Now, however, we found that we had done instinctively and spontaneously precisely what was necessary to bring us into relations at once with our spiritual selves and with the world of those who consist only of the spiritual self. For, by thus becoming vitalised and sensitive in that part of man's system which endures and passes on, we had come into open conditions with the world of those who have thus endured and passed on, and are no longer of the terrestrial, but of the celestial, having surmounted all lower and intermediate planes. All this came to us without anticipation on our part, or any conscious seeking for it; but yet without causing dismay or surprise when it came. For it came so gradually as to seem to be but the natural and orderly result of the unfoldment of our own spiritual consciousness, and excited only feelings of joy and thankfulness at finding our method and aspirations crowned with so high a success. Thus was it made absolutely clear to us that, so far from divine revelation involving miracle, or requiring for its instruments persons other in kind than the ordinary, it is a prerogative of man, belonging to him as man; and requiring for its reception only that he be fully man, alive and sensitive in his own innermost and highest, in his centre as in his circumference. Thus living on the quick and finding no others who did so, it seemed to us as if we alone were the quick, and all others were dead. We noted yet another way in which we supplemented and complemented each other. It was in this wise. As I was bent on the construction of a system of thought which should be at once a science, a philosophy, a morality, and a religion, and recognisable by the understanding as indubitably true; she was bent on the construction of a rule of life equally obvious and binding, and recognisable by the sentiments as alone according with them, its basis being that sense of perfect justice which springs from perfect sympathy. By which it will be seen that while it was her aim to establish a perfect practice, which might or might not consist with a perfect doctrine, it was my aim to establish a perfect doctrine which would inevitably issue in a perfect practice, by at once defining it and supplying an all-compelling motive for its observance. These, as we at once recognised, were the two indispensable halves of one perfect whole. But we had yet to learn the nature and source of the compelling motive for its enforcement. The deficiency was made good by the discovery of the fact of man's permanence as an individual. The revelation of this truth was the demonstration to us of the inanity--not to use a stronger term--of the system called "Positivism." In ignoring the soul, that system lacks the motive and repudiates the source of the sentiments on which it insists, and to the experiences of which those sentiments are due. FOOTNOTES: