Back

LAST LETTERS

FROM THE

LIVING DEAD MAN

WRITTEN DOWN

BY

ELSA BARKER

WITH AN INTRODUCTION



NEW YORK

E.P. DUTTON & COMPANY

681 FIFTH AVENUE


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



COPYRIGHT, 1919,

BY MITCHELL KENNERLEY


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

COPYRIGHT, 1920,

BY E.P. DUTTON & COMPANY


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All Rights Reserved

INTRODUCTION PART 1
INTRODUCTION PART 2

LETTER

I. THE GENIUS OF AMERICA
II. FEAR NOT
III. THE PROMISE OF SPRING
IV. THE DIET OF GOLD
V. CONTINGENT FEES
VI. THE THREE APPEALS
VII. THE BUILDERS
VIII. THE WORLD OF MIND
IX. AMERICA'S GOOD FRIDAY
X. THE CRUCIBLE
XI. MAKE CLEAN YOUR HOUSE
XII. LEVEL HEADS
XIII. TREES AND BRICK WALLS
XIV. INVISIBLE ARMIES
XV. THE WEAKEST LINK
XVI. A COUNCIL IN THE FOREST
XVII. THE IDEAL OF SUCCESS
XVIII. ORDER AND PROGRESS
XIX. THE FEDERATION OF NATIONS
XX. THE NEW IDEAL
XXI. A RAMBLING TALK
XXII. THE LEVER OF WORLD UNITY
XXIII. THE STARS OF MAN'S DESTINY
XXIV. MELANCHOLY
XXV. COMPENSATORY PLAY
XXVI. THE AQUARIAN AGE
XXVII. THE WATCHERS
XXVIII. THE RITUAL OF FELLOWSHIP
XXIX. RECRUITING AGENTS
XXX. THE VIRUS OF DISRUPTION
XXXI. THE ALTAR FIRE

INTRODUCTION (Part 1)

This book, the third and last of the Living Dead Man series, was written between February, 1917, and February, 1918. Then I lost the ability—or perhaps I should say the inclination to do automatic writing.
As this third manuscript was shorter than the other two, I had supposed it to be a fragment which would probably never be finished; and it was not until my publisher urged me to issue it as a fragment that I read it all over for the first time and discovered that it was really a complete thing, an organic whole.

“Perhaps,” I told myself, surprised and still half-incredulous, “there is a divinity that shapes our ends.” For had the book been published when it was written, it would have seemed premature; now the greater part of it is timely as yesterday’s editorials.
For the benefit of those who have not read the earlier books of the series, “Letters From a Living Dead Man,” 1914, and “War Letters From the Living Dead Man,” 1915, I will quote from the introductions of those books. In the first introduction I said:

“One night last year in Paris I was strongly impelled to take up a pencil and write, though what I was to write about I had no idea. Yielding to the impulse, my hand was seized as if from the outside, and a remarkable message of a personal nature came, followed by the signature ‘X.’

“The purport of the message was clear, but the signature puzzled me.
“The following day I showed this writing to a friend, asking her if she had any idea who ‘X’ was.
“ ‘Why,’ she replied, ‘don’t you know that that is what we always call Mr.——?’
“I did not know.
“Now Mr.—— was six thousand miles from Paris, and, as we supposed, in the land of the living. But a day or two later a letter came to me from America, stating that Mr.—— had died in the western part of the United States, a few days before I received in Paris the automatic message signed ‘X.’
“So far as I know, I was the first person in Europe to be informed of his death, and I immediately called on my friend to tell her that ‘X’ had passed out. She did not seem surprised, and told me that she had felt certain of it some days before, when I had shown her the ‘X’ letter, though she had not said so at the time.
“Naturally I was impressed by this extraordinary incident….

“But to the whole subject of communication between the two worlds I felt an unusual degree of indifference. Spiritualism had always left me quite cold, and I had not even read the ordinary standard works on the subject….
“Several letters signed ‘X’ were automatically written during the next few weeks; but, instead of becoming enthusiastic, I developed a strong disinclination for this manner of writing, and was only persuaded to continue it through the arguments of my friend that if ‘X’ really wished to communicate with the world, I was highly privileged in being able to help him….
“Gradually, as I conquered my strong prejudice against automatic writing, I became interested in the things which ‘X’ told me about the life beyond the grave….

“When it was first suggested that these letters should be published with an introduction by me, I did not take very enthusiastically to the idea. Being the author of several books, more or less well known, I had my little vanity as to the stability of my literary reputation. I did not wish to be known as eccentric, a ‘freak.’ But I consented to write an introduction stating that the letters were automatically written in my presence, which would have been the truth, though not all the truth. This satisfied my friend; but as time went on, it did not satisfy me. It seemed not quite sincere.
“I argued the matter out with myself…. The letters were probably two-thirds written before this question was finally settled; and I decided that if I published the letters at all, I should publish them with a frank introduction, stating the exact circumstances of their reception by me.
The interest aroused by “Letters From a Living Dead Man,” which had been published simultaneously in London and New York, astonished me. Requests for translation rights began to come in, and I was flooded with letters from all parts of the world. I answered as many as I could, but to answer all was quite impossible.

Now I will quote again, briefly, from the Introduction to the second volume, “War Letters From the Living Dead Man,” 1915.

“In that first book of ‘X’ I did not state who the writer was, not feeling at liberty to do so without the consent of his family; but in the summer of 1914, while I was still living in Europe, a long interview with Mr. Bruce Hatch appeared in the ‘New York Sunday World,’ in which he expressed the conviction that the ‘Letters’ were genuine communications from his father, the late Judge David P. Hatch, of Los Angeles, California….
“After the Letters were finished in 1913, during a period of about two years I was conscious of the presence of ‘X’ only on two or three occasions, when he wrote some brief advice in regard to my personal affairs.

On the fourth of February, 1915, in New York, I was suddenly made aware one day that ‘X’ stood in the room and wished to write; but as always before, with one or two exceptions, I had not the remotest idea of what he was going to say. He wrote as follows:
“‘When I come back and tell you the story of this war, as seen from the other side, you will know more than all the Chancelleries of the nations.’”
Then I went on to describe the process of my automatic writing, adding:

“No person who had had even a minute fraction of my occult experience could be more coldly critical of that experience than I am. I freely welcome every logical argument against the belief that these letters are what they purport to be; but placing those arguments in opposition to the evidence which I have of the genuineness of them, the affirmations outweigh the denials, and I accept them. This evidence is too complex and much of it too personal to be even outlined here.”

The second volume, which dealt with the war from the hidden side of things, and predicted the victory of the Allies, aroused even more interest than the first one. The flood of letters continued.
In 1916, at the kind insistence of Joyce Kilmer, I published another and different little book of automatic writings, “Songs of a Vagrom Angel,” the angel being the Beautiful Being described by ‘X’ in the Living Dead Man books. The “Songs” were charmingly received by the critics. The whole book, with the exception of three of the songs, had been “written down” in twenty-two hours.
In the summer of 1916 I went to California, and it was there, in February, 1917, that the writing of this third book began.
But I was growing more and more restive at the swamping of my literary career by automatic writings, and my mountainous correspondence left me less and less time for original work. Finally, in February, 1918, the “inner conflict” culminated in a complete cessation of automatic writing.

The artist in me had become exasperated. If the reader will permit the exaggeration of the simile, I felt as a man might feel who was caught between the jaws of a lion that was carrying him away into a trackless jungle. Before March, 1914, I had been known as a poet and a novelist; since 1914 my name had become known in more countries than I have counted as a “psychic,” a medium of communication between the visible and the invisible worlds. I was not sorry that I had published the books, because so many people had written me that I had saved them from despair and even suicide; but I shrank from the publicity they brought me. I have been nearly devoured by these books and the readers of these books. I felt, in February, 1918, that I had a right to say that the incident was closed.

But that did not mean a cessation of correspondence. Suffering souls to whose letters the limitations of time and uncertain health (for I had not been well since 1915) made it impossible to respond by return of post, would write again reproaching me with indifference to their sufferings. The situation had become inconceivable. And if I went out somewhere for an hour or two of social “rest,” I was surrounded by people who wanted me to talk to them about the ‘X’ books, about their own dead friends, and the possibilities of communication.

I was torn by pity for those who were suffering, and after years of war nearly everyone was suffering; but I wanted to be at the front with the Red Cross, and my health would not permit me to go. I could help various war committees, but I could not go to my tortured and beloved France—to be perhaps an added burden, should I break down altogether.
The only escape from this conflict was in abstruse studies, studies where pure mind can work. So I seriously took up Analytical Psychology, in which I had been mildly interested since 1915. Some fourteen hours a day for a year I studied, some of the time with a teacher, some of the time alone. I burrowed under the theories of the three great schools, and synthesized them, after my fashion. I had rather an active mind to experiment upon—my own. The “resistances,” so-called, had been broken down by the teacher.

One of the things which appealed most to my reason was Jung’s insistence upon the psychological (and therefore practical) value of the irrational. He says:

“There is no human foresight nor philosophy which can enable us to give our lives a prescribed direction, except for quite a short distance. Destiny lies before us, perplexing us, and teeming with possibilities, and yet only one of these many possibilities is our own particular right way…. Much can certainly be attained by will-power. But… our will is a function that is directed by our powers of reflection…. Has it ever been proved, or can it ever be proved, that life and destiny harmonize with our human reason, that is, that they are exclusively rational? On the contrary, we have ground for supposing that they are also irrational, that is to say, that in the last resort they too are based in regions beyond the human reason. The irrationality of the great process is shown by its so-called accidentalness…. The rich store of life both is, and is not, determined by law; it is at the same time rational and irrational. Therefore, the reason and the will founded upon it are only valid for a short distance. The further we extend this rationally chosen direction, the surer we may be that we are thereby excluding the irrational possibilities of life, which have, however, just as good a right to be lived. Aye, we may injure ourselves, since we cut off the wealth of accidental eventualities by a too rigid and conscious direction…. The present fearful catastrophic world-war has tremendously upset the most optimistic upholder of rationalism and culture.”

Now my rationally chosen “line of life” had been that of writing books of poetry, fiction and essays. But “accidentalness” cut in, and I wrote automatically and published what I had written. That destiny, that second line of life, may also have been, for all we can prove to the contrary, based “in regions beyond the human reason.”

I should not like to say that having led the way, in the spring of 1914, for writers of dignified reputation to publish their automatic writings might have been casually directed by the coming great need of the world for spiritual consolation during the most awful holocaust in history. That would be pressing irrationality too far.
But that second line of life, as Jung would call it, came to its inevitable end with the last of this manuscript in February, 1918. The cause of that was also seemingly accidental. But as this Introduction is only an introduction, it is impossible to follow the course of all the drops of water in the broad river that has flowed under my mental bridges during the last fourteen months.

My present line of life (and through the analysis of my dreams I have means of knowing what it is) points to the resumption of my original literary work, poetry, fiction and essays, and to the exclusion, so far as possible, of everything that would deflect me from that course. “Accidentality” will cut in from time to time, change of place and therefore change of outlook, studies of all sorts, and legitimate demands by that society of which I form a part; but I have done enough automatic writing. Others will do it, if it must be done; and probably it must—because it is an outlet which it might be unsafe to stop up in the present state of the race consciousness.
Of course if I should feel strongly impelled to do automatic writing, I should do it, trusting to that destiny which is another name for causes beyond our comprehension; but it was the strength of my “inner protest” that made me realize that I had gone far enough along that line.

As in the forewords to the former books, I state the psychological situation of the moment, saying, “so and so happened.” The reader, as before, will interpret in his own way. This introduction indicates my point of view in the month of April, 1919. Before the month of May, 2019, I shall have solved the problem of survival, or demonstrated (without knowing it) that it is insoluble.
The more we know about all these things, the less likely we are to assume that we have the sum of all knowledge. We are like children, groping among psychological lights and shadows.

My own belief in immortality seems ineradicable. I did not know that until it was tested out. But we must always remember that our personal belief is not absolute evidence of the truth of what we believe—at least until we shall have examined all the psychological roots of the belief, and in the present state of our knowledge that is well-nigh impossible. Our rational belief, if we have formed one for ourselves and have not merely accepted uncritically the beliefs of our predecessors and associates, is merely our individual synthesis. But we must not give an exaggerated value even to our own hard-won synthesis. That also is a moving, an ever-changing, thing. Otherwise we should not grow. When a man becomes fixed he begins to disintegrate.

In the first book of this series I stated in fact that I had never been interested in spiritualism. Consciously, I never had. Now, Dr. Alfred Adler, the head of what we may call the Ego School of analysis, says: “Often the negation is the assertion of an old interest that has become conscious.” Yes…. My father was deeply interested in spiritualism, and I was born in an old house where ghosts were supposed to walk. My mother was afraid of the subject. My father died when I was thirteen. I was always a little afraid of my father. The first time I met Judge Hatch I told him that perhaps he had been my father in a “former incarnation.” He smiled, and said, “Maybe.”
No microscopist had ever a greater interest in facts than I have. My scientific friends say, “A scientist was lost in you.” Other friends say, “You are a great psychic.” So there I found myself. In studying with the scientific half the phenomena of the psychic half, I am able to unify them.

The authority of the Church has been knocked from under us. We are adrift, we thinking humans of the early twentieth century, upon a sea of mind, storm-tossed by winds of feeling. We were just beginning to believe in universal brotherhood—when universal war broke out. Our steersman seemed to have been washed overboard. Everybody wants to take the helm, distrusting his neighbor’s judgment. Is it any wonder that bewildered souls by thousands turned to automatic writing, seeking for guidance, for something authoritative? In childhood our parents guided us. Later the Church guided us—or tried to. Then science guided us—a little too far. And in the reaction we turned inward, to find (sometimes) the unconscious more troubled than the conscious. But in the Letters which follow there is no despair, only light and courage and hope.

There seem to be two main streams in us, the mental and the instinctive. Bergson says, in his “Creative Evolution,” “There are things which intelligence alone is able to seek, but which, by itself, it will never find. These things instinct alone could find; but it will never seek them.”
It was inevitable that modern psychology, with its constructive curiosity, should turn its attention to the religious beliefs of the past and present. There was no other way of understanding what really goes on in the minds of people. Some of these old beliefs proved, on examination, to be scientifically tenable. For instance, the Theosophists (who got the idea from the Hindoos) tell us there are two streams of information, the elemental and the human. Dr. C. J. Jung, the head of the Swiss School of Analytical Psychology, divides the stream of “energy” into two currents, one going forward and one going backward. And this duality of will Bleuler calls “ambitendency.” The difference is chiefly a difference of phraseology and associations.

“Always a pull of the opposites,” I quote from the Letters which follow. The present psychic wave which is sweeping over the world is accompanied by modern analytical psychology. Truth may lie in the synthesis.
Between the credulity of those who believe everything purporting to come from the other side of the veil, who accept every suggestion from anybody claiming to be “psychic” who half-closes the eyes and says dreamily, “You will do so and so,”—between this thirst for delusion and the materialists’ denial that there is anything but matter and the functions of matter, there is also a middle ground.

The great pioneer of analytical psychology himself said, in a recent little volume on “War and Death,” translated by Dr. A. A. Brill: “In the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.” Suppose the unconscious should be right?
And, by the way, between the statement of Christian Scientists, “All is love,” and the statement of the parent school of psychoanalysis, “All is libido,” there is striking similarity.
Jung would say, “All is energy.” Judge Hatch wrote, in a little book published in 1905, “We postulate immortal Units of Force, each having the power to generate a constant but limited amount of energy, and no two alike in quantity. Upon this force generation in the unit, necessitated by law, do we base life. Life results from the inter-dealing and inter-playing of these units among themselves eternally, sometimes potential, again kinetic, each limited in the amount of force generated, but unlimited in variety of motion, manifestation or specialization.”

Truth may indeed be one, though the roads to it are many.
Fechner’s assertion, that the dead live in us and so influence us, does not require much stretching to fit the hypothesis that the entire past of the human race is contained in the deeper levels of the unconscious. If we go deep enough in analysis that hypothesis is illustrated by strange phenomena.
It is unwise, at the present time more than any other, even to try to take away man’s belief in immortality. The world is too sad, too near the ragged edge where personal uncertainty drifts into social irresponsibility. The psychic wave that is sweeping over the world, though it is being carried to excess, as all over-compensations are, answers nevertheless to a tremendous need. Credulity is the other end of doubt.

 

INTRODUCTION (Part 2)

Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe, in the Introduction to his translation of Silberer’s “Problems of Mysticism and Its Symbolism,” says:

“Much of the strange and outré, as well as the commonplace, in human activity conceals energy transformations of inestimable value in the work of sublimation. The race would go mad without it. It sometimes does even with it, a sign that sublimation is still imperfect and that the race is far from being spiritually well. A comprehension of the principles here involved would further the spread of sympathy for all forms of thinking and tend to further spiritual health in such mutual comprehension of the needs of others and of the forms taken by sublimation processes.”

William James defended the Christian Scientists. And Jung himself says, in one of his famous letters to Dr. Loy, “Every method is good if it serves its purpose, including Christian Science, Mental Healing, etc.”
During the last five years man has had such varied reasons for fearing objective things that he has come to fear the subjective, perhaps even more than during the Middle Ages.
Dr. H.W. Frink says, in his masterly book on “Morbid Fears and Compulsions”: “The biological function or purpose of fear is protective or preservative. Every one of us alive to-day owes his existence to the fact that his human and pre-human ancestors were afraid.”
Nearly everyone is afraid of something. Sublime Jeanne d’Arc was terribly afraid of the fire. (Perhaps she had been badly burned in infancy, and the unconscious memory twisted and turned in the deeps of her pure soul. Perhaps, and perhaps… for we shall never know.)

When we really know what fear is, we shall have solve the mystery of “the one and the many” that disturbed the cerebration of our ancestors. Fear may be a momentary surging up of the ego’s consciousness of its own helpless littleness before the immensity of the unknown and unknowable non-ego. The reckless courage of the soldier may be an over-compensation, a triumphant sublimation—sometimes followed by reaction, secret or unconcealable, depending on the intensity.
For, as Silberer says, “The conflicts do not indeed lie in the external world, but in our emotional disposition towards it; if we change this disposition by an inner development, the external world has a different value….”

Man is indeed his own cosmos, the microcosm of the macrocosm, to a degree incomprehensible to one who has not intelligently studied (and in himself) the phenomena of “projection,” and compensation including sublimation.
The great mystics of all ages, through introversion, having discovered this and reduced it to a science, after their fashion, great modern scientists like Jung and Silberer have found their systems worthy of profound study.
Writing of mysticism, Professor Dwelshauvers of Brussels says:

“The effects of mystic union are logical and coherent; a second quality of the acts of the order of grace is the positive character of the contribution, the increase which they bring to the psychic life of those who benefit by them…. The idea of God, the divine presence, or any other form of inspiration, is no more strange to the mind of the religious man than is for the savant the sudden conception of a solution long sought for, or for the artist the vision of the work which he meditates and of which he pursues the construction with patience and tenacity…. Neither the invasion of the soul by God, nor the ‘return’ of the mystics, has any resemblance of mental disintegration.”

It is not easy to get rid of God.
Will you read what Jung says on this subject in the “Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology,” edited by Dr. Constance E. Long:

“The concept of God is simply a necessary psychological function…. The consensus gentium has spoken of gods for æons past, and will be speaking of them in æons to come. Beautiful and perfect as man may think his reason, he may nevertheless assure himself that is only one of the possible mental functions, coinciding merely with the corresponding side of the phenomena of the universe. All around is the irrational, that which is not congruous with reason. And this irrationalism is likewise a psychological function, namely the absolute unconscious; whilst the function of consciousness is essentially rational…. Heraclitus, the ancient, that really very wise man, discovered the most wonderful of all psychological laws, namely, the regulating function of antithesis. He termed this ‘enantiodromia’ (lashing together) by which he meant that at some time everything meets with its opposite…. Man may not identify himself with reason, for he is not wholly a rational being, and never can or ever will become one. That is a fact of which every pedant of civilization should take note. What is irrational cannot and may not be stomped out. The gods cannot and may not die. Woe betide those men who have disinfected heaven with rationalism; God-Almightiness has entered into them, because they would not admit God as an absolute function…. Only he escapes from the cruel law of enantiodromia who knows how to separate himself from the unconscious—not by repressing it, for then it seizes him from behind—but by presenting it visibly to himself as something that is totally different from him…. He must learn to differentiate in his thoughts between what is the ego and what is the non-ego. The latter is the collective psyche or absolute unconscious…. In order to differentiate the psychological ego from the psychological non-ego, man must necessarily stand upon firm feet in his ego-function….

“Obviously the depreciation and repression of such a powerful function as that of religion has serious consequences for the psychology of the individual…. One period of skepticism came to a close with the horrors of the French revolution. At the present time we are again experiencing an ebullition of the unconscious destructive powers of the collective psyche. The result is an unparalleled general slaughter. That is just what the unconscious was tending towards. This tendency had previously been inordinately strengthened by the rationalism of modern life, which by depreciating everything irrational caused the function of irrationalism to sink into the unconscious….”
“There is indeed no possible alternative but to acknowledge irrationalism as a psychological function that is necessary and always existent. Its results are not to be taken as concrete realities (that would involve repression), but as psychological realities. They are realities because they are effective things, that is, they are actualities.”

So we need not be ashamed to admit that we pray! In this grim period of history, when the soul is face to face with itself and its brother as it has never been, we may speak with a greater simplicity than in the old conventionally-smiling days before the war. I pray—and so do you, whoever you are, if only by groaning “Oh, God!” when you suffer. Prayer is an instinct. Even an atheist will pray, if he finds himself beyond human aid. A friend of mine who was killed at the front used to take holy communion every morning, and he was doubtless a saner and better soldier for it. One need not be a Roman Catholic to see the beauty of that act of faith.

Whether God be a “dominant of the superpersonal unconscious,” a psychological function, or a mathematical equation, makes not the slightest difference to me. As William James would say, “He works.”
And whether the souls of our dead live in us, as Fechner says, or whether they are relics in the personal and collective unconscious, or whether they are “concrete realities” that can materialize by using astral and etheric substance, makes also not the slightest difference to me. If you could know how utterly I am at peace about this whole question!

And many other differences appear, on close examination, to be mainly differences of viewpoint and phraseology. The “astral world” of the Theosophists, mediæval and modern, corresponds to a certain level of the unconscious. “X” says in one of the Letters which follow, written in 1917, that melancholy may be produced by the pressure of the unhappy dead who make us fear. If you locate the dead in the unconscious, which surges up in moments of passivity, the dead will have the same effect.
Having given much of the leisure time of a laborious life to a study of the theories and practices of mysticism and occultism, as formulated by many different schools, I could write volumes (if I had the inclination, which I have not) in tracing out the psychological roots and the relations between these things. My own unconscious is rich with such images. Some of the most striking parallels have not been written about, so far as I know.

And Jung seems to have covered, with the wide mantle of his comprehension, even the frailties of those who believe in prophetic dreams. He says:

“The unconscious possesses possibilities of wisdom that are completely closed to consciousness, for the unconscious has at its disposal not only all the psychic contents that are under the threshold because they have been forgotten or overlooked, but also the wisdom of the experience of untold ages, deposited in the course of time and lying potential in the human brain. The unconscious is continually active, creating combinations of its materials; these serve to indicate the future path of the individual. It creates prospective combinations just as our consciousness does, only they are considerably superior to the conscious combinations both in refinement and extent. The unconscious may therefore be an unparalleled guide for human beings….
“The unconscious must contain all the material that has not yet reached the level of consciousness. These are the germs of future conscious contents.”

He seems to think that true prophecies are merely the result of synthesis by the unconscious of tendencies (whether in the personal or universal unconscious) significant for future occurrences. Referring to Maeterlinck’s “inconsistent supérieur,” he says of the prophetic interpretation of dreams:

“The aversion of the exact sciences against this sort of thought-process which is hardly to be called phantastic is only an overcompensation of the thousands of years old but all too great inclination of man to believe in soothsaying.”

I am told that the hearing of voices in the hypnogogic state indicates “ a slight tendency to dissociation.” Very well. Probably the voices come from a deeper level than automatic writing, whatever the inspiration of automatic writing may be.

Now while the things which ‘X’ in the following letters advised America to do, before America came into the war, were the very things which we did after we came into the war and which we could not have done except as war measures, our entrance was not written down as a specific prophesy in these letters. Any startling prophecy has always had a tendency to shake me out of the passive state in which automatic writing is possible. But—during the weeks from February to April, 1917, in the hypnogogic state preceding sleep, I several times heard, “We are coming into the war.” Of course I did not write that down in the manuscript, as it was not a part of the manuscript. What is heard is heard, what is written is written. I merely mention it as a curious phenomenon for it was probably the synthesis of the deeper levels of my unconscious. It was certainly the tragic hope of my conscious mind; but the conscious alone would not have produced a voice.

If anybody wonders that I should admit hearing hypnogogic voices, I can only say that I regard these things rather objectively and impersonally. I never hear voices except when half-asleep. If my very accurate memory has not slipped a cog, William James used to talk freely of his hypnogogic experiences. The more we know about our little personalities, the less monstrously important they seem. And the “hearing of voices” has more than once played a respectable rôle in history, before and after Moses.
But I do not imagine that I have any prophetic mission, nor do I feel in any hurry to “unite myself with the ocean of divinity,” nor feel any impulse violently to turn my back upon the universal. There is a happy mean, which makes for efficiency in life, for health and understanding.

I have touched upon analytical psychology in this Introduction because I am so constituted that I cannot publish this last volume of my automatic writings without indicating my point of view, with the same frankness as in former Introductions. Please do not blame science because I have not lost through the analytic process my instinctive belief in individual immortality. I assure you it has not been the fault of science.
If anyone objects that I have only touched the threads of this great web of psychology which lead towards the subject of this book, I can only say that this forward being by way of preface to this book, no other course was possible on account of the limitations of space and artistic relevancy.

Psychology as a method of healing I leave to the physicians, who have written many books about it, containing bibliographies. And booksellers have catalogues. Anyone interested can write to them.
This is by way of excusing myself from answering letters of enquiry. I have unselfishly and laboriously written so many hundreds of letters! Now I want to write other things. The resolution of psychological “complexes” frees energy for sublimation in work. It frees ideas for use in art.
Dr. Beatrice M. Hinkle, in the introduction to her translation of Jung’s “Psychology of the Unconscious,” says that “this psychology which is pervading all realms of thought … seems destined to be a psychological-philosophical system for the understanding and practical advancement of human life.”

So, having found a well whose waters were refreshing, I note the fact—and pass on.
The train of thought which the reader has followed in this Introduction is the train of thought which led me—after some delay—to the publication of the book.
I am glad that these “Last Letters from the Living Dead Man” are a call to courage, to restraint, to faith in the great and orderly future of America and the world, a call to all those positive qualities so gravely needed in these days of the rebuilding of Peace.

For I do not believe that Bolshevism, or any other form of lunacy, will find foothold in the United States. A nation with universal suffrage, for man and woman, certainly has no incentive for a resort to insane destruction. In the last State campaign it was interesting to watch the reactions of women to the privileges and duties of suffrage. I watched it only in one party, the Democratic, but it was doubtless everywhere the same. There was an added dignity, a sense of new responsibility, and always courtesy and real fellowship among the women and the men. Its happening to correspond in time with the Fourth Liberty Loan campaign, and the printing of casualty lists, made it all the more significant. No, these level-headed, socially-responsible women will never be swept away by collective insanity; and as the men who return from the front will return to these women, their mothers, wives and sisters, I do not think that we shall lose in peace what we have gained in war.

And now—remembering always that this book was written between February, 1917, and February, 1918—you may read the “Last Letters from the Living Dead Man.”

Elsa Barker

New York, Easter Day, 1919.
 

LETTER I

THE GENIUS OF AMERICA
February 3, 1917.

I want to write of America, land of my latest birth, land of the future.
Great is the road that the Genius of America may travel, and her feet have already passed the early stages of it.
The Genius of America!
Each land is watched over and its children guided—guided and moved—by a Genius.
Would you feel the Genius of America, go alone into the woods at night, watch and listen and invoke. Perhaps the answer may come, its recognition of you, your recognition of it.

If you are one of those who can hear the words which the Great Ones speak in the silence, perhaps you will hear something with the ears of your soul. If so, do not hasten to divulge the message, but treasure it in your heart; for that which is treasured in the heart can sometimes be felt and understood by the hearts of others.
If you are one of those who will serve willingly, the secret of your heart may be shared in silence with those who can hear in the silence.
The hour approaches when the mission of this land may be manifested. The hour approaches when the Genius of this land shall force its will upon this land. That will not be an easy task. So many wills have sought to wrest the reins from the guiding hand; so many eyes, looking in so many directions, have seen so many goals. But there is one will so strong that it can, when its hour is come, gather up the wills of men as a strong wind gathers a mass of loosely-lying straws and sweeps them along.

You know not the power of a will that has God behind it. You know not the power of a purpose that has God behind it and the future before it. Those who get in the way of the Genius of this land will be broken, like straws that would resist the wind.
I have watched from my unseen place the labors of many. I have helped unseen with my faith to strengthen the hearts of many. I shall wait now unseen till the act of destiny is accomplished.
You who have followed me from my first gropings in the twilight of the new life, before the clearness came; you who have followed me on my journeys among the battlefields, both in and above the world, follow me yet a little further, with your minds ajar for the entrance of the truth I have to tell you, the advice I have to give you. For my advice is disinterested as the rain, and my truth is offered as freely as the light.

I have come a long way since I laid down my body a few brief years ago, years of a crowded brevity, in which the world has moved as fast as I, and sometimes with more pain. For he who knows the purpose of his pain can bear it better than the child who knows only that he suffers.
I should have spoken to you before, but you would not let me. Child! Would you stand in the way with your personal wishes, and your shrinkings that are also wishes of a negative kind?
Blocked by your will to avoid this labor, I sought another entrance; but it was too much encumbered by prejudices and preconceived ideas, and all the litter of mental fragments that had accumulated through years of residence in a creed-bound place. You who have dwelt but briefly in many tents have no obstructions at your door, save such as are placed by your will, and those I now sweep away.
I shall pass in and out, and speak to you as I choose.


LETTER II

FEAR NOT
February 8, 1917.

Did I not tell you many months ago that the soul of Abraham Lincoln kept watch above this land that he died to save from disruption, and that he would keep vigil until America should have passed through her next great trial? You questioned then what that trial would be. Do you question now? And yet you do not know.
Slowly the months have gone by, receding into the past. You saw in vision the German Emperor in spiked helmet standing opposite to Uncle Sam in his shirt-sleeves, did you not suppose that it would come to this? You are wise to keep such visions to yourself.

Do not fancy that this war will end without greater changes than the world has ever known before. When I told you nearly two years ago that the battle between the powers of good and evil had been won in the invisible regions, I knew because my Teacher told me so; but do not believe that the new age can dawn without greater trouble and greater changes than you can now imagine. Birth is change and birth is painful, and birth is bloody and exhausting. The pains that have gone before are only the pains of labor.
The stars in their courses fight for the new race.

I have written of the bloody fields of Europe. Now I would write of America and her future, her near and her far future; for the sun is approaching the Eastern horizon and the dawn clouds are already tinged with the coming day.
America, do not despair! Your destiny is assured. In the storms to come, think of the freshness after the storm, when the ground shall smell sweet and birds shall sing. For the birds will sing to the children of the new age.
In the midst of changes there will come a lull. The world will say, “It is over, the old things will return, and all will be as before.” But nothing will ever be exactly as it was before. In the lull you shall draw breath, and make ready for other changes. Yes, many things will be changed, even the hearts of men.

The world has known terror. Without experience of terror, without the poise that comes from the facing of terror undaunted, the world could not face the future without failure. Is there anything now, after thirty months of war, that could surprise the world? Is there anything that the world could not face?
Oh, remember that you are immortal, and that you who go out of life will come back again, strengthened by the rest in the invisible! For a change of place is a rest of consciousness. To those whose nerves are weary, wise doctors prescribe a change. A rest in the invisible worlds is more refreshing than a summer in the mountains. Do not fear death. I passed through death, and I am more rested now than a strong man in the morning. I would not go back to my old body. When I want a body again I shall build a new one. I know the process of building, having built so many before.

Be joyous with me. A wise man once said that only the unendurable is tragic. The world, and the souls of the world, can endure the change that is coming. Have not wars prepared them for it? That is why wars had to be.
America is rich. Her vaults are full of gold, her mines are full of ore, and her fresh soil is full of richness. Shall she fear a future in which labor can procure all things for the body, and faith can procure all things for the soul? The history of this land is a history of faith. Did not Columbus start across the trackless ocean, led only by the star of his faith? Did not your ancestors follow, led by their faith in the future? The past has gone back to God, it is safe as a dead man; but the future is coming to you, and your faith shall make it sure.

Fear naught. In the early days of this land your forefathers slept in quiet, though the red man lurked in the forest, and hunger lurked in the failure of harvests, and men and children could only be winter-warm when trees had been felled for fuel. Now you fear famines of coal? The earth is heavy with coal. You fear famines of wheat, when your muscles grow fat for lack of exercise. They who came first to this land had varied reasons for fear, but you have no reasons for fear. Labor is sweet. The child who makes labor of play can vouch for the truth of that saying. Can you not then make play of your labor? When I was a child I built houses of blocks. I longed to be building. I dug ditches in the garden. I made boats of chips and sailed them on a puddle. I planted seeds.

And learning? In the libraries of the world and in the brains of men is stored the learning of the ages. The new age will not lack the archives of all ages. Though paper is less enduring than parchment, it will last over into the new age. Fear not.
By hints I convey to your mind that many changes will come. What then? All progress is change. Go out with it to meet the future, with a smile on your face and a song on your lips. The future wears a rose in its buttonhole, as your Vagrom Angel would say.


LETTER III

THE PROMISE OF SPRING
February 17, 1917.

When you learn to think of life as a whole, of which you are a part containing in yourself the potentialities of the whole, then you will look upon these great changes with joy. The One must sometimes sacrifice itself to Itself, and by elimination secure a new lease of life. The whole—call it the race, or the earth-spirit, or what you will—may grow too fat and lazy, as a man may grow too large to move about with ease, and then by war among the organs, by fever, fasting or remedies, the equilibrium is restored, and he starts again a new man, ready to face the future.

Grim, does it seem? But who told you that the purposes of life were always smiling? In the deeps of the earth and in the deeps of man are dark substances.
The cold of winter is a hardship for those who expose themselves to the elements; but winter is the ebb-tide of that changing sea of life whose flood-tide is the summer. Rhythm, always rhythm.
I would not have you discouraged by the winter of the race, for the spring will come and the roses will bloom again. March winds! They are followed by April showers and Mayflowers. We are now in February.
When the skies are dark and the snows fall, we gather round the fire and think of the future, when the flowers shall bloom again and green grass shall cover the earth and birds shall sing in the trees. The sun “crosses the line” in March when the winds blow, and enters the sign of the Ram, and the Zodiac is traversed again by the great life-giver the Sun. Do you shiver and grow afraid when the Equinox approaches?

The soul, too, has its winter of materialism and its ideal spring.
I have looked at the world from the outside, and I see no cause for despair. I have looked at the soul from the inside, and I see great cause for rejoicing.
You look forward to the end of the war, but the soul must battle to the end of its journey. So long as the soul is cased in matter there will be wars enough, for the greatest struggles are the soul’s struggles with itself. I have told you this before. Sometimes it goes out to fight, sometimes it goes in; the sword will not rust in the scabbard.

Think less of yourself and think more of the race. You lose the vision of the whole by regarding too closely the parts, by regarding too closely yourself that is only one of the parts. Think of yourself as the race, and think of the race as yourself; then yourself becomes the race, and the race becomes yourself; “the Universe grows I.”
There was once a God so great that the cells of his body were minor gods. You may become so great that the cells of your body will be glad to sacrifice themselves to your welfare. By renouncing the will to live, you may make yourself immortal. By renouncing the will to joy, you may become joyous.
Once I desired to become a great man. Now when I only desire that Man shall be great, I have increased in stature myself.

Once I desired to be loved; but now when I love for love’s sake and not for my own sake, I am loved by a multitude. Surely I found my life by losing it, and the words of the Master were justified.
I look down at the world as I once looked down at my garden. I see that the grass is sprouting and I know that seeds are in the ground. I have planted seeds in the hearts of men that shall germinate and reach up towards the sunshine, for I had faith in the spring.
For a while I have left Europe to itself, and have come back to the land that I love best. I have journeyed from State to State, and have watched the wills of our legislators. They too are aware that a Force is at work through them. They feel the responsibility of their place, they feel themselves as moving parts of the great whole whose name is America. The Flag is a symbol of their consecration.

I have walked in the woods, where the spirits of the land fore-gather for counsels which the newspapers do not report. They too are aware of their consecration. They strengthen you with their faith. When I lived as a man in America I did not know America. To know the meaning of home we must wander.
I am all for unity now. Do not let yourself be weakened by fear of the parts. America is a whole, and as a whole she must work. To fuse these many races together is the mission of the present hour. Do not lend your hearts to division.
I see a great leader of men who shall arise from this land. His mission will be the union of races. He will be a teacher and a prophet.


LETTER IV

THE DIET OF GOLD
March 10, 1917.

The very influences that now tend to disrupt this country will later draw it together. The many will find their meeting-point in the One. That idea of national unity must be fostered, even to the extent of patient tolerance of racial temperaments. Those who are in the process of being separated from their old race and amalgamated with the new race, feel the strain of the change. It irritates them and their blood protests, even when their wills bid them forge new bonds for themselves. Few “hyphenated Americans” would be willing to go bodily back to their old allegiance.

America is the most interesting of all countries, and we who see it from this side of the airy frontier see it in historical perspective. The view that is nearest to our point of view is that of your present Chief Executive. His eyes are far-seeing. He anticipates the clearer sight that will one day be his, when he has finished his work.
Our country is suffering this moment, in March, of the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventeen, from an indigestion of gold. You have swallowed more gold than you can assimilate, and your organs are congested. If to restore the equilibrium, some of this gold should be regurgitated, by war or by other means, do not in the weariness that follows fancy that the nation is going to die.

Do not be shocked by my figures of speech. I want to get into your consciousness an understanding of facts and conditions as they exist.
You cannot feed on gold. “Gold is a medium of exchange.” When it is merely hoarded it has lost its relation to life. A miser nation is a sadder subject for contemplation than a miser man, to secure himself from the dangers of the future by amassing gold for its own sake. A miser nation may think that by amassing gold for its own sake it can save itself from the financial dangers threatening the world after these years of war.
But the miser, known as such, is in danger of being robbed and murdered. And the miser nation is in danger of being attacked and looted by other nations.

You Americans want to be generous to the homeless and foodless people of Europe; but your generosity has not yet deprived of one square meal the hundred-million-headed being that is America.
I do not care so much what you do with your gold. But I care much what you do with your food. You are not alchemists that you can make gold potable. You are humans with delicate stomachs. Even a hen will not lay eggs for you unless she is well fed. If she protests, you can punish her by eating her; but the luckiest break of her wish-bone will not produce for you another hen. Better conserve her labor power by gifts of grain, and have your eggs for breakfast and for hatching. She has periods of laziness when she wants to set still; but put a few of her own eggs under her, and watch for results. Later I shall tell you of other but no less practical ways of ensuring a supply of breakfasts.


LETTER V

CONTINGENT FEES
March 10, 1917

To-day I heard that a certain rich man (unmindful of the camel and the needle’s eye), supposing that the letters from this Living Dead Man had been profitable to you, that there was “money in them,” was considering the question whether he should financially back a medium who stood ready to declare that she was in communication with me, that I repudiated the books written through you, and stood sponsor for certain manuscripts written “through” her, as my only genuine messenger to the world.

I join in your laughter, at your supposed “profitable” investment in the securities of the other world, and at the eagerness to get aboard a sea-of-ether-worthy ship exhibited by people who have not paid their fare.
I may as well tell you now that this country and some others are scattered over with supposed “communications” from me. It would seem that my writing arms are as numerous as the feet of a centipede. It would also seem by the style of some of these supposed communications, that I have as many minds as Indra has eyes.
Even the elements of the ouija board do not contradict themselves so frequently as these amanuenses make me contradict myself. I think you will have to trademark me.

After the serious nature of my recent letters, it relaxes me to jest.
If you include this letter in the book, please head it “Contingent Fees.”


LETTER VI

THE THREE APPEALS
March 11, 1917.
I stand outside the world and look inside the hearts of men. I see more than I saw when I was a man among them. Had I then looked as deep into my own heart as I now look into theirs, I should have seen the hearts of my fellow beings reflected in my own, for we differ from one another as one insect differs from another. There are differences between insects.

I look into your hearts, O men! and this is what I see: Ideals and hypocrisy, self-interest and altruism, hunger and satiety.
Shall I, in offering advice, appeal to your ideals, your self-interest, or your hunger? The opposite three would never spur you to action along the lines I would have you spurred.


LETTER VII

THE BUILDERS
March 22, 1917.

I have promised to offer you advice as to how you may restore your equilibrium. Use much of this superfluity of gold in rebuilding devastated Europe. Give her credits and give her food. You who can work in the fields, raise food to feed Europe. You who can build, give the labor of your hands wherever it is needed. You who are discontented here, go back to that Europe which gave you birth. By so doing you will give yourselves a new point of view, and you will give yourselves a new interest. A new interest is a new lease on life.

Make sacrifices. In saying that, I have two objects in view, the effect on the world and the effect on yourselves.
To work for the ideal is sometimes more practical than to work for what is called the real.
When I tell you to rebuild Europe, you can take it as ideal advice or practical advice, depending on your point of view. It is ideal because Europe needs rebuilding; it is practical because just now and for a time to come America needs to get her mind on something outside herself. We give that advice to individuals when they are too self-centered. There is so much discontent and so much uncertainty that anything which can catch and hold the attention of masses of men, which can make them forget themselves, may enable them to be used by the Genius of the race, which works for the welfare of the race as a whole.

Lend your money to Europe, and do not ask usurious interest. Yes, you can take interest, for money has earning power, and the laborer—even the laborer Gold—is worthy of his hire. But help by your generous lendings at low interest to lessen the awful burden of taxation for the people of Europe, which makes also for discontent and discouragement.
Go to Europe, many of you, that you may see what war does to a country, what it might do to your country should you selfishly expose yourselves to a desire on the part of outsiders to take from you by force that which you have so skillfully acquired.
Go, that you may see and feel, as you can only see and feel face to face, the spirit of self-sacrifice and national devotion which has animated the people of Europe in this long war. They have found their souls, but you have not yet found your soul.

There are engineers in this country who are less needed here than they will be needed in Europe. There are specialists in all the branches of science who are more needed there than here. We have specialists enough. We can spare a few of them.
Build ships. Build more ships. Keep the men occupied. Give them an objective. Do not let them brood. An idle brain is the devil’s workshop. If you have not work enough, make work. There are things enough to be done. Build ships.
Now in regard to your management of railroads and other public utilities. The day for government control was heralded when the threat of a strike came that would have, if put into effect, blocked the wheels of a nation. All those public utilities whose blocked wheels could threaten the national life and the movements of men should be managed by the government. This is not socialism, or any other ism. You who have stock in them, do not take alarm. A way can be found that will satisfy you.

Think of the good of the whole, for you who are a part cannot prosper without the welfare of the whole. This is not cant. It is a sort of race biology. I look down and see you as a great being, and I prescribe for you as a being, a race-unity, not as a few individuals here and there. The cells in the body of the race-being must all be working together. Get a unit of consciousness, as a race. Yield yourselves to the consciousness of the race-unit. Be as individual as you please, but be individual parts. Get into balance with other individuals, positive and negative.

Make the rebuilding of Europe an objective point. Make it possible for many discontented workers to go to work in Europe. You may say that the armies of Europe, when released from military service, will furnish workers enough; but there cannot be too many. There is a double object in this: the object of getting work done, and that of the psychological effect upon the worker.
I wish I could get into your minds by infusion the state of consciousness that is mine. I wish I could make you see that separation is death and that unity is life.
I have spoken of government control of railroads, but that is only the beginning. There should be governmental handling of food. Begin gradually, one thing after another. It is the destiny of the world to go in that direction. You cannot block the wheels of that chariot.

Serve if you hope to survive would be a good motto. You cannot survive if you do not serve—all of you. I like that figure of the cell which is a part of the race-being. It is the way I see you.

Just a word about nervous diseases. Yes, it is related to what I have been saying. When at last the let-up comes after the unnatural strain of war, the minds of men in going back, or in attempting to go back to their normal state, may find themselves unable immediately to adjust to the changed conditions. For a long time the brains of men and women have been stimulated by the coffee of concerted action; when they are thrown back on themselves they may relax too much.
Or, on the other hand, an unnatural excitement may drive them into all kinds of excesses. Have you ever seen victims of mania who could not rest, who had lost the ability to rest? They walk up and down, and drum with their feet, and clench their hands. So many men and women may be, after this war. There is certain to be an excess of love excitement, and work is a good panacea for that complaint.

Then again, after years of war, years in which many have not known in the morning whether they would be alive at night, they may retain the habit of dread. They may fear to rest and fear to relax. Thus they may welcome any excitement, as a substitute for the stimulus to which they have been accustomed.
That is another reason why I would send Americans to labor with the laborers of Europe. Not that the American working man is phlegmatic, far from it; but with his mind unaccustomed to fear anything, except the loss of his job and consequent hunger, he will have an effect of confidence and hope on those around him. The American likes to feel that he is leading, and in what better way can he indulge that propensity than in leading his associates to hope?

You have no idea—you cannot have an idea—of the great depression that will follow this war for a short while. It will be the relaxation, the letting go. Always after war the ebb-tide is followed by great activity; but it is that ebb-tide which we have to consider.
You in America will feel it. You have become accustomed to seeing gold flow towards these shores. When the stream lessens, you will have to combat the tendency to fear that lessening. Panics are like personal fear, intensified by mass.
The world is drawing close together, and what influences a part influences the whole.

After the war will also come an opening of the psychic senses of men, everywhere. This, while good in itself, may become an added danger. Prophets, true and false, will arise everywhere, with many remedies for the diseases of souls and of bodies.
If I may make another suggestion, it would be that those who have psychic awakening should think twice before proclaiming the fact. It is a new sense that is coming into manifestation; but as the opening of the eyes in an early stage of evolution probably revealed as many dangers as blessings, so the new sense will reveal dangers. Do not try to close the new sense, but do not be carried away by it. Remember that it will be practically general, and like every new sense it will be defective for a long time. It will reveal false things as well as true. If a man opened his eyes for the first time upon a harmless tree, he might mistake it for a monster.

Restraint in all things, moderation in all things, even in the laudable desire to action. Weigh and measure. Prove before accepting anything—prove by reason and by intuition if you cannot wait for proof by practice. Weigh and measure what I say, as well as what the wildest new prognosticator says. Discourage hysteria. A wave of hysteria is likely to sweep over the world.
As revolution follows revolution, the startled inhabitants of the world may tell themselves that nothing in the universe is stable, that all is going to destruction, and that as they cannot save themselves from what seems to be universal chaos, they may as well get all the pleasurable excitement possible out of the passing moment. Restraint, restraint!

I see women afraid to bear children because of the uncertainty of the morrow. I see men afraid to marry because of the uncertainty of domesticity. I see farmers hesitate to plant because of the uncertainty of the harvest. Again I say, be not afraid.
If you sow, you shall reap. If you marry, you shall build a home. If you have children, the race will protect them—and you are a part of the race.
Restraint! Fearlessness!


LETTER VIII

THE WORLD OF MIND
March 24, 1917.

I wish that more people of sane, sound mind would experiment in telepathic communication. I know there is any amount of uncoordinated and half-serious playing with phenomena; but with scientific accuracy of observation and scientific precision in recording data, not only the body of sensible literature on these subjects would be increased, but the habits of careful observation and precision in reporting supernormal facts would be developed in the experimentalists.
You who write for me, continue to make and record experiments. You are almost too cautious, but most persons are not cautious enough.

Explain the necessary conditions of passivity and activity between those working together. Though the best results are often obtained by you alone, yet the testimony of one person is not so convincing as the testimony of several who have witnessed and taken part in the same phenomena. But you are right in hesitating to take on the psychic conditions of insincere and merely curious people who would like to work with you.
The great difficulty with most persons is that they cannot make themselves sufficiently negative for the time being. When the experiments are over they can and should become equally positive. They can shift from one pole to the other, and they must do so if they wish to preserve their physical health and balance.

But bear in mind that the influences from this side are good and bad, even as the influences in the world are; and if you feel that any “presence” is hostile, at once banish it and become positive. After any approach by an undesirable influence, you should not for some hours let yourself become negative. Go for a walk, or attack some difficult piece of work, or read a book that demands mental activity in order to grasp its meaning.
You live in a sea of mind, as well as in a psychic sea; they interpenetrate, and they interpenetrate with the physical; but in working through and with them, keep them as distinct as possible.
I work more and more in the mental world, and less and less in the astral; but the majority of my readers will not know exactly what I mean by that statement. There is a greater difference between the astral and the mental plane than there is between the astral and the physical.

Do not despise the astral. Its dynamics are of colossal import. But cultivate more and more the purely mental, because the astral in all of you is developed beyond the mental.
Those who learn that they can create in mind need to develop a sense of responsibility. They are too reckless in demonstrating their power. Remember that as you go up in the planes of being you get into subtler and subtler regions, and strength increases with the degree of subtlety—not the reverse, as you would naturally suppose.

One of the greatest temptations of the mental world is that of the creation of falsehoods. By stating that which is not true, you project into the realm of mind a picture that has a certain permanency. It may deceive others, but in time it will deceive you, its creator. Those who speak falsely cannot perceive truth. Those who create false pictures in the mental world will be deceived by those very pictures; they will reap the effects of the causes they have set up.
Have you not known people who were always being deceived by their “friends”? They are generally those who have left deceiving pictures behind themselves. There are people who cannot discriminate between the false and the true. They deceive and are deceived. Those who deceive are always deceived, whatever their supposed intellect may be.

And I would say to those to whom I now suggest experiments with clairvoyance and telepathy, that if they have planted the seeds of falsehood they will reap a harvest of deceptive appearances. Test yourself in that way, you who believe yourselves to be sincere. You may learn something of value regarding your own karma. (Yes, I will use Theosophic or Indian terms when they express my meaning. Those who re-write the Oriental philosophies in western terms can pass for original only with the ignorant.)
What the new race needs most of all is truth. Modern science is preparing the world for the fearless facing of truth. The man who toils over a microscope that he may observe and record some fact in nature, is more the servant of God than the man who with sanctimonious face tells his fellow creatures what they must not do; for his work at least is positive in its results.

There are too many “thou shalt nots”; too few “I shalls.”
The new race will develop a wide tolerance. It will discourage undesirable things more by ignoring them than by attacking them. By attacking a thing we give it power.
Work more and more in the world of mind. The results in the physical will be immense.


LETTER IX

AMERICA’S GOOD FRIDAY
April 6, 1917.

It is past midnight. It is Good Friday. Momentous decisions for the world and for all time are heavy in the souls of men.
On the day that this day stands for, in the long ago, a man (who was also a god) stood forth alone for the ideas of love and human brotherhood. At last, after all these years, the thing for which he died may be realized. But there was a crucifixion on that Friday, centuries ago.

I have brought you from a far-away shore that you might witness a great struggle in the souls of men. You have arrived at a center.*
To-day, in thousands of churches throughout Christendom, prayers will be offered to the god-man who died that the god in man might live. To-day in millions of hearts the cross will be set up.
It is so still here at midnight, at a few minutes past midnight on this day of days.
Christianity has arisen, and presses forward to Golgotha to witness an event.
Pray! Prayer is the affirmation by the soul of its unity with the One. War is the affirmation of the soul of its separateness from many.
Love your enemies. It is the only way that you can conquer them.

* I had arrived in New York a few hours before after a long sojourn in California.


LETTER X

THE CRUCIBLE
April 12, 1917.

Let us speak a little of this initiation through which the race is passing. Always the trials precede the attainment.
When these wars are over there will be a new world, for the souls of men will have been baptized with the fire and the blood. America must have her part in it. To her also must come the trials and the attainment. Watch and pray.
Some day I will send you back to commune with the soul of the Old World—some day we will send you back. It is another Europe you will find, a Europe tried by fire, and some of it will be fine steel, and some of it will be clinkers in the furnace, for the fire proves the metal, and separates the metal from the slag.

From before the war to this day, the battles of the earth have been enacted also in your soul, the blood and the fire, the pain and the travail. You too have passed through the fiery furnace.
Long ago, when you identified your soul with the soul of the world, you took upon yourself the trials of the world, the initiatory trials. You also called down upon yourself the weight of your old karma, the effects of the causes you had set up through the ages. That you are at rest for a time means only that you have worked yourself free from a little of the load. Had you not done it now, you would have had to do it in the future. Rejoice for every trial that brings you nearer to the goal. And this I say for all men.

If I speak of the world now, instead of that part only that we call America, it is to identify the part with the whole. If I speak of you personally, it is to identify you with the whole.
Back in that Europe to which you will go, you will find two classes, those who have become fine steel, and those who have become refuse. You will know the one from the other.

They will welcome you back, for you have passed through the fire with them. They will welcome your country, too, for it now turns its face to the fire.
Be not discouraged by dismal prophecies. Man does not live by bread alone. If you have less to eat, your bodies will grow finer. If you have more to do, your minds and spirits will expand. Few of you work to your full capacity. The unit of force that is man may generate much energy, drawing it up from the deeps of himself at the call of need or of will.

Work harder now. Once I told you to rest more, but the laborers are called to the vineyard. The hour of rest will come again, when the day draws near its close.
In entering into the war, my country, put away all rancor, and fight for the right in which there is no rancor. Hate not. The hour for hate is past. (I say this, knowing that Hate and Fear, the mother of Hate, will come and challenge your souls.)
I do not hate, and I do not fear, and I shall stay with you until the day draws to its close. Are you sorry now that you let me speak again? When fear comes to your house, I will speak to you of courage. When hate shall menace you, I will turn it into love. I have found the Philosopher’s Stone that can transmute base metals into gold.

Hate will be turned to love in this land where the Eagle cries. Listen to the cry of the Eagle. It is a free bird, and it flies high. Its message has only been hinted at, in the years that have yet been numbered. The Eagle will teach freedom. They will listen—across the sea.
America is indeed the melting-pot of nations. I can find no better figure of speech. The German-American who is loyal to America now, who hides the tragedy in his heart behind a brave face, may also come through the furnace fine steel.
I am glad you know that they suffer. Hold the loyal ones in your heart, with all other loyal Americans. So you will help in the process of melting. To some of them the tragedy will open the doors of initiation. Their loyalty to a pledge is a finer trial than the fire of a battlefield. Those who are loyal must not be made pariahs. Of those who are disloyal I say nothing, but leave them to the Law.

The initiatory process! It has the earth in its grasp. There are those whom you love that it has in its grasp, too. They suffer, as you have suffered. But they shall find peace.


LETTER XI

MAKE CLEAN YOUR HOUSE
May 4, 1917.

Do you know that the human race is being weighed in the balances? Work and pray that it may not be found wanting.
We who dwell in the clear light of that world which is to you the Other World, can see the handwriting on the wall.
The world has been too dishonest. In an honest world, could this war have been? In the world that is to come, nation will not distrust nation, nor man distrust man. But now distrust is a necessary part of the human equipment. You may trust—but not too far. You may love your neighbor—but not too much. You may do to your brother as you would have him do to you—but not all the time.

America was builded on a foundation of ideals; but there is too much of the mud of personal seeking mixed with the good clay of your bricks.
You washed away with your blood one plague-spot, that of slavery; but there is another plague-spot you have got to wash away. Will you do it with the free water of good will, or will you do it again with your blood? I wait to see.
Do not say that the world’s troubles are over, because America has come into the war. The world’s troubles are not over. When the war is over—the greater war—make clean your house, O America!
There is no other civilized country where the premiums upon dishonesty are so high.

Can you buy a pound of butter and be certain that you get sixteen full ounces? Can you buy a pound of meat and be sure that the scales are true?
A new race is being born. Begin with those children, and teach them honesty before you teach them geography—honesty with the parents, honesty with each other, honesty with themselves. “As the twig is bent the tree inclines.”
When I was a little boy I was taught that George Washington could not tell a lie. I had an ideal of George Washington. I wanted to emulate him. And so when I was a man I sought truth. I looked for it on the surface of the ground, and also in deep wells. Once I spent years in the wilderness trying to find truth in myself. I remained in the wilderness until I found it. Had I not found it, I should have left my bones there.

You need a new set of copy-book maxims. If the boy who writes “Honesty is the best policy” at school in the morning, sees in the afternoon his father trying to trade a balky horse for a good roadster, he wonders if his teacher is fooling him. The disillusionment of children is tragic with menace for the coming State. I would rather see reproach in the eyes of an Adept Teacher than in the eyes of a child. If I fail my teacher I do not hurt him seriously, if I fail my child I hurt him irreparably.
You must face the fact that the life of America is going to be reorganized.
You have wondered why I have not written of late. I have been busy, studying America. I have seen much that I can tell you, and much that I cannot tell you—yet. For I want you to be quiet. You could not be quiet if you knew as much as I know.

It has been said that necessity knows no law. Forget it not, you war-profiteers who would corner the world’s necessities. Remember that a cornered animal is dangerous, and a cornered necessity has hoofs and horns.
There is a disease that has no name among the doctors—the disease of colossal possessions. Its symptoms are a voracious appetite for more possessions, and a phobia lest possessions be lost. It is worse than neuralgia and indigestion combined to disturb the rest of the victim.
I long to see a hundred million and more people living in peace and plenty in America.

Fanatics prattle about the confiscation of great fortunes. I do not care so much what you do with your fortunes. But I care much what you do with your land and your food, and I care more what you do with your men and women and little children.
Do not get into a panic, I pray you. A panic is worse than a quicksand to get into. Keep calm. The country is in no danger, if it does not lose its head.


LETTER XII

LEVEL HEADS
May 15, 1917.

Do not get excited, you Americans. If you keep your heads, you will come through this all right. If you lose your heads, you may lose much besides—You may lose more than you can win back in a hundred years.
I am not excited. I have not lost my head. (Yes, I still have a head, and hands and feet. If I should try to live out here without hands and feet, the adjustment to that unaccustomed condition would have a reactionary effect upon my head. I am not experimenting in the elimination of my members.)

You see a country now, Russia, that is making the experiment of living without its head. No nation can continue as a nation without a head, and a level one. Even the most extremely republican, democratic, socialistic, or any other kind of a nation must have a head. A completely anarchistic aggregation of people could not be called a nation. Its land would be only a geographical section populated with units, and such units unrelated to other units might as well be ciphers.
Do not be impatient because I write seldom at present. I am rather busy. I shall always come when I have something that must be said.
A change is coming in America. Quite a change has already come about, has it not? *

This country is great, this country is strong, this country is adaptable. It can adjust itself to change. The people of this country have not been slaves for a long time. The people of Russia have been so many kinds of slaves that their reaction to freedom is unexpected by a free world. Wait! Do not lose your heads about this matter.

I do not object to there being a few persons who know that I am writing with you again. They cannot affect me, save to encourage me with their interest.

* It was about this time, if I remember rightly, that many of our wealthy men began working for the government at one dollar a year.


LETTER XIII

TREES AND BRICK WALLS
May 16, 1917.

You fear lest the dismal prophesies of world-disaster, of cataclysm, of the destruction of half the human race which you hear from many sources, may tend to discourage the world.
Remember that hope springs eternal in the human breast. And if the minds of men are familiar with the idea of cataclysm, they will more readily adjust themselves to lesser changes.
Read the Old Testament. The most dismal prophecies were not verified, but changes came.

Some of the “independent ministers” of America are more violent than Jeremiah. But they help indirectly—in accustoming the minds of men to the idea of change.
If panics come—and they may—refuse to be panic-stricken.
If violence comes—and it may—refuse to be violent.
If discouragements come—and they will—refuse to be discouraged.
When your brains become over-heated, look steadily at the trees. They will quiet you. If there are no trees in your neighborhood—why, look at a brick wall in moments of excitement. A brick wall is a soothing spectacle. It stands steady, unless moved from without.


LETTER XIV

INVISIBLE ARMIES
May 23, 1917.

Many of the soldiers out here who have become fully awake and self-conscious are striving to bring about those ends for which they gave their lives on earth. There are thus soldiers working on both sides of the war and on this side of the veil. Immediately after the change many of them fight each other; but they soon learn that they can do more effective work by giving attention to their comrades in the flesh. They can soothe and inspire and instruct.

We are forming an army out here. There is no lack of recruits. America must be saved, and few of you know how much America has to be saved from. But we know—we who have watched the world for the last two years and three-quarters.
It is not so terrible to die. It is really far more terrible to be born.
The army that we are recruiting here is made up of men of all ages—all ages in this life, I mean. Yes, there are women also in our army. There are some veterans of the Civil War and veterans of the War with Spain. Over the regiments and divisions of this army there are commanders, as over the armies of earth. Otherwise the work would lack unity of purpose. Ours is mostly a volunteer army, though conscription is not unknown among us.

You wonder what I mean? Do you not suppose that we can call a soul from a useless occupation and give him useful labor? We can and do, daily.
We have even recruited largely from the old and native Americans, the red skinned hunters and warriors who remain in such large numbers in the neighborhood of the earth. There is work which they only can do. There are many kinds of work and a great variety of workers.
I come and go, from coast to coast. I know what is doing on the shores of the Pacific, in the Atlantic States, on the Gulf of Mexico, and the Middle and Rocky Mountain States are familiar ground to me. I am renewing my youth in this period of activity. I am working for my country. I am training, too.

Why do you smile? There is a training of the mind and the will that is more effective than any training of the physical body—quicker and more effective. Then too the astral body can be trained to a high degree of efficiency and elasticity. Surely I need not tell you this.
And I am training others. We old fellows can be very useful in a time like this. I am glad now that I came out when I did, that I went through with my novitiate while the world was still at peace and there was leisure for many things which now I should not have time for. I had a delightful holiday. I hunted through the wilds of the invisible, and fished in the waters of space; but now I am back at my work again.


LETTER XV

THE WEAKEST LINK
June 2, 1917.

There are in the archives of the Masters of Wisdom certain data relative to the past and future of this country which would make interesting reading could they be published in the newspapers at this time of national crisis.
America is aware of her mission of democracy; but she is not aware of another mission equally potent—that of making the world safe for spiritual culture. I do not mean religion, as the word is ordinarily used; but I mean the culture of the spirit of love—such ideas of love as the world has inadequately grasped from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, grasped and let fall again because those ideas were too warm to be comfortably held by hands cooled in the material labors of selfishness.

America has laid up for herself in the regions beyond the physical a debt—an obligation that is not by any means a treasure in heaven, but which, when the debt is paid, may be a real spiritual treasure. I refer to the armies of souls who once occupied this land as free owners, and who were expelled and disinherited by the expanding civilization which grew up in the place of wigwam and hunting-ground.

Those souls, many of them, desire to return. Many have already returned, and unless some way is open to them to live again the free life to which they were accustomed in the past, they will tend to become a destructive force. They cannot be eliminated so easily now, when they wear white bodies and claim citizenship with you. They are scattered from shore to shore of this wide land. You can tell them by their eagle eyes and their high cheek bones, by their free gait and love of freedom. They are hard to restrain in factory and counting-house. They are clerks with a difference and laborers with a dream. Many of them have found entrance into the sun-lighted world as the children of European immigrants, for they find it easier to enter the blood of certain other races than the blood of the Anglo-Saxon, for all the Anglo-Saxon love of freedom.

A time may come when these now foreign-blooded primitive Americans will instinctively rebel against the restraining influences that have held them, when they will seek to live over again the old life of nature, even though they have to take it as the kingdom of heaven is said to have been taken.
There is coming a time when love will be needed in this land as it has never been needed before, when “live and let live” must become a law as well as a phrase. Those who long for freedom with Nature can be given that freedom. Conditions may be hard in the great cities.
I am not trying to instill fear into the American heart. On the contrary, I am trying to insure you against fear.
Not long could the wheels of civilization stop turning. But they could stop—for a wink of the Cosmic Eye.
America is going to be saved, and saved in the hour of her greatest danger. What will her greatest danger be? You must think that out for yourself.

Learn to see through the eye of the Planetary Spirit. Your view is too narrow. Where your library stands on shelves is for you the centre of things; but the centre of things is in the heart, and hearts are everywhere. If you think about the race and not about yourself, your heart will be magnified; you will see with the eyes of the heart, and he who sees with the eyes of the heart is wiser than historians or intellectual prophets.
The world must be made safe for love. All men must be provided for in the scheme of the future, all men and women and little children. It is not safe to disregard any, for a chain is as strong as its weakest link, and every link must be made strong.


LETTER XVI

A COUNCIL IN THE FOREST
One night, to repose my soul from the labors I had undertaken, I retired to a pine forest upon the earth, in one of the New England States. Thinking to be alone, I had sought the place; but no sooner had I drifted into meditation than a strange sound fell upon my ears. It was not like the sounds of earth, it was more subtle yet more penetrating; and I knew that I was listening to a song (if you may call it a song) by some of my fellow sojourners in the region beyond the sunlight.

Suddenly with a rush they leaped past me into the clearing, and forming in a circle, they waited. Then I saw a light that was not of earthly origin, the light of a campfire, and I knew that I had been surprised by a band of Indians who were preparing to hold some rite of their old religion.
Though I had not been invited to their ceremony, neither had I invited them to intrude upon my contemplation, so I remained and watched them.
(Yes, there is less secrecy out here, for the reason that there is greater understanding and greater tolerance.)
Soon I was looking on at a strange dance. All in a circle they swung round and round the blazing fire, singing and leaping. I did not know the meaning of the words they sang; but I could read their minds by the thought-images they formed, and I knew that they were celebrating the date—reached by what lunar reckoning I knew not—of some great Indian massacre in which they had taken part a hundred or two hundred years ago.

And the impulse of their dance, the motive power of it, was hatred of the white man who had scattered them and driven them away from their old hunting grounds.
Shocked, yet fascinated by this inner glimpse at the souls of the American aborigines, I watched them.
Though I am not skilled in magic rituals, I soon perceived that there was form and method in this dance, method and form and a hostile purpose.
They were, by exciting themselves and by fixity of thought, trying to excite a scattered company of men in these United States—men of a low grade of intellect but of psychic temperament—to deeds of violence and destruction.

“So that is the way they do it!” I thought.
Then I drew a veil around my thoughts, that they might not be perceived by the beings before me. Yes, I can do that, and so can many men upon the earth.
I could smell the keen fresh odors of the pine grove, and I could feel the rising wind as it swept across the clearing; for the wind seemed to respond to their call and to offer its forces to them. You must know that the elements are impersonal, though semi-personalities inhabit them, and that the elements and these semi-personalities can be used and guided, for purposes good or evil, by any being who has gained that peculiar power in one or many lives.

And looking off in the distance, I could see that the wind as it swept along carried the thoughts and passions of these long dead men, these souls that by reason of their own downward tendencies had not broken away from the attraction of matter, the astral gravitation that makes so many souls earth-bound.
Still looking off and projecting my consciousness in a way I have learned to do, I saw the influence of this magic ritual of revenge and menace as it touched the minds of men far scattered. I saw their thoughts take on suddenly the tinge of hatred, hatred for the civilization in which they had failed to realize their personal desires.
And I knew that on that night and on the morrow, and at intervals for many days, deeds of violence would be committed, that property would be destroyed, and men of order threatened.

My heart was sad, for I had not understood before how real was the danger to my country in these times of crisis from the karma the old settlers had made. Of course they believed they were doing right in ridding themselves and their adopted land from the simple but complex natives, whose civilization was older than the civilization of Europe, and who had loved this land as only those can love a land who have known the freedom of its spaces.
When the magic dance was over, and one by one and two by two the communicants slipped away among the shadows, I strode forward into the circle to have speech with any who should willingly respond to my desire for acquaintanceship.
Suddenly I found myself face to face with a majestic chieftain, wearing one of those long feather bonnets whose every feather marks some deed of daring or achievement. (What a splendid custom was that! What an incentive to action! Truly among the red men, deed won a feather in the cap.)

His face was like that of a hawk, and his eyes were bright with an inner fire, that intensity of feeling and thought commingled which marks the leader and master of men and him alone.
And I said to him in the forms of thought, for I knew no word of his old language:
“I have been an unintentional witness to your ceremony this evening. Will you enlighten me further as to its purpose? for I see that it was directed towards the land of breathing men.”
With a sweep of his authoritative arm he dismissed the few of his companions who had not already moved away among the trees, and we two were alone together.
“I come as a friend,” I said, seeing that he hesitated.

And the word was true; for I saw that whatever harm he mistakenly sought to accomplish, in his soul was the consciousness of justice, that fundamental balance between right and wrong, that proposition of law, which when native in the mind gives it dignity and attracts respect. This was no dabbler in aboriginal and nasty sorcery, but a kind of priest of retribution, a tribal demi-god who might perhaps some day be made constructive and not destructive, an instrument of the great Genius of America of which I have spoken in a former letter, the Weaver of Destiny who has our land in charge.
We measured each other with the eyes, and I cast aside the veil that I had before drawn around my thoughts, that he might see me mind to mind and realize that I respected and to a degree understood him.

“You have seen what you have seen,” he observed.
“And you do not resent my presence?”
“No.”
The fresh odor of the pine grove was keen in my senses, and my new-found companion threw back his head with a splendid motion as if to drink it in.
“Freedom is good,” he said, “and the land was ours.”
So I perceived that by excusing himself and his associates he had perceived that I accused them. Then I knew that I could really commune with him mind to mind, and I was glad; for I ever seek to extend the range of my knowledge and to form acquaintance with those of sturdy will.
“But the land is free to all the world,” I said, “to you and to me, and to those of both our races.”

“We do not see it so,” was his reply.
“But,” I insisted, “are we not now, you and I, enjoying it in freedom?”
It is difficult to translate in words the rapid give and take of our thoughts, the pictures that flashed back and forth between us, as I strove with kindliness and will to make him understand that the welfare of his race did not call for the destruction of mine.
I told him—and the idea was so new to him that, lacking words, I had to draw my story on the canvas of thought in the minutest detail—how the soul that leaves the earth for a time returns to it in another form. And I explained how hundreds upon hundreds of his people, and the most advanced among them, had already come back in material form to that America they had loved before, that they wore white bodies, and could only be distinguished from other white men by the keenness of their eyes, their gait, and certain peculiarities of speech and manner.

He followed my story with astonished, almost painful, intensity; for he knew, with that inner knowledge which on this side of life is almost impossible to deceive, that I spoke honestly and believed that which I told him.
“And do you not deceive yourself?” was his inevitable question.
Then I told him of those recent and former lives of my own which I most vividly remember, and cited proofs that I did not deceive myself.
“But what a life is that of the white man for one of my people?” he demanded.

Then he flashed me picture after picture of the simple white man’s life in America, the schoolhouse with the choking-hot stove and the bad air, the house and home with closed doors and windows, the “meeting-house” where a droning or a noisy preacher prated of things he did not understand, to others who believe or did not believe that they believed him. He held up before me as for ridicule the clothing of the white man in the lower walks of life, the confining and uncomfortable shoes, the binding trousers, the ugly hat that makes bald the head, and the collar. The one he pictured was a paper collar, soiled and wilted at the edges.
Then he showed me—as if to prove the breadth of his observations—an office in a city, with the clerks seated upon stools and bent with aching backs over ledgers that contained figures, figures, long lines of figures that were the symbols of the white man’s wampum, which seemed so trivial when made the principal occupation of a soul that had rejoiced in the red man’s forest.

“And is it for this that they come back to their native land?” he asked.
“But the soul must gain all experience,” I said.
The idea seemed new to him, and he pondered it with knitted brows.
“Why should the soul gain all experience?” he asked.
“That it may return to its God rich in knowledge,” I replied.
“Its God.” At that thought the strange eyes of him lighted, though his face remained immobile.
“Yes,” I said, “for your God and my God are both God.”
“There are many gods,” he replied. “There is the Great Spirit, and there are the others.”

“In the centre of each of them,” I assured him, “there is a spot, a core of the heart that is the same in all, that exists everywhere, and in every heart is one, that knows no division; and that centre is also in your heart and mine and in that of our respective Gods.”
“Did you learn that in one of those hot schoolhouses?” he asked.
“No. I did not learn it even when I was an old man upon the earth, but after I came out here. On earth I rather prided myself on my separateness.”
“Then one can learn new religions out here?” he asked, in surprise.
“If one finds a teacher,” I replied.
“But what need is there of new religions?”

“There is,” I said, “in the core of every religion also that central spot where all are one. And there is in all races,” I pursued, for I saw that he watched with half-belief , “there is in all races a core of unity. The red man is the brother and not the permanent enemy of the white man. So why should you injure the descendants of those who followed what they believed to be right in extending their holdings in this land long ago?”
“But I was not seeking to injure them for injury’s sake.”
“Then I misunderstood the purpose of your magic song.”
“Oh!” he exclaimed. “You caught the feeling of my children, who cannot see beyond feeling. My purpose is only to destroy the present to make way for the old life.”

“But the present is always a stage,” I said, “on the highroad that leads to the future. And my people reincarnated, and yours reincarnated—or so many of them as are ready to go on—shall go on together and in this land. They will form, with those who join them from beyond the seas, a new race. And thanks to the labors of a few among the white men who have studied and appreciated the traditions and civilization of the red man and sought to save them from utter obliteration, the old forest lore will become a part of the inheritance of that new race which is to grow out of the union of yours and mine and the others. And for a part of every year, when the life of the new race is adjusted, the boys and girls and men and women will go out to the wilds and enjoy the freedom of the tent and the society round the campfire, and we shall be brothers—real blood-brothers—at last, and all the old wounds shall be healed. Can you not recognize me as your brother?”
He nodded his head.

“And will you not spread among your people the glad tidings of the new race, in all of whose possessions they will share?”
We stood long looking in each other’s eyes, and I told him more than I could record here if I held the use of your pencil for many hours. In the end he understood me.
It is my belief that he will spread the story among his people, and that one danger will be lessened thereby, to some degree, for the children of the new race.


LETTER XVII

THE IDEAL OF SUCCESS
June 23, 1917.

Put fear out of your hearts. The future will give you no greater lessons than you can master. It is not well to know the future in complete detail. Had the world known during the last ten years all it would be obliged to suffer in this war, would it have made the progress it has made in art, science and commerce? No. Every thought would have been haunted.
You may say that the weaker races (and the stronger ones) would have made better preparation. But a part of this lesson has been not to delay inevitable preparation, and to know in future that a nation which idealizes war and is mostly army, has not cultivated that ideal and that army solely for its own amusement.

If you want to understand national life and individual life, you must look for their dominating ideals. An ideal is a tendency.
What is the dominating ideal of America? Summed in a word, it is success, is it not? Now America is in a great war, and you may be sure that she will leave nothing undone that can make for success in that war, as she has left nothing undone that could make for success in business.
Take your own case. What are your dominating ideals and tendencies? You would say, off-hand, work and study and intellectual companionship, would you not? Very well. As to work, do not fear a future in which good work is pretty sure of at least a living wage. Study? There will always be books to feed your hunger for reading. Companionship? There are too many lonely souls in the world for you ever to be lonely.

What else? You lift your pencil and think. . . . That is about all, is it not?
Now let us return to America. America is not—has not been—a warlike nation, except when threatened by injustice, to herself or others. Will she lose this war? I think not.
But there will be complexities regarding the end of this war.
I want to refer to something I said in a recent letter, that we were organizing on this side of the airy frontier for work for the future of America.
I have spoken of the Genius of this land, a composite entity you may call it, if your imagination is not equal to the task of seeing that you—all of you—are cells in the body of the Genius of America.

Now the Genius of this land has glorious purposes, and she uses you—all of you—for her purposes, as you use the cells of your body, as you are using at this moment the aggregation of cells that form the hand with which you hold your pencil.
In registering yourselves at the call of your country, you are affirming your acceptance of the office of cells in the great body of her. Some of you she must sacrifice in the war for the welfare of the whole, as every day cells die and are born in the body of man, the microcosm.
Extend the idea to the whole human race, and the figure will be still more apt. The genius of the race is suffering now. The process will ultimate in a more perfect health.

You perhaps protest that many of those who are dying are the flower of the race, the young, the fitted to survive. But do you not remember that their souls survive? The essential part of them is not lost, but set free for a greater work. Have you considered that earth-life may be the dream, and the life after death the waking? Sages have considered it before you, and accepted the possibility.
Out here we are hopeful, and very busy. It is because I am so busy that I come to you only occasionally. Do not hurry me, for I do not hurry you.
We have problems to solve out here. As I have said, one of our problems is the great number of Indian souls, red men souls, who went out of life with resentment and revenge in their hearts for the elimination of their race by the white man in America.

Somehow we must placate them, and enlist them on your side. Otherwise they may be a dangerous element for the future. Some of them would like to see your civilization destroyed, as theirs was destroyed, and a few of them are strong enough to do real harm.
The best way to make an enemy harmless is to understand his peculiar qualities, to learn something from the frankness of his enmity, to turn away evil by letting it go off at a tangent. But the Indian souls are not famous for their frankness. Even with me they sometimes conceal their resentment—deep, fundamental—at the “theft,” as they feel it, of the land where they once roamed in freedom.
I advise America to cultivate the free life of the open. I have advised you in a former book that the old woodcraft should be resuscitated and taught to the children. There may come a time when the rudiments of this knowledge will be useful to many of you.

Great changes are coming in the world, a period of adjustment to new conditions. There is a restless element in all adjustment, and national restlessness is like that of puberty; it needs to be minimized by healthful outdoor play, or by work which masquerades as play.
The future will take from the present those elements that are most important for survival.
Do not fear that we shall return to the Dark Ages. Oh, no. We are going into a Light Age. It is only twilight now.


LETTER XVIII

ORDER AND PROGRESS
July 18, 1917.

Our purpose is to make the changes that must come, come gradually. We want to avoid sudden changes.
You in the world have no faint idea of the influence and power we can wield on our side. We can speak to the minds of men without their knowing whence the ideas come. They think, when a sudden idea comes into their minds, that they have evolved it; but sudden ideas generally come from outside. (I put one in your mind this morning, then ran away before you could recognize me. Why did I run away? Because I wanted you to use your own judgment.)

Just at present we are trying to encourage America as to her future—her orderly and peaceful future, after peace is declared in Europe.
You may as well know that there are many out here who are anxious about the future of the world. All men do not cease to worry when they have left their bodies. There are many here who think the world is going to smash. They always had that fear in life whenever things seemed to go wrong; and now they are no less inclined to accept every complexity as an omen of failure and confusion.

All over America there are men and women—and many of them are in pulpits or on platforms—who are croaking away about the destruction of society following this war. Bless your troubled hearts! Society is not going to be destroyed. Some elements in society will be gradually done away with, and good riddance to them! But society has made too great advance, in mechanical and intellectual ways, to permit its structure to be pulled from beneath its feet.
Do not worry. Watch out, but do not worry. As Abraham Lincoln once prevented this country from being territorially divided and thus weakened, so he and others are now working to prevent a spiritual division that would be even more disastrous.
No, we are not going to see your useful inventions and your structures that the future has need of, cast into the rubbish heap by reckless violence and extravagance. What is useful must be conserved. What is useless for the future can be made over into something useful.

Humanity has not been in the habit of taking sudden jumps. It has put one foot regularly before the other, and gone ahead rather steadily. The way of man in the past has been to improve and make over, rather than suddenly to discard its institutions, or even its garments. Only that which is really worn out is cast away. And our financial system, and our social system in general, will be improved and not discarded. Did you think we were going back to wampum? Oh, no!
There is a strong pull from this side, and from those who inhabited your continent, to simplify the life in America. But America is no longer isolate. She has now taken her place in the republic of nations.

Some of the souls who used to be American Indians would like to see America resume wigwams and campfires, because those souls want to come back, and they dread the complexity of modern American life. But there are teachers here—and some of them red teachers—who can instruct the souls behindhand in adaptability.
I have told you that there is an influence tending to draw America backward. But I have not told you to be panicky regarding the fact. There are reactionaries—even in your world.
The influence from this side is subtle. But the majority here who desire to lead the world, desire to lead it forward and not back. The world will go forward.

Yes, the souls you call the “departed” are organizing themselves. They realize that their influence can be more effective if it has a purpose and a program. For a time after the war began there was great confusion out here, but things are becoming more orderly. Minds are becoming more united. Many of us who have common sense and some measure of political judgment give most of our time to lecturing here and there, wherever we can draw a crowd together. That is one reason why you have seen me so seldom of late. I have been busier than ever before. Knowing that a time is coming soon when I can rest from my present labors, I am using my strength as fast as I generate it. For those whom I convince that America and other countries are going forward—must go forward to greater activity—seek to convince others in their turn. No lecturer on earth ever had so busy a month as I have had this last month. I have spoken to hundreds several times every day, going from place to place, from State to State, from city to city. I can speak in San Francisco in the morning, in New York at noon, in New Orleans at two o’clock, in Butte, Montana, in the evening. I am not limited to railway timetables, nor do I pay my fare.

Believe me, we are going to save America, and we are going to save the world. For the Masters are behind us, and they will not let the world be destroyed.
I should not like you to know how near it has been to destruction more than once during the last three years. But the forces of premeditated evil against which we fought so long have been scattered now, and though they have not been destroyed, their effect has been greatly lessened. What we have reason to fear now is the unwisdom of those who believe they wish good to the world—the unwisdom of fanatics and agitators and fuss-budgets of all sorts, stirring up confusion and darkening counsel with their unpractical and conflicting ideas.

Order, order, order! That is what the world must strive for in the period of reaction which will follow this war. The reaction must be reckoned with; but it will be only a brief rest of overwearied hearts, who will again begin building.
It is in that building period that I hope for America, because she will be less tired than the other members of the great world brotherhood. But in America at that time there will be a danger. I tell you that, lest you be taken unawares and relax your attention.
Be watchful, but not over-anxious.
And trust the Masters of Life somehow to lead you through.


LETTER XIX

THE FEDERATION OF NATIONS
August 9, 1917.

The time has come now for America to get out into the world and take her place in the federation of nations. Let her unite with England in a strong bond, and thereby she can keep the peace of the world.
The isolation of America in the past has been in line with her destiny; it was necessary for her to develop to her present state of power without interruptions, or the influence of international complications upon her statesmen. Free and alone, she has not had to become a part of