326 INVOLUTION. 



contains more of the emphasis of the reality, he 

 enters the region of snow. Here is a change brought 

 about by a small and perfectly natural rise which 

 yet amounts to a revolution. Another thousand feet 

 and there is another revolution — he is ushered into 

 the domain of mist. Still another thousand, and 

 the climax of change has come. He stands at the 

 top, and, behold, the Sun. None of the things he 

 has encountered in his progress toward the top are 

 new things. They are the normal phenomena of alti- 

 tude — the scenes, the energies, the correspondences, 

 natural to the higher slopes. He did not create any 

 of these things as he rose ; they were not created as 

 he rose ; they did not lie potentially in the plains or in 

 the mountain foot. What has happened is simply 

 that in rising he has encountered them — some for the 

 first time, which are therefore wholly new to him ; 

 others which, though known before, now flow into his 

 being in such fuller measure, or enter into such fresh 

 relations among themselves, or with the changed 

 being which at every step he has become, as to be 

 also practically new. 



Man, in his long pilgrimage upwards from the clay, 

 passes through regions of ever-varying character. 

 Each breath drawn and utilized to make one upward 

 step brings him into relation with a fractionally 

 higher air, a fractionally different world. The new 

 energies he there receives are utilized, and in virtue of 

 them he rises to a third, and from a third to a fourth. 

 As in the animal kingdom the senses open one by one 

 — the eye progressing from the mere discernment of 

 light and darkness to the blurred image of things 

 near, and then to clearer vision of the more remote ; 



