I return your recent reports. You need rest, more sleep, less running about, more quiet. It is the same old story, and until you get these there is no use in giving you more advice. You can rest as a sacrifice to the Master, something you force yourself to do for love of him. That will help your recollection both ways. You are learning all the time, and doing well in the main, but you fret too much about what you call your failures. Think more of your successes and of your efforts, and less of what seem to you inadequate results. They belong to the Master. You do love him. What is your intense desire to love, save love? With kind regards, I am Sincerely yours, C. A. GRISCOM. August 2nd, 1913. DEAR I wish you did not react so constantly and so violently. You write what you feel and think at the time, which is what I want, and then an hour, or a day, or a week afterwards, you always say that what you wrote were just lies. They were not. They may not sound true in another mood, but were when you wrote. DEAR Sincerely yours, C. A. GRISCOM. August 8th, 1913. I have your special delivery letter. I also have your last record. No one but a Master should accept the responsibility of another's life. I certainly would not dare. All I can do for you is to suggest, to advise, to encourage, to readjust. There is no use looking for another way. You can progress only by the way already pointed out to you: and, in the main, that is the way of quietness, of silence, stillness of mind and of body, of serenity, of calmness. You must learn these. Their absence is the cause of your various troubles, as you see for yourself. You have been told this dozens of times, and often you have said that at last you understood. But you have never done it. Even this summer, when rare opportunity has been given you, you will not rest. What is the use of talking about obedience, of your desire to dedicate yourself, your life, your energies, to the Master, when you will not do this one thing you have been told to do with steady insistence for three years? You are tempted, among other things, by the thought that you can help people. You are intended to help people-in time. But you must learn first to establish in yourself that which you desire to give them. It is folly at present to permit yourself to violate your own Rule and duty in the hope of helping others. Get, if you can, a copy of Walter Old's edition of The Tao-TehKing. It may help you to understand; for your trouble is that you do not understand. It is not lack of will, or of desire, but of understanding, and understanding sometimes comes slowly and painfully. But do not be discouraged. You know much more now than you did six months ago, or a year ago, and you are learning by degrees. Persist, and you will come out all right; perhaps sooner than you expect. I am, as always, Sincerely yours, C. A. GRISCOM. August 12th, 1913. DEAR By all means change the form of your report. It ought to be what you find most useful. The blank form you enclose seems to me very good. You do not need more direction or more advice. You need to carry out that already given you: to rest, REST, REST: to be quiet, physically and mentally. You have not as yet even a glimmer of what this means, and it is your Path to the Master and to your heart's desire. DEAR With kind regards, I am, Sincerely yours, C. A. GRISCOM. September 8th, 1913. I think you were wise. I should not, however, have written to Mrs. X. You must beware of scrupulosity. You say without hesitation that you are "out" when you wish to preserve your privacy. So in the street you can pretend not to hear, although technically you do. Mrs. X. is pretty sure to misunderstand such a letter, and you must do nothing to make people think you are peculiar. This is for future. guidance-not that there is anything more to do in this case. Sincerely yours, C. A. GRISCOM. The Hindu Yoga System, Charles Rockwell Lanman, Harvard University (Harvard Theological Review, October, 1918). This valuable essay should have been reviewed nearly three years ago. But the theme is so enduring that consideration of it is always timely. The first thing that strikes one, in Professor Lanman's study of the Yoga system (and, more specifically, of the translation of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, with Commentary, by Dr. J. H. Woods, published in the Harvard Oriental Series), is his method: he begins by comparing the spiritual experience recorded in the Yoga Sutras with the spiritual experience of others, a Christian mystic, Angelus Silesius who, some three hundred years ago, sought "to attain the unattainable, to utter the unutterable," and certain of the Greek philosophers, such as Demokritos of Abdera, who may owe to contact with India certain of his teachings, such as "his view concerning peace of mind." There is the clear recognition that the Indian teachings rest upon the spiritual experience of those "followers of the Mystic Way, whotime out of mind-have held retreat for meditation in the solemn stillness of the forests 'lapped by the storied Hydaspes,' "-the Jelum, rising in the North Western Himalayas, in Kashmir. This comparison of spiritual experience is worked out with special closeness between the Yoga Sutras and that great compendium of Buddhism, Buddhaghosa's Way of Salvation (Visuddhi-magga). And we find this profound generalisation: that all the spiritual records of India rest upon "the fundamental morality (specifically, neither Brahmanical nor Jainistic nor Buddhist) which is an essential preliminary for any system of ascetic religious training, and is accordingly taught again and again, now with a touch of gentle humour, now sternly, and always cogently, by Brahmans and Jains and Buddhists alike.” We should like to add, or, indeed, to set down first, the Rajanyas or Rajputs, to whom some of the greatest passages in the Upanishads are explicitly attributed; while both Krishna and the Buddha himself were of that kingly race. The second striking thing in this essay is the very serious tribute paid to the value of the Yoga system. The Commentary, attributed to Vyasa, which may be used in the general sense of "Revealer", rather than as a proper name, is, we are told, "informed by the noblest spirit and loftiest purpose"; the commentary on a passage in the third book, concerning temptation, "rises to a pitch of sustained and noble eloquence"; while the "historic importance and moral dignity" of the work is insisted on. And, in a striking comparison between the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha and the "five means to the higher concentration" in the Yoga Sutras (i, 20), "faith and energy and mindfulness and concentration and insight," and between the treatment of the higher states of consciousness in the two systems, there is this notable comment: "The whole spiritual situation in both cases is similar; and that the substantial coincidences of the two descriptions may be nothing more than the natural outcome of that similarity, we will not deny." The third point, of subordinate, yet genuine interest, is the discussion of "the supernormal powers which, as Buddhist and Yoga texts alike maintain, are among the fruits of the cultivation of profound concentration or samadhi. In order to make my meaning clear, let me instance some of these powers; such are clairvoyance and clairaudience, knowledge of the future and of one's previous births, thought reading, power to become invisible, the cessation of hunger and thirst, the power of hypnotic suggestion: 'your mind-stuff enters the body of another', the power to walk upon water or a spider's thread or sunbeams or to pass through the air, the power by reason of which 'the fire, hot as it is, burns you not', and so on. To seek these powers as an end, or to make a display of them to satisfy the curiosity of the vulgar, is wholly unworthy, and indeed most strictly forbidden. In the Gospelnarrative of the temptation, when the Devil says, 'If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence', the answer of Jesus is an uncompromising rebuke. And in like spirit, the Mahabharata threatens with 'a hell from which there is no release' the Yogins who are thus guilty." In this context Professor Lanman has much of value to say of "the interest of studying Yoga in the light of the discoveries of modern psychology"; of Braid's hypnotism; of William James. In a word, the subject is treated in a sincere and adequate way. But the passages which make the most direct appeal to the present reviewer come toward the end of the essay. On the one hand, like certain allusions in Shakespeare's plays, they fix the time when it was written. On the other hand, they reveal the spiritual integrity of the writer. The passages are these: Speaking of the work of translation carried out by Dr. J. H. Woods in the fine Harvard edition of the Yoga Sutras, Professor Lanman pays tribute to the "genuine enthusiasm and indomitable patience" required. “All this and much more was needed to advance our scientific salients into the territory of the Hindu dialecticians. We may well imagine those jealous guardians of their sacred lore as saying to themselves of us, ils ne passeront jamais! But Dr. Woods' intellectual emplacements were good, and his preliminary bombardments have been effective." So much for the time note. Now for the greater matter. Professor Lanman goes on to speak of "our dearly loved French brothers with whom he (Dr. Woods) is now so zealously working," and who "are showing us the supremely great lesson, that the first thing needed for substantial victory is the loftiest moral courage.” C. J. Un Drame dans le monde, by Paul Bourget (Plon-Nourrit, Paris), is the latest publication, we believe, of this great psychologist and artist. While it is not customary for the THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY to review novels, unless they deal avowedly with Theosophy, we wish to use this opportunity to pay our respects to a writer whose aim, throughout his long career, has been to portray life truly, and whose understanding of life, therefore, has never ceased to grow in depth and clarity. Working, at first simply as an artist, but as an artist who loved the truth for its own sake, and who never sacrificed truth for base or worldly ends, he works now, with even greater mastery of his art, and in the spirit of a deeply religious man,-the reward of his fidelity. Because, as St. Paul said of himself, so may it be said of Bourget; he was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision, but followed the Light always, whithersoever it led him, until now he sees the many ways of life as God's ways for man's redemption. From the beginning he saw that "the wages of sin is death." There was always a suggestion of moral purpose in his stories. His Deux petites Filles, with its tragic tale of Simone, written in 1888, concludes: "I have been thinking that it is a serious matter to have sons and daughters, and that many people take it, this very serious matter, very lightly." In his Monsieur Legrimaudet (1889-1891), he remarks: "It has seemed to me often that the highest morality of a work of art, by which I mean a work of literature, consists in redoubling in us the sense of mystery, hidden in the depths of every human being, alike in the most wretched and in the most comic, as in the most sublime." We gather from his writings that at one time he was a sceptic, if not an atheist, but that later, "after years of struggle," he recovered, through "the dry analyses of science,” faith in the Unknowable, which made it possible for him once more to pray, "Our Father which art in heaven." For how long this stage lasted, we do not know. The turning point seems to have come with his writing of Le Disciple. In any case, to-day, Bourget is a devout Catholic, but broad-minded, mellow, Gallican. As we have said,-fidelity to the truth which he saw, although a limited truth, enabled the great Lover of Truth to lead him to a breadth and depth of vision, which although still limited, none the less gives power to serve such as perhaps no other publicist in France possesses. If he were to know more, we doubt if he could accomplish as much: and because now his desire to serve, quite obviously, is even greater than his desire to know (which is just as it ought to be), Bourget is reaping the reward which his own soul would have chosen. Un Drame dans le monde is the story of a crime, followed by a great repentance; of a betrayal, followed by a complete forgiveness. Neither the man nor the woman had any faith. But the frightful facts of their existence compelled them to think, and after their agony, they found peace,—in the determination of one to atone, and of the other to work with and for that atonement. There are actions, said the woman, which, once committed, leave you without any age, without hope, without expectation. And the man, though without faith, echoed his childhood, and spoke of “buying back,” of “making good"-of expiation. The woman grasped at the straw, and found the full meaning of words which he had used emptily. "Christ means redemption," she discovered. And through her need, the man found salvation also. It is nothing, as we tell it. But Bourget's art is marvellous, the more perfect, we think, now that his motive illumines it from within. He gives life, and vivid life, to every character he draws, to every incident he describes. He has humour, beauty of diction, rare simplicity of style, profound insight. His sense of perspective, of proportion, is Gothic. Each story is complete, no matter how brief. And yet, like all true art, his art creates more than a living form, more than colour and movement: it creates atmosphere. Not one word of this is suggested, but the atmosphere of Un Drame dans le monde says quite clearly: "Yes, that woman sinned, and knew it; and because she knew it, her sin became the mainspring of her life and effort. She flew, while you crawl. Are you without sin? Are you without the opportunity which sin gives? Have you no need, no occasion, 'to buy back,' 'to make good,'-to expiate? See your past as it really was, see yourself as you really are,—and you too might fly!" We are among those who love France. It is our privilege, therefore, to express gratitude when an author represents so truly and so consistently, the nobility, the insight, and the charm, of the French genius. Still, we are not satisfied. We want more! Novels are used by most people "to kill time," or to distract their minds from the worries or boredom of daily routine. In the latter case, novels are used as a "harmless" substitute for alcohol or drugs. But they can and should be used primarily to help us to understand ourselves and to help us to understand the Divine, or, rather, the action of the divine will in human affairs. And because it is of vital importance that we should see into the depths of our own lower natures, down to desires and tendencies which perhaps have not as yet emerged, we can gain much from the patho-psychology of such books as Le Disciple, and even from André Cornélis,-on condition that we approach them in the right spirit and for the right purpose. As a general rule, however, we believe it is far wiser and better to do as Paul the Apostle urged us to do (and M. Bourget, we are sure, would agree that Paul was a greater psychologist than |