thus we
cannot avoid attributing to it the two factors which constitute
personality, namely, intelligence and volition. We are therefore brought to
the conclusion that this universally diffused essence, which we might think
of as a sort of spiritual protoplasm, must possess all the qualities of
personality without that conscious recognition of self which constitutes
separate individuality: and since the word "personality" has became so
associated in our ordinary talk with the idea of "individuality" it will
perhaps be better to coin a new word, and speak of the personalness of the
Universal Mind as indicating its personal _quality_, apart from
individuality. We must realize that this universal spirit permeates all
space and all manifested substance, just as physical scientists tell us
that the ether does, and that wherever it is, there it must carry with it
all that it is in its own being; and we shall then see that we are in the
midst of an ocean of undifferentiated yet intelligent Life, above, below,
and all around, and permeating ourselves both mentally and corporeally, and
all other beings as well.

Gradually as we come to realize the truth of this statement, our eyes will
begin to open to its immense significance. It means that all Nature is
pervaded by an interior personalness, infinite in its potentialities of
intelligence, responsiveness, and power of expression, and only waiting to
be called into activity by our recognition of it. By the terms of its
nature it can respond to us only as we recognize it. If we are at that
intellectual level where we can see nothing but chance governing the world,
then this underlying universal mind will present to us nothing but a
fortuitous confluence of forces without any intelligible order. If we are
sufficiently advanced to see that such a confluence could only produce a
chaos, and not a cosmos, then our conceptions expand to the idea of
universal Law, and we find _this_ to be the nature of the all-underlying
principle. We have made an immense advance from the realm of mere accident
into a world where there are definite principles on which we can calculate
with certainty _when we know them_. But here is the crucial point. The laws
of the universe are there, but we are ignorant of them, and only through
experience gained by repeated failures can we get any insight into the laws
with which we have to deal. How painful each step and how slow the
progress! AEons upon aeons would