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CHAPTER XXIII
THOUGHT
Thought is creative. Just as eternal thought is projected ceaselessly in space, and creates beings and
worlds, so the thought of the writer, orator, poet, and artists sends forth continual floods of ideas, works, and
conceptions, which will influence and impress for good or bad, immense human crowds.
The mission of the workers in the domain of thought is at once great, formidable, and sacred. It is
great and sacred because thought dissipates the shadows on the path, solves the enigmas of life, and traces the
route of humanity. It is the flame which warms souls and illumines the deserts of existence: formidable also,
because its efforts are powerful for descent as well as for ascension. Sooner or later, every product of the mind
returns to its author with all its consequences, bringing in its train either suffering and a diminution of liberty,
or inner satisfaction and elevation of the being. The present life is but a mere episode in our long history, a
fragment of a long chain winding through immensity. Constantly falling on us, in fogs or sunshine, are the
results of our works.
The human soul pursues its way, surrounded with an atmosphere radiant or somber, and peopled with
creations of its thoughts. There in the life of space lies its glory or its shame.
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To give thought all its force and its amplitude nothing is more efficacious than the study of great
problems. To express freely we must first feel powerfully – to enjoy the high and profound sensations, we
must go to the source from which flows all life, harmony, and beauty. All that is noble and elevating in the
domain of intellect emanates from the one eternal source of living thought. The higher is the flight of the mind
toward this great cause, the more radiant will be the light it sees, the more intoxicating the joys it feels, the
more powerful the forces it will acquire. After each flight the thought redescends vivified, clarified, to the
earthly fields to resume the tasks through which it will find greater growth, for it is labor which makes the
beauty and splendor of an accomplished work. Lift up your eyes, O thinker – O poet! Send up your appeal of
aspiration and prayer! Before the changing reflections of the sea, at the sight of white mountain summits, or
the infinite stars, have you not felt hours of intoxicating ecstasy? When the soul was plunged in a divine
dream, and when inspiration came like a messenger from Heaven, have you not heard in the depths of your
soul the vibration of murmurs from invisible worlds preparing your thought for supreme intuitions? In each
poet, artist, or writer lies the germs of the mediumistic power, unsuspected and undeveloped, waiting to
blossom. By them the worker becomes through his thought en rapport with the inexhaustible source from
which he receives his part of the revelation. This revelation, appropriate to the order of his talent, he has for his
mission – to express to the world through his works radiations of divine truths. It will be in the frequent and
conscious communion with the world of spirits that the geniuses of the future will obtain the elements for their
work. From now, the penetration into the secrets of this double life is going to offer man assistance and light
which the failing religions are no longer able to procure for him. In all domains this spiritual idea is going to
fertilize thought and work. Science will owe it the discovery of incalculable forces and the conquest of an
occult universe. It will owe to it a complete renovation of its theories and its methods. Philosophy will gain
from it a more extended and more exact knowledge of human personality. The religions of the future will find
in spiritual research the proofs of the survival of the soul and the rules of life in the Beyond, at the same time
with the principle of close union toward the common Father.
Art under all forms will discover in it inexhaustible sources of inspiration and emotion. The man of the
people, in his hours of lassitude, will find moral courage in it, and he will comprehend that the soul can grow
by humble labor as well as by loftier tasks, and that no duty is negligible – that envy is sister to hate – and that
often one is less happy in luxury than in mediocrity. In it the skeptic will find faith, the discouraged hope and
virile resolutions; all those who suffer, the profound idea that a law of justice presides over all things: that
there is not in any domain effect without a cause, no victory without combat – no triumph without hard efforts,
and that above all reigns perfect and majestic law, and that no soul is abandoned by God, of whom it is a part.
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