_By Carrie Moss Hawley_
The archives of history contain wonderful revelations of the growth and
physical development of man. Going back to the beginning of time, when
creation donned its immortal robe of life and nature gave utterance to
the thought that nothing perishes, we follow down the aisle of
centuries until we find ourselves to-day where we realize that thought
has become the most powerful factor in advancement. Gradations are
everywhere, yet mental processes and volitions take control of the
wheel of progress and guide everything with majestic power.
The mind, as we commonly think of it, is not a safe guide unless
directed by wisdom. So we appeal for light to give direction to the
ideas or conceptions that filter through the brain from the all-holding
universal thought. How to distinguish true from false conceptions is
the labor of philosophy.
Truth may be tested by one infallible rule: its power to construct. You
may see it forming what may terminate in evil, and doing unmistakable
harm. Then you say: How can this be truth if it creates disaster? But
all that is created does not act one way. There is the gross and the
refined, the blemished and the perfect. All is good in the sense that
it comes from a perfect law. It is the direction creation takes that
determines the outcome.
The next step is how to direct truth that it may produce only the end
desired. There are millions of beings on this sphere, each of whom has
the same access to truth. Many of these do not even know of their power
in production, and, with sensualized vision which has not been
renovated, they keep on bringing forth that which another class,
further advanced, is endeavoring to exterminate. This will continue
indefinitely, for there will always be growing souls that have to
learn. Since what appears as evil must exist, when it has become
abhorrent to you in all its forms, your privilege and power is to
convert all that comes within your radius into what you desire it to
be. Minimize your fear of all effects in the negative, and take firm
hold of the actual forces and mold them into whatever _you desire_.
Were you a sculptor and had a piece of marble before you, you would not
feel obliged to chisel out of it a cat, because a cat chanced to be
rubbing her head against your leg in a friendly way. While you would be
conscious of the cat she would be something outside the realm of your
perceptions when you struck your first blow upon the marble. You would
build from your perceptions that have been brought to the foreground by
your conceptions of the valuable.
Man must reach a certain plane in his development before he realizes
there are things worthless and things of worth, and that he may possess
which he will. But when the moral milestone is passed he sees the dawn
of a new day that will bring him his hopes realized.
Thus, the way to attain truth is first to see it from the vantage-point
that comes through illumination; then realize that the cosmic world
possesses all the material you need for its development. What surrounds
you that does not appeal to you, merely touches and draws attention to
its existence, need come into your creation no more than the cat came
into the artist's production.