A New Era of Thought

by Charles Howard Hinton

Human life at present is an art constructed in its regulations and rules on the inspirations of those who love the undiscerned higher beings, of which we are a part. They love these higher beings, and know their service.

But our perceptions are coarser; and it is only by labour and toil that we shall be brought also to see, and then lose the restraints that now are necessary to us in the fulness of love.

Exactly what relationship there is towards us on the part of these higher beings we cannot say in the least. We cannot even say whether there is more than humanity before the highest; and any conception which we form now must use the human drama as its only possible mode of presentation.

But that there is such a relation seems clear; and the ludicrous manner, in which our perceptions have been limited, is a sufficient explanation of why they have not been scientifically apprehended.

The mode, in which an apprehension of these higher beings or being is at present secured, is as follows; and it bears a striking analogy to the mode by which the self is cut out of a block of cubes.

When we study a block of cubes, we first of all learn it, by starting from a particular cube, and learning how all the others come with regard to that. All the others are right or left, up or down, near or far, with regard to that particular cube. And the line of cubes starting from this first one, which we take as the direction in which we look, is, as it were, an axis about which the rest of the cubes are grouped. We learn the block with regard to this axis, so that we can mentally conceive the disposition of every cube as it comes regarded from one point of view. Next we suppose ourselves to be in another cube at the extremity of another axis; and, looking from this axis, we learn the aspects of all the cubes, and so on.

Thus we impress on the feeling what the block of cubes is like from every axis. In this way we get a knowledge of the block of cubes.

Now, to get a knowledge of humanity, we must feel with many individuals. Each individual is an axis as it were, and we must regard human beings from many different axes. And as, in learning the block of cubes, muscular action, as used in putting up the block of cubes, is the means by which we impress on the feeling the different views of the block; so, with regard to humanity, it is by acting with regard to the view of each individual that a knowledge is obtained. That is to say, that, besides sympathizing with each individual, we must act with regard to his view; and acting so, we shall feel his view, and thus get to know humanity from more than one axis. Thus there springs up a feeling of humanity, and of more.

Those who feel superficially with a great many people, are like those learners who have a slight acquaintance with a block of cubes from many points of view. Those who have some deep attachments, are like those who know them well from one or two points of view.

Thus there are two definite paths—one by which the instinctive feeling is called out and developed, the other by which we gain the faculty of rationally apprehending and learning the higher beings.