rapidly becomes painful. Thus the laggard on the path of evolution has
always the sense of being hunted and driven by his fate, while the man who
intelligently co-operates is left perfectly free to choose the direction in
which he shall move, so long as it is onward and upward.

The second great law under which this evolution is taking place is the law
of cause and effect. There can be no effect without its cause, and every
cause must produce its effect. They are in fact not two but one, for the
effect is really part of the cause, and he who sets one in motion sets the
other also. There is in Nature no such idea as that of reward or
punishment, but only of cause and effect. Anyone can see this in connection
with mechanics or chemistry; the clairvoyant sees it equally clearly with
regard to the problems of evolution. The same law obtains in the higher as
in the lower worlds; there, as here, the angle of reflection is always
equal to the angle of incidence. It is a law of mechanics that action and
reaction are equal and opposite. In the almost infinitely finer matter of
the higher worlds the reaction is by no means always instantaneous; it may
sometimes be spread over long periods of time, but it returns inevitably
and exactly.

Just as certain in its working as the mechanical law in the physical world
is the higher law, according to which the man who sends out a good thought
or does a good action receives good in return, while the man who sends out
an evil thought or does an evil action, receives evil in return with equal
accuracy--once more, not in the least a reward or punishment administered
by some external will, but simply as the definite and mechanical result of
his own activity. Man has learnt to appreciate a mechanical result in the
physical world, because the reaction is usually almost immediate and can be
seen by him. He does not invariably understand the reaction in the higher
worlds because that takes a wider sweep, and often returns not in this