A New Era of Thought

by Charles Howard Hinton

Again and again has human nature aspired and fallen. The vision has presented itself of a law which was love, a duty which carried away the enthusiasm, and in which the conflict of the higher and lower natures ceased because all was enlisted in one loving service. But again and again have such attempts failed. The common-sense view, that man is subject to law, external law, remains—that there are fates whom he must propitiate and obey. And there is a strong sharp curb, which, if it be not brought to bear by the will, is soon pulled tight by the world, and one more tragedy is enacted, and the over-confident soul is brought low.

And the rock on which such attempts always split, is in the indulgence of some limited passion. Some one object fills the soul with its image, and in devotion to that, other things are sacrificed, until at last all comes to ruin.

But what does this mean? Surely it is simply this, that where there should be knowledge there is ignorance. It is not that there is too much devotion, too much passion, but that we are ignorant and blind, and wander in error. We do not know what it is we care for, and waste our effort on the appearance. There is no such thing as wrong love; there is good love and bad knowledge, and men who err, clasp phantoms to themselves. Religion is but the search for realities; and thought, conscious of its own limitations, is its best aid.

Let a man care for any one object—let his regard for it be as concentrated and exclusive as you will, there will be no danger if he truly apprehends that which he cares for. Its true being is bound up with all the rest of existence, and, if his regard is true to one, then, if that one is really known, his regard is true to all.

There is a question sometimes asked, which shows the mere formalism into which we have fallen.

We ask: What is the end of existence? A mere play on words! For to conceive existence is to feel ends. The knowledge of existence is the caring for objects, the fear of dangers, the anxieties of love. Immersed in these, the triviality of the question, what is the end of existence? becomes obvious. If, however, letting reality fade away, we play with words, some questions of this kind are possible; but they are mere questions of words, and all content and meaning has passed out of them.

The task before us is this: we strive to find out that physical unity, that body which men are parts of, and in the life of which their true unity lies. The existence of this one body we know from the utterances of those whom we cannot but feel to be inspired; we feel certain tendencies in ourselves which cannot be explained except by a supposition of this kind.

And, now, we set to work deliberately to form in our minds the means of investigation, the faculty of higher-space conception. To our ordinary space-thought, men are isolated, distinct, in great measure antagonistic. But with the first use of the weapon of higher thought, it is easily seen that all men may really be members of one body, their isolation may be but an affair of limited consciousness. There is, of course, no value as science in such a supposition. But it suggests to us many possibilities; it reveals to us the confined nature of our present physical views, and stimulates us to undertake the work necessary to enable us to deal adequately with the subject.

The work is entirely practical and detailed; it is the elaboration, beginning from the simplest objects of an experience in thought, of a higher-space world.

To begin it, we take up those details of position and relation which are generally relegated to symbolism or unconscious apprehension, and bring these waste products of thought into the central position of the laboratory of the mind. We turn all our attention on the most simple and obvious details of our every-day experience, and thence we build up a conception of the fundamental facts of position and arrangement in a higher world. We next study more complicated higher shapes, and get our space perception drilled and disciplined. Then we proceed to put a content into our framework.