brings with it a healthy mind. The two cannot be separated. Whatever brings the one will bring the other; whatever impairs the one will impair the other. A sound mind must bring, in time, a sound moral nature; and all, together, will tend toward the perfection of humanity in the development of his spiritual affinities. Such has been, roughly sketched, my belief regarding the progress of man. It has left all the men of the past ages, all of the present time, all of many generations yet to come, in a condition, which, compared with that which I try to foresee, must be called very immature. This has never been a stumbling-block to me; for I hold that the Lord understands his own work, the end from the beginning; and that, if "order is heaven's first law," there is a place for every soul that is in it, and a possible satisfaction of the desires of every one. Dr. Clarke expresses the thought that, however much any being may have gone astray, the soul reconciled at last to God, though it can never undo the past, or be at that point it might have reached, will yet be perfectly content with its place in the universe, and as much blessed as the archangels. That consideration has satisfied my mind when I contemplated humanity, seeming to stop so far short of its perfection. My regrets—if I can use such a term—came, as I believed, out of my ignorance.

Now comes a book which claims to give us the key of the whole problem of human destiny—a book containing some assertions regarding occult science, belief in which must remain suspended in our minds, and some points in cosmogony which conflict with our Christian convictions—yet a book making statements about human history which, though in the highest degree startling, are not contradicted by anything we know of the past, but are rather an explanation of some of its dark passages—a book developing a system of human growth which cannot be disproved and which makes plain some of the riddles of destiny.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the book is its tremendous assumption. "All that have hitherto written on this subject have been only half-taught. They have not been admitted to the real inner doctrine. Here is the first putting-forth, to the world, of the real teaching, as the Buddhists present it to those who have been initiated into occult science." Such is, in substance, the author's claim. We may believe just as much of this as we can. I, for my part, knowing nothing about the matter, choose, just now, and for our purpose, to assume that the doctrines of Esoteric Buddhism are what Sinnett says they are, because they suggest to my mind so many attractive avenues for my imagination to wander in.

There are two main points in this book which give it its chief interest: (1) "The past history of the human race as now living on this planet;" and (2) "The manner in which, and the circumstances under which, any individual man works out his own salvation." But before entering upon these, we should say a word about the Buddhist statements regarding the nature of man.

Seven is the sacred number in the Buddhist system. As there are seven worlds in the planetary chain, seven kingdoms in Nature, seven root-races of men, in like manner man is a sevenfold being, continuing, through untold millions of years, his existence as an individual, yet changing, one knows not how many times, many of his component elements. As the Buddhist sees the mortal body to be dissolved into its molecules, and these molecules to be transferred with their inherent vitality to other organisms, so some of his higher elements, among them his "astral body," his impulses and desires, under the name, as our author gives it, of animal soul, may separate from the more enduring parts of his composition, and become lost to him in Nature's great store of material substance. As there is an animal soul, the seat of those faculties which we possess in common with the lower beings about us, so there is a human soul, the seat of intelligence; and, higher still, a spiritual soul, possessing powers of which as yet we know but little, yet destined to give us, when it shall be more fully developed, new powers of sense, new avenues for the entrance of knowledge, by which we shall be able to communicate directly with Nature, and become as much greater than the present race of men, as that is greater than the lowest brutes. Above all these elements of man, controlling all, and preserving its individuality throughout, is "spirit." Yet even this, when absorbed into Nirvana, is lost in that great whole which includes all things and is Nature herself. Lost, do I say?—yes, lost for inconceivable ages upon ages, yet destined to come forth again at some moment in eternity, and to begin its round through the everlasting cycle of evolution.

Here, you will say, is materialism. As the intelligent man of early ages looked out upon the world, he felt the wind he could not see, he smelt the odor that he could not feel, and he reasoned with himself, I think, as follows; "There is somewhat too subtile for these bodily senses to grasp it. Something of which I cannot directly take cognizance brings to me the light of sun and stars." These somethings were, in his conception, forms of matter. He saw the intelligence and the moral worth of his friend, and then he saw that friend a lifeless body stretched upon the ground, and he said some thing is gone. This thing was again to him only another and more subtile form of matter. We, with all the aids of modern knowledge and thought, are absolutely unable to say what distinction there is between matter and spirit. The old philosopher was logical. He could find no point at which to draw his line. Therefore he drew no line. He recognized only different manifestations of one substance. In terms of our language, he was a materialist. So is the modern scientist; yet I cannot help thinking that the Buddhist stands much nearer to truth than the materialist of to-day. The various faculties of human sense and human intellect are so many molecules forming, by their accretion, the animal and the human soul. As, at death, the molecules of the body separate and are, by-and-by, absorbed with their inherent vitality into new agglomerations, and become part of new living forms, so the elements of the human soul may be torn apart, and some of them, being no longer man, but following the fortunes of the lower principles, may be lost to us, while other elements, clinging to the spiritual soul, follow its destiny in the after-life. I know a thinking man who believes in nothing but matter and motion; add time and space, and we have the all in all, the Nature, of Buddhism. Yet the Buddhist believes in a state of being beyond this earthly life: a state whose conditions are determined absolutely by the use which the human soul has made of its opportunities in the life that now is, and my friend says he does not. Truly, Buddhism is better than the materialism of to-day.

Let me now turn to the history of humanity as revealed to us in our book. Every monad, or spirit-element, beginning its course by becoming separated from what I conceive as the great central reservoir of Nature, must, before returning thither, make a certain fixed round through an individual existence. If it belongs to the planetary chain, of which our earth is the fourth and lowest link, it must pass seven times through each of the kingdoms of Nature on each one of the seven planets. Of these seven planets, Mars, our Earth, and Mercury, are three. The other four are too tenuous to be cognizable by our present senses. Of the seven kingdoms of Nature, three are likewise beyond our ken or conception; the highest four are the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, and man. Our immortal part has therefore passed already through six of the kingdoms of its destiny, and is, in fact, now near the middle of its fourth round of human existence upon the earth. One life on earth is,