Science and the Infinite Part 2

Again, if two out of the tri-subdivisions mentioned above be taken, the form of these together is exactly similar, geometrically, to half the original figure, and again the Equilateral Triangle is ubiquitous on every base line.

Again, the diagonal of the rectangle is exactly double the length of its shorter side, which characteristic is absolutely _unique_, and greatly increases its usefulness for plotting out designs; and this property of course holds good for all the rectangles formed by the original figure and for the other species of subdivision. But perhaps its most mysterious property (though not of any practical use) to those who had studied Geometry, and to whom this figure was the symbol of the Divine Trinity in Unity, so dear to them, was the fact that it actually put into their hands the means of _trisecting_ the Right Angle.

Now, the three great problems of antiquity which engaged the attention and wonderment of geometricians throughout the Middle Ages, were "the Squaring of the Circle," "the Duplication of the Cube," and lastly, "the Trisection of an Angle," even Euclid being unable to show how to do it; and yet it will be seen that the diagonal of one of the subsidiary figures in the tri-subdivision, together with the diagonal of the whole figure, actually trisect the angle at the corner of the rectangle. It is true that it only showed them how to trisect one kind of angle, but it was that particular angle which was so dear to them as symbolising their craft, and which was created by the Equilateral Triangle. All these unique properties place the figure far above that of a square for practical work, because even when the diagonal of a square is given, it is impossible to find the exact length of any of its sides or _vice versa_; whereas in the Vesica rectangle the diagonal is exactly double its shorter side, and upon any length of line which may be taken on the tracing-board as a base for elevation, an Equilateral Triangle will be found whose sides are of course all equal and therefore known, as they are equal to the base, and whose line joining apex to centre of base is a true Plumb line, forming at its foot the perfect right angle, so important in the laying of every stone of a building.

In the volume referred to I have given a skeleton plan upon such a scale of subdivision that a tracing-board, of 5 feet by 8 feet, would be divided up into over one million parts, and, as all these subdivisions are perfect representations of the original Vesica figure with all its properties, the design of the largest building, with the minutest detail, could be drafted with absolute accuracy. There are many other curious properties of this Figure, but they are difficult to explain without diagrams. I will, however, give one more example of its creative power. The problem of describing a Pentagon must have puzzled architects considerably in those early times, but this was again easily accomplished by means of the Vesica. Albrecht Durer, the great designer and engraver, who lived at the end of the fifteenth century, refers to the Vesica in his works (_Dureri Inst.i.tutune Geometricarum_, lib. ii. p. 56) in a way which shows that it was as commonly known in his time as the Circle, Square, and Triangle. His instructions for forming a Pentagon are: "Designa circino invariato tres piscium vesicas" (describe with unchanged compa.s.ses three vesicae piscium). Three similar circles are described with centres at the angles of an Equilateral Triangle, forming the three Vesicae, by means of which the Pentagon is drawn, and from which also we get a beautiful form of arch very common in the thirteenth century (_vide_ ill.u.s.trations in _Magister Mathesios_). This is also the method used in that old ma.n.u.script of the fifteenth century named "Geometria deutsch." In this old MS. it is also shown that the easiest method for finding the centre of a circle, however large, or any segment of a circle, is by means of the Vesica Piscis. And just as we see so many Cathedrals of the Middle Ages are stated by antiquarians to have been planned on the Equilateral Triangle, so do we find the Pentagon appearing as the basis of Architectural designs of buildings of a later date, such as Liverpool Castle, Chester Castle, and other similar structures; but the true means by which each were laid down, as in the case of the Equilateral Triangle, was again the Vesica Piscis. A beautiful example of decoration, on the basis of the Vesica, is seen in the tomb of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey.

I will conclude this subject by quoting from the summing up by Prof.

Kerrich (Princ.i.p.al Librarian to the University of Cambridge in 1820), in his masterly Essay on Architecture, where he gives the different forms of what he calls the "Mysterious Figure," used in the most noted Gothic buildings: he says, "I would in nowise indulge in conjectures as to the reference these figures might possibly have to the most sacred mysteries of religion; independently of any such allusion, their properties are of themselves sufficiently extraordinary to have struck all who have observed them."

From earliest Christian times the princ.i.p.al _doctrine_ based upon the Mysticism of the Neo-platonists and the Kabalists was what was called the [Greek: Gnosis], the Knowledge of the All, and the fundamental basis of this, as of all esoteric teaching from the beginning of History, was _Procreation_. From the first dawn of civilisation the "Great One" always had an enemy with whom he had to fight; having conquered, he married that enemy, and their offspring was Life or Duration. In the oldest forms, as in Persia and ancient Egypt, it was Light and Darkness, "Ormuz and Ahriman," "Osiris and Isis," the Light conquering Darkness, the Day conquering Night, resulting in Time and duration. In the Eleusinian Mysteries it was the "Sun and Earth"

producing Vegetable Life, and in the [Greek: Gnosis] it was the "Ainsoph and Ignorance," resulting in True Knowledge or Everlasting Life.

In the Vesica Piscis (_vide_ frontispiece) we see two Equilateral Triangles formed on the same base, similar to what we found in the ground-plan of Chartres and other Gothic Cathedrals; these two triangles symbolised to the Mediaeval Builders the Divine and Human Natures of the Logos, the Word, the Creator; they are both procreated and enclosed in the Vesica; the one having the Apex pointed upwards, represented Divine or Spiritual Life, and in that I have placed the "Tetragrammaton," the Word or name of G.o.d (Jehovah), which, throughout the Jewish race for thousands of years, was held to be so sacred that they did not dare to utter it aloud. It was, at this time, depicted in the Equilateral Triangle, the symbol of the Logos, becoming thus the Masonic Word of the Middle Ages, and was probably used, exoterically, for purposes of recognition among members of the Great Building Societies, with the introduction of Gothic Architecture; but the _esoteric_ teaching, which was known only to the elite of the Craft and not by the Ordinary Operatives, was the mystical _procreation_ of that triangle, the doctrine of Spiritual or New Birth, symbolised by that mysterious figure which we have seen was the very foundation stone of Geometry, and therefore of Tectonic Art, the Head of all learning, and the great Secret of Gothic Architecture, called for esoteric purposes "Vesica Piscis." The Triangle, having the Apex pointing downwards, represented Human or Physical Life, and I have placed therein a representation of _sacrificial_ death, which we shall see was introduced, as a necessity, for the good of the Race.

As "everything in Heaven has its counterpart on Earth," so may we see, by introspection, that the _reflecting_ surface, the thin, physical film between the Human and Divine, is represented by that Base, and Human Life then becomes truly, as it should be, the reflection of the Divine.

One more glance through the Window at what I will call--

"The Mystery of the Apex."

The earliest forms of Life, the unicellular "Beings," whether animal or vegetable--for both divisions, if they can be said to be divided, have the same protoplasmic cell as basis of life--were, and are still, immortal except for accidents; they are not subject to natural death as we know it; they multiply by fission and not by "budding." It was only with the building up of cell upon cell into communities, and the advent of polycellular beings of greater and greater complexity of structure, that the "Wisdom" behind natural laws introduced death as an _adaptation_, to prevent monstrosities in the shape of mutilated specimens being perpetuated on the earth. Life is purely physical and, in conformity with the modes under which our physical senses act, has the appearance of tri-unity. As white light is seen to be composed of but three primary colours, as Music is based on the Triad, as s.p.a.ce is known to us in three dimensions only, and Geometry, "the Head of all Learning," is based upon the Circle, Square, and Triangle, so may we see life in its three primary aspects: the Animal, Vegetable, and Material. The last-mentioned aspect, though long suspected, from the investigation of Crystallography, to have in some mysterious way a common basis with the animal and vegetable, was not fully grasped until, in the last few years, we have been able to study in our laboratories the actual evolution, or more correctly devolution, of matter from one form to another; and as all plants and animals are found to be built up of the same identical protoplasmic cells, so are we now able to break down and a.n.a.lyse not only these cells but even the very structure of matter, and find that all substances are built up of exactly the same bricks, the different forms known to us as Elements being the _designs_ of the great Architect upon which each structure has been built; and these completed designs again are used and become the "ashlars" of the higher forms of plant and animal structure. As Evolution in the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms has given us Species, so in the Material it has developed Elements. The structures of animal and vegetable life are of comparatively recent formation, and are still apparently progressing in the direction of complexity, whereas the structures of matter appear to have long pa.s.sed the stage of highest complexity, and the elements are now undergoing the retrograde process of being transformed, by radio-activity, from the more complex into simpler elements of lower atomic denominations--namely, having fewer bricks in each atom.

All these material designs are more or less radio-active--namely, changing into other elements, but some, like radium, polonium, &c., are active to an extraordinary extent. Each molecule or atom may be looked upon as an _aperture_, more or less open, through which we have flowing the equivalent of what may be called a leak from the Infinite, the changing of one element into another being represented by the change of shape or activity of that aperture. Countless ages ago these apertures were, by evolution, growing more and more complex in shape, but when the limit of complexity was reached and the _Apex_ was pa.s.sed, an adaptation, somewhat a.n.a.logous to death in the animal and vegetable, must have come into play, with the result that these apertures are now becoming more and more simple in their shape and activity. The Infinite referred to above may be diagnosed by some as being in the fourth dimension of s.p.a.ce, or it may even be comprised within the Ether of our known three dimensions, for the discovery of radio-activity has enabled us to see that Ether is not only as dense as iron, but millions of times denser than that metal, every cubic foot, or probably cubic inch, being capable of supplying millions of horse-power if it could only be tapped. A homely simile of this leak from the Infinite may be seen in a gla.s.s of aerated water, where an irregularity of surface, a crumb of bread, or a grain of sand becomes the means by which carbonic-dioxide escapes from the interstices of the water.

Radio-active substances then are really forges for forming new structures of matter or forms of energy, rather than quarries from which they are cut, and we seem to get a glimpse of the origin of life, perhaps itself the cause of "retrogression" in the material, coming through from the Reality, the Infinite beyond the physical Universe.

Life and its processes are well symbolised by a triangle, the base of which is the "Divide" between the Real and its reflections or shadows on the Material plane, and through which all energy percolates. One side of the triangle represents anabolism, or the process of building up, and the other katabolism, the process of breaking down, and at the Apex is the Mystical "Terror of the Threshold," the "Ainsoph" (_vide_ frontispiece), which introduced _sacrificial_ death to the Physical, as an adaptation in the evolution of, and for the good of, the Human race. With the death of the Physical, the rending of the Veil, as we have seen in View Two, all Shadows and Reflections disappear, and, in place of "seeing as through a gla.s.s darkly," the Soul has its true birth, and at last enters upon its heritage in the Divine Life, face to face with the Reality, the Good, the Beautiful, and the True.

VIEW FOUR

LOVE IN ACTION

In the preceding Views we have seen that Time and s.p.a.ce have no real existence apart from our physical senses; they are only modes or conditions under which those senses act, and by which we gain a very limited and illusory knowledge of our surroundings. Our very consciousness of living depends upon our perception of mult.i.tudinous changes in our surroundings, and our very thoughts are therefore also limited by Time and s.p.a.ce, because _change_ is dependent on those two limits, the very basis of perceived motion being the time that an object takes to go over a certain s.p.a.ce; we must therefore look behind consciousness itself, beyond the conditioning in Time and s.p.a.ce, for the true reality of Being. We have seen that man is the offspring of two distinct natures--the Spiritual or Transcendental and the Material or Physical; the former is the Real, the latter is only a shadow. If we now try to consider the connection between these two natures, we have to recognise that, with all our advance in Knowledge during the last hundred years, we are indeed still as children playing with pebbles on the sea-sh.o.r.e, knowing neither why we are placed there, nor what those pebbles are, or whence they came. Though we seem ever to be discovering fresh truths concerning their relations one with another, when arranged in different patterns, built up into new forms, or split up into smaller fragments, we have to acknowledge (subst.i.tuting thoughts for pebbles) that we are still only learning our alphabet and the simple rules of multiplication, addition, and division, which must be mastered before we can hope to take the real step towards understanding.

We are surrounded by mysteries; we are indeed a mystery to ourselves, we do not even know how the Physical Ego is connected with the physical world; how the sense organs, receiving the impression of mult.i.tudinous and diverse frequencies of different intensities, transmit them to the brain, and how the mind is able to combine all these impressions and form concepts. But by examining the Physical Universe, we seem to see clearly that the only Reality is the Spiritual, the Here, and the Now, that our real _Personality_ being Spiritual is independent of s.p.a.ce and Time limitations, and is therefore Omnipresent and Omniscient; it may indeed be not only connected with the Physical Ego of this World, but be in close working connection with other Physical Egos in the Universe, and may, in some wonderful process, through its affinity with the Great Spirit, be helping them to progress in other directions possibly quite beyond our power to conceive under the conditions we are accustomed to here.

A great forest tree forms each year a mult.i.tude of separate buds; each of these buds is an independent plant which has only a temporary existence and has no present knowledge of the other buds, but it is by means of all these buds and the leaves they develop, that the tree is nourished and increases from year to year. Still more wonderful is the fact that it is these temporary existences which, in accordance with the general law of life-production, form special "ovules," which we call seeds, each of which has the potentiality for growing up into a great forest tree, which, in its turn, is capable of pus.h.i.+ng forth temporary existences in countless directions. We have, in the above process of creating a forest tree, a likeness on the Physical Plane to what I would suggest is the process not only of the creation of the Race, but, on the Transcendental Plane, the multiplication of permanent personalities by means of, or in connection with, the temporary and s.p.a.ce-limited Human Physical Ego.

Again, as the human mind forms a thought, clothes it in physical language, and sends it forth in such a form as not only affects our material sense of hearing, but conveys to the hearer the very thought itself, so the whole Physical Universe is a temporary and s.p.a.ce-limited representation of the Reality which is behind, is in fact the materialisation of the Will or Thought of the Great Spirit.

The "taking root" or advent of the Spiritual to the genus h.o.m.o, made it possible for man to interpret the Good, Beautiful, and True in the phenomena of nature, and, as we, by studying these materialisations, gain knowledge of the Reality, and our personalities become real powers, so may we at length approach the point where we may feel that we are thinking, or having divulged to us, the very thoughts of G.o.d; and, though it may never be possible in this life to form a full conception of the Reality, we may, I think, even with our present state of knowledge, aspire to understand the messages conveyed to us in some of the mult.i.tudinous forms, under which these thoughts are presented to us, and I propose giving an example of this later on in this View.

Once more, in the case of a picture, it is possible, by examining and comparing a number of certain short lines in perspective, to discover not only the position occupied by the Artist, but also the point to which all those lines converge; so by examining and combining certain lines of Thought on the Physical Plane, and following them as far as we can with our present knowledge towards the point where our Ideals of the Good, Beautiful, and True intersect, we may reach the position from which we may be able to form, although through a gla.s.s darkly, even a conception of the Great Reality, and therefore of Its Offspring the Transcendental Ego, and its connection with the Universe.

As the whole of Nature is the temporary and s.p.a.ce-limited manifestation of the Reality, so the individual Physical Ego is the manifestation in Time and s.p.a.ce of the Transcendental Ego or true Personality. The Physical Ego is its transient expression and has no other use beyond this life. Each Physical Ego helps, or should help forward, the general improvement of the Race towards perfection. Each generation should come into being a step nearer to the Spiritual, until it can be pictured that at the final consummation, there will be nothing imperfect, no shadow left; the full complement of Spiritual Personalities being complete in the Great All-Father.

Do we not then see clearly that the Physical Ego, comprised in what we call "I am," "I perceive," "I think," "I conceive," "I remember," is transient, and has only to do with the progress of the Race? It is the Shadow or Image in the Physical Universe of that Personality which Transcends Time and s.p.a.ce. Take away a small portion of the Brain, the organ of the Mind, and Memory is wiped out, remove the greater part of it and the manifestation of the Physical Ego is destroyed; though the body is as much alive as before, there is apparently nothing left but the physical life, which it has in common with all animals, plants, and probably, as strongly suggested by late discoveries in Radio-activity, even with what is called inorganic matter. The Brain, and therefore the Ego, is not a necessity for Physical life; this is clearly seen in the lower forms of life--it would be difficult to point out the brain of a Cabbage or an Oak Tree.

In the last forty years we have entered upon a new era of religion and philosophy; we hear no more of the old belief that the study of scientific facts leads to atheism or irreligion; we begin to see that Religion and Science must go hand in hand towards elucidating the Riddle of the Universe, and such a change enables us even to aspire to show, as I now propose to do, that it is possible, by examining certain phenomena in Nature, to reach that point where we may feel that we are listening to and understanding, though through a gla.s.s darkly, what may be called the very Thoughts of the Great Reality. I will take for examination the subject most intimately connected with the t.i.tle of this View--namely, the nature of the growth of the Transcendental Personality, upon what that growth depends, and how we may understand that the attainment to Everlasting Life is dependent upon that growth.

I have already pointed out in View Two that the Transcendental Personality, being Spiritual, and therefore akin to the Great Reality, may be said to have no free-will of itself. Its will or influence must always be working towards perfection in the form "Let Thy Will, which is also my will, be done"; the efficacy of its influence with the Great Reality depends on its growth or nourishment by the knowledge of the Good, Beautiful, and True ever bringing it more and more nearly into perfect touch or sympathy with the All-loving. The power of prayer therefore depends upon two conditions; it must be in the form of "Let thy Will be done," and that which prays must be capable of making its pet.i.tion felt, by having already gained a knowledge of what that Will is. I am, of course, not referring to that form of prayer which, alas with so many, seems to be the attempt to get as much out of the Absolute as is possible, with the least amount of trouble.

If now we carefully examine the Phenomena around us, we make the extraordinary discovery that this power to influence is the very basis of survival and of progress throughout the universe. In the organic world all Nature seems to be praying in one form or another, and only those that pray with efficacy, based upon the above two conditions, survive in the struggle for existence. The economy of Nature is founded upon that inexorable law the "Survival of the Fittest"; every organism that is not in sympathy with its environment, and cannot therefore derive help and nourishment from its surroundings, perishes.

Darwin tells us that the colours of flowering plants have been developed by the necessity of attracting the bees, on whose visits depends the power of plants to reproduce their species; those families of plants which do not as it were pray to the bees with efficacy, fail to attract, are not therefore fertilised, and disappear without leaving successors. Flowers may also be said to be praying to us by their beauty, or usefulness, and in some cases, as with orchids, by their marvellous shapes. We answer their prayer by building hot houses and tending them with care, because they please us, and therefore we help them to live; while, on the contrary, those plants that have not developed these qualities are not only neglected, but, in some cases, as with weeds, we take special trouble to exterminate them, because their existence is distasteful to us.

Charles Darwin also tells us that Heredity and Environment are the prime influences under which the whole Organic World is sustained; in other words, every organism has implanted in it by heredity the principle of life, but the conditions under which it will be possible for that life to expand and come to perfection, rest entirely upon its power to bring itself into harmony with its environment. This principle of life does not come naked into the world, it is fortified by heredity, with power gained by its parents in their struggle for existence, and in their persistence to get into sympathy with their environment. The knowledge they gained, by this struggle, they have handed down to their offspring, and given it thereby the possibility of also gaining for itself that knowledge of, and power to get into sympathy with, its environment, upon which its future existence will depend. So may we not see that in the Spiritual World, these two conditions dominate, and that it is only by the clear comprehension of their reality that we can understand how all-important it is for the soul to bring itself nearer and nearer into harmony with its environment, the Spiritual, and how the efficacy of prayer depends upon the Knowledge of what is the Will of G.o.d?

We have received from our Spiritual Father the principle of Everlasting Life, and the aspirations which, if followed, will enable that life to expand and come to perfection; but, as in the case of physical organism, the gift is useless unless we elect to use those aspirations aright, and gain thereby a knowledge of our Spiritual Environment, which alone can bring us into sympathy with the Great Reality. Without this "Knowledge of G.o.d," we can see by a.n.a.logy on the Organic Plane that Everlasting Life is impossible--we are as weeds and shall be rooted out. This is no figment of the imagination, it seems to be the only conclusion we can come to if Nature is the work of Nature's G.o.d, and Man is made in the image (spiritual) of that G.o.d.

Herbert Spencer came to the same conclusion when defining everlasting existence. He says: "Perfect correspondence would be perfect life; were there no changes in the environment but such as the organism had adapted changes to meet, and were it never to fail in the efficiency with which it met them, there would be Eternal Existence and Eternal Knowledge" (_Principles of Biology_).

The power of influence, by sympathetic action, may also be seen in another direction; consider the fact that if we are in a room with a piano and we sing a certain note, say E flat, we not only hear that note coming back from the piano, but, if we examine the strings, we find that all the E flats are actually vibrating in sympathy, because they are in perfect harmony with the note given out by the voice; but none of the other strings are responding because they are out of harmony. With this simile in mind, let us consider the curious fact that a moth always lays its eggs on that particular plant upon which the caterpillars, when they hatch out of these eggs, must feed. The study of the Life History of Insects has always been of great interest to me, as I firmly believe that we are on the verge of a great discovery, and that the first indications are being revealed to us through the investigation of the Biology of Insects. Some of you may, perhaps, have watched this progress of ovipositing, as I have done, and noticed how the female moth will hover in a peculiar way over different plants, but does not alight until she comes to a plant near akin to the one she is seeking. She then alights, but remains, on tip-toe as it were, with legs outstretched and wings quivering, and soon mounts again into the air; it is only when she alights on the proper food plant that she shows unmistakably that she knows her quest is ended and her eggs are laid. This particular plant has no other attractions for her, she takes her food irrespectively from any other flower which secretes honey, and yet, when she is ready to fulfil her destiny, she is unerringly drawn towards that particular plant which must be the food of her offspring. What is this wonderful sense? We call it instinct, a name which is made to cover all other senses in the lower animals, of which we have no cognisance ourselves. Let us take our own senses as a guide: we find that they are all based on the appreciation of frequencies, of greater or less rapidity, by means of organs specially adapted to vibrate in sympathy with those pulsations, and thus we gain knowledge of external things. Two tuning forks or two organ pipes when vibrating close to each other, give out a pure musical note when they are in perfect harmony, and they then have, as it were, "rest" together; but when one is put even slightly out of harmony, there is, in place of a pure musical note, a rise and fall of sound in heavy throbs, strangely characteristic of "quarrelling"; in fact, discord and "unrest."

In our sense of hearing we can only appreciate up to 40,000 vibrations in a second as a musical sound, whereas, with Light and other electrical phenomena, as we shall see in a later View, we can appreciate sympathetic frequencies of not only many millions, but indeed millions of millions in a second, and yet it is possible that, in the sense (of insects) we are now examining of life appreciating life, we may be in the presence of frequencies as far removed from light as light is from sound. If, then, we may follow the a.n.a.logy from our highest senses, we seem to get a clear explanation of the mystery of insect discrimination. The insect, in her then state, could have no pleasure in the presence of certain plants, their modes of frequency being out of sympathy with that particular Insect Life, and, it may be conceived that, not only is there no inducement for the insect to alight on that plant, but that even in its near proximity that insect would feel discomfort or restlessness; when, however, a plant is reached which is near akin to the one required, less antipathy or unrest would be felt, and, when the true species of plant is reached, all would be harmony, pleasure, and rest, the functions of Insect Life would be vivified, and its life-work accomplished under the influences of sympathetic action.

I have made several other investigations on this subject, but I must only give one more to ill.u.s.trate the higher form of Animal Life appreciating Animal Life. There is a large cla.s.s of insects, called Ichneumonidae, which lay their eggs in the bodies of caterpillars, and, as in the case of a moth laying its egg on the special food plant upon which its caterpillar can feed, so does each species of these insects unerringly lay its eggs in the body of a particular kind of caterpillar. It must be a wonderful sense which can enable an Ichneumon Fly to do this; it has never seen that caterpillar before, as the egg, from which its own caterpillar was hatched, was laid inside the body of one of those caterpillars, and the caterpillar upon which it fed had been eaten up and disappeared at least six months before the Ichneumon Fly had even made its way out of its own coc.o.o.n; and yet this insect is not only forced, by some mysterious power, to lay its egg in the body of a caterpillar, but there is only one species which will serve its purpose, and it has to hunt up this particular caterpillar from among thousands of other different species.

Let me put before you what is, perhaps, the most mysterious ill.u.s.tration which we have under this heading, wherein the Ichneumon Fly cannot even get sight of its prey, nor employ any sense similar to our own for its detection. There are several species of moths whose caterpillars live in the very heart of trees. We will take the case of the caterpillar of Zeuzera Aesculi, the Leopard Moth; the egg of this Moth is laid in a crevice of the bark, and, when first hatched, the small larva penetrates through the bark into the centre of an apple, pear, or plum tree, and then commences to eat its way upwards, forming at first a very small tunnel, but gradually increasing it, as the caterpillar grows larger, into a pa.s.sage of about half an inch in diameter. In such a position, surrounded as it is by solid wood, the thickness of which would probably not be less than one and a half or two inches, we might suppose that the caterpillar would be safe from its enemies, but it is not: there is a large Ichneumon Fly which cannot propagate its species unless it can lay its eggs in the body of this particular caterpillar. This Ichneumon Fly can, from outside, not only tell that inside the stem of that tree there is a caterpillar, but can locate the exact spot, and, still more wonderful, is able to determine whether or not that caterpillar is the particular species it is in search of. There are numerous other species of moths whose caterpillars feed in the centre of trees, and yet this female Ichneumon is able to mark down as her prey, although far out of reach of any sense known to us, that one species which alone can serve her purpose. As soon as she has located the exact position of the caterpillar, she unsheathes a long delicate ovipositor, with which she is provided, and drills it right through the intervening solid wood until it pierces the body of the caterpillar; she then lays an egg down that long tube into its body and repeats the process two or three times. The caterpillar itself does not appear to feel any inconvenience from this process and continues to feed and grow larger; but it has the seeds of death within itself, and the two or three little caterpillars, which hatch out of the eggs of the Ichneumon, are also growing rapidly inside it. At last, when the time comes that the large caterpillar should have been full fed, and it has eaten its way outwards until it rests close under the bark, preparatory to turning into a chrysalis, its enemies finish their destructive work, and, if the tree is then opened, the empty skin and cartilage skeleton of the large caterpillar is found, together with two or three large coc.o.o.ns.

These coc.o.o.ns, if kept, will produce in due time specimens of the Ichneumon Fly, and these will in their turn go about their murderous work as soon as their proper hunting season comes round again.

This is only an isolated case out of thousands of similar occurrences in every locality; in fact, if you walk along any palings in the country in the early summer, you will see at every few steps the evidence of similar tragedies. Those of you who live in the country must often have seen on palings little heaps containing a dozen or more of the small yellow Microgaster Coc.o.o.ns, and if these are examined carefully they will be found to be surrounding the skin of a caterpillar. These minute coc.o.o.ns may be kept under a wine gla.s.s and, from each a minute Ichneumon Fly, with (if a female) its sharp ovipositor, will emerge in due time. It is curious what mistakes can be made even by intelligent persons. I have had the skin of the caterpillar and this little heap of yellow Microgaster Coc.o.o.ns sent me to examine, and have been seriously asked whether this was not a true case of Parthenogenesis; the suggestion being that the caterpillar had actually laid eggs, instead of waiting until it had become a moth, and that its efforts, to alter the course of nature, had been too much for its const.i.tution and it had died in the act! There are other ill.u.s.trations I should have liked to give but s.p.a.ce will not permit, the most remarkable being, perhaps, the knowledge a Queen Bee possesses of the proximity of another Queen, even when that other is still in the pupa state, sealed up in a waxen cell. I have made numerous experiments with Queens of the common black English Bee (_Apis mellifica_), and also the yellow-striped Italian Bee (_Apis ligustica_), which belong to the same order (_Hymenoptera_) as the Ichneumon Flies, and the same marvellous sense of life appreciating life at a distance, and through solid matter, is experienced.

If we now follow the same Thought by examining the Inorganic, we make the extraordinary discovery that this power to influence, based on sympathetic action, is the very mainspring by which physical work can be sustained, and upon it depends entirely the very action of our physical senses. Our senses are based upon the appreciation of Vibration, in the Air and Ether, of greater or less rapidity, according to the presence in our organs of processes capable of acting in sympathy with those frequencies. The limits within which our senses can thus be affected are very small; the ear can only appreciate thirteen or fourteen octaves in sound, and the eye less than one octave in light; beyond these limits, owing to the absence of processes which can be affected sympathetically, all is silent and dark to us. This capacity for responding to vibration under sympathetic action is not confined to Organic Senses; the physical forces, and even inert matter, are also sensitive to its influences, as I will now demonstrate to you.

In wireless telegraphy it is absolutely necessary that the transmitter of the electro-magnetic waves should be brought into perfect harmony with the receiver--without that condition it is impossible to communicate at a distance; again, a heavy pendulum or swing can, by a certain force, be pushed, say an inch, from its position of rest, and each successive push will augment the swing, but only on one condition, namely, that the force is applied in sympathy with the pendulum's mode of swing; if the length of the pendulum is 52 feet, the force must be applied only at the end of each eight seconds, as, although the pendulum at first is only moving one inch, it will take four seconds to traverse that one inch, the same as it would take to traverse 10 feet or more, and will not be back at the original position till the end of eight seconds; if the force is applied before that time the swing of the pendulum would be hindered instead of augmented. Even a steam engine must work under this influence if it is to be effective; there may be enough force in a boiler to do the work of a thousand horse-power, but, unless the slide valve is arranged so that the steam enters the cylinder at exactly the right moment, namely, in sympathy with the thrust of the piston, no work is possible.

To understand the next example I want you first to recognise that, apart from its physical qualities, every material body has certain, what may be called, traits of character, which belong to it alone; there is generally one special trait or "partial," namely, the characteristic which it is easiest for the particular body to manifest, but I shall show you that by sympathetic action others can be developed. I have several pieces of ordinary wood, used for lighting fires, each of which, according to its size and density, has its special characteristic; if you examined each by itself you would hardly see that they are different from one another except slightly in length, but if I throw them down on the table, you would hear that each of them gives out a clear characteristic note of the musical scale: to carry this a step forward, I have a long, heavy, iron bar, about 4 feet long and 2 inches thick, so rigid that no ordinary manual force can move it out of the straight, and, from mere handling, you would find it difficult to imagine that it would be amenable to soft influences. But I have studied this inert ma.s.s, and, as each person has special characteristics, some being more partial than others to, say, Literary pursuits, Athletics, Music, Poetry, Engineering, Science, or Metaphysics, so I am able to show that this iron ma.s.s has not only a number of these "partials," some of which are extraordinarily beautiful and powerful, audible over long distances, but that by the lightest touch of certain small generating rubbers, not more than an ounce in weight and tipped with cork or leather, each of which has been put into perfect sympathy with one of those traits, I can make that ma.s.s demonstrate them both optically and audibly; but, without those special sympathetic touches, it is silent and remains an inert ma.s.s. This result is obtained by physical contact between the instrument and the ma.s.s, but we will now carry this another step forward and deal with the subject of the action of Influence at a distance, or what may be called Prayer, between two of these rigid ma.s.ses. From what we have already seen, it is clear that the Soul of man could not possibly pray with efficacy to a graven image; there is nothing in sympathy between them, and, without sympathetic action, influence is impossible; but it is quite possible for Matter to pray with efficacy to Matter, provided the material soul, if we may use the a.n.a.logy, is brought into perfect sympathy with the material G.o.d, and I can now put before you an experiment showing this taking place.

I have another heavy bar of iron, not so long but of the same thickness as the one already described, and have found its strongest characteristic; I have another small rubber, fas.h.i.+oned so that its characteristic is in perfect sympathy with that of the bar, namely, that the number of vibrations, in a second, of the instrument are exactly equal to those of the iron ma.s.s, and it is, therefore, as we saw in the last experiment, able by contact to influence the bar sympathetically. The slightest touch throws the bar into such violent vibration that a great volume of sound is produced, which can be heard a quarter of a mile away. The result of this sympathetic touch is far from being transient, in fact, the bar will continue to move, audibly, for a long time. This movement in the ma.s.s of iron was started by physical contact, but having once started the bar praying, willing, or thinking, whichever you like to call it, that bar now has the power to affect, without contact, another rigid bar of iron even when removed to great distances, provided the second bar possesses a similar characteristic, and that that characteristic has been brought into perfect _sympathy_ with that of the first bar. I have a second bar which fulfils these conditions, and, although, at the outset, it had no power whatever to respond, it has been gradually, as it were, educated, namely, brought nearer and nearer into sympathy with the first bar, until it is now able to respond across long distances; it has acted across the whole length of one of the largest halls in London so strongly that it could be heard by all present. We will now reverse the process of bringing these bars into sympathy, and I will throw the first out of harmony by slightly changing its characteristic; the change is extremely small, quite inappreciable to the human ear, the bar giving out as full and pure a note as it did before the alteration was made; in fact, the change is so slight that it can still, with a little force, be stimulated by the same generator, and yet the whole power to influence has been lost; the first bar, although it is praying with great force, gets no response from the second bar, and, even if the bars are now brought on to the same table and put within a few inches of each other, there is still no reply, there is no sympathetic action, the efficacy of prayer between the two has been completely destroyed.

Do we not then see the principle upon which the efficacy of Prayer depends, that the whole object of a Human Soul, when using the words "Thy Will be done," is to bring itself closer and closer into perfect sympathy with the Absolute? When that is accomplished, we may understand, from our simile, that not only shall we and our aspirations be influenced by the Will of the Deity, but that then our wishes, in their turn, must have great power with G.o.d, and it becomes possible for even "Mountains to be removed and cast into the midst of the sea."

How truly the Philosopher Paul at the beginning of our Era recognised that the knowledge of G.o.d, which Christ Himself tells us is Everlasting Life, may be gained by the study of the material creation; His words were sadly overlooked by many who, half a century ago, were afraid that the discoveries of Science were dangerous to belief in the Divine. He says: the unrighteous shall be without excuse because "The invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and divinity" (Romans i. 18 to 20, R.V.).

We have seen the truth of this wonderful statement, we have traced the reflection of the greatest attribute of the Deity, Divine Love, on the material plane. What has been the result of our investigation? We find that throughout the whole of Nature the one great universal power is Sympathy.

'Tis verily "love that makes the world go round." What a marvellous conclusion to our investigation! Let us see where it leads us. The whole of creation is the materialisation of the Thoughts of the Deity; we have, therefore, in the forces of Nature, the impress of the very Essence of G.o.d. Our Innermost Self is an emanation from Him, and Prayer, which, at the beginning, is only a striving to bring ourselves into harmony with the Deity, must, as the Soul grows in strength and knowledge, become a great power working under the wonderful principle of Sympathy. True prayer, indeed, becomes "_Love in Action_," and, under certain conditions, Prayer may actually be looked upon as the greatest physical force in Nature. But let us carry this one step further: can we, by our a.n.a.logy of Matter praying, understand why "the knowledge of G.o.d is Everlasting Life"? Look at the first iron bar, and watch how, as long as it keeps on vibrating, the second bar, _because it is in sympathy_, will be kept in motion. If it were possible for the first bar to vibrate for ever, the second bar would, speaking materially, have everlasting life, through its being in perfect sympathy with the first bar; without this connection the bar would be lifeless. Now apply this to our Transcendental Personality; it is being nourished, the knowledge of G.o.d is increasing, it is at last pulsating in perfect harmony with the Deity, and when, for it, the Material Universe disappears, its _affinity_ to Infinite Love must give it Everlasting Life. Everything that has not that connection is but a shadow which will cease to be manifest when the Great Thought is completed, the volition of the Deity is withdrawn, and the Physical Universe ceases to exist; nothing can then exist except that which is perfected, that which is of the essence of G.o.d--namely, the Spiritual. Perfect harmony will then reign supreme, such happiness as cannot be described in earthly language nor even imagined by our corporeal senses; hence, in the many pa.s.sages referring to that wondrous Life hereafter, we are not told what Heaven is like but only what is not to be found there:

"Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, Neither have entered into the heart of man The things that G.o.d hath prepared for them that love Him."--1 COR. ii. 9.

There are several other phenomena which I might have examined, but I chose this particular aspect of the Reality, as best ill.u.s.trating the subject I am trying to elucidate in these Views, though it was probably the most difficult one to bring home to the general reading public. There are, I know, from personal knowledge, many of my readers who will have been able to follow and appreciate what I have attempted to demonstrate, but to those who have not grasped the connection between the Infinite and Finite, the Transcendental and the Physical Ego, the Real and its Shadow, a few more words of explanation may be helpful.

It is easy to see that the negatives, Cold, Ignorance, Falsehood, Ugliness are manifestations of their positives, as given in my list in View One, and it is also not difficult to show that Evil or Sin is dependent upon Good in the same way as the Shadow depends upon Light for its manifestation. Do not let me be misunderstood; I have never suggested that these negatives or negations have not the appearance of realities to us, under our present conditions of existence; they indeed have to be dealt with by us as realities, but they are only manifested as phenomena on the physical plane, because our Senses, and therefore Thoughts, are limited by Time and s.p.a.ce and therefore dependent upon _relativity_.

Let me put the case of Good and Evil before you, as a.n.a.logous to, say, Light and Shadow. Moral laws and responsibility thereto are dependent upon the existence of Goodness; the purely animal h.o.m.o was, as I have pointed out, free from sin or responsibility until the advent of the Spiritual made manifest, in that animal, the physical Ego and raised him far above all other animals. Man thus became a responsible moral being, a living soul, aware of Right, and therefore of Wrong, and certain acts then became for him sin that were not sin before. Thus the advent of Christ, and, in a less degree, the coming into the world of every good man, so raised, and is raising, the level of moral rect.i.tude that things become sin that were not sin before; St. Paul himself specially recognises this when he says that without law there is no sin. The Goodness, then, brought into the world by Christ, did not create sin but made it manifest, and gave it the appearance of reality under our present conditions of life and thought. How well the Mystic Paul understood that the Invisible is the Real, and that the Visible--namely, the phenomena of nature--is only dependent upon Time for its manifestation. His words are: "For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are Eternal."