"Again, there are times--if the experiences and observations of sensitive minds have any worth--when a general spirit of expectancy seems to be awakened, as if the world were on the eve of some new and epoch-making revelation of science, or some new enthusiasm of regenerative impulse. Are we not now, at this hour, in this mood of silent expectancy, thrilled with an indefinable awe of what the brooding life of the world is maturing for the sons of men?--sensitive, perhaps, to ethereal vibrations that have not yet accumulated force for expression in conscious thought or for the definite determination of our hearts' desires? "This may be fanciful. It may be simply that we are beginning to perceive that physical science has reached a stage of development when some new and more central truth, some profounder generalization, is needed to give further impulse to its essential progress. It may be that we are becoming aware that the conditions of society are such that some new unifying motive, some new enthusiasm of humanity is needed for its salvation; and that therefore we wait in expectancy for what--knowing that there can be no let nor hindrance in the onward movement of life--we feel in our hearts must come. "And yet does not this sense of expectancy seem to communicate itself from mind to mind by some other means than that of oral or written expression, and to touch with more or less force even minds that are free from these intellectual anticipations? Are there not certain intellects at the fore-front of the world's progress, and certain hearts filled above the ordinary measure with the love of mankind, who are thus centres of power, from whom spread ever widening circles of vibratory emanations that gradually involve all minds in a common thought and all hearts in a common purpose? 'Many men of many minds.' Yes, truly; but there is the one mind of humanity that thinks and thinks, and alone has the power to externalize its thought as part of the world's history, while all purely individual thought is blown finally into the abyss of the Absolute Nothing. "But it is not only the great souls that thus move and shape the world. We are all, in various degrees, centres and distributors of the ethereal force, so far as we are in touch with its waves of vibration. We can all make our thoughts, if they are one with the thought of humanity, and our desires, if they are one with the heart of humanity, felt by our fellows in extending circles of effluence till finally the very clods of human kind know the stirrings of a new life and wake to the higher reality as from a dream.