Natural Law

Finally available, a high quality book of the original classic edition.

This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work, which is now, at last, again available to you.

Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside:

Soon after this Burdin, a member of the Academy, offered a prize of 3,000 francs to any one who would read the number of a bank-note or the like with his eyes bandaged (under certain fixed conditions), but it was never awarded, though many claimed it, and there has been considerable evidence that persons in the hypnotic state have (sometimes) remarkable clairvoyant powers.

...It may be stated that most English and American operators fail to see any distinction between magnetism and hypnotism, and suppose that the effect of passes, etc., as used by Mesmer, is in its way as much physical as the method of producing hypnotism by concentrating the gaze of the subject on a bright object, or the like.

...I hope to be able to prove, what I firmly hold, both from my own personal experience and experiment, as I have already related in the Nineteenth Century, that there is no such thing as a potent mesmeric influence, no such power resident in any one person more than another; that a glass of water, a tree, a stick, a penny-post letter, or a lime-light can mesmerize as effectually as can any individual.

...Luys, to the effect that the physical magnet and electricity may affect persons in the hypnotic state, and that certain drugs in sealed tubes placed upon the patients neck during the condition of hypnosis will produce the same effects which those drugs would produce if taken internally, or as the nature of the drugs would seem to call for if imbibed in a more complete fashion.

I was staying with a party of friends in a country house during my visit to England in 1884. On Sunday evening as we sat around the fire, they asked me to read and expound some portion of Scripture. Being tired after the services of the day, I told them to ask Henry Drummond, who was one of the party. After some urging he drew a small Testament from his hip pocket, opened it at the 13th chapter of I Corinthians, and began to speak on the subject of Love.
It seemed to me that I had never heard anything so beautiful, and I determined not to rest until I brought Henry Drummond to Northfield to deliver that address. Since then I have requested the principals of my schools to have it read before the students every year. The one great need in our Christian life is love, more love to God and to each other. Would that we could all move into that Love chapter, and live there.
This volume contains, in addition to the address on Love, some other addresses which I trust will bring help and blessing to many.

                                                                                                                                                                               Henry drummond

For a Christian, an understanding of spiritual maturity and its development in one’s life is, without a doubt, one of the most important elements of our faith. At the same time, it may be one of the most elusive. Here you will find a definition of spiritual maturity along with its parameters. Additionally, you will find the things you must work on in your life to develop that maturity.

Preface.
The following extracts from the Doctor's preface contain the substance of his plan in the three different parts into which the Hymns are divided; the whole would have exceeded the limits of a small book.
"Far be it from my thoughts to lay aside the Book of Psalms in public worship; few can pretend so great a value for them as myself: it is the most noble, most devotional and divine collection of poesy; and nothing can be supposed more proper to raise a pious soul to heaven than some parts of that book; never was a piece of experimental divinity so nobly written, and so justly reverenced and admired. But it must be acknowledged still, that there are a thousand lines in it which were not made for a church in our days to assume as its own. There are also many deficiencies of light and glory which our Lord Jesus and his apostles have supplied in the writings of the New Testament: and with this advantage I have composed these Spiritual Songs, which are now presented to the World. Nor is the attempt vainglorious or presuming; for in respect of clear evangelical knowledge, 'The least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than all the Jewish Prophets.' Matt. xi. 11.
"Now let me give a short account of the following composures.
"The greatest part of them are suited to the general state of the gospel, and the most common affairs of Christians: I hope there will be very few found but what may properly be used in a religious assembly, and not one of them but may well be adapted to some seasons either of private or public worship. The most frequent tempers and changes of our spirit, and conditions of our life, are here copied, and the breathings of our piety expressed according to the variety of our passions, our love, our fear, our hope, our desire, our sorrow, our wonder and our joy, as they are refined into devotion, and act under the influence and conduct of the blessed Spirit; all conversing with God the Father 'by the new and living Way' of access to the throne, even the person and the mediation of our Lord Jesus Christ. To him also, even 'to the Lamb that was slain and now lives,' I have addressed many a song; for thus doth the holy Scripture instruct and teach us to worship in the various patterns of Christian psalmody described in the Revelation.
"I have aimed at ease of numbers, and smoothness of sound, and endeavoured to make the sense plain and obvious. If the verse appears so gentle and flowing as to incur the censure of feebleness, I may honestly affirm, that sometimes it cost me labour to make it so.
"In the first part I have borrowed the sense and much of the form of the song from some particular portions of scripture, and have paraphrased most of the doxologies in the New Testament, that contain any thing in them peculiarly evangelical: and many parts of the Old Testament also, that have a reference to the times of the Messiah.
"The second part consists of hymns whose form is mere human composure; but I hope the sense and materials will always appear divine. I might have brought some text or other, and applied it to the margin of every verse, if this method had been as useful as it was easy. If there be any poems in the book that are capable of giving delight to persons of a more refined taste and polite education, perhaps they may be found in this part; but except they lay aside the humour of criticism, and enter into a devout frame, every ode here already despairs of pleasing.
"I have prepared the third part only for the celebration of the Lord's Supper, that, in imitation of our blessed Saviour, we may sing an hymn after we have partaken of the Bread and Wine."
Hymns.

We are all dwellers in two kingdoms, the inner kingdom, the kingdom of the mind and spirit, and the outer kingdom, that of the body and the physical universe about us. In the former, the kingdom of the unseen, lie the silent, subtle forces that are continually determining, and with exact precision, the conditions of the latter. To strike the right balance in life is one of the supreme essentials of all successful living. We must work, for we must have bread. We require other things than bread. They are not only valuable, comfortable, but necessary. It is a dumb, stolid being, however, who does not realize that life consists of more than these. They spell mere existence, not abundance, fullness of life

Kandinsky believed that art had a duty to be spiritual in nature, an expression of inner need, as he came to call it. He called art for arts sake a vain squandering of artistic power.

This book was both his call to artists to meet their obligation to humanity and his attempt to define and explain color and form in its relation to expressing the message of the soul.

The 1910s was surely the most exciting, radical, innovative and genuinely NEW period in the history of all the arts, writing, music, painting, cinema, dance. it was also one of the few periods when creative frenzy was escorted by critical might, and is almost as famous for its artistic collectives, its -isms, its iconoclasms and its spectacularly aggressive, wipe-the-slate-clean manifestoes as it is for any one artwork produced.

Today, however, there arent many of these manifstoes that possess more than quaint historical value. Kandinskys Concerning the Spiritual in Art is one, and probably to our own shame, speaks as loudly to us today as it did to the artists contemporaries. A cry against all that is bogus or a dead-end in art - the bourgeois-currying; the trend-following; the excessively materialistic, naturalistic or representational; art in which formal invention is not matched by emotional power - the book demands a return to spirituality in art in an age where a godless faith in science has resulted in a soulless culture.

Kandinsky is the artist who said that Art was close to religion, and his concept of painting is heavly bound up with his Russian orthodox upbringing (as well as later exposure to theosophy). One does not have to be a card-carrying mystic, however, to recognise the truth of his central argument, that the only art with the power to truly move us is that which is ruthlessly faithful to the artists inner need, not public taste or contemporary styles.

this belief led Kandinsky towards abstraction: he rejected the idea that a painter should draw what was on the surface, instead of its inherent spirit or harmony (if this led to a cul-de-sac in 20th century art, this is because Kandinskys mimics lacked his moral drive). This book is fascinating as Kandinsky, still creating recognisably (though distorted) representational works, was struggling towards the abstract geomotry for which he is now famous. It is essential for any lover of Kandinskys work, and modern art in general, with its revealing analyses of colour and form, their psychology, and the various effects they can achieve. it is a portrait of modernism from the inside, and it is goosebumping reading a gifted contemporary passing judgement on Picasso and Matisse, although time has parted company with him in his preference for Maeterlinck and Isadora Duncan.

In his demand for a total art that would unite theatre, music and painting, he looks forward to the great Ballets Russes happenings, most significantly Nijinsky/Stravinsky/Picassos The Rite of spring. Throughout, he calls for painting to achieve the non-naturalistic liberation of music.

Have you ever wondered if there is an alternative explanation for our mental pathologies? Szasz’s theory brought to life in novel form . . . can the advice of an educated professional be enough? Or correct? E A St. Amant squares off against a study and a perspective that motivates an in-depth reflection of both personal management and societal obligation. Spiritual Apathy is both controversial and inspiring . . . reconstructing mental illness in Toronto for all the acrophobic backwash . . . the paranormal and insanity are the current cherished suburban myths which replace the hard boring facts of modern times. It certainly makes you wonder . . a parable of a prestigious psychiatrist and a lowly Jamaican janitor who battle it out for the heart and soul of a boy at war with himself and his drug addicted lover, the beautiful sex-vixen who learned her arts while still a child.

Preface-No one who is interested in the growth of human ideas or the origins of human society can afford to neglect Maine's Ancient Law. Published some fifty-six years ago it immediately took rank as a classic, and its epoch-making influence may not unfitly be compared to that exercised by Darwin's Origin of Species. The revolution effected by the latter in the study of biology was hardly more remarkable than that effected by Maine's brilliant treatise in the study of early institutions. Well does one of Maine's latest and most learned commentators say of his work that "he did nothing less than create the natural history of law."

Thought-Forms by Annie Besant, C.W. Leadbeater, First Printed 1901

"It is our earnest hope—as it is our belief—that this little book will serve as a striking moral lesson to every reader, making him realise the nature and power of his thoughts, acting as a stimulus to the noble, a curb on the base. With this belief and hope we send it on its way." Annie Besant