And then, with that element in our thought, with the reasoned-out characteristics present to our minds of what life on a higher physical basis would be, we may be able to judge amidst conflicting tendencies with more certainty and calmness.
In one of the following papers of this series an account will be given of some of the facts which we can discern about the machinery and appliances of four-dimensional beings.
But the work of real discernment belongs to those who will from childhood be brought up to the conception of higher space.
APPENDIX I.
A supposition can be made with regard to the æther which renders clearer an idea often found in literature.
This idea is that of the freedom of the will. If the will is free, then it must affect the world so as to determine chains of actions about which the mechanical laws hold true. We know that these mechanical laws are invariably true. Hence, if the will is an independent cause, it must act so that its deeds produce to us the appearance of a set of events determined by our known laws of cause and effect. The idea of the freedom of the will is intimately connected with the assertion that apparent importance, command of power, greatness and estimation, are outside considerations, not affecting the real importance and value of any human agent. These ideas can easily be represented using the idea of the æther as here given.
For suppose the æther, instead of being perfectly smooth, to be corrugated, and to have all manner of definite marks and furrows. Then the earth, coming in its course round the sun on this corrugated surface, would behave exactly like the phonograph behaves.
In the case of the phonograph the indented metal sheet is moved past the metal point attached to the membrane. In the case of the earth it is the indented æther which remains still while the material earth slips along it. Corresponding to each of the marks in the æther there would be a movement of matter, and the consistency and laws of the movements of matter would depend on the predetermined disposition of the furrows and indentations of the solid surface along which it slips.
The sun, too, moving along the æther, would receive its extreme energy of vibration from the particular region along which it moved, and the furrows of the intervening distance give the phenomena actually observed of our relationship to the sun and other heavenly bodies.