MIND AND SOUL 201 



forever ruling and controlling them throughout creation, 

 which is the one mutual point of advantage from above, like 

 the man in the balloon who sails over the top of the mountain 

 and sees all sides at once. 



I do not wish the reader, therefore, to imagine that I am 

 putting these and many of the new hypotheses and new ideas 

 expressed elsewhere as facts that are proved and demonstrated. 

 I only put them in order and sequence in this treatise as they 

 appear to be the best calculated to coincide and to meet the 

 requirements of evolution when viewed from the standpoint of 

 universal adaption to the laws of creation, and as items that 

 my hypothesis of the trinity of creation brings into prominence 

 and they form a part of the picture which the general view of 

 creation from this point of vantage offers to my mind's eye. 

 It will be for other minds viewing the same ideas from diffe- 

 rent standpoints to decide whether or no, or how far they 

 may be correct. And both the past and future evolution of the 

 world is the judge who will have to collect evidence to prove 

 or disprove my hypothesis ; but were I not to place them with 

 the rest I should feel that I had left out half of the picture 

 that has been presented to my mind and that it was blurred and 

 incomplete. They are, therefore, presented to my reader 

 purely as a subject for consideration and controversy. 



Now, reviewing all nature in its slow and gradual evolution 

 it appears to my mind that as all else is carried out on fixed 

 lines of a preconceived process of development, apparently 

 conducted and controlled by the influences of the Trinity of 

 God, so also immortality must be evolved in the same manner 

 and on the same lines, and must therefore be also one con- 

 tinuous growth and evolution of life as a product of ether on 

 the same lines and in the same manner as the rest of the 

 infinite plan of creation of the world from out the infinity of 

 ether which surrounds it, until it blooms into the perfect 

 flower of the immortality of men ; and that just as health, 

 sickness, disease and death are only the means or force used 

 by the Almighty to further perfect bodily development, so 

 also sin, crime and virtue are only parts destined to produce 

 more perfect mental developments of wisdom in the future; 

 for when all is said and done, all virtue is but so many de- 

 grees of wisdom, and all vice but so many degrees of folly. 

 I also take it that the same laws that govern bodily 



