When you get in symbols or pictures the answers to questions propounded to your Higher Self, it is by this profounder mathematics that the interior one prepares its answer. It knows causes that are unknown to you, and from these causes can foretell effects with a degree of accuracy almost as great as that of an astronomer foretelling an eclipse. _Almost_, I say, not quite; for in dealing with human affairs even the greatest Masters must take into consideration an erratic element, the free will in human beings. That, too, may be guessed; but it is guessing, nevertheless. A sudden uprush of free and erratic will, and a new cause is set up, and the calculation must be made afresh. There is a certain charm in dealing with the erratic element of will. Perhaps that is why some persons find cats more fascinating than dogs. A cat is a wilful erratic animal; so are many men. The great being who passed this night along the battle line has been watching the course of earthly events for a considerable time. He is one of those who serve the planetary spirit of the earth by carrying certain ideas around the earth when the time has come for them to play their part in history. I cannot tell you many details about the life of this being, for I know only a few facts concerning him. He is so far superior to me that my possible comprehension of him is limited. He may once have been man, I think so; but of that I am not even sure. I have been told that it was he who first impressed upon a small but courageous section of the American people the conviction that the time had come when human slavery in America should cease; that it was he who inspired Columbus with the idea that he could find land by sailing west, though in the latter case he was not able to force through into the mind of his instrument the great fact that an immense and independent continent lay off there beyond the western sea, and between it and another sea whose waters washed the eastern shores of Asia. Again, I have been told that it was this being who was instrumental in revealing the knowledge of electricity to mankind. Can you imagine the life of such a being? Can you extend your consciousness so as to touch his? I am frank enough to say that it is difficult even for me, who have been able to remember so much of my own long past, and to work out so many of the probable effects of the causes which I myself set up in the far past, effects which will shape my future lives on earth. Imagine an independent entity of vivid life, yet without a physical or even an astral body, a being of thought whose lowest medium is thought, who influences his chosen instruments by contact with their naked minds. What _personal_ wishes can such a being have? What ambitions can he have? The lower and limiting word ambition seems grotesque as characterizing the motive force of such a being.