.
Far too much generalizing and vague discussion comes from this quarter. To
say that a man's personality is a combination of inherited characteristics
may certainly be compared with the assertion that the metal parts of a
watch have fitted themselves together. It must also be admitted that, with
regard to many assertions about a spiritual world, it is as though some
one said that the metal parts of a watch cannot put themselves together in
such a way as to enable the hands to move forward; some intelligence must
therefore be present to effect this forward movement. In face of such an
assertion, _he_ certainly builds on a far better foundation who says: "Oh!
I care nothing for your 'mystical' beings who move the hands forward. What
I want to know is the mechanical construction by means of which the
forward movement of the hands is achieved." It is by no means a question
of merely knowing that behind a mechanism, a watch for instance, there is
an intelligence (the watchmaker); it can only be of importance to know the
ideas in the watchmaker's mind which preceded the construction of the
watch. These thoughts may be rediscovered in the mechanism.

Mere dreaming and imagining about the supersensual only result in
confusion, for they are not calculated to satisfy opponents. The latter
are right in saying that such general allusions to super-physical beings
are not at all conducive to an understanding of facts. Of course, such
opponents might also say the same of the _exact_ statements of occult
science. But, in that case, it may be pointed out that the effects of
hidden spiritual causes are seen in manifested life. Let us assume for the
moment that what occult science asserts, proven by observation, is
correct:--that a man has gone through a time of purification after death,
and that during this period he has experienced in his soul how a certain
deed, performed by him in a former life, was a hindrance to his
progressive evolution. While he was undergoing this experience, the
impulse arose in him to make amends for that deed. He brings this impulse
with him into a new life and its presence produces a tendency in his
nature which draws him into conditions rendering the amendment
possible.--Taking into consideration a number of such impulses, we have the
cause for a man's being born into an environment corresponding to his
destiny.

We may deal in the same way with another assumption. Let us again accept
as correct the assert