CHAPTER IV.

SELF-RELIANCE.

RELY ON YOURSELF!

The Will of each Individual is like the compass of a ship. Where the Will points there the Life goes! "If the needle directs it to the rocks, there is wreck and disaster,—if to the open sea there is clear sailing." God leaves each Individual at perfect Liberty. The Individual is neither constrained nor compelled. He must himself learn the way of right and wrong, and having learned, must choose. "We injure ourselves. God will not injure us. We invite our own miseries. God does not send them. The evils and sorrows that afflict mankind are of mankind's own making."

The relations of Man to the Divine are too pure to be profaned by the intervention of any other. The Individual needs no intermediary in order that he may know himself. He requires no substitute in order that he may see and know God.

When the Individual is true to those constructive principles which condition Life on this planet, even as a flower or a tree is true to those laws which condition its growth, when he knows himself, old things drop away. Teachers, Texts, Traditions crumble and fall. All things are new. He lives, now. Past and Future merge into the Present. He lives in the Eternal; has Eternal

Life, now; a thousand years are but as yesterday. Knowing that there is no Death but Change and Progress, he keeps things under his feet. He no longer says, "I Believe." He says, rather, "I Think!" "I Know!" He lives his Life, but not in any conventional manner or appointed way. The power which he has himself developed is new. The way is new. And, as he pursues his course, he does not perceive the footprints of any other. The way, the thought, the Life is wholly new; they are his very own.

"What a piece of work is Man! How noble in Reason! How Infinite in faculty! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an Angel! In Apprehension, how like a God!"

He asks nothing; hopes nothing; fears nothing. He scorns appearances. His power is cumulative. All the past, the foregone days in which he has toiled and thought, work their strength in this. None can come near him without his consent. None can harm or wrong him, except himself. He is indifferent to riches and the purely material advantages of the world; his Life does not consist in the things which he possesses. He is as happy in poverty as in wealth; no less happy in wealth than in poverty. Independent of criticism, he cares not for esteem. He devotes his time and energy to the highest ideals of Life, and is animated by the most unselfish purposes. And he knows that should he so far fail in his effort as to permit selfish and immoral purposes to influence his thought or conduct, he will

thereby lose his spiritual development and forfeit his power. This law of Nature has been demonstrated again and again. There is no known exception. It is as true as the fact that an electrical engine will stop when the current which runs it is disconnected or grounded. As true, as is the fact that an eagle, soaring high in the sky, will fall to earth when it ceases to exercise the energy which enabled it to reach that altitude. As true, also, as is the fact that a man in the full strength and vigor of manhood will lose his health, if he violates the laws of hygiene or ceases to exercise.

Vin was not anxious to talk!

He appreciated the motive which prompted the old Egyptian philosophers to conceal their most profound knowledge from the multitude; to communicate it only through emblems, forms, and symbols; and even in such indirect and obscure manner to communicate it only to those who had been duly approved and initiated; for, they rightly recognized the narrow limitations of the popular mind, the bigotry and prejudiced opinion of the uninformed.

What the ignorant do not understand, they scoff at. They seemingly imagine that by sneers they can drown the voice of reason; or perhaps supposing that they thus show superiority instead of idiocy. And it has been due to this that many of the greatest discoveries of science and philosophy were not communicated to the world until recent years. "Light rays" and "Wireless telegraphy" were known and their

importance fully appreciated by the Egyptian adepts, thousands of years before the "Creation" as fixed by Usher; and many of them used the "Violet Ray" in their laboratory work, as electric energy was doubtless employed in the construction of the Pyramids. But if they had made their scientific attainments known to the multitude of their day and generation, the Mob, urged on by the popular priesthood, would have torn them to atoms; just as the great teachers of mankind have been persecuted, destroyed, and crucified. In the time of Galileo, the Theological School would not believe that the Earth moves round the Sun; and, if any one had then asserted that messages could be sent from a station on land to a ship in mid-ocean, or from one ship to another at a distance, without any visible means of communication, in all probability, he would have been put to torture and death as a deliberate prevaricator, as a vain babbler, a corruptor of youth, and a setter-forth of strange gods!

For many thousands of years, the Theological School, so ignorant, so proud, so self-sufficient, so vain, resting so secure in its "infallible" traditions of the past, aided by despotism, prevented any general knowledge of the simplest scientific facts. The history of the conflict between a few brave men and women of genuine inspiration and genius, on the one side, and the great, ignorant, Theological mass, on the other, has been admirably written by Andrew D. White. During that contest between Science and Faith, the few appealed to Reason, to Liberty, to the Known,

to Justice, to Honor, to Friendship, to Love, and to Truth; the many appealed to Fear, to Ignorance, to Miracle, to Passion, to Prejudice, to Superstition and to Servitude. The few said, "Think." The many shouted, "Believe."

With precisely equal obstinacy, the average man and woman lives today in the most profound ignorance of himself, of his own latent powers and possibilities, because he will not take the time or the trouble to understand himself, to know himself, and comprehend the essential elements of that mental science which would enable him to understand his own Life, and to master those principles by which he may develop his spiritual powers, and thus improve his condition on this planet.

The experience of those who have attempted to communicate such knowledge to the uninformed has not been such as to encourage others to make the attempt. Uniformly they have been persecuted and condemned by a popular mob, incited to violence by Bigotry and Envy, by Fear and Ignorance, by Jealousy and Superstition. Thus Socrates was condemned! Thus, Jesus the Essene was crucified! Thus, Galileo was imprisoned! Thus, Kepler was persecuted. But, their Thought still lives, will live through the ages. And so, for many centuries, it has been customary for those having superior knowledge of spiritual things, of Man and his Destiny, to conceal it. And whilst they live exemplary lives, in subordination to civil government and its laws, as good citizens, they have