Ancient and modern quackery. Science and wisdom. Spirituality and substantiality. Development. Self-control. Realism and idealism. The realization of the ideal. The physician of the future. Self-knowledge. The true life. The awakening of the soul. Phenomena and noumena. The higher science. Material and spiritual evolution. Intellectuality and spirituality. Periodicity. Circular motion and spiral progress. The self-recognition of truth. 86 INTRODUCTION. “There are two kinds of knowledge. There is a medical science and there is a medical wisdom. To the animal man belongs the animal comprehension; but the understanding of divine mysteries belongs to the spirit of God in him.” (Theophrastus Paracelsus, “_De Fundamento Sapientiæ_.”) A great deal has been written in modern books on pathology about the difficulty of defining the word “_disease_.” The dictionary calls it “lack or absence of ease, pain, uneasiness, distress, trial, trouble,” &c., but against either of these definitions objections may be raised. James Paget says: “Ease and disease, well and ill, and all their synonyms are relative terms, of which none can be fixed unconditionally. If there could be fixed a standard of health, all deviations from it might be called diseases; but a chief characteristic of living bodies is not fixity, but variation by self-adjustment to a wide range of varying circumstances, and among such self-adjustments it is not practicable to make a line separating those which may reasonably be called healthy from those which may as reasonably be called disease.” To this occult science answers that _such a standard of health exists for us as soon as we recognise the unity and supremacy of the law; that the results of obedience to the law are harmony and health, and the results of disobedience are called discords or disease_. Shakespeare says:— “The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre Observe degree, priority and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order.” —(_Troilus and Cressida_, i. 3.)