faculty. To these stages succeed the periods of reflective
thought and accurate research, which, while blunting to some
degree the sharp edge of sensibility, more than atone for the loss
by the widening of horizons and the deepening of mysteries. We
must be careful, however, not to press the analogy, or parallel,
too far. Important modifications of the recapitulation theory are
being urged even on its biological side; it is wise, therefore, to
be doubly on guard when dealing with the complexities of
social development. Still, it is safe to assert that, for the race as
for the individual, the modes of cosmic emotion grow fuller and
richer in "the process of the suns." Would it be easy to parallel
in any previous period of history that passage from Jefferies?--
"With all the intensity of feeling which exalted me, all the
intense communion I held with the earth, the sun, and the sky,
the stars hidden by the light, with the ocean--in no manner can
the thrilling depth of these feelings be written--with these I
prayed, as if they were the keys of an instrument."

Starting from an acknowledgment that the intuitional faculty is
capable of development, it is an easy, and indeed inevitable,
step to the conclusion that training and discipline can aid that
development. As noted above, mystics have gone, and still go,
to lengths which make the world wonder, in their efforts to
enjoy the higher forms of mystic communion with the Real. The
note of stern renunciation has persisted like a bourdon down the
ages in the lives of those who have devoted themselves to the
quest of the Absolute. In the East, and more especially in India,
the grand aim of life has come to be the release from the
appetites and the senses. The Buddhist struggles to suppress all
natural desires, and undergoes all manner of self-inflicted