n and
reaction he must reap as he has sown. It may be in the latter part of
this incarnation, or it may be in a following one, but sooner or later
his carelessness will react and he will lose his physical body in pain
and distress and come to know personally just what his recklessness
means. In the reaction, a part only of which is on the physical plane,
he gets the experience that is necessary to set him right. The folly of
his course is so driven in on his consciousness that he is changed from
the careless man to the careful man. In no other way could his cure be
brought about.

It may be said that if a misfortune comes to us as the result of our
wrong thinking and acting in a past life we can now know nothing of its
cause and therefore we cannot profit by the reaction. But while we do
not know in the limited consciousness of the physical brain the soul
does know and in the wider consciousness the lesson is registered.

The principles of justice are never violated in teaching the soul its
evolutionary lessons. Nothing can come to a man that he does not merit
and that which often looks like a misfortune is only the beneficent
working of the law seen from an angle that makes it illusory. But, it
may be objected, how does theosophy see "beneficent working of the law"
in the burning of a theater where a score of people lose their lives,
including several children? How can theosophy explain that?

How can it be explained by those who hold that the soul is created at
birth? If God really brings the soul into its original expression in an
infant body, why does he throw it out again in a few years, or even
months? What can be the purpose? It would be difficult indeed to explain
the death of children if the soul were created at birth. But let us look
at it from the theosophical viewpoint. The child is an old soul with a
young body. Hark back to the case of the man whose carelessness caused
the death of the baby in its carriage. He, and others like him, are
again in incarnation and in the burning theater they get the reaction of
the unfortunate forces they have generated. But why so many in some
catastrophes? it may be asked. A principle is not affected by the number
involved. If we can see justice in the death of one person we can see
justice in the death of a hundred. It is simply class instruction.
People of a kind have been drawn together.

We should not forget that we see only a small fragment of any such case
from the