the absolute is that idea of a thing which contemplates it as existing _in itself_ and not in relation to something else, that is to say, which contemplates the essence of it; and the relative is that idea of a thing which contemplates it as related to other things, that is to say as circumscribed by a certain environment. the absolute is the region of causes, and the relative is the region of conditions; and hence, if we wish to control conditions, this can only be done by our thought-power operating on the plane of the absolute, which it can do only through the medium of the subjective mind. the conscious use of the creative power of thought consists in the attainment of the power of thinking in the absolute, and this can only be attained by a clear conception of the interaction between our different mental functions. for this purpose the student cannot too strongly impress upon himself that subjective mind, on whatever scale, is intensely sensitive to suggestion, and as creative power works accurately to the externalization of that suggestion which is most deeply impressed upon it. if then, we would take any idea out of the realm of the relative, where it is limited and restricted by conditions imposed upon it through surrounding circumstances, and transfer it to the realm of the absolute where it is not thus limited, a right recognition of our mental constitution will enable us to do this by a clearly defined method. the object of our desire is necessarily first conceived by us as bearing some relation to existing circumstances, which may, or may not, appear favourable to it; and what we want to do is to eliminate the element of contingency and attain something which is certain in itself. to do this is to work upon the plane of the absolute, and for this purpose we must endeavour to impress upon our subjective mind the idea of that which we desire quite apart from any conditions. this separation from the elements of condition implies the elimination of the idea of _time_, and consequently we must think of the thing as already in actual existence. unless we do this we are not consciously operating upon the plane of the absolute, and are therefore not employing the creative power of our thought. the simplest practical method of gaining the habit of thinking in this manner is to conceive the existence in the spiritual world of a spiritual prototype of every existing thing, which becomes the root of the corresponding external existence. if we thus habituate ourselves to look on the spiritual prototype as the essential being of the thing, and the material form as the growth of this prototype into outward expression, then we shall see that the initial step to the production of any external fact must be the creation of its spiritual prototype. this prototype, being purely spiritual, can only be formed by the operation of _thought_, and in order to have substance on the spiritual plane it _must_ be thought of as actually existing there. this conception has been elaborated by plato in his doctrine of archetypal ideas, and by swedenborg in his doctrine of correspondences; and a still greater teacher has said "all things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye _have_ received them, and ye _shall_ receive them." (mark xi. , r.v.) the difference of the tenses in this passage is remarkable. the speaker bids us first to believe that our desire _has_ already been fulfilled, that it is a thing already accomplished, and then its accomplishment _will_ follow as a thing in the future. this is nothing else than a concise direction for making use of the creative power of thought by impressing upon the universal subjective mind the particular thing which we desire as an already existing fact. in following this direction we are thinking on the plane of the absolute and eliminating from our minds all consideration of conditions, which imply limitation and the possibility of adverse contingencies; and we are thus planting a seed which, if left undisturbed, will infallibly germinate into external fruition. by thus making intelligent use of our subjective mind, we, so to speak, create a _nucleus_, which is no sooner created than it begins to exercise an attractive force, drawing to itself material of a like character with its own, and if this process is allowed to go on undisturbed, it will continue until an external form corresponding to the nature of the nucleus comes out into manifestation on the plane of the objective and relative. this is the universal method of nature on every plane. some of the most advanced thinkers in modern physical science, in the endeavour to probe the great mystery of the first origin of the world, have postulated the formation of what they call "vortex rings" formed from an infinitely fine primordial substance. they tell us that if such a ring be once formed on the minutest scale and set rotating, then, since it would be moving in pure ether and subject to no friction, it must according to all known laws of physics be indestructible and its motion perpetual. let two such rings approach each other, and by the law of attraction, they would coalesce into a whole, and so on until manifested matter as we apprehend it with our external senses, is at last formed. of course no one has ever seen these rings with the physical eye. they are one of those abstractions which result if we follow out the observed law of physics and the unavoidable sequences of mathematics to their necessary consequences. we cannot account for the things that we _can_ see unless we assume the existence of other things which we _cannot_; and the "vortex theory" is one of these assumptions. this theory has not been put forward by mental scientists but by purely physical scientists as the ultimate conclusion to which their researches have led them, and this conclusion is that all the innumerable forms of nature have their origin in the infinitely minute nucleus of the vortex ring, by whatever means the vortex ring may have received its initial impulse, a question with which physical science, as such, is not concerned. as the vortex theory accounts for the formation of the inorganic world, so does biology account for the formation of the living organism. that also has its origin in a primary nucleus which, as soon as it is established, operates as a centre of attraction for the formation of all those physical organs of which the perfect individual is composed. the science of embryology shows that this rule holds good without exception throughout the whole range of the animal world, including man; and botany shows the same principle at work throughout the vegetable world. all branches of physical science demonstrate the fact that every completed manifestation, of whatever kind and on whatever scale, is started by the establishment of a nucleus, infinitely small but endowed with an unquenchable energy of attraction, causing it to steadily increase in power and definiteness of purpose, until the process of growth is completed and the matured form stands out as an accomplished fact. now if this be the universal method of nature, there is nothing unnatural in supposing that it must begin its operation at a stage further back than the formation of the material nucleus. as soon as that is called into being it begins to operate by the law of attraction on the material plane; but what is the force which originates the material nucleus? let a recent work on physical science give us the answer; "in its ultimate essence, energy may be incomprehensible by us except as an exhibition of the direct operation of that which we call mind or will." the quotation is from a course of lectures on "waves in water, air and Ã�ther," delivered in , at the royal institution, by j. a. fleming. here, then, is the testimony of physical science that the originating energy is mind or will; and we are, therefore, not only making a logical deduction from certain unavoidable intuitions of the human mind, but are also following on the lines of the most advanced physical science, when we say that the action of mind plants that nucleus which, if allowed to grow undisturbed, will eventually attract to itself all the conditions necessary for its manifestation in outward visible form. now the only action of mind is thought; and it is for this reason that by our thoughts we create corresponding external conditions, because we thereby create the nucleus which attracts to itself its own correspondences in due order until the finished work is manifested on the external plane. this is according to the strictly scientific conception of the universal law of growth; and we may therefore briefly sum up the whole argument by saying that our thought of anything forms a spiritual prototype of it, thus constituting a nucleus or centre of attraction for all conditions necessary to its eventual externalization by a law of growth inherent in the prototype itself. vi. the law of growth. a correct understanding of the law of growth is of the highest importance to the student of mental science. the great fact to be realized regarding nature is that it is natural. we may pervert the order of nature, but it will prevail in the long run, returning, as horace says, by the back door even though we drive it out with a pitchfork; and the beginning, the middle, and the end of the law of nature is the principle of growth from a vitality inherent in the entity itself. if we realize this from the outset we shall not undo our own work by endeavouring to _force_ things to become that which by their own nature they are not. for this reason when the bible says that "he who believeth shall not make haste," it is enunciating a great natural principle that success, depends on our using, and not opposing, the universal law of growth. no doubt the greater the vitality we put into the germ, which we have agreed to call the spiritual prototype, the quicker it will germinate; but this is simply because by a more realizing conception we put more growing-power into the seed than we do by a feebler conception. our mistakes always eventually resolve themselves into distrusting the law of growth. either we fancy we can hasten it by some exertion of our own from _without_, and are thus led into hurry and anxiety, not to say sometimes into the employment, of grievously wrong methods; or else we give up all hope and so deny the germinating power of the seed we have planted. the result in either case is the same, for in either case we are in effect forming a fresh spiritual prototype of an opposite character to our desire, which therefore neutralizes the one first formed, and disintegrates it and usurps its place. the law is always the same, that our thought forms a spiritual prototype which, if left undisturbed, will reproduce itself in external circumstances; the only difference is in the sort of prototype we form, and thus evil is brought to us by precisely the same law as good. these considerations will greatly simplify our ideas of life. we have no longer to consider two forces, but only one, as being the cause of all things; the difference between good and evil resulting simply from the direction in which this force is made to flow. it is a universal law that if we reverse the action of a cause we at the same time reverse the effect. with the same apparatus we can commence by mechanical motion which will generate electricity, or we can commence with electricity which will generate mechanical motion; or to take a simple arithmetical instance: if / = , then / = ; and therefore if we once recognize the power of thought to produce any results at all, we shall see that the law by which negative thought produces negative results is the same by which positive thought produces positive results. therefore all our distrust of the law of growth, whether shown in the anxious endeavour to bring pressure to bear from without, or in allowing despair to take the place of cheerful expectation, is reversing the action of the original cause and consequently reversing the nature of the results. it is for this reason that the bible, which is the most deeply occult of all books, continually lays so much stress upon the efficiency of faith and the destructive influence of unbelief; and in like manner, all books on every branch of spiritual science emphatically warn us against the admission of doubt or fear. they are the inversion of the principle which builds up, and they are therefore the principle which pulls down; but the law itself never changes, and it is on the unchangeableness of the law that all mental science is founded. we are accustomed to realize the unchangeableness of natural law in our every day life, and it should therefore not be difficult to realize that the same unchangeableness of law which obtains on the visible side of nature obtains on the invisible side as well. the variable factor is, not the law, but our own volition; and it is by combining this variable factor with the invariable one that we can produce the various results we desire. the principle of growth is that of inherent vitality in the seed itself, and the operations of the gardener have their exact analogue in mental science. we do not _put_ the self-expansive vitality into the seed, but we must sow it, and we may also, so to speak, water it by quiet concentrated contemplation of our desire as an actually accomplished fact. but we must carefully remove from such contemplation any idea of a strenuous effort on our part to _make_ the seed grow. its efficacy is in helping to keep out those negative thoughts of doubt which would plant tares among our wheat, and therefore, instead of anything of effort, such contemplation should be accompanied by a feeling of pleasure and restfulness in foreseeing the certain accomplishment of our desires. this is that making our requests known to god _with thanksgiving_ which st. paul recommends, and it has its reason in that perfect wholeness of the law of being which only needs our recognition of it to be used by us to any extent we wish. some people possess the power of visualization, or making mental pictures of things, in a greater degree than others, and by such this faculty may advantageously be employed to facilitate their realization of the working of the law. but those who do not possess this faculty in any marked degree, need not be discouraged by their want of it, for visualization is not the only way of realizing that the law is at work on the invisible plane. those whose mental bias is towards physical science should realize this law of growth as the creative force throughout all nature; and those who have a mathematical turn of mind may reflect that all solids are generated from the movement of a point, which, as our old friend euclid tells us, is that which has no parts nor magnitude, and is therefore as complete an abstraction as any spiritual nucleus could be. to use the apostolic words, we are dealing with the substance of things not seen, and we have to attain that habit of mind by which we shall see its reality and feel that we are mentally manipulating the only substance there ultimately is, and of which all visible things are only different modes. we must therefore regard our mental creations as spiritual realities and then implicitly trust the law of growth to do the rest. vii. receptivity. in order to lay the foundations for practical work, the student must endeavour to get a clear conception of what is meant by the intelligence of undifferentiated spirit. we want to grasp the idea of intelligence apart from individuality, an idea which is rather apt to elude us until we grow accustomed to it. it is the failure to realize this quality of spirit that has given rise to all the theological errors that have brought bitterness into the world and has been prominent amongst the causes which have retarded the true development of mankind. to accurately convey this conception in words, is perhaps, impossible, and to attempt definition is to introduce that very idea of limitation which is our object to avoid. it is a matter of feeling rather than of definition; yet some endeavour must be made to indicate the direction in which we must feel for this great truth if we are to find it. the idea is that of realizing personality without that selfhood which differentiates one individual from another. "i am not that other because i am myself"--this is the definition of individual selfhood; but it necessarily imparts the idea of limitation, because the recognition of any other individuality at once affirms a point at which our own individuality ceases and the other begins. now this mode of recognition cannot be attributed to the universal mind. for it to recognize a point where itself ceased and something else began would be to recognize itself as _not_ universal; for the meaning of universality is the including of _all_ things, and therefore for this intelligence to recognize anything as being _outside itself_ would be a denial of its own being. we may therefore say without hesitation that, whatever may be the nature of its intelligence, it must be entirely devoid of the element of self-recognition _as an individual personality_ on any scale whatever. seen in this light it is at once clear that the originating all-pervading spirit is the grand impersonal principle of life which gives rise to all the particular manifestations of nature. its absolute impersonalness, in the sense of the entire absence of any consciousness of _individual_ selfhood, is a point on which it is impossible to insist too strongly. the attributing of an impossible individuality to the universal mind is one of the two grand errors which we find sapping the foundations of religion and philosophy in all ages. the other consists in rushing to the opposite extreme and denying the quality of personal intelligence to the universal mind. the answer to this error remains, as of old, in the simple question, "he that made the eye shall he not see? he that planted the ear shall he not hear?"--or to use a popular proverb, "you cannot get out of a bag more than there is in it;" and consequently the fact that we ourselves are centres of personal intelligence is proof that the infinite, from which these centres are concentrated, must be infinite intelligence, and thus we cannot avoid attributing to it the two factors which constitute personality, namely, intelligence and volition. we are therefore brought to the conclusion that this universally diffused essence, which we might think of as a sort of spiritual protoplasm, must possess all the qualities of personality without that conscious recognition of self which constitutes separate individuality: and since the word "personality" has became so associated in our ordinary talk with the idea of "individuality" it will perhaps be better to coin a new word, and speak of the personalness of the universal mind as indicating its personal _quality_, apart from individuality. we must realize that this universal spirit permeates all space and all manifested substance, just as physical scientists tell us that the ether does, and that wherever it is, there it must carry with it all that it is in its own being; and we shall then see that we are in the midst of an ocean of undifferentiated yet intelligent life, above, below, and all around, and permeating ourselves both mentally and corporeally, and all other beings as well. gradually as we come to realize the truth of this statement, our eyes will begin to open to its immense significance. it means that all nature is pervaded by an interior personalness, infinite in its potentialities of intelligence, responsiveness, and power of expression, and only waiting to be called into activity by our recognition of it. by the terms of its nature it can respond to us only as we recognize it. if we are at that intellectual level where we can see nothing but chance governing the world, then this underlying universal mind will present to us nothing but a fortuitous confluence of forces without any intelligible order. if we are sufficiently advanced to see that such a confluence could only produce a chaos, and not a cosmos, then our conceptions expand to the idea of universal law, and we find _this_ to be the nature of the all-underlying principle. we have made an immense advance from the realm of mere accident into a world where there are definite principles on which we can calculate with certainty _when we know them_. but here is the crucial point. the laws of the universe are there, but we are ignorant of them, and only through experience gained by repeated failures can we get any insight into the laws with which we have to deal. how painful each step and how slow the progress! Ã�ons upon æons would not suffice to grasp all the laws of the universe in their totality, not in the visible world only, but also in the world of the unseen; each failure to know the true law implies suffering arising from our ignorant breach of it; and thus, since nature is infinite, we are met by the paradox that we must in some way contrive to compass the knowledge of the infinite with our individual intelligence, and we must perform a pilgrimage along an unceasing via dolorosa beneath the lash of the inexorable law until we find the solution to the problem. but it will be asked, may we not go on until at last we attain the possession of all knowledge? people do not realize what is meant by "the infinite," or they would not ask such questions. the infinite is that which is limitless and exhaustless. imagine the vastest capacity you will, and having filled it with the infinite, what remains of the infinite is just as infinite as before. to the mathematician this may be put very clearly. raise _x_ to any power you will, and however vast may be the disparity between it and the lower powers of _x_, both are equally incommensurate with _x^n._ the universal reign of law is a magnificent truth; it is one of the two great pillars of the universe symbolized by the two pillars that stood at the entrance to solomon's temple: it is jachin, but jachin must be equilibriated by boaz. it is an enduring truth, which can never be altered, that every infraction of the law of nature must carry its punitive consequences with it. we can never get beyond the range of cause and effect. there is no escaping from the law of punishment, except by knowledge. if we know a law of nature and work with it, we shall find it our unfailing friend, ever ready to serve us, and never rebuking us for past failures; but if we ignorantly or wilfully transgress it, it is our implacable enemy, until we again become obedient to it; and therefore the only redemption from perpetual pain and servitude is by a self-expansion which can grasp infinitude itself. how is this to be accomplished? by our progress to that kind and degree of intelligence by which we realize the inherent _personalness_ of the divine all-pervading life, which is at once the law and the substance of all that is. well said the jewish rabbis of old, "the law is a person." when we once realize that the universal life and the universal law are one with the universal personalness, then we have established the pillar boaz as the needed complement to jachin; and when we find the common point in which these two unite, we have raised the royal arch through which we may triumphantly enter the temple. we must dissociate the universal personalness from every conception of individuality. the universal can never be the individual: that would be a contradiction in terms. but because the universal personalness is the root of all individual personalities, it finds its highest expression in response to those who realize its personal nature. and it is this recognition that solves the seemingly insoluble paradox. the only way to attain that knowledge of the infinite law which will change the via dolorosa into the path of joy is to embody in ourselves a _principle_ of knowledge commensurate with the infinitude of that which is to be known; and this is accomplished by realizing that, infinite as the law itself, is a universal intelligence in the midst of which we float as in a living ocean. intelligence without individual personality, but which, in producing us, concentrates itself into the personal individualities which we are. what should be the relation of such an intelligence towards us? not one of favouritism: not any more than the law can it respect one person above another, for itself is the root and support for each alike. not one of refusal to our advances; for without individuality it can have no personal object of its own to conflict with ours; and since it is itself the origin of all individual intelligence, it cannot be shut off by inability to understand. by the very terms of its being, therefore, this infinite, underlying, all-producing mind must be ready immediately to respond to all who realize their true relation to it. as the very principle of life itself it must be infinitely susceptible to feeling, and consequently it will reproduce with absolute accuracy whatever conception of itself we impress upon it; and hence if we realize the human mind as that stage in the evolution of the cosmic order at which an individuality has arisen capable of expressing, not merely the livingness, but also the personalness of the universal underlying spirit, then we see that its most perfect mode of self-expression must be by identifying itself with these individual personalities. the identification is, of course, limited by the measure of the individual intelligence, meaning, not merely the intellectual perception of the sequence of cause and effect, but also that indescribable reciprocity of _feeling_ by which we instinctively recognize something in another making them akin to ourselves; and so it is that when we intelligently realize that the innermost principle of being, must by reason of its universality, have a common nature with our own, then we have solved the paradox of universal knowledge, for we have realized our identity of being with the universal mind, which is commensurate with the universal law. thus we arrive at the truth of st. john's statement, "ye know all things," only this knowledge is primarily on the spiritual plane. it is not brought out into intellectual statement whether needed or not; for it is not in itself the specific knowledge of particular facts, but it is the undifferentiated principle of knowledge which we may differentiate in any direction that we choose. this is a philosophical necessity of the case, for though the action of the individual mind consists in differentiating the universal into particular applications, to differentiate the _whole_ universal would be a contradiction in terms; and so, because we cannot exhaust the infinite, our possession of it must consist in our power to differentiate it as the occasion may require, the only limit being that which we ourselves assign to the manifestation. in this way, then, the recognition of the community of _personality_ between ourselves and the universal undifferentiated spirit, which is the root and substance of all things, solves the question of our release from the iron grasp of an inflexible law, not by abrogating the law, which would mean the annihilation of all things, but by producing in us an intelligence equal in affinity with the universal law itself, and thus enabling us to apprehend and meet the requirements of the law in each particular as it arises. in this way the cosmic intelligence becomes individualized, and the individual intelligence becomes universalized; the two became one, and in proportion as this unity is realized and acted on, it will be found that the law, which gives rise to all outward conditions, whether of body or of circumstances, becomes more and more clearly understood, and can therefore be more freely made use of, so that by steady, intelligent endeavour to unfold upon these lines we may reach degrees of power to which it is impossible to assign any limits. the student who would understand the rationale of the unfoldment of his own possibilities must make no mistake here. he must realize that the whole process is that of bringing the universal within the grasp of the individual by raising the individual to the level of the universal and not vice-versa. it is a mathematical truism that you cannot contract the infinite, and that you _can_ expand the individual; and it is precisely on these lines that evolution works. the laws of nature cannot be altered in the least degree; but we can come into such a realization of our own relation to the universal principle of law that underlies them as to be able to press all particular laws, whether of the visible or invisible side of nature, into our service and so find ourselves masters of the situation. this is to be accomplished by knowledge; and the only knowledge which will effect this purpose in all its measureless immensity is the knowledge of the personal element in universal spirit in its reciprocity to our own personality. our recognition of this spirit must therefore be twofold, as the principle of necessary sequence, order or law, and also as the principle of intelligence, responsive to our own recognition of it. viii. reciprocal action of the universal and individual minds. it must be admitted that the foregoing considerations bring us to the borders of theological speculation, but the student must bear in mind that as a mental scientist it is his business to regard even the most exalted spiritual phenomena from a purely scientific standpoint, which is that of the working of a universal natural law. if he thus simply deals with the facts as he finds them, there is little doubt that the true meaning of many theological statements will become clear to him: but he will do well to lay it down as a general rule that it is not necessary either to the use or understanding of any law, whether on the personal or the impersonal side of nature, that we should give a theological explanation of it: although, therefore, the personal quality inherent in the universal underlying spirit, which is present in all things, cannot be too strongly insisted upon, we must remember that in dealing with it we are still dealing with a purely natural power which reappears at every point with protean variety of form, whether as person, animal, or thing. in each case what it becomes to any individual is exactly measured by that individual's recognition of it. to each and all it bears the relation of supporter of the race, and where the individual development is incapable of realizing anything more, this is the limit of the relation; but as the individual's power of recognition expands, he finds a reciprocal expansion on the part of this intelligent power which gradually develops into the consciousness of intimate companionship between the individualized mind and the unindividualized source of it. now this is exactly the relation which, on ordinary scientific principles, we should expect to find between the individual and the cosmic mind, on the supposition that the cosmic mind is subjective mind, and for reasons already given we can regard it in no other light. as subjective mind it must reproduce exactly the conception of itself which the objective mind of the individual, acting through his own subjective mind, impresses upon it; and at the same time as creative mind, it builds up external facts in correspondence with this conception. "quot homines tot sententiæ": each one externalizes in his outward circumstances precisely his idea of the universal mind; and the man who realizes that by the natural law of mind he can bring the universal mind into perfectly reciprocal action with its own, will on the one hand make it a source of infinite instruction, and on the other a source of infinite power. he will thus wisely alternate the personal and impersonal aspects respectively between his individual mind and the universal mind; when he is seeking for guidance or strength he will regard his own mind as the impersonal element which is to _receive personality_ from the superior wisdom and force of the greater mind; and when, on the other hand, he is to give out the stores thus accumulated, he must reverse the position and consider his own mind as the personal element, and the universal mind as the impersonal, which he can therefore _direct_ with certainty by impressing his own personal desire upon it. we need not be staggered at the greatness of this conclusion, for it follows necessarily from the natural relation between the subjective and the objective minds; and the only question is whether we will limit our view to the lower level of the latter, or expand it so as to take in the limitless possibilities which the subjective mind presents to us. i have dealt with this question at some length because it affords the key to two very important subjects, the law of supply and the nature of intuition. students often find it easier to understand how the mind can influence the body with which it is so intimately associated, than how it can influence circumstances. if the operation of thought-power were confined exclusively to the individual mind this difficulty might arise; but if there is one lesson the student of mental science should take to heart more than another, it is that the action of thought-power is not limited to a circumscribed individuality. what the individual does is to _give direction_ to something which is unlimited, to call into action a force infinitely greater than his own, which because it is in itself impersonal though intelligent, will receive the impress of his personality, and can therefore make its influence felt far beyond the limits which bound the individual's objective perception of the circumstances with which he has to deal. it is for this reason that i lay so much stress on the combination of two apparent opposites in the universal mind, the union of intelligence with impersonality. the intelligence not only enables it to receive the impress of our thought, but also causes it to devise exactly the right _means_ for bringing it into accomplishment. this is only the logical result of the hypothesis that we are dealing with infinite intelligence which is also infinite life. life means power, and infinite life therefore means limitless power; and limitless power moved by limitless intelligence cannot be conceived of as ever stopping short of the accomplishment of its object; therefore, given the _intention_ on the part of the universal mind, there can be no doubt as to its ultimate accomplishment. then comes the question of intention. how do we know what the intention of the universal mind may be? here comes in the element of impersonality. it has _no intention_, because it is _impersonal_. as i have already said, the universal mind works by a law of averages for the advancement of the race, and is in no way concerned with the particular wishes of the individual. if his wishes are in line with the forward movement of the everlasting principle, there is nowhere in nature any power to restrict him in their fulfilment. if they are opposed to the general forward movement, then they will bring him into collision with it, and it will crush him. from the relation between them it results that the same principle which shows itself in the individual mind as will, becomes in the universal mind a law of tendency; and the direction of this tendency must always be to life-givingness, because the universal mind is the undifferentiated life-spirit of the universe. therefore in every case the test is whether our particular intention is in this same lifeward direction: and if it is, then we may be absolutely certain that there is no intention on the part of the universal mind to thwart the intention of our own individual mind; we are dealing with a purely impersonal force, and it will no more oppose us by specific plans of its own than will steam or electricity. combining then, these two aspects of the universal mind, its utter impersonality and its perfect intelligence, we find precisely the sort of natural force we are in want of, something which will undertake whatever we put into its hands without asking questions or bargaining for terms, and which, having undertaken our business, will bring to bear on it an intelligence to which the united knowledge of the whole human race is as nothing, and a power equal to this intelligence. i may be using a rough and ready mode of expression, but my object is to bring home to the student the nature of the power he can employ and the method of employing it, and i may therefore state the whole position thus:--your object is not to run the whole cosmos, but to draw particular benefits, physical, mental, moral, or financial into your own or someone else's life. from this individual point of view the universal creative power has no mind of its own, and therefore you can make up its mind for it. when its mind is thus made up for it, it never abrogates its place as the creative power, but at once sets to work co carry out the purpose for which it has thus been concentrated; and unless this concentration is dissipated by the same agency (yourself) which first produced it, it will work on by the law of growth to complete manifestation on the outward plane. in dealing with this great impersonal intelligence, we are dealing with the infinite, and we must fully realize infinitude as that which touches all points, and if it does, there should be no difficulty in understanding that this intelligence can draw together the means requisite for its purpose even from the ends of the world; and therefore, realizing the law according to which the result can be produced, we must resolutely put aside all questioning as to the specific means which will be employed in any case. to question this is to sow that very seed of doubt which it is our first object to eradicate, and our intellectual endeavour should therefore be directed, not to the attempt to foretell the various secondary causes which will eventually combine to produce the desired result, laying down beforehand what particular causes should be necessary, and from what quarter they should come; but we should direct our intellectual endeavour to seeing more clearly the rationale of the general law by which trains of secondary causes are set in motion. employed in the former way our intellect becomes the greatest hindrance to our success, for it only helps to increase our doubts, since it is trying to grasp particulars which, at the time are entirely outside its circle of vision; but employed in the latter it affords the most material aid in maintaining that nucleus without which there is no centre from which the principle of growth can assert itself. the intellect can only deduce consequences from facts which it is able to state, and consequently cannot deduce any assurance from facts of whose existence it cannot yet have any knowledge through the medium of the outward senses; but for the same reason it can realize the existence of a _law_ by which the as yet unmanifested circumstances may be brought into manifestation. thus used in its right order, the intellect becomes the handmaid of that more interior power within us which manipulates the unseen substance of all things, and which we may call relative first cause. ix. causes and conditions. the expression "_relative_ first cause" has been used in the last section to distinguish the action of the creative principle in the _individual_ mind from universal first cause on the one hand and from secondary causes on the other. as it exists in _us_, primary causation is the power to initiate a train of causation directed to an individual purpose. as the power of initiating a fresh sequence of cause and effect it is first cause, and as referring to an individual purpose it is relative, and it may therefore be spoken of as relative first cause, or the power of primary causation manifested by the individual. the understanding and use of this power is the whole object of mental science, and it is therefore necessary that the student should clearly see the relation between causes and conditions. a simple illustration will go further for this purpose than any elaborate explanation. if a lighted candle is brought into a room the room becomes illuminated, and if the candle is taken away it becomes dark again. now the illumination and the darkness are both conditions, the one positive resulting from the presence of the light, and the other negative resulting from its absence: from this simple example we therefore see that every positive condition has an exactly opposite negative condition corresponding to it, and that this correspondence results from their being related to the _same cause_, the one positively and the other negatively; and hence we may lay down the rule that all positive conditions result from the active presence of a certain cause, and all negative conditions from the absence of such a cause. a condition, whether positive or negative, is never _primary_ cause, and the _primary_ cause of any series can never be negative, for negation is the condition which arises from the absence of active causation. this should be thoroughly understood as it is the philosophic basis of all those "denials" which play so important a, part in mental science, and which may be summed up in the statement that evil being negative, or privation of good, has no substantive existence in itself. conditions, however, whether positive or negative, are no sooner called into existence than they become causes in their turn and produce further conditions, and so on _ad infinitum_, thus giving rise to the whole train of secondary causes. so long as we judge only from the information conveyed to us by the outward senses, we are working on the plane of secondary causation and see nothing but a succession of conditions, forming part of an endless train of antecedent conditions coming out of the past and stretching away into the future, and from this point of view we are under the rule of an iron destiny from which there seems no possibility of escape. this is because the outward senses are only capable of dealing with the relations which one mode of limitation bears to another, for they are the instruments by which we take cognizance of the relative and the conditioned. now the only way of escape is by rising out of the region of secondary causes into that of primary causation, where the originating energy is to be found before it has yet passed into manifestation as a condition. this region is to be found _within ourselves_; it is the region of pure ideas; and it is for this reason that i have laid stress on the two aspects of spirit as pure thought and manifested form. the thought-image or ideal pattern of a thing is the _first cause_ relatively to that thing; it is the substance of that thing untrammelled, by any antecedent conditions. if we realize that all visible things _must_ have their origin in spirit, then the whole creation around us is the standing evidence that the starting-point of all things is in thought-images or ideas, for no other action than the formation of such images can be conceived of spirit prior to its manifestation in matter. if, then, this is spirit's modus operandi for self-expression, we have only to transfer this conception from the scale of cosmic spirit working on the plane of the universal to that of individualized spirit working on the plane of the particular, to see that the formation of an ideal image by means of our thought is setting first cause in motion with regard to this specific object. there is no difference in kind between the operation of first cause in the universal and in the particular, the difference is only a difference of scale, but the power itself is identical. we must therefore always be very clear as to whether we are _consciously_ using first cause or not. note the word "consciously" because, whether consciously or unconsciously, we are always using first cause; and it was for this reason i emphasized the fact that the universal mind is purely subjective and therefore bound by the laws which apply to subjective mind on whatever scale. hence we are _always_ impressing some sort of ideas upon it, whether we are aware of the fact or not, and all our existing limitations result from our having habitually impressed upon it that idea of limitation which we have imbibed by restricting all possibility to the region of secondary causes. but now when investigation has shown us that conditions are never causes in _themselves_, but only the subsequent links of a chain started on the plane of the pure ideal, what we have to do is to reverse our method of thinking and regard the ideal as the real, and the outward manifestation as a mere reflection which must change with every change of the object which casts it. for these reasons it is essential to know whether we are consciously making use of first cause with a definite purpose or not, and the criterion is this. if we regard the fulfilment of our purpose as contingent upon any _circumstances_, past, present, or future, we are not making use of first cause; we have descended to the level of secondary causation, which is the region of doubts, fears, and limitations, all of which we are impressing upon the universal subjective mind with the inevitable result that it will build up corresponding external conditions. but if we realize that the region of secondary causes is the region of mere reflections we shall not think of our purpose as contingent on any conditions whatever, but shall know that by forming the idea of it in the absolute, and maintaining that idea, we have shaped the first cause into the desired form and can await the result with cheerful expectancy. it is here that we find the importance of realizing spirit's independence of time and space. an ideal, as such, cannot be formed in the future. it must either be formed here and now or not be formed at all; and it is for this reason that every teacher, who has ever spoken with due knowledge of the subject, has impressed upon his followers the necessity of picturing to themselves the fulfilment of their desires as _already accomplished_ on the spiritual plane, as the indispensable condition of fulfilment in the visible and concrete. when this is properly understood, any anxious thought as to the _means_ to be employed in the accomplishment of our purposes is seen to be quite unnecessary. if the end is already secured, then it follows that all the steps leading to it are secured also. the means will pass into the smaller circle of our conscious activities day by day in due order, and then we have to work upon them, not with fear, doubt, or feverish excitement, but calmly and joyously, because we _know_ that the end is already secured, and that our reasonable use of such means as present themselves in the desired direction is, only one portion of a much larger co-ordinated movement, the final result of which admits of no doubt. mental science does not offer a premium to idleness, but it takes, all work out of the region of anxiety and toil by assuring the worker of the success of his labour, if not in the precise form he anticipated, then in some other still better suited to his requirements. but suppose, when we reach a point where some momentous decision has to be made, we happen to decide wrongly? on the hypothesis that the end is already secured you cannot decide wrongly. your right decision is as much one of the necessary steps in the accomplishment of the end as any of the other conditions leading up to it, and therefore, while being careful to avoid rash action, we may make sure that the same law which is controlling the rest of the circumstances in the right direction will influence our judgment in that direction also. to get good results we must properly understand our relation to the great impersonal power we are using. it is intelligent and we are intelligent, and the two intelligences must co-operate. we must not fly in the face of the law by expecting it to do _for_ us what it can only do _through_ us; and we must therefore use our intelligence with the knowledge that it is acting _as the instrument of a greater intelligence_; and because we have this knowledge we may, and should, cease from all anxiety as to the final result. in actual practice we must first form the ideal conception of our object with the definite intention of impressing it upon the universal mind--it is this intention which takes such thought out of the region of mere casual fancies--and then affirm that our knowledge of the law is sufficient reason for a calm expectation of a corresponding result, and that therefore all necessary conditions will come to us in due order. we can then turn to the affairs of our daily life with the calm assurance that the initial conditions are either there already or will soon come into view. if we do not at once see them, let us rest content with the knowledge that the spiritual prototype is already in existence and wait till some circumstance pointing in the desired direction begins to show itself. it may be a very small circumstance, but it is the direction and not the magnitude which is to be taken into consideration. as soon as we see it we should regard it as the first sprouting of the seed we have sown in the absolute, and do calmly, and without excitement, whatever the circumstances may seem to require, and then later on we shall see that this doing will in turn lead to further circumstances in the same direction until we find ourselves conducted step by step to the accomplishment of our object. in this way the understanding of the great principle of the law of supply will, by repeated experiences, deliver us more and more completely out of the region of anxious thought and toilsome labour and bring us into a new world where the useful employment of all our powers, whether mental or physical, will only be an unfolding of our individuality upon the lines of its own nature, and therefore a perpetual source of health and happiness; a sufficient inducement, surely, to the careful study of the laws governing the relation between the individual and the universal mind. x. intuition. we have seen that the subjective mind is amenable to suggestion by the objective mind; but there is also an action of the subjective mind upon the objective. the individual's subjective mind is his own innermost self, and its first care is the maintenance of the individuality of which it is the foundation; and since it is pure spirit it has its continual existence in that plane of being where all things subsist in the universal here and the everlasting now, and consequently can, inform the lower mind of things removed from its ken either by distance or futurity. as the absence of the conditions of time and space must logically concentrate all things into a present focus, we can assign no limit to the subjective mind's power of perception, and therefore the question arises, why does it not keep the objective mind continually informed on all points? and the answer is that it would do so if the objective mind were sufficiently trained to recognize the indications given, and to effect this training is one of the purposes of mental science. when once we recognize the position of the subjective mind as the supporter of the whole individuality we cannot doubt that much of what we take to be the spontaneous movement of the objective mind has its origin in the subjective mind prompting the objective mind in the right direction without our being consciously aware of it. but at times when the urgency of the case seems to demand it, or when, for some reason yet unknown, the objective mind is for a while more closely _en rapport_ with the subjective mind, the interior voice is heard strongly and persistently; and when this is the case we do well to pay heed to it. want of space forbids me to give examples, but doubtless such will not be wanting in the reader's experience. the importance of understanding and following the intuition cannot be exaggerated, but i candidly admit the great practical difficulty of keeping the happy mean between the disregard of the interior voice and allowing ourselves to be run away with by groundless fancies. the best guide is the knowledge that comes of personal experience which gradually leads to the acquisition of a sort of inward sense of touch that enables us to distinguish the true from the false, and which appears to grow with the sincere desire for truth and with the recognition of the spirit as its source. the only general principles the writer can deduce from his own experience are that when, in spite of all appearances pointing in the direction of a certain line of conduct, there is still a persistent _feeling_ that it should not be followed, in the majority of instances it will be found that the argument of the objective mind, however correct on the facts objectively known, was deficient from ignorance of facts which could not be objectively known at the time, but which were known to the intuitive faculty. another principle is that our _very first_ impression of feeling on any subject is generally correct. before the objective mind has begun to argue on the subject it is like the surface of a smooth lake which clearly reflects the light from above; but as soon as it begins to argue from outside appearances these also throw their reflections upon its surface, so that the original image becomes blurred and is no longer recognizable. this first conception is very speedily lost, and it should therefore be carefully observed and registered in the memory with a view to testing the various arguments which will subsequently arise on the objective plane. it is however impossible to reduce so interior an action as that of the intuition to the form of hard and fast rules, and beyond carefully noting particular cases as they occur, probably the best plan for the student will be to include the whole subject of intuition in the general principle of the law of attraction, especially if he sees how this law interacts with that personal quality of universal spirit of which we have already spoken. xi. healing. the subject of healing has been elaborately treated by many writers and fully deserves all the attention that has been given to it, but the object of these lectures is rather to ground the student in those general principles on which _all_ conscious use of the creative power of thought is based, than to lay down formal rules for specific applications of it. i will therefore examine the broad principles which appear to be common to the various methods of mental healing which are in use, each of which derives its efficacy, not from the peculiarity of the method, but from it being such a method as allows the higher laws of nature to come into play. now the principle universally laid down by all mental healers, in whatever various terms they may explain it, is that the basis of all healing is a change in belief. the sequence from which this results is as follows:--the subjective mind is the creative faculty within us, and creates whatever the objective mind impresses upon it; the objective mind, or intellect, impresses its thought upon it; the thought is the expression of the belief; hence whatever the subjective mind creates is the reproduction externally of our beliefs. accordingly our whole object is to change our beliefs, and we cannot do this without some solid ground of conviction of the falsity of our old beliefs and of the truth of our new ones, and this ground we find in that law of causation which i have endeavoured to explain. the wrong belief which externalizes as sickness is the belief that some secondary cause, which is really only a condition, is a primary cause. the knowledge of the law shows that there is only _one_ primary cause, and this is the factor which in our own individuality we call subjective or sub-conscious mind. for this reason i have insisted on the difference between placing an idea in the sub-conscious mind, that is, on the plane of the absolute and without reference to time and space, and placing the same idea in the conscious intellectual mind which only perceives things as related to time and space. now the only conception you can have of_ yourself_ in the absolute, or unconditioned, is as _purely living spirit_, not hampered by conditions of any sort, and therefore not subject to illness; and when this idea is firmly impressed on the sub-conscious mind, it will externalize it. the reason why this process is not always successful at the first attempt is that all our life we have been holding the false belief in sickness as a substantial entity in itself and thus being a primary cause, instead of being merely a negative _condition_ resulting from the _obsence_ of a primary cause; and a belief which has become ingrained from childhood cannot be eradicated at a moment's notice. we often find, therefore, that for some time after a treatment there is an improvement in the patient's health, and then the old symptoms return. this is because the new belief in his own creative faculty has not yet had time to penetrate down to the innermost depths of the subconscious mind, but has only partially entered it. each succeeding treatment strengthens the sub-conscious mind in its hold of the new belief until at last a permanent cure is effected. this is the method of self-treatment based on the patient's own knowledge of the law of his being. but "there is not in all men this knowledge," or at any rate not such a full recognition of it as will enable them to give successful treatment to themselves, and in these cases the intervention of the healer becomes necessary. the only difference between the healer and the patient is that the healer has learnt how to control the less self-conscious modes of the spirit by the more self-conscious mode, while the patient has not yet attained to this knowledge; and what the healer does is to substitute his own objective or conscious mentality, which is will joined to intellect, for that of the patient, and in this way to find entrance to his sub-conscious mind and impress upon it the suggestion of perfect health. the question then arises, how can the healer substitute his own conscious mind for that of the patient? and the answer shows the practical application of those very abstract principles which i have laid down in the earlier sections. our ordinary conception of ourselves is that of an individual personality which ends where another personality begins, in other words that the two personalities are entirely separate. this is an error. there is no such hard and fast line of demarcation between personalities, and the boundaries between one and another can be increased or reduced in rigidity according to will, in fact they may be temporarily removed so completely that, for the time being, the two personalities become merged into one. now the action which takes place between healer and patient depends on this principle. the patient is asked by the healer to put himself in a receptive mental attitude, which means that he is to exercise his volition for the purpose of removing the barrier of his own objective personality and thus affording entrance to the mental power of the healer. on his side also the healer does the same thing, only with this difference, that while the patient withdraws the barrier on his side with the intention of admitting a flowing-in, the healer does so with the intention of allowing a flowing-out: and thus by the joint action of the two minds the barriers of both personalities are removed and the direction of the flow of volition is determined, that is to say, it flows from the healer as actively willing to give, towards the patient as passively willing to receive, according to the universal law of nature that the flow must always be from the _plenum_ to the _vacuum_. this mutual removal of the external mental barrier between healer and patient is what is termed establishing a _rapport_ between them, and here we find one most valuable practical application of the principle laid down earlier in this book, that pure spirit is present in its entirety at every point simultaneously. it is for this reason that as soon as the healer realizes that the barriers of external personality between himself and his patient have been removed, he can then speak to the sub-conscious mind of the patient as though it were his own, for both being pure spirit the _thought_ of their identity _makes_ them identical, and both are concentrated into a single entity at a single point upon which the conscious mind of the healer can be brought to bear, according to the universal principle of the control of the subjective mind by the objective mind through suggestion. it is for this reason i have insisted on the distinction between _pure_ spirit, or spirit conceived of apart from extension in any matrix and the conception of it as so extended. if we concentrate our mind upon the diseased condition of the patient we are thinking of him as a separate personality, and are not fixing our mind upon that conception of him as pure spirit which will afford us effectual entry to his springs of being. we must therefore withdraw our thought from the contemplation of symptoms, and indeed from his corporeal personality altogether, and must think of him as a purely spiritual individuality, and as such entirely free from subjection to any conditions, and consequently as voluntarily externalizing the conditions most expressive of the vitality and intelligence which pure spirit is. thinking of him thus, we then make mental affirmation that he shall build up outwardly the correspondence of that perfect vitality which he knows himself to be inwardly; and this suggestion being impressed by the healer's conscious thought, while the patient's conscious thought is at the same time impressing the fact that he is receiving the active thought of the healer, the result is that the patient's sub-conscious mind becomes thoroughly imbued with the recognition of its own life-giving power, and according to the recognized law of subjective mentality proceeds to work out this suggestion into external manifestation, and thus health is substituted for sickness. it must be understood that the purpose of the process here described is to strengthen the subject's individuality, not to dominate it. to use it for domination is _inversion_, bringing its appropriate penalty to the operator. in this description i have contemplated the case where the patient is consciously co-operating with the healer, and it is in order to obtain this co-operation that the mental healer usually makes a point of instructing the patient in the broad principles of mental science, if he is not already acquainted with them. but this is not always advisable or possible. sometimes the statement of principles opposed to existing prejudices arouses opposition, and any active antagonism on the patient's part must tend to intensify the barrier of conscious personality which it is the healer's first object to remove. in these cases nothing is so effective as _absent treatment_. if the student has grasped all that has been said on the subject of spirit and matter, he will see that in mental treatment time and space count for nothing, because the whole action takes place on a plane where these conditions do not obtain; and it is therefore quite immaterial whether the patient be in the immediate presence of the healer or in a distant country. under these circumstances it is found by experience that one of the most effectual modes of mental healing is by treatment during sleep, because then the patient's whole system is naturally in a state of relaxation which prevents him offering any conscious opposition to the treatment. and by the same rule the healer also is able to treat even more effectively during his own sleep than while waking. before going to sleep he firmly impresses on his subjective mind that it is to convey curative suggestion to the subjective mind of the patient, and then, by the general principles of the relation between subjective and objective mind this suggestion is carried out during all the hours that the conscious individuality is wrapped in repose. this method is applicable to young children to whom the principles of the science cannot be explained; and also to persons at a distance: and indeed the only advantage gained by the personal meeting of the patient and healer is in the instruction that can be orally given, or when the patient is at that early stage of knowledge where the healer's visible presence conveys the suggestion that something is then being done which could not be done in his absence; otherwise the presence or absence of the patient are matters perfectly indifferent. the student must always recollect that the sub- conscious mind does not have to work _through_ the intellect or conscious mind to produce its curative effects. it is part of the all-pervading creative force of nature, while the intellect is not creative but distributive. from mental healing it is but a step to telepathy, clairvoyance and other, kindred manifestations of transcendental power which, are from time to time exhibited by the subjective entity and which follow laws as accurate as those which govern what we are accustomed to consider our more normal faculties; but these subjects do not properly fall within the scope of a book whose purpose is to lay down the broad principles which underlie _all_ spiritual phenomena. until these are clearly understood the student cannot profitably attempt the detailed study of the more interior powers; for to do so without a firm foundation of knowledge and some experience in its practical application would only be to expose himself to unknown dangers, and would be contrary to the scientific principle that the advance into the unknown can only be made from the standpoint of the known, otherwise we only come into a confused region of guess-work without any clearly defined principles for our guidance. xii. the will. the will is of such primary importance that the student should be on his guard against any mistake as to the position which it holds in the mental economy. many writers and teachers insist on will-power as though that were the creative faculty. no doubt intense will-power can evolve certain external results, but like all other methods of compulsion it lacks the permanency of natural growth. the appearances, forms, and conditions produced by mere intensity of will-power will only hang together so long as the compelling force continues; but let it be exhausted or withdrawn, and the elements thus forced into unnatural combination will at once fly back to their proper affinities; the form created by compulsion never had the germ of vitality _in itself_ and is therefore dissipated as soon as the external energy which supported it is withdrawn. the mistake is in attributing the creative power to the will, or perhaps i should say in attributing the creative power to ourselves at all. the truth is that man never creates anything. his function is, not to create, but to combine and distribute that which is already in being, and what we call our creations are new combinations of already existing material, whether mental or corporeal. this is amply demonstrated in the physical sciences. no one speaks of creating energy, but only of transforming one form of energy into another; and if we realize this as a universal principle, we shall see that on the mental plane as well as on the physical we never create energy but only provide the conditions by which the energy already existing in one mode can exhibit itself in another: therefore what, relatively to man, we call his creative power, is that receptive attitude of expectancy which, so to say, makes a mould into which the plastic and as yet undifferentiated substance can flow and take the desired form. the will has much the same place in our mental machinery that the tool-holder has in a power-lathe: it is not the power, but it keeps the mental faculties in that position relatively to the power which enables it to do the desired work. if, using the word in its widest sense, we may say that the imagination is the creative function, we may call the will the centralizing principle. its function is to keep the imagination centred in the right direction. we are aiming at consciously controlling our mental powers instead of letting them hurry us hither and thither in a purposeless manner, and we must therefore understand the relation of these powers to each other for the production of external results. first the whole train of causation is started by some emotion which gives rise to a desire; next the judgment determines whether we shall externalize this desire or not; then the desire having been approved by the judgment, the will comes forward and directs the imagination to form the necessary spiritual prototype; and the imagination thus centred on a particular object creates the spiritual nucleus, which in its turn acts as a centre round which the forces of attraction begin to work, and continue to operate until, by the law of growth, the concrete result becomes perceptible to our external senses. the business of the will, then, is to retain the various faculties of our mind in that position where they are really doing the work we wish, and this position may be generalized into the three following attitudes; either we wish to act upon something, or be acted on by it, or to maintain a neutral position; in other words we either intend to project a force, or receive a force or keep a position of inactivity relatively to some particular object. now the judgment determines which of these three positions we shall take up, the consciously active, the consciously receptive, or the consciously neutral; and then the function of the will is simply to maintain the position we have determined upon; and if we maintain any given mental attitude we may reckon with all certainty on the law of attraction drawing us to those correspondences which exteriorly symbolize the attitude in question. this is very different from the semi-animal screwing-up of the nervous forces which, with some people, stands for will-power. it implies no strain on the nervous system and is consequently not followed by any sense of exhaustion. the will-power, when transferred from the region of the lower mentality to the spiritual plane, becomes simply a calm and peaceful determination to retain a certain mental attitude in spite of all temptations to the contrary, knowing that by doing so the desired result will certainly appear. the training of the will and its transference from the lower to the higher plane of our nature are among the first objects of mental science. the man is summed up in his will. whatever he does by his own will is his own act; whatever he does without the consent of his will is not his own act but that of the power by which his will was coerced; but we must recognize that, on the mental plane, no other individuality can obtain control over our will unless we first allow it to do so; and it is for this reason that all legitimate use of mental science is towards the strengthening of the will, whether in ourselves or others, and bringing it under the control of an enlightened reason. when the will realizes its power to deal with first cause it is no longer necessary for the operator to state to himself _in extenso_ all the philosophy of its action every time he wishes to use it, but, knowing that the trained will is a tremendous spiritual force acting on the plane of first cause, he simply expresses his desire with the intention of operating on that plane, and knows that the desire thus expressed will in due time externalize itself as concrete fact. he now sees that the point which really demands his earnest attention is not whether he possesses the power of externalizing any results he chooses, but of learning to choose wisely what results to produce. for let us not suppose that even the highest powers will take us out of the law of cause and effect. we can never set any cause in motion without calling forth those effects which it already contains in embryo and which will again become causes in their turn, thus producing a series which must continue to flow on until it is cut short by bringing into operation a cause of an opposite character to the one which originated it. thus we shall find the field for the exercise of our intelligence continually expanding with the expansion of our powers; for, granted a good intention, we shall always wish to contemplate the results of our action as far as our intelligence will permit. we may not be able to see very far, but there is one safe general principle to be gained from what has already been said about causes and conditions, which is that the whole sequence always partakes of the same character as the initial cause: if that character is negative, that is, destitute of any desire to externalize kindness, cheerfulness, strength, beauty or some other sort of good, this negative quality will make itself felt all down the line; but if the opposite affirmative character is in the original motive, then it will reproduce its kind in forms of love, joy, strength and beauty with unerring precision. before setting out, therefore, to produce new conditions by the exercise of our thought-power we should weigh carefully what further results they are likely to lead to; and here, again, we shall find an ample field for the training of our will, in learning to acquire that self-control which will enable us to postpone an inferior present satisfaction to a greater prospective good. these considerations naturally lead us to the subject of concentration. i have just now pointed out that all duly controlled mental action consists in holding the mind in one of three attitudes; but there is a fourth mental condition, which is that of letting our mental functions run on without our will directing them to any definite purpose. it is on this word _purpose_ that we must fix our whole attention; and instead of dissipating our energies, we must follow an intelligent method of concentration. the, word means being gathered up at a centre, and the centre of anything is that point in which all its forces are equally balanced. to concentrate therefore means first to bring our minds into a condition of equilibrium which will enable us to consciously direct the flow of spirit to a definitely recognized purpose, and then carefully to guard our thoughts from inducing a flow in the opposite direction. we must always bear in mind that we are dealing with a wonderful _potential_ energy which is not yet differentiated into any particular mode, and that by the action of our mind we can differentiate it into any specific mode of activity that we will; and by keeping our thought fixed on the fact that the inflow of this energy _is_ taking place and that by our mental attitude we _are_ determining its direction, we shall gradually realize a corresponding externalization. proper concentration, therefore, does not consist of strenuous effort which exhausts the nervous system and defeats its own object by suggesting the consciousness of an adverse force to be fought against, and thus creating the adverse circumstances we dread; but in shutting out all thoughts of a kind that would disperse the spiritual nucleus we are forming and dwelling cheerfully on the knowledge that, because the law is certain in its action, our desire is certain of accomplishment. the other great principle to be remembered is that concentration is for the purpose of determining the _quality_ we are going to give to the previously undifferentiated energy rather than to arrange the _specific circumstances_ of its manifestation. _that_ is the work of the creative energy itself, which will build up its own forms of expression quite naturally if we allow it, thus saving us a great deal of needless anxiety. what we really want is expansion in a certain direction, whether of health, wealth, or what not: and so long as we get this, what does it matter whether it reaches us through some channel which we thought we could reckon upon or through some other whose existence we had not suspected. it is the fact that we are concentrating energy of a particular kind for a particular purpose that we should fix our minds upon, and not look upon any specific details as essential to the accomplishment of our object. these are the two golden rules regarding concentration; but we must not suppose that because we have to be on our guard against idle drifting there is to be no such thing as repose; on the contrary it is during periods of repose that we accumulate strength for action; but repose does not mean a state of purposelessness. as pure spirit the subjective mind never rests: it is only the objective mind in its connection with the physical body that needs rest; and though there are no doubt times when the greatest possible rest is to be obtained by stopping the action, of our conscious thought altogether, the more generally advisable method is by changing the direction of the thought and, instead of centering it upon something we intend to _do_, letting it dwell quietly upon what we _are_. this direction of thought might, of course, develop into the deepest philosophical speculation, but it is not necessary that we should be always either consciously projecting our forces to produce some external effect or working out the details of some metaphysical problem; but we may simply realize ourselves as part of the universal livingness and thus gain a quiet centralization, which, though maintained by a conscious act of the volition, is the very essence of rest. from this standpoint we see that all is life and all is good, and that nature, from her clearly visible surface to her most arcane depths, is one vast storehouse of life and good entirely devoted to our individual use. we have the key to all her treasures, and we can now apply our knowledge of the law of being without entering into all those details which are only needed for purposes of study, and doing so we find it results in our having acquired the consciousness of our _oneness with the whole_. this is the great secret: and when we have once fathomed it we can enjoy our possession of the whole, or of any part of it, because by our recognition we have made it, and can increasingly make it, our own. whatever most appeals to us at any particular time or place is that mode of the universal living spirit with which at that moment we are most in touch, and realizing this, we shall draw from it streams of vital energy which will make the very sensation of livingness a joy and will radiate from us as a sphere of vibration that can deflect all injurious suggestion on whatever plane. we may not have literary, artistic, or scientific skill to present to others the results of our communings with nature, but the joy of this sympathetic indrawing will nevertheless produce a corresponding outflow manifesting itself in the happier look and kindlier mien of him who thus realizes his oneness with every aspect of the whole. he realizes--and this is the great point in that attitude of mind which is not directed to any specific external object--that, for himself, he is, and always must be the centre of all this galaxy of life, and thus he contemplates himself as seated at the centre of infinitude, not an infinitude of blank space, but pulsating with living being, in all of which he knows that the true essence is nothing but good. this is the very opposite to a selfish self-centredness; it, is the centre where we find that we both receive from all and flow out to all. apart from this principle of circulation there is no true life, and if we contemplate our central position only as affording us greater advantages for in-taking, we have missed the whole point of our studies by missing the real nature of the life-principle, which is action and re-action. if we would have life enter into us, we ourselves must enter into life--enter into the spirit of it, just as we must enter into the spirit of a book or a game to enjoy it. there can be no action at a centre only. there must be a perpetual flowing out towards the circumference, and thence back again to the centre to maintain a vital activity; otherwise collapse must ensue either from anaemia or congestion. but if we realize the reciprocal nature of the vital pulsation, and that the outflowing consists in the habit of mind which gives itself to the good it sees in others, rather than in any specific actions, then we shall find that the cultivation of this disposition will provide innumerable avenues for the universal livingness to flow through us, whether as giving or receiving, which we had never before suspected: and this action and re-action will so build up our own vitality that each day will find us more thoroughly alive than any that had preceded it. this, then, is the attitude of repose in which we may enjoy all the beauties of science, literature and art or may peacefully commune with the spirit of nature without the aid of any third mind to act as its interpreter, which is still a purposeful attitude although not directed to a specific object: we have not allowed the will to relax its control, but have merely altered its direction; so that for action and repose alike we find that our strength lies in our recognition of the unity of the spirit and of ourselves as individual concentrations of it. xiii. in touch with sub-conscious mind. the preceding pages have made the student in some measure aware of the immense importance of our dealings with the sub-conscious mind. our relation to it, whether on the scale of the individual or the universal, is the key to all that we are or ever can be. in its unrecognized working it is the spring of all that we can call the automatic action of mind and body, and on the universal scale it is the silent power of evolution gradually working onwards to that "divine event, to which the whole creation moves"; and by our conscious recognition of it we make it, relatively to ourselves, all that we believe it to be. the closer our _rapport_ with it becomes, the more what we have hitherto considered automatic action, whether in our bodies or our circumstances, will pass under our control, until at last we shall control our whole individual world. since, then, this is the stupendous issue involved, the question how we are to put ourselves practically in touch with the sub-conscious mind is a very important one. now the clue which gives us the right direction is to be found in the _impersonal_ quality of sub-conscious mind of which i have spoken. not impersonal as lacking the _elements_ of personality; nor even, in the case of individual subjective mind, as lacking the sense of individuality; but impersonal in the sense of not recognizing the particular external relations which appear to the objective mind to constitute its personality, and having a realization of itself quite independent of them. if, then, we would come in touch with it we must meet it on its own ground. it can see things only from the deductive standpoint, and therefore cannot take note of the inductive standpoint from which we construct the idea of our external personality; and accordingly if we would put ourselves in touch with it, we cannot do so by bringing it down to the level of the external and non-essential but only by rising to its own level on the plane of the interior and essential. how can this be done? let two well-known writers answer. rudyard kipling tells us in his story of "kim" how the boy used at times to lose his sense of personality by repeating to himself the question, _who_ is kim? gradually his personality would seem to fade and he would experience a feeling of passing into a grander and a wider life, in which the boy kim was unknown, while his own conscious individuality remained, only exalted and expanded to an inconceivable extent; and in tennyson's life by his son we are told that at times the poet had a similar experience. we come into touch with the absolute exactly in proportion as we withdraw ourselves from the relative: they vary inversely to each other. for the purpose, then, of getting into touch with our sub-conscious mind we must endeavour to think of ourselves as pure being, as that entity which interiorly supports the outward manifestation, and doing so we shall realize that the essential quality of pure being must be good. it is in itself _pure life_, and as such cannot desire anything detrimental to pure life under whatever form manifested. consequently the purer our intentions the more readily we shall place ourself _en rapport_ with our subjective entity; and _a fortiori_ the same applies to that greater sub-conscious mind of which our individual subjective mind is a particular manifestation. in actual practice the process consists in first forming a clear conception in the objective mind of the idea we wish to convey to the subjective mind: then, when this has been firmly grasped, endeavour to lose sight of all other facts connected with the external personality except the one in question, and then mentally address the subjective mind as though it were an independent entity and impress upon it what you want it to do or to believe. everyone must formulate his own way of working, but one method, which is both simple and effective is to say to the subjective mind, "this is what i want you to do; you will now step into my place and do it, bringing all your powers and intelligence to bear, and considering yourself to be none other than myself." having done this return to the realization of your own objective personality and leave the subjective mind to perform its task in full confidence that, by the law of its nature, it will do so if not hindered by a repetition of contrary messages from the objective mind. this is not a mere fancy but a truth daily proved by the experience of increasing numbers. the facts have not been fabricated to fit the theory, but the theory has been built up by careful observation of the facts; and since it has been shown both by theory and practice that such is the law of the relation between subjective and objective mind, we find ourselves face to face with a very momentous question. is there any reason why the laws which hold good of the individual subjective mind should not hold good of the universal mind also? and the answer is that there is not. as has been already shown the universal mind must, by its very universality, be purely subjective, and what is the law of a part must also be the law of the whole: the qualities of fire are the same whether the centres of combustion be great or small, and therefore we may well conclude these lectures by considering what will be the result if we apply what we have learnt regarding the individual subjective mind to the universal mind. we have learnt that the three great facts regarding subjective mind are its creative power, its amenableness to suggestion, and its inability to work by any other than the deductive method. this last is an exceedingly important point, for it implies that the action of the subjective mind is in no way limited by precedent. the inductive method works on principles inferred from an already existing pattern, and therefore at the best only produces the old thing in a new shape. but the deductive method works according to the essence or spirit of the principle, and does not depend on any previous concrete manifestation for its apprehension of it; and this latter method of working must necessarily be that of the all-originating mind, for since there could be no prior existing pattern from which it could learn the principles of construction, the want of a pattern would have prevented its creating anything had its method been inductive instead of deductive. thus by the necessity of the case the universal mind must act deductively, that is, according to the law which has been found true of individual subjective mind. it is thus not bound by any precedent, which means that its creative power is absolutely unlimited; and since it is essentially subjective mind, and not objective mind, it is entirely amenable to suggestion. now it is an unavoidable inference from the identity of the law governing subjective mind, whether in the individual or the universal, that just as we can by suggestion impress a certain character of personality upon the individual subjective mind, so we can, and do, upon the universal mind; and it is for this reason that i have drawn attention to the inherent personal _quality_ of pure spirit when contemplated in its most interior plane. it becomes, therefore, the most important of all considerations with what character we invest the universal mind; for since our relation to it is _purely subjective_ it will infallibly bear _to us_ exactly that character which we impress upon it; in other words it will be to us exactly what we believe it to be. this is simply a logical inference from the fact that, as subjective mind, our primary relation to it can only be on the subjective plane, and indirectly our objective relations must also spring from the same source. this is the meaning of that remarkable passage twice repeated in the bible, "with, the pure thou wilt show thyself pure, and with the froward thou wilt show thyself froward." (ps. xviii., , and ii. sam. xxii., ), for the context makes it clear that these words are addressed to the divine being. the spiritual kingdom is _within_ us, and as we realize it _there_ so it becomes to us a reality. it is the unvarying law of the subjective life that "as a man thinketh in his heart so is he," that is to say, his inward subjective states are the only true reality, and what we call external realities are only their objective correspondences. if we thoroughly realize the truth that the universal mind must be to us exactly according to our conception of it, and that this relation is not merely imaginary but by the law of subjective mind must be to us an actual fact and the foundation of all other facts, then it is impossible to over-estimate the importance of the conception of the universal mind which we adopt. to the uninstructed there is little or no choice: they form a conception in accordance with the tradition they have received from others, and until they have learnt to think for themselves, they have to abide by the results of that tradition: for natural laws admit of no exceptions, and however faulty the traditional idea may be, its acceptance will involve a corresponding reaction upon the universal mind, which will in turn be reflected into the conscious mind and external life of the individual. but those who understand the law of the subject will have no one but themselves to blame if they do not derive all possible benefits from it. the greatest teacher of mental science the world has ever seen has laid down sufficiently plain rules for our guidance. with a knowledge of the subject whose depth can be appreciated only by those who have themselves some practical acquaintance with it, he bids his unlearned audiences, those common people who heard him gladly, picture to themselves the universal mind as a benign father, tenderly compassionate of all and sending the common bounties of nature alike on the evil and the good; but he also pictured it as exercising a special and peculiar care over those who recognize its willingness to do so:--"the very hairs of your head are all numbered," and "ye are of more value than many sparrows." prayer was to be made to the unseen being, not with doubt or fear, but with the absolute assurance of a certain answer, and no limit was to be set to its power or willingness to work for us. but to those who did not thus realize it, the great mind is necessarily the adversary who casts them into prison until they have paid the uttermost farthing; and thus in all cases the master impressed upon his hearers the exact correspondence of the attitude of this unseen power towards _them_ with their own attitude towards _it_. such teaching was not a narrow anthropomorphism but the adaptation to the intellectual capacity of the unlettered multitude of the very deepest truths of what we now call mental science. and the basis of it all is the cryptic personality of spirit hidden throughout the infinite of nature under every form of manifestation. as unalloyed life and intelligence it _can_ be no other than good, it can entertain no intention of evil, and thus all intentional evil must put us in opposition to it, and so deprive us of the consciousness of its guidance and strengthening and thus leave us to grope our own way and fight our own battle single-handed against the universe, odds which at last will surely prove too great for us. but remember that the opposition can never be on the part of the universal mind, for in itself it is sub-conscious mind; and to suppose any active opposition taken on its own initiative would be contrary to all we have learnt as to the nature of sub-conscious mind whether in the individual or the universal; the position of the universal mind towards us is always the reflection of our own attitude. therefore although the bible is full of threatening against those who persist in conscious opposition to the divine law of good, it is on the other hand full of promises of immediate and full forgiveness to all who change, their attitude and desire to co-operate with the law of good so far as they know it. the laws of nature do not act vindictively; and through all theological formularies and traditional interpretations let us realize that what we are dealing with is the supreme law of our own being; and it is on the basis of this natural law that we find such declarations as that in ezek. xviii., , which tells that if we forsake our evil ways our past transgressions shall never again be mentioned to us. we are dealing with the great principles of our subjective being, and our misuse of them in the past can never make them change their inherent law of action. if our method of using them in the past has brought us sorrow, fear and trouble, we have only to fall back on the law that if we reverse the cause the effects will be reversed also; and so what we have to do is simply to reverse our mental attitude and then endeavour to act up to the new one. the sincere endeavour to act up to our new mental attitude is essential, for we cannot really think in one way and act in another; but our repeated failures to fully act as we would wish must not discourage us. it is the sincere intention that is the essential thing, and this will in time release us from the bondage of habits which at present seem almost insuperable. the initial step, then, consists in determining to picture the universal mind as the ideal of all we could wish it to be both to ourselves and to others, together with the endeavour to reproduce this ideal, however imperfectly, in our own life; and this step having been taken, we can then cheerfully look upon it as our ever-present friend, providing all good, guarding from all danger, and guiding us with all counsel. gradually as the habit of thus regarding the universal mind grows upon us, we shall find that in accordance with the laws we have been considering, it will become more and more _personal_ to us, and in response to our desire its inherent intelligence will make itself more and more clearly perceptible within as a power of perceiving truth far beyond any statement of it that we could formulate by merely intellectual investigation. similarly if we think of it as a great power devoted to supplying all our needs, we shall impress this character also upon it, and by the law of subjective mind it will proceed to enact the part of that special providence which we have credited it with being; and if, beyond the general care of our concerns, we would draw to ourselves some particular benefit, the same rule holds good of impressing our desire upon the universal subjective mind. and if we realize that above and beyond all this we want something still greater and more enduring, the building-up of character and unfolding of our powers so that we may expand into fuller and yet fuller measures of joyous and joy-giving life, still the same rule holds good: convey to the universal mind the suggestion of the desire, and by the law of relation between subjective and objective mind this too will be fulfilled. and thus the deepest problems of philosophy bring us back to the old statement of the law:--ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. this is the summing-up of the natural law of the relation between us and the divine mind. it is thus no vain boast that mental science can enable us to make our lives what we will. we must start from where we are now, and by rightly estimating our relation to the divine universal mind we can gradually grow into any conditions we desire, provided we first make ourselves in habitual mental attitude the person who corresponds to those conditions: for we can never get over the law of correspondence, and the externalization will always be in accord with the internal principle that gives rise to it. and to this law there is no limit. what it can do for us to-day it can do to-morrow, and through all that procession of to-morrows that loses itself in the dim vistas of eternity. belief in limitation is the one and only thing that causes limitation, because we thus impress limitation upon the creative principle; and in proportion as we lay that belief aside our boundaries will expand, and increasing life and more abundant blessing will be ours. but we must not ignore our responsibilities. trained thought is far more powerful than untrained, and therefore the more deeply we penetrate into mental science the more carefully we must guard against all thoughts and words expressive of even the most modified form of ill-will. gossip, tale-bearing, sneering laughter, are not in accord with the principles of mental science; and similarly even our smallest thoughts of good carry with them a seed of good which will assuredly bear fruit in due time. this is not mere "goodie, goodie," but an important lesson in mental science, for our subjective mind takes its colour from our settled mental habits, and an occasional affirmation or denial will not be sufficient to change it; and we must therefore cultivate that tone which we wish to see reproduced in our conditions whether of body, mind, or circumstance. in these lectures my purpose has been, not so much to give specific rules of practice as to lay down the broad general principles of mental science which will enable the student to form rules for himself. in every walk in life, book knowledge is only a means to an end. books can only direct us where to look and what to look for, but we must do the finding _for ourselves;_ therefore, if you have really grasped the principles of the science, you will frame rules of your own which will give you better results than any attempt to follow somebody else's method, which was successful in their hands precisely because it was theirs. never fear to be yourself. if mental science does not teach you to be yourself it teaches you nothing. yourself, more yourself, and yet more yourself is what you want; only with the knowledge that the true self includes the inner and higher self which is always in immediate touch with the great divine mind. as walt whitman says:--"you are not all included between your hat and your boots." * * * * * _the growing popularity of the edinburgh lectures on mental science has led me to add to the present edition three more sections on body, soul, and spirit, which it is hoped will prove useful by rendering the principles of the interaction of these three factors somewhat clearer_. xiv. the body. some students find it difficult to realize that mental action can produce any real effect upon material substance; but if this is not possible there is no such thing as mental science, the purpose of which is to produce improved conditions both of body and environment, so that the ultimate manifestation aimed at is always one of demonstration upon the plane of the visible and concrete. therefore to afford conviction of an actual connection between the visible and the invisible, between the inner and the outer, is one of the most important points in the course of our studies. that such a connection must exist is proved by metaphysical argument in answer to the question, "how did anything ever come into existence at all?" and the whole creation, ourselves included, stands as evidence to this great truth. but to many minds merely abstract argument is not completely convincing, or at any rate it becomes more convincing if it is supported by something of a more concrete nature; and for such readers i would give a few hints as to the correspondence between the physical and the mental. the subject covers a very wide area, and the limited space at my disposal will only allow me to touch on a few suggestive points, still these may be sufficient to show that the abstract argument has some corresponding facts at the back of it. one of the most convincing proofs i have seen is that afforded by the "biometre," a little instrument invented by an eminent french scientist, the late dr. hippolyte baraduc, which shows the action of what he calls the "vital current." his theory is that this force, whatever its actual nature may be, is universally present, and operates as a current of physical vitality perpetually, flowing with more or less energy through every physical organism, and which can, at any rate to some extent, be controlled by the power of the human will. the theory in all its minutiae is exceedingly elaborate, and has been described in detail in dr. baraduc's published works. in a conversation i had with him about a year ago, he told me he was writing another book which would throw further light on the subject, but a few months later he passed over before it was presented to the world. the fact, however, which i wish to put before the reader, is the ocular demonstration of the connection between mind and matter, which an experiment with the biometre affords. the instrument consists of a bell glass, from the inside of which is suspended a copper needle by a fine silken thread. the glass stands on a wooden support, below which is a coil of copper wire, which, however, is not connected with any battery or other apparatus, and merely serves to condense the current. below the needle, inside the glass, there is a circular card divided into degrees to mark the action of the needle. two of these instruments are placed side by side, but in no way connected, and the experimenter then holds out the fingers of both hands to within about an inch of the glasses. according to the theory, the current enters at the left hand, circulates through the body, and passes out at the right hand, that is to say, there is an indrawing at the left and a giving-out at the right, thus agreeing with reichenbach's experiments on the polarity of the human body. i must confess that, although i had read dr. baraduc's book, "les vibrations humaines," i approached the instrument in a very sceptical frame of mind; but i was soon convinced of my error. at first, holding a mental attitude of entire relaxation, i found that the left-hand needle was attracted through twenty degrees, while the right-hand needle, the one affected by the out-going current, was repelled through ten degrees. after allowing the instrument to return to its normal equilibrium i again approached it with the purpose of seeing whether a change of mental attitude would in the least modify the flow of current. this time i assumed the strongest mental attitude i could with the intention of sending out a flow through the right hand, and the result as compared with the previous one was remarkable. the left-hand needle was now attracted only through ten degrees, while the right-hand one was deflected through something over thirty, thus clearly indicating the influence of the mental faculties in modifying the action of the current. i may mention that the experiment was made in the presence of two medical men who noted the movement of the needles. i will not here stop to discuss the question of what the actual constitution of this current of vital energy may be--it is sufficient for our present purpose that it is there, and the experiment i have described brings us face to face with the fact of a correspondence between our own mental attitude and the invisible forces of nature. even if we say that this current is some form of electricity, and that the variation of its action is determined by changes in the polarization of the atoms of the body, then this change of polarity is the result of mental action; so that the quickening or retarding of the cosmic current is equally the result of the mental attitude whether we suppose our mental force to act directly upon the current itself or indirectly by inducing changes in the molecular structure of the body. whichever hypothesis we adopt the conclusion is the same, namely, that the mind has power to open or close the door to invisible forces in such a way that the result of the mental action becomes apparent on the material plane. now, investigation shows that the physical body, is a mechanism specially adapted for the transmutation of the inner or mental power into modes of external activity. we know from medical science that the whole body is traversed by a network of nerves which serve as the channels of communication between the indwelling spiritual ego, which we call mind, and the functions of the external organism. this nervous system is dual. one system, known as the sympathetic, is the channel for all those activities which are not consciously directed by our volition, such as the operation of the digestive organs, the repair of the daily wear and tear of the tissues, and the like. the other system, known as the voluntary or cerebro-spinal system, is the channel through which we receive conscious perception from the physical senses and exercise control over the movements of the body. this system has its centre in the brain, while the other has its centre in a ganglionic mass at the back of the stomach known as the solar plexus, and sometimes spoken of as the abdominal brain. the cerebro- spinal system is the channel of our volitional or conscious mental action, and the sympathetic system is the channel of that mental action which unconsciously supports the vital functions of the body. thus the cerebro- spinal system is the organ of conscious mind and the sympathetic is that of sub-conscious mind. but the interaction of conscious and subconscious mind requires a similar interaction between the corresponding systems of nerves, and one conspicuous connection by which this is provided is the "vagus" nerve. this nerve passes out of the cerebral region as a portion of the voluntary system, and through it we control the vocal organs; then it passes onwards to the thorax sending out branches to the heart and lungs; and finally, passing through the diaphragm, it loses the outer coating which distinguishes the nerves of the voluntary system and becomes identified with those of the sympathetic system, so forming a connecting link between the two and making the man physically a single entity. similarly different areas of the brain indicate, their connection with the objective and subjective activities of the mind respectively, and speaking in a general way we may assign the frontal portion of the brain to the former and the posterior portion to the latter, while the intermediate portion partakes of the character of both. the intuitional faculty has its correspondence in this upper area of the brain situated between the frontal and posterior portions, and physiologically speaking, it is here that intuitive ideas find entrance. these at first are more or less unformed and generalized in character, but are nevertheless perceived by the conscious mind, otherwise we should not be aware of them at all. then the effort of nature is to bring these ideas into more definite and usable shape, so the conscious mind lays hold of them and induces a corresponding vibratory current in the voluntary system of nerves, and this in turn induces a similar current in the involuntary system, thus handing the idea over to the subjective mind. the vibratory current which had first descended from the apex of the brain to the frontal brain and thus through the voluntary system to the solar plexus is now reversed and ascends from the solar plexus through the sympathetic system to the posterior brain, this return current indicating the action of the subjective mind. if we were to remove the surface portion of the apex of the brain we should find immediately below it the shining belt of brain substance called the "corpus callosum." this is the point of union between the subjective and objective, and as the current returns from the solar plexus to this point it is restored to the objective portion of the brain in a fresh form which it has acquired by the silent alchemy of the subjective mind. thus the conception which was at first only vaguely recognized is restored to the objective mind in a definite and workable form, and then the objective mind, acting through the frontal brain--the area of comparison and analysis--proceeds to work upon a clearly perceived idea and to bring out the potentialities that are latent in it. it must of course be borne in mind that i am here speaking of the mental ego in that, mode of its existence with which we are most familiar, that is as clothed in flesh, though there may be much to say as to other modes of its activity. but for our daily life we have to consider ourselves as we are in that aspect of life, and from this point of view the physiological correspondence of the body to the action of the mind is an important item; and therefore, although we must always remember that the origin of ideas is purely mental, we must not forget that on the physical plane every mental action implies a corresponding molecular action in the brain and in the two-fold nervous system. if, as the old elizabethan poet says, "the soul is form, and doth the body make," then it is clear that the physical organism must be a mechanical arrangement as specially adapted for the use of the soul's powers as a steam-engine is for the power of steam; and it is the recognition of this reciprocity between the two that is the basis of all spiritual or mental healing, and therefore the study of this mechanical adaptation is an important branch of mental science. only we must not forget that it is the effect and not the cause. at the same time it is important to remember that such a thing as reversal of the relation between cause and effect is possible, just as the same apparatus may be made to generate mechanical power by the application of electricity, or to generate electricity by the application of mechanical power. and the importance of this principle consists in this. there is always a tendency for actions which were at first voluntary to become automatic, that is, to pass from the region of conscious mind into that of subconscious mind, and to acquire a permanent domicile there. professor elmer gates, of washington, has demonstrated this physiologically in his studies of brain formation. he tells us that every thought produces a slight molecular change in the substance of the brain, and the repetition of the same sort of thought causes a repetition of the same molecular action until at last a veritable channel is formed in the brain substance, which can only be eradicated by a reverse process of thought. in this way "grooves of thought" are very literal things, and when once established the vibrations of the cosmic currents flow automatically through them and thus react upon the mind by a process the reverse of that by which our voluntary and intentional in-drawing from the invisible is affected. in this way are formed what we call "habits," and hence the importance of controlling our thinking and guarding it against undesirable ideas. but on the other hand this reactionary process may be used to confirm good and life-giving modes of thought, so that by a knowledge of its laws we may enlist even the physical body itself in the building up of that perfectly whole personality, the attainment of which is the aim and object of our studies. xv. the soul. having now obtained a glimpse of the adaptation of the physical organism to the action of the mind we must next realize that the mind itself is an organism which is in like manner adapted to the action of a still higher power, only here the adaptation is one of mental faculty. as with other invisible forces all we can know of the mind is by observing what it does, but with this difference, that since we ourselves _are_ this mind, our observation is an interior observation of states of consciousness. in this way we recognize certain faculties of our mind, the working order of which i have considered at page ; but the point to which i would now draw attention is that these faculties always work under the influence of something which stimulates them, and this stimulus may come either from without through the external senses, or from within by the consciousness of something not perceptible on the physical plane. now the recognition of these interior sources of stimulus to our mental faculties, is an important branch of mental science, because the mental action thus set up works just as accurately through the physical correspondences as those which start from the recognition of external facts, and therefore the control and right direction of these inner perceptions is a matter of the first moment. the faculties most immediately concerned are the intuition and the imagination, but it is at first difficult to see how the intuition, which is entirely spontaneous, can be brought under the control of the will. of course, the spontaneousness of the intuition cannot in any way be interfered with, for if it ceased to act spontaneously it would cease to be the intuition. its province is, as it were, to capture ideas from the infinite and present them to the mind to be dealt with at its discretion. in our mental constitution the intuition is the point of origination and, therefore, for it to cease to act spontaneously would be for it to cease to act at all. but the experience of a long succession of observers shows that the intuition can be trained so as to acquire increased sensitiveness in some, particular direction, and the choice of the _general direction_ is determined by the will of the individual. it will be found that the intuition works most readily in respect to those subjects which most habitually occupy our thought; and according to the physiological correspondences which we have been considering this might be accounted for on the physical plane by the formation of brain-channels specially adapted for the induction in the molecular system of vibrations corresponding to the particular class of ideas in question. but of course we must remember that the ideas themselves are not caused by the molecular changes but on the contrary are the cause of them; and it is in this translation of thought action into physical action that we are brought face to face with the eternal mystery of the descent of spirit into matter; and that though we may trace matter through successive degrees of refinement till it becomes what, in comparison with those denser modes that are most familiar, we might call a spiritual substance, yet at the end of it it is not the intelligent thinking principle itself. the criterion is in the word "vibrations." however delicately etheric the substance its movement commences by the vibration of its particles, and a vibration is a wave having a certain length, amplitude, and periodicity, that is to say, something which can exist only in terms of space and time; and as soon as we are dealing with anything capable of the conception of measurement we may be quite certain that we are not dealing with spirit but only with one of its vehicles. therefore although we may push our analysis of matter further and ever further back--and on this line there is a great deal of knowledge to be gained--we shall find that the point at which spiritual power or thought-force is translated into etheric or atomic vibration will always elude us. therefore we must not attribute the origination of ideas to molecular displacement in the brain, though, by the reaction of the physical upon the mental which i have spoken of above, the formation of thought-channels in the grey matter of the brain may tend to facilitate the reception of certain ideas. some people are actually conscious of the action of the upper portion of the brain during the influx of an intuition, the sensation being that of a sort of expansion in that brain area, which might be compared to the opening of a valve or door; but all attempts to induce the inflow of intuitive ideas by the physiological expedient of trying to open this valve by the exercise of the will should be discouraged as likely to prove injurious to the brain. i believe some oriental systems advocate this method, but we may well trust the mind to regulate the action of its physical channels in a manner suitable to its own requirements, instead of trying to manipulate the mind by the unnatural forcing of its mechanical instrument. in all our studies on these lines we must remember that development is always by perfectly natural growth and is not brought about by unduly straining any portion of the system. the fact, however, remains that the intuition works most freely in that direction in which we most habitually concentrate our thought; and in practice it will be found that the best way to cultivate the intuition in any particular direction is to meditate upon the _abstract principles_ of that particular class of subjects rather than only to consider particular cases. perhaps the reason is that particular cases have to do with specific phenomena, that is with the law working under certain limiting conditions, whereas the _principles_ of the law are not limited by local conditions, and so habitual meditation on _them_ sets our intuition free to range in an infinitude where the conception of antecedent conditions does not limit it. anyway, whatever may be the theoretical explanation, you will find that the clear grasp of abstract principles in any direction has a wonderfully quickening effect upon the intuition in that particular direction. the importance of recognizing our power of thus giving direction to the intuition cannot be exaggerated, for if the mind is attuned to sympathy with the highest phases of spirit this power opens the door to limitless possibilities of knowledge. in its highest workings intuition becomes inspiration, and certain great records of fundamental truths and supreme mysteries which have come down to us from thousands of generations bequeathed by deep thinkers of old can only be accounted for on the supposition that their earnest thought on the originating spirit, coupled with a reverent worship of it, opened the door, through their intuitive faculty, to the most sublime inspirations regarding the supreme truths of the universe both with respect to the evolution of the cosmos and to the evolution of the individual. among such records explanatory of the supreme mysteries three stand out pre-eminent, all bearing witness to the same one truth, and each throwing light upon the other; and these three are the bible, the great pyramid, and the pack of cards--a curious combination some will think, but i hope in another volume of this series to be able to justify my present statement. i allude to these three records here because the unity of principle which they exhibit, notwithstanding their wide divergence of method, affords a standing proof that the direction taken by the intuition is largely determined by the will of the individual opening the mind in that particular direction. very closely allied to the intuition is the faculty of imagination. this does not mean mere fancies, which we dismiss without further consideration, but our power of forming mental images upon which we dwell. these, as i have said in the earlier part of this book, form a nucleus which, on its own plane, calls into action the universal law of attraction, thus giving rise to the principle of growth. the relation of the intuition to the imagination is that the intuition grasps an idea from the great universal mind, in which all things subsist as _potentials_, and presents it to the imagination in its essence rather than in a definite form, and then our image-building faculty gives it a clear and definite form which it presents before the mental vision, and which we then vivify by letting our thought dwell upon it, thus infusing our own personality into it, and so providing that personal element through which the specific action of the universal law relatively to the particular individual always takes place.[ ] whether our thought shall be allowed thus to dwell upon a particular mental image depends on our own will, and our exercise of our will depends on our belief in our power to use it so as to disperse or consolidate a given mental image; and finally our belief in our power to do this depends on our recognition of our relation to god, who is the source of all power; for it is an invariable truth that our life will take its whole form, tone, and color from our conception of god, whether that conception be positive or negative, and the sequence by which it does so is that now given. in this way, then, our intuition is related to our imagination, and this relation has its physiological correspondence in the circulus of molecular vibrations i have described above, which, having its commencement in the higher or "ideal" portion of the brain flows through the voluntary nervous system, the physical channel of objective mind, returning through the sympathetic system, the physical channel of subjective mind, thus completing the circuit and being then restored to the frontal brain, where it is consciously modelled into clear-cut forms suited to a specific purpose. in all this the power of the will as regulating the action both of the intuition and the imagination must never be lost sight of, for without such a central controlling power we should lose all sense of individuality; and hence the ultimate aim of the evolutionary process is to evolve individual wills actuated by such beneficence and enlightenment as shall make them fitting vehicles for the outflowing of the supreme spirit, which has hitherto created cosmically, and can now carry on the creative process to its highest stages only through conscious union with the individual; for this is the only possible solution of the great problem, how can the universal mind act in all its fulness upon the plane of the individual and particular? this is the ultimate of evolution, and the successful evolution of the individual depends on his recognizing this ultimate and working towards it; and therefore this should be the great end of our studies. there is a correspondence in the constitution of the body to the faculties of the soul, and there is a similar correspondence in the faculties of the soul to the power of the all-originating spirit; and as in all other adaptations of specific vehicles so also here, we can never correctly understand the nature of the vehicle and use it rightly until we realize the nature of the power for the working of which it is specially adapted. let us, then, in conclusion briefly consider the nature of that power. xvi. the spirit. what must the supreme all-originating spirit be in itself? that is the question before us. let us start with one fact regarding it about which we cannot have any possible doubt--it is _creative_. if it were not creative nothing could come into existence; therefore we know that its purpose, or law of tendency, must be to bring individual lives into existence and to surround them with a suitable environment. now a power which has this for its inherent nature must be a kindly power. the spirit of life seeking expression in individual lives can have no other intention towards them than "that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." to suppose the opposite would be a contradiction in terms. it would be to suppose the eternal principle of life acting against itself, expressing itself as the reverse of what it is, in which case it would not be expressing itself but expressing its opposite; so that it is impossible to conceive of the spirit of life acting otherwise than to the increase of life. this is as yet only imperfectly apparent by reason of our imperfect apprehension of the position, and our consequent want of conscious unity with the one eternal life. as our consciousness of unity becomes more perfect so will the life-givingness of the spirit become more apparent. but in the realm of principles the purely affirmative and life-giving nature of the all-originating spirit is an unavoidable conclusion. now by what name can we call such an inherent desire to add to the fulness of any individual life--that is, to make it stronger, brighter, and happier? if this is not love, then i do not know what else it is; and so we are philosophically led to the conclusion that love is the prime moving power of the creating spirit. but expression is impossible without form. what form, then, should love give to the vehicles of its expression? by the hypothesis of the case it could not find self-expression in forms that were hateful or repugnant to it--therefore the only logical correlative of love is beauty. beauty is not yet universally manifested for the same reason that life is not, namely, lack of recognition of its principle; but, that the principle of beauty is inherent in the eternal mind is demonstrated by all that is beautiful in the world in which we live. these considerations show us that the inherent nature of the spirit must consist in the eternal interaction of love and beauty as the active and passive polarity of being. then this is the power for the working of which our soul faculties are specially adapted. and when this purpose of the adaptation is recognized we begin to get some insight into the way in which our intuition, imagination, and will should be exercized. by training our thought to habitually dwell upon this dual-unity of the originating forces of love and beauty the intuition is rendered more and more sensitive to ideas emanating from this supreme source, and the imagining faculty is trained in the formation of images corresponding to such ideas; while on the physical side the molecular structure of the brain and body becomes more and more perfectly adjusted to the generating of vibratory currents tending to the outward manifestation of the originating principle. thus the whole man is brought into unison with himself and with the supreme source of life, so that, in the words of st. paul, he is being day by day renewed after the image of him that created him. our more immediately personal recognition of the all-originating love and beauty will thus flow out as peace of mind, health of body, discretion in the management of our affairs, and power in the carrying out of our undertakings; and as we advance to a wider conception of the working of the spirit of love and beauty in its infinite possibilities, so our intuition will find a wider scope and our field of activity will expand along with it--in a word we shall discover that our individuality is growing, and that we are becoming more truly ourselves than we ever were before. the question of the specific lines on which the individual may be most perfectly trained into such recognition of his true relation to the all-embracing spirit of life is therefore of supreme importance, but it is also of such magnitude that even to briefly sketch its broad outlines would require a volume to itself, and i will therefore not attempt to enter upon it here, my present purpose being only to offer some hints of the principles underlying that wonderful three-fold unity of body, soul, and spirit which we all know ourselves to be. we are as yet only at the commencement of the path which leads to the realization of this unity in the full development of all its powers, but others have trodden the way before us, from whose experiences we may learn; and not least among these was the illustrious founder of the most christian fraternity of the rosicrucians. this master-mind, setting out in his youth with the intention of going to jerusalem, changed the order of his journey and first sojourned for three years in the symbolical city of damcar, in the mystical country of arabia, then for about a year in the mystical country of egypt, and then for two years in the mystical country of fez. then, having during these six years learned all that was to be acquired in those countries, he returned to his native land of germany, where, on the basis of the knowledge he had thus gained, he founded the fraternity r.c., for whose instruction he wrote the mystical books m. and t. then, when he realized that his work in its present stage was accomplished, he of his own free will laid aside the physical body, not, it is recorded, by decay, or disease, or ordinary death, but by the express direction of the spirit of life, summing up all his knowledge in the words, "jesus mihi omnia." and now his followers await the coming of "the artist elias," who shall bring the magnum opus to its completion. "let him that readeth understand." footnotes footnote : see my "doré lectures." the way of peace by james allen author of "as a man thinketh," "out from the heart" contents the power of meditation the two masters, self and truth the acquirement of spiritual power the realization of selfless love entering into the infinite saints, sages, and saviors; the law of service the realization of perfect peace the power of meditation spiritual meditation is the pathway to divinity. it is the mystic ladder which reaches from earth to heaven, from error to truth, from pain to peace. every saint has climbed it; every sinner must sooner or later come to it, and every weary pilgrim that turns his back upon self and the world, and sets his face resolutely toward the father's home, must plant his feet upon its golden rounds. without its aid you cannot grow into the divine state, the divine likeness, the divine peace, and the fadeless glories and unpolluting joys of truth will remain hidden from you. meditation is the intense dwelling, in thought, upon an idea or theme, with the object of thoroughly comprehending it, and whatsoever you constantly meditate upon you will not only come to understand, but will grow more and more into its likeness, for it will become incorporated into your very being, will become, in fact, your very self. if, therefore, you constantly dwell upon that which is selfish and debasing, you will ultimately become selfish and debased; if you ceaselessly think upon that which is pure and unselfish you will surely become pure and unselfish. tell me what that is upon which you most frequently and intensely think, that to which, in your silent hours, your soul most naturally turns, and i will tell you to what place of pain or peace you are traveling, and whether you are growing into the likeness of the divine or the bestial. there is an unavoidable tendency to become literally the embodiment of that quality upon which one most constantly thinks. let, therefore, the object of your meditation be above and not below, so that every time you revert to it in thought you will be lifted up; let it be pure and unmixed with any selfish element; so shall your heart become purified and drawn nearer to truth, and not defiled and dragged more hopelessly into error. meditation, in the spiritual sense in which i am now using it, is the secret of all growth in spiritual life and knowledge. every prophet, sage, and savior became such by the power of meditation. buddha meditated upon the truth until he could say, "i am the truth." jesus brooded upon the divine immanence until at last he could declare, "i and my father are one." meditation centered upon divine realities is the very essence and soul of prayer. it is the silent reaching of the soul toward the eternal. mere petitionary prayer without meditation is a body without a soul, and is powerless to lift the mind and heart above sin and affliction. if you are daily praying for wisdom, for peace, for loftier purity and a fuller realization of truth, and that for which you pray is still far from you, it means that you are praying for one thing while living out in thought and act another. if you will cease from such waywardness, taking your mind off those things the selfish clinging to which debars you from the possession of the stainless realities for which you pray: if you will no longer ask god to grant you that which you do not deserve, or to bestow upon you that love and compassion which you refuse to bestow upon others, but will commence to think and act in the spirit of truth, you will day by day be growing into those realities, so that ultimately you will become one with them. he who would secure any worldly advantage must be willing to work vigorously for it, and he would be foolish indeed who, waiting with folded hands, expected it to come to him for the mere asking. do not then vainly imagine that you can obtain the heavenly possessions without making an effort. only when you commence to work earnestly in the kingdom of truth will you be allowed to partake of the bread of life, and when you have, by patient and uncomplaining effort, earned the spiritual wages for which you ask, they will not be withheld from you. if you really seek truth, and not merely your own gratification; if you love it above all worldly pleasures and gains; more, even, than happiness itself, you will be willing to make the effort necessary for its achievement. if you would be freed from sin and sorrow; if you would taste of that spotless purity for which you sigh and pray; if you would realize wisdom and knowledge, and would enter into the possession of profound and abiding peace, come now and enter the path of meditation, and let the supreme object of your meditation be truth. at the outset, meditation must be distinguished from _idle reverie_. there is nothing dreamy and unpractical about it. it is _a process of searching and uncompromising thought which allows nothing to remain but the simple and naked truth_. thus meditating you will no longer strive to build yourself up in your prejudices, but, forgetting self, you will remember only that you are seeking the truth. and so you will remove, one by one, the errors which you have built around yourself in the past, and will patiently wait for the revelation of truth which will come when your errors have been sufficiently removed. in the silent humility of your heart you will realize that "there is an inmost centre in us all where truth abides in fulness; and around, wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in; this perfect, clear perception, which is truth, a baffling and perverting carnal mesh blinds it, and makes all error; and to know, rather consists in opening out a way whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, than in effecting entry for a light supposed to be without." select some portion of the day in which to meditate, and keep that period sacred to your purpose. the best time is the very early morning when the spirit of repose is upon everything. all natural conditions will then be in your favor; the passions, after the long bodily fast of the night, will be subdued, the excitements and worries of the previous day will have died away, and the mind, strong and yet restful, will be receptive to spiritual instruction. indeed, one of the first efforts you will be called upon to make will be to shake off lethargy and indulgence, and if you refuse you will be unable to advance, for the demands of the spirit are imperative. to be spiritually awakened is also to be mentally and physically awakened. the sluggard and the self-indulgent can have no knowledge of truth. he who, possessed of health and strength, wastes the calm, precious hours of the silent morning in drowsy indulgence is totally unfit to climb the heavenly heights. he whose awakening consciousness has become alive to its lofty possibilities, who is beginning to shake off the darkness of ignorance in which the world is enveloped, rises before the stars have ceased their vigil, and, grappling with the darkness within his soul, strives, by holy aspiration, to perceive the light of truth while the unawakened world dreams on. "the heights by great men reached and kept, were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night." no saint, no holy man, no teacher of truth ever lived who did not rise early in the morning. jesus habitually rose early, and climbed the solitary mountains to engage in holy communion. buddha always rose an hour before sunrise and engaged in meditation, and all his disciples were enjoined to do the same. if you have to commence your daily duties at a very early hour, and are thus debarred from giving the early morning to systematic meditation, try to give an hour at night, and should this, by the length and laboriousness of your daily task be denied you, you need not despair, for you may turn your thoughts upward in holy meditation in the intervals of your work, or in those few idle minutes which you now waste in aimlessness; and should your work be of that kind which becomes by practice automatic, you may meditate while engaged upon it. that eminent christian saint and philosopher, jacob boehme, realized his vast knowledge of divine things whilst working long hours as a shoemaker. in every life there is time to think, and the busiest, the most laborious is not shut out from aspiration and meditation. spiritual meditation and self-discipline are inseparable; you will, therefore, commence to meditate upon yourself so as to try and understand yourself, for, remember, the great object you will have in view will be the complete removal of all your errors in order that you may realize truth. you will begin to question your motives, thoughts, and acts, comparing them with your ideal, and endeavoring to look upon them with a calm and impartial eye. in this manner you will be continually gaining more of that mental and spiritual equilibrium without which men are but helpless straws upon the ocean of life. if you are given to hatred or anger you will meditate upon gentleness and forgiveness, so as to become acutely alive to a sense of your harsh and foolish conduct. you will then begin to dwell in thoughts of love, of gentleness, of abounding forgiveness; and as you overcome the lower by the higher, there will gradually, silently steal into your heart a knowledge of the divine law of love with an understanding of its bearing upon all the intricacies of life and conduct. and in applying this knowledge to your every thought, word, and act, you will grow more and more gentle, more and more loving, more and more divine. and thus with every error, every selfish desire, every human weakness; by the power of meditation is it overcome, and as each sin, each error is thrust out, a fuller and clearer measure of the light of truth illumines the pilgrim soul. thus meditating, you will be ceaselessly fortifying yourself against your only _real_ enemy, your selfish, perishable self, and will be establishing yourself more and more firmly in the divine and imperishable self that is inseparable from truth. the direct outcome of your meditations will be a calm, spiritual strength which will be your stay and resting-place in the struggle of life. great is the overcoming power of holy thought, and the strength and knowledge gained in the hour of silent meditation will enrich the soul with saving remembrance in the hour of strife, of sorrow, or of temptation. as, by the power of meditation, you grow in wisdom, you will relinquish, more and more, your selfish desires which are fickle, impermanent, and productive of sorrow and pain; and will take your stand, with increasing steadfastness and trust, upon unchangeable principles, and will realize heavenly rest. the use of meditation is the acquirement of a knowledge of eternal principles, and the power which results from meditation is the ability to rest upon and trust those principles, and so become one with the eternal. the end of meditation is, therefore, direct knowledge of truth, god, and the realization of divine and profound peace. let your meditations take their rise from the ethical ground which you now occupy. remember that you are to _grow_ into truth by steady perseverance. if you are an orthodox christian, meditate ceaselessly upon the spotless purity and divine excellence of the character of jesus, and apply his every precept to your inner life and outward conduct, so as to approximate more and more toward his perfection. do not be as those religious ones, who, refusing to meditate upon the law of truth, and to put into practice the precepts given to them by their master, are content to formally worship, to cling to their particular creeds, and to continue in the ceaseless round of sin and suffering. strive to rise, by the power of meditation, above all selfish clinging to partial gods or party creeds; above dead formalities and lifeless ignorance. thus walking the high way of wisdom, with mind fixed upon the spotless truth, you shall know no halting-place short of the realization of truth. he who earnestly meditates first perceives a truth, as it were, afar off, and then realizes it by daily practice. it is only the doer of the word of truth that can know of the doctrine of truth, for though by pure thought the truth is perceived, it is only actualized by practice. said the divine gautama, the buddha, "he who gives himself up to vanity, and does not give himself up to meditation, forgetting the real aim of life and grasping at pleasure, will in time envy him who has exerted himself in meditation," and he instructed his disciples in the following "five great meditations":-- "the first meditation is the meditation of love, in which you so adjust your heart that you long for the weal and welfare of all beings, including the happiness of your enemies. "the second meditation is the meditation of pity, in which you think of all beings in distress, vividly representing in your imagination their sorrows and anxieties so as to arouse a deep compassion for them in your soul. "the third meditation is the meditation of joy, in which you think of the prosperity of others, and rejoice with their rejoicings. "the fourth meditation is the meditation of impurity, in which you consider the evil consequences of corruption, the effects of sin and diseases. how trivial often the pleasure of the moment, and how fatal its consequences. "the fifth meditation is the meditation on serenity, in which you rise above love and hate, tyranny and oppression, wealth and want, and regard your own fate with impartial calmness and perfect tranquillity." by engaging in these meditations the disciples of the buddha arrived at a knowledge of the truth. but whether you engage in these particular meditations or not matters little so long as your object is truth, so long as you hunger and thirst for that righteousness which is a holy heart and a blameless life. in your meditations, therefore, let your heart grow and expand with ever-broadening love, until, freed from all hatred, and passion, and condemnation, it embraces the whole universe with thoughtful tenderness. as the flower opens its petals to receive the morning light, so open your soul more and more to the glorious light of truth. soar upward upon the wings of aspiration; be fearless, and believe in the loftiest possibilities. believe that a life of absolute meekness is possible; believe that a life of stainless purity is possible; believe that a life of perfect holiness is possible; believe that the realization of the highest truth is possible. he who so believes, climbs rapidly the heavenly hills, whilst the unbelievers continue to grope darkly and painfully in the fog-bound valleys. so believing, so aspiring, so meditating, divinely sweet and beautiful will be your spiritual experiences, and glorious the revelations that will enrapture your inward vision. as you realize the divine love, the divine justice, the divine purity, the perfect law of good, or god, great will be your bliss and deep your peace. old things will pass away, and all things will become new. the veil of the material universe, so dense and impenetrable to the eye of error, so thin and gauzy to the eye of truth, will be lifted and the spiritual universe will be revealed. time will cease, and you will live only in eternity. change and mortality will no more cause you anxiety and sorrow, for you will become established in the unchangeable, and will dwell in the very heart of immortality. star of wisdom star that of the birth of vishnu, birth of krishna, buddha, jesus, told the wise ones, heavenward looking, waiting, watching for thy gleaming in the darkness of the night-time, in the starless gloom of midnight; shining herald of the coming of the kingdom of the righteous; teller of the mystic story of the lowly birth of godhead in the stable of the passions, in the manger of the mind-soul; silent singer of the secret of compassion deep and holy to the heart with sorrow burdened, to the soul with waiting weary:-- star of all-surpassing brightness, thou again dost deck the midnight; thou again dost cheer the wise ones watching in the creedal darkness, weary of the endless battle with the grinding blades of error; tired of lifeless, useless idols, of the dead forms of religions; spent with watching for thy shining; thou hast ended their despairing; thou hast lighted up their pathway; thou hast brought again the old truths to the hearts of all thy watchers; to the souls of them that love thee thou dost speak of joy and gladness, of the peace that comes of sorrow. blessed are they that can see thee, weary wanderers in the night-time; blessed they who feel the throbbing, in their bosoms feel the pulsing of a deep love stirred within them by the great power of thy shining. let us learn thy lesson truly; learn it faithfully and humbly; learn it meekly, wisely, gladly, ancient star of holy vishnu, light of krishna, buddha, jesus. the two masters, self and truth upon the battlefield of the human soul two masters are ever contending for the crown of supremacy, for the kingship and dominion of the heart; the master of self, called also the "prince of this world," and the master of truth, called also the father god. the master self is that rebellious one whose weapons are passion, pride, avarice, vanity, self-will, implements of darkness; the master truth is that meek and lowly one whose weapons are gentleness, patience, purity, sacrifice, humility, love, instruments of light. in every soul the battle is waged, and as a soldier cannot engage at once in two opposing armies, so every heart is enlisted either in the ranks of self or of truth. there is no half-and-half course; "there is self and there is truth; where self is, truth is not, where truth is, self is not." thus spake buddha, the teacher of truth, and jesus, the manifested christ, declared that "no man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. ye cannot serve god and mammon." truth is so simple, so absolutely undeviating and uncompromising that it admits of no complexity, no turning, no qualification. self is ingenious, crooked, and, governed by subtle and snaky desire, admits of endless turnings and qualifications, and the deluded worshipers of self vainly imagine that they can gratify every worldly desire, and at the same time possess the truth. but the lovers of truth worship truth with the sacrifice of self, and ceaselessly guard themselves against worldliness and self-seeking. do you seek to know and to realize truth? then you must be prepared to sacrifice, to renounce to the uttermost, for truth in all its glory can only be perceived and known when the last vestige of self has disappeared. the eternal christ declared that he who would be his disciple must "deny himself daily." are you willing to deny yourself, to give up your lusts, your prejudices, your opinions? if so, you may enter the narrow way of truth, and find that peace from which the world is shut out. the absolute denial, the utter extinction, of self is the perfect state of truth, and all religions and philosophies are but so many aids to this supreme attainment. self is the denial of truth. truth is the denial of self. as you let self die, you will be reborn in truth. as you cling to self, truth will be hidden from you. whilst you cling to self, your path will be beset with difficulties, and repeated pains, sorrows, and disappointments will be your lot. there are no difficulties in truth, and coming to truth, you will be freed from all sorrow and disappointment. truth in itself is not hidden and dark. it is always revealed and is perfectly transparent. but the blind and wayward self cannot perceive it. the light of day is not hidden except to the blind, and the light of truth is not hidden except to those who are blinded by self. truth is the one reality in the universe, the inward harmony, the perfect justice, the eternal love. nothing can be added to it, nor taken from it. it does not depend upon any man, but all men depend upon it. you cannot perceive the beauty of truth while you are looking out through the eyes of self. if you are vain, you will color everything with your own vanities. if lustful, your heart and mind will be so clouded with the smoke and flames of passion, that everything will appear distorted through them. if proud and opinionative, you will see nothing in the whole universe except the magnitude and importance of your own opinions. there is one quality which pre-eminently distinguishes the man of truth from the man of self, and that is _humility_. to be not only free from vanity, stubbornness and egotism, but to regard one's own opinions as of no value, this indeed is true humility. he who is immersed in self regards his own opinions as truth, and the opinions of other men as error. but that humble truth-lover who has learned to distinguish between opinion and truth, regards all men with the eye of charity, and does not seek to defend his opinions against theirs, but sacrifices those opinions that he may love the more, that he may manifest the spirit of truth, for truth in its very nature is ineffable and can only be lived. he who has most of charity has most of truth. men engage in heated controversies, and foolishly imagine they are defending the truth, when in reality they are merely defending their own petty interests and perishable opinions. the follower of self takes up arms against others. the follower of truth takes up arms against himself. truth, being unchangeable and eternal, is independent of your opinion and of mine. we may enter into it, or we may stay outside; but both our defense and our attack are superfluous, and are hurled back upon ourselves. men, enslaved by self, passionate, proud, and condemnatory, believe their particular creed or religion to be the truth, and all other religions to be error; and they proselytize with passionate ardor. there is but one religion, the religion of truth. there is but one error, the error of self. truth is not a formal belief; it is an unselfish, holy, and aspiring heart, and he who has truth is at peace with all, and cherishes all with thoughts of love. you may easily know whether you are a child of truth or a worshiper of self, if you will silently examine your mind, heart, and conduct. do you harbor thoughts of suspicion, enmity, envy, lust, pride, or do you strenuously fight against these? if the former, you are chained to self, no matter what religion you may profess; if the latter, you are a candidate for truth, even though outwardly you may profess no religion. are you passionate, self-willed, ever seeking to gain your own ends, self-indulgent, and self-centered; or are you gentle, mild, unselfish, quit of every form of self-indulgence, and are ever ready to give up your own? if the former, self is your master; if the latter, truth is the object of your affection. do you strive for riches? do you fight, with passion, for your party? do you lust for power and leadership? are you given to ostentation and self-praise? or have you given up the love of riches? have you relinquished all strife? are you content to take the lowest place, and to be passed by unnoticed? and have you ceased to talk about yourself and to regard yourself with self-complacent pride? if the former, even though you may imagine you worship god, the god of your heart is self. if the latter, even though you may withhold your lips from worship, you are dwelling with the most high. the signs by which the truth-lover is known are unmistakable. hear the holy krishna declare them, in sir edwin arnold's beautiful rendering of the "bhagavad gita":-- "fearlessness, singleness of soul, the will always to strive for wisdom; opened hand and governed appetites; and piety, and love of lonely study; humbleness, uprightness, heed to injure nought which lives truthfulness, slowness unto wrath, a mind that lightly letteth go what others prize; and equanimity, and charity which spieth no man's faults; and tenderness towards all that suffer; a contented heart, fluttered by no desires; a bearing mild, modest and grave, with manhood nobly mixed, with patience, fortitude and purity; an unrevengeful spirit, never given to rate itself too high--such be the signs, o indian prince! of him whose feet are set on that fair path which leads to heavenly birth!" when men, lost in the devious ways of error and self, have forgotten the "heavenly birth," the state of holiness and truth, they set up artificial standards by which to judge one another, and make acceptance of, and adherence to, their own particular theology, the test of truth; and so men are divided one against another, and there is ceaseless enmity and strife, and unending sorrow and suffering. reader, do you seek to realize the birth into truth? there is only one way: _let self die_. all those lusts, appetites, desires, opinions, limited conceptions and prejudices to which you have hitherto so tenaciously clung, let them fall from you. let them no longer hold you in bondage, and truth will be yours. cease to look upon your own religion as superior to all others, and strive humbly to learn the supreme lesson of charity. no longer cling to the idea, so productive of strife and sorrow, that the savior whom you worship is the only savior, and that the savior whom your brother worships with equal sincerity and ardor, is an impostor; but seek diligently the path of holiness, and then you will realize that every holy man is a savior of mankind. the giving up of self is not merely the renunciation of outward things. it consists of the renunciation of the inward sin, the inward error. not by giving up vain clothing; not by relinquishing riches; not by abstaining from certain foods; not by speaking smooth words; not by merely doing these things is the truth found; but by giving up the spirit of vanity; by relinquishing the desire for riches; by abstaining from the lust of self-indulgence; by giving up all hatred, strife, condemnation, and self-seeking, and becoming gentle and pure at heart; by doing these things is the truth found. to do the former, and not to do the latter, is pharisaism and hypocrisy, whereas the latter includes the former. you may renounce the outward world, and isolate yourself in a cave or in the depths of a forest, but you will take all your selfishness with you, and unless you renounce that, great indeed will be your wretchedness and deep your delusion. you may remain just where you are, performing all your duties, and yet renounce the world, the inward enemy. to be in the world and yet not of the world is the highest perfection, the most blessed peace, is to achieve the greatest victory. the renunciation of self is the way of truth, therefore, "enter the path; there is no grief like hate, no pain like passion, no deceit like sense; enter the path; far hath he gone whose foot treads down one fond offense." as you succeed in overcoming self you will begin to see things in their right relations. he who is swayed by any passion, prejudice, like or dislike, adjusts everything to that particular bias, and sees only his own delusions. he who is absolutely free from all passion, prejudice, preference, and partiality, sees himself as he is; sees others as they are; sees all things in their proper proportions and right relations. having nothing to attack, nothing to defend, nothing to conceal, and no interests to guard, he is at peace. he has realized the profound simplicity of truth, for this unbiased, tranquil, blessed state of mind and heart is the state of truth. he who attains to it dwells with the angels, and sits at the footstool of the supreme. knowing the great law; knowing the origin of sorrow; knowing the secret of suffering; knowing the way of emancipation in truth, how can such a one engage in strife or condemnation; for though he knows that the blind, self-seeking world, surrounded with the clouds of its own illusions, and enveloped in the darkness of error and self, cannot perceive the steadfast light of truth, and is utterly incapable of comprehending the profound simplicity of the heart that has died, or is dying, to self, yet he also knows that when the suffering ages have piled up mountains of sorrow, the crushed and burdened soul of the world will fly to its final refuge, and that when the ages are completed, every prodigal will come back to the fold of truth. and so he dwells in goodwill toward all, and regards all with that tender compassion which a father bestows upon his wayward children. men cannot understand truth because they cling to self, because they believe in and love self, because they believe self to be the only reality, whereas it is the one delusion. when you cease to believe in and love self you will desert it, and will fly to truth, and will find the eternal reality. when men are intoxicated with the wines of luxury, and pleasure, and vanity, the thirst of life grows and deepens within them, and they delude themselves with dreams of fleshly immortality, but when they come to reap the harvest of their own sowing, and pain and sorrow supervene, then, crushed and humiliated, relinquishing self and all the intoxications of self, they come, with aching hearts to the one immortality, the immortality that destroys all delusions, the spiritual immortality in truth. men pass from evil to good, from self to truth, through the dark gate of sorrow, for sorrow and self are inseparable. only in the peace and bliss of truth is all sorrow vanquished. if you suffer disappointment because your cherished plans have been thwarted, or because someone has not come up to your anticipations, it is because you are clinging to self. if you suffer remorse for your conduct, it is because you have given way to self. if you are overwhelmed with chagrin and regret because of the attitude of someone else toward you, it is because you have been cherishing self. if you are wounded on account of what has been done to you or said of you, it is because you are walking in the painful way of self. all suffering is of self. all suffering ends in truth. when you have entered into and realized truth, you will no longer suffer disappointment, remorse, and regret, and sorrow will flee from you. "self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul; truth is the only angel that can bid the gates unroll; and when he comes to call thee, arise and follow fast; his way may lie through darkness, but it leads to light at last." the woe of the world is of its own making. sorrow purifies and deepens the soul, and the extremity of sorrow is the prelude to truth. have you suffered much? have you sorrowed deeply? have you pondered seriously upon the problem of life? if so, you are prepared to wage war against self, and to become a disciple of truth. the intellectual who do not see the necessity for giving up self, frame endless theories about the universe, and call them truth; but do thou pursue that direct line of conduct which is the practice of righteousness, and thou wilt realize the truth which has no place in theory, and which never changes. cultivate your heart. water it continually with unselfish love and deep-felt pity, and strive to shut out from it all thoughts and feelings which are not in accordance with love. return good for evil, love for hatred, gentleness for ill-treatment, and remain silent when attacked. so shall you transmute all your selfish desires into the pure gold of love, and self will disappear in truth. so will you walk blamelessly among men, yoked with the easy yoke of lowliness, and clothed with the divine garment of humility. o come, weary brother! thy struggling and striving end thou in the heart of the master of ruth; across self's drear desert why wilt thou be driving, athirst for the quickening waters of truth when here, by the path of thy searching and sinning, flows life's gladsome stream, lies love's oasis green? come, turn thou and rest; know the end and beginning, the sought and the searcher, the seer and seen. thy master sits not in the unapproached mountains, nor dwells in the mirage which floats on the air, nor shalt thou discover his magical fountains in pathways of sand that encircle despair. in selfhood's dark desert cease wearily seeking the odorous tracks of the feet of thy king; and if thou wouldst hear the sweet sound of his speaking, be deaf to all voices that emptily sing. flee the vanishing places; renounce all thou hast; leave all that thou lovest, and, naked and bare, thyself at the shrine of the _innermost_ cast; the highest, the holiest, the changeless is there. within, in the heart of the silence he dwelleth; leave sorrow and sin, leave thy wanderings sore; come bathe in his joy, whilst he, whispering, telleth thy soul what it seeketh, and wander no more. then cease, weary brother, thy struggling and striving; find peace in the heart of the master of ruth. across self's dark desert cease wearily driving; come; drink at the beautiful waters of truth. the acquirement of spiritual power the world is filled with men and women seeking pleasure, excitement, novelty; seeking ever to be moved to laughter or tears; not seeking strength, stability, and power; but courting weakness, and eagerly engaged in dispersing what power they have. men and women of real power and influence are few, because few are prepared to make the sacrifice necessary to the acquirement of power, and fewer still are ready to patiently build up character. to be swayed by your fluctuating thoughts and impulses is to be weak and powerless; to rightly control and direct those forces is to be strong and powerful. men of strong animal passions have much of the ferocity of the beast, but this is not power. the elements of power are there; but it is only when this ferocity is tamed and subdued by the higher intelligence that real power begins; and men can only grow in power by awakening themselves to higher and ever higher states of intelligence and consciousness. the difference between a man of weakness and one of power lies not in the strength of the personal will (for the stubborn man is usually weak and foolish), but in that focus of consciousness which represents their states of knowledge. the pleasure-seekers, the lovers of excitement, the hunters after novelty, and the victims of impulse and hysterical emotion lack that knowledge of principles which gives balance, stability, and influence. a man commences to develop power when, checking his impulses and selfish inclinations, he falls back upon the higher and calmer consciousness within him, and begins to steady himself upon a principle. the realization of unchanging principles in consciousness is at once the source and secret of the highest power. when, after much searching, and suffering, and sacrificing, the light of an eternal principle dawns upon the soul, a divine calm ensues and joy unspeakable gladdens the heart. he who has realized such a principle ceases to wander, and remains poised and self-possessed. he ceases to be "passion's slave," and becomes a master-builder in the temple of destiny. the man that is governed by self, and not by a principle, changes his front when his selfish comforts are threatened. deeply intent upon defending and guarding his own interests, he regards all means as lawful that will subserve that end. he is continually scheming as to how he may protect himself against his enemies, being too self-centered to perceive that he is his own enemy. such a man's work crumbles away, for it is divorced from truth and power. all effort that is grounded upon self, perishes; only that work endures that is built upon an indestructible principle. the man that stands upon a principle is the same calm, dauntless, self-possessed man under all circumstances. when the hour of trial comes, and he has to decide between his personal comforts and truth, he gives up his comforts and remains firm. even the prospect of torture and death cannot alter or deter him. the man of self regards the loss of his wealth, his comforts, or his life as the greatest calamities which can befall him. the man of principle looks upon these incidents as comparatively insignificant, and not to be weighed with loss of character, loss of truth. to desert truth is, to him, the only happening which can really be called a calamity. it is the hour of crisis which decides who are the minions of darkness, and who the children of light. it is the epoch of threatening disaster, ruin, and persecution which divides the sheep from the goats, and reveals to the reverential gaze of succeeding ages the men and women of power. it is easy for a man, so long as he is left in the enjoyment of his possessions, to persuade himself that he believes in and adheres to the principles of peace, brotherhood, and universal love; but if, when his enjoyments are threatened, or he imagines they are threatened, he begins to clamor loudly for war, he shows that he believes in and stands upon, not peace, brotherhood, and love, but strife, selfishness, and hatred. he who does not desert his principles when threatened with the loss of every earthly thing, even to the loss of reputation and life, is the man of power; is the man whose every word and work endures; is the man whom the afterworld honors, reveres, and worships. rather than desert that principle of divine love on which he rested, and in which all his trust was placed, jesus endured the utmost extremity of agony and deprivation; and today the world prostrates itself at his pierced feet in rapt adoration. there is no way to the acquirement of spiritual power except by that inward illumination and enlightenment which is the realization of spiritual principles; and those principles can only be realized by constant practice and application. take the principle of divine love, and quietly and diligently meditate upon it with the object of arriving at a thorough understanding of it. bring its searching light to bear upon all your habits, your actions, your speech and intercourse with others, your every secret thought and desire. as you persevere in this course, the divine love will become more and more perfectly revealed to you, and your own shortcomings will stand out in more and more vivid contrast, spurring you on to renewed endeavor; and having once caught a glimpse of the incomparable majesty of that imperishable principle, you will never again rest in your weakness, your selfishness, your imperfection, but will pursue that love until you have relinquished every discordant element, and have brought yourself into perfect harmony with it. and that state of inward harmony is spiritual power. take also other spiritual principles, such as purity and compassion, and apply them in the same way, and, so exacting is truth, you will be able to make no stay, no resting-place until the inmost garment of your soul is bereft of every stain, and your heart has become incapable of any hard, condemnatory, and pitiless impulse. only in so far as you understand, realize, and rely upon, these principles, will you acquire spiritual power, and that power will be manifested in and through you in the form of increasing dispassion, patience and equanimity. dispassion argues superior self-control; sublime patience is the very hall-mark of divine knowledge, and to retain an unbroken calm amid all the duties and distractions of life, marks off the man of power. "it is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." some mystics hold that perfection in dispassion is the source of that power by which miracles (so-called) are performed, and truly he who has gained such perfect control of all his interior forces that no shock, however great, can for one moment unbalance him, must be capable of guiding and directing those forces with a master-hand. to grow in self-control, in patience, in equanimity, is to grow in strength and power; and you can only thus grow by focusing your consciousness upon a principle. as a child, after making many and vigorous attempts to walk unaided, at last succeeds, after numerous falls, in accomplishing this, so you must enter the way of power by first attempting to stand alone. break away from the tyranny of custom, tradition, conventionality, and the opinions of others, until you succeed in walking lonely and erect among men. rely upon your own judgment; be true to your own conscience; follow the light that is within you; all outward lights are so many will-o'-the-wisps. there will be those who will tell you that you are foolish; that your judgment is faulty; that your conscience is all awry, and that the light within you is darkness; but heed them not. if what they say is true the sooner you, as a searcher for wisdom, find it out the better, and you can only make the discovery by bringing your powers to the test. therefore, pursue your course bravely. your conscience is at least your own, and to follow it is to be a man; to follow the conscience of another is to be a slave. you will have many falls, will suffer many wounds, will endure many buffetings for a time, but press on in faith, believing that sure and certain victory lies ahead. search for a rock, a principle, and having found it cling to it; get it under your feet and stand erect upon it, until at last, immovably fixed upon it, you succeed in defying the fury of the waves and storms of selfishness. for selfishness in any and every form is dissipation, weakness, death; unselfishness in its spiritual aspect is conservation, power, life. as you grow in spiritual life, and become established upon principles, you will become as beautiful and as unchangeable as those principles, will taste of the sweetness of their immortal essence, and will realize the eternal and indestructible nature of the god within. no harmful shaft can reach the righteous man, standing erect amid the storms of hate, defying hurt and injury and ban, surrounded by the trembling slaves of fate. majestic in the strength of silent power, serene he stands, nor changes not nor turns; patient and firm in suffering's darkest hour, time bends to him, and death and doom he spurns. wrath's lurid lightnings round about him play, and hell's deep thunders roll about his head; yet heeds he not, for him they cannot slay who stands whence earth and time and space are fled. sheltered by deathless love, what fear hath he? armored in changeless truth, what can he know of loss and gain? knowing eternity, he moves not whilst the shadows come and go. call him immortal, call him truth and light and splendor of prophetic majesty who bideth thus amid the powers of night, clothed with the glory of divinity. the realization of selfless love it is said that michael angelo saw in every rough block of stone a thing of beauty awaiting the master-hand to bring it into reality. even so, within each there reposes the divine image awaiting the master-hand of faith and the chisel of patience to bring it into manifestation. and that divine image is revealed and realized as stainless, selfless love. hidden deep in every human heart, though frequently covered up with a mass of hard and almost impenetrable accretions, is the spirit of divine love, whose holy and spotless essence is undying and eternal. it is the truth in man; it is that which belongs to the supreme: that which is real and immortal. all else changes and passes away; this alone is permanent and imperishable; and to realize this love by ceaseless diligence in the practice of the highest righteousness, to live in it and to become fully conscious in it, is to enter into immortality here and now, is to become one with truth, one with god, one with the central heart of all things, and to know our own divine and eternal nature. to reach this love, to understand and experience it, one must work with great persistency and diligence upon his heart and mind, must ever renew his patience and keep strong his faith, for there will be much to remove, much to accomplish before the divine image is revealed in all its glorious beauty. he who strives to reach and to accomplish the divine will be tried to the very uttermost; and this is absolutely necessary, for how else could one acquire that sublime patience without which there is no real wisdom, no divinity? ever and anon, as he proceeds, all his work will seem to be futile, and his efforts appear to be thrown away. now and then a hasty touch will mar his image, and perhaps when he imagines his work is almost completed he will find what he imagined to be the beautiful form of divine love utterly destroyed, and he must begin again with his past bitter experience to guide and help him. but he who has resolutely set himself to realize the highest recognizes no such thing as defeat. all failures are apparent, not real. every slip, every fall, every return to selfishness is a lesson learned, an experience gained, from which a golden grain of wisdom is extracted, helping the striver toward the accomplishment of his lofty object. to recognize "that of our vices we can frame a ladder if we will but tread beneath our feet each deed of shame," is to enter the way that leads unmistakably toward the divine, and the failings of one who thus recognizes are so many dead selves, upon which he rises, as upon stepping-stones, to higher things. once come to regard your failings, your sorrows and sufferings as so many voices telling you plainly where you are weak and faulty, where you fall below the true and the divine, you will then begin to ceaselessly watch yourself, and every slip, every pang of pain will show you where you are to set to work, and what you have to remove out of your heart in order to bring it nearer to the likeness of the divine, nearer to the perfect love. and as you proceed, day by day detaching yourself more and more from the inward selfishness the love that is selfless will gradually become revealed to you. and when you are growing patient and calm, when your petulances, tempers, and irritabilities are passing away from you, and the more powerful lusts and prejudices cease to dominate and enslave you, then you will know that the divine is awakening within you, that you are drawing near to the eternal heart, that you are not far from that selfless love, the possession of which is peace and immortality. divine love is distinguished from human loves in this supremely important particular, _it is free from partiality_. human loves cling to a particular object to the exclusion of all else, and when that object is removed, great and deep is the resultant suffering to the one who loves. divine love embraces the whole universe, and, without clinging to any part, yet contains within itself the whole, and he who comes to it by gradually purifying and broadening his human loves until all the selfish and impure elements are burnt out of them, ceases from suffering. it is because human loves are narrow and confined and mingled with selfishness that they cause suffering. no suffering can result from that love which is so absolutely pure that it seeks nothing for itself. nevertheless, human loves are absolutely necessary as steps toward the divine, and no soul is prepared to partake of divine love until it has become capable of the deepest and most intense human love. it is only by passing through human loves and human sufferings that divine love is reached and realized. all human loves are perishable like the forms to which they cling; but there is a love that is imperishable, and that does not cling to appearances. all human loves are counterbalanced by human hates; but there is a love that admits of no opposite or reaction; divine and free from all taint of self, that sheds its fragrance on all alike. human loves are reflections of the divine love, and draw the soul nearer to the reality, the love that knows neither sorrow nor change. it is well that the mother, clinging with passionate tenderness to the little helpless form of flesh that lies on her bosom, should be overwhelmed with the dark waters of sorrow when she sees it laid in the cold earth. it is well that her tears should flow and her heart ache, for only thus can she be reminded of the evanescent nature of the joys and objects of sense, and be drawn nearer to the eternal and imperishable reality. it is well that lover, brother, sister, husband, wife should suffer deep anguish, and be enveloped in gloom when the visible object of their affections is torn from them, so that they may learn to turn their affections toward the invisible source of all, where alone abiding satisfaction is to be found. it is well that the proud, the ambitious, the self-seeking, should suffer defeat, humiliation, and misfortune; that they should pass through the scorching fires of affliction; for only thus can the wayward soul be brought to reflect upon the enigma of life; only thus can the heart be softened and purified, and prepared to receive the truth. when the sting of anguish penetrates the heart of human love; when gloom and loneliness and desertion cloud the soul of friendship and trust, then it is that the heart turns toward the sheltering love of the eternal, and finds rest in its silent peace. and whosoever comes to this love is not turned away comfortless, is not pierced with anguish nor surrounded with gloom; and is never deserted in the dark hour of trial. the glory of divine love can only be revealed in the heart that is chastened by sorrow, and the image of the heavenly state can only be perceived and realized when the lifeless, formless accretions of ignorance and self are hewn away. only that love that seeks no personal gratification or reward, that does not make distinctions, and that leaves behind no heartaches, can be called divine. men, clinging to self and to the comfortless shadows of evil, are in the habit of thinking of divine love as something belonging to a god who is out of reach; as something outside themselves, and that must for ever remain outside. truly, the love of god is ever beyond the reach of self, but when the heart and mind are emptied of self then the selfless love, the supreme love, the love that is of god or good becomes an inward and abiding reality. and this inward realization of holy love is none other than the love of christ that is so much talked about and so little comprehended. the love that not only saves the soul from sin, but lifts it also above the power of temptation. but how may one attain to this sublime realization? the answer which truth has always given, and will ever give to this question is,--"empty thyself, and i will fill thee." divine love cannot be known until self is dead, for self is the denial of love, and how can that which is known be also denied? not until the stone of self is rolled away from the sepulcher of the soul does the immortal christ, the pure spirit of love, hitherto crucified, dead and buried, cast off the bands of ignorance, and come forth in all the majesty of his resurrection. you believe that the christ of nazareth was put to death and rose again. i do not say you err in that belief; but if you refuse to believe that the gentle spirit of love is crucified daily upon the dark cross of your selfish desires, then, i say, you err in this unbelief, and have not yet perceived, even afar off, the love of christ. you say that you have tasted of salvation in the love of christ. are you saved from your temper, your irritability, your vanity, your personal dislikes, your judgment and condemnation of others? if not, from what are you saved, and wherein have you realized the transforming love of christ? he who has realized the love that is divine has become a new man, and has ceased to be swayed and dominated by the old elements of self. he is known for his patience, his purity, his self-control, his deep charity of heart, and his unalterable sweetness. divine or selfless love is not a mere sentiment or emotion; it is a state of knowledge which destroys the dominion of evil and the belief in evil, and lifts the soul into the joyful realization of the supreme good. to the divinely wise, knowledge and love are one and inseparable. it is toward the complete realization of this divine love that the whole world is moving; it was for this purpose that the universe came into existence, and every grasping at happiness, every reaching out of the soul toward objects, ideas and ideals, is an effort to realize it. but the world does not realize this love at present because it is grasping at the fleeting shadow and ignoring, in its blindness, the substance. and so suffering and sorrow continue, and must continue until the world, taught by its self-inflicted pains, discovers the love that is selfless, the wisdom that is calm and full of peace. and this love, this wisdom, this peace, this tranquil state of mind and heart may be attained to, may be realized by all who are willing and ready to yield up self, and who are prepared to humbly enter into a comprehension of all that the giving up of self involves. there is no arbitrary power in the universe, and the strongest chains of fate by which men are bound are self-forged. men are chained to that which causes suffering because they desire to be so, because they love their chains, because they think their little dark prison of self is sweet and beautiful, and they are afraid that if they desert that prison they will lose all that is real and worth having. "ye suffer from yourselves, none else compels, none other holds ye that ye live and die." and the indwelling power which forged the chains and built around itself the dark and narrow prison, can break away when it desires and wills to do so, and the soul does will to do so when it has discovered the worthlessness of its prison, when long suffering has prepared it for the reception of the boundless light and love. as the shadow follows the form, and as smoke comes after fire, so effect follows cause, and suffering and bliss follow the thoughts and deeds of men. there is no effect in the world around us but has its hidden or revealed cause, and that cause is in accordance with absolute justice. men reap a harvest of suffering because in the near or distant past they have sown the seeds of evil; they reap a harvest of bliss also as a result of their own sowing of the seeds of good. let a man meditate upon this, let him strive to understand it, and he will then begin to sow only seeds of good, and will burn up the tares and weeds which he has formerly grown in the garden of his heart. the world does not understand the love that is selfless because it is engrossed in the pursuit of its own pleasures, and cramped within the narrow limits of perishable interests mistaking, in its ignorance, those pleasures and interests for real and abiding things. caught in the flames of fleshly lusts, and burning with anguish, it sees not the pure and peaceful beauty of truth. feeding upon the swinish husks of error and self-delusion, it is shut out from the mansion of all-seeing love. not having this love, not understanding it, men institute innumerable reforms which involve no inward sacrifice, and each imagines that his reform is going to right the world for ever, while he himself continues to propagate evil by engaging it in his own heart. that only can be called reform which tends to reform the human heart, for all evil has its rise there, and not until the world, ceasing from selfishness and party strife, has learned the lesson of divine love, will it realize the golden age of universal blessedness. let the rich cease to despise the poor, and the poor to condemn the rich; let the greedy learn how to give, and the lustful how to grow pure; let the partisan cease from strife, and the uncharitable begin to forgive; let the envious endeavor to rejoice with others, and the slanderers grow ashamed of their conduct. let men and women take this course, and, lo! the golden age is at hand. he, therefore, who purifies his own heart is the world's greatest benefactor. yet, though the world is, and will be for many ages to come, shut out from that age of gold, which is the realization of selfless love, you, if you are willing, may enter it now, by rising above your selfish self; if you will pass from prejudice, hatred, and condemnation, to gentle and forgiving love. where hatred, dislike, and condemnation are, selfless love does not abide. it resides only in the heart that has ceased from all condemnation. you say, "how can i love the drunkard, the hypocrite, the sneak, the murderer? i am compelled to dislike and condemn such men." it is true you cannot love such men _emotionally_, but when you say that you must perforce dislike and condemn them you show that you are not acquainted with the great over-ruling love; for it is possible to attain to such a state of interior enlightenment as will enable you to perceive the train of causes by which these men have become as they are, to enter into their intense sufferings, and to know the certainty of their ultimate purification. possessed of such knowledge it will be utterly impossible for you any longer to dislike or condemn them, and you will always think of them with perfect calmness and deep compassion. if you love people and speak of them with praise until they in some way thwart you, or do something of which you disapprove, and then you dislike them and speak of them with dispraise, you are not governed by the love which is of god. if, in your heart, you are continually arraigning and condemning others, selfless love is hidden from you. he who knows that love is at the heart of all things, and has realized the all-sufficing power of that love, has no room in his heart for condemnation. men, not knowing this love, constitute themselves judge and executioner of their fellows, forgetting that there is the eternal judge and executioner, and in so far as men deviate from them in their own views, their particular reforms and methods, they brand them as fanatical, unbalanced, lacking judgment, sincerity, and honesty; in so far as others approximate to their own standard do they look upon them as being everything that is admirable. such are the men who are centered in self. but he whose heart is centered in the supreme love does not so brand and classify men; does not seek to convert men to his own views, not to convince them of the superiority of his methods. knowing the law of love, he lives it, and maintains the same calm attitude of mind and sweetness of heart toward all. the debased and the virtuous, the foolish and the wise, the learned and the unlearned, the selfish and the unselfish receive alike the benediction of his tranquil thought. you can only attain to this supreme knowledge, this divine love by unremitting endeavor in self-discipline, and by gaining victory after victory over yourself. only the pure in heart see god, and when your heart is sufficiently purified you will enter into the new birth, and the love that does not die, nor change, nor end in pain and sorrow will be awakened within you, and you will be at peace. he who strives for the attainment of divine love is ever seeking to overcome the spirit of condemnation, for where there is pure spiritual knowledge, condemnation cannot exist, and only in the heart that has become incapable of condemnation is love perfected and fully realized. the christian condemns the atheist; the atheist satirizes the christian; the catholic and protestant are ceaselessly engaged in wordy warfare, and the spirit of strife and hatred rules where peace and love should be. "he that hateth his brother is a murderer," a crucifier of the divine spirit of love; and until you can regard men of all religions and of no religion with the same impartial spirit, with all freedom from dislike, and with perfect equanimity, you have yet to strive for that love which bestows upon its possessor freedom and salvation. the realization of divine knowledge, selfless love, utterly destroys the spirit of condemnation, disperses all evil, and lifts the consciousness to that height of pure vision where love, goodness, justice are seen to be universal, supreme, all-conquering, indestructible. train your mind in strong, impartial, and gentle thought; train your heart in purity and compassion; train your tongue to silence and to true and stainless speech; so shall you enter the way of holiness and peace, and shall ultimately realize the immortal love. so living, without seeking to convert, you will convince; without arguing, you will teach; not cherishing ambition, the wise will find you out; and without striving to gain men's opinions, you will subdue their hearts. for love is all-conquering, all-powerful; and the thoughts, and deeds, and words of love can never perish. to know that love is universal, supreme, all-sufficing; to be freed from the trammels of evil; to be quit of the inward unrest; to know that all men are striving to realize the truth each in his own way; to be satisfied, sorrowless, serene; this is peace; this is gladness; this is immortality; this is divinity; this is the realization of selfless love. i stood upon the shore, and saw the rocks resist the onslaught of the mighty sea, and when i thought how all the countless shocks they had withstood through an eternity, i said, "to wear away this solid main the ceaseless efforts of the waves are vain." but when i thought how they the rocks had rent, and saw the sand and shingles at my feet (poor passive remnants of resistance spent) tumbled and tossed where they the waters meet, then saw i ancient landmarks 'neath the waves, and knew the waters held the stones their slaves. i saw the mighty work the waters wrought by patient softness and unceasing flow; how they the proudest promontory brought unto their feet, and massy hills laid low; how the soft drops the adamantine wall conquered at last, and brought it to its fall. and then i knew that hard, resisting sin should yield at last to love's soft ceaseless roll coming and going, ever flowing in upon the proud rocks of the human soul; that all resistance should be spent and past, and every heart yield unto it at last. entering into the infinite from the beginning of time, man, in spite of his bodily appetites and desires, in the midst of all his clinging to earthly and impermanent things, has ever been intuitively conscious of the limited, transient, and illusionary nature of his material existence, and in his sane and silent moments has tried to reach out into a comprehension of the infinite, and has turned with tearful aspiration toward the restful reality of the eternal heart. while vainly imagining that the pleasures of earth are real and satisfying, pain and sorrow continually remind him of their unreal and unsatisfying nature. ever striving to believe that complete satisfaction is to be found in material things, he is conscious of an inward and persistent revolt against this belief, which revolt is at once a refutation of his essential mortality, and an inherent and imperishable proof that only in the immortal, the eternal, the infinite can he find abiding satisfaction and unbroken peace. and here is the common ground of faith; here the root and spring of all religion; here the soul of brotherhood and the heart of love,--that man is essentially and spiritually divine and eternal, and that, immersed in mortality and troubled with unrest, he is ever striving to enter into a consciousness of his real nature. the spirit of man is inseparable from the infinite, and can be satisfied with nothing short of the infinite, and the burden of pain will continue to weigh upon man's heart, and the shadows of sorrow to darken his pathway until, ceasing from his wanderings in the dream-world of matter, he comes back to his home in the reality of the eternal. as the smallest drop of water detached from the ocean contains all the qualities of the ocean, so man, detached in consciousness from the infinite, contains within him its likeness; and as the drop of water must, by the law of its nature, ultimately find its way back to the ocean and lose itself in its silent depths, so must man, by the unfailing law of his nature, at last return to his source, and lose himself in the great ocean of the infinite. to re-become one with the infinite is the goal of man. to enter into perfect harmony with the eternal law is wisdom, love and peace. but this divine state is, and must ever be, incomprehensible to the merely personal. personality, separateness, selfishness are one and the same, and are the antithesis of wisdom and divinity. by the unqualified surrender of the personality, separateness and selfishness cease, and man enters into the possession of his divine heritage of immortality and infinity. such surrender of the personality is regarded by the worldly and selfish mind as the most grievous of all calamities, the most irreparable loss, yet it is the one supreme and incomparable blessing, the only real and lasting gain. the mind unenlightened upon the inner laws of being, and upon the nature and destiny of its own life, clings to transient appearances, things which have in them no enduring substantiality, and so clinging, perishes, for the time being, amid the shattered wreckage of its own illusions. men cling to and gratify the flesh as though it were going to last for ever, and though they try to forget the nearness and inevitability of its dissolution, the dread of death and of the loss of all that they cling to clouds their happiest hours, and the chilling shadow of their own selfishness follows them like a remorseless specter. and with the accumulation of temporal comforts and luxuries, the divinity within men is drugged, and they sink deeper and deeper into materiality, into the perishable life of the senses, and where there is sufficient intellect, theories concerning the immortality of the flesh come to be regarded as infallible truths. when a man's soul is clouded with selfishness in any or every form, he loses the power of spiritual discrimination, and confuses the temporal with the eternal, the perishable with the permanent, mortality with immortality, and error with truth. it is thus that the world has come to be filled with theories and speculations having no foundation in human experience. every body of flesh contains within itself, from the hour of birth, the elements of its own destruction, and by the unalterable law of its own nature must it pass away. the perishable in the universe can never become permanent; the permanent can never pass away; the mortal can never become immortal; the immortal can never die; the temporal cannot become eternal nor the eternal become temporal; appearance can never become reality, nor reality fade into appearance; error can never become truth, nor can truth become error. man cannot immortalize the flesh, but, by overcoming the flesh, by relinquishing all its inclinations, he can enter the region of immortality. "god alone hath immortality," and only by realizing the god state of consciousness does man enter into immortality. all nature in its myriad forms of life is changeable, impermanent, unenduring. only the informing principle of nature endures. nature is many, and is marked by separation. the informing principle is one, and is marked by unity. by overcoming the senses and the selfishness within, which is the overcoming of nature, man emerges from the chrysalis of the personal and illusory, and wings himself into the glorious light of the impersonal, the region of universal truth, out of which all perishable forms come. let men, therefore, practice self-denial; let them conquer their animal inclinations; let them refuse to be enslaved by luxury and pleasure; let them practice virtue, and grow daily into high and ever higher virtue, until at last they grow into the divine, and enter into both the practice and the comprehension of humility, meekness, forgiveness, compassion, and love, which practice and comprehension constitute divinity. "good-will gives insight," and only he who has so conquered his personality that he has but one attitude of mind, that of good-will, toward all creatures, is possessed of divine insight, and is capable of distinguishing the true from the false. the supremely good man is, therefore, the wise man, the divine man, the enlightened seer, the knower of the eternal. where you find unbroken gentleness, enduring patience, sublime lowliness, graciousness of speech, self-control, self-forgetfulness, and deep and abounding sympathy, look there for the highest wisdom, seek the company of such a one, for he has realized the divine, he lives with the eternal, he has become one with the infinite. believe not him that is impatient, given to anger, boastful, who clings to pleasure and refuses to renounce his selfish gratifications, and who practices not good-will and far-reaching compassion, for such a one hath not wisdom, vain is all his knowledge, and his works and words will perish, for they are grounded on that which passes away. let a man abandon self, let him overcome the world, let him deny the personal; by this pathway only can he enter into the heart of the infinite. the world, the body, the personality are mirages upon the desert of time; transitory dreams in the dark night of spiritual slumber, and those who have crossed the desert, those who are spiritually awakened, have alone comprehended the universal reality where all appearances are dispersed and dreaming and delusion are destroyed. there is one great law which exacts unconditional obedience, one unifying principle which is the basis of all diversity, one eternal truth wherein all the problems of earth pass away like shadows. to realize this law, this unity, this truth, is to enter into the infinite, is to become one with the eternal. to center one's life in the great law of love is to enter into rest, harmony, peace. to refrain from all participation in evil and discord; to cease from all resistance to evil, and from the omission of that which is good, and to fall back upon unswerving obedience to the holy calm within, is to enter into the inmost heart of things, is to attain to a living, conscious experience of that eternal and infinite principle which must ever remain a hidden mystery to the merely perceptive intellect. until this principle is realized, the soul is not established in peace, and he who so realizes is truly wise; not wise with the wisdom of the learned, but with the simplicity of a blameless heart and of a divine manhood. to enter into a realization of the infinite and eternal is to rise superior to time, and the world, and the body, which comprise the kingdom of darkness; and is to become established in immortality, heaven, and the spirit, which make up the empire of light. entering into the infinite is not a mere theory or sentiment. it is a vital experience which is the result of assiduous practice in inward purification. when the body is no longer believed to be, even remotely, the real man; when all appetites and desires are thoroughly subdued and purified; when the emotions are rested and calm, and when the oscillation of the intellect ceases and perfect poise is secured, then, and not till then, does consciousness become one with the infinite; not until then is childlike wisdom and profound peace secured. men grow weary and gray over the dark problems of life, and finally pass away and leave them unsolved because they cannot see their way out of the darkness of the personality, being too much engrossed in its limitations. seeking to save his personal life, man forfeits the greater impersonal life in truth; clinging to the perishable, he is shut out from a knowledge of the eternal. by the surrender of self all difficulties are overcome, and there is no error in the universe but the fire of inward sacrifice will burn it up like chaff; no problem, however great, but will disappear like a shadow under the searching light of self-abnegation. problems exist only in our own self-created illusions, and they vanish away when self is yielded up. self and error are synonymous. error is involved in the darkness of unfathomable complexity, but eternal simplicity is the glory of truth. love of self shuts men out from truth, and seeking their own personal happiness they lose the deeper, purer, and more abiding bliss. says carlyle--"there is in man a higher than love of happiness. he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness. ... love not pleasure, love god. this is the everlasting yea, wherein all contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him." he who has yielded up that self, that personality that men most love, and to which they cling with such fierce tenacity, has left behind him all perplexity, and has entered into a simplicity so profoundly simple as to be looked upon by the world, involved as it is in a network of error, as foolishness. yet such a one has realized the highest wisdom, and is at rest in the infinite. he "accomplishes without striving," and all problems melt before him, for he has entered the region of reality, and deals, not with changing effects, but with the unchanging principles of things. he is enlightened with a wisdom which is as superior to ratiocination, as reason is to animality. having yielded up his lusts, his errors, his opinions and prejudices, he has entered into possession of the knowledge of god, having slain the selfish desire for heaven, and along with it the ignorant fear of hell; having relinquished even the love of life itself, he has gained supreme bliss and life eternal, the life which bridges life and death, and knows its own immortality. having yielded up all without reservation, he has gained all, and rests in peace on the bosom of the infinite. only he who has become so free from self as to be equally content to be annihilated as to live, or to live as to be annihilated, is fit to enter into the infinite. only he who, ceasing to trust his perishable self, has learned to trust in boundless measure the great law, the supreme good, is prepared to partake of undying bliss. for such a one there is no more regret, nor disappointment, nor remorse, for where all selfishness has ceased these sufferings cannot be; and whatever happens to him he knows that it is for his own good, and he is content, being no longer the servant of self, but the servant of the supreme. he is no longer affected by the changes of earth, and when he hears of wars and rumors of wars his peace is not disturbed, and where men grow angry and cynical and quarrelsome, he bestows compassion and love. though appearances may contradict it, he knows that the world is progressing, and that "through its laughing and its weeping, through its living and its keeping, through its follies and its labors, weaving in and out of sight, to the end from the beginning, through all virtue and all sinning, reeled from god's great spool of progress, runs the golden thread of light." when a fierce storm is raging none are angered about it, because they know it will quickly pass away, and when the storms of contention are devastating the world, the wise man, looking with the eye of truth and pity, knows that it will pass away, and that out of the wreckage of broken hearts which it leaves behind the immortal temple of wisdom will be built. sublimely patient; infinitely compassionate; deep, silent, and pure, his very presence is a benediction; and when he speaks men ponder his words in their hearts, and by them rise to higher levels of attainment. such is he who has entered into the infinite, who by the power of utmost sacrifice has solved the sacred mystery of life. questioning life and destiny and truth, i sought the dark and labyrinthine sphinx, who spake to me this strange and wondrous thing:-- "concealment only lies in blinded eyes, and god alone can see the form of god." i sought to solve this hidden mystery vainly by paths of blindness and of pain, but when i found the way of love and peace, concealment ceased, and i was blind no more: then saw i god e'en with the eyes of god. saints, sages, and saviors: the law of service the spirit of love which is manifested as a perfect and rounded life, is the crown of being and the supreme end of knowledge upon this earth. the measure of a man's truth is the measure of his love, and truth is far removed from him whose life is not governed by love. the intolerant and condemnatory, even though they profess the highest religion, have the smallest measure of truth; while those who exercise patience, and who listen calmly and dispassionately to all sides, and both arrive themselves at, and incline others to, thoughtful and unbiased conclusions upon all problems and issues, have truth in fullest measure. the final test of wisdom is this,--how does a man live? what spirit does he manifest? how does he act under trial and temptation? many men boast of being in possession of truth who are continually swayed by grief, disappointment, and passion, and who sink under the first little trial that comes along. truth is nothing if not unchangeable, and in so far as a man takes his stand upon truth does he become steadfast in virtue, does he rise superior to his passions and emotions and changeable personality. men formulate perishable dogmas, and call them truth. truth cannot be formulated; it is ineffable, and ever beyond the reach of intellect. it can only be experienced by practice; it can only be manifested as a stainless heart and a perfect life. who, then, in the midst of the ceaseless pandemonium of schools and creeds and parties, has the truth? he who lives it. he who practices it. he who, having risen above that pandemonium by overcoming himself, no longer engages in it, but sits apart, quiet, subdued, calm, and self-possessed, freed from all strife, all bias, all condemnation, and bestows upon all the glad and unselfish love of the divinity within him. he who is patient, calm, gentle, and forgiving under all circumstances, manifests the truth. truth will never be proved by wordy arguments and learned treatises, for if men do not perceive the truth in infinite patience, undying forgiveness, and all-embracing compassion, no words can ever prove it to them. it is an easy matter for the passionate to be calm and patient when they are alone, or are in the midst of calmness. it is equally easy for the uncharitable to be gentle and kind when they are dealt kindly with, but he who retains his patience and calmness under all trial, who remains sublimely meek and gentle under the most trying circumstances, he, and he alone, is possessed of the spotless truth. and this is so because such lofty virtues belong to the divine, and can only be manifested by one who has attained to the highest wisdom, who has relinquished his passionate and self-seeking nature, who has realized the supreme and unchangeable law, and has brought himself into harmony with it. let men, therefore, cease from vain and passionate arguments about truth, and let them think and say and do those things which make for harmony, peace, love, and good-will. let them practice heart-virtue, and search humbly and diligently for the truth which frees the soul from all error and sin, from all that blights the human heart, and that darkens, as with unending night, the pathway of the wandering souls of earth. there is one great all-embracing law which is the foundation and cause of the universe, the law of love. it has been called by many names in various countries and at various times, but behind all its names the same unalterable law may be discovered by the eye of truth. names, religions, personalities pass away, but the law of love remains. to become possessed of a knowledge of this law, to enter into conscious harmony with it, is to become immortal, invincible, indestructible. it is because of the effort of the soul to realize this law that men come again and again to live, to suffer, and to die; and when realized, suffering ceases, personality is dispersed, and the fleshly life and death are destroyed, for consciousness becomes one with the eternal. the law is absolutely impersonal, and its highest manifested expression is that of service. when the purified heart has realized truth it is then called upon to make the last, the greatest and holiest sacrifice, the sacrifice of the well-earned enjoyment of truth. it is by virtue of this sacrifice that the divinely-emancipated soul comes to dwell among men, clothed with a body of flesh, content to dwell among the lowliest and least, and to be esteemed the servant of all mankind. that sublime humility which is manifested by the world's saviors is the seal of godhead, and he who has annihilated the personality, and has become a living, visible manifestation of the impersonal, eternal, boundless spirit of love, is alone singled out as worthy to receive the unstinted worship of posterity. he only who succeeds in humbling himself with that divine humility which is not only the extinction of self, but is also the pouring out upon all the spirit of unselfish love, is exalted above measure, and given spiritual dominion in the hearts of mankind. all the great spiritual teachers have denied themselves personal luxuries, comforts, and rewards, have abjured temporal power, and have lived and taught the limitless and impersonal truth. compare their lives and teachings, and you will find the same simplicity, the same self-sacrifice, the same humility, love, and peace both lived and preached by them. they taught the same eternal principles, the realization of which destroys all evil. those who have been hailed and worshiped as the saviors of mankind are manifestations of the great impersonal law, and being such, were free from passion and prejudice, and having no opinions, and no special letter of doctrine to preach and defend, they never sought to convert and to proselytize. living in the highest goodness, the supreme perfection, their sole object was to uplift mankind by manifesting that goodness in thought, word, and deed. they stand between man the personal and god the impersonal, and serve as exemplary types for the salvation of self-enslaved mankind. men who are immersed in self, and who cannot comprehend the goodness that is absolutely impersonal, deny divinity to all saviors except their own, and thus introduce personal hatred and doctrinal controversy, and, while defending their own particular views with passion, look upon each other as being heathens or infidels, and so render null and void, as far as their lives are concerned, the unselfish beauty and holy grandeur of the lives and teachings of their own masters. truth cannot be limited; it can never be the special prerogative of any man, school, or nation, and when personality steps in, truth is lost. the glory alike of the saint, the sage, and the savior is this,--that he has realized the most profound lowliness, the most sublime unselfishness; having given up all, even his own personality, all his works are holy and enduring, for they are freed from every taint of self. he gives, yet never thinks of receiving; he works without regretting the past or anticipating the future, and never looks for reward. when the farmer has tilled and dressed his land and put in the seed, he knows that he has done all that he can possibly do, and that now he must trust to the elements, and wait patiently for the course of time to bring about the harvest, and that no amount of expectancy on his part will affect the result. even so, he who has realized truth goes forth as a sower of the seeds of goodness, purity, love and peace, without expectancy, and never looking for results, knowing that there is the great over-ruling law which brings about its own harvest in due time, and which is alike the source of preservation and destruction. men, not understanding the divine simplicity of a profoundly unselfish heart, look upon their particular savior as the manifestation of a special miracle, as being something entirely apart and distinct from the nature of things, and as being, in his ethical excellence, eternally unapproachable by the whole of mankind. this attitude of unbelief (for such it is) in the divine perfectibility of man, paralyzes effort, and binds the souls of men as with strong ropes to sin and suffering. jesus "grew in wisdom" and was "perfected by suffering." what jesus was, he became such; what buddha was, he became such; and every holy man became such by unremitting perseverance in self-sacrifice. once recognize this, once realize that by watchful effort and hopeful perseverance you can rise above your lower nature, and great and glorious will be the vistas of attainment that will open out before you. buddha vowed that he would not relax his efforts until he arrived at the state of perfection, and he accomplished his purpose. what the saints, sages, and saviors have accomplished, you likewise may accomplish if you will only tread the way which they trod and pointed out, the way of self-sacrifice, of self-denying service. truth is very simple. it says, "give up self," "come unto me" (away from all that defiles) "and i will give you rest." all the mountains of commentary that have been piled upon it cannot hide it from the heart that is earnestly seeking for righteousness. it does not require learning; it can be known in spite of learning. disguised under many forms by erring self-seeking man, the beautiful simplicity and clear transparency of truth remains unaltered and undimmed, and the unselfish heart enters into and partakes of its shining radiance. not by weaving complex theories, not by building up speculative philosophies is truth realized; but by weaving the web of inward purity, by building up the temple of a stainless life is truth realized. he who enters upon this holy way begins by restraining his passions. this is virtue, and is the beginning of saintship, and saintship is the beginning of holiness. the entirely worldly man gratifies all his desires, and practices no more restraint than the law of the land in which he lives demands; the virtuous man restrains his passions; the saint attacks the enemy of truth in its stronghold within his own heart, and restrains all selfish and impure thoughts; while the holy man is he who is free from passion and all impure thought, and to whom goodness and purity have become as natural as scent and color are to the flower. the holy man is divinely wise; he alone knows truth in its fullness, and has entered into abiding rest and peace. for him evil has ceased; it has disappeared in the universal light of the all-good. holiness is the badge of wisdom. said krishna to the prince arjuna-- "humbleness, truthfulness, and harmlessness, patience and honor, reverence for the wise, purity, constancy, control of self, contempt of sense-delights, self-sacrifice, perception of the certitude of ill in birth, death, age, disease, suffering and sin; an ever tranquil heart in fortunes good and fortunes evil, ... ... endeavors resolute to reach perception of the utmost soul, and grace to understand what gain it were so to attain--this is true wisdom, prince! and what is otherwise is ignorance!" whoever fights ceaselessly against his own selfishness, and strives to supplant it with all-embracing love, is a saint, whether he live in a cottage or in the midst of riches and influence; or whether he preaches or remains obscure. to the worldling, who is beginning to aspire towards higher things, the saint, such as a sweet st. francis of assisi, or a conquering st. anthony, is a glorious and inspiring spectacle; to the saint, an equally enrapturing sight is that of the sage, sitting serene and holy, the conqueror of sin and sorrow, no more tormented by regret and remorse, and whom even temptation can never reach; and yet even the sage is drawn on by a still more glorious vision, that of the savior actively manifesting his knowledge in selfless works, and rendering his divinity more potent for good by sinking himself in the throbbing, sorrowing, aspiring heart of mankind. and this only is true service--to forget oneself in love towards all, to lose oneself in working for the whole. o thou vain and foolish man, who thinkest that thy many works can save thee; who, chained to all error, talkest loudly of thyself, thy work, and thy many sacrifices, and magnifiest thine own importance; know this, that though thy fame fill the whole earth, all thy work shall come to dust, and thou thyself be reckoned lower than the least in the kingdom of truth! only the work that is impersonal can live; the works of self are both powerless and perishable. where duties, howsoever humble, are done without self-interest, and with joyful sacrifice, there is true service and enduring work. where deeds, however brilliant and apparently successful, are done from love of self, there is ignorance of the law of service, and the work perishes. it is given to the world to learn one great and divine lesson, the lesson of absolute unselfishness. the saints, sages, and saviors of all time are they who have submitted themselves to this task, and have learned and lived it. all the scriptures of the world are framed to teach this one lesson; all the great teachers reiterate it. it is too simple for the world which, scorning it, stumbles along in the complex ways of selfishness. a pure heart is the end of all religion and the beginning of divinity. to search for this righteousness is to walk the way of truth and peace, and he who enters this way will soon perceive that immortality which is independent of birth and death, and will realize that in the divine economy of the universe the humblest effort is not lost. the divinity of a krishna, a gautama, or a jesus is the crowning glory of self-abnegation, the end of the soul's pilgrimage in matter and mortality, and the world will not have finished its long journey until every soul has become as these, and has entered into the blissful realization of its own divinity. great glory crowns the heights of hope by arduous struggle won; bright honor rounds the hoary head that mighty works hath done; fair riches come to him who strives in ways of golden gain. and fame enshrines his name who works with genius-glowing brain; but greater glory waits for him who, in the bloodless strife 'gainst self and wrong, adopts, in love, the sacrificial life; and brighter honor rounds the brow of him who, 'mid the scorns of blind idolaters of self, accepts the crown of thorns; and fairer purer riches come to him who greatly strives to walk in ways of love and truth to sweeten human lives; and he who serveth well mankind exchanges fleeting fame for light eternal, joy and peace, and robes of heavenly flame. the realization of perfect peace in the external universe there is ceaseless turmoil, change, and unrest; at the heart of all things there is undisturbed repose; in this deep silence dwelleth the eternal. man partakes of this duality, and both the surface change and disquietude, and the deep-seated eternal abode of peace, are contained within him. as there are silent depths in the ocean which the fiercest storm cannot reach, so there are silent, holy depths in the heart of man which the storms of sin and sorrow can never disturb. to reach this silence and to live consciously in it is peace. discord is rife in the outward world, but unbroken harmony holds sway at the heart of the universe. the human soul, torn by discordant passion and grief, reaches blindly toward the harmony of the sinless state, and to reach this state and to live consciously in it is peace. hatred severs human lives, fosters persecution, and hurls nations into ruthless war, yet men, though they do not understand why, retain some measure of faith in the overshadowing of a perfect love; and to reach this love and to live consciously in it is peace. and this inward peace, this silence, this harmony, this love, is the kingdom of heaven, which is so difficult to reach because few are willing to give up themselves and to become as little children. "heaven's gate is very narrow and minute, it cannot be perceived by foolish men blinded by vain illusions of the world; e'en the clear-sighted who discern the way, and seek to enter, find the portal barred, and hard to be unlocked. its massive bolts are pride and passion, avarice and lust." men cry peace! peace! where there is no peace, but on the contrary, discord, disquietude and strife. apart from that wisdom which is inseparable from self-renunciation, there can be no real and abiding peace. the peace which results from social comfort, passing gratification, or worldly victory is transitory in its nature, and is burnt up in the heat of fiery trial. only the peace of heaven endures through all trial, and only the selfless heart can know the peace of heaven. holiness alone is undying peace. self-control leads to it, and the ever-increasing light of wisdom guides the pilgrim on his way. it is partaken of in a measure as soon as the path of virtue is entered upon, but it is only realized in its fullness when self disappears in the consummation of a stainless life. "this is peace, to conquer love of self and lust of life, to tear deep-rooted passion from the heart to still the inward strife." if, o reader! you would realize the light that never fades, the joy that never ends, and the tranquillity that cannot be disturbed; if you would leave behind for ever your sins, your sorrows, your anxieties and perplexities; if, i say, you would partake of this salvation, this supremely glorious life, then conquer yourself. bring every thought, every impulse, every desire into perfect obedience to the divine power resident within you. there is no other way to peace but this, and if you refuse to walk it, your much praying and your strict adherence to ritual will be fruitless and unavailing, and neither gods nor angels can help you. only to him that overcometh is given the white stone of the regenerate life, on which is written the new and ineffable name. come away, for awhile, from external things, from the pleasures of the senses, from the arguments of the intellect, from the noise and the excitements of the world, and withdraw yourself into the inmost chamber of your heart, and there, free from the sacrilegious intrusion of all selfish desires, you will find a deep silence, a holy calm, a blissful repose, and if you will rest awhile in that holy place, and will meditate there, the faultless eye of truth will open within you, and you will see things as they really are. this holy place within you is your real and eternal self; it is the divine within you; and only when you identify yourself with it can you be said to be "clothed and in your right mind." it is the abode of peace, the temple of wisdom, the dwelling-place of immortality. apart from this inward resting-place, this mount of vision, there can be no true peace, no knowledge of the divine, and if you can remain there for one minute, one hour, or one day, it is possible for you to remain there always. all your sins and sorrows, your fears and anxieties are your own, and you can cling to them or you can give them up. of your own accord you cling to your unrest; of your own accord you can come to abiding peace. no one else can give up sin for you; you must give it up yourself. the greatest teacher can do no more than walk the way of truth for himself, and point it out to you; you yourself must walk it for yourself. you can obtain freedom and peace alone by your own efforts, by yielding up that which binds the soul, and which is destructive of peace. the angels of divine peace and joy are always at hand, and if you do not see them, and hear them, and dwell with them, it is because you shut yourself out from them, and prefer the company of the spirits of evil within you. you are what you will to be, what you wish to be, what you prefer to be. you can commence to purify yourself, and by so doing can arrive at peace, or you can refuse to purify yourself, and so remain with suffering. step aside, then; come out of the fret and the fever of life; away from the scorching heat of self, and enter the inward resting-place where the cooling airs of peace will calm, renew, and restore you. come out of the storms of sin and anguish. why be troubled and tempest-tossed when the haven of peace of god is yours! give up all self-seeking; give up self, and lo! the peace of god is yours! subdue the animal within you; conquer every selfish uprising, every discordant voice; transmute the base metals of your selfish nature into the unalloyed gold of love, and you shall realize the life of perfect peace. thus subduing, thus conquering, thus transmuting, you will, o reader! while living in the flesh, cross the dark waters of mortality, and will reach that shore upon which the storms of sorrow never beat, and where sin and suffering and dark uncertainty cannot come. standing upon that shore, holy, compassionate, awakened, and self-possessed and glad with unending gladness, you will realize that "never the spirit was born, the spirit will cease to be never; never was time it was not, end and beginning are dreams; birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit for ever; death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems." you will then know the meaning of sin, of sorrow, of suffering, and that the end thereof is wisdom; will know the cause and the issue of existence. and with this realization you will enter into rest, for this is the bliss of immortality, this the unchangeable gladness, this the untrammeled knowledge, undefiled wisdom, and undying love; this, and this only, is the realization of perfect peace. o thou who wouldst teach men of truth! hast thou passed through the desert of doubt? art thou purged by the fires of sorrow? hath ruth the fiends of opinion cast out of thy human heart? is thy soul so fair that no false thought can ever harbor there? o thou who wouldst teach men of love! hast thou passed through the place of despair? hast thou wept through the dark night of grief? does it move (now freed from its sorrow and care) thy human heart to pitying gentleness, looking on wrong, and hate, and ceaseless stress? o thou who wouldst teach men of peace! hast thou crossed the wide ocean of strife? hast thou found on the shores of the silence, release from all the wild unrest of life? from thy human heart hath all striving gone, leaving but truth, and love, and peace alone? within you is the power. by henry thomas hamblin contents. preface chapter i.--infinite life and power chapter ii.--the overcoming of life's difficulties chapter iii.--fate or free-will? chapter iv.--cause and effect chapter v.--success chapter vi.--health chapter vii.--the secret of abundant supply chapter viii.--the power and limitations of the sub-conscious mind chapter ix.--the use of the spiritual or super-conscious mind chapter x.--character building and the overcoming of habit chapter xi.--happiness and joy chapter xii.--the use and mis-use of mental and spiritual powers chapter xiii.--overcoming limitations and awakening inward powers preface. there is a power lying hidden in man, by the use of which he can rise to higher and better things. there is in man a greater self, that transcends the finite self of the sense-man, even as the mountain towers above the plain. the object of this little book is to help men and women to bring their inward powers of mind and spirit into expression, wisely and in harmony with universal law; to build up character, and to find within themselves that wondrous self, which is their real self, and which, when found, reveals to them that they are literally and truly sons of god and daughters of the most high. there is no way whereby the discipline of life can be avoided. there is no means by which fate can be "tricked," nor cunning device by which the great cosmic plan can be evaded. each life must meet its own troubles and difficulties: each soul must pass through its deep waters, every heart must encounter sorrow and grief. but none need be overwhelmed in the great conflicts of life, for one who has learned the great secret of his identity with the universal life and power, dwells in an impregnable city, built upon and into the rock of truth, against which the storms of life beat in vain. while this little work does not offer any vain promises of an easy life--for, if this were possible, it would be the greatest of all disasters--but rather endeavours to show how to become so strong that life looks almost easy by comparison (the life or fate does not change or become easier, but the individual alters and becomes stronger), yet, it does show the reader how to avoid making his life more difficult than it need be. most people's lives would be less filled with trouble and suffering if they took life in the right spirit and acted in harmony with universal law. it is hoped that this little book may help many to come into harmony with life's law and purpose and thus avoid much needless suffering: to find the greater self within, which discovery brings with it a realization of absolute security: to bring into expression and wisely use their inner spiritual and mental forces and thus enter a life of overcoming and almost boundless power. chapter i. infinite life and power. man possesses, did he but know it, illimitable power. [ ] this power is of the spirit, therefore, it is unconquerable. it is not the power of the ordinary life, or finite will, or human mind. it transcends these, because, being spiritual, it is of a higher order than either physical or even mental. this power lies dormant, and is hidden within man until he is sufficiently evolved and unfolded to be entrusted with its use. [ ] the powers of the sub-conscious mind are dealt with in other chapters. the powers of the spirit are far greater and finer than those of the sub-conscious mind. thought is a spiritual power of tremendous potency, but this is not the power of which we speak. by thought, man can either raise himself up and connect himself with the "power house" of the universe, or cut himself off entirely from the divine inflow. his thought is his greatest weapon, because, by it he can either draw on the infinite or sever himself (in consciousness, but not in reality) from his divine source. through the divine spark within him, which is really his real self, man is connected with the infinite. divine life and power are his, if he _realizes_ that they are his. so long as he is ignorant of his oneness with the divine source of all life, he is incapable of appropriating the power that is really his. if, however, he enters into this inner knowledge, he finds himself the possessor of infinite power and unlimited resources. this power, then, is god's, yet it is also man's, but it is not revealed to him until he is fit to be entrusted with it. it is only when man realizes his oneness with his divine source that he becomes filled with its power. many teachers and initiates lament the fact that certain secrets are being spread broadcast to-day; secrets that, in the past, were kept closely guarded. they fear that unillumined and un-evolved people may make destructive use of spiritual power. this, to the writer, appears to be improbable. it is true that strong personalities, who have a great belief in their own power to achieve and succeed, draw unconsciously on hidden powers, and thus are able to raise themselves high above their fellows. the use, however, that they can make of spiritual power for base purposes is limited, and is not to be feared. there are others, of course, who are misusing their powers. these are black magicians, and while they may do a certain amount of harm, they become reduced, ultimately, to beggary and impotence. there are also others who spend the whole of their spare time searching for knowledge of this very subject. they read every occult book they can lay hands on, but they never find that for which they seek. there are spiritual powers and influences that withhold the eyes of the seekers from seeing, until they are ready for the revelation. when man, in his search for truth, has given up all selfish striving after unworthy things, and has ceased to use his self-will in conflict with the greater will of the whole, he is ready for the revelation of his oneness with the infinite. yielding implicitly to the will of the whole may seem, to the unillumined, an act of weakness, yet it is the entrance to a life of almost boundless power. man is not separate from his divine source and never has been. he is, in reality, one with the infinite. the separation which he feels and experiences is mental, and is due to his blindness and unbelief. man can never be separated from spirit, for he himself is spirit. he is an integral part of one complete whole. he lives and moves and has his being in god (universal, omnipresent spirit), and god (spirit) dwells in him. the majority of people are unaware of this intimate relationship with the divine, and, because they are unaware, or because they refuse to believe it, they are, in one sense, separated from the inner life of god. yet this separation is only in their thoughts and beliefs, and not in reality. man is not separated and never can be, yet so long as he believes that he is separate and alone, he will be as weak and helpless as though he actually were. as soon as man realizes the truth of his relationship to the infinite, he passes from weakness to power, from death unto life. one moment he is in the desert, afar off, weak, separate, and alone; the next, he realizes that he is nothing less than a son of god, with all a son's privileges and powers. he realizes, in a flash, that he is one with his divine source, and that he can never be separated. he awakens also to the fact that all the power of the infinite is his to draw upon; that he can never really fail, that he is marching on to victory. it will thus be seen how great is the power of man's thought. while thought is not the power of the spirit, it is the power by which man either connects himself up with the infinite power, opening himself to the divine inflow, or cuts himself off and separates himself from his spiritual source. thus, in a sense, man is what he thinks he is. if he thinks he is separate from god and cut off from his power, then it is as though this were really the case, and he is just as impotent and miserable as though he actually existed apart from god. on the other hand, if he thinks and believes that he is one with the infinite, he finds that it is gloriously true, and that he is really a son of god. if he believes and thinks that he is a mere material being, then he lives the limited life of a material being, and is never able to rise above it. but if, on the contrary, he thinks and believes that he is a spiritual being, then he finds that he possesses all the powers of a spiritual being. again, if he thinks that his work is difficult and that he is not equal to his tasks, he finds that really his tasks are difficult and beyond his powers. yet on the other hand, if he believes his work is easy, or, at any rate, within his powers, he finds that such is the case, and that he can do his work with ease. the power within is infinite, for, by faith in it, man is directly "coupled up" with the spiritual power of the universe. the divine spark within him connects him to the sacred flame, thus making him potentially a god in the making. a change then, must take place within man before he can enter into his divine inheritance. he must learn to think after the spirit, _i.e._, as a spiritual being, instead of after the flesh, _i.e._, as a material creature. like the prodigal son he must "come to himself," and leave the husks and the swine in the far country, returning to his father's house, where there is bread (of life) enough and to spare. chapter ii. the overcoming of life's difficulties. the true object of life is that man may attain wisdom through experience. this cannot be accomplished by giving in to the difficulties of life, but only by overcoming them. the promises of god are not made to those who fail in life's battle, but to those who _overcome_. neither are there any promises that man shall have an easy time and be happy ever afterwards. yet, it is after this that the majority of people are for ever seeking--an easy life, a good time, freedom from suffering and care. but, in spite of all their seeking, they can never find that which they desire. there is always a fly in the ointment of their pleasure, something that robs them of true happiness; or, possibly, combinations of circumstances conspire to upset all their plans. life is a paradox; the true object of life is not the attainment of happiness, yet if we attain the true object of life we find happiness. those who are ignorant of life's true purpose and who seek happiness high and low, year after year, fail to find it. like a will-o'-the-wisp, it for ever eludes them. on the other hand, those who recognize the true object of life, and follow it, attain happiness without seeking for it. in times past, people have made god a convenience. they have thought they could drift through life, learning none of its discipline and then, when in trouble, or things were not to their liking, they could pray to god and have the unpleasant circumstances taken away. the same idea is prevalent to-day. people have left the old orthodoxy and look to various "cults" and "isms" to get them out of their difficulties. they do not believe now that they can curry special favour with god by prayer, but they firmly believe that they can get what they want from the invisible by demanding it. they think that by this means they can have their own way after all. by this they mean having a good time, with no unpleasant experiences, trials, difficulties, adversities. they are, however, merely chasing rainbows. the easy life they seek constantly eludes them, simply because there is no such thing. the only life that is easy is the life of the strong soul who has overcome. his life is not easy in reality, but appears relatively so because of his strength. it is impossible to have an easy life, and, if it were possible, then life would be not worth living, for the sole object of life is the building of character and the attainment of wisdom through experience. life to all of us must always be full of difficulty, and it is to help those, who, hitherto, have found life rather too much for them that this book is being written. what the majority are seeking for is an easy life (which they will never find, but precisely the reverse) and for them i have no message. but to those wise and awakened souls who are seeking for truth, no matter from whence it may come, and who desire to overcome life and its difficulties, instead of weakly giving in to them, this book, it is hoped, will bring a message. at this stage we cannot go into the subject of why we should meet with disasters and adversity in this life, nor why some people should have, apparently, a smoother life than others. [ ] we must therefore be satisfied to know that we have to meet trouble and overcome difficulty, and that it is only by so doing that we can attain wisdom and build up character. the question, then, is not _whether_ we shall meet the trouble and adversity or not, but rather, _how_ we shall meet them. shall we be victorious or shall we be submerged? shall we overcome life's difficulties or shall we give in to them? [ ] this subject is dealt with in "the path of victory" by the same author, and published by the science of thought press. the majority of people are drifters on the sea of life. they are wafted here and blown there: they are also carried hither and thither by every current. it is only the few who realize that they have the power of the infinite within them by which they can rise superior to all their difficulties, overcome their own weaknesses, and, through victorious experience, attain wisdom. at this point some practical reader may say that attaining wisdom is all very well, but what he wants is practical help. he is perhaps out of work, has sickness in his house and is in debt. or, he may be well-to-do, and yet in the deepest distress and misery. to all such i would say that they possess the power by which they can overcome all their difficulties, and, through overcoming, attain wisdom. a man's success depends, more than anything, upon his faith--his faith in the good purpose of life: his faith in the power of the infinite within him and his ability to overcome every obstacle in his path. the extent of the power that man can bring into his life is the measure of his faith in that power. if his faith in it is small, then his life will be feeble and lacking in achievement. if his faith in the power within him is large, then great will be the power manifesting in his life. the power of the infinite is illimitable and inexhaustible: all that is required is an unquenchable belief and trust in it. the weakest and most timid can make use of this power. there is the same power in the timid and weak as in the brave and strong. the weakness of the former is due to a lack of faith and belief in the infinite power within them. difficulties and troubles there will be in every life, and sometimes disaster and heartbreak, when the very earth slides from under the feet, yet, by calling upon the power within, it is possible to rise from the ruins of cherished hopes stronger and "greater" through experience. happiness and true success depend upon how the troubles and difficulties of life are met. adversity comes to all, but if it is met in the right manner even failure can be made the stepping-stone to success. trouble comes to all, but, while it makes some people stronger and better in every way, it submerges others so that they never rise again. the trouble is the same, it is how it is met that makes the difference. those who meet difficulty and adversity in the feeble strength of their finite minds and false personality are speedily overwhelmed and broken by the storms of life. but those who rely upon, and have faith in the power within them, can never be overwhelmed, neither can they ever be defeated. the power, being infinite, is always sufficient, no matter how great the need may be. one who realizes his own real spiritual identity, knows that he can never die, that he can never be defeated, that he can never really fail. he may lose his body through the change that is called death; but he, the true man, can never die. neither can he fail, though he be defeated a thousand times--he _must_ rise again. only have faith in the spiritual power within you and you can know all the joys of overcoming and achievement. all things will become yours. seek first the kingdom within you (your spiritual union with the infinite, and harmony with the divine will and purpose) and all these things shall be added unto you. you will have no need to fear the morrow, for you will know that all provision has already been made. there will be no need to hoard up wealth, for there will be the necessary daily supplies always available. there will be no need to live near a doctor, for god, the infinite life, shall be your health. there will be no need for regret or lamentation, for you shall know that all is well. there will be no fear of future happenings, for you shall realize that the infinite one makes no mistakes. chapter iii. fate or free-will? great has been the controversy in the past, over the vexed subject of fate versus free-will. on the one hand, fatalists claim that man is so closely bound to the wheel of fate it is impossible for him to live his life in any different way than that which is mapped out for him. he can bring a quantity of first-class evidence in support of his claim and believes in his theory with all his heart. on the other hand, the advocate of free-will believes just as whole-heartedly that man is not bound at all, being as free as air. he, too, can bring plenty of evidence in support of his theory, which confirms him in his belief. each one of them thinks that the other is wrong, yet they cannot both be wrong! let us therefore examine the subject for ourselves, for it is an important one, being intimately connected with the subject which this book discusses. first of all, let it be said, they are both wrong, in part, and right, in part. man is bound to the wheel, yet, at the same time, he has free-will. let us, therefore, explain this seeming paradox. it is an ancient truth of the inner teaching that man, when he is unevolved and before he is "unfolded," is bound to the wheel of fate very closely. the unevolved man follows his desires, thus creating for himself a future from which he cannot escape. when however, he becomes more evolved and emancipated, he begins to resist following his desires and strives, instead, to follow higher things. this creates for him a better future and thus he becomes free in comparison with his former slave state. man is a slave to fate as long as he is a slave to the desires of the earth plane. he is, however, free to overcome lower things and thus rise to higher. when he does this he ceases to create a painful future for himself and thus becomes free. there is, therefore, fate which is self created. it is necessary to acknowledge this before we can proceed further. one who has not had much experience of life or who has not been a close observer, may deny that there is such a thing, but one who has had great changes in his life, against which he has fought and struggled in vain, knows that there is a purpose working behind the events of life, against which even kings and mighty men are powerless. there come times in man's life when he moves heaven and earth, figuratively speaking: prays until he can pray no more: sacrifices, it may be, his money, his health, his prospects, and does everything that is in the power of a human being in a vain attempt to stave off a threatened disaster. but, in spite of all his efforts, in spite of his cries to a pitiless heaven, the relentless march of fate cannot be stayed. it moves forward like a huge juggernaut and crushes his hopes, his dearest idol, his very life itself or all that then makes his life worth living--and leaves him desolate. "if then," you may ask, "fate is so pitiless and so powerful, what can be done with it and where does free-will enter into the matter?" in reply it must be admitted at once that it is no use fighting fate. the more man fights it, the more completely he gets broken. there are certain main events in each life which must come to pass. these events and changes are inevitable and it is hopeless to fight against them. while these things, which constitute what we call fate, are inevitable and therefore cannot be avoided, it rests with ourselves how we meet these adversities and disasters. if we meet them in the wrong way they break us. if, however, we meet them in the right way we become stronger through discipline and experience, thus becoming better fitted to bear life's responsibilities and to overcome its difficulties and temptations. one who meets the setbacks, griefs, bereavements and disasters of life in the right spirit becomes a strong and rich character. he becomes mellowed through experience, strong, stable, a helpful influence to all who meet him. when things go smoothly and life is a merry round, no philosophy or religion seems necessary, and "as for an inward power, what of it, we can do very well without it." so say the thoughtless and inexperienced, but there come times in every life, when, not only is a philosophy, and that a very sound one, necessary, but also a power, of which the finite self knows nothing, is needed in order to raise the soul out of the dust and ashes of its despair. it is one thing to try and meet trouble and adversity in the right spirit and quite another thing to have the power to do so. one who thinks that he has no power within him but that all the power is in circumstances, can never rise victorious over his troubles and become a conqueror over life's difficulties; but one who realizes that he possesses a wonderful power that can raise him up, no matter how crushed he may be, can never be a failure in life. no matter what may happen to him he will play the man and act a noble part. he will rise from the ruins of his life and build it anew in greater beauty and splendour. at this stage it is necessary to point out that there is a difference between "big fate" and the circumstances of life. "big fate" as it sometimes is called antedates this present life and its cause does not come within the scope of this little book. [ ] sufficient if we say here that, through the ages, we reap as we sow, therefore our future depends upon how we meet life and its difficulties _now_. big fate, then, cannot be successfully fought, simply because it is the working of omnipotent law, but our life generally and its circumstances depend upon how we meet "big fate," and how we recover from it. no matter how seemingly unkind "fate" may be, it is possible for us to make our life a beautiful thing. inspired and energized by the power within, we can rise from the ashes of our dead hopes to build anew our life in greater beauty and more in harmony with the divine ideal. [ ] in addition to the "fate" or "future" which every thought and action builds, there is, behind all evolution, a gigantic plan. this wonderful plan that embraces all, from the stupendous conception of a limitless universe down to the smallest electron, is being worked out through the ages with absolute precision. nothing can prevent this plan from being brought into manifestation. it gathers up our past and weaves it into our present life, just in the same way that it is busily gathering up our present life and weaving it into future fate. it works it all into the big plan, somehow, and with infinite skill. the plan is bound to be followed (this, too, is fate) but how we follow it, either with willingness and happiness, or opposition or woe, rests with us (this is free will). those who have studied the occult sciences may say "what about planetary influences?" they will point out that, according to the ancient science of astrology, a man's life is determined by the "star" under which he is born. this is true, if he gives in to the influences around his path. at different times in his life man meets with influences that are sometimes "favourable" and at other times, adverse. these influences are, however, only influences after all, and one who will stand firm during periods of adversity and refuse to give in, relying upon the great power within to carry him through, will find that he can weather all storms of life and come out of his trials greatly strengthened. he cannot prevent these influences from coming around his path of life, but he can rise superior to them. he will meet with failures and set-backs but he will make of these, stepping-stones to success. he will experience griefs and bereavements, but out of these he will build a finer character and rise to higher things. one, however, who gives in to these things, refusing to rise again and reconstruct his life, condemns himself to further suffering, thus making utter shipwreck of his life. let the despairing take heart again. believe in the power within you and you will rise to heights before undreamed of. with this power to help you, you can accomplish the apparently impossible. appendix to chapter iii. our life here is not governed by a capricious being who blows first hot and then cold or who favours one person and tortures another. the supreme being works through laws that are absolutely just and unchanging. therefore all disaster and trouble in the life is the effect of certain causes. these causes are our own wrong doing in the past, which set in motion forces, against which the power and wit and wisdom of man are powerless. [ ] however, because the fundamental law of the universe is love, it follows that the working of the law of cause and effect is not vindictive. its object is our highest good, viz., to bring us into union with the divine or in tune with the infinite. therefore, by rising up to a higher plane and coming more into harmony and union with the divine, we rob even big fate of something of its power. we cannot oppose it, for by so doing we fight against omnipotence, but we can _forestall_ it by doing willingly, and of our own accord, that very thing which experience comes to teach us. [ ] another cause is that the soul has failed to learn certain lessons, therefore, in this life, many painful experiences are brought to bear, in such a way, as to teach the necessary lessons. the lessons are, however, learnt only if painful or unpleasant experiences are met in the right way. so long as man believes that he is unjustly treated by fate and that he does not "deserve" what life metes out to him, he intensifies his troubles, both now and hereafter, through not learning the lessons that life desires to teach. when, however man realizes and admits that life is just and that the cause of all his troubles is within himself, he, like the prodigal son comes to himself and, soon afterwards, begins his homeward journey. yet another cause is that the soul is deficient in character. strength and stability of character can be built up through the soul meeting trouble and difficulty. again it must be pointed out that they must be met in the right spirit. it will be seen then, that our future depends entirely upon the way we think and act in this life. our future lies in our own hands. if we violate the law of love in this life, we create disaster and suffering for the future, which will have to be met, in the form of "big fate" of a painful character, some day. therefore, by right thinking and right doing now, we not only ameliorate conditions in this life, but we also create a future that will be more harmonious and freer than anything we have experienced hitherto. it is also necessary to point out that, even in this life, some of its big disasters are the result of thoughts and actions committed during this present existence. a youth or young man may commit a folly that brings, in after life, a terrible retribution. or he may do another man a grievous wrong and years afterwards someone else does the same wrong to him. it is always an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth on this plane of cause and effect, but the great way shower, by his teaching of the power of love, enables us to rise above these lower things and live a life of harmony and peace. chapter iv. cause and effect. man is the cause of the disasters in his life. he reaps through the ages exactly as he sows. life is perfectly just and rewards every man according to his works. the fate of the present is the reaping of his sowing in, it may be, a distant past. therefore, the disasters and sufferings of this life, must not be attributed to the interference of a capricious and unreasonable god, for the truth is, they are due to the exact working of a perfectly just law. fate, once created, is irrevocable. it can neither be fought nor evaded. by fighting against fate, man merely smashes himself to pieces. to do so, is equivalent to running his head against a stone cliff: the harder he charges, the greater the damage to his head--but the cliff is unaffected. fate, although largely self-created, is really the divine purpose of life: therefore, to resist it is to fight against god. fate, again is not punishment, in any vindictive sense, it is the drawing together of certain remedial experiences, through which the soul can learn the lessons it has failed to learn in past ages and thus attain wisdom. the object of fate is the highest good of the individual, although it may entail suffering and painful experiences. because the disasters in man's life are due to past wrong doing, it naturally follows that his future depends upon the kind of life that he lives to-day. if, in the past, he has created for himself a sequence of events and experiences, from which it is impossible for him to escape, it is obvious that his future lives depend entirely upon how he lives the present one. it will be seen that if man can learn the lessons of the present life, and live in such a way as to cease creating trouble for the future, he is beginning to climb the path of liberation, which is the road all advanced souls have to follow, or, rather, have the privilege of following. by following this path, man ceases to be bound to the wheel of fate. this little work does not teach reincarnation, but its teaching is based on a belief that man, in reality, is a spiritual being, a divine spark from the sacred fire. spirit being immortal has no beginning or end therefore always lives. this present life is one of countless experiences, each one of which helps to build up character. there is no death, but only changes from one vehicle to another. there is no beginning, or end, or time in reality, these are mere limitations of the human mind. it is impossible for man to die: he can only leave his body. he cannot kill himself, try how he will: he can only force himself out of his body. man must always go on, whether he likes it or not: he proceeds through the ages, _reaping exactly as he sows_. we have already seen that man cannot avoid or fight successfully against fate, but that he can become free from the wheel of fate by living a life in harmony with divine law. [ ] at this point it is necessary to point out that most of man's troubles are not caused by fate at all, but are due to his fighting against or trying to resist the great plan. if the experiences of life are resisted, or an attempt is made to evade its discipline, troubles and difficulties will repeat, becoming more painful and insistent until their lesson is learnt and the life changed accordingly. therefore man has it in his power greatly to improve his present life, as well as to create a far better future, simply by living his life to-day in harmony with divine law. further, it is necessary to point out that all thought and action have an _immediate_ as well as a far reaching effect. it is true that the full effect of life here is not reaped until after our little course on this plane has been run, but great differences are effected in the present life nevertheless. the way a youth makes use of, or throws away his opportunities, either makes or mars, to a very large extent, his adult career. opportunities, once allowed to pass, can never be recalled. sins committed and wrongs done to our fellow men have an unpleasant habit of repeating themselves in a reversed way later in life. for instance, a man may get on in life, and, in his selfish climb, may trample on one weaker than himself, ruining him and driving him to despair. years afterwards, he will probably be treated in exactly the same way by someone stronger and more favourably situated than himself. therefore, there is an immediate sowing and reaping that finds fruition in this life. by "immediate" is meant, within the compass of this life. the reaping may be delayed ten or twenty years, but in the writer's experience, it not infrequently comes. "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." those, therefore, who think that life is not just, and who whine and complain about the way they are treated, are simply increasing their own troubles. until man realizes that the cause of all his troubles is within himself he can never do anything to remedy matters, because, obviously, the only thing that is required is for him to change within. man has to become changed within before his life can be altered. his thoughts, his ideals, his attitude towards life must all become transformed. when this change has been effected, he not only begins to repair his present life, but he creates a fairer and nobler life for the future. [ ] this is the inner secret of all esoteric teaching. the new birth, or regeneration, means the awakening of the soul to conscious immortality. the old self, that was bound to the wheel of fate and the plane of cause and effect from which it could never free itself, owing to the fact that it was continually binding itself to the wheel afresh, through following selfish desires, dies, and a new self is born. in other words, the consciousness is raised from the plane of sin and death, of sensuality and desire, of restriction and captivity, to the higher plane of spirit, where man realizes that he is a son of god. he discovers that the divine spark within is his true self. he realizes also that he has always lived--in his real spiritual self. beginning and end, like change and decay, belong purely to the material plane and have no place in reality. they form part of this present three dimensional existence but have no reality. endless being is the reality. anything short of this is mere illusion. it is not necessary, therefore, to believe in the theory of reincarnation or that all our experiences must of necessity take place on this plane. sufficient to know that we can never die, that we cannot escape from ourselves, and that to neglect seeking with all our heart for union once again with our divine source, is merely to prolong our sufferings. man, then, has to change. his desires and aspirations, instead of being directed towards hate and evil must be transformed to love and good. instead of wallowing in lust and selfishness he must lift himself to higher and better things. how can this be done? it cannot be accomplished by the finite man at all, but it can be achieved by the infinite power within. it is only when man realizes his oneness with the infinite and _believes_ that omnipotent power is at his disposal, that the spiritual power within becomes available. so long as man has doubts and fears or disbeliefs, this special power is not available. it is his, but his state of heart and mind prevents him from either realizing the presence of the power or making use of it. before the machinery of a workshop can run it must be connected up with the engine room. in the same way, man, before he can live the new life, must become one with the infinite life and power. entering this new life of power, does not take away life's experiences, its trials, troubles and adversities, but the change within does prevent the creation of unnecessary troubles and suffering. also even a so-called unkind fate loses much of its power to wound, for the higher man rises into union with god and infinite love, the less power it has in his life. it still operates, but it fails to wound so deeply, for man, seeing with illumined eyes, knows that it is good that has come to bless; and not evil that has come to slay. painful fate loses its power to hurt when man ceases to resist it and meets it with open arms, seeking to learn the lessons that it has to teach. chapter v. success. what is meant here by success is the achievement of something worth while, that shall make the world better and richer, and add something to the common good. our sphere in life may be very humble, but if we overcome our own weaknesses, help others along life's pathway, and do our daily work better than we need, our life cannot be other than successful. if, at the end of our life, we can be thankful for it, realizing that we have made the best possible use of it, we have achieved real success. success, to the unillumined, may mean the accumulation of wealth and the winning of fame. yet those who give up their lives to the acquirement of these things are the greatest failures in life. they gain wealth, it is true, but they find that their money can buy only those things that bring no satisfaction: that it cannot purchase for them any of the things which are really worth having. success of this hollow kind, can be won, but at too great a price. the greatest teacher of all once said: "for what shall it profit man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" what _does_ it profit a man if he "gets on" at the cost of happiness, health, joy of living, domestic life, and the ability to appreciate nature's beauties and simple pleasures? yet man must be a striver. he must be for ever seeking better things and to express himself more perfectly. one who drifts through life, making no effort to rise to better things, is not worthy of the name of citizen. man, if he is to be worthy of the name, must be for ever striving, overcoming, rising. failure in life is always due to weakness of character. it is only strong characters who can resist the buffetings of life and overcome its difficulties. the man who would make his life worthy of respect and who would rise to high achievement and service, will be confronted by difficulty at every turn. this is as it should be, for it weeds out the weaklings and unworthy aspirants, and awards the spoils to those who exhibit faith, courage, steadfastness, patience, perseverance, persistence, cheerfulness, and strength of character, generally. success, especially material success, is not, in itself, of much benefit to the one who wins it. it does not satisfy for long, but it is valuable in other ways. for instance, success, based on service, is a benefit to the community. if, it were not for successful people of this type the ordinary man in the rut would have a bad time. also, the winning of success builds up character. one who would be successful in the battle of life, must be prepared to be tested and tried in every possible way. one who survives them all is built up in character in almost every direction. even in his success, however, he will be tempted and tried. one who is engaged in the harsh struggle of business, or who takes part in public life, may, if he does not watch himself very carefully, become hard and callous. of all failures this is probably the worst. one who succeeds in other directions and becomes a "hard man," is, after all, a sorry failure. again, people of the successful, striving, climbing type, are tempted far more than those who are afraid to venture and who remain in the valley of mediocrity. this is true, not only of those who seek to climb the steep path of spiritual attainment, but also of those who are successful in mundane affairs. in each case, they have placed in their keeping great powers and influence such as the ordinary man little dreams of. this is a grave responsibility, for if these powers are used for self-aggrandisement the results are disastrous. thus, those who climb, are beset on all sides by temptations of a very subtle kind, which, if yielded to, will ruin the life and do grave injury to the soul. life is a continual battle. to the ordinary person it is generally a fight with circumstances and the ordinary difficulties of life which are very important in his eyes. the more advanced soul is not troubled much by these things--he rises above them--but he is tempted and tried to a much greater degree, and in a far more subtle manner. those who think that by following a certain "cult" or "ism," they will be able to have an uneventful walk through life are merely deluding themselves. as he learns to overcome the difficulties of life which baffle the ordinary individual, he will be tempted and tried in other and more subtle ways. this is because life is not for mere passing pleasure, but is for the building up of character, through experience. therefore, one who would succeed must be strong, and wise and patient. those who aspire to make their lives really worth while: who desire to serve their fellows more perfectly: who want to build up character through experience and overcome all their weaknesses, inherited or otherwise, must look within for power and wisdom. it must be pointed out, however, that man must not use his spiritual powers for selfish purposes and self-aggrandisement. there is an immutable law, which has been known to the inner teaching all through the ages, that forbids the use of spiritual powers for the creation of wealth or even of daily bread. jesus was subject to the same spiritual law, and was tempted exactly in the same way as we. the tempter said: "command this stone that it be made bread." if christ had turned the stone into bread, he would have failed in his great mission, but he knew the law. there are thousands of people to-day who are trying, not only to turn, by the mis-use of their spiritual powers, stones into bread, but also into motor cars, fat bank balances and lands and houses. such are heading to disaster, for they are working _against_ the combined spiritual power of the universe. the enemy of souls offers those who have learned to tap the inexhaustible power of the universe, and who have discovered that they are sons of god, wealth, power, pomp, the applause of men--the glittering things that perish--if only they will mis-use their god-given power. like jesus, they must refuse. they must put service before self, and give instead of grasping. thousands are being taught to-day to force their human will upon life and to use occult powers for the acquisition of wealth and power. they are taught to enter the silence and demand "what they want." "how to get what you want" is the slogan of these modern teachers. not merit, not service, not giving, but demanding, compelling by human will-power and by the use of occult forces. this is another device of the enemy of souls, and it is taking tens of thousands of seekers for truth out of the path. this subject is dealt with more fully in a separate chapter. if, however, man's ambition is to serve and to give, instead of to grasp and to grab: if, also, he seeks success through merit and not through the mis-use of his spiritual powers, he can go forward and the power will go with him and will help him. when once the power has been aroused, man must cease all purely selfish striving, although, of course, there will still be much selfishness in his motive. he must seek his success through service and through following noble aims: through merit and a fair exchange, instead of trying to wring success from life, no matter who may suffer thereby. further, when this power has been brought into expression it must only be used in love, for if it used otherwise it will destroy the user. again, the power must not be used by the finite human will, but an endeavour must be made to find what the will of the whole is, and to work in harmony with it. behind each life is the divine will and purpose. each life is perfect as it is imaged in the universal mind. the highest success, indeed, the only true success, is to live the life according to the great cosmic purpose, or, in other words, as it is imaged in the one mind. do not imagine, however, that it is the will of the universal mind that man should be a failure or lacking in achievement. far from it, for we have only to contemplate the universe to see that the infinite mind is for ever achieving and that it never fails. man, too, must succeed, but let him mix wisdom with his ambition, and work for the benefit of the whole, rather than for any purely selfish purpose. it is natural for man to "get on" in life, to a moderate extent. [ ] in order to "get on" he must become more efficient, and thus serve life and his fellows better. therefore, there is no harm in success of this kind. it is natural and laudable also for one in poor and unlovely surroundings to have an ambition to raise himself to better circumstances. it is only right that he should desire to make life brighter and better for his wife and family. so long as he indulges in ambition wisely, and if he seeks success through _better service_ to his fellows, his is a laudable purpose. if, however, he does not curb and control his ambition but allows it to "run away" with him, he will lose all real joy in life, and, at the last, when it is too late, learn, to his sorrow, that his life, through too much "success," has been a failure. [ ] it must not be deduced from this that the author deprecates large achievement. there must always be the few who have to bear huge responsibilities. the real success of the lives of these great ones depends entirely upon their motive. if they seek merely power, fame and self-aggrandisement, then their life, no matter how it may appear otherwise, can be only a failure. if, however, their motive is service, then their life is truly successful, no matter how it may appear to be otherwise. the writer's experience has been that it is necessary that we should always be progressing, achieving, overcoming and endeavouring to succeed. one of the greatest laws of the universe is progress, therefore it is fatal to stand still. we must go forward, we must achieve, we must accomplish things. if we do so, we may find that many things which cost us much effort, and hard work are not worth the having, yet all the time we are learning, through experience, and are being strengthened and prepared for greater things. through repeated failure to find true satisfaction we arrive finally at true knowledge, wisdom and understanding. we are wise then, if, with the world at our feet, we can be satisfied with a very moderate material success, and turn our attention and aspirations to higher and better things. in concluding this chapter let it be pointed out that success and achievement will not drop ready made from heaven into your lap. all who succeed are gluttons for work, toiling whilst others play and sleep. all teaching to the contrary is erroneous. to think that success is going to come to you when it is unmerited, simply because you make use of "affirmations" or employ mental "treatments," is folly of the first water. on the other hand, to use the inner forces in an occult way, so as to compel material things or "success," so-called, in any shape or form, to come to you, is black magic. one who stoops to such practices becomes a black magician, earning for himself a terrible retribution. there is only one way to succeed in the affairs of life, and that is by raising oneself to greater usefulness and service. by doing things better than they have been done before, by bearing greater responsibility, you serve humanity better, and therefore merit success. "it is more blessed to give than to receive," said the master, and this is true even in the practical and material affairs of life. first, you must give better and more valuable service: in other words, deserve and merit before you expect to see it materialize. you must sow before you can reap: you must become too big for your present position before you are capable of occupying a larger one. you must grow and expand in every possible way, and as you grow so will your success increase. outward success is only a reflection, so to speak, of what you really are, and a result of greater and more valuable service to humanity. it requires great effort and determination to get out of the rut, but so long as your ambition is not ignoble or selfish, there will be found within you power sufficient for all your needs. to win success, either in the hurly-burly of life, or the more difficult path of spiritual progress, demands imagination, vision, courage, faith, determination, persistence, perseverance, hope, cheerfulness and other qualities. these are all to be found within. all these qualities lie more or less dormant within, and can be called into expression if we believe that infinite power is ours. again, however, must the warning be repeated that this power must not be used for selfish self-aggrandisement, still less may it be used, or, rather, mis-used, either to influence or dominate others. if this power is mis-used the results are terrible and disastrous. therefore, use the power only for the achievement of good and noble aims and in service which shall enrich the life of your fellows, adding to the common good. having arrived at this stage you must go forward. there can be no holding back. ever onward, the divine urge is sending you, to greater achievement and accomplishment. just as surely as the planets must revolve round the sun and fulfil their destiny, so also must you go forward. see to it, then, that your aims and ambitions are based upon eternal wisdom, for upon this does your whole future depend. chapter vi. health. it is impossible, in a little work of this description to explain why it is that one person inherits a weak and ailing body and another enjoys a strong and robust constitution. sufficient for us here to notice that the days of rude, rugged health are passing, and that man is becoming more highly strung, nervous and psychic in his make-up. the old type of rude, unconscious health was due to the animal-like nature of man, which caused his body to be governed more completely by the instinctive mind. less evolved humans are not affected, apparently, by the mental storms, psychic changes, and spiritual disharmonies that disturb the health of the more evolved types. we have an illustration of this in the case of some forms of insanity. the patient "goes out of his mind," with the result that his bodily health becomes wonderfully good. the instinctive mind takes control of things, and rude, robust animal health is the result. when the patient was sane and his mind filled with worry, ambitions, plans, cares, lusts, hates and griefs, he was probably very far from well. this would be due to the disturbing effects of his thoughts and uncontrolled emotions. when, therefore, his conscious mind gave way and he became happy in an imbecile way, he ceased to think of these disturbing things, with the result that the instinctive, animal mind was able to work undisturbed. it is of no use sighing for "the good old times," when people were rugged and strong in the way that savages are rugged and strong, for evolution has decreed that man shall change into a higher and more nervous and sensitive type. in this sensitive type wrong thoughts and emotions quickly produce pain and suffering. the majority of people do not know what good health is. not only do they suffer from minor ailments, such as headaches, indigestion, rheumatism, neuritis, but they also never feel hearty or completely well. they are strangers to the joy of living. life does not thrill them: nothing quickens their blood: they have no moments of vivid ecstasy--in other words, they do not live, they merely exist at a poor dying rate. again, the majority of people are susceptible to infectious diseases and epidemics, yet, if they were really well, they would be immune. instead, however, of seeking immunity through health, they are seeking it through the use of vaccines and serums, thus adding to the burdens which the body has to bear. all attempts in this direction are bound to end in failure, for, as fast as one disease is suppressed another one will appear. many people look upon disease and sickness as inevitable, yet the truth is that health is the normal state and ill-health an abnormality. in tracing back ill-health to its source, we find, first of all, that it is due to disobedience of natural law. large numbers of people break nearly every known natural law of health, and are surprised that they become ill. yet the wonder is that they are as well as they are. yet, while obedience to nature's laws and the use of nature-cure methods will carry us a certain part of the way, we find that there must be causes even deeper than those which are physical. we are confronted by the fact that there are many people who obey every known physical law of health, who bathe, exercise, breathe, eat and drink scientifically, who adopt nature-cure methods instead of drugs and serums, who yet cannot find health. therefore we must search deeper and go to the mind in order to discover the cause of ill-health. when we look to the mind we find a prolific cause of sickness. man thinks himself into ill-health and disease. it is well known that thinking about disease and sickness produces them in the body. people who are for ever thinking about disease, illness, operations and other morbid subjects, become a prey to these things. those who believe that sickness is inevitable, manifest it in their life. morbid thinking produces a morbid state of the body, causing it either to fall an easy prey to infection or to break down into chronic ill-health, or even disease. allowing the thoughts to dwell upon morbid things is a sure way to sickness and invalidism. man is not only made ill by his own negative thoughts and emotions, he is also under the hypnotic spell of the race mind. "the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not." we are all under the spell, more or less, of a huge illusion. the evil, disease, sickness and other imperfections that we see and experience, have no reality, _in reality_, but have an _existence_ in _unreality_. [ ] although they are not real in a real sense, yet they are terribly real to this present limited consciousness. by realizing the truth, and by thinking and living in its light and power, the hypnotic spell becomes broken, not completely, else we should not grow old, but to such an extent that a state of greatly improved health can be enjoyed. [ ] for a fuller explanation of this metaphysical statement see science of thought text books, nos. i. and ii. we are also hypnotically affected by suggestion, which reaches us from a thousand different sources. the conversations of friends and acquaintances, affect us adversely. their belief in disease and sickness as realities, and in its inevitableness, colours all their conversation, and, unless we guard against it, this unconsciously affects us. newspapers, magazines, books, all steeped in the same error, also influence us unless we have become too positive to be affected. from innumerable sources it is subtly suggested to us that disease, sickness, infection are realities that cannot be evaded, and to which we are prone. the effect of all this, putting it in simple and elementary language, is to divert the life power into wrong channels, thus producing disease and ill-health in place of perfection. the normal state of health has to give place to an abnormal state of disease or sickness. the normal health-state is, however, restored when truth is realized, and the life lived in its light and power. absolute truth and perfection stand behind all the illusion and imperfection of the sense life. it is by realizing the truth and the perfection of the reality, and by establishing the thought-life in truth, so that our thoughts cease to be negative and based on error and illusion, that health is to be found. it is often said that ill-health is the result of sin. it is, for thinking about disease, sickness and ill-health, believing them to be inevitable, is one of the greatest of sins. the way of life is to walk (think and act) after the spirit (which is perfect, whole, immortal and incorruptible) and not after the flesh (corruption, disease, sickness, death). by thinking "after the flesh" we dishonour god who is absolute wholeness and perfection, and cut ourselves off from the divine life and power. but there are other ways by which wrong thinking destroys the health. thinking thoughts of lust is a prolific cause of unhappiness, sickness and nervous disease. the divine forces of life are directed into a wrong channel, resulting either in indulgence and inevitable weakening of body, brain and will, or in repression and its consequent nervous diseases. if the thoughts are allowed to dwell upon impurity, evil results must follow in some form, either in action or ill-health, or both. thought must be controlled and reversed continually. not repressed, but reversed, be it noted, for there is a tremendous difference between the two. repression creates nervous trouble, but by reversing or transmuting the thoughts the life becomes transformed, and the bodily health greatly improved. further, indulging in thoughts of hate, resentment, ill-will, fear, worry, care, grief, and anxiety, produces ill-health, and, by lowering the tone of the body, lays it open to infection and disease. we therefore see that the state of the mind and the character of the thoughts are important factors which cannot be ignored. it is useless to treat either ill-health or disease if they are merely the external _effects_ of hidden causes of the mind. in order to effect a cure we have to get back to the cause of the trouble. thought control [ ] is a great assistance. substituting a right or positive thought for a wrong one, will, in course of time, work wonders in the life. in the sub-conscious we have an illimitable power of extraordinary intelligence. according to our thoughts this wonderful power either builds up health, harmony and beauty in our life and body, or just the reverse. the power is good, the intelligence is apparently infinite, but it goes where-ever our thoughts direct it. by our thinking, therefore, we either create or destroy, produce either good or evil. if, therefore, all our thoughts are good, positive and constructive, it follows that both our body and our life must become built up in harmony and perfection. the question is, can this be done? it can be done if we have the desire, and are willing to discipline ourselves and persevere in the face, often, of seeming failure. some readers may say, at this point, that they have no desire to be so frightfully good, that they are not prepared to give up lust, impurity, hate, anger, malice and thoughts and emotions of this kind. very well, if this is so, they must go on and learn, through suffering, the lesson which they refuse to learn willingly. others may say: "yes, i want to control my thoughts, but how can i cease to worry when i have so much about which to worry, and how can i cease to hate when i have been so deeply wronged?" this brings us to an even deeper cause of ill-health than that of mind, viz., the attitude of the heart. our scriptures tell us that "as a man thinketh in his _heart_ so is he." by "heart" is meant the soul or feeling, desiring part of man. it is here where the conflict between the self-will and the divine will, between the desires of the flesh and the longings of the spirit take place. the real root cause of all unhappiness, disharmony and ill-health is spiritual, and not merely mental or physical. the latter are contributory causes, but the former is the fundamental cause. spiritual disharmony is, in reality, the cause of all ill-health and disease. until spiritual harmony is restored, man is a kingdom divided against itself, which, as our lord said, cannot stand. healing, then, must be of a spiritual character. until this harmony exists there can be no overcoming of hate thoughts, fear thoughts or worry thoughts, and until these are overcome there can be no true healing. our lord's healing was a gracious healing of the spirit. it restored inward harmony by forgiving sin, by changing the heart's desires, by bringing the will of the subject into harmony with the divine will of the whole. our lord's healing was not accomplished by means of suggestion, neither was it achieved by human will power; it was done by a bringing into harmony of the heart and desires and will with the divine will. at the same time there must have been a revelation of the truth that the will of god is love, wholeness, joy and perfection, and not disease, sickness and misery. [ ] see also "the power of thought" by the same author, published by the science of thought press, chichester. mental healing does not become possible until we have made our peace with god. until we have surrendered entirely to the love principle, we cannot overcome our hate thoughts and malice thoughts or resentment thoughts, by transmuting them into thoughts of love. until we surrender to the divine will and leave all our problems to the infinite mind, we cannot cease to worry and fear. mental discipline and thought-control are necessary after this inward change has taken place, for we all have to work out our own salvation, but the essential thing is the inward heart surrender in love and trust. so long as we hate our brother, or fear what the morrow may bring forth, or worry about the things of this life, we can never be well. when, however, we have become attuned to the divine harmony, and have learnt to control our thoughts and emotions and to transmute fleshly and material desires into loving service, a state of wholeness is the inevitable result. old, deeply-seated disorders die away, and a steady improvement in the state of health takes its place. in order to regain health it is necessary to raise oneself up continually to the divine ideal of health, harmony and perfection. but this is useless if there still remains a clashing of the personal will with the divine will, or if there is any hate, malice, envy, or fear in the heart. the will must be surrendered to the greater will (this, in reality, is our highest good, for the fulfilment of the divine will is the happy destiny of man): the heart must forgive and be filled with love; fear must be cast out, and replaced by confidence and complete trust, before we can enter into that happy, care-free, restful state which is necessary for healing. health is harmony--a delicate balance and adjustment between spirit, soul, mind and body. this harmony is dependent entirely upon the greater harmony between ourselves and god. so long as there is a conflict of will, so long as there is hate or resentment, so long as there is selfishness or while there is fear, this harmony cannot exist. therefore, the bed-rock cause of health is spiritual harmony, all healing being a restoration of harmony between man and his divine source. when this harmony is restored, man is no longer a kingdom divided against itself, for he becomes established in _unity_: he works with the universe and the divine laws of his being, instead of against them. the divine life and power flow through him unimpeded, promoting perfect sub-conscious functioning. his thoughts become cleansed at their source ("create in me a clean heart, o god, and renew a right spirit within me," "cleanse thou me from _secret_ faults"). he becomes free from the hypnotic spell of the race mind: his eyes, through the influence of the divine spirit, become opened to the truth; therefore he is no longer blinded by the prince of this world. in the divine union he becomes free. (in christ all are made alive). the subject of grief and its effect upon health has purposely been left to the last. no amount of right thinking will prevent bereavements in this life. these form part of the necessary discipline of life, and it depends entirely upon how we meet our trials whether they shall be hurtful or the greatest possible blessing. by rebelling against life's discipline, griefs become hurtful, but the hurt is not in the bereavement itself, but in the attitude of the mind and heart. until the soul is able to drink the cup of sorrow willingly, and say "thy will be done," bereavement is hurtful, destroying both health and happiness. the cause of the hurt is, however, in the hardness of heart, and not in the bereavement itself. there must, therefore, be submission and an acknowledgment that the discipline is necessary. this does not imply, however, a weak giving-in to grief and mourning. one who has been bereaved can never, it is true, be the same again, for he or she becomes more chastened, more loving, more sympathetic, richer and more mellow in character. the loved one can never be forgotten, but that is no reason why the heart should be bowed down by grief and the life made desolate by sorrow. in such cases true religion, not religiousness, is the only thing that can satisfy the soul, harmonize the mind, and heal the body. to be established in truth, knowing that all is well: that god makes no mistakes and that there is, in reality, no death but only change, is the only way by which bereavement can be made to be a blessing in disguise. when this stage is reached, grief is overcome, death being swallowed up in victory. the only panacea for all life's troubles is conscious harmony with our divine source and the divine will and purpose which desire only our highest good. chapter vii. the secret of abundant supply. it is a metaphysical truth that the outward life is a reflection of the thought life. our life is affected by our habit of thinking and attitude of mind, in two ways: first, all our actions are unconsciously influenced by our thoughts, thus helping to bring into manifestation, or attracting to us, an environment that corresponds to our thoughts. [ ] secondly, we discharge or emit an influence, silent and invisible, that no doubt affects other people. they are probably not aware of it, but they are either repelled or attracted by this silent influence. thus, if our thoughts and mental attitude are of the wrong type, not only are our actions affected thereby, but also we exert a silent influence that assists in driving the right type of friends, opportunity, success and every possible good away from us. the reverse also is equally true. by right thoughts and a correct mental attitude we naturally attract to us all the good of which our present life is capable. [ ] this may seem, at first sight, to be a sweeping statement, but two homely illustrations will prove its reasonableness. first we will take the case of a man committed to prison for law-breaking. his environment is obviously due to his wrong actions, the latter being the offspring of his thoughts, for all actions spring from thoughts. next let us take the case of a man who is the trusted head of an efficient business. obviously his position is the result of his actions, for he has climbed to it by hard work and faithful service, all due in the first place to constructive thinking and a right attitude of mind. the bible tells us that as a man thinketh in his heart so is he. it is equally true to say that as a man _is_, so does he _think_, and, that as he thinks, so do his outer life and circumstances become. therefore, as a man _is_, so is his environment. this may sound rather metaphysical, but it is really quite simple, and proof meets us at every turn. take a man from slumdom and put him in nice surroundings, and note what happens. very soon he either drifts back to a slum or turns his new house into a slum dwelling. take a man of a higher type, and put him in a slum, and soon he will either leave the slum or change his slum dwelling into a more decent habitation. put a slut in a mansion, and she will turn it into a pig-sty, but put a woman of a higher type in a hovel and she will make it clean enough to entertain royalty. therefore, before you can change a person's environment it is necessary to change inwardly the person himself. when a man becomes inwardly changed and filled with new ambitions, ideals and hopes, he, in course of time, rises above his sordid surroundings and _attracts to himself an environment that corresponds to his new state of mind_. it would be useless to tidy up the house of a slut for her, for she would soon make it like a pig-sty again, but if you could get a new ideal of neatness, cleanliness, order and spotlessness into her mind, she would not rest satisfied until her immediate environment corresponded, in some measure at least, to her mental ideal or image. very often, the failures of a man's life, and its disharmonies and poverty, either comparative or real, are outward symbols of his weakness of character. he may have ability in plenty, but he may lack application or steadfastness, and thus he fails in all his undertakings, and has to be kept by his wife and daughters. he will assure you that his circumstances are due to ill-fortune, but the actual cause of his failure is in his character, or, rather, lack of character. if, therefore, a man's poverty and lack, or financial difficulties are due to weakness of character which manifest in his work and dealings with others, in the form of inefficiency, poor service and bad judgment, it follows that he, himself, must change before his circumstances can be permanently altered for the better. the difficulty in dealing with unsuccessful people is in getting them to realize that they, themselves, are the cause of all their troubles. [ ] until, however, they do realize this, their case is hopeless, and it is impossible to help them, but when they acknowledge that the fault is theirs, they can be shown that there is a remedy for their ills and a way out of their difficulties, by means of self-improvement. let them then search for hidden weaknesses, and build up those weak places in their character, such as lack of grit, determination, steadfastness, persistence, patience, probity, decision, which are the cause of their troubles, and they will find that their circumstances will gradually change for the better. everything comes from within--first within, then out, this is the law--therefore the change must always take place within. [ ] see also "the fundamentals of true success," by the same author and published by the science of thought press, chichester. going more deeply into the subject and becoming more metaphysical, it is necessary to point out that the cause of all manifestation is mind. we have already seen that a man's mind and character are reflected in his circumstances; now let us think, for a moment, about the mind that is infinite. the whole universe, which is, of course, infinite in extent, has its origin in the divine mind, and _is contained within this infinite mind_, just in the same way that you can hold a mental picture in your own mind. god's universe, _as it is imaged in the divine mind_, is perfect. we see it as imperfect, because we only receive a finite sense-perception of that which is perfect and infinite, from this forming, in our minds, an image that is necessarily imperfect and finite, which we project outwards, and, not knowing any better, think is real. but the universe, _as imaged in the divine mind_, and as it actually is in reality, is both infinite and perfect: it is also infinitely perfect. there is no poverty or lack in a universe that is infinitely perfect, whole and complete in the divine mind. poverty and lack have their origin in the mind of man: they have no place in the mind of god. we cannot, in a little elementary work of this kind, go more deeply into this extremely fascinating subject. sufficient if we say here that the only reality is infinite perfection and wholeness, therefore there cannot be any lack at all (in reality). the obvious lack and poverty that we see around us are the product of the human mind. those who live in a consciousness of poverty and lack, go through life closely fettered by limitation. they can never escape from poverty, it dogs their footsteps like their shadow. in fact, it is a shadow or reflection, in the outer life, of their state of mind and mental attitude. on the other hand, those who live in a consciousness of sufficiency, are not troubled about supply. their circumstances reflect their type of mind and mental attitude. it does not follow that they will be rich, for many of them prefer to live from hand to mouth, and quite large numbers of people have no desire whatever to possess wealth of any kind, but they have no worry about supply, for their needs are always met by sufficiency. many of our readers look upon the possession of wealth as an iniquity. personally, i do not see how, at this stage, it can be altogether avoided. capital is necessary for the conducting of business and for the carrying out of enterprises, but, as far as the hoarding of wealth is concerned, i certainly think that it is both unwise and unnecessary. there is nothing more deadening to the spiritual life than riches. there is always hope for the drunkard and the harlot, but it is most difficult although, of course, not impossible, for one who is burdened by wealth to enter the kingdom of heaven. some are able to do so, but they are allowed to enter simply because they hold their wealth as of no importance, merely as something of which they are stewards for a season. the hoarding of wealth is just as unnecessary as poverty. they are both based upon a fundamental error. this error is in thinking that all supply, being material, must necessarily have a material source: that it is limited in quantity, and therefore must be grabbed at and fought over. the truth is, of course, that the source of supply is spiritual, and therefore without limit; consequently, one who realizes the truth has no thoughts of poverty or lack, and ceases to fear it. on the other hand, he has no incentive to hoard or to grab wealth, for of what use are riches to one whose supply is for ever assured? all who enter into this truth regarding supply, either despise riches or hold them very lightly indeed. they cease to have any desire for wealth. why should they have any such desire? people hanker after wealth because they fear poverty with a deadly fear, and long for wealth because they think that its possession would release them from their fears. when, however, they know the truth, they also know that their wants will always be supplied, therefore they no longer desire wealth and its cares and responsibilities. wealth is just as abnormal as poverty. our lord showed this to be the case by choosing to be poor (but not in poverty) and by his teaching in the sermon on the mount. what jesus promised was adequate supply, but not wealth or riches, to those who had sufficient faith in their "heavenly father." many people live this planless life of utter dependence upon their spiritual source. they never become rich, but all their needs are supplied. something always arrives in time to meet their requirements. such a life requires a very live and active faith, but its results are as certain as the rising of the sun. an understanding of the truth regarding supply is a necessary foundation for the faith without which the planless life is impossible. it is necessary to _know_ the utter falseness and unreality of poverty and lack before we can trust in divine providence or the working of spiritual (at the same time, mental) law. it is necessary to know that the universe is spiritual: that god is spirit, in whom we live and move and have our being, and that because we are a part, very small, but yet a part, of the whole, all our wants, all through the ages, must be supplied. supply, sufficient for all our needs, is the reality. poverty and lack, the product of lack of faith, of fear, of ignorance, of weakness of character, have their origin in the human mind, and are the unreality--the negative which has no permanence or reality. when we have learnt the truth, it is necessary to live in the consciousness of it, and to think and act and praise god as though sufficiency were already ours. not to spend money that we cannot afford to spend, nor to incur debt, but to live mentally in an atmosphere of abundant supply. we have to remember that the change in consciousness must take place first and become well-established, before its effects can be seen to manifest in the outer life. the entering of this higher consciousness where we know and realize the truth, viz., that the source of all our supply is spirit, and that the divine source is limitless, is not easy, although it is less difficult to some than to others. it demands constant mental activity and watchfulness: it requires persistence and perseverance in right thinking, yet it is possible to those who are in earnest. by living in the consciousness of god's supply and exercising a lively faith, the life becomes affected, principally due to both conscious and unconscious change of action. having dealt with the esoteric or inner side of the subject of supply, i will now treat it more from the outer or practical side, the latter being, of course, just as important as the former. the teaching of this chapter does not discourage industry and thrift, far from it. after the lord christ had fed the five thousand, all the leavings were carefully collected so that nothing should be wasted. this is in accord with universal law. there is a law of economy both in the natural and spiritual worlds. nature appears, on the surface, to be very wasteful and prodigal, but, actually, she never wastes anything, if it can be avoided. therefore, the action of the disciples was in accord with universal law. what a lesson for us! to be careful and saving is a mark of superiority both in mind and character. the wastefulness of the helpless poor is notorious. those who are "well to do" are far more careful and conserving than the very poor. there are exceptions, it is true, but the rule is that a man who cannot save money has not it in him to command success in life. inability to deny himself certain things shows a weakness of character and lack of purpose which make success impossible. two men that i knew very well built fortunes upon p , which they saved out of meagre earnings. it is always the start that is difficult: if you cannot overcome the preliminary difficulties you have not the steadfast purpose to hold your own in the battle of life. on the other hand, once the initial difficulties have been overcome, it is not difficult to get your barque into the currents of prosperity. when once you realize that there is unlimited abundance in which you can share: when once you learn to live in the consciousness of this abundance, at the same time living within your present income and doing your present work as well as it is possible for it to be done, you have set out on the path to affluence. one who realizes and really believes that there is abundance and plenty for _him_, puts into operation a powerful law which will surely bring opportunity to him, sooner or later. many, however, ruin their hopes by not knowing that for a time they must live a kind of double life. they must be opulent in consciousness, but careful and thrifty in actual practice. the time will come when their means will largely increase, then, if they are wise, they will live on part of their income, instead of living up to it. this will give them a wide margin for charitable purposes, for the taking up of further opportunities and for extensions. many business men have to let golden opportunities pass, simply because they have saved little or nothing, owing to lavish private expenditure, or they have to let other people in to share their schemes who, in addition to taking a large share of the profits may prove a serious handicap and hindrance in other ways. while in its essence, the source of supply is spiritual, it comes to us through material channels, and, in order to have a share in it, it is necessary to earn it. we have to give something in exchange for what we draw from life in the way of supply. we must give in order to receive, and what we give must be something that the world wants or needs. the secret of supply is, then, to realize that there is unlimited abundance and to live in the consciousness of it, as completely as though no material channels existed, and, at the same time, to work as zealously and be as careful as though there were no such thing as spiritual supply. at the same time we must give the world something that it wants, or otherwise serve in some useful capacity, exercising honesty, probity and justice in all our affairs. it is folly to expect abundance to drop ready-made in our lap; it must be earned by intelligent and faithful service. [ ] [ ] this subject is treated fully in "the fundamentals of true success," by the same author. published by the science of thought press, chichester. being a retired business man who started life with nothing, not even good health, i have looked at this subject from a business man's point of view. the principle applies, however, to every walk in life, and each reader can adapt the teaching of this lesson to his or her particular needs. chapter viii. the powers and limitations of the sub-conscious mind. the sub-conscious mind is the mind of nature. it possesses extraordinary powers and intelligence, but no inspiration. it is instinctive: it is animal: it is natural: but there is nothing god-like about it--it is of the earth and the physical plane. it can be described as the inner forces of nature resident within our body. having said this we have said nearly all there is to be said about the sub-conscious, yet this is the mind of which some people have made a veritable god. the sub-conscious mind, if led aright, is a very good friend, reducing all repeated thoughts and actions into habit, which, in time, become settled and part of the very life itself. thus, by conscious right thinking and conscious right action, a good habit is formed, which becomes, in course of time, practically automatic. this, of course, builds up the character, which, in turn, affects the life. it will be seen then, how important is the right use of this willing and faithful servant. it is no god, it has no inspiration, but it is a very useful servant, as we shall see. most of our actions or movements are done or made sub-consciously. the reason that "practice makes perfect" is that the sub-conscious mind learns to do the task, and, by so doing, takes it off our hands. how difficult it is to learn to drive a motor-car. how carefully, at first, we have to double de-clutch and obtain the right engine speed for a noiseless "change," yet, after a time, the whole action is performed sub-consciously. it is the same with pianoforte playing. many players, some better than others, can play the most difficult classical music without _consciously_ recalling it to mind. as soon as they _try to remember_ the whole "piece" leaves them, but as long as they leave the whole matter to the sub-conscious (which never forgets) they can keep on playing. i and my conscious mind are not doing much of the actual writing of this book. we think the thoughts and have something to do with the formation of the sentences, but the sub-conscious mind writes them down. if i had to think of each word and letter, my task would be hopeless, and i should become half dead with fatigue. the sub-conscious mind, however, is even more helpful, for it does the bulk of our thinking, and can be taught to do a great deal more. if we had to think everything out laboriously, according to the laws of logic, life would be unbearable. instead of this our sub-conscious mind does the bulk or our thinking, and, if we give it a chance, will do it in an extremely accurate manner, strictly according to the laws of logic and _without the slightest fatigue_. the more that we train the sub-conscious to do our ordinary thinking for us, the less we suffer from fatigue. fatigue is unknown to the sub-conscious mind, therefore we can never tire it or overwork it. the sub-conscious mind can be made to do more and more work for us if we will delegate definite work for it to deal with. one who has learnt thought control, who can take up a matter, consider it in all its bearings, and then dismiss the subject from his conscious thought, is able to increase his efficiency a hundred per cent., and reduce his mental fatigue almost to vanishing point. instead of laboriously working out his problems and worrying and scheming over them, he simply dismisses them to his sub-conscious mind to be dealt with by a master mind which works unceasingly, with great rapidity, extreme accuracy and entirely without effort. it is necessary, however, to give the sub-conscious every available information, for it possesses no inspiration or super-human wisdom, but works out logically, according to the facts supplied to it. this great, natural, untiring "mind downstairs," as it has been called, is also capable of doing even more useful work still. a writer or speaker, or preacher can collect notes and ideas for his article, book, speech or sermon, and pass them down to his sub-conscious mind with orders that they be arranged in suitable order, division, sub-division and so on. when he comes either to write or prepare the notes of his speech or sermon, he will find all the work done for him, and all that he has to do is to write it down, entirely without effort or fatigue. again, a business man who has learnt to make use of his sub-conscious mind in this way, need not juggle or worry or fatigue himself by planning and scheming for the future. all that he need do is to submit the facts to the "greater mind downstairs," and all the planning will be done for him, entirely without effort, and far more efficiently than he would have done it through laborious conscious thinking. the following, which has just been brought to my notice, is a striking confirmation of the teaching of this chapter. in a recent issue of _collier's magazine_, an interview with henry ford appeared. he spoke of the way with which big business men deal with problems, and pointed out that they did not spend a lot of time pondering and puzzling over plans or ideas. he said: "an idea comes to us: we think of it for a little while, and then _we put it in the pot to boil_. we let it simmer for a time, and then take it out." what henry ford means, of course, is precisely what we have been saying, viz., that the idea or problem is dismissed to the sub-conscious mind, which works it out, and presents it to the conscious mind for judgment. yet again, an inventor or one who is constructing something mechanical, can make use of the sub-conscious mind in precisely the same way. let him sum up the whole problem, arrange all his facts and available information, and pass them all to his sub-conscious mind, when, if a successful result is within the range of possibility, an answer or idea will be forthcoming. all this being done, mark you, without any effort whatever. all this may seem, especially to some readers, rather wonderful and far-fetched, yet there is nothing occult or mysterious about it. i am perfectly sure that there is no great writer, politician or business man who does not make use of his sub-conscious mind in this way. he probably does so unconsciously, but his procedure is the same. some employ the whole of their mind naturally. these become men of achievement, who occupy responsible positions, and who bear immense burdens without strain, worry or care. responsibility sits lightly upon them, and they are serene and untroubled when in positions, and when confronted by tasks and difficulties, such as would drive an ordinary individual out of his mind. such men develop their powers of attention and concentration (anyone who is in earnest can do this) to a very high degree. they are at great pains to get to the root of a problem, and obtain all the available data possible, but, after that, it is their sub-conscious mind that does all the work, and which arrives at a decision. while it comes natural to a few to use their sub-conscious mind in the correct way, the majority of people find themselves unable to do so. such, however, can acquire the art by training. first, it is necessary to learn thought-control, so as to be able to take up a problem or dismiss it entirely from the mind _at will_. when a problem is passed on to the sub-conscious to be worked out, the subject must be dismissed entirely from the conscious mind. the problem must not be worried over, nor the thoughts allowed to dwell upon it; it must be left entirely to the sub-conscious. second, every possible detail and information connected with the problem must be grasped by the conscious mind, and the whole matter, pro and con, visualized before being passed to the sub-conscious. it will be seen, then, that thought-control of a high order is necessary, also powers of attention and concentration. these can all be developed by anyone who is really in earnest. a good way of starting the use of the sub-conscious mind is to hold the problem in the mind just as one is going to sleep. there must not, upon any account, be any attempt made to solve the problem or to worry over it. instead, the main facts of the case, on both sides, must be marshalled, and the case presented to the sub-conscious mind in much the same way as you would place it before your lawyer. having done this, dismiss the whole matter to your sub-conscious mind, and in most cases you will find in the morning that a solution has been arrived at without any effort or fatigue on your part. this, of course, is only one of the many ways in which the sub-conscious mind can, and does, serve its master, or the one who should be master. this great invisible force of nature is for ever working. whatever ideal is held in the mind becomes woven into the life through the tireless working of the sub-conscious mind. only set your attention upon high and lofty achievement, and you will focus all the invisible inward forces of nature upon its accomplishment. in course of time you will reap as you sow. if you will direct your attention into the right channel, backing it up with energetic, conscious action, your sub-conscious will help you day and night, thus making success and achievement possible. chapter ix. the use of the spiritual or super-conscious mind. we have already seen that the sub-conscious mind, wonderful though it be, is instinctive merely, lacking inspiration and what we call originality. all inspiration comes from the universal mind, via the super-conscious. all poets and inspired writers get their inspiration in this way. this higher mind is not recognized by psychologists, but it has long been known to searchers for spiritual truth. what we get from the sub-conscious is the outcome of facts and knowledge supplied to it. what we get from the super-conscious is direct inspiration from higher planes. this higher mind might also be called the mind of illumination, for those who can enter into it become illumined, being able to know the truth and to see things as they really are, and not as they falsely appear to the senses. this limited consciousness in which we live is bounded by our five senses. the universe that we see around us is partly real and partly an illusion. the real universe is spiritual and infinite: what we sense is a limited, partial conception of a fragment of it. our limited, finite conception of the universe is entirely misleading and erroneous, and so long as we rely on sense evidence and the human mind, we remain in darkness and uncertainty. when, however, we can rise into the super-conscious realm, our consciousness expands, transcending the senses and the limitations of the physical plane. the spiritual mind is, of course, only accessible to those who are more delicately attuned to its finer vibrations. nothing that is worth having can be had without effort, and it is only after much self-discipline that it becomes possible for the student to raise his consciousness to this higher realm and understand life from the standpoint of the universal mind. there is nothing, either mystical or psychical, about the use of this higher mind. one who makes use of it becomes spiritually-minded, that is all. he does not go into trances, nor need he become clairvoyant: he simply remains a sane, normal individual, with this difference only--he makes use of more of his mind than does the ordinary individual. one who is able to use this higher mind develops that which has been termed "the divine quality of originality." if ever a person is to rise above the dead level of mediocrity it must be through direct inspiration from higher planes, through his super-conscious mind. if ever a person is to bring forth a new idea which shall enrich humanity and add to the common good, it must come through the higher mind. one who is properly attuned, becomes, through the super-conscious mind, a recipient of knowledge that is above human, and wisdom that is divine. he knows by direct knowing: he becomes wise through an influx of divine wisdom. he is able to distinguish between the real and the sham, between the gold and the dross: he is also able to see and recognize the right path in life--a thing utterly impossible to the mind of the senses--and to tread it, thus being led into the only true success and real good of which his life is capable. let it be said here that all wisdom must come from within. while books and the written word may be helpful, it is the spirit within the reader that illumines the word, and makes it real and true to the seeker after wisdom. one who realizes that he is illumined within by the divine spirit, and that this alone can bring him into real knowledge is well advanced on the path that leads to realization. the wisdom of the human mind always leads to disappointment. it is based on the evidence of the senses, which is erroneous, therefore its findings must always be lacking in _real_ wisdom. one who relies upon the inspiration of divine wisdom has often to decide to take a course of action which, apparently, is opposed to his best interests. yet, if he follows the inward wisdom, he finds that he is always guided aright, and, later, has cause to be devoutly thankful that he followed the gleam. chapter x. character building and the overcoming of habit. character building is the greatest object in life. it has been said that character is the only thing we can take with us when we depart this life. this is perfectly true, therefore the object of all religion (not religiousness), mental training and development should be the building of character. a religion that does not build up character is worthless. those who think that they can "flop" through life, avoid, as far as possible, its discipline, make no effort to improve their character, and through believing in a certain creed can miraculously become perfect, simply by dying, are deceiving themselves. we do not become "perfect," _i.e._, of a strong and perfect character, either by believing in a creed or through dying, but by attainment. god helps those who help themselves, and those people who will not strive after better things cut themselves off from all the glorious and wonderful possibilities of attainment. before, however, thinking about such lofty things as entering the path of attainment, and becoming changed into, and modelled after the divine image, the average person may wish to know how to overcome bad habits and weaknesses of character which are keeping him down in life, and, possibly, undermining his health. most people are conscious of some wrong habits that ought to be overcome, and weaknesses of character which should be eradicated. possibly they have fought against their habits or weaknesses for years, prayed until they are tired of praying, made innumerable attempts at turning over a new leaf, yet all in vain, for they are as firmly in the toils as ever. many people give up the struggle and endeavour to lead a sort of jekyll and hyde existence, being outwardly a christian or righteous person, but inwardly something quite different. yet they find no satisfaction in this dual life, for they know that they are drifting towards an abyss. yet there is a way of escape that is open to all. the infinite one has provided man with powers that are apparently unlimited: powers which can be used either to build up the life and character or to destroy them. these powers are those of the sub-conscious mind. this mind is a reservoir of unlimited, tireless forces, and becomes, if we use it aright, our best friend, or, if we mis-use it, our worst enemy. every time a bad action is indulged in, wonderful changes take place in the nervous system, and energy becomes stored up in certain cells, so as to make it easier to do the wrong act on a future occasion. it is equally true that every time a good action is done, similar changes, but in a reverse direction, take place, that make the doing of the same action easier in the future. this explains the tremendous power of habit. our body, brain and nervous system become changed, either for the worse or the better, according to the type of action indulged in. we do not yet fully realize what a wonderful adventure life is. we are entrusted with tremendous powers, and by their use or mis-use we can either destroy ourselves or build up our character in every possible direction. what a responsibility, yet what a glorious opportunity! in order, however, to find a way of escape from evil habit and weaknesses of character, we must go deeper than actual deeds, for actions are effects of hidden causes. the cause of all action is thought. a thought, someone has said, is an action in the process of being born. it is true that we possess primitive desires and impulses, but these can be transmuted into noble actions and high achievement simply by directing the thoughts and attention to higher and better things. for instance, the powers of sex become transmuted into brain power if the thoughts and attention are completely transferred from sex to intellectual pursuits. if, however, the thoughts are allowed to dwell upon sex or passion, then the kingdom becomes divided against itself, and man begins to drift towards the abyss. the strain of modern life is filling our asylums, yet there are those who can work fifteen or even eighteen hours a day and thrive on it, although engaged in severely-trying brain work. these have learnt to transmute their lower powers into higher. this is not done by means of esoteric or occult practices, but by obeying the divine injunction to set our affections on things above. in other words, to keep our thoughts and attention fixed upon higher and better aims, ambitions and pursuits. it is impossible to overcome bad habits by fighting them, for the more we fight them the stronger they become. the injunction to "resist not evil" is very applicable to habit. the way of escape is not by fighting evil or wrong habit, no matter what its character may be, but by concentrating upon building a good habit that shall cut the ground from under the feet of the bad one, or by turning the attention to higher and better things. whatever we fix our attention upon, or whatever it is that we idealize, our sub-conscious mind endeavours to actualize and make real in our life. by fighting a habit we direct sub-conscious attention to it, and this is fatal. if, however, we turn our whole attention to something entirely different and which is higher and better, all the powers of the sub-conscious are directed towards the production, in the life and body, of the new object of attention. we see, therefore, that we do not have to overcome habit. if we did our task would be hopeless, for the human will is helpless before the power of the sub-conscious mind. the sub-conscious powers can be led by the imagination, but they cannot be coerced by the will. the will must be used not to fight the habit, but in raising and directing the attention to something higher and better. by this means a new habit is formed. the attention of the sub-conscious mind is taken away from the bad habit, and all its powers directed towards the creation of a new and better one. the sub-conscious does not care what the habit is. it is indifferent as to whether it is good or bad. it is just as willing to produce a good habit as a bad one. we, each of us, therefore, hold our fate in our own hands. we can, by controlling our thoughts and imagination and by directing our attention to better things, focus all the powers of the sub-conscious on the building up of good habits, or, on the other hand, we can, by allowing our thoughts and mental pictures to dwell upon undesirable things and our attention to be directed to low or weak ideals, fall into undesirable habits. the power that produces the habits is the same in each case; it is the way in which this power is directed that is the vital and essential thing. it is very necessary to point out that right thinking and correct use of the imagination must be accompanied by corresponding right action. many people make use of auto-suggestion and expect it to destroy their bad habits and build up better ones, but it never will, or can do so, unaided. auto-suggestion is useless if it is not followed by constructive action. young people should expend their energies in physical culture and games. older people should interest themselves in hobbies and intellectual pursuits. it is only advanced students who can control their thoughts so that they can govern their life forces by mental means. those less advanced, when attacked by evil or weak thoughts, must get up and _do_ something quite different, and thus get their minds off the forbidden subject and interested in the new object of attention. it is a case of directing the desires and life forces into different channels, by controlling the thoughts and attention. here is seen the value of true religion, for it brings fresh ideals into the life and directs the attention to higher and better things. the writer realizes that a change must take place in the heart of the individual before he can desire these better things. when, however, this change has taken place, the battle has only just begun, for each one has to work out his own salvation. at first, then, most people will find it necessary to do something in order to attract their attention and guide their thoughts to something quite different from the forbidden subject. later on, however, when they become more advanced in the science of right thinking, they will be able to direct their thoughts into any desired direction. this necessitates constant vigilance. each thought has to be carefully scrutinized before being allowed to pass the threshold of the mind. by reversing every negative or unworthy or ignoble thought into its opposite, a change is wrought in the brain and nervous system. the cells formerly used for wrong thinking and for the production of wrong action go out of use as new cells are brought into use for the production of right action. this stage leads to one higher still, when it becomes a settled habit to reverse bad thoughts into good ones and perform right actions instead of bad or weak ones. the power of the sub-conscious mind, which at one time seemed so evil, produces right action more or less automatically. when once the habit of cleaning the teeth is established there is experienced an uncomfortable feeling until they have been attended to. when once a dirty person has learnt to wash himself thoroughly and keep himself decent, he will feel uncomfortable if he gets dirty. the same rule applies in the more important things and habits of life. if those who are in the bondage of habit will only direct their thoughts and attention to the building up of good habits, their old weaknesses will die a natural death. it must not be thought that the victory over life-long habits is easy. it may seem so at first, but sooner or later temptation will come with added force, which may result in a sad fall. if this should happen it is most important that too much attention should not be paid to the incident. instead, the beginner should pick himself up, and, making a mental note of the immediate cause of his downfall, thus benefiting by the experience, press on again towards freedom. it is most helpful to realize that not only is the sub-conscious mind willing to be guided aright, if we will only persevere long enough (until persevering itself becomes a habit), but that we also have behind us all the spiritual powers of god. the infinite one sees to it that the odds are not overwhelmingly against us. our difficulties are not insuperable, although they may appear to be so. we can always win through if we faint not. heaven looks on with sympathetic interest and rejoices with the struggler when he succeeds, and mourns with him when he fails. the struggle is a stiff one, for it is only by this that the seeker after god can become strong in character, but the victory can always be won. when the situation appears hopeless, let the struggling one remember that there is a way of escape somewhere, and that god, who is his freedom and deliverer, will reveal it to him if he faints not. if all who seek deliverance will realize that the power of the infinite is on their side, and that they are bound to become victors if they will only keep on, they must succeed. and what a joy is theirs! there is no happiness quite like that which comes to one who has fought the good fight and overcome habit and weaknesses of character. may every reader experience this supreme joy of overcoming. chapter xi. happiness and joy. deep down in every heart is an unquenchable desire for happiness. the advanced soul desires happiness just as much as the pleasure-seeking worldling, the difference between them is simply that the former, through knowledge and experience, does not search for happiness, knowing that it can never be found by direct seeking, but finds it through service and love to others and in victory over self; while the latter seeks happiness, like a will-o'-the-wisp, in every form of pleasure, and finds it not. man is never satisfied with his life: he is for ever seeking something that is better. until he learns wisdom, he looks for it in pleasure, in sense gratification of various kinds, in wealth, luxury and possession. the less evolved a man is the more convinced he is that happiness can be gained in these ways, and the lower are his desires. for instance, those who form what is called the underworld of our cities, seek happiness in vice and debauchery. those who are more evolved seek pleasure in more refined things, hoping to find happiness in intellectual pursuits, friendships, and in pure human loves. these more evolved types get much more pleasure through the senses than do those who are more elemental, but they are capable also of greater and more acute suffering. they can derive great pleasure from a picture gallery, whereas a savage would see nothing interesting at all: they can also suffer from things which a savage would not be capable of feeling. yet, in spite of this developed refinement and ability to derive pleasure from art, science, literature, etc., happiness is still as far off as ever. all attempts at finding happiness lead finally to "emptiness." there is no satisfaction, either in wealth and all that it can command, getting on in life, or in fame and power. they allure at first and promise happiness, but they fail us, and finally are seen to be but vanity and vexation of spirit. this desire for happiness is good, for it leads us through innumerable experiences so that the soul can realize, by practical experience, the emptiness of all self-seeking, and thus learn wisdom. after running the whole gamut of experience the soul learns at last that happiness is not something that can be found by seeking it, but is an inward mental state. although work, well done, brings a quiet sense of satisfaction, and success in one's career may also be a source of gratification for a short time, yet even these cannot satisfy the deep longing of the soul. happiness, however, is to be found in service. not if we seek happiness in service, and serve in order to be happy, but if we serve others for the sake of serving we find the only happiness that will endure and satisfy. one has only to observe the lives of those who are always selfishly seeking and grabbing, who are hard in their dealings, and always "looking after number one," in order to see how impossible it is for self-seekers to be happy. it does not matter whether they acquire riches or remain poor--they are equally unhappy. in contrast to this, you have only to go out of your way to do a kind and perfectly disinterested action and experience the glow of sheer happiness that it brings, in order to realize that you are dealing with a law of life that is as sure and unalterable as the law of gravitation. there must be a purpose in life, and this must have for its object the betterment of the lives of others, either few or many. the law of service must be obeyed, otherwise there can be no happiness. this may fill some readers with dismay, for they may be employed in an occupation that apparently does no good to anybody. they may feel that if they were engaged in some noble enterprise for the uplift of humanity, then they could truly serve, but in their present occupation this is impossible. to think thus is very natural, yet the truth is we can all obey the law of service, and can begin now, in our present occupation, no matter what it may be. we have only to do our daily work, not as a task which must be "got through," in order to bring us a living, or because it is expected of us that we should work, but as an offering of love to life and the world, in order to come into harmony with the great law of service. our ideas of values with regard to occupations are altogether erroneous, from the "inner wisdom" point of view. the scrubbing of a doorstep, if faithfully done in a true spirit of service, is of as much value and real importance as the writing of a deathless poem, or dying for one's country. we can never truthfully say that one act of service is of greater value, or is more important than another. all that the higher law looks at is the _motive_. therefore, if your motive is right, you can be engaged in the humblest and, apparently, most useless occupation, and yet be happy because you satisfy the law of service. another road to happiness is the conquest of the lower nature, the overcoming of weaknesses, the climbing to higher and better things. there is intense happiness in realizing daily that old habits are being overthrown, weak points in the character built up, and an ever-increasing state of liberty and freedom entered into. thank god, we do not have to remain as we once were, but can progress upwards, indefinitely, for there is no limit to our upward climb. but there is a state that is far higher than happiness, and this is joy. happiness comes through service and overcoming, but joy comes only to one who realizes his oneness with his divine source. the _reality_ is ineffable joy. behind this world of shadows is the real, spiritual world of splendour and delight. when the soul, after its immense journey through matter, time and space, at last finds its way back to its divine source, it becomes aware of this intense joy, too great to be described in words. it not only realizes that the _reality_ is joy, and the universe filled, not with groans or sighing, but with the sweet, quiet laughter of freed souls! it also is filled itself with this ineffable joy. what has all this got to do with practical, everyday life, it may be asked? everything, for the one who possesses this quiet joy can never be defeated in life's battles. he has something within him that can never be quenched and which will lead him from victory to victory. chapter xii. the use and mis-use of mental and spiritual powers. the average individual knows nothing of mental forces, and, although he may suffer from the effects of unconscious wrong thinking, yet he is in no danger of making deliberate mis-use of the inner powers. one, however, who has learnt how to use these interior forces must be very careful to use them aright or he will find that the invisible powers of mind and spirit are far more powerful and destructive than dynamite. it is not meant by this that he can blow himself up thereby, but it does mean that he can injure himself, not only in this life, but for ages to come, and, in addition, seriously retard his spiritual evolution. all use of the mind to coerce other people or to influence them by means of suggestion, not for their benefit, but for your advantage, is highly destructive, not to them actually, _but to you_. on the face of it, it looks an easy road to success and prosperity, but, actually, it leads to failure and poverty. the mis-use of the mental powers in this way is really a form of black magic, and the fate of all black magicians is very terrible. even the use of the mind to coerce other people _for their good_ is not desirable. it never does any real good, although it may seem beneficial for a time, and its use, therefore, is to be deprecated. healing, so-called, by hetero-suggestion, is not permanent, for as soon as the healer ceases to "pump" suggestion into the patient the latter begins to relapse into his former state. far better results accrue if the patient is taught to use auto or self-suggestion for himself. it is seen, then, that the use of the mind to influence others is distinctly harmful if it is used selfishly, and of no real use if used unselfishly. hypnotism is harmful, no matter which way it is used, and is also detrimental to the patient. because of this some of our more thoughtful neurologists have given up its use. we have no right to endeavour to influence other people by the use of our inner forces, even if our object is their good. each soul has the right to live its life in its own way, and choose for itself either good or evil. that is the object of life, so that each evolving soul should learn wisdom through the lessons learnt as a result of its own mistakes. far worse is it if others are coerced, not in order to help them, but to defraud them or to make them buy goods they do not require, or sign agreements they would not otherwise put their name to. one who mis-uses his mental and spiritual powers literally smashes his life up. he works against the laws of life and the universe, and encompasses his own ruin. there is, however, a far more subtle way of mis-using the mental and spiritual forces than by coercion, mind domination and hetero-suggestion. this method is equally destructive, and if persisted in builds up a painful future. with this method other people are not influenced or dominated, but the finer forces of nature are coerced by the human will. mental demands are made on the invisible substance from which, we are told, all things are made, and wealth is compelled to appear. in addition to this, sickness, so it is claimed, is banished, and the invisible forces of life are compelled to operate in such a way as to make life's pathway a bed of roses, without thorns, so that life becomes shorn of all its discipline and experience. its devotees "enter the silence," and there visualize exactly what they think they want, and compel it to appear, in material form, by the strength of their desire or through the exercise of their will. some followers of this cult may be able to make an apparent success of it, but i have never yet met any. if they do, however, they will live to regret it, for they are merely practitioners of black magic. their efforts are of the same nature as sorcery. all such methods build up a heavy debt of future suffering, and seriously hinder the soul in its evolutionary journey. entering the silence is a good thing: it is really entering the inner silence of the soul, the inner sanctuary where the divine spirit abides in fulness. to mis-use this inward power for selfish and material ends, and for forcing our human will upon life, so as to make it conform to what _we_ think it ought to be is a crime of the first magnitude, which can result only in ultimate failure and disaster. chapter xiii. overcoming limitations and awakening inward powers. limitations can be overcome through a realization of truth. when we say this it is taken for granted that every effort will be made on the physical plane. it is necessary to bathe, exercise and breathe fresh air in order to be well: it is equally necessary to work hard, and to give the best of which we are capable, in service, in exchange for that which we receive in the way of supply, if we are to be successful. if you keep a gardener, you must pay him. the money that you pay him is part of what you have earned by the sweat of your brain. therefore you exchange the work of your brain for the labour of his hands, and you are mutually helped and helpful to one another, both giving and receiving, and each one serving life according to his ability. taking all this for granted, we will pass on to the metaphysical side of our subject. this, by the way, is vastly the more important, but the outer, practical work is indispensable nevertheless. in order to overcome limitations it is necessary to know the truth and to live in the consciousness of it. for instance, if ill-health is our limitation, then, in order to become free it is necessary that we live in the consciousness of the wholeness of god and his divine idea. if our limitation be restricted means, it is necessary that we live in the consciousness of the inexhaustible and unlimited nature of the substance from which the creator brings everything into manifestation. if our limitation is disharmony and unhappiness, then we must become attuned to the divine harmony in such a way and to such an extent as to cause it to be reflected into the outward life. no matter what our limitation may be, we can find liberation and deliverance by looking to our divine source, realizing that in the perfect reality all our wants are supplied, and then living in the consciousness of this truth. ill-health is, apart from physical causes, an outward sign of an inward warfare or disharmony, caused by wrong thoughts, emotions, beliefs and attitude of mind and soul towards life and god. in other words, the life is lived in an "error" consciousness of disease and sickness. first, the inward life has to be adjusted in such a way as to harmonize with the laws of our own being and the divine purpose of life. there must be an inward surrender to the love principle, after which the thoughts must be brought under control so that health-destroying emotions may no longer impair the health. further, the whole consciousness must, as often as possible, be raised to a realization of the perfect wholeness which is the reality. if this course is persevered with, a consciousness of health and wholeness becomes a permanent mental state, with the result that health becomes manifested in the life. the outward life is always a reflection or external manifestation of what we are within, or our state of consciousness. therefore everything depends upon which kind of consciousness it is in which we live. one who lives in the mental atmosphere of divine wholeness, health and harmony, unconsciously directs all the inner forces of nature into health channels. on the other hand, one who lives in a mental atmosphere of ill-health, as sick and unhealthy people very often do, unconsciously directs all his sub-conscious activities in such a way as to produce sickness and disease. again, with regard to lack of means, this state also can be overcome, spiritually, only by living in a higher consciousness of abundance and sufficiency. this affects, unconsciously, every action in such a way as to bring about a better state of affairs. on the other hand, one who lives in a mental atmosphere of limitation and lack, unconsciously directs all his actions towards the production, in his life, of penury and restricted means. the same rule applies, no matter what the limitations of one's life may be. freedom can be gained only by realizing the truth about life and being. when we realize the truth, live in the consciousness of it, and become obedient to the laws of life and being, the life becomes increasingly free. this does not mean that if we are plain of feature, and of a stumpy figure, that we shall become beautiful and graceful; but it does mean that these so-called drawbacks will no longer fetter us, and that others will see in us something far better than mere regularity of feature and beauty of form. when the soul is _alive_ and the life filled with love, the homeliest face becomes attractive. neither does it mean that we shall not suffer bereavements and sorrows, difficulties and adversities, but it does mean that we shall cease intensifying these things and creating further troubles by taking life's discipline in the wrong spirit. it also means that we shall be able to overcome all life's difficulties and trials, become a conqueror in the strife, and, in so doing, build up character. thus the storms of life, instead of destroying us, can succeed only in _making us stronger_. thus our fate depends not on the storms of life, but upon how we meet them. if we give in to them, or, thinking that they are evil and not a necessary discipline, rebel against them and resist them, then we become shipwrecked on a desolate shore. if, however, we are armed with the knowledge of truth we can set our sails in such a way as to compel the storms of life actually to help us towards the desired haven. the first step in the direction of knowledge of the truth is right thinking. every negative thought must be transmuted into its positive opposite, [ ] for instance, hate and dislike into love and goodwill, fear into confident trust, poverty into abundance, evil into absolute good, and so on. this will be found to be not easy, but it is possible, and the power to control one's thoughts increases if one perseveres continually, with the passing of the years. a beginner cannot, naturally, expect to be able to exercise the same control as one who has been perseveringly seeking self-mastery for years, but he can make substantial progress and learn from day to day. [ ] see also "the power of thought" and "the way of escape," by the same author and publisher. the result of thinking in this way is surprising. the reversal of thought may appear at first to be simplicity itself, and to lead nowhere in particular, but after a time the vastness of the subject becomes almost appalling. the cultivation and practice of right thinking gradually lead to a knowledge of the truth. not an intellectual knowledge of truth, but a realization, by the soul, of _the_ truth. this is the knowing of the truth which sets men free. we can then look through all the ages and know that all is well. the heavy burden which has oppressed us so long, rolls from our shoulders, and we become free. arousing inward powers. man is heir to wonderful and illimitable powers, but until he becomes aware of them and consciously identifies himself with them, they lie dormant and unexpressed, and might just as well not exist at all as far as their use to man, in his unawakened state, is concerned. when, however, man becomes awakened to the great truth that he is a spiritual being: when he learns that the little petty self and finite personality are not his real self at all, but merely a mask to the real man: when he realizes that the spiritual ego, a true divine spark of, or branch or twig of the eternal logos, [ ] is _his real self_: when he understands that his body is not himself, that his mind is not himself, that even his soul is not himself, being but vehicles through which he seeks expression, but that he is spirit, deathless, diseaseless, eternal, forming an integral part of the one spirit and being identical with it, he enters a new life of almost boundless power. [ ] "i am the vine, ye are the branches."--jesus. it is unwise to engage in any mystical practices in an attempt to "force" development and unfoldment. mystic trances are highly dangerous and are also unnecessary. psychic experiences and the awakening of psychic centres are also dangerous and lead away from our goal. breathing exercises, whose object is to awaken inward powers, are _highly dangerous_ and are to be condemned in consequence. the cultivation of negative passivity such as inhibiting all thought and making oneself quite passive and open to any influence, is also highly dangerous and should be strictly avoided. in place of all these unwise practices a short time should be set aside each night and also morning, if possible, for getting into touch with reality. you should then endeavour to realize that the body, mind and soul are but vehicles of expression, mere servants of the true self or ego. this will bring about in time, a consciousness of identity with the one eternal spirit. what jesus called "our father in heaven." one might proceed after this fashion:-- "my body is not myself, but is merely something that enables me to live this material life and gain experience. "my mind is not myself, but merely an instrument which i use and which obeys my will. "my soul is not myself, but merely a garment of my spirit. "my will is not myself, but is something of which i, the true self, make use." and so on. by this means you gradually approach the great truth which cannot be put into words and which can only become yours through realization or inward spiritual understanding. in addition one can use a positive statement of truth, reverently, but with full confidence, such as: "i am a branch in the true vine." in course of time you will become possessed of a feeling of tremendous and unlimited power and security. this is a great responsibility for this power must be used only in service and not for selfish purposes. if it is used for the acquisition of wealth and the gaining of temporal power, great disaster will be the inevitable result. yet, if used aright, it is bound to have a great, though unconscious, influence for good on the life, and for this you are not responsible. constantly endeavour to serve and bless others, then, because you do not seek them, crowds of blessings will come into your life unbidden, great happiness being one of the chief. having found the kingdom of heaven it will be your experience that all needed good will be added unto you. this power may also be used to strengthen character, to overcome in the conflicts of the soul, and to build up the spiritual body which will be our vehicle of expression in higher realms. the end. distributed proofreaders the creative process in the individual by t. troward foreword in the present volume i have endeavored to set before the reader the conception of a sequence of creative action commencing with the formation of the globe and culminating in a vista of infinite possibilities attainable by every one who follows up the right line for their unfoldment. i have endeavored to show that, starting with certain incontrovertible scientific facts, all these things logically follow, and that therefore, however far these speculations may carry us beyond our past experience, they nowhere break the thread of an intelligible connection of cause and effect. i do not, however, offer the suggestions here put forward in any other light than that of purely speculative reasoning; nevertheless, no advance in any direction can be made except by speculative reasoning going back to the first principles of things which we do know and thence deducing the conditions under which the same principles might be carried further and made to produce results hitherto unknown. it is to this method of thought that we owe all the advantages of civilization from matches and post-offices to motor-cars and aeroplanes, and we may therefore be encouraged to hope such speculations as the present may not be without their ultimate value. relying on the maxim that principle is not bound by precedent we should not limit our expectations of the future; and if our speculations lead us to the conclusion that we have reached a point where we are not only able, but also _required_, by the law of our own being, to take a more active part in our personal evolution than heretofore, this discovery will afford us a new outlook upon life and widen our horizon with fresh interests and brightening hopes. if the thoughts here suggested should help any reader to clear some mental obstacles from his path the writer will feel that he has not written to no purpose. only each reader must think out these suggestions for himself. no writer or lecturer can convey an idea _into_ the minds of his audience. he can only put it before them, and what they will make of it depends entirely upon themselves--assimilation is a process which no one can carry out for us. to the kindness of my readers on both sides of the atlantic, and in australia and new zealand, i commend this little volume, not, indeed, without a deep sense of its many shortcomings, but at the same time encouraged by the generous indulgence extended to my previous books. t.t. june, . contents i the starting-point ii the self-contemplation of spirit iii the divine ideal iv the manifestation of the life principle v the personal factor vi the standard of personality vii race thought and new thought viii the dÉnouement of the creative process ix conclusion x the divine offering xi ourselves in the divine offering i say no man has ever yet been half devout enough, none has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough, none has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the future is. i say that the real and permanent grandeur of these states must be their religion, otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur. --walt whitman. chapter i the starting-point it is an old saying that "order is heaven's first law," and like many other old sayings it contains a much deeper philosophy than appears immediately on the surface. getting things into a better order is the great secret of progress, and we are now able to fly through the air, not because the laws of nature have altered, but because we have learnt to arrange things in the right order to produce this result--the things themselves had existed from the beginning of the world, but what was wanting was the introduction of a personal factor which, by an intelligent perception of the possibilities contained in the laws of nature, should be able to bring into working reality ideas which previous generations would have laughed at as the absurd fancies of an unbalanced mind. the lesson to be learnt from the practical aviation of the present day is that of the triumph of principle over precedent, of the working out of an _idea_ to its logical conclusions in spite of the accumulated testimony of all past experience to the contrary; and with such a notable example before us can we say that it is futile to enquire whether by the same method we may not unlock still more important secrets and gain some knowledge of the unseen causes which are at the back of external and visible conditions, and then by bringing these unseen causes into a better order make practical working realities of possibilities which at present seem but fantastic dreams? it is at least worth while taking a preliminary canter over the course, and this is all that this little volume professes to attempt; yet this may be sufficient to show the lay of the ground. now the first thing in any investigation is to have some idea of what you are looking for--to have at least some notion of the general direction in which to go--just as you would not go up a tree to find fish though you would for birds' eggs. well, the general direction in which we all want to go is that of getting more out of life than we have ever got out of it--we want to be more alive in ourselves and to get all sorts of improved conditions in our environment. however happily any of us may be circumstanced we can all conceive something still better, or at any rate we should like to make our present good permanent; and since we shall find as our studies advance that the prospect of increasing possibilities keeps opening out more and more widely before us, we may say that what we are in search of is the secret of getting more out of life in a continually progressive degree. this means that what we are looking for is something personal, and that it is to be obtained by producing conditions which do not yet exist; in other words it is nothing less than the exercise of a certain creative power in the sphere of our own particular world. so, then, what we want is to introduce our own personal factor into the realm of unseen causes. this is a big thing, and if it is possible at all it must be by some sequence of cause and effect, and this sequence it is our object to discover. the law of cause and effect is one we can never get away from, but by carefully following it up we may find that it will lead us further than we had anticipated. now, the first thing to observe is that if _we_ can succeed in finding out such a sequence of cause and effect as the one we are in search of, somebody else may find out the same creative secret also; and then, by the hypothesis of the case, we should both be armed with an infallible power, and if we wanted to employ this power against each other we should be landed in the "impasse" of a conflict between two powers each of which was irresistible. consequently it follows that the first principle of this power must be harmony. it cannot be antagonizing itself from different centers--in other words its operation in a simultaneous order at every point is the first necessity of its being. what we are in search of, then, is a sequence of cause and effect so universal in its nature as to include harmoniously all possible variations of individual expression. this primary necessity of the law for which we are seeking should be carefully borne in mind, for it is obvious that any sequence which transgresses this primary essential must be contrary to the very nature of the law itself, and consequently cannot be conducting us to the exercise of true creative power. what we are seeking, therefore, is to discover how to arrange things in such an order as to set in motion a train of causation that will harmonize our own conditions without antagonizing the exercise of a like power by others. this therefore means that all individual exercise of this power is the particular application of a universal power which itself operates creatively on its own account independently of these individual applications; and the harmony between the various individual applications is brought about by all the individuals bringing their own particular action into line with this independent creative action of the original power. it is in fact another application of euclid's axiom that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another; so that though i may not know for what purpose some one may be using this creative power in pekin, i do know that if he and i both realize its true nature, we cannot by any possibility be working in opposition to one another. for these reasons, having now some general idea of what it is we are in search of, we may commence our investigation by considering this common factor which must be at the back of all individual exercise of creative power, that is to say, the generic working of the universal creative principle. that such a universal creative principle is at work we at once realize from the existence of the world around us with all its inhabitants, and the inter-relation of all parts of the cosmic system shows its underlying unity--thus the animal kingdom depends on the vegetable, the vegetable kingdom on the mineral, the mineral or globe of the earth on its relation to the rest of the solar system, and possibly our solar system is related by a similar law to the distribution of other suns with their attendant planets throughout space. our first glance therefore shows us that the all-originating power must be in essence unity and in manifestation multiplicity, and that it manifests as life and beauty through the unerring adaptation of means to ends--that is so far as its cosmic manifestation of ends goes: what we want to do is to carry this manifestation still further by operation from an individual standpoint. to do this is precisely our place in the order of creation, but we must defer the question why we hold this place till later on. one of the earliest discoveries we all make is the existence of matter. the bruised shins of our childhood convince us of its solidity, so now comes the question, why does matter exist? the answer is that if the form were not expressed in solid substance, things would be perpetually flowing into each other so that no identity could be maintained for a single moment. to this it might be replied that a condition of matter is conceivable in which, though in itself a plastic substance, in a fluent state, it might yet by the operation of will be held in any particular forms desired. the idea of such a condition of matter is no doubt conceivable, and when the fluent matter was thus held in particular forms you would have concrete matter just as we know it now, only with this difference, that it would return to its fluent state as soon as the supporting will was withdrawn. now, as we shall see later on, this is precisely what matter really is, only the will which holds it together in concrete form is not individual but cosmic. in itself the essence of matter is precisely the fluent substance we have imagined, and as we shall see later on the knowledge of this fact, when realized in its proper order, is the basis of the legitimate control of mind over matter. but a world in which every individual possessed the power of concreting or fluxing matter at his own sweet will irrespective of any universal coordinating principle is altogether inconceivable--the conflict of wills would prevent such a world remaining in existence. on the other hand, if we conceive of a number of individuals each possessing this power and all employing it on the lines of a common cosmic unity, then the result would be precisely the same stable condition of matter with which we are familiar--this would be a necessity of fact for the masses who did not possess this power, and a necessity of principle for the few who did. so under these circumstances the same stable conditions of nature would prevail as at present, varied only when the initiated ones perceived that the order of evolution would be furthered, and not hindered, by calling into action the higher laws. such occasions would be of rare occurrence, and then the departure from the ordinary law would be regarded by the multitude as a miracle. also we may be quite sure that no one who had attained this knowledge in the legitimate order would ever perform a "miracle" for his own personal aggrandizement or for the purpose of merely astonishing the beholders--to do so would be contrary to the first principle of the higher teaching which is that of profound reverence for the unity of the all-originating principle. the conception, therefore, of such a power over matter being possessed by certain individuals is in no way opposed to our ordinary recognition of concrete matter, and so we need not at present trouble ourselves to consider these exceptions. another theory is that matter has no existence at all but is merely an illusion projected by our own minds. if so, then how is it that we all project identically similar images? on the supposition that each mind is independently projecting its own conception of matter a lady who goes to be fitted might be seen by her dressmaker as a cow. generations of people have seen the great pyramid on the same spot; but on the supposition that each individual is projecting his own material world in entire independence of all other individuals there is no reason why any two persons should ever see the same thing in the same place. on the supposition of such an independent action by each separate mind, without any common factor binding them all to one particular mode of recognition, no intercourse between individuals would be possible--then, without the consciousness of relation to other individuals the consciousness of our own individuality would be lost, and so we should cease to have any conscious existence at all. if on the other hand we grant that there is, above the individual minds, a great cosmic mind which imposes upon them the necessity of all seeing the same image of matter, then that image is not a projection of the individual minds but of the cosmic mind; and since the individual minds are themselves similar projections of the cosmic mind, matter is for them just as much a reality as their own existence. i doubt not that material substance is thus projected by the all-embracing divine mind; but so also are our own minds projected by it, and therefore the relation between them and matter is a real relation and not a merely fictitious one. i particularly wish the student to be clear on this point, that where two factors are projected from a common source their relation to each other becomes an absolute fact in respect of the factors themselves, notwithstanding that the power of changing that relation by substituting a different projection must necessarily always continue to reside in the originating source. to take a simple arithmetical example--by my power of mental projection working through my eyes and fingers i write x . here i have established a certain numerical relation which can only produce eight as its result. again, i have power to change the factors and write x , in which case is the only possible result, and so on. working in this way calculation becomes possible. but if every time i wrote that figure possessed an independent power of setting down a different number by which to multiply itself, what would be the result? the first i wrote might set down as its multiplier, and the next might set down , and so on. or if i want to make a box of a certain size and cut lengths of plank accordingly, if each length could capriciously change its width at a moment's notice, how could i ever make the box? i myself may change the shape and size of my box by establishing new relations between the bits of wood, but for the pieces of wood themselves the proportions determined by my mind must remain fixed quantities, otherwise no construction could take place. this is a very rough analogy, but it may be sufficient to show that for a cosmos to exist at all it is absolutely necessary that there should be a cosmic mind binding all individual minds to certain _generic_ unities of action, and so producing all things as realities and nothing as illusion. the importance of this conclusion will become more apparent as we advance in our studies. we have now got at some reason why concrete material form is a necessity of the creative process. without it the perfect self-recognition of spirit from the individual standpoint, which we shall presently find is the means by which the creative process is to be carried forward, would be impossible; and therefore, so far from matter being an illusion, it is the necessary channel for the self-differentiation of spirit and its expression in multitudinous life and beauty. matter is thus the necessary polar opposite to spirit, and when we thus recognize it in its right order we shall find that there is no antagonism between the two, but that together they constitute one harmonious whole. chapter ii the self-contemplation of spirit if we ask how the cosmos came into existence we shall find that ultimately we can only attribute it to the self-contemplation of spirit. let us start with the facts now known to modern physical science. all material things, including our own bodies, are composed of combinations of different chemical elements such as carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, &c. chemistry recognizes in all about seventy of these elements each with its peculiar affinities; but the more advanced physical science of the present day finds that they are all composed of one and the same ultimate substance to which the name of ether has been given, and that the difference between an atom of iron and an atom of oxygen results only from the difference in the number of etheric particles of which each is composed and the rate of their motion within the sphere of the atom, thus curiously coming back to the dictum of pythagoras that the universe has its origin in number and motion. we may therefore say that our entire solar system together with every sort of material substance which it contains is made up of nothing but this one primary substance in various degrees of condensation. now the next step is to realize that this ether is everywhere. this is shown by the undulatory theory of light. light is not a substance but is the effect produced on the eye by the impinging of the ripples of the ether upon the retina. these waves are excessively minute, ranging in length from - , th of an inch at the red end of the spectrum to - , th at the violet end. next remember that these waves are not composed of advancing particles of the medium but pass onwards by the push which each particle in the line of motion gives to the particle next to it, and then you will see that if there were a break of one fifty-thousandth part of an inch in the connecting ether between our eye and any source of light we could not receive light from that source, for there would be nothing to continue the wave-motion across the gap. consequently as soon as we see light from any source however distant, we know that there must be a continuous body of ether between us and it. now astronomy shows us that we receive light from heavenly bodies so distant that, though it travels with the incredible speed of , miles per second, it takes more than two thousand years to reach us from some of them; and as such stars are in all quarters of the heavens we can only come to the conclusion that the primary substance or ether must be universally present. this means that the raw material for the formation of solar systems is universally distributed throughout space; yet though we find that millions of suns stud the heavens, we also find vast interstellar spaces which show no sign of cosmic activity. then something has been at work to start cosmic activity in certain areas while passing over others in which the raw material is equally available. what is this something? at first we might be inclined to attribute the development of cosmic energy to the etheric particles themselves, but a little consideration will show us that this is mathematically impossible in a medium which is equally distributed throughout space, for all its particles are in equilibrium and so no one particle possesses _per se_ a greater power of originating motion than any other. consequently the initial movement must be started by something which, though it works on and through the particles of the primary substance, is not those particles themselves. it is this "something" which we mean when we speak of "spirit." then since spirit starts the condensation of the primary substance into concrete aggregation, and also does this in certain areas to the exclusion of others, we cannot avoid attributing to spirit the power of selection and of taking an initiative on its own account. here, then, we find the _initial_ polarity of universal spirit and universal substance, each being the complementary of the other, and out of this relation all subsequent evolution proceeds. being complementary means that each supplies what is wanting in the other, and that the two together thus make complete wholeness. now this is just the case here. spirit supplies selection and motion. substance supplies something from which selection can be made and to which motion can be imparted; so that it is a _sine qua non_ for the expression of spirit. then comes the question, how did the universal substance get there? it cannot have made itself, for its only quality is inertia, therefore it must have come from some source having power to project it by some mode of action not of a material nature. now the only mode of action not of a material nature is thought, and therefore to thought we must look for the origin of substance. this places us at a point antecedent to the existence even of primary substance, and consequently the initial action must be that of the originating mind upon itself, in other words, self-contemplation. at this primordial stage neither time nor space can be recognized, for both imply measurement of successive intervals, and in the primary movement of mind upon itself the only consciousness must be that of present absolute being, because no external points exist from which to measure extension either in time or space. hence we must eliminate the ideas of time and space from our conception of spirit's _initial_ self-contemplation. this being so, spirit's primary contemplation of itself as simply being necessarily makes its presence universal and eternal, and consequently, paradoxical as it may seem, its independence of time and space makes it present throughout all time and space. it is the old esoteric maxim that the point expands to infinitude and that infinitude is concentrated in the point. we start, then, with spirit contemplating itself simply as being. but to realize your being you must have consciousness, and consciousness can only come by the recognition of your relation to something else. the something else may be an external fact or a mental image; but even in the latter case to conceive the image at all you must mentally stand back from it and look at it--something like the man who was run in by the police at gravesend for walking behind himself to see how his new coat fitted. it stands thus: if you are not conscious of something you are conscious of nothing, and if you are conscious of nothing, then you are unconscious, so that to be conscious at all you must have something to be conscious of. this may seem like an extract from "paddy's philosophy," but it makes it clear that consciousness can only be attained by the recognition of something which is not the recognizing _ego_ itself--in other words consciousness is the realization of some particular sort of _relation_ between the cognizing subject and the cognized object; but i want to get away from academical terms into the speech of human beings, so let us take the illustration of a broom and its handle--the two together make a broom; that is one sort of relation; but take the same stick and put a rake-iron at the end of it and you have an altogether different implement. the stick remains the same, but the difference of what is put at the end of it makes the whole thing a broom or a rake. now the thinking and feeling power is the stick, and the conception which it forms is the thing at the end of the stick, so that the quality of its consciousness will be determined by the ideas which it projects; but to be conscious at all it must project ideas of some sort. now of one thing we may be quite sure, that the spirit of life must _feel alive_. then to feel alive it must be conscious, and to be conscious it must have something to be conscious of; therefore the contemplation of itself as standing related to something which is not its own originating self _in propria persona_ is a necessity of the case; and consequently the self-contemplation of spirit can only proceed by its viewing itself as related to something standing out from itself, just as we must stand at a proper distance to see a picture--in fact the very word "existence" means "standing out." thus things are called into existence or "outstandingness" by a power which itself does not stand out, and whose presence is therefore indicated by the word "subsistence." the next thing is that since in the beginning there is nothing except spirit, its primary feeling of aliveness must be that of being alive _all over_; and to establish such a consciousness of its own universal livingness there must be the recognition of a corresponding _relation_ equally extensive in character; and the only possible correspondence to fulfil this condition is therefore that of a universally distributed and plastic medium whose particles are all in perfect equilibrium, which is exactly the description of the primary substance or ether. we are thus philosophically led to the conclusion that universal substance must be projected by universal spirit as a necessary consequence of spirit's own inherent feeling of aliveness; and in this way we find that the great primary polarity of being becomes established. from this point onward we shall find the principle of polarity in universal activity. it is that relation between opposites without which no external motion would be possible, because there would be nowhere to move from, and nowhere to move to; and without which external form would be impossible because there would be nothing to limit the diffusion of substance and bring it into shape. polarity, or the interaction of active and passive, is therefore the basis of all _evolution_. this is a great fundamental truth when we get it in its right order; but all through the ages it has been a prolific source of error by getting it in its wrong order. and the wrong order consists in making polarity the originating point of the creative process. what this misconception leads to we shall see later on; but since it is very widely accepted under various guises even at the present day it is well to be on our guard against it. therefore i wish the student to see clearly that there is something which comes before that polarity which gives rise to evolution, and that this something is the original movement of spirit _within itself_, of which we can best get an idea by calling it self-contemplation. now this may seem an extremely abstract conception and one with which we have no practical concern. i fancy i can hear the reader saying "the lord only knows how the world started, and it is his business and not mine," which would be perfectly true if this originating faculty were confined to the cosmic mind. but it is not, and the same action takes place in our own minds also, only with the difference that it is ultimately subject to that principle of cosmic unity of which i have already spoken. but, subject to that unifying principle, this same power of origination is in ourselves also, and our personal advance in evolution depends on our right use of it; and our use of it depends on our recognition that we ourselves give rise to the particular polarities which express themselves in our whole world of consciousness, whether within or without. for these reasons it is very important to realize that evolution is not the same as creation. it is the unfolding of potentialities involved in things already created, but not the calling into existence of what does not yet exist--_that_ is creation. the order, therefore, which i wish the student to observe is, first the self-contemplation of spirit producing polarity, and next polarity producing manifestation in form--and also to realize that it is in this order his own mind operates as a subordinate center of creative energy. when the true place of polarity is thus recognized, we shall find in it the explanation of all those relations of things which give rise to the whole world of phenomena; from which we may draw the practical inference that if we want to change the manifestation we must change the polarity, and to change the polarity we must get back to the self-contemplation of spirit. but in its proper place as the root-principle of all _secondary_ causation, polarity is one of those fundamental facts of which we must never lose sight. the term "polarity" is adopted from electrical science. in the electric battery it is the connecting together of the opposite poles of zinc and copper that causes a current to flow from one to the other and so provides the energy that rings the bell. if the connection is broken there is no action. when you press the button you make the connection. the same process is repeated in respect of every sort of polarity throughout the universe. circulation depends on polarity, and circulation is the _manifestation_ of life, which we may therefore say depends on the principle of polarity. in relation to ourselves we are concerned with two great polarities, the polarity of soul and body and the polarity of soul and spirit; and it is in order that he may more clearly realize their working that i want the student to have some preliminary idea of polarity as a general principle. the conception of the creative order may therefore be generalized as follows. the spirit wants to enjoy the reality of its own life--not merely to vegetate, but to enjoy giving--and therefore by self-contemplation it projects a polar opposite, or complementary, calculated to give rise to the particular sort of _relation_ out of which the enjoyment of a certain mode of self-consciousness will necessarily spring. let this sentence be well pondered over until the full extent of its significance is grasped, for it is the key to the whole matter very well, then: spirit wants to enjoy life, and so, by thinking of itself as _having_ the enjoyment which it wishes, it produces the conditions which, by their re-action upon itself, give rise to the reality of the sort of enjoyment contemplated. in more scientific language an opposite polarity is induced, giving rise to a current which stimulates a particular mode of sensation, which sensation in turn becomes a fresh starting-point for still further action; and in this way each successive stage becomes the stepping-stone to a still higher degree of sensation--that is, to a fuller enjoyment of life. such a conception as this presents us with a progressive series to which it is impossible to assign any limit. that the progression must be limitless is clear from the fact that there is never any change in the method. at each successive stage the creating power is the self-consciousness of the spirit, as realized at that stage, still reaching forward for yet further enjoyment of life, and so always keeping on repeating the _one_ creative process at an ever-rising level; and since these are the sole working conditions, the progress is one which logically admits of no finality. and this is where the importance of realizing the singleness of the originating power comes in, for with a duality each member would limit the other; in fact, duality as the originating power is inconceivable, for, once more to quote "paddy's philosophy," "finality would be reached before anything was begun." this creative process, therefore, can only be conceived of as limitless, while at the same time strictly progressive, that is, proceeding stage by stage, each stage being necessary as a preparation for the one that is to follow. let us then briefly sketch the stages by which things in our world have got as far as they have. the interest of the enquiry lies in the fact that if we can once get at the principle which is producing these results, we may discover some way of giving it personal application. on the hypothesis of the self-contemplation of spirit being the originating power, we have found that a primary ether, or universal substance, is the necessary correspondence to spirit's simple awareness of its own being. but though awareness of being is the necessary foundation for any further possibilities it is, so to say, not much to talk about. the foundation fact, of course, is to know that i am; but immediately on this consciousness there follows the desire for activity--i want to enjoy my i am-ness by doing something with it. translating these words into a state of consciousness in the cosmic mind they become a law of tendency leading to _localised_ activity, and, looking only at our own world, this would mean the condensation of the universal etheric substance into the primary nebula which later on becomes our solar system, this being the correspondence to the self-contemplation of spirit as passing into specific activity instead of remaining absorbed in simple awareness of being. then this self-recognition would lead to the conception of still more specific activity having its appropriate polar opposite, or material correspondence, in the condensation of the nebula into a solar system. now at this stage spirit's conception of itself is that of activity, and consequently the material correspondence is motion, as distinguished from the simple diffused ether which is the correspondence of mere awareness of being, but what sort of motion? is the material movement evolved at this stage bound to take any particular form? a little consideration will show us that it is. at this initial stage, the first awakening, so to say, of spirit into activity, its consciousness can only be that of activity _absolute_; that is, not as related to any other mode of activity because as yet there is none, but only as related to an all-embracing being; so that the only possible conception of activity at this stage is that of _self-sustained_ activity, not depending on any preceding mode of activity because there is none. the law of reciprocity therefore demands a similar self-sustained motion in the material correspondence, and mathematical considerations show that the only sort of motion which can sustain a self-supporting body moving _in vacuo_ is a rotary motion bringing the body itself into a spherical form. now this is exactly what we find at both extremes of the material world. at the big end the spheres of the planets rotating on their axes and revolving round the sun; and at the little end the spheres of the atoms consisting of particles which, modern science tells us, in like manner rotate round a common center at distances which are astronomical as compared with their own mass. thus the two ultimate units of physical manifestation, the atom and the planet, both follow the same law of self-sustained motion which we have found that, on _a priori_ grounds, they ought in order to express the primary activity of spirit. and we may note in passing that this rotary, or _absolute_, motion is the combination of the only two possible _relative_ modes of motion, namely, motion from a point and motion to it, that is to say centrifugal and centripetal motion; so that in rotary, or absolute, motion we find that both the polarities of motion are included, thus repeating on the purely mechanical side the primordial principle of the unity including the duality in itself. but the spirit wants something more than mechanical motion, something more alive than the preliminary rota, and so the first step toward individualized consciousness meets us in plant life. then on the principle that each successive stage affords the platform for a further outlook, plant life is followed by animal life, and this by the human order in which the liberty of selecting its own conditions is immensely extended. in this way the spirit's expression of itself has now reached the point where its polar complementary, or reciprocal, manifests as intellectual man--thus constituting the fourth great stage of spirit's self-recognition. but the creative process cannot stop here, for, as we have seen, its root in the self-contemplation of spirit renders it of necessity an infinite progression. so it is no use asking what is its ultimate, for it has no ultimate--its word is "excelsior"--ever life and "life more abundant." therefore the question is not as to finality where there is none, but as to the next step in the progression. four kingdoms we know: what is to be the fifth? all along the line the progress has been in one direction, namely, toward the development of more perfect individuality, and therefore on the principle of continuity we may reasonably infer that the next stage will take us still further in the same direction. we want something more perfect than we have yet reached, but our ideas as to what it should be are very various, not to say discordant, for one person's idea of better is another person's idea of worse. therefore what we want to get at is some broad generalization of principle which will be in advance of our past experiences. this means that we must look for this principle in something that we have not yet experienced, and the only place where we can possibly find principles which have not yet manifested themselves is _in gremio dei_--that is, in the innermost of the originating spirit, or as st. john calls it, "in the bosom of the father." so we are logically brought to personal participation in the divine ideal as the only principle by which the advance into the next stage can possibly be made. therefore we arrive at the question, what is the divine ideal like? chapter iii the divine ideal what is the divine ideal? at first it might appear hopeless to attempt to answer such a question, but by adhering to a definite principle we shall find that it will open out, and lead us on, and show us things which we could not otherwise have seen--this is the nature of principle, and is what distinguishes it from mere rules which are only the application of principle under some particular set of conditions. we found two principles as essential in our conception of the originating spirit, namely its power of selection and its power of initiative; and we found a third principle as its only possible motive, namely the desire of the living for ever increasing enjoyment of life. now with these three principles as the very essence of the all-originating spirit to guide us, we shall, i think, be able to form some conception of that divine ideal which gives rise to the fifth stage of manifestation of spirit, upon which we should now be preparing to enter. we have seen that the spirit's enjoyment of life is necessarily a _reciprocal_--it must have a corresponding fact in manifestation to answer to it; otherwise by the inherent law of mind no consciousness, and consequently no enjoyment, could accrue; and therefore by the law of continuous progression the required reciprocal should manifest as a being awakening to the consciousness of the principle by which he himself comes into existence. such an awakening cannot proceed from a comparison of one set of existing conditions with another, but only from the recognition of a power which is independent of all conditions, that is to say, the absolute self-dependence of the spirit. a being thus awakened would be the proper correspondence of the spirit's enjoyment of life at a stage not only above mechanical motion or physical vitality, but even above intellectual perception of existing phenomena, that is to say at the stage where the spirit's enjoyment consists in recognizing itself as the source of all things. the position in the absolute would be, so to speak, the awakening of spirit to the recognition of its own artistic ability. i use the word "artistic" as more nearly expressing an almost unstatable idea than any other i can think of, for the work of the artist approaches more closely to creation _ex nihilo_ than any other form of human activity. the work of the artist is the expression of the self that the artist is, while that of the scientist is the comparison of facts which exist independently of his own personality. it is true that the realm of art is not without its methods of analysis, but the analysis is that of the artist's own feeling and of the causes which give rise to it. these are found to contain in themselves certain principles which are fundamental to all art, but these principles are the laws of the creative action of mind rather than those of the limitations of matter. now if we may transfer this familiar analogy to our conception of the working of the all-originating mind we may picture it as the great artist giving visible expression to his feeling by a process which, though subject to no restriction from antecedent conditions, yet works by a law which is inseparable from the feeling itself--in fact the law _is_ the feeling, and the feeling _is_ the law, the law of perfect creativeness. some such self-contemplation as this is the only way in which we can conceive the next, or fifth, stage of spirit's self-recognition as taking place. having got as far as it has in the four previous stages, that is to the production of intellectual man as its correspondence, the next step in advance must be on the lines i have indicated--unless, indeed, there were a sudden and arbitrary breaking of the law of continuity, a supposition which the whole creative process up to now forbids us to entertain. therefore we may picture the fifth stage of the self-contemplation of spirit as its awakening to the recognition of its own artistic ability, its own absolute freedom of action and creative power--just as in studio parlance we say that an artist becomes "free of his palette." but by the always present law of reciprocity, through which alone self-consciousness can be attained, this self-recognition of spirit in the absolute implies a corresponding objective fact in the world of the relative; that is to say, the coming into manifestation of a being capable of realizing the free creative artistry of the spirit, and of recognizing the same principle in himself, while at the same time realizing also the _relation_ between the universal manifesting principle and its individual manifestation. such, it appears to me, must be the conception of the divine ideal embodied in the fifth stage of the progress of manifestation. but i would draw particular attention to the concluding words of the last paragraph, for if we miss the _relation_ between the universal manifesting principle and its individual manifestation, we have failed to realize the principle altogether, whether in the universal or in the individual--it is just their interaction that makes each become what it does become--and in this further becoming consists the progression. this relation proceeds from the principle i pointed out in the opening chapter which makes it necessary for the universal spirit to be always harmonious with itself; and if this unity is not recognized by the individual he cannot hold that position of reciprocity to the originating spirit which will enable it to recognize itself as in the enjoyment of life at the higher level we are now contemplating--rather the feeling conveyed would be that of something antagonistic, producing the reverse of enjoyment, thus philosophically bringing out the point of the scriptural injunction, "grieve not the spirit." also the re-action upon the individual must necessarily give rise to a corresponding state of inharmony, though he may not be able to define his feeling of unrest or to account for it. but on the other hand if the grand harmony of the originating spirit within itself is duly regarded, then the individual mind affords a fresh center from which the spirit contemplates itself in what i have ventured to call its artistic originality--a boundless potential of creativeness, yet always regulated by its own inherent law of unity. and this law of the spirit's original unity is a very simple one. it is the spirit's necessary and basic conception of itself. a lie is a statement that something is, which is not. then, since the spirit's statement or conception of anything necessarily makes that thing exist, it is logically impossible for it to conceive a lie. therefore the spirit is truth. similarly disease and death are the negative of life, and therefore the spirit, as the principle of life, cannot embody disease or death in its self-contemplation. in like manner also, since it is free to produce what it will, the spirit cannot desire the presence of repugnant forms, and so one of its inherent laws must be beauty. in this threefold law of truth, life, and beauty, we find the whole underlying nature of the spirit, and no action on the part of the individual can be at variance with the originating unity which does not contravert these fundamental principles. this it will be seen leaves the individual absolutely unfettered except in the direction of breaking up the fundamental harmony on which he himself, as included in the general creation, is dependent. this certainly cannot be called limitation, and we are all free to follow the lines of our own individuality in every other direction; so that, although the recognition of our relation to the originating spirit safeguards us from injuring ourselves or others, it in no way restricts our liberty of action or narrows our field of development. am i, then, trying to base my action upon a fundamental desire for the opening out of truth, for the increasing of livingness, and for the creating of beauty? have i got this as an ever present law of tendency at the back of my thought? if so, then this law will occupy precisely the same place in my microcosm, or personal world, that it does in the macrocosm, or great world, as a power which is in itself formless, but which by reason of its presence necessarily impresses its character upon all that the creative energy forms. on this basis the creative energy of the universal mind may be safely trusted to work through the specializing influence of our own thought[ ] and we may adopt the maxim "trust your desires" because we know that they are the movement of the universal in ourselves, and that being based upon our fundamental recognition of the life, love, and beauty which the spirit is, their unfoldments must carry these initial qualities with them all down the line, and thus, in however small a degree, becomes a portion of the working of the spirit in its inherent creativeness. this perpetual creativeness of the spirit is what we must never lose sight of, and that is why i want the student to grasp clearly the idea of the spirit's self-contemplation as the only possible root of the creative process. not only at the first creation of the world, but at all times the plane of the innermost is that of pure spirit,[ ] and therefore at this, the originating point, there is nothing else for spirit to contemplate excepting itself; then this self-contemplation produces corresponding manifestation, and since self-contemplation or recognition of its own existence must necessarily go on continually, the corresponding creativeness must always be at work. if this fundamental idea be clearly grasped we shall see that incessant and progressive creativeness is the very essence and being of spirit. this is what is meant by the affirmativeness of the spirit. it cannot _per se_ act negatively, that is to say uncreatively, for by the very nature of its self-recognition such a negative action would be impossible. of course if _we_ act negatively then, since the spirit is always acting affirmatively, we are moving in the opposite direction to it; and consequently so long as we regard our own negative action as being affirmative, the spirit's action must appear to us negative, and thus it is that all the negative conditions of the world have their root in negative or inverted thought: but the more we bring our thought into harmony with the life, love, and beauty which the spirit is, the less these inverted conditions will obtain, until at last they will be eliminated altogether. to accomplish this is our great object; for though the progress may be slow it will be steady if we proceed on a definite principle; and to lay hold of the true principle is the purpose of our studies. and the principle to lay hold of is the ceaseless creativeness of spirit. this is what we mean when we speak of it as the spirit of the affirmative, and i would ask my readers to impress this term upon their minds. once grant that the all-originating spirit is thus the spirit of the pure affirmative, and we shall find that this will lead us logically to results of the highest value. if, then, we keep this perpetual and progressive creativeness of the spirit continually in mind we may rely upon its working as surely in ourselves as in that great cosmic forward movement which we speak of as evolution. it is the same power of evolution working within ourselves, only with this difference, that in proportion as we come to realize its nature we find ourselves able to facilitate its progress by offering more and more favorable conditions for its working. we do not add to the force of the power, for we are products of it and so cannot generate what generates _us_; but by providing suitable conditions we can more and more highly specialize it. this is the method of all the advance that has ever been made. we never create any force (_e.g._ electricity) but we provide special conditions under which the force manifests _itself_ in a variety of useful and beautiful ways, unsuspected possibilities which lay hidden in the power until brought to light by the cooperation of the personal factor. now it is precisely the introduction[ ] of this personal factor that concerns us, because to all eternity we can only recognize things from our own center of consciousness, whether in this world or in any other; therefore the practical question is how to specialize in our own case the _generic_ originating life which, when we give it a name, we call "the spirit." the method of doing this is perfectly logical when we once see that the principle involved is that of the self-recognition of spirit. we have traced the _modus operandi_ of the creative process sufficiently far to see that the existence of the cosmos is the result of the spirit's seeing itself _in_ the cosmos, and if this be the law of the whole it must also be the law of the part. but there is this difference, that so long as the normal average relation of particles is maintained the whole continues to subsist, no matter what position any particular particle may go into, just as a fountain continues to exist no matter whether any particular drop of water is down in the basin or at the top of the jet. this is the _generic_ action which keeps the race going as a whole. but the question is, what is going to become of ourselves? then because the law of the whole is also the law of the part we may at once say that what is wanted is for the spirit _to see itself in us_--in other words, to find in us the reciprocal which, as we have seen, is necessary to its enjoyment of a certain quality of consciousness. now, the fundamental consciousness of the spirit must be that of self-sustaining life, and for the full enjoyment of this consciousness there must be a corresponding _individual_ consciousness reciprocating it; and on the part of the individual such a consciousness can only arise from the recognition that his own life is identical with that of the spirit--not something sent forth to wander away by itself, but something included in and forming part of the greater life. then by the very conditions of the case, such a contemplation on the part of the individual is nothing else than the spirit contemplating itself from the standpoint of the individual consciousness, and thus fulfilling the law of the creative process under such specialized conditions as must logically result in the perpetuation of the individual life. it is the law of the cosmic creative process transferred to the individual. this, it seems to me, is the divine ideal: that of an individuality which recognizes its source, and recognizes also the method by which it springs from that source, and which is therefore able to open up in itself a channel by which that source can flow in uninterruptedly; with the result that from the moment of this recognition the individual lives directly from the originating life, as being himself _a special direct creation_, and not merely as being a member of a generic race. the individual who has reached this stage of recognition thus finds a principle of enduring life _within himself_; so then the next question is in what way this principle is likely to manifest itself. chapter iv the manifestation of the life principle we must bear in mind that what we have now reached is a principle, or universal potential, only we have located it in the individual. but a principle, as such, is not manifestation. manifestation is the growth proceeding _from_ the principle, that is to say, some form in which the principle becomes active. at the same time we must recollect that, though a form is necessary for manifestation, _the_ form is not essential, for the same principle may manifest through various forms, just as electricity may work either through a lamp or a tram-car without in any way changing its inherent nature. in this way we are brought to the conclusion that the life-principle must always provide itself with a body in which to function, though it does not follow that this body must always be of the same chemical constitution as the one we now possess. we might well imagine some distant planet where the chemical combinations with which we are familiar on earth did not obtain; but if the essential life-principle of any individual were transported thither, then by the law of the creative process it would proceed to clothe itself with a material body drawn from the atmosphere and substance of that planet; and the personality thus produced would be quite at home there, for all his surroundings would be perfectly natural to him, however different the laws of nature might be there from what we know here. in such a conception as this we find the importance of the two leading principles to which i have drawn attention--first, the power of the spirit to create _ex nihilo_, and secondly, the individual's recognition of the basic principle of unity giving permanence and solidity to the frame of nature. by the former the self-recognizing life-principle could produce any sort of body it chose; and by the latter it would be led to project one in harmony with the natural order of the particular planet, thus making all the facts of that order solid realities to the individual, and himself a solid and natural being to the other inhabitants of that world. but this would not do away with the individual's knowledge of how he got there; and so, supposing him to have realized his identity with the universal life-principle sufficiently to consciously control the projection of his own body, he could at will disintegrate the body which accorded with the conditions of one planet and constitute one which accorded just as harmoniously with those of another, and could thus function on any number of planets as a perfectly natural being on each of them. he would in all respects resemble the other inhabitants with one all-important exception, that since he had attained to unity with his creative principle he would not be tied by the laws of matter as they were. any one who should attain to such a power could only do so by his realization of the all-embracing unity of the spirit as being the foundation of all things; and this being the basis of his own extended powers he would be the last to controvert his own basic principle by employing his powers in such a way as to disturb the natural course of evolution in the world where he was. he might use them to help forward the evolution of others in that world, but certainly never to disturb it, for he would always act on the maxim that "order is heaven's first law." our object, however, is not to transfer ourselves to other planets but to get the best out of this one; but we shall not get the best out of this one until we realize that the power which will enable us to do so is so absolutely universal and fundamental that its application in this world is precisely the same as in any other, and that is why i have stated it as a general proposition applicable to all worlds. the principle being thus universal there is no reason why we should postpone its application till we find ourselves in another world, and the best place and time to begin are here and now. the starting point is not in time or locality, but in the mode of thought; and if we realize that this point of origination is spirit's power to produce something out of nothing, and that it does this in accordance with the natural order of substance of the particular world in which it is working, then the spiritual ego in ourselves, as proceeding direct from the universal spirit, should be able first, to so harmoniously combine the working of spiritual and physical laws in its own body as to keep it in perfect health, secondly to carry this process further and renew the body, thus eradicating the effects of old age, and thirdly to carry the process still further and perpetuate this renewed body as long as the individual might desire. if the student shows this to one of his average acquaintances who has never given any thought to these things, his friend will undoubtedly exclaim "tommy rot!" even if he does not use a stronger expletive. he will at once appeal to the past experience of all mankind, his argument being that what has not been in the past cannot be in the future; yet he does not apply the same argument to aeronautics and is quite oblivious of the fact that the sacred volume which he reverences contains promises of these very things. the really earnest student must never forget the maxim that "principle is not bound by precedent"--if it were we should still be primitive savages. to use the creative process we must affirm the creative power, that is to say, we must go back to the beginning of the series and start with pure spirit, only remembering that this starting-point is now to be found _in ourselves_, for this is what distinguishes the individual creative process from the cosmic one. this is where the importance of realizing only one originating power instead of two interacting powers comes in, for it means that we do not derive our power from any existing polarity, but that we are going to establish polarities which will start secondary causation on the lines which we thus determine. this also is where the importance comes in of recognizing that the only possible originating movement of spirit must be self-contemplation, for this shows us that we do not have to contemplate existing conditions but the divine ideal, and that this contemplation of the divine ideal of man is the self-contemplation of the spirit from the standpoint of human individuality. then the question arises, if these principles are true, why are we not demonstrating them? well, when our fundamental principle is obviously correct and yet we do not get the proper results, the only inference is that somewhere or other we have introduced something antagonistic to the fundamental principle, something not inherent in the principle itself and which therefore owes its presence to some action of our own. now the error consists in the belief that the creative power is limited by the material in which it works. if this be assumed, then you have to calculate the resistances offered by the material; and since by the terms of the creative process these resistances do not really exist, you have no basis of calculation at all--in fact you have no means of knowing where you are, and everything is in confusion. this is why it is so important to remember that the creative process is the action of a single power, and that the interaction of two opposite polarities comes in at a later stage, and is not creative, but only distributive--that is to say, it localizes the energy already proceeding from the single power. this is a fundamental truth which should never be lost sight of. so long, however, as we fail to see this truth we necessarily limit the creative power by the material it works in, and in practise we do this by referring to past experience as the only standard of judgment. we are measuring the fifth kingdom by the standard of the fourth, as though we should say that an intellectual man, a being of the fourth kingdom, was to be limited by the conditions which obtain in the first or mineral kingdom--to use scriptural language we are seeking the living among the dead. and moreover at the present time a new order of experience is beginning to open out to us, for well authenticated instances of the cure of disease by the invisible power of the spirit are steadily increasing in number. the facts are now too patent to be denied--what we want is a better knowledge of the power which accounts for them. and if this beginning is now with us, by what reason can we limit it? the difference between the healing of disease and the renewal of the entire organism and the perpetuation of life is only a difference of degree and not of kind; so that the actual experience of increasing numbers shows the working of a principle to which we can logically set no limits. if we get the steps of the creative process clearly into our minds we shall see why we have hitherto had such small results. spirit creates by self-contemplation; therefore, what it contemplates itself as being, that it becomes. you are individualized spirit; therefore, what you contemplate as the law of your being becomes the law of your being. hence, contemplate a law of death arising out of the forces of the material reacting against the power of the spirit and overcoming it, and you impress this mode of self-recognition upon spirit in yourself. of course you cannot alter its inherent nature, but you cause it to work under negative conditions and thus make it produce negative results so far as you yourself are concerned. but reverse the process, and contemplate a law of life as inherent in the very being of the spirit, and therefore as inherent in spirit in yourself; and contemplate the forces of the material as practically non-existent in the creative process, because they are products of it and not causes--look at things in this way and you will impress a corresponding conception upon the spirit which, by the law of reciprocity, thus enters into self-contemplation on _these_ lines from the standpoint of your own individuality; and then by the nature of the creative process a corresponding externalization is bound to take place. thus our initial question, how did anything come into existence at all, brings us to the recognition of a law of life which we may each specialize for ourselves; and in the degree to which we specialize it we shall find the creative principle at work within us building up a healthier and happier personality in mind, body, and circumstances. only we must learn to distinguish the vehicles of spirit from spirit itself, for the distinction has very important bearings. what distinguishes the vehicles from the spirit is the law of growth. the spirit is the formless principle of life, and the vehicle is a form in which this principle functions. now the vehicle is a projection by the spirit of substance coordinate with the natural order of the plane on which the vehicle functions, and therefore requires to be built up comformably to that order. this building up is what we speak of as growth; and since the principle which causes the growth is the individualized spirit, the rate at which the growth will go on will depend on the amount of vitalizing energy the spirit puts into it, and the amount of vitalizing energy will depend on the degree in which the individualized spirit appreciates its own livingness, and finally the degree of this appreciation will depend on the quality of the individual's perception of the great all-originating spirit as reflecting itself in him and thus making his contemplation of it nothing else than the creative self-contemplation of the spirit proceeding from an individual and personal center. we must therefore not omit the law of growth in the vehicle from our conception of the working of the spirit. as a matter of fact the vehicle has nothing to say in the matter for it is simply a projection from the spirit; but for this very reason its formation will be slow or rapid in exact proportion to the individual spirit's vitalizing conception. we could imagine a degree of vitalizing conception that would produce the corresponding form instantaneously, but at present we must allow for the weakness of our spiritual power--not as thinking it by any means incapable of accomplishing its object, but as being far slower in operation now than we hope to see it in the future--and so we must not allow ourselves to be discouraged, but must hold our thought knowing that it is doing its creative work, and that the corresponding growth is slowly but surely taking place--thus following the divine precept that men ought always to pray and not to faint. gradually as we gain experience on these new lines our confidence in the power of the spirit will increase, and we shall be less inclined to argue from the negative side of things, and thus the hindrances to the inflow of the originating spirit will be more and more removed, and greater and greater results will be obtained. if we would have our minds clear on this subject of manifestation we should remember its threefold nature:--first the general life-principle, secondly the localization of this principle in the individual, and thirdly the growth of the vehicle as it is projected by the individualized spirit with more or less energy. it is a sequence of progressive condensation from the undifferentiated universal spirit to the ultimate and outermost vehicle--a truth enshrined in the esoteric maxim that "matter is spirit at its lowest level." the forms thus produced are in true accord with the general order of nature on the particular plane where they occur, and are therefore perfectly different from forms temporarily consolidated out of material drawn from other living organisms. these latter phantasmal bodies are held together only by an act of concentrated volition, and can therefore only be maintained for a short time and with effort; while the body which the individualized spirit, or ego, builds for itself is produced by a perfectly natural process and does not require any effort to sustain it, since it is kept in touch with the whole system of the planet by the continuous and effortless action of the individual's sub-conscious mind. this is where the action of sub-conscious mind as the builder of the body comes in. sub-conscious mind acts in accordance with the aggregate of suggestion impressed upon it by the conscious mind, and if this suggestion is that of perfect harmony with the physical laws of the planet then a corresponding building by the sub-conscious mind will take place, a process which, so far from implying any effort, consists rather in a restful sense of unity with nature.[ ] and if to this sense of union with the soul of nature, that universal sub-conscious mind which holds in the cosmos the same place that the sub-conscious mind does in ourselves--if to this there be superadded a sense of union with the all-creating spirit from which the soul of nature flows, then through the medium of the individual's sub-conscious mind such specialized effects can be produced in his body as to transcend our past experiences without in any way violating the order of the universe. the old law was the manifestation of the principle of life working under constricted conditions: the new law is the manifestation of the same principle working under expanding conditions. thus it is that though god never changes we are said to "increase with the increase of god." chapter v the personal factor i have already pointed out that the presence of a single all-embracing cosmic mind is an absolute necessity for the existence of any creation whatever, for the reason that if each individual mind were an entirely separate center of perception, not linked to all other minds by a common ground of underlying mentality independent of all individual action, then no two persons would see the same thing at the same time, in fact no two individuals would be conscious of living in the same world. if this were the case there would be no common standard to which to refer our sensations; and, indeed, coming into existence with no consciousness of environment except such as we could form by our own unaided thought, and having by the hypothesis no standard by which to form our thoughts, we could not form the conception of any environment at all, and consequently could have no recognition of our own existence. the confusion of thought involved even in the attempt to state such a condition shows it to be perfectly inconceivable, for the simple reason that it is self-contradictory and self-destructive. on this account it is clear that our own existence and that of the world around us necessarily implies the presence of a universal mind acting on certain _fixed lines of its own_ which establish the basis for the working of all individual minds. this paramount action of the universal mind thus sets an unchangeable standard by which all individual mental action must eventually be measured, and therefore our first concern is to ascertain what this standard is and to make it the basis of our own action. but if the independent existence of a common standard of reference is necessary for our self-recognition simply as inhabitants of the world we live in, then _a fortiori_ a common standard of reference is necessary for our recognition of the unique place we hold in the creative order, which is that of introducing the personal factor without which the possibilities contained in the great cosmic laws would remain undeveloped, and the self-contemplation of spirit could never reach those infinite unfoldments of which it is logically capable. the evolution of the personal factor is therefore the point with which we are most concerned. as a matter of fact, whatever theories we may hold to the contrary, we do all realize the same cosmic environment in the same way; that is to say, our minds all act according to certain generic laws which underlie all our individual diversities of thought and feeling. this is so because we are made that way and cannot help it. but with the personal factor the case is different. a standard is no less necessary, but we are not so made as to conform to it automatically. the very conception of automatic conformity to a _personal_ standard is self-contradictory, for it does away with the very thing that constitutes personality, namely freedom of volition, the use of the powers of initiative and selection. for this reason conformity to the standard of personality must be a matter of choice, which amounts to the same thing as saying that it rests with each individual to form his own conception of a standard of personality; but which liberty, however, carries with it the inevitable result that we shall bring into manifestation the _conditions_ corresponding to the sort of personality we accept as our normal standard. i would draw attention to the words "normal standard." what we shall eventually attain is, not what we merely wish, but what we regard as normal. the reason is that since we sub-consciously know ourselves to be based upon the inherent law of the universal mind we feel, whether we can reason it out or not, that we cannot force the all-producing mind to work contrary to its own inherent qualities, and therefore we intuitively recognize that we cannot transcend the sort of personality which is normal according to the law of universal mind. this thought is always at the back of our mind and we cannot get away from it for the simple reason that it is inherent in our mental constitution, because our mind is itself a product of the creative process; and to suppose ourselves transcending the possibilities contained in the originating mind would involve the absurdity of supposing that we can get the greater out of the less. nevertheless there are some who try to do so, and their position is as follows. they say in effect, i want to transcend the standard of humanity as i see it around me. but this is the normal standard according to the law of the universe, therefore i have to get above the law of the universe. consequently i cannot draw the necessary power from that law, and so there is nowhere else to get it except from myself. thus the aspirant is thrown back upon his own individual will as the ultimate power, with the result that the onus lies on him of concentrating a force sufficient to overcome the law of the universe. there is thus continually present to him a suggestion of struggle against a tremendous opposing force, and as a consequence he is continually subjecting himself to a strain which grows more and more intense as he realizes the magnitude of the force against which he is contending. then as he begins to realize the inequality of the struggle he seeks for extraneous aid, and so he falls back on various expedients, all of which have this in common that they ultimately amount to invoking the assistance of other individualities, not seeing that this involves the same fallacy which has brought him to his present straits, the fallacy, namely, of supposing that any individuality can develop a power greater than that of the source from which itself proceeds. the fallacy is a radical one; and therefore all efforts based upon it are fore-doomed to ultimate failure, whether they take the form of reliance on personal force of will, or magical rites, or austerity practised against the body, or attempts by abnormal concentration to absorb the individual in the universal, or the invocation of spirits, or any other method--the same fallacy is involved in them all, that the less is larger than the greater. now the point to be noted is that the idea of transcending the present conditions of humanity does not necessarily imply the idea of transcending the normal law of humanity. the mistake we have hitherto made has been in fixing the standard of personality too low and in taking our past experiences as measuring the ultimate possibilities of the race. our liberty consists in our ability to form our own conception of the normal standard of personality, only subject to the conditions arising out of the inherent law of the underlying universal mind; and so the whole thing resolves itself into the question, what are those fundamental conditions? the law is that we cannot transcend the normal; therefore comes the question, what is the normal? i have endeavored to answer this question in the chapter on the divine ideal, but since this is the crucial point of the whole subject we may devote a little further attention to it. the normal standard of personality must necessarily be the reproduction in individuality of what the universal mind is in itself, because, by the nature of the creative process, this standard results from spirit's self-contemplation at the stage where its recognition is turned toward its own power of initiative and selection. at this stage spirit's self-recognition has passed beyond that of self-expression through a mere law of averages into the recognition of what i have ventured to call its artistic ability; and as we have seen that self-recognition at any stage can only be attained by the realization of a _relation_ stimulating that particular sort of consciousness, it follows that for the purpose of this further advance expression through individuals of a corresponding type is a necessity. then by the law of reciprocity such beings must possess powers similar to those contemplated in itself by the originating spirit, in other words they must be in their own sphere the image and likeness of the spirit as it sees itself. now we have seen that the creating spirit necessarily possesses the powers of initiative and selection. these we may call its _active_ properties--the summing up of what it _does_. but what any power does depends on what it _is_, for the simple reason that it cannot give out what it does not contain; therefore at the back of the initiative and selective power of the spirit we must find what the spirit _is_, namely, what are its _substantive_ properties. to begin with it must be life. then because it is life it must be love, because as the undifferentiated principle of life it cannot do otherwise than tend to the fuller development of life in each individual, and the pure motive of giving greater enjoyment of life is love. then because it is life guided by love it must also be light, that is to say, the primary all-inclusive perception of boundless manifestations yet to be. then from this proceeds power, because there is no opposing force at the level of pure spirit; and therefore life urged forward by love or the desire for recognition, and by light or the pure perception of the law of infinite possibility, must necessarily produce power, for the simple reason that under these conditions it could not stop short of action, for that would be the denial of the life, love, and light which it is. then because the spirit is life, love, light, and power, it is also peace, again for a very simple reason, that being the spirit of the whole it cannot set one part in antagonism against another, for that would be to destroy the wholeness. next the spirit must be beauty, because on the same principle of wholeness it must duly proportion every part to every other part, and the due proportioning of all parts is beauty. and lastly the spirit must be joy, because, working on these lines, it cannot do otherwise than find pleasure in the self-expression which its works afford it, and in the contemplation of the limitlessness of the creative process by which each realized stage of evolution, however excellent, is still the stepping-stone to something yet more excellent, and so on in everlasting progression. for these reasons we may sum up the substantive being of the all-originating spirit as life, love, light, power, peace, beauty, and joy; and its active power as that of initiative and selection. these, therefore, constitute the basic laws of the underlying universal mentality which sets the standard of normal personality--a standard which, when seen in this light, transcends the utmost scope of our thought, for it is nothing else than the spirit of the infinite affirmative conceived in human personality. this standard is therefore that of the universal spirit itself reproduced in human individuality by the same law of reciprocity which we have found to be the fundamental law of the creative process--only now we are tracing the action of this law in the fifth kingdom instead of in the fourth. this standard, then, we may call the universal principle of humanity, and having now traced the successive steps by which it is reached from the first cosmic movement of the spirit in the formation of the primary nebula, we need not go over the old ground again, and may henceforward take this divine principle of humanity as our normal standard and make it the starting point for our further evolution. but how are we to do this? simply by using the one method of creative process, that is, the self-contemplation of spirit. we now know ourselves to be reciprocals of the divine spirit, centers in which it finds a fresh standpoint for self-contemplation; and so the way to rise to the heights of this great pattern is by contemplating it as the normal standard of our own personality. and be it noted that the pattern thus set before us is universal. it is the embodiment of all the great principles of the affirmative, and so in no way interferes with our own particular individuality--_that_ is something built up upon this foundation, something additional affording the differentiating medium through which this unifying principle finds variety of expression, therefore we need be under no apprehension lest by resting upon this pattern we should become less ourselves. on the contrary the recognition of it sets us at liberty to become more fully ourselves because we know that we are basing our development, not upon the strength of our own unaided will, nor yet upon any sort of extraneous help, but upon the universal law itself, manifesting through us in the proper sequence of the creative order; so that we are still dealing with universal principles, only the principle by which we are now working is the universal principle of personality. i wish the student to get this idea very clearly because this is really the crux of the passage from the fourth kingdom into the fifth. the great problem of the future of evolution is the introduction of the personal factor. the reason why this is so is very simple when we see it. to take a thought from my own "doré lectures" we may put it in this way. in former days no one thought of building ships of iron because iron does not float; yet now ships are seldom built of anything else, though the relative specific gravities of iron and water remain unchanged. what has changed is the personal factor. it has expanded to a more intelligent perception of the law of flotation, and we now see that wood floats and iron sinks, both of them by the same principle working under opposite conditions, the law, namely, that anything will float which bulk for bulk is lighter than the volume of water displaced by it, so that by including in our calculations the displacement of the vessel as well as the specific gravity of the material, we now make iron float by the very same law by which it sinks. this example shows that the function of the personal factor is to analyze the manifestations of law which are spontaneously afforded by nature and to discover the universal affirmative principle which lies hidden within them, and then by the exercise of our powers of initiative and selection to provide such specialized conditions as will enable the universal principle to work in perfectly new ways transcending anything in our past experience. this is how all progress has been achieved up to the present; and is the way in which all progress must be achieved in the future, only for the purpose of evolution, or growth from within, we must transfer the method to the spiritual plane. the function, then, of the personal factor in the creative order is to provide specialized conditions by the use of the powers of selection and initiative, a truth indicated by the maxim "nature unaided fails"; but the difficulty is that if enhanced powers were attained by the whole population of the world without any common basis for their use, their promiscuous exercise could only result in chaotic confusion and the destruction of the entire race. to introduce the creative power of the individual and at the same time avoid converting it into a devastating flood is the great problem of the transition from the fourth kingdom into the fifth. for this purpose it becomes necessary to have a standard of the personal factor independent of any individual conceptions, just as we found that in order for us to attain self-consciousness at all it was a necessity that there should be a universal mind as the _generic_ basis of all individual mentality; only in regard to the generic build of mind the conformity is necessarily automatic, while in regard to the specializing process the fact that the essence of that process is selection and initiative renders it impossible for the conformity to the standard of personality to be automatic--the very nature of the thing makes it a matter of individual choice. now a standard of personality independent of individual conceptions must be the _essence_ of personality as distinguished from individual idiosyncrasies, and can therefore be nothing else than the creative life, love, beauty, etc., viewed as a divine individuality, by identifying ourselves with which we eliminate all possibility of conflict with other personalities based on the same fundamental recognition; and the very universality of this standard allows free play to all our particular idiosyncrasies while at the same time preventing them from antagonizing the fundamental principles to which we have found that the self-contemplation of the originating spirit must necessarily give rise. in this way we attain a standard of measurement for our own powers. if we recognize no such standard our development of spiritual powers, our discovery of the immense possibilities hidden in the inner laws of nature and of our own being, can only become a scourge to ourselves and others, and it is for this reason that these secrets are so jealously guarded by those who know them, and that over the entrance to the temple are written the words "eskato bebeloi"--"hence ye profane." but if we recognize and accept this standard of measurement then we need never fear our discovery of hidden powers either in ourselves or in nature, for on this basis it becomes impossible for us to misuse them. therefore it is that all systematic teaching on these subjects begins with instruction regarding the creative order of the cosmos, and then proceeds to exhibit the same order as reproduced on the plane of personality and so affording a fresh starting point for the creative process by the introduction of individual initiative and selection. this is the doctrine of the macrocosm and the microcosm; and the transition from the generic working of the creative spirit in the cosmos to its specific working in the individual is what is meant by the doctrine of the octave. chapter vi the standard of personality we have now got some general idea as to the place of the personal factor in the creative order, and so the next question is, how does this affect ourselves? the answer is that if we have grasped the fundamental fact that the moving power in the creative process is the self-contemplation of spirit, and if we also see that, because we are miniature reproductions of the original spirit, our contemplation of it becomes its contemplation of itself from the standpoint of our own individuality--if we have grasped these fundamental conceptions, then it follows that our process for developing power is to contemplate the originating spirit as the source of the power we want to develop. and here we must guard against a mistake which people often make when looking to the spirit as the source of power. we are apt to regard it as sometimes giving and sometimes withholding power, and consequently are never sure which way it will act. but by so doing we make spirit contemplate itself as having no definite action at all, as a plus and minus which mutually cancel each other, and therefore by the law of the creative process no result is to be expected. the mistake consists in regarding the power as something separate from the spirit; whereas by the analysis of the creative process which we have now made we see that the spirit itself _is_ the power, because the power comes into existence only through spirit's self-contemplation. then the logical inference from this is that by contemplating the spirit _as_ the power, and _vice versa_ by contemplating the power _as_ the spirit, a similar power is being generated in ourselves. again an important conclusion follows from this, which is that to generate any _particular sort_ of power we should contemplate it in the abstract rather than as applied to the particular set of circumstances we have in hand. the circumstances indicate the sort of power we want but they do not help us to generate it; rather they impress us with a sense of something contrary to the power, something which has to be overcome by it, and therefore we should endeavor to dwell on the power _in itself_, and so come into touch with it in its limitless infinitude. it is here that we begin to find the benefit of a divine standard of human individuality. that also is an infinite principle, and by identifying ourselves with it we bring to bear upon the abstract conception of infinite impersonal power a corresponding conception of infinite personality, so that we thus import the personal factor which is able _to use_ the power without imposing any strain upon ourselves. we know that by the very nature of the creative process we are one with the originating spirit and therefore one with all the principles of its being, and consequently one with its infinite personality, and therefore our contemplation of it as the power which we want gives us the power to use that power. this is the self-contemplation of spirit employed from the individual standpoint for the generating of power. then comes the application of the power thus generated. but there is only one creative process, that of the self-contemplation of spirit, and therefore the way to use this process for the application of the power is to contemplate ourselves as surrounded by the conditions which we want to produce. this does not mean that we are to lay down a hard and fast pattern of the conditions and strenuously endeavor to compel the power to conform its working to every detail of our mental picture--to do so would be to hinder its working and to exhaust ourselves. what we are to dwell upon is the idea of an infinite power producing the happiness we desire, and because this power is also the forming power of the universe trusting it to give that form to the conditions which will most perfectly react upon us to produce the particular state of consciousness desired. thus neither on the side of in-drawing nor of out-giving is there any constraining of the power, while in both cases there is an initiative and selective action on the part of the individual--for the generating of power he takes the initiative of invoking it by contemplation, and he makes selection of the sort of power to invoke; while on the giving-out side he makes selection of the purpose for which the power is to be employed, and takes the initiative by his thought of directing the power to that purpose. he thus fulfils the fundamental requirements of the creative process by exercising spirit's inherent faculties of initiative and selection by means of its inherent method, namely by self-contemplation. the whole action is identical in kind with that which produces the cosmos, and it is now repeated in miniature for the particular world of the individual; only we must remember that this miniature reproduction of the creative process is based upon the great fundamental principles inherent in the universal mind, and cannot be dissociated from them without involving a conception of the individual which will ultimately be found self-destructive because it cuts away the foundation on which his individuality rests. it will therefore be seen that any individuality based upon the fundamental standard of personality thus involved in the universal mind has reached the basic principle of union with the originating spirit itself, and we are therefore correct in saying that union is attained through, or by means of, this standard personality. this is a great truth which in all ages has been set forth under a variety of symbolic statements; often misunderstood, and still continuing to be so, though owing to the inherent vitality of the idea itself even a partial apprehension of it produces a corresponding measure of good results. this falling short has been occasioned by the failure to recognize an eternal principle at the back of the particular statements--in a word the failure to see what they were talking about. all _principles_ are eternal in themselves, and this is what distinguishes them from their particular manifestations as laws determined by temporary and local conditions. if then, we would reach the root of the matter we must penetrate through all verbal statements to an eternal principle which is as active now as ever in the past, and which is as available to ourselves as to any who have gone before us. therefore it is that when we discern an eternal and universal principle of human personality as necessarily involved in the essential being of the originating universal spirit--_filius in gremio patris_--we have discovered the true normal standard of personality. then because this standard is nothing else than the principle of personality expanded to infinitude, there is no limit to the expansion which we ourselves may attain by the operation in us of this principle; and so we are never placed in a position of antagonism to the true law of our being, but on the contrary the larger and more fundamental our conception of personal development the greater will be the fulfilment which we give to the law. the normal standard of personality is found to be itself the law of the creative process working at the personal level; and it cannot be subject to limitation for the simple reason that the process being that of the self-contemplation of spirit, no limits can possibly be assigned to this contemplation. we need, therefore, never be afraid of forming too high an idea of human possibilities provided always that we take this standard as the foundation on which to build up the edifice of our personality. and we see that this standard is no arbitrary one but simply the expression in personality of the one all-embracing spirit of the affirmative; and therefore the only limitation implied by conformity to it is that of being prevented from running on lines the opposite of those of the creative process, that is to say, from calling into action causes of disintegration and destruction. in the truly constructive order, therefore, the divine standard of personality is as really the basis of the development of specific personality as the universal mind is the necessary basis of generic mentality; and just as without this generic ultimate of mind we should none of us see the same world at the same time, and in fact have no consciousness of existence, so apart from this divine standard of personality it is equally impossible for us to specialize the generic law of our being so as to develop all the glorious possibilities that are latent in it. only we must never forget the difference between these two statements of the universal law--the one is cosmic and generic, common to the whole race, whether they know it or not, a standard to which we all conform automatically by the mere fact of being human beings; while the other is a personal and individual standard, automatic conformity to which is impossible because that would imply the loss of those powers of initiative and selection which are the very essence of personality; so that this standard necessarily implies a personal selection of it in preference to other conceptions of an antagonistic nature. chapter vii race thought and new thought the steady following up of the successive stages of the creative process has led us to the recognition of an individuality in the all-creating spirit itself, but an individuality which is by its very nature universal, and so cannot be departed from without violating the essential principles on which the further expansion of our own individuality depends. at the same time it is strictly _individual_, for it is the spirit of individuality, and is thus to be distinguished from that merely _generic_ race-personality which makes us human beings at all. race-personality is of course the necessary _basis_ for the development of this individuality; but if we do not see that it is only the preliminary to further evolution, any other conception of our personality as members of the race will prevent our advance toward our proper position in the creative order, which is that of introducing the personal factor by the exercise of our individual power of initiative and selection. it is on this account that race-thought, simply as such, is opposed to the attempt of the individual to pass into a higher order of life. it limits him by strong currents of negative suggestion based on the fallacy that the perpetuation of the race requires the death of the individual;[ ] and it is only when the individual sees that this is not true, and that his race- nature constitutes the ground out of which his new individuality is to be formed, that he becomes able to oppose the negative power of race-thought. he does this by destroying it with its own weapon, that is, by finding in the race-nature itself the very material to be used by the spirit for building-up the new man. this is a discovery on the spiritual plane equivalent to the discovery on the physical plane that we can make iron float by the same law by which it sinks. it is the discovery that what we call the mortal part of us is capable of being brought under a higher application of the universal law of life, which will transmute it into an immortal principle. when we see what we call the mortal part of us in this light we can employ the very principle on which the negative race-thought is founded as a weapon for the destruction of that thought in our own minds. the basis of the negative race-thought is the idea that physical death is an essential part of the normal standard of personality, and that the body is composed of so much neutral material with which death can do what it likes. but it is precisely this neutrality of matter that makes it just as amenable to the law of life as to the law of death--it is simply neutral and not an originating power on either side; so then when we realize that our normal standard of personality is not subject to death, but is the eternal essence and being of life itself, then we see that this neutrality of matter--its inability to make selection or take initiative on its own account--is just what makes it the plastic medium for the expression of spirit in ourselves. in this way the generic or race-mind in the individual becomes the instrument through which the specializing power of the spirit works toward the building up of a personality based upon the truly normal standard of individuality which we have found to be inherent in the all-originating spirit itself: and since the whole question is that of the introduction of the factor of personal individuality into the creative order of causation, this cannot be done by depriving the individual of what makes him a person instead of a thing, namely, the power of conscious initiative and selection. for this reason the transition from the fourth kingdom into the fifth cannot be forced upon the race either by a divine fiat or by the generic action of cosmic law, for it is a _specialising_ of the cosmic law which can only be effected by _personal_ initiative and selection, just as iron can only be made to float under certain specialized conditions; and consequently the passage from the fourth into the fifth kingdom is a strictly individual process which can only be brought about by a personal perception of what the normal standard of the new individuality really is. this can only be done by the active laying aside of the old race-standard and the conscious adoption of the new one. the student will do well to consider this carefully, for it explains why the race cannot receive the further evolution simply as a race; and also it shows that our further evolution is not into a state of less activity but of greater, not into being less alive but more alive, not into being less ourselves but more ourselves; thus being just the opposite of those systems which present the goal of existence as re-absorption into the undifferentiated divine essence. on the contrary our further evolution is into greater degrees of conscious activity than we have ever yet known, because it implies our development of greater powers as the consequence of our clearer perception of our true relation to the all-originating spirit. it is the recognition that we may, and should, measure ourselves by this new standard instead of by the old race-standard that constitutes the real new thought. the new thought which gives new life to the individual will never be realized so long as we think that it is merely the name of a particular sect, or that it is to be found in the mechanical observance of a set of rules laid down for us by some particular teacher. it is a new fact in the experience of the individual, the _reason_ for which is indeed made clear to him through intellectual perception of the real nature of the creative process, but which can become an actual experience only by habitual personal intercourse with that divine spirit which is the life, love and beauty that are at the back of the creative process and find expression through it. from this intercourse new thoughts will continually flow in, all of them bearing that vivifying element which is inherent in their source, and the individual will then proceed to work out these new ideas with the knowledge that they have their origin in the selection and initiative power of the all-creating spirit itself, and in this way by combined meditation and action he will find himself advancing into increasing light, liberty and usefulness. the advance may be almost imperceptible from one day to another, but it will be perceptible at longer intervals, and the one who is thus moving forward with the spirit of god will on looking back at any time always find that he is getting more livingness out of life than he was a year previously. and this without strenuous effort, for he is not having to manufacture the power from his own resources but only to _receive_ it--and as for _using_ it, that is only the exercise of the power itself. so following on these lines you will find that rest and power are identical; and so you get the real new thought which grows in newness every day. chapter viii the dÉnouement of the creative process then comes the question, what should logically be the dénouement of the progression we have been considering? let us briefly recapitulate the steps of the series. universal spirit by self-contemplation evolves universal substance. from this it produces cosmic creation as the expression of itself as functioning in space and time. then from this initial movement it proceeds to more highly specialized modes of self-contemplation in a continually ascending scale, for the simple reason that self-contemplation admits of no limits and therefore each stage of self-recognition cannot be other than the starting-point for a still more advanced mode of self-contemplation, and so on _ad infinitum_. thus there is a continuous progress toward more and more highly specialized forms of life, implying greater liberty and wider scope for enjoyment as the capacity of the individual life corresponds to a higher degree of the contemplation of spirit; and in this way evolution proceeds till it reaches a level where it becomes impossible to go any further except by the exercise of conscious selection and initiative on the part of the individual, while at the same time conforming to the universal principles of which evolution is the expression. now ask yourself in what way individual selection and initiative would be likely to act as expressing the originating spirit itself? given the knowledge on the part of the individual that he is able by his power of initiative and selection to draw directly upon the all-originating spirit of life, what motive could he have for not doing so? therefore, granted such a perfect recognition, we should find the individual holding precisely the same place in regard to his own individual world that the all-originating spirit does to the cosmos; subject only to the same law of love, beauty, &c., which we found to be necessarily inherent in the creative spirit--a similarity which would entirely prevent the individual from exercising his otherwise limitless powers in any sort of antagonism to the spirit of the great whole. at the same time the individual would be quite aware that he was not the universal spirit _in propria persona_, but that he was affording expression to it through his individuality. now expression is impossible except through form, and therefore form of some sort is a necessity of individuality. it is just here, then, that we find the importance of that principle of harmony with environment of which i spoke earlier, the principle in accordance with which a person who had obtained complete control of matter, if he wished to transport himself to some other planet, would appear there in perfect conformity with all the laws of matter that obtained in that world; though, of course, not subject to any limitation of the life principle in himself. he would exhibit the laws of matter as rendered perfect by the law of originating life. but if any one now living on this earth were thus perfectly to realize the law of life he would be in precisely the same position _here_ as our imaginary visitor to another planet--in other words the dénouement of the law of life is not the putting off of the body, but its inclusion as part of the conscious life of the spirit. this does not imply any difference in the molecular structure of the body from that of other men, for by the principle of harmony of which i have just spoken, it would be formed in strict accordance with the laws of matter on the particular planet; though it would not be subject to the limitations resulting from the average man's non-recognition of the power of the spirit. the man who had thus fully entered into the fifth kingdom would recognize that, in its relation to the denser modes of matter his body was of a similar dense mode. that would be its relation to external environment as seen by others. but since the man now knew _himself_ as not belonging to these denser modes of manifestation, but as an individualization of primary spirit, he would see that relatively to himself all matter was primary substance, and that from this point of view any condensations of that substance into atoms, molecules, tissues, and the like counted for nothing--for him the body would be simply primary substance entirely responsive to his will. yet his reverence for the law of harmony would prevent any disposition to play psychic pranks with it, and he would use his power over the body only to meet actual requirements. in this way, then, we are led to the conclusion that eternal life in an immortal physical body is the logical dénouement of our evolution; and if we reflect that, by the conditions of the case, the owners of such bodies could at will either transport themselves to other worlds or put off the physical body altogether and remain in the purely subjective life while still retaining the power to reclothe themselves in flesh whenever they chose, we shall see that this dénouement of evolution answers all possible questions as to the increase of the race, the final destruction of the planet, and the like. this, then, is the ultimate which we should keep in view; but the fact remains that, though there may be hidden ones who have thus attained, the bulk of mankind have not, and that the common lot of humanity is to go through the change which we call death. in broad philosophical terms death may be described as the withdrawal of the life into the subjective consciousness to the total exclusion of the objective consciousness. then by the general law of the relation between subjective and objective mind, the subjective mind severed from its corresponding objective mentality has no means of acquiring fresh impressions _on its own account_, and therefore can only ring the changes on those impressions which it has brought with it from its past life. but these may be of very various sorts, ranging from the lowest to the highest, from those most opposed to that ultimate destiny of man which we have just been considering, to those which recognize his possibilities in a very large measure, needing little more to bring about the full fruition of perfected life. but however various may be their experiences, all who have passed through death must have this in common that they have lost their physical instrument of objective perception and so have their mode of consciousness determined entirely by the dominant mode of suggestion which they have brought over with them from the objective side of life.[ ] of course if the objective mentality were also brought over this would give the individual the same power of initiative and selection that he possesses while in the body, and, as we shall see later on, there are exceptional persons with whom this is the case; but for the great majority the physical brain is a necessity for the working of the objective mentality, and so when they are deprived of this instrument their life becomes purely subjective and is a sort of dream-life, only with a vast difference between two classes of dreamers--those who dream as they must and those who dream as they will. the former are those who have enslaved themselves in various ways to their lower mentality--some by bringing with them the memory of crimes unpardoned, some by bringing with them the idea of a merely animal life, others less degraded, but still in bondage to limited thought, bringing with them only the suggestion of a frivolous worldly life--in this way, by the natural operation of the law of suggestion, these different classes, either through remorse, or unsatisfied desires, or sheer incapacity to grasp higher principles, all remain earth-bound, suffering in exact correspondence with the nature of the suggestion they have brought along with them. the unchangeable law is that the suggestion becomes the life; and this is equally true of suggestions of a happier sort. those who have brought over with them the great truth that conditions are the creations of thought, and who have accustomed themselves while in objective life to dwell on good and beautiful ideas, are still able, by reason of being imbued with this suggestion, to mold the conditions of their consciousness in the subjective world in accordance with the sort of ideas which have become a second nature to them. within the limits of these ideas the dominant suggestion to these entities is that of a law which confers liberty, so by using this law of the constructive power of thought they can determine the conditions of their own consciousness; and thus instead of being compelled to suffer the nightmare dreams of the other class, they can mold their dream according to their will. we cannot conceive of such a life as theirs in the unseen as otherwise than happy, nevertheless its range is limited by the range of the conceptions they have brought with them. these may be exceedingly beautiful and thoroughly true and logical _as far as they go_; but they do not go the whole way, otherwise these spirits would not be in the category which we are considering but would belong to that still higher class who fully realize the ultimate possibilities which the law of the expression of spirit provides. the otherwise happy subjective life of these more enlightened souls has this radical defect that they have failed to bring over with them that power of original selection and initiative without which further progress is impossible. i wish the student to grasp this point very clearly, for it is of the utmost importance. of course the basis of our further evolution is conformity to the harmonious nature of the originating spirit; but upon this foundation we each have to build up the superstructure of our own individuality, and every step of advance depends on our personal development of power to take that step. this is what is meant by taking an initiative. it is making a new departure, not merely recombining the old things into fresh groupings still subject to the old laws, but introducing an entirely new element which will bring its own new law along with it. now if this is the true meaning of "initiative" then that is just the power which these otherwise happy souls do not possess. for by the very conditions of the case they are living only in their subjective consciousness, and consequently are living by the law of subjective mind; and one of the chief characteristics of subjective mind is its incapacity to reason inductively, and therefore its inability to make the selection and take the initiative necessary to inaugurate a new departure. the well established facts of mental law show conclusively that subjective mind argues only deductively. it argues quite correctly from any given premises, but it cannot take the initiative in selecting the premises--that is the province of inductive reasoning which is essentially the function of the objective mind. but by the law of auto-suggestion this discarnate individual has brought over his premises with him, which premises are the sum-total of his inductions made during objective life, the conception of things which he held at the time he passed over, for this constituted his idea of truth. now he cannot add to these inductions, for he has parted with his instrument for inductive reasoning, and therefore his deductive reasoning in the purely subjective state which he has now entered is necessarily limited to the consequences which may be deducted from the premises which he has brought along with him. in the case of the highly-developed individualities we are now considering the premises thus brought over are of a very far-reaching and beautiful character, and consequently the range of their subjective life is correspondingly wide and beautiful; but, nevertheless, it is subject to the radical defect that it is debarred from further progress for the simple reason that the individual has not brought over with him the mental faculty which can impress his subjective entity with the requisite forward movement for making a new departure into a new order. and moreover, the higher the subjective development with which the individual passed over the more likely he will be to realize this defect. if during earth-life he had gained sufficient knowledge of these things he will carry with him the knowledge that his discarnate existence is purely subjective; and therefore he will realize that, however he may be able to order the pictures of his dream, yet it is still but a dream, and in common with all other dreams lacks the basis of solidity from which to take _really creative action_. he knows also that the condition of other discarnate individualities is similar to his own, and that consequently each one must necessarily live in a world apart--a world of his own creation, because none of them possess the objective mentality by which to direct their subjective currents so as to make them penetrate into the sphere of another subjective entity, which is the _modus operandi_ of telepathy. thus he is conscious of his own inability to hold intercourse with other personalities; for though he may for his own pleasure create the semblance of them in his dream-life, yet he knows that these are creations of his own mind, and that while he appears to be conversing with a friend amid the most lovely surroundings the friend himself may be having experiences of a very different description. i am, of course, speaking now of persons who have passed over in a very high state of development and with a very considerable, though still imperfect, knowledge of the law of their own being. probably the majority take their dream-life for an external reality; and, in any case, all who have passed over without carrying their objective mentality along with them must be shut up in their individual subjective spheres and cease to function as centers of creative power so long as they do not emerge from that state. but the highly advanced individuals of whom i am now speaking have passed over with a true knowledge of the law of the relation between subjective and objective mind and have therefore brought with them a _subjective_ knowledge of this truth; and therefore, however otherwise in a certain sense happy, they must still be conscious of a fundamental limitation which prevents their further advance. and this consciousness can produce only one result, an ever-growing longing for the removal of this limitation--and this represents the intense desire of the spirit, as individualized in these souls, to attain to the conditions under which it can freely exercise its creative power. sub-consciously this is the desire of _all_ souls, for it is that continual pressing forward of the spirit for manifestation out of which the whole creative process arises; and so it is that the great cry perpetually ascends to god from all as yet undelivered souls, whether in or out of the body, for the deliverance which they knowingly or unknowingly desire. all this comes out of the well-ascertained facts of the law of relation between subjective and objective mind. then comes the question, is there no way of getting out of this law? the answer is that we can never get away from universal principles--_but we can specialise them_. we may take it as an axiom that any law which appears to limit us contains in itself the principle by which that limitation can be overcome, just as in the case of the flotation of iron. in this axiom, then, we shall find the clue which will bring us out of the labyrinth. the same law which places various degrees of limitation upon the souls that have passed into the invisible can be so applied as to set them free. we have seen that everything turns on the obligation of our subjective part to act within the limits of the suggestion which has been most deeply impressed upon it. then why not impress upon it the suggestion that in passing over to the other side it has brought its objective mentality along with it? if such a suggestion were effectively impressed upon our subjective mind, then by the fundamental law of our nature our subjective mind would act in strict accordance with this suggestion, with the result that the objective mind would no longer be separated from it, and that we should carry with us into the unseen our _whole_ mentality, both subjective and objective, and so be able to exercise our inductive powers of selection and initiative as well there as here. why not? the answer is that we cannot accept any suggestion unless we believe it to be true, and to believe it to be true we must feel that we have a solid foundation for our belief. if, then, we can find a sufficient foundation for adequately impressing this suggestion upon ourselves, then the principles of mental law assure us that we shall carry our objective faculty of initiative and selection into the unseen. therefore our quest is to find this foundation. then, since we cannot accept as true what we believe to be contrary to the ultimate law of the universe, if we are to find such a foundation at all it must be within that law; and it is for this reason that i have laid so much stress upon the normal standard of human individuality. when we are convinced that this ideal completeness is quite normal, and is a spiritual fact, not dependent upon the body, but able to control the body, then we have got the solid basis on which to carry our objective personality along with us into the unseen, and the well-established laws of our mental constitution justify the belief that we can do so. from these considerations it is obvious that those who thus pass over in possession of their complete mentality must be in a very different position from those who pass into a condition of merely subjective life, for they have brought their powers of selection and initiative with them, and can therefore employ their experiences in the unseen as a starting-point for still further development. so, then, the question arises, what lines will this further development be likely to follow? we are now considering the case of persons who have reached a very high degree of development; who have succeeded in so completely uniting the subjective and objective portions of their spiritual being into a perfect whole that they can never again be severed; and who are therefore able to function with their whole consciousness on the spiritual plane. such persons will doubtless be well aware that they have attained this degree of development by the law of the creative process working in terms of their own individuality, and so they would naturally always refer to the original cosmic creation as the demonstration of the principle which they have to specialize for their own further evolution. then they would find that the principle involved is that of the manifestation of spirit in form; and they would further see that this manifestation is not an illusion but a reality, for the simple reason that both mind and matter are equally projections from the great originating spirit. both alike are thoughts of the divine mind, and it is impossible to conceive any greater reality than the divine thought, or to get at any more substantial source of reality than that. even if we were to picture the divine mind as laughing at its productions as being mere illusions _relatively to itself_ (which i certainly do not), still the relation between the individual mind and material existence would be a reality for the individual, on the simple mathematical ground that like signs multiplied together invariably produce a positive result, even though the signs themselves be negative; so that, for us, at every stage of our existence substance must always be as much a reality as mind. therefore the manifestation of spirit in form is the eternal principle of the creative process whether in the evolution of a world-system or in that of an individual. but when we realize that by the nature of the creative process substance must be an eternal verity we must not suppose that this is true also of _particular forms_ or of _particular modes_ of matter. substance is a necessity for the expression of spirit, but it does not follow that spirit is tied down to any particular mode of expression. if you fold a piece of paper into the form of a dart it will fly through the air by the law of the form which you have given it. again, if you take the same bit of paper and fold it into the shape of a boat it will float on water by the law of the new form that you have given it. the thing formed will act in accordance with the form given it, and the same paper can be folded into different forms; but if there were no paper you could put it into any shape at all. the dart and the boat are both real so long as you retain the paper in either of those shapes; but this does not alter the fact that you can change the shapes, though your power to do so depends on the existence of the paper. this is a rough analogy of the relation between ultimate substance and particular forms, and shows us that neither substance nor shape is an illusion; both are essential to the manifestation of spirit, only by the nature of the creative process the spirit has power to determine what shape substance shall take at any particular time. accordingly we find the great law that, as spirit is the alpha of the creative process, so solid material form is its omega; in other words the creative series is incomplete until solid material form is reached. anything short of this is a condition of incompleteness, and therefore the enlightened souls who have passed over in possession of both sides of their mentality will realize that their condition, however beatific, is still one of incompleteness; and that what is wanted for completion is expression through a material body. this, then, is the direction in which such souls would use their powers of initiative and selection as being the true line of evolution--in a word they would realize that the principle of creative progression, when it reaches the level of fully developed mental man, necessarily implies the resurrection of the body, and that anything short of this would be retrogression and not progress. at the same time persons who had passed over with this knowledge would never suppose that resurrection meant merely the resuscitation of the old body under the old conditions; for they would see that the same inherent law which makes expression in concrete substance the ultimate of the creative series also makes this ultimate form depend on the originating movement of the spirit which produces it, and therefore that, although _some_ concrete form is essential for complete manifestation, and is a substantial reality so long as it is maintained, yet the maintaining of the particular form is entirely dependent on the action of the spirit of which the form is the external clothing. this resurrection body would therefore be no mere illusory spirit-shape, yet it would not be subject to the limitations of matter as we now know it: it would be physical matter still, but entirely subject to the will of the indwelling spirit, which would not regard the denser atomic relations of the body but only its absolute and essential nature as primary substance. i want the student to grasp the idea that the same thing may be very different when looked at, so to say, from opposite ends of the stick. what is solid molecular matter when viewed from the outside is plastic primary substance when viewed from the inside. the relations of this new body to any stimulus proceeding from outside would be those of the external laws of nature; but its relation to the spiritual ego working from within would be that of a plastic substance to be molded at will. the employment of such power would, however, at all times be based upon the reverent worship of the all-creating spirit; and it would therefore never be exercised otherwise than in accordance with the harmonious progress of the creative process. proceeding on these lines the spirit in the individual would stand in precisely the same relation to his body that the all-originating spirit does to the cosmos. this, then, is the sort of body which the instructed would contemplate as that in which he was to attain resurrection. he would regard it, not as an illusion, but as a great reality; while at the same time he would not need to trouble himself about its particular form, for he would know that it would be the perfect expression of his own conception of himself. he would know this because it is in accordance with the fundamental principle that external creation has its root in the self-contemplation of spirit. those passing over with this knowledge would obviously be in a very different position from those who passed over with only a subjective consciousness. they would bring with them powers of selection and initiative by which they could continue to impress fresh and expanding conceptions upon their subjective mind, and so cause it to carry on its work as the seed-ground of the whole individuality, instead of being shut up in itself as a mere circulus for the repetition of previously received ideas; and so in their recognition of the _principle_ of physical resurrection they would have a clear and definite line of auto-suggestion. and because this suggestion is derived from the undeniable facts of the whole cosmic creation, it is one which both subjective and objective mind can accept as an established fact, and so the suggestion becomes effective. this suggestion, then, becomes the self-contemplation of the individual spirit; and because it is in strict conformity with the generic principle of the original creative activity, of which the individual mind is itself a product, this becomes also the self-contemplation of the originating spirit as seeing itself reflected in the individual spirit; so that, by the basic law of the creative process, this suggestion is bound sooner or later to work out into its corresponding fact, namely, the production of a material body free from the power of death and from all those limitations which we now associate with our physical organism. this, then, is the hope of those who pass over in recognition of the great truth. but how about those who have passed over without that recognition? we have seen that their purely subjective condition precludes them from taking any initiative on their own account, for that requires the presence of objective mind. their subjective mind, however, still retains its essential nature; that is, it is still susceptible to suggestion, and still possesses its inherent creativeness in working out any suggestion that is sufficiently deeply implanted in it. here, then, opens up a vast field of activity for that other class who have passed over in possession of both sides of their mentality. by means of their powers of initiative and selection they can on the principle of telepathy cause their own subjective mind to penetrate the subjective spheres of those who do not possess those powers, and they can thus endeavor to impress upon them the great truth of the physical ultimate of the creative process--the truth that any series which stops short of that ultimate is incomplete, and, if insisted upon as being ultimate, must become self-destructive because in opposition to the inherent working of the universal creative spirit. then, as the perception of the true nature of the creative process dawned upon any subjective entity, it would by reason of accepting this suggestion begin to develop an objective mentality, and so would gradually attain to the same status as those who had passed over in full possession of all their mental powers. but the more the objective mentality became developed in these discarnate personalities the more the need of a corresponding physical instrument would assert itself, both from their intellectual perception of the original cosmic process, and also from the inherent energy of the spirit as centered in the ultimate ego of the individual. not to seek material manifestation would be the contrary of all we have traced out regarding the nature of the creative process; and hence the law of tendency resulting from the conscious union of subjective and objective mind in the individual must necessarily be toward the production of a physical form. only we must recollect, as i have already pointed out, that this concentration of these minds would be upon a principle and not upon a particular bodily shape. the particular form they would be content to leave to the inherent self-expressiveness of the universal spirit working through the particular ego, with the result that their expectation would be fixed upon a _general principle_ of physical resurrection which would provide a form suited to be the material instrument of the highest ideal of man as a spiritual and mental being. then, since the subjective mind is the automatic builder of the body, the result of the individual's acceptance of the resurrection principle must be that this mental conception will eventually work out as a corresponding fact. whether on this planet or on some other, matters not, for, as we have already seen, the physical body evolved by a soul that is conscious of its unity with the universal spirit is bound to be in conformity with the physical laws of _any_ planet, though from the standpoint of the conscious ego not limited by them. in this way we may conceive that those who have passed over in possession of both sides of their spiritual nature would find a glorious field of usefulness in the unseen in helping to emancipate those who had passed over in possession of their subjective side only. but from our present analysis it will be seen that this can only be effected on the basis of a recognition of the principle of the resurrection of the body. apart from the recognition of this principle the only possible conception which the discarnate individual could form of himself would be that of a purely subjective being; and this carries with it all the limitations of a subjective life unbalanced by an objective one; and so long as the principle of physical resurrection is denied, so long the life must continue to be merely subjective and consequently unprogressive.[ ] but it may be asked why those who have realized this great principle sufficiently to carry their objective mentality into the unseen state are liable to the change which we call death. the answer is that though they have realized _the general principle_ they have not yet divested themselves of certain conceptions by which they limit it, and consequently by the law of subjective mind they carry those limitations into the working of the resurrection principle itself. they are limited by the race-belief that physical death is under all conditions a necessary law of nature, or by the theological belief that death is the will of god; so then the question is whether these beliefs are well founded. of course appeal is made to universal experience, but it does not follow that the universal experience of the past is bound to be the universal experience of the future--the universal experience of the past was that no man had ever flown across the english channel, yet now it has been done. what we have to do, therefore, is not to bother about past experience, but to examine the inherent nature of the law of life and see whether it does not contain possibilities of further development. and the first step in this direction is to see whether what we have hitherto considered limitations of the law are really integral parts of the law itself. the very statement of this question shows the correct answer; for how can a force acting in one direction be an integral part of a force acting in the opposite direction? how can the force which pulls a thing down be an integral part of the force which builds it up? to suppose, therefore, that the limitations of the law are an integral portion of the law itself is a _reductio ad absurdum_. for these reasons the argument from the past experience of the race counts for nothing; and when we examine the theological argument we shall find that it is only the old argument from past experience in another dress. it is alleged that death is the will of god. how do we know that it is the will of god? because the facts prove it so, is the ultimate answer of all religious systems with one exception; so here we are back again at the old race-experience as the criterion of truth. therefore the theological argument is nothing but the materialistic argument disguised. it is in our more or less _conscious_ acceptance of the materialistic argument, under any of its many disguises, that the limitation of life is to be found--not in the law of life itself; and if we are to bring into manifestation the infinite possibilities latent in that law it can only be by looking steadily into the _principle_ of the law and resolutely denying everything that opposes it. the principle of life must of necessity be affirmative, and affirmative throughout, without any negative anywhere--if we once realize this we shall be able to unmask the enemy and silence his guns. now to do this is precisely the one object of the bible; and it does it in a thoroughly logical manner, always leading on to the ultimate result by successive links of cause and effect. people will tell you that the bible is their authority for saying that death is the will of god; but these are people who read it carelessly; and ultimately the only reason they can give you for their manner of interpreting the bible is that the facts prove their interpretation to be correct; so that in the last resort you will always find you have got back to the old materialistic argument from past race-experience, which logically proves nothing. these are good well-meaning people with a limited idea which they read into the bible, and so limit its promises by making physical death an essential preliminary to resurrection. they grasp, of course, the great central idea that perfected man possesses a joyous immortal life permeating spirit, soul and body; but they relegate it to some dim and distant future, entirely disconnected from the present law of our being, not seeing that if we are to have eternal life it must necessarily be involved in some principle which is eternal, and therefore existing, at any rate latently, at the present moment. hence, though their fundamental principle is true, they are all the time mentally limiting it, with the result that they themselves create the conditions they impose upon it, and consequently the principle will work (as principles always do) in accordance with the conditions provided for its action. unless, therefore, this limiting belief is entirely eradicated, the individual, though realizing the fundamental principle of life, is bound to pass out of physical existence; but on the other hand, since he does take the recognition of this fundamental principle with him, it is bound to bear fruit sooner or later in a joyous resurrection, while the intermediate state can only be a peaceful anticipation of that supreme event. this is the answer to the question why those who have realized the great principle sufficiently to carry their objective mentality into the unseen world are still liable to physical death; and in the last analysis it will be found to resolve itself into the remains of race belief based upon past experience. these are they who pass over in sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection--sure and certain because founded upon the very being of god himself, that inherent life of the all-creating divine spirit which is the perpetual interaction of the eternal love and beauty. they have grasped the life-giving truth, only they have postponed its operation, because they have the fixed idea that its present fruition is an absolute impossibility. but if we ask the reason for this idea it always comes back to the old materialistic argument from the experience of past conditions, while the whole nature of advance is in the opening up of new conditions. and in this advance the bible is the pioneer book. its whole purport is to tell us most emphatically that death is _not_ the will of god. in the story of eden god is represented as warning man of the poisonous nature of the forbidden fruit, which is incompatible with the idea of death as an essential feature of man's nature. then from the point where man has taken the poison all the rest of the bible is devoted to telling us how to get rid of it. christ, it tells us, was manifested to bring life and immortality to light--to abolish death--to destroy the works of the devil, that is the death-dealing power, for "he that hath the power of death is the devil." it is impossible to reconcile this life-giving conception of the bible with the idea that death at any stage or in any degree is the desire of god. let us, therefore, start with the recognition that this negative force, whether in its minor degrees as disease or in its culmination as death, is that which it is the will of god to abolish. this also is logical; for if god be the universal spirit of life finding manifestation in individual lives, how can the desire of this spirit be to act in opposition to its own manifestation? therefore scripture and common-sense alike assure us that the will of god toward us is life and not death.[ ] we may therefore start on our quest for life with the happy certainty that god is on our side. but people will meet us with the objection that though god wills life to us, he does not will it just yet, but only in some dim far-off future. how do we know this? certainly not from the bible. in the bible jesus speaks of two classes of persons who believe on him as the manifestation or individualisation of the spirit of life. he speaks of those who, having passed through death, still believe on him, and says that these _shall_ live--a future event. and at the same time he speaks of those who are living and believe on him, and says that they shall never die--thus contemplating the entire elimination of the contingency of death (john xi. ). again st. paul expresses his wish not to be unclothed but to be clothed upon, which he certainly would not have done had he considered the latter alternative a nonsensical fancy. and in another place he expressly states that we shall not all die, but that some shall be transmuted into the resurrection body without passing through physical death. and if we turn to the old testament we find two instances in which this is said to have actually occurred, those of enoch and elijah. and we may note in passing that the bible draws our attention to certain facts about these two personages which are important as striking at the root of the notion that austerities of some sort are necessary for the great attainment. of enoch we are expressly told that he was the father of a large family, and of elijah that he was a man of like nature with ourselves--thus showing us what is wanted is not a shutting of ourselves off from ordinary human life but such a clear realization of the universal principle, of which our personal life is the more or less conscious manifestation, that our commonest actions will be hallowed by the divine presence; and so the grand dénouement will be only the natural result of our daily habit of walking with god. from the stand-point of the bible, therefore, the attainment of physical regeneration without passing through death is not an impossibility, nor is it necessarily relegated to some far off future. whatever any one else may say to the contrary, the bible contemplates such a dénouement of human evolution as a present possibility. then if we argue from the philosophical stand-point we arrive at precisely the same result. past experience proves nothing, and we must therefore make a fresh start by going back to the original creative action of the spirit of life itself. then, if we take this as our starting point, remembering that at the stage of this _original_ movement there can be no intervention by a second power, because there is none, why should we mentally impose any restriction upon the action of the creative power? certainly not by its own law of tendency, for that must always be toward fuller self-expression; and since this can only take place through the individual, the desire of the spirit must always be toward the increasing of the individual life. nor yet from anything in the created substance, for that would either be to suppose the spirit creating something in limitation of its own self-expression, or else to suppose that the limiting substance was created by some other power working against the spirit; and as this would mean a duality of powers we should not have reached the originating power at all, and so we might put spirit and substance equally out of court as both being merely modes of secondary causation. but if we see that the universal substance must be created by emanation from the universal spirit, then we see that no limitation of spirit by substance is possible. we may therefore feel assured that no limitation proceeds either from the will of the spirit or from the nature of substance. where, then, does limitation come from? limiting conditions are created by the same power which creates everything else, namely, the self-contemplation of spirit. this is why it is so important to realize that the individual mind forms a center from which the self-contemplating action of spirit is specialized in terms of the individual's own mode of thinking, and therefore so long as the individual contemplates negative conditions as being _of the essence_ of his own personality, he is in effect employing the creative power of the self-contemplation of spirit invertedly, destructively instead of constructively. the law of the self-contemplation of spirit as the creative power is as true in the microcosm as in the macrocosm, and so the individual's contemplation of himself as subject to the law of sin and death keeps him subject to that law, while the opposite self-contemplation, the contemplation of himself as rejoicing in the life of the spirit, the perfect law of liberty, must necessarily produce the opposite results. why, then, should not regeneration be accomplished here and now? i can see no reason against it, either scriptural or philosophical, except our own difficulty in getting rid of the race-traditions which are so deeply embedded in our subjective minds. to get rid of these we require a firm basis on which to receive the opposite suggestion. we need to be convinced that our ideal of a regenerated self is in accord with the normal standard of humanity and is within the scope of the laws of the universe. now to make clear to us the _infinitude_ of the truly normal standard of humanity is the whole purpose of the bible; and the manifestation of this standard is set before us in the central personality of the scriptures who is at once the son of god and the son of man--the great exception, if you will, to man as we know him now, but the exception which proves the rule. in proportion as we begin to realize this we begin to introduce into our own life the action of that personal factor on which all further development depends; and when our recognition is complete we shall find that we also are children of god. chapter ix conclusion we are now in a position to see the place occupied by the individual in the creative order. we have found that the originating and maintaining force of the whole creative process is the self-contemplation of the spirit, and that this necessarily produces a reciprocal corresponding to the idea embodied in the contemplation, and thus manifesting that idea in a correlative form. we have found that in this way the externalization of the idea progresses from the condensation of the primary nebula to the production of human beings as a race, and that at this point the simple _generic_ reproduction of the idea terminates. this means that up to, and including, _genus homo_, the individual, whether plant, animal, or man, is what it is simply by reason of race conditions and not by exercise of deliberate choice. then we have seen that the next step in advance must necessarily be by the individual becoming aware that he has power to mold the conditions of his own consciousness and environment by the creative power of his thought; thus not only enabling him to take a conscious part in his own further evolution but precluding him from evolving any further except by the right exercise of this power; and we have found that the crux of the passage from the fourth to the fifth kingdom is to get people so to understand the nature of their creative power as not to use it destructively. now what we require to see is that the creative process has always only one way of working, and that is by reciprocity or reflection, or, as we might say, by the law of action and re-action, the re-action being always equivalent and correspondent to the action which generated it. if this law of reciprocity be grasped then we see how the progress of the creative process must at length result in producing a being who himself possesses the power of independent spiritual initiative and is thus able to carry on the creative work from the stand-point of his own individuality. now the great crux is first to get people to see that they possess this power at all, and then to get them to use it in the right direction. when our eyes begin to open to the truth that we do possess this power the temptation is to ignore the fact that our power of initiative is itself a product of the similar power subsisting in the all-originating spirit. if this origin of our own creative faculty is left out of sight we shall fail to recognize the livingness of the greater life within which we live. we shall never get nearer to it than what we may call its _generic_ level, the stage at which the creative power is careful of the type or race but is careless of the individual; and so at this level we shall never pass into the fifth kingdom which is the kingdom of individuality--we have missed the whole point of the transition to the more advanced mode of being, in which the individual consciously functions as a creative center, because we have no conception of a universal power that works at any higher level than the generic, and consequently to reach a specific personal exercise of creative power we should have to conceive of ourselves as transcending the universal law. but if we realize that our own power of creative initiative has its origin in the similar faculty of the all-originating mind then we see that the way to maintain the life-giving energy in ourselves is to use our power of spiritual initiative so as to impress upon the spirit the conception of ourselves as standing related to it in a specific, individual, and personal way that takes us out of the mere category of _genus homo_ and gives us a specific spiritual individuality of our own. thus our mental action produces a corresponding re-action in the mind of the spirit, which in its turn reproduces itself as a special manifestation of the life of the spirit in us; and so long as this circulation between the individual spirit and the great spirit is kept up, the individual life will be maintained, and will also strengthen as the circulation continues, for the reason that the spirit, as the original creative power, is a multiplying force, and the current sent into it is returned multiplied, just as in telegraphy the feeble current received from a distance at the end of a long line operates to start a powerful battery in the receiving office, which so multiplies the force as to give out a clear message, which but for the multiplication of the original movement could not have been done. something like this we may picture the multiplying tendency of the originating mind, and consequently the longer the circulation between it and the individual mind goes on the stronger the latter becomes; and this process growing habitual becomes at last automatic, thus producing an endless flow of life continually expanding in intelligence, love, power and joy. but we must note carefully that all this can only proceed from the individual's recognition that his own powers are a derivative from the all-originating spirit, and that they can continue to be used constructively only so long as they are employed in harmony with the inherent forward movement of the spirit. therefore to insure this eternally flowing stream of life from the universal spirit into the individual there must be _no inversion_ in the individual's presentation of himself to the originating power: for through the very same law by which we seek life--the life namely, of reciprocal action and re-action--every inversion we bring with us in presenting ourselves to the spirit is bound to be faithfully reproduced in a corresponding re-action, thus adulterating the stream of pure life, and rendering it less life-giving in proportion to the extent to which we invert the action of the life-principle; so that in extreme cases the stream flowing through and from the individual may be rendered absolutely poisonous and deadly, and the more so the greater his recognition of his own personal power to employ spiritual forces. the existence of these negative possibilities in the spiritual world should never be overlooked, and therefore the essential condition for receiving the perfect fulness of life is that we should present ourselves before the eternal spirit free from every trace of inversion. to do this means to present ourselves in the likeness of the divine ideal; and in this self-presentation the initiative, so far as the individual is consciously concerned, must necessarily be taken by himself. he is to project into the eternal mind the conception of himself as identical with its eternal ideal; and if he can do this, then by the law of the creative process a return current will flow from the eternal mind reproducing this image in the individual with a continually growing power. then the question is, how are we to do this? the answer is that to take the initiative for inducing this flow of life individually it is a _sine qua non_ that the conditions enabling us to do so should first be presented to us universally. this is in accordance with the general principle that we can never create a force but can only specialize it. only here the power we are wanting to specialize is the very power of specialization itself; and therefore, paradoxical as it may seem, what we require to have shown us is the universality of specialization. now this is what the bible puts before us in its central figure. taking the bible statements simply and literally they show us this unique personality as the principle of humanity, alike in its spiritual origin and its material manifestation, carried to the logical extreme of specialization; while at the same time, as the embodiment of the original polarity of spirit and substance, this personality, however unique, is absolutely universal; so that the bible sets jesus christ before us as the answer to the philosophic problem of how to specialize the universal, while at the same time preserving its universality. if, then, we fix our thought upon this unique personality as the embodiment of _universal_ principles, it follows that those principles must exist in ourselves also, and that his actual specialization of them is the earnest of our potential specialization of them. then if we fix our thought on this potential in ourselves as being identical with its manifestation in him, we can logically claim our identity with him, so that what he has done we have done, what he is, we are, and thus recognizing ourselves in him we present _this_ image of ourselves to the eternal mind, with the result that we bring with us no inversion, and so import no negative current into our stream of life. thus it is that we reach "the father" through "the son," and that he is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before the presence of the divine glory with exceeding joy (jude ). the gospel of "the word made flesh" is not the meaningless cant of some petty sect nor yet the cunning device of priestcraft, though it has been distorted in both these directions; but it can give a reason for itself, and is founded upon the deepest laws of the threefold constitution of man, embracing the _whole_ man, body, soul and spirit. it is not opposed to science but is the culmination of all science whether physical or mental. it is philosophical and logical throughout if you start the creative process where alone it can start, in the self-contemplation of the spirit. the more carefully we examine into the claims of the gospel of christ the more we shall find all the current objections to it melt away and disclose their own superficialness. we shall find that christ is indeed the mediator between god and man, not by the arbitrary fiat of a capricious deity, but by a logical law of sequence which solves the problem of making extremes meet, so that the son of man is also the son of god; and when we see the reason why this is so we thereby receive power to become ourselves sons of god, which is the dénouement of the creative process in the individual. these closing lines are not the place to enter upon so great a subject, but i hope to follow it up in another volume and to show in detail the logic of the bible teaching, what it saves us from and what it leads us to; to show while giving due weight to the value of other systems how it differs from them and transcends them; to glance, perhaps, for a moment at the indications of the future and to touch upon some of the dangers of the present and the way to escape from them. nor would i pass over in silence another and important aspect of the gospel contained in christ's commission to his followers to heal the sick. this also follows logically from the law of the creative process if we trace carefully the sequence of connections from the indwelling ego to the outermost of its vehicles; while the effect of the recognition of these great truths upon the individuality that has for a time put off its robe of flesh, opens out a subject of paramount interest. thus it is that on every plane christ is the fulfilling of the law, and that "salvation" is not a silly shiboleth but the logical and vital process of our advance into the unfoldment of the next stage of the limitless capacities of our being. of these things i hope to write in another volume, should it be permitted to me, and in the meanwhile i would commend the present abstract statement of principles to the reader's attention in the hope that it may throw some light on the fundamental nature of these momentous questions. the great thing to bear in mind is that if a thing is true at all there must be a reason why it is true, and when we come to see this reason we know the truth at first hand for ourselves and not from some one else's report--then it becomes really our own and we begin to learn how to use it. this is the secret of the individual's progress in any art, science, or business, and the same method will serve equally well in our search after life itself, and as we thus follow up the great quest we shall find that on every plane the way, the truth, and the life are one. "a little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."--_bacon. essay xvi_. chapter x the divine offering i take the present opportunity of a new edition to add a few pages on certain points which appear to me of vital importance, and the connection of which with the preceding chapters will, i hope, become evident as the reader proceeds. assuming the existence in each individual of a creative power of thought which, in relation to himself, reflects the same power existing in the universal mind, our right employment of this power becomes a matter of extreme moment to ourselves. its inverted use necessarily holds us fast in the bondage from which we are seeking to escape, and equally necessarily its right use brings us into liberty; and therefore if any divine revelation exists at all its purpose must be to lead us away from the inverted use of our creative faculty and into such a higher specializing of it as will produce the desired result. now the purpose of the bible is to do this, and it seeks to effect this work by a dual operation. it places before us that divine ideal of which i have already spoken, and at the same time bases this ideal upon the recognition of a divine sacrifice. these two conceptions are so intimately interwoven in scripture that they cannot be separated, but at the present day there _is_ a growing tendency to attempt to make this separation and to discard the conception of a divine sacrifice as unphilosophical, that is as having no nexus of cause and effect. what i want, therefore, to point out in these additional pages is that there is such a nexus, and that so far from being without a sequence of cause and effect it has its root in the innermost principles of our own being. it is not contrary to law but proceeds from the very nature of the law itself. the current objection to the bible teaching on this subject is that no such sacrifice could have been required by god, either because the originating energy can have no consciousness of personality and is only a blind force, or because, if "god is love," he could not demand such a sacrifice. on the former hypothesis we are of course away from the bible teaching altogether and have nothing to do with it; but, as i have said elsewhere, the fact of our own consciousness of personality can only be accounted for by the existence, however hidden, of a corresponding quality in the originating spirit. therefore i will confine my remarks to the question how love, as the originating impulse of all creation, can demand such a sacrifice. and to my mind the answer is that god does not demand it. it is man who demands it. it is the instinctive craving of the human soul for _certainty_ that requires a demonstration so convincing as to leave no room for doubt of our perfectly happy relation to the supreme spirit, and consequently to all that flows from it, whether on the side of the visible or of the invisible. when we grasp the fact that such a standpoint of certainty is the necessary foundation for the building up in ourselves of the divine ideal then it becomes clear that to afford us this firm basis is the greatest work that the spirit, in its relation to human personality, could do. we are often told that the offering of sacrifices had its origin in primitive man's conception of his gods as beings which required to be propitiated so as to induce them to do good or abstain from doing harm; and very likely this was the case. the truth at the back of this conception is the feeling that there is a higher power upon which man is dependent; and the error is in supposing that this power is limited by an individuality which can be enriched by selling its good offices, or which blackmails you by threats. in either case it wants to get something out of you, and from this it follows that its own power of supplying its own wants must be limited, otherwise it would not require to be kept in good temper by gifts. in very undeveloped minds such a conception results in the idea of numerous gods, each having, so to say, his own particular line of business; and the furthest advance this mode of thought is capable of is the reduction of these various deities to two antagonistic powers of good and of evil. but the result in either case is the same, so long as we start with the hypothesis that the good will do us more good and the evil do us less harm by reason of our sacrifices, for then it logically follows that the more valuable your sacrifices and the oftener they are presented the better chance you have of good luck. doubtless some such conception as this was held by the mass of the hebrew people under the sacrificial system of the levitical law, and perhaps this was one reason why they were so prone to fall into idolatry--for in this view their fundamental notion was practically identical in its nature with that of the heathen around them. of course this was not the fundamental idea embodied in the levitical system itself. the root of that system was the symbolizing of a supreme ideal of reconciliation hereafter to be manifested in action. now a symbol is not the thing symbolized. the purpose of a symbol is twofold, to put us upon enquiry as to the reality which it indicates, and to bring that reality to our minds by suggestion when we look at the symbol; but if it does not do this, and we rest only in the symbol, nothing will come of it, and we are left just where we were. that the symbolic nature of the levitical sacrifice was clearly perceived by the deeper thinkers among the hebrews is attested by many passages in the bible--"sacrifice and burnt offering thou wouldest not" (psalms xl: , and li: ) and other similar utterances; and the distinction between these symbols and that which they symbolized is brought out in the epistle to the hebrews by the argument that if those sacrifices had afforded a sufficient standpoint for the effectual realization of cleansing then the worshiper would not need to have repeated them because he would have no more consciousness of sin (hebrews x: ). this brings us to the essential point of the whole matter. what we want is the certainty that there is no longer any separation between us and the divine spirit by reason of sin, either as overt acts of wrong doing or as error of principle; and the whole purpose of the bible is to lead us to this assurance. now such an assurance cannot be based on any sort of sacrifices that require repetition, for then we could never know whether we had given enough either in quality or quantity. it must be a once-for-all business or it is no use at all; and so the bible makes the once-for-allness of the offering the essential point of its teaching. "he that has been bathed does not need to be bathed again" (john xiii: ). "there is now no condemnation to them which are in christ jesus" (romans viii: i). various intellectual difficulties, however, hinder many people from seeing the working of the law of cause and effect in this presentment. one is the question, how can moral guilt be transferred from one person to another? what is called the "forensic" argument (i.e., the court of law argument) that christ undertook to suffer in our stead as our _surety_ is undoubtedly open to this objection. suretyship must by its very nature be confined to civil obligations and cannot be extended to criminal liability, and so the "forensic" argument may be set aside as very much a legal fiction. but if we realize the bible teaching that christ is the son of god, that is, the divine principle of humanity out of which we originated and subsisting in us all, however unconsciously to ourselves, then we see that sinners as well as saints are included in this principle; and consequently that the self-offering of christ must actually include the self-offering of every human being in the acknowledgment (however unknown to his _objective_ mentality) of his sin. if we can grasp this somewhat abstract point of view it follows that in the person of christ every human being, past, present, and to come, was self-offered for the condemnation of his sin--a _self_- condemnation and a _self_-offering, and hence a cleansing, for the simple reason that if you can get a man to realize his past error, really see his mistake, he won't do it again; and it is the perpetuation of sin and error that has to be got rid of--to do this universally would be to regain paradise. seen therefore in this light there is no question of transference of moral guilt, and i take it this is st. paul's meaning when he speaks of our being partakers in christ's death. then there is the objection, how can past sins be done away with? if we accept the philosophical conclusion that time has no substantive existence then all that remains is states of consciousness. as i have said in the earlier part of this book, the self-contemplation of spirit is the cause of all our perception of existence and environment; and consequently if the self-contemplation of the spirit from any center of individualization is that of entire harmony and the absence of anything that would cause any consciousness of separation, then past sins cease to have any part in this self-recognition, and consequently cease to have any place in the world of existence. the foundation of the whole creative process is the calling into light out of darkness--"that which makes manifest is light"--and consequently the converse action is that of sending out of light into darkness, that is, into notbeing. now this is exactly what the spirit says in the bible--"i, even i, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions" (isaiah xliii: ). blotting out is the sending out of manifestation into the darkness of non-manifestation, out of being into not-being; and in this way the past error ceases to have any existence and so ceases to have any further effect upon us. it is "blotted out," and from this new standpoint has never been at all; so that to continue to contemplate it is to give a false sense of existence to that which in effect has no existence. it is that affirmation of negation which is the root of all evil. it is the inversion of our god-given creative power of thought, calling into existence that which in the perfect life of the spirit never had or could have any existence, and therefore it creates the sense of inharmony, opposition, and separation. of course this is only relatively to ourselves, for we cannot create eternal principles. they are the being of god; and as i have already shown these great principles of the affirmative may be summed up in the two words love and beauty--love in essence and beauty in manifestation; but since we can only live from the standpoint of our own consciousness we can make a false creation built upon the idea of opposites to the all-creating love and beauty, which false creation with all its accompaniments of limitation, sin, sorrow, sickness, and death, must necessarily be real to us until we perceive that these things were not created by god, the spirit of the affirmative, but by our own inversion of our true relation to the all-creating being. when, then, we view the matter in this light the offering once for all of the divine sacrifice for the sin of the whole world is seen not to be a mere ecclesiastical dogma having no relation of cause and effect, but to be the highest application of the same principle of cause and effect by which the whole creation, ourselves included, has been brought into existence-- the self-contemplation of spirit producing corresponding manifestation, only now working on the level of individual personality. as i have shown at the beginning of this book the cosmic manifestation of principles is not sufficient to bring out all that there is in them. to do this their action must be specialized by the introduction of the personal factor. they are represented by the pillar jachin, but it must be equilibriated by the pillar boaz, law and personality the two pillars of the universe; and in the one offering we have the supreme combination of these two principles, the highest specialization of law by the highest power of personality. these are eternal principles, and therefore we are told that the lamb was slain from the foundation of the world; and because "thoughts are things" this supreme manifestation of the creative interaction of law and personality was bound eventually to be manifested in concrete action in the world conditioned by time and space; and so it was that the supreme manifestation of the love of god to meet the supreme need of man took place. the history of the jewish nation is the history of the working of the law of cause and effect, under the guidance of the divine wisdom, so as to provide the necessary conditions for the greatest event in the world's history; for if christ was to appear it must be in _some_ nation, in _some_ place, and at _some_ time: but to trace the steps by which, through an intelligible sequence of causes, these necessary conditions were provided belongs rather to an investigation of bible history than to our present purpose, so i will not enter into these details here. but what i hope i have in some measure made clear is that there is a reason why christ should be manifested, and should suffer, and rise again, and that so far from being a baseless superstition the reconciling of the world to god through the one offering once-for-all offered for the sin of the whole world, lays the immovable foundation upon which we may build securely for all the illimitable future. chapter xi ourselves in the divine offering if we have grasped the principle i have endeavored to state in the last chapter we shall find that with this new standpoint a new life and a new world begin to open out to us. this is because we are now living from a new recognition of ourselves and of god. eternal truth, that which is the essential reality of being, is _always_ the same; it has never altered, for whatever is capable of passing away and giving place to something else is not eternal, and therefore the real essence of our being, as proceeding from god and subsisting in him has always been the same. but this is the very fact which we have hitherto lost sight of; and since our perception of life is the measure of our individual consciousness of it, we have imposed upon ourselves a world of limitation, a world filled with the power of the negative, because we have viewed things from that standpoint. what takes place, therefore, when we realize the truth of our redemption is not a change in our essential relation to the parent spirit, the eternal father, but an awakening to the perception of this eternal and absolutely perfect relation. we see that in reality it has never been otherwise for the simple reason that in the very nature of being it _could_ not be otherwise; and when we see this we see also that what has hitherto been wrong has not been the working of "the father" but our conception of the existence of some other power, a power of negation, limitation, and destructiveness, the very opposite to all that the creative spirit, by the very fact of its creativeness, must be. that wonderful parable of the prodigal son shows us that he never ceased to be a son. it was not his father who sent him away from home but his notion that he could do better "on his own," and we all know what came of it. but when he returned to the father he found that from the father's point of view he had never been otherwise than a son, and that all the trouble he had gone through was not "of the father" but was the result of his own failure to realize what the father and the home really were.[ ] now this is exactly the case with ourselves. when we wake up to the truth we find that, so far as the father is concerned, we have always been in him and in his home, for we are made in his image and likeness and are reflections of his own being. he says to us "son, thou art ever with me and all that i have is thine." the self-contemplation of spirit is the creative power creating an environment corresponding to the mode of consciousness contemplated, and therefore in proportion as we contemplate ourselves as centers of individualization for the divine spirit we find ourselves surrounded by a new environment reflecting the harmonious conditions which preexist in the thought of the spirit. this, then, is the sequence of cause and effect involved in the teaching of the bible. man is _in essence_ a spiritual being, the reflection on the plane of individual personality of that which the all-originating spirit is in itself, and is thus in that reciprocal relation to the spirit which is love. this is the first statement of his creation in genesis--god saw all that he had made and behold it was very good, man included. then the fall is the failure of the lower mentality to realize that god is love, in a word that love is the only ultimate motive power it is possible to conceive, and that the creations of love cannot be otherwise than good and beautiful. the lower mentality conceives an opposite quality of evil and thus produces a motive power the opposite of love, which is fear; and so fear is born into the world giving rise to the whole brood of evil, anger, hatred, envy, lies, violence, and the like, and on the external plane giving rise to discordant vibrations which are the root of physical ill. if we analyze our motives we shall find that they are always some mode either of love or fear; and fear has its root in the recognition of some power other than perfect love, which is god the one all-embracing good. fear has a creative force which invertedly mimics that of love; but the difference between them is that love is eternal and fear is not. love as the original creative motive is the only logical conclusion we can come to as to why we ourselves or any other creation exists. fear is illogical because to regard it as having any place in the original creative motive involves a contradiction in terms. by accepting the notion of a dual power, that of good _and_ evil, the inverted creative working of fear is introduced with all its attendant train of evil things. this is the eating of the deadly tree which occasions the fall, and therefore the redemption which requires to be accomplished is a redemption from fear--not merely from this or that particular fear but from the very root of fear, which root is unbelief in the love of god, the refusal to believe that love alone is the creating power in all things, whether small beyond our recognition or great beyond our conception. therefore to bring about this redemption there must be such a manifestation of the divine love to man as, when rightly apprehended, will leave no ground for fear; and when we see that the sacrifice of the cross was the self-offering of love made in order to provide this manifestation, then we see that all the links in the chain of cause and effect are complete, and that fear never had any place in the creative principle, whether as acting in the creation of a world or of a man. the root, therefore, of all the trouble of the world consists in the affirmation of negation, in using our creative power of thought invertedly, and thus giving substance to that which _as principle_ has no existence. so long as this negative action of thought continues so long will it produce its natural effect; whether in the individual or in the mass. the experience is perfectly real while it lasts. its unreality consists in the fact that there was never any real need for it; and the more we grasp the truth of the all-embracingness of the one good, both as cause and as effect, on all planes, the more the experience of its opposite will cease to have any place in our lives. this truly new thought puts us in an entirely new relation to the whole of our environment, opening out possibilities hitherto undreamt of, and this by an orderly sequence of law which is naturally involved in our new mental attitude; but before considering the prospect thus offered it is well to be quite clear as to what this new mental attitude really is; for it is our adoption of this attitude that is the key to the whole position. put briefly it is ceasing to include the idea of limitations in our conception of the working of the all-creating spirit. here are some specimens of the way in which we limit the creative working of the spirit. we say, i am too old now to start this or that new sort of work. this is to deny the power of the spirit to vivify our physical or mental faculties, which is illogical if we consider that it is the same spirit that brought us into any existence at all. it is like saying that when a lamp is beginning to burn low the same person who first filled it with oil cannot replenish it and make it burn brightly again. or we say, i cannot do so and so because i have not the means. when you were fourteen did you know where all the means were coming from which were going to support you till now when you are perhaps forty or fifty? so you should argue that the same power that has worked in the past can continue to work in the future. if you say the means came in the past quite naturally through ordinary channels, that is no objection; on the contrary the more reason for saying that suitable channels will open in the future. do you expect god to put cash into your desk by a conjuring trick? means come through recognizable channels, that is to say we recognize the channels by the fact of the stream flowing through them; and one of our most common mistakes is in thinking that we ourselves have to fix the particular channel beforehand. we say in effect that the spirit cannot open other channels, and so we stop them up. or we say, our past experience speaks to the contrary, thus assuming that our past experiences have included all possibilities and have exhausted the laws of the universe, an assumption which is negatived by every fresh discovery even in physical science. and so we go on limiting the power of the spirit in a hundred different ways. but careful consideration will show that, though the modes in which we limit it are as numerous as the circumstances with which we have to deal, the thing with which we limit it is always the same--it is by the introduction of our own personality. this may appear at first a direct contradiction of all that i have said about the necessity for the personal factor, but it is not. here is a paradox. to open out into manifestation the wonderful possibilities hidden in the creative power of the universe we require to do two things--to see that we ourselves are necessary as centers for focussing that power, and at the same time to withdraw the thought of ourselves as contributing anything to its efficiency. it is not i that work but the power; yet the power needs me because it cannot specialize itself without me--in a word each is the complementary of the other: and the higher the degree of specialization is to be the more necessary is the intelligent and willing co-operation of the individual. this is the scriptural paradox that "the son can do nothing of himself," and yet we are told to be "fellow-workers with god." it ceases to be a paradox, however, when we realize the relation between the two factors concerned, god and man. our mistake is in not discriminating between their respective functions, and putting man in the place of god. in our everyday life we do this by measuring the power of god by our past experiences and the deductions we draw from them; but there is another way of putting man in the place of god, and that is by the misconception that the all-originating spirit is merely a cosmic force without intelligence, and that man has to originate the intelligence without which no specific purpose can be conceived. this latter is the error of much of the present day philosophy and has to be specially guarded against. this was perceived by some of the medieval students of these things, and they accordingly distinguished between what they called animus dei and anima mundi, the divine spirit and the soul of the universe. now the distinction is this, that the essential quality of animus dei is personality--not a person, but the very principle of personality itself--while the essential quality of anima mundi is impersonality. then right here comes in that importance of the personal factor of which i have already spoken. the powers latent in the impersonal are brought out to their fullest development by the operation of the personal. this of course does not consist in changing the nature of those powers, for that is impossible, but in making such combinations of them by personal selection as to produce results which could not otherwise be obtained. thus, for example, number is in itself impersonal and no one can alter the laws which are inherent in it; but what we can do is to select particular numbers and the sort of relation, such as subtraction, multiplication, etc., which we will establish between them; and then by the inherent law of number a certain result is bound to work out. now our own essential quality is the consciousness of personality; and as we grow into the recognition of the fact that the impersonal is, as it were, crying out for the operation upon it of the personal in order to bring its latent powers into working, we shall see how limitless is the field that thus opens before us. the prospect is wonderful beyond our present conception, and full of increasing glory if we realize the true foundation on which it rests. but herein lies the danger. it consists in not realizing that the infinite of the impersonal _is_ and also that the infinite of the personal _is_. both are infinite and so require differentiation through our own personality, but in their essential quality each is the exact balance of the other--not in contradiction to each other, but as complementary to one another, each supplying what the other needs for its full expression, so that the two together make a perfect whole. if, however, we see this relation and our own position as the connecting link between them, we shall see only ourselves as the personal factor; but the more we realize, both by theory and experience, the power of human personality brought into contact with the impersonal soul of nature, and employed with a knowledge of its power and a corresponding exercise of the will, the less we shall be inclined to regard ourselves as the supreme factor in the chain of cause and effect consideration of this argument points to the danger of much of the present day teaching regarding the exercise of thought power as a creative agency. the principle on which this teaching is based is sound and legitimate for it is inherent in the nature of things; but the error is in supposing that we ourselves are the ultimate source of personality instead of merely the distributors and specializers of it. the logical result of such a mental attitude is that putting ourselves in the place of all that is worshiped as god which is spoken of in the second chapter of the second epistle to the thessalonians and other parts of scripture. by the very hypothesis of the case we then know no higher will than our own, and so are without any unifying principle to prevent the conflict of wills which must then arise--a conflict which must become more and more destructive the greater the power possessed by the contending parties, and which, if there were no counterbalancing power, must result in the ultimate destruction of the existing race of men. but there is a counterbalancing power. it is the very same power used affirmatively instead of negatively. it is the power of the personal with the impersonal when used under the guidance of that unifying principle which the recognition of the one-ness of the personal quality in the divine spirit supplies. those who are using the creative power of thought only from the standpoint of individual personality, have obviously less power than those who are using it from the standpoint of the personality inherent in the living spirit which is the source and fountain of all energy and substance, and therefore in the end the victory must remain with these latter. and because the power by which they conquer is that of the unifying personality itself their victory must result in the establishment of peace and happiness throughout the world, and is not a power of domination but of helpfulness and enlightenment. the choice is between these two mottoes:-- "each for himself and devil take the hindmost," or "god for us all." in proportion, therefore, as we realize the immense forces dormant in the impersonal soul of nature, only awaiting the introduction of the personal factor to wake them up into activity and direct them to specific purposes, the wider we shall find the scope of the powers within the reach of man; and the more clearly we perceive the impersonalness of the very principle of personality itself, the clearer our own proper position as affording the differentiating medium between these two infinitudes will become to us. the impersonalness of the principle of personality looks like a contradiction in terms, but it is not. i combine these two seemingly contradictory terms as the best way to convey to the reader the idea of the essential quality of personality not yet differentiated into individual centers of consciousness for the doing of particular work. looked at in this way the infinite of personality must have unity of purpose for its foundation, for otherwise it would consist of conflicting personalities, in which case we have not yet reached the one all-originating cause. or to put it in another way, an infinite personality divided against itself would be an infinite insanity, a creator of a cosmic bedlam which, as a scientific fact, would be impossible of existence. therefore the conception of an infinite of personality necessarily implies a perpetual unity of purpose; and for the same reason this purpose can only be the fuller and fuller expression of an infinite unity of consciousness; and unity of consciousness necessarily implies the entire absence of all that would impair it, and therefore its expression can only be as universal harmony. if, then, the individual realizes this true nature of the source from which his own consciousness of personality is derived his ideas and work will be based upon this foundation, with the result that as between ourselves peace and good will towards men must accompany this mode of thought, and as between us and the strictly impersonal soul of nature our increasing knowledge in that direction would mean increasing power for carrying out our principle of peace and good will. as this perception of our relation to the spirit of god and the soul of nature spreads from individual to individual so the kingdom of god will grow, and its universal recognition would be the establishing of the kingdom of heaven on earth. perhaps the reader will ask why i say the soul of nature instead of saying the material universe. the reason is that in using our creative power of thought we do not operate directly upon material elements--to do that is the work of construction from without and not of creation from within. the whole tendency of modern physical science is to reduce all matter in the final analysis to energy working in a primary ether. whence this energy and this ether proceed is not the subject of physical analysis. that is a question which cannot be answered by means of the vacuum tube or the spectroscope. physical science is doing its legitimate work in pushing further and further back the unanalyzable residuum of nature, but, however far back, an ultimate unanalyzable residuum there must always be; and when physical science brings us to this point it hands us over to the guidance of psychological investigation just as in the divina commedia virgil transfers dante to the guidance of beatrice for the study of the higher realms. various rates of rapidity of motion in this primary ether, producing various numerical combinations of positively and negatively electrified particles, result in the formation of what we know as the different chemical elements, and thus explains the phenomena of their combining quantities, the law by which they join together to form new substances only in certain exact numerical ratios. from the first movement in the primary ether to solid substances, such as wood or iron or our own flesh, is thus a series of vibrations in a succession of mediums, each denser than the preceding one out of which it was concreted and from which it receives the vibratory impulse. this is in effect what physical science has to tell us. but to get further back we must look into the world of the invisible, and it is here that psychological study comes to our aid. we cannot, however, study the invisible side of nature by working from the outside and so at this point of our studies we find the use of the time-honored teaching regarding the parallelism between the macrocosm and the microcosm. if the microcosm is the reproduction in ourselves of the same principles as exist in the macrocosm or universe in which we have our being, then by investigating ourselves we shall learn the nature of the corresponding invisible principles in our environment. here, then, is the application of the dictum of the ancient philosophy, "know thyself." it means that the only place where we can study the principles of the invisible side of nature is in ourselves; and when we know them there we can transfer them to the larger world around us. in the concluding chapters of my "edinburgh lectures on mental science" i have outlined the way in which the soul or mind operates upon the physical instrument of its expression, and it resolves itself into this--that the mental action inaugurates a series of vibrations in the etheric body which, in their turn, induce corresponding grosser vibrations in the molecular substance until finally mechanical action is produced on the outside. now transferring this idea to nature as a whole we shall see that if our mental action is to affect it in any way it can only be by the response of something at the back of material substance analogous to mind in ourselves; and that there is such a "something" interior to the merely material side of nature is proved by what we may call the law of tendency, not only in animals and plants, but even in inorganic substances, as shown for instance in professor bose's work on the response of metals. the universal presence of this law of tendency therefore indicates the working of some non-material and, so to say, semi-intelligent power in the material world, a power which works perfectly accurately on its own lines so far as it goes, that is to say in a generic manner, but which does not possess that personal power of _individual selection_ which is necessary to bring out the infinite possibilities hidden in it. this is what is meant by the soul of nature, and it is for this reason i employ that term instead of saying the material universe. which term to employ all depends on the mode of action we are contemplating. if it is construction from without, then we are dealing with the purely material universe. if we are seeking to bring about results by the exercise of our mental power from within, then we are dealing with the soul of nature. it is that control of the lower degree of intelligence by the higher of which i have spoken in my edinburgh lectures. if we realize what i have endeavored to make clear in the earlier portion of this book, that the whole creation is produced by the operation of the divine will upon the soul of nature, it will be evident that we can set no limits to the potencies hidden in the latter and capable of being brought out by the operation of the personal factor upon it; therefore, granted a sufficiently powerful concentration of will, whether by an individual or a group of individuals, we can well imagine the production of stupendous effects by this agency, and in this way i would explain the statements made in scripture regarding the marvelous powers to be exercised by the anti-christ, whether personal or collective. they are psychic powers, the power of the soul of man over the soul of nature. but the soul of nature is quite impersonal and therefore the moral quality of this action depends entirely on the human operator. this is the point of the master's teaching regarding the destruction of the fig tree, and it is on this account he adds the warning as to the necessity for clearing our heart of any injurious feeling against others whenever we attempt to make use of this power (mark xi: - ). according to his teaching, then, this power of controlling the soul of nature by the addition of our own personal factor, however little we may be able to recognize it as yet, actually exists; its employment depends on our perception of the inner principles common to both, and it is for this reason the ancient wisdom was summed up in the aphorism "know thyself." no doubt it is a wonderful knowledge, but on analysis it will be found to be perfectly natural. it is the knowledge of the cryptic forces of nature. now it is remarkable that this ancient maxim inscribed over the portals of the temple of delphi is not to be found in the bible. the bible maxim is not "know thyself" but "know the lord." the great subject of knowledge is not ourself but "the lord"; and herein is the great difference between the two teachings. the one is limited by human personality, the other is based on the infinitude of the divine personality; and because of this it includes human personality with all its powers over the soul of nature. it is a case of the greater including the less; and so the whole teaching of scripture is directed to bringing us into the recognition of that divine personality which is the great original in whose image and likeness we are made. in proportion as we grow into the recognition of _this_ our own personality will explain, and the creative power of our thought will cease to work invertedly until at last it will work only on the same principles of life, love and liberty as the divine mind, and so all evil will disappear from our world. we shall not, as some systems teach, be absorbed into deity to the extinction of our individual consciousness, but on the contrary our individual consciousness will continually expand, which is what st. paul means when he speaks of our "increasing with the increase of god"--the continual expanding of the divine element within us. but this can only take place by our recognition of ourselves as _receivers_ of this divine element. it is receiving into ourselves of the divine personality, a result not to be reached through human reasoning. we reason from premises which we have assumed, and the conclusion is already involved in the premises and can never extend beyond them. but we can only select our premises from among things that we know by experience, whether mental or physical, and accordingly our reasoning is always merely a new placing of the old things. but the receiving of the divine personality into ourselves is an entirely new thing, and so cannot be reached by reasoning from old things. hence if this divine ultimate of the creative process is to be attained it must be by the revelation of a new thing which will afford a new starting-point for our thought, and this new starting-point is given in the promise of "the seed of the woman" with which the bible opens. thenceforward this promise became the central germinating thought of those who based themselves upon it, thus constituting them a special race, until at last when the necessary conditions had matured the promised seed appeared in him of whom it is written that he is the express image of god's person (heb. i: )--that is, the expression of that infinite divine personality of which i have spoken. "no man hath seen god at any time or can see him," for the simple reason that infinitude cannot be the subject of vision. to become visible there must be individualization, and therefore when philip said "show us the father," jesus replied, "he that hath seen me hath seen the father." the word must become flesh before st. john could say, "that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life." this is the new starting-point for the true new thought--the new adam of the new race, each of whom is a new center for the working of the divine spirit. this is what jesus meant when he said, "except ye eat the flesh and drink the blood of the son of man ye have no life in you. my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed--" such a contemplation of the divine personality in him as will cause a like receiving of the divine personality into individualization in ourselves--this is the great purpose of the creative process in the individual. it terminates the old series which began with birth after the flesh and inaugurates a new series by birth after the spirit, a new life of infinite unfoldment with glorious possibilities beyond our highest conception. but all this is logically based upon our recognition of the personalness of god and of the relation of our individual personality to this eternal and infinite personality, and the result of this is worship--not an attempt to "butter up" the almighty and get him into good temper, but the reverent contemplation of what this personality must be in itself; and when we see it to be that life, love, beauty, etc., of which i spoke at the beginning of this book we shall learn to love him for what he is, and our prayer will be "give me more of thyself." if we realize the great truth that the kingdom of heaven is _within_ us, that it is the kingdom of the innermost of our own being and of all creation, and if we realize that this innermost is the place of the originating power where time and space do not exist and therefore antecedent to all conditions, then we shall see the true meaning of worship. it is the perception of the innermost spirit as eternally subsisting independently of all conditioned manifestation, so that in the true worship our consciousness is removed from the outer sphere of existence to the innermost center of unconditioned being. there we find the eternal being of god pure and simple, and we stand reverently in this supreme presence knowing that it is the source of our own being, and wrapt in the contemplation of this, the conditioned is seen to flow out from it. perceiving this the conditioned passes out of our consideration, for it is seen not to be the eternal reality--we have reached that level of consciousness where time and space remain no longer. yet the reverence which the vision of this supreme center of all being cannot fail to inspire is coupled with a sense of feeling quite at home with it. this is because as the center of _all_ being it is the center of our own being also. it is one-with-ourselves. it is recognizing itself from our own center of consciousness; so that here we have got back to that self-contemplation of spirit which is the first movement of the creating power, only now this self-contemplation is the action of the all-originating spirit upon itself from the center of our own consciousness. so this worship in the temple of the innermost is at once reverent adoration and familiar intercourse--not the familiarity that breeds contempt, but a familiarity producing love, because as it increases we see more clearly the true life of the spirit as the continual interaction of love and beauty, and the spirit's recognition of ourselves as an integral portion of its own life. this is not an unpractical dreamy speculation but has a very practical bearing. death will some day cease to be, for the simple reason that life alone can be the enduring principle; but we have not yet reached this point in our evolution. whether any in this generation will reach it i cannot say; but for the rank and file of us the death of the body seems to be by far the more probable event. now what must this passing out of the body mean to us? it must mean that we find ourselves without the physical vehicle which is the instrument through which our consciousness comes in touch with the external world and all the interests of our present daily life. but the mere putting off of the body does not of itself change the mental attitude; and so if our mind is entirely centered upon these passing interests and external conditions the loss of the instrument by which we held touch with them must involve a consciousness of desire for the only sort of life we have known coupled with a consciousness of our inability to participate in it, which can only result in a consciousness of distress and confusion such as in our present state we cannot imagine. on the other hand if we have in this world realized the true principle of the worship of the eternal source from which all conditioned life flows out--an inner communing with the great reality--we have already passed beyond that consciousness of life which is limited by time and space; and so when we put off this mortal body we shall find ourselves upon familiar ground, and therefore not wandering in confusion but quite at home, dwelling in the same light of the eternal in which we have been accustomed to dwell as an atmosphere enveloping the conditioned life of to-day. then finding ourselves thus at home on a plane where time and space do not exist there will be no question with us of duration. the consciousness will be simply that of peaceful, happy being. that a return to more active personal operation will eventually take place is evidenced by the fact that the basis of all further evolution is the differentiating of the undifferentiated life of the spirit into specific channels of work, through the intermediary of individual personality without which the infinite potentialities of the creative law cannot be brought to light. therefore, however various our opinions as to its precise form, resurrection as a principle is a necessity of the creative process. but such a return to more active life will not mean a return to limitations, but the opening of a new life in which we shall transcend them all, because we have passed beyond the misconception that time and space are of the essence of life. when the misconception regarding time and space is entirely eradicated all other limitations must disappear because they have their root in this primary one--they are only particular forms of the general proposition. therefore though form with its accompanying relations of time and space is necessary for manifestation, these things will be found not to have any force in themselves thus creating limitation, but to be the reflection of the mode of thought which projects them as the expression of itself. nor is there any inherent reason why this process should be delayed till some far-off future. there is no reason why we should not commence at once. no doubt our inherited and personally engendered modes of thought make this difficult, and by the nature of the process it will be only when _all_ our thoughts are conformed to this principle that the complete victory will be won. but there must be a commencement to everything, and the more we habituate ourselves to live in that center of the innermost where conditions do not exist, the more we shall find ourselves gaining control over outward conditions, because the stream of conditioned life flows out from the center of unconditioned life, and therefore this intrinsic principle of worship has in it the promise both of the life that now is and of that which is to come. only we must remember that the really availing worship is that of the undifferentiated source _because it is the source,_ and not as a backhanded way of diverting the stream into some petty channel of conditions, for that would only be to get back to the old circle of limitation from which we are seeking to escape. but if we realize these things we have already laid hold of the principle of resurrection, and in point of principle we are already living the resurrection life. what progress we may make in it depends on our practical application of the principle; but simply as principle there is nothing in the principle itself to prevent its complete working at any moment. this is why jesus did not refer resurrection to some remote point of time but said, "i am the resurrection and the life." no principle can carry in itself an opposite and limiting principle contradictory of its own nature, and this is as true of the principle of life as of any other principle. it is we who by our thought introduce an opposite and limiting principle and so hinder the working of the principle we are seeking to bring into operation; but so far as the principle of life itself is concerned there is _in it_ no reason why it should not come into perfect manifestation here and now. this, then, is the true purpose of worship. it is to bring us into conscious and loving intercourse with the supreme source of our own being, and seeing this we shall not neglect the outward forms of worship. from what we now know they should mean more to us than to others and not less; and in especial if we realize the manifestation of the divine personality in jesus christ and its reproduction in man, we shall not neglect his last command to partake of that sacred memorial to his flesh and blood which he bequeathed to his followers with the words "this do in remembrance of me." this holy rite is no superstitious human invention. there are many theories about it, and i do not wish to combat any of them, for in the end they all seem to me to bring us to the same point, that being cleansed from sin by the divine love we are now no longer separate from god but become "partakers of the divine-nature" (ii peter i: ). this partaking of the divine nature could not be more accurately represented than by our partaking of bread and wine as symbols of the divine substance and the divine life, thus made emblematic of the whole creative process from its beginning in the divine thought to its completion in the manifestation of that thought as perfected man; and so it brings vividly before us the remembrance of the personality of god taking form as the son of man. we are all familiar with the saying that thoughts become things; and if we affirm the creative power of our own thought as reproducing itself in outward form, how much more must we affirm the same of that divine thought which brings the whole universe into existence; so that in accordance with our own principles the divine idea of man was logically bound to show itself in the world of time and space as the son of god and the son of man, not two differing natures but one complete whole, thus summing up the foundation principle of all creation in one undivided consciousness of personality. thus "the word" or divine thought of man "became flesh," and our partaking of the symbolic elements keeps in our remembrance the supreme truth that this same "word" or thought of god in like manner takes form in ourselves as we open our own thought to receive it. and further, if we realize that throughout the universe there is only one originating life, sending forth only one original substance as the vehicle for its expression, then it logically follows that _in essence_ the bread is a portion of the eternal substance of god, and the wine a portion of the eternal life of god. for though the wine is of course also a part of the universal substance, we must remember that the universal substance is itself a manifestation of the life of the all-creating spirit, and therefore this fluid form of the primary substance has been selected as representing the eternal flowing of the life of the spirit into all creation, culminating in its supreme expression in the consciousness of those who, in the recognition of these truths, seek to bring their heart into union with the divine spirit. from such considerations as these it will be seen how vast a field of thought is covered by christ's words "do this in remembrance of me." in conclusion, therefore, do not let yourselves be led astray by any philosophy that denies the personality of god. in the end it will be found to be a foolish philosophy. no other starting-point of creation is conceivable than the self-contemplation of the divine spirit, and the logical sequence from this brings us to the ultimate result of the creative process in the statement that "if any man be in christ he is a new creature," or as the margin has it "a new creation" (ii cor. v: ). such vain philosophies have only one logical result which is to put _yourself_ in the place of god, and then what have you to lean upon in the hour of trial? it is like trying to climb up a ladder that is resting against nothing. therefore, says the apostle paul, "beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of man, after the rudiments of the world, and not after christ." (col. ii: .) the teaching of the bible is sound philosophy, sound reasoning, and sound science because it starts with the sound premises that all creation proceeds out of god, and that man is made in the image and likeness of his creator. it nowhere departs from the law of cause and effect, and by the orderly sequence of this law it brings us at last to the new creation both in ourselves and in our environment, so that we find the completion of the creative process in the declaration "the tabernacle of god is with men" (rev. xxi: ), and in the promise "this is the covenant that i will make with them after those days (i.e., the days of our imperfect apprehension of these things) saith the lord, i will dwell _in them_, and walk _in them_, and i will be their god, and they shall be my people, and i will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will i write them, and their sins and their iniquities will i remember no more" (heb. x: . ii cor. vi: . jeremiah xxxi: ). truly does bacon say, "a little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." --bacon, essay, xvi. footnotes footnote : see my doré lectures, . footnote : see my edinburgh lectures on mental science. footnote : see my doré lectures, . footnote : for the relation between conscious and sub-conscious mind see my "edinburgh lectures on mental science." footnote : see "self-synthesis" by dr. cornwall round. footnote : for the relation between subjective and objective mind see my "edinburgh lectures on mental science." footnote : this view, it may be remarked, is not necessarily incompatible with the conception of reincarnation, on which theory the final resurrection or transmutation of the body would terminate the series of successive lives and deaths, thus bringing the individual out of the circle of generation, which is the circle of karma. i may, perhaps, have the opportunity of considering this subject on some future occasion. footnote : see my "bible mystery and bible meaning." footnote : see "bible mystery and bible meaning" by the present author. the silence: what it is and how to use it by david v. bush author of "the fundamentals of applied psychology", "applied psychology and scientific living", "practical psychology and sex life", "the universality of the master mind", "will power and success" editor, "mind power plus" below is a series of six c booklets by david v. bush entitled . "how to demonstrate prosperity" . "why some people fail in visualizing--rules for visualization" . "the influence of suggestion and auto-suggestion" . "the silence, what it is and how to use it" . "what to eat--scientific feeding" . "what is god?"[ ] these sell at c each--four for one dollar. order a set now and get as premiums two wall motto poems, artistically printed on beautiful cardboard, for home, office or business. check your choice for two wall motto poems from the list below: pep. old glory. where is success? misfits can win. pass it along. lift your head. where god is found. the boss is watching you. what is god? stick to it. charity. think right. opportunity. the real success. the bull dog grip. it's better to smile. troubles that never came. if you would be a friend to man. the silence: what it is, how to use it approach to the silence wrong thinking produces inharmony in our body, which in turn produces sickness. our bodies sometimes are instantly re-harmonized while in the silence. in the silence our minds become passive, open, free and loving, at which time the infinite master of harmony touches the mental chords of our being and we are well. just as the piano can be tuned, so can the mind. man's body is made up of twelve octaves the same as in music. all matter is music. all matter is composed of twelve octaves. wrong thinking brings inharmony in some of the octaves of our body. right thinking tunes these organs, puts them back into their normal condition. boys have their little steel magnets by which they pick up small pieces of steel, pins and so forth. when overworked, these magnets no longer attract. then the boys take their magnets, have them rubbed against strong magnets or remagnetized with an electric current and their power is quickly restored--so with our bodies. mind is the re-electrifier and re-harmonizer of the octaves into all harmony. right thinking, therefore, is the most important thing in life. as a man thinketh in his heart so is he. just as a tuning fork near a piano will respond with a vibration when a key of the same pitch is struck on the piano nearby, so likewise do the bodies of men respond to proper stimulus and become in tune. by right thinking man can re-harmonize himself, can achieve health, success and prosperity. to enter the silence one must first establish perfect relaxation in mind and body. then as the consciousness is brought from one part of the body to another the tuning takes place. if the leader in the silence should be intoning, there will be many in the audience who will feel tinkling sensations--vibrations--and often are instantly healed. they have been instantly re-harmonized. sometimes it may take several intonings in the silence for a complete healing. should you have a violent vibration, feel no fear, but thank god for your healing because the more violent the vibration perhaps the worse has been your condition and the more surely has the re-harmony begun. some people will feel this vibration for hours, even days, throughout which there is always healing. others may not feel the vibration at all, yet if there has been any inharmony in the bodily organs, these organs are unconscious to the conscious intoning re-harmonization. many people who have been healed of divers and many malignant diseases were at no time conscious of any vibration. never be discouraged if you feel no sensation. if you do feel a vibration, know that you are susceptible and on the high road to a healing demonstration. the one intoning may or may not be feeling vibrations. religion is the life of god in the soul of man. the silence is the medium by which the life of god and the soul of man are brought into at-one-ment. the silence is a medium by which man comes in a closer touch with the infinite; a medium by which man becomes conscious of his nearness to the infinite. the silence is the meeting place where man's spirit links with god's spirit; where spirit meets spirit and the marvel of his grace never ceases. the silence is another way of praying, which is another way of concentration. it is another way of visualization. "as a man thinketh in his heart so is he." in the silence a man can by his thoughts change his life, his conditions, his environment, his all. by right thinking man becomes harmonious. a harmonious man--in tune with the infinite--is on the king's highway to health, success, abundance, prosperity, happiness, love and peace. by means of wrong thinking our minds are put out of harmony with the great infinite spirit of god. "as a man thinketh in his heart so is he." when wrong thinking becomes right thinking, then man's right relationship to god is restored. he becomes an open channel for the influx of the spirit so that whatever demonstration he may desire he may have. in the silence a man may change his thinking as in no other way, therefore, may change his heart, change his whole being, change his environment, change every condition to which he was subject. the human body may be likened to a harp. when man thinks rightly his body is in tune; but wrong thinking creates inharmony in the body and produces sickness. wrong thinking produces inharmony in the mind, which, of course, disconnects man from rightful association with the divine. a man must, therefore, think right. yet, because of centuries of erroneous conception of god and of the world, man has been a negative instead of a positive being, and his unwisdom has reacted upon the present generation. we are mental sending and receiving stations. what we receive depends upon how we are thinking now. for success, health and happiness we must in the silent chambers of the soul change our thinking if we are holding negative or inharmonious thoughts. in the silence there is presented to man his greatest opportunity to change his thinking. wrong thinking produces inharmony of the body which in turn produces sickness. if we change to right thinking we have health, success and happiness. therefore the silence when properly used re-harmonizes our bodies and minds through the simple agency of right thinking. "there are steps of approach to the silence. stillness is one thing and the silence is another. one may quiet himself physically and not be still, and he may be still without entering the silence. when one becomes physically and mentally at rest, he is apt to become receptive to psychic influences; and when these are not desired it is advisable to protect oneself while mentally negative. one may affirm his oneness with god, his being surrounded and protected by the divine goodness, and may symbolize this by enveloping himself in thought with the white light of love or the mellowed tints of sunshine. "with the senses calmed and unresponsive to the slower vibrations, but responsive to the quicker ones, a peace and calm pervade one's mind, and it becomes consciously receptive to higher vibrations of vital energy. immune from the lesser harmonies, one opens himself to the greater ones, which are always seeking avenues of expression. with the greater influx of the one life, a sense of power steals over one and he becomes conscious of increased vigor and vitality. "in relinquishing specific thoughts, one opens inwardly rather than outwardly, and becomes receptive to subconscious impressions that are directed by his conscious affirmation of fundamental truth. the subconscious responds by returning to the conscious the logical sequences of the truths that have been consciously impressed upon it. the subconscious follows the lead given to it by the conscious affirmations of truth, and it brings back the consciousness of those truths in their various ramifications." health silence select one or more of the affirmations or formulas below to hold in thought while in the silence. you may change or vary these as you choose: soul is health, spirit is health, god is health, i am health. since there is but one mind, there is but one mentality. this mind and mentality is god; god is health. i am health. "i am whole, perfect, strong, powerful, loving, harmonious and happy and what i am myself i desire for everyone else." "i am filled with the abundant, intelligent, ever-present life of spirit. it flows through me freely, cleansing, healing, purifying and vitalizing every part. i am one with this life and in it i am every whit whole." "the all-powerful christ mind in me dissolves and dissipates every adverse thought. my body is the pure and holy temple of the living god, and every organ and every function is now in divine order and harmony." all the organs of my body are functioning normally and i am well, whole and complete. all is mind, all is god, all is universal energy. i am part of creative force and i am health, abundance, joy and peace. i am filled, i am thrilled with life eternal and i radiate that life within to me and without to all. every experience of my life has been for my good and i am happy in living. god is spirit. i (use your own name) am life. life spirit is now flowing through me freely and i am well, whole and complete. "be still and know that i am god." use the following as a basis for your meditation as you demonstrate health. of course, you may use other thoughts provided they are constructive health thoughts. you may practice the silence sitting, reclining, or in bed. there is no better way to learn how to relax than by going into the silence. are you tense? let go. relax. then direct the mind to go from one part of the body to another. take a deep breath between each change of your consciousness. be sure to use the diaphragmatic or abdominal breathing--breathing through the nostrils, mouth closed until the muscles of the abdomen expand. the best time to hold the silence is as you retire at night, and just as you awaken in the morning.[ ] but you should hold your thought at least three times a day, without stress or strain, without doubt or worry, passive in mind and body--perfectly relaxed. hold the silence or thought upon retiring at night, awakening in the morning, and at noon day. of course, you may take any other time that is convenient. you may concentrate on the roadway, street car, home or office, but it is well, if possible, to have one room for your silence. most people in that way will build up stronger vibrations. at noon now there are all over the world thousands of others holding silence so that there is a great combined mental force working together at one time for success, health, prosperity and happiness, and we therefore get the benefit of this great vibration. the more often you hold the silence without stress or strain, as a rule, the quicker may be the demonstration. the real part of me is spirit, not matter. i believe that this body of mine is a tabernacle for the spirit. the real "i am" within me is therefore spirit. the real "me" is spirit. this spirit is the god spirit. this is what jesus meant when in the fourteenth chapter of john and again in the seventeenth chapter of the same gospel, speaking to his disciples he referred to "i in you, you in me and we in god." my spirit is a part of the god spirit. god is health, god is perfection, god is abundance, god is harmonious. therefore, the real "i am" is god; the real "i am" is health, perfection, abundance and harmony. when i am sick i know that it is the material of me that is sick, not the god spirit; it is my _physical_ being which is out of harmony, it is this tabernacle of which paul speaks, housing my spirit, which gives me pain and suffering. the real "me" is not sick, it is _my body_. for centuries we have held to a wrong idea of life. we have thought that life is material; but life is spiritual, it is the invisible within me which is eternal, which is god. many still believe that life is material and matter, instead of mind and spirit. i no longer hold that conception. i believe that all is mind and spirit. just here is where the healing methods of drugs and the scientist's explanation of life is so limited. not until we recognize that life is really a thing of spirit--not matter but mind--not material but spiritual--do we come into an understanding of truth. jesus said, "god is spirit," and on different occasions told his disciples that this spirit was within them as well as within himself. therefore, this same spirit is within me and this same spirit is the god spirit of health, abundance, happiness, harmony and perfection. god is all health, all abundance, all harmony, peace and perfection. therefore the god spirit within me is the same. i am sick in body; not in mind, not in spirit. inasmuch as i cannot conceive of god being sick neither can i conceive of my spirit being sick. my spirit is health, perfection and harmony. my body may not be well, but since mind is all, since this material is subject to the spiritual, since matter is subject to mind, i believe and affirm that my health does not depend upon matter but upon the god spirit within me. it depends not upon the material but the spiritual, upon the god mind within. just as wood when made into a violin and properly tuned, will give forth harmony, so my body, though made in the material, when properly tuned by mind will give forth harmonious living, perfect health. as the tree standing in the forest may be made into the violin music box of harmony, so my body, the material in the forest of matter, may be put in tune, become harmonious and be raised to perfection by the master musician, god--his mind within me. god is all health. no one could conceive of god as being sick. i can visualize only the eternal spirit of the infinite father. perfection existing in everything and i being a child in spirit, am well, whole and complete in spirit. my real "i am" is well. science now asserts that matter is composed of twelve octaves, just as in music. my body is the composite of these twelve octaves. science also says that every cell atom, every electron in my body is intelligent. this spirit of mine is housed in the tabernacle of the body which is composed of millions and millions of cells, all of which having intelligence respond in my body according to the way i think. every word i entertain, every thought i hold, influences everyone of the millions of cells making up this tabernacle. my body is made whole and complete physically. that is, all the cells of my body are made over new every eleven months. the body i have today is not the body i had eleven months ago. i get a new body every eleven months and my body is today what my thinking was yesterday, the day before that and the months before that. my body in the future depends upon my thinking in the future. i am what i think i am. when i affirm that i am well, whole and complete; that i am perfect, harmonious and strong, i am suggesting to every atom in my body perfection and every atom in turn begins to make my body over, new in health and and in perfection. i may or i may not have to wait for the element of time to make over every cell. that may be done spontaneously and instantly. there is no limitation to the power of god so i shall not set a time limit for my healing, knowing that all things are possible with the father. i affirm that now i have that which i desire. i know that now the spirit of divine health is surging through me, touching and reaching every atom of my body and that now the god spirit within me is perfect and that spirit makes my body perfect. "man is a spiritual being. man expresses himself mentally and manifests himself physically. the one life animates all that exists. harmony of existence depends upon the polarities of the three aspects of life. the mind is at ease when open to the inflow of the spirit. it is discordant when it follows sensory impressions. the body is healthy when responsive to the direction of the spiritualized mind. it becomes diseased when it accepts the physical as its guide. one achieves mental ease and physical health through his mental polarity. if open to the physical and closed to the spiritual, discord will prevail. if open to the spiritual and closed to the physical, he lives the one life, in mental ease and physical health. i open my mind to the inflow of the spirit. i place my body under the control of my spiritualized mind. i feel the one life animate my mind and my body. i am a spiritual being. i am perfect health!" * * * * * miscellaneous silence[ ] thought to hold in the silence for abundance (see also abundance, page ) "the universal abundant spirit supplies all my needs." there is no want or limitation in the law. if, perchance, there should appear to be lack of, or need of, abundance in our lives, it is because of wrong thinking--not because there is a lack of abundance. therefore, we should enter the silence with the profound faith and conviction that the world is filled with plenty, and that all our needs are most bountifully supplied. the mind should be saturated with the conviction that all life is filled with abundance--all space is overflowing with abundance--all living comes from an abundant source of supply. in a universe where this is true, there can be no want, no lack for you or yours (for me or mine). as you take your exercises this month, take the affirmation above. as you walk on the street to your office, or place of business, continue this thought. as you go about your daily duties in the home or workshop, let the mind be saturated with a spirit, a feeling and thinking of abundance--"the opulence of the universal source of supply now meets all my needs," "the abundant life giving spirit of prosperity now leads and guides me into the paths of plenty, peace and power," "my mind is filled with prosperous thoughts, my being is pulsating in abundant rhythm, my soul is uplifted and sustained by a thousand thoughts of ever-present abundance, prosperity and opulence." as these thoughts are maintained and repeated again and again, absorbed and sunk deep into the subconscious mind, know that all of your needs are this minute supplied. know that you could not ask for anything from the universal spirit--father, god--without that spirit being most willing to supply, instantly, all your needs. the spirit and body are well, but the flesh is weak. allow your flesh to be stimulated, and your body to respond by thoughts of abundance, prosperity and opulence. "i am now rich in thought, rich in body and rich in spirit. i am now part of the abundant ever-present spirit of prosperity and opulence. all that i need is now mine, mine, mine." the universal abundant spirit supplies all my needs. * * * * * thought to hold in meditation in the silence for misfortunes, grief, mistakes, reverses, failure, sorrow, loss and disappointment "all is good." we are entering upon a new consciousness for the human race, a higher plane of mentality, and a greater development of the spiritual life. in spirit, of course, there is no wrong, no sorrow, no grief, no misfortune, no losses, no reverses. in short all is perfection. the age in which we are living has not yet developed this spiritual understanding. we are still of the earth--earthly--and we are still in that consciousness where the physical is affected by seeming misfortunes, reverses, sorrows, griefs, trouble, sickness, etc. we may be wise in not expecting that suddenly this generation of man will reach that spiritual plane where there will be no recognition of anything except good. we are a part of the infinite spirit ourselves and, of course, in spirit, we are perfection. but this physical body of ours manifests imperfection from time to time, because of our past training and past thinking, because of our own consciousness. in time there is no doubt in my mind but that the spirit within will make a perfect body without. this perfection will be recognized in health and in peace of mind. it will be recognized so that there will be no such thing as misfortunes, sorrows, reverses, failures, griefs, disappointments or losses being able to affect our mentality or our body. in this state of consciousness, as we are emerging from the chrysalis, material stage of man into the greater life, into the deeper spiritual understanding, we are subject to certain conditions not conducive to peace of mind without an effort. in other words, we recognize, or feel the effects of losses, misfortunes, disappointments, sorrows, griefs, etc. we recognize now, that the time is coming when the spirit will be so completely in control of matter in the body, that we will not recognize any inharmony. to reach that great spirit is one of the big forward steps in this generation. to reach that spiritual plane also means the right kind of thinking now. we plan, today, for tomorrow. this is true in every walk of life. we plan our home today--and build it tomorrow. we make our merchandise today and market it tomorrow. we sow our seed today and we reap the harvest tomorrow. we build our career today, little by little, and we reach the outcome tomorrow. therefore, our thinking today will change our tomorrow. the thinking of this generation will change the condition of tomorrow's generation. if tomorrow's generation is going to be free from the recognition of sorrows, misfortunes, griefs, fears, pain, losses, failures, reverses, inharmony, discord, etc., it depends upon our seed sowing. our seed sowing today should be "all is good." all is good in spirit. you can say that and be honest with yourself. all is perfection in spirit. all is good for us in spirit. all is good for our lives here. spirit transcends matter. when we recognize, affirm, and continue to hold the constructive thought that all is good in spirit, we are changing our own mental attitude, our own bodies, all matter in general--getting ready for the greater realization of the spiritual manifestation in the next generation. therefore, for your own good here today in success, prosperity and happiness as well as in health, peace and harmony, begin to pronounce over everything in life, _all is good_. if you have any misunderstandings, _all is good_. if you have any losses, _all is good_, any reverses, _all is good_, any sorrow, _all is good_, any inharmony, _all is good_. in everything at all that is out of perfection you must recognize only the good. all is good. sending your thought energy by repeating _all is good_, and thinking _all is good_, and living _all is good_, you will actually, in this day, overcome your difficulty, and turn all of your mistakes, blunders and misfortunes into stepping stones for your own success, health and happiness. i enter the silence this month, this day, this hour and this minute. my mind is obsessed and under control of the divine spirit, i recognize here and now only good. i see in my fellowmen only perfection and good. i see in nature all around me only perfection and good. i see in every transaction of life only the perfect good. i see in every activity of my experience, and in every form, color and thought, good. _all is good_ for me now, today and forever. god is spirit; spirit is love; love is perfection; god's spirit is harmonious, i am perfect, i am love, perfection and harmonious. all is good. * * * * * for harmony, peace, comfort base your thought for this silence upon the following. you may add any constructive thought you choose. "my subconscious mind, i desire and command you to have peace, harmony and justice reign in the hearts of men everywhere." i realize that there can be no negative thinking for my destruction, downfall or harm sent out by anyone else that can reach my consciousness, or do me ill, unless i am afraid that such negative thinking will produce the evil effects others are planning. i know that thought is energy. this is scientifically demonstrated, and i realize that a constructive thought has much more energy than a destructive thought. i know, because it has been conclusively proven, that constructive thinking will blast away every negative thought-current sent out by one person, or by a thousand. therefore, if there should be any inharmonious thoughts anywhere in the world--any discordant thought-current by those who seek my downfall, or block my progress, or by those who would endeavor to hurt my reputation--i know that by holding a harmonious attitude of peace, love, joy and success for everyone, including those who would do me wrong that such constructive thought-currents will blast away all of the discordant and inharmonious mental currents of evil so that they will not even reach my conscious mind. i also realize, when i hold my silent thought, "_my subconscious mind i desire and command you to have peace and harmony and justice reign_," that i am sending out the energy of construction which is bound to turn all of the efforts for my embarrassment and destruction into a higher current for my greater achievement. therefore, i send out blessings and thanksgiving to the very ones who would work my downfall. i charge my subconscious mind to let peace, harmony and justice reign so that all things will work together for the good for me and for those who are thinking evil. if i should think it hard to send out blessings to my enemies, i remember the affirmation of the greatest teacher of all ages who said, "forgive until seventy times seven." i remember that when he, himself, was reviled, reviled not in turn. i remember that when his merciless enemies had nailed him to the cross, had apparently crushed his fondest ambition, had scorned and reviled the kingdom of which he had spoken, and had tortured him as he hung on the cross, he uttered the immortal, lovable, constructive words which have rung throughout the centuries, and will continue to bless all mankind throughout eternity: "father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." so those who would try to block my way, curb my progress or put thorns in my crown are doing so "not knowing what they are doing." "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." instead of hurting me, they are sowing weed seeds, which shall bring forth a harvest of weeds and tares in their own lives, and not in mine. i, therefore, do not wish them harm, nor think that they should feel the reaction. i do not have to concern myself about the negative people in the world--for the law takes care of them. i shall always think constructive thoughts, harmonious thoughts and loving thoughts. "my subconscious mind, i desire and command you to have peace, harmony and justice reign, and know that all things are now working together for the good of my would-be enemies and for myself." i relax (here pause and wait), take time for meditation (here pause and rest relaxed) and i become happy in the silence--holding my thought of peace, harmony and justice reigning in the hearts of men everywhere--and, as i relax and wait, i feel my vibrations rise. i am resting at ease, in faith. (pause.) i am perfectly calm and contented. (pause.) i am sending out love, peace and harmonious thoughts, and, as they go, love, peace and harmony will come to me. these are now returning. they enter my being and uplift my soul. i am, therefore, sending out a strong current of spiritual blessings, with such a spirit of helpfulness, that i am getting back the same which i send out. my harvest shall be peace, love, joy, harmony, justice and contentment, because i am _sowing_ the seed of love, peace, harmony, joy, contentment and justice into the great subconscious soil of the universe. "my subconscious mind, i desire and command you to have peace, harmony and justice reign everywhere throughout the world." i wait--i rest--i am relaxed--i am at ease and filled with the spirit of harmony. i wait. i listen for the spirit within. i feel and hear the voice of infinite love sending back into my consciousness these thoughts which i send out. i know that my every constructive thought blasts away a thousand destructive ones. therefore, i think peace, joy, love, harmony and justice, and, as i utter these words slowly and prayerfully, i feel my vibration rising--i experience ease of mind and peace of soul. harmony is now within and without. i realize that i cannot send out my affirmation of peace, love, joy and harmony without peace, love, joy and harmony coming back to me. i, therefore, send out my affirmation: "my subconscious mind, i desire and command you to have peace, harmony and justice reign-in the hearts of men wherever they may be." i wait and listen--perfectly relaxed and at ease--and i feel the vibrations which i sent out coming back to me. i, therefore, know that no harm can befall my dwelling place. i know that whatever evil thoughts have been sent out for my destruction have been counter-blasted, and that now everything is working for my good. as i recognize, and realize, that all things work together for my good, i am sending out love-thoughts that all things are working together for the good of those who would do me wrong. "they know not what they do." they alone will have to reap the harvest of the weeds they are sowing. my wish for them is that they may learn their lesson easily and early. my blessings i send out to them. again i wait. again i listen. again i am at ease, happy, and at rest. love and blessings, peace and harmony, i send out--love and blessings, peace and harmony, come back. "my subconscious mind, i desire and command you to have peace, harmony and justice reign. my blessings upon all mankind--my love to everyone!" * * * * * thought to hold as a basis for this silence for success "i have faith and conviction in my ultimate success." i believe the scripture: "my ways are not your ways, saith the lord; neither are my thoughts your thoughts, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts." i understand by this scripture that the thoughts of the infinite god are far above the understanding of finite me; that god's ways are higher than my ways. "god moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform." i also have faith and conviction in my ultimate success because i am a part of the infinite spirit, and in the infinite spirit, there can be no failure. i am harmonious, complete and successful in spirit--in god. i may not see my success today, or i may feel as though i have accomplished little, but i know that all my efforts and energies, in the past, present and future, are working together for my good. therefore, i shall hold the thought that my success has already been achieved. i am success, i have success now and forever! therefore, i think only success; i talk only success; i believe only in success; i am demonstrating success, and i know that success is mine. the needed lessons i am having now, have had in the past, and may require in the future, are but necessary stepping stones to my greater success. the apparent delay of my greater success means that i am now demonstrating more success than i could otherwise have. dreams that i have dreamed, visions that i have visualized, and the goal that i have mapped out, are all a part of my ultimate greater success. i have that now! i am successful now! as moses went into the land of midian, and spent forty years of his life as a shepherd in the wilderness--(apparently with no future before him--which, however, was the great schooling necessary for his greater triumphant success in the future)--so i may be, in _my_ land of midian, apparently, only a sheep herder, but in reality getting the necessary training for my greater and ultimate success. therefore, i now rejoice in every experience i have--giving thanks for every apparent set back, and for every "seeming" blocking of my purposes and aspirations. i believe that my past experiences, as well as present happenings, are for my benefit, and that i could not have been the great success i am, and shall be, had not the discouragements of yesterday, the perplexities of today and the drawbacks of tomorrow come into my life. i realize that i need to go into the land of midian; that it is as necessary for me, as it was for moses, to spend a few years in the wilderness of life's experience. i am happy to know that i am in such company as that of the great leader of his people, and rejoice in the thought that the lord has called me to spend my time in the land of midian, getting the necessary training for the greater things the lord has in store for me. there is no place in the world where clouds do not gather, and storms do not rage; but when the storms abate, and the skies clear, then do we appreciate more fully the glories and beauties of god, the universe and its natural laws, and infinite love. however, i know by experience in the land of midian, where clouds hover low, and where storms try the soul and body, that the dawn of a new day shall make life all the sweeter for me and mine. moses could not have enjoyed leading his people into the promised land, had he not been in the land of midian. if he had stayed forever in the court of pharaoh, with its attendant luxuries, life would have taken on a dull, monotonous hue, and his experience would have seemed drab, wearisome and pale. i am glad for the privilege accorded me to be in the land of midian for a short time! i know that, as did moses, i shall enjoy my promised land all the more when my greater success shall have been well worked out by the hand of divinity. faith and conviction in my ultimate greater success is stronger today than ever! i hold such a strong thought, and such a deep and courageous faith in the workings of god's plan, that i know i now have that which has been intended for me, and nothing can take from me that which the lord hath prepared for my success, health and happiness. i know, too, that i shall learn daily to enjoy, appreciate, and make better use of the success i now possess; that i shall unfold day by day into greater opportunities for more influence, power, friendship, charity, love, comradeship and service. i know that my present success is but a part of the greater success which the lord has waiting for me--"just around the corner". therefore, i shall offer up prayers of thanksgiving and gratitude; i shall work harder, being more particular in the preparation for my greater work, than i have been in the past--never doubting but that every moment spent in this greater preparation will bring added interests, and a greater success in the future. even as moses did not doubt the wisdom of the lord for a greater future (when in the land of midian for forty years), so shall i not doubt his ways today. i claim, with a joyful heart and an attitude of thanksgiving, that my life could not have been as great in the future had i been denied my present experience. i know that greater things are in store for me, because god's thoughts are greater than my thoughts; because he is giving me that training now, in my land of midian, which i most need. i trust the guiding spirit of infinite love to lead me, at the right time, into my life's promised land. the success today, in my land of midian, is attracting unto me the greater influence and power in my court of pharaoh, and in my leadership, as i lead others into that promised land which the lord has prepared for me and mine. i smile--i sing--i rejoice, and offer thanksgiving and gratitude for my success now and forever. surely i believe more and more: "my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, saith the lord," and all things are now working together for my good. therefore, i have faith and conviction in my ultimate success--in my greater success--in my greatest success! * * * * * abundance (see also abundance, page ) "there is abundance in the world for me given by the bountiful hand of omnipotence. i gratefully claim and accept all the supply for my needs." the old idea of orthodox prayer was that of supplication and begging. i have spent a whole night at a time begging for a few pennies and supplicating for the salvation of others. what waste of energy. each time that we send up such a weak supplication as the attitude of a beggar, with the timid, frightful thoughts that only a beggar's mind can have--this condition of mind, cross circuits the power to bring into our lives the very things we most desire. when the beggar extends his hand for a copper, he knows that not everyone who passes is going to give him a coin. he, therefore, solicits more or less mechanically, with a mind not positive or sure. his hand is extended in timidity and weakness. now and then he gets a coin from a sympathetic passer-by. the same principle holds true for the man who prays in the old orthodox fashion. he utters his petitions with doubts and misgivings, with timidity and wonderings. some of his prayers are answered--just as the occasional coin is cast to the beggar. but most of the orthodox prayers sent up in the fashion of begging and supplicating are never answered. of necessity, they cannot be, because the concentration is filled with fear and trembling. only by positive and courageous thinking do we attract to ourselves the answers to our prayers. when we are permeated with the spirit of doubt, our petitions are cross-circuited. therefore, in making your affirmation this time, rest assured that the abundant spirit of the universal supply has everything you need, and has it now. you have only to put your mind in a condition to receive. you do not have to beg the sun for its rays, nor god for his love. it is there for the taking. many of us keep the sunshine of abundance out of our lives by pulling down the curtain of doubt--just as we may go into a room, pull down a shade and keep out the sun. james russell lowell, seventy-five years ago, told us the same story in "the vision of sir launfal," when he said that "heaven is given away and god may be had for the asking". by gratefully accepting all of the supply for your needs, you are running up the shade of positive faith and letting the sunlight of abundance in. send out the desire for your supply to the universal mind and then rest--feeling that it has been acquired. of course, the stronger you concentrate, without stress and strain (as outlined in "practical psychology and sex life," by the author, under the chapter "how to get what you want," and chapters on "concentration"), and the more positive and courageous your concentration, the stronger will be your mental thought currents and consequently the quicker your demonstration. _omnipotence has provided for me and mine_, i raise the shade of my faith and let in the sunlight of abundance. i know i do not have to beg for this, for it is mine now. when first i saw the light of day, the bountiful spirit of the father made all preparations for my life's necessities and pleasures. they have been in the world since i was born. i now claim and accept my supply. from now on the spirit goes before me--making easy and prosperous all my ways--and i have abundance for every need. from the bountiful hand of omnipotence i have abundant health--i have abundant love--i have abundant prosperity--i have abundant peace. my father careth for the grass of the field and the birds of the air--and he careth for me. i realize it. think it and live it now. abundance for all my needs is mine, now and forever. * * * * * health, success, prosperity, universal peace and brotherhood "god made from one blood all the nations of the world." as i enter the silence this time, expecting to get health, success, prosperity and happiness, i am going to have my mind filled with the spirit of divine unity. unity among the nations of the world, unity in abundance, unity in love, unity in prosperity, unity in health and unity in spirit. there can be no separation in spirit. all is mind, all is god, all is universal energy. i am part of the creative force. i am a part and parcel of the unity of love, nature and god. therefore, where god is, i recognize a completeness. and i, being a part of god, a part of this spirit, a part of the power with him, am, therefore, at one with god and all thought. i am therefore at one with god and all spirit. nothing can separate me from the love of god, but my own mental attitude. nothing can separate me from abundance, happiness, success, prosperity and love, but my own wrong thinking. love is dealt in the world in the spirit of god and, therefore, recognizing this unity of love, i am a part of it and have perfect love, success, prosperity, abundance and health. the ocean is composed of water. if i take a bucket of water from the ocean, it still is the water of the ocean. i may take this water to an island in the sea. though i have separated this water from the main body of the ocean, it still is the water from the sea. but, as the water is separated from the main body of the ocean, it loses its power, its strength and many of its cardinal properties. i am the same as the sea water when i, by wrong thinking:--whether it be jealousy, envy, hatred, misunderstanding, worry or fear--separate myself from the spirit of god. i am as one going upon an island of humanity. i am still of that same spirit; but it has been separated, so that within me, it has lost many of its cardinal virtues. these virtues are there, but i do not recognize them. separation has lessened my strength, my vitality, my power, my health, my happiness, my prosperity and my joy. just as it is necessary for the bucket of water to remain in the ocean in order to contain all of its original power and to retain all of its original strength, to be intact, so is it necessary for man to keep in the spirit of at-one-ment with the father, that we may manifest daily god's principle of unity with god, man and nature. when we have maintained that attitude of one-ness with the father in all respects, we are then recognizing and expecting, in this act, the fullness of our spirit. this fullness of our spirit will, therefore, give us health, prosperity and happiness. when i have a mind that is filled with negative, discordant or inharmonious thoughts, i am separating myself from the full expression of the divine within me. i am the bucket of water going stale on a human island; but, when i make my spirit at one with the father by harmonious thinking, by love, kindness, good will, fellowship and co-operation, i am not only maintaining all of my original properties, but i am in correspondence with the infinite spirit so that i can manifest and express his original spirit in every particular. where there is a unity of spirit, there is unity of all the good things of life. perhaps i am not drawing from the bank of life's experience everything that i ought to have--because i have separated myself from the spiritual board of directors in this bank of life, and am not getting my dividends on time. my mental attitude is the cause; therefore, as i enter the silence this time, i am going to maintain the faith and the love-spirit of my unity with all things. i maintain, therefore, my at-one-ment with god, with man and nature. i maintain that all of the original strength of spirit is mine. i hold that the manifestations of this original spirit will produce everything in my life for my ultimate good, because i am at one with the father. all things are mine. the silence, this day, finds me at one with all. the silence, this day, finds me at peace with god, man and nature. the silence, this day, finds me in at-one-ment with god and all, in unity with every conceivable thing in the universe. therefore, my unity, my at-one-ment with the father, my wholeness of spirit with god brings into my life everything for my good. all things work together for my good in my at-one-ment with man, god and nature--in my unity with all. * * * * * how to have more "i am unselfish in action, being and motive." the science of psychology as applied to everyday life is, strictly speaking, a new science. it is a matter of thousands of people in the world all of a sudden coming in contact with certain laws, which make them successful, healthy and prosperous. it is quite natural, because man is interested more in himself than in any one else, that, when he finds these laws may be applied to give him more abundance, the tendency may be to use these laws for selfish purposes. nothing could be more unpsychological. the laws should be used for the individual, but should not stop there. each individual who is profiting by the operation of the laws, or understanding of psychology, ought not only to get everything himself that psychology can give him, but he should pass these on to others; he should tell others about it; he should cry it from the housetops and megaphone it from the street corners. he should not want to get everything himself, but wish the same that he has to everyone else. by doing this, the law will rebound, and, instead of having less, he will have still more than he would have were he thinking about the laws for himself alone. the human race is made up of a whole lot of selfishness, and the man, or the woman, who hopes to get the most out of life and out of psychology, must learn at the very beginning of his or her understanding of the laws. then, only, will the best come to those who are absolutely unselfish. if there is any selfish motive or selfish desire in your heart, you may operate the law and get a certain amount of benefit, nay, you may even become rich by it and have great power, but it should not end there. your riches are for the use of others, as well as for yourselves, and the real psychologist, in getting his riches, will pass on to others that which he has. the real psychologist, in getting more power, will share it with others and will use it for the good of others, as well as for his own personal aggrandizement. therefore hold the thought: "i am unselfish in action, being and motive." many a person never will get the demonstrations he wants, because the channel of abundance and prosperity, happiness and joy, is clogged up with his own selfish attitude. the selfish person who does operate the laws, does so by overbalancing his selfishness with some other great virtue. but when he is extremely selfish, he may never have demonstrations as he wants; he may not have enough other virtues to outweigh his selfishness. he may live for years, and know what the laws are, and yet lack this one little thing, _unselfishness_, in operating the laws for his own abundance, prosperity or happiness. if you are not having the demonstrations you want, it is because there is a kink in the mind somewhere. the kink may be selfishness, or it may be pride, haughtiness, duplicity, dishonesty, hatred, envy or jealousy. this time we are going to hold the thought: "i am unselfish in action, being and motive," and each time we go into the silence, this unselfish spirit shall be the guiding-star of our thoughts. it will be the personal touch with the infinite spirit itself. the beginning of life's happiness, as well as the end thereof, is the spirit of unselfishness. "i am unselfish in action, being and motive." * * * * * all things are in divine order "divine harmony and peace actuate every thought and action of my being." i realize that all things are in divine order for me and mine. there can be no disturbance in the world without or the world within my being but that is in perfect harmony with the infinite. the circumstances outside of my life are all for my good. my environment where i am now and the conditions in which i am living, i make harmonize for me by my attitude of mind. i think only peace, i breathe only love, i speak only harmony. my conditions and my environment, although outwardly inharmonious to my likes and tendencies, are changed by the alchemy of my thinking into a perfect symphony of happiness for me now. "divine harmony and peace actuate every thought and action of my being." this thought is energy, this thought is life, this thought is power. the energy, life and power of this thought weaves all of my diversified life's experiences into a divine pattern of perfection for me. there can be no trouble, disappointments, sorrow, reverses, loss or discord but that shall be changed for my good when i think spirit and live the affirmation of today, namely, "divine harmony and peace actuate every thought and action of my being." all things are in divine order. the spirit of divinity prompts my thinking. the divine within me actuates my actions. the god powers within, this minute are working all things together for my good. there can be no danger come nigh my dwelling for my body is the temple of the living god. therefore, the god spirit within me protects me from all harm, inspires me to high ideals, lifts me to heights of righteousness and fills my soul with love. love for my circumstances, love for my present conditions, love for my environment, love for every one in the world, love for all of the creation of god. therefore i have no enemies, for i love all. i recognize no misfortunes, for the love energy within turns all misfortunes and sorrows into stepping stones for my greater advancement and achievement. the god energy within transforms all inharmonious conditions without into a perfect harmony within. the kingdom of god now reigns within me and i am at ease, at peace and at-one-ment with all nature and god. the harmony therefore within me in nature and in god gives me perfect peace within and perfect peace without. divine thought and energy, love and blessing actuate every action of my being. where divine love reigns there can be no trouble, no discord, no inharmony, no lack, no limitation, no sorrow, no grief, no sickness, no failure. the energy of divine love transforms all things into my good. the love and peace of the father abideth within me and is manifested without so that my life is one harmonious whole touching the lives of all others who come in contact with me so that they, too, feel my vibrations of at-one-ment with the father and they in turn become harmonious and complete in spirit with man and god. divine harmony and peace actuate every thought and action of my being. all things are in divine order. * * * * * thought to hold in silence and to meditate upon during the day for justice "there's a spirit of justice that secures me in which is my own." if we reach a consciousness of justice, we need have no doubts as to our care in every particular while journeying between the two peaks of eternity--from birth to the great divide. there is nothing that can defeat justice; and the person who has a consciousness of justice will attract to himself every conceivable thing needed for this life, because it will be the logical objective of justice to supply to each individual that justice for which he thinks. that is the reason why this affirmation is so complete in itself; namely, "there is a spirit of justice that secures me in which is my own, and this security is provided already for us by the spirit of justice." it would be a psychological paradox to think that justice could be defeated. that could not be. perhaps it appears to you that your own has not yet been secured to you, but, remember that life is fleeting--that a year is as a tale that is told--and that a decade is but as "ships that pass in the night"--when the years have vanished in the distance. if you have lived a life of justice, and it appears now that your own is not coming to you, that someone else is having more of the good things of life than you, and that someone seems to have used the art of the man of injustice, be not deceived, god is not mocked, for "whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." if you have sowed equity and justice in the days that are gone, be sure that the same equity and justice will be secured to you. the scriptures tell us not to think too much of the man who is nourishing like a green bay tree, for his efforts are soon cut off and he vanisheth away. one who is astride the scales of justice, and who thinks that he can hold the balance, is gravely mistaken. he may have occupied his present position for many years, first putting his weight on one side and then on the other in an effort to keep his equilibrium. perhaps today it appears that the scales of justice are being well manipulated by his insincerity, duplicity or trickery--but it is like the green bay tree. it will soon pass away. justice is as eternal as god himself, and there is no more possibility of defeating it in the individual's life, in your own life, in the life of a nation or in the history of mankind, than there is likelihood that the sun can get away from its own rays. the justice of god is eternal, or, in other words, god always is justice, personified. where god rules, and where his laws and mandates have been given by his own fiat, "man, neither flesh nor the devil" can defeat the ultimate outcome of justice. your own is secured to you. man himself is fashioned by the finger of divinity. the crown of justice is placed upon his brow and no ruthless hand of greed, duplicity or evil dexterity can ever tear it away. it is there to stay, and the man who has been thus crowned because he has lived in this consciousness of justice--in the consciousness of god himself--is bound to have come back to him that which he has thought, that which he has sowed--justice. you are secured by this spirit of justice. perhaps already your life has had the law of compensation bring to you more than to others of whom you may think, and who, because of their bank account, get more out of life than you. a man may have a million dollars, and yet not be as happy as the laborer living in a thatched cottage. _perhaps justice has tipped the scales in your favor already--and you have failed to recognize it. perhaps you have children, loved ones, family and fireside which bring more comfort to you than the land owner gets who lives in his palace on the hill_. half of life, or the joys of life, depend upon our ability to recognize and appreciate the blessings we already have. therefore, in counting your blessings, or discounting your blessings, be sure that you use a moral standard, instead of a material standard, in gauging whether justice has been meted out to you or not. the justice of the eternal secures me, the spirit of justice secures me in which is mine own. believe it, think it, live it, claim it and justice shall be yours. * * * * * question--in practicing the silence, the mind seems to flutter all about and there is great nervous tension. what is wrong? answer--lack of concentration. this person ought to follow some simple exercise of concentration, such as given below, until the mind has control over the body. by practicing a few of the simple exercises given below, fifteen minutes a day, and then taking the silence a few hours after these exercises have been practiced, the mind will begin to be under control. the nervous tension is caused because of this lack of control, and in the effort to bring the scattering mind into one focus the reaction comes upon the nervous system which, in turn, reacts upon the body. practice and exercises for lack of concentration follow. exercises by thos. parker boyd ( ) select some part of the body, a foot or hand, with the idea of heat. while holding the mind in this attitude, breathe deeply and steadily, and, in from one to four minutes, you will feel the warm glow coming to the foot. in this way, you can soon master the entire body. begin with the sense of feeling. if there is an itching of the body, make it stop by the force of your will. in from three days to three weeks, you can stop the itching sensation at will. then try the habit of sneezing; stubbornly resist the inclination to sneeze, and you will soon have the mastery. now try your will on coughing. when the tickling sensation comes, stop it by the exercise of your will. you can soon master it. next try it on pain. when you feel a pain in the body, instead of rubbing on liniment, rub in a little will power; soon it will ease your pain as if by magic. with the fingers of one hand rub the skin on the back of the other hand, stroking toward the elbow, and will that all feeling shall disappear. in from one to three minutes, take a needle, and you can stick it through the skin on the back of the hand without pain. you may have to try it a dozen times, but persistence will bring success. having mastered the sense of feeling, take up that of hearing. ( ) it may seem impossible at first thought, but you have seen people so absorbed in what they were reading or thinking that they heard nothing, although you addressed them directly. they are simply abstracted from all else, and are thinking of one thing--to the exclusion of everything else. they entered this state of abstractedness unconsciously. to do so intentionally, you go by the law of indirectness. for instance, take sight; concentrate your vision and your whole attention upon some object, real or imaginary, until soon the sense of hearing becomes dormant. a little practice will enable you to study, think or sleep, regardless of noise. ( ) having mastered hearing, begin on sight. you have known people who walked on the street, looked at you and passed by without recognition, although they knew you well. a person deeply thinking on some subject, neither sees nor hears, but uses the mental sense entirely. the method is to let the eyes be open, but concentrate the thoughts on hearing or feeling. ( ) after getting control of your sight, take up the taste. take some tasteless thing on the tongue, abstract the mind to something else until the taste becomes dormant. then take something with more taste to it, abstracting the taste, until by this gradual process you can make the sourest pickle sweet. ( ) finally take some light odor, and hold it before the nostrils, abstracting the attention from the sense of smell, by hearing or seeing, etc., until by practice you can pass through the foulest odor without inconvenience or notice. sit or stand absolutely motionless, except your breathing, for one to five minutes at a time. do this often. practice closing each finger in rotation; then, when all are closed, open one at a time very slowly, keeping the attention fixed on what you are doing. keep all the other fingers still, save the one you are exercising with. inhale gradually for ten seconds, then exhale in the same way and time. look steadily at some point or object for a minute without winking the eye, keeping your attention fixed on the object. look at a picture critically, then close your eyes and mentally reconstruct it. close your eyes and construct the face of a friend, feature by feature. fix your attention on a hand or foot, hold on it the idea of heat and continue until the hand or foot feels warm. then try cold; then try pain. will that the person in front of you shall turn around or put his hand on his head or neck. hold your hand on some one in pain and say, "i will the pain to depart." repeat till the pain goes. * * * * * note.--for a scientific understanding of positive and negative concentration, see "practical psychology and sex life," by the author. silent treatment those at a distance or those who cannot attend my classes may have silent treatments--distance is no barrier--race or creed no bar to those who earnestly want to benefit from the silent treatment. many marvelous cures have been reported through silent treatment. business has been increased, positions secured, bad habits broken, prosperity demonstrated, peace and harmony restored in home and business. this is one of the strongest of dr. bush's study features. use blank on opposite page for yourself, your friends or those whom you desire to help. you may begin it at any time. you will get the vibration of the campaign and the power of thousands of minds working for you and with you for your health and happiness. these silent treatments will help the sick rise above disease, overcome despair, and bring to themselves the positive healing vibration of dr. bush and his class. use blank on next page and bold the thought of the demonstration you desire--there is no fee. give in proportion as you hope to secure. "freely ye have received, freely give." the law of compensation demonstrates this truth. please use this blank ----------------------------------------------------------------------- in order that we may mentally treat your particular case more specifically, please answer the following questions and return this blank: date............................................................... what is the nature of your ailment?................................ ................................................................... how long so affected?.............................................. ever taken silent treatment?....................................... ever had a severe accident, shock, great sorrow or disappointment? please give particulars. ................................................................... ................................................................... are you subject to moods; high tempered; erratic?.................. are you reading dr. bush's books?.................................. which ones?........................................................ are you willing to earnestly work in harmony with the treatment when sent out?........................................................ name............................................................... address, street and no............................................. ................................................................... city.................................state......................... ---------------------------------------------------------------- enclosed find $..................as my love offering. send to david v. bush ---- franklin avenue st. louis, mo. dr. david v. bush's famous silence records new--different--startling made by dr. david v. bush in person this famous "silence record" is unlike anything else ever produced. it brings right to the privacy of your own room the actual words, affirmations and intonations of dr. bush as he leads thousands in the silence. those who cannot be present at dr. bush's famous "silence classes" will find the use of these "silence records" interesting, helpful and stimulating. they teach you how to enter the "silence" and how to intone and use it constructively for your good and that of others. can be used on any phonograph that uses a needle. it is the largest size that can be made. there is no other record like this made and it can only be bought direct from "the universal fellowship." order this famous "silence" record today and begin at once to get in harmony with dr. bush's healing and inspirational "silence." price, each..........................................$ . kinks in the mind--the cause and cure of sickness by david v. bush what is the kink in your mind? does your subconscious mind entertain thoughts of fear, sickness, poverty, unhappiness--do you lack courage--have you been hampered in reaching your success goal--do you want to be master of self and your own destiny? do you wish to conquer disease--strengthen your personality--be more and do more? here then is a way to overcome all these mental handicaps and develop within yourself constructive action. dr. bush, through his vast experience in handling thousands of cases, has proven beyond a doubt that all sickness, poverty and unhappiness is caused by "kinks" in the mind. when the store house of the intellect, the subconscious mind, becomes clogged up with morbid thoughts and destructive suggestions the physical being refuses to work in harmony. dr. bush tells you how to train your subconscious mind along the path of creative thinking. he points out the means of attaining the very things in life that your better self has longed for. he explains how you make your "dreams of success come true" and he gives you actual examples. the secret of success, health and prosperity will no longer remain a secret for you, if you will read and follow the instructions of this wonderful teacher. if you are sick this book tells you why you are sick--it explains the mental processes that react on your physical nature--it places within your reach the means of curing yourself and others. after reading it you will understand better the process of positive thinking--and you will be able to attune your physical nature so that it will work in harmony with your mental nature--you will understand how to take the "kinks" out of the mind. a book that may mean the turning point in your life--one that you should get and read now--without a day's delay. price, per copy..................................... c how to demonstrate prosperity most people fail to become prosperous because they lack a definite working plan. dr. david v. bush has prepared a simple chart so that you may analyze your failings and conquer them. with it you may demonstrate prosperity--it will point out your weak points and show the way to actual accomplishment. whatever your walk in life--no matter how many failures you have had--no matter how discouraged and despondent you may feel--you need this self-analysis chart right now. send for it today. just c, money order or stamps. why some people fail in visualizing rules for visualization to visualize and concentrate successfully, certain definite principles underlying the laws that control the functions of the mind must be understood and applied. my experience in thousands of cases shows that failure is often due to the wrong application of these laws--to a misunderstanding of the mental processes necessary to properly focus the thought waves upon some definite desire and the urge of the conscious mind for too hasty action. the laws of visualization and concentration are well defined and when properly exercised are without limitation as to success, but to accomplish results one must understand and use these laws properly. you will more readily grasp the principle that governs the laws of visualization and concentration after reading this little booklet. in it dr. david bush has gone right down to bed rock--he thoroughly explains these necessary laws--he puts you right and shows you your mistakes--he starts you off on the right foot so that you may apply these laws for your benefit and profit. dr. bush believes, from his own vast experience, that more people fail on concentration and visualization than on any other operation of the laws of mind now being studied or applied, because they only partly understand these laws. in this pamphlet he shows _why_ the vast majority of people fail in visualizing. there are natural laws which are very often cross-circuited by well intentioned people trying to operate them for their good, all because they fail to understand the right way. you will understand visualization after you read "why some people fail in visualization." send for this book today--you will understand this subject after reading it--you need it now---send c in stamps or coin. the influence of suggestion and auto-suggestion in this little booklet dr. david v. bush discusses suggestion and auto-suggestion from a different angle than that in "practical psychology and sex life" and "applied psychology and scientific living." he takes the practical side of suggestion and points out its value and usefulness. he explains the limitations of suggestion and deals in a different way with the mental laws that control this powerful factor for your success. no matter what thought you have given to this interesting subject--no matter how much you studied suggestion, you will be surprised and delighted with the plain everyday way in which dr. bush explains this mental phenomena. this is a different angle of suggestion than in either "applied psychology and scientific living" or "practical psychology and sex life." also a different angle than has been printed in the fifty-cent series by the same author under "the subconscious mind." this pamphlet not only deals differently with the law of suggestion as mentioned above, but it is most entertaining, readable and likeable from the practical side of suggestion. there will be stimulation, inspiration and mental cerebration in reading this pamphlet--"the influence of suggestion." you will welcome this little booklet as a new avenue for increasing your knowledge of this fascinating study and you will acquire a newer and different understanding of its usefulness. by all means secure this little booklet without delay. your copy is ready. just cents, coin or stamps, will start it by first mall. what to eat your capacity for constructive thinking is in exact ratio to the kind of food you put in your stomach. your physical being and cellular development is retarded or improved by the food you eat. sickness is, in many instances, the result of wrong diet. what you eat determines your fitness to fight and conquer in life's battles. "what to eat" is a book that you must read. it shows you the value of eating right--it explains the cause of disease from wrong eating--it gives you the proper diet and explains why. to succeed--to have poise and courage--to be immune from sickness--to be strong and sturdy--to think fast and act quickly--to be married happily--consider your diet. when you read this book you will be able to choose a combined diet that will nourish your body and build mentality. all life is a battle for place--the fittest only survive--stop putting poison into your stomach--learn the secret of vigorous health and long life. written by a dietitian of long experience in collaboration with dr. bush himself. you will want this book now. only a limited number will be printed. heavy cardboard cover--price, only cents per copy. will power and success by david v. bush you want to know how to get the maximum amount of success--this book will unlock the hidden treasure. you do not have to live in lack and limitation when there are natural laws to give you abundance, success and happiness. this book makes plain the great laws for success, health and abundance. you cannot fail to understand or operate those fundamental laws for your success, as dr. bush outlines them here. you will find it different from any other work ever written on will power. the culmination of over twenty years of research and study, it deals in simple language with the possibilities of every man--how you and everyone else may rise from the slough of mediocrity to the pinnacle of wealth and fame. it teaches the great laws of success, health and abundance. it teaches the simple, easy, everyday, workaday rules which will bring to you abundance--success--happiness--love. this book has been a guide-post which has steered many a traveler out of the ruts and mire of dismal struggle on to the smooth, oiled turnpike of a successful, happy, useful life. there is nothing mysterious, mystical, or supernatural in the elements of success and happiness. there is nothing in this book which the humblest among us cannot understand and yet it appeals to those who are versed in literature and science as well. in the simple everyday language of the people it tells in an interesting, fascinating way, the rules easily applicable to everyday life. price: in uniform bed cloth binding............................. $ . in novelette binding (leather)............................ . mind power plus david v. bush, editor if you want to keep abreast of the times in all lines of mental science, new thought, applied psychology and metaphysics, you should subscribe for mind power plus, the pace-making periodical in the field of mental science and advanced thought. in this magazine you will find more special departments, and more worth-while articles of a practical nature than in any other periodical of its kind on the market. you will find features in mind power plus that will not only be of intense interest but also of extremely practical value. mind power plus brings to you the latest and the best in all branches of applied psychology. it will help you to solve your problems. it will be a constant companion, guide, inspiration and source of comfort throughout the year. if you have taken any psychology, metaphysical or mental science courses you will get more out of them by reading mind power plus. if you have never taken such a course you will easily grasp every message in mind power plus because all the articles are written in such a simple, interesting, popular way. you will be introduced to the most fascinating subject on earth--you. this magazine is dedicated to the purpose of helping you--to success, health, prosperity aid happiness. that is its mission. mind power plus is a big -page monthly magazine that will help you "know self". subscription price per year......................................... $ . per copy........................................... . fifty-cent series of booklets by david v. bush the universality of the master mind. grit and gumption. kinks in the mind--the cause and cure of sickness.[ ] the law of vibration and its uses. applied psychology and what it is.[ ] what is love--how to keep it. the chemistry of thought.[ ] the law of abundance. how to double your efficiency. how to develop personality.[ ] life's greatest bet. the power of visualization. how to make your dreams come true.[ ] smile, smile, smile. man's worst enemy.[ ] the functions of the subconscious mind. psychological law of suggestion and auto-suggestion.[ ] special offer order four for $ . and you may have any one of the others free. works of david v. bush cloth novelette practical psychology and sex life $ . $ . character analysis--how to read people at sight . applied psychology and scientific living . . will power and success . . how to make love and marry--sex harmony . inspirational poems . . soul poems and love lyrics . . poems of mastery and love verse . . the universality of the master mind, paper, c . grit and gumption, paper, c . . the fundamentals of applied psychology. ------------------------------------------------------------------ editor mind power plus, per year, $ . . ------------------------------------------------------------------ address: david v. bush, publisher ---- franklin ave. st. louis, mo. notes [ : taken from applied psychology and scientific living.] [ : for complete study of how to charge the subconscious mind, see chapters on the "subconscious mind," "how to cleanse the aura," "how to get what you want," "concentration" and "visualization," in "practical psychology and sex life" by the author.] [ : scientific explanation of the silence and how to enter the silence and the benefits derived thereby, will be found in "practical psychology and sex life" by david v. bush.] [ : this is from the fundamentals of applied psychology.] [ : this is from applied psychology and scientific living.] [illustration: very truly yours w d wattles] the science of being well by wallace d. wattles author of "the science of getting rich," etc. price, $ . published by elizabeth towne holyoke, mass. copyright, september, by wallace d. wattles contents page preface i. the principle of health ii. the foundation of faith iii. life and its organisms iv. what to think v. faith vi. use of the will vii. health from god viii. summary of the mental actions ix. when to eat x. what to eat xi. how to eat xii. hunger and appetites xiii. in a nutshell xiv. breathing xv. sleep xvi. supplementary instructions xvii. a summary of the science of being well preface. this volume is the second of a series, the first of which is "the science of getting rich." as that book is intended solely for those who want money, so this is for those who want health, and who want a practical guide and handbook, not a philosophical treatise. it is an instructor in the use of the universal principle of life, and my effort has been to explain the way in so plain and simple a fashion that the reader, though he may have given no previous study to new thought or metaphysics, may readily follow it to perfect health. while retaining all essentials, i have carefully eliminated all non-essentials; i have used no technical, abstruse, or difficult language, and have kept the one point in view at all times. as its title asserts, the book deals with science, not speculation. the monistic theory of the universe--the theory that matter, mind, consciousness, and life are all manifestations of one substance--is now accepted by most thinkers; and if you accept this theory, you cannot deny the logical conclusions you will find herein. best of all, the methods of thought and action prescribed have been tested by the author in his own case, and in the case of hundreds of others during twelve years of practice, with continuous and unfailing success. i can say of the science of being well that it works; and that wherever its laws are complied with, it can no more fail to work than the science of geometry can fail to work. if the tissues of your body have not been so destroyed that continued life is impossible, you can get well; and if you will think and act in a certain way, you will get well. if the reader wishes to fully understand the monistic theory of the cosmos, he is recommended to read hegel and emerson; to read also "the eternal news," a pamphlet by j. j. brown, cathcart road, govanhill, glasgow, scotland. some enlightenment may also be found in a series of articles by the author, which were published in _the nautilus_, holyoke, mass., during the year , under the title, "what is truth?" those who wish more detailed information as to the performance of the voluntary functions--eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping--may read "new science of living and healing," "letters to a woman's husband," and "the constructive use of foods," booklets by w. d. wattles, which may be obtained from the publishers of this book. i would also recommend the writings of horace fletcher, and of edward hooker dewey. read all these, if you like, as a sort of buttress to your faith; but let me warn you against making the mistake of studying many conflicting theories, and practicing, at the same time, parts of several different "systems"; for if you get well, it must be by giving your whole mind to the _right_ way of thinking and living. remember that the science of being well claims to be a complete and sufficient guide in every particular. concentrate upon the way of thinking and acting it prescribes, and follow it in every detail, and you will get well; or if you are already well, you will remain so. trusting that you will go on until the priceless blessing of perfect health is yours, i remain, very truly yours, wallace d. wattles. chapter i. the principle of health. in the personal application of the science of being well, as in that of the science of getting rich, certain fundamental truths must be known in the beginning, and accepted without question. some of these truths we state here:-- the perfectly natural performance of function constitutes health; and the perfectly natural performance of function results from the natural action of the principle of life. there is a principle of life in the universe; it is the one living substance from which all things are made. this living substance permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe; it is in and through all things, like a very refined and diffusible ether. all life comes from it; its life is all the life there is. man is a form of this living substance, and has within him a principle of health. (the word principle is used as meaning source.) the principle of health in man, when in full constructive activity, causes all the voluntary functions of his life to be perfectly performed. it is the principle of health in man which really works all healing, no matter what "system" or "remedy" is employed; and this principle of health is brought into constructive activity by thinking in a certain way. i proceed now to prove this last statement. we all know that cures are wrought by all the different, and often opposite, methods employed in the various branches of the healing art. the allopath, who gives a strong dose of a counter-poison, cures his patient; and the homeopath, who gives a diminutive dose of the poison most similar to that of the disease, also cures it. if allopathy ever cured any given disease, it is certain that homeopathy never cured that disease; and if homeopathy ever cured an ailment, allopathy could not possibly cure that ailment. the two systems are radically opposite in theory and practice; and yet both "cure" most diseases. and even the remedies used by physicians in any one school are not the same. go with a case of indigestion to half a dozen doctors, and compare their prescriptions; it is more than likely that none of the ingredients of any one of them will be in the others. must we not conclude that their patients are healed by a principle of health within themselves, and not by something in the varying "remedies"? not only this, but we find the same ailments cured by the osteopath with manipulations of the spine; by the faith healer with prayer, by the food scientist with bills of fare, by the christian scientist with a formulated creed statement, by the mental scientist with affirmation, and by the hygienists with differing plans of living. what conclusion can we come to in the face of all these facts but that there is a principle of health which is the same in all people, and which really accomplishes all the cures; and that there is something in all the "systems" which, under favorable conditions, arouses the principle of health to action? that is, medicines, manipulations, prayers, bills of fare, affirmations, and hygienic practices cure whenever they cause the principle of health to become active; and fail whenever they do not cause it to become active. does not all this indicate that the results depend upon the way the patient thinks about the remedy, rather than upon the ingredients in the prescription? there is an old story which furnishes so good an illustration on this point that i will give it here. it is said that in the middle ages, the bones of a saint, kept in one of the monasteries, were working miracles of healing; on certain days a great crowd of the afflicted gathered to touch the relics, and all who did so were healed. on the eve of one of these occasions, some sacrilegious rascal gained access to the case in which the wonder-working relics were kept and stole the bones; and in the morning, with the usual crowd of sufferers waiting at the gates, the fathers found themselves shorn of the source of the miracle-working power. they resolved to keep the matter quiet, hoping that by doing so they might find the thief and recover their treasures; and hastening to the cellar of the convent they dug up the bones of a murderer, who had been buried there many years before. these they placed in the case, intending to make some plausible excuse for the failure of the saint to perform his usual miracles on that day; and then they let in the waiting assemblage of the sick and infirm. to the intense astonishment of those in the secret, the bones of the malefactor proved as efficacious as those of the saint; and the healing went on as before. one of the fathers is said to have left a history of the occurrence, in which he confessed that, in his judgment, the healing power had been in the people themselves all the time, and never in the bones at all. whether the story is true or not, the conclusion applies to all the cures wrought by all the systems. the power that heals is in the patient himself; and whether it shall become active or not does not depend upon the physical or mental means used, but upon the way the patient thinks about these means. there is a universal principle of life, as jesus taught; a great spiritual healing power; and there is a principle of health in man which is related to this healing power. this is dormant or active, according to the way a man thinks. he can always quicken it into activity by thinking in a certain way. your getting well does not depend upon the adoption of some system, or the finding of some remedy; people with your identical ailments have been healed by all systems and all remedies. it does not depend upon climate; some people are well and others are sick in all climates. it does not depend upon avocation, unless in case of those who work under poisonous conditions; people are well in all trades and professions. your getting well depends upon your beginning to think--and act--in a certain way. the way a man thinks about things is determined by what he believes about them. his thoughts are determined by his faith, and the results depend upon his making a personal application of his faith. if a man has faith in the efficacy of a medicine, and is able to apply that faith to himself, that medicine will certainly cause him to be cured; but though his faith be great, he will not be cured unless he applies it to himself. many sick people have faith for others but none for themselves. so, if he has faith in a system of diet, and can personally apply that faith, it will cure him; and if he has faith in prayers and affirmations and personally applies his faith, prayers and affirmations will cure him. faith, personally applied, cures; and no matter how great the faith or how persistent the thought, it will not cure without personal application. the science of being well, then, includes the two fields of thought and action. to be well it is not enough that man should merely think in a certain way; he must apply his thought to himself, and he must express and externalize it in his outward life by acting in the same way that he thinks. chapter ii. the foundations of faith. before man can think in the certain way which will cause his diseases to be healed, he must believe in certain truths which are here stated:-- all things are made from one living substance, which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. while all visible things are made from it, yet this substance, in its first formless condition is in and through all the visible forms that it has made. its life is in all, and its intelligence is in all. this substance creates by thought, and its method is by taking the form of that which it thinks about. the thought of a form held by this substance causes it to assume that form; the thought of a motion causes it to institute that motion. forms are created by this substance in moving itself into certain attitudes or positions. when original substance wishes to create a given form, it thinks of the motions which will produce that form. when it wishes to create a world, it thinks of the motions, perhaps extending through ages, which will result in its coming into the attitude and form of the world; and these motions are made. when it wishes to create an oak tree, it thinks of the sequences of movement, perhaps extending through ages, which will result in the form of an oak tree; and these motions are made. the particular sequences of motion by which differing forms should be produced were established in the beginning; they are changeless. certain motions instituted in the formless substance will forever produce certain forms. man's body is formed from the original substance, and is the result of certain motions, which first existed as thoughts of original substance. the motions which produce, renew, and repair the body of man are called functions, and these functions are of two classes: voluntary and involuntary. the involuntary functions are under the control of the principle of health in man, and are performed in a perfectly healthy manner so long as man thinks in a certain way. the voluntary functions of life are eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping. these, entirely or in part, are under the direction of man's conscious mind; and he can perform them in a perfectly healthy way if he will. if he does not perform them in a healthy way, he cannot long be well. so we see that if man thinks in a certain way, and eats, drinks, breathes, and sleeps in a corresponding way, he will be well. the involuntary functions of man's life are under the direct control of the principle of health, and so long as man thinks in a perfectly healthy way, these functions are perfectly performed; for the action of the principle of health is largely directed by man's conscious thought, affecting his sub-conscious mind. man is a thinking center, capable of originating thought; and as he does not know everything, he makes mistakes and thinks error. not knowing everything, he believes things to be true which are not true. man holds in his thought the idea of diseased and abnormal functioning and conditions, and so perverts the action of the principle of health, causing diseased and abnormal functioning and conditions within his own body. in the original substance there are held only the thoughts of perfect motion; perfect and healthy function; complete life. god never thinks disease or imperfection. but for countless ages men have held thoughts of disease, abnormality, old age, and death; and the perverted functioning resulting from these thoughts has become a part of the inheritance of the race. our ancestors have, for many generations, held imperfect ideas concerning human form and functioning; and we begin life with racial sub-conscious impressions of imperfection and disease. this is not natural, or a part of the plan of nature. the purpose of nature can be nothing else than the perfection of life. this we see from the very nature of life itself. it is the nature of life to continually advance toward more perfect living; advancement is the inevitable result of the very act of living. increase is always the result of active living; whatever lives must live more and more. the seed, lying in the granary, has life, but it is not living. put it into the soil and it becomes active, and at once begins to gather to itself from the surrounding substance, and to build a plant form. it will so cause increase that a seed head will be produced containing thirty, sixty, or a hundred seeds, each having as much life as the first. life, by living, increases. life cannot live without increasing, and the fundamental impulse of life is to live. it is in response to this fundamental impulse that original substance works, and creates. god must live; and he cannot live except as he creates and increases. in multiplying forms, he is moving on to live more. the universe is a great advancing life, and the purpose of nature is the advancement of life toward perfection; toward perfect functioning. the purpose of nature is perfect health. the purpose of nature, so far as man is concerned, is that he should be continuously advancing into more life, and progressing toward perfect life; and that he should live the most complete life possible in his present sphere of action. this must be so, because that which lives in man is seeking more life. give a little child a pencil and paper, and he begins to draw crude figures; that which lives in him is trying to express itself in art. give him a set of blocks, and he will try to build something; that which lives in him is seeking expression in architecture. seat him at a piano, and he will try to draw harmony from the keys; that which lives in him is trying to express itself in music. that which lives in man is always seeking to live more; and since man lives most when he is well, the principle of nature in him can seek only health. the natural state of man is a state of perfect health; and everything in him, and in nature, tends toward health. sickness can have no place in the thought of original substance, for it is by its own nature continually impelled toward the fullest and most perfect life; therefore, toward health. man, as he exists in the thought of the formless substance, has perfect health. disease, which is abnormal or perverted function--motion imperfectly made, or made in the direction of imperfect life--has no place in the thought of the thinking stuff. the supreme mind never thinks of disease. disease was not created or ordained by god, or sent forth from him. it is wholly a product of separate consciousness; of the individual thought of man. god, the formless substance, does not see disease, think disease, know disease, or recognize disease. disease is recognized only by the thought of man; god thinks nothing but health. from all the foregoing, we see that health is _a fact_ or truth in the original substance from which we are all formed; and that disease is imperfect functioning, resulting from the imperfect thoughts of men, past and present. if man's thoughts of himself had always been those of perfect health, man could not possibly now be otherwise than perfectly healthy. man in perfect health is the thought of original substance, and man in imperfect health is the result of his own failure to think perfect health, and to perform the voluntary functions of life in a healthy way. we will here arrange in a syllabus the basic truths of the science of being well:-- _there is a thinking substance from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. it is the life of all._ _the thought of a form in this substance causes the form; the thought of a motion produces the motion. in relation to man, the thoughts of this substance are always of perfect functioning and perfect health._ _man is a thinking center, capable of original thought; and his thought has power over his own functioning. by thinking imperfect thoughts he has caused imperfect and perverted functioning; and by performing the voluntary functions of life in a perverted manner, he has assisted in causing disease._ _if man will think only thoughts of perfect health, he can cause within himself the functioning of perfect health; all the power of life will be exerted to assist him. but this healthy functioning will not continue unless man performs the external, or voluntary, functions of living in a healthy manner._ _man's first step must be to learn how to think perfect health; and his second step to learn how to eat, drink, breathe, and sleep in a perfectly healthy way. if man takes these two steps, he will certainly become well, and remain so._ chapter iii. life and its organisms. the human body is the abiding place of an energy which renews it when worn; which eliminates waste or poisonous matter, and which repairs the body when broken or injured. this energy we call life. life is not generated or produced within the body; _it produces the body_. the seed which has been kept in the storehouse for years will grow when planted in the soil; it will produce a plant. but the life in the plant is not generated by its growing; it is the life which makes the plant grow. the performance of function does not cause life; it is life which causes function to be performed. life is first; function afterward. it is life which distinguishes organic from inorganic matter, but it is not produced after the organization of matter. life is the principle or force which causes organization; it builds organisms. it is a principle or force inherent in original substance; all life is one. this life principle of the all is the principle of health in man, and becomes constructively active whenever man thinks in a certain way. whoever, therefore, thinks in this certain way will surely have perfect health if his external functioning is in conformity with his thought. but the external functioning must conform to the thought; man cannot hope to be well by thinking health, if he eats, drinks, breathes, and sleeps like a sick man. the universal life principle, then, is the principle of health in man. it is one with original substance. there is one original substance from which all things are made; this substance is alive, and its life is the principle of life of the universe. this substance has created from itself all the forms of organic life by thinking them, or by thinking the motions and functions which produce them. original substance thinks only health, because it knows all truth; there is no truth which is not known in the formless, which is all, and in all. it not only knows all truth, but it has all power; its vital power is the source of all the energy there is. a conscious life which knows all truth and which has all power cannot go wrong or perform function imperfectly; knowing all, it knows, too much to go wrong, and so the formless cannot be diseased or think disease. man is a form of this original substance, and has a separate consciousness of his own; but his consciousness is limited, and therefore imperfect. by reason of his limited knowledge man can and does think wrongly, and so he causes perverted and imperfect functioning in his own body. man has not known too much to go wrong. the diseased or imperfect functioning may not instantly result from an imperfect thought, but it is bound to come if the thought becomes habitual. any thought continuously held by man tends to the establishment of the corresponding condition in his body. also, man has failed to learn how to perform the voluntary functions of his life in a healthy way. he does not know when, what, and how to eat; he knows little about breathing, and less about sleep. he does all these things in a wrong way, and under wrong conditions; and this because he has neglected to follow the only sure guide to the knowledge of life. he has tried to live by logic rather than by instinct; he has made living a matter of art, and not of nature. and he has gone wrong. his only remedy is to begin to go right; and this he can surely do. it is the work of this book to teach the whole truth, so that the man who reads it shall know too much to go wrong. the thoughts of disease produce the forms of disease. man must learn to think health; and being original substance which takes the form of its thoughts, he will become the form of health and manifest perfect health in all his functioning. the people who were healed by touching the bones of the saint were really healed by thinking in a certain way, and not by any power emanating from the relics. there is no healing power in the bones of dead men, whether they be those of saint or sinner. the people who were healed by the doses of either the allopath or the homeopath were also really healed by thinking in a certain way; there is no drug which has within itself the power to heal disease. the people who have been healed by prayers and affirmations were also healed by thinking in a certain way; there is no curative power in strings of words. all the sick who have been healed, by whatsoever "system," have thought in a certain way; and a little examination will show us what this way is. _the two essentials of the way are faith, and a personal application of the faith._ the people who touched the saint's bones had faith; and so great was their faith that in the instant they touched the relics they severed all mental relations with disease, and mentally unified themselves with health. this change of mind was accompanied by an intense devotional feeling which penetrated to the deepest recesses of their souls, and so aroused the principle of health to powerful action. by faith they claimed that they were healed, or appropriated health to themselves; and in full faith they ceased to think of themselves in connection with disease and thought of themselves only in connection with health. these are the two essentials to thinking in the certain way which will make you well: first, claim or appropriate health by faith; and, second, sever all mental relations with disease, and enter into mental relations with health. that which we make ourselves, mentally, we become physically; and that with which we unite ourselves mentally we become unified with physically. if your thought always relates you to disease, then your thought becomes a fixed power to cause disease within you; and if your thought always relates you to health, then your thought becomes a fixed power exerted to keep you well. in the case of the people who are healed by medicines, the result is obtained in the same way. they have, consciously or unconsciously, sufficient faith in the means used to cause them to sever mental relations with disease and enter into mental relations with health. faith may be unconscious. it is possible for us to have a sub-conscious or inbred faith in things like medicine, in which we do not believe to any extent objectively; and this sub-conscious faith may be quite sufficient to quicken the principle of health into constructive activity. many who have little conscious faith are healed in this way; while many others who have great faith in the means are not healed because they do not make the personal application to themselves; their faith is general, but not specific for their own cases. in the science of being well we have two main points to consider: first, how to think with faith; and, second, how to so apply the thought to ourselves as to quicken the principle of health into constructive activity. we begin by learning what to think. chapter iv. what to think. in order to sever all mental relations with disease, you must enter into mental relations with health, making the process positive not negative; one of assumption, not of rejection. you are to receive or appropriate health rather than to reject and deny disease. denying disease accomplishes next to nothing; it does little good to cast out the devil and leave the house vacant, for he will presently return with others worse than himself. when you enter into full and constant mental relations with health, you must of necessity cease all relationship with disease. the first step in the science of being well is, then, to enter into complete thought connection with health. the best way to do this is to form a mental image or picture of yourself as being well, imagining a perfectly strong and healthy body; and to spend sufficient time in contemplating this image to make it your habitual thought of yourself. this is not so easy as it sounds; it necessitates the taking of considerable time for meditation, and not all persons have the imaging faculty well enough developed to form a distinct mental picture of themselves in a perfect or idealized body. it is much easier, as in "the science of getting rich," to form a mental image of the things one wants to have; for we have seen these things, or their counterparts, and know how they look; we can picture them very easily from memory. but we have never seen ourselves in a perfect body, and a _clear_ mental image is hard to form. it is not necessary or essential, however, to have a clear mental image of yourself as you wish to be; it is only essential to form a conception of perfect health, and to relate yourself to it. this conception of health is not a mental picture of a particular thing; it is an understanding of health, and carries with it the idea of perfect functioning in every part and organ. you may try to picture yourself as perfect in physique; that helps; and you must _think of yourself as doing everything in the manner of a perfectly strong and healthy person_. you can picture yourself as walking down the street with an erect body and a vigorous stride; you can picture yourself as doing your day's work easily and with surplus vigor, never tired or weak; you can picture in your mind how all things would be done by a person full of health and power, and you can make yourself the central figure in the picture, doing things in just that way. never think of the ways in which weak or sickly people do things; always think of the way strong people do things. spend your leisure time in thinking about the strong way, until you have a good conception of it; and always think of yourself in connection with the strong way of doing things. that is what i mean by having a conception of health. in order to establish perfect functioning in every part, man does not have to study anatomy or physiology, so that he can form a mental image of each separate organ and address himself to it. he does not have to "treat" his liver, his kidneys, his stomach, or his heart. there is one principle of health in man, which has control over all the involuntary functions of his life; and the thought of perfect health, impressed upon this principle, will reach each part and organ. man's liver is not controlled by a liver-principle, his stomach by a digestive principle, and so on; the principle of health is one. the less you go into the detailed study of physiology, the better for you. our knowledge of this science is very imperfect, and leads to imperfect thought. imperfect thought causes imperfect functioning, which is disease. let me illustrate: until quite recently, physiology fixed ten days as the extreme limit of man's endurance without food; it was considered that only in exceptional cases could he survive a longer fast. so the impression became universally disseminated that one who was deprived of food must die in from five to ten days; and numbers of people, when cut off from food by shipwreck, accident, or famine, did die within this period. but the performances of dr. tanner, the forty-day faster, and the writings of dr. dewey and others on the fasting cure, together with the experiments of numberless people who have fasted from forty to sixty days, have shown that man's ability to live without food is vastly greater than had been supposed. any person, properly educated, can fast from twenty to forty days with little loss in weight, and often with no apparent loss of strength at all. the people who starved to death in ten days or less did so because they believed that death was inevitable; an erroneous physiology had given them a wrong thought about themselves. when a man is deprived of food he will die in from ten to fifty days, according to the way he has been taught; or, in other words, according to the way he thinks about it. so you see that an erroneous physiology can work very mischievous results. no science of being well can be founded on current physiology; it is not sufficiently exact in its knowledge. with all its pretensions, comparatively little is really known as to the interior workings and processes of the body. it is not known just how food is digested; it is not known just what part food plays, if any, in the generation of force. it is not known exactly what the liver, spleen, and pancreas are for, or what part their secretions play in the chemistry of assimilation. on all these and most other points we theorize, but we do not really know. when man begins to study physiology, he enters the domain of theory and disputation; he comes among conflicting opinions, and he is bound to form mistaken ideas concerning himself. these mistaken ideas lead to the thinking of wrong thoughts, and this leads to perverted functioning and disease. all that the most perfect knowledge of physiology could do for man would be to enable him to think only thoughts of perfect health, and to eat, drink, breathe, and sleep in a perfectly healthy way; and this, as we shall show, he can do without studying physiology at all. this, for the most part, is true of all hygiene. there are certain fundamental propositions which we should know; and these will be explained in later chapters, but aside from these propositions, ignore physiology and hygiene. they tend to fill your mind with thoughts of imperfect conditions, and these thoughts will produce the imperfect conditions in your own body. you cannot study any "science" which recognizes disease, if you are to think nothing but health. _drop all investigation as to your present condition, its causes, or possible results, and set yourself to the work of forming a conception of health._ think about health and the possibilities of health; of the work that may be done and the pleasures that may be enjoyed in a condition of perfect health. then make this conception your guide in thinking of yourself; refuse to entertain for an instant any thought of yourself which is not in harmony with it. when any idea of disease or imperfect functioning enters your mind, cast it out instantly by calling up a thought which is in harmony with the conception of health. think of yourself at all times as realizing conception; as being a strong and perfectly healthy personage; and do not harbor a contrary thought. know that as you think of yourself in unity with this conception, the original substance which permeates and fills the tissues of your body is taking form according to the thought; and know that this intelligent substance or mind stuff will cause function to be performed in such a way that your body will be rebuilt with perfectly healthy cells. the intelligent substance, from which all things are made, permeates and penetrates all things; and so it is in and through your body. it moves according to its thoughts; and so if you hold only the thoughts of perfectly healthy function, it will cause the movements of perfectly healthy function within you. hold with persistence to the thought of perfect health in relation to yourself; do not permit yourself to think in any other way. hold this thought with perfect faith that it is the fact, the truth. it is the truth so far as your mental body is concerned. you have a mind-body and a physical body; the mind-body takes form just as you think of yourself, and any thought which you hold continuously is made visible by the transformation of the physical body into its image. implanting the thought of perfect functioning in the mind-body will, in due time, cause perfect functioning in the physical body. the transformation of the physical body into the image of the ideal held by the mind-body is not accomplished instantaneously; we cannot transfigure our physical bodies at will as jesus did. in the creation and recreation of forms, substance moves along the fixed lines of growth it has established; and the impression upon it of the health thought causes the healthy body to be built cell by cell. holding only thoughts of perfect health will ultimately cause perfect functioning; and perfect functioning will in due time produce a perfectly healthy body. it may be as well to condense this chapter into a syllabus:-- _your physical body is permeated and fitted with an intelligent substance, which forms a body of mind-stuff. this mind-stuff controls the functioning of your physical body. a thought of disease or of imperfect function, impressed upon the mind-stuff, causes disease or imperfect functioning in the physical body. if you are diseased, it is because wrong thoughts have made impressions on this mind-stuff; these may have been either your own thoughts or those of your parents; we begin life with many sub-conscious impressions, both right and wrong. but the natural tendency of all mind is toward health, and if no thoughts are held in the conscious mind save those of health, all internal functioning will come to be performed in a perfectly healthy manner._ _the power of nature within you is sufficient to overcome all hereditary impressions, and if you will learn to control your thoughts, so that you shall think only those of health, and if you will perform the voluntary functions of life in a perfectly healthy way, you can certainly be well._ chapter v. faith. the principle of health is moved by faith; nothing else can call it into action, and only faith can enable you to relate yourself to health, and sever your relation with disease, in your thoughts. you will continue to think of disease unless you have faith in health. if you do not have faith you will doubt; if you doubt, you will fear; and if you fear, you will relate yourself in mind to that which you fear. if you fear disease, you will think of yourself in connection with disease; and that will produce within yourself the form and motions of disease. just as original substance creates from itself the forms of its thoughts, so your mind-body, which is original substance, takes the form and motion of whatever you think about. if you fear disease, dread disease, have doubts about your safety from disease, or if you even contemplate disease, you will connect yourself with it and create its forms and motions within you. let me enlarge somewhat upon this point. the potency, or creative power, of a thought is given to it _by the faith that is in it_. thoughts which contain no faith create no forms. the formless substance, which knows all truth and therefore thinks only truth, has perfect faith in every thought, because it thinks only truth; and so all its thoughts create. but if you will imagine a thought in formless substance in which there was no faith, you will see that such a thought could not cause the substance to move or take form. keep in mind the fact that only those thoughts which are conceived in faith have creative energy. only those thoughts which have faith with them are able to change function, or to quicken the principle of health into activity. if you do not have faith in health, you will certainly have faith in disease. if you do not have faith in health, it will do you no good to think about health, for your thoughts will have no potency, and will cause no change for the better in your conditions. if you do not have faith in health, i repeat, you will have faith in disease; and if, under such conditions, you think about health for ten hours a day, and think about disease for only a few minutes, the disease thought will control your condition because it will have the potency of faith, while the health thought will not. your mind-body will take on the form and motions of disease and retain them, because your health thought will not have sufficient dynamic force to change form or motion. in order to practice the science of being well, you must have complete faith in health. faith begins in belief; and we now come to the question: _what must you believe in order to have faith in health?_ you must believe that there is more health-power than disease-power in both yourself and your environment; and you cannot help believing this if you consider the facts. these are the facts:-- _there is a thinking substance from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe._ _the thought of a form, in this substance, produces the form; the thought of a motion institutes the motion. in relation to man, the thoughts of original substance are always of perfect health and perfect functioning. this substance, within and without man, always exerts its power toward health._ _man is a thinking center, capable of original thought. he has a mind-body of original substance permeating a physical body; and the functioning of his physical body is determined by the faith of his mind-body. if man thinks with faith of the functioning of health, he will cause his internal functions to be performed in a healthy manner, provided that he performs the external functions in a corresponding manner. but if man thinks, with faith, of disease, or of the power of disease, he will cause his internal functioning to be the functioning of disease._ _the original intelligent substance is in man, moving toward health; and it is pressing upon him from every side. man lives, moves, and has his being in a limitless ocean of health-power; and he uses this power according to his faith. if he appropriates it and applies it to himself it is all his; and if he unifies himself with it by unquestioning faith, he cannot fail to attain health, for the power of this substance is all the power there is._ a belief in the above statements is a foundation for faith in health. if you believe them, you believe that health is the natural state of man, and that man lives in the midst of universal health; that all the power of nature makes for health, and that health is possible to all, and can surely be attained by all. you will believe that the power of health in the universe is ten thousand times greater than that of disease; in fact, that disease has no power whatever, being only the result of perverted thought and faith. and if you believe that health is possible to you, and that it may surely be attained by you, and that you know exactly what to do in order to attain it, you will have faith in health. you will have this faith and knowledge if you read this book through with care and determine to believe in and practice its teachings. it is not merely the possession of faith, but the personal application of faith which works healing. you must claim health in the beginning, and form a conception of health, and, as far as may be, of yourself as a perfectly healthy person; and then, by faith, you must claim that you are realizing this conception. do not assert with faith that you are going to get well; assert with faith that you are well. having faith in health, and applying it to yourself, means having faith that you are healthy; _and the first step in this is to claim that it is the truth_. mentally take the attitude of being well, and do not say anything or do anything which contradicts this attitude. never speak a word or assume a physical attitude which does not harmonize with the claim: "i am perfectly well." when you walk, go with a brisk step, and with your chest thrown out and your head held up; watch that at all times your physical actions and attitudes are those of a healthy person. when you find that you have relapsed into the attitude of weakness or disease, change instantly; straighten up; think of health and power. refuse to consider yourself as other than a perfectly healthy person. one great aid--perhaps the greatest aid--in applying your faith you will find in the exercise of gratitude. whenever you think of yourself, or of your advancing condition, give thanks to the great intelligent substance for the perfect health you are enjoying. remember that, as swedenborg taught, there is a continual inflow of life from the supreme, which is received by all created things according to their forms; and by man according to his faith. health from god is continually being urged upon you; and when you think of this, lift up your mind reverently to him, and give thanks that you have been led to the truth and into perfect health of mind and body. be, all the time, in a grateful frame of mind, and let gratitude be evident in your speech. gratitude will help you to own and control your own field of thought. whenever the thought of disease is presented to you, instantly claim health, and thank god for the perfect health you have. do this so that there shall be no room in your mind for a thought of ill. every thought connected in any way with ill health is unwelcome, and you can close the door of your mind in its face by asserting that you are well, and by reverently thanking god that it is so. soon the old thoughts will return no more. gratitude has a twofold effect; it strengthens your own faith, and it brings you into close and harmonious relations with the supreme. you believe that there is one intelligent substance from which all life and all power come; you believe that you receive your own life from this substance; and you relate yourself closely to it by feeling continuous gratitude. it is easy to see that the more closely you relate yourself to the source of life the more readily you may receive life from it; and it is easy also to see that your relation to it is a matter of mental attitude. we cannot come into physical relationship with god, for god is mind-stuff and we also are mind-stuff; our relation with him must therefore be a mind relation. it is plain, then, that the man who feels deep and hearty gratitude will live in closer touch with god than the man who never looks up to him in thankfulness. the ungrateful or unthankful mind really denies that it receives at all, and so cuts its connection with the supreme. the grateful mind is always looking toward the supreme, and is always open to receive from it; and it will receive continually. _the principle of health in man receives its vital power from the principle of life in the universe; and man relates himself to the principle of life by faith in health, and by gratitude for the health he receives._ _man may cultivate both faith and gratitude by the proper use of his will._ chapter vi. use of the will. in the practice of the science of being well the will is not used to compel yourself to go when you are not really able to go, or to do things when you are not physically strong enough to do them. you do not direct your will upon your physical body or try to compel the proper performance of internal function by will power. _you direct the will upon the mind, and use it in determining what you shall believe, what you shall think, and to what you shall give your attention._ the will should never be used upon any person or thing external to you, and it should never be used upon your own body. the sole legitimate use of the will is in determining to what you shall give your attention, and what you shall think about the things to which your attention is given. all belief begins in the will to believe. you cannot always and instantly believe what you will to believe; but you can always will to believe what you want to believe. you want to believe truth about health, and you can will to do so. the statements you have been reading in this book are the truth about health, and you can will to believe them; this must be your first step toward getting well. these are the statements you must will to believe:-- _that there is a thinking substance from which all things are made, and that man receives the principle of health, which is his life, from this substance._ _that man himself is thinking substance; a mind-body, permeating a physical body, and that as man's thoughts are, so will the functioning of his physical body be._ _that if man will think only thoughts of perfect health, he must and will cause the internal and involuntary functioning of his body to be the functioning of health, provided that his external and voluntary functioning and attitude are in accordance with his thoughts._ when you will to believe these statements, you must also begin to act upon them. you cannot long retain a belief unless you act upon it; you cannot increase a belief until it becomes faith unless you act upon it; and you certainly cannot expect to reap benefits in any way from a belief so long as you act as if the opposite were true. you cannot long have faith in health if you continue to act like a sick person. if you continue to act like a sick person, you cannot help continuing to think of yourself as a sick person; and if you continue to think of yourself as a sick person, you will continue to be a sick person. the first step toward acting externally like a well person is to begin to act internally like a well person. form your conception of perfect health, and get into the way of thinking about perfect health until it begins to have a definite meaning to you. picture yourself as doing the things a strong and healthy person would do, and have faith that you can and will do those things in that way; continue this until you have a vivid conception of health, and what it means to you. when i speak in this book of a conception of health, i mean a conception that carries with it the idea of the way a healthy person looks and does things. think of yourself in connection with health until you form a conception of how you would live, appear, act, and do things as a perfectly healthy person. think about yourself in connection with health until you conceive of yourself, in imagination, as always doing everything in the manner of a well person; until the thought of health conveys the idea of what health means to you. as i have said in a former chapter, you may not be able to form a clear mental image of yourself in perfect health, but you can form a conception of yourself as acting like a healthy person. form this conception, and then think only thoughts of perfect health in relation to yourself, and, so far as may be possible, in relation to others. when a thought of sickness or disease is presented to you, reject it; do not let it get into your mind; do not entertain or consider it at all. meet it by thinking health; by thinking that you are well, and by being sincerely grateful for the health you are receiving. whenever suggestions of disease are coming thick and fast upon you, and you are in a "tight place," fall back upon the exercise of gratitude. connect yourself with the supreme; give thanks to god for the perfect health he gives you, and you will soon find yourself able to control your thoughts, and to think what you want to think. in times of doubt, trial, and temptation, the exercise of gratitude is always a sheet anchor which will prevent you from being swept away. remember that the great essential thing is to sever all mental relations with disease, and to enter into full mental relationship with health. this is the key to all mental healing; it is the whole thing. here we see the secret of the great success of christian science; more than any other formulated system of practice, it insists that its converts shall sever relations with disease, and relate themselves fully with health. the healing power of christian science is not in its theological formulæ, nor in its denial of matter; but in the fact that it induces the sick to ignore disease as an unreal thing and accept health by faith as a reality. its failures are made because its practitioners, while thinking in the certain way, do not eat, drink, breathe, and sleep in the same way. while there is no healing power in the repetition of strings of words, yet it is a very convenient thing to have the central thoughts so formulated that you can repeat them readily, so that you can use them as affirmations whenever you are surrounded by an environment which gives you adverse suggestions. when those around you begin to talk of sickness and death, close your ears and mentally assert something like the following:-- _there is one substance, and i am that substance._ _that substance is eternal, and it is life; i am that substance, and i am eternal life._ _that substance knows no disease; i am that substance, and i am health._ exercise your will power in choosing only those thoughts which are thoughts of health, and arrange your environment so that it shall suggest thoughts of health. do not have about you books, pictures, or other things which suggest death, disease, deformity, weakness, or age; have only those which convey the ideas of health, power, joy, vitality, and youth. when you are confronted with a book, or anything else which suggests disease, do not give it your attention. think of your conception of health, and your gratitude, and affirm as above; use your will power to fix your attention upon thoughts of health. in a future chapter i shall touch upon this point again; what i wish to make plain here is that you must think only health, recognize only health, and give your attention only to health; and that you must control thought, recognition, and attention by the use of your will. do not try to use your will to compel the healthy performance of function within you. the principle of health will attend to that, if you give your attention only to thoughts of health. do not try to exert your will upon the formless to compel it to give you more vitality or power; it is already placing all the power there is at your service. you do not have to use your will to conquer adverse conditions, or to subdue unfriendly forces; there are no unfriendly forces; there is only one force, and that force is friendly to you; it is a force which makes for health. everything in the universe wants you to be well; you have absolutely nothing to overcome but your own habit of thinking in a certain way about disease, and you can do this only by forming a habit of thinking in another certain way about health. man can cause all the internal functions of his body to be performed in a perfectly healthy manner by continuously thinking in a certain way, and by performing the external functions in a certain way. he can think in this certain way by controlling his attention, and he can control his attention by the use of his will. he can decide what things he will think about. chapter vii. health from god. i will give a chapter here to explaining how man may receive health from the supreme. by the supreme i mean the thinking substance from which all things are made, and which is in all and through all, seeking more complete expression and fuller life. this intelligent substance, in a perfectly fluid state, permeates and penetrates all things, and is in touch with all minds. it is the source of all energy and power, and constitutes the "inflow" of life which swedenborg saw, vitalizing all things. it is working to one definite end, and for the fulfillment of one purpose; and that purpose is the advancement of life toward the complete expression of mind. when man harmonizes himself with this intelligence, it can and will give him health and wisdom. when man holds steadily to the purpose to live more abundantly, he comes into harmony with this supreme intelligence. the purpose of the supreme intelligence is the most abundant life for all; the purpose of this supreme intelligence for you is that you should live more abundantly. if, then, your own purpose is to live more abundantly, you are unified with the supreme; you are working with it, and it must work with you. but as the supreme intelligence is in all, _if you harmonize with it you must harmonize with all; and you must desire more abundant life for all as well as for yourself_. two great benefits come to you from being in harmony with the supreme intelligence. first, you will receive wisdom. by wisdom i do not mean knowledge of facts so much as ability to perceive and understand facts, and to judge soundly and act rightly in all matters relating to life. wisdom is the power to perceive truth, and the ability to make the best use of the knowledge of truth. it is the power to perceive at once the best end to aim at, and the means best adapted to attain that end. with wisdom comes poise, and the power to think rightly; to control and guide your thoughts, and to avoid the difficulties which come from wrong thinking. with wisdom you will be able to select the right courses for your particular needs, and to so govern yourself in all ways as to secure the best results. you will know how to do what you want to do. you can readily see that wisdom must be an essential attribute of the supreme intelligence, since that which knows all truth must be wise; and you can also see that just in proportion as you harmonize and unify your mind with that intelligence you will have wisdom. but i repeat that since this intelligence is all, and in all, you can enter into its wisdom only by harmonizing with all. if there is anything in your desires or your purpose which will bring oppression to any, or work injustice to, or cause lack of life for any, you cannot receive wisdom from the supreme. furthermore, your purpose for your own self must be the best. man can live in three general ways: for the gratification of his body, for that of his intellect, or for that of his soul. the first is accomplished by satisfying the desires for food, drink, and those other things which give enjoyable physical sensations. the second is accomplished by doing those things which cause pleasant mental sensations, such as gratifying the desire for knowledge or those for fine clothing, fame, power, and so on. the third is accomplished by giving way to the instincts of unselfish love and altruism. man lives most wisely and completely when he functions most perfectly along all of these lines, without excess in any of them. the man who lives swinishly, for the body alone, is unwise and out of harmony with god; that man who lives solely for the cold enjoyments of the intellect, though he be absolutely moral, is unwise and out of harmony with god; and the man who lives wholly for the practice of altruism, and who throws himself away for others, is as unwise and as far from harmony with god as those who go to excess in other ways. to come into full harmony with the supreme, you must purpose to live; to live to the utmost of your capabilities in body, mind, and soul. this must mean the full exercise of function in all the different ways, but without excess; for excess in one causes deficiency in the others. behind your desire for health is your own desire for more abundant life; and behind that is the desire of the formless intelligence to live more fully in you. so, as you advance toward perfect health, hold steadily to the purpose to attain complete life, physical, mental, and spiritual; to advance in all ways, and in every way to live more; if you hold this purpose you will be given wisdom. "he that willeth to do the will of the father shall know," said jesus. wisdom is the most desirable gift that can come to man, for it makes him rightly self-governing. but wisdom is not all you may receive from the supreme intelligence; you may receive physical energy, vitality, life force. the energy of the formless substance is unlimited, and permeates everything; you are already receiving or appropriating to yourself this energy in an automatic and instinctive way, but you can do so to a far greater degree if you set about it intelligently. the measure of a man's strength is not what god is willing to give him, but what he, himself, has the will and the intelligence to appropriate to himself. god gives you all there is; your only question is how much to take of the unlimited supply. professor james has pointed out that there is apparently no limit to the powers of men; and this is simply because man's power comes from the inexhaustible reservoir of the supreme. the runner who has reached the stage of exhaustion, when his physical power seems entirely gone, by running on in a certain way may receive his "second wind"; his strength is renewed in a seemingly miraculous fashion, and he can go on indefinitely. and by continuing in the certain way, he may receive a third, fourth, and fifth "wind"; we do not know where the limit is, or how far it may be possible to extend it. the conditions are that the runner must have absolute faith that the strength will come; that he must think steadily of strength, and have perfect confidence that he has it, and that he must continue to run on. if he admits a doubt into his mind, he falls exhausted, and if he stops running to wait for the accession of strength, it will never come. his faith in strength, his faith that he _can_ keep on running, his unwavering purpose _to_ keep on running, and his action _in_ keeping on seem to connect him to the source of energy in such a way as to bring him a new supply. in a very similar manner, the sick person who has unquestioning faith in health, whose purpose brings him into harmony with the source, and who performs the voluntary functions of life in a certain way, will receive vital energy sufficient for all his needs, and for the healing of all his diseases. god, who seeks to live and express himself fully in man, delights to give man all that is needed for the most abundant life. action and reaction are equal, and when you desire to live more, if you are in mental harmony with the supreme, the forces which make for life begin to concentrate about you and upon you. the one life begins to move toward you, and your environment becomes surcharged with it. then, if you appropriate it by faith, it is yours. "ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." your father giveth not his spirit by measure; he delights to give good gifts to you. chapter viii. summary of the mental actions. let me now summarize the mental actions and attitudes necessary to the practice of the science of being well: first, you believe that there is a thinking substance, from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. this substance is the life of all, and is seeking to express more life in all. it is the principle of life of the universe, and the principle of health in man. man is a form of this substance, and draws his vitality from it; he is a mind-body of original substance, permeating a physical body, and the thoughts of his mind-body control the functioning of his physical body. if man thinks no thoughts save those of perfect health, the functions of his physical body will be performed in a manner of perfect health. if you would consciously relate yourself to the all-health, your purpose must be to live fully on every plane of your being. you must want all that there is in life for body, mind, and soul; and this will bring you into harmony with all the life there is. the person who is in conscious and intelligent harmony with all will receive a continuous inflow of vital power from the supreme life; and this inflow is prevented by angry, selfish or antagonistic mental attitudes. if you are against any part, you have severed relations with all; you will receive life, but only instinctively and automatically; not intelligently and purposefully. you can see that if you are mentally antagonistic to any part, you cannot be in complete harmony with the whole; therefore, as jesus directed, be reconciled to everybody and everything before you offer worship. _want for everybody all that you want for yourself._ the reader is recommended to read what we have said in a former work[a] concerning the competitive mind and the creative mind. it is very doubtful whether one who has lost health can completely regain it so long as he remains in the competitive mind. [a] the science of getting rich. being on the creative or good-will plane in mind, the next step is to form a conception of yourself as in perfect health, and to hold no thoughts which are not in full harmony with this conception. have faith that if you think only thoughts of health you will establish in your physical body the functioning of health; and use your will to determine that you will think only thoughts of health. never think of yourself as sick, or as likely to be sick; never think of sickness in connection with yourself at all. and, as far as may be, shut out of your mind all thoughts of sickness in connection with others. surround yourself as much as possible with the things which suggest the ideas of strength and health. have faith in health, and accept health as an actual present fact in your life. claim health as a blessing bestowed upon you by the supreme life, and be deeply grateful at all times. claim the blessing by faith; know that it is yours, and never admit a contrary thought to your mind. use your will-power to withhold your attention from every appearance of disease in yourself and others; do not study disease, think about it, nor speak of it. at all times, when the thought of disease is thrust upon you, move forward into the mental position of prayerful gratitude for your perfect health. the mental actions necessary to being well may now be summed up in a single sentence: form a conception of yourself in perfect health, and think only those thoughts which are in harmony with that conception. that, with faith and gratitude, and the purpose to really live, covers all the requirements. it is not necessary to take mental exercises of any kind, except as described in chapter vi, or to do wearying "stunts" in the way of affirmations, and so on. it is not necessary to concentrate the mind on the affected parts; it is far better not to think of any part as affected. it is not necessary to "treat" yourself by auto-suggestion, or to have others treat you in any way whatever. the power that heals is the principle of health within you; and to call this principle into constructive action it is only necessary, having harmonized yourself with the all-mind, to claim by faith the all-health; and to hold that claim until it is physically manifested in all the functions of your body. in order to hold this mental attitude of faith, gratitude, and health, however, your external acts must be only those of health. you cannot long hold the internal attitude of a well person if you continue to perform the external acts of a sick person. it is essential not only that your every thought should be a thought of health, but that your every act should be an act of health, performed in a healthy manner. if you will make every thought a thought of health, and every conscious act an act of health, it must infallibly follow that every internal and unconscious function shall come to be healthy; for all the power of life is being continually exerted toward health. we shall next consider how you may make every act an act of health. chapter ix. when to eat. you cannot build and maintain a perfectly healthy body by mental action alone, or by the performance of the unconscious or involuntary functions alone. there are certain actions, more or less voluntary, which have a direct and immediate relation with the continuance of life itself; these are eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping. no matter what man's thought or mental attitude may be, he cannot live unless he eats, drinks, breathes, and sleeps; and, moreover, he cannot be well if he eats, drinks, breathes, and sleeps in an unnatural or wrong manner. it is therefore vitally important that you should learn the right way to perform these voluntary functions, and i shall proceed to show you this way, beginning with the matter of eating, which is most important. there has been a vast amount of controversy as to when to eat, what to eat, how to eat, and how much to eat; and all this controversy is unnecessary, for the right way is very easy to find. you have only to consider the law which governs all attainment, whether of health, wealth, power, or happiness; and that law is _that you must do what you can do now, where you are now; do every separate act in the most perfect manner possible, and put the power of faith into every action_. the processes of digestion and assimilation are under the supervision and control of an inner division of man's mentality, which is generally called the sub-conscious mind; and i shall use that term here in order to be understood. the sub-conscious mind is in charge of all the functions and processes of life; and when more food is needed by the body, it makes the fact known by causing a sensation called hunger. whenever food is needed, and can be used, there is hunger; and whenever there is hunger it is time to eat. when there is no hunger it is unnatural and wrong to eat, no matter how great may appear to be the need for food. even if you are in a condition of apparent starvation, with great emaciation, if there is no hunger you may know that food cannot be used, and it will be unnatural and wrong for you to eat. though you have not eaten for days, weeks, or months, if you have no hunger you may be perfectly sure that food cannot be used, and will probably not be used if taken. whenever food is needed, if there is power to digest and assimilate it, so that it can be normally used, the sub-conscious mind will announce the fact by a decided hunger. food, taken when there is no hunger, will sometimes be digested and assimilated, because nature makes a special effort to perform the task which is thrust upon her against her will; but if food be habitually taken when there is no hunger, the digestive power is at last destroyed, and numberless evils caused. if the foregoing be true--and it is indisputably so--it is a self-evident proposition that the natural time, and the healthy time, to eat is when one is hungry; and that it is never a natural or a healthy action to eat when one is not hungry. you see, then, that it is an easy matter to scientifically settle the question when to eat. always eat when you are hungry; and never eat when you are not hungry. this is obedience to nature, which is obedience to god. we must not fail, however, to make clear the distinction between hunger and appetite. hunger is the call of the sub-conscious mind for more material to be used in repairing and renewing the body, and in keeping up the internal heat; and hunger is never felt unless there is need for more material, and unless there is power to digest it when taken into the stomach. appetite is a desire for the gratification of sensation. the drunkard has an appetite for liquor, but he cannot have a hunger for it. a normally fed person cannot have a hunger for candy or sweets; the desire for these things is an appetite. you cannot hunger for tea, coffee, spiced foods, or for the various taste-tempting devices of the skilled cook; if you desire these things, it is with appetite, not with hunger. hunger is nature's call for material to be used in building new cells, and nature never calls for anything which may not be legitimately used for this purpose. appetite is often largely a matter of habit; if one eats or drinks at a certain hour, and especially if one takes sweetened or spiced and stimulating foods, the desire comes regularly at the same hour; but this habitual desire for food should never be mistaken for hunger. hunger does not appear at specified times. it only comes when work or exercise has destroyed sufficient tissue to make the taking in of new raw material a necessity. for instance, if a person has been sufficiently fed on the preceding day, it is impossible that he should feel a genuine hunger on arising from refreshing sleep. in sleep the body is recharged with vital power, and the assimilation of the food which has been taken during the day is completed; the system has no need for food immediately after sleep, unless the person went to his rest in a state of starvation. with a system of feeding, which is even a reasonable approach to a natural one, no one can have a real hunger for an early morning breakfast. there is no such thing possible as a normal or genuine hunger immediately after arising from sound sleep. the early morning breakfast is always taken to gratify appetite, never to satisfy hunger. no matter who you are, or what your condition is; no matter how hard you work, or how much you are exposed, unless you go to your bed starved, you cannot arise from your bed hungry. hunger is not caused by sleep, but by work. and it does not matter who you are, or what your condition, or how hard or easy your work, the so-called no-breakfast plan is the right plan for you. it is the right plan for everybody, because it is based on the universal law that hunger never comes until it is earned. i am aware that a protest against this will come from the large number of people who "enjoy" their breakfasts; whose breakfast is their "best meal"; who believe that their work is so hard that they cannot "get through the forenoon on an empty stomach," and so on. but all their arguments fall down before the facts. they enjoy their breakfast as the toper enjoys his morning dram, because it gratifies a habitual appetite and not because it supplies a natural want. it is their best meal for the same reason that his morning dram is the toper's best drink. and they can get along without it, because millions of people, of every trade and profession, do get along without it, and are vastly better for doing so. if you are to live according to the science of being well, you must never eat until you have an earned hunger. but if i do not eat on arising in the morning, when shall i take my first meal? in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred twelve o'clock, noon, is early enough; and it is generally the most convenient time. if you are doing heavy work, you will get by noon a hunger sufficient to justify a good-sized meal; and if your work is light, you will probably still have hunger enough for a moderate meal. the best general rule or law that can be laid down is that you should eat your first meal of the day at noon, if you are hungry; and if you are not hungry, wait until you become so. and when shall i eat my second meal? not at all, unless you are hungry for it; and that with a genuine earned hunger. if you do get hungry for a second meal, eat at the most convenient time; but do not eat until you have a really earned hunger. the reader who wishes to fully inform himself as to the reasons for this way of arranging the mealtimes will find the best books thereon cited in the preface to this work. from the foregoing, however, you can easily see that the science of being well readily answers the question: when, and how often shall i eat? the answer is: eat when you have an earned hunger; and never eat at any other time. chapter x. what to eat. the current sciences of medicine and hygiene have made no progress toward answering the question, what shall i eat? the contests between the vegetarians and the meat eaters, the cooked food advocates, raw food advocates, and various other "schools" of theorists, seem to be interminable; and from the mountains of evidence and argument piled up for and against each special theory, it is plain that if we depend on these scientists we shall never know what is the natural food of man. turning away from the whole controversy, then, we will ask the question of nature herself, and we shall find that she has not left us without an answer. most of the errors of dietary scientists grow out of a false premise as to the natural state of man. it is assumed that civilization and mental development are unnatural things; that the man who lives in a modern house, in city or country, and who works in modern trade or industry for his living is leading an unnatural life, and is in an unnatural environment; that the only "natural" man is a naked savage, and that the farther we get from the savage the farther we are from nature. this is wrong. the man who has all that art and science can give him is leading the most natural life, because he is living most completely in all his faculties. the dweller in a well-appointed city flat, with modern conveniences and good ventilation, is living a far more naturally human life than the australian savage who lives in a hollow tree or a hole in the ground. that great intelligence, which is in all and through all, has in reality practically settled the question as to what we shall eat. in ordering the affairs of nature, it has decided that man's food shall be according to the zone in which he lives. in the frigid regions of the far north, fuel foods are required. the development of brain is not large, nor is the life severe in its labor-tax on muscle; and so the esquimaux live largely on the blubber and fat of aquatic animals. no other diet is possible to them; they could not get fruits, nuts, or vegetables even if they were disposed to eat them; and they could not live on them in that climate if they could get them. so, notwithstanding the arguments of the vegetarians, the esquimaux will continue to live on animal fats. on the other hand, as we come toward the tropics, we find fuel foods less required; and we find the people naturally inclining toward a vegetarian diet. millions live on rice and fruits; and the food regimen of an esquimaux village, if followed upon the equator, would result in speedy death. a "natural" diet for the equatorial regions would be very far from being a natural diet near the north pole; and the people of either zone, if not interfered with by medical or dietary "scientists," will be guided by the all intelligence, which seeks the fullest life in all, to feed themselves in the best way for the promotion of perfect health. in general, you can see that god, working in nature and in the evolution of human society and customs, has answered your question as to what you shall eat; and i advise you to take his answer in preference to that of any man. in the temperate zone the largest demands are made on man in spirit, mind, and body; and here we find the greatest variety of foods provided by nature. and it is really quite useless and superfluous to theorize on the question what the masses shall eat, for they have no choice; they must eat the foods which are staple products of the zone in which they live. it is impossible to supply all the people with a nut-and-fruit or raw food diet; and the fact that it is impossible is proof positive that these are not the foods intended by nature, for nature, being formed for the advancement of life, has not made the obtaining of the means of life an impossibility. so, i say, the question, what shall i eat? has been answered for you. eat wheat, corn, rye, oats, barley, buckwheat; eat vegetables; eat meats, eat fruits, eat the things that are eaten by the masses of the people around the world, for in this matter the voice of the people is the voice of god. they have been led, generally, to the selection of certain foods; and they have been led, generally, to prepare these foods in generally similar ways; and you may depend upon it that in general they have the right foods and are preparing them in the right way. in these matters the race has been under the guidance of god. the list of foods in common use is a long one, and you must select therefrom according to your individual taste; if you do, you will find that you have an infallible guide, as shown in the next two chapters. if you do not eat until you have an earned hunger, you will not find your taste demanding unnatural or unhealthy foods. the woodchopper, who has swung his axe continuously from seven in the morning until noon does not come in clamoring for cream puffs and confectionery; he wants pork and beans, or beefsteak and potatoes, or corn bread and cabbage; he asks for the plain solids. offer to crack him a few walnuts and give him a plate of lettuce, and you will be met with huge disdain; those things are not natural foods for a workingman. and if they are not natural foods for a workingman, they are not for any other man; for work hunger is the only real hunger, and requires the same materials to satisfy it, whether it be in woodchopper or banker, in man, woman or child. it is a mistake to suppose that food must be selected with anxious care to fit the vocation of the person who eats. it is not true that the woodchopper requires "heavy" or "solid" foods and the bookkeeper "light" foods. if you are a bookkeeper, or other brain worker, and do not eat until you have an earned hunger, you will want exactly the same foods that the woodchopper wants. your body is made of exactly the same elements as that of the woodchopper, and requires the same materials for cell-building; why, then, feed him on ham and eggs and corn bread and you on crackers and toast? true, most of his waste is of muscle, while most of yours is of brain and nerve tissue; but it is also true that the woodchopper's diet contains all the requisites for brain and nerve building in far better proportions than they are found in most "light" foods. the world's best brain work has been done on the fare of the working people. the world's greatest thinkers have invariably lived on the plain solid foods common among the masses. let the bookkeeper wait until he has an earned hunger before he eats; and then, if he wants ham, eggs, and corn bread, by all means let him eat them; but let him remember that he does not need one-twentieth of the amount necessary for the woodchopper. it is not eating "hearty" foods which gives the brain worker indigestion; it is eating as much as would be needed by a muscle worker. indigestion is never caused by eating to satisfy hunger; it is always caused by eating to gratify appetite. if you eat in the manner prescribed in the next chapter, your taste will soon become so natural that you will never want anything that you cannot eat with impunity; and you can drop the whole anxious question of what to eat from your mind forever, and simply eat what you want. indeed, that is the only way to do if you are to think no thoughts but those of health; for you cannot think health so long as you are in continual doubt and uncertainty as to whether you are getting the right bills of fare. "take no thought what ye shall eat," said jesus, and he spoke wisely. the foods found on the table of any ordinary middle-class or working class family will nourish your body perfectly if you eat at the right times and in the right way. if you want meat, eat it; and if you do not want it, do not eat it, and do not suppose that you must find some special substitute for it. you can live perfectly well on what is left on any table after the meat has been removed. it is not necessary to worry about a "varied" diet, so as to get in all the necessary elements. the chinese and hindus build very good bodies and excellent brains on a diet of few variations, rice making almost the whole of it. the scotch are physically and mentally strong on oatmeal cakes; and the irishman is husky of body and brilliant of mind on potatoes and pork. the wheat berry contains practically all that is necessary for the building of brain and body; and a man can live very well on a monodiet of navy beans. form a conception of perfect health for yourself, and do not hold any thought which is not a thought of health. never eat until you have an earned hunger. remember that it will not hurt you in the least to go hungry for a short time; but it will surely hurt you to eat when you are not hungry. do not give the least thought to what you should or should not eat; simply eat what is set before you, selecting that which pleases your taste most. in other words, eat what you want. this you can do with perfect results if you eat in the right way; and how to do this will be explained in the next chapter. chapter xi. how to eat. it is a settled fact that man naturally chews his food. the few faddists who maintain that we should bolt our nourishment, after the manner of the dog and others of the lower animals, can no longer get a hearing; we know that we should chew our food. and if it is natural that we should chew our food, the more thoroughly we chew it the more completely natural the process must be. if you will chew every mouthful to a liquid, you need not be in the least concerned as to what you shall eat, for you can get sufficient nourishment out of any ordinary food. whether or not this chewing shall be an irksome and laborious task or a most enjoyable process, depends upon the mental attitude in which you come to the table. if your mind and attitude are on other things, or if you are anxious or worried about business or domestic affairs, you will find it almost impossible to eat without bolting more or less of your food. you must learn to live so scientifically that you will have no business or domestic cares to worry about; this you can do, and you can also learn to give your undivided attention to the act of eating while at the table. when you eat, do so with an eye single to the purpose of getting all the enjoyment you can from that meal; dismiss everything else from your mind, and do not let anything take your attention from the food and its taste until your meal is finished. be cheerfully confident, for if you follow these instructions you may know that the food you eat is exactly the right food, and that it will "agree" with you to perfection. sit down to the table with confident cheerfulness, and take a moderate portion of the food; take whatever thing looks most desirable to you. do not select some food because you think it will be good for you; select that which will taste good to you. if you are to get well and stay well, you must drop the idea of doing things because they are good for your health, and do things because you want to do them. select the food you want most; gratefully give thanks to god that you have learned how to eat it in such a way that digestion shall be perfect; and take a moderate mouthful of it. do not fix your attention on the act of chewing; fix it on the taste of the food; and taste and enjoy it until it is reduced to a liquid state and passes down your throat by involuntary swallowing. no matter how long it takes, do not think of the time. think of the taste. do not allow your eyes to wander over the table, speculating as to what you shall eat next; do not worry for fear there is not enough, and that you will not get your share of everything. do not anticipate the taste of the next thing; keep your mind centered on the taste of what you have in your mouth. and that is all of it. scientific and healthful eating is a delightful process after you have learned how to do it, and after you have overcome the bad old habit of gobbling down your food unchewed. it is best not to have too much conversation going on while eating; be cheerful, but not talkative; do the talking afterward. in most cases, some use of the will is required to form the habit of correct eating. the bolting habit is an unnatural one, and is without doubt mostly the result of fear. fear that we will be robbed of our food; fear that we will not get our share of the good things; fear that we will lose precious time--these are the causes of haste. then there is anticipation of the dainties that are to come for dessert, and the consequent desire to get at them as quickly as possible; and there is mental abstraction, or thinking of other matters while eating. all these must be overcome. when you find that your mind is wandering, call a halt; think for a moment of the food, and of how good it tastes; of the perfect digestion and assimilation that are going to follow the meal, and begin again. begin again and again, though you must do so twenty times in the course of a single meal; and again and again, though you must do so every meal for weeks and months. it is perfectly certain that you can form the "fletcher habit" if you persevere; and when you have formed it, you will experience a healthful pleasure you have never known. this is a vital point, and i must not leave it until i have thoroughly impressed it upon your mind. given the right materials, perfectly prepared, the principle of health will positively build you a perfectly healthy body; and you cannot prepare the materials _perfectly_ in any other way that the one i am describing. if you are to have perfect health, you must eat in just this way; you can, and the doing of it is only a matter of a little perseverance. what use for you to talk of mental control unless you will govern yourself in so simple a matter as ceasing to bolt your food? what use to talk of concentration unless you can keep your mind on the act of eating for so short a space as fifteen or twenty minutes, especially with all the pleasures of taste to help you? go on, and conquer. in a few weeks, or months, as the case may be, you will find the habit of scientific eating becoming fixed; and soon you will be in so splendid a condition, mentally and physically, that nothing would induce you to return to the bad old way. we have seen that if man will think only thoughts of perfect health, his internal functions will be performed in a healthy manner; and we have seen that in order to think thoughts of health, man must perform the voluntary functions in a healthy manner. the most important of the voluntary functions is that of eating; and we see, so far, no especial difficulty in eating in a perfectly healthy way. i will here summarize the instructions as to when to eat, what to eat, and how to eat, with the reasons therefor:-- never eat until you have an earned hunger, no matter how long you go without food. this is based on the fact that whenever food is needed in the system, if there is power to digest it, the sub-conscious mind announces the need by the sensation of hunger. learn to distinguish between genuine hunger and the gnawing and craving sensations caused by unnatural appetite. hunger is never a disagreeable feeling, accompanied by weakness, faintness, or gnawing feelings at the stomach; it is a pleasant, anticipatory desire for food, and is felt mostly in the mouth and throat. it does not come at certain hours or at stated intervals; it only comes when the sub-conscious mind is ready to receive, digest, and assimilate food. eat whatever foods you want, making your selection from the staples in general use in the zone in which you live. the supreme intelligence has guided man to the selection of these foods, and they are the right ones for all. i am referring, of course, to the foods which are taken to satisfy hunger, not to those which have been contrived merely to gratify appetite or perverted taste. the instinct which has guided the masses of men to make use of the great staples of food to satisfy their hunger is a divine one. god has made no mistake; if you eat these foods you will not go wrong. eat your food with cheerful confidence, and get all the pleasure that is to be had from the taste of every mouthful. chew each morsel to a liquid, keeping your attention fixed on the enjoyment of the process. this is the only way to eat in a perfectly complete and successful manner; and when anything is done in a completely successful manner, the general result cannot be a failure. in the attainment of health, the law is the same as in the attainment of riches; if you make each act a success in itself, the sum of all your acts must be a success. when you eat in the mental attitude i have described, and in the manner i have described, nothing can be added to the process; it is done in a perfect manner, and it is successfully done. and if eating is successfully done, digestion, assimilation, and the building of a healthy body are successfully begun. we next take up the question of the quantity of food required. chapter xii. hunger and appetites. it is very easy to find the correct answer to the question, how much shall i eat? you are never to eat until you have an earned hunger, and you are to stop eating the instant you begin to feel that your hunger is abating. never gorge yourself; never eat to repletion. when you _begin_ to feel that your hunger is satisfied, know that you have enough; for until you have enough, you will continue to feel the sensation of hunger. if you eat as directed in the last chapter, it is probable that you will begin to feel satisfied before you have taken half your usual amount; but stop there, all the same. no matter how delightfully attractive the dessert, or how tempting the pie or pudding, do not eat a mouthful of it if you find that your hunger has been in the least degree assuaged by the other foods you have taken. whatever you eat after your hunger begins to abate is taken to gratify taste and appetite, not hunger and is not called for by nature at all. it is therefore excess; mere debauchery, and it cannot fail to work mischief. this is a point you will need to watch with nice discrimination, for the habit of eating purely for sensual gratification is very deeply rooted with most of us. the usual "dessert" of sweet and tempting foods is prepared solely with a view to inducing people to eat after hunger has been satisfied; and all the effects are evil. it is not that pie and cake are unwholesome foods; they are usually perfectly wholesome if eaten to satisfy hunger, and not to gratify appetite. if you want pie, cake, pastry or puddings, it is better to begin your meal with them, finishing with the plainer and less tasty foods. you will find, however, that if you eat as directed in the preceding chapters, the plainest food will soon come to taste like kingly fare to you; for your sense of taste, like all your other senses, will become so acute with the general improvement in your condition that you will find new delights in common things. no glutton ever enjoyed a meal like the man who eats for hunger only, who gets the most out of every mouthful, and who stops on the instant that he feels the edge taken from his hunger. the first intimation that hunger is abating is the signal from the sub-conscious mind that it is time to quit. the average person who takes up this plan of living will be greatly surprised to learn how little food is really required to keep the body in perfect condition. the amount depends upon the work; upon how much muscular exercise is taken, and upon the extent to which the person is exposed to cold. the woodchopper who goes into the forest in the winter time and swings his axe all day can eat two full meals; but the brain worker who sits all day on a chair, in a warm room, does not need one third and often not one tenth as much. most woodchoppers eat two or three times as much, and most brain workers from three to ten times as much as nature calls for; and the elimination of this vast amount of surplus rubbish from their systems is a tax on vital power which in time depletes their energy and leaves them an easy prey to so-called disease. get all possible enjoyment out of the taste of your food, but never eat anything merely because it tastes good; and on the instant that you feel that your hunger is less keen, stop eating. if you will consider for a moment, you will see that there is positively no other way for you to settle these various food questions than by adopting the plan here laid down for you. as to the proper time to eat, there is no other way to decide than to say that you should eat whenever you have an earned hunger. it is a self-evident proposition that that is the right time to eat, and that any other is a wrong time to eat. as to what to eat, the eternal wisdom has decided that the masses of men shall eat the staple products of the zones in which they live. the staple foods of your particular zone are the right foods for you; and the eternal wisdom, working in and through the minds of the masses of men, has taught them how best to prepare these foods by cooking and otherwise. and as to how to eat, you know that you must chew your food; and if it must be chewed, then reason tells us that the more thorough and perfect the operation the better. i repeat that success in anything is attained by making each separate act a success in itself. if you make each action, however small and unimportant, a thoroughly successful action, your day's work as a whole cannot result in failure. if you make the actions of each day successful, the sum total of your life cannot be failure. a great success is the result of doing a large number of little things, and doing each one in a perfectly successful way. if every thought is a healthy thought, and if every action of your life is performed in a healthy way, you must soon attain to perfect health. it is impossible to devise a way in which you can perform the act of eating more successfully, and in a manner more in accord with the laws of life, than by chewing every mouthful to a liquid, enjoying the taste fully, and keeping a cheerful confidence the while. nothing can be added to make the process more successful; while if anything be subtracted, the process will not be a completely healthy one. in the matter of how much to eat, you will also see that there could be no other guide so natural, so safe, and so reliable as the one i have prescribed--to stop eating on the instant you feel that your hunger begins to abate. the sub-conscious mind may be trusted with implicit reliance to inform us when food is needed; and it may be trusted as implicitly to inform us when the need has been supplied. if all food is eaten for hunger, and no food is taken merely to gratify taste, you will never eat too much; and if you eat whenever you have an earned hunger, you will always eat enough. by reading carefully the summing up in the following chapter, you will see that the requirements for eating in a perfectly healthy way are really very few and simple. the matter of drinking in a natural way may be dismissed here with a very few words. if you wish to be exactly and rigidly scientific, drink nothing but water; drink only when you are thirsty; drink whenever you are thirsty, and stop as soon as you feel that your thirst begins to abate. but if you are living rightly in regard to eating, it will not be necessary to practice asceticism or great self-denial in the matter of drinking. you can take an occasional cup of weak coffee without harm; you can, to a reasonable extent, follow the customs of those around you. do not get the soda fountain habit; do not drink merely to tickle your palate with sweet liquids; be sure that you take a drink of water whenever you feel thirst. never be too lazy, too indifferent, or too busy to get a drink of water when you feel the least thirst; if you obey this rule, you will have little inclination to take strange and unnatural drinks. drink only to satisfy thirst; drink whenever you feel thirst; and stop drinking as soon as you feel thirst abating. that is the perfectly healthy way to supply the body with the necessary fluid material for its internal processes. chapter xiii. in a nutshell. there is a cosmic life which permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe, being in and through all things. this life is not merely a vibration, or form of energy; it is a living substance. all things are made from it; it is all, and in all. this substance thinks, and it assumes the form of that which it thinks about. the thought of a form, in this substance, creates the form; the thought of a motion institutes the motion. the visible universe, with all its forms and motions, exists because it is in the thought of original substance. man is a form of original substance, and can think original thoughts; and within himself, man's thoughts have controlling or formative power. the thought of a condition produces that condition; the thought of a motion institutes that motion. so long as man thinks of the conditions and motions of disease, so long will the conditions and motions of disease exist within him. if man will think only of perfect health, the principle of health within him will maintain normal conditions. to be well, man must form a conception of perfect health, and hold thoughts harmonious with that conception as regards himself and all things. he must think only of healthy conditions and functioning; he must not permit a thought of unhealthy or abnormal conditions or functioning to find lodgment in his mind at any time. in order to think only of healthy conditions and functioning, man must perform the voluntary acts of life in a perfectly healthy way. he cannot think perfect health so long as he knows that he is living in a wrong or unhealthy way; or even so long as he has doubts as to whether or not he is living in a healthy way. man cannot think thoughts of perfect health while his voluntary functions are performed in the manner of one who is sick. the voluntary functions of life are eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping. when man thinks only of healthy conditions and functioning, and performs these externals in a perfectly healthy manner, he must have perfect health. in eating, man must learn to be guided by his hunger. he must distinguish between hunger and appetite, and between hunger and the cravings of habit; he must never eat unless he feels an earned hunger. he must learn that genuine hunger is never present after natural sleep, and that the demand for an early morning meal is purely a matter of habit and appetite; and he must not begin his day by eating in violation of natural law. he must wait until he has an earned hunger, which, in most cases, will make his first meal come at about the noon hour. no matter what his condition, vocation, or circumstances, he must make it his rule not to eat until he has an earned hunger; and he may remember that it is far better to fast for several hours after he has become hungry than to eat before he begins to feel hunger. it will not hurt you to go hungry for a few hours, even though you are working hard; but it will hurt you to fill your stomach when you are not hungry, whether you are working or not. if you never eat until you have an earned hunger, you may be certain that in so far as the time of eating is concerned, you are proceeding in a perfectly healthy way. this is a self-evident proposition. as to what he shall eat, man must be guided by that intelligence which has arranged that the people of any given portion of the earth's surface must live on the staple products of the zone which they inhabit. have faith in god, and ignore "food science" of every kind. do not pay the slightest attention to the controversies as to the relative merits of cooked and raw foods; of vegetables and meats; or as to your need for carbohydrates and proteins. eat only when you have an earned hunger, and then take the common foods of the masses of the people in the zone in which you live, and have perfect confidence that the results will be good. they will be. do not seek for luxuries, or for things imported or fixed up to tempt the taste; stick to the plain solids; and when these do not "taste good," fast until they do. do not seek for "light" foods; for easily digestible, or "healthy" foods; eat what the farmers and workingmen eat. then you will be functioning in a perfectly healthy manner, so far as what to eat is concerned. i repeat, if you have no hunger or taste for the plain foods, do not eat at all; wait until hunger comes. go without eating until the plainest food tastes good to you; and then begin your meal with what you like best. in deciding how to eat, man must be guided by reason. we can see that the abnormal states of hurry and worry produced by wrong thinking about business and similar things have led us to form the habit of eating too fast, and chewing too little. reason tells us that food should be chewed, and that the more thoroughly it is chewed the better it is prepared for the chemistry of digestion. furthermore, we can see that the man who eats slowly and chews his food to a liquid, keeping his mind on the process and giving it his undivided attention, will enjoy more of the pleasure of taste than he who bolts his food with his mind on something else. to eat in a perfectly healthy manner, man must concentrate his attention on the act, with cheerful enjoyment and confidence; he must taste his food, and he must reduce each mouthful to a liquid before swallowing it. the foregoing instructions, if followed, make the function of eating completely perfect; nothing can be added as to what, when, and how. in the matter of how much to eat, man must be guided by the same inward intelligence, or principle of health, which tells him when food is wanted. he must stop eating in the moment that he feels hunger abating; he must not eat beyond this point to gratify taste. if he ceases to eat in the instant that the inward demand for food ceases, he will never overeat; and the function of supplying the body with food will be performed in a perfectly healthy manner. the matter of eating naturally is a very simple one; there is nothing in all the foregoing that cannot be easily practiced by any one. this method, put in practice, will infallibly result in perfect digestion and assimilation; and all anxiety and careful thought concerning the matter can at once be dropped from the mind. whenever you have an earned hunger, eat with thankfulness what is set before you, chewing each mouthful to a liquid, and stopping when you feel the edge taken from your hunger. the importance of the mental attitude is sufficient to justify an additional word. while you are eating, as at all other times, think only of healthy conditions and normal functioning. enjoy what you eat; if you carry on a conversation at the table, talk of the goodness of the food, and of the pleasure it is giving you. never mention that you dislike this or that; speak only of those things which you like. never discuss the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of foods; never mention or think of unwholesomeness at all. if there is anything on the table for which you do not care, pass it by in silence, or with a word of commendation; never criticise or object to anything. eat your food with gladness and with singleness of heart, praising god and giving thanks. let your watchword be perseverance; whenever you fall into the old way of hasty eating, or of wrong thought and speech, bring yourself up short and begin again. it is of the most vital importance to you that you should be a self-controlling and self-directing person; and you can never hope to become so unless you can master yourself in so simple and fundamental a matter as the manner and method of your eating. if you cannot control yourself in this, you cannot control yourself in anything that will be worth while. on the other hand, if you carry out the foregoing instructions, you may rest in the assurance that in so far as right thinking and right eating are concerned you are living in a perfectly scientific way; and you may also be assured that if you practice what is prescribed in the following chapters you will quickly build your body into a condition of perfect health. chapter xiv. breathing. the function of breathing is a vital one, and it immediately concerns the continuance of life. we can live many hours without sleeping, and many days without eating or drinking, but only a few minutes without breathing. the act of breathing is involuntary, but the manner of it, and the provision of the proper conditions for its healthy performance, falls within the scope of volition. man will continue to breathe involuntarily, but he can voluntarily determine what he shall breathe, and how deeply and thoroughly he shall breathe; and he can, of his own volition, keep the physical mechanism in condition for the perfect performance of the function. it is essential, if you wish to breathe in a perfectly healthy way, that the physical machinery used in the act should be kept in good condition. you must keep your spine moderately straight, and the muscles of your chest must be flexible and free in action. you cannot breathe in the right way if your shoulders are greatly stooped forward and your chest hollow and rigid. sitting or standing at work in a slightly stooping position tends to produce hollow chest; so does lifting heavy weights--or light weights. the tendency of work, of almost all kinds, is to pull the shoulders forward, curve the spine, and flatten the chest; and if the chest is greatly flattened, full and deep breathing becomes impossible, and perfect health is out of the question. various gymnastic exercises have been devised to counteract the effect of stooping while at work; such as hanging by the hands from a swing or trapeze bar, or sitting on a chair with the feet under some heavy article of furniture and bending backward until the head touches the floor, and so on. all these are good enough in their way, but very few people will follow them long enough and regularly enough to accomplish any real gain in physique. the taking of "health exercises" of any kind is burdensome and unnecessary; there is a more natural, simpler, and much better way. this better way is to keep yourself straight, and to breathe deeply. let your mental conception of yourself be that you are a perfectly straight person, and whenever the matter comes to your mind, be sure that you instantly expand your chest, throw back your shoulders, and "straighten up." whenever you do this, slowly draw in your breath until you fill your lungs to their utmost capacity; "crowd in" all the air you possibly can; and while holding it for an instant in the lungs, throw your shoulders still further back, and stretch your chest; at the same time try to pull your spine forward between the shoulders. then let the air go easily. this is the one great exercise for keeping the chest full, flexible, and in good condition. straighten up; fill your lungs full; stretch your chest and straighten your spine, and exhale easily. and this exercise you must repeat, in season and out of season, at all times and in all places, until you form a habit of doing it; you can easily do so. whenever you step out of doors into the fresh, pure air, breathe. when you are at work, and think of yourself and your position, breathe. when you are in company, and are reminded of the matter, breathe. when you are awake in the night, breathe. no matter where you are or what you are doing, whenever the idea comes to your mind, straighten up and breathe. if you walk to and from your work, take the exercise all the way; it will soon become a delight to you; you will keep it up, not for the sake of health, but as a matter of pleasure. do not consider this a "health exercise"; _never take health exercises, or do gymnastics to make you well. to do so is to recognize sickness as a present fact or as a possibility, which is precisely what you must not do_. the people who are always taking exercises for their health are always thinking about being sick. it ought to be a matter of pride with you to keep your spine straight and strong; as much so as it is to keep your face clean. keep your spine straight, and your chest full and flexible for the same reason that you keep your hands clean and your nails manicured; because it is slovenly to do otherwise. do it without a thought of sickness, present or possible. you must either be crooked and unsightly, or you must be straight; and if you are straight your breathing will take care of itself. you will find the matter of health exercises referred to again in a future chapter. it is essential, however, that you should breathe air. it appears to be the intention of nature that the lungs should receive air containing its regular percentage of oxygen, and not greatly contaminated by other gases, or by filth of any kind. do not allow yourself to think that you are compelled to live or work where the air is not fit to breathe. if your house cannot be properly ventilated, move; and if you are employed where the air is bad, get another job; you can, by practicing the methods given in the preceding volume of this series--"the science of getting rich." if no one would consent to work in bad air, employers would speedily see to it that all work rooms were properly ventilated. the worst air is that from which the oxygen has been exhausted by breathing; as that of churches and theaters where crowds of people congregate, and the outlet and supply of air are poor. next to this is air containing other gases than oxygen and hydrogen--sewer gas, and the effluvium from decaying things. air that is heavily charged with dust or particles of organic matter may be endured better than any of these. small particles of organic matter other than food are generally thrown off from the lungs; but gases go into the blood. i speak advisedly when i say "other than food." air is largely a food. it is the most thoroughly alive thing we take into the body. every breath carries in millions of microbes, many of which are assimilated. the odors from earth, grass, tree, flower, plant, and from cooking foods are foods in themselves; they are minute particles of the substances from which they come, and are often so attenuated that they pass directly from the lungs into the blood, and are assimilated without digestion. and the atmosphere is permeated with the one original substance, which is life itself. consciously recognize this whenever you think of your breathing, and think that you are breathing in life; you really are, and conscious recognition helps the process. see to it that you do not breathe air containing poisonous gases, and that you do not rebreathe the air which has been used by yourself or others. that is all there is to the matter of breathing correctly. keep your spine straight and your chest flexible, and breathe pure air, recognizing with thankfulness the fact that you breathe in the eternal life. that is not difficult; and beyond these things give little thought to your breathing except to thank god that you have learned how to do it perfectly. chapter xv. sleep. vital power is renewed in sleep. every living thing sleeps; men, animals, reptiles, fish, and insects sleep, and even plants have regular periods of slumber. and this is because it is in sleep that we come into such contact with the principle of life in nature that our own lives may be renewed. it is in sleep that the brain of man is recharged with vital energy, and the principle of health within him is given new strength. it is of the first importance, then, that we should sleep in a natural, normal, and perfectly healthy manner. studying sleep, we note that the breathing is much deeper, and more forcible and rhythmic than in the waking state. much more air is inspired when asleep than when awake, and this tells us that the principle of health requires large quantities of some element in the atmosphere for the process of renewal. if you would surround sleep with natural conditions, then, the first step is to see that you have an unlimited supply of fresh and pure air to breathe. physicians have found that sleeping in the pure air of out-of-doors is very efficacious in the treatment of pulmonary troubles; and, taken in connection with the way of living and thinking prescribed in this book, you will find that it is just as efficacious in curing every other sort of trouble. do not take any half-way measures in this matter of securing pure air while you sleep. ventilate your bedroom thoroughly; so thoroughly that it will be practically the same as sleeping out of doors. have a door or window open wide; have one open on each side of the room, if possible. if you cannot have a good draught of air across the room, pull the head of your bed close to the open window, so that the air from without may come fully into your face. no matter how cold or unpleasant the weather, have a window open, and open wide; and try to get a circulation of pure air through the room. pile on the bedclothes, if necessary, to keep you warm; but have an unlimited supply of fresh air from out of doors. this is the first great requisite for healthy sleep. the brain and nerve centers cannot be thoroughly vitalized if you sleep in "dead" or stagnant air; you must have the living atmosphere, vital with nature's principle of life. i repeat, do not make any compromise in this matter; ventilate your sleeping room completely, and see that there is a circulation of outdoor air through it while you sleep. you are not sleeping in a perfectly healthy way if you shut the doors and windows of your sleeping room, whether in winter or summer. have fresh air. if you are where there is no fresh air, move. if your bedroom cannot be ventilated, get into another house. next in importance is the mental attitude in which you go to sleep. it is well to sleep intelligently, purposefully, knowing what you do it for. lie down thinking that sleep is an infallible vitalizer, and go to sleep with a confident faith that your strength is to be renewed; that you will awake full of vitality and health. put purpose into your sleep as you do into your eating; give the matter your attention for a few minutes, as you go to rest. do not seek your couch with a discouraged or depressed feeling; go there joyously, to be made whole. do not forget the exercise of gratitude in going to sleep; before you close your eyes, give thanks to god for having shown you the way to perfect health, and go to sleep with this grateful thought uppermost in your mind. a bedtime prayer of thanksgiving is a mighty good thing; it puts the principle of health within you into communication with its source, from which it is to receive new power while you are in the silence of unconsciousness. you may see that the requirements for perfectly healthy sleep are not difficult. first, to see that you breathe pure air from out of doors while you sleep; and, second, to put the within into touch with the living substance by a few minutes of grateful meditation as you go to bed. observe these requirements, go to sleep in a thankful and confident frame of mind, and all will be well. if you have insomnia, do not let it worry you. while you lie awake, form your conception of health; meditate with thankfulness on the abundant life which is yours, breathe, and feel perfectly confident that you will sleep in due time; and you will. insomnia, like every other ailment, must give way before the principle of health aroused to full constructive activity by the course of thought and action herein described. the reader will now comprehend that it is not at all burdensome or disagreeable to perform the voluntary functions of life in a perfectly healthy way. the perfectly healthy way is the easiest, simplest, most natural, and most pleasant way. the cultivation of health is not a work of art, difficulty, or strenuous labor. you have only to lay aside artificial observances of every kind, and eat, drink, breathe, and sleep in the most natural and delightful way; and if you do this, thinking health and only health, you will certainly be well. chapter xvi. supplementary instructions. in forming a conception of health, it is necessary to think of the manner in which you would live and work if you were perfectly well and very strong; to imagine yourself doing things in the way of a perfectly well and very strong person, until you have a fairly good conception of what you would be if you were well. then take a mental and physical attitude in harmony with this conception; and do not depart from this attitude. you must unify yourself in thought with the thing you desire; and whatever state or condition you unify with yourself in thought will soon become unified with you in body. the scientific way is to sever relations with everything you do not want, and to enter into relations with everything you do want. form a conception of perfect health, and relate yourself to this conception in word, act, and attitude. guard your speech; make every word harmonize with the conception of perfect health. never complain; never say things like these: "i did not sleep well last night;" "i have a pain in my side;" "i do not feel at all well to-day," and so on. say "i am looking forward to a good night's sleep to-night;" "i can see that i progress rapidly," and things of similar meaning. in so far as everything which is connected with disease is concerned, your way is to forget it; and in so far as everything which is connected with health is concerned, your way is to unify yourself with it in thought and speech. this is the whole thing in a nutshell: _make yourself one with health in thought, word, and action; and do not connect yourself with sickness either by thought, word, or action_. do not read "doctor books" or medical literature, or the literature of those whose theories conflict with those herein set forth; to do so will certainly undermine your faith in the way of living upon which you have entered, and cause you to again come into mental relations with disease. this book really gives you all that is required; nothing essential has been omitted, and practically all the superfluous has been eliminated. the science of being well is an exact science, like arithmetic; nothing can be added to the fundamental principles, and if anything be taken from them, a failure will result. if you follow strictly the way of living prescribed in this book, you will be well; and you certainly can follow this way, both in thought and action. relate not only yourself, but so far as possible all others, in your thoughts, to perfect health. do not sympathize with people when they complain, or even when they are sick and suffering. turn their thoughts into a constructive channel if you can; do all you can for their relief, but do it with the health thought in your mind. do not let people tell their woes and catalogue their symptoms to you; turn the conversation to some other subject, or excuse yourself and go. better be considered an unfeeling person than to have the disease thought forced upon you. when you are in company of people whose conversational stock-in-trade is sickness and kindred matters, ignore what they say and fall to offering a mental prayer of gratitude for your perfect health; and if that does not enable you to shut out their thoughts, say good-by and leave them. no matter what they think or say; politeness does not require you to permit yourself to be poisoned by diseased or perverted thought. when we have a few more hundreds of thousands of enlightened thinkers who will not stay where people complain and talk sickness, the world will advance rapidly toward health. when you let people talk to you of sickness, you assist them to increase and multiply sickness. what shall i do when i am in pain? can one be in actual physical suffering and still think only thoughts of _health_? yes. do not resist pain; recognize that it is a good thing. pain is caused by an effort of the principle of health to overcome some unnatural condition; this you must know and feel. when you have a pain, think that a process of healing is going on in the affected part, and mentally assist and co-operate with it. put yourself in full mental harmony with the power which is causing the pain; assist it; help it along. do not hesitate, when necessary, to use hot fomentations and similar means to further the good work which is going on. if the pain is severe, lie down and give your mind to the work of quietly and easily co-operating with the force which is at work for your good. this is the time to exercise gratitude and faith; be thankful for the power of health which is causing the pain, and be certain that the pain will cease as soon as the good work is done. fix your thoughts, with confidence, on the principle of health which is making such conditions within you that pain will soon be unnecessary. you will be surprised to find how easily you can conquer pain; and after you have lived for a time in this scientific way, pains and aches will be things unknown to you. what shall i do when i am too weak for my work? shall i drive myself beyond my strength, trusting in god to support me? shall i go on, like the runner, expecting a "second wind"? no; better not. when you begin to live in this way, you will probably not be of normal strength; and you will gradually pass from a low physical condition to a higher one. if you relate yourself mentally with health and strength, and perform the voluntary functions of life in a perfectly healthy manner, your strength will increase from day to day; but for a time you may have days when your strength is insufficient for the work you would like to do. at such times rest, and exercise gratitude. recognize the fact that your strength is growing rapidly, and feel a deep thankfulness to the living one from whom it comes. spend an hour of weakness in thanksgiving and rest, with full faith that great strength is at hand; and then get up and go on again. while you rest do not think of your present weakness; _think of the strength that is coming_. never, at any time, allow yourself to think that you are giving way to weakness; when you rest, as when you go to sleep, fix your mind on the principle of health which is building you into complete strength. what shall i do about that great bugaboo which scares millions of people to death every year--constipation? do nothing. read horace fletcher on "the a b z or our own nutrition," and get the full force of his explanation of the fact that when you live on this scientific plan you need not, and indeed cannot, have an evacuation of the bowels every day; and that an operation in from once in three days to once in two weeks is quite sufficient for perfect health. the gross feeders who eat from three to ten times as much as can be utilized in their systems have a great amount of waste to eliminate; but if you live in the manner we have described it will be otherwise with you. if you eat only when you have an earned hunger, and chew every mouthful to a liquid, and if you stop eating the instant you begin to be conscious of an abatement of your hunger, you will so perfectly prepare your food for digestion and assimilation that practically all of it will be taken up by the absorbents; and there will be little--almost nothing--remaining in the bowels to be excreted. if you are able to entirely banish from your memory all that you have read in "doctor books" and patent medicine advertisements concerning constipation, you need give the matter no further thought at all. the principle of health will take care of it. but if your mind has been filled with fear-thought in regard to constipation, it may be well in the beginning for you to occasionally flush the colon with warm water. there is not the least need of doing it, except to make the process of your mental emancipation from fear a little easier; it may be worth while for that. and as soon as you see that you are making good progress, and that you have cut down your quantity of food, and are really eating in the scientific way, dismiss constipation from your mind forever; you have nothing more to do with it. put your trust in that principle within you which has the power to give you perfect health; relate it by your reverent gratitude to the principle of life which is all power, and go on your way rejoicing. what about exercise? every one is the better for a little all-round use of the muscles every day; and the best way to get this is to do it by engaging in some form of play or amusement. get your exercise in the natural way; as recreation, not as a forced stunt for health's sake alone. ride a horse or a bicycle; play tennis or tenpins, or toss a ball. have some avocation like gardening in which you can spend an hour every day with pleasure and profit; there are a thousand ways in which you can get exercise enough to keep your body supple and your circulation good, and yet not fall into the rut of "exercising for your health." exercise for fun or profit; exercise because you are too healthy to sit still, and not because you wish to become healthy, or to remain so. are long continued fasts necessary? seldom, if ever. the principle of health does not often require twenty, thirty, or forty days to get ready for action; under normal conditions, hunger will come in much less time. in most long fasts, the reason hunger does not come sooner is because it has been inhibited by the patient himself. he begins the fast with the fear if not actually with the hope that it will be many days before hunger comes; the literature he has read on the subject has prepared him to expect a long fast, and he is grimly determined to go to a finish, let the time be as long as it will. and the sub-conscious mind, under the influence of powerful and positive suggestion, suspends hunger. when, for any reason, nature takes away your hunger, go cheerfully on with your usual work, and do not eat until she gives it back. no matter if it is two, three, ten days, or longer; you may be perfectly sure that when it is time for you to eat you will be hungry; and if you are cheerfully confident and keep your faith in health, you will suffer from no weakness or discomfort caused by abstinence. when you are not hungry, you will feel stronger, happier, and more comfortable if you do not eat than you will if you do eat; no matter how long the fast. and if you live in the scientific way described in this book, you will never have to take long fasts; you will seldom miss a meal, and you will enjoy your meals more than ever before in your life. get an earned hunger before you eat; and whenever you get an earned hunger, eat. chapter xvii. a summary of the science of being well. health is perfectly natural functioning, normal living. there is a principle of life in the universe; it is the living substance, from which all things are made. this living substance permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. in its invisible state it is in and through all forms; and yet all forms are made of it. to illustrate: suppose that a very fine and highly diffusible aqueous vapor should permeate and penetrate a block of ice. the ice is formed from living water, and is living water in form; while the vapor is also living water, unformed, permeating a form made from itself. this illustration will explain how living substance permeates all forms made from it; all life comes from it; it is all the life there is. this universal substance is a thinking substance, and takes the form of its thought. the thought of a form, held by it, creates the form; and the thought of a motion causes the motion. it cannot help thinking, and so is forever creating; and it must move on toward fuller and more complete expression of itself. this means toward more complete life and more perfect functioning; and that means toward perfect health. the power of the living substance must always be exerted toward perfect health; it is a force in all things making for perfect functioning. _all things are permeated by a power which makes for health._ _man can relate himself to this power, and ally himself with it_; he can also separate himself from it in his thoughts. _man is a form of this living substance, and has within him a principle of health._ this principle of health, when in full constructive activity, causes all the involuntary functions of man's body to be perfectly performed. _man is a thinking substance, permeating a visible body, and the processes of his body are controlled by his thought._ when man thinks only thoughts of perfect health, the internal processes of his body will be those of perfect health. man's first step toward perfect health must be to form a conception of himself as perfectly healthy, and as doing all things in the way and manner of a perfectly healthy person. having formed this conception, he must relate himself to it in all his thoughts, and sever all thought relations with disease and weakness. if he does this, and thinks his thoughts of health with positive faith, man will cause the principle of health within him to become constructively active, and to heal all his diseases. he can receive additional power from the universal principle of life by faith, and he can acquire faith by looking to this principle of life with reverent gratitude for the health it gives him. if man will consciously accept the health which is being continually given to him by the living substance, and if he will be duly grateful therefor, he will develop faith. man cannot think only thoughts of perfect health unless he performs the voluntary functions of life in a perfectly healthy manner. these voluntary functions are eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping. if man thinks only thoughts of health, has faith in health, and eats, drinks, breathes, and sleeps in a perfectly healthy way, he must have perfect health. health is the result of thinking and acting in a certain way; and if a sick man begins to think and act in this way, the principle of health within him will come into constructive activity and heal all his diseases. this principle of heath is the same in all, and is related to the life principle of the universe; it is able to heal every disease, and will come into activity whenever man thinks and acts in accordance with the science of being well. therefore, every man can attain to perfect health. * * * * * the science of being well and getting rich right is further elucidated in the nautilus magazine, published monthly for the express purpose of making the man and woman who can do what they will to do. it abounds in practical ideas and in the bright inspiration that impels you to _use_ the ideas. use it as first aid! the nautilus teaches and inspires health, wealth, and happiness in all departments of life. wallace d. wattles who wrote this book teaches constructive science in every number of the magazine. how to think so as to promote yourself in health and success is what you want to know. he teaches it! elizabeth towne and william e. towne teach it, too. they are the editors and owners of the nautilus, and their success is worth knowing about and learning from. there are many splendid contributors to the nautilus--ella wheeler wilcox, edwin markham, thomas drier, adelaide keen, grace macgowan cooke, and florence morse kingsley among them. get in touch with health and success, and with happy and successful people through the nautilus. there is a family counsel department where elizabeth towne answers personal problems for those who ask. in the success department everybody is invited to say his say, and prizes are given for best letters. don't miss wallace d. wattles' great new serial story "as a grain of mustard seed" which begins in an early number of the magazine. send $ . for a year's subscription to the nautilus, with a copy of "making the man who can" and "marital unrest: a new remedy," both by wallace d. wattles. or, send cents for a months' trial, and a copy of "marital unrest." * * * * * do you want more books on health and success? read wallace d. wattles' "science of getting rich," and bruce mcclelland's "prosperity through thought force," to which ella wheeler wilcox gave nearly a page of space in the new york journal; and read "health and wealth from within," by william e. towne and "practical methods for self-development" by elizabeth towne. price of these books, $ . each, all for $ . . and don't you want to read wallace d. wattles' "new science of living and healing," price cents? address, elizabeth towne, dept. th, holyoke, mass. freedom talks no. ii julia seton, m.d. author of "concentration," "freedom talks no. i," "marriage," etc., etc. contents i the secret of healing ii the risen self iii transcendentalism iv psychology of insanity v the law eternal vi the outside and the inside of life vii the measure of ourself viii perfect liberty ix cosmic therapeutics x absent treatments freedom talks number ii the secret of healing "_in the beginning was the word, and the word was with god and the word was god_." "_and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory full of grace and truth_." ever since the birth of the human race there have been health and disease. everywhere we find those who live at levels of comprehension that cannot express in flesh the perfect power of the word and these must by natural law take on the form of whatever they have power to comprehend. health is man's immortal birthright; it is eternal in the universal plan, and it can be made to become eternal in the life of men in just the hour they understand the laws of their own being. there are two expressions of energy in the universe; one is called the constructive, the other the destructive; the one builds up, the other tears down. this must forever be so, for only as matter is destroyed and passed back into energy can the energy pass out again into finer forms. living in these great universal currents of construction and destruction, man relates himself constantly with one or both through the simple law of his own consciousness, and only as he learns the laws of his own being and consciously places himself in a position of power can he ever hope to escape the results which the negative, destructive currents produce in his body and his environment. today we know that the world in which we live is nothing but a great sea of energy which, in the undifferentiated, is called god, and in the differentiated is called matter or form, or, to make it more simple, we can call one the energy that creates, and the other the things created from and by this energy. man and his environment are created by this energy: he is a localized center of force and he becomes the expression in form of just whatever he relates with under the law of cosmic correspondence. we have found that this great energy is also _intelligence_ and is nothing but mind with its various manifestations. we know today that the atoms of the atmosphere are intelligence, and as they touch one another throughout space, it is through this atomic mind that messages are carried, and currents are generated which can heal patients at a distance. everything in the universe is in a state of intelligent association, and when the atoms become expressed in human form, they pass into that expression of the universal mind known as _human_ consciousness. all human life is simply different tastes of consciousness brought about by the different vibratory rates to which our atoms respond. the physical body is composed of a group of atoms attuned to move at a certain vibratory rate, and within this physical body is another body of finer atoms attuned to a still higher vibration and in relationship with the higher electrical currents of the universe. there has not been much told about this finer body, but it is time the sick world knows this law of being, for then it will be in a position to control its own life. this finer body is the "thought body" or psychic body and it is upon this that the physical body depends for its power, just as the very best instrument in the world depends upon the player for its expressed melody. all sight, all hearing, all function is in this psychic body, not in the physical one. what many of the psychologists call the subconscious mind is only the registered intelligence of the psychic self. this psychic self is in direct communication with the cosmic self and with the physical self, and it is through this we become cosmic in our human consciousness. the psychic body manifests through _idea_ centers of the human brain and it is directly related with the cosmic currents through the solar plexus of the physical body. the higher _concept_ centers of the mind are the switchboard where connections are made, and it is in this way that the psychic body registers its vibrations in the physical, and the physical registers in the psychic--there is a circle of consciousness established by the two minds. this would be of no particular value to us, if it did not prove to us the source of disease, for when we look scientifically and psychologically at disease, we must see that it is simply disassociation between the psychic and the physical selves, and comes as the natural loss of poise, either physically, mentally or psychically. watching the play of human disease around us we can soon see that there are two distinct ways by which disassociation of these selves begins; first, through the mind by negative thinking, and second through the emotions by negative feeling. our thoughts and our will are the great avenues by which we admit anything into our psychic self, and are also the means by which we exclude all things. the whole poise of an individual can be destroyed by thoughts of fear, hate, grief and anger; fright has killed and all these states of emotion are simply grades of vibration, setting up inharmonious, psychical activity, and leaving their corresponding effects upon the physical cells. it is known only too well today by those who seek to know, that back of all such physical conditions as nervousness, prostration, temporary insanity, nervous disorders, pains resembling rheumatism, hay fever, heart troubles, mental symptoms, nervous chills, morbid forebodings and mild mania, there lurks the abnormal activity of the psychic or "thought body" caused by thoughts and feelings acting abnormally upon the vital centers of the nervous system and mind. new thought declares that all diseases, except accidental wounds and fractures begin in the psychic or "thought body" as _energy_ and then are registered in the physical cells as organic or functional disease. we might follow this farther in order to satisfy science, but suffice it to go this far, and then seek the value of knowing this: we can see that the only thing that naturally follows is, the healer and patient must be taught how to restore the lost equilibrium of the centers and again poise the life in a creative thought vibration. this is done simply and surely by teaching everyone the _correct_ use of the _idea_ centers of the human brain and through this he is taught to form such thoughts and produce such ideas as will allow a normal amount of energy to register on both planes, and not permit the psychical mind to drive the human engine on to destruction in a wild waste and explosion of physical, mental or psychical energy. this is not a long or wearisome task for in the cortex of every brain there are distinct _idea_ centers whose business it is to take up ideas built from thoughts, and _will_ must follow the idea, and by constantly selecting the thoughts which will produce harmonious vibrations within the psychic and physical selves, we join with the great creative energy of the universe and it flows through us, healing and harmonizing every atom of our body. the very first step toward healing is to teach the patient to build for himself a _health_ consciousness, and this is done by giving him the positive ideas of health instead of the negative ones of disease. we build for him the _idea_ of health, hold it firmly in our minds, and project it into his _idea_ centers until it registers in his psychic mind; then this is followed by his own increased power of willing, and finally this passes into action and is registered in form. _ideation, willing_ and _doing_ is the great _health trinity_, and when this is produced, healing must follow. this is the _law_ and there is no appeal from it. when we first meet a diseased person we find his field of consciousness full of all kinds of negative thoughts of disease, worry, fear and anxiety--these have been persisted in so long that they have weakened both the idea centers and the power of willing. we at once create for him the positive idea motor-form, and if his conscious mind is too weak to receive the impulse, we project it into his psychic mind, helping him hold on to the new idea until his own mind is able to grasp it, and it becomes registered for him. after he has learned the truth of the abundance of health energy within and without to be aroused into action by the simple law of his own thoughts and feelings, he sets to work to regenerate himself, and he finds that he can really breathe the breath of life into his own nostrils. after we have seen the scientific side of the real power of healing, then if we want to get health and keep it, we set about studying how to live our life so as to be able to generate thoughts and feelings, at all times, which shall always move us at a creative health vibration. the very next thing for anyone seeking health is to get easy in his everyday life; no one can ever be well and live with every nerve on a tension. we need to know the higher law of life that teaches us that no one put us anywhere but ourselves; that no one is to blame but ourselves for what we have or have not; we get and have in this world just what we have the power to relate with and will get free from the thing we do not like in just the hour that we build something better for ourselves. all we need to do is to cease resisting conditions and agree with our adversary quickly. freedom, liberty and happiness are not things of the external world; they come from within and we are sad or happy, bound or free, sick or well, not by our external but by our internal conditions. the sick, nervous, peevish, worrying mind sees everything as positive to itself and must be taught that there is nothing in all the world that has any power over us except that with which we endow it, and it must begin to live under this idea rather than the old foolish one of being controlled by every external condition. "god hath not given us a spirit of fear but of love and of power and of a sound mind," and with persistent thought culture we can soon form a habit of thought and feeling that will build us away from our old consciousness of disease and pain into a higher law of health and strength. good, positive, strong health thoughts are a certain preventive and cure for every kind of disease. disease and health have absolutely no relation with each other; disease is the expression of a faltering, undeveloped soul life, while health is the expression of a consciousness that has not broken its law of universal recognition. there are very good people who are sick and very many so-called bad folks who are well; health is not bestowed as a reward of merit, it simply is by the natural universal law, and it exists for those who know how to fulfill the law within their own being. there are many so-called wicked people who live in greater harmony with their wickedness than some so-called christians can ever do with their religion and goodness. wholeness or holiness means simply harmony, and harmony inside and outside gives health. anyone who has health has earned it by obeying the laws that produce it. another great factor active in producing inharmonious vibrations and registering destructive energy, is the old thought habit of living under the laws of opposites, thinking thought of health today and of disease tomorrow; to be passing daily between hope and despair. this is sowing mixed thought seeds and cannot help bringing mixed vibrations. the path to a health consciousness is to get the strong, positive idea of unity and live under the law of similars. to begin at once to affirm union with all the health and strength of the universe and stick to it in the face of all the opposing negative thought vibrations generated within ourselves, or thrown into our minds by others. this can be done by resolutely substituting a health thought for a diseased one; no matter how fast negative thoughts crowd in upon the mind, they can be antidoted by the strong positive affirmation of health. in order to register _health_ vibrations we must _think, feel_ and _be_ health in mind. the words of health, peace, power and strength do not unfold into radiant flesh and dwell among us through a faltering idea of fear, or vague "perhaps," or "i do hope i shall be well," or "i want to get well," but it demands the eternal i am health now. courage, zeal and consecration to the laws of health and freedom from the law of death are not kindled by the halting consciousness full of the law of opposites, but they are the results of _knowing_ and _abiding_. when we can in very truth and full of believing say to health, "thy kingdom come," it _will_ come. our daily thoughts then become the wires over which there passes into form a finer substance, and our body is rebuilt and fashioned from the indestructible _substance_ of the universe. the mortal body as we know it in the old thought world, is a thing of earth and lives and suffers earth's calamities, but through the understanding of this new thought _union_ it can be made to become a portion of the _cause_ as indestructible as _life_ itself, and live and glory in omnipotence. we are then in the resurrection of the _life_, and the _word_ that was _with_ god and _was_ god, is made _flesh_ to dwell among us in glory and full of grace and truth; then we know what jesus meant when he said, "i tell you of a truth, there be those standing among you who shall not taste of death till they see the kingdom of god." the risen self "_and entering into the sepulchre they saw a young man sitting on the right side clothed in a long white garment, and he saith unto them, be not affrighted, ye seek jesus of nazareth--he is risen! he is not here_!" when we read the bible with its story of human lives and their great, wonderful mysteries, we find among them, the greatest of all--the marvellous one of the christ birth and death, and as we read we are amazed at the many confusing ideas of jesus and his teachings. his disciples themselves did not understand him, though he sought always to clearly interpret himself; often when he spoke metaphysically they interpreted him physically. there was throughout all the christ history something so great, so holy, so inclusive that it was too large for them to comprehend, and for all eternal ages, the developing minds of men will be the same. they will keep busy with their attempts at explanation of his life and his words. jesus quitted the world in benediction, and he left to those who followed him and his precepts, a great inextinguishable hope. it matters little to those who really understand truth, whether jesus the christ lived, or whether he was only a symbol worked out by the imagination of men and priests; be the origin what it may, christianity _still_ stands; and religion still holds sway after centuries of ridicule and generations of secular and scientific analysis. something unknown and uninterpreted beats and surges in the hearts of men, and brings into expression in every age the clinging to a great mysterious, wonderful, unseen agency that somehow works its way along the silent avenues of the human soul. the man jesus may or may not have lived. humanity may keep its birthright of contradiction forever on this point, but higher than the limited understanding of the few there lives the truth of the great christ spirit which the name jesus embodied, and which for centuries gone, and centuries to be, will wax strong and flourish in the consciousness of men, as they pass one by one into recognition of it. great and sacred was the day of jesus' birth, and great and sacred was the day of his death, for both revealed the stages of our human selfhood, and both point our minds to deeper meanings of existence. jesus' life as we follow it from the manger to the cross was the unmistakable story of the pathway of every human life and each little action was a part of the great mosaic which each life is setting for itself, and from which it shall one day read its own great at-one-ment. the birth of the christ consciousness comes to each soul as the dawn of self-awakening. it is the first faint glimmer of a new world, and the first hint the soul of man has of union with its source. this first dawn of consciousness is purely a possession of the inner self, and those who feel it only follow first by faith. this faith is buffeted and attacked by the things of life until it is tried and becomes steadfast. in this first dawn of consciousness of the christ self we are always strangers to ourselves and asleep in the manger of natural things and natural senses. we go on for years, and as consciousness grows stronger we search and search for we know not what; craving pursues us, we go hither and thither seeking, seeking--finding and losing. the world and the things tangible are never wholly satisfactory in themselves; we know instinctively that they are not all there is, there is a deep, vital something in us that speaks its hidden messages into our being, and we are driven on from sensation to sensation, crying for that open sesame of union which will bring peace to our soul. then passing into deeper unfoldment we come into the real work of life, we meet with responsibilities and its experiences; we are baffled again, buffeted, besieged by the perplexities of doubt and fear and human discontent and we feel that, strive as we will, we are not yet at home. the ten thousand things of the human life entangle us,--the touch of sickness, the expressions of so-called sin,--the baffling consequences of our seeming mistakes,--all these draw us from the cradle of unconsciousness out into the vital power of a self-conscious life, and push us onward to our union with cosmic consciousness, or the risen christ. on the self-conscious plane life goes on, driven on every side by human experiences and at last turns back upon itself, and then in the gethsemane of its own making, it stands where earth and its perplexing joys are lost and heaven and its hidden joys are yet unknown, and then facing the expressions of its now half-revealed consciousness it cries out from the depth of its soul's despair, "if it is possible, let this cup pass," and it does not see the purpose in gethsemane. human life at this stage of unfoldment has _fixed laws_, and the soul meets in them the inexorable command to pass on to its own crucifixion, the worked out sentence of its own judgments, and it goes onward bearing its own cross which is built from the consequences of the laws with which it has related. the laws of human self-consciousness are hard to work out; each life faces sometime, somewhere the proof of itself. there comes a day to all when anything that is less than the truth slips off, and the soul stands bare at the bar of the universal justice ready to be judged by the laws which it has made for itself. there are hours of human crucifixion that it were well to die on, for the soul that wanders back from these fierce mounts of transfiguration has paid the price of human transgression of law by human pain, and is purged and cleaned by the fierce fire of its own igniting. the path of human living out leads every life up the steps of calvary carrying its own cross and it plaits the thorns and pierces the side of "him who in our life again is spit upon and crucified" until, at last, the great human god-self within us is released through transmutation, and the grave clothes of our dead self no longer entomb us; then the resurrection day is at hand, and the consciousness of god bursts into the self-conscious mind, and the stone is rolled away from the sepulchre. the human mind bursts forth in illumination and it passes with the christ birth on to the table-land of human comprehension and revelation of its infinite union. in this moment of glorified illumination we feel and know that every moment behind us has been that this hour may be; we feel then that every moment is a special moment; every life a special life, protected by the all life, and that everything on our human pathway, high or low, has led us on to this supreme moment of conscious union with our god. when the christ consciousness is risen within us, we feel the universality of life written everywhere on everything; there is but one starting point for all thought--god. there is but one ending place for all human faith--god. we are filled with a keener sense of the oneness of life, and we are thrilled again and again by the nearness and greatness of god in the world which he projected from himself. the father which we sought in self-consciousness has become real and tangible, and the sense of everlasting unity is in our hearts. with this great god-self alive within us, we never fear that god will ever pass away from any part of his creation. we know too well, then, the truth that "as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end," earth is destined to become a heaven in the lives of men as fast as they develop to the place of understanding, and find the real holy ground within the center of their own being. god, or the universal cosmic consciousness, has always been revealed to men through the risen christ consciousness within the self. the men of old who walked with him were those who had lifted their personal mind to the level of the universal mind, so that from the shores of the infinite wisdom great thought waves of love, truth and peace beat in on them and filled them, and their lives became a center of illumination for all. there never was and there never can be any conflict between the power of human consciousness and god consciousness. truth is always truth, and truth in the hearts of men build them back into the great harmony. the absolute never contradicts itself; as fast as lives are unfolded to the christ consciousness, they leave the old thought life like an empty tomb and push themselves into a glorious human expression, just as the easter lily rising above the dust and mould of earth, pushes itself upward into the clear sunlight of a world where flowers are revealed, just so the soul pushes on through consciousness and self-consciousness, into the glory of the risen godhood. we can hear the voice of the universal calling us through our christ consciousness today, just as it called to men throughout the ages, and we know that everything that throbs with natural life or comes into objective expression in our human world, is really only the voice of the universal cosmic mind speaking in the holy language of the human heart. every experience, every heartache, every joy, every despair, every pulse-beat is only the text by which the great child mind of the world is spelling out _god_. the risen self comes into realization of the great white light of the soul, and it enables us to see _all_ life in its completeness. human effort and human endeavor glow with an unexpected radiance when seen from the table-land of the risen truth. the human soul then rejoices in its divine possibilities. jesus said: "i do always the things that pleaseth the father," and the voice from heaven said: "this is my beloved son in whom i am well pleased." when we turn to those who ask for proof of the risen christ-self within us, we have only to point to them the empty tomb of the old lives which men everywhere leave behind them. if we desire we can go farther and point them to the production of those in whom this great consciousness is waking; all human life that is alive with thought and faith and deed, is vibrant with a great vital spiritual force. the signs of god consciousness and the conscious union of god and men is rampant everywhere in the natural world. every factory, every steamship, every invention, every composition, everything in form sets its seal upon the genuineness of the existence of the spiritual exaltation of the minds of men, and higher than the things of the natural world, there stands the achievements of the mental and inspirational souls; the libraries with their tens of thousands of written pages, the art museums and galleries of precious dreams; all over the world there are hung on walls and chiselled into glistening marble the story of the glory-gazing of some christ-illumined soul. and again sounded forth from thousands of churches each sabbath morning, there is swelling out majestic songs sung by myriads of voices now, but sung _first_ in the silence of some dim, deep soul-dream, in the christ consciousness of some risen mind. that grand harmony was born on the table-lands of human illumination, registered on the human brain, and worked out into tangible form here on earth to bear witness to the home-land of the god-man. christ consciousness is the final destiny of every soul; it is what we really live by and today we know, as never before, that in order to advance and grow, we must consecrate and bring it here and now, into its fullest expression in our life. there are bound to be born, at first, many things on this table-land of new understanding that will be worked out indifferently by our limited brain, and when challenged by the strain and stress of life they will depart because they will be unable in their present form to answer to the great world's need. but increasing consciousness makes everything more powerful, and as we go on we learn to build sublime and lasting things, to stand the test of time because they have their root, not in the old thought self, but in the unfolded risen self, and they are grappled to the heart of the very rock of ages. standing, then, risen from the dust world of our old defeats, our human minds receive new illuminations and rejoice in them. law becomes the essence of our daily living and the mind of man the direct inspiration of the almighty. we dare to trust our risen mind to the uttermost for in it is god himself enshrined. in this new spiritual perception we rely more and more on our intuitions, illumination and revelation, for it is human godness, backed by the strength of unnumbered hosts of higher consciousness. we know at last that all our daily living is not a matter of outward signs but of inward sight; all external things may contradict us, yet in sublime confidence we shape our way while the christ voice within us speaks forth its messages, telling us all the holy and uplifting stories of our daily life. over the trials and wreckage of our common years we follow it; out from a silence that is known only to ourselves we bring the lessons that have burnt their truth into our souls. in the power of this risen self we stand with our faces upturned, with our whole life opened to god, and human effort, human growth, human hope, love, joy,--all are joined in the sense of divine resurrection. this is the consciousness of god in the human soul; this is the resurrection morning and it makes us now the sons of god, and from the darkness of our old thought growth we lift our hearts away into a new life divine. we open our eyes in the radiance of a light that never grows dim, then standing with an all-seeing soul vision, we can point to the long years behind us through which we have worked out our soul's salvation and closing the door on the empty tomb of our dead self we say with all the serenity of our new-found god-consciousness: "i know whom you seek. he is not here. he is risen!" transcendentalism transcendentalism is today the one subject which is demanding the greatest attention. the race mind is beginning to think in words of transcendental language rather than in the old law of science and philosophy, and all the light of modern investigation centres round the one who declares himself a transcendentalist. we may say that a man is a scientist, a philosopher or a materialist, and the world will know at once what we mean, but if we say that he is a transcendentalist we leave an open doorway for investigation; there is something yet to be learned about him, something that no one knows about but himself. anyone can easily define a scientist, a philosopher and a psychologist, but they halt in more or less indecision when they are asked to define a transcendentalist, and it is only when we understand that a transcendentalist is one who has extended his normal consciousness into relationship with the deeper laws of the universe, so that he uses naturally these laws and is perfectly familiar and at home in states of consciousness which the rest of the world call supernatural, and with which they are entirely unfamiliar, that we can come to a true definition of the transcendentalist. transcendentalism has been a part of race unfolding since time began, and will continue to be throughout all race evolution. in the old civilization we studied the transcendentalist and transcendentalism from an entirely different view-point than we do today. transcendentalism is a state of consciousness and man evolves into it out of the natural states of his own mind. no one is to blame that he is, or is not, a transcendentalist. he becomes one not alone because he wills to become, but also because he is one with the divine law of creation and the god-consciousness within him pushes him on through one state of unfoldment to another. there are two expressions of universal and finite mind, one is the objective, the revealed, the apparent, and one is the subjective, the concealed, the absolute. the objective side of mind belongs to the surface consciousness of man, and is in itself a distinct state of existence, it is bounded on every side by its own laws, and commands its own obedience. the subjective side of life belongs to the inner side of mind and is also a distinct state of existence bounded by itself and the laws of its own kingdom, and without a deep knowledge of universal law, man has little power of connecting these two strong zones of consciousness. studying life in the light of our modern understanding, we find that man passes by natural law through the objective, the surface zone, then on to the subjective or inner zone, and then to a centralized position between both zones where he lives, moves and has being in both zones, uniting the laws of the two kingdoms into a new zone of consciousness, then using the laws of both, he passes at will to the very edge of matter, and back to the very center of the cosmic mind; standing here in life's master position, he is lord of both zones. this middle zone of power and mastery is the path of the modern transcendentalist, and the one who walks it and lives in unification with its laws is the _modern transcendentalist_ of the new civilization. it has been written-- "_for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be who go in thereat" because_ "_straight is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life_." we know today that this is true, for on the broad path of the objective life man must pass through the law of change which destroys, that it may create again and through which he is crowded on to seek the narrow path of subjective senses which are built on the law of verities. man's first lessons are in the objective zone of mind, and he remains positive in this zone until he masters its laws and the lessons which they bring. in this objective zone of mind we find the mass man of the old civilization, he is in the _broad way_ of the surface consciousness, and in his midst there dwells the specialized individuals who are approaching the central zones of mind; they are called the scientist, the physicist, the materialist, the agnostic, the mentalist, the reasoner, and the atheist, all true and perfect for their type but all more or less unconscious of the latent states of mind within themselves and the universe to which they must some day respond. as human consciousness intensifies through use, man finds himself passing on through his surface zones to the concealed states of mind within himself, "the narrow way," and slowly, almost unconsciously at first, he begins manifesting the law of these zones. in these states of mind we find the philosopher, the idealist, the emotionalist, the psychist, the sensitive, the intuitionist, the revelator, the transcendentalist and the seer. watching race evolution we see that the day of surface consciousness and its power is waning only as it is controlled and manipulated through the subjective states of man's mind. the hour for subjective research and subjective introspection is at hand,--men have mastered the external world and its laws, and are now following the cosmic urge which is pushing them toward the center and away from the _apparent_ to the _absolute_ laws of life. the external evolution of form is complete for this hour; men go down into the bowels of the earth, they sail the seas, they mount the air on wings, and the external world has seen "the son of man coming in clouds of glory" and now the eternal man must have his hour, and come in "trailing robes of power and brightness," to pour new revelation through the external world and its laws. books, paintings, pictures, science, music have all had their day in external exaltation, and now the attention of man is mounting higher and turning inward; the study of the surface and sub-consciousness has been transferred, and while part of the world's eyes are yet peering through the microscope at the _sub-life_ and plenty are looking at the laws of life around them, the transcendentalist with these truths locked fast in his mind, is turning to the undiscovered states within himself, and is everywhere launching out into the unfathomed states of the supra-mind of man. man has evolved like a planet through the stone age of mind and today with the planet in the vibratory zone of water and _air_ he has risen with it into the transcendent states of his own being. many transcendentalists are living so naturally in the beginning manifestations of the supra-mind that they hardly recognize them as uncommon and the world is becoming peopled with a race of supra-men and supra-women who are using the subtle laws of the transcendentalists of the past, but not using them _alone_, or in _hidden cloisters_, or through separate states of living, but using them as simple human attributes of their own mind, and using them in the common marts of the surface life with more real understanding than did the olden transcendentalist in his specialized separated environment, assisted by _secluded study_ and _special opportunities_. the modern transcendentalist is a post graduate of the surface consciousness, and uses it as simply a wireless machine with which he registers his deeper perceptions, and with it links himself and his revelation naturally to the natural world. he stands in natural communion with both zones, and in this communion with deeper laws he attains a supra-power, he walks his human pathway in human form, but he manipulates his surface life with the power born of his supra-wisdom. the modern transcendentalists form the corner-stones of the new civilization. "for the new age will come quickly to its birth when this his world, will know itself divine" and in this new civilization the mass man will have for his surface consciousness, the deep subtle union of both zones, and the specialized teacher, leader and messenger of this new age, will forge ahead on the great white way of prophecy and seership which is born from the union of the finite and infinite mind. to the mind of the old civilization this will not seem true, for it is still in the swaddling clothes of its old inheritance; in the thoughts of the past, man and god, matter and spirit, finite and infinite have been so long divorced and separated that it will be found difficult to accept the union of incense and worship and reverence in the same breath with the real, the apparent and the formed, but this is the hour for higher prophecy, and that hour when the "lion and the lamb shall lie down together." to those who are really able to read the signs of the times, human consciousness everywhere offers the greatest proof of this truth, for looking with eyes that can see, we find that every individual is in possession of eight distinct states of consciousness with which he can operate in the subjective and objective zones. there may be still greater stretches of the human mind into union with the universal which the oncoming races will discover, but that there are eight distinct levels of mind activity many know because they have touched them and know them within themselves. some minds are active in one, some in two, some in three, and some in four, and some are more or less distinct in all. the mass man of the new civilization is awake in the _third_ and _fourth_ dimensions of his mind, and those in higher reaches are awake in the _fifth_ and _sixth_, a few are in the _seventh_ and _eighth_, but the rank and file are familiar to some degree with all these states. the first or surface mind of man is in itself only cell consciousness, touched by man's own intellect, and it is known as _instinct_, his second expression of mind is known as _reason_, the third is _emotion_ or _feeling_, and the fourth is instinct, reason and emotion blended into one, and called _intuition_. the fifth and sixth are above the plane of thought and feeling and includes them in a still higher intensification; here thinking ceases and _registration_ is the law, and here is where _revelation_ is born. the seventh and eighth are still supra reaches of man's mind, and include the union or surface consciousness with the higher states, in which the brain becomes the wireless machine, through which flashes of divine wisdom comes; this is called _prophecy_ and _seership_ and this is the product of the "mirror-mind." there are bodies and atmospheres to fit each transcendent state of mind, and the transcendentalist can suspend any, or all of his states of mind, one after another, and pass into direct atonement with any level with which he wishes to function; he can at will live in a new world, and speak with a new tongue, and fill his surface mind with a glory not its own, "but which it had with him before the world was." these new states of mind in action extends man's world into the wider reaches of the universal and adds to him new levels of wisdom and power. there are reaches of intelligence far below and beyond the common intelligence as the microscope and the telescope have shown, and at the fourth and fifth dimension of consciousness man dispenses with all material aids and uses the adjustments of his own being. he has found the eyes, the cars, and the understanding of the supra-self, and by suspending his surface mind through concentration and meditation he can enter any sphere of thought at will and be in the land of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and in the astral and atmospherian, or pass farther out and register in his surface brain the wonders and laws of etherian, and celestial worlds. he is at one with the world of the sensitive, the impressionist and the medium, and in the deeper states of vision he can see and read the memory tablets of the universe. in the higher registrations he becomes cosmo-voyant and cosmo-audient, he can see and hear through space and through ethers as the common eye looks through air. these are not special gifts from god, but simply the gifts man gives himself through the conscious use of what is already in his possession. the power to extend sight and hearing far above and below the so-called senses is latent within every individual and when the point of transcendental development is reached he uses it naturally. there are some people who can see birds in the air, ships at sea, stars in the sky, while others standing beside them see only empty space. just so there are many everywhere on life's pathway who can extend their normal vision and hearing to such an intensified vibratory rate that it not only includes all the things of the physical plane but the things of the finer ethers. the transcendentalist standing on the streets of new york can extend his vision and look at a street or building in chicago or cairo or london, while the surface man alongside of him can scarcely read the signs on the other side of the street. the modern transcendentalist does only what the surface man does--he looks to see and brings one hundred percent of his vision to bear upon his desire, while the surface man has less than ten percent of himself in action and that _only_ on one plane. there are enough people on the planet today who can use these deep states of mind, and induce the extended vision and hearing at will to make it more than a mere hypothetical conclusion; there are x-ray beings among us who have come into contact with a great fundamental principle both within and without themselves. the time will come in the near future, when the operator with the roentgen ray will stand beside his machine and look with wide open eyes and find the x-ray in his own vision, and will work unlimited by the bondage of his material machine. comparing the modern transcendentalist and his pathway with that of the olden transcendentalist with his ascent of travail and pain, we find a profound satisfaction in the picture of power, peace and love of the modern supra-man. the pathway of the elder supra-man was one of crucifixion, self-denial, renunciation, affliction, poverty, disease and self-mortification. he found the steps to the higher consciousness and its power only through slow self-conquest and comradeship with pain, and this was the inheritance he handed down through the centuries. to think in terms of mystical wisdom meant human denial of all sentient life. unification was bought through total consecration to the subjective and the absolute, in which the diverse could have no part. today "we are free where our sires were serfs, we can see where he left them blind," and we know that god-consciousness is man's immortal birthright and that the son of man must somewhere on his pathway become the son of god, and as he passes on in his unfoldment he will contact every atom of god-mind in all lines of expression, and from the world of matter he will turn in time naturally to those levels of mind which lead him into reverence, illumination and worship, and through this he finds the whole of life. man in his immersion into cosmic consciousness puts forth profound tests of his oneness and faces life in larger and larger proportions, and as he ascends he carries all with him, so that he can give back to all a profound and heroic response. every man is transcendent when the hour dawns for his transcendent self to tremble into action. with these wider reaches of consciousness the modern transcendentalist finds the larger life and the true way of living, and in this brings the new message of the "one life in all and through all" into the mass mind, and the new song of joy and thanksgiving into their hearts. he is never sad, never agonizing, never renouncing; he has made contact with all life and through this with the universal joy; there is no denial, no separateness,--there is "no more crying," he conquers and ascends not through separateness but through increasing degrees of union. he lives in glad comradeship with god, in joy and perfected self-expression, both in the objective and in the subjective world. the ancient transcendentalist was always sad, always separate, always worshipping in beatific loneliness, in seclusion and renunciation of the world; the modern supra-man passes from end to end of the pole of being and stops at any point and functions normally. "he stands and works, then kneels and prays." he is lord of the outside external world and partaker of all its divine joys and pleasures, and he is lord of all the deeper reaches of subjective consciousness within himself and the absolute in which he lives, and he brings out from these deeper levels all the intensified power of illumination and revelation, and pours it over his daily pathway illumining it with a glory not its own. many olden transcendentalists lived on in entranced states of divine wisdom with diseased flesh and bodies that shrieked with pain, while they mortified and rejected that divine wisdom. the modern transcendentalist brings all his god-consciousness to bear upon his flesh and raises it to the transcendent heights of his own mind and heals it until bone and muscle and tissues gleam and scintillate with a new found beauty and youth. the olden transcendentalist dragged on in barren cells and dreary poverty in order not to divert his glorified vision of the formless by the beauty of the _ever present form_; the modern transcendentalist brings his higher laws into play, conquers his poverty and commands around himself the beauty and luxury and freedom of the world of form, and it speaks to him in matchless raiment, luxuriant flowers, gems, material comforts and soft ease. he lives in rapturous companionship with the glory and beauty and majesty of god in the world _he has projected from himself_, and with this beneath him, he can rise to the very pinnacle of infinite selfhood. the olden transcendentalist, ascending into the transcendental heights of his own mind, ascended alone, and from these obscure heights he shed his wisdom back upon the evolving race; he was pioneer in the lands of cosmic consciousness and the first revelator of the path; he showed the race that the path was there to tread, and his messages have fallen as a benediction on the race mind even while he himself bought his wisdom with pain, renunciation and suffering built from the limited recognition of his own mind. the path winds onward and upward still, but the feet of those climbing it today are led by still waters and in the paths of righteousness. they are no longer in the part but are in the middle of the divine channel of god-consciousness. to know _one_ part was the mission of the _past_; to know _all parts_ and join them in a divine unity is the mission of the _present_. the modern transcendentalist does not love life less, he loves it more! the world is alive with a new majesty; the passing multitude, the passing face, every human attribute of life calls forth from him a deeper interpretation; he walks out into the race mind, and with the power of a new word, and a new touch heals it from its infirmity. he does in truth give "absent treatments," and his word is accomplished; the old diseased flesh transmutes in answer to his command. he speaks to the barren walls of poverty and they stretch away into stately halls, for he knows that wherever man posits his consciousness, substance must gather round it; his new words of power and majesty fall like a benediction on the heart of the listening multitudes, and they turn round to face a new tomorrow with a new hope born of a larger understanding. the transcendentalist walks often in our midst; sometimes he assumes the simplicity of a child to disguise the larger stretches of power within him, but he is out upon the pathway strong and beautiful, wholly replete with promises of perfection, doing the work of the human. there is a royal road from _appearance_ to _reality_, from _objective_ to _subjective_, from the limited to the absolute. difference is merging into one _great white way_ through which the new civilization is thronging, led by the intensified vision of the supra-minds. unity has carried man above all things of human law, and he has found that mighty force of which all is a part, and he is out into the land of "naked visions" and _knows_. he dwells securely upon the height and has ceased the long fight with the objective half of himself; he is one with matter because he has transcended and absorbed it; he is centralized in the formless and spiritualized in the formed, and can say from the level of his own christ consciousness: "_i and my father are one." "all that my father hath is mine_." the psychology of insanity with the ever present increase of insanity, it is not only interesting but important that the subject of insanity should be studied from all view-points, and anything which can be contributed that will help in controlling or curing it, should be accepted as good material. it is an apparent fact that the multitude knows very little about the cause of insanity and less about the cure. investigation has in the past been directed to the physical side of the disease, and many of the insane hospitals are examples of physical comfort and perfect physical attention, but they are also living examples of the fact that to house, feed and clothe the demented does not necessarily mean a cure, and a call for deeper understanding is imperative. civilization needs each individual as a unit in the great working force of life, and those who need to be taken care of by a state take away a legitimate support and add just that much more to the burden of the state. a civilization which can increase the independence of the individual and lessen the responsibility of the state is one to be directly desired. insanity calls for a closer study than has ever been given and only through a deeper realization of its cause, can a cure be brought about and individuals rendered of value to themselves and the country. insanity is nothing more or less than disassociated states of mind and need not in reality be any more serious than errors of refraction of vision, faulty locomotion or lack of coordination. it comes because individuals know nothing of the psychology of themselves or their own minds and is the result of over-intensified mental and physical activity and loss of poise, physically, mentally and psychically. the insane are not capable of understanding themselves, and up to the present day there are very few who are able to understand them. the nurses, matrons and physicians of a great asylum are powerless to assist them because of their own ignorance of the true laws of psychology. the cases which simple, natural, physical methods will assist, are cured, but thousands of others are allowed to drag along with the dreadful stigmata of "hopelessly insane." insanity is increasing because civilization is changing, and conditions are changing. as conditions change the minds of men change and today subjective states of mind in the individual are becoming intensified. instinct, reason, emotion, intuition, revelation and prophecy are all struggling for expression; unrelated and misunderstood they become disease; related and understood they can be made to bring forth a new race with new extensive reaches of intelligence. there are few people so stupid but that they can testify to the conflicting states of emotions within themselves and there are many people who are perfectly familiar with states of consciousness with which many other people are entirely unfamiliar. wherever we go we are continually confronted with what the world calls "freaky" or "eccentric" people, and these people are found in all degrees from the slightly odd folks to those filling the asylums, and strange as it may seem, no matter how queer they may appear to other people, they never seem so to themselves. there are many families with members whom the rest call irrational, irresponsible or "black sheep." again, there are many families who have one child who, from the time of its birth, has called for methods of management entirely different from those used for the other children. there are many little sensitive creatures who are afraid of the dark and who have queer ideas and odd ways, and there are delicate little people who have bodies so finely organized that they are nearly broke into pieces with the natural things which the other members never notice. they are born sensitives and remain sensitives to the end of their lives, and only as they can be taught the truth about themselves can they be rescued from some form of mental disturbances. these people as they grow older, become what is termed "psychics"; they are over-intensified in some of their deeper states of mind. they are not alone the product of civilization, but the product of race evolution. many of them pass on in semi-normal states of self-support, but they are a well known class, and they are more or less unsuccessful in supporting themselves along natural lines of labor, and if they inherit wealth they run into vagaries and often degenerate lines of living; they squander their all and die in charity. the common business world is full of psychics and it is correspondingly full of failures for this is not a faculty that makes for success or power with material things. psychics who are only slightly disassociated are always a source of annoyance to their friends, and often looked upon as irresponsible, and have to be looked after by some one who has patience enough to be with them, and often they are passed along as having an artistic temperament. as long as their peculiar development does not interfere with normal action they are unmolested by the public. it is only when deeper states of mind become so over-intensified that they lose their normal relationship to normal things of the world that they are put under control. they are called paranoics, melancholics, demented and insane. a correct mental training would teach them to re-associate their mind and to live a moderately normal life, at least. all drunkards and drug fiends are psychics; degenerates are also psychics. these conditions are simply the result of loss of polarity of normal mind centers, resulting in the conflict of states of consciousness within themselves. there are also many psychics in the ignorant and undeveloped classes. the witch women and seers, and many of the colored races are psychic. in the past, these people were looked upon as witches and their words and works were known as "witchcraft." there are many psychics who are also great geniuses. lord byron and the "mad painter" of belgium were psychics. history is rife and galleries of art and temples of literature stand as testimonials to some of the constructive productions of their minds, but beside them run dark stories born of their psychic uncertainty. criminals of certain types are psychics with no power of physical control and they pass into subjective control and live and do the things that are given them to do from the psychical mind and are often ignorant of their own condition. those whom the medical profession call paranoics are simply psychics, over-developed in the subjective faculties--a prey to all the disembodied forces of the subjective plane, and also to every floating thought on the physical plane; they are obsessed by ideas from within and without and their actions bear witness to this statement. some very meddlesome women, and those who are the terror of a quiet community, are nearly always those who are in the control of the slower psychic forces and unable to consciously direct their own normal states of mind. in science the psychics are called diseased. science gives all actions a physical basis, but it is time to know that abnormal states of consciousness, that are only changes in the functional side of the mind and which have no apparent physical basis, are found in thousands. neurasthenics and psychasthenics present the mildest picture of disordered states of mind. all neurasthenics and psychasthenics are psychics and their diseases can only be fully understood by the psychologist. the scientist has long ago exhausted his knowledge of the cause and cure of these diseases and this is why all branches of metaphysical healing are overcrowded. to understand this abnormal thing called "insanity," one must fully understand the normal, called "sanity." there are four distinct states of consciousness in every individual; these must be kept co-related and all of them manifest through the common everyday mind. these four states of consciousness are _instinct, reason, emotion_ and _intuition_. these four states of consciousness are _functions_ of the normal mind. when a patient becomes over-intensified in either one of these parts of the mind, mental disease results. the psychic is over-intensified in the emotional and intuitional functions of his mind, thus rendering his common sense states _uncommon_, and according to the degree of over-activity, he is either a "freak," a creature of "temperament," a "genius" or a "dementia." the ordinarily insane individual has lost all relationship with his natural, instinctive and reasoning mind. he is disassociated. reason, instinct, emotion and intuition are all in conflict within him. the emotional and intuitional faculties overfunctioning distort his common understanding. his idea centers are not able to distinguish between the real and the unreal in thoughts. he becomes possessed and obsessed by ideas born of emotion and intuition that have no foundation in fact, and as time goes on, he loses complete control of his idea centers. every individual has definite idea centers within his own brain, and it is through these centers that ideas are coordinated, received or rejected. as over-intensification of feeling and emotion goes on, the normal action of the idea centers is interfered with and the individual has superinduced emotional and intuitional states which are no longer guarded by reason and thought. the emotion senses a purely imaginary condition and the idea centers have no power to reduce it to truth. as time goes on, all power of association is lost and the individual passes along, the plaything of his subjective states of mind. as he becomes more and more intensified subjectively, he opens the deep psychic currents both within and without himself, and loses his connection with his common mind and his physical body, and becomes a prey to all the psychic currents. there are lives everywhere open to subjective thought currents, and all unknown to themselves they are allowing themselves to become disintegrated by the daily and hourly response they are giving to the stimulus of a plane they should master instead of allowing it to master them. the psychic plane may become a pathway to power, or it may become the open doorway to a body and mind full of disease, insanity and absolute loss of power and poise. there are many patients confined in the asylums today, who would never have been there, and who would be released and cured, if those in charge fully understood the truth of this unnaturally natural development and directed their attention to its control. the first truth is, people are born into what is to them natural relationship with this psychic plane and go on for years misunderstood, pained and repressed, unable to rescue themselves from what they do not understand, and in the end the physical body does become diseased by the continual inroads of strain and repression; functional disorder and anatomical changes result. the farmer's wife loses her mental balance through repression of the fine emotional, intuitional side of her mind which finds no expression in the dull environment of the farm. the over-worked mother loses her mental poise; disassociation follows over-stimulation of the practical and repression of the artistic; and in emotional patients exaggerated states of feeling go on into greater disassociation for lack of strong sensible thought control. and the second truth is, that many are born so close in relationship to the unseen plane and in such psychical correspondence, that some slight thing which weakens the will-power--sorrow, a disease that devitalizes the physical, some shock, or some prolonged or strained mental condition, breaks down the remaining law of separation, and the life is astray in the psychical world, manifesting abnormal, physical laws. there is one great connecting link between the physical and the psychical through which all abnormal conditions can be corrected, and this is will power. when this power of will is broken, the life must become a manifestation of error, according to the generally accepted idea of normal relationship. the will-power of an individual is dependent upon his ideation. weaken his power to carry an idea, and his will grows correspondingly weak; the _will_ must _follow_ the idea; it is not a separate entity--_will_ only exists in _partnership_ with the _idea_. _ideation, willing_ and _motion_ are the great human trinity from which everything else originates. when we inspect our minds, we find that a voluntary motion is always preceded by the idea of that motion. the idea is first and the will follows the idea. ideas have definite sensory centers in the cortex of the brain and conscious ideation may be induced to produce a particular form of willing. all voluntary action depends, first, upon the ideas of action, then the willing to do, then the doing. the will-power, in its accelerating and restraining impulses, is modified by the degree of the intensity of the idea. grief, fear, worry, anger, despondency, anxiety, hate, resistance are all negative ideas that weaken the idea centers and produce weakness of willing. these ideas persisted in at first produce indecision and after a while absolute inaction because the patient has lost the perfect co-relation of his idea centers, which associate instinct, reason, emotion and intuition. in order to get complete control of the will we must get complete control of the idea centers and induce strong, positive ideas which the will cannot refuse to follow. when we associate all states of consciousness--instinct, reason, emotion, and intuition, in one strong, centralized idea, it is impossible for physical expression to do anything else than follow this idea. when one has come into certain conditions of negativeness in any part of his mind, and continues in it for any length of time, it takes more than his own power to modify these intensified conditions and bring about an inhibiting power of mind which will crowd them out, and allow the idea centers to receive a new thought-form and intensify it so that the will can pass it into action. the abnormal individual is always weak in obeying his ideas and carrying out his impulse because there is a dissociation of idea centers and his mind becomes mixed in its responses and he cannot make for a true, harmonious expression on all of the planes of mind within himself--this is the condition of the neurasthenic and psychasthenic, and he needs some mind stronger than his own to hold his ideas true to what he knows to be true. the first lesson for the diseased mental patient to learn is that if he wants to keep his mental balance or restore it, he must first inhibit all negative ideation and refuse to allow himself to be driven into wild bursts of psychical or mental energy along any one line. he must force himself to interest his mind in other things and to inhibit the over-active states of thinking. this is best done by a complete change of environment, and often a change of friends. friends and environment, more than any other things, have the greatest power of keeping the mind intensified in its old thought ruts. there is little hope of receiving a new ideation and acting upon it, when one allows himself day after day to drag through the same central sensations and receive the same nerve impulses, and register the same responses. by removing to a new environment, and substituting new mental and psychical vibrations the old states of consciousness are allowed to rest while a new unworked state of mind begins. psychical development is not a disease; it is an attribute of individual growth; no one is to blame if he has it or has it not; all that anyone needs to know is the truth about it and just how to control it and direct it. subjective hearing and vision come just as naturally to us as life and death--they are a part of the great plan of unfoldment. in teaching man to co-relate his many states of developing consciousness into one powerful state of mind, we use our everyday common sense. we give him a place of mental power and after such training he opens or shuts his mind to suit himself; he can live in either extension of consciousness at will and extending his understanding into the transcendent side of his own mind, he can become the modern mystic or seer. he can function in the purely material side of himself or he can become an intensified psychic or mystic by simply suspending and intensifying different centers within himself. concentration, centralization in ideas, conscious mental substitution, creation of strong mental ideas, and psychic displacement of the negative with the positive, both by the patient within himself and from the attendant or physician without, will bring insanity under control. when men fully understand their own mind's scope, they will find that what the world calls un-natural states of consciousness, are only cerebral and psychic disassociation. the greater freedom of the race, and the cure and control of insanity will be found in the deeper study of _all_ levels of mind rather than the one or the few. only as physical science unites with metaphysical, and these both unite with scientific psychical investigation, will humanity pass toward a solution of its insanity problems. insanity, delusions, hallucinations, the so-called mental diseases will pass just because they have been naturally displaced by our higher scientific preventive psycho-therapy. the asylum doors will only open as a place of refuge where men and women will be taught the psychology of the self; there will be _schools_ not _cells_. outside the asylum doors there will be an ever increasing crowd of intelligent men and women psychologists, who will be awake to the first hint of psychic disassociation in an individual. with keen insight and scientific direction, they will teach the beginning paranoic, melancholic, neurasthenic, clairvoyant and psychasthenic the truth about themselves and the first hint of disassociation will be replaced by association, and rest homes, asylums and sanitarium doors will close forever! the law eternal "_for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the creation_." whenever we read the stories in the bible, our minds are held with a deep interest, for through all its pages and in all its words, there breathes out the history of the hopes, dreams and aspirations of human hearts, and above every other story or hope or dream, there stands first in absorbing interest the history of the man jesus, with his wonderfully inspired life. this wonderful christ life as given in history is a benediction to the world, and his teachings have given us a great inextinguishable hope. in all his history there is one profound principle that never becomes obscured, and that is his eternal adherence to the law of life. he never forgot to speak the word that should show the true laws of cause and effect. nearly all the people of his day followed the letter of his word and not the spirit. when he spoke in parables they interpreted in fact, and even when he said: "i go to prepare a place for you, and if i go and prepare a place, i will come again and receive ye unto myself, that where i am, there ye may be also," they believed and interpreted it to mean really material facts, and began to build up their finite hope for a future kingdom, totally blind to the deep subjective law of his spoken word. they really believed that if they waited a few years, at most, jesus would return unto them, and in triumph and power gather them together and raise up a community of peace and love in this earth plane. they believed that through this they would become monarchs of a new world. nothing in their minds revealed the impossibility of material form without fundamental facts beneath them. the sick and suffering and discouraged of every class, knowing nothing of the higher laws, laid this hope to their hearts, and filled with a courage built on this belief, they taught themselves to stand silent beneath scorn and persecution, feeling inwardly, that when the hour of christ's return came, their life would suddenly become powerful through some new dispensation. the years came and went, one after another the apostles died with their hope still in their hearts; at last, only the lengthened life of john was left on which to hang expectancy, then he, too, died and the jesus of their hope had not returned. even then the church was reluctant to give up its teaching of the letter and it still held, that even while a few followers remained whose term reached back to christ's time, it was not too late for his return, and the son of man might yet be sustained in his earthly kingdom. time went on until even the oldest memories of the promises passed; change after change came, and man could no longer find a finite place for his faith and trust, and then, as human life was pushed on by the great resistless ebb-tide of the infinite, those who were still clinging to this false hope, broke forth in a wail of despair, and they cried, "where is the promise of his coming?" "for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the creation." we who read their history today and know the truth of life's finer relationships, cannot but feel a pity for their failure, and the lingering death of their expectancy, even while we see that it was built on superficial human understanding. in the great unrelated, ignorant hope of these people, we can read in letters of fire, the proof of the certainty of disappointment of every human hope that has not its conscious union with the great universal laws of life. we can see now with the calm vision of those who have no part in their superstition that their hope was never built on the understanding and wisdom of creation, but upon weak, human desires and narrow personal expectation. it can easily be seen that under the great law eternal it was not possible, that after training only a small part of the human race-thought there could be a return, a king of any sort, or that there could follow the perfecting of the race in any such a narrow, limited, personal way. when truth has become revealed to the minds of men, they at once see that laws remain, and that the human race is bound to fit itself to these, and looking back over the centuries, and on into the future, we find that jesus taught us when he said, "i come not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it." today we see how everything waits upon its own cause, and how change is only brought about by the processes of regular unfoldment. we know now that the whole can only come into expression through the part, and that the fulfillment of an individual, a nation, or a race must come under the silent operation of those spiritual laws of human understanding which neither the race nor the individual can outstrip. god is law, and law began when life began and only a deep union with the finer relationships of life can ever bring us into dominion of power. there has ever been and ever will be many expressions of law, and between the absolute expression and the finite results there must ever be the grinding to dust and ashes of things which oppose either the lesser or the larger unfoldment. when we look at life from the limited, personal view we can only see from the boundary line of the unfathomed self; but as we come into deeper consciousness, we learn that expectation and promise built on personal hope is one thing, and expectation and promise built on universal understanding of universal action is another. we are a part of everything in the universe and as we come to look through the personal to the universal, we see clearly the inseparable oneness of god-consciousness and man-consciousness, and as we understand and master this relationship, we can read the real answer to our question: "where are the promises?" human life has always been, and always will be, only the unfolding of the personal mind into recognition of the absolute mind. the universe is under the law eternal and in the degree that we know this, we stop our limitations; mankind is free in the absolute law, and only seemingly bound in the finite one. not one jot or tittle of the law ever passes away; all laws exist to be fulfilled, but human life evolves from level to level of consciousness, and through relationship with higher understanding it escapes the primitive expressions of the lower laws and unites itself with the higher. the very first truth, then, for any life to learn is, that in this universe of law and order, we get just what we relate with--no more, no less! nothing happens; everything is the natural expression of the action which produces it. jesus came into the world under the law of his own life; he was born to pass along and die expressing the forms of his higher knowledge; he came and went under his own laws, but these were too obscure for the minds of that race to comprehend, and they lived, hoped and died, ignorant of his great cosmic relationship. jesus was a son of the planet and his mission was to set laws of race consciousness into activity which would act as a spiritual fulcrum throughout the ages. what was true in these olden days is still true today; we often go on hoping that fulfillment will come, when by the very nature of what we are doing, we cannot get the higher expression. take the simple things of our everyday life, our hope of health or our hope of love, wealth, place, happiness, success and usefulness; often we really do hope to be well, and plan in a way for that end, while really at the same time every breath we draw builds for the transitory and fleeting. like the christians of old we do not understand higher relationships, and at last, worn out with disappointment we cry, "where are the promises?" and do not see that until we have perfect thought relationships, we cannot hope for perfect results. it takes deep perception to find the immutable law that all physical phenomena is mental arrangement. we get everything we find expressing in life through the law of conscious or unconscious thinking! we have, and hold and keep only the things we create for ourselves; there is no other law; no one can take our own away; no one can give us anything, for only what we create is our own, and we alone must create it in consciousness before we can possess it. when we create it in consciousness we really set the law in operation for ourselves and this law will pass it into form. we make our relationships through the thoughts of our mind. our mind is the universal mind, and it is inseparably connected with everything in the universe; and whatever we have or have not is a signal of just what we have related with in consciousness. this is the unwritten action of the law; no one limits us but ourselves; the universal life stands ready with its many levels of relationships to give to every one according to the power he has to create for himself and he is really and truly judged "according to the deeds done in the body." jesus could not give an ignorant and undeveloped race the gift of a glorified kingdom; nor could they give it to themselves until they had related in consciousness with the laws that would produce it, the thing we want and our point of attraction must be equal. we come into life under correct laws; one is not born a jew, an assyrian, an englishman or an american by chance; nor is one born well and rich, and another sick and poor by chance, but each is the expression of the laws with which he has related in his own consciousness. thoughts are things and it is a part of the universal plan that thoughts from the human mind reach out into the universal, or cosmic mind, and there generate an energy which must in time embody in form and become the world picture of just what has been stimulated into expression. when thinking passes into a _fixed power_ in our life it can be used to destroy or construct the body or the environment and every thought spoken or unspoken is registered in thought forms in our atmospheric environment and must some day pass into material form. health is the expression of a law brought about by a certain line of thinking and disease is another expression. wealth is one law, poverty is another, and any life can choose this day _which_ he wishes to be under, and choose this hour which law he will serve, and jesus said, "whomsoever ye yield yourself servants to obey, his servants ye are, whether it be sin unto death or salvation unto righteousness." jesus did not return to his disciples as they expected, because there was no universal law for such return. just so with health, wealth, love, joy and happiness. they can never come into expression for us so long as there is not established within us the law of natural relationships. we are learning at last that "since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the creation," and it takes more than a fond imagination to pass our life from the law of inharmony, desire and pain, into the higher one of peace, power and happiness. the moment a life desires anything it instantly becomes related with that thing, but it does not become a possession until all the conditions are fulfilled. some minds think so _lightly_ of everything that nothing ever becomes steadfast and certain. they drift aimlessly between loss and gain, health and disease, crying out, "where are the promises," never realizing that promises are only fulfilled when the whole selfhood becomes grappled to the rock of understanding. human life is only a _growing_ time, and each life will remain just where it is and express the laws of its level of consciousness until it develops out from them into others. sickness, poverty, wretchedness, disappointed hopes are common in the journey of life; despairing human lives are common too, and lives full of rebellion can be found on every hand, but all these are the products of thoughts that produced them and show just where the consciousness has lingered. freedom from all these negative human experiences comes as the reward of inner growth; it can only come through unfoldment and transmutation into higher understanding. human pain and loss, despair and disease, and the heart-breaks of life, are all the fruits of the tree of life whose root is _truth_. when sickness, sorrow and unhappiness have taken the place of health and joy in our life, we have no one to blame but ourselves; we can know that through a long line of perverted thinking, both inherited and acquired, we have become related with the laws in consciousness, and these laws are thoughts of self, hate, jealousy, strife, condemnation, resistance, etc. we have thought it unconsciously in the past, but until we stop and get up new thought relationships, these old things must go on. when we know the higher truth of new thought relationship, and the power of constructive thinking, we can begin then and there to change things and we instantly can clean out all the distorted thought energy, and pass the simple act of thinking into a creative form, quitting forever our response to the negative things around us. we see the truth of "whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap," and we see, too, that this harvest field where we reap is the human life, and the seeds are thoughts, and we then and there fill our field of consciousness with thought-seeds of health, strength, peace, love, joy and all the ten thousand beautiful constructive things, and we soon are living in a perfected thought world, surrounded by the dream pictures of our soul consciousness. we become like mystical seers, we can prophesy then about everything in our life without fear of contradiction, for knowing the law that on the path "like produces like," and knowing the thought-seeds we sow, we can be certain of the future harvest. under the law eternal we cease to consider ourselves related to anything that we do not want. these things we do not want have ceased to exist for us, in the moment we have forgotten them in consciousness. we must refuse even to connect with them in memory. sometimes this is a hard lesson: the law of memory is a peculiar force, it is the expression of fixed thinking--that which we cannot forget has made deep inroads into consciousness. memory often keeps us related in strange ways, and hinders our unfoldment. memory is the connecting link between the yesterday and today; it makes the past always the present and it remains the master of many lives and pours what it will into the field of consciousness until it is conquered. we cannot go on to peace, power and divine unfoldment while we are wrapped around with olden memories, olden idols, fears and bondage. it is an unwritten law that we pass on as we become fit, and any life can at any moment come away from the thought law of sin, sickness and death, into the law of peace, power, happiness and joy. the great god-life wants us to have whatever we want, and will help us to get it and keep it. we have been told for ages to "ask and receive, seek and find, knock and it shall be opened." the universal waits upon our recognition of its presence and before we ask it is given. the moment we know what we want and ask for it under the higher law of recognition, it is ours, then we only have to wait until we can manifest it. over the same thought line which we pass out our desires, there passes back to us the answer to our prayers and our human pathway blossoms with the fruits and flowers of our deeper understanding. the law of bondage will never become the law of liberty, but each one of us may come away into this perfect law of creative thinking as soon as we teach ourselves the simple act of picking out thoughts that relate us with the higher things of life. the kinds of positions, friends, conditions and environment we attract to ourselves under the positive conscious relationship are entirely different from the ones we will attract under the negative destructive thought laws. good friends, happy environment, peace and love, are not made from the material of mind that recognizes only lack, loss, envy, despair, fear, condemnation and resistance. when we want health, we must think health thoughts and become _one_ with the laws that make for health and live at health's heights; when we want wealth we must create a wealth thought vibration and link our lives with the levels of wealth. all the grand, good things of earth can only come and gather around us when we have lifted our consciousness to the level at which they can be touched. in the light of this higher understanding we can see that in just the proportion that our human nature rises towards the universal wisdom, our human perception becomes widened, until, at last, we include all the laws of higher living, thinking and being, and we bring from the hidden center within ourselves a profound knowledge. as our life grows more and more in the power of perception, we retire farther and farther from the personal, the pessimistic, the limited belief of selfishness, condemnation, resistance, and we begin a new thought life filled with moral, intellectual and spiritual glory, and even though "since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the creation," we see the true laws of creation, and making pur minds one with these laws we pass with them and through them on to perfected human wisdom, we turn to the daily life then with a higher, holier and more glorified purpose and out from all the gloom of the past we find the promises have all been answered and that god has provided some better things for us, which without us could not be made perfect. the final word, then, to the sick, discouraged and diseased world is this: "the righteous are in the hands of their god (the law) and their life is full of immortality," and knowing this anyone may recognize their conscious union with whatever they desire; create it in their human thought world and project it into form in the cosmic consciousness; then with wide open soul eyes walk calmly on, expecting it and never laying down their demand until it manifests for them. the outside and inside of life "_jesus said unto him, go and wash in the pool of siloam. he went his way therefore and washed and came seeing_." st. john ix, . when we read the history of the ages behind us we cannot help but see that through every phase of human evolution there has run that subtle something which men call "the power of the unseen." matty of our forefathers lived in self scrutiny and subjective investigation, and many lived in lawless expression of their objective selves with no idea of life in its subjective action and form. as humanity advanced in its reverence it came to where lack of attention to regeneration and self-comprehension was followed by an inner sense of guilt, and those who know the power of the two states of consciousness, the outer and the inner, have grown to where they look upon it as abnormal to higher progress, to only enter these finer courts of being just to rest and renew the physical body. men instinctively know that life is too serious and mighty to pass along on the objective side of living without now and then going into the center of being and holding an earnest deep contact with the silent consciousness. in the old thought world it was not strange for master men in every walk of life to pray. the powerful warrior turned his eyes from the field of battle to the strength of heaven; the trusting mourner turned his eyes from the loss of earth to the gain of dying; even milton gave himself to the discords of politics in action, and the symphonies of the seraphims. in the silence great lives everywhere have mingled the meditations of the absolute with the thoughts of the discordant, differentiated and apparent _now_. there is not a family anywhere that does not possess at least one person who in himself holds the proof of how real and earnest a thing are the exercises and consciousness of the solitary vigil. there is something of reverence yet in many lives as they recall the blessing given at meals and the evening hour of prayer. to the wayward and those living in the control of the outside things of life, it was an hour of bondage, but to those who were at all awakened to the call of the inside life, it was an even-tide of peace and power and rest. it cannot be denied that the years have brought great changes in the methods of human worship. the contempt with which some of the later educators treat worship and religion betray an ignorance on their part both of the true office of revelation and reverence, and this blinds them to the real, innate, fundamental longing of human life. there are many who come away from the old thought and who believe in the promulgation of a new truth, but they attempt to build up the new through the destruction of the old, and pass along as iconoclasts seeking what they can destroy. these lives are the lawful product of the undeveloped human comprehension, and the only safety for the race is in the fact that only a few ever take them seriously, and these soon see that they are not inclusive enough to help more than the few, and that after a while, in order to meet the demands of their own increasing individuality, they must themselves pass into wider union, into worship and get away from their own limitations. humanity must forever pass between the outside and the inside of life, and only as each soul becomes awake in both conditions can it understand and unite with the laws of perfect being. new thought is conscious of the open door between the inside and the outside of life, the earth and heaven, and it knows that each soul may live from choice in either state of consciousness and pass in and out at will. man instinctively knows the difference between the inside and the outside of living; he can easily detect the laws of action, and the laws of silence. the tendency of our new thought development is to teach lives to pass more and more into the inside power or, in other words, to come into the unseen laws of being and work consciously with the energy that creates and which is unmanifested, while at the same time they manipulate the manifested, external things, and through the understanding of the finite are able to bring into expression the absolute power. it is slowly dawning upon the present day intelligence that through this inner side of mind we can become more and more capable of controlling and directing the outer states of human consciousness and men are recognizing more and more that all physical objective form is inner spiritual arrangement. today humanity is looking at the cant and form and creed of the crowd, and giving them their own rightful place, power and function, but it is also looking at the unseen and daring to affirm that an audience with god is attainable, certain and possible and productive of its own natural expressions in its own realm of higher recognition. today more than ever before new strength is being born into what the world calls the devotional element of humanity and it is being born on a sane, healthy plane of understanding which bids fair to revolutionize the world. it does not take long to see, when we look with a clear vision, that those who display most power today, and who are productive of the greatest good to the developing world are not those who are living in fixed relationship with the outside of life; it is true that those on the outer rim may boast of perfect physical strength and a perfect brain and a physical beauty, but the victory today is not from the without, but it is rather for those who are psychologically practical, mystically enlightened and subtle with a deep scientific relationship with all nature's finer forces and who know life not alone as a science or as a philosophy, or as a religion, but as an art. the truth must some day beat its way into the developing minds of men that we are now alive in a great age, and are coming to where the inside power must become externalized and that those who today stand masters of life, and those who will continue to become masters of life and leaders in power and helpfulness, must do it by a development that is not so much characterized by their objective knowledge as by their subjective holiness or wholeness. we must learn what we never seem to have learned before, that the moments we spend in the external world are not wholly our strongest or sanest moments and that all external outside action is the crudest form of energy, and that when we want the _real_, we must turn the clear deep eye of our nature toward the inner, the silent, and then all our power seems to well up and meet us, because it is called in from the apparent to the absolute of being. the next great truth is that all the old ways of life are never thrown away until we have something to live by in the new; old truths never die, they are always existent, but their methods of expression must be changed to suit the developing intellectuality and spirituality of man. in the old thought life prayer was the pathway to the interior world of power, but today we know that recognition must be the guide to the interior world of power. prayer was the pathway of the old forefathers and prayer in its first inception was a straight road to the center of divine union, but after the minds of men, befogged between the glamour of the external and the power of the internal, evolved a form of prayer that led the race away from its center out into the rim of living, the power ceased; prayer became full of cant and form, words became meaningless and non-mystical; the truth that "god is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" was lost in the increasing bewilderment of the mind. after a while humanity, seeing the futility of objective kind of prayer, ceased its praying, not because it had worn out prayer, not because it had wandered from its desire of worship and soul communion, but because it had worn out the old useless method, and found the dross of the letter; no one stood developed to where he could push faith into a new interpretation. self examination and supplication is natural to every life as soon as it develops to a finer knowledge of what passes within itself. until the last man of the earth is dead this natural cry for the communion with the inner states of consciousness and the union with the great absolute god-life will rise up and flourish and wax strong in the souls of men. we have learned now too much of the inside of living to ever be happy with the outside form alone, and we have seen too much of the unseen forces within us to ever yield ourselves servants completely to the external powers. our spiritual analysis is too fine to permit crude interpretation. men are leaving the old just as the seed must forever leave the mould and dust of earth, and push its stalk up into heaven's bright sunshine. today we stop and in close self questioning and with a desire to know the truth, and nothing but the truth, we ask what is it that has rendered the old thought piety of our fathers unnatural and impossible to us? it does not take long to answer this if we look with eyes that have clearer sight. men have turned away simply because they were too developed to be fed on the husks of a worn out expression that was no longer large enough to satisfy their developing thirst for truth. our new thought methods have come because men built them with their desires; they called for methods that would fit the increasing spiritual comprehension of developing humanity. today mankind is instinctively recoiling from every sense of separation from god which our fathers felt; human life has become more human; the outside of life is known at its real value, the inside of life is given its place and power; love has become vitalized; human affection has become sweet and natural; human duties are blessed privileges and life is elevated to a pinnacle of power before unknown; social interests are now beginning in all and ending in all; the whole scheme of man's natural moral and religious existence has a true worth and dignity of its own, and humanity is listening, accepting and delighting to honor and obey. only the life in the outside ranks of living will ever condemn this new rise of power, and only the cowardly can despise; it is whole, sane, sweet and divinely human and humanly divine in its application and privileges. we lost, perhaps, a great part of the old time manner of communion with god because we first lost the old time spirit of supplication and the groveling spirit of the outside world, but we have not lost communion or devotion. today we are at home in the center of being, and feel and know oneness. we have union now just as those who _know_ truth have always had, but the method differs, and silence has taken the place of the spoken prayer, meditation and silence is the new pathway to the cosmic heart, and through this the developing children of men walk into perfect union, receiving the messages of the divine host. they come into a grand comradeship with god, not in the old time spirit of supplication and service, not asking, not seeking really, not even penitentially suppliant, but in the new found glory of a faith that looks up in perfect confidence of its oneness, and which speaks from the very depth of its own glorified selfhood, and knows that "i and my father are _one_ and all my father hath is mine." the new race will keep all that is vital in the old one of prayer and communion, and it will add to it all the great power of its own awakened consciousness. we are awake now--wide awake to the despotism of the outside world and its laws--and we are equally awake to the law of the inner side of life and the dominion of the world of pure being. today the silence of our new understanding has become for developed humans the pathway of god, and it is indeed the pool of siloam in which all may bathe and be healed. the silence becomes for those who seek it a well of living water that springs up into everlasting life. it is promised that "the pure in heart shall see god," and anyone who comes away from the outside of life and comes stripped to the soul into the inner side of his own being will find god there, for like the vision of the monk, he is always there, waiting to be manifest. the outside of life is beautiful and sweet and has in it many forms of self-realization; it is part of the plan of human development, but it is only a part and the lesser side of living, and after we have mastered its secrets and understood our own relationship to it, it is natural to turn inward, and read the other side of our life's picture, and when we do this it will be strange indeed if we do not feel the eternal presence so close upon our soul that we will long to say with bated breath, "thou god seest me." the silence of the inner side of life and the power it produces cannot be put into words; it is the pathway to the absolute and the _language_ of _that_ land is not spoken in the outer world of sense and sight. _know_ the inner side of life, then _live_ it--this is the pathway of peace and power and along this way there is found that strange vital, vibrant glow of spiritual illumination sanctifying our senses, and filling our soul and leading our mind into the fulness of him who fills all. life then becomes for us a something divinely sent, no longer distraught; no longer to suffer; nothing but reality and a reality that has been known by millions throughout the ages and will be known by millions yet unborn. do not think that this turning into the inner side of living is weakness and cowardice and fear of the external world and its happenings; it is not, it is simply all energies united; it is not fear nor halting power, but it is rather the strength of the superhuman; it is not illusion, not self-hypnotism; it is a divine reality; it is god's witness to those who seek after his illuminated heights. this living in the inner side of life each day is essential for the preservation of equalization of our daily life. the outside of life cannot help but become wearisome, and when we come away into the silence of our inner self, we find the thrill of life and we find the human made radiant with the glory of the divine. the inner side of life answers all the questionings of our mind, and as we learn this truth we depend less and less upon the things created, but live constantly in the energy that creates, and through this operate our whole life. silence was first in the scheme of creation. remember this: "the darkness and the silence knew. so is a man's fate born." there is no creation that will last that is born on the plane of external action for the law of that plane is change. in the hush of the valley of silence we accumulate the inward power which pushes our external expression into bloom. in the inner side of living the soul enlarges its dimensions and when it comes back into the earthly things it gilds them with a glory not their own. the inner side of life and its power is not a mysterious thing, it is only the finding of god, and when we meet him face to face, we speak in a new tongue; we live in a temple not made by hands, eternal in the heavens, and we live in the truth of the olden mystics and say with the power of our new consciousness: "our father, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom has come, thy will is done on earth, as it is in heaven." the measure of ourself "_and he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof and the wall thereof. and the length and the breadth and the height are equal_." the building of a glorious perfected selfhood, this is the work of every life. we all come into existence equal in privilege, we are all born equal in latent power, which, if developed, will keep us shoulder to shoulder in this game of living out; but not until this latent power is developed and brought out into external manifestation can any life really declare its mastery. life has one grand prize for all, and this prize is life's master position. the chance to compete for this prize is given to all at birth, but the power to push forward in the pursuit of it is only developed by those who know that it is really within them, and knowing this begin systematically to unfold it. not everyone is equal in the externalization of this latent energy, and no matter how much or how little any life may possess it, still it has its own point of contact for power, and it can come forth in its own way in wisdom of conquest. life as we find it here on earth is like a great garden; each soul comes into this world garden and its place and keynote is struck upon the harp of life and the registration is made in the universal harmony; then it must work out its own part until it comes into perfect tune with the other parts of the great universal chord. not a life is born into expression here, but in the unseen realm an angel or higher master ministers at its birth, and its name is written in the lamb's book of life (or the universal cosmic mind). each life drops into its own selected and appointed place; it has its own special mission to perform, its own lessons to learn, its own part to work out, and its own grand privilege of development. in essence all life is _one_, and all humanity is the same; the _one life_ is in all and through all, without regard to class, creed or color, but in manifested expression we must forever be different; some lives are younger in their unfoldment--they are unfinished; some have finer bodies through which to manifest consciousness; some are born into positions where there is more required of them than of others, for the price of usefulness is the ability to be useful; some are never useful and live idle aimless lives because they have not yet incorporated within themselves the power to be of use to others. the nation, the race, the individual and the environment are simply signals which we hang upon ourself of just what we created and unfolded within our own consciousness. we come the reaper of the things we sowed, and just where we find ourselves here is the picture of how well or how ill we have used the years behind us, but the privilege of new use and new development is still within us; we stand each day on the threshold of a new lifetime, ready to begin over and over again our new unfoldment. around each life is the _all consciousness_, and it can fashion for itself a new world, made of the cosmic substance with which it is connected. the great unfolding mass of humanity pass along, taking themselves as a confused bundle of states of being, acted upon by the external force of people and environment, and in turn acting back with no conscious idea of creation, never knowing that with what measure we mete it shall be meted unto us. this process of being acted upon and acting back unconsciously, produces a type of energy that cannot fail but bring forth masses of individuals who are in bondage, body, mind and spirit, for spirit has not sensed its eternal birthright of liberty. looking at this world garden full of natural wild flowers, called the "human race," new thought sees clearly that whatever response an individual gives to his environment is the evidence of his own special power, and that this personal power may, by conscious control and direction, give him complete mastery, and through this he passes uninterrupted into possession of life's master position and the prize of peace and power and wisdom. the individual is always the actor; the environment is always acted upon, and this acting and acting upon again gives forth an expression, and the exchange and inter-exchange between the two produces what the world calls the character of a life, and looking upon the product of this play of forces, we say "he is a genius," "he is a thief," "he is a god-man," or, "he is a degenerate," measuring with the example that is hung before our eyes. up to this point all men are really equal; they are simply alive in consciousness, but just as the gardener takes the flower and transplants it to specialized soil, and causes it to bud and bloom with all the energy within it, just so man's own consciousness can take his soul and teach him how he can lift himself into states of specialized human power and show forth all the glory of a divinely developed man. everyone can take his place at any level of living that he chooses just as soon as he knows that there is no one to say "no" to him but himself. strong positive thoughts put truth into the hearts of men, and this builds them upward and inward towards harmony. this great universal law of harmonious consciousness is the reed with which everyone may measure himself and with which each one is taught to take his own dimensions and never lay it down until his city of character stands equal in height, breadth, and depth, and length. when we measure ourselves by the golden reed of consciousness, we find by the signs of ourself and our environment if our city of self is right, and if it is not we can rebuild it in finer architectural fashioning. there are many lives that have neither breadth, nor height, nor depth, they have only length; they pass along through life tied to one idea or at least a few ideas; they are narrow, bigoted, selfish and careless about the other dimensions of themselves; they see through their glass darkly, the things of their own immediate knowledge are enough for them; they are exclusive and powerful in one direction, and humanity might break itself to pieces just outside their narrow life for they neither hear nor care; they are all right, secure in their length of narrow, personal endeavor. they are afraid of anything that is outside of their own field of vision, and their life is altogether too small and straight and strained, for any but a few of their own kind to hold on to; their days are full of anxiety and worry, for their hold on truth is too weak to bring them to power, and wisdom. again, after we see how we measure in length, we can turn the golden reed upon ourselves for specialization in breadth, and often again we find a shortcoming. the breadth must also be equal; we cannot fail in our breadth and come into true wisdom, true breadth means inclusion--this may vary in degree, but there must never be exclusion of anything in the well-rounded character, there is conscious selection, but never exclusion; there is nothing _in_ or _under_ or _above_ the earth but that is companion with us on our journey toward divine unfoldment. to make the breadth of our life measure up in fulness, we must look with wide open eyes at everything and everyone in life, and take it at its own point of unfoldment. not in every life is found true wisdom of thought and expression, but if we know the truth we will see past all the undeveloped things within, to the beautiful god-self it is becoming and with wisdom and power and love include it in our own consciousness, waiting patiently for its development. to have breadth we must open our ears and our life to the call of the world voice and live to answer it. we must hear it socially, ethically, individually, financially, politically, religiously, spiritually, mentally and physically not only in our own way, but in every way can that one find god within himself before he can find it through humanity; but when measured by the golden reed for the building of the new self, we must find god or good in and through every living creature. all people love themselves and most people love their own families; and this is right and good that it is so, but the breadth and height and depth must be equal and that means inclusion of the universal as well as the personal self. jesus again told this when he said to the man who asked him "what shall i do that i may have eternal life?" and he said unto him: "keep the commandments" and, "thou shalt not bear false witness:" "and the young man saith unto him, 'all these things have i kept from my youth up; what lack i yet?'" "jesus saith unto him: 'if thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven and come and follow me.' but when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions." so when jesus measured him by the reed of breadth and deeper inclusion, he followed him no more, for the height, the breadth and the depth were not equal. to give to ourselves and to our own, or to those who seem to have a claim on us for anything, is good, but, to give to those who have not claim or kinship nor power over us is _greatness_. to include them in our own world, not by might or force, but through recognition of union with the one life--this is consciousness of breadth that remains immortal. again, the depth of a life must be equal, and how do we lack in this? there are thousands today who flit along on the crest of the wave of life's current, butterfly-like; they never really have a conscious thought. if "it only does not affect me" is their watchword, and freedom from anything serious is their only really serious problem. they know in an indifferent way that hearts break, that tears fall, that there are prayers that stagger upward through life's storm, but the froth and foam of life is in their eyes; they look out on the rim of a life where they see only self-indulgence, and when now and then they are hushed long enough to listen to the world cry, they turn away quickly for fear they will actually touch lives with the common people. so long as they keep afloat they are content, their lack of depth does not disturb them, but often after they have wasted their all in riotous living, and the realities of life fall upon them, they cry out from the depth of their own self-made despair; their life was like a palace built on sand which the first fierce flood tide could destroy; it had no root, no place in consciousness when measured by the golden reed--the height, the breadth and the depth were unequal. unless the soul has root in soil divine, it cannot face earth's overwhelming expressions of the working out of the human laws which it sets in motion in the round of human living. the life that would build sublime and lasting things to stand the test of time, must drop its consciousness into the absolute, and sink the string of thought into the fathomless! lights and shadows are strangely blended all along the human pathway; so from the very center of the deeps of life the incense of our illumined selves must still send up a faint sweet breath outward and onward,--then the breadth as touched by the golden reed is equal. again, the height of the perfect self is also measured. no house so low but it must have a window opening to the sky. again, there are many lives that touch the golden reed as it measures outward, downward, but are insensible of upward power. above the surge and din of life, amid its sorrows and its strife, the soul that comes under the glory of the golden reed, must lift itself to the hills of specialized wisdom greater then the common consciousness. we can find many noble, moral, natural lives equal in length and breadth and depth, but the height is lacking. within many minds is lack of great sublime ideals, ideals that should be born in the illumined centers of the self. there are many who have no communion with their source; they are kind, sociable, natural, humanitarian, but lacking in that great wonderful psychological essence which makes the human half divine; the height of their life is unfinished, the golden reed is broken; they walk on superior in their knowledge until in some supreme hour of human grief, their soul is forced through some gethsemane and opens its eyes to the need of a strength beyond their own. death, the grave and love teach them to look up, and hope higher than the earthly kingdom. and once more the measure of our soul goes on, and we find that often all is equal, but the height is _over-reached_; there are many forgetting breadth and length and depth who measure into the very hill-tops of illumination, making their whole expression a dream of no value to themselves or others. they are pure children of spirit; they live in a world peopled with the dream-children of their mind and everything they produce is vapid and useless in the world in which they live and have being; everything seems to pass away from them and their productions are as nothing under the crush and strain of life around. _use_ is the world's great test of anything; unless it can be utilized by some one it is valueless to aid humanity; everything that comes forth into form from any state of consciousness must prove its own power to persist, or it vanishes and is forgotten. nothing too high, nothing too low, nothing too wide, nothing too narrow, too shallow, but all perfectly adjusted--this is the measure of self, and when we know this the illumined life works out its own unfoldment, passing at will to any degree of consciousness. this is the finished product of the life that knows how to specialize in consciousness and it is made possible through deeper illumination. it gives to everyone the glorious physical, a depth of perception, radiant with a refined energy and alive with all the latent power of instinct and harmony, and with this the brilliant mind with its breadth of unanswerable logic, its fine facts, science of order and laws of physical adjustment. and added to both these we find the dream vision of the psychic, with the poet's soul of inspiration, sublime ideality and the gentle tender heart, alive with all the common human emotions; and at last, blended and transmuted and made vibrant by that great spiritual insight born on the heights of human revelation we find ourselves whole, grand, developed, humanly divine creatures, walking in glad comradeship with god. this is the "holy grail" of selfhood and in the light of our higher understanding we look downward and outward and upward, and the length and the breadth and the height are equal. we pass from the old race thought of limitation and live in a divine atmosphere, and can say with a wisdom born from this fuller comprehension: "_we know that if our house of this earthly tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of god--an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens_." perfect liberty "_no man liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself_." the more we look at humanity and study its expressions, the more we become convinced of the truth of these words. it is not hard to see that our human ties are closely knit with everything and everyone, but it is not always easy to understand how they have come to their sometimes almost hopeless tangle. we are a part of everything in the universe, seen and unseen, and as we have within us a response to every emotion, hope dream, impulse of any kind known or recognized by the human race. as we study and understand our relationship to people, things and expressions, we cannot help but grow deeper and deeper into the clearness of the great truth, namely, the universal and abiding one-ness of man and god. some of our relationships in this one-ness are very indistinct and obscure, while some are very distinct and painfully objectified. the first truth for us to take up is this--we _have_ and _express_ in our being and our environment just these things with which we have related ourselves, either through inherited or acquired lines of thinking; no one gives to us but ourselves, no one takes away from us but ourselves, no one is to blame but ourselves whatever we have or have not; we, and we alone, are the architects of our own fortune or misfortune. we get everything in life by the law of conscious or unconscious relationship with it through the simple act of thinking; our thoughts are lines of transference over which may pass to us not only the things which we desire, but also those which our fear brings down upon us and which we do not desire. unconscious relationship differs from conscious relationship and brings us the things with which we have connected through the law of omission; conscious relationship is union, and brings everything into expression under the law of commission. both of these lines are constant and their results undeniable, but one brings us the whole, the constructive, while the other opens our life for the control of the destructive, the limited. when thinking passes into a fixed power in our life, it may be used to perfect or destroy the whole mechanism of our present and our future. long lines of conscious and unconscious thinking bring about certain expressions, and these expressions in time become a part of our very existence, and our environment, good or bad, bears witness to this relationship. one day upon the streets of boston i saw an old woman selling newspapers; her hair was gray, her skin brown and wrinkled, her clothing shabby and only half sufficient for the chill of the hour; she was simply poverty-stricken, and her old, thin, piping voice trembled as she called her papers in an effort to compete with the crowds of newsboys around her. many bought her papers, drawn to her through pity, and her evident need. i felt sorry that with her gray hair so near the grave life should have only this to offer her, and i sought a reason for it. i asked her to tell her story. she was the daughter of a minister; her mother had been the proverbially meek little woman of history, perfectly fitted to be her father's wife. her grandfathers on both sides of the parental tree had been ministers; she gave me a graphic sketch of the long line of concentration which she had been born into and in which she continued. there was a long line for concentration and relationship with lowliness of spirit, for grace, for the utter sinking of self; lack of demand for place or power; lack of self-righteousness, absolute submission sown through generations, sown for her in her own life. it had to bring forth its fruit and it did bring it forth in the form of that gray-haired, beautiful, ragged old woman, who, in the days of her declining years, gathered her harvest on the cold streets of a rich city, underfed, poor and alone. she was still true to her inherited concentration, for while i questioned her she said, "health, money and happiness were not for her," and that "her family had borne the cross of poverty and sickness all their lives and borne it nobly, and some day the father would give them their reward." don't you see that the mind that is poised where her mind was, and where her family's mind had been for generations, could not escape the law which they had built for themselves. here was an example of unconscious relationship; can't you see how unwittingly she hourly and daily made anew her relations with the very things which must by their very nature divorce her from the things which she never sensed belonged to her. the fixed thinking handed down to her from the past, bound her like a galley-slave and kept her life held against the law which was daily destroying her; she was unconsciously related and she remained unconsciously related to the laws which made for loss and lack in her life, unable to see the paths where she turned aside from her father's house, and his universal abundance; blind to her power of new creating. when we begin to study our lines of unconscious relationship we find that we are appalled almost at the ten thousand little tendrils which bind us to our old relationships; we think ourselves "good easy man" this moment, and the next moment sees us opening the door of our life to thought forms which if entertained, will certainly become for us a poor relation, and demand our support for ages. we daily open our lives to endless tramp thoughts which dwell with us and in the end beggar us. we need hourly to set a guard on our field of unconsciousness, and absolutely refuse to admit into our daily mind any thoughts less than those which distinctly relate us with all the beautiful things of life, and we must never forget the truth of the power of our own personal creations. we can be what we _will_ to be; we can be related to whatever we choose to be related to; we can choose this day whom we will serve and start the hour of our rebuilding. whatever we have or have not is a positive picture of our relationship and tells to every passer-by the story of just how well we know how to control, and direct our own thoughts, and whether we are living unconsciously or consciously. the way to get the perfect liberty for ourselves is to understand fully the secret of relating ourselves with it through the power of conscious thinking. the moment that a life desires anything, be it health, wealth or love, it becomes related with that thing, and the thought establishes a line of direct transference; desire is the first out-reaching for the things which are necessary to fully develop our life. it is the god-push within us trying to get our consciousness into expression. in the past, the educators often called this power of conscious relationship, "persistency"; have you not seen people whom the world called "hobby riders" or "freaks"? these people are only perverted in the expression of conscious relationship; they hold their relationship to one thing to the exclusion of every other thing in their life. it is just as much a form of misdirected energy to sink everything in life to one idea; to sacrifice health, friends, position, peace, everything, in order to gain one thing, as it is to have a diverse, indefinite, faltering idea of relationships and purposes. the true position is between them: all things work together for the final good of man, and union with _all_ things, not _one_ thing, is the law of _universal_ development. once we have decided what we want to be related with we can afford to let everything take its own appointed time and place in our life, bringing everything up in its appointed place. all that we have to do is to keep our fixed point of attachment with it and this attachment is made through power thoughts. substance is always changing and so is our position to it under the common law, but under the conscious law of creation we change our position over and over again, but we keep the same hope until in some expected hour we stand face to face with our hope manifested in form. there is no use running after anything; no use straining after it! we gain liberty not by resistance, denial or renunciation, but through union; under the old law we worked on the plane of competition; in the perfected imaging or thinking we are living under the law of divine attraction, and whatever we relate ourselves with in thought must come and join us. when we are under this law thousands of unseen hands reach out to lift us into peace-crowned heights, and into relation with what we desire. when sickness has taken the place of health in our life, when disease has crowded out our ease and comfort, we can know that by a long line of perverted thinking, perhaps both inherited and acquired, we have become related with those things which are under the law of pain, destruction and disintegration. we may have done all this thinking unconsciously in the past, but there is now no excuse for us to go on with this old relationship; it is senseless to again fill up our field of consciousness with the old thought concepts. when we know the truth of this transference into form through thought relationship, we have perfect liberty; we look at ourselves in a new light, and begin to then and there pass this simple act of thinking into lines which will connect us with just these things which we desire; we quit forever our thought relationship with conditions which speak for lack or loss or limitations. we fill our field of consciousness with thoughts of the strong, and the health of life; we shut out the diseased, the dwarfed, the imperfect. we force the pictures of hospitals and sanatoriums out of our mind; we look at our bodies no matter how they look, or how much of disease they are then expressing, and we see only the _whole_, the new, the complete. we force ourselves to _know_ nothing but the great all health thoughts; we go back again and again to our relation with the abundance of health; we make ourselves deaf and blind and dumb to the absence of wholeness and our body slowly swings into line, and begins to express for us the nature of our conscious thinking. we cease to consider ourselves related to anything that we do not want. disease, pain, lack of health may have its place in the lesser relationships of the human plane, but it is not found in the kingdom of consciousness--the all-health within us; it cannot exist in this new world of spiritual chemicalization with which we have taken up our relations. when we want this perfect law of liberty, we do not recognize the existence of the old, we simply occupy our whole thought time with the new things with which we wish to make union. every condition of life that we consider desirable for ourselves we convince ourselves is already ours, we reach out and lay hold of it, and give it a line of transference into our life. this is not castle building, this is divine relationship--the perfect law of liberty! we see the truth that the strong, the healthy, the happy, the powerful are living in the same world, in the same universal energy that obtains for the diseased, the weak, the sick, the unhappy; there is no reason why they may not have every good and perfect gift. there are almost as many healthy as there are sick in every hospital--the doctors, nurses, porters, cooks, and servants, all hale and hearty, putting in their whole time caring for those who are half dead with disease. what makes the difference? just the difference of relationship. they have not accepted mentally the same conditions, and even surrounded as they are with the sick and diseased, they refuse to be bound by the laws which these patients have endowed with power over themselves. they have learned the two great truths: there is nothing in all the world that has any power over us except that with which we endow it, and there is nothing in all the world of which we need be afraid. disease and sickness are signals of great negative conditions of mind which we have recognized in thought, and exalted to the _king_ chair in our life and endowed with power to hold us in bondage. we may escape in just that hour that we sense the power of our own personal creation, and set up a conscious relationship with the positive constructive things in our own consciousness. we become lords of our physical conditions and our environment just as soon as we cut out all thought relationship with the laws which make for loss and lack. "the spirit beareth witness with our spirit day by day that we are the sons of god," and as soon as the soul knows this it senses its divine relationship, and is born again on the planes of a higher consciousness, and in the wisdom of its understanding it builds itself new conditions, and lives in a new world, surrounded with the objects of its own creating, at first subjectively, but in time manifested on the objective plane, to bear witness to the truth which its soul knows and obeys. when this is done we live in a new world made perfect by our own inspired workmanship; we know nothing of disease and pain, we have never a morrow of fear, "our today of content is eternal." there are many who have mastered health, because it was the first thing they demanded, and after they have done this, they find that they are still related to the laws which make for poverty and lack in material possessions; they have liberty in flesh but not the perfect law of it in environment. there are those who have known the grinding hand of need, who have stood with crushed lives, hopeless; with courage dead and the devil of despair crouched on their shoulder, whispering words of disappointment; there are those who are homeless in a land of homes, and those who are starving in a world of plenty; what can we say to them? how can we comfort them and point them to the hope of a new endeavor? the world is full of these half-fledged lives and we must answer them. in order to meet this expression we must go back again to our first truth, our first statement:--"we _have_ and _express_ in our being and our environment just these things with which we have related ourselves, either through inherited or acquired lines of thinking; no one gives to us but ourselves, no one takes away from us but ourselves, no one is to blame but ourselves whatever we have or have not; we, and we alone, are the architects of our own fortune or misfortune." as soon as we can teach a life to know the truth of its own power of conscious thought relationship, it can face about and begin a new line of attraction and accumulation. it is an unwritten law that we pass on as we become fit, and we can at any moment begin a new thought attitude which, if persisted in, will relate us with everything which we conceive to be opulence or abundance. when we want to come into perfect liberty for wealth, we must never recognize poverty or the things which make for it; we must refuse to sense a separation from whatever we desire; the universal abundance is for all, and we get and express just the amount we have power to connect. the all will wants us to have whatever we want, remember this! and it will aid us to secure what we want and help us to keep it just so long as we show we can make intelligent connection with it. we must believe in our divine kinship with supply, and the divine kinship of every other soul with it; over the same line which we send out our desire for abundance there will pass back to us the answer to our prayer; the things we seek are seeking us; this is a great psychological truth which we can prove to ourselves if we try. under the lines of the higher spiritual affinity the lines of transference never cross; our gain never becomes another's loss, and _vice versa_. the whole scheme of life is for freedom; it is only the perverted building of the minds of men that have externalized lack and bondage. we have forgotten the eternal promise, "with what measure ye mete it shall be meted unto you," we have related with lack of supply, never knowing the truth that no one limits us but ourselves. under the law of liberty, we place ourselves in the very heart of divine opulence and though at first we cry abundance from the very depth of poverty, if we hold our life servant to this relation, all lack will slowly slip away from us, and we can, and _do_ walk out into new relations of attraction, and become one with all that our father hath. this, then, is the truth of perfect liberty: "to him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." those who have laid hold of the divine truth of abundance of supply and related themselves with it through the power of conscious thinking may go on in calm security from demand to supply, coming each day deeper into the universal cosmic opulence of health, wealth, love and usefulness. the word, then, to the sick or poverty-stricken or loveless is this: recognize your union with whatever you desire; reach out and make relation with it through the power of conscious thinking; look with wide open soul eyes straight into the face of the universal being, and taking your wants firmly into your mind walk on in your daily life demanding them and expecting them to manifest; never lay down your consecration until it does express for you. make every conscious relationship one with health, wealth, love and usefulness, accompanied by peace, power, plenty and divine realization. as soon as we lift our personal life to the level of the universal life in positive recognition of our own, it will come to us and abide. union with the cosmic life is a possible thing here and now; the human life is but the remote picture of our place in the universal; our life's relations may become the flowers on our tree of life, and our manifold experiences the fruits of our own growing and all life be one perfect round of liberty born from conscious righteous choice. cosmic therapeutics "_and he stood between the living and the dead, and the plague was stayed_." the greatest secret of the age is the connection with and manipulation of the cosmic energy. in every age and every race men have stumbled on to relationship with their atmospheric environment and have each demonstrated it in their own way, but it remained for the twentieth century investigators to give us the real key to our continuous connection and the methods by which this connection could be demonstrated to the thinking world. the minds of the past taught us the existence of an atmospheric environment and to a degree manifested our connection with it, but accomplished it through the medium of objective lines of connection and transference; today we are finding the new truth that man is able to create his own environment even to the most minute thing and create it from atmospheric energy lifting his creations aloft in his life in finite form through the medium of a power that, in its first expression, far transcends sight and touch. today we know that the great cosmic currents in which the whole world lives, and moves, is nothing but a vast undifferentiated sea of energy. this energy is acting always in the formless as electrical currents; these currents are always waiting to be set in motion with any other current which corresponds with them in electrical reaction either positive or negative. man's whole atmospheric environment is formed of these currents and he is a localized attracting center, registering in himself and his environment just those electrical reactions with which he relates under the great cosmic law of correspondence. we have found in the past that these atmospheric currents can be sent as vibrations through the medium of any object that is brought into relation with them and the degree of registration depends upon the instrument used. in some rates of vibration these waves may be made to become heat; in others, cold; in others, light; in others, sound; in others, just motion, without sound being separated. physical science has given us examples too numerous to mention of the positive expression of enforced vibration in relation to objective things, but it was left for marconi to show conclusively that these vibrations may be produced and transmitted through the medium of the atmospheric waves themselves, and psychology has shown that any instrument, either mechanical or human, may register vibrations in the very moment they are attuned to them. atmospheric environment has passed deeply into the development stage scientifically, and even in this it does not yet really appear what it may be, but it is easy to see how all atmospheric energy becomes really a substance from which every skilled mechanic may create his own expression. metaphysically, it is plain to see that man is only one part of this great cosmic energy, and that standing as he does, a localized point in the ocean of formless vibrating ether, he becomes a specialized, attracting center and the lines which connect him with this ocean of energy are his own thoughts. in the physical plane men use wires and machines and objective localization, but on the higher planes of consciousness we only need to use the vibrations of that plane, and the higher connecting thought wires become as tangible to those who use them as do the objective connections on the physical planes. on the human plane our thoughts become the metaphysical avenues of connection; with thoughts we reach out into this formless ocean of cosmic energy and create through recognition the things which we desire, and our environment under this law becomes the world-picture of just what we have had the power to create for ourselves. this cosmic substance is neither great, nor small, finite nor infinite, it simply is substance from the highest to the lowest expression of life. there is no escaping this universal product of energy. we ourselves are it! the physical universe, and everything that we call matter, is simply _universal energy_ manifested in form; everything expressed on the physical plane is cosmic energy materialized; and every human being is only this cosmic energy localized and expressed in human flesh and form. form is only the physical side of divine mind. in this ocean of universal energy or atmospheric environment which we call formless, there is always some form of some kind, but the formless is a form too high for our human mind to comprehend, we have not yet reached the plane of unfoldment where we have cosmic recognition. as we investigate this atmospheric environment, we find it has two distinct forces at work within it, and these forces are the positive and negative reaction of its atoms. this positive and negative reaction of the atoms is continually going on, and they each have their corresponding embodiment in the eternal world of matter; they act independently or together, and when one has learned how to blend these two reactions in his consciousness, as do the skilled magi, he has come to the center of his own and universal being. in the manifested world of substance, mankind takes its place in one or both of these energies; it is drawn into their expression by the universal law of attraction. each life is in its first expression, positive or negative in its cosmic polarity. in the universal interpretation, we learn to look upon the positive life as the creative, and the negative life as the receptive. every individual is just what he is by the natural law of his own cosmic relationship, and he will remain just what he is at any point of progress, and express himself in his own way until he grows into a deeper state of comprehension, and knows the method of changing his cosmic positions. when we get the truth of the universal energy in our minds and realize that this energy is really positive and negative, and that both these reactions have their corresponding material manifestation in ourselves, then we are ready to go farther into the study of the registration of this energy, and from this into the higher psychology of function. there is nothing in this atmospheric environment of ours that is not endowed with intelligence. everyone who postulates a _first cause_ begins with the universal _intelligence_. this _intelligence_ is given to us as a beginning, it remains with us to the end. the acceptation of the truth of the unity of intelligence is the first step toward investigation. all finite life is an embodiment of universal substance and intelligence in some form--this is truth. physical scientists everywhere are showing us the infinitesimal lives working continually and in ways that are wonderful. psychologists are opening daily the hidden chambers of this physical and metaphysical world, and giving us high lights on what we once thought impossible of investigation; they are showing us astounding examples of conscious ideation in every order of life, and are aiding us to draw interesting conclusions. there is a great universal intelligence and a remote finite expression of this intelligence; the lesser is always dependent upon the greater and our human life becomes the microcosmic pattern of the macrocosmic world. with this premise firmly under our feet let us go on to the question of the intelligence of the physical tissues of the human body, and our relation to disease, health, poverty and opulence. every cell of our physical body is intelligent and capable of being instructed into finer grades of expression; this is the process by which we refine matter into spirit and by which we pass from a lower to a higher expression of wholeness and build our cells into a grade of consciousness so high that we produce objective expressions of such perfect response that we become the higher revelation of the cosmic consciousness. the higher we go in intellectualizing ourselves, the closer we draw to the cosmic consciousness, and the more familiar we become with its laws. the highest life is the one that includes the most. it is a natural law that we have at all times unconscious thought relation to the universal abundance and our thoughts are the conscious agents of construction and destruction, and we work through them as soon as we are old enough to think and reason. disease and poverty would never manifest for us if we did not some time recognize it in our atmospheric environment with our thoughts, and work it out on the objective plane through the law of atomic attraction. whenever doubt, worry, anger and negative thoughts take possession of our field of consciousness (the everyday mind), we are creating these things for ourselves in the cosmic currents and they cannot refuse to register in form either in our body or in our environment. it can be seen that if, year after year, we separate ourselves from the positive creative cosmic intelligence, and put up our images of personal limitation, the creative intelligence is joined to the weaker energy and cannot refuse to work out the conditions with which they are related. the human mind is the agent which must be taught to stand as sentinel and force our minds to people our currents with thoughts which make only for the perfect health, perpetual opulence and divine realizations. the minor intelligence of our cells would just as readily work out the universal law of perfection if we only knew enough to intelligently direct them and not overpower them by our negative personal directions. when we have once established in our minds the truth of this universal cosmic intelligence, in which there is no sickness, poverty or death, unless we recognize it, it does not take us long to work out better conditions for ourselves in the physical body and environment. no matter what our lack may be, we can know that it is because we have set our human thought to work under a personal negative law instead of a positive creative universal one. we have only to stop, face about, and begin to direct our thoughts intelligently, and in union with the higher plan, and solicit co-operation with all the finite forces around us. if we find ourselves diseased, with pain, and physical mal-positions we can speak to our physical cells as we would to a friend and connect them with the higher creative currents and help them to get into a higher form of building; they are ready at any moment to answer, "the sheep know their shepherd's voice and obey it." they must begin to build in the new likeness and in the very moment that we consciously direct them; this is the law, there is no appeal from it. everything comes to us from the infinite atomic ethers through the law of divine attraction, and when we have built and rebuilt our cells into an intelligent relationship with absolute wholeness, we become a magnet, so highly sensitized and so magnetic and carefully polarized, that we are an attracting center for everything in our atmospheric environment, and our physical body and our environment become the expression of our thought world. when we know enough to send our thoughts into the universal energy with only the recognitions of positive creations, such as health, wealth, love, divine realization and actualization, then our material world must be made the immediate reproduction of these things. the sick world passes along with all its thoughts poised in the destructive recognition; we meet them upon this pathway, and knowing the law of the higher constructive power of building we must meet their questioning with some answer that will restore them to the state of consciousness they have lost. the very first truth that every sick life must know is that thoughts are _things_, and make themselves felt in form, and that in the great atmospheric energy, like attracts like. our consciousness becomes for us the wireless stations which attract and register the universal messages, and each station attracts its own from whatever plane or state of consciousness it vibrates. the invisible world is _something_ and its substance is _something_, and that we do not understand it and have improper correspondence, is no proof that the power of correct correspondence does not exist. there are great occult laws of relationship always awaiting our deepening comprehension: "_till one appears who bears, all nature silent is, silent for evermore, beating its waves of force on an unanswering shore till one appears who bears_." the cosmic atmospheric energy in which we live, move and have our being is always ready to become manifested in form, and may become manifested by anyone who knows how to create a form for himself. it has been manifested in many varied forms by the children of men, but it has not yet entered into the hearts of men to conceive of the glories that are yet awaiting them when one appears who really does hear, and knows the full truths of cosmic power. this is the secret of cosmic therapeutics, and those who know this secret really do become the twentieth century mystics and are rulers over the manifestations of finite and infinite energy. when we come to this point of demonstration we are the world's greatest physicians. with this knowledge we may conquer not only disease and poverty and despair, but we may overcome the last enemy--death, and live and have being in a world of universal power. there are grades and grades of intelligence both in the human and the absolute mind: all grades of cosmic currents are ever ready waiting to respond to those who touch them; there is nothing mysterious or unattainable about them; they are the natural results of natural laws, and we come into union with them through growth and recognition. we first come to a consciousness of our universal, atmospheric relationship with all that is, then we learn to understand the response that comes to us from every person and everything; then we reach out in perfect faith with our deep of need, calling to the deep of supply, and the doors of a thousand hidden chambers of nature open bringing divine revelation into our souls. absent treatments the sick world has always had its scientific and religious investigation, and in addition to this new-found power of atmospheric creation there is another great truth which the sick world must know in order to make its own union, and this is the truth of the power to manipulate these cosmic currents not only of our own creation, but for anyone who touches our life; we cannot only think and realize and actualize for ourselves, but we can reach out into the formless energy and create, direct and control these great universal currents so that they will have the power to rebuild another's life. we have a great psychological cosmic truth known as "absent treatments" but which is really cosmic therapeutics in our new understanding; we use cosmic currents to heal ourselves and we manipulate them for another thereby eliminating time and distance; we get behind the things created and understand and deal with the energy which creates. the sick world has tried all the things of the physical world through the medium of objective lines of transference--drugs, electricity, diet, baths and what not, each one a part of the cosmic consciousness, but it finds that the laws still exist, and as long as they remain related with the laws of disease in flesh it will manifest for them in flesh. absent treatments is the power to connect with and direct the cosmic atmospheric currents which make for positive expression of health, and when we have laid hold of this power, we can change at will any vibration of negativeness with which we find ourself or others expressing, and we do it through the power of thought, feeling and revelation. these higher laws of relationship are only mysterious and strange to those who do not understand; the hottentot stands in wonder and amazement at the x-ray machine, but the skilled operator turns on its power in spite of this ignorance and disbelief, and it works whether he believes it or not. just so the skillful operator in cosmic therapeutics can generate, control and direct the power of the cosmic consciousness which he understands, and it brings its results whether the skeptical mind of man accepts or denies. this power to manipulate nature's finer forces is only hidden from those who do not seek to find; in the moment a soul knows that it is possible to connect through thought and to manipulate through consciousness, it is born into union with the energy that creates and can say, "let there be light" over its own world. we can stand in the great cosmic energy and with tools a thousand times finer than the finest x-ray or vibratory machine known to science and project our thought power into regions of an ether so fine, so vibrant, so vital that the very touch of them upon our being fills us with the great pulsing energy of the universe. in just the instant we connect with these currents our old vibratory rates of living are changed and we have passed from death into life; we are healed to stay healed through conscious union with the all-health currents of the universe. there are many clumsy operators in any field of science, and there are plenty of them in this new world of cosmic therapeutics, but investigation and application give unfoldment and skill, and we will soon pass into such a complete understanding of these higher laws of being that it will be a novelty to find a life unacquainted with them, and everyone will be using cosmic therapeutics in some degree. the fundamental law of absent treatments is the truth of the oneness of life and intelligence, and the ready response of the absolute intelligence to the finite mind. each life has its own direct line of thought connection with this universal energy, and no matter where it stands in its comprehension, it can be taught to understand this simple truth of thought relationship. we can think ourselves to the outermost rim of things and there connect with the diverse differentiated energy which can only make for disease and lack, or we can think ourselves to the very center of the cosmic heart and find there the "peace that passeth understanding." we find this center and attract its energy through human thoughts of power, love, hope, faith, joy, purity, patience and consciousness of infinite union, and our every action carries with it into the external world a power that manifests for us as health in our body and wealth in our environment. when we know that all life is universal atmospheric intelligence and that it responds to us from any point we touch it, we need then only to throw ourselves into conscious thought union with everything which we desire; forgetting all the weak negative things we do not desire, and this conscious connection leads us into relation with the energy that must eventually manifest in form. if we want to heal ourselves we stand with our whole life open to the positive creative cosmic currents and let them beat through us and around us; we will then and there to pass our whole being into union with every creative universal force, and to feel the power of its energy sweeping through us; we hold our life to this higher understanding until the great flood tide of the universe comes sweeping along our veins and through our being, washing away in its resistless force all the lesser moorings which hold us to the thoughts of disease or decay; we have then the life more abundantly than is promised and we feel that we have entered into that place that is prepared for the people of god; we are healed to stay healed for the very life blood of the universe is in our veins. if we then want to give an absent treatment, and send to another this energy that creates we just take the thoughts of our cosmic atmospheric relationship in our mind, and reaching out first in perfect thinking we build for them a perfect thought body, and place it in the cosmic energy; holding fast to this image we pass with it into the deeper states of being where thinking ceases, and knowing is the law, and we bid them stand forth with us in conscious union whole, complete, the god-child, one with the all-health of the universe. when we can do this, our work is finished, and we can let them go, secure in the consciousness that they are one with us in strength and power. when we have really understood this higher law of recognition we look with all-seeing eyes into the face of cosmic intelligence, and we see the infinite supply answering our finite lack, we abide in a position of knowing which passes us externally into health of body and environment. how to give absent treatment concentrate your mind on the one whom you wish to heal, then build a mental vision of him; see him in consciousness just as whole and perfect as if he was really radiant with health. make believe that he is standing before you a perfect picture of physical perfection, work on your vision until you can produce and hold the most beautiful idealized picture of human beauty of flesh, form and character. never forget to illumine your perfect thought-patient with a divine light of spiritual radiance. this perfected "make-believe-self" must be the risen god within them and it must come forth resplendent in a new glory. when you can hold a perfect vision of him and make yourself blind to anything but this image of beauty, health and power--then place him in the divine life and leave him. god, the great universal intelligence, will make the balance good. he will finish what you have begun. there is concerted action between the atomic mind of infinite substance and the mind of man, "and as the father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, so has he given the son the power to quicken whom he will." this vision held daily and intensified by belief and conscious command will be accepted by the spiritual consciousness of the patient and whether his surface mind accept it or not, his deeper consciousness gives the stimulation to his body and this registers it in form and he is healed to stay healed through the silent laws of mind. "and he stood between the living and the dead and the plague was stayed" because by his own transcendent consciousness he set in operation the higher laws of intelligence in substance. it is written that in the psychological institute in france, professor prisbram, in one of his psychological experiments, asked a patient to think powerfully and concentratedly upon a make-believe vision of a bottle--he did, with his hand on a sensitive plate in a developing fluid, and slowly the picture of the bottle registered upon the plate. just as this make-believe bottle registered upon the plate, just so does the make-believe perfect flesh-body register in the cells of the old, and under the law of renewal of tissue, it is developed into form. this vision is the true self that is latent in every life. "the first man, adam, was of the earth, earthy, the last man, adam, was a living soul." "there is a body terrestrial and there is a body celestial, and the glory of the terrestrial is one and the glory of the celestial is another." and with the vision of the celestial body, in which the consciousness vibrates as a living soul, our treatment is accomplished and we have made our mind a conscious part of the mighty plan and we can ask whatsoever we will and it will be granted. how often shall we treat an absent patient? three times daily and between these times forget them utterly, give them to the cosmic forces, the absolute. holding on to a patient in thought often delays his recovery. when you have done your spiritual visualizing powerfully and perfectly, stop! the universal law will do the rest; never give an anxious thought to them, nor recognize death; vibrate life and more and more life to them and just as the current runs along the wire just so this silent cosmic intelligence will flow from you to them, and health will come, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, back along their veins. dynamic thought or the law of vibrant energy by william walker atkinson _author of "thought force;" "law of the new thought;" "nuggets of the new thought;" "memory culture" and other scientific and occult works. associate editor of "suggestion," - ; editor of "new thought," - ; co-editor of "the segnogram," ._ "i am attacked by two very opposite sects--the scientists and the know-nothings; both laugh at me, calling me the 'frogs' dancing master,' but i know that i have discovered one of the greatest forces in nature." --galvini. the segnogram publishing company los angeles, california copyright by the segnogram publishing company notice.--this book is protected by copyright, and simultaneous initial publication in the united states of america, canada, great britain, france, germany, russia, and other countries. all rights reserved. a foreword this is a queer book. it is a marriage of the ancient occult teachings to the latest and most advanced conceptions of modern science--an odd union, for the parties thereto are of entirely different temperaments. the marriage might be expected to result disastrously, were it not for the fact that a connecting link has been found that gives them a bond of common interest. no two people may truly love each other, unless they also love something in common--the more they love in common, the greater will be their love for each other. and, let us trust that this will prove true in this marriage of occultism and science, celebrated in this book. the occultists usually get at the "facts," first, but they manage to evolve such outrageous theories to explain the facts, that the world will have none of their wares, and turns to science for something "reasonable." science, proceeding along different lines, at first denies these "facts" of the occultists, not finding them accounted for by any of her existing theories; but, later on, when the "facts" have been finally thrust under her eyes, after repeated attempts and failures, she says, "oh, yes, of course!" and proceeds to evolve a new theory, welding it with other scientific hypotheses, and after attaching a new label thereto, she proudly exhibits the thing as "the latest discovery of modern science"--and smiles indulgently, or indignantly, when the theory of the old occultists is mentioned, saying, "quite a different thing, we assure you!" and yet, in all justice, be it said, science usually proceeds to find much better "proofs" to fit the "facts" of occultism, than did the occultists themselves. the occultist "sees things," but is a poor hand at "proofs"--while the scientist is great on "proofs," but so often, and so long, fails to see many things patent to the occultist who is able to "look within" himself, but who is then unable to positively and scientifically "prove" the facts. this is easily explained--the occultist's information comes from "within," while the scientist's comes from without--and "proofs" belong to the "without" side of mentation. and this is why the occultists so often make such a bungle regarding "proofs" and the scientist fails to see "facts" that are staring the occultist in the face. the whole history of occultism and science proves the above. take the phenomenon called "mesmerism" for instance--it was an old story with the occultists, who had been for years aware of it, theoretically and practically. mesmer brought it into general prominence, and science laughed at it and at mesmer's "fluid" theory, and called him a charlatan and imposter. years afterwards, braid, an english surgeon, discovered that some of the facts of "mesmerism" were true, and he announced his discovery in a scientific manner, and lo! his views were accepted, and the thing was called "hypnotism," poor old mesmer being forgotten, because of his theory. then, after a number of years, certain other aspects of the phenomenon were discovered, and scientifically relabelled "suggestion," and the re-naming was supposed to "explain" the entire subject, the learned ones now saying, "pooh, 'tis nothing but 'suggestion,'" as if _that_ explained the matter. but so far, they have only accepted certain phases of this form of dynamic thought--for that is what it is, and there are many other phases of which they do not dream. and the same is true of the occult teaching that there is "life in everything--the universe is alive." for years, this idea was hooted at, and we had learned scientific discourses upon "dead matter," "inert substance," etc. but, only within the past decade--yes, within the last five years, has science discovered that there was life in everything, and that even in the atom of mineral and chemical substance, there was to be found evidence of mind. and science is beginning to plume itself on its "recent discovery," and to account for it by a new theory, which is "quite a different thing, we assure you," from the old occult theory. and the same will prove true in the case of the occult teaching of an universal mind, or cosmic mind. science and philosophy have long laughed at this, but even now their foremost investigators have come to the borders of a new country, and are gasping in amazement at what they see beyond its borders--they are now talking about "life and mind in the ether"--and before long they will discard their paradoxical, absurd, hypothetical ether, and say, "we are bathed in an ocean of mind"--only they will insist that this "ocean of mind" is, somehow, a "secretion of matter"--something oozing out from the pores of matter, perhaps. but science is doing valuable work in the direction of investigation and experiment, and in this way is _proving the principal occult teachings_ in a way impossible to the occultists themselves. so, you see that both occultism and science have their own work to do--and neither can do the work of the other. just now science is coquetting with the question of "thought transmission," etc., at which she has for so long sneered and laughed. by and by she will accept the facts, and then proceed to prove them by a series of careful and conclusive experiments, and will then announce the result, solemnly, as "a triumph of science." and so, in this book you will find a marriage of the old occult teachings and modern scientific researches and investigation. and the two are bound together with that bond forged by the writer of the book--heated in the oven of his mind, and hammered into shape with his "untrained" thought--a crude, clumsy thing, but it serves its purpose--a thing called "_the theory of dynamic thought_." and so, this is what this theory is--a "_tie that binds_." how you will like it depends upon yourself. for himself, the writer does not hesitate to say that he is pleased with his handiwork, rude, and clumsy though it may be. he believes that he has made a thing that will stand wear and tear, and that though it be not beautifully finished, it "will serve," and "be useful." and that is the main thing, after all. and, then, perhaps, some may see beauty in the very crudeness of the thing--may see that it bears the loving mark of the hammer that beat it into shape--may recognize that over it has passed the caress of the hand that made it--and in that seeing there may come the recognition of a beauty that is beyond "prettiness." william walker atkinson. _los angeles, california, february , ._ contents chapter. page. i. "in the beginning" ii. things as they are iii. the universality of life and mind iv. life and mind among the atoms v. the story of substance vi. substance and beyond vii. the paradox of science viii. the forces of nature ix. radiant energy x. the law of attraction xi. the theory of dynamic thought xii. the law of vibrant energy xiii. the riddle of the sphinx xiv. the mystery of mind xv. the finer forces of the mind xvi. thought in action "a fire-mist and a planet, a crystal and a cell, a jelly-fish and a saurian, and caves where the cave-men dwell; then a sense of law and beauty, and a face turned from the clod,-- some call it evolution, and others call it god." "like tides on a crescent sea-beach, when the moon is new and thin, into our hearts high yearnings come welling and surging in,-- come from the mystic ocean whose rim no foot has trod,-- some of us call it longing, and others call it god." --w.h. carruth. dynamic thought chapter i "in the beginning" this book will deal with life. it holds that life is universal--that it is inherent in, and manifests (in different degrees) in every part, particle, phase, aspect, condition, place, or relationship, in the world of things that we call the universe. it holds that life manifests in two aspects or forms, which are generally found by us in connection and co-operation with each other, but which are both, probably, an expression of some one thing higher than either. these two aspects or forms, which together go to make up or produce that which we know as "life," are known as ( ) substance or matter; and ( ) mind. in this book the term "substance" is used in preference to "matter," owing to the fact that the term "matter" has become closely identified with certain ideas of the materialistic school of thought, and has generally been regarded by the public in the light of "dead matter," whereas this book holds that all substance is alive. the term "mind" is used in the sense of "mind, _as we know it_," rather than as "mind, _as it is_"--or, as "the cosmic mind." in some places the term "mind-principle" is used to convey the idea of "a portion of the great principle of mind, of which that which we call 'mind' is but a small and but partially expressed portion." these terms are explained and illustrated as we proceed. the aspect of "energy or force" is not treated as a separate aspect or form of life, in this book, for the reason that it is regarded as merely a manifestation of mind, as will appear as we proceed. we have much to say regarding motion, but the writer has tried to explain and prove that, at the last, all motion results from mental action, and that all force and energy is vital-mental force and energy. this book is not intended to run along metaphysical or theological lines--its field is different. and so, while it recognizes the importance of these branches of human thought, still, it finds that its own particular field is sufficient to engross its entire attention, for the moment, and, consequently the aforesaid subjects shall not be touched upon except incidentally, in connection with the subject matter of the book. this being the case, there will be no discussion of the "origin of life"--the question of "creation"--the problems of theology and metaphysics--the riddle of the "why and wherefore" of life and the universe. the writer has his own opinions upon these questions, but feels that this is not the place in which to air the same. for the purposes of the book, he prefers to leave every reader to his own favorite views and conceptions regarding these great subjects, feeling that the views regarding life, mind, motion and substance, that are advanced in this book, may be accepted by any intelligent reader, without prejudice to his, or her, accepted religious or philosophical views. the writer sees that this something called "life" exists--he finds it in evidence everywhere. and he sees it always in its aspects of substance and mind. and he feels justified in regarding "life" as always existing in, and manifesting in these aspects--always in conjunction--at least, life "as we know it." and he finds certain apparent laws of life in operation in the universe to which all life, in all of its aspects, is apparently amenable. and he feels justified in considering these laws constant, and invariable, and unchangeable so long as the universe, as it now is, exists. and with the above views in mind, this book will proceed to a consideration of its subject, without attempting to peer behind the veil separating the universe from its causer--life from its source. but in justice to reader, subject and writer, the latter has thought it well to state that he _does_ recognize, not only the veil, but that-which-is-behind-the-veil. to proceed without this statement would be unfair and misleading. the writer wishes to be understood positively upon this point, even though the declaration may bring forth the derisive jeer of those who feel that they "have outgrown" this conception; or else the calm, superior, pitying smile of those who feel that the universe is its own cause and effect. by "universe," the writer means "the whole body of things" (webster). his declaration means that he believes in "that-which-is-above-things." the writer prefers not to attempt to "define" that which he calls "the infinite." the word "infinite" means "without limit in time, space, power, capacity, knowledge or excellence" (webster). and to "define" is to "limit"; "mark the limits of"; "mark the end of," etc. the term "define," as applied to "the infinite," is ridiculous--an absurd paradox. the writer echoes spinoza's statement: "to define god is to deny him." and so there shall be no attempt at definition or limitation. but the human mind, in considering the subject, is bound by its own laws to think of "the infinite" as real, and actually being and existent, if it thinks of it at all. and if it thinks of it as "infinite," it _must_, by its own laws, think of it as causeless; eternal; absolute; everywhere-present; all-powerful; all-wise. the human mind is _compelled_ to so consider the infinite, if it thinks of it at all. but even in so thinking of it as "being" these things, it is doing something like "defining" or "limiting" it, for the infinite must not only "be" those things, but it must "be" so much more, that "those things" are but as a grain of dust on the desert as compared to the real "being" of the infinite. for the "things" mentioned are but "finite" or "defined" things--things possessed by the finite things--and, at the best can be but symbols of the attributes or qualities of the infinite; even the words "attributes" or "qualities" being an absurdity as applied to the infinite. this view, also, _must_ be reported by the human reason, if it thinks about the matter at all. the final report of the human reason regarding this matter is that it is insoluble and unthinkable to that reason, in its final analysis. this because the human reason is compelled to use terms, concepts, etc., derived from its experience with finite things, and therefore has no tools, measurements, or other appliances with which to "think" of the infinite. all that it can do is to report that it finds that it has limits itself, and that it finds beyond those limits that which it cannot define, but which it is justified in considering as infinite, and superior to all finite conceptions, such as time, space, causation and thought. (the idea of thought being finite, equally with time, space and causation, is not common, by the writer is compelled to place it in that category, because it is clearly under the laws of time, space, and cause and effect, and must be considered as "finite." the "knowledge" possessed by the infinite must be something far transcending that which we know as the result of "mental operations," or "thinking.") certain fundamental truths seem to have been impressed upon the human intellect, and the reason is compelled to report in accordance therewith. but an analysis of these fundamental truths is futile, and the attempt only leads one into wild speculations. the only advantage that comes from the attempt is the strengthening of mental muscle of those who are able to stand the strain of the exercise; and the fact that by such attempt we are made aware that we do not know, and cannot know, by reasons of the nature of the intellect, and are thus prevented from harboring absurd and childish theories about the unknowable. to know that we do _not_ know, and _cannot_ know, is the next best thing to actually knowing. the writer does not wish to be understood, that the limits of the human reason are unalterably fixed. on the contrary, he believes that additional fundamental portions of truth are super-imposed upon the mind of the race from time to time. and he believes, yes, _knows_, that there are regions of the mind that give reports higher than those conveyed through the intellect. and he believes that there are phases of knowledge in store for man that will raise him as much higher than his present position, as that present position is superior to that of the earthworm. and he believes that there are beings in existence to-day, on planes of life as yet undreamed of by the average man, who far transcend man in power, wisdom and nature. he believes that man is merely just entering into his kingdom, and does not realize the grandeur of that which is his divine inheritance. it will be as well to mention here that the classification of mind with the aspects of life, in conjunction with substance, and motion, does not mean that the ego or man is a material thing. the writer believes that the ego is a transcendent being, partaking in some wonderful way of the essence of the infinite--that it is a soul--immortal. he believes that as paul says, "we are all children of god, but what we shall be does not as yet appear." these matters shall not be discussed in this book, but the writer wishes to make himself clear, in order to prevent misunderstanding. again, in this respect, he must "fly in the face of materialism." but, although the writer expresses his belief in the existence of the infinite, and bases his philosophy upon that basis, he does not wish to insist upon the identification of his conception with that of any other particular conception of the source of life. nor does he insist upon names, or terms, in connection with the conception. he has used the term, "the infinite," because it seems to be broader than any other of which he could think, but he uses it merely as a name for the un-nameable. so, if the reader prefers, he, or she, may use the terms: "god"; "deity"; "first cause"; "principle"; "unknowable"; "infinite and eternal energy"; "the thing-in-itself"; "the absolute"; or any of the other countless terms used by man in his attempt to name the un-nameable--to describe the un-describable--to define the un-definable. and all may retain their ideas, or lack of ideas, regarding the relation of the infinite to their own particular religious views, or lack of views. the philosophy of this book need not disturb a man's religious belief--nor does it insist upon the man holding any special religious belief. those are matters entirely for the exercise of the man's own reason and conscience. and they may retain their own pet philosophy regarding the origin, purposes or plan of the production and existence of the universe--this book shall not meddle with their metaphysics or philosophy. what is herein offered may be assimilated with the fundamental ideas of nearly every form of religious or philosophical belief, it being in the nature of an addition rather than a subtraction, or division. its philosophy is constructive rather than destructive. chapter ii things as they are in our last chapter we considered the source-of-all-things, which we called the infinite. in this chapter we shall consider the all-things itself, which men call the universe. note that the word universe is derived from the latin word "unus," meaning "one," and "_versor_," meaning "to turn," the combined word meaning, literally, "one that turns, or moves." the latin words indicate a close meaning, namely, one thing in motion, turning its several aspects, and assuming many changes of appearance. the writer does not intend touching upon theories of the origin of the universe, nor of its purpose, or of any design in its production or management, nor of its possible or probable end. these questions do not belong to our subject, and then again, as was said in the last chapter, speculation regarding it is devoid of results, and leads one to quicksands and bogs of mental reasoning, from which it is difficult to extract oneself. the answer to the riddle of the universe rests with the infinite. but it is different with the case of the manifested universe that is evidenced by our senses. science is a different thing from metaphysics, and its process and mode of work are along different lines. and, much knowledge of things may be obtained from a consideration of it--remembering always, that its knowledge is confined to things, and not to that-which-is-back-of-things. and, so let us consider the universe of things. material science has held that the universe is composed of two principles, ( ) matter; ( ) energy or force. some hold that these two principles really are aspects of the same thing, and that there is really but one principle, one aspect of which is shape, form, etc., and called matter; the other a quality manifesting in motion, which quality is called force. others, the most radical, hold that there is nothing but matter, and that force and energy is but a "quality," or "power," inherent in matter. others hold that force is the "real thing" and matter but a form of force. all branches hold to the idea that matter and energy are always found together, and can not be thought of separately. matter and force are held to be eternal, and infinite, it following that there can be no addition to, or subtraction from either; all apparent loss and gain, creation and destruction being but change of form or mode. god is declared unnecessary, and the universe is held to operate according to certain laws of matter or force (either or both) which are unchangeable and immutable--eternal and always valid. mind and thought are held to be products of properties of matter or force (one or both), secreted, evolved, or produced in the brain. the soul is relegated to the waste heap, and discarded as useless in the new philosophy. _moleschott_ said, "thought is a motion of matter"; and _holbach_, that "matter enjoys the power of thinking." "natural laws" are held to be sufficient for the explanation of all phenomena, although ignoring the fact that the reason has never before formed the conception of a "law," without thinking it necessary to think of a "law-maker," or a power to enforce and administer the law. however, the philosophers hold that it is no more difficult to think of such a law than to try to form an idea of space or eternity, both of which are unthinkable to the human reason, but both of which are admitted as self-evident facts. but notwithstanding this somewhat crude and "raw" reasoning, material science has accomplished a wonderful work in the world, and has brought to light facts of inestimable value to man in mastering the material world, and in forming correct ideas of the solution of material difficulties. the facts of material science enables the world to cheerfully overlook its theories. and even the theories are rapidly undergoing a change, and, as we have stated, some of the most advanced scientists are rapidly reaching the position of the occultists and mystics, bringing with them a mass of facts to back them up, to exhibit to the occultists who dealt with principles rather than with details, or material facts, so far as fundamental theories were concerned. each is boring his way through the mountain tunnel of the unknown, and both will meet in the centre, their lines meeting each other without a variation. but the occultists will call the tunnel-centre mind, and the scientists will call it matter, but both will be speaking of the same thing. and the causer of the mountain will probably know that they both are right. but, we are speaking of the new school of advanced material science now--not of the old conservative "all is matter" people, who have been left behind. the new school speaks of substance now, instead of matter, and ascribes to "substance" the properties of matter, energy, and something that they call sensation, by which they mean mind in a crude form, and from which they say mind and "soul" evolved. this new school of scientists are very different from their predecessors--they are less "hide-bound," and far from being so "cock-sure." they are seeing matter melting into energy, and giving signs of sensation, and they are beginning to feel that, after all, there must be a thing-in-itself, that is the real basis of, or "real thing" in substance. there is heard very little among them about "dead matter"; "blind force"; or of the "mechanical theory" of life and the universe. instead of it being a big machine, operated under mechanical laws, with life as the steam, the universe is beginning to be regarded as somehow filled with life, and science is finding new examples of life in unexpected quarters, and the "dead matter" area is being narrowed. men who have followed the advances made by recent science are holding their breaths in awe and earnest expectation--and those who are pushing the inquiries and investigations to the furthest extent are showing by their eager faces and trembling hands that they feel that they are very close to the border line separating the old materialism from a new science that will give thought and philosophy a new impetus and a new platform. such men are feeling that they are seeing the old matter melting away into something else--the old theories are falling apart under the light of new discoveries--and these men feel that they are penetrating a new and hitherto unexplored region of the unknown. may success be theirs, for they are now on the right road to truth. in the following chapters we shall see frequent references to "science"--and when we use the word we shall know it means this new school of scientists, rather than the older school that is now being superceded. there is no conflict between true occultism and true science, notwithstanding their directly opposite theories and ideals--they are merely looking at the truth from different viewpoints--at different sides of the same shield. a better day is coming, when they shall work together, instead of in opposition. there should be no partisanship in the search for truth. things have worked this way: occultism would enunciate a theory or principle--but would not attempt to prove it by material facts, for it had not gathered the facts, having found the principle _within_ the mind, rather than without. then, after laughing at the occult theory or principle, science would search diligently for material facts to prove an opposite theory, and in so doing would unearth new facts that would support the occultists contention. then science would discard its old theory (that is, the younger men would--the old ones, never) and proceed to proclaim a new theory or principle, under a new name, and backed up with a mass of facts and experiments that would create a new school with many enthusiastic followers. the old claim of the occultists would then be forgotten or else go unrecognized under its old name; or disguised by the fantastic and _bizarre_ coverings which some so-called occultists had draped around the original truth. but, so long as truth is being uncovered, what matters it who does the work, or by what name he calls his school. the movement is ever forward, and upward--what matter the banner under which the armies move? in this book the writer will advance a very different theory of the universe of all-things from that of modern science, although he feels that his theory may easily be reconciled with the most advanced views of that school. in the first place, as he has stated in the first chapter, he does not hold that the universe, as we know it, is self-sufficient, but he recognizes a something back of all phenomena and appearances, which something he calls "the infinite." and he differs very materially from the views of those who claim that mind is but a property, or quality, or something proceeding from matter or force, or matter-force, or force-matter--according to the views of the respective schools. he takes an entirely different and opposite position. he holds that all that we call matter (or substance) and mind (_as we know it_) are but aspects of something infinitely higher, and which may be called the "cosmic mind." he holds that _what we call_ "mind" is but a partial manifestation of the cosmic mind. and that substance or matter is but a cruder or grosser form of that which we call mind, and which has been manifested in order to give mind a body through which to operate. but this view he merely states in passing, for he makes no attempt to demonstrate or prove the same, his idea being that it forms a different part of the general subject than the phase of "dynamic thought," to the consideration of which this book is devoted. he also differs very materially from the materialistic school in his conception of force or energy. instead of regarding force as a distinct principle, and as something of which mind is but a form, he walks boldly out into the arena of scientific thought, and throwing down his gauntlet, proclaims his theory that "there is no such thing as force apart from life and mind"--"all force and energy is the product of life and mind--all force, energy and motion result from vital-mental action--all force, energy and motion is vital-mental force, energy and motion."--"the mind abiding in and permeating all substance, not only has the power to think, but also the power to act, and to manifest force and energy, which are its inherent and essential properties." he also takes the position that mind is in and about and around everything. and that "everything is alive and thinking." and that there is no such things as "dead-matter," or "blind-force," but that all substance, even to the tiniest particle, is permeated with life and mind, and that all force and motion is caused and manifested by mind. he holds that all forms of force, energy and motion, from the attraction of the particles of matter, and their movements in response thereto, up to the attraction of gravitation, and the response of the worlds, and suns, and stars, and planets, thereto--are forms of mental energy and force, and action. and that from the tiniest atom, or particle, to the greatest sun--all obey this great action of mind--this great force of mind--this great energy of mind--this great power of mind. and upon this rock--this rock of truth, he believes it to be--he takes his stand, and announces his belief, and bids all-comers take notice of what he believes to be a germ-thought that will grow, develop, and increase so that it will eventually permeate all scientific thought as the years roll along. he calls this theory "the theory of dynamic thought." chapter iii the universality of life and mind the writer has deemed it advisable to preface his consideration of "mind" in itself, as well as of substance and motion, with two chapters, the purpose of which will be to demonstrate that mind, in some form or degree, is to be found in connection with all things--and that everything has life--and that mind is an accompaniment of all life. to many the term "mind" means only the "thinking quality" of man, or perhaps of the lower animals; and "life" the property only of such organic creatures. for that reason it has been deemed advisable to point out that life and mind are found even in the lowest forms of substance--even in the inorganic world. in this chapter and from now on, the writer shall use the term "_the_ mind," etc., to indicate the particular mental principle of the creature or thing--the bit of mind that is segregated from the rest, and which each person thinks of as "mine," just as he thinks of "my" body, as distinguished from the universal supply of substance. the term "mind" will be used in its universal sense. and, the writer intends to use elmer gates' term, "_mentation_," in the sense of "effort; action; or effect; in or of, the mind"--in short, "mental process." the word is useful and when one has learned to use it, he will prefer it to the more complicated terms. remember, then, please--"mentation" means "mental process." mentation includes that which we call "thought," as well as some more elementary forms of mental process that we are not in the habit of dignifying by the term, thought, which latter we usually reserve for mental process of a higher order. so, then, "mind" is the something of which one's particular mind is composed; "the mind" is that something possessed by one, by and through which he "thinks"; "mentation" is mental process; and "thought" is a advanced kind of mentation. at least, the said words will be so employed in this book, from now on. in this chapter, you are asked to consider the fact that life is universal--that everything is alive. and, that mind and mentation is an attribute of life, and that, consequently, everything has mind, and is able to express a degree of mentation. forms of life, as we know them, are always seen as possessing two aspects, _viz._, ( ) body (substance); and ( ) mentation (mind). the two aspects are always found in combination. there may be living creatures who occupy bodies of so fine a form of substance as to be invisible to the human senses--but their bodies would be "substance" just as much as is the "body" of the granite rock. and, in order to "think," these beings would need to have a material something corresponding to the brain, though it be finer in quality than the rarest gas, vapor, of electric wave. no body, without mentation; no mentation without a body. this last is the invariable law of the world of things. and naught but the infinite--that-which-is-above-things--can be exempt from that law. in order to grasp the idea of the universality of mind, let us go back to the elementary forms of things, and, step by step, see how mentation manifests itself in every point on the scale from mineral to man--using bodies ranging from the hardest rock to that finest form of known substance--the brain of man. as mind advances in the scale of evolution it creates its own working instrument--the body (including the brain) and shapes, and moulds it to admit of the fullest possible expression of mentation possible at that stage. mind is the moulder--body (and brain) that which is moulded. and inclination, desire, and will, are the motive powers leading to gradual unfoldment, the impelling cause being the craving for satisfaction. we shall make our journey backward--and ignoring beings higher in the scale, we shall start with man. leaving out of the consideration, for the moment, the fact of the existence of the "ego," or "spirit" of man, which is higher than body or mind--and considering "the mind of man," rather than the man himself--we have our starting point on the downward journey of investigation. we need not devote much attention to the consideration of the mind of man, at this stage, although we shall have much to do with it, later on. but we may undertake a brief consideration of the descending degrees of mentation as manifested by man, as we pass down the scale in the human family, considering in turn, the newtons, shakespeares, emersons, edisons, and their brothers in intellect, in the field of mathematics, literature, music, art, invention, science, statesmanship, business, skilled workmanship, etc., respectively. from these high levels we pass down, gradually, through the strata of men of but a slightly lower degree of intellect--down through the strata of the "average man"--down through the strata of the ignorant man--down through the strata of the lowest type of our own race and time--down through the strata of the barbarian, then on to the savage, then on to the digger indian, the bushman. what a difference from highest to lowest--a being from another world would doubt that they were all of the same family. then we pass rapidly through the various strata of the lower animal kingdom--from the comparatively high degree of mentation of the horse, the dog, the elephant, etc., down through the descending scale of the mammals, the degree of mentation becoming less marked at each step of the journey. then on through the bird kingdom. then through the world of reptiles. then through the family of fishes. then through the millions of forms of insect life, including those wonderful creatures, the ant and the bee. then on through the shell-fish family. then on through the community of sponges, polyps, and other low forms of life. then on to the vast empire of the microscopic creatures, whose name is legion. then on to the plant life, the highest of which have "sensitive cells" that resemble brains and nerves--descending by stages to the lower plant life. then still lower to the world of bacteria, microbes, and infusoria--the groups of cells with a common life--the monera--the single cell. the mind that has followed us in this descent of life, from the highest form to the cell-like "thing" merely "existing" in the slime at the bottom of the ocean, has acquired a sense of awe and sublimity not dreamed of by "the man on the street." the degrees of mentation in the lower animal kingdom are well known to all of us, therefore, we need not devote much time to their consideration at this time. although the degree of mentation in some of the lowly forms of animal life, are scarcely above that of the plant life (in fact, are inferior to that of the highest plants), still we have accustomed ourselves to the use of the word "mind" in connection with even the lowest animals, while we hesitate to apply the word to the plants. it is true that some of us do not like to think of the lower animals "reasoning," so we use the word "instinct" to denote the degree of mentation of the lower animal. the writer does not object to the word; in fact, he shall use it for the sake of distinguishing between the several mental states. but, remember, "instinct" is but a term used to denote a lesser form of "reason"--and the "instinct" of the horse or dog is a fine thing when we consider the "reason" of the bushman or digger indian. however, we shall not quarrel about words. both "reason" and "instinct" mean degrees or forms of "mentation," the word we are using. the lower forms of animal life exhibit mentation along the lines of sex-action; feeling and taste. then by degrees come smell, hearing and sight. and then something very like "reasoning" in the case of the dog, elephant, horse, etc. mentation everywhere in the animal kingdom, in some degree. no doubt about life and mentation, there. but what about mentation and life in the plant life? all of you admit that there is "life" there--but about mentation, well, let us see! some of you draw the line at the word "mind" in connection with plants, although you freely admit the existence of "life" there. well, remember our axiom--"no life without mentation." let us try to apply it. a moment's reflection will give you instances of mentation among the plants. science has called it "appetency," rather than admit "mind," the word "appetency" being defined as "an instinctive tendency on the part of low forms of organic life to perform certain acts necessary for their well-being--such as to select and absorb such particles of matter as serve to support and nourish them." well, that looks like a degree of mentation, doesn't it? many young animals evidence little or nothing more than "appetency" in suckling. we shall adopt the word "appetency" to designate the mentation in plant-life. remember this, please. anyone who has raised trees or plants has noticed the instinctive efforts of the plant to reach the water and sunlight. potatoes in dark cellars have been known to send forth shoots twenty feet in length in order to reach an opening in the wall. plants have been known to bend over during the night and dip their leaves in a pot of water several inches away. the tendrils of climbing plants seek for the stake or support, and find it, too, although it has been changed daily. the tendril will retwine itself, after it has been untwisted and bent in another direction. the tips of the roots of the tree are said to show a sensitiveness almost akin to that of the limb of an animal, and evidently possess something akin to nerve matter. duhamel placed some beans in a cylinder of moist earth. when they began to sprout, he turned the cylinder around quarter way of its circumference; then a little more the next day; and so on, a little each day, until the cylinder had described a complete revolution--had been turned completely around. then the beans were taken from the earth, and lo! the roots and sprouts formed a complete spiral. with every turn of the cylinder the roots and sprouts had changed their position and direction--the roots striving to grow "downward," and the sprouts striving to grow "upward"--until the spiral had formed. akin to this is the boy's trick of uprooting a sprouting seed, and replanting it upside down, in which case the sprouts begin to turn a semicircle until it is able to grow straight up to the surface of the earth, while the roots describe a semicircle until they can grow downward once more. and so on, story after story of "appetency" or mentation in plants might be told, until we reach the insect-catching species, when even the most conservative observer is forced to admit that: "well, it does _almost_ seem like thinking, doesn't it?" any lover of plants, flowers or trees, and who has been able to study them at first hand, does not need much argument to prove that plant-life exhibits traces of mentation, some of it pretty far advanced, too. some lovers of plants go so far as to claim that one must "love" plants before they will succeed in growing them, and that the plants feel and respond to the feeling. but the writer does not insist upon this, but merely mentions it in passing. before leaving the subject of mentation in plants, the writer is tempted to steal a little more space and tell you that plants do more than receive sensations of light and moisture. they exhibit rudimentary taste as well. haeckel relates an interesting story of an insect-catching plant. he states that while it will bend its leaves when any solid body (excepting a raindrop) touches its surface, still it will secrete its acrid digestive fluid only when that object happens to be nitrogenous (meat or cheese). the plant is able to distinguish its meat diet (its food being insectivorous), and while it will supply its gastric juice for meat and cheese, as well as for the insect, it will not do so for other solids to which it is indifferent. he also mentions the fact that roots of trees and plants are able to taste the different qualities of soil, and will avoid poor soil and plunge into the richer parts of the earth. the sexual organism and life of plants also affords a great field for study to the student hunting for evidences of "life" and "mentation" in that kingdom. the motion or circulation of the sap in trees and plants was formerly considered to be due to capillary attraction and purely "mechanical laws," but recent scientific experiments have shown it to be a vital action--an evidence of life and mentation--the experiments having proven that if the cell-substance of the plant was poisoned or paralyzed, the circulation of sap immediately ceased, although the "mechanical principles" had not been interfered with in the least. and now on to the mineral kingdom. "what," you may cry, "mind and mentation in the mineral and chemical world--surely not?" yes, even in these low planes may be found traces of mental action. there is life everywhere--even there. and where there is life there is mind. away back among the chemical principles, and the minerals we may go in our search for life and mind--they cannot escape us--even there! chapter iv life and mind among the atoms to the majority of persons the title of this chapter would seem an absurdity. not to speak of inorganic "mind," the idea of "life" in the inorganic world would seem a ridiculous paradox to the "man on the street" who thinks of substance as "dead," lifeless and inert. and, to tell the truth, even science has held this view until a comparatively recent period, laughing to scorn the old occult teaching that the universe is alive, and capable of thinking. but the recent discoveries of modern science has changed all this, and we no longer hear science speaking of "dead matter" or "blind force"--it recognizes that these terms are meaningless, and that the dreams of the old occultists are coming true. science confronts a live and thinking universe. she is dazzled by the sight, and would shade her eyes, fearing to see that which she feels must present itself to her vision when her eyes become accustomed to the sight. but a few daring minds among the scientific investigators are dreaming wonderful dreams to-day, and they tell us in broken tones of the wonderful visions that are passing before their sight. they dare not tell it all, for they fear the ridicule of their fellows. their visions are of life--universal life. in its investigations of the material, science has penetrated so far into the recesses of things that its most advanced thinkers and investigators now find themselves standing in the presence of the immaterial. science to-day is proclaiming the new doctrine--that is the same as the "old" doctrine of the occultists--the doctrine of "life everywhere"--life even in the hardest rock! before entering into our consideration of the evidence of mentation in the inorganic world, let us accustom ourselves to the idea of "something like life" being found there. it will be better for us to approach the subject by easy stages. where there is life there must be mind--so let us first look for evidences of life. the "man on the street" would require something more tangible than scientific explanations of "sensation," "attraction," etc. what can we offer him as an illustration? let us see! suppose we call the attention of "the man" to the fact that metals get tired after considerable work without periods of rest. science calls this the "fatigue of elasticity." when the metals are given rest, they recuperate and regain their former elasticity and health. "the man" may remember that his razor acts this way occasionally--and if he talks the matter over with his barber, his suspicions will be verified. then, if he consults a musician friend, he will be informed that tuning-forks also become tired, and lose their vibrating quality, until they are given a rest. then his machinist friend will tell him that machinery in factories must be given a rest, occasionally, else it will begin to disintegrate and "die." machinery will go on a strike for a rest, if it is overworked. then metals contract disease. science informs us that zinc and tin have been infected, and the infection has spread from sheet to sheet crumbling the metal into powder--the spread of the infection resembling the spread of a plague among animals or plant-life. science has experimented with copper and iron, and has found that these metals may be poisoned with chemicals, and will remain in a weakened condition until antidotes are administered. window-glass workers declare that there is such a thing as "glass-disease," that will ruin fine stained glass windows unless the infected panes are removed. the "glass-disease" starts with one pane, and spreads gradually to the entire window, and from there to other windows. metallurgists have found that when metallic ores are put under certain forms of pressure, they seem to lose strength, and become weak until the pressure is removed. do these things mean anything to the "man of the street?" another step in the consideration of life in the inorganic world, is the realization of the fact that, after all, there is but the very finest line separating the higher forms of mineral "life," from the lower forms of vegetable life, or the life of those "things" which we may call either plants or animals. the "life-line" is being pushed further back every day, by scientific investigation, and the "living" thing of today was the "inanimate" thing of yesterday. we hear much talk in the newspapers about some scientist, or another, "discovering life," or "creating life," in some "inanimate substance." bless your hearts, you who are alarmed by these reports--no one can "create" life in anything, for it already exists there. the "discovery" is simply the realization of this fact. science, by means of the microscope, has brought to light forms of "living things," resembling in appearance the fine dust of inorganic minerals. these low forms of life exhibit but the simplest vital processes, the same very closely resembling chemical processes, although just a shade higher in the scale. living creatures have been found which could be dried and laid aside like dust for several years, and then revived by being immersed in water, when they would resume their vital process as if they had been awakened from a sleep. forms of life, called "baccilli" have been discovered that can pass through degrees of heat and cold that can be expressed only by vague symbols or figures, the heat and cold being so intense that the unscientific mind cannot imagine it. in appearance the "diatoms" resemble the chemical crystals. these "diatoms" are minute one-celled living "things," having a hard but thin siliceous covering or shell, of extreme delicacy. they are what are known as "microscopic" creatures--that is, visible only through the microscope. some of them are so small that it would take a thousand or more to cover the head of a pin. but, remember this--the microscope reveals them as "living creatures" performing vital functions. they are found in the deep waters of the ocean. to the naked eye they appear like fine sand or "dirt," but under the most powerful microscope, they are seen to comprise many species and varieties, exhibiting many peculiar shapes and forms--in fact, they have been called "living geometrical forms," their shapes and appearances almost exactly resembling those of the chemical and mineral crystals. science informs us that these and similar microscopic creatures, number thousands of families or species,--and it is thought that the varieties of microscopic creatures outnumber the varieties of creatures visible to the unaided sight. and, remember, that there is probably a still greater world of "sub-microscopic" creatures, that is a world invisible even when the most powerful microscope is used. who knows what wonders are to be found there--what forms of creatures live, and move and have their being there. in passing by the subject of the resemblance between the outward forms of living things and the crystals, it is interesting to note how the crystals of frost and ice resemble the forms of leaves, branches, flowers, foliage, etc.--the pane of glass covered with these frosty forms, resembles a garden. the disk of saltpeter, under the effect of polarized light, very closely resembles the form of the orchid. recent scientific experiments have shown that certain metallic salts, when subjected to a galvanic current, group themselves around one of the poles of the battery, and assume a mushroom-like shape and appearance. at first, they seem to be transparent, but gradually they assume color, the top becoming a bright red, with the under-side showing a pale rose color, the stem being of a pale straw color. the discoverers of these peculiar forms, called them by the german equivalent for "inorganic mushrooms," but even this term seems scarcely worthy of them, for they even show a trace of something like organs. under the microscope they are seen to have fine canals or vein-like channels running through their stems, from top to base. and through these "veins" the "thing" absorbed fresh material and actually "grew" like low forms of fungus-life. were these things merely minerals or chemical-substances, or were they low forms of organic life? the lines between the inorganic and the organic are being wiped out rapidly. the supreme power that _caused_ life to be, caused it to all, and did not divide its manifestations into dead-things and live-things, but breathed into all the breath of life. and the more clearly we see the actual evidence of this, the greater does that supreme power seem to us. a very low form of living creatures called the monera, is held by science to be the one of the strands of the connecting link between the organic and inorganic worlds. the monera are the lowest and simplest form (at least so far known) of organic life. they may be said to be "organic" creatures _without organs_--being but little more than simple cells--tiny globules of plasm, surrounded by a thin membrane--their sole vital function being the absorption of nourishment through the pores of their covering (just as a piece of chalk would absorb water) and the consequent conversion of the nourishment into material for growth, the whole process resembling chemical action. the monera reproduce their kind simply by cleavage or separation of the substance of the mother cell into two, and so on, being little more than the "growth" of crystals. the monera are everywhere recognized, without question, as "living creatures," but they exhibit merely a trace more of life than do certain forms of crystals. the difficulty in considering crystals as "living things" is partially due to the outward form and substance, so different from the form and substance of the higher "living things." but we have seen that the diatoms took on shapes of crystals, and that the outer shell or covering was similar to silicia, a mineral, the inner substance being but a tiny speck of plasm, similar to that of the substance of a plant cell. and then we may look to the tiny bit of chalk dust which was once the skeleton-form of a living creature. the same is true of coral. in the very low forms of life, the skeleton, or form, is the thing most apparent, the plasm of "living substance" being still smaller, and less apparent. and yet, the skeleton, or shell, was formed by the vital processes of the creature, and was a part of its "body," just as is the skeleton or bony structure of the higher animals. and, in the same sense it is "living substance." and, remember, that there is but little difference between these "bodies" of the low forms of life, and the bodies of crystals. and the chemical constituents of its plasmic inner body is but slightly different from that of the crystals. and its nature and vital process are by a shade higher in the scale than those of the crystals. you may ask why we have said so much of crystals. the reason is just this--science has begun to think of crystals as semi-living things, and its most advanced investigators and thinkers go further and assert that "the crystals are alive--crystallization is an evidence of life process." crystals arrange themselves in well-known and well-defined shapes, direction and order of formation being observed implicitly. each crystal follows the laws and habits of its kind, just as do plants and animals. its lines of crystallization are mathematically perfect, and according to the laws of its being. not only this, but some substances have a range of six or seven different forms of crystal-forms possible to them. in some cases a chemical element assumes one form of crystallization when it manifests as one mineral, and a second form when it manifests in another form--in each case however, it manifests along well-known and recognized courses of action, movement, and shapes. crystals may be "killed" by a strong electrical discharge--that is, they are so affected that they disintegrate, their atoms separating to form new combinations, just as is the case with the "bodies" of higher forms of life. some scientists have gone so far as to claim that they had discovered something akin to rudimentary sex-action in certain crystals, resembling the sex-process of the lowest plant-life. but this has not, as yet, been positively established, although it seems probable and reasonable. a recent writer in one of the magazines has said, "crystallization, as we are to learn now, is not a mere mechanical grouping of dead atoms. it is a birth." this may seem mere "scientific poetry" until the process of crystallization is carefully studied, when it will be seen to give evidence, not only of something like vital and mental action, but also something very much like reproductive functioning of the lower forms of "life." there is an "assimilation" of material to build up the crystal in the first place, just as an animal assimilates matter to build up its shell--or a tree to form its bark. the "form" of the crystal is truly its "body," and behind and _in that body there is "something at work" that is not the body, but which is forming it_. and, later on, that crystal increases in size, and then begins to separate into two, throwing off a smaller crystal, identical in form with the parent crystal. this manner of reproduction is almost identical with the process of reproduction in the lower forms of "life," which consist merely of a like separation of the parent form into two, and the throwing off of the offspring. the principal difference between the growth of crystals and of the monera, is that the crystals grow by absorbing fresh matter and attaching it to their outer surface, while the monera grow by absorbing fresh material and growing outwardly, from within. but this may be accounted for by the difference in the density of their bodies, the crystal being very solid, while the monera is like a thin jelly. if the crystal had a soft interior, it could grow like the monera or diatom, _but then it would be a diatom_. the process of crystallization is accountable only by the theory that in the crystal there exists something like life and mentation. there is something more than mere "mechanical motion," or blind chance at work here. does not the process of crystallization look like rudimentary purposive action? it may be said that it is movement and action in accordance with some established "law of nature"--granted, but is not that also true of the physical processes and growth of higher forms of life? is the forming of the crystal-form to be considered as a "mechanical effect," and the forming of the "shell" of the monera to be considered a "mental and vital action?" if so, wherefore? the point is that crystals act as if they are "alive," and capable of assimilation, growth, and reproduction, in a manner and degree differing but very slightly from corresponding functioning of the lower forms of "life." verily the crystals are "alive"--and if alive they must have at least a trace of "mind." does it not appear that they exhibit something very like both? quoting from a recent writer, let us notice that: "recent investigations in the new department of science, which has been termed 'plasmology,' show in crystals phenomena which are absolutely analogous to vital phenomena--so much so that photographs of certain forms produced in the changes of crystals appear to be almost exact duplicates of those in the various lower forms of microbes. the question has been raised as to whether the microbe is no more alive than the crystal, or the latter equally endowed with life as is the former." and now another step, in our search for life. remember, that the hardest rocks are composed of crystals of certain kinds. and, if the higher crystals have life, then it is only fair to suppose that the lower and cruder forms are likewise endowed, even if in a still lower degree. and if all crystals are endowed with life, then the most solid rocks, being composed of aggregations of crystals must be masses of inorganic life--and consequently, of inorganic mind. a crystal, according to webster, is "the regular form, bounded by plane surfaces, which a substance tends to assume in solidifying, through the inherent powers of cohesive attraction." that definition of webster tells the whole story, and we see that a "crystal" is merely a "regular form" of a "substance," which the substance "tends to assume in solidifying"--that is in re-assuming a solid form after being in a liquid or melted state, and that is just what all the rocks of the earth did when they emerged from the melted state in which they existed in the early days of the world's history. and this "tendency" that caused them to solidify, and assume certain crystal forms, and which must have existed potentially through the melted state--what of that, what is this "tendency" or force. the definition answers: "_the inherent powers of cohesive attraction_." so, here is "cohesive attraction," that we shall consider fully in forthcoming chapters of this book. "inherent," too, the definition says. what is "inherent?" let us see, webster defines "inherent" as "permanently existing." so this power of cohesive attraction "permanently existed" in the substance or else in connection with it. let us take another look at cohesive attraction. cohesive attraction is that form of universal attraction that causes the molecules of a body to draw together--that "invisible power of" the molecule, by which it draws another molecule toward itself, and itself toward the other, the manifestation of which power by several molecules tends to draw each of them together. (we shall learn of these particles of substance called molecules before long.) it is a primal cause of motion, this mutual attraction, and drawing-power. now is it reasonable to suppose that this wonderful "power" is a mere blind-force? is it not more reasonable to think of it as a form of vital-action--life-action? "dead" things could not manifest this force and action. and if this cohesive attraction is an evidence of life, then all substance must have life manifesting through it. not only the rocks, but the soil and earth and dirt, for they are but crumbled rock. and, when we thus consider substance, as being the "body" through which life is manifesting, we must not lose sight of the molecules and atoms, in our consideration of the mass. a bit of rock; crystal; or dirt; is but an aggregation of countless molecules, grouped together in certain crystallized shapes and forms, each having characteristics of its own. these molecules cling together, in accordance with their mutual attractive powers. and each of these molecules is composed of a number of atoms, which cling together in accordance with chemical affinity, or chemism--but which is but another name for attraction, or cohesion--and which form a little family, called a molecule. and these atoms are composed of corpuscles. we will waive the consideration of the corpuscle, for the moment, but even if we consider it, we only carry the subject back a step farther. what we wish to say, could be said even if there were ten further divisions of substance--or a million, for that matter. the point we wish you to consider now, is that we must separate the mass into its constituents--its molecules, atoms, and even corpuscles--in our search for the life in the mineral and chemical world. if there is life in the mass, there must be life in the molecule, atom, or corpuscle. now, do we find it there? certainly, for the tiniest atom manifests its attractive power, and not only does it draw other atoms to itself by virtue thereof, but it even goes a step further, and shows a "preference"--a degree of "liking" in its mutual relations with other atoms. we shall see, in future chapters, that there is "desire," "love," "marriage," and "divorce" among the chemical atoms. we shall consider the flirtations, and love-affairs of certain atoms. we shall see how an atom will leave another, and fly to a new charmer. we shall have many evidences of _the atom's power to receive sensations, and to respond to the same_. nothing "dead" about this, is there? the atom is "very much alive." the attraction; affinity; and motions, of the atom, give a certain evidence of something "very much like life," as we see it in higher forms. in the atom exists all the life that causes crystallization. and in the atom lies that which causes force and motion to manifest. verily, the atom lives and moves and has its being. and, so our journey is ended--we have traced life to its last stages of manifestations--and we have found it there, and at each step of the journey. but, stop, we have not completed our journey--we have but begun it. "why," some of us may cry, "how can we go back of the atom, or electron?" the answer is "into the ether"! yes, back of the atom and the corpuscle, is said by science to lie that wonderful, paradoxical something they call the universal ether--that something that science has considered the womb of matter and force--something that is different from anything ever known or dreamed of by man,--that something which science has labored so diligently to build up, and which it has used as an "explanation" for so much phenomena, but regarding which, of very recent date, there has begun to grow a distrust and a suspicion, owing to the discovery of radiant matter, and things that followed in its train. but, notwithstanding these shadowy suspicions, science still asserts in belief in the constancy and integrity of the ether, and it behooves us to investigate that wonderful region in which it dwells, in order to see whether life and mind are also to be found there. we think that, in the words of the street, we shall find that they are "very much there." and, so in later chapters of this book, we shall consider the etherial region very fully. but before doing so, we had better give substance and motion, in all their forms, a careful consideration, for a correct understanding of them is vitally necessary for an intelligent conception of the ideas underlying the philosophy to be herein set forth. * * * * * now, pray do not leave this chapter with the belief that the writer has said that the particles of inorganic substance are endowed with conscious reasoning powers. nothing of the kind has been said--nothing of the kind is meant. the life and mind evidenced in the particles are but the faintest glimmerings. there is no sign of "consciousness" or "reasoning"--the mind exhibited is less than that of the plant, yes, less than even that of the cell of the plant. the life is evidenced by power to move, and the mind is evidenced by the ability to receive impressions and to respond to the same by evidencing force and movement. there is no evidence of "consciousness" or "understanding" in these mental processes. consciousness is not an essential attribute of life or mind-action. in fact, but a small part of even the mentation of man is performed in the field of consciousness. nearly all of his bodily functions are beneath the field of consciousness--one does not consciously regulate the beating of his heart; the circulation of his blood; the digestion and assimilation of his food; the tearing-down and building-up work of the cells; the work of the organs, etc., etc. yes, these processes are all mental processes, and far from mere "mechanical movements," or chemical processes, as some imagine. let the spark of life leave the body, and the processes stop, although all the chemicals are still there, and the "mechanical movements" might go on unhindered. the particles of substance have enough life and mind to enable them to move, receive and respond to impressions, and to exert force in accordance with the law of attraction--but there it stops. the crystals show signs of something like taking nourishment, but the real taking of food may be said to commence with the monera. not until very high degrees of life and mind are attained, do "creatures" begin to exhibit consciousness, and that which is called "understanding" is still higher in the scale, and not until man is reached does the faculty of turning the mental searchlight _inward_ manifest itself. these matters are mentioned here merely to prevent misunderstanding and misapprehension. but still, do not forget--the particles of substance receive impressions and respond thereto--they _act_ and exert force and energy--they manifest life and mentation. chapter v the story of substance as we stated in a former chapter, there are two aspects of all-things, _viz._, ( ) substance; ( ) mind. in this and the following two chapters we shall consider the first one, substance, which science calls "matter." perhaps it would be as well to begin by asking ourselves the question: "what is substance?" the answer seems to be: "anything that takes up room; the body aspect of things; matter occupying space, etc." some writers have spoken of substance as "something tangible--that can be felt," but this definition will not do, for there are forms of substance too fine to be felt. and so, perhaps the definition "the body of things," is as good a definition as any, taken in connection with the thought that it "takes up room." science divides substance (which it calls "matter") into four general classes, _viz._: ( ) _solid matter_, which is substance, the parts of which closely adhere and resist impression, such as stone, wood, flesh, etc., the degrees of solidity varying greatly, and sometimes shading into the next class, which is called: ( ) _liquid matter_, which may be described as substance, the parts of which have a free motion among themselves, and easily yield to impression, such as water, molasses, etc., the degree of fluidity ranging from some liquids that flow very slowly, such as hot pitch, up to others that flow very freely, such as water, wine, etc., the property of fluidity being also shared by the next higher class, which is called: ( ) _aeriform matter_, which is substance in the form of "elastic fluid," such as air, gas, vapor, etc.; and ( ) _radiant matter_, which is of recent recognition, and which is an ultra-gaseous form of substance, utterly unlike anything ever before known, consisting of the tiniest particles of "corpuscles" of substance finer and more subtle than the rarest form of atomic substance known to science. the three classes are well represented by ( ) earth (solid); ( ) water (liquid); ( ) air (aeriform); ( ) the corpuscles or electrons, or particles of electrified substance, first noticed in connection with the x rays, radium, etc. but it must be remembered that these four classes of substance are not fixed or permanent--on the contrary they are changeable either under pressure, when subjected to heat, or under the influence of electricity, etc. in fact the word "condition" is more applicable than the term "class." the condition or class of a particle of substance may be changed into another class or condition by the application of the agencies above named. the same substance may exist in two or three classes, under different circumstances. solids may be changed into liquids, and liquids into gases, and _vice versa_. metals may be melted, then changed into gas, according to the degree of heat applied. liquids may be changed into vapor by the application of heat, or into solids by the withdrawal of heat. for an example we may turn to water, which is a solid in the condition of ice; a liquid in the condition of water; and steam in the condition of vapor. quicksilver is a metal which is in a liquid condition in our ordinary temperature, but which becomes a solid when subjected to a very low degree of temperature, and may be transformed into a gas, under a high degree of heat. air is a vapor in our ordinary temperature, but has been transformed into "liquid air" under tremendous pressure, which produced a very low degree of temperature, and, theoretically, it may be transformed into a solid under a sufficiently low degree of temperature, although so far, science has not been able to produce a degree of cold sufficient to "freeze" the liquid air. it is all a matter of "freeze," "melt," and "evaporate," in all forms of substance--and any substance, at least theoretically, is capable of being subjected to any of the three conditions just named, and being manifested in the respective conditions, of solid, liquid, and aeriform. this may actually be accomplished with the majority of substances at this time, although in some instances we are not able to produce a sufficiently high temperature to "melt and evaporate" certain solid substances, on the one hand, or a sufficiently low degree of temperature to "liquify" or "freeze solid" certain vapors. but the intense heat of the centre of the earth is able to melt rocks, and show them as liquid lava flowing from volcanoes, and science teaches that the solid substance of the earth, and other planets, suns, etc., existed in the shape of a vapor at one time, and would again take on that condition in case of a collision with another great body, which convert motion into intense heat that would first melt, and then vaporize every solid particle of which the earth is composed. if the sun's heat were completely to die out, the cold would be so intense that the air around the earth, and all the gases and vapors, would be frozen to solids. in physics the term "gas" is generally applied to a substance that is aeriform in our ordinary temperature, but which may be liquefied in a low temperature; the term "vapor" being generally applied to the aeriform condition of substances that are solid or liquid in our ordinary temperatures, but which may be "evaporated" by heat, and thus transformed into an aeriform condition, resuming their original form upon cooling. these terms, however, are technical, and practically there is no difference between a gas and a vapor. in the above statements regarding the possibility of the transformation of each of the several forms of substance, into other forms, the reference has been applied only to the three better known forms, _i.e._, solid, liquid and aeriform. the fourth form or state of substance, known as radiant matter, is of too recent discovery to admit of its properties being accurately observed. the best and latest opinion of science, however, is that it constitutes what may be called "primal matter"--that is substance from which all other forms, states, kinds and varieties of substance arise--the "stuff" from which they are manufactured. science seems to be discarding the ether theory of the origin of matter, in favor of this "primal matter." physical science divides substance into masses, molecules, and atoms--that is, the old physical science did, but the later investigators now see that even the atom may be sub-divided. but the old terms may as well be used, at least for the time being. let us consider these divisions. _a "mass"_ is a quantity of substance considered as a whole--but which is composed of a collection or combination of parts (molecules.) a lump of coal; a piece of iron; a portion of meat, even a drop of water, is a mass. the only requisite for a mass, is that it contains two or more parts or molecules. therefore a mass is a collection or combination of two or more molecules, considered as a whole. _a "molecule"_ is the _physical_ unit of substance, or, in other words, the smallest part of any kind of substance that can exist by itself and still remain that particular "kind" of substance. (but not the smallest chemical part--the latter is called an atom, and atoms combine to form a molecule.) the molecule exists as a unit, and cannot be split or separated by physical means, although it may be separated into atoms by chemical means. in order that we may form a clear idea of the molecule, let us take a very small mass of matter--a drop of water, for instance. this drop of water is a mass composed of a great number of molecules. it may be divided, and sub-divided, into smaller and still smaller parts. this division may be carried on until it reaches a point where our sight and instruments are unable to make a further sub-division. but, theoretically, the work may be carried on still further, until at last a limit is reached where we are unable to divide the water into any smaller parts, without separating its chemical constituents from each other, in which latter case there would be no water at all, its chemical constituents (or atoms) having separated and now appearing as two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen, separated and apart and no longer forming a molecule of water. well, this smallest possible part of water (or any other form of substance) is a molecule. remember the molecule is the smallest part of that kind of substance that can be produced by division and sub-division, without destroying the "kind" of the substance. it is the smallest part of any kind of substance that can exist by itself, and maintain its "kind." in order that you may grasp the minuteness of the molecule, we may mention that science claims that no molecule, even the largest, is of sufficient magnitude to be seen under even the strongest microscope. it has been calculated that if a drop of water as large as a pea were magnified to the size of the earth, the molecules would then appear no larger than the original drop. the space between the molecules is believed to be considerably larger than the molecules themselves. the figures that are necessary to use in connection with molecular substance are likely to stagger the imagination. besides speaking of the molecules of inorganic substance, it may be interesting to note that a spider's thread is so fine that a piece of it large enough to circle the earth would weigh only half a pound. and yet each thread is composed of six thousand filaments. and each of these minute filaments may be divided into tiny bits, and each bit will still be a mass of substance containing thousands of molecules and their constituent chemical atoms. there are living, microscopic creatures, so small that five millions of them might be crowded into a space the size of a pin head. and yet each of them have organs. and in these organs fluids circulate. try to figure out the size of the molecules of the fluids circulating in these tiny organs, not to speak of the chemical atoms. when you handle a coin, an infinitesimal portion of it is worn off--can you figure the size of the molecules composing that part? when a rose throws off its perfume, it emanates tiny particles of itself--can you measure or weigh the molecules composing that odor? the human mind is compelled to realize its finiteness when it considers these things--but we have only just begun to consider the smallness of things. _an "atom"_ is the _chemical_ unit of substance--that is, the smallest chemical part that can enter into combination. it has been considered indivisible--that is, incapable of further sub-division. that is, it has been so considered, until very recently, but the latest discoveries have exploded this idea, and have shown the atom is composed of certain other things, as we shall see a little later on. still we may use the atom as a very good unit of measurement, for it still represents the unit of _chemical_ substance, just as the molecule is the unit of _physical_ substance. in order that you may understand the difference between molecules and atoms--physical units, and chemical units, let us give you a few examples. take a molecule of water--the _physical_ unit, you remember. when it is chemically separated or analyzed, it is found to contain two atoms of hydrogen, and one atom of oxygen--both chemical units, remember--which when united and combined, form water, but which when separated are simple atoms of certain chemical gases. the proportion in water is always the same, two of hydrogen and one of oxygen--this is the only partnership that will form water. the molecule of table salt contains one atom of sodium and one of chlorine. the molecule of air contains five chemical gases, of which nitrogen and oxygen are the principal ones, the proportion being about three parts of nitrogen to one of oxygen. some molecules are far more complex, for instance the molecule of sugar is composed of _forty-five_ chemical atoms, and sulphuric acid of seven. an atom is estimated at one- , , th of an inch in diameter. but this is not all. the old theory of the finality, and ultimateness of the atom has been shattered by the recent discoveries of science. the atom of hydrogen was formerly considered to be the refinement of substance--the ultimate atom--the smallest and finest atom possible or known--the last thing that could be imagined about substance. some even went so far as to declare that the atom of hydrogen was the ultimate element, that is the element out of which all other atoms were made--the mother of atoms--the origin of substance. it was supposed that all other atoms of matter were composed of a varying number of hydrogen atoms, which themselves were "vortex-rings in the ether"--and that analysis could go no further. science rested on its oars, and pronounced the work of a century completed. but alas! no sooner was this position reached, than the discovery of radiant matter and the formulation of the "corpuscle theory" brought down the whole theoretical structure, and science was compelled to take up the hunt again, and to probe further into the inner recesses of things for the ultimate thing. but, nevertheless, atoms still exist, although their finality is no longer urged. the facts remain, although the theory has fallen. let us see about this latest theory--the corpuscle or electron theory. the discovery of radiant matter, and the investigation of the late discovery of radium, has led to the further discovery that each atom, instead of being a "thing-in-itself" is a little mass containing numerous other "things" called "corpuscles" (or "electrons," because electrified). the theory is this, briefly: that each atom is a minute mass of substance containing a number of "electrified particles," which are known as electrons, in constant motion and vibration, revolving around each other, as do the planets, suns, and moons of the universe--in fact each chemical atom is like unto a universe in itself. the simplest atom--that which was supposed to be the "ultimate atom"--the atom of hydrogen--is supposed to contain within its tiny self no less than , minute corpuscles, which because electrified are called "electron," revolving in fixed and regular orbits within the containing globe of the atom. the more complex forms of atoms are supposed to contain a far greater number of electrons, the authorities estimating those in an atom of oxygen at , ; those in an atom of gold, , ; and those in an atom of radium, , . these figures are of course mere "scientific guesses" but when compared with the similar "guess" regarding the size of the atom, they give a startling illustration of the size of the newly discovered corpuscle or electron. another authority, for an illustration, asks us to consider a great globe about feet in diameter--that is, of course, feet through its centre. let the globe represent the atom. then imagine , minute "specks," each the size of a pin-point, composed of substance, and each containing, as in a capsule, an atom of electricity. each "speck" is revolving around each other in a regular orbit, in that great " feet through" globe, and keeping well away from one another. that will give you an idea of the relative size of the electrons and atoms, and the room that the former have to move about in--good many feet between each, you will notice. lots of room, and plenty to spare. try to figure out the size of an electron. many readers of the magazines have been confused as to the relation between the corpuscles and the electrons (or ions, as some have called the latter.) the matter is very simple. they are both the same. the corpuscle is the tiny particle of matter, which because it is electrified and has thus become the "unit of electricity," is called an "electron." from the viewpoint of substance we call the tiny particle a "corpuscle"--from the viewpoint of electricity, we call it an "electron." these electrons are the tiny particles that pour forth from the pole in the crookes' tube, and constitute what are known as "x rays," "cathode rays," "becquerel rays," etc. they also are the particles that are thrown off and emitted by radium, and similar substances. they exist in the atom, as explained, but also are found "free" and independent, and in the last condition or state are thrown off in the aforesaid "rays," and by radium, etc. so far the corpuscles are known only as charged with electricity, and the electron only as a tiny charge of electricity with which the corpuscle is charged. but science dreams of corpuscles of substance other than electrons, in which case the old occult teachings of "light dust" and "heat dust," etc., will be verified. the electron contains a powerful charge of electricity, as much in fact as an atom, , to , times its size will carry. but science is wondering how these highly charged particles manage to hold together in the atom, so rigidly coherent as to appear indestructible. we think that we may get a hint at the matter a little later on in this book. science, or at least _some_ scientists, are wondering whether the "whirl" or vibration of the corpuscle might not produce that which we call "electricity," and whether, when this motion is intensified, waves of electricity will not be emitted. the writer fully agrees with this idea, and finds that it fits closely his own theories regarding substance and motion. but the reader is cautioned against falling into the error of many recent popular writers on the subject, some of whom have used terms calculated to convey the idea that the corpuscle (electron) is electricity _itself_, rather than tiny particles of substance called corpuscles, charged with the unitary charge of electricity, and therefore called "electrons." but for that matter, electricity is only known to us as associated with some form of substance, and not as "a thing-in-itself." we shall see the reason for this as we proceed with this book. these corpuscles are destined to play a most important part in the theories of science from now on. they already have overturned several very carefully and laboriously erected theoretical structures--and many more will follow, among the many important ones evidently doomed to the dust-heap being the "vortex-ring" atomic theory, and other theories built upon the etheric origin of matter, and other theories concerning the ether, even to the extent of breaking down the theory of the ether itself, which theory had almost come to be considered a law. we shall further consider the corpuscles, and their qualities, characteristics, etc., in the next chapter, for they have an important bearing upon the theories advanced in the course of the study of this book. chapter vi substance and beyond science has ascribed to substance certain characteristic qualities which it calls "properties." it divides these properties into two classes, _viz._: ( ) molecular properties (sometimes called physical properties); and ( ) atomic properties (sometimes called chemical properties). _molecular properties_ are those which may be manifested by substance without disturbing the molecules, and consequently without affecting the "kind" of substance. _atomic properties_ are those which concern the atoms when free from molecular combination, and which consequently cannot be manifested without changing the "kind" of substance. science, before long, is likely to add a third class of properties, namely, "_corpuscular properties_," relating to the corpuscles or particles of radiant matter, but, so far, it has not had the opportunity to sufficiently observe these qualities, except in a general way. there are certain general properties that seem possessed by both mass, molecules, and atoms--and probably by corpuscles. these _general properties_ are as follows: _shape_: that property whereby substance "takes up room." this property manifests in three directions, called dimensions of space, namely, length, breadth, and thickness. _weight_: that property whereby substance responds to gravity. weight is simply the measure of the attraction. _impenetrability_: that property whereby two bodies of substance are prevented from occupying the same space at the same time. a nail driven into a piece of wood, simply pushes aside the molecules, and occupies the space between them. substance is never actually "invaded" or its actual territory occupied by other substance. _indestructibility_: that property whereby substance is prevented from being destroyed or annihilated. although the forms of substance may be changed, or transformed into other forms, still, substance _in itself_ is not destroyed, and cannot be under the existing laws of the universe. _mobility_: that property whereby substance responds to imparted motion. we shall notice this property in our consideration of motion. in addition to the motion of the mass, and the movements of molecules and atoms in response to its attraction, there is another form of motion constantly going on, without reference to the attraction or impressed motion of the mass. the molecules of all bodies are always in a state of rapid motion, called vibration. in solids this vibration is short, being restrained by the close cohesive position of the molecules. but in liquids, the molecules being further separated, the vibration is far more rapid, and they move around and slide over each other with comparatively little resistance. in gases and vapors the molecules have a splendid field for motion, and consequently vibrate in wide fields and orbits, and dash around with the greatest velocity. the atoms also are believed to vibrate rapidly, in accordance with their own laws of vibration. and the corpuscles are believed to far excel the last two mentioned particles in intensity, rapidity and complexity of their vibrations, as we shall see a little later on in the book. all substance is in constant motion and vibration. there is no rest in substance. _inertia_: that property whereby substance may not move unless in response to imparted motion; nor terminate its motion, when it is once imparted, except in response to some other manifestation of impressed force. science holds that this "impressed force" or "imparted motion" must come from without, but the writer holds that force may also be "expressed" from "within," as may be seen by reference to subsequent chapters of this book. _attraction_: that property whereby particles or bodies of substance ( ) draw other particles or bodies toward themselves; or ( ) move toward other particles or bodies; or ( ) are mutually drawn together. this property manifests in four forms, generally referred to as separate and distinct from each other, but which the writer believes to be but forms of the same attractive power, and which he believes to be a mental process, at the last analysis (a revolutionary claim, which will be supported by argument in later chapters of the book). these three forms of attraction are known as ( ) gravitation; ( ) cohesion; ( ) adhesion; and ( ) chemical affinity, or chemism. we are invited to consider them briefly, at this point, further investigation being reserved for our chapters on motion, and dynamic thought. _gravitation_: this term is usually applied to the attraction between masses of substance, such as the sun, the earth, and masses of substance on or about the earth's surface. however, newton, who discovered the facts of gravitation, states the law, as: "_every particle of matter in the universe, attracts every other particle_," _etc._ _cohesion_: this term is used to indicate the attraction between molecules, by which they are combined into masses or bodies. cohesion causes the molecules to unite and cling together, thus forming the mass. _adhesion_: this term is used to indicate the attraction between masses which causes them to "stick together" without a cohesion of their molecules. adhesion operates through the adjacent surfaces of the two masses. it may be considered as a "lesser" form of cohesion. _chemical affinity_ (sometimes called chemism or atomic attraction): this term is used to indicate the attraction between the atoms, by which they combine, unite and cling together, forming the molecule. science has before it the task of naming, and classifying, the attraction between the corpuscles, by which they combine and form the atom. but whatever the name, it will be seen that it represents but another manifestation of "attraction." arising from molecular attraction, or cohesion, are several "properties" peculiar to masses having molecules, and resulting from the tendency of the latter to resist separation. we had better consider them briefly, in order to understand the power of molecular attraction, and its incidents. _porosity_: that property indicating the distances observed by the molecules in their relation to each other, which varies in different "kinds" of substance. all substance is more or less porous, that is, has more or less space existing between the molecules--the degree depends upon the "closeness." compressibility and expansibility, sometimes mentioned as "properties," are but results of porosity. _elasticity_: that property whereby bodies resume their original size and form, after having been compressed, expanded or "bent." the result is caused by the inclination of the molecules to resume their original positions. what is sometimes called "plasticity" is merely the reverse of elasticity, and denotes a limited degree of the latter. _hardness_: that condition resulting from molecular attraction resisting the forcible entrance and passage of other substance between the molecules. _tenacity_: that condition resulting from molecular attraction resisting the forcible pulling asunder, or tearing apart of the mass. this condition sometimes is called "toughness." _malleability_: that condition resulting from molecular attraction resisting the forcible separation of the mass by pounding, hammering or pressure. the resistance is "passive," and consists of the molecules allowing themselves to assume a spread-out formation, rather than to be forced apart. _ductility_: that condition resulting from molecular attraction resisting the forcible separation of the mass by a "drawing out" process. the resistance is "passive," and consists of the molecules allowing themselves to be drawn out into a formation of the shape of wire or thread, rather than to be pulled apart. in any of the above cases, we may intelligently, and with propriety, substitute the words, "_molecules, by means of cohesion, resisting, etc._," for the terms above used, "molecular attraction, resisting, etc." all masses of substance (probably molecules as well) are capable of _expansion and contraction_, both phenomena, in fact, and in degree, resulting from the relation of the molecules. contraction is a "crowding together" of the molecules; expansion a "getting apart" of them. _density_: the amount of substance in relation to a given bulk. _volume_--the "size" or "bulk" of a body of substance. _mass_--besides being used to designate a "body" of substance, composed of two or more molecules, the term "mass" is used to designate the "total quantity of substance in a body." an application of the above terms may be seen in the following illustration: a quart of water occupies a certain space--and has a certain "volume," "mass" and "density." convert the same "mass" of water into steam, and it expands to a "volume" of times that of water--but, as no molecules have been added, the "mass" remains the same--but as a quart of steam weighs times less than the same "volume" of water, the "density" of steam is times less than that of water. as the "volume" of a given "mass" increases, the "density" decreases in the same proportion--but the "mass" remains the same. "mass" therefore has two factors, _i.e._, "volume" and "density." the "density" of a "mass" is determined by the _weight_ of a certain "volume" of it. the above consideration of the "properties" of substance dealt only with the molecular properties, or physical properties, as they are sometimes called--that is, with properties depending upon the existence of the molecules. when we consider the molecules as being composed of atoms, and when we consider the processes whereby these molecules are built up of, or broken down through the separation of atoms, we come to the subject of atomic properties, or chemical properties, as they are often called. _the atomic properties of substance_ consist principally in the power and manifestation of motion, in the direction of combination, separation, and the complex motions resulting from the same. this motion is manifested by reason of atomic attraction, sometimes called "chemical affinity," which we shall consider a little later on in the chapter. atomic principles, as above mentioned, are best illustrated by a reference to chemical changes, and we shall now examine the same. and, the better way to consider chemical changes is by comparing them with physical changes, or changes of the molecules. _some physical changes in substance_ are brought about by heat, which tends to separate the molecules, or rather to allow them to spread out away from each other, so long as the high temperature is maintained, the degree of their nearness being influenced by temperature. other physical changes are produced by outside forces separating the molecules to such an extent--to such a distance--that their cohesive force is lost, and the solid matter is said to be "broken," or even reduced to dust. other physical changes are brought about by electricity, causing the molecules to separate and disintegrate. _chemical changes_, as distinguished from physical changes, do not involve or deal with molecules, the action being solely upon the atoms of which the molecules are composed. physical changes _separate_ molecules from each other, while chemical changes destroy and break up the molecule, so that its identity is forever lost, its atoms thereafter either existing free from combinations, or else recombining with other atoms, and forming new combinations. chemical changes are occasioned by either physical or chemical agencies. the physical agencies generally employed are heat, electricity, light, pressure, percussion, etc. the principle of chemical changes is that the atoms are possessed of, and subject to, what is called "atomic attraction" or "chemical affinity," which may be defined as an attraction or "love" existing in varying degrees between atoms. this affinity causes atoms of one element to seek out and ally themselves to atoms of another element, the element of "choice" or "preference" being strikingly in evidence. atoms of different elements form marriages, and cling together in harmony, until, perchance, by some physical or chemical agency, the molecule is brought in sufficiently close connection with another molecule composed of different elemental atoms, when, alas! one of the atoms of our molecule finds that it has a greater affinity for some other elemental atom in the second molecule, and lo! it flies away, leaving its first partner, and seeking the new charmer. divorce and re-marriage is a common thing in the world of atoms--in fact, chemistry is based upon these qualities. physical and chemical changes gradually transform solid rock to "earth" or "soil." disintegration, by the action of changes in temperature, rains and atmospheric influences, and other physical changes, have slowly worn down the rocks into "dirt," gravel, clay, loam, etc. and decomposition by chemical change that set the atoms free from their combinations has aided in the work. there is no rest in the world of substance. everything is changing--constantly changing. old forms give way to new, and these, grown old while being born, are, in turn replaced by still newer. and on, endlessly. nothing persists but change. and yet nothing is destroyed, although countless forms and shapes have succeeded each other. substance is always there, undisturbed and unaffected by the varieties of forms it is compelled to undergo. masses may change--and do change. molecules may change--and do change. disintegration and decomposition affect both, and bring to them the death of form. but their substance endures in the atom. atoms may change, and decompose, or undergo whatever change that is their fate, and still the corpuscles, or what lies beyond the corpuscles will remain. the atom was once regarded as eternal, but now even it seems to be capable of dissolving into some finer division of substance--and perhaps still finer subdivisions await it. that familiar form of substance that we call "earth," "dirt," "soil," etc., is but the result of disintegrated rock, which has crumbled and lost its former form through the action of air, water and atmospheric influences. and the rocks themselves, from which the "soil" came, were at one time a sea of melted, flowing liquid substance, somewhat resembling volcanic lava. and this "melted rock" is thought to have been condensed from the same principles in the shape of vapor, that existed in the early days of our planetary system. vapor, gas, liquid, semi-liquid, solid rock, "soil"--the substance unchanged, the forms totally unlike. helmholtz estimates the density of the nebulous vapors of substance as being so rare that it would take several millions of cubic miles of it to weigh a single grain. oh, nature, what a wizard thou art! we have spoken of air and water, in a former chapter, and their constituent atoms have been named. and from these three great reservoirs of substance--the earth, the air, and the water--are obtained all the material that goes to form the bodies of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. the plant draws its nourishment from the soil, the air, and water, and in its wonderful chemical laboratory is able to transform the elements so drawn from these sources into a substance called "plasm," which consists principally of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen, being nearly identical in composition to the white of an egg, and which constitutes the basis of animal and plant bodily structures. all the material of the physical bodies, of men, animals and plants, are but forms of plasm. the animals, and man, obtain their nourishment, directly or indirectly, from the plant body, and so at the last we are seen to draw from the soil, air and water all our bodily nourishment, which we convert into bodily structure, bone, muscle, flesh, blood, veins, tissue, cells, etc. and the chemical atoms of our bodies are identical with those in the rock, the air, the water. and so you see the universality of substance and its countless forms and appearances. chemistry resolves substance back into about seventy-five simple substances, of which atoms are the units, which simple substances are called "elements." from these elements (by their atoms) all other substances are formed by combinations, the number of such possible combinations being infinite. an element (in order to be an element) must be a "simple" substance, that is, must be incapable of further analysis into some other elements. the seventy-five elements, now recognized by science, have never been resolved into other elements, by chemical analysis, and therefore are accepted as "simple." but, it is true that other substances that were formerly considered as simple elements were afterward decomposed by electricity, and found to consist of two or more simpler substances or elements. thus new elements were discovered, and old ones discarded as "not-elemental." and this fate may be in store for a number of the elements now on the list--and many new ones may be discovered. for a long time science was endeavoring to trace all elements back to hydrogen, the latter being considered the "ultimate element," and its atoms composing all the other atoms, under varying conditions, etc. but this theory is now almost abandoned, and science rests on its list of seventy-five elements, the atoms of which are composed of "electrons." some have hazarded the theory that the elements were all forms of ether (see next chapter), their apparent differences resulting merely from the varying rate of vibration, etc. and, in fact, such theory was about finally adopted as a working hypothesis until the discovery of the corpuscle. everything in substance now seems to be moving back to the corpuscle, as we shall see a little further on. the following is a list of the principal elements, known to science, to-day: aluminum. antimony. arsenic. barium. bismuth. boron. bromine. cadmium. calcium. carbon. chlorine. chromium. cobalt. copper. fluorine. gold. hydrogen. iodine. iron. lead. magnesium. manganese. mercury. nickel. nitrogen. oxygen. phosphorus. platinum. potassium. radium. silicon. silver. sodium. strontium. sulphur. tin. zinc. of the above, hydrogen is by far the lightest in weight; in fact it is used as a unit of atomic weight, its weight being marked " " on the scale; gold, ; lead, ; silver, ; oxygen, ; nitrogen, ; iron, . the discovery of the corpuscle, or electron, rudely shattered the vortex-ring theory of the origin of the atom, and now, instead of the atom being regarded as a "vortex-ring" in that hypothetical, paradoxical absurdity, the ether, it is believed to be composed of a vast number of tiny particles called corpuscles, as we saw stated in our last chapter. these corpuscles seem to be the "last thing in substance"--its last known state of refinement, and already it is being proclaimed as the long-sought for "primal matter," or "ultimate substance." whether or not a still finer state of substance will be discovered science is unable to say, but thinks it unlikely. but we must not overlook the old occult teaching indicating a state of substance so fine that it is imperceptible, and only recognizable as apparently "free force"; its covering, or vehicle of substance not being evident. this would seem to indicate a still further refinement of substance, although perhaps the "corpuscle" or "electron" will answer to "fill the bill" in the case. as to the corpuscle being "primal substance," it must be admitted that its advocates have presented a very strong case. one of their most important points is that although molecules differ very materially from each other, according to their kinds; and while atoms likewise manifest very plainly their "kind," the corpuscle seems to possess _only one "kind,"_ no matter from what form or "kind" of substance it is thrown off. just think what this means. it means that the finest particles of gold, silver, iron, hydrogen, oxygen, and all the rest of the elements, _are composed of identically the same material, and exhibit no differences in_ "_kind_." the elements are no longer "simple." _all substance is one, at the last analysis!_ the corpuscles seem to possess the same mass--to carry the same charge of electricity--to act precisely the same--irrespective of their source. no difference in size, mass or character, as in the case of the atom--all are identical, save in the rate of their vibration at the time of observation, which is simply a matter of more or less motion. space seems to be flooded with these tiny particles--these units of substance. they stream from the sun; the stars; and every body highly heated. likewise they stream from the bodies of highly electrified substance. groups of these corpuscles, absolutely identical in nature, size, mass, etc., constitute the atoms of the seventy-five elements, the "kind" of element seemingly being dependent upon the number and arrangement of the corpuscles, and possibly by their rate of vibration. every atom is like a great bee-hive with a swarm of corpuscles vibrating, moving around each other, and upon their own centres. and, if by the action of intense heat, transmitted, or caused by interrupted motion--or if by a strong electric charge--some of these corpuscles are detached from the atoms (or possibly an atom broken up), they fly off through space at a marvellous speed of many thousand miles an hour. so we see that these wonderful corpuscles look very much like primal matter or ultimate substance--the "stuff" out of which substance is made. and, taking you back to the chapter on "the universality of life and mind," the writer would remind you that in their motions and evident attraction, etc., these corpuscles evidence the same "life and mind" that we observed in the molecules and atoms. it must be so, for what is in the manufactured article must be in the material of which the article is made. and so, even here, life and mind have not escaped us. nor will it in the ether! and speaking of the corpuscles, as "manufactured articles," we are reminded of herschel's thought about the atoms, when they were regarded as primal matter and likely to be uniform, and, at the end, of one primal substance. although herschel's conception does not now apply to the atoms, it may be transferred to the corpuscles. herschel thought that the fact that the particles of substance were likely to be found to be uniform in size, and identical in nature and characteristics, indicated that they might be akin to "manufactured articles," turned out from the same great machinery of creation. this idea would indicate that the creator applied the rules of careful manufacture to the manufacture of the particles, the uniformity operating in the direction of ( ) economy of material; ( ) utility through interchangeability, replacing broken or discarded parts, etc.; and also ( ) conformity to a standard of size, quality, etc. the thought is interesting, and is mentioned here for that reason. it is not affected by the supposition that there may be a still finer and rarer form of substance, from which the particles are "manufactured"--in fact, the idea of herschel, if closely analyzed, would seem to indicate some such "raw material" from which the articles were manufactured. chapter vii the paradox of science in the days of the ancients, when the philosophers found themselves unable to account for any particular class of phenomena, they bundled it together and referred it to a suppositious something that they called "the ether." finding this an easy way to get rid of vexatious questions, they fell into the custom--and the habit grew upon them. soon there were a dozen or more different kind of ethers in vogue, each explaining something else--the "something else," by the way, being things that science _now_ feels that it understands pretty well. these ethers grew to be like the various "vapors" of the ancients--a dignified term for "we don't know"--a respectable road for retreat under the semblance of an advance. these ethers became a scientific scandal, and caused a lax mode of thinking among students of those times. and so they were finally abolished and relegated to the scrap pile of science, where they lay for many centuries until a comparatively recent period, when at least one of them was hauled forth, dusted, freshened up a little, and placed upon its old pedestal. this revamped ether, referred to, was the "ether of aristotle." aristotle, as we know, was a famous greek philosopher who lived about b.c.--about years ago. he was a good man and a celebrated philosopher, but was somewhat deficient in scientific knowledge. although he knew many things, and uttered many wise thoughts, he was under the impression that the breath of man entered the heart instead of the lungs--that the back part of the skull was empty, and so on. he was without the advantages of a modern training--which, was not his fault, however. well, aristotle conceived the idea of an universal ether, which he thought pervaded all space, and with which he accounted for the passage of light from the sun and stars; the movements of the planets, and various other physical phenomena. it is not known whether aristotle really _believed_ in this ether, or whether he merely used it as a speculative hypothesis, following the ether habit of his contemporaries. at any rate, his theory served its purpose--lived, flourished, declined and died--at least seemed to be dead. but its corpse was resurrected in modern times, and used to account for divers things. this does not mean that modern thinkers really "believe" in the universal ether--they merely assume it as a working hypothesis until something better is offered. its principal modern use is to account for the transmission of light from the sun and stars to the earth. it was held that a thing could not act "where it was not," and so it became necessary to account for the transmission either by the theory that small particles of substance were thrown off from the sun, and travelled to the earth, or else that there was some medium of communication by means of vibrations, etc. newton held to the first theory, but his hypothesis went down before the ether advocates, who advanced the "wave-theory," although it seems that, like banquo's ghost, newton's theory will not stay down, and is now taking on a new lease of life, owing to the discovery of the corpuscle and radiant matter. the wave-theory philosophers asserted that the light and heat of the sun were thrown off in the shape of force or energy, and transformed into "waves" in and of a hypothetical ether (aristotle's own), which waves were carried to the earth, where, meeting substance, they were again transformed into heat and light. it was known that light and heat travelled at the rate of , miles per second, and therefore the "waves" of the ether were considered to have that speed. the wave-theory seemed to fit the facts of the case better than the newtonian theory of corpuscles, although the latter has always been considered as better explaining certain phenomena than the new theory. and so the ether wave became generally accepted, and remains so to-day, although recent discoveries are causing a disturbance in the scientific camp regarding the question. later it was discovered that the electricity travelled at the same rate as light and heat, and the wave-of-the-ether theory was thus thought to have additional verification, and electricity came under the law and remained there until the electron discovery, which is causing much disturbance, among those interested in the study of electricity. briefly stated, the theory of the universal ether is this: that pervading all space in the universe--not only between planets, stars and suns, but also "filling in the cracks" between molecules, and atoms as well--there is a subtle substance in and through which the waves of light, heat, electricity and magnetism travel at the rate of , miles per second. this substance is said to be "matter that is not matter"--in fact, science does not venture to say just _what_ it is, although it freely states just what some of its properties must be, and, alas! these properties are most contradictory and opposite to each other, as we shall see as we proceed. this universal ether is purely hypothetical. it has been called a "necessity of science"--something assumed for the purpose of explaining or accounting for certain phenomena. it is undemonstrated and unproved--in fact, may truthfully be said to be undemonstrable and unprovable. some have gone so far as to say that its claimed properties and qualities render it "unthinkable" as well. and yet, science finds itself compelled to assume that the ether, or "something like it" exists, or else cease speculating about it. it belongs to the realm of pure theory, and yet, many writers treat it as if it were a positively demonstrated and proven fact. let us examine into the nature of science's problem, and her attempted solution, and the trouble arising therefrom. light travels at the rate of , miles a second. remember, that light and heat are that which we call by those names only when considered in connection with substance. according to the theory, light in the sun's atmosphere is transformed into a light-wave of the ether on its travels to the earth, and only when the "wave" comes in contact with the substance on the earth's body or atmosphere does it become again transformed into light as we know it. in its travels through space it meets with no substance, and has nothing to "turn into light"--consequently space (between worlds) is in a state of absolute darkness. the same is true of heat, and inter-world space is absolutely cold, although passing through it are countless heat-waves of great intensity, which, later on, will be transformed into heat when they reach the substance, the earth. the same is true of electricity and magnetism. although the ether, as we have seen, is a purely theoretical substance, yet science has found it reasonable to conclude that it must be possessed of certain attributes in order to account for certain known facts. thus, it is said to be frictionless, else the worlds, suns and planets could not pass freely through it, nor could the light and heat waves travel at such a tremendous rate. it also is thought to have something like inertia, because motion once started in it persists until stopped; because it is at a state of rest until motion is imparted to it; and because it takes a fraction of time to impart motion to it. it is thought to be different from substance in any of its known forms, for many reasons, among such being the fact that no known form of substance could carry vibrations through space at the rate of , miles a second. and light and heat waves travel at that rate, and have forms and shapes, and lengths of their own. light for instance, vibrates on two planes, and a light-wave is something like a greek cross, thus (-|-), having a horizontal and a vertical line, or plane of vibration. and the ether cannot be a fluid of any degree, because a fluid cannot transmit cross vibrations at all. and it cannot be a solid, because a solid could not stand vibrations at such a terrific speed, and still remain a solid. and yet, to transmit the two-plane light waves, the ether must have a certain degree of rigidity, else the waves could not travel. lord kelvin estimated this degree of rigidity as about , , , th of the rigidity of the hardest steel. so, you see, science is compelled to assume that the ether is "a continuous, frictionless medium, possessing both inertia and rigidity." some scientists have thought it to be a kind of "elastic jelly." of the ether, prof. oliver lodge has said, "we have to try and realize the idea of a perfectly continuous, subtle, incompressible substance, pervading all space, and penetrating between the molecules of ordinary matter, which are imbedded in it, and connected to one another by its means. and we must regard it as the one universal medium by which all actions between bodies are carried on. this, then, is its function--to act as the transmitter of motion and energy." to give you an idea of the wonderful thing that science is compelled to think of the ether as being, by reason of the qualities it is compelled to ascribe to it--although it confesses itself unable to "imagine" the nature of the "thing" which it has created in bits by the adding and bestowing of qualities which were made necessary by the logical requirements of the case--let us take a hurried view of the thing as the several departments of science say it must be thought of. to meet the requirements of the case, science says that the universal ether must be substance infinitely more rare and evanescent than the finest gas or vapor known to science, even in its rarest condition. it must convey heat in the manner of an infinitely solid body--and yet it must not be a solid. it must be transparent and invisible. it must be frictionless, and yet incompressible. it cannot be a fluid. it cannot have attraction for substance, such as all substance has. nor can it have weight--that is, it is not subject to gravitation. it is beyond the reach of any known scientific instrument, even of the greatest power, and it refuses to register itself in any way, either to senses or instruments. it cannot be known "of itself," but may only be recognized as existent by the "things" for which it acts as a medium or transmitting agent. it must convey energy and motion, yet it must not take up any part of either from the matter in its midst. it must not absorb any of the heat, light or electricity. it must fill up the spaces between the worlds, as well as the most minute space between the molecules, atoms and corpuscles, or any other minute particle of substance, either known by name to science now or which may be discovered or imagined later as a necessity of some conception regarding the nature of substance. in short, the universal ether, in order to do the things attributed to it, must be more solid than solids; more vapor-like and gas-like than vapor or gas; more fluid than fluids; infinitely less rigid than steel, and yet infinitely stronger than the strongest steel. it must be a substance having the qualities of a vacuum. it must be continuous and not composed of particles, atoms or molecules. it must be an "everything" in some respects, and yet a "nothing" in others. it must not be substance, and yet it must carry substance within its ocean of dimensions, and, besides, interpenetrate the most minute space between the particles of substance. it must not be energy or force, and yet science has been considering energy and force as but "interruptions of rest" or "agitations" within, and of, itself. so you see that this mysterious, wonderful universal ether--in order to "be" at all--must be a "something" possessing certain qualities or properties of substance--many of the properties of qualities being exactly contradictory and opposed to each other--and yet it cannot be substance as we know it. it is a paradoxical thing. it could only belong to another and an entirely different order of existence from that of substance as we know it. it must possess characteristics and properties of an order as yet unknown to us by name--for which the material world contains no analogy--for which substance has no analogues. it must be a far more complex thing than is even the most complex thing we call matter, or that which we call force or energy. and yet, it has been claimed that it would explain both--yes, contain within itself the possibility of both. and yet, in face of what has just been said, the writer must confess, humbly and with a full realization of the enormity of the offence, that he supposes advancing a theory, a little further on in this book that will attempt to identify this something--this universal ether--with a something else that we know, although not through the senses or by means of instruments. bear with him kindly, he begs of you, while he proceeds gradually along the path that leads to the theory. scientists have compared substance moving through the ether as a coarse seive moving through water, the latter making room for the passage of the seive, and then closing up behind it. if this be amended by the idea that the moving seive, while allowing the water to pass through it freely, still carries along with it a thin film of water which clings to the wires of the seive by adhesion--if there be admitted this "clinging film" as well as the body of the water through which the seive moves--then the illustration answers quite well as a crude illustration of substance and "the ether." this fact is important in view of the theory that will be advanced, further on in this book. prof. lodge, in his interesting work, "modern views of electricity," mentions a number of experiments tending to prove the above mentioned fact, which is not so generally known as other facts relating to the ether. until the discovery of radiant matter (bringing with it the new theories of the corpuscle or electron, etc.), brushed aside into the dust heap many generally accepted scientific theories regarding the nature of substance, the favorite and most popular theory was what was known as the "vortex-ring" theory of the atom. this theory held that the atoms of substance were but vortex-rings of the ether, having had motion communicated to them in some way, and which afterwards acquired other motions, and which finally become apparent to our senses as substance. in other words, the atom was supposed to be a vortex-ring of ether, acted upon by force, in some unknown way, the character, nature and properties of the atom being determined by the shape and size of the vortex-ring; the rate of motion; etc., etc. the new discoveries of science, however, have set aside (at least temporarily) this "vortex-ring" theory, and at present science seems to find its "latest thing in substance," in the theory that substance--at the last--seems to be the corpuscle or electron. in other words, after many years of fancied security in a settled theory regarding the nature of substance, science once more finds itself compelled to take up the search for the origin of things. but the theory of the ether remains--and is likely to--although the names applied to it will change. by some it is still believed that in the ether, a little further removed, rests the origin of substance and that the corpuscle may be the "vortex-ring" product, instead of the atom. it will be noticed that science has made no serious attempt to connect the phenomenon of gravitation or attraction with the ether. gravitation stands alone--an "outsider" among the forces, responding to none of their laws--needing no time in which to travel--needing no medium like the ether in which to transmit "waves"--fearing no obstacle or interfering body, but passing right through the same--different, different, different. and we shall see _why_ this difference, when we reach the point where our theory brings us to the point where we must substitute "something else" for that great paradoxical general solvent of modern science--the ether of aristotle. we shall reach the point after a brief consideration of motion, force and energy. chapter viii the forces of nature the substance filling the universe is in constant and unceasing motion. motion is evidenced in every physical and chemical process and change, and manifested in the constant interchange of position of the particles of substance. there is absolutely no rest in nature--everything is constantly changing--moving--and vibrating. building-up processes are ever at work forming larger masses or bodies of the particles--and tearing-down processes, disintegration and decomposition of molecules and atoms, and corpuscles, are constantly at work also. nature maintains a constant balance among her forces. if the building-up energies and forces were allowed full sway, then all the particles in the universe ultimately would gravitate to a common centre, thus forming a compact and solid mass, which would thus dwell for eternity, unless the creative power should move upon it and again scatter its particles in all directions. and, if the tearing-down, and dispersive forces and energies were allowed full sway, the particles would fly apart and would remain asunder for eternity, unless called together by some new creative fiat. but nature pits one force against another, maintaining an equilibrium. the result is constant play and inter-play of forces, causing distribution, and redistribution of particles, following the gathering-together and building-up processes. there is no lost motion, or waste force. one form of force and motion is converted into another, and so on, and on. nothing is lost--all force is conserved, as we shall see as we proceed. in the public mind--or rather, in the mind of that part of the public which think of the matter at all--there seems to be an idea that "force" is something of the nature of an entity, separate from substance or mind--something that pounces down upon substance and drives it along by presence from without. the ancient philosophers regarded substance as acted upon from _without_ by an entity called force, substance being regarded as absolutely inert and "dead." this idea, which is still held by the average person, owing, doubtless, to the survival of old forms of expression, was generally held by philosophers until the time of descartes and newton. this old idea was due to the teachings of aristotle--he of the ether theory--and science and philosophy were timid about shaking off the aristotelian dogmas. others held that light, heat and electricity were "fluids" conveyed from body to body--in fact the general public still entertains this idea regarding electricity, owing to the use of the term "the electric _fluid_." the present teaching of science is that force is the result of the motion of the particles of substance, and, of course, originates from _within_, rather than from without. it is true that motion may be communicated to a body by means of another body in motion imparting the same to it, but that does not alter the case, for the original motion came from the movement and vibration of the particles of substance, although it may have passed through many stages of transformation, change and transmission in its progress. the only exception to the rule is gravitation, which is a form of force, the nature of which is unknown to science, although its laws of operation, etc., are understood. we shall learn some new facts about gravitation in the forthcoming chapters of this book. it will be well for us to remember _this_ fact, in our consideration of force and motion--that force and motion _originate_ from the inherent property of motion passed by the particles of substance, and come from _within_, not from without. this is the best teaching of modern science, and also, forms an important part of the theory of dynamic thought which is advanced in this book. buchner, the author of "_force and matter_," vigorously insists upon this conception, saying, among many other similar expressions: "force may be defined as a condition of activity or a motion of matter, or of the minutest particles of matter or a capacity thereof." the term "force" is generally defined in works on physics as "that which causes, changes or terminates motion." the word "force" is generally used in the sense of "in action," while "energy" is usually used in the sense of "potential force--capacity for performing work," the idea being that it is "stored-up" force, or "force awaiting use." the term "power" is used in two senses, the first meaning "a measure of mechanical energy," such as a "forty horse-power engine," etc.; the second sense being "capacity or ability to act, or exercise force," this use being almost identical to the idea of "energy," as above described, although, possibly, a little stronger expression. the materialistic school holds that force is a property of matter, the latter being regarded as the "real thing" of the universe. others hold that force is the "real thing," and that what is called matter, or substance, is but a centre of force, etc. others hold that the two are but aspects of the same thing, calling the "thing" by the name "matter-force," or "force-matter." haeckel calls this combined "thing" by the name of "substance," claiming that what are called matter and force are but "attributes" of it, the third "attribute" being "sensation," which he holds is akin to mind--"haeckel's substance" is held to be eternal, and self-existent--its own cause, in fact. (in this book the term "substance" is not used in this sense, but merely as synonymous with what science usually calls "matter.") the views advanced in this book differ materially from any of those above mentioned, it being held by the writer that "all force is vital-mental force," and, consequently, "force" as a separate thing is considered an unreasonable proposition--what is called "force" being considered merely an action of mind upon substance, causing motion. the writer does not intend to advance this idea at this point beyond the mere mentioning of the fact--the theory being brought out and developed as we proceed--and he will proceed to a consideration of the phenomena of force, along the lines of modern science, believing that in this way the subject may be better understood. the term "motion," as used in physics, is defined as: "the act, process or state of changing place or position; movement"--(webster). so you see, motion is the movement of substance changing place or position; force is that which causes, changes or terminates motion; and energy is the "capacity" for manifesting force; and power the ability to act. in works on physics you will notice the expression, "potential energy," meaning energy awaiting action; also "kinetic energy," meaning energy in action; that is, in motion. we shall not need these terms in this book, but it is well to understand them. another term frequently met with, is "conservation of energy," which is used to indicate that law of physics the operation of which renders energy indestructible. that is, science holds that energy can not be destroyed--that it is not lost, or created, but is merely transformed into other forms of energy, potential or kinetic. therefore, after energy is used, it either passes into a state of potential energy or rest, awaiting a future call to activity, or else is immediately transformed into another form of kinetic energy, or energy in action. the theory holds that the quantity or amount of energy in the universe is fixed in its totality--none may be created or destroyed--there can be no addition to, or subtraction from the totality of energy--that all energy used has been previously stored up, or else has been immediately transmitted or transformed. it is also held that when energy manifests as the result of work performed, it is always found that it is at the expense of some previously manifested form of energy--that the agency by which the work is performed always parts with its stock of energy, and that the thing worked upon always acquires or gains the amount of energy lost by the aforesaid agent, or worker--and yet there is no actual loss or gain, but merely transformation. the above theory is mentioned as of interest in the general subject, although it does not play a prominent part in the subject of this book, for the writer holds that all energy resides in mind, and emerges therefrom, and, in the end, returns thereto. this being believed, it is seen that energy is not to be thought of as a separate thing having a "totality," but merely as a quality of mind--the question of its totality or fixed quantity not being inquired into, although both, probably, run along the lines of the nature of mind, and depend upon the limitations, or lack of limitations, of the latter. however, the question does not assume a vital importance in our consideration of the subject. so far as the question of transmission, or transformation of energy, is concerned, however, the principles of the law of conservation of energy may be accepted as correct, although it more properly belongs to the principle of what has been called "the corelation of force," the idea of which is that one form of energy may be, and is always, transformed into another form, and so on, and on, unto infinity. this idea is followed in this book, except that the idea of "from mind originally, to mind finally," is incorporated within it. this law of the "corelation of force" may be illustrated by the following quotation from tyndall, the great scientist of the last century, who says: "a river, in descending from an elevation of feet, generates an amount of heat competent to augment its own temperature degrees f., and this amount of heat was abstracted from the sun, in order to lift the matter of the river to the elevation from which it falls. as long as the river continues on the heights, whether in the solid form as a glacier, or in the liquid form as a lake, the heat expended by the sun in lifting it has disappeared from the universe. it has been consumed in the act of lifting. but, at the moment that the river starts upon its downward course, and encounters the resistance of its bed, the heat expanded in its elevation begins to be restored. the mental eye, indeed, can follow the emission from its source through the ether, as vibratory motion, to the ocean, where it ceases to be vibration, and takes the potential form among the molecules of aqueous vapor; to the mountain-top, where the heat absorbed in vaporization is given out in condensation, while that expended by the sun in _lifting_ the water to its present elevation is still unrestored. this we find paid back to the last unit by the friction along the river's bed; at the bottom of the cascade, where the plunge of the torrent is suddenly arrested; in the warmth of the machinery turned by the river; in the spark from the millstone; beneath the crusher of the miner; in the alpine saw-mill; in the milk-churn of the chalet; in the supports of the cradle in which the mountaineer, by water-power, rocks his baby to sleep. all the forms of mechanical motion here indicated are simply the parcelling out of an amount of calorific motion derived originally from the sun; and, at each point at which the mechanical motion is destroyed or diminished, it is the sun's heat which is restored." the following quotation, also, is interesting as illustrating another phase of this law: "the work performed by men and other animals is due to the transformed energy of food. this food is of vegetable origin and owes its energy to the solar rays. the energy of men and animals is, therefore, the transformed energy of the sun. excepting the energy of the tides, the sun's rays are the source of all the forms of energy practically available. it has been estimated that the heat received by the earth from the sun each year would melt a layer of ice over the entire globe a hundred feet in thickness. this represents energy equal to one horse-power for each fifty square feet of surface."--anthony and brackett. from the above quotations, it will be seen that the principal and most familiar sources (or great storage batteries) of energy, apparent to dwellers upon this planet, are ( ) the earth manifesting the power of gravitation; and ( ) the sun, manifesting solar heat. in tyndall's illustration we see the force of the sun's energy--heat--raising the water from the ocean, by evaporation (although aided by the earth's gravitation "pulling down" the heavier air, allowing the vapor to rise). then we see the force of gravitation causes the condensed vapor to fall as rain or snow on the mountain-top--then causing the rain to run into little streams, and so on until the river is reached--then causing the river to start on its downward journey of over seven thousand feet--then causing it to plunge over the cascade; to turn the wheels that operated the machinery, and turned the millstone, and the crusher of the miner, and the saw-mill, and the milk-churn, and the cradle. and, as tyndall might have added, had he lived a little later--in the running of the dynamo, which running, produced electricity, that in turn caused lights to burn; other machinery to run and manufacture things; stoves to cook; flat-irons to iron; automobiles and engines to run; and many other things along the lines of transmitting energy, force and motion. and in this consideration, let us not forget the important part that gravitation--that most wonderful of all forces--plays in the grand scheme of nature. not only does this force cause the planets to circle around the sun, and, perhaps that sun around another sun, and so on, and on until the matter becomes unthinkable--not only this, but it performs a million parts in the affair of earthly matter, as we shall see in a later chapter. the force of gravitation is one of the greatest mysteries confronting science to-day, although many believe it a simple question. gravitation and the universal ether contain the great secrets of nature that man is striving to unveil. and yet, so "common" is gravitation that the race, including almost all the scientists, take it as a "matter of course." we shall devote much attention to the question of gravitation in the forthcoming chapters of this book, for it plays a very important part in the general theory of dynamic thought, upon which this book is based. we shall have a special chapter devoted to it, a little later on, and the matter will also come up for explanation further on in the book. but, in the meantime, let us consider the other forms of energy, _viz._, heat, light, magnetism and electricity, which with gravitation and attraction of other kinds, form the forces of nature. chapter ix radiant energy the "kinds" of energy are very few, although the methods of using, applying and manifesting same are innumerable. let us begin with one of the best known forms of energy, namely, heat. _heat_ was formerly regarded as a very fine fluid or substance, called "caloric," which was supposed to enter into substance and then manifest the phenomenon of "heat." this idea has long since been relegated to the scrap pile of science. the present theory, which is supported by a mass of evidence obtained through investigation and experimentation, is that heat is a form of energy, arising from the vibratory motions of the particles of substance--a "mode of motion." the degrees of heat are termed "temperature." temperature depends upon the rate of the heat-vibrations of the particles of substance, either arising from the original motion of the particles, or else from vibrations or motion aroused in them by transmission from particles of other bodies of substance--these vibrations being "contagious." temperature then means "the measure of the vibrations of the particles." all bodies of substance have _some_ degree of temperature--some degree of heat-vibration of its particles. science has a pleasant "scientific friction" of an absolute zero at the degree of below zero, fahrenheit, but this is merely an imaginary something with which the grown up children of science amuse themselves. when two bodies are brought near each other--the "nearness" being comparative, and, in some cases, meaning a distance of millions of miles--heat is transmitted from the warmer to the cooler body, until the temperatures are equalized--that is until the two bodies vibrate in unison. in physics we are taught that the "transmission" of heat may be accomplished in three ways, although the writer is of the opinion that the three ways are but three forms of one way. the first form is called "conduction," whereby the vibration, or heat, is conveyed along a body of substance, from its warmer to its cooler parts--for instance, an iron poker with one end in the fire. the second form is called "convection," whereby the visible motion of heated substance, moving along the air--for instance, hot-air, hot-water, steam, etc., either by means of pipes, or by allowing them to pass freely through the air. the third form is called "radiation," whereby the vibrations are believed to be transformed into "waves of the ether," which will be spoken of later, in addition to what has been said on the subject in our chapter entitled "the paradox of science." the writer thinks that a little consideration will show us that the same rule operates in all of the above cases, and that "conduction" and "convection" are but forms of radiation. for instance, in conduction there must be a few particles first set into vibration, the same gradually passing on to the others farther, and farther away. passing _how_? "by contact," replies physics. but, the particles are never in absolute contact--there always is "plenty of space" between them. and so there must be some kind of "waves" passing through the space between them, which space is not filled with "air," or other form of substance, but only with "the ether," or _something that takes its place_. so that, after all, conduction is but a form of radiation. and the same rule will apply in the case of convection. heat arises from several causes, all of which, however, manifest through the vibration of the particles of the body evidencing the heat. these causes may be stated as ( ) original motion of the particles of a body of substance, arising from some workings of the law of attraction, and including motion arising from chemical action, combustion, etc. ( ) from transmission or "contagion" from some other body of substance, the particles of which are vibrating at the rate of heat. ( ) from interrupted motion, including friction both of the moving body with the air or other substance, and the friction of a current of electricity passing through the body. in each of the above cases, the _actual_ and immediate cause of the heat is the vibration of the particles of the substance manifesting the heat, although the transmitted vibratory waves, or the interrupted motion, friction, current, etc., may have been the instigator or provoker of such vibration. the interrupted motion, friction, or "wave" does not produce the heat, but merely arouses or provokes the increased vibration of the particles, that really manifest the heat. at the last, remember, the heat is in the particles of the body that "feels" or experiences it. the vibrations of heat seem to have the properties of causing the molecules to draw further apart, and to manifest less attraction, or more repulsion, whichever way one cares to express it. this "moving away" of the molecules tend to cause the body to increase in volume or size, and occasions what is known as "expansion" in substance. in this way heat transforms solids into liquids; liquids into gases or vapors, the change being wholly a matter of the relative distances of the molecules. _magnetism_ is another form of energy, and is generally believed to be a part of the phenomena of electricity, if indeed, not a form of electricity itself. science knows very little about the nature of magnetism, but in a general way holds to the theory that it results from the vibration or motion of the particles of substance, as do all other forms of energy. the magnetic qualities of a body may be increased or decreased by motion affecting the relation of the molecules, which fact has been regarded as having some bearing on the theory. _electricity_ is a form of energy, that science regards as also arising from the vibration or motion of the particles of substance. it is transmitted, like heat, by conduction and radiation, the "waves" tending to provoke similar vibrations in the particles of substances receiving them. by many careful investigators, electricity is believed to be very closely related to the phenomenon called light, both having much in common. science seems to be discovering new points of resemblance between them, and it is probable that in the near future they will be seen to be but varying forms of the same thing. the purposes of this book do not call for an extended consideration of the properties of electricity, the same being served by a consideration of its nature being akin to that of the other forms of energy, namely, "vibration or motion in or among the particles of matter." _light_ is a form of energy, the study of which is of the greatest interest to science, for the reason that the field seems to be widening out continuously, and reaching out into the territory formerly thought to be the special region of electricity. and, in another direction, it seems to be reaching out into the territory of heat, the latter being considered by many to be but a form of light, in its lower vibrations. in fact, the writer of this book so considers the subject, and for the purposes of this book, in later chapters, he will combine electricity, heat, and light, including, also, the phenomena known as the x-rays, becquerel rays, radium waves, etc., as forms of light--the combined forms of energy to be called "_radiant energy_." in this combination, he believes that he is in line with the latest and best thought of modern science. however, he does not insist upon his readers following this idea, and so, if they prefer, they may think of each of these forms as separate and distinct, and yet not run contrary to the line of thought of the book. light is not the simple thing that it is considered to be by the general public. it is composed of many parts, qualities and manifestations. its rays, when separated by the spectrum, are seen to consist of "waves" or vibrations of differing degrees of rate and intensity. the lower range contains the heat rays, and it is interesting to know that there are rays of heat too far down in the scale to be evidenced by human senses that may be distinguished by delicate instruments. but there are rays still further down in the scale that are known to exist, theoretically, that cannot be registered even by the finest instruments. to gain an idea of the delicacy of these instruments, let us remember that prof. langley has an instrument called the "bolometer," that is so delicate that it registers a change of temperature of one millionth of a degree, and will register the heat of a candle one and one-half miles distant from it. light vibrations arise from combustion, friction, electricity etc., causing the particles to assume increased motion. let us consider the report of the spectrum. beginning with waves or vibrations far below the sensibility of man, the scale shows an advance until the first "warm" vibration of iron was reached. this first indication of warmth comes when the vibrations reach the rate of , , , , _per second_. then gradually they increase until a dull red glow is noticed--the lowest _visible_ light ray--when the vibrations are , , , , per second. then come the orange rays, then the golden yellow, then the pure yellow, then the greenish yellow, then the pure green, then the greenish blue, then the ocean blue, then the cyanic blue, then the indigo, then the violet--the latter evidencing when the vibrations reach the rate of , , , , per second. then come the ultra-violet rays--invisible to human sight--but evidenced by chemical media. in this ultra-violet region lies the x-rays, etc., and also the "actinic rays," that produce photographs, sunburn one's face and blister the nose--that cause violent explosions in chemicals--that transform forms of substance--that are employed to cure skin diseases, etc. these actinic or chemical rays have an important role to play in plant-life, for they act upon the green leaves of the plant, causing a chemical change by which carbonic acid and water are transformed into sugar and starches. some of the rays of the ultra-violet region of light penetrate substances formerly considered solid and impenetrable. and some of them emitted from radium, etc., would destroy organic life if applied in sufficient quantities. some of them are practically waves of electricity so that light and electricity are seen to be closely related. to give one an idea of the differences produced by different rates of vibration, let us imagine a mass of iron, shaped like a great "top," capable of being impelled to "spin" at a constantly increasing rate of speed, by some mighty will. at first it is seen as a slowly spinning top, manifesting nothing but slow motion, to our senses. now, imagine our top spinning at a rate doubling each second. the first second the top spins at the rate of two revolutions per second. we notice no change, except that we can see the movement. the next second the revolutions are doubled to four per second. then, doubling each second, we have, respectively, revolutions of eight per second, then sixteen, and then in the fifth second thirty-two per second. then we begin to notice a change. when the revolutions reach thirty-two per second the friction of the moving top on the air causes it to give forth a very low, deep, bass note of sound. this note is like a low, deep "hum," and is the lowest possible of perception by the human hearing, although it is possible that some of the lower forms of life may be conscious of still lower vibrations. the sixth second the revolutions reach sixty-four, and the low note has grown much higher in the scale. the seventh second records a rate of , and the note has correspondingly increased. then, as the seconds pass, we have, successively, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , the latter in the fifteenth second, and representing the highest note recognizable by the human ear, although it is believed that some of the lower animals may recognize sounds too acute for our sense of hearing. during this increase in revolutions from the fifth second to the fifteenth, the sound-note has risen rapidly in the scale from the low sullen "hum," on through the notes of the musical scale, and beyond the range of instruments, until the shrillness becomes so intense as to be almost unbearable, and finally terminating in a shrill, piercing shriek like the "squeak" of the bat, only long-drawn out. then from the termination of the sound (by reason of the rate of vibration having become too high) silence reigns for thirty seconds--absolute silence, in spite of the rapidly increasing rate of vibrations, in fact, because of it. when the forty-fifth second is reached, and the revolutions have reached the rate of , , , , per second, our top begins to emit heat-rays, increasing each second. then a little later a dull, dim glow may be noticed. then, as the seconds fly, the dull glow manifests a deep dark red color, such as one notices in the iron of the blacksmith's shop, soon after it begins to "glow." then, on and on, as the seconds fly, the deep red grows lighter and brighter, gradually changing into orange, then into yellow, then into green, then into blue, then into indigo, then into violet, and then into the color of "white-heat." then this "white-heat" changes into a still more dazzling white, and then a white impossible to describe appears, so bright, clear and brilliant that the eye cannot bear the sight. then, suddenly, the intense brightness is succeeded by absolute darkness, and the moving top cannot be seen by the eye--and yet it moves on. the highest recorded chemical rays of light are estimated to equal a rate of vibration of , , , , , per second. the vibration of the lowest shade of red light is estimated at , , , , , and the highest of violet at , , , , per second, so we may imagine what the highest line on the spectrum is like. still vibrating, our top, which has become now a mass of vaporized iron, rapidly tending toward still more ethereal forms. it has passed out from the region of light-waves, into another "unknown region" of vibrations, in which region, however, exist the vibrations known to us as the "x-rays," etc. it is throwing off great quantities of electrons. if we were to use a fluorescent screen we would be able to observe the phenomena of the roentgen rays, and similar manifestations of radiant energy. on and on vibrates the top of what we once called iron--cold iron, warm iron, hot iron, melted iron, gaseous iron, etherealized iron, if you like. what it is like now, the imagination of man cannot conceive. still the revolutions continue, doubling each second. _what is being produced?_ the imagination cannot conceive of what this state of substance, now being reached, is like. by a scientific form of poetry we might think of it as melting into energy--pure energy, if there were such a thing. long since it has been resolved into its original particles--its corpuscles, and perhaps into the "stuff" from which particles are made. but we must let the curtain drop--the wildest fancy cannot follow the dance of substance any further. the theory of the transmission of vibrations of radiant energy by means of "waves" in the ether, or "something that takes the place of the ether," has been mentioned in other parts of the book. referring again to it, the writer would say that he thinks it probable that the "waves" coming in contact with the countless corpuscles in the earth's atmosphere, communicate a high rate of motion to them, the result being that they take on the vibrations immediately, and pass along with the "wave" current--the result being that much that we consider as waves of light, heat and electricity are but streams of these corpuscles in which vibrations have been awakened by the "waves." this idea will help to explain some of the phenomena of light, which seemed more understandable under the old light-corpuscle theory of newton than under the "wave" theory of recent years. the idea is advanced merely for the purpose of setting down the thought, for it plays no important part in the theory of the book. another matter that should not be overlooked in connection with light and heat and electricity is that particles absorb or "catch" the vibrations in different degrees, their receptivity depending upon their particular vibratory mode, or "custom of their kind." if unable to "absorb" the vibrations, they "reflect" them. substance, of any particular kind, absorb heat in the degree of its atomic weight. in the next chapter we shall learn something of the law of attraction, that wonderful law that makes possible any motion or radiant energy. chapter x the law of attraction in the previous chapters we have seen that all forms of radiant energy, _viz._, light, heat, electricity and magnetism, arose from the motion of the particles of substance. it now becomes important to learn just what cause this "motions of the particles." science is somewhat hazy and foggy on this subject, but in a general way decides that it is caused by "the mutual relations and positions of the particles, arising from their respective attractive qualities," as a recent writer has expressed it. well, this is better than the old way of seeking refuge and retreat in a mere volume of dense words. it is indeed the only logical conclusion, this one that the operations of the law of attraction are manifested in the motion of the particles. this great law of attraction is the greatest law in nature. it operates on all planes of life. it is always in evidence. let us consider it. let us begin by considering the most magnificent and constant exhibition of that law--gravitation. gravitation is the riddle of the universe, and the one form of energy that balks science--so much a mystery that science does not even hazard a "guess" at its nature--no theory of the origin and nature of gravitation is to be found in "the books." let us see what gravitation is. it is more than the power that "pulls things to the earth," as the average man would define it. it does more than cause water to run down hill, and turn mill-wheels to drive machinery. water-power results from gravitation, but even the energy of niagara falls is insignificant when compared to the other manifestations of the mother of energy--gravitation. webster defines gravitation as: "that attraction or force by which all bodies or particles in the universe tend toward each other." following that definition, let us add that: _every particle of substance has an attraction for every other particle_. in view of our belief that this "attraction" is a form of mental effort, let us regard the term "attraction" as being a form of what we call "desire," or even "love," in the mental world. if you will think of it in this way, you will be better able to fall in with our lines of thought. and, in addition to every particle of substance having an attraction (love or desire) for every other particle, _it has the means and power to draw that other particle toward itself, and to move toward that other particle at the same time_. webster gives a very clear idea of this when he defines attraction as: "_an invisible power in a body by which it draws anything to itself; the power in nature acting mutually between bodies, or ultimate particles, tending to draw them together, or to produce their cohesion or combination, and conversely resisting separation_." the majority of persons, when thinking of "gravitation," are satisfied with the idea that it is a power that "pulls things down to the ground," and do not think of it as a force that "pulls things" other ways besides "down," and which is possessed and exercised by the speck of dust as well as by the whole earth--by the molecule as well as by the mass. the reason of this is that this power is so slight in small bodies of substance that it is unnoticed; and that only when the mass is sufficiently large to make the "pull" strong does one perceive and appreciate that the force exists. the lack of information on the part of the average person regarding this subject is amazing, particularly when the importance of the knowledge is understood. the attraction that holds the molecules of substance together is gravitation. the attraction that "pulls" a piece of substance to the earth is gravitation. the attraction that keeps the suns and planets in their orbits is gravitation. let us see the operations of the law. in astronomy you may learn that the movements of the planets around the sun and the moons around their planets--their regular and constant relative positions--are caused by the force of gravitation. if it were not for this attraction by the sun, the planets would fly out into space, like a stone from a sling. the attraction of gravitation acts on the planets just as does the string of the whirling sling that keeps the stone from flying away during the whirling until the string is released. some astronomers think that our sun revolves around some greater sun, and this again around a greater, and so on to infinity. if this be so, then the attraction of gravitation is that which holds them all in their orbits and places in spite of their motion. and in physics, you may learn that this same attraction of gravitation prevents the people and objects on the surface of the earth from flying off into space. and that it holds the portions of the earth together, preventing them from flying apart. and, remember this, for it is important--the attraction of the earth, great and powerful as it is, is nothing more than the _combined_ attractive power of its constituent molecules, or atoms, or parts. the centre of the earth is the centre of the attraction, because it is the centre of the aggregation of its particles. it must not be supposed that the earth simply attracts "downward," that is, toward its centre. on the contrary, large masses of earth--large mountains, for instance--exert a certain degree of attraction of gravitation, and experiments have shown that a "plumb" is slightly deflected by reason of the proximity of a large mountain. and the reason that bodies "lose weight" as they descend from the surface of the earth is because they leave "above" them a certain large portion of the molecules composing the earth, which mass of molecules exert an attraction proportionate to their mass, which attraction balances the attraction of the mass of earth "beneath them." science teaches that if the earth were hollow in the centre, the weight there would be zero, or nothing at all, and that a body would float in the space at the centre of the earth just as does a balloon in the air, the reason thereof being that the attraction would be equalized--equal attraction from every direction, counterbalancing each other. considering the earth's radius to be miles, a body that weighed pounds on the surface would weigh but pounds at the depth of miles; but pounds at a depth of miles; but pounds at a depth of miles; and nothing, or zero, at a depth of miles, which would be the centre of the earth. this, of course, supposes that the substance of which the earth is composed is of uniform density from surface to centre. from an equal distance above the surface of the earth, bodies released, or dropped, will reach the surface at exactly the same degree of speed, and in exactly the same time--this irrespective of weight or size. in other words, a cork or piece of lead, no matter what their sizes may be, will travel with equal rapidity. in case where the "lighter" substance travels more slowly (compare a feather and bullet, for instance) the difference is caused by the light object meeting with more resistance from the air. this apparent exception has been explained away by the experiment of dropping the bullet and the feather in a vacuum tube, in which there was no resistance from air, the consequence being that both descended precisely at the same instant. another similar experiment is to place the feather upon a piece of iron whereby the resistance of the air is prevented, and the feather will maintain its position during the drop, and will reach the ground resting on top of the iron, just as it started. and, remember this please, that the small object attracted by the earth exerts an attraction on its own account. if the two were of the same size they would exert an equal attracting power, but as one is smaller its attracting power is very slight compared with that of the large mass. but it is true that the particle of dust attracts the earth precisely as the earth attracts the particle of dust--the difference being solely a matter of degree depending upon the "mass" of the body. the amount or degree of the _combined_ attracting power is determined by the combined total of the two masses. distance lessens the degree of attraction--thus as bodies are lifted above the earth the weight decreases very gradually, and by very slight degrees, but constantly and invariably. the poles of the earth are flattened, and, consequently, the weight of an object slightly increases as it is carried from equator to pole. concluding our consideration of gravitation, it will be well to call your attention to the fact that gravitation differs from the forms of radiant energy known as heat, light, electricity and magnetism in several very important particulars, which seems to go far in the direction of proof that the latter are by incidents or consequences of the former. in the first place, gravitation, so far as is known, is not dependent upon, caused by, or maintained by, any other force or form of energy. nor does it seem to be derived from some great reservoir, from which it obtains its supply of energy. on the contrary, it seems to be a "thing-in-itself," self-supporting, self-existing--an intrinsic thing, in fact. it does not seem to be lost to bodies by radiation. and consequently there seems to be no need of a body replenishing its supply, as there is no loss. gravitation seems to be a constant _something_, remaining always with bodies and neither being lost or acquired. it exists between the atoms, molecules, masses--all in the same way. in fact, one is tempted to think of the planets and worlds in space, as molecules of some greater mass held together by gravitation just as are the molecules held together. remember, that the molecules and atoms are not in absolute contact, _but there is always a "space" between them_, although the space or distance may be "insensible" to us. "as above, so below," says the old occult aphorism, and it seems to be so. then again, gravitation is believed to act _instantaneously_, and does not require time to pass between bodies, as does light, heat, electricity, magnetism--radiant energy. light travels through the ether (as light-waves) at the rate of , miles a second. the same is true of heat and of electricity. but gravitation travels instantaneously. for instance, if a new star were to spring into existence at some inconceivable distance from the earth it would require thousands of years for its light to reach us. but its attraction of gravitation would be felt _instantly_. do you realize what this means? it means that gravitation is in some way connected with the ether, or "conveying medium," that an impulse communicated at some point of space trillions of miles away is felt _at once_ at our point in space, and vice versa. there is some awful mystery here, and the laws of substance, and force, as generally understood, do not account for it. and the theories regarding the ether do not throw light upon it. _but wait a bit!_ but more than this. science holds that gravitation _does not require a medium_--that it seems to be its own medium--needing no "ether" or other medium to transmit its influence. in this respect also, gravitation differs from the form of radiant energy. and more, it is not "cut-off" or interfered with by any intervening body, for its force operates through such intervening bodies. for instance, in an eclipse of the sun, the moon passes between the earth and the sun, but the gravitation is not affected in the slightest, for the bodies would evidence such change immediately were it to occur. so gravitation acts instantaneously; is its own medium, and may not be interfered with by an intervening body. it, indeed, is in a different "class" from light, heat and electricity. and now let us consider the other forms of attraction. in the previous chapters we saw that the form of attraction called "cohesion" caused the molecules to tend to each other, and to remain in more or less close contact, the differing degrees of cohesion determining the density, etc., of the body. were the attractive force of cohesion suddenly removed, the most solid bodies, as well as the lightest ones, would instantly fly into very fine powder, thus being resolved into their constituent molecules. the separation of the molecules, that is, the "setting further apart," occasioned by heat, is spoken of by physicists as "repulsion." but the writer holds that repulsion is an entirely different thing, and that the heat merely causes the molecules to lose a portion of their attractive power for each other. until the heat being withdrawn, the molecules respond to the uninterrupted attraction. the molecules are like lovers who are attracted toward each other, and remain attached unless separated violently, or by some fading of attraction. consider heat as a disturbing element--a "misunderstanding" between the molecular lovers, who under its influence draw somewhat apart, and are only reunited when the obstacle is removed, and harmony again manifested. as we have shown you in a previous chapter, the so-called "properties" of matter, _i.e._, hardness, tenacity, malleability, ductility, etc., are simply evidence of a persistent cohesiveness of the molecules--a strong "love" or "desire" for each other that caused them to adopt every possible means in their power to resist, and prevent, the separation of the molecules forming the mass. it was like a desperate attempt to prevent the "breaking up of the family." each so-called special physical property of matter is seen to be but the action of the molecule resisting separation, in obedience to that law of its being called "attraction," or "gravitation," or "cohesion," or "adhesion"--but which might as fitly be called "desire," or "love." and, remember, that this law does not seem to be merely one of self-preservation of the molecule--for it remains intact even after the separation from its companions or family. it is more, for it is a law that causes it to bend all its energies in remaining within "molecular distance" or close companionship with its family, and resisting disintegration. it is like the "social instinct" in man, if one may be pardoned from using the figure. now for the attraction of the atoms--"chemical affinity," or "chemism," as it is called. an atom, you know, is the chemical unit of matter, and the smallest particle of matter that can enter into combination (leaving the corpuscle out of the consideration, for the moment). these atoms exhibit and manifest an attraction for each other that causes them to form combinations or "marriages," and thus to combine, forming a molecule. but remember, always, that when atoms "combine" they do not merge their identities--they simply "marry," and nothing more. each atom maintains its own identity, and is found intact if the "marriage" is destroyed by chemical process, which might be called the termination of the molecular marriage, by "divorce," that is, by one atom forsaking its mate and seeking a new "affinity" in the shape of some more attractive (or attracting) atom. for, alas, the atoms are more or less fickle, and often leave their life-partners for some other fascinating particle. at times there is manifested a condition of "how happy could i be with either, were t'other fair charmer away"--there is a conflict of attractions. there is more "flirting" and "affairs of the heart" in the world of atoms than in the region of the molecules, for while the latter are apt to seek only the companionship of their own "family," or some nearly related family, the atoms have quite a number of possible "affinities," and will invariably desert a lesser attraction for a greater one (thus forming a new molecule) and leave the deserted one to get along alone as best it may, or else form a new alliance with some other affinity who is either impervious to the attraction of the more brilliant charmer, or else is out of the danger of temptation. but, if we analyze and carefully consider this "chemical affinity," "chemism," we will see that it comes well under the definition of "attraction" as given by webster, and quoted in the first part of this chapter. it certainly comes under the rule of "_the power in nature acting mutually between bodies, or ultimate particles, tending to draw them together_," etc. the writer thinks that he is justified in asking you to consider gravitation, cohesion, adhesion and chemical affinity as related forms of the same thing. if you do not like to call this "same thing" by the name of "gravitation," suppose we call it "the law of attraction," of which gravitation, cohesion, adhesion, chemical affinity or chemism are but different aspects. (this "relation" is described in chapter xiii.) and the writer believes that this "law of attraction" is the underlying cause of all that we call energy, force, power, motion, etc., in the physical world. for if "gravitation" accounts for all "mass motion," or "mechanical motion"--if molecular cohesion, and the vibrations accompanying it, manifest in forms of "molecular motion"--and if atomic "chemical affinity" or "chemism," manifest in "atomic motion"--and if even the corpuscles in their movements obey this same "law of attraction" in some form--and if all force and energy is but a "mode of motion"--then, if all this be true, are we not justified in claiming that this "law of attraction" is the basis of all energy, force and motion? and are we not justified in thinking of this "law of attraction" as always manifesting in the direction of drawing together particles of substance--be those particles suns, planets, masses, molecules, atoms or corpuscles--in pursuance of some basic law imposed upon all-things, by that-which-is-above-things? the following quotation is interesting, in our consideration of this subject: "there are other forces besides gravity, and one of the most active of these is chemical affinity. thus, for instance, an atom of oxygen has a very strong attraction for one of carbon, and we may compare these two atoms to the earth and a stone lodged upon the top of a house. within certain limits, this attraction is intensely powerful, so that when an atom of carbon and one of oxygen have been separated from each other, we have a species of energy of position just as truly as when a stone has been separated from the earth. thus by having a large quantity of oxygen and a large quantity of carbon in separate states, we are in possession of a large store of _energy_ of position. when we allowed the stone and the earth to rush together, the _energy_ of position was transformed into that of actual motion, and we should therefore expect something similar to happen when the separated carbon and oxygen are allowed to rush together. this takes place when we burn coal in our fires, and the primary result, as far as _energy_ is concerned, is the production of a large amount of heat. we are, therefore, led to conjecture that heat may denote a motion of particles on the small scale just as the rushing together of the stone and the earth denotes a motion on the large. it thus appears that we may have invisible molecular energy as well as visible mechanical _energy_."--_balfour stewart._ to the writer it seems that the particle of substance finds within its mind-principle (for you know we have seen that all substance had something akin to life and mind) a constant craving, imbedded in its very nature, which causes it to seek satisfaction. this craving for satisfaction results in unrest, and seeks a solution along two lines. these two lines are indicated by two entirely different desires that it finds within itself--the first being a desire or inclination to seek the companionship of some other particle--the second being a desire or inclination to be free of attachment or entanglement. the desire for attachment arises from the force of the law of attraction that exists between each particle of substance. the desire for non-attachment arises from some inward inclination for freedom. these two desires or inclinations may be called the desire for impression and the desire for expression. the desire for impression (or pressing in) manifests along lines of action tending toward attachment, moreness, companionship, combination. the desire for expression (or pressing out) manifests along the lines of action tending toward individuality, freedom, independence, unattachment, etc. and both are strong cravings--and both tend to produce unrest, which results in motion. the "pull" of the desire of impression exists always, and is always modified and counteracted by the "push" of the desire for expression. and, resulting from the play of these two desires, or forces, result activity, motion and change. like the two conflicting angels in the persian mythology--ahriman and ormuzd--these two desires wrestle with each other in the theatre of the universe--constant motion and change being the results. and, if the writer may be pardoned for dropping into mysticism for the moment, may it not be that these conflicting desires for separateness and unity, respectively, are but different forms of the desire for satisfaction through oneness. impression seeks oneness by combination with other separated particles, _but finds it not_. expression seeks oneness by drawing apart and endeavoring to realize it in that way, _but finds it not_. but both are but different aspects of the same desire for satisfaction, and only when the mind recognizes oneness in diversity does satisfaction come. and thus the lesson of the particle becomes the lesson of the man. these conflicting desires of inclinations of the particles--the one urging it along the lines of attraction--the other along the lines of separation--produce the dance of the atoms--the motion of the particles. when the particle manifests along the lines of expression it pushes itself away from the other particle, and, consequently, also pushes the other particle away. when it manifests along the lines of impression, it pulls itself toward the other particle, and at the same time pulls the other particle toward itself. in both cases the "medium" of the pulling extends over the space separating them, as will be described in future chapters. this pulling and pushing is called by chemistry "attraction and repulsion" of the particles. it is perhaps unnecessary to state that the force of the attraction of cohesion or of chemical affinity is much stronger than that of gravitation, in the case of the same particles. otherwise, if one picked up a piece of iron, the attraction of gravitation would cause its particles to separate and fall to the ground, whereas, the attraction of cohesion and that of chemical affinity enable the particles to counteract the pull of gravitation, and thus remain intact. compared with cohesion or chemical affinity, the pull of gravitation is incomparably weak. the force which holds together two atoms of water represents a high degree of dynamic power, and the shock of forcible separation of chemical atoms produces something akin to an explosion. so we see that the attraction of the particles, while of the same nature as gravitation, is much higher in intensity. but notwithstanding the power of the attraction, it seems to be a matter inherent in the nature of the particle, and to represent a something like will, in response to desire. the varying "push and pull" or the two desires, would necessarily cause a revolution of each particle on its own axis, and a revolution around each other--besides many instances of rushing together and away from each other. in these forms of motion is to be found the cause of the vibrations producing radiant energy, known as light, heat, electricity and magnetism. chapter xi the theory of dynamic thought from the preceding chapters we have learned that: ( ) the forms of force or radiant energy, known as light, heat, magnetism and electricity, are "modes of motion," arising from the original motion of the particles of substance (molecules, atoms, corpuscles or electrons). and that such original motion of the particles arises from the operation of the law of attraction; ( ) that the forms of attractive force or energy, known as gravitation, cohesion, adhesion, atomic attraction, chemical affinity or chemism, and corpuscular attraction, also arise from the operation of the law of attraction; ( ) that, from the above, it follows that: all manifestations of force and energy in inorganic substance (_viz._, both radiant energy in its forms of light, heat, magnetism, electricity, etc.; and also attractive energy in its forms of gravitation, cohesion, adhesion, chemical affinity or atomic attraction and corpuscular attraction) arise from the operation of the law of attraction. it will be well to remember that the fact that some of the above forms of radiant force or energy, such as heat, light, magnetism and electricity, may arise from motion transmitted from other substance, does not alter the matter. for if they arise from "waves" from some other substance, it merely follows that the original motion that gave rise to the "waves" arose from the operation of the law of attraction. or, if they arise from "interrupted motion," it merely follows that the motion that is interrupted may be traced back to original motion that arose from the operation of the law of attraction. so that all mechanical power, and all the forms of energy or force producing the same (omitting for the moment the forms of energy or force of "living organisms," which will be described later on) arise from the operation of the law of attraction. now, for the next step. we have seen that the operation of the law of attraction results from vital-mental action on the part of the life and mind principle inherent in the nature of the particles of substance. consequently, all forms of energy and force arising from the operation of the law of attraction--the latter being the result of vital-mental action--then it follows that: _all forms of energy and force having its origin in the law of attraction are manifestations of vital-mental action._ but this is not all--for we have not considered the energy and force abiding in, and manifested by, what are called "living organisms," such as human, animal and plant life, which are manifested by the physical organisms or "bodies" of man, animal and plant. in order to avoid a long digression into the realms of biology, we will omit all but a passing reference to the theories that seek to identify the action of the cells of organic life with those of the particles of inorganic life--for remember, that organic substance has its molecules, atoms and corpuscles, as well as its higher combinations known as "cells"--and we will seek the ultimate source of all forms of force and energy, exhibited by "organic life," in that which lies back of "physical action." we need no argument here--for all will readily recognize that behind the physical action of man, animal and plant, lies life and mind, and that therefore all force and energy arising from such action must be manifestations of vital-mental action. and so, summing up our conclusions regarding force and energy and motion in inorganic substance--and then in organic substance--we arrive at an understanding of the basic proposition of the theory of dynamic thought, which is as follows: basic proposition.--_that all forms and exhibition of force, energy, motion and power are manifestations of vital-mental action. and that, consequently, at the last there is no force but vital-mental force; no energy but vital-mental energy; no motion but vital-mental motion; no power but vital-mental power._ it is possible that the average reader will fail to recognize the tremendous importance of the above proposition. it is most revolutionary, and is not only directly opposed to the materialistic theory which makes matter the dominant factor--the only factor, in fact--in life; but it is also far different from the opinion of the average person who has been taught to think of "blind force," "dead matter," "mechanical energy," "power of machinery, engines," etc. and yet, you are invited to go back over the path that leads up to the theory, and test and examine every bit of the road for weak spots--insecure bridges, etc.--the writer feels that the work will bear examination. he thinks that he has succeeded not only in proving that ( ) the universe is alive and thinking; and ( ) that mind is dominant--but he believes, also, that he has made at least partially understandable the old occult and metaphysical aphorism that has been heard so much in these later days--the statement that "all is mind--mind is all." the only fact needed now is the proof of the old occult theory that matter or substance blends gradually into mind, and that in the end it is found to have its origin there. so far, science has not given us this proof, but it begins to look that way, although science does not dream of what lies at the end of the road she is travelling. she tells us that she sees matter melting into force or energy, and that perhaps the universe may be found to be energy or force, at the last. but she ignores the fact that her investigations have already proven (to those who know how to combine them) that mind is back of force--that all force is mental force, at the last. and, so, you see it is not so far a cry from matter to mind in these days of the twentieth century. the bridge is being erected by the materialists, but the mentalist will be the first to cross over it. but there are many important questions ahead of us for consideration in relation to the theory of dynamic thought. and we must hasten on to them. one of the first questions that must be considered is that of the transmission of force, energy or motion. science has told us that light travels and is "contagious," that heat travels and is "contagious," that electricity travels and is "contagious," that magnetism travels and is "contagious." but is has failed to find evidences of cohesive force, or adhesive force, or the force of gravitation, or the force of chemical affinity, or the force of corpuscular affinity, being "contagious," and although it recognizes that they must "travel" beyond the limits of the bodies manifesting them, yet it has hazarded no theory or hypothesis, worthy of the name, to account for the phenomenon. it informs us that light, heat, magnetism and electricity "travel" (via waves of the "ether") at the rate of , miles per second--and that when they reach their destination the "ether waves" set up similar vibrations in the substance with which they come in contact. the only explanation of the method or medium of "travel" is the "aristotle's ether" theory, which, while generally accepted as a working hypothesis, nevertheless, brings a broad smile to the face of any thoughtful scientist who considers it in detail. as for the medium of the transmission of gravitation, cohesion, chemical affinity and molecular affinity, science is mute. all that she says is that gravitation is believed to travel _instantaneously_ over distances that it takes light, travelling at the rate of , miles per second, _over two thousand years_ to travel. verily, gravitation defies scientific theories and estimates, and laughs at the "ether." let us see if the dynamic thought theory throws any light on the subject! the first step in the solution of the problem of the transferring and communication of energy is the remembrance of the fact that the energy is _purely mental_. be it gravitation, affinity or attraction, on the one hand--or light, heat, magnetism or electricity on the other--it is all mental force. attraction in all of its forms has been recognized as mental action. and the vibrations that cause light, heat, magnetism and electricity have been seen to result from the law of attraction, and, therefore, are mental. this being the case, would it not be wise for us to look for a solution of the transmission of force and energy in the region from which it originated--_the mental region_? does not this seem reasonable? should not the explanation for mental effects be sought in a mental cause? and should not the medium between mind and mind be looked for in the mental region? taking the liberty of peeping into some of the succeeding chapters of this book--getting a little ahead of the story, as it were--let us consider the operation of mind in the higher forms of life. without argument, or proof at this point, let us remember the well-founded statements of fact--and the old occult teachings as well--that the mind is not confined to the limits of the body, but extends as an "aura" for some distance beyond the physical form. let us also remember the phenomena grouped together under the general subject of "thought-transference," "thought-transmission," "telepathy," or (the best term of all) "telesthesia" (meaning, literally "far-off sensation"). the writer imagines that he hears the yell of derision go up at this point from the materialistic personage, or "man on the street," who has been induced to read this book by some well meaning friend. "thought-transference, fiddlesticks," we may hear him cry, in imagination. but let this reader remember--fiddlesticks, or no fiddlesticks--that thought-transmission is a proven fact--and that thousands of people _know_ it to be so, absolutely, from their own experience. it is too late in the day for sneers at the mention of the term. well, then, since force is mental, and we are looking for a mental explanation for the phenomenon of transmission of force, does it not seem natural to consider thought-transmission in that connection? answering a possible objection of some critical reader, to the effect that before a "sensation" may be received, the receiver must have "sense-organs"--a very good objection, but one that is answered by science itself--let us read on. haeckel, the distinguished scientist, in his endeavor to prove that man's senses are but a development of something in inorganic life, has called our attention to the fact that molecules, and atoms, are capable of "receiving" sensations and "responding" thereto. he makes quite a point of this in his latest works, and remarks, among many other things showing his positive views on the subject of "sensation in the inorganic world": "_i cannot imagine the simplest chemical and physical process without attributing the movements of the material particles to unconscious sensation_"; and again: "_the idea of chemical affinity consists in the fact that the various chemical elements perceive the qualitative differences in other elements--experience 'pleasure' or 'revulsion' at contact with them, and execute specific movements on this ground_." he also quotes, approvingly, the remarks of nageli, who said: "_if the molecules possess something that is related, however distantly, to sensation, it must be comfortable to be able to follow their attractions and repulsions; uncomfortable when they are forced to do otherwise_." haeckel also says that in his opinion _the sensations in animal and plant life are "connected by a long series of evolutionary stages with the simpler forms of sensation that we find in the inorganic elements, and that reveal themselves in chemical affinity_." is not this strong enough? perhaps we may now be permitted at least to "assume" that even the atoms, molecules and corpuscles have "something like sensation." some one may now object that haeckel speaks of "contact" between the particles, and that sensation by contact (even in an atom) is far different from sensation without contact, at a short distance. quite right, but if the objector will take the trouble to review the teachings of science regarding the relation of the particles, he will see that the particles are _never "exactly" in contact_, except in moments of collision, which, by the way, they carefully avoid. the corpuscles, as we have shown, have _"plenty of room" in which to move about_, and they move in orbits around each other. the atoms combine, _but there is always room between them_, as may be seen by reference to the teachings regarding the "ether," which "fills up the cracks" according to the theory. and the molecules _also have "plenty of room,"_ as may be seen by reference to that part of the subject, particularly to the comparison of the drop of water magnified to the size of the earth, in which the molecules would appear about the size of the original drop _with more room between each than their own size_. in fact, as we have been shown in a previous chapter, the particles are attracted only to a certain distance, at which they resist the impulse or attraction and "stand off" a bit. they will not be forced too near without creating disturbances, and manifestations of force, and if they are separate beyond a certain distance the attractive power ceases to operate. but _there is always some room between them_, and they bridge over that room and exert and receive the attractive power _in some way_. this is true not only of the particles but of the great bodies, like the earth and planets, that are attracted, and attract over great distances. now for the question: "how do they exert sense and attractive power over the great comparative distance--great, comparatively, as well in atom, as in planet and sun?" some one may answer the question closing the last paragraph with the word "_electricity_." very good--electricity, like the "ether," comes in quite handy when one is forced to explain something not known. "electricity," like the "glacial period," "aristotle's ether," "natural laws," and "suggestion," is a most handy weapon of argument, and often acts as a preventative to further inquiry and investigation until some sufficiently irreverent of precedent arises to ask, "but why and how?" and starts the ball rolling again. but "electricity" will not answer in this case, for the rate of the "travel" of electricity is well known-- , miles per second, which, fast as it is, assumes the crawl of a "slow-freight" when compared with the "instantaneous" rate of travel of gravitation. and then electricity requires a "medium" and gravitation does not, and in many other ways the two are seen to be totally different. and in the case of the space between the atom and molecule and corpuscle, it is no more reasonable to say "electricity" than it would be to say "heat" or "light"; and "magnetism" is not available for obvious reasons. remember that electricity, light and heat are _caused_ by motion resulting from attraction, and _the child cannot procreate the parent_. heat, light and electricity may beget each other (and they do). and gravitation may procreate heat, light and electricity. but heat, light and electricity _cannot procreate gravitation_--never! and light, heat and electricity require replenishing from the common source of energy, but gravitation is self-sufficient and asks no replenishing or storage-battery or power-house. electricity, heat and light come and go, appearing, manifesting and disappearing, swallowed up by each other, or by substance. but gravitation is always there--unchangeable--unwavering--immutable--invariable--something above matter and force--something majestic, awe-inspiring, sublime! does it take a wild flight of the imagination to see that this something, that is not matter, and nor force, _must be a manifestation of mind_? let us first apply this idea of thought-transference to the operation of the law of attraction between the corpuscles, atoms and molecules of substance--the particles of substance. the particles are believed to move to or away from each other in accordance with the workings of attraction and affinity, in its various degrees. first they must _desire_ to move--not desire in the developed sense that we feel it, but still elementary "feeling," or "inclination," or "tendency"--call it what you will, but it remains rudimentary mental emotion--an e-motion leading to motion. (this is not a pun--look up the meaning of the word emotion and you will see its application.) then, following the desire, comes the action in the direction of gratifying it. the particles act to gratify desire in two ways--acting at a "distance," remember--they exert the attractive force, which the writer believes to be mental force, _transmitted by mind, projection_, a mental or psychic bond or connection being thus established. by means of this bond of mind, the particle endeavors to ( ) draw itself to the object; and ( ) to draw the object toward itself. in the case of the molecule, this desire and movement seems to be mutual, and evidenced by and to all molecules alike, _providing they be within molecular distance_, as science calls it. but in the case of the atoms, it seems to be different--for there is found a greater degree of "choice," or "elective affinity." this "election" or "choice" is not altogether free, but depends upon the relative likes and dislikes of certain "kinds" of elements, as we have seen in previous chapters, although, to be sure, these elements are all made out of the same "stuff" in different combinations. the details of corpuscular attraction are not known, so it cannot be told whether "preferences" exist, or whether (in the words of the street) all corpuscles "look alike" to each other. it would appear, however, that there must be some reasons for preference, among the corpuscles, else they would always form in the same combinations--always act alike to each other, as they are alike in other actions--and thus there would be but _one_ element or kind of atom, formed, instead of the _seventy-five_, already known. to be sure, in this case, it _might_ be that the _one_ kind of atom formed would be the atom of hydrogen, and that all other elements, or atoms, were modifications of that one--just proving the dream of the scientists of the nineteenth century. but, as kipling would say, "that is another story." to return to the particle which we left trying to draw the other particle to itself, and itself toward the other. there is no _material_ connection between them (and electricity and magnetism will not answer), so what is to be done? evidently the particle knows, for it exerts _a "drawing" power or force by means of the mental-connection_, and two come together. the particle evidently is able to exert a repelling or "moving away" power by reversing the process, the mental-bond acting as the medium. this may cause a smile, because we have never seen an instance of bodies pulling themselves together by intangible "bonds." _haven't we?_ then how about two pieces of magnetised steel, or two electrified substances? oh, that's different, you say. _why, different?_ isn't _the bond intangible_? and, haven't we seen that both electricity and magnetism were mental actions also? oh,--er--but well,--oh yes, _that's_ it--perhaps the attracting force is magnetism or electricity. no, that will not do, for we have seen that electricity and magnetism were _products_ of this attraction, not _producers_ of it--the attraction must come _before_ electricity and magnetism, not _after_ them--you are mixing cause and effect. and, even if you were right--and you cannot be--wouldn't the electrical or magnetic force be _called into operation, and directed by the mental action_, arising from the desire? you cannot get away from mental action when you study the law of attraction. "but, how about the fact that heat causes the particles to change their vibrations, and draw apart, and all that sort of thing--and electricity, likewise?" you may ask. "surely this takes the matter away from mental action, doesn't it?" well, the writer thinks that the phenomenon referred to only helps to prove his theory. and he will endeavor to so prove to you. the consideration of the facts related in this chapter, leads us to a supplemental proposition to our basic proposition, which may be stated as follows: supplemental proposition i.--_not only is the law of attraction the manifestation of a mental process, or vital-mental action; but also the actual force or energy used in bringing the particles of substance in closer relation, in accordance with that law, is in its nature a vital mental force or energy, operating between bodies or particles of substance, without a material medium._ chapter xii the law of vibrant energy in previous chapters we have seen that the phenomena of radiant energy, known as light, heat, magnetism and electricity, had their origin in the motion of the particles, the different classes of phenomena depending upon the particular degree and nature of the aforesaid motion of particles. we have seen also that radiant energy could be communicated or transmitted from one body of substance to another. and that the communication of transmission might be accomplished not only by close contact of the bodies, but by "waves" of some sort which were caused in some "medium" (the ether) by the vibrations of the particles of the body, and which "waves," when they reached the other body, were transformed into vibrations of the particles corresponding to those manifested in the first body. the idea has been illustrated by the sending telephone, the sound waves in the diaphragm of which were transformed into waves of the electric current, and thus passing along the wires were transformed again into sound-waves by the diaphragm of the receiving instrument. we have seen, also in the preceding chapter, that the medium by which these vibrations were transferred, transmitted, or communicated, might be supposed to be mind, the operation being akin to thought-transference. now let us examine into the workings of the matter. in the first place, we assume a certain state of vibration, existing in a certain body of substance--heat, or electricity for instance (either illustration will answer.) another body of substance is brought in close contact with the first body, and the vibrations of energy pass on to the second, not by "waves" but by a seeming actual passing of vibrations without the need of intervening "waves." this, science calls transmission by conduction, the theory being that the particles rapidly "pass on" the vibrations from one to another. convection or conduction along other forms of substance, such as hot-air, hot-water-steam, etc., is but a variation of the above, as substance is the medium in both cases. the third form of transmission is by radiation, whereby the vibrations are transmitted by "waves" in some medium other than substance (according to the theory), as we have described in a preceding paragraph, as well as in previous chapters. as a matter of fact, a careful analysis of the matter will show that even in the "conduction" of the most solid substance, there must be a "_medium not substance_" between the particles of the substance, _for the particles always have space between them_--this being true of the particles of air, as well as those of iron. _so there is always space to be traversed by a "medium not substance."_ but we need not stop to split-hairs regarding this question, for the general explanation will explain this also. now, to get back to our body of substance vibrating with radiant energy, separated from a second body of substance by a great distance--thousands of miles in fact--millions would be better--let us take two worlds, for instance--the sun and the earth. ignoring for the moment the explanation of gravitations (which will be given later) and realizing that there _is no medium of substance_ existing between the two bodies, we must grant that there is a "_medium not substance_" existing between them, either permanently or thrown out for the purpose of this special transmission. we shall assume a medium existing before the need of the transmission (for reasons to be seen later.) our theory of dynamic thought, and thought-transference between bodies of substance, compels us to suppose that this medium _is a mental connection, or mental relation, existing between the two bodies of substance_. so, we must consider the question of this medium of mind transmitting the vibrations of radiant energy from the sun to the earth. how can mind conduct radiant energy? _it does not conduct radiant energy_, but it does _transmit_--not radiant energy--but the _mental state that causes radiant energy vibrations_. this statement of a "mental state causing radiant energy vibrations" seems rather startling at first sight--but let us examine it. we have seen that the radiant energy was caused by the motion or vibrations of the particles, which motion or vibration was the result of the workings of the law of attraction, and which law was but the manifestation of vital-mental action. and, at the last, the vibrations of radiant energy are the result of peculiar or particular "states" of the life and mind of the particle. the word "state" is derived from the latin word _status_, meaning "position; standing," and is used generally in the sense of "condition." this mental state of the particle may be described as a state of "_emotional excitement_." let us pause a moment to consider the meaning of these words--it often helps us to understand a subject, if we examine the real meaning of the words defining it. "emotion" is derived from the latin word _emotum_, meaning "to shake; to stir up"--the latin word being made up of two other words, _i.e._, _e_, meaning "out"; and motum, "to move." "emotion" is defined as "a moving or excitement of the mind." "excitement" is derived from the latin word _excitare_, meaning "to move out"--the english word being defined as "a calling to activity; state of active feeling; aroused activity." so you see that the idea of _active motion_, and _aroused activity_, of mind, permeates the term "emotional excitement," that is used by the writer in connection with the mental state causing vibration of the particles of substance. the single word, "excitement," will be used by the writer, hereafter, in the above connection, in order to avoid complex terms. to those who still object to the use of a mental term in reference to motion of substance, he might remark that science makes use of the term--"excite," and "excitement"--in reference to electrical phenomena, so that he is not altogether without support in the use of the word. now to return again to our body of substance--the sun--the particles of which are manifesting a great degree of "excitement," evidencing in vibrations producing the phenomenon of radiant energy. the excitement is shared equally by its particles, the "contagion" having spread among them. even the particles of its atmosphere are vibrating with excitement, and evidencing radiant energy. the sun is in direct mental connection with the earth (as we shall see presently) and the excitement is transmitted by thought-transference (along this mental connection) in the shape of dynamic thought-waves of excitement. these waves have a rate of speed of , miles per second--why this particular rate, or any rate at all, is not apparent; it being very evident, however, that this particular kind of mental action--excitement, or thought--is not transmitted _instantaneously_ as is the mental quality known as desire, resulting in attraction, or gravitation, which seems to be rather a basic quality, rather than a temporary disturbance or emotional excitement. but the writer must not get ahead of his story. the excitement of the particles of substance composing the sun is "contagious," and the thought-waves travel along the mental connection, or medium, at a wonderful rate of speed. soon they come in contact with the mental atmosphere of the earth and the excitement becomes manifest in action, the emotional excitement being reproduced by the particles of the earth's substance nearest the surface which vibrate and manifest the radiant energy in spite of themselves, for the tendency among particles is to "settle down," and remain "calm," rather than to participate in emotional excitement. they have acquired a normal and fixed rate of vibration, or mental state, after many years, gradually changing from a high state of excitement, to a comparative calm state. and, their tendency and inclination is conservative, and they are disposed to resent and repel radical states of excitement or disturbance, coming from other less conservative bodies. the above fact partially explains why the communicated excitement manifests itself more strongly on the surface of the body "exposed" to the contagion of excitement. the conservative influence is always at work, and manages to absorb and equally distribute the energy that is beating down upon it, without allowing it to penetrate very far. the energy is used-up or absorbed, and neutralized by the lower vibrations of the mass. the effort of the energy coming from the sending body is to "bring-up" the vibrations of the receiving body to the rate of the sender; while the effort of the receiving body is to resist this effort, and to reduce and "bring-down" the transmitted increased rate of vibration of the particles immediately exposed to the contagion. in both cases the effort is toward "equalization" of the rate of vibrations. this working of the law may be observed plainly in the case of heat vibrations--the energy seeming to wish to "bring-up" the vibrations or temperature of the second body, while the latter resists this effort, and strives to "bring-down" the vibrations or temperature of those particles of itself that have "caught the motion." the energy is like a radical agitator who wishes to stir up an excitement, leading to "a change," while the body is like the conservative element that prefers to "let well enough alone," and resists the stirring-up process, and exerts itself to restore quiet, and to maintain accustomed conditions. the explanation of the phenomenon given in any work on physics or natural philosophy will answer fairly well in the consideration of this theory of dynamic thought, the only important change being required, being the substitution of "thought-waves" for "waves of the ether" of science. science has described the "working operations," as might be expected from her years of careful study and examination. she has erred only in the theory or hypothesis advanced to account for the facts. her "ether" handed down by aristotle, is admitted by her to be paradoxical and "unthinkable"--but she has had none other to substitute for it. she will probably sneer at the dynamic thought, and thought-transference theory advanced in this book--if indeed she takes the trouble to examine it. but sometime, from her own ranks--among her most advanced members--will arise a man who will claim that "all force is mental force," and that "transference of energy is thought transference." and the scientific world will accept the doctrine after it finds itself unable to fight it down--and it will give new names and terms to its workings. and it will proclaim loudly the "new" truth. and this little book, and its writer will be ignored--but its work will go on. the writer although probably doomed to have himself and his theory laughed at by the masses of people (whose children will accept the teachings of this book) does not feel discouraged by the prospect. he cares nothing for personal credit--the truth being the important thing. like galvini, (whose words appear on the title page of this book) he may cry: "_i am attacked by two very opposite sects--the scientists and the know-nothings. both laugh at me, calling me the 'frog's dancing master,' but i know that i have discovered one of the greatest forces in nature._" the illustration given above of the transmission of the excitement of the particles of the sun to the particles of the earth, will answer equally well in the case of light, heat, magnetism and electricity. and it will answer in the case of the transmission of these forces between atoms, molecules, and masses as well as between worlds and solar systems. any bodies subject to the law of attraction may and do, so transmit vibrations. in our consideration of "the riddle of the sphinx," which forms the subject of the next chapter, we shall obtain further particulars of the workings of the law. the consideration of the facts and principles stated in this chapter brings us to a second supplemental proposition, which may be stated as follows: supplemental proposition ii.--_the rates of vibration of the particles of substance may be likened to "mental states"; and a high degree of the same may be called an "excitement." this "excitement" may be, and is, communicated from the particles of the body manifesting it, to the particles of other bodies--the medium of such communication being a mental connection or mental relation existing between the two bodies of substance, without the employment of any material medium--and which excitement, so communicated, reproduces in the second body the vibrations manifested in the first body, subject, always, to the counteracting efforts of the second body to maintain its accustomed, and former, rate of vibration, and mental state._ chapter xiii the riddle of the sphinx it is with no light emotion, or jaunty air, that the writer approaches this part of his subject. on the contrary, he feels something like awe when he contemplates the nature of that great something which he is called upon to attempt to "explain" in a few pages. he feels, in only a lighter degree, the emotion that one experiences when, in occasional moments, his mind leads to a contemplation of the infinite. he feels that that which men mean when they say "gravitation" and "the ether," are but symbols and feeble concepts of something so far above human experience that the mind of man may grasp only its lowest shadings, the greater and higher part of it, like the higher rays of the spectrum, being hidden from the experience of man. in his endeavor to pass on to you his ideas regarding the something that explains both gravitation and the ether, he must ask you to endeavor to form a mental picture of a "something." this something must fill all space within the limits of the universe, or cosmos--if limits it has. it must be an expression of the first of the attributes of the infinite--the one called omnipresence, or presence-everywhere--and _yet it must not be the infinite presence_. it also must be an expression of the second of the attributes of the infinite--the one called omnipotence, or all-power--and _yet it must not be the infinite power_. it also must be an expression of the third attribute of the infinite--the one called omniscience, or all-knowing--and _yet it must not be the infinite wisdom_. it must be an expression of all the attributes that _we think of_ as belonging to the infinite--_and yet through them all we may see the infinite, itself, in the background, viewing its expressions_. this something that you are asked to think of is that something regarding which the mystics have dreamed; the philosophers have speculated; the scientists have sneered and smiled--that something that men have thought of as the universal mind or the cosmic mind. you are asked to think of this something as a great ocean of pure mind, permeating all space--between solar systems--between worlds--between masses of substance--between the molecules, atoms, and corpuscles. in and about and around everything--yes, even in everything--in the very essence of the corpuscle it is--in truth _it is that essence itself_. bound up in the bosom of that mighty ocean of mind must reside all knowledge of the universe--of all "this side of god." for that all-knowledge is but a knowing of its own region. latent within itself must be locked up all energy, or capacity for force or motion, for all force or energy is mental. in its very presence it exemplifies the capacity of filling all space. omnipresent; omnipotent; omniscient--all the attributes of the infinite are manifested in it--_and yet it is but the outward expression of that-behind-the-veil, which is the causeless cause of all_. in that great ocean of universal or cosmic mind, bodies of substance are but as floating specks of dust--_or even bubbles formed of the substance of that ocean itself_--on the surface of that ocean, there may arise waves, currents, ripples, eddies, whirlpools,--storms, hurricanes, tempests,--from its bosom may rise vapor, that after stages of clouds, rain-drops, flowing in streams, rivers, bays, at last again reach the source of its origin. these disturbances and changes we call energy, force, motion--but they are but surface manifestations, and the great ocean is serene in its depths, and, in reality, is unchanged and undisturbed. this, friends, is that which the writer asks you to accept in the place of aristotle's ether. is it a worthy exchange? * * * * * we have seen that the attraction of gravitation was different from any other so-called form of force and energy--both in its operations and laws, as well as in its constancy and self-support. and that it was different from the other forms of attraction such as cohesion, chemical affinity, etc. and, so we must consider it as more than a mere "emotional excitement" in the mind of the particle--that bubble on the surface of the ocean. and it must be different from the special forms of attraction manifested by the atom and molecule. it must be a simpler, more basic, and yet a more constant and permanent thing. it must exist before and after "excitement; vibration; cohesion; and chemical affinity." _it must be the mother of the forces._ let us imagine the cosmic mind as a great body of something filling space, instead of as the surface of the ocean, which figure we used just now--either figure is equally correct. this great cosmic mind is to be thought of as filling space, and containing within its volume (oh, for a better word!) countless worlds, and suns, as well as smaller bodies of substance. these suns and world, and bodies are apparently free and unconnected, floating in this great volume of mind. but they are not free and unconnected--they are linked together by a web of lines of gravitation. each body of substance has a line reaching out in a continuous direction, and connecting it with another body. each body has one of such lines connecting it with _each_ particular "other body." consequently, each body has countless lines reaching out from it; some slender, and some thick,--the thickness depending upon the ratio of distances maintained by, and relative sizes of, the particular bodies that it connects. this system of "lines" form a great net-work of connections in the volume of mind, crossing each other at countless points (but not interfering with each other.) and although the number may be said to be "countless," still these lines do not begin to cover the entire dimensions of space, or of the mind that fills it. there are great areas of space entirely untouched by these lines. if one could see the system of lines, it probably would appear as a sheared off section of a great spider's web, with lines in all directions, but with "plenty of room" between the lines. _perhaps these lines converge to a common centre, and that centre may be----!_ but this is transcendental dreaming--let us proceed with our consideration of the use of these lines. it is to be understood, of course, that these "lines" _are not material_ lines--not made of substance--but rather, "conditions" in the cosmic mind. not thought-waves arising from the excitement of particles, but something more basic, simpler, and more permanent. let us look closer and we will see that the great lines of gravitation radiating from, and connecting world with world--sun with planet--are really cables composed of much smaller lines, the finest strands of which are seen to emanate from each corpuscle or particle of substance--the "line" of gravitation reaching from the earth to the sun being composed of a mass of tiny strands which connect each particle of one body with each particle of the other. the last analysis shows us that _each particle is connected with every other particle in the universe by a line of attraction_. _these "lines of attraction" are what we call gravitation_--purely mental in nature--lines of mind-principle in the great volume of mind. these lines of gravitation must have existed from the creation of the particle, and the connection between particle and particles must have existed from the beginning, if beginning there was. the particles may have changed their positions and relations in the universe, but the lines have never been broken. whether the particle existed as a free corpuscle--whether combined as atom or molecule--whether part of this world or sun or planet, or that one countless millions of miles removed--it mattered not. the line of gravitation always was there, between that particle and every other particle. distance extended and thinned the line, or the reverse, as the case might be--but it was there, always. obstacles proved no hindrance to passage, for the lines passed through the obstacle. can it not be seen that here is the secret of the fact that no "time" is required for the passage of gravitation--it apparently traveling instantaneously, whereas, in fact, it does not "travel" at all. and does not seem that this theory also explains why no medium is required for the "travel" of gravitation? and does it not explain why gravitation is not affected in its "passage" by intervening bodies? gravitation does not "travel" or "pass"--it remains constant, and ever present between the articles, varying in degree as the distance between the particles is increased, and _vice-versa_; and increasing and decreasing in effect, according to the number of particles combining their lines of attraction, as in the case of atom, molecule, mass, world. gravitation is a mental connection or bond uniting the mind in the several particles, rather than their substance or material. along these lines of gravitation pass the "thought-waves," resulting from the excitement of the particles--these fleeting, changing, inconstant waves of emotion--how different they are from the changeless, constant exhibition of gravitation. and along these same lines--when shortened by close contact, travel the impulses of cohesion and chemical affinity. gravitation not only performs its own work, but also acts as a "common-carrier" for the waves of desire-force, and the thought-waves of excitement of the particles, manifesting as attractive energy, and radiant energy, respectively. the writer asks you to remember, particularly, that while the desire-waves of the particles,--and their thought-waves of excitement--are changeable, disconnected, and inconstant; the line of gravitation is never broken, and could not be unless the particle of substance was swept out of existence, in which case the balance of the universe would be overturned, and chaos would result. the divine plan is perfect to the finest detail--every particle is needed--is known--is counted--and used in the plan. and gravitation is the plainest evidence of the reality of the infinite that is afforded us. _in it we see the actual machinery of the infinite._ no wonder that great thinkers have bowed their heads reverently before its power and awfulness, when their minds have finally grasped its import. verily the sparrow's fall is noted, and known, as the biblical writer has recorded, for the fall is in obedience to that great law that holds the particles in their places--that makes possible the whirl of worlds, and the existence of solar systems--that, indeed, makes possible the forms of life as we know them--that something that forever and ever has, and will, silently, ceaselessly, untiringly, and without emotion, fulfilled its work and destiny--gravitation. * * * * * the theory of dynamic thought also holds that in addition to the existence of the cosmic mind, or ocean of mind-principle--and the lines of attraction that run through it, each particle has its mental atmosphere, or aura. the aura is an atmosphere of mind that surrounds the particle--and also the larger bodies--and also living forms higher in the scale. this aura is merely an extension of the bit of mind that is segregated or apparently separated from the cosmic mind, for use by the individual particle, mass, or creature. through, and by means of this aura the particle takes cognizance of the approach and nature of the other particles in its vicinity. the same rule holds good in the case of the creatures, including man, as we shall see in a later chapter. the fact is mentioned here, merely in order to connect the several manifestation of mental phenomena mentioned in the several parts of this book. * * * * * some may object to the theory of the lines of gravitation being the only "carriers" of the energy of the sun, as being contrary to the conception of science that the sun radiates energy _in all directions equally_, just as does a piece of hot iron, or a lamp. answering this objection, the writer would say that there is a decided difference in the two cases. the iron or lamp radiates its heat and light to the particles of the surrounding air and other substance in close distance, the "lines" being very close together,--so close in fact that they seem to be continuous and having no space between them, at least no space sufficiently large to be detected by the eye of man, or his instruments. but with the sun the case is different, for the distances are greater and the lines spread apart as the distance is increased. draw a diagram of many fine rays emanating from a central point, and you will have the idea at once. if space were filled with substance, just as is the atmosphere of the earth--the air, is meant of course--then indeed would the lines practically be joined together, but as space between the worlds is almost devoid of substance, the lines between the sun and the other worlds, and planets, spread out rapidly as the distance from the sun increases. to show how this objection is really an additional proof of the theory the writer begs to call your attention to the fact that according to the calculations of the physicists in science, the sun's energy would have been exhausted in , , years, granting that it was dispersed equally in all directions during that time. but, _note this_, science in its other branches, namely in geology, etc., holds that the sun already has been throwing out energy for , , or more years, and seems able to stand the strain for many millions of years more. thus science is arrayed against science. does not this theory harmonize the two, by showing that the sun does _not_ emanate energy in _all_ directions, equally, and at all times--but, on the contrary radiates energy _only along the lines of gravitation, and in proportion to the relative distances and sizes of the bodies to whom such energy is radiated_? the writer need scarcely state that in the short space at his disposal, in the pages of this book, he has been able merely to outline his theory of dynamic force, as applied to the inorganic world. the patience of the average reader has limits--and he must pass on to other features of the workings of the theory, namely the mental life of man, in which the same laws are manifested. but, he feels that those interested in the phases of the subject touched upon, may explain for themselves the missing details by reference to the teachings of modern science on the subjects of physics, remembering, _always_, to substitute the theory of dynamic thought for the "ether" theory that modern science borrows from aristotle as a temporary "makeshift." the writer believes that this theory will account for many of the missing links in physics--a broad statement, he knows, and one either extremely impudent or superbly confident, according to the view-point of the critic. * * * * * the writer may be able to throw a little additional light, probably, upon the question of the relation between gravitation, and the excitement-waves of radiant energy. without attempting to go into details, he wishes to suggest that in view of the fact that the particles are connected by the "lines of gravitation," any great, extended, and rapid disturbance of a number of particles would cause a series of undulating or wave-like movements in the "lines," which might be spoken of as waves of "agitation or unrest" in the lines of gravitation. this agitation, or unrest, of course, would be thus communicated to all other particles toward whom lines extended, the intensity or effect of such agitation or unrest depending upon the relative distances, and the number of particles involved. we may easily imagine how the intense and high rate of vibration among the particles of the sun, manifesting as intense heat, would cause a like high degree of agitation or unrest among the lines of gravitation--the "lines" dancing backward and forward; around and about; following the movements of the particles, and thus producing "waves" of gravitational agitation and unrest, which when communicated to the particles of the earth, would produce a similar excitement among the particles of the latter. in the same way the "sun-spots," and consequent terrestial electrical disturbance may be explained. while not absolutely tying himself to this particular conception of the details of the workings of the law, the writer feels free to say that he considers it a very reasonable idea, and one that in all probability will be found to come nearer to explaining the phenomena, than any other hypothesis. it certainly coincides with the "undulatory wave" theory of science. the idea is but crudely expressed here, for lack of space, it being impossible to attempt to go into details--the mere mention of general principles being all that is possible at this time and place. * * * * * and now, for a few additional words on the subject of our theory that in place of the hypothetical ether of science--a substance that is not substance--there exists a great ocean of cosmic mind. the idea is not without coroborative proof in the direction of the thought of advanced thinkers even among the ranks of science. while science has accustomed the public to the idea that in the universal ether might be found the origin of matter--the essence of energy--the secret of motion--it has not spoken of "mind," in connection with this universal something. but the idea is not altogether new, and some daring scientific thinkers have placed themselves on record regarding same. let us quote from a few of them--it will make smoother our path. _edward drinker cope_, in several of his writings, hinted at the idea that _the basis of life and consciousness lay back of the atoms, and might be found in the universal ether_. _dolbear_ says: "_possibly the ether may be the medium through which mind and matter react_." _hemstreet_ says: "_mind in the ether is no more unnatural than mind in flesh and blood_." _stockwell_ says: "the ether is coming to be apprehended as an _immaterial_, superphysical substance, filling all space, carrying in its infinite throbbing bosom the specks of aggregated dynamic force called worlds. _it embodies the ultimate spiritual principle_, and represents the unity of those forces and energies from which spring, as their source, all phenomena, physical, _mental and spiritual_, as they are known to man." _dolbear_ speaks of the ether as a substance, which, besides the function of energy and motion, has other inherent properties "_out of which could emerge, under proper circumstances, other phenomena, such as life, or mind or whatever may be in the substratum_." _newton_ spoke of it as a "_subtle spirit, or immaterial substance_." _dolbear_ says: "the ether--the properties of which _we vainly strive to interpret in the terms of matter_, the undiscovered properties of which ought to warn every one against the danger of strongly asserting what is possible and what is impossible in the nature of things." _stockwell_ says: "that the ether _is not matter in any of its forms_, practically all scientists are agreed. _dolbear_, again, says: if the ether that fills all space is not atomic in structure, presents no friction to bodies moving through it, and is not subject to the law of gravitation, it _does not seem proper to call it matter_. one might speak of it as a substance if he wants another name for it. as for myself, i make _a sharp distinction between the ether and matter_, and feel somewhat confused to hear one speak of the ether as matter." and yet, in spite of the above expressions, no scientist has dared to say in plain words that the ether, or whatever took the place of the ether, _must be mind_, although several seem to be on the verge of the declaration, but apparently afraid to voice their thought. * * * * * in view of what we have seen in our consideration of the facts and principles advanced in this chapter, we are invited to consider the following two supplemental propositions: supplemental proposition iii.--_connecting each particle of substance with each and every other particle of substance, there exists "lines" of mental connection, the "thickness" of which depends upon the distance between the two particles, decreasing in proportion as the distance is increased. these "lines" may be considered as "conditions" of the great ocean of cosmic mind which pervades and fills all space, including the essence or inner being of the particles of substance, as well as the space between the said particles. these "lines" are the "lines of gravitation," by and over which the phenomenon of gravitation is manifested. these lines of gravitation have always existed between each particle and every other particle, and have persisted continuously and constantly, throughout all the changes of condition, and position, and relation, that the particles have undergone. there is no "passage" or "transmission" of energy or force of gravitation over these lines, or any other channel, but, on the contrary the energy or force of gravitation is a constant and continuous mental connection or bond existing between the mind of the particles, rather than between their substance or material._ supplemental proposition iv.--_the lines of gravitation, mentioned in the preceding proposition, are the medium over which travel, or are transmitted the "thought-waves" resulting from the excitement of the particles, and by which waves the "mental states" are communicated or transmitted. the same medium transmits or carries the mental force of attraction--cohesion, chemical affinity, etc., evidencing in the relation of the particles to each other. thus gravitation not only performs its own work, but also acts as a "common carrier" for the "waves of excitement," manifesting as radiant energy; and the waves of desire-force, manifesting as attractive energy._ * * * * * and here, the writer rests his case in the action in the forum of advanced thought, entitled "_the theory of dynamic thought vs. the theory of aristotle's ether_," in which he appears for the plaintiff. he begs that you, the members of the jury, will give to the evidence, and argument, due consideration, to the end that you may render a just verdict. chapter xiv the mystery of mind the writer, in this book, has treated the two manifestations of life, _viz._, mind and substance, as if they were separate things, although he has hinted at his belief that substance, at the last, might be found to emanate from mind, and be but a cruder form of its expression. the better way to express the thought would be to say that he believes that both substance, and mind _as we know it_, are but expressions of a form of mind as much higher than _that which we know as mind_, as the latter is higher than substance. but he does not intend to follow up this belief, in this book, as the field of the work lies along other lines. the idea is mentioned here, merely for the purpose of giving a clew to those who might be interested in the conclusions of the writer, regarding this more remote regions of the general subject. the writer agrees with the ancient occult teachings regarding the existence of the cosmic mind, as he has stated in the last chapter. this cosmic mind, he believes, is independent of substance, in fact it is the mother of substance, and its twin-brother, _mind as we know it_. _mind, as we know it_, and substance are always found in connection with other. it is true that the form of substance, used by mind as its body, may be far finer than the rarest vapor that we know, but it is substance nevertheless. the working of the great plan of the universe seems to require that mind shall always have a body with which to work, and this rule applies not only in the case of the densest form of substance and the mind-principle manifesting through it, but also in the case of the highest manifestation of mind, as we know it, which requires a body through which to manifest. this constant combination of mind and substance--the fact that no substance has been found without at least a trace of mind, and no mind except in relation to and combination with substance, has led many scientific thinkers to accept the materialistic idea that mind was but a property of substance, or a quality thereof. of course, these philosophers and thinkers have had to admit that they could form no idea of the real nature of mind, and could not conceive how substance really _could_ "think," but they found the materialistic idea a simpler one that its opposite, and so they fell into it. notwithstanding the fact that there was always a something within that would cry "pshaw!" at the conclusion of the argument or illustration, these men have thought it reasonable to believe that there was no such thing as mind, except as a result of "irritation of tissue," etc. but, nevertheless, there is always a something in us that, in spite of argument, keeps crying like a child, "_'taint so_!" and, wonderful to relate, we heed the little voice. this materialistic theory is a curious reversal of the facts of the case. even the very conclusions and reasoning of these thinkers is made possible only by the existence of that mind which they would deny. the human reason is incapable of "explaining" the inner operation of the mind, upon a strictly and purely physical basis. _tyndall_, the great english scientist, truthfully said, "_the passage from the physics of the brain, to the corresponding facts of consciousness, is unthinkable. granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action of the brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from the one phenomenon to the other._" the materialist is prone to an attempt to rout the advocates of "mind" with a demand for an answer to the question, "what is mind?" the best answer to that question lies along the proverbial irishman's lines of answering a question by asking another one, resulting in the "answering question," "what is _matter_?" as a fact, the human reason is unable to give an intelligent answer to either question, and the best opinion seems to be to consider them as but two aspects of something, the real origin of which lies in something higher, of which both are aspects or forms of expression. the occult teaching, with which the writer agrees, is that the "mind" inherent in any portion of substance, from the corpuscle up to the brain of man, is but a segregated (or apparently separated) portion of the universal mind-principle, or cosmic mind. this fragment of mind is always connected with substance, and, in fact, it is believed that it is separated from the universal mind, and the other separate minds by a "film" of the rarest substance, so fine as to be scarcely distinguishable from mind. this separation is not a total separation, however, for the fragment of mind is in connection with all other fragments of mind, by "mental filaments," and besides is never out of touch with the cosmic mind. but, comparatively, the fragment of mind is _apart_ from the rest, and we must consider it in this way, at least for the purpose of study, consideration, and illustration. it is like a drop in the ocean of mind, although connected, in a way, with every other drop, and the ocean itself. the individual mind is not closely confined within the substance in which it abides, but extends beyond the physical limits of the substance, sometimes to a quite considerable distance. the aura, or egg-shaped projection or emanation of mind, surrounding each particle and each individual, is an instance of this. in addition to the aura, there is possibly an extension of mind to a considerable distance beyond the immediate vicinity of the physical limits, the connection, however, never being broken during the "life" term. mental influence at a distance, however, does not always require the above mentioned projection of the mind. thought-waves often answer the purpose, and, besides, there is such a thing as the imparting of mental vibrations to the small particles of substances with which the atmosphere is filled, which vibrations continue for quite a time, often for a long period after the presence of the individual producing them. these matters shall be discussed in later chapters of this book. the mind of man is a far more complex thing that is generally imagined by the average man. not only in its varied manifestation of consciousness, but its great region of "below-consciousness" or infra consciousness, as it is called. it shall be the purpose of the sequel to this book (now in preparation) which will be entitled "the wonders of the mind," to describe these inner workings, and to point out methods of utilizing the same. our next chapter, entitled "the finer forces of the mind," will lead us into this field. chapter xv. the finer forces of the mind. it was the writer's original intention to close the book with the chapter in which he brought to a close his argument, and presentation of the case of "dynamic thought." the book was written for the purpose of demonstrating that theory, and it naturally should have closed there. the writer has in simultaneous course of preparation a companion book, entitled "_the wonders of the mind_," in which, in addition to information and instruction regarding the latent powers and hidden regions of the mind--including an investigation of the infra-conscious and ultra-conscious regions; automatic thinking; occult systems of mentation; mental development, and unfoldment, etc.--he purposes taking up the subject of "dynamic thought," from the mental plane of man. and he thought it better to keep the two branches of the subject separate and apart. but, notwithstanding the above facts, he feels that he cannot close the present book--the consideration of the present phase of the subject, without at least a passing reference to the fact that "dynamic thought" is fully operative on the plane of human mentation, as on the plane of atomic mentation. in fact, man has the same power, potentially, that is possessed by the atom, only refined to a degree corresponding to the development of man as compared to that of the atom. the power is raised to a higher plane of mentation, but is fully operative. just as the body of man contains physical life corresponding with the different stages of lower physical life, mineral, vegetable, and animal--for instance, the mineral-like bones, and the mineral salts in the system; the plant-like life and work of the cells; and the animal-like flesh, and physical life; in addition to the wonderful brain-structure and fine brain development, peculiar to man--so has man the lower mental qualities of the lower life, in addition to his glorious human consciousness that is reserved for the highest form of life on the globe. in his mental regions, man has the power of the atom of attracting particles of substance to him, that he may combine it with other substances in building up his body--then he has the plant-like cell mentation, that does the building-up work, and repairs wounds, and damaged parts, etc.--then he has the animal mentation evidencing in the passions, desires, and emotions of the purely animal nature, and which mentation, by the way, keeps man busy in controlling by means of his higher mental faculties, that are god's gift to man, and are not possessed by the animals. but all this will form part of the sequel, "_the wonders of the mind_," and are merely mentioned here in passing. and, just as man is enabled to use elementary the physical qualities that he finds in his body, and to turn same to good account in living his human life, so does man, consciously, or unconsciously, make use of these elementary mental powers in his everyday mental life. and if he but realizes what a _conscious_ use of these faculties, guided by the human will, will do, man may become a different order of being. this is the basis of the occult teachings, and the mysteries of the ancients, as well as the teachings of the modern secret esoteric bodies and societies, such as the "rosicrucians" and "hermetic brotherhood," and several other societies whose names are not known--the _real_ societies are referred to, not the brazen imitations that unscrupulous men are holding out to the public as the original orders, membership being offered and urged for the consideration of a few dollars. it is needless to say that membership in the _real_ occult orders is _never urged_, and _cannot be bought_. but to return to the subject--the individual mind of man is in direct touch, not only with the great cosmic mind, but also with the individual mind of every other man. just as the particles are bound by lines of attraction, so are the minds of men bound together by lines of mind, or mental filaments. and just as special forms of attraction exist between the particles, so do special forms of attraction exist between men. and just as particles are influenced at a distance by other particles, so are men influenced at a distance by other men. and just as the particle draws toward itself that which it desires, so do men draw toward themselves that which they desire. and just as mental-states and "excitement" are transmitted, or communicated from particle to particle, so are mental states or "excitement" transmitted or communicated from men to men. "_as above so below--as below so above_," says the old occult maxim, and it may be found to operate on every plane. the phenomena of thought transference; telepathy; telesthesia; mental projection; suggestion; hypnotism, mesmerism, etc., etc., may be explained and understood, by reason of an acquaintance with the "theory of dynamic thought," as explained in this book. an understanding of one gives you the key to the other--for the law operates precisely the same on each particular plane. if the reader will think over this statement, and then apply it to his investigations and experiments, he will find that he has the key to many mysteries--the loose end of a mighty ball of thread, which he may unwind at his leisure. let us begin by a consideration of the process of thought-production in the human mind. in this way we may arrive at a clearer idea of the mental phenomena known as thought-force; mental power; thought-waves; thought-vibrations; mind-transference; mental influence, etc. to understand these things we must begin by understanding the process of thought-production. here is found the secret of the phenomena named, and much more. in the first place, while the brain is the organ of the mind--the instrument that the mind uses in producing thought, still the brain does _not_ do the thinking, nor is the brain-matter visible to the eye, the material instrument of thinking. the brain (and other portions of the nervous systems, including the "little brains" or ganglia, found in various parts of the body) is composed of a certain substance--a fine form of plasm, which however is but the ground-work of foundation for finer forms of substance used in the production of thought. science has not discovered this finer substance, for it is not visible to the eye, or to the finest instruments, but trained occulists know that it exists. this fine substance escapes the scalpel and microscope of the biologists and anatomists, and, consequently, their search for "mind" in the brain is futile. there is something more than "tissue to be irritated" in the brain. but, remember, that this "something more" is still substance, and not mind itself. thought is a form of "excitement" in this fine brain-substance, which we may as well call psycho-plasm, from the two greek words meaning "the mind," and "a mold, or matrix," respectively--the combined word meaning the "mould or matrix of mind," in other words the material substance used by the mind in which to "cast" or "mold" thoughts. this excitement in the psychoplasm manifests in vibrations of its particles--for, like all substance, it has "particles." all scientists agree that in the process of thinking there is an expenditure of energy, and a "using-up" of material substance. just how this is effected, they do not know, but their experiments have shown that there is energy manifested and used, and also substance consumed. the secret of the production of thought does not lie in the brain or nervous system, which are but the material substratum upon which the mind works, and which it uses as a mold or matrix for the production of thought. thought is the product of mind directing force upon substance in the shape of psychoplasm. and energy is manifested in the production of thought just as much as in the operation of the law of attraction, or chemical action. "_what_ force and energy?" may be asked. the answer is "_mental_ force!" but although the answer stares them right in the face, scientists deny that mind contains force or energy within itself, and persist in thinking of force as a "mechanical thing," or as necessarily derived from the common forms of energy, such as heat, light or electricity. they ignore the fact that mind has a finer force which it uses to perform its work. how do the atoms attract each other and move together? there is an evidence of force and energy here that is not heat, light or electricity--what is it? when a man wishes to close his hand, he wills that it be closed, and sends a current of this finer force of the mind along the nerve to the muscle, and the latter contracts and the hand is closed. a similar process is used in every muscular action. _what is the force used?_ science admits the existence of this force, and calls it "nervous energy," or "nerve force." it holds that it must be something like electricity, and some even go so far as to say that it _is_ electricity. they base their ideas upon the fact that when electricity is applied to the muscle of living or dead animals, they contract just as they do when this "nerve force" is applied, and every movement of the muscles may be so produced by electricity, which becomes a counterfeit nerve force. but, here is the point, this force cannot be identical with electricity, _for none of the appliances for registering electric currents will register it_. it is not electricity, _but is some finer force of the mind_, generated in the material substratum that the mind uses as a base of operation. this fine force of the mind is generated in some way in the brain and nervous system, by action upon the psychoplasm. the brain, or brains (for man has several centres worthy of that term) are like great dynamos and storehouses of this force, and the nerves are the wires that carry it to all parts of the system. more than this, the nerves have been found to be generators of force, also, as well as the brain. experiments have shown that the supply of force in a nerve vanishes when the nerve is used, in which case it draws upon the storehouses for an additional supply. this fine force of the mind is really the source of all energy, for as we have shown in previous chapters, all motion arises from mental action, and this form of force or energy is the primal force or energy produced by the mind. and this force is in operation in all forms of life, from the atom to the man. and not only may it be used by the particle, but man, also, has it at his disposal. as a proof that substance is "used-up," and energy manifested in the production of thought, science points to the fact that the temperature of a nerve rises when it is used, and the temperature of the brain increases when it is used for extended thought. scientists have claimed, and advanced a mass of proof to back up the same, that thought was as much a form of energy as was the pulling of a train of cars, and was attended by the production of a definite amount of heat, resulting from the activity of the fine substance of the physical extended resistant and composite substratum. but, science has taken all this to mean that thought and mind were purely material things, and properties of matter. it has claimed that "matter thinks," instead of that mind uses the matter or substance, in its finer forms, as a _substratum for the production of thought_. buchner, the leader of the purely materialistic school, claims positively that thought is but the product of matter. he says: "is it not a patent fact, obvious to all but the wilfully blind that _matter does think_? de la mettrie made merry over the narrowness of the mentalists, in saying: 'when people ask whether matter can think, it is as though they asked whether matter can strike the hours!' matter, indeed, as such, thinks as little as it strikes the hours; but it does both, when brought into such conditions that thinking, or hour-striking results as a natural action or performance." the above quoted opinion of buchner shows how narrow and one-sided a talented man may become by reason of shutting out all other points of view, and seeing only one phase of a subject. the example of the "hour-striking" is a poor figure for the materialists, for although matter _does_ strike the hours, it does so only when wound up by man under direction of his mind. and in the manufacture, adjustment, and winding of the clock, mind is the cause of the action. and, more than this, the very action of the coiled spring that is the immediate cause of the striking, results from the _mental_ effort of the particles of the spring endeavoring to resume their accustomed position, under the law of elasticity, as explained in our chapters on substance. science renders valuable service in showing us the details of the "mechanism" of thought, but it will never really _explain_ anything unless it assumes the existence of mind, back of and in everything. it may dissect the brain-cells, and show us their composition, but it never will find mind under the scalpel, or in the scale or test-tube. not only is this true, but it cannot even discover the fine psychoplasm which is used in the production of mind. but we may make use of its investigations regarding the matter of activity of brain-substance in the process of thought, and by combining them with our belief regarding the existence of mind we may form a complete chain of reasoning, without any missing-links--these missing-links appearing both in the case of the "no-mind" philosophers, and the "no-matter" metaphysicians. this theory of mind and substance considered as the two aspects of something higher, from which both have originated or emanated, will come to be regarded as the only "thinkable" proposition, in the end. and, with this idea in view, we may use the facts and experiments of the materialists, while smiling at their theories. and, with but a slight change of words, we may turn against them their own verbal batteries. in this way, we may take moleschott's famous statement: "_thought is but a motion of matter_," and render it intelligible by making it read as follows: "_thought produces motion in matter_." this finer force of the mind is in full evidence to those who look for it, and although it may not be registered by the scales or instruments designed to register the coarser grades of force, still it _is_ registered in the minds of men and women, and in the actions resulting from their thoughts. these living registers of the force respond readily to it,--and every one of us is such a register. just as is the force a much higher grade of energy than the forms usually considered as comprising the entire range of energy, so are the instruments required for its registration much higher than those used to determine the degrees of heat, light, electricity, and magnetism. it may be that the future will give us instruments adapted for the purpose--in fact it begins to look even now as if the same were forthcoming. but whether we have such mechanical instruments, or not, the living instruments give us a sufficient proof of the existence of the force, and its operation. well--the writer still finds himself unable to bring the book to a close. he added this chapter, to show that the property of dynamic thought extended to the highest development of mind, as well as abiding in the lowest. and, now that he has ventured upon the subject, he finds himself impelled to give you a few instances of the workings and operations of that law, in the case of human mental life. and this means one more chapter--but only one, remember. the book must come to an end sometime remember. and, so we will pass over into another chapter, which will be entitled, "thought in action." chapter xvi thought in action without attempting to go into details, or to enter into explanations, the writer purposes taking his readers on a flying trip through the region of "thought in action," or "dynamic thought in operation in human life." the details of this fascinating region must be left for another and more extended visit, in our next book (before mentioned) which will be called "_the wonders of the mind_." but he thinks that even this flying trip will prove of interest and instruction. let us start with a hasty look at man himself. not to speak of his "seven planes of mind," which belongs to the next visit, we find him a very interesting object. not only has he a physical body, apparent to our senses, but he has also a finer or "astral body," which he may use (unconsciously, or consciously, when he learns how) for little excursions away from the body, during his lifetime. this astral body is composed of substance just as his denser physical body. the field and range of substance extends far beyond the powers of ordinary vision, as even the materialists must admit when they talk of "radiant matter," "etherial substance," etc. then he has currents of fine force coursing through his nervous system, which may be seen by those possessing "astral vision," if the teachings of the occultists be true. then he, like the particle, has an "aura" or egg-shaped projection of mind and fine particles of psychoplasm, which has been thrown off in the process of thought, and which clusters around him, producing a "mental atmosphere," which constantly surrounds him, and makes itself "felt" by those coming in his presence. those who read these words may remember, readily, the "feeling" they have experienced when coming in contact with certain people--how some radiated an atmosphere of cheerfulness, brightness, etc., while others radiated the very opposite. some radiate a feeling of energy, activity, etc., while others manifest just the reverse. many likes and dislikes between people meeting for the first time, arise in this way, each finding in the mental atmosphere of the other, some inharmonious element. these radiations are perceived by others coming into their range. occultists tell us that the character of a man's thought vibrations may be determined by certain colors, which are visible to those having "astral sight." there is nothing so wonderful about this, when it is remembered that the various "colors" of light, comprising the visible colors of the spectrum, ranging from red, on through orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and terminating in violet, arise simply from different rates of vibration of the particles of substance. and as thought is produced by mind causing vibrations in the psychoplasm, why is not the astral colors reasonable? we cannot stop to consider these colors in detail, but may run over the ones corresponding to each marked emotion of thought, as reported by the occult teachings. for instance the shade of the thought manifesting in physical or organic functions, is of a colorless white, or "color of clear water"; and the color of the thought manifesting in fine force or vital energy, is that of air,--heated air arising from a furnace or heated ground--when it emerges from the body although of a faint pink when in the body itself. black represents hate, malice, etc.; gray (bright shade) represents selfishness, while gray of a dark dull shade represents fear. green represents jealousy, deceit, treachery, and similar emotions, ranging from the dull shades which characterize the lower and cruder forms, to the bright shades which characterize the finer, or more delicate forms of "tact," "politeness," "diplomacy," etc. red (dull shade) represents sensuality and animal passion, while red (bright and vivid) represents anger. crimson, in varying shades, represents the phases of "love." brown represents avarice or greed. orange represents pride and ambition; and yellow, in varying shades, represents grades of intellectual power. blue is the color of the religious thoughts, ranging, however, through a great variety of stages, from the dull shade of superstitious religious belief, to the beautiful violet of the highest religious emotion or thought. what is generally known as "spirituality" is characterized by a light blue of a peculiarly luminous shade. just as there are ultra-red, and ultra-violet rays in the spectrum, which the eye cannot perceive, so occultists inform us there are "colors" in the aura or mental atmosphere of a person of unusual psychic or occult development, the ultra-violet rays indicating the thought of one who is pursuing the higher planes of occult thought and unfoldment, while the ultra-red is evidenced by those possessing occult development, but who are using the same for base and selfish purposes--"black-magic" in fact. there are other shades, known to occultists, indicating several highly developed states of mind, but it is needless to mention them here. but the influence of these particles of "thought-stuff" thrown off from the mind psychoplasm under the vibrations produced by the mind during the process of thought, does not cease with the phenomena surrounding the aura. they are radiated to a considerable distance, and produce a number of effects. we will remember how the corpuscles or electrons are thrown off by substance in a high state of vibration. well, the same law manifests in the vibrations attendant upon the production of thought. the particles are thrown off in great quantities each vibrating at the rate imparted to it during the process. no these particles of "thought-stuff" do not compose the "thought-waves"--the latter belong to a different set of phenomena. these particles of vibrating "thought-stuff" fly off from the brain of the thinker, in all directions, and affect other persons who may come in contact with them. there is an important rule here, however, and that is that they seem to be attracted by those minds which are vibrating in similar thought-rates with themselves, and are but feebly attracted--and in some cases, actually repelled--by minds vibrating on opposite lines of thought. "like attracts like," in the thought world, and "birds of a feather flock together," here as elsewhere. some of these particles of "thought-stuff" are still in existence, and vibrating, which proceeded from the minds of persons long since dead, the same being emitted or thrown off during the lifetime of the persons, however. just as a distant star, which was destroyed hundreds of years ago, may have emitted rays which are only now reaching our vision, years after the destruction of the star which emitted them--and just as an odor will remain in a room after the object causing it has departed the particles still remaining and vibrating--and just as a stove removed from a room may leave heat vibrations behind it--so do these particles persist, vibrate, and influence other minds, long after the person who caused them may have passed out of the body. in this way, rooms, houses, neighborhoods, and localities may vibrate with the thoughts of people who lived there long ago, but who have since passed away, or removed. these vibrations affect people living in these places, to a greater or lesser extent, depending upon circumstances, but they may always be counteracted or changed (if they are of undesirable nature) by setting upon positive vibrations on a different plane of mind, or character of thought. the mind of a thinker is constantly emitting or throwing off these particles of "thought-stuff"; the distance and rate of speed, to and by which they travel, being determined by the "force" used in their production, there being a great difference between the thought of a vigorous thinker, and that emanating from a weak, listless mind. these projections of thought-stuff have a tendency to mingle with others of a corresponding rate of vibration (depending upon the character of the thought.) some remain around the places where they were emitted, while others float off like clouds, and obey the law of attraction which draws them to persons thinking along similar lines. the characteristics of cities arise in this way, the general average of thought of their inhabitants causing a corresponding thought-atmosphere to hang over and around it, which atmosphere is distinctly felt by visitors, and often determines the mental character of the persons residing there, in spite of their previous characteristics--_that is, unless they understand the laws of thought_. some neighborhoods, also, have their own peculiar mental atmosphere, as all may have noticed if they have visited certain "tough" neighborhoods, on the one hand, and neighborhoods of an opposite kind, on the other. certain kinds of thoughts and actions seem to be contagious in certain places--_and they are_ to those who do not understand the law. certain shops seem to have their own atmosphere--some reflecting confidence and honest dealing, and others radiating an atmosphere that causes patrons to hold tightly to their pocketbooks, and, in some extreme cases, to be certain that their buttons are tightly sewed on their garments. yes, places like people, have their distinctive mental atmospheres, and both arise from the same cause. and each person draws to himself these particles of vibrating "thought-stuff" corresponding with the general mental attitude maintained by him. if one harbors feelings of malice, he will find thoughts of malice, revenge, hate, etc., pouring in upon him. he has made himself a centre of attraction, and has set the law into operation. his only safe course is to resolutely change his thought vibrations. a most remarkable form of these particles of thought-stuff is evidenced in the case of what are known among occultists as "thought-forms," which are aggregations of particles of thought-stuff energized by intense and positive thought, and which are sent out with such intensity and positiveness, that they are almost "vitalized," and manifest almost the same degree of mental influence that would be manifested by the sender if he were present where they are. this highly interesting phase of the subject would take many chapters to describe in detail, and we must content ourselves with a mere passing view. to those who are interested in the subject, the writer would say that he purposes considering them at considerable length, in the forthcoming book "_the wonders of the mind_," which has been alluded to elsewhere. besides the operation of these particles of thought-stuff emitted during the production of thought, there are many other phases of thought influence, or thought in action. the principal phase of this phenomena arises from the working of the law of attraction between the respective minds of different people. just as are the particles of substance united and connected by "lines" of connection, so are the minds of men connected. and the strong "pull" of desire manifests along these lines, just as it does in the case of the atoms. there has been much written of recent years regarding this "drawing power of the mind," and although some of what has been written is the veriest rubbish and nonsense, yet under it all there remains a strong, form, substantial substratum of fact and truth. men _do_ attract success and failure to them--people _do_ attract things to them--as strange as it may seem to the person who has not acquainted himself with the laws underlying the phenomenon. there is no "miracle" about all of this--it is simply that the law of attraction is in full operation, and that people of similar thoughts are drawn together by reason thereof. the workings of this law are somewhat intricate, but all of us are constantly using them, consciously or unconsciously. we draw to ourselves that which we desire very much, or that which we fear very much, for a fear is a belief, and acts in the direction of actualizing itself, _sometimes_. but, again, as kipling would say: "but, that's another story." this phase of the subject is a mighty subject in itself, and "the half has not been told" even by the many who have written of it. the writer intends to try to remedy the deficiency in his next book, however. then, again, the "excitement" of thought, in the minds of people may be transmitted or communicated to the minds of others, and a similar vibration set up, under certain conditions, and subject to certain restraining influences--just as in the case of the particles of substances in a body or mass of substance. and, in many ways that will suggest themselves to the reader who has mastered the contents of the earlier chapters of this book, the phenomena of dynamic thought in the case of the atoms, and particles, may be, and are duplicated in the case of individual minds of men. the reader will see, readily, that this theory of dynamic thought, and the facts noted in the consideration thereof, give an intelligent explanation for the respective phenomena of hypnotism, mesmerism, suggestion, thought-transference, telepathy, etc., as well as of mental healing, magnetic healing, etc., all of which are manifestations of "dynamic thought." not only do we see, as prentice mulford said, that "thoughts are things," but we may see "_just why_" they are things. and we may see and understand the laws of their production and operation. this theory of dynamic thought will throw light into many dark corners, and make plain many "hard sayings" that have perplexed you in the past. the writer believes that it gives us the key to many of the great riddles of life. this theory has come to stay. it is no ephemeral thing, doomed to "die a-borning." it will be taken up by others and polished, and added to, and shaped, and "decorated"--but the fundamental principles will stand the stress of time and men. of this the writer feels assured. it may be laughed at at first, not only by the "man on the street," but also by the scientists. but it will outlive this, and in time will come to its own--perhaps long after the writer and the book have been forgotten. this must be so--for the idea of "dynamic thought" underlies the entire universe, and is the cause of all phenomena. not only is all that we see as life and mind, and substance illustrations of the law, but even that which lies back of these things must evidence the same law. is it too daring a conception to hazard the thought that perhaps the universe itself is _the result of the dynamic thought of the infinite_? oh, dynamic thought, we see in thee the instrument by which all form and shape are created, changed and destroyed--we see in thee the source of all energy, force and motion--we see thee always--present and everywhere--present, and always in action. verily, thou art life in action. thou art the embodiment of action and motion, of which zittel hath said: "wherever our eyes dwell on the universe; whithersoever we are carried in the flight of thought, everywhere we find motion." suns, planets, worlds, bodies, atoms, and particles, move, and act at thy bidding. amidst all the change of substance--among the play of forces--and among and amidst all that results therefrom--there art thou, unchanged, and constant. as though fresh from the hand of the infinite, thou hast maintained thy vigor and strength, and power, throughout the aeons of time. and, likewise, space has no terrors for thee, for thou hath mastered it. thou art a symbol of the power of the infinite--thou art its message to doubting man! let us close this book with the thought of the greatness of this thing that we call dynamic thought--which, great as it is, is but as the shadow of the absolute power of the infinite one, which is the causeless cause, and the causer of causes. and in thus parting company, reader, let us murmur the words of the german poet, who has sung: "dost thou ask for rest? see then how foolish is thy desire; the stern yoke of motion holds in harness the whole universe. "nowhere in this age canst thou ever find rest, and no power can deliver thee from the doom of activity. "rest is not to be found either in heaven or on earth, and from death and dying break forth new growth,--new birth. "all the life of nature is an ocean of activity; following on her footsteps, without ceasing, thou must march forward with the whole. "even the dark portal of death gives thee no rest, and out of thy coffin will spring blossoms of a new life." finis. success-thought the desire of every reader is to get, hot from his pen, all that a progressive writer has to say. readers of this book will be interested in knowing that mr. william walker atkinson is on the regular editorial staff of the segnogram, and that the choicest of his "i can and i will" preachments are appearing in each issue of that magazine. the segnogram is a monthly magazine for success-thought thinkers and readers. it has one mission to fill--the upbuilding--the betterment of man. it has no time to quarrel with any creed, sect, doctrine or belief. the law of love is its controlling influence--it has none other. to read it is to be imbued with its high teachings. it is a success magazine that teaches how to win success without preaching about it. it believes in doing things, because in doing things we win success. do you desire to come in with us? do you want to join our circle of thousands of success readers? do you want to get the cream of success--thought? if so you must not lag behind. keep to the front by keeping in touch with mr. atkinson and his coworkers, messrs. a. victor segno and h.m. walker. the price of the magazine is cents a year, five cents the copy. write for sample copy if you never have seen it. address the segnogram publishing co. los angeles, cal. transcriber's note: obvious typos and printer errors have been corrected without comment. in addition to obvious errors, the following changes have been made: page : missing word "are" was added to the phrase, "and he believes that there are beings in existence...." page : missing word "the" was added to the phrase, "... one of the atoms of our molecule...." page : missing word "miles" was added for meaning in the phrase, "... the rate of , miles per second." page : missing word "be" was added for meaning in the phrase, "... the atom was supposed to be a vortex-ring...." page : 'incon-constant' changed to 'inconstant' in the phrase, "... are changeable, disconnected, and inconstant...." page : 'difference' changed to 'distance' in the phrase, "and just as particles are influenced at a distance by other particles, so are men influenced at a distance by other men." other than the above changes, no attempt has been made to correct common spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc. the author's usage is preserved as printed in the original publication. unconventional and/or inconsistent spelling which has been preserved includes, but is not limited to the following: seive corelation terrestial mould/ mold inconsistent hyphenation which has been preserved includes: to-day/ today view-point/ viewpoint internet archive (https://archive.org) note: images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/nuggetsofnewthou atki transcriber's note: text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). text enclosed by tilde characters is in bold face (~bold~). nuggets of the new thought several things that have helped people by william walker atkinson associate editor of "new thought," chicago; author of "thought force," "the law of the new thought," etc. published by the psychic research company, vincennes ave. chicago, ill., u. s. a. copyright, , by the psychic research company, chicago, ill. all rights reserved. _notice.--this work is protected by copyright, and simultaneous initial publication in united states of america, great britain, france, germany, russia and other countries. all rights reserved._ preface. i do not like writing a preface--it seems too much like an apology. i have no special apology to tender for offering this collection of new thought nuggets. they may possess no literary merit, but they have _helped_ men and women. with the exception of "the secret of the i am," these essays appeared from month to month in "new thought," of which magazine i am associate editor. they were written hastily, principally upon the demand of the printer for "copy," and, for the most part, were printed just as they were written, there being no time for revision or polishing up. you may pick up any one of them and find many sentences needing straightening out--many thoughts which could be better expressed by the change of a few words. knowing these things, i first thought that i would go over each essay and add a little here, and take away a little there, polishing up and burnishing as i went along. but when i looked over them, my heart failed me. there they were just as they were written--just as they were dug out of my mind--and i hadn't the heart to change them. i remembered the circumstances surrounding the writing of every one of them, and i let them alone. a "nugget" polished up would be no longer a nugget. and these thoughts are nuggets--i dug them myself. i will not say much regarding the quality of the metal--that is for you--but you see them just as they came from the mine--rough, unpolished, mixed with the rock, queerly shaped. if you think that they contain metal of sufficiently good quality, refine them, melt them and fashion them into something useful or ornamental. for myself, i like things with the bark on--with the marks of the hammer--with the original quartz adhering to the metal. but others are of different taste--they like everything to feel smooth to the touch. they will not like these nuggets. alas, i cannot help it--i cannot produce the beautifully finished article--i have nothing to offer other than the crude product of the mine. here they are, polish them up yourself if you prefer them in that shape--i will not touch them. w. w. a. chicago, october , . contents. the keynote. "i can and i will"--the recognition--equal to any task--a feeling of calm confidence--an abiding sense of power, reserve force and security--the something within--the triple key to the door of attainment--the vibrations of success the secret of the i am. the ego--the physical plane--the mental plane--the new plane of consciousness--the real self--the "i"--the temple of the living spirit--development of the "i am" consciousness.--the higher reason "let a little sunshine in." the young people's song--good "new thought" doctrine--plenty of sunshine in life, if you look for it--don't make a dark dungeon of your mind--throw open the windows of your soul--how to let a little sunshine in the hunger of the soul. the soul, as well as the body and mind, requires nourishment --the want, a promise of the fulfillment--the law of unfoldment --nourishment provided when it is needed--provided for in the divine plan--the feast of good things look aloft. the old sailor's advice--the warning cry--peace and content-- mental balance recovered--the glory of the universe--all governed by law--the law manifests everywhere--a reverent feeling of calm, peaceful faith--look aloft to-morrow. the work and cares of to-day easy if we do not worry about those of to-morrow--the mysterious to-morrow and its terrors--the way to meet the cares of to-morrow--to-morrow's opportunities will come as surely as to-morrow's cares--law supreme--no need to be afraid--the real to-morrow in the depths of the soul. stores of information; rich mines of knowledge; uncut gems and precious metal awaiting the discoverer--psychic and spiritual faculties--strange attraction of soul to soul--the rock of ages--the voice of the soul forget it. why worry about the past--hugging old sorrows to your bosom-- what to do with them--don't poison your life--pain brings experience--learning your lesson--how to get rid of a gloomy thought--throw it away--forget it the kindergarten of god. life a great school--man a child learning his lesson--preparing for higher grades--the game-task--what it all means--things as they are--the rules wise and good--each task means something-- greeting the kindergartner the human wet blanket. sees no good in anything--expects the bad and gets it--attracts it to him--depresses everything and everyone--carries an aura of negative depressing thought--clammy--puts out the fire of energy --take warning aim straight. fear attracts as well as desire--learn to aim straight and aim at the right thing--examples--the bowler--the bicyclist and the car--the bicyclist and the post--the boy and the marbles--wisdom from the babe--look straight; think straight; shoot straight at home. don't be afraid--you are at home--not here by chance--you belong here--you are the soul--you cannot be hurt--you cannot be banished--you are right in the universe, and there is no outside--great things are before you--make yourself at home the solitude of the soul. lorado taft's group--description--each stands alone--each is in touch with every other--soul communion in silence--silence is the sanctuary of the soul--the oneness of life and its apparent separateness--the message jerry and the bear. the law's plan of developing an individual--folly of clinging to old worn out sheaths--the story of jerry and the bear--who jerry was--he meets the bear--the fight--the result--the consequences --the change in jerry--the moral the unseen hand. the consciousness of the hand--when it first was felt--always there--now as the hand of a father--now as that of a mother--a lover--a brother--always guiding--always leading--a mystery-- some day we will know the owner of the hand how success comes. seeking success through mental powers--holding the thought alone not sufficient--how to get the real benefit of thought-force-- fall in with the workings of the law--stand on your own feet-- one step at a time--"i do" as well as "i am" the man with the southern exposure. southern exposure as good a thing in a man as in a room--the man who faces the sun--lives one day at a time and does the best he knows how, and is kind--finds joy and carries it to others-- simple, loving, kind--open yourself to the sun a foreword. an individualist--wearing no ticket or label--no one has a corner on truth--enough to go around--the infinite power back of all things--the real self is spirit--the law of attraction --fearthought--the brotherhood of man partnership. next to marriage, partnership is the most important association --mental partnerships--be careful whom you choose as your mental partners--get into partnership with the best thoughts--dissolve partnership with the other kind--"i can, i will; i do, i dare." the seekers. the secret of life--the riddle of existence--sought now as ever --the whyness of things--attempts to answer the riddle--the seekers--fantastic creeds and queer philosophies--revamping old ideas--the story of the man and the stars--the answer to be found within the soul mental pictures. "i hang bright pictures in my mind"--bright pictures encourage one; gloomy ones depress--get rid of your old, gloomy mental pictures--make a bonfire of them--get rid of the particularly miserable one, first of all--then put bright ones in their places don't retail your woes. a miserable habit--it grows as it is fed--a nuisance to friends and neighbors--it brings to you more of the same kind--you will get what you look for--looking for trouble brings it--don't imagine that you are being "put upon"-- don't retail your woes life. there is in each of us a potential something seeking for expression--the something within--the plant of life--no use trying to repress it, for develop it must--life has a meaning --growth, development and unfoldment--the lesson of life let us have faith. faith necessary in every human undertaking--you have faith in man, but are afraid to trust god--the universe if governed by law--the law is in operation everywhere--don't be afraid--you are a part of the plan--fall in with the law--have faith, have faith do it now. do to-day's tasks now--don't try to do to-morrow's work to-day, but be sure and do the day's work now--the baneful effects of procrastination--not fair to yourself--demoralization attendant upon putting off things--the world looking for people who can do things now get in tune. marconi's wireless messages--vibrations reach only the instruments attuned to the sender--the same law in operation on the mental plane--the correct pitch is the thing--get in tune with the proper vibrations--get the messages from the best senders mental toxin and anti-toxin. a new toxin--the microbes in the thoughts we think--the new anti-toxin--thoughts may poison--fear causes paralysis--hate causes insanity--fear and hate have killed their thousands-- gates' experiments--how to overcome the poison of bad-thinking the keynote. "i can and i will"--the recognition--equal to any task--a feeling of calm confidence--an abiding sense of power, reserve force and security --the something within--the triple key to the door of attainment--the vibrations of success. "i can and i will!!!" have you ever said these words to yourself with a firm conviction that you were speaking the truth--with the strong feeling that needed no other proof. if so, you then felt within you a thrill which seemed to cause every atom of your being to vibrate in harmony with some note in the grand scale of life, sounded by the real self. you caught a momentary glimpse of the inner light--heard a stray note of the song of the soul--were conscious for the moment of yourself. and in that moment of ecstasy you knew that untold power and possibilities were yours. you felt that you were in touch with all strength, power, knowledge, happiness and peace. you felt that you were equal to any task--capable of executing any undertaking. for the moment there was no fear in the world for you. all the universe seemed to vibrate in the same key with your thought. for the moment you recognized the truth. but alas, the spirit of doubt, distrust, fear and unfaith called you again to earth--and the vision faded. and yet, the remembrance of the sight--the echo of the sound--the remnant of the new-found strength--is with you still. you still find that memory to be a stimulus to great efforts--a comforting thought in times of weakness and trial. you have been able to accomplish much by the aid of the lingering vibrations of the mighty thought. in times of great peril--grave perplexities--life and death struggles, a feeling of calm confidence and strength often comes to us, and we are borne on by a power _of_ us and _in_ us (and yet in everything else, too) that seems to lift us off our feet and sweep us on to safety--to peace--to rest. we are possessed of an abiding sense of power, reserve force and security. when extraordinary conditions confront us--when our bodies seem paralyzed--our minds stupefied--our will power gone, we are often made conscious of the existence of the real self, and it answers our involuntary demand, and comes to rescue with the cheering cry: "i am here"! many of us have made use of this inner strength without realizing it. one day we were sorely distressed and made the demand, and lo! it was answered. we knew not from whence came this new-found strength, but we were conscious of the uplift, and felt more confidence in ourselves. the next time we _confidently_ demanded the aid, and again we were answered. we acquired that which we call confidence and faith in ourselves, and were carried over many a dark place and started on the road to success. our repeated success caused us to think and speak of our "luck," and we grew to believe that we had a "star," and took chances and risks that others would not dream of. we dared. we made some apparent failures, but we soon came to know them as only lessons leading to _ultimate_ success. the "i can and i will" feeling carried us over rough places safely, and we got to simply _know_ that we would "get there" in the end. and so we went on and on, knowing that if we advanced three steps and slipped back two, we were still one step ahead. we had confidence, because we _knew_ that "things would come our way" in the end. and so long as we held this attitude, we _did_ succeed, and it was only when we lost heart at some unexpected slip--only when, after having attained success, we became dazed and frightened, and began to fear that our "luck might turn" and that we would lose all of our accumulations--it was only _then_, i say--that our star waned. talk with any successful man, and, if truthful, he will admit having felt, from the time of his first success, that he had some sort of "pull" with fate--some "lucky star"--some special providence operating in his behalf. he grew to _expect_ results--to have confidence in things turning out right--to have faith in _something_ of which he knew not the nature--and he was not disappointed. things seemed to work in his favor--not always just in the way he expected, sometimes in an entirely different way--matters seemed somehow to straighten themselves out in the end--so long as he kept his "nerve." he did not know the source of his strength, but he believed in it and trusted it just the same. let us wake up and recognize this something within--let us begin to understand this "i can and i will" feeling--let us cherish it if we have it, and cultivate it if we have it not. do you know that we are young giants who have not discovered our own strength? are you not aware that there are powers latent within us, pressing forth for development and unfoldment? do you not know that earnest desire, faith and calm demand will bring to us that which we require--will place at our hand the tools with which we are to work out our destiny--will guide us in the proper use of the tools--will make us grow? do you not know that desire, faith and work is the triple key to the doors of attainment? there are possibilities before us, awaiting our coming, of which we have never dreamed. let us assert ourselves--take up the key--unlock the doors--and enter our kingdom. to accomplish, we must be possessed of earnest desire--must be as confident of ultimate success as we are of the rising of to-morrow's sun--we must have faith. and we must work out the end with the tools and instruments that will present themselves day by day. we will find that desire, confidence, faith and work will not only brush aside the obstacles from our path, but will also begin to assert that wonderful force, as yet so little understood--the law of attraction--which will draw to us that which is conducive to our success, be it ideas, people, things, yes, even _circumstances_. oh, ye of little faith, why do you not see these things? the world is looking for these "i can and i will" people--it has places ready for them--the supply does not begin to equal the demand. pluck up courage ye unfortunate ones--ye doubters--ye "i can't" people! begin the fight by abolishing fear from your minds. then start to climb the ladder of attainment, shouting "i can and i will" with all your might, drowning out the sound of the "buts," "ifs," "supposings," "you can'ts" and "aren't you afraids" of your wet-blanket friends at the foot of the ladder. do not bother about the upper rounds of the ladder--you will reach them in time--but give your whole attention to the round just ahead of you, and when you have gained a firm footing on that, then look at the next one. one round at a time, remember, and _give your entire attention to each step_. climb with desire, confidence and faith inspiring each step, and the task will become a pleasure. you will be conscious of some mighty force attracting you upward and onward as you progress. and don't try to pull some other fellow off the ladder--there's room enough for both of you--be kind, be kind. if you fail to feel the "i can and i will" vibrations within you, start in to-day, and _say_ "i can and i will"--think "i can and i will"--act "i can and i will," and get the vibrations started in motion. remember that as the one note of the violin, if constantly sounded, will cause the mighty bridge to vibrate in unison so will one positive thought, held constantly, manifest itself both in yourself, others and things. so begin sounding the note to-day--this very moment. sound it constantly. send forth a clear, glad, joyous note--a note of faith--a note of coming victory. sound it over and over again, and soon you will become conscious that the vibrations have commenced, and that the mighty structure of your being is quivering and vibrating to the keynote:--"i can and i will." the secret of the "i am." the ego--the physical plane--the mental plane--the new plane of consciousness--the real self--the "i"--the temple of the living spirit--development of the "i am" consciousness--the higher reason. "lord of a thousand worlds am i, and i reign since time began; and night and day in cyclic sway, shall pass while their deeds i scan. yet time shall cease, ere i find release, for i am the soul of man." --charles h. orr. many of us are accustomed to thinking of ourselves on the physical plane alone. when we think of the ego--the "i" of ourselves, we picture it as a human body with organs ranging from the finest--the brain, down to those of coarser atomic structure. to one living on this plane of consciousness the body is the _real_ self, and the mind but an appendage to the body. such a man speaks of "my mind" or "my soul," as he speaks of "my hat," "my coat," "my shoes"--as things belonging to him, which he uses, but which are not _him_. to him the body is the real man--the mind something useful to the body--the spirit a nebulous hypothetical something of which he has but a hazy idea and no consciousness. he lives on the physical plane alone. others picture their "i" as intellect or mind, having control of the body and its organs, and having its abode in the brain, or brains, of the human being. to these people the intellect is the real self, in fact to many of this class the intellect is elevated to the position of god, and they bow down to and worship it. they realize the subjection of the body to the mind, and are aware of the wonderful power of the latter over the particular body under its control; the bodies of others; the minds of others. to them the intellect is the highest self, identical with the spirit. they are conscious of the wonderful workings of the mind, but are conscious of nothing higher. to some of them death seems to end all, their idea of mind being that it is a product of the brain. others feel that somehow, somewhere, their intellect will maintain its existence, but it is merely a _belief_ or hope, based upon the words of others who have claimed authority to speak. they have no consciousness of pre-existence or future existence--no perception of that real self which _knows_ itself to be eternal. a third class have so far progressed along the path of life that they have crossed the borders of a new plane of consciousness. they are in a strange land--they see no familiar landmarks--they do not recognize the country that lies before them. their friends, whom they have left just a few feet behind across the border, do not seem to realize the difference the short distance has made to those who have traveled it, and therefore doubt the prospect seen from the new point of view. those who have crossed the border find that they have acquired a _consciousness_ of a real existence. the "i" consciousness has passed beyond the intellectual plane and is able to look back to that plane and the one still further back, the physical plane. "i" recognizes the value of both mind and body, but regards them both as but instruments, tools or servants, with which to work. "i" feels that it has existed from the beginning (if beginning there was) and will exist until the end (if end there be). "i" feels a keen pleasure in mere existence--in the now. "i" knows itself to be a part of the whole thing--knows that the universe is its home. "i" knows itself to be a tiny drop of spirit from the great spirit ocean; a ray from the supreme sun; a particle of the divine being, encased in a material body, using that body and a force called mind, with which to manifest itself. "i" does not at present _understand_ all things--far from it. it has not as yet been able to bring its tools to that degree of perfection. it merely _knows_ that it is, and has always been, and always will be. "i" allows intellect to indulge in speculations, but contents itself with the knowledge that it is--it frets not itself with the problems of the past or future, but lives in the now, and knows itself to be a part of the whole. "i" knows that it cannot be destroyed or injured--that it exists in accordance with law (and that law is good) and asks no further light at this time, knowing that in its progress through matter, discarding sheath after sheath, more _knowing_ will surely come. it says trustfully and confidently, to the absolute: "thy will be done." knowing itself to be immortal, "i" has no fear of the death of the body--one body is as good as another to it--it is willing to lay aside the body as it does a coat, when it has outworn or outgrown it. knowing itself to be impregnable to harm, "i" has no fearthought--it fears nothing. knowing that the law is working for development (always for ultimate good) "i" is not disturbed by the cares, troubles and sorrows of life--it knows them for what they are. the body may be in pain, the mind may be burdened with sorrow, but "i," _knowing_, smiles. "i" knows itself to be one with the "i" of all living creatures, and knowing this cannot manifest hate, fear, envy, jealousy--it cannot despise or condemn. these and other feelings of the old life drop from the person like a discarded mantle when "i" mounts its throne. "i" recognizes that others may not have progressed so far on the path as itself, but knows them to be but fellow travelers on the same road, who are doing the best they know how, considering their stage of the journey. "i" recognizes ignorance--not evil. "i" has but one feeling toward mankind and the whole living world--love. aye, love and comradeship for even the _last man_, for it knows that that last man cannot be left out of the great scheme of life. "i" knows that it has traveled a long road leading to its present position, and that all life is traveling the same. "i" looks back and sees others covered with the mire and dust of the road, far back on the path, but knowing that it has traveled the same stage of the journey--been covered with the same mire and mud--it cannot condemn. "i" knows that it is but on the threshold of the new consciousness--the borderland of the cosmic knowing--and that far beyond lie regions of marvelous beauty which will in turn be traveled, and then on and on, increasing in strength and knowing-power each day. "i" sees endless phases of existence opening up to the vision--it cannot at this time _understand_, but it knows of the existence of the law, and is content. "i" has the courage of intelligent faith, and presses forward cheerfully to the divine adventure. all this--and more. to the man or woman who understands, the task of self-development becomes a labor of love--an exalted task rather than the mere selfish striving after power. as the sculptor saw in the block of marble the form of the angel, and was impelled to cut away the surrounding material in order to liberate the angelic form--so may we, seeing the god-like form within us, strive to liberate it. that inner form is the real self--the "i." if you have never realized this truth, relax body and mind and indulge in a little introspection; turn your gaze inward; listen to the voice of the spirit. you will be conscious of a faint recognition of the something within striving to make itself manifest to your understanding--asking for the proper tools with which to work. listen, listen in the silence! day by day the voice will grow plainer--day by day the light will grow brighter--your own is coming to you, at last. o, joy unspeakable! o tears! o laughter! after long ages you are coming in sight of the promised land. know yourself o man! know that you have within you the divine spark, to which both body and mind are but servants. know that your body is the temple of the living spirit and respect it as such. know that your intellect is but the instrument of the manifestation of the spirit--the "i." do not crawl on your belly like a worm; do not humble yourself in the dust and call upon heaven to witness what a despicable creature you are; do not call yourself a miserable sinner worthy only of eternal damnation. no! a thousand times no! rise to your feet; raise your head; face the skies; throw back your shoulders; fill your lungs with nature's ozone. then say to yourself: "i am." man has acquired a wonderful power when he can _understandingly_ say: "i am a part of the eternal life principle; i am created in the divine image; i am filled with the divine breath of life; nothing can hurt me, for i am eternal." the first requisite for the acquirement of an understanding of the law is the recognition of the existence and the power of the real self--the "i." the more complete the recognition the greater the power. special directions for the acquirement of this faculty of recognition cannot be given. it must be grown into and felt, rather than reasoned out by the intellect. you will not be long in doubt as to whether or not you are on the right track; if you are right you will begin to realize it at once. you will have glimpses of it, and then it may slip away from you for a while, but fear not, you cannot escape it in the end. you will feel that your body is but as a garment which whilst covering you temporarily is not you. you will feel that you are separate and apart from your body, although for a time living in it. you will feel that you could as well live in some other body, and still retain your sense of individuality. you will realize then even your mind is not you, but is merely the instrument through which you manifest yourself, and which being imperfect prevents the complete expression of the spirit. in short, when you say, or think, "i am," you are conscious of the existence of your _real_ self, and feel the growth of a new sense of power within you. this recognition of the self may be faint, but encourage it and it will grow, and whilst growing will manifest itself to your mind by impressing upon the latter the knowledge of the proper plan for further development. it is another example of "to him that hath shall be given." this mere calling of their attention to the fact will awaken the first glimmer of recognition in some; others will find it necessary to reflect upon the idea and awaken to a recognition of the truth more slowly. some will not _feel_ the truth. to such i say: the time is not yet ripe for your recognition of this great truth, but the seed is planted and the plant will appear in time. this may seem like the veriest nonsense to you now, but the time will come when you will admit its literal correctness. you will find that a desire has been created that will cause a mental unrest until more light is received. as walt whitman says: "my words will itch in your ears till you understand them." as emerson says: "you cannot escape from your good." to those who feel the first indications of the awakening of the spirit, i say: carry the thought with you and it will unfold like the lotus, naturally and gradually; the truth once recognized cannot be lost, and there is no standing still in nature. what has been said is but a faint hint of a mighty truth, which nestles in the bosom of the esoteric teachings of all religions--in the philosophies of the orient and of ancient greece. you will find it in the songs of the poets--in the writings of the mystics. the advanced science of this age touches it without recognizing it fully. it is not a thing that can well be conveyed by words--it is not easily comprehended by purely intellectual processes--it must be _felt_ and lived out by those who are ready for it--those for whom the time has come. it has been known to the few throughout all ages and in all times. all races have known it. it has been handed down from teacher to pupil from the earliest days. it is that truth which edward carpenter refers to when he says: "o, let not the flame die out! cherished age after age in its dark caverns, in its holy temples cherished. fed by pure ministers of love--let not the flame die out." it is difficult to convey even a hint of this truth to any but those who are prepared to receive it. to others it will seem to be arrant folly. as emerson says: "every man's words, who speaks from that life, must sound vain to those who do not dwell in the same thought on their own part. i dare not speak for it. my words do not carry its august sense; they fall short and cold. only itself can inspire whom it will * * * * yet i desire even by profane words, if sacred i may not use, to indicate the heaven of this deity, and to report what hints i have collected of the transcendent simplicity and energy of the highest law." if you prefer to try to solve the problem of life--the riddle of the universe--by scientific investigation, by exact reasoning, formal thought, mathematical demonstration--by all means follow this method. you will be taught the lesson of the power and the limitations of the human intellect. and after you have traveled round and round the circle of thought and find that you are but covering the same ground over and over again--after you have run into the intellectual _cul de sac_, the blind alley of logic--after you have beaten your wings against the cage of the unknowable and fall exhausted and bruised--after you have done all these things and have learned your lesson--then listen to the voice within, see the tiny flame which burns steadily and cannot be extinguished, feel the pressure of the something within _and let it unfold_. you will then begin to understand that as the mind of man developed by slow stages from mere sensation to simple consciousness; from simple consciousness to self-consciousness (in its lower and higher degrees) so is there a consciousness, higher than we have heretofore imagined, in store for man, which is even now beginning to manifest itself. you may then understand that there may be an intelligent faith which _knows_, not simply believes. these and other lessons you will learn in time. and when you have reached the stage where you _feel_ the promptings of the higher reason, and live in accordance therewith, you will say with carpenter: "lo! the healing power descending from within, calming the enfevered mind, spreading peace among the grieving nerves. lo! the eternal saviour, the sought after of all the world, dwelling hidden (to be disclosed) within each * * * * o joy insuperable." "let a little sunshine in." the young people's song--good "new thought" doctrine--plenty of sunshine in life, if you look for it--don't make a dark dungeon of your mind--throw open the windows of your soul--how to let a little sunshine in. the other night, just as i was dropping off to sleep, a crowd of young people passed along, returning from some social gathering. they were bubbling over with mirth and joy, and every girl seemed to be talking at the same time, the voices of the young men serving merely to punctuate the sentences of their fair companions. just after they passed my window, some one started up a song, and the rest joined in. i do not know the song they sang, but the chorus went something like this: "let a little sunshine in; let a little sunshine in; open wide the windows, open wide the doors, and let a little sunshine in." i listened with pleasure to the words and cheerful air of the song and said to myself: "well, that's good enough 'new thought' doctrine for me." the young people went on their way singing. i, now wide awake, listened and thought. the song grew fainter and fainter as the distance between us grew greater, and at last i could not clearly distinguish the words they sang, but the faint vibrations of the tune still reached me, and i imagined that i could just hear the last words of the refrain: "let a little sunshine in." oh, if only those young people--and all young people--and all people young or old--would take to their hearts these words, and "let a little sunshine in." it is not sufficient that you merely agree that the advice is good--that you merely repeat the words mechanically--you must make thought take form in action, and not only say the words--not only think them--but you must act them. make them a part of your life--incorporate the idea in your being--train yourself into the habit of opening yourself to the sunshine of life--get into the way of letting it flow in. "let a little sunshine in." there is plenty of sunshine in life, if you only look for it. and there is plenty of shadow in life, if you only look for it. but in the things that seem all shadow to others, you will be able to find the sunshine if you but train yourself to always look for it. and in that which may seem bright sunshine to some, others will find nothing but shade--they are troubled with a mental cataract that shuts out all the rays of the sunshine of life. "let a little sunshine in." and when you learn to love the sunshine and look forward to seeing it always, you seem to draw it to you. the law of attraction brings to you your share of the sunshine with which the world is plentifully supplied. and, if you fall into the habit of looking for and expecting the shadow, the shadow will always be found. "let a little sunshine in." it is astonishing what a change the mental attitude of the person will make. change your mental attitude, and the whole world seems to change. it is like taking off the smoked glasses that have caused the world to seem dark and gloomy, and seeing the brightness and colors of the world. "let a little sunshine in." many of you have been making dark dungeons of your minds. you have steadily shut out the sun, and your minds have become musty, damp and mildewed. across the floor crawl noxious creatures. the slimy form of fear drags itself slowly along, leaving its track behind; the hideous shape of jealousy eyes you from one corner--a creature of darkness; the venomous reptile hate shows its fangs; the vampire worry flits across the chamber. fearful shapes are there glowering in the darkness--frightful forms crouch in corners and recesses. all is gloom, darkness, horror. a fit breeding place for the foul creatures who fear the light--a fit nursery for monsters. look within the dark chambers of your mind--see what it really is--see what it generates. look within--look within. ah, you see at last. no wonder you shriek with terror--no wonder you turn away with horror. no, no, do not turn away--look and see yourself as you are. you need the lesson. now that you see what you have been carrying around with you, and are sickened at the sight, start to work to remedy the evil. throw wide open the doors; throw open the windows of the soul. "let a little sunshine in." ah, yes, never fear, there is plenty of sunshine in the universe. plenty for all of you. there is an infinite supply. draw it to you. take it freely. it is there for _you_. it is your own--your very own. it is as free as air and the material sunshine. there is no tariff on it. it is not controlled by any trust or combine. it is not adulterated. it is everywhere, everywhere. ho! ye who are dwelling in darkness! here is life and happiness for you! here is peace for you! here is joy for you! joy, comrades, joy! open wide your windows; open wide your doors. "let a little sunshine in." yes, yes! i hear you say that you cannot dispel the gloom with which you are surrounded. nonsense. do you not know that darkness is not a positive thing--it is the essence of negation. it is not a real thing at all--it is merely the absence of light. and here you have been for all these years, believing that the darkness was a real thing that you could not get rid of. just stop for a moment and think. if a room in your house is dark and gloomy, do you hire a man to shovel out the darkness--do you attempt to do it yourself in your desire for light? no, no, of course you do not. you just raise the shades, and throw open the shutters and the sunshine pours in and lo! the darkness has vanished. so it is with the gloom of the soul, the darkness of the mind. it is a waste of energy to attempt to dig away the darkness--to cast out the shadows. you'll never get light in that way. all that you need to do is to recognize the advantage of light--the fact that light is to be had--that there is plenty of it anxiously waiting to be let in. then all that you need to do is to "let a little sunshine in; let a little sunshine in; open wide the windows, open wide the doors, and let a little sunshine in." the hunger of the soul. the soul, as well as the body and mind, requires nourishment--the want, a promise of the fulfillment--the law of unfoldment--nourishment provided when it is needed--provided for in the divine plan--the feast of good things. the soul, as well as the body and the mind, requires nourishment. we have felt that hunger for spiritual knowledge which transcended our hunger for bread--exceeded our craving for mental sustenance. we have felt soul-hungry and knew not with what to appease it. the soul has cried out for food. it has been fed upon the husks of the physical plane for so long that it is fairly starving for the proper nourishment. it seeks this way and that way for the bread of life and finds it not. it has asked this authority and that authority for information as to where this food may be had--where could be obtained the food that would nourish the soul--but it has been given nothing but the stone of dogma and creeds. at last it sank exhausted and felt that perhaps there was no bread to be had. it has felt faint and weary and almost believed that all was a delusion and a will-o'-the-wisp of the mind--that there was no reality to it. it felt the chill of despair creeping over it and all seemed lost. but we must not lose sight of the fact that just as the hunger of the body implies that somewhere in the world is to be found that which will satisfy it--that just as the hunger of the mind implies that somewhere is to be found mental nourishment--so the mere fact that this soul-hunger _exists_ is a proof that somewhere there is to be found that which the absolute has intended to satisfy it. the _want_ is the prophecy of the fulfillment. yes, and the want and its recognition afford the means of obtaining that which will satisfy the want. when, in the course of unfoldment either on the physical, mental or spiritual plane, it becomes necessary for the well-being of the unfolding ego to draw to itself certain things which it requires in the process of evolution, the first step toward the obtaining of that necessary thing is the consciousness of a great and pressing want--the birth of a strong desire. and then the desire grows stronger and stronger, until the ego becomes desperate and determines to obtain the necessary thing at any cost. the obtaining of that thing becomes the prime object in life. students of evolution realize this fact perhaps more than the rest of us. the subconsciousness of the plant or animal becomes surcharged with this great desire, and all the conscious and subconscious power of the living thing is put forth to obtain that which is necessary for its development. and on the mental plane the same thing is true. the hunger for knowledge, when it once possesses a man, will cause him to cut loose from old environments, surroundings and everything else which has held him, and he forces himself to the place where that knowledge may be obtained--and he obtains it. if he only wants it hard enough he gets it. when we think of lincoln in his boyhood days, painfully and laboriously striving for knowledge, lying on his side before the log fire and reading his book by the light of its flames--and this after a hard day's work such as only the boy on the farm knows--when we think of this we may understand the effects of a strong desire possessing the mind of man or boy, woman or girl. and this hunger for spiritual knowledge and growth, from whence comes it? when we understand the laws of spiritual unfoldment we begin to understand that the ego is growing and developing--unfolding and casting off old worn-out sheaths. it is calling into operation new faculties--exploring new regions of the mind. in the super-conscious regions of the soul are many faculties lying dormant, awaiting the evolutionary hour of manifestation along conscious lines. as the faculties approach the hour of birth into the new plane they manifest an uneasiness which is communicated to the subconscious and conscious planes of the mind, causing a restlessness and uneasiness which is quite disturbing to the individual in whom they are manifesting. there is a straining for expression--a reaching forward for development--a desire for growth which produces something akin to pain. all growth and development is accompanied by more or less pain. we speak of the beautiful growth of the plant--of the lily--and wish that we could grow as easily and as painlessly as it does. but we forget that _all_ growth means a breaking down--a tearing away--as well as a building up and adding to. the lily's growth appears painless to us, but if we were endowed with keen enough vision--with clear enough sight--with a power enabling us to feel that which is going on within its organism, we would be made aware that there is a constant change going on--a tearing down of tissue, a using up of cells, a pressing upon and breaking through of confining sheaths--all meaning growth, development and unfoldment. we see only the birth of the new parts and lose sight of the pain and destruction preceding it. all through life is manifested the "growing pains" of development. all birth is attended with pain. and so it is with the birth into consciousness of these unfolding spiritual faculties. we feel an uneasiness, dissatisfaction, yea, even pain, as we strive to call into conscious life these children of the soul. we feel that desire for something needed by our inner self and we seek for it in all directions. we exhaust all of the pleasures of life, so-called, and find no satisfaction there. we then endeavor to find comfort and solace in intellectual pursuits, but without obtaining that which we seek. we pore over the writing of the philosophers and learned writers of the past and present, but find them as but husks to the hungering soul. we seek in creeds and dogmas that comforting something, the need of which we feel, but of the nature of which we are ignorant--but we find no satisfaction there. we, perhaps, go from creed to creed, from philosophy to philosophy, from one scientific theory to another scientific theory, but still we hunger. at last we get to a position in which we feel that life is not worth the living and that all is a ghastly mockery. and so we go on and on, seeking--ever seeking--but the quest is fruitless. man on the physical plane has a comparatively easy time of it. he lives as does the animal--he thinks as does the animal--he dies as does the animal. the problems of life fret him not. he does not even know of the existence of the problems of life. he is happy in his way, and it almost seems a pity that he must be disturbed from his state of animal content. but he _must_ be disturbed, not by you or by me perhaps, but by the inevitable law, which is working around and about him, and in him. sooner or later in the course of his development he must be awakened. and he awakens upon the mental plane, and here his troubles begin. on the mental plane everything seems beautiful for a time. man finds himself a new being and he goes on and on, feeling himself a very god and reveling in his intellectual powers. but after a time these things cease to satisfy him. the unfolding of the higher faculties begin to annoy him, particularly as he cannot explain them. his intellectual training has perhaps taught him to believe that there was nothing higher than the mind--that religious feelings were nothing but the result of the emotional nature and that he had outgrown all that. but still he feels that something within, never ceasing to annoy him--never ceasing to intrude upon his intellectual consciousness certain _feelings_ entirely contrary to his theories. he has grown to doubt the existence of a supreme being, and having read haekel's "riddle of the universe" feels that the question has been satisfactorily settled for all time, and that the answer to all of life's problems may be found in the tenets of his creed--materialism. but, somehow, he is not at ease. he feels the pressure of the growing something within and becomes quite restless. this goes on from time to time and he seeks the truth in all directions, rushing from one thing to another in his desire to satisfy the cravings of the soul, but all the time denying that there is anything to be found. after a time he becomes aware of a new state of consciousness developing within him, and in spite of his mental revolts against any good thing coming from within, he is forced to accept himself in his growing state, and to realize that he may possess a knowing other than that of the intellect. it may take him a long time to accept this, but so long as he rebels against it and struggles, so long will he feel pain. and only when he catches a glimpse of the true state of affairs does he open himself up to the divine unfoldment going on in his soul, and joyfully welcome the tearing away of confining mental sheaths, which destruction enables the newly born faculty to force its way into the conscious mentality. he learns to even aid in the unfoldment by holding the thoughts conducive to spiritual development, and thus assists in the bringing forth of the new leaf or flower of the soul. it has always been so. man has gone through stage after stage of unfoldment, suffering pain each time as the old sheaths are burst asunder and discarded. he is prone to hold on to the old sheaths and to cherish them long after they have served their purpose in his growth. and it is only when he has reached the stage that many men are now coming into a knowledge of that he understands the process of growth and is willing and glad to aid in the development instead of attempting to oppose it. he falls in with the workings of the law instead of trying to defeat it. life is motion. we are moving onward and upward throughout the ages. man has passed over miles of the path, but he will have to travel many more before he sees the reason of the journey. but he has now reached the stage where he may see that it all means something--all is a part of a mighty plan--that this is a necessary stage of the journey, and that around the bend of the road are to be found shady trees, and a brook at which he may quench his thirst and wash away the dust of the last few miles. this hunger of the soul is a real thing. do not imagine that it is an illusion--do not endeavor to deny it. if you feel it you may rest assured that your time is coming, and that there will be provided that which will satisfy it. do not waste your energy in running hither and thither seeking for bread. the bread will be provided when it is most needed. there is no such thing in life as spiritual starvation. but instead of seeking without for that which will nourish you, look within. at each stage of the journey the traveler will find enough to nourish him for the hour--enough to sustain him until he reaches the next stage. you cannot be denied this nourishment. it is part of the divine plan that it be provided for you. if you will look for it in the right place you will always find it, and will be saved much seeking and worrying. do not be impatient because the feast is not set before you at this stage. be satisfied with that which is given, for it suffices your needs at the present moment. by and by you will reach the stage when the feast of good things will have been earned, and you will be invited to feast and rest until you are ready for the next stage of the journey. the great spiritual wave which is now sweeping over the world brings with it great wants, but it also carries with it the means of satisfying those wants. do not despair. look aloft! the old sailor's advice--the warning cry--peace and content--mental balance recovered--the glory of the universe--all governed by law--the law manifests everywhere--a reverent feeling of calm, peaceful faith--look aloft. i recently heard a little tale about a boy who went to sea, in the old days of the sailing vessel. one day he was ordered to go aloft, and was urged on until he reached the highest possible point on the mast. when he found that he could go no farther, he glanced down. the sight terrified him and almost caused him to lose his grip and fall headlong on the deck, far below. he felt dizzy and sick, and it seemed almost impossible for him to maintain his hold on the mast. far below was the deck, looking so small as compared to the wide expanse of water on all sides of it. the motion made him feel as if he was suspended between heaven and earth, with nothing substantial to support him. he felt his brain reeling and his senses leaving him, and all seemed lost, when far away from the deck below, he heard an old sailor cry, "look aloft, lad! look aloft!" turning his eyes from the scene below the boy gazed upward. he saw the blue sky, the fleecy clouds passing peacefully along, looking just the same as they did when he had looked at them while lying on his back on the green grass of the meadows in his country home. a strange feeling of peace and content came over him, and the feeling of dread, terror and despair passed away. his strength and presence of mind came back to him, and soon he was able to slide down the mast until he grasped a friendly rope, thence to the lower rigging, and on until the deck was again reached. he never forgot the old sailor's advice given in the hour of need, and when he would feel dazed and fearful of danger, he would invariably look aloft until he recovered his mental balance. we may well take a leaf from the old sailor's note-book, and impress his wisdom upon our minds. there's nothing so good in hours of trial, doubt, sorrow and pain, as to "look aloft." when we feel that we cannot see clearly with our spiritual vision--that our spiritual sight is blurred and dim--that we lose faith and confidence, hope and courage--that we feel the deadly sensation of despair and hopelessness creeping over us and benumbing our senses, stilling our heart--then is the time for us to listen to the warning shout: "look aloft, lad; look aloft!" when all seems lost--when darkness is closing around us--when we seem to have lost our foothold and have no way of regaining it--when all appears hopeless, gloomy and dreadful--when faith seems to have deserted us, and the chill of unbelief is on us--then is the time for us to shout to ourselves, "look aloft--look aloft!" when we try to solve the riddle of the universe--the problem of existence--by the aid of the intellect, unsupported by faith. when we ask our intellects, "whence come i? whither go i? what is the object of my existence? what does life mean?" when we travel round and round the weary path of intellectual reasoning, and find that it has no ending. when we shout aloud the question of life, and hear no answer but the despairing echo of our own sad cry. when life seems a mockery--when life seems to be without reason--when life seems a torment devised by a fiend--when we lose the feeling of nearness to the infinite power that has supported us in the past--when we lose the touch of the unseen hand. these are the times for us to look upward to the source of wisdom and light. these are the times for us to heed the cry of the soul: "look aloft; look aloft; look aloft!" some clear night, when the moon is not shining, go out into the darkness, and gaze upward at the stars. you will see countless bright spots, each of which is a sun equaling or exceeding in size the sun which gives light and life to our little earth--each sun having its circling worlds, many of the worlds having moons revolving around them, in turn. look all over the heavens, as far as the eye can reach, and endeavor to grasp the idea of the countless suns and worlds. then try to imagine that in space, far beyond the reach of human vision, even aided by the telescope, are millions upon millions of other worlds and suns--on all sides of us, on and on and on throughout the universe, reaching into infinity. and then remember that all these worlds hold their places and revolve according to law. and then remember that the microscope shows that law manifests itself in the smallest thing that can be seen by its use. all around you you will see nothing but the manifestations of law. and then, remembering that the infinite, which has us all in charge, takes note of the fall of the sparrow, what has become of your fears and doubts and worries? gone is your despair and unbelief, and in their place is found a reverent feeling of calm, peaceful faith. aye, there is much good sense in the old sailor's maxim. "when you get rattled, look aloft!" to-morrow. the work and cares of to-day easy if we do not worry about those of to-morrow--the mysterious to-morrow and its terrors--the way to meet the cares of to-morrow--to-morrow's opportunities will come as surely as to-morrow's cares--law supreme--no need to be afraid--the real to-morrow. the work of each day would be a pleasure if we would refrain from attempting to perform at the same time the work of to-morrow. the cares of to-day would cease to disturb us, if we would refuse to anticipate the cares of to-morrow. the work of to-day is easily performed, notwithstanding the fact that we spoiled the pleasure of yesterday by fretting about the tasks of the coming day. the cares of to-day do not seem half so terrible as they appeared viewed from the distance of yesterday, nor do we suffer nearly as much from to-day's burdens as we did yesterday in bearing these burdens in anticipation. to-day is comparatively easy for us, but oh, to-morrow. aye, there's the trouble--to-morrow. the past is gone, and its sorrows, cares, troubles, misfortunes and work do not seem so terrible viewed from this distance--the misfortunes of the past are now often known as blessings in disguise. to-day is here, and we seem to be getting along fairly well--excepting fearing the dawn of to-morrow. but to-morrow--oh! mysterious to-morrow--that delight of the child--that bugaboo of the "grown up"--what shall we say of to-morrow? who knows what terrible monsters are lurking in its gloomy recesses--what frightful cares are slumbering there--what dreadful shapes are there crouching, with glowering eyes, awaiting our coming? no frightful tale of childhood begins to compare in horror with this fantasy of maturity--to-morrow. yesterday, with all its troubles--to-day, with its pressing tasks--affright us not, but to-morrow, ah! to-morrow. tell us of the morrow! who knows what a day may bring forth? tell us how to meet the terrors of to-morrow! forsooth, an easy task, good friends. the way to meet the terrors of to-morrow is to--wait until to-morrow. the cares of to-morrow indeed! 'twould be laughable if it were not so pitiful. to-morrow's cares may come, will come, must come, but what of to-morrow's opportunities, to-morrow's strength, to-morrow's chances, circumstances, helpers? don't you know that the supply of good things does not cease with the close of to-day? don't you know that in the womb of the future sleep opportunities intended for your use when the time comes? don't you know that an earnest, confident expectation of the good things to come will cause these good things to grow for your use in the future? well, it's so; they'll grow and grow and grow, and then when you need them you will find them ripe and ready to pick. water them with faith; surround them with the rich soil of hope; let them receive the full rays of the sun of love, and the nourishing fruit of opportunity will be your reward--to-morrow. did you ever shiver with dread at the thought of what would happen if the sun should not rise to-morrow? did you ever doubt that the grass would grow and the trees take on leaves next spring? did you ever fear that perhaps the summer would not come? oh, no, of course not! these things have always happened and you have sufficient faith to know that they will occur again. yes, but you have been fearing that opportunities, chances, circumstances, may not be present to-morrow. oh, ye of little faith do you not know that this is no world of chance? do you not know that you are working under the operations of a great law, and that these things are as much amenable to that law as are the seasons, the crops, the motion of the earth, the planets, this and countless other solar systems, the universe! the law which regulates the motions of the millions of worlds, and whose jurisdiction extends over space--that space the abstract idea of which cannot be grasped by the puny intellect of man of to-day--also takes cognizance of the tiny living organism too small to be seen through our strongest microscope. the sparrow's fall comes under the law as well as the building of a magnificent series of solar systems. and yet, man fears to-morrow. of all living beings, man alone fears to-morrow. children, lovers and philosophers escape the curse. the first two look forward to it with joy and confidence, having the love that casteth out fear; the philosopher's reason teaches him that which the intuition of the other two has grasped. the child intuitively recognizes that the infinite supply is inexhaustible and naturally expects to-morrow's supply as he does to-morrow's sun. he has faith in the law, until fear is suggested into his receptive mind by those who have grown old enough to fear. the child knows that "there are just as good fish in the sea as ever were caught," but the "grown-up" fears that to-day's fish is the last in the sea, and fails to appreciate to-day's haul by reason of his worry about the possible future failure of the fishing industry. oh no! i do not believe in just sitting down and folding my hands and waiting for "mine own to come to me." i know that "mine own will come to me," because i am doing well the work that the law has placed before me to do--that which lies nearest to my hand to-day. i believe in work, good work, honest work, cheerful work, hopeful work, confident work. i believe in the joy of work--the pleasure of creating. and i believe that he who does his best work one day at a time working with faith, hope and confidence in the morrow, with fear eliminated from his mind and replaced with courage--i believe, i say, that such a man will never find his cupboard empty, nor will his children want for bread. and furthermore, i believe that to-morrow is what we make it by our thoughts to-day. i believe that we are sowing thought-seeds to-day, which will grow up over night and bear fruit to-morrow. i believe that "thought takes form in action," and that we are, and will be, just what we think ourselves into being. i believe that our minds and bodies are constantly being molded by our thoughts, and that the measure of man's success is determined by the character of his thoughts. and i believe that when man will throw off the incubus of fear, the frightful vision of the night will vanish, and, opening his eyes, in the place of the monster he will see the fair form and smiling face of a radiant creature, who, bending over him with love-lit eyes, will softly whisper, "i am to-morrow." in the depths of the soul. stores of information; rich mines of knowledge; uncut gems and precious metal awaiting the discoverer--psychic and spiritual faculties--strange attraction of soul to soul--the rock of ages--the voice of the soul. deep down in the soul are stores of information awaiting to be brought to the surface of consciousness. rich mines of knowledge are there--uncut gems rest there awaiting the day when they will be uncovered and brought into the bright light of consciousness--rich veins of precious metals are there awaiting in patience the day when some divine adventurer will search for them and bring them to light. the human mind is a wonderful storehouse, concealing all sorts of treasures and precious things, only a fraction of which have been discovered so far. we have faculties not yet recognized by the science of the day--psychic and spiritual faculties--just as real as the recognized faculties, playing an important part in our everyday lives, particularly when we have been made aware of their existence. in many of us these faculties are scarcely recognized, and many of us doubt and deny their very existence. others have a faint perception of their existence, but do not know how to use them, and get but the slightest benefit from them. others have awakened to the wonderful faculties which are developing and unfolding within them, and a few have gone so far as to aid in this development of these higher faculties of the mind, and have been almost startled at the results obtained. the orientals have their ways of development of these faculties, and we occidentals have ours. each best serves the purposes of the particular people using it. as we bring these faculties out of the realm of the super-conscious into the field of consciousness, life takes on an entirely different meaning, and many things heretofore dark are seen plainly and understood. no one can understand the oneness of things until his spiritual faculties are sufficiently developed to make him _conscious_ of it. blind belief or reliance upon the words of another will never do for the seeker after truth that which is accomplished by a single gleam of consciousness resting upon some of the hidden treasures of the soul. one glimpse into the depths of the soul will do more than the reading of thousands of books, the teaching of hundreds of teachers. this glimpse, once had, will never be forgotten. its reality may be questioned at times--at other times the memory may seem dim and unreliable--but it will return in all its freshness and brightness, and even in the moment of doubt we cannot entirely escape it. our real knowledge of the existence of god is not obtained from the intellect. we can take up the subject of god and reason about it all our life, only to find ourselves, in the end, in a worse muddle than when we started. and yet one single ray of consciousness reaching down into the depths of our inner being will bring to us such a complete certainty of god's existence and being, that nothing afterward will ever shake our faith in the reality and existence of the supreme power. we will not understand the nature of his being--his existence--his power--but we will _know_ that he exists, and will feel that peacefulness and infinite trust in him which always come with the glimpse of the truth. we will not understand any better the many theories of man regarding god and his works; in fact, we will be more apt to turn away, wearied, from man's discussion of the subject--the attempt of the finite to describe and limit the infinite. but we will _know_ that at the center of things is to be found that universal presence, and we feel that we can safely rest ourselves on his bosom--trust ourselves in his hands. the cares, sorrows and trials of life seem very small indeed when viewed from the absolute position, although from the relative position this world often seems to be a very hell. another glimpse into the recesses of the soul reveals to us the oneness of things. we see god as the great center of things, and all the universe as but one. the oneness of all life becomes apparent to us and we feel in touch not only with all mankind, but with all life. the petty distinctions of class, race, rank, caste, nationality, language, country fade away and we see all men as brothers. and we feel a kindly feeling and love toward the lesser manifestations of life. even the rocks and the stones are seen as parts of the whole and we no longer feel a sense of separateness from any thing. we realize what the universe is, and in our imagination visit the most distant stars and instinctively know that we would find nothing foreign to us there--all would be but bits of the same thing. and we begin to understand those strange attractions of soul to soul, instances of which have come to all of us. we realize that it is possible to entertain a feeling of love for every living creature--to every man or woman, the manifestations, of course, varying in degree and kind, according to sex and closeness of soul relation. it makes us more tolerant and causes us to see but ignorance in many things in which we saw but sin before. it makes us feel pity rather than hate. ah, these little glimpses into the inmost recesses of the soul they teach us many new lessons. and one of the greatest lessons that we may acquire in this way is the recognition of the eternal life of the soul. we may believe, with greater or less earnestness, in the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, our beliefs and conceptions depending more or less upon the teachings which we have received from early childhood, but until we become conscious of that which lies within us, we are never really certain--we do not know. many good people will deny this statement, and will say that they have never doubted the life of the soul after death, but see how they act. when death comes into their houses they mourn and cry aloud in their agony, and demand of god why he has done this thing. they drape themselves in mourning and mourn and weep as if the loved one had been destroyed and annihilated. all of their actions and conduct go to prove that they have no abiding sense of the reality of the continuance of life beyond the grave. they speak of the dead as if they were lost forever--as if a sponge had been passed over the slate of life and naught remained. how cold and hollow sounds the would-be comforting words of friends and relatives, who assure the mourning ones that the being who has just laid aside the body is "better off now," and that all is "for the best," and all the rest of conventional expressions that we make use of. i tell you that one who has had a glimpse into what lies within him knows so well that he is eternal that he finds it impossible to look upon death in the ordinary way, and if he is not very careful he will be regarded as heartless and unfeeling for the sorrows of others. and he will be regarded as a fool in his views of life by those around him who attend church regularly every sunday, and who profess a full belief in all its doctrines. if he considers that he himself is his soul, and that he is as much an immortal being now as he ever will be--that his body is but as a garment to cover him, or an instrument through which he manifests himself--if he considers that he is in eternity now just as much as he ever will be; that he cannot be destroyed by mt. pelee eruptions or railroad accidents--if, in short, he feels these things so strongly that they have become a part of his real everyday life--why, he is looked upon as "queer" by those who hear these things taught them every sunday, and who would feel horrified if they were accused of harboring a doubt regarding them. this is one of the things that go to show the difference between "believing" a thing and "being conscious" of it. now, don't run away and say that i held that the church-goers have no conception of the reality of the immortality of the soul, for i haven't said any such thing. there are many church-goers who have experienced a full realization of the feeling i mention, and there are many more church-goers who have not. and there are many men and women who scarcely ever enter within the walls of a church who have had this experience, and it means more to them than all the preachments they have ever listened to. it is not a matter of being "in-church" or "out-of-church," it is a matter of spiritual development, that's all. i attend churches of all denominations, and i find all of them good. the service of the catholic church appeals to me, and so does the meeting of some old-fashioned methodist congregation. i do not accept all the doctrines and theories i hear in the various churches, but i manage to get some good out of all. if i have any preference whatever, it is for an old-fashioned quaker meeting, where, perhaps, not a word is said from beginning to close, but where there is undoubtedly a strong spiritual power manifested. i have even found much good in attending a certain orthodox church, where the venerable preacher, who does not believe in the "higher criticism" or creed revision, often gives us a delightful sermon on the horrors of hell and the state of the damned, including the unbaptized infants. i can listen to a sermon like this with a thrill of delight--a feeling of intense joy which comes to me because i have been given the inward assurance that there exists a god who is love, instead of the hating, wrathful, vengeful creature that the poor preacher tries to make us believe is the infinite power--the universal presence--the loving father. oh, no, i am not condemning churches--i like them all, and think that each one is doing the best possible work for the particular people who are attracted to it. i have listened to the exercises of the salvation army, and have seen much good in it. how many of you new thought people, or you high-toned church members, would make half the sacrifices for what you consider truth that the salvation army soldier or the hallelujah lassie make every day of their lives? stop a moment before you laugh at them. some of these people have more spirituality in their little finger than many of us have in our whole bodies. there are times when we feel disturbed and full of unrest. we seek to use our intellects and solve all the problems of life. we fret and chafe under the restrictions which have been placed upon us. we wish to know all things. we reason this way and that way, follow up every lane, alley and street in the city of thought, but, alas, we find not that which we seek. and in our search we are apt to forget that we have within us an assurance that all is well with the world, and with us. we rebel against the leadings of the spirit--against the knowledge that has come from the inner self--and we want to get our knowledge over the old channels--by means of the intellect. well, at such times we storm and fume and fret, and complain at our inability to solve the problem. we set up ideas only to tear them down again. we assume and then abandon one position after another, until there is nothing left. and the end of all the intellectual debauch is to say finally, "i do not know." and then, after the struggle is over, we see, just as plainly as ever before, the glimpse of truth that has come to us from within--we hear the words of the soul--we have the same old consciousness. we say to ourselves, "i may not get this thing intellectually, but i know it is true. i cannot doubt the voice of the soul." this knowledge which comes from within is like the rock against which beat the storms of the sea--against which dash the waves which completely cover it and which hide it from sight, until it seems that it has disappeared forever from view, carried away by the attacking waves. the lightning flashes, the thunder rolls, the fury of the tempest seems concentrated against this rock, and the demon of the storm seems intent upon destroying every particle of it--of tearing it to little bits with which to strew the shores. all is darkness--all is blackness--all is fury, raging and terror. after hours, the storm subsides, and then later morning comes, and the first rays of the rising sun kiss lovingly the rock which has stood the fury of the storm, and has emerged unhurt, a witness to its superiority to the elements. storm away, ye who would destroy this rock--dash your waves of doubt, logic, criticism, unbelief, dogma, theory, against this rock of the spirit. exert yourself to the utmost--expend all the force that is within you--do your best--do your worst. tear and twist, pull and wrench, beat and pound, and what have you accomplished? after the storm has passed away--after the clouds have dispersed--when the sky again is blue and the sun again is shining--the rock still stands, undisturbed, unchanged, unshaken. and stand it will for ages and ages. and man shall begin to know of the stability and firmness of this rock. he will begin to realize just what it means to him, and he will know that while the waves that beat upon it are good and needful, and not to be despised, that only upon the rock can he safely build. do not despise the intellect and its teachings, but know that ye have within ye another source of knowledge--that ye have spiritual faculties which are developing and which you can use. and trust the work of these faculties--listen to the voice of the soul. "forget it." why worry about the past?--hugging old sorrows to your bosom--what to do with them--don't poison your life--pain brings experience--learning your lesson--how to get rid of a gloomy thought--throw it away--forget it. one can often get some useful lesson from the slang and current phrases of the day. there is something particularly attractive to me about slang, and the pat phrases that are passed along from one to another on the streets. many of these phrases condense in a few words certain practical truths that one could use as a basis for a sermon, an essay, or even a book. they are the practical experiences of the people crystallized in a catchy phrase. the phrase which i hear so frequently on the street just now, "forget it," seems to me to contain much practical common sense, and if people would put it into practice there would be many more brighter faces--many more lighter hearts. what's the use, anyhow, of carrying around a long face or a heavy heart, just because away back in the past something "went wrong" with us, or even if we "went wrong" ourselves (and most of us have--i have, i know)? what's the use? forget it! of course you will not forget the experiences of the past, and you do not want to. that's one of the things we are living for--gaining experience. when we have once really learned a thing through experience, we never forget it--it is a part of us. but why bother about the memory of the pain, the mortification, the "slip-up," the heartache, the wounded feelings, the misplaced confidence, the thing done in the wrong way, the chance you let slip by, the folly, the sin, the misery, the "might-have-beens," and all the rest. oh what's the use? forget it i say, forget it. if one is to worry about all the things that went wrong--all the things that didn't come right--in the past; if he has to take out each memory every day, and after carefully dusting it off, fondle and caress it, and hug it close to his bosom; if he has to raise up these ghosts from the past--these phantoms of long ago--these musty, moth-eaten things--why he will have no time for the affairs of to-day. he will lose all the joy of the now--all the pleasure of life of the moment--all the interest in the things of to-day. oh, dear, dear, what's the use? forget it--forget it. some people are not happy unless they have some old faded sorrow hugged up close to their bosoms, and they feel guilty if they happen to smile and forget the old thing for even a moment. oh, how they do gloat over their own revamped unhappiness--how they enjoy the relieving of the pains and sorrows, mistakes and ignorance of years gone by. how they love to hold the fox to their sides and let it eat out their heart. these people are really happy in the unhappiness, and life would not be worth living if they were deprived of their pet sorrows. of course, if these people are really happy because they are unhappy, i have no objection. every man or woman has the right to pursue happiness in his or her own way, and i suppose that that is as good a way as any other, and i should not find fault if somebody else's way is different from mine. but doesn't it seem like a pity to see people wasting their time, energy, thoughts and life on these old sorrows? if they must think of the past, why not think of the bright things that came into their lives, instead of the dark ones? think of the moments of happiness, not of the moments of sorrow. don't make a tomb of your mind. don't let that particular painful experience poison your present life. don't do it--don't do it. what's the use? forget it. every bit of pain that has happened you has brought its experience to you--you are better, wiser and broader for it. look at it in that way, and you will cease to mourn and wail and wring your hands over the fact that in the past you "have done those things which you ought not to have done, and have left undone those things which you ought to have done." nonsense! you have gained the experience and know better now. if you were placed back in the same old position, and lacked the experience that you have gained by just such things, you would do the same old thing over again, and in the same old way. you couldn't help it, because you would be the same old person. what you would like to do would be to be placed back in the same position, and face the same old temptation or problem, but you would want to take with you the experience you have gained by your former mistake. you want the cake and the penny at the same time. you want the experience without the pain. oh, yes, you do, now, that's just what you want--i've been through it myself, and know all about it. you've gained the experience, be satisfied. some day you'll need that experience, and will be glad you have it, and will see that it was worth all you've paid for it. no, you don't see it that way? well, maybe you haven't had enough of it--haven't learned your lesson yet. if that is the case, some of these days the law will drop you back into the pot, until you're well done. the law is not satisfied with underdone people. oh, you're making a big mistake. forget it--forget it. the people who carry these old things around with them generally get themselves into the mental attitude that draws other things of the same sort to them. misery likes company, and a miserable thought also likes companionship, and almost always manages to attract some other miserable thing to it, to keep it from being lonesome. the only way to get rid of a thought of this kind is to--forget it. now if you have some pet thing that is gnawing out your vitals--is corroding your heart--is poisoning your mind--take it out and look at it for the last time. give it a last long lingering gaze. kiss it good-bye. weep over it if you like, for this is the last you will see of it. then throw open the window of your mind and pitch it out into the outer darkness. forget it! "the kindergarten of god." life a great school--man a child learning his lesson--preparing for higher grades--the game-task--what it all means--things as they are--the rules wise and good--each task means something--greeting the kindergartner. i see life as a great school--man as a tiny child, learning his little lessons, performing his little tasks, playing his little games, enjoying his little pleasures, suffering his little pains, disappointments, trials and sorrows. i feel that we are in but the kindergarten stage of existence, learning the first lessons of life--fitting ourselves for the grander, broader, fuller life in store for us. and i feel that this little kindergarten experience will continue until we have learned its lessons well--have firmly grasped the principles designed for our baby minds. and i feel that when we have proven our ability to weave our little mats--build our little blocks--draw our little pictures--mold our little clay forms--sing our little songs--then, and not until then, will we pass into a higher grade, where we will spell out the lines of the primer of life, and acquire the elementary principles of cosmic mathematics. and i feel that each little lesson must be learned, thoroughly, before the next step is taken. and i feel that every one of us must perform his own task--must memorize his own lesson--before he can gain the experience--can profit by the knowledge acquired in the performance of the task. we may be inspired by some brighter pupil--be encouraged by the loving sympathy of some fellow-scholar, but the task is _ours_ to perform, sooner or later--and ours is the joy of accomplishment. i believe that as some children, even whilst fascinated by the game-task of the kindergarten, know that it is only a childish task and not the _real thing_ of life, so may we come to a point, where, whilst enjoying the constantly changing play of life, we will realize that it is but the training for greater things, and important only in that sense. the perception of this fact by the child need not interfere with his interest in the game--need not prevent him from feeling the joy of _doing_, creating, working, gaining new experiences; nor need it prevent _us_ from playing the kindergarten games of grown-up life with a zest and interest, not alone because we realize that we are learning valuable lessons, but, yea, even from the very excitement and joy of the game itself. when we realize just what this view of life means, we will find new pleasures in everyday life--will learn to laugh with childish glee at our little successes in molding the clay into the desired shape--in the clever weaving of the mat. and we will learn to smile, through our tears, if our little mat happens to tear in two--if our little clay sphere drops to the floor and is shattered--if the hour's work is destroyed. and we will learn our little lesson of love--of comradeship. we will learn by experience that if we lead the narrow, selfish life we will miss the joy that falls to the lot of those who have learned to express more fully the love-nature within them--we will find that love begets love--that the love-nature, expressed, attracts to itself the love in the hearts of our little playmates. we will find that the child who carries within him the love for others, and expresses that love, need never want for friends or companions, need never suffer from loneliness, need never fear being left out in the cold. the true personal magnetism of the child (and the grown-up) consists largely of--love, which never fails in its drawing power. and we will learn, from bitter experience, the folly of the idea of separateness from our little playmates--will know that the standing apart brings nothing but sorrow to us. we will realize that selfishness brings nothing but pain--that giving has its pleasures as well as receiving. and we will learn something of brotherhood, and its goodness--we will have the true democracy of the kindergarten impressed upon us. these lessons (and others) we will learn well, before passing on. we, like the child, often wonder what is the use of it all--fret over our enforced tasks--chafe at the confinement--rage at the restrictions, and, failing to comprehend it all, indulge in complaints, protests, rebellion. and, like the child, we cannot expect to understand the whyness of it all, certainly not until we pass beyond the kindergarten stage of existence and reach the higher grades. when one begins to realize _what he is_--begins to be conscious of the i am--begins to know things as they are--he gradually learns to appreciate things at their true worth, and, although not released from the necessity of playing out his kindergarten game tasks, is able to, practically, _stand aside and watch himself play them out_. he knows that he is gaining knowledge--is mastering his lessons--is living-out, and out-living, his desires--is acquiring and storing up new experiences--but he values things only at their final worth, and is not deceived by the apparent value of the moment. he begins to see things in their proper relations. he does not take himself (or things) too seriously. he enjoys the pleasure of the game--but he knows it to be but the play and pleasure of the child--he laughs, but is not deceived. he suffers, also, the sorrow, grief, disappointment, humiliation and chagrin of the child-nature--but even though the tears are falling he, _knowing_, smiles. he laughs with joy--with pain he cries, but he knows--he _knows_. he enjoys the playthings, gifts, rewards, but he knows them for what they are--he knows. he plays the games with the children who do not know--and well he plays--but he knows. his disillusionment spoils not the sport--he plays on (for play he _must_), knowing, but enjoying. yes, enjoying _because_ of the knowing. he knows that the child-things are good--but he sees them as but shadows of the good to come. he knows that he "cannot escape from his own good." and he knows that the good is also in store for his playmates (though they know it not) and, being full of love, he rejoices. he feels that the rules of the school are wise and good, and that, though he cannot see it clearly now, infinite justice rules all, as will in the end appear. he knows that promotion will be gained, just as soon as earned. he knows that just as soon as he is able to master a task, that task will be set before him--not a moment before. and he knows that no task will be allotted him even one moment before the possibility of its accomplishment. he knows that he is being tested, trained and strengthened, day by day--that every unpleasant and disagreeable task has an important end in view. and he knows that every task placed before him is in accordance with a law that takes cognizance of his powers, failings, capabilities, short-comings--that understands him better than he does himself. he knows that the very allotment of the task is a guarantee of his ability to perform it. he knows that within him are latent powers, potential forces, hidden knowledge, which will well forth from his sub-conscious mentality when bidden by the confident expectation of intelligent faith. and, knowing these things, he is filled with courage--and presses forth eagerly to the tasks of the day. and, knowing, he casts off all fear, worry, discouragement and discontent, and, with the smile of love on his face and the joy of faith in his heart, he greets the kindergartner with confidence and trust. the human wet blanket. sees no good in anything--expects the bad and gets it--attracts it to him--depresses everything and everyone--carries an aura of negative depressing thought--clammy--puts out the fire of energy--take warning. did you ever meet the human wet blanket? to start with, he sees no good in anything. to him every man is a rogue--every woman a schemer trying to pull the wool over the eyes of some man. he looks for the bad--expects to find it--and find it he does. one generally gets what he looks for. he attracts to him that for which he looks, and he cannot see any other qualities than those possessed by himself. everyone is trying to cheat him, and out-wit him, so he thinks, and i have no doubt that the law brings him a fair share of people of this kind. in order to prevent other people from taking advantage of him, he endeavors to take advantage of them in the same small way that he fears they will use on him. the consequence is the people with whom he has dealings are apt to give him a dose of his own medicine. he trusts no man. he's so shrewd that he measures off a spool of thread in order to be sure that the storekeeper has not robbed him of a yard or two. and the funny thing is, that he sets in motion the law which causes the one short-measure spool in the case to fall into his hands. he just _draws_ these things to him. he thinks himself a marvel of cunning, and endeavors to manifest it in petty practices, the result being that he attracts to himself all the little schemers, and some of the big ones, who happen to be within the radius of his attracting power, while the other type of people are repelled by his mental attitude and thought-force. funny, isn't it? then he sees nothing but disaster ahead in any plan, and, sure, enough, if he gets near enough to the plan to contaminate it, trouble is sure to happen. as an attractor of negative thought he is a glittering success. he seems to have a positive genius for doing things the wrong way. and yet, he doesn't believe in the attractive power of thought or "any such nonsense." he's too shrewd to take any stock in such ridiculous theories, although he exhibits in his life a most convincing proof of the truth of new thought teachings. he never says "i can and i will," and if he hears anyone around him indulging in such heretical notions, he promptly proceeds to squelch him by a few "supposings," "buts," "what ifs," and two or three gloomy shakes of the head, and a few sighs. his motto seems to be "there's no use trying, you can't do it." with him the country seems always to be going to the dogs, and the poorhouse is constantly looming up before him. i need scarcely add that fear, worry, jealousy, and suspicion are his bosom friends. he holds these thoughts constantly, and they and the rest of the negative brood are devouring him. they are making their home in his mentality and are increasing rapidly, besides frequently inviting their friends for a visit. of course, it's nobody's business if he likes this sort of thing, but it is not pleasant to come in contact with him. he is surrounded with an aura of negative, depressing, gloomy, thought-force, which is manifest to all with whom he comes in contact. turn him loose in a roomful of cheerful people, and in a few minutes the conversation has lagged, the warmth of love and friendship has disappeared and things begin to feel damp and chilly, and someone will begin to make inquiry regarding the furnace or the steam radiators, and wondering why the janitor does not keep up the fire on such a day. approach him when you feel fired with energy, ambition and push--when you feel that you can go out and conquer any obstacle--and you will feel the clammy wet blanket thrown over you, putting out your fire of energy, and in a moment or two you will wonder "what's the use." that is, unless you understand your business, and know how to throw off the influence of the negative thought-waves emanating from this man. look out for him. from the bottom of my heart, i pity this man and his kind. he gets none of the sweet things of life--he doesn't see them lying around. he misses the joy of living. he sees everything through jaundiced eyes. he knows nothing of the happiness of the clear head, warm heart, and brotherly hand. he is so occupied in looking for the spoiled fruit on the ground that he does not see the perfect fruit on the branches above his head, begging to be picked. he is so much engrossed in the mud upon the road, that he does not see the bright blue sky above his head; the beautiful landscape; the children playing on the grass; the mother nursing her babe; the old couple trudging along hand in hand. these things do not exist for him. his mind is so full of fear, suspicion, distrust, and petty spite, that love finds no room. but even this is good--for many find their way to optimism only by first sinking to the depths of extreme pessimism. they reach the celestial city by the road that winds through the valley of the shadow of death. even these things shall pass away. all's well. aim straight. fear attracts, as well as desire--learn to aim straight and aim at the right thing--examples--the bowler--the bicyclist and the car--the bicyclist and the post--the boy and the marbles--wisdom from the babe--look straight; think straight; shoot straight. a strong desire or a strong fearthought is an aim at the thing desired or feared. and in proportion to the degree of desire or fear, will we be carried toward the thing at which we aim. confident expectation is manifested in a fearthought as well as in an earnest desire, and when we confidently expect a thing to happen we are carried toward it by an irresistible force. it may seem strange to you to hear that fear is akin to desire, but this is the truth. it matters not whether we call it desire or fear, the gist of the matter lies in the confident expectation. a faint hope and a lurking fear have about the same attractive force--a desire coupled with a firm belief in its realization attracts strongly, but no more strongly than does a fear coupled with a feeling of certainty of its realization. the thing upon which your thought is firmly fixed or drawn toward, will be the thing you will realize. therefore aim straight. we have heard much of the attractive power of thought as applied to desire. i will now say something to you about the same force called into operation by fearthought. it is far more pleasant for me to speak of the bright side of the question, but i would be neglecting my duty toward you if i failed to direct your attention to the reverse of the shield. when you thoroughly realize that thought-force works both ways, you will know how to handle it, and will understand many things that have heretofore been dark to you. you will learn to aim straight, but will also learn to be careful at what you aim. you will learn to avoid the aim inspired by fear, and will hereafter use all your energies to pointing your mental arrow at the bull's-eye of happiness and success. let us take a few facts from the physical plane in order to illustrate things as they are on the mental plane of effort. life has its correspondences on all its planes, and by taking examples from one plane, we will be able to more readily understand the workings of the law on other planes. some time ago, i was talking to a number of people about this subject, and gleaned from each an illustration of the workings of the law of attraction on the physical plane. and each example although on the physical plane, showed the power of mind behind it. i will tell you what some of these people said, and you can see for yourself just what i mean. the first man was a printer, who after hours spent much time in bowling, and who was looked upon as an expert in that game. he said that some time before he was playing a game, and at a critical point when he was taking aim and endeavoring to put the ball in between the and pins (a specially advantageous shot), his opponent spoke up and said "just watch him hit the pin." i do not know anything about bowling, but it seems that to hit the pin is about the worst thing that can happen to a bowler, outside of missing the pins altogether. well, to go on with the story, with the remark of his rival, fearthought entered the mind of the printer, and he couldn't get the pin out of his mind. he kept on looking at the place he wanted to hit, but his mind was on the pin, and he feared that he would hit it. to use his own words, he "got rattled," and away went the ball striking the pin fair and square. he concluded the story by saying: "and so instead of making a 'ten strike' i got only a 'split.'" maybe you understand those terms better than do i, but at any rate you will see what a fearthought brought to this typographical bowler in his little game of ten-pins. moral: when you wish to place the ball energy between the and pins of life, don't allow fearthoughts to switch you off to the pin, thereby giving you a "split" instead of the coveted "ten-strike." another friend told me that, a few days before, he had been riding on the front bench of a grip-car on a chicago cable-line. hearing the gripman break into the vernacular in a vigorous style, he looked up, and saw a colored man on a bicycle trying to cross the track "on the bias," as the girls say, just ahead of the car. there was plenty of time--plenty of room--for the man to get across, but when he reached the middle of the track fearthought got hold of him, and in spite of himself his wheel turned and he headed straight for the car. he headed straight for the gripcar, just as if he had aimed at it, and the next moment he went "bang" right into it. he escaped injury, but his wheel was wrecked. when asked about it, he said that from the moment he got afraid of the car his wheel "ran away with him," right into the thing he feared. moral: keep your mind fixed on the thing you want--not on the thing you don't want. another man, to whom i related the story of the man on the wheel, said that he had the same trouble when he was learning to ride the wheel. he was getting along pretty well and could manage to steer half-way straight, although in a wobbly manner, until one day he happened to see a certain telegraph pole in front of the place where he was learning to ride. the pole seemed to hypnotize him, and from that day he couldn't keep his front wheel away from it. he couldn't keep away from that pole--he was afraid of it. the pole seemed to have magnetic qualities and the result was "bump." he remounted, over and over again, but the result was the same. at last he made up his mind that he was going to get ahead of that pole somehow, and he mounted the wheel with his back toward the pole (but his mind was still on it) and lo! the front wheel described a semi-circle, and back to the pole he went. moral: don't let a pole hypnotize you with fearthought--keep your mind on the place to which you wish to go. but the best example was given by a boy who had kept his eyes open and his thinker working. maybe i had better tell you in his own words. this is what he said, just as he said it: "oh, pshaw!" said the boy, "you're making a big fuss over nothing. every feller knows that you've got to _think_ about a thing if you want to hit it, and if you think about the wrong thing, why, you'll hit the wrong thing. if i fire a stone at a tin can, why, i just look square at the can and think about the can for all i'm worth, and the can's a dead one, sure. if i happen to let my mind wander to the cat what's on the shed over to the left of the can--well, so much the worse for the cat, that's all. _to shoot straight, you've got to aim straight; and to aim straight you've got to look straight; and to look straight you've got to think straight._ every kid knows that, or he couldn't even play marbles. if i get my heart set on a beauty marble in the ring, i just want it the worst way and says i to myself, 'you're my marble.' then i look at him strong and steady-like and don't think about nothing else in the world but that beauty. maybe i'm late for school, but i clean forget it. i don't see nothing--nor think nothing--but that there marble what i want. as the piece in my reader says, it's my 'heart's desire,' and i don't care whether school keeps or not, just so as i get it. then i shoot, and the marble's mine. and, at school, when our drawing teacher tells us how to draw a straight line, she makes two dots, several inches away from each other. then she makes us put our pencils on the first dot and look steady at the other and move our pencil towards it. the more you keep thinking about the far off dot, and the less you think about the starting dot or your hand, the straighter you're going to get your line. wonst i looked straight at the far-off dot with my eyes, but i kept thinking about a red-headed girl on the other side of the room, and what do you think, the line i was drawing slanted away off in her direction, although i had kept my eyes glued on the far-away dot and never even peeped in the kid's direction. that shows, sure, that it's the thinking as well as the looking. see?" all of the examples above given contain within them the principles of a mighty truth--a working illustration of a great law of life. if we are wise we will profit by them. many things are happening around us every day, from which we might gain lessons if we would only think a little, instead of playing "follow my leader" and accepting other people's thought, ready made. we have gotten so accustomed to these "hand-me-down" thoughts, that we have almost forgotten how to turn out thoughts for ourselves. the day has come when we are required to do a little thinking on our own account, instead of humbly bowing before moth-eaten authority perched upon a crumbling base. the time has arrived when we must strike out for ourselves, instead of following a musty precedent which has "seen better days." this is the age of the individual. this the time for the "i" to assert itself. i wish you would pay attention to what the boy said. it is not the first time that we have gone to the babe for wisdom. although a child has an imagination beyond our comprehension, he, at the same time, is painfully and even brutally, matter of fact. he is continually asking: "why," and when we grown-ups are unable to answer him he answers the question himself, often better than we could have done. he doesn't theorize, but gets down to business, and works things out for himself. this boy knew all about the thinking part of the problems, and had put it into practical application, while we were theorizing about it. he had discovered that in order to get things we must first earnestly desire them; then confidently expect that we would get them; then go to work to procure them. that's the true philosophy of getting things. he tells us, about the marble, that he first "wanted it the worst way" and "didn't care whether school kept or not" just so he got the marble. then he "looked strong and steady-like" at the marble, saying: "you're my marble." then he shot, and the marble was his. can any of you describe the process of getting things better than this? if we grown-ups would only put into our daily tasks the interest and attention that the boy put into his game of marbles, we would "get the marble" oftener than we have been doing. of course, it may be true, that the principal joy is in the getting of things rather than in the possession of them--that the game of life is like the game of marbles in that respect, but what of that? that needn't spoil the game. the boy knows enough to enjoy playing for a few marbles that may be obtained for a penny-a-fistful at the corner store--but that fact doesn't bother him at all. he knows that when he gets the marble it will not seem half so beautiful in the hand as it did in the ring--but he gets ready to shoot for the next one with just as much zest and enjoyment. he finds a joy in living; acting; doing; expressing; growing and outgrowing, gaining experiences. take a lesson from the boy--while you are in the great game, take a boy's interest in it; play with a zest; play your level best, and _get the marble_. the boy instinctively knows that the joy of life consists of living, while we poor grown-ups vainly imagine that our pleasure will come only in the trophies of the game--the glass-marbles of life--and look upon the playing of the game as drudgery and work imposed upon us as a punishment of the sins of our forefathers. the boy lives in the now, and enjoys every moment of his existence--his winnings, his losings, his victories, his defeats, while we, his elders and superiors in wisdom groan at the heat of the day and the rigor of the game and are only reconciled to our tasks by the thought of how we will enjoy the possession of the marbles, when we get them at the end of the game. the boy sucks his orange and extracts every particle of its sweet contents, while we throw away the juicy meat and aim only to secure the pips. oh, yes! the boy not only knows how to "get there," but he has also a sane philosophy of life. many of us grown-ups are now re-learning that which we lost with our youth. you will notice that the bowler, the bicyclists and the others, got what they didn't want, because they were afraid of it, and allowed it to distract their thoughts from the object of their desire. to fear a thing is akin to desiring it--in either case you are attracted toward it, or it to you. it's a rule that works both ways. you must think about the thing you want--not about the thing you don't want, for the thoughts you are thinking are the ones that are going to take form in action, as the boy said: "_you've got to think about a thing if you want to hit it, and if you think about the wrong thing, why, you're going to hit the wrong thing_." watch your ideal, not your bugbear. concentrate on your ideal--fix your thought and gaze upon it, like the boy upon his marble--and don't allow fearthought to sidetrack you. select the thing you want to be, and then grow steadily into it. pick out the thing you want, and then go straight and steadily to it. replace your old whine: "i fear," with the new thought shout: "i can, and i will." then you will experience an illustration of "thought taking form in action." look straight; think straight; shoot straight; in these three things lie the secret of success. at home. don't be afraid--you are at home--not here by chance--you belong here--you are the soul--you cannot be hurt--you cannot be banished--you are right in the universe, and there is no outside--great things are before you--make yourself at home. don't be afraid. you're living in your own home. this universe was built for you to inhabit--to occupy--to enjoy. do not feel strange--make yourself at home. the wonderful laws of nature--those which have been discovered, and those which remain to be discovered--are all laws for your use, when you grow large enough to understand how to make use of them. did you think you were here by chance, or that you were an alien? if so, learn better. you are to the manor born--you are the heir. everything around the place is for your use, when you grow up. no one can dispossess you--no one can put you out. you are at home. do you long for another home? do you fret and chafe at the trials and troubles of this world, and imagine that somewhere else things will be better? well, they'll never be better for you until you have met and conquered the trials and troubles of this place. you are just where you belong. you are surrounded with just the things you need. you are getting just what you deserve. and until you learn the truth of this, you will have the same surroundings--the same environments. and then when you learn that the things around you are all right--that you are being treated justly--that you are getting just what you have attracted, and are attracting, to yourself--then you will be ready for the next step in the journey, and you will have new surroundings and new environments--new tasks--new lessons--new pleasures. i hear some of you talking about death. you seem to think that you will be another order of being as soon as you take your last breath upon earth. you talk about being a "spirit," bye-and-bye. do i believe this? of course, i believe it. i _know_ it. but i also know something else, and that is that you are a spirit now, just as much as you will be in another world. did you think that some wonderful essence was going to grow from you, and that that essence would be what you call a spirit? nonsense! you are the spirit, and the not-you part which will be discarded never was you. the you which says i am is the real thing--the real self--and the rest of you is but tools and instruments which you are using. why can't you see this? you talk about "my soul," "my spirit," and so on. you make me tired. why, the thing which is thinking and speaking--you--is the "soul" or "spirit" of which you are talking. you talk as if the physical part of you, which is changing continually, was you. you are like the boy with the old knife. he was continually having the knife repaired. he had had seven new blades and three new handles put on it, and yet it was the same old knife. why, you could step right out of your body (and maybe you do, more than you have any idea of) and it would be the same old you. you could discard your body just as you do your clothes, and yet you would be the same individual. there is a wonderful difference between individuality and personality. one you cannot get rid of; the other may be changed. what's the use in being afraid? nobody can hurt the real you. you cannot be wiped out of existence. if a single spirit atom should be destroyed, the entire structure would smash up. you cannot be banished from the universe, for there's nowhere else to put you. you cannot get outside of the universe, for _there's no outside_. there's no place for you outside of everywhere. and you talk about time and eternity. why, you're in eternity right now. you are right in it this moment. it is always to-day--to-morrow never comes. and you are right at home in the universe, and always will be. you are always there, for there's nowhere else to go. so what's the use in being afraid? who's going to hurt you? they can't kill you. they can't put you out of existence. they cannot expel you from the universe. so what are they going to do about it anyhow? and, after all, who are "they?" you talk as if there were outside forces and influences antagonistic to you. outside of what? no matter what beings of earth or air there may be, they are creatures like yourself. they are all a part of the whole thing--all made of the same material--all come from the hand of the same maker--you are all cut from the same piece of goods. the apparent differences are illusions--the difference and separateness is only relative, and not actual. so, make yourself at home. take a look around and see what a nice bit of the universe you have to live in. some of your family have been trying to occupy the whole house instead of only their share of it, but those things are gradually working out, and all will be better within a comparatively short time. this is going to be a better world to live in when men take time to think a little. and you'll be around to enjoy it when it comes--never fear. you cannot get away, even if you want to. and, what's the use of waiting for to-morrow. there's lots of things in which you can find happiness to-day, if you will only stop worrying about to-morrow. the little child knows more about enjoying life than you do. the little child feels at home anywhere and starts in to enjoy it, and get the most out of it, until he grows old enough to be hypnotized by the race belief. you are at home here. just as much at home as is the fish in the sea--the bird in the air. realize this, and make the most of it. stop being afraid. stop fretting. stop worrying. realize that yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, you are here in the universe. it's a good universe, and it grows better as man grows in wisdom to take advantage of its goodness. and it is not yet "sun-up" here. great things are before us. and you will see them and take part in them. make yourself at home, for you're going to be around here for some time. the solitude of the soul. lorado taft's group--description--each stands alone--each is in touch with every other--soul communion in silence--silence is the sanctuary of the soul--the oneness of life and its apparent separateness--the message. in one of the rooms of the art institute, in chicago, stands a remarkable group, by lorado taft, the sculptor, entitled "the solitude of the soul." the average visitor stops a moment and passes on, commenting on the beauty of the figures composing this group. a few hurry past, afraid to look at the figures, for they are nude--as naked as the human soul before the gaze of its creator. (some people are afraid of things not hidden by draperies--even the naked truth shocks them.) but the man or woman who thinks and understands--stops long before this group, conscious that it tells the tale of a mighty truth. around a large rock, stand four human figures--two men and two women. they are so placed that but one figure is in full sight from any given point of view, although the connection between any figure and the two on each side of it may be seen. it is necessary to walk completely around the group to see the idea of the sculptor--to read the story that he has written into the marble. each figure has an individuality. each stands alone. and yet each is in touch with the one behind, and the one before. each one is connected with all, yet each one stands alone. one figure extends a hand to her brother just ahead of her, and on her shoulder rests the tired head of the brother following her. hand in hand, or head on shoulder stand they, each giving to the other that human touch and contact so dear to the soul craving that companionship of one who understands. each face shows sorrow, pain, and longing--that longing for that complete union of soul with soul--that longing that earth-life cannot satisfy. and each feels and knows that the other has the same longing. and each gives to the other that comforting touch that says "i know--i know." each face shows a great human love mingled with its pain. each face shows resignation mingled with its grief. it is the old story of human love and human limitations. it is also a story of deeper import--the story of the soul. every lip is closed. each man and woman is silent. and yet each understands the other. soul is communing with soul, in the silence. and in the silence alone can soul converse with soul. words cheapen the communication of soul to soul. with those who understand us well, we can best commune in silence. hand in hand--cheek to cheek--sit those who love well. the tale of love is told and re-told without a word. words serve their purpose in conveying the commonplaces of life, but seem strangely inadequate to express the deeper utterances of the soul. the tale of love--the story of sorrow--needs no words. the soul understands the message of the soul--mind flashes the message to mind--and all is known. the fondest memory of the one whom you loved and lost, is not of moments in which he spoke even the most endearing words. the memory most sacred to you is that of some great silence lived out with the loved one--some moment in which each soul drew aside its veil and gazed with awe into the depths of the other soul. silence is the sanctuary of the soul. enter it only with due reverence. uncover the head--tread softly. each figure stands alone, and yet in touch with all the rest. each is apparently separate and yet each is but a part of the whole. each feels the frightful solitude which comes to the soul when first it recognizes what it is. and yet, in that dreadful moment each knows itself to be in touch with all of life. each feels that intense longing for a closer soul union--a reunion of the separated parts of the whole. and yet each realizes the impossibility of the consummation of that desire at this time--and they show their grief--they place the head upon the shoulder of the other--they clasp the hand of the other--they touch the flesh of the other--all as a symbol of the desire for the union of the soul. this group is a symbol of the oneness of life and its apparent separateness. a picture of the in-touchness of each part of the whole, with every other part. a story of the pain of the soul in its awful solitude--of its impotent striving for at-one-ment. a representation of the communion of soul with soul, in the silence. a tale of the comfort and joy in the presence of another human form. a message of the brotherhood of man. all this--and more--is in this group. i wonder if the sculptor saw it all, or whether he chiseled better than he knew. sometimes the divine in man causes him to write better--paint better--cut better--than he realizes. others see much more in his essays, stories, poems, paintings, statuary, than the maker knew was there. and the man himself, after years have past again views his work, and wonders at the new story he reads there. he feels dazed at having portrayed truths of which he dreamt not while he worked. there are within us unexplored depths, of the existence of which we do not dream. and from these depths, now and then, rise into our consciousness beautiful thoughts--beautiful images--which we reproduce on paper--canvas--marble. we do not understand these things, and we join with others in the feeling of wonder inspired by the sight of the reproduction of that which came from the depths of our mental being. and some, who have grown closer to the real self within them, see beauties in our work to which we are blind. not until the scales fall from our eyes, do we realize the full meaning of our work. some call this inspiration. but those who have pierced the veil know that it is inspiration from within, not from without. it is the voice of the divine spark within man, whispering to the consciousness which is struggling to know better that higher self--a whisper of encouragement and good cheer--a portent of the future--a glimpse of the distant light--a bestowal of a few crumbs from the table of the spirit. i know not, i say, whether lorado taft knew what he chiseled. i know not whether he is a man of deep spiritual insight. but this i do know, that this group, "the solitude of the soul" is the work of the spirit within this man. and his work carries a deep spiritual message to those who are ready to receive it. and in years to come this message will be understood by thousands, for everyone who receives it to-day. this work shall live long after its maker has forsaken the earthly body that he now uses as an instrument. it will live because it carries a message--because it conveys a mighty truth. jerry and the bear. the law's plan of developing an individual--folly of clinging to old worn out sheaths--the story of jerry and the bear--who jerry was--he meets the bear--the fight--the result--the consequences--the change in jerry--the moral. the law, in its efforts to develop man into a self-reliant being--into an individual--first tries the simpler plan of bringing a steady pressure to bear in the direction of gradual progress and growth, impelling the man to think and act himself into a more positive condition each day. after a while the man, feeling behind him the steady push of life, and being conscious of the attracting power of the absolute drawing him to higher things--leading him up the mountain path of attainment--learns to trust the propelling and attracting power, and, ceasing his resistance, moves along in the direction of gradual unfoldment and growth. he casts off sheath after sheath--and grows. he does not attempt to impede or interfere with his development, but cheerfully and joyfully presses forward to his unfoldment. he finds pleasure in each stage, and should pain manifest itself he knows it as the growing pains of the child--a promise of greater things. there are some, however, who seem determined to cling to their old sheaths, and resist the pressure of growth to the utmost. they are unable to withstand the steady pressure, and the attracting power, carrying them forward, and their resistance brings them much pain and friction, and they are pushed this way and that by the pressure of the growing self, resisting and struggling all the time. the law has several ways of dealing with these people, for their own good, and often, with a supreme effort, tears them from the surrounding sheath to which they are clinging and forces them into a broader and wider life, against their wishes and in spite of their struggles and cries. many of us, looking back over our past lives, smile as we recognize how we were forced into new fields of work and endeavor--how we were broadened out in spite of ourselves--how we were torn from our old surroundings and environments, in spite of our lamentations, reproaches, and cries, and placed amid new scenes and faces. this thing is repeated over and over again, until we learn the lesson and cease to be unduly attached to persons and things, and become willing to yield ourselves to the onward moving force and co-operate with the law instead of opposing it. many men and women who steadily refuse to stand erect and assert their independence, are deliberately worked into a position where they _must_ declare their freedom from the things upon which they have been leaning, and are forced to stand up and face conditions from which they have shrunk all their lives. the law has a way of picking up those shivering mortals who stand around the river's edge, and throwing them into the stream, bidding them to strike out and swim. it prefers the easier way of teaching you to swim by degrees--of acquiring knowledge by easy stages--but if you refuse to learn in this way, it will resort to the vigorous plan just mentioned--but swim you _must_, one way or the other. i am going to tell you a story--not a particularly pretty one, but one that will give you an idea of what i mean, and how the plan works. it's about animals--but many a truth has been conveyed by fables in which animals were the actors, and this homely little tale from the wilderness may convey to your minds the point of this talk better than do my words. here's the story: once upon a time a man, away up in one of the northwestern states, owned a dog named "jerry." he was not very much on looks--and less in good qualities. he was not of any fancy breed--just dog, that's all. he had drifted on to the farm from somewhere and had been kicked and cuffed around in his early youth, until he was afraid to claim a right to live at all. he grew up into a worthless animal--snapped at by smaller dogs--bullied by those of his own size--looked down upon by all. he expected to be kicked by everybody in sight--and, of course, got kicked. (men and dogs who go around expecting to be abused, always draw upon them the thing they fear and expect.) his tail seemed a magnet which attracted all the tin cans around that neighborhood. pitying did not seem to do him any good--it only made him more miserable and abject than ever, just as it acts in the case of some people. the poor chap gradually dropped down to the lowest state of dogdom, and his case seemed hopeless. the farmer would drive to town every once in a while, and jerry would sneak along under the wagon, in manner seeming to apologize for taking up even that space. his appearance would be the signal for all the dogs of the several farms along the road to chase down to the wagon, rout him out, and roll him over in the dust, the performance being repeated at every farm to and from the town. the farmer, at last, feeling that the dog was bringing his establishment into disrepute, and knowing that "hopkins' jerry" was becoming a township jest, determined to put an end to the animal's unhappy career. but destiny intervened--possibly in order to give me a tale to point the moral of this talk--and to give you something to remember in trying circumstances. jerry strayed away from the farm one evening, being chased a part of the distance by some of the smaller dogs who delighted in bullying him. he traveled some distance from home and entered the woods. bear tracks had been discovered in that region, and some of the boys had dug a pit, baiting it with some choice tid-bit pleasing to his bearship, and covering it over with a thin roof which would yield to a light weight. jerry started across the roof, and in he went. some hours after a young bear came sniffing around, and he, too, dropped in the pit. then the trouble commenced. the bear feeling infuriated by his unceremonious drop, reached out for jerry and gave him a scratch which caused him to yell. the bear, seeing that there was no fight in his opponent, chased him round and round the pit, until it seemed only a matter of a few minutes more until the dog would be relieved of his misery. things took an unexpected turn, however. the bear knocked jerry over on his back, and began giving him the finishing touches. this seemed to bring to life the last remaining touch of self-respect left in the poor brute, and with a mighty effort he sprang straight at the bear's throat and gave him a bite in which was concentrated all the repressed bites of a lifetime. the bear, with a roar, sprang back to the other side of the pit. it was hard to tell which was the most surprised of the two, the bear at the sudden courage of his opponent, or jerry at the fact that he could fight bear. the dog's self-respect and confidence went up nearly to par. the bear's caution adjusted itself accordingly. after a bit the bear cautiously worked his way over toward jerry, but the dog snarled fiercely and showed his teeth. they had several rounds before things quieted down, and each time jerry showed his mettle, and although he was badly scratched he had bestowed upon the bear several tokens of his valor. his self-respect and confidence was now an assured thing, and the bear treated him with considerable deference and consideration. after matters adjusted themselves, the bear and the dog each retired to their respective sides of the pit, and declared a truce. in the morning the boys came to the pit, shot the bear and lifted jerry out and carried him home. his tail was several inches shorter, and one ear was missing, and his body was scarred and scratched like the face of a heidelberg student, but away down in his heart he felt good--and he showed it. the farmer, feeling proud of the animal, carefully nursed him until he was able to move around the house, and then allowed him to go out of doors. as soon as he appeared the other dogs made a rush for him, but something in his look caused them to keep at a safe distance, and they contented themselves with barking at him and keeping out of reach. he did not seem anxious to fight, but he had that look of confidence in his eyes that kept them where they belonged. he had ceased to fear. his tail no longer drooped between his legs, but was held aloft as is the tail of every self-respecting dog. and somehow, that tail did not have the attracting power for tin cans that had formerly marked it. the boys recognized that jerry had advanced in the scale, and there was something about him that they liked and respected. about ten days after the dog got well, the farmer took a trip to town, and jerry accompanied him, trotting along in an unconcerned manner, alongside, behind, or any other place that suited him. as the first farmhouse was reached the dogs came rushing down to have some fun with our friend. they pitched into him as of yore. something happened. the pack ran yelping back to the house for surgical attention--and jerry trotted on just the same. this scene was repeated at every farm along the road, jerry repeating the object lesson each time, finishing up his task by rolling into the dust the big bull terrier in front of the postoffice, who, heretofore, had been the terror of the town. the homeward trip was a triumphal progress for the dog, and all his old foes vied with each other in tail-wagging and other demonstrations designed to let jerry know that they were proud to be his friends. but he paid little attention to them--he had developed into a canine philosopher. after that he led a happy life. he was not seeking fight, but no boy or dog seemed to seek fight with him. he had cast out fearthought. he feared nothing that walked on legs. he had met bear. now, some of my critics will call the attention of their readers to the fact that i am advising fight. not so, good friends. i am using this dog story as an illustration, and am trying to show you how the law will sometimes force a man into tight quarters in order to bring out his courage and self-confidence. it knows the man "has it in him," and it proceeds to use vigorous methods to bring it out into action providing, always, that the man has not developed it before. when a man has been placed in a position where he faces the worst, and is compelled to grapple with the bear, he finds that he has reserve force within him of which he never dreamt before, and he puts forth all his energy to save himself. he finds that when he boldly faces the difficulty the difficulty seems as much afraid of him as he had been of it. he gains more confidence, until at last he beats off the foe, and rests secure in his own strength. he finds that to the man who has abolished fear and who can smilingly face any situation, fate is very respectful and obliging, although to the man who fears it is a tormentor. in proportion to a man's fear will be his troubles. when he reaches the position when he can laugh in the face of fortune, he will find her ceasing her coquetries and falling desperately in love with him. and after the man has met the great difficulty--fought the mighty fight--he finds that he has ceased to fear the little troubles and trials of life--he feels his strength--he knows his source of power. he holds his head erect and breathes in the pure air of heaven, and feels the warm blood tingling through his veins. he has found himself. he has met bear. the unseen hand. the consciousness of the hand--when it first was felt--always there--now as the hand of a father--now as that of a mother--a lover--a brother--always guiding--always leading--a mystery--some day we will know the owner of the hand. i have felt the unseen hand--have been guided by it--have felt the kind but steady urge in the direction which it knew to be best, though my intellect failed to see the beauty of the road toward which the hand was directing me. for a time i rebelled against the impertinent interference of that which seemed to be a thing apart from me--a meddler--an unasked for helper. i had emerged from the dependent state--the state in which i thought it necessary to lean upon others. i gloried in my independence--my freedom--my ability to stand alone. finding that it was good to stand alone--reveling in the joy of my new found freedom--rejoicing in the fact that the i am within me was a reality--feeling within me the ecstasy that comes from the recognition of the reality of individuality--i resented any interference from outside. but the pressure of the hand was still here--it would take my unwilling fingers within its own and lead me on--and lead me on. finding that i could not get rid of this unseen helper--realizing that it was intent upon guiding me in spite of my repeated assertions that i was able to take care of myself--that i was big enough to walk alone--i began to study the something that was so determined to take an active part in the affairs of my life--i started in to become acquainted with it. i found that it had always been with me more or less, but that i had not before recognized its presence. so long as i felt that i was not able to stand erect upon my feet--so long as i feared--so long as i failed to recognize the i am--i was scarcely aware of this invisible helper. but when i began to realize what i was--what was my place in the universal order of things--what were my possibilities--my future--the presence of this unseen hand began to be manifest. when i at length threw off the last fetter that had bound me--when i threw back my shoulders and drew my first free breath--when i shouted aloud with joy at my freedom and strength--when i realized the power that was within me and at my command--when i started out to accomplish that which my awakened mind told me was possible of attainment--when i started to do these things _all by myself_--then i felt for the first time the firm clasp of the unseen hand. now gently guiding--now leading--now kindly restraining--now giving a gentle urge toward people, things and conditions--now drawing me back from the edge of a precipice--now directing toward a better path--now giving me a gentle, firm pressure to reassure me of its presence when i doubted--now allowing me to rest my weight upon it when i felt tired--always there. at times this hand has placed before me conditions that seemed to me to be anything but good. at times it has brought me pain. but i have learned to trust it--have learned to trust it. the conditions that have seemed to me to be undesirable have brought me to desirable things. the pain that i have suffered has brought me pleasure. the experiences that have come to me i would not wish to part with--the more pain, the more experience; the more experience, the more knowledge. i have learned to love this hand. and the owner of the hand seems to feel and return this love, and now and then, by a sympathetic little clasp, lets me know that i am understood. this hand sometimes seems to be that of a father--strong and firm--leading on with a confident air. again it seems to be that of a mother--gentle and kind--leading me as does the mother lead her child. again it seems as the hand of a woman who loves me--clinging and warm--neither leading nor being led--just moving on clasped in mine--no words--but with a perfect understanding. the owner of this hand seems to combine within itself the qualities of both sexes--seems to have within itself all the attributes of father, mother, lover, brother, sister. it seems to respond to the human need, in every direction. it seems always the hand of love--even while giving me pain. i have never seen the face of the owner of this hand. i have never looked into its eyes. i have never seen its form, if form it has. but i have been conscious, at times, of being lifted up in its arms and being pressed close to its breast. i have felt the impulse of the child, at such times, and have felt for the breast of the mother, and have been conscious of the answering mother pressure as i was drawn up close to the body of the owner of the hand. and, at times, have i felt rebellious at the confining clasp, and have struggled and have even beat against the breast with my puny fists as i insisted that i be released from the clasping arms. but, mother-like, the owner of the hand only drew me closer to the breast until i could feel the very heart-throbs within the mother-body--could feel the vibrations emanating from its life--could feel the warm breath upon my cheek as the invisible face bent over me impelled by the mother love. again, it takes on the father-form, and i place my little hand within it, and feeling like the boy whose father is taking him on a journey, i say "lead thou me on," and go cheerfully and with faith into new lands--new surroundings--new fields. why should i fear, have i not hold of my father's hand? and the hand at such times rests upon my shoulder, every once in a while, and i realize that the father feels a pride in his son, and sees him growing in strength and knowing--that the father looks forward to a time when he will be able to talk with the boy who will then have grown in knowledge, and will be able to understand some of the secrets of life that the father will then unfold to him. and, still again, the hand is that of the loving woman who is walking along the path of life with the man she loves. it is a tender clasp--the fingers tingle with love--the arm presses close to mine. i hear no voice--no words are needed--soul talks to soul in the silence. we walk on and on and on. we understand. and, still again, the hand seems that of a brother--a twin brother. neither the protection of the father--the loving tenderness of the mother--the thrill of the lover's touch--is there. i feel not that the hand is that of a stronger being--i am conscious only of the brotherly clasp--the touch of comradeship--the presence of an equal. i feel by my side a helper--someone who will back me up in time of need. and i stroll along by his side and laugh with joy. the joy of the boy is again mine. the joy of companionship is again mine. and, lo the hand of the brother seems to grow--he and i are again men. and something in his hand-clasp seems to say to me, "come, brother, let us go forth into the unknown future. let us have faith. there are lands awaiting our coming. let us enjoy them. let us explore them. let us be filled with the spirit of adventure, and go forth. let us see--let us feel--let us know." and i return the clasp, and say, "aye, brother, let us go forth. whither thou goest there will i go. thy joys shall be my joy--thy pain my pain. let us go forth--let us go forth to the divine adventure." and, so, manifesting the attributes of all human relations, in turn, and at the proper time, the owner of this unseen hand is near me. i feel his presence--i am aware of his nearness. at times faith grows faint, and i think it all a delusion--a phantasm--a dream. all seems lost, and i weep. but, lo! in the midst of my despair, i feel the hand upon my head--i know that it is a reality and, through my tears, i smile. shall i ever know the owner of this hand? shall i ever see its face? shall i ever understand the mystery of its existence? i know not. but faith whispers in my ear, "wait! all is well! when the pupil is ready the master appears. when your eyes have a clear vision and can bear the sight, then shall you see the face of the owner of the hand. you have entered the path and there is no turning back. go on--go on in faith, courage and confidence. why should you doubt--have you not felt the pressure of the hand?" aye, why should i doubt or question? have i not felt the pressure of the unseen hand? open your hands, friends, that the hand may clasp yours as it has mine. while your hand is clenched in anger and hate--while it clutches tight the gold it has snatched from the hand of another--while the fingers are drawn together with fear--it cannot receive the unseen hand. open it wide--reach it out--offer it in friendly clasp--and you will feel within it the touch of that which you seek. the unseen hand is waiting to clasp yours. give it welcome--give it welcome. how success comes. seeking success through mental powers--holding the thought alone not sufficient--how to get the real benefit of thought-force--fall in with the workings of the law--stand on your own feet--one step at a time--"i do" as well as "i am." many of the men and women who have been seeking prosperity by means of the powers of the mind, have done so by "holding the thought," and then folding their hands and calmly waiting for some "lucky" event to happen, or in other words, for the long sought for prize to drop down into the laps, from out of the nowhere. now, i have heard of a number of cases in which things apparently came about in this way, although i have always felt that a little investigation would have shown some good and natural cause behind it all, but as a rule the law does not work in this way--it does not leave the old beaten road of cause and effect. it is no aladdin's lamp which has merely to be rubbed in order that glittering gems, and showers of gold, be poured out into the lap of the owner, as he lies back on his cushions, lazily rubbing the lamp with the tip of his little finger. the law expects from the man who would invoke its mighty aid, a little honest work on his part. i think that the majority of those who have met with a greater share of success by means of the wonderful power of thought, have met with such success not by having it fall from the skies, but by following out the ideas, impulses, yes, inspiration, if you will, that have come to them. the man who has turned his back upon the old negative mental attitude--who has turned his face toward the rising sun--who has allowed the voice of faith again to be heard--who knows that the law which rules the motions of the worlds and still takes note of the sparrow's fall, has his interest at heart and asks but for faith--that man, i say, finds that from time to time ideas will come into his mind just when they are needed; will find that the law takes cognizance of all human needs and has prepared a way to satisfy them. he finds that new ways are pointed out to him--avenues of escape from unbearable conditions--signboards pointing out the right road, but he must have faith in these little hints from the infinite, and must follow them. the law will open the door to you, but will not push you in. and when it finds that you refuse to see the open door, it softly closes it, and not until many weary years have passed do you recognize what you have missed. and the law insists upon doing its work in its own good way--not in _your_ way. you may know what you want, but you may not know just the right way to get it, although you think you do. the law will give you many a hint, and many a gentle push in the proper direction, but it always leaves you the liberty of choice--the right to refuse. it does not insist upon your love, your faith; that is, it does not _make_ you love and have faith, but until you _do_ love and have faith you are not conscious of the promptings of the spirit, or, at most, dismiss them as beneath your notice. oh, ye of little faith, when will ye learn. the man who understands the workings of the law, acts upon the tender impulses imparted to him, without resistance. he does not ask to see the end of the journey, but he sees the step just ahead of him very plainly, and he hesitates not about taking it. he does not expect the law to bring results and place them in his hand. all he asks and desires is that the way be pointed out to him, and he is willing and ready to do the rest himself. the true man or woman does not wish to be fed with a spoon. all they ask is that they may have a fair chance to reach the source of supply, and they can manage to handle the spoon themselves. if any man think that the law is an incubator of parasites--of leeches--of vampires--he is greatly mistaken. the lesson of the law is to teach every man to stand upon his own feet--to lean not upon another--but at the same time to feel that he is guided by the great law of which he himself is a part, which manifests within him as well as without him, and that, consequently, while placing his trust in the law, he trusts in himself. not paradoxical at all, when you have the key. yes, yes, the law expects every man to do well the work that lies to his hand--and to do it well, whether it is irksome or distasteful or otherwise; and as soon as he ceases to rebel and beat his wings against the bars of the cage, the way is opened for the next step; and if he does not take that step, he must work away until he learns to take it. and so on, and on, the lesson of each task to be learned before the next is presented. work? why certainly you must work. everything in the universe works unceasingly. when you learn to look upon work as a joy and not a curse, then you are beginning to see your way out of the grinding process. then you are getting a glimpse of the promised land. why bless your hearts, work is the best friend you have, the only trouble is that you have treated it as an enemy and it has paid you back in your own coin. when you learn to treat it as a friend, it will be only too glad to make up, and you will get along like two old cronies. now, you people who have been sitting with folded hands and "calmly waiting," and complaining that your own has not come to you, listen: you are mistaken. your own has come to you--that's just the trouble. your own is the thing you attract, and you have been attracting just what has come to you. start in to-day, determined to fall in with the workings of the law, and pay attention to the "i do" side of things as well as the "i am," and you will receive new light. great things are just ahead of you, but you must reach out for them--they're not going to drop into folded hands. this is the law. the man with the southern exposure. southern exposure as good a thing in a man as in a room--the man who faces the sun--lives one day at a time and does the best he knows how, and is kind--finds joy and carries it to others--simple, loving, kind--open yourself to the sun. did you ever go house hunting? then you remember how the agent laid much stress on the fact that certain rooms had a "southern exposure." no matter how many other good qualities the house had, all was subordinated to the fact that the best rooms faced the south--had the longed for "southern exposure." the very words conveyed to your mind the sensation of balmy breezes--the freedom from the rude blasts of the north--the cheering rays of the sun--plenty of light and healthful vibrations coming from old sol. ah, that "southern exposure"--how much the words convey. now, if this "southern exposure" is such a good thing in a room, why isn't it a good thing in a man? did you ever meet the man with the "southern exposure"--the man who faces the sun? do you recall how he brought with him the inspiring solar vibrations? do you remember how the wrinkles and frowns disappeared from the faces of those in his presence? do you remember how, long after he had departed, the memory of his presence cheered you--the thrill of his thought vibrations remained to stimulate? we all know this man with the "southern exposure," god bless him. we couldn't get along without him. there are a number of him, and he is scattered all over the globe. we call him by different names, but he is always the same man. after we have felt the cold northern chill emanating from some of the cold, despondent, negative people with whom we have come in contact, what a relief it is to meet some one who carries with him the mellowing sunny, vibrations of the south wind--the man with the "southern exposure." as the vibrations of the sun bring life, energy, and strength to all things having life, so this sunny man brings positive, bright, cheerful and happy thoughts to us, and stimulates, encourages and strengthens us. he actually radiates sunshine and cheer in all directions, and thaws out the natures that have become well nigh frozen from contact with people of the other type. oh, it's a great thing, this "southern exposure" in a man or woman. this man faces the sun. he is an optimist. he looks on the bright side of things, and gets all there is in life--he lives. he manages to extract "fun" out of the most unpromising conditions and things, and goes on his way with a smile, and a cheerful song, an abiding faith in the absolute. he lives his life, one day at a time, loving all of god's creatures and letting the creatures know it--carrying a message of hope, and courage, and a helpful suggestion to all mankind. he is the salt of the earth, and life would lose its flavor if he were taken from us. and how smooth the pathway of life seems made for him. it matters not in what station he may be placed--what seemingly small degree of material prosperity may come to him--what may be his surroundings and environments--he makes the best of everything--he still catches the rays of the sun, and rejoices--he has the "southern exposure." he is broad and tolerant--merciful and forgiving--devoid of hate, envy and malice--free from fear and worry. he minds his own business, and grants you the same privilege. he is full of love, and radiates it to all the world. he goes through life in his own sunny way, meeting cheerfully the things that drive others to despair and misery--somehow things seem to be smoothed out for him, and he passes over the stony road, unharmed. his peace comes from within--and all who meet him feel his presence. he does not _seek_ after friends or love--friendship and love come to him as a right--he attracts them. people are glad to see him come, and sorry to see him go. little children and animals are drawn to him, and know him as their friend and lover. he is as much at home in the tenement of the laborer as in the palace of the wealthy--both places seem home to him, and their occupants on a level. brother to both saint and sinner is he, and he loves one as much as the other, for he somehow feels that each is doing his best. he looks for the good in the sinner--not for the sin in the saint--although he knows that both exist. he is not a pharisee--he recognizes within himself all that is within both saint and sinner--he knows that he is not without sin, so he dares not cast the first stone. the outcast recognizes in him a brother--the woman who has passed through the fiery furnace trusts him and is not afraid, for she knows that he understands. he, being near the sun, knows that it shines alike on saint and sinner--he feels that when god withholds his sunbeams from his most disobedient child, then may he withhold his love from his most degraded brother or sister. until that time comes he sees fit to love them. he does not condemn--he lets god exercise that prerogative, if he sees fit--he does not feel fit to act as judge. he believes that the universe is conducted on sound business principles--that god knows just what he is about and does not require any gratuitous advice from man. he works, and works well. he finds joy in his work--pleasure in the humblest tasks. he likes to create things--and he is proud of that desire, for he feels that it is an inheritance from his father. he does not seem to hurry--nor is he rushed. he has plenty of time--eternity lasts a long while, and he is in it now. he is not afraid of death--or even life--he knows them as one. he goes about his way--doing his best--and letting the other fellow alone. he has an abiding faith in the absolute--he believes in infinite justice and ultimate good. he does not fear his father--he cannot find room for fear where love abides. he does not believe that there is a bottomless pit into which his loving father intends to plunge him--he has too much confidence in his father to think that. he believes that there is enough hell on earth to burn away the mistakes and ignorance of man. and he believes that all the burning ones will eventually emerge purged of their dross. he knows that his father is near him, for he has felt the pressure of his hand. in the darkness of the night he has felt the father's presence--by the glare of the lightning flash he has seen his form, for a moment, and that memory is burned into his brain. he faces the sun--this man with the "southern exposure." he is simple, loving, kind. he is of the elect. he is a prophecy of the future. and he is on the increase. on the tree of life are many promising buds, which the sun of the spirit is nursing into beautiful blossoms that will yet fill the world with the delicious fragrance of love. there are certain people who have come into our midst silently and without announcement. they have found places waiting for them. they have come to prepare the way for their brothers and sisters who are in the womb of the future--they are working quietly to prepare a home for their unborn brothers and sisters when they come. they are the forerunners of the coming race. smiled at--sneered at--persecuted--reviled--pitied--it matters not. god has sent them--they have his message to deliver--that's why they are here. the world may raise its eyebrows--shrug its shoulders--tap its forehead significantly--but these new people smile, they know, they know. they see the misunderstanding multitude as mere babes in the spiritual knowing--many of them babes unborn--and they heed them not. take notice of these people--they are making their presence felt. they are wielding a silent powerful influence, and are molding public opinion far more than are the blatant reformers, the boastful leaders, the bespangled figures strutting at the front of the stage. the people who are thus being used--instruments in god's hands--are these quiet men and women who are facing the sun--these people with the "southern exposure." if you feel the call to join the ranks of these people--do not resist, but answer cheerfully "i hear; i obey; i come." allow the seed to grow into the plant, the plant to put forth leaves--bud and blossom. when you feel the impulse, do not resist--open yourself to the sun--receive its vibrations--and all will be well. be not afraid--have within you that love which casteth out fear--place your hand in that of the absolute and say "lead thou me on." after long ages of wandering, you are coming home. a foreword.[ ] an individualist--wearing no ticket or label--no one has a corner on truth--enough to go around--the infinite power back of all things--the real self is spirit--the law of attraction--fearthought--the brotherhood of man. * * * * i generally call myself a mental scientist, and am so known to my friends, but i merely use the term because it is broad and comprehensive, not because i bear the ticket of any particular school of the new thought--not because i wear the badge of any special leader. i am an individualist. i believe in the right of every man to think his own thoughts--to find his way to the truth by whatever road he may see fit, even if he prefers to cut across fields in getting there. i believe that whilst all men are brothers, and each a part of a mighty whole, still each one must stand squarely upon his own feet--must work out his own salvation--must do his own thinking. i believe that truth is everywhere--in everything, and that we may uncover a bit of it wherever we may happen to dig. i do not believe that any person has a corner on the truth--a monopoly of knowing. i do not believe in popes, in or out of the new thought. each of us will uncover his own little bit of the truth, but we must not imagine that we have the whole thing. there's enough truth to go around--and to spare. [ ] an extract from the article of this name in which the author introduced himself to the readers of the magazine "new thought," upon assuming the position of co-editor, in december, . i believe that there is an infinite power in, and of, all things. i believe that, although to-day we have but the faintest idea of that power, still we will steadily grow to comprehend it more fully--will get in closer touch with it. even now, we have momentary glimpses of its existence--a momentary consciousness of oneness with the absolute. i believe that the greatest happiness consists in maintaining toward the absolute the attitude of the trusting child, who, feeling no doubt of the parent's love--no doubt of his wisdom--places his little hand in that of the parent, and says: "lead thou me on." i believe that he who feels towards the absolute, the trustfulness of the babe which places its little tired head close to the breast of the mother, will also be conscious of the tender answering pressure, as the babe is drawn just a little closer to the mother heart. i believe these things--i have felt them. i believe that man is immortal--that the real self is spirit, which uses mind and body as its tools, and manifests itself according to the fitness of the tools. i believe that man is rapidly growing into a new plane of consciousness, in which he will _know_ himself as he is--will recognize the i am--the something within. many are having glimpses of the truth every day--the first glimpses of the light of the great dawn are even now being perceived by those who are awake and watching. i believe that the mind of man contains the greatest of all forces--that thought is one of the greatest manifestations of energy. i believe that the man who understands the use of thought-force can make of himself practically what he will. i believe that not only is one's body subject to the control of the mind, but that, also, one may change environment, "luck," circumstances, by positive thought taking the place of negative. i know that the "i can and i will" attitude will carry one forward to success that will seem miraculous to the man on the "i can't" plane. i believe that "thoughts are things," and that the law of attraction in the thought world will draw to one just what he desires or fears. i believe that fearthought is the root of more misery, unhappiness, disease, crime, failure and other undesirable things than any one thing in the world. i intend to attack this monster most vigorously, through these columns. i intend going for him with the grace of god in my heart, and a good hickory club in my hand. i will cause many of you to tear out fear by the roots--you don't need it about you. i will preach the gospel of fearlessness. there is nothing in the world (or out of it) to fear except--fear. i will also preach the gospel of backbone to you--will insist upon your inserting a steel-rod vertebra in the place of that india-rubber affair that some of you are carrying around with you. you doubt this, do you?--well, just you wait and see. i believe in the brotherhood of man. i believe in being kind. i believe in everyone minding his own business--and allowing everyone else the same privilege. i believe that we have no right to condemn--"let him who is without sin cast the first stone." i believe that he who hates, is an assassin; that he who covets, is a thief; that he who lusts, is an adulterer; that the gist of a crime is in its desire. seeing this--looking into our own hearts--how can we condemn? i believe that evil is but ignorance. i believe that "to know all is to forgive all." i believe that there is good in every man; let us help him to manifest it. i believe in the absolute equality of the man and the woman--sometimes i think that the odds are slightly in favor of the woman. i believe in the sacredness of sex--but i also believe that sex manifests on the spiritual and mental planes, as well as on the physical. and i believe that to the pure all things are pure. i also believe in the gospel of work--in "hustling." i believe in the i do, as well as the i am. i know that the man who will take advantage of the power of the mind, and who will manifest that power in action, will go forward to success as surely and as steadily as the arrow from the bow of the skilled archer. partnership. next to marriage, partnership is the most important association--mental partnerships--be careful whom you choose as your mental partners--get into partnership with the best thoughts--dissolve partnership with the other kind--"i can, i will; i do, i dare." next to marriage, a partnership arrangement is the most important association into which a man or woman may enter. its consequences are far-reaching and difficult to escape, and to a very considerable extent one is bound by the acts of his partners. this being the case, it is of the utmost importance that one should exercise the greatest diligence and care in selecting partners. if any of my readers were to contemplate entering into a partnership agreement with others, he would be sure to select those who were possessed of the most desirable qualities, and those most conducive to success. he would carefully avoid those possessed of lack of confidence, fear, worry, discouragement and others of the "i can't" class. he would seek out the courageous, confident, "i can and i will" men. he would keep away from those in whom hate, malice, jealousy, envy, bigotry and other traits of ignorance were strongly manifest. he would, in short, choose those who possessed to the greatest possible degree the qualities most conducive to success and would as carefully avoid those possessed of opposite qualities. there is no doubt of the truth of what i have just said--every one of you will admit it. now, i do not purpose telling you about business partnerships of the ordinary kind--you know all about those--but i will call your attention to the fact that you are every day forming partnerships of a most important character and far-reaching in their effects, but of which you probably have been unaware. when your attention is once called to the matter, many things will seem clear to you that have heretofore appeared quite dark, and you will be able to avoid mistakes, in the future, that have been quite common in the past. this is an important lesson, and i trust that you will give heed to what i say. i have stated, in previous articles, that your mind is a mighty magnet, attracting to itself the thoughts emanating from the minds of others. like attracts like in the world of thought, and the prevailing character of your thoughts will be manifested in the character of thought waves drawn to you from the great ocean of thought. your thought mingles and coalesces with thoughts of a corresponding nature sent out from the minds of others, and both you and the other senders are strengthened in the mental attitude by reason of the joining of forces. _you are entering into a mental partnership_ with those unknown thinkers, and attracting them to you, and you to them. why do "birds of a feather flock together," in business and everyday life? simply because they are irresistibly drawn to each other by the law of mental attraction. the people with whom you are brought in contact are those of the same mental key as yourself. you may not agree with this statement, but a close analysis will prove it. the pushing, "hustling," wide-awake man will attract to himself thought-partners of the same stamp, while the man who is afraid is always sure to find himself surrounded by people having the same defects. and not only is this true in the sense that the law brings you into actual contact with people of the same mental key, but you are connecting yourself with hundreds of others who are thinking along the same lines, although you may never actually come in physical contact with these people. you are going into partnership with them, and will share in the firm's profits and losses, just as you would in case of an ordinary business partnership. and it is easy to foretell upon just what side of the firm ledger the balance will appear. when you approach a man on business, with your mind laden with thoughts of fear, lack of confidence, etc., you strike a similar keynote in that man, and he instinctively feels that he has no confidence in you or your business, and if he is a man whose predominant note is courage, he will feel the inharmony and get rid of you as soon as he can. if, on the contrary, he is also a "i can't" man he will feel a fellow feeling for you, but it will do you no good; it will be a case of "misery loves company," and the first thing you know you will find yourself and that man in an earnest conversation about "dull times," "poor crops," "the country is going to the dogs," "no chance for a man nowadays," "we're all going to the poorhouse," etc., etc. i've seen it happen many a time, haven't you? but if you are an "i can and i will" man, and he is the same, see how different things are. he will warm up to you and will feel that he understands you, and sooner or later you and he will do business with each other, in fact, the arrangement is begun with your first meeting. if you can get yourself in something like the same mental attitude of a man with whom you wish to do business, you will get along with him, never fear. when you have something in mind upon which you are working, and you are at the same time maintaining the proper mental attitude, you are placing yourself in psychic touch with every other man in the same line who is holding the same mental attitude. you draw inspiration from them, and both parties to the mental partnership share in the profits. both will share, to a certain extent, in each other's progress and both will draw largely from the mental stock of those who are working along the same lines, but who are holding a negative mental attitude. in fact, the whole store of knowledge and progress along those lines will be tapped by these partners holding the positive mental attitude. new plans, ideas, combinations, schemes, devices will spring into being in their minds, and they will not only help each other, but will draw upon the less positive people. this seems a hard law, but it is like all of nature's laws, so severe that we are forced sooner or later to learn the lesson. we learn by experience only. this operation of the law of mental attraction is a good example of one of the meanings of that saying, so dark to many: "to him that hath shall be given; to him that hath not shall be taken away, even that which he hath." at any rate, that is the way the law works. and it is not only in the matter of success that this mental partnership works. its operations are manifest everywhere. you will notice that the negative emotions draw to themselves people, thoughts and things upon which they can feed. let a man or woman manifest jealousy, and, lo! as if from the earth spring apparent causes for that jealous feeling. all sorts of things seem to conspire to feed "the green-eyed monster" into a state of fatness. and let a man or woman get a notion that people are trying to "slight" them, and let them continue to hold this thought, and it will soon seem to the poor victim of fearthought as if everybody in the world was determined to snub, slight and tread upon him and hurt his feelings. if he persists in this attitude, life will become a burden too heavy to bear, and there will be no possible relief for him except a change of mental front. let one imagine that everyone is trying to cheat him, and he will be a lucky man if he does not find that the things he feared have come upon him. let a man cherish thoughts of hate and malice, and sooner or later he will become involved in all sorts of hateful, malicious schemes and occurrences, with his partners whom he has drawn to him. "he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword," is proven every day. he who thinks every man is a rogue will see enough rogues to justify him in his belief, and will probably end up by having people think of him as a rogue--he will draw all sorts of roguish people, things and circumstances to him. did you ever start in the morning feeling cross and crabbed? well, if you did you probably found that after the inevitable domestic row over the buckwheat cakes and coffee--after you had left your wife with tears in her eyes, and the children in good shape to get into trouble in school--that everyone seemed to "have it in for you." some fellow in the train seemed to deliberately tread on your pet corn, another jostled you, and so on. when you got down to business, everything went wrong, and unless you brought yourself up with a short turn you had a dreadful time of it all day, and were glad when night came that you might sleep it off. you will always find that there are plenty of people waiting to go into mental partnership with you in such cases. if you are looking for fight, you will get it. i tell you, friends, that people are all more or less in psychic touch with each other, and the sooner we recognize this fact the better it will be for us. this law of mental attraction works either good or bad for us, according to the uses we make of it. if we run contrary to the law we will be taught lesson after lesson, until we learn something. but if we fall in with the workings of the law we will reap the benefits that come to man when he masters and controls any of nature's great forces. now, don't make partnerships of an undesirable kind. if you do you will have to bear the consequences. if you have already formed such a partnership, dissolve it at once and go into liquidation. after a while you will have cleared up the old debts and straightened matters out and will begin to do business on another basis. and i want to tell you right here that you can get into the best mental firms in the world if you only go about it right. they will not object to you if you are a fit member, and, in fact, they could not keep you out even if they wished. the doors will open at the magic touch of the spoken word backed up by the proper mental attitude. cut loose from the old thought associations and form new connections. get in touch with the right kind of thought-waves, people and things. cultivate the proper mental attitude and demand an entrance to the firm you wish. good men are scarce in all branches of business, trades and professions. there's room for you--away up at the top, too. get what belongs to you; do not be cheated out of your heritage. assert yourself. join to-day that good, hustling firm, whose name on the signboard reads: "i can, i will, i do, i dare." the seekers. the secret of life--the riddle of existence--sought now as ever--the whyness of things--attempts to answer the riddle--the seekers--fantastic creeds and queer philosophies--revamping old ideas--the story of the man and the stars--the answer to be found within the soul. "i laugh at the lore and the pride of man, at the sophist schools and the learned clan, for what are they all, in their high conceit, when man in the bush with god may meet?" --emerson. man is trying to reason out now as in the past, the secret of life--the riddle of existence. he seeks to know from whence he comes, whither he goes, and what is the object of his existence. he wants to know the _whyness_ of things--what it all means. he is like the squirrel in the cage, which exhausts itself in traveling the long road of the wheel, only to find itself at the end of its journey just where it started. or worse still, like the newly-caged wild bird, he dashes against the bars of his prison, again and again, in his efforts to regain his freedom, until at last he lies weak and bleeding, a captive still. it has ever been so, from the childhood of the race until the present time. sages, seers, prophets and philosophers have endeavored to reason out the problem, but their labors have availed nothing, and the riddle remains unanswered. man has traveled over and over the circular road of thought, only to discover that it has no beginning--no ending. he thinks that he has explained things, but he has merely given them names. all the scientific research, all the theological and metaphysical speculation, has failed even to explain the sprouting of the mustard seed. life and death is a mystery to the most brilliant man of this civilization, as it was to the ignorant creature of the stone age. races, nations, civilizations rise and fall; creeds are born, grow strong, weaken and die, but the secret remains a secret still. the present day seems to have reawakened the latent desire of man to see behind the veil. the pendulum which carried so many thinkers to the materialistic extreme is beginning to swing in the opposite direction, and is causing a strange and wonderful revival of ancient creeds and philosophies. those who have long since turned their backs upon the accepted creeds now find themselves in the company of those who still claim allegiance to the church, but who feel themselves cramped by the creeds fashioned for them by their fathers. the leader of the new thought, reaching the top of the mountain, often finds himself face-to-face with a scientific _savant_ who has reached the same place by climbing up the other side of the hill. and the scientist and the new thought man need not be surprised to find a leader of advanced religious thought claiming a foothold on the top of the same hill. but the trio, after they have congratulated themselves upon reaching the summit and ending their journey look around them, and lo! their mountain is but a foothill, and far above them, towering higher and higher, rise range after range of the real mountains, the highest peaks being hidden among the clouds! one has but to look around him to see how strenuous has grown the search for the answer to the riddle. new creeds, philosophies, cults and schools confront us at every turn. the past has been ransacked for its discarded philosophies, which have been renovated and trimmed anew for modern use. the dust has been brushed off many an old and almost forgotten creed, which is pushed to the front under a new name and with new trimmings. plato is worked overtime to furnish the twentieth century creed promoters with material to be done over. the wildest dreams of the ancients are toned down a little, and boldly offered to the eager multitude as the long sought for solution of it all. priests and teachers of all the religions of all lands are among us vying with the priests and priestesses of the new philosophies and creeds of our own land, and bidding for public favor. and these new home-made philosophies, how frightfully and wonderfully are they made! the old philosophies of greece and rome are skilfully dovetailed with the creeds of the orient, and the result is a thing differing from anything ever seen before by gods or men. brahmins, buddhists, confucians, mahommedans and sun worshippers claim thousands of followers in our land, and isis and osiris will before long again be given a place and duly installed in the new pantheon. thor and odin will doubtless be revamped, and the rites of the druids revived. we are looking every day for the arrival on our shores of the advance agent of the joss propaganda from the celestial kingdom. and the home product is, if possible, more fantastic and _bizarre_ than the imported article. the wildest claims and statements are made with an air of authority, and are accepted as "gospel" by the adherents of the several sects. one does not know whether to sigh or weep as he watches some of the modern prophets and prophetesses strutting their little stage and cutting fantastic capers before high heaven, thus adding to the gayety of the nations. the demand for these things has been created, and nothing seems too highly spiced for the devotees of the latter day creeds. and the followers of those strange prophets, what of them? many of them are mere excitement hunters; others that class of people possessed of a consuming thirst for something new; some are honest seekers for the truth; and others are those who have cut away from their old moorings and are drifting about, rudderless and without an anchor, at the mercy of any stray current which may sweep them along. there are thousands of people who never heard of the philosophies and creeds of the ancients, who are now dazzled by the revamped doctrines expounded by the modern prophets, and who, being impressed with the strangeness and novelty of the (to them) new truths, accept them as inspired and emanating from the absolute. new gods have arisen and also new devils. the "malicious mental magnetism" of the christian scientists is as much a devil to them as was the orthodox devil of one hundred years ago to our forefathers. the new cults usually begin by performing cures by means of the power of the mind and other natural laws, which they attribute to the principles and teachings of their particular sects. many of them now, however, frankly admit that they are past the healing stage, and look down upon the mere healing of disease as a thing too nearly allied to the detested "material" plane to be seriously considered. the time of the leaders is now principally occupied in announcing and elucidating wonderful, high, spiritual truths for the seekers, soaring away up in the clouds of transcendentalism, leaving their followers behind, gaping upwards like a crowd at a country balloon ascension. once upon a time there was a reformer who attended a public meeting, and took part in an exciting debate on an important question of the day. at last, heated, wearied and disgusted by the fruitless struggle, he left the hall and started for home. it was a beautiful, cold winter's night, and the heavens were studded with stars shining bright through the clear frosty atmosphere. pausing for a moment in his rapid walk, he glanced upward. the stars were twinkling away merrily. they did not seem to be at all disturbed by what had been going on in the meeting. they appeared just the same as when, in years past, as a boy he had looked at them with wondering eyes. as he gazed, a peaceful calm came over him, and his worry, doubts and fears seemed very petty. at last one little star appeared to notice him, and he thought he could see it cast a good-natured glance downward, saying, in a cheerful voice, "why so _hot_, little man?" when we feel cast down with doubt, torn with anxiety, weak from loss of faith, faint with fear, let us look aloft at the stars. when we see those distant points of light, knowing them to be centers of solar systems, knowing that beyond, beyond and beyond are countless other suns and world, let us pluck up a little courage and realize that we are a part of a mighty law, a stupendous plan. let us know that the power which called these things into life, and which is able to manage them, and even greater things, has us in charge and will not allow us to be destroyed. let us know that we are but in the kindergarten stage of existence and that we shall go on and on and on, from plane to plane, ever onward and upward in the scale, until at last we shall be able to spell out the lines of the primer of life, and learn the multiplication table of the universe. let us in the meanwhile live on in trust and hope; one day at a time; living our own lives; doing our best work; getting the joy which comes from the simple, human life; lending a helping hand. let us abolish fear and hate, and replace them with courage, confidence and love. let us look for good rather than evil. let us know failure as merely a lesson in success. let us look upon death as birth. let us do the best we can with this world, knowing that the next world will find us prepared for its task. let us know that we are in eternity right now. let us know that god is not so far away as we have been taught, for is it not true that in him "we live and move and have our being!" let us preserve our sense of humor--for it will guard us against many a fear, many a folly, many a delusion. and, finally, let us keep out of the throng which is rushing wildly hither and thither, after leaders, prophets, sages, seers. let us look within ourselves and see the little flame which burns steadily there. let us know that we have within us the light of the spirit which naught can extinguish. and let us say with good old newman: "lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom lead thou me on. the night is dark, and i am far from home; lead thou me on. keep thou my feet; i do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me. lead thou me on." mental pictures. "i hang bright pictures in my mind"--bright pictures encourage one; gloomy ones depress--get rid of your old gloomy mental pictures--make a bonfire of them--get rid of the particularly miserable one, first of all--then put bright ones in their places. "i now hang bright pictures in my mind," said a friend to me, recently. her remark explained to me without the necessity of further words, the cause of her bright, cheerful and happy disposition, so greatly in contrast with that of the despondent, fretful woman i had known a few months ago. the change seemed so remarkable that one would have almost expected her to have claimed some startling occurrence as the cause of the wondrous transformation, instead of giving so commonplace an explanation. but just think how much there is in this thought: "i hang bright pictures in my mind." stop a moment, and let the thought sink deep into your inner consciousness. "bright pictures in the mind," why not, indeed? if we wish to make a chamber, or office, bright and cheery, we see that nothing but pictures representing bright, cheerful subjects are hung there. they may be the choicest engravings or paintings, or they may be some little inexpensive things, but just so they are bright and cheery the purpose is accomplished, and the room somehow seems a happier, more joyous place than before. if we were preparing a new room for the occupancy of some dear one, would we place there any but the brightest picture? would we hang there pictures of pain and misery, hate and murder, jealousy and revenge, sickness, suffering and death, failure and discouragement? would we do this thing i ask you? would _you_ do it? and if not, why not, pray? simply because you instinctively feel that the gloomy, hateful subjects would react upon the loved one. and you know, is the same way that the bright, cheerful, inspiring subjects are likely to uplift, stimulate, encourage and make better the occupant of the chamber. have you ever noticed that some rooms always seem to exert a beneficial effect upon you, while others seem to depress you? certainly you have. well, the next time you go into these rooms, look around a little and see if the explanation of your moods is not to be found in the character of the pictures on the walls. you may not have specially noticed them before, but your sub-conscious mental faculties have taken up the impression, and the reflex action has affected you. who can resist the "fetching" qualities of a bright, baby face, smiling from a little picture on the mantel, or on the wall? not i, for one. and who can help feeling the sense of comradeship for the kindly st. bernard whose great, affectionate eyes look down upon you from the engraving on the other side of the room. and on the other hand, who could--but, now i'm not going to describe the other kind of pictures in this article. but now to get back to the "pictures in the mind." if the gloomy pictures on the wall affect people, what do you suppose will be the effect of carrying around gloomy, fearful, hateful, jealous, envious, despondent mental pictures? can any good come of lugging this trash around with you? come, now, be honest. why don't you bundle up these horrible chromos of the mind, and then make a bonfire of the lot. now is the time for a mental house-cleaning--get to work and clean out these miserable daubs, and replace them with nice bright, cheerful, happy, sunny, mental works of art. do it to-day. you can't afford to put it off until to-morrow--indeed you can't. oh, yes, i know that you have grown attached to some of these old mental pictures--you've had 'em around so long that you hate to part with them. there's that particular miserable one at which you're so fond of looking--you know which one i mean. you see, i know all about it. you've been in the habit of standing before it with folded hands, and gazing, and gazing, and gazing at it. and the more you gazed, the more miserable you grew, until at last you felt that you would like to lie down and die, only that there was some work to do around the house, and you couldn't spare the time. yes, _that's_ the picture i mean. take it down and put it on top of the bonfire pile, and touch off the whole lot. then go back into the house and hang up all the new ones to be found, and the brightest one of the lot must hang in the place of that dear old miserable one that you threw out last--that one which was so hard to part with (the meanest one in the lot, always). and after you have done these things, how good you will feel. see how bright and cheerful the sun is shining; how pure and fresh the air seems--take a good long draught of it; look out the window and see the fleecy white clouds floating across the sky; the sky itself--how blue it is; and just listen to the bluebirds down by the old gate--spring must be coming. ah, how good it is to be alive! don't retail your woes. a miserable habit--it grows as it is fed--a nuisance to friends and neighbors--it brings to you more of the same kind--you will get what you look for--looking for trouble brings it--don't imagine that you are being "put upon"--don't retail your woes. don't retail your woes. do you think that it does you any good to go around with a long face, telling your tale of woe to everyone whom you can induce to listen to you? do you think that it does you any good? do you think it helps you to overcome your troubles, or makes your burden any lighter? no, i don't believe that you think any such things. all your experience teaches you that people do not like to listen to long-drawn-out tales of your troubles--they have enough of their own. even those who are always ready to lend a helping hand and to give what aid they can to one who needs it resent being made targets for a continuous fusillade of troubles, woes, griefs, etc. and you know very well that a constant repetition of your own woes will only make them seem greater and more real to you. and then the chronic retailer of woe grows to be like the journalist--develops a keen scent for matter to be dished out to others--she needs it in her business. when one gets into this habit of carrying about tales to her friends, she runs out of ready material, and eagerly looks around for more with which to supply the demand. she becomes quite an adept at discovering insults, sneers, double-meaning remarks, etc., on the part of her friends and relatives, where nothing of the kind was intended, and she rolls these things over and over in her mind like sweet morsels before she serves them up with appropriate trimmings, to her listeners. you will notice that i say "her," in speaking of the victim of this demoralizing habit, and some of my readers of that sex will undoubtedly take me to task for blaming it on the woman instead of the man. well, you all know my ideas about the equality of the sexes--about their being different, but one being as good as the other, with the odds a little in favor of the woman. but i feel justified in saying that this habit is one that seems to have a special liking for women, and it generally picks out a woman for its victim in preference to a man. when a man acquires this habit, he becomes such a nuisance to his friends and associates that sooner or later he will notice that they avoid him, and the chances are that some blunt fellow will tell him that he has no time for listening to tales of this kind, and that if he, the complainer, would display the same energy in attending to his business that he does to peddling around tales about how badly he has been used, he would not need any sympathy. but woman, god bless her, does not like to hurt the feelings of others in this way--she suffers the infliction in silence, and then tells her friends how she has been bored. she will listen to her woe-retailing friend, and seem to sympathize with her, and say, "oh, isn't it dreadful;" "how could she speak so harshly of you;" "you poor dear, how you must have suffered;" "how could he have treated you so unjustly," and other things of that kind. but when the visitor goes, she yawns and says, "dear me, if mrs. groan would only try to say something more cheerful; she gives me the horrors with her tales about her husband, her relatives, her friends, and everybody else." but mrs. groan never seems to see the point, and she adds to her list of people who have "put upon her," as she goes along, her tired-out friends being added to the number, as their patience wears out. and then the effect upon the woman herself. you know the effect of holding certain lines of thoughts; of auto-suggestion; of the attractive power of thought, and you can readily see how this woman makes things worse for herself all the time. she goes around with her mind fixed upon the idea that everybody's hand is against her, and she carries about with her an aura that attracts to her all the unpleasant things in the neighborhood. she goes around looking for trouble, and, of course, she gets it. did you ever notice a man or a woman looking for trouble, and how soon they found it? the man looking for fight is generally accommodated. the woman looking for "slights" always gets them, whether the giver intends them or not. this sort of mental attitude fairly draws out the worst in those with whom we come in contact. and the predominant thought draws to itself all the corresponding thought within its radius. one who dwells upon the fancied fact that everybody is going around trying to injure him, treat him unkindly, sneer at him, "slight" him, and generally use him up, is pretty sure to find that he has attracted to him enough people who will humor his fancy, and give him what he expects. in "thought force" you will remember, i tell the story of the two dogs. the one dog, dignified and self-respecting, whom no boy ever thinks of bothering. the other dog, who expects to be kicked by every passing boy, and who draws himself up, and places his tail between his legs, and actually suggests the kick to the passing boy. of course he gets kicked. it's wrong for the boy to do it, i know, but the dog's attitude is too much for the nature of the average boy. and "grown-ups" are built upon the same plan. these people who are going around in the mental attitude which invites unkind treatment, generally manage to find someone who will have his natural meanness drawn out to such a convenient lightning rod. and, in fact, such people often generate harsh feelings in persons who scarcely ever manifest them. like attracts like in the world of thought, and one draws upon him the things he fears, in many cases. but one of the most regrettable things about this woe-retailing woman, is the effect the habit has upon her own mind and character. when we understand how one is constantly building up character, adding a little every day, and that our thoughts of the day are the material which are going into our character-structure, it will be seen that it is a matter of the greatest importance what kind of thoughts we think. thoughts are not wasted. they not only go out in all directions, influencing others--attracting persons and things to ourselves--but they have a creative effect upon our own mind and character. thought along a certain line will develop certain brain-cells to a great extent, and the cells manifesting the contrary line of thought are allowed to dwindle away and shrivel up. now, when we have our minds fixed upon the thought that we are long-suffering mortals, and that everyone else is trying to do mean things to us; that we are not appreciated, and that those who should care most for us are only biding their time until they can hurt us; we are building up our minds along that line, and we find ourselves in the habit of looking for the worst in everybody, and we often manage to bring it to the surface, even if we have to dig hard for it. some of this class of people seem to take a particular delight in bringing upon their head the harsh words and "slights" of others. now, i really mean this. i have seen people go around with that "i'm a worm of the dust, please tread on me" air, and the same expression as that in the eyes of the dog which expected to be kicked. and when somebody would be nagged into saying or doing something that they would not otherwise have thought of, the woe-seeker's eyes would assume an expression of "i told you so," and "it's only poor me," and "it's all i can expect, everybody wishes to crush me," and a few other assorted thoughts of that kind. and then she will go to her room and moan and weep, and dwell upon her miseries until they seem to be as large as a mountain. and then the first chance she gets she will run around the corner to a friend, and will retail all the new stock of woes which she has accumulated, with fancy trimmings, you may feel sure, and the friend will try hard to avoid showing that she is bored at the tale she has so often heard, but will say nice little things, until the mourner is sure that the whole world sympathizes with her, and she feels a glow of righteous indignation, self-pity and martyrdom. oh, the pity of it all! these people go through the world, making things harder for themselves, their friends, their relatives, and everyone else with whom they come in contact. they are constantly seeking to keep their stock fresh and attractive, and display more energy in their retailing than the average man or woman does in business. this thing of looking for trouble is a very unfortunate thing in families. as a rule, i think that woman gets the worst of it in family troubles. the economic position places her at a disadvantage, and she often suffers all sorts of horrible things, rather than have her troubles made public. but i must say that _some_ women bring upon themselves all that they get. i have known them to get in a frame of mind in which they could see nothing but unkindness, where the utmost kindness was meant. man is not an angel--far from it--but the attitude of some women is enough to bring out all the qualities other than angelic. they assume that they are "put upon" and live up to that idea. every word that the man says is twisted and distorted into something entirely different from what he intended. the mental attitude produces moral astigmatism, and things are seen at the wrong angle. all the little things that happen are promptly retailed to some mischief-making neighbor, who is in the game for the excitement it affords her, and who laughs at the wife behind her back, and talks about her in turn to some third person. and the wife fairly draws upon herself all sort of things that never would have happened otherwise. she knows that her neighbor is waiting for to-day's budget of news, and she, almost unconsciously, shapes things so that the facts justifying the news are forthcoming. did you ever notice that woman who keeps her troubles to herself does not have nearly as much bickering and strife in her household as the one who has acquired the retailing habit? don't retail your woes. keep them to yourself, and they will die, but spread them, and they will grow like weeds. you are making things worse for yourself--are drawing things to you--and are spoiling your mind, disposition and character by this miserable business of retailing woes. life. there is in each of us a potential something for expression--the something within--the plant of life--no use trying to repress it, for develop it must--life has a meaning--growth, development and unfoldment--the lesson of life. there is in each of us a potential something, pressing forth for expression and growth in the direction of ultimate good--casting off sheath after sheath in its progressive development and unfoldment--impelled by the impulse imparted by the primal cause--attracted upward by the absolute. failing to understand this impulse of the growing something--seeking relief from its steady pressure--we look upon it as an intruder, and instead of allowing it to develop and grow naturally, we endeavor to kill it, or to train its growth after our own petty notions. we fail to see that this something is like unto the plant which grows on steadily and surely, from seed to blossom, until its potentialities are fully expressed. we do not realize that this plant of life should be allowed to grow as does the lily, freely and without restraint, unfolding leaf after leaf, until the plant stands in its complete beauty, crowned with its divine flower. we would train the plant into some fantastic shape--dwarf it as the chinese do the oak, that it may become the pretty ornament of the parlor instead of the noble monarch of the forest. we would have it grow _our way_, not according to the law of its being. we fancy that we know what is best for it, losing sight of the fact that deep down in the subconscious depths of its being reposes that which directs its every effort toward the good--forgetting that its attraction toward the absolute is drawing it steadily and irresistibly in the right direction. we forget that the plant will fulfill these impulses so long as there remains in it one atom of life. the seed in the ground will express itself in its little shoot, often moving weights a thousand times heavier than itself in its efforts to reach the rays of the sun. the sapling may be bent and confined to the ground, but its branches, following the laws of its being will instinctively shoot upward. restrict the growth of the plant, if you can, but, nevertheless, it will move along the lines of least resistance and grow toward the sun, in spite of your efforts. and so it is with the plant of life--the something within us. we are afraid to allow it to grow according to the laws of its being, but wish to model it and shape it in accordance with the theories of ourselves or others (more frequently the latter, for most of our ideas on the subject are borrowed). we seem to imagine that the intelligence that thought the plant into existence did not understand its business, and we are afraid that without the assistance of our mighty intellect the poor thing will grow into a misshapen and unsightly thing. we would alter the shape designed by its maker, and would twist it into the form approved of by the passing fashion of the hour. we would substitute for the beauty and symmetry of nature, our own fantastic ideas of form. but, like the plant, this something of ours will not submit to the confining bonds--will not conform to the false standards which we would set up for it. submitting as long as it must, it stores up reserve strength day by day and keeps up a continuous steady pressure in the direction of its desire, and some day, by a supreme effort, it throws off the interfering obstacles, and, obeying the laws of its being, again grows toward the sun. life is growth. it moves along, pressing this way and that way, along the lines of least resistance, drawing to itself that which it needs for its complete expression and growth, using this thing and that thing to-day, and discarding them to-morrow, after they have served their purpose--after their helpful qualities have been extracted. it assumes many forms in its growth, discarding sheath after sheath as outgrown. any attempt to compel it to retain a sheath, which has become outgrown, will cause its life nature to revolt, and, in the end, with a mighty effort, it will burst forth, tearing the confining sheath into fragments. this something may be restrained temporarily, but its growth is as sure as the rising of to-morrow's sun, and its attempted restraint only results, in the end, in a violent assertion of its right to unfold and develop according to law. when we finally come to realize that life has a meaning--that we are here for a purpose--that the process of spiritual evolution is being expressed in us and through us--that our growth is in accordance with law--that the absolute understands its business--then will we cease to attempt to meddle with the great plan. we will then cease our futile efforts to mold to our absurd and arbitrary shapes that which is intended to grow in the beautiful form of nature's designing. we will realize that the power which called into being this life of ours, knew just what it was about--that this power placed within that life the energy which is expressing itself in changing form and color, but which has but one real object--growth toward the sun, and when we realize this truth we will begin to have faith, and will trust the law to do that which is best to be done--will realize the folly of imagining that the weight of the universe rests upon our shoulders. some of these days we will awaken to the fact that ours is the conceit of the fly resting upon the mighty revolving wheel, imagining that the fanning of his wings causes the wheel to revolve. some of these times the fly, tired with its exertions, will stop to rest for a few moments, when it will find that the wheel continues to revolve quite well, thank you, without its active assistance. we have been taking our little selves quite seriously, indeed. the something within is moving steadily and surely toward its goal, and much of the pain of life comes to us by reason of our efforts to restrict it--our efforts to change its motion, direction, speed. it is a mighty aid to those who understand and move along with it--but woe unto those who get in its way and endeavor to obstruct its progress. if unobstructed, there is no friction--if interfered with it manifests friction, which means pain. this pain is the notice given us by the law to the effect that we are obstructing the growth of the life plant, and, if we are wise, we will heed the warning. by conforming to the growth we will find that there is little or no friction, and life begins to take on new pleasures. by co-operating with the law, and moving along with it, we will find that things will "come our way" in a most unexpected manner. the law is a good friend and helper, and is of the greatest assistance to us, if we but trust it to do its work well, in its own good way. we can use its growing force to aid us in our daily pursuits, if we will trust it and move along with it, but we must heed the first sign of friction and understand that we are in some way interfering with its natural growth. by living in accordance with the law, instead of attempting to oppose it, we will find that we are guided in the direction of places, people and occupations best suited to develop us and to impart to us the experience needed to round out our lives. a realization of this fact by those who have experienced it, has given rise to the saying "nothing ever _happens_." we find the teachers and helpers that we require, and they find us. if we need certain information, we will find it in some person or book, and will thus be placed upon the track of that which we seek. the law will sometimes accomplish its results in ways far different from that which we would have supposed to be the best, but after time has passed we can look back and will see that the way by which the results were accomplished was the best possible under all the circumstances. we may meet with some bitter disappointments, losses, sorrows, but in the end these things will be seen as good--will be seen as having been necessary to give us the experience needed--to round out our characters--to enable us to understand. there are none who would be willing to part with the experience gained from even the most painful events of their lives. after, say, ten years have elapsed no man would be willing to have the memory and recollection of his greatest pain eradicated; if at the same time he would have to part with the experience and knowledge which have come to him by reason of that pain. the pain and its resulting experience have become a part of us, and we are not willing to be robbed of our own. and we will realize, in looking backward, that if we had been living in accordance with the law in the past--if we had understood its workings--these very sorrows, disappointments, losses, would have been considered only in view of their ultimate good, and the very sting of the pain would thus have been removed. when we learn to regard the pain of to-day as we now do the pain of ten years ago, we may feel that we are beginning to understand something of the operation of the law of good. and when we reach this stage, we will find that the pain is no longer _pain_, but only a form of good. when we cease to cause friction, friction no longer exists for us. the lessons of life _must_ be learned, sooner or later. it depends upon us whether they shall be forced upon us, in spite of our resistance, with much pain, or accepted by us, understandingly, with knowledge. in one case we will have the pain which comes from opposing the law; in the other, we will learn the lesson equally well, without the pain of the birching. the _lesson must be well learned in either case_. choose your method. now, i do not wish to be understood as meaning that we should simply fold our hands and wait for the law to bring all things to us without any labor on our part. try this way, though, if you like, and see how quickly the law will rap you over the knuckles to remind you that a task is set before you. the proper way is to take up the task that lies nearest your hand (and some task is _always_ there) and do it well, with the knowledge that the task has been placed there in accordance with the law. if the task is not to your liking, you will know that that is the very reason that it has been placed before you--you have a lesson to learn from it. when the time comes for a change you will find a strong desire for a something else full-grown within you. now is your chance. trust to the law to aid you in working out your desire. the desire is there in accordance with the law--its very existence is a promise of its fulfillment. with the aid of the law you will work out your desire. it is true that when you attain the object of your desire, it may not be just what you had thought it--may not be at all what you want. well, what of that? you have learned the necessary lesson--have lived out the desire and will now outlive it. something else will take its place. and you will be surprised at the _way_ that law has brought about the accomplishment of your desire. you will learn another lesson in this. when you have learned to work on, merrily--doing your best--living out each day's life--with faith and trust, confidence and fearlessness--accepting the development of each day as meaning ultimate good--seeing and _feeling_ that the law of good is in full operation--being willing to accept whatever it may bring you--then, and not until then, good friend, will you begin to know what is life. let us have faith. faith necessary in every human undertaking--you have faith in man, but are afraid to trust god--the universe if governed by law--the law is in operation everywhere--don't be afraid--you are a part of the plan--fall in with the law--have faith, have faith. when you take a journey by rail, you step into the car, settle yourself, take out a book and read, and give little or no thought to the engine or engineer in charge of the train. you go rushing across the country at the rate of fifty miles an hour, with no thought of possible disaster or accident, and for the time forgetting that there is such a person in existence as the engineer. you have absolute faith in the careful management of the road, and in the intelligence of the man who has been placed in the engine. the lives of yourself and hundreds of fellow passengers are practically in the hands of one man, and that man is a stranger to you--you have never seen him--you know nothing of his qualifications--you only know that the management has picked him out to safely conduct you across the country. you take a steamship to europe and place yourselves in the hands of a few men who are total strangers to you. you stake your life on their skill, judgment and intelligence. you feel that they would not be where they are unless the management of the line considered them competent. it is all a matter of trust--of confidence. the same thing is true when you take your seat on a trolley car or on the elevated railroad, or even in a stage coach or a private carriage. in each case you place yourself in the charge of another person in whom you have a certain amount of confidence, although he may be comparatively, or wholly, unknown to you. you place your wealth in a bank, having confidence in its management. you have business dealings with men whom you scarcely know, trusting to their honesty of purpose. in every transaction in life you are compelled to have confidence in people. your lawyer, your physician, your grocer, your clerks are all taken on faith. one cannot get away from it. if confidence were destroyed the wheels of modern life would stop in a minute. the so-called hard-headed practical man may sneer at faith, but it underlies every manifestation of the life of this civilization. man has faith and confidence in man, but is afraid to trust god. he looks about him and sees millions of worlds, each in its appointed place, each revolving in its own orbit. he has faith that at a certain time each world will be in a certain position, which position may be calculated centuries in advance--but he lacks faith in the power that created these worlds and keeps them in their places. he has faith in certain laws--but he doubts the existence of the law-maker. he sees the wondrous manifestation of life in great and small. he takes advantage of the telescope and the microscope and explores new regions, and finds the law in operation everywhere--but he doubts the existence of a great law which governs his life--his incomings and his outgoings--his great deeds and his petty acts--he fails to realize the truth of the saying that the hairs on his head are numbered, and that not a sparrow may fall unnoticed. he seems to think that if there is a god, he must have made the world and then ran away and left it to take care of itself. he fails to see that law must govern man's life as it governs the unfolding of the leaf, the development of the lily. he fails to see that law is in full operation within him as well as without him. he fails to see that as he opposes the operation of law, pain comes by reason of the friction. he fails to see that the only true philosophy is that which teaches one to fall in with the operations of law, and to let it work in him and through him. do you think for a moment that god does not know what he is about? do you doubt the supreme intelligence which knows all things and is conscious of all things? do you doubt the supreme power which manifests itself in all forms of power? do you doubt the universal presence which is in all places at all times? do you suppose that the manifestation is everything, and the manifestor nothing? poor man! either the universe is without law--without meaning--without reason, or it is the manifestation of supreme and infinite reason. either it is the work of a demon who sits somewhere and grins and gloats over our misfortunes--our trials--our troubles--our pain--our follies, or it is the work of an all-knowing--all-powerful--all-present intelligence-power-presence which has taken into consideration everything within the universe, down to the tiniest thing--down to the merest detail. and if this last be true, then everything that happens must be in accordance with law--everything that happens to us must be the very best thing that could happen to us at that particular time and that particular place. things are not run by blind chance--there is law under everything. everything has some connection with every other thing--every person has a relationship with every other person. all is one--the manifestations are varied, but there is but one reality. there is a great plan underlying all life, and life itself is in accordance with that plan. nothing ever _happens_. every occurrence has a bearing on every other occurrence. chance has no part in the plan--everything is in accord with well ordered laws. there is always an end in view in every thought, word or act. we are constantly being used for the benefit of the whole. there is no escape--and when we get to _know_ we cease to wish to escape. he who understands not law is constantly struggling, striving, fighting and contending against it, and, producing friction, he feels pain. he who understands something of law ceases to contend against it--he lets it work through him, and is carried along with a mighty force, doing each day the best he knows how, expressing himself in the best possible manner, sailing to the right and to the left, with the wind and against the wind, but still being borne on by the mighty current and resisting it not. he enjoys every mile of the journey, seeing new sights and hearing new sounds--moving on ever. he who understands not, rebels at being swept along--he wishes to stay where he is, but there is no such thing as staying--life is motion--life is growth. if you prefer to pull against the tide--to row up stream--by all means do so. after a while you will grow tired and weary, and will rest on your oars. then you will find that you are moving on just the same toward the unknown seas, and you will find that it is much easier work rowing or sailing with the current, or from one side of the river to another, than to attempt to stay in the same place or to pull up the stream. all this fretting--all this worrying--all this contention and strife, comes from a lack of faith. we may assert fervently that we know that all is good, and that all is best for us, etc., etc., but have we enough faith to manifest it in our lives? see how we endeavor to tie on to _things_, people, and environments. how we resist the steady pressure that is tearing us loose, often with pain, from the places to which we have wished to stay fastened like a barnacle. the life force is back of us, urging us along--pushing us along--and move we must. the process of growth, development and unfoldment is going on steadily. what's the use of attempting to resist it? you are no more than a water-bug on the surface of the river. you may dart here and there, and apparently are running things to suit yourself without reference to the current, but all the time you are moving along with it. the water-bug plan is all right, just so long as we do not attempt to stop the current or to swim right against it--when we try this we find out very quickly that the current has something to say about it, and before long we get so tired that we are willing to fall in with the law behind the current. and yet even the opposition is good, for it teaches us that the current is there--we gain by experience. the new thought does not teach people to stem the current or to swim up stream, although some teachers and some students seem to be of that opinion. on the contrary, the real new thought teaches us of the existence of the stream, and that it is moving steadily toward the sea of good. it teaches us how to fall in with it, and be borne further along, instead of attempting to hold back and become barnacles, or to try to push back up the stream. it also teaches us to live in the now--to enjoy the darting backward and forward over the face of the waters. it also tells us of the direction in which the current is moving, that we may move along that way, without wasting our energies in trying to go the other. it teaches us co-operation with law, instead of opposition to it. why do we not have faith? why do we not see the great plan behind it all? why do we not recognize law? as we have seen, we place our confidence in the engineer of the train--the pilot--the captain--the coach-driver, and the other guiding hands and yet we hesitate to trust ourselves in the hands of the infinite. of course, it makes no difference to the infinite whether or not we repose trust in it. it moves along just the same, guiding and directing--steering and regulating speed--it minds not our doubts and obstructions any more than does the great driving-wheel mind the fly who is perched upon it and who does not like the movement and attempts to stop it by spreading out its wings and buzzing. the great wheel of the universe is moving around, steadily and mightily. let us go with it. and while we are going let us spare ourselves the trouble and folly of the buzzing, wing-spreading business. let us part with fear and worry. let us cease our imagining that we can run the universe better than the engineer who has his hand on the throttle. let us cease imagining that god needs advice on the subject. let us stop this folly of saying "poor god, with no one to help him run things." let us trust the engineer. let us have faith--let us have faith. do it now. do to-day's tasks now--don't try to do to-morrow's work to-day, but be sure and do the day's work now--the baneful effects of procrastination--not fair to yourself--demoralization attendant upon putting off things--the world looking for people who can do things now. if you have anything to do--do it. if you have any task to perform to-day--do it now. if the matter cannot possibly be performed to-day, stop bothering about it, and get to work doing the things of to-day. but don't get into that miserable habit of putting off things until later in the day, or later in the week--do them _now_. the old proverb: "procrastination is the thief of time," is true, but it does not go far enough. procrastination is not only the thief of time, but the thief of energy--the thief of efficiency--the thief of success. we have had much to say about living in the now--about not dwelling in the past or fretting about the future. and all this is true, and i will probably say it over and over again during the year, because i believe in it, and wish you to get acquainted with the idea. but living in the now does not merely mean the thinking of the thoughts of to-day--the carrying of the burdens of to-day--the meeting of the problems of to-day. it also means the doing of the work of to-day. to attempt to carry last year's burdens--or next week's burdens--to-day, is folly of the worst kind, as you well know. but it is equally foolish to put off to-day's work until to-morrow. it's not treating to-morrow right--not giving it a chance. the self of to-morrow is not exactly the self of to-day. that is, it has grown a little and is the self of to-day plus the added experience of the day. and it is just as selfish for the self of to-day to attempt to throw his burdens upon the self of to-morrow as it would be for you to attempt to throw your burdens upon your brother or sister. it is not only selfish, but it is hurtful to you--it impedes your growth. to-day's work is set before you because of the lesson it contains, and if you refuse to accept your lesson, you are the loser. you cannot get away from the task. it will be placed before you again and again until it is performed, and you might as well do it at once, and get your lesson at the proper time, and not be compelled like the schoolboy to "catch-up" in his work. by putting off things until to-morrow, you are simply heaping up troubles for yourself to-morrow, as to-morrow's own work will have to be done as well as your leftover tasks, and the chances are that neither of them will be done properly. there's no sense whatever in this habit of procrastinating. it is folly of the worst kind. and not only in the immediate effects is procrastination hurtful to one. one of the worst features of the case is the demoralizing effect it has upon the whole mental attitude of the man. it cultivates laziness, indecision, shiftlessness, slackness and many other undesirable habits of thought and action. it manifests itself in numberless ways in the character of the man who has allowed himself to be tangled in it. it impairs his efficiency--affects his value. then again, you are really unfair to yourself if you get in the way of putting off things. you never have any time to yourself if you have a number of old matters demanding your attention. the man who procrastinates is never able to spare time for mental improvement, because he always has some old loose ends to wind up--some old tangle to straighten out. and he loses all idea of the value of time--of getting the most out of every hour, every minute. the procrastinator is the veriest drudge--he has his nose to the grindstone all the time. he never has any time he can call his own. he is a slave to his own habit of "laying things aside." poor man. i am satisfied that half the failures of life--yes, three-quarters of them--are due to the failure of persons to do the thing now. not only because of what they lose directly by this habit, but because of the effect it produces upon their character. the shiftless habit of thought manifests itself in action. the thought and action, long persisted in, will lead to a demoralization of the entire character of the individual. he soon forgets how to do things right. and that is where so many people fail. the world is looking for people who can do things--and who can do them now. if you are one of the procrastinating kind, start in at once and get over it. put up a sign before your desk, your sewing machine, your work-bench, or wherever you spend most of your time, and have these words in big black letters on the sign:--"do it now!" by carrying the thought of this now way of doing things, and letting it manifest itself in action as frequently as possible, you will find that before long your entire mental attitude regarding work has changed, and you will find yourself doing things when they should be done, without any particular effort on your part. the mind can be trained and taught to do things right. it needs a little courage, a little perseverance, a little will-power, but the result will pay you for your trouble. start in to cure yourself of this bad habit. start in at once. do it now. get in tune. marconi's wireless messages--vibrations reach only the instruments attuned to the sender--the same law in operation on the mental plane--the correct pitch is the thing--get in tune with the proper vibrations--get the messages from the best senders. i have just finished reading an account of marconi's wireless telegraphy. it seems that when a message is sent from the marconi transmitter, the vibrations travel in all directions, and not alone in the direction of the person to whom the message is sent. it would seem to the reader, at first, that any instrument, in any direction from the sender, could and would be affected by the vibrations and would take up and record them. but such is not the case, for marconi finds that he can attune his receiving instrument to a certain pitch, and that the instrument will receive and record only vibrations emanating from a sending instrument attuned to the same pitch. this is true no matter how near the instruments may be to each other, or in what direction they may be from each other. and all instruments, irrespective of number, that may be within sending distance, will receive the message providing they are attuned to the same pitch. now just notice how much this corresponds to what we know of the working of thought-force. people whose minds are attuned to a certain pitch will receive the vibrations from the minds of others whose mental keynote is the same. and if one maintains a high positive keynote, he will not be affected by the vibrations emanating from the mind of another who may have a low negative pitch. the nearer to our pitch the mind of another may be, the more we feel the sympathetic vibrations in our own mind; the greater the difference in the pitch, the less we will feel in sympathy with him. this will account for the instinctive likes or dislikes that many of us experience when coming into the presence of other people. and how soon do people of kindred vibrations seek out and find each other in a mixed assembly. many likes, unexplainable by any theory of personal appearance, etc., arise from this cause. and as the marconi instruments may have their pitch changed, so are our mental keynotes changed from time to time as we adjust ourselves to new conditions--as we grow. this will explain why two people, who at one time seemed to be in perfect attunement with each other, will drift apart until at last they seem to have scarcely a thought or feeling in common, and yet both of them may be good people, really anxious to be helpful to the other. but this is not the only way in which the working of the marconi system resembles the workings of the mind. i have often called your attention to the fact that the holding of certain mental attitudes resulted in the attraction to oneself of thought vibrations corresponding to the general character or the thought held in the mind of the person. let a man be filled with the spirit of jealousy, and everything seems to feed that feeling. he hears of cases of faithlessness on the part of other persons; every circumstance seems to confirm him in his belief. the actions of the loved one seem doubly suspicious--signs of guilt are seen in every expression, every move. he draws to himself the thought-waves of other minds vibrating on the same pitch--like attracts like. let a man drop into the fearthought condition, and immediately he feels the rush of fear to his mind. let him cast aside fear, and attune himself to the fearless pitch, and he feels an influx of courage, fearlessness, confidence, energy and other positive thoughts. and according to the character of your thoughts, will you draw to yourself people calculated to co-operate with you and be of assistance to you. even things seem to shape themselves to fit in with the keynote you have sounded. not only do you attract to yourself people and things corresponding with your mental pitch, but you send out thought-waves affecting others creating impressions upon them. go into the presence of an "i can and i will" man, and, if you are of the same kind, he will instantly perceive it and will be glad to talk to you. on the other hand, approach a man of this kind, with your mind full of "i can't," and he will be conscious of inharmony and will want to be rid of your presence at once. be a man with the southern exposure, such as i described to you in another article, and you will find that you will extract and draw to yourself all the sunniness in the nature of people with whom you come in contact. be a human wet blanket, such as i have described in another article, and you will find that you will get the meanest qualities inherent in the nature of people with whom you come in contact--in fact you will be able to attract only that kind of people who are as musty and unwholesome as yourself. get rid of the old negative notes. start in and cultivate the positive, joyous, active vibrations, until you reach the steady mental pitch of the "new thought" man. then will all the negative vibrations pass you by, finding no encouragement to enter your mentality--then will you receive the bright, cheerful, happy, fearless vibrations coming from others who have reached the same plane of thought. get in tune--get in tune. mental toxin and anti-toxin. a new toxin--the microbes in the thoughts we think--the new anti-toxin--thoughts may poison--fear causes paralysis--hate causes insanity--fear and hate have killed their thousands--gates' experiments--how to overcome the poison of bad-thinking. in these days of toxin and anti-toxin--of poison in sausages, oysters, canned beef, ice cream--of anti-toxin serums (that often are more deadly than the original toxin) for the prevention and cure of tuberculosis, leprosy, pneumonia, typhoid fever, tetanus, bubonic plague, diphtheria, and the rest of the list, it requires courage to call the attention of the public to a new "toxin," even if at the same time we furnish an anti-toxin that "anti-toxicates." we shudder at the thought of microbes and bacilli--and thereby attract them to us; we filter our drinking water, after boiling all the life out of it; we develop into microbe hunters, and see poison in everything we wear, eat, drink or breathe. but we overlook the microbes in the thoughts we think. we encourage the enterprising doctor in his giddy chase after the nimble dollar, as he produces anti-toxin serums to order. the poor, broken-down cart horse is worked overtime in producing filthy pus and serum for the serum-maniac to inject into our circulation. but we overlook the pure, harmless, powerful anti-toxin obtained fresh from the cells of the brain--right thinking. that thoughts may poison, is a well-proven fact. depressing thoughts interfere with the cerebral circulation, impairing the nutrition of the cells and nerve centers. the result is that the organs and tissues manifest lost or impaired function--loss of general nutrition follows--and a break-down is inevitable. fear, worry, anger, envy, jealousy, and other negative thoughts, reflect themselves most disastrously in the human system. fear has paralyzed nerve centers, and turned the hair white over night. a mother's milk has been poisoned by a fit of anger. fear and hate--father and son--have produced insanity, idiocy, paralysis, cholerina, jaundice, sudden decay of teeth, fatal anaemia, skin diseases, erysipelas, and eczema. epidemics owe their rapid spread and heavy death rate to fear and ignorance. epidemics may kill their dozens--fear kills its thousands. all the brood of negative, fearful, selfish, hateful thoughts manifest themselves in physical conditions. stigmata or marks upon the body, caused by fear or desire, are quite common in the annals of medical science and psychology. professor gates, of the smithsonian institution, washington, d.c., in his investigation of the effect of mental states upon the body, found that irascible, malevolent and depressing emotions generated in the system injurious compounds, some of which were extremely poisonous; he also found that agreeable, happy emotions, generated chemical compounds of nutritious value, which stimulated the cells to manufacture energy. he says: "bad and unpleasant feelings create harmful chemical products in the body which are physically injurious. good, pleasant, benevolent feelings create beneficial chemical products which are physically healthful. these products _may be detected by chemical analysis_ in the perspiration and secretions of the individual. more than forty of the good, and as many of the bad, have been detected. suppose half a dozen men in a room. one feels depressed, another remorseful, another ill-tempered, another jealous, another cheerful, another benevolent. samples of their perspiration are placed in the hands of the psycho-physicist. under his examination they reveal all these emotional conditions distinctly and unmistakably." remember, this is not "the airy fancy of some enthusiastic mental scientist," but is the testimony of a leading scientific investigator in the laboratories of the smithsonian institution, one of the best known scientific institutions of the world. "chemical analysis," mind you--not "transcendental imaginings." now i have said enough about the toxin and some little about the anti-toxin of the mind. i might go on for hours, stating example after example; illustration after illustration, but the tale would be just the same. now what are you going to do about it? are you going to keep on poisoning yourself and those around you with vile, malignant thoughts reeking with the miasmatic effluvia of hate--emitting the noxious exhalation of fear and worry? or will you cease being a psychic pest-house, and begin to fumigate and disinfect your mind? and after getting rid of all the microbes of fear and worry and the bacilli of hate, jealousy and envy, open wide the windows of the mind and admit the bright sunshine of love, and the bracing air of confidence and fearlessness. come, friends, let us get out of this habit of poisoning the air with fear, worry and hate thought. let us join the ranks of the don't worry company--the fearless brigade--the invincible, conquering army of love. let us be bright, cheerful and happy--the other things are not worth while. let us be confident, expectant, hopeful and fearless--these things are winners. let us be filled with love for all men--and we will find that life is one sweet song. love, faith and fearlessness, are the ingredients of life's great anti-toxin. try it and be blessed. ella wheeler wilcox undertakes new work. favorite author becomes associate editor of the new thought magazine. best writing she has ever done now appearing in that bright publication. the many friends and admirers of ella wheeler wilcox will be interested to learn that this gifted author and thinker has connected herself, in the capacity of associate editor, with the new thought magazine, and that hereafter her writings will appear regularly in that bright publication, of which the aim is to aid its readers in the cultivation of those powers of the mind which bring success in life. mrs. wilcox's writings have been the inspiration of many young men and women. her hopeful, practical, masterful views of life give the reader new courage in the very reading, and are a wholesome spur to flagging effort. she is in perfect sympathy with the purpose of the new thought magazine. the magazine is having a wonderful success, and the writings of mrs. wilcox for it, along the line of the new movement, are among her best. words of truth, so vital that they live in the memory of every reader and cause him to think--to his own betterment and the lasting improvement of his own work in the world, in whatever line it lies--flow from this talented woman's pen. the magazine is being sold on all news stands for five cents. it is the brightest, cleanest and best publication in its class, and its editors have hit the keynote of all sound success. the spirit of every bit of print from cover to cover of the magazine is the spirit of progress and upbuilding--of courage, persistence and success. virile strength and energy, self-confidence, the mastery of self and circumstances are its life and soul, and even the casual reader feels the contagion of its vigor and its optimism. free.--the publishers will be pleased to send a handsome portrait of mrs. wilcox, with extracts from her recent writings on the new thought, free. address, the new thought, , the colonnades, vincennes ave., chicago. a full list ...of... important books published by the psychic research company vincennes avenue chicago at the _uniform price of_ $ . _each, postpaid_ [pointing finger] address all orders to book department the psychic research company to insure prompt attention. remit by postal order or express order. if currency or stamps is sent, register the letter. if personal check is used, add c. for exchange fee. orders filled the day they are received. ~thought-force~ (in business and every-day life) by william walker atkinson a wonderfully vivid book answering the questions: can i make my life more happy and successful through mental control? how can i affect my circumstances by my mental effort? just how shall i go about it to free myself from my depression, failure, timidity, weakness and care? how can i influence those more powerful ones from whom i desire favor? how am i to recognize the causes of my failure and thus avoid them? can i make my disposition into one which is active, positive, high strung and masterful? how can i draw vitality of mind and body from an invisible source? how can i directly attract friends and friendship? how can i influence other people by mental suggestion? how can i influence people at a distance by my mind alone? how can i retard old age, preserve health and good looks? how can i cure myself of illness, bad habits, nervousness, etc. "thought-force" gives an answer to questions like these. the book has been universally commended for its clearness and simplicity. bound in purple silk cloth, gold lettering. price, $ . , postpaid. with one year's subscription to new thought, both for $ . . ~nuggets of the new thought~ (in press) by william walker atkinson a series of essays by this forceful writer, constituting the cream of his magazine articles upon new thought topics. the famous "i can and i will" essay forms the opening chapter. "the secret of the i am," of which , copies have been sold, is also contained in this volume. we heartily commend this book as interpretative of the higher teaching. a most suitable gift book. silk cloth, purple and gold. price $ . , postpaid. with new thought, one year, both, $ . . ~the law of the new thought~ by william walker atkinson this is a plain answer to the oft repeated questions. "what is the new thought?" "what does it mean?" "what principles does it stand for?" "is it different from what is called mental science, or christian science?" the new thought is quite different. it is so broad and comprehensive in its bearing upon human life and human happiness that it can only be defined by its name, new thought. mr. atkinson's new book not only explains what the law is upon which new thought is based, but teaches how it may be used to the greatest good of men. silk cloth, purple and gold. price, $ . , postpaid. with new thought, one year, $ . . ~the heart of the new thought~ (in press) by ella wheeler wilcox a new book of original essays by this gifted woman dealing with the new thought in practice. this book will be off the press about the beginning of december. a first edition of , copies has been ordered. it deals with the practice of new thought in our daily lives. a helpful and inspiring book, fully equal to the very best work this author has done. silk cloth, purple and gold. price, $ . , postpaid. with new thought, one year, $ . . ~mesmerism in india~ by james esdaile, m.d. a classic from the pen of a surgeon in the british army, stationed in india fifty years ago. a most fascinating work for the student of practical psychology, containing the plainest description of the methods then in vogue of inducing the artificial coma for the performance of painless surgical operations. silk cloth, purple and gold. price, $ . , postpaid. with new thought, one year, $ . . ~the home course in osteopathy~ a clear and practical work, fully illustrated, for home use, explaining the theory and practice of osteopathy, massage and manual therapeutics, and illustrating all the different movements. the only complete work of the kind ever published. silk cloth, purple and gold. price, $ . , postpaid. formerly sold at $ . in paper covers. with new thought, one year, $ . . ~series "a"~ a masterly work dealing with two phases of development: the mental showing forth in self-control and force of character: and the spiritual as taught through zoism, the new mental science. this book makes plain that which is known as the law of mental currents, and teaches much that is new to the student of metaphysics. it is clearly and simply written and has been warmly endorsed by ella wheeler wilcox. silk cloth, purple and gold. price, $ . , postpaid. with new thought, one year, $ . . ~series "b"~ this is a book for physicians, dentists, osteopaths and professional nurses particularly, inasmuch as it deals with the theory and practice both of suggestive therapeutics and magnetic healing. it is intensely practical, and gives the clearest directions how to proceed to induce the state of passivity necessary for the curing of diseases by these means. it is considered by all authorities to be the most complete work, written purely for instruction's sake, ever put out. it is well illustrated. silk cloth, purple and gold. price, $ . , postpaid. with new thought, one year, $ . . ~series "c"~ this is a compilation of new, copyright works dealing with the practice of clairvoyance or crystal-gazing, human magnetism, auto-suggestion, concentration, and mind reading in its two aspects of muscle reading and true telepathy. this book really tells how to perform mind-reading. in this it is unique; no other work to our knowledge, being really useful in this regard. silk cloth. purple and gold. price, $ . , postpaid. with new thought, one year, $ . . ~series "d"~ although this is the last of this series of books it is in some respects the most important of any. a life-time of study and practice will not exhaust its stores of knowledge. it deals with psychometry, phrenology. palmistry, astrology, mediumship and somnopathy. this last is a new word, coined by the author, sydney flower, to define his discovery of a new method of educating the young, i.e., during natural sleep. of this method, a lady writing in the washington post, of recent date, said: "i never punish my little ones, i simply wait till they are asleep, and then i talk to them, not loud enough, you understand, to wake them, but in a low voice. i tell them over and over that they must be good, i suggest goodness to them, for i think the mind is just as susceptible to suggestion during the natural sleep as during the working state. i concentrate my mind on it, and i am confident that before long all mothers will adopt my method. it is the best way i know of to bring up children." this method is fully described by its discoverer in this work, and the endorsements of prominent physicians are given in full. silk cloth, purple and gold. price, $ . , postpaid. with new thought, one year, $ . . ~the mail-order business~ by sydney flower this little book, if we are to judge by the testimony of those who have paid for and read it, exactly fills the need of the many men and women who are now looking to the mail-order field as a means of starting in business for themselves in a small way. this book is very practical, very simple, very much to the point. it teaches how to enter the mail-order field, manufacture goods, buy, sell and advertise articles, keep a card-check system, set of books, etc., in short, how to conduct a small mail-order business on a limited capital. silk cloth, purple and gold. price, $ . , postpaid. with new thought, one year, $ . . ~the mind's attainment~ (in press) by uriel buchanan every reader of new thought literature is familiar with the charming literary style of mr. buchanan. this book, which will be ready by the end of november, expresses more nearly the high ideals of the author than anything he has hitherto published. it gives the essence of a beautiful and uplifting philosophy that cannot fail to benefit and instruct humanity. silk cloth, purple and gold. price, $ . , postpaid. with new thought, one year, $ . . these books are published and owned by the psychic research company, vincennes avenue, chicago. all books are sold by this company upon the full refund principle of "your money back if the book does not suit you." * * * * * * transcriber's note: minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed.