to eradicate, and our intellectual endeavour should therefore be
directed, not to the attempt to foretell the various secondary causes which
will eventually combine to produce the desired result, laying down
beforehand what particular causes should be necessary, and from what
quarter they should come; but we should direct our intellectual endeavour
to seeing more clearly the rationale of the general law by which trains of
secondary causes are set in motion. Employed in the former way our
intellect becomes the greatest hindrance to our success, for it only helps
to increase our doubts, since it is trying to grasp particulars which, at
the time are entirely outside its circle of vision; but employed in the
latter it affords the most material aid in maintaining that nucleus without
which there is no centre from which the principle of growth can assert
itself. The intellect can only deduce consequences from facts which it is
able to state, and consequently cannot deduce any assurance from facts of
whose existence it cannot yet have any knowledge through the medium of the
outward senses; but for the same reason it can realize the existence of a
_Law_ by which the as yet unmanifested circumstances may be brought into
manifestation. Thus used in its right order, the intellect becomes the
handmaid of that more interior power within us which manipulates the unseen
substance of all things, and which we may call relative first cause.

IX.

CAUSES AND CONDITIONS.

The expression "_relative_ first cause" has been used in the last section
to distinguish the action of the creative principle in the _individual_
mind from Universal First Cause on the one hand and from secondary causes
on the other. As it exists in _us_, primary causation is the power to
initiate a train of causation directed to an individual purpose. As the
power of initiating a fresh sequence of cause and effect it is first cause,
and as referring to an individual purpose it is relative, and it may
therefore be spoken of as relative first cause, or the power of primary
causation manifested by the individual. The understanding and use of this
power is the whole object of Mental Science, and it is therefore necessary
that the student should clearly see the relation between causes and
conditions. A simple illustration will go further for this purpose than any
elaborate explanation. If a lighted candle is brought into a room the room
becomes illuminated, and if th