wn observation of ordinary life, good habits, even though they may not
be so readily formed as bad ones, are not difficult to maintain in
proportion to the difficulty of their commencement. For a moment it may
be asked how this may be applied to a succession of lives separate from
each other by a total oblivion of their details; but it really applies
as directly to the succession of lives as to the succession of days
within one life, which are separated from each other by as many nights.
The certain operation of those affinities in the individual Ego which
are collectively described in the esoteric doctrine by the word Karma,
must operate to pick up the old habits of character and thought, as life
after life comes round, with the same certainty that the thread of
memory in a living brain recovers, day after day, the impressions of
those that have gone before. Whether a moral habit is thus deliberately
engendered by an occult student in order that it may propagate itself
through future ages, or whether it merely arises from unintelligent
aspirations towards good, which happily for mankind are more widely
spread than occult study as yet, the way it works in each case is the
same. The unintelligent aspiration towards goodness propagates itself
and leads to good lives in the future; the intelligent aspiration
propagates itself in the same way plus the propagation of intelligence;
and this distinction shows the gulf of difference which may exist
between the growth of a human soul which merely drifts along the stream
of time, and that of one which is consciously steered by an intelligent
purpose throughout. The human Ego which acquires the habit of seeking
for knowledge becomes invested, life after life, with the qualifications
which ensure the success of such a search, until the final success,
achieved at some critical period of its existence, carries it right up
into the company of those perfected Egos which are the fully developed
flowers only expected, according to our first metaphor, from a few of
the thousand seeds. Now, it is clear that a slight impulse in a given
direction, even on the physical plane does not produce the same effect
as a stronger one; so, exactly in this matter of engendering habits
required to persist in their operation through a succession of lives, it
is quite obvious that the strong impulse of a very ardent aspiration
towards knowledge will be more likely than a weaker one to triumph over
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