However this may be, the prescribed course of self-discipline commences here.  It may be stated briefly that its essence is a course of moral, mental, and physical development, carried on in parallel lines—­one being useless without the other.  The physical man must be rendered more ethereal and sensitive; the mental man more penetrating and profound; the moral man more self-denying and philosophical.  And it may be mentioned that all sense of restraint—­even if self-imposed—­is useless.  Not only is all “goodness” that results from the compulsion of physical force, threats, or bribes (whether of a physical or so-called “spiritual” nature) absolutely useless to the person who exhibits it, its hypocrisy tending to poison the moral atmosphere of the world, but the desire to be “good” or “pure,” to be efficacious must be spontaneous.  It must be a self-impulse from within, a real preference for something higher, not an abstention from vice because of fear of the law:  not a chastity enforced by the dread of Public Opinion; not a benevolence exercised through love of praise or dread of consequences in a hypothetical Future Life.*

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* Col.  Olcott clearly and succinctly explains the Buddhist doctrine of
Merit or Karma, in his “Buddhist Catechism.” 
(Question 83).—­G.M.
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It will be seen now in connection with the doctrine of the tendency to the renewal of action, before discussed, that the course of self-discipline recommended as the only road to Longevity by Occultism is not a “visionary” theory dealing with vague “ideas,” but actually a scientifically devised system of drill.  It is a system by which each particle of the several men composing the septenary individual receives an impulse, and a habit of doing what is necessary for certain purposes of its own free-will and with “pleasure.”  Every one must be practiced and perfect in a thing to do it with pleasure.  This rule especially applies to the case of the development of Man.  “Virtue” may be very good in its way—­it may lead to the grandest results.  But to become efficacious it has to be practiced cheerfully not with reluctance or pain.  As a consequence of the above consideration the candidate for Longevity at the commencement of his career must begin to eschew his physical desires, not from any sentimental theory of right or wrong, but for the following good reason.  As, according to a well-known and now established scientific theory, his visible material frame is always renewing its particles; he will, while abstaining from the gratification of his desires, reach the end of a certain period during which those particles which composed the man of vice, and which were given a bad predisposition, will have departed.  At the same time, the disuse of such functions will tend to obstruct the entry, in place of the old particles, of new particles having a tendency to repeat the said acts.  And while this is the particular result as regards certain