mes it all; and all that goes thence (returns from heaven to a
new life) the earth consumes it all."

XI THE GIFT OF FREEDOM

CONCEPT AND CONDUCT

A surgeon once remarked to the author that among his professional
associates he had noticed an increasing awareness of the invisible.
This he claimed was manifest in the fact that the young men educated
since the rise of bacteriological science were more punctilious in
the matter of extreme personal cleanliness and the sterilization of
their instruments than the older and often more accomplished
surgeons whose habits in these matters had been formed before the
general sense of an _invisible_ menace had become acute.

This anecdote well illustrates the unconscious reaction of new
concepts upon conduct. Preoccupation with the problems of space
hyper-dimensionality cannot fail to produce profound changes in our
ethical outlook upon life and in our attitude towards our fellow
beings. The nature of these changes it is not difficult to forecast.

Although higher-space thought makes painfully clear our limitations,
it nevertheless leads to the perception that these very limitations
are inhibited powers. In this way it supplies us with a workable
method whereby we may enter that transcendental world of which we
glimpse so many vistas. This method consists in first becoming aware
of a limitation, and then in forcing ourselves to dramatize the
experience that would be ours if the limitation did not affect us.
We then discover in ourselves a power for transcending the limitation,
and presently we come to live in the new mode as easily as in the old.
Thought, conscious of its own limitations, leads to the New Freedom.
"Become what thou art!" is the maxim engraved upon the lintel of
this new Temple of Initiation.

SELFLESSNESS

Higher-space speculation is an education in _selflessness_, for it
demands the elimination of what Hinton calls _self-elements_ of
observation. The diurnal motion of the sun is an example of a
self-element: it has nothing to do with the sun but everything to do
with the observer. The Ptolemaic system founded on this illusion
tyrannized over the human mind for centuries, but who knows of how
many other illusions we continue to be victims--for the worst of a
self-element is that its presence is never dreamed of until it is
done away with. The Theory of Relativity presents us with an effort
to get rid of the self-element in regard to space and time.