his passage, like a proffered dish full of rare fruit, tempts the
metaphysical appetite by the wealth and variety of its appeal; but
not to weary the reader, the author will content himself by the
abstraction of a single plum. The plum in question is simply this
(and the reader is asked to read the quotation carefully again): may
not every act, incident, circumstance in a human life be the
"uncoiling" of a karmic aggregate? This coil of life may be thought
of most conveniently in this connection as the _character_ of the
person, a character built up, or "successively introduced" in
antecedent lives. The sequence of events resultant on its "unwinding"
would be the destiny of the person--a destiny determined, necessarily,
by past action. This concept gives a new and more eloquent meaning
to the phrase "Character is destiny." If we carry our thought no
further, we are plunged into the slough of determinism--sheer
fatality. But in each reincarnation, however predetermined every act
and event, their reaction upon consciousness remains a matter of
determination--is therefore _self_-determined. We may not control
the event, but our acceptance of it we may control. Moreover, each
"unwinding" of the karmic coil takes place in a new environment, in a
world more highly organized by reason of the play upon it of the
collective consciousness of mankind. Though the same individual
again and again intersects the stream of mundane experience, it is an
evolving ego and an augmenting stream. Therefore each life of a
given series forms a different, a more intricate, and a more amazing
pattern: in each the thread is drawn from nearer the central energy,
which is divine, and so shows forth more of the coiled power within
the soul.

X GENIUS

IMMANENCE

The greatest largess to the mind which higher thought brings is the
conviction of a transcendent existence. Though we do not know the
nature of this existence, except obscurely, we are assured of its
reality and of its immanence, through a growing sense that all that
happens to us is simply our relation to it.

In our ant-like efforts to attain to some idea of the nature of this
transcendent reality, let us next avail ourselves of the help
afforded by the artist and the man of genius, too troubled by the
flesh for perfect clarity of vision, too troubled by the spirit not
to attempt to render or record the Pisgah-glimpses of the
world-order now and then vouchsafed. For the geniu