It should not be overlooked that, although these radiant properties are possessed for all persons alike, they are not discerned by all alike. All people are not equally receptive, equally sensitive, equally apperceptive. Human beings are like soil--some is stony ground and the seed takes no root, other is thorny, and the seeds, springing up, are choked, other still is good ground and bears fruit, some thirty, some sixty, some an hundred fold. In other words the state of our own responsiveness determines the effect upon us of the radiancy of the objects with which we come in contact. The quartz picked up from a ledge may be full of valuable mineral, but to the ignorant it is "a piece of rock and nothing more." The ordinary traveler on the desert sees a large black beetle. Knowing nothing of beetles, it is to him "only a bug." But the scientific entomologist, seeing the same beetle, is carried away with delight, for he recognizes the rare _Dinapate Wrightii_, one of the least seen and most rare of American beetles. Most travelers seeing the cactuses of the desert note but a few varieties, but the trained observer revels in hundreds of differences in _mammillaria_, _opuntias_, _echinocactuses_, and _agave_. Some see no beauty in them, some delight in their many and diverse charms; to some their thorns are hideous and repulsive, to others both interesting and beautiful in their arrangement and design. According to our receptivity do these objects of Nature affect us--some in one way, some another. The more sensitive our minds and souls are to what they perceive, the more we receive, absorb, gain, and, therefore, the more we in turn radiate to others, but we must remember that the character and quality of that which we receive will be reflected, therefore it is necessary to be constantly in that attitude of mind which is receptive to good only. CHAPTER II THE RADIANT AURA Swedenborg, who was one of the most eminent of scientists and engineers, as well as the founder of the religious system that bears his name, asserted that various "aura" surrounded all living beings, and that the mental or spiritual state radiates, just as light and heat radiate from the sun, and cold from the snow. When one was angry, he said, he gave out the aura of anger which enveloped him as a cloud. Hatred had its aura, as well as love, sympathy, purity, impurity, kindliness, charity, jealousy, courage, justice, and the like. He also asserted that, to those who were simple, natural, and unspoiled by false reasoning--those who were spiritually inclined--these varied aura were clearly perceptible, and were as certainly felt or seen as were heat, cold, whiteness, blackness by the senses. Rudyard Kipling bases his story, "They," which appeared some years ago in _Scribner's Magazine_, upon this statement of Swedenborg's, and in this light it becomes an extra fascinating story to read.