childhood about guardian angels who always hovered over their charges may have had its influence in determining this.  However that may be, the earnest wish undoubtedly clothed itself in this graceful and expressive outline, while the affection that prompted it gave to it its lovely rose-colour, and the intellect which guided it shone forth like sunlight as its heart and central support.  Thus in sober truth we may make veritable guardian angels to hover over and protect those whom we love, and many an unselfish earnest wish for good produces such a form as this, though all unknown to its creator.

[Illustration:  FIG. 12.  PEACE AND PROTECTION]

Grasping Animal Affection.—­Fig. 13 gives us an instance of grasping animal affection—­if indeed such a feeling as this be deemed worthy of the august name of affection at all.  Several colours bear their share in the production of its dull unpleasing hue, tinged as it is with the lurid gleam of sensuality, as well as deadened with the heavy tint indicative of selfishness.  Especially characteristic is its form, for those curving hooks are never seen except when there exists a strong craving for personal possession.  It is regrettably evident that the fabricator of this thought-form had no conception of the self-sacrificing love which pours itself out in joyous service, never once thinking of result or return; his thought has been, not “How much can I give?” but “How much can I gain?” and so it has expressed itself in these re-entering curves.  It has not even ventured to throw itself boldly outward, as do other thoughts, but projects half-heartedly from the astral body, which must be supposed to be on the left of the picture.  A sad travesty of the divine quality love; yet even this is a stage in evolution, and distinctly an improvement upon earlier stages, as will presently be seen.

[Illustration:  FIG. 13.  GRASPING ANIMAL AFFECTION]

DEVOTION

Vague Religious Feeling.—­Fig. 14 shows us another shapeless rolling cloud, but this time it is blue instead of crimson.  It betokens that vaguely pleasurable religious feeling—­a sensation of devoutness rather than of devotion—­which is so common among those in whom piety is more developed than intellect.  In many a church one may see a great cloud of deep dull blue floating over the heads of the congregation—­indefinite in outline, because of the indistinct nature of the thoughts and feelings which cause it; flecked too often with brown and grey, because ignorant devotion absorbs with deplorable facility the dismal tincture of selfishness or fear; but none the less adumbrating a mighty potentiality of the future, manifesting to our eyes the first faint flutter of one at least of the twin wings of devotion and wisdom, by the use of which the soul flies upward to God from whom it came.

[Illustration:  FIG. 14.  VAGUE RELIGIOUS FEELING]