. Memory
largely constitutes the man, for his every experience and thought is
recorded by his subconscious memory, and goes to the making of his
characteristics and his personality. Day by day we meet, and perforce
remember each other: we remember also those to whom we may never have
spoken, and so--unintroduced--they creep in this subtle way into our
personality. "We are, each one of us, united by bonds of emotional
influence with the personalities of all those with whom we have had to
do. If we could see them, they would guide us to their objects, for they
never lose their way. Thus by threads of love, threads of hatred,
threads of adoration, threads of thought, the universe of souls is
interpenetrated and linked up into a unity of correlated activity, an
intricate web of life."[9] Something of myself goes, in my thoughts,
into this written word: you read it, and as the thought incorporates
itself in your mind so does some tenuous element of my personality creep
into your own. Our independence is a fiction. We inspire each other,
whether we like it or no.

[Note 9: C. J. Whitby, M.D. "The Open Secret."]

But inspiration is of all kinds: it is like those neutral forces of
faith and thought, which depend for their result upon the direction in
which they are turned. Inspiration can uplift, but it may also degrade.
We ourselves by the tuning of our own thoughts determine which it shall
accomplish. Like can only answer to like: anger can never play echo to
love, for their vibrations are so far apart in attunement that the one
cannot influence the other. But anger answers to anger, and love to
love. It is the eternal response of the love implanted in the spirit of
man that ever bids him answer to the love that radiates from the divine.
Hence, in whatever age or clime we look, always there is to be seen man
in quest for the unseen, after joy, beauty, truth, happiness, after all
those spangles that glitter on the garment of love.

The mind of man is ever the tenuous instrument upon which are playing
the invisible forces of inspiration. All the thoughts that have existed,
exist still: all the thoughts that man can ever think are there already,
they do but await the time and season in which he can sense and
interpret them. These are the future discoveries for you and for me.
The pioneers who have passed our way are still working at the tasks
that were at once their life and love: and they have not gone so far
upon the journe