"degree are like the stern hero of Bulwer's" Zanoni.... "the heartless
morally dried up mummies some would fancy us to be" and adds that few of
them "would care to play the part in life of a desiccated pansy between
the leaves of a volume of solemn poetry." But our adept omits saying
that one or two degrees higher, and he will have to submit for a period
of years to such a mummifying process unless, indeed, he would
voluntarily give up a life-long labour and--Die.--Ed.
----------

They may at times have exercised powers which the world called
miraculous; they may have electrified man and subdued Nature by fiery
and self-devoted Will; they may have been possessed of a so-called
superhuman intelligence; they may have even had knowledge of, and
communion with, members of our own occult Brotherhood; but, having
deliberately resolved to devote their vital energy to the welfare of
others, rather than to themselves, they have surrendered life; and,
when perishing on the cross or the scaffold, or falling, sword in hand,
upon the battle-field, or sinking exhausted after a successful
consummation of the life-object, on death-beds in their chambers, they
have all alike had to cry out at last: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!"

So far so good. But, given the will to live, however powerful, we have
seen that, in the ordinary course of mundane life, the throes of
dissolution cannot be checked. The desperate, and again and again
renewed struggle of the Kosmic elements to proceed with a career of
change despite the will that is checking them, like a pair of runaway
horses struggling against the determined driver holding them in, are so
cumulatively powerful, that the utmost efforts of the untrained human
will acting within an unprepared body become ultimately useless. The
highest intrepidity of the bravest soldier; the interest desire of the