"I have always," I said, "been deeply interested in everything pertaining to the progress of the race, but I have been inclined to regard it as somewhat a matter of chance. You seem to have reduced it to an exact science. I can understand how certain influences are necessarily toward improvement, but how is it that our elevation is assured when so many are unconscious of such a tendency, and in the outer world at least, multitudes seem to be bent upon getting lower instead of higher in the scale? I feel quite sure that the masses of our ancestors in the past, were no better than the masses now, and did not consciously co-operate with nature for their own improvement. It seems, however, that by some kind of a blind chance they may have contributed something, but it certainly was not intentional. I see a different influence working here and the people are evidently co-operating with nature for the good of all, but I fear that it will be a long time before the people of my own country will reach that stage of development." "Do not be discouraged," said Norrena. "The constitution of the human mind is a guarantee of human elevation. The history of human development presents two distinct stages, the unconscious and the conscious. All progress from the simple cell to the human being, is of course unconscious and is governed by fixed and immutable laws. These same laws control human development up to the point where knowledge enables the race to consciously participate in the work of its own elevation. As soon as the people are sufficiently developed to understand the operation of the laws which control their own unfoldment, they will enter upon an epoch of conscious progress by careful and well concerted measures. When at the close of the Transition Period our people reached that stage, the change for the better in every direction came suddenly upon the world, because the masses of mankind felt the need of something better. Unconscious development had prepared them for the wonderful change. The blind forces which had been slowly urging man upward toward a higher plane of existence, now had the aid of careful and well devised methods, and the long ages of darkness disappeared in the blaze of light which was let in upon the world."