olute limit to our mental capacity. It is
quite within our own power to dwarf or extend it. If we are content to
rest satisfied with a small amount of knowledge we can do so, and even
cease to suffer in our own self-esteem by feeling we are stupid, or
indolent, or ignorant. Our perceptions are gradually blunted, and
society is kind enough to case most of its remarks and opinions in a
sugar-coating, so that the real truth never reaches us. We gradually
find, then, that an opinion that soothes our personal vanity and
self-esteem is a very pleasant opinion. So long as we cherish that
falsehood, so long do we blunt our faculties of progress. Now it seems
a very extraordinary thing to me, who have long been accustomed to
investigate and direct the psychic side of nature, to find such numbers
and numbers of people who don't believe in _any psychic laws at all_,
far less care to investigate them as knowledge. The reason is simply
this, that they all are convinced that _one_ trivial, petty earth-life
is the one life for which they were created and are responsible,
therefore the only one they feel bound to investigate."

She paused and looked at the circle of grave and wondering faces.

"You have heard of the law of Karma, I suppose?" she said.

There was a murmur, vague, spontaneous, or doubtful, according to the
amount of comprehension excited by the question.

"It is a pity," resumed the Princess, "that it is not more generally
understood. What is the difficulty? I learnt it in my childhood just
as your English children learn their catechism. You have taken up the
doctrine of Evolution very strongly, but Karma is its very leading law,
so to speak. Man is perpetually working out and developing afresh the
energies, aspirations, and character with which his spirit was
originally endowed. He becomes, as it were, the product of the better
part of himself, that struggles to the surface again and again during
periods of incarceration in the flesh."

"Then you would convey that we all live over and over again?"

"Most certainly. It is the only rational way to account for the
injustice, the sorrows, and the miseries of earth. It gives long
opportunities for the modification of character; it acts as retribution
to the evil and the vicious and the selfish; it gives a far deeper sense
of responsibility than the shallow acceptance of mere creeds, because a
man's good or evil deeds become a series of actions with inevita