express facts which
may be experienced if the right methods for the purpose are used. But to
many people these same thoughts represent highly disputable assertions,
which may arouse fierce contention, even if they are not regarded as
something which may be "proven" impossible.

These two thoughts are, first, that behind the visible world there is
another, the world invisible, which is hidden from the senses and also
from thought that is fettered by these senses; and secondly, that it is
possible for man to penetrate into that unseen world by developing certain
faculties dormant within him.

Some will say that there is no such hidden world. The world perceived by
man through his senses is the only one. Its enigmas can be solved out of
itself. Even if man is still very far from being able to answer all the
questions of existence, the time will certainly come when sense-experience
and the science based upon it will be able to give the answers to all such
questions.

Others say that it cannot be asserted that there is no unseen world behind
the visible one, but that human powers of perception are not able to
penetrate into that world. Those powers have bounds which they cannot
pass. Faith, with its urgent cravings, may take refuge in such a world;
but true science, based on ascertained facts, can have nothing to do with
it.

A third class looks upon it as a kind of presumption for man to attempt to
penetrate, by his own efforts of cognition, into a domain with regard to
which he should give up all claim to knowledge and be content with faith.
The adherents of this view feel it to be wrong for weak human beings to
wish to force their way into a world which should belong to religious
life.

It is also alleged that a common knowledge of the facts of the sense-world
is possible for mankind, but that in regard to supersensible things it can
be merely a question of the individual's personal opinion, and that in
these matters there can be no possibility of a certainty universally
recognized. And many other assertions are made on the subject.

The occult scientist has convinced himself that a consideration of the
visible world propounds enigmas to man which can never be solved out of
the facts of that world itself. Their solution in this way will never be
possible, however far advanced a knowledge of those facts may be. For
visible facts plainly point, through their own inner nature, to the
existence of a hidden world. One