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EXTERNAL INFLUENCE ON THE HUMAN BEING 253
so there scem to be recurrences of certain types of character, and duplicates of certain facial lineaments.
Causes of all occurrences in the organic and inorganic life are present in the material and the soul-world. The prophets and seers have the power to actually see these causes and know their effects. The Chaldean soothsayers perceived the destinies of nations in the smoking ashes of the burnt offering ; the Roman augurs interpreted the issues of life and death from the flight of birds ; Persian Magi read the words of fate inscribed on the starry pages of the skies ; Hebrew Priests discovered mystic meanings in the glittering lustre of Urim and Thummin ; they were all natural: philosophers and had studied the occult side of nature with as much understanding and perhaps more devotion than the nineteenth century scientists accord to the mastery of the known and the visible.
For thousands, perhaps for tens of thousands of years, it was the office of the best and wisest men of every succeeding generation, to devote a lifetime to the study of nature and that in her profoundest depths and through all the mazes and windings of her supernatural relations with the visible and invisible spheres of being around her. Ever let it be remembered too, that the ancient philosopher brought to this sublime study a body as thoroughly prepared as a mind ; a physique fitted by temperance, chastity and purity to allow full sway to the mind which inhabited it, and is so often cramped by inharmonious physical states.
When we come to lay down the conditions under
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