To gain touch with this is _not_ to be put at once in possession of that certainty concerning the survival after death of the real “Me” in each case, which is the great point to be established for most European doubters, but it is the first step. Students of the laws which govern existence in the higher realms of Nature can gain no hearing from those to whom that great point remains unsatisfied. Once the higher realm is felt to be a reality, the possibility of gaining a knowledge of the laws which prevail there presents itself to the mind with an altogether new significance. And finally, closer attention shows that this knowledge certainly has been gained; that the path leading to spiritual wisdom is defined; that with some of the powers which reign in the invisible world we may enter into more or less definite relations beforehand here; that of all practical pursuits which men of clear heads and resolute purpose can set themselves to, during the space of incarnate earthly life, immeasurably the most practical, in so far as it has to do with objects which dwarf all others in their importance, are those which have to do with the culture and development of that Higher Self within them which has its natural home in the invisible world, and is but a passing guest in the midst of material occupations. To use and apply the knowledge of supermaterial laws which occult studies disclose is a life’s task, but of that for the moment we need not speak. It is with the heedless and frivolous generation at large that we are concerned in this appeal—with those who waste great gifts of intelligence and splendid energies and courage and indomitable industry on transitory pursuits, on money-making (in excess), on discovery and research that merely subserve passing material wants, on the struggle for flattering distinctions which cast a meteoric gleam on the brief journey to personal oblivion, on the “solid realities” of the visible world, which, like the ice drops of a hailstorm, are as hard as bullets one minute and dissolved in new forms the next. It is all for want of taking the first step that they are squandering their lives. Their immediate predecessors _knew_ no more than they perhaps of the hidden mysteries, but they were less critical of the distorted shape in which pious tradition told them of the future and of the powers above. The heirs of modern thought have grown in knowledge of molecules and of the transmutation of energy but as they look back upon the beliefs which contented their forefathers, they perceive that their fuller science of the physical plane has entirely shut out the wide, vague prospect that used to gleam on the earlier horizon.