The Occult World

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actual experimental knowledge concerning the soul’s condition of extra-corporeal existence. There is thus something more than a mere archæological interest in the identification of the occult system with the doctrines of the initiated organizations in all ages of the world’s history, and we are presented by this identification with the key to the philosophy of religious development. Occultism is not merely an isolated discovery showing humanity to be possessed of certain powers over Nature, which the narrower study of Nature from the merely materialistic standpoint has failed to develop; it is an illumination cast over all previous spiritual speculation worth anything, of a kind which knits together some apparently divergent systems. It is to spiritual philosophy much what Sanscrit was found to be to comparative philology; it is a common stock of philosophical roots. Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and the Egyptian theology are thus brought into one family of ideas. Occultism, as it is no new invention, is no specific sect, but the professors of no sect can afford to dispense with the sidelights it throws upon the conception of Nature and Man’s destinies which they may have been induced by their own specific faith to form; occultism, in fact, must be recognized by any one who will take the trouble to put before his mind clearly the problems with which it deals, as a study of the most sublime importance to every man who cares to live a life worthy of his human rank in creation, and who can realize the bearing on ethics of certain knowledge concerning his own survival after death. It is one thing to follow the lead of a hazy impression