correspondences as those which start
from the recognition of external facts, and therefore the control and right
direction of these inner perceptions is a matter of the first moment.

The faculties most immediately concerned are the intuition and the
imagination, but it is at first difficult to see how the intuition, which
is entirely spontaneous, can be brought under the control of the will. Of
course, the spontaneousness of the intuition cannot in any way be
interfered with, for if it ceased to act spontaneously it would cease to be
the intuition. Its province is, as it were, to capture ideas from the
infinite and present them to the mind to be dealt with at its discretion.
In our mental constitution the intuition is the point of origination and,
therefore, for it to cease to act spontaneously would be for it to cease to
act at all. But the experience of a long succession of observers shows that
the intuition can be trained so as to acquire increased sensitiveness in
some, particular direction, and the choice of the _general direction_ is
determined by the will of the individual.

It will be found that the intuition works most readily in respect to those
subjects which most habitually occupy our thought; and according to the
physiological correspondences which we have been considering this might be
accounted for on the physical plane by the formation of brain-channels
specially adapted for the induction in the molecular system of vibrations
corresponding to the particular class of ideas in question. But of course
we must remember that the ideas themselves are not caused by the molecular
changes but on the contrary are the cause of them; and it is in this
translation of thought action into physical action that we are brought face
to face with the eternal mystery of the descent of spirit into matter; and
that though we may trace matter through successive degrees of refinement
till it becomes what, in comparison with those denser modes that are most
familiar, we might call a spiritual substance, yet at the end of it it is
not the intelligent thinking principle itself. The criterion is in the word
"vibrations." However delicately etheric the substance its movement
commences by the vibration of its particles, and a vibration is a wave
having a certain length, amplitude, and periodicity, that is to say,
something which can exist only in terms of space and time; and as soon as
we are dealing with anything capable of the conce