but at length he must reach a point at which he inwardly
dies. For that which may thus be extracted for man from the outer world,
becomes exhausted. This is not a statement arising from the personal
experience of one individual, but something resulting from an impartial
survey of the whole of human life. That which secures life from exhaustion
lies in the unseen world, deep at the roots of things. If a person loses
the power of descending into those depths so that he cannot be perpetually
drawing fresh vitality from them, then in the end the outer world of
things also ceases to yield him anything of a vivifying nature.

It is by no means the case that only the individual and his personal weal
and woe are concerned. Through occult science man gains the conviction
that from a higher standpoint the weal and woe of the individual are
intimately bound up with the weal and woe of the whole world. This is a
means by which man comes to see that he is inflicting an injury on the
entire world and every being within it, if he does not develop his own
powers in the right way. If a man makes his life desolate by losing touch
with the unseen, he not only destroys in his inner self something, the
decay of which may eventually drive him to despair, but through his
weakness he constitutes a hindrance to the evolution of the whole world in
which he lives.

Now man may delude himself. He may yield to the belief that there is
nothing invisible, and that that which is manifest to his senses and
intellect contains everything which can possibly exist. But such an
illusion is only possible on the surface of consciousness and not in its
depths. Feeling and desire do not yield to this delusive belief. They will
be perpetually craving, in one way or another, for that which is
invisible. And if this is withheld, they drive man to doubt, to
uncertainty about life, or even to despair. Occult science, by making
manifest what is unseen, is calculated to overcome all hopelessness,
uncertainty, and despair,--everything, in short, which weakens life and
makes it unfit for its necessary service in the universe.

The beneficent effect of occult science is that it not only satisfies
thirst for knowledge but gives strength and stability to life. The source
whence the occult scientist draws his power for work and his confidence in
life is inexhaustible. Any one who has once had recourse to that fount
will always, on revisiting it, go forth with renewed vigou