great sun would shine on ever the same, rising at dawn, sinking at
even, with unbroken exactitude and regularity if Man no longer
lived. Why have the monstrous forces of Evolution thundered their
way through cycles of creation to produce so infinitesimal a
prodigy?

Till this question is answered, so long must life seem at its best
but vague and unsatisfactory. So long over all things must brood the
shadow of death made more gloomy by hopeless contemplation. So long
must Creation appear something of a cruel farce, for which peoples
and civilisations come into being merely to be destroyed and leave
no trace. All the work futile,--all the education useless,--all the
hope vain. Only when men and women learn that their lives are not
infinitesimal but infinite--that each of them possesses within
himself or herself an eternal, active, conscious individual Force,--
a Being--a Form--which in its radio-active energy draws to itself
and accommodates to its use, everything that is necessary for the
accomplishment of its endeavours, whether such endeavours be to
continue its life on this planet or to remove to other spheres; only
then will it be clearly understood that all Nature is the subject
and servant of this Radiant Energy--that Itself is the god-like
'image' or emanation of God, and that as such it has its eternal
part to perform in the eternal movement towards the Eternal Highest.

I now leave the following pages to the reader's attentive or
indifferent consideration. To me, as I have already stated, outside
opinion is of no moment. Personally speaking, I should perhaps have
preferred, had it been possible, to set forth the incidents narrated
in the ensuing 'romance' in the form of separate essays on the
nature of the mystic tuition and experience through which some of us