"Natural Law in the Spiritual World"--I knew Professor Drummond later, when he came to stay with us, and also when he lectured to the students at Edinburgh on Sunday nights, coming from his Glasgow Chair for the purpose: I can still see his large, glowing, far-seeing eyes--Cahagnet's "Arcanes de la Vie Future"; and "Animal Magnetism," by Binet and Féré. The experiments of Braid, and Dr. Esdaille in India, had also come my way.
Such one-sided reading, of course, fed the growing sense of wonder, naturally strong in any case; Shelley coloured it; and nothing offered itself at the time to curb, shape or qualify it. Spiritualism, apart from the exciting phenomena it promised with such confident volubility, left me rather unstirred, but theosophy, of course, I swallowed whole, with its Mahatmas, development of latent powers, memory of past lives, astral consciousness, and description of other beings both superior and inferior to man. It was some years before scientific reading came to check and guide a too exuberant imagination; but, even so I have always taken ideas where I found them, regardless of their propounders; if Tibet and its shining Mahatmas faded, the theories of Karma and reincarnation were older than any modern movement, and the belief in extension of consciousness to some nth degree, with its correlative of greater powers and new faculties, have not only remained with me, but have justified themselves. The "Gita," too, remains the profoundest world-scripture I have ever read.
An immediate, happy result of this odd reading, at any rate, I recall with pleasure: my father's Christianity became splendid in my eyes. I realized, even then, that it satisfied his particular and individual vision of truth, while the fact that he lived up to his beliefs nobly and consistently woke a new respect and admiration in me....
By far the strongest influence in my life, however, was Nature; it betrayed itself early, growing in intensity with every year. Bringing comfort, companionship, inspiration,
joy, the spell of Nature has remained dominant,
