The problem has not been approached from the point of view of any private doctrine or creed, but from a mathematical, an engineering, point of view, which is impersonal and passionless. It is obvious that to be able to speak about the great affairs of Man, his spiritual, moral, physical, economic, social or political status, it must first be ascertained what Man is—what is his real nature and what are the basic laws of his nature. If we succeed in finding the laws of human nature, all the rest will be a comparatively easy task—the ethical, social, economic and political status of Man should be in accord with the laws of his nature; then civilization will be a human civilization—a permanent and peaceful one—not before.
It is useless to argue if electricity be “natural” or “_super_natural,” of “material” or of “spiritual” origin. As a matter of fact we do not ask these questions in studying electricity; we endeavor to find out the natural laws governing it and in handling live wires we do not argue or speculate about them—we use rubber gloves, etc. It will be the same with Man and the great affairs of Man—we have, first of all, to know what Man is.
Though this book has been written with scrupulous care to avoid words or terms of vague meaning—and though it often may seem coldly critical of things metaphysical, it has not been written with indifference to that great, perhaps the greatest, urge of the human heart—the craving for spiritual truth—our yearning for the higher potentialities of that which we call “mind,” “soul” and “spirit”—but it has been written with the deep desire to find the source of these qualities, their scientific significance and a scientific proof of them, so that they may be approached and studied by the best minds of the world without the digressions, and misinterpretations that are caused by the color and the confusion of personal emotions; and if the book be read with care, it will be seen that, though the clarifying definition of the classes of life has been chiefly used in the book for its great carrying power in the _practical_ world, its greatest help will ultimately be in guiding the investigation, the right valuation and especially the control and use of the higher human powers.
