All our activities are now carried on upon a gigantic scale. Where formerly a little stream supplied the water to the mill, we now harness the invisible and apparently inexhaustible forces of electricity; where formerly commerce was a system of bartering between two single individuals, it is now a huge network involving millions of persons. Everything teaches us the lesson of inclusiveness, as we approach a more spiritualized ideal of life. We are uniting; merging; drawing within.
The Centripetal force of the planet itself, corresponding to the female pole of the magnet, is today the active principle in external life. The machinist knows this when he is compelled to avoid the suction currents of electrical power. Cosmic reaction has set in, and union between complementaries is the result. Applying this truth to individual human life, and we have what?
Counterpartal Sex-union.
CHAPTER VII
SOUL-UNION: WHERE WILL IT LEAD?
We have heard much in recent years of "affinities," and "soul-mates," and we are likely to hear much more in the future. So much that is unsavory and sensational is associated with these two words, that we almost hesitate to employ them; but that is always the way with Fear. It builds a high wall between us and Truth, and dares us to scale it.
We accept the challenge.
To begin with, the words are not synonymous, although frequently used as such. Affinities are based upon mutual interests; mutual tastes and appetites; mutual stages of development; but these stages of development may be sense-conscious only; or they may be of a highly intellectual order. Whatever their basis of mutuality, they tend to attract upon that plane. Whenever this affinity, established by virtue of mutual tastes, is on the sense-plane only—that is, when it is because two persons both like their roast-beef rare; or their whiskey diluted; or their wine iced—we are apt to find the result in a mistaken idea of sexual affinity, which wears itself out for the reasons already stated, because there is no reservoir from which to draw. The chemistry of the body changes with time and emotional experiences. Affinity of bodily contact only, resulting from a congeniality of sense-appetites, is therefore necessarily short lived.