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to go apart from "the madding crowd" and think for one's self in wise solitude is highly desirable. Moreover, it is well to know how to absent one's self from any environment one may chance to be in. To possess this power one must know how to concentrate. Concentration, then, is the beginning; and this is far simpler, after all, than many have thought. The essential is first to have a clear idea of what concentration is not, then busy one's self with what it is, that is, the persistent doing of whatever line of activity is chosen. We are concentrating all the time, while we go about our daily tasks. There is nothing mysterious about it. Why not "enter the silence," then, in the same common- sense sort of way that you would set about to make bread or kindle a fire? You can make a fine art of housework as well as of anything else. And there is more that is sound and wise in the well-ordered home than in all the occult gatherings that were ever gathered to meditate upon the indiscriminate.
 
4. Again, we see the vast importance not only of a sound theory of first principles but of intellectual standards, definite conclusions in regard to what is worthwhile. Vagueness concerning spiritual meditation springs largely out of the tendency to revert to Oriental pantheism and the Yogi practices. To accept mysticism in theory is to accept it in practice. To reject it philosophically