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2>awn*ZCbouGbt 
 
 ON THE RECONCILIATION 
 
 A VOLUME OF PANTHEISTIC IMPRESSIONS 
 AND GLIMPSES OF LARGER RELIGION 
 
 J. WM. LLOYD 
 
 'One God, one law, one element: 
 
 And one far-off divine event 
 To which the whole creation moves.*' 
 
 TENNYSON, "In Memoriam. 
 
 MAUGUS PRESS 
 WELLESLEY HILLS, MASS 
 
Copyrighted 1900, by 
 J. W, LLOYD 
 
^his is a. hook, Rea.der, thai you ivitl not agree 
 ^Uh, hut if you read it you 'will never forget it, and 
 ten years from notu it %itt seem truer to you than 
 to-day. 
 
Contained Iberetn, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Eht Terces v 
 
 The Dawning of the Thought J 
 
 The DaMrn-Thought 4 
 
 There is but One 4 
 
 The Center and the Two Aspects of the Divine .... 6 
 
 The Consciousness of Individuality 7 
 
 The Reconciliation 9 
 
 The Cheer of the Dawn-Thought JO 
 
 Of Solidarity JJ 
 
 Of Prophecy 15 
 
 Fate and Free WiU - . . 15 
 
 The Reason of Evil J6 
 
 Loss of Memory J8 
 
 All-in-all, Salvation and Forgiveness J 9 
 
 Of Divine Suffering and Forgiveness 20 
 
 The Large Religion 21 
 
 The Sickness of the Dark Side 24 
 
 Freedom 25 
 
 Beautiful Discontent and the Soul Supreme 27 
 
 The Religion of Embrace and Aspiration 29 
 
 Of Immortality and the Great Consolation 30 
 
 Both-Seeing and the Use of the Underloofc 31 
 
 A Universe of Contradictions 33 
 
 The Two of the One 34 
 
 Of Love that Holds and Liberates 36 
 
 Genius and the Ideal 38 
 
 Of Hero Worship and Demigods 39 
 
 We Find Our Own 40 
 
PAGE 
 
 The Genesis of the Ungenoine , 4J 
 
 The Real 42 
 
 Emantiel 43 
 
 The Path 44 
 
 Blending 45 
 
 Character 48 
 
 The Variety and Uniformity in Universal Life 48 
 
 The Image 49 
 
 Living and Outliving 49 
 
 The Service of Reversion 50 
 
 God-Names 51 
 
 At-One-Ment 52 
 
 Satisfaction in Dawn-Thinking 53 
 
 The Dawn 53 
 
 Good and Evil in the Partial 54 
 
 Fanaticism and Common-Sense 56 
 
 The Heart of Religion 57 
 
 Acceptance and Contradiction in Prayer 57 
 
 Life and Faith 6J 
 
 Enlargement 62 
 
 The Dawn-Joy 62 
 
 The Light of the "World 63 
 
 Superstition and Knowledge 63 
 
 Pain and Fear the Utterance of the Partial 64 
 
 Greatness 65 
 
 Frankness 65 
 
 An Answer on Politeness. 67 
 
 Sin is Refused Grow^th 68 
 
 The Ongo 69 
 
 The Virtue of Sin 69 
 
 The Hard and the Soft 70 
 
PAGE 
 
 The Large Contains Contfadiction 75 
 
 The Word "God" 75 
 
 Of Certain Meanings and Matters in Love 77 
 
 Mother Love 83 
 
 Of Marriage 85 
 
 The Evolution of Words 87 
 
 Lifers Hard and Soft in Art 88 
 
 Of the Spirit-World and its Importance 90 
 
 Of Reincarnation 104 
 
 Summary of Spirit Doctrine J05 
 
 Why Evil is First and Love Last 107 
 
 The Passion for Greatness 109 
 
 The Bends and Reaches in the River of Life 116 
 
 Truth is Central; Limits are Arbitrary and False ■ . . • n7 
 
 Evolution in Battle 120 
 
 Of the Lover and Beloved, and the Uplift and Fitness in 
 
 Loving 121 
 
 The Assurance of Greatness 124 
 
 To be Good 126 
 
 Of Vital Unity 127 
 
 Of the Counter Truth, Individuality, and its Relation to 
 
 Unity 130 
 
 Noblesse Oblige 133 
 
 We Return and Reap 134 
 
 Sowing and Reaping 135 
 
 Somewhat on Liberty and Love and the Ethics of the 
 
 Dawn 136 
 
 Conscience 142 
 
 The Law of Right Betv/een Societies 143 
 
 Of War and Peace 144 
 
 Reality 155 
 
 vii 
 
PAGE 
 
 Natural and Artificial J55 
 
 The Law of Opposites proved in Messiah-men 157 
 
 Of Conscience and Evil J58 
 
 Heredity J6J 
 
 Adumbrations J64 
 
 Infinity 168 
 
 Finer Forces J70 
 
 The True Cross J72 
 
 Of Pessimism, the Infidel, and the Believer . . . ... . J73 
 
 Sex 175 
 
 Modesty 176 
 
 Love, Sacrifice, Parenthood t79 
 
 Home 182 
 
 The New Chivalry 186 
 
 The At-one-ment in Marriage t86 
 
 The Religion of Atheism J 89 
 
 Of True Individuality J93 
 
 An Afterword J95 
 
J£M Zcvcce. 
 
 give me the grace of a tolerant heart. 
 
 Of a thought so large as the sphere of men, 
 A joy to hold, and health to impart. 
 The inside touch and the linking ken I 
 
 Lo, the trees of the wood are my next of kin. 
 And the rocks alive ■with what beats in me ; 
 
 The clay is my flesh, and the fox my sin, 
 I am fierce with the gad-fly, and sweet with the bet 
 
 The flower is naught but the bloom of my love. 
 And the waters run down in the tune I dream. 
 
 The sun is my flow^er, uphung above, 
 I flash w^ith the lightning, with falcons scream. 
 
 All prophets have broken to me my creed, 
 
 AU sceptics have saved my faith alive. 
 All superstitions I know, indeed. 
 
 From infinite depths their truth derive, 
 
 1 worship the serpent and shining sun. 
 The carven wood, and the mystic stone, 
 
 Brahma, Allah, Sweet Mary's Son, 
 
 The Power Inclusive, known, unknown, 
 
 I worship all, yet I stand up free; 
 
 To all I reach with the equal handj 
 Saint, disciple, and devotee. 
 
 Infidel, atheist, mystic, stand, 
 
 ix 
 
I cannot die, though forever death 
 Weave back and fro in the warp of me, 
 
 I was never born, yet my births of breath 
 Are as many as waves on the sleepless sea. 
 
 I am God in heaven, and soul in hell, 
 
 The murderer damned, and the hero dead. 
 
 An orb where the stars in their nations dwell. 
 The babe, the parent, the maiden wed. 
 
 Before I was, and I still shall be, 
 
 When the worlds are dead and the suns hang cold; 
 And the secrets of all eternity 
 
 Are mine to remember when all is told. 
 
 I came from the loins of the highest king. 
 And whenever my home my footsteps find, 
 
 I shall know, I shall be the infinite thing. 
 All, all, shall inherit, to loose or bind, 
 
 I am brother of all, and them I am, 
 I may plead not guilty to not one sin; 
 
 I am slavish bom as the seed of Ham, 
 Yet the infinite sceptre my hand fits in. 
 
 I must drink all joy, and breathe all pain. 
 Live out each virtue, and every crime, 
 
 All shames must suffer, all plaudits gain. 
 Of all soul-growings be soil and clime. 
 
 For the AH is One, and all are part, 
 
 And not apart as they seem to be| 
 And the blood of life has a single heart. 
 
 Beating through God, and clod, and me. 
 
And the river of life is a stream of force. 
 Through endless circles forever run ; 
 
 And no thing hath from another divorce. 
 Yet liberty opens ■while love makes one» 
 
morning 
 way on 
 
 BawnsXTbougbt. 
 
 N the winter of '95-'97 I rode into 
 the city of New York each morn- 
 ing from my home in New Jersey, 
 and to beguile the journey used gen- 
 erally to carry some little book of 
 Emerson's or Carpenter's. One 
 I had been thus reading, and was half- 
 my way, when a sudden illuminating 
 thought entered my mind that stopped all read- 
 ing for that day, and has had a profound influence 
 on my life ever since. It came with all the sin- 
 cerity and light of a true inspiration, and, strangely 
 enough, upon a subject to which I had before given 
 but slight attention indeed — namely Pantheism. 
 Of course my discerning reader will at once trace 
 a connection, and find an origin for this, in my 
 course of reading, and may be right, but if so I 
 was unconscious of it. Emerson and the Tran- 
 scendentalists had been favorites, since childhood, 
 in my reading, but with no reference to this. I had 
 long been a contented Agnostic, and felt toward 
 Pantheism as tow^ard all other theories of God and 
 the universe, regarding all as guesses at truth, 
 
 I 
 
 THE DAWN- 
 ING OF THE 
 THOUGHT 
 
THE DAWN- 
 ING OF THE 
 THOUGHT 
 
 unproved hypotheses, to which I had little appe- 
 tite. Indeed I rather misliked Pantheism, for no 
 better reason than this, that its logical end, I 
 thought, was Nirvana, and Nirvana, I concluded, 
 and had been told, meant annihilation to the indi- 
 vidual. Not reflecting very much on the subject, 
 how^ever, I did not observe that practically all, or 
 at least most religions and philosophies, came to 
 some such conclusion. Materialism, for example, 
 ends us here, and then dissolves us into the uni- 
 verse, -which is a sort of Nirvana ; and the Chris- 
 tian in heaven is so resigned to the will of God, 
 so absorbed in devotion, that he is practically 
 resolved into the Divine Being. The progressive 
 spirit of the Spiritualist is on the same road, and 
 must get there in time; and, in brief, unless w^e 
 adopt the theory that there is in the universe 
 a True Polytheism — ^many independent intelli- 
 gences and forces — we are forced to some such 
 conclusion. Nevertheless, the idea of annihilation 
 ■was repulsive to my strong Individualism, and 
 I disliked Pantheism with the rest. And yet I 
 had been inclined all my life to adopt the theory 
 that there was in the universe but one force, 
 which was all, one element, one substance, inter- 
 changing forms endlessly. Clearly this was fer- 
 tile soil for Pantheism, yet heretofore the seed 
 had not taken root. a 
 
But the thought, or intuition, or revelation, that THE DAWN- 
 came to me that bright January morning, was ING OF THE 
 one that suddenly removed my objection to Nir- THOUGHT 
 vana. I do not think I could have derived it from 
 Emerson or Thoreau or W^hitman or Carpenter, 
 for I nowhere find that they have expressed it ; 
 and, so far as I still know, it is what w^e call an 
 " original " idea. And it seemed not only to run 
 like a magnetic current through all my w^orld 
 of chaotic facts and theories, suddenly arranging 
 all in beautiful order and coherence, but it seemed, 
 at the same time, to cast a flood of light over the 
 authors named, so that, for the first time, I felt 
 that I understood them, and had in my hand the 
 key to all their secrets and hard sayings. And 
 a certain sub-conscious bitterness and cynicism 
 which I had experienced for years seemed to 
 have dropped away also, and I felt a glad sense 
 of peace and reconciliation. For the first time I 
 felt I understood why all these transcendentalists 
 manifested such a bright, healthy cheerfulness ; 
 something that had before both attracted and 
 surprised me. For I think no other believers, 
 of any sort, seem so serenely, comfortably 
 cheery at all times, and utterly without gall, as 
 Pantheists. 
 
THE DAWN- 
 THOUGHT 
 
 THERE IS 
 BUT ONE 
 
 ELL, not to detain the reader, 
 this "Dawn Thought of mine was 
 to the effect that absorption of 
 the individual into the Divine did 
 not mean annihilation, but the 
 contrary in the extreme sense — 
 that it was the arriving at real, full-grown, com- 
 plete and conscious Individuality, impossible be- 
 fore. There was but One. 
 
 This view of the matter may be familiar enough, 
 for aught I know, to Buddhistic and Brahminical 
 thinkers, but to me it v^as altogether new and 
 self-derived, so to speak. 
 
 For when w^e come to reflect upon that on 
 which I had not before reflected, and to reason 
 about that which seemed to come to me in an 
 instant without reasoning, the argument appears 
 like this : 
 
 HERE is but One. Call it what we 
 please, the Universe, or God, or 
 by any other name, it is the same. 
 The Serpent has his tail in his 
 mouth ; the chain of causation and 
 relation is nowhere broken, nor 
 can be. If the One created the universe, he must 
 have made it from himself, for there was nothing 
 else to make it from, and it must still be himself, 
 
 4 
 
as the body is the man in his outward aspect. If THERE IS 
 this theory is true, everything is convertible (the BUT ONE 
 philosopher's stone not such a chimera after all) 
 and in the last analysis all are one and the same. 
 Matter is but congealed spirit, and spirit but sub- 
 limated matter, and each transformable into the 
 other. Granite is no more substantial than hope, 
 and thought is as real a substance as marble or 
 diamond. The One must be Life, and every- 
 thing must be alive, metal and sand, lightning- 
 flash, stick and rainbow, imagination, laughter 
 and pain. 
 
 Separateness cannot be real, but must be a sort 
 of illusion, for everything is cemented and related 
 on every side, and cannot find a free chink to peep 
 through, or anyvi^here to draw in a free breath 
 from the outer. There is, philosophers say, "no 
 vacuum in nature," v/hich is a confession of one- 
 ness and continuity. 
 
 But if the all is Divine it must be so in each 
 and every part, and more or less so according to 
 the quantity contained w^ithin its form. For, as 
 Sw^edenborg sho^ws, an individual or separate is 
 but a form, through which the universe flows like 
 a stream — the quality of the individual depend- 
 ing upon the form, or upon the aggregate of con- 
 tained forms, or individuals, within the form, for 
 
THERE IS 
 BUT ONE 
 
 THE CEN- 
 TER AND 
 
 THE TWO 
 ASPECTS OF 
 THE DIVINE 
 
 most individuals are confederations or societies 
 of lesser individuals. 
 
 But if there is no real break in the continuity of 
 nature, and if each is a part of all, and not only 
 that but inseparably united to it, then each and 
 all are one and the same ; and if any can be called 
 God then God is all, and all is God, jointly and 
 severally, wholly and in part. If this is true, each 
 man is God, and all men are God ; and not only 
 that but every animal, bird, leaf, stone, and clod, 
 likewise every force and every thought, is God. 
 
 UT if separateness is not actual it 
 is apparent and relative. When 
 we touch a man's finger-nail wre 
 touch him, but it is not the same 
 as touching a nerve, it is not the 
 same to touch the nerve as to touch 
 the brain. According to the form, the indwelling 
 life and divinity are more or less apparent and 
 revealed. While life and a sort of intelligence 
 are everyvv^here, they are not the same in degree 
 or expression, they differ in consciousness. 
 
 Just as in man, while he is one, there is a part 
 w^here consciousness, intelligence, and volition are 
 especially located, and the other parts differ in 
 their greater or lesser distance from that, in 
 their greater or less resemblance to it ; so in the 
 
Universal One there probably, somewhere, is a 
 part which is "God," or "Father," (better Father- 
 Mother or Parent) in the peculiar sense — con- 
 sciousness, life, intelligence, force, in the pure or 
 essence — and other parts may be classified by 
 their greater or less distance from this Center, 
 their greater or less resemblance to it. 
 
 There are then tw^o aspects of the Divine — 
 God in the peculiar or personal sense (which is 
 the truth expressed in all anthropomorphic con- 
 ceptions) the Center, the Pure, the Essence, the 
 Parent, the Maker, the Fountain-Head, who may 
 be symbolized by the intersection of tw^o, thus, 
 -I-, and God in the inclusive or pantheistic sense, 
 who is the AU-in-All, the Inclusive One, the In- 
 finite, symbolized by a circle or sphere, O. Not 
 that these are really separate, or two, for they 
 are really One, 0, but that thus the mind may 
 the more conveniently handle the subject. 
 
 ND this, too, w^as in my thought, 
 that there was really, all the time, 
 but One Individual in all the uni- 
 verse, constituting it, but multi- 
 tudes of apparent individuals, or 
 forms, and in each apparent indi- 
 vidual a consciousness of the Real Individual, 
 mingled with and modified by a greater or less 
 
 7 
 
 THE CEN- 
 TER AND 
 THE TWO 
 ASPECTS OF 
 THE DIVINE 
 
 THE CON- 
 SCIOUSNESS 
 OF INDIVID- 
 UALITY 
 
THE CON- 
 SCIOUSNESS 
 OF INDIVID- 
 UALITY 
 
 illusion of separateness (according to the greater 
 or less attainment) causing the part, or form, to 
 regard itself for the time as a separate individual. 
 What therefore we call our individual conscious- 
 ness is really our apprehension of the One Only 
 Individual ; and he seems thus because he really 
 is our ego, or self, our life, and we have no ex- 
 istence or intelligence apart. To lose this appre- 
 hension of individuality -would be annihilation ; 
 therefore it, in the last analysis, is the one thing 
 that seems sure to us. I am, I exist, is the 
 foundation faith, the primal postulate. Like the 
 forking fingers of the hand, w^e are separate and 
 yet not separate, but one through the arm ; like 
 the branches of a river, we are apart, yet all one 
 in the main current. 
 
 Through all the lower forms of the universe, 
 up to man, there is an increase in consciousness ; 
 and in man, through all the lovi^er forms up to 
 the Grand Man, there is a steady enlargement 
 of consciousness, and of self-conscious dignity, 
 divinity, and identity v/ith the universe, until at 
 last, in Nirvana, the man completes his changes 
 of elusive separateness, and emerges into com- 
 plete consciousness of all, and of himself as that 
 all. In absolutely losing self he first completely 
 finds self, which is the key to many dark sayings 
 
in the v/orld's Bibles, which explains the ineradi- 
 cable altruistic passion for the first time, and its 
 hold on the world's highest and purest minds, 
 and the enthusiasm we all feel in the presence of 
 its manifestations ; for the less selfish we are, 
 that is, the less v/e feel ourselves separate selves, 
 the nearer we come to the Center, approach to 
 which is our law of growth, and in our growth is 
 our happiness. 
 
 ND here, too, in its reconciliation 
 of Individuality and Solidarity, we 
 strike a key-note of this philoso- 
 phy, a basic truth to be perpetu- 
 ally affirmed and returned to, that 
 in it extremes meet and oposites 
 are reconciled. It is the Reconciliation, In af- 
 firming all religions, all philosophies, all sciences, 
 all faiths, all earnest teachers, as true, it destroys 
 antagonisms, prejudice, and bitterness, and cre- 
 ates true tolerance, respect, and fraternity. For 
 as truth is the food of our growth, we can never 
 really forgive one v^hom we think withholds it 
 from us with evil intent, or who teaches us 
 falsity. We are obliged to fear the liar, and dread 
 the false view. " Do you love me ? " says Emer- 
 son, '< means. Do you see the same truth?" 
 And until men are reconciled about truth they 
 
 9 
 
 THE CON- 
 SCIOUSNESS 
 OF INDIVID- 
 UALITY 
 
 THERECON- 
 CILIATION 
 
THE RECON- 
 CILIATION 
 
 THE CHEER 
 
 OF THE 
 
 DAWN 
 
 THOUGHT 
 
 can never be reconciled at all, and "love your 
 neighbor" is an impracticable precept. 
 
 Love is the mending of the shattered sphere. 
 
 |NE of the first and most striking 
 things to be observed about this 
 philosophy, or religion, is its effect 
 I &^ ^ I Jl ^P°^ ^^® spirits of the believer. 
 j\ \r''TyV y^ It is infinite in its possibilities of 
 r^^^^wiiir -"^^r'l' niental cheer. It fills at once the 
 life of the meanest man with dignity and grace — 
 for he is not only a child of God but one with 
 him, the Infinite Universe itself in ultimate des- 
 tiny, becoming that so far, and so fast, as he 
 opens his soul and enlarges it to the divine com- 
 prehensiveness. He is heir to the full estate, with 
 no rivals. All powers, all forces, all possessions, 
 are his. His immortality is assured, made fast 
 by every promise and every fact. It is more than 
 a hope, it is unthinkable otherwise. No longer 
 need of V7orry about time. You have all the time 
 there is ; and all eternity too, if there is any dif- 
 ference, is yours. No longer dread death ; it is 
 only one of the necessary changes and progres- 
 sive steps which lead to your inheritance. Rise 
 up in the dignity and majesty of your manhood, 
 above pettiness of care and anxiety, and be as 
 a god on the earth, conscious of your worth and 
 
destiny, large and frank and generous and free, as 
 becomes one of princely wealth and fortune. You 
 can no longer afford to feel small or be small — 
 noblesse oblige. There is a new heaven, w^hich 
 is divine attainment, a nev/ hell, v/hich is distance 
 from the Divine, and a new earth, in which liber- 
 ated man, free of fear, filled with the health of a 
 great thought, v/alks joyously onward. No other 
 religion holds out so high a hope, offers so grand 
 a destiny or so great a reward. And this for all 
 men and all things, absolutely v/ithout excep- 
 tion. It is truly universal and inclusive, therefore 
 thoroughly satisfies the broadest intellect and the 
 most generous emotion. It more than meets 
 Tennyson's beautiful inspiration : — 
 
 "I can but trust that good shall fall 
 At last — far off — at last to all." 
 
 ^ ND another beautiful corollary is 
 the fraternal feeling evoked. No 
 other religion may compare w^ith 
 it here. The Hindoo's brother- 
 hood is limited by his caste, the 
 Jew's by his race, the Christian's 
 by his sect, or, at largest, by his faith, for he 
 cannot be " unequally yoked together with un- 
 believers " (" or what part hath he that believeth 
 
 II 
 
 THE CHEER 
 OF THE 
 DAWN 
 THOUGHT 
 
 OF SOLI- 
 DARITY 
 
OF SOLrl- with an infidel ? "), but the Pantheist can make no 
 DARITY exceptions, may exclude none. All men are his 
 brothers, nay, more, are himself. To love his 
 neighbor as himself is to him no empty precept, 
 but a logical necessity of his faith. All other 
 human beings whatever are a part of his very 
 body and soul. His life is one with their life. 
 But he may not stop even here. He is united 
 with everything, — beast, tree, flower, and rock, 
 — he is they, and they are he, and one great life 
 binds all. Does not this contain a possible ex- 
 planation of the mysteries of vital magnetic heal- 
 ing, of nutrition ? May not one life feed another, 
 one body be transformed into another body, and 
 into life for that body ? Why not, if all is of the 
 same ? 
 
 All petty obstacles and prejudices of race, of 
 nationality, of country, of color, fade away and 
 disappear in the sunrise of this grand, this mag- 
 nificent generalization. The true Pantheist knov/s 
 only one country, one nation, one race, one reli- 
 gion, and himself lives through all and in all. 
 He cannot help realizing the inspired vi'-ords of 
 Thomas Paine (no grander ones in any Bible !) 
 " The world is my country, to do good my reli- 
 gion ; " and again he agrees v/ith him when he 
 says, "I believe in one God, and no more." With 
 
 12 
 
the Mohammedan he cries, "There is one God, and OF SOLI- 
 Mohammed is his prophet!" and further agrees DARITY 
 v/ith him that every country and race and time 
 has its prophet, suited to its genius. He accepts 
 all religions and all religious teachers, and rises 
 serenely above them, distributing the merit and 
 truth of each -with impartial gratitude, and cor- 
 recting their mistakes in the generous light of a 
 brighter day. "With the Unitarian he is one -vidth 
 the One God ; with the Universalist he has con- 
 demnation for none. And with the Polytheist he 
 sees the God to be worshiped in everything, and 
 understands how it has come about, in the course 
 of human evolution, that each thing has come 
 before the mind of man — the stars and sex, hero, 
 serpent, ape, and stone and lightning-flash and 
 little bird and fish and flow-er — in its infinite 
 mystery, rightfully demanding and receiving his 
 adoration. For on one side everything reaches 
 to and takes hold on the Inmost (and on every 
 side is touched and penetrated by and made in- 
 separable from the Inclusive) and is divine. And 
 there is nothing omitted. 
 
 And he can see, too, the truth of the Atheist's 
 feeling that in all the universe he can find no God, 
 only himself and his own consciousness, for that, 
 too, is fact ; he is all, and it is only the larger and 
 
 13 
 
OF SOLI- purer part of himself that a man calls " God " (his 
 DARITY Ideal of Perfection in character), and he is free to 
 worship or not, as he pleases, without condemna- 
 tion ; nay, whatever he may say or do, or leave 
 undone, he inevitably does worship, for no man 
 may escape the flow of his spirit tow^ard his 
 Ideal, and this is worship in its central sense. 
 The Atheist as truly worships as the most pos- 
 turing formalist, only he represents the other side. 
 
 With the Comptist, only in larger view, the 
 Pantheist sees God in Humanity, and Humanity 
 as God. With the Materialist he can see that 
 all is matter, and v/ith the Spiritualist that all is 
 spirit, for these are but different terms for inter- 
 changeable forms of the same thing. With the 
 Agnostic he agrees that there is always an Un- 
 knowable for the finite mind. But vv^hen the 
 finite mind enlarges into the Infinite it shall know 
 all things even as it v/as known ; and it is only in 
 the light of the Dawn-Thought that such a pas- 
 sage of scripture can be justified or explained, for, 
 obviously and logically, no finite can ever embrace 
 or comprehend the infinite. 
 
 And so the Pantheist has in the DaAvn-Thought 
 a master-key to open all doors, a master principle 
 wherewith to arrange all sciences, a universal 
 solvent to reduce all things to the one and original 
 element. ja 
 
ND is it not true that only some 
 form of Deism can explain the 
 undoubted fact of prevision and 
 prophecy, to \A^hich all ages and 
 faiths offer such abundant testi- 
 mony ? At least it is very easy 
 to understand that if there is only one penetrative 
 and omnipresent Life, resident in every atom of 
 the universe, constituting, forming, controlling it 
 in every detail, then this Life knows all, -what has 
 been, what is, what shall be, and this knowledge 
 can, under favorable and necessary conditions, be 
 communicated. A finite mind v/hich had to some 
 extent lost its separateness, and mingled more 
 freely with the great currents of being, could then 
 read the Book of Life for many pages, backward 
 or forward, or both, or know the secrets of dis- 
 tance. Thus could psychometry, prophecy, clair- 
 voyance, be explained. Certainly I know of no 
 materialistic philosophy which even attempts to 
 explain prophecy. It contents itself with denial. 
 ND this suggests the old riddles of 
 fate and free-will, and confirms and 
 reconciles both of these apparently 
 implacable opponents. Our inex- 
 tinguishable conviction of free-will 
 and our equally irrepressible con- 
 15 
 
 OF 
 PROPHECY 
 
 FATE AND 
 FREE-WILL 
 
FATE AND 
 FREE-WILL 
 
 THE 
 
 REASON OF 
 EVIL 
 
 viction of immortal individuality both manifestly 
 refer to the same fact, our latent, semi-conscious, 
 and becoming God-hood. It is on our inward, 
 our Central side, that we have free-will, immor- 
 tality, individuality ; on our outward, or world- 
 side, we are mortal, and throw^n, bound hand and 
 foot, into the stream of an irresistible fate. 
 
 ND this, my Dawn-Thought, gives 
 me the first and only explanation 
 of evil that has for a moment satis- 
 fied me. Indeed, it was the moral 
 objection to the existence of a 
 Divinity, brought before me by the 
 unchecked existence of evil and the elaborate 
 provision for its perpetuity that the universe 
 presents in every part, that seemed logically to 
 force me into Atheism, and only w^hen I could see 
 some reasonable justification for the making and 
 keeping of evil could I accept Deity as a possibility. 
 But the view which my Dawn-thinking gave 
 me of evil was this : Only the w^hole can be per- 
 fect, the part is necessarily incomplete. Any 
 partition w^hatever, then, in the universe, and 
 any separateness, real or apparent, any distance 
 from the Divine, must mean incompleteness ; 
 and to be incomplete is to be imperfect, and to be 
 imperfect is, necessarily and inevitably, to be sub- 
 
 i5 
 
ject to all the evils that only completeness and THE 
 perfection can remedy. But action requires the REASON OF 
 actor and the object acted upon ; therefore the EVILr 
 Divine One, in order to have action, has to project 
 himself into outer forms on which he can act, to 
 part and separate himself to a certain extent ; and 
 this partition, -while to a great extent only an 
 appearance and an illusion, is still, in its relation 
 to the consciousness of the parts and in its rela- 
 tion to the necessities of the Divine Action, a real 
 thing. The parts feel themselves to be, and to 
 that extent are, separate. In the Divine Con- 
 templation, the Divine Rest, the Divine Unity, 
 the Divine Sympathy, the Divine Embrace, they 
 are one ; but in the Divine Action they resolve 
 into parts, acted upon and acting on each other. 
 This is the Mystery, the Paradox. But the parts, 
 being thus apart, are incomplete, and being in- 
 complete are subject to evil. Being imperfect in 
 health, they are subject to sickness ; being imper- 
 fect in wisdom, they are subject to ignorance ; 
 being imperfect in virtue, they are subject to sin ; 
 being imperfect in strength, they are subject to 
 weakness. This can best be illustrated by shat- 
 tering a sphere. Now each piece is- imperfect, 
 being less than the sphere, and of another shape. 
 Only when all fit together again in the order of 
 
 17 
 
THE 
 
 REASON OF 
 
 EVIL 
 
 LOSS OF 
 MEMORY 
 
 their breaking is harmony restored, and this not 
 for each, as a separate one, but for all together as 
 One. 
 
 This imperfectness, this evil in the parts, is 
 inevitable, a necessity of their being as parts, and 
 cannot be avoided, even by the Divine, until Nir- 
 vana is attained. When we attain it, it will all 
 appear right to us, for we shall see that it was all 
 the time our plan and our willing sacrifice. 
 
 UT as the Divine, in order to act, 
 must project members which shall 
 feel themselves separate, just as 
 a cell must extemporize organs 
 and members in order to exercise 
 functions, and as every such spe- 
 cialization of function carries with it a consequent 
 weakness and limitation as well as a peculiar 
 strength, and is obliged to be different in order to 
 feel separate, so there seems to have been a 
 simple, efficient device regularly adopted by the 
 Center, in order that the separation of the 
 parts should to themselves appear real. Loss of 
 memory is this, in one word ; for if any part could 
 realize all its previous existence it would at once 
 know itself as one and continuous, and not as 
 broken off and dissevered. With every re-birth 
 of a projected life into a new form, previous exist- 
 
 i8 
 
ence in past forms and in Nirvana is usually com- 
 pletely forgotten (except a sort of sub-conscious 
 memory), and the life seems to be, by reason of 
 this, an entirely new and independent existence. 
 (To the Divine Contemplation all must appear 
 One, but in the Divine Action there is a working 
 fiction, if I may so express it, of separateness, the 
 Divine Center, as a part, acting upon the Divine 
 Outer, or surrounding parts, as a sun upon its 
 system. Therefore separateness is a paradox, 
 both real and unreal, but in the deepest, truest 
 sense unreal. Unity is the central truth, the 
 Truth.) Manifestly it is only thus that apparent 
 separateness can be attained, for, if we recol- 
 lected our past existence, we should realize per- 
 fectly our continuity and Divinity. But God sends 
 us strong delusion that v/e should believe a lie. 
 
 This explains and justifies to me our forgetful- 
 ness of past existence which previously had 
 always been to me an inscrutable mystery, an 
 unjustifiable evil. 
 
 UT as the inclusive One is not 
 subject himself to this illusion, as 
 his consciousness remains per- 
 fect, so he knows himself all and 
 in all, whatever is felt he feels, 
 whatever is done he does, what- 
 
 19 
 
 LOSS OF 
 MEMORY 
 
 ALL-IN-ALL, 
 SALVATION 
 AND FOR- 
 GIVENESS 
 
ALL-IN-ALL, 
 SALVATION 
 AND FOR- 
 GIVENESS 
 
 OF DIVINE 
 
 SUFFERING 
 
 AND 
 
 HAPPINESS 
 
 ever we suffer he suffers, all action and cessation 
 are his. And this is the only reasonable explana- 
 tion of the Christian saying that he bears our 
 sins and suffers our sorrows. And as all is him- 
 self, and as self-love is perfect love, and as he 
 cannot condemn his own acts, his forgiveness is 
 perfect. His love for us is perfect love, he is the 
 sinner and the saviour in one. His righteous- 
 ness, the perfectness of the w^hole of which v/e 
 are parts, is imputed to us, and by it we are 
 saved. Were it possible to fall out of the grasp 
 of the Whole we should be annihilated, but that 
 is impossible, for outside there is nothing, there is 
 no outside. 
 
 L^D yet, though the Divine com- 
 mits all our sins and bears all our 
 sorrows, it is not to be supposed 
 that he sins as we sin, or suffers 
 as we do. For even with us it is 
 constantly to be observed that 
 what to us w^as once a sin proves, w^ith a larger 
 environment and in the light of higher knowledge, 
 no sin, though the same act ; and what causes 
 us pain and sadness becomes, in the same way, 
 in our progressive development, adapted and 
 justified into beauty, ease, and gladness. So the 
 Inclusive One, consistently carrying out his plans, 
 
 20 
 
commits no sin ; for he cannot injure himself. 
 Although he commits in us all the acts that we, 
 in relation to ourselves, call sins, and although 
 he feels in us all our emotions which cause us 
 pain, he does not really fear, or sin, or suffer, 
 because he understands these acts and emotions 
 and their use and cannot regret his ow^n perfect 
 deeds. In other words, 'while he commits all 
 and feels all, the poison of evil, so to speak, is, in 
 his case, instantly neutralized by his wholeness. 
 For wholeness (holiness) is health, and as w^e 
 progressively enlarge into Godhood we lose sin 
 and sadness and sickness and realize how^ little 
 important, w^hat mists and fictions they were. 
 
 O other view of the universe, that 
 I knov/ of, can so satisfy the soul 
 of man as this, because no other 
 contains its largeness, its promise 
 of infinite expansion. 
 
 O give me room ! the free soul 
 saith, — for in all others man becomes a mere 
 unit in a series, a link in a chain, and is forever 
 helplessly and hopelessly limited and subordinate. 
 The relation of this philosophy to truth is espe- 
 cially to be noted, and has been somewhat re- 
 marked upon in the foregoing. Its position is 
 that because all expressions of life and thought 
 
 21 
 
 OF DIVINE 
 SUFFERING 
 AND 
 HAPPINESS 
 
 THE LARGE 
 RELIGION 
 
THE LARGE are from the Divine, therefore all are true, and 
 RELIGION not one to be despised, or rejected in toto. But, 
 again, as each is the proximate act of a finite and 
 partial intelligence, strained and filtered through 
 the limitations of a partial form, and as only com- 
 plete intelligence can furnish or express complete 
 truth, therefore all are false, and not to be 
 accepted or believed in toto. Here, again, ex- 
 tremes meet and opposites accord in reconcilia- 
 tion. Faith and skepticism are seen to be equally- 
 valuable and justified, and to be used concerning 
 every assertion of fact or intuition. From this 
 application necessarily springs the broadest eclec- 
 ticism, the v/idest tolerance, the keenest in- 
 telligence, the justest impartiality, the fairest 
 comparisons, the most generous sympathy, the 
 readiest appreciation. Prejudice and bigotry 
 disappear, and free-thought and free-discus- 
 sion, in their most ideal forms, inevitably assert 
 themselves. 
 
 All doctrines, philosophies, religions, become 
 merely as a bunch of keys in the hands of the 
 wise man, which he tries in succession upon 
 every problem presented to him, seeking for the 
 right one to unlock the secret. To him they are 
 tools, not codes ; he is above them. 
 
 In this philosophy, wisdom and goodness con- 
 
 22 
 
sist in enlarging, in becoming God, in becoming THE LARGE 
 reconciled and one with universal life. It is not RELIGION 
 a state of obedience, but of being. A state of su- 
 premacy, of superiority, of strength and health 
 radiating its own virtue. Do we not find this 
 true in life, that in proportion as we enlarge v/e 
 increase in freedom, tolerance, courage, wisdom, 
 easy-working strength ; become genial, generous, 
 and magnanimous, helpful to others ? Codes no 
 longer trouble us ; we often violate their letter, 
 but we vindicate our virtue on a higher plane. 
 And all men expect this of us. "We do not w^onder 
 that the weak, ignorant man is envious, irritable, 
 deceitful, passion-ridden ; but these faults in the 
 strong, richly-endowed man seem monstrous to 
 us. And when a large, wise, strong man is virtu- 
 ous it never excites surprise ; it seems to us only 
 appropriate and natural, like due proportion in a 
 statue. 
 
 For every man has his ideal of what is just, 
 right, proportionate, appropriate ; an ideal con- 
 stantly enlarging with its attainment, his growth 
 in any direction. "We despise conceit, egotism, 
 complacency ; because these mean that a man is 
 satisfied with his attainment, and is resting there 
 in contented stupidity, short of the true Nirvana. 
 This that we call the ideal in us is the instinct 
 
 23 
 
THE LARGE 
 RELIGION 
 
 THE SICK- 
 NESS OF 
 THE DARK 
 SIDE 
 
 of growth, of enlargement, the impulse to attain, 
 to become Divine, to include all things, and under- 
 stand all. And whenever we find attainment, or 
 what appears relatively to be such, in any thing 
 or creature, in any direction, what we call ad- 
 miration or worship is ' excited. We cannot 
 help worshiping transcendent beauty, wisdom, 
 strength, po^ver, genius, because here is the 
 Divine manifest. Our ideals live before us in the 
 great, and we recognize their attainment, their 
 v/orth-ship, their divinity. And the more gener- 
 ously and frankly we w^orship, while at the same 
 time clearly but kindly recognizing all attendant 
 weaknesses, the better it is for our own enlarge- 
 ment. We grow in the likeness of what we 
 admire. We should be quick and generous to 
 praise every beautiful feature, every brave deed, 
 every wise word, every great thought ; for by so 
 doing we grov/ the God in ourselves and others. 
 ONVERSELY, by constantly 
 dv/elling on the faults and failures 
 and errors of those persons and 
 doctrines presented to us, we be- 
 become harsh, rigid, deformed, 
 bitter, and limited in our growth. 
 We shrink instinctively from the critical, cynical 
 man, for he checks our growth like a frost. He 
 
 24 
 
is very wise in the matter of holea and old elotheSj the sick- 
 
 but he does not mend nor make. 
 
 If you would be well, trouble not about disease, 
 but delight in health. It is very well to see a 
 fault, but the slightest standing upon it as a 
 finality, the slightest pessimism and hopelessness 
 about it, is unmanly and sickening, starves and 
 shrivels us. 
 
 Pessimism is a symptom of disease and stagna- 
 tion. Lice do not trouble fat cattle. Don't 
 trouble about the evils of the passing present, but 
 appreciate every joy, and keep every body think- 
 ing about the ideal future, and the world spins 
 merrily on. For life is grov/th, and growth is 
 tow^ard the light. Life is the cure of death, health 
 of sickness, joy of sorrow^, love of hate, hope of 
 fear, virtue of sin. Waste no time in remorse, 
 but step on your mistake, and make it lift you up. 
 Every weakness has its own strength. The com- 
 pensations are adequate. 
 
 rr^^'^^ NE VITABLY this philosophy leads 
 to freedom in its widest. It liber- 
 ates from all laws, rules, codes, 
 dogmas, formulas. These are in- 
 'i deed seen to be useful, but only as 
 guides, working-plans, advices, 
 tools. They are not finalities or masters. A 
 
 NESS OF 
 THE DARK 
 SIDE 
 
 FREEDOM 
 
FREEDOM principle is to be followed till the exception comes, 
 and then, and there (where the opposing extreme 
 claims its equal right) is found a neutral ground 
 and an open door through which the freed soul 
 goes outward and upward to higher perception. 
 And this freedom, claimed for self, inevitably 
 extends to all, for all are equal in need, in ulti- 
 mate destiny and attainment, all are one, and the 
 last word of existence is solidarity. And again, 
 immediately and proximately, there is benefit in 
 freedom for all ; for as each is traveling his ovn^-u 
 road to attainment, each has his own special view 
 of the truth, each his oivn special development 
 of the in-growing Divine, and this experience we 
 imperatively need to share to supplement our 
 own. It is therefore of the first importance that 
 we should not impose our grov/th on him, for 
 that aborts him, and leaves us where w^e are 
 (both balked together), but that we should aid and 
 encourage his enlarge in his own way, so that he 
 may aid and growth us by his discoveries and 
 conquests. There is infinite division of labor in 
 this search for attainment, this struggle for the 
 ideal, this humanity becoming God ; and V7lioso 
 hinders any stupidly stops himself and all. For 
 each man's works, and discoveries, and valor, and 
 eccentricity, and peculiarities, have value for us 
 
all, are a part of our wealth, stored labor and 
 working capital — tools to the wise hand. 
 
 And again, the very spirit of this religion makes 
 anything but freedom impossible ; for as a religion 
 it is not a creed, or a dogma, or a ritual, but 
 progress, attainment, development, growth, en- 
 largement, expansion to the infinite ; and all this 
 requires freedom, fluency, adaptation, receptivity, 
 and appreciation in their most perfect and gener- 
 ous forms as the very law of growth. It is the 
 only religion that is perfectly sweet throughout, 
 without a terror or a prejudice or a hate. It is 
 all " sweetness and light." 
 
 O jealous of freedom is the w^ise 
 man that he v/ill not bind himself 
 by any habit, good or bad, nor will 
 he let any passion, not even the 
 purest love, get the mastery over 
 his life. For any passion or desire 
 becoming dominant in one's life, however good 
 in itself (and often because of its goodness is its 
 seductive pov\7er) is a peril just in proportion to 
 its strength. It is a stone on a growing plant, 
 an iron band about a growing tree ; we must 
 throw it off ; we must burst it, or we shall never 
 attain. If any joy were always joy, if any pleasure 
 ever satisfied, w^e should stand still, and cease 
 
 FREEDOM 
 
 BEAUTIFUL 
 DISCON- 
 TENT AND 
 THE SOUL 
 SUPREME 
 
 27 
 
BEAUTIFUL 
 DISCON- 
 TENT AND 
 THE SOUL 
 SUPREME 
 
 iipiring ta our infinite destiny, Therefore ev^ty 
 joy that is given up to and rested in satiates or 
 turns to nausea or pain« The infinite uplift of 
 things is against contentment in possession or sen- 
 sation, and in proportion as we are growing are we 
 restless, aspiring, urged by desire and ambition. 
 
 Yet ever the extremes meet and the balance 
 holds. The man w^ho has rejected contentment 
 in any lower circle finds himself restored to a 
 serene peace in the endogenous energies of his 
 o-wn life and the sweep and rhythm of the uni- 
 verse. The Great Content overcomes the need of 
 lesser contents, and includes all. The nature 
 that refuses to give itself with utter abandonment 
 to any lesser love, and insists on rising above love 
 with serene poise, suddenly finds that for the first 
 time has it attained real lovability ; that the ele- 
 ments of peril and of pain, before so inevitable 
 and acute, have nov/ disappeared from love ; that 
 it is now free to love every one and everything, 
 without fear, and that all loves nov/ turn to it 
 with perfect trust and eager thirst. Love, before 
 a seductive, deceitful, and capricious tryant, flat- 
 tering and torturing by turns, now becomes a 
 glad and eager servant forever, on bended knee, 
 presenting the cup of clear joy. 
 
 It now^ appears that the more love, the more 
 
 28 
 
ambition, the more desire, the miore passion, the 
 more experience, a man has, provided he be above 
 them all, using and not used by them, the greater, 
 the more God-like, he becomes, the larger his life, 
 his power, helpfulness, usefulness, everywhere. 
 Instinctively all eyes turn to him ; he is the 
 courage and hope of millions, for by an obligatory 
 inner necessity it is the Attained Man that we are 
 all looking for. He is the guaranty of our own 
 success. He restores our faith. He is Saviour, 
 Master, Messiah, the Incarnate God. 
 
 It was this superiority, this Soul Supreme, this 
 Serene Life, which the ancient philosophers all 
 contemplated in some form, and made their dream 
 and ideal, often dimly enough, but with certain 
 faith. And it v/as this grandeur of ideal and 
 attainment in them that has fixed them like 
 mountain peaks of the Lifted Land before all 
 succeeding ages, for v/e all have the same yearn- 
 ing from the same innate need. And attainment 
 is Happiness ; attainment is Heaven. 
 
 iT the charity of this religion is 
 not confined to persons, to creeds, 
 to doctrines ; it extends also to 
 intentions and deeds. It is the 
 only religion in the -world v/hich 
 
 has charity for evil, which hates 
 29 
 
 BEAUTIFUL 
 DISCON- 
 TENT AND 
 THE SOUL 
 SUPREME 
 
 THE RELI- 
 GION OF 
 EMBRACE 
 AND AS- 
 PIRATION 
 
THE RELI- 
 GION OF 
 EMBRACE 
 AND AS- 
 PIRATION 
 
 OF IMMOR- 
 TALITY 
 AND THE 
 GREAT CON- 
 SOLATION 
 
 neither the sinner nor the sin. Recognizing evil 
 as the " dirty -work " of the universe, a necessary 
 part of the great plan, it has no hatred or bitter- 
 ness toward even that. Yet this does not mean 
 that the believer himself is to do what he con- 
 siders evil, or indulge in sin. There are plenty of 
 those yet walking in darkness to do this dirty 
 vvork. Higher souls who aspire, v/ho are further 
 on the path to attainment, vi^ill avoid these things, 
 and live true to their higher ideals. It is for the 
 souls that delight in evil to do it, for for them it is 
 natural, for them it is right ; but as soon as they 
 perceive it as evil it is no more right for them ; 
 they are to leave it and go on — for this is evolu- 
 tion, this is gro-wth. 
 
 Evil is good, but the good is better. 
 
 HAT a ruling passion, v^hat an 
 unescapable longing, this, which 
 I all men feel, that something of 
 \ them, or of their w^orks, shall be 
 permanent and endure forever — 
 the prayer for fame, for remem- 
 brance, for immortality ! All religions are, in 
 somewhat, the voice of and answer to this prayer 
 for permanence in a stream of change. And 
 no other religion, I think, has ever offered so 
 sublime an answer to this prayer as the Dawn- 
 
Thought. Consider it — nothing is lost, nothing 
 dies, nothing is forgotten, nothing is unforgiven ; 
 in the end every evil is discovered good, every 
 weakness is revealed a strength, every mistake 
 works success, every failure acquires ; everything 
 is justified. Your works endure, and all v/orks 
 are yours ; your wealth is not to be surpassed, for 
 all things in heaven and earth belong to you, are 
 you ; no immortality can be greater, for you are 
 Life itself, Vv^ithout beginning or end. To Attain, 
 to be Conscious-God, is to be Beauty, Power, 
 Wisdom, Life, Love, Perfection itself (for all 
 these are interchangeable terms) is to realize your 
 every ideal, longing, aspiration, ambition, in its 
 most absolute form ; and this is the goal before 
 you which you cannot escape if you would, your 
 certain and inevitable destiny. 
 
 UT to understand the Dawn- 
 Thought and its corollaries re- 
 quires the rare pow^er of both-see- 
 ing. The average mind is not thus 
 philosophic and possessed of the 
 dual vision necessary to see both 
 sides of the shield at once, day and night at the 
 same time, and to understand hovv;' extremes 
 coexist, meet, and embrace. Therefore this re- 
 ligion cannot easily be comprehended by th^ 
 
 31 
 
 OF IMMOR- 
 TALITY 
 AND THE 
 GREAT CON- 
 SOLATION 
 
 BOTH- 
 SEEING 
 AND THE 
 USE OF THE 
 UNDER- 
 LOOK 
 
BOTH- 
 SEEING 
 AND THE 
 USE OF THE 
 UNDER- 
 LOOK 
 
 masses. To them a paradox is a manifest lie, or 
 an absurdity ; your Pantheism to them is profa- 
 nation, your affirmation of Self-inclusiveness is 
 Atheism, your God-in-all and God-becoming are 
 blasphemy. Such minds m.ust move in an at- 
 mosphere of illusions and deceptions to have 
 moral impulse^ They cannot shoot unless they 
 first shut one eye. They cannot love the good 
 unless you ailov/ them to hate the evil ; they 
 cannot choose the truth unless horrified at lies ; 
 they cannot enjoy the light v^ithout dreading the 
 dark. They are not capable of faith without 
 abominating unbelief; to love virtue they must 
 be rancorous against the sinner and the sin ; in 
 order to rise to the spiritual they must despise 
 the animal. Their unspoken faith is that a good 
 lover must be a good hater, and they must 
 have something to fight or their good v^orks are 
 flavorless. 
 
 There is alvv^ays a time in the soul's upward 
 march v^hen the sharpest contrasts are needed to 
 emphasize perception, when partisanship, big- 
 otry, prejudice, are inevitable and necessary. 
 Therefore the Underlook must be for av/hile. 
 There is more room for pious frauds than Protes- 
 tants recognize in the moral evolution of man ; 
 and the illusion that evil is altogether evil must 
 
for a time stand. Therefore even intolerance, 
 bigotry, persecution, are to be accepted, for they 
 also do Divine -work and liberate the soul. We 
 must accept all, respect all, be reconciled. But 
 this can only come in the good time of our growth. 
 A green fruit cannot at the same time be ripe. 
 Only when we attain the Overlook are w^e high 
 enough to perceive that w^hen the Maker said he 
 had seen all his works and they w^ere "very 
 good," he meant all and not a part — included 
 sinners with saints, sins w^ith virtues, crimes with 
 liberations — all were planned, intended, foreseen, 
 approved. This is a hard saying. 
 
 T will be manifest by this time that 
 in this view God is a synthesis ; 
 Truth is a paradox, expressed in 
 paradoxes; the Universe is a bal- 
 ance of opposites ; Life an agree- 
 ment of contradictions. This ex- 
 plains at once why existence has al'ways been such 
 a riddle and a mystery ; why every doctrine is so 
 plausible and none can be proved to the end ; 
 why logic always brings one to the reductio ad 
 absurdum ; why all faiths are so stubbornly held, 
 yet not one explains to a finish, or satisfies 
 the deep inquiry. 
 
 BOTH- 
 SEEING 
 AND THE 
 USE OF THE 
 UNDER- 
 LOOK 
 
 A UNI- 
 VERSE OF 
 CONTRA- 
 DICTIONS 
 
 33 
 
THE TWO 
 OF THE ONE 
 
 N this view we see that there are 
 two great manifestations of the 
 ^\»/T ^^0(1 One, by which alone, their opposi- 
 ■^^\j ^-^vl'l tion and interaction, is the exist- 
 ence of the moving universe made 
 possible. These appear, disap- 
 pear, and reappear in everything, — in every indi- 
 vidual, group, and class. By the one force the 
 Center binds everything to himself, so that he is 
 All and in all, and nothing can fall away or escape ; 
 by the other he holds objects, individuals, away 
 from himself, in apparent separateness, that he 
 may use them and act upon them, that Motion 
 may be. The degree of their union and conscious- 
 ness of their union with him is the degree of their 
 strength, beauty, virtue, attraction, wisdom, hap- 
 piness ; the degree of their separateness is the 
 measure of their weakness, ugliness, evil, repul- 
 siveness, ignorance, misery. Everything in the 
 universe, least or greater, expresses and reveals 
 this great fact ; and that is why all religions 
 naturally express themselves in similes, allego- 
 ries, fables, why all religions are poetic, and w^hy 
 poetry so charms and delights all minds, savage 
 and civilized. It explains why an ingenious mind 
 can use any natural phenomenon as an illustra- 
 tion of truth, and why an equally ingenious mind 
 
 Z\ 
 
can turn any figure or comparison against itself, THE TWO 
 and make it prove too much. To a certain extent OF THE ONE 
 all things co-operate and resemble each other, to 
 a certain extent each is unique and a contradic- 
 tion of others. Communism makes all things 
 belong to all, but Individualism apportions to 
 each his own ; Egoism proves all things center in 
 self, but Altruism enlarges self to include all ; 
 Love is the uniting force of the universe, but 
 Liberty is the dividing force. Centripetal and 
 centrifugal hold the heavenly bodies in their 
 orbits. Aggregation no sooner begins than dis- 
 tribution attends. We are gregarious, we make 
 conventions, we establish customs, w^e imitate, 
 we discipline, we vow, — it is all of no use, — we 
 are a handful of water, a netful of sand, and slide 
 and glide away in all directions, like a brood of 
 quails, each for his own. All the marriage-cus- 
 toms, all the passionate love-clingings, cannot 
 make two souls utterly one in this world, or two 
 bodies grow together. Every love has its heart 
 of disappointment. All the longings of loneliness, 
 all the yearnings of sympathy, cannot enable any 
 two human beings to understand each other. 
 Each man, as each nation, has a tongue peculiar, 
 that cannot be translated. And yet, if we rashly 
 insist on our separateness as absolutes if we turn 
 
 35 
 
THE TWO the backs of our hearts on the race, we starve 
 OF THE ONE at the soul, we shrivel like desiccated fruits. 
 E pluribus unum is the universe. 
 
 In everything, physical, spiritual, these two 
 great forces vindicate themselves and have their 
 own — persuade and dissuade, assert and deny, 
 attract and repulse, compel and repel, unite and 
 divide, and this not only in alternation, but at the 
 same time. Everything shall feed you, but noth- 
 ing satisfy your hunger. 
 
 VE being the uniting force of the 
 universe, the attraction to the 
 Center, we no sooner feel love 
 toward another than our whole 
 nature is stirred and inspired by 
 a great joy and power ; we are 
 coming closer to the Great Magnet, we receive 
 God into ourselves, and becoming god-like v»7e 
 inspire the god-like in our lovers. It is the 
 manifest Divine in us that they love, and they 
 also, by reason of their love receiving God into 
 themselves, appear perfect to us. And this 
 is no deception, no illusion, but a beatific in- 
 carnation of the Best. And for this reason 
 love is the divinest, the most uplifting influ- 
 ence in our lives. And this is \Aiy seers say 
 •* love is life," and speak of " saving love," and 
 
 3G 
 
 OF LOVE 
 
 THAT 
 
 HOLDS AND 
 
 LIBERATES 
 
insist that *' God is lave,*' And herein is anothir 
 mystery explained : The " conjugal," the '« mono- 
 gamic " impulse leads us to love but one, to 
 center all our affections on one object. This is 
 because God is one, and our love, at bottom, is 
 not love to an individual, who is but an evanes- 
 cent, imperfect representative, and really, at the 
 deepest, a fiction, but to The Individual, it is the 
 God-becoming instinct in us. But because the in- 
 dividual in \A;'hom we for the time being see the 
 Perfect visioned is not the Whole, but imperfect, 
 we are never satisfied by the one love, hovv'ever 
 beautiful ; we are never satisfied, and no matter 
 what our vows, our sacraments, our rebukes of 
 conscience, our dream of fidelity, our yearnings 
 for constancy, our fancy will stray, our love will 
 go out to other beautiful souls and bodies in 
 whom the Divine is also revealed. Nevertheless, 
 it is through the " Grand Passion," the centering 
 of our greatest and richest love in one, that we are 
 best able to normally love these others, and bring 
 them into normal love relations with ourselves ; 
 and herein is the mystery and contradiction again. 
 Almost all the battles of affection are over this 
 unrecognized la^A7. But we may hide the fact 
 even from ourselves, we may deny it, we may 
 crucify the flesh and starve the soul, but the fact 
 
 OF LOVE 
 THAT 
 
 HOLDS AND 
 LIBERATES 
 
 t-i 
 
OF LOVE 
 
 THAT 
 
 HOLDS AND 
 
 LIBERATES 
 
 GENIUS 
 
 AND THE 
 
 IDEAL 
 
 remains, and in the judgment of the Attained 
 Vision no soul can say with truth, " I have loved 
 but one." And this is because the law is that 
 the Divine, vyho is in all, is to be recognized and 
 loved in all, or loss of growth and pain is the 
 penalty. But neither woman nor man can satisfy 
 or appease ; only to love more and more until we 
 Attain — that can satisfy/. 
 
 " He prayeth best who loveth best, 
 All things both great and small : 
 For the dear God, who loveth us, 
 He made and loveth all." 
 
 vfe call the "ideal" is this 
 perception of, this thirst for, this 
 undying aspiration and uplift 
 toward the Divine in us. That 
 which we love, that which is the 
 ruling passion of our life, w^e 
 straightway " idealize ; " that is, vs^e imagine it in 
 a more perfect form than any we have actually 
 seen or realized, and this ideal indicates the line 
 of our growth. What this really means is, that 
 on this line of our aspiration and yearning we 
 become intuitional, and to som.e extent really 
 apprehend the perfect as regards that attribute. 
 We become intuitional, and acquire a power, 
 knowledge, and " genius," as we name it, on this 
 
our idealized line, ■which appears to transcend GENIUS 
 
 our ordinary faculties and confess a sixth sense. AND THE 
 
 We recognize all this in great men, and expect IDEAL 
 
 them to do deeds and execute works in a sort of 
 
 divine frenzy, accomplishing that -which surprises 
 
 themselves, and the power and process of which 
 
 they cannot explain. But, though not so apparent, 
 
 precisely the same thing occurs in small men, to 
 
 each in the line of his own genius. The mechanic 
 
 builds wiser than he knows ; golden words drop 
 
 from the humblest lips ; orders fly from the lips 
 
 of the shipmaster in the storm which he cannot 
 
 justify to himself, but they save the ship. Every 
 
 student has moments of illuminated perception 
 
 of lav/ and truth, every poet v/rites vv^ords which 
 
 he does not understand, yet v\7hich teach him in 
 
 his cooler moments. And the more we grow the 
 
 more the ideal enlarges before us ; we increase 
 
 our growth in its image, and receive more and 
 
 more the pov/er v/hich attends ; and this forever, 
 
 till Attainment, with all power, comes. 
 
 T excites much indignation in the OF HERO- 
 minds of many good people that "WORSHIP 
 men so persistently admire great AND 
 conquerors, pirates, courtesans, DEMIGODS 
 svt'indlers, and other workers of 
 evil. An evidence of "total de- 
 39 
 
OF HERO- pravit^," this has been conslderedj but in fact 
 
 WORSHIP it is only one expression of the outreach to the 
 
 AND Divine. Very low natures, "whose legitimate work 
 
 DEMIGODS is evil, no doubt admire the evil in these strong 
 
 ones ; but the fact that all natures, high and lo^v 
 
 alike, feel the same impulse to admire, proves 
 
 that there is somewhat there for all. Now, the 
 
 simple fact is, that all " great," all strong, able 
 
 natures have in some direction a larger share of 
 
 the divine force than the lesser ones around them. 
 
 And it is this godlike faculty, w^hatever it may 
 
 be, in them, that we inevitably and rightfully 
 
 admire, no matter what evil, or mistakes, or 
 
 v^eakness, in other directions, may happen to be 
 
 bound up in that particular nature with it. 
 
 WE FIND |^^^^^S|VERY nature, like a root pushed 
 
 OUR OW^N Viv^A^i^^^ffM through the soil, selects its own 
 
 nutriment, and rejects all elements 
 which do not feed it. So the 
 higher nature, that w^hich has out- 
 grow^n the plane of evil, cannot be 
 smirched or befouled by any influence or en- 
 vironment. With a sure instinct it will find its 
 own, and thrive on the good, the true, and the 
 beautiful where you might suppose one morsel of 
 such manna could not be found. 
 
 We have only to stand aside and see the salva- 
 40 
 
tion. The soul that is going home cannot be 
 diverted from the path. 
 
 " For it is God which Avorketh in you both to 
 will and to do of his good pleasure." 
 ?f^fJS^-- a 3 |LL forms, all ranks, castes, artifi- 
 cialities, "nobilities," have grown 
 'i out of the many-sided push toward 
 '^" the Divine. Longing to be godlike, 
 by innate and irresistible impulse, 
 men in their ignorance did not 
 realize that they must grow, but impatiently en- 
 deavored by outvv^ard forms and images to be that 
 which man can only become by inward-outward 
 evolution. Because the Supreme had pow^er of 
 life and death, men supposed they could become 
 like gods by assuming despotic control of their 
 fellov/s ; because God was majestic, they theatri- 
 cally endeavored to be like him by putting on 
 metal crowns and fur robes and w^aving sym- 
 bols ; they tried to be noble by wearing the name 
 and assuming the virtue as hereditary ; they sub- 
 stituted fashion w^here they needed taste, polite 
 forms for courtesy, cosmetics for beauty, excite- 
 ment and intoxication for gladness, customs and 
 la-ws for spontaneous restraints, affectation for 
 grace, hypocrisy for virtue, ritualism for religion. 
 
 WE FIND 
 OUR OWN 
 
 THE GENE- 
 SIS OF THE 
 UNGENU- 
 INE 
 
 41 
 
THE REAL 
 
 LL this was the sincerest flattery 
 of the genuine, and kept vivid the 
 faith in it by symbols, as it were, 
 and by pure reaction ; for it is 
 utterly impossible to kill out of 
 men the intuition that there is a 
 real majesty, a real nobility and aristocracy of 
 manhood, a legitimate leadership of the wise and 
 able, a genuine courtesy, a sincere virtue, a true 
 taste, a Pow^er over all and through all. You 
 may show them the counterfeit a million times, 
 and.svt^ear there is no other coin, but they refuse 
 to be cheated ; they may even profess to believe 
 it ; they may persuade themselves in much pain 
 that they do believe it — it is useless — they do 
 not believe it, nor can they. Could they perfectly 
 so persuade themselves they ■w.'-ould die ; and even 
 a partial persuasion leads to settled sadness, pain, 
 pessimism, or suicide. Life is faith in the genu- 
 ine ; and faith in the genuine expresses itself in 
 living your own life frankly and trustfully, as an 
 animal acts, as a tree grows. 
 
 The real Kings wear no crowns, the true nobles 
 have no titles, genuine courtesy has no forms, 
 sincere virtue recks not of moral rules, wisdom 
 is above custom, liberty drops law, love knows 
 only its object, genius ignores canons, the godly 
 
 42 
 
man has no dogma, creed, Bible, ritual, or temple. THE REAL 
 The Real is tolerant and inclusive ; God is not 
 a party, a hostile fragment. 
 
 I remember that Carpenter, in his " Civilization, 
 its Cause, and Cure," declares the sickness of 
 mankind to lie in the fact that men are at war 
 with themselves, while in nature every life fol- 
 lows its own laws w^ithout self-reproach. This 
 was a dark saying to m.e, but my Dawn-Thought 
 has made it light ; nevertheless, this inner war 
 of a man is also a necessary part of his evolution 
 to a new and higher unity and self-peace. As a 
 man enlarges from the Dawn-Thought, he drops 
 all forms and rules and " principles " as outworn 
 tools, and follo'ws reverently all the inner im- 
 pulses and restraints, living his own life as 
 frankly as a bird, " letting himself go " as a brook 
 runs, in peace with the eternal v^orld-currents 
 and his ow^n soul. The days of struggle are over, 
 he blooms like a flow^er, he bears fruit like a tree 
 — God is in him, and all the v/orld is with him. 
 
 HERE is no more war with con- EMANUEL 
 science, but life and growth only, 
 and this is heaven within. Jesus 
 is a parable of the incarnate Di- 
 vine ; we shall all be Christ's be- 
 fore Ascension, we shall all be 
 43 
 
EMANUEi^ 
 
 THE PATH E 
 
 Buddhas before Nirvana ; Messiah-ship is our 
 common ripening — the God-man we shall each 
 become before the man becomes God. 
 
 We are all to preach gospels ; we shall each 
 add our testament to the Universal Bible ; every 
 one shall rise from the dead, and sit at the right 
 hand of the Parent, and be one with him in wis- 
 dom and power. 
 
 This purer part of the One, from which we all 
 proceed, and to which we all return, is the Parent, 
 the Father-Mother ; this sympathetic force, flow- 
 ing through all things, and binding all in unity, 
 is the " Holy Spirit," the Health (it would indeed 
 be " unpardonable sin " to sin against this, if that 
 were possible, because to do that would be to 
 drop out of the currents of eternal life) ; and the 
 Messiah, which each soul becomes when it nears 
 Nirvana, is the Child, the " Son." And these 
 three are one because all things are One. 
 
 ND the truth concerning the Path 
 appears to be, that that part of the 
 Divine v/hich is to constitute an in- 
 dividual soul (a *' part," yet never 
 disconnected) is first projected as 
 a germ, one might say, into the 
 lowest form ; and from this grows, expands, en- 
 larges, evolves, by love and war, by accretion, and 
 
 44 
 
disintegration ; becomes increasingly conscious, THE PATH 
 as it passes from change to change, transforma- 
 tion to transformation ; death after death, and 
 birth after birth, through all the forms and planes 
 of mineral, vegetable, animal, and human life, 
 until finally emerging into the absolute Conscious- 
 ness and Identity of Nirvana. On its v/ay having 
 every experience, knowing every weakness and 
 strength, every degradation and glory, every crime 
 and virtue, every sin and shame, every innocence 
 and delight, every sorrow^ and pain, every master- 
 ship and slavery, yet in not exactly the same way 
 as any other soul, until all is known, all experi- 
 enced, and the circle is complete. At the last po- 
 etic justice is meted out, everything is explained, 
 justified, forgiven, appreciated, accepted, approved. 
 "We may reflect that every chemic force, every 
 clod, every crystal, every bit of protoplasm, an- 
 imalcule, -worm, flow^er, tree, bird, beast, is on the 
 road, equally with ourselves, and will reach home, 
 inevitably, by the same eternal necessity. 
 
 CONCEIVE that souls do not re- BLENDING 
 main separate through all the 
 changes of the path. Indeed, what 
 philosophers and scientists call the 
 " atom " is probably the soul-germ 
 at its very beginning on the upw^ard 
 45 
 
BLENDING course. From thencefor\A7ard its progress is a 
 continuous process of transformation and enlarge- 
 ment by blending and accretion. We know that 
 all the higher organisms are compound, and are 
 rather confederations of individuals than indi- 
 viduals simple. Indeed, above the atom we know 
 not -where to find the simple individual, for even 
 the molecule is not simple. Each cell, each cor- 
 puscle of the blood, each spermatozoan is a 
 living and somewhat separate animal in the 
 human body ; the ganglia and nerve centers seem 
 relatively independent intelligences. The pro- 
 cesses of nutrition teach us the same lesson of 
 constant fusion and transformation of separates 
 into one. If this is true in the visible, I appre- 
 hend it is equally true in the realm of the in- 
 visible, and that spiritual growth and enlargement 
 is greatly a process of fusion and union of lesser 
 lives into greater ones ; this being a type, as it 
 w^ere, of Nirvana, not a loss of individuality, but 
 an enlargement of individuality ; each life coming 
 into the union not feeling itself lost, but simply 
 increased by the pow^ers and experience of the 
 ally. Even two human souls, perhaps more, I 
 apprehend, often unite for a new incarnation. As 
 the final destiny and perfection of the soul is 
 enlargement into conscious identity v^dth all ex- 
 
 46 
 
istences, all this seems perfectly logical and accord- BLENDING 
 ant. Nothing has to be done but to break down the 
 partition of apparent separateness ai>d two souls 
 at once know their real identity. Possibly this 
 union often takes place between tv/o (a male and a 
 female) disembodied souls w^ho were lovers in this 
 life — truly wedded they fuse into one for a nev/ em- 
 bodiment. These are deep, suggestive problems. 
 
 Society is an individual composed of individ- 
 uals, w^ho again are composed of lesser indi- 
 viduals, and so on almost ad infinitum. And the 
 Universe is a great individual composed of all. 
 
 And we constantly see great souls draw lesser 
 souls into their current with an irresistible pas- 
 sion of devotion. 
 
 And so by conquest and cannibalism, by love 
 and war, by eating, drinking, earning, learning, 
 begging, stealing, sympathizing, accepting, the 
 universal march of enlargement goes on. Yet 
 ever disintegration attends and fights against, 
 and the imperfectly mated fall apart and oppose, 
 till true fitness is acquired, and then they blend 
 triumphantly in attained enlargement. 
 
 Sex is the spiritual and physical line of cleavage 
 and therefore of conjunction ; here each matches 
 and fits the other ; they separated here ; here 
 they long to return. 
 
 47 
 
CHARAC- 
 TER 
 
 THE VA- 
 RIETY AND 
 UNIFORM- 
 ITY IN UNI- 
 VERSAL 
 LIFE 
 
 N this vie%v the whole scheme 
 of things becomes a school for 
 character. It is for this that the 
 universe exists, and the revolv- 
 ing w^orlds plot and plan. And 
 Character is only another word 
 for the attained Ideal. 
 
 ND as we cannot imagine the Cen- 
 ter as a mere impassivity, and as 
 this method of projecting himself 
 into partial and apparently sepa- 
 rate forms is the only method by 
 which action becomes possible to 
 him, it is plain that he has followed, and will 
 follow, this method through all eternity. But 
 all things point to the Divine as perfect in unity, 
 yet infinite in variety. Both these are exhibited 
 in his method of action. Through all the universe, 
 in every form of existence, we perceive the same 
 methods infinitely diversified. Every soul has 
 the same experiences as other souls in general 
 features, yet not exactly the same either in detail 
 or in the ensemble. Variation always vindicates 
 itself to the discerning eye equally with unifor- 
 mity. Here, again, extremes meet and are rec- 
 onciled. It is in this infinite variation of works, 
 and yet consistency w^ith self, that we may sup- 
 
 48 
 
pose the Divine pleasure to consist — avoiding 
 equally, thereby, monotony and chaos. The ka- 
 leidoscope revolves forever, and forever the new 
 combinations appear. And it is this consistency 
 of the Divine character and this uniformity of the 
 Divine methods which make science possible and 
 constitute the "laws of Nature." And it is this 
 infinite variation which makes the study of nature 
 perpetually a surprise and delight even to the 
 most habituated. 
 
 T is because man, of all creatures, 
 is nearest to the Center that he is 
 said to be made in the image of 
 God ; and because all other crea- 
 tures are on the path, coming 
 toward man and God, we perceive 
 expressions, movements, some- 
 what resembling and prophesying ourselves. The 
 human in them is germinal, latent, becoming. All 
 nature is a prophecy of man ; man is a symbol 
 and epitome of God. 
 
 HIS should be observed by those 
 who are inclined to regard this 
 doctrine as identical with The- 
 osophy — that it differs from it in 
 two remarkable points : First, its 
 Nirvana is enlargement and per- 
 
 49 
 
 THE VA- 
 RIETY AND 
 UNIFORM- 
 ITY IN UNI- 
 VERSAL 
 LIFE 
 
 THE IMAGE 
 
 LIVING AND 
 OUTLIVING 
 
LIVING AND 
 OUTLIVING 
 
 THE 
 SERVICE OF 
 REVER- 
 SION 
 
 fection of self-consciousness, instead of annihila- 
 tion, absorption, or loss ; Second, it differs 
 fundamentally in this, that instead of teaching 
 asceticism, quietude, repression of passion, the 
 mortification of the flesh, and the ignoring of ex- 
 ternal things, the Dawn-Thought teaches growth, 
 expansion, appreciation, reception, blooming, and 
 fruiting to the infinite. Here, in this last, is dif- 
 ference tremendous and vital. In Theosophy 
 you are taught to attain the Divine by concen- 
 trated culture of one part of your complex nature, 
 and by systematically dw^arfing and starving all 
 else — as though God hated somewhat of himself, 
 and could not be at peace with any, unless they 
 joined in his warfare — but in Dawn-Thinking 
 you rise and overcome simply by the natural 
 process of living fully and thus outliving, as a 
 child its milk-teeth, a serpent his slough. Living 
 and Outliving, that expresses it. Until you have 
 learned the one lesson fully you are never ready 
 for a new one. 
 
 DO not suppose that all progres- 
 sion on the path is direct and con- 
 tinuous — there are periods of 
 pause, of reversion, of decadence. 
 But these, too, serve. Sleep is 
 not lost time. Energy is stored ii 
 50 
 
times of quiet, in winters, fallows, dammed-up 
 streams. The lazy beasts have the most tre- 
 mendous power in times of needed effort. Re- 
 action often carries farther forw^ard than direct 
 action. Haply the Tzar does as much for liberty 
 by creating the Nihilist as the Nihilist does by 
 killing the Tzar. 
 
 HETHER we say Jove, or Zeus, 
 Brahma, Jehovah, Allah, the 
 Great Spirit, the Infinite, the In- 
 clusive, the Real, the Creator, 
 the Center, the Sphere, the Uni- 
 verse, the One, the Unknown, 
 the Divine, the Ideal, the Higher-Self, the Grand- 
 Man, the Over-Soul, the Ego, the Parent, Nature, 
 Heaven, Wisdom, Power, Beauty, Goodness, 
 God — we say, I apprehend, the same thing. For 
 these are all interchangeable terms, and refer 
 alike to that Being, that Essence, that Only Ex- 
 istence, who is the Alpha and Omega, the Whole, 
 and the Circle. These names, and countless 
 hundreds more, are only symbols, clumsy human 
 attempts to describe and bring before the mind, 
 by w^ord or phrase, in -whole or in part, that power 
 and mystery which all feel at the heart of things 
 — that consciousness which none may escape, 
 yet which is ever unknown and apparently un- 
 
 51 
 
 THE SER- 
 VICE OF RE- 
 VERSION 
 
 GOD-NAMES 
 
GOD-NAMES 
 
 AT-ONE- 
 MENT 
 
 knovi^able. And for this every man has some 
 name, after the fashion of his thought. Whether 
 the Atheist says Nature, or the devotee says Lord 
 Jesus, they both speak of the same thing, they 
 lay hold, each from another side, of the same 
 great matter, which neither understands. Yet 
 every man feels somewhat, and, so far as he feels, 
 he speaks a Name to describe the greatest thing 
 in his thought. Each man makes his god in his 
 o^vn image ; for really his true Self and God are 
 one, and as his self-consciousness enlarges his 
 vision of the Divine enlarges. The gods live and 
 die, but the Fact remains. 
 
 Only in the light of Pantheism does the wonder- 
 ful significance of such old terms as the Be- 
 ginning and the End, The Great I Am, become 
 fully clear to us. 
 
 HIS is Heaven, this is Attainment, 
 this is Nirvana, this is the Re- 
 conciliation, to lose all sense of 
 separateness, to enlarge into iden- 
 tity w^ith the All, to be in every- 
 thing and to be everything. 
 Now the atonement formerly w^as understood 
 to be the at-one-ment, as the etymology of the 
 word reveals. In the Christian mythus God and 
 man became one, at-one, in the God-Man, Christ- 
 
 52 
 
Jesus. But this Dawn-Thought of mine is alto- 
 gether the at-one-ment ; it is that and that only, 
 the reconciliation and perceived unity of all things. 
 ^n^^^^^^ST would be reasonably expected of 
 a true and divinely constituted 
 religion, that on its essential, or 
 hope and cheer giving, side it would 
 be so simple that the merest sav- 
 age might feel it out by instinct, 
 the merest child could understand enough to be 
 glad, while in its philosophical, or explanatory, 
 side it would take hold on the deepest facts of life 
 and experience, and open endless vistas of mys- 
 tery, search, and wonder to the profoundest intel- 
 lect. Both these requisites are realized, in their 
 extreme form, in the Da-wn-Thought. In it 
 extremes of simplicity and mystery, of common- 
 sense and paradox, meet. 
 
 HE Dawn-Thought is ever a dawn- 
 ing to all who hold it. Forever, 
 as the soul advances, grow^s, and 
 enlarges, a new day seems to be 
 breaking just ahead, the face is 
 toward the East, and the glory 
 and the vigor of the morning is over all. To the 
 budding, grow^ing soul the eyes are ever opening, 
 as if from sleep, the senses are aw^aking to new 
 
 53 
 
 AT-ONE- 
 MENT 
 
 SATISFAC- 
 TION IN 
 DAWN- 
 THINKING 
 
 THE DAWN 
 
THE DAWN 
 
 GOOD AND 
 
 EVIL IN 
 
 THE 
 
 PARTIAL 
 
 things, there is perpetual Dawn, Sunrise, Morning, 
 Youth, Spring, the push and rise and glamour 
 of a new life. 
 
 F the theory of evil in the Dawn- 
 Thought be correct — that it ori- 
 ginates in partialness, in incom- 
 pleteness, and pertains to that by 
 inevitable necessity, then, theo- 
 retically, if one knew nothing of 
 actual life, it would have to be inferred that 
 every thing (for every thing is but a part, a frag- 
 ment) would bear its inevitable fruit of evil in the 
 shape of failure, or disappointment, or pain, or 
 unfitness of some sort. And, conversely, if the 
 Dawn-Thought theory be right that God is good 
 and all is God, then each part fnust have a part 
 of the divine goodness in itself, and possess a 
 certain relation of fitness to other things, and 
 must bear its inevitable fruit of joy, benefit, 
 success, pleasure. And this theoretical is found 
 demonstrable in the actual. To the perpetual 
 puzzle of religionist and moralist, it has always 
 been observed that vices, crimes, sins, -worked 
 out, in spite of themselves and their condemna- 
 tion, a certain good ; and that pious, virtuous, and 
 kindly-intentioned deeds quite often brought dis- 
 aster, and never produced the all-around success 
 
 54 
 
and joy and good-results so confidently expected 
 of them. In brief, because each thing is a frag- 
 ment of, the Whole (which is perfect) nothing 
 whatever is wholly false or bad ; and, because 
 each thing is a fragment, nothing can possess 
 that perfect good which only completeness can 
 possess (and no part could be complete in itself 
 unless completely separate and independent, 
 w^hich nothing is) therefore good and evil are 
 relative, and pertain to every thing, considered as 
 a part. 
 
 This has a decided bearing on practical life. 
 The Dawn-Thought philosopher perceives that 
 joy and sorrow^, pleasure and pain, good and evil, 
 in their various forms, practically balance every 
 where in life. Therefore he is never wildly 
 elated or deeply depressed, he is neither cynical 
 nor fanatical ; neither pessimist nor optimist as 
 regards the world about him. He knows that 
 every crime must translate to virtue, every sla- 
 very produce liberty, and, on the other hand, that 
 blighted fruits are borne on all the trees of joy. 
 Therefore he cultivates in his own mind the 
 appreciation of every good as it comes, and the 
 ignoring of the evil w^hen it is uppermost, know- 
 ing that each will soon change to its opposite. 
 Only, finally, in his view of Nirvana, the Home- 
 
 55 
 
 GOOD AND 
 EVIL IN 
 THE 
 PARTIAL 
 
GOOD AND 
 
 EVIL IN 
 
 THE 
 
 PARTIAL 
 
 FANATI- 
 CISM AND 
 COMMON- 
 SENSE 
 
 Coming, the God-Attainment, is he optimistic. 
 And there is no bitterness in his heart, because 
 he realizes that things are as they are from inevi- 
 table necessity and logic, and that the Divine, 
 himself, if he would create at all, must make 
 creatures with the imperfections w^hich part ex- 
 istences cannot avoid. With every change of 
 life, every new stage of progress, he perceives 
 new weaknesses and evil in a ne'w form, and 
 satisfaction and compensation in a new form. 
 Only in the complete circle are compensations 
 adequate, and justice is done. 
 
 IFE being an adjustment of op- 
 posites, there are three factors to 
 truth — the Thesis, the Anti-the- 
 sis, the Syn-thesis. Now what 
 men call a "crank," a "fanatic," 
 a "zealot," is one w^ho sees only 
 one side of truth, with such narrowness and in- 
 tensity that he can never receive the antithesis of 
 what he declares true. Some other " crank " has 
 to make a thesis of that, in order to give it due 
 prominence. Therefore enthusiasts are always 
 open to refutation and puncture by opposing 
 fanatics. 
 
 But a man of " common-sense " is one who, by 
 intuition rather than logic, holds that there is a 
 
 56 
 
golden mean, that no extreme is true alone, v/ho, 
 by nature, is an eclectic and reconciler. He is 
 practical, and sees just hov/ much of each is 
 available, under present conditions, to gain a 
 desired end. Practically, because of this useful 
 and applicable intuition, he is often more of a 
 philosopher than many great theorists. 
 
 ]HE core of religion, something 
 v/hich may come to the mind of 
 man anyv/here, with any creed or 
 no creed, appears to be this : An 
 intuition of the presence of an 
 indwelling Force in the universe 
 and of its protective love. This is the center, 
 and this is enough. All else is accessory. "With 
 this alone a man has religion and rest. 
 
 N one sense, and with minds that 
 ^ have reached the Overlook, there 
 f is no place in the Dawn-Thought 
 religion for prayer. How can there 
 be ? Worship, praise, adoration, 
 yes ; but petition, no. For if God 
 be all and does all, all is right, all is well done, 
 all is planned from the beginning and cannot be 
 changed. Prayer asks a change, implies a dis- 
 trust, a suspicion, a criticism. It. is an impu- 
 dence, an impertinence, the finite advising the 
 
 57 
 
 FANATI- 
 CISM AND 
 COMMON- 
 SENSE 
 
 THE HEART 
 
 OF 
 
 RELIGION 
 
 ACCEPT- 
 ANCE AND 
 THE CON- 
 TRADIC- 
 TION IN 
 PRAYER 
 
ACCEPT- infinite, ignorance presuming to correct the work 
 
 ANCE AND of complete knowledge. The Pantheist sees God 
 
 THE CON- in every thing, and -worships every thing as him, 
 
 TRADIC- and asks no change. He is reconciled. " Thy 
 
 TION IN Kingdom come and thy will be done on earth 
 
 PRAYER and in heaven I " 
 
 Nor does he ask God to bless his meat, for w^hy 
 ask God to bless a part of himself? Nor does he 
 consecrate to him a part of the earth, or a house, 
 when all " the earth is the Lord's and the fullness 
 thereof," and he dwells in an habitation not made 
 with hands. To the Pantheist, his religion is 
 the appreciation of every thing as divine, and he 
 can make no partitions, 
 
 I have said there v^/as no place in the Davi^n- 
 Thought religion for prayer. It is true, and yet 
 not true, there is no place, and yet there is a 
 place. It is true that prayer is presumptuous and 
 impertinent, yet it is true, too, that prayer is 
 wise and pertinent. It is foolish to petition the 
 Unchangeable, and impudent and absurd in the 
 part-^wise to criticise or advise the All- Wise, yet 
 in the sight of the Large One there are no real 
 sins, but ignorance and mistake merely, for which 
 he is at last responsible and not ourselves. "We 
 cannot sin against God, for we all do his will as 
 helplessly as the winds and waves. The Divine 
 
 58 
 
is never angry or offended by any soul, because 
 he always understands the whole situation, and 
 moves and directs all. His forgiveness is always 
 perfect, or rather he never forgives because he 
 cannot be offended — it is his love that is perfect 
 and changes not, neither to smite nor pardon. 
 
 Therefore to those to whom prayer seems right 
 it is right — they are at that stage of evolution in 
 which prayer is appropriate — they have as yet 
 only the Underlook, and all the fictions of exist- 
 ence are very real to them. Like children v/ith 
 a w^himsical father, they coax, plead, argue, and 
 confess, as though Deity could be cajoled, taught, 
 and diplomatically "talked over." It is laugh- 
 able, it is revolting, yet these diplomats are per- 
 fectly sincere, perfectly reverent, never dream of 
 incongruity, and, more than that, derive a real 
 good from the act. 
 
 For we may feel assured that nothing takes 
 deep hold upon the people except it be by a true 
 appetite, and that that which seems to satisfy 
 always does satisfy. And there is a restfulness 
 about prayer, and a peace, refreshment, and calm- 
 ness following its exercise, v/hich prove it the 
 satisfaction of a deep need. And this is so be- 
 cause prayer, at bottom, is longing, aspiration ; 
 and the strongest and most universal out-reach 
 
 ACCEPT- 
 ANCE AND 
 THE CON- 
 TRADIC- 
 TION IN 
 PRAYER 
 
 59 
 
ACCEPT- in all nature, as we have seen, is toward the 
 ANCE AND Divine. All nature, in every part, prays for union, 
 THE CON- and what w^e call prayer is simply one expres- 
 TRADIC- sion of that universal, centripetal force elsewhere 
 TION IN spoken of. Hov^^ever ignorantly voiced it origin- 
 PRAYER ates in the yearning to be at-one, to attain Enlarge- 
 ment, and tends to bring us to the Great Center. 
 Hence its healthfulness. We bring our little 
 buckets to the great V/ell and go away refreshed. 
 Prayer is the voice of love, and all love is 
 prayer. 
 
 And this is the secret basis and nature of prayer. 
 It is the impulse toward union, it is " Nearer my 
 God to thee," it is the urge toward the Divine, 
 it is ambition, aspiration, grow^th-direction, it is 
 the inward flow^ of the world's blood. And no 
 one feels this more than the Dawn-Thinker. He 
 is the only one w^ho truly and consciously " prays 
 without ceasing " ; his face is always to the East ; 
 he is always on the road to Mecca ; he is con- 
 sciously going home. His desire for attainment, 
 for the divine-indwelling, for the Overlook and 
 the Serene Life, is ever with him, though he 
 bend not the knee, nor fold the hand, nor utter 
 the formal word in all a life's journey. Prayer 
 is the heart of his life, and his v/hole life is 
 prayer. 
 
 60 
 
OW if the whole inclusive uni- 
 verse is alive, in whole and in 
 every part, in every form and 
 manifestation, — and this is in my 
 Dawn-Thought, — then perhaps 
 the best correlative term or syno- 
 nym for the Divine, w^ho is the universe, is The 
 Life. And if death is only an illusion, an appear- 
 ance, or rather a disappearance of one form of 
 life behind or w^ithin another form, to reappear 
 later on intact and indeed enlarged, we can under- 
 stand that the Divine is not only The Life but 
 the Resurrection, and we perceive how^ Jesus, in 
 an ecstasy of attainment and Messiah-ship identi- 
 fying himself w^ith the Divine, could cry: " I am 
 the resurrection and the life." And if one great 
 life is all and the substance of all, may it not be 
 that this intuitional consciousness of a universal 
 existence, transcending evidence (for has not 
 Herbert Spencer shown, in the v/onderfui chap- 
 ters of " First Principles," that neither by reli- 
 gious reasoning nor by scientific reasoning can w^e 
 arrive at logical proof of our ultimate ideas, yet 
 w^e cannot escape the consciousness of a great 
 reality?), this "cosmic consciousness" of life of 
 the modern, is the same as the "faith" of the 
 ancient ? For if life is all, and the only substance, 
 
 LIFE AND 
 FAITH 
 
LIFE AND 
 FAITH 
 
 ENLARGE- 
 MENT 
 
 THE 
 DA\VN-JOY 
 
 and if faith is our grasp on it, and if this con- 
 sciousness of life is our only evidence of it, then 
 can we understand that mystical hard saying : 
 " Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, 
 the evidence of things not seen." 
 
 [HY do we so enjoy the acquisi- 
 tion of kno"wledge apparently for 
 its own sake ? Because the ac- 
 quisition of every fact is an en- 
 largement of consciousness, and 
 enlargement of consciousness is 
 becoming Divine, is that in w^hich all our highest 
 enjoyments — those we call by the collective 
 name happiness — consist. So -with increase in 
 health, strength, beauty, love-power, creative 
 art-power, all these mean enlargement in Divine- 
 attainment and yield a pure joy. 
 
 HIS Dawn-Thought has broken 
 into my life like a veritable light. 
 I w^as not conscious before of 
 shadow, but now that the light 
 has come I knov\;' the difference 
 by the contrast. I feel so much 
 younger, lighter, healthier, happier. Something 
 has come that my system craved, like food to the 
 hungry, like drink to one athirst. 
 
 62 
 
DEEM that the Light of the World 
 is always shining, and that all 
 things and all lives are more or 
 less translucent to it. And so it 
 tNi^//4 comes to us through all these 
 j^^>j(j^ media, stained and colored by each 
 according to its tint, like sunlight through cathe- 
 dral windovv^s, or through various atmospheres, 
 or through the leaves of a forest. It never reaches 
 us quite pure, therefore all revelations are but 
 partial and imperfect, there is no one and nothing 
 infallible, yet every man, every nation, yes, every 
 beast, flower, crystal, has the light. 
 
 HE sceptic calls the reverence 
 which the ignorant feel for the un- 
 known superstition, yet the igno- 
 rant have right as vv^ell as the 
 skeptic. That w^hich we do not 
 know stands apart from us, 
 clothed in vague terrors, and is the Unknov/n 
 God w^hich we dread, yet which v^q worship and 
 to v/hich we yearn, but that which we know we 
 have made a part of ourselves, our consciousness. 
 It is our Self, the Attained-God (so far as we have 
 gone), and we no longer fear it because we com- 
 prehend it. Our attitude to what v^^'e do not 
 know^ is the fear of God, and our attitude to what 
 63 
 
 THE LIGHT 
 OF THE 
 WORLD 
 
 SUPERSTI- 
 TION AND 
 KNOWL- 
 EDGE 
 
SUPERSTI- 
 TION AND 
 KNOWL- 
 EDGE 
 
 PAIN AND 
 FEAR THE 
 UTTER- 
 ANCE OF 
 THE 
 PARTIAL 
 
 ■WQ know is the love of God ; for what -we know 
 is our own, and w^e love our own. Therefore a 
 certain stage of attained knowledge casts out fear, 
 LL pain, fear, trouble, evil, arise 
 from partialness, and from imper- 
 fection of view^. The more we 
 know, the more we unite, the more 
 we attain, the more these disap- 
 pear, and courage and ease ap- 
 pear. Therefore knowledge is the true Savior. 
 Therefore the saying of Jesus, " The Truth shall 
 make you free." But as we enlarge in knowledge 
 comes reconciliation and lack of struggle, w^e are 
 at home with life as it is, yet, in ceasing to strug- 
 gle w^ith it, do more than any else to make it as 
 it should be. Therefore the w^ord of Epictetus : 
 " Do not seek to have all things happen as you 
 would choose them, but rather choose them to 
 happen as they do ; and so shall the current of 
 your life flow free." For every man, who, like 
 Whitman, for example, has obtained a glimpse 
 of Reconciliation, and agrees to the v/orld's tides, 
 becomes at once a center of peace and harmony, 
 a w^indow of new light, a point of happy growth. 
 Agreement, acceptance, is the great peace- 
 maker, because it brings union, and love and 
 
 harmony are of union, and joy attends. 
 
 6a 
 
ND this is greatness that one ap- 
 preciate the greatness there is 
 about him in every least as in 
 every large thing. It will be found 
 that the man of genius finds great- 
 ness and wonder and beauty and 
 mystery, and truth wdthin truth, -where the com- 
 mon-man finds only commonplace. "When your 
 artist has painted your hutch, or your fence- 
 corner, or your cabbage-garden, you shall some- 
 v/hat see what beauty and wonder there was in 
 it — in this that you deemed so vulgar. 
 
 " Elder, mulien and poke-weed and the scabs 
 on the worm-fence." 
 
 And this is because every least thing, as every 
 large thing, also takes hold on the infinite, and 
 on one side is infinite — wonder_within wonder, 
 mystery within my!stery, truth w^ithin truth, to 
 infinity. For there is nothing separate, and 
 the all is in each. 
 
 APPREHEND that the desire for 
 secrecy is one of the low^er things 
 which higher minds outgrow^. The 
 desire to hide and conceal hints of 
 evil. It is because we plot evil 
 against others, or suspect that they 
 plot danger to us, that we wear masks, talk eva- 
 
 65 
 
 GREAT- 
 NESS 
 
 FRANKNESS 
 
FRANKNESS sively, and work in the dark. Cunning and peril 
 both demand privacy, but \Ai'hen we neither fear 
 nor hate we are open. Trust and love tell every- 
 thing ; and the fearless and harmless are frank. 
 
 Now ignorance separates ; what we do not 
 know is not a part of us, but what we do know is 
 united to us. And love is the desire for and joy 
 in union. When therefore we wish another to 
 love us we desire to reveal ourselves utterly, for 
 we wish to be altogether known and possessed, 
 ■ even as we w^ish to know and possess. On every 
 noble nature, when kindled by love, comes an 
 imperious yearning to confess every thing, to give 
 all, to be at-one. Therefore love resents secrecy, 
 and all withholding, or apart living, and therefore, 
 as our sympathies enlarge, as we love more and 
 grow m.ore into unison with all things, we shall 
 conceal less. And in proportion as w^e lead our 
 lives openly before all men, frankly explaining all 
 our deeds and motives, shall we attract to our- 
 selves love and trust and ansv/ering frankness. 
 Perhaps the books that teach the world most, 
 and have the most undying fascination, are those 
 ■which are in their nature confessions. And even 
 the romances which, like Crusoe, profess to con- 
 fess the faults and mistakes of life with their 
 consequences, if truth-like, are enduring in their 
 
 6a 
 
charm. And he is the great artist who, in his 
 works, reveals himself v,7ithout ceasing, and him 
 w^e love. 
 
 We are all to be united at last, and what w^e 
 call progression is ever in the direction of union 
 and self-revelation ; self-expression makes for 
 union, and the plant that grows unfurls its buds 
 and throw^s its petals open. 
 
 HAVE supposed that the Dawn- 
 Thought might explain the pleas- 
 
 VvfT r^^Wv!! ^^^ "w^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ deferentialities 
 ^^ r'^\/i'l of polite life. "We are pleased at 
 the respectful tone, the lifted hat, 
 the bow, the requested permission 
 to serve ; yet these all smack of the slave — why 
 then do we enjoy the giving and receiving of 
 them ? 
 
 In the Dawn-Thought we find two forces 
 whereby the universe stands, the centripetal and 
 the centrifugal, the uniting and dividing, love and 
 liberty. Now, if you will notice, you shall find 
 that we do not admire those obeisances which 
 are really slavish, the fawning and cringing of 
 abject fear and submission. Even if we exact 
 these, we despise them w^ith disgust. That is to 
 us beautiful and significant in manners w^hich 
 symbolizes the two forces of life — that deference 
 
 67 
 
 FRANKNESS 
 
 AN AN- 
 SWER ON 
 POLITE- 
 NESS 
 
AN AN- 
 SWER ON 
 POLITE- 
 NESS 
 
 SIN IS RE- 
 FUSED 
 GROWTH 
 
 and courtesy which says " You are great ! I wor- 
 ship you ! " mingled with that dignity which says 
 '' I, too, am great and w^orthy of your w^orship ! " 
 — in w^hich union and independence, love and 
 liberty are expressed with equal emphasis in 
 the same act. 
 
 OW sin is a denial of the law of 
 upward growth ; it is a turning 
 back on the path, a failure or re- 
 fusal to look at things in the new 
 light that is given, to receive the 
 new food, to put out the new 
 branch. Something which in the past we found 
 good nov/ smacks of evil, the inner voice assures 
 us it is time for us to leave it and go on, but, like 
 Peter, we curse and deny, and turn back, swear- 
 ing that that which was once good must always 
 be good, and live our old habits doggedly. Not 
 however that the law of life is ever balked, or 
 that we ever really succeed in turning back the 
 hands on the dial. Our sin, our denial, our re- 
 fusal, at last, by the reaction of disgust and the 
 sting of sad consequence, drive us even farther 
 on the way. They are but the compression of 
 air in the barrel, but the tightening of the spring, 
 and only ensure the velocity of our future progress. 
 
 68 
 
Y sin, shame, joy, virtue and sor- 
 row, action and reaction, attrac- 
 tion and repulsion, the soul, like 
 a barbed arrow, ever goes on. It 
 cannot go back, or return through 
 the valves of its coming. 
 But this must not be understood to be fulfilled 
 in one and every earth-visit. It is true only of 
 the whole circle-voyage of the soul. In one 
 earth-trip, one "life," as v^^e say, it may be that 
 there v/ould nothing be but a standing still or a 
 turning back, nothing but sin. But the whole 
 course of all is on. 
 
 ND it is plain from the foregoing 
 that sin also has its virtue. And 
 this w^e might expect. For if God 
 is everything and everything is 
 God, then nothing can be entirely 
 bad. Indeed nothing is bad at all, 
 but seemingly it is more or less so (everything) 
 when view^ed from the partial, and according to 
 its distance or difference from the attained Di- 
 vine. And because distance makes apparent bad- 
 ness, we classify all things which are but new on 
 the path as "low," "gross," "crude," "mate- 
 rial," etc. ; and those that seem to lead back, to 
 hinder, to stand in the v^ay, we call "wicked," 
 
 69 
 
 THE ONGO 
 
 THE VIR- 
 TUE OF SIN 
 
THE VIR- 
 TUE OF SIN 
 
 THE HARD 
 
 AND THE 
 
 SOFT 
 
 "sinful," "evil," etc. That is our progressive 
 side names thus. But quite often, v^hen it comes 
 to social, political, religious, and moral matters, 
 our conservative side is quite as free in dubbing 
 the pioneering, on-pushing urge bad and criminal. 
 And each is right, and each wrong, according to 
 the point of viev/. Live and outlive, that is 
 the lav^ — so much grov/th and experience in so 
 much time, each thing right in its time and place, 
 and no new thing attained till old things are ful- 
 filled. Where growth is too fast, there is sappy 
 softness and hot-house spindling, and where 
 there is too much conservatism, Hindoo, Chinese 
 deadness. 
 
 Everywhere in life we shall 
 
 mark the two, the ebb and the 
 flow, the eddy and the current, 
 heart-wood and sap-v/ood, bone 
 and flesh, sternness and gentle- 
 ness, wrath and peace, sin and 
 virtue, the esthethic and the mechanical, the re- 
 fined and the crude, the savage and the civilizee, 
 alw^ays the hard and the soft, side by side and 
 correcting each other. They are in^woven, in- 
 separable, yet infinitely interchangeable. And 
 this is no accident. 
 
 There are those who w^ould attain perfection 
 70 
 
by leading one-sided lives ; by excluding all that 
 we call wicked, harsh, low, crude, rough, vulgar, 
 or unrefined. But such lives are failures in the 
 sense that they shoot wide of the target. The 
 mass of men instinctively avoid these " unco 
 guid," over-nice, too-refined. We have the feel- 
 ing that the sinless man is a sort of sickly de- 
 formity, and do not envy him ; we suspect the 
 oathless man ; we trust not the tones that are 
 always sweet ; we are afraid of the always gentle, 
 or deem them weak, and we have no confidence 
 in our friend till we have received his confession 
 and mapped his faults. A good, sweet human 
 fault is a certificate of character, and we love it, 
 and we know right w^ell and tenderly that the 
 faults of the great are also great. We demand 
 the round, the full, the hard with the soft, the 
 bone and fat in the meat, the bran in the flour, 
 and will not be cheated. 
 
 It is so everywhere in life. All sorts of efforts 
 have been made to get " pure food," the essence 
 of nutrition, to extract, separate and refine, but 
 none of these artificial products satisfy a healthy 
 appetite or sustain life. Like a mule we must 
 have " roughness ; " and v/hen we have milled 
 out all the harshness of our wheat v/e shall find 
 that our superfine flour is not sufficient, and what 
 71 
 
 THE HARD 
 AND THE 
 SOFT 
 
THE HARD we have taken out must be supplied in some 
 
 AND THE other form or the nutrition of the system suffers. 
 
 SOFT The young girl w^hom -we educate in convents, 
 
 that no breath of lust may taint her, is not the 
 
 one we may trust with seducers. 
 
 These one-sided people, who choose so fastidi- 
 ously, are not life's happy ones. They are at 
 feud with the actual, they are the unreconciled. 
 " The fiend that torments man is his love for 
 the perfect," said Emerson, and these have such 
 a passion for the perfect that they are bitter, 
 cynical, pessimistic, reproachful of God, man 
 and nature ; and therefore, most imperfect them- 
 selves, stand in the v/ay of joy. Yet, when, as 
 sometimes happens, their passion for the perfect 
 is tempered v/ith a clear appreciation of the good 
 in the passing actual, how sweet and beautiful 
 their lives can be ! Then they have the true viev/ 
 and the right grasp ; they see the good in all, yet 
 prefer the best in its own ripe time. 
 
 And even the cranks, the extremists, the accu- 
 sers, and rebuking prophets, the Utopians, the 
 exquisites, who will not be happy where they 
 cannot see ideal perfection, even these, spite of 
 their self-torment, in their zeal and unrest and 
 discontent, do most precious work, and deserve 
 our gratitude in truth. We laugh at them, shame 
 
 72 
 
them, hate them, slay them, but they do us much 
 good in return. They emphasize the ideal by 
 sheer exaggeration and excess. The Pharisee 
 will not let us forget the letter nor the mystic the 
 spirit ; the esthete forces us to remember art and 
 the beautiful ; the very fops save us from slovenli- 
 ness. As extremes ever meet, so all extremists, 
 in the end, aid and establish their opposites, and 
 the broken circle is made whole. 
 
 The minister, the priest, is one v^ho, more 
 prominently than any other, perhaps, strives after 
 this partial-perfect. He is partisan, a " soldier 
 of the Cross," and he preaches war and unrecon- 
 ciliation. To him there is always a part repro- 
 bate, and one-half of things, at least, is a huge 
 mistake. His God has an Enemy, who is almost 
 too much for him, and the cry is " All hands to 
 the rescue ! " Yet, though men sv/ear they be- 
 lieve all that he says, and will live to it, still they 
 keep their parts and passions, nature is vindi- 
 cated, and the rivers of human life lio'w majesti- 
 cally on, as unmindful as the stars and the winds 
 of condemnation and conviction of sin. 
 
 Yet the priest is what he believes himself, a 
 mouthpiece of God, and does the work given him 
 right usefully, even if he is blissfully unconscious 
 that the poor sinner over whom he thunders is 
 
 73 
 
 THE HARD 
 AND THE 
 SOFT 
 
THE HARD 
 
 AND THE 
 
 SOFT 
 
 also a prophet and a worker, equally loved and 
 approved. 
 
 "We cannot pick out a part of life and leave the 
 rest. Nature -will not have it so. She insists on 
 the round. There is alw^ays the other side. 
 
 Leaves and fiowrers hang not in the air un- 
 supported ; there are always the stem and the 
 branches. Nor do even the stars and the clouds 
 hang unsupported. No matter how fair and 
 sweet the flesh there are always bones beneath. 
 The sw^eet, the gentle, peace, love, beauty, virtue, 
 joy, poetry — how w^e apotheosize all these and 
 condemn their opposites, yet simply we cannot 
 have them w^ithout their opposites. For so much 
 peace so much w^ar ; for so much sweet so much 
 bitter. For there is always the hard with the 
 soft, the shadow with the sun, the mechanical 
 with the fluent, the straight with the curved, the 
 blow w^ith the caress. 
 
 For life stands by the thrust of opposites and 
 the push of those w^hich deny each other. 
 
 "When the mother meets the father the child 
 starts forward on the new life like a glad traveler 
 on a new^ path. 
 
 When the negative electric comes to the posi- 
 tive electric, then flies the lightning flash. 
 
 "When the sweet seed feeds on the foul rot, then 
 springs the green blade. 
 
 74 
 
For Life is One, but its manifestations are Two, 
 and the Whole is in embryo in every part ; and 
 all things are formed in its image because there 
 is no other pattern or model — there is no other. 
 HE inconsistency noticed in the 
 words of the wise is a trial to 
 many hero-w^orshiping minds, but 
 is it not, indeed, only a proof of 
 higher greatness ? It is easy for 
 a small mind, or a mind dealing 
 altogether in abstract and ideal goods, to be totally 
 accurate, consistent, logical ; but the greater the 
 mind the more it takes hold on the Great Paradox, 
 and feels and expresses the contradiction in every- 
 thing. It is necessarily eclectic, appreciative, toler- 
 ant, open, truthful to its vision, and must feel many 
 opposite things good and true and a pressure to so 
 declare them. Often, before the Dawn-Thought 
 gave me Reconciliation, have I felt the pain of this. 
 But now I have welcome for the other side. 
 
 AM warned by kindly friends that 
 I shall hurt this book for many if 
 I use the word God so freely. I 
 k'^^pj K^ri am told it is a confusing word, that 
 \/f^^ ^X^t every one uses it differently, that 
 ■ III liiii rnost people attach to it the old 
 orthodox idea, and many other objections. 
 
 75 
 
 THE HARD 
 AND THE 
 SOFT 
 
 THE LARGE 
 CONTAINS 
 CONTRA- 
 DICTION 
 
 THE WORD 
 " GOD " 
 
THE WORD But I see in none of these any strong argument. 
 
 "GOD" Of course to those who insist on sharp defini- 
 tions, who do not look at things centrally, God is 
 a confusing word — so is liberty, love, philosophy, 
 any word you please on which the attention of 
 many is concentrated. Every independent thinker 
 stains his words through and through with the 
 pigment of his thought, and they are not as other 
 men's are. But I do not fear that a kind and 
 fair reader v^ill misunderstand me, at least not 
 anyone who stands anyway nearly on the same 
 plane of spiritual development with me, and, after 
 all, my message is only to such, for only such 
 can understand any speaker. You may spend all 
 your days in explaining your view, but those 
 below you on the ladder will never see it as you 
 see it till they also stand v/here you stand. This 
 is immutable law. I speak to my own, and my 
 ow^n "will understand. 
 
 I use the word God because Monotheists and 
 Pantheists of all time have used it, and these are 
 they 'who can most easily understand me. And 
 I use the word God because it means Good, and 
 by the good we all understand that which makes 
 for our happiness, and I wish to emphasize, in 
 this book, the idea that the universe, its Power, 
 and its Life, works together in every part, and as 
 
 76 
 
a whole, for our happiness and the happiness of THE WORD 
 all, in the largest, best, and completest sense of " GOD " 
 that word. 
 
 OVE is the uniting element. In OF CERTAIN 
 sex love w^e draw^ tow^ard the MEANINGS 
 Center ; in parent-love the Cen- AND MAT- 
 tral Love flow^s out through us TERS IN 
 toward the parts. Like the tides LOVE 
 of the sea, there is forever a ma- 
 jestic influx and efflux of love through all the 
 v/orld. For it is not to be forgotten that the 
 Divine is feminine as well as masculine. Mother 
 as w^ell as Father. The Divine Tenderness, the 
 Divine Woman, is Peace, Rest, the Great Com- 
 forter. The Divine Strength, the Father, holds 
 us and protects us, the Divine Tenderness, the 
 Mother, feeds and cherishes us. Therefore the 
 sexes are diff"erent and equal ; therefore sex and 
 parenthood symbolize religion with peculiar force, 
 and refer ever to the most sacred things ; there- 
 fore the ancients were reasonable and reverent 
 in worshiping sex, and making a religion of it ; 
 for everything about sex takes hold on Life and 
 the Mystery. And it has been ever noted that 
 woman was not only more sexually susceptible 
 than man, but more religiously susceptible, and 
 that the religious mind in general was prone to 
 77 
 
OF CERTAIN 
 MEANINGS 
 AND MAT- 
 TERS IN 
 LOVE 
 
 dwell much on things of sex — it might deify it, 
 or shrink from it as the great temptation, but 
 it could not hold it indifferent. 
 
 But to the Dawn Thinker the relation of woman 
 to religion is natural and inevitable. Religion 
 peculiarly refers to the problems of Life and 
 Love, -woman is peculiarly the cherisher of life 
 and agent of love. Therefore woman always has 
 a religious feeling about her love, therefore reli- 
 gious emotion can, in a great measure, com- 
 pensate her for absence of love. 
 
 Man and woman represent the hard and the 
 soft, the two forces of the universe, the man 
 Liberty, the dis-union principle, the woman Love, 
 the union principle. Man represents the con- 
 tending, separating elements in life, woman rep- 
 resents the gregarious, attracting elements. Man 
 makes w^ar and woman makes society ; that is to 
 say it is the peculiarly male element, or principle, 
 that makes war and the female element that 
 makes society. Yet some men have more of the 
 woman, or social element, than some women, 
 and some women are masculine in their love of 
 battle ; for sex is more a matter of the spirit than 
 of form, and both sexes are to some extent in 
 each. It is not natural for a typical woman to 
 fight, except for her children, and when, like Joan 
 
 78 
 
of Arc, she puts on armor to battle, it is with 
 the feeling that she is the Mother of the Nation 
 and the people her wronged infants. 
 
 In sex-worship the cross, the most ancient of 
 sacred symbols, ^A^as a type of man and woman 
 and their union. But more and deeper than this 
 it is representative of the two great principles of 
 life, their union and contest, their mutual sup- 
 port and antagonism, their peace and war, and 
 their peace through war. Had the two bars of 
 the cross stood parallel they would have repre- 
 sented very beautifully equality and harmony of 
 tw^o, but they w^ould not have symbolized life ; 
 they w^ould not have symbolized how^, in life, the 
 two cross each other, and by this are opposed 
 and by this united. The love of a man is pro- 
 jective, protective, and possessive, the element 
 of force is strong in it ; but the love of a woman 
 is receptive and distributive, she draws and gives, 
 the element of generosity is sw^eet in it all. A 
 man's love is peculiarly of the loins, but the love 
 of a woman is more peculiarly breast-love. The 
 man is less a parent than the initiator of parent- 
 hood, sex to him looms large, with parentage as 
 a remote sequence ; but a -woman is peculiarly a 
 parent ; to her motherhood is the great event, and 
 sex only an incident. But Love is one, and its 
 
 79 
 
 OF CERTAIN 
 MEANINGS 
 AND MAT- 
 TERS IN 
 LOVE 
 
OF CERTAIN 
 MEANINGS 
 AND MAT- 
 TERS IN 
 LOVE 
 
 different forms are not really separate, but only 
 apparently so, they ever merge and flov/ together, 
 and in each is the potentiality of all. A loving 
 man is tender as well as strong, he cherishes and 
 guards the woman he loves as if she were a 
 child ; a loving w^oman is strong as well as sweet, 
 her sex surrounds her like a cloud, she compels 
 as well as attracts. She loves to take the head 
 of the man of her heart on her breast, and com- 
 fort him like a babe ; she is at the same time to 
 him friend, lover, guardian and mother, and she 
 loves to mother all the helpless everywhere. 
 Man is peculiarly the sex-lover and protector, and 
 woman is peculiarly the breast-lover and parent, 
 but as humanity becomes truly civilized, that is, 
 socialized, all these things will take on new and 
 enlarged meanings. While normally loving one 
 woman above all others, his queen and guardian- 
 angel, the love of a man w^ill flow out in passion- 
 ate chivalry, protection, and respect to every 
 w^oman, because of her sex and the loveliness of 
 it ; and while normally crowning one man as her 
 King-consort and hero, the love of a woman will 
 be warm to all men, because of their manliness 
 and potential father-power (the most beautiful of 
 all powers in a woman's eyes) and her abounding 
 and overflov/ing divine motherliness will make 
 
 80 
 
her make man help her in caring for every weak, 
 sick, helpless one, man, woman, or infant, in the 
 community, as a precious charge and child. 
 
 And as attainment advances, and the human 
 becomes more and more the Divine (who is both 
 sexes in one) the differences of sex will be less 
 marked, and they will more merge and blend 
 together. The woman w^ill be more strong, self- 
 poised, intelligent, capable, influential ; the man 
 will be more gentle, tender, compassionate, par- 
 ental. And the union of these two in one sym- 
 bolizes the Divine. Therefore -wedded bliss is 
 the most religious thing in life. Therefore the 
 instinct of the woman, who w^ill alw^ays disregard 
 any creed or code to be true to her heart, is pure 
 and right. 
 
 In nature the male and female elements, acting 
 together, beget and create. This is known in 
 physical generation, it is not recognized that it is 
 universal law^ and as true in the spiritual sphere. 
 But, in fact, everywhere and always, the action 
 of the man on the woman, of the woman with 
 the man, is generative — the tw^o must co-act to 
 beget children of the brain and soul. Therefore, 
 if we would have a nation overflow^ing with 
 genius, we must look to it that the sexes are 
 brought together in everything, and never allowed 
 
 8i 
 
 OF CERTAIN 
 MEANINGS 
 AND MAT- 
 TERS IN 
 LOVE 
 
OF CERTAIN to be grouped apart — the greatest possible free- 
 MEANINGS dom and encouragement must be given to love 
 AND MAT- and attraction, and the co-education, co--working, 
 TERS IN and sympathy of the sexes. 
 
 LOVE It is a great mistake that most religions have 
 made, especially the Christian, to bar woman as 
 a priestess and religious teacher. Because, by 
 reason of her religious nature, this is peculiarly 
 her place. And indeed she is imperatively needed 
 here, as elsewhere, to supplement man. For 
 man, being the separating agent, his religious 
 nature is analytic, abstract, didactic, dogmatic, 
 but woman, being the uniting agent, her religious 
 thought is synthetic, concrete, harmonizing. Man 
 concerns himself w^ith definitions, logic, and quar- 
 rels of form, but woman concerns herself w^ith 
 faith, life, love, and good w^orks. Despite the 
 fact that Jesus was mostly feminine, as nearly 
 woman as a man could be, the monopoly of 
 church offices by the masculine element made the 
 history of Christianity, till within a very few 
 years, mostly a record of bigotry and sectarian 
 w^ar. "With the introduction of Sunday-schools 
 woman entered the Church as a religious influ- 
 ence, and since then the tendency of Christianity 
 has been toward the obliteration of dogma and 
 the emphasis of love. 
 
 82 
 
The blending and homogeneity of religion with 
 sex may be easily observed in life. W^hen moved 
 by a great love, a 'woman has an adoring, wor- 
 shipful impulse toward the man who has entered 
 her heart, and he feels that she is a visible incar- 
 nation of the Divine, something holier, purer, 
 more sacred than common clay ; a religious ecs- 
 tasy and glamour hangs on each. And the 
 literature of love is naturally expressed in terms of 
 religion, the poetry of religion in metaphors of love. 
 HE most beautiful of all loves, if 
 any is to be singled out, is parent- 
 love. It is peculiarly the attribute 
 of the woman. It is the origin of 
 the instinct of giving, the source 
 of generosity and altruism. The 
 qualities of sex v^^hich balance in humanity in the 
 wide circle, do not necessarily equally coexist in 
 the arc. In the lower forms, those that are new 
 on the path, the masculine qualities predominate, 
 and the feminine hardly appear. "War, rape, 
 conquest, fiery, brief attraction, are found as low- 
 down as we may go ; but it is a far cry from the 
 start before w^e find the tender, protecting care of 
 the parent, and at first this is but for a short 
 time, perhaps only for the egg ; but as life attains 
 toward the Center there is constant progress, 
 
 83 
 
 OF CERTAIN 
 MEANINGS 
 AND MAT- 
 TERS IN 
 LOVE 
 
 MOTHER 
 LOVE 
 
MOTHER the parent-love growls more tender and helpful, 
 LfOVE lasts longer, till it covers the -whole life of the 
 child, overflows to some other children, then to 
 all children, then to all young creatures, then to 
 all creatures, old or young, which are weak, help- 
 less, or in need. It now has become a most 
 divine sympathy and compassionateness ; but long 
 before this stage has been reached it has spread 
 from the woman to the man, and we find him 
 becoming more and more merciful, compassion- 
 ate, sympathetic to all. Thus, at last, the woman 
 element exceeds. Messiah-men are distinguished 
 by their woman-like gentleness, spirituality, com- 
 passion, and yearning tenderness. And men, 
 everyv^here, as this stage attains, lay aside war, 
 which once so distinguished them, and become 
 peaceful. And even their passion for liberty 
 changes from a passion to do as they please, re- 
 gardless of others, to a passion to be equally free 
 with others. But nature looks ever to balance, 
 and as man becomes more womanly the w^oman 
 takes on a change tov^ard the finer masculine. 
 She grows stronger in selfhood, in thirst for 
 liberty and influence, in willingness to battle (but 
 mentally and for those she protects) in the intel- 
 lectual pow^er to analyze and separate, in ability 
 to manage and superintend. As in the lovs^er 
 
 84 
 
stages of the path the sexes were nearly alike, on 
 the masculine, physical plane, so in the higher 
 stages they again become nearly alike on the 
 feminine, spiritual, plane. The attraction of the 
 woman is at last a stronger force in the world 
 than the compulsion of the man — the Finer, the 
 Gentler Forces prevail. 
 ^af.-^T'lW^ITH legal m^arriage the Dawn- 
 Thinker has no concern. Legal 
 marriage is a legal form, and 
 stands or falls by its own legality. 
 But the true marriage is a spirit- 
 ual fact, and stands or falls by 
 the real spiritual attitude of the lovers to each 
 other. "Where two souls and bodies really fit 
 and ans-wer each other in tender love, there is 
 the real marriage, where they conjoin w^ithout 
 this fitness there is adultery, and when this fit- 
 ness fails there is divorce. And this without 
 regard to the legal or illegal pronunciamento. It 
 is with marriage as with all things else. The 
 law establishes only the artificial, the so-called ; 
 it has no power to create the real, no jurisdiction 
 in the realm of spirit, no recognition in nature. 
 The attempt to marry by law is like the attempt to 
 make royalty, nobility, manners, and the rest, by 
 law. The true King is not created by such clumsy 
 
 85 
 
 MOTHER 
 LOVE 
 
 OF 
 MARRIAGE 
 
OF tools as crowns and thrones, but is such by the 
 MARRIAGE majesty of his own soul ; the true nobleman is 
 the noble man, the truly polite are those v/ho 
 respect liberty and are kind. The law^ can create 
 nothing but a form ; it is helpless to help marriage, 
 it can only usurp and interfere. By no possibility 
 can it make a true union more beautiful, pure, 
 and sweet, but it can call a-way attention from its 
 spiritual essence to emphasize a formula ; it can 
 externally vulgarize it ; it can externally prevent 
 it ; it can license or even compel an adulterous 
 union, and it can compel an adulterous union to 
 stand, and prevent its natural correction, w^hich 
 is the immediate secession of the parties. The 
 conjunction of the incompatible is the true adul- 
 tery, and is condemned as such in every kingdom 
 and province of Nature. Divorce or suffer is the 
 la^v. 
 
 The true marriage is the holiest and most reli- 
 gious thing in the universe, and all caresses of all 
 lovers are perfect in proportion to the religious 
 depth and sincerity of their moving impulse. The 
 lighter, sportive expressions of love are certainly 
 delightful and, in their time and place, most inno- 
 cent, but they do not satisfy ; only the moving 
 of the whole soul to its foundations in a deep, 
 solemn, devoted love can satisfy. And particu- 
 86 
 
larly every woman feels this, because she is 
 peculiarly the agent of love and religion. The 
 woman, however base or fallen, who does not 
 secretly worship the " grand passion," as her 
 intensest aspiration and holiest ideal, is a w^oman 
 in form merely, not in spirit. 
 
 The relations of lovers are the most sacred and 
 private things in all the world. Their love, 
 caresses, and union are the "holy of holies," and 
 the vulgarity and profanation of public interfe- 
 rence with their relations, except by their express 
 permission or request, is not to be exceeded by 
 any sacrilege. If they themselves profane them- 
 selves, either spiritually or physically, in this 
 their temple, that is their ow^n saving sin, which 
 shall by contrast show them the right. 
 ^^vm ■ is-^^^ s men move upward on the path 
 they see more and farther, and life 
 continually takes on for them nev*^ 
 and enlarged meanings. And as 
 words express their understanding 
 of what they see, it is manifest 
 that the language must evolute w^ith the man. 
 When he sees what appears like a new thing he 
 invents a new word ; but oftener he sees not ne-w 
 things but a new side or facet of an old thing, 
 and then the old word comes to take on, for him, 
 
 87 
 
 OF 
 MARRIAGE 
 
 THE EVO- 
 LUTION OF 
 WORDS 
 
THE EVO- 
 LUTION OF 
 WORDS 
 
 LIFE'S 
 
 HARD AND 
 
 SOFT IN 
 
 ART 
 
 a nev/ meaning. Thus have all the old words 
 changed form and complexion with time, and 
 thus will they continue to do so long as the old 
 facts stand and grow before us. And this is par- 
 ticularly true of the greater -words, God, religion, 
 truth, love, marriage, and the others that take 
 hold on the Mystery. Therefore are old v/ords 
 often used with enlarged meanings in the Dawn- 
 Thought. 
 
 IHE " eternel alternation" in life, 
 before alluded to, the contrast of 
 opposites, is something all artists 
 should heed, and which indeed 
 most of them recognize con- 
 sciously or unconsciously. It is 
 in Art the indispensable, the spinal column. 
 
 Nov/ Art is the Interpreter ; therefore it must 
 be true to life. It must know how^ to touch with 
 sure finger all the stops of charm. And because 
 contrast, alternation, rhythm, opposition is the 
 very method and act of life, its idea, its pulse, its 
 breathing, we love it and cannot do otherwise, 
 and demand it in all things with imperious urge. 
 The bite of our appetite is cheated if we have 
 much butter and no crust, all sugar and no tart. 
 
 Consider that in draw^ing and painting there are 
 two things, vi^hich cannot be dispensed with — 
 
 88 
 
light and shade ; and in poetry and music two — a lifr'S 
 rising and a falling, which we name rhythm ; and jjARD AND 
 in sculpture and architecture two — that v/hich goFT IN 
 is cut away and that w^hich rises in relief, and we /^rt 
 shall see that the law holds everywhere, even in 
 the elemental. And in the higher charms, the 
 mental messages and spiritual suggestions of a 
 work of art, it is the same. If the impression 
 given, the emotion aroused, is altogether sweet, 
 merry, we at once cloy ; and if it be altogether 
 cruel, gloomy, w^e repel. It is bad art, and strikes 
 us as a monstrosity. Observe how in the great 
 tragedies of Shakespeare, the clowns, by their 
 fooleries, and even the quips and turns and puns 
 in the verse, lighten the -whole. No great comedy 
 is altogether comic, nor any great tragedy merely 
 horrible. Nothing of that sort can -win enduring 
 fame, nor even exist at all. Contrast is so in- 
 dispensable and constant in life that the most 
 misdirected ingenuity and painstaking labor, of 
 the most one-sided and morbid taste, could not 
 possibly eliminate it altogether. 
 
 No crime can exist without its saving grace, 
 nor any saint v/ithout his saving sin. 
 
 To many, music seems all sw^eetness, all joy, 
 but it is really not so. Such music would be 
 lifeless, and v/ould truly not please. Music is the 
 
 89 
 
LIFE'S 
 
 HARD AND 
 
 SOFT IN 
 
 ART 
 
 OF THE 
 SPIRIT- 
 WORLD 
 AND ITS 
 IMPOR- 
 TANCE 
 
 Voice of Life, and vibrates ever with its contrasts. 
 But no music is so fierce as to be altogether 
 bereft of sv/eetness, nor any so gloomy that it has 
 no joy ; and in the gayest there is ever the minor 
 chord, and -when pain and bliss mingle in it most 
 thrillingly we have the most exquisite strains. 
 
 I have noticed since a child that w^ar-music 
 made me feel like dancing, and church-music 
 passioned me to battle. 
 
 [OW as in the Dawn philosophy 
 it appears that each individual 
 is ofFshot from the Divine, as a 
 germ, taking hold first in the low- 
 est plane of mineral existence, 
 and lifting gradually through all 
 the levels of life, even to the highest, may it not 
 be that what the spiritist calls the spirit-v^orld 
 is visited alternately with this ? Whenever -we 
 find a law of nature v^/e find that it applies every- 
 where, and this is so certainly true that analogy 
 becomes, practically, a scientific tool. And if 
 alternation holds, as we find it does, everywhere 
 else, may it not be that earth-life and spirit-life 
 are thus alternate ? The testimony for spirit- 
 phenomena is so persistent and universal it seems 
 impossible to ignore it, and yet it seems equally 
 impossible to bind it so as to be found where 
 
 go 
 
left. It is elusive, yet ever present and not to be 
 denied. In some form, and by some explanation, 
 it must be recognized. Let us theorize, then, 
 that every time an earth-life-form is destroyed by 
 the change we call death, the progressing spirit 
 escapes and spends a period of indeterminate 
 time in the spirit-world, or unmattered state, re- 
 tiring to its chamber, as it were, and taking a bath 
 and a night's rest before putting on a new suit of 
 work-a-day earth-clothes. Why should there 
 not be a rest-night for a life, as for each day of 
 that life ! 
 
 The flesh is the tool of the spirit, and a spirit 
 fleshed is like a w^orkman w^ith his tools, but the 
 spirit unfleshed is the Vvi^orkman v^ithout his tools. 
 
 Now many things in current spirit evidence 
 tend to prove the foregoing. There are appar- 
 ently, hovering about us, intelligences which 
 would communicate with us but cannot do so 
 without a body. But finding some " medium " 
 Vi/illing to lend a body temporarily, Vv holly or in 
 part, they can communicate. And they can per- 
 haps find some impressible soul still enfleshed, 
 and so act upon it that they can be seen and felt 
 and heard by it in a visionary way. 
 
 But -why should the spirit come back, why 
 choose incarnation again v/ith all its pains and 
 
 91 
 
 OF THE 
 SPIRIT- 
 WORLD 
 AND ITS 
 IMPOR- 
 TANCE 
 
OF THE 
 SPIRIT- 
 'WORLD 
 AND ITS 
 IMPOR- 
 TANCE 
 
 battles ? There are many reasons, perhaps. First, 
 if it is really a natural law that the progressing 
 spirit shall re-incarnate, it will surely come to 
 pass no matter v/hat siren may sing of rest. 
 Rest is delightful to the tired man, but he longs 
 again for action when rest is fulfilled. Perpetual 
 rest is intolerable, even to the laziest. Children 
 are happy and play is delightful, but in time the 
 boy longs to be a man and the girl a woman ; the 
 baby is longed for in place of the doll, and real 
 work is preferred to play. And in normal life the 
 man comes to look forward with welcome to the 
 quietude of old age, and the old man to the rest 
 of the grave. All natural changes, in their own 
 ripe time, are welcomed and desired, however 
 repellant if premature. So, reasonably, after a 
 time, the dolce far niente of the spirit-world 
 grows stupid and tiresome, and the rested and 
 reinvigorated soul feels the bourgeoning of new 
 sap and longs for action — to grasp the tools and 
 handle the sword once more. 
 
 For the earth-world it is -which appears to be 
 the field of battle, the w^orkshop and the building- 
 place. The spirit-w^orld, I take it, is but a bo^^.'-er 
 and a bed-room, and life there but a night of rest 
 after a day's work of earth-life. 
 
 The desire, no doubt, counts for much. Indeed, 
 
 92 
 
in spirit-life, which must be one of emotion, 
 thought, and imagination wholly, its power must 
 be almost inconceivably increased. Thus it may 
 be that the low^er forms of life, lacking spiritu- 
 ality, with all their hopes and interests centered 
 on earthly and material things, return s-wiftly, 
 perhaps immediately, to the field of preferred 
 action ; while spiritual and idealist souls, living 
 in a sphere of dreams, may spend very long 
 periods betv/een incarnations, centuries perhaps, 
 in the home of pure mind. 
 
 But if it be true that life moves by two, the 
 hard and the soft, and if, in this case, the soft is 
 the spirit and the hard the flesh, by and through 
 which it must act (for, as we say, every faculty 
 must have its organ), then the time comes when 
 the inner pressure and longing for action is suffi- 
 cient to drive the soul back to flesh, and a new 
 earth-trip is taken. The coming into this life 
 again we call, on this side, a birth (its character- 
 istic being a complete loss of conscious memory 
 of all past incarnations and spirit-land rests), but 
 on the spirit-side it may be like a death. As we 
 die, or change, out of the earth-life into the spirit- 
 life, also we may die out of the spirit-life again 
 into earth-life, and so on, back and forth, till 
 Nirvana opens. 
 
 93 
 
 OF THE 
 SPIRIT- . 
 WORLD 
 AND ITS 
 IMPOR- 
 TANCE 
 
OF THE But I suppose the death out of spirit-Hfe and 
 
 SPIRIT- birth of reincarnation are both much more com- 
 
 WORLD plete than the death and birth out of earth-life 
 
 AND ITS into spirit-life, for this reason : The spirit remem- 
 
 IMPOR- bers its last incarnation vividly, indeed its spirit- 
 
 TANCE life seems but a continuance of that, but a 
 
 new-born babe has no recollection of any past 
 
 existence whatever, at least not consciously. 
 
 Just as the body keeps its form for a w^hile 
 after the spirit leaves, and then gradually decays, 
 so perhaps, the spirit is strong and vigorous for 
 a while after death, retaining a finer portion of 
 the matter belonging to earth-life, which like the 
 yolk of the egg to the birdling feeds and sustains 
 it for a time, but which, gradually, is exhausted, 
 until at last its active powers fade and dissipate 
 and it drops to the level of the merely dreaming, 
 enervated spirits about it. For it appears that 
 action, everywhere in the universe, depends upon 
 codperation (in unison and contest) of spirit and 
 matter, and just as it is true in this visible world 
 that the creature which can ingest, digest, assimi- 
 ilate, and excrete the refuse of the most food is 
 the creature possessing the greatest vital force 
 and active pov/er, so I suppose it to be true every- 
 where. I suppose the spirit-world to be not 
 entirely destitute of matter, but that there is 
 
 94 
 
enough in its atmosphere to enable the spirit to 
 exist and manifest a certain action, but that this 
 action is confined almost entirely to the functions 
 of memory, meditation, and imagination. For it 
 ■will be observed that most of the communica- 
 tions derived from spirits are of poor mental 
 fiber. Call up a great poet, and ask for a poem, 
 and you will get such stuff as no poet in this 
 w^orld would acknow^ledge. Nothing of any im- 
 portance comes to us from the spirit- w^orld, either 
 in art, literature, or science, and this even -with 
 the aid of the loaned body and organs of the 
 medium. Bits of memory and imagination may 
 come all right, but art-work is creative work, and 
 requires the finest, strongest coaction of soul and 
 matter. 
 
 Therefore spirits are no artists. 
 
 Depend upon it, it takes a soul and a body 
 together to produce sound work, even as the 
 Center, the Great Spirit, acts by and through the 
 material universe, the Great Matter. 
 
 I suppose, as the spirit-world is one of mind 
 only, that there is no perception of this earth 
 given the spirit except so far as he is enabled to 
 enter the aura or use the eyes of those w^ho con- 
 sciously or unconsciously are mediums ; or, at 
 any rate, that his life is mainly introspective, and 
 
 95 
 
 OF THE 
 SPIRIT- 
 WORLD 
 AND ITS 
 IMPOR- 
 TANCE 
 
OF THE 
 SPIRIT- 
 WORLD 
 
 AND ITS 
 IMPOR- 
 TANCE 
 
 that therefore he sees usually nothing of this 
 world ; like a man in a brown study, unconscious 
 of all around him. The " spirit-world," as we 
 term it, w^hich environs the spirit, I suppose to 
 be only the pictures of his own imagination, pro- 
 jected vividly before him as realities ; like, only 
 more intensely real in seeming, the imaginary 
 world of our dreams. Therefore the spirit-world 
 is to every man w^hat he desires and imagines it. 
 His strong preconceptions color all the landscape 
 and erect the dwellings of his fancy. Hades may 
 have been very real to the Roman soldier's shade ; 
 the Norseman, no doubt quaffed his mead in 
 Valhalla, and clashed swords on the plains of 
 Asgard ; the Indian chases buffalo on spirit- 
 prairies ; the Mohammedan embraces his Houris ; 
 the Christian sings praises in the heavenly chorus. 
 It is *' as you like it," and '* every man in his own 
 humor." 
 
 But as everywhere in life there is rhythm, a 
 rising and a falling of vi^aves of onward force, and 
 as every phase of existence is such a v/ave, so I 
 infer that in a spirit-life, as in an earth-life, there 
 is a youth and an old age, and that finally even 
 the powers of remembering and dreaming fade 
 and dissipate, and the soul is oppressed with a 
 sense of weakness and a longing for renewed 
 
 96 
 
power and youth. This felt loss, and all the limi- 
 tations of spirit existence, cause an inclination to 
 reincarnation. 
 
 To be sure, messages sometimes come from 
 the spirit-world purporting to be from ancient 
 spirits, but I suppose there are few, if any, ancient 
 spirits there. These messages are, I think, mostly 
 from mischievous spirits, who loaf along the line 
 and find an idle delight in practicing upon the 
 gullibility of mediums and spiritists, in furnishing 
 messages and evidences to order, and in person- 
 ating famous individuals, departed friends, saints, 
 angels, fairies, devils, perhaps Christ, or even the 
 Deity. It must be rare sport to see ^;vhat bare- 
 faced rubbish can be crammed down the throats 
 of otherwise prudent and uncheatable men, if 
 only presented in the name of spirit. And ima- 
 gine personating " Auld Hornie," with hoofs and 
 tail complete, and frightening a plantation darkey ! 
 
 Fairy land was, I suppose, not such a delusion 
 as some think. I think it w^as the heaven of 
 some ancient religion, the conception of the spirit- 
 world of some departed peoples. And, doubt- 
 less, to this day, m.any a little child, v/hose delight 
 is in such, finds itself, after death, surrounded by 
 dancing elves and smiled at by a fairy godmother. 
 And when the Irish or Swedish peasant solemnly 
 
 97 
 
 OF THE 
 SPIRIT- 
 WORLD 
 AND ITS 
 IMPOR- 
 TANCE 
 
OF THE tells you that he has seen fairies, and heard their 
 
 SPIRIT- music, I suppose that he has either temporarily 
 
 WORLD slipped from earth into the spirit-world of his 
 
 AND ITS fancy (common, I take it, in visions) or else has 
 
 IMPOR- seen some spirit who, for kind or unkind reasons, 
 
 TANCE ^s personating an elf. 
 
 I suppose that v/hen a spirit dies out of the 
 spirit-world it leaves no residuum, or "body," 
 there, but simply disappears, or is missing, slip- 
 ping out through a chink, as it were, into earth- 
 life again. And that the change consists in a 
 forgetting of its just-passed earth and spirit-life, 
 so that it enters its new body, or earth-form, a 
 blank page so far as conscious memory is con- 
 cerned. And this I take to be the universal 
 method, in order to ensure a feeling of distinct 
 individuality as before explained. I say conscious 
 memory, for I have an idea that the unconscious 
 memory of past experience persists in all souls, 
 and affects choice and actions, and constitutes a 
 greater part of what we call instinct, the re- 
 mainder being, perhaps, a sort of sub-conscious 
 clairvoyance, or perception of unseen relations. 
 
 Now a mesmerist will often be astounded in 
 his hypnotic experiments to uncover several dif- 
 ferent individuals in one, so to speak, as if each 
 man was on the top of a box, w^ith many other 
 
men packed away below him, to be produced, one 
 by one, when the lid was opened. These other 
 individuals I would explain to be only the m.em- 
 ory of other lives, w^hich the subject has lived in 
 time past, and which the hypnotic trance has in 
 some way recalled to his recollection. 
 
 Growth must go on forever, till Nirvana ; and I 
 suppose that in the spirit-w^orld the soul does 
 much of its important grov^th. Memory of all 
 that has occurred in the previous earth-life is, I 
 take it, extremely vivid, even to the minutest 
 detail, and the judgment greatly cleared from the 
 passions and ambitions which action imposes on 
 it here. The life is introspective and retrospec- 
 tive, and as everything passes in review, again and 
 again, before the sensitive and attentive spirit, 
 with nothing to distract or confuse, occurs that 
 great " last judgment " of which religionists v/rite. 
 The God-side of the soul, so far as it is attained, 
 judges all, separates the wheat from the tares, 
 the sheep from the goats, and the mistakes and 
 errors are burned up in the fire of remorseful 
 regret and condemnation, and the wise and right- 
 eous deeds are enjoyed over and over in the 
 heaven of delightful recollection and approval. 
 The mistakes damned, and burned up, are likely 
 no more to be repeated in future incarnations, 
 
 99 
 
 OF THE 
 SPIRIT- 
 W^ORLD 
 AND ITS 
 IMPOR- 
 TANCE 
 
OF THE and the virtues and successes become an inte- 
 
 SPIRIT- grally assimilated part of the advancing, enlarging, 
 
 WORLD strengthening soul. The bad, rejected, " depart 
 
 AND ITS into outer darkness " (nothingness), and the good, 
 
 IMPOR- accepted, sit on the right hand of approval and 
 
 TANCE. future action. 
 
 And growth goes on too, I dare fancy, in the 
 spirit-world, by a process of loving accretion and 
 merging. According to the Dawn-Thought we 
 are, in the last analysis, all one, and growth con- 
 sists in the attainment of oneness, of full large- 
 ness. Therefore for one individual to join fully 
 and be utterly merged with another would be no 
 loss, but, on the contrary, a doubling of self in 
 size. In the spirit-world desire is prepotent, and 
 what is desired, if of a spiritual nature, is realized 
 with greatest ease. Swedenborg tells us that 
 spirits who desire to be -with other spirits find 
 themselves instantly in their society, and that 
 higher spirits converse without words. What 
 more natural then than that lovers who loved 
 each other so intensely in this life that they de- 
 sired utterly to be one, should find their desire 
 attainable in the land of soul — should flow 
 together there, and become one indeed, and 
 inseparable. 
 
 And if it be asked : Which, then, loses self in 
 
 100 
 
the other ? I reply, neither. For if there be only 
 One Individual in the universe, and what v/e con- 
 sider our consciousness of separate individuality 
 is only a consciousness of the life of that great I 
 Am, clouded by our delusion of separateness, 
 then, no matter how many others -we merge ^A^ith, 
 our perception of our individuality simply in- 
 creases, and grows more powerful and sure, 
 and we lose nothing but one of the supposed 
 partitions of separation. 
 
 To the v/oman it feels that her lover has lost 
 objective existence, but that she has made him a 
 part of herself, and feels him w^ithin her with 
 infinite content, and herself enlarged by all his 
 powers and strength and courage, and this no 
 delusion ; and to the man it feels that he has 
 absorbed the woman, and that all her love and 
 loveliness are now a living and delightful part 
 of his being. 
 
 And every caress of love typifies this. Love is 
 a species of cannibalism, and the constant desire 
 to be in contact, "closer, closer!" the clinging 
 embraces, the penetration, and overdosing, the 
 devouring, greedy kisses, bites even, the craving 
 to reach the mucous membrane, the heart, the soul, 
 all reveal this tremendous imperious urge to be at 
 one, to give all of self, and take all of the beloved. 
 
 OF THE 
 SPIRIT- 
 WORLD 
 AND ITS 
 IMPOR- 
 TANCE. 
 
 lOZ 
 
OF THE For there are two elements or impulses which 
 
 SPIRIT- interact in human life, the egoist and altruist. The 
 W^ORLD egoist is the male element, and the altruist the 
 AND ITS female. They both coexist in each individual, at 
 IMPOR- al^ times, but in varying proportions ; and usually 
 TANCE the altruist predominates in the woman, and the 
 egoist in the man, where both are on somewhat 
 the same plane of evolution. But sometimes the 
 woman in form is male in spirit, and the man in 
 form is sometimes female in spirit. Therefore, 
 sometimes the man v/orships the woman, and 
 gives himself to her in devotion. And when the 
 Center thro-ws off a germ to form an individual, 
 as we say, the first thing to be emphasized is the 
 apparent separation, the feeling of distinct indi- 
 viduality and self-importance. Therefore all 
 souls primitive, young on the path, are intensely 
 egoist, even to selfishness. But as the return 
 accelerates separation grows less certain and 
 distinct, unity is more and more felt -and accepted, 
 and altruism manifests itself more and more in 
 active gentleness and love. Therefore the primi- 
 tive savage is intensely a man, and even the 
 primitive v^/oman is man-like, but the higher 
 evolution is alw^ays in the direction of the woman- 
 like, of softness, gentleness, tender love, consid- 
 eration, sympathy. All the Messiah-souls, who 
 
 102 
 
are near the end of their course, are of this order. 
 Consider Buddha, Jesus, Emerson, Whitman. 
 Therefore, too, women have always been more 
 religious than men, and men have always felt 
 that the spiritual element in woman was superior 
 to their own. 
 
 Therefore is it said that the weak things of the 
 world are chosen to confound the mighty, and 
 things which are not (ideal things), to bring to 
 nought things that are. 
 
 And just as the soft oyster forms and shapes 
 the hard shell, and the soft brain shapes the hard 
 skull, and the soft nerve directs the hard muscle 
 and bone, and the soft water drills the hard rock, 
 so, in every thing, is the soft finally stronger 
 than the hard, and the finer, the gentler forces 
 prevail. 
 
 And so the soft woman and the hard man unite 
 and merge again and again in evolving a higher 
 humanhood, till both finally completely find their 
 Self by losing themselves in that God who is 
 both Father and Mother, male and female, the 
 perfect Egoist, or Individual, and the perfect 
 Altruist, or All-Lover, in One. 
 
 OF THE 
 SPIRIT- 
 WORLD 
 AND ITS 
 IMPOR- 
 TANCE 
 
 103 
 
OF REIN- 
 CARNATION 
 
 S innumerable multitudes of new 
 forms are originating every mo- 
 ment in the matter--world, each 
 calling for its indwelling, directing 
 spirit, there must be a tremendous 
 current of attraction setting be- 
 tween the matter-'world and the spirit-world, 
 drawing the spirits dcwn, as it were. Of course 
 this, like all things else, is according to some 
 invariable method, or natural law, and doubtless 
 each spirit is drawn along the current of his 
 desire to the form, or body, best fitted for him 
 next to inhabit. I suppose that ancestors often 
 reincarnate themselves iri the bodies of posterity, 
 which would tend to explicate much in heredity. 
 And I suppose that sex (^;vhich anatomists tell us 
 is more or less of what v/e call an accident, any- 
 way) is changeable, so that what is man in this 
 incarnation may be woman when next enfleshed, 
 which might help to explain masculine women 
 and feminine men. 
 
 But I do not suppose there is any return into 
 lower forms passed and outlived, except, per- 
 haps, occasionally, under strong reactive desire. 
 Buddhists are mistaken in attaching so much im- 
 portance to this, I believe. For the whole course 
 of all is on, and reactions, even when they occur, 
 
 104 
 
react again to progress. There is probably an 
 effectual repugnance to the returning again to an 
 experience fully outlived. 
 
 T will be noticed that this view of 
 spirit-life differs markedly from 
 current spiritualism in its view^ of 
 " the power, liberty, possibility, 
 and necessity of the being, action, 
 and passion" of the disembodied. 
 Spiritualism has different sects, but all of them 
 ascribe immense power, influence, and authority 
 to unbodied souls. Some of them assert a spirit- 
 ual hierarchy, others describe leagues or cabals 
 of spirits, but all agree that all human life is 
 largely under spirit control, and that unbodied 
 spirits are wiser and stronger than bodied ones. 
 
 The foregoing view differs from all this. Its 
 contention is that spirit acts by and through 
 matter as tool and material, and is helpless w^ith- 
 out it ; that the matter-world is the field of ac- 
 tion, school of experience, and stair of progress ; 
 that unbodied souls have no means of directly 
 acting upon " mortals," except by borrowing the 
 bodily organs of some " medium," and then only 
 in an imperfect w^ay ; that only these mediums 
 can see, hear, feel, or be impressed by spirits ; 
 that mediums are weaker than average human 
 
 i°5 
 
 OF REIN- 
 CARNATION 
 
 SUMMARY 
 OF SPIRIT 
 DOCTRINE 
 
SUMMARY beings (wherefore their sensitiveness to spirit im- 
 OF SPIRIT pressions) but, nevertheless, so v^^eak are the 
 DOCTRINE spirits, even the average medium can resist them 
 and escape their influence. That the life of the 
 spirit is almost altogether subjective ; a matter 
 of thought, memory, and imagination rather than 
 of will or action ; that even these faculties grow 
 weak and fade in a veritable old age, needing a 
 new birth for rejuvenation ; that the apparent 
 spirit-environment is projected from the imagina- 
 tion, is ideal not real (that is, not material) ; that 
 spirits could not exist at all were there not a 
 sufficiency of the finer forms of matter available 
 to enable them to continue the purely mental 
 functions alone practicable for them ; and, finally, 
 it is held that all this affords sufficient induce- 
 ment for the return of the soul to earth-life, that 
 pow^er and action may be again enjoyed, and 
 progress continued toward that goal which is the 
 end of all living. And it is held that the phe- 
 nomena of current spiritualism, broadly viewed 
 and interpreted, affords strong confirmatory proof 
 of all this. 
 
 io6 
 
N the early stages of the path evil 
 is the predominant thing, because 
 evil is primarily separation and 
 distance from the Center. This 
 may be called negative evil. But 
 the secondary, positive form of 
 evil is aggression, with its fruit, inharmony. 
 
 At first separation is emphasized because that 
 is the peculiar attribute of the primary germ. 
 The thought to separate was its parent. In it 
 the apparent separation, which is the working 
 fiction of the universe, is carried to its uttermost 
 and raised to its highest pov^^er. With every step 
 inward from this, union increases and partitions 
 disappear. But at first unions are not harmonious, 
 because there is no desire to form them ; the pri- 
 mary impulse is apartness, and selfishness is its 
 expression and characteristic. Therefore unions 
 at first are only by force. Selfishness is the domi- 
 nating instinct, and while each wants to be alto- 
 gether apart, it also wishes to possess all the 
 goods (that it recognizes as such) that others 
 share or possess. Hence battle is inevitable. 
 And battle promotes progress in two ways : First 
 by destroying forms (death), thus forcing the in- 
 dweller to seek a new form ; second, by compell- 
 ing unions. Unions are compelled in two ways : 
 
 107 
 
 WHY EVIL 
 IS FIRST 
 AND LOVE 
 LAST 
 
WHY EVIL 
 
 IS FIRST 
 
 AND LOVE 
 
 LAST 
 
 By devouring or enslaving the conquered, and by 
 obliging unions for mutual defense or aggression. 
 
 But those w^ho confederate for mutual gain 
 taste love, and henceforth that enters as an ele- 
 ment in associated life, and grows larger, stronger, 
 purer, more inclusive, to Attainment. 
 
 This explains why the law of lower nature is 
 " Might is Right," w^hile in all higher natures the 
 passion for right (or harmony) controls and moves 
 might. And this is w^hy there is to everything a 
 lower and evil side, and %vhy the evil, in natural 
 order, comes first, and disappears as advance is 
 made. The first unions are those in w^hich one 
 party is altogether devoured, in which force is 
 carried to its ultimate ; then follow those in w^hich 
 some selfhood is retained by the conquered, but 
 in slavery ; then unions in which tyranny is lim- 
 ited, and somewhat a matter of treaty, bargain, 
 and consent, as in most governments ; then unions 
 of perfect equality, but for convenience only ; 
 lastly unions of pure love and communism, in 
 which desire for the comrade's good equals desire 
 for self-good — in which the confederates feel as 
 one. And so it is with everything in life ; the 
 battle, the evil, the inharmony, the hard work, 
 the disadvantages appear first, and later come 
 ease, joy, and gain. 
 
 1 08 
 
|HE passion for greatness is the THE PAS- 
 strongest in human nature, and SION FOR 
 rightly, for it is the current forever GREATNESS 
 setting tow^ard our destiny. In all 
 beautiful and all morbid forms it 
 announces itself. Pride, conceit, 
 
 vanity, tyranny, all worship, and all devotion, are 
 
 explained by it. With enthusiasm we give our- 
 selves to the service of the great, and why ? Be- 
 cause of irresistible sympathy, because they are 
 
 living for us that w^hich v/e long, but as yet are 
 
 helpless to live. 
 
 " And I, if I be lifted up from the earth will 
 
 draw all men unto me," said Christ, and thus 
 
 voiced a natural law of lifting. The truly great, 
 
 by their rise, lift all about them, and make them 
 
 greater and richer also. It is the meanly great, 
 
 those w^ho have the w^ill to be superior, as indeed 
 
 all have, but no perception, as yet, of the meat of 
 
 the matter ; it is these who, having no lift in 
 
 themselves, try to appear great by trampling on 
 
 and lowering those about them. But the truly 
 
 great long for comradeship in greatness, and 
 
 know no purer delight than the developing of 
 
 every latent spark of it, and this is one reason 
 
 why they are loved with such pure love and 
 
 served with such passion of devotion ; for we all 
 
 109 
 
THE PAS- 
 SION FOR 
 GREATNESS 
 
 have instinct that no man can do us greater good 
 than to make us great, if by only a line and a 
 hair's breadth, or v/orse hurt than to belittle us. 
 And, because of the solidarity of man, every blos- 
 som of greatness, wherever, greatens us all, and 
 enlarges the coasts of being. No man may do 
 men greater service than to make himself great. 
 
 And w^e are so grateful to the great, so helped, 
 lifted, -widened by them, that we endure faults, 
 injuries, crimes even, from, them, which we could 
 not so ignore in the small. 
 
 The devotion w^hich a true woman feels for the 
 man she has crowned her heart's king is per- 
 fectly natural, and in itself healthful. With the 
 irrepressible yearning of the race for infinite en- 
 largement, to which goal all our passions are but 
 roadsj and love most of all, she feels that by join- 
 ing herself to one greater than herself in wisdom, 
 strength, and majesty, she becomes all that he 
 is, plus herself. And he, on his part, if a true 
 lover, and moved by the grand passion, feels that 
 she is his heart's queen, and enlarges him by 
 those qualities of beauty, grace, gentleness, and 
 spiritual intuition in which w^oman differs from 
 and is superior to man. For the love of royalty 
 is not a mistake and a degradation, as many ultra 
 radicals fiercely say. Equality in smallness is 
 
 no 
 
not what the future is to bring us, but equality in THE PAS- 
 greatness ; and a meeting and concourse of kings SION FOR 
 and royal personages — each royal in his or her GREATNESS 
 own right over the things pertaining to self, each 
 recognizing and respecting the dignity, power, 
 and majesty of the other — is the true type and 
 picture of the future, w^herein human beings shall 
 be as gods, eating lotus and drinking nectar on 
 the hills of divine leisure. 
 
 But a king, over others, should be crowned by 
 them, not crown himself, and I have divine right 
 to be king of whosoever crow^ns me. 
 
 The true king is leader, exampler, not tyrant. 
 
 The passion for greatness ! — what else is it 
 makes men rush into w^ar and the madness of 
 battle! They must be heroes or they die, and 
 therefore they endure for pay, so scanty that else- 
 where they would scoff at the wage, all hardships, 
 degradations, and tyranny of officers, wounds and 
 horrors unmentionable. Because there is no 
 other joy so utterly rich and satisfying as the 
 feeling that one has made oneself sublim.e, they 
 dare all to taste it, if only for the moment. 
 
 And they are right in the main, as the common 
 people always are, centrally, in their instincts. 
 Vaguely, stumblingly, with little consciousness, 
 like animals, they walk in the paths of great 
 
 III 
 
THE PAS- truths because they are so moved by they know 
 SION FOR not \A;^hat unseen forces, but in the obeying of 
 GREATNESS which they feel safe. 
 
 And this is w^hy fear is so shameful to men, for 
 it is afraid of change when all things live by 
 change, and afraid of death when there is no 
 death, and in all things stands coweringly with 
 its face backv^ard. It is the Great Denial, the 
 Great Reaction, and to endure it would be 
 annihilation. 
 
 Fear is the true Infidelity ; for Faith is the feel- 
 ing of immortality, the assurance of deathless- 
 ness, and Courage is the same in its essence. 
 Your hero, your intrepid man, is enthused by in- 
 vincibility. He cannot conceive that he should 
 be hurt, or defeated, or killed. These may be for 
 others, they are not for him, and he cannot bring 
 them livingly even before his imagination. If he 
 could, if they appeared real and applicable, he 
 would be frightened. 
 
 Courage is that glorious prophecy w^hich rushes 
 over the soul of man in moments of exaltation 
 and of trial, with the assurance of his uncon- 
 querableness and his imperishability. In pro- 
 portion as a man receives this he fears nothing, 
 and dares everything. 
 
 Fear is the faith in Death, just as sorrow is 
 
 112 
 
faith in Loss, and these two are the wickedest 
 things in thought, because the most paralyzing 
 to growth. Where one is in the full light of the 
 Daw^n Thought there is no fear, nor sorrow, for 
 all things succeed, and Life is all. 
 
 Certainly in the partial and apparent sense a 
 man may be broken, beaten, slain, but in the 
 large sense this is impossible. And greatness is 
 the affirmation of the large sense. 
 
 And this is w^hat, consciously or unconsciously, 
 your hero feels, and what you, consciously or 
 unconsciously, admire in him ; for it is utterly 
 impossible to restrain the thrill of admiration, 
 hope, ^nd dilating joy, we feel v/hen we see a 
 man calmly confident that defeat, injury, and 
 death are not for him. 
 
 Courage is the affirmation of life. 
 
 Each thing is true in a small sense, and true 
 also, but often quite differently, or even oppo- 
 sitely, in a large sense, and it is the sign and 
 mark of greatness that it emphasizes this large 
 sense ; and v/e are all great in the degree in 
 which w^e apprehend this. And as greatness 
 grov^/s the larger is its grasp and vision, the deeper 
 its courage and breathing. 
 
 I have no fear that natural leadership will ever 
 be lost. It is the most natural thing in life. We 
 
 113 
 
 THE PAS- 
 SION FOR 
 GREATNESS 
 
THE PAS- reverence the great by irresistible drawings. 
 SION FOR Xhey are God-manifest to us, the incarnation of 
 GREATNESS q^j. hope, the vision of our victory. "We worship 
 the wise and obey the capable as we eat and 
 breathe. W^lioso can lead shall be follow^ed, and 
 the greater a leader is the more he feels himself 
 a tool in a strong hand. There is an endless 
 uplook through all the planes of power. 
 
 It is this deep truth which moved Plato to 
 place an aristocracy of the w^ise and good at the 
 head of his "Republic; " it is this that Carlyle 
 v/orships in his heroes ; it is this that Nietzsche 
 touches in his "Overman;" and it is this that 
 all governments profess to foster and secure by 
 some mechanical and arbitrary machinery of dy- 
 nasties, nobilities, elections, or other political 
 scheme by -which an artificial and arbitrary ruler- 
 ship is substituted for the natural leader, chosen 
 by the spontaneous admiration and corrected by 
 the spontaneous criticism and secession of the 
 free individual. 
 
 This sort cometh not by machinery, but by 
 nature. Truly the great should lead, and the 
 foolish follow, but the moment the great impose 
 their -wisdom and compel obedience, in that mo- 
 ment, and by so much, they cease to be great, 
 
 because, instead of affirming the large sense, and 
 
 114 
 
uplifting, they affirm the small sense and beat THE PAS- 
 back the inward uplift in those below them. For SION FOR 
 the great thing, the important event, is not that GREATNESS 
 the great should be obeyed, but that the weak 
 should be strengthened and the low lifted by 
 voluntarily imitating and obeying them, yet not 
 slavishly, but as men convinced. 
 
 It is great to compel, but infinitely greater to 
 have such masterful, manifest desert that men 
 follow and obey by irresistible, spontaneous flow, 
 necessity that holds, and admiration not other- 
 wise to be appeased. 
 
 But even the artificial leaders advance the true 
 thought. For men must worship, and if the man 
 they are told to look to is not worthy, then they 
 clothe him with the imputed virtues of their 
 ideal, and so exist till the true hero and king 
 arrives. It is better to worship a carven post, 
 made deity by the imagination, than to have 
 nothing great to look up to. 
 
 And it is true that repression never finally re- 
 presses ; the plan is such that it must even indi- 
 rectly advance, yet in the end every will must 
 have its way, for liberty is the indispensable, the 
 road, the atmosphere of growth. 
 
 And growth is happiness. To be consciously 
 enlarging, expanding, attaining, advancing, this 
 
 115 
 
THE PAS- 
 SION FOR 
 GREATNESS 
 
 THE BENDS 
 
 AND 
 
 REACHES 
 
 IN THE 
 
 RIVER OF 
 
 LIFE 
 
 is our joy. And vvhere there is freedom there is 
 nothing to stop gro-wth, therefore men hold it 
 first, and greatest of all. Growth is the river of 
 life, and liberty the channel in w^hich it runs. 
 
 30W this is the law of force that it 
 travel ever in waves ; a rising and 
 a falling constitute a life. And 
 this is true of every complete epi- 
 sode in nature. The moon waxes 
 and wanes, a morning and an 
 evening are the life of a day, a spring and a fall 
 the life of a year, a cresting and a sinking the life 
 of a wave. And even so a youth and an old age 
 are a life of a man. And at the end of an episode 
 or a *' life," comes a change, which change, occur- 
 ring in those we call living, constitutes what we 
 call death. But an analogous change comes to 
 all things that are partial, animate or inanimate, 
 natural or arbitrary, material or spiritual. Ev- 
 ery motion, every imagination, obeys the same 
 law^. But all things continue, and there is no 
 real death. Month follows month, but the moon 
 does not die because hidden ; day follows day, 
 but the sun ever shines ; year follow^s year, 
 but the fabric of time is continuous ; wave suc- 
 ceeds wave, but the stream flov*;'s on. Or if 
 oceans of water and fire fail, these have not 
 
 ii6 
 
perished, they have but changed place and ap- 
 pearance. 
 
 Death is only the pause before the next rising 
 impulse of onwardness. These things are for 
 times and for seasons ; they are punctuation 
 points. Changes, exchanges, transformations, are 
 everywhere, but annihilation nowhere. Every 
 end is but a beginning, every beginning an end. 
 Therefore life is all rhythm, and herein is the 
 charm of poetry and music that they repeat the 
 rhymes of life. Pulse, pulse, beats the world's 
 blood forever, smitten onw^ard by the Great Heart. 
 T is to partialness of view that strife 
 and contention among men are due. 
 Each disputant feels passionately 
 the truth of his thesis because it 
 is true, but none sees the synthesis 
 which proves the equal necessity 
 of his opponent's thought ; therefore the battle 
 rolls. But as growth goes on, and life larges, 
 rigid lines soften, respect and toleration widen 
 their borders, and peace comes like a da'wning. 
 
 Reverence the broad man, for he is -well along 
 on the path. 
 
 But though it is true, this that we see, remem- 
 ber that we do not see it exactly true, because we 
 see but part, and see as parts, and the partial 
 
 117 
 
 THE BENDS 
 AND 
 
 REACHES 
 IN THE 
 RIVER OF 
 LIFE 
 
 TRUTH IS 
 CENTRAL; 
 LIMITS ARE 
 ARBITRARY 
 AND FALSE 
 
TRUTH IS 
 
 CENTRAL; 
 
 LIMITS ARE 
 
 ARBITRARY 
 
 AND FALSE 
 
 view is alv/ays somewhat of a mistake, the part 
 itself is a mistake. With every inch of stature, 
 with every step to right or left, w^e see more and 
 differently, and must needs correct previous im- 
 pressions. Therefore we dare affirm positively 
 only the truth of the center. All religions, ail 
 philosophies, sciences, doctrines, dogmas, are true 
 at heart, but the moment the seer attempts to 
 too positively explain and define details he is a 
 false prophet ; for these limitations have no ex- 
 istence in nature, other than that they more or 
 less truly represent the horizons of his outlook, 
 the edges of his eye-scope. All emphasis about 
 boundaries makes a lie ; all limitation makes a 
 lie ; all standing still at a preferred spot and in- 
 sistance on that vista as final is stagnation and 
 extinguishment. Buddha saw the truth, so did 
 Moses, Socrates, Jesus, Mohammed, Mother Ann 
 Lee, Swedenborg, Emerson, Whitman, and so do 
 I. And you have, in yourself, a vision that no 
 other may see for you or exactly with you. But 
 to-morrow comes one who sees more and farther ; 
 and the next day a larger man than any, with 
 stronger eyes and brain. There is no creed, no 
 code, no definition, no limit, but for the moment ; 
 but all is life and the rhythm and flow of it. And 
 this is ever to be remembered — that if the god- 
 
 ii8 
 
like see true, so do the worm-like. For if Jesus 
 sa'w the truth, also in his way, did Judas, and 
 lived up to it. 
 
 Judas and Jesus are types of the lower and 
 higher man, each wise in his own outlook. 
 
 For if boundaries, limits, distinctions, were 
 real, separations w^ould be real, and the solidarity 
 and unity of all things would not be. But we 
 shall prove, w^hen we take life in our hand and 
 challenge a barrier, though it be of adamant, that 
 it is not there, but only a mist and a seeming ; it 
 fades like a memory of a dreaming, and life, 
 the eternal-moving, the changing-unchanging, 
 goes on. 
 
 The Christian Scientists are right when they 
 affirm that there is no death, sin, sickness, mat- 
 ter ; but they would be equally right did they deny 
 there was any separate life, or any virtue, health, 
 spirit ; for these are but v/ords, distinctions, tem- 
 porary fences, map-lines, rounds on the ladders 
 that lift us ; they have no real existence, are 
 equally arbitrary and verbal ; for all is flow, and 
 a shifting and exchanging, and, at the final, a melt- 
 ing together and a oneness, an overlook, a recon- 
 ciliation, and an acceptance — God is all. and we 
 are God — One. 
 
 And this is Nirvana. 
 
 TRUTH IS 
 CENTRAL ; 
 LIMITS ARE 
 ARBITRARY 
 AND FALSE 
 
 119 
 
EVOLUTION ^S^£Ebk^ft^^^i EN love war because of the swift- 
 IN BATTLE ^y/^iJ) ^^^^^Al ness of its changes, because ar- 
 mies are rivers of force, but, most 
 of all, because courage is its life 
 and center, and courage is the 
 most life-giving of passions. 
 And the love of struggle, of conquest, of domina- 
 tion by force, dies not in man, nor shall die, be- 
 cause these are of grov/th and its methods. But 
 as God-attainment goes on the struggle between 
 man and man v/ill grovi^ less deadly, freer of hate, 
 more humane in form and action, and at last all 
 men will clasp hands and stand shoulder to 
 shoulder in a great army of industry. The pas- 
 sion for v^ar will take other form and seek other 
 outlet. It will be directed to the conquest of 
 leisure, so that men may be as gods on the earth, 
 ennobling themselves and enjoying each other in 
 the large ease and courtesy of those who are 
 equal in mastership and royalty. But each man, 
 full of force and beauty, burgeoning v/ith life-sap, 
 will seize betimes the weapons of his pow^er and 
 rush forth w^ith joy to the manly struggle with the 
 elements and forces, the obstacles which repress 
 the divine in man, the enemies which brain and 
 muscle and heart, in work, conquer. 
 
 All admiration which men novi^ give to w^ar will 
 
 120 
 
be given to work ; and the workman w^ill be the 
 petted hero, the subject of song and story, the ob- 
 ject of love's adoration, the knight, the deliverer. 
 With the same enthusiasm now given to 
 slaughter, the workman, the soldier of that time, 
 will be drilled, decked, armed, equipped, and go 
 forth in the glamour of romance, with the inspira- 
 tion of music and the v/aving of beautiful hands, 
 to the enlargement of the Kingdom of Man, and 
 the subjugation and despoiling of the alien, the 
 enemy, the forces which will not serve. 
 It is daw^ning now ; that will be day. 
 
 T is this endless pursuit and upward 
 yearn which explains that wonder- 
 ful fact that in love the two parties 
 are never equal, that there is al- 
 ways a Lover and a One-Beloved. 
 Were it otherw^ise, were each 
 equally worshipful and perfect in content, then 
 would it be deemed that heaven were found, and 
 nothing more to seek, and the greater heaven 
 would be unattained. But the clock-work of the 
 ^vorld is wound to a larger tune. God has not 
 arranged it so that any of his children shall get 
 lost on the road, or forget to come home. Pleas- 
 ure and Pain are the two levers w^hich lift, and 
 they are ever acting in sufficient degree and con- 
 
 121 
 
 EVOLUTION 
 OF BATTLE 
 
 OF THE 
 LOVER AND 
 BELOVED 
 AND THE 
 UPLIFT AND 
 FITNESS 
 IN LOVING 
 
OF THE 
 
 LOVER AND 
 
 BELOVED 
 
 AND THE 
 
 UPLIFT AND 
 
 FITNESS 
 
 IN LOVING 
 
 cert to do their work. "When one ceases to push, 
 the other draws, and usually they push and pull 
 together. And so love reaches out on all sides 
 and calls continually for the perfect companion, 
 the completing complement, but is never fully 
 satisfied. For it w^as never intended that we 
 should find rest in any one friend or lover. It is 
 only when you love all, and are friends to all, 
 absolutely and %vithout reservation, that rest 
 comes. And that cannot be till Nirvana. 
 
 Tw^o fragments of a broken globe cannot do 
 more than faintly resemble, in their union, the 
 perfect sphere. An ideal love is the mending of 
 the shattered sphere. 
 
 Therefore should love be bound by no rigid 
 vows or cast-iron forms. Everything unchange- 
 able is deadly to the thing it w^ould conserve ; for 
 life is impossible w^ithout motion, and motion 
 means change, and change if it mean not grow^th 
 and accretion means decretion and decay. 
 
 Though we should be friends of all and lovers 
 of all, yet love presupposes fitness, and is not 
 made possible by mere resolution. When the 
 globe is shattered and there are a multitude of 
 fragments, you w^ill find that the one you pick up 
 fits only a few others, and fits each only on one 
 side, but after it has enlarged by joining to these, 
 
 122 
 
then there are more to which it may fit, and so 
 on to all-fitness. And so it is -with man ; he is a 
 fragment, and his fellows are fragments of the 
 One. Let him fit where he may all those whom 
 he can, if only on one side, and so enlarge to 
 Nirvana. 
 
 The power to appreciate, fit-to, and love many 
 proves a soul far along on the path. 
 
 And love is fitting and sympathy is cementing. 
 
 But though loves are never equal, and there 
 is al^vays one who gives most, who is the Lover, 
 and one w^ho receives most, who is the Beloved, 
 yet does it often happen that their fitness is so 
 delightful to them, so fruitful of joy, that the soul 
 has a foretaste of Nirvana, w^herein there is no 
 struggle nor hate, but love perfect. 
 
 And even w^hen loves are most unequal, still 
 is love a blessed thing to both. If either have the 
 best of it, it is the Lover, who is the worshiper, 
 who is the one uplifted, who grows and enlarges 
 toward the Beloved. But the Beloved, too, is 
 blessed in foretasting God-hood, in the joy of 
 teaching, uplifting, sweetening another life, of re- 
 ceiving worship and proving worth-ship. 
 
 As the w^orld stands, men are the Lovers and 
 the Center the One-Beloved. The souls that are 
 far aw^ay on the path are full of the sense of 
 
 123 
 
 OF THE 
 LOVER AND 
 BELOVED 
 AND THE 
 UPLIFT AND 
 FITNESS 
 IN LOVING 
 
OF THE 
 
 LOVER AND 
 
 BELOVED 
 
 AND THE 
 
 UPLIFT AND 
 
 FITNESS 
 
 IN LOVING 
 
 THE 
 ASSURANCE 
 OF GREAT- 
 NESS 
 
 dependence ; they are oppressed with loneliness ; 
 they crave to worship. To these loving, worship- 
 ing, is the chief joy, because it gives most rapid 
 growth. But as the soul grows larger and w^iser 
 it becomes more like the Inclusive, the Sphere, 
 who is always alone. It feels its own individu- 
 ality more, yet more its vital contact with all, is 
 more content and happy and serene in self-hood. 
 It is strange how the same impulse in life leads 
 to most opposite results. The outer souls are 
 necessarily intensely individualized, but this very 
 strong sense of separation makes them crave con- 
 nection, therefore are they intensely tribal, grega- 
 rious ; selfish, yet moving in herds. But the inner 
 souls are so sure of their touch with many that 
 they care little for the outward assurance, can be 
 very content alone, and substitute an inward, spir- 
 itual individuality for the outward, physical one 
 that so burdens the savage. They trouble not 
 about society, are happy and fearless in solitude, 
 yet are the best lovers and the best company, 
 
 UT every stage of development has 
 its higher and low^er, and at first 
 the intellectual recognition of the 
 importance of individuality, and 
 content in self-hood, may go to an 
 extreme, and make the holder cold, 
 124 
 
selfish, and isolated ; for the lower form always 
 asserts itself first. But this lower punishes itself, 
 and ensures a reaction, until the soul becomes gen- 
 erous, benignant, a receiver of love and worship, 
 and a dispenser of benefits. In the lower form 
 the king-souls are jealous of worship, and exact it 
 with craving, but the older kings are sure of their 
 royalty, and used to it, and care nothing for the 
 forms and signs of obeisance, nor even if they are 
 withheld. Jesus knov/ing that he was king and 
 God troubled not that men denied and reviled. 
 These are so royal that they seem, as it were, 
 humble. And the Supreme, the Alone One, is 
 troubled nothing that men blaspheme and deny 
 him. A jealous God is the myth of a small mind. 
 Why even a great dog has magnanimous con- 
 tempt for the barks of the tykes. 
 
 In like manner those w^ho lack self-assurance 
 of greatness long for the plaudits of their fellows, 
 but the truly great, secure in this self-assurance, 
 are serene, vyhether fame be w^ithheld or given. 
 For the inward conviction and sensation of w^orth 
 is the purest joy in life, and where men have it 
 not they reach out hungrily to every substitute, 
 as sick men seek remedies of quacks. They are 
 ready to bribe, beg or steal a word of praise, to 
 self-deceive their souls withal, and so are the 
 
 125 
 
 THE 
 
 ASSURANCE 
 OF GREAT- 
 NESS 
 
THE 
 ASSURANCE 
 OF GREAT- 
 NESS 
 
 TO BE 
 GOOD 
 
 ready-made and self-devoted dupes of all flatter- 
 ers. And v^uth drugs, stimulants, narcotics, they 
 fill themselves with fumes of sham force and 
 power. And truly brave men, grown sure in 
 their courage, are modest and indifferent to 
 praise ; but a man w^ho has a coward doubt likes 
 to be bolstered by others' conviction, and is 
 tempted to bully and boast, that the fear and 
 praise of others may inspire his feeble heart. 
 
 HOSE who tell you to be good in- 
 deed tell you well, it is the fruit 
 the tree is inevitably to bear ; but 
 those w^ho expect mature virtues 
 from undeveloped souls have a 
 pinched brain and a narrow eye. 
 They are like fools who look for ripe apples in 
 the spring. Tell them the corn bears ears when 
 it is big enough. 
 
 And the fruit is first hard and sour, then mel- 
 low and sweet. And a useless virtue, or rather 
 an unused one, like fruit kept uneaten, for orna- 
 ment only, soon grows over-ripe and rotten. 
 Virtue is not only strength and beauty but 
 service. 
 
 126 
 
HE whole is one, and this truth all OF VITAL, 
 things in nature repeat to us in UNITY 
 ever-varying lessons. Everything 
 seeks unity, equilibrium, the cen- 
 ter; and though continually thrown 
 out, persistently returns from 
 ■whence it came, just as man goes back to Nirvana. 
 Consider the waters, which, though lifted in mists 
 and clouds, drop sw^iftly back through all their 
 shining levels to the sea. And, if more slow^ly, 
 the uplifted mountains are just as certainly and 
 stubbornly flowing down into the valleys. When 
 we seek for a clear partition and definition be- 
 tw^een mineral and vegetable, vegetable and ani- 
 mal, animal and man, man and God, we fail to 
 find it. Any of these view^ed centrally is different 
 enough, but when you seek for boundary lines 
 they forever elude. Because they do not exist. 
 They are but convenient fictions, lines on our 
 maps w^hich the fields and forests they cross 
 know^ not of. Does not evolution reveal a per- 
 petual touch and blending all along the lines of 
 life ? Do not the methods, the " law^s " of nature 
 apply universally ? Is not each thing a type and 
 figure of every other thing ? Is not man a micro- 
 cosm of the macrocosm ? Study comparative 
 anatomy, and see how every nerve and muscle 
 127 
 
OF VITAL ^^'^ bone hints of the human. Run sex down, 
 UNITY if you can, and find some element or aggregation 
 which knows nothing of the power of the dual 
 principle. 
 
 Motion and rest are all of life, and all our mo- 
 tions are in pursuit of rest. 
 
 We all stand on the earth, and are united by 
 our touch of it, and by the air ^which ever pursues 
 us, by the ether w^hich never leaves us, by elec- 
 tric and magnetic currents, interpenetrating, by 
 strange, invisible nervous sympathies which clair- 
 voyance, telepathy, and similar marvels, occa- 
 sionally reveal to us. We are united by our 
 common needs, weaknesses, passions, by our 
 common origin and destiny. 
 
 Look how reproduction unites us. The actual 
 substance and life of the parent goes into the 
 child, and there is no break in the life. The life 
 in the seed is the life, and the finest life, of the 
 parent, and develops without cut-off into the off- 
 spring, an extension of the parent. Humanity is 
 like an undying tree, and dying individual forms 
 are like the dropping leaves. Or it is like an un- 
 dying man, and dying individual like the broken- 
 down tissue and cells excreted and thrown away. 
 
 And humanity is only a limb of the Great Tree, 
 or Body, of Life, equally inseparate. 
 
 128 
 
Consider how nutrition unites us : We breathe 
 the air and drink the water and intake the in- 
 visible forces. The vegetable eats the mineral, 
 the animal the vegetable, w^e eat both vegetable 
 and animal, and so the mineral, and so every- 
 thing in the universe. And the dead are continu- 
 ally devoured and used over again, and resurrected 
 and made alive again ; or rather life never ceases, 
 but rises and falls, through days and nights, labors 
 and sleeps, strengths and w^eaknesses, conscious- 
 ness and unconsciousness, in eternal rhythm. 
 
 Those religionists w^ho suppose that the soul 
 never returns, but remains unchanging in a heaven 
 of changeless bliss, or a hell of unmitigated tor- 
 ment, suppose something for which there is no 
 warrant, anywhere, in the analogies of nature. 
 
 And those w^ho reject reincarnation, and con- 
 sider the alleged loss of memory of the reborn 
 soul as an improbable hypothesis, must remem- 
 ber that, even from the most materialistic stand- 
 point, everything in the universe, matter or force, 
 is worked up, over and over, reborn and reincar- 
 nated in one sense, and yet the conscious memory 
 of past experience is continually lost with every 
 change. "Why, when, as we have seen, the body 
 and life of parent and child are actually continu- 
 ous, w^hy does not the child remember its previ- 
 
 129 
 
 OF VITAL 
 UNITY 
 
OF VITAL 
 UNITY 
 
 OF THE 
 COUNTER 
 TRUTH, IN- 
 DIVIDUAL- 
 ITY, AND 
 ITS RELA- 
 TION TO 
 UNITY 
 
 ous experiences as parent and ancestors? Plainly 
 with the new individual form comes the new 
 memory, and this without theory. 
 
 And men are united by labor and property. 
 W^e not only live on our ancestors, in an actual 
 though disguised cannibalism, but we spend their 
 money, live in their cities, w^alk their streets, 
 pluck fruit from their trees, read their books, 
 work with their tools, think their thoughts, and 
 carry out their plans. All inheritance unites with 
 the past, and the extent of our inheritance is 
 beyond all our measure or mental grasp. 
 
 Philosophers are continually pointing out that 
 humanity is a macrocosm, a true individual, the 
 Great Man, of whom man, the lesser individual, 
 is a miniature. 
 
 |UT though all things tend to the 
 center, to unity, and the partitions, 
 separations, are apparent and not 
 finally real, yet it is of the utmost 
 importance to the order of the uni- 
 verse, its motion and action, that 
 all these apparent distinctions should be under- 
 stood as facts and carefully respected. Here, as 
 elsewhere, the opposites must meet and frater- 
 nize, or conflict continues. When we attain the 
 ideal society it will be one in which the separate 
 
 130 
 
liberty of each man will be fully recognized and 
 deferred to in every social act, yet in which each 
 man feels his unity with all and relates to it in 
 every private act. Not till this perfect balance 
 and reciprocity betw^een the individual and society 
 is attained, as a custom and inwoven habit, w^ill 
 the perfect society be attained, and where it ex- 
 ists, even now, between two or more individuals, 
 there the perfect society is. And the first step is 
 to recognize the free individual as an individual 
 sovereign, supreme over his own. For the first 
 step in creating order, anywhere, is to give each 
 thing its place, and the full properties and powers 
 that pertain to it, preventing at the same time its 
 interference •with any other. This results inva- 
 riably and everywhere in order, peace, and har- 
 mony. It is the natural law of right, that is of 
 individual w^ell-being and social accord. Any 
 deviation produces inharmony and disorder. 
 
 But remember that individuality is only true 
 centrally. The moment you begin to insist on 
 border lines, and define them, you will have 
 trouble ; for you are forcing into fictitious promi- 
 nence something that, in nature, does not exist. 
 By myself I am one man, and my neighbor, by 
 himself, is another man, but when we come to- 
 gether and touch we are not two but one, and if 
 
 131 
 
 OF THE 
 COUNTER 
 TRUTH, IN- 
 DIVIDUAL- 
 ITY AND 
 ITS RELA- 
 TION TO 
 UNITY 
 
OF THE 
 COUNTER 
 TRUTH, IN- 
 DIVIDUAL. 
 ITY, AND 
 ITS RELA- 
 TION TO 
 UNITY 
 
 this is fully perceived and acted upon there will 
 be perfect love and harmony bet"ween us. Herein 
 is the unshakable strength of Christ's injunction : 
 " Love thy neighbor as thyself." But he does 
 not explain v/hy, which the Dav\/n-Thought does. 
 You are to love him as yourself because he is 
 yourself, only in another form. And if you do 
 not respect that form you do violence to yourself 
 as well as him. For all final crime is violence to 
 self. Assert your ovv^n individuality with dignity 
 and delight in it, and with equal pride and joy 
 assert the individuality of your fellow — that is 
 the true method of human association and, w^here 
 followed, yields perfect peace and love. To love 
 the neighbor more than self, as ultra altruists 
 urge, produces inward pain, abasement, protest ; 
 to love self most cuts off all those currents of life 
 which would flow from him to you and feed you ; 
 to try to destroy his individuality by obliterating 
 him, or by annexing him to yourself by force, 
 turns those currents to virulent poison, bitter and 
 deadly tov/ard you. 
 
 In other words, then, and herein is a paradox 
 and truth most significant and far-applying, you 
 only attain to unity by recognizing every indi- 
 viduality, and every time you recognize another 
 individuality you increase your own. 
 
 132 
 
We are each one a pulse-beat of the Great 
 Heart. The Blood of Life flows on in one con- 
 tinuous stream, but there is sound health only 
 \vhen the pulse beats are each one firm and 
 distinct. 
 
 Love others because you love yourself! 
 Serve others by making yourself free and great, 
 and by expressing boldly all that seeks utterance 
 through you. 
 
 [ O the man permeated by the Dawn- 
 Thought, noblesse oblige pervades 
 the atmosphere of his life like a 
 fragrance. It becomes habit, 
 channel, mood, and unconscious 
 motive. Sublime in origin and 
 destiny ; boundless in final possession ; of the 
 same blood and family as the greatest, and certain 
 to become their equal ; lofty in overlook ; infinite 
 in expectation ; god-like in assurance of death- 
 lessness ; how can he be small, or mean, or 
 ungenerous, or cowardly, or deeply disturbed ! 
 How can he be intolerant, or haggle about small 
 differences ! How can he yield to despair ! 
 
 By the very nature of the case he must be 
 great and live greatly ; sympathetic, helpful, and 
 princely, he must be worthy of himself and his 
 high title and estate. 
 
 133 
 
 OF THE 
 COUNTER 
 TRUTH, IN- 
 DIVIDUAL- 
 ITY, AND 
 ITS RELA- 
 TION TO 
 UNITY 
 
 NOBLESSE 
 OBLIGE 
 
WE 
 
 RETURN 
 
 AND REAP 
 
 ^lEWED from the standpoint of 
 self, what great inducement is 
 there in the orthodox outlook for 
 a man's endeavor to leave this 
 world richer, better, and happier 
 for his having lived in it ? Or 
 from any of the currently accepted outlooks, re- 
 ligious or irreligious ? Either a man dies and 
 knows no more, or he goes away at death to 
 some foreign coast, with no more interest or con- 
 cern in the things of here. 
 
 Then w^hy not let him make life tolerable for 
 himself, -while it lasts, w^ith not too much scruple 
 about others, and none at all about posterity, and 
 let that suffice ? 
 
 But if reincarnation be accepted the view in- 
 stantly changes. A man may come back to live 
 in the houses he has built, to pluck fruit from the 
 trees he has planted, to enjoy the -works of art he 
 has created, to study in the schools he has 
 founded ; or to be deceived by the lies he has 
 left, to be starved in the deserts he has made, to 
 be cramped and stunted by the laws he has 
 imposed. 
 
 Here then is every encouragement to a man to 
 leave his -world beautiful, rich, and free, that the 
 
 joy of his own future be assured. 
 
 134 
 
ERE separateness a real thing, 
 and did each individual stand by 
 himself as a new creation, alto- 
 gether disconnected from an- 
 cestor and posterity, then would 
 it be a cruel injustice, this w^e so 
 often see, men reaping the crops they have not 
 sown, and suffering for the crimes they did not 
 commit. But view^ed as a part of the phenomena 
 of unity, the matter puts on a different face. 
 
 '' For none of us liveth to himself, and no man 
 dieth to himself," and each is a piece of all, and 
 not only shares in the profits, but is responsible 
 for the debts of the whole firm. 
 
 This shareholding, this necessary and inevitable 
 communism, is one of the evidences of unity. It 
 is the same v/ith society as vi/ith the human body ; 
 no organ can be sick and not affect the health 
 of the rest, even to the least of them., and the 
 strength and joy of any one of them inevitably 
 benefits every one of the others. 
 
 And as a matter of fact the innocent are not so 
 guiltless as they think themselves ; neither are 
 the guilty as criminal as we deem them. And 
 the man who reaps a crop may be sure that he 
 once shared in the sowing of it. 
 
 For the sower and reaper, the murderer, the 
 
 135 
 
 SOWING 
 
 AND 
 
 REAPING 
 
SOWING 
 
 AND 
 
 REAPING 
 
 SOME- 
 WHAT ON 
 LIBERTY 
 AND LOVE 
 AND THE 
 ETHICS OF 
 THE DAWN 
 
 victim, and the hangman are one. " Whatso- 
 ever a man soweth that shall he also reap," and 
 his is both the seed and the harvest. 
 
 ERE unity complete, and no 
 separation, real or fictitious, any- 
 w^here, then would there be per- 
 fect peace, for it is separation, 
 apartness that is the under-cause 
 of conflict and inharmony. And 
 the more perfectly you and any other merge and 
 become one in thoughts, sensations, desires, the 
 more perfect the harmony betw^een you. But 
 apartness, as we have before explained, is neces- 
 sary to the moving, acting, -working universe ; 
 there is a vszorking necessity for it, otherw^ise 
 would the universe be in a state of utter repose, 
 peaceful, motionless, and, as it were, asleep. 
 All force would be latent. The pendulum v^ould 
 have stopped in its center. Therefore as an 
 acting universe is desired, the working fiction 
 of apartness, of multitudinous individualities, is 
 necessary and must be recognized and maintained. 
 And this recognition, preservation, defense, and 
 orderly relation of individualities is -what men call 
 Justice. 
 
 And the permitting of each individuality to ex- 
 press fully its ow^n nature, the impulses that w^ell- 
 136 
 
up within it, to live its own life according to its 
 own innate law, to grow and develop after its 
 ow^n kind, this is what men mean by Liberty. 
 
 The various great ideas, or principles, w^hich 
 run through the universe have from time to time 
 inspired the great religious teachers of the past, 
 but usually have been received only one at a 
 time, in a sort of blind enthusiasm, excluding 
 recognition of the others. They (these teachers) 
 seemed to lack the sense of proportion, the pov^^er 
 to do justice to opposites. Thus Moses was en- 
 thused by Justice, but of a narrov/, arbitrary, 
 national sort, and Jesus was enthused by Love, 
 but apparently too partially and "with confused 
 sense of its relation to Justice. 
 
 Not till Emerson and Whitman do we reach 
 the eclectic seer, able to be enthused by the 
 "Whole, and to view each part in somevi^hat 
 just relation and w^ith tolerant catholicity of 
 recognition. 
 
 It has puzzled devout minds not a little that 
 Jesus came after Moses, and taught a new doc- 
 trine reversing the old. Truly there was nothing 
 in their logic to justify or explain such a thing. 
 For if the law of God was one, and unchangeable, 
 as they taught, and God was one and changeless, 
 how could Jesus, vi''ho they said was God, teach 
 
 SOME- 
 WHAT ON 
 LIBERTY 
 AND LOVE 
 AND THE 
 ETHICS OF 
 THE DAWN 
 
 137 
 
SOME- 
 WHAT ON 
 LIBERTY 
 AND LOVE 
 AND THE 
 ETHICS OF 
 THE DAWN 
 
 a new and different doctrine from Moses, who 
 was taught by God and gave the law he was 
 commanded to utter ? It was an inscrutable 
 mystery. 
 
 But not to the disciple of the Dawn. To him 
 the Light, the Truth, is always there, and always 
 the same, but a man's perception of it depends 
 on the quality of his eye-sight. Moses and Jesus 
 both saw the same thing, which was indeed al- 
 ways there to see, but Jesus saw it more broadly 
 and clearly, and with better understanding, be- 
 cause he -was older on the path. And Emerson 
 saw^ it better still, for exactly the same reason. 
 
 (And perhaps Emerson was Jesus reincarnated, 
 an intellectual Jesus instead of an emotional one, 
 and perhaps Jesus was the reincarnated Moses, 
 each correcting the mistakes of a previous and 
 low^er vision — but this is a guess-saying.) 
 
 And the impossibility of ever finally defining 
 right and wrong is explained, because these things 
 pertain to the relations of individuals, and profess 
 to define their boundaries. But, as w^e have 
 seen, such boundaries do not really exist, but 
 there is an endless touching, blending, and flow- 
 ing together throughout all nature — One, not 
 many as it seems. Therefore the Science of 
 Right, however useful and necessary in a general 
 
 138 
 
and practical way, is only a fiction, based on and 
 explaining other fictions, and not the awful and 
 eternal verity the doctors once imagined it. 
 And indeed, of late years, few men of thought 
 and kindliness have failed to see that truth and 
 falsehood and right and wrong are interchange- 
 able and relative things, varying ever with the 
 standpoint and view-point of the observer. 
 
 And in the Dawn-Thought all things are, at 
 last, but one thing, and that one thing altogether 
 good and true. 
 
 And this new view diminishes almost to a van- 
 ishing point the suspicion, bitterness, and hatred 
 bet-ween men. 
 
 What then, it will be asked, if right and wrong 
 are fictions still they are incessantly necessary in 
 practical life, for the recognition of the individu- 
 alities is impossible without them, cannot then 
 the Daw^n-Thought help us to a clearer and larger 
 perception of the Right in a great and final sense ? 
 Most assuredly, both in a proximate and in an 
 ultimate sense it gives the guiding word. In the 
 largest sense it teaches that God is one and all, 
 and all-good, and the doer of all ; therefore that 
 everything is finally right and to be accepted in 
 reconciliation, — that in the ultimate there is noth- 
 ing anywhere but the Divine Existence and this, 
 
 139 
 
 SOME- 
 WHAT ON 
 LIBERTY 
 AND LOVE 
 AND THE 
 ETHICS OF 
 THE DAWN 
 
SOME- 
 WHAT ON 
 LIBERTY 
 AND LOVE 
 AND THE 
 ETHICS OF 
 THE DAWN 
 
 properly speaking, neither good nor bad, but 
 simply itself. 
 
 But in the proximate and practical its teaching 
 is still definite and strong, and in the large sense 
 noble and high. Right, ii the practical, consists 
 in establishing harmony by the wise and balanced 
 recognition of the tv/o great principles of univer- 
 sal action — individuality and unity. Every les- 
 son in the Dawn-Thought inspires liberty and 
 dignity in the disciple, and the eager desire to 
 promote liberty, and dignity in every associate. 
 Therefore it is peculiarly just, both in the letter 
 and spirit, in all its expressions. And liberty and 
 justice being spontaneous and basic -with it, noth- 
 ing is more inevitable than that its active expres- 
 sion should be loving. For v/here liberty is 
 natural and justice spontaneous, so that both are 
 assured, love, which is the next in higher order, 
 groves like a plant in its native clime and soil. 
 
 Nov/ Love, practically, is the voluntary disre- 
 gard and abandonment of individual emphasis in 
 the reach toward unity. Where our individuality 
 is denied, or invaded, v/e jealously assert and 
 fiercely, desperately defend it. But when the 
 neighbor gladly and cordially admits our individu- 
 ality, and its rights, and with willing justice gives 
 it all that belongs to it, we feel ourselves melting 
 
 140 
 
toward him, and a very little makes us flo-w to- 
 gether in mutual love. We no longer are jealous 
 to be apart, we are more than willing to unite. 
 
 And so it comes about by the usual paradox, 
 that by gladly and constantly cultivating liberty 
 and justice, v/hich on the face of them are against 
 unity and make for separateness, we instantly 
 and to the uttermost inspire love, which is the 
 hunger and thirst for unity. Therefore the first 
 step in the practical Right, yes, and the second 
 step, and the last step, is to generously, and with 
 enthusiasm, cultivate the liberty of every man co- 
 equally with his fellows ; for w^hile liberty means 
 the expression of the utmost difference, such ex- 
 pression always means grov/th, and growth is 
 always toward the Center, therefore, finally, ex- 
 tremes meet and a reconciled harmony betv/een 
 individuality and unity is attained. 
 
 Therefore be free and set free, that growth go 
 on and love be perfect. 
 
 For the Dawn-Thought is the Religion of 
 Grov/th, and all its ethics may be summed up in 
 the injunction to grow, to welcome grow^th, to 
 keep the w^ay open for growth ; for so shall 
 human life be large and generous and happy and 
 free. 
 
 And in this the Dawn-Thought religion differs 
 141 
 
 SOME- 
 WHAT ON 
 LIBERTY 
 AND LOVE 
 AND THE 
 ETHICS OF 
 THE DAWN 
 
SOME- 
 WHAT ON 
 LIBERTY 
 AND LOVE 
 AND THE 
 ETHICS OF 
 THE DAWN 
 
 CON- 
 SCIENCE 
 
 utterly from the older religions, whose chief busi- 
 ness was to stop the soul at a certain tavern and 
 tell it the journey ended there, and to go on 
 further was destruction, and even to look further 
 forbidden. Paul rebuking the Athenians for seek- 
 ing ever some new thing, was the type of the class. 
 But the Dawn-Thought tells you it is not final, 
 nor is anything final — go on, go on forever, till 
 Nirvana ! And perchance even that is not final, 
 but only a greater rest before the commencing of 
 a new and greater cycle, 
 
 HE moral intuition of humanity 
 has always been that conscience 
 was a guide to be followed in ques- 
 tions of right, w^hile casuists have 
 plausibly argued that its guidance 
 w^as worthless because not the 
 same in different individuals, nor in the same 
 individual at different times. But the Dawn- 
 Thought explains and reconciles these by show- 
 ing that the growth of the individual makes a 
 continuous change in his view of right, and yet he 
 must needs ever follow the new vision as it is 
 given him, but discreetly and prudently, not slav- 
 ishly as if it were all truth for all time. For con- 
 science, like everything else, grow^s with our 
 growth. 
 
 142 
 
RECONCILED harmony between 
 individuality and unity, so that 
 each has the fullest possible recog- 
 nition co-equal with the other, we 
 have seen to constitute the practi- 
 cal Right in the affairs of individu- 
 als ; and exactly the same constitutes the right 
 relation betw^een societies, which are merely in- 
 dividuals of one degree greater complexity. And 
 affection betw^een societies is obtained in exactly 
 the same way as in the case of individuals, by 
 making no overt effort toward friendship, but by 
 sympathetically and cordially admitting and en- 
 couraging difference. If in my relations with a 
 foreigner I speak his language, and show my 
 familiarity with its literary treasures, if I sing 
 his country's songs, and reveal a hearty apprecia- 
 tion of the many excellences of his native land, 
 then is his heart warmed toward me, and he is 
 equally ready to do justice to the merits of my 
 country. For the common sense of the matter is 
 that societies are composed of units, and all trans- 
 actions bet'^Areen them are conducted by units, 
 and whatever conduct ensures harmony betw^een 
 men is the conduct that ensures harmony be- 
 tween societies of men. 
 
 The spirit of liberty expressed by justice first, 
 143 
 
 THE LAW 
 OF RIGHT 
 BETWEEN 
 SOCIETIES 
 
THE LAW 
 OF RIGHT 
 BETWEEN 
 SOCIETIES 
 
 OF WAR 
 AND PEACE 
 
 and then comes love of itself, v/ithout effort or 
 seeking, and this alike between single men or 
 groups of men. 
 
 Christ was enthused by love and gave the com- 
 mandment *' Love one another," but love never 
 thrives where freedom is repressed. Had he en- 
 joined, instead, the enthusiasm for equal liberty, 
 he need not have mentioned love. In this case 
 the longest Vv/'ay round would have been the 
 nearest way home. Free men are natural com- 
 rades, and just men love each other by grateful 
 impulse. For love is the most natural and spon- 
 taneous thing in the world to all higher natures, 
 and only injustice or unfitness prevents it, and 
 where unfitness or injustice confronts him one 
 cannot love, let him try as he may. 
 
 Love never comes by obeyed commands but by 
 fulfilled conditions. 
 
 HAT apartness be maintained we 
 have seen is necessary, and there- 
 fore is complete harmony in the 
 universe impossible, for harmony 
 means unity. But an approximate 
 harmony may be obtained where 
 the separates not only differ but agree to differ, 
 and give each other equal liberty to differ, rejoi- 
 cing in each other's difference. But even this is 
 
 144 
 
not possible, except in certain limited spheres, OF WAR 
 among those souls which have progressed enough AND PEACE 
 to feel the need of it and to be capable of it. The 
 universe is full of souls in all stages of growth, 
 and among all those who do not feel the need of 
 striking a balance of differences, conflict is in- 
 evitable. Therefore "War must alv/ays be in the 
 v/orld, and therefore War is justified and right. 
 
 War is one of those evils which, like all other 
 evils, given the necessity for apartness, which is 
 the parent of evil, are unavoidable and must be 
 reconciled to. Nov/ Evil, in the broad sense, is 
 simply that w^hich opposes us, it is resistance, 
 active or inert. It is the foil, the negative, the 
 opposite, the failure, the defeat. But because 
 apartness is necessary, and because opposition is 
 that by which the order of the universe stands, 
 evil is really good, and not to be finally condemned 
 but accepted. It is not a real thing, but only a 
 change of light, of position, of relation. It is only 
 the good in another form, and constantly chan- 
 ging places w^ith it in a v/eaving dance. Evil being 
 the opposition, or other leg, is alv/ays present, 
 and always w^ill be present in exactly equal pro- 
 portions with the good. It is altogether elusive 
 and incompressible, and like the magician's coin 
 disappears in one pocket only to be found in an- 
 
 ^45 
 
OF "WAR other. We shall never escape it except in one 
 AND PEACE vvay — by admitting and accepting it as good, by 
 being reconciled to it. But, and herein is a 
 deeper mystery, this acceptance is to be only 
 spiritual and inward ; outw^ardly we must resist 
 the evil in order to get its good. V^e must be 
 glad of our enemy and rejoice in him, but keep 
 him an enemy still. 
 
 Now most religionists have made the strange 
 mistake that evil is a real and constant thing, in- 
 hering in certain acts, and therefore have taught 
 much falsehood and w^rought much woe. Having 
 declared that God w^as altogether good, and evil 
 altogether evil, nothing remained for them, logi- 
 cally, but to deny that God was the author of evil 
 and to create another person who should father 
 it. Almost all religious errors and superstitions 
 have gro-wn out of this one mistake. And with 
 the outgrow^ing of this colossal blunder a w^on- 
 derful freedom and gladness must come to men. 
 And this is the glad-tiding of the Dawn. For the 
 Da-wn is but the light which gradually breaks in 
 upon us as this huge night of mistake is out-lived. 
 
 Evil is the opposition, but it is not finally evil 
 unless it succeed and defeat us, but, as we have 
 seen, there is no such thing as real defeat in the 
 universe. We talk of defeats and failures in 
 
 146 
 
these petty lives of ours, but in the long run, and OF WAR 
 the wide circle, all works for us, and pushes us AND PEACE 
 on to perfect victory ; — for w^e are of the One and 
 cannot fall out. 
 
 Now^ God is good, and the name means that, 
 and the Devil (or D-evil) is the evil, and the 
 name reveals it. But the evil is only a fiction, 
 like separateness, right and wrong, and all terms 
 that relate to apartness. And so the devil as a 
 personification of the evil is only a fiction and the 
 greatest of them (the "Father of Lies"); he is 
 simply all apartness, and the contentions caused 
 by apartness, poetically personified ; he is a fallen 
 angel, the enemy with which God contends, be- 
 cause he is the fulcrum on which God acts, he is 
 the apartness which renders Divine action pos- 
 sible. He is indispensable, and invaluable, yet a 
 fiction still — a mere working convenience. 
 
 The devil is evil, and Hell is the torment w^hich 
 is caused by faith in evil as a thing to turn back 
 to, a real and triumphant thing. For the good of 
 evil is only brought out through resistance ; those 
 -who believe it a good thing w^ithout resistance 
 go down into hell, and those who fight it, but as 
 pessimists, believing in its victorious power, taste 
 hell. There is a curious confusion of interpreta- 
 tion of the w^ord hell, variously as the grave and 
 
 147 
 
OF WAR 
 AND PEACE 
 
 as a place of torture. But hell is both. Evil is 
 negation, and if a real thing w^ould be a no-thing 
 (there seems no way to express it except by this 
 paradox) annihilation, utter death, and hell, the 
 place of evil, woufd be the grave of the utter 
 death. But there is no death, no failure, but 
 those ^who believe in them as real suffer fiery 
 torture, are gnawed by an undying worm, and 
 the place of evil is to them a place of torment. 
 
 As the very action of the universe depends 
 upon opposition it follows that all life is a struggle, 
 a battle, and this is observed as a fact. Darwin, 
 in his magnificent books, has shown that every- 
 where is a struggle for existence, a series of 
 battles, and that in each battle the " fittest," 
 (that is the best fighters under the conditions) 
 survive. Therefore does this universal battle 
 force men ever onward, by fear and hope of 
 escape, and courage, and lust of conquest, on the 
 path. And not only men, but all things, for the 
 war is for all, and the same lav/s act on all, and 
 the same end is before all, and, though armistice 
 and truce are frequent, peace is never declared. 
 
 War is the concentrated expression of evil, and 
 so we perceive again the paradox hold, and that 
 agency, which on the face of it is all bad, develop 
 all the virtues of character. Of course v/ar is 
 
 148 
 
here spoken of in the broad sense, but even war Qp -^^ a R 
 in the narrow and special sense of military AND PEACE 
 struggle between men produces the same result. 
 In itself the sum of all human crimes, it is still 
 obliged by its very necessities to contradict itself 
 and bear beautiful fruits of virtue. War between 
 men develops courage, the sublimest of virtues, 
 fortitude, quickness of resource, steadiness "of 
 hand, keenness of eye, exaltation of emotion, but, 
 strangely enough, the greatest force of its effect 
 is directly counter to itself. \¥ar is separation 
 carried to its bitterest extreme, yet the necessities 
 of war require in each army, considered by itself, 
 the intensest unity and most devoted and loyal 
 comradeship. The ideal army is one that thinks, 
 wills, and moves as one individual. In military 
 nations this esprit de corps becomes a sort of 
 religion, w^ith the flag for a god and the comrade 
 for the neighbor, the enemy for the devil. In no 
 other cooperation ever attempted between men 
 has the unity of military organization been real- 
 ized. The only thing approaching it has been in 
 the mental v^ar between certain religious sects. 
 In fine it appears that unity and separateness must 
 alw^ays balance like all other opposites ; and if a 
 great and dangerous breach of unity shows itself, 
 then is the quantity and quality of unity on each 
 
 149 
 
OF WAR side of the great separation increased, while if, 
 AND PEACE on the contrary, the breach heals and peace is 
 declared, then the war is diffused among the dis- 
 persed warriors of each army, before so united, 
 and goes on in a smoldering form in quarrels 
 and separations between erstwhile comrades. 
 
 Now it is a la^v of extremes that they develop 
 and merge into their opposites by natural neces- 
 sity. So war carried to extreme develops peace. 
 Not only is the peace between comrades in arms 
 greater than betw^een citizens, but everything else 
 about war tends to the same result. Conquest 
 carried to its ultimate, the conquest of the world, 
 necessarily -sA^ould end war. So does armed re- 
 sistance to the conqueror, carried to its ultimate. 
 And it has long been seen that perfection in mili- 
 tary weapons must end the use of them, for an 
 irresistible w^eapon could not and would not be 
 resisted. 
 
 And so war, we see, is ever obliged to deny 
 itself and declare for peace ; but peace is no better 
 off, for it is in perpetual opposition to war, and 
 opposition itself is war, and to prevail it must 
 contend and conquer, therefore the acquisition 
 and action of peace is war in another form. It is 
 our old lesson of the hard and the soft, over 
 again, and only another form of it. „ War is hard, 
 
 150 
 
and peace soft, and back and forth, in weaving Qp ta/a r 
 dance and shifting masque, these characters go, AND PEACE 
 changing names and places every moment, yet 
 always carrying on the same old play in two 
 equal acts, 
 
 " Peace, peace, w^hen there is no peace," and 
 yet always as much of it as of -war. 
 
 " I came not to send peace, but a sword," said 
 Jesus, and therein expressed the truth that the 
 most peaceful doctrine must contend for its ex- 
 istence, and will ensure war to its advocates 
 equally with the most ferocious. 
 
 We tell men to be calm when annoyed, and we 
 do well, for it is distressful and undignified to see 
 a strong man contend with pigmies, yet the battle 
 ■which the superior man suppresses on the sur- 
 face, when he is patient and serene under tor- 
 ment, is only driven w^ithin and translated to 
 another plane. Instead of irritably contending 
 w^ith his trials, he now battles w^ith himself and 
 his desire to groan and reproach. Always, and in 
 everything, in some form, open or concealed, 
 physical, mental, or spiritual, war and peace 
 must be equally vindicated. And the form of 
 our battle reveals the height of our growth ; 
 the low^er man fights brutally and the higher 
 man spiritually, but neither can escape the is- 
 
 151 
 
OF WAR ^^^' ^^^ each must use the weapon fitted to his 
 
 AND PEACE ^^^^' .... . ^. 
 
 Let not the friend of peace be discouraged. 
 
 The fact that he loves peace shows that he is 
 becoming ready to live it and fight for it. Let 
 him join the army of peace and stand valiantly to 
 his guns. He is right and will prevail in the 
 battle he seeks. But let him not despise his 
 enemy, but love him, for he also is right, and cer- 
 tain of his victory, in his own time and place. 
 
 For there are two pillars on which the world 
 stands, and the name of one is War and the name 
 of the other Peace. 
 
 And the practical ethic of all this — how shall 
 we apply to human life to-day ? The first obvi- 
 ous fact is that it reproves those who confidently 
 look and build for millennial peace to embrace all 
 men and all living creatures. Absolute peace is 
 absolute pause and inaction, and is impossible 
 while the universe remains. And even that lim- 
 ited and practicable peace which means equal 
 liberty to grow and be, agreement in difference, is 
 only possible w^here the parties to it have grov^n 
 sufficiently to comprehend its need, its nature, 
 and conditions. 
 
 To preach peace to every creature is to preach 
 revolution against Nature — absolute folly and 
 
 152 
 
\vasted force. Will the orbits of the world change qF W^AR 
 if you tell them ? Will the weasels and the night- AND PEACE 
 ingales live in a happy family because of Tol- 
 stoi? No more will undeveloped man give up 
 might as his law of right. Yet with him preach- 
 ing is not idle, for it is one of the agents of his 
 grow^th, yet he must have his time to grow 
 though it be ten thousand years. And it is v/ell 
 for him, -when he aggresses, that force should 
 defend against his force, and so force neutralize 
 itself. 
 
 And peace to the animals ? The Buddhist can 
 easily enough not kill the tiger, but the tiger 'will 
 none the less kill him and eat him, too. The 
 tender-hearted farmer may keep gun and ferret 
 and snare from his rabbits, and they will reward 
 him by increasing and multiplying and devouring 
 his crop to the stubble. You may keep cat and 
 trap away from your mice, but they will enter 
 into no compact to respect your property in fur- 
 niture, dress, and provisions. And what would 
 it profit the oxen and sheep if the tribes of men 
 did not enslave them, or rob them, or eat them, 
 but simply fenced them off the earth ? No, it is 
 impossible ! War betw^een man and the brutes 
 must go on. 
 
 And equally impracticable are the .schemes of 
 
 153 
 
OF WAR *h°se dreamers Vvho suppose that by some grand 
 AND PEACE stroke of legerdem.ain — all government, no gov- 
 ernment, expropriation, fiat-money, universal love, 
 or what not, they could secure absolute peace 
 and happiness to all men. Their schemes are 
 reasonable and sound enough, and any one of 
 them V70uld probably do the work v/ere the neces- 
 sary foundation beneath it — and this is the very 
 thing these dreamers ignore. They must have 
 universal harmony and cooperation before any 
 one of these schemes can be universally practi- 
 cable, and given that the scheme itself has little 
 significance. 
 
 Shall we then pessimistically lose hope ? Not 
 at all, we must simply be reasonable and build on 
 sure foundations of eternal nature. The first 
 essential of practical right we found was the 
 recognition of our unity with every man and yet 
 of his separateness — a glad, just recognition of 
 his equal liberty. Nov^ just so many individuals 
 as can understand this truth and mutually apply 
 it can associate together and live harmoniously 
 one V7ith another in sympathetic peace — and no 
 more. The others must and will go on fighting 
 till hard knocks teach them to respect and help 
 each other. 
 
 And these little Utopian bands, at harmony at 
 
 154 
 
home, will have to stand shoulder to shoulder in 
 a foreign war -with the tyranny, aggression, and 
 unrest around them. And -when at last they pre- 
 vail, as they surely will, and all men grow into 
 like harmony one with another, then 'will it be 
 found that war has taken other forms — indus- 
 trial campaigns of conquest over lower nature, 
 and spiritual battles, "within, now undreamed of. 
 UT one thing needs restatement 
 explanatory. While opposites are 
 coequal in an acting universe their 
 equality breaks do-wn at just one 
 point — its final reality. So soon 
 as the need for action disappears 
 it is seen that the Opposite is a vv'orking fiction, 
 a "man of straw," introduced "for the sake of 
 the argument." Separateness, duality, hate, evil, 
 war, these are unreal, for the Real is One, the 
 Good, Peace, the Everlasting All. And in that 
 thought there is fixity and rest. 
 
 I HE recognition of opposites in 
 their just balance and proportion, 
 in reconciliation and unity, is the 
 ethic of the Dawn-Thinker. For 
 opposites are in everything and 
 equally, but in the bits and frag- 
 ments of life w^hich w^e usually view they are 
 
 155 
 
 OF WAR 
 AND PEACE 
 
 REALITY 
 
 NATURAL 
 
 AND 
 
 ARTIFICIAL 
 
NATURAL 
 
 AND 
 
 ARTIFICIAL 
 
 often not equal, but in varying proportions. This 
 is because the sections we take and submit to the 
 lens are arbitrary, and divorced from that which 
 finishes and balances. 
 
 If we take a section of a fly and put it under a 
 microscope we wonderfully improve our vision 
 of the part, but unless we correct that observa- 
 tion by the V7ider, if less detailed, view by the 
 naked eye of the entire insect, we shall have the 
 most inaccurate idea of its proportions and co- 
 ordination of parts. And we shall be utterly 
 wrong if we take the edges of the microscopic 
 field for a natural limit. 
 
 So it is in philosophy. Opposites balance and 
 justify, but not necessarily in a day's v/ork, a 
 man's life, a city's affairs. It is in the whole 
 cycle and progression of the soul through a linked 
 chain of lives, from the out-go from the Center to 
 the in-go to Nirvana, that they are in proportion ; 
 it is in the rhythm and symphony of the universe 
 that they balance. 
 
 The natural is that v^^hich grows, and which 
 must be considered, to be understood, in all 
 its fullness of grov/th ; the arbitrary is that which 
 we cut to suit ourselves from the natural, and we 
 must not complain that that w^hich we, imperfect, 
 have made is itself imperfect. 
 
 156 
 
Nothing can be perfect till completed, and to 
 complete anything takes everything. 
 
 It is in the just recognition of opposites then, 
 their value and import, their proportionate pres- 
 ence or absence, and in ideally supplying the miss- 
 ing parts by spiritual insight and foresight, that 
 the soul of man finds its noblest, divinest, happi- 
 est functions, and foretastes the joys which are 
 not yet. This is the building of the Ideal and the 
 living of the Righteous Life ; this is the true 
 Morality and Justice in theory and practice ; and 
 no one can live thus and not find himself ever 
 growing larger, kinder, more tolerant, reconciled, 
 free, and magnanimous. He has the Overlook, 
 and lives in the Lifted Land. 
 
 OTHING, perhaps, more vividly 
 in history illustrates the law of 
 opposites, and how extremes pro- 
 duce each other, than the spiritual 
 fruition of various ages and times 
 in their Messiah-men. Thus 
 from the Hindoos, fixed in caste, establishing the 
 relative inferiority and superiority of men as in 
 grooves of adamant, came Buddha, indifferent to 
 caste, with his gospel of individuality, equality, 
 and universal love. From the Greeks, who above 
 
 all men loved this earth-life and the sensuous 
 
 157 
 
 NATURAL 
 
 AND 
 
 ARTIFICIAL 
 
 THE LAW 
 OF OPPO- 
 SITES 
 
 PROVED IN 
 MESSIAH- 
 MEN 
 
THE LAW 
 OF OPPO- 
 SITES 
 PROVED IN 
 MESSIAH- 
 MEN 
 
 OF CON- 
 SCIENCE 
 AND EVIL 
 
 joy of it, came Socrates who above all men af- 
 firmed the soul. From the narrov</, clannish, 
 grasping, revengeful Jews came Jesus the com- 
 munist, the universal brother, the all-forgiver. 
 From the idolatrous, polytheistic tribes of Arabia 
 came Mohammed, the idol-breaker, the affirmer 
 above all others of a pure Monotheism. From 
 the despotic, ferocious Russians came Tolstoi', 
 the non-resistant, and Krapotkin who abdicated 
 a princedom for love of the people. Lastly from 
 the Yankees, the most calculating, materialistic, 
 business-bound of all, come the Transcendental- 
 ists, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, men of pure 
 spirit, to w^hom all existence is a poem of the 
 Divine. 
 
 Always v^^'hen the time grows rotten the Savior 
 appears, and no extreme is left without its anti- 
 dote ; yea, it produces its antidote. 
 
 |ONSCIENCE is the voice of prog- 
 ress, the impulse of spring, the 
 sap in the tree. It is the main- 
 spring of growth in the human 
 soul. And the evil thing against 
 which it utters is that which is 
 against our growth and progress, the thing we 
 have outgrown, or the thing given us to strive 
 against. Seldom is it when two armies come 
 
 158 
 
together that each is not inspired by a conscien- 
 tious conviction of a just and righteous cause, 
 and that devout leaders on each side lift not up 
 holy hands, before the battle, imploring confi- 
 dently the Divine aid. And truly God is with 
 each, and each does his work. Yet is that prayer 
 all unnecessary, for the true battle ^jvas fought 
 from the beginning of eternity, and this is only 
 the visible and material explanation of it — a mov- 
 ing picture of the real thing. 
 
 For one view of right inspires one man to one 
 act and another view of right inspires his antago- 
 nist to resist — "Loyalty to the King," on one 
 hand, and "Liberty or Death" on the other — 
 and so the battle of the universe, with its oppo- 
 sites and contradictions, goes bravely on. For 
 no more than cocks in a main do the antagonists 
 work their own w^ills, or fight their own fight. 
 Truly they act, yet are they automatons ; truly 
 they choose, yet is their choice forechosen. 
 
 And so there is no evil except as a relative, 
 mutable thing — a chameleon of change. Evil is 
 not absolute, inhering in one act, but according to 
 circumstances there or absent. 
 
 Evil overturned reads tt've^ What lesson is 
 here ? May this not be a teaching that the true 
 evil is where life is reversed, growth set back, 
 
 159 
 
 OF CON- 
 SCIENCE 
 AND EVIL 
 
OF CON- 
 SCIENCE 
 AND EVIL 
 
 progress aborted ? Truly when the inner voice 
 bids us to rest we are justified to take repose ; 
 there is a time to sleep, a time to loaf, a time for 
 contentment, a time for serene observation and 
 meditation, as well as for labor and for strife ; 
 but when the bugle blows, then the soldier who 
 takes not his place in the ranks is a rebel and 
 a deserter. But the discipline is perfect, the 
 pressure is sufficient, and whether he stands, or 
 lies dow^n, strikes on or runs back, yet he is fully 
 utilized and his rebellion made to serve as per- 
 fectly as his obedience. But the true virtue is to 
 be ardently convinced of right and then strike. 
 
 " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with 
 thy might ! " 
 
 For all the currents of the universe, all the 
 stars in their courses, all the tides of human sym- 
 pathy are inevitably -with the man of force and 
 conviction, and fight w^e him never so fiercely, 
 nathless w^e love the bold and earnest enemy. 
 
 The weakling, the coward, the despairful, the 
 irresolute, the pessimist, he is the w^orld's traitor. 
 For weakness is the sin. 
 
 1 60 
 
T is in my thought that there are 
 two heredities — the one of the 
 ^Xi/' RTWll body the other of the soul. Men 
 ^~^"^ p^vl have thought much of the first, but 
 about the second have deemed only 
 that it probably was inseparable 
 from the first. Pretty clearly is it established 
 that by breeding in certain well-known grooves 
 physical peculiarities of form, size, color, etc, can 
 be quite regularly and certainly transmitted. But 
 character seems to follow^ no such lines. Twins 
 may be so much alike as not to be separable by 
 the eye, yet their mental traits may be most dif- 
 ferent, though their physical heredity must have 
 been the same. Animals reared from the same 
 litter differ widely in temper and traits — the 
 one gentle, the other fierce ; the first, perhaps, 
 treacherous, the second trustful, and so on. 
 Physiognomy has always been studied as an 
 index of the soul, yet is it an index unreliable. 
 How frequently the beautiful face goes with a bad 
 heart ! — and Socrates was ugly, and Demos- 
 thenes had impeded speech. 
 
 Now I suppose, following the Dawn-Thought, 
 that the soul has to know all things and receive 
 all experiences, therefore does not necessarily 
 
 HEREDITY 
 
 follow the 
 
 systematic course 
 
 of the body but 
 
HEREDITY often goes cross-lots, so to speak. If this were 
 not so the extermination of a family would be the 
 extermination of its souls, because the physical 
 heredity was terminated. The soul is freer than 
 the body, and follows not its bounded course, 
 yet has imperative attractions of its ow^n w^hich 
 determine its conscious or unconscious choice. 
 When a child is born the body comes from the 
 parents, but the soul which enters may have 
 previously been in a body in another land, of 
 another race, experiencing opposite conditions. 
 The soul of the child of an American may have 
 been, last life, a Jew and in the life before an 
 Ethiopian. The present tyrant may have been 
 a slave, and the present saint may have passed 
 from previous life via the gallows. Consider 
 this and it explains much. The body, if it agrees 
 with its tenant, forms a beautiful servant, but if 
 soul and body do not agree, then each modifies 
 the other in the struggle and compromise. The 
 form of the body does certainly modify the ex- 
 pression of the soul, hence the truth of physiog- 
 nomy, but the soul, with equal certainty, moulds, 
 in time, the physical features to its own pattern. 
 Hence however much at first the body may belie 
 the soul, at last, if the life be sufficiently long, it 
 tells the approximate truth, and when the soul 
 
 162 
 
finally leaves its influence will be found to have HEREDITY 
 changed its dv/elling for better or worse, while its 
 ow^n experiences received there, and because of 
 it, have transformed it eternally. 
 
 How^ often do w^e see in women ascetic souls 
 struggling with voluptuous bodies, or the reverse ; 
 and, in men, mighty ones w-ho are cow^ards, and 
 puny ones who beard lions. Honest faces deceive 
 us, firm faces grow lax, and weak faces wax 
 .earnest and sincere. 
 
 Much of personality is currently explained by 
 derivation from ancestors, but nothing in current 
 theories can tell me why your great-grandfather, 
 unlike you, has reappeared in your son. But 
 possibly he has reappeared in fact. Ancestors 
 might naturally and easily be attracted to reap- 
 pear in their posteritj'-. 
 
 This theory, too, could offer an explanation of 
 that wonderful fact that men of genius so often 
 contradict the genius of their nation. Who could 
 have predicted, following usual theories of hered- 
 ity, a Marcus Aurelius among the Romans, a 
 Jesus among the Jews, an Emerson, a Thoreau 
 in New England ? 
 
 What strange, far birds of passage are these ? 
 
 When a Buddha appears, men hold him such 
 a marvel they fable an immaculate conception ? 
 
 163 
 
ADUMBRA- 
 TIONS 
 
 F the Dawn-Thought is the right 
 thought then are all the religions 
 ^\\[/ 5f^^' o^ the world, and all strongly held 
 '^ KxjI beliefs, but adumbrations, or misty- 
 
 shapes, of truth — in each is a 
 changeful core of truth wrapped 
 about and modified to the eye by fogs and decep- 
 tive outlines of mistake, and moving light and 
 shade. As we gro-w taller, as our eyes grow 
 stronger, and our judgment improves, we shall 
 be less and less deceived, shall perceive the 
 center nearer and larger, but we shall always 
 be somewhat mistaken, even until Attainment. 
 All this should never be forgotten in our estimate 
 of any faith — acceptance and scepticism should 
 alw^ays go hand in hand as cooperating friends. 
 Therefore there is constant growth and change 
 in religion as in all else — or rather in the normal 
 growth and evolution of humanity the same reli- 
 gion serves different men differently. To those 
 not yet to it, it is mysterious, attractive, or repel- 
 lent ; to those abreast of it it is all truth ; but 
 those who are past it can criticise it wisely, ac- 
 cording to their distance, and modify it to their 
 need, add to it their new truths, and finally out- 
 grow it altogether and into something appar- 
 ently new yet feeding on the dead truths of the 
 
 164 
 
old. For continuity is never really broken in any . t^tt^^t^^ ^ 
 
 J r ,/ , . , ,. . / ADUMBRA- 
 
 thing, and, after all, there is only one religion m fTOTsr*^ 
 
 the whole world. 
 
 Apply these views to the two great vital and 
 growing religions of the present — Mohammedan- 
 ism and Christianity : To the pagans, among 
 whom it grows, Islam carries the great inspira- 
 tional and unifying thought that God is One and 
 there is but one. In its fatalism, too, it gives 
 them the Reconciliation, which is the thought 
 that in some form or other does most to give 
 men peace. Add to this the great practical virtue 
 of temperance, which Islam teaches with more 
 force than any other creed, and which is pecu- 
 liarly needed by the sensual savage, and we see 
 its value as a purifier of paganism, and that no 
 other religion excels it in the strength and sub- 
 limity of its central truths. 
 
 Logically the religion of Christ should not be a 
 gospel at all, but a sad tiding ; for, logically, it is 
 founded on the doctrine that men can be utterly 
 damned and spiritually die, and only those Vv/'ho 
 believe rightly can be saved. But practically it 
 is a religion of joy, simply because it is human 
 nature, after all, to look on the bright side for 
 self and to select that which feeds. Damnation 
 is accepted as a dogma, yet, after all, the innate 
 
 165 
 
ADUMBRA- courage and hope of the healthy nature vindicates 
 TIONS itself, and it is tacitly accepted that " as for me 
 and my house" v/e are exempt. That danger 
 ignored the rest is easy. And in Christianity 
 there are tvi^'O grand central doctrines for which, 
 through all its changes, it stands — Divine Sym- 
 pathy and Human Solidarity — God cares and all 
 men are brothers. And this is good news, indeed. 
 And then, in all ages and places, good people are 
 better than their creeds, because the human soul 
 grow^s and advances while the creed stands still ; 
 and thus Christianity teaches and is taught, gives 
 and receives, advances, and is modified and 
 added to. 
 
 The great doctrines of Christianity, as of all 
 religions, are adumbrations of great truths, where- 
 fore their hold on the people, v^ho seldom or 
 never hold them exactly as the theologians formu- 
 late them, but, as it were, centrally, in firm faith 
 but with dim insight. Thus held they are the 
 bread of life. But as soon as there is insistence 
 on details of definition the bread becomes a stone. 
 Thus of salvation by faith. Let us look at it 
 broadly and centrally. As soon as a man can lay 
 hold on the Great Life, in confident trust, he is 
 delivered at once from fear, and the currents of 
 that life fiov/ through him, creating spiritual" and 
 
 i66 
 
physical health. He is reconciled, happy, and 
 his happiness and peace are contagious, benefit- 
 ing all. 
 
 He is saved from fear, disease, and sin, not 
 altogether, but in exact proportion to his develop- 
 ment, and of his pov/er to believe and receive, to 
 see and hold. In other w^ords, those who believe 
 receive into themselves and their consciousness 
 the Everlasting Life, 
 
 Those v^ho, in the rhythm of life, reach tempo- 
 rarily those ebbs of doubt and denial w^hich every 
 growing soul must fall into before the next on- 
 w^ard wave-lift feel " lost," " damned," or con- 
 demned. They have lost their sense of unity and 
 of relation to the Great Life, feel strangely apart, 
 and that the universe is against them. Hence, 
 centrally and broadly, the doctrine of damnation 
 by doubt is true. But ultimately every doubter 
 is saved by a greater influx of life v/ith its accom- 
 panying consciousness or faith. His loneliness 
 and soul-pain have made him enlarge himself to 
 receive more, and he enters on a new stage of 
 spiritual life. Note that it is not evil v/orks 
 which bring the feeling of pessimism and separa- 
 tion (of being "lost") but lack of faith in and 
 assurance of life and final good. Evil men are 
 usually believers, and therefore not despairfully 
 
 167 
 
 ADUMBRA- 
 TIONS 
 
ADUMBRA- 
 TIONS 
 
 INFINITY 
 
 unhappy, but doubters are usually good men, but 
 pessimistic. Therefore the truth of the saying 
 that salvation is by faith, not works. 
 
 And so may the central truths in all doctrines 
 be found and show^n. 
 
 jHE Divine Infinity has been a puz- 
 zle to the doctors, because they 
 have made God only a part. God, 
 they said, was Infinite Love, or 
 Infinite Pov^^er, or Infinite Wis- 
 dom, or all these. But infinity is 
 that which has no limit. If power and wisdom 
 are different and distinct things from love, then 
 God cannot be any one of these things in an in- 
 finite degree, because the moment love touched 
 the boundary of v/isdom, or of power, it would 
 become limited and finite. The same difficulty 
 in a still greater degree attends the discovery of 
 opposites. If there be any hate in the universe, 
 anywhere, that hate necessarily limJts the love in 
 the universe, and prevents its being infinite ; and, 
 in the same way, any w^eakness neutralizes in- 
 finite power, and any ignorance destroys the 
 infinity of w^isdom. 
 
 Therefore the Divine cannot be Infinite Love, 
 or Power, or Wisdom, because each of these is 
 an attribute, a part, and no part can be infinite. 
 
 1 68 
 
This brings us to the true Infinity, reveals INFINITY 
 the true doctrine, God is not an infinite part, 
 he is the Infinite All, because only all can be 
 infinite. He includes love and hate, virtue and 
 sin, strength and weakness, ignorance and knowl- 
 edge — everything. He is One, the Only One, 
 the Infinite. 
 
 Yet, because there is, after all, no real hate, 
 sin, weakness, or ignorance, in all the universe, 
 all these being but apparent or -working fictions ; 
 and because the Divine feelings and motives are 
 fundamentally and necessarily (because Deity 
 includes ail and cannot hate himself) kind, health- 
 ful, and life-giving ; and because there are no real 
 divisions or separations between the so-called 
 attributes of Deity, all these being one, and there- 
 fore it makes no difference whether we say love, 
 or power, or wisdom, all these being ultimately 
 one and the same — it follows that it is, after all, 
 in the ultimate or largest sense, perfectly correct 
 to speak of God as Infinite Love, or Infinite 
 Wisdom, or Infinite-anything-else, because, ulti- 
 mately, in him there are no partitions and the 
 name makes no difference but must apply to all. 
 
 And so, finally, there is always a largest sense 
 in which every illogical thing becomes logical, 
 and every contradiction true. 
 
 i6g 
 
FINER tJ ^^jJT^'-dpST appears, therefore, that life is a 
 FORCES 3^7 r^Cn furnace in which everything is be- 
 V\*/^ §w(i ^^S refined. Starting in the gross- 
 ■^^ ^■^\/l'i est its action is always toward 
 the finer, till a consummation or 
 "bloom" has been obtained, and 
 then, falling back for a space and resting, as it 
 were, it goes on again and farther than before ; 
 and so on forever, till Nirvana. Every atom, 
 every molecule, mineral, organism, — vegetable, 
 animal, or human — species, race, theory, belief, 
 is pushing on by means direct or indirect, appar- 
 ently alone or manifestly v/ith and by others, 
 helped by help and helped by hate, toward more 
 beautiful attainment. Life is a great battle, force 
 rules all, and in every contest strength prevails. 
 This is because Force is One, and the One is 
 Force, and therefore must prevail, for w^eak- 
 ness is always wrong (really non-existent) in the 
 greater sense, though right in the lesser sense 
 because necessary. But as opposed to force 
 w^eakness is in the wrong and always has to give 
 way. Yet as things tend always to produce their 
 opposites so the defeated weak thing evolves a 
 new strength finer than that which defeated it, 
 and becomes, in turn, conqueror. And so the 
 game goes on ; and v^rith every step in the play 
 
 170 
 
finer forces come into the contest, and the players FINER 
 rise higher, and the Divine stands more revealed. FORCES 
 The old forces remain, but the new and finer 
 ones subdue and include them. There is no go- 
 ing back, when a new force arrives it holds its 
 own and grow^s into dominion. It is really not a 
 new force (because Force is one) but a newly 
 revealed part of the old — a finer, more subtile 
 side perceived by any soul as it grows in con- 
 sciousness and attainment. Therefore it is al- 
 ways stronger, because it always has the strength 
 and weight of the more — it is always plus. The 
 strong, the conquerors, do not find new forces 
 because they are content with that which has 
 given them victory, but the vanquished seek them 
 and open themselves to receive them, and so 
 discover. Therefore there is great profit in de- 
 feat, and out of ignorance, mistake, weakness, 
 sickness, deformity, come w^onderful fruits for the 
 w^orld's feast. 
 
 Because man was w^eaker than the beasts 
 around him, poorer in teeth and nails, he took to 
 his brains, and their finer force gave him do- 
 minion over all fangs and pav7S and horns. And 
 when a w^eak or sick man contended w^ith a 
 strong, w^ell one, he too fell back on finer force, 
 and by wile or deception, or trap, or machine, or 
 
 171 
 
FINER eloquence, or argument, saved himself alive, and 
 FORCES set aside or defeated the purpose of his foe. 
 
 And little by little the finer forces prove them- 
 selves the greater ; and men see that indirection 
 is stronger than directness, attraction is stronger 
 than repulsion, love than fear, kindness than 
 cruelty, justice than lust, force than matter. It 
 will yet be seen that woman is stronger than man, 
 and the soft things shall prevail over the hard. 
 
 There is then profit in defeat, strength in v/eak- 
 ness, health in sickness, virtue in sin ; but mainly 
 only to those who do not acquiesce in them, but 
 ■who resist them to the attainment of their oppo- 
 sites — who never submit or despair. 
 
 And the lesson to hold is that everything in the 
 universe is not here by accident, or alien, but is a 
 legitimate part, is in its place, doing its work, has 
 indispensable value, and is to be accepted and rec- 
 onciled to, even if necessarily and properly resisted. 
 THE TRUE \^^f^yj^''^'<fS^ ^ mystical symbol is and has been 
 CROSS ImT ]r?^ \ ^ ^n so universal and well know^n as 
 
 the cross. The most ancient sym- 
 bolists used it, it is ^everywhere 
 to-day. And why? Because 
 everywhere, for all men, w^as, is, 
 and shall be, throughout the world, that great 
 mystery the Contradiction, the Opposition, the 
 
 172 
 
Antagonism, the crossing of good by evil, joy by 
 pain, health by sickness, virtue by vice, day by 
 night, heat by cold, birth by burial, life by death, 
 male by female, the soft by the hard. This is the 
 True Cross of universal experience, and all men 
 mystically feel the force of the symbol. The 
 world's saviors are broken on it, yet uplifted by 
 it. On it -we all are crucified, yet through it all 
 are saved. 
 
 The two bars typify the two parts of the Con- 
 tradiction, their position how they mutually cross 
 yet support each other, their touch the Recon- 
 ciliation, their intersection the Center ; include 
 the four equal ends in a circle, and you typify the 
 Inclusive, the Perfect, the All. 
 
 HE normal and healthy mind is 
 superior, alw^ays above, judicial. 
 It has no prejudices, either for or 
 against, and is carried away by no 
 irresistible predilection, dislike, or 
 despair, know^ing perfection im- 
 possible in the partial things about it, it looks 
 confidently and without surprise, or overmuch 
 condemnation, for the inevitable and certain weak- 
 nesses. Yet this attitude is far enough from bit- 
 ter censorious suspicion — is rather that of the 
 kind physician ^vho know^s the oftenness of dis- 
 
 173 
 
 THE TRUE 
 CROSS 
 
 OF PESSIM- 
 ISM, THE 
 INFIDEL, 
 AND THE 
 BELIEVER 
 
OF PESSIM- 
 ISM, THE 
 INFIDEL, 
 AND THE 
 BELIEVER 
 
 ease and does not expect to find the perfectly 
 well man. Yet the healthy mind has no pessim- 
 ism, and you may know it by this sign. Deep 
 do'wn in every sane and healthy soul is an intui- 
 tive conviction and assurance, having very little 
 reference to reason or external evidence, that at 
 last the good and the glad are strongest and will 
 prevail. This is Faith, and is the certain mark 
 of the Believer. The believer may pretend to be 
 a cynic, may call himself atheist, infidel, or what 
 not, but at bottom he feels there is a povver not 
 himself (yet to which he is related) which makes 
 for righteousness, justice, betterment, and this 
 secret consciousness is his consolation and keeps 
 the springs of his life sweet. 
 
 Pessimism is the true infidelity : and he is the 
 Infidel w^ho believes that at last all the promises 
 of life are a lie, that existence is a cunning trap, 
 baited by Supreme Malice or unconscious fate, 
 and that deceit, selfish sport, or blind death, lie 
 at the center of the Mystery. 
 
 For the first man life is ever a great song full 
 of stirring words, but to the second man all is 
 mockery, a worm is in every bud, and a drop of 
 gall at the bottom of every cup. 
 
 It matters not about words. The first man 
 may tell you that he believes not in God, but that 
 
 174 
 
he trusts in the universe, or life, or evolution, or 
 lav\^, or any other preferred name — never mind, 
 do not dispute v/ith him, he is right, it is the 
 same. 
 
 And the second may be gay, and hide his de- 
 spair under intoxications, hollow jests, soul-sick 
 laughter, but finally his text is that of Job's wife, 
 " Curse God and die," and the goal of all his 
 roads is suicide. To him life show^s an insanity, 
 and death a blank. 
 
 To such men the Dawn-Thought comes as a 
 gospel ; to the man of faith it is a reason, to the 
 unbeliever a hope. 
 
 HROUGHOUT the universe runs 
 the principle of sex, in every- 
 thing, and to be continually reck- 
 oned w^ith. And the practical 
 application of it in human affairs 
 is that in every relation, not alone 
 in building of homes and building of children, the 
 man and the v/oman should act and react, plan 
 and place, consult, work, love, and suffer together. 
 A man should be ashamed to do anything (as one 
 who had neglected to use proper means) without 
 the advice and help of a woman. Wherever 
 either sex acts entirely alone, there is waste of 
 life and no begetting, and w^herever there is par- 
 
 I7S 
 
 OF PESSIM- 
 ISM, THE 
 INFIDEL, 
 AND THE 
 BELIEVER 
 
 SEX 
 
SEX 
 
 MODESTY 
 
 tially separate action, there, by so much, is de- 
 formed offspring and stunted product. It requires 
 the free, glad sympathetic cooperation of two, 
 a male and a female, to give birth and happy 
 growth to any beautiful child of brain or body. 
 The sexes are natural helpmeets and correlatives 
 of each other, and where they are free to follow 
 their natures, not controlling but assisting each 
 other, life is healthful and sw^eet in blossom and 
 ripe in fruit. It is again the doctrine of opposites 
 and complements, of the hard and the soft, of 
 that dualism working out unity which expresses 
 existence. 
 
 EX and religion are near akin, be- 
 cause both take hold on the roots 
 of being and flow in the currents 
 of life and love. And in all the 
 higher natures a religious feeling 
 grows around everything of sex 
 and love, a sense of sacredness. Poetry and the 
 most exalted ideals spring up spontaneously in 
 this congenial climate, and the deeper the love, 
 and the more refined and noble the character, the 
 surer do we see the instinct appear to devote 
 the functions of sex only to the highest offices, to 
 invest all with a religious consecration and apart- 
 ness from possible pollution, or cheap and com- 
 
 176 
 
mon, unreverential regard. This is peculiarly MODESTY 
 true of woman, and increases ever with her spir- 
 itual uplift, and is the certain gage of it. To the 
 truest woman her sex is the " holy of holies," 
 the temple of her peculiar religion, in w^hich only 
 her lover is her fellow worshiper, and which 
 she would protect from the profane eye and hand 
 with her life. And this is "modesty," and the 
 origin of it. While a woman retains this she 
 is at peace with herself, but this lost she falls 
 into moral chaos. Men, who are always behind 
 w^omen in the evolution of love, may not know 
 what has happened her, but they know she has 
 ceased to be " w^omanly," and no longer beckons 
 them upward or leads them in lines of light. And 
 men, as they advance in evolution (because evo- 
 lution is toward the finer forces) become ever 
 more -woman-like themselves, and, as they grow 
 gentler, more parental, compassionate, they also 
 surely grow more modest and sensitive to the 
 finer instincts and motions of sex. As the life is 
 so are the ideals of sex, and all that a man is will 
 he tell in his love. 
 
 And purity is the desire to consecrate sex only 
 to the highest ideals of love. 
 
 But all this refers not so much to externals as 
 to internals, not so much to finical physical con- 
 177 
 
MODESTY cealment as to that aura and atmosphere of native 
 and inviolable purity which surrounds the high- 
 est souls like an ether too rarefied for grosser 
 lungs to breathe. 
 
 The fact that the location of modesty is differ- 
 ently and, as it were, arbitrarily placed by differ- 
 ent individuals and races, argues nothing against 
 its essentiality ; for its essential sign and charac- 
 teristic is the desire to keep the best prized and 
 most precious things in love sacredly reserved 
 for the ones most w^orthy and beloved. 
 
 The instinct that sex is sacred has given birth 
 to sex-religions, and asceticism is but the other 
 pole and extreme of sex-religion — the desire to 
 keep sex pure become morbid, and leading finally 
 to the extravagance that all use, joy, satisfaction 
 in, or discovery of sex, or confession of desire, 
 or even mention of the matter, is vile and obscene. 
 
 This is disease, not purity. 
 
 But, normally, sex is spiritually the fountain, 
 physically the garden of life ; the visible finger of 
 the Creator ; pure as the dearest flov/ers, w^or- 
 shipful as the most sacred things. 
 
 Search yourself; if sex is to you unbeautiful, a 
 shameful thing, you are not pure. 
 
 178 
 
OVE is need and the satisfaction 
 of need, but selfish love is never 
 satisfactory, because the highest 
 satisfactions of love come only- 
 through the contradiction of sac- 
 rifice. The yearning of true love 
 •is to give, and the more it gives the more self- 
 joy it feels. Sacrifice is the yielding of a precious 
 thing that a more precious thing may come, as in 
 olden days men offered the firstlings of their 
 flocks to obtain favors from the gods. Enlight- 
 ened egoism must work out as altruism and 
 again, because finally v/e are all one, altruism is 
 fundamentally egoistic. 
 
 Love between man and woman, then, never 
 attains its deepest satisfactions and contents till 
 it is " for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer," 
 but there is a perilous point here. Sacrifice and 
 submission to the desires of the loved one may 
 itself be a selfishness and weakness, bearing evil 
 results for all. Woman, being peculiarly the 
 lover, is peculiarly prone to sacrifice, and her 
 weakness and her besetting sin lie here as well 
 as her strength. Every virtue is potentially a 
 vice, a crime even, and the greater the virtue the 
 greater the peril from its perversion. Tempted 
 by her own nature to sacrifice all to the man she 
 179 
 
 LOVE, SAC- 
 RIFICE, PA- 
 RENTHOOD 
 
LOVE, SAC- 
 RIFICE, PA- 
 RENTHOOD 
 
 loves, -woman is further pressed to do evil by 
 law, and a one-sided code, which tell her that she 
 must and should submit to her husband's desires. 
 But w^oman is above all the mother. Her first 
 duty, after the keeping of her self-respect, is to 
 her child. And she stands on the divine and 
 inner side of life, beckoning man toward the 
 Center, and should not abdicate her spiritual 
 leadership. Motherhood is her most sacred func- 
 tion ; she is not only mother to her child but to 
 the whole human race. This is the divine law in 
 her which human laws should not outrage. Her 
 body is her temple, she is sole priestess there, by 
 divine right, and it is her place to see that no 
 profane touch approaches. For her own sake, 
 for her child's sake, for the sake of the coming 
 generations whose doorkeeper she is, she must 
 demand from those who come to her only the 
 purest love and the finest character. As for her 
 life she must keep all others aw^ay. She must 
 demand the best from her lover, always, and take 
 no other. If she do not this she is false to her 
 most sacred office and trust. The finest love 
 and the finest manhood, that she may keep soul 
 and body fit for motherhood — that her children 
 may be beautiful and great, well-born and nur- 
 tured in the Eden-garden of a true and loving 
 
 i8o 
 
home ! For her child's sake a woman should 
 permit no man to be its father unless able to 
 pass her soul's most searching test ; for her 
 child's sake she should instantly take it and leave 
 him if his moral atmosphere prove unwholesome 
 for it. Her first duty is to herself and her child ; 
 and her first sacrifices should be to her mother- 
 hood, not to the man. And in nature, through 
 her elective love, if free, she holds the keys of 
 human character. 
 
 Motherhood is w^oman's peculiar office, all her 
 nature is builded about it, and in proportion as 
 she is supreme and free here the moral order of 
 society is assured. To protect her and cooperate 
 with her in building a more beautiful race should 
 be man's proudest privilege. To invade her free- 
 dom and dominion here is to strike at the moral 
 life, to commit the greatest of crimes. Hence 
 the universal horror with which men regard rape, 
 as the most dreadful of pollutions. Hence human 
 law, in subverting the natural order by giving the 
 husband power over the body of the w^ife, pre- 
 venting her natural free and sovereign choice of 
 the hour and the man, and her right to divorce 
 herself and her child from any man the moment 
 he proves unv^orthy, is guilty of the greatest 
 of organized crimes, conspiracy, usurpation, and 
 
 i8i 
 
 LOVE, SAC- 
 RIFICE, PA- 
 RENTHOOD 
 
LOVE, SAC- 
 RIFICE, PA- 
 RENTHOOD 
 
 HOME 
 
 rape, perversion of social morality, poisoning the 
 fountains of the future, neutralizing the greatest 
 social antiseptic, and bringing all the weight and 
 powers of society to compel one brave woman to 
 abdicate the sovereignty of her body and soul. 
 
 There is no influence on earth so divine and 
 uplifting as the yearning of a true man to deserve 
 the admiration and love of a good w^oman. Liber- 
 ate this force, and give it its full scope and opera- 
 tion by restoring to w^oman her power of choice 
 and personal sovereignty, at all times and with 
 all men, and human character will improve as 
 by miracle. 
 
 JHE true home is the type of true 
 society. As the home is, so is the 
 community. We have seen that 
 the natural law of practical right, 
 for the individual and for so- 
 ciety, is the evolution of sponta- 
 neous unity through and by the glad recognition 
 and admission of every self-hood. Just the 
 same must apply w^ith even intenser force in 
 the " home." There is no sweeter word, for 
 the home is the practical and objective of that of 
 w^hich heaven is the subjective. And the unity, 
 peace, joy, love, harmony of the ideal of home 
 are only realized w^here every individual in it is 
 
 182 
 
as free as he himself wishes to be, so far as this HOME 
 can be without abridging a Hke freedom in the 
 others. This truth cannot be too often repeated. 
 There is and can be no real peace, love, unity, 
 where equal freedom is not first ideally vindi- 
 cated. As sure as hatred is not love, so surely 
 is invasion the tap-root of hatred. 
 
 The true home is the abode and paradise of 
 love, but that love is not only utterly worthless, 
 but utterly non-existent, if forced. It cannot be 
 forced, hence the utter folly of all legal bonds. 
 For the ligatures of the law are all of force and 
 fear, and the magnetic currents of love are all of 
 attraction and fitness — the home is the antithesis 
 of force and fear. To bind tv/o people together 
 w^ho already love each other is as foolish as to 
 order hungry mouths to feed ; to bind two people 
 together w^ho do not love each other is the put- 
 ting of innocent souls in hell. The home is the 
 garden from -whence grow all the roots of life. 
 If it is w^hat it should be the children reared 
 there w^ill have learned by example and observa- 
 tion those lessons of freedom and love which will 
 last them through life, ensuring them to be polite, 
 honest, considerate, sane, in every social relation. 
 They carry with them the foundations on which 
 it is always safe to socially build. 
 
 183 
 
HOME Here, in this Eden regained, the man and 
 woman are naked before each other in body and 
 soul ; free to have all the secrets they please, yet 
 having none because where there is no aggression 
 and no fear there is no need to hide. There is no 
 authority, no compulsion, because each is more 
 than w^illing, eager, that the other should be true 
 to self. Where there is perfect trust, who can 
 conceal ! Where there is perfect respect, who 
 can compel ! Where there is perfect love, how 
 can one prevent the other ! 
 
 Ah, the sweet sympathy, the proud admiration, 
 the thrilling praise, the tender assistance, the 
 instant defense, the undoubted loyalty, the glad 
 cooperation, the mutual inspiration, soul-health, 
 peace, rest, trust, security — these are of home. 
 
 Communism does not need to be mentioned in 
 the home ; it would spoil all to make a bargain, 
 a contract of it ; for communism between lovers 
 is as spontaneous as kisses are, as the clinging of 
 flesh to flesh and soul to soul. Yet not here, 
 either, must the contradiction be forgotten or 
 overridden. The individuality, so gladly ac- 
 knowledged, and upon the existence of w^hich 
 depends the attraction, must flow out and express 
 itself in all surroundings of the individual, and 
 the blendings of communism must be balanced 
 
 184 
 
by the perfect expression of each self-hood, and HOME 
 in individual possession and sovereignty over 
 material goods. 
 
 The true home expresses first each individual, 
 second the blending of these in that larger, com- 
 posite individual called the Family. That this be 
 realized, each individual should have a room, or 
 rooms, sacredly private and consecrated to self, 
 in which every thread and stick of furniture, 
 every picture, bit of bric-a-brac, line and color, 
 reveals the personality, celebrates the spirit, and 
 encourages the law of growth of the owner, there 
 royal in his ov/n realm. But in the family rooms 
 the taste, the spirit, the love and unity of all 
 should blend like a symphony. 
 
 In the true the ideal home the only restraint is 
 on aggression, the father is head because wisest, 
 the mother the heart because the dearest, the 
 children honor their parents because they are 
 honorable, the children are respectful and polite 
 because their parents treat them as respectfully 
 and politely as they treat each other and they 
 know no other manner. 
 
 185 
 
THE NEW 
 CHIVALRY 
 
 THE AT- 
 
 ONE-MENT 
 
 IN 
 
 MARRIAGE 
 
 EFORE me rises the prophecy of 
 a new chivalry, \A^herein the vindi- 
 cation and defense of every wo- 
 man's right to absolute freedom in 
 her person and love w^ill be the 
 spirit, instinct, and code of honor of 
 every man claiming the proud name of gentleman. 
 J^ARRIAGE has been variously de- 
 fined as cohabitation, a promise 
 of exclusiveness, a legal cere- 
 mony, a religious sacrament ; but 
 all these definitions are too crude. 
 Even the declaration, " and they 
 twain shall be one flesh," is too crude, too ex- 
 ternal. Nor shall we find more by hunting to the 
 roots of the w^ord. To find out the original mean- 
 ing of a word is to find out only that — what it 
 originally meant. Words evolute and grow, as 
 the souls grow^ that use them, and come to mean 
 much more and differently than at first. What 
 the Vv^ord marriage means now, with the most 
 highly evoluted souls, is that beautiful and almost 
 indescribable union in which the two are in such 
 sympathy that each actually feels the other as a 
 part of self — a state of liberty and unity so ideal 
 that each is fully vindicated, yet blended — a unit 
 in two, like the universe. This is more than 
 
 i86 
 
twain v/ho are one flesh ; it is one soul expressed 
 in two forms ; it is tw^o halves w^ho have found 
 each other and by uniting make one. This proves 
 marriage a spiritual fact. 
 
 It is more than living together, more than 
 fleshly consummation, more than mutual parent- 
 hood, more than legal or religious ceremonies, 
 more than vows or promises. All these are ac- 
 cidents or incidents, having no essential relation 
 to true marriage which can exist in its most 
 perfect spiritual form without them ; they only 
 express, declare, celebrate, or hamper and inter- 
 fere with it. True marriage is at-one-ment, is 
 union, a one-ing. Hence its wonderful, vital rela- 
 tion to religion and life. By its one-ment of two 
 souls it typifies what finally must come to all 
 souls — their at-one-ment with all things, and 
 thus enlargement to the Divine Inclusion. And 
 the man and the woman, thus united, form the 
 social molecule, of w^hich, taken separately, they 
 are the atoms. Separately they are social atoms, 
 indivisible, incoherent ; together they are the 
 social unit, the smallest possible, yet most typi- 
 cal social group ; mutual, equal freedom balanced 
 in united love — the encircled cross. 
 
 The man and the woman, thus at-oned, form 
 the true human, and their typical relation fits 
 
 187 
 
 THE AT- 
 ONE-MENT 
 IN 
 MARRIAGE 
 
THE AT- 
 
 ONE-MENT 
 
 IN 
 
 MARRIAGE 
 
 them to extend the same freedom in sympathy to 
 all others, and thus build the ideal and true 
 society. 
 
 Love is marriage, incompatibility is divorce, 
 the illegitimate child is the one begotten against 
 its mother's wish. These are natural, spiritual 
 facts, and the artificial, legal proclamations on 
 such matters are clumsy and violent usurpations 
 and impertinences, beneath the recognition of 
 free and seeing minds. 
 
 But this real and true marriage of two is so 
 rare and heavenly a vision, even yet, on the earth, 
 that it seems presumptuous to point further and 
 say that some day love may come to so enlarge 
 itself that it may mean the perfect blending of not 
 only two but of more than two, of many souls, 
 male and female, as one. But, if the logic of the 
 Dawn-Thought is true, nothing is more certain. 
 It is the destiny of all to become one, and to 
 become one by a gradual growth and enlargement 
 of the present methods of harmony till they in- 
 clude all. The time must come w^hen vi^hat is 
 now sometimes true of two will be true of the 
 whole human race, which will be, as it were, 
 married in the perfect union of its tvs^o (male and 
 female) separated elements ; every man husband, 
 every woman wife, and every child finding in 
 
 1 88 
 
every adult a loving, protective parent. For 
 marriage is completion. 
 
 But all this requires an enlargement and beauty 
 of character, a development of unselfishness, a 
 sensitiveness of sympathy, a universality of gen- 
 erosity, an outgrowing of jealousy, a purity of 
 thought and action, a refinement, gentleness, free- 
 dom, and sweetness of life and association, of 
 Avhich w^e as yet have hardly the rudiments, and 
 w^hich is now almost inconceivable. 
 
 But in character all that is imaginable is 
 attainable. 
 
 And love is not a thing to be commanded, not 
 a duty, not something to be forced. Nothing is 
 more unfortunate than for any tw^o to try to make 
 themselves love w^here Nature says no. Love is 
 always free and spontaneous, and comes from 
 mutual fitting and fulfilled conditions. Love is 
 for all, and to all at last, but not till the proper 
 season and fullness of growth. 
 
 When w^e arrive ! — 
 ^^^JSC^^HVERY religion has its place in the 
 RV^/vii\riM^tfl evolution of the soul, and the 
 teaching and acceptance of it its 
 due effect, yet equally and often 
 more valuable are the results of 
 skepticism. After a religion has 
 189 
 
 THE AT- 
 ONE-MENT 
 IN 
 MARRIAGE 
 
 THE RELI- 
 GION OF 
 ATHEISM 
 
THE RELI- 
 GION OF 
 ATHEISM 
 
 been sufficiently believed and lived to yield all its 
 good it begins to grow old, formal, lifeless, to the 
 soul that is through w^ith it, like the pupa case 
 which the expanding insect breaks and flies from. 
 This is inevitable and necessary, otherwise the 
 old faith becomes an intolerable prison, and pre- 
 vents all growth and on-going life. Therefore 
 the time always comes, in a progressing life, when 
 skepticism and repulsion toward w^hat has been 
 believed sets in, and the marching soul steps on 
 and leaves its dead creed behind it. All skepti- 
 cism, negation, unbelief, then, even the most ex- 
 treme, is a healthful and natural symptom, though 
 a painful one, and a sure sign of an enlarging, 
 growing, God-going soul. Welcome it, and fear 
 and condemn it not. Heretics, skeptics, idol- 
 breakers, are the pioneers and scavengers of the 
 Living Church. Without them it would grow 
 rotten or petrify. Atheists are the closest and 
 dearest of God's unconscious children — blind 
 babies, but with lips on the true breast. It is 
 because of their growth toward him, their God- 
 becoming, that they are what they are. 
 
 For that which makes a man skeptical is al- 
 ways this, that his intellect and moral nature 
 have outgrov/n his creed. He has become better 
 
 and wiser than the thing he is taught to believe. 
 
 190 
 
And because he is wiser than his Bible, and ^^^ RELI- 
 larger than his creed, and better than his revealed ^^ON OF 
 God, he no longer believes in any of them; but ATHEISM 
 rejects them all, just in proportion to his percep- 
 tion of this. 
 
 For a man may only worship that which is 
 beyond and above, that >vhich leads him on. 
 The atheist is what he is because he must have 
 a better God, a wiser Bible, a nobler creed, a 
 purer faith, a grander inspiration and enthusiasm 
 than that w^hich contents the less developed souls 
 about him. If he is honestly atheist, he is inva- 
 riably a finer, nobler, and more trustw^orthy man 
 than the believer whom he has left and w^ho tries 
 to defame him. It is because he demands a per- 
 fect God, and yet sees evil flourishing, that he 
 comes to deny deity and falls into utter negation 
 and pessimism. But this is always only a tempo- 
 rary state. It is but the destruction of the old 
 temple, that a newer, larger, grander one may 
 build on its site. Were it complete and perma- 
 nent it would be annihilation, but it never is. 
 The Divine ever lives and reveals himself to all 
 aspiring souls. The atheist soul, by its negation 
 of all about it, is inevitably throw^n back on itself, 
 and self, as we have seen, is the road to God, 
 
 because there is but one Self, the Center. 
 
 191 
 
THE RELI- 
 GION OF 
 ATHEISM 
 
 It is the narrow, petrifying, dogmatism which 
 insists upon any faith as a finality, -which ulti- 
 mately makes atheism and passionate heresy a 
 necessity to all those who must go on — who 
 have the Life within. Where religion is recog- 
 nized as a growing, enlarging, never-finished 
 thing, this violent revolt is not necessary to 
 those who can include more. For religion is 
 inclusion. 
 
 Hungering for the highest good, yet finding it 
 not, the skeptic begins to form ideals of what it 
 should be, and that is the Inner Voice, the true 
 seed of a new religion which shall carry Religion 
 one step further on. The man himself, as we 
 know him, in his one lifetime, may not come to 
 acknow^ledge deity or religion, but that is of no 
 consequence except to his own happiness ; he is 
 doing the v^ork, and developing the new and 
 higher ideal, bringing forward the new and larger 
 explanation to comfort and inspire, promoting his 
 own growth and that of all about him, even by 
 denial and rebellion, and that is all important. 
 
 The darkness and pain and negativeness of un- 
 belief and pessimism may be likened to the night 
 with its needful rest before a ne^w day's w^ork ; 
 to a fallow field recovering fertility ; to the dark 
 
 earth w^herein a new seed germinates ; to the 
 
 192 
 
dark womb where a new birth of a New Man 
 is beginning. 
 
 And it is so with all negations, all rebellions, 
 heresies — atheist, nihilist, rebel, socialist, anar- 
 chist, free-lover, what you will. Wherever these 
 rebels are honest, driven by an inner necessity to 
 protest, revolt, deny, they do so because they 
 have a passionate love of the better side of the 
 thing they deny, because they are superior to 
 the institution they criticise, and are driven by 
 the inw^orking Divine to liberate its spirit and 
 build for it a larger and better form. 
 
 HEN a savage looks in a mirror 
 for the first time he thinks that 
 what he sees there is another 
 man, but we tell him he sees 
 only himself. The exact con- 
 verse of this expresses the Dawn- 
 Thought doctrine of the relation of the apparent 
 individualities to the True Individual. We are, 
 each one of us, as it v>;-ere, but a reflection of the 
 One Individual, and when we look v/ithin and 
 see, as we say, ourselves, what we really see is 
 the greater and true Self, The Individual (called 
 by some God, by others the Universe, Nature, 
 or by many other names), but diminished, modi- 
 fied, and clouded by more or less of mistake, 
 
 193 
 
 THE RELI- 
 GION OF 
 ATHEISM 
 
 OF TRUE 
 INDIVIDU- 
 ALITY 
 
OF TRUE 
 INDIVIDU- 
 ALITY 
 
 according to the form and development of our 
 visual powers. I am but a reflection, but when 
 I saw my original I thought I saw myself, and, 
 after all, that was true ; only my mistake was in 
 believing that I w^as apart, that selves were 
 separate and many. 
 There is but One. 
 
 194 
 
an a^tevwor^* 
 
 wish to tell the simple truth about A.N AFTER- 
 this book. It is not a theory built VVORD 
 up by painful and long-continued 
 intellectual piece-'work and inge- 
 nuity. It came to me, from first 
 to last, as v/e say by inspiration ; 
 first the main Thought, then the corollaries. 
 The Thought came unsought, like a ray of un- 
 expected light, and the after vistas came one 
 at a time, as the Thought revolved and shed 
 its ray here and there upon them. In many 
 cases I felt impelled to sit down and write, 
 and as I wrote the subject unfolded itself auto- 
 matically, as one might say, before me. At 
 other times it was born into my mind in the 
 same way, while walking or working. But in all 
 cases I felt surprised and uplifted, as by read- 
 ing great, new, and true words by some other 
 mind. 
 
 But do not mistake me. There was no trance, 
 or any consciousness of spirit or person. I was 
 never more normal or sanely serene. It was 
 
 merely that a mood of clearer consciousness 
 
 195 
 
AN AFTER- seemed to come upon me, illuminating and 
 WORD uplifting me to greater distance and depth of 
 vision, and the confused became plain. That 
 was all. 
 
 I do not say these words of the Dawn-Thought 
 are true. Prove them for yourself, and if they 
 do not seem to you true do not believe them. 
 
 Nor do I say they are final. I regard them but 
 as a step in a series. Judged by their own stand- 
 ards they are only true centrally, and their out- 
 lines must change with every change in the point 
 of view. Look w^ith your own eyes ; listen to 
 your own soul ! 
 
 For myself, I am still agnostic. I do not know, 
 nor profess to. But whereas before I was agnos- 
 tic and did not believe, now I am agnostic and 
 believe. The Daw^n-Thought is to me a working 
 theory of truth, and seems truer to me continu- 
 ally. It makes all life seem w^hole and healthy 
 before me. 
 
 But I urge no one. If it is for you it will seem 
 true to you in the ripe time. 
 
 Doubtless many would have been better pleased 
 
 had I grouped all related sections under one head, 
 
 but usually I have not done this, but have -written 
 
 dow^n the various applications and corollaries of 
 
 the main Thought as they came to me, even if 
 
 196 
 
in fragments, feeling that what was thus lost AN AFTER- 
 in logical coherence would be more than made WORD 
 up to the reader by permitting him to see the 
 order of their spontaneous procession in my 
 mind. 
 
 It is pleasanter to watch a running stream, I 
 think, than a building house. 
 
 Zbc £nO. 
 
 197 
 
OTHER WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 WIND-HARP SONGS»»»«, Dedicated to the Free Spirit. 
 
 Poems of life, love, nature, liberty, and death. A charming gift -hook for the emancipated. 
 Passionate and philosophical. Daintily bound in yellow linen, green, and gold. Price, $1.00. 
 
 " Mr. Lloyd's book is dedicated to the 'free spirit,' of whose nature he partakes largely. Emerson 
 seems to have had no little influence upon him. These songs of life, love, nature, and liberty were, he says, 
 composed not for the pubHc, but for his own pleasure — 'on the plains, in the forest, in the wake of the plow, on 
 horseback, on the crowded street, by the bedside of death, in the silence of midnight, and when the face of the 
 God of Morning blushed through the golden tresses of Dawn." 
 
 "There is much poetry of a wild, free kind, in Mr. Lloyd's work. In the opening piece, ' The Wind- 
 Harp Song,' for instance, one is delighted at this touch, the forest trees being spoken of; 
 
 ' Old, old things they remember. 
 Of the burnt-out years. 
 Which, pastward. 
 Like smoke-puffs, dim, are drifting.' 
 
 Better, however, is this : 
 
 ' The winds. 
 Whistling, 
 Singing, 
 
 From far away winging, 
 Tell their tales of Thence and Thither, 
 And Yonder Lands, 
 Over the Sun-fall Hills, 
 The Sun-rise Sea.'" — Louisville Courier Journal. 
 
 THE RED HEART IN A WHITE WORLD 
 
 A Suggestive Manual of Free Society, 
 Price, 10 Cents. 
 
 SONGS OF THE UNBLIND CUPID 
 
 Are a few poems, by J. WM. LLOYD, selected and daintily arranged in booklet form by his friend, 
 ALEX E. WIGHT, of Wellesley Hills, Mass. 
 
 Imprinted from kelmscott type, on deckle-edged hand-made paper, with initial letters, ornaments, and 
 borders in red, and an initial letter and sketch upon the opening page, hand-painted in water-colors, it is an 
 edition de hixe. Covers, brown with choice of silver or gold lettering. Edition limited to 650 copies. 
 
 Price per Copy, 30 Cents. 
 
 For Sale by J. WM. LLOYD, WESTFIELD, NEW JERSEY. 
 
cj - ::> T - / -7<J^O 
 
 /7^ 
 
 FOR SALE BY 
 Purdy Publishing Co., 
 
 McVicker's Theatre 81dg„ 78-84 Madison St. 
 
 CHICAGO, ILL. 
 
University of 
 Connecticut 
 
 Libraries 
 
 39153020738755 
 

 
 HE 
 
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