ta Nuova_, "to behold a
very wonderful vision; wherein I saw things that determined me."

It may be given to any one at any time to behold the vision.
Circumstances are fluidic and impressionable, and take on any form that
the mental power has achieved sufficient strength to stamp, and because
of this--which is the explanation of the outward phenomena whose
significance, on the spiritual side, is all condensed in prayer--one
need never despond or despair. At any instant he can so unite his own
will with the divine will that new combinations of event and
circumstance will appear in his life. A writer on this line of thought
has recently said:--

"There is an elemental essence--a strange living essence--which
surrounds us on every side, and which is singularly susceptible to
the influence of human thought.

"This essence responds with the most wonderful delicacy to the
faintest action of our minds or desires, and this being so, it is
interesting to note how it is affected when the human mind
formulates a definite, purposeful thought or wish."

There is a phase of occult thought represented at its best by Mr. C. W.
Leadbeater of London, and at its worst by a host of miscellaneous
writers, whose speculations are more or less grotesque and devoid of
every claim to attention, who materialize thought and purpose, and
invest it with an organism which they name "an elemental," and one finds
Mr. Leadbeater saying things like this, of the results of an intensely
held thought:--

"The effect produced is of the most striking nature. The thought
seizes upon the plastic essence, and moulds it instantly into a
living being of appropriate form,--a being which when once thus
created is in no way under the control of its creator, but lives
out a life of its own, the length of which is proportionate to the
intensity of the thought or wish which called it into existence. It
lasts, in fact, just as long as the thought force holds it
together."

Mr. Leadbeater continues:--

"Still more pregnant of results for good or evil are a man's
thought about other people, for in that case they hover not about
the thinker, but about the object of the thought. A kindly thought
about any person or any earnest wish for his good will form and
project toward him a friendly artificial elemental; if the wish be
a definite one, as, for example, that