The Hidden Power And Other Papers upon Mental Science. Thomas Troward

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      So with that universal power which we call the Spirit. It has an

      inherent generic character with which we must comply if we would employ

      it for our specific purposes, and this character is summed up in the one

      word "goodness." The Spirit is Life, hence its generic tendency must

      always be lifeward or to the increase of the livingness of every

      individual. And since it is universal it can have no particular

      interests to serve, and therefore its action must always be equally for

      the benefit of all. This is the generic character of spirit; and just as

      water, or electricity, or any other of the physical forces of the

      universe, will not work contrary to their generic character, so Spirit

      will not work contrary to its generic character.

      The inference is obvious. If we would use Spirit we must follow the law

      of the Spirit which is "Goodness." This is the only limitation. If our

      originating intention is good, we may employ the spiritual power for

      what purpose we will. And how is "goodness" to be defined? Simply by the

      child's definition that what is bad is not good, and that what is good

      is not bad; we all know the difference between bad and good

      instinctively. If we will conform to this principle of obedience to the

      generic law of the Spirit, all that remains is for us to study the law

      of the proportion which exists between the more and less fully

      integrated modes of Spirit, and then bring our knowledge to bear with

      determination.

      The law of spirit, to which our investigation has now led us, is of the

      very widest scope. We have followed it up from the conception of the

      intelligence of spirit, subsisting in the initial atoms, to the

      aggregation of this intelligence as the conscious identity of the

      individual. But there is no reason why this law should cease to operate

      at this point, or at any point short of the whole. The test of the

      soundness of any principle is that it can operate as effectively on a

      large scale as on a small one, that though the nature of its field is

      determined by the nature of the principle itself, the extent of its

      field is unlimited. If, therefore, we continue to follow up the law we

      have been considering, it leads us to the conception of a unit of

      intelligence as far superior to that of the individual man as the unity

      of his individual intelligence is superior to that of the intelligence

      of any single atom of his body; and thus we may conceive of a collective

      individuality representing the spiritual character of any aggregate of

      men, the inhabitants of a city, a district, a country, or of the entire

      world.

      Nor need the process stop here. On the same principle there would be a

      superior collective individuality for the humanity of the entire solar

      system, and finally we reach the conception of a supreme intelligence

      bringing together in itself the collective individualities of all the

      systems in the universe. This is by no means a merely fanciful notion.

      We find it as the law by which our own conscious individuality is

      constituted; and we find the analogous principle working universally on

      the physical plane. It is known to physical science as the "law of

      inverse squares," by which the forces of reciprocal attraction or

      repulsion, as the case may be, are not merely equivalent to the sum of

      the forces emitted by the two bodies concerned, but are equivalent to

      these two forces multiplied together and divided by the square of the

      distance between them, so that the resultant power continually rises in

      a rapidly-increasing ratio as the two reciprocally exciting bodies

      approach one another.

      Since this law is so universal throughout physical nature, the doctrine

      of continuity affords every ground for supposing that its analogue holds

      good in respect of spiritual nature. We must never lose sight of the

      old-world saying that "a truth on one plane is a truth on all." If a

      principle exists at all it exists universally. We must not allow

      ourselves to be misled by appearances; we must remember that the

      perceptible results of the working of any principle consist of two

      factors--the principle itself or the active factor, and the

      subject-matter on which it acts or the passive factor; and that while

      the former is invariable, the latter is variable, and that the operation

      of the same invariable upon different variables must necessarily produce

      a variety of results. This at once becomes evident if we state it

      mathematically; for example, _a_, _b_ or _c_, multiplied by _x_ give

      respectively the results _ax_, _bx_, _cx_, which differ materially from

      one another, though the factor _x_ always remains the same.

      This law of the generation of power by attraction applies on the

      spiritual as well as on the physical plane, and acts with the same

      mathematical precision on both; and thus the human individuality

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