country or from death itself, and in a moment he is no longer the gardener, his business is at an end, he has no more duty of that kind at all.  Then his favorite plants suffer and die, and the delicate ones become one with the earth.  But soon fierce Nature claims the place for her own, and covers it with thick grass or giant weeds, or nurses some sapling in it till its branches shade the ground.  Be warned, and tend your garden to the utmost, till you can pass away utterly and let it return to Nature and become the wind-blown plain where the wild-flowers grow.  Then, if you pass that way and look at it, whatever has happened will neither grieve nor elate you.  For you will be able to say, “I am the rocky ground, I am the great tree, I am the strong daisies,” indifferent which it is that flourishes where once your rose-trees grew.  But you must have learned to study the stars to some purpose before you dare to neglect your roses, and omit to fill the air with their cultivated fragrance.  You must know your way through the trackless air, and from thence to the pure ether; you must be ready to lift the bar of the Golden Gate.

Cultivate, I say, and neglect nothing.  Only remember, all the while you tend and water, that you are impudently usurping the tasks of Nature herself.  Having usurped her work, you must carry it through until you have reached a point when she has no power to punish you, when you are not afraid of her, but can with a bold front return her her own.  She laughs in her sleeve, the mighty mother, watching you with covert, laughing eye, ready relentlessly to cast the whole of your work into the dust if you do but give her the chance, if you turn idler and grow careless.  The idler is father of the madman in the sense that the child is the father of the.man.  Nature has put her vast hand on him and crushed the whole edifice.  The gardener and his rose-trees are alike broken and stricken by the great storm which her movement has created; they lie helpless till the sand is swept over them and they are buried in a weary wilderness.  From this desert spot Nature herself will re-create, and will use the ashes of the man who dared to face her as indifferently as the withered leaves of his plants.  His body, soul, and spirit are all alike claimed by her.

III

The man who is strong, who has resolved to find the unknown path, takes with the utmost care every step.  He utters no idle word, he does no unconsidered action, he neglects no duty or office however homely or however difficult.  But while his eyes and hands and feet are thus fulfilling their tasks, new eyes and hands and feet are being born within him.  For his passionate and unceasing desire is to go that way on which the subtile organs only can guide him.  The physical world he has learned, and knows how to use; gradually his power is passing on, and he recognises the psychic world.  But he has to learn this world and know