nd if we can reason clearly from one
to the other with sufficient clearness, then we may actually prophesy
certain things in advance, always making allowance for the intervention of
the unexpected.

An authority says on this phase of the question: "There is no doubt
whatever that, just as what is happening now is the result of causes set
in motion in the past, so what will happen in the future will be the
result of causes already in operation. Even on this plane of life we can
calculate that if certain actions are performed, certain results will
follow; but our reckoning is constantly liable to be disturbed by the
interference of factors which we have not been able to take into account.
But if we raise our consciousness to the higher planes we can see much
further into the results of our actions. We can trace, for example, the
effect of a casual word, not only upon the person to whom it was
addressed, but through him on many others as it is passed on in widening
circles, until it seems to have affected the whole country; and one
glimpse of such a vision is more efficient than any number of moral
precepts in impressing upon us the necessity of extreme circumspection in
thought, word, and deed. Not only can we from that plane see thus fully
the result of every action, but we can also see where and in what way the
results of other actions apparently quite unconnected with it will
interfere with and modify it. In fact, it may be said that the results of
all causes at present in action are clearly visible--that the future, as
it would be if no entirely new causes should arise, lies open before our
gaze.

"New causes of course do arise, because man's will is free; but in the
case of all ordinary people the use which they make of their freedom may
be calculated beforehand with considerable accuracy. The average man has
so little real will that he is very much the creature of circumstances;
his action in previous lives places him amid certain surroundings, and
their influence upon him is so very much the most important factor in his
life-story that his future course may be predicted with almost
mathematical certainty. With the developed man the case is different; for
him also the main events of life are arranged by his past actions, but the
way in which he will allow them to affect him, the methods by which he
will deal with them and perhaps triumph over them--these are all his own,
and they cannot be foreseen even on the ment