Psychic tradition is as important a fact as is physical heredity. The latter is a factor of immense importance as affecting the constitution and quality of the organism in and through which the soul is required to function. But psychic tradition is that which determines the power and faculty brought to bear upon the physical organism. Past evolution is not a negligible quantity, and its effects are never wasted or lost to the individual. We are what we are by reason of what we have already been, as well individually as racially. "The future is, the past unfolded" or "entered upon by a new door," as it has been well said. We do not suddenly acquire faculties, we evolve them by effort and successive selection. In our upward striving for liberty we specialize along certain lines which appear to us to be those offering either the least resistance or the most ready means of self-preservation, liberty and well-being. Hence some evolve a special faculty for money-making and, as schoolboys, will be expert traders of alley-taws, jack-knives, toffee and all sorts of kickshaws. Others of another bent or list will traffic in knowledge to the abounding satisfaction of their masters and the jealous pride of their form. So that psychic tradition while disposing some to the speedy revelation of an already acquired faculty, disposes others to the more arduous but not less interesting work of acquiring such faculty. And because the spiritual needs of mankind are ever of primary importance, there are always to be found those in whom the power of spiritual interpretation is the dominant faculty, such persons being the natural channels of intercourse between the superior and inferior worlds. The physical body of man is equipped with a corresponding order of microbic life which acts as an organic interpreter, translating the elements of food into blood, nerve, fibre, tissue and bone agreeably to the laws of their being. What I have to say in this place is addressed especially to those who would aspire to the faculty of clear vision and in whom the psychic powers are striving towards expression. Every person whose life is not wholly sunk in material and selfish pleasures but in whom the aspiration to a higher and better life is a hunger the world cannot satisfy, has within himself the power to see and know that which he seeks behind the veil of the senses. Nature has never produced a desire she cannot satisfy. There is no hope, however vague, that the soul cannot define, and no aspiration, however high, that the wings of the spirit cannot reach. Therefore be patient and strive. To others I would say: Be content. All birds cannot be eagles. The nightingale has a song and the humming bird a plumage the eagle can never possess. The nightingale may sing to the stars, the humming bird to the flowers, but the eagle, whose tireless eyes gaze into the heart of day, is uncompanioned in its lofty loneliness amid the mountain tops. CHAPTER III. THE FACULTY OF SEERSHIP