on the bank of life--by some one
supreme catastrophe; or it may be paid in a number of smaller notes, in
minor troubles and worries; in some cases it may even be paid in the small
change of a great number of petty annoyances. But one thing is quite
certain--that, in some form or other, paid it will have to be.

The conditions of our present life, then, are absolutely the result of our
own action in the past; and the other side of that statement is that our
actions in this life are building up conditions for the next one. A man who
finds himself limited either in powers or in outer circumstances may not
always be able to make himself or his conditions all that he would wish in
this life; but he can certainly secure for the next one whatever he
chooses.

Man's every action ends not with himself, but invariably affects others
around him. In some cases this effect may be comparatively trivial, while
in others it may be of the most serious character. The trivial results,
whether good or bad, are simply small debits or credits in our account with
Nature; but the greater effects, whether good or bad, make a personal
account which is to be settled with the individual concerned.

A man who gives a meal to a hungry beggar, or cheers him by a kindly word,
will receive the result of his good action as part of a kind of general
fund of Nature's benefits; but one who by some good action changes the
whole current of another man's life will assuredly have to meet that same
man again in a future life, in order that he who has been benefited may
have the opportunity of repaying the kindness that has been done to him.
One who causes annoyance to another will suffer proportionately for it
somewhere, somehow, in the future, though he may never meet again the man
whom he has troubled; but one who does serious harm to another, one who
wrecks his life or retards his evolution, must certainly meet his victim
again at some later point in the course of their lives, so that he may have
the opportunity, by kindly and self-sacrificing service, of
counterbalancing the wrong which he has done. In short, large debts must be
paid personally, but small ones go into the general fund.

These then are the principal factors which determine the next birth of the
man. First acts the great law of evolution, and its tendency is to press
the man into that position in which he can most easily develop the
qualities which he most needs. For the purposes of the gen