Man’s ideas of the gods change as the gods themselves change, for “everything is becoming,” as Heraclitus said about twenty-four centuries ago. Did you fancy that the gods stood still, and that only you progressed? In that case you might some day outstrip your god, and fall to worshipping yourself, having nothing to look up to as superior. Accompanied by the Teacher, I have stood face to face with some of the older gods. Had I come out here with a superior contempt for all gods save my own, I should hardly have been granted that privilege; for the gods are as exclusive as they are inclusive, and they only reveal themselves to those who can see them as they are. Does this open the door to polytheism, pantheism, or other dreaded _isms_? An _ism_ is only a word. Facts are. The day is past when men were burned at the stake for having had a vision of the wrong god. But even now I would hesitate to tell all that I have learned about the gods, though I can tell you much. Take, for instance, the god whom the Romans called Neptune. Did you fancy that he was only a poetic creation of the old myth-makers? He was something more than that. He was supposed to rule the ocean. Now, what could be more orderly and inevitable than that the work of controlling the elements and the floods should be assumed by, and the work parcelled out among those able to perform it? We hear much of the laws of Nature. Who enforces them? The term “natural law” is in every man’s mouth, but the Law has executors in heaven as on earth. I have been told that there are also planetary beings, planetary gods, though I have never had the honour of conscious communion with one of them. If a planetary being is so far beyond the daring of my approach, how should I comport myself in approaching the God of gods? O paradoxical mind of man, which stands in awe and trembling before the servant, yet approaches the master without fear! I have been told that the guardian spirit of this planet Earth evolved himself into a god of tremendous power and responsibility in bygone cycles of existence. To him who has ever used a microscope the idea need not be appalling. The infinitely small and the infinitely great are the tail and the head of the Eternal Serpent. Who do you fancy will be the gods of the future cycles of existence? Will they not be those who in this cycle of planetary life have raised themselves above the mortal? Will they not be the strongest and most sublime among the present spirits of men? Even the gods must have their resting period, and those in office now would doubtless wish to be supplanted. To those men who are ambitious for growth, the doors of development are always open. LETTER XLI THE DARLING OF THE UNSEEN I HAVE written you before of one whom I call the Beautiful Being, one whose province seems to be the universe, whose chosen companions are all men and angelkind, whose play-things are days and ages.