October, 1860
Man is the sum of the natural world. The Six Great Principles show this. They are Wisdom—Utility—Justice—Power—Beauty—Aspiration—Harmony, in that order. Harmony being the last and the highest for it is closest to the wishes of the Positive Mind.
Or Divine Architect. Or Great Spirit. Or God.
For William Mumler was His agent. Listen please while I explain.
Take a camera say and point it. Point it at a tree why not—and tell that tree to keep still please—and make what is called, and what is, an exposure. Now do as William Mumler does. Take the plate. Wash it. Pour the so-called preparation. And when you’re done: observe.
That tree.
It is all of it there in its fullest expression. No more and no less than the Positive Mind had in mind for that tree when He made it exist is missing from the picture you have taken of the tree.
To see it there exults your heart.
I wrote to His Seership to tell Him as much and His Seership writes back: Stay as long as you need.
Packages arrived for me in three days’ time at my shabby hotel.
There are two kinds of prophets at large in this world, I thought as I crouched at the base of the stairs and watched the little darkened square that showed the front of Mumler’s rooms. The first kind of prophet holds forth in the day and humbles a crowd with the marvels he’s seen, yet who can say that this man’s words are not the raptures of the crowd. The second kind he has no crowd—he has no mount—and speaks at night—and then speaks only to himself in a room as dark as William Mumler’s. No one can say they were prophets, these men, for no one has been there to witness their marvels. Isn’t this a tragedy and yet a triumph even so.
Maybe if I stayed right here in my little hideout at the base of the stairs. Maybe if I stayed right here in my base Mental State en route to the next then I could say in years to come that I had been the first to see.