ulty. Here is the origin of the religious mind which has been so long a riddle to the philosophical world. Having no appreciation of anything higher than emotion, it has never been able to conceive of the higher problems of civilization. It is the mind, which while talking of holier and higher things has yielded to the most unchristian practices, which the ethical writers have endeavored to correct. Moreover, it has been difficult to account for the thought-out dishonesty of this mind when pretending at the same time extreme piety. These things are accounted for by the fact of its emotional effect on the thought-out mind when not yet developed to the point of ethical inspiration.

THOUGHT-OUT MIND

This mind consists of consciousness through which external influences and internal sensations assume the form of satisfaction or pain. Here the struggle begins as a result of the necessity of choosing between humanly expressed energy and a natural reliance on the Absolute Mind.

This mind is a collection of images and impressions. It consists of the memory of those things that have given pleasure or pain, loss or gain, fear or hope. Unfortunately for us the thing which made pleasure under one condition became the source of suffering under another. Experience has been but a codification of these sensations, and the phenomena we have just referred to have made it impossible to reduce any of these experiences, or any deductions made therefrom, to a law or even a system that an awakened mind could digest. This is the period of human absolutism where pirate chiefs become mon

archs and charlatans become religious prelates. It is the age of the obvious. As man is unable to account for activities later explained by natural science, it is the period of superstition. As the mechanics of the Universe dimly dawn on this thought a cause is implied and an effort to explain this cause results in mythology. Naturally, the effort to trace this cause to an original source results in a personal God. Righteous indignation against tyranny and jealousy of power is the cause of endless wars. This is the period of seers and prophets whose glimpses of the universe of immaterial intelligence and its activities, beyond the range of bodily vision, contradict the established order of things; hence crucifixion becomes a religious rite. The material interpretation of their teachings in time develops iron laws, dogmas and cruel tyrannies. It is the period of persecution in the name of humanly evolved gods, of images graven on the mind by fear of punishment and hope of reward. Its best understood period is what we call civilized. The enlightened period comes later; likewise the spiritual, but these are only riper periods of the thought-out mind. It comprises the world as we know it; it is the sum and substance of the consciousness of all of us-the different degrees of intelligence that segregate and war with those above and below them; the travail of a derived intelligence; it is the period in which are born the mental species which come first to our notice and later we must analyze and explain.

INSPIRATION

This is the period in the development of the thoughtout mind when it becomes so attenuated that it feels the

influence of the Absolute Immaterial Intelligence and begins to contradict the mistaken impressions of its earlier period. It is where male and female thought-out minds dissolve under a higher influence, men and women are born,,and science takes the place of superstition.

Inspiration is the period of the thought-out mind when it begins to see principle and functions, reason and ask why. Having reached the point of the evanescence of the obvious, whether mental or material, man begins to search for cause, and when he has found a cause he learns that his experience has developed him to the point where he sees there must be yet another cause. Thus cause becon.es causeless as he explores the world of the obvious, and when the senses can carry him no farther he hypothecates a first cause, the unknowable, or God. Concerning himself no longer with that which he cannot explain, and having become convinced there is one invariable activity or law whose origin it is impossible to learn, he assumes everything must be derived from the one central law. This is the demise of belief and the birth of science. Hereafter he searches for principles which must be demonstrated. It is the period when man begins to see something beyond the fascination of the senses; something that becomes more real to him as he approaches it through a channel before unknown to him. Under its influence he acquires a higher sense of duty to his fellow man and realizes the necessity of a more intelligent cooperation. This is the period of polemics and democracies. It is where principle is substituted for personality and man begins to conceive government by law that is higher than human expediency. This is the period of philosophers, men who have become conscious

of the difference between bodily vision and the vision of the mind. There are those who vaguely follow them, and mistaking the name for the substance split into factions like the followers of prophets. The period of philosophers is the period of the highest development yet known to man. This is the period when man begins to bring the human into subjectivity to the perfect. Here the secondary sexual attributes begin to disappear and man influences his opposite with intelligence instead of cruel magnetic powers. Just at this period he makes matter and its activities obey the true relation of man to

man.

Of this period Paul says, "But the Spirit maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." Since the human brain or thought-out mind cannot see or hear Spirit it only feels its influence. This is a helpful explanation when translated into popular language. We have explained before that the brain hears only through impressions made on it by vibration and necessarily cannot hear vibrationless Spirit; this it only feels. However, when we have evolved or grown to the point where the influence of Spirit counterbalances the influence of the senses, we have reached a stage which, if continued, would eventually demonstrate the principles of immaterial relations to the extent that human institutions would fall into disuse. Several civilizations known to history have approached this point. Within the last few years the Western world reached the highest pinnacle of enlightened selfishness and forced the recognition of the rights of man over the rights of money and its induced activities without internecine war.

SPIRIT CONSCIOUSNESS OR CONSCIOUSNESS

OF SPIRIT-THE CHRIST

This is the period when man becomes conscious of the Substance of the Universe. The effect of this illumination is to enable one to see through matter in the form of time or mass. When we have reached this point, we see nothing as real except this substance as Principle and its activities. This is the new Heaven and new Earth beheld by St. John instead of the bodily vision of a material heaven and earth.

Spirit consciousness consists of the apperception of Substance in its pure nature. It is the period when men tell of seeing God and speak and write of talking with Him. When men behold this Substance, they become indifferent to the world of bodily vision. They talk of things strange to mankind, and when they attempt to described in symbols what they have seen the symbol blinds their hearers to the Substance. They have been generally regarded as pious men, but in the generally accepted sense of the word this is not sustained by history. This state of mind is usually accompanied by an emotional repression which has been regarded as evidence of spirituality. Experience has taught me to believe this to be a mistaken idea of the influence of Spirit. I am convinced it is nothing more than a form of fear we experience in the presence of dignity and authority. When I first saw Spirit clearly the regeneration was remarkable and was accompanied by this sense of awe. However, instead of yielding to this fear, I determined to overcome it. This was not an easy thing to do in spite of mental independence and freedom from superstition. Besides, those with whom I was associated in studying and demon