by a natural law, the demand creates the supply, and this supply
may be freely applied to any and every subject-matter that commends
itself to us. There is no limit to the supply of this energy other than
what we ourselves put to it by our thought; nor is there any limit to
the purposes we may make it serve other than the one grand Law of Order,
which says that good things used for wrong purposes become evil. The
consideration of the intelligent and responsive nature of spirit shows
that there can be no limitations but these. The one is a limitation
inherent in spirit itself, and the other is a limitation which has no
root except in our own ignorance.
It is true that to maintain our healthy action within the circle of our
own individual world we must continually move forward with the movement
of the larger whole of which we form a part. But this does not imply any
restriction of our liberty to make the fullest use of our lives in
accordance with those universal principles of life upon which they are
founded; for there is not one law for the part and another for the
whole, but the same law of Being permeates both alike. In proportion,
therefore, as we realise the true law of our own individuality we shall
find that it is one with the law of progress for the race. The
collective individuality of mankind is only the reproduction on a larger
scale of the personal individuality; and whatever action truly develops
the inherent powers of the individual must necessarily be in line with
that forward march of the universal mind which is the evolution of
humanity as a whole.
Selfishness is a narrow view of our own nature which loses sight of our
place in relation to the whole, not perceiving that it is from this very
relation that our life is drawn. It is ignorance of our own
possibilities and consequent limitation of our own powers. If,
therefore, the evidence of harmonious correlation throughout the
physical world leads irresistibly to the inference of intelligent
spirit as the innermost within of all things, we must recognise
ourselves also as individual manifestations of the same spirit which
expresses itself throughout the universe as that power of intelligent
responsiveness which is Love.
Thus we find ourselves to be a necessary and integral part of the
Infinite Harmony of All-Being; not merely recognising this great truth
as a vague intuition, but as the logical and unavoidable result of the
universal Life-principle which permeates all Nature. We find our
intuition was true because we have discovered the law which gave rise to
it; and now intuition and investigation both unite in telling us of our
own individual place in the great scheme of things. Even the most
advanced among us have, as yet, little more than the faintest
adumbration of what this place is. It is the place of _power_. Towards
those higher modes of spirit which we speak of as "the universal," the
law of man's inmost nature makes him as a lens, drawing into the focus
of his own individuality all that he will of light and power in streams
of inexhaustible supply; and towards the lower modes of spirit, which
form for each one the sphere of his own particular world, man thus
becomes the directive centre of energy and order.
Can we conceive of any position containing greater possibilities than
these? The circle of this vital influence may expand as the individual
grows into the wider contemplation of his unity with Infinite Being; but
any more comprehensive law of relationship it would be impossible to
formulate. Emerson has rightly said that a little algebra will often do
far more towards clearing our ideas than a large amount of poetic
simile. Algebraically it is a self-evident proposition that any
difference between various powers of _x_ disappears when they are
compared with _x_ multiplied into itself to infinity, because there can
be no ratio between any determinate power, however high, and the
infinite; and thus the relation between the individual and All-Being
must always remain the same.
But this in no way interferes with the law of growth, by which the
individual rises to higher and higher powers of his own individuality.
The unchangeableness of the relation between all determinate powers of
_x_ and infinity does not affect the relations of the different powers
of _x_ between themselves; but rather the fact that the multiplication
of _x_ into itself to infinity is mentally conceivable is the very proof
that there is no limit to the extent to which it is possible to raise
_x_ in its determinate powers.
I trust unmathematical readers will pardon my using this method of
statement for the benefit of others to whom it will carry conviction. A
relation once clearly grasped in its mathematical aspect becomes
thenceforth one of the unalterable truths of the universe, no longer a
thing
