of time, and that of one which is consciously steered by an intelligent purpose throughout. The human Ego which acquires the habit of seeking for knowledge becomes invested, life after life, with the qualifications which ensure the success of such a search, until the final success, achieved at some critical period of its existence, carries it right up into the company of those perfected Egos which are the fully developed flowers only expected, according to our first metaphor, from a few of the thousand seeds. Now, it is clear that a slight impulse in a given direction, even on the physical plane does not produce the same effect as a stronger one; so, exactly in this matter of engendering habits required to persist in their operation through a succession of lives, it is quite obvious that the strong impulse of a very ardent aspiration towards knowledge will be more likely than a weaker one to triumph over the so called accidents of Nature. This consideration brings us to the question of those habits in life which are more immediately associated in the popular views of the matter with the pursuit of occult science. It will be quite plain that the generation within his own nature by an occult student of affinities in the direction of spiritual progress, is a matter which has little if anything to do with the outer circumstances of his daily life. It cannot be dissociated from what may be called the outer circumstances of his moral life, for an occult student, whose moral nature is consciously ignoble, and who combines the pursuit of knowledge with the practice of wrong, becomes by that condition of things a student of sorcery rather than of true occultism--a candidate for satanic evolution instead of perfection. But at the same time the physical habits of life may be quite the reverse of ascetic, while all the while the thinking processes of the intellectual life are developing affinities which cannot fail in the results just seen to produce large ulterior consequences. Some misconception is very apt to arise here from the way in which frequent reference is made to the ascetic habits of those who purpose to become the regular chelas of Oriental Adepts. It is supposed that what is practiced by the Master is necessarily recommended for all his pupils. Now this is far from being the case as regards the miscellaneous pupils who are gathering round the occult teachers lately become known to public report. Certainly even in reference to their miscellaneous pupils the Adepts would not discountenance asceticism. As we saw just now, there is no hard line drawn across the scale on which are defined the varying consequences of occult study in all its varying degrees of intensity--so with ascetic practice, from the slightest habits of self-denial, which may engender a preference for spiritual over material gratification, up to the very largest developments of asceticism required as a passport to chelaship, no such practices can be quite