The Dore Lectures on Mental Sciencel. Thomas Troward

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      Original Mind upon itself; it is the reaching out of this Mind

      for realization of all that it feels itself to be.

      The creative process thus in the first instance is purely a

      matter of feeling--exactly what we speak of as "motif" in a work

      of art.

      Now it is this original feeling that we need to enter into,

      because it is the fons et origo of the whole chain of causation

      which subsequently follows. What then can this original feeling

      of the Spirit be? Since the Spirit is Life-in-itself, its feeling

      can only be for the fuller expression of Life--any other sort of

      feeling would be self-destructive and is therefore inconceivable.

      Then the full expression of Life implies Happiness, and Happiness

      implies Harmony, and Harmony implies Order, and Order implies

      Proportion, and Proportion implies Beauty; so that in recognizing

      the inherent tendency of the Spirit towards the production of

      Life, we can recognise a similar inherent tendency to the

      production of these other qualities also; and since the desire to

      bestow the greater fulness of joyous life can only be described

      as Love, we can sum up the whole of the feeling which is the

      original moving impulse in the Spirit as Love and Beauty--the

      Spirit finding expression through forms of beauty in centres of

      life, in harmonious reciprocal relation to itself. This is a

      generalized statement of the broad principle by which Spirit

      expands from the innermost to the outermost, in accordance with a

      Law of tendency inherent in itself.

      It sees itself, as it were, reflected in various centres of life

      and energy, each with its appropriate form; but in the first

      instance these reflections can have no existence except within

      the originating Mind. They have their first beginning as mental

      images, so that in addition to the powers of Intelligence and

      Selection, we must also realise that of Imagination as belonging

      to the Divine Mind; and we must picture these powers as working

      from the initial motive of Love and Beauty.

      Now this is the Spirit that we need to enter into, and the method

      of doing so is a perfectly logical one. It is the same method by

      which all scientific advance is made. It consists in first

      observing how a certain law works under the conditions

      spontaneously provided by nature, next in carefully considering

      what principle this spontaneous working indicates, and lastly

      deducing from this how the same principle would act under

      specially selected conditions, not spontaneously provided by

      nature.

      The progress of shipbuilding affords a good example of what I

      mean. Formerly wood was employed instead of iron, because wood

      floats in water and iron sinks; yet now the navies of the world

      are built of iron; careful thought showed the law of floatation

      to be that anything could float which, bulk for bulk, is lighter

      than the mass of liquid displaced by it; and so we now make iron

      float by the very same law by which it sinks, because by the

      introduction of the PERSONAL factor, we provide conditions which

      do not occur spontaneously--according to the esoteric maxim that

      "Nature unaided fails." Now we want to apply the same process of

      specializing a generic Law to the first of all Laws, that of the

      generic life-giving tendency of Spirit itself. Without the

      element of INDIVIDUAL PERSONALITY the Spirit can only work

      cosmically by a GENERIC Law; but this law admits of far higher

      specialization, and this specialization can only be attained

      through the introduction of the personal factor. But to introduce

      this factor the individual must be fully aware of the PRINCIPLE

      which underlies the spontaneous or cosmic action of the law.

      Where, then, will he find this principle of Life? Certainly not

      by contemplating Death. In order to get a principle to work in

      the way we require it to, we must observe its action when it is

      working spon" taneously in this particular direction. We must ask

      why it goes in the right direction as far as it does--and having

      learnt this we shall then be able to make it go further. The law

      of floatation was not discovered by contemplating the sinking of

      things, but by contemplating the floating of things which floated

      naturally, and then intelligently asking why they did so.

      The knowledge of a principle is to be gained by the study of its

      affirmative action; when we understand THAT we are in a position

      to correct the negative conditions which tend to prevent that

      action.

      Now Death is the absence of Life, and disease is the absence of

      health, so to enter into the Spirit of Life we require to

      contemplate it, where it is to be found, and not where it is not-

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