tained
at too great a cost, since it seems to them that on the whole the harm
done outweighs the good. The method adopted was to take some ordinary
person after death, arouse him thoroughly upon the astral plane,
instruct him to a certain extent in the powers and possibilities
belonging to it, and then put him in charge of a spiritualistic
circle. He in his turn "developed" other departed personalities along
the same line, they all acted upon those who sat at their _seances_,
and "developed" them as mediums; and so spiritualism grew and
flourished. No doubt living members of the original lodge occasionally
manifested themselves in astral form at some of the circles--perhaps
they may do so even now; but in most cases they simply gave such
direction and guidance as they considered necessary to the persons
they had put in charge. There is little doubt that the movement
increased so much more rapidly than they had expected that it soon got
quite beyond their control, so that, as has been said, for many of the
later developments they can only be held indirectly responsible.

Of course the intensification of the astral-plane life in those
persons who were thus put in charge of circles distinctly delayed
their natural progress; and though the idea had been that anything
lost in this way would be fully atoned for by the good Karma gained
by helping to lead others to the truth, it was soon found that it was
impossible to make use of a "spirit-guide" for any length of time
without doing him serious and permanent injury. In some cases such
"guides" were therefore withdrawn, and others substituted for them; in
others it was considered for various reasons undesirable to make such
a change, and then a very remarkable expedient was adopted which gave
rise to the curious class of creatures we have called "human
artificials". The higher principles of the original "guide" were
allowed to pass on their long delayed evolution into the devachanic
condition, but the shade he left behind him was taken possession of,
sustained, and operated upon so that it might appear to its admiring
circle practically just as before. This seems at first to have been
done by members of the lodge themselves, but apparently that
arrangement was found irksome or unsuitable, or perhaps was considered
a waste of force, and the same objection applied to the use for this
purpose of an artificial elemental; so it was eventually decided that
the departed person who w