of something; no appearance that is not the appearance of something. The architect constructs his house in imitation of a pre-existing model or idea, and, without that idea, it might be anything else, as well as a house. So the tabernacle of Moses was to be built after the pattern shown to him in the Mount. So of every object of nature, and of all that endless variety of things, which belongs to the world of sense, they owe their existence to antecedent ideas, which they represent on a lower plane of being. As ideas are the causes of the existence of all material entities, so they sustain a causal relation to the human body and all its states of health and disease. If I would be perfectly well in body, I must first form the true idea of myself, such as I really am in spirit (or as Paul would say, in Christ). For Plato teaches that the highest soul of man, the pneuma of the New Testament, the Buddhi of the Sanscrit, is the idea or living image of God. If I come to the knowledge of this,-my real and immortal self,-it will act as a cause, and adjust the lower animal soul, and the body in harmony with it. And "our earthly house of this tabernacle" will be constructed after the pattern shown to us in the Mount.

All creation is first in idea, and is essentially a generating or begetting. Ideas are conceptions; that is, they are the union of pure intellect, which was viewed in the Hermetic philosophy as masculine, with that spiritual and feminine principle, which may be designated by the general term, feeling. This union is life whenever and wherever it is effected. It is represented symbolically by the cross, and is the Kabalistic balance, and they express one of the most comprehensive and far-reaching truths in the whole realm of thought. "There is in everything," says Swedenborg, "the marriage of truth and good," or the conjunction of intellect and feeling. This extends through the universe. It is said in the Sohar, the Book of Splendour, or the teaching of the shining ones (Dan. xii. 3), "When the Most Holy Elder (or the Ancient

of Days), hidden in all occultations, willed to create, he made all things in the form of husband and wife." ("Idra Suta" [or "Smaller Assembly"], sec. 218.) "All things appear, therefore, in the form of husband and wife; were it otherwise, nothing whatever could subsist." ("Idra Suta," sec. 223.) It is an immutable and eternal truth, and one that is fundamental and universal, that nothing exists or can exist, except by the union of intellectual thought with its corresponding feeling, or their correlatives. And ideas are the only "truly existing things," as they are denominated by Plato. They are the generation or creation of the masculine Intelligence (Nous), in union with the feminine Wisdom (Sophia), and they are living, enduring, and divine realities. They result from the union of the intellect and feeling on the higher plane of being, and descending to the lower animal soul plane, they are perceived as what are called external objects.

The union of the intellect and feeling, in order to the existence of a living entity, is a truth with which the ancient wisdom-religion was familiar, but has long since been forgotten. When I think of a triangle, or a circle, the thought conjoins itself with the universal principle of feeling, the mother principle, and an idea is formed or perceived in the mind. This is a living and immortal thing.

Thought and feeling are correlative opposites, like the two poles of a magnet. Each implies the other, and they mutually balance each other, and there is an affinitive attraction between them, and a spontaneous tendency to a conjunction and a state of equilibration. When I think that I am well (which is true of my real being), or form an intellectual conception of any mental or bodily condition, the thought will seek to unite itself with the principle of feeling on the intermediate plane of my mental being, and then it becomes faith, and a living inward reality, and the substance or subsistence of things hoped for. And it will tend to translate itself into a corporeal expression.

We are to bear in mind, that as there is a world of phenomena or of material things which are only appearances, so there is a world of ideas which sustains a constant creative relation to the world of sense, and without which the latter could not exist any more than there could be a shadow without a substance. This realm of ideas is the subjective and real world. It is the "intelligible world" of Plato, and "the kingdom of the heavens" of which Jesus speaks. Wherever there is a material thing, there is behind it, as its soul and life and cause, an idea. All things in the natural world are but representations of things in the realm of ideas. This is the old Hermetic doctrine of correspondence which has been reproduced by Swedenborg. Says the Jewish Kabala, "The lower world is made after the pattern of the upper (or inner) world; everything which exists in the upper world is to be found as it were in a copy upon earth; still the whole is one." ("Sohar," II., 20, a.) This is a fundamental principle in our transcendental philosophy, and must be fully apprehended before we can go any farther. It is the key-note of our theosophical system. Just as the soul of man, rather than the body, is the real man, so the world of ideas is the really existing world. The external Cosmos is but a resemblance, a representation, an appearance of the higher world to the sensuous mind. The world of ideas is that which was called in the ancient philosophy the macrocosm, or greater world; and the material world, including the human body, which belongs to it and is an image of it, was denominated the microcosm, or lesser world.

Owing to the importance of the subject in its relation to our transcendental science of medicine, or science of mentalcure, and the necessity of starting right, on the principle of the maxim of Pythagoras, that "a good beginning is half way to the end," we pursue our inquiry still further into the nature of ideas.

In this both Berkeley
But what is the idea

Ideas are the only objects of vision. and Locke, and even Condillac agree.

of a thing which is the object of vision? It is the spiritual form and reality, of which the so-called external object is the correspondent or appearance. Says a distinguished writer, "Let us suppose a man to look for the first time upon some work of art, as, for example, upon a clock, and having sufficiently viewed it, at length to depart. Would he not retain, when absent, an idea of what he had seen? And what is it to retain such an idea? It is to have a form internal correspondent to the external." ("Hermes," by James Harris, p. 375.) But this internal form is all that the man ever saw, and is all that we ever see in any case. The word form comes from a Greek word (öpaμa), meaning that which is seen. The same is true of the term idea. In vision, if there is no idea in the mind, we are blind to the object however perfect may be our organs of sight. If there be an idea of a thing in our mind, there is a vision of it proportioned in intensity to the vividness of the idea. If the internal form reaches a certain degree of clearness, it becomes what we call a sensation. The perception of the form, idea, type, pattern, exemplar, species (or whatever we are pleased to call it), of a thing, is necessary to the vision of it. It is the essential thing in every act of vision. And the external eye is not absolutely necessary to it. We see things which have all the marks of reality in dreams, and in states of mental abstraction. This mental form, image, or idea expresses not merely the material shape, but the spiritual nature, essence, and reality of a thing. It is this, and this only, that the mind sees, and of which the soul is cognizant in every act or state of visual perception. It is not a mere symbol, a picture, a mental copy, a representation of the thing, but the ding an sich, as Kant would say, the thing itself in its inmost reality, the really existing thing, to use a Platonic expression, of which the so-called

material exhibition is only its manifestation on a lower and more imperfect plane of thought. The idea is the living soul of the thing; the material phenomenon is the imperfect copy. Ideas are not only the only objects of vision, but as they are the essential reality of things, they are the only objects of knowledge or true science, as was long ago taught by Plato.

We remark still further, that ideas are not mere abstract thoughts, but living and immortal entities; material things are their phenomena or appearances,-the shadow and not the substance. This is directly the opposite of the popular conception and belief. Ideas are the living kernel of things; the material organization is the rough shell. When we think of anything, as of Bunker Hill monument, the thought takes form in an idea. This is the thing itself, and more real than the granite rock. It is the only visible entity. Ideas may be defined to be the living and fixed forms assumed by thought. All things which exist have had a previous existence in the unseen and real world of light, the world of ideas, and after their dissolution they return to that world. When you burn a rose, as the ancient Magi, or Wise Men, affirmed, it is not destroyed or annihilated, but has only passed from the world of sense to the unseen and real world whence it came. This doctrine of pre-existence applies to minerals, plants, animals, and men. They have existed as ideas before they had a material manifestation. This is the doctrine of Plato, and the teaching of all the philosophies of the East. It is expressed in unmistakable language in the first chapters of Genesis. "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day when Jehovah God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew.” (Gen. ii. 4, 5.) All things were created in idea and in reality before they were in the earth. Their generation, or incarnation, or descent into matter is to be viewed in the light of a