It may be that all this is strange thought to you, almost meaningless, perhaps.  You are invited, therefore, to remember that thousands of people have felt similarly at first, have then caught a glimpse of the truth here and there, and finally have experienced a wondrous recognition of the New Dawn which has now surely come to the world.  It is significant that these are saying, “There is nothing else worth while in the whole earth.”

Two men were scraping paint from a house preparatory to putting on. a new coat of color, One of them who had been helped back from mental unbalance, and helped solely by thought, broke a long silence and said:  “This is the whole thing.”  He referred to the dawn of Real Life in himself.

If, now, this chapter has seemed to broach the subject of religion, remember, it does not deal with religion as you perhaps know religion.  The only thing valuable in religion is the White Life within the human self.  That alone is religion.  Call it what you will.  And it means just that courage which makes us buoyantly equal to any kind of life that is right.  The methods of this book will prove of value to you, whether or no you go into the white-life phase of existence.  But they will realize completest value if you will swing at the start clean out into the one greatest thought—­“I surrender to, and I receive, the infinite white life.”

It is because I desire every reader to get this perfect start in our study that I have indulged in the rather general outlook on the world’s New Dawn.  Hereafter our work will be more specific and adressed to the varying conditions of the individual man or woman.

FEAR—­THOUGHT AND FEAR—­FEELING.

The intellect coldly reflects What Is: 
An icy, crystalline lake portraying earth and sky
In shadows beautiful as death—­
And void of pulse, or warmth, or music of good life. 
This is no Eye with which to view the world!

The soul reflects the universe
With ECSTASIES of heat, of hue, of harmony! 
Its inner gaze creating Life in Fact,
So, robing sheer Reality in colors ravishing,
Giving it Voice, forming within it Heart,
And vitalizing All with Feeling—­Being’s blood. 
This is our Eye, viewing the world it builds.

Fear blurs that Eye, while Reason clears: 
Pure mind lacks Passion adding values to existence;
(Who loves mere ghost—­flowers born of moonlight?)
Pure Feeling lacks in reason, needing values,
And, lacking so, fills Eye of Soul with fantasies,
With wild distortions of imagination’s lust. 
(Who loves the fire—­hued, smoke blooms of Hell’s Land?)
And always Fear feeds Feeling’s grotesque growths
Till Soul’s Eye on its own creation looks
As on eternal Truth. 
Then Truth and Nature, Deity and Man
Evolve dread enmity and horrors multiple,
And Soul flees terror-stricken on to Death.