Thus we see that however infinitesimal any part may be as compared with the whole, it must also be a complete whole on its own scale, if the greater whole is to be built up. On the same principle, our recognition that our personality is an infinitesimal fraction of an inconceivably greater Life, does not mean that it is at all insignificant in itself, or that our individuality becomes submerged in an indistinguishable mass; on the contrary, our own wholeness is an essential factor towards the building up of the greater whole; so that as long as we keep before us the building up of the Great Whole as the "main motif," we need never fear the expansion of our own individuality. The more we expand, the more effective units we shall become.

We must not, however, suppose that Unity means Uniformity. St. Paul puts this very clearly when he says, if the whole body be an eye, where would be the hearing, etc. (1 Cor. xii, 14). How could you paint a picture without distinction of form, colour, or tone? Diversity in Unity is the necessity for any sort of expression, and if it be the case in our own bodies, as St. Paul points out, how much more so in the expressing of the Eternal Life through endless ages and limitless space! Once we grasp this idea of the unity and progressiveness of Life going on ad infinitum, what boundless vistas of possibility open before us. It would be enough to stagger the imagination were it not for our old friends, the Law and the Word. But these will always accompany us, and we may rely upon them in all worlds and under all conditions. This Law of Unity is what in natural science is known as the Law of Continuity, and the Ancient Wisdom has embodied it in the Hermetic axiom "Sicut superius, sicut inferius; sicut inferius, sicut superius"—As above, so below; as below, so above. It leads us on from stage to stage, unfolding as it goes; and to this unfolding there is no end, for it is the Eternal Life finding ever fuller expression, as it can find more and more suitable channels through which to express itself. It can no more come to an end than numbers can come to an end.

But it must find suitable channels. Let there be no mistake about this. Perhaps some one may say: Cannot it make suitable channels for any sort of expression that it needs? The answer is, that it can, and it does so up to a certain point. As we have seen, the Word, Thought, or Initial Impulse of the Ever-Living Spirit starts a centre of cosmic activity in which the mathematical element of Law at once asserts itself; thenceforward everything goes on according to certain broad principles of sequence. This is a Generic Creation, creation according to genera or classes, like the "archetypal ideas" of Plato. This creation is governed by a Law of Averages, and the legal maxim "De minimis non curat lex"—the Law cannot trouble about minorities—applies to it. This generic law keeps the class going, and slowly advancing, simply as a class, but it can take no notice of individuals as such. As Tennyson puts it in "In Memoriam," speaking of Nature:

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

This mode of creation reaches its highest level, at any rate in our world, in Genus Homo, or the human race. We also, as a race, are under the Law of Averages. The race continues to exist, but from the moment of birth the individual life is liable to be cut short in a hundred different ways. In producing man, however, Generic Creation has produced a type having a mental and physical constitution capable of perceiving the underlying principle of all creation, that is, of seeing the relation between the Word and the Law. We cannot conceive creation by type going further than this. By the nature of this type every human being has the potential of a further evolution, which will set it free from bondage to an impersonal Law of Averages, by specializing it through the Power of the Word, that is, by bringing the Personal Factor to bear upon the Impersonal Factor, and so unfolding the possibilities which can be achieved by their united activities. We have the power of using the Word so as to specialize the action of the Law, not by altering the Law, which is impossible, but by realizing its principle, and enabling it to work under conditions which are not spontaneously provided by Nature, but are provided by our own selection. The capacity for this exists in all human beings, but the practical application of this capacity depends on our recognition of the principles involved; and it is for this reason that I commenced this book by citing instances of the combined working of Law and Personality in purely physical science. I wanted first to convince the reader from well ascertained facts, that the Law contains infinite possibilities, but that this can only be brought out through the operation of the mind of man.

It is here that we find the value of the maxim "Nature unaided fails." The more we consider this maxim and the principle of Unity and Continuity, the clearer it will become, that Limitation is no part of the Law itself, but results only from our own limited comprehension of it; and that St. James uses no meaningless phrase, but is stating a logical and scientific truth, when he speaks of "The perfect Law of Liberty" (Jas. i, 25). What we have to do is, to follow this up, not by petulant self-assertion, but by quietly considering the why and wherefore of the whole thing. In doing so we can fortify ourselves with another maxim, that "Principle is not limited by Precedent." When we spread the wings of thought and speculate as to future possibilities, our conventionally-minded friends may say we are talking bosh; but if you ask them why they say so, they can only reply that the past experience of the whole human race is against you. They do not speak like this in the matter of flying-machines or carriages that go without horses; they say these are scientific discoveries. But when it comes to the possibilities of our own souls, they at once set a limit to the expansion of ideas, and do not see that the scientific principle of discovery is not confined to laboratory experiments. Therefore, we must not let ourselves be discouraged by such arguments. If our friends doubt our sanity, let them doubt it. The sanity of such men as Galileo and George Stephenson was doubted by their contemporaries, so we are in good company. At the same time we must not neglect to look after our own sanity. We must know some intelligible reason for our conclusions, and realize that however unexpected, they are the logical carrying out of principles which we can recognize in the Creation around us. If we do this we need not fear to spread the wings of fancy, even though some may not be able to accompany us; only we must remember that we are using wings. Fancy, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, has really no wings; it is like a balloon that just floats wherever any passing current of air may drive it. The possession of wings implies power to direct our flight, and fancy must be converted into trained Imagination, just as the helpless balloon has been superseded by navigable air-craft. It must be "the scientific imagination"; and the "scientific imagination" carried into the world of spiritual causation becomes the Word of Power, and its Power is derived from the fact that it is always working according to Law. Then we may go on confidently, because we are following the same universal principles by which all creation has been evolved, only now we are specializing its action from the standpoint of our own individuality, according to the ancient teaching that Man, the Microcosm, repeats in himself all the laws of the Macrocosm, or great world, around him.

As we begin to see the truth of these things, we begin to transcend the simply generic stage. That first stage is necessary to provide a starting-point for the next. The first stage is that of Bondage to Law. It could not be otherwise for the simple reason that you must learn the law before you can use it. Then from the stage of Generic Creation we emerge into that of individual Creation, in which we attain liberty through Knowledge of the Law of our own Being; so that it is not a mere theological myth to talk of a New Creation, but it is the logical outcome of what we now are, if, to our recognition of the Power of the Law we add the recognition of the Power of the Word.



CHAPTER V

THE SOUL OF THE SUBJECT

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

Creation being by type, everything must have a generic basis of being in the Cosmic Law, not peculiar to that individual thing, but peculiar to the class to which it belongs, an adaptation of the Cosmic Soul for the production of all things belonging to that particular order, in fact, what makes them what they are and not something else. Now just because this basis is generic and common to the whole genus that is built upon it, it is not specific, but it acquires localization through Form; the form being that of the class to which it belongs, thus producing the individual of that class, whether a cat or a cabbage. It is this underlying generic being of the thing, that I want the student to understand by "the soul of the subject." In fact we may call it the Noumenon or essential being of the class, as distinguished from the specific characteristics that differentiate the individual from others of the same class. It follows from this that this generic soul has no individuality of its own, and consequently is open to receive impressions from any source that can penetrate the sheath of outward form and specific characteristic that envelopes it. At the same time it is a manifestation of Cosmic Law, and so cannot depart from its own class-nature, and therefore any influence that may be impressed upon it from some other source will always show itself in terms of the sort of generic soul that is thus impressed; for instance, it would be impossible so to impress a dog as to make it write a book; and we may therefore generalize the statement, and lay down the rule, that "Every impress receives expression in terms of the medium through which it is expressed." This becomes almost a self-obvious truism when put into plain language like this; thus, if I paint a picture in oils, my impression is conveyed in terms of this medium, and if I paint one in water-colours my conception will be conveyed in terms of that medium, and the methods of handling will be perfectly different in the two pictures.

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

Now we ourselves are included in the general creation, and consequently we have in us a generic or type basis of personality, which is entirely impersonal. This is not a contradiction in terms, though it may look like one. We belong to the class Genus Homo, the distinctive quality of which is Personality, that is to say, the possession of certain faculties which constitute us persons, and not things or animals; but at the same time this merely generic personality is common to all mankind, and is not that which distinguishes one individual from another, and in this sense it is impersonal; so we may call it our Cosmic or Impersonal Personality.

Now it is upon this cosmic element, inherent in all things from mineral to man, that Thought-Power acts, because, being impersonal, it has no private purpose of its own with which to oppose the suggestion that is being impressed upon it. The only thing is, that according to the rule just laid down, the response will always be in terms of the cosmic element which we have thus set in motion. Therefore on the human plane it will always be in terms of Personality.

The whole thing comes to this, that we impart to this impersonal element the reflection of our own personality, and thereby create in it a certain personality of its own, which will express itself in terms of the inherent nature of the impersonal factor, which we have thus temporarily invested with a personal quality; we are continually doing this unconsciously, either for good or ill; but when we come to understand the law of it, we must try so to regulate the habitual current of our thoughts, that even when we are not using this power intentionally, they may only exercise a beneficial influence.

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

In those hypnotic experiments in which the operator merely makes the subject do some external act, we get no further than the fact that the person's individual will has been temporarily put to sleep, and that of the hypnotist has taken its place; still even this shows a power of impressing upon the subliminal consciousness a personal quality of its own, but it does not enable it to exhibit its own powers. The object of such experiments is, to exhibit the powers of the hypnotist, not to investigate the powers of the subliminal personality, which is of more importance in the present connection. But where the hypnotist employs his power of command to tell the subliminal self of the patient to exercise its own powers, merely directing it as to the subject upon which it is to be exercised, very wonderful powers indeed are exhibited. Places unknown to the percipient are accurately described; correct accounts are given of what people are doing elsewhere; the contents of sealed letters are read; the symptoms of disease are diagnosed and suitable remedies sometimes prescribed; and so on. Distance appears to make no difference. In many cases time also does not count, and historical events of long ago, with the details of which the seer had no acquaintance, are accurately described in all their minutiae, which have afterwards been corroborated by contemporary documents. Nor are cases wanting in which events still future have been correctly predicted, as, for example, in Cazotte's celebrated prediction of the French Revolution, and of the fate that awaited each member of a large dinner-party when it should occur—though this was a spontaneous case, and not under hypnotism, which perhaps gives it the greater value.

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

In our more usual condition however, these faculties are subordinate to those which put us in touch with the every-day world, and I cannot help thinking, that at our present stage this is the best place for them. In this place they have a special function to perform, which I will speak of in another chapter, and in the meanwhile for my own part I should prefer to leave their development to the ordinary course of Nature, neither stimulating them by hypnotic influence, or auto-suggestion, nor repressing them if they manifest themselves of their own accord. However, every one must follow his or her own discretion in this matter; the only thing is, do not deny the existence of these faculties in yourself because you may not consciously exercise them, for they hold a very important place in our complex personality.

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

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

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

But this power of sending out a subtle influence, call it magnetism or what you will, is not confined to operations upon the human subject. Two ladies of my acquaintance experimented on two rose-trees, which, to all appearances, were both in equally good condition. They daily blessed one and cursed the other, with the result that at the end of a month the anathematized plant had withered up from the roots, while the other was in an abnormally flourishing condition. Nor are we entirely without scientific backing even in such a case as this; for Professor Bose tells us in his work on the "Response of Metals," that not only can they be poisoned by certain chemicals, so as to deprive them of their normal qualities, but that they can be mesmerized into a similar condition. Such facts as these therefore give considerable support to the theory of the existence in everything of a "soul of the subject," which responds after its own manner to the power of human thought.

In what manner, then, is this influence conveyed? It is here that our study of etheric waves comes to our assistance, by carrying the same principle further, and picturing the working of the known Law under unknown conditions. It will at least enable us to form a working hypothesis. I have stated that our actual commercial application of the etheric waves extends from the ultra-violet waves used in photography, and measuring only 1/254,000 of an inch, to those measuring many miles employed in wireless telegraphy; but this practical application by no means exhausts the conceivable possibilities of etheric vibrations; for not only do we find a gap of five octaves of as yet unknown waves between the dark heat group and the Hertzian group, but mathematically there is no limit to the greatness or smallness of the waves, and the scale may be prolonged indefinitely in either direction. Nor is this to be wondered at; for if we consider that vibration is not a progress of individual particles from one place to another, but the alternate rising and falling of the substance at the same point, and that the ether is a homogeneous and universally present substance, it is obvious that there is nothing to limit the minuteness or the greatness of the intervals at which the rising and falling will occur. Therefore we have an unlimited field for our imagination to play about in. Then, if we further reflect that all forms are built up of denser or finer aggregations of ether, and that what determines the generic form of anything is its cosmic soul, or the generating principle of the class to which it belongs, it follows that this soul must have a corresponding form, however inconceivably fine may be the etheric condensation which thus differentiates it from other souls, and prevents it from all being mixed up together in an indistinguishable mass. If now, we combine these two facts, that the soul of anything must have a form, however fine, and that there is no limit either to the greatness or the minuteness of etheric vibrations, we can draw certain deductions from these premises.

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

The principle may be illustrated by the power of the X-rays to penetrate apparently solid bodies, such as iron. Then, if we combine with this the fact, that there is no limit to the minuteness of etheric waves, we see that however fine may be the particles constituting any form, it is always possible to have etheric waves still finer and thus able to penetrate that form and set up vibrations in it. It is our familiarity with the denser modes of matter that makes it difficult for us to grasp the idea of these finer activities; but there is nothing in what we know of the denser modes to contradict the conception; on the contrary, it is just by what we have learned of these denser modes that we reach the principles on which these further conceptions are founded. Looking at this, therefore, in the light of a mathematical proposition, there is absolutely no limit to the fineness of any form, or to its susceptibilities to etheric vibrations.

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

But the conception we are considering is not limited to concrete entities, whether persons or things. It applies to abstractions also, and it is for this reason that I have called it the "Soul of the Subject." We often speak of the "Soul of Music," or the "Soul of Poetry," and so on. Thus our ordinary talk stands on the threshold of a great mystery, which, however, is simple enough in practice. If you want to get a clearer view of any subject than you have at present, address yourself mentally to the abstract soul of that subject, and ask it to tell you about itself, and you will find that it will do so. I do not say that it will do this in any miraculous manner, but what you already know of the subject will range itself into a clearer order, and you will see connections that have not previously occurred to you. Then again, you will find that information of the class required will begin to flow towards you through quite ordinary channels, books, newspapers, or conversation, without your especially laying yourself out to hunt for it; and again, at other times, ideas will come into your mind, you do not know how, but illuminating the subject with a fresh light. I cannot explain how all this takes place. I can only say from personal experience that it happens. But of course we must not throw aside ordinary common-sense. We must sort out the information that comes to us, and compare it with our previous knowledge; in fact we must work at it: there is no premium for laziness. Nor must we expect to receive by a sudden afflatus a complete acquaintance with some subject of which we are entirely ignorant. I do not say that such a thing is altogether impossible, for I cannot venture to limit the possibilities of the Universe; but it is certainly not to be looked for in the ordinary course. I have sometimes been shown specimens of "inspirational painting" done by persons said to be entirely ignorant of art, and the ignorance is very apparent on the face of the work. I dare say an artist may be inspired in the production of a picture, but the technical training comes first, and the inspiration afterwards. The same I believe to be true of all other subjects, so that we come back to the maxim of the power always expressing itself in terms of the instrument through which it works. With this reservation, however, it appears to me, that every class of subject has a sort of soul of its own with which we can put ourselves en rapport by, so to say, mentally unifying our own personality with its abstract principle.

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

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

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

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

But on the other hand, if our intention be to co-operate with the Great Law, we shall find that in it also exists a mysterious "Soul of the Subject," which will respond to us, however imperfectly we may understand its modus operandi. It is the intention that counts, not the theoretical knowledge. The knowledge will grow by experience and meditation, and its value is measured entirely by the intention that is at the back of it.



CHAPTER VI

THE PROMISES

We have now, I hope, laid a sufficiently broad foundation of the relation between the Law and the Word. The Law cannot be changed, and the Word can. We have two factors, one variable, and the other invariable; so that from this combination any variety of resultants may be expected. The Law cannot be altered, but it can be specialized, just as iron can be made to float by the same law by which it sinks. Now let us try to figure out in our imagination an ideal of the sort of results we should want to bring out from these two factors.

In the first place I think we should like to be free from all worry and anxiety; for a life of continual worry is not worth living. And in the second we should like always to have something to look forward to and feel an interest in; for a life entirely devoid of all interest is also not worth living. But, granted that these two conditions be fulfilled, I think we should all be well pleased to go on living ad infinitum. Now can we conceive any combination of the Law and the Word which would produce such results? that is the question before us. The first step is to generalize our principle as widely as possible, for the wider the generalization, the larger becomes the scope for specialization. The invariable factor we already know. It is the Law, always creating in accordance with the Word that sets it in motion, whether constructive or destructive; so what we really have to consider is the sort of Word (i.e. Thought or Desire) which will set the Law working in the right direction. It must be a Word of confidence in its own power; otherwise by the hypothesis of the case it would be giving contradictory directions to the Law, or to borrow a simile from what we have learnt about waves in ether, it would be sending out vibrations that would cancel one another and so produce no effect. Then it must be a Word that does not compromise itself by antagonizing the Law of unity, and so producing disruptive forces instead of constructive ones. And finally, we must be quite sure that it really is the right Word, and that we have been making no mistake about it. If these conditions be fulfilled the logical result will be entire freedom from anxiety. Similarly with regard to maintaining a continued interest in life. We must have a continued succession of ideals, whether great or small, that will carry us on with something always just ahead of us; and we must work the ideals out, and not let them evaporate in dreams. If these conditions be fulfilled we have before us a life of never-ending interest and activity, and therefore a life worth living. Where then are we to find the Word which will produce these conditions: perfect freedom from anxiety and continual, happy interest? I do not think it is to be found in any way but by identifying our own Word with the Word which brings all creation into existence, and keeps it always moving onward in that continuous forward movement which we call Evolution. We must come back to the old teaching, that the Macrocosm is reproduced in the Microcosm, with the further perception that this identity of principle can only be produced by identity of cause. Law cannot be other than eternal and self-demonstrating, just as 2 x 2 must eternally = 4; but it remains only an abstract conception until the Creative Word affords it a field of operation, just as twice two is four remains only a mathematical abstraction until there is something for you to count; and accordingly, as we have already seen, all our reasoning concerning the origin of Creation, whether based on metaphysical or scientific grounds, brings us to the conception of a Universal and Eternal Living Spirit localizing itself in particular areas of cosmic activity by the power of the Word. Then, if a similar Creative Power is to be reproduced in ourselves, it must be by the same method: the localizing of the same Spirit in ourselves by the power of the same "Word." Then our Word, or Thought, will no longer be that of separate personality, but that of the Eternal Spirit finding a fresh centre from which to specialize the working of the Law, and so produce still further results than that of the First or simply Cosmic and Generic Creation, according to the two maxims that "Nature unaided fails," and that "Principle is not limited by Precedent."

I want to make this sequence clear to the student before proceeding further:

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

2. Cosmic or Generic Creation, including ourselves as a race resulting from this, and providing both the material and the instruments for carrying the work further by specializing the Original Creative Power through individual Thought, just as in all cases of scientific discovery.

3. Then, since what is to be specialized through our individual Thought is the Word of the Originating Power itself, in order to do this we must think in terms of the Originating Word, on the general principle, that any power must always exhibit itself in terms of the instrument through which it works.

This, it appears to me, is a clear logical sequence, just as a tree cannot make itself into a box, unless there be first the idea of a box which does not exist in the tree itself, and also the tools with which to fashion the wood into a box; while on the other hand there could never be any box unless there be first a tree. Now it is just such a sequence as this that is set before us in the Bible, and I do not find it adequately set forth in any other teaching, either philosophical or religious, with which I am acquainted. Some of these systems contain a great deal of truth, and are therefore helpful as far as they go; but they do not go the whole way, and for the most part stop short at the first or simply Cosmic Creation; or, if they attempt to pass beyond this, it is on the line of making unaided power of the individual the sole means by which to do so, and thus in fact always keeping us at the merely generic level. Such a mode of Thought as this, fails to meet the requirements of our conception of a happy life as one entirely exempt from fear and anxiety. In like manner also it fails to meet the first requirements of the whole series, viz.: the Word should be certain of itself; and if it be not certain of itself we have no assurance that it may not eventually disappoint our hopes. In short, this mode of thought leaves us to bear the whole burden from which we want to escape. So it is not good enough; we must look for something better.

Now this something better I find in the Promises contained in the Bible, and it is this that to my mind distinguishes our own Scriptures from the sacred books of all other nations, and from all systems of philosophy. I do not at all ignore the current objections to the possibility of Divine Promises, but I think that on examination they will be found to be superficial and resulting from want of careful enquiry into the true nature of the Promises themselves. How is it possible for the Laws of the Universe to make exceptions? How can God act by individual favouritism unless it be either through sheer caprice, or by the individual managing to get round Him in some way, either by supplying some need which He cannot supply for Himself, in which case God is of limited power, or else by flattering Him, in which case He is the apotheosis of absurd vanity. The two are really the same question put in different ways—the question of individual exceptions to the general Law.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course there are spiritual equivalents to these things, and the teaching of the Bible is, that they are the outward correspondences of inward spiritual states; but to "spiritualize" them in the way I am speaking of, is nothing but unbelief in the power of God to work on the plane of Nature. How such readers square their opinion with the fact that God has created Nature, I do not know. Even in the animal world we find wonderful instances of longevity. If an elephant be not overworked before he is twenty, he is in full working power up to eighty, and will then be capable of light work for another twenty years, after which he may yet enjoy another twenty years of quiet old age as the reward of his labours, while crocodiles and tortoises have been known to live for centuries. If then such things be possible in the ordinary course of Nature in the animal world, why need we doubt the specializing power of the Word to produce far greater results in the case of man? It is because we will not accept the maxim, that "Principle is not limited by Precedent" in regard to ourselves, though we see it demonstrated by every new scientific discovery. We rely more on the past experience of the race, than on the Creative Power of God. We call Him Almighty, and then say that in His Book He promises things which He is not able to perform. But the fault is with ourselves. We limit "the Holy ONE of Israel," and as a consequence get only so much as by our mental attitude we are able to receive—again the old maxim that "Power can only work in terms of the instrument it works through." I do not say that it is at all easy for us to completely rid ourselves of negative race-thought ingrained into us from childhood, and subtly playing upon that generic impersonal self in us of which I have spoken, and which readily responds to those thought-currents to which we are habitually attuned. It is a matter of individual growth. But the promises themselves contain no inherent impossibility, and are logical deductions from the principles of the Creative Law.

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

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

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

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

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

Now I hope the reader will take the trouble to look up the texts to which I have referred, and not be lazy. I am sure he would do so if he were promised a ten pound note or a fifty dollar bill for his pains, and if these promises are not all bosh, there is something worth a good deal more to be got by studying them. Just run through the list: health, wealth, peace of mind, safety, creative power, and eternal life. You would be willing to pay a good premium to an Insurance Office that could guarantee you all these. Well, there is a Company that does this without paying any premium, and its name is "God and Co., Unlimited"; the only condition, is that you yourself have to take the part of "Co." and it is not a sleeping partnership, but a wide-awake one!

So I hope you will take the trouble to look up the texts; but at the same time you must remember that the reading of single texts is not sufficient. If you take any isolated phrase you choose, without reference to the rest of the Book, there is no nonsense you cannot make out of the Bible. You would not be allowed to do that sort of thing in a Court of Law. When a document is produced in evidence, the meaning of the words used in it are very carefully construed, not only in reference to the particular clause in which they occur, but also with reference to the intention of the document as a whole, and to the circumstances under which they were written. The same word may mean very different things in different connections; for instance I remember two reported cases in one of which the word "Spanish" meant a certain sort of leather, and in the other a kind of material used in brewing; and in like manner particular texts are to be interpreted in accordance with the gist of the Bible as a whole.

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

What Jesus meant was, that we should read the Scriptures in the same way we should read any other book of practical instruction. First think what it is all about; then look at the nature of the general principles involved, and then see what instruction the book gives you for their practical application. Then go and do it. And remember also a further difference between reading about a thing and doing it. A book is for everybody, and can therefore, only give general instruction; but when you come to do the thing you will always find it works with some personal modifications,—not departures from the general principles you have read about, but specializations of them—and in this way you will learn much that is not to be got out of books, even the best.

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

Now it appears to me, that taken in this way, the Bible is an exceedingly practical book, and that is why I want the reader to get at some general principles which he will find, mutatis mutandis, equally applicable all round, whether to electricity, or to life, and whatever may be the subject-matter, it will always be found to resolve itself into a question of the relation between Law and Personality. If now we read the Bible Promises in the light of the general principles we have considered in the earlier pages, we shall find that they are all Promises according to Law. They are statements of the results to be obtained by a truer realization of the principles of Law and Personality than we have hitherto apprehended.

We must always bear in mind that the Law is set in motion by the Word. The Word does not make the Law, but gives it something to work upon, so that without the Word there could be no manifestation of the Law, a truth embodied in the maxim, that "Every Creation carries its own mathematics along with it." If the reader remembers what I have said in the chapter of "The Soul of the Subject," he will see that the principle involved, is that of the susceptibility of the Impersonal to suggestions from the Personal. This follows of course from the very Conception of Impersonality; it is that which has no power of selection and volition, and which is therefore without any power of taking an initiative on its own account.

In a previous chapter I have pointed out that the only possible conception of the inauguration of a world-system, resolves itself into the recognition of one original and universal Substantive Life, out of which proceeds a corresponding Verb, or active energy, reproducing in action what the Substantive is in essence. On the other hand there must be something for this active principle to work in; and since there can be nothing anterior to the Universal Life or Energy, both these factors must be potentially contained in it. If, then, we represent this Eternal Substantive Life by a circle with a dot in the centre, we may represent these two principles as emerging from it by placing two circles at equal distance below it, one on either side, and placing the sign "" (plus) in one, and the sign "-" (minus) in the other. This is how students of these subjects usually map out the relation of the prima principia, or first abstract principles. The sign "" (plus) indicates the Active principle, and the sign "-" (minus) the Passive principle. If the reader will draw a little diagram as described, it will help to make what follows clearer.

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

From such considerations as this the deep thinkers of old times posited the generating of a world-system by the interaction of what they named Animus Dei, the Active principle, and Anima Mundi, or Soul of the Universe, the Passive principle—the one Personal, and the other Impersonal; and by the hypothesis of the case the only mode of activity possible to Anima Mundi is response to Animus Dei. But the same impersonal passivity must also make Anima Mundi receptive likewise to lesser and more individualized modes of Personality, and it becomes, so to say, fecundated by the ideas thus impressed upon it. In every case "the word is the seed." We may picture this planting of an idea or "word" in the Cosmic soul as acting very much like the initial impulse that starts a train of waves in ether, and these thought-waves are reproduced in corresponding forms; or, to recur to the simile of seed, the cosmic soul acts like the soil and gives it nourishment. Looking at it in this way the old exponents of these things regarded the Active principle as Masculine, and the Passive as Feminine, the one generating and the other nutritive, corresponding to the words rouah and hoshech, the expansion and compression principles in the Hebrew text of the opening verses of Genesis.

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

We may picture then, the response of the indwelling Soul of the Universal Medium to our Thought, as starting corresponding vibrations in the Substance of the Medium, just as our own thought, acting through the vibratory system of our nerves, causes our body to make the movement we intend. But perhaps you will say: How can this be, seeing that by the hypothesis the Soul of the Universe is Impersonal, and therefore unintelligent? Well, it is just this fact of having no thought of its own, that enables us to impress our thought upon it and cause it, so to say, to "take on" an intelligence relatively to the subject of our thought, much in the same way that the impersonal soul in the human subject "takes on" or reflects the thought of the hypnotist, and not infrequently develops it to a far greater extent than the original thought of the operator expressed. Such a hypothesis—and I think some such hypothesis is needed to account for any creation at all—throws light on the modus operandi of the Bible Promises. We plant the Word of the Promise in the womb of Anima Mundi, and if we do not uproot it by using the same power adversely, it is bound to come to fruition in due course, by the same Law by which the world-systems are formed; and if we are to believe that the Word of the Promise is not our own word, but the Word of God, then our Thought of it is imbued with a corresponding power as we hand it over to Anima Mundi. Thus the Promises fulfil themselves automatically, in accordance with the principles of the relations between Law and Personality, and they do so, not in our own power, but by the Power of the Word of God.

This, then, gives us at least an intelligible working hypothesis of the rationale of the Bible Promises. The measurement of their fulfilment is exactly proportional to our belief in them, not from any unintelligible cause, and still less from any unreasoning feat of a capricious Deity, but by the working of an intelligible Law. If any of my readers happens to be an electrician, he will find an exact parallel in what is known as Ohm's Law. Such readers will be familiar with the formula C = E/R, but for the benefit of those to whom this formula may be unintelligible, I will give a few words of explanation. C means the current of electricity which is to be delivered for any work that is to be done. E stands for the Electro-motive force which generates the current; and R is the Resistance offered to the current by the conductor, such as the wires through which it flows. If there be no resistance, the full amount of current generated would be delivered. But without any conductor no current could be delivered, and therefore there must be some resistance, and so the full power of the Electro-motive force can never be delivered by the Current. The amount that will be delivered is the original power of the Electro-motive force divided by the Resistance. The Resistance therefore acts as a restricting force, limiting the extent to which the power of the original Electro-motive force shall be delivered at the point where the work is to be done, but at the same time no delivery at that point could be effected without it; so the Resistance also has a necessary part to play in the working of the circuit. Now if we want to translate the formula C = E/R into terms of spiritual force we may put it thus: E stands for the limitless Potential of the Eternal Spirit; C stands for the current flowing from it; and R stands for the localizing quality of our thought. We cannot entirely dispense with this localizing quality, for our whole purpose is to transmute the unlimited, undifferentiated power, which subsists in the Eternal Substantive of Spirit, into a particular differentiated mode of action, which therefore implies a corresponding centralization. This is the proper function of our thought. It is this compressing power which, as I said above, the Hebrew renders by the word "hoshech" in the opening verses of Genesis, and which is the necessary complementary to the converse expanding power or "rouah." It takes the co-operation of the two to produce any results.

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

We see, then, that there is a Law of Faith, and that Faith is not a denial of the universal reign of Law, but the perception of its widest generalization, and therefore giving scope to its highest specialization. The opposition between Faith and Law, of which St. Paul so often speaks, is the opposition between this broad view of the ultimate Principle of the Creative Law and that narrower view of restriction by particular laws, which prevents us from grasping the Law of Faith; but that he does not deny the Principle of Law, that is the relation between C and E, is clear from his own statement in Rom. viii, where he says: "The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus sets me free from the law of Sin and Death;" in other words: the Law of the Good sets us free from the Law of Evil; and for the same reason St. James says, that the perfect law is the law, of Liberty (Jas. i, 25).

Of course if we suppose that faith is something contrary to the law of the Universe we at once import into our thought the negative quality which entirely vitiates our action. We rightly perceive that the laws of the Universe can never be altered, and if our notion of Faith be, that it is an attempt to work in contradiction to these laws, the best definition we can give it is that given by the little girl in the Sunday school, who said that "Faith is trying to make yourself believe what you know is not true." The reason for such a misconception is, that it entirely omits one of the factors in the calculation. It considers, only the Law, and gives no place to the Word in the scheme of things. Yet we do not carry this misconception into the sciences of chemistry and electricity. We take the immutability of the Law as the basis of these sciences, but we do not expect the immutable Law to produce a photographic apparatus, or an electric train, without the intervention of a reasoning and selective power which specializes the fundamental general Law into particular uses. We do not look to the Law for those powers of reasoning and selection, through which we make it work in all the highly complex ways of our ordinary commercial applications of it—we know better than that. We look to Personality for this. In our every-day pursuits we always act on the maxim that "Nature unaided fails," and that the infinite possibilities stored up in the Law, can only be brought to light by a power of reasoning and selection working through the Law. This co-operation of the Personal with the Impersonal is the Law of the Law; and since the Law is unchangeable, this Law of the Law must also be unchangeable, and must therefore apply on all planes, and through all time—the Law, that without co-operation of the Law and the Word nothing can be brought into existence, from a solar system to a pin; while on the other hand there is no limit to what can be got out of the Law by the operation of the Word.

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



CHAPTER VII

DEATH AND IMMORTALITY

I think most of my readers will agree with me, that the greatest of all the promises is that of the overcoming of death, for, as the greater includes the less, the power which can do that can do anything else. We think that there are only two things that are certain in this world—death and taxes, and no doubt, under the ordinary past conditions, this is quite true; but the question is: are they really inherent in the essential nature of things; or are they not the outcome of our past limited, and often inverted modes of Thought? The teaching of the Bible is that they are the latter. On the subject of taxes the Master says: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" (Matth. xxii, 21), but on another occasion he said that the children of the King were not liable to taxation (Matth. xvii, 26). However we may leave the "taxes" alone for the present, with the remark that their resemblance to death consists in both being, under present conditions, regarded as compulsory. Under other conditions, however, we can well imagine "taxes" disappearing in a unity of thought which would merge them in co-operation and voluntary contribution; and it appears to me quite possible for death to disappear in like manner.

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

Probably ninety-nine out of a hundred readers will say, the whole experience of mankind from the earliest ages proves that Death is the unchangeable Law of the Universe, and there have been no exceptions. I am not quite sure that I should altogether agree with them on this last point; but putting that aside, let us consider whether it really is the essential Law of the Universe. To say that this is proved by the past experience of the race, is what logicians call a petitio principii—it is assuming the whole point at issue. It is the same argument which our grandfathers would have used against aerial navigation—no one had ever travelled in the air, and that proved that no one ever could. My father, who was a junior officer in India when the first railway was run in England, used to tell a story of one of his senior officers, who, on being asked what he thought of the rapidity of the new mode of travelling, said he thought it was "all a damned lie," which opinion appeared to him to settle the whole question. But I hope that none of my readers will hold the same opinion regarding the overcoming of death, even though they might express it in more polite language. At any rate it may be worth while to examine the theoretical possibility of the idea.

To begin with, it involves a self-contradiction to say that the energy of any force can stop the working of that force. If a force stops working, it is for one of two reasons, either that the supply of it is exhausted, or that it is overcome by an opposite and neutralizing force. But we have seen that the Originating Cause of all things can only be an inexhaustible Power of Life, and therefore the hypothesis of it becoming exhausted is eliminated; and similarly, since all the forces of the Universe proceed from this Source, it is impossible for any of them to have a nature diametrically opposite to that of the source from which they flow. So the alternative must be eliminated also. Accordingly, the outflow, undifferentiated, of Life and Energy from the Eternal Substantive of Spirit, is never stopped by its own current in any of its differentiated streams; it is impossible for a current to be stopped by its own flow, whether it be a current of electricity, steam, water, or anything else. What then does stop the flow of any sort of current? It is the Resistance or inertia of the channel through which it flows; so that we come back to the formula of Ohm's Law, C = E/R as a general proposition applicable to any conceivable sort of energy.

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

Now the components of the human body are simply various chemical elements—so much carbon, so much hydrogen, etc., as any textbook on the subject will tell you; and although, of course, every sort of substance is the abode of ceaseless atomic energy, we all recognize that merely atomic energy is not that of the powers of thought, will, and perception, which make us organized mentalities instead of a mere aggregation of the various substances exposed to view in a biological museum, as constituting the human body—you might take all these substances in their proper proportions, and shake them up together, but you would not make an intelligent man of them. We are therefore safe in saying that the physiological body represents the principle of inertia in us, while the something that thinks in us represents the principle of Ertia.

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

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

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

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

But if we wish to trace the links by which our thought operates upon the physical body, we find ourselves compelled to postulate yet another intermediary, what I have spoken of as the "Vital Soul"—a vehicle which does not consciously think, but in which what we may call race-consciousness becomes centred in the individual. This race-consciousness is none other than the ever-present "will-to-live" which is the basis of physical evolution—that automatically acting principle—which causes plants to turn towards the sun, animals to seek their proper food, and both animals and men to try instantly to escape from immediate danger. It is what we call instinct which does not reason. I may give a laughable experience of my own to illustrate the fact that conscious reason is not the method of this faculty. Once when on leave from India I was walking along a street in London in the heat of a summer's day and suddenly noticed just at my feet a long dark thing apparently wriggling across the white glare of the pavement. "Snake!" I exclaimed, and jumped aside for all I was worth, and the next moment was laughing at myself for not recollecting that cobras were not common objects in the London streets. But it looked just like one, and of course turned out to be nothing but a piece of rag. Well, instinct did its duty even if it did make a fool of me; but there is certainly no conscious reasoning in the matter, only the automatic action of inherent Law—"Self-preservation is the first law of Nature."

This Vital Soul, then, is the seat of all those instincts which go towards the preservation of the individual's physical body, and towards the propagation of the race; and it is on this account that our theosophical friends call it the "Desire Body" or, to use the Indian term "Kama rupa." It acts with conscious intention, but not with conscious reasoning. It is thus distinguished on the one hand from the etheric body, which is a mere vehicle for finer vibrations than can take place in the denser matter of the physical body, but which has no intention; and on the other from the mind which acts by conscious reasoning, and it thus forms an intermediary between the two.

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

Now it is the direction of this thought that influences the three lower factors. The sequence, going upwards, is as follows:—movement is communicated to the physical body by the etheric body; and movement is communicated to the etheric body by the Vital Soul; then, in proportion as the purely instinctive action of the Vital Soul is controlled by the conscious thought, so its action upon the two lowest principles is modified.

Here, then, is the crucial point. In what direction is the conscious thought going to modify the action of the three principles that are below it? If it takes the soul of mere racial desire and the physical body as its standard of thought, then it naturally follows that it cannot raise it any higher. It has descended to their level and so cannot pour any stream of life into it, on the simple principle that no current can ever flow from a lower to a higher level, whether the difference in level be that of actual elevation, as in the case of water, or different in potential, as in the case of electricity. On the other hand if the conscious mind recognizes that itself proceeds from some higher source, it looks to receive life from that source, and its thought is modified accordingly, and in turn re-acts correspondingly upon the lower principles.

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

In this way then, it appears to me, the Personal in us acts upon the Impersonal in us; and if we assume, as I think we may, that this action takes place by means of etheric waves, we have, on general scientific principles, a clue to what we read in the Bible about the transmutation of the body. The theory of the constitution of the atom shows us that its nature is determined by the number of its particles and their rate of revolution, and that a change in the rate of revolution results in the throwing off of some of the particles. Then the number of particles being altered, there results a change in the distribution of the positive and negative charges within the sphere of the atom, since they must always exactly balance one another; and this change in the distribution of the positive and negative charges must instantly result in a corresponding change in the geometrical configuration of particles constituting the atom.

That the particles automatically arrange themselves into groups of different geometrical form within the sphere of the atom, has been demonstrated both mathematically and experimentally by Professor J.J. Thompson,[6] these geometrical forms resulting of course from the balance of attraction and repulsion between the positive and negative charges of the particles.

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

The transmutation of one sort of atom into another is therefore not a mere visionary fancy, but an established fact; and although our laboratory experiments in this direction may not as yet have gone very far, they have gone far enough to show that a Law of Transmutation does exist in Nature. Then, since the difference between one sort of atom and another results from the difference and arrangement of their particles, and the difference in the number and arrangement of the particles results from the difference in the speed of their rotation, and this again results from the difference in the energy or rate of vibration of the particles, we come back to different rates of etheric vibrations as the commencement of the whole series of changes; and as is proved by the facts of wireless telephoning, different rates of etheric vibrations can be set in motion by the varying sounds of the human voice, even on the physical plane. May it not be then, that by the same law, vibrations of other wave-lengths, yet unknown to science, will be set in motion by the unspoken word of our thought?

The substance known as Polonium, even by its near approach to an electric bell, causes it to ring, and if etheric waves can thus be started by an inanimate substance, why should we suppose that our thought has less power, especially when metaphysically we cannot avoid the conclusion that the whole creation must have its origin in the Divine Thought?

From such considerations as these, I think we may reasonably infer that if the mind be illuminated by a range of thought coming from a higher mind, there is no limit to the power which may thus be exercised over the material world, and that therefore St. Paul's statement regarding the transmutation of the present physical body, is one which should be included in the circle of our ideas, as being within the scope of the Laws of the Universe when their action is specialized by the power of the Word (1 Cor. xv); and similarly with regard to other statements to the same effect contained in the Bible. What is wanted is the realization of a greater Word than that which we form from the current experience of the race. The race has formed its Word on the basis of the lower principles of our being, and if we are to advance beyond this, the Law of the subject clearly indicates that it can only be by adopting a more fundamental Word, or Idea, than that which we have hitherto thought to include the entire range of possibilities. The Law of our further Evolution demands a Word not formed from past experiences, but based upon the eternal principle of the All-Originating Life itself. And this is in strict accord with scientific method. If we had always allowed ourselves to be ruled by past experiences we should still be primitive savages; and it is only by the gradual perception of underlying principles, that we have attained the degree of civilization we have reached to-day; so what the Bible puts before us is simply the application to the life in ourselves of the maxim that "Principle is not limited by Precedent."

Now the Bible Promises serve to put us on the track of this Principle: they suggest lines of enquiry. And the enquiry leads to the conclusion that the two ultimate factors are the Law and the Word. What we have missed hitherto is the conception of the limitless possibilities of the Law, and the limitless power of the Word. On one occasion the Master said to the Jews "Ye know not the Scriptures neither the power of God" (Matth. xxii, 29) and the same is the case with ourselves. The true "Scripture" is the "scriptura rerum" or the Law indelibly written in the nature of things, and the written Scriptures are true only because they contain the statement of the Principle of the Law. Therefore until we see the Principle of the Law we "know not the Scriptures." On the other hand, until we see the Principle of the operation of the Word through the Law, we do not know "the Power of God"; and it is only as we come to perceive the interaction of the Law and the Word that we see the beginning of the way that leads to Life and Liberty.

But although it is evident from the text just quoted, as well as from other intimations in his Epistles, that St. Paul fully grasped the principle of the transmutation of the body, he himself tells us that he has not yet realized it in practice. He says he has not yet "attained to the resurrection from the dead," but is still pressing on towards its attainment (Ph. iii, 12). And it is to be remarked that he is not here speaking of a general "resurrection of the dead," but, as the word exanastasis in the original Greek indicates, of a special resurrection from among the dead; this indicates an individual achievement, not merely something common to the whole race. From this and other passages it is evident that by "the dead" it means those whose conception of Life is limited to the four lower principles, thus unifying the mind with the three principles which are below it; and the same idea is expressed in a variety of ways all through the Bible. This therefore shows that he is quite aware that knowledge of a principle does not enable us then and there to attain the completeness of the application, and if this be the case with St. Paul, we cannot be surprised to find it the same with ourselves. But on the other hand knowledge of the principle is the first step towards getting it to work.

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

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

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

Yes, this is a question of deep personal interest to us; but as I cannot speak from experience, I will restrict myself to seeing whether we can form any sort of general hypothesis on the basis of the principles we have recognized. What then is likely to survive? The physical body is of course disintegrated by the chemistry of Nature. The etheric body probably continues to retain its form longer, because it is a condensation of etheric particles wrought together by the etheric waves sent out by the Vital Soul, and is therefore not subject to the laws of chemical affinity. The Vital Soul, being the race-principle of life in the individual,—that principle which automatically seeks to preserve the individual from disintegration,—probably survives longer still, until, ceasing to receive any reflex vibrations from the body, it grows gradually weaker in its sense of individual guardianship, and so is eventually absorbed into the group-soul or generic essence of the class to which it belongs. This is probably what happens in the case of animals for want of any higher vivifying principle, and would be the same with us were it not for the fact of having such a higher principle. In our case I should imagine that the influx of etheric waves, received from the thought action of the mind, would have the effect of continuing to impress the Vital Soul with a sense of individuality, in terms of its own plane, which would prevent it from being absorbed into the group-soul so long as the vital current from the mind continued to reach it. But eventually that current would cease to reach it, and in some cases, because the individual mind that governed it would gradually realize that its connection with the physical plane had ceased, and in others, because through a higher illumination the mind had, of its own volition, turned its thought in another direction. In either case, on the ceasing of the influx of that vitalizing current, the Vital Soul of the human being would likewise be absorbed into the Cosmic Soul, or Anima Mundi.

How long the processes of the disintegration of the etheric body, and absorption of the vital soul may take, is a question on which I can offer no opinion beyond saying that certain psychic phenomena suggest that in some cases they may take a long period of time. But for the reasons I have now given, it appears to me that the permanently surviving factor is the thinking mind which is our real self, and is positively our centre of consciousness after the physical body has been put off.

By the facts of the case its consciousness is no longer affected by vibrations received from the physical body; and therefore, to the extent to which our idea of life has been centred in that body, we shall feel its loss. If our motto has been "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die" we shall feel very dead indeed—a living death, a consciousness of being cut off from all that constituted our enjoyment of life—a thirst for the satisfaction of our customary ideas, which we have no power to quench; and, in proportion as our habitual mode of thought is raised above that lowest level, so will our sense of loss be less. Then, by the same Law, if our habitual mode of thought is turned towards pure, beautiful, and helpful ideals, we shall feel no loss at all, for we shall carry our own ideals with us, and, I hope, see them more clearly by reason of their disentanglement from mundane considerations. In what precise way we may then be able to work out our ideals I will not now stop to discuss. What we want first is a reasonable theory, based upon the principle of that universal Law which is only varied in its actions by the conditions under which it works; so, instead of speculating as to precise details, we may generalize the question of how we can work out the good ideals which we carry over with us, and put it this way:—Our ideas are embodied in thoughts; thoughts start trains of etheric waves, which waves induce reciprocal action whenever they meet with a receiver capable of vibrating synchronously with them, and so eventually the thought becomes a fact, and our helpful and beautiful ideal becomes a work of power, whether in this world or in any other.

Now it is to the forming of such ideals that the Bible, from first to last is trying to lead us. From first to last it is working upon one uniform principle, that the Thought is the Word, that the Word sets in motion the Law, and that when the Law is set in motion it acts with mathematical precision. The Bible is a handbook of instruction for the use of our Creative Power of Thought, and this is the sequence which it follows—one definite method, so fundamental in its nature, that it applies equally to the making of a packing-case or the making of a solar system.

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

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

If now we start by recognizing this as our necessary place in the Progressive Order of the Universe, I think it will help us to form a reasonable theory as to the reconstruction of the body. First of all, why have we any physical body at all? As a matter of fact we have one, and no amount of transcendental philosophizing will alter the fact, and so we may conclude that there is some reason for it. We have seen the truth of the maxim "Omne vivum ex vivo," and therefore that all particular forms of life are differentiations of the one Basic Life. This means a localizing of the Life-Principle in individual centres. The formation of a centre implies condensation; for where there is no condensation the Energy, whether electricity or Life, is simply dispersed and achieving no purpose. Therefore distinctness from the undifferentiated Original Life is a necessity of the case. Consequently the higher the degree of Consciousness of Individuality, the greater must be the Consciousness of Distinctness of Personality.

We say of a "wobbly" sort of person: "That fellow is no use, you can't depend on him." We say of a person whose ideas, intentions, and methods are subject to continual variations under all sorts of outside influences, whether of opinions or circumstances, that he has "no backbone," meaning that he is in want of individuality. He has no real thought of his own, and so has no Word of Power by which to co-operate with the Law; therefore, to the extent to which this is the case with any of us, we are of no use in furthering the unfoldment of Evolution, whether in ourselves or anywhere else.

Now we talk a lot about Evolution or the un-folding, but we seem often not to realize that there must be something to unfold; and that therefore In-volution, or the concentration of the Life-principle, must be a condition precedent to its E-volution. This process of Involution must therefore be a process of gradually increasing concentration of the Life-principle, by association with denser and denser modes of the Universal Substance. Then, on the principle of Vibration, the less dense the substance in which the Life is immersed, the more it must be subject to being stirred by vibratory currents other than those produced by the conscious action of the Ego, or inherent Life, of the individuality that is being formed.

But "the Sum of the Vibrations in anything determines the mode, power, and direction of its action"; therefore, the less the Ego be concentrated through association with a dense vehicle, the more "wobbly" it must be, and consequently the less able to take any effective part in the further work of Creation. But in proportion as the Ego builds up an Individual Will, the more it gets out of the "wobbly" state—or, to refer once more to the idea of etheric waves—it becomes able to select what vibrations it will receive, and what vibrations it will send out.

The involution of the Ego into the physical body, such as we at present know it, is therefore a necessity of the case, if any effective Individuality is to be brought into existence, and the work of Creation carried on instead of being cut short, not for want of material, but for want of workmen capable of using the tools of the builders' craft—the Law as "Strength" and the Word as "Beauty."

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

If the Constrictive element be allowed to go further than giving necessary form to the Expansive element, it imprisons the latter. The condensation becomes too dense for the Ego to receive or send forth vibrations according to its free will, and so the Individuality becomes lost. If the condensation process be not carried far enough, no Individuality can be built up, and if it be carried too far, no Individuality can emerge; so in both cases we get the same result that there is no one to speak the Word of Power without which "Nature unaided fails."

Thus we are now exactly at the bottom of the Circle of Being. We have completed the Descending Arc and reached the point where the realization of the Distinctness of Conscious Individuality enables us to choose our own line, whether that of progressing through the stages of the Ascending Arc of Being, or of falling out from the living Circle of Progression, at least for a period, into what is sometimes mystically spoken of as "the Moon," or (in descending order) the "Eighth Sphere," and which is called in Scripture "The Outer Darkness,"—the rigidity which stops the action of Life.

Therefore it is with regard to this stage of our career that the Bible lays so much stress on the conflict between the Spirit and the Flesh—it is a fact in the course of our evolution, and the purpose of the Bible is to teach us how to move forward along the Ascending Arc of the Circle of Being, so as to build up individualities which will be able to use the tools of Intelligence and Will in the great work of Evolution, both Personal and Cosmic.

Now what is shown diagrammatically as the Ascending Arc of the Circle of Life is the Return from its lowest point, or the Full Consciousness of Personal Distinctness, gained through the Material Body, back to its highest point or the Originating Life itself. This is the truth embodied in the parable of the Prodigal Son. It is a Cosmic truth, and this return journey is technically called by the Green name "Anaktorion." It is the Rising-again, that is from matter to Spirit, and is the Resurrection Principle.

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

A New Centre of Intelligence and volition is established; from this the Creative Word of Power can be spoken—a Complete Man has been brought into existence, who can take a free and intelligent part in the further work of Creation, by his understanding of the interaction between the Law and the Word. The "Volume of the Sacred Law" lies open before us, and the Vibratory Power of the Word to give effect to it is the "Blazing Star" that illuminates its contents, and so we become fellow-workers with the Great Architect of the Universe.

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

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

On the contrary, the very conception of the power of the Word to specialize the action of the Law, implies the power of functioning on any plane we choose; but always subject to the Law, that if we want to act on any particular plane in propria persona, and not merely by influencing some other agent, we can only do so by assuming a body in terms of the nature of that plane. Therefore, if we want to act on the physical plane, we must put on a physical body. But when we have fully grasped the Power of the Word we cannot be tied to a body. We shall no longer regard it as composed of so many chemical elements, but we shall see beyond them into the real primary etheric substance of which they are composed, and so by our volition shall be able to put the physical body on or off at pleasure,—that at least is a quite logical deduction from what we have learnt in the preceding pages.