is no assimilation of what is read, and the mind does not grow thereby-nay, it is likely to suffer from overloading, and to weaken rather than strengthen under a burden of unassimilated ideas.

We should read less, and think more, if we would have our minds grow, and our intelligence develope. If we are in earnest in the culture of our minds, we should daily spend an hour in the study of some serious and weighty book, and, reading for five minutes, we should think for ten, and so on through the hour. The usual way is to read quickly for the hour, and then to put away the book till the next hour comes for reading. Hence people grow very slowly in thought power.

One of the most marked things in the Theosophical movement is the mental growth observable year by year in its members. This is largely due to the fact that they are taught the nature of thought; they begin to understand a little of its workings, and set themselves to build their mental bodies instead of leaving them to grow by the unassisted processes of nature. The student eager for growth should resolve that no day shall pass that shall not have in it at least five minutes' reading and ten minutes' strenuous thinking on what is read. At first he will find the effort tiresome and laborious, and he will discover the

weakness of his thinking power. This discovery marks his first step, for it is much to discover that one is unable to think hard and consecutively. People who cannot think, but who imagine that they can, do not make much progress. It is better to know one's weakness than to imagine oneself strong when one is feeble. The realisation of the weakness—the wandering of the mind, the feeling of heat, confusion, and fatigue which comes on in the brain after a prolonged effort to follow out a difficult line of thought, is on all fours with the similar feeling in the muscles after a strong muscular exertion. With regular and persistentbut not excessive-exercise, the thought-power will grow as the muscle-power grows. And as this thought-power grows, it also comes under control, and can be directed to definite ends. Without this thinking, the mental body will remain loosely formed and unorganised; and without gaining concentration-the power of fixing the thought on a definite point point-thought-power cannot be

exercised at all.

CHAPTER III.

THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE.

ALMOST everyone now-a-days is anxious to practice thought-transference, and dreams of the delights of communicating with an absent friend without the assistance of telegraph or post. Many people seem to think that they can accomplish the task with very little effort, and are quite surprised when they meet with total failure in their attempts. Yet it is clear that one must be able to think ere one can transfer thought, and some power of steady thinking must be necessary in order to send a thought-current through space. The feeble vacillating thoughts of the majority of people cause mere flickering vibrations in the thought-atmosphere, appearing and vanishing minute by minute, giving rise to no definite form and endowed with the lowest vitality. A thought-form must be clearly cut and well vitalised if it is to be driven

in any definite direction, and to be strong enough, on arriving at its destination, to set up there a reproduction of itself.

There are two methods of thought-transference, one which may be distinguished as physical, the other as psychical, one belonging to the brain as well as the mind, the other to the mind only. A thought may be generated by the consciousness, cause vibration in the mental body, then in the astral body, set up waves in the etheric and then in the dense molecules of the physical brain; by these brain vibrations the physical ether is affected, and the waves pass outwards, till they reach another brain and set up vibrations in its dense and etheric parts. By that receiving brain vibrations are caused in the astral and then in the mental bodies attached to it, and the vibrations in the mental body draw out the answering quiver in consciousness. Such are the many stages of the arc traversed by a thought. But this traversing of a "loopline" is not necessary. The consciousness may, when causing vibrations in its mental body, direct those vibrations straight to the mental body of the receiving consciousness, thus avoiding the round just described.

Let us see what happens in the first case.

There is a small organ in the brain, the pineal

gland, the function of which is unknown to Western physiologists, and with which Western psychologists do do not concern themselves. It is a rudimentary organ in most people, but it is evolving, not retrogading, and it is possible to quicken its evolution into a condition in which it can perform its proper function, the function that, in the future, it will discharge in all. It is the organ for thought-transference, as much as the eye is the organ of vision or the ear of hearing.

If anyone thinks very intently on a single idea, with concentration and sustained attention, he will become conscious of a slight quiver or creeping feeling-it has been compared to the creeping of an ant-in the pineal gland. The quiver takes place in the ether which permeates the gland, and causes a slight magnetic current which gives rise to the creeping feeling in the dense molecules of the gland. If the thought be strong enough to cause the current, then the thinker knows that he has been successful in bringing his thought to a pointedness and a strength which render it capable of transmission.

That vibration in the ether of the pineal gland sets up waves in the surrounding ether, like waves of light, only much smaller and more rapid. These undulations pass out in all directions, setting the