the same result. Past experience proves nothing, and we must therefore make
a fresh start by going back to the Original Creative action of the Spirit
of Life itself. Then, if we take this as our starting point, remembering
that at the stage of this _original_ movement there can be no intervention
by a second power, because there is none, why should we mentally impose any
restriction upon the action of the Creative Power? Certainly not by its own
Law of Tendency, for that must always be toward fuller self-expression; and
since this can only take place through the individual, the desire of the
Spirit must always be toward the increasing of the individual life. Nor yet
from anything in the created substance, for that would either be to suppose
the Spirit creating something in limitation of its own Self-expression, or
else to suppose that the limiting substance was created by some other power
working against the Spirit; and as this would mean a Duality of powers we
should not have reached the Originating Power at all, and so we might put
Spirit and Substance equally out of court as both being merely modes of
secondary causation. But if we see that the Universal Substance must be
created by emanation from the Universal Spirit, then we see that no
limitation of Spirit by substance is possible. We may therefore feel
assured that no limitation proceeds either from the will of the Spirit or
from the nature of Substance.

Where, then, does limitation come from? Limiting conditions are created by
the same power which creates everything else, namely, the
Self-contemplation of Spirit. This is why it is so important to realize
that the individual mind forms a center from which the self-contemplating
action of Spirit is specialized in terms of the individual's own mode of
thinking, and therefore so long as the individual contemplates negative
conditions as being _of the essence_ of his own personality, he is in
effect employing the Creative Power of the Self-contemplation of Spirit
invertedly, destructively instead of constructively. The Law of the