ll our activities are now carried on upon a gigantic scale. Where
formerly a little stream supplied the water to the mill, we now
harness the invisible and apparently inexhaustible forces of
electricity; where formerly commerce was a system of bartering between
two single individuals, it is now a huge network involving millions of
persons. Everything teaches us the lesson of inclusiveness, as we
approach a more spiritualized ideal of life. We are uniting; merging;
drawing within.

The Centripetal force of the planet itself, corresponding to the
female pole of the magnet, is today the active principle in external
life. The machinist knows this when he is compelled to avoid the
suction currents of electrical power. Cosmic reaction has set in, and
union between complementaries is the result. Applying this truth to
individual human life, and we have what?

_Counterpartal Sex-union._

CHAPTER VII

SOUL-UNION: WHERE WILL IT LEAD?

We have heard much in recent years of "affinities," and "soul-mates,"
and we are likely to hear much more in the future. So much that is
unsavory and sensational is associated with these two words, that we
almost hesitate to employ them; but that is always the way with Fear.
It builds a high wall between us and Truth, and dares us to scale it.

We accept the challenge.

To begin with, the words are not synonymous, although frequently used
as such. Affinities are based upon mutual interests; mutual tastes and
appetites; mutual stages of development; but these stages of
development may be sense-conscious only; or they may be of a highly
intellectual order. Whatever their basis of mutuality, they tend to
attract upon that plane. Whenever this affinity, established by virtue
of mutual tastes, is on the sense-plane only--that is, when it is
because two persons both like their roast-beef rare; or their whiskey
diluted; or their wine iced--we are apt to find the result in a
mistaken idea of sexual affinity, which wears itself out for the
reasons already stated, because there is no reservoir from which to
draw. The chemistry of the body changes with time and emotional
experiences. Affinity of bodily contact only, resulting from a
congeniality of sense-appetites, is therefore necessarily short lived.

Affinity of intellect is much more lasting, because it approaches a
state higher in the ascent to the spiritual center of the cosmos.

Though