Just as a man has two parents, and four grandparents, and eight great-grandparents, and sixteen great-great-grandparents, and so on until when, say, forty generations are calculated the numbers of ancestors run into many millions—­so it is with the number of causes behind even the most trifling event or phenomena, such as the passage of a tiny speck of soot before your eye.  It is not an easy matter to trace the bit of soot hack to the early period of the world’s history when it formed a part of a massive tree-trunk, which was afterward converted into coal, and so on, until as the speck of soot it now passes before your vision on its way to other adventures.  And a mighty chain of events, causes and effects, brought it to its present condition, and the later is but one of the chain of events which will go to produce other events hundreds of years from now.  One of the series of events arising from the tiny bit of soot was the writing of these lines, which caused the typesetter to perform certain work; the proofreader to do likewise; and which will arouse certain thoughts in your mind, and that of others, which in turn will affect others, and so on, and on, and on, beyond the ability of man to think further-and all from the passage of a tiny bit of soot, all of which shows the relativity and association of things, and the further fact that “there is no great; there is no small, in the mind that causeth all.”

Stop to think a moment.  If a certain man had not met a certain maid, away back in the dim period of the Stone Age—­you who are now reading these lines would not now be here.  And if, perhaps, the same couple had failed to meet, we who now write these lines would not now be here.  And the very act of writing, on our part, and the act of reading, on yours, will affect not only the respective lives of yourself and ourselves, but will also have a direct, or indirect, affect upon many other people now living and who will live in the ages to come.  Every thought we think, every act we perform, has its direct and indirect results which fit into the great chain of Cause and Effect.

We do not wish to enter into a consideration of Free Will, or Determinism, in this work, for various reasons.  Among the many reasons, is the principal one that neither side of the controversy is entirely right-in fact, both sides are partially right, according to the Hermetic Teachings.  The Principle of Polarity shows that both are but Half-Truths the opposing poles of Truth.  The Teachings are that a man may be both Free and yet bound by Necessity, depending upon the meaning of the terms, and the height of Truth from which the matter is examined.  The ancient writers express the matter thus:  “The further the creation is from the Centre, the more it is bound; the nearer the Centre it reaches, the nearer Free is it.”