ofoundly influences every corner of the field of
thought. We now incline to think rather of the rise of Man out of Nature
than of his fall into it, though, perhaps, there can no more be a rise
without a precedent fall, than there can be a return without a precedent
out-going. Evolution may be the time-form of Attraction. But all this
affects the outside form, not the essence of the doctrine. Behmen is
concerned with the real nature of things, apart from time and space,
with their apparent, but so misleading, facts. He appeals to each Soul's
knowledge of itself, and, on the principle that _all is in everything_,
draws from the nature of Man, that little Universe (and we can no
otherwise learn things as they are in themselves), his teaching as to
Universal Nature. "In Man (he says) lies all whatsoever the Sun shines
upon, or Heaven contains, as also Hell and all the Deeps." His Iliad is
the struggle between light and darkness, life and death, expansion and
contraction, the centripetal and centrifugal force, heat and cold, love
and hatred, peace and wrath, humility and pride, self-sacrifice and
self-seeking, joy and anguish, repose and restlessness, in the whole of
Nature and in the Soul of Man. Does not every man, who has lived his
full life, know the truth and reality of all this? It is known more
especially and actually by those ardent and adventurous spirits who have
sailed in far seas of thought or action, not merely coasting along the
shores of tradition, authority and established rule. Sinners know some
things more vividly than those who ever and easily have been good. Only
the man who has been sick knows the difference between sickness and
health. The prodigal who had wandered in a far country and had lived as
he would, understood the meaning of peace and love better than the
brother who had always stayed at home.

These wanderers, if they return in time, know best, taught by the
heart-rending lessons of experience, the difference between the Heaven
and Hell within them; the Hell of wrath, self-torment, fear, anxiety,
envy, malice, evil-will, pride, cruelty, sensual passion, longing to
domineer, and the Heaven of love, benevolence, meekness, humility,
compassion, peace, joy, long-suffering.

They know that Heaven and Hell can alike be revealed in the Soul. From
youth they have felt something in them striving, often feebly enough,
against passionate desires for wealth, honour, success, and for mastery
over the mind