governs the universe, in a word, on all the riddles that assail and all the mysteries that overwhelm us. But, let us hasten to repeat it, there could not seriously be any question of fraud, because the texts or traditions that might be regarded with suspicion are corroborated by other texts, such as the sacred inscriptions of Egypt, which no one thinks of contesting. At most we may come upon a few passages antedated by the imprudent zeal of adepts or commentators, a few interpolations which merely embroider the majestic lines. Taking it as a whole, we have to do with a revelation which dates back infinitely farther than all that we have called the prehistoric ages, wherefore it is legitimate that our astonishment should be unbounded. 12 Very good, it will be said, this interpretation of the universe, this anthropocosmogenesis is the loftiest, the most spacious, the most wonderful, the most unassailable that has ever been conceived; it teems in every part with human thought and imagination; but what is it all based upon? When all is said, we have here only magnificent hypotheses, boldly disguised as authoritative, dogmatic and peremptory declarations, but every one incapable of verification. This is the objection which I myself put forward, a little hastily, in one of the early chapters of _Our Eternity_. It is indeed undeniable that we shall not for some time to come, that perhaps we shall never know the truth about the origin and the end of the universe or any of the other problems which these declarations profess to solve. But it is curious to note that science, despite itself, is daily drawing nearer to one or other of these declarations and that it is unable to set aside or to contradict any of them. There is for example, a certain study of the genesis of the elements, by the well-known chemist, Sir William Crookes, which unconsciously becomes plainly occultist, while the discovery of the radioactivity of matter reproduces precisely the theory of vortices of the initiate Anaxagoras. It is the same, _mutatis mutandis_, with the function attributed to the ether, the latest, indispensable postulate of our scientists. It is the same with the supreme and essential functions of certain minute glands of which modern medicine is only now beginning to rediscover the importance and which probably hold hidden the primordial secrets of life: the thyroid gland, which directs growth and intelligence; the suprarenal gland, which governs the unconscious muscle that is the heart; and the pineal gland, the most mysterious of all, which brings us into relation with the unknown worlds. It is the same again with astronomy, when the manifest insufficiency of our so-called cosmic laws, notably that of gravitation, propounds a host of questions which only the cosmogony of the east is able to answer. But this would require a long enquiry, which I am not qualified to undertake.