TWENTY-NINTH TALK 593

idea of giving intantional pain is always" wrong.
We must keep our minds clear about these things,
and we in the Theosophical Society should not be
led away by thi§ bugbear of custom. All sorts of
things are the custom which are eminently undesir-
able and foolish things. You have only to look
back at the customs of earlier ages. It is
the custom in China for ladies to bandage their
feet so that they cannot walk. That is the custom,
but it is not a sensible one. There are other customs
here. I do not want to launch upon troubled
questions, but there are fashions which are anything
but sensible fashions, yet people follow them quite
blindly. Some of them are actually dangerous;

only people rfbver think of these things. I have seen
—of course there are extremes in these things—I have
seen ladies wearing boots with heels so high and
skirts so tight, that it would be impossible for them
to run in them. In an emergency they could not run.
Now do you not see that either of these things might
mean loss of life ? You might find yourself in a
position where you must run in order to save your-
self. I know very little about such matters, but I
infer that a sensible woman takes care to avoid the
extremes of fashion that would be dangerous, but
that, at the same time, she does not make herself
conspicuous. That is the sensible view to take.
You mu»st not get the idea that because a thing is the
custom, even because it has been the custom for

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