m, hide in
the very words which frame it its actual mystery.
They cannot do more. There is a law of
nature which insists that a man shall read these
mysteries for himself. By no other method can
he obtain them. A man who desires to live
must eat his food himself: this is the simple law
of nature--which applies also to the higher
life. A man who would live and act in it cannot
be fed like a babe with a spoon; he must
eat for himself.

I propose to put into new and sometimes
plainer language parts of "Light on the Path";
but whether this effort of mine will really be
any interpretation I cannot say. To a deaf
and dumb man, a truth is made no more intelligible
if, in order to make it so, some misguided
linguist translates the words in which
it is couched into every living or dead language,
and shouts these different phrases in his ear.
But for those who are not deaf and dumb one
language is generally easier than the rest; and
it is to such as these I address myself.

The very first aphorisms of "Light on the
Path," included under Number I, have, I know
well, remained sealed as to their inner meaning
to many who have otherwise followed the purpose
of the book.

There are four proven and certain truths
with regard to the entrance to occultism. The
Gates of Gold bar that threshold; yet there are
some who pass those gates and discover the
sublime and illimitable beyond. In the far
spaces of Time all will pass those gates. But
I am one who wish that Time, the great deluder,
were not so over-masterful. To those
who know and love him I have no word to
say; but to the others--and there are not so
very few as some may fancy--to whom the
passage of Time is as the stroke of a sledge-hammer,
and the sense of Space like the bars
of an iron cage, I will translate and re-translate
until they understand fully.

The four truths written on the first page
of "Light on the Path," refer to the trial initiation
of the would-be occultist. Until he has
passed it, he cannot even reach to the latch of
the gate which admits to knowledge. Knowledge
is man's greatest inheritance; why, then,
should he not attempt to reach it by every
possible road? The laboratory is not the only
ground for experiment; _science_, we must remember,
is derived from _sciens_, present participle
of _scire_, "to know,"--its origin is similar
to that of the word "discern," to "ken."
Science does not therefore deal only with
matter, no, not even its subt