Yet,—­as he personally declares, through the mouth of his modern science,—­he is not of real importance withal.  The little planet on which he dwells would, to all seeming, move on in its orbit in the same way as it does now, without him.  In itself it is a pigmy world compared with the rest of the solar system of which it is a part.  Nevertheless, the fact cannot be denied that his material surroundings are of a quality tending to either impress or to deceive Man with a sense of his own value.  The world is his oyster which he, with the sword of enterprise, will open,—­and all his natural instincts urge him to perpetuate himself in some form or other incessantly and without stint.  Why?  Why is his existence judged to be necessary?  Why should he not cease to be?  Trees would grow, flowers would bloom, birds would sing, fish would glide through the rivers and the seas,—­the insect and animal tribes of field and forest would enjoy their existence unmolested, and the 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 in this workaday world have the courage to pass successfully, but I know that the masses of the people who drift restlessly to and fro upon the surface of this planet, ever seeking for comfort in various forms