it is in the world of Spirit. It is not, therefore,
Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we who reward or punish
ourselves, according to whether we work with, through, and along with
nature, abiding by the laws on which that Harmony depends, or--break
them.

"Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable, were men to work in union
and harmony instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of those
ways--which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark
and intricate, while another sees in them the action of blind
Fatalism, and a third, simple chance, with neither gods nor devils to
guide them--would surely disappear, if we would but attribute all
these to their correct cause....

"We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and the
riddle of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great
Sphinx of devouring us. But verily, there is not an accident in our
lives, not a mis-shapen day or a misfortune, that could not be traced
back to our own doings in this or in another life...."

On the same subject, Mrs. Sinnett says in _The Purpose of Theosophy_:

"Every individual is making Karma either good or bad in every action
and thought of his daily round, and is at the same time working out in
this life the Karma brought about by the acts and desires of the last.
When we see people afflicted by congenital ailments, it may be safely
assumed that these ailments are the inevitable results of causes
started by the same in a previous birth. It may be argued that, as
these afflictions are hereditary, they can have nothing to do with a
past incarnation; but it must be remembered that the ego, the real
man, the individuality, has no spiritual origin in the parentage by
which it is re-embodied, but is drawn by the affinities which its
previous mode of life attracted round it into the current that carries
it, when the time comes for re-birth, to the home best fitted for the
development of those tendencies....

"This doctrine of Karma, when properly understood, is well calculated
to guide and assist those who realise its truth to a higher and better
mode of life; for it must not be forgotten that not only our actions,
but our thoughts also, are most assuredly followed by a crowd of
circumstances that will influence for good or for evil our own future;
and, what is still more important, the future of many of our
fellow-creatures. If sins of omission and commission could in any case
be only sel