**Consciousness and the Universe.** Intelligent spirits have possessed, from the beginning, a consciousness of the world in which they found themselves. They must have been susceptible, from the first, of feeling pleasure and pain, and must have had equivalents of our senses, which, possibly, were keener than those we now possess. When they were placed in opposition to any law of nature, pain or its equivalent undoubtedly resulted exactly as today. When they moved along with law, joy must have been sensed, as today. Intelligent beings can not rejoice in pain, therefore, from the beginning, to avoid pain and to secure joy, they have searched out and obeyed law. The more advanced the intelligence, the greater the number of laws that are understood to which adaptation may be made, and therefore the greater the possibility of joy. The search for increasing power, carried on by all normal beings is then really a search for a greater and more abiding joy. There is no Godliness in pain, except as it is an incident in securing more knowledge. True freedom, which is full joy, is the complete recognition of law and adaptation to it. Bondage comes from ignorance of law or opposition to it. **The Primeval Condition.** Man's approach to a fullness of joy is pictured in his revealed history. Through the veil of forgetting we see but dimly our pre-existent condition. The Gospel student does not really concern himself, greatly, with the details of the life before this one; so much needs to be done in this life that he is content with the great outlines of pre-existent life, which may assist him to understand the eternal journey of intelligence. Of the primeval condition of man little is known. He found about him many forces, operating in diverse ways, and to control them, and thus to sense joy, he began to study them. The story of that early day of striving for the greatest goal has not been told to mortal man. **The First Estate.** Matter exists, perhaps, in many forms, but may be classified, as the ponderable matter of earth, known directly through the senses, and, as the imponderable matter which cannot be sensed directly by man. This second class, often called spirit matter, is perhaps most important, for it is not unlikely that from it are derived all other forms of matter. It was of first importance that the intelligent beings aiming at the conquest of the universe, should learn to understand, thoroughly, the properties of universal matter, in all of its forms. As nearly as can be learned, the efforts of man were first devoted to education in the properties of spirit matter. We were begotten spirits by God, who thus became our Father, and we are his sons and daughters. Our career in the spirit world is often spoken of as man's first estate.