And yet, though it is so easy to blame and ridicule that attitude of mind, no one who has the influence of the higher occultism in his heart, and at the same time a capacity for sympathising with the best attributes of modern culture, can be otherwise than indefatigably anxious to waken up the present generation more fully to an appreciation of the sublime knowledge accessible to those who get across the outer barriers and come to realise the existence of the world beyond, once for all. Occultists will often fail to understand the situation aright. There are some who would do nothing but draw from their own knowledge of the invisible world a store of moral maxims, and serve these out to their brethren, fearing to suggest further inquiries lest danger should be incurred, for, of course, people are put in danger the higher they climb, falls being then more disastrous. But maxims to have any value must be in circuit with knowledge. “Be good!” is a sound maxim. “Be good children!” is often an efficient exhortation, but it will not survive the period when the persons addressed say “Why?” And all the educated world is saying “Why?” now in regard to injunctions which rest upon incredible assertions. Why is Society so tolerant of some misdoing which the Church has always specially condemned, though it lies outside the catalogue of offences like robbery and murder, proscribed by common convenience? Because maxims which merely rest upon religion have no longer any binding force; in other words, because religion is the science, or the sum total of the sciences of the invisible world, and men now claim to have cut and dried maxims overhauled on principles to which this age of science has accustomed them. It is quite possible to get this done. The fact that this _is_ a scientific age is a declaration, in other words, that a time has come for putting a scientific complexion on religious thought; in other words again, for beginning to lead the public, in flocks, where hitherto rare pioneers only have penetrated in secret—across the threshold unto the limitless realms of the invisible world. By flocks we need not be supposed to mean crude masses of humanity selected on no system, but large numbers compared to the rare explorers of former times, considerable groups of the most intelligent and advanced minds of the age. A man of the present day, who has obtained the beautiful culture of modern civilisation, who may be an accomplished classic, a finely-trained man of science, a poet, an artist, and yet a person so ignorant or stupid (as to certain facets of his mind) as not to know anything about the invisible world, is a creature who provokes in the more enlightened observer a feeling analogous to that with which one might look at a lady of fashion, beautiful in the face, but whose winning draperies you know to hide ugly deformities or repulsive disease. Or treating the subject more abstractedly, this lovely culture of modern