"During the next two hundred years," he said, "the earth will be a
lively place for those who are fond of observation. If I am not much
mistaken there will be great progress in the growth of spiritual
science, and as its professors will probably possess a very imperfect
knowledge there may be some little confusion. Fancy how unpleasant it
will be to many people when their thoughts become common property, and
their actions can no longer be done in secret. When a cad, however
polished, will appear as a cad; and children will be sent to school to
undergo heart-training and not to learn deportment; when the future
members of Parliament will have to study the art, not of elocution and
subterfuge, but of caring more for their constituents than for their own
interests; when the wife will no longer ask her husband why he returned
so late, because she will know as well as he does; when the detective
will be banished into the region of history, and the judge require
neither witness nor jury; when curiosity, the cause of so much vice,
shall be exercised only in spiritual things, and men and women walk
naked yet unashamed both in body and spirit.
"Of course all this will come gradually, and future generations will
find no more inconvenience than would young children if the change took
place to-morrow. All our so-called modesty and our deceit are unknown
to them, being merely the outcome of training. The child is open enough
until by mental or physical smacks he learns to cover his body with
garments, and his thoughts with words most suitable to concealing them.
When such clothing is transparent the man will become in this respect as
a little child.
"This will be the time of which Emerson speaks, when he says--’Every man
takes care that his neighbour shall not cheat him, but a day comes when
he begins to care that he do not cheat his neighbour. Then all goes
well; he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun. What a
day dawns when we have taken to heart the doctrine of faith! To prefer
as a better investment being to doing, being to seeming, logic to rhythm
and to display; the year to the day, the life to the year, character to
performance.’
"The desire to perform is the one great hindrance to progress. So many
wish to do, so few to be. If we are great we cannot help doing great
things, and if we are small-minded no effort shall magnify our output.
It is for this reason that I give a limit of two hundred years for even
this partial development of a sense which is already latent in many. In
the present rush of action growth is retarded, discovery thrown into the
melting-pot for gain, whereby its most valuable component parts escape
in the form of invisible gases. But come with me, and I will show you
the secret which is hidden behind that third door."
We passed as usual into the laboratory.
"Sit down, and while we smoke I will tell you a few things which it is
as well you should know before we go further.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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