OFTHE HELEN VILMANS. THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY, BY HELEN WILMANS. "Out of the night that shelters me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods there be For my unconquerable soul." SEA BREEZE, FLORIDA : FREEDOM PUBLISHING COMPANY. COPYRIGHTED, 1893, BY HELEN WILMANS. RZ. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. CHAPTER I. 5 THE INTUITIVE PERCEPTION OP A TRUTH THAT CD HAS NOT AS YET BEEN MADE APPARENT TO THE REASONING FACULTIES. (3 g In looking back I now see that a belief in death as a fixed and unalterable fact never had full possession of me. d I doubt whether, in the true sense, it really has X full possession of any one ; for, while it seems real en enough, so far as the dying of other people is 2* concerned, we rarely think of it as being an in- 3 evitable reality for ourselves. It always seems a far off and shadowy possibility, but not an irresistible fate such as a man feels it to be who is under sentence of death for some crime. 448075 4 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. And yet reason, so far as our reason is based on observation, tells us that death is as certain to come to us as to the condemned felon in his cell. And why are we so little disturbed by it? Is it because we anticipate life beyond the grave? The felon also anticipates this; and, moreover, his expectations for happiness in an- other world are usually as bright to his imagin- ation as ours can be. Then why does he dread death while we do not? It is because he realizes that to him it is in- evitable, while we realize nothing of the kind. To be sure our reason, based on observation, admits that it is inevitable ; but there is in us some hidden impulse that denies the inevit- ableness of it. And this hidden impulse be- trays the presence, deep down at the very foun- tain head of individual existence, of some un- seen spring of ever present vitality, the dis- covery of which will overcome death. We feel it, though we do not see it ; and there is an unde- fined something in man that lives more by feeling than seeing, and so death is inwardly rejected while verbally accepted. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 5 If man accepted death all over, in his inner as well as his outer consciousness, he would feel about it very much as this condemned fel- on does. It would occupy his every thought and render him unfit for any effort in life ex cept a preparation for death. In short the certain knowledge of coming death would be equivalent to present death so far as the uses of life are concerned. But men are not expecting to die ; their lives prove it ; they are deeply interested in a thous- and schemes of activity, and they are happy in their efforts to better their conditions and to surround themselves with pleasing things. "Death is inevitable," they say, but their words do not touch them ; they do not excite them in the least. It is only when they feel its icy touch that they begin to have even the slight- est realization of it as applicable to their own cases. As soon as men begin to feel that death is impending, their fear is then aroused and they %eek to escape from it. That they do fear it and seek to escape from 6 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. it, is proof conclusive that there is a way of es- cape from it ; for there is no truth in the cos- mic growth of the race more true than that every hope is the sure prophecy of its own ful- fillment The dread of death is the hope of life. Hope which is an expression of the Law of Life in man cannot possibly point to that which does not exist. It always streams forth in the direction of that which is correlated to it ; of that which is its complement, and the acquisition of which fixes it in living substance as a new creation. The idea that projects life beyond the grave does not altogether allay the fear of death ; nor does the promise of heaven, with all its attrac- tions, reconcile it to us. So long as even a modicum of the old vitality lasts, we prefer this troublesome and poverty-stricken world to the " spheres of the blest." It is only when the vitality is too low for resistance that men, as a rule, become reconciled to go. To be sure, there are abnormal instances where men's imaginations have been so stimu- lated by descriptions of the next world, they THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 7 have let go the frail hold they had upon this one, and have seemed anxious to go. But we all ad- mit that men in such conditions are unbalanced. We do not want to die ; this is the plain fact. We do not want to die, no matter how hard life seems, or how enchanting the future is painted for us. We not only do not want to die, but we do not expect it. It always comes upon us as a surprise. The race believes that it believes that an im- placable and inexorable God has passed sen- tence of death upon it; it also claims to justify God in having done so ; but its position is self- deceptive, and its actions contradict its as- sumed belief in God's power and wisdom. It is constantly seeking remedies by which it can thwart God's purpose in killing it; and down deep in the soul of it, it vests more hope in the power of a pill than in the power of God. It has its body tinkers and its soul tinkers ; and it clings to its body tinker until hope de- serts it ; and then in despair it turns to its soul tinker. And when a loved one has passed through the 8 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTUEY. veil out of sight, though we say, " He is happy now, he is in the bosom of God, and sorrow, sickness and death shall touch him no more," we weep and refuse to be comforted. And I say that it is not the mere pain of separation that wrings our souls, for he might have gone to another country or even to another planet, and if he had gone alive we would not have felt as we do. And this feeling we have for him ; what is it ; and why is it what it is? Again I say, as I intimated before, it is the intuitive perception of a truth that has not yet been made apparent to the reasoning faculties. It is because death is a violation of some nat- ural principle with which we are not yet famil- iar. And because it is a violation of some nat- ural principle, even though the principle is hidden at -present from our dwarfed percep- tions, we are rent asunder by it, and cannot reconcile it with our long accepted belief that death is a blessing in disguise. It is human nature overturning human religion. It seems to me, judging by myself, that if a THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 5f man actually knew that death was to be his doom, from which there was no possibility of escape, that he would so dread the event as to make life one prolonged horror, and would be prompted to hasten the thing in order to relieve himself from it; just as men condemned to hang will hang themselves in their cells in order to get the fearful catastrophe off their minds. The fact is, men do not anticipate death for themselves whatever they may do for others. Undefined in their own minds there remains fixed forever that intuitive perception of im- mortality which belongs to the unchanging and undying Life Principle, of which they are the expression, or visible manifestation. Undefined by themselves, I say. So unde- fined is it, so misunderstood by them, and yet so potent, that out of it, out of this simple in- tuitive perception, this vague feeling of immor- tality, has arisen every theological scheme ever yet projected for the perpetuation of individual life in another state of existence. Thinkers and reasoners on this subject ac- tually believe they have accepted as inevitable 10 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. the death of the body ; and so, as a last resort they hold fast with unswerving tenacity to the feeling of immortality which they find implant- ed within all men ; and they have therefore en- dowed each individual of the race with a spirit that lives beyond the death of the body ; and this spirit they have provided out of their am- ple imaginations with many and various modes of escape from annihilation. Religion offers another world to the race as a substitute for its unconquerable desire to live. It is the best thing that couid be done in the world's past and perhaps even in its present state of intelligence. But the entire reasoning of religion, based as it is upon the inborn sense of man's immortal- ity as an individual, belongs to the awakening intelligence of an infant race not yet grown to a knowledge of its own power to conquer death here and now, and to project a life of unbroken progression for itself. Religion is but the pointing finger of infalli- ble intuition indicating the fact that there is a road through the untrodden wilderness of fast THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 11 coming thought which experience must traverse, but which has never yet been traversed, and which when once traversed, will put an en- tirely new face upon our implanted belief in our individual immortality. Man may possess a spirit that lives beyond his body, and I hope and believe that he does. But we have no absolute and indisputable proof of it. 12 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. CHAPTER II. THE ENDLESS CREATIVENESS OF THE HUMAN INTELLIGENCE. I am familiar with the phenomena of spirit- ualism, and I will say that it of all the theories extant furnishes by far the best basis of be- lief in life beyond the grave. Spiritualism is not humbuggery. It is a genuine thing. Spirits, or what seem to be spirits, do make themselves visible to spectators under certain conditions. The only doubt concerning the matter, is not in the genuineness of these apparitions, but in the character of them. Many a time when entire ly alone, they have appeared to me ; and at first I thought them veritable messengers from the other side. Later, I did not know whether they were gen- uine spirits of the departed, or thought images projected by my own mind. Not that they were unreal ; for they were real ; they were not THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 13 pictures ; they were tangible shapes and lasted for several minutes at a time ; but were they spirits ? At this time the human mind begins to reveal itself to me as a mighty, but an unknown thing ; as the seed germ of a power whose possibilities no one has ever tested or ever will entirely test, because its unfoldment must go on forever. That the human mind is the great creative power I do most sincerely believe. And that its power to create is absolutely limitless I also believe. By " creative power," I simply mean the pow- er of making manifest the wonders that exist in latency in the Law of Being, or the Principle of Life, or the Law of Attraction ; these wonders depend for their manifestation upon individual recognition. The three terms, Law of Being, Principle of Life and Law of Attraction, are three modes of expressing the same thing. There are times when one of these modes of expression seems best adapted to convey my meaning, and times when the other modes seem best. But for this 14 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. I would simplify the matter by using one of these expressions only. As I feel about it, I shall retain them all. Individual recognition of a power heretofore existing in latency may be called a creation. The power to recognize is the power to create, if by the word creation we simply mean the making manifest that which has always existed, but has not existed for us, because our intelli- gence had not ripened to the point where we could see it. By recognition then, the subjective power embodied in the Life Principle becomes an ob- jective good, or use, or knowledge ; it becomes manifest or made visible. All things are already created ; or all truths are already created. The universe is a whole, and it is perfect. Nothing remains to be added to it. It is the absolute and infinite truth. Man, in his individual capacity is the recog- nizer of this truth. He correlates the truth the Law to the extent of his capacity to rec- ognize it. By his recognition of it, he shows it forth in his personality ; that is, as much of THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY, 15 the power of the truth or the Law as he can un- derstand he makes manifest in his person. And it is in the sense of his power to recognize that he is said to create. Thus, in the absolute sense, there is no new creation ; in a finite sense the race is constantly creating, and will never cease to create. Its privilege is to forever make visible in the ob- jective world the powers that exist in tie Infi- nite of Being, or the Principle of Life. The human mind is constantly revealing new good, or new uses, or new knowledges out of the Law of Being simply by recognizing them as possibilities to be attained. Thus, a faint conception of some power be- yond that which has ever yet been manifested by any member of the race, flits through a man's mind only to be discarded as absurd and im- practical. But it comes again and stronger; and yet again and more powerfully still, until he begins to give it credence. At this point his mind goes on exploring trips into unprospected realms of thought and brings home much evi- dence to sustain him in his growing belief ; un- 16 THK BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. til at last he knows that a thing heretofore con- sidered impossible is possible ; and he goes to work and demonstrates it to others. We call his work a creation ; and in a limited sense it is a creation. The creative power is the power to recognize the good ; it is a power vested in intelligence ; and it is by this power alone that nature, with man at its head, exists ; it is by this power that nature, with man at its head, is on the road of endless progression through an infinite realm of ever-widening possibilities. Life is dual simply from the fact that it is both seen and unseen. On its unseen side there is the Law of Being, otherwise called the Law of Attraction or the Principle of Life. On the seen side there is intelligence, which is the re- cognition of the Law of Being. All nature, every living form, every thing that is visible or external is intelligence; it is that which recognizes the Law of Being; and that which recognizes is mind or intelligence. There- fore the whole objective universe is mind ; liv- ing, thinking mind, and not dead matter. All THE BLOSSOM OP THE CENTURY. 17 the substances we see or feel or that in any- way appeal to our senses are mind and not mat- ter. Mind or intelligence ranges the entire vis- ible universe ; it is real substance ; we handle it; we weigh and measure it; we cut it into lengths for building material ; we melt it and run it into bars for our Rail Road cars to run on; our cars and everything we manufacture are made out of various conditions of the one substance of mind. Mind, in its myriad forms, ranges every degree from solid iron and granite to the rarest ether The diamond is one condition of mind ; the perfume of a rose is another condition of the same substance ; and thought is still another condition of it, and the most subtile and power- ful condition we know of. The most difficult task the metaphysician has to perform is that of rendering apparent to the conception of the student the fact that mind or intelligence is an actual substance that can be seen and handled. We have always believed mind to be an un- substantial thing ; a principle that invaded the 18 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. dead substance of matter and imparted a tem- porary show of life to it ; but we have never con- ceived the fact that it is matter itself. We have never conceived the fact that matter is mind ; that matter is the visible side of the Law of Being ; or, in other words, that it is the Law's recognition of itself, just as light is heat's recognition of itself. But this is so, and must be so, because no log- ical philosophy can admit the idea of deadness in the universe. The universe is a universe, and not a diverse. It is all life, pure life ; there is not a dead atom in it. If there were even one atom of death in it, or the possibility that there ever would be one, then the universe would not be a whole, and it could not endure. But it is a whole ; it is the unchanging prin- ciple of life ; it is on its unseen or spiritual side the Law of Being, or the Law of Attrac- tion ; the law or principle whose one function is to draw or to unite. It is Love in its unal- loyed essence; and the recognition of it is Intel- ligence or mind, expressed in a million varying beliefs, ranging the entire visible creation. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 19 The tree is a belief. It is the externalization of the Law of Being, or the Law of Attraction to the extent of the tree's intelligence. The tree shows forth as much of the good or the life embodied in the Law of Being as it can recog- nize. Recognition takes form in beliefs ; and be- liefs are substance ; the substance to which we falsely ascribe the name of "dead matter." Every belief takes on form. No matter how short lived the belief may be, nor how frail ; if it is a belief at all, it is, for the time being, some phase of recognition of the possibilities of the Law of Being ; and every form of recognition is mind or intelligence, and therefore substance, and shows forth as a substantial entity. It is some faction of the Law in objectivity. A belief differs from a thought only in the matter of fixedness; a thought is a transient thing unless it becomes fixed in a belief, and then it is more permanent and therefore more apparent : it is a fraction of the Law of Being in more decided objectivity than a mere pass- ing thought. 20 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. Our thoughts, then, are real things; ana though usually invisible, being in a great meas- ure under the control of our bodies which are the sum total of our fixed beliefs, they are too frail and fleeting to assume the substantial appearance of bodies. Nevertheless they are real substance and have form : they are originated in our bodies ; and though invisible as a rule, they do become objective to our bodies, and go forth as living but probably as short lived entities. The thoughts are real, because they are in- tellectual conceptions of something ; and there can be no intellectual conception that is not, in its degree, a recognition of that which is ; a recognition of some phase of the Law of Being. There can be no recognition of that which is not ; and therefore even the frailest and most fleeting thought has form, whether we see it or not. But there are certain conditions of a man's mind, usually conditions of negation, conditions of abstraction, during which he is not noticing what is transpiring in his mind, when it is pos- sible for his thoughts to express themselves THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 21 without the help or even the cognizance of the man by whom or from whom they are express- ed. In this way they may abstract enough of the man's mentality or body to make them- selves visible not only to the man himself, but to others who may be present. Thn first time I saw "a spirit" was when a student at a Catholic school. It was a bright moonlight night, and about twenty of us had taken a run from the hall door down through the crisp snow to an old tree that grew near the house. I stood for a few minutes quite apart from my companions, and found myself looking up into the tree in that condition of thought which is almost entirely unconscious of itself. I was looking at a woman who was standing far out on one of the limbs of the tree, and who was balanced lightly on one foot with her other foot swinging, and her arms raised as she held a pale blue scarf that the wind filled and swung to and fro. I stood looking at this marvelous sight without one particle of fear or wonder or any other feeling that I can recall. The woman's dress was like that of a ballet 22 THE BLOSSOM OK THE CENTURY. girl, and the limb on which her foot rested was not larger than a riding whip. But as I continued to look, without any special interest in the sight, I was conscious of the bab- ble of voices kept up by the other girls, though unconscious of what they were saying ; until one of them cried out, "Oh ! look up in the tree." A deep silence then ensued, and was broken by the simultaneous rush which they made towards the house. In another instant I became conscious of the situation, and turning I ran after them, becoming more frightened with each step. Was this a spirit, or was it a projection from myself? Since then I have had hundreds of exper- iences similar to this, and they are all marked by the same absence of a certain part of my- self that prevents the feeling in me of fear or wonder or any emotion whatever. The remem- brance of things of this kind has often frighten- ed me after they have passed, and I have many times felt a great dread of their recurrence ; but never once have I been frightened or even as- tonished at the time. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTUEY. 23 In the same frame of mind a condition in which I the person of the house, seem to be almost out of my house, I have heard voices that spoke to me ; but they never told me any- thing bnyond what I could have conceived with- out them. But perhaps the most singular of these ex- periences has been the manifestation of a pow- er that lifts me up and makes me feel that I do not weigh an ounce. I have lain in bed in a room where the lamp burned brightly, and have been lifted bed and all until I could touch the ceiling with my hand. I have sat on a stout table and have been lifted with the table until my head touched the top of the room. One would suppose that such marked and various manifestations as these would at once convince me that there was no way by which they could be accounted for except by spirit agency. But I am not convinced of this, though I would have been glad to accept such a convic- tion if I could have rested in content upon it. 24 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. The very wonders of the human mind, as they begin to disclose themselves to me during the years I have been devoting myself exclusively to its study, have made it impossible for me to rest such phenomena upon the generally ac- cepted conclusions of spiritualism. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 25 CHAPTER III. ALL GROWTH IS A RKVOLT AGAINST THE CLAIMS OF THE SO-CALLED LAW OF GRAVITATION. No man has tested the powers of his own mind ; no man knows its mysterious compli- cations, or dreams of the strange seed lying dormant within it, and capable of springing up into the blossoming and fruitage of such won- ders as it would be madness even to name in these pages. But in these years of study that I speak of, enough has been revealed to me of the giant power sleeping in the brain of the race to keep me from wandering off to other worlds for a solution of its exceptional actions. Many things concerning it that will seem fabulous to others, I know to be true ; and indeed so great have become my conceptions of its possibilities that at this time I have pulled up all the stakes that have ever, to me, environed it, and have 26 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. established it in my belief as respondent in all particulars to that omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent Principle of Life that men call God. I think it will readidly be seen how there being no nothing, and thoughts being things that a thought may appear in objectivity from the thinker, and thereby become apparent to the thinker and to others who may be present. The same thing may be said of the voices we hear. But these explanations go for nothing so long as it remains that some seemingly invis- ible power can overcome the law of gravitation in the human form, and lift it from the earth with evident ease. This matter remained a mystery to me for years, until I learned that man had the power to become master of the law of gravitation, after which he could float in the air at his ease. "But," some one remonstrates, u you had no knowledge of this power, and yet you floated ; therefore it must be that some power outside of yourself lifted you." THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 27 For a long time I reasoned this way myself ; and I believed that I was lifted by spirit power. But after a time I considered how it had ever been, that some seemingly accidental exhibition of a new power had come as a forerunner to open the eyes of men to a new possibility within themselves ; and I began to see that this exper- ience of mine might belong to this same class of premature revelations. I could readily admit that if it were in a man's power to overcome the law of gravity, (so-called) that accidental conditions of thought might arise within him, unanalyzed by himself, that for the time being, until changed by his quickening belief, would lift him into the air. The more I thought about it, the more I be- came convinced of it. The more I reasoned on the law of gravitation, the law which seems to draw all things to the centre of the earth, the more clearly I saw that it was the Law of At- traction in its action upon so-called dead matter ; and that there was no power that could 28 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. of itself draw anything towards the earth's cen- tre provided the thing to be drawn did not want to be drawn in that direction. That any substance or thing, no matter how powerful, could refuse to obey this law, proved at once that there was a higher power than the law, or else that the law was not under- stood. Of course I at once assumed that the law was not understood. The law of gravitation is that power which draws towards the centre of the earth ; but what is the Law of Attraction? I answer that there is but one law and I shall call it the Law of Attraction. The so-called law of gravitation is the negative action of the Law of Attraction. In other words it is the Law of Attraction in its action upon what is called dead matter ; it is powerless upon all sub- stances in proportion to the intelligence of the substance. It cannot compel the intelligent will of any creature to obey it . Indeed I may state it in this way ; that while the law of gravitation, the law that draws to the earth's THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 29 centre, is operative upon mind in its una- wakened condition, yet it is powerless to act on mind in which a will has been developed. As weak a thing as a blade of grass obeys its own will ; a will that leads it upward instead of downwards towards the earth's centre. I saw it rise out of the earth and begin its little journey towards the sun. I saw as feeble a thing as a crawling worm overcome the earth's attraction, and mount a tree trunk climbing up- wards in obedience to its own awakening per- ceptions of the Law of Attraction, expressed in itself as will power. I saw that while "dead matter," which is mind unconscious of its own will, was held to the earth's centre, that "live matter," which is mind conscious of its own will, was on a jour- ney in another direction. Then there is no law that holds objects to the earth's centre provided the objects have a will to travel towards the sun. This so-called law is the law of inertia ; the law of death to the dead ; or in strict truth it is the absence, as nearly as can be. of the Law of Attraction, 30 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. which is the only Law of Life ; the Law of growth. The law of gravitation is the negative pole of the Law of Attraction or the Law of Being. The peach ripens and falls ; it falls toward the earth. Why? Because it is so much inert substance, and it is drawn to a larger body of inert substance. If the peach had been larger and heavier than the earth it would have drawn the earth to it In bodies of equal deadness, by which I mear. bodies that are equally lacking in conscious- ness of will, the power to draw each other is dependent on their size and weight. But once introduce into inert mind (matter) the vital- izing principle of conscious will, and the whole statement is changed. Size and weight have nothing to do with the drawing power, the con- scious will is under obedience only to its own desire The latent power slumbering in mat- ter has awakened, and it has come under obe- dience to the Law of Attraction. It has evolved a will that its intelligence re- cognizes as its leading power, and it goes to any THE BLOSSOM OP THE CENTURY. 31 place towards which the will may point, wheth- er towards the earth or away from it. If it goes away from the earth as all advanced life does in its growth, it goes as far away as its intelligence permits it to go. That is, it goes as far as it believes that it can go ; its belief in this particular marking the limit of its intel- ligence. Flying creatures are more unlimited in their belief in this one matter than the crea- tures that remain on the earth. And it is be- cause they do realize more of the Law of At- traction than other creatures that they have sprouted wings. The law of cosmogony express- es itself in conformity with a belief in the Law of Attraction ; and evolution has steadidly pro- ceeded on this principle from the first effort of individualism to man. The Law of Attraction is the law of gravi- tation raised from a basis of unconscious life or ignorance of life, to a conception of life in which the will becomes the principal factor and elects for itself the direction in which it shall be attracted. Intelligence refuses obe- 32 THE BLOSSOM OP THE CENTURY. dience to mere bulk and weight, and follows any attraction that seems good to it. A grain of sand is under obedience to the law of gravitation; the earth holds it to herself. But imagine the grain of sand changed to a minute insect ; it instantly declares its free- dom from the law that influences dead matter only, and lifts itself up above the earth. And it will retain its independence of the earth un- til it dies ; then the earth by the law of dead- ness in which bulk and weight make the attrac- tion, claims its own, and the insect lies help- less upon it. The whole tendency of evolution is from in- ertia to activity ; from deadness to life ; from obedience to the Law of inert or unawakened substance, to the intelligent attraction which is the law of living or conscious substance. In strict truth there is no dead substance, because all substance holds life in latency; but until the latent life principle begins to ex- press itself intelligently, this substance is un- der obedience to the law of gravitation only. But, as substance does express itself more THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 33 and more intelligently, the law of gravitation loses its force, and the Law of Attraction is substituted. Thus all individual lives work out their own freedom through intellectual growth. Intellectual growth is the liberation from the law of gravitation which is the law of death* or rather the no-law of life ; because death has no law, but is simply the negation of the Law of Attraction, which is the Law of Life. Man becomes more free from the so-called law of so-called dead matter with every ac- quisition of intelligence he makes ; and he is now approaching a plane of knowledge where he will realize that by the law of attraction he can break his allegiance to the earth and float in the air. And this will simply be the be- ginning of his exploits in this direction. As I from some peculiar and accidental consciousness of this great truth actually floated in the air, so the time will come in which I shall learn how I did it ; and thus be able to do it again. It is probable that in my then negative con- 34 THE BLOSSOM OP THE CENTURY. dition a higher sense of freedom took possess- ion of me, which my uneducated faculties would have denied, and thus have frustrated the phe- nomena, but that for the time being they were inoperative, and did not put in their ignor- ant protest. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 35 CHAPTER IV. THE ONE MIGHTY FACTOR IN RACE GROWTH IS THOUGHT. Man is a compendium of all the lives that have existed before him ; but he does not show forth the full power of all those individual lives. He is in his present stage of develop- ment a compromise of them all. The power of all of them, and vastly more power, lies stored in his brain, but it has not yet been expressed in his personality. It is in his power to express, and by his intelligent be- lief in its presence, he will be able to express it. Belief in self is the key that unlocks all this stored power. If I did not believe I could draw a bucket of water out of the well, I would never draw it. If I did not believe I could write an article, I could never write it. The paralytic believes he cannot move his hand and he does not move it. The Mental Healer, in his treat- ment of this disease, does not even think of 36 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. the hand ; he directs his thought to the patient's brain, and corrects his mistaken belief in his own power. All disease is of the brain. A belief in disease is the brain's own under-esti- mate of its power. The brain has weakened in its belief of what it is and what it can do, and the body shows forth the brain's error. A woman came to me one day with the sick- ness of a decade in every part of her body. Long years of a life totally unappreciated by others, and a lack of self-esteem on her own part, had brought her to the condition in which I saw her. Her wonderful eyes, and the entire wreck of her queenly beauty, impressed me greatly. A few minutes conversation showed me the situation. I did not offer to treat her ; I told her how beautiful and how great she was. I told her what splendid possibilities I saw in her mind ; she knew I was telling her the truth, and she was well in that hour. Day by day from that time her body showed forth her re- newed trust and confidence in her own intellect ; her individuality strengthened until the nega- tions that had once submerged and held her THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 37 under, became the servants that ministered to her uplifting. The intellect is the shaping power in the body. It is true that the body builds the brain ; but the brain reciprocates by building the body. Every higher thought a man has, records itself in some added power in the body ; and if this could go on day by day, the body would become more and more a revised edition of a revised mode of thinking. And just so, in the opposite direction, the body may and does deteriorate. How is it that the man of science can take an animal's skull and from its shape tell us just what the animal was like, and what it fed on, and all the particulars concerning it? It is be- cause the brain shapes the body ; and when they get a correct idea of the brain from the shape of the skull, they have no difficulty in describ- ing the animal that owned it, and naming the family to which it belonged. Familiarity with the correlation between the brain of the animal and the different members of the body of the animal also enables these 448075 38 THE BLOSSOM OP THE CENTUEY. men of science to work the same problem back- wards. They will take any well-defined bone of the animal and describe all the animal's clearly marked characteristics. The relation between the brain and the different parts of the body is exact. Surely there is a big lesson in this for him who thinks. From the very earliest forms of organization clear up to man, there has been a steady increase of brain power, and a steady im- provement in the shape of the head. Not in a single instance has there been a sudden jump from low to high. And never has there been any real retrogression. There have been instan- ces in race growth which seemed like retrogres- sion, but which were truly a kind of retrogress- ive progression ; being but a temporary halt in the upward journey of the incessant brain, or a going back a few paces to bring up the lagging forces. There is no missing link. Race growth has been as even and steady as the growth of a child from infancy to manhood. And the one factor in its growth has been thought. THE BLOSSOM OP THE CENTURY. 39 Let no one imagine that thought is confined to human beings alone. All creatures think. Animals think ; plants think ; and even crystals think. They think the thoughts that render them obedient to the operation of the Law of Attraction, by whose power they are drawn into certain forms. The grass thinks ; it aspires or desires, and its aspirations or de- sires find a ready response in nature, and the result is growth. Every upward step in the scale of creation is marked by a greater power of thought in the creatures ; and this greater power of thought produces more powerful creat- ures. And so thought, even in its lowest forms, expressed in desire, relates the creature, under the ever active Law of Attraction, to that which it desires; and the stones emerge into gigantic vegetation ; the vegetation be- comes concentrated into a drop of protoplasm ; the protoplasm, by the same potency of thought, expressing the ever growing desire for an enlarged life, greater happiness and greater freedom, sprouts a digestive system ; puts forth from its body the necessary instruments by 40 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. which to supply the digestive system with food ; eyes, ears, claws, legs, members both offensive and defensive, until the ripened man, with his noble brain, is here. And still the same system of growth goes on. The ripened man is man only in his form ; the strength and character of his animal progeni- tors have passed into his brain and live there in disguise, or show forth in cunningly devised methods for the attainment of that power which the beasts his forefathers took by force of muscle and cunning. Society is a compromise based on fear ; religion is a superstition founded also on fear, and rotten with hypocrisy. And yet this condition is only an attitude in race growth, and it is all right for the stage of growth it represents. It is not the desirable thing any more than the bitter and unripe peach is the desirable thing ; but it is on the way to becoming the right thing. It will always be becoming more and more the right thing ; for it, like the individuals that compose it, is on the road of endless progression Forever ripen- ing but never ripe; forever incarnating in THE BLOSSOM OK THE CENTURY. 41 itself more and more of the vast possibilities latent in the Law of Being the Law of Attrac- tion but never exhausting the fullness of the Law, and therefore never ripe. 42 THE BLOSSOM OK THE CENTURY. CHAPTER -V. To think in the old ruts is to remain in the old conditions. To think expansively is to grow endlessly in the direc- tion of freedom and happiness. Death is not growth. It solves no problem. Man at this time is all that his animal pro- genitors are, and more. The strength of muscle which they exhibited, finds its expression in him in his brain and not in his muscle. The quality of every faculty they possessed is con- densed in his brain ; in ceasing to become ani- mal, and in becoming more and more .man, the attributes that expressed themselves in the body of animals, express themselves with ten- fold more force in the brain of the man. In fact, the process of growth has been a process of brain making. The awakening of life from the inertia that holds it obedient to that downward attraction called the law of gravitation, has been one steady advancement of all things toward brain ; towards the pow- er to think ; towards the freedom that thought THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 43 alone can insure ; towards the conquest of envi- ronment that thought alone can master. I am not making an exaggerated statement when I say that the road of life, the road of progress is from a belief in that inert substance we call matter, to a belief in mind. This inert substance we call matter, and which is under the (so-called) law of gravi- tation, is, in point of absolute truth, all mind or brain or thought; but it is unawakened mind, and therefore unconscious or " dead " mind ; mind whose powers are latent or unex- pressed. The steady effort of the ages has been to lib- erate this substance from its unconscious obe- dience to the " law of gravitation" the law of the dead to the dead by awakening it to a con- sciousness of its power to think ; thus demon- strating to it that it is mind, living and active and free, subject to the Law of Attraction only, instead of being dead matter. I cannot repeat too often the great fact that there is no dead matter ; that there is no death in the universe ; that what we call dead matter 44 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. is unawakened mind ; that every atom in the world is mind, either awakened to a sense of its own power, or holding its power in the uncon- sciousness of latency. It is on this mighty truth that man's salvation depends. What we call matter is the recognition of something. Every atom of it is a magnet. A magnet is that which recognizes the Law of At- traction within itself. If the recognition is BO feeble that it yields obedience only to that com- paratively unintelligent force expressed in bulk and weight, it recognizes bulk and weight, and yields its recognition to it, and is then said to be under the law of gravitation. But no matter what it recognizes, the fact that it. recognizes anything at all proves that it is mind. Dead matter cannot recognize. Rec- ognition is a faculty of mind. The Law of Being, the Law of Attraction, ex- ists. No one knows anything about it except that it exists. It is that unseen principle running through all things, and to whose power man can add nothing. It is unchangeable. Our recognition THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 45 or comprehension of it changes constantly, but it never changes. All nature with man at its head is the recog- nition or the comprehension of this Law. Not a perfect recognition or comprehension of it ; it can never be perfectly comprehended ; but a partial and constantly improving and grow- ing comprehension of it. Men call this Law of Attraction God ; but the word is unscientific and misleading. Sub- stitute the word "Law" for "God" in Pope's lines and they would explain all. "The universe is one stupendous whole Whose body Nature is, and God the soul." As our bodies are the perception, or the un- derstanding, or the recognition of our spirits, so is all nature the perception, or the understand- ing, or the recognition of this Infinite Spirit; being the unseen Life Principle which I call the Law of Attraction or the Law of Being. Understanding, recognition, the power to perceive does not belong to anything but mind ; therefore, all visible things are mind ; no mat- ter how apparently dead this substance called matter may seem, the Law of Attraction is la- 46 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. tent, in it, and in the farther process of evolu- tion it will recognize the fact, thus proving that it is mind. And mind, no matter how crude it may be, is one form of brain out of which the higher or governing brain proceeds ; the brain which be- gets the intelligent will ; whose mandate governs the entire body. It may be said that nature is all brain, rang- ing numberless degrees from coarse to fine, from the crudest substance to the highest thought, as water ranges from solid ice to the invisible gas generated by steam. That wonderfully volatile fluid we call elec- tricity is, in its own way a certain form, and a very vital form of recognition of the Law of Attraction; and is therefore mind, brain, in- telligence or thought. Nature being in all particulars the recogni- tion of that vital Principle called the Law of Attraction, it will be seen that she is all mind, whose power to grow lies in her continued pow- er to think more intelligently than she has previously thought. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 47 Our visible world has now thought herself up to her present position, which is a higher point of intelligence than she has ever reached before. From the fiery mass that she was in our first knowledge of her, where the Law of Attraction between the atoms seemed so feeble in its power, because so little recognized, that it appeared to be rather a law of repulsion, on up through every grade of ripening recogni- tion of the Law, with its consequent forms of greater intelligence, we have come to this our present plane of thought. And right here, in spite of our past record with its unflagging development in every di- rection, there are thousands of our people who affirm that the world has ceased growing. Or rather I may say there are tens of thou- sands, nay millions, who do not know that the whole visible world is a growth in the under- standing of the Law of Being ; who do not be- lieve it ; and who are therefore unprepared to accept the statement that her position in growth is still in its infancy, and that her power to keep on growing is endless. 48 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. But, whether they accept it or not, it is true ; and any truth even approaching the glory of this truth has never been announced before. The visible world grows by its acquisition of intelligence ; or rather by its development out of itself of more and more power to recognize the unfailing, the infinite possibilities of the Law of Attraction, which is the Law of Being. Thus, the potency of mind increases daily ; and as it increases, its environments give way, and .happiness and freedom come more readily within its grasp. The idea that the race has achieved even a minimum of the power that is in store for it is absurd. The idea that the race must continue to wear its fetters because they are "God imposed" is still more absurd. Man has no fetters but those of his own ig- norance, and nothing but intelligence will liber- ate him from such fetters. You may take from him every visible environ- ment; you may heap him with wealth; you THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 49 may place him in high position ; but, unless he has come into the saving knowledge which an intellectual perception of his own boundless re- sources yields him, he is not free. Ignorance still holds him and will pull him down to old age, feebleness and the grave. And what but these old age, feebleness and the grave are our real fetters? What have we gained though we conquer everything else, and these remain? It may be that the spirit sur- vives the body, as spiritualism believes it has demonstrated ; but, even in this case, a man's sphere of activities is removed from his work- shop, the earth ; and his death is a break in what should be an unbroken line of growth. I do not believe that true, healthy growth can proceed through the tortuous weakness of old age, decrepitude and death. True intelligence, the farther recognition of the Law, which alone is growth, is not in these conditions. Nothing is in these conditions but the denial or the non- recognition of the Law ; which is a slipping back from a certain condition of incarnate in- telligence into a condition of ignorance where- 50 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. in the previous condition of intelligence, the incarnate condition of it, is denied or can- celled. Even in this denial or cancellation of the previous condition, it may be that the spirit survives, and I believe it does ; but, I do not be- lieve that the person has gained by the change ; indeed, I feel certain that he has lost ; and though the loss may not be irreparable, yet it is a mighty loss, and ought to be avoided. And it can be avoided. If I did not know that the loss of the body which is the condensed bulk of the man's be- liefs could be avoided, I would never have writ- ten so much as the first line of this paper. But I do know it. I have frequently been asked to establish this statement by producing an instance in which some one had conquered death. There was a time when there was no animal life on this planet at all ; did the fact that there was none then form a true basis of belief that there would never be any? Because the Cave dwellers had never produced THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY, 51 a Plato, was that a valid reason for supposing that there would never be one? Those who are limited to a belief that the race is ripe, and that there will be no farther development than there has already been, are in no condition either to deny or affirm the statements I am prepared to make on this sub- ject. They do not know that the race is a growth. They have never examined its past history; this history that began millions of years before it actually appeared in its present form ; and their opinions, as weighed against the opinion of one who has learned the situation by heart, are absolutely worthless. I have studied this matter of race growth for many years. I began to be the race's cham- pion and defender when a child. I was scarcely out of my teens before a burning sense of dis- gust for the foolish and false theologies of the day took pos7ession of me. I knew that we were not willful sinners against a higher pow r er> but simply ignorant children feeling our way through intellectual darkness, and stumbling at every step. Without knowing it, having no 52 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. positive information by which to bolster up my belief on this subject, I simply held to it because it was part of me, and I could no more get rid of it than I could get rid of my head. It became the dominant force of my existence, and the chief source of my vitality. In the midst of sickness, it kept me whole ; in posi- tions that would have been death to another, I was unscathed. In point of fact, it was nothing more than a larger seeing, a deeper recognition of the Life Principle than that possessed by the average man. Having more life I felt more life, and death seemed farther away and more indefinite to me than to others. As I grew older, the possibility of avoiding it entirely began to take form in my intelligence. It was not that I feared death, for it never seemed sufficiently real to fear. v The idea of overcoming it came to me as a part of my growth, in which it seemed better to acquiesce consciously, so that I might thereby note every step of its progress. Naturally observant and THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY 53 introspective I was curious about it; all my interest was aroused and something firmer than interest, a deep-seated determination to carry the thing through to success became a fixed factor of my mind. It is strange how, by simply holding an idea or belief, it aggregates to itself certain mental building material until it stands impregnable and apparently deathless. This is now the condition of my belief in the possibility of im- mortality in the flesh. I have not read books, I have not sought outside of myself for rea- sons to strengthen my position ; I have held to it simply because it has held to me ; and out of my own organism has been unfolded the course of reasoning by which I have demonstrated its truth to myself. I believe in it as firmly as I believe in my personal presence in this room ; and the world is going to believe it before many years shall pass. It is true that the spirit of Malthus is wide- spread at this stage of human development, and questions are frequent as to what will be- come of the earth's overflowing population if 54 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. immortality in the flesh should become pos- sible. The natural Malthusian is one who has not penetrated even to the slightest degree into the realm of the Ideal, where alone immortality in the flesh can become possible. He does not know that life, when lifted from its belief in the deadness of matter, enters the thought realm, in which the supply is equal to the demand. But this is so. As soon as a man steps up from a belief in matter as dead substance, and perceives that all is life, and that every form of life is on the wing, as it were, from lower to higher, and that there is no stagnation possible to growth, he will then know that the earth will not be overcrowded by a too rapidly accumulat- ing population. The old saying that "there is room at the top" applies here. The pioneers in civilization or in thought, always find themselves rather lonesome than otherwise. The space outside of the herds is unlimited. Especially is this true in the realm of thought ; the realm of the ideal, which we are now on the verge of entering. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 55 It is true that the world would soon become overcrowded if people should keep producing children who would never die, unless some way should be provided for them to leave the earth. But the entire range of creation is open to man, and there is nothing but his ignorance of his own powers and privileges that will keep him in one place. It is true that no God will ever interfere in his behalf to lift him into more enlarged spheres of activity ; but no God will ever prohibit him from lifting himself into these spheres. Indeed, such lifting is correlated to the man's lifted and enlarged thought. As the man ex- pands in his thought life, he will be met by more expansive conditions ; and the possibility of fettering him to one point in the universe will cease. It is by thought expansion that a man's fetters fall from him. Thought is the conqueror of everything that hampers and binds. It cannot make even the smallest conquest over its surroundings that it does not come at once into relation with exter- 56 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. nal conditions better suited to its enlarged sense of freedom. Indeed, it almost seems as if these freer con- ditions constantly pressed in on the thought of the race, as if consciously resolved to be re- cognized. The croakers of the world cried out that the coal beds were becoming exhausted and that the race was doomed in consequence. A wider range of thought was correlated by the sub- stance of electricity and the world came out of its nervous chill on the subject of coal. Because balloons have proved a failure does any one suppose that the air will never be navi- gated? Even if gas and machinery fail to ac- complish this thii^g, there is a power latent in man's organism that will do it ; namely, the power of thought to which all substances are negative. immortality in the flesh would be neither possible nor desirable if man were to remain the helpless and ignorant creature that he now is. It would not be desirable because the universe THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 57 can furnish no excuse for the perpetuation of ignorance. It would not be possible because ignorance is death already ; at least, it is the nearest approach to death that Life renders possible. To keep the race forever alive in its present aninaalized condition would be to perpetuate ig- norance ;to keep it as a stagnant pool in the heart of universal progression ; and this could not be. Perpetual change is the order of Life. He who catches on to higher thought and holds it with a faith so firm that it crystallizes into be- lief, is on the upward move where higher in- fluences meet him, and fix his thought in tangible substance. He who turns from his higher thought, doubting its practicability, pinches himself in- to constantly lowering conditions, until he is pinched out. There is progression for the one, and at least a temporary retrogression for the other ; but there is no standing still. Therefore, immortality in the present status of universal race thought here in this world is not possible now. 58 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. But the dawn of it is here. The beginning of that credence in the human ideal, which alone will usher it in, is here. It is here for no less a reason than because woman with her strong- ly intuitional nature has come to the front. Woman has brought the morning of a new era with her ; and as her feet obtain firmer standing in the slushy quagmire of the world's present condition of thought, the morning of her day will brighten into the full splendor of a noon that will arrest and hold the entire in- terest of the millions of dying souls about us. This much is already accomplished. The beginning of the dawn is here. Universal thought has begun to move. A ripple runs along the full length of its connected links, even though it is only the few who stand in the front that are capable of seeing the light that shines so brightly ahead. If this movement had to be confined to our earth, as the Malthusians all must imagine, then its scope would be so small as to furnish a reason for their doubts. But because man's growth is limitless, and by his ever increasing THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 59 power of thought I know that his growth is limit- less,the fact shadows forth the possibility of his leaving the earth when he shall have learned how to do BO. More than this. In the economy of Nature, the time will come when generation will lose itself in regeneration. Conditions adapt themselves to each other. When one thread is spun out there is another thread waiting there to meet the out-stretched hand of him who has resolved to go ahead. To him who is not so resolved, and who does not know his power to go on, though the thread is there, it is not there for him, because he does not see it. And so he falls ; not because Life was lacking, but because the individual in- telligence with which he should have grasped it was wanting. 60 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. CHAPTER VI. DESIRE THE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE. Since the first two atoms came together under the Law of Attraction and produced the earliest specimen of individual life upon our planet, the vitality of the race has been slowly ripening up to the point where immortality in the flesh could become a possible thing. As the vital powers have ripened, conditions have also rip- ened to meet the needs of more vital creatures, and thus the supply has been equal to the de- mand. Indeed, the saying that the supply is equal to the demand is grounded in the principle of the law of attraction. It is one of the absolute truths. Whether what I call the life of immortality in the flesh is desirable or practical hinges on one point. If the substance all about us that we see in existing forms of life, the forms of minerals, plants and animals is dead matter, THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 61 infused by living spirit, then our only hope of prolonging our lives will be by some method that will release the spirit from the matter. And this position is accepted as the truth al- most the whole world over. Dead matter can never be permanently enliv- ened by spirit, nor is it desirable that spirit should load itself down with something that is forever dead. Moreover, if this is the true con- dition, it never has been necessary for spirit to be so loaded with the dead weight of matter ; and the entire combination has been a very grave mistake, ruining the happiness of every spirit that ever entered the material life. If I knew this to be the true situation, I would never move my hand to save my own life ; I would look forward to the time when my spirit would drop its load of death as the chained and barred prisoner looks forward to the hope of freedom. Long and earnestly I pondered the subject of dead matter with its infusion of living spirit, and wondered why a union of two things so diametrically opposite to each other should be 62 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. either necessary or desirable. Presently, I knew that it could not be; because, if matter is dead, then the Law of Attraction cannot exist in it, and it is absolutely immovable by any force whatever. It has no power to respond to spirit ; it is helpless, without the principle of cohesion, and entirely useless in the build- ing of worlds or of men. In this thought, which I knew to be correct, I touched the negative pole of the truth I was seeking. If matter was a dead substance, it was dead, and there was no inherent power in it; and no latent life. It was simply dead, and had no place whatever in the universe of uses. That the substance called matter did exist, there was no denying, even through the visionary process of Christian Science. The substance existed; it was an ever present and an in- dispensable reality. ' ( Indispensable ; " this was a fortunate word. Dead matter could not be indispensable ; the sooner dead matter and every form of death should be dispensed with, the better. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 63 What then was the substance called dead matter? Did it have life of itself ? I answer "-Yes." Then, if it has life of itself, what need has it of the infusing spirit which seems to be a differ- ent thing from it; the infusing spirit that only infuses it a few years and then deserts it ; leaving it to be again infused by other spirits or to remain forever helpless? The more I pondered on this subject, the more I became convinced that matter had life of itself. To have life is to be capable of thought. This proposition brought me face to face with the great truth that every atom in the universe had power to think. In other words, that every atom was transfused with the law of attraction and responsive to every other atom ; and on this fact alone rested the possibility of organized forms. By slow degrees and never-ceasing thought, I soon found myself in an immaterial universe. That is, in a universe where all is living, active vital intelligence, or mind, or thought, or brain or knowledge. 64 THE BLOSSOM Ol' THE CENTURY. Each atom was not a dead thing that knew something ; it was not a dead thing that yet had the power to recognize the transfusing prin- ciple of life within it ; if it was dead, it could not recognize anything. But still it existed and was responsive to other atoms ; what, then, was it? It was mind itself ; and mind, which is the recognition of the law of attraction, or the law's recognition of itself, was substance; ac- tual substance to be seen and handled ; to (ex- press in its own appearance its own belief in the law, or as much of the law as it could com- prehend. Here, all in an hour, the whole system of evolution opened up to me. The external world, the world of mind, is in constant effort to know more and more of the Law of Being, the Law of Attraction, which is the principle of life ; the unseen side of itself ; the positive and unchangeable I AM ; the constantly growing recognition of which gives ever-improving ex- pressions of itself, from the smallest and weak- est individualized life up to man ; and from THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTUliY. 65 man as he now stands in his ignorance and helplessness up through an unending process of improvement, by a constant acquisition of new truths, or an ever-widening recognition of the power of the Law. The Law of Being or of Attraction is to the visible universe what heat is to light. It is the magnetism in the magnet. Every atom is a magnet, and the external or visible part of it is the magnet's recognition of itself, just as light is heat's recognition of itself All power is in the law. By all power, I mean all power of organiza- tion. In our first knowledge of the world, as stated before, the atoms were so widely diffused as to be almost beyond the reach of each other's at- traction. Ages passed ; and the law always constant to itself in its drawing power had con- densed the fiery mass somewhat ; had brought the atoms closer together, so that its drawing influence began to have a greater effect. Then as the ages went by, the drawing power over- came the distances more and more, and masses bep;an to assume form. 66 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. Through this same process, always increasing in strength, the world was brought to a condi- tion where it became possible for higher concep- tions of the Law to be formed. Rocks adhered ; waters gathered themselves together ; a blade of grass put up its daring head, and the first pro- test of intelligence against bulk and weight, the first rebellion against death recorded its tiny oath. But the poor baby life did die ; recognizing nothing but the first faint monition of endless individuality, its little effort lost itself to be- come merged in another and greater effort. And so one species merged into a nobler one ; one genus disappeared, because its power to recognize nothing farther of the possibilities of the Law became its environment ; an environ- ment that nothing but dissolution could break. But always the power of the Law was drawing the atoms to closer cohesion ; and the atoms thus cohering, were, by their very existence, proving the greater potency of individuals to recognize the Law of Being or the Law of At- traction. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 67 And so the recognition of the Law of Attrac- tion or of Being has proceeded right through the asres ; and so it can continue to proceed. And although recognition of the Law is the externalizing power, the power that makes visi- ble, or makes the showing forth of the Law, it is a factethat up to the present time, this re- cognition has been an unconscious recognition ; by which, I mean a recognition that has express- ed itself in uses, and not a recognition that could give a logical account of itself, and there- by become a conscious recognition. Life has heretofore proceeded entirely on the unconscious plane. It has proceeded in the in- dividual by the individual's recognition of its own desires. Desire is the organizing principle ; from first to last it has been so. The recognition of desire is the recognition of the Law as expressed individually. It is the individual's recognition of the magnetic or attracting power which he sees within himself- He recognizes this attraction or magnetism in himself and it becomes the law of his individ- 68 THK BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. ual life. It is that unseen something within him that always cries out for something more than he already possesses. It is the principle ot life ; the growing principle ; and his recognition of it, has brought him steadidly up through the centuries from the lowest and frailest condi- tion imaginable to his present form, intelli- gence and strength. In obedience to his unconscious recognition of this life principle expressed individually as desire he, as the tiny drop of protoplasm, acquired a digestive system and all the appen- dages necessary to supply it with food. In obedience to his love of life or his desire to have his life perpetuated, his organism pro- duced a reproductive system ; which as yet, on- ly serves a part of his purpose; since it is only far enough evolved to perpetuate his fcind without perpetuating himself. While generation proceeds in one unbroken stream on the unconscious plane of life, regen- eration is not possible except upon the con- scious plane ; a plane that the race is now on the verge of reaching. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 69 All growth depends upon the recognition of the Law. But no thing and no man can recognize the Law in its fullness. Man only recognizes the Law in himself as it is expressed in desire. The recognition of my desires is the recogni- tion of the Law in my own life, as separate and apart from the Law expressed in other lives. The desires I see in myself are evidence of my own selfhood. They form my ego. That I am not in all particulars like my neighbor is because my desires differ from his ; I recognize in the Law more good than he does, and there- by show forth an organization superior to his ; or, recognize less good, and show forth an or- ganization inferior to his ; or each of us may recognize an equal amount of good, but of dif- ferent kinds, and may show forth organiza- tions equally good, but different from each other. And this has been the case all down the scale of being ; a blade of grass shows forth as much good as it recognizes ; so does a tree, a horse or an angle worm. Our bodies are the records of our beliefs; 70 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. and just to the extent that we have believed in our desires, which are the Law individualized within us, we have been true to the Law, or the principle of growth, and have manifested that which seemed good to us ; therefore, I say that as much "good" as we have recognized in the Law, we have shown forth in our bodies ; thus making our bodies the record of what we desired and believed in. The forms of life have been growing more complex from the first inception of the first form, which was nothing more than the cohe- sion through the Law of Attraction of two or three of the primordial life cells They have been growing more complex be- cause as they aggregated to themselves more and still more of the life cells, their desires became more numerous. This increase in the number and character of their desires was all the time making more powerful magnets of them ; and so evolution proceeded. Every visible manifestation of life, mineral, plant and animal, is self-created. Life is tw r ofold. On the unseen side, we have THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 71 the Law of Being or the Principle of Life, which is the Law of Attraction. No man knows anything about it except that it simply exists. We see its effects in the magnet; we see that every life cell is a magnet, and we know that it is both external and internal; both seen and unseen ; both positive and nega- tive. The positive side being the Law, which is unchanging ; the negative side being the rec- ognition of the Law, which is the external side, and which is constantly changing through the growing or lessening power of individual recognition. The more an individual recognizes of the Law, the more positive he becomes. Man, re- cognizing more of the Law than any other crea- ture, is positive to all other creatures; and being positive to them, he is their master. They feed him in all his many wants. He cuts down the magnificent tree and holds its individuality in subservience to his needs ; he kills the noble animal and eats its flesh in order to satisfy his desire for food ; he becomes greater and stronger all the time by sacrificing 72 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. lives that are negative to him. These lower lives pass constantly into his life; his life would pass into some life higher than his own, but for the fact that his constantly growing brain renders unnecessary any life higher than his. If his brain found its limitation in serv- ing a non-expanding range of uses like those of the cow or the horse, then nature would be- get an organization superior to his. But it is not necessary, and therefore there will be no higher organization, except that into which his present organization will ex- pand by the farther expansion of his brain ; or his farther recognition of still greater power existing in the Law. Intelligence or mind is the visible substance of the universe ; and it is simply the recogni- tion of the Law of Being, which is the Law of Attraction, or the Life Principle. Another statement of this idea would be that the words "Love" and "Intelligence" are an explanation of it all. Love being the un- seen principle of cohesion, and intelligence the recognition of this principle. The idea ex- THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 73 pressed in this manner is not new ; it forms the basis of Swedenborg's theory, a theory that he fails to carry out into particulars in his very voluminous writings. The entire trend of thought is from physi- cal to metaphysical ; and it cannot be other- wise since race growth is in this direction. A belief in the physical as dead matter is all that now holds the race back from the most rapid and startling growth. Freedom the goal of the world's desire, lies just ahead, and here we remain tethered to a mistake, a mis- take that could not hold us one moment, but for the fact that we are all mind, and that our mistakes are our bodies. Our mistakes are our beliefs; they are our fixed modes of thought, therefore they are our beliefs ; and belief is the body of the individual. The body is not the record of our beliefs; but it is our beliefs ; it is the sum total of all our beliefs ; for belief being a mental thing is real sub- stance ; and whether belief is true or false, it is a substantial thing so long as it lasts. Believing ourselves living spirits chained to 74 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. dead matter is a mistake as potent to hold us down to what we call the law of gravitation, as if matter really were a dead substance ; in- stead of being what it really is pure mind, the recognition of the Law of Being from which it is inseparable. The inseparableness of substance from the Law that is its invisible partner, when once seen in its true light, immediately suggests the idea of immortality in the flesh; especially when taken in connection with the fact that man is self-creative. Indeed, but for man's belief in the deadness of matter, and his still more foolish belief that God made him, he would even at this time be diseaseless and deathless ; he would even now be on the road of endless progression, led ex- clusively by his desires for happiness. He would be trusting the Law, and externalizing his desire which is the Law individualized in him; and his body would be showing forth greater power and beauty daily. He would be on that plane of thought where his body THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 75 (which is the condensed form of his thought) would be growing each day into a new and ever beautifying revision of his new and ever beau- tifying acquisition of intelligence. 76 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY, CHAPTER VII. BELIEFS: BOTH FIXED AND UNFIXED. I now leave it to the reader to say whether death is a necessity of our organization, or a desirable thing, since spirit and matter are not two separate substances. And I will return on my track to again con- sider what seems to be the spirit forms de- scribed so frequently by Spiritualists, and seen by thousands of people. Our bodies are the condensed form of our thoughts, or our beliefs. Thought and belief are in some degree synonymous; both are forms of recognition ; both are mental expres- sions. A thought seems not to have the fixed character of a belief; but it may become a belief; and in doing so, it will take its place among other fixed beliefs and be a part of the visible body. Belief is simply thought that becomes fixed. The body is thought, but it THE BLOSSOM OP THE CENTURY. 77 is thought that is fixed; thought, whose au- thority is not questioned, and (on the men- tal plane, where we do really exist, whether 'we are aware of it or not) it becomes visible. Fixed thought is belief; and belief is visible thought expressed in a thousand different forms; each form being its own individual recognition of the Law of Being. Thought before it becomes fixed in belief is invisible to our poor, undeveloped percep- tions; it is a reality, though intangible, just as the perfume of flowers and many other ethe- real substances which we are not able to per- ceive except by their effects. And yet the power to see these fine sub- stances is latent among the undiscovered pos- sibilities that will some time awaken within us. Even now we get occasional evidences of their existence when we are off our guard against everything but the commonplace and orthodox attainments of the present. We sometimes forget that we believe in nothing but what we call "established facts," and in these moments of forgetfulness, it may be that 78 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. some mighty power within us, and kept out of sight by our ignorant beliefs, will steal a march on us and show itself in something unexpected to, and even unacceptable by our " sober senses." Then it is not impossible that the thought, which has so far mastered us as to render us in a measure unconscious of what we are thinking, or at least off our guard and unwatchful of the action of our mind, should suddenly appear be- fore us in the objective. It is a living thing; each atom of its frail being is transfused by the Law. For the time being, it actually has an individuality of its own ; an individuality quite negative, however, to that of its creator, myself, for instance, and holding its objective form IL ready obedience to my caprice. This is the real condition: I have been in a revery, a careless state of mind, when my thoughts were shaping themselves uncontrolled by my will. My will, which is my ego, being off guard, there is a tendency to disintegration in my body the sum of my fixed beliefs. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 79 Then, stray thoughts, beliefs which are not fixed, may start up from the careless or in- dolent brain and actually become sufficiently fixed to be visible. In becoming thus par- tially fixed they draw upon the fixed beliefs (my body), which for the time are in a meas- ure unfixed. And here we have the double presence, the second party, which may either be an exact resemblance of ourselves or the resemblance of some picture that exists or' has existed at some previous time in the mind. I recall an occasion when for a few hours I was so exceedingly negative that these thoughts took objective form by the hundred. They were literally annihilating me, and I was too weak to resist them. My life seemed to be passing out into them, when the physician was called, and by giving me a stimulant re-estab- lished the ego in my organization, which actu- ally appeared to call into itself and absorb every one of the wandering shapes that were using me up in order to become objective to me. That thoughts are things is a fact that can- 80 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. not be disputed. We might as well say that ether did not exist, because it is invisible, as to say that thought is nothing because it is not seen under ordinary conditions. There is no nothing. Wherever the Law of Attraction is recognized even in the feeblest manner, there, though unseen, exists the form of that recognition. Recognition is form. Rec- ognition is the making visible of the Law. The Law is the only thing that can be recog- nized. It may be recognized in weakness or in strength ; but wherever it is recognized, no mat- ter whether the recognition is weak or strong, a manifestation of it is inevitable. Whether this explanation will apply to every phase of spirit materialization or not, I cannot say. Nor have I given it in the hope that it will do so ; for there is no pleasanter thought to me than that our loved and dead do really live after they have left this sphere, and can return to us again. Nor does the fact that our thought may take shapes which under certain conditions be- come objective to us, invalidate the claim of THE BLOSSOM OP THE CENTURY. 81 Spiritualism, that the spirits of the dead can return and take form. My real object in saying what I have said is to prove to the reader what I know to be true ; that there is no nothing ; and that thoughts are things. I also wish to establish the fact that the human mind is an unprospect- ed field, and that no one has even the faintest idea of its latent powers. In the matter of being lifted from the floor, to which I alluded a few pages back, in connec- tion with other spiritualistic phenomena, I wish to say that this too, may be, and is a power that belongs to man ; one that he can exercise at will when he comes to know more of himself and his relation to the Law of his being. 82 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. CHAPTER VIII. THE LAW OF ATTRACTION. In attempting to define the seeming differ- ence between the law of gravitation and the Law of Attraction, I showed that this seeming difference was a difference in the degree of in- telligence in the objects that were attracted. I showed how the words " death to death " would explain the law of gravitation, and "life to life" would explain the Law of Attraction ; in short, that the law of gravitation was the neg- ative pole of the Law of Attraction, since its effects were manifested in objects too ignorant of the Law of Attraction to be lifted by it. I said that with the first awakening of intel- ligence, which in all objects from a grain of sand up to man, is the recognition of innate de- sire, that the objects were lifted upward instead of being held downward. The Law of Attrac- tion is therefore the Law of life in evolution, while the law of gravitation is the same law of THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 83 life in latency. All is life either in action or with, its powers of action latent. Therefore the law of gravitation is the Law of Attraction; but being the negative pole of the Law, seems to be rather a denial of the Law than the Law itself. The law of gravitation glides by impercepti- ble degrees into the Law of Attraction. They are the same Law, the seeming difference being the different degrees of intelligence that recog- nize it. The speck of mold lies close to the earth. It does not recognize the principle of life with- in it. That principle of life is desire. The Law in individual expression is desire; and after a time, the speck of mold feels the monitions of the law ; recognizes the desire the law and becomes what we call a living organism. It was alive before, but did not know it. That is, the Law of Attraction was in it because it is in all things ; but the recognition was wanting ; or rather, the degree of recognition within it was too undeveloped for observation. So long as the recognition was wanting, or 84 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. too feeble for expression, the speck of mold was simply acted on. With stronger self-recog- nition, came the power of independent action ; and then it became obedient to the Law of Attraction within it, as expressed in its own recognized desire ; and with even this small amount of freedom it moved upward from the earth. The law of gravitation in it had devel- oped into the Law of Attract'.on. In strict truth, it had always been the Law of Attrac- tion, but was only the Law of Attraction to the intelligence that recognized it as such. Thus it is seen that a recognition of the Law of Attraction emancipates from a belief in the law of gravitation ; or from the non-belief in the Law of Attraction ; and thus intelligence becomes master of death to the extent of its power to recognize the Law of Attraction. I shall have to go over this again in order to make it clear. There really is no law of gravitation ; that is, if I am permitted to define the law of grav- itation as that power which draws all objects THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 85 towards the centre of the earth. For there is ' no such power. Every atom in the world is mind, intelligence, recognition of the Law of life within itself, that when expressed at all, is expressed in desire. This Life Principle which is expressed in the individual as desire, exists in latency in every atom ; and it is no sooner recognized by the atom than the atom acts in obedience to it. The desire in the atom always leads away from the earth, and not down into it, showing that the real attraction to which every desire points is upward and not downward. The tree is attracted upward, and it goes on being attracted upward in obedience to its de- sire until its very roots in a broad sense are freed from the earth, and it walks on top of the earth in a form of greater freedom. It may have a multitude of feet on the ground and may move with difficulty, but the same Law of At- traction keeps growing upon its recognition, until in the lapse of ages it stands upon four feet. And so the power of recognition goes on 86 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. for ages again ; and it has so far emancipated itself that it stands on only two feet. And still the power to recognize the Law as expressed in desire goes on ; and the freedom from the so-called law of gravitation con- tinues. This is the case to-day. It has been the case always ; and who is there to limit its progress in the future? Man, as to his personality, is clear mind or intelligence. He is the Law in the objective. The Law as personified in desire is his sub- jective side; and the seeming two are one. The Law is inexhaustible. Man's recognition of the law has its limitations, and these limita- tions establish his shape, and the shape of every object in nature. But though we see in man's present shape, and in the power or lack of power he manifests, the limitation of his intelligence, yet there is no valid reason why there should ever be a lim- it to his intelligence, or his recognition of the Law. The Law being limitless, his power to recognize it is also limitless. And as every fresh THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 87 recognition of its power releases him more and more from the deadness called gravitation, and puts him more and more under the influence of the Law of Attraction, which is not towards the earth, but away from it, I say the time is com- ing when he shall float in the air ; and that too without any foreign appliances, and without any effort beyond the simple recognition of the Law of Attraction. In other words, he will float in the air because he wants to. It is impossible to form anything like an ad- equate idea of the power of the Law of Attrac- tion. Every form of organization depends upon it. Every organized form, according to its needs, recognizes the power of the Law, and becomes just what it recognizes ; or shows forth in its external self that which it perceives to be good. Recognition is the externalizing power ; and it is something that grows. The Law does not grow ; but the recognition of the power of the Law grows constantly in the mind of the un- trammelled thinker ; and this is why life is a progression and not a creation. 88 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. Nothing is created; nothing ever has been created. What we call creation is the thousand forms of recognition of the power of the Law of Attraction. If recognition may be called creation, and in one sense it may be so called, then forms are self-created. They are at least self-manifested. It is a half intuitive perception of this fact that has started the belief called " free moral agency." If free moral agency means the power to act independent of the Law, then there is no free moral agency; for the Law is one with the power that exerts it ; and the nearest approach a man can make to freedom is through greater knowledge of the Law, or closer conformity with it. THE BLOSSOM OF 1 THE CENTURY. 89 CHAPTER IX. THE EGO. "Out of the night that shelters me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods there be For my unconquerable soul." The much repetition of the foregoing pages would be unpardonable but for the fact that nothing short of repetition over and over again would make the subject clear to those to whom the idea is new. There are two parts to this subject. On 3 re- lates to the Law of Being or Attraction. The other relates to individual life under the Law. We know nothing of the Law except that it is the Life Principle ; that it fills all space ab- solutely full, leaving no room for the least particle of death. We know that this Life Principle is altogether good, and as it fills the universe , therefore the universe is alto- gether good. This statement excludes the 90 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. idea of either death or evil. And indeed, there is no death and no evil. The Life Principle, the Law, is the continent of all possibilities. Man and all creatures ex- ternalize in their own personalities these possi- bilities as rapidly as they recognize them. Recognition makes apparent or visible those possibilities of the Law that were unapparent or invisible before they were recognized. In this sense the sense of externalizing or making visible the possibilities of the Law the power to recognize may be called the creative power ; and from this time on, I shall speak of it as creative. Recognition then, which is intelligence or mind, creates. I therefore come to the second of the two parts of this subject; that which relates to creation. The old question in the catechism, "Who made you?" has never been answered correctly except in one instance ; at least, there is only one instance on record, and that will be found in " Uncle Tom's Cabin." THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 9) When Miss Ophelia propounded the question to Topsy, it was answered correctly : "Nobody made me. I just growed." On the hypothesis that there is a personal God, who in spite of his personality which means his limitation still fills all space ; and on the still farther hypothesis that he made man and all the other creatures, I think it must be admitted that, for an individual of his power and unerring judgment, he made a very poor job of it; so poor that it is no won- der he got tired of the work of his hands and gave us over to his coadjutor, the devil, to hide it out of his sight. Compare this theory with the theory that the race is a growth, and that it takes no step forward in the scale of being except by recog- nition of more truth, or the gain of more in- telligence ; and compare it as it now stands with what it was at the time of the cave-dwel- lers, and see if it, as its own creator, has not the right to be proud of its work. On the first hypothesis the work was finished at one blow as it were and it was a wretched 92 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY, piece of work. On the second hypothesis we see the never-ceasing effort of intellect to climb higher in the intellectual scale; and as a re- sult, an unfinished,but a constantly progressing race; a race that we admire and respect be_ cause we know that it is where it is by its own effort; by its own unceasing struggle with ig- norance ; by the daily heroism of its past as it journeyed through untrodden wildernesses of thought without a solitary guiding light except that which its slowly growing experience yielded it. Take this glorious race just as it stands to- day, still fettered and still clinging to its chains, but still advancing slowly along the road that promises relief from them, and com- pare it with the cut and dried and finished race that God made, and note the difference in your feelings for the two. In God's race there is no hope. It was com- pleted at its birth and has done nothing but degenerate ever since. God made it dependent on himself; and it now finds itself in the dilemma of an abandoned job ; God having in a THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 93 measure washed his hands of it, and left it to the tender mercies of its arch-enemy, whom God also made, apparently for no other purpose than that of a scape-goat for his own mistakes. But the man-made race of evolution began in the smallest possible way. It was not only not perfect at its inception, but it was merely the seed germ of a race. It had no God to depend upon, and no inspired guide to lead it. It was self-creative and self-dependent from the first, and it felt its slow but sure way up from its beginning, through the darkness of absolute ignorance. It had no guides but its mistakes. These mistakes which have been imputed to it as sins have been its only guide- posts to point it in the right direction. And yet it has forged its way through earth and air and fire and water and tempest, and the dense blackness of its own intellectual night, to its present standpoint, where it sees the dawning of light at last. It has scored its triumphs in the conquest of a myriad of obstacles ; it has covered itself with bruises and wounds too 94 THE BLOSSOM OK THE CENTURY. grievous to tell of ; it has left thousands of its numbers to mark each upward step in its prog- ress ; and it is here to-day, blood-stained, sick and sore from its head to its feet, but daunt- less still, and covered with the glory of its un- dying courage. 0, beautiful Race ! A baby race even yet ; still foot bound in the long gowns of its infan- cy, but ready now to tear away each hamper- ing bond, and walk forth in the broad road of an infinite freedom towards infinite wisdom. Which will you have; the race that God made or the race that is now making itself? Those who look upon the race to condemn it, exhibit about as much judgment as one, who coming into the orange grove at my window, should taste the unripe fruit and pronounce the entire orange culture a failure. If God made the race, then there would be no need for any action upon its part at all. It is made and finished and that is all there is of it But if the race made itself, which it surely did, then it has an endless work before it in making THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 95 itself over in accordance with its ever-enlarg- ing and ever-beautifying ideal. And who will deny the presence of the ideal in man? Man, God-made, could have no use for an ideal, since God's work must necessa- rily be perfect ; it might have the power to retrograde, but it evidently could have no pow- er to progress. And yet we find in man an ideal that is always far ahead of his present attainment. This would not be in him if God had made him ; it would be in him if he had made him- self ; it would be the beautiful implanted hope ever leading him to higher growth , to nobler attainment. And this ideal is not only in man, but it ex- ists in every organized creature from the low- est form of life on up through the scale to man. It is the aspiration, the desire, the Law incarnate whose never ending possibilities are foreshadowed in the creature's intuitive or latent powers of recognition. It is the very basis of growth in all creatures, and links all creatures together on the road of infinite pro- 96 THE BLOSSOM OK THE CENTURY. gression ; proving not only the oneness of the Law, but the oneness of the Law's recognition of itself. For the Law's recognition of itself is one, though expressed in individuals. It is one unbroken chain of recognition that estab- lishes not only the brotherhood of man with man, but the brotherhood of every expression of life with every other expression. For as the Law is one, so the recognition of the Law is one; thus demonstrating the wholeness and infallibility of the Universe. Every life cell is an ego. It is a seed germ. When under the Law of Attraction two or more of the life cells unite, they come into one understanding of the Law, not into two or three understandings, and the two or three egos become one ego and possess greater drawing power than the single life cell. This is shown in the common magnet. It has its positive and negative pole and demon- strates its power as .a whole magnet. It may be broken into a hundred pieces, and each piece will be a perfect magnet with its positive and negative pole. Weld the pieces together TEE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. #7 again and the many magnets become one mag- net. The magnetism is indivisible ; the recog- nition of the magnetism may be individualized ; and it is individualized endlessly in the pri- mordial life cells. The drawing together of the cells and their cohesion in more complex forms is individual growth. In individual growth the drawing power of the individual is constantly increased; as it increases, it becomes constantly more positive to the less complex individualities about it, and masters them ; by mastering them it unites their power to its own. The strength of the conquered does, in a sense, pass into the con- queror ; and so we have the law of individual growth, which is by the survival of the fittest. The magnet's recognition of its own magnet- ism is it recognition of the Law of Attraction within it. The man's recognition of desire within him- self is the recognition of the Law of Attraction within him. The leading difference between the magnet 98 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. and the man is that, while both recognize the Law of Attraction within themselves, the man's recognition is of such a character as to give birth to witt] the conscious ego; while that of the magnet has not advanced so far on the road to conciousness. In the early stages of individual growth, the creature's recognition of the Law of Attraction within it is perceived to be simple desire. But this desire is the basis of all future growth. The more we gratify desire, the more it grows. This is equivalent to saying, the more we recog- nize the Law, the more of the power we em- body ; for the gratification of desire is the rec- ognition of the Law. The desire thus recognized by the creature has no moral character whatever ; nor has the Law itself any moral character. Morality is an external thing, and belongs to the intelli- gence. - Desire is a purely selfish attribute. What then, is the Law of Attraction, the Law that men call God's, a selfish principle? The Law of Attraction has no character THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 99 whatever; it is neither selfish nor unselfish; .c is simply the drawing power, whole and in- divisible ; utterly regardless of morality or individual rights. With individualization, comes the conscious- ness of the Law, taking the form of desire. It is utterly selfish ; it is the ego ; it is the "I" in a struggle with every other "I." Its selfishness, from its first inception, is only limited by its lack of power. It is its own centre of the universe, and its one effort is to draw to itself all there is. The selfishness of the creature increases step by step with the development of higher and still higher types of life. Why? Because de- velopment is nothing else but the still greater recognition of individual desire ; and desire is the starting point and the basic principle of self; it is selfishness or selfhood. The desire of the individual is only limited in its selfish grasping after everything it sees, by a still greater desire ; the desire for a secure life. So long as all creatures act from selfish 100 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. desire there is one constant state of warfare, and the world is under the dominion of fear. The desire for peace and security dominates the desire for possession, and gradually it becomes the highest desire that justice shall reign, be- cause justice guarantees the greatest happiness. Tne desire, without ever forsaking the central standpoint of self, always bent on its own hap- piness, has developed a better conception or a better recognition of what it takes to produce happiness. Individual life rests exclusively on selfish- ness ; the effort of each to attain its own ends ; its own happiness. The best method of attain- ing these ends, true happiness, is a matter of intellectual growth ; a matter of greater recog- nition of the Law of Attraction ; the law of in- finite union ; the Law as expressed in greater and more complex desires. The renunciation of one individual to another and the folly of self-sacrifice become apparent when it is seen that such renunciation and sac- rifice rest on the same foundation that all our other actions rest upon. They are performed THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 101 for the purpose of yielding us the greatest happi- ness either here or hereafter. So it happens that no man can resign the ego. Let him cover it up as he will, it is always the motor that moves him, and always will be. What is religion but giving up some- thing in the present in order that we may get it in the future with infinitely compounded in- terest? I am willing to give the heathen the twenty dollars I have saved for the purchase of a new dress, if I am convinced that God is my security and will pay me back a hundred-fold. It appears to me as a first class business trans- action and I will risk " the sacrifice." The mother love, that beautiful and tender and holy feeling, is self-love. The child is the object of the mother's desire ; probably the very highest object of her desire, and she holds it more tenaciously than anything else. Every form of love rests on desire ; rests on the basis of self. Indeed, every good and beau- tiful attribute has self-love for its starting point ; self-love worked out through higher and nobler recognition of the Law of Attraction, 102 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. and individualized in higher and nobler de- sires. The growta of desire is the growth and strengthening of the individual. Society, when it shall have reached a more ideal condition than at present, will have reached it through the strengthening of the individualities composing it; and these indi- vidualities will have become strengthened by a better recognition of their own selfhood as ex- pressed in their enlarged desire. The total sacrifice of the selfish principle as expressed in desire, if such a thing were possi- ble, would mean the destruction of the ego, which would be annihilation. And this is the impracticable and the impossible religion preached from thousands of pulpits to-day, whose effects are not the making of men, but the prostitution of them to a mistaken renun- ciation and a self-deceptive and often a hyp- ocritical humility. Religion is based on fear. And I now state boldly that everything in this world that is based on fear must die. It must die that man THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 103 may live and love and expand to the glory of true and free individualism through the power of love, whose very nature is incompatible with fear. The love that is preached from the pulpit is an impossible thing in the character of the religion that preaches it. And why? Because the religion itself is the most diluted compound of weakness ever concocted for the abject prostration of individuality. It is a doctrine that teaches men to resign their own strength, and to lean on the strength of anoth- er; a doctrine that ignores individual power, and throws itself in abject helplessness upon some imaginary power external to the individ- ual. Undei such circumstances the very effort of a person to love his neighbor as himself be- comes a hypocritical pretense ; he is not capa- ble of generating love ; love is the child of free- dom, and the slave of fear is powerless to beget it; no one who is weak in his own selfhood can give himself ; and this is love. No one who leans on a power outside of himself can be anything but weak. 104 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. It is only when men come into a state of freedom from the ripening of the ego, that it becomes possible for them to fulfill the claims of the so-called gospel, and love others as they love themselves. For love is the overplus of strength, and they who lean and beg will never be strong enough to generate anything but a counterfeit representative of it. Love is the outflow of individual strength ; the outflow of the individual's very self ; there is no outflow to individual weakness ; nothing but the absorptive drying up that we perceive in stagnant water. The time is fast approaching when men will love ; and that too, because self is the moving spring of each person. When we shall become free from fear through the growing knowledge of our own power, we will see in others only the qualities that attract us, and we will flow out to them in desires for their good ; beau- tiful deeds will become the spontaneous out- growth of free souls. In an atmosphere of freedom, the kingdom of love will be estab- lished. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 105 We would love now if we were free and strong ; but we are so fettered and so weak, and so full of fears for our own safety that we can- not get away from the clamoring ego within us for an hour. We cannot come into that condition of noble and lofty repose which enables us to say, "All things are well at home ; I will therefore go abroad and see if I cannot make them better for my neighbors." This would be love. It would be the superabundant outflow of strength. But why should I care being happy myself whether others are happy or not? Am I not under obedience to the law of selfishness? In what particular is this personal ego I find within myself to be served by serving others? I answer that in my still farther recognition of the Law of Attraction I have come into clos- er relationship with my neighbor ; the drawing power of the Law has so shown me his oneness with me that it has become my desire to help him ; my whole nature has warmed towards him, because the law in its fuller manifestation is Love. My more complete recognition of tho 106 THE BLOSSOM OP THE CENTURY Law has filled me with love, and love seeks an object; it is the expression of the Law of At- traction, and being full of it, my happiness is best served by manifesting it in noble words and generous deeds. And thus, even in the ex- ecution of man's loftiest ideal for the univer- sal good, we see that he acts in obedience to his self-love; the love so misunderstood and so jondemned by the superficial thought of the age. The tendency of evolution is the perfecting of individuality ; the concentration of power in the ego. Man must learn that he is self- creative, and this, his only hope, lies in this fact; that his only salvation is knowledge; that knowledge is a constantly growing power. Seeing this to be so, let every human being take fresh hope. So long as salvation is supposed to depend on another, it must always seem doubtful ; and this doubt cannot but keep one more or less under the influence of fear. But when self salvation is seen to rest on self dependence, on individual effort, then native THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 107 courage and will power come to the rescue, and a man shoulders the burden of his journey and trudges along the road of endless progression with faith in himself to overcome all obstacles. And in this frame of mind he grows stronger every hour, no matter how rough the journey; the rougher the better, since every conquest adds to his strength until he feels his position to be God-like and irresistible. 108 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. CHAPTER X. ENDLESS PROGRESSION. ITS RETARDATION BY FEAR. Self-dependence in the pursuit of wisdom ; this alone is growth. Whenever a man is in a position that entails the necessity of leaning on some external aid, he is a dying man ; his tendency is downward ; he is under the so-called law of gravitation. Knock the props from under him ; then, if he can stand alone with faith in his own unaided self, and with the resolution to follow his high- est aspirations, indifferent to the criticisms of his neighbors, he has passed the line that lies between the so-called law of gravitation and the Law of Attraction, and has entered the outskirts of a diseaseless and deathless domain of pure life. That this is a difficult thing to do no one can doubt. We look abroad and see disease THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 109 and death everywhere. They seem to be the established order of nature ; to break away from them looks like an impossibility. We have not yet discovered that there is no estab- lished order in nature ; we cannot yet realize that nature is an ever-varying series of concep- tions of the Law, and that disease and death are among these conceptions. That they are mistaken conceptions, or con- ceptions based on our ignorance of absolute truth has not occurred to us. We have not yet found out that all is life, and that the whole chain of growth from the lowest organic form, up to man, is a gradually growing consciousness of this great truth ; this absolute truth ; the only absolute truth we know at this time. The entire procession of organic forms I say again, has been but a series of gradu- ally enlarging perceptions of the one absolute truth that there is no death, and can be none ; that all is life. Individual intelligence, individual know- ledge of this one mighty truth is positive sal- vation from disease and death. 110 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. That disease and death should be among the conceptions of nature is because nature in her conceptions of the truth is a growth. She can- not conceive the full possibilities of the Law of Attraction in a moment, any more than a peach can conceive the possibilities of its fully ripened condition at the moment of its in- ception. Let us imagine that nature could be abso- lutely perfect and beyond the possibility of any farther growth ; that man, as a part of nature, was also perfect. In this case, he would have nothing more to desire, and no farther incentive either to thought or action. Is there anything desirable in such a condi- tion? Is it not the most terrible form of death that one can imagine? Dead and yet conscious of the situation ; dead and yet sufficiently alive to know it. For my part, I should prefer an eternal sleep. On the other hand, look at nature with man at its head as an ever-growing thing. Look at the Law as expressed individually in desire. In this condition, there is always a future ; THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. Ill there is always some happiness to be attained, which when attained, projects its hope of some other and greater happiness. There is always some obstacle of ignorance to be conquered, the conquering of which brings a greater con- sciousness of strength and power to him who conquers. There is an ever enlarging object in life ; an ever enlarging hope for that which lies beyond; an ever enlarging future, which in passing behind us, strengthens our position in the universe and confirms our mastery more and more. There is always something to live for ; always an object to stimulate effort, and always the deepening and broadening and beautifying manhood and womanhood that is the result of effort. There is always the closer approximation of our external selves to the glorious internal ideal born of desire, and bringing us more and more into a position of oneness with the Law of Attraction, thus uniting us in love and harmony and power. And in all of this growth, we will eventually exhaust the latent possibilities of the earth, and enter other spheres of thought and action, 112 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. whose possibilities will far transcend those of the earth. And on, and on, through a never-ending series of conquests in obedience to the ideal, which allures forever to higher heights and to hap- pier happiness, and to tenderer and nobler love. There is perfection, but man will never reach it. It is an infinite thing and belongs only to the Law, the unchangeable Principle of Life ; the Eternal Unit ; the One. Man is many; he represents a million phases of the Law, but not the All of it. His happiness de- pends on his finitehood; on the absolutely limitless capacity of his power to grow. The basis of individual life is desire. Desire is the Law incarnate in the individual. It is the diseaseless and deathless principle. This fact shows that it is of the Law, and not of the intelligence, or the recognition of the Law. The desire exists whether it is recognized or not. Indeed, it is very seldom that the desire is recognized in a man in a way that THE BLOBSOi,. OF THE CENTURY. 113 will make it apparent in his consolidated in- telligence, which is his body. He desires and he recognizes that he does desire, but he does not recognize that his desire is a power to be relied upon. He desires, but he fears to trust his desire and trusts his fear instead; thus giving the superior recognition to his fear and ignoring his desire. In ignor- ing his desire, he in a measure paralyzes its effectiveness ; in recognizing his fear, he makes the fear paramount in his mind or his intel- ligence, and it is the fear that is recorded in his intelligence, and not the perfect desire. And this is why these human intelligences our bodies are so weak and wretched and diseased, and why they die. To fear is as much a function of the intellect as to hope. To fear is to believe something that you do not wish to believe. Every be- lief is a form of intelligence or ignorance; (the two words are off the same piece, being nega- tive and positive poles of truth.) To believe what you fear, is to make manifest a certain be- lief ; it is a negative belief, but it is a belief ; 114 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. and to believe anything whatever, IB to make it manifest or visible ; whether it is a negative be- lief, by which I mean a belief that denies the absolute truth that all is life, or a positive be- lief that affirms the infallibility of the Life Principle. If a man believes that which he fears, his belief is a traitor to his desire; it is not at one with his desire, and therefore, it does not properly clothe his desire or make it mani- fest. There is no belief entirely free from the recognition of the desire ; there must be some recognition of desire in every belief, or else the body of man's belief would scarcely cohere enough to give him a personal appearance at all. And men do trust their desires deep down in their intuitional natures much more than they are usually aware of ; from this fact, they live longer than would appear possi- ble when we consider how very much people seem to trust their fears. Desire is so positive a thing that it commands a certain amount of THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 115 recognition, even though it is unconscious or intuitive recognition. Life, freedom from disease and old age, de- pend entirely on the amount and kind of recognition a man gives to his desire. One man recognizes his desire as something danger- ous to his own salvation and to society, and goes to work to crush it. This crushing pro- cess usually strengthens the desire and thereby the individual ; but it is apt to render him an inharmonious element in society, not because his desire is evil, but because his mistaken in- telligence imputes evil to it. With this im- puted character, and with the recognition he has given his desire in trying to crush it, he has become a strong man in a mistaken direc- tion. For the desire is the Principle of Life in the man. It points forever in the direction of happiness ; it is altogether good and disease- less and deathless, without knowing this fact. It is a part of the altogether good and disease- less and deathless Law, awaiting individual recognition in order to become manifest or 116 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. visible on the external (the mental) plane, in an altogether good and diseaseless and death- less individual existence. When a man in order to attain some form of that happiness toward which his desire is always pointing makes the mistake of injur- ing another, it is not his desire that has erred, but his intelligence. His desire never points towards the injury of another; it cannot possi- bly do so; it is a portion of the eternal unity, an intelligent recognition of which, leads to a condition of unbroken harmony, undying brotherhood and ever-enlarging love. The intelligence which is the individual- izing factor does little else thus far in its growth than make mistakes as it gropes blind- ly in the direction of the absolute truth that there is no death ; that all is Life. The truth that all is Life comes only with a recognition of the Law of Attraction. Ever since the first tiny creature, and before, the trend of ages has been towards the knowing of this truth. And now we know it. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 117 To know it is to be conjoined to it in its diseaselessness and deathlessness. To know it is to be one with it. To know that it is diseaseless and deathless is to know that it is also sinless ; it is to know that the so-called sins of the race have been like the so-called diseases, nothing more than the mistaken beliefs of a baby race, following the dim and murky lights its half-awakened in- telligence yielded it, in the direction it thought would lead to happiness. No man desires to be a criminal. All men desire happiness. It is the mistaken efforts to gratify a desire that can be nothing else but holy, that create the mistaken appearance of sin in the world, and fill it full of poor benighted blunderers whom we call sin- ners. Until the growth of intelligence in the race shall demonstrate this to be true, society can do no better than to protect itself from the consequences of these mistakes and their mis- taken perpetrators just as it is doing now. But a time is coming when a true knowledge 118 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. on this subject will convert our state prisons into colleges where the truth will be taught. More and more the power we have ascribed to "God" the Law seems to be centering in the individual. It is evolving through the indi- vidual's organization and is being expressed by him ; and in proportion as it is so understood and expressed, man trusts his fears less and his desires more. Man's organism is the intellectual laboratory for the expression or the making visible and available the power of the Law of Attraction in our world of uses. The power exists ; the Law exists ; but it might as well not exist as to find in external life no recognition of it. "Man is God's ne- cessity." The visible world is the chief object of creation, and the Law is its servant, and not its master. The Law is simply the invisible frame-work upon which man strings the wonderful creations of his genius ; it is the in- finite breath of life that flows into his every thought, and makes his thoughts external, visible existences. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 119 It is true that without the Law man could not be ; but it is also true that without man to in- terpret the Law, and so make it manifest ex- ternally, the Law might as well not be. The belief that the invisible is more impor- tant than the visible is a mistake. The belief that individual life, as it refines and spiritual- izes, becomes less allied to the visible plane and more allied to the invisible plane, is another mistake. Individual life as it refines and spiritualizes will attain a stability and a fixedness, a pow- er of cohesion and concentration on the visi- ble plane, infinitely greater than it now pos- sesses. It will be as much more solid than it is now as steel is more solid than water; it will become as much more delicate and com- pact as alabaster is more delicate and compact than sand. The refining principle that comes through the growth of a superior intelligence will not disintegrate individuals or cause them to disappear from the external world. Intellectual growth is the constant replacement of a low grade of thought by a higher grade of 120 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. thought ; it is the constant acquisition of new truth; new truth relegates to the past every particle of old truth, which in the light of the new truth, has become error and therefore use- less. Every atom of this truth, new and old, is substance; the identical stuff our bodies and everything else we see are made of; and it changes constantly. If we keep on learning new truth, the substance of our bodies refines; grows stronger and more beautiful. If we cease to learn, this substance dries up and falls to the earth under obedience to the negative pole of the Law of Attraction which says, " The dead to the dead." Jesus understood this, and said: "Let the dead bury their dead." The dead are burying their dead to-day all over the world. But the life of a nobler intelligence has appeared, and death itself is dying. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 121 CHAPTER XI. MAN'S POWER TO SPEAK THE CREATIVE WORD: EVOLUTION OF THE IDEAL. To make visible; this is the object of crea- tion. The visible universe is the universe of uses, and man's theatre of ever-progressive action. To pull out from his own brain as the spider pulls out of its body, an unending web of creations ; creations that suggest other crea- tions in a never-ending procession of higher and still higher and more potent uses. At a certain point in the acquisition of intel- ligence, a man arrives at a wonderful fact; he perceives that he is personally creative; sees that his spoken word has the power of life in it ; that it heals the sick, banishes old age and drives death away. He does this through the power of the Law made personal. That man should be able to make the power 122 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. of the Law personal in himself, is so wonderful a truth that the world is not going to accept it until it sees it demonstrated. But even now the fact is being demonstrated in sufficient force to prove to the unprejudiced observer that the statement I have made is true. The people, as a whole, are not looking for anything out of the common occurrences of life; their preachers and their teachers, their body tinkers and their soul tinkers are on top of them, and they are holding them down with a weight as of mountains. When one poor, struggling creature gets from under, and begins to breathe the pure air of higher intelligence, he distrusts it because of its very purity. He is afraid of it ; its grandeur terrorizes him ; he is tempted to crawl back to his old stifling posi- tion in order to obtain again that mental stu~ por he is fain to call "his peace of mind." The rapidly enlarging thoughts that spring from his liberated brain can find no soil for their germination ; as far as his vision can reach, he sees but an arid desert waste, inca- THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 123 pable of responding to his mental touch. He grows hopeless ; the belief in himself and his own ideas, that would make them manifest in external form in spite of the most unfavora- ble conditions, is wanting; the disregardful world drifts over his genius and he is lost. Belief is the clothing power of which desire is the spirit or soul. Belief is a function of intelligence. A man believes what his intelligence shows him to be true. His belief is his fixed perception of cer- tain facts. As his perception of facts changes, his belief changes. No one doubts this ; but, when I say that his body is a faithful record of his beliefs, and shows forth every change of his perceptions, very few people will believe it ; and yet it is true. Beliefs with slight variations run in grooves that produce established types. Cattle repre- sent a certain set of beliefs, and we have their type. Horses represent a set of beliefs, differ- ing somwhat from those of cattle, and we have another type. Man represents another set of 124 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. beliefs a more intelligent set of beliefs and they are faithfully registered in his higher organization. There has been very little change in man's beliefs for ages. In all important particulars, he believes substantially what he believed thou- sands of years ago. He represents the inherit- ed beliefs of many generations. His beliefs have been somewhat changed in a few particu- lars, but the body of his beliefs is the same. He believes himself to be a limited creature; he believes that God made him in His own image, and that God holds his destiny in His hand. He leans on God or on some other im- aginary power ; and it is his disbelief in him- self as his own maker and the master of his own destiny, that keeps him from farther marked and substantial advancement in his beliefs. His intellect is locked up within a limit of his own making, and though he is slowly widen- ing this limit in spots, he is contracting it in other spots, and his average growth out of his fetters is very slow. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 125 The belief lying at the root of all his hampering beliefs is a belief in the deadness of the matter out of which he thinks his body is made. He carries the body of death with him from the cradle to the grave. In spite of his ever-present intuition that death is not for him, he admits its existence in his external senses and he takes the consequences of the admission, and dies. The few years of his life are insufficient for anything more than the round of ideas pur- sued by his father; and so he dies without having found any new line of thought by which to change his fixed beliefs. And thus, with human belief in a state of stagnation, the race itself is stagnant. It cannot improve in any decidedly marked manner. The idea that the race has reached its ulti- mate development is one of the most absurd of all its ideas. It may be that the human form has become a crude expression of the shape best adapted to the highest use ; and, in that case, there will be no higher race of animal creatures than man. But, if this is so, and I 126 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. believe it is, then the improvement to be made in him by a constantly growing belief in his own unlimited power will show forth not in any marked change in nis bodily structure but in an ever-strengthening, refining and beautifying process of his present structure. A man can be just what he believes he can be, after he understands the Law. He can do just what he believes he can do, after he has come into the understanding of Being. Therefore, personal power is simply a matter of the understanding of truth ; simply a course of mental training in the right direction ; the direction towards freedom from every one of his old hampering beliefs in his own limitation, and a consequent emancipation from every description of fear. All power is in the knowing. By the word power, I do not mean some abstract, far-away force, but a present personal power ; a power vested in the individual himself ; the power to be precisely what he wants to be, and to do precisely what he wants to do. A man has no THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 127 limitations but those imposed by his ignorance of his power. This is because the external of man is belief. What he believes even in his ignorance of the Law he is. When he shall come into an un- derstanding of the Law, and know that it does not circumscribe him in any direction what- ever, he can then consult his desires as to what he desires to become ; and, recognizing that the Law does not stand in the way of his becoming what he desires to be, he slowly begins to grow into it. He speaks the word of his own re- newed creation. He slowly begins to grow into the new form of life projected by his ideal. I say " slowly," because at first this complete change of belief is very slow indeed. At every step of his progress in it he is met by the solid wall of his previous beliefs, which have been compacted in him by a thousand generations of ancestors. He not only meets this solid wall in himself, but he can scarcely take a step out- side of himself without meeting it in a still more unyielding form from those in whom it 128 THE BLOSSOM OP THE CENTURY. has never been shaken at all, and who turn upon him like enraged beasts when they begin to feel the change that is going on in him. Truly, he who would step up to a higher plane in life, must be brave as well as faithful to the best he knows. And yet, to one who is thoroughly tired of the world as it is, tired of its mediocre attain- ments, tired of the entire range of its cheap and wretched thought , any change however dif- ficult seems a relief. The energies are stimulat- ed by it ; and under the stimulus greater hopes are born, and greater courage to insure their ripening. Anything more dismal than the eternal round of small events that swarm our pathway from the cradle to the grave, to be repeated in each successive generation, I cannot imagine. No wonder if death should be welcomed by the weary pilgrim after his third or fourth journey over this arid and unchanging scene. If a continued existence has nothing better to hold out to us as an inducement to our prolonged lives here, I want nothing of it. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 129 The same thing over and over and over for thousands of years ; this has been the history of the race. A generation is born; it drags through untold hardships, gives birth to an- other generation and dies. And, under the circumstances, it ought to be glad to die. It has no incentive to live. More- over, there is no reason why it should live ; its only use, so far as its growth has carried it, is to propagate its kind in order that the highest form of life on our globe shall not become extinct until the knowledge of self-salvation, through a continued growth, unbroken by death, should come to it. The possibility of this unbroken line of growth in the individuals of the race has been the ever-alluring, though never defined hope by which it was possible for the generations to repeat themselves, until such time as human intelligence had come to that point of devel- opment where it could grasp the idea of per- petual and undying growth, and hold fast to it until it became fixed in these forms of per- sonal belief, which we call our bodies. 130 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. Indeed, evolution, in its whole course, has flowed steadily up to this one hope ; or rather because self-perpetuation was an ultimate pos- sibility, all life has ascended the scale in one unbroken stream of higher and still higher forms towards its actualization. To believe it possible to live forever in con- stant progression towards more refined and more powerful conditions, is the beginning of growth towards these conditions. This belief is the seed germ in the primordial life cell ; it has developed in us on the unconscious plane, that is, without any help from our reasoning powers, until the present time. The development of this seed germ can only go a certain distance on the unconscious plane. The time comes when unconscious growth having ripened an intellect of sufficient power demands the co-operation of that intellect; or at least, the recognition of its still latent possibilities by that intellect ; or it develops no farther. This is the period when a transition from unconscious to conscious life begins ; in other words, it is a transition from the plane THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 131 wherein life lived us, to the higher plane where we begin to live ourselves, or to do our own living by our own knowledge of how to do it. The unconscious plane of life is that plane in which we recognize the Law without know- ing what it is, and without giving it any special thought. We simply recognize it as we make it manifest through use. We perform all the uses of life because life is in us, but our intel- ligences take no thought about it in any way that can lead to practical results. We know we live, and that is about all we do know. When unconscious life, as expressed in uses, begins to become conscious life, it shows forth in a strange and heretofore unknown awaken- ing of the intelligence ; which, as it proceeds, lifts life from its unconscious plane, its plane of uses, to a plane of conscious power in its own ability to express itself in logical statements of itself, and free from compulsory expression in those uses, which previously, had been its only mode of expression. It is emancipated from the position of drudgery that was the natural result of its 132 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. ignorance of its own ability and power, into a position of mastery, when its own logical state- ment of truth, as it has learned it by self-in- trospection, establishes its station in the world. For instance, the man reasons this way: He says, " I have got an understanding of the power vested in the Law of Being ; or at least an understanding of enough of that power to know that nothing can circumscribe it. This for the first part. For the second part, I per- ceive that desire is the individualized expres- sion of the Law; and that desire is made manifest or visible in the external world by belief. I have believed in the power of the Law unconsciously, and that belief has mani- fested itself in all the organs of my body, and in the senses that relate me as an individual to the world of uses. Having realized its power even before I learned to observe it and reason on it intellectually, now, at this time, when I do observe it and reason upon it intellectually, I am beginning to be amazed at my own stu- pidity, and the stupidity of the race, that so little should be understood about it. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 133 For if an unconscious or dumb and blind belief should have brought me up to my pres- ent standpoint in creation, what will not a conscious or intelligent belief do for me ; a belief, that, knowing something of the Law, can co-operate wHh it in its manifestation in my body ?" If the Law can manifest through olind be- lief, as it does do, how much more powerfully can it manifest through the intelligent belief that meets its every manifestation with a ready appreciation of its meaning? The action of the Law is co-related to the action of the intelligence ; the greater the ac- tivity of the intelligence, the greater the ac- tivity of the Law in manifesting. So long as the power of the Law to manifest was con- fined to the dumb intelligence of the body, an intelligence that reciprocated only in added functions to the body, it continued to build the body until the body needed no more of those functions that expressed life only in uses. It had reached a shape of such propor- 134 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. tions as perhaps best fitted it for its journey through eternity. But suppose the Law could at this stage of man's development simply hold the man in existence, without any farther attempt at the recognition of truth on his part, what ob- ject would be served in the economy of hu- man development ? None at all. We should have a race stag- nant at the completion of its animal life ; a race not able to go alone in its own growing strength, and not worth carry ing , because of its helpnessness, its disease and deformity and brutality. Such a condition would furnish us with a spectacle of arrested growth on so huge a scale as to be beyond comparison with any- thing of the kind ever witnessed in the uni- verse. But this is precisely the spectacle we have been looking upon for thousands of years here on this planet. What does it mean? It means that the Law reciprocates our unconscious recognition up to a certain point only, and never goes beyond that point. It THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 135 reaches that point with each generation. Each generation then falls away from this uncon- scious recognition ; it dies, and another gen- eration follows in its footsteps, to again cease its unconscious recognition of the Law and die. And what cares the Law? The Law is un- heeding. The Law bends to no one's cries or prayers. It is not generous ; it has no moral quality ; it is simply the Principle of Attrac- tion ; the attractive and cohesive power of the universe. It is unchanging; it simply IS. " Men may come and men may go, " but it exists forever! But in all these wretched rounds of the ripening generations, the upper brain has been building ; the brain that begins to realize and trust and believe in the IDEAL. And what has the ideal promised? It has promised us happiness ; and happiness means freedom in its best sense ; freedom from the bonds that have been festering more and more in our worn senses as the ideal brain grew; freedom from all our past conditions. "Con- 136 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. ditions" is a word that, being interpreted by the new meaning which the advancing truth has placed upon it, is synonymous with "be- liefs." For, if a man is all mind, as to his per- sonality, then his conditions are his beliefs, and his beliefs are his conditions. And so the ideal brain is promising us re- lief from the old beliefs that have held us so long in the ruts of dead but unburied thought. It is not only furnishing us with new hopes, but it is showing us the feasibility of trusting these hopes to their utmost ; and trusting them, they will lift us away from the broken generations that are the result of our unconscious recognition of the Law, into the one unbroken generation that will begin as soon as we yield to the leadings of the ideal and place our trust upon the infinite possibil- ities latent in the Law ; possibilities we have never yet prospected for. It is the growing brain, the development of the ideal faculties that gives us power at this time to perceive more of the power latent in the Law than we have ever before seen. And as THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 137 it is a fact that the body being all mind the more we see of the power of the Law, the more that power becomes incarnate in us, it there- fore follows that the race is going to accom- plish the effort of centuries, and cross the line between its unconscious life of the past, and enter a condition of conscious life for the future. The ideal faculty in its development makes our desires seem plausible and possible of re- alization. No inferior faculty of the brain has ever done this or ever can do it. The Ideal has not only opened the external world up be- fore us, and given us new incentives to life and effort, but it has opened new departments in the body that correlate the external ; that are adapted to the external, and that under the Law of Attraction will unite with the external in a new growth, and a nobler growth than the race has yet had. There is no doubt at all that it has been exclusively by the race's growing recognition of desire, that the ideal faculties have been built. The ideal brain is the new laboratory 138 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. which desire has formed for the expression of its own peculiar characteristics. Desire has formed it in order to make itself visible and audible in the world of effects. Desire, as a latent and greatly ignored function, desired to be recognized by the individual in whose economy it played so important a part; and in order to do this, it had to build a laboratory in the human brain for the expression of itself. And so we have the faculty of ideality. And it is the growth of this faculty that is now pledged to lift us to a recognition of the vast importance of the Law within us as ex- pressed in desire. It is teaching us even now, in spite of the contempt heaped on our desires by generations of theologians, to respect desire in ourselves and others It is teaching a few of us to stand by our desires and uphold them as we would stand by and uphold our own lives ; for we know that desire is the life principle within us and that it is death to ignore it. In speaking of desire, the life principle in man, it seems unnecessary to guard it THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 139 against the misapprehension that has always clouded it in public opinion. Public opinion is a very shallow stream ; and no defense that I can make of a word which has lain so long un- der the drifts of theological rubbish will be un- derstood. To the thinkers, I have only to re- peat what I said once before in these pages ; that desire is the implanted life principle, without which no plant or animal, no organic form, could ever move at all ; indeed, there could be no organic form; for the principle of cohesion would not be expressed in indiv- iduals. Desire points always in one direction ; the direction of happiness. That the individual should make most griev- ous mistakes in seeking the happiness towards which desire always points, is because the individual in his external life is a mental creature, whose only chance to grow is by projecting experimental efforts here, there and everywhere ; and by the results of these ex- periments, he judges for himself whether he is right or wrong. In this way he has built him- 14C THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. self from the smallest possible life, up to the most powerful life on our globe. And in the same way, he will go on building himself un- til experience shall teach him that his highest happiness hangs on the great moral law laid down by Jesus; "Whatsoever ye would that others should do unto you, do ye also unto them." In believing in my desires, I believe in the Law of Attraction in my body. The Law of Attraction is the power that holds the atoms of my body in cohesion. In our unconscious life the Law acts without our knowing it ; it holds the atoms of our bodies compact until we reach the point of our highest development, or until we are grown. Then, if our conscious knowledge of its power could hitch on to our unconscious knowledge of it, the power would still operate to hold the atoms in such close relation to each other that we would not grow any older. But when we fail to recognize the Law in our bodies as expressed in desire, then at the point when the unconscious life drops us, we begin to grow old. The growing old process is simply a THE BLOSSOM OP THE CENTURY. 14l process of disintegration or falling apart of the atoms, because we do not begin the process of conscious recognition, and the power vested in unconscious recognition begins to fail. We are then in a condition of negation, wherein the atoms or cells lose their magnetic relation to each other more and more. As this goes on, the different organs of the body become dead- ened to each other's magnetisms, and become slack in their action, until the whole system gets to be like an old machine whose wheels have worn smaller and smoother until the cogs do not act in a way to move all its parts har- moniously. This is the condition we call old age. A similar condition may exist in youth ; there may be a non-recognition of the Law of Attraction on the unconscious plane of a child ; and the child may express the condition in many forms of error called disease. And every form of it is non-recognition, either consciously or unconsciously, of the Law of Attraction in the individual as expressed in desire. A sick person may have a hundred desires, 142 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. and the desire to live, more than all others ; but even having the desire in its greatest devel- opment, he does not trust it ; and it is power- less to save him. He must not only be conscious of his desire, but he must know that desire is the saving power, and that to trust it fully, to believe in it as a saving power, he will be saved. This is what the Bible means when it speaks of the saving power of God, and of how God will save to the uttermost all who trust Him. The old prophets and teachers of that long past age, when the Bible was written, had an inkling of the truth of this matter. For their God is the Law ; it is expressed in man in desire ; and when comprehended and trusted, the result is absolute and indestructible and ever-refining and progressive life. By the understanding of his own power as related to the Law of Being, a man's spoken word will re-create him. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 143 CHAPTER XII. THE TREATMENT OF DISEASE ON THE MENTAL PLANE. From the mental standpoint, disease is error ; it cannot consistently be called anything else. If all is life, as it surely is in absolute truth, and if man is an individualized understanding of the life, then he may be said to be a mental statement of the Law ; and a statement which he himself has made. Not knowing the abso- lute truth that all is Life; knowing, indeed, nothing of the Law ; not being able to give anything like a reasonable account of himself ; simply feeling that he lives, it cannot be oth- erwise than that his statement of being should be extremely weak, and full of errors. Errors of intelligence are simply negations of the Law, through ignorance of its existence. These negations of absolute truth show forth in 144 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. a hundred forms of weak and erroneous beliefs. The body being mind, fixed beliefs, the errors were recorded in it just in the degree and char- acter of their weakness. Everybody was ignorant of the Law. No two persons were ignorant precisely in the same way and to the same extent. So these va- rious shades and grades of ignorance were so many different erroneous statements. These beliefs were predicated upon the basis of a fixed conviction in the perishability of matter; beliefs based upon the accepted idea that mat- ter is perishable, could not do otherwise than result in death sooner or later. The race takes the consequences of its be- liefs ; a thing it could not do but for the fact that it is all mind, and that every man's body is a statement of his beliefs, either acquired by himself or inherited from his parents, or both ; modified in nearly all instances, by the beliefs of those about him. For, until a man has learned to think him- self out of the fixed beliefs of the race, by a recognition of his own freedom through a THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 145 knowledge of the Law, he meets with constant environment from the opinions of others ; and this environment does have its influence in shaping him. No man has any mode of thought that is ab- solutely and unalterably fixed, until he comes into the knowledge of the Law. Then all his thoughts begin to adjust themselves to his knowledge of absolute truth, and gradually the entire bulk of his former fixed beliefs (his body) begins to change. It does not change its type, but its type be- gins to relax, so as to admit of a series of all- over improvements, corresponding with his re- vised beliefs in absolute truth ; the truth that all is life ; and therefore good and desirable. When man arrives at the knowledge of this one absolute truth, he has a firm foundation under him for the first time in the history of the race. He now has a logical basis of fact from which to make a new statement of him- self. The statement of himself which he has inherited, is not and never has been a state- ment for which he, as a reasoning creature, is 146 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. responsible. It is a statement of the develop- ing animalhood of all the past, which has culminated in him, and which he has ac- cepted in unconsciousness of the fact that he could make a statement that would suit him better. But he could make no better statement so long as he believed himself to be a creation of some force outside of himself. He could make no better statement so long as he did not know by what means his present statement had been made; he could not even make any special change in the statement of himself; he was helpless as a log in his ignorance of the Law, and of his own power under the Law. And so the same statement simplv kept repeating itself over and over witluut any marked departure from the fixed type until now. But now the greatest truth that has ever dawned on the race is here; the absolute truth that all is Life ; and there is no disease, no death and no old age ; and that this truth simply awaits universal recognition in order that its vitalizing influence shall be expressed THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 147 in one unbroken current through all the mem- bers of the race. I refer again to that wonderful book, the Bible. "Believe," says the Bible, "and you shall be saved." How can belief save a man unless he is all mind? Believe in whom? "Believe in God;" these are the words. Believe in the power of the Law ; these are equivalent words. God and man are one ; the Law and man are one. God, the Law, is subjective man. The race is God, the Law, made objective. The Law being the unchangeable Life Prin- ciple, it cannot be diseased and it cannot die. Intelligence may weaken in its recognition of the Law on the unconscious plane, and this weakening will be called disease. Or it may cease to recognize it altogether on the uncon- scious plane, and this will be called death. Is it really disease and death? Certainly not. It is simply the individual cessation of 148 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. any farther power to recognize Life; but it is not the death of Life. Non-recognition of Life, Life that is self-ex- istent and eternal, is no more evidence that death exists, than a blind man's belief in dark- jess is evidence that no light exists. Therefore disease is error ; and it cannot be called anything else, If you knew your neighbor was laboring un- der some mistaken opinion, would you pre scribe a porous plaster and a dose of calomel in order to change it? Would you not rather ex- pect that the best course would be to reason with him until you had convinced him that he was in an error? Even if his condition of error had culmina- ted in the almost total destruction of his mind, and his conduct endangered the lives of those about him, so that he had to be tied or put un- der the influence of a narcotic, until such time as the truth could be planted in his intelligence so firmly a6 to convince him of his mistake would not this course be more reasonable than the former one? THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTUKY. 149 If I have made it clear that man, as to his external or visible side, is mind, and not matter, I know that every reader will answer yes. Being actually startled with this idea when it was first presented to me, I kept experiment- ing with it until I demonstrated that it would work perfectly in nine cases out of ten. And perhaps the strangest part of it was, that in making the argument that convinced the patients of their error in believing in dis- ease, I always did it silently. I seldom spoke aloud to any of them ; and when they were cured they knew no more of my method than when they first came. Some of them said God worked through me to perform the cure. Others believed that I had an exceptionally strong "power in prayer," and did not know that prayei and every other form of leaning and begging was as far as possible from my method. Some unusually ignorant people thought it a species of witchery, and held me in great awe. It came to be believed that I sould raise the dead, and do manv other things 150 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. that I was not able to do. The report of my power over disease spread far and wide by word of mouth, and people came to me from clear across the continent, not only to be cured, but to know how it was done. It was done by thought transference, but it was the transference of a very unusual char- acter of thought In the early pages of this book, I tried to establish the fact that thoughts are things. They are substantial, though usually invisi- ble entities; and it is in the power of the thinker to send them from him into the organ- isms of others, where they are not only the messengers, but the messages themselves, that are transferred from one brain to another. They leave the strong and positive brain of the person who is grounded in the belief that there is no disease and no death, and they take their abode in the brain of the one whose beliefs are so lacking in knowledge of the absolute truth as to render him negative to higher thought forms than his own ; and here they remain, carrying conviction to the pa- THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 151 tient, of his mistake, and thus healing him, as the term goes. In healing a patient, there are two points to be noticed in the silent argument ap- plied. The first is a consideration of the fact that there is no disease. This truth is universal. But, in spite of the fact that it is universal, and therefore of the first importance, it goes for nothing unless individual application can be made of it. The Law is one thing, and the understanding of the Law is another thing. The Law in its majesty, simply is. Man, who is the individu- alized comprehension of the Law, changes perpetually ; changes in proportion as he knows more and more. It seems easier to define the Law than to define the man. He is a bundle of desires. By these desires, he is related to everything that he desires. The existence of his desires proves conclusively that what he desires exists, and is for him. His desires taken in the aggregate are the sure prophecy of their own 152 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. fulfillment. They point towards happiness, and thus include health, opulence and beauty. Under no influence imaginable but that power vested in the Law of Attraction, could the man be related to the object of his desires in a way to insure their fulfillment. He is therefore allied to the Law of Attraction and dependent upon it. But he is not dependent upon it as a slave is dependent on his master. He depends upon it as a freeman depends upon his own efforts. He knows that it will serve him in every effort he may make. These efforts are all intellectual ; they are all of them the strivings of an earnest soul in the pursuit of truth. Knowledge of truth is the only saviour, and he knows it. Knowledge of truth means greater knowledge of the power of the Law. This is what he desires ; greater knowledge of the power of the Law. All of his desires, even unknown to himself, tend to this. Each acquisition of knowledge he may make helps to THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 153 liberate him from the bonds of his past ignor- ance ; from the wretched beliefs that made them- selves manifest as disease, old age and death. Knowledge is power, and power is freedom, and freedom is happiness. This is the happi- ness that includes all those minor details of health, opulence and beauty. Therefore, as close a definition of man as we can come to, is to call him an ever-growing desire ; approximating in hie growth more and more closely to a comprehension of the power of the Law. The more a man perceives of the power of the Law, the more of that power he incarnates in himself. He thus becomes at every step of his advancement, to use an old phrase, "nearer to God;" a state of at-one-ment with the Law, that theologians- would call making the atonement. Perceiving, then, that man is a bundle of de- sires, all of which point to the attainment of truth- we recognize his desires as legitimate; and in our silent reasoning with him, we strive justify him in his own estimation by remov- 154 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. ing the prejudice he has always had against de- sire. The bulk of mankind are not only prejudiced against their own desires, but they are afraid of them. Their knowledge of desire is confined to the many mistakes heaped upon it by the ex- perimenting ignorance that necessarily marks the growth of an infant race. Therefore, to justify the patient, in the promptings of his own spirit, as expressed in desire, is one of the first efforts of the silent argument made to him. He is doubtful whether he has any true right to live at all. He sees himself a bundle of desires, all lead- ing as he believes to narrow and selfish ends. He does not see the great object towards which the race is being drawn, and into which it will all be harmonized; his opinion of his own utility, as a member of society, is more than doubtful ; and he says, " I would like to live and get well, if it is God's will" His intelligence has yielded him no truth that will justify his desire to live and get well ; and so he leaves it for some one else to decide. THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 155 He is completely off his own base ; and in en- deavoring to rest upon another, he has become as a plant whose roots are pulled up out of the ground, and can find no nourishment in that condition. And so it becomes the effort of the silent argument addressed to him, to strengthen him in his belief of himself; to justify his desires to him, and to establish the ego firmly in his thought. This gives him mental strength, and as his mental condition is his bodily condition, it gives him bodily strength. To recognize desire in the patient, is to recog- nize what he fails to recognize in himself. This recognition on the part of another has the same effect in his body as if he recognized it intelligently and consciously himself. And so the patient may be healed without being aware of the character of the great truth that has been poured into his body. His body, being to a great degree a fixed thing, possesses less vitality than his active thought ; and very much less than the thought 156 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. of the person effecting the cure. The body of the patient, then, is decidedly negative in com- parison with the living truth being poured into it, and it gives an unconscious response to it ; in the meantime the patient's own thought is comparatively untouched. At least, it has not been sufficiently influenced by the more positive thought of the healer to come to an under- standing of the truth by which the body is healed. That the patient's thought is more or less impressed by the healer's more positive thought, is often proved by the questions he asks after- wards ; but I have never known a case where his thought his active intelligence received the whole truth, as communicated silently by the healer. The patient, in submitting himself to the healer, does practically submit to him his own beliefs, in order to have the healer change them But he does this when he consults a physician ; the physician then proceeds to change the patient's beliefs by his own mor-3 THE BL0880M OF THE CENTURY. 157 positive belief in the power of medicine, and he very often succeeds in doing it. Where a person rejects the new truth, the truth that there is no disease, and refuses to submit his beliefs to manipulation by the mental method, he creates a barrier that pre- vents the natural tendency of higher thought to seek its level. But even in this case, the higher and more positive thought will eventu- ally break down the barrier and enter. Even now, in this silent way, there can be no high and positive thought generating anywhere that does not raise the average thought of the entire race a little higher. The patient who believes in the power of another's thought to cure him, removes all barriers to the entrance of that thought, and soon feels the effect of it. It was on this plan that Jesus healed ; and it was his know- ledge of the matter that caused him to say : 'According to thy faith, so be it unto you." He made no test cases of unbelievers ; he knew he was hedged out of their minds. Nor did he heal all he attempted to heal. For, "when he 158 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. went down into Capernaum, he did no mighty works there, because of their unbelief. " Individuality is a very potent thing indeed. It stands above all things except the Law. It shall not be set aside and overcome even that it may be made healthy and opulent and beau- tiful. Clothed in the rags of error, and too wretched to make farther effort in its own be- half, it is still the seed germ of all future growth ; its ego is obscured, but not destroyed ; and no power can prevail against it until it resigns itself. I cannot enter the realm of your ego without your consent. I may conquer you bodily and make a slave of you, only to groan in despair at the knowledge that the independent ego within your breast scorns me, and holds fast in its own right every thought that fortifies the citadel where it resides unassailable, inde- structible, haughty. A realization of the majesty of the undying ego is a strong point in the argument addressed to the patient. The more it is dwelt upon, the more firm and invincible it seems, and the THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. 159 more irresistible its demands. Indeed, as its strength grows upon one's thought, the desires that proceed from it seem commands that no power can disobey ; it becomes a focus for the centralization of all things desirable ; and to the opened spiritual sense all things appear to be drifting to it in helpless obedience to its calm mastery. Thus is individuality more powerfully indiv- idualized in the patient until a sense of strength comes to him, that causes him to lose sight of the negative beliefs that formerly held a place in his mind; and he knows that he is well, though he knows not why. And so the two points in removing his false beliefs have been freely used ; sometimes one and sometimes the other, as each in its turn appeared the mor-e impressive. There are occasions when it is enough for him who is required to make this silent argu- ment, to merely bring himself into a clear per- ception of the fact that there is no disease and no death. This is rising into the realm of absolute truth, and seeing all things from that 160 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. standpoint; but it is a universal and noC an individual argument. The individual argu- ment is that which perceives the ego, and makes every effort to strengthen it by justify- ing its desires to itself. That thousands of cures are made by the mental method, which I have faintly described, no person who has taken the pains to investi- gate the matter can doubt. The sweeping charges brought against the method rest on no better foundation than ignorance and preju- dice. Many people are willfully blind, believing it to their interest to learn no more than they now know. For my part, I let go all hold of the past, years ago; resolved to remain no longer in the worn-out fields of thought that I so heartily despised, no matter where a fresher and braver line of thought might land me. I was so tired of the dead past, that I knew I had nothing to lose in leaving it, and it was with a feeling akin to that of the most reck- less voyageur, that I plunged into The New. And who can tell of the reward that has met me every day ? THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY 161 Each day the light shines a little brighter on this wonderful journey through the realm of The New. Old beliefs are fading fast. The vitalizing power of the new and positive truth is literally making me over. Each opening day is met by a brighter recognition of all the joy it holds for those who are looking for joy, and who are expecting the good, and not the evil ; until lit- tle by little, and by slow degrees, all power to recognize the evil is fading from my intellect ; and only the power to perceive the good is re- maining. Do you know what this means? It means that heaven really exists ; that it lies all about our daily pathway ; and that at last through the unveiling of our mental perceptions, we are growing into a recognition of it. There is now a more subtile suggestion of beauty to me in the tiny seed-pod, than there once was in the splendid promise of a gorgeous dawn, clothed in its translucent gar- ments of pink and amethyst and blue; all trimmed with gold-embroidered fleece of downy 162 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. white. And there is more happiness in the un- expected flower by the roadside, than the rich- est pageant could once yield me. Heaven is here, but it only unfolds itself to those who unfold to meet it. I laugh at the idea of going to a heaven more beautiful than this world, before we have learn- ed to see the beauty that meets us here at every step. What could we do with more beauty, when we are blind to that which we have? Before closing I will answer an objection that is often brought against the mental method of healing. There is an idea quite prevalent that any mental application of power must be purely mesmeric or hypnotic. Just what the relation of hypnotism to men- tal healing is, I do not know ; but I know this : that while the operator in hypnotism gains con- trol of his patient by the subjugation of the patient's will to his own will, that the mental healer does nothing of the kind. Indeed, what the mental healer does is just the opposite. He knows that the entire result THE BLOSSOM OP THE CENTURY. 163 of his efforts in healing depends on his power to strengthen his patient's will. The mental healer has learned the inestima- ble value of individual will, and has cultivated his own* will by a calm and logical perception of its power and its value. He sees that it is the bulwark of his own character, without which, he would take his position among the negative forces in life, whose only use is to be expended in the service of others. He sees that his will is his only salvation in a world whose law of growth is the survival of the, fittest, and it assumes such proportions in his estimation, that he looks on it as the most important factor in his make-up. It has kept him in the ascend? ncy on the brute plane, and it is pledged to hold him on a level with the most progressive on the intellectual plane. Realizing, then, that the will is the man, he immediately perceives that the trouble with the patient is his failure to recognize his own will. Therefore, instead of trying to weaken still farther the patient's will by subjugating it to his own will, he begins to strengthen the 164 THE BLOSSOM OF THE CENTURY. will of the patient by the mental argument he understands so well. Surely there is a power heretofore unrecog- nized in the mind of man ; a power that prom- ises so much, that to neglect its investigation would be an infinitely greater piece of folly than to turn indifferently from a collection of treasures richer than any one has ever heaped up before. To investigate this mighty subject is all I ask of the reader. Health and strength and beauty and opu- lence are in it in greater fullness than can^be found in the whole world of thought outside of it. This much I know. THE HOME COURSE IN MENTAL SCIENCE. The most essential thing I know of for the uplifting of humanity, and for healing all its dis- tresses of sickness, weakness, deformity and pov- erty, is a knowledge of the science of mind ; a knowledge of what mind is and what it can do. I am now offering for home study a complete course of lessons upon this most essential subject. There are twenty of these lessons in twenty pam- phlets. The names of the lessons are as follows : 1. Omnipresent Life. 13. Mental Science a Race 2. Thought, the Body-builder. Movement. 3. Our Beliefs. 14. Mental Science Incarnate 4. Denials. in Flesh and Blood. 5. Affirmations. 15. Personality and Individ- 6. The Soul of Things. uality. 7. Faith, Our Guide through 16. " The Stone that the the Dark. Builders Rejected." 8. Spirit and Body Are One. 17- A Noble Egoism the Foun- 9. Prayer and Self-Culture. dation of Just Action, 10 ' T Thronr r BehiDd thC 18 ' Recognition of the Will 11. The Power Above the the Cure of Disease ' Throne. 19. Practical Healing. 12. The King on His Throne. 20. Posture of the Will Man. The price of these lessons has been reduced from $25.00 to $5.00. Students have the privilege of sending $1.00 at a time and getting four lessons. Send for descriptive circular to HELEN WILMANS, Sea Breeze, Fla. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. FonnLQ 15m-10,'48(B1039)444 UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES T TRPARY 401 Blossom of the UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILTY A 001 412184 2 RZ 401 P84b