latter journal going as far as to say that I had beaten Beckford's
famous "Vathek" on its own ground.

Whatever may now be the consensus of opinion on its merits or
demerits, I know and feel it to be one of my most worthy attempts,
even though it is not favoured by the million. It does not appeal to
anything 'of the moment' merely, because there are very few people
who can or will understand that if the Soul or 'Radia' of a human
being is so forgetful of its highest origin as to cling to its human
Self only (events the hero of "Ardath" clung to the Shadow of his
Former Self and to the illusory pictures of that Former Self's
pleasures and vices and vanities) then the way to the eternal
Happier Progress is barred. There is yet another intention in this
book which seems to be missed by the casual reader, namely,--That
each human soul is a germ of SEPARATE and INDIVIDUAL spiritual
existence. Even as no two leaves are exactly alike on any tree, and
no two blades of grass are precisely similar, so no two souls
resemble each other, but are wholly different, endowed with
different gifts and different capacities. Individuality is strongly
insisted upon in material Nature. And why? Because material Nature
is merely the reflex or mirror of the more strongly insistent
individuality of psychic form. Again, psychic form is generated from
a divinely eternal psychic substance,--a 'radia' or emanation of
God's own Being which, as it progresses onward through endless aeons
of constantly renewed vitality, grows more and more powerful,
changing its shape often, but never its everlasting composition and
quality. Therefore, all the experiences of the 'Soul' or psychic
form, from its first entrance into active consciousness, whether in
this world or in other worlds, are attracted to itself by its own
inherent volition, and work together to make it what it is now and