action-called inspiration. The second, the metaphysical world, works in us by interior illumination. The third degree, which is the highest and most seldom attained, opens the whole inner man. It breaks the crust which fills our spiritual eyes; it reveals the kingdom of Spirit, and enables us to see, objectively, metaphysical and transcendental sights; hence all visions are explained fundamentally."'

Of the doctrine the most interesting to us he writes very fully and openly. I quote some of the most interesting passages :

A more advanced School has always existed to whom this deposition has been confided, and this School was the Community illuminated interiorly by the Savior, the society of the Elect, which has continued from the first day of creation to the present time; its members are scattered all over the world, but they have always been united in the Spirit and in one Truth. This Community possesses a School, in which all who thirst for knowledge are instructed by the Spirit of wisdom itself, and all the mysteries of God and of nature are preserved in this School for the children of light. Perfect knowledge of God, of nature and of humanity are the objects of instruction in this School. It is from her that all truths penetrate into the world; she is the School of the Prophets and of all who search for wisdom; and it is in this Community alone that truth and the explanation of all mystery is to be found. It is the most hidden of communities, yet possesses members from many circles. From all time there has been an exterior School, based on the interior one, of which it is the outer expression.. All that the external Church possesses in symbol, ceremony or rite, is the letter expressive outwardly of the Spirit of Truth residing in the interior sanctuary. The interior Church was formed immediately after the fall of man, and received from God at first hand the revelation of the means by which fallen humanity could be again raised to its rights and delivered from its misery.

The whole of this is of course in accordance with our theosophical teaching, taking the fall of man as the Christian equivalent for the theosophical conception of man's desending from his resting place in the bosom of the Father, and submitting to the limitations of matter, and helped, instructed on his pilgrimage as rational man by Divine agents, members of the Divine Hierarchies, Avaṭāras, Sons of Venus. "This illuminated Community has been through time the true School of God's Spirit, and considered as a School it has its Chair, its Doctor, it possesses a rule for students, it has forms and objects for study, and in short, a method by which they study. It has also its objects for successive development to higher altitudes. He repeats here the degrees given as to the opening of the inner sensorium, and continues;

This same Spirit which ripens men for this Community also distributes its degrees by the co-action of the ripened subject. This School of Wisdom has been forever most secretly hidden from the world, because it is invisible and submissive solely to Divine government. It has never been exposed to the accidents of time and to the weakness of man; because only the most capable were chosen for it, and the Spirits who selected made no error. Through this School were developed the germs of all the sublime sciences, which were first received by external schools, then clothed in other forms and hence degenerating. This Society of Sages communicated, according to time and circumstances, unto the exterior societies their symbolic hieroglyphs, in order to attract man to the great truths of their interior. But all exterior societies subsist through this interior one giving them its spirit. As soon as external societies wish to be independent of the interior one, and to transform a temple of wisdom into a political edifice, the interior society retires and leaves only the letter without the spirit.* In this interior society all disputes, controversies, error, schisms and systems are banished. Neither calumny nor scandal are known, every man is honored, satire is unknown. Love alone reigns, want and feebleness are protected.

It is clear, I think, that here our mystic is writing of a Society covering the very largest spiritual area and including members of many degrees in the spiritual life; even the Masters, we are taught, are ranked in different degrees, and above Them and below Them extends the chain of pupil and teacher, cause and effect, one life showing as many in manifestation.

Eckartshausen warns us, and the warning is timely and necessary, that it is difficult to speak or write of spiritual verities without materialising them; in such cases words are but clumsy misfits:

We must not however imagine this Society resembles any secret society, meeting at certain times, choosing its leaders and members, united by special objects. This Society knows none of the formalities which belong to the outer ring, the work of man. In this kingdom of power all outward forms cease...This Community has no outside barriers... All men are called; the called may be chosen, if they become ripe for entrance. Anyone can look for the entrance, and any man who is within can lead another to seek for it; but only he who is fit can arrive inside... Worldly intelligence seeks this Sanctuary in vain; fruitless also will be the efforts of malice to penetrate these great mysteries; all is undecipherable to him, he can see nothing, read nothing in the interior.

Eckartshausen finishes the letter (Letter II) in which he specifically deals with the subject by describing its greatness: “It is the unique and really illuminated Community which is absolutely

* Replace' political' by 'intellectual' in the above sentence and it reads as a very appropriate warning to the present situation in the T. S.

in possession of the key to all mystery, which knows the centre and source of all creation. It is a Society which unites superior strength to its own, and counts its members from more than one world. (Italics mine) It is the society whose members form a theocratic republic, which one day will be the Regent Mother of the whole world."

In Letter III, Eckartshausen expressly identifies himself with this Community, giving no explanation; in fact, warning those he is addressing against asking for information, he writes:

Do not ask who those are who write to you; look at the spirit not the letter, the thing not at persons. We know, the object and the distinction of man, and the light which lights us works in all our actions... We assure you faithfully that we know exactly the innermost of religion and of the Holy Mysteries, and that we possess with absolute certainty all that has been surmised in the Adytum, and that this said possession gives us the strength to justify our commission and to implant to the dead letter and hieroglyphic everywhere both Spirit and Life. This School possesses knowledge of Spirit, and knowledge of all symbols and all ceremony......as well as the most intuitive truths of all the Holy Books, with the laws and customs of primitive people.

"We possess

Knowledge of nature's mysteries is theirs also. a key to open the gate of mystery, and a key to shut nature's laboratory." They know of "the tie between the divine and spiritual worlds, and of the spiritual world with the elementary, and of the elementary world with the material world .........The practice of our science is in the completion of the Divine union with the Child of Man. True Occultist is Eckartshausen, for divine knowledge and divine science are for him the passwords by which he wins his way upwards; the transports of the Mystic, the fiery love of the devotee, are not found in his pages. Truly in of the Master the disciple is transformed, but it is a calm, balanced devotion, seeking to attain by method and He knows the dangers that attend the quest for the unprepared and impure; he warns his readers that the treasures "which ever remain to us, treasures of the highest wisdom, would bring to carnal minds both weakness and sorrow."

his teaching by love

reason.

Eckartshausen was a follower of Jesus Christ, but he uses the name Jesus Christ to cover a great deal of ground, to mean a great deal more than the personality of Jesus. "The metaphysical world is one really existing, perfectly pure, and whose centre we call Jesus Christ." The various stages which lead to perfect Regeneration are

brought about by the birth of the mystic Jesus within our hearts, a stage which must be reached by all who seek to be delivered from return and need the help of a teacher, by whatever name in different creeds or different ages we individualise the teacher and the process. Eckartshausen teaches that all the powers of the understanding as well as of the heart or will are to be fixed on the Master to help our advance in the spiritual life, and then these powers of the understanding and of heart and will "can be ennobled and exalted in a very special manner," culminating in the "complete union of our will with His, by which union man is with Jesus Christ but as one sense, one heart." His instructions on this point are so interesting from their similitude to the means by which the Indian devotee would seek the same end, that I conclude this article by quoting them in full:

Our understanding is formed after that of Jesus Christ. First when we have Him in view in everything, when He forms the only point of sight for all our actions.

Second, when we perceive His actions, His sentiments and His Spirit everywhere.

Third, when in all our thoughts we reflect upon His sayings, when we think in everything as He would have thought.

Fourth, when we so comfort ourselves in such wise, that His thoughts and His wisdom are the only object for the strength of our imagination.

Fifth, when we reject every thought that would not be His, and when we choose every thought which could be His.

Sixth, when, in short, we co-ordinate the whole edifice of our ideas and spirit upon the model of His ideas and spirit.

Seventh, It is then will be born in us a new light, a more brilliant one, surpassing far the light of reason and of the senses. Our heart is also reformed in like manner when in everything: First, we lean on Him only; second, we wish for Him only; third, we desire Him only; fourth, we love Him only; fifth we choose only that which He is, so that we avoid all that He is not; sixth, we live only in harmony with Him after His commandments and His institutions and orders; by which, in short, seventh, is born a complete union of our will with His, by which union man is with Jesus Christ but as one sense, one heart; by which perfect union the new man is, little by little, born in us, and Divine Wisdom and Love unite to form the new spiritual man, in whose heart faith passes into sight; and in comparison to this living faith, the treasures of India can be considered but as ashes."

ELISABETH SEVERS.

THE

STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE SCIENCE.

VII.

HE chemical evolution of the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms appears to consist in the presence of two fundamental types of forms, types which resemble each other in every respect, except that the one is the inverse of the other, in the same sense in which a right hand may be said to be the inverse of a left-hand, or a right-handed screw may be said to be the inverse of a left-handed screw, or a looking-glass image of an asymmetric object may be said to be the inverse of the asymmetric object which is held before the glass. The left-hand is identical in all its parts with the right-hand, but the identical parts are arranged in an inverse order in the two hands, in such a way that the two hands cannot be brought into identical positions, or cannot be superposed. Such types may therefore be termed righthanded types and left-handed types respectively. Technically, any two types or forms which are thus related to one another are called enantiomorphous, or chiral, types, and are said to be enan. tiomorphously, or chirally, related to one another. They possess 'chirality'; right-handed chirality in the case of the right hand, left-handed chirality in the case of the left hand. They are isomorphous, or identical in structure so far as the number and arrangement of their constituent parts, or elements, are concerned, but differ in their chirality, or in the order in which the constituents are arranged. In the January Theosophist, on p. 351, Mrs. Besant tells us an interesting fact which bears on this question. She says that two types of the ultimate physical atom have been clairvoyantly observed; and that "they are alike in everything, save the direction of their whorls and of the force which pours through them "; in other words, they are isomorphous, asymmetric, chiral forms, identical in form and structure, but inverse, because one is the plane mirror (or looking-glass) image of the other. She calls them male and female, or positive and negative. Technically, they might be termed chiral, or enantiomorphous, and may be said to possess chirality, or enantiomorphism, and to be chirally related to one another. The male, positive, ultimate physical atom, like a righthanded screw, is a right-handed enantiomorphous form; the corres