"Certainly when they are emplanted upon a true basis. I said 'make-believe'—that is what kills all good things—make-believe. Most of the present-day leaders are throwing dust in their followers' eyes—or their own. Priests and politicians, lawyers and financiers—all of them are afraid of the truth. Every one lives in a stupid atmosphere of self-deception. The religion of the future will teach each individual to be true to himself, and when that is accomplished the sixth root race will be born. Look at that man over there talking to a woman with haggard eyes—can you see them in the gloom? They have all the ugly entities around them, the spirits of morphine and nicotine—drawing misfortune and bodily decay. Every force has to have its congenial atmosphere, or it cannot exist; fishes cannot breathe on land."
Amaryllis looked at the pair; they were well-known people, the man celebrated in the literary and artistic section of the world of fashion—the woman of high rank and of refined intelligence.
Verisschenzko looked also. "I do not know either of their names," he said, "I am simply judging by the obvious deductions to be made by their appearances to any one who has developed intuition."
"How I wish I could learn to have that!"
"Read Voltaire's 'Zadig.' Deductive methods are shown in it useful to begin upon—observe everything about people, and then having seen results, work back to causes, and then realise that all material things are the physical expression of an etheric force, and as we can control the material, we need thus only attract what etheric waves we desire."
Amaryllis looked again at the pair—both were smoking idly, and she remembered having heard that they both "took drugs." It was a phrase which had meant nothing to her until now.
"You mean that because they smoke all the time, and it is said they take morphine piqûres, that they are not only hurting their bodies, but drawing spiritual ills as well."
"Obviously. They have surrounded themselves with the drab demagnetising current which envelops the body when human beings give up their wills. It would be very difficult for anything good to pierce through such ambience. Have you ever remarked the strange ends of all people who take drugs? They seldom die natural, ordinary deaths. The evil entities which they have drawn round them by their own weakness, destroy them at last."
"I do not like the idea that there are these 'entities,' as you call them, all around us."
"There are not, they cannot come near us unless we allow them—have I not told you that the atmosphere must be congenial? Our own wills can create an armour through which nothing demagnetising can pass. It is weakness and drifting which are inexorably punished; they draw currents suitable for the vampires beyond to exist on."