Lesson One: Recapitulation

The evolution of man brings him automatically to a time when real individuality is produced. From that day any further evolution must be through his conscious coöperation with Life. All nature waits on man's self-recognition and is always ready to obey his will; but he must use nature's forces in accordance with her laws.

Science is the knowledge of certain facts built around some known principle of being. Man never creates; he discovers and uses. In this way all sciences are evolved. We live in a Universe of Law through which runs an element of Self-Knowing Intelligence. "All's Love, yet all's Law."

The Law has done all that it can do for man automatically. It has brought him to the point of individuality, and must now let him alone to make this discovery for himself. Man is potentially perfect, but free will and self-choice cause him to appear imperfect. In reality, all that he can destroy is the embodiment of himself, for the Divine Spark is always intact in Instinctive Man.

Man awakes to self-consciousness, finding himself already equipped with a mentality, a body and an environment. Gradually he discovers one law of nature after another until he conquers his environment through his acquisition of natural forces. Everywhere he finds that nature does his bidding, in so far as he understands her laws and uses them along the lines of their inherent being; for he must first obey nature, then she will obey him.

Man discovers his ability to think, and begins to realize that from within comes a reaction to his thought. He comes to realize that he is threefold in his nature; that he can consciously think; that he has within a mentality which acts upon his thoughts; and that he has a body which is affected by his thinking.

He next discovers that he can think for others, causing a corresponding action in and through their bodies. In this way