Transcriber's Note.

Apparent typographical errors have been corrected.

"UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD".
VOLUME XIII. NO. 10.

JANUARY, 1899.

Universal Brotherhood
·A·MAGAZINE
Devoted To The
Brōtherhōōd·of·Humanity
The·Theōsōphical·Mōvement
Philōsōphy·Science·And·Art
FOUNDED·IN·1886·UNDER·THE·TITLE·OF ·THE·PATH·BY
·Wᵐ·Q·JUDGE

VOLUME XIII. No. 10.

CONTENTS.

Mrs. Katherine A. Tingley, Mr. E. A. Neresheimer, Editors.

$ 2.00 PER YEAR. ISSUED MONTHLY. PER COPY 20 CENTS
Entered as second class matter at New York Post-office.

"Universal Brotherhood"

DEVOTED TO
The Brotherhood of Humanity, the Theosophical Movement, Philosophy, Science and Art.

Founded in 1886 under the Title of "The Path," by WILLIAM Q. JUDGE.

BUSINESS NOTICE.

Universal Brotherhood is published on the twenty-fifth day of the month preceding date of issue.

Main Office: Theosophical Publishing Co., 144 Madison Avenue, New York City.

London: Theosophical Book Company, 8 Vernon Place, Bloomsbury Square, W. C.

Dublin: 18, Eustace Street.

Cable Address: "Judge," New York.

Annual Subscription for the United States, Canada and Mexico, $2.00; 6 months $1.00; 3 months 50 cents; single copy, 20 cents. Foreign countries in the Postal Union, 9s. per annum; six months 4s. 6d.; single copy, 1s. Payable in advance.

Remittances should be made by draft, check, post office order or registered letter. All remittances should be made payable and sent to Theosophical Publishing Company.

Change of Address. No change of address will be made within ten days previous to mailing day.

Manuscripts must be accompanied by postage for return if found unavailable.

Advertising Rates, which are moderate, may be obtained on application to the publishers.

Agents.—Active Agents are desired in every part of the world, to whom liberal inducements will be offered.

Communications intended for the Editorial Department should be addressed "Editor, Universal Brotherhood, 144 Madison Avenue, New York City," and should include no other matter. Those intended for the Business and Publishing Department should be addressed to "Theosophical Publishing Co., 144 Madison Avenue, New York City". It is particularly requested that this notice be complied with.

The Editors are not responsible for signed or unsigned articles in this Magazine, to which neither of their names are attached.

ANNOUNCEMENT.

UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD is a Magazine devoted to the promulgation of the principles of the Brotherhood of Humanity in the widest sense. It is an organ whose aim is to show that the Unity or Brotherhood of Mankind it an actual fact in nature. If this principle were better understood by the multitude or even by certain classes of Society there would be less strife and competition and more sympathy and co-operation.

The demonstration of these broad ideas from the Ethical, Scientific and Practical points of view will prove that there is much agreement between these systems on this topic, and that it is an underlying ground-work by means of which all Religions and all Philosophies agree also.

This magazine will endeavor to show the great similarity between the Religions of the world, in their fundamental beliefs and doctrines as also the value of studying other systems than our own.

A sound basis for ethics should be found.

Those who would assist the cause of Brotherhood should realize that it is of the first importance to discover as much as possible concerning the nature of man and man's relation to the world around him. The laws that govern his physical, mental, moral and spiritual being should be studied and investigated.

It is hoped that every sympathizer with the cause of brotherhood will endeavor to assist us in enlarging the circulation of this magazine. Subscribers will greatly oblige by sending us the names and addresses of individuals known to them as willing to investigate liberal ideas.

All writers who are interested in the above objects are invited to contribute articles.

It is in the hands of our readers to push the circulation of Universal Brotherhood to an almost unlimited extent. All profits arising from the publication of this magazine, or from the business conducted by the Theosophical Publishing Co., are devoted to propaganda of Brotherhood. All who assist us in this work are directly helping the great cause of humanity.

Please mention UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD when you write advertisers.

(illegible signature)
A HAPPY NEW YEAR.

"Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something, while you live, and it is in your power."

"The first duty taught in Theosophy, is to do one's duty unflinchingly by every duty."—Gems from the East.

Universal Brotherhood

Vol. XIV. JANUARY, 1899. No. 10.

A HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Once more we enter upon a new year, and the Greetings of our hearts rise spontaneously and go out to our loved ones and comrades throughout the world, to all the people of the earth, and to all creatures. We look back through twenty-three years and we see that lion-hearted pioneer H. P. Blavatsky standing alone, proclaiming her message to the world. Then a few gather around her and among them is our beloved Chief, William Q. Judge. A little later, H. P. B. leaves America for Europe and India, and the picture comes before us of W. Q. Judge meeting in New York, night after night, often alone, sometimes with but one or two. We know now what he was doing. We can see now how faithfully he tended the seed that has grown to a tree which is for the healing of the nations, and how he watched the spark that is now bursting into flame, a beacon of Truth, Light and Liberation for discouraged humanity.

How small a beginning! How glorious the result even now! But could I show you the picture of a few years hence you would say it is beyond belief. But it is not. The tide has turned. The sorrow and suffering which have oppressed Humanity for ages are nearing their end, the day of hope has already dawned, the new age and the new year of Universal Brotherhood has begun.

How glorious then is the opportunity of all to-day, and how great the responsibility of each one to help and not obstruct or hinder this work for humanity. Success cannot be attained without effort. The evil in the world and in man's own nature cannot be overcome without a struggle. But is it not a glorious thing to fight on and still fight? Some, perhaps, may fall, some have fallen in the struggle, but the victory is certain, and if all, when they are sore-pressed, would but remember the words of H. P. B., they would take new courage and new strength to go ever forward.

"Trials you must pass through or you will not be purified."

"Twenty failures are not irremediable if followed by as many undaunted struggles upward! Is it not so that mountains are climbed?"

And can we not see already how glorious is the work that has been accomplished. But two short years to the end of the Century and we shall see the Sun shining gloriously. The battle is already won, the darkness is already fast disappearing before the light of day. The work of H. P. B. and W. Q. J. has spread around the world and with each New Year the note of Brotherhood resounds more clearly and the Happy New Year shall be realized.

What a Greeting the Chief would, and I know, does send to all. This Universal Brotherhood Magazine is the outgrowth of The Path in which year after year he sent out his Greetings to the members and once again that our new members and friends may become as familiar with him as those of us who knew him personally and worked with and loved him we send his portrait as a New Year's Greeting.

Katherine A. Tingley.

COMRADES; GREETING!

Universal Brotherhood, the keynote of the coming cycle! Let its melody be diffused to the four points of the compass from the very depths of our hearts at this important hour at the closing of the year 1898, that it may reach the hearts of other men and women. The time is opportune and propitious, for the whole race has already been touched by the virtue of compassion.

Our organization, firmly founded on this high ideal, has sent its tendrils from the bosom of love and sympathy to discouraged humanity through its many channels of dissemination of the sublime philosophy of solace and happiness.

This greatest movement for the redemption of all mankind has been led through the initial stages of development with great success by the Master-hand of Wisdom; all brethren in the work may now take heart and strength from the certainty that the possibility of accomplishment is in sight. Signs are not wanting that the truths of our ideals are breaking through the strong crust of conventionality, and that the world has already been brought nearer to the realization of it by the efforts of this organization. Love to all workers!

E. Aug. Neresheimer.

"Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow.

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

"Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more;

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind."

Tennyson, In Memoriam.

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE.

BY ALEXANDER WILDER, M.D.

III. EARLY MANHOOD.

Goethe, has pictured Faust as having first acquired the learning of the schools, philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence and theology; then as going forth with Mephisto in quest of excitement, to which comes a tragic ending. The shock of this paralyzes him for a time from further endeavor. In the Second Book of the drama, he again rises up with strong resolve to begin an active career in the busy world.

Somewhat in analogy with this is the history of every one who leaves adolescence behind and attempts without the discipline of experience, to find a place and engage in the future work of life. Too often, however, it is more the varied wanderings of a Jung-Stilling, requiring the vicissitudes of years of preparation.

Lamartine desired to enter upon a military life, but it was repugnant to the wishes of his family that he should take service, either in the army of Bonaparte, or of any country that might be opposed to France. His father retained his royalist sentiments with characteristic stubbornness, and his older uncle, the recognized head of the family, though a former friend of Mirabeau, had refused the office of Senator when offered to him by the Emperor. Young Lamartine was thus handicapped and forced to idleness.

He spent some winters in Paris, and mingled with the gaieties and dissipations which young men encountered at the metropolis. The result was self-abasement. He incurred debts at the gaming table, which his limited allowance though eked out by secret contributions from his mother, were insufficient to meet; and he formed acquaintances that were a serious drawback to him in later years.

Perhaps he, like Bunyan, depicted himself in darker colors than there was really occasion. "There was not," says he, "air enough in the sky, fire enough in the sun, or space enough on the earth for the want of breath, excitement and burning that consumed me. I was a living fever; I had the delirium and inquietude of it in every part. The sober habits of my years of study, and the tranquil piety of my mother and our teachers, have been put far away from me. My friendships were as unworthy as my feelings. I had become intimate with the most giddy and turbulent young men of my country and period."

Nevertheless while he was going forward so readily in disorderly ways he was actually repelled by them. Indeed, he was only imitating others, and not really following his own natural disposition. When he came to be alone, the solitude purified him.

In 1813 he again visited Italy. His first opportunity for activity now came.

Paris having surrendered and Napoleon having abdicated, the Allied Powers of Europe placed Louis XVIII. on the throne of France. This prince had always been liberal in his views, and he now proclaimed a constitutional government. This conciliated all parties, royalists and republicans alike. Lamartine was enrolled in the Royal Guard, and was of the force that marched against Bonaparte upon his return from Elba.

The statement has been generally accepted and believed that the reception of the Emperor on this occasion was of the nature of a triumph. Lamartine declares that this was unqualifiedly untrue. The enthusiasm, he affirms, was confined entirely to the soldiers and to the dregs of the population. France, itself, the real France, had become utterly weary of this fighting for the aggrandizement of this one man. It had welcomed Louis XVIII., but not as the king of a counter-revolution. It did not contemplate any going back to former conditions. The king was received as the king of the Liberal Constitution.

"All the movement of the Revolution of 1789 which had been interrupted was commenced anew by us after the fall of the Imperial Government. The entire France,—the France that thought and not the France that clamored—was perfectly conscious that the return of Bonaparte meant the return of the military régime and tyranny. Of this it stood in dread. The Twentieth of March [1815] was a conspiracy of the army and not a movement of the nation. If there had not been an army organized in France that was ready to fly under the eagles of its Emperor, the Emperor would never have reached Paris."

Nevertheless Lamartine was confounded by what took place. In the brief space of eight days apart, he saw one France ready to rise up in mass against Bonaparte, and then another France prostrate at his feet. From that day he despaired of the omnipotence of opinion and believed even more than he ought in the power of bayonets.

Louis XVIII., the Count d'Artois and son, with Marshal Marmont and the royal forces left Paris the night before Bonaparte made his entry. As they passed the cities on their retreat, the citizens brought them food, execrating the "Pretorians" who had overturned the institutions and peace of the country. Royalists and Republicans alike participated in this denunciation of the treason of the army.

At Arras the king left the troops and went on by himself to Belgium. The Count d'Artois and Marshal Marmont, the commander of the forces, followed soon afterward, after having issued a proclamation absolving the men from their oath. Thus abandoned, the question arose, what was next to be done. After a desultory discussion, a musketeer declared that the true and safe course was to leave France and take service abroad.

Lamartine opposed this proposition. Though but twenty-four years of age, he had won the respect of his comrades. Stepping on the wheel of a wagon he addressed them. It was his first attempt to speak in public. He referred to the significant fact that his family had been loyal to the monarchy, but had not emigrated during the Revolution. He had been nurtured in such sentiments. Louis XVIII. had now given France a representative government. The cause of Republican Liberty and the cause of the Bourbons had thus become united. If now the two parties should continue to act together, the reign of Bonaparte would be short and his fall complete. But if the royalists should now emigrate, they would, by so doing abandon the Republicans to the army. The blood of the Republicans would smother all resistance to the Empire. The duty, therefore, of those now present, both to their country and to their families, forbade that they should follow the king out of the French territory.

Most of the men voted to remain; a few rode away. Being now without officers, a temporary organization was effected, posts established around Bethune and a patrol provided. Four days later a capitulation took place, by which they were permitted to go to their families, but excluded from Paris.

Lamartine, however, put on the dress of a citizen and went in a cabriolet to Paris. A few days later he was present at a review of the troops.

The Emperor, he observed, exhibited none of that ideal of intellectual beauty and innate royalty, which writers had so often depicted. He seemed to be conscious that the ground was not solid under his feet. His movements indicated distrust and hesitation. As the troops defiled before him they cheered with "a concentrated accent of hopelessness."

Lamartine went home with renewed confidence.

The Imperial conscription filled the Chevalier, his father, with dismay. Lamartine declared to him that he would in no case enter the ranks himself or procure a substitute. He would sooner be shot to death. Leaving home, he put on the dress of a peasant laborer, and eluding the videttes on the frontier, crossed into Switzerland.

For some weeks he was the guest of the Baron de Vincy, an emigrant nobleman whose property had been confiscated. Himself almost without money and his entertainers impoverished, he could not bring himself to burden them longer. Leaving them abruptly, he made his way to Geneva. He was actually considering the project of applying to be a tutor in a Russian family and travelling to the Crimea, Circassia and Persia, when the final overthrow of Bonaparte called him back to France.

He became again a member of the military household of the king. Here he found his oldest and most beloved of friends, the Count Aymon de Virieu. They had been in college together, had travelled in Italy, their fathers had shared danger together in the Royal Guard on the fatal Tenth of August. They were ever after as two brothers, one in thought, one in soul, one in purse. They continued members of the Guard till it was disbanded.

Some years afterward Virieu made Lamartine acquainted with several persons of distinction whose good offices indirectly facilitated Lamartine's entry into public life.

Virieu was boisterous, full of jest, and a skeptic in religion. He was through his mother, descended from Montaigne, and he had inherited that author's disposition. He quoted him incessantly.

Lamartine, on the contrary, had inherited from his mother, a melancholic temperament, quiet, serious and religious. He could not bear Montaigne's skepticism, nor his salacious utterances. "Man is born to believe," he declared. "To believe in nothing is the way to accomplish nothing, and impurity in speech is a soiling of the soul."

He spent a summer with Virieu and his family in Dauphiné. Their way of living was a reflection of his boyhood life at home, and brought calm and repose to his mind.

Virieu afterward became serious like his mother and withdrawing from public life on account of his health, died some years later. "In him," says Lamartine, "I lost the living witness of the first half of my own life. I felt that death had torn out the dearest page of my history, and that it was enshrouded with him."

Another fellow-student whom Lamartine repeatedly mentions, was the baron Louis de Vignet, of Chambery, in Savoy. They were often competitors for the prizes. Vignet gave up the profession of law and accepted a life of poverty for the sake of his mother and sister. He had been a skeptic and scoffer in religion and repulsive in temper, but watching with his dying mother, he became changed and was modest, pensive, gentle and melancholy.

He had hesitated to renew his acquaintance with Lamartine during the latter's wild career in Paris, but now, meeting accidentally, the two were drawn together at once. Vignet greeted Lamartine more as a father than as a comrade, and they quickly formed a compact of friendship. As if to seal it they went together to Charmettes to visit the house where Rousseau had lived, and afterward went to Servolex together.

Vignet was a nephew of the Counts de Maistre, two of whom were distinguished in the political arena and world of letters. Lamartine was received by the elders as a son, and the younger members of the family as a brother. He remained with them during the summer. The wholesome influence took his mind away from the philosophy of the guardhouse and the effeminate literature then current in France. It was indeed an important epoch in his history. Time, death, difference of country and opinion afterward separated them, but he always vividly remembered that summer at the house of Colonel de Maistre and Louis de Vignet.

A diversion of the household consisted of recitations of verse. Vignet had collected a large number of effusions which were current among the Savoyards. Lamartine also ventured to recite his own verses before Colonel de Maistre and his daughters. The old man admired his pure French diction and predicted to his nephew that Lamartine would become distinguished.

Another summer found Lamartine at home in Milly. The family had gone away; the father and uncles to a hunting party in Burgundy, the mother on a journey, and the sisters on visits to friends, or to the convent. He was left alone with no companionship but an old servant-woman, his horse and his dog. The silence, the loneliness of the garden, and the empty rooms reminded him of the tomb. It was in keeping with his state of mind. He felt himself, or rather he desired to feel himself dead.

In this mood he again resumed familiar relations with the Abbé Dumont, his former schoolmaster at Bussières. The abbé had himself become the parish priest. There had been a tragedy in his life before he gave up his place in the world to take orders. He was the original of Jocelyn in Lamartine's little poem.

Lamartine rode daily to the parsonage. The two discoursed on topics more or less abstruse, such as the state of man on the earth, the vanity of ambition, the religions, philosophies and literature of different peoples, the esteem bestowed on one great man over another, the superiority of certain authors to their rivals, the greatness of spirit in some and littleness in others. To set forth their views they quoted authors of every age, like Plato, Cicero, Seneca, Fénélon, Bossuet, Voltaire, Rousseau.

Poetry was more severely handled. Dumont appreciated only the sense of language, and did not care for the musicalness of what was uttered. They both agreed that in the study of rhythm and the mechanic consonance of rhyme there was a puerile attempt to associate a sensual delight of sound to some grand thought or manly sentiment. Versifying pertains to the speech of a people's infancy, prose to that of its maturity.

Lamartine conceived that poetry does not consist in the mere sensuousness of verse, but in the ideas, the sentiment, the image. "To change an utterance into music does not perfect it, but materializes it. The simple sentence justly and forcibly expressing the pure thought or naked sentiment without a dream as to the sound or form of phrase, is the genuine style, the expression, the WORD."

These conversations naturally drifted to the supreme questions of the time—to politics, philosophy and religion. Dumont was that contradictory character, found so often in many countries—a royalist although a democrat, and opposed to the Revolution, although he detested the ancient régime and actually accepted the very aims and doctrines which the Revolution contemplated. Both he and Lamartine had been "fed with the marrow of Greek and Roman literature." They adored Liberty as a well-sounding term before they came to consider it as a holy thing and as the moral quality in every free man.

Dumont was philosophic, like the century in which he was born. In his house there was no token to show that he was a priest—neither breviary, nor crucifix, nor image of a saint, nor priestly garment. All these he relegated to the sacristy. He considered the mystic rites of Christianity which he performed as belonging to the routine of his profession, to be little else than a ritual of no importance, a code of morals illustrated by symbolic dogmas and traditional practices, that did not encroach on his mental independence and reason. He spoke of God to an infantile people, using the dialect of the sanctuary. But when he returned home he discoursed in the language of Plato, Cicero and Rousseau. His mind was incredulous, but his soul, softened by his sad fortune, was religious. His great goodness of heart enabled him to give to this vague piety the form and reality of a precise faith. He constrained his intelligence to bow under the yoke of Catholicism and the dogmas of religion. He read and admired the writings of Chateaubriand and others of the time, but he was not convinced; he did not believe what they taught.

Lamartine, on the other hand, was influenced by the religion of his infancy. Piety always came back to him when he was alone; it made him better, as though the thought of man when he is isolated from others was his best counsellor. It was not so much a matter of conviction, as a wish that it should be true. The poetry and affectionateness of religion swayed his will. He could contemplate the mystery of the Incarnation as filling, or at least bridging over, the unmeasurable space between humanity and God. If he did not quite admit this as actual fact, he revered it as a wonderful poem of the soul. He embellished it with the charms of his imagination, he embalmed it with his desires, he colored it with the tints of his thought and enthusiasm; in short,—he subordinated his rebellious reason to this earnest desire to believe, so that he might be able to love and pray. He put away from him, as by force, every shadow of doubt and repugnance, and almost succeeded in producing the illusions for which he was so eager, and in conforming the habit of his soul to the current sentiment of the epoch. If he did not really worship his mother's God as his own God, he at least carried him in his heart as an idol.

The cordial relations of the two friends were maintained for years. The priest continued to minister in his little church and gave much assistance to the mother of Lamartine in her charities. Above his grave in the cemetery is a stone with a brief epitaph, and beneath it the words: "Alphonse de Lamartine à son ami."

The mental depression under which Lamartine labored, seriously affected his health. The family physician was alarmed. Plainly enough it was from causes outside of the province of medicine and so instead of prescribing medicines he ordered the young man to go to Aix in Savoy, to the hot sulphur springs. He borrowed money from a friend of the family and went. Vignet procured a room for him, and paid him several visits during his sojourn. It was early Autumn. October had just begun, and the leaves on the trees had put on their colors. The bathing season was over, and the usual guests had gone away, leaving the place solitary.

There was another patient in the house. This was a lady from Paris. She was in a decline and had been at Aix several months. Lamartine, however, had no inclination to see her.

An accident on the lake brought them together in which he rescued her from imminent peril of life. The acquaintance thus begun became at once an ardent attachment. Lamartine describes it as "repose of the heart, after having met with the long-sought and till then unfound object of its restless adoration; the long-desired idol of that vague, unquiet adoration of supreme beauty which agitates the soul till the divinity has been discovered."

This lady, the "Julie" of his story, was the wife of an old man, a friend of the Emperor Napoleon. He had first seen her at the convent where she was receiving her education. She was a native of the island where the Virginia of the romance was said to have been born, and had been brought to France. She was without friends to protect her or the necessary dowry to attract proposals of marriage. The old gentleman in pity for her friendless condition, had married her, receiving her as a daughter and not as a wife. Her health had given way, and he sent her to Aix in hope that the mountain air and bathing might restore her.

She had no liking for gallantry. Yet she did not affect prudery or reserve. She declared her understanding of their peculiar relations in terms the most forceful: "Eternity in one instant and the Infinite in one sensation." Then she said further: "I do not know whether this is what is called love; nor do I wish to know; but it is the most supreme and entire happiness that the soul of one created being can draw from the soul, eyes and voice of another being like herself—a being who, till now, was wanting to her happiness, and whose existence she completes."

She had lived among philosophers of the French school, and did not have views like those of the women of Europe who bowed before another criterion than their conscience. "I believe," said she, "in the God who has engraved his symbol in Nature, his law in our hearts, his morality in our reason. Reason, feeling and conscience are the only revelation in which I believe." She then asked that this their mutual affection should remain "like a pure thought" and so be in no way blended with any other relations.

In this way six weeks passed by. They adhered strictly to their line of action, yet she fretted jealously at the thought that Lamartine would love another after her death, and even attempted suicide; but presently yielded the point, and even predicted that he would yet find another like and as dear as herself.

Winter drew near and they left Savoy for their respective homes. Unknown to her, Lamartine followed her travelling coach to Paris, and then went to Milly where Vignet was awaiting him.

He remained at home till January. He had exhausted his allowance of money. His mother observed his restlessness and attributed it to want of diversion. She presented him with a diamond, the last jewel which she had retained from her young girlhood, and bade him go to Paris. "It is the last token of my love," said she,—"and I stake it in the lottery of Providence."

This gift had a wholesome influence. He became thenceforth more prudent in the expending of money, and never parted with the gem till his other resources were exhausted. He no more affected to be engaged in study while actually spending his time in dissipation. He directed his days to reading in history, science, political economy and diplomacy. The Count de Virieu was in Paris and received him to share his modest lodgings.

Nevertheless, his money though now carefully managed, was finally exhausted. He was called upon by old creditors to pay the "debts of honor" that he had incurred in former years. He had renewed his intimacy with Julie, and her husband gave him the warmest of welcomes. Her health was failing fast, and he took frequent excursions with her about Paris in the hope of benefit. At the end of the winter the alternative was presented to support himself or go back to Milly.

When in college he had written verses which his friends there greatly admired. He continued to do so at different times, and had brought a collection of them to Paris. He now offered them to publishers but without success. He was obliged to submit. He made a farewell excursion with Julie to St. Cloud, and left Paris the next morning.

That summer was for him more terrible than ever. He saw no hope of emerging from poverty and obscurity. Crops failed that year and the resources of the family were straitened to actual penury. His health suffered and serious results were apprehended. He was again ordered to go to Aix. His mother procured the money for him by surreptitiously selling trees that were growing on their little farm.

A note from Julie informed him that her husband was ill, but told him to go to Aix and wait for her. When he arrived there, there came a package forwarded from Chambery enclosing letters from Paris. One of these was from Julie[1] containing a lock of hair and bidding him farewell. It had been herself and not her husband, that was ill and dying. She had given up her former disbelief. "God will send you another sister," she wrote, "and she will be the pious helpmate of your life. I will ask it of him."

A letter from the husband asked Lamartine to continue to him as a son.

The shock almost bereft him of reason. He wandered for months over the mountains of Savoy and Switzerland, as he describes, "like a darkened soul that had lost the light of heaven and had no mind for that of earth." His mother secretly procured money for him in the hope that travel would alleviate his condition, the cause of which she did not imagine. Autumn was passing, however, and she could no longer frame excuses for his absence. He must return home.

As he was returning in the boat from Lyons, he contemplated the prospects before him. He had chafed for an active life, and destiny was compelling him to fold his wings in the nest from which he had been eager to escape. Now, in his exhaustion, he was willing to give up, hoping soon to die. "I was convinced," says he, "that in those months of love, of delirium and of grief, my heart had exhausted all the delights and bitternesses of a long life; that I had nothing more than for some months more to bury the memory of Julie under the ashes of my heart; and that the angel whose steps I had followed in thought into another life would soon call me to shorten my absence and begin the eternal love. The feeling that this was sure, now gave me comfort and enabled me to accept with patience the interval which I believed would be a short one between the parting and the reunion."

When the boat arrived at Mâcon, Lamartine saw nobody at the landing to welcome him. But as he picked up his valise he found himself suddenly embraced and almost smothered by the caresses of a dog. It was Azor, the same that had so abruptly broken up his Ossianic interview, seven years before, with Lucy, on the terrace. It was necessary to give him a strap of the valise to hold to keep him from getting under the feet of other travellers.

The Chevalier, his father, however, was only a little way off. He was watching with an opera-glass to see whether the dog had found his son. He now conducted him home by the most frequented streets, as if to show him to those whom he met. The dog had already gone to announce him, and Lamartine found his mother and sisters at the door.

The house had been recently purchased for a winter residence. The mother had besought this outlay for the sake of her five daughters, to be able to provide them with tutors and governesses and to introduce them advantageously into society. The Chevalier lost no time in showing his son the various rooms and conveniences and bringing him to the apartment for himself.

Lamartine had retired for the evening when his mother came into the room. She had noted his profound depression and now silently caressed him.

"Who would have told me," said she, "that in twenty-two years I would see my child blighted in the vigor of his soul and heart, and his countenance enshrouded in a secret grief?"

Then, forbearing to enquire further, she explained the embarrassed condition of the family. Their property, always small, had been greatly reduced by the expenses of his education, travels, and wayward adventures. "I do not mention this to reproach you," said she; "you know that if my tears could have been changed into gold for you, I would have put it into your hands."

The purchase of the house, the saving of money to furnish dowries for his sisters, and bad harvests had narrowed their circumstances. His father had worried at the thought of leaving his children without a patrimony; and though he had taken great delight in them in their tender years, he reproached himself now for their existence.

What she could do to help, she had done. In their various exigencies she had been generously helped by Madame Paradis, their neighbor. This lady had done this from affection, only stipulating that their father should not know. She had furnished the money for Lamartine's expenses.

"I had hoped," she continued, "that your father's family would perceive the craving for activity which is wasting your youth, and be prompted to the outlay necessary to enable you to enter and go through with the preparatory course for an administrative or diplomatic career. I have reasoned with them, prayed, conjured, wept, humbled myself before them as it is glorious and agreeable for a mother to humiliate herself for her son. It is in vain."

As he was to be the heir to their estates, they saw no necessity for him to desire or be ambitious for an active career beyond their sphere of life. Hence her pleading had only brought harsh words and unkind feeling toward herself without doing him any service.

If Providence had granted her wish she would have made use of every opportunity to open for him a larger horizon, and a career worthy of him. But he must wait. She also asked him to make her his only confidant. A complaint to his father would drive him to despair, because he could not help. "Accept this obscure and unoccupied life for a few years," she pleaded. "I will pray God to move the hearts of your uncles and aunts, and to open for my son that field of activity, extent, glory and happy fortune, which he has permitted a mother to desire for such a son as you."

To such an appeal Lamartine could only acquiesce. The life upon which he thus entered has had many counterparts. The older uncle gave law to the whole family as its recognized head. He and his nephew had many angry encounters. The mother would endeavor anxiously to reconcile them. The Chevalier, bearing in mind the interest of all his children, remained neutral.

The uncle, regarding Alphonse as his prospective successor, desired him to remain quietly at home, cultivate science, apply himself to agriculture and domestic economy, and in time become the head of a family in the province. Lamartine acknowledged that such a career would have been the most natural and happy. "But," he adds, "everyone when coming into the world has his allotment marked out in his nature. This career was not for me, and my uncle had not been able to read the fact in my eyes."

His life at Mâcon that winter was as monotonous as that of monks in a cloister. He spent the forenoons in his room with his books and dog. Dinner was at noon; and after that all assembled at the mansion of the uncle. This was a season to be dreaded. His mother was then subjected to reproaches and remonstrances from every one for every trifling fault of her children. The aunts seemed to regard them as their own, and actually loved their brother's wife; but they desired to exercise the rights of motherhood without the burdens. Sometimes she would repel their attacks, but oftener she only wept. Then would follow explanations, excuses and caresses; and so it would go, only to be resumed the next day.

She was a woman superior to them all, high-spirited and dignified; but the future interest of her children depended on their good-will, and for this reason she was submissive. "We called this the Hour of Martyrdom," says Lamartine, "and we sought to make it up to her by redoubling our tenderness after we came out."

In the afternoon, she helped the tutors with her daughters, or herself received visitors. Her house and discourse were to her neighbors an attraction far exceeding that of the majestic austerity at the great house, the Hotel de Lamartine. The Chevalier would go out to visit some former comrade, or one of the older inhabitants, when they would amuse themselves with playing at checkers, backgammon or "Boston."

Lamartine himself would repair to his room, or walk out with his dog in the paths that intersected the fields behind the Alms House. There were grand views in the distance, but he only gazed on the Alps as the prisoner looks on the wall beyond which he has tasted of sunshine, love and freedom.

He also visited a comrade of his father's at the place. The man was unable to use his limbs, and kept himself cheerful by working as a jeweler and repairer of watches. Lamartine helped him and became daily a welcome visitor.

The leading families of Mâcon cultivated social relations, and there was a drawing-room party somewhere every night. Lamartine accompanied his mother and sisters, but made his escape before diversions began.

At his uncle's, however, it was different. The visitors included the most eminent men of the district, diplomats, scholars and others of distinction. Ten of these, with his uncle, organized the Academy of Mâcon. It held meetings in the library which were usually attended by thirty or forty members. Papers were presented on subjects of importance, social, industrial or scientific.

Lamartine was admitted to membership despite his youth at the proposition of his uncle. He delivered his first discourse upon the Advantages Derived from Interchange of Ideas between Peoples by Means of Literature. Years after he burned this paper in disgust at its commonplace character.

One of the most interesting members of this Academy, M. de Larnaud, he describes as "a Universal Dictionary in a human form, all the ashes of the Alexandrian Library contained in the skull of a living man." M. de Larnaud, he declares, "knew everything and impassioned everything." He had engaged in the Revolution in 1789 with the ardor of a delirium, but after the massacre of the Tenth of August, he turned his sympathies to the victims. He was intimate with the Girondins,—above all with Madame Roland and Vergniaud—and he accepted heartily their doctrine of a free Republic which should be wise and pure. He did not mourn their fate on the scaffold which was their pedestal for history, but he mourned that vote which they gave "for the death of the king to save the people." Although a nation is often saved by a martyrdom, he knew that it is never saved by a crime.

M. de Larnaud had no less enthusiasm for poetry and literature than for politics. He was a comrade of Rouget de Lisle, the author of the Marsellaise Hymn; he had taken part at sittings of the Academies; he was a member of all the Cercles; he followed all the Courts, visited all the Salôns, attended all the theatres, absorbing all that was knowable, all that pertained to the two orders of things. He remembered everything and would tell it with a manner and gesture that made the hearer understand and behold it all. Everything—antiquity, past history and present—was to be learned from him.

He was quick to perceive the bent of Lamartine. He visited the young man in his chamber and discoursed familiarly with him, as though both were of the same age and plane of intelligence. He did not venture, however, to speak with like freedom in the drawing-room in presence of the uncle, the pious aunts, and the various classes of visitors. But in young Lamartine's chamber he would display his old-time enthusiasm for the great men and great achievements at the beginning of the Revolution before the period of the ascendancy of the populace, the Commune of Paris, and the Terror. The philosopher was again manifest in him under the simulacrum of the man of the world, and he denounced the Imperial régime of Bonaparte with fierceness.

From him Lamartine derived the conception of the scenes, the men and characters which he set forth so admirably in the History of the Girondists. His friendship remained constant till his death.

One day as Lamartine was walking in the street his dog made the acquaintance of another dog belonging to a physician of the place. The owner was M. de Ronot, who had been a fellow-student at College. Warm friendship now sprang up between them. Lamartine pays him this tribute: "I was often absent from the land of my birth, especially after death had blighted all the roots of my family; but I knew that there was one who watched for my return, who followed with his eye my adverse fortunes, who fought against the envies, hatreds and calumnies that grovelled on the soil of our homestead—alas, about our gravestones, and who received with delight everything in my life that was good fortune, and with grief everything that was sad."

He died many years afterward with the name of Lamartine on his lips. It was at the period when Lamartine was in deepest adversity, and abandoned by the many who in brighter times had ardently professed their friendship.

When the time came in spring for the family to go back to Milly, the whole family welcomed this modest abode as an asylum. The mother resumed the instructing of her daughters, and her visits to the sick and poor. Lamartine often went with her. He always found living in a city to be intolerable, but he brought his melancholy with him. He renewed his intimacy with the Abbé Dumont at the garden of the parsonage, and gradually recovered health and spirits.

Translations of Byron's poems appeared that season in French journals. Lamartine was prompted to endeavors of similar character. That autumn he wrote several of his Meditations, and read portions of them to his father. The old Chevalier, who knew nothing of the new school of poetry, was deeply affected, but feared to utter praise, lest it should be from parental partiality.

The second winter at the new house in Mâcon was passed like the first. Lamartine had no liking for the social entertainments. When Lent came, he left home and spent the spring and summer with his other uncle, the Abbé Lamartine, at D'Urcy in Upper Burgundy.

This uncle had been compelled, by the accident of having been a second son, to take priest's orders. Thus interdicted from having a family of his own he bestowed his affection richly upon his younger brother and children. He considered them as his own, and Lamartine was recognized as his heir. They spent the summer and autumn in their younger years, at his patriarchal mansion, and he took an actual part in their education. It was here that Lamartine acquired his passion for life in the country.

The abbé had spent his noviciate at Paris, and mingled in society in the time of Louis XV. He was a man of the world rather than of the Church. Relinquishing the priestly functions at the Revolution, he now lived by himself on his share of the paternal estate, a Homeric life, hermit-like, as a philosopher and cultivator of the soil.

His housekeeper, herself formerly a nun, persuaded him to purchase dogs and a horse for his nephew. Lamartine had always been beloved by all the domestics, and his uncle, who was the most affectionate of men, treated him as a personal friend rather than as a kinsman.

One afternoon in the latter part of July, he was riding back from a jaunt in the neighboring forest when a letter-carrier delivered him a note from two Roman ladies at an inn at Pont-de-Pany. His uncle, in whom humor was a prominent quality, demanded at once to know the mystery.

"There must be no mystery with me," said he. "The heroes of a romance always need a confidant, and I have known both parts in my time."

He continued his badinage, promising to be discreet as well as faithful; but Lamartine, unable to endure it, protested that he could not form any new attachment.

"That linden-tree is older than you," the uncle replied. "I have cut it five times in twenty years, and it has more sap and branches now than when I came here."

"Burn it at the root," Lamartine retorted in desperation, "and then see whether it will spring up again."

It was an adventure of a new character. The two ladies, the princess Regina di —— and her aunt, had been commended to his good offices by the Count Saluce de ——, a Breton nobleman belonging to an emigrant family, then living at Rome. He had come temporarily to France and took service in the Royal Guard, there forming an intimate friendship with Lamartine. The princess was a maiden wife of sixteen who had been forced against her will into a marriage ceremony with an elderly kinsman, and had fled with her aunt to France. The count was her lover, and had been arrested as he was about to accompany her. Lamartine had been apprised of all this before by letters from his friend, and now complied faithfully with his wishes by finding the two fugitives a residence at Noyon near Geneva. Meanwhile a suit was in progress for an annulment of the marriage.

Some days afterward a letter came from the count apprising Lamartine that this would not take place. The princess was liable, therefore, to forfeit her property, and upon her return to Italy, to be imprisoned in a convent. The prince, her husband, who was old and infirm, had desired the marriage only for the purpose of assuring her estate to his heirs. He now offered, if Count Saluce would not press the suit, that he would cast a veil over what had passed, and let her live with her grandmother in future. This would spare her reputation and social position. But Saluce must go far away.

He decided to comply with the conditions, and had already left Italy for Spain to join his uncle's regiment and embark for the Philippine Islands.

Lamartine deplored the fatal necessity but felt himself obliged to approve the course taken by his friend. Yet Regina had not been consulted, and perhaps she would have chosen exile with him before freedom and fortune elsewhere. Certainly, the count had constituted himself judge and sacrificing priest without consulting the victim, but the sacrifice was commended by delicacy of sentiment, by honor, virtue, even by love itself.

When Lamartine met Regina she read all in his face. As she perused the letter she was seized with fury. She denounced her lover as savage and cowardly, not worthy of the least token of regard. Hurrying to her room, she threw his letters and keepsakes out of the window and commanded her nurse to go and sink them in the lake; that thus six months of love and delirium might be swallowed up. The nurse fully reciprocated the sentiments of her mistress. She saw no merit in such generosity as Saluce had exhibited. A Roman would have gone to every extreme, knowing love and nothing else.

Three days passed before the young princess made her appearance. She had become more calm. She told Lamartine that she was now undeceived; what she had thought she loved was a phantom that had vanished.

She was turning her regard upon him. His unflagging kindness and assiduity had affected her. But susceptible as he might be, the memory of his own lost one, and his friendship for Saluce, were intervening. Finally, however, upon learning that Lamartine would be in Paris the coming winter, she declared her purpose to be there likewise.

Her uncles had come for her, and she returned with them to Rome. One of them afterward accompanied her and her grandmother to Paris, and Lamartine met them there the coming winter.

He had now resolved to try his fortune once more. It was declared by Charles Fourier, that when God implanted a desire in a human soul it was his promise of its fruition. Lamartine was now to realize its verity.

[1] In the Meditations, Lamartine names an Elvire who has been conjectured to have been the same person.

"If you examine a man that has been well-disciplined and purified by philosophy, you will find nothing that is unsound, false, or foul in him."

"The noble delight in the noble; the base do not; the bee goes to the lotus from the wood; not so the frog, though living in the same lake."

—Gems from the East.

POINT LOMA AND ITS LEGEND.

BY FRANK M. PIERCE.

How describe its indescribable beauties: the broad expanse of ocean; land-locked bay, with craft of war and commerce riding on its peaceful bosom; nestling city; sunlit, fruitful valleys, cut by sparkling, snow-fed streams; majestic mountain range with snow-capped peaks, like giant fingers heavenward pointing—all touched by soft and vitalizing breezes—one vast Titanic picture, overwhelming self, while "Soul," in fitting raiment stands visible, a God.

In retrospective thought, seated on its rock-ribbed, element-defying battlements, I muse upon the Legend:

That here the wise ones of Lemuria—now ocean-covered—reared a stately edifice, a temple dedicated to the Gods of Light, wherein they taught her worthy youth the simple laws of life eternal:

That here the gods touched hands with men and gave to them rich stores of knowledge and of wisdom in such measure as they could use unselfishly:

That here men living for the soul of things made earth a heaven, themselves gods, conscious of their oneness with the Father (like their modern prototype, the fearless Nazarene):

That from the temple-dome-crowned Point, standing like mystic virgin, old yet ever young—never yielding to the dark waters' fond embrace when all to Westward sank in one vast cataclysm—shone to all the world a quenchless, pure, white flame to light the way for mariners on ocean's waters, and on the sea of thought, that all might see and live:

That once, when darkness filled the earth and men went blindly searching for the light and found it not, then the great Teacher from the temple—filled with pity and compassion—went forth to save the lost,—leaving the temple and its sacred light in care of trusted ones, charged on their lives to keep and hold its precincts inviolate till her return; their inspiration gone—careless and faithless to their sacred trust—the light went out and they in darkness perished; the temple—refuge for the good and wise—was sacked and leveled to the earth from sight of men:

But caverned underneath (the Legend runs) stand guarding genii, giants grim, fairies, gnomes and sprites, to hold the portals closed by pitfalls, ocean tides, dire calamities and death, 'gainst venturous ones and the faithless guardians lingering near the whispering, moaning caverns by the sea—till their Queen returns to their release:

That in some coming age when men, grown weary, heartsick, hopeless, wandering in the trackless waste, shall face again the rising Sun in search of ancient Wisdom and the Truth, then the great Teacher will again appear in human guise, among her own—welcomed by the wise-grown, faithful watchers, rejected and reviled by those who faithless in the past have been—to rear upon the ruins of the old, a new and grander Temple, dedicated to all that lives; and in its pure white marble dome to fix a light—symbolic of regenerate man—whose penetrating rays shall reach to lowest depths to light the ceaseless upward march of evolution to the Heaven on Earth—the Universal Brotherhood of Peace and Good-Will, made perfect through the travail, agony and blood of man, redeemed from SELF.

EVOLUTION AND INVOLUTION.

BY H. A. FREEMAN.

Metaphysically considered, evolution is Nature's process of unfolding and bringing about her changes and developments. It goes on its way irresistibly and taken as a whole moves in orderly routine. This is not always obvious, but the exceptions are only apparently such. The fault lies in our lack of ability to observe all the facts and conditions. If we could investigate fully we should find that all apparent hitches are balanced or offset by an advance in some other direction and that there has been and can be no check or disorder in the process of evolution.

Whatever deflects the course or changes the character of an evolution does not necessarily hinder it, and if it seems to stop still that is only a question of the point of view.

The people of a race, or nation, or a community may deteriorate physically, intellectually, or in their commercial activity, but that does not prove that their development has come to an end. It only marks a cessation of progress along certain special lines. The American Indians are practically extinct, and it may appear that their race evolution has stopped. But that would be taking note of only one aspect of their condition. If we observe that they have decreased in ferocity, diminished in numbers and sunk to the commonplace grade of hard working farmers we must agree that their evolution does not proceed along romantic lines as it did in the days of Fenimore Cooper. But the few that remain may be more useful for the world's upbuilding than were all the savage hordes that ever started out on the war path to exterminate each other.

Numbers are not essential to a healthy evolution. China with its starving myriads is not a high example of progress.

The variations and fluctuations that make themselves visible in evolution are like ripples. We should never notice them if we took a broader view.

Evolution does not go stiffly and solidly forward like a self-propelled wall of masonry. It is more like the resistless ebb and flow of the incoming tide.

One ripple overwhelms or effaces another and a curling breaker leaps up from behind them and sprays the shore far in advance of the main body of invading waters.

Evolution reaches out similarly, now advancing, now retreating in unconsidered wavelets, always gaining, always effacing the old with the new, and inevitably dominating the entire situation at last.

The ebb tide affords a symbol of Involution which lays bare the way for another era of flood, so that every drop in the ocean taking its turn may ultimately rise to its highest mark of attainment.

Involution is usually described as a sort of compensatory process, coördinate with evolution, though not co-incident with it. It is regarded as a return swing of the pendulum of evolution and is sometimes crudely illustrated by comparing the two to the corresponding halves of a circle matched together so as to form a completed ring or hoop. But this symbol though impressive is misleading, for involution matched with evolution can not bring about any condition of finality.

If that were possible evolution would end in extinction—and extinction is unthinkable.

The pairing of the two processes does not complete a circle. One does not match the other and neither can undo the other's work. If there could be a counter-action between them, each would efface the results of the other, as soon as its hour of activity began.

For illustration one may consider the progress of a bud which in due course of evolution unfolds into a rose fully expanded. That rose does not refold and become again a bud.

And if it did, that would not be involution. It would be only retrogression. Involution does not follow upon the heels of evolution to match its movements with opposing influences. It doesn't interfere at all. If it did there would be no unfolding of Nature's plans, for all her efforts would cancel each other.

Doubtless the two processes work towards the same result in obedience to a systematic divine idea and purpose, and, not leading up to any finality, they form a cycle rather than a circle and may be best pictured as a continuous spiral and not as a completed hoop.

It would then be seen that involution and evolution succeed each other in rotation as the night follows day and the day gives place to night. Each period of one followed by the other forms a coil in the spiral. And the spiral is continuous, being itself only one coil in a greater cycle which, in its turn, forms part of a still more extensive series of coils. And thus they go on to infinity, for they can never reach a limit. And the processes of our involution and evolution are only coils of a cycle that has gone on forever and they will continue to form new coils to all eternity.

But the contemplation of the present coil in which we find ourselves involved is quite confusing enough for it extends back farther than our comprehension can grasp and is still very far from finished. It will never be complete until we have all reached our limit of attainment, and that is yet a long way ahead of us.

It is obvious that these mighty processes lead to some ultimate object, and that they could never have been started into operation without a reason.

The ultimate object is easily found. It is quite evidently progress. And the reason seems by analogy to be similar to that which dominates every living thing in the Universe—the desire to expand, to create, to perpetuate. This desire seems to have impelled that incomprehensible Power which is back of all life and expression to make itself manifest. A Breath of itself took the form of matter and in obedience to the immutable law of compensation sought at once to return to its original exalted condition.

That descent into matter was Involution. The regeneration, the re-ascent to the original purity is Evolution.

The creative Consciousness awoke to a desire for manifestation and produced from its thought, substance. Then were set in motion the forces through whose operations substance took on form and living organisms appeared.

The degradation of that Spiritual Essence into a condition of matter was Involution. It was a degradation or descent because it was a change. No change could have exalted it, so the altered condition was a descent. The process of regeneration, the work of purification from the stain of material existence began at once and still goes on. And that is evolution.

When man began to assume domination over the other products of evolution and became a reasoning, responsible creature, that was evidence that he is the medium through which matter is to be uplifted to its former spiritual condition. In other words, it is a certainty that matter reaches its highest development in man and that the next step beyond the physical man is the divine man—the man of pure spirituality practically unsullied by matter. All the processes of evolution lead to the supremacy of the physical man over all other material development, and as he continues to advance he will inevitably reach a condition so exalted as to be virtually divine while still living in the flesh. Such men exist even to-day and have been known in all ages.

They are those who occasionally appear as Saviours and Messiahs. They are the pioneer wavelets which spray the shore in advance of the incoming tide.

When man reaches that point of perfection that will free him from the material or physical life forever, his evolution is complete and involution may begin again upon a new world as it has done countless millions of times before and will continue to do to all eternity.

We cannot of course comprehend why the Divine Consciousness has arranged all this stupendous machinery for the mere sake of becoming manifest. We cannot assume that it is for any reason that we could understand even though it were revealed to us. But we may wonder less perhaps when we consider that time and space are nothing in actual fact, and the immensity of our universe and the tremendous stretches of time that paralyze all thought of reckoning are but trifles not to be considered in contemplating the Infinite.

Our entire solar system doesn't make a speck in space and the age of the world cannot be reckoned, for time has no value, no existence in the super-material world.

It is frequently urged by sceptics that to an all powerful consciousness it should be easy to assume a personal character without employing the complicated process of producing mankind and awaiting humanity's slow growth to a divine perfection. But when it comes to preparing plans and specifications for a better and simpler method they have never shown ability superior to the divine thought.

Leaving out the consideration of time and the immensity of the finite world, which are of no importance to the Supreme Architect, the plan seems simple enough. There was a divine desire for expression. The Supreme was alone and unmanifest. There was consciousness but no knowledge, for there was nothing to know. The impulse to Be, produced the world, every atom of which is part of the Creator that produced it. The world is synthesized in man, for man holds in his physical body the essence of everything that is in the world. There is nothing, mineral, vegetable, animal, solid, fluid or gaseous that has not its place in man's organization. Man is pressing forward, evolving to a condition of purity that shall make him perfect and divine, a God enriched with the knowledge gained from numberless lives on earth. He becomes again a spark of the Supreme, but individualized and omniscient. And thus is the divine purpose accomplished and the divine impersonal self made divinely manifest.

Whether this be the true theory or not cannot be determined by any process of reasoning. The Finite mind is unable to comprehend the Infinite. We cannot analyze the act of the super-mundane power or find a reason that we can understand and prove by mental progress.

So therefore we can not trace involution even as we can evolution, for it is not of this plane. Whatever we note that seems to us to be involution is only some variation of the other. It has to do with our material progress while involution is a product of the impulse of a consciousness beyond our comprehension.

We may then consider involution briefly as the descent of spirit into a material condition and evolution as the refinement of matter into spirit. We may safely believe that under this stupendous plan the present is not the first and will not be the last cycle, but that they stretch their never ending spirals in both directions without limit. Whether or not there ever was a beginning to this endless coil of cycles of involution and evolution is beyond our feeble comprehension.

Logic and reason are but the dull weapons of conquest over problems of the Finite, and are entirely too crude to be used with confidence in giving battle to the mysteries of the Infinite.

Only the intuitions can help us beyond the boundaries of the super-material world and they tell us that there never was a beginning to the things which are and that there will never be an end. This condition of Being, without ever a time of actual commencing, is paradoxical and confusing to the mind and we cannot easily realize that although apparently impossible it is true. But it is only one of many similar contradictions that attend upon the Contemplation of Infinity.

We cannot even comprehend a beginning to the present cycle of our existence. The birth of this world is lost in the misty obscurity of the infinite Past and is as hopelessly beyond us as is the record of the countless myriads of similar creations which preceded it. It is therefore of little value to attempt to fix an era from which to begin tracing the evolution of man from the irresponsible, mindless monster that archaic teachings describe him to have been before he assumed conscious domination over the other creatures of this world. And it is equally vain to seek for information regarding the various changes through which he arrived at even that primitive condition of being only a mass of inert semi-conscious matter. Perhaps in this as in the other aspects of the transmigration of the Divine into the Finite, there never was any beginning.

The Vedanta, which is that phase of Indian Philosophy that treats specially on this subject, says that the world proceeded from an inscrutable principle, darkness, neither existent nor non-existent and from "one that breathed without afflation, other than which there was nothing, beyond it nothing."

According to the Vedanta there is but one substance or reality immutable and eternal, the supreme spirit, the impersonal Self, the spiritual absolute atman—and that of course is summed up in the idea of Deity.

Science, which professes to reject all theories that cannot be proven, suggests tentatively that all of nature's innumerable products have evolved from the result of a fortuitous combination of unconscious causes that produced a beginning.

But there should be something beyond mere accident in the movements of non-intelligent forces. There must always be a first cause even for a beginning and that first cause cannot be an accident.

That should be an uncomfortable theory for those who are scientific enough to believe it, for they have no guarantee against other accidents of Nature. They can never feel secure against some awkward occurrence that might counteract that initial commingling of forces and restore this world to its original condition of nothingness.

We read of various vibrations that shiver into the production of light, color, heat, sound, power, electricity and even the life principle, but these vibrations are not even said to be self-produced. There has never been a theory satisfactory to the intuitions—which are the most accurate of all our truth finders, except that of an universal, Conscious Self, impersonal but all pervasive, that is the Cause, the Beginning and the ultimate Attainment of everything.

The only theory that agrees with the intuitions without offending the reasoning perceptions should offer the safest foundation upon which to build a philosophy. It is therefore not remarkable that ages ago the sages of the Orient, men who were fitted by training and inherited faculties for metaphysical contemplation, elaborated a philosophy based upon the belief in an impersonal First Cause that seeks personality only through involving Spirit in matter and evolving back to Spirit. Tinted with the results of that experience, Spirit, they believe, becomes self-conscious and individualized by its contact with a life or lives of manifestation. Evidently it can never be absolutely stainless again. It has exchanged entire purity for knowledge and self-consciousness. Therefore, man, who is the highest attainment of this evolution, can never be infinitely perfect, but can ever more and more approximate to perfection. He can never again be absorbed and swallowed up and engulfed in absolute divinity. He will never become entirely Divine in the sense of being re-absorbed into the unrecognizable All-consciousness, for that would extinguish all the effects of his earth experiences and his long pilgrimage would be a profitless waste of time and toil. He has become an individualized conscious being, less than Deity, but by reason of his completed evolution he is relatively a God to us.

He may therefore reach up to the Infinite even now, and can also extend a hand down to Earth to help us on our upward climb. Innumerable divine men have been reborn and have dwelt among us to teach us how to live. Even in comparatively modern times we have a line of such whose example and teachings have helped forward our evolution and made it easier for us.

From Zoroaster and Buddha and Jesus and others have come revelations that justify the theory of man's perfectibility through evolution and as we can trace the growth of all matter up to its culmination in humanity, the divine plan seems to stand revealed, and our ultimate destiny is plainly outlined. The method of evolution, like everything else in Nature, seems entirely a process of compensations. We gain and renounce; we take on higher qualities and drop the meaner characteristics. We advance by such methods as we can command as we go along. Higher ideals being reached, we look upward for still loftier points of attainment.

In the prehistoric stages of our development, while pure physicality dominated us, we asserted our supremacy by superior strength or speed. Further along a cunning mentality gave us a wider range of power. Still later we have grown into wisdom, and as we near the end we shall discard all the physical desires, the tastes and appetites, the hopes and ambitions, the affections and passions that tie us to the earth life, and take on instead the finer spiritual attributes that are inseparable from the higher planes of existence.

The severing of the earth desires marks the end of the process of evolution of spirit from matter. What follows that we may infer from analogy. The process of unfolding doubtless continues on planes of which we have no conception, but obviously need not dread to encounter.

Of course we have moved slowly forward in our various stages of development from whatever we were before we took on human qualities up to our present degree of attainment. It is not hard to believe that we have developed superior understanding and the other higher attributes of humanity only as our growing needs and opening opportunities have called for them.

The evolution of species and the laws governing the development of physical organs as they became necessary for the growth and preservation of the infinite variety of living things have been a favorite study for materialistic scientists for the past century. More than that, long ago the learned Jean Baptiste Lamarck formulated four propositions that are now accepted as self-evident.

First. Life, by its proper forces, tends continually to increase the volume of every body possessing it, and to enlarge its parts up to a limit which it brings about. This covers the phenomenon of growth to maturity.

Second. The production of a new organ in an animal body results from the supervention of a new want continuing to make itself felt, and a new movement which this want gives birth to and encourages.

This is shown in the long neck of the giraffe, which enables him to feed on the tender top leaves of tall tropical plants, and in the camel's hump which supplies him with vigor during long intervals without feeding, and the receptacle for water, which enables him to traverse long stretches of barren and streamless lands.

Third. The development of organs and their force of action are constantly in ratio to the employment of those organs.

The kangaroo, a large animal carrying its young for safety in a natural pouch, stands erect and never uses its fore legs in walking. It leaps forward in prodigious bounds, propelled by the muscular power of its tail, which has grown and developed beyond even the hind legs in strength; while the fore legs have dwindled to insignificant size and importance.

Fourth. All which has been laid down or changed in the organization of individuals in the course of their life, is conserved by generation and transmitted to the new individuals which proceed from those which have undergone these changes.

This is because evolution carries us constantly beyond certain needs and progress does not let us go back to those needs, neither in our own persons nor in those of our posterity. Man and beast alike have only and always such organs as they require and no others. The laws of heredity are not whimsical or recalcitrant, and the changes brought about by evolution are carried forward by them in strict obedience to its demands. Recognizing this fact, but building from a false premise, the followers of Darwin search for a link to connect humanity with the tailless apes of earlier periods, assuming that man was developed from them, and that the ape is the link between mankind and the next lower order of being. There is absolutely nothing in support of this theory beyond a resemblance in the physical conformation. And that is far more likely to result from the ape being a descendant of prehistoric man.

All these speculators stop short at any valuable foundation on which to build theories. They see in evolution only the generation and development of living organisms and the reason or cause of the infinite variety of form, color and habits.

Kant and Laplace theorized vaguely on the formation of the solar system from a gaseous condition to its present character, but they shared the perplexity of all biological thinkers when they endeavored to peer behind the mechanical beginning in search of a First Cause. It is probable that even the mechanical beginning had never a first hour or day or year or era. And so Science, bound and boxed up in materialism, observes the growth and development of species and placidly stops at that, having begun with a guess and ended with—a bundle of axiomatic conclusions.

But the philosophy of the ancients, backed up by the teachings of the divine men who from time to time have come back to us, and endorsed by our own inner convictions, tells us that evolution is the concerted effort of all the atoms that comprise the Universe to return to a condition not recognized by science—the condition of spirit which is the ultimate aim of everything.

And every infinitesimal atom is alive and has a consciousness of its own. They cluster together and form living organisms, developing and progressing in even pace with those organisms, flying off into space as their work goes on and rushing together to build up some other organism. Had we ultra-microscopic vision we could see them streaming from us continually and being replaced by corresponding streams of new atoms. And each one of these has its own divine spark. It is a living entity.

They abide with us according to our attraction, some shunning us, others preferring us. Evil people attract such atoms as have just come from others of like disposition and leave their impress upon them and gain nothing good from them. Every evil thought taints every atom of the stream that we contact with at the time. They advance in their evolutions no faster than does humanity and reach spirituality when we do and not sooner or later. Man arrives finally at this condition clothed in the "spiritual body" of which theologians speak without any idea or comprehension of its true nature.

All who would shun contact with the particles that emanate from vile people must live the life that repels such atoms. Those who live a life of pure thought and fraternal consideration draw towards them atoms of such quality as makes their personality pleasant and attractive and their bearing gracious. No pure life builds up a vile personality. There are other ways to recognize traits of character besides the mere facial expression. Even scientists know that.

It is therefore evident that every one should shun evil thought just as he would any other deadly and destructive infection. It rests with every man to carry forward with him on his upward journey all the material that goes toward his own physical composition.

There is no one who has not attracted all grades of atoms to him, and it is well to bear in mind that they are the very same that have formed the bodies of all the population of the world, man and beast, since life first was. There has been no addition, no diminution. Nothing in nature is ever destroyed. Nothing ever ceases to be. There is no place to banish material. It must be spiritualized and we must be the medium.

And, therefore, it is no poetic fancy to say that we are of one common clay and that humanity is all one. Every man, at every moment, is building and rebuilding himself of the same materials, particle for particle as have built up every other man. Prince or pauper, saint or demon, society flower or foul tramp, we are all of the very same dust and we can determine which sort we shall use for our own bodies. It is not a question of proximity. It is entirely one of sympathy and character and affinity. We evolve as fast as our thoughts and conduct permit, and we purify our souls and our bodies alike and together.

If we recognize the brotherhood of humanity we need no reminding to see that it is our duty to ourselves—to our personal selves as well as to our spiritual selves, to help to make cleaner and sweeter the whole world through our own mental, moral and the resultant spiritual cleanness. That will not hurry evolution much in each separate instance, but by the contagion of sympathy and the dynamic power of thought these beneficent, physical atoms can be attracted to us and we can carry about with us their gentle influence for good.

That is the secret of the curative influence of sweetsouled people upon those who are sick in mind or body, and if people could understand these influences as they are and value them justly we should soon see a happier world with less sorrow, less injustice, less sickness and a far wider recognition of the material as well as spiritual truth that brotherhood is an universal fact in Nature, and that our evolution can never be complete until all realize it and live accordingly.

THE CYCLE OF LIFE.

BY MARY KONOPNITSKY.

TRANSLATED FROM THE POLISH BY V. A. H.

PRELUDE.

In the new morn, that dawns above the world, I put aside the black and sombre harp, that plays and sings so sadly. For, from the ocean's farthest shore, with the first daybreak blushes, with the golden arrows of the sun, there comes on rosy wings, all radiant with fiery auroras, a new song, a bird of the arriving spring.

In the new morn, that dawns above the world, I stretch the golden strings, I weave them from the day-beams, I paint them with the iris dew. For through the mould of sorrows, there breaks the music of mountain waterfalls; their vernal voice and chime now reach me from every rock and rill, and a new flowery raiment is again woven for the earth.

In the new morn, that dawns above the world, I tie fresh golden cords of sound,—not for the pain, not for the longing in the gloom, not for the old complaint of the lonely heart. I send them into the blue infinitudes unrestrained, I launch them from globe to globe, into the farthest space. From star to star there glistens of my strings the golden grate.

I.

I am a ray. The fount of Light I cannot circumscribe. And yet I fly. Through the dark nights I fly, through stars and pallid moons; I kindle ephemeral scintillations, I send out my trembling light towards infinity's eternal flame, from which shines forth the sun of all the suns. And now I darken, totter, pale; I lose my breath, my hope, I smoulder like a spark.

And lo! again I energize my rays, cast into endless skies; again I illume myself and burn; I reach forth, I fly in space as a fiery ribbon from the spindle of the spirit. Now my tiny ray approaches the great sun; it is already burning with eternity's first blush. As an arrow I sling myself into the bright path, illuminated by the rosy dawn. I am a ray—the fount of Light I cannot circumscribe. Let me, then, be encompassed by its dome.

II.

I am a spark of eternity; and I am a pilgrim. Even to-day shall I pass away, after a while, after an hour's stroke, together with the smoke of the shepherd's fire, which writhes in blue strands over the forest in the eve, and disappears in the tears of dew before the night. Even to-day shall I be divorced from that power, which holds me here from the twilight to the twilight, and the sun shall not see me more with his golden eyes.

I am a spark of eternity. Beyond the cold ashes I shall exist even to the dawn, ... And then in my own embers shall I wax in brightness, glow as gold and burn as ruby; I shall pass through the grayness of the dust of this my bed, and before the rosy dawn shall have bathed herself in dew, before the sun shall have lifted his golden gaze from beyond the sea, I shall strike into the flames of life.

III.

How many dawns, how many twilights have I passed? Do I know it myself? Through how many gates of body and of soul have I entered into life, as an eternal voyager, who is born daily, now here, now there, from the sleep of death, in the earliest morn.

And then, exhausted, I departed to the West, through the great twilight dusk, which, all blazing with gold and red as blood, led me into the silent fields of blue, upon the dreamy meadows of the moon, all heaving with the beating of the wings of Psyche-butterflies, where I sought my sleep, and my head leaning on eternity's great bosom, I rested after a life and before a life.

IV.

Myself—the gate, and myself—the path, once only in this cycle have I issued from the Divine Light. Once only blew its breath for all bodies and souls, once only has it in the morning of Day opened its bosom of luminous archetypal thought,—and all subsequent myriads of forms, before and now, were sculptured by myself.

Lo! I emerge from the conflagration of blood; I come in the likeness of a child, I who am a lion, crouching for the powers of the heavens and of the earth. And I depart into the night, through the blood and through the pain, crouching as a shadow, for the dawn and for the day. After a time, after a moment I increase in strength, I spring up in the dust. My germ of existence now feels hunger of life; it attracts life's forces and lifts green blades above the grave. The sun now warms it for a new day of its immortal labor.

V.

With no gift am I favored in my early hour. All my radiance have I spun myself through many nights and shadows. And all my powers upon the earth and in the heavens have I obtained from my own mystic depths. Every form I have, it is of ages' toil, it is an effort of many births, a battle of many darkling deaths.

What light have I, by a promethean labor, through thousand lives, spark by spark have I stolen it from the sun, spark by spark have I seized it from the blushes of the morning. The rosy coral of the dawns, and lilies' whiteness have I plucked unseen in the gardens of the night from the silvery stars. There is no color and no sound upon the waving meadows, among the nests of eagles or of nightingales, which through the ages, in ruins' coldness and scorching heat of life I have not worked out from a laughter to a groan,—alive by my own self.

VI.

And my right is to upwards grow through all the worlds. And my right is to expand my heart through all the worlds. In storms, in silence I burst the bars of death's prisons, and strike the metal of the all-awakening bell!

Lightning of life, and thunderbolt of life I let into the dark camera of death, into the house of dust. And touched by a spark of the spirit the dust explodes with life, the soil opens, waving the flowers of new spring, and again breathes joyous in the splendor of the day.

VII.

The soul-bird builds her cage herself,—with songs and flapping of her wings,—and enters then its gates all fascinated with the life.

But soon the winged guest, from the infinity, newcomer, striking her prison's trellis-wall, reddens her golden pinions with the ruby blood.