Here, then, is the
application of the dictum of the ancient philosophy, "Know Thyself." It
means that the only place where we can study the principles of the
invisible side of Nature is in ourselves; and when we know them there we
can transfer them to the larger world around us.
In the concluding chapters of my "Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science" I
have outlined the way in which the soul or mind operates upon the physical
instrument of its expression, and it resolves itself into this--that the
mental action inaugurates a series of vibrations in the etheric body which,
in their turn, induce corresponding grosser vibrations in the molecular
substance until finally mechanical action is produced on the outside. Now
transferring this idea to Nature as a whole we shall see that if our mental
action is to affect it in any way it can only be by the response of
something at the back of material substance analogous to mind in ourselves;
and that there is such a "something" interior to the merely material side
of Nature is proved by what we may call the Law of Tendency, not only in
animals and plants, but even in inorganic substances, as shown for instance
in Professor Bose's work on the Response of Metals.
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