erations will greatly simplify our ideas of life. We have no
longer to consider two forces, but only one, as being the cause of all
things; the difference between good and evil resulting simply from the
direction in which this force is made to flow. It is a universal law that
if we reverse the action of a cause we at the same time reverse the effect.
With the same apparatus we can commence by mechanical motion which will
generate electricity, or we can commence with electricity which will
generate mechanical motion; or to take a simple arithmetical instance: if
10/2 = 5, then 10/5 = 2; and therefore if we once recognize the power of
thought to produce any results at all, we shall see that the law by which
negative thought produces negative results is the same by which positive
thought produces positive results. Therefore all our distrust of the law of
growth, whether shown in the anxious endeavour to bring pressure to bear
from without, or in allowing despair to take the place of cheerful
expectation, is reversing the action of the original cause and consequently
reversing the nature of the results. It is for this reason that the Bible,
which is the most deeply occult of all books, continually lays so much
stress upon the efficiency of faith and the destructive influence of
unbelief; and in like manner, all books on every branch of spiritual
science emphatically warn us against the admission of doubt or fear. They
are the inversion of the principle which builds up, and they are therefore
the principle which pulls down; but the Law itself never changes, and it is
on the unchangeableness of the law that all Mental Science is founded. We
are accustomed to realize the unchangeableness of natural law in our every
day life, and it should therefore not be difficult to realize that the same
unchangeableness of law which obtains on the visible side of nature obtains
on the invisible side as well. The variable factor is, not the law, but our
own volition; and it is by combining this variable factor with the
invariable one that we can produce the various results we desire. The
principle of growth is that of inherent vitality in the seed itself, and
the operations of the gardener have their exact analogue in Mental Science.
We do not _put_ the self-expansive vitality into the seed, but we must sow
it, and we may also, so to speak, water it by quiet concentrated
contemplation of our desire as an actually accomplished fact. But we must