It is a Sanskrit term expressing tersely the principle of action and reaction, or the law of consequences. This word and the idea which it imbodies are now quite commonly used in fiction and philosophy, cinema and drama. Yet while it has been thus forcibly expressed by the great Christian apostle and initiate, the Christian nations, crippled by the lack of any real philosophy of life, have failed to understand the profound meaning in this formulation of the law of ethical justice. Overlooking its far-reaching action, they have accepted it superficially only and not as a working hypothesis on mental and spiritual planes. But this has been the case only in the field of moral and social life, for the law of action and reaction is so evident in the physical world that our lives are unconsciously guided by our sense of its infallibility.
Day follows night unfailingly, as birth is succeeded by death.
Certain common principles of mechanics expressing this law are understood and acted upon instinctively, even by children. Law and order are the rule everywhere and are constantly readjusting the disorder which ignorance and carelessness produce. The presence of this law of logical results following upon action is indeed plainly revealed over the whole range of external nature, yet the Western world, at least, has failed to realize its universal reign and to follow the indelible record written beneath the surface. This failure to connect human life with the universal working of the habit of action and reaction amounted, in the last century, to a veritable mental aberration. Out of the close observations of the transformations of nature, in which every atom of energy had to be accounted for, grew the formulation of the law of the Conservation of Energy, which, although only partly true, still disclosed the reign of trustworthy law in the physical world.