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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
regression of life. Let us emphasise our point by an illustration. When a musician produces a melody, on a musical instrument, by the ear, his fingers run over the keys automatically, leaving his mind free to enjoy the music. But the moment a false note is struck, his attention is roused from its' unconscious' attitude, and becomes engaged in discovering the nature and cause of the mishap. He then spreads out the notes side by side in imagination, and singles out the one which was out of place. This is what is known to everybody, but what is not known is the nature of the process which takes place within the mind itself. The rapt attention, with which our musician was executing and enjoying the melody, was not the same attitude which sees the notes and rests, put alongside of one another, as in the written scroll. There were no notes and no rests for the musician at the time; and his whole mind was gathered up, as it were, in the melody itself. It was a higher rhythm which the soul was beating time to, and in which the entire tune was present to the mind as a single sensation or feeling. In that attitude the soul lived the melody rather than knew its composition. Each note was then felt to be a part of the whole, and pointed to the whole of what had preceded and the whole of what was to follow, in one and the same instant. The discriminative consciousness, which cuts up the melody into separate notes and pauses, had vacated its throne, and lay folded up, as it were, in the intensity of the higher rhythm of life. When the accident occurred, the rhythm of the soul was thrown out of harmony with tbe rhythm of the melody, and will,
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