plate, so that pictures are formed on it of the objects to which it has been exposed. So on the sensitive plate that we call the mental body, the materials are re-arranged as a picture of the objects that have been contacted. The Knower perceives these pictures by his own responsive vibrations, studies them, and after a while begins to arrange them and to modify them by the vibrations he sends out on them from himself. By the law already spoken of, that energy follows the line of least resistance; he re-forms over and over again the same images, makes images of images; so long as he confines himself to this simple reproduction, with the sole addition of the time-element, we have, as said, memory and anticipation.

Concrete thinking is, after all, only a repetition in subtler matter of every-day experiences, with this difference, that the Knower can stop and change their sequence, repeat them, hurry or slacken them as he will. He can delay on any image, brood over it, dwell on it, and can thus gain from his leisurely re-examination of experiences much that had escaped him as he passed through them, bound to the unresting, unhasting wheel of time. Within his own domain, he can make his own time, so far as its measures are concerned, as does the Logos for His worlds; only he cannot

escape from the essence of time, succession, until he can touch the Logic consciousness, freeing himself from the bonds of the world-matter; and then, even, only so far as this system is concerned.

CHAPTER VI.

THE GROWTH OF THOUGHT.

OBSERVATION AND ITS VALUE.

THE first requisite for competent thinking is attentive and accurate observation. The Self as Knower must observe the Not-Self with attention and with accuracy, if it is to become the Known, and thus merge in the Self.

The second requisite is receptivity and tenacity in the mental body, the power of yielding quickly to impressions and of retaining them when made.

In proportion to the attention and accuracy of the Knower's observation, and the receptivity and tenacity of his mental body, will be the rapidity of his evolution, the speed at which his latent potencies become active powers.

If the Knower have not accurately observed the thought-image, or if the mental body, being undeveloped, has been insensitive to all but the stronger vibrations of an external object, and so has been modified into an imperfect reproduction,

the material for thought is inadequate and mis

leading. The broad outline is at first all that is obtained, the details being blurred or even omitted. As we evolve our faculties, and as we build finer stuff into the mental body, we find that we receive from the same external object much more than we received in our undeveloped days. Thus we find much more in an object than we before found in it.

Let two men stand in a field, in presence of a splendid sunset. Let one of these be an undeveloped agricultural labourer, who has not been in the habit of observing nature save with reference to his crops, who has only looked at the sky to see if it promises rain or sunshine, caring nothing for its aspects save as they bear on his own livelihood and employment. Let the second be an artist, a painter of genius, full of the love of beauty, and trained to see and enjoy every shade and tone of colour. The labourer's physical, astral, and mental bodies are all in presence of that gorgeous sunset, and all the vibrations caused by it are playing upon the vehicles of his consciousness; he sees different colours in the sky, and observes that there is much red, promising a fine day for the morrow, good or bad for his crops, as the case may be. This is all he gets out of it. The painter's physical, astral, and mental bodies are

all exposed to exactly the same pulsations as those of the labourer, but how different is the result! The fine material of his bodies reproduces a million vibrations too rapid and subtle to move the coarse material of the other. His image of the sunset is consequently quite different from the image produced in the labourer. The delicate shades of colour, hue melting into hue, translucent blue and rose and palest green lighted with golden gleams and flecked with royal purple-all these are tasted with a lingering joy, an ecstasy of sensuous delight; there are waked all fine emotions, love and admiration merging into reverence and joy that such beauty can be; ideas of the most inspiring character arise, as the mental body modifies itself under the vibrations playing on it on the mental plane from the mental aspect of the sunset. The difference of the images is not due to an external cause, but to an internal receptivity. It does not lie in the outside, but in the capacity to respond. It is not in the Not-Self, but in the Self and its sheaths. According to these differences is the result produced; how little flows into the one, how much into the other!

Here we see with startling force the meaning of the evolution of the Knower. A universe of beauty may be around us, its waves playing on us from