he spirit of the new age, tangled with many of the ideas and fancies
of his time. His aspirations were lofty, his medical skill was unique
for his day, he was in large measure liberated from tradition, and he
was dedicated, as Browning truly represents him, to his mission, but he
was still under the spell of "mystic" categories, and he still held the
faith that Nature's secrets were to be suddenly surprised by an inward
way and by an inward Light:

Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perception--which is truth,
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and, to KNOW,
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.[5]

There are, again, in his Universe, as in the other occult systems,
three elemental worlds--the spiritual or intellectual world, the astral
world or universal Soul, and the terrestrial world; and all three
worlds are man's "mothers." Man is a quintessence of all the elements,
visible and invisible. He has a spiritual essence within him which is
an emanation of God; he has an astral-soul essence, from the Soul of
the world; and he partakes, too, of the material and earthly world.
His supreme aim in life should be to establish, or rather re-establish,
a harmony between his own little world and the great Universe, so that
all the worlds have their right proportions in him, and so that through
his highest essence he can win the secrets of the lower worlds--the
astral and the material. To accomplish _that_ is to be spiritual, to
become like Adam, {139} a paradisaical Man, or like Christ the new
Adam. Even the lowest world is penetrated with the spiritual "seed" or
"element." The very basic substances of which it is composed--sulphur,
mercury, and salt--are in essence spiritual principles, elemental
forces, rather than crude matter, and the lower world is written over,
like a palimpsest, with "signatures" of the divine world to which it
belongs. All doors into all the worlds of God open to faith and
prayer, and he who subordinates lower elements in himself to higher has
power and potency in all realms.

But far more important for the development of spiritual reli