s, or bribes (whether of a physical or so-called
"spiritual" nature) absolutely useless to the person who exhibits it,
its hypocrisy tending to poison the moral atmosphere of the world, but
the desire to be "good" or "pure," to be efficacious must be
spontaneous. It must be a self-impulse from within, a real preference
for something higher, not an abstention from vice because of fear of the
law: not a chastity enforced by the dread of Public Opinion; not a
benevolence exercised through love of praise or dread of consequences in
a hypothetical Future Life.*

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* Col. Olcott clearly and succinctly explains the Buddhist doctrine of
Merit or Karma, in his "Buddhist Catechism."
(Question 83).--G.M.
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It will be seen now in connection with the doctrine of the tendency
to the renewal of action, before discussed, that the course of
self-discipline recommended as the only road to Longevity by Occultism
is not a "visionary" theory dealing with vague "ideas," but actually a
scientifically devised system of drill. It is a system by which each
particle of the several men composing the septenary individual receives
an impulse, and a habit of doing what is necessary for certain purposes
of its own free-will and with "pleasure." Every one must be practiced
and perfect in a thing to do it with pleasure. This rule especially
applies to the case of the development of Man. "Virtue" may be very
good in its way--it may lead to the grandest results. But to become
efficacious it has to be practiced cheerfully not with reluctance or
pain. As a consequence of the above consideration the candidate for
Longevity at the commencement of his career must begin to eschew his
physical desires, not from any sentimental theory of right or wrong, but
for the following good reason. As, according to a well-known and now
established scientific theory, his visible material frame is always
renewing its particles; he will, while abstaining from the
gratification of his desires, reach the end of a certain period during
which those particles which composed the man of vice, and which were
given a bad predisposition, will have departed. At the same time, the
disuse of such functions will tend to obstruct the entry, in place of
the old particles, of new particles having a tendency to repeat the said
acts. And while this is the particular result as regards certain
"vices," the general result of an abstention from "gross" acts will be