Do not think of this, that, or the other particular circumstances of health, peace, etc., but of health, peace, and prosperity themselves. Here is an advertisement from Pearson's Weekly:—"Think money. Big moneymakers think money." This is a perfectly sound statement of the power of thought, although it is only an advertisement; but we may make an advance beyond thinking "money." We can think "Life" in all its fulness, together with that perfect harmony of conditions which includes all that we need of money and a thousand other good things besides, for some of which money stands as the symbol of exchangeable value, while others cannot be estimated by so material a standard.

Therefore think Life, illumination, harmony, prosperity, happiness—think the things rather than this or that condition of them. And then by the sure operation of the Universal Law these things will form themselves into the shapes best suited to your particular case, and will enter your life as active, living forces, which will never depart from you because you know them to be part and parcel of your own being.



V

SUBMISSION

There are two kinds of submission: submission to superior force and submission to superior truth. The one is weakness and the other is strength. It is an exceedingly important part of our training to learn to distinguish between these two, and the more so because the wrong kind is extolled by nearly all schools of popular religious teaching at the present day as constituting the highest degree of human attainment. By some this is pressed so far as to make it an instrument of actual oppression, and with all it is a source of weakness and a bar to progress. We are forbidden to question what are called the wise dispensations of Providence and are told that pain and sorrow are to be accepted because they are the will of God; and there is much eloquent speaking and writing concerning the beauty of quiet resignation, all of which appeals to a certain class of gentle minds who have not yet learnt that gentleness does not consist in the absence of power but in the kindly and beneficent use of it.

Minds cast in this mould are peculiarly apt to be misled. They perceive a certain beauty in the picture of weakness leaning upon strength, but they attribute its soothing influence to the wrong element of the combination. A thoughtful analysis would show them that their feelings consisted of pity for the weak figure and admiration for the strong one, and that the suggestiveness of the whole arose from its satisfying the artistic sense of balance which requires a compensation of this sort. But which of the two figures in the picture would they themselves prefer to be? Surely not the weak one needing help, but the strong one giving it. By itself the weak figure only stirs our pity and not our admiration. Its form may be beautiful, but its very beauty only serves to enhance the sense of something wanting—and the something wanting is strength. The attraction which the doctrine of passive resignation possesses for certain minds is based upon an appeal to sentiment, which is accepted without any suspicion that the sentiment appealed to is a false one.

Now the healthful influence of the movement known as "The Higher Thought" consists precisely in this—that it sets itself rigorously to combat this debilitating doctrine of submission. It can see as well as others the beauty of weakness leaning upon strength; but it sees that the real source of the beauty lies in the strong element of the combination. The true beauty consists in the power to confer strength, and this power is not to be acquired by submission, but by the exactly opposite method of continually asserting our determination not to submit.

Of course, if we take it for granted that all the sorrow, sickness, pain, trouble, and other adversity in the world is the expression of the will of God, then doubtless we must resign ourselves to the inevitable with all the submission we can command, and comfort ourselves with the vague hope that somehow in some far-off future we shall find that

"Good is the final goal of ill,"

though even this vague hope is a protest against the very submission we are endeavouring to exercise. But to make the assumption that the evil of life is the will of God is to assume what a careful and intelligent study of the laws of the universe, both mental and physical, will show us is not the truth; and if we turn to that Book which contains the fullest delineation of these universal laws, we shall find nothing taught more clearly than that submission to the evils of life is not submission to the will of God. We are told that Christ was manifested for this end, that he should destroy him that hath the power of death—that is, the devil. Now death is the very culmination of the Negative. It is the entire absence of all that makes Life, and whatever goes to diminish the living quality of Life reproduces, in its degree, the distinctive quality of this supreme exhibition of the Negative. Everything that tends to detract from the fulness of life has in it this deathful quality.

In that completely renovated life, which is figured under the emblem of the New Jerusalem, we are told that sorrow and sighing shall flee away, and that the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick. Nothing that obscures life, or restricts it, can proceed from the same source as the Power which gives light to them that sit in darkness, and deliverance to them that are bound. Negation can never be Affirmation; and the error we have always to guard against is that of attributing positive power to the Negative. If we once grasp the truth that God is life, and that life in every mode of expression can never be anything else than Affirmative, then it must become clear to us that nothing which is of the opposite tendency can be according to the will of God. For God (the good) to will any of the "evil" that is in the world would be for Life to act with the purpose of diminishing itself, which is a contradiction in terms to the very idea of Life. God is Life, and Life is, by its very nature, Affirmative. The submission we have hitherto made has been to our own weakness, ignorance, and fear, and not to the supreme good.

But is no such thing as submission, then, required of us under any circumstances? Are we always to have our own way in everything? Assuredly the whole secret of our progress to liberty is involved in acquiring the habit of submission; but it is submission to superior Truth, and not to superior force. It sometimes happens that, when we attain a higher Truth, we find that its reception requires us to re-arrange the truths which we possessed before: not, indeed, to lay any of them aside, for Truth once recognised cannot be again put out of sight, but to recognise a different relative proportion between them from that which we had seen previously. Then there comes a submitting of what has hitherto been our highest truth to one which we recognise as still higher, a process not always easy of attainment, but which must be gone through if our spiritual development is not to be arrested. The lesser degree of life must be swallowed up in the greater; and for this purpose it is necessary for us to learn that the smaller degree was only a partial and limited aspect of that which is more universal, stronger, and of a larger build every way.

Now, in going through the processes of spiritual growth, there is ample scope for that training in self-knowledge and self-control which is commonly understood by the word "submission." But the character of the act is materially altered. It is no longer a half-despairing resignation to a superior force external to ourselves, which we can only vaguely hope is acting kindly and wisely, but it is an intelligent recognition of the true nature of our own interior forces and of the laws by which a robust spiritual constitution is to be developed; and the submission is no longer to limitations which drain life of its livingness, and against which we instinctively rebel, but to the law of our own evolution which manifests itself in continually increasing degrees of life and strength.

The submission which we recognise is the price that has to be paid for increase in any direction. Even in the Money Market we must invest before we can realise profits. It is a universal rule that Nature obeys us exactly in proportion as we first obey Nature; and this is as true in regard to spiritual science as to physical. The only question is whether we will yield an ignorant submission to the principle of Death, or a joyous and intelligent obedience to the principle of Life.

If we have clearly grasped the fact of our identity with Universal Spirit, we shall find that, in the right direction, there is really no such thing as submission. Submission is to the power of another—a man cannot be said to submit to himself. When the "I AM" in us recognises a greater degree of I AM-ness (if I may coin the word) than it has hitherto attained, then, by the very force of this recognition, it becomes what it sees, and therefore naturally puts off from itself whatever would limit its expression of its own completeness.

But this is a natural process of growth, and not an unnatural act of submission; it is not the pouring-out of ourselves in weakness, but the gathering of ourselves together in increasing strength. There is no weakness in Spirit, it is all strength; and we must therefore always be watchful against the insidious approaches of the Negative which would invert the true position. The Negative always points to some external source of strength. Its formula is "I AM NOT." It always seeks to fix a gulf between us and the Infinite Sufficiency. It would always have us believe that that sufficiency is not our own, but that by an act of uncertain favour we may have occasional spoonfuls of it doled out to us. Christ's teaching is different. We do not need to come with our pitcher to the well to draw water, like the woman of Samaria, but we have in ourselves an inexhaustible supply of the living water springing up into everlasting life.

Let us then inscribe "No Surrender" in bold characters upon our banner, and advance undaunted to claim our rightful heritage of liberty and life.



VI

COMPLETENESS

A point on which students of mental science often fail to lay sufficient stress is the completeness of man—not a completeness to be attained hereafter, but here and now. We have been so accustomed to have the imperfection of man drummed into us in books, sermons, and hymns, and above all in a mistaken interpretation of the Bible, that at first the idea of his completeness altogether staggers us. Yet until we see this we must remain shut out from the highest and best that mental science has to offer, from a thorough understanding of its philosophy, and from its greatest practical achievements.

To do any work successfully you must believe yourself to be a whole man in respect of it. The completed work is the outward image of a corresponding completeness in yourself. And if this is true in respect of one work it is true of all; the difference in the importance of the work does not matter; we cannot successfully attempt any work until, for some reason or other, we believe ourselves able to accomplish it; in other words, until we believe that none of the conditions for its completion is wanting in us, and that we are therefore complete in respect of it. Our recognition of our completeness is thus the measure of what we are able to do, and hence the great importance of knowing the fact of our own completeness.

But, it may be asked, do we not see imperfection all around? Is there not sorrow, sickness, and trouble? Yes; but why? Just for the very reason that we do not realise our completeness. If we realised that in its fulness these things would not be; and in the degree in which we come to realise it we shall find them steadily diminish. Now if we really grasp the two fundamental truths that Spirit is Life pure and simple, and that external things are the result of interior forces, then it ought not to be difficult to see why we should be complete; for to suppose otherwise is to suppose the reactive power of the universe to be either unable or unwilling to produce the complete expression of its own intention in the creation of man.

That it should be unable to do so would be to depose it from its place as the creative principle, and that it should be unwilling to fulfil its own intention is a contradiction in terms; so that on either supposition we come to a reductio ad absurdum. In forming man the creative principle therefore must have produced a perfect work, and our conception of ourselves as imperfect can only be the result of our own ignorance of what we really are; and our advance, therefore, does not consist in having something new added to us, but in learning to bring into action powers which already exist in us, but which we have never tried to use, and therefore have not developed, simply because we have always taken it for granted that we are by nature defective in some of the most important faculties necessary to fit us to our environment.

If we wish to attain to these great powers, the question is, where are we to seek them? And the answer is in ourselves. That is the great secret. We are not to go outside ourselves to look for power. As soon as we do so we find, not power, but weakness. To seek strength from any outside source is to make affirmation of our weakness, and all know what the natural result of such an affirmation must be.

We are complete in ourselves; and the reason why we fail to realise this is that we do not understand how far the "self" of ourselves extends. We know that the whole of anything consists of all its parts and not only of some of them; yet this is just what we do not seem to know about ourselves. We say rightly that every person is a concentration of the Universal Spirit into individual consciousness; but if so, then each individual consciousness must find the Universal Spirit to be the infinite expression of itself. It is this part of the "Self" that we so often leave out in our estimate of what we are; and consequently we look upon ourselves as crawling pygmies when we might think of ourselves as archangels. We try to work with the mere shadows of ourselves instead of with the glorious substance, and then wonder at our failures. If we only understood that our "better half" is the whole infinite of Spirit—that which creates and sustains the universe—then we should know how complete our completeness is.

As we approach this conception, our completeness becomes a reality to us, and we find that we need not go outside ourselves for anything. We have only to draw on that part of ourselves which is infinite to carry out any intention we may form in our individual consciousness; for there is no barrier between the two parts, otherwise they would not be a whole. Each belongs perfectly to the other, and the two are one. There is no antagonism between them, for the Infinite Life can have no interest against its individualisation of itself. If there is any feeling of tension it proceeds from our not fully realising this conception of our own wholeness; we are placing a barrier somewhere, when in truth there is none; and the tension will continue until we find out where and how we are setting up this barrier and remove it.

This feeling of tension is the feeling that we are not using our Whole Being. We are trying to make half do the work of the whole; but we cannot rid ourselves of our wholeness, and therefore the whole protests against our attempts to set one half against the other. But when we realise that our concentration out of the Infinite also implies our expansion into it, we shall see that our whole "self" includes both the concentration and the expansion; and seeing this first intellectually we shall gradually learn to use our knowledge practically and bring our whole man to bear upon whatever we take in hand. We shall find that there is in us a constant action and reaction between the infinite and the individual, like the circulation of the blood from the heart to the extremities and back again, a constant pulsation of vital energy quite natural and free from all strain and exertion.

This is the great secret of the livingness of Life, and it is called by many names and set forth under many symbols in various religions and philosophies, each of which has its value in proportion as it brings us nearer the realisation of this perfect wholeness. But the thing itself is Life, and therefore can only be suggested, but not described, by any words or symbols; it is a matter of personal experience which no one can convey to another. All we can do is to point out the direction in which this experience is to be sought, and to tell others the intellectual arguments which have helped us to find it; but the experience itself is the operation of definite vital functions of the inner being, and no one but ourselves can do our living for us.

But, so far as it is possible to express these things in words, what must be the result of realising that the "self" in us includes the Infinite as well as the Individual? All the resources of the Infinite must be at our disposal; we may draw on them as we will, and there is no limit save that imposed by the Law of Kindness, a self-imposed limitation, which, because of being self-imposed, is not bondage but only another expression of our liberty. Thus we are free and all limitations are removed.

We are also no longer ignorant, for since the "self" in us includes the Infinite we can draw thence all needed knowledge, and though we may not always be able to formulate this knowledge in the mentality, we shall feel its guidance, and eventually the mentality will learn to put this also into form of words; and thus by combining thought and experience, theory and practice, we shall by degrees come more and more into the knowledge of the Law of our Being, and find that there is no place in it for fear, because it is the law of perfect liberty. And knowing what our whole self really is, we shall walk erect as free men and women radiating Light and Life all round, so that our very presence will carry a vivifying influence with it, because we realise ourselves to be an Affirmative Whole, and not a mere negative disintegration of parts.

We know that our whole self includes that Greater Man which is back of and causes the phenomenal man, and this Greater Man is the true human principle in us. It is, therefore, universal in its sympathies, but at the same time not less individually ourself; and thus the true man in us, being at once both universal and individual, can be trusted as a sure guide. It is that "Thinker" which is behind the conscious mentality, and which, if we will accept it as our centre, and realise that it is not a separate entity but ourself, will be found equal to every occasion, and will lead us out of a condition of servitude into "the glorious liberty of the sons of God."



VII

THE PRINCIPLE OF GUIDANCE

If I were asked which of all the spiritual principles ranked first, I should feel inclined to say the Principle of Guidance; not in the sense of being more essential than the others, for every portion is equally essential to the completeness of a perfect whole, but in the sense of being first in order of sequence and giving value to all our other powers by placing them in their due relation to one another. "Giving value to our other powers," I say, because this also is one of our powers. It is that which, judged from the standpoint of personal self-consciousness, is above us; but which, realised from the point of view of the unity of all Spirit, is part and parcel of ourselves, because it is that Infinite Mind which is of necessity identified with all its manifestations.

Looking to this Infinite Mind as a Superior Intelligence from which we may receive guidance does not therefore imply looking to an external source. On the contrary, it is looking to the innermost spring of our own being, with a confidence in its action which enables us to proceed to the execution of our plans with a firmness and assurance that are in themselves the very guarantee of our success.

The action of the spiritual principles in us follows the order which we impose upon them by our thought; therefore the order of realisation will reproduce the order of desire; and if we neglect this first principle of right order and guidance, we shall find ourselves beginning to put forth other great powers, which are at present latent within us, without knowing how to find suitable employment for them—which would be a very perilous condition, for without having before us objects worthy of the powers to which we awake, we should waste them on petty purposes dictated only by the narrow range of our unilluminated intellect. Therefore the ancient wisdom says, "With all thy getting, get understanding."

The awakening to consciousness of our mysterious interior powers will sooner or later take place, and will result in our using them whether we understand the law of their development or not, just as we already use our physical faculties whether we understand their laws or not. The interior powers are natural powers as much as the exterior ones. We can direct their use by a knowledge of their laws; and it is therefore of the highest importance to have some sound principle of guidance in the use of these higher faculties as they begin to manifest themselves.

If, therefore, we would safely and profitably enter upon the possession of the great inheritance of power that is opening out before us, we must before all things seek to realise in ourselves that Superior Intelligence which will become an unfailing principle of guidance if we will only recognise it as such. Everything depends on our recognition. Thoughts are things, and therefore as we will our thoughts to be so we will the thing to be. If, then, we will to use the Infinite Spirit as a spirit of guidance, we shall find that the fact is as we have willed it; and in doing this we are still making use of our own supreme principle. And this is the true "understanding" which, by placing all the other powers in their correct order, creates one grand unity of power directed to clearly defined and worthy aims, in place of the dispersion of our powers, by which they only neutralise each other and effect nothing.

This is that Spirit of Truth which shall guide us into all Truth. It is the sincere Desire of us reaching out after Truth. Truth first and Power afterwards is the reasonable order, which we cannot invert without injury to ourselves and others; but if we follow this order we shall always find scope for our powers in developing into present realities the continually growing glory of our vision of the ideal.

The ideal is the true real, but it must be brought into manifestation before it can be shown to be so, and it is in this that the practical nature of our mental studies consists. It is the practical mystic who is the man of power; the man who, realising the mystical powers within, fits his outward action to this knowledge, and so shows his faith by his works; and assuredly the first step is to make use of that power of infallible guidance which he can call to his aid simply by desiring to be led by it.



VIII

DESIRE AS THE MOTIVE POWER

There are certain Oriental schools of thought, together with various Western offshoots from them, which are entirely founded on the principle of annihilating all desire. Reach that point at which you have no wish for anything and you will find yourself free, is the sum and substance of their teaching; and in support of this they put forward a great deal of very specious argument, which is all the more likely to entangle the unwary, because it contains a recognition of many of the profoundest truths of Nature. But we must bear in mind that it is possible to have a very deep knowledge of psychological facts, and at the same time vitiate the results of our knowledge by an entirely wrong assumption in regard to the law which binds these facts together in the universal system; and the injurious results of misapprehension upon such a vital question are so radical and far-reaching that we cannot too forcibly urge the necessity of clearly understanding the true nature of the point at issue. Stripped of all accessories and embellishments, the question resolves itself into this: Which shall we choose for our portion, Life or Death? There can be no accommodation between the two; and whichever we select as our guiding principle must produce results of a kind proper to itself.

The whole of this momentous question turns on the place that we assign to desire in our system of thought. Is it the Tree of Life in the midst of the Garden of the Soul? or is it the Upas Tree creating a wilderness of death all around? This is the issue on which we have to form a judgment, and this judgment must colour all our conception of life and determine the entire range of our possibilities. Let us, then, try to picture to ourselves the ideal proposed by the systems to which I have alluded—a man who has succeeded in entirely annihilating all desire. To him all things must be alike. The good and the evil must be as one, for nothing has any longer the power to raise any desire in him; he has no longer any feeling which shall prompt him to say, "This is good, therefore I choose it; that is evil, therefore I reject it"; for all choice implies the perception of something more desirable in what is chosen than in what is rejected, and consequently the existence of that feeling of desire which has been entirely eliminated from the ideal we are contemplating.

Then, if the perception of all that makes one thing preferable to another has been obliterated, there can be no motive for any sort of action whatever. Endue a being who has thus extinguished his faculty of desire with the power to create a universe, and he has no motive for employing it. Endue him with all knowledge, and it will be useless to him; for, since desire has no place in him, he is without any purpose for which to turn his knowledge to account. And with Love we cannot endue him, for that is desire in its supreme degree. But if all this be excluded, what is left of the man? Nothing, except the mere outward form. If he has actually obtained this ideal, he has practically ceased to be. Nothing can by any means interest him, for there is nothing to attract or repel in one thing more than in another. He must be dead alike to all feeling and to all motive of action, for both feeling and action imply the preference for one condition rather than another; and where desire is utterly extinguished, no such preference can exist.

No doubt some one may object that it is only evil desires which are thus to be suppressed; but a perusal of the writings of the schools of thought in question will show that this is not the case. The foundation of the whole system is that all desire must be obliterated, the desire for the good just as much as the desire for the evil. The good is as much "illusion" as the evil, and until we have reached absolute indifference to both we have not attained freedom. When we have utterly crushed out all desire we are free. And the practical results of such a philosophy are shown in the case of Indian devotees, who, in pursuance of their resolve to crush out all desire, both for good and evil alike, become nothing more than outward images of men, from which all power of perception and of action have long since fled.

The mergence in the universal, at which they thus aim, becomes nothing more than a self-induced hypnotism, which, if maintained for a sufficient length of time, saps away every power of mental and bodily activity, leaving nothing but the outside husk of an attenuated human form—the hopeless wreck of what was once a living man. This is the logical result of a system which assumes for its starting-point that desire is evil in itself, that every desire is per se a form of bondage, independently of the nature of its object. The majority of the followers of this philosophy may lack sufficient resolution to carry it out rigorously to its practical conclusions; but whether their ideal is to be realised in this world or in some other, the utter extinction of desire means nothing else than absolute apathy, without feeling and without action.

How entirely false such an idea is—not only from the standpoint of our daily life, but also from that of the most transcendental conception of the Universal Principle—is evidenced by the mere fact that anything exists at all. If the highest ideal is that of utter apathy, then the Creative Power of the universe must be extremely low-minded; and all that we have hitherto been accustomed to look upon as the marvellous order and beauty of creation, is nothing but a display of vulgarity and ignorance of sound philosophy.

But the fact that creation exists proves that the Universal Mind thinks differently, and we have only to look around to see that the true ideal is the exercise of creative power. Hence, so far from desire being a thing to be annihilated, it is the very root of every conceivable mode of Life. Without it Life could not be. Every form of expression implies the selection of all that goes to make up that form, and the passing-by of whatever is not required for that purpose; hence a desire for that which is selected in preference to what is laid aside. And this selective desire is none other than the universal Law of Attraction.

Whether this law acts as the chemical affinity of apparently unconscious atoms, or in the instinctive, if unreasoned, attractions of the vegetable and animal worlds, it is still the principle of selective affinity; and it continues to be the same when it passes on into the higher kingdoms which are ruled by reason and conscious purpose. The modes of activity in each of these kingdoms are dictated by the nature of the kingdom; but the activity itself always results from the preference of a certain subject for a certain object, to the exclusion of all others; and all action consists in the reciprocal movement of the two towards each other in obedience to the law of their affinity.

When this takes place in the kingdom of conscious individuality, the affinities exhibit themselves as mental action; but the principle of selection prevails without exception throughout the universe. In the conscious mind this attraction towards its affinity becomes desire; the desire to create some condition of things better than that now existing. Our want of knowledge may cause us to make mistakes as to what this better thing really is, and so in seeking to carry out our desire we may give it a wrong direction; but the fault is not in the desire itself, but in our mistaken notion of what it is that it requires for its satisfaction. Hence unrest and dissatisfaction until its true affinity is found; but, as soon as this is discovered, the law of attraction at once asserts itself and produces that better condition, the dream of which first gave direction to our thoughts.

Thus it is eternally true that desire is the cause of all feeling and all action; in other words, of all Life. The whole livingness of Life consists in receiving or in radiating forth the vibrations produced by the law of attraction; and in the kingdom of mind these vibrations necessarily become conscious out-reachings of the mind in the direction in which it feels attraction; that is to say, they become desires. Desire is therefore the mind seeking to manifest itself in some form which as yet exists only in its thought. It is the principle of creation, whether the thing created be a world or a wooden spoon; both have their origin in the desire to bring something into existence which does not yet exist. Whatever may be the scale on which we exercise our creative ability, the motive power must always be desire.

Desire is the force behind all things; it is the moving principle of the universe and the innermost centre of all Life. Hence, to take the negation of desire for our primal principle is to endeavour to stamp out Life itself; but what we have to do is to acquire the requisite knowledge by which to guide our desires to their true objects of satisfaction. To do this is the whole end of knowledge; and any knowledge applied otherwise is only a partial knowledge, which, having failed in its purpose, is nothing but ignorance. Desire is thus the sum-total of the livingness of Life, for it is that in which all movement originates, whether on the physical level or the spiritual. In a word, desire is the creative power, and must be carefully guarded, trained, and directed accordingly; but thus to seek to develop it to the highest perfection is the very opposite of trying to kill it outright.

And desire has fulfilment for its correlative. The desire and its fulfilment are bound together as cause and effect; and when we realise the law of their sequence, we shall be more than ever impressed with the supreme importance of Desire as the great centre of Life.



IX

TOUCHING LIGHTLY

What is our point of support? Is it in ourselves or outside us? Are we self-poised, or does our balance depend on something external? According to the actual belief in which our answer to these questions is embodied so will our lives be. In everything there are two parts, the essential and the incidental—that which is the nucleus and raison d'etre of the whole thing, and that which gathers round this nucleus and takes form from it. The true knowledge always consists in distinguishing these two from each other, and error always consists in misplacing them.

In all our affairs there are two factors, ourselves and the matter to be dealt with; and since for us the nature of anything is always determined by our thought of it, it is entirely a question of our belief which of these two factors shall be the essential and which the accessory. Whichever we regard as the essential, the other at once becomes the incidental. The incidental can never be absent. For any sort of action to take place there must be some conditions under which the activity passes out into visible results; but the same sort of activity may occur under a variety of different conditions, and may thus produce very different visible results. So in every matter we shall always find an essential or energising factor, and an incidental factor which derives its quality from the nature of the energy.

We can therefore never escape from having to select our essential and our incidental factor, and whichever we select as the essential, we thereby place the other in the position of the incidental. If, then, we make the mistake of reversing the true position and suppose that the energising force comes from the merely accessory circumstances, we make them our point of support and lean upon them, and stand or fall with them accordingly; and so we come into a condition of weakness and obsequious waiting on all sorts of external influences, which is the very reverse of that strength, wisdom, and opulence which are the only meaning of Liberty.

But if we would ask ourselves the common-sense question Where can the centre of a man's Life be except in himself? we shall see that in all which pertains to us the energising centre must be in ourselves. We can never get away from ourselves as the centre of our own universe, and the sooner we clearly understand this the better. There is really no energy in our universe but what emanates from ourselves in the first instance, and the power which appears to reside in our surroundings is derived entirely from our own mind.

If once we realise this, and consider that the Life which flows into us from the Universal Life-Principle is at every moment new Life entirely undifferentiated to any particular purpose besides that of supporting our own individuality, and that it is therefore ours to externalise in any form we will, then we find that this manifestation of the eternal Life-Principle in ourselves is the standpoint from which we can control our surroundings. We must lean firmly on the central point of our own being and not on anything else. Our mistake is in taking our surroundings too much "au grand serieux." We should touch things more lightly. As soon as we feel that their weight impedes our free handling of them they are mastering us, and not we them.

Light handling does not mean weak handling. On the contrary, lightness of touch is incompatible with a weak grasp of the instrument, which implies that the weight of the tool is excessive relatively to the force that seeks to guide it. A light, even playful handling, therefore implies a firm grasp and perfect control over the instrument. It is only in the hands of a Grinling Gibbons that the carving tool can create miracles of aerial lightness from the solid wood. The light yet firm touch tells not of weakness, but of power held in reserve; and if we realise our own out-and-out spiritual nature we know that behind any measure of power we may put forth there is the whole reserve of the infinite to back us up.

As we come to know this we begin to handle things lightly, playing with them as a juggler does with his flying knives, which cannot make the slightest movement other than he has assigned to them, for we begin to see that our control over things is part of the necessary order of the universe. The disorder we have met with in the past has resulted precisely from our never having attempted consciously to introduce this element of our personal control as part of the system.

Of course, I speak of the whole man, and not merely of that part of him which Walt Whitman says is contained between his hat and his boots. The whole man is an infinitude, and the visible portion of him is the instrument through which he looks out upon and enjoys all that belongs to him, his own kingdom of the infinite. And when he learns that this is the meaning of his conscious individuality, he sees how it is that he is infinite, and finds that he is one with Infinite Mind, which is the innermost core of the universe. Having thus reached the true centre of his own being, he can never give this central place to anything else, but will realise that relatively to this all other things are in the position of the incidental and accessory, and growing, daily in this knowledge he will learn so to handle all things lightly, yet firmly, that grief, fear, and error will have less and less space in his world, until at last sorrow and sighing shall flee away, and everlasting joy shall take their place. We may have taken only a few steps on the way as yet, but they are in the right direction, and what we have to do now is to go on.



X

PRESENT TRUTH

If Thought power is good for anything it is good for everything. If it can produce one thing it can produce all things. For what is to hinder it? Nothing can stop us from thinking. We can think what we please, and if to think is to form, then we can form what we please. The whole question, therefore, resolves itself into this: Is it true that to think is to form? If so, do we not see that our limitations are formed in precisely the same way as our expansions? We think that conditions outside our thought have power over us, and so we think power into them. So the great question of life is whether there is any other creative power than Thought. If so, where is it, and what is it?

Both philosophy and religion lead us to the truth that "in the beginning" there was no other creative power than Spirit, and the only mode of activity we can possibly attribute to Spirit is Thought, and so we find Thought as the root of all things. And if this was the case "in the beginning" it must be so still; for if all things originate in Thought, all things must be modes of Thought, and so it is impossible for Spirit ever to hand over its creations to some power which is not itself—that is to say, which is not Thought-power; and consequently all the forms and circumstances that surround us are manifestations of the creative power of Thought.

But it may be objected that this is God's Thought; and that the creative power is in God and not Man. But this goes away from the self-evident axiomatic truth that "in the beginning" nothing could have had any origin except Thought. It is quite true that nothing has any origin except in the Divine Mind, and Man himself is therefore a mode of the Divine Thought. Again, Man is self-conscious; therefore Man is the Divine Thought evolved into individual consciousness, and when he becomes sufficiently enlightened to realise this as his origin, then he sees that he is a reproduction in individuality of the same spirit which produces all things, and that his own thought in individuality has exactly the same quality as the Divine Thought in universality, just as fire is equally igneous whether burning round a large centre of combustion or a small one, and thus we are logically brought to the conclusion that our thought must have creative power.

But people say, "We have not found it so. We are surrounded by all sorts of circumstances that we do not desire." Yes, you fear them, and in so doing you think them; and in this way you are constantly exercising this Divine prerogative of creation by Thought, only through ignorance you use it in a wrong direction. Therefore the Book of Divine Instructions so constantly repeats "Fear not; doubt not," because we can never divest our Thought of its inherent creative quality, and the only question is whether we shall use it ignorantly to our injury or understandingly to our benefit.

The Master summed up his teaching in the aphorism that knowledge of the Truth would make us free. Here is no announcement of anything we have to do, or of anything that has to be done for us, in order to gain our liberty, neither is it a statement of anything future. Truth is what is. He did not say, you must wait till something becomes true which is not true now. He said: "Know what is Truth now, and you will find that the Truth concerning yourself is Liberty." If the knowledge of Truth makes us free it can only be because in truth we are free already, only we do not know it.

Our liberty consists in our reproducing on the scale of the individual the same creative power of Thought which first brought the world into existence, "so that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." Let us, then, confidently claim our birthright as "sons and daughters of the Almighty," and by habitually thinking the good, the beautiful, and the true, surround ourselves with conditions corresponding to our thoughts, and by our teaching and example help others to do the same.



XI

YOURSELF

I want to talk to you about the livingness there is in being yourself. It has at least the merit of simplicity, for it must surely be easier to be oneself than to be something or somebody else. Yet that is what so many are constantly trying to do; the self that is their own is not good enough for them, and so they are always trying to go one better than what God has made them, with endless strain and struggle as the consequence. Of course, they are right to put before them an ideal infinitely grander than anything they have yet attained—the only possible way of progress is by following an ideal that is always a stage ahead of us—but the mistake is in not seeing that its attainment is a matter of growth, and that growth must be the expansion of something that already exists in us, and therefore implies our being what we are and where we are as its starting point. This growth is a continuous process, and we cannot do next month's growth without first doing this month's; but we are always wanting to jump into some ideal of the future, not seeing that we can reach it only by steadily going on from where we are now.

These considerations should make us more confident and more comfortable. We are employing a force which is much greater than we believe ourselves to be, yet it is not separate from us and needing to be persuaded or compelled, or inveigled into doing what we want; it is the substratum of our own being which is continually passing up into manifestation on the visible plane and becoming that personal self to which we often limit our attention without considering whence it proceeds. But in truth the outer self is the surface growth of that individuality which lies concealed far down in the deeps below, and which is none other than the Spirit-of-Life which underlies all forms of manifestation.

Endeavour to realise what this Spirit must be in itself—that is to say, apart from any of the conditions that arise from the various relations which necessarily establish themselves between its various forms of individualisation. In its homogeneous self what else can it be but pure life—Essence-of-Life, if you like so to call it? Then realise that as Essence-of-Life it exists in the innermost of every one of its forms of manifestation in as perfect simplicity as any we can attribute to it in our most abstract conceptions. In this light we see it to be the eternally self-generating power which, to express itself, flows into form.

This universal Essence-of-Life is a continual becoming (into form), and since we are a part of Nature we do not need to go further than ourselves to find the life-giving energy at work with all its powers. Hence all we have to do is to allow it to rise to the surface. We do not have to make it rise any more than the engineer who sinks the bore-pipe for an artesian well has to make the water rise in it; the water does that by its own energy, springing as a fountain a hundred feet into the air. Just so we shall find a fountain of Essence-of-Life ready to spring up in ourselves, inexhaustible and continually increasing in its flow, as One taught long ago to a woman at a wayside well.

This up-springing of Life-Essence is not another's—it is our own. It does not require deep studies, hard labours, weary journeyings to attain it; it is not the monopoly of this teacher or that writer, whose lectures we must attend or whose books we must read to get it. It is the innermost of ourselves, and a little common-sense thought as to how anything comes to be anything will soon convince us that the great inexhaustible life must be the very root and substance of us, permeating every fibre of our being.

Surely to be this vast infinitude of living power must be enough to satisfy all our desires, and yet this wonderful ideal is nothing else but what we already are in principio—it is all there in ourselves now, only awaiting our recognition for its manifestation. It is not the Essence-of-Life which has to grow, for that is eternally perfect in itself; but it is our recognition of it that has to grow, and this growth cannot be forced. It must come by a natural process, the first necessity of which is to abstain from all straining after being something which at the present time we cannot naturally be. The Law of our Evolution has put us in possession of certain powers and opportunities, and our further development depends on our doing just what these powers and opportunities make it possible for us to do, here and now.

If we do what we are able to do to-day, it will open the way for us to do something better to-morrow, and in this manner the growing process will proceed healthily and happily in a rapidly increasing ratio. This is so much easier than striving to compel things to be what they are not, and it is also so much more fruitful in good results. It is not sitting still doing nothing, and there is plenty of room for the exercise of all our mental faculties, but these faculties are themselves the outcome of the Essence-of-Life, and are not the creating power, but only that which gives direction to it Now it is this moving power at the back of the various faculties that is the true innermost self; and if we realise the identity between the innermost and the outermost, we shall see that we therefore have at our present disposal all that is necessary for our unlimited development in the future.

Thus our livingness consists simply in being ourselves, only more so; and in recognising this we get rid of a great burden of unnecessary straining and striving, and the place of the old sturm und drang will be taken, not by inertia, but by a joyous activity which knows that it always has the requisite power to manifest itself in forms of good and beauty. What matters it whither this leads us? If we are following the line of the beautiful and good, then we shall produce the beautiful and good, and thus bring increasing joy into the world, whatever particular form it may assume.

We limit ourselves when we try to fix accurately beforehand the particular form of good that we shall produce. We should aim not so much at having or making some particular thing as at expressing all that we are. The expressing will grow out of realising the treasures that are ours already, and contemplating the beauty, the affirmative side, of all that we are now, apart from the negative conceptions and detractions which veil this positive good from us. When we do this we shall be astonished to see what possibilities reside in ourselves as we are and with our present surroundings, all unlovely as we may deem them: and commencing to work at once upon whatever we find of affirmative in these, and withdrawing our thought from what we have hitherto seen of negative in them, the right road will open up before us, leading us in wonderful ways to the development of powers that we never suspected, and the enjoyment of happiness that we never anticipated.

We have never been out of our right path, only we have been walking in it backwards instead of forwards, and now that we have begun to follow the path in the right direction, we find that it is none other than the way of peace, the path of joy, and the road to eternal life. These things we may attain by simply living naturally with ourselves. It is because we are trying to be or do something which is not natural to us that we experience weariness and labour, where we should find all our activities joyously concentrated on objects which lead to their own accomplishment by the force of the love that we have for them. But when we make the grand discovery of how to live naturally, we shall find it to be all, and more than all, that we had ever desired, and our daily life will become a perpetual joy to ourselves, and we shall radiate light and life wherever we go.



XII

RELIGIOUS OPINIONS

That great and wise writer, George Eliot, expressed her matured views on the subject of religious opinions in these words: "I have too profound a conviction of the efficacy that lies in all sincere faith, and the spiritual blight that comes with no faith, to have any negative propagandism left in me." This had not always been her attitude, for in her youth she had had a good deal of negative propagandism in her; but the experience of a lifetime led her to form this estimate of the value of sincere faith, independently of the particular form of thought which leads to it.

Tennyson also came to the same conclusion, and gives kindly warning:—

"O thou who after toil and storm May'st seem to have reached a purer air, Whose faith has centred everywhere, Nor cares to fix itself to form. Leave thou thy sister when she prays Her early heaven, her happy views, Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse A life that leads melodious days."

And thus these two great minds have left us a lesson of wisdom which we shall do well to profit by. Let us see how it applies more particularly to our own case.

The true presentment of the Higher Thought contains no "negative propagandism." It is everywhere ranged on the side of the Affirmative, and its great object is to extirpate the canker which gnaws at the root of every life that endeavours to centre itself upon the Negative. Its purpose is constructive and not destructive. But we often find people labouring under a very erroneous impression as to the nature and scope of the movement, and thus not only themselves deterred from investigating it, but also deterring others from doing so. Sometimes this results from the subject having been presented to them unwisely—in a way needlessly repugnant to the particular form of religious ideas to which they are accustomed; but more often it results from their prejudging the whole matter, and making up their minds that the movement is opposed to their ideas of religion, without being at the pains to inquire what its principles really are. In either case a few words on the attitude of the New Thought towards the current forms of religious opinion may not be out of place.

The first consideration in every concern is, What is the object aimed at? The end determines the means to be employed, and if the nature of the end be clearly kept in view, then no objectless complications will be introduced into the means. All this seems too obvious to be stated, but it is just the failure to realise this simple truth that has given rise to the whole body of odium theologicum, with all the persecutions and massacres and martyrdoms which disgrace the pages of history, making so many of them a record of nothing but ferocity and stupidity. Let us hope for a better record in the future; and if we are to get it, it will be by the adoption of the simple principle here stated.

In our own country alone the varieties of churches and sects form a lengthy catalogue, but in every one of them the purpose is the same—to establish the individual in a satisfactory relation to the Divine Power. The very fact of any religious profession at all implies the recognition of God as the Source of life and of all that goes to make life; and therefore the purpose in every case is to draw increasing degrees of life, whether here or hereafter, from the Only Source from which alone it is to be obtained, and therefore to establish such a relation with this Source as may enable the worshipper to draw from It all the life he wants. Hence the necessary preliminary to drawing consciously at all is the confidence that such a relation actually has been established; and such a confidence as this is exactly all that is meant by Faith.

The position of the man who has not this confidence is either that no such Source exists, or else that he is without means of access to It; and in either case he feels himself left to fight for his own hand against the entire universe without the consciousness of any Superior Power to back him up. He is thrown entirely upon his own resources, not knowing of the interior spring from which they may be unceasingly replenished. He is like a plant cut off at the stem and stuck in the ground without any root, and consequently that spiritual blight of which George Eliot speaks creeps over him, producing weakness, perplexity, and fear, with all their baleful consequences, where there should be that strength, order, and confidence which are the very foundation of all building-up for whatever purpose, whether of personal prosperity or of usefulness to others.

From the point of view of those who are acquainted with the laws of spiritual life, such a man is cut off from the root of his own Being. Beyond and far interior to that outer self which each of us knows as the intellectual man working with the physical brain as instrument, we have roots penetrating deep into that Infinite of which, in our ordinary waking state, we are only dimly conscious; and it is through this root of our own individuality, spreading far down into the hidden depths of Being, that we draw out of the unseen that unceasing stream of Life which afterwards, by our thought-power, we differentiate into all those outward forms of which we have need. Hence the unceasing necessity for every one to realise the great truth that his whole individuality has its foundation in such a root, and that the ground in which this root is embedded is that Universal Being for which there is no name save that of the One all-embracing I AM.

The supreme necessity, therefore, for each of us is to realise this fundamental fact of our own nature, for it is only in proportion as we do so that we truly live; and, therefore, whatever helps us to this realisation should be carefully guarded. In so far as any form of religion contributes to this end in the case of any particular individual, for him it is true religion. It may be imperfect, but it is true so far as it goes; and what is wanted is not to destroy the foundation of a man's faith because it is narrow, but to expand it. And this expanding will be done by the man himself, for it is a growth from within and not a construction from without.

Our attitude towards the religious beliefs of others should, therefore, not be that of iconoclasts, breaking down ruthlessly whatever from our point of view we see to be merely traditionary idols (in Bacon's sense of the word), but rather the opposite method of fixing upon that in another's creed which we find to be positive and affirmative, and gradually leading him to perceive in what its affirmativeness consists; and then, when once he has got the clue to the element of strength which exists in his accustomed form of belief, the perception of the contrast between that and the non-essential accretions will grow up in his mind spontaneously, thus gradually bringing him out into a wider and freer atmosphere. In going through such a process as this, he will never have had his thoughts directed into any channel to suggest separation from his spiritual root and ground; but he will learn that the rooting and grounding in the Divine, which he had trusted in at first, were indeed true, but in a sense far fuller, grander, and larger every way than his early infantile conception of them.

The question is not how far can another's religious opinions stand the test of a remorseless logic, but how far do they enable him to realise his unity with Divine Spirit? That is the living proof of the value of his opinion to himself, and no change in his opinions can be for the better that does not lead him to a greater recognition of the livingness of Divine Spirit in himself. For any change of opinion to indicate a forward movement, it must proceed from our realising in some measure the true nature of the life that is already developed in us. When we see why we are what we are now, then we can look ahead and see what the same life principle that has brought us up to the present point is capable of doing in the future. We may not see very far ahead, but we shall see where the next step is to be placed, and that is sufficient to enable us to move on.

What we have to do, therefore, is to help others to grow from the root they are already living by, and not to dig their roots up and leave them to wither. We need not be afraid of making ourselves all things to all men, in the sense of fixing upon the affirmative elements in each one's creed as the starting-point of our work, for the affirmative and life-giving is always true, and Truth is always one and consistent with itself; and therefore we need never fear being inconsistent so long as we adhere to this method. It is worse than useless to waste time in dissecting the negative accretions of other people's beliefs. In doing so we run great risks of rooting up the wheat along with the tares, and we shall certainly succeed in brushing people up the wrong way; moreover, by looking out exclusively for the life-giving and affirmative elements, we shall reap benefit to ourselves. We shall not only keep our temper, but we shall often find large reserves of affirmative power where at first we had apprehended nothing but worthless accumulations, and thus we shall become gainers both in largeness of mind and in stores of valuable material.

Of course we must be rigidly unyielding as regards the essence of Truth—that must never be sacrificed—but as representatives, in however small a sphere, of the New Thought, we should make it our aim to show others, not that their religion is wrong, but that all they may find of life-givingness in it is life-giving because it is part of the One Truth which is always the same under whatever form expressed. As half a loaf is better than no bread, so ignorant worship is better than no worship, and ignorant faith is better than no faith. Our work is not to destroy this faith and this worship, but to lead them on into a clearer light.

For this reason we may assure all inquirers that the abandonment of their customary form of worship is no necessity of the New Thought; but, on the contrary, that the principles of the movement, correctly understood, will show them far more meaning in that worship than they have ever yet realised. Truth is one; and when once the truth which underlies the outward form is clearly understood, the maintenance or abandonment of the latter will be found to be a matter of personal feeling as to what form, or absence of form, best enables the particular individual to realise the Truth itself.



XIII

A LESSON FROM BROWNING

Perhaps you know a little poem of Browning's called "An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experiences of Karshish, the Arab Physician." The somewhat weird conception is that the Arab physician, travelling in Palestine soon after the date when the Gospel narrative closes, meets with Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead, and in this letter to a medical friend describes the strange effect which his vision of the other life has produced upon the resuscitated man. The poem should be studied as a whole; but for the present a few lines selected here and there must do duty to indicate the character of the change which has passed upon Lazarus. After comparing him to a beggar who, having suddenly received boundless wealth, is unable to regulate its use to his requirements, Karshish continues:—

"So here—we call the treasure knowledge, say, Increased beyond the fleshly faculty— Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth, Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven: The man is witless of the size, the sum, The value in proportion of all things."

In fact he has become almost exclusively conscious of

"The spiritual life around the earthly life: The law of that is known to him as this, His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here,"

and the result is a loss of mental balance entirely unfitting him for the affairs of ordinary life.

Now there can be no doubt that Browning had a far more serious intention in writing this poem than just to record a fantastic notion that flitted through his brain. If we read between the lines, it must be clear from the general tenor of his writings that, however he may have acquired it, Browning had a very deep acquaintance with the inner region of spiritual causes which give rise to all that we see of outward phenomenal manifestation. There are continual allusions in his works to the life behind the veil, and it is to this suggestion of some mystery underlying his words that we owe the many attempts to fathom his meaning expressed through Browning Societies and the like—attempts which fail or succeed according as they are made from "the without" or from "the within." No one was better qualified than the poet to realise the immense benefits of the inner knowledge, and for the same reason he is also qualified to warn us of the dangers on the way to its acquisition; for nowhere is it more true that

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,"

and it is one of the greatest of these dangers that he points out in this poem.

Under the figure of Lazarus he describes the man who has practically grasped the reality of the inner side of things, for whom the veil has been removed, and who knows that the external and visible takes its rise from the internal and spiritual. But the description is that of one whose eyes have been so dazzled by the light that he has lost the power of accommodating his vision to the world of sense. He now commits the same error from the side of "the within" that he formerly committed from the side of "the without," the error of supposing that there is no vital reality in the aspect of things on which his thoughts are not immediately centered. This is want of mental balance, whether it shows itself by refusing reality to the inward or the outward. To be so absorbed in speculative ideas as to be unable to give them practical application in daily life, is to allow our highest thoughts to evaporate in dreams.

There is a world of philosophy in the simple statement that there can be no inside without an outside, and no outside without an inside; and the great secret in life is in learning to see things in their wholeness, and to realise the inside and the outside simultaneously. Each of them without the other is a mere abstraction, having no real existence, which we contemplate separately only for the purpose of reviewing the logical steps by which they are connected together as cause and effect. Nature does not separate them, for they are inseparable; and the law of nature is the law of life. It is related of Pythagoras that, after he had led his scholars to the dizziest heights of the inner knowledge, he never failed to impress upon them the converse lesson of tracing out the steps by which these inner principles translate themselves into the familiar conditions of the outward things by which we are surrounded. The process of analysis is merely an expedient for discovering what springs in the realm of causes we are to touch in order to produce certain effects in the realm of manifestation. But this is not sufficient. We must also learn to calculate how those particular effects, when produced, will stand related to the world of already existing effects among which we propose to launch them, how they will modify these and be modified by these in turn; and this calculation of effects is as necessary as the knowledge of causes.

We cannot impress upon ourselves too strongly that reality consists of both an inside and an outside, a generating principle and a generated condition, and that anything short of the reality of wholeness is illusion on one side or the other. Nothing could have been further from Browning's intention than to deter seekers after truth from studying the principles of Being, for without the knowledge of them truth must always remain wrapped in mystery; but the lesson he would impress on us is that of guarding vigilantly the mental equilibrium which alone will enable us to develop those boundless powers whose infinite unfolding is the fulness of Life. And we must remember above all that the soul of life is Love, and that Love shows itself by service, and service proceeds from sympathy, which is the capacity for seeing things from the point of view of those whom we would help, while at the same time seeing them also in their true relations; and therefore, if we would realise that Love which is the inmost vitalising principle even of the most interior powers, it must be kept alive by maintaining our hold upon the exterior life as being equally real with the inward principles of which it is the manifestation.

1902.



XIV

THE SPIRIT OF OPULENCE

It is quite a mistake to suppose that we must restrict and stint ourselves in order to develop greater power or usefulness. This is to form the conception of the Divine Power as so limited that the best use we can make of it is by a policy of self-starvation, whether material or mental. Of course, if we believe that some form of self-starvation is necessary to our producing good work, then so long as we entertain this belief the fact actually is so for us. "Whatsoever is not of faith"—that is, not in accordance with our honest belief—"is sin"; and by acting contrary to what we really believe we bring in a suggestion of opposition to the Divine Spirit, which must necessarily paralyse our efforts, and surround us with a murky atmosphere of distrust and want of joy.

But all this exists in, and is produced by, our belief; and when we come to examine the grounds of this belief we shall find that it rests upon an entire misapprehension of the nature of our own power. If we clearly realise that the creative power in ourselves is unlimited, then there is no reason for limiting the extent to which we may enjoy what we can create by means of it. Where we are drawing from the infinite we need never be afraid of taking more than our share. That is not where the danger lies. The danger is in not sufficiently realising our own richness, and in looking upon the externalised products of our creative power as being the true riches instead of the creative power of spirit itself.

If we avoid this error, there is no need to limit ourselves in taking what we will from the infinite storehouse: "All things are yours." And the way to avoid this error is by realising that the true wealth is in identifying ourselves with the spirit of opulence. We must be opulent in our thought. Do not "think money," as such, for it is only one means of opulence; but think opulence, that is, largely, generously, liberally, and you will find that the means of realising this thought will flow to you from all quarters, whether as money or as a hundred other things not to be reckoned in cash.

We must not make ourselves dependent on any particular form of wealth, or insist on its coming to us through some particular channel—that is at once to impose a limitation, and to shut out other forms of wealth and to close other channels; but we must enter into the spirit of it. Now the spirit is Life, and throughout the universe Life ultimately consists in circulation, whether within the physical body of the individual or on the scale of the entire solar system; and circulation means a continual flowing around, and the spirit of opulence is no exception to this universal law of all life.

When once this principle becomes clear to us we shall see that our attention should be directed rather to the giving than the receiving. We must look upon ourselves, not as misers' chests to be kept locked for our own benefit, but as centres of distribution; and the better we fulfil our function as such centres the greater will be the corresponding inflow. If we choke the outlet the current must slacken, and a full and free flow can be obtained only by keeping it open. The spirit of opulence—the opulent mode of thought, that is—consists in cultivating the feeling that we possess all sorts of riches which we can bestow upon others, and which we can bestow liberally because by this very action we open the way for still greater supplies to flow in. But you say, "I am short of money, I hardly know how to pay for necessaries. What have I to give?"

The answer is that we must always start from the point where we are; and if your wealth at the present moment is not abundant on the material plane, you need not trouble to start on that plane. There are other sorts of wealth, still more valuable, on the spiritual and intellectual planes, which you can give; and you can start from this point and practise the spirit of opulence, even though your balance at the bank may be nil. And then the universal law of attraction will begin to assert itself. You will not only begin to experience an inflow on the spiritual and intellectual planes, but it will extend itself to the material plane also.

If you have realised the spirit of opulence you cannot help drawing to yourself material good, as well as that higher wealth which is not to be measured by a money standard; and because you truly understand the spirit of opulence you will neither affect to despise this form of good, nor will you attribute to it a value that does not belong to it; but you will co-ordinate it with your other more interior forms of wealth so as to make it the material instrument in smoothing the way for their more perfect expression. Used thus, with understanding of the relation which it bears to spiritual and intellectual wealth, material wealth becomes one with them, and is no more to be shunned and feared than it is to be sought for its own sake.

It is not money, but the love of money, that is the root of evil; and the spirit of opulence is precisely the attitude of mind which is furthest removed from the love of money for its own sake. It does not believe in money. What it does believe in is the generous feeling which is the intuitive recognition of the great law of circulation, which does not in any undertaking make its first question, How much am I going to get by it? but, How much am I going to do by it? And making this the first question, the getting will flow in with a generous profusion, and with a spontaneousness and rightness of direction that are absent when our first thought is of receiving only.

We are not called upon to give what we have not yet got and to run into debt; but we are to give liberally of what we have, with the knowledge that by so doing we are setting the law of circulation to work, and as this law brings us greater and greater inflows of every kind of good, so our out-giving will increase, not by depriving ourselves of any expansion of our own life that we may desire, but by finding that every expansion makes us the more powerful instruments for expanding the life of others. "Live and let live" is the motto of the true opulence.



XV

BEAUTY

Do we sufficiently direct our thoughts to the subject of Beauty? I think not. We are too apt to regard Beauty as a merely superficial thing, and do not realise all that it implies. This was not the case with the great thinkers of the ancient world—see the place which no less a one than Plato gives to Beauty as the expression of all that is highest and greatest in the system of the universe. These great men of old were no superficial thinkers, and, therefore, would never have elevated to the supreme place that which is only superficial. Therefore, we shall do well to ask what it is that these great minds found in the idea of Beauty which made it thus appeal to them as the most perfect outward expression of all that lies deepest in the fundamental laws of Being. It is because, rightly apprehended, Beauty represents the supremest living quality of Thought. It is the glorious overflowing of fulness of Love which indicates the presence of infinite reserves of Power behind it. It is the joyous profusion that shows the possession of inexhaustible stores of wealth which can afford to be thus lavish and yet remain as exhaustless as before. Read aright, Beauty is the index to the whole nature of Being.

Beauty is the externalisation of Harmony, and Harmony is the co-ordinated working of all the powers of Being, both in the individual and in the relation of the individual to the Infinite from which it springs; and therefore this Harmony conducts us at once into the presence of the innermost undifferentiated Life. Thus Beauty is in most immediate touch with the very arcanum of Life; it is the brightness of glory spreading itself over the sanctuary of the Divine Spirit. For if, viewed from without, Beauty is the province of the artist and the poet, and lays hold of our emotions and appeals directly to the innermost feelings of our heart, calling up the response of that within us which recognises itself in the harmony perceived without, this is only because it speeds across the bridge of Reason with such quick feet that we pass from the outmost to the inmost and back again in the twinkling of an eye; but the bridge is still there and, retracing our steps more leisurely, we shall find that, viewed from within, Beauty is no less the province of the calm reasoner and analyst. What the poet and the artist seize upon intuitionally, he elaborates gradually, but the result is the same in both cases; for no intuition is true which does not admit of being expanded into a rational sequence of intelligible factors, and no argument is true which does not admit of being condensed into that rapid suggestion which is intuition.

Thus the impassioned artist and the calm thinker both find that the only true Beauty proceeds naturally from the actual construction of that which it expresses. It is not something added on as an afterthought, but something pre-existing in the original idea, something to which that idea naturally leads up, and which presupposes that idea as affording it any raison d'etre. The test of Beauty is, What does it express? Is it merely a veneer, a coat of paint laid on from without? Then it is indeed nothing but a whited sepulchre, a covering to hide the vacuity or deformity which needs to be removed. But is it the true and natural outcome of what is beneath the surface? Then it is the index to superabounding Life and Love and Intelligence, which is not content with mere utilitarianism hasting to escape at the earliest possible point from the labour of construction, as though from an enforced and unwelcome task, but rejoicing over its work and unwilling to quit it until it has expressed this rejoicing in every fittest touch of form and colour and exquisite proportion that the material will admit of, and this without departing by a hairbreadth from the original purpose of the design.

Wherever, therefore, we find Beauty, we may infer an enormous reserve of Power behind it; in fact, we may look upon it as the visible expression of the great truth that Life-Power is infinite. And when the inner meaning of Beauty is thus revealed to us, and we learn to know it as the very fulness and overflowing of Power, we shall find that we have gained a new standard for the guidance of our own lives. We must begin to use this wonderful process which we have learnt from Nature. Having learnt how Nature works—how God works—we must begin to work in like manner, and never consider any work complete until we have carried it to some final outcome of Beauty, whether material, intellectual, or spiritual. Is my intention good? That is the initial question, for the intention determines the nature of the essence in everything. What is the most beautiful form in which I can express the good I intend? That is the ultimate question; for the true Beauty which our work expresses is the measure of the Power, Intelligence, Love—in a word, of the quantity and quality of our own life which we have put into it. True Beauty, mind you—that which is beautiful because it most perfectly expresses the original idea, not a mere ornamentation occupying our thoughts as a thing apart from the use intended.

Nothing is of so small account but it has its fullest power of expression in some form of Beauty peculiarly its own. Beauty is the law of perfect Thought, be the subject of our Thought some scheme affecting the welfare of millions, or a word spoken to a little child. True Beauty and true Power are the correlatives one of the other. Kindly expression originates in kindly thought; and kindly expression is the essence of Beauty, which, seeking to express itself ever more and more perfectly, becomes that fine touch of sympathy which is artistic skill, whether applied in working upon material substances or upon the emotions of the heart. But, remember, first Use, then Beauty, and neither complete without the other. Use without Beauty is ungracious giving, and Beauty without Use is humbug; never forgetting, however, that there is a region of the mind where the use is found in the beauty, where Beauty itself serves the direct purpose of raising us to see a higher ideal which will thenceforward permeate our lives, giving a more living quality to all we think and say and do.

Seen thus the Beautiful is the true expression of the Good. From whichever end of the scale we look we shall find that they accurately measure each other. They are the same thing in the outermost and the innermost respectively. But in our search for a higher Beauty than we have yet found we must beware of missing the Beauty that already exists. Perfect harmony with its environment, and perfect expression of its own inward nature are what constitute Beauty; and our ignorance of the nature of the thing or its environment may shut our eyes to the Beauty it already has. It takes the genius of a Millet to paint, or a Whitman in words, to show us the beauty of those ordinary work-a-day figures with which our world is for the most part peopled, whose originals we pass by as having no form or comeliness. Assuredly the mission of every thinking man and woman is to help build up forms of greater beauty, spiritual, intellectual, material, everywhere; but if we would make something grander than Watteau gardens or Dresden china shepherdesses, we must enter the great realistic school of Nature and learn to recognise the beauty that already surrounds us, although it may have a little dirt on the surface. Then, when we have learnt the great principles of Beauty from the All-Spirit which is it, we shall know how to develop the Beauty on its own proper lines without perpetuating the dirt; and we shall know that all Beauty is the expression of Living Power, and that we can measure our power by the degree of beauty into which we can transform it, rendering our lives,

"By loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought."



XVI

SEPARATION AND UNITY

I

"The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me" (John xiv, 30). In these words the Grand Master of Divine Science gives us the key to the Great Knowledge. Comparison with other passages shows that the terms here rendered "prince" and "world" can equally be rendered "principle" and "age." Jesus is here speaking of a principle of the present age so entirely opposed to that principle of which he himself was the visible expression, as to have no part in him. It is the utter contradiction of everything that Jesus came to teach and to exemplify. The account Jesus gave of himself was that he came "to bear witness to the Truth," and in order that men "might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly"; consequently the principle to which he refers must be the exact opposite of Truth and Life—that is, it must be the principle of Falsehood and Death.

What, then, is this false and destructive principle which rules the present age? If we consider the gist of the entire discourse of which these are the concluding words, we shall find that the central idea which Jesus has been most strenuously endeavouring to impress upon his disciples at their last meeting before the crucifixion, is that of the absolute identity and out-and-out oneness of "the Father" and "the Son," the principle of the perfect unity of God and Man. If this, then, was the great Truth which he was thus earnestly solicitous to impress upon his disciples' minds when his bodily presence was so shortly to be removed from them—the Truth of Unity—may we not reasonably infer the opposing falsehood to be the assertion of separateness, the assertion that God and man are not one? The idea of separateness is precisely the principle on which the world has proceeded from that day to this—the assumption that God and man are not one in being, and that the matter is of a different essence from spirit. In other words, the principle that finds favour with the intellectuality of the present age is that of duality—the idea of two powers and two substances opposite in kind, and, therefore, repugnant to each other, permeating all things, and so leaving no wholeness anywhere.

The entire object of the Bible is to combat the idea, of two opposing forces in the world. The good news is said to be that of "reconciliation" (2 Cor. v. 18), where also we are told that "all things are from God," hence leaving no room for any other power or any other substance; and the great falsehood, which it is the purpose of the Good News to expose, is everywhere in the Bible proclaimed to be the suggestion of duality, which is some other mode of Life, that is not the One Life, but something separate from it—an idea which it is impossible to state distinctly without involving a contradiction in terms. Everywhere the Bible exposes the fiction of the duality of separation as the great lie, but nowhere in so emphatic and concentrated a manner as in that wonderful passage of Revelations where it is figured in the mysterious Number of the Beast. "He that hath understanding let him count the number of the Beast ... and his number is six hundred and sixty and six" (Rev. xiii, 18, R.V.). Let me point out the great principle expressed in this mysterious number. It has other more particular applications, but this one general principle underlies them all.

It is an established maxim that every unity contains in itself a trinity, just as the individual man consists of body, soul, and spirit. If we would perfectly understand anything, we must be able to comprehend it in its threefold nature; therefore in symbolic numeration the multiplying of the unit by three implies the completeness of that for which the unit stands; and, again, the threefold repetition of a number represents its extension to infinity. Now mark what results if we apply these representative methods of numerical expression to the principles of Oneness and of separateness respectively. Oneness is Unity, and 1 x 3 = 3, which, intensified to its highest expression, is written as 333. Now apply the same method to the idea of separateness. Separateness consists of one and another one, each of which, according to the universal law, contains a trinity. In this view of duality the totality of things is two, and 2 x 3 = 6, and, intensifying this to its highest expression, we get 666, which is the Number of the Beast.

Why of the Beast? Because separateness from God, or the duality of opposition, which is also a duality of polarity, which is Dual-Unity, recognises something as having essential being, which is not the One Spirit; and such a conception can be verbally rendered only by some word that in common acceptance represents something, not only lower than the divine, but lower than the human also. It is because the conception of oneself as a being apart from God, if carried out to its legitimate consequences, must ultimately land all who hold it in a condition of things where open ferocity or secret cunning, the tiger nature or the serpent nature, can be the only possible rule of action.

Thus it is that the principle of the present age can have no part in that principle of Perfect Wholeness which the Great Master embodied in His teaching and in Himself. The two ideas are absolutely incompatible, and whichever we adopt as our leading principle, it must be to the entire exclusion of the other; we cannot serve God and Mammon. There is no such thing as partial wholeness. Either we are still in the principle of Separateness, and our eyes are not yet open to the real nature of the Kingdom of Heaven; or else we have grasped the principle of Unity without any exception anywhere, and the One Being includes all, the body and the soul alike, the visible form and the invisible substance and life of all equally; nothing can be left out, and we stand complete here and now, lacking no faculty, but requiring only to become conscious of our own powers, and to learn to have confidence in them through "having them exercised by reason of use."

The following communication from "A Foreign Reader," commenting on the Number of the Beast, as treated by Judge Troward in "Separation and Unity," is taken from EXPRESSION for 1902, in which it was first published. Following is Judge Troward's reply to this letter.

Dear Mr. Editor.—A correspondent in the current number of Expression points out the reference in the Book of Revelation to the number 666 as the mark of the Beast, because the trinity of mind, soul, and body, if considered as unity, may be expressed by the figures 333, and therefore duality is 333 x 2 = 666.

I think the inverse of the proposition is still more startling, and I should like to point it out. Instead of multiplying let us try dividing. First of all take unity as the unit one and divide by three (representing of course the same formula, viz., mind, soul and body). Expressed by a common fraction it is merely 1/3, which is an incomplete mathematical figure. But take the decimal formula of one divided by three, and we arrive at .3 circulating, i. e., .3333 on to infinity. In other words, the result of the proposition by mathematics is that you divide this formula of spirit, soul, and body into unity, and it remains true to itself ad infinitum.

Now we come to consider it as a duality in the same way. Expressed as a vulgar fraction it is 2/3; but as a decimal fraction it is .6666 ad infinitum. I think this is worth noting.

Yours very faithfully, A Foreign Reader.

Brussels, Aug. 14, 1902.

* * * * *

Dear Editor.—I return with many thanks the very interesting letter received with yours, and I am very glad that my article should have been instrumental in drawing forth this further light on the subject.

This, moreover, affords an excellent illustration of one great principle of Unity, which is that the Unity repeats itself in every one of its parts, so that each part taken separately is an exact reproduction (in principles) of the greater Unity of which it is a portion. Therefore, if you take the individual man as your unit (which is what I did), and proceed by multiplication, you get the results which were pointed out in my article. And conversely, if you take the Great Unity of All-Being as your unit, and proceed by division, you arrive at the result shown by your foreign correspondent. The principle is a purely mathematical one, and is extremely interesting in the present application as showing the existence of a system of concealed mathematics running through the whole Bible. This bears out what I said in my article that there were other applications of the principle in question, though this one did not at the time occur to me.

I am much indebted to your correspondent for the further proof thus given of the correctness of my interpretation of the Number of the Beast. Both our interpretations support each other, for they are merely different ways of stating the same thing, and they have this advantage over those generally given, that they do not refer to any particular form of evil, but express a general principle applicable to all alike.

Yours sincerely, T.

London, Aug. 30, 1902.

II

It may perhaps emphasize my point if I remind my readers that it was the conflict between the principles of Unity and separation that led to the crucifixion of Jesus. We must distinguish between the charge which really led to his death, and the merely technical charge on which he was sentenced by the Roman Governor. The latter—the charge of opposition to the royal authority of Caesar—has its significance; but it is clear from the Bible record that this was merely formal, the true cause of conviction being contained in the statement that of the chief priests: "We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God."

The antagonism of the two principles of Unity and separation had first been openly manifested on the occasion when Jesus made the memorable declaration, "I and my Father are one." The Jews took up stones to stone him. Then said Jesus unto them, "Many good works have I shown you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone Me?" The Jews replied, "For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God." Jesus said, "Is it not written in your law, I said ye are gods? If He called them gods, unto whom the Word of God came (and the Scriptures cannot be broken), say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?" Here we have the first open passage of arms between the two opposing principles which led to the scene of Calvary as the final testimony of Jesus to the principle of Unity. He died because he maintained the Truth; that he was one with the Father. That was the substantive charge on which he was executed. "Art thou the son of the Blessed?" he was asked by the priestly tribunal; and the answer came clear and unequivocal, "I am." Then said the Council, "He hath spoken blasphemy, what further need have we of witnesses?" And they all condemned him to be worthy of death.