'Now, each of these Zodiacal Intelligences—as the sun, with our little earth alongside, passes through it—rules over its partickler period. With every period we enter a new current of forces. Each period, therefore, of about 2000 years has new Gods, new characteristics, new types of 'uman beings with new tendencies and powers and possibilities in them—a new point of view, if you like to call it so, or, as we Aquarians call it, a new consciousness. Well, the Aquarius Sign just beginning, is an Air Sign. We're getting our new powers, our new point of view and hattitude, our new consciousness—from the air.'
In his excitement and deep belief the word 'air' was dangerously near 'hair,' but no one smiled. Perhaps even the critic experienced similar difficulties in his home circle that prevented his noticing it, or caring to take advantage of it if he did.
'I've already referred,' the speaker continued, 'to its effect on the physical plane, new inventions and the like, and 'ow men now navigate the air as fish do the sea, and send their thoughts spinning round the world with the speed of lightning. That's easy enough. I mean, you can all see it for yourselves. The areoplane's a fac' nobody can't get away from, whichever way you take it. But the effect on the spiritual plane is not so simple. It's not so easy to describe—far from it, I admit. When a new mode of consciousness begins to hoperate in men and women, they find difficulty in expressing it. They're puzzled a bit. They don't know where they are with it quite. Those 'oo get it first are called quacks and charlituns, and maybe swindlers too. The slower ones regard them with suspicion, and they may think themselves lucky if they 'ain't stoned or burned alive or crucified as they once was.'
He smiled, and the audience smiled deprecating with him.
'And the chief reason for their difficulty,' he went on, 'is simply this: They 'aven't got the language. Nor the words. That's it. The words describe the experiences of a new type of consciousness don't exist at first. They come later, slowly, gradually. They evolve as the new powers in the race evolve.'
He took his glasses off and wiped them carefully.
'So wot's the result?' he asked. 'Why, this. There's only feeling left. The people that first get the new consciousness feel it in them. But they can't prove it to others because their power is small. And they can't explain it in words, because the words don't exist. So there you are. Only the truth is there too jest the same.'
The challenge in his tone was unmistakable, but no one took it up. The critic was making notes on his cuff and probably had not heard it. Some one coughed, however, and feet shuffled here and there.
'I know it's true, and some of you 'ere in front of me know it's true,' the speaker resumed quickly, his eyes alight and intense conviction in his tone and manner, 'but we can't do more at first than feel it and be glad. All we can do is to show it in our lives. We can live it. We can feel the joy and speed and lightness of the air, and we can live it, show it. We can express it that way, leaving the words to follow in good time. And that's a lot, for example guides the world.'
A murmur of applause greeted the emphatic statement, and Wimble, for one, was tempted to rise on his toes with waving hands and give his confession of faith in no uncertain voice. This railway guard, half quack, half prophet, this man of the people whose knowledge was as faulty as his grammar, had offered the first explanation he had yet heard of his own strange attitude to life and of his experiences since boyhood. This man, similarly, had caught his secret from the air. His exposition might be as exaggerated and wild as the critic suggested, yet it was somewhere true, he felt. The man, owing to his very ignorance perchance, had caught at the skirts of a new and mighty truth that in a century would have become a commonplace, but that at the present moment caused others with better education than himself to talk of Hanwell. Wimble felt this excitement in him—to get up before them all and say that he, too, had felt and tried to live this light, new, swift and spontaneous airy consciousness. The impulse, the generous desire to help, caught at him. Another minute and he might have been on his toes, bearing stammering witness to the truth that was in him. The lecturer himself, however, prevented.