desires and, as we
are constantly simultaneously thinking, desiring and acting, very
complex results arise. In the multitudinous activities of life we set up
relationships with other souls, some of the results of which reach far
into the future. The average man, with no knowledge of the laws under
which he is evolving, is usually making both friends and foes for future
incarnations and is often unwittingly laying up pain and sorrow for
himself that a little occult knowledge would enable him to avoid. Every
injury that he inflicts will return to him, though not necessarily in
kind. Nature does not punish. She merely teaches and knows nothing of
retaliations. Her great concern seems to be that all souls shall get on
in evolution and when a lesson is learned her purpose appears to be
accomplished.

The forces we generate in each incarnation shape and determine the next
and succeeding ones. Our friends, our families, our business associates,
our nation, are determined by what we have thought and felt and done in
the past and by the lessons it is necessary we shall learn. Our wealth
or poverty, our fame or obscurity, our strength or frailty, our
intelligence or stupidity, our good or bad environment, our freedom or
limitations, all grow out of the thoughts and emotions and acts in the
past. From their consequences there is no possibility of escape.

But that does not mean that we are the helpless slaves of fate from
which there is no release. We who generated the forces can neutralize
them. We can undo anything we have done. It only means that for a time
we must work within the self-imposed limitations created by a wrong
course in the past.

Those who are interested in the long-time discussion over free-will and
determinism have often been impressed with the remarkably strong
arguments that can be marshaled by each side to the controversy. Either
side, when presented alone, appears to be conclusive. The explanation
lies in the fact that each is right, but only to a certain point. Both
free will and necessity are factors and when the theosophical viewpoint
is understood the apparent contradiction disappears. We are temporarily
bound, _but we did the binding_, by the desires we indulged and the
emotions we freely harbored in the past.

The condition of temporary restraint in which we now find ourselves may
be likened to that of a party of gold hunters who go into Alaska to
locate mines. They are all aware that in that remo