ture, both for the utterance of tones, and for the production of the emotions which they represent.

The transmitted emotional capacity, and the transmitted vocal structure, are inter-active and retro-active. The increased emotional capacity will tend to call out more than the fullest powers of the vocal structure.

The tones producible by the vocal structure will arouse emotions more intense and varied than could spring up in the mind of the animal unaided by the tones of its own voice. There results a rapid development of structural and emotional capacity. There can exist in the voice no tones not born of previous emotional experiences; and the voice is clearly indicative, by its tone-qualities, of the nature of these emotional experiences. NYAIKA'S 95TH LAW OF SOUND.

"All the physical, mental, and emotional (moral) characteristics of people are typified and expressed by the dominant harmonics of the tones of their voices, and their relative variations as described in the 92nd, 93rd, and 94th Laws."

NYAIKA'S 96TH LAW OF SOUND.

“All vocal and instrumental tones produce (especially by frequent repetition) structural changes within the organisms of persons hearing them; and these structural changes are the incarnation of the emotions and ideas produced by the tones."

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS.

Meditate upon this, and, above all, make yourself acquainted with the underlying facts. These phenomena, rightly understood, are the keys to many of the mysteries of the mind and soul, and will enable us to understand many things about ourselves which hitherto have been inexplicable. In the light of these laws, it becomes evident that there is more magic in the tones of the human voice, more potency for good in the cadences of the wise and the pure,―than in all the talismanic and ceremonial mysteries of antiquity. Tones not only convey words fraught with definite meanings appealing to the understanding, but they conceal within themselves a magic charm capable of producing in the hearer an emotional state which may, or may not, add to the meaning of the words.

It

may

be an emotional enthusiasm and zeal, carrying persuasive power to the heart: it may be one of distrust and disdain, born of the speaker's own insincerity.

Tones not only recall the emotions which we have once experienced during this remembered earth-life, but the emotions of other lives, and experiences in times and places of which this earth gives us no similitude.

Not only can tones recall these emotions, but they do that which is of extreme importance from a practical stand-point, namely; they refine and purify them each time they are reproduced. We not only recall the emotion, divested of the more unpleasant features with which it was once associated, but, in recalling it, we re-excite the structural change it produced, and, under the more harmonious and elevating tendencies of the present, we rebuild and recast the emotional record, and its incarnated structure. It is the heavenly part of the experience perpetuated, and the earthly part eradicated. - the soul freed from the body. It was Schiller, I believe, who maintained that the world would be regenerated through the influence of the beautiful, and it is certain that beauty is one of the most important factors of development; but it is not the beauti

ful and pleasurable in music merely to which we are now calling the Reader's attention

In a certain sense it is true that "Nothing is good or evil, but thinking makes it so;" and to re-think and re-feel the experiences and emotions of by-gone days in the light of new associations, and under the ennobling effect of related symmetry and aspiration, is to re-create our acquired experiences, to reconstruct from better material, the palace in which our soul resides. The practical application of these laws to this purpose demands considerable experience, both in the manipulation of the tones, and in the regulation of the order in which they are presented.

It has been said that "Man is what he has thought and felt." If there are important things about which he has not thought, and important emotions which he has not experienced, the development will not be harmonious. In the reproduction of these feelings and emotions by the power of tones, we are liable to exaggerate dominant personal qualities by dwelling upon those tones producing the most vivid effects.

It has always been customary, where these things are practised, to systematically reproduce each of the twelve emotional classes in order, dwelling the same length of time upon each, and in the case of those who have already an over-development of any one emotional tendency, to prevent, by artificial means, (closing the ears for instance) — their hearing the corresponding tones.

When the emotional development has become harmonious, the attention must be directed entirely to the production of the mental states. This must always be done after subsidence of the physiological action following the emotional tumult.

During the time these tones recall to us the beautiful in our past lives, and while we are actuated by the consequent emotional effect, there is going on a physiological action consisting of a modified circulation, temperature, lymphatic action, and nervous excitation. The nervous prelimination is most active in those portions of the body modifiable by the operative emotions. It is a peculiar condition both of body and mind. While under the spell of tones, every function is harmonized and accelerated which is needful to the production of the emotion; the hearts diastole and systole, and other involuntary vermicular and peristaltic motions assume a different rhythm, and a state of complete quiescence invades inactive organs. Evil and impure thoughts and feelings find no welcome harbor. We open up to higher sentiments and aspirations, as naturally as the flower opens to the light, and are unwilling even to recall from our past whatever may have been ignoble, for the present is too sacred and holy.

Under the exhilaration of the moment, mind-images assume a vividness at other times unknown, and we graft upon the contented pleasures of the present the insatiable longings and aspirations for a higher life.

The condition, Sammadhi, and the state, Sambudhism, are frequently produced while listening to the variations of the seventh dominant harmonic. That which you mistake for meditation, in which you seem to get a retrospect of yourself in your own time and place, is but the initial step into the state of Sambudhism, giving you communion with all other minds and the reverie which seems to deal with unbridled fancy and to roam through untrodden realms within your own mind, may be the beginning of Illumination. New purposes and new philosophies have had their birth during just such moments of concentrative, thoughtful worship, as are produced by

;

the dying away echoes of a harp or wire. Emotions are often the first impulses to higher effort. If the effort be noble, these emotions must be dominated by love. The object of the effort must be an object of worship. Those who have never truly loved can never truly worship; and those who cannot worship are incapable of grand effort. Those incapable of effort are destitute of love-dominated emotions. The sorrowful and pathetic sublimity necessarily connected, as if it were the background to a picture, with all deep and mighty ideas of devoton, is the cloud veiling the too fierce sunlight, and preventing it from scorching immature growths. Sorrow has its lesson for us, and the pathetic in tone often gives us the Ariadne's clew to higher life and thought, without afflicting us with the physical misery which would be necessary for the production of such a sorrow. Within the human heart the fountains of the great deep must be broken up, before the windows of heaven can be opened to the hungry soul. It is indeed a magic and a potent spell which enables a man, by a few simple tones, to take entire possession of the body, mind, and heart of a hearer, and to expel, as with an infallible charm, all thoughts of evil and of care.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

A PRAYER FOR KNOWLEDGE.

BY MELVIN L. SEVERY.

INVOCATION.

(CONTINUED FROM MAY NUMBER.)

OH! free us from the canker of those creeds
Whose tenets, wordily sophistical,

Are but occulted engines subtly framed
To quake the nobler tenor of the mind,
And make religion cowardice, but worms
Envenoméd with fear, green, slimy things,
That gnaw their fulsome way within the soul
Of man, its stubborn essence draining off
Through fright-empurpled and most tremulous lips
Shaming his dignity as one

Of God created. · O let such not be !

Must we forever crawl like scourgéd beasts
In doubtful terror lest Thou, Father, shouldst
Esteem us in revolt against Thy high
Estate? and must we, then, so carefully lop
The aspiring tendrils of our minds, lest some
More sapful shoot of greenest thought, made strong
With the great pulse of verdant blood within
Its veins, doth overreach the narrow rule,
And trellis to some truth outside the trend
And scope of written creed? Is truth less true
For that? Or is Thy Gospel all that is,
And Nature but the open book which we
Must read, the grammar elementary
Of Thy beneficence, uncircumscribed
And fathomless,

which Thou hast spread before

Thy children, pending its mysterious
And painful conquest, ere thou chargest us
With those far higher, grander lessons, in
Whose mastery Thou own'st Thy seraphim?
Are we to blink all light which shineth not
Upon us through the stained minster glass
Of theologic dogma? Must we hold
Thee as revengful, passioned in those mean,
Those sorry frailties which all noble men
Abjure? May we not spew, as poison from
Our mouths, those bitter draughts sophistical
Which, to the taste of weakling minds, do make
Thee tyrant; and in the assured avouch
Of the more honeyed gust of reason born
Of love, find Thee our Father? Evil doth
Exist we know; and if in spite of Thee,
Then Thou art not omnipotent, and we
Are but rear vassals of a loving God
Enfettered to a fiend. But if Thou art
All-powerful, and yet all love, and still
Dost suffer wrong to lie, a canker in
The bud of every virtue, then one thing
Is e'en as plain as the Cyclop-eye of fire
Which ever from the forehead of high heaven
Gleams with its hot and luminous gaze down bent
Eternally upon us; and that thing

Without

Is this evil is but a part of that
God-given mantle of love which doth upon
The mortal heart so irksome set, because
Its ignorance hath donned it wrong side out.
Oh surely Thou art not, or else all love
Thou art; and in that love we live.
This firm belief, more lonely far than e'en
A single swan upon a stagnant pool,
Man, guided by the eye of blindest hope,
Drifts to the sightless, nethermost abyss
Of cavernous despair. "Love is the life

Of man;" so saith the Swedish Seer, whose soul,—
A heaven in miniature, so closely lain

To Nature's heart did catch the breathing of
Its counterpart Elysian. Saith La Salle,
"Love is an egotism of two;" but this
Some earthly passion is, not love; for love
Is the soul's converse with its God, and flesh
To let that holiest of communions hath
No right. What was it, if not love divine,
That filled that mighty, ever-flaming lamp
Round which the seven-sistered Earth and her
Bright mates do flit like moths enamored of
Its sacred glare? What, if not love divine,
Doth pulse the blood within the arteries
Of Life? Oh! make our sky-aspiring souls,

No longer bound Prometheus-like to fear,
See that, in lacking love, the horror of
Sak Akbar's vision sure would find in life
Fulfillment. Hearken, ye grim doubters, to
The Hindu's tale, and in the answer made
To him end ye the dismal vigil of

A similar quest, and rest ye thus content.
(To be continued.)

IN THE ASTRAL.

BY MAURICE ST. CLAIRE.

CHAPTER III.

A Dream.

"THERE is but one way to account for this remarkable occurrence to which we have both been witnesses. The Captain has told me of several instances, which have come under his observation, where the soul has been projected to distant places, and has produced in the observer mental impressions so marked as to make him actually believe that the absent one had been seen. I think it all the result of the Captain's strong will and occult knowledge, whereby he has command over the secrets and resources of the elements, to an extent which enables him to appear to distant friends, and even converse with them, by the simple concentration of mind on mind." But," I replied, "the Captain told me of things, and spoke of people whom I have reason to believe he had never met. How could this be?" “Of whom did he speak?" asked Hodge. I hesitated, and my friend quietly went on; "He doubtless spoke of Miss Darcet. You remember my telling you to-day that I had been warned to avoid this lady; well, the warning came from Captain Faunce nearly a year ago, before I knew that such a lady existed. The Captain and myself were admiring a beautiful sunset from the summit of Mt. Washington. Suddenly he threw the cigar, which a moment before seemed to him a source of great enjoyment, far down the mountain side, and, with a touch of impatience in his voice, asked if I proposed forever to remain blind to a pretty girl's foibles, and, without giving me chance to reply went on, "Miss Darcet will hold you back; she will hinder every step of the progress which you would otherwise make in your desire for occult knowledge and development. Why cannot you see it, and thus make it unnecessary for me to interfere?" Upon two occasions since then, he has spoken to the same effect. You are the only person to whom I have told this. I have never spoken of it even to the Captain himself, for it has seemed to me that it was not he who spoke, but some one altogether different, and, for some reason which I myself cannot understand, I have not been able to broach the subject to him. I had some curiosity to know if Captain Faunce and Miss Darcet had ever met, and I accordingly pointed him out to her one day, and asked if she knew him, to which she promptly replied that she had never had that pleasure. I believe her, and think his knowledge was derived from some hidden source of which you and I are ignorant, and which he himself realizes only in the peculiar state in which we have seen him.”