htened by the natural sun. It is that of
the present life of the body. The next is enlightened by the astral
or magnetic light, and it is that of the sidereal body. The next is
that of the soul, and it is enlightened by the spiritual sun. And
the highest is the immediate presence of God."

Since the days of Jacob Behmen there have been no such remarkable series
of mystic writings as are contained in the two volumes called "The
Perfect Way" and "Clothed with the Sun," by Doctor Anna Kingsford. Her
belief and her illuminations were crystallized in the affirmation, "Life
is the elaboration of soul through the varied transformations of
matter." She saw the entire purpose of creation to be the evolution and
elaboration of the soul. Very little is generally known of Doctor
Kingsford. She was descended from an old Italian family, one of whom had
been the architect of the Vatican, and, on her mother's side, from
mingled German and Irish ancestry. She was the daughter of John Bonus,
born in England in 1846, and she married, in 1867, Algernon Godfrey
Kingsford, who subsequently took orders in the English Church. Three
years later Mrs. Kingsford entered the Catholic communion, and some
years afterward she studied medicine in Paris and received her degree.
She is said to have been very beautiful, with great talent in painting
and in music, a poet of lyric gifts, and from her childhood she saw
visions and dreamed dreams. She died in 1888, and is buried in Atcham,
near Shrewsbury, where her husband had his parish.

In 1881 Doctor Kingsford delivered in London, before drawing-room
audiences, comprising representatives of literature, art, fashion, and
the peerage,--audiences inclusive of the most notable people in London,
the nine lectures that are published under the title of "The Perfect
Way," and at the time these lectures inspired a profound interest. Their
central theme is the Pre-existence and Perfectibility of the soul. "The
intuition," she says, "is that portion of the mind whereby we are
enabled to gain access to the interior and permanent region of our
nature, and there to possess ourselves of the knowledge which in the
long ages of her past existence the soul has made her own. For that in
us which perceives and permanently remembers is the soul. And all that
she has once learned is at the service of those who duly cultivate
relations with her." And those relations, she taught, are cultivated by
living so