transition of inorganic into organic and animated matter, or should he by some happy chance be able to transmute non-living into living matter,' would there be in such a discovery aught that would contravene revealed truth, or mitigate against any of the received dogmas of the church?" In answering the question we heartily agree with Professor Zahm's emphatic negative. Furthermore such a discovery would, more than any other revelation, put to right searchers for light and truth. Furthermore, it would forever silence the misleading theological explanations of mortal and material phenomena. We would then learn how to read Infinite truths out of the Bible and at the same time separate uninspired laborious human efforts to give to the physical world and physical man a divinely created significance. Next to believing the highly attenuated form of matter to be mind, the belief that life is in matter has done most harm. When we understand the theory of the origin of mental species which explains what has been heretofore taken for life to be merely animated matter, we will cease to attribute the appalling cruelties of nature to the Creator.

We have no way of making a demonstration of the process of the felt-out mind, but we see it around us in

1 Matter under some conditions and through a process of slow variation evolves an invisible something called the psychical and out of which evolves an intelligence. Whether we can sufficiently enlarge our understanding of this sidereal influence which makes this growth possible, and so enable ourselves to construct an animate something, is still doubtful and to most people unthinkable. However, on the historical side we have history, legend and lore, and on the modern side we have machines that walk, machines that talk and machines that think.

2 Evolution and Dogma-Zahm (Page 330).

every stage of development.1 Unless we connect these stages by some process such as evolution, they will always be fragmentary bits of phenomena. Even the arrangement of them in some order will result in a comparative analysis, which analysis will result in a sequence. It is the failure to begin somewhere that keeps man in darkness. A false conclusion, if realized as a fallacy, is as useful to mankind as a correct one. This may seem strange, but in the light of the origin of mental species it is true. If there is an everactive intelligence of which the felt-out mind could avail itself, it is conclusive that if we get rid of the illusions which infest the thought-out mind, we will receive without effort that which is ever manifesting itself to mankind. We cannot create good any more than we can create God.

Metaphysics, in its correct sense, consists of working in Mind entirely and this Mind is Divine not human. Thinking good in metaphysics consists of Divine thinking and not some human concept of good. Only as we learn to work in the Absolute Mind can we work in matter. Intelligence gives us power to manipulate, control and dissolve matter. Understanding how this is done explains the apperception of the past as well as the illumination of the future. It enables us to see through

1 In contradistinction to the long periods necessary for the processes of natural evolution there is continually before us the idea of invention. The reason for this is that few understand, or in the least comprehend, the long periods necessary to the processes of mental evolution that make an invention possible. If we could trace the processes of mental evolution from the point of its appearance to the bodily vision in the form of a material machine backward to the first conscious grasp of the least vital element necessary to the invention of that machine, we would not only realize that inventions are not sporadic but rather are the culmination of ages of correlated adaptations of the sidereal power that makes evolution and invention possible.

the deceptions of animated matter which have caused man to mistake animation in matter for life.

The greatest difficulty encountered in this work has been the fragmentary and indefinite nature of works on mental causes and effects. What we need is editors rather than writers. Works that take up conclusions reached by different writers and held in apposition for the purpose of comparison are what we need instead of new efforts to uncover some discovery, which discovery may be merely a re-statement of some accepted fact that has not been generally understood on account of the mistaken ideas and contradictions in the field of mental research.

In fact, I find the same state of affairs existing among modern writers on natural science. It would appear that talent and the division of labor in pedagogic work are responsible for these specialists in the different fields of scientific research. What we need is the rare genius. who has the comprehensive mind to see the substance of many teachers and without malice or jealousy compare them for the purpose of discovering their relative values.

It is the contention of this work that the human mind is a negation and automatically denies everything unlike itself and that the inverse of this negation is truth. This accounts for the attempt of so many to prove by argument the untruth of every contemporary effort to demonstrate some new expression of principle. This continues in the face of the world-age fact that you cannot argue a lie out of existence. No human tongue or pen has ever succeeded in doing this. Only when we discover the truth and substitute it for the lie, does the lie yield. The nineteenth century produced many master minds who

devoted their lives to proving the truth of contemporary discoveries and for this reason I have quoted them instead of modern writers.

Even though many disagree with me in regard to the origin of mental species on account of the seeming mystical nature of the science of desymbolization and its effect on the human mind the study of mental activities will be advanced through its establishing an intelligent system by means of which students may reach, compare and classify conclusions without confusion.

Furthermore, a large part of what has been written on the subject of mind has been based on two concepts of mind, namely, mind and subconscious mind. This is so indefinite that no system of classification has developed out of it. This failure to develop anything of permanent usefulness proves its insufficiency. According to the Origin of Mental Species, the first mind referred to is not mind in the correct sense but merely sensation trained and classified. What has been referred to as the subconscious mind is the inspiration of the thought-out mind. The inspiring power in its purity is substance. This distinction must be seen with the vision of the mind before correct classification can be made.

It is regrettable that in a work of this kind we must use a style of writing the very opposite of what we would wish. We cannot take conclusions reached by others as the naturalists do and compare them, since our symbols would not be understood. We regret this, but there is nothing for us to do except declare our principles, take our stand for the theory, and defend it.

CHAPTER X

SEARCHING FOR TRUTH

Time, place, chance and symbols have been responsible for the obtuse nature of works on this subject. In undertaking to get light on so abstract a theme, we must be mindful of two unalterable facts. One is that

we cannot make an absolute statement in human words. The other is that time, place, chance and symbols are no part of truth. These statements must not be passed by with indifferent notice, neither should they be treated as trite, high-sounding or sophistical. They mean just what they say in so far as human words can express anything. Unless we understand this we cannot be lucid ourselves, and neither can we elucidate the meaning of others. Remembering this, we are careful to take into consideration the thought of the reader and how a statement will appear to him as well as to ourselves. Saying something in a way or to the effect of satisfying our senses is nothing more than entertaining our own egotism. If we have not illuminated a point or convinced someone, we have not said anything; we have merely repeated words. Probably there has never been such an exhibition of this vanity as in the number of creeds, doctrines and hypotheses that have been read into the Bible. All of them cannot be true, and if one of them were true, and if such a thing were possible, kept free from the reading into it of human opinion, it would destroy all of the others.

There is a limited meaning to every human word and as a result of this limitation all attempts to express what