GIFT OF 
 / 1 ///'a I I a LI /or 
 
Stigmas. Last publ shed record of this inheritance was in 
 the XII century, the stigmas upon the person of Saint Francis 
 of Assizi, Italy. There arc on my body the same marks, in 
 the locations that the Roman cross marks at its cruel execu- 
 tions. A scabby sore is on my right breast, near the nipple 
 always open. On the back of each hand, in the center, are 
 breaking sores ; on the inside of each hand are gristly lumps ; 
 on my back, and opposite the front or opening sore, is a lump 
 larger than an egg, resembling a fatty tumor ,at the left side 
 of and near the backbone. In line between the front and 
 rear sore's my bowels have always felt and acted as partially 
 paralyzed. Feet not pierced ; the shinbone has skin discolored. 
 
 WM. TAYLOR, Age 83. 
 

 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 AND 
 
 HIGHER LIGHT 
 
 Written for the 
 Thoughtful 
 
 WILLIAM TAYLOR 
 
 A. C. Humphry, Printer for the Author 
 117 Stimson Bldg., Los Angeles, Cal. 
 
Copyright, 1922 
 by 
 Taylor 
 
 L teto IGu 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In a measure, extent of thoughts with us is very 
 limited. Blundering is the name to be applied for 
 those who defining for the common sense are slack. 
 "I thought" means very little. Artemas Ward lec- 
 turing the spendthrift said, "It would be money in 
 your pocket if you'd never been born!" 
 
 When earliest of mankind selected one only of the 
 polarities of being, the male, as leader, as god or chief, 
 a costly mistake was made; it made the tyrant, the 
 slave-driver, the aristocrat. This blunder made War. 
 
 Our United States had added to its formation, one 
 state inclusive, Pennsylvania, that had the humble peo- 
 ple called Quakers, who would not call any man 
 master; and no woman of this sect (formed in Eng- 
 land) had for husband a master. The keynote with 
 them was Equality. This feature in the population is 
 bound to grow, so today we have a free and enlight- 
 ened country, and it stands foremost of all the nations 
 of earth. No nation, says Lincoln, (of Quaker de- 
 scent), can endure, half slave and half free. He might 
 have added, no true marriage is made half slave and 
 half free. Want of thought is a bad basis, if you 
 ever want to care for any creature we call domestic 
 animal; you must give it soul equality, as you best 
 understand freedom in life. 
 
 All religion was founded -upon the autocratic basis 
 of having God or gods to rule. "The kingdom of 
 God is within you," so there is no truth in slavery if 
 life with both predominate the positive and negative 
 polarities. Franklin and Edison in curbing the elec- 
 
 517332 
 
PREFACE 
 
 trie fluid, very sensibly used both the positive and 
 negative, in other terms, he and she. Either element 
 to act alone is unthinkable. 
 
 This belief is that upon which I base the rebirth 
 theory, advocated in this work. 
 
 If "no more war/' we must have no more gods of 
 the nations, conquerors. 
 
 As mistakes occur in all early life, so recorded in 
 bibles and scriptures for the less enlightened, we 
 should strive to turn ahead to the known principles of 
 that great Hebrew prophet, Jesus who was the first 
 to startle the world for higher principles in mankind. 
 Plato, the Grecian philosopher advocated also for peo- 
 ples of enlightened states to follow his teachings in 
 The Republic. 
 
 No human records are long kept. Palmyra of the 
 ancients had a throng in life. The Grecian unknown 
 god and the others are not now named. But the 
 despised slave on the path, sings, "Carry me back to 
 old Virginia/' meaning to his old home. An equally 
 lasting thing is the stigma, a flesh mark that lasts 
 through all Christian times. So books and creeds 
 kept alive in only the mind's eye, the soul. Jehovah 
 was a big name long ago, yet is passing with idolatries 
 and scriptures. Cain killing Abel was a soul offense, 
 to last as murder may last. The coming Age of Com- 
 passion may glimpse that promised Age of Heaven ! 
 
Physical Life and Higher LigKt 
 
 BOOK ONE 
 
 This is an age of Change. The past, we hope, ends 
 the long era of wars, and for the first time in modern 
 history peace conferences of the nations have produced 
 general rejoicing. 
 
 "War is Hell," was an expression of General Sher- 
 man, in 1865. As the Great Prophet, Jesus, 2000 
 years ago, based His work upon peace hopes then so 
 unpromising, let the prayers, the hopes ever since, of 
 countless millions of peoples everywhere, be of ac- 
 count. Prayers for peace are heard and may be an- 
 swered from on High! Very few with love for our 
 humanity but can incline to join a general chorus 
 "May the Prince of Peace be born again to meet less 
 brutality and greater general intelligence/' 
 
 There is no place like home. Oldest of our Chris- 
 tian sects, and we have many, worship the mother, as 
 is proper for every one of us. As to the father, Jesus, 
 the Divine One, recognized this as highest in names 
 Our Father. 
 
 We of to-day mix the clean with the unclean, the 
 man of blood, soldier, thief, conqueror, with the right- 
 eous, the divine. As Adam was scourged, driven out 
 of the Garden of God, so we must drive the unclean 
 out of our society, or submit to a weaker polarity of 
 existence. 
 
 The kingdom of God, Jesus said, was always within 
 us whatever use you may make of a Creator and 
 Preserver. If the starters of religions or governments 
 
8 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 have failed to point out this kingdom, they made 
 calamities and failures this even down to the lowest 
 savage tribes on earth. Gentlemen are reckoned our 
 highest type of enlightenment, their failure in duty 
 distressing and calamitous. Talk means little to idol 
 worshippers, more than mere priestly formality, so 
 remnant of this worship is too prevalent. Jesus was 
 not the graven image to bow to, for that little we know 
 of His teachings is as real for us as is the nation's 
 government. 
 
 Beauty a living presence of the Earth, 
 Surpassing the most fair ideal forms 
 Which craft or delicate spirits hath composed 
 From Earth's materials, waits upon my steps: 
 Pitches her tents before me as I move. 
 An hourly neighbor, Paradise, and groves 
 Elysian, Fortunate Fields like those of old 
 Sought in the Atlantic Main, why should they be 
 A history only of departed things, 
 Or a mere fiction of what never was? 
 For the discerning intellect of man, 
 When wedded to this goodly universe 
 In love and holy passion, shall find these 
 A simple produce of the common day. * * * 
 Such grateful haunts for growing, if I oft 
 Must turn elsewhere to travel near the tribes 
 And fellowships of men, and see ill sights, 
 Maddening passions mutually inflamed; * * * 
 Descend, prophetic Spirit! that inspirest 
 The human soul of universal earth, 
 Dreaming on things to come : and dost possess 
 A metropolitan temple in the hearts 
 Of mighty poets; upon me bestow 
 A gift of genuine insight, that my song 
 With star-like virtue in its place may shine ! 
 Shedding benignnant influence, and secure 
 Itself from all malevolent effect. 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 The first great reformer was Jesus of Jerusalem. 
 But the Holy Land fanatics murdered Him. He came, 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 
 
 as the pious said, eating and drinking with the publi- 
 cans and sinners, and the church would have none of 
 the New, the democratic, Testament. War lords later 
 became unbearably oppressive, Rome fell, and then 
 came a reaction in the French Revolution ; in England, 
 a Robin Hood with his "outlaws' ' (the Lincoln 
 Greens) to suppress the holy orders monks, more to 
 be feared than Darwin's monkeys! Governments in 
 both England and France were so tyrannical that the 
 people rose in their wrath and beheaded the kings of 
 both countries. 
 
 Education was accomplishing its blessed work. 
 Brave spirits were throwing off both the religious and 
 church-and-state tyrannies. The Trend of Liberty, 
 going mostly westward, the final downfall here of 
 oppression came with a Monroe Doctrine. Washing- 
 ton's hatchet cut the way to free institutions on a New 
 Continent, and English war lords, finally giving up 
 their cause (Aristocracy), in a later day begged for 
 our American sympathies when the most enlightened 
 of their powers made a world war that threatened all 
 Europe. 
 
 A better educated Church, and less inclined to be 
 aristocratic and more content under the mild govern- 
 ment of the Lamb of God, is now becoming of real 
 use to the people. A better understanding of the 
 Blessed Book begins to guide all alike. Formerly the 
 Bible was a Thing to be worshipped. 
 
 Two authors, Virgil and Ovid, have references to 
 Lethe and the descent into Hades, how the souls were 
 there made ready for reincarnation and there assemble 
 on the marge of the water of life, in order that they 
 
10 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 may partake, and then forget their past life, thence 
 returning to the physical plane. Christians and peo- 
 ples of other religions have faith that they will enjoy 
 an after-existence and especially with those in or 
 near the Old Home. It would be a senseless thing to 
 combat such a hope. Jesus upheld, I think, such a 
 heavenly vision beauties of the earth, reunion of the 
 risen; "a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without 
 the Father's notice." "Heaven/' he said, "was a place 
 of many mansions/' such as we have the place near 
 home upon the earth. 
 
 A CREED 
 
 BY JOHN MASEFIELD 
 
 I hold that when a person dies 
 
 His soul returns again to earth ; 
 Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise, 
 
 Another mother gives him birth. 
 With sturdier limbs and brighter brain 
 The old soul takes the roads again. 
 
 Such is my own belief and trust; 
 
 This hand, this hand that holds the pen, 
 Has many a hundred times been dust 
 
 And turned, as dust, to dust again; 
 These eyes of mine have blinked and shone 
 In Thebes, in Troy, in Babylon. 
 
 All that I rightly think or do, 
 Or make, or spoil, or bless, or blast, 
 
 Is curse or blessing justly due 
 For sloth or effort in the past. 
 
 My life's a statement of the sum 
 
 Of vice indulged, or overcome. 
 
 And as I wander on the roads 
 I shall be helped and healed and blessed ; 
 
 Dear words shall cheer and be as goads 
 To urge to heights before unguessed. 
 
 My road shall be the road I made: 
 
 All that I gave shall be repaid. 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 11 
 
 So shall I fight, so shall I tread, 
 
 In this long war beneath the stars ; 
 So shall a glory wreathe my head, 
 
 So shall I faint and show the scars, 
 Until this case, this clogging mold, 
 Be smithied all to kingly gold. 
 
 In the chapters of this little work a stigmatized 
 scribbler arises to advocate a very old doctrine or idea, 
 "Rebirth/' expecting all the souls of all the living 
 creatures here on earth to be reborn countless times, 
 and be back on earth, until all mankind will attain that 
 perfection to at last be able to abide in harmony in 
 that ever yearned for place or condition where a 
 heaven in reality is attained with no more of the dis- 
 cords of the good and bad of life to make a Lamb of 
 God other than an Elder Brother. "Who told thee 
 that thou wert naked ?" Adam was free to say things 
 not true, possibly, about Eve, and drew the long-bow, 
 as the saying is in our language; also he accused a 
 hypnotist, a snake, for making things worse. This 
 style of lying seemed to be at the very beginning of 
 our race. 
 
 As wise men have ever affirmed, the earth when 
 fitted for life and later for mankind, was provided 
 with sustenance, and for homes a state of felicity 
 highest of all. Soul and life seem synonymously one 
 element, the only other materiality. 
 
 Larger forms, with the brain dominating, have the 
 long-time hibernation, death we call it, while the 
 underworld, so called in Grecian literature, hath the 
 Lethean forgetfulness of the past; yet the feebler 
 worm, locust, etc., will be buried alive in the earth to 
 pass the period and very briefly, it seems, to stay 
 above the little while in sunlight and active life. 
 
12 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 "The March" from "Saul/' is remembrancer for all 
 of the Great Adventure death, from Incarnation to 
 Spirit. Bathing in the Lake of Lethe for purification, 
 then the preparation for and passing the gate of life 
 again. 
 
 Dimly in infancy thy world will appear with that 
 early Hebraic sign in a church, as the Command- 
 ments partly unfitted for the present age. "Thou 
 shalt have no other gods before Me. Correct; but yet 
 in the prayer, another reads, "Lead us not into 
 temptation but deliver us from evil." Children in this 
 age would not make this balk. 
 
 Our American poet Whitman says, personifying his 
 soul's path through the reincarnations : "O vapors, I 
 think I have risen with you, and moved away to dis- 
 tant continents and fallen down there, for reasons; I 
 think I have blown with you, O winds; O waters I 
 have fingered every shore with you. All forces have 
 been steadily employed to complete and delight me. 
 Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul. Hands 
 of the sisters, Death and Night, incessantly softly 
 wash me." 
 
 Eve, the submissive, the good, has been lied about 
 or enslaved all through the years. It is plainly to be 
 seen she does not tempt Adam to be over-indulgent 
 in use of drugged liquors, tobacco and other poisons. 
 The root of woman's nature is to love and cherish, 
 even the lowest of females in animal kind have this 
 instinct springing from motherhood. 
 
 There is much of old Adam even in the churches, 
 as you may start to cut out dead wood from pulpit 
 and amen corner to the rear benches (for poor and 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 13 
 
 the niggers). Have these latter a shed for shelter in 
 heaven ? 
 
 You hear much from the meek, owlish, well-dressed 
 priest (some in gold-spangled garments) about his 
 want of funds a money changer. The higher "calls" 
 they are not in the catalogue with Jesus, are a 
 
 P source of great interest among God's agents or minis- 
 ters today. And mere loafers in the house of God 
 have in our free country, that ignores church entangle- 
 ments, all kinds of business and other callings at high 
 salaries, for the asking. Unlike the union that Adam 
 belongs to (churchly) our good government offers 
 equal opportunities for women. 
 
 Costly bible institutes for education surely prepare 
 the student for usefulness and keeps him away from 
 low life and beggary. Receiving useful knowledge, 
 any young person of brains may go up to the highest 
 rung in life. Only indolence or worse can keep any 
 away from the true Path and away from that Levitism 
 abhored by Jesus, and of the still lower grade of 
 money changers in the temple. 
 
 A scientist as previously quoted says that smallest 
 of matter still emits rays. This is equivalent to that 
 saying of Jesus of the spiritual inhering in all life 
 the kingdom of God being within you. If you start a 
 fire in any spot where a fire may spread, it will enlarge 
 from heat into greater flames. An old saying, that 
 the world will be burned or we will have another 
 flood the polar opposition from fire. Words of the 
 prophet are a true saying, if extended to spirit and 
 matter being intermingled; so reincarnation is in a 
 way natural. 
 
14 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 Milton, in grandest of poems, hints that the high- 
 est heaven may be encroached upon by the lowest, 
 Apolleon. Defeated above, the devil darkness 
 sought the light in mankind. In other words the 
 Christ permitted the old boy to get a lodgment; but 
 we are of the godly, yet beware ! 
 
 Adam lied when he said he walked with the true 
 God in the cool of the evening; then he whispered to 
 the Highest that Eve had tempted him, and he did 
 eat (some person's chicken of woman's excellent 
 cooking), the blasted snake-fruit! 
 
 I have marks on my body called stigmas, that mark 
 infrequent intervals in man's history to account for 
 the last 2,000 years of the struggle to escape savagery 
 of the Roman period. This sign, marks of that Age 
 of Tyranny from which the gentle Jesus died in many 
 hours of his agony on the cross. That great New 
 England author, Hawthorne, dared to raise his voice 
 against fanaticism. His heroine was branded by pub- 
 lic authority of Puritan religionists, and she died bear- 
 ing the cursed mark on her breast. And scores of 
 so-called witches (earliest of Christians) were put to 
 death in this land of the free. Even in our day the 
 citizens of all governments dare not risk a vote to pub- 
 licly declare if wars shall cease ! Two thousand years 
 ago a preacher was abroad asking for peace and com- 
 passion. Even Lincoln says of majorities, "God must 
 love the poor, He made so many of them." People 
 of old were satisfied(P) to be called publicans and 
 sinners. To torture and kill the great preacher, Jesus, 
 a pact was made between Power Rome, and Religion, 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 15 
 
 such as it was ; a judge, however, declaring, "I find no 
 -fault in this man Jesus. 
 
 Dante : 
 
 In this their order diversely, some more 
 
 Some less approaching to their primal source. 
 
 Thus they to different havens are moved on 
 
 Through the vast sea of being, and each one 
 
 With instinct given, that bears it in its course; 
 
 This to the lunar sphere directs the fire, 
 
 This prompts the hearts of mortal animals, 
 
 This the brute earth together knits, and binds. 
 
 Nor only creatures void of intellect, 
 
 Are aimed at by this bow ; but even those 
 
 That have intelligence and love are pierced. 
 
 That Providence, that so well orders all, 
 
 With her own Light makes ever calm the heaven, 
 
 In which the substance that hath greatest speed, 
 
 Is turned. And thither now as to our seat 
 
 Predestined, we are carried by the force 
 
 Of that strong cord, that never loses dart 
 
 But at fair aim and glad. Yet is it true 
 
 That as ofttimes but ill accords the form 
 
 To the design of Art through sluggishness 
 
 Of unreplying matter, so this course 
 
 Is sometimes quitted by the creature, who 
 
 Hath power, directed thus, to bend elsewhere 
 
 As from a cloud the fire is seen to fall 
 
 From its original impulse warped to earth, 
 
 By vicious fondness. Thou no more admire 
 
 Thy soaring (if I rightly deem) than lapse 
 
 Of torrent downwards from a mountain's height. 
 
 There would in thee for wonder be more cause, 
 
 If, free of hindrance, thou hadst fixed thyself 
 
 Below, like fire in moving on the earth. 
 
 From Dante's Pergatory, I pass along to his Para- 
 dise vision of a returned soul upon earth: 
 
 That Lethe's water hath not hid it from him. 
 That oft the memory 'reaves, perchance hath made 
 His mind's eye dark. But lo ! where Ennoe flows ! 
 Lead hither; an as thou art want, revive 
 His fainting virtue. . . . 
 
 Then Reader, might I sing, though but in part, 
 That beverage, with whose sweetness I had ne'er 
 Been sated. But since all the leaves are full. 
 
16 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 Appointed for this second strain, mine art 
 With warning bridle checks me. I returned 
 From the most holy wave, regenerate. 
 Even as new plants, renewed with foliage new, 
 Pure and made apt for mounting to the stars. 
 
 And this is an age for us mortals to rise in airplane 
 flights surely! The babe, sated with that beverage, 
 the mother's milk, 
 
 Gazing as never eagle fixed his ken, 
 
 As from a first a second beam is wont 
 
 To issue, and reflected upwards rise, 
 
 E'en as a pilgrim bent on his return. 
 
 So with her (soul's) act, that through the eyesight passed 
 
 Into my fancy, mine was formed; and straight 
 
 Beyond our mortal wont, I fixed mine eyes 
 
 Upon the sun. Much is allowed us There 
 
 That Here exceeds pur power; thanks to the place 
 
 Made for the dwelling of the human kind. . . . 
 
 And suddenly upon the day appeared 
 
 A day new risen, as He who hath the power 
 
 Had with another sun (soul) bedecked the sky. 
 
 In the last analysis of character, the system called 
 reincarnation has no weak spots, not in smallest of 
 the spirits.. Souls that are for earth, we may say, all 
 generations, are as to the smallest forms making 
 growth, making changes to suit the condition as to 
 future heat and cold, for our earth itself, has soul and 
 body. Let us refer to all animal life, that we know 
 grows in shape and fineness to suit the later conditions. 
 Take the forms so familiar to us, the horse, in fact 
 all domestic animals. Then the earth's pets (butter- 
 flies, locuts, etc.), we know of their passing long years 
 in the "underworld," to appear for a brief spell in 
 full sunlight, almost momentarily to enjoy existence, 
 then as happily sings the locust, after the egg-laying, 
 seeks again the darkness that fits its longer term of 
 existence. 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 17 
 
 Our Creator has ways past rinding out. Fitted are 
 the two polarities of being as needed. We wonder 
 why such as the fleas, as robbers of human blood, or 
 as the bigger torments, human criminals, are needed 
 for life's purposes. But a heaven can be fuller here, 
 than (imagined) above all the homes of earth, again 
 grandeurs, joys and social life are beyond dreams of 
 poet and artist ! 
 
 Body and soul so intimately blended are they, that 
 a healthy person knows scarcely where one touches the 
 other. Traits of character are almost like the twin 
 body, with its soul. We know of most remarkable 
 men and women whose traits re-unitedly theirs. 
 Sickly children have often the healthy after-life of 
 effort and joy; some of these, poets and philosophers, 
 caused their mothers often to wonder as of a gift from 
 God, knowing how the little ones thrive. 
 
 We have amongst us Helen Keller, whose faculties 
 have been restored, trained from the inborn traits. 
 And her soul now, in life and joy, is the greatest of 
 puzzles. A body that was tortured, crucified, as was 
 that of Jesus, leaves marks to show plainly elsewhere 
 after nearly 2,000 years! These stigmas are more 
 than birthmarks. 
 
 In lower forms of the soul, the "worm" stage of 
 the body, from plain and loathsome (to us) they in 
 later existence give us butterflies and other of the 
 most beautiful aspects in colors and forms. 
 
 Read Franklin H. Heald's Procession of the 
 Planets, scouted at or ignored as it may be by scien- 
 tists ; yet in studies like Prof. Chamberlin's of Chicago, 
 lately, you will find the ipse dixit of the learned ones 
 
18 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 of the past entirely reversed, as to the earth's solidity. 
 The sun in every system of planets must resemble, 
 as Lakes of Lethe for our souls have material un- 
 seeable to constitute the materials, for life, here on 
 earth and elsewhere. New worlds are thus formed, 
 so are new bodies for all the living. Heat, of the 
 material kind, has wonderful properties it may be, to 
 weld the two aspects, soul and body. The soul's in- 
 dividual complexities, generation after generation in a 
 true Path "driven out from God," as we say, then 
 reaches the sphere called Life. No two souls are just 
 alike! Even in birth of twins or triplets, as often 
 happens with us, the natures are entities. 
 
 Wise men of the East, as recorded by the shepherd 
 poet watching by night his flocks, saw overhead the 
 galaxy of bright stars, and also the comet westward. 
 He does not make record of the other party in day- 
 time, going westward looking for the foot of that 
 rainbow where gold is buried, some of each party 
 finally landed in California and other states of our 
 Union. 
 
 As to where the Wise Men found the new-born 
 Christ, opinions differ ; some say in a stable, others in 
 a manger. 
 
 Soon after the cruel ending of this babe, the dom- 
 inant religionists (or conquerors) and one pope re- 
 mained settled in Rome, the other in Constantinople. 
 Since the recent overthrow of the son of Victoria of 
 England, Russia has no "religion." 
 
 The Night and the Day. John Burroughs, my 
 serene and happy friend and friend of the birds, had 
 query as to the cruelty of nature that gives us the 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 19 
 
 sun by day and moon by night. The owl is not a 
 solemn bird; for you judge the creature by daylight 
 its time for sleep. See the same bird at night, wide- 
 awake, at its nest, and the joys it has at home where 
 love rules, and ever and ever rule it should! The 
 nestlings are most joyful of living creatures and in 
 this regard, with the parents unmolested, far surpass 
 the proud, too often peevish, human kind. 
 
 You will find that even at his prayers the owlish 
 (in piety) takes great comfort in solemnity, many 
 times, too, lacking in sincerity and saturated as we are 
 with "business/' the leading tone is selfishness. Go 
 into thy closet with a feeling of joy, as one meeting 
 a lover and true friend; for God, as Jesus instructs, 
 says, is not far off "is within you." Do not in the 
 stillness of thy closet act the part of a cringing beg- 
 gar what is truly thine will come to thee! It is a 
 poor return when communing with Spirit at all times, 
 and with men sometimes, to act the part that is mean, 
 of beggary acknowledged. Speak no evil of anyone. 
 He knoweth all, and if acting the Good Samaritan, you 
 especially as a minister of God, and among those 
 "sitting in darkness," be truly and honestly helpful. 
 Weak nations are almost always the victims of those 
 who call themselves Christians, since the dawn of 
 American history. Raising the cross surely did not 
 indicate the presence of good Samaritans in such 
 crowds as ruined gentle natives, hospitable and civil- 
 ized as were native Peruvians and Mexicans. 
 
 The light of life here on earth at its withdrawal 
 is not calamity, only as respects parting from beloved 
 ones awhile ; for God rules. Your soul goes marching 
 
20 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 on, to later reincarnations and reunions; again with 
 the awhile loved and lost you will meet in joy. 
 
 An anxious question is asked, Will we know each 
 other in the new term of life? I think so, for I have 
 observed that even with horses the touch of noses is 
 a conveying of intelligence one to another. We can 
 have this language when it is needful, for surely we 
 are not below the horse in intellect, and especially 
 when love points the way. 
 
 I surmise that the after life periods, and rebirths 
 differ little as with animal natures, as all alike are 
 children of earth. Being primates, the larger soul 
 needs a larger circuit. Instead of groveling as little 
 souls do in the underworld or elsewhere, the superior 
 in intellect goes into higher elements surrounding. 
 The rebirths, whithersoever, do reach earth again and 
 again, via reincarnation. This is an older belief than 
 our historic and recent religions. We hear of it con- 
 stantly by tradition, and so handed to our Christians 
 of today, that prayer of sincerity, Jesus will be re- 
 born on earth! 
 
 I have often alluded to a Night of the Soul, nega- 
 tive of life's positive as Milton in his sublime poem 
 told of the proceeding of casting out devils from 
 heaven. You see, on earth the near relation of day 
 and night, for creatures can not live without a re- 
 newal in sleep. As Bunyan starts Christian with a 
 load of sin, these ofttimes heavier than can be borne, 
 yet in the renewal of pleasant rest and dreams, how 
 refreshed we can open the morning, singing for joy. 
 So it is, escaping a night everlasting. 
 
 So goes my story of life, including on the traveled 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 21 
 
 road all creatures. As many die, averaging the years, 
 as are born. It is unaccountable that some Christians, 
 dazed by beliefs of old, cling to the sacrificial altar, 
 streaming with blood, in his conceptions, he yielding 
 possibly to the priestly demand ( ?) for burnt offerings 
 (fried chicken) and money gifts for promised remis- 
 sion for sins believing the Compassionate One, Jesus, 
 had been offered up to his Father to be put to cruelest 
 of deaths, a sacrifice, so to get remission of sins for 
 a poor little Christian man of today, and also for his 
 reivards, etc., etc.. 
 
 Even our best scientific inquirers cannot fix on the 
 functions stored in a tiny egg. The stabilizing and 
 other needs, as the directing of homing pigeons, needs 
 for the millions of creatures beginning life here, 
 would not all be learned of highest gifts to man, in 
 hundreds of rebirths. What little account could our 
 Creator take of prayers of all, in all languages and to 
 hear the praises round a throne, from all creation ! 
 
 We speak of wornout New England farms; so we 
 might speak of the deserts in all lands possibly. Our 
 orb longer blessed and later covered with vegetation, 
 and waters abounding in fish, should not show now 
 any signs of decay, so early after making up of the 
 same. 
 
 Man is a poor farmer to have deserts near his "land 
 of promise/' or say only abandoned farms. We find 
 there is no trouble with nature and her affairs. I have 
 seen southern cotton lands of lazy owners, in ridges 
 in the forests, unused and back in the wilds. These 
 lands are thus being renovated by allowing pine trees 
 to start and grow thereon. The whole earth, it is said, 
 
22 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 was once covered by the flood, yet man's feebler ef- 
 forts only amount to irrigation in spots! It is the 
 same always with nature and mankind. If you do not 
 keep garden, radishes, carrots, chicory, and beets 
 under cultivation, they go to the wilds for better care. 
 It is only that we can get such as watercress, because 
 this plant is irrigated watered by nature at her 
 springs bubbling up here and there. 
 
 How are the living creatures of the garden of God 
 being cared for in general? We have failing man- 
 hood propped by a fiction in marriage called "love," 
 that is not Love. With airplanes, autos, etc., as pre- 
 cludes any serious thinking on affairs, on long jour- 
 neys, the lady passengers especially crowding in their 
 best-sellers novels, so-called, for the speeders to while 
 away time perusing. A favorite command to the 
 man at the wheel is, go faster. So go the idlers, pass- 
 ing such small spots en route as Devilton, Deep Sea 
 Port, and finally the crowd may be wrecked at the 
 Point of Land lying ahead called by the unfashion- 
 able name, Hell ! 
 
 Rebirths, reunions, it seems to me, are the primal 
 laws of life here and hereafter, for our spirits are to 
 return to earth, as Jesus hinted, by rebirth. He said 
 that except ye become as little children, you are not 
 of the kingdom of heaven, of light higher than this 
 life: "Be such as these little ones," for they have 
 passed the Lake of Purification. 
 
 A path for all the living, souls or carnals, is, if you 
 believe in immortality from birth until death here 
 and the heavenly life you hope for. Belief should 
 have no infidelic gap, being of those who die, quit of 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 23 
 
 higher prospects of life here or hereafter. Let us 
 hope there will be no dropping out even in thought, 
 losing sight of a chain of being with no beginning or 
 ending. The rolling earth has its 365 days every year 
 of your life here; but the orb everlasting, above and 
 beyond us, completes the great circuit of being. 
 
 One feature of the Quaker migration to Pennsyl- 
 vania to escape persecutions in England, were of the 
 great number bearing distinction in the old home land. 
 Of the Nottingham colony were the Lincolns, Def oes, 
 Hanks and Boones; Daniel Boone later of Kentucky, 
 and Abraham Lincoln descended, as also his mother 
 (Hanks), from these Quaker emigrants. A niece of 
 Daniel Defoe, the London Quaker, coming to the 
 colony at Nottingham, deserves peculiar mention. Her 
 mother and the uncle, Daniel Defoe, thwarting her in- 
 tended marriage ("out of meeting," they being of the 
 Society of Friends), the girl of independent spirit sold 
 herself to a sea captain to pay for a passage to the 
 Delaware and was "redeemed" (by paying the money) 
 by Friend Job of the Nottingham Colony. Later she 
 married her purchaser's son, and a grandson of this 
 marriage was Andy Job, born near the Friends' brick 
 meeting house, Maryland. The strange character of 
 Andy Job was a few years ago written up for and 
 published in Scribner's Monthly, by Mary Ireland, and 
 well illustrated. Andy's farm was an excellent one, 
 received as inheritance. He would not admit visitors 
 to his cabin in a beautiful white oak grove on his 
 lands, possibly from the fact that he wore no clothing 
 except in coldest of weathers, and did all his own 
 work, though owning a nice herd of cattle. In every 
 
24 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 way though not thought to be demented, he pat- 
 terned his life much like that described by Daniel 
 Defoe in his famous story of Robinson Crusoe. In 
 this very peculiar case, no inheritance from any real 
 personage is known and must be of the order of re- 
 incarnation, as the forerunners, savages, were never 
 known. 
 
 I have hitherto quoted a French scientist as saying 
 that all matter he has examined emits rays of light. 
 There is no doubt with anyone that all things are 
 under domination in Essence and Matter a Creator 
 for matter surely, the other being the spirit thereof. 
 
 It is well known that we have wheat today from a 
 few seeds fo.und in Egyptian tombs of some early age. 
 "The seed of the Kingdom" is often a quotation ; and 
 Jesus, the prophet, declared "the kingdom of God is 
 within you." Even the little girl, when asked who 
 made her, said "God made me so high ; I growed the 
 rest!" 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 25 
 
 II 
 
 Title of this book, Physical Life and Inner Light 
 light 'not of the sun, but of the Creator who shows in 
 physical being, all that we know of such in this life. 
 
 Speaking of seeds that endure, I am reminded of 
 once attending a lecture in Yale University on the sub- 
 ject of the Seat of Life here. The speaker told us of 
 a few experiments he had made. He selected some 
 frozen fish in market with fins and tails intact, and 
 taking the fish to an unfrozen body of water, dropped 
 them in. When spring came, the fish had all "thawed 
 out" and were as lively as crickets! The speaker 
 owned a pond full of terrapins, etc., and taking pity 
 upon an exposed one with shell fast in the ice, dug a 
 hole nearby and buried the turtle below frost line. In 
 the spring he found the terrapins alive and well 
 except the one he had buried ! 
 
 This is explanation so many poor mortals make who 
 can think of no entity higher than theirs. These so 
 pettishly and foolishly blurt out, "There is no God !" 
 A fool of the "educated" sort once told a Quaker he 
 could not see did not believe there was a God. The 
 Friend merely asked, "Has thee ever seen thy brains, 
 young man? (Of course he hadn't.) Then dost thee 
 know that thee has any?" 
 
 If a distinguished scientist gives up the riddle of 
 life as unsolvable, so without more ado we poor mor- 
 tals must let the frost make occasional kills; in the 
 case alluded to, man was to blame. Even old earth 
 has spells of the bellyache (earthquakes) and worries. 
 
26 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 As education and culture advance, so does the 
 reverence for womankind. Inferiority in sex is not 
 recognized in animals below man. Excepting we now 
 have less amazons for war; even the nobles, kaisers 
 and chiefs are falling into ways of the softer sex and 
 plead for ending of that savagery; a co-worker with 
 slavery is war. In our bible scriptures and of the 
 Shinto, Buddhist and Christian beliefs, there is the 
 trace of creating better evolutions. The "born of a 
 virgin" is not put forward as the true miracle of pre- 
 dominance. Japanese make the variant, showing 
 greatest respect for both parents, yet have proper 
 respect for the wife and daughters. This precludes all 
 gush about beauty and its sex abuses. 
 
 And He rested on the seventh day, for tiresome is 
 the work of creation. That is to say, putting the cart 
 before the horse, for it is not likely man could have 
 invented an almanac before there was call for such a 
 book as I remember away back, our old Dutch kind 
 gave us rules for planting in dark or light of the moon 
 and had many saws and funny crips. Think it over, 
 and be of the religion of Jesus: "The Sabbath was 
 made for man, not man for the Sabbath/' 
 
 "And the soul returned to me and said, thyself art 
 heaven and hell/' so Whitman later than Omar, on the 
 seaside said, "I have fingered every shore with thee 
 my soul!" 
 
 We can have notions, intimately in fancy, of no 
 places away from earth. Traveling in Germany, a 
 new country to me seemingly, and when in region 
 of the Black Forest had intimations of familiar land- 
 scapes there. This, as if the soul in former rebirth, 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 27 
 
 I probably had been home there on that great Path of 
 the Eternal. No mortals have, except they be poets, 
 the fancy fit to guess at unseen things. Milton in his 
 conception of a war just outside heaven's gate, to 
 subdue, as earth also experienced later, arch fiends, in- 
 vaders of the devil order, the wrong polarity, as the 
 robbers, holdups, etc. 
 
 Many besides our greatest prophet speak of the 
 light within that must drive out any spiritual dark- 
 ness. But if questioned about heaven and heavenly 
 places for preferments of anxious politicians and 
 such, Jesus could only answer folly by folly: heaven 
 is a place of many mansions. He did not proceed to 
 give particulars as to taxations, and money changers 
 he had had too much trouble with the selfish followers. 
 
 It is useless in our discussions of the golden rule, 
 etc., to mention those worthies, ancient and modern, 
 who gave for the thoughtful so many times, as did 
 Jesus, differing only in degree, the difference between 
 highest orbs sun, moon and stars, in comparison to 
 the light (as Milton said, holy light) that lighteth up 
 a passage throughout the soul's path. At the first 
 lesson in the primer learn that "the kingdom of God 
 is within you." 
 
 How poorly has the best of mortals made out dis- 
 covering things of earth in the usual lifetime! So in 
 the chances offered by our Creator to perfect ourselves 
 He has given us more than one chance, by rebirth. 
 But if artists leave their best work, soon time ruins 
 the colors, as no pigments can be everlasting. To make 
 their landscapes near the nature models must require 
 artists to guess at the transitory, the vanishings with 
 
28 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 time. Curious curves over the picture to blot out 
 visiojn of shades very transitory clouds, streams, and 
 decay in all mountain grandeurs in the pictures. In 
 reincarnation we can secure features of Nature in 
 longer decay periods. Our "night time away from 
 Nature" refreshes us, and in each life time can with 
 Milton's grand apostrophe, "Hail, Holy Light, off- 
 spring of heaven !" A new heaven, and a new earth 
 or older earth. So we journey afresh through the 
 Seven Ages of Man. Thus comes renewal of strength, 
 of aptitude for life, that in the night of the soul gets 
 still more of the higher light and more manly strength 
 also on being. 
 
 The latest kind of Bible miracles for children to 
 read are those made up at a period when Cicero and 
 other famous men of Rome made literature prized 
 ever since. Let me cite one miracle to explain ( !) the 
 life work of the world's Example in every regard : a 
 story of Jesus at a jolly wedding party making good 
 wine. Such a character today would be consorted with 
 bootleggers and breakers of the 18th Amendment to 
 our national Constitution. 
 
 This senseless, profane charge made against our 
 Savior causes all the religious murders, burning of 
 martyrs alive and destruction of true writings of the 
 best of authors, who could not believe "the entire 
 Bible" as handed down. The very kind of infidelity 
 that has ruined the good name of a church and has- 
 tens the downfall of it. 
 
 Then, I say, on behalf of religion, separate the sheep 
 from the goats in any reverenced volume, as the Bible, 
 so to keep the children of God provided with only 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 29 
 
 intelligent traditions, etc., of the moral kind, touching 
 all the events in the farthest past. 
 
 A print shop and a paper mill, ill used, have brought 
 to the world a new form of idolatry, that formerly was 
 among stone-cutters and hewers of wood. Originating 
 long before mankind had knowledge, they set up some- 
 thing to call an unknown spirit; later, when language 
 grew, it was called the gods. There is no excuse now 
 for idolatry. 
 
 Tradition, that tells us so much of interest about 
 affairs in the ancient world, is of priceless value, a 
 thousand times better in form of knowledge than 
 learned in the houses of gods, priestcraft, and such 
 monopolies. These have been to some extent gathered, 
 and one regarding the formation of the earth life 
 then mostly amphibious, but can be studied today in 
 the rings of Saturn, with more perfect telescopes, as to 
 the vapors and intermingled matters. First was pos- 
 sibly tradition of the flood. An ingenious story-teller 
 among those who tend herds of sheep by night started, 
 possibly, telling of a Noah's flood. The pious hero of 
 such an age if he now had such a reputation, would 
 go to jail for sex enormities and drunkenness. He, 
 Noah, and family are reported among the saved mor- 
 tals, with the pairs of live creatures herded in Noah's 
 tub! 
 
 The next water story, told by some shepherd on the 
 hills, was that about pious Jonah, who was swallowed 
 by a whale. He had a sea voyage of three days ahead, 
 free of cost, and in all that time Jonah found comfort, 
 maybe, but the whale got seasick. The big fish "threw 
 up" about everything loose, including the "pious ex- 
 
30 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 ample" and this hero of the Bible story landed just 
 where on shore he wanted to go. Three days in a 
 whale's belly, and not any sea sickness or a sea biscuit ! 
 
 At Sunday School the pious but smart boy was 
 asked to state a moral to the class. He did! "You 
 cannot keep a good man (Jonah) down." 
 
 No knowledge, even apparently trivial, says Maurice 
 Thompson, can be without its place in the great chain 
 of wisdom. "Art is not the whole of life, nor is mate- 
 rial progress the only good. The pleasure of knowl- 
 edge never embodied in painting, sculpture or poem, 
 nor applied to any economic purpose, is of itself a 
 mighty factor in the operations of human life." 
 
 il v^ >4jLo />JaiW>Jvj;rf : oa'j;rj v 
 
 "Lights out" along the land, 
 "Lights out" upon the sea. 
 The night must put her hiding hand 
 Out with the tranquil lights, 
 Out with the lights that burn 
 For love and law and human rights ! 
 Set back the clock a thousand years : 
 All they have gained now disappears, 
 And the dark ages suddenly return. 
 
 You that let loose wild death, 
 And terror in the night 
 God grant you draw no quiet breath, 
 Until the madness you began 
 Is ended, and long-suffering man, 
 Set free from war lords, cries, "Let there be Light." 
 
 Henry Van Dyke. 
 
 God is over all, and always is a truth generally 
 understood. Another quotation is often referred to. 
 Truth crushed to earth will rise again, as truth is the 
 "salt of the earth." You scarcely can look for relief 
 from heaven from the Highest if you have no part 
 and parcel of true verity. 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 31 
 
 The despised Quaker was, two hundred years ago, 
 a subject of ridicule, even murder, among those who 
 said he had no rights a white man is bound to respect. 
 Because he had "no religion/' as decided in Oxford 
 University sentiment of the elect in all aristocratical 
 religious assemblies, not only in the mother country, 
 but here in America among the "Puritans." Ancestors 
 of our Abraham Lincoln came hither with William 
 Penn, and settled in Pennsylvania. Among late can- 
 didates for President of the United States were found 
 four or five of the descendants of the Quakers coming 
 hither, one of whom was President Harding. As is 
 well known, that active world-war food provider 
 abroad, another Quaker, Hoover, is now an active 
 member in the U. S. Cabinet. In several colonies, in 
 the time of the Revolution, the staid Quakers in poli- 
 tics retired from active life because of their unwaver- 
 ing peace principles. 
 
 While Lincoln, of Quaker descent, in 1861-5 was 
 President, slavery in our government of the United 
 States was abolished. When the late world-war came 
 to a close, our "Quaker" President called a World 
 Congress together, that met in Washington, and was 
 honored by delegates from European and other gov- 
 ernments, all earnestly bent on securing peace for the 
 world powers universally and by united effort. The 
 ambitions that hitherto governed a fighting world 
 should have been of "sterner stuff" but God rules! 
 Church members, when on the wrong side the side 
 of war must be reformed, converted to the truth of 
 God and wise efforts of the Greatest Prophet. Even 
 
32 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 one of our best generals, in efforts to put down slav- 
 ery, 1861-5, said War is Hell! 
 
 Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate, 
 
 As we voyage along through life ; 
 'Tis the set of the soul that decides the goal, 
 
 And not the calm or the strife. 
 
 Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 
 
 Can there be a war in heaven Milton says "out- 
 side" also, as asserted in the scriptures of John? My 
 claim elsewhere written is that scriptures wrongly 
 written have tended to abate spirituality. A general 
 cry goes up among reverends in any war, just or un- 
 just, to encourage fighting. The preacher fights with 
 his mouth, as the saying is, harmless because gunless. 
 
 Put up thy sword! was a true spiritual edict of a 
 Great Savior, for, as I cited of the Quaker, the man 
 of peace, the world must have spirituality up to that 
 point when all the rebirths to earth can be secure from 
 war. The promise to the righteous of soul every- 
 where, in all times. How can any with the least taint 
 of combativeness rest in the final state, home for all 
 the distressed of earth, except we become as little chil- 
 dren, as the true assertion is. Who is keeping us out 
 of heaven, the final rebirth, after so many trials, 
 except ourselves! That One Place of Peace, after buf- 
 ferings through the ages, will be free from jarring 
 sectarianism, mistakes between mating couples, am- 
 bitions for place of power, and all other meannesses 
 "flesh is heir to" will be driven from our human na- 
 tures. No holy water referred to, but that baptism of 
 the spirit that long has been named bathing in the spir- 
 itual Lake of Lethe, where the earth-chain is severed, 
 and the path starts anew ! 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 33 
 
 Our Christian religion was an association of war- 
 ring elements from the beginning. The Lion of Judah 
 associated with the Lamb of God the democratic 
 Jesus, greatest of all the Jewish prophets, yoked with 
 the bearers of the Ark of the Covenant. 
 
 The Bible says, in reference to Jesus, that in His 
 early manhood He was called to discuss affairs of the 
 soul with His people's doctors of divinity, similar in 
 station to our worthies of the same rank, chief priests, 
 doctors of divinity, etc. 
 
 Jesus was a superior personage, evidently possessing 
 great intelligence. He would have educated, converted 
 His people to become an age of reason ; but as He said 
 just before they secured His destruction on the Roman 
 cross, "I would have gathered thee, as a hen gathereth 
 her chickens under, her wing, but ye would not/' 
 
 A like dissimilarity of views was noticeable while 
 Saxon orthodoxy in religions was governing England 
 in the 17th century. One case in point was that of 
 youthful but serious George Fox, founder of Quaker- 
 ism. Desiring priestly help in his religious difficulties, 
 he went to a priest, as he says in his Journal, for ad- 
 vice. The priest's advice to him was "Run with the 
 girls, and chew tobacco." Before the imprisonments 
 of George Fox ended in his death, he founded the 
 Society of Friends (Quakers), to whom I make refer- 
 ence elsewhere. 
 
 Jesus, as the Bible states, after church orthodoxy 
 had done its deadliest of work, cried out from the 
 cross, O ye generation of vipers ! In the cruelties of 
 religious persecutions under "Christians," followers of 
 Jesus and others since, drawing and quartering, 
 
34 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 burning alive, as was the case with a false "witch" 
 charge against the heroic Maid of Orleans, and are 
 we yet clear of persecutions, and "O ye generations 
 of vipers/' as the words of a very great prophet said 
 of the same savagery of the Sanhedrin. 
 
 Very wisely our colonies forming a United States 
 prohibited all union of Church and State as a form of 
 our government. Wisdom of our republican form, 
 under men, not the least of them to be classed as 
 'Vipers/' can very readily be distinguished in compari- 
 son from almost all other nations today, as our United 
 States leads all in culture, in wealth, and in sentiments 
 of freedom, education and religious toleration. 
 
 It comes with our nature to recognize the fittest, for 
 it has been a long time since devil worship. It is not 
 in man to perform miracles; he may only do tricks. 
 When Jesus said, Go into thy closet (for prayer) to 
 have access to the Presence, He evidently meant the 
 spiritual communion alone, and wordless, of course. 
 "He will reward thee openly/' This applies to us who 
 ask not in any free-will mockery. Your inventors 
 of any manner of useful things seek this silent ap- 
 proach. Could any inventor get his inspiration by 
 frequenting places where are mere noise, or amusing 
 antics ? 
 
 Flammarion, the star-gazer, poet and mystic, has 
 issued a book of soul-searching import. I take the 
 following extract from it : After admitting that spirit 
 and matter are forces in unity everywhere, it says: 
 Cosmic dynomism rules the worlds. Newton gave it 
 the name of attraction. If there were nothing but at- 
 traction in the universe the stars would form only one 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 35 
 
 mass, for it would have brought them together long 
 ago, in the beginning of time. There is something 
 else ! Vital dynomism governs all beings. In man, as 
 he has evolved, psychic dynomism is constantly associ- 
 ated with vital dynomism. At bottom all these dyno- 
 misms are one it is the spirit in nature, deaf and 
 blind as far as we are concerned in the immaterial 
 world ; and even in the instinct of animals ; unconscious 
 in the majority of human works conscious in a small 
 number. Matter vanishes; the universe is an intelli- 
 gent principle." 
 
 This is as good a guess as yet proclaimed, for in 
 earliest scriptures is admitted, Ye have not seen God 
 at any time. 
 
 The song of the reaper has a thought of home in 
 sight; a lad on the sea will feign seasickness when it 
 is homesickness. Wars on land or on sea are wreckers 
 of home, and the dazed brain of a tramp comes of his 
 flight from home and its innocence his father's 
 house. Lately, in the Arroyo meadow trees, I heard 
 though the night joyful songs of home a mocking 
 bird's gentle singing, and knew it was for his patient, 
 sitting mate. Then near me other music of a human, 
 a love song for the children. Songs of this kind make 
 for the beautiful and happy feelings of all the living; 
 an opposite in polarity takes you afar from the tree of 
 life and love. Even very gypsies will stand together 
 and cherish one another through the centuries if they 
 are not aquit of the song of songs they heard in deserts 
 many centuries ago. The Father of Life gave the 
 home for bird or beast, or man, and those reborn to 
 earth, hearing the voice of God always will need not 
 
36 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 be fearful of darkness, or divorce, wars, or carnage, or 
 thieves, if you are fighters for the right, for home. 
 
 President Harding, we have noted elsewhere, re- 
 ceives much criticism in English quarters, because he 
 doesn't know good English. Below I copy from a 
 late address to students a fair specimen of the way 
 this sinner uses the American language : Declaring that 
 almost nothing remains secure today from the attacks 
 of iconoclasts. Our President appealed to the gradu- 
 ating classes of the nation's universities and colleges to 
 dedicate themselves to an unselfish service in the 
 preservation of civilization. 
 
 "We look to this month's graduating classes/' said 
 the President, speaking at the commencement exer- 
 cises of the American University, "to provide far more 
 than their numerical share of leaders for the nation in 
 a future not far ahead. 
 
 "The nation must constantly be on its guard against 
 the tendency to tear down established institutions 
 before a plan of reconstruction had been devised. 
 
 "After all, unsatisfactory as some earnest people 
 regard the present structure of society and existing 
 human relationships, a reasonably conscientious world 
 has been a long time traveling far on the road toward 
 as ideal conditions as it now has reached. History 
 has afforded many illustrations of societies crumbling 
 and going to pieces, and the process has invariably been 
 attended with superlative disaster to great masses of 
 humanity. 
 
 "It is a commonplace that at this time the world 
 stands on the brink of what looks very like a precipice. 
 It must not be allowed to take the fatal plunge. It 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 37 
 
 will not if it shall be able to summon to its leadership 
 in the coming generation men and women who will 
 unite a necessary measure of conservative purpose with 
 an equally necessary portion of willingness to con- 
 sider new expedients, to test out formulas, to apply 
 the acid test even to what we have learned to believe 
 is pure gold." 
 
 In our war for the Union, and incidentally to put 
 down the Southern and English aristocracy, 1861-5, 
 we noted that the free press was non est inventu with 
 our enemies. Comic Punch only punched as the aris- 
 tocrats bid it "be funny." After the war, it was too 
 serious a concern for those against Liberty to see 
 much fun in anything. Elsewhere in this book an 
 extract from poem by Thomas Taylor of England 
 (Tom Taylor in good English), will enlighten the 
 reader about English aristocratical opinions of Lin- 
 coln. 
 
 "Serene, I fold my hands and wait, 
 
 Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea ; 
 I rave no more 'gainst Time or Fate, 
 
 For lo ! my own shall come to me. 
 
 "I stay my haste, I make delays, 
 
 For what avails this eager pace? 
 I stand amid the eternal ways, 
 And what is mine shall know my face." 
 John Burroughs. 
 
 Saddest of mortals that ever lived were friends 
 probably of those who were stricken from life here 
 in their early years. Surely we all would welcome 
 their return. An ever-loved one in all the Christian 
 centuries was Jesus of Nazareth. This primate of 
 all prophets, when his young life was taken in torture 
 on the cross at behest of phenatics, he despairingly 
 
38 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 cried, My God, hast thou forsaken me? Best beloved 
 of English poets, Keats, in his great gloom and disap- 
 pointment (he died in early years of consumption) 
 said, My name is writ in water! The best possibly 
 of our southern bards, Dunbar, in a sad but beautiful 
 poem affirmed, "I's lone and in distress/' He was 
 stricken by consumption when a mere youth. 
 
 Could anyone make suggestion of a more hopeful 
 theory for humanity than that in this my book. A 
 never-ending Circuit-of Being, where the loved and 
 lost could be restored, to gladden the generations of 
 the earth-born? Precious lives of great ones, never 
 forgotten ones, who could again spread comforting 
 words of hope, words ever to be remembered, and 
 thus to better help and cheer all generations. 
 
 With falcon-wings have flown the two-score years 
 
 Since here I trod the heights, yet now I gaze 
 
 Entranced, for that blue lonliness betrays 
 
 No age, like some perpetual bride who bears 
 
 Unfading wreaths of bloom, it yearly wears 
 
 Fresh garlands woven of cerulean haze; 
 
 These dreamy hills well loved in happier days, 
 
 Seem even lovelier as my twilight nears. 
 
 Tense life hath taken her relentless toll, 
 
 For to myslf I turn, and see the truth 
 
 Furrowed upon my brow, and in the soul 
 
 Deep scars : Corrosive Time hath wrought the change ; 
 
 And yet yon blue, insensate mountain range 
 
 Defies mutation with perennial youth. * * * 
 
 Each eve I perish on my sumptuous pyre, 
 Yet every morn my bright renascence brings 
 Innumerous orbs to illume the rolling earth 
 When I, at dusk, withdraw from view of men, 
 But star and planet never meet my sight: 
 I am that Splendor of primeval birth, 
 Which flushed the dawn of Chaos, and since then 
 For me till systems crash there is no Night. 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 39 
 
 I loved the Day, but now the dark Night clings 
 Close to my soul. Lo, through the evening air 
 Night comes, naked and pure divinely fair 
 Slow floating downward on those brooding wings ! 
 She is the Dove of Darkness, and she brings 
 The olive, Peace, into the Tents of Care : 
 Oh, let the raven mystery of her hair 
 Enshroud me with occult imaginings ! 
 O, Night, if thou art beautiful as this, 
 Let thine arms fold me till my passing breath 
 Dies into dreams wherein the Spirit rests : 
 Numb me with rapture of Thy Lethean kiss. 
 
 Lloyd Mifflin. 
 
 Belief, no doubt, began with the notion oj: failing 
 power of argument or assertion. Since the Christian 
 age and periods of better education, we have had less 
 of Thus saith the Lord. I remember well when in 
 protracted meetings for conversion, to hear in ser- 
 mon and song, "Only believe and you will be saved. " 
 
 Early references can not be found in the Bible, I 
 presume, of reincarnation because there was no full 
 faith in immortality. Our New Testament and else- 
 where, catching the truth of a Hereafter, taught by 
 the great Prophet, abounds in the spiritual concept 
 entire and not of idol worship. We find a story of 
 Jonah in the Jewish scriptures, that does not refer to 
 the Spirit for Jonah had merely made his temporary 
 earthly domicil in the whale's belly. Theologians since 
 time of the murder of Jesus have the fact, (little they 
 understand it!), how education has improved 
 through belief in miracles being lost sight of so such 
 ones as that about Jesus even are out of date ; where 
 he turned crystal clear water, at a wedding carousal, 
 into wine ! This foolish miracle was of the order of 
 the Jonah story. 
 
40 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 From the good work women of the societies and 
 others accomplish, I may well advocate that there is 
 no Supreme Spirit having male sex, and I affirm that 
 without woman's help theology long ago would have 
 collapsed. God, He; God, She, seems very ridicu- 
 lous except to thoughtless priests. Before the male 
 supremacy here, or hereafter, had any lodgment in 
 beliefs, there was in very ancient times a woman god. 
 
 Nurse of Eternity, 
 
 Thy bosom feeds the sun; 
 From thine eternity 
 
 All breasts in nature run. 
 To thy bright Light we turn 
 
 All other gods to spurn ! 
 
 Modern philosophy may require better common 
 sense, to fix in our minds a fact (?) that beams of 
 light have any zigzag or other unseen course from 
 distant spheres, to reach us. As well say the con- 
 science or higher light have a way of wabbling, so 
 that you do not get your true measure! In what 
 measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again, 
 whether of laughter, or the sunlight, even of pota- 
 toes (?) you will require the full measure. 
 
 As Bro. Heald relates (see Appendix) a heavenly 
 body of our own system, as astronomers affirm, and 
 name Asteroid, was a law-breaker among the great 
 bodies of the universe, so was flung to atoms. A 
 nature criminal giving us the particles attracted to 
 earth called meteorites, etc. Criminals in human 
 society are entitled to punishment surely in proportion 
 even as a law-breaking star. Life of Lincoln was 
 destroyed by one of the creatures, lower than a 
 louse, who knew not any human sympathy. Very 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 41 
 
 pious but mistaken people advocate forgiveness, im- 
 mediate conversion, etc., so go to jails to present these 
 lice, flowers! A well-known author, Thos. Taylor of 
 England, in a poem on Lincoln's burial, at a time 
 all friends of humanity or democracy were mourning, 
 had these words of stinging reproach for the Glad- 
 stones and other English aristocrats who were wish- 
 ing ill of our republic. I quote opening lines : 
 
 You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, 
 
 You who with mocking pencil wont to trace 
 Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, 
 
 His length of shambling limb, his furrow'd face, 
 His giant, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair 
 
 His gait uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, 
 His lack of all we prize as debonair; 
 
 Of power or will to shine, of art to please. 
 You whose smart pen back'd up the pencil's laugh 
 
 Judging each step as though the way were plain; 
 Between the mourners at his head and feet, 
 
 Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you? 
 
 This from a talented Englishman, whom his Saxon 
 friends called Tom Taylor a despiser he was of a 
 title from aristocrats. 
 
 Get your criminals at earliest possible moment, and 
 remove them from sight of innocency ; or kill them, 
 for all souls passing to rebirth, then pure as babes 
 again, are sure of another chance to do well. In youth 
 most of us were taught by good mothers about the 
 Good man and Bad man. You could have no better 
 instructors to warn of opposite polarities. As educa- 
 tion will augment possibly the class called drones, lit- 
 tle higher than criminals, they should be treated as 
 our Greatest Prophet did, with compassion ; weak and 
 poor you help, the mere animal tricksters you ignore 
 as being neither good nor half-good. Since Sunday 
 
42 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 schools were started by educators, we have compas- 
 sionate, careful lovers of youth to impart and explain 
 real helpful knowledge. Jesus spent no hours I affirm 
 in biblical nonentities, but his teachings were very help- 
 ful. "Behold the lilies of the field." "The sparrow 
 can not fall to the ground' ' without His notice. I 
 would suggest a work like that helpful book of Cali- 
 fornia Useful Plants for this state. It is full of in- 
 struction, giving pleasure to brainy youth. I remem- 
 ber near-childhood incident of an uncle carrying me 
 to the pens outside a new phase of active life to me. 
 The compassionate Lincoln had long grief when his 
 father sold his pet little pig ! A truly American poet, 
 Paul L. Dunbar, says: 
 
 Da rain done hid de mountain's fo'm, 
 De trees is bendin' in de sto'm, 
 
 Fs lone and in distress. 
 But listen, dah's a voice I hyeah, 
 A-sayin' to me, loud and cleah, 
 
 "Lay low in de wildaness." 
 
 Look not outwards but inwards; there are sure no 
 ideas in miracles. There now is belief in the supreme 
 spirit, be it Law or be it Creator. "There is no god 
 but God," one may say with Mahomet, another can 
 quote Jesus, another Buddha. 
 
 The pose naturally of a tree, on any part of earth, 
 points from center dark, to light of magnetic or sun 
 force. What was the cult called Druidism, coming 
 evidently from tree worship? Origin may be from 
 fabled Adam's day of old, before the fall of man 
 even he fell from his home in the trees, to better 
 himself after an age of monsters on sea and land as 
 found now in our museums but articulated. Great 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 43 
 
 snakes! from Ireland, driven, as was Eve, from the 
 better land of Paradise, where the Tree of Life was 
 blooming, and the (forbidden) Fruit sickened Adam, 
 possibly then he tried stock raising. This course of 
 the Circuit of Life on earth, that fetches us time 
 and again to the world (in rebirth) is traditional and 
 problematical. And from pioneer days on all the con- 
 tinents, the trees, the grass and the flowers should 
 make us surely lovers of Nature in all its ramifications. 
 
 And all these things seemed very glad, 
 The sun, the flowers, the birds on wing 
 
 The jolly beasts, the fury-clad 
 
 Fat bees, the flowers, and everything. 
 
 But gladder than them all was I, 
 
 Who being man might gather up 
 The joy of all beneath the sky, 
 
 And add their treasures to my cup. 
 
 And travel every shining way, 
 Laugh with the world at world's delight 
 
 Create a sphere for every day, 
 And store a dream for every night. 
 
 John Drinkwater. 
 
 Yale Review of late date speaks thus of an English 
 woman's autobiography. She "has no sense of re- 
 serve, no passion for accuracy, and no standard of 
 taste, can hardly fail to write an entertaining book 
 for England and more timidly the United States. 
 . . . It is a story after the order of Melchizedek, 
 without beginning and without end. .... She shrank 
 not from exposing the secrets and sensations of life/' 
 A good bit of honest criticism ! 
 
44 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 EAST AND WEST 
 
 Men look to the east for the dawning things, 
 For the light of the rising sun ; 
 But they look to the west, to the crimson west, 
 For a view of the things that are done. 
 
 For the eastward sun is a new born hope 
 From the dark of the night distilled, 
 But the westward sun is the sunset sun, 
 The sum of a hope fulfilled. 
 
 For there in the east they have always came - 
 The cradle that gave the birth 
 To all the hopes of the hearts of men, 
 To all the hopes of the earth. 
 
 For there in the east a Christ arose, 
 
 And there in east there gleamed 
 
 The dearest dream and the clearest dream ( 
 
 That a prophet ever dreamed. 
 
 But into the waking west they came 
 
 With the dream-child of the east, 
 
 And they found the hope they had hoped of old 
 
 A htousandfold increased. 
 
 For there in the east we dreamed the dream 
 Of the things we hoped to dp, 
 But here in the west, the crimson west, 
 The dreams of the east came true. 
 
 How do we get civilized and away from barbarism, 
 *f not through being born again? Christian belief 
 as to Jesus and others whose blessed work for less 
 civilized mortals, gave us clues for betterment. It has 
 surely depended upon rebirth, as all our instincts point 
 directly to former denizens of earth, before the print- 
 ing press was thought of, or even earlier stories of 
 creation were handed down. Discoverer of America 
 had, as recorded, a firm instinctive faith as to new 
 continent. Peoples of the East were famous naviga- 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 45 
 
 tors and no doubt Columbus was under this inheritance 
 from Phoenician or Greek life lived long ago. In 
 Spain or among Druids were no such leading. In- 
 heritance means that which inheres, aside from real 
 estate affairs, for Shakespeare says, "It is to enclose 
 as in a funeral monument, traditions" ; or as Raleigh 
 says to have inherently. If the earth is for real estate 
 owners, why is its surface so given to the waters? 
 
 Oliver Lodge, a learned spiritualist of the true order, 
 already has a vast following many from communing 
 with unseen spirits as though heaven and earth were 
 one. To what region will Jesus next come: to lands 
 of his former work and agonies, still in control of 
 autocrats, popes, kings and Kaisers, who hated him, or 
 more sensibly, to those of the loving kind, the poor 
 in heart who will gladly receive him? The principles 
 of equity and helpfulness that Jesus taught are in 
 the very foundations of the government of the United 
 States, and signs of the times point to the triumph 
 of the republicanism that means equity, equality of 
 rights. 
 
 Nor shall I deem His object served, 
 
 His end attained, His genuine strength put forth 
 
 While only here and there a star dispels 
 
 The darkness. . . . When the host is out 
 
 At once to the despair of Night 
 
 When all mankind alike is perfected 
 
 Equal in full-bloom powers, then not till then, 
 
 I say begins Man's general infancy. 
 
 Browning. 
 
 Reader, did it ever occur to you that Heaven may 
 be in our midst unseen? This surely would shorten 
 the Circuit of Being. For ages we have had so-called 
 spirit rappings, communications with unseen ones; by 
 
46 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 priests, ministers, mediums, etc. We know that as God 
 is spirit, no one has seen Him at any time ; time being 
 a material concept. What is coming from hell or the 
 devil negative of the Great Spirit is not known. 
 Have we ever had an age of miracles? I think not, 
 for Law can never lie dormant, if from God : spirit 
 never sleeps. To get a better advertiser was the need 
 in theology a few centuries after Jesus had been killed 
 by the fanatics. Make a noise, call out the lo heres 
 and lo heres; so the miracles were revamped from 
 uses in barbarism of olden times. Jesus taught high- 
 est philosophy. 
 
 There is cause and effect in everything in natural 
 way of course ; so when clouds move because heat has 
 to do with it, and the electrical disturbances must 
 likewise be governed ; then at man's behest if anything 
 must stand still in Nature [as the sun is reported, 
 while a fight lasted, over the valley of Ajalon] the 
 reporter may have been drinking a drop too much 
 or was asleep. 
 
 It is well known to intelligent readers that reincar- 
 nation is one of man's earliest beliefs. ,A11 ancient 
 writings, including the Scriptures, have frequent refer- 
 ence to it being born again. In fact, devout Chris- 
 tians and of all religions down to lowest level of cul- 
 ture, daily pray and act under this belief. 
 
 In Matthew, 11:15, of our New Testament, is this: 
 And from the days of John the Baptist until now, 
 the kingdom of heaven [likely was meant the Holy 
 Land of the Jews] suffereth violence [Jewish na- 
 tion, conquered by the Romans] and men of violence 
 take it by force; for all the Prophets and the Law 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 47 
 
 prophesied until John. And if ye are willing to re- 
 ceive it, THIS is ELIJAH [Jesus] which is to come. He 
 that hath ears to hear, let him hear. * * * For John 
 came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, he 
 hath a devil. The Son of Man came eating and drink- 
 ing, and they say, Behold a gluttonous man and a wine- 
 bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners! And wis- 
 dom is justified by her works/' 
 
 In Malachi, "Behold I will send you Elijah the 
 prophet [by rebirth] before the great and terrible day 
 of the Lord come; and he shall turn the heart of the 
 fathers to the children; they to their fathers, lest I 
 come and smite the earth with a curse." 
 
 Luke 1:17, And he shall go before his face in the 
 spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the 
 fathers to the children, and the disobedient to walk 
 in the wisdom of the just to make ready for the Lord 
 a people prepared for Him. 
 
 Matthew 17:12. And he answered and said, Elijah 
 indeed cometh and shall restore all things: but I say 
 unto you, that ELIJAH is COME ALREADY, and they 
 knew him not, but did unto him whatsoever they 
 listed. Even so shall the Son of Man suffer of them. 
 
 John 1 :23. What sayest thou of thyself? He said, 
 "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. 
 Make straight the way of the Lord, as said Isaiah the 
 Prophet, * * * And they asked him and said unto 
 him, Why then baptized thou, if thou art not the 
 Christ? John answered them saying, I baptizeth with 
 water ; in the midst of you standeth one whom ye know 
 not, even him that cometh after me, the latchstring 
 of whose shoe I am not worthy to unloose." 
 
48 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 This prophecy (or introduction) of a great prophet, 
 met fulfilment, after a great many centuries of 
 wrangling. We have no guide, religious or govern- 
 mental, that would govern mortals truer than the ad- 
 vice vouchsafed by Jesus. I quote below from Charles 
 Nordhoff's Politics for Young Americans. 
 
 "I believe that free government is a political appli- 
 cation of the Christian theory of life; that at the 
 base of the republican system lies the Golden Rule; 
 and that to be a good citizen of the United States one 
 ought to be imbued with the spirit of Christianity, and 
 to believe in and act upon the teachings of Jesus. He 
 condemned self-seeking, covetousness, hypocrisy, class 
 distinctions, envy, malice, undue and ignoble ambition, 
 and he inculcated self-restraint, repression of the lower 
 and meaner passions; love to the neighbor, content- 
 ment, gentleness, regard for the rights and happiness 
 of others, and respect for the law. It seems to me 
 that the vices he condemned are those also which are 
 dangerous to the perpetuity of republican govern- 
 ment; and that the principles he inculcated may be 
 properly used as tests of the merits of a political sys- 
 tem or a public policy." 
 
 A poet of the nimble fancy exclaims, "How won- 
 derful is sleep, sleep and his brother death!" Just 
 as are your perceptions, keen or dull, will you behold 
 of the higher life, the innocent, unwordly state and 
 condition of Jesus, when he says that children are of 
 the spirit that will be prevalent in the Hereafter. You 
 can have no Heaven without this spirit. You make 
 your conceptions of hell theologically, to suit your- 
 self. No one here can tell of any divisions, physically, 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 49 
 
 in the Hereafter -of Heaven, Purgatory or Hell. 
 These are earth-born. An eloquent but crafty 
 preacher can add to his possessions in his sermon by 
 references to his personal "wants," say a piano, if in 
 his congregation is a rich musical instrument maker, 
 by broad hints so that "thrift may follow fawning/' 
 Evil will grow upon what it feeds as a hog fattens. 
 A servant is worthy of his hire, but somehow it hap- 
 happens that a master's eye is worth two of his hands. 
 So the hypocrite has a higher recompense (?) than 
 is awarded a mere hog, or the contrary. 
 
 How comes it that we know neither the day nor 
 even the year of Jesus' birth; and only lay claim to 
 December 25th because it is the Winter Solstice and 
 is the birthday of an entire host of Pagan Gods, all of 
 them reputed to have been born of virgins : Crishna, 
 Buddha, Mithra, Isis, Osiris, Hercules, Bacchus, 
 Adonis, and dozens more? Is it all coincidence ? And 
 is it a mere coincidence that the rites of religion as 
 practised now were, almost entirely, instituted by 
 Mithra, five hundred years, approximately, before 
 Jesus was born? While the doctrines of election and 
 free grace, as taught by Calvinism and Arminianism, 
 could never be harmonized with each other, with rea- 
 son, or with the Bible, yet these two Bible doctrines 
 are perfectly harmonious, seen from the standpoint of 
 the plan of the ages. In view of God's glorious plans 
 for the future, what must be the attitude of every 
 true Christian respecting the second advent of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ the first step toward the accom- 
 plishment of the long-promised and long-expected 
 
 
50 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 blessings for the world of mankind? Golden Age, 
 April, 1921. 
 
 While aristocracy and orthodoxy (in religion) had 
 dominacy, a democratic form of government was im- 
 possible. Even in our American colonies, the frenzy 
 of religion became so rampant that under the Puritan 
 rule, in New Haven, Conn., H. Norton, a Quaker, in 
 1657, was sent to prison for preaching the Word of 
 God as he understood it, and later flogged cruelly until 
 citizens interfered. Then he was branded in his right 
 hand with letter H (heritic) and sent back to jail till 
 a heavy fine should be paid. A stranger, a Dutch- 
 man, out of compassion, paid the fine. Later, Norton 
 was banished from among the Puritan Elect. John 
 Milton visited Gallileo in prison, in Europe, as the 
 two were heretics agreed, however, on question of 
 astronomy, and had suffered for biblical non-con- 
 formity. 
 
 Lest the sorcerer entice 
 With some other new device. 
 
 Says Milton. These two were compelled by imprison- 
 ment and threats of death, to keep speechless while 
 inquisition ruled. 
 
 Since the Spaniards first in America raised their re- 
 ligious banner, the Cross, in their search for gold, and 
 Columbus tried a trick of making, for profit, slaves 
 of the Aborigines here, it seems a far cry to the real 
 Christian kind of government we have now. 
 
 I refer elsewhere to a paper in the Missionary Re- 
 view of the World, written by Dr. Eleanor Taylor Cal- 
 verly, formerly of York, Pa. The writer, now a resi- 
 dent of Kuweit, Arabia, says: "Yes, we admit there 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 51 
 
 is much cruelty among the Arabs; they are no mean 
 workmen, and are brave in war suffering silently the 
 pangs of death, because death is from Allah. They 
 are here a most hospitable people/' 
 
 In matters of the gods we are mostly concerned in 
 the Far East. Here in America, a land of freedom, 
 our spiritual, progressive, conceptions are different. 
 Our form of government, republican, opposes the old 
 Eastern tyrannies in any shape : our own Washington 
 and lovers of freedom abroad La Fayette, Steuben, 
 Payne, would not abide under aristocrasies in the 
 eastern world, nor religions of "Thus saith the Lord/' 
 
 The trend of civilization has ever appeared west- 
 ward. Our first president of the United States advised 
 us to keep free from all European or other foreign 
 alliances, secular or religious entanglements. 
 
 Hindu scriptures have hope of the Prasna Upanis- 
 had, 1.10, "that they who seek the Atman by austerity, 
 chastity, faith and knowledge they do not return in 
 any more rebirths, only means that they have finally 
 escaped from the thralldom of reincarnations by being 
 absorbed into God. Throughout the thirteen principal 
 Upanishads the records of that eager quest which India 
 has been pursuing through the centuries, which is 
 tersely expressed in the Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad 
 in its first division (at 1, 3, 28) : 
 
 "From the unreal lead me to the real, 
 From the darkness lead me to the light, 
 From death lead me to immortality." 
 
 Not being an educational force, Theology is losing 
 ground, and the Prince of Peace gains, in an en- 
 lightened world. 
 
52 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 Arabs along the Red Sea, a most hospitable people, 
 are far from being free from sensuality and bigotry. 
 
 Dr. Eleanor Taylor Calverly, graduate of Phila- 
 delphia Woman's Medical College, now living at the 
 Kuweit Mission in Arabia, writes a graphic paper to 
 the Missionary Reviezv of the World about her neigh- 
 bors. She speaks of Arabs as being very hospitable, and 
 yet sensual and cruel; one house is for the "mother/* 
 the other is for "father's wife/' There is Moham- 
 medan belief in the evil eye; and children grow up 
 in an atmosphere of envy, fear and hatred. "Little 
 Arab sister, with sweet olive-tinted face and great 
 wondering brown eyes, is a playmate of the doctor's 
 little daughter. Disadvantages of Arab children are 
 both spiritual and mental ; yet there is something that 
 is irresistible in the wide-mouthed, guileless smile of a 
 baby, whether he be white, red, brown, yellow or black. 
 
 Life in an Arab town is something very sordid. 
 There is so much to make one shudder, so much to 
 wring one's heart. Then there is also the monotony : 
 sand, sand, sand! 
 
 The doctor says, "Our little daughter, clad in pink 
 rompers, and playing in the sand, was happy. Naima, 
 our daughter's Arabic name, was asked by her play- 
 mate, Hassa, 'Where are your jewels? You have 
 none?' Naima shook her head. 'Oh,' cried Hassa, 
 'you poor thing.' When I heard Hassa say this there 
 came to me a vision of the probable future of these 
 two children. I saw our little girl, in free America, 
 rolling hoops and jumping rope, while Hassa was se- 
 cluded and guarded within the confines of her home 
 lest she be seen by men. Then I saw our little one a 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT S3 
 
 few years later, a sweet girl graduate ; then Hassa, 14 
 years of age, would be spending sleepless nights to still 
 the crying of her first-born child. I saw our daughter 
 walking arm in arm with comrades on the college cam- 
 pus; when Hassa, a disappointed, sad-eyed woman, 
 divorced, re-married, would be supplanted by a 
 partner wife." 
 
 Of all the land far-famed for goodly steeds, 
 
 Thou com'st, O stranger, to the noblest spot. 
 
 Colonos, glistening bright, 
 
 Where evermore, in thickets freshly green, 
 
 The clear-voiced nightingale 
 
 Still haunts and pours her song, 
 
 By purpling ivy hid. * * * 
 
 And yet another praise is mine to sing, 
 
 Gift of the Mighty God 
 
 To this, our city, mother of us all, 
 
 Her greatest, noblest boast, 
 
 Famed for her goodly steeds, 
 
 Famed for her bounding colts, 
 
 Famed for her sparkling sea. 
 
 (Ediptis at Colonos. 
 
 Above I quote from the famous Greek author, his 
 hint that a city of thy desire may be a heaven, of de- 
 light, for the once and evermore denizen of earth. If 
 elsewhere I refer to the "heaven-born" of Biblical 
 times, the meaning must be taken as earth-born. Gods 
 in the old Grecian times were said to have marriage 
 with mortals. Be sure there is mistake they have 
 been of earth-birth. Even along in our history, in an 
 enlightened Roman period of the New Testament, 
 Jesus it was said came to earth fatherless and departed 
 "in a cloud." Let us hope He Himself was free from 
 trickery of the pious reporters in everything, for He 
 braved a cruel death from fanatics to do unrivaled 
 good for all humanity. 
 
54 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 Put your ear to the ground, as the saying is, for we 
 of the lowly have a hearing as well as a vision out- 
 wardly and inwardly. Sleep and Death by Shelley are 
 accounted of, similarly, higher than by the outward 
 senses. You who have vision can find this true. After 
 the death of your beloved, then beyond the human 
 senses, you can in dreams be told these latter are 
 not of earth. You may dream of helping the beloved 
 one still, from a cramped enclosure as earth, and then 
 the heavenly smiles reward you. While mere names 
 of earth mates will not recur, yet you still detect the 
 object, knowing no names can reach above earthly 
 condition. Good and bad, rich or poor ,are terms for 
 us here. Good news of a conscience turns up now and 
 then ; but finally death grips ; then Higher Light is too 
 radiant. "I will repay/' An eye for an eye is the 
 human balance, yet the higher adjustment sure follows 
 delinquency, and the stumbling over conscience of 
 "Forgiye ! forgive ! !" of the unworthy. Justice is sure, 
 and sure does Fate "Strike once, and strikes no more/' 
 
 EVELYN HOPE 
 
 BY ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead ! 
 
 Sit and watch by her side an hour. 
 That is her book-shelf, this her bed; 
 
 She plucked that piece of geranium flower, 
 Beginning to die, too, in the glass; 
 
 Little has yet been changed, I think: 
 The shutters are shut, no light may pass 
 
 Save two long rays through the hinges' chink. 
 Sixteen years old when she died! 
 
 Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name; 
 It was not her time to love; besides, 
 
 Her life had many a hope and aim, 
 And now was quiet, now astir, 
 
HIGHER LIGHT 55 
 
 Till God's hand beckoned unawares, 
 
 And the sweet white brow is all of her. 
 Is it too late, then, Evelyn Hope? 
 
 What your soul was, pure and true, 
 The good stars met in your horoscope, 
 
 Made you of spirit, fire and dew 
 And just because I was thrice as old, 
 
 And our paths in the world diverged so wide, 
 Each was naught to each, must I be told? 
 
 We were fellow mortals, naught beside; 
 No, indeed ! for God above 
 
 Is great to grant, as mighty to make, 
 And creates the love to reward the love : 
 
 I claim you still, for my own love's sake ! 
 Delayed it may be for more lives yet, 
 
 Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few: 
 Much is to learn, much to forget, 
 
 Ere the time be come for taking you. 
 But the time will come, at last it will, 
 
 When Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say), 
 In the lower earth, in the years long still, 
 
 That body and soul so pure and gay? 
 Why your hair was amber, I shall opine, 
 
 And your mouth of your own geranium's red 
 And what you would do with me, in fine, 
 
 In the new life come in the old one's stead. 
 I have lived (I shall say), so much since then, 
 
 Given up myself so many times, 
 Gained me the gains of various men, 
 
 Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes; 
 Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, 
 
 Either I missed or itself missed me: 
 And I want, and find you, Evelyn Hope ! 
 
 What is the issue? Let us see! 
 I loved you, Evelyn, all the while ! 
 
 My heart seemed full as it could hold: 
 There was place and to spare for the frank young smile, 
 
 And the red young month and the hair's young gold. 
 So, hush, I will give you this leaf to keep; 
 
 See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand ! 
 There, that is our secret, go to sleep ! 
 
 You will wake, and remember, and understand. 
 
 McGroarty, a California philosopher, says: There 
 are so many things to remember. And to forget the 
 names of a thousand wonder workers, more or less, 
 
56 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 who have been dead so long that it is time for them 
 to come back again what difference does it make ? 
 
 Attributed to the Great Prophet, Jesus, is the say- 
 ing : "Take no thought of the morrow what ye shall 
 eat and wherewithal ye shall be clothed." Also cease 
 from worry now over "things to remember." Suffi- 
 cient unto the day is the worry thereof, for reaching 
 the higher sphere, there are no time-tables to mark in- 
 tervals, as here on earth, in reincarnations. Shake- 
 speare's Seven Ages of Man will keep you busy over 
 wonder- workings ! 
 
 Civilization can be farther traced, thanks for that 
 blessed book, the Bible. It is above all creeds, all na- 
 tions, and only alert is its hint of beginning of every- 
 thing, the Spirit. Let us consider the first man, irre- 
 spective of any garden, or ship, or how this first of 
 the race was clothed not being so favored as other 
 animals that are naked. His warmth came from a fig 
 leaf garment; and after Adam was told to hustle for 
 himself, then his ingenuity suggested the suspenders 
 for this fig leaf; his first invention, possibly! With 
 an eager and a nipping air, he became a bit envious of 
 well-clothed animals he looked on as his inferiors "in 
 the sight of God," and did his first killing, to get fur 
 robes. Why should Eve not have had attention ? Fe- 
 males of all breeding pairs of animals have better care 
 from the Creator, in the innate modesty or feature of 
 life-regulation, than has man. 
 
 What a long and unclean or brutal struggle our race 
 has had ! Greeley, our wisest editor, wrote, "Go west, 
 young man !" Both to the north and to the south the 
 trend of population seldom goes, for the end of these 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 57 
 
 journeys brings torturing cold. Even down to the 
 days of a free Hebrew race, escaped from Egyptian 
 bondage, but still carrying the Ark of the Covenant, 
 the people rushed to new wars, bloody wars, very like 
 conquests in America later, when the Red Man had to 
 go. Jews wanted the territory Jehovah promised, a 
 Holy land, and yet even unto this day that land is not 
 very promising. 
 
 There will still be our Sphynx question: Is the 
 world better or worse for mankind? Not as to any 
 one feature. God is no respecter of special life in the 
 whole kingdom of nature, and if any of us should be 
 so child-trusting as to ask special privileges or com- 
 forts, we may (as the Bible relates to the whole ques- 
 tion of immortality), assert, "Ye think ye have eternal 
 life." The Creator fills no stockings for children at 
 Christmas, but delegates to the parents and friends this 
 loving service. If the agents or the dear little ones are 
 untrue to a soul's trust, how can they trust the Unseen 
 One? If, as thy child believes, thou art great and 
 noble of soul, he knows no mistrust when Christmas 
 comes, or at any time. Break his faith, or her faith, 
 and mistrust even of the Greatest Prophet ensues, 
 when that truth was uttered for all to cheer us. The 
 kingdom of God is within you. 
 
 There is a straight way in life here, a straight path 
 that leads thee later, and on until life begins here 
 again for thee on earth; and if home is the heaven of 
 thy desire, this next birth will bring to thee joy over 
 reunions, and the new home will have transcendent 
 phases of life, more life, that will grow better, larger 
 of purpose throughout rebirths innumerable. 
 
58 ' PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 The Very Elect is not voted for by generality of 
 electors; in fact, He breathed into you the breath of 
 life, and in that condition only one ballot need be 
 taken. We must take into the account Lo here's ! and 
 Lo there's ! ! Had we Christians a unit, there would 
 be but one sect to interpret the Bible. Lo, too, our 
 many denominations of Christians. 
 
 A little girl hit on a great truth when asked, "Who 
 made you?" "God made me so high; I growed the 
 rest/' We all grow more or less some very bad, 
 some very good. Those in the brutal way, loving 
 strife; others as Jesus desires, His own beloved. 
 
 Let us hope for another group of immortals reborn 
 here, to rebuild, amplify our civilization, and to do 
 the work left undone by the murdered Prophet, in 
 spreading compassion that is love. 
 
 This warning for young aviators : 
 
 Our boy Jeremire 
 
 Dun burnt in de fire; 
 
 His airplane drawed de sun. 
 
 We need not the traditionally pick-up, story of af- 
 fairs from savagest and crudest of life, in the early 
 times, when good men of Sodom or Gomorra were 
 as rare as hen teeth, as the saying is. Report is that 
 in Jerusalem today are, as in earlier times, rivalries 
 and fightings mostly over religion. "Great is Diana 
 of the Epesians," great is Jehovah, great is Moham- 
 med, and so on. One clan still points out the grave 
 of Adam, which excited the pious (?) humor of 
 Mark II. 
 
 A common saying is, "more holy than righteous," 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 59 
 
 and has ever mortal exhibited the qualities that truly 
 belong to us all ?. It does not stand to reason, for we 
 have all grades in hypocrisy. Artemis Ward mistook 
 for a common preacher (though a hypocrite likely) 
 and who appealed to the humorist with eyes cast 
 heavenward as a sign-manual. Meeting with no re- 
 sponse, the good man said, "This is a cold world/' 
 A. W., sizing the man up, and- having no Bible at 
 hand, blurted out, "You'll get into a hotter one by and 
 bye; hot as hell." 
 
 No fault attaches to Bible accounts, so valuable for 
 reference; written from hearsay, these records can be 
 construed as most valuable for study conceptions of 
 earliest traditional times. You must not take Jacob 
 and his wives and concubines as a holy example now, 
 for life today if examples of Scriptures mean for 
 "instruction" (example) would indicate no progress 
 through the ages. Jesus surely fought and opposed 
 the holy ideas in olden scriptures. An eye for an 
 eye and saying not anything of reproof in the scrip- 
 tures about holiness of holy wars "but I say unto 
 you, love one another." 
 
 I am not psychoanalytic nor of the pious the very 
 elect, but observe from all past experience, we do not 
 get to the full understanding of life from our human 
 nature. Experience of religion teaches that it has 
 much of impulsive goodness, formal ceremonies or 
 actions soon forgotten. Jesus no' doubt had reference 
 to this, religion too full of animal magnetism, for 
 when speaking of a church (his was the open-air 
 kind) when two or three in serious mood are met 
 together. Then the higher light and life are manifest, 
 
60 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 a spirit arises that .will with the morning stars sing in 
 utmost joy. A church should surely have the educa- 
 tional feature, for at this ripe age of the world we 
 may drop -notions of altars, offerings to gods (burnt 
 or otherwise). 
 
 Rather too much of human nature is exhibited by 
 school authorities in selecting teachers (a hint also to 
 church authorities), the employed expecting a good 
 time, to spend between the movies and mental con- 
 cerns, as the "duties." In selecting help for churches 
 or charities, the teachers should be given not any no- 
 tions of ease, soft snaps, or time for selfish uses; but 
 select the most competent of Good Samaritans, and 
 not from mere scholarly or pious pretensions. 
 
 This is an age of action, and those coming in a re- 
 birth to take again some part in human affairs must 
 hustle. No more of the loafing, hold-up dispositions 
 "need apply/' must go as the scoffer says, to hell 
 where the dark of polarity belongs. Times change 
 and w r e with the times. Now great shake-ups from 
 calamities recently, endured from prominence of 
 hatred and war. 
 
 Our President, since the devil dance of others, has 
 been wise, careful and patriotic. With our Republic 
 has always seemed the light of progress, or we would 
 now, as at first, be in chains of slavery and under dic- 
 tation of lazy autocrats or plutocrats. 
 
 As showing the new trend, in America, I copy from 
 James Oppenheim's late Times essay : 
 
 "When its meaning is revealed, we see that the un- 
 conscious wisdom is trying to tell us of ourselves, to 
 reveal our real trouble, and even to lead us to a solu- 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 61 
 
 tion of the difficulties. . . . What does one know of 
 oneself? Human nature is a rich mystery, for not 
 only is it compounded of our experience and our gifts, 
 it is also inherited from the remote past. In each of 
 us is the collective unconscious, the racial mind, which 
 contains the wisdom, the power, the greatness of the 
 entire past : the very source of inspiration, the spring 
 from which have risen all our arts, inventions, re- 
 ligions and sciences. . . . 
 
 "One may wonder how by any psychological process 
 one may come to this deeper insight. One cannot do 
 it alone. Maeder, in his little book on the subject, 
 likens the analytic process to Dante's 'Divine Comedy/ 
 The analyst is the guide, Virgil, who leads the patient, 
 Dante, first down through the inferno of his hidden 
 abysses of nature, then up through Purgatory, the 
 great overcoming. But at the peak of the Mountain 
 of Purgatory, Virgil gives up his guidance, and 
 Beatrice appears, Dante's own soul, now to lead him 
 up through the paradise/' 
 
 
62 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 III 
 
 When Tolstoy was excommunicated in 1901, he 
 addressed the Orthodox Russian Church very candid 
 letters as to his belief in Jesus and the Father of us 
 all. Said, "Truth more than all else in the world he 
 loved, and had greatest veneration for Jesus." His 
 later years were spent amidst spies of the church, and 
 very many pressing offers he had to die with church 
 prospects for salvation at last. The wife of Tolstoy 
 was evidently sent to spy on him, and take him from 
 his prized last writings, to burn such has long been 
 the fashion of the pious vs. infidels. 
 
 From a recent issue of the Atlantic Monthly I copy 
 a Tolstoy letter of October 23, 1910: "I am a very 
 sinful person, and my only occupation consists in 
 mending myself, in the measure of my power and 
 ability, from my numerous sins and sinful habits. I 
 beseech God to help me in this cause, and He helps 
 me. Though at the pace of a turtle, still I advance 
 with His help. In this advancing I find that the sole 
 sense purpose and benefit of my life. The kingdom 
 of God is within us and the kingdom has to be won 
 by force (that is, by effort). I believe in this, and 
 exert all possible efforts for this; and here you come 
 to offer me the performance of certain rites and the 
 utterance of certain words, which would show that I 
 consider as infallible truth all that which men who call 
 themselves Church consider truth, and in consequence 
 of which all my sins would be pardoned pardoned 
 somehow and by someone; and that I shall not only 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 63 
 
 be exempt from the inner hard but at the same 
 time joyous, spiritual work of self -improvement, but 
 that I shall* be somehow saved from something, and 
 shall receive some kind of an eternal bliss. 
 
 "Why, dear Brother Dimitri, do you address me 
 with such a strange proposal? Have I tried to con- 
 vert you, have I counseled you to rid yourself of that, 
 in my opinion, pernicious delusion which you profess, 
 and into which you painstakingly lure thousands and 
 thousands of unfortunate children and common peo- 
 ple, perverting their minds? Then why do you not 
 leave me in peace, a man who, by his age, stands with 
 one foot in the grave, and who calmly awaits his 
 death? My conversion to the church faith might have 
 had sense were I a boy, or a grown-up atheist, or an 
 illiterate yakout who had never heard about the 
 church-faith. But I am 82 years old, was brought up 
 in the very same deception which still dominates you, 
 to which you are inviting me, and from which, with 
 greatest suffering and efforts I freed myself many 
 years ago, adopting a Christian not ecclesiastical 
 point of view, which gives me the possibility of a 
 peaceful, joyous life directed toward self-perfection, 
 and the readiness for as peaceful and joyous a death, 
 in which I see a return to God of love, out of whom I 
 issued forth. With brotherly love, Leo Tolstoy." 
 
 Orthodox church, as we know, has ever been fore- 
 most in spreading evil reports. If hatred as so often 
 did not stop short of cruelest forms of murder, for 
 its "enemies," independent thinkers. Our own lover 
 of liberty, Thomas Payne, died, as evil report gave 
 out, a drunkard, who wanted to confess his errors in 
 
64 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 speaking of orthodoxy. Equally false have been re- 
 ports that Tolstoy was maddened by his unorthodox 
 writings, and started off in his old age to die in some 
 unknown wilderness. The letter above corrects these 
 reports. 
 
 Possibly the worst blunder committed in the history 
 of pious sects and idolatry in early ages, was in hav- 
 ing men set apart, no family or family relations, to 
 attend to the altars of the gods. As the Maker of us 
 all clearly indicates as His will and our instincts verify 
 it, sexes cannot be apart, and children in all homes 
 have a clinging to and almost worship of the parents. 
 Babes are the best gift of mankind, most highly 
 prized by all surely. Child-trust and innocence are 
 makers of true character and worth. Return to earth 
 in all rebirths, ever rouses the sacredest of songs, 
 "Glory to God in the highest; peace on earth; good 
 will to all mankind/' And this language, and song of 
 glory, is indicated even down to the humblest creatures. 
 
 When in life's common ways, 
 
 With cheerful feet we go; 
 When in the steps we tread 
 
 Who trod the ways of woe 
 Thou that once on mother's knee 
 
 Wert a little one like me, 
 Thou hast sent me here to be 
 
 Born of human-kind like Thee, 
 From nature's inmost heart 
 
 (The final film withdraw!) 
 Eternal silence reighs 
 
 Bound in Eternal Law 
 It is enough: we ask not where Thou art, 
 
 Present in space, or in the faithful heart. 
 Unchanging Law binds all 
 
 And Nature's law we see 
 Hope of those that have no other. 
 
 Palgrave. 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 65 
 
 Mark Twain and many others have toured to the 
 Holy Land, to get sight of holy relics. Our Mark was 
 shown the grave of Adam, and if some scriptural 
 things he writ about in the Holy Land are found 
 say among Mark II papers maybe valuable. Photo 
 of that grave ; and possibly Mark II having measured 
 the hole, has the new scripture to quote how the holy 
 dust of Adam was found ! He, Mark II, an American, 
 knew how to be trusty, having sure swallowed Wash- 
 ington hatchet as part of our scripture. 
 
 Can any value the sayings of Jesus more than I? 
 But even the monk reporting was human; he surely 
 was when the prayer pleads with the Father of us all 
 to lead us not into temptation. God Almighty does no 
 such mischief. In the scripture of truth called John, 
 quoted on another page, his record of wars and 
 rumors of wars in or near heaven (possibly had ref- 
 erence to wars between Jews and the conquering 
 Romans). It seems very probable scriptures were 
 pick-ups, as printers call fat-takes. 
 
 After Jesus had been cruelly murdered as a rebel 
 against Romans, and his spirit passed on to the Great 
 Path of being, then will come his rebirth possibly 
 back to earth to now receive the wonted welcome and 
 not again have to curse a whole generation as pre- 
 viously "Ye generation of vipers !" 
 
 They stooped in the gleam of the faint light, Over 
 
 The print of themselves on the limpid gloom; 
 And she lifted her full palm toward her lover, 
 
 With her lips prepared for the words of doom. 
 But the warm heart rose, and the cold hand fell, 
 
 And the pledge of her faith sprang, sweet and clear, 
 From a holier source than the old saint's well, 
 
 From the never-ebbing tide of Love a tear. 
 
 R. D. filackmore. 
 
66 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 Sleep, under the law of life, as alternating with the 
 wakeful period, seems a polarity existing between 
 everyday existence and a higher life. No creature 
 escapes going over the Path. To make a personal ex- 
 planation, will refer to a fact occurring in March, 
 1922. I received notice that a beloved cousin had died 
 after long illness, at Atlantic City, N. J. On the night 
 succeeding notice, I dreamed of her. Passing in 
 dreamland from one ocean to another, I detected 
 cousin in a position requiring help, a kind of trap. 
 Rushing to help her, I noted very distinctly that it was 
 a gray dress she wore. The vision faded, but not until 
 her joyful looks disclosed that she was far from hav- 
 ing any fear in her peculiar situation. Writing to 
 brother of deceased later, wished him to state how the 
 sister was dressed for the funeral. The reply proved 
 that my far-away vision in sleep was correct ! As a 
 fact, deceased was buried in a gray dress exactly cor- 
 responding to my vision ! Had one's dream followed 
 the circumstance of meeting in late years, no surprise 
 in the dream could occur. But here is a fact of dis- 
 tance and unusual sight of the gray dress; thus re- 
 calling some spiritual agencies, as spoken of by Plato 
 and Whitman that time and place are of the earth 
 and have no spiritual bearing. 
 
 Home is the corner stone of our civilization, says 
 President Harding. We may read of any land of 
 promise, but the home therein is the great concern. 
 No home, no heaven! 
 
 By a theory I claim, Rebirth, we shall know our 
 promised land will be located where our parents and 
 friends have been or are, ever next us with love in 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 67 
 
 the eternal and the earthly shapes. We know our own, 
 as Jesus said of the sheep separated thus only for 
 a while. 
 
 "And what has happened to the colored people is 
 that there are those among them who have acquired 
 a degree of culture equal to that of any race on earth. 
 There is today among the negroes of America a large 
 class that has placed itself beyond the sneers of negro- 
 baiters and negro-haters. For that class the "color 
 line" has faded away forever. The people of that 
 class can and do look serenely down on whomever sets 
 himself up as a mental or moral superior. /. 5*. 
 McGroarty. 
 
 Dr. Maudsley says, "It has been justly remarked 
 that if we were actually to do in sleep all the strange 
 things which we dream we do, it would be necessary 
 to put every man in restraint before he went to bed; 
 for, as Cicero said, dreamers would do more strange 
 things than madmen. A dream put into action must 
 indeed look very much like insanity ( e. g. the ordinary 
 sleep-vigil), as insanity has at times the look of a 
 waking dream." 
 
 Somnambulists act without any visible sense of direc- 
 tion or purpose. I had an uncle, Caleb Hood of Lan- 
 caster County, Pa., who in youth often climbed upon 
 a high roof and from the peak was alone, star gazing 
 or to be spiritually alone and away from earth's affairs. 
 In his very dangerous climbing he was never hurt. 
 His father was epileptic. 
 
 Hibernating animals have the instinct to sleep 
 through seasonal intervals. Securing abundance in 
 
68 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 days of plenty, the sleepy animal, the fat animal, re- 
 tires through the long inclement season to sleep. 
 
 Body is not anything important; so cling close to 
 the everlasting soul. Sleep is the near-soul restorer, 
 this you have always, but now and they only a rebirth, 
 awhile in mortal being just as you enjoy changes of 
 day and night. 
 
 "Every man's work shows what god he serves, 
 For faith is a path without any curves. 
 We must all hear our master's word before we can do ; 
 Faith will come by hearing him, which will put us through." 
 
 The four lines we quote here from the new poetry 
 have more of good sense than all samples of sex- 
 compositions usually do, appearing formless. 
 
 It is a long while since the sun stood still at Gibeon 
 and the moon at Ajalon, to see the invading Jews, 
 ferocious under a ferocious leader, Joshua, drive out 
 of their homes all natives in the Holy Land that God 
 Jehovah had promised the children of Israel. Later 
 on, when Hebrews began to know from a Higher Light 
 for all nations that called by Christians the Light of 
 Christ, Jesus the compassionate Jew, He prayed for 
 an era free from war. 
 
 Education not stored in your memory, your soul, is 
 surely not a real light. Gods, and such as Joshua the 
 killer, have passed, I hope, as Jesus, a Jew, gives a new 
 commandment, Love one another ! 
 
 Later generations that sprang from the earlier births 
 show a larger and finer brain, and consciousness of 
 purer light in the soul. Earliest of the Scriptures gave 
 a primal mandate of the Highest, referring to good 
 evil ; so with Druids and others followed a say- 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 69 
 
 ing, "If the tree bear not good fruit, cast it into the 
 fire !" If a farmer spends time cultivating bad stock, 
 how can he thrive? Then how can nations prosper 
 that allow evil men to rule? Pure democracy says, 
 Cut out the dead wood ! 
 
 Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe 
 and take for granted! nor to find talk and discourse, 
 but to weigh and consider. Bacon. 
 
 Orthodox Christians, fleeing to America to escape 
 religious persecutions by England's state church, grew 
 very intolerant, and began to kill Quakers and witches. 
 I quote from a new book published by Humphrey Mil- 
 ford, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. 
 
 "Ritual Witchcraft the Dianic cult embraces the 
 religious beliefs and rituals of the people known in late 
 mediaeval times as 'Witches/ The evidence proves 
 that underlying the Christian religion was a cult prac- 
 tised by many classes of the community. It can be 
 traced back to pre-Christian times, and appears to be 
 the ancient religion of Western Europe, which, carried 
 to America, caused Cotton Mather to say, The witches 
 are organized like Congregational Churches/ There 
 was among the witches a body of elders the Coven 
 which managed the local affairs of the cult, and a man 
 who, like the minister, held the chief place, though as 
 God that place was infinitely higher in the eyes of the 
 congregation than any held by a mere human being. 
 In some of the larger congregations there was a per- 
 son, inferior to the Chief, who took charge in the 
 Chief's absence. In Southern France, however, there 
 seems to have been a Grand Master who was supreme 
 over several districts. The position of the chief 
 
70 PHYSICA.. LIFE 
 
 woman of the cult is still somewhat obscure. It may 
 be the cult mentioned in Scripture : 'Great is Diana of 
 the Ephesians/ ' 
 
 Little is known of the animal nature. In Egypt of 
 old there was no sacredness of a human being recog- 
 nized religiously over the animals ; and in Greece at the 
 height of art there were so many requirements of man 
 for the horse that a tradition grew that they were 
 formed together. Science teaches, however, that 
 through all the evolutions, man has shrunken physic- 
 ally, but expanded mentally; the horse has greatly 
 gained physically. In Grecian times the centaur was 
 reckoned a once real animal. In the city of Taor- 
 mena, Italy, can be seen typical man-monkey, intelli- 
 gent man with a tail. 
 
 Behold, how these religionists love each other: at the 
 Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, even where they in real- 
 ity fight like wolves, when the gentle Jesus surely is 
 far from them. 'These do not regard a command to 
 love one another. Why then seek holy places to dis- 
 honor purest memorials? If idolatry lead you into 
 savagery, how expect a better world when you pass 
 with your degradations marked on your soul record 
 in this life? If you love the old home, and keep in 
 remembrance all the joys of earth, you are fitting your- 
 selves possibly by many rebirths for the "amen cor- 
 ner," as the saying is, for the place of many mansions, 
 on any habitable sphere, in the skies, promised for the 
 elect. Above all, at any rebirth, do not neglect your 
 soul-gifts from God. Sweet brain-path memories 
 dearest in the book of memory, always with you, 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 71 
 
 reached ever in sights and sounds, not of any sphere 
 especially, along your path ! 
 
 Therefore, O friends, if you are of my mind, 
 
 When we are passed the French and English strait, 
 
 Let us seek news of that desired gate 
 
 To immortality and blessed rest 
 
 Within the landless waters of the west; 
 
 But still a little to the southward steer, .... 
 
 Spice trees set waving by the western wind, 
 
 And gentle folk who know no guile at least, 
 
 And many a bright- winged bird and so ft- skinned beast, 
 
 For gently must the year upon them fall. 
 
 Morris* Earthly Paradise. 
 
 We always have carpings as to the faults in nature, 
 and ye proud scholars have been of late finding many 
 faults in Shakespeare, the child of nature, in all his 
 writings. He is decried mostly because he was not a 
 university man. Shakespeare was plainly, openly, uni- 
 versal, and not particular about small things. 
 
 A recent writer, Prof. Powell, about early orthodox 
 religions mentions services in Crete where devotees 
 danced to most excellent dance music, and hymns that 
 exacted the best of trained singing. He says, "There 
 is little permanence for a religion consisting only of 
 miracle and ritual, and less for one of magic; and 
 these types are doomed to pass away/' 
 
 THE COWBOY'S PRAYER 
 
 Oh, Lord, I've never lived where churches grow, 
 
 I love creation better as it stood 
 That day you finished it so long ago, 
 
 And looked upon your work and called it good. 
 
 I know that others find you in the light 
 That filters down through tinted window panes, 
 
 And yet I seem to feel you near tonight 
 In the dim, quiet starlight on the plains. 
 
72 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 I thank you, Lord, that I am placed so well ; 
 
 That you have made my freedom so complete, 
 That I'm no slave of whistle, clock or bell, 
 
 Or weak-eyed prisoner of wall or street. 
 
 Just let me live my life as I've begun, 
 And give me work that's open to the sky; 
 
 Make me a partner of the wind and sun, 
 And I won't ask a life that's soft or high. 
 
 Let me be easy on the man that's down ; 
 
 And make me square and generous with all ; 
 I'm careless sometimes, Lord, when I'm in town, 
 
 But never let them say I'm mean or small. 
 
 Make me as big and open as the plains, 
 As honest as the horse between my knees, 
 
 Clean as the wind that blows behind the rains, 
 Free as the hawk that circles down the breeze. 
 
 Forgive me, Lord, when I sometimes forget, 
 You understand the reasons that are hid, 
 
 You know the little things that gall and fret, 
 You know me better than my mother does. 
 
 Just keep an eye on all that's done and said, 
 Just right me sometimes when I turn aside, 
 
 And guide me on the long, long trail ahead 
 That stretches upward toward the Great Divide. 
 
 Badger Clark. 
 
 Inabilities of our priestly class are mostly because of 
 bad training that may be traced from the beginning. 
 In days of idolatry there was chosen a certain class of 
 men assigned to keep the hands of a lower class off the 
 sacred thing. For ages the assignment lasted, and in 
 some respects for the mentally lowest of peoples, as 
 can be traced today; but now culture of all races has 
 risen until the Spirit of God is manifest. In fact, to- 
 day the ''holy men" really and truly fight against the 
 Eternal One and for idolatry. 
 
 Our modern beliefs are for all humanity, as Jesus 
 taught the people, not for the "upper class." No man 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 73 
 
 can rise above the evident and well understood behest 
 of the true Scripture. "By the sweat of thy brow 
 shalt thou earn thy bread/' But the lazy class assert, 
 "The world owes us a living/' Any place at an altar 
 must be the hirelings of idol worship, now descended 
 into mere custom. Educational work, or work in hos- 
 pitals, require no Very Reverends. Only good charity 
 workers need apply. You may, not loving exertion, se- 
 lect thus a needed branch of work but work for your- 
 self if you have the means, furnish the means to 
 carry on the good work. 
 
 No more school sports, if these innocents are to seri- 
 ously turn attention to God's altar and the church trap- 
 pings of ANY denomination, in the house of God or 
 gods. In reading, to begin with Genesis, the urchin 
 is told, Man was made of the dust of the earth. Not 
 very educational is this, for a fact ! A book on geol- 
 ogy will tell a very different story. There was no dust 
 until made in millions of years later by tramplings of 
 man and other animals. So of the Ark story : very in- 
 definite and misleading, to take a lawyer, sure, or paid 
 preacher, to tell you straight. 
 
 Aristocracies in either form, churchly or govern- 
 mental, are taboo in any republic, for the wars they 
 have created in all ages have very much hampered the 
 true growth and resourcefulness of the people. 
 
 Life on other planets, if we judge from conditions 
 here, has constant changes and evolutions. With the 
 horse, we know his physical life has tended to the im- 
 provement in size, while that of man goes to the men- 
 tal make-up, more of spiritual change. We know from 
 experience in earth's past, that races enslaved can only 
 
74 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 after great lapses of time assume the most upright 
 phase and be clear of gypsyings. With lower animals, 
 they understand our ways and words, but never speak. 
 
 In Leaves of Grass, my old companion, Walt Whit- 
 man, wrote concerning his soul : "I have fingered 
 every shore with thee!" Even today we are worried 
 touching drinkables, and in our U. S. Constitution is 
 prohibition touching alcohol to be drank by the weak- 
 headed. It is a poison. 
 
 As the schools teach, there are many worms having 
 each the two sexes, and all sex matters are free of 
 dust. That the earth had its origin in fluidity, cooled 
 steam with the sun's help in sending its power by grav- 
 ity of heat in very fine particles. So when life was 
 sent to earth, a Higher Life it was, came with an im- 
 pulse we know not of. 
 
 Army worms, pet ones, take to the sea in undersea 
 crafts used only in the latest of our wars. Last we 
 hope to see of that breed. Pests to farmers plan their 
 forays at stated intervals in the dark. Both kinds of 
 pests are to be dreaded. 
 
 Many good people, from suggestions of priests or 
 ministers, have urged our lawmakers to permit the use 
 of the Bible in schools. It needs not much argument 
 to convince the thoughttul that this would not be in 
 the interest of education. The child must have a time 
 for childish things, yet on going to school he is to be 
 educated. When told to read from the Word of God 
 the little one is puzzled. "No one has seen God at any 
 time." 
 
 About an ancient religious belief I quote one of 
 Erasmus' Colloquies: "During a furious storm at sea, 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 75 
 
 not a few fell flat on the deck, and began to worship 
 the sea, pouring all the oil they could get hold of upon 
 the waters, soothing it, just as we are wont to do to 
 an irritated prince. O most merciful sea, most noble 
 sea, most worthy sea! O most beautiful sea! grow 
 calm and save us. Many prayers of this kind they 
 kept chanting to the deaf sea. Some were only seasick, 
 most of them were making vows. One Englishman 
 was there who kept promising mountains of gold to 
 Our Lady of Walsingham if ever he set foot on land 
 alive. Some made many promises to the wood of the 
 cross in one place, and others to it in another. A few 
 promised to turn Carthusians. One there was who 
 bound himself to go to St. James of Campostello with 
 bare feet and head, his body covered only with a shirt 
 of iron mail, and begging his bread along the road. I 
 could not but laugh, as I heard one vowing as loud as 
 he could bellow lest he should not be attended to, a 
 wax figure as big as the St. Christopher who stands 
 on the top of the church in Paris more like a moun- 
 tain than a statue. While he was thus vociferating 
 at his best, an acquaintance that happened to be stand- 
 ing next to him gave him a nudge, and added a hint, 
 'Mind what you promise/ he says, 'even if you sell by 
 auction everything you possess you could not pay this/ 
 The other replied, in a most subdued tone, so that 
 St. Christopher should not hear, forsooth, 'Hold your 
 tongue, you idiot. Do you think I am speaking my 
 real mind? If only once I set my foot ashore I should 
 not give him as much as a tallow candle.' " 
 
 Our Holy Bible, with all the uses made of it, to be 
 worshipped as the object of all things holy; to be sub- 
 
76 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 ject of study for millions of the thoughtful in all gen- 
 erations, is, I think, still a mystery. For the world- 
 ling it is an idol ; for those who read it by the Inner 
 Light, as was that light with Jesus, it is "the light of 
 the world/' 
 
 Let it be understood that the author is not quarrel- 
 ing with religion, but so far as it concerns Jesus 
 many of us wish His rebirth may be often of earth, 
 until all aristocracies and churches of that kind, or 
 admixture of these, have been quelled by common 
 consent. Some persist in saying we are heaven-called * 
 ideally perfect in our Biblical interpretations; but all 
 may settle into one belief, that no books are kept in a 
 higher place than here on earth. If religions were 
 from above, beliefs would be all alike. A theory that 
 we all have by instinct is of self-preservation, and for 
 union in a government, as lower animals exhibit in 
 their flocks. 
 
 A reason for our calling Jesus the Lord is that He 
 is and has long been leader in human democracies. 
 The nearer we get to republican form, the nearer to 
 the Lord and God. 
 
 There is no middle ground from the idolatry of old 
 to the community of man. Aristocracy and such as 
 beliefs seem mere phantoms. 
 
 I will give and I will take are selfish notions, not 
 possibly inheriting in a Creator of All ; but if human 
 rights are interfered w r ith a Scripture rightly says of 
 Him, ""I will repay." 
 
 As to reincarnation, being reborn, that is a theory 
 of life. You will not be murdered if you fail to be- 
 lieve in it, so go your individual way ; but help the help- 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 77 
 
 less, and do unto others as you wish to be done by. 
 Beliefs are of no account. 
 
 To make a Roman holiday required many sacrifices. 
 Captured queens and kings, bedraggled and in chains, 
 and so many other captives, dragged to the Coliseum 
 and to death. All the spoils of war and of savagery 
 became offerings to some god. On his chariot was the 
 conqueror's sign so gods and men might not get 
 mixed, the glaring sigh, "Remember thou art a man/' 
 The spoils of empire were heaped mountain high. 
 
 Later, the glory of conquerors and all their belong- 
 ings faded, as fades the pictures on the movie screens 
 about as little worth. 
 
 The majesty of old Rome, of savagery, replaced 
 awhile by a Christian ruler, Constantine, he to leave 
 the ruins and seek shelter in the East, Constantinople. 
 Now we have two rival powers, both "followers of the 
 Lamb of God/' or as Carlyle said of them, Papas. 
 Seneca the pagan says, "What today are your suffer- 
 ings compared with the flame and the rack ? and yet in 
 the midst of sufferings of that sort I have seen men 
 not only groan, that is little ; not only complain, that is 
 little ; not only reply, that too is little. But I have seen 
 them smile, and smile with a good heart." 
 
 Did Jesus ever join or recognize a church, except as 
 His mother led him? His pure religion and undefiled 
 was, be helpful for others, and remain undefiled by the 
 world. Surely this is credo enough for the Christian 
 religion later ! Have we any church that is limited to 
 this? if we have showdowns of creeds, these are as 
 the "movies." It is of record that Jesus said to a 
 disciple who had been a baptizer, "I will suffer this," 
 
78 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 but I surmise He meant no form that binds to a creed. 
 Doctors of divinity who had asked the lad Jesus to 
 converse, did not find that they could later "convert" 
 him. A little later, in torture on the cross, He ex- 
 claimed as dying, cursing, O ye generation of vipers ! 
 Should Jesus be reborn to earth, at this time, would He 
 be likely to seek knowledge as taught at Bible Insti- 
 tutes? I think not, for His unusual intelligence 2000 
 years ago, and His soul goes marching on. What a 
 great and good helper He surely would be today for 
 all of us ! 
 
 My suggestion came for adopting the so-called Re- 
 birth Theory of Higher Light, and its opposite, the 
 physical being, from Franklin H. Heald's "The Pro- 
 cession of Planets. In our world there can only be 
 originally, motion from heat ,and its opposite in polar- 
 ity is cold, the Creator's forces in nature. As life be- 
 longs to the higher light of a soul, I insist that the 
 polarities dominate even as between the bad and the 
 good devil for evil and a good God. In Darwin you 
 will find only references to life here on earth: Fal- 
 staff, as Shakespeare shows him a go-between, says, 
 "And if I be virtuous will there be no more cakes and 
 ale?" 
 
 Near the same locality in England were born a few 
 years only the one older than the other two babes, 
 destined to be great leaders in religious freedom : 
 George Fox and John Bunyan. The former became 
 advocate of a Light within, the other was author of 
 Pilgrim's Progress, that directs Christian to a GREAT 
 LIGHT before him and others, always. 
 
 Men of intelligence, in Jerusalem who had courage 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 79 
 
 of their convictions and ideas not formed into creeds) 
 were very scarce when the question of having Jesus, 
 the idealist and thinker, make open proclamation of 
 dissent from Jewish doctrines, and He Himself a 
 Jew ! Says Prof. Fiske : "So is the kingdom of God, 
 as if a man should cast seed upon the earth; and 
 should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed 
 should spring up and grow, he knoweth not how. The 
 earth beareth fruit of herself ; first the blade, then the 
 ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the fruit 
 is ripe, straightway he putteth forth the sickle, because 
 the harvest is come/' Evolution is defined by Pro- 
 fessor Le Conte as "continuous progressive change 
 according to certain laws and by means of resident 
 forces." 
 
 We only begin to understand, notwithstanding so 
 many things thought very holy in tita New Testament, 
 that some biblical facts abound of supreme use for hu- 
 manity in the books referring to Jesus. Our Outlook 
 explains this : The gardener can plow the ground and 
 fertilize it, and can guard the growing tree and spray 
 and prune it ; but he cannot give life to either seed or 
 soil. Growth from seed and soil is God's way of mak- 
 ing an apple continuous, progressive growth by a 
 force residing in the seed and in the soul. Sow dia- 
 monds in the soil and nothing happens; for the dia- 
 monds have not life. President of Yale, Dr. James R. 
 Angell, thinks that the Pilgrim Fathers are "extolled in 
 terms which would have brought the blush of shame 
 to their tanned and sallow cheeks, " and that the praise 
 is not only excessive, but is often "ludicrously miscon- 
 ceived and misdirected/' 
 
80 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 "Between two fires" is an old phrase, and a truth, 
 with man and other animals. I saw this exemplified 
 at Rose Hill, my home, when a new neighbor there 
 wished to search my hillside lot to find his escaped 
 wild cat. In Arizona he caught a male and a female, 
 and wished to raise them for pets. They bore captivity 
 a while, but instinct prevailed this out of the way 
 place was not the mountains, their home. The male 
 kitten broke for liberty and disappeared. He was 
 caught a week later in a nearby garret, and the owner 
 carried him (everybody else afraid) to the cage again, 
 and to his mate. Whether or no she had become 
 reconciled, and trusted a mere man, it never will be 
 known. The wilder one, now in the cage, with un- 
 tamed instincts, one day killed and mangled the mate. 
 Why? 
 
 The last and greatest Prophet of the Jews came of 
 a good mother and father, and had a good home and 
 trade, carpenter. The doctors of His church could 
 not "convert" the boy Jesus (Joshua) of this family, 
 so for being an infidel, associating like the other poor 
 Jews with the publicans and sinners, He was outlawed. 
 He, the very flower of humanity! Church and state 
 in darkness, lo, these many centuries, have had wonted 
 evolutions since the infidel Jesus suffered on the cross, 
 and now in America the state is exalted, and the church 
 -between the kill and cure medicine, meekly survives. 
 
 Instincts are the lead-all in life; the humble follow 
 this call oftener than the great, the rich, the so-called 
 wise and worldly. A creed is noted in the church, but 
 we have the cute priest once he, we know, advised a 
 searcher after truth George Fox, the Quaker to 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 81 
 
 quiet his soul by running with the girls, smoke tobacco 
 and drink a little. This priest was not speaking higher 
 than other worldly wise ones. 
 
 Our Bible, true to all instincts of mankind, calls 
 attention to a study of man's foreknowledge. All ani- 
 mal kind has a light to perceive its course at death, 
 and craves to return to nature to former habitats in 
 the wild state, the woods and mountains green, and 
 "beside the still waters." 
 
 Pierre Loti of France made comparison a great 
 feature in life, and chose the cat as a close friend, 
 because she almost talked with hi$n, through the eye. 
 His pets always escaped before their death, knowing 
 death would not end all and all life was craving for 
 particular locations on earth. The old home, of the 
 spirit the heaven we say. That flash, the vision of 
 death, "we know neither the day, nor the hour" for it. 
 This period having illumination of the soul and not 
 of this world. John Burroughs, dying in the car, 
 asked in bewilderment, "Are we near home?" Earth, 
 his ideal home. 
 
 Church and state powers in Europe during the Mid- 
 dle Ages were not favorable to having the New Year 
 begin at or near our Christmas date, but the old 
 heathen festival spirit was too deeply established to be 
 easily thrown out; the Christ mass was not substi- 
 tuted for New Year day. Prof. Poole, of the British 
 Academy, says the Year of Grace period for the con- 
 tinent, carried by the English missionaries, having 
 learned that near the same period in the year a harvest 
 festival of the aborigines was celebrated so the 
 churches had the Christ mass to occur as it does, and 
 
82 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 New Year later. The church festival of Easter, also 
 Lady Day, etc., were kept to mark New Years before 
 our Old Style was replaced by the proper one of 
 astronomers. The monks were careless and ignorant, 
 so church records are giving New Year day from 
 September to March ! 
 
 The Times of Los Angeles wisely asserts that the 
 church should be a retaining wall at the edge of the 
 cliff rather than a hospital at its base. 
 
 That eternal riddle, Life and Death, the here and 
 the there, that is highest in importance, can do little to 
 enlighten the near-animal nature in many. Schools 
 can not do more than stimulate the thoughtful, but our 
 form of government compels equal attention for all. 
 Artemus Ward in humorous way speaks of showmen, 
 who seek a living by exhibiting the wonderful, or the 
 Billy Sunday style of frightening people into their nets, 
 when the humor was shown of a man raking in money 
 "to look at the sublime eclipse of the sun! 10 cents 
 only! Come right inside this open-top tent and look 
 up!!" 
 
 When dying, the great Goethe exclaimed, "More 
 Light I" as nearing the end of life here, he possibly saw 
 the Great Light John Bunyan speaks of in Pilgrim's 
 Progress, and the repeated mental state referred to 
 by George Fox, of an Inner Light. John Burroughs, 
 lately dying, was not clear of the world's visions of 
 creatures he loved here, and asked, "Are we near 
 home?" I have a last photo taken near our Arroyo of 
 him, that I think should never have existed, of a last 
 illness that prsented tortures at a time that even our 
 animals seek to be alone, earth passing. 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 83 
 
 On this subject I quote, author unknown : 
 
 "When some one leaves this world to go on to an- 
 other, why it is usually said that the person 'died' ? Is 
 it right to say that John Burroughs, for instance, is 
 'dead/ when we know very well that he still lives, and 
 that his feet are wandering in fields of asphodel in 
 another country? That which was really John Bur- 
 roughs could not die. The poor, old worn temple that 
 was his body crumbled back to the dust from whence 
 it came. But John Burroughs, himself, is living still. 
 
 "The Christian Scientists say that he has 'passed 
 on/ The Salvation Army say of their departed com- 
 rades that they have been 'promoted/ Both these 
 phrases are infinitely better than the common usage." 
 
 Franklin H. Heald, of Los Angeles, when first he 
 published his Procession of Planets, about 1907, went 
 on camping trips, until 1921, then, with Mrs. Heald, 
 located near Death Valley. 
 
 Men of science avoided belief in his theory of the 
 universe, just as men keep up notions of the past until 
 the show-down comes. This in humanity, as a white 
 feather on a blackbird, meant that the flock instinct in 
 nature must be paramount. We are yet in that stage 
 of civilization as the Indian, our predecessor of the 
 soil, has belief in "medicine men/' 
 
 F. H. Heald explains in his Procession of the Plan- 
 ets the basic principles in nature thus: Matter has 
 three forms, and two motions, extending and contract- 
 ing. Water, we know, takes up the least room the 
 instant before it is in the solid form when it is in a 
 crystalized state its atoms lie between straight parallel 
 lines. When 32 degrees of heat are added its bulk is 
 
84 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 decreased and it becomes a liquid. Increase heat to 
 212 degrees, it becomes a gas and occupies 1730 times 
 the space it occupied as a solid. So all matter in- 
 creases in bulk as it is heated. Gas at the sun below 
 must hold the gas above up as far as it can, and when 
 it meets the gas from the next sun where upward 
 expansion from the two are equal, of course it can go 
 no farther. Gas is composed of spherical atoms, each 
 one from the sun held up and forced up by pressure 
 from the sun, held up and pressed up by pressure 
 from the next one. A pile of these atoms has the 
 force of expansion by heat at the sun, so must force 
 them up and hold them there until they become cold 
 enough to contract into solid matter; then they begin 
 to fall again, by gravity, to the sun, or center from 
 which they expanded. If there was only the force of 
 heat in nature, all matter would be expanded into space 
 as gas, never to return ; and if there was only the force 
 of gravity or contraction in nature, all matter would 
 finally be concentrated into one vast body. In either 
 case all would be silence and death. 
 
 When Sir Isaac Newton discovered the force of 
 gravity or contraction, by wondering why the apple 
 fell to the earth instead of into the sky, if he had 
 wondered also how it came into the tree top he would 
 have discovered the law of heat expansion, the oppo- 
 site of gravity, or the other great force in nature. It 
 was the force of expansion by heat acting on the soil 
 which sent the sap up through the pores of the tree to 
 the apple blossom to build the apples; and it is the 
 same throughout all nature. It is the force of heat 
 generated by the friction of decay or chemical decom- 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 85 
 
 position of food in our stomachs that warms our blood, 
 feeds our tissues, muscles and nerves, and sustains our 
 life; but it is the force of gravity, or contraction, that 
 collects the substances, condenses and ossifies the 
 bones, muscles and tissue, finally bringing the ripeness 
 and wrinkles of old age and death. 
 
 When matter returns to the sun, as solid matter 
 crystalized into separate elements, and is expanded into 
 gas tens of thousands of times its bulk when solid, and 
 is swelled up into space, it is composed of a perfect 
 mixture of all the elements in matter and nature. It is 
 forced up into intensely cold regions of space, where 
 it contracts into solid matter, and gathers into worlds. 
 It separates again into different elements, such as 
 water, air, and the various minerals, as it goes through 
 its evolutions returning to the sun, thus to start 
 force to again release it at the end of another journey. 
 
 This outpouring of matter and energy from the sun 
 in every direction in space, and a continual returning 
 of this matter and energy, guided by the minor forces 
 in the great circling orbits of the planets, moons and 
 other bodies, is an everlasting movement, until the 
 suns fail. 
 
 Lockyer says the visible universe, as distinguished 
 from our own universe, is less extended in some direc- 
 tions. They are most numerous, the bodies ,as a zone 
 which crosses the Milky Way at right angles ; the con- 
 stellation of Virgo being so rich in them that a portion 
 of it is termed the Nebulous region of Virgo; this 
 being at right angles to the Milky Way is on the plane 
 of the sun's equator, and as Mr. Heald says, is exactly 
 where we must expect to find the condensed crystals of 
 
86 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 this expanded gas, where new worlds should be 
 forming. The negatively charged Nebula is the sup- 
 posed cause of rotation from electrical disturbance. 
 
 From outworn theories in astronomy, we find that 
 the stars are supposed to have "influence" upon us of 
 the earth ! 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 87 
 
 BOOK TWO 
 
 From conquering Rome taking possession of the so- 
 called Holy Land at the time Jesus worked, suffered 
 and died that cruel death on the cross, there may be 
 excuses for the Jewish church showing great resent- 
 ment against a member (Joshua or Jesus) for offering 
 to reform the holy order of a holy church; but cor- 
 ruption had done its deadly work among even the 
 anointed and leaders of church. Kill the rebel ! And 
 they did ; but that murder has had far-reaching effect. 
 The old hymn, Dies Ire, says : 
 
 The Jews were wrought to cruel madness, 
 Christians fled in fear and sadness; 
 Mary stood the cross beside. 
 
 Ignorance in the population had prevented any per- 
 ceptible change from the preaching of the reformers, 
 Jesus and John. A woman at the well ,tradition tells 
 us, heard Jesus speak, telling of all the "things that 
 ever I did/' Astonishing! a fortune-teller abroad! 
 Others reported the dead had been given life again, by 
 a rebel against God, who had in His wisdom assigned 
 Death. Then, too, Jesus had driven devils from in- 
 sane persons into swine, and drowned the bad spirits 
 with the hogs ! 
 
 Intelligent and religious mortals everywhere have 
 had lasting sorrow over the loss of Jesus, in His early 
 prime; but traditions (His writings evidently de- 
 stroyed, as He was not an ignoramus), having with 
 the Father's care been preserved through all the cen- 
 
88 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 turies since! Some idol worshippers ,holding to the 
 idols of the earliest of mankind, had the audacity to 
 revive the dead forms of "altar/' "died for us/' so His 
 cruel death, a matter of course, as taking the place of 
 a slaughtered beast ,and priests grabbing for the 
 "burnt offerings." But such a stretch of cruel fancy 
 seems horrible! Shame, like fanaticism, has no 
 bounds. This being an age of reason, there need be 
 no more hesitation, as when the Roman judge, sentenc- 
 ing Jesus, said, "What is truth? I find no fault in this 
 man." The coming of a Christ, a man of God, was 
 the belief of pious Hebrews ; and when that one came, 
 "eating and drinking," living with common folks, he 
 was despised, forsaken, crucified. From the world's 
 terrible warrings and cruelties in every form, surely it 
 was the Christ when He preached Love, Compassion, 
 and Peace! 
 
 Greater the preacher so few are great and consci- 
 entiously pious then the greater thinker; divine na- 
 ture being nearest the Divine Being. Are divines re- 
 lated to the Good Samaritan, or too many to the de- 
 spicable Levites? 
 
 Brooks, the good man and famous preacher, said : 
 
 That makes us purer, makes us wiser, too, 
 
 And every beauty coming on a beam 
 
 Of God's sweet sunlight, brings new truth to view. 
 
 "Keep, O pleasant Melvin stream, 
 Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam ! 
 On the Indian's grassy tomb 
 Swing, O flowers, your bells of bloom ! 
 Deep below as high above, 
 Sweeps the circle of God's love." 
 
 Whittier. 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 89 
 
 When Jean Valjean felt the death-damp gathering 
 about him, Victor Hugo put into his mouth these reg- 
 nant words : "I do not know what is the matter with 
 me; but I see LIGHT!" 
 
 My old friend, Americus D. Buck, has an expres- 
 sion, when I offer some book to him, "That author 
 doesn't write for me." We cannot school ourselves 
 into something our nature does not care for. Cram- 
 ming and memorizing is not a thing of the spirit if 
 the spirit does not absorb the thoughts or images. 
 That is the reason for waste of time in school or 
 church. Mind has its own memorizing cord beginning 
 at the very beginning of life, or of instincts earlier, 
 thoughts of snakes or dragons of some long past ages 
 torment the timid always. Even physical peculiarities 
 of your life may linger. A man was seen lately at 
 Taormina, in Sicily, who has a tail like a chimpanzee. 
 Several thousand years ago, possibly, his strain of in- 
 heritance came of the meaner animal. 
 
 Darwin was a near-martyr for having said our race 
 sprang out of an earlier form of life the chimpanzee, 
 to illustrate, having all the bones of animal structure 
 man has. The bridge to reach lower than humanity is 
 now resting upon a figment of belief in some other 
 compromise structure. Pride goeth before a fall. Act 
 well your part there all the honor lies; the dishonor 
 may rest on your mean monkeying like the monkey. 
 
 Roman Catholic artists picture the dying Jesus on 
 the cross, with spikes through His feet, and instead of 
 the Roman death cap He wears a crown of thorns. 
 Greeks and other enlightened peoples are probably 
 correct the feet and legs bound with a cord. Roman 
 
90 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 soldiers, best drilled of soldiers, allowed no rabble to 
 interfere with hootings and violence against any of 
 the three, rebels or outlaws ; they were commanded to 
 execute legally (?), in that trinity being Jesus. 
 
 They also, (later than the Bible) give us some 
 pointers to explain the Man of Sorrows, as also the 
 Holy Ghost (?) for sacred Trinity. 
 
 Listen to the song of the fire, that element with 
 water will conquer all things physical on earth. So 
 long as the blubber of the whale, and fat remains of 
 the hybernating bear, we may expect a continuance of 
 ordinary life. When the life elements are withdrawn, 
 death of course follows. Ingenuity of man already 
 thinks over the possibility of using central-earth fires 
 for heat, to drive our machinery and cook our meals. 
 
 Traditions have long existed, that the earth will be 
 destroyed by fire or flood, just as we drown or cre- 
 mate anything ; but that cannot occur wholly while the 
 earth has life. Long before demise of our founda- 
 tion the earth man, like rats on a sinking ship, will 
 have fallen under the care of a later globe to mother 
 us, so nature will have provided for the infant souls, 
 late of the earth for heaven, to accept a new and 
 greater home. 
 
 As Father of us all will continue our provider, let 
 there be increase of joy and not fear. Innumerable 
 stars in our sky will as old earth offer all the souls of 
 all our past, a home, a heaven again. 
 
 The soul has had ever the instinct of self-preserva- 
 tion, for back to our earthly beginning has been a like 
 fear for humanity's beginning and ending of a sud- 
 den, fearful end thereof, of the earth. But really we 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 91 
 
 have fearful plagues, wars, panics, even since general 
 ignorance, worst of them all, is being well doctored. 
 
 A. B. Cutner sings grandly of our beautiful "waters 
 of life/' may too give us tenfold more of poetic 
 beauty to describe our hills and valleys, of holiest land- 
 scapes. 
 
 I want to go back to the rolling seas, 
 
 The dark blue seas and the skies, 
 Where the breakers roar on the wild seashore 
 
 And the mad gale sighing flies ! 
 
 I want to embrace in the speeding bark 
 
 The rapture of watery main, 
 While the billows play in its mighty sway 
 
 With its thunderous, fierce refrain ! 
 
 I long to go back to the crystal deep 
 
 With its rainbows of pearl within, 
 Where the mystic gloom slumb'ring weeds entomb, 
 
 And disport gay mermaids in. 
 
 I long to go back to the straying breeze, 
 
 And the great sea's thundering tide, 
 To the ocean's voice and the ocean's noise 
 
 By the deep blue ocean's side ! 
 
 I want to go back to the rolling seas, 
 
 The dark blue seas and the skies, 
 For, there I'll find my wandering mind, 
 
 Where the raging hurricane flies ! 
 
 Many find themselves themselves to blame even 
 after many reincarnations, groveling yet and "down 
 and out/' wearing the fool's cap, maybe gold-embroid- 
 ered ; the fool still uneducated in all the higher phases 
 of life. Surely these are not fit for any orthodox 
 heaven, when as proven they are unfit to live on our 
 humble earth, and behave themselves properly ! 
 
 Out damned spot ! is the curse that Shakespeare put 
 
92 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 in the mouth of a' Scotchman, that would as well suit 
 the cross-bearer everywhere. The murderer, the stig- 
 matizer of the greatest of mortals, as the war-makers 
 and conquerors; all those devoid of compassion and 
 rather enjoying cruelties, else the Roman cross would 
 never have been invented. Even the Primate of Man- 
 kind, the last and greatest Jewish prophet, was stabbed 
 by the iron nails of the cross to endure a lingering 
 death. Jesus yet and evermore will live his soul goes 
 marching on, giving to millions rejoicing or hope, 
 while proud and cruel Rome will soon be forgotten. 
 
 IN MY DREAMS 
 
 By FRANKLIN H. HEALD 
 
 In my dreams a roguish boy 
 Comes to me in mydreams. 
 
 He folds his little arms 
 Around me so it seems, 
 
 And tells me how he loves me 
 in my dreams. 
 
 In my dreams I of'times 
 See him playing in my dreams, 
 
 Building houses with his 
 "Gifts" and toys so it seems, 
 
 And he always builds "for papa" 
 in my dreams. 
 
 In my dreams he writes me 
 Little letters in my dreams, 
 
 Of how he longs to 
 See me so it seems; 
 
 All his postscripts are sweet kisses 
 in my dreams. 
 
 In my dreams I love 
 To linger in my dreams. 
 
 Were it not for living 
 Loved ones to me it seems, 
 
 I would not be awakened 
 in my dreams. 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 93 
 
 EVELYN HOPE 
 
 By ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead ! 
 
 Sit and watch by her side an hour. 
 That is her book-shelf, this her bed; 
 
 She plucked that piece of geranium-flower, 
 Beginning to die too, in the glass ; 
 
 Little has yet been changed, I think: 
 The shutters are shut, no light may pass 
 
 Save two long rays through the hinge's chink. 
 
 Sixteen years old when she died ! 
 
 Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name; 
 It was not her time to love ; beside, 
 
 Her life had many a hope and aim, 
 Duties enough and little cares, 
 
 And now was quiet, now astir, 
 Till God's hand beckoned unawares, 
 
 And the sweet white brow is all of her. 
 
 Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope? 
 
 What, your soul was pure and true, 
 The good stars met in your horoscope, 
 
 Made you of spirit, fire, and dew 
 And just because I was thrice as old, 
 
 And our paths in the world diverged so wide, 
 Each was naught to each, must I be told? 
 
 We were fellow mortals, naught beside? 
 
 No, indeed ! for God above 
 
 Is great to grant, as mighty to make, 
 And creates the love to reward the love : 
 
 I claim you still, for my own love's sake ! 
 Delayed it may be for more lives yet, 
 
 Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few: 
 Much is to learn, much to forget 
 
 Ere the time be come for taking you. 
 
 But the time will come, at last it will, 
 
 When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say) 
 In the lower earth, in the years long still, 
 
 That body and soul so pure and gay? 
 Why your hair was amber, I shall divine, 
 
 And your mouth of your own geranium's red 
 And what you would do with me, in fine, 
 
 In the new life come in the old one's stead. 
 
94 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 I have lived (I shall say) so much since then, 
 
 Given up myself so many times, 
 Gained me the gains of various men, 
 
 Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes ; 
 Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, 
 
 Either I missed or itself missed me : 
 And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope ! 
 
 What is the issue? let us see! 
 
 I loved you, Evelyn, all the while ! 
 
 My heart seemed full as it could hold; 
 There was place and to spare for the frank young smile, 
 
 And the red young mouth, and the hair's young gold, 
 So hush, I will give you this leaf to keep : 
 
 See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand ! 
 There, that is our secret : go to sleep ! 
 
 You will wake, and remember, and understand. 
 
 One having ripe experience in the world might 
 whisper to the devil that of two ways for destroying 
 the human race one selfishness, the other destruction 
 of modesty and worth of womankind. While in all 
 lower races the women were slaves, humanity was in- 
 efficient, weak and every way in savagery. * 
 
 The church today, aristocratic, depends upon women 
 help akin to her slavery. Acuteness, that amounts 
 to other weaknesses of aristocracy, as Artemus Ward 
 tells an experience of an emphatic showman who 
 took advantage to show an eclipse for profit. He set 
 up a tent open at the top, and harangued to folks on 
 his front: "Chance to see an eclipse in all its glory. 
 Admission ten cents only!" Others pursue "money- 
 changing" in church like in the open-top tent, a wor- 
 shipful place to see God! (He is within you.) We 
 all know that pure religion and undefiled, is as free to 
 all as our glorious air. Why pay to see God or an 
 eclipse ? 
 
 We hear constantly from the feeble prophets, pre- 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 95 
 
 dictions that the world would soon go up in smoke, * 
 be burnt. Others say at such and such a date, our 
 footstool would be exceedingly moist! All from the 
 Word of God. (Whose translation?) So the elect 
 put on robes of righteousness, and on hilltops tire of 
 waiting for the great event, appoint a new date, to 
 have the ascension, one just like Elijah, Moses, Jesus ; 
 but there is no room in heaven for chariots, horses, 
 old clothes, etc., even with the tentative home in 
 heaven located. Go and assist the next Elijah and 
 others. Put teams under shelter but only on earth; 
 also pack, until next call, all robes. 
 
 Our latest abuse of the blessed Book is to fill it fuller 
 of miracles, world's ends, and foolish prophecies. 
 
 Reincarnation in all of history's pages stands side 
 by side with other theories. In the Christian dispen- 
 sation are so many references. 
 
 Christians fled in fear and sadness ; 
 Jews were wrought to cruel madness ; 
 Mary stood the cross beside. 
 
 We have no truer account, in short, of that age of 
 Jesus, than this Catholic hymn discloses. On the cross, 
 amidst tortures, he had nothing to say against his 
 cowardly followers who so lately discussed their ex- 
 pectations of rewards or promotions the highest at- 
 tainable in that kingdom of the righteous they had 
 poor comprehension of. Enemies of Jesus were 
 divided, some of the established church; the others 
 liars against the Prophet: that he desired an earthly 
 throne as the conquering Romans had. 
 
 The tortures so crazed Jesus, evidently, that he gave 
 a helpless, desponding cry, "My God! hast thou for- 
 saken me ! !" 
 
96 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 It was well to call this greatest of sons the fore- 
 runner, for the time had not arrived evidently for a 
 spiritual era; in fact, 2000 years passed later and the 
 hell-hounds barked for "our rewards in heaven !" 
 They for the glory of God were murdering, burning 
 alive, or quartering infidels and witches. 
 
 Among our feebler-minded or lazy calling them- 
 selves the annointed and what for? who seat them- 
 selves with aristocrats, dogs of war, etc., and live 
 sumptuously upon church tithes, can be called modern 
 Levites. "Walking on the other side/* seeing no 
 manly path of duty; and poor or helpless of us mor- 
 tals they see not. I feel, we will have no churches 
 of Christ and houses of gods to reckon with Good 
 Samaritan worshippers, in the good time coming. 
 Servants may become masters and well fitted for the 
 places of command; then these fitter rulers may kick 
 away those warring and expensive of the humankind 
 now in power. Our beloved Lincoln was one of the 
 lowly kind, and said, "God must love the poor, he 
 made so many of us such/' In the school of life, those 
 of supreme intelligence may not be kept forever in the 
 lower classes. 
 
 Men and women of the shady class, night birds, 
 soiled doves, gamblers who think the world owes 
 them a living which it does not; must in the new 
 order be eliminated. Creatures in nature kill their 
 drones, when the cruel necessity comes ; this their evo- 
 lution as others surely "the voice of God/' 
 
 That eternal riddle, life and death, the here and the 
 hereafter, are of more importance to all, old and 
 young, than pleasing sights of movies, or sounds from 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 97 
 
 gabfests in tavern or temple as the saying is, these 
 sounds come in at one ear and go out the other. When 
 dying, the great Goethe exclaimed, "More light!" as 
 evidently bursting from the hereafter it may be sur- 
 mised. John Burroughs, dying lately, was not clear 
 of the world, yet asked, "Are we near home?" I 
 have a last photo of him it should never have been 
 taken showing his uneasiness, almost his torture, as 
 his last writings are forshadowings of. 
 
 Lowell has an expression : "They met by chance in 
 the usual way," in life yet and youth. Shakespeare 
 said of his beloved mate, "Ann Hathaway, she hath 
 a way "that he never would forget even in realms of 
 the blest." 
 
 So it is with all the living, love and sympathy 
 deepens whenever we "sing of the brave and the true." 
 Will we meet again? Surely, if we belong together in 
 life and in death. One star only differs from another, 
 in power, in glory. They all are found in star 
 clusters moons, habitable globes, and that center of 
 light! 
 
 A primate among the living of 2000 years ago gave 
 us the key that is of the soul everywhere, "I give you 
 a new commandment, love one another." 
 
 We have almost forgotten this best of all sayings, 
 that surely is the binding element in life. Our houses 
 fit for gods are very stately, but those therein lack 
 dreadfully that command of Jesus. In congregations 
 you may begin at the doors to cut out the dead wood. 
 Rulers of men, from Pope to Indian Chief, are more 
 concerned over the tinsels and the monies, in this life 
 of theirs, than anything that may pertain to that com- 
 
98 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 mand to ruler and ruled I have quoted above. Ye 
 thieves and those fallen among thieves, you await the 
 Good Samaritan, alike as two peas you are to be ! 
 
 "Conscience doth make," says Shakespeare, "cow- 
 ards of us all," and of all the most in need, those in 
 authority. Ye who are principals should be servants, 
 caretakers of those who need your care. If you were 
 on the heavenly path and ready to sing as chanticler 
 does after close of earth's night-time, then feel the 
 joys of life, and of those little ones coming back to 
 earth purified, surely you could and should preserve 
 here that heavenly jewel, compassion. 
 
 Here on earth, be not as the worms of the dust, 
 loveless for why a heaven for creatures pitiless? 
 Words, mere words, mean little, and wealth less. 
 When there must be ingathering, the good harvest, 
 spread the bounties thereof. The earth surely is a 
 good school. 
 
 It seems that the great reborn, for a purpose are 
 sent us in groups, in "star systems," I might say. 
 Milton and Shakespeare ; Lincoln and Grant. In Ro- 
 man times, to checkmate the cruelties of. the era came 
 Jesus, greatest prophet of all time. Then democracy 
 rose in its very earnestness. This republic of ours was 
 the result of the great upheaval by the people, for 
 the people and in two of the leading governments of 
 Europe, kings were slaughtered; since, the slowed- 
 down solemnities of the past, the aristicrats are as 
 tame as rabbits. "Let us have peace," said Grant. 
 A writer in N. A. Review says, "Neither Olympus nor 
 Calvary (war nor religion) dominates the scene, for 
 man is the great heir of both." So both have had their 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 99 
 
 day of dominion, indolence, and extravagance that 
 overburdened our time, and left mankind beggared in 
 lands "flowing with milk and honey." 
 
 Let us hope for another star group of immortals 
 with powers to rebuild those civilizations that "pro- 
 gressives" since have in digging for gold, ruined, made 
 the lands deserts. Halt the fighting storekeepers that 
 bring on world wars, so we may have world peace, a 
 society free from sex suicide, etc., to weaken strongest 
 of nations. 
 
 But give me one clear hour at close of day, 
 
 And whisper, as the darkling shadows fall, 
 The names of friends I lost along the way, 
 The faithful friends I can no more recall. 
 
 And while their names upon my lips are set, 
 Oh, speed the silent tides that I must stem, 
 
 That ere again I slumber or forget, 
 I may begin my eager quest of them. 
 
 L. Dodge. 
 
 In this fervor for reunion in spirit we have an idea 
 of rebirth akin and more real than those of earth 
 wholly. Religion may still keep the key, the password, 
 but dogmas about the infinite mystery must pass. 
 Education makes us more and more at home in this 
 world of progress, but for a well-balanced mind the 
 need can be felt for a night of the soul, a higher land 
 of delight, felt only in our dreams now and then. 
 Passing to the new morn again for a coming day, by 
 rebirth, society will have advanced as we get to an 
 age for appreciation. Wonders increase, souls in all 
 homes with love and compassion as the religion of 
 Jesus taught and to be understood later ; so this quiets 
 our fears of hell and purgatory, man's inventions 
 
100 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 surely; so we can, as the saying is, continue if neces- 
 sary to pour oil on troubled waters. The world no 
 longer a place of torture, a prison, but for real home 
 life, and joys of nature we never before dreamed of. 
 
 As Burroughs said, "satisfied with our earth/' 
 Whitman in his joy exclaimed, "I have positively ap- 
 peared" again ! 
 
 A well known writer says: "I am pessimistic by 
 night, but by day am a confirmed optimist, and it is 
 the days that have stamped my life. I was born under 
 a lucky star." May all thy rebirths be like unto this! 
 
 Some murmur when their sky is clear 
 
 And wholly bright to view 
 If one small speck of dark appear 
 
 In their great heaven of blue. 
 And some with thankful love are filled, V H 
 
 If but one streak of light, 
 One ray of God's great mercy, gild 
 
 The darkness of their night. 
 
 Richard Cheneviv Trench. 
 
 All life is a school, a preparation, a purpose: nor can we 
 pass current in a higher college, if we do not undergo the tedium 
 of education in this lower one. Author Unknown. 
 
 "Nature is ourselves written large/' says John Bur- 
 roughs. I have dwelt upon some phases of early hu- 
 manity, as exhibited by scriptural traditions, a species 
 of ancient history. We shed past life, just as life 
 ascends to higher light. 
 
 On earth "in the beginning" may mean only back to 
 savagery. Prof. Osterhout, studying our seaside kelps, 
 found death always going on, as with life, the turn of 
 the scales, he states, in turn break to mysterious life. 
 As with vegetable life, the A, M, B, etc., to properties, 
 say of the kelp; the cell means life, with elemental 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 101 
 
 forces diminishing. But the foundation link which 
 joins the organic with the inorganic elements, in all 
 living forms, chloriphel in plants, and diatomic in ani- 
 mal features, means the unthinkable spectacle bridg- 
 ing life and death. 
 
 A slight change in the thermal condition of the 
 globe, or some real flood of pernicious fluid, would 
 sweep us all to the discard and this may happen any 
 moment would happen if the creator was a mere 
 divine of the proselyting order, with foolish cry of 
 god, god; me, me! 
 
 This would be far less cruel than has religion or 
 Roman power inflicted, to say nothing about ferocious 
 quarterings or body burnt alive because of "infidelity/' 
 To say this fair earth of ours is not good enough for 
 the righteous, is rather laughable. If the Maker of 
 heaven and earth made anything amiss, it was man- 
 kind, if scriptures are truthful. But do not reckon as 
 of the higher light the mere rushlight that humans 
 hold up. 
 
 Man, like the rest of all life, will be improved by 
 every evolution, yea, by every rebirth. Prayers of the 
 righteous availeth much in the way of directing atten- 
 tion to future betterments. If we find that after a 
 general hope in mankind there is sure comfort for 
 death that evolution follows evolution, a theory of re- 
 incarnation has no terrors, as death now with uncer- 
 tainty. Whatsoever you may think of heaven, purga- 
 tory and hell, the hope of coming to the old home 
 land may be cheerful, may be joyous, as you will come 
 as come all the living from a state of simplicity, and 
 ignorance. 
 
102 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 Philosophy and theology agree that matter is a 
 coarseness as compared with spirit. See wheat grow 
 up only with assistance of silica in the stalk. In the 
 egg of every creature coming to life are the elements 
 of body and spirit. In the body goes the earth's fer- 
 tility fitted for spirit later, reincarnation. Life's en- 
 velope contains the new letter of credit for both life 
 and higher light. 
 
 As I made reference, the first of life in the world 
 was when one-cell particle of matter joined the one 
 nearest of opposite sex, or polarity. Even dust hardly 
 discernible has the quality of circular attachments to 
 other particles of opposite polarity. This law con- 
 tinues to the highest and greatest of aggregations, 
 heavenly orbs and suns. Fish and other of the near- 
 brainless creatures, cold-blooded, have only external 
 contacts of polarity. The vulgarest of all creatures is 
 mankind, with a literature filled with love gush and 
 art with naked women and men models. Whitman 
 told me the poem he wrote to kill sex vulgarity was 
 the very one that is loathed by all hypocrites and 
 vulgar-minded. 
 
 Mr. Heald lays much stress upon polarity of heat 
 and cold. This twin force seems to move everything. 
 In the earlier stage of our world, the oceans being 
 warm and earth supercharged with fertility, the vege- 
 tation was crowding and decaying, to accummulate for 
 ages and ages coal, crude oil, etc. Showing that our 
 present period is that of earth's sear and yellow leaf 
 autumn of the old man earth he is beginning to exact 
 extra clothing. Those of us not being minded of coal 
 oil products and remnant of coal left us, are bethink- 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 103 
 
 ing of getting nearer the sun. Nature will perform 
 the operation dissolve his cold remains in our sur- 
 charged neighboring sun then we will be warm ! 
 
 The passage from suns to earths, to form all the 
 globes of the heavens, is very like the spirit of all the 
 living being reborn. 
 
 There are honest rich men as there are dishonest 
 poor, and vice versa. You see the profiteers making 
 all kinds of lying promises, advertising tricks, so- 
 called bargains, to call attention of those who imagine 
 the greatest call is also the biggest bargain. Hence 
 so many millions of dollars spent annually in very 
 gaudy public advertising. Duplicity, dishonest trading, 
 come of craftiness and selfishness, so called provident 
 ones are also, maybe not honest ones of earth. "Bar- 
 gains" turn the heads of the weak, those Jesus came 
 to succor as lambs he would hold. But ye would not. 
 Souls differ of course, individually, and weak ones 
 pass th Lake of God time and again but are not re- 
 made only purified. 
 
 If anywhere in this essay the writer makes allusion 
 to the Other Life which no mortal can know please 
 lay this upon weakness of human nature training 
 among story-tellers, mind-readers, spiritualists, preach- 
 ers all who work you for a fat living. Soothsayers 
 all telling you about gods and higher abode you can 
 get for so much at the agency on earth. 
 
 Animals meek and harmless, or nearly so, are called 
 wild beasts and monsters in all languages. This is far 
 from truthful, and shows our unkindness and selfish- 
 ness towards the little people. A lizard not longer 
 than your foot is a gila monster. 
 
104 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 Even an Ice Age has its uses, especially after rank 
 growths in an age of wonderful vegetation. The great 
 covering of water in form of ice will then give way 
 to stretches freed from former deserts, and an age of 
 coal and oil, accessible beneath or at surface of the 
 ground. 
 
 "Jesus set small store by charity. The philanthropy 
 of almsgiving was to Him a mere cloak for the im- 
 perfections and inequities of human relations. He put 
 all the emphasis of His teaching and example upon 
 justice and love. In a word where these prevailed 
 charity would be unnecessary. We have traveled so 
 far from the ideals of Jesus it is not easy to restore 
 them. But there is no other way to find a permanent 
 solution for the troubles that disturb us. His road is 
 the only road. It involves sacrifice. We cannot avoid 
 the cross. But beyond Calvary lies the realization of 
 our hopes. Chicago Post. 
 
 The fool and his money are soon parted ; abroad, 
 the Wilhelms, Henrys and Georges nowadays kill no 
 dragons, yet their proceedings cost the people billions 
 in money and countless die in fear of blue-blooded 
 autocrats such as these bringing on costly wars. The 
 churchly Pope and the financially poor were born 
 exactly alike to all appearance. If I was born in an 
 oven would I be a loaf of bread? asks the witty Irish- 
 man. In one and all the tribes of man a spirit of 
 nature rules. Scientists could not explain the concern 
 of the get-rich-quicks how to convert other metals 
 into gold, or how to secure the desired metal from 
 sea water; but an evil-minded man may handle mil- 
 lions of our money, for his profiteering, to do the 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 105 
 
 trick. How long will such tricksters have us at their 
 mercy, or grabbers (even for charity money) keep 
 begging "for Jesus"? 
 
 A well-balanced healthy life never tires of earth. 
 That is more possible than might be surmised of the 
 old heavenly vision of churchmen who sing over and 
 over Glory to God in the Highest ! Praise Him all ye 
 Saints!! whatever said about (imagined) surround- 
 ings, trumpets, golden streets, and the very sands are 
 precious stones everywhere for everybody. The priests 
 never look at nature, I presume, with trained eyes. 
 John Burroughs loved the wild woods as nature al- 
 ways has very beautiful and abounding life. John 
 Muir loved the greater view of mountains, and all of 
 us might exclaim at dying, as did Humboldt, Oh, for 
 another hundred years ! 
 
 Scientists may explain something of sunlight and of 
 summer lightning, but these would be trifling things 
 of the earth, earthy, as compared with seizing upon 
 inner light that never was on sea nor shore. You 
 may see movies to represent god Jupiter tossing up 
 streaks of lightning, but this is not explaining elec- 
 tricity, any more than I can in trying to tell you of a 
 pure spiritual element, such as spiritualists (?) often 
 try to be familiar with knowledge of the unseen. 
 Nearest the Greatest Prophet came to an explanation 
 was, the kingdom of God is within you ! 
 
 Sympathy plays a great part, but attraction of mes- 
 merism has greater effect. Watch movements of 
 birds, etc., in flocks. You note the oneness, the unity 
 in movements. 
 
106 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 Verses in Yale Review by C. M. Lewis, tell an old 
 tale of a statue : 
 
 Pygmalion paid no worship to the warm sun's dazzling beams, 
 
 But shrined a dim ideal in the temple of his dreams. . . . 
 
 The Cyprian Aphrodite heard the anguish of his call. 
 
 Zeus frowned; she heeded not; and heard not, till too late, 
 
 The slow relentless tolling of the iron bells of fate: 
 
 She breathed into the ivory the breath of carnal life, 
 
 And to a mortal dreamer gave his dream to be his wife. . . . 
 
 Unnatural, unspeakable, filled full the cup of fate, 
 
 And one fair child, Adonis, last of Pygmalion's race, 
 
 Avenged on Aphrodite her blushing act of grace. . . . 
 
 For down here in the valley, secure from wind and weather, 
 
 Is the true hearts' homing-place for me and mine together. 
 
 Writing of life with the inner light of the impal- 
 pable soul, is never anything practical however some 
 may believe in ghosts or "spirit forms/' Shakespeare's 
 line of divergence is I think correct, "from whose 
 bourne no traveler returns." This conception I am ad- 
 vocating, rebirth, for "Far down here in the valley, 
 secure from wind and weather, is the true hearts' 
 homing place for me and mine together." 
 
 No truer conception I opine ever originated in 
 Greece or elsewhere entire separation of the Here 
 and Hereafter. Lo heres and lo theres, like those of 
 earlier days advocate going to heaven "with their boots 
 on," very evidently not the true life and inner light. 
 
 Kindness to the poor and lower animals results 
 often in the harm done by visitors whose motive is 
 the exercise of a dilettante virtue. It is more difficult 
 to rejoice with those that do rejoice than to weep with 
 those that weep ; for good fortune awakens envy, but, 
 as has been shrewdly said, the misfortunes of our 
 friends give us secret pleasure. While there can be no 
 real kindness to others without sympathy, feelings of 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 107 
 
 sympathy have, in themselves, no moral quality. With 
 animals, "regard for others" terminates early; repro- 
 duction and care of offspring are little more than in- 
 stincts planted in the physical nature and needs of 
 animals/' 
 
 If what is known as human lovemaking were only 
 and truly holy, we would hear very little about divorce. 
 Even birds mate without "catawauling" and so live 
 as pairs mostly, throughout their lives. Isn't it at last 
 recognized that God is everywhere? Are matches, 
 marriages, made in heaven? A great question if the 
 latter are not, as it would preclude divorces. 
 
 Joaquin Miller is rated by an editor of L. A. Times, 
 Mr. Ford, as the third great number of the Overland 
 group. His was a free spirit, brooking no restraint, 
 an impassioned nature instinct with the love of the 
 primitive and of untrammeled life. Freedom he de- 
 manded and freedom he achieved both in his life and 
 in his poetry. Born in Indiana, he was brought to 
 Oregon while yet a child. At fifteen he threw off all 
 restraint, ran away from home, wandered from one 
 California mining camp to another, and finally took 
 up his life with the Indians. This was the life that 
 he loved. He abandoned himself to it with all his 
 ardor. So he was adopted by one of the tribes and 
 married the chief's daughter, in true story-book style. 
 But he was a nomad whom the Red gods called. So 
 he packed his kit and trekked. Nicaragua, South 
 America, Europe, the Orient, the Rockies, Alaska 
 called him and thither he went, breathing deeply of 
 the free air of romance and of advanture. 
 
 His picturesque garb, with flannel shirt, flowing red 
 
108 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 tie, high top boots, into which his corduroys were 
 tucked, combined with his unshorn locks to make him 
 the cynosure of all eyes when he was in England, and 
 it was here that his verses first attracted marked at- 
 tention. When he was at last ready to settle down it 
 was on the hills back of Oakland that he built his 
 cabin. Here he had the view of foothill, bay and 
 ocean, ever changing and so ever new. 
 
 His poems are mostly contained in "Songs of the 
 Sierras/* "Songs of the Sunfands" and "Songs of the 
 Mexican Seas." Though highly individual in form, 
 they have a free musical sweep, are full of color and 
 of beauty and of the romance of the West. Unde- 
 terred as they are in form as in thought they created 
 a literary sensation and gave a new impetus to poetry. 
 With Walt Whitman it may be justly said that Joaquin 
 Miller enlarged the conception of verse both as to 
 form and content." 
 
 "Lord, Lord, when thou comest into thy kingdom, 
 remember me !" It started with the first followers of 
 Jesus, will continue while selfishness exists in man- 
 kind. The Romans, most famous of human butchers, 
 ceased conquering neighboring nations long enough to 
 look out for the heavenly "rewards," becoming Chris- 
 tians. Spain raised the Cross and blotted out civiliza- 
 tion on the American continent. All Christian na- 
 tions have yet wars and rumors of wars ; yet base their 
 lamblike ethics upon him who had said, "Put up thy 
 sword!" Ministers of Christ under whatever sect 
 have claimed exclusive guardianship of the truth of 
 God as it is in Jesus! None of these show more 
 Christian resignation than did the late John Bur- 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 109 
 
 roughs, whom churchmen do not accept in fellowship. 
 He said: 
 
 All serene I fold my hands and wait, 
 Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea ; 
 
 I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, 
 For lo! my own shall come to me. 
 
 Problems of good and evil God and Devil are 
 oldest, yet freshest, that man has to deal with. It was 
 in the Garden of Eden, yea, tree of life and its fruits. 
 According to Paradise Lost, the great poem of Milton, 
 this same problem was solved in heaven. 
 
 When was beginning of earth, and when the close 
 of its life, no human can guess aright. As we all have 
 hopes of higher and better life, there may be in our 
 rebirth, some better world for us. For the weak in 
 any sense, mind or character, may be born into exist- 
 ence lower down the scale, or tribulations somewhere 
 met to complete us. "If I had life to live over again !" 
 Surely you will always on your soul have the right 
 "tab." 
 
 Sometimes my Conscience says, says he, 
 
 "Don't you know me?" 
 
 And I, says I, skeered through and through, 
 
 "Of course I do. 
 
 t You air a nice chap ever' way, 
 
 \ I'm here to say! 
 
 / You make me cry you make me pray, 
 
 And all them good things thataway 
 
 That is, at night. Where do you stay 
 
 Burin' the day?" 
 
 And then my Conscience says, onc't more, 
 
 "You know me shore?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," says I, a-trimblin' faint, 
 
 "You're jes' a saint! 
 
 Your ways is all so holy- right, 
 
 I love you better ever' night 
 
 You come around, 'tel plum daylight, 
 
 When you air out o' sight !" 
 
110 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 And then my Conscience sort o' grits 
 
 His teeth, and spits 
 
 On his two hands and grabs, of course, 
 
 Some old remorse, 
 
 And beats me with the big butt-end 
 
 O' that thing -'tel clostest friend 
 
 'Ud hardly know me. "Now, says he, 
 
 "Be keerful as you'd orto be 
 
 And allus think o' me !" 
 
 Riley. 
 
 Seekers after truth, teachers and not preachers only, 
 were at the time of Jesus located possibly in Greece or 
 other countries favoring education. Solon gave as a 
 truth, that until after death there can be no man called 
 happy. Grecian thinkers made Harmony the touch- 
 stone, for the soul's betterment. Socrates said man 
 from his own fear of death, unprepared, reckoned the 
 swan's song before dying a soul-cry of sorrow: his 
 own actions, condemned to death by poison, shows the 
 grandeur of a brave man going hence. He referred 
 to Anaxagorus as applying himself to thoughts of re- 
 birth in his meditations about life, and says this sage 
 taught that mind is the cause and controlling power of 
 the universe. Many were the theories rife in ancient 
 times as to the universe, some saying the earth was 
 encompassed by a vortex, declaring heavenly bodies 
 were held in orbital place yet still the notion that our 
 earth was flat prevailed. 
 
 A few blest souls that clearly see the right, 
 
 Who love the truth and have a steadfast will, 
 Live life to do the right in love, not might, 
 
 To seek the truth with zeal which naught can still, 
 To help those stumbling on life's rugged way. 
 
 These are content for now to know in part, 
 Because they inly feel that God bears sway, 
 
 And peace, eternal peace, dwells in their heart. 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 111 
 
 The oldest road, 
 
 And the craziest road of all ; 
 Straight it goes to the witch's shade 
 
 As it did in the days of Saul; 
 And nothing has changed of the sorrows in store 
 For such as go down on the road to Endor. 
 
 The earth is yet a strange land to most of us; then 
 why wish for any better? The songs of birds and in 
 childhood with thy mother are surely sweetness of life. 
 The scenery here is so entrancing that all the fancies 
 of the most pious of artists have never pictured a 
 heaven of hereafter with the sublime beauties and tints 
 of earth. So let us all be content that we are here 
 and here maybe to stay at intervals ! Tarry in earth's 
 grand scenery forever is the highest conception of 
 bliss and beneficence if we are beneficent! When I 
 point to the doctrine of transmigration not new as 
 return after death in a rebirth, it may be height of 
 most heavenly desires for Home, Sweet Home, is the 
 greatest of songs for mortals, and to meet again a 
 loving mother is sure haven in the highest point of 
 bliss. Our scriptures, our society affairs, our greatest 
 longings, fall far short of this hope of being again in 
 father. 
 
 God, Father, Maker, Ruler, are names of a higher 
 force that must remain forever nameless in the spirit. 
 Be content with blessings, and fulfill thy duty as duty 
 comes along the Great Chain of Being, and no need 
 for worship except in every moment. To thine -own 
 self be true, here on earth and keep peace with all the 
 living ! 
 
 As an echo of times of religious persecution in 
 France, I find this extract from a story by Gilbert 
 Parker : 
 
112 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 "To her the vesper bell was the symbol of tyranny 
 and persecution. All that she had borne, all that her 
 father had borne, the thought of the home lost, the 
 name ruined, the heritage dispossessed, the red war of 
 the Camisards, the rivulets of blood in the streets of 
 her loved Rouen, smote upon her mind, and drove her 
 to her knees in the forest glade, her hands upon her 
 ears to shut out the sound of the bell. . . And a reve- 
 lation seemed to have come upon her, and, for the 
 first time, she was a Huguenot to the, core. Hitherto 
 she had suffered for her religion because it was her 
 father's religion, and because he had suffered, and be- 
 cause her lover had suffered. Her mind had been 
 convinced, her loyalty had ben unwavering, her words 
 for the great cause had measured well with her deeds. 
 But new senses were suddenly born in her, new eyes 
 were given to her mind, new powers for suffering to 
 her soul." 
 
 Religious intolerance does not apply to any one 
 nation. England, Italy, Spain, Germany have shown 
 the same hall-mark of aristocracy. Mohammedans 
 and Eastern Christians have kept themselves poor try- 
 ing to enforce certain doctrines upon those who dif- 
 fered from them severally. As free as is America, the 
 same intolerance prevails. The latest get-together are 
 followers of Wesley, that church as others having in 
 slavery times in this country agreed to part, because 
 human bondage was approved of by Southern Meth- 
 odists. The devil and the deep sea yawned ; but as 
 public morals and education advance, religionists at 
 this later age of aristocratical failures has caused a 
 stampede of churches to the side of freedom. In this 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 113 
 
 age of Lincoln what miracles of common sense! A 
 laughable combination salvation and army a con- 
 cept to link God with Devil must go, or fighting Chris- 
 tians have revival. 
 
 How round gray arch and column lone 
 
 The spirit of the Old Time broods, 
 And sighs in all the winds that moan 
 
 Along the sandy solitudes ! 
 
 In thy tall cedars, Lebanon, 
 
 I have not heard the nations' cries, 
 Nor seen thy eagles swooping down 
 
 Where buried Tyre in ruin lies. 
 
 Nor watched in midnight's solemn time 
 The garden where His prayer and moan, 
 
 Wrung by His Sorrow and our Crime, 
 Rose to ONE listening ear alone. 
 
 I have not kissed the rock-hewn grot, 
 
 Where in His mother's arms He lay. 
 Nor knelt upon the sacred spot 
 Where last His footsteps pressed the clay; 
 
 Nor looked on that sad mountain head, 
 Nor smote my sinful breast where wide 
 
 His arms to fold the world He spread, 
 And bowed to bless and died! 
 
 Speaking of spiritual impressions, inheritances, we 
 approach an old theme, reincarnation. First of intel- 
 lectual race inheritances seem of Greek or earlier 
 origin. Belief in gods as souls of earthly heroes, was 
 followed by the Druid concept of golden boughs (seen 
 as spirit, not with the mortal eye), was in the Bible 
 of the Hebrews recorded as fact in the priest's pres- 
 ence of the unknown god, the vision. 
 
 When the aircraft in use gets old-fashioned, the 
 other, a still finer element, comes next to be exploited. 
 
114 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 Already other waves in the wireless-message contriv- 
 ance, is much in use. 
 
 Air and electricity were long mysterious agents to 
 early races of mankind. A god, Jupiter, is represented 
 as above, handling the lightning ! Now that electricity 
 is well in control by man, and air heavier than ether, 
 we will require to go higher yet for latest experiments. 
 "Heaven" will come next in our evolution, to get to 
 the top ! Or we may be delving for heat toward earth's 
 center ! 
 
 Man sees where nature is blind ; he takes a straight 
 cut where she goes far around. In him she has added 
 reason to her impulse, conscience to her blind forces, 
 self-denial to her self-indulgence, the power of choice 
 to her iron necessity. How well she has done by man, 
 man alone knows. How much he is dependent upon 
 her, he alone knows; how completely he is a part of 
 her, he alone knows. We may call man an insurgent 
 in her world, as an English scientist does, but he is 
 her insurgent ; she inspires him to insurrection and she 
 puts his weapons in his hands. His cause is her cause 
 and his victories are her victories. 
 
 Only by personifying nature in this way and stand- 
 ing apart from her and regarding her objectively, can 
 we contrast her methods and her spirit with our own. 
 The mother she has been to us becomes apparent. In 
 spite of all her shortcomings and delays and round- 
 about methods, here we are, and here we wish to 
 remain." John Burroughs in Yale Review, Jan., 1920. 
 
 Our purpose in this book is to advocate the old 
 theory, reincarnation, our return time and again to the 
 physical life. It is no new belief for this progressive 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 115 
 
 age, even the most devout among us believing in the 
 doctrine that Jesus will be born again. So say we all ; 
 the new birth giving this conjecture, as to whether 
 we shall know each other? I might venture here a 
 thought that if a family had been harmonious, will 
 not part when the night called death passes over as 
 sure as day in the spirit; but the old names and old 
 places are of the past, so only the spirit keeps alive. 
 
 Jesus Christ, the Logos, the Divine Word, was a 
 new revelation, though Plato had "longed for some 
 divine word, if only it might be." To the Greeks and 
 Jews the new phase of spirituality was a stumbling 
 block, and the Prophet was crucified; but fortunately 
 not all his teachings perished, as the new era had a 
 means of preserving such writings as escaped censor- 
 ing and burning by the priests. In a summing up of 
 doctrines said to have been given the world by Jesus, 
 there stands, a recent reviewer says, simple home life 
 with an atmosphere of love and truth and intelli- 
 gence; where real life was not lost sight of and ob- 
 scured by the then (church) refinements or atrophied 
 by pleasures; where ordinary needs and common 
 duties were the daily facts: where God was a con- 
 stant and friendly presence. The prophet, however, 
 was being brought into the higher light the spiritual 
 phase of Being very far above divine miracles, lo- 
 heres, and other claptrap. 
 
 Cheer fulest of peoples it seems are races that long 
 endured slavery, and now thank God (not man) for 
 freedom. The Hebrews of old when captured and 
 sent among vegetarians in the garden of Paradise 
 region, had longings for the fleshpots of Egypt, the 
 
116 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 old home. Scriptures recount their query, How can 
 we sing the songs of Zion in a strange land? Cheer- 
 fulness did not desert the race, howsoever attacks of 
 homesickness. Vegetarian king of Babylon stirred 
 their wit to remark, he "ate grass like an ox." 
 
 Quick wit is not lacking with our Afro-Americans. 
 Mrs. Pickett tells of Old Mose, ex-slave, who fished 
 later for his sustenance along the James river. A New 
 York visitor at the Pickett plantation asked Mose 
 what price he received for diamond-backs? " 'Bout a 
 dollar a dozen." "Why, at the New York hotels you 
 can sell them at $10 apiece!" Mose, swelling up with 
 fun, said, "You see dat bucket o' water; hit's wuf a 
 million dollars in hell !" 
 
 Should church property be taxed is a question. All 
 depends upon the use these properties are as public 
 institutions. If tithes go into our public treasuries for 
 public use then there is good reason to help the church 
 members on the equitable plans for taxation. Take 
 off taxes on houses of God, when taxation for the 
 public use is not called charities, missions to foreign 
 lands, etc., but for "our own use." 
 
 Edisonally speaking, dear reader, did it ever occur 
 to thee that the story of Jesus, Levite and Robber, 
 might hint that these could be partners? One a lure 
 for the other? Positive and negative as electricity in 
 dark cloud, may not have active contact. Theology, 
 with its purgatory, heaven and hell, is not teaching 
 anything to the righteous other than heaven is our 
 home of a vast camp-meeting order. I would enlarge 
 the place of joy at the home, to complete a circuit of 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 117 
 
 life the here attuned to the hereafter; from death, 
 to rebirth ; to death again. 
 
 A few years ago in Europe the evil traits in man- 
 kind became such that thievery and other deviltries 
 were punished by sentence of death. Cruel, some may 
 say, but it was a question of life in peace. The honey- 
 producers, by destroying useless bees, the female 
 working bee finding insufficient food could be gath- 
 ered for the hive, determined on thus destroying 
 drones. 
 
 In sublime poem, Milton depicts Lucifer, like a mis- 
 chief-maker, who started rebellion in heaven and was 
 sent flying earthward bethought him of good busi- 
 ness (for him) down amongst the Adamites; and 
 straightforward he came to us. Between fights and 
 frolics he was ever after in his glory on earth. His 
 two weapons, laziness and war, did the business, sure, 
 for us. His work has given us overloads of poverty. 
 Paradise Lost, depicting the twin evils, is followed by 
 this poet's Paradise Regained. Here is brought for- 
 ward the Prince of Peace, the industrious carpenter 
 who builds up, as Lucifer tore down. Our glorious 
 American, Lincoln, finding evil fruits of slavery every- 
 where, keeping up the idle-rich at home, and in Europe 
 and elsewhere a breeder of aristocrats rich and idle 
 classes, had by heroic endeavor to put down the war 
 element of the home rebels, and their co-workers for 
 slavery, in England and France. Noblest endeavor of 
 any mortal in history. A writer says : 
 
 "Should you be able to persuade others to follow 
 your lead, and rank all work by its usefulness rather 
 than by its gentility, you would accomplish a much 
 
118 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 needed reform. Gentility is the most worthless pos- 
 session in the world. Thousands have starved for it, 
 and thousands more have lived cramped, forlorn lives 
 because they worshipped at its shrine/ 1 
 
 In all the years of my observation of the beavers 
 and their ways I never knew of them being caught 
 short on their winter's feed, unless it was a case where 
 the ruthless hand of man brought distress on them by 
 cutting out their dams or destroying their houses in 
 mid-winter. The first work on their dams usually 
 commences about the middle of September, in North 
 Dakota. They first go to the dam breasts and do a 
 little repairing with mud and twigs, after which they 
 dredge out or dig any canals the situation of the hour 
 would warrant. By this time the old weather prog- 
 nosticators had cast their horoscope for signs of the 
 coming winter, and whatever the result, action fol- 
 lowed. If severe cold snaps were expected early, work 
 on the dams stopped for the time that all hands could 
 commence cutting down and draging in their willow 
 brush and tree-tops before ice formed in their water 
 slides which would bother and retard them, getting 
 their food in shape for winter storage. A winter with- 
 out snow in the fore part of it, means water exposed 
 to hard freezing weather, and as a consequence thick 
 ice that will freeze deep down in the beaver's feed bed 
 and give them much trouble the balance of the winter, 
 if the same cannot be avoided. This is the reason that 
 from warnings of a snowless winter the beavers raise 
 the breasts of their dams from one to two feet higher 
 than in winters that they expect a heavy snowfall in 
 the earlier part. Long cold winters can be forecasted 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 119 
 
 by an intelligent observer of beavers' ways by noting 
 an extra large feed bed and the extreme care that they 
 use in replastering their houses ; the work on the latter 
 being usually completed by the first days of October." 
 
 The above quotation from Joseph H. Taylor's book 
 on The Beaver indicates how the white man with civ- 
 ilization ruins any fair realm. Killing inhabitants, 
 not only red brethren but wild animals ruthlessly. 
 In destroying beavers alone, large tracts along our 
 streams were deprived of moisture, made desert. Kill- 
 ings have robbed our native wilds of countless crea- 
 tures that in former times had the forests, now de- 
 stroyed, to live thereunder in all peace and security. 
 
 We have neither to curse our gods nor to praise 
 them; neither to do penance nor to offer burnt offer- 
 ings (food for priests), but only to take and use wisely 
 the gifts bestowed upon us. 
 
 There are neither skeptics nor atheists in regard to 
 nature and the true God. He can exist in the higher 
 place and can never be changed. God is as many- 
 sided as nature is. The savage and merciless aspects 
 of nature are of Him also in the jungles of Africa 
 as well as in the walks of culture and refinement; in 
 the destroying tornado as well as in the gentle summer 
 breeze; in the overwhelming floods as well as in the 
 morning dews, says John Burroughs. 
 
 Dogs of war, conquerors, are first in war, last in 
 peace. Next to this very evil element come distress- 
 ful millions of their victims, and hordes of profiteers. 
 Money as exchange symbol is not evil, assuredly; but 
 when the rogues and idle rich get hands on it, then it 
 is linked with evil and can do no good. Idleness is 
 
120 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 an accursed evil has no place in nature. We see mo- 
 tion everywhere in the heavens and every portion of 
 animated being. Honey bees will take the lives of 
 their drones (males) when scarcity of food is theart- 
 ened on years flowers are scarce. 
 
 Exclusively blessed ones, biblical to the core, are 
 now, they say, near the era of the Second Coming of 
 Jesus; or they to meet him above with their robes on. 
 They never die! "Remnant, true believers now liv- 
 ing/' says our local publication, Messiah's Coming 
 Kingdom, "should first go through the shadow of His 
 death, burial and then the reality. We should be sown 
 or buried, a natural body, and then be raised a spir- 
 itual body. But provision is also made for a company 
 in the last days of the dispensation who are not to 
 pass through the grave, but are to be changed. We 
 undoubtedly are living in that time, and no true be- 
 liever should think of death or the grave, but strive 
 to be among the overcomers. Some have honestly 
 taken the stand that if all believers during the gospel 
 age had been sufficiently strong in faith they might 
 have escaped the grave and been with us today. After 
 this the Son of man is revealed sitting upon a white 
 cloud, and forthwith the harvest of the earth, or gen- 
 eral ingathering of surviving Christians, is reaped by 
 him. As soon as the 144,000 sealed ones are securely 
 caught up to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, 
 the heavenly Jerusalem, straightway there goes forth 
 an angel, representing a body of preachers and jour- 
 neys through the midst of heaven with the everlasting 
 gospel. The immediate and final sequel is the treading 
 of the winepress at the battle of Armageddon, when 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 121 
 
 the incorrigible are crushed in the vintage of God's 
 wrath. Thus terminates the description of the five 
 years of the second advent of Christ, including the 
 translation of the first-fruits-Christians at its begin- 
 ning, and of the harvest-Christians at its close. God's 
 word plainly states that a woman must not be "al- 
 lowed to teach or usurp authority/' We know of no 
 better way for preachers to use their tithing money 
 than in literature bringing light and truth. The Lord 
 will touch your heart to give, but you must do the 
 giving. The finances of the editor are very meager." 
 This is not different from condition of other poor 
 editors than Brother Miller. But why be concerned 
 about money at so terrible, so prophetic, so pathetic a 
 time of catastrophe! 
 
 Before Lincoln reached his acme of achievement, 
 we heard he was too common to be great, and looked 
 like a baboon. Socrates, greatest of the Grecians, was 
 a "corrupter of youth" through his queer doctrines, 
 for his judges were found, to condemn him to death 
 by poison. Omar Khayyam was called a drunken 
 loafer, an infidel. Even Jesus was scoffed at as a hobo, 
 mere carpenter in Nazareth especially was he an in- 
 fidel deserving all the agonies of slow torture on the 
 cross. 
 
 We hear all kinds of complaints as did Job, of 
 trebles and vexations in living the chief villain (as 
 playgoers say) was Maker and Moving Cause of all 
 life's activities. Job trusted things would move bet- 
 ter by-and-by. A beneficent One sends to earthly 
 existence once and oftener as to a house furnished: 
 here in Los Angeles if the human animal is dissatis- 
 
122 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 fied, dirty, negligent, and howling about better treat- 
 ment, he must move or pay rent and "no children per- 
 mitted." 
 
 Human nature in the days of Jesus was much the 
 same as today. We have missions abroad and pulpits 
 filled, by those of the Levite order ; we have true re- 
 formers doing work without money and cheerfully 
 doing their best. Jesus scornfully points to the Levite 
 as passing on the other side of trouble, of serious 
 calls to help a brother. How will it be possible to 
 build up the old aristocratical institutions, by aristo- 
 crats themselves, the help ! help ! yelpers. They follow 
 advice of the poet, "Donst thou marry for money, but 
 go ivhere money is." 
 
 Evolution is a fact, as we see in growth everywhere. 
 Not only do the creatures of earth change, but the 
 earth itself ages. Single lifetimes are mysterious, for 
 many small things among those living about us have 
 their tadpole-frog or earlier changes of form. The 
 bee has progressed so far as to control progeny the 
 atrophied female can be seen destroying males of the 
 hives, one pair (sex) doing the office of hundreds of 
 individuals. The worst enemies we have among 
 worms and the like, are those underground breeders, 
 coming up at stated intervals like our seventeen-year 
 locusts and the army worm, that in their last of trans- 
 formations to the perfect state will overrun acres and 
 destroy every bit of the vegetation. Farmers may get 
 control of this over-breeding mania when his own kind 
 require no more divorcing. In old time the greater 
 the power a chief or holy man had, the more were his 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 123 
 
 "concubines/' Thanks to increase in education the 
 chief can no longer control the woman. 
 
 It will bear examination, the statement that convicts 
 have sharper more cunning intelligence than the 
 general population, but lack much of pity. You find 
 in little depredators as mice (and not their fault) in- 
 telligence suited to their size, as that governing hu- 
 man crooks, the latter in polarization all wrong. Make 
 better traps to catch the big ones. It does not make 
 for hardening of youth to great extent, catching the 
 "innocent" lice and mice. It will not likely make us 
 less in innocence, destroying humans possessed of bad 
 instincts, than to be carefully eliminated, for these 
 negative ones only live to study how to "get you" who 
 are on the side of innocence. 
 
 There was a recent case of a citizen "being born 
 again" after eight years of silence as in a grave. A 
 Denver mute dumb, blind and paralyzed in every 
 limb, so helpless that it was necessary to feed him by 
 means of a tube through his nostrils, unable to feel, 
 smell or taste or even to think, to all intents and pur- 
 poses unconscious, Luther Dionne was carried into the 
 county hospital. Now he can point out the town of 
 his birth, and with a pencil he can print, laboriously, 
 the name of the village. 
 
 "Would'st thou the young year's blossoms and the fruits of its 
 
 decline, 
 
 And all by which the soul is charmed, enraptured, feasted, fed, 
 Would'st thou the Earth and Heaven itself in one sole name 
 
 combine ? 
 I name thee, O Sakuntala! and all at once is said." 
 
 Goethe. 
 
 Main purposes in this book will be to promote joys 
 of home, and of peace. These are surely more in the 
 
124 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 way of hope and sure expectancy than is a heaven in 
 belief only. The physical love of life here, are our 
 vital purposes always. From Henry IV in Shake- 
 speare, I copy, the dramatist glorying at end of a war : 
 
 I like them all, and do allow them well, 
 
 And swear here by the honor of my blood, 
 
 My Father's purposes have been mistook; 
 
 And some about them have too lavishly 
 
 Wrested His meaning and authority. 
 
 My lord, these griefs shall be with speed redressed; 
 
 Upon my soul they shall. If this may please you, 
 
 Discharge your powers into their several counties, 
 
 As we shall ours, and here between the armies, 
 
 Let's drink together friendly and embrace, 
 
 That all their eyes may bear these tokens Home 
 
 Of our restored Love and unity 
 
 The word of Peace is rendered, hark how they shout ! 
 A Peace is of the nature of a conquest 
 For then both parties nobly are subdued 
 And neither party loses ! 
 
 The human family seems never satisfied with earth, 
 being of such covetous nature. Self-preservation 
 hustle influenced our races from very earliest times. 
 Man wants to go faster, imitating spirit, that travels, 
 Plato says, from Here to There without lapse of time, 
 or any pain. When airplane or under-sea crafts tire 
 him, he will seek further knowledge of the earth's in- 
 terior, or further, seeking universal schemes toward a 
 heaven! But "heaven" is within him. How pitying 
 he is "to the man sitting in darkness" ; some other sort 
 of civilization, or medicine, he must take. We get 
 farther away from health and undefiled religion every 
 century ,and when innocent, childlike nations are used 
 up -how we all will be as like as two peas ! 
 
 Prescott's Conquest of Peru relates : The Spanish 
 were nearly mad with joy at receiving these brilliant 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 125 
 
 tidings of the Peruvian city. All their fond dreams 
 were now to be realized, and they had at length reached 
 the realm which had so long flitted in visionary splen- 
 dor before them. . . . "It was manifestly the work 
 of heaven/' exclaims a devout son of the church, "that 
 the natives of the country should have received him in 
 so kind and loving a spirit, as best fitted to facilitate 
 the conquest ; for it was the Lord's hand which led him 
 and his followers to this remote region for the exten- 
 sion of the holy faith, and for the salvation of souls, 
 . . . . Having now collected all the information 
 essential to his object, Pizarro, after taking leave of 
 the natives of Tumbez, and promising a speedy return, 
 weighed anchor and again turned his prow towards the 
 south. Still keeping as near as possible to the coast, 
 that no place of importance might escape his observa- 
 tion, he passed CapeBlanco, and, after sailing about a 
 degree and a half, made the port of Payta. The in- 
 habitants, who had notice of his approach, came out in 
 their balsas to get sight of the wonderful strangers, 
 bringing with them stores of fruits, fish and vegeta- 
 bles, with the same hospitable spirit shown by their 
 countrymen of Tumbez. 
 
 Repeatedly they saw structures of stone and plaster, 
 and occasionally showing architectural skill in the exe- 
 cution, if not elegance of design. Wherever they cast 
 anchor they beheld green patches of cultivated country 
 redeemed from the sterility of nature, and blooming 
 with the variegated vegetation of the tropics ; while a 
 refined system of irrigation, by means of aqueducts 
 and canals, seemed to be spread like a network over 
 the surface of the country, making even the desert to 
 
126 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 blossom as the rose. . . . On his way, he touched 
 at several places where he had before landed. At one 
 of these, called by Spaniards Santa Cruz, he had been 
 invited on shore by an Indian woman of rank. . . . 
 Pizarro found that preparations had been made for his 
 reception in a style of simple hospitality that evinced 
 some degree of taste. Arbors were formed of luxuri- 
 ant and widespreading branches, interwoven with 
 fragrant flowers and shrubs that diffused a delicious 
 perfume through the air. A banquet was provided, 
 teeming with viands prepared in the style of the Peru- 
 vian cookery, and with fruits and vegetables of tempt- 
 ing hue and luscious to the taste, though their names 
 and nature were unknown to the Spaniards. After 
 the collation was ended, the guests were entertained 
 with music and dancing by a troop of young men and 
 maidens simply attired, who exhibited in their favorite 
 national amusement all the agility and grace which 
 the supple limbs of the Peruvian Indians so well quali- 
 fied them to display. Before his departure, Pizarro 
 stated to his kind host the motives of his visit to the 
 country, in the same manner as he had done on other 
 occasions, and he concluded by unfurling the royal 
 banner of Castile, which he had brought on shore, 
 requesting her and her attendants to raise it in token of 
 their allegiance to his sovereign. ... He took with 
 him gold, some of the natives, as well as two or three 
 llamas, various nice fabrics of cloth, with many orna- 
 ments and vases of gold and silver, as specimens of the 
 civilization of the country, and vouchers for his won- 
 derful story. " 
 
 Has Spain received glory and wealth to yet endure 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 127 
 
 the inroads of time? Eveti at our time of greater 
 civilization, only one nation (our own), has published 
 any desire to quit robbing weaker nations. Still 
 Pizarro methods predominate! 
 
 Our American poet, Whitman, personifying the 
 Soul says: 
 
 "O, vapors! I think I have risen with you, and 
 moved away to distant continents and fallen down 
 there, for reason ; I think I have blown with you, O, 
 winds! O, waters, I have fingered every shore with 
 you. All forces have been steadily employed to com- 
 plete and delight me. Now on this spot I stand with 
 my robust soul, etc. Hands of the sisters, Death and 
 Night , incessantly, softly wash again and ever again 
 this soiled world/' 
 
 "When once/' Bacon says, "the mind has placed be- 
 fore it noble aims, it is immediately surrounded not 
 only by the virtuous, but by the gods/' This is evo- 
 lution. 
 
 Jesus says, "To him that hath shall be given." 
 
 Plato affirms that "the soul is wholly immortal, and 
 when it is removed from this spot, it is there without 
 pain; so it must needs be, Axiochus, if you have lived 
 piously, you will be happy either below or above." 
 
 Confucius says, "The glory and tranquillity of a 
 state may arise from the excellence of one man. If a 
 man love others, and no responsive attachment is 
 shown to him, let him turn inwards and examine his 
 own benevolence." 
 
 "The stern behest of duty, 
 
 The doom-book open thrown, 
 The heaven ye seek, the hell ye fear, 
 Are within ourselves alone." 
 
 Whittier. 
 
128 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 Franklin H. Heald ,in his theory of the procession 
 of planets, has reasoned out his case from facts, with- 
 out any tendency to mysticism. 
 
 Early Hebrews believed in their Burning Bush, and 
 in ancient times idol worship and ghost-seeing indi- 
 cated there was evidence of this unknown force of 
 light. Shakespeare in his great tragedy, "Macbeth," 
 gave this unexplained something both the knocking 
 power (at the gate), and the visions. 
 
 Spectrum analysis shows the same elements as our 
 sun, for the earth and all other bodies. A more search- 
 ing knowledge will some day follow on the spiritual 
 side of light. 
 
 The war now ended will give us a new era. Prus- 
 sianism and Priestcraft must go! and then the lowly 
 Jesus, the leveler of old, will come into His own. De- 
 spised, forsaken, crucified, this representative of re- 
 publicanism moved among the publicans and others, 
 His true mission never wholly revealed, even when 
 the new religion had later sprung up to do Him pious 
 honor. His fabled Samaritans, Levites and Magda- 
 lenes will now be better interpreted. Woman is free 
 now to live, and no longer must be slavish burden 
 bearer or bearer of children, as her only "spheres." 
 
 Our palaces of kings and houses of God or gods 
 will be turned to better use, to poor houses, maybe, so 
 that the halt and blind and poor will have veritable 
 refuges at last. Every human being must, as Bunyan 
 said of the tub, "stand on its own bottom." Church 
 and state tyrannies must go. Less than 300 years ago 
 John Bunyan in Merry England was kept 13 years 
 in Bedford jail for preaching in a private residence; 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 129 
 
 indicted as "a person who devilishly and perniciously 
 abstained from coming to church/' And he the 
 author of Pilgrim's Progress and other pious and ever- 
 popular books ! 
 
 George Fox of the same period and region as Bun- 
 yan, for preaching the gospel, was seized by law 
 and robbed of his goods, and often sent to noisome 
 jails. His followers in the Society of Friends, to the 
 number of hundreds, were ruthlessly mobbed, jailed, 
 or murdered. 
 
 Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man" would indi- 
 cate our earthly personal evolutions, almost as marked, 
 one from the other, as the final one here, the Great 
 Adventure. 
 
 As sunlight may carry all the materials to make up 
 worlds, why should not "Light that never was on sea 
 nor shore" carry souls, life ; and cannot this better 
 part of all animate creation, after rest at the center, 
 go again into motion beyond, attracted by the loved 
 souls gone before; or, to go again into outer realms? 
 The new-born babe holds forth the hands to grasp the 
 beloved one, so we should approach the finite or in- 
 finite, our best beloved. 
 
 "Lead, kindly Light," that lighteth everyone upon the 
 earth. The Guide will not turn from Light to Dark- 
 ness in either direction making the procession the 
 evolution. George Fox, in his homely phrase, said, 
 "Mind the Light !" Another meaning than the one he 
 intends, we may indicate here: Mind is the channel 
 of all reunion, Finite with Infinite. 
 
 You can always discern the difference between a 
 "miracle" worker and the true minister of Jesus, for 
 
130 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 the former makes ready advances to get your money, 
 and the latter is true to his teacher in the spirit will 
 "render unto Caesar the things that are honestly Cae- 
 sar's, and unto God the things that are His." 
 
 "A servant is worthy of his hire," says the trickster. 
 As no man "can find out God," no man can be hon- 
 estly hired by Him. Work ye for the well-being of all 
 in Life do it in the spirit of love and compassion. 
 
 This auto, aero, and movie generation has much 
 more of frivolity than had that generation before it. 
 In 1653 George Fox of England devised a very sim- 
 ple but solemn marriage ceremony. After a young 
 couple had attended his (Quaker, and very solemn) 
 meetings and announced there their intentions of mar- 
 riage, at last came the meeting place ceremony, with 
 a personage of the law present as recorder. They, 
 standing before the assembled Friends, say, as Richard 
 Roe, who, taking Mary Doe by the hand, said : "In 
 presence of our friends assembled, I take to be my 
 wedded wife promising, with Divine assistance, to be 
 unto her a loving and faithful husband, until death 
 shall separate us." Then the woman (with only "hus- 
 band" omitted, and "wife" inserted), repeats the 
 promise. 
 
 This is a very practical age, in a well-governed re- 
 public. Before the Jewish nation succumbed 2000 
 years ago, poverty was general, for, after paying 
 the tithes, 10 per cent, on incomes, the people must 
 raise taxes for government purposes. The tithe went 
 to autocratic religious extortioners hirelings in name 
 only, as they lived in great comfort. This class had, 
 before they killed Jesus, to bear much ridicule and 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 131 
 
 some violence from Him, the free prophet, or "out- 
 law." As the Bible says, Jesus scourged them, and 
 His way of treating "the Levite priest" is of record. 
 God-hirelings, so-called, are today our citizens with- 
 out regular employment. The citizens assist them, 
 aside from the exaction of ten per cent, in money 
 raised by tithes from parishioners for them to use. 
 If they go abroad to the "men sitting in darkness," 
 they are, on return here, well healed, yet helpless in 
 regard to public duties. As our poor need assistance, 
 this class of the community should be publicly en- 
 rolled and be made to work. They were of public 
 school education (also theological schools or Bible in- 
 stitutes), so could be of great help to the public. 
 Mothers everywhere are overburdened by care and 
 work, so why not turn all agents of God, so-called, 
 into By-the-Sweat-of-the-Brow class? I have a niece, 
 a doctor with Presbyterian missions in Arabia, and the 
 wealthy sheik of the region encourages her in different 
 ways imploring her to help his downtrodden people 
 but asks her to be among them not as a missionary. 
 
 Authority is the thing to scare you out of your 
 boots, be you ever so innocent of wrong-doing. A snip 
 of a British officer, leading his crowd of armed over- 
 whelmers near Bunker Hill, got his soldiers into a bad 
 mix, captured by our Continentals. Our sturdy Revo- 
 lutionary general was being browbeaten by the haughty 
 captive chief, who roared out, "By what authority?" 
 The answer of our patriotic general was "By authority 
 of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." 
 This is the best, the most pat, and enduring answer to 
 aristocracy that could be made. It was good before 
 
132 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 the days of Putnam; it is good today. The same 
 blatant cry of authority, religious, strength of arm, or 
 trickery, can turn up the rottenest element to rest on 
 the surface of affairs with stench, with abuse, with 
 money (or God's authority (!) no one with intelli- 
 gence would obey. 
 
 The insolence was crowded back in our Revolution, 
 and today we hope will be alike successful whenever 
 an unauthorized (by the people) set of rulers attempt 
 government. The like fate will be meted out to science 
 or religions attempting to override the common sense 
 of a common people. 
 
 It appears from tradition Jesus was a fighter for the 
 right, as shown in a fight He had with money changers 
 in the temple. Today we have perplexities in belief, 
 yet with education and science now, the mystery busi- 
 ness (miracles, etc.), mildly turn to movies, acrobats 
 in the air springing securely across voids from one air- 
 plane to another; and the ouiji board that crazes many 
 who are looking for some hokus pokus from spirits. 
 All have trace of a brain weakness that comes from 
 use, generation after generation, of rum, tobacco or 
 opium mostly. Systems are also weakened physically 
 from private diseases and poisons. Paradise Lost 
 might be rewritten, and as Quaker Thomas Elwood 
 suggested to his friend John Milton once, "Thee 
 should tell us of a paradise found." If Jesus by re- 
 birth comes to earth, as religionists oft aver He will, 
 we may expect a still more elevated poem than that of 
 blind Milton. 
 
 We begin to learn of true mysteries of sky and plan- 
 ets, and suns ; and when more writers can follow John 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 133 
 
 Burroughs in telling us of the real life of bird or ani- 
 mal, the earth should attract all attention, long diverted 
 to a heaven of the Loheres. Then will we have a tith- 
 ing for human knowledge not yet attained, that is far 
 above gold and rubies. Then, possibly, will be seen 
 spirits (I think not), in nature aside from all the crea- 
 tures returning here by a rebirth. The grandeurs and 
 endless variety in nature here is surely above any con- 
 ceptions of a golden, trumpeting, hallelujah resting 
 place for spirits only spirit; unseen forms. (No 
 trumpets, no mouth to sing.) 'The kingdom of God 
 is within you/' was a fitting expression of Jesus, when 
 we can keep thoughts above any concepts of kings, 
 priests, or any pleasures of society, past or present. 
 We are not longer worshipping mere idols of dead 
 men in this age of equal rights, equal privileges, caring 
 not what any boss may think about this and that. 
 
 Venerate the Scriptures, in the saying, "If we go to 
 the uttermost ends of the earth," there is the God of 
 law and order. (In the old times, possibly, the earth 
 had ends, but now it is round as a ball.) "How can 
 we sing the songs of Zion in a strange land?" Thou 
 needst not, for in thy everlasting garb of the spirit, 
 there is no strange land. "I sent my soul into the in- 
 visible, the after-life, to tell; and it returned to me 
 and said, Thou, thyself, art heaven and hell." God is 
 everywhere. Why wish to meet Him in bliss (heaven) 
 if thou wilt live in peace and happiness? 
 
 As a soldier, going over the top with an unloaded 
 gun, would mean want of discretion or wilfulness, so 
 you must in this world have a trained will. If you 
 take to flight in an airplane, and have the ocean or 
 
134 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 mountain to cross, then you find a trained will essen- 
 tial. 
 
 If a young person of either sex contemplates mar- 
 riage, then an age of selfishness ice cream and candy 
 era must be abated. This most essential period 
 reached, selfishness must be thrown out of your then 
 high flights of fancy. The pilot of an airplane would 
 not need a better trained will than yours should be to 
 steer you on a true course. Lay low, and think ! Call 
 up a trained will power to command or to your need. 
 You will truly seek then that power within the in- 
 stinct guiding all animal life. For if the mate, chosen 
 with a care the bird shows in preparation for nesting, 
 has met the crisis with like care, you can go ahead 
 knowing all is well. 
 
 Man's a little chunk of ice ; 
 
 Woman is the Sun ; she lets 
 Herself beam on him. How nice 
 
 And soft he gets ! 
 
 A person who loves ease, and yet counts upon a re- 
 birth that will still keep him among the slothful high- 
 ups, will be much surprised, maybe, to find that his 
 soul has, like the ass's skin in the story, grown in- 
 finitesimally small, to be brought again into reincarna- 
 tion amidst his equals, the sloths or monkeys. What a 
 hullabaloo was raised when Huxley and others proved 
 that man and monkey have the precise skeleton in 
 every bone ! 
 
 We had returned to us of earth, a century ago, when 
 our republic was endangered, such grand men as Lin- 
 coln and Grant, just in the nick of time as the saying 
 is. While great souls are sent as needed to rebirth, 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 135 
 
 the lower world of wild creatures will have souls also 
 sent. Those humans bfore tried and found wanting, 
 possibly, will appear in families of monkeys or sloths. 
 The devil takes the hindermost, is a common saying. 
 
 Related to immortality seems that almost invisible 
 element protozoa. After its host's death this continues 
 its life, almost formless, in the dead body. Cycle of 
 life at first passes six stages from fertilization until 
 leaving the egg form. Oxygen seems of primal use, 
 as use of ai ris our last hold or want of hold upon life. 
 
 It is crass conceit to say you know the world, for 
 throughout countless lives of creatures you cannot 
 even see so many of microscopic smallness. You only 
 see a few of the larger forms in all the kingdoms of 
 nature. Thus you can pass away from earth, and 
 again return to the first stage, ovum, the spirit return- 
 ing rejuvenated after death (soul sleep) to again reach 
 the middle of life's stage. 
 
 Ignoring the opposite pull of polarity might destroy 
 hell. As well try to write hot and cold into a com- 
 promise unit. When a Higher Light illumines, there 
 comes the Christ spirit, and later our Elder Brother, 
 Jesus. The age we live in is not Christian, if that 
 means being on the side of right to any great extent. 
 
 Evolutions have brought us out of savagery; they 
 will lead us to God (good). Jesus gives no account 
 of heaven, no assurance of our fitness for it, only of 
 home concept. 
 
 A Quaker poet, Whittier, whose ancestors were so 
 maltreated for heresy in the Puritan days, is now ac- 
 counted a Christian guide and an honored hymn- 
 writer, all denominations honoring him. Another be- 
 
136 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 liever in voices, the Maid of Orleans, was burned at 
 the stake as an infidel at behest of a bishop, who, 
 Judas-like, betrayed the savior of France to her Eng- 
 lish foes. Puritan cruelties exercised against old 
 women martyrs so-called witches show a big blot 
 in our history. And but for educated thinkers we 
 would yet have a dark age kaisers thirsting for plun- 
 der and power, and fanatics stirring up all kinds of 
 disorders. 
 
 Let us follow the teachings of Jesus and other com- 
 passionate democrats. There is a general belief in 
 churches that the Comforter will again be reborn on 
 earth, so that I may presume to say the theory of re- 
 birth, as old as sun-worship, maybe, will bear in time 
 good fruit. 
 
 THE OPEN ROAD 
 
 BY C. B. DODGE 
 
 The open road lies out to the hills, 
 Where the cares will find you not; 
 
 Each turn of road brings a vista new 
 Of a quiet sylvan spot. 
 
 And the song of the thrush is ringing, 
 
 Oh, a wonder song thou art ! 
 And a solace comes in the woodland, 
 
 And quiet steals to the heart. 
 
 Then it's leave behind the noisy town, 
 
 Where the cares and worries be, 
 To wander far o'er the open road 
 
 To the land of leaf and tree ! 
 
 Oh, world, the wealth of life and love 
 Breathes out from thy primal sod; 
 
 The open road lies out to the hills, 
 And that highway leads to God ! 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 137 
 
 "It is not easy to hear and apply to one's self the 
 exhortations of preachers who, aloft in the pulpit, 
 seem to be carrying out a mere formality; it is just 
 as difficult to escape from the appeals of a layman 
 who walks at your side/' says Sabbatier, author of 
 the Life of Saint Francis. The latter was more the 
 recluse, camper in the woods, than preacher. Deeds, 
 not words, as this great man did his work principally 
 for the poor, and his friends, the birds and other lowly 
 creatures. 
 
 A man who worries over his own soul and to con- 
 vert others, as did the fanatics about 1212, when send- 
 ing abroad into the region of Jerusalem defenseless 
 children. The little ones were ruthlessly slain, or 
 taken by enemy soldiers, to spend the rest of their lives 
 in slavery, and homeless. This was far and away 
 from the religion of Jesus the compassionate. In Eng- 
 land, likewise, the poor were neglected and downtrod- 
 den by worthless priests and rulers, until a friend of 
 the poor, Robin Hood, made havoc among the idle 
 rich churchmen. 
 
 Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, slaughtering each 
 other, for ages, and all other wars, upon unbelievers 
 or enemies, must cease, or compassion such as Jesus 
 taught ,and education fosters, must go to the discard 
 and we go back to savagery! 
 
 Ovid, the Roman poet, speaking of Pythagoras as 
 his interpreter, says: "Our bodies, too, are changing 
 always, and without any intermission, and tomorrow 
 we shall not be what we were or what we are now. 
 And, believe me, in this universe so vast, nothing per- 
 ishes; but it varies and changes its appearance, and 
 
138 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 to begin to be something different from what it was 
 before, is called being born; and to cease to be the same 
 thing is to be said to die. Whereas, perhaps, those 
 things are transferred hither, and these things thither, 
 yet ,in the whole, all things ever exist." 
 
 As Pythagoras was considered to have pursued 
 metaphysical studies more deeply, perhaps, than any 
 other of the ancient philosophers, Ovid could not have 
 introduced a personage more fitted to discuss these 
 subjects. Having traveled through Asia, it is sup- 
 posed that Pythagoras passed into Italy, and settled 
 at Crotona ,to promulgate there the philosophical prin- 
 ciples which he had acquired in his travels through 
 Egypt and Asia Minor. 
 
 The Pythagorean philosophy was well suited for 
 the purpose of mingling its doctrines with the fabulous 
 narratives of the poet, as it consisted, in great part, 
 of the doctrine of an endless series of transformations, 
 its main features may be reduced to two general 
 heads, the first of which was the doctrine of metam- 
 psychosis, or continual transmigration of souls (as in 
 rebirth) from one body to another. Pythagoras is 
 supposed not to have originated this doctrine, but to 
 have received it from the Egyptians, by whose priest- 
 hood there is little doubt that it was originated. 
 
 A native of India says: "We've been taught for 
 ages after ages, and centuries after centuries, to turn 
 our gaze inzvard toward the realms that are not those 
 which are reached by the help of the physical senses. 
 Great as the physical body may be, there is something 
 greater within man, underneath the universe that is 
 to be longed for and striven after." 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 139 
 
 Plutocratic religions must give way for democracy 
 as Jesus taught and practiced. The cycle of matter 
 and that higher one of the spirit, admit of no release 
 from law here and hereafter. No agencies for God 
 to excuse, to help, to exonerate. The little verse of 
 Bishop Doane may be cited: 
 
 The parish priest of Austerity 
 
 Climbed up in a high church steeple 
 To be nearer God, that he might 
 
 Hand down His word unto the people. 
 
 So he daily wrote in sermon script 
 What he thought was sent from heaven, 
 
 And he dropped this down on the people's heads 
 Two times one day in seven. 
 
 In his age, God said, "Come down and die." 
 
 And he cried from out the steeple: 
 "Where are thou, Lord?" and the Lord replied, 
 
 "Down here among my people." 
 
 The human mind, as shown in progress of inven- 
 tions, has no recourse but from imitation of nature. 
 Our minds get the concepts only of earth (and what 
 the light within prompts), so why not have a religion 
 that will glorify the Original of all earth's glories? 
 "This is a sinful world" is taught by priests, yet the 
 Original of all is praised the revilers of His works 
 knowing no other world ! There are billions of crea- 
 tures and numberless plants, unknown to us "of the 
 home plant," yet some may be intelligent and inclined 
 to see and appreciate any of these: this is religion look- 
 ing backwards, and not seeing the all-absorbing beau- 
 ties of the present. 
 
 Education is far from that concept of reward in an- 
 other world a heaven of bliss and praise to God. 
 
140 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 Prof. Sumner, deceased, of Yale University, once said : 
 
 "The higher you go in social attainments, the 
 greater will be the restraints upon you. The gait, the 
 voice, the manner, the rough independence of one or- 
 der of men is unbecoming in another. Education 
 above all brings this responsibility. Discipline in man- 
 ners and morals does not belong to the specific matter 
 of education. The educated man must work by him- 
 self without any overseer over him. He finds his com- 
 pulsion in himself and it holds him to his task longer 
 than any external compulsion. This responsibility to 
 self we call honor, and it is one of the highest fruits 
 of discipline when discipline, having wrought through 
 intellect, has reached character. 
 
 "It is well that we should remember that the re- 
 ligious life looked for God in law and ritual, in the 
 abnormal and unusual ; but for Jesus, as for every man 
 who has earnestly sought to help his fellows, the ordi- 
 nary and commonplace were enough. How the growth 
 of the priest and the progress of ecclesiasticism all 
 through the middle ages, overlaid and obscured Jesus 
 his spirit and His teaching and the 'hungry sheep 
 looked up and were not fed P How slow man has been 
 in learning that the kingdom of God is among you, 
 even within you, in the common people of whom all 
 other teachers have declared P J 
 
 Further, says this writer: 
 
 "The Pharisee in his tithing of 'mint, anis and cum- 
 min/ in laying excessive stress on the trivialities of the 
 law, on Sabbath keeping, on tithes and temple ritual, 
 on the washing of pot and platter, shut himself out 
 of all sharing in the fellowship and friendship of 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 141 
 
 Jesus, for he utterly missed His spirit. In all that he 
 supposed constituted righteousness, the Spiritual had 
 no part. Absorbed as he was in the vexations and 
 pettiness of trivialities he was but playing to himself a 
 contemptible comedy of holiness/' 
 
 A Night of the Soul ! From age to age selfishness 
 has increased. We kill all harmless birds and animals 
 for sport only ,or for food; robberies are on the in- 
 crease ; even children, helplessly aged persons, pets and 
 domestic animals, are cruelly treated. Lambs and 
 monkey calves are led to the slaughter, or themselves 
 are starved that the selfish humankind may get richer 
 milk and cream. Physical nature will in course of 
 events become rigid and cold as the earth loses by age 
 our moon already presents only one side to us. So 
 the earth, in turn, will show only the one face to the 
 sun, later to be swallowed up in that fiery furnace. 
 Meantime, all the living creatures of earth will die, and 
 be reborn on some globe as a new home, probably the 
 next planet in our system behind the earth ,if habitable. 
 There may we have joys, flowers and fruits, in fact, a 
 second home for all ! 
 
 This is of a greater evolution, indeed. 
 
 We are learning more and more of the Spirit ; hav- 
 ing less and less of the fear of death that is no 
 monster at all. All will abide under and trust the 
 Beneficent Creator at last. Death and birth are near 
 alike. 
 
 Half the congregations of so-called worshippers 
 may have a certain belief in Beneficent Christ, yet so 
 set in the crooked way that these have murder in their 
 hearts if others will not cringe to a selfish opinion. 
 
142 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 Rows upon rows the graves are found in Slander's 
 fields! So numerous that continuous graveyards 
 stretch around the world, and then not hold those 
 killed by cruel slanderers. Yes, in Slander's field ! 
 
 Real education is not a common kind of culture, 
 for business, war, etc. Matthew Arnold, in the Intro- 
 duction of his essay, "Sweetness and Light, says : 'In 
 one of his speeches a short time ago, that fine speaker 
 and famous Liberal, Mr. Bright, took occasion to have 
 a fling at the friends and preachers of culture. Teople 
 talk about what they call culture,' said he contemptu- 
 ously, 'by which they mean a smattering of the two 
 dead languages, of Greek and Latin.' It is well for 
 Americans to remember that the cultured Englishman, 
 Mr. Gladstone, was the first of the aristocrats who fa- 
 vored in Parliament the side of slavery in our fight 
 for the United States and freedom in 1861-5." We 
 want no such culture. It was just such autocrats as 
 Gladstone who financed that war for slavery, yet the 
 scoundrels failed of their purpose to break up the 
 United States. The same kultur we fought against in 
 the World's War later. 
 
 There is nothing in the universe stationary nothing 
 void of HEAT. Evolution may refer to life as we 
 know it. Matter cannot be "blessed" into animation of 
 soul, nor can our bodies be mummified to preserve the 
 mortal likeness preserve from changes of time. 
 
 A rose she was, most passing fair, 
 That makes more sweet the summer air 
 
 For one day only; 
 A solitary cloud at noon, 
 That, melting in the dome of June, 
 
 Leaves the blue lonely: 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 143 
 
 A bird at dawn that upward flies 
 And falls from out the scarlet skies 
 
 Of Eldorado; 
 
 A murmuring shell upon the shore 
 Swirled sudden down beneath the roar 
 
 To realms of shadow; 
 
 A sumptuous moth, in autumn hours, 
 A-flutter o'er ephemeral flowers 
 
 In vain endeavor ; 
 A firefly in the fields of even, 
 That lights a little space of heaven, 
 
 Then fades forever. 
 
 Lloyd Mifflin. 
 
 As I once told John Burroughs, my opinion was that 
 the greatest, unpleasantest fall of man was when he 
 fell from the trees, then in his arboreal stage of nature. 
 He began then to kill and eat innocent creatures on 
 the earth, descending to the low estate of a carnivore 
 or buzzard. Keep going, going so you get some- 
 where. 
 
 A chance for home gives the weakest (or wickedest) 
 criminal some cheer, of the dreamy kind. Out of the 
 depths, cries Evolution. It takes no "Revelations" to 
 give your inmost thoughts something of that core of 
 Being your mind's eye pictures of HOME, if it was 
 a happy one! The devout Catholic, with his "Hail, 
 Mary," has conscious touch of home, here or here- 
 after. 
 
 It matters not what science may tell of matter and 
 worlds. A single cell of the lowest life has a mag- 
 netic cell to reach for its next neighbor, cell of an 
 opposite polarity. This is the way of life here Love 
 and Home. The Sun of Righteousness! We know 
 throughout all history of divine influence a light that 
 but seldom lights upon sea or shore ; the days not ac- 
 
144 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 tinic, even, but known of those who "see in the dark." 
 When the human spirit reaches near the Highest, be 
 sure there will be no selfishness in such a Presence 
 
 Come back, come back across the flying foam, 
 We hear faint, far-off voices call us Home ; 
 Come back, ye seem to say ; ye seek in vain : 
 We went, we sought, and homeward turned again. 
 
 Come back, come back! 
 And lighter far than ocean's flying foam, 
 The heart's fond message hurries to its HOME! 
 
 Students of the University of Michigan have begun 
 a new and excellent life work in agriculture, that prom- 
 ises much . There the young folks, studying under 
 government supervision, are being paid for vocational 
 training for the farm. Their courses stipulate that a 
 certain period be devoted to practical agriculture. Stu- 
 dents are required to pay for the public lands on instal- 
 ments, from a salary of $100 a month which each re- 
 ceives. The men, some of whom begin work with 
 families, are to be housed in large community bunga- 
 lows, until separate houses will be built. There will 
 be schoolhouses, stores, churches, recreation halls and 
 grounds. 
 
 The culture secured in our American schools it is 
 hoped will eliminate much of ignorance, in every phase 
 of life. We have now too much of childishness and 
 selfishness. 
 
 Aggravating foreign troubles now and such with 
 disease uncultivated catch readily in our republic is 
 near anarchy now in Russia, from misunderstanding 
 of their prophet, Tolstoy. He, with ideas of culture 
 such as Jesus', is conducing the boorish now in need of 
 a government. 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 145 
 
 We all have Hope ,that means Heaven, and from 
 the present lookout one can visualize there the robes 
 of the Very Reverends, preachers robed with right- 
 eousness, the reformed murderer or thief, and those 
 with robes cleverly made for the "getting there with 
 both feet/' who affirm they never die but fly ! 
 
 In a period of great unhappiness in youth, Goethe 
 penned some odes (halbunsinn) that, now, 150 years 
 later, read very like prophecy, regarding his Father- 
 land. I copy here and there these lines : 
 
 "In the distant world is waiting, 
 In our arms thou'lt find thy prized, and love, 
 too, when returning !" 
 
 And now I've seen her, 
 
 Alas ! how changed ! 
 With cold demeanor 
 
 And looks estranged, 
 With ghostly tread, 
 
 All hope is fled, 
 Yea, fled forever! 
 
 The lightnings quiver, 
 Each palace falls; 
 
 The god-like halls 
 Each joyous hour 
 
 Of spirit power 
 With Love's sweet day 
 
 All fades away! 
 
 Let us in a cunning wise 
 
 Yon dull Christian priests surprise! 
 With the devil of their talk 
 
 We'll those very priests confound. 
 Come with prong, and come with fork, 
 
 As from the smoke is freed the blaze, 
 
 So let our faith burn bright! 
 And if they crush our olden ways, 
 
 Who e'er can crush Thy Light? 
 Wilder yet the sounds are growing, 
 
 See the arch-fiend comes all glowing. 
 
146 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 Thou would'st rejoice to leave 
 
 This hated land behind ! 
 Wert thou not chained to me 
 
 With friendship's flowery chains. 
 Brother, take thy brethren with thee, 
 
 With thee to thy aged Fatherland. 
 
 Down from the lofty, 
 Rocky wall 
 
 Streams the bright flood, 
 Then spreadeth gently 
 In cloudy billows 
 O'er the smooth rock, 
 And welcomed kindly, 
 Veiling, on roars it, 
 Softly murmuring, 
 Toward the abyss. 
 
 Spirit of man, 
 
 Thou art like unto water! 
 
 Fortune of man, 
 
 Thou art like unto wind! 
 * * * * 
 
 All the remaining races so poor 
 
 Of life- teeming Earth, 
 
 In children so rich, wander and feed 
 
 In vacant enjoyment, 
 
 And midst the dark sorrow 
 
 Of evanescent, restricted life 
 
 Bowed by the Yoke of Necessity! 
 
 Father of Love but one tone 
 
 That to His ear may be pleasing, 
 
 Oh! then, quicken His heart! 
 
 Clear his cloud-enveloped eyes; 
 
 Over the thousand fountains, 
 
 Close by the thirsty one in the desert. 
 
 As old as Plato or older was a fact known, I sur- 
 mise, through the Spirit; Life not requiring space and 
 time, and we find in our mortal existence, spiritually 
 it comes to us without our knowledge here. By what 
 I may term sympathetic assortment, nations and fami- 
 lies associate when "time is no more/' One who gov- 
 erns all things, so is known not of men exactly, a prob- 
 lem of race as well as nationality here with us. 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 147 
 
 Says V. Kellogg in Yale Review, "The problem of 
 Americanization of the American people involves a 
 consideration of race as well as nationality partly 
 biological, partly educational. Anthropology is a sci- 
 ence which has had great development in recent years 
 because of the many finds of the relics of prehistoric 
 man that have been made since the beginning of this 
 century; so a new and much more precise knowledge 
 of heredity has also been gained." 
 
 Melting pots have no uses when we affirm, generally 
 speaking, "God rules/' Polarity in the character is a 
 something to convince us man cannot govern ; we our- 
 selves as Americans continue to kill or cure, in our 
 physical times and conditions. Just as we learn on 
 earth, that except for polarization, that even in 
 lake to cleanse us, as babes later are cleaned by us 
 in the physical life, cannot remake the soul. Other- 
 wise we could be made as Adam, scripturally, "out of 
 the dust of the earth," that a breathing of the "breath 
 of life" touched. 
 
 The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, 
 where it is worthy, of its high destinies, our race, as 
 time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay. 
 There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an ac- 
 credited dogma which is not shown to be questionable, 
 not a received tradition which does not threaten to 
 dissolve. Our religion has materialized itself in the 
 fact, in the supposed fact; it has attached its emotion 
 to the fact, and now the fact is failing it. But for 
 poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of 
 illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emition 
 
148 PHYSICAL LIFE 
 
 to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of 
 our religion today is its unconscious poetry. 
 
 Let me be permitted to quote these words of my 
 own, as uttering the thought which should, in my opin- 
 ion, go with us and govern us in all our study of 
 poetry. 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 I have yet much manuscript, but forbear to use it 
 until such may be needed, explanatory to the theory 
 of rebirth and new evolutions. 
 
 Slowly our old earth may get the transforming in- 
 genuity of man to get away from the "Under World" 
 (after robbing it), reaching for abode nearer the 
 heavens. Airplanes, already very ingenious, will, after 
 many mishaps to the inventors and users, be used 
 skyward; for, let us consider Nature Farther how 
 annually the clouds now keep up the millions of tons 
 of water in wet seasons! More room at the top is 
 an old saying. Keep up a lively courage, for you have 
 friends an Almighty Father; and Greatest of the 
 Prophets, Jesus; have your twins within your soul, 
 Conscience and Character, and that host of the "Do 
 unto others as you wish to be done by/' others may 
 be tricksters ! 
 
 W. T. 
 
 A few words, gentle reader, and then I quit. We 
 "two or three met together," as Jesus enjoined, have 
 had life under discussion, just as Job of old and his 
 
AND HIGHER LIGHT 149 
 
 friends. As at the dawn of creation, under the tree 
 of life, the question Good and Evil comes uppermost. 
 Let us confer, concern ourselves very little as to a place 
 in heaven, but try to determine influences growing out 
 of good and evil, that affect us and others. Eliminate 
 the dead wood on the Tree, "cast it into the fire," as 
 Jesus advised, and act as good husbandmen for plant- 
 ing not in stony places. Let there be care to stop 
 the irrigating wastes in our Garden of Eden. Curb 
 laziness and languor in the good work for the world, 
 and promote culture. 
 
 In a word, let us have Peace and Plenty if possi- 
 ble, in this Old Home ,earth ,as appointed (thus far 
 on the Path of Life), so we can continue God's plan in 
 our Everlasting World of the Spirit. 
 
 THE END 
 
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