soul. In compelling the ears to listen only to
the eternal silence, the being we call man
becomes something which is no longer man. A
very superficial survey of the thousand and
one influences which are brought to bear on
us by others will show that this must be so.
A disciple will fulfil all the duties of his manhood;
but he will fulfil them according to
his own sense of right, and not according to
that of any person or body of persons. This
is a very evident result of following the creed
of knowledge instead of any of the blind
creeds.

To obtain the pure silence necessary for the
disciple, the heart and emotions, the brain and
its intellectualisms, have to be put aside. Both
are but mechanisms, which will perish with the
span of man's life. It is the essence beyond,
that which is the motive power, and makes man
live, that is now compelled to rouse itself and
act. Now is the greatest hour of danger. In
the first trial men go mad with fear; of this
first trial Bulwer Lytton wrote. No novelist
has followed to the second trial, though some
of the poets have. Its subtlety and great
danger lies in the fact that in the measure of a
man's strength is the measure of his chance of
passing beyond it or coping with it at all. If
he has power enough to awaken that unaccustomed