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"Let my divine nature return to the Universal Divinity."-PLOTINUS.

VOL. XIV.

DECEMBER, 1896.

No. 12.

Theory of the Will - Power.

Axiom 1. Nothing can resist the will of man when he knows what is true and wills what is good.

2. To will evil is to will death. A perverse will is the beginning. of suicide.

3. To will what is good with violence is to will evil, for violence produces disorder and disorder produces evil.

4. We can and should accept evil as the means to good, but we must never will or practise it, otherwise we should demolish with one hand what we erect with the other. A good intention never justifies bad means; when it submits to them it corrects them, and condemns them while it makes use of them.

5. To earn the right to possess permanently, we must will long and patiently.

6. To pass one's life in willing what is impossible to retain for ever is to abdicate life and accept the eternity of death.

7. The more numerous the obstacles which are surmounted by the will, the stronger the will becomes. It is for this reason that Christ has exalted poverty and suffering.

8. When the will is devoted to what is absurd, it is reprimanded by eternal reason.

9. The will of the just man is the will of God Himself, and it is the law of Nature.

IO.

The understanding perceives through the If the will be healthy, the sight is accurate. be light!" and the light was. The will says

medium of the will. God said-" Let there "Let the world be

such as I wish to behold it!" and the intelligence perceives it as the will has determined. This is the meaning of the word Amen which confirms the acts of faith.

When we produce phantoms we give birth to vampires, and must nourish these children of nightmare with our own blood and life, with our own intelligence and reason, and still we shall never satuate thein.

12. To affirm and will what ought to be is to create; to affirm and will what should not be is to destroy.

13. Light is an electric fire, which is placed by man at the disposition of the will; it illuminates those who know how to make use of it, and burns those who abuse it.

14.

15.

The empire of the world is the empire of light.

Great minds with wills badly equilibrated are like comets, which are abortive suns.

16. To do nothing is as fatal as to commit evil, and it is more cowardly. Sloth is the most unpardonable of the deadly sins.

17.

To suffer is to labor. A great misfortune properly endured is a progress accomplished. Those who suffer much live more truly

than those who undergo no trials.

18.

The voluntary death of self-devotion is not a suicide—it is the apotheosis of free-will.

19. Fear is only indolence of will; and for this reason public opinion brands the coward.

21.

20. An iron chain is less difficult to burst than a chain of flowers. Succeed in not fearing the lion, and the lion will be afraid of you. Say to suffering-"I will that thou shalt become a pleasure," and it will prove such, and more even than a pleasure, for it will be a blessing.

22. Before deciding that a certain the bent of his will. Jesus proved His immortality,

and the Cross.

man is happy or otherwise, seek to asTiberius died daily at Caprea, while and even His divinity, upon Calvary

A O. "All things come from within." The departure of the Soul atom from the bosom of Divinity is a radiation from the life of the great All, who expends his strength in order that he may grow again and live by its return. God thereby acquires a new vital force provided by all the transformations that the Soul atom has undergone. Its return is the final reward. Such is the secret of the evolution of the great Being and of the Supreme Soul. — Book of Pitris.

"As it is above so it is below." "As it is in heaven so it is on earth."

KEPLER'S THIRD LAW. In casting our eyes down the list of the planetary distances, and comparing them with the periodic times, we cannot but be struck with a certain correspondence. The greater the distance, or the larger the orbit, evidently the longer the period. The order of the planets, beginning from the sun, is the same, whether we arrange them according to their distances, or the time they occupy in completing their revolutions; and is as follows:-Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, the ultra-zodiacal planets, or, as they are sometimes also called, Asteroids,-Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Nevertheless, when we come to examine the numbers expressing them, we find that the relation between the two series is not that of simple proportional increase. The periods increase more than in proportion to the distances. Thus, the period of Mercury is about 88 days, and that of the earth 365-being in proportion as 1 to 4.15, while their distances are in the less proportion of 1 to 2.56 ; and a similar remark holds good in every instance. Still, the ratio of increase of the times is not so rapid as that of the squares of the distances. The square of 2.56 is 6.5536, which is considerably greater than 4.15. An intermediate rate of increase, between the simple proportion of the distances and that of their squares is therefore clearly pointed out by the sequence of the numbers; but it required no ordinary penetration in the illustrious Kepler, backed by uncommon perseverance and industry, at a period when the data themselves were involved in obscurity, and when the processes of trigonometry, and of numerical calculation were encumbered with difficulties, of which the more recent invention of logarithmic tables have happily left us no conception, to perceive and demonstrate the real law of their connection. This connection is expressed in the following proposition :-"The squares of the periodic times of any two planets are to each other, in the same proportion as the cubes of their mean distances from the sun." Take, for example, the Earth and Mars, whose periods are in the proportion of 3652564 to 6869796, and whose distance from the sun is that of 100000 to 152369; and it will be found, by any one who will take the trouble to go through the calculation, that (3652564)2: (6869796)2: (100000)3 (152369)3. -Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, pp. 258-259.

:

"THE LAW OF GRAVITATION," by Evan MeLennan, a four-page essay in the September number of NOTES AND QUERIES, was reprinted in the Free Thought Magazine, for September, published in Chicago.

No thing is small, nothing is great in the Divine Economy." The Thoughts of God are best expressed in Nature's Language."

Wisdom of Krishna.

I. Those who do not control their passions cannot act properly toward others.

2. The evils we inflict upon others follow us as our shadows follow our bodies.

3. Only the humble are beloved of God.

4.

Virtue sustains the soul as the muscles sustain the body.

5. When the poor man knocks at your door, take him and administer to his wants, for the poor are the chosen of God (Christ said, "God hath chosen the poor").

6. Let your hand be always open to the unfortunate.

7. Look not upon a woman with unchaste desires.

Avoid envy, covetousness, falsehood, imposture and slander, and sexual desires.

Above all thing, cultivate love for your neighbor.

10. When you die you leave your worldly wealth behind you, but your virtues and vices follow you.

II.

12. 13.

Contemn riches and worldly honor.

Seek the company of the wicked in order to reform them. Do good for its own sake, and expect not your reward for it on the earth.

14.

The soul is immortal, but must be pure and free from all sin and stain before it can return to Him who gave it.

15. The soul is inclined to good when it follows the inward light. 16. The soul is responsible to God for its actions, who has established rewards and punishments.

17. Cultivate that inward knowledge which teaches what is right and wrong.

18. Never take delight in another's misfortunes.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

It is better to forgive an injury than avenge it.

You can accomplish by kindness what you cannot by force.
A noble spirit finds a cure for injustice by forgetting it.
Pardon the offence of others, but not your own.

What you blame in others do not practice yourself.

24. By forgiving an enemy you make many friends.

25. Do right from hatred of evil, and not from fear of punishment. 26. A wise man corrects his own errors by observing those of others.

27. He who rules his temper conquers his greatest enemy.

28.

The wise man governs his passions, but the fool obeys them. 29. Be at war with men's vices, but at peace with their persons. 30. There should be no disagreement between your lives and your

doctrine.

31. Spend every day as though it were the last.

32. Lead not one life in public and another in private.

33. Anger, in trying to torture others, punishes itself.

34.

35.

36.

A disgraceful death is honorable when you die in a good cause. By growing familiar with vices, we learn to tolerate them easily. We must master our evil propensities, or they will master us. 37. He who has conquered his propensities rules over a kingdom. 38. Protect, love and assist others, if you would serve God.

39. From thought springs the will, and from the will action, true or false, just or unjust.

40. As the sandal tree perfumes the axe which fells it, so the good man sheds fragrance on his enemies.

41. Spend a portion of each day in pious devotion.

42.

To love the virtues of others is to brighten your own. 43. He who gives to the needy loses nothing himself. A good, wise, and benevolent man cannot be rich. 45. Much riches is a curse to the possessor.

44.

46. The wounds of the soul are more important than those of the body.

47. The virtuous man is like the banyan tree, which shelters and protects all around it.

48. Money does not satisfy the love of gain, but only stimulates it. 49. Your greatest enemy is in your own bosom.

50. To flee, when charged, is to confess your guilt.

51. The wounds of conscience leave a scar.

LEGEND OF THE MAGPIE.

One day as the magpie had taken a seat

on the limb of a tree, near the highway, two travelers came along and halted under the tree to rest. They soon observed the bird, and, having never seen one of its species before, one of them called out: "Behold the eagle! What a noble bird!"

"How beautiful! How grand!" added the other.

Filled with conceit, the magpie began to chatter her satisfaction at these words; but she had scarcely opened her mout, when one of the travelers exclaimed ?

"What fools we are! I know from what I have read that this bird is only a common magpie!"

"And let her begone!" added the other, as he picked up a stone and sent it whizzing at her head.

Moral-A crow which had heard and seen it all, without being noticed himself, now scratched his ear and murmured:

"If some folks would only keep their mouths shut, what credit they might get for what they don't know."-N. Y. World.

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