THE MYSTERIES OF ROTATION: by a Student

ONE of the most fascinating results of the attention bestowed in the last few years upon gyroscopic effects, has been the almost final perfection of the gyrostat-compass, and the Scientific American Supplement contains an excellent account of it, together with one of the clearest popular explanations of its action which we have seen. The tests of the Anschütz instrument as improved by Sperry, were carried out last April for five days on a steamer plying between New York and a port in Virginia. Although the vessel rolled in heavy seas, it was found that the compass kept practically absolutely on the meridian during the whole period. The electric motor runs at 6000 revolutions per minute, and the instrument is in the steering-engine room, connected electrically with a repeating compass on the bridge. It is stated that at all ordinary latitudes this compass has a directional force some fifteen times greater than a corresponding magnetic compass. This, however, diminishes on approaching the poles. The interesting feature of the gyro-compass is that its action in pointing true north depends upon the rotation of the Earth.

SCENE FROM "THE AROMA OF ATHENS"
IN THE CENTER IS PHARNABAZOS, THE PERSIAN ENVOY TO ATHENS, WITH HIS SUITE AND ATTENDANTS

ANOTHER SCENE IN "THE AROMA OF ATHENS"
CENTRAL FIGURES ARE PERIKLES AND PHEIDIAS

ARCHERS IN "THE AROMA OF ATHENS"

ANOTHER SCENE IN "THE AROMA OF ATHENS"

WHAT ARE THE BASES OF AN INTELLIGENT BELIEF
IN REINCARNATION? by F. S. Darrow, A. M., Ph. D. (Harv.)

REFLECTION inevitably reveals the limitations of the actual, the confines of the present. So narrow is the sphere within which our daily life revolves that even the man who most prides himself on his avoidance of philosophy is forced, perhaps unconsciously, to construct a theory of metaphysics. How is it possible to do our daily duties without forming a working hypothesis as to the nature of the world within which those duties lie? Inarticulate and crude as the theory may be, each and every man is forced to adopt a life-hypothesis and by it, as best he can, to mold his actions. No specious reasoning can free us from speculation. Therefore it is a solemn duty which we owe to ourselves to choose intelligently our hypothesis as to life and its meaning. This duty can be trusted neither to chance nor to tradition. To shirk a moral responsibility incurs grave consequences.

It is necessary that our life-hypothesis shall fulfil two conditions: it must be thinkable and it must be livable. Life leads to thought about life; but our judgment must concern itself with life. Therefore what we believe must be both logical and practical. Logical because fact makes the appeal to logic, and practical because logic must answer fact. Our life-hypothesis, since its subject-matter is the Self and the World in which the Self lives, must be both universal and particular.

In answering the query, What are the bases of an intelligent belief in Reincarnation? we are primarily concerned with the Self. Without considering the nature of the Self in detail, let me postulate that by the Self I mean the Real You and the Real I, the Individual Life, which expresses itself through your physical nature and through mine, the Individuality at the basis of the Personality, the Character underlying the physical man.

The conception of reincarnation or rebirth of soul, I grant, is speculative, since it ranges far beyond the cramped present. So, if it is to become part of our life-hypothesis it must be both logical and practically imperative. If logic and practical requirements combine in their demands, then we must conclude that reincarnation has been demonstrated to be true in so far as any hypothesis can be. The most probable is and must be accepted actually as the true.

Many circumstances suggest that the Self existed previously to its birth in the present body. Poetry voices the thought as follows:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar.

Children frequently instinctively believe that they have lived before. The poets do not monopolize those tantalizingly vague sensations of familiarity, which sometimes accompany strange and apparently novel experiences.

Sometimes a breath floats by me,

An odor from Dreamland sent,

Which makes the ghost seem nigh me

Of a something that came and went

Of a life lived somewhere, I know not

In what diviner sphere:

Of mem'ries that come not and go not:

Like music once heard by an ear

That cannot forget or reclaim it—

A something so shy, it would shame it

To make it a show:

A something too vague, could I name it

For others to know:

As though I had lived it and dreamed it,

As though I had acted and schemed it

Long ago.

Whittier voices the impression of many when he says:

A presence strange at once and known

Walked with me as my guide:

The skirts of some forgotten life

Trailed noiseless at my side.

So, too, the recurrence of the seasons, the ebb and flow and re-ebb of the tides, the cycles of day and night, the phenomenon of genius, and countless other things, suggest that the old is continually reborn. Yet classing all these together they amount merely to presumptive evidence, hints at possibilities, but not proof.

We are born with a sense of Justice, a sense which extends at least as far as our private rights. Further, justice is so valued that we regard Deity as perfectly just. The kernel of justice is: "As a man sows so shall he reap." The effect must be equal to the cause. To talk of the justice of a god who creates Souls is to babble nonsense. Personal responsibility is an indispensable requirement for the maintenance of justice, and personal responsibility can exist only if souls are the creators of their own destinies. Otherwise "Justice" is a mockery and a delusion. Therefore, if we are to believe that the Universe is ruled justly, eternal pre-existence of soul must be a fact.

The books say well, my brothers, each man's life

The outcome of his former living is:

The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows and woes,

The bygone right breeds bliss.

So is a man's fate born.

Ex nihilo nihil fit—from nothing nothing is made. Nineteenth century science has succeeded in proving what the world's thinkers have long believed. Matter and energy are indestructible. "Creation" in the sense of manufacture out of nothing is unthinkable. If the soul is one with the Universal Energy, "it is not a thing of which a man may say, 'It hath been, it is about to be, or is to be hereafter,' for it is without birth and meeteth not death." "Nature is nothing less than the ladder of resurrection, which step by step leads upward." The eternal Soul, now linked to a mortal body, has lived before and will live hereafter.

The last and most important of the logical imperatives demanding a belief in reincarnation is the thesis: Immortality of soul demands complete eternity of soul. That which has a beginning, of necessity has an end. The child is born, grows into youth and manhood, lives its life, but it dies. Death's fingers clutch at birth. That which is born is mortal. Thus the soul must be birthless if it is to be deathless. It must have lived before its present body and it will outlive any body which it may hereafter enliven. Reincarnation is merely the natural corollary to eternity.

Let us now turn to the practical considerations reinforcing our belief. Even when discouraged we feel that life has a purpose and a meaning. This is, to keep adding to experience and to knowledge. The amount actually experienced and learned within the limits of a single life is so small in comparison with the possibilities of experience and knowledge that it can only serve as an introduction into deeper mysteries. The scholar does not graduate until he has fulfilled the requirements of a definite standard. The knowledge and experience of one life is surely too low a standard to admit of graduation from earth. Our globe is a school and the souls are the scholars. What is once gained is never lost. "Be ye perfect even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect." Think of the hope! An infinite future with the possibility of an infinite progress in knowledge and attainment!

Ambition, zeal, and love, demand an infinity to express themselves. Love of work, love of learning, love of loved ones, presuppose by their existence the complete eternity of the Soul. So, too, all our impulses which tend toward expansion and increase, all those which break loose from the present into the expanse of the future, require that the soul be immortal and consequently eternal.

Notice, aside from logic, what a belief in rebirth and in the eternity of the Soul, means. It gives hope in the perfectibility of man, inspiration in his divinity, and comfort in the trials of life, trials that are just and capable of teaching greater knowledge. There is no inspiration which in the future cannot be attained by honest effort. These are a few of the blessings which the philosophy of Theosophy has to offer to you and to me, a philosophy of soul-evolution that is an ever-present help in trouble, one that is both logical and practical, a "religious science, and a scientific religion." Search within yourself and listen to the message of Theosophy: Truth

takes no rise

From outward things, whate'er you may believe;

There is an inmost center in us all,

Where truth abides in fulness.

THE VICTORY OF THE DIVINE IN MAN:
by Rev. S. J. Neill

NOTHING moves on with even flow. It seems to be inherent in the very nature of the universe that there should be ripples in the great Life-Current of Existence, just as there are waves in the sea. A well-known scientist once asked me if I had ever noticed how a stream of water, perfectly smooth, apparently flowing over a sheet of quite smooth glass would nevertheless produce ripples. There is no known explanation of this except it be that the water at its source had received unequal impulse which it never lost. So in the universe, the great impulse of the Creative Word in manifestation stamps cyclic law on all things. We see this in the coming and going of the seasons; in the recurrence of day and night; in the ebb and flow of the sea. Human life too, is made up of cycles great and small. The seven ages of human life, mentioned by Shakespeare, are distinctly marked. The four ages corresponding to the changing seasons of the year, are also well known.

The wise note and take advantage of cyclic law. To educate during the time of youth is like sowing seed in the springtime. Many people have distinct moods at certain times: at one time they are happy, hopeful, buoyant; at another time they are miserable and despondent. No doubt much of this moodiness is the result of people allowing themselves to drift. We can, if we will strongly enough, rise above this condition of things. We can cast out the morose, sullen, discontented states of mind, and make the character firm and strong, calm and hopeful. We can cultivate a good temper and a sunny atmosphere. Just as man can make a clearing in the forest or on the hillside, so we can make a clearance within our minds and in our mental atmosphere. And the happy feeling thus produced will be part of the harvest we shall reap, for it will return and return, it will become cyclic, until at last it will be most truly natural for us to dwell in light and sunshine. And we ourselves shall be producers of light and sunshine. Joy and peace will attend our steps, and wherever we come it will be a sunny place.

We can do this; we can rise above circumstances and control them because at the center of our being the Light of Life ever shines forth. Dwelling in Time, and therefore to some extent subject to heat and cold, summer and winter, joy and sorrow, we can, nevertheless, rise above these things. We can create surroundings for ourselves. The more we are truly alive the more we shall be able to do this. It may be that the birds by some act of will, to them as simple as breathing, can change their polarity and thus remain poised in air without a motion. It should be possible, and it is possible, for us to change our moral or spiritual polarity when we will, and rise above all terrestrial attractions. All holy scriptures regard this as certain. The Bhagavad-Gîtâ on nearly every page speaks of man overcoming his lower nature and being master of circumstances. The Bible teaches the same thing: "Cease to do evil; learn to do well." "Resist the Devil and he will flee from you." "Overcome evil with good." "Do good hoping for nothing again." Jesus treats his disciples as men who have within them a divine possibility, and says: "Where I am, there shall ye be also."

There is much darkness in the world, much evil; but we can lessen it; we can to some extent remove it and annihilate it; and in the end we can, if we so will, produce the reign of light everywhere.

As the moral sense in us is more and more sensitive we shall regard many things as wrong which now we do not so regard. Just as we now regard many things as wrong which people in a less advanced stage do not regard as evil at all. The brighter the light, the deeper the shadows. In this sense Light and Dark are the world's Eternal ways. But a time will come when, as St. Paul says, "Mortality will be swallowed up of Life"; when the Great Light will shine so fully within us and around us that there will be nothing to cast a shadow.

Is this not some of the meaning of such places as that in the book of Revelation, where it says, "and there shall be no night there; and they need no lamp, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light"? Or as we read in the Gitâ, "neither the sun nor the moon nor the fire enlighteneth that place; from it there is no return; it is my supreme abode." It is also written that "the path of the just is as a shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day."

Surely all this means, if words mean anything, that perfection can be and will be reached; and that even here a large degree of perfection may be attained. "Each victory will help us some other to win." Each step we mount upward over our lower selves gives us a wider horizon and a heavenlier air to breathe. The foes we slay today, we shall never have to fight again. We not only become stronger but we become much stronger relatively as our foes are weaker and fewer.

The more we live with perfect unselfishness then the more we come into the "Path of the Just." But if we do good things even, looking for the reward, we do not take the highest path. It is much to understand the nature of these two paths, for it is written: "Knowing these two paths, O Son of Prithâ, the man of meditation is not deluded." Or, in other words, though we dwell in Time, and our lower nature belongs to it, yet in our inmost and only true Self, we belong, not to Time, but to the Eternal; that is our Home and Place of Peace always.

The man who retires often to this fortress, to this place of peace, though he may have to pass through much suffering, will be raised above its destroying influence. Like the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace he will pass through the fire of affliction and not a hair will be singed nor even the smell of fire be on his garments.

We are assured that Nirvâna is on both sides of death. We can take the highest path now, and the sooner we take it the sooner shall we reach the goal. So bright a hope should give us greater strength.

ASPASIA

ATHENIAN SOLDIERS

"HEKTOR CHIDING PARIS"
TABLEAU PRESENTED IN "THE AROMA OF ATHENS"

"THETIS BRINGING THE ARMOR TO ACHILLES"
ANOTHER TABLEAU IN "THE AROMA OF ATHENS"