THE LAW AND THE WORD

BYT. TROWARD

_Late Divisional Judge, Punjab. Honorary member ofthe Medico-Legal Society of New York. First Vice-President InternationalNew Thought Alliance_

Author of the "Edinburgh Lectures on MentalScience, " etc. 

NEW YORKROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY1937

COPYRIGHT, 1917BY S. A. TROWARD

_Published, May, 1917

Eighth Printing, June, 1937_

THE LAW AND THE WORD

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

FOREWORD iii

 I SOME FACTS IN NATURE 1

 II SOME PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES 18

 III MAN'S PLACE IN THE CREATIVE ORDER 44

 IV THE LAW OF WHOLENESS 75

 V THE SOUL OF THE SUBJECT 85

 VI THE PROMISES 103

 VII DEATH AND IMMORTALITY 132

VIII TRANSFERRING THE BURDEN 168

FOREWORD

THOMAS TROWARD

AN APPRECIATION

How is one to know a friend? Certainly not by the duration ofacquaintance. Neither can friendship be bought or sold by servicerendered. Nor can it be coined into acts of gallantry or phrases offlattery. It has no part in the small change of courtesy. It is outsideall these, containing them all and superior to them all. 

To some is given the great privilege of a day set apart to mark thearrival of a total stranger panoplied with all the insignia offriendship. He comes unannounced. He bears no letter of introduction. Nomutual friend can vouch for him. Suddenly and silently he stepsunexpectedly out of the shadow of material concern and spiritualobscurity, into the radiance of intimate friendship, as a picture isprojected upon a lighted screen. But unlike the phantom picture he is aninstant reality that one's whole being immediately recognizes, and theradiance of fellowship that pervades his word, thought and action holdsall the essence of long companionship. 

Unfortunately there are too few of these bright messengers of God to bemet with in life's pilgrimage, but that Judge Troward was one of themwill never be doubted by the thousands who are now mourning hisdeparture from among us. Those whose closest touch with him has been thereading of his books will mourn him as a friend only less than those wholistened to him on the platform. For no books ever written more clearlyexpressed the author. The same simple lucidity and gentle humanity, thesame effort to discard complicated non-essentials, mark both the man andhis books. 

Although the spirit of benign friendliness pervades his writings andilluminated his public life, yet much of his capacity for friendship wasdenied those who were not privileged to clasp hands with him and to sitbeside him in familiar confidence. Only in the intimacy of the firesidedid he wholly reveal his innate modesty and simplicity of character. Here alone, glamoured with his radiating friendship, was shown thewealth of his richly-stored mind equipped by nature and long training todeal logically with the most profound and abstruse questions of life. Here indeed was proof of his greatness, his unassuming superiority, hishumanity, his keen sense of honour, his wit and humour, his generosityand all the characteristics of a rare gentleman, a kindly philosopherand a true friend. 

To Judge Troward was given the logician's power to strip a subject bareof all superfluous and concealing verbiage, and to exhibit the gleamingjewels of truth and reality in splendid simplicity. This supremequality, this ability to make the complex simple, the power tosubordinate the non-essential, gave to his conversation, to hislectures, to his writings, and in no less degree to his personality, adirect and charming naďveté that at once challenged attention andcompelled confidence and affection. 

His sincerity was beyond question. However much one might differ fromhim in opinion, at least one never doubted his profound faith andcomplete devotion to truth. His guileless nature was beyond ungeneroussuspicions and selfish ambitions. He walked calmly upon his way wrappedin the majesty of his great thoughts, oblivious to the vexations of theworld's cynicism. Charity and reverence for the indwelling spirit markedall his human relations. Tolerance of the opinions of others, benevolence and tenderness dwelt in his every word and act. Yet hiscareful consideration of others did not paralyze the strength of hisfirm will or his power to strike hard blows at wrong and error. Thesearch for truth, to which his life was devoted, was to him a holyquest. That he could and would lay a lance in defence of his opinions isevidenced in his writings, and has many times been demonstrated to thediscomfiture of assailing critics. But his urbanity was a part ofhimself and never departed from him. 

Not to destroy but to create was his part in the world. In developinghis philosophy he built upon the foundation of his predecessors. No goodand true stone to be found among the ruins of the past, but wascarefully worked into his superstructure of modern thought, radiant withspirituality, to the building of which the enthusiasm of his life wasdevoted. 

To one who has studied Judge Troward, and grasped the significance ofhis theory of the "Universal Sub-conscious Mind, " and who also hasattained to an appreciation of Henri Bergson's theory of a "UniversalLivingness, " superior to and outside the material Universe, there mustappear a distinct correlation of ideas. That intricate and ponderouslyirrefutable argument that Bergson has so patiently built up by deepscientific research and unsurpassed profundity of thought andcrystal-clear reason, that leads to the substantial conclusion that manhas leapt the barrier of materiality only by the urge of some externalpressure superior to himself, but which, by reason of infinite effort, he alone of all terrestrial beings has succeeded in utilizing in asuperior manner and to his advantage: this well-rounded and exhaustivelydemonstrated argument in favour of a super-livingness in the universe, which finds its highest terrestrial expression in man, appears to be thescientific demonstration of Judge Troward's basic principle of the"Universal Sub-conscious Mind. " This universal and infiniteGod-consciousness which Judge Troward postulates as man'ssub-consciousness, and from which man was created and is maintained, and of which all physical, mental and spiritual manifestation is a formof expression, appears to be a corollary of Bergson's demonstrated"Universal Livingness. " What Bergson has so brilliantly proven bypatient and exhaustive processes of science, Judge Troward arrived at byintuition, and postulated as the basis of his argument, which heproceeded to develop by deductive reasoning. 

The writer was struck by the apparent parallelism of these twodistinctly dissimilar philosophies, and mentioned the discovery to JudgeTroward who naturally expressed a wish to read Bergson, with whosewritings he was wholly unacquainted. A loan of Bergson's "CreativeEvolution" produced no comment for several weeks, when it was returnedwith the characteristic remark, "I've tried my best to get hold of him, but I don't know what he is talking about. " I mention the remark asbeing characteristic only because it indicates his extreme modesty anddisregard of exhaustive scientific research. 

The Bergson method of scientific expression was unintelligible to hismind, trained to intuitive reasoning. The very elaborateness andmicroscopic detail that makes Bergson great is opposed to JudgeTroward's method of simplicity. He cared not for complexities, and theintricate minutić of the process of creation, but was only concernedwith its motive power--the spiritual principles upon which it wasorganized and upon which it proceeds. 

Although the conservator of truth of every form and degree whereverfound, Judge Troward was a ruthless destroyer of sham and pretence. Tothose submissive minds that placidly accept everything indiscriminately, and also those who prefer to follow along paths of well-beaten opinion, because the beaten path is popular, to all such he would perhaps appearto be an irreverent iconoclast seeking to uproot long accepted dogma andto overturn existing faiths. Such an opinion of Judge Troward's workcould not prevail with any one who has studied his teachings. 

His reverence for the fundamental truths of religious faith wasprofound, and every student of his writings will testify to the greatconstructive value of his work. He builded upon an ancient foundation anew and nobler structure of human destiny, solid in its simplicity andbeautiful in its innate grandeur. 

But to the wide circle of Judge Troward's friends he will best and mostgloriously be remembered as a teacher. In his magic mind theunfathomable revealed its depths and the illimitable its boundaries;metaphysics took on the simplicity of the ponderable, and man himselfoccupied a new and more dignified place in the Cosmos. Not only did heperceive clearly, but he also possessed that quality of mind even morerare than deep and clear perception, that clarity of expression andexposition that can carry another and less-informed mind along with it, on the current of its understanding, to a logical and comprehendedconclusion. 

In his books, his lectures and his personality he was always ready totake the student by the hand, and in perfect simplicity and friendlinessto walk and talk with him about the deeper mysteries of life--the lifethat includes death--and to shed the brilliant light of his wisdom uponthe obscure and difficult problems that torment sincere but rebelliousminds. 

His artistic nature found expression in brush and canvas and his greatlove for the sea is reflected in many beautiful marine sketches. But ifpainting was his recreation, his work was the pursuit of Truth whereverto be found, and in whatever disguise. 

His life has enriched and enlarged the lives of many, and all those whoknew him will understand that in helping others he was accomplishingexactly what he most desired. Knowledge, to him, was worth only what ityielded in uplifting humanity to a higher spiritual appreciation, and toa deeper understanding of God's purpose and man's destiny. 

 A man, indeed! He strove not for a place, Nor rest, nor rule. He daily walked with God. His willing feet with service swift were shod-- An eager soul to serve the human race, Illume the mind, and fill the heart with grace-- Hope blooms afresh where'er those feet have trod. 

 PAUL DERRICK. 

THE LAW AND THE WORD

CHAPTER I

SOME FACTS IN NATURE

If I were asked what, in my opinion, distinguishes the thought of thepresent day from that of a previous generation, I should feel inclinedto say, it is the fact that people are beginning to realize that Thoughtis a power in itself, one of the great forces of the Universe, andultimately the greatest of forces, directing all the others. This ideaseems to be, as the French say, "in the air, " and this very wellexpresses the state of the case--the idea is rapidly spreading throughmany countries and through all classes, but it is still very much "inthe air. " It is to a great extent as yet only in a gaseous condition, vague and nebulous, and so not leading to the practical results, bothindividual and collective, which might be expected of it, if it wereconsolidated into a more workable form. We are like some amateurs whowant to paint finished pictures before they have studied the elements ofArt, and when they see an artist do without difficulty what they vainlyattempt, they look upon him as a being specially favoured by Providence, instead of putting it down to their own want of knowledge. The idea istrue. Thought _is_ the great power of the Universe. But to make itpractically available we must know something of the principles by whichit works--that it is not a mere vaporous indefinable influence floatingaround and subject to no known laws, but that on the contrary, itfollows laws as uncompromising as those of mathematics, while at thesame time allowing unlimited freedom to the individual. 

Now the purpose of the following pages, is to suggest to the reader thelines on which to find his way out of this nebulous sort of thought intosomething more solid and reliable. I do not profess, like a certainNegro preacher, to "unscrew the inscrutable, " for we can never reach apoint where we shall not find the inscrutable still ahead of us; but ifI can indicate the use of a screw-driver instead of a hatchet, and thatthe screws should be turned from left to right, instead of from right toleft, it may enable us to unscrew some things which would otherwiseremain screwed down tight. We are all beginners, and indeed thehopefulness of life is in realizing that there are such vistas ofunending possibilities before us, that however far we may advance, weshall always be on the threshold of something greater. We must be likePeter Pan, the boy who never grew up--heaven defend me from ever feelingquite grown up, for then I should come to a standstill; so the readermust take what I have to say simply as the talk of one boy to another inthe Great School, and not expect too much. 

The first question then is, where to begin. Descartes commenced his bookwith the words "Cogito, ergo sum. " "I think, therefore I am, " and wecannot do better than follow his example. There are two things aboutwhich we cannot have any doubt--our own existence, and that of the worldaround us. But what is it in us that is aware of these two things, thathopes and fears and plans regarding them? Certainly not our flesh andbones. A man whose leg has been amputated is able to think just thesame. Therefore it is obvious that there is something in us whichreceives impressions and forms ideas, that reasons upon facts anddetermines upon courses of action and carries them out, which is not thephysical body. This is the real "I Myself. " This is the Person we arereally concerned with; and it is the betterment of this "I Myself" thatmakes it worth while to enquire what our Thought has to do in thematter. 

Equally true it is on the other hand that the forces of Nature around usdo not think. Steam, electricity, gravitation, and chemical affinity donot think. They follow certain fixed laws which we have no power toalter. Therefore we are confronted at the outset by a broad distinctionbetween two modes of Motion--the Movement of Thought and the Movement ofCosmic Energy--the one based upon the exercise of Consciousness andWill, and the other based upon Mathematical Sequence. This is why thatsystem of instruction known as Free Masonry starts by erecting the twosymbolic pillars Jachin and Boaz--Jachin so called from the root "Yak"meaning "One, " indicating the Mathematical element of Law; and Boaz, from the root "Awáz" meaning "Voice" indicating Personal element of FreeWill. These names are taken from the description in I Kings vii, 21 andII Chron. Iii, 17 of the building of Solomon's Temple, where these twopillars stood before the entrance, the meaning being that the Temple ofTruth can only be entered by passing between them, that is, by givingeach of these factors their due relation to the other, and by realizingthat they are the two Pillars of the Universe, and that no real progresscan be made except by finding the true balance between them. Law andPersonality--these are the two great principles with which we have todeal, and the problem is to square the one with the other. 

Let me start, then, by considering some well established facts in thephysical world which show how the known Law acts under certain knownconditions, and this will lead us on in an intelligible manner to seehow the same Law is likely to work under as yet unknown conditions. Ifwe had to deal with unknown laws as well as unknown conditions weshould, indeed, be up a gum tree. Fancy a mathematician having to solvean equation, both sides of which were entirely made up of unknownquantities--where would he be? Happily this is not the case. The Law isONE throughout, and the apparent variety of its working results from theinfinite variety of the conditions under which it may work. Let us lay afoundation, then, by seeing how it works in what we call the commoncourse of Nature. A few examples will suffice. 

Hardly more than a generation ago it was supposed that the analysis ofmatter could not be carried further than its reduction to some seventyprimary chemical elements, which in various combinations produced allmaterial substances; but there was no explanation how all thesedifferent elements came into existence. Each appeared to be an originalcreation, and there was no accounting for them. But now-a-days, as therustic physician says in Moličre's play of the "Médecin Malgré Lui, ""nous avons changé tout cela. " Modern science has shown conclusivelythat every kind of chemical atom is composed of particles of oneoriginal substance which appears to pervade all space, and to which thename of Ether has been given. Some of these particles carry a positivecharge of electricity and some a negative, and the chemical atom isformed by the grouping of a certain number of negatively chargedparticles round a centre composed of positive electricity around whichthey revolve; and it is the number of these particles and the rate oftheir motion that determines the nature of the atom, whether, forinstance, it will be an atom of iron or an atom of hydrogen, and thus weare brought back to Plato's old aphorism that the Universe consists ofNumber and Motion. 

The size of these etheric particles is small beyond anything butabstract mathematical conception. Sir Oliver Lodge is reported to havemade the following comparison in a lecture delivered at Birmingham. "Thechemical atom, " he said, "is as small in comparison to a drop of wateras a cricket-ball is compared to the globe of the earth; and yet thisatom is as large in comparison to one of its constituent particles asBirmingham town-hall is to a pin's head. " Again, it has been said thatin proportion to the size of the particles the distance at which theyrevolve round the centre of the atom is as great as the distance fromthe earth to the sun. I must leave the realization of such infiniteminuteness to the reader's imagination--it is beyond mine. 

Modern science thus shows us all material substance, whether that ofinanimate matter or that of our own bodies, as proceeding out of oneprimary etheric substance occupying all space and homogeneous, that isbeing of a uniform substance--and having no qualities to distinguish onepart from another. Now this conclusion of science is important becauseit is precisely the fact that out of this homogeneous substanceparticles are produced which differ from the original substance in thatthey possess positive and negative energy and of these particles theatom is built up. So then comes the question: What started thisdifferentiation?

The electronic theory which I have just mentioned takes us as far as auniversal homogeneous ether as the source from which all matter isevolved, but it does not account for how motion originated in it; butperhaps another closely allied scientific theory will help us. Let us, then, turn to the question of Vibrations or Waves in Ether. Inscientific language the length of a wave is the distance from the crestof one wave to that of the wave immediately following it. Now modernscience recognizes a long series of waves in ether, commencing with thesmallest yet known measuring 0. 1 micron, or about 1/254, 000 of an inch, in length, measured by Professor Schumann in 1893, and extending towaves of many miles in length used in wireless telegraphy--for instancethose employed between Clifden in Galway and Glace Bay in Nova Scotiaare estimated to have a length of nearly four miles. Theseinfinitesimally small ultra-violet or actinic waves, as they are called, are the principal agents in photography, and the great waves of wirelesstelegraphy are able to carry a force across the Atlantic which cansensibly affect the apparatus on the other side; therefore we see thatthe ether of space affords a medium through which energy can betransmitted by means of vibrations. 

But what starts the vibrations? Hertz announced his discovery of theelectro-magnetic waves, now known by his name, in 1888; but, followingup the labours of various other investigators, Lodge, Marconi and othersfinally developed their practical application after Hertz's death whichoccurred in 1894. To Hertz, however, belongs the honour of discoveringhow to generate these waves by means of sudden, sharply defined, electrical discharges. The principle may be illustrated by dropping astone in smooth water. The sudden impact sets up a series of ripples allround the centre of disturbance, and the electrical impulse actssimilarly in the ether. Indeed the fact that the waves flow in alldirections from the central impulse is one of the difficulties ofwireless telegraphy, because the message may be picked up in anydirection by a receiver tuned to the same rate of vibration, and theinterest for us consists in the hypothesis that thought-waves act in ananalogous manner. 

That vibrations are excited by sound is beautifully exemplified by theeidophone, an instrument invented, I believe, by Mrs. Watts-Hughes, andwith which I have seen that lady experiment. Dry sand is scattered on adiaphragm on which the eidophone concentrates the vibrations from musicplayed near it. The sand, as it were, dances in time to the music, andwhen the music stops is found to settle into definite forms, sometimeslike a tree or a flower, or else some geometrical figure, but never aconfused jumble. Perhaps in this we may find the origin of the legendsregarding the creative power of Orpheus' lyre, and also the sacreddances of the ancients--who knows!

Perhaps some critical reader may object that sound travels by means ofatmospheric and not etheric waves; but is he prepared to say that itcannot produce etheric waves also. The very recent discovery oftransatlantic telephoning tends to show that etheric waves can begenerated by sound, for on the 20th of October, 1915, words spoken inNew York were immediately heard in Paris, and could therefore only havebeen transmitted through the ether, for sound travels through theatmosphere only at the rate of about 750 miles an hour, while the speedof impulses through ether can only be compared to that of light or186, 000 miles in a second. It is therefore a fair inference that ethericvibrations can be inaugurated by sound. 

Perhaps the reader may feel inclined to say with the Irishman that allthis is "as dry as ditch-water, " but he will see before long that it hasa good deal to do with ourselves. For the present what I want him torealize by a few examples is the mathematical accuracy of Law. The valueof these examples lies in their illustration of the fact that the Lawcan always be trusted to lead us on to further knowledge. We see itworking under known conditions, and relying on its unchangeableness, wecan then logically infer what it will do under other hypotheticalconditions, and in this way many important discoveries have been made. For instance it was in this way that Mendeléef, the Russian chemist, assumed the existence of three then unknown chemical elements, nowcalled Scandium, Gallium and Germanium. There was a gap in the orderlysequence of the chemical elements, and relying on the old maxim--"Naturanihil facit per saltum"--Nature nowhere leaves a gap to jump over--heargued that if such elements did not exist they ought to, and so hecalculated what these elements ought to be like, giving their atomicweight, chemical affinities, and the like; and when they were discoveredmany years later they were found to answer exactly to his description. He prophesied, not by guesswork, but by knowledge of the Law; and inmuch the same way radium was discovered by Professor and Madame Curie. In like manner Hertz was led to the discovery of the electro-magneticwaves. The celebrated mathematician Clerk-Maxwell had calculated allparticulars of these waves twenty-five years before Hertz, on the basisof these calculations, worked out his discovery. Again, Neptune, theoutermost known planet of our system was discovered by the astronomerGalle in consequence of calculations made by Leverrier. Certainvariations in the movements of the planets were mathematicallyunaccountable except on the hypothesis that some more remote planetexisted. Astronomers had faith in mathematics and the hypotheticalplanet was found to be a reality. Instances of this kind might bemultiplied, but as the French say "ŕ quoi bon?" I think these will besufficient to convince the reader that the invariable sequence of Law isa factor to be relied upon, and that by studying its working under knownconditions we may get at least some measure of light on conditions whichare as yet unknown to us. 

Let us now pass on to the human subject and consider a few examples ofwhat is usually called the psychic side of our nature. Walt Whitman wasquite right when he said that we are not all included between our hatand our boots; we shall find that our modes of consciousness and powersof action are not entirely restricted to our physical body. Theimportance of this line of enquiry lies in the fact that if we dopossess extra-physical powers, these also form part of our personalityand must be included in our estimate of our relation to our environment, and it is therefore worth our while to consider them. 

Some very interesting experiments have been made by De Rochas, aneminent French scientist, which go to show that under certain magneticconditions the sensation of physical touch can be experienced at somedistance from the body. He found that under these conditions the personexperimented on is insensible to the prick of a needle run into hisskin, but if the prick is made about an inch-and-a-half away from thesurface of the skin he feels it. Again at about three inches from thispoint he feels the prick of the needle, but is insensible to it in thespace between these two points. Then there comes another interval inwhich no sensation is conveyed, but at about three inches still furtheraway he again feels the sensation, and so on; so that he appears to besurrounded by successive zones of sensation, the first about aninch-and-a-half from the body, and the others at intervals of aboutthree inches each. The number of these zones seems to vary in differentcases, but in some there are as many as six or seven, thus giving aradius of sensation, extending to more than twenty inches beyond thebody. 

Now to explain this we must have recourse to what I have already saidabout waves. The heart and the lungs are the two centres of automaticrhythmic movement in the body, and each projects its own series ofvibrations into the etheric envelope. Those projected by the lungs areestimated to be three times the length of those projected by the heart, while those projected by the heart are three times as rapid as thoseprojected by the lungs. Consequently if the two sets of waves starttogether the crest of every third wave of the rapid series of shortwaves will coincide with the crest of one of the long waves of theslower series, while the intermediate short waves will coincide with thedepression of one of the long waves. Now the effect of the crest of onewave overtaking that of another going in the same direction, is to raisethe two together at that point into a single wave of greater amplitudeor height than the original waves had by themselves; if the reader hasthe opportunity of studying the inflowing of waves on the seabeach hecan verify this for himself. Consequently when the more rapid ethericwaves overtake the slower ones they combine to form a larger wave, andit is at these points that the zones of sensation occur. If the readerwill draw a diagram of two waved lines travelling along the samehorizontal line and so proportioned that the crest of each of the largewaves coincides with the crest of every third wave of the small ones, hewill see what I mean: and if he then recollects that the fall in thelarger waves neutralizes the rise in the smaller ones, and that becausethis double series starts from the interior of the body the surface ofthe body comes just at one of these neutralized points, he will see whysensation is neutralized there; and he will also see why the succeedingzones of sensation are double the distance from each other that thefirst one is from the surface of the body; it is simply because thesurface of the body cuts the first long wave exactly in the middle, andtherefore only half that wave occurs outside the body. This is theexplanation given by De Rochas, and it affords another example of thatprinciple of mathematical sequence of which I have spoken. It wouldappear that under normal conditions the double series of vibrations isspread all over the body, and so all parts are alike sensitive to touch. 

I think, then, we may assume on the basis of De Rochas' experiments andothers that there are such things as etheric vibrations proceeding fromhuman personality, and in the next chapter I will give some examplesshowing that the psychic personality extends still further than theseexperiments, taken by themselves, would indicate--in fact that wepossess an additional range of faculties far exceeding those which weordinarily exercise through the physical body, and which must thereforebe included in our conception of ourselves if we are to have an adequateidea of what we really are. 

CHAPTER II

SOME PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES

The preceding chapter has introduced the reader to the general subjectof etheric vibration as one of the natural forces of the Universe, bothas the foundation of all matter and as the medium for the transmissionof energy to immense distances, and also as something continuallyemanating from human beings. In the present chapter I shall consider itmore particularly in this last aspect, which, as included in our ownpersonality, very immediately concerns ourselves. I will commence withan instance of the practical application of this fact. Some years ago Iwas lunching at the house of Lady ---- in company of a well-known mentalhealer whom I will call Mr. Y. And a well-known London physician whom Iwill call Dr. W. Mr. Y. Mentioned the case of a lady whose leg had beenamputated above the knee some years previously to her coming under hiscare, yet she frequently felt pains in the (amputated) knee and lowerpart of the left leg and foot. Dr. W. Said this was to be attributed tothe nerves which convey to the brain the sensation of the extremities, much as a telegraph line might be tapped in the middle, and Mr. Y. Agreed that this was perfectly true on the purely physical side. But hewent on to say, that accidentally putting his hand where the amputatedfoot should have been he felt it there. Then it occurred to him thatsince there was no material foot to be touched, it must be through themedium of his own psychic body that the sensation of touch was conveyedto him, and accordingly he asked the lady to imagine that she was makingvarious movements with the amputated limb, all of which he felt, and wasable to tell her what each movement was, which she said he didcorrectly. Then, to carry the experiment further, he reversed theprocess and with his hand moved the invisible leg and foot in variousways, all of which the lady felt and described. He then determined totreat the invisible leg as though it were a real one, and joined up thecircuit by taking her left foot in his right hand and her right foot(the amputated one) in his left, with the result that she immediatelyfelt relief; and after successive treatments in this way was entirelycured. 

A well authenticated case like this opens up a good many interestingquestions regarding the Psychic Body, but the most important pointappears to me to be that we are able to experience sensation by means ofit. In this case, however, and those mentioned in the preceding chapter, the physical body was actually present, and if we stopped at this point, we might question whether its presence was not a _sine qua non_ for theaction of the etheric vibrations. I will therefore pass on to a class ofexamples which show that very curious phenomena can take place withoutthe physical body being on the spot. There are numerous well verifiedcases of the kind to be found in the records of the Society forPsychical Research and in other books by trustworthy writers; but it mayperhaps interest the present reader to hear one or two instances of mypersonal experience which, though they may not be so striking as some ofthose recorded by others, still point in the same direction. 

My first introduction to Scotland was when I delivered the course oflectures in Edinburgh which led to the publication of my first book, the "Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science. " The following years I gavea second course of lectures in Edinburgh, but the friends who had kindlyentertained me on the former occasion had in the meanwhile gone to liveelsewhere. However, a certain Mr. S. , whose acquaintance I had made onmy previous visit, invited me to stay with him for a day or two while Icould look round for other accommodation, though, as it turned out, Iremained at his house during the whole month I was in Edinburgh. I had, however, never seen his house, which was on the opposite side of thetown to where I had stayed before. I arrived there on a Tuesday, and Mr. S. And his family at once met me with the question:

"What were you thinking of at ten o'clock on Sunday evening?"

I could not immediately recall this, and also wanted to know the reasonof their question. 

"We have something curious to tell you, " they replied, "but first try toremember what you were thinking of at ten o'clock on Sundayevening--were you thinking about us?"

Then I recollected that about that time I was saying my usual prayersbefore going to bed and had asked that, if I could stay only a day ortwo with Mr. S. , I should be directed to a suitable place for theremainder of the time. 

"That explains it, " they replied; and then they went on to tell me thatat the hour in question Mr. S. And his son, a young man of about twenty, had entered their dining-room together and seen me standing leaningagainst the mantel-shelf. They were both hard-headed Scotchmen engagedin business in Edinburgh, and certainly not the sort of people toconjure up fanciful imaginings, nor is it likely that the same fancyshould have occurred to both of them; and therefore I can only supposethat they actually saw what they said they did. Now I myself was inLondon at the time of this appearance in Edinburgh, of which I had noconsciousness whatever; at the same time the fact of my being seen inEdinburgh exactly at the time when my thought, in prayer, was centredupon Mr. S. 's house (which I had not then seen) is a coincidencesuggesting that in some way my Thought had made itself visible there inthe image of my external personality. 

In this case, as I have said, I was not conscious of my psychic visit toEdinburgh, but I will now relate a converse instance, which occurred inconnection with my first visit there. At that time I had never been inScotland, and so far as I knew was never likely to go there. I was wideawake, writing in my study at Norwood, where I then lived, when Isuddenly found myself in a place totally unknown to me, where stood theruins of an ancient abbey, part of which, however, was still roofed overand used as a place of worship. I felt much interested, and among otherthings I noted a Latin inscription on a tablet in one of the walls. There seemed to be an invisible guide showing me over the place, whothen pointed out a long low house opposite the abbey, and said: "This isthe house of the clergyman of the abbey"; and I was then taken insidethe house and shown a number of antique-looking rooms. Then I came tomyself, and found I was sitting at my writing-table in Norwood. I had, however, a clear recollection of the place I had seen, but no idea whereit was, or indeed whether any such place really existed. I alsoremembered a portion of the Latin inscription, which I at once wrotedown in a note-book, as my curiosity was aroused. 

As I have said, I had no reason at that time to suppose I should evergo to Scotland, but some weeks later I was invited to lecture inEdinburgh. Another visitor in the house where I was a guest there, wasthe wife of the County Court Judge of Cumberland, and I showed her andour hostess the part of the Latin inscription I had retained, andsuggested that perhaps it might exist somewhere in Edinburgh. Howevernothing answering to what I had seen was to be found, so we relegatedthe whole thing to the region of unaccountable fancies, and thought nomore about it. The Judge's wife took her departure before me, and kindlyinvited me to spend a few days at their residence near Carlisle on myreturn journey, which I did. One day she drove me out to see LanercostAbbey, one of the show-places of the neighbourhood, and walking roundthe building I found in one of the walls the Latin inscription inquestion. I called Mrs. ----, who was a little way off, and said: "Lookat this inscription. "

She at once replied: "Why! that is the very inscription we were allpuzzling over in Edinburgh!"

It turned out to be an inscription in memory of the founder of theabbey, dating from somewhere in the eleven-hundreds. The whole placeanswered exactly to what I had seen, and the long low parsonage wasthere also. 

"I should have liked you to see it inside, " said Mrs. ----, "but I havenever met the vicar, though I know his mother-in-law, so we must give itup. "

We were just entering our carriage when the garden-gate opened, and whoshould come out but the mother-in-law. 

"Oh, Mrs. ----, " she said, addressing the Judge's wife, "I am here on avisit and you must come in and take tea. " So we went in and were shownover the house, much as I had been in my vision, and some portions wereso old that, among other rooms, we were shown the one occupied by KingEdward I on his march against Scotland in the year 1296, when theScottish regalia was captured, and the celebrated Crowning-Stone wasbrought to England and placed in Westminster Abbey, where it has eversince remained--a stone having an occult relation to the history of theBritish and American peoples of the highest interest to both, but asthere is already an extensive literature on this subject I will notenter upon it here. 

I will now relate another curious experience. We had only recentlytaken up our residence at Norwood, when one day I was seated in thedining-room, but suddenly found myself in the hall, and saw two ladiesgoing up the stairs. They passed close to me, and turning round thelanding at the top of the stairs passed out of sight in a perfectlynatural manner. They looked as solid as any one I have ever seen in mylife. One of them was a stout lady with a rather florid complexion, apparently between forty-five and fifty, wearing a silk blouse with thinpurple and white stripes. Leaning on her arm was a slightly-built oldlady with white ringlets, dressed all in black and wearing a lacemantilla. I noticed their appearance particularly. The next moment Ifound I was really sitting in the dining-room, and that the ladies I hadseen were nothing but visionary figures. I wondered what it could mean, but as we had only recently taken the house, thought it better not tomention it to any of my family, for fear of causing them alarm. But afew days later I mentioned it to a Mrs. F. Who I knew had had someexperience in such matters, and she said: "You have seen either some onewho has lived in the house or who is going to live there. " Then thematter dropped. 

About a month later my wife arranged by correspondence for a certainMiss B. To come as governess to our children. When she arrived there wasno mistaking her identity. She was the stout lady I had seen, and thenext morning she came down to breakfast dressed in the identical blousewith purple and white stripes. There was no mistaking her, but I waspuzzled as to who the other figure could be whom I had seen along withher. I resolved, however, to say nothing about the matter until webecame better acquainted, lest she should think that my mind was notquite balanced. I therefore held my peace for six months, at the end ofwhich time I concluded that we knew enough of each other to allow oneanother credit for being fairly level-headed. Then I thought, now if Itell her what I saw she may perhaps be acted upon by suggestion andimagine a resemblance between the unknown figure and some acquaintanceof hers, so I will not begin by telling her of the vision, but willfirst ask if she knows any one answering to the description, and giveher the reason afterwards. I therefore took a suitable opportunity ofasking her if she knew any such person, describing the figure to her asaccurately as I could. 

Her look of surprise grew as I went on, and when I had finished sheexplained with astonishment: "Why, Mr. Troward, where _could_ you haveseen my mother? She is an invalid, and I am certain you have never seenher, and yet you have described her most accurately. "

Then I told her what I had seen. She asked what I thought was theexplanation of the appearance, and the only explanation I could givewas, that I supposed she was on the look-out for a post and paid us apreliminary visit to see whether ours would suit her, and that, beingnaturally interested in her welfare, her mother had accompanied her. Perhaps you will say: "What came of it?" Well, nothing "came of it, " nordid anything "come" of my psychic visits to Edinburgh and LanercostAbbey. Such occurrences seem to be simple facts in Nature which, thoughon some occasions connected with premonitions of more or lessimportance, are by no means necessarily so. They are the functioning ofcertain faculties which we all possess, but of the nature of which we asyet know very little. 

It will be noticed that in the first of these three cases I myself wasthe person seen, though unaware of the fact. In the last I was thepercipient, but the persons seen by me were unconscious of their visit;and in the second case I was conscious of my presence at a place which Ihad never heard of, and which I visited some time after. In two of thesecases, therefore, the persons, making the psychic visit, were not awareof having done so, while in the third, a memory of what had been seenwas retained. But all three cases have this in common, that the psychicvisit was not the result of an act of conscious volition, and also, thatthe psychic action took place at a long distance from the physical body. 

From these personal experiences, as well as from many well authenticatedcases recorded by other writers, I should be inclined to infer that thepsychic action is entirely independent of the physical body, and insupport of this view I will cite yet another experience. 

It was about the year 1875, when I was a young Assistant Commissioner inthe Punjab, that I was ordered to the small up-country station ofAkalpur, [1] and took possession of the Assistant Commissioner'sbungalow there. On the night of our arrival in the bungalow, my wife andI had our charpoys--light Indian bedsteads--placed side by side in acertain room and went to bed. The last thing I remembered before fallingasleep, was seeing my wife sitting up in bed, reading with a lamp on asmall table beside her. Suddenly I was awakened by the sound of a shot, and starting up, found the room in darkness. I immediately lit a candlewhich was on a chair by my bedside, and found my wife still sitting upwith the book on her knee, but the lamp had gone out. 

"Take me away, take me into another room, " she exclaimed. 

"Why, what is the matter?" I said. 

"Did you not see it?" she replied. 

"See what?" I asked. 

"Don't stop to ask any questions, " she replied; "get me out of this roomat once; I can't stop here another minute. "

I saw she was very frightened, so I called up the servants, and had ourbeds removed to a room on the other side of the house, and then she toldme what she had seen. She said: "I was sitting reading as you saw me, when looking round, I saw the figure of an Englishman standing close bymy bedside, a fine-looking man with a large fair moustache and dressedin a grey suit. I was so surprised that I could not speak, and weremained looking at each other for about a minute. Then he bent over meand whispered: 'Don't be afraid, ' and with that there was the sound of ashot, and everything was in darkness. "

"My dear girl, you must have fallen asleep over your book and beendreaming, " I said. 

"No, I was wide awake, " she insisted; "you were asleep, but I was awakeall the time. But you heard the shot, did you not?"

"Yes, " I replied, "that is what woke me--some one must have fired a shotoutside. "

"But why should any one be shooting in our garden at nearly midnight?"my wife objected. 

It certain seemed strange, but it was the only explanation thatsuggested itself; so we had to agree to differ, she being convinced thatshe had seen a ghost, and that the shot had been inside the room, and Ibeing equally convinced that she had been dreaming, and that the shothad been fired outside the house. 

The next morning the owner of the bungalow, an old widow lady, Mrs. LaChaire, called to make kindly enquiries as to whether she could be ofany service to us on our arrival. After thanking her, my wife said: "Iexpect you will laugh at me, but I cannot help telling you there issomething strange about the bungalow"; and she then went on to narratewhat she had seen. 

Instead of laughing the old lady looked more and more serious as shewent on, and when she had done asked to be shown exactly where theapparition had appeared. My wife took her to the spot, and on beingshown it old Mrs. La Chaire exclaimed: "This is the most wonderful thingI have ever heard of. Eighteen years ago my bed was on the very spotwhere yours was last night, and I was lying in it too ill to move, whenmy husband, whom you have described most accurately, stood where you sawhim and shot himself dead. "

This statement of the widow convinced me that my wife had really seenwhat she said she had, and had not dreamed it; and this experience hasled me to make further enquiries into the nature of happenings of thiskind, with the result, that after carefully eliminating all cases whichcould be accounted for in any other manner, I have found myselfcompelled to admit a considerable number of instances of what arecalled "ghosts, " on the word of persons whose veracity and soundness ofjudgment I should not doubt on any other subject. It is often said thatyou never meet any one who has himself seen a ghost, but only those whohave heard of somebody else seeing one. This I can entirely contradict, for I have met with many trustworthy persons of both sexes, who havegiven me accounts of such appearances having been actually witnessed bythemselves. In conclusion, I may mention that I was telling this storysome twenty years later to a Colonel Fox, who had known the unfortunateman who committed suicide, and he said to me: "Do you know what were thelast words he said to his wife?"

"No, " I replied. 

"The very same words he spoke to your wife, " said Colonel Fox. 

This is the story I refer to in my book "Bible Mystery and BibleMeaning" as that of "the Ghost that I did not see. " I do not attempt tooffer any explanation of it, but merely give the facts as they occurred, and the reader must form his own theory on the subject; but the reason Ibring in this story in the present connection is, that in this instancethere could be no question of the physical body contributing to thepsychic phenomenon, since the person seen had been dead for nearlytwenty years; and coupling this fact with the distance from the physicalbody at which the psychic action took place in the other cases I havementioned, I think there is a very strong presumption that the psychicpowers can, and do, act independently of the physical body; though ofcourse it does not follow from this that they cannot also act inconjunction with it. 

On the other hand, a comparison of the present case with thosepreviously mentioned, fails to throw any light on the important questionwhether the deceased feels any consciousness of the action which thepercipient sees, or whether what is seen is like a sort of photographimpressed upon the atmosphere of a particular locality, and visible onlyto certain persons, who are able to sense etheric wave-lengths which areoutside the range of the single octave forming the solar spectrum. Itthrows no light on this question, because, in the case of my being seenby Mr. S. In Edinburgh and that of Miss B. And her mother being seen byme at Norwood, none of us were conscious of having been at thoseplaces; while in the case of my psychic visit to Lanercost Abbey, andother similar experiences I have had, I have been fully aware of seeingthe places in question. The evidence tells both ways, and I cantherefore only infer that there are two modes of psychic action, in oneof which the person projecting that action, whether voluntarily orinvoluntarily, experiences corresponding sensations, and the other inwhich he does not; but I am unable to offer any criterion by which theobserver can, with certainty, distinguish between the two. 

It appears to me, that such instances as those I have mentioned, pointto ranges of etheric action beyond those ordinarily recognized byphysical science, but the principle seems to be the same, and it is forthis reason that I have taken the modern scientific theory of ethericvibration as our starting-point. The universe is one great whole, andthe laws of one part cannot contradict those of another; therefore theexplanation of such queer happenings is not to be found by denying thewell-ascertained laws of Nature on the physical plane, but byconsidering whether these laws do not extend further. It is on thisaccount that I would lay stress on the Mathematical side of things, andhave adduced instances where various discoveries have been made byfollowing up the sequence indicated by the laws already known, and whichhave thus enabled us to fill up gaps in our knowledge, which wouldotherwise stop, or at least seriously hinder, our further progress. Itis in this way that Jachin helps Boaz, and that the undeviating natureof Law, so far from limiting us, becomes our faithful ally if we willonly allow it to do so. 

I think, then, that the scientific idea of the ether, as a universalmedium pervading all space, and permeating all substance, will help usto see that many things which are popularly called supernatural, are tobe attributed to the action of known laws working under, as yet, unknownconditions, and therefore, when we are confronted with strangephenomena, a knowledge of the general principles involved, will show usin what direction to look for an explanation. Now applying this to thepresent subject, we may reasonably argue, that since all physical matteris scientifically proved to consist of the universal ether in variousdegrees of condensation, there may be other degrees of condensation, forming other modes of matter, which are beyond the scope of physicalvision and of our laboratory apparatus. And similarly, we may argue, that just as various effects can be produced on the physical plane, bythe action of etheric waves of various lengths, so other effects mightbe produced on these finer modes of matter, by etheric waves of otherlengths. And in this connection we must not forget that a gap occursbetween the "dark heat" groups and the Hertzian group, consisting offive octaves of waves, the lengths of which have been theoreticallycalculated, but whose action has not yet been discovered. Here weadmittedly have a wide field for the working of known laws under as yetunknown conditions; and again, how can we say that there are not rangesof unknown waves, yet smaller than the minute ultra-violet ones, whichcommence the present known scale, or transcending those largest ones, which bear our messages across the Atlantic? Mathematically, there is nolimit to the scale in either direction; and so, taking our stand on thedemonstrated facts of science, we find, that the known laws of Naturepoint to their continuation in modes of matter and of force, of which wehave as yet no conception. It is therefore not at all necessary tospurn the ground of established science to spread the wings of ourfancy; rather it affords us the requisite basis from which to start, just as the aeronaut cannot rise without a solid surface from which tospring. 

Now if we realize that the ether is an infinitely subtle fluid, pervading all space, we see that it must constitute a connecting linkbetween all modes of substance, whether visible or invisible, in allworlds, and may therefore be called the Universal Medium; and followingup our conception of the Continuity of Law, we may suppose that trainsof waves, inconceivably smaller or greater than any known to modernscience, are set up in this medium, in the same way as theelectro-magnetic waves with which we are acquainted; that is, by animpulse which generates them from some particular point. In the regionof finer forces we are now prospecting, this impulse might well be theDesire or Will of the spiritual entity which we ourselves are--thatthinking, feeling, inmost essence of ourself, which is the "noumenon" ofour individuality, and which, for the sake of brevity we call our "Ego, "a Latin word which simply means "I myself. " This idea of spiritualimpulse is quite familiar to us in our every-day talk. We speak of animpulsive person, meaning one who acts on a sudden thought withoutgiving due heed to consequences; so in our ordinary speech we look uponthought as the initial impulse, only we restrict this to the case ofunregulated thought. But if unregulated thought acts as a centre ofimpulse, why should not regulated thought do the same? Therefore we mayaccept the idea of Thought as the initial impulse, which starts trainsof waves in the Universal Medium, whether with or without dueconsideration, and having thus recognized its dynamic power, we mustlearn to make the impulsions we thus send forth intelligent, welldefined, and directed to some useful purpose. The operator at somewireless station does not use his instruments to send out a lot ofjumbled-up waves into the ether, but controls the impulsions into adefinite and intelligible order, and we must do the same. 

On some such lines as these, then, we may picture the desire of the Egoas starting a train of waves in the Universal Medium, which arereproduced in corresponding _form_ on reaching their destination. Aswith the electro-magnetic waves, they may spread all round, just asripples do if we throw a stone into a pond; but they will only take formwhere there is a correspondence able to receive them. This is what inthe language of electrical engineers is called "Syntony, " which meansbeing tuned to the same rate of vibration, and no doubt it is from somesuch cause, that we sometimes experience what seem inexplicable feelingsof attraction or repulsion towards different persons. This also appearsto furnish a key to thought-transference, hypnotism, and other alliedphenomena. 

If the reader questions whether thought is capable of generatingimpulses in the etheric medium I would refer him to the experimentmentioned in Chapter XIV of my "Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science, "where I describe how, when operating with Dr. Baraduc's biometer, Ifound that the needle revolved through a smaller or large arc of thecircle, in response to my mental intention of concentrating a smaller orlarger degree of force upon it. Perhaps you will say that the differencein the movement of the needle depended on the quantity of magnetism thatwas flowing from me, to say nothing of other known forces, such as heat, light, electricity, etc. Well, that is precisely the proposition I amputting forward. What caused the difference in the intensity of themagnetic flow was my intention of varying it, so that we come back tomental action as the centre of impulsion from which the etheric waveswere generated. If, then, such a demonstration can be obtained on theplane of purely physical matter, why need we doubt that the same Lawwill work in the same way, in respect of those finer modes of substance, and wider ranges of etheric vibrations, which, starting from the basisof recognized physical science, the Law of Continuity would lead to byan orderly sequence, and which the occurrence of what, for want of abetter name, we call occult phenomena require for their explanation?

Before passing on to the more practical generalizations to be drawn fromthe suggestions contained in this chapter, I may advert to an objectionsometimes brought by the sceptical in this matter. They say: "How is itthat apparitions are always seen in the dark?" and then they answertheir own question by saying, it is because superstitious people arenervous in the dark and imagine all sorts of things. Then they laugh andthink they have disposed of the whole subject. But it is not disposedof quite so easily, for not only are there many well attested cases ofsuch appearances in broad daylight, but there are also scientific facts, showing that if we are right in explaining such happenings by ethericaction, such action is more readily produced at night than in thepresence of sunlight. 

In the early part of 1902 Marconi made some experiments on board theAmerican liner _Philadelphia_, which brought out the remarkable factthat, while it was possible to transmit signals to a distance of fifteenhundred miles during the night, they could not be transmitted furtherthan seven hundred miles during the day. The same was found to be thecase by Lieutenant Solari of the Italian Navy, at whose disposal theship _Carlo Alberta_ was placed by the King of Italy in 1902, for thepurpose of making investigations into wireless telegraphy; and summingup the points which he considered to have been fully established by hisexperiments on board that ship, he mentions among them the fact, thatsunlight has the effect of reducing the power of the electro-magneticwaves, and that consequently a greater force is required to produce agiven result by day than by night. Here, then, is a reason why we mightexpect to see more supernatural appearances, as we call them, at nightthan in the day--they require a smaller amount of force to produce them. At the same time, it is found that the great magnetic waves which coverimmense distances, work even more powerfully in the light than in thedark. May it not be that these things show, that there is more than amerely metaphorical use of words, when the Bible tells us of the powerof Light to dissipate, and bring to naught, the powers of Darkness, while the Light itself is the Great Power, using the forces of theuniverse on the widest scale? Perhaps it is none other than thecontinuity of unchanging universal principles extending into themysterious realms of the spiritual world. 

CHAPTER III

MAN'S PLACE IN THE CREATIVE ORDER

In the preceding chapters we have found certain definite facts, --thatall known matter is formed out of one primordial UniversalSubstance, --that the ether spreading throughout limitless space is aUniversal Medium, through which it is possible to convey force by meansof vibrations, --and that vibrations can be started by the power ofSound. These we have found to be well established facts of ordinaryscience, and taking them as our starting-point, we may now begin tospeculate as to the possible workings of the known laws under unknownconditions. 

One of the first things that naturally attract our attention is thequestion, --How did Life originate? On this point I may quote two leadingmen of science. Tyndall says: "I affirm that no shred of trustworthyexperimental testimony exists, to prove that life in our day has everappeared independently of antecedent life"; and Huxley says: "Thedoctrine of biogenesis, or life only from life, is victorious along thewhole line at the present time. " Such is the testimony of modern scienceto the old maxim "Omne vivum exvivo. " "All life proceeds from antecedentlife. " Think it out for yourself and you will see that it could notpossibly be otherwise. 

Whatever may be our theory of the origin of life on the physical plane, whether we regard it as commencing in a vivified slime at the bottom ofthe sea, which we call protoplasm, or in any other way, the question ofhow life got there still remains unanswered. The protoplasm beingmaterial substance, must have its origin like all other materialsubstances, in the undifferentiated etheric Universal Substance, noparticle of which has any power of operating upon any other particleuntil some initial vibration starts the movement; so that, on any theorywhatever, we are always brought back to the same question: What startedthe condensation of the ether into the beginnings of a world-system? Sowhether we consider the life which characterizes organized matter, orthe energy which characterizes inorganic matter, we cannot avoid theconclusion, that both must have their source in some Original Power towhich we can assign no antecedent. This is the conclusion which has beenreached by all philosophic and religious systems that have really triedto get at the root of the matter, simply because it is impossible toform any other conception. 

This Living Power is what we mean when we speak of the All-OriginatingSpirit. The existence of this Spirit is not a theological invention, buta logical and scientific ultimate, without predicating which, nothingelse can be accounted for. The word "Spirit" comes from the Latin"spiro" "I breathe, " and so means "The Breath, " as in Job xxxiii, 4, --"The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hathgiven me life"; and again in Ps. Xxxiii, 6--"By the word of the Lordwere the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of hismouth. "

In the opening chapter of Genesis, we are told that "the Spirit of Godmoved upon the face of the waters. " The words rendered "the Spirit ofGod" are, in the original Hebrew "rouah Ćlohim, " which is literally "theBreathing of God"; and similarly, the ancient religious books of India, make the "Swára" or Great Breath the commencement of all life andenergy. The word "rouah" in Genesis is remarkable. According torabbinical teaching, each letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a certainsymbolic significance, and when examined in this manner, the root fromwhich this word is derived conveys the idea of Expansive Movement. It isthe opposite of the word "hoshech, " translated "darkness" in the samepassage of our Bible, which is similarly derived from a root conveyingthe idea of Hardening and Compressing. It is the same idea that ispersonified in the Zendavesta, the sacred book of the ancient Persians, under the names of Ormuzd, the Spirit of Light; and Ahriman, the Spiritof Darkness; and similarly in the old Assyrian myth of the strugglebetween the Sun-God and Tiámat, the goddess of darkness. 

This conception of conflict between two opposite principles, Light andDarkness, Compression and Expansion, will be found to underlie all theancient religions of the world, and it is conspicuous throughout our ownScriptures. But it should be borne in mind that the oppositeness oftheir nature does not necessarily mean conflict. The two principles ofExpansion and Contraction are not necessarily destructive; on thecontrary they are necessary correlatives to one another. Expansion alonecannot produce form; cohesion must also be present. It is the regulatedbalance between them that results in Creation. In the old legend, if Iremember rightly, the conflict is ended by Tiámat marrying her formeropponent. They were never really enemies, but there was amisunderstanding between them, or rather there was a misunderstanding onthe part of Tiámat so long as she did not perceive the true character ofthe Spirit of Light, and that their relation to one another was that ofco-operation and not of opposition. Thus also St. John tells us that"the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not"(John i, 5). It is this want of comprehension that is at the root of allthe trouble. 

The reader should note, however, that I am here speaking of thatPrimeval Substance, which necessarily has no light in itself, becausethere is as yet no vibration in it, for there can be no light withoutvibration. We must not make the mistake of supposing that Matter is evilin itself: it is our misconception of it that makes it the vehicle ofevil; and we must distinguish between the darkness of Matter and moraldarkness, though there is a spiritual correspondence between them. Thetrue development of Man consists in the self-expansion of the DivineSpirit working through his mind, and thence upon his psychic andphysical organisms, but this can only be by the individual's_willingness to receive_ that Spirit. Where the hindrance to thisworking is only caused by ignorance of the true relation betweenourselves and the Divine Spirit, and the desire for truth is present, the True Light will in due course disperse the darkness. But on theother hand, if the hindrance is caused by _unwillingness_ to be led bythe Divine Spirit, then the Light cannot be _forced_ upon any one, andfor this reason Jesus said: "This is the condemnation, that light iscome into the World, and men loved darkness rather than light, becausetheir deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But hethat doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be mademanifest, that they are wrought in God" (John iii: 19-21). In physicalscience these things have an exact parallel in "Ohm's Law" regarding theresistance offered by the conductor to the flow of the electriccurrent. The correspondence is very remarkable and will be found morefully explained in a later chapter. The Primary Darkness, both ofSubstance and of Mind, has to be taken into account, if we would form anintelligent conception of the twofold process of Involution andEvolution continually at work in ourselves, which, by their combinedaction, are able to lead to the limitless development both of theindividual and of the race. 

According to all teaching, then, both ancient and modern, all life andenergy have their source in a Primary Life and Energy, of which we canonly say that IT IS. We cannot conceive of any time when it was not, for, if there was a time when no such Primary Energizing Life existed, what was there to energize it? So we are landed in a _reductio adabsurdum_ which leaves no alternative but to predicate the EternalExistence of an All-Originating Living Spirit. 

Let us stop for a moment to consider what we mean by "Eternal. " When, do you suppose, twice two began to make four? And when, do yousuppose, twice two will cease to make four? It is an eternalprinciple, quite independent of time or conditions. Similarly with theOriginating Life. It is above time and above conditions--in a word itis _undifferentiated_ and contains in itself the _potential_ ofinfinite differentiation. This is what the Eternal Life is, and whatwe want for the expansion of our own life is a truer comprehension ofit. We are like Tiámat, and must enter into intelligent and lovingunion with the Spirit of Light, in order to realize the infinitepossibilities that lie before us. This is the ultimate meaning of themaxim "Omne vivum ex vivo. "

We see, then, that the material universe, including our own bodies, hasits origin in the undifferentiated Universal Substance, and that thefirst movement towards differentiation must be started by some initialimpulse, analogous to those which start vibrations in the ether known toscience; and that therefore this impulse must, in the first instance, proceed from some Living Power eternal in itself, and independent oftime and conditions. Now all the ancient religions of the world concur, in attributing this initial impulse to the power of Sound; and we haveseen, that as a matter of fact, sound has the power of startingvibrations, and that these vibrations have an exact correspondence withthe quality of the sound, what we now call synchronous vibration. 

At this point, however, we are met by another fact. Cosmic activitytakes place only in certain definite areas. Solar systems do not jostleeach other in space. In a word the Sound, which thus starts the initialimpulse of creation, is guided by Intelligent Selection. Now sounds, directed by purposeful intention, amount to Words, whether the words ofsome spoken language or the tapping of the Morse code--it is the meaningat the back of the sound that gives it verbal significance. It is forthis reason, that the concentration of creative energy in particularareas, has from time immemorial been attributed to "The Word. " The oldSanskrit books call this selective concentrative power "Vach, " whichmeans "Voice, " and is the root of the Latin word "Vox, " having the samemeaning. Philo, and the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria who follow him, call it "Logos, " which means the same; and we are all familiar with theopening verses of St. John's Gospel and First Epistle in which heattributes Creation to "The Word. "

Now we know, as a scientific fact, that solar systems have a definitebeginning in the gyration of nebulous matter, circling through vastfields of interstellar space, as the great nebula in Andromeda does atthe present day. Ćons upon ćons elapse, before the primary nebulaconsolidates into a solar system such as ours is now; but science shows, that from the time when the nebula first spreads its spiral across theheavens, the mathematical element of Law asserts itself, and it is bymeans of our recognition of the mathematical relations between theforces of attraction and repulsion, that we have been able to acquireany knowledge on the subject. I do not for an instant wish to suggestthat the Spiritual Power has not continued to be in operation also, buta centre for the working of a Cosmic Law being once established, theSpiritual Power works through that Law and not in opposition to it. Onthe other hand, the selection of particular portions of space for themanifestation of cosmic activity, indicates the action of free volition, not determined by any law except the obvious consideration of allowingroom for the future solar system to move in. Similarly also with regardto time. Spectroscopic analysis of the light from the stars, which aresuns many of them much greater than our own, shows that they are ofvarious ages--some quite young, some arrived at maturity, and somepassing into old age. Their creation must therefore be assigned todifferent epochs, and we thus see the Originating Spirit exercising thepowers of Selection and Volition as to the time when, as well as to theplace where, a new world-system shall be inaugurated. 

Now it is this power of inauguration that all the ancient systems ofteaching attribute to the Divine Word. It is the passing of theundifferentiated into differentiation, of the unmanifested intomanifestation, of the unlocalized into localization. It is the usheringin of what the Brahminical books call a "Manvantara" or world-period, and in like manner our Bible says that "In the beginning was the Word. "The English word "word" is closely allied to the Latin word "verbum"which signifies both _word_ and _verb_. Grammarians tell us that theverb "to be" is a verb-substantive, that is, it does not indicate anyaction passing from the subject to the object. Now this exactlydescribes the Spirit in its Eternity. We cannot conceive of It except asalways BEING; but the distribution of world-systems both in time andspace shows that it is not always cosmically active. In itself, apartfrom manifestation, it is Pure Beingness, if I may coin such a word; andit is for this reason that the Divine Name announced to Moses was "IAM. " But the fact that Creation exists, shows that from this SubstantivePure Being there flows out a Verb Active, which reproduces in action, what the I AM is in essence. It is just the same with ourselves. We mustfirst _be_ before we can _do_, and we can _do_ only to the extent towhich we _are_. We cannot express powers which we do not possess; sothat our doing necessarily coincides with the quality of our being. Therefore the Divine Verb reproduces the Divine Substantive by a naturalsequence. It is _generated_ by the Divine "I AM, " and for this reason itis called "The Son of God. " So we see that The Verb, The Word, and TheSon of God, are all different expressions for the same Power. 

Creative vibration in the Universal Substance can, therefore, only beconceived of, as being inaugurated by the "Word" which _localizes_ theactivity of the Spirit in particular centres. This idea, of thelocalization of the Spirit through the "Word, " should be fully realizedas the energizing principle on the scale of the Macrocosm or "GreatWorld, " because, as we shall find later on, the same principle acts inthe same way on the scale of the Microcosm or "Small World, " which isthe individual man. This is why these things have a personal interestfor us, otherwise they would not be worth troubling about. But a mistaketo be avoided at this point, is that of supposing that the "Word" issomething which dictates to the Spirit when and where to operate. The"Word" is the word of the Spirit itself, and not that of some higherauthority, for the Spirit being First Cause there can be nothinganterior to dictate to it; there can be nothing before that which isFirst. The "Word" which centralizes the activity of the Spirit, istherefore that of the Spirit itself. We have an analogy in our own case. If I go to New York the first movement in that direction is that of myThought or Desire. It is true that in my present state of evolution Ihave to follow the usual methods of travel, but so far as my Thought isconcerned, I have been there all the time. Indeed, such a case as theone I have mentioned, of my being seen in Edinburgh while I wasphysically in London, seems to point to the actual transference of somepart of the personality to another locality, and similarly with my visitto Lanercost Abbey; and the reader must remember, that such phenomenaare by no means uncommon--they are the natural action of some part ofour personality, and must therefore follow some natural law, even thoughwe may at present know very little of how it works. 

We see, therefore, both from _a priori_ reasoning, and from observedfacts, that it is the Word, Thought, or Desire of the Spirit, thatlocalizes its activity in some definite centre. The student should bearthis in mind as a leading principle, for he will find that it is ofgeneral application, alike in the case of individuals, of groups ofindividuals, and of entire nations. It is the key to the relationbetween Law and Personality, the opening of the Grand Arcanum, theequilibrating of Jachin and Boaz, and it is therefore of immediateimportance to ourselves. 

We may take, then, as a starting-point for further enquiry, the maximthat Volition creates Centres of Spiritual Activity. But perhaps youwill say: "If this be true, what word or words am I to employ?" This isa question which has puzzled a good many people before you. This "Word"which so many have been in search of, has been variously called "theLost Word, " "the Word of Power, " "the Schemhammaphorasch or Secret Nameof God, " and so on. A quaint Jewish legend of the Middle Ages says thatthe "Hidden Name" was secretly inscribed in the innermost recesses ofthe Temple; but that, even if discovered, which was most unlikely, itcould not be retained because, guarding it, were sculptured lions, whichgave such a supernatural roar as the intruder was quitting the spot, that all memory of the "Hidden Name" was driven from his mind. Jesus, however, says the legend, knew this and dodged the lions. He transcribedthe Name, and cutting open his thigh, hid the writing in the incision, which, by magical art, he at once closed up; then, after leaving theTemple, he took the writing out and so retained the knowledge of theName. In this way the legend accounts for his power to work miracles. 

Jesus, indeed, possessed the Word of Power, though not in the waytold in the legend, and he repeatedly proclaimed it in histeaching:--"According to your Faith be it unto you"--"Verily, I say untoyou, whosoever shall say to this mountain, 'Be thou taken up and castinto the sea'; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe thatwhat he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith"(Mark xi, 23). And similarly in the Old Testament we are told that theWord is nigh to us, even in our hearts and in our mouth (Deut. Xxx, 14). What keeps the Word of Power hidden, is our belief that nothing sosimple could possibly be it. 

At the same time, simple though it be, it has Law and Reason at the backof it, like everything else. The ancient Egyptians seem to have hadclearer ideas on this subject than we have. "The name was to theEgyptians the _idea_ of the thing, without which it could not exist, andthe knowledge of which therefore gave power over that which answered toit. " "The _idea_ of the thing represented its _soul_. "[2] This is thesame conception as the "archetypal ideas" of Plato, only carriedfurther, so as to apply, not only to classes, but to each individual ofthe class, and, as we shall see later, there is a good deal of truth init. Put broadly, the conception is this--every external fact must havea spiritual origin, an internal energizing principle, which causes it toexist in the particular form in which it does. The outward fact iscalled the Phenomenon, and the corresponding inward principle is calledthe Noumenon. The dictionary definition of these two words is asfollows: "Phenomenon--the appearance which anything makes to ourconsciousness as distinguished from what it is in itself. " "Noumenon--anunknown and unknowable substance or thing as it is in itself--theopposite to the Phenomenon or form through which it becomes known to thesenses or the understanding" (Chambers' Twentieth Century Dictionary). Whether the dictionary be right in saying that the "noumena" of thingsare entirely unknowable, the reader must decide for himself; but thepresent book is an attempt to learn something about the "noumena" ofthings in general, and of ourselves in particular, and what I want toconvey is, that the "noumenon" of anything is its essence, _in terms ofthe Universal Energy and the Universal Substance, in their relation tothe particular Form in question_. Probably the Latin word "Nomen, " aName, is derived from this Greek word, and in this sense everything hasits "hidden name"; and the region in which Thought-Power works, is thisregion of spiritual beginnings. It deals with "hidden names"--thatinward essence which determines the outward form of things, persons, andcircumstances alike; and it is in order to make this clearer, that Ihave commenced by sketching briefly the general principles of Substanceand Energy as now recognized by modern science. 

If I have made my meaning clear, you will see that what is wanted isnot the knowledge of particular words, but an understanding of generalprinciples. At the same time I would not assert that the reciting ofcertain forms of words, such as the Indian "mantras" or the word AUM, to which Oriental teachers attach a mystic significance, is entirelywithout power. But the power is not in the words _but in our belief intheir power_. I will give an amusing instance of this. On severaloccasions I have been consulted by persons who supposed themselves tobe under the influence of "malicious magnetism, " emanating in somecases from known, and in others from unknown, sources; and the remedy Ihave prescribed has been this. Look the adverse power, mentally, fullin the face, and then assuming an attitude of confidence say"Cock-a-doodle-doo. " The enquirers have sometimes smiled at first, butin every case the result has been successful. Perhaps this is whyĆsculapius is represented as accompanied by a cock. Possibly theancient physicians were in the habit of employing the"Cock-a-doodle-doo" treatment; and I might recommend it to the facultyto-day as very effective in certain cases. Now I do not think thereader will attribute any particularly occult significance to"Cock-a-doodle-doo. " The power is in the mental attitude. To"cock-a-doodle-doo" at any suggestion is to treat it with scorn andderision, and to assume the very opposite of that receptive attitudewhich enables a suggestion to affect us. That is the secret of thismethod of treatment, and the principle is the same in all cases. 

It matters, then, very little what particular words we use. What doesmatter is the intention and faith with which we use them. But perhapssome reader will here take the rôle of cross-examining counsel, and say:"You have just said it is a case of synchronous vibration--then surelyit is the actual sound of the particular syllables that counts--how doyou square this with your present statement?" The answer is that the Lawis always the same, but the mode of response to the Law is alwaysaccording to the nature of the medium in which it is operating. On theplane of physical matter the vibrations are in tune with physicalsounds, as in the experiments with the eidophone; and similarly, on theplane of ideas or "noumena, " the response is in terms of that plane. Theword which creates "noumena, " or spiritual centres of action, mustitself belong to the world of "noumena, " so that it is not illogical tosay that it is the intention and faith that counts, and not the externalsound. In this is the secret of the Power of Thought. It is thereproduction, on the miniature scale of the individual, of the same modeof Power that makes the worlds. It is that Power of Personality, which, combined with the action of the Law, brings out results which the Lawalone could never do--as the old maxim has it, "Nature unaided fails. "

This brings us to another important question--is not the creative powerof the Word limited by the immutability of the Law? If the Law cannot bealtered in the least particular, how can the Word be free to do what itlikes? The answer to this is contained in another maxim: "Every creationcarries its own mathematics along with it. " You cannot create anythingwithout at the same time creating its relation to everything else, justas in painting a landscape, the contour you give to the trees willdetermine that of the sky. Therefore, whenever you create anything, youthereby start a train of causation, which will work out in strictaccordance with the sort of thought that started it. The stream alwayshas the quality of its source. Thought which is in line with the Unityof the Great Whole, will produce correspondingly harmonious results, andThought which is disruptive of the great Principle of Unity, willproduce correspondingly disputive results--hence all the trouble andconfusion in the world. Our Thought is perfectly free, and we can use iteither constructively or destructively as we choose; but the immutableLaw of Sequence will not permit us to plant a thought of one kind, andmake it bear fruit of another. 

Then the question very naturally suggests itself: Why did not God createus so that we could not think negative or destructive thoughts? And theanswer is: Because He could not. There are some things which even Godcannot do. He cannot do anything that involves a contradiction in terms. Even God could not make twice two either more or less than four. Now Iwant the student to see clearly why making us incapable ofwrong-thinking would involve a contradiction in terms, and wouldtherefore be an impossibility. To see this we must realize what is ourplace in the Order of the Universe. The name "Man" itself indicatesthis. It comes from the Sanscrit root MN, which, in all its derivatives, conveys the idea of Measurement, as in the word Mind, through the Latin_mens_, the faculty which compares things and estimates themaccordingly; Moon, the heavenly body whose phases afford the mostobvious standard for the periodical measurement of time; Month, theperiod thus measured; "Man, " the largest of the Indian weights; and soon. Man therefore means "The Measurer, " and this very aptly describesour place in the order of evolution, for it indicates the relationbetween Personal Volition and Immutable Law. 

If we grant the truth of the maxim "Nature unaided fails" the wholething becomes clear, and the entire progress of applied science provesthe truth of this maxim. To recur to an illustration I have employed inmy previous books, the old ship-builders thought that ships were boundto be built of wood and not of iron, because wood floats in water andiron sinks; but now nearly all ships are made of iron. Yet the specificgravities of wood and iron have not altered, and a log of wood floatswhile a lump of iron sinks, just the same as they did in the days ofDrake and Frobisher. The only difference is, that people thought out the_underlying principle_ of the law of flotation, and reduced it to thegeneralized statement that anything will float, the weight of which isless than that of the mass displaced by it, whether it be an iron shipfloating in water, or a balloon floating in air. So long as we restrictourselves to the mere recollection of observed facts, we shall make noprogress; but by carefully considering _why_ any force acted in the wayit did, under the particular conditions observed, we arrive at ageneralization of principle, showing that the force in question iscapable of hitherto unexpected applications if we provide the necessaryconditions. This is the way in which all advances have been made on thematerial side, and on the principle of Continuity we may reasonablyinfer that the same applies to the spiritual side also. 

We may generalize the whole position thus. When we first observe theworking of the Law under the conditions spontaneously provided byNature, it appears to limit us; but by seeking the _reason_ of theaction exhibited under these limited conditions, we discover theprinciple, and true nature, of the Law in question, and we then learnfrom the Law itself, what conditions to supply in order to give it moreextended scope, and direct its energy to the accomplishment of definitepurposes. The maxim we have to learn is that "Every Law _contains initself_ the principle of its own Expansion, " which will set us free fromthe limitation which that Law at first appeared to impose upon us. Thelimitation was never in the Law, but in the conditions under which itwas working, and our power of selection and volition enables us toprovide new conditions, not spontaneously provided by Nature, and thusto _specialize_ the Law, and disclose immense powers which had alwaysbeen latent in it, but which would for ever remain hidden unless broughtto light by the co-operation of the Personal Factor. The Law itselfnever changes, but we can _specialize_ it by realizing the principleinvolved and providing the conditions thus indicated. This is our placein the Order of the Universe. We give definite direction to the actionof the Law, and in this way our Personal Factor is always acting uponthe law, whether we know it or not; and the Law, under the influencethus impressed upon it, is all the time re-acting upon us. 

Now we cannot conceive any limit to Evolution. To suppose a point whereit comes to an end is a contradiction in terms. It is to suppose thatthe Eternal Life Principle is used up, which is to deny its Eternity;and, as we have seen, unless we assume its Eternity, it is impossible toaccount either for our own existence or that of anything else. Therefore, to say that a point will ever be reached where it will beused up, is as absurd as saying that a point will be reached where thesequence of numbers will be used up. Evolution, the progress from lowerto higher modes of manifestation of the underlying Principle of Life, istherefore eternal, but, in regard to the human race, this progressdepends entirely on the extent to which we grasp the principles of theLaw of our own Being, and so learn to specialize it in the rightdirection. Then if this be our place in the Universal Order, it becomesclear that we could not occupy this place unless we had a perfectly freehand to choose the conditions under which the Law is to operate; andtherefore, in order to pass beyond the limits of the mineral, vegetableand animal kingdoms, and reach the status of being Persons, and notthings, we must have a freedom of selection and volition, which makes itequally possible for us to select either rightly or wrongly; and thepurpose of sound teaching is to make us see the eternal principlesinvolved, and thus lead us to impress our Personality upon the Law, inthe way that will bring out the infinite possibilities of good which theLaw, rightly employed, contains. If it were possible to do this by anautomatic Law, doubtless the Creative Wisdom would have made us so. Thisis why St. Paul says: "If there had been a law given which could havegiven life, verily righteousness should have been by the law" (Gal. Iii, 21). Note the words "a law _given_, " that is to say, imposed by externalcommand; but it could not be. The laws of the Universe are Cosmic. Inthemselves they are _impersonal_, and the infinite possibilitiescontained in them, can only be brought out by the co-operation of thePersonal Factor. It is only as we grasp the true relation between Jachinand Boaz, that we can enter into the Temple either of our ownIndividuality, or of the boundless Universe in which we live. Thereason, therefore, why God did not make us mechanically incapable ofwrong thinking, is simply because the very idea involves a contradictionin terms, which negatives all possibility of Creation. The conceptionlands us in a _reductio ad absurdum_. 

Therefore, we are free to use our powers of Personality as we will, onlywe must take the consequences. Now one error we are all very apt to fallinto, is the mistaken use of the Will. Its proper function is to keepour other faculties in line with the Law, and thus enable us tospecialize it; but many people seem to think that by force of will theycan somehow manage to coerce the Law; in other words, that by force ofwill they can sow a seed of one kind and make it bear fruit of another. The Spirit of Life seeks to express itself in our individuality, throughthe three avenues of reason, feeling, and will; but as in the Masoniclegend of the murder of Hiram Abif, the architect of Solomon's Temple, it is beaten back on the side of reasoning, by the plummet of a logicbased on false premises; on the side of feeling, by the level ofconventional ideas; and on the side of will, by the hammer of ashort-sighted self-will, which gives the finishing blow; and it is notuntil the true perception of the Principle of Life is resurrected withinus, that the Temple can be completed according to the true plan. 

It should be remembered that the will is _not_ the Creative Faculty inus. It is the faculty of Conception that is the creative agent, and thebusiness of the Will is to keep that faculty in the right direction, which will be determined by an enlightened Reason. Conception createsideas which are the seed, that, in due time, will produce fruit afterits own kind. In a broad sense we may call it the Imaging Faculty, onlywe must not suppose that this necessarily implies the visualizing ofmental images, which is only a subsidiary mode of using this faculty. An"immaculate conception" is therefore the only means by which the NewLiberated Man can be born in each of us. The sequence is always thesame. The Will holds the Conception together, and the idea thus formedgives direction to the working of the Law. But this direction may beeither true or inverted; and the impersonal Law will work constructivelyor destructively, according to the conception which it embodies. In thisway, then, will-power may be used to hold together an invertedconception--the conception that our personal force of will is sufficientto bear down all opposition. But this mental attitude ignores the fact, that the fundamental principle of creative power is the Wholeness of theCreation; and that, therefore, the idea of forcing compliance with ourwishes, by the power of our individual will, is an inverted conception, which, though it may appear to succeed for a time, is bound to faileventually, because it antagonizes the very power it is seeking to use. This inverted use of the Will is the basis of "Black Magic, " a term somereaders will perhaps smile at, but which is practised at the present dayto a much greater extent than many of us have any idea of--not always, indeed, with a full consciousness of its nature, but in many ways whichare the first steps on the Left-hand Path. Its mark is the determinationto act by Self-will, rather than using our will to co-operate with thatcontinuous forward movement of the Great Whole, which is the Will ofGod. This inverted will entirely misses the point regarding the part weare formed to play in the Creative Order, and so we miss the developmentof our own individuality, and retrograde instead of going forward. 

But if we work _with_ the Law instead of against it, we shall find thatour word, that is to say our conception, will become more and more theWord of Power, because it specializes the general Law in some particulardirection. The Law will serve us exactly to the extent to which we firstobserve the Law. It is the same in everything. If the electrician triesto go counter to the fundamental principle, that the electric currentalways flows from a higher to a lower potential, he will be able to donothing with it; but let him observe this fundamental law and there isnothing that electricity will not do for him within the field of its ownnature. In this sense, then, of specializing the general Law in aparticular direction, we may lay down the maxim that "The Law flows fromthe Word, and not _vice versa_. "

When we use our Word in this way, not as expressing a self-will thatseeks to crush all that does not submit to it, but as a portion, howeversmall, of the Universal Cause, and therefore with the desire of actingin harmony with that Cause, then our word becomes a constructive, instead of a destructive power. Its influence may be very small atfirst, because there is still a great mass of doubt at the back of ourmind, and every doubt is, in reality, a Negative Word warring againstour Affirmative Word; but, by adhering to our principle, we shallgradually gain experience in these things, and the creative value of ourword will grow accordingly. 

CHAPTER IV

THE LAW OF WHOLENESS

It may seem a truism to say that the whole is made up of its parts, butall the same we often lose sight of this in our outlook on life. 

The reason we do so is because we are apt to take too narrow a view ofthe whole; and also because we do not sufficiently consider that it isnot the mere arithmetical sum of the parts that makes the whole, butalso the harmonious agreement of each part with all the other parts. Theextent of the whole and the harmony of the parts is what we have to lookout for, and also its objective; this is a universal rule, whatever thewhole in question may be. 

Take, for instance, the case of the artist. He must start by having adefinite objective, what in studio phrase is called a "motif"; somethingthat has given him a certain impression which he wants to convey toothers, but which cannot be stated as an isolated fact without anysurroundings. Then the surroundings must be painted so as to have anatural relation to the main motif; they must lead up to it, but at thesame time they must not compete with it. There must be only one definiteinterest in the picture, and minor details must not be allowed tointerfere with it. They are there only because of the main motif, tohelp to express it. Yet they are not to be treated in a slovenly manner. As much as is seen of them must be drawn with an accuracy that correctlysuggests their individual character; but they must not be accentuated insuch a way as to emphasize details to the detriment of the breadth ofthe picture. This is the artistic principle of unity, and the sameprinciple applies to everything else. 

What, then, is the "Motif" of Life? Surely it must be, to express itsown Livingness. Then in the True Order all modes of life and energy mustconverge towards this end, and it is only our short-sightedness thatprevents us from seeing this, --from seeing that the greater the harmonyof the whole Life, the greater will be the inflow of that Life in eachof the parts that are giving it expression. This is what we want tolearn with regard to ourselves, whether as individuals, classes ornations. We have seen the cosmic workings of the Law of Wholeness in thediscovery of the planet Neptune. Another planet was absolutely necessaryto complete the unity of our solar system, and it was found that thereis such a planet, and similarly in other branches of natural science. The Law of Unity is the basic law of Life, and it is our ignorant orwilful infraction of this Law that is the root of all our troubles. 

If we take this Law of Unity as the basis of our Thought we shall besurprised to find how far it will carry us. Each part is a completewhole in itself. Each inconceivably minute particle revolves round thecentre of the atom in its own orbit. On its own scale it is complete initself, and by co-operation with thousands of others forms the atom. Theatom again is a complete whole, but it must combine with other atoms toform a molecule, and so on. But if the atom be imperfect as an atom, howcould it combine with other atoms?

Thus we see that however infinitesimal any part may be as compared withthe whole, it must also be a complete whole on its own scale, if thegreater whole is to be built up. On the same principle, our recognitionthat our personality is an infinitesimal fraction of an inconceivablygreater Life, does not mean that it is at all insignificant in itself, or that our individuality becomes submerged in an indistinguishablemass; on the contrary, our own wholeness is an essential factor towardsthe building up of the greater whole; so that as long as we keep beforeus the building up of the Great Whole as the "main motif, " we need neverfear the expansion of our own individuality. The more we expand, themore effective units we shall become. 

We must not, however, suppose that Unity means Uniformity. St. Paul putsthis very clearly when he says, if the whole body be an eye, where wouldbe the hearing, etc. (1 Cor. Xii, 14). How could you paint a picturewithout distinction of form, colour, or tone? Diversity in Unity is thenecessity for any sort of expression, and if it be the case in our ownbodies, as St. Paul points out, how much more so in the expressing ofthe Eternal Life through endless ages and limitless space! Once we graspthis idea of the unity and progressiveness of Life going on _adinfinitum_, what boundless vistas of possibility open before us. Itwould be enough to stagger the imagination were it not for our oldfriends, the Law and the Word. But these will always accompany us, andwe may rely upon them in all worlds and under all conditions. This Lawof Unity is what in natural science is known as the Law of Continuity, and the Ancient Wisdom has embodied it in the Hermetic axiom "Sicutsuperius, sicut inferius; sicut inferius, sicut superius"--As above, sobelow; as below, so above. It leads us on from stage to stage, unfoldingas it goes; and to this unfolding there is no end, for it is the EternalLife finding ever fuller expression, as it can find more and moresuitable channels through which to express itself. It can no more cometo an end than numbers can come to an end. 

But it _must_ find suitable channels. Let there be no mistake aboutthis. Perhaps some one may say: Cannot it _make_ suitable channels forany sort of expression that it needs? The answer is, that it can, and itdoes so up to a certain point. As we have seen, the Word, Thought, orInitial Impulse of the Ever-Living Spirit starts a centre of cosmicactivity in which the mathematical element of Law at once assertsitself; thenceforward everything goes on according to certain broadprinciples of sequence. This is a Generic Creation, creation accordingto _genera_ or classes, like the "archetypal ideas" of Plato. Thiscreation is governed by a Law of Averages, and the legal maxim "Deminimis non curat lex"--the Law cannot trouble about minorities--appliesto it. This generic law keeps the class going, and slowly advancing, simply as a class, but it can take no notice of individuals as such. AsTennyson puts it in "In Memoriam, " speaking of Nature:

 "So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life. "

This mode of creation reaches its highest level, at any rate in ourworld, in Genus Homo, or the human race. We also, as a race, are underthe Law of Averages. The race continues to exist, but from the moment ofbirth the individual life is liable to be cut short in a hundreddifferent ways. In producing man, however, Generic Creation has produceda _type_ having a mental and physical constitution capable of perceivingthe underlying principle of _all_ creation, that is, of seeing therelation between the Word and the Law. We cannot conceive creation bytype going further than this. By the nature of this type every humanbeing has the potential of a further evolution, which will set it freefrom bondage to an impersonal Law of Averages, by specializing itthrough the Power of the Word, that is, by bringing the Personal Factorto bear upon the Impersonal Factor, and so unfolding the possibilitieswhich can be achieved by their united activities. We have the power ofusing the Word so as to specialize the action of the Law, not byaltering the Law, which is impossible, but by realizing its principle, and enabling it to work under conditions which are not spontaneouslyprovided by Nature, but are provided by our own selection. The_capacity_ for this exists in all human beings, but the practicalapplication of this capacity depends on our recognition of theprinciples involved; and it is for this reason that I commenced thisbook by citing instances of the combined working of Law and Personalityin purely physical science. I wanted first to convince the reader fromwell ascertained facts, that the Law contains infinite possibilities, but that this can only be brought out through the operation of the mindof man. 

It is here that we find the value of the maxim "Nature unaided fails. "The more we consider this maxim and the principle of Unity andContinuity, the clearer it will become, that Limitation is no part ofthe Law itself, but results only from our own limited comprehension ofit; and that St. James uses no meaningless phrase, but is stating alogical and scientific truth, when he speaks of "The perfect Law ofLiberty" (Jas. I, 25). What we have to do is, to follow this up, not bypetulant self-assertion, but by quietly considering the why andwherefore of the whole thing. In doing so we can fortify ourselves withanother maxim, that "Principle is not limited by Precedent. " When wespread the wings of thought and speculate as to future possibilities, our conventionally-minded friends may say we are talking bosh; but ifyou ask them why they say so, they can only reply that the pastexperience of the whole human race is against you. They do not speaklike this in the matter of flying-machines or carriages that go withouthorses; they say these are scientific discoveries. But when it comes tothe possibilities of our own souls, they at once set a limit to theexpansion of ideas, and do not see that the scientific principle ofdiscovery is not confined to laboratory experiments. Therefore, we mustnot let ourselves be discouraged by such arguments. If our friends doubtour sanity, let them doubt it. The sanity of such men as Galileo andGeorge Stephenson was doubted by their contemporaries, so we are in goodcompany. At the same time we must not neglect to look after our ownsanity. We must know some intelligible reason for our conclusions, andrealize that however unexpected, they are the logical carrying out ofprinciples which we can recognize in the Creation around us. If we dothis we need not fear to spread the wings of fancy, even though some maynot be able to accompany us; only we must remember that we are usingwings. Fancy, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, has really nowings; it is like a balloon that just floats wherever any passingcurrent of air may drive it. The possession of wings implies power todirect our flight, and fancy must be converted into trained Imagination, just as the helpless balloon has been superseded by navigable air-craft. It must be "the scientific imagination"; and the "scientificimagination" carried into the world of spiritual causation becomes theWord of Power, and its Power is derived from the fact that it is alwaysworking according to Law. Then we may go on confidently, because we arefollowing the same universal principles by which all creation has beenevolved, only now we are specializing its action from the standpoint ofour own individuality, according to the ancient teaching that Man, theMicrocosm, repeats in himself all the laws of the Macrocosm, or greatworld, around him. 

As we begin to see the truth of these things, we begin to transcend thesimply generic stage. That first stage is necessary to provide astarting-point for the next. The first stage is that of Bondage to Law. It could not be otherwise for the simple reason that you must learn thelaw before you can use it. Then from the stage of Generic Creation weemerge into that of individual Creation, in which we attain libertythrough Knowledge of the Law of our own Being; so that it is not a meretheological myth to talk of a New Creation, but it is the logicaloutcome of what we now are, if, to our recognition of the Power of theLaw we add the recognition of the Power of the Word. 

CHAPTER V

THE SOUL OF THE SUBJECT

We may now turn to speculate a little on some conceivable application ofthe general principle we have been considering. It seems to me that, asa result of the generic creation of which I have just spoken, there isin everything what, for want of a better name, I may call "The soul ofthe subject. "

Creation being by type, everything must have a _generic_ basis of beingin the Cosmic Law, not peculiar to that individual thing, but peculiarto the class to which it belongs, an adaptation of the Cosmic Soul forthe production of all things belonging to that particular order, infact, what makes them what they are and not something else. Now justbecause this basis is generic and common to the whole genus that isbuilt upon it, it is not specific, but it acquires _localization throughForm_; the form being that of the class to which it belongs, thusproducing the individual of that class, whether a cat or a cabbage. Itis this underlying _generic_ being of the thing, that I want the studentto understand by "the soul of the subject. " In fact we may call it theNoumenon or essential being of the class, as distinguished from thespecific characteristics that differentiate the individual from othersof the same class. It follows from this that this _generic_ soul has noindividuality of its own, and consequently is open to receiveimpressions from any source that can penetrate the sheath of outwardform and specific characteristic that envelopes it. At the same time itis a manifestation of Cosmic Law, and so cannot depart from its ownclass-nature, and therefore any influence that may be impressed upon itfrom some other source will always show itself _in terms of the sort ofgeneric soul that is thus impressed_; for instance, it would beimpossible so to impress a dog as to make it write a book; and we maytherefore generalize the statement, and lay down the rule, that "Every_im_press receives _ex_pression in terms of the medium through which itis expressed. " This becomes almost a self-obvious truism when put intoplain language like this; thus, if I paint a picture in oils, myimpression is conveyed in terms of this medium, and if I paint one inwater-colours my conception will be conveyed in terms of that medium, and the methods of handling will be perfectly different in the twopictures. 

This applies all round; and if we keep this generalization in mind, itwill render many things clear, especially in psychic matters, whichwould otherwise seem puzzling. 

Now we ourselves are included in the general creation, and consequentlywe have in us a generic or _type basis_ of personality, which isentirely impersonal. This is not a contradiction in terms, though it maylook like one. We belong to the class Genus Homo, the distinctivequality of which is Personality, that is to say, the possession ofcertain faculties which constitute us persons, and not things oranimals; but at the same time this merely generic personality is commonto all mankind, and is not that which distinguishes one individual fromanother, and in this sense it is impersonal; so we may call it ourCosmic or Impersonal Personality. 

Now it is upon this cosmic element, inherent in all things from mineralto man, that Thought-Power acts, because, being impersonal, it has noprivate purpose of its own with which to oppose the suggestion that isbeing impressed upon it. The only thing is, that according to the rulejust laid down, the response will always be in terms of the cosmicelement which we have thus set in motion. Therefore on the human planeit will always be in terms of Personality. 

The whole thing comes to this, that we impart to this impersonal elementthe reflection of our own personality, and thereby create in it acertain personality of its own, which will express itself in terms ofthe inherent nature of the impersonal factor, which we have thustemporarily invested with a personal quality; we are continually doingthis unconsciously, either for good or ill; but when we come tounderstand the law of it, we must try so to regulate the habitualcurrent of our thoughts, that even when we are not using this powerintentionally, they may only exercise a beneficial influence. 

In our normal state this cosmic element in ourselves is so closelyunited with our more conscious powers of volition and reasoning, thatthey constitute a single unity; and this is how it should be, only, aswe shall see later on, with a difference. But there are certainabnormal states which are worth considering, because they make clearerthe existence in us of this impersonal self, which in academicallanguage is called the subliminal consciousness. The work of thesubliminal consciousness exhibits itself in various ways, such asclairvoyance, clair-audience, and conditions of trance; all of whicheither occur spontaneously, or are induced by experimental means, suchas hypnotism; but the similarity of the phenomena in either case shows, that it is the same faculty that is in evidence. 

In those hypnotic experiments in which the operator merely makes thesubject do some external act, we get no further than the fact that theperson's individual will has been temporarily put to sleep, and that ofthe hypnotist has taken its place; still even this shows a power ofimpressing upon the subliminal consciousness a personal quality of itsown, but it does not enable it to exhibit its own powers. The object ofsuch experiments is, to exhibit the powers of the hypnotist, not toinvestigate the powers of the subliminal personality, which is of moreimportance in the present connection. But where the hypnotist employshis power of command to tell the subliminal self of the patient toexercise its own powers, merely directing it as to the subject uponwhich it is to be exercised, very wonderful powers indeed are exhibited. Places unknown to the percipient are accurately described; correctaccounts are given of what people are doing elsewhere; the contents ofsealed letters are read; the symptoms of disease are diagnosed andsuitable remedies sometimes prescribed; and so on. Distance appears tomake no difference. In many cases time also does not count, andhistorical events of long ago, with the details of which the seer had noacquaintance, are accurately described in all their minutić, which haveafterwards been corroborated by contemporary documents. Nor are caseswanting in which events still future have been correctly predicted, as, for example, in Cazotte's celebrated prediction of the FrenchRevolution, and of the fate that awaited each member of a largedinner-party when it should occur--though this was a spontaneous case, and not under hypnotism, which perhaps gives it the greater value. 

The same powers are shown in spontaneous cases also, of which my ownexperiences related in a previous chapter may serve as a small example;but as there are many books exclusively devoted to the subject I neednot go into further details here. If the reader be curious for furtherinformation, I would recommend him to read Gregory's "Letters on AnimalMagnetism. " It was published some fifty years ago, and, for all I know, may be out of print, but if the reader can procure it, he will find thatit is a book to be relied upon, the work of a Professor of Chemistry inthe University of Edinburgh, who investigated the matter calmly with athoroughly trained scientific mind. But what I want the reader to layhold of is the fact, that whether the action occur spontaneously or beinduced by experimental means, these powers actually exist in us, andtherefore in reckoning up the faculties at our disposal they must not beomitted. 

In our more usual condition however, these faculties are subordinate tothose which put us in touch with the every-day world, and I cannot helpthinking, that at our present stage this is the best place for them. Inthis place they have a special function to perform, which I will speakof in another chapter, and in the meanwhile for my own part I shouldprefer to leave their development to the ordinary course of Nature, neither stimulating them by hypnotic influence, or auto-suggestion, norrepressing them if they manifest themselves of their own accord. However, every one must follow his or her own discretion in this matter;the only thing is, do not deny the existence of these faculties inyourself because you may not consciously exercise them, for they hold avery important place in our complex personality. 

All such evidence on the subject as has come my way, appears to me topoint to the fact, that it is through this impersonal or cosmic portionof our mind that Thought-Power operates upon us, whether in the form oftelepathy, or of healing treatment, or in any other way; and it isthrough this channel also that thought currents, not specially directedtowards ourselves, nevertheless affect us, just as the first wirelesstelephone message sent on September 29, 1915, from the office of theAmerican Telephone Company in New York, and directed to San Francisco, was simultaneously heard at San Diego, at Darien in Panama, and even asfar away as Pearl Island, Honolulu, in the Pacific Ocean. 

We sometimes pick up messages which are not intended for us; so we mustkeep our receiver in perfect syntony of reciprocal vibration with thestations from which we require to receive messages, to the exclusion ofothers which would produce confusion. 

But I have strayed a little from our present point, which is rather thatof giving out influence than of receiving it. Through theinstrumentality of this impersonal cosmic soul we can send out ourThought for the healing of disease, for the suggestion of good and happyideas, and for many other beneficial purposes; though the extent of theresult will of course be considerably influenced by the mental attitudeof the recipient, which is therefore a factor to be reckoned with. 

But this power of sending out a subtle influence, call it magnetism orwhat you will, is not confined to operations upon the human subject. Twoladies of my acquaintance experimented on two rose-trees, which, to allappearances, were both in equally good condition. They daily blessed oneand cursed the other, with the result that at the end of a month theanathematized plant had withered up from the roots, while the other wasin an abnormally flourishing condition. Nor are we entirely withoutscientific backing even in such a case as this; for Professor Bose tellsus in his work on the "Response of Metals, " that not only can they bepoisoned by certain chemicals, so as to deprive them of their normalqualities, but that they can be mesmerized into a similar condition. Such facts as these therefore give considerable support to the theory ofthe existence in everything of a "soul of the subject, " which respondsafter its own manner to the power of human thought. 

In what manner, then, is this influence conveyed? It is here that ourstudy of etheric waves comes to our assistance, by carrying the sameprinciple further, and picturing the working of the known Law underunknown conditions. It will at least enable us to form a workinghypothesis. I have stated that our actual commercial application of theetheric waves extends from the ultra-violet waves used in photography, and measuring only 1/254, 000 of an inch, to those measuring many milesemployed in wireless telegraphy; but this practical application by nomeans exhausts the conceivable possibilities of etheric vibrations; fornot only do we find a gap of five octaves of as yet unknown wavesbetween the dark heat group and the Hertzian group, but mathematicallythere is no limit to the greatness or smallness of the waves, and thescale may be prolonged indefinitely in either direction. Nor is this tobe wondered at; for if we consider that vibration is not a progress ofindividual particles from one place to another, but the alternate risingand falling of the substance at the same point, and that the ether is ahomogeneous and universally present substance, it is obvious that thereis nothing to limit the minuteness or the greatness of the intervals atwhich the rising and falling will occur. Therefore we have an unlimitedfield for our imagination to play about in. Then, if we further reflectthat all forms are built up of denser or finer aggregations of ether, and that what determines the generic form of anything is its cosmicsoul, or the generating principle of the _class_ to which it belongs, itfollows that this soul must have a corresponding form, howeverinconceivably fine may be the etheric condensation which thusdifferentiates it from other souls, and prevents it from all beingmixed up together in an indistinguishable mass. If now, we combine thesetwo facts, that the soul of anything must have a form, however fine, andthat there is no limit either to the greatness or the minuteness ofetheric vibrations, we can draw certain deductions from these premises. 

It is an established fact of ordinary science that, however closelyparticles of any substance may seem to cohere, they are in realityseparated by interstices through which etheric waves can penetrate. 

The principle may be illustrated by the power of the X-rays to penetrateapparently solid bodies, such as iron. Then, if we combine with this thefact, that there is no limit to the minuteness of etheric waves, we seethat however fine may be the particles constituting any form, it isalways possible to have etheric waves still finer and thus able topenetrate that form and set up vibrations in it. It is our familiaritywith the denser modes of matter that makes it difficult for us to graspthe idea of these finer activities; but there is nothing in what we knowof the denser modes to contradict the conception; on the contrary, it isjust by what we have learned of these denser modes that we reach theprinciples on which these further conceptions are founded. Looking atthis, therefore, in the light of a mathematical proposition, there isabsolutely no limit to the fineness of any form, or to itssusceptibilities to etheric vibrations. 

Finally, to this add the power of the Word to start trains of ethericvibration, and you get the following series: The Word starts the ethericwaves; these waves produce corresponding vibration in the soul of thesubject; and the soul of the subject in turn communicates correspondingvibration to its body. We may thus explain the Creative Power of Thoughton the basis of recognizable Law, and so we believe, because we know_why_ we believe, not because somebody else has told us so. Doubt isstill the creative action of Thought, only it is creating negatively; soit is helpful to feel that we have some reason for confidence in thePower of the Word. There are a great many "Thomases" among us, and asone of the number I shall be glad if I can help my "Brother Tommies" toget a grip of the why and wherefore of the things which appear at firstsight so fantastic and improbable. 

But the conception we are considering is not limited to concreteentities, whether persons or things. It applies to abstractions also, and it is for this reason that I have called it the "Soul of theSubject. " We often speak of the "Soul of Music, " or the "Soul ofPoetry, " and so on. Thus our ordinary talk stands on the threshold of agreat mystery, which, however, is simple enough in practice. If you wantto get a clearer view of any subject than you have at present, addressyourself mentally to the abstract soul of that subject, and ask it totell you about itself, and you will find that it will do so. I do notsay that it will do this in any miraculous manner, but what you alreadyknow of the subject will range itself into a clearer order, and you willsee connections that have not previously occurred to you. Then again, you will find that information of the class required will begin to flowtowards you through quite ordinary channels, books, newspapers, orconversation, without your especially laying yourself out to hunt forit; and again, at other times, ideas will come into your mind, you donot know how, but illuminating the subject with a fresh light. I cannotexplain how all this takes place. I can only say from personalexperience that it happens. But of course we must not throw asideordinary common-sense. We must sort out the information that comes tous, and compare it with our previous knowledge; in fact we must _work_at it: there is no premium for laziness. Nor must we expect to receiveby a sudden afflatus a complete acquaintance with some subject of whichwe are entirely ignorant. I do not say that such a thing is altogetherimpossible, for I cannot venture to limit the possibilities of theUniverse; but it is certainly not to be looked for in the ordinarycourse. I have sometimes been shown specimens of "inspirationalpainting" done by persons said to be entirely ignorant of art, and theignorance is very apparent on the face of the work. I dare say an artistmay be inspired in the production of a picture, but the technicaltraining comes first, and the inspiration afterwards. The same I believeto be true of all other subjects, so that we come back to the maxim ofthe power always expressing itself in terms of the instrument throughwhich it works. With this reservation, however, it appears to me, thatevery class of subject has a sort of soul of its own with which we canput ourselves _en rapport_ by, so to say, mentally unifying our ownpersonality with its abstract principle. 

We are told by some teachers, that we can in the same way even constructentities in the nature of our Thought, and possessing a personality oftheir own with which we have endowed them. Whether this be the case Icannot say--I do not know all the secrets of the invisible. But if ourthoughts do not create personal entities able to hang "on their ownhook, " they create forces which come to much the same thing. They startwaves in the Universal etheric medium, which, like the electro-magneticwaves of telegraphy, spread all round from the point of initial impulse, and are picked up whenever a centre happens to be attuned to a similarrate of vibration, and each new centre energizes these vibrations againwith a fresh impulse of its own; so in this way thought-currents becomevery real things. 

Such, then, is the power of our Word, whether spoken or only dwelt uponin Thought, to impress itself upon the impersonal element around us, whether in persons or things. We cannot divest it of the power, thoughwe may intensify its action by deliberate use of it, with knowledge ofthe principle involved, and therefore, whether consciously orunconsciously, we are sending out the influence of our personality allthe time. 

Now the more we know of these things the greater becomes ourresponsibility, and I would therefore solemnly warn the reader againstany attempt to use the powers now indicated to the injury of any otherperson, or for the purpose of depriving any one else of that liberty ofaction which he would wish to enjoy himself. Such use of our mentalpowers is in direct opposition to the Law of Unity which I have spokenof; and since that Law is the basic principle of the whole Universe, anyopposition to it places us in antagonism with a force immeasurablygreater than ourselves. 

Our Thought always continues to be creative; but in destructive use itbecomes creative for destructive forces, and, since it has its origin inour own personality, we are certain sooner or later to feel its effects, on the principle that every action always produces a correspondingreaction. As we have seen, the Law knows nothing of persons, but actsautomatically in strict accord with the nature of the power which hasset it in motion. Under negative conditions the great Law of theUniverse becomes your adversary, and must continue to be so, until byyour altered mode of Thought you put yourself in line with it. 

But on the other hand, if our intention be to co-operate with the GreatLaw, we shall find that in it also exists a mysterious "Soul of theSubject, " which will respond to us, however imperfectly we mayunderstand its _modus operandi_. It is the intention that counts, notthe theoretical knowledge. The knowledge will grow by experience andmeditation, and its value is measured entirely by the intention that isat the back of it. 

CHAPTER VI

THE PROMISES

We have now, I hope, laid a sufficiently broad foundation of therelation between the Law and the Word. The Law cannot be changed, andthe Word can. We have two factors, one variable, and the otherinvariable; so that from this combination any variety of resultants maybe expected. The Law cannot be altered, but it can be specialized, justas iron can be made to float by the same law by which it sinks. Now letus try to figure out in our imagination an ideal of the sort of resultswe should want to bring out from these two factors. 

In the first place I think we should like to be free from all worry andanxiety; for a life of continual worry is not worth living. And in thesecond we should like always to have something to look forward to andfeel an interest in; for a life entirely devoid of all interest is alsonot worth living. But, granted that these two conditions be fulfilled, I think we should all be well pleased to go on living _ad infinitum_. Now can we conceive any combination of the Law and the Word which wouldproduce such results? that is the question before us. The first step isto generalize our principle as widely as possible, for the wider thegeneralization, the larger becomes the scope for specialization. Theinvariable factor we already know. It is the Law, always creating inaccordance with the Word that sets it in motion, whether constructive ordestructive; so what we really have to consider is the sort of Word(i. E. Thought or Desire) which will set the Law working in the rightdirection. It must be a Word of confidence in its own power; otherwiseby the hypothesis of the case it would be giving contradictorydirections to the Law, or to borrow a simile from what we have learntabout waves in ether, it would be sending out vibrations that wouldcancel one another and so produce no effect. Then it must be a Word thatdoes not compromise itself by antagonizing the Law of unity, and soproducing disruptive forces instead of constructive ones. And finally, we must be quite sure that it really is the right Word, and that we havebeen making no mistake about it. If these conditions be fulfilled thelogical result will be entire freedom from anxiety. Similarly withregard to maintaining a continued interest in life. We must have acontinued succession of ideals, whether great or small, that will carryus on with something always just ahead of us; and we must work theideals out, and not let them evaporate in dreams. If these conditions befulfilled we have before us a life of never-ending interest andactivity, and therefore a life worth living. Where then are we to findthe Word which will produce these conditions: perfect freedom fromanxiety and continual, happy interest? I do not think it is to be foundin any way but by identifying our own Word with the Word which bringsall creation into existence, and keeps it always moving onward in thatcontinuous forward movement which we call Evolution. We must come backto the old teaching, that the Macrocosm is reproduced in the Microcosm, with the further perception that this identity of principle can only beproduced by identity of cause. Law cannot be other than eternal andself-demonstrating, just as 2 × 2 must eternally = 4; but it remainsonly an abstract conception until the Creative Word affords it a fieldof operation, just as twice two is four remains only a mathematicalabstraction until there is something for you to count; and accordingly, as we have already seen, all our reasoning concerning the origin ofCreation, whether based on metaphysical or scientific grounds, brings usto the conception of a Universal and Eternal Living Spirit localizingitself in particular areas of cosmic activity by the power of the Word. Then, if a similar Creative Power is to be reproduced in ourselves, itmust be by the same method: the localizing of the same Spirit inourselves by the power of the same "Word. " Then our Word, or Thought, will no longer be that of separate personality, but that of the EternalSpirit finding a fresh centre from which to specialize the working ofthe Law, and so produce still further results than that of the First orsimply Cosmic and Generic Creation, according to the two maxims that"Nature unaided fails, " and that "Principle is not limited byPrecedent. "

I want to make this sequence clear to the student before proceedingfurther:

1. Localization of the Spirit in specific areas of Creative Activity. 

2. Cosmic or Generic Creation, including ourselves as a race resultingfrom this, and providing both the material and the instruments forcarrying the work further by _specializing the Original Creative Power_through individual Thought, just as in all cases of scientificdiscovery. 

3. Then, since what is to be specialized through our individual Thoughtis the Word of the Originating Power itself, in order to do this we mustthink in terms of the Originating Word, on the general principle, thatany power must always exhibit itself in terms of the instrument throughwhich it works. 

This, it appears to me, is a clear logical sequence, just as a treecannot make itself into a box, unless there be first the idea of a boxwhich does not exist in the tree itself, and also the tools with whichto fashion the wood into a box; while on the other hand there couldnever be any box unless there be first a tree. Now it is just such asequence as this that is set before us in the Bible, and I do not findit adequately set forth in any other teaching, either philosophical orreligious, with which I am acquainted. Some of these systems contain agreat deal of truth, and are therefore helpful as far as they go; butthey do not go the whole way, and for the most part stop short at thefirst or simply Cosmic Creation; or, if they attempt to pass beyondthis, it is on the line of making unaided power of the individual thesole means by which to do so, and thus in fact always keeping us at themerely generic level. Such a mode of Thought as this, fails to meet therequirements of our conception of a happy life as one entirely exemptfrom fear and anxiety. In like manner also it fails to meet the firstrequirements of the whole series, viz. : the Word should be certain ofitself; and if it be not certain of itself we have no assurance that itmay not eventually disappoint our hopes. In short, this mode of thoughtleaves us to bear the whole burden from which we want to escape. So itis not good enough; we must look for something better. 

Now this something better I find in the _Promises_ contained in theBible, and it is this that to my mind distinguishes our own Scripturesfrom the sacred books of all other nations, and from all systems ofphilosophy. I do not at all ignore the current objections to thepossibility of Divine Promises, but I think that on examination theywill be found to be superficial and resulting from want of carefulenquiry into the true nature of the Promises themselves. How is itpossible for the Laws of the Universe to make exceptions? How can Godact by individual favouritism unless it be either through sheer caprice, or by the individual managing to get round Him in some way, either bysupplying some need which He cannot supply for Himself, in which caseGod is of limited power, or else by flattering Him, in which case He isthe apotheosis of absurd vanity. The two are really the same questionput in different ways--the question of individual exceptions to thegeneral Law. 

The answer is that there are no individual exceptions to the generalLaw; but there are very various degrees of realization of the Principleof the Law, and the more a man works with the Principle the more the Lawwill work for him; so that the finer his perception of the Principlebecomes, the more he will appear to be an exception to the Law ascommonly recognized. 

Edison and Marconi are not capriciously favoured by the laws of Nature, but they know more about them than most of us. 

Now it is just the same with the Bible Promises. They are Promisesaccording to Law. They are based upon the widest generalization andhence lead to the highest specialization through the combined action ofthe Law and the Word--Jachin and Boaz, the Two Pillars of the Universe. 

These Promises comprise all sorts of desirable things: health of body, peace of mind, earthly prosperity, prolongation of life, and, finally, even the conquest of death itself; but always on one condition: perfect"Confidence in the power of the All-Originating Spirit in response toour reliance on the Word. " This is what the Bible calls Faith; and it isperfectly logical when we understand the principle of it, for everyThought of doubt is, in effect, the utterance of a Word which producesnegative results by the very same law by which the Word of Faithproduces positive ones. This is the only condition which the Bibleimposes for the fulfilment of its Promises, and this is because it isinherent in the nature of the Law by which their fulfilment is to bebrought about. 

A few texts will suffice as examples of the Bible Promises, and no doubtmost of my readers are familiar with many others; but it would be worthwhile to read the Bible through, marking all such texts, and classifyingthem according to the sort of promises they contain. 

Read, for instance, Job xxii, 21, etc. This is a most remarkable passagecontaining among other things the promise of earthly wealth; or againJob v, 19, etc. , where we find promises of protection in time of danger, power over material nature, and prolonged life. While in Job xxxiii, 23, etc. , there is promise of return to youth, a promise which is repeatedin Psalm ciii, 5. Again in Isaiah lxi, 20, etc. , there is the promise ofimmensely extended physical life, death at the age of one hundred beingcounted so premature as to resemble that of an infant, and the normalstandard of age being compared to a tree which lives for centuries; andthe same passage also promises immediate answer to prayers. The Psalmsare full of such promises, and they are scattered throughout the Bible. 

Now there is an unfortunate tendency among people who read their Biblewith reverence, to what they call "spiritualize" such passages as these, which means that they do not believe them. They say such things areimpossible; and therefore they must have some other meaning, andaccordingly they interpret the words metaphorically, as referring tosomething to be experienced in another life, but quite impossible inthis one. 

Of course there are spiritual equivalents to these things, and theteaching of the Bible is, that they are the outward correspondences ofinward spiritual states; but to "spiritualize" them in the way I amspeaking of, is nothing but unbelief in the power of God to work on theplane of Nature. How such readers square their opinion with the factthat God has created Nature, I do not know. Even in the animal world wefind wonderful instances of longevity. If an elephant be not overworkedbefore he is twenty, he is in full working power up to eighty, and willthen be capable of light work for another twenty years, after which hemay yet enjoy another twenty years of quiet old age as the reward of hislabours, while crocodiles and tortoises have been known to live forcenturies. If then such things be possible in the ordinary course ofNature in the animal world, why need we doubt the specializing power ofthe Word to produce far greater results in the case of man? It isbecause we will not accept the maxim, that "Principle is not limited byPrecedent" in regard to ourselves, though we see it demonstrated byevery new scientific discovery. We rely more on the past experience ofthe race, than on the Creative Power of God. We call Him Almighty, andthen say that in His Book He promises things which He is not able toperform. But the fault is with ourselves. We limit "the Holy ONE ofIsrael, " and as a consequence get only so much as by our mental attitudewe are able to receive--again the old maxim that "Power can only work interms of the instrument it works through. " I do not say that it is atall easy for us to completely rid ourselves of negative race-thoughtingrained into us from childhood, and subtly playing upon that genericimpersonal self in us of which I have spoken, and which readily respondsto those thought-currents to which we are habitually attuned. It is amatter of individual growth. But the promises themselves contain noinherent impossibility, and are logical deductions from the principlesof the Creative Law. 

If the power of the Spirit over things of the material plane be animpossibility, then by what power did Jesus perform his miracles? Eitheryou must deny his miracles, or you must admit the power of the Spiritto work on the material plane--there is no way out of the dilemma. Perhaps you may say: "Oh, but He was God in person!" Well, all thepromises affirm that it is God who does these things; so what it ispossible for God to do at one time, it is equally possible for Him to doat all times. Or perhaps you hold other theological views, and will saythat Jesus was an exception to the rest of the race; but, on thecontrary, the whole Bible sets Him forth as the Example--an exceptioncertainly to men as we now know them, but the Example of what we allhave it in us to become--otherwise what use is He to us? But apart fromall argument on the subject we have his own words, telling us that thosewho believe in Him, i. E. , believe what He said about Himself--shall beable to do works as great as His own, and even greater (John xiv, 12). For these reasons it appears to me that on the authority of the Bibleitself, and also on metaphysical and scientific grounds we are justifiedin taking such promises as those I have quoted in a perfectly literalsense. 

Then there are promises of the power that will attend our utterance ofthe Word. "Thou shalt also decree a thing and it shall be establishedunto thee" (Job xxii, 28). "All things are possible unto you" (Mark ix, 23). "Whosoever . .. Shall believe that what he sayeth cometh to pass, heshall have whatsover he sayeth" (Mark xi, 23), and so on. 

Other passages again promise peace of mind. "Thou wilt keep him inperfect peace whose mind is staid on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee"(Isaiah xxvi, 3). "Let him take hold of my strength that he may makepeace with me" (Isaiah xxvii, 5). St. Paul speaks of "The God of Peace"in many passages, e. G. , Rom. Xv, 33; 2 Cor. Xiii, 11; 1 Thess. V, 23, and Hebr. Xiii, 20; and Jesus, in his final discourse recorded in thefourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of St. John's Gospel, layspeculiar stress on the gift of Peace. 

And lastly there are many passages which promise the overcoming of deathitself; as for instance Job xix, 25-27; John viii, 51, and x, 28, andxi, 25 and 26; Hebr. Ii, 14 and 15; 1 Cor. Xv, 50-57; 2 Tim. I, 10; Rom. Vi, 23 ("The gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ, our Lord"). 

"God commanded the blessing, even Life for evermore" (Ps. Cxxxiii, 3). 

Now I hope the reader will take the trouble to look up the texts towhich I have referred, and not be lazy. I am sure he would do so if hewere promised a ten pound note or a fifty dollar bill for his pains, andif these promises are not all bosh, there is something worth a good dealmore to be got by studying them. Just run through the list: health, wealth, peace of mind, safety, creative power, and eternal life. Youwould be willing to pay a good premium to an Insurance Office that couldguarantee you all these. Well, there is a Company that does this withoutpaying any premium, and its name is "God and Co. , Unlimited"; the onlycondition, is that you yourself have to take the part of "Co. " and it isnot a sleeping partnership, but a wide-awake one!

So I hope you will take the trouble to look up the texts; but at thesame time you must remember that the reading of single texts is notsufficient. If you take any isolated phrase you choose, withoutreference to the rest of the Book, there is no nonsense you cannot makeout of the Bible. You would not be allowed to do that sort of thing in aCourt of Law. When a document is produced in evidence, the meaning ofthe words used in it are very carefully construed, not only inreference to the particular clause in which they occur, but also withreference to the intention of the document as a whole, and to thecircumstances under which they were written. The same word may mean verydifferent things in different connections; for instance I remember tworeported cases in one of which the word "Spanish" meant a certain sortof leather, and in the other a kind of material used in brewing; and inlike manner particular texts are to be interpreted in accordance withthe gist of the Bible as a whole. 

This is just the mistake the Jews made, of building up theories onparticular texts, and which Jesus corrected when he said: "Search theScriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and these arethey which testify of me" (John v, 39), or, as the Revised Version putsit: "Ye search the Scriptures because ye think that in them ye haveeternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me, " whichappears to be the better rendering. The words "ye think" is the key tothe whole passage. He says in effect: "You fancy that eternal life is tobe found in the book. It is not to be found in the book, but in what thebook tells you about, and here I am as a living example of it. " It isjust the same with everything else. No book can do more than tell youabout a thing; it cannot produce it. You may study the cookery book frommorning till night, but that will not give you your dinner. 

What Jesus meant was, that we should read the Scriptures in the same waywe should read any other book of practical instruction. First think whatit is all about; then look at the nature of the general principlesinvolved, and then see what instruction the book gives you for theirpractical application. _Then go and do it_. And remember also a furtherdifference between reading about a thing and doing it. A book is foreverybody, and can therefore, only give general instruction; but whenyou come to do the thing you will always find it works with somepersonal modifications, --not departures from the general principles youhave read about, but specializations of them--and in this way you willlearn much that is not to be got out of books, even the best. 

I remember many years ago, when I was much younger, asking one of ourleading water-colour artists, [3] how he would recommend me to studylandscape painting, and he said: "Practise continually from Nature, andyou will learn more than any one can teach you; that is how I havelearnt, myself. " On the subject, then in question, he said just whatJesus did: "Here I am as a practical example of what I tell you. " Andanother thing is, that the more you think principles out for yourselfand try to observe them in practice, the clearer the meaning of yourbook will become to you. I have a few excellent books on painting, but Ihad no idea how excellent they were when I first got them; practicalexperience has taught me to find much more in them than I did at first, for now I understand better what they are talking about. Well, that isthe way to read the Bible, neither despising it as worthless tradition, nor treating the mere letter of it with superstitious veneration; bothextremes are to be equally avoided. In fact the Bible tells us soitself: "The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life" (2 Cor. Iii, 6);this, of course, does not mean that the letter can be tampered with, anymore than a judge can alter the wording of a document put in evidence;it must be interpreted in the general sense of the document as a whole;and when the letter is thus vivified by the Spirit, it will be foundfully to express it. But we require to enter into the Spirit of itfirst. 

Now it appears to me, that taken in this way, the Bible is anexceedingly practical book, and that is why I want the reader to get atsome general principles which he will find, _mutatis mutandis_, equallyapplicable all round, whether to electricity, or to life, and whatevermay be the subject-matter, it will always be found to resolve itselfinto a question of the relation between Law and Personality. If now weread the Bible Promises in the light of the general principles we haveconsidered in the earlier pages, we shall find that they are allPromises according to Law. They are statements of the results to beobtained by a truer realization of the principles of Law and Personalitythan we have hitherto apprehended. 

We must always bear in mind that the Law is set in motion by the Word. The Word does not _make_ the Law, but gives it something to work upon, so that without the Word there could be no manifestation of the Law, atruth embodied in the maxim, that "Every Creation carries its ownmathematics along with it. " If the reader remembers what I have said inthe chapter of "The Soul of the Subject, " he will see that theprinciple involved, is that of the susceptibility of the Impersonal tosuggestions from the Personal. This follows of course from the veryConception of Impersonality; it is that which has no power of selectionand volition, and which is therefore without any power of taking aninitiative on its own account. 

In a previous chapter I have pointed out that the only possibleconception of the inauguration of a world-system, resolves itself intothe recognition of one original and universal Substantive Life, out ofwhich proceeds a corresponding Verb, or active energy, reproducing inaction what the Substantive is in essence. On the other hand there mustbe something for this active principle to work in; and since there canbe nothing anterior to the Universal Life or Energy, both these factorsmust be potentially contained in it. If, then, we represent this EternalSubstantive Life by a circle with a dot in the centre, we may representthese two principles as emerging from it by placing two circles at equaldistance below it, one on either side, and placing the sign "+" (plus)in one, and the sign "-" (minus) in the other. This is how students ofthese subjects usually map out the relation of the _prima principia_, or first abstract principles. The sign "+" (plus) indicates the Activeprinciple, and the sign "-" (minus) the Passive principle. If the readerwill draw a little diagram as described, it will help to make whatfollows clearer. 

Necessarily the initiative must be taken by the Active principle; andthe taking of initiative implies selection and volition, that is to say, the essential qualities of personality; and Passivity implies theconverse of all this, and therefore is Impersonality. The two principlesin no way conflict with one another, but are polar opposites, like thepositive and negative plates of a battery, or the two ends of a magnet. They are complementary to one another, and neither can work without theother. A little consideration will show that this is not a mere fancy, but a self-obvious generalization, the contrary to which it isimpossible to conceive. It is simply the case of the box which cannotcome into existence without the activity of the carpenter and thepassivity of the wood. 

From such considerations as this the deep thinkers of old times positedthe generating of a world-system by the interaction of what they namedAnimus Dei, the Active principle, and Anima Mundi, or Soul of theUniverse, the Passive principle--the one Personal, and the otherImpersonal; and by the hypothesis of the case the only mode of activitypossible to Anima Mundi is response to Animus Dei. But the sameimpersonal passivity must also make Anima Mundi receptive likewise tolesser and more individualized modes of Personality, and it becomes, soto say, fecundated by the ideas thus impressed upon it. In every case"the word is the seed. " We may picture this planting of an idea or"word" in the Cosmic soul as acting very much like the initial impulsethat starts a train of waves in ether, and these thought-waves arereproduced in corresponding forms; or, to recur to the simile of seed, the cosmic soul acts like the soil and gives it nourishment. Looking atit in this way the old exponents of these things regarded the Activeprinciple as Masculine, and the Passive as Feminine, the one generatingand the other nutritive, corresponding to the words _rouah_ and_hoshech_, the expansion and compression principles in the Hebrew textof the opening verses of Genesis. 

If then we posit this impersonal Soul of the Universe as the livingprinciple dwelling in the substance of the etheric Universal Medium itwill account for a good many things. If it be asked why we should assumethe presence of a living principle in the Universal Substance the answeris in the maxim "Quod ex Vivo Vivum, " what proceeds from Life is living. Then as we see by our diagram, Anima Mundi equally with Animus Deiproceeds from the original Substantive of Life, and therefore, on theprinciple of the above maxim, that like produces like, Anima Mundi mustalso be a living thing whose vehicle is the Universal Substance. 

We may picture then, the response of the indwelling Soul of theUniversal Medium to our Thought, as starting corresponding vibrations inthe Substance of the Medium, just as our own thought, acting through thevibratory system of our nerves, causes our body to make the movement weintend. But perhaps you will say: How can this be, seeing that by thehypothesis the Soul of the Universe is Impersonal, and thereforeunintelligent? Well, it is just this fact of having no thought of itsown, that enables us to impress our thought upon it and cause it, so tosay, to "take on" an intelligence relatively to the subject of ourthought, much in the same way that the impersonal soul in the humansubject "takes on" or reflects the thought of the hypnotist, and notinfrequently develops it to a far greater extent than the originalthought of the operator expressed. Such a hypothesis--and I think somesuch hypothesis is needed to account for any creation at all--throwslight on the _modus operandi_ of the Bible Promises. We plant the Wordof the Promise in the womb of Anima Mundi, and if we do not uproot it byusing the same power adversely, it is bound to come to fruition in duecourse, by the same Law by which the world-systems are formed; and if weare to believe that the Word of the Promise is not our own word, but theWord of God, then our Thought of it is imbued with a corresponding poweras we hand it over to Anima Mundi. Thus the Promises fulfil themselvesautomatically, in accordance with the principles of the relationsbetween Law and Personality, and they do so, _not in our own power_, butby the Power of the Word of God. 

This, then, gives us at least an intelligible working hypothesis of therationale of the Bible Promises. The measurement of their fulfilment isexactly proportional to our belief in them, not from any unintelligiblecause, and still less from any unreasoning feat of a capricious Deity, but by the working of an intelligible Law. If any of my readers happensto be an electrician, he will find an exact parallel in what is known asOhm's Law. Such readers will be familiar with the formula C = E/R, butfor the benefit of those to whom this formula may be unintelligible, Iwill give a few words of explanation. C means the current of electricitywhich is to be delivered for any work that is to be done. E stands forthe Electro-motive force which generates the current; and R is theResistance offered to the current by the conductor, such as the wiresthrough which it flows. If there be no resistance, the full amount ofcurrent generated would be delivered. But without any conductor nocurrent could be delivered, and therefore there must be _some_resistance, and so the full power of the Electro-motive force can neverbe delivered by the Current. The amount that will be delivered is theoriginal power of the Electro-motive force divided by the Resistance. The Resistance therefore acts as a restricting force, limiting theextent to which the power of the original Electro-motive force shall bedelivered at the point where the work is to be done, but at the sametime no delivery at that point could be effected without it; so theResistance also has a necessary part to play in the working of thecircuit. Now if we want to translate the formula C = E/R into terms ofspiritual force we may put it thus: E stands for the limitless Potentialof the Eternal Spirit; C stands for the current flowing from it; and Rstands for the localizing quality of our thought. We cannot entirelydispense with this localizing quality, for our whole purpose is totransmute the _unlimited_, undifferentiated power, which subsists in theEternal Substantive of Spirit, into a particular differentiated mode ofaction, which therefore implies a corresponding centralization. This isthe proper function of our thought. It is this compressing power which, as I said above, the Hebrew renders by the word "_hoshech_" in theopening verses of Genesis, and which is the necessary complementary tothe converse expanding power or "_rouah_. " It takes the co-operation ofthe two to produce any results. 

Restricted, then, to its proper function our R or condensing quality isan essential factor in the work. But if it be allowed to take the formof doubt or unbelief, then it renders the flow of the current from theSpirit ineffective to the extent to which the doubt is entertained; andif doubt be allowed to degenerate into total unbelief and denial of thePower of the Spirit, we thereby cancel the originating force altogether. To put it in terms of the electrical formula, we make R greater than E, in which case no current can flow. We thus find that the words"According to your faith be it unto you" are actually the statement of aMathematical Law, having nothing vague about them. This may be asomewhat original application of Ohm's Law, but the parallel is soexact, that I cannot help thinking it will appeal to some of my readerswho may be conversant with Electrical Science. For those who are not, asimpler simile may be, that you cannot deliver a more powerful stream ofwater than the bore of the pipe through which it flows will admit of;or, to employ a legal truism, delivery on the part of the donor must bemet by acceptance on the part of the donee before a deed of gift canbecome operative; or, in still simpler language, "you may take a horseto the water but you can't make him drink. "

We see, then, that there is a Law of Faith, and that Faith is not adenial of the universal reign of Law, but the perception of its widestgeneralization, and therefore giving scope to its highestspecialization. The opposition between Faith and Law, of which St. Paulso often speaks, is the opposition between this broad view of theultimate Principle of the Creative Law and that narrower view ofrestriction by particular laws, which prevents us from grasping the Lawof Faith; but that he does not deny the _Principle_ of Law, that is therelation between C and E, is clear from his own statement in Rom. Viii, where he says: "The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus sets mefree from the law of Sin and Death;" in other words: the Law of the Goodsets us free from the Law of Evil; and for the same reason St. Jamessays, that the perfect law is the law, of Liberty (Jas. I, 25). 

Of course if we suppose that faith is something contrary to the law ofthe Universe we at once import into our thought the negative qualitywhich entirely vitiates our action. We rightly perceive that the laws ofthe Universe can never be altered, and if our notion of Faith be, thatit is an attempt to work in contradiction to these laws, the bestdefinition we can give it is that given by the little girl in theSunday school, who said that "Faith is trying to make yourself believewhat you know is not true. " The reason for such a misconception is, thatit entirely omits one of the factors in the calculation. It considers, only the Law, and gives no place to the Word in the scheme of things. Yet we do not carry this misconception into the sciences of chemistryand electricity. We take the immutability of the Law as the basis ofthese sciences, but we do not expect the immutable Law to produce aphotographic apparatus, or an electric train, without the interventionof a reasoning and selective power which specializes the fundamentalgeneral Law into particular uses. We do not look to the Law for thosepowers of reasoning and selection, through which we make it work in allthe highly complex ways of our ordinary commercial applications ofit--we know better than that. We look to Personality for this. In ourevery-day pursuits we always act on the maxim that "Nature unaidedfails, " and that the infinite possibilities stored up in the Law, canonly be brought to light by a power of reasoning and selection workingthrough the Law. This co-operation of the Personal with the Impersonalis the Law _of_ the Law; and since the Law is unchangeable, this Law_of_ the Law must also be unchangeable, and must therefore apply on allplanes, and through all time--the Law, that without co-operation of theLaw and the Word nothing can be brought into existence, from a solarsystem to a pin; while on the other hand there is no limit to what canbe got out of the Law by the operation of the Word. 

If the student will look at the Bible Promises in the light of thegeneral principles, he will find that they are perfectly logical, whether from the metaphysical or from the scientific standpoint, andthat their working is only from the same Law through which allscientific developments are made. If this be apprehended it will beclear that the Word of Faith is not "trying to make ourselves believewhat we know is not true, " but, as St. Paul puts it, it is "givingsubstance to things not yet seen" (Heb. Xi, 1, R. V. ). 

CHAPTER VII

DEATH AND IMMORTALITY

I think most of my readers will agree with me, that the greatest of allthe promises is that of the overcoming of death, for, as the greaterincludes the less, the power which can do _that_ can do anything else. We think that there are only two things that are certain in thisworld--death and taxes, and no doubt, under the ordinary pastconditions, this is quite true; but the question is: are they reallyinherent in the essential nature of things; or are they not the outcomeof our past limited, and often inverted modes of Thought? The teachingof the Bible is that they are the latter. On the subject of taxes theMaster says: "Render unto Cćsar the things that are Cćsar's" (Matth. Xxii, 21), but on another occasion he said that the children of the Kingwere not liable to taxation (Matth. Xvii, 26). However we may leave the"taxes" alone for the present, with the remark that their resemblance todeath consists in both being, under present conditions, regarded ascompulsory. Under other conditions, however, we can well imagine "taxes"disappearing in a unity of thought which would merge them inco-operation and voluntary contribution; and it appears to me quitepossible for death to disappear in like manner. 

In whatever way we may interpret the story of Eden, whether literally, or if, like some of the Fathers of the church such as Origen, we take itas an allegory, the result is the same--that Death is not in the essenceof man's creation, but supervened as the consequence of an inverted modeof thinking. The Creative Spirit thought one way, and Eve thoughtanother; and since the Thought of the Creating Spirit is the origin ofLife, this difference of opinion naturally resulted in death. Then, fromthis starting-point, all the rest of the Bible is devoted to getting ridof this difference of opinion between us and the Spirit of Life, andshowing us that the Spirit's opinion is truer than ours, and so leadingus to adopt it as our own. The whole thing turns on the obviousproposition, that if you invert the cause you also invert the effect. Itis the principle that division is the inversion of multiplication, sothat if 2 × 2 = 4 then you cannot escape from the consequence that 4/2 =2. The question then is, which of the two opinions is the morereasonable--that death is essentially inherent in the nature of things, or that it is not?

Probably ninety-nine out of a hundred readers will say, the wholeexperience of mankind from the earliest ages proves that Death is theunchangeable Law of the Universe, and there have been no exceptions. Iam not quite sure that I should altogether agree with them on this lastpoint; but putting that aside, let us consider whether it really is theessential Law of the Universe. To say that this is proved by the pastexperience of the race, is what logicians call a _petitio principii_--itis assuming the whole point at issue. It is the same argument which ourgrandfathers would have used against aerial navigation--no one had evertravelled in the air, and that proved that no one ever could. My father, who was a junior officer in India when the first railway was run inEngland, used to tell a story of one of his senior officers, who, onbeing asked what he thought of the rapidity of the new mode oftravelling, said he thought it was "all a damned lie, " which opinionappeared to him to settle the whole question. But I hope that none of myreaders will hold the same opinion regarding the overcoming of death, even though they might express it in more polite language. At any rateit may be worth while to examine the theoretical possibility of theidea. 

To begin with, it involves a self-contradiction to say that the energyof any force can stop the working of that force. If a force stopsworking, it is for one of two reasons, either that the supply of it isexhausted, or that it is overcome by an opposite and neutralizing force. But we have seen that the Originating Cause of all things can only be aninexhaustible Power of Life, and therefore the hypothesis of it becomingexhausted is eliminated; and similarly, since all the forces of theUniverse proceed from this Source, it is impossible for any of them tohave a nature diametrically opposite to that of the source from whichthey flow. So the alternative must be eliminated also. Accordingly, theoutflow, undifferentiated, of Life and Energy from the EternalSubstantive of Spirit, is never stopped _by its own current_ in any ofits differentiated streams; it is impossible for a current to bestopped by its own flow, whether it be a current of electricity, steam, water, or anything else. What then does stop the flow of any sort ofcurrent? It is the Resistance or _inertia_ of the channel through whichit flows; so that we come back to the formula of Ohm's Law, C = E/R as ageneral proposition applicable to any conceivable sort of energy. 

The neutralizing power then, is not that of the flowing of any sort ofenergy, but the rigidity, or inertia of the medium through which theenergy has to make its way; thus bringing us back to _rouah_ and_hoshech_, the expansive and compressive principles of the openingverses of Genesis. It is the broad scientific generalization of theopposition between Ertia, or Energy, and Inertia, or Absence of Energy;and since, for the reasons just given, Ertia cannot go against itself, the only thing that can stop it is Inertia. 

Now the components of the human body are simply various chemicalelements--so much carbon, so much hydrogen, etc. , as any textbook on thesubject will tell you; and although, of course, every sort of substanceis the abode of ceaseless _atomic_ energy, we all recognize that merelyatomic energy is not that of the powers of thought, will, andperception, which make us organized mentalities instead of a mereaggregation of the various substances exposed to view in a biologicalmuseum, as constituting the human body--you might take all thesesubstances in their proper proportions, and shake them up together, butyou would not make an intelligent man of them. We are therefore safe insaying that the physiological body represents the principle of inertiain us, while the something that thinks in us represents the principle ofErtia. 

The balance of power between the Life Principle in us and the DeathPrinciple, is then, necessarily, a question of the balance between thesetwo, the spirit and the flesh, or ertia and inertia. 

Why then does the balance preponderate to the life-side for a certainlength of time, and then go over to the opposite side?

Now this brings us to the distinction which the old writers drew, between the "Vital Soul" of any living thing and the Spirit. Theirconception of the "Vital Soul" was very much the same as I have setforth in the chapter on "The Soul of the Subject. " It is theindividual's particular share of the Cosmic Soul or Anima Mundi, whetherit be an individual tree, or an individual person; and the ordinarymaximum length of time, during which the Vital Soul will be able toovercome the inertia of its physical vehicle, depends upon theparticular class to which the individual belongs. What the ordinarymaximum is in regard to any species is a matter of experience, and it isin this way that we have fixed the usual limit of human life atthree-score years and ten. 

Now it is here that we shall begin to profit by some knowledge about theinvisible part of ourselves. The actual molecules of our body, as I havejust said, are only so much dead matter. This inert material is pulledabout in various directions by strings which we call muscles, accordingto the movements we wish our bodies to make, and these muscles are setin motion by the vibrations of the nerves. [4] But what is it thatoccasions these vibrations of the nerves? Here we begin to pass beyondthe limits of official Science, though not beyond the limits ofrecognizable Law. We have to recognize the existence of an etheric bodyacting as an intermediary between intention, desire, or (in the case ofhuman beings) thought of the soul and the physical vibrations of thenerves. This is why, in an earlier chapter, I have drawn attention toour power of sending out etheric vibrations beyond the limits of thephysical body, as in the case of De Rocha's experiments. Suchexperiments show that there is in us something not composed of densematter, which is able to convey vibrations to dense matter; and it isthis something which we speak of as the etheric body. 

But if we wish to trace the links by which our thought operates upon thephysical body, we find ourselves compelled to postulate yet anotherintermediary, what I have spoken of as the "Vital Soul"--a vehicle whichdoes not _consciously think_, but in which what we may callrace-consciousness becomes centred in the individual. Thisrace-consciousness is none other than the ever-present "will-to-live"which is the basis of physical evolution--that automatically actingprinciple--which causes plants to turn towards the sun, animals to seektheir proper food, and both animals and men to try instantly to escapefrom immediate danger. It is what we call instinct which does notreason. I may give a laughable experience of my own to illustrate thefact that conscious reason is not the method of this faculty. Once whenon leave from India I was walking along a street in London in the heatof a summer's day and suddenly noticed just at my feet a long dark thingapparently wriggling across the white glare of the pavement. "Snake!" Iexclaimed, and jumped aside for all I was worth, and the next moment waslaughing at myself for not recollecting that cobras were not commonobjects in the London streets. But it looked just like one, and ofcourse turned out to be nothing but a piece of rag. Well, instinct didits duty even if it did make a fool of me; but there is certainly noconscious reasoning in the matter, only the automatic action of inherentLaw--"Self-preservation is the first law of Nature. "

This Vital Soul, then, is the seat of all those instincts which gotowards the preservation of the individual's physical body, and towardsthe propagation of the race; and it is on this account that ourtheosophical friends call it the "Desire Body" or, to use the Indianterm "Kama rupa. " It acts with conscious intention, but not withconscious _reasoning_. It is thus distinguished on the one hand from theetheric body, which is a mere vehicle for finer vibrations than can takeplace in the denser matter of the physical body, but which has _nointention_; and on the other from the _mind_ which acts by consciousreasoning, and it thus forms an intermediary between the two. 

The importance of recognizing the place of this higher intermediary inthe ascending scale of living principle is, that for all practicalpurposes the animal world does not rise higher than this in the scale. It is true that in particular instances we find the first dawning of themental faculty in an animal, but it is only very faint; so this does notaffect the broad general principle. The point to be noted is that up tothis stage human beings are built on the same lines as animals, and whatdistinguishes us, is the addition in ourselves of a higher factor, --thatof the reasoning mind exercising the power of conscious thought. 

Now it is the direction of this thought that influences the three lowerfactors. The sequence, going upwards, is as follows:--movement iscommunicated to the physical body by the etheric body; and movement iscommunicated to the etheric body by the Vital Soul; then, in proportionas the purely instinctive action of the Vital Soul is controlled by theconscious thought, so its action upon the two lowest principles ismodified. 

Here, then, is the crucial point. In what direction is the consciousthought going to modify the action of the three principles that arebelow it? If it takes the soul of mere racial desire and the physicalbody as its standard of thought, then it naturally follows that itcannot raise it any higher. It has descended to _their_ level and socannot pour any stream of life into it, on the simple principle that nocurrent can ever flow from a lower to a higher level, whether thedifference in level be that of actual elevation, as in the case ofwater, or different in potential, as in the case of electricity. On theother hand if the conscious mind recognizes that itself proceeds fromsome higher source, it looks to receive life from that source, and itsthought is modified accordingly, and in turn re-acts correspondinglyupon the lower principles. 

If this is clear to the student, he will now see how it is that bylimiting our conception of life to the current ideas entertained by therace, we impress these ideas on our three lower principles. It is truethat these three principles are not capable of reasoning themselves, butthe highest of them, the Vital Soul, has its action modified by thereasoning principle above it, and so communicates to the two lowestprinciples corresponding waves of vibration. And in this connection wemust remember the distinction between the two systems of nerves; thevoluntary system connected with the brain and forming the medium of allvoluntary action, and the involuntary, or sympathetic system connectedwith the solar plexus and controlling all the automatic actions of thebody, and thus being the agent of that continual renewal of the physicalorganism which is always going on, and keeps in existence for a lifetime a body which begins to disintegrate immediately the soul has leftit. [5] Now it is through this inner Builder of the Body that our Thoughtre-acts upon our physical organism. The response is purely automatic, for the simple reason that there is no original thinking power in thethree lower principles; the action is that of the Law as directed byThought or Word. 

In this way then, it appears to me, the Personal in us acts upon theImpersonal in us; and if we assume, as I think we may, that this actiontakes place by means of etheric waves, we have, on general scientificprinciples, a clue to what we read in the Bible about the transmutationof the body. The theory of the constitution of the atom shows us thatits nature is determined by the number of its particles and their rateof revolution, and that a change in the rate of revolution results inthe throwing off of some of the particles. Then the number of particlesbeing altered, there results a change in the distribution of thepositive and negative charges within the sphere of the atom, since theymust always exactly balance one another; and this change in thedistribution of the positive and negative charges must instantly resultin a corresponding change in the geometrical configuration of particlesconstituting the atom. 

That the particles automatically arrange themselves into groups ofdifferent geometrical form within the sphere of the atom, has beendemonstrated both mathematically and experimentally by Professor J. J. Thompson, [6] these geometrical forms resulting of course from thebalance of attraction and repulsion between the positive and negativecharges of the particles. 

That the transmutation of one substance into another is not a mere dreamof the medićval alchemists is now already shown by Modern Science. Undersuitable conditions an atom of Radium breaks down into atoms of anothersort known as Radium Emanations, and these again break down into yetanother sort of atoms to which the name of Radium Emanations X has beengiven, while Radium Emanation also gives rise to the atom of Helium(N. K. 124). Thorium also behaves in the same manner, transmuting intoatoms called Thorium X, which again change into atoms of another sort towhich the name of Thorium Emanations has been given and these in turntransmute into atoms of yet another kind, known as Thorium Emanations X. The same is the case also with Uranium which, however, so far as is yetknown, undergoes only one transmutation into what is known as Uranium X. 

The transmutation of one sort of atom into another is therefore not amere visionary fancy, but an established fact; and although ourlaboratory experiments in this direction may not as yet have gone veryfar, they have gone far enough to show that a Law of Transmutation doesexist in Nature. Then, since the difference between one sort of atom andanother results from the difference and arrangement of their particles, and the difference in the number and arrangement of the particlesresults from the difference in the speed of their rotation, and thisagain results from the difference in the energy or rate of vibration ofthe particles, we come back to different rates of etheric vibrations asthe commencement of the whole series of changes; and as is proved by thefacts of wireless telephoning, different rates of etheric vibrations canbe set in motion by the varying sounds of the human voice, even on thephysical plane. May it not be then, that by the same law, vibrations ofother wave-lengths, yet unknown to science, will be set in motion by theunspoken word of our thought?

The substance known as Polonium, even by its near approach to anelectric bell, causes it to ring, and if etheric waves can thus bestarted by an inanimate substance, why should we suppose that ourthought has less power, especially when metaphysically we cannot avoidthe conclusion that the whole creation must have its origin in theDivine Thought?

From such considerations as these, I think we may reasonably infer thatif the mind be illuminated by a range of thought coming from a highermind, there is no limit to the power which may thus be exercised overthe material world, and that therefore St. Paul's statement regardingthe transmutation of the present physical body, is one which should beincluded in the circle of our ideas, as being within the scope of theLaws of the Universe when their action is specialized by the power ofthe Word (1 Cor. Xv); and similarly with regard to other statements tothe same effect contained in the Bible. What is wanted is therealization of a greater Word than that which we form from the currentexperience of the race. The race has formed its Word on the basis of thelower principles of our being, and if we are to advance beyond this, theLaw of the subject clearly indicates that it can only be by adopting amore fundamental Word, or Idea, than that which we have hitherto thoughtto include the entire range of possibilities. The Law of our furtherEvolution demands a Word not formed from past experiences, but basedupon the eternal principle of the All-Originating Life itself. And thisis in strict accord with scientific method. If we had always allowedourselves to be ruled by past experiences we should still be primitivesavages; and it is only by the gradual perception of underlyingprinciples, that we have attained the degree of civilization we havereached to-day; so what the Bible puts before us is simply theapplication to the life in ourselves of the maxim that "Principle is notlimited by Precedent. "

Now the Bible Promises serve to put us on the track of this Principle:they suggest lines of enquiry. And the enquiry leads to the conclusionthat the two ultimate factors are the Law and the Word. What we havemissed hitherto is the conception of the limitless possibilities of theLaw, and the limitless power of the Word. On one occasion the Mastersaid to the Jews "Ye know not the Scriptures neither the power of God"(Matth. Xxii, 29) and the same is the case with ourselves. The true"Scripture" is the "scriptura rerum" or the Law indelibly written in thenature of things, and the written Scriptures are true only because theycontain the statement of the Principle of the Law. Therefore until wesee the Principle of the Law we "know not the Scriptures. " On the otherhand, until we see the Principle of the operation of the Word throughthe Law, we do not know "the Power of God"; and it is only as we come toperceive the interaction of the Law and the Word that we see thebeginning of the way that leads to Life and Liberty. 

But although it is evident from the text just quoted, as well as fromother intimations in his Epistles, that St. Paul fully grasped theprinciple of the transmutation of the body, he himself tells us that hehas not yet realized it in practice. He says he has not yet "attained tothe resurrection from the dead, " but is still pressing on towards itsattainment (Ph. Iii, 12). And it is to be remarked that he is not herespeaking of a general "resurrection _of_ the dead, " but, as the word_exanastasis_ in the original Greek indicates, of a special resurrectionfrom among the dead; this indicates an _individual_ achievement, notmerely something common to the whole race. From this and other passagesit is evident that by "the dead" it means those whose conception of Lifeis limited to the four lower principles, thus #unifying# the mind withthe three principles which are below it; and the same idea is expressedin a variety of ways all through the Bible. This therefore shows that heis quite aware that knowledge of a principle does not enable us then andthere to attain the completeness of the application, and if this be thecase with St. Paul, we cannot be surprised to find it the same withourselves. But on the other hand knowledge of the principle is the firststep towards getting it to work. 

Well, St. Paul is dead and buried, and so I suppose will most of us bein a few years; so the question confronts us, what becomes of us then?

As Milton puts it in "Il Penseroso" we want:

 "to unsphere The spirit of Plato and unfold What worlds or what vast regions hold The immortal mind that hath forsook Her mansion in the fleshly nook. "

Yes, this is a question of deep personal interest to us; but as I cannotspeak from experience, I will restrict myself to seeing whether we canform any sort of general hypothesis on the basis of the principles wehave recognized. What then is likely to survive? The physical body is ofcourse disintegrated by the chemistry of Nature. The etheric bodyprobably continues to retain its form longer, because it is acondensation of etheric particles wrought together by the etheric wavessent out by the Vital Soul, and is therefore not subject to the laws ofchemical affinity. The Vital Soul, being the race-principle of life inthe individual, --that principle which automatically seeks to preservethe individual from disintegration, --probably survives longer still, until, ceasing to receive any reflex vibrations from the body, it growsgradually weaker in its sense of individual guardianship, and so iseventually absorbed into the group-soul or generic essence of the classto which it belongs. This is probably what happens in the case ofanimals for want of any higher vivifying principle, and would be thesame with us were it not for the fact of having such a higher principle. In our case I should imagine that the influx of etheric waves, receivedfrom the thought action of the mind, would have the effect of continuingto impress the Vital Soul with a sense of individuality, in terms of itsown plane, which would prevent it from being absorbed into thegroup-soul so long as the vital current from the mind continued to reachit. But eventually that current would cease to reach it, and in somecases, because the individual mind that governed it would graduallyrealize that its connection with the physical plane had ceased, and inothers, because through a higher illumination the mind had, of its ownvolition, turned its thought in another direction. In either case, onthe ceasing of the influx of that vitalizing current, the Vital Soul ofthe human being would likewise be absorbed into the Cosmic Soul, orAnima Mundi. 

How long the processes of the disintegration of the etheric body, andabsorption of the vital soul may take, is a question on which I canoffer no opinion beyond saying that certain psychic phenomena suggestthat in some cases they may take a long period of time. But for thereasons I have now given, it appears to me that the permanentlysurviving factor is the thinking mind which is our real self, and ispositively our centre of consciousness after the physical body has beenput off. 

By the facts of the case its consciousness is no longer affected byvibrations received from the physical body; and therefore, to theextent to which our idea of life has been centred in that body, we shallfeel its loss. If our motto has been "Let us eat and drink, forto-morrow we die" we shall feel very dead indeed--a living death, aconsciousness of being cut off from all that constituted our enjoymentof life--a thirst for the satisfaction of our customary ideas, which wehave no power to quench; and, in proportion as our habitual mode ofthought is raised above that lowest level, so will our sense of loss beless. Then, by the same Law, if our habitual mode of thought is turnedtowards pure, beautiful, and helpful ideals, we shall feel no loss atall, for we shall carry our own ideals with us, and, I hope, see themmore clearly by reason of their disentanglement from mundaneconsiderations. In what precise way we may then be able to work out ourideals I will not now stop to discuss. What we want first is areasonable theory, based upon the principle of that universal Law whichis only varied in its actions by the conditions under which it works;so, instead of speculating as to precise details, we may generalize thequestion of how we can work out the good ideals which we carry over withus, and put it this way:--Our ideas are embodied in thoughts; thoughtsstart trains of etheric waves, which waves induce reciprocal actionwhenever they meet with a receiver capable of vibrating synchronouslywith them, and so eventually the thought becomes a fact, and our helpfuland beautiful ideal becomes a work of power, whether in this world or inany other. 

Now it is to the forming of such ideals that the Bible, from first tolast is trying to lead us. From first to last it is working upon oneuniform principle, that the Thought is the Word, that the Word sets inmotion the Law, and that when the Law is set in motion it acts withmathematical precision. The Bible is a handbook of instruction for theuse of our Creative Power of Thought, and this is the sequence which itfollows--one definite method, so fundamental in its nature, that itapplies equally to the making of a packing-case or the making of a solarsystem. 

Now we have formed a generalized conception, based on this universalmethod, of the sort of consciousness we are likely to have when we passout of the physical body. Then our thought naturally passes on to thequestion what will happen after this?

It is here that some theory of the reconstitution of the physical bodyappears to me to hold a most important place in the order of ourevolution. Let us try to trace it out on the general lines of theCreative Power of Thought indicated above, the keynote to which is thatthe Law is specialized by the Word, and cannot of itself bring out theinfinite possibilities contained in it without such specializing, justas in all scientific development of ordinary life. The clue to the wholequestion is, that our place in the Universal Order is to develop theinfinite resources of the Original Life and Substance into actual facts. "Nature unaided fails. " The Personal Factor must co-operate with theImpersonal, alike for setting up an electric bell, or for thefurtherance of cosmic evolution; and the reason it is so is, because itcould not possibly be otherwise. 

If now we start by recognizing this as our necessary place in theProgressive Order of the Universe, I think it will help us to form areasonable theory as to the reconstruction of the body. First of all, why have we any physical body at all? As a matter of fact we have one, and no amount of transcendental philosophizing will alter the fact, andso we may conclude that there is some reason for it. We have seen thetruth of the maxim "Omne vivum ex vivo, " and therefore that allparticular forms of life are differentiations of the one Basic Life. This means a localizing of the Life-Principle in individual centres. Theformation of a centre implies condensation; for where there is nocondensation the Energy, whether electricity or Life, is simply_dispersed_ and _achieving no purpose_. Therefore distinctness from theundifferentiated Original Life is a necessity of the case. Consequentlythe higher the degree of Consciousness of Individuality, the greatermust be the Consciousness of _Distinctness of Personality_. 

We say of a "wobbly" sort of person: "That fellow is no use, you can'tdepend on him. " We say of a person whose ideas, intentions, and methodsare subject to continual variations under all sorts of outsideinfluences, whether of opinions or circumstances, that he has "nobackbone, " meaning that he is in want of individuality. He has no realthought of his own, and so has no Word of Power by which to co-operatewith the Law; therefore, to the extent to which this is the case withany of us, we are of no use in furthering the unfoldment of Evolution, whether in ourselves or anywhere else. 

Now we talk a lot about Evolution or the _un_-folding, but we seem oftennot to realize that there must be something to unfold; and thattherefore _In_-volution, or the concentration of the Life-principle, must be a condition precedent to its _E_-volution. This process ofInvolution must therefore be a process of gradually increasingconcentration of the Life-principle, by association with denser anddenser modes of the Universal Substance. Then, on the principle ofVibration, the less dense the substance in which the Life is immersed, the more it must be subject to being stirred by vibratory currents otherthan those produced by the conscious action of the Ego, or inherentLife, of the individuality that is being formed. 

But "_the Sum of the Vibrations in anything determines the mode, power, and direction of its action_"; therefore, the less the Ego beconcentrated through association with a dense vehicle, the more "wobbly"it must be, and consequently the less able to take any effective part inthe further work of Creation. But in proportion as the Ego builds up an_Individual_ _Will_, the more it gets out of the "wobbly" state--or, torefer once more to the idea of etheric waves--it becomes able to selectwhat vibrations it will receive, and what vibrations it will send out. 

The involution of the Ego into the physical body, such as we at presentknow it, is therefore a necessity of the case, if any effectiveIndividuality is to be brought into existence, and the work of Creationcarried on instead of being cut short, not for want of material, but forwant of workmen capable of using the tools of the builders' craft--theLaw as "Strength" and the Word as "Beauty. "

The Descending Arc of the Circle of Being is therefore that of theInvolution of Spirit into denser and denser modes of Substance, --aprocess called in technical language by the Greek name "Eleusin, " andthe process continues until a point is reached where Spirit andSubstance are in equal balance, which is where we are now. Then comesthe tug of war. Which of the two is to predominate? They are theExpansive and Constrictive primal elements, the "rouah" and "hoshech" ofthe Hebrew Genesis. 

If the Constrictive element be allowed to go further than givingnecessary form to the Expansive element, it imprisons the latter. Thecondensation becomes too dense for the Ego to receive or send forthvibrations according to its free will, and so the Individuality becomeslost. If the condensation process be not carried far enough, noIndividuality can be built up, and if it be carried too far, noIndividuality can emerge; so in both cases we get the same result thatthere is no one to speak the Word of Power without which "Nature unaidedfails. "

Thus we are now exactly at the bottom of the Circle of Being. We havecompleted the Descending Arc and reached the point where the realizationof the Distinctness of Conscious Individuality enables us to choose ourown line, whether that of progressing through the stages of theAscending Arc of Being, or of falling out from the living Circle ofProgression, at least for a period, into what is sometimes mysticallyspoken of as "the Moon, " or (in descending order) the "Eighth Sphere, "and which is called in Scripture "The Outer Darkness, "--the rigiditywhich stops the action of Life. 

Therefore it is with regard to this stage of our career that the Biblelays so much stress on the conflict between the Spirit and the Flesh--itis a fact in the course of our evolution, and the purpose of the Bibleis to teach us how to move forward along the Ascending Arc of the Circleof Being, so as to build up individualities which will be able to usethe tools of Intelligence and Will in the great work of Evolution, bothPersonal and Cosmic. 

Now what is shown diagrammatically as the Ascending Arc of the Circle ofLife is the Return from its lowest point, or the _Full Consciousness ofPersonal Distinctness_, gained through _the Material Body_, back to itshighest point or the Originating Life itself. This is the truth embodiedin the parable of the Prodigal Son. It is a Cosmic truth, and thisreturn journey is technically called by the Green name "Anaktorion. " Itis the Rising-again, that is from matter to Spirit, and is theResurrection Principle. 

But what is accomplished by the journey of the Ego round the Circle ofLife?

_A New Centre_ of Intelligence and volition is established; from thisthe Creative Word of Power can be spoken--a _Complete Man_ has beenbrought into existence, who can take a _free and intelligent_ part inthe further work of Creation, by his understanding of the interactionbetween the Law and the Word. The "Volume of the Sacred Law" lies openbefore us, and the Vibratory Power of the Word to give effect to it isthe "Blazing Star" that illuminates its contents, and so we becomefellow-workers with the Great Architect of the Universe. 

For these reasons it appears to me that our self-recognition in aphysical body is a necessary step in our growth. But why should thereconstruction of a physical body be either necessary or desirable? Theanswer is as follows:

Obviously self-recognition is the necessary basis for all use of thosepowers of selection and volition by which the Impersonal Law is to bespecialized so as to bring to light its limitless potentialities; andself-recognition means the recognition of our personal Distinctness fromour environment. Therefore it must always mean the possessing of a bodyas a vehicle, by means of which to act upon that environment, and toreceive the corresponding reaction from it. In other words it mustalways be a body constituted in terms of the plane upon which we arefunctioning. But it does not follow that we should always be tied downto one plane. 

On the contrary, the very conception of the power of the Word tospecialize the action of the Law, implies the power of functioning onany plane we choose; but always subject to the Law, that if we want toact on any particular plane in _propria persona_, and not merely byinfluencing some other agent, we can only do so by assuming a body interms of the nature of that plane. Therefore, if we want to act on thephysical plane, we must put on a physical body. But when we have fullygrasped the Power of the Word we cannot be tied to a body. We shall nolonger regard it as composed of so many chemical elements, but we shallsee beyond them into the real primary etheric substance of which theyare composed, and so by our volition shall be able to put the physicalbody on or off at pleasure, --that at least is a quite logical deductionfrom what we have learnt in the preceding pages. 

Seen in this light the "Resurrection Body" is not the old bodyresuscitated, but a new body, just as real and tangible as the old one, only not subject to any of its disabilities, --no longer a limitation, but the ever ready instrument for any work we may desire to do upon thephysical plane. 

But perhaps you will say, "Why should we want to have anything more todo with the physical plane? surely we have had enough of it already!"Yes; in its old sense of limitation; but not in the new sense of a worldof glorious possibilities, a new field for our creative activities; notthe least of which is the helping of those who are still in those lowerstages which we have already passed through. 

I think if we realize the position of the Fully Risen Man, we shall seethat he is not likely to turn his back upon the Earth as a rotten, oldthing. Therefore a new physical body is a necessary part of hisequipment. 

If, then, we take it as a general principle, that for self-recognitionupon any plane a body in terms of that plane is a necessity, this willthrow some light on the Bible narrative of our Lord's appearances afterhis Resurrection. It is noteworthy that he himself lays stress on thebody as an integral part of the individuality. When the disciplesthought they had seen an apparition he said: "Handle me and see that itis I _myself_, and _not_ a spirit, for a spirit hath not flesh andbones as ye see I have" (Luke xxiv, 39). This very clearly states thatthe spirit without a corresponding body is not the complete "I myself";yet from the same narrative we gather that the solid body in which heappeared is able to pass through closed doors, and to be disintegratedand re-integrated at will. Now on the electronic theory of theconstitution of matter which I have spoken of in the earlier part ofthis book, there is nothing impossible in this; on the contrary it isonly the known Law of synchronous vibration carried into those furtherranges of wave-lengths which, though not yet produced by laboratoryexperiment, are unavoidably recognized by the mathematicians. 

In this way then the Resurrection of the Body appears to me to be thelegitimate termination of our present stage of existence. What furtherdevelopments may follow, who shall say? for we must remember that theend of one series is always the commencement of another--that is thedoctrine of the Octave. But this is far enough to look forward in allconscience. As to _when_ the completion of our present stage ofevolution will be attained, it is impossible even to hazard a guess; butthat the _individual_ attainment of such a Resurrection is notdependent on any particular date in the world's history, is clearly theteaching of Scripture. When Martha said to Jesus that she knew herbrother would rise again "at the last day, " he ignored the question of"the last day, " and said "I am the Resurrection and the Life" (St. Johnxi, 25); and similarly St. Paul puts it forward as a thing to beattained (Ph. Iii, 15). It is not a resurrection _of_ the dead but _fromamong_ the dead that St. Paul is aiming at--not an "anastasis tonnekron, " but an "anastasis _ek_ ton nekron. "

Doubtless there are other passages of Scripture which speak of a generalresurrection, which to some will be a resurrection to condemnation (St. John v, 29), a resurrection to shame and everlasting contempt (Dan. Xii, 2). This is a subject upon which I will not attempt to enter--I have agreat many things to learn, and this is one of them; but if the Biblestatements regarding resurrection are to be taken as a whole, thesepassages cannot be passed over without notice. On the other hand theBible statements regarding _individual_ resurrection are there also, andthe general principle on which they are based becomes clear when we seethe fundamental relation between the Law and the Word. Only we mustremember that the Word that can thus set in motion the Law of Life, andmake it triumph over the Law of Death, cannot be spoken by the limitedpersonality which only knows itself as John Smith or Mary Jones. We mustattain a larger personality than that, before we can speak the Word. Andthis larger personality is not just John Smith or Mary Jones magnified;that is the mistake we are all so apt to fall into. Mere magnificationwill not do it. A square will continue to be a square however large youmake it; it will never become a circle. But on the other hand, there issuch a thing as stating the area of a circle in the form of a square;and when we learn to regard our square as not existing on its ownaccount, but as an expression of the circle in another form, ourattention will be directed to the circle first, as the generatingfigure, and _then_ to the square as a particular mode of expressing thesame area. If we look at it in this way we shall never mistake thesquare for the circle, but we shall see that as the circle grows, thecorresponding square will grow with it. It is this dependence of thesquare on the circle that makes all the difference, and makes it aliving, growing square. For the true circle represents Infinitude. It isnot bounded by a limiting circumference as in the merely symbolicgeometrical figure, but is rather represented by the impulse whichgenerates an ever widening circle of electro-magnetic waves; and when werealize this, our square becomes a living thing. The "Word" that wespeak with this recognition is no longer ours, but His who sent us--theexpression, on the plane of individuality, of the Thought that sent usinto existence and so it is the "Word of Life. " This is the trueResurrection of the Individual. 

CHAPTER VIII

TRANSFERRING THE BURDEN

The more we grow into a clear perception of what is really meant by"Squaring the Circle, " the freer we shall find ourselves from the burdenof anxiety. We shall rise to a larger generalization of the Law of Causeand Effect. We shall learn in all things to reach out to First Cause asoperating through the channels of secondary causation, --"causa causas"as producing, and therefore controlling "causa causata"--and so we ceaseto worry about secondary causes. On the plane of the lower personalitywe see certain facts, and argue that they are bound to produce certainresults, which would be quite true if we really saw _all_ the facts; or, again, allowing that in any particular case we actually did see all thefacts as they now exist, we can either deny the operation of FirstCause, or recognize its infinite capacity for creating new facts. Therefore, whatever may be the nature of our anxiety, we shouldendeavour to dispel it by the consideration that there may be alreadyexisting other facts we do not know of, which will produce a differentresult from the one we fear, and that in any case there is a power whichcan produce new facts in answer to our appeal to it. 

But I can imagine some one saying to us, "You bumptious little midget, do you think First Cause is going to trouble Itself about you and yourpetty concerns? Do you not know that First Cause works by universal Law, and makes no exceptions?" Well, I would not have written this book if Idid not suppose that First Cause works by universal Law, and it is justbecause It does so that I believe It _will_ work for me and my concerns. The Law makes no exceptions, but it can be specialized through the powerof the Word. Then our sceptic says, "What, do you think _your_ word cando that?" To which I reply, "It is not my word because I am not using itin my lower personality, as John Smith or Mary Jones, but in that higherpersonality which recognizes only one all-embracing Personality anditself as included in that. "

Which comes first, the Law or the Word?

The distribution of the solar systems in space, the localization of theSpirit in specific areas of cosmic activity, proclaims the starting ofall manifestation through the "Word. " Then the operation of Law followswith mathematical precision, just as when we write 2 × 2 we cannot avoidgetting 4 as the result--only there is no reason why we should not write2 × 3 and so get 6 instead of 4. Let it be borne in mind that the Lawflows from the Word, and not _vice versa_, and you have got the clue tothe enigma of Life. 

How far we shall be able to make practical use of this clue depends, ofcourse, on our acceptance of its principle. 

The Directing Power of the Word is _inherent_ in the Word, and we cannotalter it. _It is the Law_ OF _the Law_, and so, like any other law, itcannot be broken, but its action can be inverted. We cannot deprive theWord of its efficacy, but our denial of it as the Word of Expansion isequivalent to an affirmation of it as the Word of Contraction, and sothe Law acts towards us as a Limitation. But the fault is not in theLaw, but in the way we use the Word. Now if the reader grasps this, hewill see that the less we trouble ourselves about what appear to us tobe the visible and calculable causes of things, the freer we must becomefrom the burden of anxiety; and as we advance step by step to a clearerrecognition of the true order of Cause and Effect, so all intermediatecauses will fade from our view. Only the two extremes of the sequence ofCause and Effect will remain in sight. First Cause, moving as the Word, starting a sequence, and the desired result terminating it, as the Wordtaking Form in Fact. The intermediate links in the chain will be there, but they will be seen as effects, not causes. The wider thegeneralization we thus make, the less we shall need to trouble aboutparticulars, knowing that they will form themselves by the naturalaction of the Law; and the widest generalization is therefore, to statenot what we want to _have_, but what we want to _be_. The only reason weever want to _have_ anything, is because we think it will help us to besomething--something more than we are now; so that the "having" is onlya link in the chain of secondary causes, and may therefore be left outof consideration, for it will come of itself through the naturalworkings of the Law, set in operation by the Word as First Cause. Thisprinciple is set forth in the statement of the Divine Name given toMoses (Ex. Iii, 13-14). The Name is simply "I AM"--it is Being, nothaving--the having follows as a natural consequence of the Being; and ifit be true that we are made in the likeness and image of God, that is tosay on the same Principle, then what is the Law of the Divine naturemust be the Law of ours also--and as we awake to this we become"partakers of the Divine Nature" (2 Pet. I, 4). 

What we really want, therefore, is to _be_ something--something morethan we are now; and this is quite right. It is our consciousness of thecontinually generative impulse of the Eternal Living Spirit, which isthe _fons et origo_ (fountain and source) of all differentiated lifeworking within us for ever more and more perfect individual expressionof all that is in Itself. If the reader remembers what I said at thebeginning of this book about the Verb Substantive of Being, he will seethat each of us is in truth a "Word (verbum) of God. " Let not theorthodox reader be shocked at this--I am only saying what the Bibledoes. Look up the following passages: "I will write upon him the nameof my God and my own new name" (Rev. Xiii, 12). "I saw, and behold alamb standing on the Mount Zion (note, the word Zion means the principleof Life), and with him a hundred and forty and four thousand, having hisname and the name of his Father written on their foreheads" (Rev. Xiv, 1). "His name shall be on their foreheads" (Rev. Xxii, 4). Readparticularly the whole passage Rev. Xix, 11-16, where we are expresslytold that the name in question is "the Word of God"; and that this nameis the one put upon those who follow their Leader, is shown by the samedescription being given of the followers as of the Leader. They all rideupon "white horses, " and the "horse" is the symbol of the intellect. Also in the case of the Leader, the peculiarity of his Name is that "noone knows it but himself, " and in Rev. Ii, 17, exactly the same thing issaid of the "New Name" to be given "to him that overcometh. " Again, inIsaiah lxii, 2, "Thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth ofthe Lord shall name"; and again in Num. Vi, 27, "They shall put my nameupon the children of Israel. "

Then as the meaning of that Name "the Word of God. " In Ps. Cxix, 160:"Thy word is true from the beginning, " and Jesus said: "Thy Word isTruth" (John xvii, 17). 

This also corresponds with the description in Rev. Xix, 11-16 whereanother name for "the Word of God" is "Faithful and True"; and the samemetaphor of the Truth "_riding into action_" is contained in Ps. Xlv, 3, 4. "Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and thymajesty; and in thy majesty ride prosperously because of Truth. " Thesame symbol of "riding" also occurs in Ps. Lxviii: "Extol him thatrideth upon the heavens, " "Sing praises to him that rideth upon theheaven of heavens which were of old (i. E. , _ab initio_); lo, he dothsend out his Voice and that a mighty Voice"--and the word "Voice" is theHebrew Word [Hebrew: "K[=o]l"], meaning "Sound" or "Word"--so that hereagain we have the idea of "The Word" riding into action. Oncemore--"Thou hast magnified thy Word above all thy Name" (Ps. Cxxxviii, 2), thus repeating the idea of the Word as the Name. 

In other passages we have the idea of the Word as a Weapon. "The Swordof the Spirit which is the Word of God" (Eph. Vi, 17), which answers tothe description in Revelations of the Sword proceeding out of the mouthof the Word; and we have the same metaphor of the Word riding intoaction in Habakkuk iii, 8 and 9. "Thou didst ride upon thine horses andthy chariots of salvation. Thy bow was made quite naked . .. Even thyWord"; and similarly those that oppose the Word are "killed with thesword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of hismouth. "

In other passages we have the Word put before us as a Defence. "HisTruth shall be thy shield and buckler" (Ps. Xci, 4); and again "The Nameof the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and issafe" (Prov. Xviii, 10); and we have already seen that this Name is "TheWord of God"; and similarly in Ps. Cxxiv, 8: "Our help is in the name ofthe Lord, who made heaven and earth. "

Lastly, we get "the Word" as the final deliverance from all ill; "Intothy hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of Truth"(Ps. Xxxi, 5). 

And the reason of all this is because "His Truth endureth to allgenerations" (Ps. C, 5); it is everlasting, Changeless Principle. "Bythe Word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them bythe breath of his mouth" (Ps. Xxxiii, 6), as is also said of the Word inthe opening of St. John's Gospel and First Epistle. 

Now a careful comparison of these and similar passages will make itclear that the sequence presented to us is as follows: The "Word" is thepassing of the Verb Substantive of Being into Action. It is always thesame in Principle, on whatever scale, and therefore applies to ourselvesalso, so that each one of us is a "Word of God. " We are this by the veryessence of our being, and that is why the first thing we are told aboutMan is, that he is made in the image and likeness of God. But how farany of us will become a really effective "Word, " depends upon ouracceptance of the New Name which is ready to be bestowed upon each one. "To as many as _receive_ him, to them gives he power to become Sons ofGod, even to them that believe on his Name" (John 1-12). We get the NewName by realizing the Truth, which Truth is that we ourselves areincluded in THE NAME, and that name is called "The Word of God. "

The meaning of which becomes clear if we remember that the spiritualname of anything is its "Noumenon" or essential being, which ismanifested through its "Phenomenon" or outward reproduction in Form; sothat the true order is first our "Name" or essential Being, then our"Word" or active manifestation of this essential Being, then the "Truth"or the unchangeable Law of Being passing into Manifestation--and thesethree are ONE. Then when we see that this is true of ourselves, notbecause of some arbitrary favouritism making us exceptions to the humanrace, but because it is the working on the plane of Human Individualityof the same Power and the same Law by which the world has come intoexistence, we can see that we have here a Principle which we can trustto work as infallibly as the principle of Mathematics; and thattherefore the desire to become something more than we now are is nothingelse than the Eternal Spirit of Life seeking ever fuller expression. 

The correction which our mode of thinking needs therefore is to startwith Being, not with Having, and we may then trust the Having to comealong in its right order; and if we can get into this new manner ofthinking, what a world of worry it will save us! If we realize that theLaw flows from the Word, and not vice versa, then the Law of attractionmust work in this manner, and will bring to us all those conditionsthrough which we shall be able to express the more expanded Beingtowards which we are directing our Word; and as a consequence, we shallhave no need to trouble about forcing particular conditions intoexistence--they will grow spontaneously out of the seed we have planted. All we have to do now, or at any time, is to take the conditions thatare ready to hand and use them on the lines of the sort of "being"towards which we are directing our Thought--use them just as far as theygo at the time, without trying to press them further--and we shall findby experience that out of the present conditions thus used to-day, morefavourable conditions will grow in a perfectly natural manner to-morrow, and so on, day by day, until, when later on we look back, we shall besurprised to find ourselves expressing all, and more than all, the sortof "_being_" we had thought of. Then, from this new standpoint of ourbeing, we shall continue to go on in the same way, and so on _adinfinitum_, so that our life will become one endless progress, everwidening as we go on. And this will be found a very quiet and peacefulway, free from worry and anxiety, and wonderfully effective. It may leadyou to some position of authority or celebrity; but as such thingsbelong to the category of "Having" and not of "Being" they were not whatyou aimed at, and are only by-products of what you have become inyourself. They are conditions, and like all other conditions should bemade use of for the development of still more expanded "being"; that isto say, you will go on working on the more extended scale which such aposition makes possible to you. But the one thing you would not try todo with it would be to "boss the show. " The moment you do this you areno longer using the Word of the larger Personality, and have descendedto your old level of the smaller personality, just John Smith or MaryJones, ignorant of yourselves as being anything greater. It is true yourWord still directs the operation of the Law towards yourself--it alwaysdoes this--but your word has become inverted, and so calls intooperation the Law of Contraction instead of the Law of Expansion. Ahigher position means a wider field for usefulness--that is all; and tothe extent to which you fit yourself for it, it will come to you. So, ifyou content yourself with always speaking in your Thought the CreativeWord of "Being" from day to day, you will find it the Way of Peace andthe Secret of a Happy Life--by no means monotonous, for all sorts ofunexpected interests will be continually opening out to you, giving youscope for all the activities of which your present degree of "being"renders you capable. You will always find plenty to do, and findpleasure in doing it, so you need never be afraid of feeling dull. 

But perhaps you will say:

"How am I to know that I am not speaking my own Word instead of that ofthe Creative Spirit?"

Well, the word of the smaller personality is always based on the idea ofpossessing, and the Word of the Spirit is always based on the idea ofBecoming--that is the criterion. And also, if we base our speaking ofthe Word on the Promises of Spirit, we may be sure that we are on theright track. 

We may be sure of it, because when we come to analyze these promises weshall find that they are all statements of the Creative Law of Being, and the nature of this Law is obvious from the facts of the VisibleCreation. 

These things are not true because they are written in the Bible, but theBible is true because these things are written in it. The more weexamine the Bible Promises, the more they will impress themselves uponus as being Promises according to Law; and since the Law can never bebroken, we can feel quite secure of it, subject to the one conditionthat we do not stop the Law from working to the fulfilment of thePromise, by our own inverted use of the Word. But if we take the _Wordof the Promise_ and make it our own Word, then we know that we arespeaking the right Word, which will so specialize the action of the Law, as to produce the fulfilment of the Promise. Apart from the Word thereis no Foundation. In all other systems we have either Law without Will, or Will without Law. 

Then we know that we are not speaking of ourselves, but are speaking theWord of the Power that sent us into the World. The Law alone cannotfulfil the Promises. It is in itself Cosmic and Impersonal, and, asevery scientific discovery amply demonstrates, it needs the co-operationof the Personal Factor to bring out its latent possibilities; so thatthe Word is as necessary as the Law for the fulfilment of the Promises;but if the Word which we speak is that of the Creating Spirit, we mayreckon it as being just as certain in its operation as the Law, and thetwo together form an infallible Power. 

But there is one thing we must not forget, and this is the Law ofGrowth. If the Law which we plant is the seed, then we must allow timefor it to grow; we must leave it alone and go about our business asusual, and the seed we have sown will spring and grow up of itself, weknow not how, a truth which we have been told by the Master himself(Mark iv, 26, 29). 

We must not be like children who plant a seed one day, and dig it up thenext to see whether it is growing. Our part is to plant the seed, not tomake it grow, --the Creative Law of Life will do that. It is for thisreason that the Bible gives us such injunctions as "Study to be quiet"(1 Thess. Iv, 11). "He that believeth shall not make haste" (Is. Xxviii, 16). "In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength"(Is. Xxx, 15). To make ourselves anxious as to whether the Word we haveplanted will fructify is just to dig it up again, and then of course itwill not grow. 

The fundamental maxim, then, which we must always keep in mind is that"Every creation carries its own Mathematics along with it, " and thattherefore "The Law flows from the Word, and not _vice versa_;" andconsequently "_The Word is the Foundation of every creative series_, "whether that series be great or small, cosmic or individual, constructive or destructive. Every series commences with Intention; andremember the exact meaning of the Word. It is from the two Latin words"in, " towards, and "tendere, " to stretch, and it therefore means a"reaching out in a certain direction. " This "reaching out in a certaindirection" is the Conception of ourself as arrived at the destinationtowards which our Thought tends, and is therefore _the conceiving of anidea_, and our formulated idea is stated, if only mentally, inWords--and the termination of the series is the realization of the ideain actual fact. Therefore it is equally true of every series, whether itbe the creation of a lady's blouse or the creation of a world, that "inthe Beginning is the Word"--the Word is _the Point of Origination_. 

Then, since the Word is the Point of Origination, what is our conceptionof the best thing we can originate with it? There is a great variety ofopinion as to what is desirable; and it is only natural and right thatit should be so, for otherwise we should be without any individuality, which means that we should have no real life in us--in fact such a worldis unthinkable; it would be a world that had ceased to move, it would bea dead world. So it is the varied conception of "the Good" that makesthe world go on. Uniformity means reducing things to one dead level. Buton the other hand there must be Unity--unity of action resulting fromunity of purpose, otherwise the world logically terminates ininternecine strife. If then the world is to go on, it can only be bymeans of Unity expressing itself in Variety, and therefore the questionis: What is the _unifying Desire_ which underlies all the varieties ofexpression? It is a very simple one--it is just to ENJOY LIVING. Ourideas of an enjoyable life may be very various, but that is what we allreally want; so what we want to get at is: What is the basis of anenjoyable life?

I have no hesitation in saying that the secret of enjoying life is _totake an interest in it_. The opposite of Livingness is Deadness, thatis, inertia and stagnation. Dying of "ennui" is a very real thingindeed, and if we would not die of this malady we must have an interestin life that will always keep going on. 

Now for anything to interest us we must enter into the spirit of it. Ifwe do not enter into the spirit of a game it does not interest us; if wedo not enter into the spirit of a book, it does not interest us, we arebored to death with it; and so on with everything. So from our ownexperience we may lay down the maxim that "To enjoy anything we mustenter into the spirit of it, " and if this be so, then, to enjoy the"Living Quality of Life" we must enter into the Spirit of Life itself. Isay the "Living Quality of Life" so as to dissociate it from all ideasof particular conditions; because what we are trying to get at is thefundamental principle of Life which creates conditions, and not thereflex of sensations, whether physical or mental, which any particularset of conditions may induce in us for the time being. In this way wecome back to the initial proposition with which we started--that theorigin of everything is only to be found in a Universal Ever-LivingSpirit, and that our own life proceeds from this Spirit in accordancewith the maxim "Omne vivum ex vivo. " Thus we are logically brought tothe conclusion that the ultimate Desire of all Humanity is toconsciously enter into the Spirit of Life as it is _in itself_, antecedently to all conditions. This is the widest of allgeneralizations, and so opens the door to the highest of allspecializations; for it is a scientific fact that the more widely we cangeneralize the principle of any Law, the more highly we can specializeits working. It is only as our conception of it is limited that any Lawlimits us. 

A principle _per se_ is always undifferentiated, and capable of any sortof differentiation into particular modes of expression that are not inopposition to the principle itself; and it is true of the Principle ofLife as of all others. There is therefore no limit to its expressionexcept that which inverts it, --that is to say, anything which tendstowards Death; and, accordingly, what we have to avoid is the negativemode of Thought, which starts an inverted action of the Law, logicallyresulting in destructiveness instead of constructiveness. But themistake we make from not seeing the basic principle of the whole thing, is that of looking to the conditions to form the Life, instead oflooking to the Life to form the conditions; and therefore what werequire is a _Standard of Measurement_ for our Thought, by which weshall be able to form _The Perfect Word_ which will set in motion theLaw of Cause and Effect in such a manner as to fulfil that _Basic Desireof Life_ which is common to all Humanity. The Perfect Word musttherefore fulfil two Conditions--it must have the essential Quality ofthe Undifferentiated Eternal Life, and it must have the essentialQuality of "Genus Homo. " It must say with Horace "Homo sum; nihil humanimihi alienum puto" (I am Man; I regard nothing human as alien tomyself). When we think it out carefully, there is no escaping theconclusion that this must be the essential Quality of the Perfect Wordwe are in search of. It is the final logical inference from all that wehave learnt regarding the interaction between Law and Personality, thatthe Perfect Word must combine in itself the Quality of each--it must beat once both Human and Divine. 

Of course all my readers know where the description of such a Word is tobe found; but what I want them to realize is the way in which we havenow reached a similar description of the Perfect Word. We have notaccepted it unquestioningly as the teaching of a scholastic theology, but have arrived at it by a course of careful reasoning from the factsof physical Nature and from our experience of our own mental powers. This way of getting at it makes it really our own. We know what we meanby it, and it is no longer a mere traditional form of words. It is thesame with everything else; nothing becomes our own by being just toldabout it. 

For instance, if I show an artist a picture, and he tells me that a boatin it is half a mile away from the spectators, I may accept this on hisauthority, because I suppose he knows all about it. But if next day afriend shows me a picture of a bit of coast with a fishing-boat in thedistance, and asks me how far off that boat is, I am utterly stumpedbecause I do not know how the artist was able to judge the distance. But if I understand the principle, I give my friend a very fairapproximation of the distance of the boat. I work it out like this. Isay:--the immediate foreground of the picture shows an amount of detailwhich could not be seen more than twenty yards away, and the averagesize of such details in nature shows that the bottom edge of the picturemust measure about ten yards across. Then from experience I know thatthe average length of craft of the particular rigging in the picture is, say, about eighty feet, and I then measure that this length goes sixteenand a half times across the picture on the level where the boat issituated, and so I know that a line across the picture at this levelmeasures 80 x 16-1/2 = 1320 ft. = 440 yards. Then I make thecalculation: 10 yds. : 440 yds. :: 20 yds. : the distance required to beascertained 440 x 20 / 10 = 880 yds. 1760 yds. = 1 mile and 1760 / 2 =880 yds. Therefore I know that the boat in the picture is represented asbeing about half a mile from the spectator. I really know the distanceand do not merely guess it, and I know _how_ I know it. I know it simplyfrom the geometrical principle that with a given angle at the apex of atriangle the length of a perpendicular dropped from the apex to the baseof the triangle will always bear the same ratio to the length of thebase, whatever the size of the triangle may be. In this way I know thedistance of the boat in the picture by combining mathematics and my ownobservation of facts--once again to co-operation of Law and Personality. Now a familiar instance like this shows the difference between beingtold a thing and really knowing it, and it is by an analogous methodthat we have now arrived at the conclusion that the Perfect Word is acombination of the Human and the Divine. We have definite reasons forseeing this as the ultimate fact of human development--the power to giveexpression to the Perfect Word--, and that this follows naturally fromthe fact of our own existence and that of some originating source fromwhich we derive it. 

But perhaps the reader will say: How can a Word take form as a Person?Well, words which do not eventually take form as facts only evaporateinto thin air, and we cannot conceive the Divine Ideals of Man doingthis. Therefore the expression of the Perfect Word on the plane ofHumanity must take substance in the Form of Humanity. It is not themanifestation of any limited personality with all his or heridiosyncrasies, but the manifestation of the basic principle of Humanityitself common to us all. 

To quote Dryden's words--but in a very different sense to that intendedin "Absolom and Achitophel, "--such a one must be "Not one, but allMankind's epitome. " The manifestation must be the Perfect Expression ofthat fundamental Life which is the Root Desire in us all, and which istherefore called "The Desire of all nations. "

Here then we have reached (Haggai ii, 7) the foundation fact of HumanPersonality. It is the Eternal "Will-to-live, " as Schopenhauer calls it, which works subconsciously in all creation; therefore it is the rootfrom which all creation springs. In the atom it becomes atomic energy, in the plant it becomes vegetable life, in the animal it becomes animallife, and in man it becomes personal life, and therefore, if a PerfectStandard of the Eternal Life is to be set before us, it must be in termsof Human Personality. 

But some one will say: Why should we need such a Standard? The answeris that since the working of the Law towards each of us is determined byour mode of Thought, we require to be guarded against an inverted use ofthe Word. "Ignorantia Legis nemini excusat" (ignorance of the Law doesnot excuse you from its operation), is a scientific, as well as aforensic maxim, for the Law of Cause and Effect can never be altered. Our ignorance of the laws of electricity will not prevent us from beingelectrocuted if we get into the circuit of some powerful voltage. 

Therefore, because the Law is _Impersonal_ and knows no exceptions, andwill bring us either Life or Death according to the direction which wegive it by our Word, it is of the first importance for us to have aStandard by which to measure the Word expressed through our ownPersonality. This is why St. Paul speaks of our growing to "the measureof the stature of the fulness of Christ, " (Eph. Iv, 13) and why we findthe symbol of "Measurement" so frequently employed in the Bible. 

Therefore, if a great scale of measurement for our Word is to beexhibited, it can only be by its presentation in human form. 

Then if the purpose be to establish such a standard of measurement, thescale must be expressed in units of the same denomination as that of ourown nature--you cannot divide miles by ampčres--and it is because thescale of our potential being is laid out in the same denomination asthat of the Spirit of Life itself that we can avail ourselves of thestandard of "the Word made Flesh. "

When this is clearly seen it removes those intellectual difficultieswhich so many feel with regard to the doctrine of the Atonement. If wewant to avail ourselves of the Bible Promises on the basis of the Bibleteaching, we cannot throw the teaching overboard. As I have said before, if a doctrine is to be rightly interpreted, it must be interpreted as awhole, and in one form or another the doctrine of the Atonement is thepivot point of the whole Bible. To omit it is like trying to play"Hamlet" with Hamlet left out, and you may put your Bible out on therubbish-heap. How, then, does the Atonement come in?

Here are the usual intellectual difficulties. To whom is the sacrificeoffered? To God or to the Devil? If it be to the Devil, then the Devilis a greater power than God. If it be to God, then how can a God whodemands a sacrifice of blood be Love? And in either case how can guiltbe transferred from one person to the other?

Now as a matter of fact none of these questions arise. They are besidethe real point at issue, which is: How can we so combine the Personalaction of the Word with the Impersonal action of the Law, as to make theLaw become to us the Law of Life instead of the Law of Death (Rom. Viii, 2)?

Let us recur to the principles which we have worked out. The Law flowsfrom the Word and not _vice versa_--it acts for good or ill according tothe Quality of the Word which calls it into action. Therefore to get theLaw of Life we must speak the Word of Life. Then, on the principle of"Omne vivum ex vivo, " the Word of Fundamental Basic Life, which is notsubject to conditions because it is antecedent to all conditions, canonly be spoken through consciousness of participating in the EternalLife which is the "fons et origo" of all particular being. Therefore, tobe able to speak this Word we must have a foundation of assurance thatwe are in no way separated from the Eternal Life, and since thisfoundation is required for all men, it must be broad enough toaccommodate all grades of perceptions. 

Theologically the separation from the Eternal Life is said to be causedby "Sin. " But what do we mean by "Sin"?

We can only judge of what a thing _is_ by what it _does_; and so, if"Sin" is that which prevents the inflowing of the Eternal Life, which weknow is the root of our individual being, then it must be thetransgression of the inherent Law of our own Being. The truth is that welive simultaneously in two worlds, the visible and the invisible, justas trees draw their life from the earth beneath and from the air andlight above, and the transgression consists in limiting ourselves onlyto the lower world, and thereby cutting ourselves off from the essentialpart of our own life, that which _really lives_. 

We do not realize the true function of the three lower principles of ournature, viz. : Vital Spirit, etheric body, and outward form; the functionof which is to give concentration to the current of spiritual lifeflowing from the Eternal Spirit, and thus enable the undifferentiatedLife to differentiate itself into Individual Consciousness, which willbe able to specialize the action of the Law into higher manifestationsthan it can produce without the co-operation of Personality. 

On the analogy of Ohm's Law our error is making our "_R_" so rigid thatit ceases to be a conductor, and so no current is delivered and no workdone. This is the true nature of sin, and it is this opposition of our_R_ to E. M. F. Or Eternal Motive Force that has to be removed. We have torealize the true function of our R, as the channel through which theE. M. F. Is enabled to carry on its work. When we awake to the fact thatour true place in the Order of the Universe is to be fellow-workers withGod in carrying on the work of Creation, then we see that hitherto wehave entirely missed the purpose of our calling, and have misused theDivine image in which we were created; and therefore we want anassurance that our past errors will not stand in the way of our futureadvance into continually fuller participation in the Divine CreativeWork, which, in virtue of our true nature should be our rightfulinheritance. 

That our future destiny is to actually take an individual part, howeversmall, in guiding the great work of Evolution, may not be evident to usin the earlier stages of our awakening; but what is clear as a matterof feeling, but not yet intellectually, is, that in some way or other wehave been cutting ourselves off from the Great Source of Light, and thatwhat we therefore want, is to be re-united to it. What is wanted, then, is something which will give us a firm ground of assurance that we _are_re-united to it, and that that something must be of such a nature asnever to lose anything of its efficiency at any stage of ourprogress--it must cover the whole ground. 

Now, if we think deeply upon this question, we shall gradually come tosee that this expansive quality is to be found in the doctrine of theAtonement. It meets all the needs of our spiritual nature in a way thatno other theory does, and responds to every stage of our progress. Thereis only one thing that will prevent it working, and that is, saying thatwe have no need of it. That is why St. John said, that if we say we haveno sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 John i, 8). But the more we come into the light of Truth, and realize that sin iseverything that is not in accordance with the Law of our own essentialbeing as related to the Eternal Life, the more we shall see, not onlythat we have transgressed the Law in the past, but also that even nowwe are very far from completely fulfiling it; and the more light we getthe more clearly we shall see this to be the case. Therefore, whatevermay be the stage of our mental development, the assurance which we allneed for the basis of our new life is that of the removal of sin--thesins of the past, and the daily errors of the present. We may formvarious theories, each to our own satisfaction, as to _how_ this takesplace. For instance we may argue that, since "the Word" is theundifferentiated potential of Humanity, every human soul is included inthe Self-offering of Christ, and that in Him we ourselves suffered onthe Cross. Or we may say that our confession that such an offering isneeded amounts to our participation in it. Or we may say with St. Paulthat, as in Adam all are sinners, so in Christ all are made free fromsin (1 Cor. Xv, 22). That is, taking Adam and Christ as therepresentatives of two orders of men. Or we may fall back on thestatement "Sacrifice and burnt offerings Thou wouldst not" (Ps. Xl, 6), and on Jesus' own explanation of his death, that He offered himself intestimony to the Truth--that is, that the Eternal Life will no moreexercise a retrospective vengeance upon us for our past misunderstandingof It, than would electricity or any other force. We may explain the_modus operandi_ of the great offering in any of these ways, for theScripture presents it in all of them--but the great thing is to acceptit; for by the nature of our mental constitution, such an acceptance, whether with or without an intellectual explanation, affords theassurance which we stand in need of; and building upon the Foundation wecan safely rear the edifice of our future development. 

Also it affords us a continual safeguard in all the further stages ofour evolution. As our psychic consciousness increases, we become moreand more responsive to psychic stimulus whether that stimulus proceedfrom a good or evil influence; and therefore the recognition of ourRedemption in Christ surrounds us with a protecting barrier, throughwhich no evil spirit or malign influence can pass; so that, resting uponthis Truth, we need never be in fear of any such invasion, but shall atall times be clothed with the whole armour of God (Eph. Vi, 11). 

From whatever point of view we regard it, we therefore find in the OneOffering once made for the sin of the whole world, a standpoint such asis provided by no other teaching, whether religious or philosophical;and we shall see on examination that it is not an arbitrary decree forwhich we can give no account, but that it is based on the psychologicalconstitution of man--a provision so perfectly adapted to ourrequirements at every stage of our evolution, that we can only attributeit to the Divine Wisdom acting through One, who by Perfect Love, thuswillingly offered himself, in order to provide the Foundation ofcomplete assurance for all who recognize their need of it. 

On this basis, then, of reunion with the Eternal Source of Life, all thePromises of the Bible are found to be according to Law--that is, according to the inherent Law of our Being; so that, in the laying ofthis Foundation, we find the supreme manifestation of the interactionbetween the Law and the Word, which, when its significance isapprehended, opens out vistas of limitless possibilities to theindividual and to the race. 

But the race, as a whole, is yet very far from apprehending this, andfor the most part has no perception of spiritual causation. Where somedim perception of spiritual causation is beginning to emerge, it is veryfrequently inverted, because people only apprehend it as giving them anadditional power of exercising compulsion over their fellow-men, andthus depriving them of that individuality which it is the one purpose ofEvolution to develop. This is because people do not look beyond thethree lower principles of life, those principles which animals have incommon with man; and consequently the higher principle of mind, whichdistinguishes man, is brought down to the lower level, so that the manis distinguished from the beast only by the possession of intellectualfaculties, which by their perversion make him not merely a beast, but adevil of a beast. Therefore the recognition of psychic powers, when notsafeguarded by the higher principles of Truth, plunges man even deeperinto darkness than does a simple materialism; and so the two go hand inhand on the downward path. There is abundant evidence that this isincreasingly the case at the present day; and therefore it is that theBible Promises culminate in the Promise of the return of Him who offeredhimself in order to lay the foundation of Peace. As I have said before, we must either take the Bible as a whole, or reject it entirely. Wecannot pick and choose what pleases us, and refuse what does not. Nolegal document could be treated in this way; and in like manner theBible is one great whole, or else it is just--"skittles. "

Therefore, if that Divine "Word" was manifested to save the world fromdestruction, by opening the way for the _individual_ through recognitionof his true relation to God, then it is only a reasonable carrying outof the same thought that, when the bulk of mankind fail to realize thebeneficent use of these powers, and persist in using them invertedly, the same Being should again appear to save the race from utterself-destruction, but not by the same method, for that would beimpossible. 

The individual method is that of individual self-recognition in thelight of Truth; but that cannot be _forced_ upon any one. The headlongdownward career of the race as a whole cannot therefore be stopped _viet armis_, and this can only be done by first letting it have a bitterexperience of what intellect, depraved to the service of the Beast inMan, leads to, and then forcibly restraining those who persist in thismadness. Therefore a Second Coming of the Divine Man is a logicalsequence to the first, and equally logical, this Second Coming must beas One who will rule the nations with irresistible power; so that men, reflecting upon the evils of the past, and enquiring into their cause, may be led to see that cause in the inverted action of the Law of theirown being, and may therefore learn so to renew their thoughts inaccordance with the Divine Thought as to bring them into the gloriousliberty of the Sons of God. 

This, then, is the Promise we have to look forward to at the presentday, and though it might not be wise to speculate as to the precise timeand manner of its fulfilment, there can be no doubt as to the nature ofthe general principles involved; and I trust the reader has at leastlearned from this book that principles unfold themselves with unfailingaccuracy, though it depends on our Word, or mental attitude, in what waytheir unfoldment will affect us personally. 

For such reasons as these, it appears to me, that the current objectionsto the doctrine of Atonement are entirely beside the mark. They miss thewhole point of the thing. Punishment for Sin? Of course there ispunishment for sin so long as it is persisted in. It is the naturalworking of the Law of Cause and Effect. Forgiveness of sin? Of coursethere is forgiveness of sin as soon as, through knowledge, we make aright use of the Law of our own Being. It could not be otherwise. It isthe natural working of the Law of Cause and Effect. 

"This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saiththe Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds willI write them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more"(Heb. X, 16); and similarly in Jer. Xxxi, 32, from which the writer ofthe Epistles to the Hebrews quotes this. "Now the Lord is the Spirit" (2Cor. Iii, 17, R. V. ), i. E. , the Originating Spirit of life, and therefore"my laws" means the inherent Law of the Originating Principle of Being, so that here we have a plain statement that the realization of the TrueLaw of our Being _ipso facto_ results in the cancelling of all our pasterrors. When once we see the principle of it the whole sequence becomesperfectly plain. 

There is nothing arbitrary in all this. It results naturally from a Newmode of Thought producing a New order of Consciousness; and it iswritten that "if any man be in Christ he is a new creature" or, as itsays in the margin, "a new creation" (2 Cor. V, 17), and on theprinciple that "every Creation carries its own mathematics with it, "every such man has passed from the Law of Death into the Law of Life. The full fruition may not yet be visible--we must allow for the Law ofGrowth--but the Principle is in him and has become the central, generating point of his consciousness, and is therefore bound, sooner orlater, to develop into perfect manifestation by the Law of its ownnature. If the Principle be accepted it will work all the same, whetherwe accept it by simple trust in the written Word, or whether we analyzethe grounds of our trust; just as an electric bell will ring when youpress the button, whether you are an electrical engineer or not. Butthere will be this difference, that if you _are_ an electrical engineeryou will see the principle implied in the ringing of the bell, and youwill find in it the promise of infinite possibilities which it is opento you to develope; and in like manner, the more clearly you see therelation which necessarily exists between yourself and theAll-Originating Living Spirit, the more clear it will become to you, that this relation opens up an endless vista of boundless potentialitieswhich can never be exhausted. This is the true nature of the BiblePromises; they were not made by some external Deity about whose ideas wecan never have any certainty, but by the Indwelling God, who is at oncethe Life, the Law, and the Substance of all things, and therefore theyare Promises according to Law, containing in themselves the principle oftheir own fulfilment. 

But, as I trust the reader is now convinced, the Law can fulfil thePromise which is latent in it only by the co-operation of the Word; thatis, the Personal Factor which provides the necessary conditions for theLaw to work under; and therefore, if the Promise is to be fulfilled, wemust meet the All-originating Life, the "Premium mobile, " not only onthe Plane of Law, but on the Plane of Personality also. This becomesevident if we consider that this Originating Life must be _entirelyundifferentiated_ in Itself; for otherwise it could not be the origin ofall differentiated modes of Life and Energy. As long as we finddifferentiation, on however wide a scale, we have not arrived at FirstCause. There will still be something further back, out of which thedifferentiations have proceeded; and it is this "Something" which is atthe back of "Everything" that we are in search of. Therefore theOriginating Spirit must be _absolutely undifferentiated_, andconsequently the Personal Factor in ourselves must be thedifferentiation into individuality of a Quality eternally subsisting inthe All-Originating Undifferentiated Spirit. 

Then, since our individual differentiation of this Quality must dependon the mode of our recognition of it, it follows that a Standard ofMeasurement is needed, and the Standard is presented to us in the formof the Personality around whom the whole Bible centres, and who, as theStandard of the Divine Infinitude differentiating Himself into units ofindividual personality, can only be described as at once The Son of Godand The Son of Man. If we see that the Eternal Life, by reason of itsnon-differentiation in itself, must needs become to each of us _exactlywhat we take it to be_, then it follows that in order to realize it onour own plane of Personality we must see it _through the medium ofPersonality_, and it is therefore not a theological figment, but theSupreme Psychological Truth that no man can come to "the Father"--thatis, to the Parent Spirit--except through the Son (John xiv, 6). 

When we see the reason at the back of it, the Bible becomes a New Bookto us, and we learn that the interpretation of it is not to be found inlearned commentaries, but in ourselves. Then we find that it is indeedThe Book of Promises, not vague and uncertain, but logical andscientific, teaching us how to combine the instrumentality of the Lawwith the freedom of the Word; so that through the Perfect Word, manifested as the Perfect Man, we reach the Perfect Law, and find thatTHE PERFECT LAW IS THE LAW OF LIBERTY. 

THE END

FOOTNOTES:

[1] For various reasons I am not giving the actual names of places andpersons in this story. 

[2] "Out of Egypt" by Miss Crouse. Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 

[3] R. W. Allen. 

[4] See Chapters on "Body, Soul, and Spirit" in my "Edinburgh Lectureson Mental Science. "

[5] See "Edinburgh Lectures. "

[6] "New Knowledge. "