othing behind it. The
great duty incumbent on all who have attained to this knowledge is to
impress upon their fellow men that there is an _inner side_ to things,
and that until this _inner_ side is known, the things themselves are not
known.
There is an inner and an outer side to everything; and the quality of
the superficial mind which causes it to fail in the attainment of Truth
is its willingness to rest content with the outside only. So long as
this is the case it is impossible for a man to grasp the import of his
own relation to the universal, and it is this relation which constitutes
all that is signified by the word "Truth." So long as a man fixes his
attention only on the superficial it is impossible for him to make any
progress in knowledge. He is denying that principle of "Growth" which is
the root of all life, whether spiritual intellectual, or material, for
he does not stop to reflect that all which he sees as the outer side of
things can result only from some germinal principle hidden deep in the
centre of their being.
Expansion from the centre by growth according to a necessary order of
sequence, this is the Law of Life of which the whole universe is the
outcome, alike in the one great solidarity of cosmic being, as in the
separate individualities of its minutest organisms. This great principle
is the key to the whole riddle of Life, upon whatever plane we
contemplate it; and without this key the door from the outer to the
inner side of things can never be opened. It is therefore the duty of
all to whom this door has, at least in some measure, been opened, to
endeavour to acquaint others with the fact that there is an inner side
to things, and that life becomes truer and fuller in proportion as we
penetrate to it and make our estimates of all things according to what
becomes visible from this interior point of view.
In the widest sense everything is a symbol of that which constitutes its
inner being, and all Nature is a gallery of arcana revealing great
truths to those who can decipher them. But there is a more precise
sense in which our current life is based upon symbols in regard to the
most important subjects that can occupy our thoughts: the symbols by
which we strive to represent the nature and being of God, and the manner
in which the life of man is related to the Divine life. The whole
character of a man's life results from what he really believes on this
subject: not his formal statement of
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