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motive of Love and Beauty.

      Now this is the Spirit that we need to enter into, and the method

      of doing so is a perfectly logical one. It is the same method by

      which all scientific advance is made. It consists in first

      observing how a certain law works under the conditions

      spontaneously provided by nature, next in carefully considering

      what principle this spontaneous working indicates, and lastly

      deducing from this how the same principle would act under

      specially selected conditions, not spontaneously provided by

      nature.

      The progress of shipbuilding affords a good example of what I

      mean. Formerly wood was employed instead of iron, because wood

      floats in water and iron sinks; yet now the navies of the world

      are built of iron; careful thought showed the law of floatation

      to be that anything could float which, bulk for bulk, is lighter

      than the mass of liquid displaced by it; and so we now make iron

      float by the very same law by which it sinks, because by the

      introduction of the PERSONAL factor, we provide conditions which

      do not occur spontaneously--according to the esoteric maxim that

      "Nature unaided fails." Now we want to apply the same process of

      specializing a generic Law to the first of all Laws, that of the

      generic life-giving tendency of Spirit itself. Without the

      element of INDIVIDUAL PERSONALITY the Spirit can only work

      cosmically by a GENERIC Law; but this law admits of far higher

      specialization, and this specialization can only be attained

      through the introduction of the personal factor. But to introduce

      this factor the individual must be fully aware of the PRINCIPLE

      which underlies the spontaneous or cosmic action of the law.

      Where, then, will he find this principle of Life? Certainly not

      by contemplating Death. In order to get a principle to work in

      the way we require it to, we must observe its action when it is

      working spon" taneously in this particular direction. We must ask

      why it goes in the right direction as far as it does--and having

      learnt this we shall then be able to make it go further. The law

      of floatation was not discovered by contemplating the sinking of

      things, but by contemplating the floating of things which floated

      naturally, and then intelligently asking why they did so.

      The knowledge of a principle is to be gained by the study of its

      affirmative action; when we understand THAT we are in a position

      to correct the negative conditions which tend to prevent that

      action.

      Now Death is the absence of Life, and disease is the absence of

      health, so to enter into the Spirit of Life we require to

      contemplate it, where it is to be found, and not where it is not-

      -we are met with the old question, "Why seek ye the living among

      the dead?" This is why we start our studies by considering the

      cosmic creation, for it is there that we find the Life Spirit

      working through untold ages, not merely as deathless energy, but

      with a perpetual advance into higher degrees of Life. If we could

      only so enter into the Spirit as to make it personally IN

      OURSELVES what it evidently is in ITSELF, the magnum opus would

      be accomplished. This means realizing our life as drawn direct

      from the Originating Spirit; and if we now understand that the

      Thought or Imagination of the Spirit is the great reality of

      Being, and that all material facts are only correspondences, then

      it logically follows that what we have to do is to maintain our

      individual place in the Thought of the Parent Mind.

      We have seen that the action of the Originating Mind must needs

      be GENERIC, that is according to types which include multitudes

      of individuals. This type is the reflection of the Creative Mind

      at the level of that particular GENIUS; and at the human level it

      is Man, not as associated with particular circumstances, but as

      existing in the absolute ideal.

      In proportion then as we learn to dissociate our conception of

      ourselves from particular circumstances, and to rest upon our

      ABSOLUTE nature, as reflections of the Divine ideal, we, in our

      turn, reflect back into the Divine Imagination its original

      conception of itself as expressed in generic or typical Man, and

      so by a natural law of cause and effect, the individual who

      realizes this mental attitude enters permanently into the Spirit

      of Life, and it becomes a perennial fountain of Life springing up

      spontaneously within him.

      He then finds himself to be as the Bible says, "the image and

      likeness of God." He has reached the level at which he affords a

      new starting point for the creative process, and the Spirit,

      finding a personal centre in him, begins its work de nova, having

      thus solved the great problem of how to enable the Universal to

      act directly upon the plane of the Particular.

      It is in this sense, as affording the requisite centre for a new

      departure of the creative Spirit, that man is said to be a

      "microcosm," or universe in miniature; and this is also what is

      meant by the esoteric doctrine of the Octave, of which I may be

      able to speak more fully on some other occasion.

      If the principles here stated are carefully considered, they will

      be found to throw light on much that would otherwise be obscure,

      and they will also afford the key to the succeeding essays.

      The reader is therefore asked to think them out carefully for

      himself, and to note their connection with the subject of the

      next article.

      INDIVIDUALITY.

      Individuality is the necessary complement of the Universal

      Spirit, which was the subject of our consideration last Sunday.

      The whole problem of life consists in finding the true

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