-the second is a mixture of the past and
of the energies of the present incarnation; the end of life is nothing
but a sinking into an ever-deepening rut for those who crystallise in
only one direction; the force of habit sets up its reign, and man
finds himself bound by the chains he himself has forged. This is the
reason an old man does not like the present times; he has stopped
whilst time has advanced, and he is now being carried along like the
flotsam and jetsam of a wreck; the very tastes and habits of his
contemporaries violently clashing with his beloved past. Speak not to
him of progress or evolution, he has brought himself into a state of
complete immobility, and he will discover no favourable field of
action nor will he acquire real energy until he has drunk of the
waters of Lethe in a rest-giving Hereafter and a new body supplies his
will with an instrument having the obedient suppleness of youth.

H. P. Blavatsky, in the _Secret Doctrine_, has well described this
progressive enmeshing of man in the net he himself is weaving.

"Those who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from
birth to death, every man is weaving, thread by thread, around
himself, as a spider his web; and this destiny is guided either by the
heavenly voice of the invisible prototype outside of us, or by our
more intimate _astral_ or inner man, who is but too often the evil
genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these lead on the
outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning
of the invisible affray the stern and implacable _Law of Compensation_
steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations
of the fight. When the last strand is woven, the man is seemingly
enwrapped in the net-work of his own doing, then he finds himself
completely under the empire of this _self-made_ destiny...."

She adds shortly afterwards:

"An Occultist or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness or
cruelty of Providence; but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will
teach that nevertheless it guards the good and watches over them in
this as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer, aye, even
to his seventh rebirth, so long, in short, as the effect of his having
thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the Infinite World
of harmony, has not been finally readjusted. For the only decree of
Karma--an eternal and immutable decree--is absolute Harmony in the
world of matter as