Rational human creatures cannot afford to leave that prospect in a permanent eclipse. The neglect of all facts concerned with the durabilities of existence; the concentration of effort and interest on the hastily dissolving view of its physically manifested phases, is the crying folly of the period. To spring at once into complete conscious spiritual relationship with the higher planes of Nature is not an easy achievement. The great Realities lie within a domain which makes no direct appeal to the five senses of the earthly body, and the only way of approaching their comprehension is to press on through the darkness, beyond which other men before us declare that they have reached illuminated altitudes. But meanwhile, the torpor of the educated world at large in regard to the promptings which ought now to stir its activity in this direction is little less than idiotic. Idiotic relatively, that is to say, to spiritual culture. There are men of illustrious fame in the various provinces of intellectual culture, who are behaving relatively to their own higher potentialities, as the luckless victim of a shallow skull may behave towards the teachings of science and art. But there is always one thing to be remembered about them; they are curable. Their cure can be undertaken with sure certainty of success at any moment, but for each sufferer from that inner cataract which shuts out from his consciousness the prospect of the invisible world, there is only one surgeon who can successfully perform the necessary operation—the man himself. What we can do who have accomplished the feat for ourselves, is to encourage others—not to _go_, but to come and do likewise. A. P. SINNETT. [Illustration: decorative separator] THE MYSTIC THOUGHT. When will come rest? Is it alone the silent grave That can bring true peace to the restless soul That striving, yearns to reach some distant goal, Toss’d like a boat on the crest of a mighty wave? Is there oblivion in the cold, dark tomb To dull the heart and kill the abject fear Which loads the sense, when unknown dangers loom From regions that our sense perceives not here? When from the soul goes forth the mystic thought That we have higher purpose than we know, And each must reap the fruit he cares to sow, Or learn the duties he himself has taught: Can this be killed?—no, surely!—but that lamp can save That burns within us here—and burns beyond the grave. P. H. DALBIAC. =THE BLOSSOM AND THE FRUIT=: _THE TRUE STORY OF A MAGICIAN_. (_Continued._) --------------------- BY MABEL COLLINS,