Most people know so little because they think so much.

   They study science instead of learning from Omni-science.

   The chief object of a college curriculum seems to be so to block the "threshold of consciousness" that the soul cannot pass in and out freely. Yet the sill itself is left unplaned and the door unhinged--I suppose they think the fact that we get what we don't need is offset by the more glaring fact that we need what we don't get.

   The lessons that last longest are the ones that impress themselves silently, carrying with them no conscious memories. We remember best what we never need recall.

   The only infallible memory is the memory of Instinct--the only infallible judgment is the judgment of Instinct. What we have felt we remember by instinct--merely what we have thought must we recollect by reason. And, as you may have gathered already, I am assured that feeling is a much finer, truer, purer, surer, higher mode of perception than thought. Life is measured least by what we have done, more by what we have thought, more yet by what we have loved, most of all by what we have felt. Love feels--and knows. Law reasons--and is forever doubting, quibbling, denying.

   Go to some meeting where reason runs riot--say the Manhattan Liberal Club, of New York City. What do you hear? A jargon of profitless sound; a clashing of brains on edge; a pitting of wild hypothesis against savage denunciation; a fusillade of facts athwart a blank wall of doubt; a charge of mental musketry; a sight of bleeding souls and an echo of their moaning;-- then out again into the night. But the gloom you have left is darker than the night--nor dawns yet the day in the distance.

   What a contrast when you and your sweetheart meet at the spot of your first trysting-place! How the very path is hallowed that you trod together. How the tree where you leaned stands straighten How the moss is softer for the memory of her touch.

   How the brook sings more joyously since it filled the cup that you and she first shared;--you know that was the day you discovered your sweetheart must always take a sip before you drank. Since the dew of her lips would purify and sweeten the flow from Arcadia's crystal fount.

   If we only loved enough, the vividness of Love's remembrance would halo all the world! Then should we see with the eye of the Creator.

   The average human is a nondescript creature, combining the dim memory of an animal with the dimmer prophecy of a god. At present he is neither animal, man nor god. He has lost his animal-instinct, he has not attained his god-consciousness, he is just in the process of developing his man-reason. So we observe him bumping about into all sorts of obstacles--including his neighbors--with the deftness of a June-bug and the farsightedness of a bat. He doesn't know he's a hybrid. But that's what's the matter. And he won't be acquainted with himself till he succeeds in tracing his ancestral lines more accurately.

   Most of us witness in our own person a life-long struggle, between reason and instinct. But there should be no conflict-- there is none between my instinct and my reason. Only between my instinct and the world's reason. And if I would but stop the world's mouth or my own ears long enough to hear myself, I should find how perfectly my instinct and my reason work together.

   To put it succinctly; for the journey of Life, we may say that Reason draws the map, makes the time-table, and runs the train; while Instinct points the direction, fixes the destination, sets the clock and prepares the lunch. Now there are rival roads in the realm of Reason--scores of them. And the trouble with us is we are forever asking the ticket-agent where we want to go. He doesn't know--hasn't the least idea. But naturally he sells us a ticket to the end of his line--that's his business. Then we discover that wasn't the place after all. So we come back and make another foolish try.

   Here is the rule reconciling Reason and Instinct.

   Ask Instinct what to do--ask Reason how to do it. That is, Reason may direct but not dictate, may suggest but not sanction. In any case, however, of apparent conflict, trust Instinct rather than Reason. Spirit speaks to soul through Instinct, soul speaks to body through Impulse, body answers and obeys through Action. Reason, on the other hand, is simply the cry of the world --a voice from without, estranged from both Impulse and Action.

   Instinct is the register of pre-incarnate experience--Reason is the shuttle of current experiment. That is, what we get rationally in this life we get instinctively or intuitively in the next. Instinct therefore may be assumed as much finer than Reason as a resurrected soul is assumed finer than a mortal of clay.

   Reason is higher than Instinct only in the sense of being supplementary to it. Instinct must be the foundation of a sane life, as in animals so in men; Reason but adds another story or two to your structure. In realty, the "lower animals" are far more exemplary than the human race. Animals are absolutely true to themselves, in so far as they know; whereas men wittingly misuse and blaspheme body, mind and soul. Perfect fidelity to self is a finer, deeper, subtler thing than the average man ever dreamed of. A little illustration--very homely, but very apt.

   I was recently obliged, out of courtesy, to dine at a large table where a score of people ate together. There were four kinds of acid food for a single meal--cottage cheese, grape jelly, oranges and cherries. I instinctively took the cheese and the jelly, refusing the fresh fruits. Most of the guests refused not one of the acids. After dinner, I happened to recall the four varieties of acid, and to reflect that the two I combined from desire alone were the only two that should combine for digestibility alone. Which means I have come so close to my soul that I cannot mistake its faintest whisper; nor need I empanel the brain to interpret.

   Impulses are the sinews of the soul. How can sinews strengthen without exercise? Many a beautiful soul has been palsied with fearing to act on its impulses. Fearing lest the world call it emotional, sentimental, or sinful. Instinct and feel ing are as inseparable as soul and body. But we have dwelt in our brains so long as to forget the oneness of soul and body. Instinct therefore is condemned as bestial, and feeling is ridiculed as irrational. Purblind humans! Too sickly to be animals-- and too sanctimonious to be gods!

   A recent illustration of the obtuseness of mentality;--in connection with Oscar Wilde's book "De Profundis." Never have I heard so sincere a cry from a soul in the depths of anguished feeling. Yet his own publishers in announcing the book, laid stress on what they termed "the peculiarly artificial nature" of the author. Truly our friends are our worst enemies. There is some hope when our foes misunderstand us; but not when our friends do--for they think they know us. To the few that understand, I am more than undescribable. I Am Nameless. Just an All-embracing Consciousness wherein they rest and fall asleep.

   Impulses grow best in Dreamland. And that's where children live. Aren't you sorry you moved away?

   Do you enjoy your pile of wood or stone as once you did your air-castle? Are you altogether at home--within four walls and a roof? Is there no part of you that mounts beyond the cupola, fleeing earth-constraint?

   Most of the troubles that haunt men are ghosts of truths lost from childhood.

   The purpose of our teaching children is that they may teach us without our knowing it. It is the mother who will not learn of her child that punishes him--for her own delinquency.

   The crucial test of wisdom is the renunciation of knowledge. Not even a sage can stand this test--it takes a seer. No wonder a poor little mother is heavily weighed with foolish fears, superfluous advice, deadly warnings, and dismal precedents;--when the wisest of men dare not trust their own souls. And the babe has to suffer. How many things a child instinctively rebels at--things the mother thinks she knows but the child knows she doesn't know. Forced feeding; close confinement; bed-pins; safety-pins and responsibility-pins; bitter medicine; scratchy flannels; shoes and stockings ; tight underwear and stiff outerwear; book-learning; church attendance; perfunctory prayer; social distinctions; hereditary vocation; regular duties; mute obedience; catering to authority ; any sort of ology or ism; in short the fetters, the blinders, the threateners of the race, all of which take shape when we know too much and feel too little.

   How anomalous to call a man a "grown-up"--him but a remnant of the largeness of childhood. The time will come when education will run like this:--INSTINCT FIRST, INSPIRATION SECOND, Instruction third. Since the body is most vital, soul next, brain least.

   Let me quote right here extracts from a recent utterance of Professor Edgar L. Larkin, whose reputation as a pure scientist can but echo my consciousness as a pure mystic. "Three-fourths of the entire literature of the world is now obsolete. The discoveries being made hourly must have world-wide effect soon. Many of our habits and customs must be greatly modified, and others wiped out. The future school will be so unlike those we now have that one can scarcely realize the transformation. The sensitive mind of a poet can be ruined by three or four years of forced drill in geometry and analytics. And no teacher will be allowed, under heavy penalty, to attempt to teach any child or youth until its mind is examined by expert mentalists."

   All of which tends toward the position outlined in this book.

   To be called childlike is the greatest compliment payable to any man. It means he is simple, natural, sincere, spontaneous, cheerful, charitable, sympathetic, trustful, loving, idealistic. And instinctive.

   Therefore is the promise of childlikeness by no means the least conferment tendered by the Conquest Fast.

   Let me cite a few details.

   1. The Conquest Fast severs false relationships. Either the thralldom of things or the pinch of personality prevents our living naturally. But how can we see the yoke we bear while still we bear it? There are just two ways to treat an uncongenial atmosphere; change it or leave it. To change it means usually to match one against the multitude--a terrific strain and useless waste of energy. By lifting us bodily from our environ of doubt and hesitancy, the Conquest Fast puts us where we can create our own atmosphere by the natural outworkings of instinct.

   2. The Conquest Fast reveals the insignificance of the brain. And this we must sense very strongly before we dare trust to our souls. We might liken the brain to a telegraphic instrument, and the soul to a Marconi transmitter. One needs a network of mental machinery--the other a single flash of sunlight. We shall probably never be able to dispense wholly with telegraph instruments. But nothing save the wireless can reach the ships at sea.

   Many a barque that has set sail on the sea of Truth drifts today void of destination. Reach it with your brain you cannot-- illumine it with your soul you may.

   Before you light a lamp, you turn the wick low. Before God lights a soul is the soul prepared for the dim glow of instinct. A turn higher, as the flame brightens, and we have intuition. The next is inspiration. And at last, with the full brilliance of the soul's luminosity, shines the splendid beacon of revelation.

   3. The Conquest Past refines the reasoning faculties. A mystic needs reason as much as a materialist needs soul. And the Naturist often needs both. To attune your perceptions without developing your faculties is to put a gag between your lips and then ask you to read to us. It is not natural for a human being to live forever in the backwoods. He must mingle with men, must feel the spur of business activity, must whet his wits on financial problems, must learn to decide quickly, act firmly, and plan persistently.

   Feeling must be furthered by thought. Deep emotional natures are often repressed, or expressed wrongly, through lack of reasoning power. Adolph Just, for instance, in his wonderfully helpful book "Return to Nature," loses through lack of logic much of the ground gained through the leading of instinct. His message is true in the main--but often it fails to convince, because it is not cogent.

   Now the Conquest Fast by the same process of clarification first frees the soul, then quickens the brain to fulfil the soul's behest. It should raise you to the acme of all your powers--or at least show you how to get there.

   4. The Conquest Fast perpetuates the joy of living. I'm getting tired of being solemn--there's been a smile asking to come 1 out for ever so long. When I go to "Advanced Thought" meetings--or used to, I know better now--I would feel myself freezing stiff from outside in. It's just as cold as the clouds as in the cellar. And when you have to be loving, you can't philosophize very long at a time.

   If we aren't happy, we aren't whole. And to have the secret of wholeness is to have the secret of happiness. Whenever a doubt crosses my vision, or a chill threatens my heart, or the slightest discomfort irritates my body, I know at once where the stress of externals has closed in on my soul. I have repressed natural instinct and yielded before unnatural intellect; I have let the braggadocio of brute mentality parry the thrill of gentle Deity; I have somehow been less than myself. To regain my diminished stature and exult again in my suspended happiness, I have but to loosen the cumbrance with a mighty pulse of truer purpose. Then the next time be utterly myself. Whence this soul-certainty? From the Conquest Fast.

   The bird was born to sing and to soar. Just this the bird does --and is happy.

   The flower was born to be sweet and be beautiful. Just this the flower is--and has happiness to share.

   What I was born to do and to be, only that in its fulness suffices. Always happy I if I measure up to myself. Let us smile.