to the resources of astral clairvoyance in
investigations concerning the past history of the earth, whether we
are concerned with the events that have befallen the human race in
prehistoric epochs, or with the growth of the planet itself through
geological periods which antedated the advent of man, or with more
recent events, current narrations of which have been distorted by
careless or perverse historians. The memory of Nature is infallibly
accurate and inexhaustibly minute. A time will come as certainly as
the precession of the equinoxes, when the literary method of
historical research will be laid aside as out of date, in the case of
all original work. People among us who are capable of exercising
astral clairvoyance in full perfection--but have not yet been called
away to higher functions in connexion with the promotion of human
progress, of which ordinary humanity at present knows even less than
an Indian ryot knows of cabinet councils--are still very few. Those
who know what the few can do, and through what processes of training
and self-discipline they have passed in pursuit of interior ideals, of
which when attained astral clairvoyance is but an individual
circumstance, are many, but still a small minority as compared with
the modern cultivated world. But as time goes on, and within a
measurable future, some of us have reason to feel sure that the
numbers of those who are competent to exercise astral clairvoyance
will increase sufficiently to extend the circle of those who are aware
of their capacities, till it comes to embrace all the intelligence and
culture of civilised mankind only a few generations hence. Meanwhile
the present volume is the first that has been put forward as the
pioneer essay of the new method of historical research. It is amusing
to all who are concerned with it, to think how inevitably it will be
mistaken--for some little while as yet, by materialistic readers,
unable to accept the frank explanation here given of the principle on
which it has been prepared--for a work of imagination.

For the benefit of others who may be more intuitive it may be well to
say a word or two that may guard them from supposing that because
historical research by means of astral clairvoyance is not impeded by
having to deal with periods removed from our own by hundreds of
thousands of years, it is on that account a process which involves no
trouble. Every fact stated in the present volume has been picked up