X. First Contemplation: How Michael prepares his earthly mission supersensibly, by the conquest of Lucifer.

Looking thence to the age of the Spiritual Soul, we may see how the world has grown as it were ‘clear’ to the vision of men's souls, in respect of their grasp of physical entities and physical processes. Gerard sails with his ships, so to speak, through a mist. He only knows, each time, one little bit of the world with which he has to do. In Cologne, one learns nothing of what is happening in England; and one must go for years in search of a man who is in Cologne. The life and possessions of such a person as the man on whose shore Gerard is cast on his homeward voyage, first become known to one when Fate carries one directly to the spot. Compared to the perspicuity of the world's circumstances to-day, that of those days is like the difference between gazing over a broad, sunny landscape, and groping in a dense mist.