CHAPTER II 



HOW THIS TREATISE CAME TO BE WRITTEN 



Two or three months ago a lady who was staying with me 

 went to a clairvoyant ladies will do these sort of things and 

 when she returned while we were having tea, told me, among 

 other things, what he had told her was, that she was staying 

 with a gentleman who was a great thinker ; he was not a 

 religious man in the ordinary acceptance of the word, but just 

 an ordinary man of the world. But was a good-natured, 

 honest, straightforward man, kind and considerate for the 

 good of others. He was a man of many moods. He was not 

 rich, but steadily making a success of whatever he undertook, 

 but that he would make a name and become a greater success 

 if he were to write books instead of the work he was engaged 

 in. " Oh," I replied, " that shows he is a fraud, for that is 

 the very last thing I would ever think of doing. I am totally 

 unfit for that sort of work ; my spelling is a disgrace to civili- 

 sation, and my composition is abominable. I should never be 

 such a fool as to try and do anything I felt myself so unfitted 

 for." Yet here I am doing the self-same thing. I have only 

 mentioned this fact to show how little I contemplated this 

 undertaking only four or five months ago, and that but for 

 the marvellous sequel I am about to relate I should never have 

 entertained the idea of writing it at all. 



A week or two later a young man introduced himself to me 

 at a restaurant. He told me he did not know why he had 

 done so, but felt some power compelled him to do it. He 

 became my shadow for a fortnight or so and I could not shake 

 him off, and in the course of this enforced acquaintanceship, so 

 far as I was concerned, he persuaded me to read a book 

 entitled " The Cosmo Conception of Rosicrucianism." I read 

 it through and put it down with the mental comment that I 

 had not thought it possible for any human mind to so far 

 profane the honoured name of Logic as under its name lo 



