Some more or less personal discussion followed, during which Mr. Gaylord asked whether certain arrangements he contemplated making were wise.
Frederick replied that they were, as far as he could see, adding: “This is hardly a time for making permanent arrangements, for while the end of the war is certain, the economic conditions with you, following the war, are impossible now to foresee. We have no way of knowing how that struggle between labor and capital, power of foundation and power of development, will end. That is one of the reasons we are so eager to get all forces for true progress united now. There are thousands of laboring men misled. Get them in for our work. There are hundreds of employers ignorant or indifferent. Turn them out.”
Mr. Gaylord, who had not at that time read the Lessons carefully, interpreted this as championship of the cause of labor as opposed to capital. Some one else suggested that every one, employer or laborer, who was not for united progress, should be “turned out.”
“Sure,” Frederick answered. “Turn out the unions, as they work now. Get in unity, regardless of class.”
When Mrs. Gaylord inquired about a member of her own family, he replied: “He has gone on, and I haven’t seen him. To some of us here there comes a lessening of interest in your life, and an intensified feeling of the importance of work beyond your plane. He has this interest, I hear, and very rarely comes back now. There is a lot I want to tell you some time about the differences and conditions of the many planes, but I can’t do it now. The first work of those of us who have still close ties there is to give you all we can of the possibilities and meaning of the life you live. Some day I’ll tell you what I can of the life ahead, which as yet I only aspire to.”
“I suppose there’s no use asking whether you inhabit space, or planes, or stars?” Lois inquired.
“There are things that I can tell you later about those matters of plane and future progress,” he said, “but there is so much that is more imperative now that I am told not to tell more, at present, than the immediate needs of your life require.”
“Do you feel any depression, when you realize the immensity of the universe and the smallness of each individual?” was the next question.
“That’s a thing you’ve got to learn. There is no force that is not true force, and no atom so small that its weight doesn’t count. If one atom is for destruction, that means two atoms lost to construction, the one that is against us and the one that balances it here, without any forward movement.”