e. I have sometimes been shown specimens of "inspirational
painting" done by persons said to be entirely ignorant of art, and the
ignorance is very apparent on the face of the work. I dare say an artist
may be inspired in the production of a picture, but the technical
training comes first, and the inspiration afterwards. The same I believe
to be true of all other subjects, so that we come back to the maxim of
the power always expressing itself in terms of the instrument through
which it works. With this reservation, however, it appears to me, that
every class of subject has a sort of soul of its own with which we can
put ourselves _en rapport_ by, so to say, mentally unifying our own
personality with its abstract principle.

We are told by some teachers, that we can in the same way even construct
entities in the nature of our Thought, and possessing a personality of
their own with which we have endowed them. Whether this be the case I
cannot say--I do not know all the secrets of the invisible. But if our
thoughts do not create personal entities able to hang "on their own
hook," they create forces which come to much the same thing. They start
waves in the Universal etheric medium, which, like the electro-magnetic
waves of telegraphy, spread all round from the point of initial impulse,
and are picked up whenever a centre happens to be attuned to a similar
rate of vibration, and each new centre energizes these vibrations again
with a fresh impulse of its own; so in this way thought-currents become
very real things.

Such, then, is the power of our Word, whether spoken or only dwelt upon
in Thought, to impress itself upon the impersonal element around us,
whether in persons or things. We cannot divest it of the power, though
we may intensify its action by deliberate use of it, with knowledge of
the principle involved, and therefore, whether consciously or
unconsciously, we are sending out the influence of our personality all
the time.

Now the more we know of these things the greater becomes our
responsibility, and I would therefore solemnly warn the reader against
any attempt to use the powers now indicated to the injury of any other
person, or for the purpose of depriving any one else of that liberty of
action which he would wish to enjoy himself. Such use of our mental
powers is in direct opposition to the Law of Unity which I have spoken
of; and since that Law is the basic principle of the whole Universe, any
opposit