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Full text of "The Theosophical quarterly"

JULY, 1917 

The Theosophical Society, as such, is not responsible for any opinion 
or declaration in this magazine, by whomsoever expressed, unless con- 
tained in an official document. 

THEOSOPHY AND WAR 

HOW many of those who read the title, "Theosophy and War," 
have a feeling of wonder that members of The Theosophical 
Society can countenance war; since our First Object contains 
the words, "a universal brotherhood of humanity, without dis- 
tinction of race ? " Is there not a flagrant contradiction in the fact that 
The Theosophical Society in Convention has just passed resolutions 
enthusiastically endorsing the entry of the United States into the war 
against Germany? Yet as much as two years ago, an earlier Conven- 
tion passed resolutions urging that very action, and urging it precisely 
in the name of our First Object, precisely in the name of universal 
brotherhood; and we, members of The Theosophical Society feel tri- 
umphant at the decision of the United States; we feel enthusiastic 
gratitude for the splendid majorities by which both the Senate and 
the House of Representatives have voted for that action and have pro- 
claimed the obligation of universal military service, in this righteous war. 

Is there not, seemingly, a flat contradiction in this? For many 
people, perhaps, there is. And our present purpose is, to make clear 
that there is no contradiction; that we are bound, by the spiritual prin- 
ciples which we support and which bind us together, to take just this 
action; that, in a profoundly real sense, this is pre-eminently our war. 

A closer reading of the First Object of The Theosophical Society 
will suggest, what is the deeper truth: that we do not hold that the 
universal brotherhood of humanity is already existent, manifest in the 
present life of the nations. It does exist eternally in the heavens; but 
it is up to the present made manifest only in the spiritual world; only 
in the Lodge of Masters, in whom so many of us believe. We believe 
in a spiritual brotherhood, a brotherhood of our immortal souls, not 
a material conglomerate; our First Object is, "to form the nucleus of a 
universal brotherhood of humanity," to be realized in the far distant 
future ; not to proclaim a brotherhood already existing. 



2 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

On what spiritual principle must that future brotherhood be 
founded? On the principle of spiritual liberty, the liberty of each soul, 
of each group of souls, of each nation, to unfold and develop in freedom, 
according to its own inherent divine character, its own inner divine 
nature, the revelation of which has been entrusted to it by the Supreme 
Eternal. In this sense, the spiritual character of each man, each group, 
each race and nation is sacred ; the unfoldment of that inner, spiritual 
nature according to its own law and individuality, is a most sacred 
obligation. We are, therefore, opposed to the levelling internationalism 
which would obliterate distinctions of race, as we are opposed to move- 
ments which seek to obliterate the spiritual difference of sex, and for 
identical reasons. Unless there be difference, there can be no harmony, 
no melody even ; nothing beyond the monotonous strumming of the 
tom-tom. Harmony and melody are possible, just because the seven 
notes of the scale, and the scales themselves, have each one its pro- 
foundly distinctive character, wholly unlike any other. And we look 
for the fine music of that larger harmony which God will play on 
"*,<axilhe seven strings of the races of men. The differences of these races 
spring from, and make manifest, in the belief of many of us, the deep, 
eternal differences between the seven Rays of the Logos, the ever- 
lasting Word of God. 

Therefore, in our profound conviction, there is no elect and chosen 
race to which the All-Highest has given to dominate other races, to 
deny and obliterate their national spirit, to force them into a hard 
monotony. In this sense, there can be no "chosen people" ; though there 
may be races elect through heroism and the power of sacrifice. There- 
fore this war against Germany and Germany's coadjutors is pre- 
eminently a Theosophical war ; because Germany and the German spirit 
are based upon a dogma which cuts at the root of our faith; because 
Germany seeks with brutal violence to break the strings of the divine 
instrument, to make the eternal harmonies forever impossible, to replace 
them by the harsh monotone of the savage's tom-tom. 

It is well worth while, at this point, to demonstrate this German 
do^ma ; to show that the brutalization of other races is not merely the 
boast of her bragging generals, but the cardinal principle of her national 
creed, the first principle of her spiritual life, if one may apply that 
word to a principle which directly violates the deepest spiritual law. 
The seeds of the German evil were sown precisely by those men who 
are exalted as the supreme revealers of the German spirit: by Kant, 
by Fichte, by Hegel, who prepared the way for Nietzsche, for Treitschke, 
for Bernhardi. 

As concerns Kant, a Frenchman who has studied him profoundly, 
in the clear and critical spirit of France, has recently written : "As for 
the Critique of Pure Reason, the fundamental and irremediate dis- 
tinction between the T and the 'not-F ends by discrowning science of 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 3 

its character of certainty, and by dethroning reason. Our supposed 
incapacity to conceive the essence of things and beings imposes upon us 
the state of doubt, of phantasy, of permanent arbitrariness, benumbs us 
as regards the external world, and loses itself, now in a gloomy and 
sulky scepticism, now in a haughty refusal to come to a conclusion. 
It is the school of mental paralysis, of dreams that lose themselves in 
the void, of chimeras regarded as divine. Everyone has his cloud- 
zone, his refusal to come to an understanding on certain fundamental 
principles which are neither restrictive nor prohibitive, his refusal to 
be bound (religio). . . . All the systems founded on the sensible 
to the detriment of reason owe their origin to Emmanuel Kant. He is 
the father of that squinting view, of what I shall call that mental double- 
vision, which decomposes the aspect of life, of the real, into two elements 
thenceforth incapable of coming together again: the conceiver and the 
conceived, the perceiver and the perceived. . . . We know whither leads, 
and has always led and will lead, this road : to individualism. . . . This 
is strikingly conspicuous in the very text of the fundamental law of 
Practical Reason : 'Act in such a way that the maxim of the will may at 
the same time have validity as a principle of universal legislation.' . . . 
In the wake of these words come Fichte, Stein and Bismarck, the mili- 
tant nationalism which springs from the Kantian criticism by the exten- 
sion of the sacred and inviolate 'ego' to the German nation." 

The extension of the sacred and inviolable "ego" to the German 
nation was elaborated by Fichte and Hegel. Fitchte, in his Addresses to 
the German Nation, delivered in Berlin in the winter of 1807-1808, car- 
ried Kantian individualism forward to the bellicose conception of the 
necessary predominance of the German state. One of the old tribal 
Teutonic names was "Alleman"; Fichte bases on this name the dogma 
that the German is "All-man," essential humanity. His famous Addresses 
preach that the Germans must dominate humanity, because their All- 
manism gives them "the power to reach everything and to absorb every- 
thing in their nationality." He affirms that Germany is "the chosen 
people." Germany is not a people ; Germany is The People. In speaking 
of Germany, one should say: The People, as one says, The Bible. 
Germany is The Race, not one race among others but the typical race. 
Germany is Humanity, because Germany alone retains the primitive 
model of man, which has been defaced in other lands. 

Germany is Humanity. . . . Here, then, according to Nietzsche, 
another prophet of theirs, is the portrait of that Divine Man : "those 
very men are to the outside world, to things foreign and to foreign 
countries, little better than so many uncaged beasts of prey . . . they 
revert to the beast's innocence of conscience, and become rejoicing 
monsters, who, perhaps, go on their way, after a hideous sequence of 
murder, arson, violation, torture, with as much gaiety and equanimity 
as if they had merely taken part in some student gambols. . . . 



4 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Deep in the nature of all these noble races there lurks unmistakably the 
beast of prey, the blond beast, lustfully roving in search of booty 
and victory. From time to time the beast demands an outlet, an escape, 
a return to the wilderness . . . Germany is Humanity. . . ." 

Hegel set the keystone on the arch of militant Pan-Germanism. 
"\Ye Germans have received from Nature," he said, in his lectures 
before the Berlin University in 1816, "the supreme mission to be the 
guardians of the sacred fire, as to the Eumolpides of Athens was con- 
fided the preservation of the Eleusinian mysteries, and to the inhabitants 
of Samothrace that of a purer cult, as in times past the Universal Spirit 
gave to the people of Israel that from the breast of that people the 
spirit should come forth renewed." Hegel proclaimed that the State 
meaning, of course, the German State was absolute power, and should 
be venerated as incarnate God. Whence it results, according to him, 
that there are no moral relations between States. From this, it further 
results that each State, in determining its conduct, can consult only 
its own interests and its own power. Victory is, for the people that 
wins it, the irrefutable proof of its right to conquer. History, which 
records the struggles, the defeats and victories of peoples, is the judg- 
ment of God Himself. This Hegelian gospel is thus rephrased by the 
German philosopher of history, Treitschke: "God no longer speaks to 
princes by prophets and by dreams ; but there is a divine vocation where- 
ever an occasion is presented to attack a neighbor and to extend one's 
own frontiers." The Pan-German prophet, Bronsart von Schellendorf 
makes this quite concrete: "We proclaim from henceforth that our 
nation has a right not only to the North Sea but to the Mediterranean 
and the Atlantic as well. So we shall annex successively Denmark, 
Holland, Belgium, the Franche-Comte, northern Switzerland and Livonia ; 
then Trieste and Venice, and finally the north of France, from the 
Somme to the Loire. . . . We must not lose sight of the task of 
civilization laid upon us by the will of Heaven." Finally, Maximilian 
Harden: "Germany strikes! When she has subdued new realms for 
our genius, the priests of every faith will bless the God of War." 

So the gospel of the German War Office, which showed its faith 
by its works in Belgium is likewise the gospel of the German philos- 
ophers, of the German universities. It is equally the teaching of the 
German church, as is demonstrated by a book of sermons recently 
translated, with the title, "Hurrah and Hallelujah !", which, among other 
startling blasphemies, teaches that "Humanity is to be redeemed by the 
Passion of Germany." 

This, perhaps, makes sufficiently clear that the German gospel is 
a negation of fundamental spiritual law, and will, if logically put in 
force, lead to the spiritual annihilation of Humanity. So it becomes 
equally clear that to this gospel every follower of Theosophy must 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 5 

stand unalterably opposed. Light and darkness are not more opposed 
than is Theosophy to this German dogma. 

But, it may be said, should not Theosophists limit themselves to a 
moral and spiritual opposition ? Is there not something radically untheo- 
sophical in this ardent support of war, even for a righteous end? That 
plea is, it seems to us, equally bad in religion and in science. Taking the 
religious standpoint, are we not taught that God, putting all good things 
within our reach, nevertheless demands that we shall toil and sacrifice 
to get them; and what is war but the organization of sacrifice and toil? 
What, after all, is the ultimate weapon of offence, but the human will, 
inspired by valour, of which all other weapons are but the expressions 
and contrivances? What is the final power of defence, but the cour- 
ageous willingness to endure pain and death? A battle, with its guns 
and steel, simply represents the opposing pressure of two wills; and, 
hitherto, no other way has been found, in which these two wills can 
fight their contest. The battles, therefore, fought in France are the 
direct conflict of the will for righteousness against the will of evil. 

Biological science teaches exactly the same lesson. We are deeply 
indebted to the great and reverent spirit of Darwin for demonstrating 
conclusively and with fullest detail, that terrestrial activity is a never 
ceasing "struggle for life," an unrelenting life-and-death warfare, in 
which the conflicting organisms must at every instant hold their own by 
fighting, on pain of instant and irremediable death. This warfare goes 
on, every second, within our own bodies, between the creative and the 
destructive forces ; our medical science has quite clearly shown that 
maladies, epidemics, plagues are literally battles between the powers of 
life and the hosts of death. This scientific age of ours which, in its 
curious blindness, knows more of jellyfish than it knows of angels, 
which recognizes malefic bacteria but does not yet recognize devils 
though certain departments of psychology may be drawing nearer to 
that recognition nevertheless sees clearly this fundamental truth: life 
is war; its warp and woof are woven of everlasting conflict. 

God has prepared for us infinite gifts, but on condition that we 
fight for them and win them; through conflict, every step of progress 
in material life has been won; through ceaseless life-and-death conflict. 
With spiritual life, it is exactly the same. If we want spiritual gifts, 
we shall have to fight for them. If we wish to establish the nucleus of 
universal brotherhood, we must fight for it, not merely in some theo- 
retical field of argument, but on the battlefield. If a nation has incar- 
nated in itself the active powers of evil, forces which would annihilate 
the spiritual life of universal brotherhood, and seeks by force of arms 
to maim and slaughter those who defend that spiritual life, then we must 
fight our battle on that ground, precisely at the point where the conflict 
is being waged. 

For yet another reason, we who are followers of Theosophy and 



6 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

members of The Theosophical Society are of necessity at war with 
Germany: the motto of The Theosophical Society is, "There is no 
religion higher than Truth;" and against truth, as against the faith 
of the plighted word, Germany wages ceaseless warfare. One man 
in Germany, Liebknecht, has had the courage to speak the truth; he is 
now in prison for it. He boldly said: "This war was begun by a lie; 
it is being carried on by lies." Maximilian Harden who, in other things 
accepts the German gospel, nevertheless has the candor to exclaim: 
"Let us abandon our contemptible efforts to justify Germany's conduct: 
have done with this lying attempt to deceive the enemy. We did not 
plunge into this formidable adventure against our will, as a nation set 
upon. We wanted this war, and we were right in wanting it. . . ." 
But even he says nothing of the lying attempt to deceive the German 
people, an effort which is still conscientiously carried on. An effort to 
deceive the German people; nay, an effort to deceive God Himself. 
At a solemn Mass, for peace, recently celebrated in Saint Stephen's 
Cathedral in Vienna, the Cardinal officiating, in the presence of the 
newly crowned Emperor and Empress, entered the presence of God with 
this same lie upon his lips, a lie twice reiterated in the course of one 
brief prayer. What more profound unfaith, what deeper insult could 
be conceived, to the Truth that we revere? 

A pathetic, horrible belief in the power of lying; this, and meth- 
odical violation of the plighted word of honour, systematic, self-justi- 
fied breach of treaties, which has given the world that striking phrase, 
"a scrap of paper." Who, in the last analysis, is the supreme arbiter 
and guarantor of covenants? Who, but God Himself? Is not the bond 
between God and man called the first covenant? What phrase did 
Saint Paul find, best to express the new relation between God and man, 
established by Christ's death? He called it "the new covenant," and the 
record of it is called, universally, the New Testament. Such supreme 
authority is there for the sanctity of plighted faith, the faith which Ger- 
many systematically and methodically breaks, whether it be the guar- 
antee of Belgian neutrality or the humane rules of The Hague Con- 
ventions, to which Germany is a signatory. 

That nation, therefore, seeks to establish a system of world domina- 
tion on lying, on treachery, on the breach of the plighted word, and 
equally on systematic defamation. Are we not bound, then, as fol- 
lowers of Theosophy, as members of The Theosophical Society, whose 
motto is : "There is no religion higher than Truth," to fight against 
that system to the death, and to fight at every point where the conflict 
is waged ? 

But there is, in the minds of many people, a rooted misgiving: 
the thought that religion necessarily forbids war; that Christ himself 
has taught that war is necessarily sinful. The Theosophical Society 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 7 

has, as an additional object, the comparative study of religions. It is, 
therefore, a fitting part of our task to examine this objection. 

It appears to be true that Buddhism absolutely forbids war, and 
interdicts the taking of any life whatsoever, under any circumstances. 
But that extreme form of Buddhism equally sets itself against every form 
of worldly life, and would turn all men into monks and nuns. Let 
the pacifists, therefore, who take their stand upon this principle, carry 
it to its logical conclusion, as do the Buddhist devotees ; let them not be 
content to denounce war; let them renounce every phase of worldly and 
family life and take the yellow robe and the beggar's bowl. 

But we may set against this, the older religion of India, in which 
the Warriors were the highest caste; the religion, whose scripture is 
the Bhagavad Gita, with such a sentence as this : "There is nothing 
better for a warrior than a righteous war." And this command was 
given quite literally, on the field of battle, on the eve of a mighty con- 
flict. The whole of the Gita rings with the command, "Therefore 
fight!" 

We have been told that the young men of our nation are going about 
downcast, dreading the horror of the trenches which our allies have 
endured with uncomplaining valour these three years. This seems to us 
unjust to a courageous nation ; but let us think rather of the splendour 
of the trenches ; the white light of Eternity is beating down on them. 
The names of those who fall are written in the Book of Life. The Holy 
Powers will never forget. 

Pacifists who entrench themselves behind the teaching of Christ 
habitually quote the saying, "Resist not evil." It seems to us that they 
misunderstand it ; that the Master's true purpose was this : the Jewish 
nation had just passed through a period of savage wars; a fierce war 
lay immediately before it. The Jews had fought savagely, with the 
bitterest personal hatred, animosity, resentment. It was, we believe, to 
this feeling that the Master addressed his rebuke, forbidding, not war- 
fare, but personal hatred and revengefulness. And in truth, no feeling 
is more opposed to the true spirit of the warrior, who must conquer 
personal feeling, as he must conquer the fear of death, if he is to fight 
effectively at all. 

On the other hand, the highest personal commendation Christ ever 
gave, was to a soldier, to the centurion full of faith. Was there not then 
a perfect opportunity to rebuke the warrior's life, had the Master been 
so minded? Yet not a syllable of rebuke was uttered. 

The Master's tremendous sentence has been often quoted: "Think 
not that I am come to send peace on earth : I am come not to send peace, 
but a sword." But perhaps it will be said that this is a metaphor, a 
parable. But surely this is no parable: "He that hath no sword, let 
him sell his garment and buy a sword." One would like to see that 
sentence blazoned above the doors of the Peace Societies, accredited to 



8 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

its author. No; pacifists who take a religious ground should quote 
Buddha, not Christ, but they should follow Buddha to the logical limit. 
Above all, they should keep away from the Bhagavad Gita. We believe 
that, concerning Christ, they are completely mistaken. We believe that, 
in a very real sense, this is Christ's war ; that the Powers and the soldiers 
of the Entente are fighting for the cause of Christ. 

Again, there is confusion concerning the duty to forgive "until sev- 
enty times seven." Are we commanded to forgive the infamies commit- 
ted by the Germans, the Austrians, the Bulgarians, the Turks ? No ; there 
is no such command. Christ's complete teaching is recorded in the third 
Gospel : 

"If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him ; and if he repent, 
forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and 
seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt for- 
give him." 

Neither on earth nor in heaven is there forgiveness for obdurate, 
unrepented sin. It is an obligation of honour, and of religion, not to for- 
give, but to exact reparation "to the uttermost farthing." The words 
again are Christ's. 

There is a profound spiritual reason : only through the suffering of 
completest reparation can the soul of the evil-doer come to full realization 
of the evil done, and so work off the heavy burden of that debt, and come 
back again to spiritual health. It is, therefore, a debt of honour which we 
owe to these befouled and burdened souls, to aid them, by exacting the 
utmost reparation, to get rid of their lethal burden. 

But the warfare of Christ, the warfare of the Spirit, has a far 
wider range. It touches every part of life, every task and endeavour. 
And, if we, members of The Theosophical Society, are full of a triumph- 
ant thankfulness that the nation among whom The Theosophical Society 
was founded has entered the war, we have a further object in view, 
besides the winning of this present conflict, and the crushing defeat of 
the nations that take their stand on lying, on cruelty, on treachery, on 
broken faith. For we hold that, as all life is warfare, so the lessons 
of this active war, now being waged in France, are eternal lessons and 
are to be applied throughout all life. 

For the soldier is perfected through obedience which is, in the last 
analysis, obedience to a spiritual principle courage, discipline, complete 
self-sacrifice. And these are the requisites of the eternal warfare, the 
essential conditions of really good work, in any field whatever. Many 
a man of science is of necessity an ascetic; many have made a practice 
of fasting, in order to refine the perceptive faculties ; while the willing 
endurance of hardship, in a spirit of self-sacrifice, is the invariable con- 
dition of many branches of research. And there must be the still greater 
sacrifice: the love of Truth for the sake of Truth, the entire readiness 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 9 

to surrender one's own views and preconceptions, at a moment's notice, 
before the faint, dawning light of a new truth. This is, in the most real 
sense, obedience to a spiritual principle; this is true self -surrender. 
And only through such obedience and self -surrender has any real dis- 
covery in science ever been made. 

Exactly the same thing is true of art. If a poet seeks inspiration, 
the divine infusion of the breath of beauty, he must of necessity sacrifice 
the lower perception to the higher, the lower to the higher self. He 
must go out of himself into God's idea of beauty, of harmony, of the 
inner truth of things, thereby informing and transforming the outer. 
Only when that transformation has taken place, only when outer things 
have been taken up, dissolved in the light of the spirit, and reformed 
along eternal lines, does the poet bring forth the substance of genuine 
poetry. And there must be surrender of the personality to that which 
is greater, truer than the personality. How was Shakespeare able to 
create type after type, both men and women? Only by going out of 
himself, into these other types, and infusing into them the breath of 
life. And so completely did he do this, that it is almost impossible to 
find, in his works, his own personality, his private view or preference 
in anything; in contrast, let us say, with Byron, whose own personality 
is in everything that he wrote. There is, in Shakespeare, a certain 
limitation, a reluctance to rise to the immortal part of man, to see the 
divine Logos in all men ; and that limitation runs through all his work, 
which, therefore, speaks only haltingly to the immortal. So that the 
greater sacrifice of self, if he had risen to it, would have made him a 
far greater poet. 

This rising to the immortal man, through self-surrender, is the 
doorway of all the best art. What gives Greek sculpture its supreme 
value? what but the fact that it is a revelation of the divine in human 
form, a visible manifestation of the God in man ? And without a 
real entering into the divine nature, preceded by the completest self- 
surrender, it would have been wholly impossible for the sculptors of 
Hellas to have rendered in lovely marble the godlike majesty of Zeus, 
the dignity and inspiration of Athene, the beauty of Apollo. Why is 
the painting of Italy supreme? Because it reveals the divine in human 
form, and with an inspiration, a tenderness, a realization of the beauty of 
holiness and of sacrifice that even Hellas did not reach. 

Discipline too, the ceaseless effort to perform a task in exactly 
the right way, to attain to perfection in each detail of work, is a neces- 
sary element in all success, whether in art or science, in commerce or 
manufacture. Treatises have been written on the mathematical perfec- 
tion of the Parthenon, in which seemingly straight lines are really most 
delicately calculated curves, allowance being made, not only for the 
pressure and stress of natural forces and the strength of materials, but 



10 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

also for the effect of parallel or divergent lines upon our vision. What 
perfection of measurement, of proportion, of anatomy, in an Apollo. 
What a knowledge of the properties of colours, and of their effects 
upon each other, in a good Italian painting. And how many dis- 
coveries in science have been made, simply by the application of finer 
and finer measurements, by the conscientious application of what is 
finely called "chemical cleanness." 

And, with sacrifice and discipline and obedience, there must be the 
most courageous devotion, the vigorous flow of the spiritual will, the 
immortal man in action through the mortal. Without that tremendous 
driving force, nothing real or great has ever been accomplished, or can 
ever be accomplished. And it is because the warrior in a righteous war 
must fill his heart with obedience, discipline, self-sacrifice and courage, 
that we believe in the divine revelation through a righteous war. This 
righteous warfare is essentially Theosophical, a splendid application of 
the Theosophical life. Take the three rules in Light on the Path: "Kill 
out ambition; kill out the desire of life; kill out desire of comfort." 
No one can be a soldier worthy of the name, who does not learn these 
three rules. And in the same inspired treatise, the divine self is called, 
not the Seer only, but the Warrior. 

Because we believe in these principles, because they are of the 
very essence of true Theosophy, therefore we are heart and soul for 
this righteous war. Heart and soul, too, for the continued, conscious 
application of these same principles, when the forces of righteousness 
have won the war, inflicting final and crushing defeat upon the malig- 
nant and treacherous powers of evil. We are wholly consistent, there- 
fore, in our joy and reverent gratitude that the United States is now 
enlisted in the war, taking a place amid the ranks of those who are 
fighting in this holy cause. This country has, we believe, high courage, 
great powers of devotion, though they be not yet fully evoked. But we 
have much, nay, almost everything still to learn, in self-surrendering dis- 
cipline; very much still to learn concerning sacrifice. There is to be 
seen, in the streets of Paris, and of every town in France, a tragical 
inscription : "Mourning in twenty- four hours." When the hour comes 
for us too to read the same sign daily and hourly in our own streets, 
when the black livery of bereavement is as familiar to us, to the men 
and women and children of America, as it is to all in France, then we 
shall know something more of sacrifice, of sacrifice as a divine sacra- 
ment. And, if we are reverent and full of aspiration, as befits the 
soldiers in a holy war, we shall so deeply learn this divine lesson, that 
we shall carry it forward into the days beyond the war, and keep it as 
a purifying inspiration in every detail and act of life. In this way, 
this war against the foul and treacherous forces of evil may bring 
righteousness to reign on earth, and hasten the coming of the Kingdom. 



FRAGMENTS 



THE disciple starting on the Way seeks three gifts: liberty, life, 
and happiness. Deep within his soul he finds the desire for them, 
a flaming desire that burns unquenchably and ever more and 
more brightly as he contemplates it. Here, at the threshold, 
appears his first test, a test of his intuitive power to read his own heart, 
as well as to realize theoretically wherein true satisfaction consists. 
For the illusions cast upon the Screen of Life, which the untrained 
mind looks upon, not through, would tell him, by means of his lower 
senses, that the road to that which he seeks lies along the flowery path 
of self-indulgence, where glitter of lights, and blare of trumpets, and 
thrills of a mysterious excitement invite and fascinate him. All the 
wondrous mirage of psychic life lies spread before his inexperienced 
vision, and he is like a peasant boy in the midway of some great city. 
Here, as I said, at the very inception of his journey, he must possess 
the ability to discriminate ; he must be able to turn off the artificial 
light of the lower world from the Screen upon which he gazes, so as 
to see through it to the reality beyond. Then this psychic world of 
apparent beauty and attraction is reduced to the tawdry ugliness and 
cheap imitation of the midway in the morning sunshine, possessing no 
allurements whatever, but sickening in its sights and odours, empty, 
dust-blown, desolate. The experienced man of the world realizes these 
facts of the city's midway even in the midst of the illusions of the 
night, and so holds himself aloof and is not deceived. To him it rep- 
resents no temptation : his enjoyments and ambitions are of a higher 
order, and therefore more intense as well as finer. In like manner, 
the occultist walks the midway of material life, experienced, balanced, 
understanding, and, because so completely understanding, never harsh or 
indifferent. 

This truth that the occultist is the grown-up, cultured, experienced 
man, in the midst of the ignorant, vulgar crowd of ordinary men, is 
rarely appreciated. 

Before the beginner can have intuitive perception of these simple 
facts, he must have gained some mastery of his grosser senses ; he must 
be able to hear somewhat above their clamour, to see through their 
smoke and fog, to free his mind from the vertigo they cause, and thus 
to think in spite of them. Until he can accomplish this to some degree, 
he cannot even start upon the Way. 



12 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

For, at the threshold test, without the power to discriminate, the 
beginner will most likely plunge into the roaring maelstrom of sensation, 
fondly believing that the trinity he seeks exists there, and so be caught, 
perhaps for long periods of time, until the compassionate Law, which 
reigns even in Hell, casts him up out of its vortex, by the very process 
of its cyclic churning, and leaves him exhausted, half-dead, upon its 
margin. The awfulness of it lies in the possibility that life may even be 
altogether extinct, since for every personality there exists the danger of 
the "second death," only in fact to be avoided if that personality be 
welded fast to the immortal spirit. 

If, however, the disciple starting on the Way, has glimpsed suf- 
ficient of these truths to keep him to the right turning (like the level- 
headed peasant boy who might say to his companions: "I don't intend 
to go in for that sort of thing; I came here to work and I am going to 
make the most of my chances"), and so by that fact steps over the 
threshold of immortal life and passes his first test, he is immediately 
confronted by an admonition, which may seem to him the denial of all 
his hopes bidding him not to work for reward to seek no results. He 
knows that liberty, life and happiness are what he desires, and in his 
eyes they are supreme rewards, worth all the sacrifice he is prepared to 
make. Without hope of their ultimate attainment, he can see no satis- 
faction in sacrifice or in labour; and so bewilderment, discouragement, 
perhaps bitterness overtake him, and he faces his second test, for the 
proper meeting of which a further enlargement of his perception is 
required. Many linger a long while over the solution of this problem, 
waving back and forth in vain endeavours, suffering greatly, held by 
this second curtain of the Screen and the illusions of the lower world 
upon it. Others have divined the trick at a flash, and thein laugh is 
echoed back by the angels, as they pass through the mirage of the cur- 
tain's folds. 

Results? No! If we seek a result, we seek (and find, God help 
us) a transient thing; for that which ends, which in its very nature is 
an end, cannot be immortal. Therefore the liberty which is a result, 
cannot be the real, the eternal liberty; nor the life and happiness which 
are rewards, the everlasting ones we crave. A trinity of Being is our 
desire, not mere endlessness of extension. We desire fulness of realiza- 
tion, completeness of possession, an eternity of joy, illimitable, inex- 
haustible consciousness, God. 

A reward is but a fragment of this; a goal, a temporary stop- 



FRAGMENTS 13 

ping place, a result, a finality, on the other side of which there must 
be a blank or a recommencement. 

So our admonition really means this : that we are to seek the 
whole, not a part; that we are to be content with nothing less than 
everything. And because we are thus admonished, we find a dazzling 
promise held before us: encouragement, not its reverse. Also we see 
our danger: that to seek anything less than the whole, is ultimately 
to lose even the part. For the reward slips away, becoming stale; the 
result proves unsatisfactory or dead (unless we stultify our own power 
of growth, in which case both we and our reward die together) . 

We become aware that the desires for liberty, for life, and for 
happiness are the cries of the immortal soul for the God from whom 
it came; and that we may climb back to that Bliss which is both our 
origin and our heritage, on the arm of the dear Master whose child 
we are. 

Liberty, therefore, cannot be licence, but consists in self-restraint, 
leading to complete self-mastery on every plane of consciousness: the 
self-mastery essential to realization of any kind ; the detachment which 
alone gives perspective, without which sight is myopic to blindness. 

Life, to be worth having, must be that which has been laid down 
in glorious proof of this self-mastery; not the torn bit snatched in a 
selfish scuffle, too crumpled and meaningless, when won, for any other 
purpose than to be tossed aside. For one of the paradoxes of life is 
that we must either surrender it, and so gain it ; or else seize it, later to 
cast it aside because, in the very seizing, we have made it worthless; 
the divine law being thus unfailingly operative. We can defeat our own 
ends, but never its ends. 

Happiness is the essential fruit of the liberty of renunciation, as it 
is the heart of life; and it has no smallest participation in the life of 
self-seeking and anarchy, nor in the excitement which the powers of dark- 
ness provide to cover its absence or to deny its existence. Our bodies 
are made of the roadside dust, but our spirits are made of the stars; 
and our souls are one with flowers and spring sunshine, and the breath 
of the summer light, and the colour of the trees in autumn, and the 
cold whiteness of the mountain snows. 

O Lodge of Life, God's treasure house on earth, in thee are locked 
these mysteries of Eternal Love, safe from the devils of the lower world 
who storm its heights in vain; safe from the traitors lodging in our 

hearts, kept for our heritage forever. 

CAVE. 



THE HEART OF FRANCE 



"When Jesus was come into the temple, the chief priests 
and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, 
and said, By what authority doest thou these thingsf and who 
gave thee this authority?" 

[Jesus replied] "The Kingdom of God shall be taken from 
you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." 
Matthew XXI, 23, 43. 

NOTHING succeeds like success. Since 1870, the nations of 
the world, idolizing the Prussian conquerors, have gone to 
school to Germany, with the desire to imitate German efficiency 
and success in the educational system, in manufactures and 
trades, in matters musical, artistic and scientific, even in matters reli- 
gious, declaring that one's faith should be modified to accord with the 
most recent speculations of some theological professor. This worship of 
success German success was true of England, of America, and to 
a considerable extent, of France herself. 

To-day the appalling principles of evil that animated the dazzling 
activities of Germany, intellectual and practical, are revealed to us 
if we have eyes open to see through the veils of prosperity and self- 
indulgence and self-satisfaction. 

Principles of Evil! Our blind worship of efficiency and success 
was misplaced. To-day, we can admire in Germany, and in the Ger- 
mans, only the zeal and whole heartedness with which they execute 
their principles: "the children of this world are in their generation 
wiser than the children of light." 

The success that America, since the Civil War, has been worship- 
ping, along with the rest of the world, is the illusion of material pros- 
perity, the fallacy of apparent success. France is destined, however, 
to strive for real success, to bring to completion the stupendous under- 
taking of which the Easter Resurrection marks a victorious stage the 
establishment, namely, of one law, one will, one realm, in earth as in 
Heaven, and one supreme ruler, Christ the King. The real France 
has been coming to herself again, during these eye-opening years of 
struggle with evil. Let us hope she will come to clear recognition of 
the duty to which, through old vows, she stands committed. 

The history of France, its legends and traditions, bear witness to 
this self-devotion of France to the cause of Christ. A widely accepted 
tradition narrates that some time after the Ascension, the Jews con- 
strained certain of the most fervent of His followers to board a dis- 
mantled vessel and deliver themselves to the mercy of the waves. 
Among them were the three Maries, Martha, Lazarus and St. John. Con- 

4 



THE HEART OF FRANCE 15 

ducted by Providence, the bark touched the shore of Provence at the 
extremity of the Isle of Camargue. The poor exiles, miraculously 
delivered from the perils of the sea, journeyed throughout Southern 
Gaul and became the first apostles. One of the Maries withdrew to a 
cave in the desert of Sainte-Baume, to meditate and to pray. St. John 
returned to the East. Those who remained received further instruction 
from the Master upon many points that had been interrupted by the 
shortening of His brief period of work. Their lives of prayer con- 
secrated the neighbourhood which continued to be their headquarters, 
and made it, for future generations, a centre of religious life and force. 
So renowned indeed did it become, that later, the young convert, Patrick, 
journeyed thither to deepen his hold upon truth, carrying back thence 
to Ireland and Scotland the impression he received of the Master as 
a Living Teacher and Friend. The sojourn of the holy band has only 
the authority of tradition. But even as tradition, we can see in that 
life of consecration and prayer, a force that contributes toward under- 
standing the inspiration of the first King of France, Clovis. The con- 
version of Clovis was not that of a savage chieftain who suddenly 
decides upon baptism for himself and his tribe. Clovis was a states- 
man. He had unified warring factions, created an entity, a state. Like 
any other artist, or creator, he did not relish the dismemberment of 
his production. He had long been married to a Christian Queen; he 
enjoyed, for years, personal friendship with St. Genevieve; he was not 
ignorant of the Christian teachings and claims. The kindling of his 
flame was effected on the battlefield. He knew that the issue of the battle 
would be decisive either for the destruction or the preservation of the state 
which he had been instrumental in forming. There are two elements in 
conversion : first, a recognition of one's own powerlessness against over- 
whelming odds that seem destined to victory ; and, secondly, a recognition 
of the Master's ability to triumph over those very forces that threaten to 
crush us. Need, personal need, outer or moral need, brings men to con- 
version. As I read the story of Clovis's conversion, I interpret it in this 
way. His personal need and desire to preserve his state in a dire 
strait, drove him to invoke the Man God whose existence he had long 
pondered. His cry for help, brought him, I believe, some consciousness 
of the Master's presence, of the Master's human sympathy with his aims, 
of the Master's compassion for him in his extremity. Then, recognizing 
the magnanimity of the Master's interest and sympathy, as a great nature 
would, Clovis threw himself in self-abandonment on that divinely human 
heart which beats only for the happiness of men, His children. With 
gratitude, and compassion and love, kindled by these very qualities in the 
Master, Clovis gave his all to Christ. He did not, as we do, present that 
vague and damp thing that we think of when we use the word "soul ;" he 
did not reserve for himself all that makes life interesting. Clovis gave 
himself body and soul, all that he was and had, his treasure, his state. His 
power of vision was sharpened as his whole past life moved before his 



16 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

eyes in that moment of extremity. He recognized how worthy indeed his 
long efforts had been, but, also how small had been his own part in that 
undertaking. For, with death threatening, he understood facts that 
before he had misunderstood. He saw that his worthy ambition was not 
a goal suggested by his own active intellect, but an inspiration given by the 
Royal Master who endeavours to guide men aright through their own un- 
wise scheming. He saw that his part had not been that of originator, but 
of executor he had carried out, in some measure, the designs entrusted 
to him. He recognized the Living Christ, standing before him, as the 
Source of all that had made his life worth while he saw his ambitions 
proceeding from the mind and the heart of Christ, a part of Christ's 
beneficent plan for the world. He saw the Living Christ as the Goal 
toward which all the true desires of his nature tended. In an ecstacy of 
humility and gratitude, Clovis threw himself before those Royal pierced 
feet; "This thing for which I have sweated and bled, this people, this 
nation, this kingdom, it is not mine, O Christ, but Thine. Make it the 
beginning of Thy Kingdom on earth." Then, rising to his feet, with a 
sense of vaster issues now at stake, no longer his kingdom, but Heaven's 
colony that was to be saved or lost, Clovis rushed into the thick of battle 
and won. 

Such was the conversion and the donation of Clovis! Such was the 
consecration of France to copartnership with Christ in His work of 
reclaiming the bad lands of humanity to make the stone heap and sand 
stretches of man's heart a blossoming garden. That great unfinished task 
of the Master's includes not only the vague benefits that we associate with 
our immortal souls ; it includes also instruction in the arts and sciences, in 
the principles of government, in moral and social virtues and graces His 
task is to civilize and humanize man. 

An editorial in the New York Tribune for March 14th, 1917, headed 
France and the Disease of Democracy, contains these sentences : "The 
latest crisis in French politics again discloses that disease which has been 
revealed in all three of the great democracies during the present war 
crisis. Like Britain, like the United States, France is to-day at the mercy 
of parochial politicians, elected primarily because of their concern for the 
selfish and petty interests of their districts and without regard to the 
questions affecting the life of the nation. . . . Politicians who at a 
moment of national peril think of their own political fortune and of the 
power and of the prestige which they deem their right." One may, surely, 
without discrediting democracy as a whole, turn back to the outgrown 
monarchical period of France for an example of rulers who were not 
politicians, men who were forgetful of self-interest, and who led France 
to give herself lavishly for an ideal. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Louis ! 
What splendid leadership those names recall! St. Bernard drew men 
after him to whatever cause it was his duty to champion. How shadow- 
like contemporary senators and ministers are when we recall Bernard's 
courage and power ! How drab their acts ! One longs for personal 



THE HEART OF FRANCE 17 

heroism to equal St. Bernard's on that early morning in the old church of 
Aquitaine. He was celebrating Mass; there was a thronging congrega- 
tion ; the Duke of Aquitaine was present. This Duke was opposed to 
Bernard in an ecclesiastical matter that affected vitally the political situ- 
ation of France. Conference and argument had failed to change the 
Duke's opinion. Suddenly, at the moment of the Elevation, Bernard puts 
the Wafer back on the altar, leaves the Sanctuary, and strides resolutely 
through the congregation to the Duke's side. The ducal men-at-arms are 
on guard. Bernard is only a monk and is in his opponent's fortress. But 
unflinching and unabashed, he demands of this provincial ruler how long 
he will keep his King waiting.* The terrified Duke drops to his knees 
and promises everything to escape Bernard's intolerable countenance. 
St. Louis is praised even by a historian who rates men and events from 
the material standpoint of political economy. "From this time forth," 
writes Professor J. Moreton McDonald, referring to St. Louis and the 
Crusades, "wherever she fought, whatever cause she adopted, France 
stands out as a real nation, endowed with glorious and peculiar national 
qualities." Is triumphant democracy, in France, in America, in Russia, 
making herself loved through such noble leaders? "St. Louis made 
kings so beloved," writes Georges Goyau (of the Revue des deux 
Mondes} "that from his time dates that royal cult, so to speak, which 
was one of the moral forces in olden France, and which existed in no 
other country of Europe to the same degree. Piety had been for the 
kings of France, set on their thrones by the Church of God, as it were 
a duty belonging to their charge or office; but in the piety of St. Louis 
there was a note all his own, the note of sanctity." 

Joan of Arc is less of a mystery, if one believes that the Master 
accepted Clevis's donation as simply as Clovis made it. Such a gift 
involved France in the way of sacrifice, the Way of the Cross. 
Judging merely from the view point of the world, there are 
Americans who would conclude that the subjection of France to Eng- 
land, in the 15th century, would not have been an irreparable injury 
though, to-day, we unequivocally conclude that the pollution of a square 
inch of non-Prussian territory by Teuton barbarians is a calamity dis- 
graceful to every non-protesting nation that calls itself civilized. Eng- 
land is a land with the ideals of a gentleman; it is valorous and heroic. 
It is a worthy thing to spread the ideals and practices of a gentleman; 
it upbuilds and civilizes. But for all his preciousness and, in America, 
one is in no danger of overestimating those qualities which make up a 
gentleman there is a vast difference between a gentleman and a Chris- 
tian. A gentleman may be an incipient or unconscious Christian. But 
a Christian is a conscious gentleman. Between those two stages, 
unconscious and conscious, there is a difference like that between the inno- 
cence of a child and the purity of a man. A child is morally clean because 



* i. e., waiting to descend from Heaven into the Wafer. 
2 



18 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

it is ignorant of evil ; while a man who is pure has had to learn the exist- 
ence of and to face all evil, continuing clean, however, in spite of that 
knowledge. Had France been subjugated by England, she might have 
had no despicable fate, yet humanity would have lost those qualities 
and charms which the ideals of a Christian add to those of a gentleman, 
completing them. For France is the thin end of the wedge that the 
hands of Heaven are driving through the hardness of this world. To 
rescue the wedge, the Powers of Heaven sent Joan of Arc against the 
English, who at that period were threatening the national unity of France. 

No other explanation than that explains the mysterious peasant 
child, who, in the presence of ancient peers, shone with a courtesy 
which she had learnt, as an old chronicler puts it, in the court of Heaven. 
Do you know that military experts who have studied the tactics of that 
17 year old girl, declare she possessed a knowledge of artillery tactics, 
worthy of modern times? If she learnt courtesy in the court of Heaven, 
why may she not also have learned, from Michael and his Angels, mili- 
tary and artillery manoeuvres? St. John, our holy Apostle of love, does 
not represent Heaven as a conference of pacifists ''there was war in 
Heaven," he wrote. 

A second peasant daughter of France, a 17th century nun, the Blessed 
Margaret Mary, is less known to us, aliens and Protestants, than is Joan 
of Arc, only, I think, because her mission and outer life are less dramatic 
and tragic than Joan's. Her mission is, however, of no less significance. 
For through her, we have learned again, what we constantly forget, the 
secret of the Master's continued humanity. He came to her, not in a 
morbid vision, but bodily, in the chapel and garden of her convent, telling 
her in plain human words, that He is Man as well as God, and that His 
human Heart differs from other human hearts in no way save in the 
excess of its love and desire to be loved. "I thirst for the hearts of men," 
He said to her. By His direction, that obscure nun sought to reach the 
great King, Louis XIV, to give him the message from Heaven's King 
that the banners of France would triumph when Heaven's symbol, the 
Master's human Heart, was blazoned with the heraldic devices of earth, 
and France openly ratified her consecration vows and undertook what 
her saints and rulers had pledged her to the adventure of the Cross. 

We should be erring gravely to think that this religious fervour and 
aspiration is a thing of the past, and that modern-day France is only the 
happy hunting ground of pleasure seekers. France produced as rich a 
harvest of saints in the nineteenth century as in the twelfth and thir- 
teenth. While the froth of life flecked the streets of Paris, and narrow 
viewed politicians were turning venerable religious centres like Clairvaux 
into prisons and workhouses, the religious fire of France burned on, in 
what monasteries were left to it, and in the homes of the people. In the 
nineteenth century, among many others, there was Mother Barat, who 
founded the Order of the Sacre Coeur, with its admirable system of edu- 
cation for women of the upper class. The Carmelite convent at Dijon 



THE HEART OF FRANCE 19 

trained Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity to a saintly life; and at Lisieux, 
that other Carmelite flower, Soeur Therese, opened in exquisite beauty. 
How truly gay is convent life, is shown in the pages of her Autobiogra- 
phy. She died in 1897, aged twenty-three. Her letters, her talk, bind 
contemporary France in with the traditions of the older centuries. What 
human charm and humour there is in her narrative of spiritual things. 
Here is an account given by one of the novices whom Therese guided 
with counsel : 

"Being somewhat of a child in my ways, the Holy Child to help 
me in the practice of virtue inspired me with the thought of amusing 
myself with Him, and I chose the game of ninepins. I imagined them 
of all sizes and colours, representing the souls I wished to reach. The 
ball was love. 

"In December, 1896, the novices received, for the benefit of the 
Foreign Missions, various trifles towards a Christmas tree, and at the 
bottom of the box containing them was a top a rare thing in a Carmelite 
convent. My companions remarked: 'What an ugly thing! of what 
use will it be?' But I, who knew the game, caught hold of it, exclaiming: 
'Nay, what fun ! it will spin a whole day without stopping if it be well 
whipped ;' and thereupon I spun it 'round to their great surprise. 

"Soeur Therese was quietly watching us, and on Christmas night, 
after midnight Mass, I found in our cell the famous top, with a delight- 
ful letter as follows : 

To My Beloved Little Spouse 
Player of Ninepins on the Mountain of Carmel. 

Christmas Night, 1896. 

My beloved little Spouse, I am well pleased with thee ! All the year 
thou hast amused Me by playing at ninepins. I was so overjoyed, that 
the whole court of Angels was surprised and charmed. Several little 
cherubs have asked Me why I did not make them children. Others 
wanted to know if the melody of their instruments were not more pleasing 
to Me than thy joyous laugh when a ninepin fell at the stroke of thy love- 
ball. My answer to them was, that they must not regret they are not 
children, since one day they would play with thee in the meadows of 
Heaven. I told them also that thy smiles were certainly more sweet to 
Me than their harmonies, because these smiles were purchased by suffer- 
ing and forgetfulness of self. 

And now, my cherished Spouse, it is my turn to ask something of 
thee. Thou wilt not refuse Me thou lovest Me too much. Let us change 
the game. Ninepins amuse me greatly, but at present I should like to 
play at spinning a top, and, if thou dost consent, thou shalt be the top. 
I give thee one as a model. Thou seest that it is ugly to look at, and 
would be kicked aside by whosoever did not know the game. But at the 
sight of it a child would leap for joy and shout : 'What fun ! it will 
spin a whole day without stopping!' 



20 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Although thou too art not attractive, I the little Jesus love thee, 
and beg of thee to keep always spinning to amuse Me. True, it needs a 
whip to make a top spin. Then let thy Sisters supply the whip, and be 
thou most grateful to those who shall make thee turn fastest. When 
I shall have had plenty of fun, I will bring thee to join Me here, and our 
games shall be full of unalloyed delight. Thy little Brother, 

JESUS." 

It is not the convents alone that produced heroic religious souls. 
There are noteworthy examples of aspiration in the secular life of 
France. Some individuals of this class have become known through their 
literary work ; others remain entirely obscure. Charles Peguy and Ernest 
Psichari are among the former. Peguy died leading his division at the 
Marne. When the call to the colours came, in 1914, he was urged not to 
volunteer so as to save his talents for his country. With a clear percep- 
tion of spiritual values, and realizing that, in a truer sense, he would be 
saving his talents by death in battle, he replied: "What I am about to 
do is worth thirty years of writing." One aim of his writing was to 
awaken his countrymen so that they might claim their great inheritance 
from the past. He held up to the new generation the ideal of national- 
ism, of a chivalrous and Christian France, continuing in the 20th century 
the aims which had kindled the saints and heroes of ancient and 
mediaeval years. He wrote of France : "The Pharisee nations call thee 
light minded, because thou art nimble. But God says : I have weighed 
thee and do not find thee light in the balance; people that designed the 
cathedral. I do not find thee wanting in faith ; people that invented the 
crusade, I do not find thee wanting in charity ; and, as for hope there is 
none elsewhere than in France." Peguy's friend, Psichari, who has also 
given his life in the war, is an even more conspicuous example of reaction 
against the scepticism that, for a period, was fashionable among the Intel- 
lectuals. Psichari was the grandson of Renan. He grew up in his grand- 
father's mode of thought. Then, as a soldier, he passed through a phase 
when his religion of doubt failed him he came out of the struggle, estab- 
lished in the religion of faith. When he died, in the retreat from Charle- 
roi, he was a member of The Third Order of St. Dominic. He left a 
record of his intellectual and spiritual development, interwoven with a 
thin veil of romance, and published as The Voyage of the Centurion. 
Here is a paragraph from that book which describes the awakening 
realization in Psichari of what his country, France, really stands for, in 
the history of civilization : "He has been sent there by a people who 
know well what blood of the martyrs is worth. He well knows what it 
is to die for an idea. He has behind him twenty thousand Crusaders 
a whole nation of those who have died with drawn swords, with prayers 
fixed on their lips. He is the child of that blood. It is not in vain that 
he suffered the first hours of exile, nor that the sun has burned him, nor 
that solitude has wrapt him under her great veil of silence. He is the 



THE HEART OF FRANCE 21 

child of pain. . . . Thou art not the first,' says a voice which he 
did not recognize it is the voice of the motherland which he has railed 
against 'thou art not the first that I send to this infidel land. I have 
sent others before thee. For this land is mine, and I have given it to my 
sons, that they may suffer there, that they may learn suffering. Others 
have died before thee. And they did not ask these slaves to teach them 
how to live. Look, my son, how they bore themselves in this great under- 
taking, in this great French adventure, which was the adventure of the 
pilgrimage of the Cross. . .' " 

A diary edited by the Reverend A. Poulain gives a glimpse into the 
interior of French homes. It reveals a life so different from what most 
Americans find on the sidewalks of Paris. The volume is a spiritual 
autobiography ; the writer's name is not revealed. She is referred to as 
Lucie Christine ; her life covers the period from 1870 to 1908 what we 
think of as a decadent and irreligious section of French History. She 
was the mother of a family, and raised her children dutifully, while, at 
the same time, leading an interior life of great fervour. Her aspiration 
brought her some realization of Christ as a living Master and Friend. 
One entry reads thus: "Jesus came to visit me. ... I also saw 
around Jesus the souls of the Elect . . . interceding for the world, 
for France, for our congregations." Then there is this : "This morning 
I asked of Jesus and obtained in Holy Communion that grace of union 
and of special vision in which my Communion and second prayer of yes- 
terday entirely consisted. By this grace, which I have spoken of for a 
long time past, the soul sees Jesus in the place of her own poor being and 
loses the sentiment of her own presence in the Presence of God. She sees 
with her interior sight the Son of God made Man, the second Person of 
the Adorable Trinity, with His Two Natures. In place of her own poor 
being she finds the height, the depth, the breadth, the sublimity of God. 
She does not see this as if God had expelled her from that place, but as if 
she had been absorbed and transformed into God Himself; she loses 
herself in the ineffableness of the Divine Ocean, and has no longer any 
consciousness of herself except by the exquisite sentiment which this 
vision, this knowledge which inflames her with love, procures her." 

The records of these three individuals, chosen from many, show 
what was at work, silently in France, before the war came. All of us 
know what has been taking place since the war began. So splendid is that 
right-about-face toward religion that many pray, perhaps, that the war 
may not end, until the conversion of France is somewhat complete, and 
the whole nation understands its mission as His wedge. The happy sacri- 
fices made by all classes in France will act as a spiritual momentum carry- 
ing the nation toward its goal. Misunderstandings of many kinds will 
clear up, between civic and cleric, between the Catholic nation and the 
claims of Rome which the nation is not inclined to take too seriously. 
The nation will reestablish its old direct connection with the Master, as 
many of its individual citizens have done. How great an advance for 



22 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

civilization it will be when a single nation shall declare that it is waging 
war not for democracy, but for Christ's Kingdom ! One of the good 
things brought us by the war is a letter from a priest, a sub-lieutenant 
of infantry, written on the eve of an advance which he knew would be 
perilous and in which he did receive a mortal wound. There is no pagan 
lament or gloom in this farewell to earth, but Christian joy flowing from 
direct knowledge that for a Christian death is gain. "To die young, to 
die a priest, as a soldier, during an attack, marching forward, while per- 
forming the priestly function, perhaps while granting absolution . . . 
to give one's life for the Church, for France, for all those who carry in 
their hearts the same ideal as I do, who are quickened by the same faith 
. . . and for the others too that their eyes may at last be opened to 
the light and that they may know the joy of believing: Ah! truly Jesus 
spoils me! How glorious it is ! (Que c'est beau!). . ." 
That is the spirit which burns in the heart of France. 

C. C. CLARK. 



That piety which sanctifies us, and which is a true devotion to God, 
consists in doing all His will precisely at the time, in the situation and 
under the circumstances, in which He has placed us. Perfect devoted- 
ness requires, not only that we do the will of God, but that we do it with 
love. God would have us serve Him with delight; it is our hearts that 
He asks of us. Francis de la Mothe Fenelon. 



EASTERN AND WESTERN 
PSYCHOLOGY 



III 
PHYSICAL CONSCIOUSNESS: THE FIRST PLANE 

THERE is a curious story in the Chhandogya, one of the oldest 
and most mystical Upanishads, which may be translated some- 
what as follows: 

The Devas and the Asuras the angels and demons both 
of them sprung from the Lord of Beings, strove together. The Devas 
sacrificed by offering the syllable Om; by this, said they, we shall pre- 
vail. They entered into the nasal breath with their aspiration; but the 
Asuras pierced it with evil; therefore through this, he perceives both 
that which is fragrant and that which is foul, for they pierced it with 
evil. And so the Devas entered voice with their aspiration ; but the 
Asuras pierced it with evil ; therefore he speaks both truth and falsehood, 
for voice was pierced with evil. And so they entered sight with their 
aspiration; but the Asuras pierced it with evil; therefore by it he 
sees both that which should be seen and that which should not be 
seen, for it was pierced with evil. And so the Devas entered hearing 
with their aspiration ; but the Asuras pierced it with evil ; therefore he 
hears both what should be heard and what should not be heard, for it 
was pierced with evil. And so the Devas entered mind with their 
aspiration ; but the Asuras pierced it with evil ; therefore with it he 
conceives both that which should be conceived and that which should 
not be conceived, by it he wills both that which should be willed and 
that which should not be willed, for mind was pierced with evil. And 
so there is this higher vital breath ; the Devas entered this by their 
aspiration ; the Asuras, coming to this, fell to pieces, as something would 
fall to pieces, by coming against a hard rock. Thus verily, as some- 
thing coming against a hard rock would fall to pieces, so does he fall to 
pieces, who desires evil for one who knows this ; and he who drives him 
away, he indeed is as a hard rock. Because of this, therefore, he does 
not perceive both things fragrant and foul, for he has driven evil away, 
and whatever he eats or drinks, by this he guards the lives. 

The makers of this old mystical tale sought to show, in a parable, 
which, nevertheless, comes close to literal truth, that this two-sidedness 
runs through every phase of our physical perception: we see good and 
evil; we hear good and evil; we will good and evil; we act out good 
and evil. But there is in us the higher spiritual breath, the spiritual 
will and intuition ; this the devils were not able to enter, but fell back 
from it, broken to pieces, as some brittle thing falls back broken from 

3 



24 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

a rock. And this spiritual breath, the power of intuition and spiritual 
will, nourishes and upbuilds the other powers, building up a dwelling of 
like nature to itself. 

So far the parable. Its application to our subject the plane or field 
of physical consciousness is this: there are, as it were, two layers of 
our physical consciousness and our physical action, a lower and a higher 
layer ; or, one may say, there are two ways of using each power, a lower 
and a higher way. The lower way is that which is inspired from beneath 
pierced by the Asuras; the higher way is that which is inspired from 
above, breathed into by the aspiration of the Devas. Or, to put it yet 
another way, any act can be performed in obedience to either one of two 
motives : the motive of self-will, which is of the Asuras, the demons ; and 
the motive of divine will, which is of the Devas; these two powers, the 
good and evil angels, meeting and contesting in every act and percep- 
tion of ours, and we ourselves having the power to throw the victory 
to either side, to the Asuras or to the Devas, to the good angels or the 
evil, according as our motive is self-will or the divine will acting in us. 

This sounds perhaps, not merely mystical but even mythical; this 
contest of good and evil angels in our every act. So it may be worth 
while to clear the air by showing that biology, the material science of 
life, recognizes just the same kind of conflict. 

All organisms, in the view of biology, all living things, whether they 
be plants or animals, very simple or very highly developed, go through 
a series of acts. Plants draw in nourishment through their roots, chemi- 
cal elements soluble in water, building materials in liquid form, such as 
ammonia, phosphoric acid, potash; they draw in, through the pores of 
their leases, when these are exposed to sunlight, further nourishment 
from the air, carbonic acid, which is divided into carbon and oxygen; 
the carbon combining with the hydrogen in the water sucked up by the 
roots, the oxygen being breathed forth again. And so the plant grows, 
puts forth leaves and flowers, forms fruit or seed, and thus prepares 
for a new generation of that same plant. 

But besides these evident activities there is a second range of activ- 
ities, of far finer quality, which can hardly be detected in one genera- 
tion 01 even in many generations ; but which, in the long run, and when 
studied in large spaces of time, are seen to be immensely important. 
By virtue of certain forces we can hardly yet call them efforts in the 
case of plants certain forms of plant life progress; others halt and then 
retrogress, falling into degeneration. In the forests of the Carboniferous 
period, there were many kinds of trees. A few of them were the 
ancestors of the trees in our present forests ; many of them have ceased 
altogether from the earth, or are represented only by dwarfish relations, 
like the equisetums, the mare's-tails of our marshes. There were, it 
would seem, in those ancient forests, certain individuals which, by the 
infinite accretion of small differences, were destined to develop into our 
present trees. There were others, by no means distinguishable at the 



EASTERN AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY 25 

time, which were to fail in these infinitely numerous, hardly perceptible 
accretions, and were destined, in consequence, to die, to fall out of the 
battle for life and immortality. 

The same thing, in a much more manifest way, in animal life. 
Biologists trace a line of ascent, up from primal protoplasm to our own 
bodies, so far the most perfect organism in the world. But, besides 
the organisms which lie along this direct line in an ascending series, 
there are other organisms without number, which diverged or fell away 
from the line by infinitely small gradations ; organisms which have either 
ceased altogether to exist, like the extinct dinosaurs, or which, like the 
lower animals about us to-day, have taken directions of growth which can 
never lead up to the highest organic form; so far, they are as complete 
failures as are the animals which are actually extinct. 

There is, therefore, the one line of complete success, the line which, 
according to biological theory, led up to our own marvellously formed and 
articulated bodies. There are, on the other hand, the many lines of 
failure. Each line is the sum of an infinite number of small acts or 
activities, imperceptible at the time, hardly perceptible even when taken 
in thousands; but, none the less, quite decisive. These and these acts 
and activities made for progression along the true line, the line of life 
and infinite upward progress; those and those acts and activities made 
for digression, for retrogression, for degeneration, for ultimate death 
and extinction. The geological strata are storehouses of forms which 
thus strayed from the path, of lines which have failed of posterity, of 
extinct peerages in the nobility of life. 

So that, for each minutest act or. activity, there were two possible 
ways : the way which would make for progression along the royal line ; 
and the way which would make for digression, for retrogression. These 
two potencies, these two possibilities, or the forces which determined 
them, are the angels and the demons of our parable, the Devas and the 
Asuras. Where the Deva conquered, the activity was realized in such 
a way as to make for the upward path. Where the Asura won, the 
activity was carried out in such a way as to make for digression, for 
retrogression. 

So far, the biologists have refused to speculate concerning these 
Devas and Asuras. They have gone as far as recognizing that these 
and these activities made for progress, whether they were activities of 
the whole organism, or activities within the organism activities of the 
germ plasm. But they have been chary of telling us why, under what 
impulsion, the activity turned the one way or the other way. It just 
"happened" so, and is not susceptible of explanation. So they solve 
a mystery by a mystery. Darwin built up his whole fabric of evolu- 
tion out of two things: the occurrence of favorable variations, which 
gave certain organisms an advantage over their brothers and sisters; 
and their consequent success, their survival in the struggle for life. 
Among their progeny again there were more gifted children and less 



26 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

gifted; there were advantageous variations. Their fortunate possessors 
once more survived and begat sons and daughters, unequally endowed. 
And so it went on, until the coming of man, the king. The whole 
thing, the whole progression from the speck of protoplasm to Darwin 
himself, was the sum of happy accidents, of infinitely small drives for- 
ward, which were the outcome of sheer good luck. 

Bergson saw that this is somewhat hard to credit : so many, so 
infinitely many minute special providences, playing the deciding role in 
this supposedly materialistic system. So he postulated an elan vital, a 
vital drive, at work from the beginning, and having, in a sense, a 
predetermined goal. Where, in each minute activity, the vital drive pre- 
vailed, that activity took place in the main line of progression ; where 
the forces of inertia, of obstruction, prevailed, that activity swerved 
aside, and took its place in the line of retrogression. So we come 
back again to our Devas and Asuras. 

Bergson evidently felt that the fortunate, the progressive activity, 
took place under the impulsion of a force from above, a force coming 
down into the material world from a spiritual plane above it ; and that, 
when the activity of the organism responded to that force from above, 
the activity was a success ; it made for progression along the royal road. 

At the time, it would evidently be exceedingly difficult to discern 
between the successful activity and the unsuccessful; that which is to 
make for further progress and that which is to make for digression. 
Indeed, the appearances might well be against the truth. Thus, we 
may imagine that, among the Miocene apes, there were two contending 
parties, those who were for continuing their free, swinging life among 
the tree-tops, and those who were for coming to the ground. This serene 
life, we may imagine the tree-top party saying, gives us the free air of 
heaven ; it makes for high security, and gives us wide horizons. Why 
should we go down to the earth, among so many dangers, to breathe a 
lower air? But the others took their decision and came to earth. The 
upshot is, that the tree-top party are still swinging among the tree- 
tops, in Further India and Borneo and Equitorial Africa, while the down- 
to-earth people have built Athens and Rome. This is, of course, only an 
illustration, a parallel ; we do not at all vouch for its historicity. 

But it seems clear that only through the event, the outcome, the 
arrival at the end of the road, can unfailing discernment be reached. 
It is easy, now, looking back along the biologist's line of ascent from 
the monad to the man, to say that these and these activities, these 
and these decisions, made for progression along the royal road, while 
the others, which may have seemed excellent at the time, made for 
retrogression and extinction. 

The mystics, whether of the East or West, have always refused to 
accept Darwin's fancy that the infinitely numerous small forward steps 
took place by chance and were but happy accidents. And indeed, if 
we set it down baldly, there is something incredible in the idea that 



EASTERN AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY 27 

the fine mechanism of the eye with its self-adjusting diaphragm in the iris, 
its self-focussing crystalline lens, to say nothing of the adjustment of 
the colour nerves, or the sheer fact of sight at all, has been built up by 
a string of happy chances ; that the beauty of the lilies, the lovely melody 
of the thrush and nightingale, nay, such master-melodies as the Upa- 
nishads and the Gospels, are merely the accumulation of infinite happy 
chances which began to befall the monad, and which have been succeed- 
ing each other ever since. The mystics have always believed that the 
spiritual world above is perpetually shining through this nether world; 
that these lovely and wonderful things, the bird's song, the lily's radi- 
ance, the parables of the Upanishads and the Gospels, are all revela- 
tions of the spiritual world, breaking through the clouds of this lower 
world; nay, that each minutest step forward, in the whole evolutionary 
chain, is the direct response and result of a spiritual force and impulse 
impinging at that point, and creatively urging each living thing along 
the royal road. 

The whole of our progress hitherto has been won through the 
battle of these forces that make for development, against the forces 
that make for retrogression and degradation; through the conflict 
between the Devas and the Asuras, the angels and the demons. And 
exactly the same law holds for our further progress, for every act and 
activity in our present lives ; there is at each point, for each activity and 
act, the pull of the two forces, upward and downward ; and our advance 
along this further road, the path of our immortality, depends on our 
discerning between the two, and responding to the upward pull. And, 
once more, just as it was infinitely difficult, at the time, to decide between 
the happy and the unhappy activity in the earlier field of development, 
as, for instance, in the controversy between the tree-top party and the 
down-to-earth party among the imagined Miocene apes, so it is infinitely 
difficult, at that point alone, and with only the knowledge belonging 
to it, to decide, concerning our present acts, to see which make for 
death, which make for immortality. But, just as it is easy enough, after 
the event, to say that the lazy abandonment of the activity of flight by 
the dodo and the great auk has meant the extinction of both; as it is 
easy, looking back along the biologist's line of ascent, to pronounce 
as to the Tightness of each decision in the organic world, so it will be 
easy, when we have reached the end of the way, the goal of our 
immortality, to declare, concerning each of our acts, that this activity 
made for life, while the other held the menace of destruction ; and 
therefore, it is easy now, for those who have attained, for those who 
have gained the journey's end, to say, concerning our present acts, that 
these are good and make for immortality, while those contain the seeds 
of ruin and of death. 

What we need, then, for our further journey, is just such a diag- 
nosis, a pronouncement by those who have attained, which shall touch 
all our acts and activities, so that we may eschew the evil and cleave 



28 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

to that which is good. Therefore the first need of our mystical train- 
ing is some method, or rule of life, which shall cover all our energies 
and acts, strengthening and approving the good, while warning us against 
the evil. It is a question of fine discernment of the impulsions which 
come to us from above, from the spiritual world, and which will gradu- 
ally lead us forward and upward to that world, and of responding to 
these by act; as, in the biologist's long line of ascent, it was a question 
of discernment, by the developing organisms, of those activities which 
led onward and upward, as against those which led backward and 
downward. 

Therefore, it would seem, all the great, ancient Law Codes, like 
that of Manu in India, or the Mosaic code, or the laws of ancient Egypt, 
are held to have been given by inspiration, to have been revealed from 
on high; and, in like manner, all the mystical rules, whether of East 
or West, are held to have been given by inspiration. 

We may, at this point, give in outline certain of these codes and 
rules, making the attempt to see their underlying principles ; to see why, 
and in what way, they try to make the discernment between acts to 
be performed and acts to be eschewed ; the former making for salvation 
and immortality, while the latter make for degradation and death. One 
of the best versions of the ancient code and rule of India is that 
recorded in the Vayu Purana. The name of this revered scripture sig- 
nifies The Ancient Book inspired by the Spirit ; for Vayu, the Wind-god, 
is the Spirit, which "bloweth whither it listeth." We may preface the 
code itself by giving, for contrast with our somewhat sketchy outline 
of the Darwinian scheme, the ancient Indian account of the evolution 
of living beings on this earth, through the pressure of the spiritual world 
upon the physical world. It is simply an expansion, in vivid detail, of 
the pressure of spiritual forces which Bergson saw to be indispens- 
able for any clear understanding of ascending development among beings. 

Brahma, the Creator, formed mind-born creatures from his own 
body and resembling himself. When the Treta Third Age had arrived, 
and had gradually reached its middle, the Lord then began to form 
other mind-born creatures. He next formed beings in whom sattva 
(goodness) and rajas (passion) predominated, and who were capable 
of attaining righteousness, possessions, love and liberation, together with 
the means of subsistence. Devas, too, and Pitris, and Rishis, and 
Manus, by whom these creatures were variously ordered, according to 
their natures in conformity with the Yuga. When this character of his 
offspring had been attained, the self-existent meditated with love upon 
mind-born offspring of all kinds and of various forms. Those creatures, 
who were described by me to thee as having taken refuge in the world 
called Janaloka at the end of the Kalpa, all these arrived here, when 
he meditated upon them, in order to be reproduced in the form of Devas 
and of other beings. According to the course of the Manvantaras the 
least came first, being guided by destiny, and by connections and cir- 



EASTERN AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY 29 

cumstances of every kind. These creatures were always born, under 
the controlling influence of, and as a recompense for, their good and 
bad karma. He of himself formed these creatures, which arrived in 
their several characters of Devas, Asuras, Pitris, cattle, birds, reptiles, 
trees, and insects, in order that they might be subjected anew to the con- 
ditions of creatures. . . . 

This brings us to the ancient polity, the ordained order of civil 
and religious life, which is outlined in an earlier passage of the same 
scripture : 

Brahma, the Creator, determined the respective duties and func- 
tions of all mankind. Lord Brahma ordained that power, the sceptre, 
and war should be the duty of the Kshattriyas. He then appointed, as 
the functions of the Brahmans, the duty of officiating at sacrifices, sacred 
study, the receiving of gifts. The care of cattle, commerce, and agricul- 
ture, he allotted as the work of the Vaishyas. The practice of the 
mechanical arts, and service, he assigned to the Shudras. 

Having distributed to the classes their respective functions and 
occupations, the Lord then allotted to them abodes in other worlds for 
their perfection. The world of Prajapati is declared to be the abode of 
Brahmans practising rites; Indra's world that of Kshattriyas who do 
not flee in battle; the world of the Maruts that of Vaishyas who fulfil 
their duty; the world of the Gandharvas that of Shudras who abide in 
the work of service. 

So far the Vayu Purana, the Ancient Book of the Spirit. There 
are two vital principles in this passage: the first is that, for each type 
of character or race, there is an ideal task, a type of work which will 
exactly fulfil that individual's need at that time and in that life, and 
will give exactly the right development to the spiritual powers which 
belong to that character; naturally, almost automatically, leading the 
soul forward along the royal road of progress. In a polity which had 
for centuries and even millenniums been stable, like that of ancient India, 
it was held that, under the orderly action of the law of Karma, each 
man and woman would be born into the class or caste which naturally 
fitted that soul, the situation in life which that soul had worked its 
way up to; thus, a Shudra who, faithful to "the work of service," had 
completed, in one or many lives, the tasks belonging to that state, 
and had learned its lessons and developed its powers, would, through 
Karma, be reborn as a Vaishya, thus inheriting the lessons of the next 
class, and entering into larger responsibilities. The faithful Vaishya 
would, in the fulness of time, be reborn a Brahman, and thus inherit 
the opportunity of study, of the practice of ritual, the whole rule of life 
belonging to that caste. Finally would come birth into the highest, the 
Kshattriya class, with the added responsibility of rule, with the obliga- 
tion of war; so that the fullest exercise would be given to the spiritual 
powers of initiative and intuition, this exercise being safeguarded by the 
earlier and thoroughgoing training in service and the faithful use of 



30 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

materials as a Shudra, in commerce and mutual exchange, together with 
the care of living and growing things as a Vaishya, and in the austerity 
and study of Brahmanhood. In a social and political age like ours, with 
its innumerable confusions, the path of life is far more difficult. But 
there is safety in the principle of duty, in that conscientious fulfilment 
of "the duties of our state," on which Christian teachers lay such stress. 
If we look upon our state of life as an opportunity to fulfil our duties, 
to develop the spiritual powers of endurance, of fidelity, of self-sacrific- 
ing devotion, we shall reap the fruits of such an ordered social polity 
as the Vayu Purana describes. 

It is interesting to find that the Vayu Purana, like all the ancient 
books of India, lays the greatest stress upon just this moral attitude 
towards the duties of our state, declaring that: All external rites are 
fruitless for one who is inwardly debased, however energetically he may 
perform them. A man who bestows even the whole of his substance 
with a defiled heart will thereby acquire no merit of which a good 
disposition is the only cause. 

The second vital principle in the passage we have quoted is that 
contained in the verses which declare that, after death, the Kshattriya 
goes to the heaven of Indra, the Brahman to the heaven of Prajapati, the 
Vaishya to the world of the Maruts, the Shudra to the world of the 
Gandharvas. This is once more a parable, a symbolic statement of the law 
that the spiritual states attained, the planes of spiritual consciousness 
reached, depend upon the activities of the will in life, upon the faithful 
and self-sacrificing performance of duty ; the true duty being, in each case, 
an expression of the spiritual needs, the spiritual stature, of each soul, at 
each stage of its progress. 

We therefore find that the right performance of duty is the back- 
bone of spiritual life, the firm foundation of mystical development, of 
spiritual consciousness. Without the faithful performance of duty, in 
the spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice, all supposed states of spiritual 
consciousness are delusions and highly dangerous delusions. They rep- 
resent, not the true unfoldment of the spiritual man, with his larger 
consciousness, but fatal by-paths leading to degradation and extinction. 
So that the right performance of duty in the outer world is the only 
doorway of entrance to the inner world ; and a wise consideration of 
duty, of the true duties of each state of life, must form the first chapter 
in every sound treatise on mysticism. 

The principle underlying this is clear. The whole of evolution has 
taken place in obedience to the pressure of spiritual forces from above ; 
therefore the life of every organism, of every being, which is on the 
royal road of progress, is, at each moment, an expression of spiritual 
forces working through physical life. Only by the reception of these 
spiritual forces and by complete correspondence with them, can right 
life be maintained from moment to moment; only thus can right progress 
be made. 



EASTERN AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY 31 

Each stage of life means a larger endowment of consciousness, 
a greater exercise of power, than that of the preceding stage. There- 
fore it is imperative that this wider consciousness shall be developed 
along the true spiritual lines; that the power, the will, shall be used in 
perfect harmony with spiritual laws. And so we find that, for each 
class, for each caste in the system described in the Vayu Purana, 
duties are prescribed which will widen the consciousness and develop 
the will in unison with spiritual law. 

The most primitive and elementary revelation of the spiritual law 
in the physical world is that which is contained in the nature and 
properties of lifeless substances, of wood and stone, of brass and iron, 
of silver and gold; therefore the handling of these things, the gaining 
of practical mastery over them, as artisans, was prescribed as the duty 
of the lowest class, the Shudra ; this, with the obligation of service, 
the duty of obedience, which is the fundamental spiritual law, since only 
by implicit obedience to law can life be maintained at any point even 
for a moment. 

The second revelation of spiritual law is the growth and develop- 
ment of living things, of plants and animals, the law of life. So this 
range of activities was prescribed for the second class, the Vaishyas, 
as farmers and tenders of cattle. So complete is the revelation of 
spiritual law in this world of growing things, that their activities were 
made the basis of an admirable book, Natural Law in the Spiritual 
World, which had been better named, Spiritual Law in the Natural 
World. So rich and detailed is this revelation that Jesus drew many 
of his parables of spiritual life from it: Consider the lilies; a sower 
went forth to sow ; now learn a parable of the fig tree. . . . 

Then, with Brahmanhood, came the study of spiritual life as 
recorded in the older revelations, the ancient Sacred Books, the revela- 
tion of spiritual law through illuminated human consciousness ; this, 
and the supervision of sacrifices, of acts done through devotion, in 
obedience to spiritual commandments. 

And lastly, with the attainment of the highest caste, the Kshat- 
triya, came the exercise of authority and power and the supreme train- 
ing of righteous war. C. J. 

(To be continued.) 



How shall we rest in God? By giving ourselves wholly to Him. 
If you give yourself by halves, you cannot find full rest; there will ever 
be a lurking disquiet in the half which is withheld. Jean Nicolas Grou. 



"THE HEARTS OF MEN" 



THE Four were at dinner at a great club. Dissimilarities had been 
accentuated by the passing years. Coke had become a notably 
successful lawyer. His cynical wit made him welcome in the 
cleverest circles of Club life. His major personal interests were 
believed to be divided between his art collections and charity organiza- 
tions. Few who knew him would admit that his brilliant agnosticism or 
prosperous bachelorhood had any tinge of regret or desire. Seabury 
was the Rector of a great Episcopal parish ; a leader on many philanthropic 
lines ; a priest who had twice refused a Bishopric. Gracious was he, even 
to suavity, yet men accepted his sincerity. Ryan, too, had taken Orders, 
going to a seminary in Rome after graduating, and then putting himself 
under a Rule that had curbed his physical nature as it had developed the 
intellectual. More austere in appearance than Seabury, in social address 
and diplomacy he was the latter's peer. Abrahams, still unkempt, and 
with black eyes still glowering beneath black brows, was a Rabbi, a leader 
of the Zionists and of all that was Hebrew and Orthodox. 

How did such a group come together? What had such polar oppo- 
sites in common, to explain their sitting in quartette, in even surface 
intimacy? To understand their fore-gathering it is needful to go back 
many years: 

A quarter of a century and four years before ; four raw, green, and 
half-sca.ed Freshman found themselves seated on a bench in the Secre- 
tary's office of a great Eastern university. It was the close of the very last 
day for registration. In the office no other students were left. Only a 
busy clerk and a sad-eyed, youngish widow remained of the crowd that 
had filled the office ; a crowd with constantly changing components, yet 
with a note of sameness running through it ; only the four boys seemed 
unmarked. Yet even they were alike in their shyness and ignorance. 

At last the Secretary came out of his private office with two laughing 
Juniors. He had almost passed through the outer door when his clerk 
called: "Excuse me, Dr. Smith, but these Freshmen who want 
rooms." 

The Professor turned abruptly. He looked half-despairingly at the 
four lonely figures, who looked back at him in entire despair. Then he 
looked at his watch and made an impatient little gesture. "Haven't you 
boys any place you could go tonight and then see me in the morning?" 
Four heads drooped. Before the answers could come the young Profes- 
sor was obviously repentant of his own impatience. "All right," he said, 
"I'll come back and see what we can do." 

The widow leaned forward with a grim intentness that all but broke 
through her self -repression and native reserve. The Professor's eyes 
lightened and he put back into his pocket the watch he had been holding 



THE HEARTS OF MEN 33 

in his hand. "Let me see, Mrs. Pynetree, you say you can take in four. 
Your prices are moderate. The committee has approved you. And you 
haven't taken any in. Ah, what a happy circumstance for all of us ! Here 
are four young gentlemen who know not where to hang their hats and 
place their weary heads; here are you, ready to give them a gladsome 
welcome, and, let us hope, not too uncomfortable quarters ; and here am 
I enabled to keep a most delectable engagement. Miss Standish will 
arrange things officially and I will see you young gentlemen whenever I 
may be of service." With an airy wave of his hand, the Professor 
departed. 

So it was that the Four were thrown together, trudging off, bag-laden, 
through the September heat, to Mrs. Pynetree's cottage. They trudged in 
silence, for they did not even know one another's names. Only that each 
had a certificate of admission and that Dr. Smith had sent them on to- 
gether accounted for the grouping. Not one of them had a single friend 
at the University. Each would be the sole representative of his school. 
They had come unheralded. As they trudged along, each felt secretly that 
he had come unwelcomed. 

Yet for four years they roomed together. Inevitably they made 
friends independently of one another, but nothing pried them apart. Some- 
times they marvelled at this and would say that they wouldn't leave Mrs. 
Pynetree in the lurch, with her little house off the student channels. Yet 
sometimes in the conferences, which grew to be almost nightly, however 
brief in duration, they would admit that they stayed together because they 
wanted to be together. Yet, more often, even they doubted this. 

When they had graduated they had formally vowed to get together 
often. As a matter of fact, even Coke and Seabury had met seldom. But 
the twenty-fifth anniversary of their class had brought out pledges from 
each to attend. Seabury, noting this, had arranged a private reunion of 
the Four the night before their class should come together. So it was 
that they were now sitting as Coke's guests. 

Coke did know how to order a dinner. He and the Club chef con- 
sidered that they had accomplished a great work of art. However 
successful the dinner was in food effectiveness, it was otherwise a flat 
failure. At first there had been sudden spurts of "Don't you remember," 
but the polite interest, so instantly manifested by the others, had seemed 
to silence each oral entrant in turn. The dinner was a failure. Each 
man was bored. Yet none felt intimate enough to admit it. 

"Excuse me, Sir 

"Your car is here, Sir," announced a servant. 

Even Coke started when the man reported to him. He had for- 
gotten the plan, suggested by Seabury, who still retained a trace of his 
boyish romanticism, that they should leave after an early dinner and spend 
the night together in their old quarters, secured through the cooperation 
of his oldest son, now closing his first year as a student at their old 
college. 



34 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

The ride was as silent as the latter part of the dinner. Yet even the 
ride was cheerful in comparison with the meeting in Seabury's old room, 
after they had placed their luggage and got into lounging attire. 

Each seated man was staring into vacancy when Seabury got up and 
went over to the fireplace. He placed his left elbow upon the mantel and 
put a foot on the fender. The attitude was so familiar that the other 
three looked up. The gesture with which he pulled his moustache was 
new, but the eyes were unchanged. They were once more friendly. 

"As my boy might say," began the Reverend Doctor, "this is a 
frost!" 

Four laughs broke out together. Coke got up and began walking 
back and forth. "Why is it?" he asked with a suddenness of persistent 
inquiry that was unlike the polished Clubman he had become. 

"That's the second natural note," came in Ryan's deep tones, as he 
leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. 

"You, too, look like old times," said the Rabbi, turning his chair and 
putting his elbows on the table. 

There was a moment's silence kindly and intimate. 

Then Seabury spoke out. "I have been thinking" he began, 
only to be interrupted by Coke's "Isn't that dangerous for a Rev. Doc ?" 

"So do many think," said Seabury. "And others teach," went on 
Coke, pointing a finger at Ryan, who laughed, as he said : "Same old 
error, Puck, thinking you think." 

"But if the Sea babe wants to exhibit his mental processes, why not 
let him," suggested Abrahams. 

"Yes, Scab, what were you thinking?" 

The Rector grew more earnest in manner. "You boys know how 
much we all looked forward to this and how disappointing it has been. 
Let's be honest. This reunion is a flat failure. I feel as if I were at a 
funeral, with only corpses present, and not even one mourner left to 
praise the dead " 

"But what's the reason there must be something more than the 
years? We men certainly have more in common than those four dear, 
dead boys?" Coke spoke with more human feeling than he had mani- 
fested all evening. 

"Puck, you've hit it we haven't looked for what we have in 
common yet doing that is what pulled us together and kept us together 
twenty-five years ago." 

"What have we in common, save a memory that's outgrown?" said 
Abrahams, twisting his gnarled and knotted fingers together in a tight 
clasp. "Bigot, infidel, heretic and Jew what have we in common? 
Seabury, even your church cannot hold us four together." 

"Thanks, you old Joshua, you are helping Puck to bring out my 
thought. We four grown men are shyer than those poor little forlorn 
Freshmen bunked together, willy nilly, by Dilettante Smith, the dear old 
fellow. We looked and worked and hungered to find out where we were 



THE HEARTS OF MEN 35 

alike and human. We men stand apart, afraid of each other. We see 
only our differences. Why can't we look below, forgetting externals." 

"Externals Scab even your latitudinarianism must balk at calling 
your faith a suit of clothes." Ryan's voice removed any sharpness from 
his words, for an unspoken affection rang through it. 

"We didn't notice our clothes then " 

"No," spoke up Abrahams, "You fellows were always gentlemen that 
way." 

"We fellows please Rabbi," said Ryan, "You were and are one 
of us." 

"I am here, thanks be, but can this be real? Can we overlook the 
truth and what does set us all apart?" 

"That's what I was thinking about," said Seabury eagerly, "Let's 
make a bargain. Let's sit down for a good old fashioned parley, as if we 
were those boys, those first few days of meeting seeking to find 
wherein we agree. Let's try now that we meet as greater strangers to 
find out where we are alike and may pull together." 

The three others looked at him with interest stamped upon their faces 
and looking out from their eyes. But there was silence until Coke spoke : 

"But, my reverend friend, we were boys then, unknown to one 
another, interesting in our mysteriousness. Now, do not our known 
differences 'set us all apart/ as the Rabbi has said ?" 

"Are we not all the more unknown and mysterious because of these 
differences? I know the lives we try to lead; I know the good we each 
are trying to do; I know we have something in common what is it? 
That's what I want to know ! Let us hunt for where we agree. Could 
anything be more unknown and mysterious? Have we ever been more 
lonely and more anxious for a friend than right now?" 

Four boys, using the bodies of middle-aged men, began to talk 
together sometimes one monologued; sometimes it was a duet; some- 
times all talked at once. All became interested in Seabury's quest ; and 
joined in what Coke called "the search for a friend." His legal mind, 
Seabury's eagerness, Ryan's diplomacy, Abrahams' concentration, were 
called upon in changing turn to keep the discourse on the plane of agree- 
ment ; on the problem of where they were really at one. 

The hours passed. They passed unnoticed by the eager group of 
lonely youngsters, seeking to find what they had in common. At last 
they grew quiet in thought. Through the silence of the summer dawn 
there came the crowing of a cock. Ryan sat up ; turned a strained and 
startled face toward his comrades ; then lurched forward to bury his face 
in his hands on the table, fairly sobbing as he prayed: "Blessed 
Mother, help me. I have been a heretic." Abrahams arose and, lifting 
up both hands, declaimed: "God of my fathers, forgive me, I have 
forsaken Thee." Seabury, standing at the mantel, looked across at Coke 
and hal f -whispered : "What am I a Jew or a Romanist?" to which 
Coke answered: "For God's sake, boys, what is the difference between 
us? " G. MCCLEMM. 



FROM THE HIGHLANDS OF 
LEMURIA 



II 



A FIRST LESSON IN THE LEMURIAN LANGUAGE 



"^~TT^HE First Race," says H. P. Blavatsky, in The Secret Doctrine, 
"was, in our sense, speechless, as it was devoid of mind on our 
_^ plane. The Second Race had a 'sound-language,' to wit, chant- 
like sounds composed of vowels alone. The Third Race devel- 
oped in the beginning a kind of language which was only a slight improve- 
ment on the various sounds in Nature. . . . When the law of evolu- 
tion led the middle Third Race to reproduce their kind sexually, an act 
which forced the creative gods, compelled by Karmic law, to incarnate in 
mindless men, then only was speech developed. But even then it was no 
better than a tentative effort. The whole human race was at that time of 
'one language and of one lip.' Speech then developed, according to Occult 
teaching, in the following order : 

"Monosyllabic speech; that of the first approximately fully developed 
human beings at the close of the Third Root-race, the 'golden-coloured,' 
yellow-complexioned men, after their separation into sexes, and the full 
awakening of their minds. Before that, they communicated through what 
would now be called 'thought-transference.' . . . This monosyllabic 
speech was the vowel parent, so to speak, of the monosyllabic languages 
mixed with hard consonants, still in use among the yellow races. . . . 

"These linguistic characteristics developed into the agglutinative 
languages. The latter were spoken by some Atlantean races, while other 
parent stocks of the Fourth Race preserved the mother-language. And 
as languages have their cyclic evolution, their childhood, purity, growth, 
fall into matter, admixture with other languages, maturity, decay, and 
finally death, so the primitive speech of the most civilized Atlanteans 
. . . decayed and almost died out. 

"The inflectional speech the root of the Sanskrit, very erroneously 
called 'the elder sister' of the Greek, instead of its mother was the first 
language (now the mystery tongue of the Initiates) of the Fifth Race." 

We have already quoted the same author as saying that "the Poly- 
nesians belong to the very earliest of surviving sub-races." We shall 
now try to show how completely the Polynesian languages bear out the 
above quotation as to the origin and development of speech. 



FROM THE HIGHLANDS OF LEMURIA 37 

First a word as to the general growth of languages, the materials of 
which they are made. Speech, in general, is a flow of breath from the 
lungs, to which sound and tone are given by the vibration of the vocal 
chords ; the change in position of the lips and the mouth giving the differ- 
ing sounds which we call vowels. If speech went no further, we should 
have the primal "vowel-language." But there are two further elements. 
The first is a partial closing of the lips, or a partial, but incomplete, ap- 
proach of the teeth, or of the tongue to various points along the palate, 
thus causing, for the lips, the sounds of f and v ; for the teeth, the sounds 
of s, of th and dh ; for the tongue, the sounds of 1 and r, (formed by the 
tip of the tongue, partially, but not completely, stopping the vowel air- 
stream ;) the sounds of kh and gh, when the root of the tongue comes 
close to the palate. Thus are formed the semivowels or liquids, which 
stand half-way between the vowels and the full consonants, or, as the 
Sanskrit grammarians better call them, the "contacts." In Sanskrit, there 
are five points in the mouth at which full contacts are formed : ( 1 ) the 
throat or back of the mouth, where the sounds of k and g (hard) are 
formed ; (2) the top of the mouth where, by a contact with the under- 
side of the tip of the tongue, turned backwards, a hard t and d are formed, 
which are nearly like the very hard t and d of the English language ; (3) 
the true dentals, formed by pressing the tip of the tongue against the teeth, 
like the soft t and d in Italian and other continental languages. The fact 
that Englishmen, not noticing the difference, use their own hard t and d 
when pronouncing continental languages, is one of the things which keep 
them from "talking like the natives," who use the soft t and d. (4) a 
blend between t and sh, with the tongue against the teeth, giving the sound 
ch, with its corresponding sonant, j ; and (5) the lip-contact, forming the 
labials, p and b. In Sanskrit, there are, for each of these five points of 
contact, first, the surd sounds, like k, ch, t, p ; then the sonants, like g, j, d, 
b; then the same sounds aspirated, or followed by an immediate out- 
breathing, giving the sounds k-ha, g-ha, t-ha, d-ha, ch-ha, j-ha, p-ha, b-ha ; 
and, finally, the nasals, formed by setting the organs of the mouth in posi- 
tion for pronouncing each group and then sending forth the breath, not 
through the mouth, but through the nose ; sounds something like this : nga, 
for the throat ; nya, for the ch-sound ; the hard and soft na ; and, finally, 
ma, for the lip-contact. 

This pretty formidable battery of sounds represents the highest and 
fullest development, that of the early Fifth Race. We have given it in 
its completeness, as a basis of comparison for the very simple range of 
sounds in the extremely early, and, therefore, comparatively undeveloped, 
Polynesian languages, those of "the earliest surviving sub-races." And, 
at the risk of appearing to bore even the most tolerant readers, we venture 



38 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

to arrange these Sanskrit sounds in a little table, to be followed, presently, 
by a similar table for the Polynesian tongues : 



SANSKRIT CONSONANT AND SEMI-CONSONANT RANGE 



ka 


k-ha 


ga 


g-ha 


nga 


ha 


(kha) 


ta 


t-ha 


da 


d-ha 


na 


ra 


sha (hard) 


ta 


t-ha 


da 


d-ha 


na 


la 


sa 


cha 


ch-ha 


ja 


j-ha 


nya 


ya 


sha (soft) 


pa 


p-ha 


ba 


b-ha 


ma 


va 


(fa) 



(hard) 
(soft) 



Each of the above sounds (except the two in brackets) has a letter 
to represent it in the Sanskrit alphabet, and, in that alphabet, the sounds 
are arranged in their physiological order, pretty much as in this table ; first, 
the throat sounds, then the sounds of the roof of the mouth, then the 
sounds of the ridge of the palate, then the sounds of the teeth, then the 
sounds of the lips. Thus a Sanskrit dictionary follows the natural order 
of these sounds, as they are formed by the organs of speech, justifying the 
idea that this highly scientific arrangement was reached by men who 
fully understood the mysteries of sound, men who spoke the "mystery 
tongue of the Initiates," as said in The Secret Doctrine. In contrast, our 
own alphabet is absolutely unscientific, a mere jumble of sounds without 
any order at all ; first, an open vowel, then a lip sound, then a dental 
sibilant, then a dental surd, then another vowel, and so on. It is an 
adaptation of the Greek alphabet, named from its two first letters, alpha- 
beta ; this is, in its turn, an adaptation of the Semitic Phoenician or 
Hebrew, where the two first letters are aleph ("an ox") and beth ("a 
house") ; our capital A being an ancient picture of the head of an ox, now 
turned upside down, while the second letter, B, is a conventionalized 
house. In like manner, our G is the head of a camel, the Hebrew 
gimel ; while our L is an ox-goad ; they are all blurred pictures, repre- 
senting the initial sounds of the objects depicted. 

We now come back, duly furnished with bases of comparison, 
to the Polynesian languages, with their very early, very slightly 
de' eloped, range of sounds. 

There are, first, the vowels which, as we shall see, play a very 
great part in Polynesian, a survival of the earlier all-vowel language. 
Next, there are the semi-vowels or breathings of the throat and lips, 
the sounds of ha and wha, va or fa, and the liquids, r and 1. Then 
there are three contacts or full consonants : that of the throat, or ka ; 
that of the teeth, or ta ; that of the lips, or pa. Throughout the whole 
Polynesian regions, of enormous extent, there are (with almost no 
exceptions) the surd sounds only, never the sonants ; that is, we find 
the sounds ka, ta, pa ; but not the sounds ga, da, ba. Finally, there 
is a nasal for each of the three contacts, namely, nga, na, and ma. 
To show how undeveloped this sound range is, we shall arrange the 



FROM THE HIGHLANDS OF LEMURIA 39 

Polynesian sounds in the same way as we arranged the very highly 
developed sounds of Sanskrit: 

POLYNESIAN CONSONANT AND SEMI-CONSONANT RANGE 
ka nga ha 
ta na la (or) ra 
pa ma wa (or) wha (or) fa 

And that is all; only nine contacts, instead of the thirty-three of 
Sanskrit. 

It seems, then, that the beginning was made with streams of vowel- 
sound only; that the half-contacts or semi-vowels, breathings and liquids 
and nasals, were then developed ; that the full contacts came last, begin- 
ning, perhaps, with the lip-contact, which is the easiest and simplest to 
make; the contacts of the teeth and throat, the sounds of ta and ka, 
coming later. Further, that all the surds were developed first, and then 
only later the sonants; the aspirated surds and sonants, as in Sanskrit, 
coming last of all. 

This gradual development, from pure vowel sounds, through breath- 
ings and semi-vowels, to full contacts or consonants, seems to record 
exactly that fall into matter described in The Secret Doctrine; it seems to 
have gone on parallel with the complete materialization, externalization 
and development of the fully formed physical man, remaining as an exact 
record and register of that development. And it seems probable that, if 
we could get the exact range of consonants natural to each race or sub- 
race, we could, using that range of sounds as an index, place the races in 
their correct order in the historical plan of development ; that we could 
grade all the races by this index alone. So marvellous a thing is language, 
so mysterious and magical is sound. 

We come, at length, to the Polynesian vowels, the oldest element of 
language and the most potent. It is curious and significant that, in the 
Polynesian tongues, the vowels still retain their primitive spiritual value ; 
many of them, simply, or united, form the divine names, the names of the 
Gods. Thus, A means God ; Ao is heaven, the state of the blessed ; ao, as 
a verb, means, to regard with reverence ; as a noun, ao means authority ; 
aoao means supreme, or, to be supreme ; aio means peace, quietude ; lo is 
the mystery God, the Supreme Being who, according to the Polynesian 
belief, is everywhere potent, without form, having no house ; they will not 
even name that God in a house or among men, but first withdraw to the 
wilderness, "where nature is unpolluted." lo also means the soul, life, 
power, mental energy. The vowel O alone means space, capacity, the 
ability to be contained; and, more familiarly, an enclosure, a garden. 
U means that which is fixed or firm, not easily to be shaken or moved. 

To come next to words of one or more vowels, genuine survivals of 
the primal vowel language; we shall be surprised at their great variety 
and expressiveness in Polynesian. 

Besides meaning God, the vowel a is also used as an article, as a 



40 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

prefix to proper names, as a preposition meaning to, or belonging to ; as 
an interjection. Aia means to have authority over, as ao means to reign. 
Ae is used to signify agreement, meaning yes, in answer to an affirmative 
question, and meaning no in answer to a negative question. The pure 
vowel word aeaea, accented on the second and fourth vowels, means to 
rise to the surface like a bubble ; aeaea means to pant, to be out of breath, 
to breathe hard ; the fundamental meaning evidently being breath, or, 
more metaphysically, spirit. Ai means to give life, while aia means an 
abode, a place where one lives ; ai is also an interjection of surprise. Ao, 
besides meaning personified Light, as a divinity, signifies also daylight, 
daytime, dawn; as a verb, ao means to gather, to collect; aoa means to 
bark like a dog, while aoaoa is the indistinct noise made by persons at a 
distance ; these two last belong to the category of Nature sounds, spoken 
of in The Secret Doctrine. Au means smoke, the current of a stream, 
and, more materially, a sharp thorn or needle ; auau means to pick out, 
as thorns or fish-bones are picked out ; au further means firm, stable, sure, 
and, as an exclamation, exactly what "sure" means in American. Also, as 
an imitative sound, au signifies a dog's bark, or, as a verb, to bark. Aua 
is the name of a small fish. Aua also means "I know not (and care not) !" 
Aua has the further meaning of far on, at a distance, while auau has 
meanings as different as to lift, and a basket of seed potatoes ; perhaps the 
meaning shades thus : to lift, to gather together, to gather in a basket, and 
so on. Aue is an exclamation of sorrow, like alas ! It further means a 
clamor, a noise of woe. 

We have, therefore, of pure vowel words beginning with a, the 
following : A, ae, ai, ao, au ; aeae, aeaea ; aia ; aoao, aoaoa ; aua, auau, aue. 
This is already a fair illustration of the primal vowel language. 

E is used as a sign of the future tense ; as a preposition, it means by ; 
it is used as the sign of the vocative case. Ea is an exclamation of sur- 
prise ; it further means to rise above water, and, by a development of the 
meaning, to return home, as war captives return; and thence liberty, 
escape ; while eaea means, to escape repeatedly. Starting from the mean- 
ing, to rise, eaea comes to mean exalted, honourable. The beautiful word 
eaoia, each letter being distinctly pronounced, means but. Ei is an inter- 
jeciion, used at the ends of lines in poetry; while eia means a current or 
tide. Eo is said to mean a flat rock, but seems not to be generally used. 

The vowel i is used to form indefinite past tenses, and to connect a 
verb with its object ; it is also used as a sign of the accusative case, or with 
the meaning of to. Accented, i means to ferment; ii has the meaning of 
fermented, sour, mouldy ; ia means he, she or it ; with the additional mean- 
ings of that, the aforesaid ; ia also means a current or stream, while iaua 
means hold ! stay ! 

The vowel o, besides meaning space, an enclosure, something 
contained, comes to mean provision for a journey, a present, and, as a 
verb, to penetrate, to go deep, to dig a hole ; then to husk a cocoanut, to 
pierce with any sharp instrument. As a possessive pronoun, it means 



FROM THE HIGHLANDS OF LEMURIA 41 

your, belonging to; it is also an exclamation, in answer to a call. Oi 
means to shake, to shudder, with an intensive oioi, to be greatly agitated ; 
oioi then comes to mean rapid, swiftly, quickly ; to move. Oi, accented on 
the second syllable, means to shout; oioi is also the name of a bird and 
of a plant. Oa, in Hawaiian, means a board, a rafter ; while oaoa means 
split or cleft, like a tree cut into planks. Ou means you, or your ; oue is a 
kind of flax ; while ouou means a few, and further, thin, feeble. 

U, as we saw, means something firm or fixed ; and then, to reach the 
land, to touch, as a boat or ship on the rocks, to come face to face, to face 
danger, to run up against anything, to prevail, to conquer. Ua is the back- 
bone, uaua is a sinew, a vein, an artery, with the more abstract meanings, 
courage, firmness, resolution, a brave man. Backbone has just the same 
secondary meanings with us. Ua means rain, to rain, while ue means to 
weep. Ua as an adverb means when; it is also used as a particle 
of expostulation. Ue, besides meaning the fourth day of the moon's age, 
signifies to shake, to tremble, while ueue means to stimulate, to incite ; uei 
means to try to set going ; ueue means to call people to war. Ui means to 
ask, to inquire ; an invitation ; uiui means to ask questions repeatedly. 

When in addition to the five vowels, we take the simple breathing ha, 
or the slightly more concrete, but still open wa and wha, we can multiply 
our vocabulary many times. Thus, aeha, aewa, ahau, ahe, ahea, aheahea, 
ahi, ahiahi, aho, ahu, ahuahua, ahua, awa, awawa, awe, aweawe, awha, 
awhe, awheawhe, awheo, awhi, awhiwhiwhi, awhio, awhiowhio, and so on 
for the other vowels. 

Then come the liquids, 1 and r ; then the nasals ; and, finally, the full 
contacts or consonants. 

It will be noted that, in many cases, an intensive is formed by 
doubling the original word ; awhe, for example, means to gather in a heap ; 
awheawhe means to set to work with many persons ; awhio means to wind 
about, while awhiowhio means a whirlwind. This is the simplest form 
of agglutination, the "gluing together" of words, spoken of, in The Secret 
Doctrine, as characteristic of the second period of speech. Here is a 
pretty example of agglutination, from Samoan: lagi means sky; lalolagi 
means under the sky; lelalolagi means the earth; fa'a lelalolagi 
means earthly. If one repeats these words in series, lagi-lalolagi-lelalola- 
gi-fa'alelalolagi, one gets an effect that is distinctly Lemurian ; and not in 
fancy only, but in reality; the words have actually survived since 
Lernurian times. 

But there is a further evidence that, in the Polynesian tongues, we 
have the survival of a far older all-vowel tongue the miocene survival of 
an eocene speech, as one writer says. The word kanaka has been used very 
widely to mean a native of the Hawaiian islands, or indeed of the islands 
in general ; it really means a man, a human being, in the Hawaiian tongue. 
The word consists of a hard contact, a nasal and another hard contact, each 
followed by the vowel a. But, at the other end of Polynesia, the word is 
no longer kanaka but tangata ; thus Tangata-maori means a native of New 



42 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Zealand, literally "an indigenous man," or, as we say, a Maori. Here again, 
the word consists of a hard contact, a nasal and a hard contact, each fol- 
lowed by the vowel a ; but, while the three vowels remain the same, the con- 
tacts and nasals are altered, interchanged. The Hawaiian form of the word 
has the throat contact k ; the dental nasal n, the throat contact k, with the 
three a's ; the New Zealand word has the dental contact, the throat nasal, 
the dental contact, with the three a's. It is evident that the three a's are the 
essential part, the root of the word, the old and original basis, while the 
contacts or consonants were filled in later, and filled in differently, at dif- 
ferent parts of Lemuria. In Samoan, the tongue of the group of islands 
which lie halfway between these extremes, and about two thousand miles 
from either end, the word is tagata, the nasal being softened to a sonant, 
a sound which is not found in the original range of Polynesian contacts; 
in Tahiti, a thousand miles south-east of Samoa, the central nasal is 
dropped altogether, or has never been added, and the word is ta-ata. In 
Moriori, it becomes rangata. In Fiji it is tamata. In Vanikoro it is rana- 
ka. Thus we get the series of forms : Ta-ata, tagata, tangata, rangata, 
ranaka, kanaka ; the vowels being the essential thing, while the consonants 
are put in, and variously put in, to give the word more substance. The 
same thing may be illustrated by another well known word : in Mangaian, 
aroa means love, or beloved ; in Maori it is aroha ; in Samoan it is alofa ; 
in Hawaiian it is aloha ; showing the substitution, in the one case, of one 
liquid for another; in the other, of one breathing for another. In the 
same way, atarangi, a shadow, in Maori, becomes akalani in Hawaiian ; 
ata-ani in Marquesan. Kaha, a rope, in Maori, becomes aha in Tahiti, 'afa 
in Samoa, kaa in Mangaian, kafa in Tongan. So the Samoan word lagi, 
meaning sky, which we have already quoted, is in Maori rangi ; in Man- 
garevan it is ragi ; in Tahitian it is rai ; in Hawaiian it is lani ; in Motu it 
is lai. So we get the series, rangi, rani, rai, lai, lani, lagi ; showing, as 
before, that the vowel-combination is the essential element, the real root 
of the word, the survival from the all- vowel period. 

Two things in this baby-talk of mankind may have seemed very fam- 
iliar, even to those who know nothing of Polynesian : first, this substitu- 
tion of one consonant for another; second, the doubling of syllables or 
words, or even their repetition several times running. The truth is, that 
both these linguistic pecularities survive among the small early-Third Race 
people who are continually arriving in our midst, and whom we prosaically 
call babies, quite overlooking the fact that, in a great many things, they 
are a genuine apparition of the long gone sub-races. For have they not 
the exact character of the sexless, mindless sub-races, not fully mastering 
their material bodies, not yet inhabited by manas? Do they not express 
themselves in streams of vowel speech, before they come to the semi- 
vowels and liquids, and, finally, the hard contacts or consonants ? And do 
they not indulge in the trick of reduplication or repetition, saying, with 
entire content, such words as papapapa, or mamamama, or tatatata, which 
their progenitors quite unwarrantably take to themselves? And do they 



FROM THE HIGHLANDS OF LEMURIA 43 

not, often to their fourth or fifth year, mix up the consonants just as do 
the recognized Lemurians, the peoples of the Polynesian islands, generally 
using ta for ka, just as the Maori says tangata for kanaka? 

This is but one of many illustrations of the law of reversion or sur- 
vival, in accordance with which the individual, in the earlier stages of his 
career, reverts to the characteristics of past periods and races, nay, even 
of past Rounds. So there are, all around us, opportunities for studying 
the most ancient Lemurian speech. We need not go to the South Seas to 
hear it. All babies talk it ; all babies, up to a certain age, talk the same 
language, and that language is a reversion to the speech of the earliest 
races, long before complete humanity had been attained. 

So, from our survey of the Highlands of Lemuria, we get these 
results : Over this vast space of islands dotted amid the ocean, a space 
from twelve to fifteen millions of square miles, or equal to a third or a 
fourth of the land surface of the globe, the speech is singularly uniform 
even though the island tribes that talk it have been separated from each 
other for long ages. And everywhere, with the sameness of speech, there 
are the same large, fundamental ideas, the same world-concepts, the same 
divinities, the same ancient traditions of the early world. Without doubt, 
we are in presence of a once united, though now endlessly subdivided 
people, a common culture, a common historical or prehistoric past. 

And, at the basis of this vastly extended speech, there is an identity 
of metaphysical or spiritual meaning. The vowels, which are its dominant 
element, have large, abstract ideas attached to them or, rather, evidently 
inherent in them. They stand for heaven, the sky, the soul, life, breath, 
space; the great, formless forces and powers that are the root of all 
things. And, even after the few, simple consonants or contacts were 
developed, the words remained essentially vowel-words; the vowel part 
of them is uniform and unchanging, over the whole vast area, while the 
hard contacts or consonants are variously filled in, as gutturals in one part 
of the Lemurian area, as dentals in another, but, according to an evident 
phonetic system, by no means haphazard. 

It is interesting that Dana, who wrote an admirable account of the 
early days, and of a cruise to the Pacific coast nearly a hundred years 
ago, records that a group of Kanakas, whom he found at San Diego, had 
a series of very ancient religious chants, which were composed of vowels 
only, as though the older speech, before the formation of consonants, had 
been preserved as a mystery tongue. It is interesting also that, in the 
older Upanishads, there is a tradition which accords closely with the his- 
torical evolution of the Polynesian languages; the vowels, we are told, 
belong to the gods, to the heavenly world ; the breathings and semi-vowels 
belong to the mid-world ; the consonants belong to the material world, the 
world of death. Here again is the tradition of a fall into matter, for the 
speech of mankind as well as for man himself. 

C.J. 
(To be continued} 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 



THE CAUSES AND CONDUCT OF THE WAR 
INTRODUCTION 

A" IERICA has seemed so secure from invasion for so long, that a 
habit of regarding the affairs of other continents as "no concern 
of ours" has resulted, which in its turn has discouraged study 
of world conditions and of international politics. We have become 
provincial. 

The consequence is that relatively few Americans, even today, could 
explain the causes of the present world-war; while if the United States 
is to do its part with concentrated vigor and intelligence, not only during 
the war, but particularly when the time comes to discuss terms of peace 
it is of vital importance that in this country as elsewhere, there shall be 
wide-spread understanding of the factors involved. What all of us 
must desire is, not only a peace based upon justice, but a peace based 
upon conditions which will eliminate, so far as possible, the causes which 
made the present war possible. 

The large majority of Americans are now keenly alive to the need 
for right understanding and are able to approach the problem without 
prejudice. But there are those whose love of peace still makes it difficult 
for them to see justification for any war, while others, of German birth 
or origin, are unable to reconcile loyalty to their blood-ties with loyalty 
to America and the Allied cause. 

In the following pages, after dealing with the Causes and Conduct 
of the war, it will be shown that the more ardently we love peace, the 
more complete must be our approval of America's participation in the 
war, and that the greater the loyalty of a German-American to his blood- 
ties, the more earnestly he must desire that Germany shall learn, once 
for all, that "God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that 
shall he also reap." 

Properly speaking, no one has any right to adopt a new citizenship, 
and to swear allegiance to the country of his adoption, unless he abandons 
completely all sense of allegiance to the land of his birth. The fact is, 
however, that a great many people became citizens of the United States 
during times of peace and without considering the possibility that Ameri- 
ca might some day be at war with their native land. The resulting posi- 
tion is a false one. 

Yet, in almost any circumstances, it would be strange if people of 
German birth or of German ancestry were not inclined to favor their own 
race. Blood is thicker than water. It does not speak well for those who 
think otherwise. 

Almost inevitably, therefore, when this great war first broke out, 

44 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 45 

the majority of German- Americans believed that Germany was probably 
in the right, and wanted her to prove victorious against France and 
England and Russia. Naturally, also, they must have wished the United 
States to side with Germany, and must have done what they could to 
influence public opinion on Germany's behalf. 

Imagine your attitude when suddenly told that your brother has 
committed some frightful crime. You declare it impossible. You are 
simply unable to believe it. If your brother has been arrested, the 
obvious thing to do is to try at once to obtain his release; to take his 
part to the uttermost against those who have falsely accused him. Your 
brother must of necessity be innocent. Those who accuse him are his 
enemies and yours. 

Disinterested acquaintances may for years have noticed evidences 
in him of increasing moral perversity. They may have said among 
themselves that someday there would surely be an outbreak. But you, 
his brother biased in his favor may have made light of his "peculiar- 
ities ;" may have shared the more innocent of them with him. Of bestial 
outrage and crime No, you would never believe him guilty of that ! 

Suppose, then, that you go to his rescue, taking up the cudgels on 
his behalf, confident of his innocence. 

Intelligently to defend him you must listen to the charges brought 
against him; you must examine the witnesses, and you must obtain 
evidence as to what he said and did prior to the event. After you have 
done this you will be in a position to decide how you can best serve your 
brother, how you can most truly be loyal to him. In other words, even 
the German-American who still has strong Pro-German bias, should not 
only be willing but anxious to ascertain the facts and to know as much 
as anybody concerning the causes and conduct of the war. Every peace- 
lover, also, must desire to change conditions which have proved provo- 
cative of war, and is obliged, therefore, like a wise physician, to make 
a careful study of the factors, both inner and outer, which have tended 
to upset that "balanced and harmonious action and inter-action of all 
the parts of the body" which we call health or peace. 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 

Of what is Germany accused? What has been the nature of her 
"outbreak" ? 

The President of the United States, after nearly three years of 
observation, declared (April 2, 1917) that Germany had thrown "to the 
winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings 
that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world;" that she 
was conducting "a war against all nations" by "the wanton and wholesale 
destruction of the lives of non-combatants, men, women and children;" 
that "the wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common 



46 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life," and that, finally, the 
United States was compelled to align itself against "an irresponsible 
government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and 
of right and is running amuck." 

More specifically, Germany stands accused : 

(a) Of having plotted a ruthless war of conquest as a preliminary 
step toward world domination ; and of having begun operations by 
violating the neutrality of Belgium which she herself was pledged to 
respect and to enforce; 

(b) of having outraged every law of God and man in her method of 
warfare, in all the territory she occupied, and in all her military 
operations both on sea and land ; 

(c) of being an outlaw among the nations, by reason of these 
crimes and because she continues to glory in them. 

It is further declared by her accusers that not until a majority of 
her own people insist that those who are responsible for these crimes 
and outrages be brought to fair trial, and not until the guilty be adequately 
punished, can Germany retrieve her outlawry and be admitted once 
more to the comity of nations. 

Germany is accused of having plotted a ruthless war of conquest 
as a preliminary step toward world domination ; and of having begun 
operations by violating the neutrality of Belgium which she herself 
was pledged to respect and to enforce. 

Under this first head it is essential to read the following: 
The Pangerman Plot Unmasked, Berlin's formidable Peace-trap 
of 'The Drawn War' by Andre Cheradame, published by Scribner, New 
York, 1917, at $1.25. 

In the case of the criminal brother, it was suggested that disinter- 
ested acquaintances may for years have noticed evidences of his increasing 
moral perversity, and may have foretold a serious and perhaps calamitous 
outbreak. 

Anyone who visited Germany some fifteen years ago, and who 
stayed there long enough to renew acquaintance with the German people, 
must have been impressed by the popularity of Nietzsche. People who 
had not read a line of his writings, pretended to admire him and quite 
genuinely approved of such extracts as they heard quoted. Nietzsche 
was the fashion. More than that, his self-idolatry was the fashion. 
German novels were nauseous with sex self-assertion. Women novelists 
were as bad and in some cases worse than the men. The German people 
had become Ego-maniacs. They dreamed of themselves as Super-men. 
In their personal relations they tried to live as Super-men. Their idea 
of a hero, a held, was a man who strode ruthlessly over obstacles over 
any kind of an obstacle, so long as he strode, and so long as he was 
ruthless. He had to be ruthless with women (the women wanted him 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 47 

to be ruthless). Compassion, pity, as Nietzsche said, must have no place 
in his Table of Values: they were the characteristics of slaves. The 
German, being a Super-man, must be hard (Werke, vi, p. 312). 

In those days it sounded like a joke. Very few foreigners took 
the situation seriously. It was well known that Berlin had become the 
most licentious city in Europe, and that German licentiousness was 
appallingly crude and vulgar. It was well known that illegitimacy had 
increased to an amazing extent, not only in the cities but in the country 
also. But the immorality of a nation seemed, to most people, to have 
no connection with world politics. It was not understood that such 
immorality was an expression of self-assertion of the worship of self 
and of ruthlessness and that there was the closest possible connection 
between the pseudo-philosophic talk of the "intellectuals;" the student 
Super-man with his shop-girl mistress and his duelling, and the inter- 
national self-assertion of the Pan-Germans : "Germans alone will govern ; 
they alone will exercise political rights; . . . they alone will have 
the right to become land owners. . . . However, they will condescend 
so far as to delegate inferior tasks to foreign subjects subservient to 
Germany" (Grossdeutschland und Mitteleuropa um das Jahr 1950, pub- 
lished under the auspices of the Alldeutscher Verband, or Pan-German 
League, Berlin, 1895 ; p. 48. Quoted by Cheradame, p. 4.) 

That statement, fathered as it was by the most powerful of German 
Leagues in 1895, would have impressed anyone but a German as simply 
insane. If an American had said it of Americans, an Englishman of 
Englishmen, a Frenchman of Frenchmen, they would have been greeted 
by roars of laughter from their own people. But Germans who did not 
agree with it, argued about it as Americans might argue the pros and 
cons of Free Trade : as a possibility to be considered, even if rejected. 

Only a nation of Ego-maniacs could have desired a world in their 
own image. Attainable or not, the Englishman, the Frenchman, the 
American, would have repudiated such a prospect for his own nation 
as introducing an intolerable monotony ! For a man to admire his own 
image to the point of willing and working to force all others into it, is not 
merely lunatic, but is a lunacy distinctly dangerous to his neighbors. 

Yet, because most people take us at our own valuation, the weak- 
minded of other nations were immensely impressed by Germany's self- 
satisfaction. Universities in particular were anxious to discover how 
the thing was done, that they too might acquire the dogmatic spirit of 
Kultur and escape from their own less imposing fallibilty. German 
science, German music, German theology, German metaphysics, German 
sociology (the economic interpretation of history, for instance), even 
German art and German philology imposed themselves by sheer impu- 
dence of self-assertion, or by their overwhelming ponderousness, and 
were accepted with a respect utterly beyond their intrinsic merits. Such 
lack of discrimination and of resistance in other nations, naturally reacted 
unfavorably upon Germany, tending to reinforce her constantly increas- 



48 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

ing egotism. In one sense and to a limited extent, her deep contempt for 
other nations was as much the fault of their weakness as of her conceit. 

"War must leave nothing to the vanquished except eyes to weep over 
their ill-luck (ungluck}. Moderateness (bescheidenheit) would be for us 
foolishness," wrote Otto Richard Tannenberg, in 1911 (Grossdeutschland, 
die Arbeit des 20 ten Jahrhnnderts, Leipzig; p. 237). 

Such a phrase was regarded by Germans as heroic, as grandiose, as 
German ! And German it certainly was. 

It was no new development. Long before the time of Nietzsche, 
there had been innumerable indications of the same obsession (see Prus- 
siens d'Hier et de Tou jours, by G. Lenotre; published by Perrin, Paris). 

No greater mistake could be made than to attribute to the German 
Emperor the sole, or even the chief responsibility for the madness of 
his people. He was a victim of the same disease: he also was an Ego- 
maniac; he also believed in ruthlessness. But he was and is typically 
German. He and Tannenberg and Nietzsche, Bernhardi, Bulow and the 
student Super-man, are but branches of the same tree. The Emperor's 
speech to his troops at Bremerhaven, on July 27, 1900, before their 
departure for China, was symptomatic and in no sense causal. "The 
Chinese," he said, "have trampled on international law. . . . Remem- 
ber when you meet the foe, that quarter will not be given, and that 
prisoners will not be taken. Wield your weapons so that for a thousand 
years to come no Chinaman will dare to look askance at a German. 
Pave the way once for all for civilization" ( !). 

There was that other speech by the Emperor, at Wilhelmshaven 
in March, 1898: "For where the German eagle has taken possession and 
has implanted his talons in a land, that land is German and will remain 
German" (see Germany's War Mania, pp. 67, 75; published by Dodd, 
Mead and Co., New York). 

There was the Emperor's motto which he wrote in the "golden 
book" of the Munich town-hall: "Suprema lex regis voluntas estol" 
("May the King's will be the supreme law!") It was the German spirit, 
the German attitude not peculiar to William, but the assertion by 
Germany to herself and to the world that she was a law unto herself: 
the spirit of the gilded anarchist whom Nietzsche had labelled Super- 
man. 

And, again, it was not primarily or chiefly the Emperor. German 
scientists and philosophers for years past have instilled into the German 
mind that, as the anthropologist, Woltmann, said, "the German is the 
superior type of the species homo sapiens, from the physical as well as 
the intellectual point of view." Wirth declared that "the world owes its 
civilization to Germany alone" and that "the time is near when the earth 
must inevitably be conquered by the Germans." Haeckel, the philosopher, 
said in a lecture before the Geographical Society of Jena, in 1905, that 
"the work of the German people to assure and develop civilization, gives 
it the right to occupy the Balkans, Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia, 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 49 

and to exclude from these countries the races actually occupying them 
which are powerless and incapable." 

The Emperor was at one with them ; neither leader nor led. "It is 
to the empire of the world that the German genius aspires," he said 
at Aix-la-Chapelle, on June 20, 1902. (The New Map of Europe, by 
H. A. Gibbons; pp. 29, 31, 62, 151. A suggestive book, marred by 
undue straining after neutrality). 

The Crown Prince contributed his quota in ways by no means 
discreet but none the less significant. He made speeches and wrote 
Prefaces, many of which are given in the book already referred to, 
Germany's War Mania. But he also talked, and Ian Malcolm, a well- 
known and highly respected member of the British Parliament, who had 
in earlier years been attached to the Embassy in Berlin, records in his 
War Pictures behind the Lines (Dutton) a conversation he had with the 
Crown Prince in January, 1914. 

It is worth quoting at length, if only for the light it throws on 
the claims of present German apologists that a peace-loving Fatherland 
was compelled to take up arms against the intrigues of her enemies. 

"Crown Prince. 'After all, you English people ought to be better 
friends with Germany than you are.' 

"I. M. 'Sir, we are always ready to be friends as you know, but 
to all of our overtures your Chancellor replies with an invariable snub.' 

"Crown Prince. 'How can we trust you whilst you are allied with 
such people as the French or the Russians? You have nothing really 
in common with them, and you have nearly everything in common with 
us. Together we could divide Europe and keep the peace of the world 
for ever.' 

"I. M. 'But how would you propose to do that ; given our existing 
treaties, how could we break them in order to be better friends with 
you?' 

"Crown Prince. 'You could shut your eyes and let us take the 
French Colonies first of all. We want them.' 

. . . The interview closed by my making the trite remark that 
now-a-days nobody wanted war, which injured victors and vanquished 
in like degree ; to which the Crown Prince vigorously replied : 

" 'I beg your pardon ; I want war. I want to have a smack at those 
French swine as soon as ever I can.' " 

And the Crown Prince, because of his known sentiments, was the 
most popular man in Germany. As Ian Malcolm says, he was "the 
object of constant demonstrations of popular affection" (pp. 2-4). 

It would have been better for the world if disinterested acquaint- 
ances had taken such evidences of increasing moral perversity with 
greater seriousness. Paradoxically, the danger was so overwhelming 
and so immediate that it was incredible. But the incredible happened, 
and the question today is whether America, in her selfish desire to 



50 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

stand aloof, did not wake up to her danger too late to help save the 
world from irretrievable disaster. 

Germany was to be made the center of a world system. The 
program was simple enough. Diplomatic Germany proclaimed part of 
it to the world, while pretending that that part of it was to be carried 
out by peaceful means. It was known as the Mitteleuropa doctrine, or 
as the Pan-German program. 

Outside the German Foreign Office, there was very little concealment 
of what the plan really involved. Thus, in 1898, at Manilla, there had 
been friction, as everyone knows, between Admiral Dewey and Rear- 
Admiral von Goetzen, an intimate friend of the Kaiser. In the course of 
a conversation the German Admiral spoke freely about the future, 
although aware, as he said, that no one would believe him at that time. 
"About fifteen years from now," he declared, "my country will start her 
great war. She will be in Paris about two months after the commence- 
ment of hostilities. Her move on Paris will be but a step to her real 
object the crushing of England. Everything will move like clockwork. 
We will be prepared and others will not be prepared." Then he added : 
"Some months after we finish our work in Europe, we will take New 
York, and probably Washington, and hold them for some time. We will 
put your country in its place, with reference to Germany. We do not 
propose to take any of your territory (?), but we do intend to take a 
billion or so of your dollars from New York and other places. The 
Monroe Doctrine will be taken charge of by us, as we will then have to 
put you in your place, and we will take charge of South America, as far 

as we wish to Don't forget this, and about fifteen years 

from now remember it, and it will interest you" (Naval and Military 
Record, No. 33, vol. LII, p. 578). 

The particulars of the program have been formulated repeatedly 
from 1895 to the present day, not only by the Pan-German League, but 
in whole or in part by the most powerful associations in Germany, such 
as those which presented to the German Imperial Chancellor, with his 
connivance, on May 20, 1915, the Memorial from which the quotations 
immediately following are taken. These associations included the League 
of Agriculturists, the League of German Peasants, the Provisional 
Association of Christian German Peasants, the Central German Manu- 
facturers' Union, the League of Manufacturers, and the Middle-Class 
Union of the Empire (Le Temps of Paris, August 12, 1915). 

Because Germany, although sufficiently supplied, for commercial pur- 
poses, with coal and iron, is not rich enough in either of them, without 
large additional resources, to be able to carry on a great war against such 
a country as the United States, the German plan included, to begin with : 

In the west, the seizure of Belgium and its absolute control "by 
putting into German hands the properties and the economic undertakings 
which are of vital importance for dominating the country" ; the seizure 
of Dunkirk, Calais and the French coast as far as the Somme "which 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 51 

will give us an outlet to the Atlantic Ocean" with the iron districts of 
Briey, the coal districts of the departments of the Nord and of the Pas de 
Calais, and the fortresses of Verdun, Belfort and the western buttresses 
of the Vosges. 

In the east, in order to "reinforce the agricultural basis of our 
national economy," and so as "to add largely to the number of our people 
who are capable of bearing arms," it will be "necessary to take from 
Russia" a "considerable extension of the frontiers of the (German) Em- 
pire and of Prussia" by "the annexation of at least certain parts of the 
Baltic Provinces and of territories situated to the south." 

In the south, the seizure or, preferably, the absorption of Austria- 
Hungary, the Balkan States and the Ottoman Empire, so as to form 
an unbroken block of territory stretching from the North Sea to the 
Persian Gulf, from Hamburg to Bagdad, including control of the 
Dardanelles, which would greatly facilitate the economic exploitation by 
Germany of Russia. 

Through Turkey, Germany was to exercise suzerainty over the 
entire Mohammedan world. She was to acquire possession of the better 
part of China, and of the French, Belgian, Dutch and Portuguese 
Colonies, except such parts of these as it might be necessary to give to 
England as a sop, until England's turn came to be conquered. 

America was to be dealt with later, although as early as 1900, German 
maps were published showing large sections of South America as belong- 
ing to the German Empire (see Cheradame, pp. 105, 194-195). 

A "Great Germany" to include Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, 
Austria, parts of France and parts of Russia with the vast dependencies 
outlined in the preceding paragraphs: this, said Tannenberg in 1911, "is 
the goal of the work of the German people in the 20th Century" (ist das 
Ziel der Arbeit des deutschen Volkes im Zivanzigsten Jahrhundert; loc. 
cit.,p. 267). 

It was certainly an ambitious program; but it would be folly to 
underestimate the organized intelligence and zeal with which it was 
supported. Germans in every part of the world, from the Emperor to 
the humblest workman, became spies and conspirators on behalf of this 
interpretation of Deutschland uber alles. 

Lord Cromer one of the most experienced and conservative of 
statesmen declared in his Introduction to Cheradame's Pan-German 
Plot Unmasked: "That this project has for a long while past been in 
course of preparation by the Kaiser and his megalomaniac advisers, 
cannot for a moment be doubted. When, in November, 1898, William 
II pronounced his famous speech at Damascus, in which he stated that 
all the three hundred millions of Mohammedans in the world could rely 
upon him as their true friend, the world was inclined to regard the utter- 
ance as mere rhodomontade. It was nothing of the sort. It involved 
the declaration of a definite and far-reaching policy, the execution of 



52 



THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 



which was delayed until a favorable moment occurred and, notably, until 
the Kiel Canal was completed." 

The more conservative Germans, such as Friedrich Naumann, 
thought it would be a mistake to include Holland and Switzerland "in 
our scheme from the outset as fixed quantities, whilst actually they still 
have a breathing space before making their decision" (Mitt el-Euro pa, 
by Friedrich Naumann, Member of the Reichstag; translation published 
by Knopf, New York; p. 10). 

Practically without exception, however, all Germans agreed that 
as soon as possible the German Empire must extend solidly to the 
Persian Gulf. 

This basic part of the program alone meant that 127 millions of 




GERMANY S PROPOSED FOUNDATION FOR HER NEXT WAR 

The minimum contemplated is shown in dark shading. Lighter shading 
shows gains in East and West. 



non-Germans could be used by the 77 millions of Germans for military and 
industrial purposes. If military mobilization were applied to fourteen 
per cent of the population, it meant that the Hohenzollerns would have 
an army of 21 millions of soldiers at their disposal. It meant also, of 
course, the monopoly of several millions of square miles of territory 
for economic exploitation ; the possession of strategical points of the 
greatest importance (including the Dardanelles), and, above all, the 
power thereafter to dictate to East and West the terms on which other 
nations might exist (see Cheradame, passim}. 

Naturally, there were difficulties in the way which the Germans 
themselves were the first to recognize. 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 53 

The difficulty which is least understood in America, and the most 
thorough understanding of which is essential, if, as a result of this war, 
the monstrous ambitions of Germany are to be checked, lies in the very 
diverse and antagonistic elements which enter into the make-up of 
Austria-Hungary. Germany knew that her dream of world domina- 
tion must remain a dream until she had completely absorbed the Austro- 
Hungarian Empire. As we shall see, the fear of Germany that 
that Empire, on the death of the old Emperor Francis Joseph, would 
disintegrate into separate States, some of them anti-German, was one 
of the causes which led Germany to precipitate the war when she did ; 
for the existence of such independent States would bar her way to the 
Dardanelles, and so to the Persian Gulf and to the realization of her 
dream. 

The German authorities in Vienna count everyone who can speak 
a little German as Germanic. None the less, and in spite of such methods 
of reckoning, even the Germans can claim only 12 millions of Germans 
out of a total population of over 50 millions within the Austrian Empire. 
The Hungarians, or Magyars, claim a population of 10 millions, conceding 
to the Slavs, including Bohemians (Czecks) and Poles, a total (actually 
much larger) of 24 millions, and to the Latins, including Italians and 
Rumanians, a total of 4 millions. 

The Hungarians are controlled absolutely by their large landed- 
proprietors, who are in league with the Prussianized Camarilla of Vienna. 
But with very few exceptions the 28 millions and more of Slavs and 
Latins, who for centuries have been oppressed outrageously in Austria- 
Hungary, not only hate Prussianism, but, in spite of ceaseless obstacles 
raised by the Germans and Hungarians, have been becoming, for some 
years past, "dangerously" insistent upon their right to genuine political 
representation. Some of them have gone so far as to demand 
autonomous administrations. Most of the leading Bohemian deputies are 
at this moment in Austrian prisons (see The Czecho-Slovakst: An 
Oppressed Nationality; Doran Co., New York, 5 cents). 

The Germans had no illusions on the subject of the Austro-Hun- 
garian army. They despised it. The early disasters at the hands of 
Russia were clearly foreseen. But these disasters, in the circumstances, 
were exactly what was wanted, for they gave Germany her chance to go 
to the rescue, and incidentally to take possession of the large though 
disorganized forces which still remained at the disposal of the old 
Emperor. The result was a "friendly" absorption of Austria-Hungary, 
and the policing of the whole Austrian Empire by German troops. 

Germany won the first battle of her war when Russia routed the 
Austro-Hungarian armies. She has got Austria-Hungary clinched 
though even now she recognizes and is mortally afraid of elements of 
disintegration, proof of which lies in the fact that Friedrich Naumann 
thought it necessary, in the midst of the war, to write Mittel-Europa, in 
which he says, with the usual German naivete: "To speak quite frankly, 



54 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

it sometimes happens that people [Austro-Hungarians] accept help, and 
at the same time scold those [Germans] who help them" ! None the 
less, in so far as force can make union, Germany and Austria-Hungary 
today are one Empire. 

Turkey was bought and paid for years ago. 

In 1888 the year in which William II came to the throne a group 
of German financiers, backed by the Deutsche Bank, purchased a conces- 
sion to build a railway line in Asia Minor which was designed to be 
part of the "all rail route," Berlin-Bagdad-Bassorah (Persian Gulf). 

Next year, in 1889, the Emperor made his first move in foreign 
politics by visiting the Sultan Abdul Hamid at Constantinople. As 
Gibbons says (loc. tit., p. 63) : "The friendship between the Sultan and the 
Kaiser was not in the least disturbed by the Armenian massacres. The 
hecatombs of Asia Minor passed without a protest. In fact, five days 
after the great massacre of August, 1896, in Constantinople, where 
Turkish soldiers shot down their fellow-citizens [Armenians] under 
the eyes of the Sultan and of the foreign ambassadors, Wilhelm II sent 
to Abdul Hamid for his birthday a family photograph of himself with 
the Empress and his children." 

In 1898, the Kaiser paid his second visit to Constantinople, which 
was followed by further railway concessions for the completion of the 
Bagdad line to the Persian Gulf. This visit was extended so as to include 
the Holy Land, when the Kaiser promised his friendship to "the three 
hundred million of the world's Mohammedans." 

Abdul Hamid, however, was too wily to put his neck entirely into 
the German noose, and too rich to become wholly dependent upon the 
German Treasury. The "Young Turks," penniless adventurers, were 
more promising material. Enver Bey was in training at Berlin. The 
Kaiser did not keep Abdul on the throne. The coup d'etat of 1908, but 
more particularly that of January, 1913, which gave the Young Turks 
supreme power in the person of Enver Bey, placed Turkey, and as much 
of Asia as Turkey controlled, completely at the disposal of Berlin. The 
reception accorded the Goeben and Breslau at the Dardanelles, and 
Tui key's attack on Russia on October 29, 1914, were a foregone conclu- 
sion. To that extent, and so far as the end of her stride in Mesopotamia 
was concerned, Germany might have boasted with some show of reason 
that she won the war before she began it. 

It was the Balkans that stood in Germany's way, and the need to 
absorb and to assimilate Austria-Hungary. 

Until about 1912, developments had favored Germany's plan. In 
1909, Austria (ever unscrupulous, even when a tool), successfully 
carried out the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, countries which 
are peopled almost entirely by Serbians. This seizure of a huge Slav 
territory was a great triumph for the cause of Pan-Germanism, and 
was made possible by the threat of the Hohenzollern "shining sword" 
and by the exhaustion of Russia, protector of the Slavs, after the war 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 55 

with Japan. And instantly Austria set to work, in ways altogether 
abominable, to drive the Slav population out of the annexed territory 
and to give the lands of the peasants to Germans (Gibbons, loc. cit. 
pp. 150-154). 

In 1911, the Agadir incident with France nearly precipitated the 
conflict. But the Kaiser preferred to bide his time. For one reason, 
the Kiel Canal, which had been opened in 1895, had had to be enlarged, 
and would not be finished until 1914. Connecting the North Sea with the 
Baltic, Germany was in absolute need of the Canal to protect and at the 
same time to double the effectiveness of her fleet. 

In 1912, things began to go wrong. Greece, Montenegro, Serbia 
and Bulgaria united against Turkey. What was worse, the Turks, 
trained by German officers, were defeated. Worst of all was the exist- 
ence of a Balkan Confederation, which, if permitted to continue, would 
have made it impossible for Berlin to "divide and rule." 

The success of Serbia was particularly exasperating. It filled the 
Serbians of the Austrian Empire with hope of freedom and of a Greater 
Serbia. Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Dalmatia and every Serb in the 
Empire were affected. 

Another blow was the Greek occupation of Salonika, long coveted 
by Vienna and Berlin for use as a naval base within striking distance 
of Egypt and the East. 

So Berlin and Vienna played upon the well-known vanity and 
ambition of the Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria supported, as it was, by 
the racial arrogance of the Bulgars, who have well been called the 
Prussians of the Balkans and instigated a Bulgarian attack upon the 
Serbians and Greeks. This was in June, 1913. Then Rumania inter- 
vened against Bulgaria, and Bulgaria was vanquished. The result was 
the treaty of Bukarest of August 10, 1913. 

This treaty closely united Rumania, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece, 
against Turkey on the one hand and Bulgaria on the other. It also 
tended to range these four powers against Germany and Austria, and 
to make them lean more and more toward the Triple Entente (Russia, 
France and England), though this tendency was modified later by the 
failure of Allied diplomatists to realize that both Bulgaria and Turkey 
had been bought and delivered to Germany, and by foolish efforts of 
the Allies to conciliate Bulgaria at the expense of Serbia and Greece. 

All that Germany saw in August, 1913, however, was her Pan- 
German conspiracy more dangerously threatened than it had ever been. 
A glance at the map will show that Bulgaria, crippled by the Balkan 
wars, could have been crushed at any time by the converging forces of 
Serbia, Rumania and Greece; and that thus Germany's road to the 
Dardanelles had practically been blocked. 

For this reason, and because the death of the old Austrian 
Emperor might at any moment have shaken Austria-Hungary into its 
constituent racial elements, which would have meant still further 



56 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

reinforcement of the Serbian (Slav) barrier between Germany and 
the Dardanelles ; and because the German Government and people were 
finding it every year more and more difficult to carry the enormous burden 
of their military and naval expenditures, for these reasons Germany, 
after the treaty of Bukarest of August 10, 1913, decided to bring about 
war as soon as the Kiel Canal could be opened. This was due to take 
place in July, 1914. 

Meanwhile, in November, 1913, during a visit of the King of the 
Belgians to Potsdam, both the Kaiser and General von Moltke, Chief 
of the German General Staff, informed King Albert that they looked 
upon war with France as "inevitable and close at hand," at the same 
time trying to impress him with a belief in the certain and overwhelm- 
ing success of German arms. Belgium was to be brow-beaten into 
subservience and, if possible, into treachery (Germany before the War, 
by Baron Beyens, formerly Belgian Minister at the Court of Berlin; 
pp. 36, 37). 

As the time drew near, the Kaiser kept in close touch with the Arch- 
Duke Francis-Ferdinand, the heir to the Austria-Hungarian throne. 
They were intimately friendly, and the Arch-Duke was a party to the 
German plot. In April, 1914, the Kaiser visited the Arch-Duke at 
Miramar, near Trieste. Again he met the Arch-Duke in June, 1914, at 
Konopischt, and on this occasion was accompanied by von Tirpitz, of 
submarine infamy. The murder of the Arch-Duke on June 28, 1914, 
merely provided a pretext for an Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. The 
Kiel Canal had been opened on June 24th. The psychological moment 
had arrived. On July 28th, war against Serbia was declared. 

It is quite obvious to any impartial student of the communications 
which passed between the European Governments in July and August, 
1914, that England, France, Russia, Belgium, Serbia and Italy were trying 
desperately to preserve peace, and that Germany and Austria were 
determined to provoke war. Naturally the Teutonic powers tried to 
conceal the fact, but if anyone still doubts that they, and they alone were 
responsible for the war, he need only read The Evidence in the Case, 
by James M. Beck (published by Putnams at $1.25), to have the possi- 
bility of doubt removed. Mr. Beck, formerly Assistant Attorney-General 
of the United States, analyses exhaustively the diplomatic records of the 
period and proves conclusively, on Germany's own showing, that it is 
she who was guilty. 

But it seems unnecessary now to discuss that issue in detail. Maxi- 
milian Harden, the irrepressible, in October, 1914, while still a Super- 
man and still expecting victory, voiced the clear understanding of all 
Germany when he wrote in his review, Die Zukunft: "Not as will-less 
dupes have we taken upon ourselves the enormous hazard of this war. 
We have willed it (W ir haben es gewolf). Because we had to will it 
and dared to .... Germany, by reason of her achievement, dares 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 57 

to exact, and to reach after and obtain, broader Earth-space and wider 
fields of action" (October 17, 1914; pp. 69, 79). 

Granting that a man has for years premeditated a murder ; that he 
has discussed it openly with his family and friends, and that finally, in 
the sight of innumerable witnesses, he commits it, his attempt subse- 
quently to wash his hands of responsibility is not likely to be convincing. 
He may pose as having been attacked, and may succeed in convincing 
himself at times that it is he who is the injured party ; but if he convinces 
others it may safely be assumed that their judgment is either biased or 
infirm. 

The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia was delivered on July 23, 1914. 
Its terms involved practically the surrender of Serbian independence. For 
the third time in six years, Russia urged Serbia to swallow her pride 
and to submit, with the least possible modification, to everything that 
Austria demanded. Serbia did so, offering, if her response to the ultima- 
tum were found insufficient, to place her case in the hands of the Hague 
Tribunal. Austria would not so much as listen. On July 28 she declared 
war on Serbia. 

England, France and Russia again and again urged Germany and 
Austria to submit the matter to arbitration. The request was met with 
flat refusal. The Kaiser, to show his reasonableness, declared that all 
he wanted was that the Czar should give Austria-Hungary a free hand 
against Serbia! 

On August 1st, on the ground that Russia had not ceased to 
mobilize her forces as Germany had demanded, Germany declared war 
against Russia. On August 2nd, Germany demanded of Belgium the 
right to use Belgian territory for military purposes against France, 
threatening her with "the decision of arms" if opposition were offered. 
In reply, Belgium reminded Germany that "the treaties of 1839, confirmed 
by the treaties of 1870, make sacred the independence and the neutrality 
of Belgium under the guarantee of the Powers and notably of the 
Government of His Majesty the King of Prussia." On August 4th, 
the German troops crossed the Belgian frontier and hostilities began. 

Belgium then appealed to England. Thereupon, acting on the 
instructions of his Government, the British Ambassador in Berlin, Sir 
Edward Goschen, called upon the German Secretary of State, Herr von 
Jagow, and informed him that unless the German Government "could 
give the assurance by 12 o'clock that night (August 4th) that they 
would proceed no further with their violation of the Belgian frontier 
and stop their advance, I had been instructed to demand my passports 
and inform the Imperial (German) Government that His (Britannic) 
Majesty's Government would have to take all steps in their power to 
uphold the neutrality of Belgium and the observance of a treaty to which 
Germany was as much a party as themselves" (Beck, loc. cit., p. 220). 



58 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Herr von Jagow replied that "the safety of the Empire rendered it 
absolutely necessary that the Imperial (German) troops should advance 
through Belgium." 

The British Ambassador then asked to see the Chancellor, Herr 
von Bethmann-Hollweg, and later wrote the following oft-quoted account 
of his interview: 

"I found the Chancellor very agitated. His Excellency at once began 
a harangue, which lasted for about twenty minutes. He said that the 
step taken by His (Britannic) Majesty's Government was terrible to a 
degree; just for a word 'neutrality/ a word which in war time had so 
often been disregarded just for a scrap of paper Great Britain was 
going to make war on a kindred nation who desired nothing better than 
to be friends with her" (Beck, loc. cit., p. 221). 

In reply to the Chancellor's statement that, for strategical reasons, 
the violation of Belgian neutrality was a matter of life and death for 
Germany, the British Ambassador tried to explain to the Chancellor that 
it was "a matter of life and death for the honor of Great Britain that 
she should keep her solemn engagement to do her utmost to defend 
Belgium's neutrality if attacked": but, in the nature of things, noblesse 
oblige had no meaning for the representative of Germany. That a nation 
could act for the sake of honor was incredible if only because incom- 
prehensible. 

It was on that same day, August 4th, that the Chancellor explained 
to the Reichstag: 

"Here is the truth. We are now in a state of necessity, and 
necessity knows no law. Our troops have occupied Luxemburg and 
perhaps are already on Belgian soil. Gentlemen, that is contrary to the 
dictates of international law. . . . Anybody who is threatened, as 
we are threatened, and is fighting for his highest possessions, can only 
have one thought how he is to hack his ivay through." 

Incidentally it may be suggested that it is not as a rule the man 
whose house is being entered by a burglar who talks about "hacking his 
way through." For the burglar, entering the house, such language 
wouM not be inapposite. 

Germany had calculated that both Belgium and Great Britain would 
be governed, not by principle, but by expediency. She has no realization 
whatsoever that what is right is wise, and that worldly wisdom, when 
true, is merely an interpretation of spiritual law in terms of material 
life. She is intellectually blind at that point, as all profoundly selfish 
and egotistic creatures must be, seeing that one of the worst penalties 
of sin is the intellectual and moral blindness which it induces. 

Germany, therefore, had expected Belgium to think first of her own 
wealth and safety, and to submit, thus betraying her international 
obligations in general and those to France in particular (see Beyens, pp. 
36-38; 320-328). 

Great Britain also, it was supposed, would be too considerate of her 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 59 

own interests, including a settlement of the Irish crisis, then so acute, 
and too anxious to profit commercially by a European war, to intervene 
on a point of honor or through mere sympathy with France. 

And as to France : were not all Frenchmen effeminate and cowardly 
and degenerate ? Had not every German school-boy been taught as much 
by real (because German) Professors? France would simply collapse! 

So the sequence of events, as Germany saw it, was to have been: 
swiftly to crush France by over-running Belgium and by seizing Paris; 
then to turn round and to stampede Russia; thirdly, either at once to 
fall upon England, or to postpone this for a few months until the results 
of the earlier victories had been consolidated; fourthly to exact a huge 
indemnity from the United States on some pretext which these wars 
would have developed ; fifthly, but there was in fact no end to the 
dream, short of universal domination. The German plan has been 
outlined in preceding pages in its most conservative character. Even 
now, after nearly three years of war, and while many Americans still 
refuse to take any part of the plan seriously, the most influential men 
in Germany, including General von Ludendorff, described privately in 
Berlin as "Hindenburg's brains," are advocating the incorporation of 
all of France as a federated State of Germany, the extension of the 
German sphere of influence in Persia and Afghanistan, the reduction of 
Poland, Courland, the Baltic provinces, Finland and the bulk of European 
Russia to the status of protectorates or annexed territories of Germany 
(From Germany's Position Under Good and Bad Peace, quoted by the 
New York Times, June 10, 1917). And while America is less often 
referred to explicitly, it is notorious that the idea of a mere indemnity is 
rejected by many leading Germans as wholly inadequate and unsatis- 
factory. They are sanguine of German- American support, once German 
troops were landed here, and they argue that unless America were 
completely Germanized, the survival of the United States, as an English- 
speaking, independent nation, would be a constant menace to the 
supremacy of German world-authority. 

What it would mean to our women and children if German troops 
were to land in this country, will be realized more clearly after the 
Conduct of the war has been examined. 

Fortunately for America and for the world, Belgium and England 
and France totally upset the German calculations, each of them, in their 
own way, revealing qualities of unselfish and splendid heroism which 
for ages will inspire mankind. Utterly unprepared for war, while 
Germany, having chosen her own time, was prepared "to the last button 
on the last Grenadier's tunic," the Allied nations, by their resistance, 
enabled Russia under the Grand Duke Nicholas to strike before Germany 
had demolished France. The Battle of the Marne completed the repulse 



60 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

of Germany and gave civilization an opportunity to organize for victory. 

But now, in the light of Germany's war-plan, is it not evident why 
she is so anxious to arrange a temporary peace? Officially and unoffi- 
cially she has assured the world of her peaceful inclination. Von 
Hindenburg sends a wireless message to the Russian Council of Work- 
men's and Soldiers' Delegates "announcing German sympathy with the 
formula 'peace without annexations or indemnities' " (see New York 
Times, June 8, 1917). 

Germany has been checked and perhaps knows it ; but she has 
reduced Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria to a condition of vas- 
salage; she has gained absolute control of a solid mass of territory and 
of population stretching from Hamburg well into Asia Minor and 
almost to Bagdad. Not only Maximilian Harden, but such organs as the 
Frankfurter Zeitung, as early as December, 1915, declared that even if 
Germany were obliged, at the end of the first "round," to surrender her 
conquests, she would have cut the world in half and would be situated 
better than ever before to complete her program of world dominion 
(see Cheradame's most important explanation of what he calls "the 
dodge of the Drawn Game;" Chapter V, and pp. 64, 109). 

"No indemnities" ! The war has cost Germany little in comparison 
with what it has cost France and England and poor Belgium. Germany 
has lived on the territories and populations she has invaded on forced 
labor, on confiscated wealth, on paper promises and has tried deliber- 
ately to destroy everything which she has not been able to consume. 
She is willing enough to let the Allies pay for the ruin she has wrought. 

"No annexations" ! Russia restores the Armenians to their mur- 
derers, the Turks; Great Britain restores Bagdad to Turkey, and the 
German Colonies, so-called, to Germany thus provoking, incidentally, 
a rebellion in South Africa in which Boers and Britons would unite 
against England ; for Boers and Britons, as brothers in arms, have laid 
down their lives to free those "Colonies," which actually were slave-pens, 
from the horrors of German despotism. 

"No annexations and no indemnities" and so leave Germany free 
to organize her vastly increased resources, and all the latent wealth of 
Asia Minor, and her new army of 21 millions of men (127 millions 
of non-Germans to be exploited by 77 millions of Germans), for her 
next great war of conquest! 

No wonder that President Wilson, in his recent message to Russia 
(published in the United States on June 10, 1917), spoke as he did of 
German "projects of power all the way from Berlin to Bagdad and 
beyond." 

"Government after Government," the President declared, referring 
unquestionably to the Governments of Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Bul- 
garia and probably to that of Greece also, Government after Govern- 
ment, without open conquest of its territory, has "been linked together 
in a net of intrigue directed against nothing less than the peace and 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 61 

liberty of the world. The meshes of that intrigue must be broken, but 
cannot be broken unless wrongs already done are undone ; and adequate 
measures must be taken to prevent it from ever again being rewoven 
or repaired. 

"Of course," he continues, "the Imperial German Government and 
those whom it is using for their own undoing are seeking to obtain 
pledges that the war will end in the restoration of the status quo ante. 
It was the status quo ante out of which this iniquitous war issued forth, 
the power of the Imperial German Government within the Empire and 
its widespread domination and influence outside of that Empire. That 
status must be altered in such fashion as to prevent any such hideous 
thing from ever happening again." 

No wonder, either considering that the Allied Governments had 
learned at last to take the German plot seriously that, in reply to Presi- 
dent Wilson's request to state their war aims, those Governments declared 
on January 10, 1917, that, in addition to the "restoration of Belgium, 
Serbia and Montenegro, with the indemnities due them," and "the 
evacuation of the invaded territories in France, in Russia and in Ru- 
mania, with just reparations," the Allies were also fighting for "the 
recovery of provinces or territories torn in the past from the Allies, by 
force or against the wishes of their populations;" for "the liberation 
of the Italians, Slavs, Rumanians and Czecko-Slovaks from foreign 
domination" ; for "the emancipation of populations subjected to the 
bloody tyranny of the Turks"; and for "the expulsion from Europe of 
the Ottoman Empire which has shown itself so radically alien to western 
civilization." 

To fight for less than that would be to fight, not for peace, but for 
another war more terrible than this one, and for a war which might well 
result in the conquest of the United States of America by a Germanized 
Mitteleuropa Empire. 

T. 

(To be continued} 



A soul cannot be regarded as truly subdued and consecrated in its 
will, and as having passed into union with the Divine will, until it has a 
disposition to do promptly and faithfully all that God requires, as well 
as to endure patiently and thankfully all that He imposes. T. C. Upham. 



LEMENTARY ARTIG 




RECOLLECTION AND DETACHMENT 

THE very first definite rules which are given the would-be dis- 
ciple include what are called in the devotional books, Recollection 
and Detachment. A little reflection will show that this is entirely 
logical. Put in the very simplest terms, if a man wants to be 
good the first thing he must be sure to do is to remember that fact. He 
cannot hope to continue on the straight and narrow path very long 
unless he remembers that he wishes to walk on it. That is recollection 
in its most elementary form. It is remembering what you wish to 
remember. Now there are many things that tend to distract our atten- 
tion and to draw it away from our main purpose. Any pull on our 
five senses will tend to do this: sounds, sights, tastes, feelings, smells, 
and all that they stand for, on the mental, moral, and emotional planes, 
as well as on the purely physical plane. If we wish to remain recol- 
lected, to remember our purpose, we must beware of these distractions, 
these pulls on our attention through our senses ; we must, in a word, 
cultivate the deliberate habit of disassociating ourselves from these 
things; we must practise Detachment. Therefore, at the beginning of 
the way, Recollection and Detachment are very necessary rules. But 
Recollection and Detachment are really not the simple things they 
seem. Like most spiritual truths or laws of life, while they fit the 
ordinary facts of the outer life they also go deep below the surface, 
into the realms of that mysterious inner nature which it should be our 
constant endeavor to bring to active outer manifestation. First it should 
be noted that we remember only that in which we are interested. There- 
fore we are thrown back at once upon the last article describing our 
Initial Motives, and their respective powers. But let us assume an ade- 
quate interest, either from fear, from self-seeking, or from love. The 
motive whatever it may be, charges us with a desire to live a better 
life: we want to do it. The problem is how to do it, how to start. 
Experience soon teaches us that a mere resolution to be good only influ- 
ences us so long as it keeps in the fore-front of our minds. Once let 
our attention be distracted by whatever outside influence and we sud- 
denly awaken to the fact that we forgot all about being good, and, during 
the period of forgetfulness, we got mad and swore, or we ate too much, 

6 



RECOLLECTION AND DETACHMENT 63 

or we were mean and ill-tempered, or spiteful, or gloomy, or malicious, or 
wicked in some more overt and obvious manner. We did not really want 
to do or be any of these things, save momentarily, and in a part of which 
we are ashamed and wish to be rid of. We realize keenly that our failure 
was not a failure of real desire so much as a failure of Recollection. We 
feel sure that if we had remembered our desire to be good at the 
moment of temptation, we should have had little trouble in waging 
a victorious fight against the enemy. In other words, what we needed 
was more Recollection. 

It is to be noted that Recollection is a rule for the would-be dis- 
ciple, not for the ordinary man. To be potent in a true sense, we 
must assume that the man has a conscious desire to be good and that 
he will be good, if he remembers. Most people do not want to be good 
in that sense, they are not interested, and have nothing to be recol- 
lected about. Indeed, the vast majority of people try very hard not 
to be recollected, and they spend most of their leisure going from one 
distraction to another in a frantic effort to find forgetfulness of self 
in any outer activity that promises pleasure or excitement. This is 
the secret of the success of the theatre and the novel. 

The desire to be recollected is not, however, a hard and fast line 
separating the sheep from the goats. Even the would-be disciple can- 
not always instantly surmount all temptations by the mere recollection 
of his principles. He ought to be able to do so, but things are actually 
not so easy. The desire to be good is of a certain power, and will only 
surmount temptations of corresponding potency. If we have a weak 
desire to be good, and a strong lower nature, with many evil propensities, 
we may be sure that we shall have many falls. The struggle upwards 
is a long and painful struggle, and is based on countless failures. But 
a point must be reached when the Recollection of one's principles has 
sufficient power to withstand at least every activity of our lower nature 
save what we may call our besetting sins. There are certain directions 
in which we are specially weak. If it were not so, we should be dis- 
ciples already. It is hardly to be hoped that our incipient desire, for 
we are dealing with first stages, will be strong enough, even when 
remembered, to enable us to surmount all temptations. This need not 
discourage us. It is common sense. The thing to do is to start over 
again, not once or twice, but a thousand times, cheerful and undepressed, 
fiercer and ever firmer in our determination to conquer this and every 
other manifestation of our lower nature. 

Some of us will continue to get mad and lose our tempers ; others 
will continue to gossip and say ill-natured things ; others will be envious 
and jealous; still others will give way to the grosser sins of the flesh. 
All this is natural, and will pass. Only the good is eternal and persists 
forever. The bad in each one of us will be and must be killed out in time, 
no matter how long it takes. The time is in our hands. We can make a 
short and violent aggressive campaign against our lower natures, which 



64 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

is what the disciple is doing, or we can await the long drawn-out fulfill- 
ment of spiritual law, which in the progress of time, will stamp out all 
evil. 

Recollection therefore, is not, at first, an infallible remedy. It 
becomes such when a man becomes a disciple ; that is to say, he must be 
incapable of deliberate sin before he can be a disciple in the real sense of 
that loosely used word. And a man sins deliberately if he sins in spite of 
recollection. A corollary of this is that a real disciple must be to 
all intents and purposes, always recollected. It is not absolute, for even 
the real disciple can still sin without its involving irretrievable disaster. 
But his sins are sins of inadvertence, of misunderstanding, rather than 
sins of weakness and bad intent. This, however, is a little away from our 
main point. 

Recollection, while not an infallible remedy against sin, must become 
so, approximately, at any rate. Therefore, like everything else in the 
spiritual life, it is a progressive thing. It must develop ; develop in 
intensity and depth as well as in broadness and extent. It must cover 
wider and wider ranges of our activities. I mean that at first Recollec- 
tion is simply trying to remember our ideal, and to act accordingly. We 
actually do remember in the morning at our prayer time, and a few times, 
more or less, during the day, particularly just after doing something we 
ought not to have done. From this very elementary stage we must grad- 
ually work up until we have trained our bodies to be recollected, so that 
they will sit straight and not slouch, so that we have eliminated all objec- 
tionable tricks, useless movements, mannerisms and personal idiosyncra- 
sies, in a word, until our body is trained to remember that it is the body 
of a would-be disciple and behaves accordingly. Then we must train our 
emotions to be recollected so that they will not surprise or betray us, by 
fear, by anger, by impatience or by any other of the countless influences 
which habitually sway people's emotions. We must train our minds to be 
recollected, and that is almost the hardest task of all, for our minds are 
very untrained indeed, and we hardly know how to go about trying to do 
this difficult thing. But it can be done. The mind can be so saturated 
with an idea, an ideal, that its influence is perpetually present, in the back- 
ground perhaps, but actually present in the sense that it raises its head 
and comes to the fore front of the mind the instant anything happens 
which makes its presence desirable, and it comes in time to be effective. 
It will show an uncanny provision and knowledge of what is likely to 
disturb the even course of the disciple, and Will not fail to warn him. 
Some people will think I am talking about the conscience, and to them I 
should reply by asking them to explain, if they can, the difference 
between Recollection and the conscience. There is a difference and it is 
a very interesting and instructive difference, but does not belong to the 
legitimate field of an elementary article. 

Finally, we must have Recollection of the will. When we have that 
the battle is almost won, for that means that we are able to bring to bear 



RECOLLECTION AND DETACHMENT 65 

on each struggle, the supreme weapon at our command. But this also 
takes us beyond the field of an elementary article. A recollected will is a 
weapon of the full disciple, and is something the would-be disciple is 
working towards. 

It will be seen from this brief analysis, that there is much to be done 
about Recollection, and the point of immediate interest for all of us is to 
begin. As usual I would counsel patience and humility. Do not try 
everything all at once. Make some few simple rules, say one for each 
of the several planes, of the body, the emotions, the mind, and the will. 
Take a simple bodily trick such as crossing one's knees, or twiddling one's 
fingers, and stop it. Then take an emotion like habitual impatience, and 
stop it. Then take the mind and decide to remember something any- 
thing with a spiritual implication, say a brief prayer, at a given time 
or times, and do it. All three of these practices will train the will in 
Recollection, so you will need no special practice for that. When you have 
perfected yourself in these three things, try others. You will learn 
Recollection by this simple process, and incidentally, you will learn much 
more. 

C. A. G. 




The Inner Life, by Rufus M. Jones ; published by Macmillan, price $1.00. 

"There is no inner life that is not also an outer life," says Mr. Jones in the 
opening sentence of his Introduction; and his effort in this collection of not very 
closely knit essays is to demonstrate, on the sure foundation and logic of example 
given us by Christ and the Christian mystics, that life is not divisible into 
religious or secular, and that "the tendency to dichotomize all realities into halves 
and to assume that we are shut up to an either-or selection, is an ancient tendency 
and one that very often keeps us from winning the full richness of the life that 
is possible for us." The plain man, because he does not go to Church, feels that 
he is not religious, and thereby automatically divorces himself from religion and 
the things of the Spirit. This mental attitude does not, however, correspond with 
the facts. "There is no line that splits the outer life and the inner life into two 
compartments." 

This thought, though occasionally out of sight, really binds together Mr. 
Jones' topics. With the wish to bring home the fundamental unity of life, and 
the impossibility of really divorcing the two, he holds man up to himself by 
reinterpreting a few common-place inner experiences, and by analysis and appli- 
cation of the Beatitudes, of the Christ-life, of St. Paul, and the Johanine Gospel. 
The Beatitudes represent life to us as richer in the rewards of a right inner life 
than of a life where the inner is used merely as an adjunct to administer the 
outer. "The aspiration, and not the attainment, is singled out for blessing. In 
popular estimate, happiness consists in getting the desires satisfied. For Christ 
the real concern is to get new and greater desires desires for infinite things." 
So Paul demands "a new kind of person, with a new inner nature, a new dimen- 
sion of life, a new joy and triumph of soul." 

This "Kingdom within the Soul" is to be obtained only by the way of 
experience, which each man must find for himself, but which may wisely be 
modelled on the recorded experiences and teaching of those who have gone before. 
The value of the Quaker form of worship here enables Mr. Jones to grasp a 
truth of the spiritual order, which, though essentially Christian "where two or 
time are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst" is not a domi- 
nant note of the great mystical writers, who were for the most part solitary and 
isolated individuals in their spiritual struggles upward. "By far," he tells us, "the 
most influential condition for effective worship is group-silence the waiting, seek- 
ing, expectant attitude permeating and penetrating a gathered company of persons. 
We hardly know in what the group-influence consists, or why the presence of 
others heightens the sensitive, responsive quality in each soul, but there can be no 
doubt of the fact. There is some subtle telepathy that comes into play in the 
living silence of a congregation which makes every earnest seeker more quick to 
feel the presence of God, more acute of inner ear, more tender of heart to feel the 
bubbling springs of life than any one of them would be in isolation." 

This is the fundamental position on which The Theosophical Society is founded, 
it is illustrative of the Theosophic method. True Brotherhood is more than good- 
will, it is the synthesis and spiritual re-knitting of a new unity, an expanded and 

M 



REVIEWS 67 

yet thoroughly integrated life existing in a unity deeper and more permanent than 
the unity of personality itself. So the T. S. is a unit of groups, themselves units 
composed of individual members. It is the united push of a larger and upward- 
striving consciousness that will ultimately unlock the Golden Gates and liberate 
mankind into the world of spirit. 

Mr. Jones closes his book with a brief consideration of the mystical "Experi- 
ence of God," which he, we think rightly, ascribes to many more persons than those 
represented in literature. He sees in it not some exotic manifestation of the 
Spirit in man, but rather the natural expression of our religious consciousness, of 
that "mystery of goodness," of which it is "not so clear and plain" how we "came 
to be possessed." "Religion when it is real, alive, vital, and transforming, is essen- 
tially and at bottom a mystical act, a direct response to an inner world of spiritual 
reality." This, we feel, is placing mysticism in its true relation, and only when it 
is seen and studied in this way will that study profit the soul of man. 

Mr. Jones has written a popular book, in fluent, almost slangy terms at times ; 
and therefore easy to read. One or two of his definitions are very happy 
"Patience, endurance, stedfastness, confidence in the eternal nature of things, 
determination to win by the slow method that is right rather than by the quick and 
strenuous method that is wrong are other ways of naming meekness." He might 
wisely have added courage to this list. Again, he defines worship as "direct, vital, 
joyous, personal experience and practice of the presence of God." 

The book is fragmentary, with little organization of ideas, which are some- 
times repeated ; but the fragments are in themselves "good and sufficient." 

A. G. 

Is God Dead? by Newman Floary, is based on a good idea. A rich and happy 
man loses fortune and his only son in the war. He is religious in the conven- 
tional sense, but his faith breaks down under the strain of his misfortune and, 
denying the existence of God, he contemplates suicide. He has some kind of an 
experience, not clearly described, during which he sees, as God sees, the inner 
workings of the souls and minds of six or seven other individuals who also go 
through circumstances connected with the war which test but strengthen their faith. 
These several experiences form the main part of the book. The result restores 
the doubter to a belief in God, and the book closes with a picture of a footman softly 
closing the door as he sees his master on his knees. It is a forceful and convincing 
book with much sound argument, and, in spite of its literary defects, one which 
we would recommend. J- B. 

God the Invisible King, by H. G. Wells (Macmillan Co.), is an interesting 
and honest statement of Mr. Wells' conversion. He has attained to the knowl- 
edge that God is. 

"Then suddenly, in a little while, in his own time, God comes. This cardinal 
experience is an undoubting, immediate sense of God. It is the attainment of an 
absolute certainty that one is not alone in oneself. * * * But after it has 
come our lives are changed, God is with us and there is no more doubt of God. 
Thereafter one goes about the world like one who was lonely and has found a 
lover, like one who was perplexed and has found a solution. One is assured 
that there is a Power that fights with us against the confusion and evil within us 
and without. There comes into the heart an essential and enduring happiness and 
courage." 

The book contains flashes of true inspiration. Mr. Wells has caught certain 
great truths with extraordinary vividness and clarity. 

"God is a person. * * * God is a person who can be known as one knows 
a friend. * * * He is our king to whom we must be loyal; he is our captain, 
and to know him is to have a direction in our lives. He feels us and knows us; 



68 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

he is helped and gladdened by us. He hopes and attempts. * * * God is no 
abstraction nor trick of words, no Infinite. He is as real as a bayonet thrust 
or an embrace. 

****** 

"There is the love God bears for man in the individual believer. Now this 
is not an indulgent, instinctive, and sacrificing love like the love of a woman for 
her baby. It is the love of the captain for his men ; God must love his 
followers as a great captain loves his men, who are so foolish, so helpless in 
themselves, so confiding and yet whose faith alone makes him possible. It is an 
austere love. The spirit of God will not hesitate to send us to torment and 
bodily death. 

"And God waits for us, for all of us who have the quality to reach him. 
He has need of us as we of him. He desires us and desires to make himself 
known to us. When at last the individual breaks through the limiting dark- 
nesses to him, the irradiation of that moment, the smile and the soul clasp, is 
in God as well as in man. He has won us from his enemy. We come staggering 
through into the golden light of his kingdom, to fight for his kingdom henceforth, 
until at last we are altogether taken up into his being." 

There is much in the book that is admirable. In general, wherever Wells 
speaks of his own positive convictions, he speaks truly and well. Unfortunately 
he has permitted himself to fall into the very common fault of feeling that to 
assert one thing it is necessary to deny something else, as though the amount of 
truth in the universe were limited, and if needed in one place it had to be taken 
from another. It is this that makes almost everyone except members of The 
Theosophical Society assume that if one believes in Christ it is necessary to deny 
Buddhism. Wells falls into this error throughout. What he has not experienced 
he denies. Further and more serious, what he does not understand, he denies. 
There is so much that he does not understand. Of the significance of the Cross 
he has no conception whatever. To him it is a meaningless horror. 

He is like a man who had spent his life in a village in Holland denying 
that the world could contain a hill, let alone a mountain, and who suddenly found 
himself on top of a high hill. He is convinced, delighted by the beauty of the 
outlook, the bracing air, and he calls aloud his conviction and his delight. All 
honour to him. But there are in the world no snow-capped peaks. That is 
the superstition of an outworn theology to hold men shackled from the truth. 
He has seen mountains and he knows. 

But he is honest and he is capable of growth. So short a time ago he had 
no faith at all. Doubtless his next book will show that he has bridged many 
of the obvious gaps in his belief. A very little knowledge of theosophy would 
clear up so many of his difficulties for him. 

The cardinal points of his belief are : 

I. God is. 
II. God is a person. 

III. God is finite, not infinite, seeking knowledge rather than omniscient, strug- 
gling rather than omnipotent. 

IV. "God," as he uses the word, is not the Creator of the universe. That he 
refers to as the "Veiled Being" of whom we know nothing. He hopes 
that minds will develop later that will be capable of knowing something 
of this "Veiled Being." 

V. God is the King, the Captain of Mankind, our Leader. All men are 
to give themselves to his service ; the State is his instrument and the 
destiny of the world is Theocracy, with God as recognized King. 

In much that he says of "God" he draws so close to the idea of the Masters, 
as familiar in Theosophy, that it seems that it would only be necessary for the 
idea to be suggested to him to have him accept it as the keystone of his arch. As 



REVIEWS 69 

said above, with many of his positive statements, students of Theosophy may 
agree cordially. His writing is curiously irregular. A passage that one feels 
to have been inspired by the Master whom he calls "God," will be followed by 
another obviously written from the standpoint of his own superficial prejudices 
and misunderstandings. As a child be seems to have been taught a distortion, 
miscalled Christianity, which deeply scarred his inner nature, and resulted in a 
prejudice from which he has never recovered, and which still blurs his vision. 
Granting his misunderstandings of Christianity and of its founder as the "Saint 
of non-resistance," we can only sympathize with his indignant rejection of both. 
His God, and ours, is a Warrior God and we are to become "knights in God's 
service." This service of God as the , Invisible King, he sees should lead into 
every department of life, "the teaching at the village school, the planning of the 
railway siding, the mixing of mortar," down to the representation of God on coin 
and postage stamp. "To realize God in one's heart is to be filled with the desire 
to serve him," and the way to serve him is to do all that we do in his way. 

His conversion has brought Wells much light and a splendid certainty that 
God is. He believes that it has brought him equal conviction of what God's 
will is, and it is here that a little knowledge of Theosophy, of the nature of man, 
would save him from a great danger. He knows the light he has received is the 
true light, but he has not yet realized man's power to distort that light and color 
it with his own preconceptions. Nor does he yet understand how easy it is to 
mistake our own will for God's will. For instance : 

As those who have had experience have little argument but profound con- 
viction of God's existence, so, Wells says, of God's qualities : "if you feel God 
then you will know, you will realize more and more clearly, that thus and thus 
and no other is his method and intention. 

"It comes as no great shock to those who have grasped the full implications 
of the statement that God is Finite, to hear it asserted that the first purpose of 
God is the attainment of clear knowledge, of knowledge as a means to more 
knowledge, and of knowledge as a means to power. For that he must use human 
eyes and hands and brains. 

"And as God gathers power he uses it to an end that he is only beginning to 
apprehend, and that he will apprehend more fully as time goes on. But it is 
possible to define the broad outlines of the attainment he seeks. It is the con- 
quest of death." 

Nevertheless Wells has made a great step forward. He has shown, too, that 
he can grow and we shall await his next book with keen interest. Perhaps even 
now he is discovering that it is the first step in the spiritual life that he has 
taken, not the last, and that humility is the foundation of the life of the soul. 

J. F. B. M. 



ANSWERS 




Readers of THE THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY are invited to send questions to 
be answered in this Department, or to submit other answers to questions already 
printed where their point of view differs from or supplements the answers that 
have been given. 

QUESTION No. 213. Do the Masters live among men in the Western World 
or are they all living together in Central Asia? Are they living in their physical 
bodies? 

ANSWER. Everyone who has studied Theosophy for some years should be 
able to answer this question satisfactorily to himself. This doesn't mean that it 
would be satisfactory to another; but to the questioner it is the best answer that 
can be given, since he is not able to appreciate the deeper meaning of another's 
answer, unless it re-echoes from his own inner life. The real truth about the Masters 
is of no use to us, as long as our spiritual discernment is not sufficiently awake to 
grasp it. 

What is our conception of the Masters? Most of us think of them as Beings 
far, far ahead of the rest of mankind on the evolutionary scale. Some of them 
have passed entirely out of the physical plane and have no physical body at all. 
Others have still a body that makes it possible for them to work directly on the 
physical plane ; but this body may be too refined to stand the atmosphere in the 
ordinary world. A Master has told us something to that effect (The Occult World). 

But there is another and more peremptory reason for them to keep aloof. 
The force that goes out from them would have a tremendous effect upon us. As 
said in Fragments I in answer to one who wished to converse with the Master 
face to face : "That force you speak of might shake your nature to its very depths. 
And do you know what demons might fly out from thence to torment and assail 
you? Are you strong enough for them?" The force of the Masters is strong 
enough to extirpate all evil in the world, but as evil still "lives fruitfully" in the 
hearts of all men, it would mean to destroy mankind at the same time. 

But what about the Christian Master? may be asked. The answer is that 
He incarnated in a physical body and only with so much of his real splendour and 
force as this body could bear, and as was necessary for his work. He could not 
manifest more of His Divine Powers in that body, without doing harm to 
His surroundings and counteracting His mission. Surely, He had a reason for His 
teachings in the parable of the man that sowed good seed in his field. When his 
servants proposed to gather up the tares, he said : "Nay, lest happily while ye 
gather up the tares, ye root up the wheat with them." 

Thus, I don't think that any real Master can live among men, either of the 
Western or of the Eastern world, at the present stage of man's evolution. But 
many of their Disciples (Chelas), so far developed that they are "Adepts" com- 
pared to people at large, can do so ; and several of them are, no doubt, living in 
different places throughout the world at the present time. The physical body of 
these Chelas is still gross enough to stand the unwholesome exhalations of the 
man of this age. But such Adepts are not known except by some few who are, 
themselves, Chelas of a lower degree. 



QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 71 

The Masters are not all living in Central Asia, though a good many of them 
have chosen that favorable and isolated locality, just as we often go off to healthy 
places up in the mountains during the hot season. Meanwhile there may be other 
suitable localities on this globe, where they can live, and do live. 

Certainly they are living in their physical body, if they still have one. They 
would not have striven so hard to develop and keep up this body, as is depicted in 
"The Elixir of Life," unless it were useful to them. But there will come a 
time when, as said above, a Master has advanced so far that He cannot use a 
physical body any longer. Then He sloughs it off; and He is doing so, because 
it would be impossible for any kind of a physical body to endure the pressure and 
violence of the powers He has now acquired. Then He is called to do more im- 
portant and immensely more difficult work on a higher plane of being. 

T. H. K. 

ANSWER. If the questioner will read Acts and the Lives of the Saints it is 
probable that a pretty firm conviction will grow up that at least one Master lives 
among men in the Western world. Reading the Letters of the Master K. H. in 
various Theosophical publications, notably in The Occult World, will leave a 
similar conviction as to His reality. Light on the Path covers this question if one 
will seek therein for the truth. The Voice of the Silence gives an explanation of 
how the Masters may live and appear. S. 

QUESTION No. 214. Has anyone now living ever seen a Master, or known 
anyone who has seen one? If so, was the Master seen in the inner or outer world? 
Can there be proof of seeing a Master in the inner world? 

ANSWER. Read the history of the early days of the T. S., and you will find 
an answer to the first question. Surely Madame Blavatsky, and others too, have 
seen a Master. And there are still many in the T. S., as well as outside it, who 
knew H. P. B. personally. 

Whether any person now living has seen a Master in the outer world I don't 
know; but I feel sure that there are some who have seen Him in the inner world, 
not vaguely only, but very distinctly. There is no proof of this, that is valid to 
anyone except to the seer himself. What would you think of a person who told 
you that he had seen the Master face to face in the inner world? If you thought 
him absolutely reliable you would begin to think very highly of him, which would 
benefit neither you nor him. Or you might perhaps think that he had deceived 
himself, or even that he was deceiving you. The wise man that has seen his 
Master, doesn't a'dvertise it. The only reliable proof of seeing the Master in the 
inner world is, therefore, to raise oneself to that world, which means to make 
oneself conscious there, or to develop the inner organs of sense by which to see, 
hear, etc., in that world. T. H. K. 

ANSWER. Holmes in either the Creed of Christ or of Buddha says that postu- 
lating the soul it must be considered as infinite. Being infinite it cannot be limited. 
Neither can it be defined. Therefore it cannot be proved. As it is on the soul 
plane that one would know the Master, one may answer this question either "yes" 
or "no." There is no equal mass of testimony about any subject compared to the 
mass of testimony on the reality of our own great western Master, yet most of 
His followers try to banish Him into space as an etherealized impotent Spirit 
why then expect that any "proof" would be satisfactory? If there be real desire 
behind this question, and not a purely intellectual curiosity, we might try the 
experiment of loving Him. Very few people could "prove" who were their parents 
yet most of us find it enough to love them. S. 

ANSWER. We may be pretty sure that people who claim to see Masters are 
deluded. Those who could see them would not be likely to make the claim. But 



72 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

in the early days of the Theosophical Society it was different. Then it was not a 
question of individual merit or development, but of the time and cycle the Kartnic 
opportunity. Then Masters were seen by many different people who have left clear 
records of the fact. 

As to proof of seeing a Master in the inner world What do we mean by 
"proof"? Most people mean the evidence of the physical senses which are notor- 
iously unreliable. In truth, can we "prove" anything? Can we even "prove" that 
we are awake and not asleep and dreaming? But we do not want to "prove" it. 
We know it. In the same way the evidence of those who have seen Masters in 
the inner world shows that they know the truth of what they see with a certainty 
far greater than any the physical senses can give. There are some truths that 
each man must learn for himself. R. D. 



THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY AND MRS. ANNIE BESANT. 

New York newspapers of June 24, 1917, contain the following statement : 

"Telegrams from Bombay say that the restrictions placed by the Government 
on Mrs. Annie Besant and her colleagues are the sequel to a violent home rule 
agitation, which was distinguished by a vilification of everything British and 
Western . . . Mrs. Besant is head of the Theosophical Society." 

Newspapers describing Mrs. Besant as head of the Theosophical Society do 
so in good faith, merely repeating Mrs. Besant's own claim. But the society of 
which Mrs. Besant is the head has no connection whatsoever with The Theosophical 
Society, and is working for objects which are opposed diametrically to those for 
which The Theosophical Society exists. 

The agitation to which the newspapers refer is wholly contemptible, treacher- 
ous and outrageous. Such behaviour, however, cannot surprise any member of 
The Theosophical Society who is familiar with the earlier history of the Move- 
ment, when Mrs. Besant, at that time a member of the Society, made an equally 
contemptible, treacherous and outrageous attack on Mr. William Q. Judge. 

T!ie Theosophical Society was compelled then to deny its platform and its 
membership to Mrs. Besant and her deluded followers, and from that day to this 
has consistently refused to have any relations with them. 

For reasons essentially the same, the Government of India has now been 
compelled to forbid Mrs. Besant "to participate in any meetings, deliver lectures 
or publish her writings." 

Great Britain is sacrificing her best in men and treasure for love of righteous- 
ness and to free the peoples of Belgium, northern France and Serbia from an 
intolerable slavery. She is fighting and dying with France and the other Allies 
for the freedom of the world. At such a time to organize against her an agitation 
which at best is based upon self-assertion and self-seeking; to take advantage 
of her unselfishness, and of the terrible needs of Germany's innocent and tortured 
victims, to stab her in the back, is not only the antithesis of Theosophy, but is 
as monstrous a crime as Germany's very worst. 

Even if India were suffering from maladministration and she is not, being 
one of the best and most sympathetically governed nations in the world it would 
be no excuse for what Mrs. Besant and her followers have done. 

If American "Pacifists" and Pro-Germans were at this time to start a "home 
rule agitation" in the Hawaiian Islands, and were to foment a rebellion among 
that mixed population regardless of the fact that home rule there would result 
inevitably in the same internecine strife which kept India in agony prior to British 
occupancy it is doubtful whether the American people would feel that justice had 
been satisfied by the infliction of so mild a penalty as prohibition to continue such 
treachery openly. 




REPORT OF THE ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE 
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 

The Annual Convention of The Theosophical Society was held in New York 
at 21 Macdougal Alley, on Saturday, April 28, 1917. 

MORNING SESSION 

The Chairman of the Executive Committee, Mr. Charles Johnston, called 
the Convention to order at 10.30 a. m. and asked for nominations for the offices 
of Temporary Chairman and Temporary Secretary. On motion by Mr. C. A. 
Griscom, seconded by Mr. G. V. S. Michaelis, Mr. Johnston was unanimously 
elected as Temporary Chairman. On motion by Professor Mitchell, seconded by 
Mr. Acton Griscom, Miss Isabel E. Perkins was elected Temporary Secretary. 
The Temporary Chairman asked the pleasure of the Convention regarding organiza- 
tion, and Mr. J. F. B. Mitchell moved that the Chair appoint a Committee on 
Credentials. This motion was seconded by Mr. K. D. Perkins, and carried. The 
Temporary Chairman felt that of necessity the Secretary T. S. and the Treasurer 
T. S. should be placed upon that committee, since its activities involve a knowledge 
of the different Branches and the standing of the members. He consequently 
appointed Professor Mitchell, Mrs. Gregg, and Miss Flora Friedlein, representing 
the far West. This committee, after having received the credentials of all the 
delegates and proxies present, retired to prepare its report, and the Temporary 
Chairman addressed the Convention. 

ADDRESS OF THE TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN 

It is the great privilege of the Temporary Chairman to welcome members 
and delegates to this Convention; and I am convinced, as I think we all are, that 
we have never held a Convention of greater importance and vitality. One 
remembers Conventions in many lands in India, under the palm trees, and the 
sunshine and the tinkly temple bells that Kipling has recorded, in London, and 
elsewhere. Now the Convention has come back to its original starting place, and 
this Convention meets not so very far from the original centre of the work which 
was in the Mott Memorial Hall, in Madison Avenue. The Society has made 
the circle of the globe, and has come home again. That is in a way significant 
of our whole life the T. S. has girdled the globe, gathering life and vitality, and 
returns to focus that increased force in its work from its old centre, strengthened 
and reestablished. 

The Theosophical Society and its work are much more vital than many of us 
realize; it is the effective bridge between the spiritual world and the outer world, 
a bridge built by spiritual powers and forces, over which they can pass into the 
life of mankind and into the making of history. While this Convention can be 
contained in a small space, its life and activity affect the whole world far more 

73 



74 



THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 



vitally than most of us recognize. In 1915 and 1916 resolutions were passed, 
touching on the relation of this Convention to world events and the war. Those 
resolutions, which were then expressions of our hopes, have now become realities ; 
and I think we could not overestimate the part which The Theosophical Society 
has had in turning the tide of thought and feeling from absorption in selfish and 
material interests to some recognition of the spiritual issues at stake in this 
world conflict. We should realize that our aspirations have potency; that they 
can be used for the uplifting of the thoughts and desires of others. If this were 
as clear to us as it ought to be, we should strive to hold the wisest and most 
far-reaching aspirations, for we should recognize in sober fact that we can so 
live and act that what The Theosophical Society is doing and thinking to-day, 
the world will be doing to-morrow. 

I have great pleasure in welcoming to New York and to this Convention 
those delegates and members who have come from a distance ; and on behalf 
of the Executive Committee I wish to congratulate each and every one here 
present on being permitted to take part in so momentous an occasion as this. 



REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON CREDENTIALS 

The report of the Committee was made by Professor Mitchell, who stated 
that fifteen Branches were found to be present, in the person of delegates and 
proxies entitled to cast seventy-five votes, representing many times that number 
of members. There were also a number of foreign proxies, known to be on the 
way, which had not arrived owing to the irregularity of the mails. The Committee 
recommended that the Branches represented by such proxies be considered as 
present, but not as entitled to vote unless their proxies arrived before the Con- 
vention adjourned. The Branches represented were as follows those whose 
proxies came after Convention are marked with a star. 



Aurora, Oakland, Cal. 
Blavatsky, Seattle, Wash. 
Blavatsky, Washington, D. C. 
Cincinnati, Cincinnati, O. 
Hope, Providence, R. I. 
Indianapolis, Indianapolis, Ind. 
Middletown, Middletown, O. 
New York, New York 
Pacific, Los Angeles, Cal. 
Providence, Providence, R. I. 



St. Paul, St. Paul, Minn. 
Toronto, Toronto, Can. 
Virya, Denver, Colo. 
Altagracia de Orituco, S. A.* 
Krishna, South Shields, England 
London, London, England* 
Newcastle, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Eng- 
land* 

Norfolk, Norfolk, England* 
Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela, S. A. 



Dr. C. C. Clark moved that the report of the Committee on Credentials be 
accepted and that the Committee be discharged with thanks. This motion was 
duly seconded and carried. 

PERMANENT ORGANIZATION 

The Temporary Chairman then stated that the Convention should be perma- 
nently organized and requested nominations for the office of Permanent Chairman. 
Mr. Ernest T. Hargrove referred to what the Temporary Chairman had said of this 
as a great day and expressed his own feeling that we should try to meet it greatly. 
He knew of no one whose long and unbroken fidelity to the cause of The 
Theosophical Society better fitted him to fill the office of Convention Chairman 
than Professor Mitchell, of whom he spoke as not only the President of the 
New York Branch and the Treasurer of the T. S., but as a great deal more, an 
old and faithful member of the T. S. This nomination was seconded by Mr. 
Griscom and unanimously carried. In taking the Chair, Professor Mitchell said : 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 75 

"What has already been said of the importance of this Convention gives me 
a very serious sense of what is involved in serving as its Chairman. Fortunately 
I have also heard what led you to elect me ; I am being praised for what is a 
great privilege, that of being an old member of the T. S., and we must all agree 
that it ought to fit us to do great things greatly, however small they may at first 
sight appear to be." 

Nominations were asked for the office of Permanent Secretary ; the name of 
Miss Perkins was presented by Mr. Hargrove, seconded by Mr. Griscom, and 
Miss Perkins was elected. Mr. Griscom moved a vote of thanks to the Temporary 
Chairman for his services and also for his address; unanimously carried. 

CONVENTION COMMITTEES 

The Chairman announced that three standing committees were required to 
take charge of the business that might be presented, and Mr. Johnston moved 
that the Chairman be authorized to appoint the usual Committees, on Nominations ; 
Resolutions ; and Letters of Greeting, with instructions to meet during the recess 
and to report at the afternoon session. The Chairman announced the following 
appointments : 

Committee on Nominations Committee on Resolutions 

Mr. C. A. Griscom, Chairman Mr. E. T. Hargrove, Chairman 

Mrs. Marion F. Gitt Miss Margaret T. Hohnstedt 

Mr. Charles M. Saxe Mr. G. V. S. Michaelis 

Committee on Letters of Greeting 
Mr. Charles Johnston, Chairman 
Dr. C. C. Clark 
Mrs. Irene E. Regan 

The Chairman then called upon Mr. Johnston, Chairman of the Executive 
Committee, for his Report. 

REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 

There is a quotation that has been used on similar occasions Happy is the 
nation that has no history. It is such a good quotation that I do not hesitate 
to use it again. The Executive Committee exists for emergencies between 
Conventions ; it is something like the fire department of the T. S. In one of our 
New Jersey villages the fire engine, their only fire engine, was found to be in 
bad condition. This suggested serious possibilities, and one of the village worthies 
introduced a resolution providing that the fire engine should be inspected two 
weeks before each fire. The fire department of the T. S. is inspected oftener than 
that; and I hope that it is always in good shape. 

The details as to the issuing of Charters and Diplomas, which are executed 
by the Executive Committee, rest with the Secretary T. S. and will be covered 
in her report. The Committee, therefore, has only to report that it has stood 
firm, serene, and steadfast throughout the 365 days since the last Convention. 
Fortunately there have been no extraordinary emergencies, no important action 
to report. Yet this need not imply that the Committee has not been serving 
it is something like the question of a bridge. If a bridge is in good order and is 
open for traffic, there is very little to say about it, but if it is out of order there 
is much to say. Your Executive Committee has been in order 365 days, therefore 
that is the only fact that needs to be recorded. 

It was moved by Mr. J. F. B. Mitchell and seconded by Mr. Acton Griscom 
that the report be accepted with the thanks of the Convention, and that its thanks 
be also extended to the Chairman of the Executive Committee for his service 
during the year. The Chairman announced that it was next our very pleasant duty 
to listen to the report of our Secretary, Mrs. Gregg. 



76 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY T. S. FOR THE YEAR ENDING APRIL 28, 1917 

New Members 

Year after year, your Secretary begins the annual report with a statement 
of the number of new members admitted during the year, and the number of new 
charters granted. Prominence is thus given to these statistics, not because the 
number of annual accessions is to be taken as a measure of the success of the 
year's work, but rather as a record of the Society's new liabilities. Each new 
member, each new Branch, may be regarded as a new department in the vast 
organization, visible and invisible, through which the Lodge is administering the 
work of the world. If each new department can become strong, steady, serviceable, 
the whole movement is strengthened and extended. It must be equally true that 
failure in one spot reacts upon all; and hence one of our problems is how to 
relate the new members to the work and life of the Society. To a considerable 
extent that is the responsibility of the local Branches ; you have also entrusted 
your Secretary with some special oversight over new members and their cordial 
response to offers of help is one of the many rich compensations of the Secretary's 
work. But may I also suggest that every Branch and every member of the T. S. 
has also a responsibility for the progress and the growth of the new members. 
It is not given to many to correspond with them, or perhaps even to know them, 
but I am profoundly convinced that whenever one of our established Branches, 
or T. S. members, does a piece of work with thoroughness, devotion, and under- 
standing, for the sake of furthering the Theosophical Movement, this act, though 
unseen and unknown, is the means of giving very real support and encouragement 
to our recruits, to those who are trying to get their bearings, to find their work 
in the great Movement which The Theosophical Society represents. 

During the past year, one new Branch has been chartered ; and diplomas 
have been issued to 33 new members : United States, 20 ; South America, 4 ; 
England, 4; Norway, 5. 

Correspondence 

The correspondence going out from the Secretary's Office falls into two 
general classes: (1) letters to members and inquirers who ask for specific informa- 
tion, suggestion, or guidance; and (2) letters to those who need help but do not 
indicate what they need. This year the Secretary wishes to make a special appeal 
to members, particularly to members-at-large, that they shall make more definite 
demands, ask more questions, state their problems more freely. It is not that the 
Secretary alone would presume to offer assistance in all the problems of the 
theosophic life, but there are experienced members who stand ready, through 
the Secretary's office, to give generously of their counsel and encouragement. 
Help is always to be had in the answering of questions that spring from the real 
need of the inquirer; and nothing that is said about the extent of the work of 
this office should serve to deter anyone from asking for such assistance. And 
further, letters that tell of a definite need can be answered much more readily 
than those which are written in general terms. Frequently an isolated member 
writes a letter that shows such utter loneliness and deprivation of companionship 
as to wring the heart of the Secretary; one longs to try to give something to 
that member, but it may take hours to consider the situation and what could 
helpfully be said. On the other hand if that member had referred to some 
problem on which light was desired ; some bit of reading that was not clear, some 
experience which he would like to share with a friend, the reply could be easily 
and quickly made. 

Branch Activities 

The first impression that comes to me in my effort to mirror the activities 
of the Branches during the year is the depth of the devotion and the breadth of 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 77 

the work done. The different reports show that, in spite of the great outer 
events that have been claiming the attention of all thinking people, the attendance 
at our Branch meetings has been maintained, and in many cases has greatly 
increased. In some Branches it has been the distinct aim to interpret present 
events in the light of theosophic principles; and this effort must become more 
general as we realize the light that has been given us, and the need of the world. 

As we find ourselves face to face with the problem of how to let our light 
shine on all planes, it is not strange that we should find the Branches reporting, 
from different parts of the country, increased activity in working through churches, 
clubs, and various other organizations. The reports also refer, with generous 
satisfaction, to one and another member who is gifted with the ability to make 
addresses, to tell stories, to be the inspiration of some social circle and truly all 
gifts must be requisitioned and used in this time of need. But how about the 
smaller and less conspicuous gifts that are likely to be overlooked and so left 
unused? The member who can make a good address is not likely to be allowed 
to shirk, but then there is the rank and file of every Branch those whose best 
contribution to the cause is their quiet hours of meditation, their constant effort 
for perfection in the performance of the humblest duties, their joyous sacrifice of 
self for a cause that is dearer than self. If they could only recognise how 
absolutely indispensable their unseen contribution is to the work of their Branch, 
to the work of the Society, with what courage and enthusiasm they would press 
forward, through the most humdrum and the most taxing duties ! 

The Branch Reports for this year reflect in a curious way the distinct 
broadening of outlook and aims that has come to different Branches. They find 
it increasingly difficult to report on their work; they realize that the essence of 
this work is not expressed by any account of the nature and number of the 
meetings held, the new members added, the number of copies of the QUARTERLY 
that they have placed, etc. Those facts could be easily told, but it is not easy to 
describe the ways in which they have tried to become as leaven in family and in 
community life most of that story must needs be left untold. 

Many Branches maintain public meetings, and also meetings for members 
only. One Branch uses the members' meetings as preparation for the topics to 
be taken up in the public meetings ; others have used the Key to Theosophy in their 
members' meeting; and one reports that Mr. Johnston's articles on the "Religion 
of the Will" (in the QUARTERLY, July, 1909-January, 1910) have served as an 
excellent bridge between the devotional books, like the Gita, and those which 
present the theosophic philosophy as such. Another Branch has a regular series 
of meetings for inquirers; others use the QUARTERLY as their means of reaching 
inquirers, offering to send questions to the department for "Questions and Answers" 
trying at once to supply the inquirer with a line to Headquarters. One of the 
most significant reports is from a Branch that has been making a serious and 
practical study of the series of QUARTERLY articles on "A Rule of Life"; seeking 
to find the barriers that prevent their more rapid advancement, as individual 
members and as a Branch; such work done with earnest sincerity must bring 
light. 

The Theosophical Quarterly 

The magazine has never been more generally appreciated than during the past 
year. In saying this, I have not in mind so much the growing subscription list, 
as the expressions of gratitude that come constantly from members and non- 
members. It is in an unusual sense the "organ" of the Society, for it not only 
presents in many different forms the truth that has been given to us, but it also 
serves many members as a means of expressing that truth. They work over some 
problem, and perhaps they find their solution, but do not succeed in giving it 
to others as they would wish; until some day the QUARTERLY epitomizes for them 



78 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

their own truth, gives it to them in terms in which they can give it to their fellows. 
There are members who make full use of the QUARTERLY, and others who 
seem to be content with its message to them, without trying to pass that message 
on. There are so many ways in which it might be brought before non-members 
that I am sometimes tempted to prepare a list of questions to be sent to all 
members making such pointed inquiries as the following: When you read 
"Fragments" in the April issue, did you not think of one single friend to whom 
you would like to send that message? Do you not know of some public spirited 
man who would find his questions answered in "On the Screen of Time?" Have 
you no friend who longs for such guidance in inner life as is given in "A Rule of 
Life?" Try thinking of the articles in the QUARTERLY as precious stones that you 
have the privilege of passing on to those who love jewels a ruby for this friend, 
a diamond for another, a pearl for a third. Then if you cannot spare the money 
to buy copies of the magazine for such discriminating giving write to the 
Subscription Department (P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York) ; and ask to have 
the magazine sent to your friend ; there is always a supply of copies that could be 
used in that way. Or if you think it wiser to send only one single article cut 
from the magazine, ask to have a copy sent to you, for cutting up. The magazine 
is published for distribution, not as a business venture ; you are helping forward 
its purpose whenever you ask to have it sent to someone whom you feel to be 
ready to hear its special message. 

The Book Department 

New editions of Mr. Johnston's Song of Life and The Parables of the 
Kingdom have been issued by the Book Department, in attractive form. The 
long-desired second edition of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, as translated and 
annotated by Mr. Johnston, is soon to be issued ; his work on the edition, which 
involved many very valuable additions, is completed and now it only remains for 
the printer and binder to produce the book; it may be looked for by mid-summer. 
There are several interesting new publication projects under way, but I have been 
asked not to speak of the plans in detail, because it takes so much longer to prepare 
and to make books than it does to tell about them ; the Book Department is anxious 
lest you should all begin to order the new books and to look for them in the 
mails before they can possibly be prepared. 

A Personal Acknowledgment 

As the work increases, so does the number of the workers ; and yet there 
is always a shortage, always more work to be done than those who are privileged 
to carry it can possibly compass. Year after year this has been the case ; perhaps 
we are in this way being taught to separate essentials from non-essentials. In 
thr work that comes to the Secretary's Office, I am greatly indebted for constant 
help and co-operation to my fellow officers, and to my long-time friend Mrs. 
Gordon. The Assistant Secretary is now responsible for the mailing of the 
QUARTERLY, for the QUARTERLY subscriptions and for the book orders. In these 
branches of the work, which involve so much detail, many members are giving 
generously of their time. The QUARTERLY envelopes are being addressed by Mrs. 
Helle, Mrs. Gordon, Miss Graves, and the residents at the "Community House." 
In the Book Department, Miss Youngs and Mrs. Vaile are carrying on certain 
lines of work that are of constant and increasing assistance. 

Perhaps I might be permitted to reply here to offers of help that come from 
out-of-town members. There is seldom any of the Headquarters work that can 
be sent out to be done, but I do know of one way in which time could be saved 
to those who are carrying on the book work. It is desired that members should 
use the Book Department freely, constantly should order books, our own or 
those of other publishers, and should make all the inquiries they want to make; 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 79 

the Book Department is for your service. It can serve you better, with the same 
expenditure of time, if you will, so far as possible; (1) send the money to pay 
for a book at the time you order it; (2) give your complete address on every letter; 
(3) make each order complete in itself i.e., do not refer to something that you 
said about books or magazines in a previous letter, but give full information in 
the order itself. These are small points; but the observance of them would set 
free much time for other work. 

With a deep sense of my obligation to you all for the opportunity to take 
my part in this wonderful work for mankind, this report is respectfully submitted. 

April 27, 1917. ADA GREGG, Secretary T. S. 

MR. JOHNSTON : It is one of my privileges to move a vote of thanks to Mrs. 
Gregg for the work that has just been reported upon, and I have been wondering 
how we could adequately express our thanks. As she read the report, every 
one of us could see that we were getting a synthetic view of the work of the T. S. 
in all places, and we have there a picture of the work that Mrs. Gregg is always 
doing for the Society she synthesizes the work of the whole T. S. Just as the 
reports of work that is spread over the whole world have been summed up and 
passed on to us here, so the work itself comes to a centre in Mrs. Gregg's office 
and radiates out from there greatly enriched by passing through her hands. I 
have been having my misgivings, I might as well admit, lest, as Mrs. Gregg's 
account of the activities of her office proceeded, the Convention might divine 
why the Executive Committee was able to make so peaceful a report. 

Mrs. Gregg used two phrases which I should like to apply to her work 
"breadth of work," illustrated in the details of the activities of which she has 
told us (Branches, Book business, magazine circulation, etc.), and "depth of 
devotion," which is harder to illustrate, for being far more vital and spiritual it 
is less easy to catalogue. If the T.S. stand firm, as it has for years, a vital part 
in that sanity and spirit of harmony is due to our Secretary. Professor Mitchell 
has been spoken of as an old member; Mrs. Gregg should be called a perpetually 
young member, and some of the joy of youth goes into all the work she does, 
giving it a long lease of life after it leaves her hands. When she is writing to a 
Branch, that life runs forward into the work of the Branch. 

It is impossible adequately to express our debt and our gratitude to her 
I have been casting about for a simile that should throw some light on one side 
of her work, the side which it is most difficult to illustrate ; perhaps the decorations 
in this room will serve. There are the standards and the many flags, they might 
stand for the Executive Committee which represents all nations (incidentally, I 
count three British flags among the many here, and that is interesting because 
we have three British members on the Committee.) Then there are the lilies and 
the roses ; if they were taken away from this room we should know that something 
was missing and should want it back again. They are to me an illustration of 
the kind of influence that Mrs. Gregg spreads let us go on record as doing what 
we can to express our thankfulness for it. 

MR. HARGROVE: I want to second this motion. In the early days of the T.S. 
we heard much about phenomena, nowadays we hear much less ; that is because 
we have Mrs. Gregg, and she is a perpetual phenomenon, a living demonstration 
of the supernatural. Newer members who desire to grow into the spirit of the 
Movement will be able to gauge their attainment by their admiration for Mrs. 
Gregg. I want to unite with Mr. Johnston in an expression of devout thankfulness 
for her. 

MR. GRISCOM : In casting about for a phrase which would express what 
Mrs. Gregg is and does. I have thought of two; one the hackneyed phrase, 
"sweetness and light"; the other the title of a book, Sesame and Lilies. Those 



80 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

four words sum up Mrs. Gregg; "sesame and lilies" is specially appropriate because 
she has opened up to so many people the spirit and the beauty of the theosophic 
life. 

THE CHAIRMAN : The Chairman has the privilege of adding a word because 
he has been asked by Mrs. Gregg to say that she would like to be allowed to 
express her thanks to the Society for the chance it has given her to do this work 
for the T.S. Speaking for myself, I believe that what we owe most to her is 
the sense she always gives us that she is doing something that is no sacrifice, 
but an enormous privilege. I am grateful to her for her constant recognition of 
the privilege that is involved in our very membership in the Society, and of the 
love that is part of our Brotherhood. The best reason I could advance for 
thanking her is that she wants her thanks expressed for the opportunity to serve. 

The next order of business being the Report of the Treasurer T.S., Mr. 
Hargrove was asked to take the Chair, as a member of the Executive Committee ; 
he called upon Professor Mitchell for the Treasurer's Report. 

REPORT OF THE TREASURER T.S. 

The report that I have to make to-day is reminiscent of times that I thought 
had passed away, for the report shows a balance in the general fund of $2.42, and 
that the receipts for the year fell below what was expended by some $300; thus 
making the showing for the year an actual deficit. Looking back over the past, 
this has been almost invariably the situation; the Society long managed with just 
barely enough money to do its work calling upon a few members to make up 
the deficit if there was one. Of recent years it has been different, and some of 
us have felt rather fearful whenever the year's record showed that more money 
had come in than we had found that we could rightly use. To-day there is no 
such occasion for apprehension; and now the Treasurer would strongly urge 
members to realize that starting the year, as we do, with a balance of $2.42, the 
QUARTERLY cannot be produced if the money does not come in. The cost of 
issuing the magazine is reduced to the minimum; no salaries are paid for any 
of the work on it and there are no payments to the contributors, but the printer 
and the binder must be paid, and money for postage is demanded by the post 
office. So the Treasurer comes before you to tell you that you have not been 
doing your duty in the matter of payments. With this explanatory statement, I 
will read the formal report for the year, omitting the cents as I read because often 
that is all we remember from a list of figures. 

Report of the Treasurer T. S. 

From April 20, 1916 to April 26, 1917 

GENERAL FUND AS PER LEDGER 
Receipts Disbursements 

Dues from Members $565.40 Secretary's Office $152.50 

Subscriptions to the THEOSO- Treasurer's Office 7.35 

PHICAL QUARTERLY 486.12 Printing and Mailing the THEO- 

General Contributions 191.41 SOPHICAL QUARTERLY (four 

Transfer check from bank 1.00 numbers) 1,407.66 

Expense of Subscription Dept, 

$1,243.93 of the QUARTERLY 17.10 

Balance April 20, 1916 $343.10 

$1,584.61 
Balance April 26, 1917 $2.42 

$1,587.03 $1,587.03 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 81 

FINANCIAL STATEMENT 

(Including Special Accounts) 

General Fund 

April 20, 1916 $343.10 Disbursements $1,584.61 

Receipts 1,243.93 Balance April 26, 1917. 2.42 $2.42 



$1,587.03 $1,587.03 

Special Publication Account 
Balance April 20, 1916 $312.00 Balance April 26, 1917 $312.00 

Discretionary Expense Account 
Balance April 20, 1916 $483.00 Balance April 26, 1917 $483.00 



$797.42 

On deposit Corn Exchange Bank, April 26, 1917 $899.68 

On hand for deposit 66.94 



$966.62 

Outstanding checks, not yet cashed 169.20 

$797.42 

H. B. MITCHELL, Treasurer. 

Permit me to say, further, that the bank book is here, the check book, and 
the cash book, all three in balance, and open for inspection if any auditing is 
desired. I should like also to add my own thanks to the Assistant Treasurer, 
Mr. Karl D. Perkins, who, as many of you know, has done most of the work 
of the Treasurer's office at a sacrifice of time and convenience that is not under- 
standable by those who lead lives more permanently located. He has been away 
at the times when we should have liked to send out our receipts more promptly, 
and has been obliged to work at great disadvantage. It is to him that I am indebted 
for the ability to tell you that the books are balanced, and that we have made a 
worthy use of the money intrusted to us. 

On motion made by Mr. Griscom and seconded by Mr. Acton Griscom the 
Report of the Treasurer was accepted, with a vote of thanks to Professor Mitchell 
for the work done by himself and his assistant, Mr. Perkins. Professor Mitchell 
resumed the Chair, and called upon Mr. Griscom for the report of the Editor-in- 
Chief of the QUARTERLY, who consents to appear only at Convention time, remain- 
ing anonymous in the magazine. Mr. Griscom said : 

REPORT ON THE THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

There are certain things at Convention that I like to do talking of Mrs. 
Gregg is one of them. Among the things that I do not like is talking about the 
QUARTERLY. It seems to me that after fourteen years a magazine should have 
reached such a point that you would not expect the editor to talk about it. It is 
especially unbecoming of me to do so because, in looking over the Index, the other 
day, I found that I am there credited with more articles in the last volume than 
anyone else, despite the fact that the chief duty of an editor is, admittedly, to 
keep his own stuff out. Nobody else can! I have no statistics for the year to 
give you; it has been without important outer incidents. 

One idea came to me, however, which may be of interest to you I found 
that for the past year the keynote which ran through the magazine was that of 
Discipleship ; practically every article that was published bore directly on Disciple- 



82 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

ship. This did not come about through deliberate design, yet there was the fact 
that with three or four exceptions, one of them a book review, there had been 
nothing in the magazine that did not bear upon the problems of Discipleship, that 
was not designed to be of help to us in the effort to lead the higher life. The 
range of topics has been wide ; there have, for instance, been discussions of the 
war, but those were from the point of view of what each one of us should feel 
and should think. There have been biographies of the saints and of great people, 
but the underlying purpose was to show what inspiration they could give to us 
who are trying to lead similar lives. The sum of the work of the magazine for 
the past year has been along the line of personal effort and sacrifice, constantly 
presenting ideals of the highest and noblest type. 

If there are any suggestions that any of you have to make as to new fields 
to be covered, new types of articles that would be helpful, I should be glad to 
hear from you. 

MR. MICHAELIS : I am sure that we all have a deep sense of the great debt 
that we owe to the QUARTERLY and to its Editor ; and that if we had any criticism 
to offer on the conduct of the magazine it would be that we do not have more 
articles from the Editor. I beg, therefore, to move that this Convention express 
its sincere thanks to Mr. Griscom for his editing of the QUARTERLY. This motion 
was seconded by Mr. Mitchell, and enthusiastically voted. 

THE CHAIRMAN : If it were not for the fact that so large a proportion of 
those here present are doing more or less work on the QUARTERLY, I should like 
to entertain a motion to thank the contributors and the other workers. 

We have now reached the end of what is usually the work of the morning 
session ; it has been the custom to confine this session to organization and to the 
reports of the officers, so that there may be opportunity during the noon recess 
for members to consult about the other matters to be brought up, and for the 
several Committees to meet. Mr. Griscom has suggested, however, that instead 
of closing now we should hear from visiting delegates, which is one of the most 
interesting of the opportunities that the Convention offers. If there is no objection 
to that procedure, I will ask Miss Hohnstedt to report on the work of the 
Cincinnati Branch. 

REPORTS FROM DELEGATES 
CINCINNATI BRANCH 

Miss HOHNSTEDT: First, let me say that I look forward to this Convention 
from one year to the next you will understand that it is a great pleasure to 
me to be here with you. I should like to begin my report by reading to you a 
letter of greeting from the President of our Branch, Mr. Guy Manning : 

"Once again the members of the Cincinnati Branch send their 
greetings to those in Convention assembled at New York. We are keeping 
up the good work with doors wide open, and the members loyal and 
willing workers, eager to hand on the philosophy that has been so helpful 
to them. We attract some interested visitors who take active part in our 
discussion, with the result that we are all benefited. The best feeling 
always prevails." 

That is the feeling of our Branch ; the members arc unitedly willing and 
eager to do all that they can. One departure in our work this year is that we 
have had certain subjects under discussion for two or three consecutive meetings; 
we have tried to discuss them from the philosophical, scientific, and religious 
standpoint. All our visitors have come regularly; our average attendance is 19, of 
this number we average 9 or 10 members. We have carried on our Study Classes 
as usual; in our members' meetings, we prepare for the next topic to be taken up 
at the public meetings or else discuss the questions that have already been raised 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 83 

there. We have monthly classes in the Key to Theosophy, and we also take up 
the devotional books. For propaganda we use the QUARTERLY, which we have 
placed in all the libraries of the city. We are looking forward to much work 
next year. 

SAINT PAUL 

The Chairman asked for a full report from Saint Paul, being the youngest 
Branch in the Society. Responses were made by Miss Goss, the President, and 
Mrs. Shaw, the Branch delegate. 

Miss Goss: We are babies in the Society; there are only four of us, and 
we are all beginners, struggling to help each other. There is complete harmony 
among the four, and a spirit of devotion that is rarely equalled. Our active work 
has been the study of the Ocean of Theosophy; we hold open meetings which 
begin with meditation and reading from Light on the Path, followed by the reading 
of some "lay" book that may have appealed to some member, and we close with 
some selected biblical passage in biblical interpretation we get great help from 
Mrs. Shaw who is a wonderful Bible student. She is our delegate, and will report 
further. 

MRS. SHAW: I came only expecting to listen and to learn, but it may be of 
interest to you to know that our little Branch grew out of the hunger of two 
people for further light; they had come up from years of faithful service in the 
path of orthodoxy. They had been led to the conclusion that there was a great 
gap between religious teaching and religious experience. It seemed to them that 
there must be a bridge between the only world we know and that other world 
which they felt must exist somewhere. We cried for light, and the answer came 
through association with Miss Goss, a former member of the New York 
Branch, who brought to us a knowledge of Theosophy, and through Theosophy 
the light has come. Speaking for myself, what I have learned has brought to 
me the deepest comfort, the brightest light, the greatest incentive I have ever 
had. I feel that all the rest of my life is to be colored by this meeting, and I am 
deeply grateful for the association with you. All I can do is to perform the humble 
duties that come to me the best I know how if that is Theosophy, then I am a 
deep-dyed Theosophist. 

BLAVATSKY BRANCH, WASHINGTON 

MRS. GITT : Our Branch meetings have been well kept up during the year, 
in spite of various hindrances, such as the illness of members, and a car strike 
which was so serious in its consequences that the police warned us not to use 
the cars, but we went to the meetings just the same, and none of us was injured 
or molested. 

I want to refer to what Mr. Johnston and Mrs. Gregg have already 
said about the depth of devotion that has characterized the T.S. work this year. 
That is true of our meetings in Washington. We are convinced that what counts 
most is the inner attitude of members and not the number who attend any given 
meeting. We hold semi-monthly meetings, different members presiding and 
selecting their own subjects. These subjects are largely drawn from the QUARTERLY 
we have had some excellent meetings based upon "Notes and Comments." Our 
members do much individual work, and we feel that we are growing strong. 
The best evidence of this is the harmony that exists in the Branch. I wish that 
we could do more during the coming year to increase the circulation of the 
QUARTERLY, that we could persuade more people to read it regularly. Mr. Johnston's 
"Christianity and War" has been sent to a number of our ministers, and one of 
them preached two sermons on it. This seems to me a good time to give out 
these pamphlets, when light on the whole problem of war is being so earnestly 
sought by many people. 



84 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

MlDDLETOWN BRANCH 

This Branch was represented by its proxy, Mrs. Gordon of New York, who 
was for years a member of the Middletown Branch, and is still called by them their 
"absent member." The Branch completed this year its study of the "Yoga Sutras," 
and has recently taken up the "Abridgement of the Secret Doctrine." The meet- 
ings, which are held every other week, represent only one of the activities of this 
Branch, whose local membership is small only five but they are fortunate in 
counting among their number several devoted members, whose lives, as Mrs. 
Gordon says, are centred in the theosophic movement. 

It is in personal work for the cause that this Branch seems to have been 
most effective, and that is ceaselessly carried on. 

HOPE BRANCH, PROVIDENCE 

Mrs. Regan, the President of this comparatively new Branch, represented it 
at Convention. The work has been carried on quietly, and with enthusiasm, as from 
the beginning. There are public meetings twice a month, and a Study Class every 
week. The public meetings are devoted to the presentation and discussion of arti- 
cles in the QUARTERLY or selections from "Fragments" all those present taking an 
active part in the discussions. The Branch has inaugurated the policy of sending 
the QUARTERLY to persons who, it is hoped, will continue the subscription for 
themselves, and so enable the Branch to widen its field constantly. The first and 
most important work of this Branch is still felt to lie in building its foundations 
on the right principles, and as Mrs. Regan says, it takes a long time to build a 
firm foundation. 

NEW YORK BRANCH 

MR. HARGROVE: Professor Mitchell is President of the New York Branch, 
I act as Chairman. Perhaps others may be prepared, this afternoon, to go into 
details as to the kind of work we undertake ; I should like to speak now of our 
motives and aims. I was greatly impressed by a statement made by the delegate 
from the Saint Paul Branch, Mrs. Shaw, who said that their Branch was founded 
by two people who had for years been faithful to the truth as they then 
saw it, i.e, to orthodox Christianity. One thing that the New York Branch believes 
most profundly is, that unswerving fidelity to any truth will lead to the Masters 
and to light; the merit lies in the fidelity. We feel that whoever is faithful to the 
light he sees, is faithful to the truth, to his own soul, and is in fact a Theosophist 
though he may never have heard the word. It is because we as a Branch are so 
profoundly convinced of this, that we have been able to carry the light of 
Theosophy into the church and into other organizations. 

Theosophy is a light; it is not a thing in itself, it is a light. It is not a 
church and cannot be compared with a church, nor with any organization the 
purpose of which is to spread a particular truth. It is a light that is intended 
to illumine all things ; a light which its members should carry with them, so that 
wherever they go they may give light. In this it is like the soul, which ought 
to illumine men's minds. This does not mean, as we well know, that the mind 
has got to stop thinking ; on the contrary, it has to do its share, to contribute its 
part, while the soul should illumine all mental processes. That, as the New York 
Branch sees it, is the purpose of Theosophy a leaven that leavens the lump. 

Like the other Branches, we have been learning much this year. Events of 
the outer world have illustrated before our eyes the eternal truths of Theosophy. 
Take such incidents as the Russian revolution ; we ought to learn from that a 
great theosophic truth, which is that it does not follow that a country is better 
governed by a hundred million fools than by one colossal idiot. We are not 
advocating any particular form of government. Individually we may feel that 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 85 

some particular form of government is the best; but if we look at the problem 
with detachment, we shall learn that it is not so much the form of government 
which counts, as that which lies back of the form, namely the character of the 
individuals concerned. It is the individual, the light within the individual, or the 
lack of it, that is important. So this question of government resolves itself for 
us into the need that the individual shall strive by all means in his power to 
get light into his darkness. Before we can get light we must always begin by 
realizing that there is some darkness; if we start by recognizing that there is a 
little darkness, even a very little, we may find in time that our darkness is 
increasing splendidly! At about that time the light should begin to dawn. 

Every Branch must move forward. Growth in numbers is not the important 
thing; the real thing is the steady illumination of individuals from within. No 
one who has been a member of the T.S. for a great many years can be devoid of 
zeal; we realize that we owe everything we are, have, and know to Theosophy. 
There are some of us who are doing active work in the Christian church, and 
there are those within the church who are not members of the Society, who speak 
well of what is being done. We show, I believe, a deeper understanding of church 
doctrine than the average exponent of Christianity possesses ; we get it from our 
years of study of Theosophy and from the effort to put into practice some of 
the Theosophy which we have learned and which we have tried to live. Ultimately 
it does all resolve into living the theosophic life, that we may carry the light of 
Theosophy into the darkness of the world. 

The great question of Brotherhood, which means everything when rightly 
understood, is being studied by the New York Branch. We know that it is the 
supreme art of life, and that there is nothing more difficult in the world than 
the art of right living. Whenever we come into contact with a human being, the 
problem of Brotherhood is involved, and every day that one lives one ought to 
discover something more about the meaning of Brotherhood. You saw a hideous 
distortion of Brotherhood in the fervent pleas from many quarters for peace- 
at-any-price ; you revolted from this twist of mawkish sentimentality. Yet that 
is a mistake which many people make. They will never begin to be brotherly 
until they discover that it is the exact opposite of inhumanity on the one hand 
and of sentimentality on the other. These, which are supposed to be opposites, 
are so only in the sense that they form the opposite base angles of a triangle, 
with Brotherhood at the apex. In spirit, those two base angles are identical. As 
a Branch, we are in the habit of bringing our studies back to the question 
what is brotherly? It takes time to see that if we would understand Brotherhood 
we must understand the great Masters and Avatars who were its perfect exponents. 

The Chairman announced that the time for adjournment had come, and that 
luncheon would be served at the Hotel St. Denis at 12.45 ; the New York Branch 
extended a cordial invitation to this lunch to all visiting members and delegates. 
A motion for adjournment until 2.30 was declared to be in order and was carried. 



AFTERNOON SESSION 

At 2.30 the Chairman called the Convention to order, and asked whether the 
Committees appointed at the morning session were prepared to report. They 
were declared to be ready, and the Committee on Nominations was first called, 
Mr. Griscom reporting for the Committee. 

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON NOMINATIONS 

The Committee on Nominations as usual has a very simple report to make. 
We have to elect a Secretary; Assistant Secretary; Treasurer; Assistant Treas- 
urer, and two members of the Executive Committee. For the offices of Secretary 



86 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

and Assistant Secretary the Committee nominates the present incumbents, Mrs. 
Gregg and Miss Perkins. 

THE CHAIRMAN : The report of a Committee needing no seconding, I will 
ask you to vote on the candidates proposed as Secretary and Assistant Secretary. 
Unanimously elected. 

MR. GRISCOM : For the office of Treasurer we propose the name of Professor 
Mitchell ; and as Mr. Perkins, the present Assistant Treasurer, is likely to be away 
frequently during the coming year, we propose as Assistant Treasurer the name 
of Miss Martha E. Youngs of New York. Unanimously elected. 

MR. GRISCOM : For the Executive Committee, we propose the names of Judge 
McBride of Indianapolis, and Colonel Knoff of Kristiania. Colonel Knoff repre- 
sents the Society in Norway and in fact in Scandinavia ; Judge McBride well 
represents the old-time spirit of the T.S. We had expected him here to-day, and 
I have a special delivery letter from him explaining why he is absent the reason 
is one which I am sure would interest you all. When the European war broke 
out his son went over into Canada and enlisted there, was made a captain and 
later put into a training camp to train recruits. He wanted to go to the front 
when his regiment was called but was considered too valuable as a training officer 
to be allowed to go. Finally, feeling that he could no longer endure being left 
behind, he resigned his commission and enlisted as a private, and as a private went 
to the front in the fall of 1914 in the same regiment in which he had been an 
officer. With it he saw much service, being wounded seven times ; he received a 
number of decorations for distinguished service, including the Military Medal of 
Great Britain, and from France the Croix de Guerre, with the bronze palm, and the 
Medaille Militaire. He was in a hospital in London when this country declared 
war, having regained the rank of captain, and he has just returned home to 
recuperate fully from his injuries. His father reports that he is ready to go 
back to Europe as soon as he is fit, hoping that he can go with American troops 
and under an American commander. Meanwhile, after spending this week-end 
with his parents, he is going to Culver Military Academy as an instructor in 
modern trench warfare thus remaining in the harness while taking the necessary 
time for recovery. A visit from such a son seems to your Committee ample excuse 
for absence from this Convention. In his letter Judge McBride also says : 

"Please convey my best wishes to the members of the Convention, 
and give expression in as strong terms as you can of my regret that I 
cannot be with them. My son has recovered from all his hurts, except 
a hurt to one knee and an injury to his left eye. The hurt to the knee 
only bothers him occasionally now. The injury to the eye was caused by 
a blow from a piece of shell that fractured the cheek bone, and from a 
steel splinter from the same shell that penetrated back of the eyeball and 
lodged against the optic nerve. The splinter of steel was successfully 
removed, and while his eye is still weak, his sight is growing better, and 
he has the assurance of an eminent British specialist in London that bis 
recovery from that injury, while slow, will be complete. Pardon me for 
troubling you with these details of his injuries, but I thought that they 
might interest you and your friends." 

Mr. Michaelis moved that the Committee on Nominations be discharged 
with thanks, and that a note be made of the fact that the Convention shares the 
regret of the Committee that the Society is not to have the services of Mr. Perkins 
as Assistant Treasurer. 

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON RESOLUTIONS 

MR. HARGROVE: Mr. Chairman and Fellow Members On behalf of the 
Committee on Resolutions, I beg, in the first place, to suggest the following in 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 87 

comment on Mr. Griscom's remarks about Judge McBride and the reason for 
his absence today: 

I. RESOLVED, That the heartfelt congratulations of this Convention 
of the T.S. be and hereby are extended to Judge McBride and his family 
for the heroic and self-sacrificing service of his son, on behalf of human 
brotherhood, at the front in France. 

The Committee suggests that this resolution should be sent as a telegram, 
io that Judge McBride may show it to his son while he is visiting his family. 

The resolution was unanimously adopted, with much enthusiasm. Mr. 
Hargrove then read the Committee's second resolution : 

II. Whereas, The only binding object of The Theosophical Society 
is to form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of humanity; and 

Whereas, Any form of slander is a direct violation of the principle 
of Brotherhood ; and 

Whereas, No one who is guilty of evil speaking or of evil listening 
can be worthy of membership in the Society; and 

Whereas, There is no provision at present by which the Society can 
rid itself of unworthy members, therefore, 

Be it Resolved, That the following be added as By-Law No. 2: 

"The Executive Committee shall have power to expel from 
the Society, after proper investigation and due hearing, anyone deemed 
unworthy of further membership by reason of violations of Brother- 
hood, whenever, in its opinion, the reputation and well-being of the 
Society make such a course desirable." 

and that the subsequent By-Laws be renumbered accordingly. 

Be it further Resolved, That the Secretary be and is hereby instructed 
to prepare and to issue to all members a booklet which shall contain the 
Constitution and By-Laws as they shall exist at the adjournment "of this 
Convention. 

It stands to reason that we should have some provision for getting rid 
of a member whose conduct makes him a disgrace to the Society. Imagine our 
position with a member who was leading a scandalous life. There is no provision 
in the By-Laws that enables us to do anything in such a case. Once a member of 
the Society, no matter how deplorable his conduct may be, he has the right to 
sign F.T.S. after his name, and the Society is helpless. The provision of this 
Resolution seems to be only common sense I do not see that there can be any 
question about incorporating it into our By-Laws. The direct reference is to 
slander; that, however, is not the only offence contemplated; it would cover any 
offence against Brotherhood, which is the binding object for which the Society 
exists. No one is expected to jump into an understanding of Brotherhood; the 
oldest of our members would admit that it is difficult to understand, and still 
more difficult to carry out consistently. But if there is in our ranks a member 
who does not wish to learn, then he would prove himself unworthy. It is always 
probable that we may sin against Brotherhood, but so long as we are willing 
to learn, it is not conceivable that the Society would take action against us ; if 
any one should show that he is not willing to learn, then it would be for the 
Executive Committee to act, and to deprive him of his membership. 

THE CHAIRMAN : Do you wish to hear the Resolution read again, or are 
you ready to vote? [The question was called for, and the Resolution unanimously 
carried.] 

MR. HARGROVE: As to the next Resolution, which we may or may not all 



88 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

agree about, it is important that there should be full expression of opinion, for 
it concerns all of us vitally. It reads : 

Whereas, The Theosophical Society, in Convention assembled, on the 
24th day of April, 1915, adopted unanimously the following Resolution, 
to wit : 

"Whereas, The first and only binding object of The Theosophical 
Society is to form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Human- 
ity; and 

"Whereas, In the name of Brotherhood, war as such is being 
denounced from many pulpits and lecture platforms, and in news- 
papers and magazines, with appeals for peace at any price ; and 

"Whereas, Non-belligerents have been asked to remain neutral ; 
therefore, be it Resolved, That The Theosophical Society, in Conven- 
tion assembled, hereby declares 

"(a) That war is not of necessity a violation of Brotherhood, 
but may on the contrary become obligatory in obedience to the ideal 
of Brotherhood; and 

"(b) That individual neutrality is wrong if it be believed that 
a principle of righteousness is at stake." 

And Whereas, The United States of America, by act of the President 
and of Congress, has finally declared that neutrality is no longer possible 
in a conflict that involves the deepest principles of righteousness, and has, 
in obedience to the ideals of Brotherhood, declared war against those 
who are carrying on "warfare against mankind" through "an irresponsible 
Government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and 
of right, and is running amuck." 

And Whereas, By sacrifice alone can evil be overcome and righteous- 
ness be established ; 

Therefore, Be it resolved that we, the individual members of The 
Theosophical Society here present, do hereby express our heartfelt 
thankfulness that the country in which the Society was founded has 
thus shown its recognition of the ideal of Brotherhood, and 

Be It Further Resolved, That we do hereby pledge our utmost 
loyalty and endeavour to the cause upon which the country has entered, 
until through the energy of sacrifice the war be brought to a victorious 
conclusion in accordance with the terms of the President's message. 

I shall be greatly pleased if you approve of this resolution because three of 
your officers labored over it last night, and it has been carefully discussed and 
considered by your Committee appointed to-day. It seems to me that we ought 
to be sincerely thankful that the resolution we adopted two years ago, which at 
that time ran counter to the expressed official feeling of this country, proved to be 
an expression of the soul of the country. In a country, as in an individual, you 
have a higher and a lower self. That higher self is made up of courage, of 
aspiration, of love for the highest that is recognized. The lower self is made up 
of prejudice, of fear, of weakness, of selfishness. It was our privilege two years 
ago to speak for the best that is in this nation ; and now it is only right that we 
should express satisfaction that the nation has asserted its soul; has come out 
positively on the side of Brotherhood. 

Since all those who are here are readers of the QUARTERLY, I suppose it is 
not necessary to explain that statement. It is inconceivable that any student of 
Theosophy should imagine that Brotherhood is approval of everything and every- 
body, or, on the other hand, that it means being against everything and everybody. 
As members of this Society, we ought to have made Brotherhood the study of 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 89 

our lives; we should see clearly that its first principle is loyalty to the truth and 
to the souls of men. This was illustrated in the QUARTERLY by the case of a 
burglar, caught in the act of robbing a house. The foolish sentimentalists who 
prate about Brotherhood would say that we must let the poor dear burglar off 
apparently the more of a burglar he is, the dearer he is ; (which would be expressive 
of a certain type of Brotherhood). Let us assume that this burglar has a father 
and mother, who instead of being fools are members of the T. S.; we will also 
assume that they are really devoted to their son. His plight is set before them. 
It might go bitterly against the grain, but if they had any sense of duty, any under- 
standing of their son's needs, they would say; He must suffer for what he has 
done; it is the only way to teach him the wickedness of his conduct. They would 
say, Let us make manifest before his eyes the law of Karma; for his sake, and in 
the name of Brotherhood, let him be punished. 

So it is encouraging that the moral sense of this country, which two years ago 
was amorphous and jelly-like, has recently become reasonably substantial. The 
majority has come out for Brotherhood; has said that evil-doers must be punished; 
that those who have come out openly against the laws of God and man must be 
made to realize that sin involves punishment, and that there can be no forgiveness 
until there be repentance and expiation. 

The Committee recommends that you pass this resolution, and that you, as 
individuals, pledge your "utmost loyalty and endeavour to the cause upon which 
the country has entered, until through the energy of sacrifice the war be brought 
to a victorious conclusion in accordance with the terms of the President's message." 

THE CHAIRMAN : Your applause shows clearly the feeling of those present, 
but the Chair would wish that this resolution should not be hastily passed. The 
principles involved in it go deep into the real life of the Society; the principle of 
Brotherhood implies the necessity for combatting false Brotherhood. These things 
are too important to be assumed as known to us, and I therefore hope that the 
principles of them may have full discussion here today. Two years ago we passed 
a resolution (the one just read), of which the one before you now is the logical 
sequence. A year ago another resolution was presented which the Resolutions 
Committee recommended postponing indefinitely. No part of that is now before 
you, but it seems to me that since such a resolution was presented and considered, 
even though we refused to vote on it officially, it ought to be read here, as the 
connecting link between our action of two years ago and that now proposed. I 
will read it from the official report of the Convention of 1916: 

"Chairman of the Resolutions Committee : 'The Resolution which I 

shall now read is presented by Mr. K. D. Perkins, a delegate from the 

New York Branch : 

" ' RESOLVED, That The Theosophical Society in Convention as- 
sembled places itself on record as to the present wa. : 

" ' It is the conviction of the Convention that the powers of good 
are now ranged over against the powers of evil : that, among the 
nations, France is leading the charge of the White Lodge against the 
attack of Germany, supported and directed by the Black Lodge and all 
the evil forces of the world. 

" ' That this is a time when nations and individuals have chosen 
and must now choose to wage war both outward and inward, on one 
side or on the other: 

" 'That this day of Convention is the eleventh hour and that 
choice must now be made ; furthermore, the Society recognises the fact 
that in this great conflict between good and evil, to choose neutrality 
is to choose hell. 

" 'We do not recommend a vote upon that Resolution, but recommend that 
it be indefinitely postponed.'" 



90 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Though no action was taken on that resolution a year ago, it seems to be 
pertinent to our consideration today. That it was an eleventh hour effort is evident, 
and now, even at the eleventh hour, our own nation has acted. I think we cannot 
do better than to ask Mr. K. D. Perkins to speak on the resolution now pending. 

MR. PERKINS : When Mr. Hargrove and Mr. Johnston spoke this morning 
they brought out the fact that the number of delegates and members gathered here 
bears no numerical relation to the importance of the Convention, of the issues 
involved ; of the results that hang upon our discussions and subsequent actions. 
One side of this meeting was brought out and the other perfectly obvious side was 
left for us to think over. If intensity of effort is what counts, then it must be 
true that each one of us has it in his power by the quality of effort that he is 
putting into this moment,, into the duties of everyday life, to bring a mighty acces- 
sion to the Lodge itself. 

It is clear, as Mr. Hargrove has said, that the soul of the United States has 
finally listened, has assumed control, and has acted. There is also the soul 
of this Convention of the T.S. If what that soul has done in days past has been 
of supreme importance, surely what is taking place at this moment in our hearts 
and wills is of no less importance. As we think of this resolution our thoughts 
may run forward to the year to come ; what we set our wills and our hearts for 
at this time may indeed have its effect on the issues yet to be fought out in France. 
This Convention has it in its power to contribute markedly to the cause of Masters 
and the Lodge because it is a bridge. Let us put behind this resolution of the 
Committee the power of individual support which means individual sacrifice, such 
sacrifice as we have seen so splendidly exemplified in the French nation during the 
last two years, the sacrifice which goes with true courage. Let us determine in 
our hearts that America shall do the right thing; let us remember as the hours 
come and go what we said at the last Convention, taking up the words of the 
French commander, "They shall not pass," and give all that we can, with real 
joy, on the altar of sacrifice, for true Brotherhood. 

MR. GRISCOM : I think it may be well to explain the difficulty over a resolu- 
tion of this character. A fundamental principle is that the T. S. must not commit 
itself to any particular belief, and it would be most unwise for us to step beyond 
the limits which the founders wisely set; we must conform to that principle. There 
are many things that some of us would like to say, to go on record as willing to 
do. I know there was no one in the Convention last year who did not agree with 
the spirit and purpose of Mr. Perkins' resolution last year, but we refused, and I 
think properly, to commit the Society to what it would have been committed to if 
we had passed the resolution. And now there is a way out which will at least give 
relief for individual feelings. I have the right to get up and say anything that I 
want to say, but that does not commit the Society ; it is only when an official vote 
is t .ken that the Society is committed. I should like to see this Convention go 
further than this year's resolution takes us. The limitations two years ago did 
not prevent our expressing an opinion as to the direction which the law of Brother- 
hood would take, and it has taken the country two years to catch up to the views 
we announced then. Today I should like to see the Society go on record for the 
next two years. I am going to read a resolution which I should like to see passed, 
but I know that it is not possible for this Convention to take such action so when 
I have finished reading my resolution I shall move that it be not passed. 

Whereas, The world is confronted with a crisis in its spiritual life, and 
Whereas, Many persons do not yet realize that the war is a physical 
expression of the age-long conflict between the forces of good and of evil, 
and 

Whereas, This country has at last awakened to the paramount impor- 
tance of the conflict, and is beginning to appreciate the moral and spiritual 
issues which are involved, and 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 91 

Whereas, Two years ago this Society, in Convention assembled, took its 
stand against neutrality, or any attitude of compromise with the forces of 
evil, and thus anticipated the action recently taken by the President and 
by Congress, and 

Whereas, We members of the T. S. deem it fitting and proper at this 
important juncture in the history of civilization that we should again record 
our principles and our opinions, 

Therefore, be it resolved, 

1. The war should be prosecuted with the utmost possible vigour, by 
land and by sea, and by all available agencies, until the enemy is thoroughly 
beaten. 

2. That we should cast in our lot with the Allies, whole-heartedly and 
without reservation, and that we should not make or consent to any peace 
save in unison with them. 

3. That we should give our Allies every possible assistance, with 
liberal contributions of money, supplies, munitions, shipping, and above all, 
with men. 

4. That the resources of the nation, both men and materials, should 
be organized on the basis of the war lasting several more years. 

5. That every citizen should consider it his duty to contribute his 
time, money, and work to the cause, up to the limit of his ability. 

6. That as the war is a war of principle, it should be recognized that 
spiritual victories are only won by spiritual forces, and that no one is con- 
tributing his quota who is not giving what costs him hardship, deprivation, 
and sacrifice. 

MR. J. F. B. MITCHELL: In comment on Mr. Griscom's resolution, which he 
warns us not to pass, I should like to express my personal satisfaction at the oppor- 
tunity that is given us to talk over this matter in Convention whatever limits may 
wisely be set to our formal action. It is indeed gratifying that this nation has 
thrown itself onto the side of its soul instead of serving the forces of death and 
hell. It is clear that as a nation we greatly need to recognize the danger of the 
misunderstanding of Brotherhood with which we are already confronted. The 
principle of Brotherhood rests, as everyone here knows, on the identity of all 
souls with the oversoul ; hence any compromise with evil must necessarily be an 
offence against Brotherhood. In this country we are surely going to be tempted 
to come to an easy compromise with evil before we have won our victory. It is 
not too early to ask ourselves what will happen when Germany makes the first 
peace offer which carries on its face an appearance of being genuine. What will 
happen when they say they are sorry and will go back and be good. How many 
people will then be inclined to say, let us be magnanimous, let us be generous? 
The danger we have to face is failure to go through to the end. We shall be 
tempted to abandon the Allies and having set our hand to the plow to turn back. 
It is therefore of vital importance that we of this Convention should realize that 
we must throw ourselves in for the victory of the soul of the nation until that 
victory is won and won completely. 

DR. CLARK : Personally I should prefer Mr. Griscom's resolution, but I feel 
that the Committee's resolution, if we put our hearts behind it, would really accom- 
plish what is desired. It was said two years ago that our action then was in 
advance of what the country felt. The Committee's resolution of to-day offers 
something for the country to grow up to. It says that what is at stake is Brother- 



92 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

hood. Brotherhood implies Fatherhood, and that is a fact which needs to be recog- 
nized by this country. Splendid as is the President's message, it suggests that war 
is a struggle between certain forms of government against the usurpation of one 
ruler. It seems to me that this war is a struggle of evil forces against the forces 
of good. The light that Theosophy has thrown on Christian teaching suggests 
that this struggle is but the continuation of that war which started so long ago in 
Heaven. It is the existence of the spiritual forces that is at stake, those great 
forces that come to their center in God. 

MR. SAXE: I am grateful to the Committee for this resolution, and grateful 
for the speeches upon it which we have heard. I do not feel that I can add any- 
thing to what has been said, except to express my heartfelt thanks. 

THE CHAIRMAN : It is important, I feel, that the principles enwrapped in 
this resolution should be exposed. I have been calling upon delegates, but I should 
be glad to hear from anyone present who feels moved to speak to this resolution. 

MR. BERRENBERG: I have been in a very peculiar situation with relation to 
the war ! though born in this country I have lived in Europe so long that I have 
assimilated many German ideas and it was natural for me to become a neutral in 
this conflict. The Chairman has said that neutrality is hell, and certainly it has been 
very bitter for me. I have tried to find my way to one side or another ; and if 
I were going to follow my conviction I should have to oppose this resolution, but 
I regard it as the first principle of Brotherhood to make sacrifice. 

A!RS. SHELDON : Last year I was the only one who sat still when the resolu- 
tion on the war was read ; to tell why I did so is too long and too personal a story, 
but I should like to say that today I agree perfectly with the view of Dr. Clark as 
to the spiritual principle that is involved in this war. To me there can be no outer 
principle that can make true Brotherhood, it has to be for each individual to live 
in the light of his divine consciousness, and I believe each should be allowed to 
choose, to stand alone. This is a tremendous issue and it cannot be solved with 
a few words ; it is the culmination of the ages, it is Karma ; and we have to realize 
that great spiritual laws are being expressed through life today. I for one have to 
bow to these laws and keep quiet. There is no sacrifice that I would not make, 
but I have to wait and see what the way of sacrifice is for me; the matter is 
between each person and the God within. 

MR. MICHAELIS : This morning as I sat here thinking of the privilege that 
was ours, my eye fell on the plaster cast of the cherub orer that door and on the 
French flag near it. I tried to imagine what he would think as he looked back 
over the centuries of effort and thought, reviewing all that the great ones had done, 
and then I thought of what happened on Calvary Hill : surely he would feel that 
we had done pitifully little to justify it. Still, after thousands of years of effort 
herr is the T. S., something that is continuous, that has courage to face its problem 
and that reminded me of the dramatic story of that humble member of the 
Canadian mounted police who, riding through one of the great northwestern 
provinces in the storm and the gathering dusk, noticed an exceptional stalk of 
wheat, stopped at the risk of his life to gather it, and so made possible the cultiva- 
tion of a form of wheat adapted to those northern latitudes, which has resulted in 
countless prosperous farms and thousands of sturdy men to fight in this war for 
France and for the cause of the Masters. In the T. S. we have people willing to 
face what will come from individual effort. We should be glad too that there 
are in the T. S. older students who can make it clear to us that Brotherhood does 
not mean the sacrifice of our convictions. That would indeed be a dangerous 
doctrine. Let us remember that the mobs who burned in the south enjoyed lynch- 
ings. Let us remember that each one of us has in him something of the German, 
something that loves sin ; so each one may contribute something to this fight, as he 
chooses on which side he will serve. Men are dying in France for the great cause, 
we here are fortunate in that our poor pitiful sins can be made to do service, for 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 93 

the conquest of them can give us something with which to fight, here and now, in 
the spirit of that greatest of all fighters, who in Gethsemane refused to allow us 
to expiate for our own sins. I believe that the triumph of our Lord will be hastened 
by what we have the wisdom and the courage to do here today. 

MR. ACTON GRISCOM : One point which Mr. Mitchell made might, it seems 
to me, be given further attention ; he spoke of fighting to the finish, and asked 
what this country would do when the first peace offer came from Germany. I 
have been asking myself what the proper punishment for Germany would be; 
how far the distinction between German autocracy and the German people can 
be made. It is very easy to become confused between the people who are 
doing these things and evil powers who are involved in their course of action. 
When I was a small boy I used to express regret for my misdeeds because I 
saw that I was going to get into trouble. Punishment usually followed, regard- 
less of my half-hearted regrets, and then I found myself in some confusion, 
for I was conscious that my intentions at the time I was being punished were 
good, but down below the confusion I knew that I was only getting what I 
deserved. The tendency now is to let the child off from punishment if there 
is any feeble sign of repentance. This tendency must also apply to nations, 
and I think that we ought to clear up as much as we can the principles 
involved in the punishment that should be meted out to the German people. 

Miss HOHNSTEDT : At the beginning of the war it was a long time before 
I could decide what .side to take. I saw so many good qualities in the German 
people ; but as I looked for light I found that where they were efficient they 
had turned their power to material ends, they had forgotten the mission of the 
soul and what we are here for. I knew then what stand I had to take ; and 
since then my attitude has been, not peace at any price, but justice at any 
price. 

MR. MITCHELL: I have been asked to inquire whether it would not be 
possible for those individuals present who would have liked to vote for Mr. 
Griscom's resolution, if it had been presented for action, to be given a chance 
to express their individual feelings and convictions. 

MR. MICHAELIS : I move a vote of thanks to Mr. Griscom for the paper 
which he prepared and read to us. 

It was moved by Mr. Michaelis and seconded by Mr. Mitchell that those 
present extend to Mr. Griscom their personal thanks for the resolution he had 
prepared, signifying in that way their agreement with the views expressed. This 
vote of thanks was passed amid much applause and the action was unanimous, 
with the exception of one person who declined to vote. 

MR. HARGROVE: I am asked to speak before the resolution of the Com- 
mittee is put to the vote. This resolution is based upon the first object of The 
Theosophical Society, Brotherhood. What does it mean? What is it all about? 
One speaker has said that this war is an outcome of Karma so am I, and so 
is this building, so is the law of gravity; but you cannot ignore the existence 
of a thing just because Karma causes it. We have to deal with things as they 
are, and not as we wish them to be. Spiritual life is an outcome of Brother- 
hood. One of the most common mistakes in connection with the spiritual life 
is the idea that you should ignore facts. It would be a mistake to ignore the 
fact that one or two members of The Theosophical Society, even in this country, 
were pro-German. It would be foolish if we felt that, in order to be brotherly, 
we must not say what we think about the war, lest it should offend those 
members. Let us look at the thing in its simplest terms: suppose there were 
a member in a Branch, a friend of yours, who was pro-German. Should all 
the other members sit around in an artificial hush, and say We must not say 
anything about the war; we must not do anything about it; that would not be 
brotherly? 



94 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Suppose we were to go back in imagination to the early days of Chris- 
tianity. Imagine a family of Jews converted to Christianity one of them did 
not believe in Christ, and those people sat around and said Hush, we might 
hurt his feelings ! Clearly that would not have been right or brotherly. So 
in a Branch, if we were to heed the mistaken advice to keep silent, we should 
be doing a grievous wrong to the minority. What we ought to do in a Branch 
is to go ahead and do the right thing. What is that? Think of H. P. B. 
her principle of action was : speak the truth and abide by it. You have to say 
what you think, but do not be personal about it. To go back to the pro- 
German friend, and the Branch meeting we were imagining. Another member, 
we will suppose, makes a strong statement about the misconduct of Germany. 
To make that remark for the purpose of hurting the feelings of the pro-German, 
would be abominable. The motive must not be a personal one, but love of the 
truth and of justice. If a German member, because of such statements, made in that 
spirit, were to have his feelings hurt, he would show complete misunderstanding 
of the spirit and purpose of the T. S. If Miss Hohnstedt, having come to a 
splendid conclusion about this matter, had decided not to say anything about it, 
would she be representing the Society? She has, in this sense, the advantage 
of being of German origin ; she can say It is not a question with me of race 
or of ancestry; it is a question of Brotherhood. The more you love these peo- 
ple, the more you ought to desire that they shall suffer for their sins. 

Are we blind to the fact that they sinned? I do not believe that we are 
as convinced of it as we ought to be. I do not believe that there are half 
a dozen people in this room who have read consecutively and carefully the 
report of the Belgian atrocities as given by the Bryce Commission, or the report 
of the Swiss Commission as to what took place in Serbia. Unspeakable and 
systematic atrocities have been proved, which were not the acts of isolated 
individuals but part of an organized policy of terrorism. It would not be pos- 
sible in an audience in which there are women to describe things that were 
done over and over again by officers and men of the German armies. It is sin; 
frightful, horrible, monstrous sin. Let me ask whether, if your own child were 
to do such things, you would say, He is my own child, I must not punish him. 
Such infamies as those, and worse in some respects, are being perpetrated to this 
very day, in the belief that it is the only way to strike terror into mankind. In 
the name of Brotherhood, we have got to show them that such things are met 
with a punishment as terrible as the crime. 

To the German member, who in many cases does not know the facts, the 
thing to do is to insist that for his soul's salvation he shall know them. It is not 
a question of blood being thicker than water; the more anxious he is to serve 
his nation the more clearly he must see that for the sake of the soul of his people 
it is necessary that they should learn that that kind of inhuman outrage brings 
down the wrath of God and of man, until it is repented of for ever. 

There is another point : we are going on record on behalf of Brotherhood, 
and that brings us to a logical inference in another situation. We in New York 
are constantly asked by members of outlying Branches how to deal with com- 
plications that arise from the proximity of other Societies calling themselves 
theosophical. There are, without doubt, a number of such societies in New York, 
but they do not bother us. That is partly because it is a big city, and partly 
because we are not interested or concerned. We leave them alone, and they 
us if they did not, we should wish to know the reason why. If in a smaller 
city there is a Branch of some other society meeting next door, even if you are 
friendly with individuals in it, is there any complication? I do not see it. 
You may have a very friendly feeling for people in different churches, but you 
do not feel obliged to go to their church, nor they to go to your T. S. Sup- 
pose that you lived in Utah, and an exceedingly nice Mormon asked you to 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 95 

come around to the Temple, you might go from sheer curiosity but you would 
not keep on going. 

Let us look at the facts. There is the Annie Besant Society (it used to 
be called the Olcott, the Adyar Society), and there is Mrs. Tingley's Society; 
they are just as foreign to The Theosophical Society as the Mormons are. 
It is difficult for those who have not been in the Society a long time to appre- 
ciate this, but it is so. You may say that a newly enrolled member of the 
Annie Besant Society was not mixed up with the past, did not attack Mr. Judge, 
has not violated the principles of our Society, etc. but you overlook the fact 
that this person has joined the organization that did do these things, and so 
must partake of the life, spirit, and purpose of the institution he has joined. It 
is not a question of our meting out personal condemnation. The simple fact 
is that the other societies are in some respects working for objects diametrically 
opposed to ours. To pretend that they are working for the same thing is not 
to be brotherly but nonsensical. Do we not realize that the spiritual life is based 
upon common sense? Now to return to our resolution. 

This resolution is based on Brotherhood, is built up on Brotherhood, and 
must of necessity result in Brotherhood. In drafting it, the question with your 
committee was not, how much can we say? but, what is the least we can say 
while obeying at every point the needs of the situation and your and our 
ideal of theosophic needs and standards ? When you come to read the resolu- 
tion, later on, you will find that there is a great deal in it. If you adopt this 
resolution, you will go on record as standing flat-footedly for the soul of this 
country, and as standing side by side, as far as you are able, with the cause 
of the Allies, which I suspect all of us believe to be the cause of Truth and of 
Righteousness. We believe that this war is no more than the appearance on 
the surface of an age-long conflict. You know that even the largest icebergs seen 
floating in the water have the greater part of their bulk hidden out of sight 
beneath the water. So it is with this mighty conflict between good and evil. 
Those of us who believe in Reincarnation know that we are going on, age after 
age, with this same war. What we are doing here is to reaffirm what we hope 
is in every case an age-long enlistment to fight under exactly the same banner 
under which we have already fought, for the cause of Masters. We must 
all be devoutly thankful that this fight is now out in the open ; that we need 
no longer keep silent thankful that we have the opportunity to speak for the 
eternal Gods, whatever name we may give to them. Blood and race are not 
the issue. The question is to what extent have we given ourselves to that 
Cause, to what extent are we holding back, confused, doubtful, selfish to what 
extent are we in it, body and soul, now and always. 

In response to many demands for the question, the Chairman asked for a 
rising vote on Resolution No. 3, which had been considered at length. It was 
unanimously carried; one person present refrained from voting, either for or 
against. The Committee also had certain formal resolutions to present, but the 
Chairman asked that they be withheld and that the Committee should not be 
discharged until later to give opportunity for any further resolutions that 
members might wish to submit through the Committee. The next order of 
business was the report from the Committee on Letters of Greeting, made by its 
Chairman, Mr. Johnston. 

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON LETTERS OF GREETING 

The greetings are numerous and cordial and immensely interesting; I am 
sure that you would be delighted to hear them all if only there were time. 
There are a few which should be picked out from the rest because they are 



96 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

distinctly messages to this Convention. The first is from Dr. Keightley. He has 
the honour of being the oldest member in the Society and is very dear to our 
hearts; no one is better loved. We had hoped that he would be here today, but 
his country felt that he was needed in England at this time. We shall hope that 
his country may see that others also may need him, and that we may have him 
with us before long. 

To the Members of the Theosophical Society in Convention assembled : 

The Members of the British Branch desire, through me, to send 
their heartiest good wishes for a happy and a successful Convention in 
this year : 

As we all felt last year, the world-war (and its effects) still occupies 
the attention of the greater part of the human race, and now nation 
after nation has been drawn into the whirlpool with the exception of 
those who cannot assert themselves because of their position, geographi- 
cally. It would almost seem that one nation, in its search for world- 
domination, has succeeded in compelling all humanity to struggle for their 
existence as individual nations. An English author once pointed out that 
the law governing animal coalition was the struggle for life, and that the 
essentially human stage was only reached when that struggle for life was 
replaced by the altruistic law of struggle for the life of others. In 
short, self-assertion was to be replaced by self-sacrifice to the common 
good. It would seem that this is the lesson humanity has to learn, 
and that we, each in his own place and manner, have to make our choice 
between external, material benefits and adhesion to the principles which by 
great efforts on our part lead us to the increased and essentially human 
evolution. 

And in this evolutionary progress, the objects of The Theosophical 
Society, with the proclamation printed on the back of each issue of the 
QUARTERLY, constitute a declaration of principles which can govern our 
path for a very long distance. I remember that in one point of indecision 
a watchword was given us : "Avoid facts and stick to principles." The 
world is faced today with multitudes of facts. But the principles which 
lie behind the facts are neglected in the more obvious adhesion to self- 
interest. Therefore let us get away from facts, and by loyal adherence 
to principles which we know to be right in the evolutionary progress 
of man as man, liberate ourselves and mankind from the thraldom of 
material self-seeking. That thraldom is a slavery, and in the name of 
God we strive for freedom. 

Here, the conditions of work and the exigencies of the military 
situation, still contrive to prevent the Branch meetings from taking place 
in the evening. In many places the streets are entirely dark, in others 
there is so little light that walking is dangerous, and the cars are infre- 
quent, or do not run. In the north, some of the most active members 
are serving in the army abroad; almost all have some national duty to 
perform. We very slowly gain in numbers, and I am glad to say we 
have lost no members. 

May next year find us at peace, but may no peace come until the 
lesson is learned. 

ARCHIBALD KEIGHTLEY, 

General Secretary, 
British National Branch T.S, 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 97 

There is a very welcome and sympathetic letter from South America, ad- 
dressed to Mrs. Gregg, which I shall next ask the privilege of reading to you. 

CARACAS, March, 1917. 
DEAR FELLOW- WORKER : 

With much pleasure I've read your kind favour dated 24th February, 
as well as the notice for the assembling of the Convention; and in accord- 
ance with them and their contents, I with pleasure send you the report with 
the Office-bearers and the new members of the Branch during the year 
1916, as well as the credential for the representation of the "Rama Vene- 
zuela" in the coming Convention of the Theosophical Society. 

The reunion of this body, in this critical moment for the world, we 
consider to be a supreme event ; as one other proof and that, conclusive 
that the triumph of the Good Law is a fact. 

United, truly united as we are, we send our salutation, our fervent 
gratitude, together with the wishes that the "Rama Venezuela" makes that 
the greatest success crown its labours, being as these are, the work of the 
world's health. 

With best wishes, 

I am, yours fraternally, 

JUAN J. BENZO, Secretary. 

MR. JOHNSTON : There are many other letters that I should like to read but 
this Committee must not trespass too far upon the time of the Convention. 

THE CHAIRMAN : It has been customary for the Chairman of the Committee 
on Letters of Greeting to read selections from the letters, such as he thought 
ought to be called to our attention at this time; and a resolution has usually been 
adopted authorizing the editor of the QUARTERLY to print such other important 
letters as there was not time to read. I know of no further business that need 
interfere with the reading of additional letters but visiting members have indicated 
the desire to hear further from delegates about Branch work and particularly 
about the work of the New York Branch. 

MR. HARGROVE: We could hear from members of the New York Branch at 
the Branch meeting this evening and I would suggest that we give Mr. Johnston 
time to read such of the letters as he specially wishes to read. 

MR. MICHAELIS : An address by the President of the New York Branch has 
been one of the features of the Conventions which many of us remember with 
much pleasure. I hope that time enough may be left for such an address. 

MR. JOHNSTON : Many of the letters that have come to the Committee deal 
largely with the details of Branch work. The principles to be brought out are 
those embodied in the letter from Dr. Keightley which I have already read and I 
think we might suspend the reading of letters at this point. It is usual at this 
point for some well-meaning person to move that the Chairman of this Commit- 
tee shall reply to these letters of greeting. I wish to do what I can to discourage 
that resolution. The letters go directly to the Secretary of the Convention for 
the making of the Convention report and as it is some time before they can again 
reach the Chairman of this Committee, I think it would be more charitable and 
practical not to provide for something that is not likely to be carried out. 

THE CHAIRMAN : Your pleasure is asked with reference to the recommenda- 
tion of the Chairman of this Committee that the editorial board of the QUARTERLY 
be asked to include with the Convention report such letters as it feels could to 
advantage be incorporated. The vote to that effect was unanimous. 



98 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

MR. HARGROVE : The Committee on Resolutions, having received no recom- 
mendations from delegates or members, asks permission to present the formal reso- 
lutions which are always passed; and which will conclude its work. 

4. A resolution providing that Mr. Johnston or some other representa- 
tive of the Executive Committee be requested to do all the various things 
that should be done with reference to the letters of greeting; that leaves 
him a loophole, and perhaps he can get some assistance from Mrs. Gregg 
or Miss Perkins. 

5. The usual resolution of thanks to the New York Branch for its 
reception of the Convention. 

6. The usual resolution authorizing the visits of officers to the 
Branches. 

The foregoing resolutions were unanimously passed; also the motion made by 
Mr. Mitchell and seconded by Mr. Michaelis, that the Committees on Resolutions 
and on Letters of Greeting be discharged with the thanks of the Convention. The 
Chairman then announced, 1. The meeting of the New York Branch at 8.30, to 
which all members and delegates were cordially invited. 2. The public lecture, to 
be given by Mr. Charles Johnston, at Hotel Saint Denis, on Sunday afternoon at 
half past three. 3. The tea to be given by the New York Branch at the Studio, 
following Mr. Johnston's lecture. There being no further business to come before 
the Convention, the Chairman asked for a motion to adjourn. Mr. Michaelis 
requested permission to anticipate that with a motion that the cordial thanks of the 
Convention be extended to Professor Mitchell and Miss Perkins, for their services 
as Chairman and Secretary. This motion, put by Mr. Hargrove, was carried. In 
response, the Chairman made the following brief address, after which the motion 
to adjourn was made, duly seconded, and carried. 

THE CHAIRMAN : This closes our business ; it does not close the life of our 
Convention. The true life of this Convention is but beginning. Many things have 
been said here, and it now remains to live them. Unless they are to be lived there 
were no need or use in saying them. Our putting into action of the principles 
declared two years ago was followed by the nation. In the spiritual world, as has 
been said, numbers are not the important thing what counts is the extent to which 
spiritual principles are lived. We have said much to-day of war, because the laws 
of war are the laws of life. There is no compromise in war or in life ; those who 
think there is must decline and die. Life is war. That is the cost every one of us 
must pay for our deepest life which comes to us from our Master. 

To live that life to make the divine live in us means ceaseless conflict. If 
we are not willing to undertake that conflict, and to struggle daily to overcome 
all the manifold evil that is arrayed against us in our own natures, and which 
surrounds us in the external world, we cannot keep even the vision of the truth, 
and all that has been given to us will have been given in vain. 

As we go out now, having listened to much, it behooves us to go out deter- 
mined to live much. And in particular, when we read in these Convention proceed- 
ings the resolution that we have just passed, I hope that each and every one may lay 
firm hold upon the phrase "by the energy of sacrifice." It is only by sacrifice 
that we can win our way to victory, can keep our hold on life. What we have said 
is nothing unless we make the sacrifice. War, Sacrifice, Brotherhood these things 
mean conflict, and we go forth to enter upon it. 

ISABEL E. PERKINS, 
Secretary of Convention. 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 99 

LETTERS OF GREETING 

ALTAGRACIA DE ORITUCO, VENEZUELA. 
To The Theosophical Society in Convention Assembled: 

FELLOW MEMBERS : 

The members of the "Rama Altagracia de Orituco" greet you, and at the 
same time they desire to be united with you in heart, spirit and purpose. It may 
be said, we think, that the vigorous impulse with which The Theosophical Society 
has carried forward its spiritual work, since it was founded in New York, is the 
realization of the ideal of work initiated at the beginning by our dear Master 
H. P. B. Throughout, we see the fruits of that magnificent labour, appearing in 
science and philosophy as much as in religion and art. They show that they have 
perceived a glimpse of the inner light and that they are moving toward the com- 
mon ideal of brotherhood. Therefore, we suppose that, although at present our 
Race is involved in material catastrophe and ruin, because of conditions created by 
the false concept that men generally hold of the purpose of life, yet beyond this 
can be seen the awakening in our Race of a higher spiritual consciousness, emerg- 
ing with a new arrangement of things. That result is undoubtedly due to the 
efforts and consecration of The Theosophical Society. 

Considering the universal conflagration, which affects us also, we believe in 
our "Rama" that we must give our attention to the consideration of problems such 
as those that the QUARTERLY has been explaining since the beginning of the Euro- 
pean war. It has been waging a very serious campaign against the greatest forces 
of evil in the world. In our place we have cooperated and have followed the stand- 
ard that the QUARTERLY has raised, working in accordance with it. ' The princi- 
ples of love and justice need for their defense all our courage, and this is a good 
opportunity to serve them with valor and loyalty. This is an important fact of our 
theosophical life in the past year. 

Furthermore, we have had the happy event of the publication of the transla- 
tion of "Patanjali's Yoga Sutras," made by the "Rama Venezuela," from the Eng- 
lish edition. In our "Rama" we are studying this remarkable book. Our work has 
followed the same plan as in previous years : meetings, readings, etc. 

We wish earnestly that you may get full success upon the object and purpose 
for which you are to be assembled at this time. 

Fraternally yours, 

M. DE LA CUEVA, 

For the "Rama Altagracia de Orituco." 

CARACAS, VENEZUELA. 
To the Convention of The Theosophical Society: 

I come to fulfil the duty of rendering account of our labours during the past 
year; and with such motive I salute respectfully the Convention of The Theo- 
sophical Society in the name of the members of the "Rama Venezuela." 

Those labours have been a simple continuation of those realized before, with 
the sole object of diffusing the Theosophical doctrine and spirit among the Span- 
ish-American peoples. An important part of that program of work has been our 
review, Dharma. Inspired in the QUARTERLY, many of whose articles it reproduces, 
Dharma has managed to be, in this way, an echo of the profound cry of the Mas- 
ters which arises continuously from the heart of that great nation called, with 
justice, the stronghold of Theosophy. Our work has not been an easy one. Sev- 
eral difficulties we have had in sustaining our Review, but it pleases us to be able 
to say that our Branch feels itself happy for having been able to conquer them, 
and also for having interpreted them as the most interesting proofs of its faith 
in the ideal of human fraternity and of its love for the cause of the Masters. It 



100 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

pleases me, besides, to announce that the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are already in 
circulation in America, translated and edited by our Branch; and we have the hope 
that their reading will awaken many souls to the life of things spiritual. 

The Branch meets once a week; and in each there are studied theosophical 
books, subjects proposed among the members which are considered and threshed 
out; and generally the diverse matters which constitute our literature and philoso- 
phy are speculated on. 

There is an indication which gives a clear confidence in the future of the 
Theosophical movement in Venezuela, and this consists in the sale, in promising 
manner, of books of our literature. This shows that there are readers of our 
spiritual matters. It is to be supposed, therefore, that later on that tendency 
will seek an atmosphere in which to manifest and live externally. It satisfies me 
to say that that future success is upheld and fortified by the fact that in the heart 
of our "Branch" there lives and prospers a faith certain of the triumph of universal 
fraternity, and labours according to the measure of its forces, for that triumph. 

I offer the most cordial wishes that the labours of the Convention may mani- 
fest, for the welfare of the world, the thought and the will of the Masters. 

F. DOMINGUEZ ACOSTA, President. 

LONDON, S. W. 3. 
To the Members of The Theosophical Society in Convention Assembled: 

The London Lodge sends greetings and sincere good wishes for the success 
of your deliberations. We are with you in spirit, and hope that the meeting 
may be a memorable one and that all may receive strength and inspiration for the 
work of the coming year. 

The black cloud which hangs over mankind externally, affects especially 
the deeper things of life. They who could not see God in the sunshine and 
among the flowers, or recognize him in the smiles of their fellows, are begin- 
ning to hear his voice in the storm and to recognise the signs of his purpose in 
the depths of human suffering. 

We know that the lesson each of us has to learn is a necessary one. 
May we have strength to humbly do our duty and to aid those whose duty is 
to help mankind in this day of trial. 

Sincerely and fraternally yours, 

M. GORDON KENNEDY, 
N. KENNEDY, 

Joint Secretaries. 



ADDITIONAL BRANCH REPORTS 

WALKER, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE. 
DEAR MR. JOHNSTON: 

On behalf of the members of the Newcastle-on-Tyne Lodge I am requested 
to ask you to represent us at the forthcoming Convention and to use our votes as 
occasion arises as you think best. We have not received word of any new resolu- 
tions to be put forward, so take it there are none this year. During the past year 
we have steadily plodded on in spite of the various difficulties which the war 
has produced, and have endeavoured to still keep before us that right spirit 
which seems to us the true drawing power of the T. S. As an instance of this 
may I be pardoned for quoting from a letter of a new member? 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 101 

"I wish to convey to you how deeply I appreciate the kind thoughts and 
wishes you have addressed to me. It is very helpful to come among friends 
with such large sympathies. The T. S. has many attractions, and this striking 
one is very encouraging and surely an inducement to join the Society. I have 
perhaps a little knowledge of what true greatness means and I hope to learn 
more as time goes on. I felt the atmosphere, the first evening I attended the 
meeting to be one of hearty goodwill, and am very glad of the privilege to 
join the Society. I do hope that I will be able to realize the possibilities before 
me, that I may indeed become an active member and worthy the name." 
Believe me to be, 

Yours sincerely and fraternally, 

E. HOWARD LINCOLN, 

Secretary. 

KRISTIANIA, NORWAY. 

In the past year the Karma Branch has as usual continued its meetings once 
a week in the evening except in September, October and November, when meet- 
ings were held every fortnight only. During the Summer 1916 the meetings were 
suspended. As a rule the meetings have been conducted by Colonel Knoff, who 
has selected pieces mostly from the theosophical literature, and commented 
on them. Afterwards there has been a discussion in which those present have 
taken part with great interest. The door has been kept open to all. 

In December last one of our earliest members, Mr. Carl Sjostedt, passed 
away. The Branch has felt this loss deeply, being much indebted to Mr. Sjostedt 
for his faithful work, especially at a time when his help was greatly needed. 

The great stir in Europe at the present time seems to draw the attention 
away from our little Branch. Meanwhile, we are trying to keep up our work, 
knowing that every effort to support the Theosophical Movement is valued and 
valuable ; and we are confidently looking forward to the time, when the raging 
conflict is over, trusting that good must prevail and that evil will be overcome. 

ANNA D. DAHL, 

Secretary. 



AYLSHAM, NORFOLK, ENGLAND. 
DEAR SECRETARY: 

I have no activities to report for this year from the Norfolk Branch of the 
T. S. as all the members are scattered, one is a prisoner of war in Germany 
and two others are away doing "War Work." So it is not possible to hold any 
meetings, but we try to read as much as possible, and we keep up our interest 
in T. S. activities. We read the QUARTERLY with keen interest and have found so 
many of the articles, especially on war subjects, most admirable. There have been 
no new members in the Branch. 

We send cordial greetings and all good wishes to the Annual Convention of 
T. S. 

Yours fraternally, 

HOPE D. BAGNELL. 



VIRYA BRANCH, DENVER 

We can only send our greetings this year to the fortunate members attend- 
ing the Convention. Protracted absences and illnesses here have caused some 
changes in the apportioning out of Virya work and in the number and character 



102 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

of our meetings, now held only on the first Sunday of every month. While 
nothing can compensate for our temporary absentees, we have noted in the 
attendance of visitors, a marked increase, numerical and dynamic. Our new quar- 
ters are more accessible to street cars, in a closer-in neighborhood. While no 
new members have been added, these increased individual activities and facilities 
have brought about a wider-spread interest in somewhat newer circles. Attendance 
is more regular and prompt, and curiously new in quality. The meetings arc 
enriched by the presence of several acquaintances who may never join the T. S. 
(being satisfied with their own modes of thought), but whose gracious and 
stimulating presence and friendly spirit in discussion, evokes appreciative theo- 
sophic response. We are learning hard problems in paradoxes : To be tolerant, 
flexible, and courteous, while at times, conscience demands firm treatment of 
the alien views of passing guests from other Societies, is one problem doubt- 
less not confined to our little area of Branch-consciousness. 

Deeper questions than those of mere adaptability and flexibility of method, 
confront each personally, brought to light by our winter's study of articles from 
the QUARTERLY on "A Rule of Life." We take them in connection with the older 
but identical teachings of the Gita. In tracing the parallelism between the Gita's 
simple yet mighty Manual of Warfare against evil, with these elementary yet 
subtle modern teachings regarding Discipline and obedience in practical Theo- 
sophic life, in the working world of today, we have been confronted by problems 
and paradoxes, great and small ; world-questions, and personal questions, hard 
to reconcile with public discussion in a parlor full of strangers. We begin to 
suspect that it is not only a race-weakness, but a grave individual aversion to 
implicit obedience, and the recognition of superior officers, which retard our 
spiritual growth and make life painful instead of simple and spontaneously happy. 
These articles on methods of discipline have unearthed startling discoveries in 
each one's interior field of thought and emotion. They have ploughed deep, and 
the harvest of good seed-thoughts is a matter of patient waiting. They have 
drawn deep furrows (with what at the time seemed like "harrowing effects") 
upon us all, members both new and old, and friends, acquaintances, passers-by 
casual, or otherwise. Our's seems to be an intensive field, more overworked 
than neglected at present. Perhaps one of the greatest difficulties is in 
feeling the necessity for our existence, among so many noble and enthusiastic 
workers along somewhat similar lines. The absurdity of our lack of numbers, 
strength, opportunity, etc., would annihilate the Virya were it not that wiser 
Branches than our's had made from even smaller beginnings a Cause whose effects 
will be obvious a thousand years hence. Since we are here, and hard at such 
ancient tasks as these of reconciling each one's need of freedom with the self- 
sacnfice of each to all, (and the need of absolute joy in our self-imposed dis- 
cipline,) we may take comfort in the belief that we are important enough for 
the very existence and continuance of the Branch life to be a genuine little 
miracle of the Master's care and protection. In a world of warring elements 
and factions and dissonances, the presence of our Theosophical Society is to many 
of us watching it nourish, reconcile, explain and transmute our lower natures 
into higher heavenly consciousness the best and most practical proof of the 
great miracle of the Master's Love. How can we be other than grateful for 
the help so faithfully extended us all since each first entered the ranks? During 
the year just past, each member of the Virya has felt more than usually glad of 
membership and appreciative of the Society's beautiful sympathy and interest in 
all the activities of all its scattered branches. 

Faithfully yours, 

THE VIRYA BRANCH. 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 103 

PACIFIC BRANCH, Los ANGELES 

I hardly know what to say in regard to the information about special work 
that is desired. We have one member who has been working with a so-called 
"Voluntary Co-operative Association," for the uplift and benefit of down and 
out humanity, supplying them with material assistance, and propagating the Theo- 
sophical doctrine among them as well as can be done; and the same member 
has joined the Congressional Church for the helpfulness of the members in com- 
ing to an understanding of the inner meaning of the Bible, so far as he is afforded 
the opportunity, in harmony with our teachings. Two lady members are in 
correspondence with friends in other parts of the country on Theosophical sub- 
jects, and one of them, a teacher in the Indian school at the agency, sub- 
scribed to the QUARTERLY, I have been told. One lady and one male member 
of the Branch circulate the QUARTERLY gratuitously among their friends; this 
coming issue, nine such copies will be circulated. Another male member is 
proselyting among his friends in a city adjacent to this city. Another male 
member conducts correspondence on Theosophical matters with absent friends, 
and looks after the sale of the QUARTERLY in the stores, and makes himself 
generally useful in Theosophical matters during the day with callers at the meet- 
ing room. 

We all wish you well, and regret that some one of us has never been able 
to attend a Theosophical Convention. With much love, 

Sincerely, 

ALFRED L. LEONARD, 

Secretary. 

INDIANAPOLIS BRANCH 

We are few in number here but we are doing Theosophical work in many 
ways. A class of students, who are at work with the Ocean of Theosophy, appear 
to be very much taken by its contents. It's a hopeful sign, when people get inter- 
ested enough to ask many questions about the different statements in the Ocean. 
The effort to make the Ocean fill the place it is expected to fill adds real fire 
to our meetings and makes the members feel that the time has been well spent. 
Every Friday afternoon, for two hours, we have something going on in the class 
that keeps them very busy. 

The members of the class carry the seed to places where it takes root, and 
soon we have another member. Better still, the members of the class are begin- 
ning to understand that the Theosophical study has nothing to do with opinions 
or beliefs; that it is a life that must be lived, to know its real meaning. 

I hope the Convention will be what all expect it to be, and that the Master's 
blessing will be with your efforts. 

Fraternally yours, 

GEO. E. MILLS, 

Secretary. 



AURORA BRANCH 

Our Branch has for one year adhered to the plan of taking the Sutras of 
Pantanjali, in their successive order, as the subject of daily meditation com- 
paring individual results at our meetings. So helpful did we find the exchange 
of thoughts, that along in August of 1916 we decided to embody our notes 
in a rather more permanent and amplified form. These were typed, and placed 
on file at our lodge rooms, and are open to the members who care to peruse them. 

At this date we have completed the first book of the Sutras, and after tak- 



104 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

ing one afternoon for the examination and summary of the principles involved, 
and whatever practical application we have deduced from our understanding of 
them, we will begin the second book, in the expectation that, as we seek Truth, 
Truth will be revealed to us, to the glorious end that it shall abide with us. 

Along with this central activity we have completed the reading of Ancient 
and Modern Physics, and Memory of Past Births. 

With sincere greetings from the Aurora Branch to those friends whom, not 
having seen, we yet do know, I am, 

Fraternally yours, 

JULIA A. HYDE, 

Secretary. 



THE ROLL OF HONOUR 
A COMMUNICATION FROM THE PRESIDENT OF VENEZUELA BRANCH 

Angelo Santos Palazzi, member of the "Rama Venezuela" was married, with 
three children. He enjoyed a fair share of wealth. Three years ago he estab- 
lished himself with his family in Barcelona, Spain. He was generous and bright, 
of fine spiritual qualities and worked for Theosophy. As soon as the war began, 
he believed it his duty to fill the place of a soldier in the army of France. Separat- 
ing himself from his wife and three children, the little family he loved much, he 
went forth to fight. He was decorated for valour, and now we have received 
notice of his death, bravely fighting in the Vosges Mountains. He died victoring 
France. 

Please strike out his name from the book of members of the Society; and 
communicate the news to the other companions. 

Fraternally yours, 

F. DOMINGUEZ ACOSTA. 



FROM THE TREASURER'S OFFICE 

Members are requested to note that many dues are in arrears for the 
year 1917, which has just closed. Prompt payment would be greatly appreciated. 
According to our By-laws, dues for the year 1918 became payable on April 30th, 
1917; and it would greatly facilitate the work of the Treasurer's Office if all 
1918 dues were paid within the month of July. (In case any member does not 
find it convenient to pay at this time, please send in a word to that effect.) The 
duei are $2.00 for each member; and of the $2.00 received from each member 
$1.00 is applied as subscription money for the payment for the magazine that 
is sent to each member without additional charge. 

H. B. MITCHELL, 

Treasurer T. S. 




The Theosophical Society, as such, is not responsible for any opinion 
or declaration in this magazine, by whomsoever expressed, unless con- 
tained in an official document. 

THE PEACE MESSAGE OF BENEDICT XV 

THE Letter addressed by Pope Benedict XV "To the Leaders 
of the Belligerent Peoples," and published on August 15, de- 
serves our most careful study for several reasons : First, perhaps, 
for the claims which Pope Benedict makes for himself, with the 
spiritual and moral consequences which logically follow from these 
claims; second, in order that we may clearly realize the political results 
which would ensue from a general acceptance of the Pope's Peace Plan ; 
and, thirdly, in order that we may gain a clearer view of certain moral 
and spiritual principles involved. It should be said that apparently a 
French version of the Pope's Letter was given out by the Foreign Office 
in London, while only an English translation appears to have been cabled 
to this country; and this English translation is so poor, that it is often 
difficult to make out its meaning. We shall try, however, to make no 
deductions except from sentences that are absolutely clear. 

"Since the beginning of our Pontificate," Pope Benedict begins, "the 
horrors of a terrible war let loose on Europe, we had in view above 
everything three things to preserve: Perfect impartiality toward all 
belligerents as is suitable for him who is the common Father and 
who loves all his children with equal affection; continually to attempt 
to do all the good possible and that without exception of person, with- 
out distinction of nationality or religion as is dictated to us by the 
universal law of charity which the Supreme Spiritual charge has con- 
fided to us with Christ; finally, as our pacific mission also requires, to 
omit nothing as long as it was in our power which might contribute to 
hasten the end of this calamity by trying to lead peoples and their leaders 
to more moderate resolution, to hasten a serene deliberation of a peace 
just and durable." 

Pope Benedict claims, therefore, to be "the common Father," loving 
all his children in this case, all the belligerent peoples with equal 
affection ; the "common Father" of all, without distinction of nationality 



105 



106 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

or religion ; further, Pope Benedict claims an august source for this 
"common Fatherhood" ; "which the Supreme Spiritual charge has con- 
fided to us with Christ." This is not quite lucid, but it evidently means 
that God has conferred this common Fatherhood upon Pope Benedict, 
as the Father entrusted authority to Christ ; practically, that Pope Bene- 
dict is the representative of Christ, both in his common Fatherhood, 
which embraces all the belligerent peoples, and in the proposals which 
he puts forward to compose the differences between them. He presides 
as representing Christ; he makes proposals as Christ's representative. 
That is the claim. 

As Pope Benedict reminds us, he was elected just after the begin- 
ning of the World War; in fact, on September 3, 1914, on the eve of 
the battle of the Marne; he was crowned on September 6, as that 
decisive fight began. Therefore we may expect that, at such a critical 
time in his life, Pope Benedict's mind and heart were peculiarly open 
and alert, sensitive to impressions of events then taking place in the 
world. He knew, therefore, of the assassination, at Sarajevo in Bosnia, 
on June 28, 1914, of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian 
throne by Austrian subjects, in an Austrian town. He knew that 
Austria, which had planned to destroy Serbia in the summer of 1913, 
instantly seized on this assassination as a pretext, and delivered to Serbia 
an ultimatum which meant that Serbia must either give up her national 
sovereignty or suffer the horrors of armed invasion by Austria. To the 
astonishment of the world, Serbia chose the former course, and, in her 
reply to the Austrian ultimatum, practically yielded up her national 
sovereignty into Austria's hands. But this abject self-humiliation was 
quite useless. Austria declared the answer unsatisfactory, and announced 
that "the Imperial and Royal Government are themselves compelled to 
see to the safeguarding of their rights and interests, and, with this object, 
to have recourse to force of arms." This declaration of war against 
Serbia dated at Vienna, on July 28, 1914, was the actual beginning of 
the World War. On the same day, July 28, the Austro-Hungarian 
Ambassador at Berlin telegraphed to Count Berchtold, the Austro- 
Hungarian Secretary for Foreign Affairs : "The proposal for mediation 
made by Great Britain, that Germany, Italy, Great Britain and France 
should meet at a conference at London, is declined so far as Germany 
is concerned on the ground that it is impossible for Germany to bring her 
Ally before a European Court in her settlement with Serbia." (This is 
Document No. 35, in the Austro-Hungarian Red Book.) 

It must have been perfectly well known to Pope Benedict that 

(1) Austria had delivered an outrageously unjust ultimatum to Serbia: 

(2) that, even when Serbia accepted its terms, practically without reser- 
vation, Austria announced that this was unsatisfactory, declared war and, 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 107 

in fact, precipitated the World War; and (3) finally, that both Austria 
and Germany declined any form of mediation, arbitration or peaceful 
settlement; declined any decision, except that which might be obtained 
by force of arms. Benedict XV must have been, and must be, quite well 
informed as to who, in fact, began the World War, and on what pretext. 
Further, he must have followed the events which followed each other 
so swiftly, at this impressionable period of his election. He must have 
learned that, at 7 p. m. on August 2, Germany presented to Belgium 
"a note proposing friendly neutrality. This entailed free passage through 
Belgian territory, while guaranteeing the maintenance of the independ- 
ence of Belgium and of her possessions on the conclusion of peace, and 
threatened, in the event of refusal, to treat Belgium as an enemy. A 
time limit of twelve hours was allowed within which to reply." (This 
is Document No. 23, in the Belgian Grey Book.) 

Germany demanded permission for her armies to pass through 
Belgium on the pretext that France was preparing to attack her. In his 1 
book, "Germany and the Next War," published a year earlier, Bernhardi 
had written : "Let it then be the task of our diplomacy so to shuffle the 
cards (die Karten so zu mischen) that we may be attacked by France 
. . ." (page 280 in the English translation published by Longmans, 
Green and Co.). Bernhardi meant, of course, not to "shuffle" the cards, 
but to "stack" the cards, as a cheating cardsharper does. But, even 
using this method, German diplomacy failed. France not only did not 
attack ; she withdrew all troops to a distance of ten kilometres from her 
frontier, in order to make chance collisions impossible. The trick of the 
cards having failed, Germany had recourse to another even more ele- 
mentary. Announcement was made throughout Germany that French 
aviators had dropped bombs on the Niirnberg railways. This was, of 
course, simply a lie : "The Magistrat of Niirnberg has avowed to Privy 
Councillor Riedel that all reports of the kind are false ; and Professor 
Schwalbe has confessed as much in the Deutsche Medizinische IVochen- 
schrift of May 18, 1916." 

All this must be perfectly well known to Pope Benedict, and is, 
without doubt, perfectly well known to him. We have quoted from the 
two documents which actually started the World War : Austria's outra- 
geous ultimatum, followed by her declaration of war against Serbia ; and 
Germany's ultimatum, equally outrageous, to Belgium. These are the 
actual causes of the condition which Pope Benedict so eloquently depicts : 
"the war continued desperately for another two years with all its horrors. 
It became even more cruel and extended over the earth, over the sea, 
and in the air, and one saw desolation and death descend upon the cities 
without defense, upon peaceful villages and on their innocent population, 
and now no one can imagine how the sufferings of all would be increased 
and aggravated if other months or, worse still, other years are about to 



108 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

be added to this sanguinary triennium. Is this civilized world to be 
nothing more than a field of death? And Europe, so glorious and so 
flourishing is it going as if stricken by a universal madness to run into 
the abyss and lend its hand to its own suicide ? " 

Here, then, is the condition brought about by the war, as Pope Bene- 
dict sees it. The documents proving that Germany and Austria prepared, 
caused and launched the war, we have just given. No judicial body 
could have the slightest doubt as to where full culpability lies, for the 
horrors which Pope Benedict deplores. What, then, in the presence of 
this quite simple situation, clearly showing the crime, the criminals and 
the victims, what, then, is Pope Benedict's moral attitude? He tells 
us himself : "Perfect impartiality toward all belligerents" ! 

Surely, a more complete moral abdication it would be impossible to 
imagine. But the formidable thing, from the spiritual point of view, is 
that, in thus making a parade of his moral blindness, Pope Benedict 
claims to speak as one entrusted with supreme authority by God, as the 
representative of Christ. ... In effect, the essence of the Teutonic 
crime is murder and lying. Does Christ in fact maintain towards murder 
and lying the attitude of "perfect impartiality"? As quoted by the 
Apostle of Love, Christ's attitude is this: "Ye are of your father the 
devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do : he was a murderer from 
the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in 
him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own : for he is a liar, 
and the father of it. . . ." (John, viii, 44). Perfect impartiality! . . . 
Is it not, on the contrary, the fact that, in his moral judgments, Christ is 
unflinchingly just one may say, absolutely unrelenting? Has he not 
given us the exact measure of his own stern justice? "Then shall he 
answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not 
to one of the least of these ye did it not to me. And these shall go away 
into everlasting punishment. . . ." Thus Christ speaks with unmis- 
takable decision, for the high integrity of God. 

There is, in the Pope's Letter, a later sentence which brings this 
nonmoral standpoint into still higher relief, the sentence in which Pope 
Benedict says: "As to the damages to be repaired and as to war 
expenses, we see no other means of solving the question than by sub- 
mitting as a general principle complete and reciprocal condonation. . . ." 
The dictionary meaning of condonation is, "pardon, forgiveness," There- 
fore Pope Benedict sees no other means of solving the question of the 
wrongs inflicted in this most iniquitously contrived war, except mutual 
pardon, mutual forgiveness. . . . 

Let us try to work this out in detail. Austria plotted the national 
destruction of Serbia, and, after Serbia had soundly thrashed her, enlisted 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 109 

the aid of Germany and Bulgaria and filled Serbia with ruin and deso- 
lation. Well, according to Pope Benedict, Serbia is to forgive Austria, 
and Austria is to forgive Serbia. . . . Again, Kaiser Wilhelm, in 
direct violation of the pledge of Prussia, brought abominable devastation 
to King Albert's realm. Then let King Albert forgive the Kaiser, and 

let the Kaiser forgive King Albert There was reported, from 

Belgium, wholesale outrage inflicted upon Belgian nuns by German offi- 
cers and soldiers. Pope Benedict bids the nuns forgive the German 
soldiers and bids the German soldiers forgive the Belgian nuns. . . . 
There was, in Belgium and in France, wholesale shooting of women and 
children by German soldiers. Let the dead women and children, through 
their surviving kindred, forgive the soldiers who bayoneted them; let 
these German soldiers forgive the women and children whom they foully 
murdered. . . . The men and officers of German submarines mur- 
dered over a thousand non-combatants, largely women and children, when, 
by the Kaiser's orders, they torpedoed the Lusitania. Let the immortal 
Lusitania dead pardon their murderers, and let the murderers forgive 
the women and children whom they murdered ; for Pope Benedict sees 
no other means but mutual condonation. . . . 

But, we may be told, forgiveness, pardon, is a Christian obligation ; 
therefore Pope Benedict, in thus asking for mutual condonation, is ful- 
filling his duty as a Christian, as "the Father of the faithful," to 
repeat his own phrase. We say, on the contrary, that, in thus asking 
for the forgiveness of unconfessed, unrepented sin, Pope Benedict is 
contravening a cardinal dogma of his Church. According to that teach- 
ing, a priest "cannot and may not absolve one indisposed," that is, unre- 
pentant; "absolution presupposes on the part of the penitent, contrition, 
confession, and promise at least of satisfaction." Absolution is only 
possible "where there is true repentance and sincere confession"; there 
must be sincere detestation of sin, and "the motive of this detestation 
is that sin offends God." We are further told that "God himself cannot 
forgive sins, if there be no real repentance." (Catholic Encyclopedia, 
"absolution" and "penance.") 

When and how, therefore, did Germany and Austria show contri- 
tion, confession and promise of satisfaction? Has Kaiser Wilhelm, have 
his lesser accomplices, manifested that "real repentance" without which 
not even God himself can forgive sins? The very question is full of 
stinging irony. And this irony arises from the obliquity of Pope Bene- 
dict's moral vision. Surely the exact contrary is the fact: Germany is 
notoriously unrepentant; so far from confessing, both she and Austria 
continue to lie ; to lie in their prayers even, as to their part in launching 
this most iniquitous war as one of Pope Benedict's Cardinals did, on 
a recent and memorable occasion, at Vienna. To teach that the women 
of France and Belgium should forgive the men who enslaved them, while 



110 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

these remain obdurate, insolent, exultant, is, perhaps, thinkable though 
we hold that Christ taught no such obligation, while the Church of Rome 
explicitly teaches that even God himself cannot forgive unrepented sin. 
Forgiveness by the victims is, as we say, thinkable ; but is there not a 
profound outrage to the moral sense in the suggestion of "mutual" 
forgiveness ? 

As a practical policy, Pope Benedict gravely proposes a general dis- 
armament, and the establishment of a universal court of arbitration 
"according to the rules to be laid down and the penalties to be imposed 
on a State which would refuse either to submit a national question to 
arbitration or to accept its decision." On this, several comments suggest 
themselves : first, that disarmament has been discussed again and again, 
only to be met with a direct negative, always from Germany. Unless 
Pope Benedict has definite certainty (something more substantial than 
verbal assurances or scraps of paper) that Germany will now reverse 
herself and consent to disarmament, there is something futile and irrele- 
vant in making this the foundation-stone of his peace proposal. If he 
has made the suggestion while practically certain that Germany will 
never accept it and carry it out honestly, then, in making this suggestion, 
there is a lack of good faith. 

Pope Benedict goes on : "Once the supremacy of right has thus 
been established" that is, by disarmament and arbitration "all obstacles 
to the means of communication of the peoples would disappear by assur- 
ing, by rules to be fixed later, the true liberty and community of the 
seas, which would contribute to ending the numerous causes of conflict 
and would also open to all new sources of prosperity and progress." The 
presence in this sentence of the German catchword "the freedom of 
the seas," makes it desirable to comment on this rather enigmatical 
phrase. 

Here is the first comment: "In times of peace the freedom of the 
seas has been so long enjoyed by the whole world that men are apt to 
take it for granted. . . . Four centuries ago the doctrine of inter- 
national law which declares that the high seas are the common property 
of all nations was not accepted. On the contrary, a Papal award of 
1493 at a time when the Papacy was the supreme international arbiter 
practically gave a monopoly of most of the world's seas to Spain and 
Portugal; and for a century thereafter the ships of all nations but these 
voyaged at their peril in the South Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans." 
Thus writes Professor Ramsey Muir, in a recent pamphlet, "Mare 
Liberum," page 2. It appears, then, that in time of peace the freedom 
of the seas has been long enjoyed by the whole world. We do not clearly 
see how a condition which has long existed "would open to all new 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 111 

sources of prosperity and progress." That the great historic violation 
of the freedom of the seas was due to a predecessor of Pope Benedict, 
is interesting but not relevant. 

But there is the other side of the question, the freedom of the seas 
in time of war. The author just quoted sets forth very lucidly the 
German view on this question, as brought out in the discussions which 
led up to the abortive Declaration of London in 1907 abortive, because 
the British Parliament refused to ratify it. Professor Muir says: "The 
German view of freedom of the seas in time of war was that a belliger- 
ent should have the right to make the seas dangerous to neutrals and 
enemies alike by the use of indiscriminating mines ; and that neutral 
vessels should be liable to destruction or seizure without appeal to any 
judicial tribunal if in the opinion of the commander of a belligerent war- 
vessel any part of their cargo consisted of contraband. ... At the 
same time she was anxious to secure to belligerent merchant-ships the 
right of transforming themselves into war-ships on the high seas. Thus, 
a belligerent merchant-ship might sally forth as a peaceful trader under 
the protection of the 'freedom of the seas,' and, so long as it carried 
no contraband, be safe from interruption by the enemy ; then, picking 
up guns in a neutral port, it might begin to sink enemy or neutral ships 
which, according to the judgment of its captain, were declared to be 
carrying contraband ; and this without reference to any court of law. 
Such was and is the German doctrine of the freedom of the seas." 
("Mare Liberum," pages 12-13.) 

Which suggests two comments : First, that the use of a phrase with 
such directly opposite meanings in Pope Benedict's Letter, makes not 
for clearness but for confusion ; second, that we have here an excellent 
illustration of a fundamental fact: namely, that, in all discussion and 
controversy, Germany makes any phrase mean exactly what she wishes ; 
she seeks to give it, not a fair and honest meaning for fair-play as an 
ideal has for Germany simply no existence but precisely the meaning 
which is most advantageous to the selfish interests of Germany. Thus, 
every item in the above-quoted German doctrine of "the freedom of 
the seas" is deduced from the fact that the British navy is greatly 
superior to the German ; Germany, by a series of tricks, tries to counter- 
act this superiority. It is a fair supposition that, had Germany had the 
stronger fleet, "the freedom of the seas" would have had no greater 
currency than, say, "the freedom of the Belgians." 

But, with this unvarying action of the German mind, it is not un- 
natural that other nations do not greet with enthusiasm Pope Benedict's 
suggestion that they should agree to settle, in conference with Germany, 
questions like the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine, the reconstruction of 
Poland, the future of Armenia and the Balkan States; nor are other 



112 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

nations overanxious to have Germany set her signature to further 
scraps of paper. 

We believe then that, in holding forth the hope of universal dis- 
armament, unless he knows that Germany will not only agree to it, but 
will really carry it out, Pope Benedict is simply cherishing delusions 
and asking others to cherish them. We hold that, in appealing to "the 
spirit of equity and justice," so far as Germany is concerned, he is 
appealing to something which has no existence ; and that, in seeking 
to build a durable peace on Germany's "spirit of equity and justice," 
he is seeking to build a house upon the sand. His persistent ignoring of the 
notorious bad faith of Germany must fill the Allies with a pitying scepti- 
cism as to the validity of his whole appeal ; while his "perfect impartiality" 
between criminal and victim profoundly shocks the moral sense of every 
honest nation, of every honest man and woman in the world. No; no 
moral clearing of the issues of the World War can be even begun, until 
it is recognized, and frankly stated, that justice and righteousness are 
with the Entente Allies, while the Central Empires have been fighting, 
and are now fighting, for the principles of evil. 

That Pope Benedict, claiming to be the representative of righteous- 
ness and justice, should counsel a "perfect impartiality," blind to the 
difference between good and evil, is disgraceful. That he should do 
this in the name of "the Redeemer, the Prince of Peace," invoking the 
light and counsel of the Divine Spirit, is more than disgraceful. 

As these Notes are written, only one reply to Pope Benedict's Letter 
has been made public: That of the President of the United States. 
President Wilson takes his ground firmly on moral principle, the prin- 
ciple of international honour and the sanctity of international engage- 
ments. It is useless and dangerous, he tells Pope Benedict, to try to 
found world peace on a treaty with Kaiser Wilhelm, whose government 
has made the breaking of treaties a principle of state policy; useless to 
form a confederation of nations for the preservation of peace, with the 
German Emperor as a party to it, since the actual confederation of 
nations which, in 1831, pledged itself to preserve the inviolability of 
Belgium, and of which the kingdom of Prussia was a member, furnished 
the "scrap of paper" which has passed into history. Germany was also 
pledged to solemn observance of The Hague Conventions enjoining 
humanity, honesty and protection of noncombatants in time of war, 
while Germany has notoriously and of deliberate purpose violated 
every principle of these conventions. These deliberate violations of her 
plighted word of honour by Germany were, of course, just as well known 
to Pope Benedict as to President Wilson, yet Pope Benedict does not 
hesitate to say that "the honour (of the German army) is safe." One 
would like to take the testimony of noncombatants in Belgium and 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 113 

occupied France, for the most part members of the Church of which 
Pope Benedict is head, concerning "the honour of the German 
army." 

Certain things in President Wilson's Reply are more debatable. 
For example, a passage evidently inserted as an afterthought, since it 
interrupts the logical sequence of the Reply, takes exception to "economic 
agreements." But the fiscal policy of the United States is based upon 
an economic agreement, wholly selfish in purpose; while the economic 
agreement entered into at Paris by certain of the Entente Powers has 
as its sole purpose, to check Germany's power to prepare for "the next 
war"; and this is also the chief purpose of President Wilson. And, 
as the United States is not a party to the Paris agreement, there would 
seem to be a lack of propriety in any criticism of that agreement by the 
United States Government, especially any criticism in a sense hostile to 
the purpose of the Entente Powers. 

President Wilson also speaks deprecatingly of "the dismemberment 
of empires," obviously meaning the empires with which the Entente is at 
war: the German, Austrian and Turkish empires. But, to begin with, 
the United States is not at war with the Austrian and Turkish empires, 
and, therefore, has no standing in the future settlement to be made with 
these two empires; further, in what he has already written of Poland, 
"united, independent and autonomous," President Wilson has already 
implied the dismemberment of the Russian, German and Austrian em- 
pires, to that extent; and there is the obvious case of Armenia, which 
implies a dismemberment of the Turkish empire. Nor could the aspira- 
tions of nationalities (to which President Wilson adheres) be realized, 
without the dismemberment of the Austrian empire. There is in this 
a lack both of consistency and lucidity. 

But the United States is actually at war only with the German 
Empire and is, therefore, concerned with the German Empire only. And 
it would seem that his phrase deprecating the dismemberment of 
empires is in fact addressed to "the German people," with whom, 
President Wilson has several times said, the United States has no quarrel. 
This position appears to us open to grave exception on several grounds. 
First, the German Empire has been built up by quite recent acts of 
rapacity. If the fact that Alsace-Lorraine was iniquitously taken from 
France entitles these two provinces to separate treatment, then the same 
reasoning of necessity applies to Schleswig and Holstein, as iniquitously 
taken from Denmark only six years earlier. And exactly the same 
thing is true of Hesse, Hanover and Nassau, as iniquitously seized by 
Prussia in 1866. It is impossible to serve at once the integrity of justice 
and the integrity of the German Empire, which has been built up by 



114 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

rapacity and injustice. If justice be the criterion, then the German 
Empire must be, and ought to be, dismembered. 

The President takes this position, inconsistent with historical justice, 
in pursuance of his theory that the German people does not share the 
blood-guiltiness of this iniquitous war; with this belief, he would condone 
the equally iniquitous annexations of Bismarck (with the exception, 
perhaps, of Alsace-Lorraine), since this condonation is necessary to 
preserve the unity of the German people, even though, in doing this, he 
would of necessity fasten Prussian domination upon the German people. 
But we do not share the belief that the German people is in any sense 
free from blood-guiltiness, or from the fullest responsibility in every act 
of cruelty, terrorism and fraud committed by Germany. Nor do we hold 
that "the masters of the German people" are in any degree more guilty 
than the German people which upholds these masters with servile adora- 
tion, and which, in its individual members, has made itself the willing, 
eager instrument of every one of these atrocities. The practical test is 
this: Was the German people, as a whole, ready to share the plunder? 
An accessory after the fact fully shares the guilt of a crime; and 
the German people have been accessories not only after, but during and 
before the launching of this most iniquitous war. But we may well leave 
the disproof of this position to the logic of events. As regards his main 
position, the inviolability of international honour, President Wilson seems 
to us to stand on the firm rock of spiritual principle. 



In the order of nature, necessary tilings, as air, water, earth, the God 
of all goodness has made common and easy of attainment. Nothing is 
more necessary than breath, sleep, food, and nothing is more common. 
Love and fidelity are no less necessary in the spiritual order, therefore 
the difficulty of acquiring them cannot be as great as you represent it to 
yourselves. REV. J. P. DE CAUSADE, SJ. 



FRAGMENTS 



THE disciple, if truly a disciple, must also be a priest. He will 
live in such close communion with the Master that he will make 
of each common act or detail of life a sacrament, and so turn the 
bread and water into the Eucharistic flesh and blood make of 
himself a channel that Christ may use to feed with the bread of life, 
which is Himself, all those who approach him. To pass this communion 
chalice to others, we must first drink of it ourselves, and so we must 
watch with the Master in Gethsemane, and be able to pray His prayer 
there from our hearts. 

Not all of us can hope to reach Calvary, where we can say, "It is 
finished," but the Garden is offered each one. Mostly we turn away 
from it, and leave Him to suffer there alone for us. 

Can we not bear in mind this priestly function in even the smallest 
contact with others, for love of Him? making of ourselves tabernacles 
where the veiled Christ lives perpetually, to minister to all who approach 
the Sacrament of His love? 



From a Master. Convention, 1916. 

"Throughout each moment of these two following days, bear this 
thought constantly in mind: that you have it in your power, by united 
effort and devotion, to make of this Convention a momentous one. This 
is a day when men are being sifted as individuals, as organizations, as 
nations. It is an accounting day in the Lodge, and the ledgers are being 
balanced. Part of the veil has been drawn aside, and men are staring at 
realities ; some with sightless eyes, it is true, but others with under- 
standing. We held back our hands an instant, and the hounds of hell 
leaped forth. And so the crisis foreseen, in some sense precipitated. 

"I am at Verdun, and I send you this from the heart of battle. 
Dites, vous aussi, Us ne passer ont pas! " 

Comrades : The Master has given us a consign, "Us ne passeront 
pas!" Let us use it as a mantram, as they are doing in France, to 
galvanize even our cold hearts to the flame of His love and service. Let 
us meet each mood, each temptation, each slackening of the will with the 
flash of its steel determined to conquer to die if need be but to 
conquer eternally for Him. CAVE. 

"5 



CYCLIC LAW IN ART 



WITH COMMENT UPON THE RELATIONS OF ART, SCIENCE AND RELIGIOX 

THE History of Art illustrates the parable of the tares and wheat 
good and evil flourish, side by side. It is a piece of changeable 
silk; one sees the colour he looks for, sees whatever he brings, 
sees his own soul, in fact, just as the artist himself can not 
paint or carve or put into tones or words anything else than his own soul 
or lack of soul. But while good and bad art thus flourish side by side, 
there are large encircling periods or cycles which govern art production, 
just as, on the small scale of a year, the cycle of the seasons controls the 
output of tares and wheat. Recognition of these cycles, their orderly 
progression, and of the smaller cycles that develop within them, will 
clarify and enlarge the understanding of any period of civilization and 
also of individual works of art. 

For purposes of convenience the year 1858 may be taken as the 
beginning in England of one more effort to revive the civilization of 
ancient Greece, and to substitute its mode of life for what the pro- 
moters of this revival took to be Christian ideals. In 1858, William 
Morris published his Defence of Guenevere, a protest and reaction 
against mid-century literature of which Tennyson is the shining leader. 
The turning toward ancient Greece was part of that reaction. Three 
champions of the Greek revival were Matthew Arnold, Walter Pater and 
Swinburne. The common effort of these men, and of William Morris, 
was to escape from restraint, Arnold, in the sphere of the intellect, 
Pater and Swinburne in the sphere of philosophy, aesthetics and 
morals. 

At the same time, another group of men were working to spread 
abroad acquaintance with Greek civilization a group of university 
scholars, literati of the first rank. These men worked inconspicuously, 
and, unlike Arnold and Swinburne, their work and their names are 
scarcely known, save to professional students of literature. I refer to 
the translations from the Greek made by Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf and 
Ernest Myers. These scholars were not belligerent self-advertisers, 
and did not seek the public stage of controversy. But, as scholars and 
critics, it was not possible they should be blind to the startling differences 
between ancient Greek civilization and the results obtained by the 
English would-be-Greeks. In a prefatory sonnet to the translation of 
the Odyssey, Andrew Lang suggests that the modern imitators of Greece 
would be purged of moral sickness, if they would drink copious draughts 
of true Greek vintage. 



116 



CYCLIC LAW IN ART 117 

As one that for a weary space has lain 
Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine 
In gardens near the Pale of Proserpine, 
Where that Aeaean isle forgets the main, 
And only the low lutes of love complain, 
And only shadows of wan lovers pine, 
As such an one were glad to know the brine 
Salt on his lips, and the large air again, 
So gladly, from the songs of modern speech 
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free 
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers, 
And through the music of the languid hours, 
They hear like ocean on a western beach, 
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey. 

Mr. Ernest Myers, in his Introduction to the Odes of Pindar, 
written in 1874, warns thus against the methods and aims of those 
evangelists whose Bible is Marius the Epicurean: "One symptom of 
the renewed influence of antiquity on the modern world is doubtless, 
and has been from time to time since the Revival of Letters, a tendency 
to selfish and somewhat sickly theories so-called of life, where sensibility 
degenerates through self -consciousness into affectation, and efforts to 
appreciate fully the delightfulness of life and art are overstrained into 
a wearisome literary voluptuousness, where duty has already disappeared 
and the human sympathies on which duty is based scarcely linger in a 
faint aesthetic form, soon to leave the would-be exquisiteness to putrefy 
into the vulgarity of egoism." 

To have a concrete example, by which to test general statements 
that may be made, I am going to insert (in abbreviation) a familiar 
incident from the Iliad, the scene between Hector and Andromache. It 
is one of the most celebrated pieces of Greek literature, and no one will 
dispute it as characteristic of Greek art and life: 

"Hector smiled and gazed at his boy silently, and Andromache stood 
by his side weeping, and clasped her hand in his, and spake and called 
upon his name. 'Dear my lord, this thy hardihood will undo thee, neither 
hast thou any pity for thine infant boy, nor for me forlorn that soon 
shall be thy widow. But it were better for me to go down to the grave 
if I lose thee ; for never more will any comfort be mine, when once thou, 
even thou, hast met thy fate, but only sorrow.' Then great Hector of 
the glancing helm answered her: 'Surely I take thought for all these 
things, my wife ; but I have very sore shame of the Trojans and Trojan 
dames with trailing robes, if like a coward I shrink away from battle. 
Yet doth the anguish of the Trojans hereafter not so much trouble me, 
as doth thine anguish in the day when some mail-clad Achaian shall lead 
thee weeping and rob thee of the light of freedom. So shalt thou abide 
in Argos and ply the loom at another woman's bidding, being grievously 



118 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

entreated, and sore constraint shall be laid upon thee. And then shall 
one say that beholdeth thee weep : 'This is the wife of Hector, that was 
foremost in battle of the horse-taming Trojans when men fought about 
Ilios.' So spake glorious Hector, and stretched out his arm to his boy. 
But the child shrunk crying to the bosom of his fair-girdled nurse, dis- 
mayed at his dear father's aspect, and in dread at the bronze and horse- 
hair crest that he beheld nodding fiercely from the helmet's top. Then 
his dear father laughed aloud, and his lady mother ; forthwith glorious 
Hector took the helmet from his head, and laid it, all gleaming, upon 
the earth ; then kissed he his dear son and dandled him in his arms, and 
spake in prayer to Zeus and all the gods." Why is this piece of poetry 
so enchanting and why is it so unsatisfactory? It is wonderfully beau- 
tiful, its dignity, nobleness, serenity, poise, its delicacy, there is 
nothing else like it. But the situation is one of great pathos pathos 
that fails to move us, that brings, instead of tears, a smile to our faces. 
Is not our feeling toward Hector and his wife exactly that of a mother 
whose child has been startled by a fall on the grass, without receiving 
harm from the fall ? The mother says to the child : "Come, let me kiss 
your shoulder and everything will be all right." Her kiss is curative ; the 
child romps along the path, the fall forgotten. We smile at the woes 
of Andromache and her lord, because we know their pains go no deeper 
than can be reached and remedied by the equivalent of a kiss. They 
are children. Greek civilization is the culmination of a cycle of child- 
hood. Its art, the full flower blooming at the end of a cycle of civiliza- 
tion, is the only fully developed and complete art now in the world. 

Much qualification is necessary to explain what is meant by "the 
cycle of childhood." We live in a new cycle, different entirely from 
the Greek; in our cycle, childhood has changed along with everything 
else. We associate with childhood un fathomed depths of wisdom drawn 
from the Heaven that lies about us in infancy. It is the other aspect 
of childhood, and that only, which we must think of as the characteristic 
of Greek civilization unselfconsciousness the thing which constitutes 
the innocence of the child. In the child the faculty of reflection, of self- 
reference, has not yet developed it is conscious of things around it in 
the world it is not conscious of itself. Its life is an April day, sun- 
shine, cloud, showers ; sunshine, showers, clouds ; they pass along, and 
the total result is pleasant and delightful. 

Hector, Andromache, Antigone, if you object that Homer is archaic 
and does not represent Greek life at its culmination the entire Greek 
race, like some five year old child, was incapable of a feeling that could stir 
themselves or us. They could not know grief or sorrow such as we are 
familiar with Wordsworth's Michael, for example : 

'Tis not forgotten yet 
The pity which was then in every heart 
For the old man and 'tis believed by all 
That many and many a day he thither went, 
And never lifted up a single stone. 



CYCLIC LAW IN ART 119 

It would not be fair to call the Greeks heartless, because that word 
implies the atrophy of faculties through disuse or misuse. It is a term 
of reproach. We do not reproach a child who cannot experience tragic 
suffering. The Greeks were not heartless ; accurately and literally, they 
were unhearted. It is that lack in them that makes us prefer their 
headless statues the Victory, fortunately, lacks the Milo's tell-tale eyes 
empty. The Milo and Andromache are interchangeable. Beautiful 
pieces of furniture, animated stone. What man of our cycle would 
endure either of them as a companion? It is impossible to name an 
individual of our cycle who illustrates fully the Greek type of character. 
But Griselda Grantly, the impassive beauty of Barchester, suggests that 
unselfconscious, unhearted race : " 'It will kill me,' said Mrs. Grantly 
(the breaking of Griselda's engagement to Lord Dumbello), 'but I think 
that she will be able to bear it.' On the next morning Mrs. Grantly, with 
much cunning preparation, went about the task which her husband had 
left her to perform. It took her long to do, for she was very cunning in 
the doing of it ; but at last it dropped from her in words that there was 
a possibility, a bare possibility, a bare possibility, that some dis- 
appointment might even yet be in store for them. 

" 'Do you mean, mamma, that the marriage will be put off ? ' 

" 'I don't mean to say that I think it will ; God forbid ! but that is 
just possible. I dare say that I am very wrong to tell you this, but I 
know that you have sense enough to bear it. Papa has gone to London, 
and we shall hear from him soon.' 

" 'Then, mamma, I had better give them orders not to go on with 
the marking.' " 

The endowment of humanity with heart was accomplished by the 
Incarnation. The word "heart" is used in a comprehensive way it 
includes mental things, the faculty of reflection, the faculty of self- 
consciousness. It includes the literal meaning of the Greek word logos, 
"the mind of God," and also all that is contained in the fact that that 
incarnating logos, or mind, the Son, was (and is), also, the Heart of His 
Father. The Cycle of the Heart would be no misnomer for our present 
cycle a name that drives deeper into our realization the significance of 
the great war. France leads in this war against brutal heartlessness. 
And France, alone of the nations, is dedicated to the Heart of Christ, 
with victory promised, according to the tradition, when His Heart shall 
be blazoned upon her flag of state. 

The Incarnation affected the nature not only of man but of every 
mote of dust in the universe of every atom. With our finite intelli- 
gences, we are always wronging some part of Christ's twofold nature 
we wrong either His Humanity or His Divinity. I believe we think of 
His birth in Bethlehem as a detached thing as a mathematical point 
almost. We would do better to think of that birth as the apex of an 
inverted triangle that covers the whole universe. The Infinite Tran- 
scendent logos when He came down to earth to dwell with us, took upon 



120 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Him not only the flesh of man, but the flesh of fish, the flesh of bird, 
the flesh of flower, the flesh of rock. From Transcendent, brooding over 
the world, He became Immanent also, resident in every portion of space, 
resident in the narrow limits of a human personality. Do you think it 
is the idle fancy of a diseased brain when Shelley speaks of the one 
Spirit's plastic stress, 

. . . bursting in its beauty and its might 
From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. 
Or maudlin affectation when Wordsworth writes: 

To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 
It is not fancy it is perception of the truth of things. 

The Greeks could not write such emotions and sentiments about the 
world of nature or about human relations, as Shelley and Wordsworth 
have written, because they could not feel them; and they could not feel 
them because they were not yet facts to be felt. The logos did not dwell 
with the Greeks He was transcendent only. Their religion is a child's 
interpretation of the transcendence they intuitively and instinctively felt. 
When we call the Greeks pagans, we should be careful to remove from 
that word "pagan" the reproach and condemnation we justly give to 
materialists of our day and cycle. The Greeks were spiritual to the 
full extent it was possible for them to be. To them, life was not 
a fortuitous thing, but something willed and controlled by tran- 
scendent deity; they pictured that transcendent deity as the Gods 
of Olympus. They sensed the depths of the Justice of Deity ; but their 
childish processes could represent that justice only as the inscrutable 
ways of Nemesis Fate. They divined the self-existence of Deity, and 
therefore gave to their gods an imperishable immortality. But man had 
no share of that glorious immortality (the gap between man and God 
was not yet bridged by the Incarnation). They were spiritual enough 
to feel intuitively that man's life too must continue. But what dreadful 
immortality they rightly gave him! the sad twilight of the Elysian 
fields a realm of phantoms free indeed from positive pain and suffer- 
ing but full of the negative pain of yearning futile longing for the 
pleasures of earth, sorrow's crown of sorrow the remembrance of joy 
past never to return. No wonder they dreaded their euphemistic Abode 
of the Blessed, and shrank from death as an end-all. Think of mighty 
Ajax, the slayer of armies, how he wilts and can make no effort even 
against the King of Shadows: "O Death, Death, come now and look 
upon me ! Nay, to thee will I speak in that other world also, when I am 
with thee. But thee, thou present beam of the bright day, and the Sun 
in his chariot, I accost for the last, last time, as never more hereafter. 
O sunlight ! O sacred soil of mine own Salamis, firm seat of my father's 
hearth! O famous Athens, and thy race kindred to mine! And ye, 
springs and rivers of this land and ye plains of Troy, I greet you also 



CYCLIC LAW IN ART 121 

farewell, ye who have cherished my life! This is the last word that 
Ajax speaks to you : henceforth he will speak in Hades with the dead." * 
What a change has come into the world since that phantom King of 
Death was vanquished by the King of Heaven and earth! A French 
priest, a soldier in a division ordered to advance "at any cost," writes 
thus on the eve of the attack from which he knows he can scarcely 
expect to return alive: "To die young, to die a priest, as a soldier, 
during an attack, marching forward, while performing the priestly 
function, perhaps while granting absolution ... to give one's life 
for the Church, for France, for all those who carry in their hearts the 
same ideal as I do, who are quickened by the same faith . . . Ah! 
truly Jesus spoils me! Que c'est beau!" 

The Greek feeling about nature is that of transcendent Deity. How 
grateful we should be to them for their spiritual perception of a 
transcendent deity who brooded over flower and tree and stream whom 
they represented as the nymphs and other creatures dwelling in flower 
and stream without being part of the flower. Today, however, the 
sunset itself is breathless with adoration God is indivisibly united with 
His creatures. When the rose fades, and is no longer recognisable as 
rose, He is present in the atoms that constitute the former petals. Not 
a leaf rots on the highway, wrote Carlyle, but has force in it. We are 
engulfed in immortality we cannot escape it. 

What is there hid in the heart of a rose, 

Mother-mine ? 

Ah, who knows, who knows, who knows ? 
A man that died on a lonely hill 
May tell you, perhaps, but none other will, 

Little child. 
What does it take to make a rose, 

Mother-mine ? 

The God that died to make it knows. 
It takes the world's eternal wars, 
It takes the moon and all the stars, 
It takes the might of heaven and hell 
And the everlasting Love as well, 

Little child.f 

Greek civilization closed the Cycle of Childhood. The Italian 
Renaissance is the first flowering of Art in the new Cycle led in by the 
Incarnation. Three great manifestations of that Art demand study 
painting, Gothic architecture, and the Divine Comedy, though the 
Architecture flowered outside Italy in the Cathedrals. 

The endowment of humanity with new powers, the reflective powers, 



* Sophocles. 
t Alfred Noyes. 



122 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

faculties of mind and heart suggested by the word, logos, the lifting of 
Incarnation. Three great manifestations of that Art demand study 
consciousness to consciousness of self, complicates what was simple in 
Greek life. Greek life was a fagade, a plane surface; from a mere cir- 
cumference it has become a sphere life is now an interior, chambers 
opening out of chambers. In putting Renaissance and Greek Art side 
by side, we must remember that we are comparing the final stage of one 
cycle with the first stage of another cycle and that the comparison 
cannot be a true one. The Greeks ended a long cycle of development. 
Stage one of their cycle would be the true comparison with the Renais- 
sance. But stage one is lost to us in buried history. Yet, even in com- 
paring two unequal stages, the result is in favour of Christian Art. 

Let us begin with Italian painting, and let us recognize that the 
relative advantage of the fine arts for a representation of life ranks 
thus: 

1st and lowest, architecture and sculpture which represent life 
static. 

2nd, painting, which adds warmth of colour to static conditions. 

3rd, music. 

4th and highest, poetry, which contains all the others. 

Though Greek painting is lost to us, and Greek music, Greek poetry 
remains in abundance. But the most salient characteristic of Greek 
poetry is, it is statuesque. Hector, Andromache, Antigone, Hermes, 
Psyche the sculpture and the verse are interchangeable. Even if Greek 
painting and music remained in any quantity, we should probably find, 
that, along with the epic and dramatic poetry, all of Greek Art is re- 
ducible to terms of sculpture and bas-relief, the most limited of the 
Arts. 

Putting Italian painting beside Greek sculpture, we find the Chris- 
tian artists defective at many points. The Greeks depicted the truth 
as they saw it the beauty of the human form. The Mediaevals are 
depicting the truth as they see it an interior given to life a significance 
utterly lacking in the objects and incidents of the Greek world a Divine 
Spirit and Presence pervading the world, a Spirit glowing within, and 
behind, and below the visible universe, like layer after layer of petals, 
until human vision can no longer follow it, but loses itself in the golden 
splendour at the heart of the rose. The Italian painters tried in the most 
natural way in the world to depict this Spiritual presence through the 
scenes of Christ's life in which the logos revealed itself humanly. They 
succeeded in painting transparent light, thus symbolising and suggesting 
that the visible world is a transparent veil that reveals (or hides) the 
spiritual universe, just as we, the onlookers, wish. But, as compared 
with Greek modelling and drawing, what childish efforts what entire 
lack of perspective, making us smile just as the Greek interpretations of 
divinity make us smile! 

That faulty drawing, perspective, etc., are natural enough, however. 



CYCLIC LAW IN ART 123 

For while the Cycle of childhood has been forever left behind, the stage 
of childhood must continue in human development and in any cycle 
whatever. The Mediaeval painters represent the infancy stage of the 
new period the infancy stage with its two aspects already referred to 
depths of wisdom which glows unmistakably on the old canvas, together 
with naivete, ineptness and innocence, as shown in their childish 
drawing. 

But a difficulty, a contradiction, meets us in the Cathedral Archi- 
tecture, where proportion, symmetry, balance, perspective are as superbly 
set forth as in any Greek statue or temple, where there is no suggestion 
of childish incompetence. Is it explicable? 

It is explicable but with difficulty. This difficulty is due to the 
domination of Greek philosophy over our thinking due to the failure 
of the Church to develop a philosophy of its own. Greek Philosophy is, 
like Greek Art, the most perfectly developed body of Philosophy in our 
world. But it belongs to an outgrown world. Like their Art, it deals 
solely with externals. Greek Philosophy is the science of external life 
its psychology, its ethics, its logic, its morals, its political science all have 
to do merely with a fagade of life. The Greeks in their whole life, hence, 
inevitably in their Art and Philosophy were superficial; though they 
are not to blame for that. They saw clearly what there was to see 
namely, a surface. But with the Incarnation, the interior of life was 
revealed. The old philosophy is as inadequate for the new realms of 
life as surface measure is to determine the contents of a cube. But, 
under the protection of the Church, that outworn mental system of 
Greece continues today as the official philosophy of the world. The 
disastrous result is the fratricidal war between religion and science. 

The function of science in a Christian cycle is to scan and relate 
and systemize the laws of the inner states and realms, of which we gain 
knowledge through the experience of the Saints. Guided by a spiritual 
Church, science would have achieved results fruitful for our souls. But, 
in the light of history, who can maintain that steadfast spirituality is a 
mark of the Church of official religion? To what purpose were such 
lives as Dante's, Catherine's (Siena), Francis' (Assisi) and Loyola's 
and others directed? Was it not to set a spiritual ideal before a Church 
that was absorbed in material aggrandizement? A material Church per- 
secuted or neglected its Saints until intolerance and indifference were no 
longer possible ; then it labelled the experiences of the Saints "Revela- 
tion," by which it meant something that happens outside of law and 
nature, and waved a prohibitive hand at science. And science, for its 
part, was quite content to keep to the field of exterior life, multiplying 
the conveniences and luxuries of the body, but, in the main, sterile, and 
harmful to the soul, by its concentration upon material life. The result 
is a feud between material religion and material science, each fighting 
for priority. Instead of a united front against a common enemy, there 
is dissension in the ranks, strife among allies, worse than that, warfare 



124 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

between brothers. For Science, Religion and Art do not constitute a 
man-made, artificial alliance. They are allies by nature, blood-brothers. 
The True, the Beautiful, the Good are children of one birth, generals of 
equal rank, commissioned by their King, Christ, for the stupendous 
task of civilizing the earth, to make earth a colony of Heaven, to fight 
and defeat and put to death all that is untrue, all that is hideous, all 
that is evil, so that one flag shall fly, alike in the colony and in the 
mother country, one law prevail in both, one Ruler be crowned, alike 
in Heaven and in Earth. 

The Cathedrals reveal the beauty and perfection of those inner 
realms the true world from which material science is barred. The 
Cathedrals embody in stone the experiences of the great Saints in those 
realms the experiences of the Saints in the higher stages of Contempla- 
tion. The orderly stages of Contemplation are the keys that open one 
after one the inner halls of consciousness that the Incarnation built on 
to the fa$ade of life. These keys are in man's possession, and man has 
but to use them to reach conscious intercourse with the logos, transcend- 
ent and immanent, divine and human, to know the Divine Perfection, 
its truth and beauty. The Middle Ages and especially mediaeval 
France were a rose garden of saints, great saints, 

Continuous as the stars that shine 
And twinkle in the Milky Way. 

Their aspirations reached beyond the surface to the heart of life 
whence flows the vivifying and unifying Blood. Through aspiration, they 
were led, by way of Contemplation, to actual experience of the Divine 
Life, Eternal, Spiritual. Contemplation, with its ordered stages, is some- 
thing higher and greater than the intellectual processes that suffice for 
dealing with the exterior of life. The Cathedrals represent the ex- 
periences of the saints when, in Contemplation, they transcended their 
minds, transcended their ordinary mental processes and their mental 
limitations. Their inner experiences crystallized outwardly as monu- 
ments of architecture, perfect in poise, symmetry and proportion, equal 
in mere craftsmanship to any achievement of the Greeks, and, in addition, 
with a meaning, a significance that cannot be found in Greek Art. Italian 
painting, also, reveals that inner world of the Saints (the true world) 
but far less perfectly than French Cathedrals do, and in a lower degree. 
For as the processes of Contemplation transcend the processes of Intel- 
lect, it is impossible to represent correctly in mental terms the realities 
experienced in Contemplation. Italian painting, with its faults and 
defects, illustrates that impossibility of translating Contemplation into 
Intellect. Italian painting records on the mental plane the inner ex- 
periences of the saints ; it depicts those experiences as they were remem- 
bered by the minds of the saints. To represent three dimensions on 
a flat surface one must be familiar with the laws of perspective. The 
saints had no mental perspective of truth. Hence the paintings embody 



CYCLIC LAW IN ART 125 

their mental limitations. Whereas the Cathedrals are direct and im- 
mediate embodiments of spiritual truth and beauty unmarred by the 
distorting influence of the mind. The Cathedrals are wholly spiritual, 
therefore, perfect; the paintings are both spiritual and intellectual 
hence marred by the inaccuracy and imperfections with which the mind 
always confuses truth and beauty. 

The form of Art architecture in which perfect expression was 
thus attained, was conditioned by the infancy stage of the new cycle. 
In that first flowering of Art, man could reach perfection only in the 
lowest form of Art. The higher forms, painting, poetry await his future. 
What testimony to the power of Christianity is given by that Gothic 
architecture ! Christian Art, in its first essay, at the bottom of its ladder, 
equals what was achieved by the pagan cycle only at its apex of develop- 
ment in Greece. 

A second difficulty and contradiction immediately arises, namely 
the Divine Comedy. It is the most perfect poem in the world, and thus 
seems to nullify the conclusion just stated; for it would seem that, in 
that first outflowering, man attained perfection, not only in architecture, 
the lowest form of Art, but also in the highest form, poetry. But the 
Divine Comedy is a work of single authorship, while the Cathedrals 
represent generations and centuries of saints. The solitary preeminence 
of the poem seems explicable thus. In history, there are minor incidents 
that, in one respect, are not unlike the Incarnation itself, namely, in this : 
they are inexplicable from the standpoint of earth. They are events 
directly controlled by the agencies of Heaven, rather than ends achieved 
through human intervention. Joan of Arc is an obvious incident of 
this kind, inexplicable in a human way. The opinions of the early Church 
Fathers influence one to believe that, among the Greeks, Plato was such 
an instrument of Heaven. Similarly, in the realm of Art, the Divine 
Comedy is such an event ; it is not the work of man nor of the immanent 
logos working through man it is a work of the transcendent logos, a 
free gift from God. It seems, in that early epoch of the Christian cycle, 
when man could give adequate expression to spiritual beauty only in the 
static terms of stone, as if the Divine Compassion, further to aid and 
inspire him, sent a special messenger to reveal the mountain heights of 
poetry that still await man's coming of age. 

Today, we are still in the cycle of the heart. What then can be 
said of present day Art, what about Art of the future? Renaissance 
Art marks the first epoch of our cycle the epoch of childhood. But 
the winsome age of childhood, is, in* life, followed by unattractive periods 
of transition, when a boy, from being a cherub, becomes a distorted 
juncture of ears and shins, and a girl, a flower of grace, passes into a 
condition of Futurist lankiness. Cycles of civilization, like children, 
reach a stage when they are the despair of those who cherish them 
something to be kept out of sight. Futurist art, with its distortions 
and ugliness, most truly represents our present awkward age; our 



126 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

unattractiveness, our charmless and graceless condition is reflected 
from those canvasses that are too grotesque for caricatures that are 
faithful likenesses. 

In despair, we turn for relief to the past, to the Art of Greece. We 
should turn to the inevitable future. Greece has passed, never to return 
impossible to revive. Greece looms as a refuge for those whose en- 
deavour is to escape the Hound of Heaven His unperturbed chase 
continues throughout our cycle. Such refugees, having turned from 
religion, have then sought throughout the universe for harbour: they 
were "heavy with the even, when she lit her glimmering tapers, round 
the day's dead sanctities." But everywhere they turn they hear the 
swift pursuit of the tireless Hound, since every atom of the universe 
is His abode. Greece beckons where men lived content and happy, 
undisturbed by His Presence and Pursuit. True. But, saturate them- 
selves as they may with Greek Art, they cannot transport themselves 
behind the Incarnation into that former cycle of unconsciousness and 
care freedom. They cannot escape from their own souls. The Divine 
Presence has a centre in their hearts, and His pursuit hounds them out 
of any fancied security they make for themselves. Greece, too, fails 
them. 

We cannot return to Greek conditions. We shall develop an art 
that surpasses Greek sculpture just as the statue of bronze excels the 
course molds into which the hot metal was poured. The new cycle offers 
splendid possibilities. It will pass on from tomboy crudeness to ma- 
turity. The great art of our maturity will obey the same laws that 
governed Greek production but on a higher scale, just as our cycle, 
though so different, still parallels the stages and epochs the curve of 
development of the former era. The Greeks were unhearted, but they 
were not reprobates. They matured their civilization under Divine guid- 
ance, and their art is Divinely inspired. The secret of Greek expression 
is much repression. An art to be great must have intense feeling, intense 
passion, but this held with a strong hand, so that each line is balanced, 
delicate, firm. Where there is tumult, emotionalism, torrents unchained, 
the result is a counterfeit of art, which some prefer to the reality. Greek 
art is austere in its restraint. They restrained their passion for beauty 
of form so that beauty could be manifested. Such restraint is always 
necessary in order to convey to others what one perceives or feels. 
How can a man make an instrument a medium of expression, voice, 
paint or marble, until he has control of it ? I may love my friend with 
all the strength of my heart, but if I have no control over my voice 
I cannot tell him so. If, in a tempest of feeling, I attempt to speak, 
only incoherent ejaculations will escape me : to make myself understood 
I must control myself, speak quietly, coherently, logically. If I have 
no control over the muscles of my face I cannot even smile at him, and 
in trying to do so may, instead, make a hideous grimace. 

Greek Art thus illustrates, in stone, those principles which, since 



CYCLIC LAW IN ART 127 

the Incarnation, are the Way of life for us, the inspiration of our efforts ; 
for that art is founded upon the principle of sacrifice the sacrifice of 
the less for the greater beauty. It is austere, rejecting the superfluous 
in its effort to achieve the last refinement of line. Greek Art is true in 
that it is a faithful portrayal of life. Christianity does not deny that 
truth or supersede it. Christianity enlarges the field of operation for 
those principles which the Greeks manifested in their sculpture. Greek 
Art and Christian Religion are not antagonistic, as is sometimes mis- 
takenly thought; the relation of our Religion to that bygone Art is a 
supplemental one, adding on to the loveliness of the outer world the 
splendour of the inner. This true relation of Greek and Christian is 
eloquently suggested by one of the Neo-Platonist philosophers those 
Greeks who in their own persons experienced the extension of horizons 
that Christ effected. In his essay on Beauty, Plotinus writes: "With- 
draw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful 
as yet, do as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful; 
he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this 
other purer, until he has shown a beautiful face upon his statue. So do 
you also; cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, 
bring light to all that is shadowed, labor to make all glow with beauty, 
and do not cease chiselling your statue until there shall shine out on you 
the God-like splendour of virtue, until you shall see the final goodness 
surely established in the stainless shrine." 

C. C. CLARK. 



"All the really great saints have felt about morality as an artist feels 
about beauty. They don't do good things because they are told to do 
them, but because they feel them to be beautiful, splendid, attractive; 
and they avoid having anything to do with evil things because such 
things are evil and repellant." FATHER PAYNE. 



EASTERN AND WESTERN 
PSYCHOLOGY 



IV 
THE MINISTRY OF ANGELS AND THE TEMPTATIONS OF THE DEVIL 

WE have seen that the fundamental fact in physical life, in our 
life on the physical plane, is that, on this plane, we are not 
subject only to the physical forces belonging to this plane, 
but are subject, in an even greater degree, to the continual 
pressure of spiritual forces from the planes above ; and that to this 
spiritual pressure from above is due not only the whole process of 
physical advancement which may be termed biological evolution, but the 
whole of our moral advancement also, the unfoldment of our spiritual 
evolution. And our response to this spiritual pressure from above 
determines the whole of our future progress, our gradual growth into 
the world of conscious immortality. 

As there are these spiritual forces constantly making for our upward 
progress into the life of the realms above us, so there are forces as 
constantly at work, hindering and thwarting that advance, tending cease- 
lessly to draw us into the path of retrogression, of degeneration. And so 
close is the analogy between these forces, as revealed in our moral 
experience, and the forces which make for degeneration in the regions 
observed by biology, that many biologists have classed them together. 
Thus Henry Drummond, writing of Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 
drew the closest analogies between biological and spiritual degeneration, 
and printed on the cover of his able and intuitive work the picture of one 
of the types of biological degeneration, the hermit crab. In like manner 
Sir Oliver Lodge, who is a close student of biology though not primarily 
a biologist, has described the forces of moral evil as forces of degen- 
era.ion in the biological sense; the spiritual equivalent of the tendencies 
which draw backward and downward those organisms which have ceased 
to grow upward. 

It is, however, not quite accurate to speak of these forces as drawing 
backward an organism which has ceased to progress. For such an 
organism by no means returns to the condition which it had reached at 
a previous period. The hermit crab which, borrowing the shell of a 
mollusk, has shirked the effort of self-protection, does not by any means 
retrace its steps to an earlier crab form; it degenerates but does not 
return ; it becomes, in fact, a morbid and mutilated organism, losing its 
relative perfection and becoming ugly, weak, unnatural. The forces of 
degeneration are not simply forces of recession, nor, in any instance, 



EASTERN AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY 129 

does an organism which has ceased to go forward, return to the condition 
which it earlier held. In exactly the same way, in the case of moral 
degeneration produced by alcohol, though a drunken man loses the moral 
sense, the power of reason, of focussed vision, of articulate speech, of 
stable locomotion, all of which an infant also lacks, he does not thereby 
become an infant nor retrace his steps along the line of progress. He 
reaches a condition which did not exist at any point along that line of 
progress ; a condition of actual evil, like the malformation of the hermit 
crab. Even a biologist, therefore, must recognize forces of degeneration 
and destruction, in addition to the forces which simply retard normal 
progress, or make that progress difficult and arduous. And those who 
make spiritual life the subject of their experience and wise experiment 
will likewise recognize, that, in addition to the tendencies of inertia, of 
cowardice, of irresolution, which simply check their growth and make it 
arduous, there are other forces which tend toward actual evil, bringing 
about morbid and degenerate conditions which are not a return toward 
the condition of a child or the condition of the primitive races. 

It is of universal experience that, as we recognize the pull of the 
spiritual forces which are striving to raise us upward, to lead us to the 
realm above us, the realm of our conscious immortality, and, recognizing, 
respond to these forces and cooperate vigorously with them, we grow 
into the perception that they are not only beneficent, but are also conscious, 
endowed with the qualities of personality, and directly responding to the 
quality of personality in ourselves. But the experiment must be made, 
and the experience must be gained, within our moral and spiritual 
consciousness ; it cannot be validly reached by any outside or merely 
mental speculation. Sought for and reached in our moral consciousness, 
this perception of the personal quality in the powers of good thereafter 
becomes the most momentous reality in our experience, and infinitely 
aids our further spiritual progress. And this is one of the best attested 
facts in all human experience, and by the best witnesses. It is a funda- 
mental fact in the real experimental psychology, in all lands, among all 
peoples, throughout all times. It further gives us a sound experimental 
basis for the view that the forces which make for evolution, including 
those which have presided over each step of biological evolution from 
the beginning, are not only beneficent forces but are also conscious forces. 

The more intuitive biologists have come to this conclusion. Alfred 
Russel Wallace, who discovered the great laws of evolution at the same 
time as Darwin, and independently of Darwin, marshalled a series of 
purely biological evidences to show that, in particular, the physical 
evolution of man from an earlier, pre-human form had been carried out 
under the direction of conscious spiritual forces, and could not have 
been carried out without their interposition. Bergson has put forward 
the same view, using as an illustration the marvellous formation of the 
eye, which organisms have reached along quite different lines of 
development, and therefore independently, not deriving this wonderful 



130 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

mechanism from each other ; and Bergson has argued that it is infinitely 
unlikely that such a mechanism could be developed twice inde- 
pendently by chance, by such an accumulation of happy accidents as 
Darwin postulates. It is more than likely that, had Darwin been willing 
to accept the action of spiritual forces, even as a working hypothesis (and 
a theorist has the right to make use of any working hypothesis) he would 
have avoided the innumerable absurdities into which his theory of 
accumulated happy accidents has led him; for he has completely failed 
to show why the progressive happy accident the happy accident which 
leads the organism forward should happen at all ; much more has he 
failed to show any reason why these happy accidents should happen at 
all points, in all periods. Yet this is what his theory of natural selection 
in fact demands; failing the occurrence of happy accidents, there would 
be no basis at all for selection ; there would be no "fittest" to survive. 
The truth is, that Darwin simply accepted the fact without giving an 
explanation, and without even trying to explain it. And he could never 
have explained it except by admitting the existence of conscious spiritual 
forces, guiding the evolution of organisms along lines mapped out in 
advance. Had he been willing to accept the existence of these consciously 
guiding spiritual forces, he would have instantly found his hypothesis 
supported by the well observed and endlessly verified facts of moral and 
spiritual experience, thus making it something very much more than a 
working hypothesis a well authenticated reality. Had he done this, 
the world would have been saved the tragedy of a materialistic theory 
of development, with the immense impulse towards materialism which 
has come from it. 

The fundamental fact, then, of moral and spiritual experience is that 
the quality of personal consciousness inheres in the spiritual powers which 
we feel working and striving to draw us upward towards immortality ; to 
such a degree that we have a sound basis for supposing that all the 
upward forces are conscious, spiritual, personal forces, even though they 
may be forms of personal consciousness which it is at present very 
difficult for us to conceive. But, when it conies to the forces which make 
for upward growth in our moral and spiritual life, our indications are 
clearer: we feel ourselves to be in the presence of conscious, personal 
beneficence, a benign personal consciousness which has a profound under- 
standing, an even deeper compassion, for our human hearts, our human 
sorrows. Therefore, in addition to divine helpfulness, we are compelled 
by the continuing facts of our experience to credit these interposing 
spiritual powers with a depth of human sympathy which would be difficult 
to understand in, let us say, angels from some distant sphere, able to 
help, but hardly able to understand or compassionate our human sorrows. 

In holding and putting forward such a view, we are thoroughly 
scientific, basing ourselves on sound experiment and proved experience. 
On the contrary, it is the materialistic biologist who perpetually closes 
his consciousness to this field of experience, refusing to make the 



EASTERN AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY 131 

experiments which establish it, or to recognize that others have made 
and are making them, who is thoroughly and incurably unscientific; and 
who, as we have seen, just because he follows this course, is led into 
endless perplexities and absurdities. 

We shall try, later on, to establish by methodical evidence the reality 
of this fundamental law, that the beneficent powers are conscious, 
personal, full of a profound humanity. For the present, we shall use 
this generalization to illumine the opposite, the darker side of the same 
problem, suggesting that continued human experience has likewise shown 
that the forces of degeneration, the forces of evil, are also personal, 
conscious powers, consciously seeking and working evil. 

The great experimental psychologists of the East, who find 
Consciousness to be the central fact of personal life, have at the same 
time found it difficult to conceive of an infinite number of personal 
consciousnesses, coming into being wholly independent of each other. 
They found that, as Consciousness is the central fact of personal life, 
so communion is the central fact of consciousness. We are conscious 
of each other's consciousness, long before we reason about the question; 
and, indeed, for the most part, we do not reason about the fact at all, 
simply taking it for granted, and acting upon it in every relation of 
life. When we speak to each other, we are acting on the innate conviction 
that a kindred consciousness is there, ready to respond to our 
consciousness, and, in fact, responding to it. 

Resting on this universal experience of communion, then, the great 
experimental psychologists of the East drew the conclusion that there 
must be a bridge of consciousness between the two seemingly separate 
consciousnesses; they must have their synthesis in a higher and deeper 
consciousness, which embraces them both. So, by ascending steps, they 
made their final generalization, naming the ultimate reality "the Supreme 
Consciousness of All Beings." And their experience had already 
compelled them to assign to this last reality supreme beneficence, infinite 
goodness, ceaselessly desiring and working for our perfection. 

We shall be fully justified in speaking of this benign Supreme 
Consciousness as the Personal God, if we are careful to assign to Him 
the essence of our personality, not its limitations and deflections; the 
pure quality of spiritual consciousness, not the perversions of our personal 
nature. For, in fact, as we meet and respond to the spiritual power 
which draws us upward, we do not find in that power these limitations 
and perversions; on the contrary, we find a perpetual challenge to 
ourselves, to overcome just these limitations and perversions, with active, 
effective aid to do it. With this clearly understood, the name, Personal 
God, is wholly justified. 

Are we, then, led by a like chain of experience and inference to 
postulate ah opposite to that God a single "Personal Devil," the Ahriman 
of our Ormazd? I think not, and for this reason: if we yield to the 
forces of evil, we find that they lead, not to a deeper unity, but away 



132 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

from unity; not to the merging of consciousness in compassion, but to 
separation of consciousness, in malice and hatred; not to deeper being, 
but to restriction of being. The logical conclusion of this is, not an 
evil cosmic unity, but dissolution, annihilation. The true opposite of the 
good God is not an evil God with equal power, but Nothingness, Void, 
total negation. And the element of personal consciousness, which we 
find by experience in the forces of evil, is, in its own colourless essence, 
not of evil, but of good. It leads us, not to a Personal Devil, but back to 
the same absolute Good, the beneficent Supreme Consciousness. In other 
words, that which is real even in the powers of evil, is of God and in 
God; only the unreal is of evil. We are, therefore led to think of an 
ultimate conquest of evil by Good ; a final purification of evil, the fine 
divine essence being sifted from it and restored to the God to whom it 
belongs. This will lead us to some such thought as that of the "fallen 
angels ;" powers, each of whom still possess a particle of the Divine 
Essence. It will lead us, further, to the thought of an ultimate 
purification, into which these particles of Divine Essence will be drawn, 
returning to the God who gave them; their withdrawal bringing about 
the final, irretrievable dissolution of these powers, their complete and 
eternal annihilation. 

But we shall find that, while completely logical reasoning lead? us 
away from the conception of a single Personal Devil, a bad God, even 
while we are compelled to accept the fact of personal consciousness in 
the powers of evil, yet many religions do, in fact, speak of a Personal 
Devil; many also teach or indicate that this Personal Devil is a "fallen 
angel," a perverted divine power. We would seem to have a justification 
of this second idea in the logical conclusion we have already reached : 
while the thought of a Personal Devil may be simply a personification, 
a synthesis, of the powers of evil; or he may be, as in Milton's "Paradise 
Lost," simply the leader among a host of evil powers, one evil spirit 
among many, distinguished by greater energy, but in no sense an equal 
opposite of God. Milton, of course, is thoroughly imbued with the idea 
that these powers of evil are perverted powers of good ; that the "ethereal 
essence" in them is of God. It is the perversion of their nature which is 
their own, and that perversion is doomed to ultimate annihilation. 

In one of the great scriptures of Temptation, the Tempter is Yama, 
the Lord of Death. As it now stands, the "Katha Upanishad" does not 
in any way explain the character or history of Yama, but other Indian 
books tell us that Yama was a king, the king of one of the earlier human 
races who never tasted death; that, when the time came for death to 
enter the world, Yama, as king, elected to be the first to die, the first 
to meet this new, terrible experience ; and that, after his heroic death, 
he became the ruler of the dead ; just as in ancient Egypt, Osiris, after 
his sacrificial death, became the judge of the dead. Thus, though Yama 
"descended into Hell," this was a voluntary descent, having elements 
of atonement ; it was voluntary, like the descent of Christ into Hell, as 



EASTERN AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY 133 

taught in the Creed, this teaching being apparently based on the words 
"he went and preached unto the spirits in prison," in the First Epistle 
of Saint Peter. But, while Yama is not the Devil, he is, in a very real 
sense, the Tempter. 

His temptations are addressed to the youth, Nachiketas, whose 
history once more reminds us strongly of the Creed, though it is thousands 
of years older. For Nachiketas is the only son of a father, who offers 
him as a sacrifice; Nachiketas then descends into the house of Death, 
remains there for three days and, on the third day, rises again from the 
dead. There is the further analogy that the sacrifice of the only son is 
made only after the sacrifice of cattle had proved unavailing, thus 
strongly reminding us of the teaching of Paul, that the sacrifice of 
Jesus superseded the sacrifice of cattle in the temple. 

This is one of the most striking likenesses between the religious 
teaching of East and West. We shall try to see, later on, how far it 
is based on experimental psychology, on spiritual experience. 

Nachiketas, reaching the house of Death, after he has been sacrificed 
by his father, finds the dwelling empty. After he has waited three days, 
or, as the ancient text more graphically says, "three nights," Death 
returns and, in order to make amends to Nachiketas for the slight he 
has received in waiting three days without a greeting, offers him three 
wishes. 

Nachiketas immediately asks for the knowledge of immortality: 
"This that they doubt about, O Death, what is in the great Beyond, tell 
me of that." 

Thereupon Death, as Tempter, seeks to draw Nachiketas away from 
the quest of immortality by offering him alluring gifts: "Even by the 
gods of old it was doubted about this ; not easily knowable, and subtle 
is this law. Choose, Nachiketas, another wish. . . . Choose sons and 
grand-sons of a hundred years, and much cattle, and elephants and gold 
and horses. ... If thou thinkest this an equal wish, choose wealth 
and length of days. . . . Whatsoever desires are difficult in the mortal 
world, ask all desires according to thy will. These beauties, with their 
chariots and lutes not such as these are to be won by men be waited 
on by them, my gifts. Ask me not of death, Nachiketas." 

It is impossible not to be struck by the likeness of this to another 
great drama of temptation: "Again, the devil taketh him up into an 
exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the 
world, and the glory of them ; and saith unto him, All these things will 
I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. ..." 

Nachiketas, resisting all the allurements of the Tempter, learns the 
secret of Death and enters immortality. Whereupon these words follow : 
"Rise ye up! Awake ye! and having obtained your wishes, understand 
them," as though this scripture of the victory over the Tempter had 
been used as a ritual, addressed to a number of participants. 

In the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad, there is another scene of 



134 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

temptation. The father of Shvetaketu comes to the dwelling of King 
Pravahana, the son of Jivala, who offers him a wish. The father of 
Shvetaketu asks to be told the answers to certain questions which the 
king had earlier asked Shvetaketu, but which the youth had been unable 
to answer. The questions concerned immortality. 

But Jivala, in the character of the Tempter, answers : "This is 
one of the wishes of the gods. Ask instead a wish of men." 

The father of Shvetaketu answers: "I know well; there is store of 
gold, of cattle and horses, of slave-girls and robes ..." but refuses to 
accept anything but the "wish of the gods," the knowledge of 
immortality. 

The wording of this suggests that there was what one may call a 
sacramental formula of temptation and trial ; a phrase which had become 
representative of all temptation, as has the phrase, "the kingdoms of 
the world, and the glory of them." 

It is notable that, in both these Upanishad stories, the Tempter 
afterwards becomes the instructor, the Initiator. And Yama is, further, 
the Lord of Death, a divine king who has descended into Hell, to perfect 
a work which has in it elements of vicarious atonement. The Atharva 
Veda says of Yama, "He died the first of men ;" and he is elsewhere 
spoken of as a "Prajapati," one of the "Lords of beings," of whom 
Brahma is the first. 

There is a close likeness here to another great drama of temptation, 
the Book of Job, which assigns a divine origin to the Tempter: "Now, 
there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before 
the Lord, and Satan came also among them. And the Lord said unto 
Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, 
From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. 
And the Lord answered unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant 
Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright 
man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? Then Satan answered 
the Lord, and said, "Doth Job fear God for nought? . . . And the 
Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only 
upon himself put not forth thy hand. So Satan went forth from the 
presence of the Lord." 

Thus Satan, "the Accuser," is counted among "the sons of God," as 
Yama, "son of the Sun," is counted among "the Lords of Beings ;" and 
Satan tempts Job with the permission, almost under the direction of God. 

After Job had triumphed over all his temptations, "the Lord gave 
Job twice as much as he had before;" the numbers of his possessions 
and of his cattle were doubled. It is worth noting that, in the scriptures 
of India, the powers of perception and action are called "the cattle which 
graze in the pastures of life." If a like symbol is used in the Book of 
Job, then, after the victory over his temptations, Job was divinely 
endowed with an enlarged scope of life, an added range of perceptive 
and active powers the powers and perceptions of the spiritual man. 



EASTERN AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY 135 

The same story of temptation is told of Prince Siddhartha, of the 
family of the Gotamas, who became "the Awakened," the "Buddha," and 
is therefore called Gautama Buddha, "the Awakened One, of the family 
of the Gotamas." 

The temptation of the future Buddha is related at great length, and 
with a wealth of Oriental imagery, in the Introduction to the Jataka, 
the Book of the Births of Buddha. It begins thus : 

"Then the future Buddha turned his back to the trunk of the Bo-tree 
and faced the east. And making the mighty resolution, 'Let my skin, and 
sinews, and bones become dry, and welcome ! and let all the flesh and 
blood in my body dry up! but never from this seat will I stir, until I 
have attained the supreme and absolute wisdom!' he sat himself down 
cross-legged in an unconquerable position, from which not even the 
descent of a hundred thunder-bolts at once could have dislodged him. 

"At this point the god Mara, exclaiming, 'Prince Siddhartha is 
desirous of passing beyond my control, but I will never allow it!' went 
and announced the news to his army, and sounding the Mara war-cry, 
drew it out for battle ... in that army, no two carried the same weapons ; 
and diverse also in their appearance and countenance, the host swept on 
like a flood to overwhelm the Great Being (Prince Siddhartha). 

"... He perceived Mara's army coming on like a flood, and said, 
'Here is this multitude exerting all their strength and power against me 
alone. My mother and father are not here, nor my brother, nor any 
relative. But I have these Ten Perfections, like old retainers long 
cherished at my board. It therefore behooves me to make the Ten 
Perfections my shield and my sword, and to strike a blow with them that 
shall destroy this strong array.' . . . 

"Thereupon the god Mara caused a whirlwind, thinking, 'By this 
will I drive away Siddhartha.' . . . Yet when the winds reached the 
future Buddha, such was the energy of the Great Being's merit, they 
lost all power and were not able to cause so much as a fluttering of the 
edge of his priestly robe. 

"Then Mara caused a great rain-storm, saying, 'With water will I 
overwhelm and drown him.' . . . But on coming to the Great Being, 
this mighty inundation was not able to wet his priestly robes as much as 
a dew-drop would have done. 

"Then Mara caused a shower of rocks, in which immense mountain- 
peaks flew smoking and flaming through the sky. But on reaching the 
future Buddha they became celestial bouquets of flowers. . . . 

"Then Mara caused a shower of hot ashes, in which ashes that 
glowed like fire flew through the sky. But they fell at the future 
Buddha's feet as sandal-wood powder. . . . 

"Then Mara caused a shower of mud, in which mud flew smoking 
and flaming through the sky. But it fell at the future Buddha's feet as 
celestial ointment. 

"Then Mara caused a darkness, thinking, 'By this will I frighten 



136 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Siddhartha, and drive him away.' And the darkness became fourfold, 
and very dense. But on reaching the future Buddha it disappeared like 
darkness before the light of the sun. . . . 

"Mara . . . drew near the future Buddha, and said, 'Siddhartha, 
arise from this seat ! It does not belong to you, but to me.' 

"When the Great Being heard this he said, 'Mara, you have not 
fulfilled the Ten Perfections in any of their three grades; nor have you 
made the five great gifts (the gift of treasure, gift of child, the gift of 
wife, of royal rule, and last, the gift of life) : nor have you striven for 
knowledge, nor for the welfare of the world, nor for enlightenment. 
This seat does not belong to you, but to me.' 

"Unable to restrain his fury, the enraged Mara now hurled his 
discus. But the Great Being reflected on the Ten Perfections, and the 
discus changed into a canopy of flowers, and remained suspended over 
his head. 

"Then the Great Being said, 'Mara, who is witness to your having 
given donations?' 

"Said Mara, 'All these, as many as you see here, are my witnesses ;' 
and he stretched out his hand in the direction of his army. And instantly 
from Mara's army came a roar, 'I am his witness! I am his 
witness !' . . . 

"Then said Mara to the Great Being, 'Siddhartha, who is witness 
to your having given donations?' 

" 'Your witnesses,' replied the Great Being, 'are animate beings, and 
I have no anim-ate witnesses. . . .' Drawing forth his right hand from 
beneath his priestly robe, he stretched it out towards the mighty earth, 
and said, 'Are you witness to my having given a great donation?' And 
the mighty earth thundered, 'I bear you witness!' . . . And the 
followers of Mara fled away in all directions. No two went the same 
way, but leaving their head-ornaments and their cloaks behind, they 
fled straight before them. 

"Then the hosts of the gods, when they saw the army of Mara flee, 
cried out, 'Mara is defeated! Prince Siddhartha has conquered! Let 
us go to celebrate the victory!' And . . . they came with perfumes, 
garlands, and other offerings in their hands to the Great Being on the 
throne of wisdom. . . . 

"It was before the sun had s^t that the Great Being thus vanquished 
the army of Mara. And then, while the Bo-tree in homage rained red 
coral-like sprigs upon his priestly robes, he acquired in the first watch 
of the night the knowledge of nrevious existences ; in the middle watch 
of the night, the divine eye; and in the last watch of the night, his 
intellect fathomed dependent origination ..." 

It is impossible not to feel that this highly coloured narrative lacks 
the austere beauty and pathos of the Temptation in the Wilderness, with 
its ending, perfect in simplicity, "Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, 
angels came and ministered unto him ;" but it is also impossible not to 



EASTERN AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY 137 

see that the story of Siddhartha has a beauty of its own, the beauty of 
high moral truth ; it has comforted and inspired innumerable followers 
of the Buddha, and helped them to pass through their temptations. 

But, with all their difference in treatment and colour, the two 
narratives evidently record like experiences; the parallelism between 
them is complete, from the long initial fast (in the case of Siddhartha, 
a fast of "seven weeks, or forty-nine days"), to the ministry of angels. 

CHARLES JOHNSTON. 
(To be continued.) 



W hen God calls for a sacrifice, whether it be the loss of a relation or 
a friend, the endurance of a sickness or a misfortune, we must make it 
in a truly Christian spirit. And God hates rapine in a sacrifice. 

In the Old Law, when a sacrifice was offered to God, it was one of 
the greatest sins to steal part of the offering, and the sons of Heli, for 
this their crowning sin were, by the judgment of God, to die both in one 
day. There is a parallel between their rapine and that which takes place 
in sacrifices God exacts from us when we refuse submission or willing 
endurance to His divine will. 

Even in the darkest sorrow God knows best, and will turn every 
sorrow bravely borne to the welfare of the sufferer. How, we may 
neither know nor see, but then it is that faith enters to help us. 

And after all, rapine in a sacrifice only results in embittering the 
mind. It brings no consolation, which is precisely what the sufferer needs 
most. Generosity in sacrifice is always followed by generosity from God, 
in power of endurance, in courage, in contentment and peace of mind, for 
God will not be outdone by His creatures in generosity. 

LAURENCE BOYLE. 



10 



"DON'T BLAME ME" 



IT was just a vulgar dream. 
Feeling as if I were being crushed, I opened my eyes, to see 
Something fat, bloated and most unpleasant, sitting on my chest and 

stomach. 

Its eyes turned in, as if It wanted to look only at Itself. Its long nose 
wiggled and twisted as if seeking evil smells. Its hairy ears flapped, as 
if It feared to miss something wrong to hear. Its pudgy hands were 
restless. Its feet were atrophied from lack of use. The general effect 
of its colorings was dirty white and slimy, giving It more the appearance 
of being a Worm than man-fashioned. "Get off," I gasped, bracing my 
body to hurl It off. 

A sigh of self-pity escaped the full, fatuous mouth. "I suppose I'd 
better, if I want to keep you alive, and, worse luck for me, I have to do 
that, or I'd die myself." It voiced its plaintiveness. It stumped down on 
the side of the bed and wept weakly. 

"What are you doing here?" 

"You invited me you have urged me to stay. Don't blame me." 

"Are you crazy? I don't want you to stay one minute get out." 

"I don't think you are strong enough, and besides you have always 
been too kind to me to treat me cruelly just because you can see me now." 

"You have never been here before," I declared, yet I knew I spoke 
doubtfully against the certainty of Its expression, the one note of 
sincerity It had given out. 

"Oh ! yes I have, only you have not been able to see me. You 
couldn't see me now if you hadn't been listening to those dreadful people 
who are talking about practical discipleship all the time," and a shudder 
of real fear shook Its jellylike substance. "If you ever get to doing 
what they advise I'll have to die ; I'll starve to death and die," Its voice 
piped shrilly to a sickening wail. 

"For Heaven's sake, what are you ?" 

"Don't, don't use that name ; don't even think of Heaven when I'm 
'round. It brings on malaria," and It had a chill, unpleasantly. 

"But what are you?" 

"Don't you know your own pet? Why I am your own Lower Self 
nobody else is responsible for me. Don't blame me." 

Blankness began to assault my mind ; negativeness was impending, 
but I seized on the clue of the Teaching It had spoken of, and rallied 
myself to say. sternly : "Explain yourself I insist on your talking this 
thing out." 

"There you go, getting positive when you do that I am at your 
mercy please let up." 

"Go on," I said more sternly. 

138 



"DON'T BLAME ME" 139 

"Don't blame me. I am what you have made me." 

I braced myself to look at Its unpleasantness. As I looked It seemed 
at once to shrink and to stand out more clearly. 

"Please stop looking at me so hard. It is bad for me." 

"Talk," I commanded. 

"I'd rather whisper, the way I am used- to doing with you, but I am 
at your mercy." 

"Go on." 

"Don't blame me you have done this. I started out as a clean, 
unthinking, thoughtless little animal, depending upon you. Then, as you 
grew older and would get negative and slothful and self-indulgent, I 
began to put on fat, and soon lost my shapeliness. Then every time you 
had an evil thought or did something you knew you ought not to do I 
grew in strength. If you were only positively wicked I would not have 
to carry all this loathsome fat. I had a good nose once, until you took 
to contemplating evil. I had good ears once, until you listened to evil 
speaking and foul stories. My eyes were straight until you took to self- 
reference in all things." 

"Have I got to have you around always ?" 

"Not unless you give yourself up to me then I will live and grow 
stronger." 

"You have to tell me the truth ?" 

"I do, whenever you have the courage to face me and ask." 

"Then tell me how to get rid of you ?" 

It fell on its weak legs in an agony of supplication. "Spare me." It 
wailed, "don't blame me. I am only what you have made me." 

"Answer," I demanded. 

Its wailing rose and It slobbered in anguish. 

I thought hard in my determination to get rid of It. It had said 
that studying Discipleship had opened my eyes to Its presence. If the 
study of Discipleship could do that, what could not Discipleship do? 
Full of the thought of the cleansing power of Master's Love, my will 
arose in arms. "I will be a Disciple," I said aloud, in irrevocable 
resolution. 

It had vanished. U. G. 



Our Heavenly Father makes "straight paths for our feet," and, if 
we would GO IN His WAY, if we would straighten our wills to His will, 
and lay them side by side, there would be no crosses. But when the 
path that God points out goes north and south, and our stubborn wills 
lead us east and west, the consequence is "A CROSS." . . . 

ANNIE WEBB-PEPLOE. 



PARACELSUS 



Theosophists. In the mediccval ages it was the name by 
which were known the disciples of Paracelsus of the sixteenth 
century. (I sis Unveiled.) 

CARLYLE says somewhere that each age has its own faith and 
laughs most unwisely at the faith of its predecessor. It is 
not a question of whether or not a given age be an "age of faith." 
All ages have faith in abundance for their needs. The question 
is in what does it put the faith that is given it. Is it in the law and the 
prophets, the literal inspiration of the Bible, the authority of the church? 
Is it in the material world, the evidence of the physical senses and the 
power of the analytical, finite mind to deal with an infinite universe? 
Or is it in the inner light of the soul, the inspiration and noetic power 
of the heart ? Man stands on faith as he might stand on a ladder leading 
out of a pit. It is not the fault of the ladder if he uses it to go down 
deeper into the darkness, instead of up into the sunlight. 

The critical periods in man's history are the times when he is forced 
to realize that he has misplaced his faith and that the foundation on 
which he has planted his ladder is quicksand and not rock. Plant it 
somewhere he must by the inherent law of his being. It may be that 
the most honest spot in his horizon is the doubt in his own mind and 
then he puts his faith in those doubts. Obviously, at a time when the old 
foundations of men's faith have been destroyed, and they are seeking 
new, firm ground on which to build, it is of vital importance that they 
should be shown the truth and at least given the chance to build on it. 

"If the understanding be not thus cleared and illumined, it may catch 
every gleam of intuition and spiritual light, only to distort that gleam, 
to light with it the false pictures of the lower mind, thus filling the 
spiritual life with images of material things. Thus are painted the 
material heavens that fill so great a space in certain forms of faith, and 
thus it comes that the Most High is represented with purely human 
qualities, revengeful, jealous, threatening punishment like the despot of 
a down-trodden land. 

"From these erring theologies there comes ever a reaction and a 
protest, and, confounding the substance with the form, men of strong 
unillumined mind reject both faith and fable, and build up speculative 
materialisms, which increase the sum of human pain, the dread of death, 
the unendurable sorrow of separation. 

"For these ills there is no cure like wisdom, no available cure so 
potent as the ancient wisdom of India." * 



* Introduction to Bhagavad Gita. 



PARACELSUS 141 

Thus, when old forms are breaking up and before men's minds have 
re-crystallized, we would look to see an especial effort made by the Lodge 
to bring true ideals into the thought of the world. It is impossible to 
over-estimate the value and far-reaching influence of the presence in 
the world's thought of real ideals at such times. We have only to see 
how the ideas first promulgated by Madame Blavatsky through the 
Theosophical Society have colored every department of modern thought, 
to realize this. The mere fact that modern thought neither recognizes nor 
admits this is of no importance. It was not recognition for which she 
worked. The influence of her work on the thought the essential faith 
of future generations is incalculable. A man's faith is the foundation 
of all his action, not what he may call his faith but his real faith. As 
has been often pointed out, if a man says he believes in honesty and then 
steals, it is obvious that he really believes in stealing and not in honesty. 
So men's actions and the history of the world for centuries may be deter- 
mined in these critical periods when old faiths have been destroyed and 
men's minds are seeking new foundations on which to rest and new forms 
around which to crystallize. These new faiths are tested in action, it 
may be over centuries, are one by one found wanting and have to be 
abandoned in their turn. 

Born in 1493, the year after the discovery of the new world, a con- 
temporary of Martin Luther and the Protestant reformation, Paracelsus, 
like Madame Blavatsky, came at such a formative period in the world's 
history when the foundations of men's thought were being shattered. 
In both times, fixed ideas long held by the race were breaking up, 
destructive attacks were being made on the established church and new 
doctrines were arising. 

In the sixteenth century the thought of the world was ruled by 
narrowness and bigotry. Men were offered their choice between the 
corruption of Rome together with the bigotry that led to the Spanish 
Inquisition on the one hand, or on the other, rebellion, predestination, 
infant damnation and a no less intolerant bigotry. Later, in Madame 
Blavatsky's time, the choice lay between the blatant, intolerant material- 
ism of science and the still more intolerant believers in a jealous God and 
an actual Adam and Eve, created 4004 B. C, neither more nor less. The 
spirit of Christianity had been so completely lost in the letter of the 
Bible that to call in question a single biblical statement seemed to 
threaten the entire religious edifice. The man who could not believe 
that an actual whale swallowed an actual Jonah, was not permitted to 
believe in Christ. "The choice seemed forced between the extremes of 
superstition and materialism, and in consequence, religion was left with- 
out vitality, without the sense of immediate reality and the support of 
natural law." 

In spite of shining exceptions, the tendency of both times was to 
neglect entirely the inner life and the inner light and to base all con- 
clusions on external things. Nineteenth century science put its faith 



142 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

absolutely in the evidence of the physical senses notoriously unreliable 
and on the ability of the analytical mind to draw correct and all- 
inclusive deductions therefrom. Theology put its faith in the literal 
inspiration of the Bible or in the authority of the external church. In 
the time of Paracelsus "authority" was the great word. Everything had 
to be based on "authority." All arguments must proceed from estab- 
lished axioms drawn, not from experience but from the writings of some 
church Father or revered ancient whose works were universally accepted 
and whose least dicta were not to be questioned. Always it was to some- 
thing outside of himself that man must look. 

In both the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries that on which he 
had been accustomed to place his dependence was broken before his eyes. 
It then became a question of finding a substitute and of what that sub- 
stitute would be. Would narrowness be replaced by narrowness, dog- 
matism by dogmatism? Would man still worship an "absentee god" 
and must he remain blind to his own powers and his divine possibilities ? 

No one can study the life of Paracelsus without being struck by the 
remarkable similarity between his life and writings and the life and 
writings of Madame Blavatsky. Against the narrow dogmatism of their 
ages both hurled themselves with splendid courage. Both set themselves 
to shattering the armor-plated walls of prejudice to let in to men's dark- 
ened minds the light of the spirit. We feel in each case the same intense 
hatred of all hypocrisy and the same power of invective in denouncing it. 
Change the names and pronouns, and it would be hard to say whether the 
following was written of Paracelsus or of Madame Blavatsky : 

"He had the volcanic temperament needed to destroy the old order, 
which he knew to be corrupting the world, as he had the piercing insight 
which discerned the new order amidst a welter of troubled and heaving 
stagnation. But the stagnation had to be laid bare in all its mischievous- 
ness to be revealed for what it had become. The very men who had 
recognised the degeneracy of the Church were slow to admit its parallel 
in the realm of knowledge. . . . 

"He had a message to give which needed directness, a reveille to a 
new day, . . . and he shouted his message abroad in language that all 
could understand, and he shouted abroad as well his titanic wrath at 
those who, hearing, closed their ears and sought to stifle his appeal. 
There was no time for mincing courtesies ; the world needed a ne"w birth 
and had first to pass through the scathing fire of truth, the old earth and 
the old heaven had to be shrivelled up as a roll, and a new earth and 
heaven had to be discerned in their stead. Paracelsus set his torch to 
the waste-heap and scared its blind and dingy guardians, who denounced 
him for sacrilege." (Miss Stoddard: Life of Paracelsus.} 

On the constructive side, Madame Blavatsky and Paracelsus both 
taught the same great doctrine. Both gave their lives in ceaseless effort 
to free men from the bonds of ignorance and darkness and to reveal to 



PARACELSUS 143 

them the road to their own happiness. Both were denounced as char- 
latans, reviled, persecuted and slandered all their lives. 

"Thou earnest, O Lord, with the living word 
That shouldst make thy people free, 
But with mocking scorn, and with crown of thorn, 
They bore thee to Calvary." 

The servant is not greater than his Lord. Truly the world is slow to 
change its methods. 

Paracelsus, Phillipus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus, Bombast of 
Hohenheim, to give him his full name and title, was born in 1493 in 
Einsiedeln near Zurich. His father was a physician and Paracelsus him- 
self seems to have had a good education. At sixteen he entered the 
University of Basle, studying chiefly alchemy, medicine and surgery. 
Later he was taught by Johann Trithemius, of Sponheim, Abbot of St. 
Jacob at Wurzburg, said to have been one of the greatest adepts in 
alchemy and magic. This was followed by practical experience in the 
laboratory of another celebrated alchemist, Sigismund Fugger who owned 
mines in the Tyrol, where Paracelsus learned mineralogy and metallurgy. 

Miss Stoddart, in her Life of Paracelsus, gives an interesting por- 
trait of Abbot Trithemius: 

"Even as a young Benedictine he was celebrated for his learning, 
and was made Abbot of Sponheim when he was only twenty-one years 
old. From Sponheim he was transferred in 1506 to the monastery of 
St. Jacob close to Wurzburg, where he died in 1516. He had a great 
renown, and more especially for occult research, believing that the hidden 
things of nature were in the keeping of spiritual forces. Students came 
to him and if they proved themselves worthy were admitted to his study 
where his grim experiments were made. He was learned in all the 
knowledge of his day, influenced too by the Renaissance, a lover of art 
and poetry as well as a historian and a physician, . . . 

"Trithemius was accounted dangerous by the ignorant many. He 
had penetrated to some of nature's hidden things, amongst them to mag- 
netism and telepathy. In mystical experiments he had found himself 
able to read the thoughts of others at a distance. He used a cryptic 
language and had a secret chronology by which he interpreted the pro- 
phetic and mystical portions of the Bible and of cabalistic writings. 
Above all study he insisted on that of the Holy Scriptures, for which he 
had a deep devotion and which he required his students to examine with 
exact and reverent care. In this he influenced Paracelsus for life, for 
Bible study was one of the preoccupations of his later years, and in his 
writings we have constant witness not only to his mastery of its language, 
but of its deepest spiritual significance. 

"That he studied occultism with the abbot and was aware of its 
mysterious powers is also sure . . ." 

For ten years or so after this Paracelsus seems to have travelled 



144 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

very widely, covering most of Europe. According to one tradition he 
also went to India where he is said to have been taken prisoner by the 
Tartars. The Tartars took him to the Khan with whose son he subse- 
quently went to Constantinople. Apparently it was during this stay in 
the East that he was taught much of the Eastern Wisdom. Many of the 
Eastern tenets which appear in his writings, such as the sevenfold consti- 
tution of man, were, so far as we know, unknown in Europe at that time. 
His disciple, Van Helmont, says that he received the Philosopher's Stone 
in Constantinople in 1521, a statement that appears to be a guarded refer- 
ence to his initiation. In this connection Madame Blavatsky says in 
I sis Unveiled: 

". . . and although there had been alchemists before the days of 
Paracelsus, he was the first who passed through the true initiation, that 
last ceremony which conferred on the adept the power of travelling 
toward the 'burning bush' over the holy ground, and to 'burn the golden 
calf in the fire, grind it to powder, and strow it upon the water.' " 

Paracelsus then returned to Italy where he served as surgeon in the 
Imperial Army participating in a number of campaigns. Unfortunately 
we have no details of his military life. In 1525 he returned to Basle 
and two years later was appointed a professor of physic, medicine and 
surgery. His lectures created a profound sensation. To begin with, 
instead of the conventional Latin he lectured in German, doubtless much 
to the delight of his students and certainly to the great scandal of his 
tradition-loving colleagues. But far worse than that, his lectures em- 
bodied his own views, the results of his experience and knowledge 
instead of being based exclusively on the statements of the recognized 
and accepted authorities, Messrs. Galen and Avicenna. Apparently no 
one had dared for many years to express any opinion not founded on their 
works and the shock was correspondingly great. As Paracelsus wrote: 
"New stars appear and others disappear on the sky. New ideas appear 
on the mental horizon and old ideas are lost. If a new comet appears in 
the sky, it fills the hearts of the ignorant with terror; if a new and 
grand idea appears on the mental horizon, it creates fear in the camp of 
those who cling to old systems and accepted forms." 

His new ideas, grand and noble as they were, created not only fear 
but envy and rage. The rage was enormously increased when in his 
capacity of City Physician he secured the passage of a mediaeval Pure 
Food and Drugs act which placed the apothecaries of the city under his 
supervision as to the purity and genuineness of their drugs and the 
reasonableness of their prices. His marvellous success in effecting cures, 
moreover, did not tend to allay the professional jealousy of his fellow 
physicians. On the whole he seems to have drawn upon himself a storm 
of criticism and abuse. The storm came to a head when he criticized 
the City Council for a very unjust decision. A rich man, who had been 
given up to die as hopeless by the other physicians, called in Paracelsus. 
Paracelsus promptly cured him, so promptly in fact that the rich man 



PARACELSUS 145 

refused to pay the agreed fee on the eminently Teutonic ground that the 
cure had been effected so easily that the fee had not been earned. The 
City Council sided with the rich miser. The injustice of this so outraged 
Paracelsus, who cared nothing for money and treated the poor free, that 
he expressed his opinion of the Council. If he did this in his best style 
we can understand that he had to leave the city secretly immediately 
afterward. In power of invective, he is second only to H. P. B. 

For the next few years he travelled from place to place, coming to 
Nuremberg in 1530. The "regular" physicians promptly denounced him 
as a quack and a charlatan. (It all sounds very modern.) At his request 
some cases given up as incurable by the other physicians were put under 
his care. In a short time he cured a number of cases of elephantiasis 
which had been so sent him. Dr. Hartmann says that testimonials to this 
effect may be found in the archives of the City of Nuremberg, but history 
is silent as to the effect on the other Nuremberg physicians. There is no 
record of their inviting him to remain and instruct them. He wandered 
for a number of years more until, attracted by his growing fame, Duke 
Ernst of Bavaria invited him to Salzburg. There shortly afterward he 
died. There is some obscurity in regard to his death, a widely accepted 
version being that it resulted from a treacherous attack by thugs in the 
pay of jealous rivals. Madame Blavatsky mentions a tradition current 
among the Alsatians that he is not dead but, like Charlemagne, sleeps 
in his grave. 

It would be as impossible to summarize his writings in an article of 
this scope as to summarize The Secret Doctrine. It is in essence the 
same teaching. Madame Blavatsky says that to accuse her of plagiarism 
from Paracelsus, Eliphas Levi or Buddhism would be like accusing Max 
Muller of plagiarising in his Sacred Books of the East from the phil- 
osophy of the Brahmins. Obviously she regarded the identity of the 
teaching as self-evident. 

His work may be divided into three classes : 

First: His revolutionary teaching in regard to the methods by 
which knowledge was to be obtained. The ceaseless effort of Paracelsus 
was to draw men from reliance on external authority back to their own 
experience. He used medicine as one of the means to do this, bitterly 
denouncing the systems of his day, founded on distorted precepts from 
ancient writers, and insisting on experience as the great teacher. This 
seems so obvious to us that it is hard to believe that it was ever novel, 
not to say revolutionary. For "authority" he substituted the study of 
nature, and the inductive method as, so to speak, the introduction to the 
acquisition of knowledge. So far modern science goes with him and 
acknowledges its obligation by calling him "the forerunner of all scientific 
progress from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth." We are so accus- 
tomed to this method that it is almost impossible for us to realize how 
great was the change which its introduction wrought. Of course Para- 
celsus did not originate it any more than he originated any of the truths 



146 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

which he gave to his world. Roger Bacon's work, his Opus Magnus, 
although not published until the year after the death of Paracelsus, was 
written over two hundred and fifty years before. Let us say he redis- 
covered it, or if you will, that he only reaffirmed it. In view of the fact 
that the achievements of modern science are due to the adoption of his 
method, that would be distinction enough. 

It is his method, but only the lesser part of his method. The lower, 
the side that leads to knowledge of the material, has been developed and 
followed. The higher, that which might have led to knowledge of the 
divine, has been ignored. He never made the mistake that science makes 
to-day of thinking of experimental research as the only or even as the 
best way to acquire knowledge. Its limitations he saw clearly. Great as 
are the results that have flowed from it, they are as nothing compared 
to what may be expected when the world awakes to the possibilities of 
his teaching in regard to the direct perception of truth. "The cause of 
his (man's) ignorance is that he does not understand how to search in 
himself for the powers that are given him by God, and by which he may 
arrive at all the Wisdom, Reason and Knowledge concerning everything 
that exists, whether it be near him or far away." (De Inventione Artium.) 
In this respect he is still centuries in advance not only of his own time 
but of ours. Science might do well to inquire, for instance, how he came 
to know that man's body and the stars were composed of the same 
elements, three centuries before the discovery of the spectroscope. 

The rationale of his teaching lies in the fundamental unity of all 
souls with the Oversoul. All men are rays of the Divine Consciousness. 
Consciousness is one and not separate and hence all that is in the Divine 
Consciousness may be known to the consciousness of man. 

"Neither the external nor the astral man is the real man, but the 
real man in the soul in connection with the Divine Spirit. The astral soul 
is the shadow of the body, illumined by the spirit, and it therefore 
resembles man. It is neither material nor immaterial but partakes of the 
nature of each. The sidereal man is formed out of the same Limbus as 
the Macrocosm, and he is therefore able to participate in all the wisdom 
and the knowledge existing in the latter. He may obtain knowledge of 
all creatures, angels and spirits, and learn to understand their attributes. 
He may learn from the Macrocosm the meaning of the symbols by which 
he is surrounded, in the same manner as he acquires the language of his 
parents ; because his own soul is the quintessence of everything in crea- 
tion, and is connected sympathetically with the whole of nature; and 
therefore every change that takes place in the Macrocosm may be sensed 
by the ethereal essence surrounding his spirit, and it may come to the 
consciousness and the comprehension of man." 

Second : His outer contributions to scientific knowledge, particularly 
medical and chemical. For many of these he is given full credit. 

Paracelsus admittedly discovered hydrogen and probably oxygen. 
He discovered and used animal magnetism in the treatment of disease 



PARACELSUS 147 

two hundred and fifty years before Mesmer forced its acceptance on an 
incredulous and reluctant not to say abusive scientific world. In the 
sixteenth century he taught the indestructibility of matter, the persistence 
of life and by implication the conservation of energy. He knew and 
taught that matter, solid rock for instance, was permeable to certain kinds 
of light, a fact usually regarded as a purely modern discovery learned 
by the use of the X-ray. He first introduced modern methods in surgery 
and it is he rather than Pare who should be called "the father of modern 
surgery." He taught the chemical composition of the body and revolu- 
tionized the practice of medicine by the introduction of laboratory 
methods. Many of our present medicines were first used by him, such 
as laudanum, calomel, etc. He said that human beings and the stars were 
composed of the same substances, a statement for which he was duly 
ridiculed for centuries on the ground that it was manifestly impossible 
for him or any one else to know anything at all about the composition of 
the stars. The confirmation of his doctrine on this point by the com- 
paratively modern discovery of the spectroscope has not in the least 
interfered with the continuance of the ridicule in regard to many of his 
other statements about which the twentieth century scientist is fully as 
ignorant as his predecessor of the eighteenth was on the composition 
of the stars. 

Take, for instance, his assertion that the "sun shines through the 
rocks for the gnomes." Plainly this consists of two statements, first that 
the sun shines through rock and second that it does so for the gnomes. 
At the time when it was written men found it easier to believe in gnomes 
than that the sun could shine through rock, a fact contrary to all experi- 
ence and to the plain evidence of their senses. Now we know that even 
the densest matter is permeable to certain kinds of light and we take 
photographs through a silver plate. But fancy a modern scientist seriously 
discussing the existence of "gnomes"! The prejudice against even con- 
sidering such a possibility is so strong that the mere mention of the name 
in connection with his first statement is sufficient to cause the whole to 
be dismissed with a smile at Paracelsus's mediaeval superstition and ignor- 
ance, and the truth to which it alludes missed entirely. On what the 
modern positive disbelief in the possibility of the existence of "gnomes" 
rests beyond violent prejudice and the general habit of denial I do not 
know. Of course by "gnomes" Paracelsus did not mean little hump- 
backed men with long white beards and pick-axes, but beings who live 
in the earth as fishes live in the water. Wherever science has found the 
means to look it has found life. There are how many thousands of 
microscopic living creatures in a colorless drop of water? Why should 
it be assumed that there are no separate lives in the earth which as yet 
we have not found the means to see ? In any case whether or not there 
are "gnomes" it is obviously illogical for modern scientists, who admittedly 
have no evidence one way or the other, to make positive denials. 

As Paracelsus says in this connection, the possibilities of nature are 



148 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

not limited by man's knowledge of them. "That which is unexpected 
will in the future prove to be true, and that which is looked upon as 
superstition in one century will be the basis for the approved science of 
the next." (Philosophia Occulta.) 

Third : His philosophical and religious writings, for which the 
world owes him an immense, and as yet unpaid, debt of gratitude. This 
was his real work. He uses medicine, chemistry or whatever it may be 
of which he is writing as vehicles for his great spiritual doctrine. 

Naturally he does not use modern terminology and many of the 
truths in his writings are veiled more or less thinly by symbolism. He 
was a Rosicrucian and as such sworn to secrecy in regard to much that 
he knew. He did not write for the general eye. Many of his passages, 
most illuminating when once we have the key, are designedly meaningless 
without it. The reader who takes what he says in its dead letter sense 
and materializes it, will miss entirely the truth hidden in the symbolism 
or the allegory. As Dr. Hartmann points out, it takes a vast deal more 
credulity to believe that a man admittedly possessed of such knowledge 
as Paracelsus, would consent to write whole volumes of intolerable 
rubbish (which some of his books would be if taken in their literal 
meaning) than to believe that great spiritual truths were thus hidden 
in allegories intended to be understood only by those who possessed the 
key in their own hearts. 

We may get an idea of the extent to which Rosicrucian writing has 
been materialized by contrasting the currently accepted meaning of such 
words as "Alchemy," "Magic," "Astronomy," etc., with what Paracelsus 
meant by them. Magic we identify with witchcraft, and dismiss it as the 
crassest superstition. Alchemy we regard as the effort to make gold out 
of baser metals, and smile at its "obvious futility." Astronomy we limit 
to the study of the stars as physical bodies. 

To Paracelsus, Magic was supreme wisdom. "Magic is great hidden 
wisdom, just as that which is commonly called human reason is a great 
folly. To use wisdom, no external ceremonies and conjurations are re- 
quired. The making of circles and the burning of incense are all tom- 
foolery and temptation, by which only evil spirits are attracted. The 
human heart is a great thing, so great that no one can fully express its 
greatness. It is imperishable and eternal, like God. If we only knew all 
the powers of the human heart nothing would be impossible to us." 
(De Peste. Lib. I.) 

By magical powers he meant spiritual power. "The power which 
enabled the saints to work miracles is still alive and is accessible to all." 
"It may be acquired by obtaining more spirituality, and making one's 
self capable to see and to feel the things of the spirit." "Christ and the 
prophets and the apostles had magical powers, acquired less by their 
learning than by their holiness. They were able to heal the sick by the 
laying on of their hands and to perform many other wonderful but natural 
things." In this belief that the miracles of Christ were literally true and 



PARACELSUS 149 

at the same time in entire accord with natural laws as yet unknown to us, 
he was again far in advance, not only of his, but of our own time. 

He believed these "magical powers" to be latent in all men. They 
are the inherent powers of the soul and will develop with the development 
of the soul. "The exercise of true magic does not require any cere- 
monies, ... it only requires a strong faith in the omnipotent power of 
all good, that can accomplish everything if it acts through a human mind 
who is in harmony with it, and without which nothing useful can be 
accomplished. True magic power consists in true faith, but true faith 
rests in spiritual knowledge, and without that kind of knowledge there 
can be no faith." 

He might have added in the words of the Gita "He who is perfected 
in devotion will find spiritual knowledge springing up in himself in no 
long time." 

But in insisting as he does on the spiritual character of magic and 
on its foundation in faith, he does not in any way detract from the reality 
or potency of magical powers. The heart of all his writing is the ascend- 
ancy of the inner over the outer, of the spirit over matter. Through the 
attainment of true spirituality, the purification of the will and the heart 
of man, his union with the divine spirit within him, all power may be 
given him. In his Philosophia Sagax he says: 

"Faith has a great deal more power than the physical body. You 
are visible and corporeal but there is still an invisible man in you, and 
that invisible man is yourself too. . . . True faith has wonderful powers, 
and this fact proves that we are spirits and not merely visible bodies. 
Faith accomplishes that which the body would accomplish if it had the 
power. Man is created with great powers; he is greater than heaven 
and greater than the earth. He possesses faith, and faith is a light more 
powerful and superior to natural light, and stronger than all creatures. 
All magic processes are based upon faith. By faith and imagination we 
may accomplish whatever we may desire. The power of faith overcomes 
all spirits of Nature, because it is a spiritual power, and spirit is higher 
than nature. Whatever is grown in the realm of nature may be changed 
by the power of faith." 

It is this ascendancy of spirit over matter, the inner rather than the 
outer, the essence rather than the form, that he strives ceaselessly to 
present. To him, all forms were but the vehicles of powers and expres- 
sions of them, their "signatures." To those who know how to read 
them, each form is a revelation of the character of the force that brings 
it into being. Thus by astronomy and the "stars" he means, not the 
physical stars that we see, but the cosmic forces of which they are an 
outer manifestation. These forces are universal and operative in the 
heavens, in the earth and in the constitution of man. 

" 'Saturn' is not only in the sky, but also deep in the earth and in the 
ocean? What is Venus but the 'Artemesia' that grows in your garden? 
What is 'iron' but Mars ? That is to say, Venus and Artemesia are both 



150 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

manifestations of the same cause. What is the human body but a con- 
stellation of the same powers that formed the stars in the sky ? " 

This makes it clear that when in other places Paracelsus speaks of 
the influence of a star on men, he does not mean the planet we see but 
the operation in man of the particular universal force to which that 
particular planet corresponds. 

His definition of Alchemy is likewise very different from our idea 
of it as a search for material gold. "To grasp the invisible elements, to 
attract them by their material correspondences, to control, purify, and 
transform them by the living power of the Spirit this is the true 
alchemy." 

And again "The Alchemist is one regenerated in the spirit of Jesus 
Christ." 

A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump, and it would be difficult to 
overestimate the effect of the presentation of his teaching during such a 
formative period of the world's thought. 

Like a beacon light in the darkness of infant damnation, predestina- 
tion, doubt and denial, stands out the great doctrine of the inherent 
divinity and perfectibility of man. "And it is a great truth, which you 
should seriously consider, that there is nothing in heaven or upon earth 
which does not also exist in Man, and God who is in heaven exists also 
in man, and the two are but One. 

"Before man is born, and afterwards, his soul is not perfect, but it 
may be perfected through the power of the Will. 

"Physical man takes his nutriment from the earth ; the sidereal man 
receives the states of his feelings and thoughts from the stars; but the 
spirit has his wisdom from God. The heat of the fire passes through an 
iron stove, and likewise the astral influences, with all their qualities, pass 
through man. They penetrate him as rain penetrates the soil, and as 
the soil is made fruitful by the rain, likewise man's soul is made fruitful 
by them ; but the principle of supreme wisdom of the universe penetrates 
into the center, illuminates it, and rules over all. 

"Hail may destroy the fruits of the earth, evil planetary influences 
may be attracted by the soul of the earth and cause epidemic diseases, 
ana the spiritual center in man may be devoid of wisdom and darkness 
reign in its place. The earth, the animal kingdom, and physical man 
are subject to the government of the stars; but the spiritual man rules 
over the stars and over the elements, and conquers the worlds without 
and the world within by the wisdom that comes from God." 

J. F. B. MITCHELL. 



PARENTHOOD AND 
DISCIPLESHIP 



A MOTHER'S EXPERIENCE 

IT "chanced" that an old family friend, who is also a really great 
doctor, came to the resort where I was living. My dear husband 
had died there, and I had stayed on month after month ; he seemed 

nearer to me there than at home, and that helped to reconcile me to 
staying on there, "sacrificing my mother-love to building up my health 
for my children's sake." When I heard that our doctor was at the hotel I 
went to see him. I knew my family would trust his report, though they 
had not been impressed by the warnings of the resort physicians, which I 
had sent to them. The family felt that I ought not to be separated so 
long from my children. 

"Dear Doctor," I said, "it is fortunate you are here. Now you can 
tell Ethel and the rest they'll believe you that, while I want to go back 
to the children and to get rid of poor Fraulein, who is making little 
German girls of them, I just can't, for the children's sake. I have no 
right to endanger their health." . . . 

"Well, well, Mercy, my dear, that does sound pretty bad. Here you 
are, hating with all your big heart what Germany now stands for, and yet 
letting a hireling make little Frauleins of your daughters. Ethel did tell 
me of the bad reports given on your case by the resort physicians. In 
fact, she begged me to send for you as soon as I arrived, but I thought 
I'd let you come to me you would have more trust in my diagnosis and 
prognosis. Now I want you to remember my one rule, Mercy you 
don't have to come to me, but, when you do, you've got to do what I say. 
Will you?" 

Although I was not sure whether it was my heart or my appendix 
that he would find had gone wrong, on top of my weak lungs, I knew he 
would find me in too serious a condition to go home, where I was not fit 
to be, and it would be such a relief to have the family letters stopped 
yes, and my stupid, old-fashioned, silly conscience just made to quit 
talking. So I agreed to his requirement. 

Doctor was certainly painstaking and careful. He gave me several 
examinations, and kept me under observation for a week. Then he 
promised to give me his decision in three days. The fateful morning 
came. I was so upset that I had my maid telephone him to come to my 
apartment. I was too weak to rise from the lounge when he came in 
my heart was going so. 

"Well, well, Mercy, my dear, this won't do at all ; this is all wrong." 



152 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

"Doctor, I know you, I trust you, I will be brave ; but I must know 
the truth the full truth." 

"Yes, my dear, you ought to be brave, coming from the stock you 
do. I'll give you the truth and it will be bitter truth ; but will you keep 
your promise to do what I say ?" 

"We keep our promises, Doctor." 

"Humph ! You do when you remember them, and I won't let you 
forget this. Get up and dress dress fast for your train leaves in three 
hours, and you haven't much time." 

"To a higher altitude is it as bad as that?" 

" 'Higher altitude' I hope so, for you're going home." 

I sat up and gasped the Doctor says I glared, but that is not 
true "Home!" 

"Yes. There's nothing physically the matter with you. You can do 
the family washing if you want to, now. Get up and get busy. I will wire 
Ethel to take Fraulein to Mrs. Max Zimmer, who has been trying for 
months to lure her away from you. A telephone message to Mrs. Zimmer 
and Ethel's motor will get Fraulein out of your family and into a better 
paying position before you reach home. So you must catch the train, 
somehow." 

I would have had hysterics if I had not been afraid of Doctor 
there was no telling what he might not have done to me. And so it was 
that I caught the train, and went home to my children and my duties. 

Ethel met me and took me to my own apartment and escaped as 
quickly as she could. I was alone with my children. The little girls 
looked at me. I looked at them. Not one of the four of us spoke. They 
were politely interested, yet their glances made me conscious that my hat 
was not on straight. 

I wondered what I should say after the complete failure of my 
attempts to be demonstrative, in the face of their manifestations of 
physical discomfort, and personal discomfiture, when I had clasped them 
close. I could hear them thinking: "Now what would Fraulein want us 
to say, or to do?" Yet I was their mother; they were (and are!) "my" 
children. This may read like the scenario of a "movie-drama," yet I am 
afraid it represents the situation between the average child and the 
average parent. The circumscribing facts may differ, but how different 
is the inner attitude? 

My husband's illness had taken, and had kept me, away. Then the 
possibility of my having acquired tuberculosis had kept me longer away. 
Fraulein Mueller was "a perfect wonder." She had "a veritable genius 
for training children" and I was so incompetent besides having my 
duty to my husband. 

The new regime began. At first it was very simple. All I had to 
do was to stand by and let the machinery revolve. When I was in doubt 
one of the children would say : "But Fraulein always told us to do this" or 
"never would let us do that." By following out the methods to which 



PARENTHOOD AND DISCIPLESHIP 153 

the children were accustomed I found that I had time to get about among 
my friends much more than I had hoped for. But one night all three of 
the little girls had croup. I was so frightened that I insisted on having 
our Doctor, who no longer made family visits, come to see them himself. 
He wrote a prescription and then said: "This won't do any real good. 
The trouble is not with the children ; it is with you. Children never get 
croup parents give it to them." 

My hand flew to my throat had I croup ? 

"There's nothing the matter with your body. You're not even a 
'croup-carrier' you're a croup-giver. You neglect your children, and 
you let them eat what they please and eat altogether too much, even 
if it were the right thing to eat. Croup always makes me suspect that 
children have been eating like pigs only with less sense." 

"But I was doing what Fraulein did and she kept the children 
well." 

"Perhaps though I doubt it. But you are not even doing what she 
did. You are doing what the children say she did. You have been 
neglecting them worse than you did when you stayed away from them, 
and that was bad enough." 

I began to cry, but Doctor began to scold, so, of course, I stopped. 
(I wonder whether a woman ever cries publicly if she knows that crying 
will not do any good?) Before the Doctor got through with me I was 
scared enough to take notice, and to do for the children what he wanted 
me to do about diet, and hours, and general health rules. 

Then my troubles began. The children were first impudent and 
then disobedient. "Fraulein" was hurled at me until I really wished she 
had never existed, but my hating her did not make the children love me. 
All my ease and comfort were gone. The children and I bickered and 
quarreled and wept together in a most disgraceful way. We were all 
unhappy, and things kept getting worse. I demanded a governess, but 
Tom, Ethel's big, phlegmatic husband, who was our trustee, put his foot 
down and said I could not afford it and there was no appeal. 

One day when things were what my dear husband would have 
called "just plain hell," I went to see Jessie Troy, a schoolmate whose 
quiet home and loving daughters were my envy. 

"Jessie, I've come for advice. Everything is going wrong with me 
and my girls. Everything is right with you and your girls. How do you 
do it? Tell me, please," and I threw myself into her warm arms and 
wept again. 

"Stop crying, Mercy, for you are going out with me and it won't do 
to go looking like a wreck." 

I stopped, and asked, "Where are we going?" 

"Where I learned how to make a home and to bring up my girls. I 
want you to get the teaching straight and not through me but hurry, 
dear, or we shall be late and that would be the wrong way to begin." 

Before I really knew what had happened we were in Jessie's car, 

11 



154 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

hurrying down town and over into a poor and dilapidated part of New 
York. We stopped in front of a building that might have been a warehouse 
or factory, and went upstairs into a dim and quiet little chapel. Even 
now I cannot talk about it. It would be telling something too intimate 
to say what that chapel meant to me, even the first time I went into it. 

There was a service that seemed to open my heart to the childhood 
power of prayer with the certainty of getting help. Then there was an 
address or sermon. The first one I heard might as well have been in 
Greek, except that it made me want to hear more. I went often, and I 
discovered that one reason why I did not understand at first was 
because it was all so simple and so practical that I overlooked its power 
and truth. Then, too, the teaching hurt. It made one realize that Our 
Lord is not a sort of gaseous spirit, somewhere out in the starry space, 
with no power even of knowing us. It made one feel that He is a loving 
friend, loving one, anxious to help one, and only prevented because one 
will not let Him. Soon the teaching made me want to let Him help me, 
and then I found I had to "do something about it." 

This "doing something," I grew to believe, meant accepting the fact 
that God had put me where I ought to be, and had given me the right 
things to do. At first, when I found myself growing interested in the 
life and the teaching at that little chapel, I longed to work there I 
wanted to lead classes and teach and be busy about church work. But in 
time, and it took time, too, for how I did hate to take up the commonplace, 
homely duties surrounding me, I began to see that my chance for Heaven 
lay in "doing something" about being a real Mother. 

There were days yes, months when I still regarded my own 
children as deadly nuisances, barriers in the way of my making spiritual 
progress, but I could not escape the obvious the Master loves us, He 
loves me, He gave me my children to help me, and unless and until I so 
accepted them I could not get His Help. So, in time, I grew to be more 
and more of a mother and, in time, I liked it better and better. 

It is a pity that parenthood is being so commonly dodged nowadays, 
for there is unlimited riches to be got out of it ; not only in the way of 
pleasure, but in the way of one's own training. Indeed, as one progresses 
in a courageous experimentation in assuming parental responsibility 
(however out-of-date this may be) one begins to wonder whether the 
parent does not get more out of it than the child. On the material plane, 
the child of right parents seems to get everything, and to have the chance 
of repayment only in what he may do in turn for his children. One 
sometimes wonders how God may regard the relationship. If one really 
believes that soul-evolution be the secret of life, parenthood at once 
becomes a very great opportunity. Our Lord speaks of "little children." 
In the East, we are told, "chela" means child. Perhaps parenthood may 
be a means of teaching one how to be a chela or disciple by conscious 
experimentation. 

Yet "Other people's children" seem to be more interesting nowadays 



PARENTHOOD AND DISCIPLESHIP 155 

than one's own. This is indicated by two common tendencies : not having 
children, or, else, when one has children, putting the responsibility for 
them upon others. The "slacker" in parental responsibility is a "slacker," 
whether he or she lives on the East Side of New York, and expects the 
public school to do everything, from soup to shoes, from dentistry to a 
doctorate diploma, and all without expense; or whether one lives on a 
great estate on Long Island, and sees one's children only at the "proper" 
time and in the "proper" manner. 

I sent my children to the Sunday school of the little church, as I 
grew to know it better. "I really don't see how you can do it, Mercy," 
Cousin Caroline said to me one day. "At St. Crcesus' they would meet 
just the children you want them to know, while down there in the slums." 
She threw up both hands. 

"But they are taught religion there," I said. 

"Nonsense,"said my cousin, "that won't help them when they are 
debutantes." 

I found that most of my friends had an uncomfortable feeling about 
having their children "too religious." I suppose that it might seem 
dangerous in the case of uncontrolled and lawless children ; for their 
little minds are logical, they are keen observers, and they might become 
critical of their elders. This is bad for the child, and it is also most 
uncomfortable for the parent even if the criticism be based on the truth. 

One hears so much in these days about the "handicap of existing 
economic organization," whatever that may mean. Then other women 
say "What can you expect of children when women are denied the 
ballot?" Others talk largely of their responsibility to Society or the 
State, always putting emphasis on their sacrifice. Still others object to 
"anything that will make a child different." "You must let your girls 
mix with other children, so that they will know more of life," 

Even the women who try to take an interest in their children, but 
who cling to "scientific pedagogy" or "giving the child a broad human- 
itarian outlook" have to admit their helplessness. "Mercy, you can't 
expect womanliness in an age of athletics and of growing democracy 
the best we can do is to strive for efficiency." 

So many people want their children to be just like all other children, 
yet the words "my child" are more than a shibboleth of melodrama. 
Probably they vocalize, with the "my" in big capitals, the first surge of 
feeling that comes to most parents on the birth of their first child. 
When the child is turned over to others, municipal or personal employees, 
the sense of personal possession remains, although personal responsibility 
be forgotten. "It would hurt me too much to strike my child," says the 
average humanitarian and hysterical mother of the XXth Century. She 
says it with an unconcealed sense of superiority over the "brute of the 
mid- Victorian" (and "mid-Egyptian" and "mid" commonsense period of 
any age) who "beats" his or her child. Yet that mother does not know 
how truthfully she portrays herself. It would hurt her, it should hurt her, 



156 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

to punish her child, but she ought not to be thinking about herself, but 
rather what is good for the child. If she thought of the souls involved, 
her soul and the child's soul, it might lead to a reversal of attitude. 

Looking back over the furnace of experience, through which my little 
ones and I have passed together, I wonder why more people do not see the 
parallelism in "parenthood and discipleship," and do not seek to use the 
help such recognition might bring, in getting training for themselves as 
they train their children in drawing closer to the Master, as they draw 
their children closer to them. I have been forced by life itself and its 
sorrows to believe that my relations to God and my neighbor are the only 
things that count, and that what happens to me, as and for myself, is 
utterly unimportant more than that, becomes deadly uninteresting 
even to me ! "Discipleship" does seem to be what one is here for call it 
"the Path" or "serving God" words do not count. Actions do count, 
and that is where we stick. Like most average Americans yes, like most 
XXth Century people I had grown to hate rules and restrictions, and to 
despise experience and traditions. "The antiquity that survives is of 
interest, not because of its age, but for its truth" meant nothing to me. 
If anything had stood the test of ages it must, therefore, necessarily, be 
out-of-date. Rules and restrictions had the sanction of ages, so "into 
the scrap-heap with 'em," as my nephew says. 

Yet the experiment of trying to be a faithful mother, has led me to 
the belief that life is nothing but Rule, and that this is unescapable fact 
on any plane, in any relation of life, however much we may kick at the 
pricks. 

In my first reaction against Fraulein's regime I abolished all rules. 
I cried out, "Let love be our rule !" But I found that this did not work. 
My "middle-sized bear" girl cured me by her logic. I had talked a great 
deal about doing things for love, and for the sake of those whom we love 
best. She was guilty of a very serious act of disobedience, deliberate, yet, 
curiously enough, not defiant. 

"You said we should do things for the one we loved best. I thought 
it over. I know I love myself best better than you or Baby or Sister, 
and of course more than God. He's too big to love. So I did what I 
wanted to for love's sake." Her honesty is rare, but I believe her feeling 
to be otherwise. 

That children have fancies but lack imagination is one lesson I have 
learned. This calls for laying out plans for them, for fancies are poor 
guides, and impulses worse. I found that it would not answer to follow 
my impulses. I had to weigh the consequences of my decisions, or trouble 
ensued. It took too much time to make plans anew each day, so it became 
easier, all around, to set up rules as a sort of recurrent planning. It was 
easier to insist upon punctuality than to fuss and fume in getting the 
children off to school each morning and it kept them on time when to 
rules were added penalties for breaking them. 

That rules are a moral prophylaxis for children came out last year. 



PARENTHOOD AND DISCIPLESHIP 157 

Some very little girls were found to have been making friends that were 
not only "impossible" but terribly dangerous. They met at moving 
picture theatres, while the different parents supposed their daughters were 
interchanging home visits. My oldest girl, then only 13, escaped because 
"Mother insists on my coming right straight home from school, no matter 
what happens," as she told Cousin Caroline one day, when that imposing 
old lady tried to carry the child off with her. Yet Caroline is loudest in 
her protests that my regime of rule is destroying all individuality in my 
girls. 

Even the most irresponsible cousin or parent prefers a child to be 
well-mannered an ill-bred child does so reflect upon one's own family! 
And what are good manners but observances of Rule ? In Turkestan the 
American College Expedition found that it was a compliment and courtesy 
to eat out of one dish, using one's fingers as utensils; while America 
prefers forks and spoons. The difference is one of Rule, not of inherent 
and ethical distinction. It would have been unmannerly to have disre- 
garded the laws of hospitality. All that parent and state can really do is 
to implant knowledge of rules of some kind in a child's memory, and to 
imprint them on its will and conduct. Do we use this principle in 
preparing our children for life? Or do we try to let them avoid the 
unavoidable ? There is no escaping from Rule we do not even eat when 
or what we please we follow rules, and, if we wanted to disregard them, 
the family or our very servants would prevent us. 

What are fashions but rules? 

What is patriotism but consciousness of a civil Rule under which we 
live, and which we must support ? 

"Ignorance of the law is no defence" is a legal axiom, which Tom 
likes to quote to me. It is certainly the mainspring of our social relations. 
Because we recognize the infallibility of this principle, we seek to 
preserve our children's social status by training them as Disciples of 
Convention ; Chelas of Madame Grundy. 

Lots of women, I know, would deny this, but even they are rule- 
bound; convention-devotees. It may be that they are bound to the 
"up-to-the-minute-convention" that they "defy tradition," or "disregard 
established conventions," but, poor dears, they are the most slavishly, 
stupidly rule-ridden people I know, because they are not volunteers, but 
have been drafted, and drafted without having had any real intention to 
serve. 

The very ability to maintain physical existence depends upon 
observance of Rule. If I lean too far out of my apartment window I shall 
fall to the pavement 200 and more feet below, so I adopt the Rule of not 
leaning out too far, and I teach my children the Rule not to lean out at all. 

Take it in the "education" of our children rules do rule. I should 
prefer to use the old New England term "Schooling," for what we call 
"education" I believe to be only a small part of real education. Even 
the school that stands most firmly on the unstable platform of "developing 



158 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

the individual expression" has its rules which must be observed and even 
obeyed. The non-observer of rules ends with utter loss of freedom and 
generally ends in one of four places, jail, asylum, hospital or a prematurely 
occupied grave. 

These generalities may explain why it is that I have persisted in 
keeping my children under Rule and why it was that, as my love for them 
grew, I increased the number and nicety of the rules, and enforced more 
exactly their observance. Physically, the child progresses through an 
evolution and development before he or she becomes a self-supporting 
organism why should we think it possible to ignore this principle in other 
relations of life? Why should I dare to let one of my little girl's 
"temperamental peculiarities" govern her conduct, when I have worked so 
hard to make her walk aright, and to keep her backbone straight? What 
difference is there, I wonder, in God's eyes, between a twisted backbone or 
a twisted will, if both were twisted into ineffectiveness through parental 
neglect? In either case there was a "temperamental peculiarity" to start 
with. 

The law of the land will not let me deprive my child of physical food 
to the point of starvation. I should be jailed and should lose my control of 
my child if I persisted in disregarding this man-made law. It frightens 
me often when I ask myself what is God's law, and its penalties, in 
regard to inner and spiritual sustenance ? 

This is one reason why I have made my daughters go to church. 
People who know that I belong to the T. S. ask me how I reconcile the 
principle of tolerance, with making my children go to church when they 
do not want to go. It is because I do not believe that a child has evolved 
enough to know what it really wants, nor what is really best for it. By 
some marvel of Omniscience I have been deemed, with all my faults, the 
one right person to give my children guidance. I certainly am not going to 
put into my place a 14-year-old girl, however much I may admire her. So 
I send her to church to give her a structural form for future expression. 

In civil law, in mechanical law, there is no such thing as conditional 
or delayed obedience obedience must be instant and exact. I may not 
wan* to drive my car on the right-hand side of the road, to use one 
illustration. I may want to lean out of the window too far "just for an 
instant" but no consideration is shown to my intention to obey the law 
of gravity a little later I simply splash on the pavement. So it is that I 
do not dare to let my children obey tardily, nor do I excuse disobedience. 
An Army woman I have heard of taught her sons that tardy obedience 
was "disobedience plus cowardice." Is there an uglier vice in man or 
woman than cowardice ? 

While I hope my daughters may never be permitted to vote (even 
should they desire it, which Heaven forbid), yet I know that they will 
have both legal and social relations to observe in the future, when they are 
personally responsible for their own acts. So it is that I try now to train 
them to be considerate of others. It is "my" apartment, but if I let my 



PARENTHOOD AND DISCIPLESHIP 159 

children disregard the comfort of those in the apartment below us by 
temperamental expression in jumping on the floor, I shall be preparing 
them to disregard the laws, later, when the punishment must fall on 
them and not upon me. Yet it will have been my neglect or cowardice 
which trained them as law-breakers-in-embryo. I say "cowardice" 
because it is so often hard for me to be strict with them. To be sure 
strictness may sometimes make them think less lovingly of me. What 
of that? I am here to prove my love for them, not to try to get a false 
love from them today, which they will have to pay for in loss and 
suffering tomorrow. I remember the first time I whipped one of my 
daughters after I had returned to the family. Right in the middle of the 
punishment I stopped and fled, for I found myself enjoying the relief to 
my temper in chastising the child. I had a long fight with myself before 
I could see that the fault was not in using punishment for the child's 
good, but that I needed to correct my attitude, to control my temper. 
This was no excuse, however, for depriving the child of training at the 
least possible cost to her. 

Which is better to make a child eat properly, even at the cost of a 
little physical pain or to let her wreck her health later, when she will 
suffer more and will perhaps bring into the world children who will 
suffer? If I have to whip a child into good habits now, I would rather 
do so than let pain and disgrace whip her without surcease in her maturity. 
"I can't make Alice stop eating candy" wails one friend of mine, whose 
own wayward aunt is never spoken of nowadays we do not know 
whether she is dead or alive. 

Children do grow to do things automatically and by habit, just by 
doing them, and it works vice versa. My little girls, as they grow, will 
have growing with them the habits of thinking of others, of expecting 
penalties for wrong acts and of being obedient. Are not these better 
habits than selfishness, gluttony and disobedience which will be punished 
terribly if carried on into maturity? We are members of the animal 
kingdom whether we like it or not. It made my little girls furious to 
find human beings so classified, when I took them to the Natural History 
Museum. Yet people nowadays seem to forget this. There is no animal 
which will not take what it wants, when it can get it without obvious 
risk. What good is it to tell Alice that the candy she eats now is bad for 
her health later? She cannot understand. She would understand a 
severe whipping combined with the certain knowledge that others would 
come as often as she broke the rule and ate forbidden candy. 

But what has all this to do with discipleship ? I must be very stupid 
if I have not made it clear that because I love my children I have learned 
to lay my yoke upon them, to make them conform to my Rule for their 
own dear little sakes. Does the Master love less courageously than I 
love? Has He less wisdom? Should I not rejoice when He lays His 
yoke on me, for I, assuredly, should be able to comprehend the love 
behind the seeming severity which will persist only until I have learned to 



160 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

conform to the plan He has laid out for me. I did not begin to teach my 
youngest daughter to read out of an unabridged dictionary. My three 
children do not use the same study books nor follow identical regimes. 
It would be folly to expect me to explain these distinctions or differences 
to them. I find that it is bad for them to give them reasons for my 
insisting on a given rule. I must inculcate obedience, not complacent 
compliance. 

Why then should I dare to consider the Master less wise than I am 
and ask Him to make everything clear to me? There is not one of my 
dear little girls who would not change her own rule of life if I allowed 
her to do so. There is not one of them old enough, nor wise enough, to 
make it safe to let her make her own rules. Do I know more than God? 
Would it be safe to trust me to order my own Fate ? 

In training and educating a child one starts with simple and 
elementary lessons. If one wishes to secure perfection, later, one insists 
upon an absolute nicety in observance, and an unfailing exactness in 
these niceties, before progress is permitted. I could not have used my 
musical ability to solace my husband's last days with me if my own mother 
and teachers had not been so "merciless" towards me, in insisting upon 
those many and painful hours of "stupid" and "useless" practicing. I do 
the same with my daughters. Has God a lower standard of excellence of 
attainment for His children than we have for ours ? While I have virtues 
in embryo, and good qualities lacking in technical excellence, why should I 
complain if Life holds me back that I may keep on practicing until I am 
capable of learning more difficult lessons? While I cannot be certain of 
controlling my tongue, is it not well that I should suffer from Cousin 
Caroline's, as a warning of what I might become if I persist in her ways? 

Parenthood has taught me to know something more than I had 
dreamed I could ever know of what it may mean "to praise, to reverence, 
and to serve God, our Lord, and by this means to save his (one's) soul." 
On the other hand the seeking to be a disciple has helped me to be a better 
parent. One great fact stands out in both one must be under Rule to 
live. 

"Under rule" why that means never letting up even for an instant. 
Take it in the Army a Regular is never permitted to "let up." A tired 
man in civil life may sleep on duty and be forgiven, but in war time the 
sleeping sentry is shot. Even in our own national democracy, in war time 
both volunteers and drafted men go under the same strict law under 
which the Regulars fight. We are taught, by clergymen and biologists 
alike, that life is war. So we ought to be Regulars, too, ought we not? 
"Regulars" never "let up" when on duty. I do not believe we can afford 
to, either. I tried to teach my little girls that "let ups are horrid" their 
own verdict at the end of the experiment. I gave them a "free day" 
recently. We were off in the country where no harm could ensue. No 
plans were made for the day ; no rules were in force. We were all tired 



PARENTHOOD AND DISCIPLESHIP 161 

and bored and cross by night fall. It was a wasted day and we none of 
us liked it. Is a wasted, unplanned, lawless life any happier? 

Of course the Devil is out of fashion nowadays. I did not believe in 
his existence until I read a wonderful Life of Jesus, by a great Oxford 
professor, who made it clear that, if we postulate Christ as a centre of 
divine Consciousness for good, we must postulate as a counterbalance, or 
"equal and opposite reaction," Satan, as a centre of consciousness for evil 
and man with his freedom of choice must take sides. Christ does over- 
come Satan single-handed, but even Christ cannot save us, when we join 
forces with Satan. Is this horribly old-fashioned doctrine? It is simple 
fact to any one who, inspired by unselfish love, has fought the Devil to 
save a child. There is, I believe, something that must be like a 
miniature Devil, trying to get into each one of us, and feed on our souls. 
It seems easier for the Devil to get into a child unless its parents keep 
on the watch. I get very, very tired sometimes. I feel as if I must let 
something go. "Don't be too hard on the child, ma'am," my old nurse 
used to say to my mother. "I won't be," my mother would reply, "and 
so I will be hard on myself and punish the child." How few women 
nowadays are so wise, so courageous, so loving. It is "hard on the child" 
if the parent relaxes discipline and to do that is so easy for the parent. 
One's own personal Devil is ready to whisper sophistry, and to plead for 
"tenderness," but it is "tenderness" for the Devil and not for the child. 

At a meeting of the New York Branch of the T. S., which I 
attended, a young man told a story which has more than once nerved me 
not to "let up" on a naughty child for the child's sake. He said that one 
of his sisters had trained her dog very carefully. Part of the Rule of the 
dog's life was that it must not get up on a sofa. Once in a while the 
younger sister would yield to the puppy's pleading, and invite him to lie 
on the sofa beside her. The dog never accepted this as a privilege, but 
took it as a precedent, and would then get up on the sofa uninvited. It 
would take a month of punishment and training to make up for a single 
moment's soft-hearted relaxation. Children are very much like puppies 
in that sort of thing. One dares never relax that is if one is working for 
their happiness, rather than one's own momentary comfort. 

If it makes me sad and lonely not to be able to relax with my children, 
during their training, what must be the sadness and loneliness of the 
Master that He may not seek solace in relaxing towards me! That 
nerves me to try to hasten my own training, that I may "grow-up" and 
become His companion-child, as I know my children will become towards 
me. But all my love cannot change the evolutionary Law. I must wait 
for them to grow, and I, in turn, must wait and trust until I "grow" too. 

This rule of no-relaxing as proof of a parent's love brings one up 
hard against an "up-to-the-minute" prejudice. Most of the parents of 
my acquaintance believe in "free periods" in a child's day, week, month 
and year. It is, perhaps, a "free period" for the parent, but it certainly 
is bad for the child. I have grown to wonder if the real meaning of 



162 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

"vacation" may not be "vacated by the soul, but occupied by the Devil." 
I do not always succeed but I do try to keep track of every moment of 
my children's lives. If I am not with them, I want them to be doing 
something that has been planned, and to be doing that something right. 
If they are not alone, I want them to be with some one whom I trust, and 
of whom I approve as a beneficial influence in their lives. Now if I have 
learned this to be best, why deny equal wisdom and greater power to 
God in planning my life in detail? When I believe this, I do not care 
about troubles or worries, or even sorrow, for I see them all as part of 
God's planning for His child. When my bills seem heavy, and my 
finances hopeless, it does not mean to me "hard luck" it means that I 
still need to learn how to plan and to save and to utilize the gifts I have, 
before I may get others. 

Some of my friends, who know that my children are under a non- 
relaxing Rule, tell me that I am Prussian in my ideals. They say they 
cannot understand why, if I want Prussian methods used with my 
children, I should have sent Fraulein away, and taken so much care on 
myself. And while my intuition and experience both declare to me that I 
took the right course, it is difficult to explain my reasons for it to those 
whose ideals differ so from my own. To me the whole matter is not a 
question of methods at all, but of intention and aim. The Prussian 
certainly does use childhood training and discipline, but uses them to 
destroy free will and to inculcate Kultur. The fact that he uses them does 
not mean, to me, that childhood training and discipline are bad. It 
emphasizes all the more the Prussian wickedness in that he uses such 
splendid things for such base ends. Nothing could have pleased the 
Devil more than to see those splendid, undisciplined, unorganized young 
Englishmen whose lives were so unhesitatingly thrown away in the 
second stage of the war those days of the first of Kitchener's Army, 
when the British Regulars were wiped out, holding the lines imperilled 
by their gallant, undisciplined comrades. 

Fraulein's intention and aim in training my children was to make 
them obedient and efficient, and to make them staunch adherents of 
Prussian methods and Kultur; her effort to this latter end was so 
insidious that I should have been helpless to counteract it. Her discipline 
was admirable but it was not rooted, as I trust mine is, in a determination 
to prepare those children to become the faithful servants and soldiers of 
our great Master, to train body and brain so that they may faithfully 
respond to the demands of the soul that is to use them as its instrument 
for service and growth. How can those women who give such intelligent, 
unremitting care to the proper training of a hunting dog, to make him 
fit for a relatively unimportant service, find fault with the time and 
thought and prayers that I give to the training of the animal bodies 
through which the souls of my children are to do or to fail to do the 
service that the Master desired from them when He mapped out this life 
for them? Would they, with their experience as trainers, suggest to me 



PARENTHOOD AND DISCIPLESHIP 163 

that I substitute for parental rule a council of democracy, composed of a 
14-year-old, an 11-year-old and an 8-year-old? Are these children 
competent to take the responsibility? 

One last word really a woman's postscript. If you love your 
children more than yourself, then sacrifice yourself for them in main- 
taining rule for they will have to accept rule later, or be punished. 
And take quite literally Christ's teaching that we must become as little 
children, which means to me that we must love and trust Him as we wish 
our children to love and trust us. 

MERCY FARMER. 



We know not exactly how low the least degree of obedience is, which 
will bring a man to heaven; but this we are quite sure of, that he who 
aims no higher will be sure to fall short even of that, and that he who 
goes farthest beyond it will be most blessed. JOHN KEBLE. 



FROM THE HIGHLANDS OF 
LEMURIA 



III 
Two ATLANTEAN COLONIES IN MEXICO 

MME. BLAVATSKY tells us, in The Secret Doctrine, that 
Atlantis was the prolongation, and afterwards the survivor of 
Lemuria. Several regions still existing seem to have belonged 
first to Lemuria and later to Atlantis. Mexico appears to have 
been one of these Lemuro-Atlantean regions ; Scandinavia seems to have 
been another. Apparently western Mexico, probably including Southern 
California, was joined to Lemuria at an immensely remote period, 
probably a million years ago, when, as has already been related, certain 
groups of birds akin to the scarlet tanagers, inhabited the Lemuro- 
Mexican region, which included the peaks of Hawaii. So it comes that 
the descendants of these birds are still found both in the Hawaiian Islands 
and in the American continent ; one of their peculiarities, in both regions, 
is the seasonal change of plumage from scarlet to green. 

Professor William Niven has for a number of years devoted his 
leisure to the exploration of the buried cities in the valley of Mexico and, 
in a profoundly interesting narrative recently contributed to The Mexican 
Review, some account is given of his discoveries, which are the more 
interesting to us, because they have led him to accept the Atlantean 
theory completely, so that he even proposes to give the name Atlantan 
to one of the superposed civilizations which he has unearthed. 

For he has laid bare a series of successive civilizations, each 
destroyed by a natural cataclysm, and separated from its successor by 
enormous spaces of time ; one city being built upon the buried ruins of 
another, as Schliemann discovered in his excavations at Troy, and, as 
we are told, on high authority, in Five Years of Theosophy, there are 
several buried cities beneath the present town of Florence. Natural 
advantages of position, with regard to a river, a fertile valley, a rich 
deposit of minerals, would account for this ; the same advantages would 
attract successive peoples to the same site. 

Professor Niven discovered the buried cities of the oldest Mexican 
civilization he has yet unearthed (the race to which he has given the name 
Atlantan), at great depths, in some cases as much as sixty feet below the 
present surface. This civilization, which was probably Lemurian rather 
than Atlantean, was completely wiped out by a series of volcanic 
eruptions, its buried cities being covered with a thick deposit of volcanic 
ash: Lemurian prototypes of Pompeii. And it is of immense interest 
that, just as the bodies of Pompeian citizens, who were overtaken while 



FROM THE HIGHLANDS OF LEMURIA 165 

fleeing from that famous catastrophe, have been found buried in the 
volcanic ashes of Mount Vesuvius, so escaping "Atlanteans," were 
overwhelmed by the falling ashes of the volcanoes close to Mexico City ; 
their skeletons have been recovered from depths of sixty feet. This is 
the more interesting, because The Secret Doctrine records that "Lemuria 
was destroyed by fire; Atlantis by water." 

At present, the formation of new layers of soil is going on very 
slowly, so slowly that the giant cypress trees at Chapultepec under which 
Montezuma walked four centuries ago are practically unaltered in 
position. But we may obtain a working average for the rapidity of earth 
deposition from other regions. Thus in the Somme valley, dated Roman 
coins are found at a depth which shows that soil there has formed at the 
rate of three centimetres a century. Sections of peat in Ireland, subjected 
to microscopic examination, show fine layers of yearly growth, a thousand 
being contained in a foot thick of peat. These two bases of measurement 
give the same result: a foot of thickness in a thousand years. If we 
apply this standard to the deepest layer of buried cities so far laid bare 
by Professor Niven, at a depth of sixty feet, we shall get an antiquity of 
sixty thousand years. 

But long periods of development certainly stretch back behind even 
these ancient cities, since they show a very considerable advancement in 
the arts of life, and evidences of very considerable culture, religious life 
and scientific knowledge. For example, there is much artistic skill shown 
in the design of a censer, decorated with the figure of the god of flowers ; 
and small portrait busts, of which Professor Niven has unearthed large 
numbers, seem to have taken the place of oil paintings or photographs. 
There appear to have been two distinct races, one of marked Chinese 
type, the other with Egyptian features, if w"e judge by these small portrait 
busts. The former, who in all likelihood came from the west, from the 
Pacific side, are probably "Lemuro-Atlanteans ;" the latter, "Atlanteans," 
related to the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians. We are even told 
that Chinese characters have been found on some of the objects 
unearthed, but these do not seem to be among the most ancient. We are 
further told that Carl Lumholtz, who made a reputation by his book on 
the cannibals of Queensland, has found in the remote fastnesses of the 
Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico, a race in whose language numbers of 
Chinese vocables are still found ; this race may possibly be a survival of 
the ancient Lemuro-Atlantean colony in Mexico. There is nothing 
impossible, or even improbable, in this ; since we have seen that widely 
spread elements of the far older Lemurian languages are in common use 
throughout the Polynesian islands even to-day. The language of the 
Pharaohs has still a living descendant in the Coptic tongue, which was 
extensively used in the deciphering of the Demotic and Hieroglyphic 
inscriptions; and it is said that there are descendants of the ancient 
Chaldeans among the water-carriers of Tiflis. 

Among the interesting relics dug up by Professor Niven, there is 



166 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

one, a small, rudely carved statuette, which has exactly the features and 
appearance of the huge, grotesque statues on Easter Island, some of 
which are in the British Museum. The resemblance is so complete that 
it irresistibly suggests a former connection between this Mexican colony 
and that part of Lemuria of which Easter Island is a survival. "The 
Easter Island relics are the most astounding and eloquent memorials of 
the primeval giants. They are as grand as they are mysterious ; and one 
has but to examine the heads of the colossal statues, that have remained 
unbroken on that island, to recognize in them at a glance the features of 
the type and character attributed to the Fourth Race giants. They seem 
of one cast though different in features that of a distinctly sensual type, 
such as the Atlanteans (the Daityas and "Atalantians") are represented 
to have in the esoteric Hindu books . . . the brood of mighty sorcerers." 
(The Secret Doctrine, vol. II, p. 224.) 

There is abundant evidence of the domination of sorcery in Mexico, 
not only at the time of the Spanish conquest four centuries ago, but for 
ages before that: the evidence supplied by the existence of a powerful 
priesthood practising human sacrifices, in which it was the custom to cut 
to the heart of a living victim, thus supplying the powers of evil with a 
material basis for manifestation, in a way resembling the materializations 
of spiritualistic seances. It appears that these human sacrifices took 
place on the flattened summits of the pyramid temples which are 
characteristic of the older ruins throughout Mexico, and especially in 
Yucatan and the regions further south, in Central America. 

The succession of civilizations has been clearly revealed by the 
excavations of Professor Niven, as recorded in The Mexican Review. 
Above the most ancient level of remains is, as has been already said, a 
thick layer of volcanic ashes, showing that this civilization was destroyed 
by fire. Then follows a layer of earth, several feet thick. Above this 
begin the remains of a second civilization, which Professor Niven, finding 
no sufficient indication of its ethnical character, has negatively named 
"pre-Aztec." This civilization was evidently destroyed in its turn by 
water, since its remains are covered by a thick layer of mixed gravel and 
sand, obviously laid down by water, in a series of inundations. Above 
this is a second layer of earth, with a layer of remains above it, which 
represents a third civilization, which Professor Niven calls "Aztec." 

An extremely interesting section of these superposed civilizations is 
shown in a hill at San Juan Teotihuacan, some thirty miles to the 
south-east of Mexico city. A railroad cutting through the hill gives a 
cross section of successive cities, one above the other, the thick blocks of 
the paved streets being worn into deep ruts and cavities by the feet of 
the citizens passing and repassing through countless centuries. One 
feature in this layer of cities is described by Professor Niven, but not 
explained : the houses are found to be filled with masses of broken stone, 
not with volcanic ash, as at Pompeii, nor with lava, as at Herculaneum. 

There are many sites of ancient cities not far from Mexico City and 



FROM THE HIGHLANDS OF LEMURIA 167 

immediately to the south. In the seldom visited valleys of the Sierra 
Madre mountains, stretching up to the north-west, towards Arizona, Carl 
Lumholtz found the ruins of huge stone fortresses, built of rough blocks. 
He also found tribes of "cave-dwellers," who may be the descendants of 
some of these old Lemuro-Atlantean colonies. We may be able, later, to 
recount some of their world-theories, comparing them with those which 
have been already recorded, from the peaks of Lemuria, scattered through 
the vast spaces of Polynesia. 

There is an important group of Atlantean ruins in the peninsula of 
Yucatan, in south-eastern Mexico, a general description of which has also 
appeared in The Mexican Review. It seems that the sites of a hundred 
and seventy-two cities have already been identified, though so far very 
inadequately excavated or described. Most of them are buried in the 
densest tropical jungle, fever-infested and inaccessible. It is possible to 
pass quite close to these hidden cities without even suspecting their 
presence. Two are also so large, that it is estimated that they had each 
half a million inhabitants ; and in them are found the pyramid temples, on 
whose summits human sacrifices were offered, sacrifices of sorcery, to 
invoke the help of powers of evil. The recorder of these discoveries in 
Yucatan appears to believe that these huge blocks of hard stone were 
cut and even elaborately carved by masons and sculptors using only flint 
axes and knives. But this is difficult to believe ; and, as Carl Lumholtz 
found fine cutting implements of hardened copper practically bronze 
among tribes of Indians in the remote Sierra Madre valleys copper 
implements of the shapes made familiar by the discoveries of the Bronze 
Period in Europe it is not too much to suppose that the Yucatan 
builders also made use of graving tools of hardened bronze. And no 
practical demonstration has been given, that hard rock can, in fact, be 
hewn and carved with implements of flint. 

This very imperfect account of these vitally interesting discoveries 
shows that, while much has been done already, far more remains to be 
done ; and it would seem that Carl Lumholtz has hit upon a valuable clue, 
though he does not appear to have followed it up: to begin, namely, by 
bringing together all the light which might be shed on the past of 
Mexico by a detailed and faithful study of present conditions, language, 
art processes and so on, among the Sierra Madre Indians and the natives 
of Yucatan and Central America. Thus many of the conventional 
patterns on earthenware bowls, which he illustrates, and all of which 
appear to have symbolical meanings, closely resemble the symbolical 
figures in the so-called hieroglyphics found in Yucatan; a clue to the 
meaning of the latter might well be found through a study of the former, 
just as very valuable clues to the ancient language of the Pharaohs, 
recorded in equally mysterious hieroglyphics, were found through a study 
of the Coptic language, which is still studied in Egyptian monasteries. 

Further, there is the abundant and still little studied literature 
gathered and preserved by the early Spaniards, long before the earliest 



168 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

settlements made by English colonists on the shores of the New World. 
Thus there is a complete and beautifully printed Aztec-Mexican Dictionary, 
which was published in Mexico City about the time of Shakespeare's 
birth. And there is the wonderful text of the Popul-Vuh, which gives 
a marvelously vivid account of some of the earliest races, with their 
almost divine powers and many passages in which have admirable 
qualities of eloquence and devotional fervour. 

But this rich material is almost neglected ; there is little study of it 
and less co-ordination. When this study is fully developed and its results 
intelligently applied to the monuments excavated in Yucatan and 
elsewhere, we may confidently expect that many chapters of Atlantean 
history will be restored to the world, and that most valuable 
corroborations of The Secret Doctrine will be furnished. 

C. J. 
(To be continued.) 



"The Saint is one who lives life with high enjoyment, and with a 
zest; he chooses holiness because of its irresistible beauty, and 
because of the appeal it makes to his mind. He does not creep through 
life ashamed, depressed, anxious, letting ordinary delights slip through 
Jiis nerveless fingers; and if he denies himself common pleasure it is 
because, if indulged, they thwart and mar his purer and more lively joys" 

A. C. BENSON. 



WHY I JOINED THE 
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 



STANDING at the window of the living room one November 
day, years ago, we watched the storm sweep down the river, 
across the cornfields and over the alfalfa-rooted hillside to wrap 
its terrible strength around the big old trees that sheltered our 
house on the hill's top. Because the lightning tore the heavens open 
and the thunder cannonaded, the two older women who, too, had 
watched the onrushing storm, fled from the window. Trembling 
with fear, my face pressed against the cold glass, I watched the poplars 
twist in spirals and the limbs of our tough elms bow until their 
branches swept the ground. The next morning we counted the wreck 
of fourteen trees, broken and flat on the earth. 

One spring, in a later year, the snows melted unexpectedly soon 
on the mountains, and the loosened waters rushed down the frost- 
stripped sides into the two streams that form the Ohio. The river 
rose swiftly in the night. We wakened to find ourselves girdled; 
as far back as we could look toward the Indiana boundary line and the 
Kentucky hills, reached the waters. Ribboning toward the Indiana 
line, was the railroad track, the only dry surface above the stretches 
of water. Its protection against the bombardment of the flood was 
the heavy sacks of sand that train crews had been piling against 
the embankments during the night. 

When we "walked the ties," that I might reach the village in 
whose school I was teaching, the waters were rising inch by inch. 
It was possible the flood could creep upon us more swifty than we 
could pick our way over the ties of the railroad bridge and tracks, 
and carry us, helpless, across the fearful, desolate waters. 

Those two memories of the power of wind and water come back 
to me when I try to think of my first gropings toward God. They 
left me with indelible images of His power in the physical realm. 
Many times since then, in realms other than the physical, I have 
seen His sudden devastation at work. I think I should have been 
carried with the other wreckage to destruction, had not Theosophy 
come to show me glimpses of His purposes. 

I wonder if you, my friends in Theosophy, who perhaps were 
reared in orthodoxy, can know what this knowledge means to one 
who, all her previous years, had been destitute of it? Your knowl- 
edge had not to leap, full-armoured, into being. Probably it was 
transmuted, but it always was; there were no vacant years when 
you walked without the grace of some conception, either vague or 
indefinite, of Him. 



170 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

During childhood and early womanhood, I think I was searching 
for Him rather wistfully in an agnostic home such as the skeptical 
science of the past half-century bred, the girls and boys in the neigh- 
borhood were church and Sunday-school farers. The children of our 
family went to church and Sunday-school with intermittent frequency, 
in exact measure as our schoolmates were evangelistically persua- 
sive. We wondered a little at their implicit acceptance of the prayers 
they said, the songs they sang, the sermons they heard. I puzzled 
over the creed when my comrades, at the accepted adolescent age, were 
"joining the church." 

During heedless University days when I foolishly boasted of unfaith, 
came the first ray of Light. With neither warning nor prelude, there 
was, one Sunday morning, a rush of understanding through the gates 
of the lower mind. Perhaps the morning sermon had turned the 
key of those locked doors; perhaps some vigorous metaphysical 
teaching of the stormy old professor of our philosophy classes sud- 
denly lighted my dark mind-corners. I do not know how nor why 
the knowledge came. I remember only the rapt young joy of know- 
ing that I knew God was spirit, all-embracing, all-present, all-comforting, 
all-divine. 

Suddenly to have the clamps on one's understanding loosened, 
suddenly to be swept loose and far into a mystic sea would have 
been bewildering utterly, I think, had not the knowledge come with 
curious, immediate conviction and certainty. Phrases and dogmas from 
the prayer-book, pages from the Church fathers, sentences from the 
Transcendentalists, leaped into meaning. 

There were everyday days and years ; dull hours following that 
first radiance : but the quickening had begun. Recrudescent in bleak 
months of trial, the knowledge of Him lived. On moonless nights, 
I, who previously had had no faith in nor knowledge of the Unseen, 
could lay my cheek against the black boles of the trees -and hear the 
whispers of their spirit-voices ; on August days I could hear the living 
message of the brown hills ; in city street cars I could catch, in the 
faces across the aisle, glimpses of tender divinity. 

Then in the quick course of years, came Theosophy. A chance 
sentence repeated from what "Somebody said" of the teaching of 
Karma and reincarnation, rested lightly at first, but with curious 
insistence. Its leading brought me to some strange doorways, but 
it led me also to the New York Branch of The Theosophical Society. 
Of that gracious Karma I am humbly undeserving. 

Temperamentally I have been forced to go by the slow route of 
satisfying the dull and stupid lower mind. It has been a route that has 
wasted precious hours on the journey to Him. I have stopped by 
the way to look into cults that were called Theosophical or occult. 
In my heart's depth I knew that I was at home in the New York 



WHY I JOINED THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 171 

Branch; that there I found not merely a teaching in spoken words, 
not merely theories laid down on printed pages, but the sole justifica- 
tion of occultism and mysticism lives so unflinchingly and uncom- 
promisingly lived as to make them channels of the Most High. There 
I found leadership that demanded no applause, that prided itself 
with none of the clap-trap of psychism. 

In other organizations I watched dear friends led by the revela- 
tions, so-termed, of clairvoyants inspired of their master, the devil. 
I saw them substitute this grotesque external leadership for the holy 
power that can come only from the Master within. I have seen them 
apotheosize the mental and astral powers, so ignorant of higher 
powers that they did not recognize their own confusion. I have 
grieved to watch them go down the dark path on which they have, 
with fatal loyalty, surrendered themselves to those whose teaching 
is fluent with Theosophical terms, but whose lives are either stagnant 
horrors or actively retroversive. 

Slowly I have passed from no knowledge of God to a spiritual 
hunger for Him. Supplementing the first crude realization of His 
power, expressed in the elements of wind and water, and the swift 
mystic conception that came on my sacred Sunday long ago, Theos- 
ophy has given me an intellectual concept and the beginnings of 
higher understanding. It has made me a churchwoman. At the 
altar rail, the walls of the flesh down, I know I am fed with the 
spiritual food of His broken body and that I drank the blood He shed. 

Theosophy extends the hour of communion beyond the chancel. 
In daily meditation it helps me to realize the secret meaning of the 
prayer-book words that formerly were paganly insignificant and 
pantheistic "and made one body with him that he may dwell in 
us and we in him." 

Reaching beyond set occasions and hours, Theosophy gives sweet 
reasonableness to the plea of the old monk, Brother Lawrence, for 
the practice of the presence of God daily and hourly, as the rule 
whereby one may live a holy life. 

I have lifted only the drop-curtain. I must put aside my other 
screens before I shall have True Vision. I have begun barely to 
try to make pragmatic my elementary knowledge of Him. 

I am glad Theosophy has re-polarized my life. God has been 
given to me. Theosophy has replaced intellectual flippancy regard- 
ing Him, with the purpose of righteousness a purpose which, sadly 
enough, daily begins, fails and begins again to execute itself. 

Some day I shall mount to His very presence. Meantime, in 
storm and in silence, in quiet nights and on days of sunlight or down- 
pouring rain, in hours of war-cataclysm, or in serene moments of 
Divine Union, I am glad to know He holds us in His hand. 

G. L. S. 



PREPAREDNESS 



THE joy of camping is greatly enhanced for most people by the 
delight of long weeks of preparation, during which one makes 
a careful survey of his needs, and reviews with happy anticipa- 
tions the experiences of other camping trips, either his own 
or those of the friend in whose steps he intends to follow. Many a 
camper gives his leisure moments during an entire winter to planning 
out new arrangements for the coming summer, new ways of taking 
his chosen companions into the heart of the woods. To be sure he 
knows that a thousand chances may render impossible the assembling 
of the special party of friends he desires to take with him, but he is 
content to go to endless trouble in devising special outfits just suited 
to them, individually, on the chance that when the time comes they 
may be able to make the trip. 

That eager use of the imagination, that happy industry are 
indeed admirable, but would they survive the shock if we were to 
ask that camping enthusiast whether he had ever tried the experi- 
ment of using the same faculties in making some preparation for 
another trip that he is certain to take, one of these days the trip to 
that world which is entered through the portal of death. In general 
terms we readily admit that all men must die, and yet to come to 
closer grips with that inevitable fact frequently appears to be 
regarded, even in a soldier, as either unmannerly, or unnecessary, or 
morbid at least by the large majority of people in the Protestant 
world. If you pick up a book by an unknown author and find him 
speaking of death as a time of spiritual combat, or measuring actions 
by the view one will take of them when he stands before a just 
God you feel that you have data sufficient for the conclusion that 
the writer is a Catholic. Yet the certainty of the termination of 
life is not restricted to the adherents of that church; those outside 
its fold are just as surely drawing nearer, momentarily, to their 
hour of death. Why, then, this extraordinary conspiracy, as it would 
seem, to ignore the inevitable? 

One brilliant day last summer, a number of friends sat looking 
out onto a woodland, full of flowers, insects and birds, through which 
the tide of life seemed to be setting so strong that the first impres- 
sion one got from it was of abounding life. Suddenly one of the 
number spoke of death, apparently feeling no incongruity between it 
and the pulsating life of the day. In some way we all fell quite 
comfortably into a discussion of this unusual theme. One argued 
convincingly that most men really did not believe in death, history, 
science, and observation to the contrary notwithstanding. There was 
much to be said for this theory; all of us had experienced the shock 



PREPAREDNESS 173 

of surprise that comes when a friend casually mentions how lonely 
it will be for him when -we are gone, speaking in a tone that implies 
intimate knowledge of the Almighty's plans for our early demise, and 
for his own continued existence. 

Another was inclined to the view that it was man's intuitive 
sense of his immortality that made him such a sceptic as to his own 
death. This was challenged by a third who argued that there could 
be no immortality for the personality, which was also clearly the part 
of a man that refused to entertain the idea of death, balked before 
the mention of it. Some one else asked, pugnaciously, Are we ever 
really prepared for the death of anybody connected with us? It may 
come in ripe old age or at the termination of a long illness, when 
our hearts have been torn with the sufferings of the sick person, from 
which death is the only possible relief. Even under those circum- 
stances death brings a physical shock to the entire family circle, 
and this is quite apart from the grief over the loss of the loved one ; 
the advent of death is a distinct shock even to those whose hearts are 
not touched. 

That is true, we all admitted, but not distinctive of death. One 
by one each of the married men present was led to admit that shock 
was also incident to having entered the marriage state. It might 
come soon or late, but there was a day when one discovered with 
a shock that he was married ; he had perhaps moved heaven and earth 
to bring it about, finally succeeded, and then discovered, right in the 
midst of his joy and satisfaction, that something new and strange 
had come over him. 

This comparison, far from daunting the first speaker, was 
welcomed as unexpected confirmation of the original proposition. It 
might similarly be expected that man would experience shock when 
he came to consciousness apart from his body, and found that he had 
experienced the change of state called death. But what, it was asked, 
would he then wish he had done before death put an end to his 
activities in that particular physical body? What preparations would 
he wish he had made? Presumably it had taken a long time, and 
much experience of acute starvation, to convince men that it was 
necessary to do long-continued work in their fields in spring and sum- 
mer if they wished to avoid going hungry in the cold winter days to 
come. Finally that necessity came to be accepted; until now a con- 
siderable portion of the work of the world is done in anticipation of 
future needs. And it apparently never occurs to the toilers, amid 
their frequent and formidable complaints, to find hardship or gloom 
in the fact that their work is being done to provide against future 
need. They do not think of declaring that it worries them beyond 
endurance to be asked to cultivate a field of young corn which cannot 
possibly be of use to anybody for three months. 



174 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

A hitherto silent member of the group declared that the explana- 
tion of our problem was to be found just there. Mankind resolutely 
refused to take death into account because there seemed to be nothing 
to do about it. Right living surely was the proper preparation for 
right dying, and so one did struggle to make his life approach nearer 
to his ideal. How would it help him there to be continually calling 
up mournful pictures of a Judgment Day, or to close each day with 
the dreary thought that it had brought him one step nearer his end? 
Was there anything sensible, encouraging, heartening to better 
endeavour, that went with such practices? 

The friend who had introduced this discussion was becoming 
very much amused over the gloom that it was bringing to faces 
that were well tutored to an impassive placidity, and so asked the 
last speaker what practices he suspected would be indulged in by one 
who courted the idea of making definite preparation for death. Much 
thinking about it, many dreary prayers and a refusal to do many 
pleasant and natural things, because one must some day die, summed 
up the various notions advanced. Just how these would prepare a 
man for death was not clear to any of those who proposed them. 
Finally a business man who was drawn into the circle and had not 
heard all the previous discussion, suggested that if he were making 
a trip to his Alaska properties he would not get ready to go in any 
such indefinite ways as had been outlined; if he did, his business at 
home would be left in a snarl and he would find himself only half 
equipped for his work in Alaska when he had arrived. Led on by 
questions, this man gave a rapid, enthusiastic sketch of his own 
methods in preparing his data and equipment for an important busi- 
ness trip; both how he made himself ready to meet the situation to 
which he was going, and also how he went over the work he had in 
hand, to see whether there were any additional provisions he wanted 
to make, any messages that he ought to give to those whom he was 
leaving, any weak spots that required strengthening before he left. 

The positive, resourceful mastery that rang out from this man's 
sketch of a common business experience aroused enthusiastic 
response; all were agreed that there could be nothing sad or soggy 
about such preparations but the comparison was not a fair one for 
in the case of the business man's trip there was something definite 
to do, while in that matter of death-bed preparation there was not. 

Here a laughing but determined protest came from the original 
champion of preparedness. Nothing definite to do to get ready for 
death? Yet what a bustle of activity there is whenever a man of 
affairs suffers some accident that threatens to be fatal. If he is able 
to transact business, his lawyer is summoned, business associates are 
called, he finds much to do. Then he turns from these affairs, many 
of which perhaps could not naturally be transacted until the end of 



PREPAREDNESS 175 

life, and gives his thought to his family and his personal friends. 
How much he has to say to them, warnings, advice, expressions of 
confidence, of affection. If time to review life be granted him, how 
many odd requests he is likely to make; he recalls a time years 
back when he took unfair advantage of a rival, and the desire to offer 
reparation possesses him, he cannot rest until that man is sought out 
and some amends made to him ; he thinks of a friend who did him a 
good turn which he appreciated and meant to repay in kind but in 
his busy life the chance to do it never seemed to come. How eagerly 
he now devises a way of showing his gratitude and affection. His 
failing strength is generously, gladly given in these varied efforts, 
yet how many of them could have been done better, done more as he 
longs to do them, if done when he sat firmly in the saddle, master 
of all his forces and resources. 

This statement of the situation appealed to the business man who 
heartily declared that he should call that man a poor executive who 
habitually left his most important duties until the last of the day, 
allowing small demands and perplexities to crowd the bigger things 
into the next day; such a man lacked either perspective or the will 
to grapple with his problems. If he dealt competently with the big 
ones, there would be fewer difficulties to meet in the minor problems 
of the day. 

It was decided, after much animated discussion, that the same 
principles also applied in the conduct of a household or a nursery 
full of children, or a religious community ; and if so why not also to the 
conduct of one's own life. That very term, conduct of one's life, 
rang strange in the ears of most of the circle. It suggested to some 
a new occupation which might have elements of interest that they 
had as yet failed to find. 

A student of Theosophy who had so far limited his contributions 
to occasional questions that seemed to keep the discussion going, now 
ventured to suggest that life was made fairly exciting in its oppor- 
tunities for those who regarded it as a continuous thread, with one 
earth-life after another strung like varicoloured beads on to that 
vivid life thread. Many a man, after giving fifty years to some pur- 
suit that was dear to him, regretted that he could not go on for 
another fifty or more with the development of what he had initiated. 
He could, in the view of this speaker, for countless fifties of years 
if only his interest be centered in one of the fundamental problems of 
man's real life ; and in that case he certainly could not dislike to face 
the demand that in this life there should be due preparation for the 
one to come next after it. He knows that he is now sowing the 
seed that will spring up and come to harvest in after lives, and he 
sees nothing dreary or morbid in the constant effort to select for 
sowing the seeds of fruits that he wishes to reap, nor even in the 



176 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

patient tracing out and uprooting of weeds that he does not wish to 
allow to seed themselves in his garden for future lives. 

The fear of death, then, would not exist for that fortunate man ? 
This was a defiant question hurled by an imperious old grande dame, 
whose violent knitting throughout the entire conversation had not 
disguised her deep interest in the subject. She had held death at 
bay so far, but she recognized that the time was coming when she 
must face that horror and find a way to pass through his house, 
without, as she hoped, yielding to his vassalage. All those present 
honoured her for the painful self revelation of that question; and 
all turned instinctively to the friend who had first brought forward 
this hazardous topic, for they felt that no one else was able to 
respond fittingly to the genuine heart-cry behind the outburst. 

In quiet vibrant tones came the gentle reply, " 'Dread' is a term 
that covers so many different feelings I find it difficult to answer 
either yes, or no, for the hero of that sketch. What a man dreads 
is such a telltale! In one sense, may not even a real hero dread 
certain encounters? You will, I am sure agree with me," (this was 
said with a deferential nod to the grande dame) that a hero could not 
dread the possible pain of putting off the phyical body, for that he 
would find courage and the will to endure, but it must represent to 
him the end of a bit of work given to him to do; we might say, in 
the figure already used, the completion of one of the beads on the 
precious string of life. The time comes for him to present that 
bead before the Great Artist, to ask his acceptance of it will He 
receive it, or will it disappoint Him, and prove a blemish on the 
symmetry of the whole? Might it even be so marred as to subject 
Him to the scoff and scorn of His enemies who delight to taunt Him 
with the failures, the evil things wrought by His children? Dread 
of this sort would not be that constrictive force from which we all 
turn as from cowardice, it would be dynamic in each day's effort ; 
it would give joy to every waking, whether to hard or easy tasks, 
because each new day brings another chance to work for that per- 
fection in following His will which is our appointed goal." 

Simple as those words were, there returned with them the sun- 
shine of the day, which for some of us had been blotted out by our 
unhappy associations with the subject of death and its demands. 
Here was one, at least, who felt no shrinking from death, who with 
a sure hand used the knowledge of it as a touchstone. With a 
common desire we broke through our customary reserves, the con- 
ventions that have made "impolite" any recognition of the deeper 
needs of the human soul, we asked how the last speaker was wont 
to make use of death as an initiator. Simply, clearly the question 
was answered for us. One of the methods suggested was so definite 
and so new to all of us that we thereupon resolved to try it ourselves. 



PREPAREDNESS 177 

This was the substance of it, as an exercise to be performed at the 
end of each month. Set apart a certain time and give it quite com- 
pletely to this question If I knew at this moment that I had just a 
month to live what should I wish to do in that time? One obviously 
must play fair, must give imagination, expectation, and interest to 
the game. First would come, perhaps, the recollection of tasks to 
be completed ; looked at in this light we might well discover that 
some of them were not duties but rather means by which we had 
chosen to cloak our desire to have our own way, regardless of the 
needs and the pleasures of others. Evidently such work had better 
be abandoned, whether life for us were to last days, months, or 
years. 

Next might come pictures of duties we had entirely neglected 
how differently they look to us now than when we turned away 
from them ! Indeed we could welcome a month in which to pick 
up those threads again. Then there is thrown on the screen that 
last talk with a tried friend; he was fighting some demon of self- 
will and though he had not recognized his foe he asked for help. 
The answer one gave him was a pleasantry; and why? It looks in 
this clear light as though cowardice was the reason for that jest; 
it was such a risk to undertake to speak out honestly, taking sides 
against that friend's personality and lining up squarely with and for 
his soul. Thank heaven, there may be chances found, in the month 
to come, to show real friendship. 

Deeper still, the light must search, it will show virtues that 
one began to cultivate and then allowed to fall into neglect, just 
for want of interest enough to give them daily and hourly attention. 
Then there are the faults, so clearly recognized as such ; some of 
them so nearly worn out that little more is needed for their conquest 
than the steady, purposeful piercing of them with the unsheathed will. 
What might not be done to them, in a month ! 

So deeper and deeper the searchlight goes, until the field of one's 
life is covered. And hand in hand with insight goes resolution. 
"This, and this, and this," says Resolution, "you would wish to do 
were next month to be your last. It is not mine to promise you 
that grant of time, nor indeed the hour on which you have just 
entered, but if you really covet the opportunity to attempt those 
duties, by all means let us undertake them together, with good will. 
Should more than the month be given you, we will at its close con- 
sider what gain has been made, and what further attempts these gains 
make possible." 

There is more than one of that summer's day party who adopted 
that practice, and who can testify that it is not dull and despair- 
breeding, but has furnished armour and weapons for offense in many 
a combat. I. 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 



THE CAUSES AND CONDUCT OF THE WAR 

PART II 
THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR 

TO understand the Causes of the War, it was necessary first to 
understand what Germany had been thinking and saying during 
the years before the war. So, in the last Screen of Time, before 
considering Germany's territorial ambitions and the sequence 
of events which culminated in the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, many 
recognized authorities were quoted to show that the German attitude of 
mind was bound to result as it did, and that the real cause of the war 
must be found in the desire of the German people. 

The Conduct of the War must remain almost incredible and quite 
past understanding, unless it also is seen as the inevitable outcome of the 
German character and of the German creed. 

Behavior is the result of a man's habitual thinking. There is no 
escape from that. If you would change his conduct, his "policy," you 
must change his manner of thought, his creed for his creed consists of 
the beliefs he acts upon, not of mere words which he echoes. So long as 
Germany thinks as she has been thinking, so long will she provoke wars 
for her own aggrandizement and carry them on with the brutality on 
which she prides herself. 

Very few wrongdoers change their manner of thought, their 
habitual attitude toward life, until intense suffering at last forces them 
to trace effect to cause, and to recognize the origin of the trouble as 
within themselves. Conversion means "to turn away from," and 
Germany, as the result of intense suffering, must be brought to the 
point at which she will turn away from her evil thinking from her 
perverted pride, her devouring egotism, her unscrupulous brutality, her 
treachery, her malice, her vindictiveness, her contempt of the truth. 

If the world is to be saved from slavery and barbarism, Germany 
must be made to suffer until she turns with all her will, crying to God 
and man for forgiveness and mercy. These are old-fashioned words, 
but they speak of real things : Germany must repent. Officially and 
collectively, she has proved herself a murderer, a violator of women, a 
brigand and a thief ; she uses torture, slavery, outrage, as means to her 
ends; she is not only unashamed, but she finds proof of her superiority 
in her ability to do these things ruthlessly and happily. As far as history 
reaches, no such Evil has been seen in the world before. 

It is of supreme importance that the simplicity of the situation 
be understood. There is and there will be talk of peace. Terms of 
peace are discussed. Peace ! There can be no peace with a murderer 

, 7 8 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 179 

who believes in murder ; no peace with a thug who justifies his outrages 
to himself and boasts of them to his friends. If you make peace with 
him, you deprive him of his only chance to reform. If you make peace 
with Satan, what it means is that you have gone over into his camp ; you 
have accepted his standards ; you have submitted to his authority. Our 
own salvation depends upon our refusal to compromise with sin. Our 
love of comfort, our inertia, our willingness to leave the settlement of 
trouble to the future ; our fear of pain, our dislike of sacrifice, our almost 
unconquerable self-centredness all these things conspire to fog the mind 
and to weaken the will. Germany offers to restore, let us suppose, some 
of the things she has stolen. Possibly she offers to pay damages for 
some of the outrages she has committed. Then among weaklings, and 
even among the weaknesses of strong men, there will go up a cry for 
Peace! And there will be no peace; there can be no peace, so long as 
the murderer secretly glories in his crime. There is but one real question : 
has he repented? Has he turned with horror from his sin? And, if he 
added robbery to murder, is he making restitution merely because he 
must, or because he would be miserable unless he did so ? 

Has America, have the Allies, moral courage enough to fight things 
out to that ideal end? Probably not. Probably their own fatigue will 
tempt them, sooner than ought to be, to accept the overtures of cunning, 
craven Austria, still used by Germany as a catspaw. So the issue will 
be postponed. But there is this one chance against it : that people every- 
where shall come to understand what Germany has done and why she 
has done it ; that they shall see for themselves the insane thinking and the 
hideously perverted desire which caused both the war and its atrocities ; 
and that they shall resolve that not until Germany as a nation has 
confessed and lamented her own wickedness, can the world be made safe 
for decency, or God rest satisfied with the result. 

Evil, in other words, must be hated for what it is. 

During the early days of the war, a French officer said to Rudyard 
Kipling : 

" 'Our national psychology has changed. I do not recognize it 
myself.' 

" 'What made the change ?' 

" 'The Boche. If he had been quiet for another twenty years the 
world must have been his rotten, but all his. Now he is saving the 
world.' 

"'How?' 

" 'Because he has shown us what Evil is. We you and I, England 
and the rest had begun to doubt the existence of Evil. The Boche is 
saving us' " (France at War, pp. 41, 42). 

But the world is slow to hate. This is because no one can truly 
hate who does not intensely love. Perfect hatred of Evil is found in 
Masters alone, because in them only is found the most passionate love of 



180 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

righteousness. How can impurity be hated except by those who are 
pure? 

Dilutions of Christ's teaching blasphemous emasculations of His 
life and doctrine are not the cause but the product of the world's moral 
flabbiness in this respect. A Pacifist of necessity is "neither cold nor 
hot." 

In America, at this great distance, we have not had the opportunity 
that France has had to see with our own eyes the damnable hideousness 
of Evil. Therefore our national psychology has as yet changed but little. 
Possibly it would have been more conducive to our own salvation if the 
Pacifists had had their way ; if we had kept out of the war, and had thus 
made it easy for Germany to invade our shores as she intended, and to 
carry fire and sword and ruthlessness and outrage into our comfort-loving 
homes. Then, without so much difficulty, we might have learned to 
sacrifice self to Righteousness as we rose in horror against the Evil 
thrust upon us. 

As things now are, it is most clearly our duty to acquaint ourselves 
with the facts. To refuse to look at them because they are revolting, is 
to refuse to help ; is to refuse to serve. A general and vague impression 
will not sustain us, once we begin to suffer. The "grace of final 
perseverance" is given to those who deserve it because they have worked 
for it. Profound and immovable conviction is the reward of right 
thinking, of honest desire for the truth; and nothing short of such 
conviction can give us courage to endure all things, or the fire of 
enthusiasm which makes effort creative and victorious. 

For that reason it will be necessary, in these pages, to tell the truth 
in very plain words. Grown men and grown women for whom alone 
these pages are intended should be glad to suffer rather than remain in 
ignorance and lukewarmness at this time of world purgation. Each one 
of us is being tried and tested. Better, surely, to suffer ; better to see and 
know these monsters of cruelty, of lust, of depravity, at their devil's 
work, than to fail in one's duty at any stage of the conflict, seeing that 
to fail would be to fail God as well as country ; would be to fail man as 
well as one's own soul. 

The philosophy to which Germany's ambition and inherent depravity 
have pushed her, and which she uses to justify and even to glorify her 
misconduct, has very clearly been outlined by Professor Vernon Kellogg, 
who served as chief representative of the American Relief Commission in 
occupied eastern France. Writing in The Atlantic Monthly of August, 
1917, he shows how it is that in Germany "the pale ascetic intellectual 
and the burly, red-faced butcher meet" on the common ground of "no 
mercy, no 'women-and-children' appeals; no hesitation to use the torch 
and the firing squad, deportation and enslavement." 

The German intellectual believes in the Allmacht of a natural 
selection based on a violent and ruthless struggle for supremacy. For 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 181 

him, "the test of right in this struggle is success in it. So let every 
means to victory be used." "He opposes all mercy, all compromise with 
human soft-heartedness." He has made himself unable to see that 
altruism, or mutual aid, as the biologists prefer to call it, "is just as truly 
a fundamental biologic factor of evolution as is the cruel, strictly 
self -regarding, exterminating kind of struggle for existence with which 
the Neo-Darwinists try to fill our eyes and ears, to the exclusion of the 
recognition of all other factors." 

It was this philosophy though he prided himself on having none 
which Nietzsche embodied in his doctrine of the Superman ; and it is this 
doctrine of the Superman, characterized by Nietzsche himself as the 
opposite of Christianity, which serves Germany to-day as her standard 
of conduct and as proof of her superiority over all other peoples. 

In his Zur Genealogie der Moral (I, 11), Nietzsche describes the 
Germans of his ideal in these terms : "Those same men who are so strictly 
kept within bounds by good manners . . . who, in their behavior to 
one another, show themselves so inventive in consideration, self-control, 
delicacy, loyalty, pride and friendship those very men are, to the outside 
world, to things foreign and to foreign countries, little better than so 
many uncaged beasts of prey (nicht viel besser also losgelassne 
Raubthiere). Here they enjoy liberty from all social restraint . . . 
and become rejoicing monsters (frohlockende Ungehener), who perhaps 
go on their way, after a hideous sequence of murder, arson, rape, torture, 
with as much gaiety and equanimity as if they had merely taken part in 
some student gambols. . . . Deep in the nature of all these noble 
races there lurks unmistakably the beast of prey, the blond beast (blonde 
Bestie}, lustfully roving in search of plunder and victory (Beute und 
Sieg}." 

It is this "ideal" which Germany has tried to make real, and the 
attainment of which by her soldiers of all ranks has filled her civilian 
population, including her women, with the most intense pride and 
satisfaction. They have been amazed that the world has failed to 
recognize such conclusive proof of German pre-eminence. They have 
despised the consideration shown to German prisoners in England, 
explaining it as evidence of fear and of inherent weakness. 

Still calling themselves a Christian people though their intellectuals 
have for long ceased to do so they have been at pains to explain to one 
another that world politics must not be confused by the thought of 
religion. Thus Friedrich Naumann, member of the Reichstag, founder 
and leader of the Deutsche Volkspartei, and one of the greatest powers 
in the Germany of today, declares in his Brief e iiber Religion (5th ed., 
Berlin, 1910; pp. 86, 87) that "we do not consult Jesus when we are 
concerned with things which belong to the domain of the construction of 
the State and of Political Economy. This sounds harsh and abrupt for 
every human being brought up a Christian, but appears to be sound 
Lutheranism." 



182 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

The German clergy solve the problem more simply by claiming that 
Germans are God's chosen people ; that above all things He wishes them 
to triumph over the rest of the world, and that whatever Germans do is 
done by God. "The German soul is the world's soul ; God and Germany 
belong to one another," says Pastor W. Lehmann in his sermon On the 
German God (Professor J. P. Bang, in Hurrah and Halleluiah, p. 83). 

Few serious writers are so widely read in Germany as Professor W. 
Lombard of Berlin, whose formulation of the German creed may be 
accepted as final, particularly if the "blond beast" be kept in mind. 
"Nietzsche," he says, "was but the last of the singers and seers who, 
coming down from the height of heaven, brought to us the tidings that 
there should be born from us the Son of God, whom in his language he 
called the Superman" (Bang, he. cit., p. 53). 

With that as their creed, with that attitude toward the world, no 
wonder that, from the Kaiser to the "pale intellectual," from "pale 
intellectual" to brute peasant, they behave like devils "for the love of 
God" of their God, who is the very spirit of Evil with whom they have 
allied themselves. 

The peasant, though he knows nothing of natural selection, nothing 
of Nietzsche, nothing of Professor Lombard or even of Pastor Lehmann, 
draws by osmosis, as it were, from his acknowledged superiors, from his 
officers and masters, encouragement to give free rein to his native 
rapacity and lust. A farm for nothing from the Russians ; wine for 
nothing and any other plunder from the French ; women for nothing 
wherever he goes license to break loose from the restraints which peace 
imposes upon him: this is his desire (for there is no peasant in the world 
so brutal as the German), and this it is that makes him willing to submit 
to the discipline of those who, as he knows, share in substance the same 
desires with him. 

"Gefickt [untranslatable] and boozed through the streets of Liege. 
. . . We live like God in Belgium" as a German soldier wrote in his 
diary, in August, 1914 (Bryce Report, Appendix, p. 255). 

What chance is there for such a creature until he is punished and 
knows that he is being punished, more terribly than he had imagined 
possible, for the vileness that is in him? What would he care if all that 
happened were the removal of a Kaiser and some change in the 
Constitution? The misfortunes of others are the only things in life 
which amuse him, which appeal to his brutish humor (what else, for 
instance, are the Bavarian "joke" stories about?). He would laugh 
uproariously if his superiors were punished. It would have no other 
effect. He would remain the beast, and the dangerous beast, that he is. 
He himself must suffer, and must suffer to the uttermost, before there can 
be any hope for him. 

Himself a slave, he is filled with the belief that, because a German, 
he is entitled to treat the men and women of other races as if they were 
animals beneath him. In this respect also, therefore, he is of one heart 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 183 

and mind with his superiors, who, with an intelligence which he of course 
does not possess, planned to enslave the world. 

Such statements as these cannot be quoted too often : "Germans alone 
will govern ; they alone will exercise political rights ; . . . they alone 
will have the right to become land owners. . . . However, they will 
condescend so far as to delegate inferior tasks to foreign subjects 
subservient to Germany" (Grossdeutschland und Mitteleuropa um das 
Jahr 1950, published under the auspices of the Alldeutscher Verband, or 
Pan-German League, Berlin, 1895; p. 48. Quoted by Cheradame, p. 4). 

And: "War must leave nothing to the vanquished except eyes to 
weep over their ill-luck (unglilck}. Moderateness (bescheidenheit} 
would be for us foolishness" (Otto Richard Tannenberg, in Grossdeutsch- 
land, die Arbeit des 20 ten Jahrhunderts, Leipzig, 1911 ; p. 237). 

There, plainly set forth, are the German purpose, the German soul, 
with Austria-Hungary, like the jackal that she is, trotting in company 
to pick up the leavings from the big beast's orgies. 

It is difficult for Americans to believe such things, so foreign to their 
own inclination and practice. But they are facts, and must be believed, 
if we are to do our part in the war. There is proof enough and to spare, 
not merely of atrocities beyond number, but of the motive which inspired 
those atrocities. That motive is, to enslave the people whom Germany 
subjugates. 

The United States, Great Britain, France and other nations hold 
dependencies such as the Hawaiian Islands, India, Algiers. But they 
hold them in trust. It is their avowed purpose to develop, not only the 
resources of territory thus held, but in all ways to benefit the inhabitants 
and to give them as much freedom as is consistent with their highest 
welfare. 

This is not an empty claim. No one who has travelled widely and 
who has seen the officials at work who govern such territories, could fail 
to recognize that their instinctive motive is to benefit the peoples under 
them. 

German domination means the exact opposite of this. It means that 
Germans, having obtained possession of a country, at once set to work to 
exploit it for the exclusive benefit of Germans. Its inhabitants are 
enslaved. Every effort is made to cow them, to bring them abjectly to 
heel. By means of physical and moral intimidation and outrage, Germany 
strives systematically to break their spirit, to murder their souls. Poland, 
Alsace-Lorraine, Africa, bore witness to that for years before the war. 

Now for the facts facts which prove that Germany has done, so 
far as she was able, according to her desire, according to her nature, 
according to her declared principles and purposes. Before dealing with 
the center, however, it will be best to examine the circumference of 
German action the works of her servants, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, 
Turkey. "The behavior of a valet will ofttimes reveal his master's 
character." 



184 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Professor R.-A. Reiss, of the University of Lausanne, a practical 
criminologist, visited Serbia to investigate for himself the reports of 
Austro-Hungarian atrocities. He had not been convinced by reading 
the Serbian complaints. In his Report (How Austria-Hungary Waged 
War in Serbia; published by the Librairie Armand Colin, Paris), he 
says : 

"I conducted my inquiry with every necessary precaution. I did not 
limit myself to questioning hundreds of Austrian prisoners and hundreds 
of eye-witnesses ; I went to the spot, sometimes with shells bursting 
around me, to inform myself of everything that it was possible to 
investigate. I opened graves; I examined the dead and wounded; I 
visited bombarded towns ; I went into houses and I carried on there a 
scientific inquiry, using the most scrupulous methods ; in short, I did my 
utmost to investigate and verify the facts which I report in this work." 

Confirmed by independent investigators, such as George M. 
Trevelyan, the English historian, Dr. Arius van Tienhoven of Holland, 
and Jules Schmidt the Swiss engineer, the result is a verdict such as has 
rarely if ever been brought against a nation. 

Serbian soldiers, when wounded or taken prisoners, were massacred. 
Photographs are given of women and children murdered in cold blood. 
"At Dobritch, on August 16th, 1914, the soldiers of the 57th Hungarian 
regiment bayoneted and killed eleven or twelve children from six to 
twelve years of age. This was done by order of First Lieutenant Nagj," 
who stated that he was obeying the commands of his superiors (p. 19 of 
the French edition). In a hundred different villages, similar things 
happened. Mothers and their daughters were outraged and then 
mutilated and then at last murdered, often in the presence of husband 
and father (pp. 21, 25, 36). At Chabatz, Hungarian officers, having 
driven all the girls and young women into the church, violated them 
behind the High Altar (p. 26). In many cases, men, women and children 
were driven into houses and burned alive (p. 33). 

"Near the railway station at Lechnitza, there is a large common pit 
20 metres long, 3 metres broad, and 2 metres deep. In this pit are buried 
109 peasants aged between 8 and 80. They were hostages from the 
neighboring villages whom the Austro-Hungarians brought to this place, 
where they had already begun to dig their grave. They were bound 
together with ropes and encircled by a wire. Then the soldiers took 
their places on the slope of the railway embankment, about 15 metres 
from the victims, and fired a volley at them. All of them fell down into 
the pit, and other soldiers immediately covered them with earth, without 
ascertaining whether they were dead or only wounded. It is certain that 
many of them were not mortally wounded, and some perhaps were not 
wounded at all, but were dragged into the grave by the others. They 
were buried alive. While this execution was going on, a second group 
of prisoners was brought up, among whom were many women, and when 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 185 

the first party were shot, these poor people were forced to shout 'Long 
live Emperor Francis Joseph!'" (p. 34). 

Professor Reiss says : "Very often the victims were mutilated before 
or after death. The following methods of killing and mutilating I have 
established by evidence : The victims were shot, killed by the bayonet, 
their throats were cut with knives, they were violated and then killed, 
stoned to death, hanged, beaten to death with the butt-end of rifles or 
with sticks, disemboweled, burned alive, or their legs or arms were cut 
or torn off, their ears or noses cut off, their eyes put out, their breasts 
cut off [a favorite practice of the Germans in Belgium and France], their 
skin cut in strips or the flesh torn from the bone; lastly, a little girl of 
three months was thrown to the pigs" (p. 38). 

Wherever the Austro-Hungarian troops went, "furniture, wardrobes 
and linen which could not be carried away, were destroyed. Pictures and 
upholstered furniture are smashed, carpets cut to pieces, crockery broken. 
The walls are splashed with ink, and the soldiers have left excrement 
everywhere" (p. 39). "Faecal matter was found on the tables, in the 
crockery, on the floor, etc." (p. 43) ; which also was a favorite practice 
of German officers and men in Belgium and France an unthinkable 
bestiality of which there is endless proof. 

Concluding his Report, Professor Reiss says : "What I have already 
written, as well as the statements of the Austro-Hungarian soldiers which 
I have published, show the systematic preparation for the massacres by 
officers of superior rank. The following extracts taken from a pamphlet 
issued by the higher command and distributed among the soldiers, afford 
even better proof of this preparation : 

" 'K. u. K. 9. Korpskommando. 

" 'Directions for conduct towards the population of Serbia. . . . 
Towards such a population all humanity and all kindness of heart are out 
of place ; they are even harmful, for any consideration, such as it is some- 
times possible to show in war, would in this case endanger our own 
troops. Consequently I order that during the whole course of the war, 
the greatest severity, the greatest harshness, and the greatest mistrust be 
observed towards everyone (Ich befehle daher, dass w'dhrend der ganzen 
Kriegerischen Aktion die grosste Strenge, die grosste Hdrte und das 
grosste Misstrauen gegen jedermann zu walten hat} ." 

So it goes on, explaining in great detail the many occasions on which 
"no consideration is to prevent their [the inhabitants'] execution." Thus: 
"Every inhabitant who is found outside a village, particularly in the 
woods, must be looked upon as a member of a band who has hidden his 
weapons, which we have no time to look for. Such people are to be 
executed if they appear in the slightest degree suspicious" (p. 47). 

And these were the orders of an Austrian General representing his 
Government ! 

When Serbia finally was overrun, through the combined efforts of 
Austria, Germany, and Bulgaria ("The Prussia of the Balkans"), and 

13 



186 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

when active military operations within Serbian territory ceased, the 
treatment of the civilian population became worse, if that were possible, 
instead of better. 

Full information under tHis head can be obtained from the Serbian 
Relief Committee of America (70 Fifth Avenue, New York). 

In a circular recently issued by that Committee, it is shown that the 
Bulgarians are trying to stifle the very idea and name of Serbian 
nationality. The use of the Serbian language is not tolerated. The 
Bulgarians are imposing on the entire population the Bulgarian language, 
religion, and name. Their aim is to denationalize and to enslave the 
Serbian people. They have interned all the Serbian teachers and 
clergymen, replacing them with Bulgarian teachers and priests. They 
confiscate and burn Serbian books ; they destroy Serbian monuments ; 
they remove to Bulgaria the agricultural implements, and the machinery 
from Serbian factories, so as to destroy the productivity of the country 
and to crush still further the spirit of the Serbian people. There is no 
cruelty or outrage which the Germans, Austrians and Bulgarians between 
them, are not committing, in order to attain their end, which is to turn a 
brave and independent people into a nation of terrorized slaves. 

Every day brings further evidence that the aim and methods of 
Germany and her allies remain the same, and that, though they "speak 
with the tongues of men and of angels" about Peace, they are as dis- 
honorable, as unscrupulous, as brutal, as they were at the beginning of 
the war. 

Not the worst, but merely the latest illustration of this, is given 
in an order issued by the Bulgarian War Ministry, dated May 20th, 1917, 
wlrch was published in the New York Times of October 6th, 1917, with 
some preliminary comment by the Serbian Legation, as follows: 

"Not long ago, in the Vienna Parliament, Deputy Dr. V. Riber 
declared that the horrors of this war affected none of the Allies so ter- 
ribly and gravely as the Jugoslav people. Once flourishing cities and 
villages are now in ruins. From the district of Nish [Serbia] alone the 
Bulgarians have deported more than 30,000 people to the deserts of 
Asia Minor. Since the times of Kossovo the Serbian people have 
(.xperienced no greater catastrophe. 

"Now, we are again in possession of a very important document, 
which illustrates the state of affairs prevailing in subjugated Serbia. This 
document, which was dispatched by the Bulgarian War Ministry to the 
Bulgarian Headquarters Staff, fell into the hands of the British Army 
at the Saloniki front. 

"From this document, of which we give the exact translation, it is 
clearly to be seen that the enforced recruiting of Serbians in the Morava 
districts is being conducted by Bulgarians, and that when these recruits 
were deported to Bulgaria 'regrettable events' occurred, i. e., the mutiny of 
the Serbian recruits in the neighborhood of Karlova, etc. 

"Many of these recruits deserted. The Bulgarians punished these 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 187 

deserters by whipping and hard labor. Afterward, contrary to the law 
of nations and The Hague Convention, these unfortunate deserters were 
shot, their houses burned down, their belongings confiscated, and their 
families deported from Serbia to Xrpali. 

"The Bulgarians also armed their civil population in order to com- 
plete the extermination of the Serbian nation." 

The text of this military order, which the Times reprinted in extenso, 
fully confirms the foregoing statements. It is signed, among others, by 
the Chief of the General Staff of the Bulgarian War Ministry. 

Are crimes committed in the Balkans too far off to seem real? 
But it is just such crimes, and the similar though in some ways more 
loathsome crimes committed in Belgium and eastern France, which the 
German Government and the German people long to commit in America. 
No home would be spared, no woman would be safe, no child but might 
wantonly be bayoneted. 

Now or later, it must be a fight to a finish between the powers that 
make for righteousness and the powers that work for Hell. But if it 
be not finished now ; if this cancer on the body of the earth be not 
removed to the last root now, who will guarantee that the best of the 
earth's nations can again be assembled to resist her? As America was 
slow to come in this time, may not other nations be as slow to come in 
then? And meanwhile? Surely the martyrdom in Europe should 
warn us! 

Treaties will not bind Germany. She has proved that. She will agree 
to anything. She will sign anything. She will go through all the motions. 
But "where there's a will there's a way." Her will must be changed. 
She must suffer until it does change. Her people must be brought to 
their knees. T. 

(To be continued.) 



What is peace? There is peace when there is nothing in man which 
strives against God. St. Augustine. 



MENTARY ARTICLE 




RECOLLECTION AND DETACHMENT 

KCOLLECTION and Detachment are twin doctrines and are 
almost always mentioned together. The reason for this is 
simple. We cannot hope to maintain Recollection to be recol- 
lected if we permit ourselves to be swayed by the countless 
distractions which each one of us meets every minute and hour of 
every day. Detachment is necessary. We must guard ourselves against 
the pull of our senses and our emotions, and the vagaries and discur- 
sive tendency of our minds. There is a converse to this and it will require 
some explanation and elaboration. 

Take a typical day. The need for both Recollection and Detach- 
ment begins with the first moment of waking consciousness. We are 
aroused, perhaps from deep sleep by an alarm clock. All the devotional 
books say that we should instantly turn our thoughts toward God. But 
we find that, instead of doing this instinctively and naturally and as a 
matter of course, we are much more likely to think first that it is very 
early; that we are very sleepy; that we got to bed late, perhaps because 
we were doing some altruistic work ; that we can do better work if 
we get enough sleep and keep our body and nerves in good condition ; 
that we can stay in bed ten minutes more if we hurry through our 
prayers or toilet. In a word, our minds, backed by the sensuous 
demands of our bodies, will give us countless excuses, and often very 
subtle and ingenious excuses, why we should not get up. 

William James expressed an occult truth when, in his Psychology, 
he wrote that the easy way out of our usual morning struggle, is not 
by an effort of will, so much as by an effort of mind. He said : stop 
thinking about how warm your bed is, etc., etc., and think of some- 
thing entirely different. If you do you will at once get up without 
effort or struggle. This is only a way of describing a part of what 
Detachment means; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that 
it describes in part, how Detachment works. Put in the words and 
phrases of the religious writer, we could say that the aspirant must 
detach himself from the pull of his physical senses, his love of warmth 
and comfort, his inertia and his hatred of cold and effort. Recollection 
may do this. If he is going to catch a train and has only just time 

1 88 



RECOLLECTION AND DETACHMENT 189 

enough, he will jump out of bed without delay, although perhaps with 
a sigh of self-pity. If he is going to do something long desired, to 
see a loved friend to accomplish a coveted end, he springs out of bed 
the instant he awakes, all alive and eager. Think how you felt as a 
child when you awoke on the morning of the circus or the picnic. The 
knowledge that there is going to be buckwheat cakes and sausage for 
breakfast, is sufficient to rouse some people from their sleeper's lethargy, 
while the desire for hot coffee influences a great many more persons 
than would like to confess to it. 

The point of course is that Recollection of some motive which 
carries with it a mainspring of action more powerful than the pull of 
our lower nature, is essential, or we would sleep late every morning. 
Fear is often the motive, fear of missing the train, fear that we shall 
be late at the office, fear that breakfast may be cold. Self-interest 
may furnish the motive; ambition, anticipated pleasure, or more subtle 
fears, like the fear that we shall disgrace ourselves, or neglect some 
duty. On the other hand love may furnish the motive, as when a 
mother gets up many times in a night to tend her baby. Her humanity 
may sometimes suggest to her that it is a cold and dreary business, 
but on the whole she has little contest with herself, because she wants 
to do it more than she does not want to do it. 

All this is Recollection ; Recollection in its most elementary form. 
Detachment is the deliberate freeing of ourselves from the power of the 
senses, until they cease to influence us, for it is obvious that we are not 
safe so long as right action depends upon our finding some motive which 
is stronger than our desire to be bad. Some day we may not find such 
a motive. Therefore we must not only practise Recollection, but we 
must attack the problem at the other end too; we must strive earnestly 
and diligently to lessen the hold which our senses have upon us; we 
must withdraw ourselves from their control ; we must detach ourselves 
from their allurements and entanglements ; we must practise Detachment. 

Recollection and Detachment, therefore, are simply two methods of 
accomplishing the same result, the conquest of our lower nature. In 
Recollection we pull ourselves away from our lower nature by grasp- 
ing something we want more. In Detachment we push ourselves away 
from the same lower nature because, well, because we do not like 
lower nature, we do not want to be under its sway, because we fear 
the results of self-indulgence, or because self-interest is a stronger force, 
or because we love something or some one better than we do our lower 
selves. 

It is obvious that there must be an element of Recollection in 
Detachment, otherwise we would not strive for Detachment; therefore 
we always find Recollection spoken of and inculcated first. The Rescue 
Mission worker knows he must awaken a desire for repentance and 
reform in the drunkard, before the convert will try to detach himself 
from the drink habit. 



190 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

It must be obvious by now that Recollection and Detachment are not 
mere religious precepts which the aspirant after discipleship must make 
part of his Rule of Life: they are universal laws, on all the planes of 
being, and whether he knows it or not every human being in the world 
is under their sway. Even the deliberately wicked man is subject to 
them. Like all universal laws, they are entirely impersonal and impartial, 
though they may be given an intensely personal bearing. 

The object and purpose of the disciple is to recognize the operation 
of these laws and, by taking advantage of that knowledge, to make 
them doubly or trebly productive in his own life. He cannot get away 
from them, but, by conscious use of them, he can get their power back 
of his efforts towards betterment. In other words, he can go with the 
current and take full advantage of its impetus. 

It is, I presume, quite clear that we can practise Recollection and 
Detachment in order to perfect ourselves in wickedness, as well as to 
perfect ourselves in goodness. For our purpose, however, we may take 
for granted that we wish to grow, to improve, to become bigger, better, 
stronger, wiser, kinder, gentler, more loving, more efficient, more useful. 
Hardly anyone but would say, "yes," to all this. Well, we know very 
well, from sad experience, that it is what w r e call our lower nature 
which is in our way. The desire to be good is intermittent. Between 
times we follow the behests of our lower nature, which are often not 
actively bad, and very frequently seem entirely innocent. The desires 
of our higher and of our lower natures may run parallel for a time ; 
and, as we grow, this should be more and more the case. But another 
condition also results. Our very progress throws our actual status into 
relief and accentuates the differences between higher and lower nature. 
The contrasts and contests tend to become more acute. Even a little 
lower nature will spoil a great deal of good, like a little garlic in milk ; 
until finally, as we near perfection, it is usually some small sin, some- 
thing which in an ordinary man or woman would be almost unnoticed, 
which not only mars our achievement, but may actually precipitate a 
totil failure. There is no big or little when it comes to sin. Anything 
which is not higher nature, is poisonous and however seemingly 
innocent or trivial must be got rid of. Hence the importance of Mr. 
Judge's famous injunction that we should never do anything for the sake 
of the lower self alone. Doubtless this is a counsel of perfection, as 
any one who tried it for ten minutes will discover, but it is nevertheless, 
the ideal which must underlie our efforts. 

We must conquer our lower natures completely, so that there is no 
lower nature left. It is a very big task indeed ; not any the less difficult 
because, at first, we do not know the difference between lower nature 
and higher nature, especially at the border line where the contest rages. 
But that is a different subject. This section is upon Detachment, which 
is one, and one of the chief, methods of conquering our faults. It 



RECOLLECTION AND DETACHMENT 191 

assumes that we know the fault and, at least at times, want to get 
rid of it. 

Detachment is the conscious and deliberate withdrawal of our con- 
sent to the fault. This means that we put no new power into it ; but 
unfortunately, it does not mean that the fault will not continue to attack 
us with all the virulence of its stored up energy. Every time we com- 
mitted the fault in the past, we gave it a part of the force which is our 
divine birthright as sons of God, as rays of the Over-soul. This 
energy, this power, must be withdrawn from the fault and taken back 
into the higher nature where it belongs. This is done at first by refus- 
ing to allow the fault to express itself, and is completed by cultivating 
the virtue of which the fault is a perverse expression. In that way we 
transfer the power which gave life and force to the fault, to a virtue 
which becomes a permanent possession of the higher nature. 

The part Detachment plays in this process should be obvious. We 
cannot hope to make this transfer of power so long as our desires are 
tangled up in the fault; therefore we must cultivate detachment from 
the fault. What does that mean? It means that if you are a glutton, 
and there are very few people who are not, you must systematically 
cultivate an indifference to food. You must deny yourself the kinds 
of food you especially like and regulate rigorously the quantity you 
permit yourself to eat, until you observe Mr. Judge's rule and never 
eat anything for the sake of the lower self alone; that is, because it 
tastes good, or you like it. You eat because your body needs food, and 
you regulate what and how much you eat as systematically as you feed, 
let us say, your horse. You give it so many quarts of oats and so many 
pounds of hay, each day. You pay no attention whatever to the fact 
that the horse loves sugar and carrots, and at any opportunity will eat 
itself sick of them. You know that it will keep well and strong on oats 
and hay, so you give it oats and hay, and pay no attention to its desire 
for other things. Treat yourself exactly the same way. 

No, it is not easy; and to do it at all you must become detached 
from food. You must cultivate indifference to it, by acting as if you 
were indifferent to it, until you actually do become indifferent to it. Or 
perhaps you are already indifferent to what you eat. Some fortunate 
people are. If so, let us take some other weakness as an illustration. 
Let us assume that you are not above criticizing your acquaintances 
and friends, and are a bit of a gossip. Perhaps you do not actually 
enjoy a scandal, but you can contemplate the weaknesses of others with 
entire equanimity, if not with a certain relish. Most people can. Now 
that, as a matter of fact, is a perfectly horrid fault, and comes straight 
from the lowest depths of Hell. It is only a devil who is malignant 
enough to gloat over the sins of others, and in so far as you have that 
tendency, you partake of the nature of the devil. Now, do you not 
want to be detached from such a sin? Of course you do. Well, the 
way to begin is to deny its least expression. Recollection comes into 



192 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

play here, for you cannot hope to stop so ingrained a habit unless you 
are on perpetual guard, and remember constantly that you think it abom- 
inable to get satisfaction from the contemplation of, and the talking 
about, the weaknesses of others. After you make some progress in over- 
coming your evil tendency, you can add the next and necessary stage to 
the process and cultivate deliberately the qualities of sympathy, toler- 
ance and charity, which are, perhaps, the antitheses of your fault. This 
gives an outlet to the force in the fault and prevents it from going back 
into the fault when you deny it expression. 

Every manifestation of the lower nature has to be treated in this 
same manner. They all have to be killed out and transmuted into higher 
nature. There is no other way. It may seem a soggy prospect, and 
if the contest is played with, it is soggy, for a half-way, or partial treat- 
ment is hell. On the other hand to start and to prosecute such a 
struggle with fire and energy is a perpetual joy and a succession of 
victories, each one leaving us stronger, better, happier, freer than before. 

C. A. G. 



The one misery of man is self-will, the one secret of blessedness is 
the conquest over our own wills. To yield them up to God is rest and 
peace. What disturbs us in this world is not "trouble," but our opposi- 
tion to trouble. The true source of all that frets and irritates, and 
ivecrs away our lives, is not in external things, but in the resistance of 
our wills to the will of God expressed by external things. Alexander 
MacLaren. 




The Heliotr opium, or Conformity of the Human Will to the Divine, from the 
Latin of Jeremias Drexelius ; published by the Devin-Adair Co., New York, 1917. 

This book was first published in Latin in 1627. The author was one of the 
most distinguished ascetical writers of Germany in the seventeenth century. He 
was born at Augsburg in 1581 ; became court preacher at Munich, and died in 1638. 
His writings were immensely popular. Of one treatise alone, 20,400 copies were 
disposed of in Munich before the year 1642; while the total sale of his various 
writings is said to have reached the astonishing figure of 170,700 copies. 

To the student of Theosophy The Heliotropium "turning to the Sun" will 
be of particular interest and value. In Christian terms, its teaching is exactly 
the same as that which the Bhagavad Gita emphasizes in chapters showing that all 
things originate in the Supreme, and that good fortune and ill, health and sickness, 
wealth and poverty should be accepted as expressions of the divine will for us. 
The doctrines of Reincarnation and Karma explain the operation of justice and 
wisdom and love in the distribution of inner characteristics and outer events. 
But there are many who believe theoretically in Karma who fail utterly to accept 
its decrees as evidence of divine compassion. Drexelius would help them to do this. 

The book is full of excellent stories, illustrative of the author's points. We 
quote one of these at length, as a fair sample of the book: 

"There was once upon a time an eminent Divine who for eight years besought 
God with unwearied prayers to show him a man by whom he might be taught the 
most direct way to heaven. One day, when he was possessed of an unconquerable 
desire to converse with such a man, and wished for nothing so much as to see a 
teacher of truth so hidden, he thought that he heard a voice coming to him from 
heaven, which gave him this command : 'Go to the porch of the church, and you 
will find the man you seek.' 

"Accordingly he went into the street, and at the door of the church he found 
a beggar whose legs were covered with ulcers running with corruption, and whose 
clothes were scarcely worth threepence. The Divine wished him good day. To 
whom the beggar replied, 'I do not remember that I ever had a bod one.' Where- 
upon the man of letters, as if to amend his former salutation, said, 'Well, then, 
God send you good fortune.' 'But I never had any bad fortune,' answered the 
beggar. The Divine was astonished at this reply, but repeated his wish, in case he 
might have made a mistake in what he heard, only in somewhat different words : 
'Say you so I pray, then, that you may be happy.' But again the beggar replied, 
'I never was unhappy.' The Divine, thinking that the beggar was playing upon 
words merely for the sake of talking, answered, in order to try the man's wit, 
'I desire that whatever you wish may happen to you.' 'And here, also,' he replied, 
'I have nothing to complain of. All things turn out according to my wishes, 
although I do not attribute my success to fortune.' 

"Upon this the man of letters, saluting him afresh, and taking his leave, 
said : 'May God preserve you, my good man, since you hate fortune ! But tell me, 
I pray, are you alone happy among mortals who suffer calamity? If so, Job 
speaks safely when he declares, "Man born of a woman, living for a short time, 
is filled with many miseries." And how comes it that you alone have escaped all 

193 



194 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

evil days? I do not fully understand your feelings.' To this the beggar replied, 
'It is so, sir, as I have said. When you wished me a "good day," 1 denied that I 
had ever had a bad one. I am perfectly contented with the lot which God has 
assigned me in this world. Not to want happiness is my happiness. Those bug- 
bears, Fortune and Misfortune, hurt him only who wills, or at least who fears, to be 
hurt by them. Never do I offer my prayers to Fortune, but to my Heavenly Father 
Who disposes the events of all things. And so I say I never was unhappy, inas- 
much as all things turn out according to my wishes. If I suffer hunger, I praise 
my most provident Father for it. If cold pinches me, if the rain pours down upon 
me, or if the sky inflicts upon me any other injury, I praise God just the same. 
When I am a laughing-stock to others, I no less praise God. For sure I am that 
God is the Author of all these things, and that whatever God does must be the 
best. Therefore, whatever God either gives, or allows to happen, whether it be 
pleasant or disagreeable, sweet or bitter, I esteem alike, for all such things I 
joyfully receive as from the hand of a most loving Father ; and this one thing 
I will what God wills. And so all things happen as I will. Miserable is the 
man who believes that Fortune has any power against him ; and truly unhappy 
is he who dreams of some imaginary unhappiness in this world. This is true 
happiness in this life, to cleave as closely as possible to the Divine Will. The Will 
of God, His most excellent, His most perfect Will, which cannot be made more 
perfect, and cannot be evil, judges concerning all things, but nothing concerning it. 
To follow this Will I bestow all my care. To this one solicitude I devote myself 
with all my might, so that whatever God wills, this I also may never refuse to 
will. And, therefore, I by no means consider myself unhappy, since I have so 
entirely transfused my own will into the Divine, that with me there is no other 
will or not will than as God wills or wills not.' 

" 'But do you really mean what you say ?' asked the Divine ; 'tell me, I pray, 
whether you would feel the same if God had decreed to cast you down to hell?' 
To which the beggar at once replied, 'If He should cast me down to hell ? But 
know that I have two arms of wondrous strength, and with these I should hold 
him tightly in an embrace that nothing could sever. One arm is the lowliest 
humility shown by the oblation of self, the other, purest charity shown by the love 
of God. With these arms I would so entwine myself round God, that wherever 
He might banish me, thither would I draw Him with me. And far more desirable, 
in truth, would it be to be out of heaven with God, than in heaven without Him,' 
The Divine was astonished at this reply, and began to think with himself that 
this was the shortest path to God. 

"But he felt anxious to make further inquiry, and to draw forth into sight 
the wisdom which dwelt in such an ill-assorted habitation ; and so he asked, 
'Whence have you come hither?' 'I came from God,' replied the beggar. To 
whom again the Divine, 'And where did you find God?' 'Where I forsook all 
created things.' Again the Divine asked, 'But where did you leave God?' 'In 
men of pure minds and goodwill,' replied the poor man. 'Who are you?' said the 
Divine. 'Whoever I am,' he replied, 'I am so thoroughly contented with my lot 
that I would not change it for the riches of all kings. Every one who knows 
how to rule himself is a king.' 'Am I, then, to understand that you are a king?' 
said the other. 'Where is your kingdom?' 'There,' said the beggar, and at the 
same time pointed with his finger toward heaven. 'He is a king to whom that 
kingdom on high is transferred by sure deeds of covenant.' At last the Divine, 
intending to bring his questions to an end, said, 'Who has taught you this? Who 
has instilled these feelings into you?' To which the other replied, 'I will tell you, 
Sir. For whole days I do not speak, and then I give myself up entirely to prayer or 
holy thoughts, and this is my only anxiety, to be as closely united as possible to 
God. Union and familiar acquaintance with God and the Divine Will teach all this.' 

"The theologian wished to ask more questions, but thinking it would be better 
to postpone this to another time, took his leave for the present. As he went away, 
full of thought, he said to himself, 'Lo ! thou hast found one who will teach thee 
the shortest way to God ! How truly does S. Augustine say, "The unlearned start 
up and take heaven by violence, and we with our learning, and without heart, lo ! 
where we wallow in flesh and blood !" And so Christ, when giving thanks says, 
'I confess to thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid 
these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.' 
Beneath a filthy garment, forsooth, great wisdom often lies concealed. And who 
would think of seeking for such Divine learning in a man of so mean an appear- 
ance? Who would believe that so much of the Spirit was hidden under such 
unlettered simplicity? Lo! those two arms of unconquerable strength, Oblation 
of Self and Love of God, draw God withersoever this poor man wills! With these 
arms God permits Himself to be closely bound; other embraces He refuses.'" 



ANSWERS 




QUESTION No. 215. /j nof reincarnation almost as painful to think of as 
annihilation, in that in future lives we will not remember or recognise those whom 
we love today? 

ANSWER. How do we know that we do not recognize today those whom we 
have loved before? Personally I believe we do. Is not that more real than to 
think we love those whom we have been thrown against by the accidents of a 
single life? But it is said that our associations are divinely guided. Is this 
different in essence from the doctrine of reincarnation? Which is it easier to 
believe that a God moves us like wooden chessmen, or that the divine element 
in ourselves seeks out an environment with those whom we love? Is it "annihila- 
tion" to look forward to close association and association in love with the 
added experience of life by life for our soul-memory, and the cleansing of the 
slate for the mere animal memory? G. V. S. M. 

ANSWER. The doctrine of reincarnation has never troubled me because Carlyle, 
in Sartor Resartus, gave me the key to it. What is it that is really "I"? Is it not 
something indestructible like the sense of identity that now, in my fifty-sixth year, 
persists, after the many mental changes of an active life? I think of my reincarna- 
tions as clothes. In the attic, at home, are still kept my baby clothes and my first 
soldier suit. I can still remember the day I put on the (toy) soldier suit. I ara 
the same "I" today as the "I" of fifty-one years ago. I am wearing different 
clothes today; so are my friends. My present day clothes do not recognize the 
costumes worn by my friends thirty years ago. But "I" recognize both the friends 
and the costumes. J. W. O. 

ANSWER. This question reminds me of the fact that we do not remember 
anything from our birth up to the age of three to five years old. Surely we 
loved, in our own way, our mother and father and nurse. We clung to them 
and felt happy and safe in their arms. The nurse left perhaps, before we were 
four years old, and we forgot her entirely. In some cases the father or the 
mother too is lost at that early age. Later we may not even remember that we 
ever saw them. Does this fact make our later life miserable or bring us to wish 
that we had never been born? 

When the child grows older and begins to exhibit some power of memory 
and reason, it feels unhappy with the thought of leaving those it loves, or of 
losing them ; and it may even wish to die with them. But time passes, and 
experience shows that these heartbreaking pangs were temporary moods only, as 
they are later in life too at the loss of one very dear to us. We still remember 
the beloved friends that are no more at our side, but the memory of the happy 
time spent with them causes no distress any longer, is more like a lovely dream 
we once had. Does this recollection of the lost dear-ones ever make us feel so 
wretched as to prefer annihilation to continued life? Certainly not. Is it the 
confidence in meeting again at the resurrection that pacifies our minds and makes 
us again enjoy our present life perhaps even more than before the great loss? 
In some cases it may be, but not as a rule. Changes in moods are effects of 

195 



196 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

changes in time, surroundings and circumstances. We are outgrowing childhood, 
youth, old enjoyments, old sorrows, old memories; and new enjoyments, sorrows, 
memories are replacing them. We find other companions that take the empty 
places; we are again happy with new friends, embracing new dear-ones. 

Let us not be narrow-minded and confine our conception of human life to 
one single incarnation. If we consider a long series of incarnations as the days 
of the soul, and compare them with the days of our present incarnation, surely we 
must come to the conclusion that we are much worse off in the days of our present 
life-time than in the days of the soul's life-time, in which we do not remember 
the events of the past days. In this connection it seems befitting to quote the 
following advice of the Christian Master : "Be not therefore anxious for the 
morrow; for the morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the 
evil thereof." Instead of regarding it an unbearable loss not to remember the 
details of our last incarnation we should find it a blessing. To remember every- 
thing about our last incarnation would, to many ot us, be a source of no end 
of miseries; and to all it would mean a great hindrance in pursuing just that 
course of training which is wanted by the soul. 

Therefore, instead of questioning the wisdom and perfection of the great 
evolutionary scheme moulded in the Divine Mind before time was, and overruled 
by the presiding Deity, we should study the doctrine of reincarnation well and try 
to understand its significance and necessity. And having realized its grandeur to 
some extent, and that every incarnation is a new opportunity given us for our 
salvation for the soul's liberation from the bondage of matter then we can 
indeed celebrate the first and all succeeding birthdays of our present incarnation 
with exultant hearts, overflowing with gratitude to our Heavenly Father for all 
his mercy and love for an ungrateful generation. T. H. K. 

ANSWER. It would be quite as painful without the doctrine of love. The 
many instances of "love-at-first-sight" and strong almost inexplicable affection 
(such as are described in Guy de Maupassant's story called "Love") are proof to me 
that though our minds have forgotten and do not recognize the clothes or physical 
bodies, have lost the conscious memory of the other pilgrim, the love of the two 
souls is but a continuation of the love and companionship of innumerable lives. 

"Love is the strongest bond in the universe." If we really believed this it 
seems to me we would have to believe in its power to draw together those who 
truly love one another when one takes this thought forward into the lives to come 
all sting, indeed, is taken from death. T. M. 

QUESTION No. 216. / have heard it said that individual help can only be given 
in response to a demand. Do not the Masters give individual help in response to 
a great need even when there has been no demand and when it can not be said 
that the person helped is living in any sense according to the laws of the spirit? 
Would not a desperate situation call down help from Masters if there were HO 
special merit whether of sacrifice or spiritual living or incipient discipleship f 

ANSWER. A genuine "need" is a demand ; and the genuine needs of mankind 
of all mankind are supplied by the Masters perpetually. But it should not be 
forgotten that the genuine need may be the need of punishment ; that is, of purifica- 
tion, for without pain, there is no purification. And the Masters may deliberately 
administer that pain, to bring the purification. 

We are too inclined to think that the work of a Saviour is to remove pain, 
to guard us from pain. But there is good authority for exactly the opposite belief : 
"As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten : be zealous, therefore, and repent. . . ." 

C J. 

ANSWER. Surely it depends on what is a real need. Is not such a real need 
a demand? Light on the Path speaks of the. ordinary man asking with his mind 



QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 197 

only : but when there is a real need the whole life of the man cries out and 
makes the demand even if it be voiceless or beyond the brain-mind. And it is 
just such vital demands which are active on the plane of consciousness where the 
Masters work and where such demands are always heard. Whether individual help 
can be given is entirely another matter and depends on the justice of Karma. The 
Masters are always ready to help when They can : but we place ourselves in 
"desperate situations" and tie Their hands so that They cannot help; we prevent 
the help They would gladly give from reaching us. But in reply to the last part 
of the question, I should think that the demand would be the effect of special merit 
in some former incarnation. Otherwise I think there could be no demand. 

A. K. 

ANSWER. It might be helpful to the questioner to consider this series of 
questions from the viewpoint of reincarnations instead of the single life hypothesis. 
How dare we deny "special merit" unless we know what has happened in the past? 
Indeed how dare we deny "special merit" when we see only the outside of things. 
Does prayer have to be vocalized? Is the soul in anguish limited to the expression 
of a physical demand? And may not help be given through the mediation and 
advocacy of another perhaps the Master or some one of "special merit" ready to 
ransom us for love's sake? As an abstract matter there must be a demand but 
as a practical matter it is doubtful if we are fitted to judge whether a demand has 
been made or whether merit exists in ourselves or others. G. V. S. M. 

ANSWER. Bourget closes his recent book, Le Sens de la Mart with these 
words : "When we feel that God has dropped out of things, in reality He is quite 
near us." Is there only one form in which a demand can be made? Are there 
not acts, which involve and imply a demand? The action of France toward the 
religious Orders may be such an act an unwillingness, on the part of the national 
conscience, any longer to tolerate religious institutions into the veins of which the 
Vatican virus had been introduced. It was a loss France brought upon herself, 
thus to break with her traditional faith. Was not a demand for something more 
genuine involved? May that demand be receiving its answer in the present war 
which, by illustrating devotion and self-sacrifice, is bringing France once more 
to recognize realities, and the genuine religion that she needs ? A. W. 

ANSWER. Remember that the Masters are the executors of the Law and not 
its opposers. Through love for mankind they have consecrated their whole life 
to its welfare. They are acting impartially and always on principles and in accord- 
ance with the Law. Thus, in the case of a great need they give what help they 
can without regard to the worthiness of the man in a desperate situation. Mean- 
while, they can, of course, give immensely more help to the good man than to the 
sinner, not because the first is a favorite, but since the Law permits it. And since 
the desperate situation may be brought on by the Law in order to give a highly 
wanted lesson, and to promote the welfare of the one in need, it would be the 
opposite of charity to help, till the Law is fulfilled. But the Masters are keeping 
a watchful eye on the case and are always ready to help, when help is a blessing. 

T. H. K. 

ANSWER. Masters may give help for many reasons. They are always trying 
to reach souls and a special need may be a special opportunity. Help may also 
come as the Karma of past lives, the fruit of good- deeds done ages ago of which 
we have now no conscious knowledge. We are the sum total of all our experience, 
not of one life only. Or help may be given because of a man's position involving 
the need of others, perhaps the need of a nation. Or again it may be given through 
the prayers or the vicarious atonement of others. 

But what do we mean by a "desperate situation?" If there has been no merit, 
no living in accordance with spiritual laws, now or in the past, there would be no 



198 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

individual in the real sense, only a mass of swaying desires. No situation that 
concerned only such an elemental self could be really desperate at all. 

B. M. H. 

QUESTION No. 217. In reading Air. Johnston's "From the Upanishads" and 
reaching the paragraph beginning "If the slayer thinks to slay it, if the slain thinks 
it is slain," I recalled at once Emerson's poem Brahma whose opening lines are 
almost identical. One line of that poem has always been a mystery to me: "And 
one to me are shame and fame." It seems wholly out of key with the rest of tht 
poem. I should appreciate an explanation? 

ANSWER. Zeno, one of the ancient Greek philosophers, taught that the soul 
is the only reality, and that everything that happens in life is an opportunity for 
the soul to prove its power. Thus, health and disease, poverty and wealth are 
such opportunities. Can we not see that good repute and ill repute are similar 
opportunities? Ought not the soul to stand unshaken either by shame or by fame, 
extracting from both the lesson which is there? S. M. 

ANSWER. Does it not mean that one who strives to live the life of the soul, 
to tread the Path of discipleship, must be prepared to follow that Path whether 
it lead to shame or fame in the eyes of men? There are many parallels to that 
passage. For instance, Light on the Path, the end of the third comment, page 
68, "... there is neither credit, glory or reward to be gained by this first task 
which is given to the neophyte. Mystics have always been sneered at, and seers 
disbelieved." Obviously the neophyte would not hesitate through fear of the 
shame of being sneered at. Shame or fame would be all one to him if it were 
his Master's will. "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you 
and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake." (Matt. 5:11) 
The same spirit is to be found throughout the Bhagavad Gita. To emote one 
passage out of many : "Standing in union with the Soul, carry out thy work, 
putting away attachment. O conqueror of wealth; eaual in success and failure, 
for equalness is called union with the Soul." J. M. 



I T-s-Acnvmes 



THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, PACIFIC BRANCH, LOS ANGELES, CAL. 

Los ANGELES, CAL., July, 1917. 
To the Chairman Executive Committee, T. S., 

and Editor THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY. 
DEAR SIRS AND BROTHERS: 

Whatever our personal predilections may be, or whatever the star, as it were, 
by which we each are inwardly guided, we all with one accord, looked Eastward on 
the morning of the Convention day. 

By mutual confession, our first thought and mental questioning upon arising 
may well be epitomised into: "What of the day? What is the watchword for the 
coming Society year?" 

Whilst outwardly, at this distance from you, the Convention assembly may 
have seemed to us a long way off, and hardly discernable in the scene of active 
outward life and striving, that the thought of New York City suggests to us; yet 
inwardly we felt we were with you, breathing, shall we say, the same sacramental 
inner vitalizing airs, sharing with you the inner life atmosphere, you in New York 
have done so much to create. So that the QUARTERLY'S Convention report, which 
has just reached us, not only throws a bright light upon outward things, it also 
records our deep convictions. 

We, the undersigned, therefore desire collectively to declare to you, in more 
or less formal way, our individual approval of the preamble and resolutions, rela- 
tive to President Wilson's war message, and the entry of America into the war, 
which were presented to the Convention by the Committee on Resolutions, and 
unofficially voted upon and passed by individual members of the Society then 
assembled. And we ask that our own individual indorsement of that preamble and 
resolutions be herewith added to the votes of those members then and there given. 

Although we judge that the rejected preamble and resolutions, submitted by 
Mr. C. A. Griscom, really and more fittingly expressed the thought and feeling, 
and intentions of the members who so voted, as it does our own. We would 
further like you to know that we also appreciate the very necessary new rule which 
provides for the protection of the Society by expulsion, if needs be, of an un- 
principled member. 

As you doubtless well understand, we merely record our own personal con- 
victions. Neither do we intend them to commit the Society or our Branch, in any 
way in matters of belief. Nor should it in any way hinder a like free expression 
of a different opinion by other members. With you, we realize that each one is 
free to choose in such matters, and we heartily thank you and the members in 
New York for the fearless, outspoken, and instructive lead you have taken. 

We remain very sincerely yours, and with all good wishes for the ensuing 
year, as ever. 



WALTER H. Box, 
ALFRED L. LEONARD, 
ERIK BLAKKEN, 
AGNES GOOD, 



M. ELLA PATERSON, 
JULIA M. Box, 
AGNES C. ELWING. 



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200 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

ADDENDA 

If to this the writer may add an after-thought on the Convention proceedings 
as a whole, and select from among the many good things then said, a sentence 
which seems to him to express more nearly the Convention's keynote, or the watch- 
word for the coming Society year, it is, "Victory for the Soul of the nation ! " 

For, as he believes, high above all else, by every war move and paramount 
commercial and political issue, the Souls of the Nations, the potential spiritual 
life of their peoples, of the neutral and belligerent nations alike, are being weighed 
as in a balance by the present conflict; more searchingly than at any other time 
in the history of the Caucasian races. 

I gather from what I recall of Theosophical writings that the times in which 
we live are essentially a period of transition. It is a point in our spiritual evolu- 
tion the thought of which brings to mind with added force and meaning Shake- 
speare's simile of fortune's floodtide in the affairs of men, which, if "omitted" or 
allowed to fail of its purpose in life's voyage, binds men in shallows, and in 
miseries. 

For potential power and its far-reaching effect upon the future, and in its 
inner and outer workings, in most all save the elements of human self-effort and 
responsibility, the present time is said very closely to correspond to the periods of 
evolutionary change and new beginnings in nature. Such times, for example, as 
when Nature's Master Builders, living and all unseen on her inner secretive planes, 
and with nature's vast purposes in view, give inner birth to those invisible nuclei 
of life which afterward, in due course of nature's living fostering processes, spring 
up into outer nature as new crystalline formations, or new species of flora, or 
animal life, the origins of which, science on the outside so diligently but vainly 
seeks ; and when, we are told, the same Master-hand gives to each such hidden 
nucleus of plastic germinal life, and potential life qualities, its predominant char- 
acteristics, and the necessary impulse withal to carry the fittest amongst its count- 
less variations to perfection. 

In other words, in the evolution of the race as a whole, our time and age is 
essentially the birth hour for certain soul qualities within us, if not for the Soul 
Itself. 

By every seen and unseen token and factor of this decisive struggle ; by the 
right guidance of world leaders, or by their perfidy and inhumanity, "will to power," 
and abuse of intellectual attainments and gifts of inner life, as by the responsive 
beats and impulses of the hearts and minds of the people, both high and low ; by 
our every effort and incentive; in all that we think and feel and do, and by the 
help of Master hands in this common hour of trial, future standards of human 
life and conduct are in the making. 

In this hour of travail, midst thunders of human strife, and in the twilight 
and silence of the human soul, dominent chords and dissonances, as it were, of 
human life and possibility are being sounded, to re-sound and live again in cen- 
turies and periods to come as the fundamental principles upon which future civili- 
zations will be built, for the Soul's final victory or defeat. 

And for our own country, to which it was given to declare a "New Order 
of Ages," we pray that its peace, whatever the outward seeming, may in a measure 
be as the peace the Master gives to the struggling disciple, a peace which comes 
not only with victory, but with deeper inner understanding and the will to obey; 
though we pass through sorrow and suffering, inner and outer privation and 
want, and the gates of death, as some have done, guided continuously by the 
Master's Light. A. E. O. 




JANUARY, 1918 

The Theosophical Society, as such, is not responsible for any opinion 
or declaration in this magazine, by whomsoever expressed, unless con- 
tained in an official document. 

THE KARMA OF THE RUSSIANS 

WE were told, on high authority, in the last issue of the 
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, that this period of the World 
War is "a day when men are being sifted as individuals, 
as organizations, as nations. It is an accounting day in the 
Lodge, and the Ledgers are being balanced . . . " In the light of a 
sentence like that, what can be more appalling than the present position 
of Russia, where a nation, once counted among the Allies, seems 
determined to cover itself with undying shame. To such a point has the 
"Russian Revolution" come. Yet there were many, and among them a 
man so wise as General Jan Christian Smuts, who, at the outset, hailed 
that revolution as perhaps the greatest event of the world war: a pro- 
nouncement that today sounds like the bitterest irony. 

We have been counseled always to look beneath events for the 
motive which gives them life ; we have been told, further, that "by their 
fruits ye shall know them." By what profound corruption of motive 
can we account for the fruit of dishonor that the Russian revolution 
bears ? 

As to the forces for the moment dominant, the so-called "Bolshevik 
Socialists," there is no great mystery about their motives. They are 
explicit enough in their declarations, and quite clear as to the goal they 
have in view. From the beginning, they planned to get hold of the 
Russian army, in order to carry through what they call "the social revolu- 
tion" in Russia. But their ultimate purpose covers the whole world; if 
they succeed in Russia, they will immediately start an active campaign 
here, for they have plenty of ardent disciples in America, nay, in the 
very centre of New York. Among the Petrograd Bolsheviki, very few 
leaders seem to be Russian by blood. Most of them talked a dialect 
of German as their mother-tongue and they still think in that German 
dialect. Completely turning their backs on the faith of their fathers as 

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202 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

an absurd and outgrown superstition, they have accepted Karl Marx 
and Marx in his most violent and destructive moods as their Messiah; 
the reign of "the proletariat" represents for them "the coming of the 
kingdom." 

Like Karl Marx, they are, for the most part, thoroughly materialistic 
and anti-Christian; when they think about philosophical ideas, they are 
atheists; but generally they think of one thing only material wealth 
and power. They have in mind a world-empire with themselves as 
leaders, an empire enriched with the plunder of existing governments, 
whom they ferociously call "armed robbers." But Karl Marx's formulas, 
with the spoliation of "the proletariat" by "the capitalistic classes" date 
from 1850; that is, nine or ten years before Darwin's idea of evolution 
came into the world; therefore Marx, though a thorough-going 
materialist, is not an evolutionist. He could never see, as Darwin so 
clearly sees, that free competition is the greatest instrument of progress, 
and therefore of general enrichment. Brought up in a narrow and 
densely egotistic corner of German thought, Marx could never see that 
the one guarantee of progress and general enrichment is free opportunity 
for the exceptionally gifted men, with a reward sufficient to spur them 
to extraordinary exertion ; exertion which invariably results in general 
enrichment and betterment. Marx could only see the result, the reward, 
of exceptional power ; he could never see, and these followers of his, for 
the most part men of his race, can never see, first, the exceptional power 
which these rewards simply register; and, secondly, that while the gifted 
man makes a fortune for himself, he invariably raises a wave of well- 
being, that enriches all his neighbors at the same time. He could never 
see, what is really quite simple and elementary, that the rich man, the 
gifted man whose power has brought great rewards, can profit by his 
wealth in one way only: by paying other people for services, and so 
immediately restoring the general level of wealth. 

Marx declares, and these fanatical followers of his believe, that the 
labor of "the proletariat" creates all wealth ; they are incapable of seeing 
that, without thought, without intelligence, without the guiding and 
organizing will, labor can create almost no wealth ; and that it is the 
exceptional gifted man who supplies these things, and therefore really 
creates wealth. 

So, obstinately blind to the forces of intelligence and will, and with 
greedy eyes fixed only on the rewards, the results of these, Marx and 
his Bolshevik followers ferociously denounce the gifted men as "robbers," 
and call on "the proletariat" to pull them down and despoil them, thus 
taking back for labor the wealth which, they say, labor alone has created. 

It is a wild, explosive, destructive philosophy. But we must take 
the pains to understand it, as an indispensable measure of safety; for, 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 203 

within a very short time, we shall face exactly the same kind of move- 
ment, with like leaders and the same convictions, that have been raging 
for eight months in Petrograd. 

The Lenins and Trotsky s believe themselves to be the apostles of 
Marx, the new Messiah, apostles destined to lead "the proletariat" into 
the promised land; and their promised land is wholly material; 
they have no ideal that could not be gratified by money and more money. 

These Lenin-Trotsky agitators are aliens in Russia, alien to the great 
mass of Russians in blood and creed ; they admit this quite frankly them- 
selves, and say they are not Russians but citizens of the world. Having 
for centuries had no nationality themselves, but being dispersed among 
all nations, they deny the fact and value of nationality, which is the 
creation, they say, of "the capitalistic classes." But, since their mother 
tongue is a dialect of German and this is quite as true in New York 
as it is in Petrograd and since their gospel, Das Kapital, is written in 
German, they find themselves more in sympathy with Germany than with 
any other nation. And they have no radical quarrel with the German 
State, since the German State is the greatest and most successful 
experiment in Socialism that the world has ever seen; nay, the German 
army, with its destruction of individual will and initiative, is through 
and through Socialistic and communistic. 

So it happens that the Lenin-Trotsky agitators are congenitally pro- 
German, in New York as in Petrograd. A very slight modification of 
the German State the substitution of a Marxian tyrant for the Hohen- 
zollern tyrant, and it would suit them perfectly. Even now, Germany 
almost realizes their ideals. 

One thing more: these men, whether in Russia or in the United 
States (we shall do well to get it into our heads that they form a single, 
closely-knit organization there and here) have no scruples at all, as we 
understand scruples; they are thoroughly Germanic in that. They are 
logical too, for they scoff at the idea of spiritual law, and recognize 
nothing as real except brute materialism, purely material gains to be won 
by all available means. They frankly say they have not the slightest 
objection to bloodshed; nay, their ideal is, to pour out the blood of the 
"bourgeois class," the "capitalistic class," which has so long, they say, 
ground down the proletariat in degrading slavery. It is a philosophy of 
militant materialism. 

These Lenin-Trotsky agitators thoroughly believe in using all 
weapons that come to their hands ; and words are among the most potent 
of weapons. Therefore they mouth fine phrases about "world demo- 
cracy." and "the revolution." We in America attach certain meanings 



2(H THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

to these words. Democracy, for us, means ordered liberty under the 
American Constitution. The Revolution means the great historic episode 
made splendid by the genius of Washington and his generation. And 
these words on the tongues of the Lenin-Trotsky agitators have deluded 
us profoundly deluded us into believing that they hold similar ideals. 
That is a wide and dangerous delusion. Democracy, for them, means a 
new class tyranny, with themselves as tyrants; the revolution, for them, 
means the destruction of the whole existent order, and the substitution 
of militant materialism. 



Naturally, these Lenin-Trotsky agitators are profoundly and blatantly 
indifferent to "the honor of Russia." National honor, they say, is merely 
a selfish "capitalistic" trick, to make slaves of the workers, so that they 
may lay down their lives for "the capitalistic classes." As has been 
already said, they plan to get hold of Russia, and of the Russian army, 
in order to force their tyranny on the whole world, by a destructive 
international revolution and war. For them, therefore, the Russian 
revolution is the golden opportunity, the corner-stone of the kingdom of 
their Messiah. That is what the Bolshevik leaders, the Lenins and 
Trotskys think about the Russian revolution. 

These men constitute one of the two revolutions which started at 
the same time in Petrograd last March. We come now to the other 
revolution. It was put in motion by the Duma leaders, as a protest 
against two things : the ineptitude of some of the Tsar's ministers, an 
ineptitude which brought immense disasters upon Russia ; and the open 
treason of others, who were, they believed, planning to bring about a 
separate peace with Germany, thus betraying the Allies of Russia into 
the hands of the enemy. These men, led by the great figures in the 
Duma, men like Rodzianko, Milyukoff and Gutchkoff, and by the great 
Zemstvo organizers, like Prince Lvoff, had a perfectly definite plan 
which has failed completely. They intended to try, first, to pursuade 
Nicholas II to dismiss such ministers as Stuermer and Protopopoff, and 
to put in their places men acceptable to the Duma. In other words, they 
wanted to repeat, for Russia, the change which took place in England 
between the reign of George III (whose ministers were completely 
responsible to him) and the reign of George V (whose ministers are 
completely responsible to the popular House of Parliament). The 
American Constitution, drawn up in the reign of George III, has embodied 
and stereotyped the practice then in force, so that our American "ministers 
of State" are not responsible directly to our Parliament ; they are not 
chosen from Congress, nor appointed by Congress, nor can they (except 
in the hardly thinkable case of impeachment) be dismissed by Congress. 
Therefore we are in a position to understand the Tsar's point of view. 
At any rate, he refused to choose ministers acceptable to, and responsible 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 205 

to, the Duma, though he did, under pressure from the Duma, dismiss the 
pro-German Premier, Stuermer. 

The Duma leaders then determined to force the Tsar's abdication, 
when they intended to recognize his young son Alexis as heir, guided 
by a Council of Regency named by themselves probably consisting of 
themselves. This, their first plan, failed, because Nicholas II refused 
to be separated from his son, to whom he is devotedly attached, and 
who was constantly with him at army headquarters, from the time the 
Tsar himself took command of the Russian forces. The Duma leaders 
then developed a second plan : to name the Tsar's younger brother 
Michael, Emperor, governing with a constitutional ministry responsible to 
the Duma, a ministry which would in all likelihood have included them- 
selves. This plan also failed, because Grand Duke Michael was willing 
to accept the throne only in case the Russian nation, in a Constitutional 
Convention, or Constituent Assembly the American and French names 
for the same thing should express its absolute approval of that arrange- 
ment. Therefore the Duma leaders decided to do two things: they 
planned a Constituent Assembly, primarily to pronounce upon the 
candidacy of Grand Duke Michael; and they formed a Temporary or 
Provisional Government, to carry on the business of administration, until 
the Constituent Assembly could be got together. 

On the face of it, their plans appear plausible. For without doubt 
there were pro-German influences among the Tsar's ministers ; without 
doubt there were powerful pro-German currents in the court of the 
Russian Empress, a German princess by birth. And, in all probability, 
had the Emperor Nicholas been immediately replaced by his brother, as 
Michael II, with a strong national ministry formed of tried and trusted 
leaders, Russia Avould have gone on fighting among the Allies, as gallantly 
as she fought during the late Spring and Summer of 1916. There was 
that possibility, which may, in part, justify the Duma leaders. But there 
are two further considerations : first, the proverbial practical danger of 
"swapping horses while crossing the stream"; second, the grave moral 
question of loyalty. As to the practical question, we can see now that 
Russia, so far from doing more for the Allies because of the revolution, 
has done infinitely worse than the worst mistakes of the imperial regime, 
even if it was honeycombed by German agents, as we are told. The 
practical result has been disastrous. The Duma leaders, therefore, stand 
convicted of an act of almost measureless folly, judging that act by its 
fruits. And there is a strong suspicion that they fell into this act of 
folly because they were blinded by vanity and personal ambition, two 
evil counsellors, who open the doors wide to the Powers of Evil. If 
they allowed themselves to be blinded to the possible and even probable 
dangers in their path, because they wished to become ministers them- 
selves as they did, in fact, become then their culpability is great. They 



206 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

will stand condemned of a colossal blunder which was, at the same time, 
a crime. 

But far deeper than this practical question is the spiritual question : 
the question of that Loyalty which "surpasses all." What are the evils 
that today rage and devastate the Russian State ? They are, each and all, 
forms of disloyalty. The soldiers are disloyal to their officers to the 
point of assassinating them. The workmen, munition-makers, railroad 
men, are disloyal to their duty, crassly indifferent to the consequent 
danger of their brothers at the front. But, far worse, the whole nation, 
so far as the Russian nation can be said to have any existence today, is 
soaked through and through with disloyalty. We remember how severely 
the Duma leaders, men like Rodzianko and Milyukoff, berated the Tsar's 
ministers and the court of the Empress for plotting a separate peace with 
Germany. That plot was, in reality, the excuse they gave to the world 
for the revolution : the danger, they said, was so imminent that instant 
surgical action must be taken. But what is the upshot of the revolution ? 
What was the outcome, from the very first? The army practically ceased 
to fight. An armistice in fact began as soon as the revolution was con- 
summated ; and the formal armistice signed early in December only 
recognizes a fact that has been in existence for nearly nine months. There 
was, it is true, one forward movement at the beginning of July; but it 
was made by a portion of the army which the "revolution" had not yet 
reached. It was wholly due to the momentum of the old imperial 
discipline, at that one point still intact. 

So the revolution has led to betrayal and treachery : treachery and 
betrayal of the nation's faith, smirching and staining the honor of the 
Russian army, which had fought at times with heroic valor for the 
Allies' holy cause ; base and gross betrayal, next, of the invaded provinces 
of Russia, ground under the heel of Teutonic tyranny ; most cowardly 
betrayal of Poland, Serbia, Montenegro and Rumania, to which Russia 
was bound by the most imperative ties of honor ; and, greatest of all, 
a f jul betrayal of the Western Allies, France, Britain and Italy ; betrayal 
of the cause of Humanity, of the sacred cause for which fight the holy 
spiritual powers. Where, after the war, can Russia look for friends? 
It is practically certain that Russia's greedy seizure of a "premature and 
traitorous peace," will prolong the war by many months, probably by 
years ; for the enemy has now begun to hope for further treason and 
cowardice, and sees in that cowardice and treason a good hope of ultimate 
triumph, a wholesale surrender of mankind to Teuton despotism. But 
it is certain that this prolonging of the war will inflict heavy suffering 
on the already tried and heavily burdened Allies on every one of the 
nations that stands firm. To begin with the United States, there will be, 
in all likelihood a million families, bereaved and orphaned, who will 
clearly see that their bereavement is due to Teuton ambition and Russian 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 207 

poltroonery. They will hardly view "the youngest democracy" with very 
friendly eyes. Nor will Italy, the enslaved inhabitants of eastern Venetia, 
feel deep gratitude to the Russians, who have given them into the hands 
of their age-long oppressors. England and her younger dominions which, 
with one disgraceful exception, have striven and suffered heroically, will 
hardly be counted among Russia's future friends. And, finally, France, 
in fact involved in this war and in all the horrors and abominations which 
she has suffered from her bestial invaders, precisely because she loyally 
kept her faith with Russia what will France say to her traitorous ally? 
There remains to Russia the "friendship" of the Teutons the friendship 
of the wolves for the sheep. The essence of the matter is, that this long 
and fatal chain of betrayal and disloyalty was begun by the disloyalty 
of the Duma leaders who, in their blindness and ambition, broke their 
own oath of allegiance, in effect saying to the army: "In the name of 
our disloyalty, be loyal to us !" 

But there was a second act of disloyalty; perhaps we should rather 
call it an act of blind folly. One episode of the "revolution" has been 
veiled in darkness, where so much has been paraded in full daylight: 
We have not yet been told what terms were made by the Duma leaders, 
to buy the support of the revolutionary Socialists for the political changes 
they wished to bring about. But, while the terms of that treaty have 
been carefully hidden from the world, the result is appallingly clear. It 
is a repetition of the stories of mediaeval black magic, in which, to gain 
success, men signed a bond with the powers of darkness. They got the 
success they bargained for and then came the payment of the bond, the 
forfeit of their souls. So the Duma leaders signed their bond and got 
their success ; but they had put themselves into the hands of the powers 
of destruction, and now the mortgage has been foreclosed. 

But, we may ask ourselves, what of the Russian army? What of 
the men in the ranks? What inducements made such an appeal to them 
that they have so obstinately trodden the path of dishonor? In the first 
place, release from discipline, from the military obligation of obedience. 
It may, perhaps, be urged in extenuation that the path of disloyalty and 
insubordination was opened wide to them by the very men who should 
have safeguarded them, the Duma leaders of the "constitutional" revolu- 
tion. Without doubt this is true, and, to their already crushing heavy 
account, we must add this supreme act of folly, forced upon the Duma 
leaders by their Socialist allies. It was an act of folly, and of the utmost 
vanity also; these men persuaded themselves that they were giving a 
lesson in true progress to all mankind to the old, effete nations like 
France and England, which maintain "the outworn superstition" of 
implicit military obedience. But, even though the Duma leaders must 
bear the heaviest responsibility for this act of final folly, this by no 
means exonerates the soldiers, the men of the rank and file. The path 



208 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

was opened wide for them; true, but the path of evil is always open 
wide; "broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction." The powers of 
evil see to that. The main culpability of the Russian rank and file would 
seem to lie precisely in this: that, from the very beginning, they have 
opened their ears wide to every counsel of evil. Evil listening has been 
their capital fault. 

First, the eager desire to escape from discipline. Next, sloth and 
cowardice, in the face of the foe. We have been told in extenuation, 
that these men are weary ; that they have been fighting bravely, under 
great hardships, often with incompetent, perhaps even traitorous backing, 
since the beginning of the war. But in reality the men on the battle-line 
have been again and again reinforced; a large proportion of those who 
are capitulating now, have seen little active service. Nor has the fighting 
been continuous. During practically the whole winter of 1916-1917, 
they were neither attacking nor attacked; they were being held back, 
in preparation for a great Spring offensive, which was to repeat and 
outstrip the triumphs of June 1916; a great offensive which was first 
checked by the "revolution," then, when it was launched in July, was 
turned into a disgraceful rout by the "democratization" of the Russian 
army. Therefore the plea of weariness is only half justified, only half sin- 
cere. But let us suppose that they had fought continuously from the first ; 
has not France done the same? France, involved in the war primarily 
by her treaty of alliance with Russia, and by her unswerving loyalty, 
in the face of large bribes and truculent threats, to the obligations of that 
treaty ? The French nation is weary ; the French army is weary. Yes, 
but, like heroes, they make that the reason for fighting with finer valor, 
with more splendid heroism. There was General Foch's great answer 
to one of his commanders who, at the Marne, pleaded that his men were 
weary :" "The enemy is more weary still ; attack again !" That has, 
from the outset, been the unwavering principle and practice of that army 
of heroes. 

Yet another bribe which corrupted the Russian army was even more 
crude, if possible, more discreditable. They were promised that, if they 
supported the "revolution" and stopped the war, "the land would be 
distributed." And they gulped avidly at that bait. The wording of this 
bribe is ambiguous. Some people have supposed it to mean that the 
communal land of the Russian villages, now held in many cases jointly 
under the system of primitive Socialism, was to be divided, to be held 
in severalty, each peasant receiving and fully owning his own land. If 
this were really the meaning, then the object would be in itself good ; 
for this communal land tenure, this primitive Socialism, hangs like a 
millstone round the neck of agricultural Russia. But the meaning is 
in reality quite different. It is a question of seizing the land of the large 
holders and dividing it among the peasants; in plain language, an act 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 209 

of spoliation, of robbery. And nothing speaks so eloquently of the moral 
baseness of the Russian soldier-peasants as the fact that they are not 
willing only, but wildly eager, to quit the trenches, in order to secure their 
share of the spoils, to profit by this "legalized" robbery. Greedy self- 
indulgence could go no further. 

So far, the heavy Karma of the Russian nation. But we shall be 
well advised not to stop at this point ; not to exhaust ourselves in 
indignant anger at their base betrayal. We shall do well to bring the 
question home to ourselves. We, who have a part in the Theosophical 
Movement, have, with that high privilege, a very grave responsibility. 
We, and we alone, have been told quite openly of the part being played 
in this world war by the powers of good and the powers of evil. We 
know, further, the part which spiritual effort must take in this momentous 
conflict. Let us see whether we too are not in danger of growing weary 
of the fight; let us look well to the question whether these very bribes, 
the desire to escape from irksome discipline, sloth, cowardice, self- 
indulgence, have not, perhaps, a dangerous allurement for ourselves. For 
we know that, heavy as may be the responsibility which the Law lays 
upon the Russian soldier, our own responsibility, just because we know 
far more, must be infinitely greater. "For unto whomsoever much is 
given, of him shall be much required. . . . " 



As in a vision of the night He stood before me, and in His voice 
was kindness as He said: "I have come to lead you to hidden treasures." 
As I followed, my heart grew light, my spirit buoyant. I was conscious 
of beauty all about me and of a strength unknozvn before; the fears that 
had always walked at my side zvcre left behind, I knew not when or where. 
At last He stopped. "Is this where the treasures are hid?" I asked. 
"What more do you seek," He anszvercd "than you have found? A 
ivorld of beauty, a heart of peace, a sense of boundless life. These are 
the treasures that were hidden in your own soul. I am the spirit of 
love; by following me you have found yourself." 

ANDREW V. V. RAYMOND. 



THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS 



VII 

MENDICANT ORDERS 
St. Dominic. The Order of Preachers Union through Knoivledge 

EARLY in the 13th century, two Orders were founded, one by St. 
Dominic, one by St. Francis of Assisi. These are the two great 
mendicant Orders. 

The mendicant Orders introduce nothing new into monas- 
ticism; they make a new application of an old custom. They raise an 
old practice into a principle. In doing so, however, they so innovate 
upon the established principles of St. Benedict, that they are justly 
regarded as a fresh start taken by monasticism. 

In order to correct the evils attendant upon irresponsible monks and 
hermits who roamed or settled at will, looking for their food to the 
charitably minded, St. Benedict brought these individuals together into 
communities. He provided that the community should earn its own 
living. All outgrowths of the parent Benedictine trunk, at Cluny, Citeaux, 
Chartreux, etc., in maintaining that principle of self-dependence, became 
great industrial centres as well as houses of religion. 

The mendicants retained the community life of St. Benedict, and 
tried strictly to adhere to the system of services arranged for the "Hours" 
(Matins, Vespers, etc.). But instead of earning its living, the community 
was required to beg it. This difference (and others) is so great that it 
results in a new type of religious Order. Up to the 13th century the 
many Orders, great and small, had all been modifications of the Benedic- 
tine, essentially a contemplative Order. With St. Dominic and St. Francis 
what we may call a new fatnily has its beginning the family of active 
Orders. 

Those who are interested in historical development may well regard 
this first quarter of the 13th century as a period of great significance. 
It establishes a second type of monk. 

It is impossible for an American and a Protestant to make an 
unprejudiced approach toward the Dominican Order, on account of the 
unsavory connection of that Order with the Inquisition. One or two 
facts however mitigate our prejudices. The first of these facts is, that, 
notwithstanding much that is righteously detestable in the policy and 
conduct of Rome, the Roman Catholic Church transmits a tradition that 
is less distorted than the teaching of any Protestant rival. In the Roman 
Church the science of the spiritual life is as a mine; in the Protestant 
Churches, spiritual science merely outcrops in individuals. We must 
distinguish between what is righteously detestable in Rome, and that 
which merely cuts across our opinions well or ill founded. One by one, 



THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS 211 

in the case of individuals and events, we may have seen our Protestant 
opinions fall away from us as we studied the facts of the case; examples 
are : the teaching about Hell, Purgatory and Heaven ; about the rights 
of Rulers; the condemnation of all socialistic tendencies; the insistence 
upon a religious control over education, the monastic idea. Examples 
of individuals about whom we may have changed our opinion are such 
unmodern men as Ignatius Loyola, Thomas Aquinas, and St. Benedict. 
Gradually an un-Protestant attitude may have replaced former antip- 
athies; without ceasing to detest the Church's policy, we, perhaps, have 
grown to believe in advance that Rome's summing up of men and events 
is likely to be correct. 

In the present case what is at stake is the judgment upon the twelfth 
century reformers in the south of France who, under the names Albi- 
genses and Waldensians, are commonly presented in history as martyrs 
of the Protestant Cause. The Dominican Order arose out of St. Dominic's 
efforts against those reformers. When Dominic's life and work is 
narrated, it may be possible to make explanations which will justify him 
and his canonization. 

As a first step toward a fair consideration of St. Dominic's life, we 
ought to ascertain a few facts to replace the vague horror which, with 
many individuals, is their sole knowledge of the Inquisition. Let us 
consult Mr. Henry Charles Lea, a scholar of Philadelphia, whose special 
field of investigation has been certain matters of Church History. Among 
other books, Mr. Lea has written two studies that specially concern us. 
One is a History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages; and the other is a 
History of the Inquisition in Spain. These works are in three volumes 
each, large volumes. They evidence patient study of original sources. 
The two titles give us our first fact of information. In the early 13th 
century there was a Papal Inquisition against the heretics in southern 
France and other disturbers. It is this Inquisition that is connected with 
the origin of the Dominican Order. Nearly three hundred years later, the 
Spanish Inquisition came into existence. Mr. Lea describes this latter 
organization as an essentially national institution, "entirely Spanish and 
entirely royal," organized by their majesties, Ferdinand and Isabella 
(patron of Christopher Columbus) against converted Jews. The Spanish 
Inquisition was organized without any suggestion from Rome ; it not only 
aimed at independence from Rome, but, as it grew in power and enlarged 
its activity, it actually made accusations against high officials of the 
Church. It was the Spanish Inquisition that persecuted St. Teresa and 
St. Ignatius Loyola. It was the Spanish Inquisition that lighted so many 
faggots. Though it is true that members of the Dominican Order were 
made active in its odious work by the Spanish sovereigns, we must 
remember that this occurred more than two hundred and fifty years after 
the death of St. Dominic. Religious Orders degenerate after the death 
of the founder. We must not hold a saint responsible for the acts of 
unaspiring followers, centuries after his impulse has died out. 



212 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Mr. Lea's attitude toward these matters of Church History seems 
to us typically Protestant and American. What he says of monasticism 
is a good example: he calls it a singing of "barren liturgies" "a selfish 
effort of the individual to secure his own salvation by repudiating all 
the duties and responsibilities of life." Mr. Lea's opinions therefore are 
not likely to err on the side of favour to the Catholics. When we find 
him, then, stating that the popular attitude toward the Mediaeval Inqui- 
sition is one of exaggeration, it is well to pause and give his words due 
consideration. At the end of the first volume of his study, Mr. Lea 
summarizes thus: "I am convinced that the number of victims who 
actually perished at the stake is considerably less than has ordinarily been 
imagined. The deliberate burning alive of a human being, simply for 
difference of belief, is an atrocity so dramatic and appeals to strongly 
to the imagination that it has come to be regarded as the leading feature 
in the activity of the Inquisition . . . Imagination has grown in- 
flamed at the manifold iniquities of the Holy Office, and has been ready 
to accept without examination exaggerations which have become habitual." 
Mr. Lea cites two characteristic Inquisitors in proof of his opinion. He 
states that one Bernard de Caux "with an enviable record for zeal and 
activity in the relentless persecution of heresy," in his register from 1246 
to 1248 does not record a single burning. The second, the model Inqui- 
sitor of this period, Bernard Gui, who vigorously prosecuted the heretical 
uprisings in southern France, condemned only forty, during fifteen years, 
to the death penalty. 

These facts are certainly less lurid than the vague imaginations 
usually clouded around the Inquisition. Perhaps we can now approach 
more open-mindedly the work of St. Dominic. Seventeen years intervene 
between the death of the great Cistercian, St. Bernard (1153) and the 
birth of St. Dominic (1170). His family was Spanish. His mother 
seems to have been truly religious. When her boy was seven years old, 
she sent him to her brother, a priest, for schooling. After another seven 
years, Dominic passed on to a higher center of learning, where he spent 
six years in the usual academic curriculum, and then, four years more 
in preparation for Ordination in the Church. He was ordained about 
1194, as that year he left Palencia, where he had been studying, and took 
up his duties in the Cathedral at Osma, of which he had been made 
a canon. 

As St. Dominic's Order is a natural evolution from the Order of 
Canons, it will be well to interrupt the narrative of his life in order to 
understand what this Order of Canons, now for the first time mentioned, 
really is. 

Canons, though they are usually classed among the four types of 
monk, are not an Order in the sense that Jesuits, Carthusians, and others 
are. They are not a branch spreading from the root of a great individual- 
ity; they are little local communities, which, after many centuries of 
existence, were given organization and uniformity by one of the Pope?. 



THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS 213 

as late as 1339. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) thus defines the Order: 
"The Order of Canons Regular is necessarily constituted by religious 
clerics, because they are essentially destined to those works which relate 
to the Divine mysteries, whereas it is not so with the monastic Orders." 
That is an excellent definition. Canons are priests ("religious clerics") 
whose duty it is to officiate in the formal Church Services (Holy Com- 
munion, Baptism, etc.). Monks do not, essentially, have those duties, as 
a monk need not be a priest. A Canon is a priest without a parish; he 
officiates in an ecclesiastical establishment that is without parish connec- 
tions, such as a college chapel or a Cathedral. Usually a group of Canons 
grew up in connection with a Cathedral, where the Canons live as 
assistants to the Bishop ; they officiate in the Cathedral services, while the 
Bishop is active in all matters that concern the entire diocese. There is 
much dispute over the facts of when and by whom Cathedral (or col- 
legiate) priests were first organized into a group bound by a common 
rule and no convincing conclusion has been reached. One undisputed 
historical fact is that St. Augustine, who became Bishop of Hippo 
(Africa) in 395, maintained, together with the priests who assisted him 
in the office of Canons, a Rule of life, and resided in community. That 
Rule, or what is known as that Rule, was adopted, with modifications, by 
many later Bishops and other leaders, notably, as we shall see, by St. 
Dominic, who made it the foundation of his own Rule. 

The Canons' Rule (or St. Augustine's Rule it will be discussed 
later in this article) was less strict that the Monastic Rule. The Canons 
usually kept the "Hours" ; but the hard manual labour, the solitude and 
seclusion were no part of a Canon's life. Occasionally, however, we do 
find certain Bishops prescribing labour, as in the case of the celebrated 
Bishop of Metz, Chrodegang, who in 763 brought together his Canons 
into a community and adapted for them the Rule of St. Benedict and that 
of St. Augustine. Canons did not take the vow of poverty and could 
possess property. The Canon's Rule seems a compromise between life 
in the world and life in a cloister, a rule suited for those who wish to 
lead a religious life, but who are hindered by certain causes from entering 
a formal religious Order. For that reason, perhaps, the Canon's Rule 
became very popular about the year 1100, when, as we have seen, some 
of the austere Orders like the Carthusian and Cistercian, were being 
formed. So popular indeed did it become, that in certain well known 
cases, the meaning of the word canon (a priest attached to a cathedral 
or college) was either deliberately or unconsciously overlooked, and the 
word came to be used to denote communities of priests, of a grade less 
strict than monks, but living under an Abbot, and engaged in parochial 
work. Such were the White Canons of Premontre (a large abbey near 
Soissons), and those of St. Victor, near Paris. The founder of the 
latter, William of Champeaux, (1106) will be remembered as the friend 
who had St. Bernard placed under obedience to a physician, when the 
austerities at Clairvaux seemed unreasonable. St. Norbert, the founder 



214 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

of Premontre, (1120) was also a close friend of St. Bernard's, and St. 
Bernard is said to have given him the land on which the home of the 
White Canons was built. 

The original use of the word "Canon," a member of a Cathedral 
Staff, and the second meaning, a cloistered priest who is less strictly 
secluded than a monk, continued together. Later, in the 12th Century, 
a distinction was made between "regular" and "secular" Canons. The 
word "regular" describes those Canons who adopt a Rule of life. 
"Seculars" are those who do not adopt any such rule. 

About 1194 St. Dominic finished his period of formal scholastic 
preparation and went to the Cathedral of Osma as a Canon. The Bishop 
of Osma had given to his Cathedral Staff the Rule of St. Augustine as 
their guide. Dominic found this rule of life so congenial that in a few 
years he became sub-prior of the community, and shortly after, prior. 
Nine uneventful years were spent at Osma; they seem to have been a 
period of spiritual preparation. 

Dominic's active career began in 1203. The King of Castile in that 
year sent the Bishop of Osma on a mission to arrange a marriage for 
the Prince. The Bishop took with him his faithful canon, Dominic. The 
two travellers, passing from Spain through Provence (the southern part 
of France) were brought into contact with members of the Albigensian 
sect. That brief contact stirred in Dominic's heart a desire to preach the 
truth to these misguided people, and to save them from their error. His 
wish was soon realized. In 1204 the Bishop of Osma, with his canon, 
Dominic, was in Rome, asking permission from the Pope to resign as 
bishop and to go as missionary to the interior of Russia. The Pope sent 
him instead, to the interior of Provence as missionary to the Albigenses. 

The Albigenses and kindred sects, like the Waldensian, have been 
described in other articles published by the THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY,* 
and they have been too frequently mentioned and defended by historians 
and Protestant theologians to make necessary now a discussion of their 
position. Practical, moral virtues they had, indisputably. The clergy 
of the period, even the monks contrasted unfavorably with them in this 
resoect. Dominic clearly recognized the self-denial, and simplicity of 
their lives. He recognized it so clearly as to realize that it must be 
offset by corresponding austerity in those, who, by intellectual argument, 
were endeavoring to expose the errors of the Albigensian doctrines. 

It was to meet their practical morality, that, after uncertainty and 
discussion, Dominic finally decided on the vow of poverty and upon the 
principle of mendicancy for his own followers. Albigensian virtues, 
therefore, are unquestionable. But an old proverb attributes many 
practical virtues to the Devil himself. And we have read of the self- 
denial and austerities practised by members of the Black Lodge. Indis- 
putable practical morality, rare as it is, unfortunately, and precious 

Mystical Movements of the Middle Ages, January, 1907. The Mission of Certain Heresies, 
July, 1916. The Foundations of the Moravian Church, January, 1917. 



THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS 215 

does not excuse other forms of sin, which, though they may be called 
sins of misunderstanding, of the intellect, nevertheless have their origin 
in subtler forms of immoral volition. Are not many Socialists, and all 
varieties of mental scientists upheld today by reason of their blameless 
lives until a study of their teachings brings us to see that those ap- 
parently blameless lives are in truth pestiferous. The Albigenses seem 
to be in the same category with Socialists and Scientists (Mental, Chris- 
tian, etc.). They had laid hold of a distortion of the "hidden wisdom." 
They seem even more blameworthy than contemporary heretics, and more 
dangerous, because they had penetrated further beneath the veils of the 
"secret doctrine." Fundamentally, however, their error seems to have 
been the same as that of present day sowers of dissension and discord 
namely, inability to believe a paradox. The Albigenses had a staunch 
faith in the "Realities of the Spiritual World." But by reason of that 
staunch faith, they denied there was any reality in institutions and 
ordinances of the physical world that are commonly regarded as repre- 
sentative of spiritual realities. For example they denied the validity of 
the Church, its Sacraments, etc. It is a common error, this inability 
to hold fast to a paradox, it is the error of Christian Science, for 
example. It is moral blindness as the consequence of some sin an 
inability to perceive that while only the Absolute is strictly "real," never- 
theless all manifested things have a "relative reality." The true "secret 
doctrine" unfolds a teaching altogether different from the heresy of the 
Albigenses, and of others. (See The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, 
Vol. I, pp. 71, 72, edition of 1893). "Only when we shall have reached 
absolute Consciousness and blended our own with it, shall we be free 
from the delusions produced by Maya." "Maya, or Illusion, is an element 
which enters into all finite things, for everything that exists has only a 
relative, not an absolute reality . . . Nevertheless all things are 
relatively real, for the cognizer is also a reflection, and the things cognised 
are therefore as real to him as himself." Madame Blavatsky thus stated 
the paradox of Truth. Those are fortunate whose Karma enables them 
to grasp her words and to act upon them. 

The Dominican Order arose out of that mission to the heretics of 
southern France entrusted by the Pope to the Bishop of Osma, and his 
faithful companion, in 1204. The Order became great and powerful 
because it supplied a true need. It did not arise out of individual aspira- 
tion or caprice, as Orders sometimes seem to originate. The Dominican 
Order was a natural growth, an evolution. It came into existence through 
the failure of the Cistercian Order to meet an emergency which it was 
not its function to meet. It was as if a new organ were needed by the 
religious body. Nature quickly developed the required organ it was 
the Dominican Order of Preachers, 

The Dominican is an active Order; the Cistercian, a contemplative. 
The relation of the new Order to the Cistercian is close, however per- 
haps like that of a hand to the arm. 



216 THKOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

St. Bernard's career, his practical wisdom, his influence are dazzling. 
I le dwarfs statesmen and politicians. But, as we read his letters, written 
from Germany and other quarters of western Europe, and read his longing 
for Clairvaux and the cloister life perhaps we felt a regret that he 
permitted himself to be drawn away from that cloister and enter into the 
maelstrom of statecraft. What if he did possess power and influence 
greater than kings and popes ! That is to be expected. Religion develops 
such faculty in its disciples. The affairs of the world were, nevertheless, 
not the province of the Cistercians or of St. Bernard. We must regard 
as a waste of energy the power he diverted from the channels of Con- 
templation for straightening the crooked courses of earth; because, by 
broadening those channels, he could have given to the more powerful 
forces of the spiritual world more untrammeled access to earth. What he 
did was to give his own illumined energy it was great and splendid 
to the tangled skein of statecraft. W'hat he might have done was lay 
another cable from earth to heaven. It is not surprising, therefore, that 
St. Bernard's efforts among the Albigenses had a very impermanent result. 
The heresy was powerful and dangerous in his day, sixty years before 
Dominic began to combat it. In 1145, Bernard went south to stay the 
tide of evil in those southern provinces. The conditions he found are 
quoted from him by many historians. "The churches are deserted, the 
basilicas without worshippers, the people without priests, the priests 
exposed to contempt, and Christians without Christ ! They strip our 
temples as bare as synagogues, they rob our sacraments of all that is 
sacred, they deprive our solemn days of thejr august solemnity ! Men die 
in their sins ; and their souls alas ! pass from this life to the dread tribunal 
of God, without having been reconciled by the sacrament of penance, 
or fortified by holy communion."* In some places that Bernard visited 
a temporary enthusiasm was shown ; in others, he was not even listened 
to. The permanent result of his mission was nil. Fifty years after his 
death the Pope called upon the Abbot of Citeaux to undertake a mission 
in Provence to these same heretics. The Bishop of Osma's visit to Rome 
coincided with that action of the Pope ; he, too, was told to convert the 
heretics of Provence. In order to work in co-operation with the Cister- 
cian Abbot, the Bishop with Dominic went from Rome to Citeaux, and 
left Citeaux in 1205 for the field of their labour. 

The decade from 1205 to 1216 is the period of formation of the 
Order which constituted itself formally at the beginning of 1216, and 
received official approval and authority from Rome in December, 1216. 
The characteristic features of the Dominican Order were moulded by 
the pressure of events in the heretical provinces of southern France. 

The Abbot of Citeaux was the ranking chief of the mission, and the 
Bishop of Osma was subordinate. The Bishop returned to Spain in 1207 
to solicit money for the mission, leaving Dominic in France. The Bishop 
died that same year. Dominic was thus left to work alone upon the 

* Ratisbonne, Life of St. Bernard, p. 330. 



THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS 217 

situation, practically as leader, for, from the beginning, the Bishop and 
Dominic had shown themselves the positive and constructive agents among 
the missioners. 

Let us now consider the characteristics of St. Dominic's Order and 
the events that moulded it. First of all, it is a preaching Order it is 
the Order of Friars Preachers. That function distinguishes it sharply 
from the Orders so far studied. Their aim is the same as the Dominican, 
namely, the salvation of souls. But the older Orders are contemplative. 
Their method is, through prayer, meditation and contemplation (and 
their accessories, manual labour, etc.) to advance the individual soul 
along the road to Reality, and also, through the prayers and meditations 
of the individual monks and of the community, to accumulate a spiritual 
force available for the salvation of others who, themselves, may or may 
not be praying. The Dominican method was devised to meet the case 
of misbelievers who needed their fallacies exposed by the logic of preach- 
ing. The new Order is a splendid example of a leader meeting adversaries 
on their own ground and vanquishing them by their own weapons. The 
heresy had spread widely because of great elasticity in the matter of 
preaching. While the heretics kept a form of hierarchical organization 
with their own bishops, etc., their laymen were sent out to do a kind of 
Salvation Army work, corresponding to our modern street corner preach- 
ing ; these lay preachers thus carried the doctrine to those who would not 
take the trouble to go to the doctrine. They were successful. St. 
Bernard, in his effort to check the tide of heretical progress, had written 
to the people of Toulouse a warning against these itinerants. His letter 
reads thus : "I repeat to you my earnest recommendations never to receive 
amongst you any preacher who has not received a mission from the Holy 
See (Rome) or the approbation of your Bishop. These foreign preachers 
bear the appearance of piety, but they possess not its spirit. They conceal 
their poison under the appearance of sweetness; and they have the art 
to wrap up their profane novelties in divine language. Distrust these 
persons as men who would poison you." Dominic opposed to these foot- 
loose preachers, unhampered by parish and diocesan ties, an association 
of preachers equally unhampered, men who need not be priests, "free 
from any parochial ministry, exempted from the authority of the Bishop, 
and devoting themselves solely to preaching wherever need arose." 
Dominic's association of Preachers resulted from his quick perception of 
conditions and events. A wave of censure had been the only response 
to the Abbot of Citeaux when he entered upon the mission. The Abbot 
and his companions were journeying with horses. The Pharisaical here- 
tics at once condemned them : "See the ministers of a God who went only 
on foot, riding; the wealthy missionaries of a God who was poor; the 
envoys of a God Who was humble and despised, loaded with honours." 
Dominic at once proceeded to undermine that condemnation by persuading 
the Abbot to abandon his cumbrous impedimenta, and to trust the issue 
of the campaign to the foot soldiers. 

15 



218 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

A second characteristic is : the Dominicans are intellectual. As he 
had met the Albigenses with their own weapons on the ground of morality 
and teaching, so Dominic again by clear and logical thought opposed the 
Albigenses where they were most complacent and vain. It was said 
that the heretics had apprehended a distorted form of occult truth. 
Pluming themselves upon their superior knowledge and wisdom, they 
looked with scorn upon those who were merely orthodox and exoteric. 
Popular preaching had spread the heresy among the lower classes. 
Pseudo-occultism would seem to have won the upper class. Many of 
the most affluent of the nobles were among the misbelievers. Dominic 
arranged, at several of the noble castles, a debate with his opponents. 
A subject was chosen, preparation made, books and authorities marshalled 
finally the arguments themselves began in the presence of the count 
or knight and a large audience. Some of these debates lasted a week. 

These two characteristics intellectual acumen and evangelical zeal 
(like Wesley's, for example) for the salvation of souls, are not always 
to be looked for in combination in every Dominican. But if we take as 
examples two typical Dominican Saints, Thomas Aquinas and Catherine 
of Siena, the foregoing would seem a fair analysis. Dominican zeal for 
logic, for a clear presentation of truth reached its climax in the scholar 
who arranged in an orderly fashion all the tenets of theology, their con- 
sequences and derivatives. And where is more evangelical zeal to be 
found than in St. Catherine who accompanied criminals to the place of 
execution, to win from them a moment of repentance ! 

The organization of the Order, up to the securing of official appro- 
bation, is marked by a naturalness of growth that again makes its 
existence seem inevitable. The first step was taken in 1206. A convent 
for women was started that year. In 1215 a centre was found for the 
men. The centre for the women was given in appreciation of the mis- 
sioners' work. The donor was the orthodox Bishop of Toulouse. The 
missioners had greatly relieved the distress caused to the Bishop by the 
swarms of heretics in his diocese. Prouille (the name of the Church 
donated by the Bishop) was, at the start, not a convent. It was a haven 
for women of the better class who had abjured their errors, but who 
needed instruction in the right way. Gradually it became a convent. 
Dominic, though an active preacher, never erred in undervaluing the 
contemplative way of life, and he incorporated into his practice and his 
ideal all of the strictly cloistered observances that it was possible for him 
to carry out. Nine ladies went into residence in the first house built 
by Dominic adjacent to the church of Prouille. 

The Preachers themselves, the Friars Preachers, organized them- 
selves formally in 1216. They were seventeen in number. Long 
preliminary work had of course been done before that formal step 
became possible. The same Bishop (Toulouse) who made over Prouille 
for the women, established Dominic, sometime before 1214, as chaplain 
of the church at Fanjeaux. This gave to the men a centre of their own 



THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS 219 

for worship. A residential centre was acquired for the Preachers in 
1215 by the accession to their number of a wealthy young man of 
Toulouse ; he made over his patrimony, including a house, to Dominic. 
In 1215 the Bishop gave official recognition to the Preachers in his own 
diocese. Dominic, however, (wisely, as the sequence of events proved) 
did not wish the work of evangelization and its fruits to be at the mercy 
of a single Bishop. He was seeking the approval of Rome itself. The 
time seemed propitious, for the Pope had just called together a General 
Council one object of which should be a consideration of ways and 
means for improving morals, and for correcting heresy. Dominic decided 
to go to Rome, to declare the results of the ten years of preaching in 
Provence, and to obtain, he hoped, in recognition of that labour, a formal 
sanction for the Preachers. 

But there were difficulties in the way he had not foreseen. From 
the year 1100 onward for a century, Religious Orders were being every- 
where established. In this present series of articles, only the great Orders 
are studied. Smaller Orders made valuable contributions to civilization 
and to religious life ; but in most cases they are branches growing out 
from a parent stem and in some cases the branch is the result of per- 
sonal idiosyncrasy. The note of personality was so strong and 
dangerous in the many Rules submitted by would-be Founders to 
the authorities at Rome, that this General Council at Rome to which 
Dominic went in great hope, decreed that no new Orders should be 
established. "For fear," the decree proceeds, "lest an exaggerated diver- 
sity of religious Rules should produce grievous confusion in the Church, 
we forbid that anyone whosoever shall henceforth introduce any fresh 
ones. He who desires to embrace the religious life may adopt one of 
the Rules which have already been approved. In the same way, whoso- 
ever shall wish to found a new monastic house shall make use of the 
Rule and the institutions of one of the recognized Orders." It was in 
vain that Dominic represented to this Council the self-sacrifice and sound 
sense of the Preachers. The Council ended its session without granting 
the sanction he desired, and, at the beginning of 1216, he had to return 
disappointed to his brethren in southern France. During that period of 
waiting in Rome, there occurred the incident that Fra Angelico has com- 
memorated in painting, the meeting of Dominic and Francis of Assisi. 
The story will be told in connection with St. Francis. 

A legend relates that the Pope, very favorably impressed with 
Dominic, but unwilling to act against the decree of the Council, bade 
him go home and choose one of the old Rules for the proposed new 
Order of Preachers. This is what actually happened, though whether in 
the manner the legend narrates, some may doubt. The brothers assembled 
with Dominic. They were seventeen in all. It is easy to follow in 
imagination the deliberations of the seventeen brothers, to enter into 
their perplexity, to grope with them for a way out of the cul-de-sac of 
the decree. How simply does the inspiration come ! It suddenly occurs 



220 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

to Canon Dominic that his little company has but to adopt the Rule which 
he himself as Canon of Osma had already observed, namely, the indefinite, 
elastic Rule of St. Augustine, (the Canon's Rule). With that Rule 
adopted, their difficulties end, for they find themselves within the bounds 
mentioned in the decree of the Council. And, at the same time, that 
Rule is so general and elastic that it does not prohibit the special work 
engaged in by what is really a new Religious Order an Order of Mendi- 
cant Preachers. Dominic went again to Rome, and in December 1216, 
he obtained the coveted sanction. 

It is custom and courtesy that give to certain writings of St. 
Augustine the name "Rule." We have already said that as Bishop 
of Hippo, Augustine maintained a community life with his canons. 
He has described their mode of life in two sermons. These sermons 
and certain letters and treatises on the monastic life contain the general 
principles of monasticism. It was the flexibility of these principles, 
their adaptability to various groups of people, that made this "Rule 
of St. Augustine" so suitable for Canons, and so popular with founders 
of Orders in the 12th and 13th centuries. It was this flexibility that 
made possible St. Dominic's Order. He and his companions could 
continue their work as Preachers and Mendicant Friars, by giving a 
general adherence to the general recommendations of Augustine. 

Five years later Dominic died in 1221, at his prime. These five 
years were very busy ones. It was the period of rooting the Order 
in the soil of Italy, Spain, England, Northern France, and the countries 
to the East. That work of propagation involved visits from the Father 
Fornder to the new centres established by his sons journeys to many 
great centres. 

Dominic's mature life thus forms two easy divisions. Passing 
over the years of preparation (to 1194) and the period of apprenticeship 
at the Cathedral, his life work begins in 1205 (he was then 35) with 
the mission to Provence. During eleven years he worked at a seed 
bed, forming the Order of Preachers. During five years more he 
transplanted his seedlings into the open. 

The long sojourn in Provence terminated with the official estab- 
lishment of the Preachers. It must not be inferred from what has been 
said of Dominic's energy and success with the Albigenses, that the 
heresy had been suppressed. He was energetic, prayerful and success- 
ful, but his success lay in demonstrating that the field was white and 
ripe for preaching rather than in converting hosts. We are following 
in this article the rise of the Dominican Order. We consider facts as 
they relate to that and not to the Albigensian sects. It must be remem- 
bered that those sects had been in existence much more than a century ; 
that they were not confined to some country districts in the south of 
France, but were wide-spread, in cities, in Spain, Italy, Switzerland, 
Austria. From the view point of true success, Dominic must certainly 
be regarded as a great leader from the fact that in the course of 



THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS 221 

eleven years he gathered around him seventeen companions (some of 
them converts from the sectarians) willing to take the vows of poverty, 
chastity and obedience, and to devote their lives, under his direction, to 
evangelical work. Exteriorly, as the world counts success, there was 
not much to be placed to Dominic's credit. The mass of misbelievers 
were not reached by his handful of Preachers. In 1208, following the 
murder by the heretics of Toulouse of one of the Cistercian monks 
whom the Pope had commissioned for the work, the Pope called upon 
the King of France to suppress the sectarians and rebels. Simon de 
Montfort (father of the Simon noted in English History) became chief 
of the Expedition, and in many conflicts broke the hostile forces. But 
there were several recurrences of the rebellion, and Montfort was killed 
in one of these, in 1218. Eventually those southern earldoms and prov- 
inces were more closely attached to the northern Kingdom of France. 
But the heresies persisted through another century. 

Dominic had no delusions in regard to his accomplishments among 
the heretics. He saw no possibility, by continuing to preach among 
them, of clearing up the situation. On the other hand, he saw that 
his company of Preachers could become a very effective instrument 
for religion. He decided therefore to extend it beyond parochial and 
provincial limits. Accordingly, in 1217, after his return from obtaining 
the Roman sanction, he assembled with his brothers, won their sym- 
pathy with his views, and sent them off into new fields and new labours. 
Seven went to Paris, four into Spain, four remained at Prouille and 
Toulouse to guide the original foundations, Dominic himself went to 
Rome. 

Thenceforward, for five years, the history of the Order is a rapid 
increase of members and centres. When Dominic died, in 1221, sixty 
monastic houses had been established with a membership of about five 
hundred men and one hundred nuns. The largest of these houses were 
at the university centres, Paris, Bologna, Palencia (the town in Spain 
where Dominic had studied) and, later, Oxford. 

The university towns were chosen by preference. Like Ignatius 
Loyola, Dominic saw that learning is a valuable instrument for com- 
batting distorted truth and its moral consequences. His ideals and aims 
for his Order and individual members have much in common with the 
more modern Jesuit Order. Indeed, in the world today, the Dominican 
and Jesuit Orders are often mentioned (in contrast with contemplative 
Orders) as those which attract "men of parts." No small portion of 
Dominic's greatness is the wisdom with which he provided for the 
various needs of individual members and also for the varied classes of 
members in the Order. First of all he drew a clear line between the 
duties and mode of life of the monks and the nuns. The convents were 
to stand for the purely contemplative side of the religious life. The 
nuns, therefore, had no connection, or practically none, with the outside 
world. At Prouille, and later convents which Dominic founded or re- 



222 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

formed upon the model of Prouille, the nuns were forbidden to leave the 
cloister, they might talk with members of their family only behind a grat- 
ing, there were no visitors except those few officials (members of the 
Order) who directed the affairs of the convent, and these official visitors 
transacted the necessary duties (spiritual and temporal) behind a grating. 
Here is part of a letter from Dominic to a new convent at Madrid: "My 
desire is that in cloistered places that is the refectory, the dormitory, and 
the oratory silence shall be kept, and that in everything besides the Rule 
shall be observed. Let no one leave the convent ; let no one enter it 
unless it be the bishop and the other superiors who come to preach or to 
visit it canonically." Again, there is this direction : "No sister shall 
leave the house where she has made her profession, unless she is for 
some necessary purpose transferred from it to another convent of the 
same Order." Thus, the daily life of Dominican nuns was a faithful 
carrying out of the old Benedictine provisions, the Divine Office at the 
"Hours," private prayers and reading, and manual work of spinning, 
weaving, etc. The nuns, by their labour could not, however, provide 
their own maintenance, and, as they had no contact with the world, they 
could not beg it ; Dominic's habit was to transfer to the convents, for 
their upkeep, gifts of property etc., which were made to him or to the 
monasteries. He wished to preserve the spirit of poverty and mendi- 
cancy, and was unwilling to retain such gifts for the Preachers who 
went out into the world and could beg. 

The men of the Order monks, friars, or Preachers as we may 
prefer to call them represent the "active" side of the religious life. No 
reader of the QUARTERLY is likely to misinterpret the word "active" 
as does Mr. Lea, the scholar and historian quoted earlier. Commenting 
upon the improvement Dominic made in the older forms of monasticism, 
Mr. Lea writes: "It was not for them (Dominicans) to practise the 
strenuous idleness of conventual life, in a ceaseless round of barren 
liturgies." That is a great misunderstanding of Dominic's feeling. Dom- 
inic made ceaseless efforts to combine with the new duty of preaching the 
older duties of monastery life. His early associates testify that he 
attended Divine Office with them, passing from one side of the choir to 
the other, "exhorting them to sing with energy and devotion." He 
planned for the "Night Offices" just as St. Bernard had done: "As soon 
as they wake and rise the friars shall together recite the matins of the 
Blessed Virgin according to the season, and then repair to the choir." 
With all this strict planning, Dominic retained that fundamental elastic- 
ity which we have seen is characteristic of the Canon's Rule. He pro- 
vided for individual needs: "Those suited to the office of preaching (the 
most important in the Order or rather in the Church of God) shall be 
employed in no other work. They are to be devoted to reading and study 
rather than to the singing of responses and anthems." This mental flexi- 
bility of Dominic's was exhibited in an amazing manner at the first 
general meeting of the brethren after the membership had greatly 



THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS 223 

increased. He foresaw how later adherents would be apt to follow the 
Rule in a literal and mechanical way ; rather than countenance such 
idolatry of the Rule, Dominic declared "he would go to every cloister 
and hack them (the Rules) to pieces with his knife." That is indeed a 
remarkable example of detachment and impersonality! 

There is a passage in one of the early records which describes 
Dominic at work with his books. That passage shows what St. Dom- 
inic meant by study and why, for the sake of such study, he was willing 
to dispense his friars from choir duties. In fact such study is but 
another form of prayer; it accounts for the power of their preaching. 
This comment upon Dominic recalls something similar we have heard or 
read about St. Thomas Aquinas how he studied at the foot of his 
crucifix, talking with his crucifix. It makes St. Thomas's place in the 
Order seem natural and inevitable. The old Chronicle states : "He never 
entered any house where hospitality was given him without first saying a 
prayer in the church, if there was one in the place. When the meal was 
ended he retired to a chamber where he read the Gospel of St. Matthew 
or the Epistle of St. Paul, which he always carried about with him. He 
would sit down, open his book, cross himself, and then begin to read 
attentively. But presently he became carried away by the Divine Word. 
From his gestures it seemed as though he were speaking with some one ; 
he appeared to listen, to dispute, to argue ; at times he smiled or wept ; he 
gazed straight before him, then lowered his eyes, muttered to himself 
and beat upon his breast. He passed incessantly from reading to prayer 
and from meditation to contemplation. From time to time he would 
press his lips lovingly to his book as though thanking it for his happi- 
ness, or bury his face in his hands or his hood and sink still deeper 
into his holy ecstasy." 

Dominic died in 1221, just at his prime, full of plans for further 
evangelical work. His last years were very happy, free from the dis- 
tress that so troubled his great contemporary of Assisi. He died, 
seeing his Order a useful and effective organization, that had not yet 
begun to depart from his ideals for it. That period of decay started 
perhaps shortly after his death, in 1227, when the Pope made the Dom- 
inicans of Tuscany responsible for the work of Inquisition against here- 
tics. The Pope found the Dominicans faithful and effective agents, and 
gradually made them Inquisitors in all the European Kingdoms. 

SPENCER MONTAGUE. 



It is easy to make great sacrifices ivhen God does not ask them, but 
to give up our own will in each detail of life is something far harder. H. 
Bowman. 



WHY I JOINED THE 
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 



_ _. April 30, 1917. 

DEAR KATHERINE: 

THE recent correspondence between us, wholly earnest and 
wholly honest on the side of each, has been yet one more exempli- 
fication of the law as stated by St. Paul: "All things work 
together for good to those that love God, who are all called 
according to his purpose." 

The true believer in God cannot regard any page, paragraph, line, 
word or jot of his life writing as without significance, or bereft of an 
ultimate outworking for good. The meanings are not always made 
manifest at once nor in full, but there is a central and unbroken mean- 
ing from the beginning to the culmination. 

The fact that a certain silence fell between us as to the things of 
the soul was not necessarily (as you have seemed to think) indicative on 
my part of any "loss of experience," or any spiritual lapse ; nor had you 
any right (I say this reverently to you as my one-time teacher) to 
conclude definitely concerning the life of my soul, when you had no posi- 
tive facts or full knowledge. Acceptance, not judgment, is the part of 
really scientific wisdom. Neither you nor I have the vision of omni- 
science, and therefore for us is spoken the law, "Judge not." When 
the time was ripe the silence was broken ; and then my words, which 
broke the silence, conveyed to you that which did not conform to your 
personal religious convictions, and this led on your part to an earnest 
remonstrance against what seemed to you to be sin, or spiritual retro- 
gression, in me. 

Your remonstrance, coming when and as it did, acted upon my 
thoughts as a precipitant, and helped me to analyze and come to a clear 
understanding of my own inward state. I went to the bottom, so to 
speak, and brought up all my former credos for examination. Therefore 
I say the whole episode between you and me has been but part of the 
life chapter, and is not to be disregarded nor regretted, but viewed 
calmly and studiously and trustfully. 

I am now led to review, as clearly as possible, the history of my 
life in those things which we include under the term "religious exper- 
ience." Such review will be of no permanent value nor interest to any 
save yourself and a few of the nearest friends with whom I hold in 
common a fundamental belief in God as the Creator of the universe. 

In view of our late correspondence in which you state your doubt 
as to my ever having been converted, or ever having known the Christ, 
I owe you this courtesy in things spiritual, the courtesy of my soul nar- 
rative so far as I can tell it; and, to go deeper yet, owe to you this 



WHY I JOINED THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 225 

story for the reason that you were for very long my revered teacher as 
I pursued the way that leads to everlasting life. You teach me still, for 
the power of a truly illumined soul never dies. 

I cannot remember when a certain consciousness of God was not 
mine, and my memory runs back very clearly to some time before my 
sixth year. There was always within me a certain instinctive readiness 
to pray ; not so much formal petition as that look toward God which may 
be compared to the glances which a little child continually turns toward 
the father near whom it may be walking or playing. I believe I was 
born His child, a naughty one very often, but always conscious of my 
Parentage. 

That consciousness of God flashed out in hours of fear, tenderness 
and in contemplation of Nature. If I were "afraid in the dark," or in a 
storm, or in an empty room, or of losing my mother, my baby soul always 
turned to God in this upward glance which is perhaps truest prayer. 
When this same baby soul was given a gift or a caress, the reaction 
always was a swelling desire and resolution to be "good," rising with such 
emotion as to cause genuine pain. Everything in Nature was dearer to 
that little child than anything else in the outward world. Born and 
reared in a large city, she worshipped before the curb-grown dandelion, 
the one far star beyond the city roof, the narrow glimpses of sky, the 
smell of rain-wet air. Mother, for very peace's sake, often yielded to 
my passionate clamors and took me by boat or car to the green fields 
and riverside, mourning because I loved Mother Earth so well that I 
could never forego direct contact, and had to be led home a very untidy 
child. She did not know what I then felt, later knew, and now more 
clearly understand an understanding that is to deepen that the dande- 
lion has a livingness which my livingness greeted, the wind has a voice 
and a being, the stars were other than just stars, the rain something more 
than mere water. Everything in Nature was precious and alive, and I 
could not not-believe in a Life all around me, although I could not see it 
with my eye of flesh. This communion with Nature has grown with my 
growth, and if it be "pantheism," with which you have charged me (a 
doctrine I know only by its word-derivation, by sporadic literary allu- 
sions, and by your mention of it in our correspondence), then I was 
born pantheist, and give reverent thanks for that which has been one of 
the richest phases of my life on earth ! 

So much for the child's natural religion, or better her religious 
nature. 

My mother was an Episcopalian, a communicant of the Church of 
England ; and through sermons, from the prayer book, from such writers 
as Milton, from a study of the Bible that plunged an immature mind into 
subjects too high and deep, I gathered beliefs in a devil and all his angels, 
an angry and insulted God, a Savior who must needs be crucified for my 
sins (though I could not intelligently understand what 7 personally and 



226 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

individually had to do with things that happened before I was born!) ; of 
a hell where people were tortured forever. Whenever I saw I was in 
danger, I speedily tried to square accounts with the Most High and it 
was a relief, when the danger was over, to settle down again into natural 
habits of the mind and heart. I promised under fear to "be good." 

I was at times "a good girl," and at other times "a bad girl," but 
now from the perspective afforded by over fifty years, I know that deep 
within myself (unbroken from the beginning) was that which it is 
difficult to frame in words, but impossible not clearly to perceive as a 
consciousness of God and His Christ. The Methodist Church calls this 
"conviction:" well, then, I was "convinced" of God; has called it "hunger 
for God :" well, then, I was hungry and also feeding on the eternal bread, 
for had I not been so feeding, that unsatisfied hunger in me must have 
resulted in the starvation of that me which hungered. The Bible calls 
that consciousness of God "the light which lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world :" well, then, that "light" has burned in me always, 
and through a life of strange vicissitudes, temporal and spiritual, I have 
always been conscious of its presence. 

I know that my history is not unlike any other history of this 
nature, save as one face is unlike every other face, and so all faces are 
unlike ; yet so great is our calling and election that each individual's 
history counts eternally. 

I came along through the first seven and the second seven years of 
my life, as I suppose all girls do, dreaming dreams. Through all dreams 
and fears ran this deep urging and longing to be "good." Only one type 
of friend or companion ever deeply satisfied me, namely, an individual 
with a soul purpose, a central earnestness of some kind. I could romp 
and laugh with the wildest ; but a strain of music, the breath of a flower, 
a hint of earnestness in conversation, and that central hunger within me 
was all attention. 

It became time for my confirmation in the Church of England. A 
deep sense of solemnity was all mixed up with pride in the flowing veil 
and other outward novelties of the occasion. Somehow I gathered the 
idea that when the Bishop's hands were laid upon my head, something in 
me would change and after that I should have no trouble in being as 
"good" as possible. To my dismay, while kneeling at the altar, I dis- 
covered that the Bishop had blessed me and passed on while I was 
anxiously peeking around to see if a blue-eyed boy in the choir had 
noticed my beautiful veil! My fourteen-year-old mind was perplexed 
that so terrible a thing could happen, and I nearly came to the conclu- 
sion that I was not one of the elect. I transferred my hope for escape 
from inherent naughtiness to the hour of my first communion, and re- 
call very vividly the horror with which I awakened soon afterward to 
the fact that I was the same girl that I had been before. Discouraged 
and dismayed, I nevertheless followed the light, or rather it wooed me 
by its Holy Shining. 



WHY I JOINED THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 227 

When I was about eighteen years old I heard a sermon that colored 
all the subsequent current of my life. The preacher was a Methodist, 
one of the last exponents of that fervent Wesleyan spirit that resembled 
the spirit of the ancient prophets. He was a man of culture and of deep 
vision. He avoided the easy religious verbiage that refers lightly to 
things holy and tremendous. As I listened to his sermon I knew that 
I was hearing of something vital, as I had never heard of it before, and 
my whole being said, "This is what I have been looking for." 

At the close of the sermon he asked if there were any in the house 
who desired to know more of this religion and who wished the prayer of 
God's people. If there were such, would they stand up? This was the 
first time I had ever been in any but an Episcopal Church, and the whole 
thing was against my natural inclinations. Shy, intensely self-conscious, 
afraid of publicity, sick with inward trembling, yet there seemed for me 
no other honest response to the honest appeal than to stand on my feet. 
No one else stood. 

Later that day some one who knew what I had done assured me 
that I had misunderstood the preacher ; that I was a Christian because I 
had been confirmed; that I was simply "muddled," and that she had a 
book at home that would straighten me out and comfort me. The book 
was Hannah Whitall Smith's Christian's Secret of a Happy Life. I read 
it and was more wretched than ever before, because Hannah Smith 
pointed out very clearly that for which I was looking, the secret of being 
"a good girl," the secret of a God-obeying life. I wanted to be and I 
felt that all people ought to be as holy as St. Paul. By that act of 
standing in the church I was classed by observers either as "convicted" 
or "converted." I know now that neither of these terms covered the case: 
I was simply doing what I had always been doing, feeling after God. 
Could I only then have understood that from the beginning He had been 
in my soul with my soul why, I dare now to state the wider truth! 
WAS HIMSELF MY REAL SELF, how I might have grown in grace and in 
the knowledge of God! Yet even as I write this last sentence I am 
recalled by knowledge of the law forever operative: "All things work 
together for good to them that love God, who are the called according 
to His purpose." I was led in the way that was the Way for me. 

In all these events I was in the path of evolution. For some part 
in that evolutionary progress and Divine purpose, I was led in the way in 
which I was led, and do not now regret any of the way. 

One only of all the sermons I heard this saint preach can I recall, 
and of that only the central theme; and now, at the age of fifty-five, 
that burning message flashes clear: "The Kingdom of God is within 
you. The Word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thine heart." 
Did I know the meaning ? No, but the truth the preacher proclaimed was 
as a seed dropped in good soil to germinate when its own season was 
ripe, and not before. He quoted David, and I can still hear the bigness 
of his voice vibrant with the truth which it carried. "Though I make 



228 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

my bed in hell, Thou art there." Did I know the meaning? No; but I 
felt the truth, and feeling was to grow to certain knowledge. Dimly 
I used to reason this way: since God abides in "heaven" and equally 
abides in "hell," how then can one be different from the other or less 
good for man than the other? My thinking was as blind as the 
movements of a blind kitten that moves its head about feeling for a 
somewhere. Its going, or movement is a content of somewhere to 
go. So I felt the oneness of God and sensed His permeation of the 
all which He has created out from Himself. I dared not yet disbelieve 
in the hell of theology, for I felt there must be some means of dis- 
position of the naughty ones. I felt the incompleteness of its teach- 
ings but had no better teaching. I was always sure the Sinners would 
come home to heaven if they could only understand, and I wanted to 
believe that some day they would understand. Now I am sure of this ! 

A certain urge within me, a certain certainty about God and His 
Christ, opened my lips in public so that I became by turn Sunday School 
teacher, class and prayer-meeting leader. I suffered fearfully from 
nervous tremors whenever I spoke or taught; but I rarely could 
refuse an opportunity to "say so," lest I be counted as not "on the 
Lord's side." I wanted to do this work I never could refrain ; yet 
I was never perfectly sure of the singleness of my own motives. 

My whole religious life was one of ups and downs. Some said I 
was vacillating, others said I was moody. There were no doubt these 
qualities present; but there were also others. I always had a hungry 
mind. Sometimes a flash of truth would gleam across my mind, and 
after it my spirit would inevitably follow. Great conflict there always 
was, caused, as I now know, by the doctrines I so earnestly tried to under- 
stand and accept. Some of these doctrines were: the inherent sin- 
fulness of man ; eternal punishment ; the vicarious atonement ; the gift 
of the Holy Ghost, called by many Methodists "the second blessing." I 
wondered reverently about the resurrection of the body and rested my 
doubts on a belief that He who had performed miracles on earth, no 
doubt could re-assemble the dissipated parts of my body and some- 
how join thereto my soul. Theology did not scientifically or satisfac- 
torily bridge the gaps for me. 

In revival meeting when I was told that the conversion and 
therefore the salvation of individuals depended on me and that therefore 
I must "go after souls," I was torn between my desire to do right, with a 
deep repugnance at any attempt to unveil the secret retirement of another's 
soul, and a feeling I could not explain that such methods were somehow 
unwise. I used to argue to myself in this way: "If the Almighty God 
made Mary Jones's chance of heaven rest on my obedience to Preacher 
Smith's call to me on some particular evening to 'go after' Mary's soul, 
then somehow God was not so Almighty as I felt Him to be and as He 
should be! Moreover, if any onJs ULTIMATE salvation depended on my 
poor prayers and my "love for souls," why on earth was it that I could 



WHY I JOINED THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 229 

NOT make myself pray all night long and wrestle that soul into heaven? 
Why should my weariness or my human indifference condemn another 
to eternal death ? I understand better now ! 

So the vicious circle of unreasonable doctrines held up before a 
reasonable mind kept me blundering along, stumbling, now swiftly and 
now with lagging steps, after "holiness." 

It would be interesting (to me) to go exhaustively into the psychology 
of all those years. Suffice it to say that all the while there lived within 
me that central Light so that whenever a crisis came in outward events, 
the Light blazed up and my soul somehow saw and followed. Was I 
in need ? I felt that God would provide, and He never failed. Was I 
in danger? I felt sure of His care here and hereafter. I got hold of 
the truth that "there shall no harm befall thy dwelling place," and that 
my dwelling place was in the eternal God. 

When the supreme love of my life came to me it came in such guise 
as to help me see yet more clearly that light within. When my husband 
and always lover passed on, I received my first absolute knowledge within 
myself that life is continuous and that the spirit leaves the body with 
all its functions unimpaired. Nevertheless my heart knew its Gethsemane 
of human desolation and perhaps because there was no other way, a 
vision was granted me and I saw with or despite the eyes of flesh my 
beloved and The Beloved, heard a spoken promise of future care, and no 
yawning mouth of hell nor any radiant angel can make me unsee Those 
whom I saw, nor forget or disbelieve in their message of love. And they 
have kept the word that was spoken to me that June day, 1905. 

I may say here that I am no spiritualist and no seer of visions. This 
one vision was mine in my hour of need as supremely and as really as 
was the vision granted to Saint Paul. 

After my husband "went away" I desired more than ever to purify 
life and spirit and more than ever I sought, as I had so often sought 
before, for the definite gift of the Holy Ghost, the baptism by fire such 
as came at Pentecost, "the second blessing." I was sure that unless such 
sanctifying by fire were mine I could not live the life which I believed 
the Bible calls upon men to live: a perfectly unselfish, pure life; a life 
of spiritual power; a life of faith as far as temporal needs are concerned ; 
a life of prayer and meditation and service. Christ said : "Be ye perfect 
as your Father in Heaven is perfect." / have never known any better 
than to believe that He meant what He said, but I thought that He spoke 
that word to every one who should read it or hear it. He also said, 
"Preach the Gospel to every creature." I was sure that He spoke that 
word to me. The secret, then, of attaining this life to which He called 
me seemed to be the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I many times before 
had sought this baptism. Certain leaders had assured me that if I 
"believed" I should "receive." I went so far in my confidence in those 
leaders as to affirm "on faith" that I had entered into such an experience ; 
but each time followed the discovery that I still remained normally human. 



230 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

However, once more I sought ; and I made a bargain with my God, saying 
in effect: "If Thou wilt grant me the gift of the Holy Ghost, I will preach 
the Gospel while I live." I was as honest when I said those words as I 
was when I kissed the lips of my dying husband in good-by. 

A great peace fell upon my soul. Somewhere I had heard this : "Act 
as if I were and thou shalt know that I am." So I went about my days, 
holding my mind hi the attitude of belief that I had received the Holy 
Ghost as the answer to my belief; therefore I must preach the Gospel 
and live wholly by faith. I gave up an excellent position and began to 
follow my husband's evangelistic methods of work. Conscientiously from 
day to day I followed what seemed to be the Spirit's voice, and the leading 
took me into enough preaching to show me that I was no preacher or 
at least to show me that if I ever were to preach worthily and helpfully, 
I needed a new and full course of preparation. Yet I would not give 
up. I faithfully followed from day to day what seemed to me to be the 
directing voice of the Spirit, and the earthly path led me into the country 
in the State of Tennessee and there so far as preaching the Gospel was 
concerned, I was as one shut up in the belly of the whale. 

It was at this time that you secured the editorial position for me in 
England and I was sure that the Spirit was leading me to my goal, for 
the journal on whose staff I was to serve was a holiness organ and I 
was to have the privilege of a course of Bible training under gifted 
leaders. A few days before I was to sail, as you know, I was carried on 
a stretcher to the hospital and lay there for weeks helpless and suffering. 
I had sold my home ; and when I was able to leave the hospital I was 
without money, without strength, stripped of every human comfort. All 
was gone save the inner Light that never ceased to assure me. Through 
those awful days of trial it turned its concentrated rays on Paul's word : 
"I know that all things work together for good to them that love God, 
who are the called according to His purpose." 

Shall I say that I clung to that truth, or that the truth from that 
hour abode increasingly with me? Yet you have told me that you doubt 
if I was ever really converted or ever really knew my Master. As well 
you might tell me, who have had good eyes for fifty-five years, that I 
have been blind all these years ! 

Following that illness I experienced everything save actual starvation ; 
but always I knew Him in Whom I believed and He kept that which I 
had committed unto Him. 

Do not misunderstand me. I am not for one instant telling a story 
of my own righteousness. Too well I know that I was and am abominably 
human. I did and said and thought things which saints do not do and 
say and think ; but I know now that I was, as I am still, evolving, develop- 
ing, growing naturally toward that far-distant Sainthood and was never 
once out of my Master's hands or out of the direct path of evolution. 
True sainthood is a matter not of one life but is the crowning of many 
incarnations. 



WHY I JOINED THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 231 

Without money or strength I was called to go to M . You 

began then to doubt that I was doing right and wrote me to fight for my 
spiritual life and "the keen edge of my spiritual experience." I listened 
to your words because I knew you to be, as you are, God's own peculiarly 
so. But even to you I could not say that I was what I was not, and my 
letters to you could not give the history of an ecstasy which I did not feel. 
I was not then spending hours of each day in prayer and Bible study as 
I did in E . I was doing the rough, hard work of a pioneer 
woman on the bare plains. I was not preaching but I was learning ; getting 
close to Nature in a vision of her wonders never before dreamed of. I 
was enduring heat and cold, doing rough, hard work, learning the lesson 
sent me by the Lord of Life. Dare any one say I was not to learn those 
lessons, that because I was learning them I was a backslider or fallen 
from grace? Shall one not learn all the lessons? 

After being in M for a year and a half with my friend M., 

I left her and took up a claim for myself and lived there with no near 
neighbors, practically no money, and no companionship. There for the 
better part of three years I lived entirely alone. Did I keep the Sabbath? 
Not exactly. In a certain sense all seven days were alike. Did I pray? 
Sometimes, as you define prayer; always, as I knew it in my own soul. 
While there alone with the daily companionship of the majestic Rockies, 
with a door-yard one hundred and fifty miles across, with a stupendous 
panorama of wonder and beauty, with unbroken silence around me almost 
all of twenty-four hours, I found a great change going on within. One 
by one the dogmas of the Church dropped away, and I made the dis- 
covery that a lot of my religion lay in or was dependent on outward 
forms and fellowships. Severed from Church and Church members, 
without Christian comrades, with no outward religious duties, I came at 
last to look upon my naked soul, to realize what I really believed for 
myself and what I was letting others believe for me. And one night I 
went out under the silent stars and looking up, said, "I believe in You!" 
I said it over and over again, for it seemed to me that I should die of my 
soul nakedness. Everything imposed upon my thought by men and books 
was stripped away. Later on I even found myself wondering: "Who and 
what is this God in whom I cannot but believe?" The heavenly throne 
and the bottomless hell were gone alike, and nothing was left save the 
Eternal One. 

It is very difficult to put the thought processes of this time into 
words but I can perhaps make myself clear by some concrete statements. 
The one decision to which I came was that I should never again label as 
wrong any overt act the springs of which I could not know as clearly as 
God can know them. If I saw a man smoke or drink, I must leave him 
with his Maker, ready, of course, to do my part if the man himself opened 
the way, by witnessing to him of what I believe to be better methods of 
life. If a woman went to the theatre I myself might even go; for 
never having attended any worldly amusements of the kind, how should 



232 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

I say what was right or wrong for me or any one else? In other words, 
I awakened to the fact that much of my so-called religion was a belief 
in certain sayings of others and a credulous following of certain authori- 
tative doctrines. My outward life was conformed to ideals laid down 
by other people. I decided to find out intelligently and for myself what 
are matters of right and wrong, to live my life in my own way, to be, 
as far as possible, a normal woman, acting from intelligent understanding 
instead of from blind faith. I determined not to be afraid to say "I do 
not know" about anything, and never to say "I believe" because some 
one else even though he were a bishop said to me "This is so." 

While visiting a friend in M just before I came to 

S , she made the statement (I cannot give her exact words) to 

the effect that the central being of each individual is pure spirit. I said 
to her, "Do you mean to tell me that there is a place in me or a part of 
me that is ivithout sin?" And as she dried the dish that was in her hand, 
she said almost casually, as if all the world knew it except myself, "Why, 
of course. Pure spirit is pure, is it not? At the center, you are pure 
spirit !" 

It seemed to me that that moment a chain that had bound my soul 
as long as I could remember, was broken and cast aside, and / stood up 
straight as every child of God should stand, in the conscious dignity of 
my Divine inheritance of the Divine Ego which just now bears the 
name of A S . 

This friend it was who put into my hands later the Dore lectures 
by Judge Troward, and he showed me that I am one with the Divine and 
that I may so develop my Divine Spirit as to fulfil in some life to come 
that word of Christ's: "Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is 
perfect." 

In the past I have had moments of rapture and of ecstasy ; but never 
before was it my blessed privilege to draw the satisfying soul breaths that 
I drew as I took this big truth into my mind. Shortly after this I came 

to S and entered upon a more normal life, as far as this world 

is concerned, than in any previous years. I even went to the theatre and 
experienced no sense of condemnation. That I do not attend amusements 
every night in the week is due to my own choice and sense, not due to 
any outside word of authority. That is to say, I have reached the place 
of a more intelligent recognition of my central Self, and my hand is now 
the directing lever of my life, as it should be. I try to judge no one. 
i ASK THAT NO ONE JUDGE ME. I endeavor to walk by the Light within 
as I see it. 

Two years ago I came into very close relations with a young woman 
in whom I saw a spirit at once reverent and just; a mind cultured and 
clear; and I ventured now and then to put to her some leading questions. 

Your letters so severely arraigning me and warning me of wrath to 
come, drove me to severe self-examination; and in the suffering induced 
by what you wrote, I talked with my friend who gave me answers from 



her heart, answers which always threw me back, as far as accepting them 
was concerned, upon my own intelligence. She told me not to be afraid 
to analyze any truth and not to lean on any one. She began to talk to 
me of evolution and I wondered why it was that through all the years 
I had been steered so far from the evolutionary theory. She spoke to me 
of the doctrine of reincarnation and I found my mind strangely ready 
to take it in. She gave me books to read, urging me always never to 
accept a truth that I did not see for myself. She told me, moreover, that 
I would be able to put to the proof sooner or later every truth by which 
my life is steered. Troward's books had prepared the way for these things 
by revealing to me the truth that I am one with Him that I am essen- 
tially Divine ; that the Divine powers are unfolded in the Ego within, even 
as the perfect oak tree and all its acorns are unfolded in the one small 
nut. As Christ was, so shall I become, when the Ego within shall have 
evolved even as did the Master's. 

With another friend, who by a very different path had arrived at the 
same conclusions as myself touching orthodox belief, I read the books 
given me. We asked for more, discussed, thought, meditated ; and in time 
each of us independently of the other, was ready to embrace the teachings 
of Theosophy. We find that these teachings crown all that is past. They 
belittle nothing. They illumine. 

I understand now that this life of mine this Divine Ego enshrined 
within my body, has always been; that I have been evolving since the 
beginning; that I have been under the guidance of great human teachers 
who long ago reached that to which I attain that I am a much older Ego 
than some individuals with whom I am associated, and a much younger 
Ego than others; that the events of my present life are concrete results 
of past events ; that today's events create or determine the events of my 
lives to come. 

Theosophy bridges the gaps, illumines the dark places, changes faith 
to knowledge, lends a dignity, furnishes a splendor and certainty, to life, 
which I always felt life should have. Theosophy is "the wisdom of God," 
a wisdom which is to be evolved in me. 

The theosophical teaching meant so much to me that when an 
opportunity came to attend the Convention of The Theosophical Society 
in New York City, I felt it my solemn duty to embrace that opportunity, 
and I am concluding this sketch on the day following the Convention. 

Full well I know that you for whom this very incomplete story is 
written, and perhaps some others to whom I shall give it, will think me 
led far astray. One of the cardinal teachings of Theosophy is that every 
man must be permitted to hold his independent beliefs; that one must 
never indulge in criticism. One of the leaders said to me yesterday, a 
man who holds a responsible position in the University, "If Theosophy 
does not illumine the real religion of an individual, whatever that religion 
be, then that which he takes for Theosophy is something else. Theosophy 
is not a creed, it is rather a light." 

16 



234 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

And I say unto you, honored friend, and to any one who may read 
this imperfect story, that Theosophy has restored to me a faith that 
threatened to go out, has given me a sweetness of spirit, a tolerance, a 
clearness of vision, a patience with life, a sense of Divine justice, a hope 
for all mankind, which I never had before. It has given me back my 
belief in the Bible, or, rather, has illuminated a Book that had become 
dulled through many misinterpretations and misconceptions. It has made 
Christ real to me as never before. It has lifted up and broadened out 
and immeasurably strengthened my determination to follow Him. It has 
given me purpose and reason. It has shown me how I can, in time, attain 
even unto that command, "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in Heaven 
is perfect." 

My mind, built by God, is being increasingly satisfied. My years, 
now nearing three score, are to be rich and growing and splendid and I 
freely say unto you, I am content, and I go forward. 

A. M. S. 

P. S. The foregoing was written in the warm afterglow of the 
Convention of The Theosophical Society, held in New York City, last 
May. Eight months of close study and clean-cut spiritual decisions 
confirm all I have written and more. Devoutly I affirm that the Master 
has become and is steadily becoming more real to me; that the Bible 
unfolds as I never dared dream it could unfold, in a revelation of 
hitherto hidden truth and glory; that all endeavor to "be good" has a 
scientific basis and an assured goal. I am more than "content": I am 
profoundly and devoutly grateful and am resolved still to go forward. 

A. M. S. 



Write your name in kindness, love, and mercy on the hearts of those 
you come in contact with year by year. Chalmers. 



FROM THE HIGHLANDS OF 
LEMURIA 



IV 

LEMURO-ATLANTEAN ASTRONOMY 

IN one of the earlier chapters of this study of Lemurian and Atlantean 
remains, we saw that, widely dispersed over the whole Polynesian 
area which includes much of the Lost Lemuria, there are traditions 

of a graded series of heavens and hells, completely corresponding 
to the teaching of ancient India concerning the Lokas, or, as we may 
prefer to call them, the higher and lower planes of spiritual life. And 
these ancient fragments of what we must call the Lemurian Secret 
Doctrine are to all intents and purposes identical, in islands separated 
by wide ocean spaces of thousands of miles ; further, they have been 
preserved unchanged during a period so long that immense and funda- 
mental differences have developed between languages which must once 
have been a common tongue: differences the nature and meaning of 
which we tried to make clear in another chapter. The result we arrived 
at was, that the original Lemurian tongue must have been a language 
almost wholly made up of vowel sounds ; that consonants, or contacts, 
had been gradually developed, through cycles of progressive materializa- 
tion : and that, in view of their comparative poverty in consonants or 
contacts as compared with a rich consonant range like that of Sanskrit 
this whole group of Polynesian or Lemurian languages belong to a very 
early period in the history of mankind, a period that may well be 
millions of years ago. And, since it appeared that, while the different 
groups of Polynesian islanders descendants of the Lemurians had 
seemingly been separated during the long epochs when their languages 
were developing in different directions, (for, had these languages come 
in contact with each other, they would have been blended or blurred, 
instead of showing clean-cut phonetic differences), while at the same time 
they possessed identical teachings concerning the spiritual planes or 
worlds, with names for them that, beneath their long and slowly developed 
phonetic divergences, were identical; it seemed certain that they had all 
possessed the same teaching concerning the spiritual worlds while they 
were still undivided, that is, while Lemuria was a continuous continent, 
not a vast, far thrown galaxy of islands and archipelagos. 

If this inference be correct, two things would seem to follow from 
it: First, that that period of common possession of this great spiritual 
teaching was almost inconceivably remote, belonging to the time of 
undivided Lemuria; and, second, that the Lemurians of that day, or 
some of them, were in possession of faculties of spiritual vision which 
we are accustomed to associate with the Adepts. 

35 



236 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

For there is only one way to gain certain and methodical knowledge 
of the spiritual worlds, ascending spiritual planes, or successive "heavens," 
whichever we may choose to call them ; and that is, by developing 
successively the consciousness which corresponds to them; in fact by 
being born into one ascending plane after another; by taking each of 
these mansions of the Kingdom of Heaven by violence. And it is just 
this successive series of spiritual attainments which is called the cycle 
of adeptship, while the successive efforts of attainment, the successive 
conquests of the spiritual worlds, are the great Initiations. 

The conclusion from our facts would seem to be, then, that some 
at least of the Lemurians were Initiates ; that the great Initiations were 
a spiritual possession of these Lemurian Initiates, at a period almost 
inconceivably remote ; and that the Polynesian teachings concerning the 
successive heavens and hells are, in fact, memories and traditions of 
the great Initiations, memories which still linger with striking uniformity 
and completeness in islands thousands of miles apart, whose inhabitants 
were wholly unknown to each other until modern voyagers established 
a new connection between them. 

Since these chapters of our Lemuro-Atlantean studies were published, 
we had the good fortune to receive, through the thoughtful kindness 
of Dr. Archibald Keightley, an essay by Mr. Samuel Stuart, which 
strikingly corroborates these conclusions ; all the more because Mr. Stuart 
is dealing with a wholly different subject, namely, astronomical cycles, 
and is only indirectly concerned with the Lemuro-Atlanteans. Probably, 
the best way to cover the subject will be, to quote at some length from 
Mr. Stuart's valuable paper, and then to indicate, very briefly, how his 
conclusions are related with our own. Mr. Stuart begins with an acute 
analysis of astronomical cycles, as recorded in the works of certain ancient 
nations which paid particular attention to astronomy, and he then proceeds 
to examine one great cycle in particular : the cycle of 4,320,000 years, 
which, in the ancient Indian system, is called the Maha Yuga, or Great 
Cycle. In India, there were a number of cycles based upon the same 
figures, and these were divided into dependent cycles ; for example, the 
fourfold group of Yugas : Satya Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, Treta Yuga and 
Kali Yuga, the last meaning literally "the Age of the Devil," the first 
5,000 years of which were completed a few years ago. 

Speaking of this cycle, 432 followed by ciphers, Mr. Stuart says: 

"It is remarkable that what remains we possess of the Mexican 
astronomy, whilst differing in their application, are yet founded upon 
the very same numbers as the ancient systems of India, Egypt, and 
Chaldea ; and yet these are not such as we have derived from the heavens, 
and, therefore, cannot be considered as inevitable results of observation. 
Niebuhr remarks that the Etrurian mode of determining time was 
extremely accurate, and based on the same principles as the computation 
observed by the ancient Mexicans. 'When the Spaniards first arrived 
in America they found that their time, according to the Julian, was eleven 



FROM THE HIGHLANDS OF LEMURIA 237 

days in advance of the Mexican time, and the Mexican year at that period, 
it is said, differed only two minutes and nine seconds from the present 
estimated European year. A day consisted of sixteen hours, a week of 
five days, a month of twenty days, a year of eighteen months, making 
360 days, to which five days or a week was added to complete the year. 
At the end of every 52 years an intercalation of 12^ days was made.' 1 
We may here note that a day contained 86,400 seconds, and a week of 
their reckoning would amount to 432,000 seconds. And if we take their 
period of 52 years as corresponding to an hour, in 24 of these there will 
be 1,248 years of 365 days, with a correction of 432,000 minutes to add 
in order to make the same number of their solar or tropical years ; which 
according to the foregoing 52 year cycle would be of 365d. 5h. 46m. 
9.23076s. each. The peculiarity of this number 432,000, and a desire to 
retain it in their computations, was no doubt the reason why they used 
a period of 52 years, which involves a correction not composed of whole 
days as we find it in the old world. To make the correction amount to 
whole days, they would have used a period of 104 years with a difference 
of 25 days. But let us take ten periods of 1,248 years, when the correction 
becomes 4,320,000 minutes or 3,000 days ; if we then multiply all by 3, 
we obtain 37,440 years of 365 days each, with 1,296,000 minutes, or 9,000 
days, or 25 years of 360 days, added. It hence appears that the 25 days 
of the Mexican 104 year cycle, when they are multiplied by the Eastern 
360, become 25 years of the greater cycle, in which the number of minutes 
added are equal to the seconds in ten circles. 

"The extraordinary coincidence of the numbers employed by the 
Mexicans and by the eastern nations cannot have arisen accidentally, 
for in the Greek mythology there is a curious story of the year of 360 
days, its division by 18, and the deriviation of the odd five days, 2 which 
seems very like a version of the Mexican rules. Moreover the number 
432 and cyphers is the most ancient we possess, and appears to have been 
known to the eastern nations from an immemorial antiquity; it is the 
basis of the list of the Chaldean kings given by Berosus (third century 
B. C.) and of all the cycles used in India; and as we shall further see, 
is the most wonderful monument of ancient astronomical achievement 
we possess. Such strange agreements in the astronomical numbers used 
in the East and West, when there would appear to have been no con- 
nection between the old and the new worlds prior to Columbus, is a very 
strong argument in favor of the theory that there was once a time when 
they were in communication with each other; or if not that, then the 
Hindus, Egyptians and Mexicans must have had a common origin for 
their knowledge. And it is here that the theosophical hypothesis as to 
the former existence of a great continent where now rolls the Atlantic 
Ocean, and which joined together the peoples of the East and the West 



1 Wilson's Lost Solar System of the Ancients Discovered, II., 160, 314, 335. 

2 Sir Wm. Drummond's Oedipus Judaeicus, 103. 



238 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

and made their knowledge have a common resemblance, will supply the 
link which is necessary to account for the latter. . . ." 

After a minute and very careful criticism of the astronomical calcu- 
lations of the motions of the planets, and the amounts by which these 
calculations may depart from absolute accuracy, Mr. Stuart comes to 
the immediate study of the cycle of 4,320,000 years, the Maha Yuga, 
or Great Cycle. He believes it to be a cycle of this nature: At some 
immensely remote period in the past, there was a conjunction of all 
the planets (namely, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and 
Neptune, with, perhaps, other planets as yet unknown to modern astro- 
nomy) with the sun; all these bodies being gathered together at the same 
point in the heavens ; or, let us say, close to the same fixed star in the 
Zodiac. From that point, they then set forth on their circling paths, in 
orbital periods of immensely varying length, from the few weeks in which 
Mercury traverses his small orbit round the sun, to the centuries in 
which remote Neptune makes the same circuit. After the lapse of how 
many years, how many centuries, thousands, or even millions of years, 
will the planets all return to the same point in the sky the same fixed 
star in the Zodiac, coming once more into general conjunction with each 
other and with the sun ? The period, according to Mr. Stuart's reasoning, 
is precisely the Maha Yuga of 4,320,000 years. That part of Mr. Stuart's 
essay which justifies this exceedingly interesting conclusion is as follows : 

"We have then to be guided by the following conditions of our 
enquiry : 

"(a) We are not justified in assuming that the number 4,320,000 has 
been quoted otherwise than exactly, unless it shall be found impossible 
to accomodate the mean motions of the planets to it without alterations 
which amount to more than five or six seconds in a century ; which are 
the limits of accuracy assumed for our present astronomical elements. 

"(6) Since all the planets must return to the same place amongst 
the stars, it follows that the period must be an exact number of sidereal 
solar years without any remainder. 

"(f) Because the processional motion of the equinoxes to be used 
wi'.h the Maha Yuga has been definitely adopted, therefore the difference 
between the sidereal and Julian years in the great cycle is also known, and 
cannot be altered without changing all the conditions. 

"(d) Whatever may be the number of Julian years which we have 
to add to the 4,320,000 sidereal years according to the given precession, 
the same should be the amount necessary to bring the planets into their 
nearest approach to a general congress according to such tabular results 
as we may find it best to adopt. 

"(e) As the period known as the Maha Yuga appears to have been 
derived by means with which we are not acquainted, it may include planets 
which were unknown to us until the last century and a quarter, such as 
Uranus and Neptune, and may also have dealt with others yet to be 
discovered. We must therefore expect that Uranus and Neptune are 



FROM THE HIGHLANDS OF LEMURIA 239 

to be included, and that we have here another reason for the extreme 
length of the period ; since the more planets it includes, the longer it 
must be. 

"(/) We must also decide, if possible, to what age of the world the 
great period more particularly belonged; because according to what has 
been said in the foregoing, the mean motions of the planets may have 
been different in a remote epoch in the past, from what we find them 
today. As we have seen, the period in one of its varieties was quoted 
by Berosus about the third century B. C. ; but according to Madame 
Blavatsky the Maha Yuga and other great periods have come down to us 
from Atlantean times. 1 This could not have been less than four or five 
million years ago. 2 

"These things premised, and taking the mean motion of the sun 
corresponding to the tropical years as we have found it from a comparison 
of Delambre and Lever rier in the foregoing, with precession for 25,920 
years, we find that 4,320,000 sidereal years are equal to 4,320,074 Julian 
years and 252 days; which is a difference of 27.280 days, or 74.6900 
years, due to the excess of one kind of years over the other. The number 
of tropical years would be 4,320,166.7500; since the sidereal period 
includes 166.75 periods of the equinox. 

"We then find upon trial by our best modern tables, that whereas, 
the period of 4,320,000 if considered to consist of Julian or tropical 
years would not be a planetary period, yet when it is dealt with as 
sidereal years and the above difference of 74.6900 added, the motions of 
all the planets, including Uranus and Neptune, are so nearly equal as to 
bring them into positions which only differ from the point of conjunctions 
by an extreme difference which is about one-fifth of the ecliptic. After 
making all due allowance for the variations discussed in the preceding 
notes, it therefore appears that the claim as to the Maha Yuga being a 
cycle of planetary conjunctions is substantially true. And this not only 
for planets which we know were discovered by the ancients, but also 
including Uranus and Neptune, supposed to be quite unknown to them. 

"But the quantities by which the planetary positions differ from the 
mean places they ought to occupy, show that the negative quantities are 
a little in excess of the positive ; indicating that their mean motions were 
somewhat slower than at the present time. If the foregoing reasoning has 
been correct, this means that the sun was, in the Atlantean period, rather 
nearer to the body about which it revolves than at present; and conse- 
quently the planetary periods were longer and their orbits dilated. And 
in order to compare the result with modern data, we may (seeing they 
differ but little) take an average of the precession in 100 Julian years 
according to Leverrier and Newcomb; and after reducing the planetary 
tropical motions per century, given by these and Dr. Hill, to sidereal 



1 The Secret Doctrine, ii, 51-2; cf. Isis Unveiled, i, 239, as to late discoveries. 

2 See the author's article, "The Great Year of the Ancients," in the Theosophist, Jan., 1901, 
222, and Feb., 297. 



240 



THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 



places according to the precession for 25,920 years, we find the differences 
of the Maha Yuga data are in 100 years : 

Neptune (per Newcomb) minus 5.481" 
Uranus 

Leverier 

" Dr. Hill 

" Newcomb 



plus 
plus 
plus 
plus 



2.520 
5.589 
3.019 
4.519 



Saturn 

Jupiter 

Mars 

Venus " " minus 1.787 

Sun " " minus 5.334 

Mercury " plus 4.559 

"This is after adding the small quantity 2.641" to the Maha Yuga 
results, which appears to be the amount by which the planetary centennial 
means motions were slower some four and a half million years ago than 
they are at present. We then find that, allowing all the planets to be 
exactly upon the place of any given fixed star or immovable point in 
the heavens at any given epoch, modern tables show that after a lapse 
of 4,320,000 sidereal years, or 4,320,074 Julian years and 252 days, the 
planets would differ from such a point by: 

Neptune (Newcomb) plus 65.8 

minus 30.2 
minus 67.7 
minus 36.2 

minus 54.2 ( (Heliocentric longitudes only), 
plus 94.0 
plus 21.5 
minus 54.7 



Uranus 

Saturn (Leverrier) 

Jupiter (Dr. Hill) 

Mars (Newcomb) 

Sun 

Venus 

Mercury 

"As none of the outstanding quantities differ from the average place 
required by so much as a fifth part of the ecliptic, and the outstanding 
errors of the tables, or unknown secular equations, may be responsible 
for nearly the whole of these differences, it becomes practically certain 
that the Maha Yuga is at least as correct as any of our means of comput- 
ing, and therefore that it is a veritable cycle of the planetary motions 
nay, that it is so much superior to anything which we could produce, that 
only within the last ten years could \ve completely verify it, and demon- 
strate that its exact length has been truly given. 

"Allowing for the difference of the centennial precession by the 
Maha Yuga, and an average of that used by Leverrier and Newcomb 
(24.152"), we then have the following centennial mean sidereal motions: 

Neptune 218 28' 16.450" and Newcomb (plus 24.152") gives it as 218 28' 24.572" 

" " 68 30 33.432 

142 7 10.873 

154 54 48.102 

60 18 36.772 

359 22 47.352 

197 49 22.472 

72 40 55.082 



Uranus 68 30 33.311, 
Saturn 142 7 13.821, 
Jupiter 154 54 48.480, 
Mars 60 18 38.650, 
Sun 359 22 39.377, 
Venus 197 49 18.043, 
Mercury 72 40 57.000, 


11 11 

" Leverrier 
" Dr. Hill 

" Newcomb 
11 11 

ii ii 



FROM THE HIGHLANDS OF LEMURIA 241 

"To the Maha Yuga results we have to add 2.641", as per foregoing, 
when the outstanding differences will be found as above given. 

"The average procession per century by a mean of Leverrier and 
Newcomb is 1 23' 44.065". If we calculate by the Maha Yuga results 
we shall find that the following would be the heliocentric longitudes on the 
completion of the cycle : 



Neptune 
Uranus 


1 
1 


37' 

47 


Saturn 


359 


38 


Jupiter 

Mars 


359 
359 


15 
26 


Sun 








Venus 


2 


3 


Mercury 


359 


56 



These according to sidereal places. 



"The preceding positions and data are all exceedingly striking and 
they agree very much more closely than could, under all the circumstances, 
be expected ; while the assignable limits of error show that the last results 
may be quite accurate. And even if it could be satisfactorily shown that 
the future corrections to the planetary motions would be in the opposite 
directions to the above outstanding differences, this would not help 
objectors to the theory that the Maha Yuga is correct, out of the difficulty 
very far ; for the synodic periods derivable from it would still be far more 
accurate than any we possessed prior to the year 1820 and there would 
also remain the greater probability in favor of the conjunction rather 
than against it. These things being so, the enquiry naturally arises 
where and when, setting aside the reference to the Atlanteans and any 
other theosophic or occult explanation, did the ancients become acquainted 
with the exact length of this cycle? We have seen that it would have 
been impossible for western scientists of the present day to have obtained 
its measure from their own data, unless put in possession of its approxi- 
mate length from some external source. It thence appears that the 
Maha Yuga period is strictly original, and could not have been got up 
within the historical period or from western data ; and this being so, and 
it being found to agree so nearly with the best, latest, and most refined 
efforts of the combined intellectual strength of Europe, it follows that 
the archaic scientists were in possession of our astronomical periods ages 
before we, with all our boasted superiority to the ancients in such matters, 
had arrived at them by slow degrees and intense labor. Moreover this 
triumph of the ancients is more than complete; for though it may be 
claimed that whatever the archaic astronomers may have accomplished 
in reference to the bodies visible to the unassisted eye, they knew nothing 
of others, yet by the preceding it appears that our own astronomers can 
no longer point to their discoveries of Uranus and Neptune (which were 
marvels of telescopic power and intellectual penetration) as a point of 
vantage to which the scientists of a hoary antiquity could not attain. 



242 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

And indeed, quite independently of the conclusions on this head derivable 
from the Maha Yuga, which might be vitiated if any great alteration is 
in future made in the mean motions of these two planets (but which 
we may predict will consist of thirty seconds per century or multiples 
thereof), it is said that one, if not both, of the most distant planets were 
known to the ancient writers. 1 This escaped notice until modern times, 
when by reference to any hand-book on Astronomy we may see that 
Uranus was discovered by aid of the first great reflecting telescope used 
in England, on the 13th of March in the year 1781 ; though its existence 
had been previously suspected, owing to unexplained perturbations in 
the movements of Saturn. 2 And similarly, the planet Neptune was dis- 
covered by us through the unaccounted-for movements of Uranus, on 
September 18th, 1846, when it was seen by Dr. Galle with a powerful 
telescope, in the very point in the sky where the calculations of Adams 
and Leverrier had indicated that it would be found. 3 The difficulties 
which the discoverers had to face were enormous, 4 but it is said that 
"both not only solved the problem, but did so with a completeness that 
filled the world with astonishment and admiration, in which none more 
ardently shared than those who, from their attainments, were best qualified 
to appreciate the difficulties of the question." 5 And every writer upon 
the subject for the last sixty years has sung paeans of victory over this 
celebrated performance as the crowning intellectual triumph of the present 
day; 6 but by the contents of the present paper it appears that the whole 
had been forestalled many ages ago by those despised ancients, whom 
modern Europeans have been in the habit of looking down upon as the 
very impersonations of superstitious ignorance. 7 . . ." 

Mr. Stuart is, of course, far too careful a student to say that he has 
proved his case conclusively, to the point of absolute certainty. But let 
us, for the sake of clearness, accept the supposition that the case is proved 
conclusively ; that the facts and deductions are entirely correct. What 
results will follow? 

First, that all the planets, including Uranus and Neptune, and, 
perhaps, other planets still unknown to modern astronomy, do, in fact, 
come into conjunction with each other and with the sun (that is, gather 
together at the same point in the Zodiac, or close to the same fixed star) 
at regularly recurring periods separated by the enormous space of 
4,320,000 years. 

Second, that this fact was the basis of the cycle called the Maha 
Yuga, or Great Cycle, which lies at the foundation of the whole Indian 
philosophy of world-cycles, and which is suggested by the occurrence of 



1 The Secret Doctrine, i, 126, 128; ii, 512, 513. Cf. Isis Unveiled, i, 267, etc. 
3 Orbs of Heaven, 127, by Prof. Mitchell. 
Mitchell's Astronomy, 217. 
'Ibid, 215, 216. 

* Popular Astronomy, 179, ed. 1856, by Dionysius Lardner, D.C.L. For the high attain- 
ments and qualifications of Mons. Leverrier and Mr. Adams, see Orbs of Heaven, 138, et seq. 
Mitchell's Astronomy, 211 (Routledge's ed.) 
1 Cf. Isis Unveiled, i, 239. 



FROM THE HIGHLANDS OF LEMURIA 243 

the same figures in other ancient astronomical systems, notably the 
Chaldean and aboriginal Mexican. 

Third, that the fact of such a general conjunction was known to 
the astronomers of an immensely remote period, presumably Atlantean or 
Lemuro-Atlantean (since the Aryan, the Fifth Race, did not begin to 
come into being until a much later period). 

Fourth, that these Atlantean or Lemuro-Atlantean astronomers knew 
of the existence and orbital periods of both Uranus and Neptune, which 
modern astronomers have only quite recently discovered, by the aid of 
immensely powerful telescopes combined with highly developed mathe- 
matical science. 

Which would involve the final conclusion that the Atlanteans or 
Lemuro-Atlantean astronomers either had equally powerful telescopes 
and an equal knowledge of mathematics; or that they obtained their 
knowledge in other ways by the possession of the occult powers which 
would make them high Initiates. For we have been told that, to the 
awakened vision of such Initiates, the most distant nebulae, separated, 
perhaps, from the sun by spaces which light takes millions of years to 
traverse, appear as close, as visible, as "daisies in the next field." 

C.J. 
(To be continued.) 



We are only worth the price at which God values us. True merit 
must be weighed in His scales, for it is His judgment which alone can 
decide between real and counterfeit virtue. S. John Berchmans. 



ALSACE AND LORRAINE 



MODERN history finds it hard to discover the true feeling of 
Alsace and Lorraine only because a veil has been thrown over 
their own self-expression; while all, literally all, the facts of 
the case have been distorted and preverted to serve the purpose 
of an unscrupulous conqueror. It must be remembered that it is not 
Alsatians or Lorrainers who have made such persistent and indefatigible 
claims to German origin, to German intellect, to German likeness and 
spirit. It is German conquerors who have made these assertions for 
them; and the world always grows to believe, or at least half believe, 
what it is told often enough, and with a sufficient air of conviction. The 
claims Germany has made and is vigorously making, to a right over 
Alsace and Lorraine, have in large measure been believed by the world 
at large, though perhaps a few people outside of France, have supposed 
that some of their assumptions were rather sweeping. But in the main, 
Germany's claim that Alsace-Lorraine was and is German, has been 
accepted because the arguments she put forward appeared plausible 
enough on the surface, and because the average man is prepared to 
accept any reiterated definite statement on a subject about which he 
personally has little or no direct knowledge. 

The claims of Germany are false. Even a surface examination of 
the facts demonstrates that Germany's so-called "right" is an assumption, 
and that her whole position is untenable and a premeditated fiction. 

Germany bases her claim to Alsace-Lorraine on three major 
premises. First, ethnologically, Alsatians and Lorrainers are asserted to 
be German peoples, descendants of German tribes. Second, Alsace and 
Lorraine, it is said, had belonged by direct political liaison to Germany 
since the time of Charlemagne (described as "the first German Emperor." 
cf. any German encylcopedia.), and until Louis XIV "seized" them in 
1679-1697 (Treaties of Nimwegen and Ryswick, respectively). This 
would give Germany possession of these territories for eight or nine 
centuries prior to that of France; and, therefore, in 1871, Germany only 
recovered that which was legally and rightly hers. Third, Alsatians and 
Lorrainers speak German, are German at heart, and, by all signs save 
those advanced by a few pro-French extremists, prefer to remain German. 

Emphatically, these three claims are historically false and without 
foundation in fact. It will become evident that the theories, purporting 
to be scientific, which German vanity has created to serve its ends, are 
preposterous to an extreme. For it is vanity which has led Germany to 
claim all good things as German. And it must be remembered, on this 
very account, that recent generations of Germans have been brought 
up to believe implicitly any and every falsification of fact which the 
satisfaction of this vanity has made necessary, and it must therefore have 



ALSACE AND LORRAINE 245 

become almost an impossibility for the modern German at this time to 
shake himself free from the resulting delusions. For no regard what- 
soever has been paid by them to the facts of history ; neither to the outer 
events such as treaties or wars, nor to those more subtle mental attitudes 
which find expression in these events, as well as more clearly perhaps in 
literature and art. 

A careful investigation of the German claims regarding Alsace and 
Lorraine reveals the absolute necessity of understanding the whole 
historic method and treatment which Germans have applied to these 
unfortunate peoples. Without a thorough comprehension of this method, 
its intellectual dishonesty and consequent scientific inaccuracy, the prob- 
lem cannot be solved. History cannot be a thing to conjure with. History 
is the unravelling and outer expression of human character and human 
thought. Back of every human activity lie the thoughts that planned and 
motived it. The history of a nation or of a people differs only from 
individual biography in the immensity and complexity of its life to 
which must be added that new factor of a united consciousness, which 
arises wherever the hearts of a group are bound together by some spiritual 
affinity. "What a man thinks, that he becomes," which is not to say 
that what he imagines he thinks will he become, but rather that those 
fundamental principles underlying all his thinking processes will react 
determinatively on his character, and must inevitably find their realization 
sooner or later in outer life. 

The German interpretation of history, equally of its own as of 
other countries, has been systematically and deliberately falsified to 
such an extent that the writing of a fair and true account by a German 
of any period has become an impossibility. Persistent liars distort the 
truth even its fragments, when deliberately trying not to; and the 
intellectual dishonesty of German thinking is on such a colossal scale, 
that unless some special study has been directed towards the examination 
not merely of German historical research, but of other branches of 
German science, no real comprehension can be reached of how far- 
reaching and insidious their perversions have become. American scholar- 
ship in particular has lent itself (in the past willingly) to the admiration 
of this German product; and it is as yet a hard lesson to learn that a 
whole people, under the aegis of "exact science" and "sound scholarship," 
and quite apart from the direct influence of Prussian militarism, could 
so basely have misused the intellect and betrayed the trust of men. 

But such is the fact, and German histories of Alsace and Lorraine 
prove it. 

The German people, following such German thinkers as Kant, Fichte, 
Hegel, Haeckel, Harnack, Nietzsche, Treitschke, Bernhardi, and many 
like them almost as well known, who have led, and in a true sense repre- 
sented their fellow countrymen for several generations, have succeeded 
not only in preparing and finally precipitating this war, but also in so 
impregnating the whole intellectual world with their point of view, which 



246 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

is the fruit of their method, that all of literature, art, history, and politics 
have felt strongly this influence. Partly by sheer weight and numbers, 
partly by an array of accumulated facts and figures (generally untrust- 
worthy because selected with a bias), partly because of a certain 
complexity and massiveness of mind, they have 'Succeeded in affecting 
deeply the scholarship and education of our generation. As a result, now 
that war has revealed what it is that Germany and German scholars in 
almost every case were striving for, much of the critical study of art, 
of literature, of history will have to be restudied and rewritten. For it 
must never be forgotten that, however aside from the main issue a branch 
of study may be, respected German writers and widely-studied German 
university professors, sometimes openly, sometimes sub-rosa, but always 
with indefatigable zeal, have maintained the pre-eminence and superiority 
of Germany, of the Germans, and of everything which by its excellence 
they could claim as resembling even remotely their own lofty German 
standard. 

This German racial pretension is the philosophical background of 
all Pan-German propaganda, the corner-stone of all the Mittle-Europa 
scheme, which, by its unscrupulous seizure of territory has finally raised 
the issues of Alsace-Lorraine, of Poland, and of the Balkan States. It 
is essential to understand this claim, otherwise no true perspective can 
be gained of any such complex problem as that which, thanks entirely 
to German dishonesty and self-delusion, the history of Alsace-Lorraine 
now presents. 

Two main causes have led to this extravagant German attitude. The 
first and most obvious was the series of military and diplomatic successes 
of Frederick the Second and William the First, Prussian kings. From 
being disunited, backward, partly civilized peoples, the amalgamated 
Germans suddenly found themselves the conquerors of four important 
nations, immensely rich and able under the clever and unscrupulous 
leadership of Bismark, and the morally degenerate military aristocracy of 
Prussia, to become the dominant factor in European politics. 

The second cause lay within and behind the outer evidence of the 
other, and may be traced in the leading thought and intellectual moulds 
of the Germanic peoples throughout their history, though more definitely, 
perhaps, since the Protestant Revolt, with its emphasis on self-expression 
which develops self-will, and as reinforced by the egotistical philosophies 
of Kant, Fichte, Hegel and Nietzsche. 

The accumulated influence of this intellectual legacy can alone explain 
the unanimity with which German scholarship along so many different 
lines of research, has lent itself but to one end, the aggrandizement 
of Germany and of everything remotely connected therewith. "The 
proud conviction forces itself upon us with irresistible power that a high, 
if not the highest importance for the entire development of the human 
race is ascribable to this German people," writes Bernhardi (Germany 
and the Next War, p. 68). Another well-established writer, Josef Ludwig 



ALSACE AND LORRAINE 247 

Reimer, said in 1905, "The Kultur of the Germans is actually the 
stimulous to our present European Civilisation with which we are con- 
quering the world." (A Pangerman Germany, p. 31). So, quite recently, 
an eminent doctor of theology and philosophy, a jurist, and professor of 
Berlin University, Dr. Adolf Lasson, writes, "The whole of European 
Kultur ... is brought to a focus on this German soil and in the 
hearts of the German people. It would be foolish to express oneself 
on this point with modesty and reserve. We Germans represent the 
latest and the highest achievement of European Kultur." (Deutsche 
Reden aus Schwerer Zeit, No. 4, p. 13. A series of pamphlets issued 
since the war by the Professors of Berlin University and others, typical, 
in every sense, of German character and mentality.) 

Bald extracts such as these, which might be multiplied ad infinitum, 
do not immediately suggest the wide influence which this fundamental 
idea has had in affecting all German scholarship and not alone scholar- 
ship, but everything to which the German has turned his attention. 
Take, for instance, their conception of art and of artists it being 
remembered that our libraries and colleges are filled with text-books and 
"standard" works which are colored with just such falsifications. "Every 
great artistic achievement of France and Italy since the time of the 
Romans can be traced to families and classes with a strong mixture of 
Germanic blood, and, especially in earlier times, to the descendants of 
Germanic stocks, who had kept their blood, or at any rate their nature 
(Art} pure." (H. A. Schmid Dr. of Philos., Professor of Art History 
at Gottingen in No. 25 of the above cited series of pamphlets, p. 21.) 
This claim is methodically treated, and, to German satisfaction, is proved 
concerning at least the whole Italian Renaissance period, by an eminent 
anthropologist, lecturer and scholar, Herr Professor Ludwig Woltmann. 
He demonstrates that all the famous "Architects, Painters, Historians and 
Humanists, Naturalists and Philosophers, Authors, and Musicians" were 
of German parentage or descent ; and his list includes exactly one hundred 
and seven names. But his reasons? Benvenuto Cellini had a blonde 
beard verging on red ; Michael- Angelo Buonarotti, whose real name must 
have been Bohn-Rotto, or perhaps Beon-Rad, indicating Saxon origin ; 
Leonardo da Vinci, presumably having corrupted his name from Wincke, 
must have been of the same stem, etc. Even Dante does not escape, so 
the Divine Comedy also should be esteemed as a German classic. (Die 
Germanen und die Renaissance in Italien, passim. Woltmann receives 
half a column in Meyers' Konversations-Lexicon. He died in 1907.) 

So too, religion cannot and does not escape this burlesque. Josef 
Ludwig Reimer, jurist, traveler, and author, accredited by inclusion in 
Wer ists (Who's Who), "proves" Christ to have been German. In his 
book, Ein Pangermanisches Deutschland (Chap. XIV, p. 233), he says, 
summarizing the discussion of several chapters : "When we see how very 
closely Christ is identified with Germanic Nature [note the order], how 
at the same time he rejected the Jews and was in turn rejected by them; 



248 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

when we see further that the Homo jitdaeiis contains much German blood, 
and in earlier times must of necessity hrve had it still purer than noiv, 
especially in such a very mixed neighborhood (Galilee), out of which 
Christ sprang, why shall we not be permitted to designate as Germanic 
the Being of Christ, which is ours today, and always will remain so; 
entirely apart from the plausible evidence of a Chamberlain and of others 
who support His Arian origin, and apart also from the sceptical attitude 
(even when perhaps deliberate) about the legitimacy of His birth, which 
is widely circulated throughout Judaism!" 

These quotations, which might easily be multiplied almost indefinitely, 
should illustrate to what lengths German vanity has gone. Christ, Greek 
art, the Renaissance, Dante, Charlemagne, even Jeanne d'Arc, born in Lor- 
raine, are German to the degree in which they were excellent, or to 
which their possession might flatter the Germans and increase their 
prestige in their own eyes. Nor is this point of view confined to a 
small body of Pangermanists. The German school-child is educated in 
such ideas, German text-books and encyclopedia are based on them, and 
the whole fabric of German thought thus has its basis in vain delusions 
and insidious fictions. 

PART I. 

Returning to the three major German claims to Alsace-Lorraine, 
the ethnological, the historic, and the cultural and personal, it would 
seem best to take up first the ethnological or racial claim. A survey 
must be made of a very much controverted question, \vho and from 
whence are the races in Europe ? which is highly technical in its details, 
but at the same time of such a nature that certain fundamental principles 
may readily be established by anybody who reads even a resume of the 
vast literature involved. For, as Dr. T. Rice Holmes remarks in his 
really erudite study of Caesar's Commentaries, the student need not "be 
afraid, even if he is not a Celtic scholar or a professional anthropologist, 
to form an opinion of his own. For he will observe that the specialists, 
in so far as they differ among themselves, are simply drawing their own 
conclusions from ascertained facts which are accessible to all." (Casar's 
Conquest of Gaul, p. 261). 

A study of the languages surviving from earliest days in Europe 
indicates a close structural connection between seven great families or 
groups the Hellenic, Italic, Celtic, Teutonic, Slavonic, Lithuanic or 
Lettic, and Albanian, in fact, all the existing languages except Finnic, 
Basque, Magyar, and Turkish. Closely related to these are three Asiatic 
groups : Indie, derived from Sanskrit ; Iranic, including Zend, Persian, 
etc., and Armenian. The name for this numerous, interrelated family 
of speech has been a subject for controversy, especially in the earlier 
days after Bopp's Comparative Grammar founded in 1833-35 the science 
of Comparative Philology. To call them Indo-Germanic or Indo- 
European is not only clumsy, but inaccurate. The first, adopted by Bopp, 



ALSACE AND LORRAINE 249 

is the favorite term in Germany ; but French and Italian scholars see no 
reason why German should be taken as the type of European speech. 
Nor do these terms include the Armenian and Iranic branches. Aryan, 
a term popularized by Max Miiller, while originally derived from the 
supposed center in Asia from whence these sister languages migrated, 
is now being used more and more by English, French and German 
students alike as a general term to describe not so much this interrelated 
family of peoples itself, as the now obsolete theories which dealt with 
them. 

The origin of the Aryans then, became fo; years a bone of con- 
tention, and the modern Pan-German theories of a superior German 
race, God's own chosen people, are derived directly from the speculations, 
assertions, and conclusions of a long line of German writers on this 
question. It culminated in the works of Cuno, Posche, Penka, and 
Schrader for scientific theory, and Fichte, Trietschke, Reimer and Bern- 
hardi for their amplification and direct application to Pangermanism. 

Max Miiller jumped from the conclusion that, behind so many 
interrelated languages, there must be one primitive, stock-language, to 
the further, and absolutely unwarranted conclusion, that there must have 
been also a primitive stock-race. So instead of speaking only of the sources 
of the Aryan language, he spoke of an "Aryan race" and an "Aryan 
family," and asserted that there was a time "when the first ancestors of 
the Indians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Slavs, the Celts, 
and the Germans were living together within the same enclosures, nay 
under the same roof." He further asserted that because the same forms 
of speech are "preserved by all the members of the Aryan family, it 
follows that before the ancestors of Indians and Persians started for 
the south, and the leaders of the Greek, Roman, Celtic, Teutonic, and 
Slavonic colonies marched towards the shores of Europe, there was a 
small clan of Aryans, settled probably on the highest elevation of Central 
Asia, speaking a language not yet Sanskrit or Greek or German, but 
containing the dialectical germs of all." (Lectures on The Science of 
Language, 2nd revised edition, pp. 211-212. Delivered 1861). 

Dr. Isaac Taylor, an eminent English ethnologist, declares "Than 
this picturesque paragraph more mischievous words have seldom been 
uttered by a great scholar." How true this estimate was, Dr. Taylor 
himself never knew. For to the German mind, an Aryan root-race, since 
it produced Germanic or Teutonic off-shoots, must have been essentially 
a German root-race, else how came so distinctive and superior a race 
as the Germans of history into being? And once the self-evident fact 
be grasped that the modern German language, which is at once the best, 
most scientific and most beautiful of languages (vide Fichte) has its 
roots in the primitive Aryan language, from whence it may also be traced 
as the foundation of practically all European, Iranic, and Sanskritic 
languages (!), what conclusion is left but that the German element is 
the one enduring, enlightening agent of an all-wise and far-seeing Divine 

17 



250 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Providence, and is therefore, the leading race in the world? The terms 
Aryan and German are consequently practically interchangeable, and so 
they will be found in multitudes of German books. 

This brand of vicious reasoning, which always returns upon itself, 
is characteristic of the German scientific method, though more often in 
conclusions formed, than in the logic of facts. For it is typical of the 
German that in the ordering of mere facts he can be sequential and 
logical to a degree, but when he is called upon to draw conclusions from 
those facts, in other words, to deal with the logic of ideas ; he is incapable 
of the detachment from self, and of the judgment necessary for coherent, 
principled, let alone clear thinking. 

Now it is an interesting commentary on the whole scientific and 
philosophical basis of the Pan-German claims, that the ethnological theory 
on which they are based is today absolutely discredited. French, English, 
and even some German scholars agree in showing "conclusively that the 
assumption of the common ancestry of the speakers of Aryan languages 
is a mere figment, wholly contrary to the evidence, and as improbable 
as the hypothesis that a small Aryan clan in Central Asia could have sent 
out great colonies which marched four thousand miles to the shores of 
Europe." (Taylor, Origin of the Aryans, pp. 4-5). There is not, or 
rather, never has been, such a thing as an Aryan race. "It cannot be 
insisted upon too strongly that identity of speech does not imply identity 
of race, any more than diversity of speech implies diversity of race," 
says Dr. Taylor (p. 5). "Language seems almost independent of race" 
(p. 204 et seq.). 

As this cardinal ethnological principal bears directly on the fact that 
Alsatians speak a language which Germans can understand only with 
great difficulty, and the French not at all, it may be useful to note that 
in Italy where the south is lapygian, Sicanian, and Greek, and the north 
Etruscan, Ligurian, Rhsetian, Celtis, Herulian, Gothic, and Lombard, the 
speech is that of Rome, a city which itself "contained an overwhelming 
proportion of Syrians, Greeks, and Africans." The actual Latin blood 
in Rome was probably extremely small, but its speech extends over Italy, 
France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Roumania, part of Canada and the 
United States, and practically all of South and Central America. English 
likewise, is today replacing Celtic in Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and 
Scotland, as well as Latin in other parts of the globe. German has 
replaced Celtic in the regions of the Danube and Main, and more recently 
has extinguished two Slav dialects, Polabian and Wend. The old 
Prussians spoke a sister language of the Lithuanian (Slavs) ; and though 
still from forty to sixty per cent Slav, speak German, which was imposed 
on them by the conquests of the Teutonic Knights. 

Claims to Alsace, then, based on the fact that French is not spoken 
except by a minority, do not enter into the question at all ; and any such 
claim, put forward in the face of so much self-evident scientific data 
which proves the absolute unreliability of the language test, is either 



ALSACE AND LORRAINE 251 

relying on popular ignorance and credulity to escape detection, or is a 
studied factor in a program of wilful deceit. As a matter of fact the 
Alsatians speak a dialect of their own, which, though largely German in 
vocabulary, is essentially French in structure, differing markedly from 
neighboring German. So much is this so, that even five hundred years 
ago Troubadour poetry could find expression in Alsatian ; whereas German 
imitations, products of the Minnesingers, are in no way equal, lacking 
wholly, because of the medium of an entirely different language, the 
spontaneous lyrical flow and lightness of phrase characteristic of this 
poetry. 

A further and final blow was delivered to Max Miiller's Aryan race 
theory, by the series of anthropological discoveries that all the existing 
races in Europe show conclusive evidence of having lived just where 
they now are, back into prehistoric times, while there is no evidence what- 
ever to show that they ever migrated from Asia. So entirely without 
exception has this been found to be, that "the ultimate result has been 
to bring about a conviction not only that there is no such thing as any 
pure Aryan race, but that the existence of a primitive Aryan language 
is doubtful" (Op. cit. p. 38. Delbriick, Einleitung in das Sprachstu- 
dium, pp. 131-137; Bacmeister, Allemanishes Wanderungen, Cuno, 
Schrader, etc.) 

Modern discovery, therefore, seconded by some of the ablest German 
anthropologists, overthrows entirely not merely the probability, but the 
possibility of a primitive root-race which was the foundation of modern 
European races; and with this fact proves the complete falsity of the 
modern German's claim to represent the evolved quintessential perfection 
of that original stock. Likewise the German claim, corollary to the main 
one, that all neighboring races in Europe, such as the English, French, 
Italians, etc., are necessarily off-shoots of the main German stock, and 
merely a greater or less dilution of German with native barbarian or 
African blood, is equally false and absurd. 

Yet this assertion is put forward today fearlessly and repeatedly. 
Meyers' Konversations-Lexicon, volume 6, p. 827, explains just how the 
French are German, largely because three tribes of disputed Germanic 
origin, the Franks, Goths, and Suevi-Alemanni, obtained a partial conquest 
of independent northern sections of what is now France (despite the fact 
that they were absorbed by the superior culture of the peoples they 
overcame). Meyers' encyclopedia corresponds, of course, with the 
Encyclopedia Britannica as a standard for reference. Under "English" 
the same type of argument is followed, though large parts of England, 
such as Wales, and Cornwall, and the red-haired sections of Scotland 
and North England, are either aboriginal or Celtic, while Essex, where the 
Teutonic element predominated, is about an equal blend of French and 
Celtic with Germanic. Only in a remote sense are the English, in Matthew 
Arnold's words, "A vast obscure Cymric basis with a vast visible Germanic 
superstructure." (On the Study of Celtic Literature, p. 64) : Arnold 



252 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

learned his ethnology admittedly from Germans, who at that time were 
almost the only students in the field. So Dr. Karl Woltmann, professor at 
the Imperial University at Strasbourg, whose volumes on Mediaval Paint- 
ing are a standard and erudite reference work in all libraries, claims as a 
matter of course that Alfred the Great was German, and he speaks 
highly of this typical English king because he "resuscitated the studies 
that lay so low ; he had made himself master of the highest culture of 
the day, and had taken the first place among the prose zvriters of the 
Germanic tongue" (Vol. II, p. 279). This professor claims some of the 
best periods of the Dutch School for Germany, because, "The greater 
part of the Netherlands belonged in this age to the Duchy of Lotharingia 
(Lothringen, Lorraine) and therefore to the German Empire" (p. 282). 
There was no "German Empire" at this time, while the Duchy of 
Lorraine was independent even of the Holy Roman Empire. Alfred the 
Great was really a Gaul, and by no means a German, either in feeling, 
character, or mentality. 

It is on just such assumptions and inaccurate statements that German 
public opinion has acquired the firm belief in its blood-authorship of 
England, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Alsace-Lorraine, Switzerland, 
Denmark, and others. "Would to God Professor Engel were right in 
maintaining that the English are Kelts. Then we should not have to be 
ashamed of our brothers!" wrote Pastor B. Losche in 1914. One of the 
most illuminating revelations of the presence of a motive which for long 
has lain back of German science and method, has been the easy volte face 
effected on this same race question of England since the war. "England 
is now showing on what feeble feet its Germanism rests, how unsound, 
how profoundly unworthy of the German Thought it is. It cannot shake 
off its bitter accusers its Shakespeare and Carlyle, its Dickens and 
Kingsley. It has committed treason against the spirit of its greatest 
men . . . " ; and in the same strain : "Does one German cousin fight 
against another ? We good-natured idealists have always dwelt upon this 
German cousinship. The three-quarters-Keltic England has no feeling 
of common Germanism." (Quoted by William Archer, Gems of German 
Thought, numbers 440, 439, and 442.) 

From all that has gone before, one definite conclusion is established. 
The word Germanic has two uses. It is loosely used to describe a number 
of tribes and races which once overran Europe. It is also applied today 
by modern Prussians to describe themselves and their Empire ; and these 
two applications cannot be reconciled. The modern German is at least 
as much a mixture of races and peoples as the Englishman, Frenchman, 
or Italian. Prussians are Lithuanians, at least forty per cent Slav ; while 
Bavarians are just as conglomerate as Alsatians. No such thing as a 
pure Germanic stock survives at the present day. The German racial 
pretension, therefore, falls absolutely to the ground, since that which is 
today claimed as German is not the German of five, still less of ten or 
fifteen, centuries ago. 



ALSACE AND LORRAINE 253 

Specific German claims about the ethnology of France and of Alsace- 
Lorraine may now be more easily disposed of. They rest on the funda- 
mental error of mixing the terms race and nationality; of implying that 
nationality is ninety-nine per cent a question of race. It is not. Present- 
day Americans, from a racial standpoint, whatever else they are, can 
neither correctly be restricted to surviving Red Indians, nor can they 
at this time be said to exclude, for instance, descendants of African 
negroes. It is true that Americans as a race, strictly speaking do not 
exist as yet; but as a nationality, however, their self-consciousness and 
power cannot be successfully questioned. In almost every case, national 
consciousness is an intangible spirit, sometimes limited by natural 
geographic boundaries, but quite as often regardless of them ; and it 
seems to be more frequently the result of an ideal forged in the hearts, 
and exemplified in the persons, of first one and then another of the 
great heroes and figures of history. Groups of contiguous peoples catch 
fire from the leadership of such individuals, and are drawn together 
not primarily by conquest, which often does not last, but rather by their 
response to a common ideal, and to the mutual interchange of thoughts 
and experiences. King Arthur, legendary as he is in most of the stories, 
Alfred the Great, Richard the Lion-hearted, these men were the active 
expression of England's spirit ; they embodied successively the growth of 
English national consciousness. In France, Clovis, by his dedication of 
France to Christ; Charlemagne by his creation of a Christian Empire, 
ruled in a spirit of chivalry made famous by Roland, Oliver, and Bayard ; 
St. Louis, crusader King; the Blessed Jeanne d'Arc, these and a host 
of others epitomize France, and gave to her a self-conscious realization of 
her mission. 

To all of which the German spirit is frankly hostile, rejecting on the 
one hand such an interpretation of history, and on the other, claiming 
everything French as German, because France was populated by Aryan 
and therefore Germanic tribes. 

This distinction between race and nationality applies directly to 
Alsace and Lorraine. Border countries between Germany and France, 
since the days of Caesar, and undoubtedly before, they were the scene 
of incessant conflict. As to the earliest known inhabitants, the Com- 
mentaries tell us that when the Roman General defeated Ariovistus and 
thereby prevented the German Suevi from migration over the Rhine, the 
land was inhabited by three Celtic tribes, the Treviri, Mediomatrici, and 
Leuci. Treves is one remnant of their nomenclature, while Verdun comes 
from the name of an incorporated tribe, the Verodunes. The Germans 
claim that the Celts are part of the Indo-germanic stock (Meyers' 
Konversations-Lexicon, vol. x, p. 828. "eine Volkes des indo-germani- 
schen Sprachstammes"), or Teutonic race. They base their claim on the 
fact reported by Dion Cassius, the Greek historian, by Caesar, by Tacitus 
in his Gennania, and other sources, that the Celtae and Belgae were fair- 



254 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

haired, blue-eyed, and tall, like their later and better-known conquerors, 
the Vandals and Huns. 

The literature discussing this claim is vast in amount, and the use 
of the term "Celt" is so confused and at times all-inclusive, that the lay- 
reader is left hopelessly in the dark. But in the light of recent 
ethnological research, the old Celtic problem bids fair to reach an unex- 
pected conclusion. Mr. Madison Grant in his exceedingly interesting book 
The Passing of a Great Race, opens with the sentence: "Failure to recog- 
nize the clear distinction between race and nationality and the still greater 
distinction between race and language, the easy assumption that the one 
is indicative of the other, has been in the past a serious impediment to 
an understanding of racial values. Historians and philologists have 
approached the subject from the viewpoint of linguistics, and as a result 
we have been burdened with a group of mythical races, such as the 
Latin, the Aryan, the Caucasian, and, perhaps, the most inconsistent of 
all, the 'Celtic' race. ... It is, therefore, necessary at the outset 
for the reader to thoroughly appreciate that race, language, and 
nationality, are three distinct things, and that in Europe these three 
elements are only occasionally found persisting in combination, as in 
the Scandinavian nations" (pp. 3-4). 

According then, to the older theories, the Celts, being a part of the 
original Aryan or Indo-germanic linguistic stock, are in essence Teutonic 
peoples. The German claimants are so eager to cover every conceivable 
point which might be used against them, that they frequently conflict 
and over-reach themselves. Statements about the inhabitants of early 
France and of Alsace-Lorraine afford ample illustration of this. The 
Celtic race, identified as such by ancient writers merely on the grounds 
of blue eyes and blonde or ruddy hair, cannot be distinguished, as far 
as these same ancient descriptions go, from Teutonic tribes such as Van- 
dals, Goths, Lombards, and Burgundians. The Germans, possessing 
themselves china-blue eyes and blonde hair (not ruddy) instantly claimed 
the Celts as Indo-germanic, and Teutonic. But when a little more 
research proved that the so-called Celtic race, far from embracing most 
of the inhabitants of France, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, northern 
Spain and Italy, Belgium, and Alsace-Lorraine, as at first thought because 
these peoples spoke Celtic, must instead be limited to either one of three 
insignificant, racially distinct, remnants the Bretons, the Welsh, or the 
Scotch Highlander, then the German scientist (though not, as yet, the 
German public) discarded the Celts, and pinned his faith to Goths, 
Normans, and Burgundians. So we have one class of Germans (such as 
Meyers, Cuno, Schrader. Niehbur, Miillendorf and many others) whose 
assertions lead their fellow-countrymen to claim all France and all 
Frenchmen as German because they are descendants from the Celts. 
Then, in opposition, we have such renowned men as Herr Ottokar Lorenz 
and Herr Wilhelm Scherer who contradict this claim in their (for 
Germans, most moderate) Gcschlchte Elsasscs. They find it necessary, 



ALSACE AND LORRAINE 255 

in order to eliminate an inconvenient French ( !) element in Alsace, to 
disparage the Celts. Thus, "The Celts, as always happens with moribund 
races, were divided into two factions, one of which sought Roman pro- 
tection while the other depended upon the Germans." Even Myers, 
wishing to come near the truth, states that, "the Alsatians belong, with 
the exception perhaps of the inhabitants of the northern part, to the 
alemannic, the Lorrainers to frankish Folkstem." (Under Elsass- 
Lotheringen, vol. 5, p. 727.) He maintains that both are German in 
origin, but the alemannic more purely so. Further on he says (p. 733) : 
"The oldest historically known inhabitants of Elsass were the keltic 
Sequani and Rauriki, who followed the Germanic Triboker and Nemeter." 
We have no knowledge of these last mentioned, practically pre-historic 
tribes, but by seeking to preceed the Celts with German tribes, though 
quite without warrant, Meyers sought to provide for the most remote 
possible German heredity of Alsace. 

Comparing and summing, therefore, the statements of these several 
scholars, it would be a fair inference to suppose that France (or Italy 
or England or Belgium for that matter) became a separate nation through 
some mistake on the part of a body of Germans who did not realize 
what they were doing; and so, by cutting themselves off from their 
fountain-head, and blending with inferior races, they turned themselves 
into degenerates and renegades who today are even fighting their Mother. 
Apparently, however, such degenerates can produce an occasional Rodin 
or Voltaire or Moliere (or Carlyle, etc. and etc.), who is a credit, despite 
his handicap, to the parent country. 

The facts in the case, as far as they are ascertainable, may briefly 
be put as follows : 

The original Celts, or at least, users of the Celtic language, some- 
where before 1100 B. C. were spread over Central and Western Europe, 
long antedating the irruption of the Teutonic tribes. Earliest neolithic 
remains place them in Central France, Belgium and Southern Germany ; 
they migrated west to England and east into Greece; they were called 
Gauls or Celts by the Romans, and Galatians by the Greeks (Cf. De 
Quatrefages and especially, Broca). They were "gigantic barbarians," 
with fair, very often red, hair, grey-blue eyes, and brachycephalous or 
with rounded skulls. They gave their language to the peoples they 
conquered, and were absorbed by the native populations. The only Celtic- 
speaking peoples remaining today are the round-skull, or brachycephalic 
Breton peasants; the short, long-skull, or dolichocephalous Welshman, 
dark in color; and the tall, light, often ruddy Scotch Highlander, also 
dolichocephalous. These groups are not physically similar, and their 
character and mentality are totally unlike. If one be descended from an 
original Celtic race, then the other two are not. The Scotch Highlander 
has been identified with the true Scandinavian type, tall, dolichocephlous, 
with an index of from 70 to 73, whose general structural and cultural 
characteristics places him with the Row Grave and Staengenaes skeletons 



256 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

of pre-Teuton invasions, and therefore closely resembling the Swedes, 
Danes, and Frisians of today. The Welshman is now generally believed 
to be a residuum of pre-Celtic races "of immense antiquity." The French 
Bretons, with index over 80, at best are a mixed people, possibly related 
to the Slavs and even the Lapps, and having no racial elements in 
common with Welsh or Scotch. In passing, it might be noted that the 
great mass of Irish are Danes, Norse, and Anglo-Norman, not Celtic, 
together with a substratum of pre-historic elements similar to the earliest 
Welsh. The Irish, therefore, cannot scientifically claim national inde- 
pendence on any grounds of race. 

About 100 B. C. the Teutons appeared on the scene, first the 
Ostrogoths, the Huns, the Visigoths, the Cimbri, the Suevi, the Helve- 
tians, and the Alemanni of the upper Rhine. There is a superficial 
resemblance between the Teutons and the Celts. Both races are tall, 
large limbed, and fair haired. But they "are radically distinguished by 
the form of the skull" (Taylor, op. cit. p. 109). 

Ausonius, Lucan, Claudian, Martial, Tacitus, Calpurnius, Flavius, 
Propocius, and others, as well as Caesar, describe these invasions; and 
German authors have industriously assembled all these quotations (Zeuss, 
Die Deutschen, p. 50 et seq.; Posche, Die Arier, p. 25, seq.; Penka, 
Or, Ar., p. 122; Diefenbach, Or. Eur., p. 161, seq.; Miillendorf, etc.) 
Though fair, the Celtic complexion is more florid and freckled than the 
pink and white of the Teuton, while the eyes of the former are green, 
grey, and greyish-blue rather than the "cccruli oculi" of Tacitus. Dr. 
Holmes thinks that the keen observation of Caesar led him to dis- 
criminate between the Germans and the Gauls (Celts), for he describes 
the latter as "resembling" the former, but not so tall, so fair, or so 
savage (Op. cit. Chapter on "Who Were the True Gauls?"). 

Caesar's description of these first German invasions of France, which 
he met and defeated on the soil of Alsace and Lorraine, are very 
indicative in the light of recent events. Speaking of the ravages which 
the native Gauls (Celts) of Alsace sustained, he tells us that Divitiacus 
the Aeduan reported that about 15,000 Germans had "at first crossed the 
Rhine; but after that these wild and savage men had become enamored 
of the lands and the refinement and abundance of the Gauls, more were 
brought over, until about 120,000 of them were in Gaul." (De Bella 
Gallico, i, cap. xxxi). The Commentaries then describe the sufferings 
of various Celtic clans, notably the Sequani, exposed as they were on the 
border-land to the inroads of alien Germanic hordes. There is much 
revealed in Caesar's shrewd description of these same Germanic tribes 
description singularly applicable to modern German claims and methods. 
The Sequani were especially dejected for "Ariovistus, King of the 
Germans, had settled in their territory, and had seized a third of it, the 
best land in the whole of Gaul ; and now he demanded that the natives 
should vacate another third, because a few months previously 24,000 
Harules had joined him, and he had to find homestead land for them. 






ALSACE AND LORRAINE 257 

[In other words, as today, they wanted a "place under the sun," room 
to "expand," at another's expense.] 

Within a few years, the entire population of Gaul would be 
expatriated, and the Germans would all cross the Rhine; for there was 
no comparison between the land of the Germans, and that of the Sequani, 
nor must the standard of living among the former be put on a level with 
that of the latter." (I, Cap. XXXI.) 

Csesar's victory was only temporary, however, and the Western 
Roman Empire collapsed under the repeated blows of the successive 
Teutonic hordes. But it is important to note that Celtic culture was 
superior to Teutonic, that the close natural alliance between Celtic and 
Latin led to the easy spread of the Roman conqueror's tongue, and that 
the Teutons did not recognize the Celtic speaking peoples as kin in any 
sense; on the contrary, they called them Welsh, or foreigners. From 
this word are derived the names "Wales," "Cornwales" or "Cornwall," 
"Valais," "Walloons," and "Wallachian" or "Vlach." 

So much for German claims that the Celts are German. 

With the political and military debacle of Rome, Teutonic tribes, 
warlike and restless, spread over the whole of Europe. In the fourth 
and fifth centuries A. D. the Vandals established a kingdom in North 
Africa. Spain fell under the Visigoths, Portugal under the Suevi. 
Southern Gaul was also Visigothic ; eastern Gaul, Burgundian ; while the 
north was Prankish, until Charlemagne created an Empire and spread 
their influence throughout France. Italy was conquered first by the 
Ostrogoths and then by the Lombards. The Saxons and related tribes 
took the British Isles; while Norsemen and Danes invaded all the costal 
areas as far south as Spain. 

Politically these conquests were real enough, but in point of popu- 
lation, there was no such radical change. As Madison Grant says, "all 
Europe had become superficially Teutonized" (p. 162). Alaric's army 
which conquered Italy and sacked Rome was very small relative to the 
whole population of Italy ; and the actual numerical superiority of Goths 
in Theodoric's kingdom at Toulouse, over the layers of Celtic and 
Roman population, is very improbable. 

The Teutonic element was the ruling, warrior class, and as such 
it gave its name to the various kingdoms. But in its turn this position 
meant that when the Mohammedan invasions broke the Visigothic and 
Vandal kingdoms in pieces, and only Charles Martel and his Franks 
prevented the Moors from conquering France as well as Spain, it was 
these same Teutonic over-lords who suffered the greatest loss, and were 
reduced in numbers. 

The fact remains that "In France it is probable that nineteen- 
twentieths of the blood is that of the aboriginal races, Aquitanians, Celts, 
and Belgse ; while of the later conquerors the descendants of the Teutonic 
invaders, Franks, Burgundians, Goths, and Normans, doubtless con- 
tributed a more numerous element to the population than the Romans, 



258 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

who, though fewer in number than any of the others, imposed their 
language on the whole country" (Taylor, Op. cit., p. 204). 

To sum up, then, in Lorraine as it emerges out of the Roman period, 
there were three main strains of blood Celtic, then Roman, finally 
German; but the last was decidedly subordinate to the other two. The 
later Germanic migration of Alemanni and Frankish-Hessian peoples, 
settled in the open country. This left the cities in the hands of the Celto- 
Roman population, which accordingly impressed its language and laws 
upon the invaders. Roughly speaking, by the tenth century, or about 
a hundred years after the treaty of Verdun, Lorraine had succeeded in 
knitting together these diverse elements and it became as distinct a unit, 
with as marked an individuality, as any other national nucleus of Europe. 
The people are described by contemporary writers as possessing a char- 
acter of their own, and were noted for wit, sensitiveness, a military and 
chivalric spirit, and a tendency to mysticism. Tauler and Brother 
Lawrence represent the last, while Jeanne d'Arc speaks for their military 
and chivalric spirit as well as for their mysticism. Nor should it be 
forgotten that it was in Lorraine that the Irish monk Columba found 
a congenial home in the sixth century, and laid the foundations for the 
future Christianity of the people. 

What is true of Lorraine is in almost the same degree true of 
Alsace, where, however, there was more settling and inter-marrying 
between the Teutons and their subjects. But even Alsace as she emerged 
from the Roman period was still essentially Gallo-Frankish. The Celtic 
inhabitants had not been entirely dispossessed; and as the later trans- 
Rhine Teutonic immigrations had been gradual and less aggressive, there 
was less antagonism. They are described with "the characteristics of 
activity, enterprise, energy, independence, irony, and badinage ascribed 
to the people of the French realm," and they spoke in different localities 
both the lingua romana and the lingua teudisca. (For an exhaustive study, 
cf. Chas. Schmidt, Les Seigneurs, les paysans, et la propriete rurale en 
Alsace.} The solid peasant stock, which made up the back-bone of the 
country, reasserted itself, and though modified, it still felt itself to be one 
with Celto-Roman traditions, and the new French national spirit infused 
throughout France by Charlemagne. 

ACTON GRISCOM. 
(To be continued) 



Have these three things always present to your mind: what you were, 
what you are, and what you will be. S. Bernard. 



THE CRUSADES 



THE whole Christian world has watched with interest the recent 
developments in the East, and in the capture of Jerusalem has 
perhaps recalled to memory others of the many capitulations 
which Jerusalem has experienced during her long history. 
Naturally, for western peoples the greatest interest will center in the time 
when last the western nations held this much-disputed soil, during the 
great crusading movement nearly ten centuries ago ; and when to this 
is added the fact that just about ten centuries more intervened between 
that time and the time of the incarnation of the great western Avatar, 
this most recent connection between the Holy Land and the West takes 
on a new significance. 

Doubtless everyone is more or less familiar with the idea of cycles 
the theory that individuals, nations, whole civilizations in fact, return 
in regularly recurring periods; a theory which has been conclusively 
worked out from the scientific standpoint by W. M. Flinders Petrie in 
his book, the Revolutions of Civilisation. And when we consider not 
only the millennial recurrence mentioned above but also the fact that each 
of these periods has been marked by the most vital and far-reaching 
changes for the whole western world, it suggests the possibility, at least, 
of a thousand year cycle involving the joint activity and connection of 
East and West. 

A comparison, even the most superficial, of our own time with that 
of the Crusades, shows certain broad characteristics which would seem 
further to substantiate the idea. Many of the tendencies which stood 
most in need of correction at the time of the Crusades, many of the evils 
which would naturally be followed by deep-seated changes, are practically 
duplicated in our own day. Of course, it will not do to carry such an 
idea too far ; Europe in the XI century was still practically in a state of 
barbarism, while according to Mr. Petrie's tables we, at the present stage 
of civilization, are well over the crest of the wave, in some respects are 
well on toward the period of decay. We must expect difference then ; 
but though there is not identity of characteristics there is nevertheless 
a parallelism which may well be considered as far as it goes. 

To turn first of all to an external feature, is it a mere coincidence 
or is there meaning beneath the surface, in the position of the various 
European countries at the time of the Crusades ? As in the present day, 
so then, France was foremost in the movement, bearing the main burden 
of the warfare. To borrow the words of one of the historians, "yielding 
readily to ideas, passing quickly from ideas to action, enthusiastic, viva- 
cious France has the power of giving an impulse to the nations, as was 
seen in 1793, 1830 and 1848, and the thrill aroused in France vibrated 
over all western Europe." Italy came second in activity, but her interest 
and her work were more commercial than religious. England, because 



260 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

of the readjustments necessarily following the Norman conquest, was 
unable to enter into the movement at the start, but shared more actively 
in the later Crusades. Spain took no part, being occupied first with the 
Moors and later with her own Crusade against the Albigenses, and Russia 
had not yet taken her place among the nations, being still, so to speak, 
in process of formation. As for Germany, occasional individuals entered 
into the movement, to be sure, but the nation as a whole looked upon it 
with disfavor. During the first wave of enthusiasm, Germany was 
occupied with her War of Investitures, and the events of that war would 
scarcely lead her to espouse with zeal a movement promoted by a Pope 
who had so endeavored to humble her Emperors. But further than this, 
Germany had an opportunity as time passed, to see the results so 
calamitous to many of the crusaders and to realize the first disadvantages 
to those who remained at home. Jealous of their power, the German 
barons were quick to oppose a movement which in other countries was 
impoverishing the nobles, lessening their number, reducing their military 
and political importance, and, as it were, playing into the hands of both 
the crown and the lower classes. And by avoiding the loss she missed 
also the gain. Hungary, though recently Christianized, was bitterly 
hostile to the Crusaders, albeit with considerable reason since the lawless, 
undisciplined hordes of the first crusade, travelling entirely without 
preparation or provision, overran her territory to the number of eighty 
or a hundred thousand sometimes estimated at two hundred thousand 
seized everything they could lay hands on, outraged the women, attacked 
the men, and burned and pillaged the towns, in one case massacring four 
thousand citizens. Hungary was not prepared to stop them, but in Bul- 
garia, which was equally hostile, the inhabitants attacked and killed them, 
reducing their numbers by many thousands. Curiously enough, then, the 
alignment of nations was roughly speaking, that of the present day. 

As for the general characteristics of the two periods, where we 
have as a dominant feature of our own day, materialistic skepticism, 
crusading Europe went to the other extreme. There was no lack of 
religion, but it was fixed and dogmatic, full of superstition, and with it 
went fanaticism, bigotry and intolerance. The XI century, then, was 
probably quite as much in need of shaking-up as we are, though for quite 
the opposite reason. Then there was lack of unity lack of unity of 
purpose and lack of national unity ; that ferment working close beneath 
the surface everywhere at the present day and so tragically evident in 
Russia, was one of the great difficulties then as well as now. The reasons 
for it were different to be sure: economic conditions, lack of facilities 
for transportation and communication, limited trade and commerce, 
primitive methods of exchange were the natural preventives. In addition 
to these, the whole feudal system, opposing as it did, any centralized 
authority, recognizing no common laws, making each feudal lord a law 
unto himself with independent jurisdiction over his serfs and vassals, 
was a further barrier. 



THE CRUSADES 261 

Numerous references are made in accounts of the time, to class- 
unrest and the wretchedness of the people it must be remembered that 
this was well on toward the end of feudalism, and oppression of the 
serfs and privation and misery may well have been common. Whether 
this was merely a local condition or sufficiently widespread to have some 
influence in the Crusades, is a question. Certainly it was not organized 
as is our present-day counterpart of it, for the means of communication 
were too inadequate. Whatever may have been its actual value, thousands 
of the lower classes flocked to join the Crusades, so many serfs becoming 
freedmen in this way (manumission being a result of taking the vow) 
that a whole new class of society sprang up. 

Like our own day, feudal Europe was cursed with individualism, 
resented authority, and lacked discipline, a lack which cost the lives of 
hundreds of thousands in the first Crusade. It may be argued that these 
characteristics together with pride, arrogance, avarice and others of the 
vices which manifested themselves, are found to a greater or less degree 
in every age, being common to unregenerate man, and that in any great 
movement, our own war or another, some will be actuated by high ideals 
and noble qualities, while others and usually a great majority, will 
blacken the cause with the low aims and evil passions of their kind. 
However, there are times when the sins of the world come more nearly 
to the surface than others, and the events of the Crusades would show 
lack of discipline, among high and low alike, to be one of the crying 
evils of the time. 

Back of all the more obvious purposes of the Crusades and the 
tendencies which they were apparently meant to correct, stands the one 
great fact which was given in a recent sermon at the Chapel of the 
Comforter, regarding our present World War namely that from time 
to time, the Master tries in one way or another to draw the world to 
Him, appealing now to love, now to pity and so on. The world, it was 
said, is full of the poison of self, which lulls it to sleep the sleep of 
death. The analogy was used of a man dying of cold who must be 
roused from his lethargy if he is to live. The only way to save the 
world is to insist that it shall feel ; the only way to make it feel is to 
make it suffer. 

How this was done for XI century Europe is better left to a more 
detailed account of the individual Crusades. The story is more or less 
familiar to all enthusiastic multitudes rushing into the project with 
fanatical zeal, meeting all too soon the pitfalls made by their own self- 
will and ungovernable natures ; their sufferings by plague, pestilence -and 
famine ; the tragic end of countless numbers, mere heaps of bones in the 
desert; and the moderate success of the few in their several short-lived 
kingdoms and principalities. What the actual results of all this were 
to the people who took part in it, what changes may have been brought 
about in their own inner natures, is of course impossible to tell. And 
yet some indication of it is given in their life subsequent to their arrival 



262 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

in the Holy Land. One of the chief indications is their change from 
fanatical intolerance to a reasonably generous recognition of their neigh- 
bors' views. In the laws drawn up in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, under 
the rule of Godfrey of Bouillon, the people were allowed, in almost every 
particular, to continue in their usual customs. This even went so far 
as to provide for the Syrian population a court under a Syrian official, 
though later a change was made to four Syrian and two Prankish officials, 
due perhaps to the inefficiency of the natives. Apparently entire toleration 
was granted to all ; in the matter of an oath, for instance, Mohammedans 
took it on the Koran, Armenians, Syrians and Greeks on the cross, Jews 
on the Torah, etc. 

According to one Mohammedan authority, the Musselman farmers 
found the Prankish rule more agreeable than the Musselman. This meant 
an extraordinary amount of adaptation to circumstances. Where king- 
doms were being established and westerners were remaining permanently, 
it was necessary, of course, to maintain friendly relations with the 
surrounding states if possible. The military training and prowess of 
both Mohammedans and Franks was one point of contact between them, 
especially in view of their mutual contempt for the unwarlike Syrians 
and Greeks. But the Franks had come from a civilization which was 
just awakening; they had presumably little or no breadth of view, and 
certainly no preparation for their experiences in the East. Practical 
knowledge of the East and its problems was lacking, as was also any 
understanding of its peoples ; their fanaticism and intolerance was an 
added barrier. Yet they accomplished the apparently impossible with 
remarkable success, and in a comparatively short time, we find one of 
their number writing that all who remained in the East had become 
orientals. "We have already forgotten the cities where we were born." 

No such feeling was entertained, however, by the yearly pilgrims 
who continued to come from the West in great numbers, and who 
remained too short a time to gain an understanding of the situation. 
To them such an attitude toward the unbelievers was apostasy and their 
own continued intolerance was a source of much difficulty, as for instance, 
when in a siege of Acre, 1104, the Prankish leader agreed to spare the 
lives of those who surrendered to him, but soon found himself utterly 
unable to prevent their massacre by fanatical Pisans and Genoese. In 
spite of the fact that they were often troublesome, unruly and undis- 
ciplined citizens, these western newcomers were encouraged or even 
urged to remain in the East, for nothing but force of numbers could 
secure permanence of the Prankish possessions against the continual 
efforts of the Mohammedans. 

Even such potential strength and security as the Franks did possess 
was by no means utilized, for the new surroundings had done little to 
overcome the individualism and aversion to authority with which they 
started out. The leaders were unable to get along harmoniously together ; 
each wanted, and for the most part secured for himself a kingdom, but 



THE CRUSADES 263 

instead of uniting their conquests into a strong league under one head, 
they remained just so many independent principalities under so many 
independent chiefs practically a copy of feudal Europe. They had 
become broader and more liberal but the lesson of unity still remained 
unlearned. 

This was not the case at home, however; not only did Europe 
grow in unity as the Crusades progressed, but every department of her 
life, economic, intellectual, religious, took on new vigor, every class of 
society underwent a change, the Dark Age was left behind, and a rapid 
development began. In certain of the countries, France particularly, the 
nobles had joined the Crusades in large numbers, occasionally entire 
families leaving the homeland for several generations. This removed 
what had previously been the chief source of opposition to kingly rule, 
and resulted in a greater centralization of authority and an immense 
increase for the crown of both power and wealth. At the same time 
a new citizen class was arising, due as before mentioned, to the large 
number of serfs released from bondage, some by masters who them- 
selves took the cross, others by the papal decree freeing all bondsmen 
who did so. Many of these freedmen, hitherto bound to the soil, turned 
for a livelihood to industries, of which a number had recently been 
imported from the East and others had received fresh impetus from that 
source. Thus a class grew up which was independent of the soil and 
which, leaving the country, congregated in the towns. The king in turn, 
was quick to take advantage of the changing conditions, and by affording 
protection to this growing citizen class, still further strengthened his 
power. 

Besides the new industries and improved methods in old industries, 
there were new articles of every description brought from the East, 
new household appliances, fabrics, natural products, fruits, grains, etc. 
The increase of import and export trade which resulted, still further 
changed and developed the life of the time, for through localities which 
had previously been shut off, or hemmed in, by natural barriers of various 
kinds, great trade routes grew and commercial centers sprang up. And 
perhaps the most important of all economic effects, was the introduction 
of a new system of exchange. At the beginning of the Crusades the 
means of exchange was primitive, in some localities barter was still the 
custom, though coin was largely used even at that date. The crusading 
prince, starting out on his journey, had to carry with him in specie, a 
sufficient amount to defray all his expenses and pay his men. This was 
reasonably safe because of the warlike character of the company, but 
the inconvenience of such a method will be apparent. Gradually there 
developed the custom of securing letters of credit from some wealthy 
person remaining at home, usually at a heavy rate of interest which the 
Church tried in vain to regulate. And from this grew a regular system 
of letters of exchange and a balancing of debits and credits very similar 
to our own modern system. 



264 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Big banking houses sprang up, notably those of Genoa, Pisa and 
Siena, having offices in all the principal cities of the East and providing 
by means of their letters of credit, sums of any size at any time and 
place. When the Religious Orders were formed, they of course, made 
extensive use of this system and before very long they themselves became 
bankers on a large scale. The Knights Templars were especially active 
in this capacity ; by the Pope they were given charge of all the vast funds 
collected for the Holy Land and in addition they made large loans at very 
high interest to the monarchs of the different countries. In time the 
regulation of the money traffic of the entire world lay in their power. 
Such changes in the commercial life naturally revolutionized the world 
commercially, at least, old national boundaries lost much of their impor- 
tance ; old national differences were wiped out ; transportation and travel 
became easier and simpler ; the productive power of the communities was 
accordingly increased; and interest became united with interest. 

But all this growth was merely economic. Other results of the 
Crusades were intellectual, moral and spiritual changes equally important 
and far-reaching if not more so. With the interchange of thought 
between East and \Vest and the resultant widening of view, new energies 
were awakened in the intellectual life of the time. The old orthodox 
ideas of the Middle Ages became obsolete, their narrow mental barriers 
becoming too restrictive. Slowly but surely, men began to shake off the 
theological despotism which the Church had so long exercised, to strive 
for spiritual freedom, to awaken to the possibility of a breadth of thought 
and speculation, the audacity of which would have been considered 
impious a short time before. The whole thought of the time became 
opened up, the soil prepared for the great and rapid development 
including both the Renaissance and the Reformation, which followed 
close on the fall of the Eastern Empire and the dwindling of the power 
of the Papacy. It has been said that the Renaissance must be "viewed 
mainly as an internal process whereby spiritual energies latent in the 
Middle Ages were developed into actuality and formed a mental habit 
for the modern world" ; and can it not be said with equal truth that the 
Cmsades furnished the original impetus to that evolution which, including 
the Renaissance in its course, brought the modern world into being and 
gave to the nations of the West a common civilization? 

JULIA CHICKERING. 



Live in this world as if God and your soul only were in it, so shall 
\oiir heart be never made captive by any earthly thing. S. John of the 
Cross. 



EASTERN AND WESTERN 
PSYCHOLOGY 



THE INFUSION OF DIVINE LIFE 

iN a very valuable study, "Evolution and the Need of Atonement,"* 
the author, whose purpose is, to bring about a reconciliation 
between biological and spiritual knowledge, hits upon a striking 

and brilliant simile for the development of our spiritual life and 
consciousness : 

"We may assume," he says, "for the sake of argument, that some 
form of marine life was the most primitive. Now when a marine 
organism begins to adapt itself in the direction of a littoral life, we have 
obviously a succession of environmental changes so marked as to produce 
a very rapid adaptation, for even the smallest change will be markedly 
favorable or unfavorable. The change to a life at first between tide- 
marks, then wholly on shore, must introduce such a vast series of new 
factors that an incredibly huge number of experimental variations must 
occur; some useless, some committing to one line of advance, some to 
another. Again, equally obviously, organisms that had gone very far 
in adapting themselves to a particular line of development, could not 
go very far under the new conditions, for retrogression is impossible; 
the majority would fail completely, some few would get on in a lowly 
way, their equilibrium-position being reached in a comparatively short 
time and comprising relations with a comparatively small range of 
environmental conditions. An example of this may be found in the 
littoral and land Crustacea. The creatures that succeeded best would be 
those who had adapted themselves completely to the simpler conditions of 
the sea, yet had not committed themselves by over-specialization, but 
were ready to respond to the new stimuli of the shore and the land. 
And in just the same way the land organisms which early reached their 
equilibrium-position i. e., the position involving approximately com- 
plete adaptation to a small number of conditions would again be 
incapable of what we call 'progress' into a higher and more complex 
development. Thus we see that the organism which becomes 'highest' 
is that which never reaches a stable position, but is always ready to 
respond to the fresh higher environment conditioned by its last progres- 
sive variation." 

The passage is very carefully written, in order that it may be a 
quite exact description of biological law, so far as that law is known. 
But the real purpose of the author goes much farther : He is supplying, 
from biology, an illustration of the operation of spiritual law; the 

By Stewart A. McDowall, Cambridge University Press. 



266 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

operation of spiritual law at the critical stage when we are passing, 
or seeking to pass, from material to spiritual life. The author depicts 
one of the great critical periods in biological evolution, when the beings 
which had hitherto been living in water were beginning a new chapter in 
life, emerging from the water and establishing themselves on land, 
or, as it would, perhaps, be truer to say, establishing themselves in the 
lower strata of the air. They will henceforth dwell surrounded by the 
element air, instead of the element water; and success will mean com- 
plete adaptation to this finer medium. It is really a new birth; a death 
to water-life and a new birth into air-life. Therefore it is a real and 
natural analogy with the spiritual rebirth, which is the passage from 
a grosser to a finer medium, or, if one prefer the expression, the passage 
from a lower to a higher plane. And just because the author is at great 
pains to make his biological description as exact as possible, it will pay 
to study and ponder over every sentence. It is a genuine parable, fol- 
lowing the example of the Western Master, who bases so much of his 
spiritual teaching on simple biological analogies. 

Before we consider this analogy, it is worth while to turn aside 
for a moment, to quote a grim passage in which the author raises and 
answers the question: What is the fate of an organism which, having 
emerged into the air, elects to return again to life in the water? 

"What can we say, then, of a land-organism which once more 
betakes itself to the sea? Let us take for example the whale. It can 
never return to true gills and fins of the same nature as, or as zoologists 
would say, homologous with, those of a fish. At best it can but develop 
similar or analogous organs, and it will be so far behind the fish in 
adaptation to marine conditions that its efforts may be regarded as 
hopeless: it has tried to turn back, failed, and is eventually added to 
nature's flotsam and jetsam, being incapable of further progress." Or, 
as the Bhagavad Gita says, it "has lost both worlds." 

Returning to our first quotation, describing the development which 
does not fail, but succeeds, let us try to add to it certain considerations 
which we reached in preceding chapters. In the first place, it is quite 
evident that the emergence from water-life to air-life would be abso- 
lutely impossible unless the air were already there, with its element of 
oxygen, giving the possibility of life. In the same way, it would be 
entirely impossible for us to emerge from material life to spiritual life, 
unless the spiritual world were already there, pervaded everywhere by 
spiritual, life-giving force, as oxygen everywhere pervades the nitrogen 
and other inert elements of the air. It is interesting to recall that the 
earlier name of nitrogen was "azote," that which cannot support life, 
as contrasted with oxygen, which can and does support life. Therefore 
our whole possibility of emergence into spiritual life, our possibility of 
establishing ourselves on the spiritual plane, depends on the pre-existence 
of spiritual life, everywhere present in the spiritual world, pervading the 
spiritual plane. 



EASTERN AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY 267 

On the other hand, the presence, even from the beginning, of the 
oxygen-containing air was not enough, in itself, to cause the emergence 
of living things from the water. Air and water like the spiritual and 
material planes might have continued in contact for ever, without 
bringing about the great transformation, the new birth from above. 
The perpetual presence and readiness of the air, of the spiritual world, 
was not enough. There was needed the impulse in the water-dwelling 
beings, to come forth, first to the borderland between low and high 
tide, and then into the clear air. 

Orthodox biology simply records the fact of this emergence, but 
does not seek to explain it. Darwin practically considered this tremen- 
dous step in evolution, like all steps in evolution, as a "happy accident." 
But we have seen already, first, that this infinite multiplication of "happy 
accidents" is more miraculous than miracles ; and, second, that our 
conscious experience in evolution, in spiritual life, gives us excellent 
ground for holding that, just as our spiritual evolution is invariably 
accompanied by the sense of guidance and help by conscious, responsive 
spiritual forces (manifestations of a personal spiritual consciousness 
and force), so we are justified in believing that the earlier stages of 
our evolution, from the very earliest, must have been guided by con- 
scious, consciously acting spiritual forces, though we may not be able 
to form any clear idea of their character. So we have ground for 
believing that the emergence from water-life to air-life must have been 
the result of two things: first, the impulse of growth, the "vital drive," 
in the living things themselves; and, second, the instigation, guidance 
and supervision of their emergence by conscious spiritual forces, lending, 
at that point, the same aid which we have such full experience of, at a 
later point. 

But there is a third condition of success, a condition absolutely 
indispensable, without which failure is quite certain, even though all 
other conditions of success are abundantly present. This essential con- 
dition is eternal effort, eternally renewed. There could be no more 
fatal mistake than to think that a stage of spiritual life will be reached, 
comparatively early, perhaps, at which effort will not be needed; in 
which we shall be able to rest in inactivity. We shall find rest it is true, 
but it will be the rest of perpetual effort in complete harmony with 
spiritual law ; the element of rest lies in that harmony, and by no means 
in cessation of effort. On the contrary, at each advance, the effort 
required will be greater, more diversified, just as the effort of a man is 
infinitely greater and more diversified than the effort of a sea-anemone. 
Of course, to compensate, the man has infinitely more power to make 
effort than the sea-anemone. So each spiritual advance, far from 
bringing "rest," brings the imperative necessity for greater and ever 
greater effort; but, in compensation, it brings also greater and ever 
greater strength, greater power of effort. Popular religion, as expressed, 
for example, in the inscriptions upon tombstones, seems to promise that 



268 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

with death comes rest: "Let him rest in peace." But, while there is 
rest from one kind of effort, it would seem to be certain that there is 
a new effort of another kind, since this is a universe of perpetual motion. 
But popular religion has at least this safeguard : It teaches, with entire 
definiteness, that effort must continue, because imminent danger continues, 
up to the very moment of death; so far, it appears to teach the literal 
truth. 

We shall be well advised, therefore, at the very outset, clearly to 
realize, and courageously to face the fact that we shall reach no condi- 
tion of rest which will mean surcease of effort; but, on the contrary, that 
without incessant, unbroken, unflagging effort, we can make no progress 
at all; nay, each step gained will mean more and greater effort. For 
such is the Law of Life universal. 

Let us, for a moment, look at this inflexible law from the other 
side. There is, as we have seen, the imperative necessity of continuous 
effort, never ceasing but perpetually increasing. Yes ; but does not that 
mean that we are inherently capable of just that kind of effort ; of effort 
which shall perpetually increase, both in quality and in quantity? The 
power to make effort is, then, in a sense, the divinest power we have, 
and we have it perpetually; further, effort invariably carries compound 
interest; each effort made adds definitely and measurably to our capital 
of power, our ability to make further effort. 

Let us go back for a moment, and see how our biologist has 
expressed this law of perpetual and perpetually increasing effort. He 
expresses it thus: "Thus we see that the organism which becomes 
'highest' is that which never reaches a stable position, but is always 
ready to respond to the fresh higher environment conditioned by its last 
progressive variation ;" always ready to respond by effort, as each step 
is gained. 

It would be interesting and fruitful to examine the way in which 
this law of continuous and continuously increasing effort works out in 
the field of biology, and especially in the passage across that borderland 
between water-life and air-life, our symbol of the spiritual rebirth. But, 
for the present, we must be content to remind ourselves that in the 
biological field the rule is, that each individual must work each day to 
secure, often with great difficulty and effort, the food for that day. 
Creatures which lay up stores, like the bees, the squirrels, the jays, are 
a very small minority. The rest must literally work out the prayer: 
"Give us this day our daily bread." And every creature has its enemies, 
which ceaselessly beset it, so that every bird, for example, is perpetually 
toiling, perpetually vigilant and perpetually rejoicing. We should learn 
all three lessons and apply them all. 

We shall try to see, later in this enquiry, how, according to recorded 
experience and experimental knowledge, this law of ceaseless and 
increasing effort works out in the spiritual world. For the present, how- 
ever, we shall consider another side of the problem. 



EASTERN AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY 269 

Three conditions, as we saw, are involved in this transformation 
from the material to the spiritual plane, or in its biological analogy. 
These are, first, the pre-existence of the higher plane or world, per- 
vaded by the powers which support life; second, the inherent drive in 
the organism, expressing itself in the power of ceaseless effort; and, 
third, the guiding and fostering power of the conscious spiritual forces 
which, if our view be true, inspire and oversee both transformations. 

If it be true that, as we are making our way from material life 
to spiritual life, we are, in fact, guided, guarded, helped, ceaselessly 
inspired by spiritual powers which respond by personal consciousness to 
our personal consciousness, in what way do those who have immediate 
experience of this process describe it? What is the direct testimony of 
experimental psychology, in both East and West, concerning this vitally 
important experience? 

There is a beautiful passage in the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad 
which describes, not so much the actual passage to the spiritual world, 
as the spiritual condition of those who have made the passage and are 
already at home there, freely breathing that finer air; they have largely 
received, and perfectly responded to, the infusion of Divine Power from 
above, and have become one with the very essence of that Divine Power. 
The Divine Life has become their life. It is of high interest and true 
significance that, just as Spirit means "breath," the divine Breath of 
Life, so the Sanskrit Atma means breath, and, pre-eminently the Divine 
Breath, the Holy Spirit. In the passage to be quoted, the word Atma 
is translated Soul: 

"Thus far of him who is under desire. Now as to him who is free 
from desire, who is beyond desire, for whom the Soul is his desire. 
From him the life-powers do not depart. Growing one with the Eternal, 
he enters into the Eternal. 

"When all desires that were hid in the heart are let go, the mortal 
becomes immortal, and reaches the Eternal. 

"And like as the slough of a snake lies lifeless, cast forth upon an 
ant-hill, so lies his body, when the Spirit of man rises up bodiless and 
immortal, as the Life, as the Eternal, as the Radiance. 

"The small old path that stretches far away, has been found and 
followed by me. By it go the Seers who know the Eternal, rising up 
from this world to the heavenly world. 

"Who knows the Soul, and sees himself as the Soul, what should 
he long for, or desiring what should he fret for the fever of life? 

"By whom the awakened Soul is known while he dwells in the 
wilderness of the world, he is creator of all and maker of all ; his is the 
world, for he is the world. 

"Even here in the world have we reached wisdom ; without wisdom, 
great were thy loss. They who are illumined, become immortal. Others 
enter into sorrow. 



270 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

"When a man gains a vision of the godlike Soul, the Lord of what 
has been and what shall be, he fears no more. 

"At whose feet rolls the circling year with all its days, Him the 
gods worship as the one, the light of lights, the immortal Life. 

"In whom the five hierarchies of beings and the ether are set firm, 
him I know to be the Soul. And knowing that deathless Eternal, I too 
am immortal. 

"They who know the life of life, eye of the eye, the ear's ear, heart 
of the heart, have found that eternal Ancient, the Most High. 

"This is to be understood by the heart: there is no separateness at 
all. He goes from death to death who beholds separateness. 

"This immeasurable and unchanging Being is to be beheld as the 
One. The stainless Soul is higher than the heavens, mighty and sure. 

"Let the sage, the follower of the Eternal, knowing this, strive 
to behold it in vision. Let him not meditate on many words, for words 
are weariness. 

"This is the mighty Soul unborn, who is Consciousness among the 
life-powers. This is the heaven in the heart within, where rests the 
ruler of all, the master of all, the lord of all. He grows not greater 
through good works, nor less through evil. He is lord of all, overlord 
of beings, shepherd of all beings. He is the bridge that holds the worlds 
apart, lest they should flow together. This is he whom the followers 
of the Eternal seek to know through their scriptures, sacrifices, gifts and 
penances, through ceasing from evil towards others. He who knows 
this becomes a sage. This is the goal in search of which pilgrims go 
forth on pilgrimages. 

"Knowing Him, the men of old desired not offspring. What should 
we do with offspring, they said, since ours is the Soul, the All? They 
became saints, ceasing from desire of offspring, the desire of the world, 
the desire of wealth. For the desire of offspring is a desire for wealth, 
and the desire for wealth is a desire for the world. For these both are 
desires. But the Soul is not that, not that. It is incomprehensible, for 
it cannot be comprehended ; it is imperishable, for it passes not away ; 
nought adheres to it, for it is free ; the Soul is not bound, fears not, 
suffers not. 

"He who knows is therefore full of peace, lord of himself ; he has 
ceased from false gods, he is full of endurance, he intends his will. In 
his soul he beholds the Soul. He beholds all things in the Soul. Nor 
does evil reach him ; he passes evil. He is free from evil, free from 
stain, free from doubt, a knower of the Eternal." 

In this beautiful passage, there are the following elements: The 
knowing of the divine power the heaven of the heart; the recognition, 
in this divine power, of the quality of consciousness, the personal quality 
expressed by the words, the Lord, the Shepherd, the Master ; the transfer 
of the life, through this infusion of the Divine Life, from this world 
to the heavenly world ; the glory of that immortal life in the Eternal. 



EASTERN AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY 271 

Let us compare with this, certain passages from Western spiritual 
experience, which describe not so much the consummation as the process 
of the infusion of the Divine Life, or, as it is called "the presence of 
God" in the heart. The best passages are, perhaps, those which describe 
the spiritual experience of Saint Teresa who, to a pure, courageous and 
rejoicing heart, added a clear, well-balanced understanding and a gift 
of eloquent expression. 

"I used to have," Saint Teresa writes, "at times, as I have said, 
though it used to pass quickly away, certain commencements of that 
which I am now going to describe . . . and sometimes even when 
I was reading, a feeling of the presence of God would come over me 
unexpectedly, so that I could in no wise doubt, either that He was 
within me, or that I was wholly absorbed in Him. . . . For the 
soul is already ascending out of its wretched state, and some little 
knowledge of the blissfulness of glory is communicated to it." 

Again Saint Teresa writes: "So, in the beginning, when I attained 
to some degree of supernatural prayer I speak of the prayer of quiet 
I labored to remove from myself every thought of bodily objects. 
I thought, however, that I had a sense of the presence of 
God . . ." "It is the settling of a soul in peace, or rather Our 
Lord, to speak more properly, puts it into peace, by His Presence, as 
He did just Simeon: for all the faculties are calmed. The soul under- 
stands after a manner far different from understanding by the exterior 
senses, that she is now joined nearer to her God, for that within a very 
little while more she will attain to the being made one with Him by 
union. . . . Those who are in the prayer of quiet are so near, that 
they perceive they are understood by signs. They are in the palace, 
close by their King, and see that He already begins here to bestow on 
them His Kingdom . . ." "There is raised in the interior of the 
soul so great a suavity that makes her perceive very plainly that Our 
Lord is very near to her. I call it the prayer of quiet, for the repose 
it causeth in all the powers : so that the person seems to possess God as 
he most desires . . . though the soul perfectly sees not the Master 
that teaches us, yet plainly understands He is with her." 

Many of those whom the West rightly calls saints, because they 
have experienced and borne witness to this infusion of the Divine Life, 
have put on record exactly the same sense of the presence of God in 
their hearts. A beautiful expression of this experience is that of the great 
French teacher of mystical theology and religious discipline, Father Louis 
Lallemant : 

"When, after a long cultivation of purity of heart, God would enter 
into a soul and manifest Himself to it openly by the gift of His holy 
presence . . . the soul finds itself so delighted with its new state, 
that it feels as if it had never known or loved God before." And else- 
where in the same treatise on Spiritual Doctrine, Father Lallemant 
writes very wisely of the renunciation of the world, the mortification 



272 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

of worldly desires, on which such stress was laid in the Upanishad 
we have quoted. Father Lallemant says: "The reason why we are so 
little illuminated by the lights of the Holy Spirit, and so little guided 
by the motions of His gifts, is that our soul is sensual beyond measure, 
and full of a multitude of earthly thoughts, desires, and affections, which 
extinguish within us the Spirit of God. Few give themselves wholly to 
God, and abandon themselves to the leadings of the Holy Spirit, so that 
He alone may live in them and be the principle of all their actions." 

In the Katha Upanishad, we have exactly the same teaching con- 
cerning "the desires that dwell in the heart:" 

"The great Beyond gleams not for the child, led away by the delu- 
sion of possessions. 'This is the world, there is no other,' he thinks 
and so falls again and again under the dominion of Death." 

It is because of these desires dwelling in the heart, these many 
attachments to the familiar, long-inhabited world, that the beginning of 
the way is so difficult, so full, not so much of suffering, as of the dread 
of suffering. For this reason, so many shrink from the attempt; as, 
in our opening parable, we may imagine that the water-dwellers clung 
desperately to their familiar world, dreading and shrinking from 
emergence into the new world of air and sunlight. Some refused even 
to try; some, who tried, turned back, but never found again what they 
had lost. 

This trial of the beginning of the way, a trial destined to be over- 
come, and to dissolve in splendor, has been described with striking like- 
ness in the East and the West. Thus we find Father Louis Lallemant 
writing : 

"At first, divine things are insipid, and it is with difficulty we can 
relish them, but in the course of time they become sweet, and so full of 
delicious flavor, that we taste them with pleasure, even to the extent 
of feeling nothing but disgust for everything else. On the other hand, 
the things of earth, which flatter the senses, are at first pleasant and 
delicious, but in the end we find only bitterness in them." 

So we find the Bhagavad Gita teaching: 

"That which at the beginning is as poison, but in the outcome is 
like nectar, that is the happiness of Goodness, springing from clear 
vision of the Soul. But the happiness which springs from the union of 
the senses with the objects of desire, in the beginning like nectar, but 
in the outcome like poison, that is declared to be the happiness of 
Passion." 

It would not be easy to cite two passages which more clearly prove 
the identity of spiritual experience, which forms the basis of the real 
psychology, the "soul-science," in the East and the West. 

CHARLES JOHNSTON. 
(To be continued) 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 



THE CAUSES AND CONDUCT OF THE WAR 

PART II (Continued) 
THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR 

THERE can be no peace in the world until the men and women 
of Germany repent of their country's crimes. But they will 
not repent until suffering has brought them to their knees, and 
they will not suffer to that point unless America comes to under- 
stand, as she does not yet understand, the nature of Germany's aims 
and methods. Again and again it must be repeated and proved that 
Germany desires world conquest ; that her idea of conquest is to enslave, 
by means of intimidation and outrage, for her own supposed benefit, the 
peoples she subjugates, and that when she cannot enslave she murders 
them with absolute ruthlessness and with what she considers heroic 
good cheer. 

As stated already, there is proof of this and to spare. But it will 
be best further to examine the circumference of Germany's action 
the works of her servants, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey before 
dealing with her nearer iniquities in France and Belgium. 

Blackened by sins so innumerable, so atrocious, it would be impossible 
to select the German worst; but Germany's responsibility for the treat- 
ment of the Armenians is as cowardly and as hideous an offence as 
any of which she has yet been convicted. In "The Causes of the War," 
it was pointed out that the friendship between the Sultan Abdul Hamid 
and the Emperor William was at no time disturbed by the Armenian 
massacres. As Gibbons says: "The hecatombs of Asia Minor passed 
without a protest. In fact, five days after the great massacre of August, 
1896, in Constantinople, where Turkish soldiers shot down their fellow- 
citizens [Armenians] under the eyes of the Sultan and of the foreign 
ambassadors, Wilhelm II sent to Abdul Hamid for his birthday, a family 
photograph of himself with the Empress and his children" (The New 
Map of Europe, p. 63). 

The Emperor William and the Sultan were congenial spirits. The 
"Prussianization" of the Poles and Alsatians was conducted on the same 
general principles as the "Ottomanization" of the Armenians. With the 
advent of the Young Turks, who had been educated in Germany or 
by Germans, the program was carried out more radically and con- 
sistently. The Adana massacres of 1909, more terrible than the Hamidian 
massacres of 1895-6, occurred within a year of the proclamation of the 
Young Turk Constitution. The massacres of 1915 which, as Mr. Henry 
Morgenthau has testified, were "encouraged and aided by German army 
officers" were the most atrocious of any. Mr. Morgenthau was the 



274 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Ambassador of the United States to Turkey until diplomatic relations 
were severed. Speaking in New York on December 10th, 1917, he 
further said: 

"I was at Constantinople when the massacre began. I was 
personally told by the Turkish authorities that their forefathers, 
when they took Turkey, determined to destroy the Armenians; 
that now, after 450 years, they were going to make up for that 
little mistake [of not having exterminated them sooner], and 
that they were going to destroy them then. They gloried in the 
fact that they were able to accomplish in thirty days what Abdul 
Hamid had not been able to do in thirty-one years of his reign. 
They were determined to do it nothing could stop them and 
as I have said before, they could have been stopped if they had 
not been encouraged by the Germans, and when all the facts are 
known it will be the darkest mark against the Germans of any 
of their vandalism." 

In a pamphlet entitled The Murderous Tyranny of the Turks, by 
Arnold J. Toynbee, with a preface by Viscount Bryce (which can be 
obtained from the G. H. Doran Company, 38 West 32nd Street, New 
York, for five cents), it is stated: 

"Only a third of the two million Armenians in Turkey have 
survived, and that at the price of apostatising to Islam or else 
leaving all they had and fleeing across the frontier. The refugees 
saw their women and children die by the roadside ; and apostacy 
too, for a woman, involved the living death of 'marriage' to a 
Turk and inclusion in his harem. The other two-thirds were 
'deported' that is, they were marched away from their homes 
in gangs, with no food or clothing for the journey, in fierce heat 
and bitter cold, hundreds of miles over rough mountain roads. 
They were plundered and tormented by their guards, and by 
subsidised bands of brigands, who descended on them in the 
wilderness, and with whom their guards fraternised. Parched 
with thirst, they were kept away from the water with bayonets. 
They died of hunger and exposure and exhaustion, and in lonely 
places the guards and robbers fell upon them and murdered 
them in batches some at the first halting place after the start, 
nthers after they had endured weeks of this agonizing journey. 
About half the deportees and there were at least 1,200,000 of 
them in all perished thus on their journey, and the other half 
have been dying lingering deaths ever since at their journey's 
end ; for they have been deported to the most inhospitable regions 
in the Ottoman Empire : the malarial marshes in the Province 
of Konia ; the banks of the Euphrates where, between Syria 
and Mesopotamia, it runs through a stony desert ; the sultry and 
utterly desolate track of the Hedjaz Railway. The exiles who 
are still alive have suffered worse than those who perished by 
violence at the beginning. 

"The same campaign of extermination has been waged 
against the Nestorian Christians on the Persian frontier, and 
against the Arabs of Syria, Christians and Moslems without 
discrimination. In Syria there is a reign of terror. The Arab 
leaders have been imprisoned, executed or deported already, 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 275 

and the mass of the people lie paralyzed, expecting the 
Armenians' fate, and dreading every moment to hear the decree 
of extermination go forth. 

"This wholesale destruction, which has already overtaken 
two of the subject peoples in Turkey, and threatens all that 60 
per cent, of the population which is not Turkish in language, 
is the direct work of the Turkish government. The 'Deportation 
Scheme' was drawn up by the central government at Constan- 
tinople and telegraphed simultaneously to all the local authorities 
in the Empire ; it was executed by the officials, the Gendarmerie, 
the Army, and the bands of brigands and criminals organized in 
the government's service. No State could be more completely 
responsible for any act within its borders than the Ottoman 
State is responsible for the appalling crimes it has committed 
against its subject peoples during the War." 

More than one German teacher, stationed in Asia Minor to spread 
the blessings of German Kultur, has complained that he would have no 
pupils left to instruct, as it was the Armenians and not the Turks who 
went to school. Thus, Dr. Martin Niepage, Higher Grade Teacher in 
the German Technical School at Aleppo, appealed in vain to the German 
authorities "to put a stop to the brutality with which the wives and 
children of slaughtered Armenians are being treated here" ( The Horrors 
of Aleppo, seen by a German eyewitness; obtainable from the G. H. 
Doran Co., New York, for five cents). In a formal report which Dr. 
Niepage drew up, he states: 

"Out of convoys which, when they left their homes on the 
Armenian plateau, numbered from two to three thousand men, 
women and children, only two or three hundred survivors arrive 
here in the south. The men are slaughtered on the way; the 
women and girls, with the exception of the old, the ugly and 
those who are still children, have been abused by Turkish 
soldiers and officers and then carried away to Turkish and 
Kurdish villages, where they have to accept Islam. They try 
to destroy the remnant of the convoys by hunger and thirst. 
Even when they are fording rivers, they do not allow those dying 
of thirst to drink. All the nourishment they receive is a daily 
ration of a little meal sprinkled over their hands, which they lick 
off greedily, and its only effect is to protract their starvation." 

Then he adds: 

" 'Ta'alim el aleman' ('the teaching of the Germans') is the 
simple Turk's explanation to everyone who asks him about the 
originators of these measures." 

He concludes his report with the statement: 

"Only just before I left Aleppo last May (1916), the crowds 
of exiles encamped at Ras-el-Ain on the Bagdad Railway, esti- 
mated at 20,000 women and children, were slaughtered to the 
last one." 

So well had the Turks learned their lesson from their German 
masters that "in many places on the road from Mosul to Aleppo," the 



276 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

hands of little children were seen "lying hacked off in such numbers, 
that one could have paved the road with them" (p. 12). 

And these atrocities are being perpetrated today. It is not ancient 
history. As in the case of the Serbians, and of the Southern Slavs 
within the Austrian Empire, every week brings further news of outrages 
as monstrous as any we have recorded. It is so clearly the duty of 
American patriots to acquaint themselves with the facts, and then to 
make them known to their neighbors lest devils be forgiven before 
they have turned from their wickedness and repented that we urge 
every reader of these pages to obtain full and current information from 
the American Committee for Armenian Relief, 70 Fifth Avenue, New 
York. 



Now for Belgium and France. 

Under this head it is important to read the Report of the Committee 
on Alleged German Outrages, presided over by the Right Hon. Viscount 
Bryce ; published by the Macmillan Company, New York, at 10 cents. 

The Committee responsible for this report consisted of men likely 
to err, if at all, on the side of the accused. Among them were Sir 
Edward Clarke, K.C., and Sir Frederick Pollock, K.C. They discarded 
all evidence which was not convincing, and were surprised to find how 
often depositions, "though taken at different places and on different dates, 
and by different lawyers from different witnesses," corroborated "each 
other in a striking manner." 

The Appendix, which contains the Residence and Documents Laid 
Before the Committee, includes many diaries found on dead German 
soldiers. It is printed separately and is also published by the Macmillan 
Co., New York ; price 50 cents. 

Other books and pamphlets which throw valuable additional light 
on the subject are: 

German Atrocities: An Official Investigation, by Professor J. H. 
Morgan; published by E. P. Button and Co., New York, at $1.00. 

The German Terror in Belgium, by Arnold J. Toynbee, published 
by G. H. Doran Co., New York, at $LOO. 

Belgium and Germany, Te.vts and Documents, collected by Henri 
Davignon ; published by Nelson & Sons, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York, 
at 25 cents. 

The Destruction of Belgium: Germany's Confession and Avoidance, 
by E. Grimwood Mears, one of the Joint Secretaries to the Committee 
on alleged German Outrages ; obtainable from G. H. Doran Co., New 
York; price 10 cents. 

The Belgian Deportations, by Arnold J. Toynbee, with a statement 
by Viscount Bryce ; published by G. H. Doran Co., New York, at 10 cents. 

The German Terror in France, by Arnokl J. Toynbee; published by 
G. H. Doran Co., New York, at $1.00. 

Their Crimes, translated from the French ; obtainable free of charge 
by writing to Cassell & Co., Ludgate Hill, London, E. C, England. 



OX THE SCREEN OF TIME 277 

Most of these books and pamphlets can be obtained free of charge 
by writing to Professor W. Macneile Dixon, 8 Buckingham Gate, London, 
S. W. I., England, who generously has made it his business to spread 
a knowledge of the facts as widely as possible. 

On August 4, 1914, the roads converging upon Liege, in Belgium, 
were covered with German Deaths' Head Hussars and Uhlans, pressing 
forward to seize the passage over the Meuse. From the very beginning, 
this sort of thing happened: 

"On the 4th of August," says one witness, "at Herve" (a vil- 
lage not far from the frontier), "I saw at about two o'clock in 
the afternoon, near the station, five Uhlans ; these were the first 
German troops I had seen. They were followed by a German 
officer and some soldiers in a motor car. The men in the car 
called out to a couple of young fellows who were standing about 
thirty yards away. The young men, being afraid, ran off and 
then the Germans fired and killed one of them named D . . ." 

"The murder of this innocent fugitive civilian," the Bryce 
Report continues (p. 10), "was a prelude to the burning and 
pillage of Herve and of other villages in the neighborhood, to 
the indiscriminate shooting of civilians of both sexes, and to the 
organized military execution of batches of selected males. Thus 
at Herve some fifty men escaping from the burning houses were 
seized, taken outside the town and shot. At Melen, a hamlet 
west of Herve, forty men were shot. In one household alone the 
father and mother (names given) were shot, the daughter died 
after being repeatedly outraged, and the son was wounded. Nor 
were children exempt. 'About August 4,' says one witness, 
'near Vottem, we were pursuing some Uhlans. I saw a man, 
woman, and a girl about nine, who had been killed. They were 
on the threshold of a house, one on the top of the other, as if 
they had been shot down, one after the other, as they tried to 
escape.' " 

The Report suggests that the burning of the villages in this neigh- 
borhood and the wholesale slaughter of civilians, such as occurred at 
Herve, Micheroux, and Soumagne, may have been connected with the 
rage of the Germans caused by the resistance of Fort Fleron, whose 
guns barred the road to Liege. "Probably thinking that by exceptional 
severities at the outset they could cow the spirit of the Belgian nation, 
the German officers and men speedily accustomed themselves to the 
slaughter of civilians" (p. 11). 

The Committee at that point appears to forget that terrorization is a 
recognized and prescribed feature of the German war-game. Officially, 
in its instructions to German officers (Kriegsbrauch itn Landkriege, 
translated into English by J. H. Morgan, The German War-Book}, the 
German Government, as early as 1902, warned its officers against 
"humanitarian ideas" (humanitare Anschauungen) , and declared that 
war must be waged "by all methods which promote the attainment of its 
object, subject only to such restraints as it imposes on itself in its own 
interest." Further: "To protect oneself against attack and injuries from 



278 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

the inhabitants, and to employ ruthlessly the necessary means of defence 
and intimidation, is obviously not only a right but a duty of the staff 
of the army" (p. 120). Finally: "International law [as interpreted by 
the German Government] is in no way opposed to the exploitation of 
the crimes of third parties (assassination, incendiarism, robbery and the 
like) to the prejudice of the enemy" (p. 85). 

It should also be borne in mind that German discipline, both military 
and civilian, is intended to brutalize the nature so that "inferior" races 
can be treated just as the Belgians were treated. 

None the less we must assume that "practice makes perfect." The 
character of the German outrages became more and more monstrous. 

The Germans entered Liege on August 7th. Arms in private hands 
had already been called in by the Belgian police, so that the Germans 
might not excuse their murders on the pretext that civilians had fired 
on them. The Germans found themselves in peaceful occupation of a 
great industrial city. But the forts around Liege had offered unexpected 
and exasperating resistance; many German soldiers had been killed, and 
the Belgian army was continuing its resistance as it retired on Antwerp, 
Ghent and Namur. The unfortunate city of Liege, therefore, was to be 
used as an example. On August 20th, a massacre took place in its 
streets. There is overwhelming evidence that this, and the burning of 
large sections of the city, were premeditated (Toynbee, pp. 47, 48). 

Entries in a German soldier's diary, already quoted, show that on 
August 19th the German troops were allowed to give themselves up to 
debauchery (Bryce Appendix, p. 255) something which certainly would 
not have happened, because German discipline is strict, unless counten- 
anced by officers. 

Next day (August 20th), houses in the Place de 1'Universite and 
elsewhere were fired systematically with benzine, and many inhabitants 
were burnt alive in their houses, their efforts to escape being prevented 
by rifle fire. 

It will be best, however, to allow one of the witnesses to describe 
what he saw (Bryce Appendix, pp. 18, 19) : 

"Before setting fire to these houses the Germans drove any 
inhabitants there were in them into the cellars. All the houses 
were inhabited, but some of the inhabitants had got away before 
the Germans came up to them. At about thirty of the houses, 
I actually saw faces at the windows before the Germans entered 
and then saw the same faces at the cellar windows after the 
Germans had driven the people into the cellars. One set of 
Germans, about twenty in number, would do all this at a house 
and then set fire to it. Altogether this took the whole morning. 
Before each house was burnt it was thoroughly searched by the 
men who brought out all sorts of furniture and put it on to 
wagons which were waiting outside. I also saw some of the 
men bringing out bags of money and handing them to their 
officers. There were about thirty officers in the street. I am 
quite sure of this. There were also a crowd of Belgian civilians 
in the streets. I actually saw all these houses set fire to. In this 
way thirty-five people were burnt. I know this from the list 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 279 

which was put up in the police station afterwards and which 
I saw. One of the houses which was burnt was the house of a 
man I knew. He and two daughters, his nephew and niece were 
burnt there. His wife was away at the time. She had gone to 
Brussels the day before to see her parents. I know the family 
very well. . . . When I was in the Place St. Lambert when 
I heard shooting, I went to try and find where it was going on. 
In the Rue Soens de Hasse I saw civilians brought out of their 
houses. About 150 Germans under eight officers. They were 
paying house to house visits, bringing all the people out of the 
houses and forming them up in the street. I kept some little 
distance away and so did many other Belgians who were with 
me. The Belgians from the houses were marched off to the 
Place de 1'Universite between files of soldiers. I followed, 
keeping about twenty-five or thirty metres behind. When the 
Place was reached the Belgians were not formed up in any 
order, but the Germans fired on them. I heard an officer shout 
an order in German and all the Germans in one part of the 
square fired. The firing was not in volleys, and went on for 
about twenty minutes. Whilst this was going on other Germans 
were going into other houses in the square and bringing out more 
Belgians whom they put among those who were being shot. 
Altogether thirty-two were killed all men. I counted the 
bodies afterwards. I saw all this from the end of the Rue 
Soens de Hasse. There were many Belgians with me, but none 
of us were attacked. When I saw any Germans coming I got 
out of the way. . . . After the shooting about seven or eight 
were finished off with the bayonet. Immediately after the 
men had been killed, I saw the Germans going into the houses 
in the Place and bringing out the women and girls. About 
twenty were brought out. They were marched close to the 
corpses. Each of them was held by the arms. They tried to get 
away. They were made to lie on tables which had been brought 
into the square. About fifteen of them were then violated. 
Each of them was violated by about twelve soldiers. While 
this was going on about seventy Germans were standing round 
the women including five officers (young). The officers started 
it. There were some of the Germans between me and the 
women, but I could see everything perfectly. The ravishing 
went on for about one and one-half hours. . . . Many of 
the women fainted and showed no sign of life. The Red Cross 
took them away to the hospital. While this was going on other 
Germans were burning the houses in the square." 

In that German soldier's diary already quoted, under the date August 
24th, we read: "We live like God in Belgium" (Wir leben wie Gott 
in Belgieri). 

And the German official defence? Practically this: Served them 
right! (See The Destruction of Belgium, by E. Grimwood Mears). 

Worse than that, the cry of the women of Germany was and is: 
Served them right ! Had not Belgium resisted the German advance ? 

But worse was to come. It was not merely that old women and 
children and cripples and priests were shot indiscriminately and wantonly ; 
that babies were bayoneted and dangled on bayonets before their mother's 



280 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

eyes; it was not merely that whole villages were burned and their in- 
habitants thrown back into the flames, under the direction of German 
officers and while perfect discipline was maintained ; it was not merely 
that nuns, and little girls of twelve, and old women of sixty, and 
innumerable married women and single women, were violated in ways 
so obscene and so loathsome as to outdo the foulest records of any 
criminal court in the world. It was worse than this ; for these German 
heroes, in order to impress the "inferior" race with a sense of German 
ruthlessness which in Germany means superiority developed the prac- 
tice of cutting off the breasts of the women they violated and of leaving 
them, naked, to die, though frequently the Germans nailed the bodies 
of their victims to doors or tied them to trees (Bryce Appendix, pp. 120, 
14, 82, 65, 112 and passim}. 

Very little has been stated publicly, for obvious reasons, about the 
violation of nuns. Cardinal Mercier wrote to von Bissing, the German 
Governor-General of Belgium, "that I could furnish him with no exact 
information, because my conscience forbade me to hand over to a tribunal 
of any kind the information (alas! very precise) in my possession. 
Outrages have been committed upon nuns" (Cardinal Mercier, by 
Stillemans, p. 74). An officer of the llth United States Engineer 
Regiment, in a letter to Robert Ridgeway of the Public Service Com- 
mission, says : "A British Chaplain told me that he knows personally 
of a Belgian Convent where they found that fifty-seven out of eighty-two 
nuns had been violated when the boche fell back" (New York Times, 
December 10, 1917). 

Perhaps it is necessary to give specific instances of some of the dif- 
ferent outrages mentioned. Here is the affidavit of a Belgian soldier : 

"We were passing the flying ground outside Liege at Ans 
when I saw a woman, apparently of middle age, perhaps twenty- 
eight to thirty years old, stark naked, tied to a tree. At her feet 
were two little children about three or four years old. All three 
were dead. I believe the woman had one of her breasts cut off, 
but I cannot be sure of this. Her whole bosom was covered with 
blood and her body was covered with blood and black marks. 
Both children had been killed by what appeared to be bayonet 
wounds. The woman's clothes were lying on the grass, thrown 
all about the place. I was near J. B. at the moment we found the 
woman. I told Corporal V. what I had seen later on. I was 
marching on the outside of the patrol, on grass land, B. being 
next to me and the corporal closest to the regiment. J. B. cut the 
cords which held the woman up by stabbing them with his 
bayonet. The body fell and we left it there. We could not 
stop to bury the bodies because we could see the Germans follow- 
ing" (Bryce Appendix, p. 14). 

Here is another: 

"On September 10th we came to the village of Haecht, and 
I and some others were sent out as a patrol ; we passed a river 
and came to a farmhouse. On the door of the farm I saw a child 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 281 

two or three years old nailed to the door by its hands and 
feet. It was clothed and quite dead. There was no wound of 
any sort on the body; the face was horribly drawn with pain. 
In the garden of the same house I saw the body of another child, 
a little girl of five or six; she had been shot in the forehead" 
(Bryce Appendix, p. 119). 

And another : 

"About 13th or 14th September [1914], we captured the 
village of Haecht from the Germans. We had, however, to 
retreat again. While resting we found a woman lying in the 
road naked to the waist. The breasts were cut right off both 
of them. Lieutenant D. ordered us to cover the woman with 
a small German 'tent' we found close by in the haversack of 
a German, and we afterwards buried her. My section was 
with me at the time" (Bryce Appendix, p. 120). 

This is the affidavit of a British non-commissioned officer: 

"We were searching a village for a patrol of Uhlans at 
3.30 p.m. a small village of about fifty houses we found them 
in a house ; about ten got outside, but we did not let them get to 
their horses and we killed them all. On the ground floor in 
the front room it was a house of about six rooms there were 
ten Uhlans, who immediately put up their hands, and we took 
them prisoners. I sent them outside in charge of my men. I 
searched the house ; everything was in disorder. On the floor 
in the corner near the fireplace I saw two women and two 
children, the ages of the former apparently about thirty and 
twenty-five. One was dead, the one I judged to be the elder. 
Her left arm had been cut off just below the elbow. The floor 
was covered with blood. I think she had bled to death. I felt 
her other pulse at once. I have been trained as a hospital 
attendant before I went into the reserve. She was quite dead, 
but not yet quite cold. Her clothing was disarranged, but may 
have been because she was rolling about in pain. The house 
had farm buildings attached to it, so I presume they were of 
the farmer class. I did not examine her for any other wound, 
as I was satisfied she had died of hemorrhage. The younger 
woman was just alive, but quite unconscious. Her right leg had 
been cut off above the knee. As she was on the point of death 
I could not summon assistance quickly enough to stop the bleed- 
ing even; I was sure she was beyond assistance then. There 
were two little children, a boy about four or five and a girl of 
about six or seven. The boy's left hand was cut off at the wrist 
and the girl's right hand at the same place" (Bryce Appendix, 
p. 232). 

There are nearly three hundred closely printed pages containing 
testimony such as the foregoing and the following: 

"As I looked into the kitchen I saw the Germans seize the 
baby out of the arms of the farmer's wife. There were three 
German soldiers, one officer and two privates. The two privates 
held the baby and the officer took out his sword and cut the 

19 



282 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

baby's head off. The head fell on the floor and the soldiers 
kicked the body of the child into a corner and kicked the head 
after it. ... After the baby had been killed we saw the 
officer say something to the farmer's wife and saw her push 
him away. After five or six minutes the two soldiers seized the 
woman and put her on the ground. She resisted them and they 
then pulled all her clothes off her until she was quite naked. 
The officer then violated her while one soldier held her by the 
shoulders and the other by the arms. After the officer each 
soldier in turn violated her, the other soldier and the officer 
holding her down. . . . After the woman had been violated 
by the three, the officer cut off the woman's breasts. I then saw 
him take out his revolver and point it at the woman on the 
ground. . . . 'We ran into the fields and from there saw the 
farmhouse had been set on fire" (Bryce Appendix, p. 21). 

As an example of the way towns and villages were treated, the case 
of Dinant will serve as well as any other. This is from the Belgian 
Official Report (see The Crimes of Germany, published by Horace Cox, 
London ; pp. 39, 41 ; and Reports on the Violation of the Rights of 
Nations . . . in Belgium, by the Official Commission of the Belgian 
Government; pp. 81-110) : 

"On 15th August a lively engagement took place at Dinant 
between the French troops on the left bank of the Meuse and 
the German troops coming up from the East. On Friday, the 
21st, about 9 o'clock in the evening, German troops coming 
down the road from Ciney entered the town by the Rue St. 
Jacques. On entering they began firing into the windows of the 
houses, and killed a workman who was returning to his own 
house, wounded another inhabitant, and forced him to cry 
'Long live the Kaiser.' They bayoneted a third person in the 
stomach. They entered the cafes, seized the liquor, got drunk, 
and retired after having set fire to several houses and broken the 
doors and windows of others. The population was terrorised 
and stupefied, and shut itself up in its dwellings. 

"Saturday, 22nd August, was a day of relative calm. All 
life, however, was at an end in the streets. 

"On the following Sunday, the 23rd, at 6.30 in the morning, 
soldiers of the 108th Regiment of Infantry invaded the Church 
of the Premonstratensian Fathers, drove out the congregation, 
separated the women from the men, and shot 50 of the latter. 
Between 7 and 9 the same morning the soldiers gave themselves 
up to pillage and arson, going from house to house and driving 
the inhabitants into the street. Those who tried to escape were 
shot. About 9 in the morning the soldiery, driving before them 
by blows from the butt ends of rifles men, women, and children, 
pushed them all into the Parade Square, where they were kept 
prisoners till 6 o'clock in the evening. The guard took pleasure 
in repeating to them that they would soon be shot. About 6 
o'clock a captain separated the men from the women and chil- 
dren. The women were placed in front of a rank of infantry 
soldiers, the men were ranged along a wall. The front rank of 
them were then told to kneel, the others remaining standing 
behind them. A platoon of soldiers drew up in face of these 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 283 

unhappy men. It was in vain that the women cried out for 
mercy for their husbands, sons and brothers. The officer 
ordered his men to fire. There had been no inquiry nor any 
pretence of a trial. About 20 of the inhabitants were only 
wounded, but fell among the dead. The soldiers, to make sure, 
fired a new volley into the heap of them. Several citizens 
escaped this double discharge. They shammed dead for more 
than two hours, remaining motionless among the corpses, and 
when night fell succeeded in saving themselves in the hills. 
Eighty-four corpses were left on the Square and buried in a 
neighbouring garden. 

"The day of 23rd August was made bloody by several more 
massacres. Soldiers discovered some inhabitants of the Fau- 
bourg St. Pierre in the cellars of a brewery there and shot them. 

"Since the previous evening a crowd of workmen belonging 
to the factory of M. Himmer had hidden themselves, along with 
their wives and children, in the cellars of the building. They had 
been joined there by many neighbours and several members of 
the family of their employer. About 6 o'clock in the evening 
these unhappy people made up their minds to come out of their 
refuge, and defiled all trembling from the cellars with the white 
flag in front. They were immediately seized and violently 
attacked by the soldiers. Every man was shot on the spot. 
Almost all the men of the Faubourg de Leffe were executed 
en masse. In another part of the town 12 civilians were killed 
in a cellar. In the Rue en He a paralytic was shot in his arm- 
chair. In the Rue Enfer the soldiers killed a young boy of 14. 

"In the Faubourg de Neffe the viaduct of the railway was 
the scene of a bloody massacre. An old woman and all her chil- 
dren were killed in their cellar. A man of 65 years, his wife, 
his son, and his daughter were shot against a well. Other 
inhabitants of Neffe were taken in a barge as far as the rock of 
Bayard and shot there, among them a woman of 83 and her 
husband. 

"A certain number of men and women had been locked up 
in the court of the prison. At 6 in the evening a German 
machine gun, placed on the hill above, opened fire on them, and 
an old woman and three other persons were brought down. 

"To sum up, the town of Dinant is destroyed. It counted 
1,400 houses; only 200 remain. The manufactories where the 
artisan population worked have been systematically destroyed. 
Rather more than 700 of the inhabitants have been killed ; others 
have been taken off to Germany, and are still retained there as 
prisoners. The majority are refugees scattered all through 
Belgium." 

It is also characteristic of German methods that those of the survivors 
who were deported to Germany, were abominably treated, both during 
their journey and after their arrival. M. Tchoffen, the Public Prosecutor 
of Dinant, who was one of these prisoners, gives a graphic account of 
his experience. He says: 

"We were treated like beasts in a menagerie. Officers and 
soldiers and they were everywhere gave the lead to the 
civilians. The women and children kept on insulting and using 



284 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

threatening gestures at us. ... The journey lasted twenty- 
three hours. Once only had we anything to eat and drink, and 
we owed that to the Red Cross" (Belgian Official Report, 
pp.99, 100). 

Both in Belgium and France, the Germans constantly used civilians 
to screen their advance. Thus, at Mons, "we waited for the advance 
of the Germans," states a British officer (Bryce Appendix, p. 176). 
"Some civilians reported to us that they were coming down a road in 
front of us. On looking in that direction we saw, instead of German 
troops, a crowd of civilians men, women and children waving white 
handkerchiefs and being pushed down the road in front of a large number 
of German troops." "They came on as it were in a mass," states a 
British soldier, "with the women and children massed in front of them. 
They seemed to be pushing them on, and I saw them shoot down women 
and children who refused to march." "I saw the Germans advancing 
on hands and knees towards our position," states another; "they were 
in close formation, and had a line of women and children in front of 
their front rank." A Belgian standing in a side street saw the German 
tactics close at hand. He saw six of the victims shot by the Germans 
for trying to get away. The Burgomaster of Mons himself had been 
seized in the streets, and was driven forward with the others (Bryce 
Appendix, p. 177; Belgian Official Report, Vol. II, p. 136). 

In France as in Belgium, arson, rape and pillage were the hall- 
marks of German occupation. After what has already been related, a 
single instance will suffice, that of Gerbeviller. Here, as also at Lune- 
ville, Herimenil, Rehainviller, Mont, Lamath, Fraimbois, St. Barbe, and 
at scores of other villages, the Bavarians proved themselves to be just as 
brutal as the Prussians. 

"From the moment of their entrance into the town the 
Germans [Bavarians] gave themselves up to the worst excesses, 
entering the houses with savage yells, burning the buildings, 
killing or arresting the inhabitants, and sparing neither women 
nor old men. Out of 475 houses, twenty at most are still 
habitable. . . . [Of the inhabitants] some were led into 
the fields to be shot, others were murdered in their houses or 
struck down as they passed through the streets, while they were 
trying to escape from the conflagration. Up to now thirty-six 
bodies have been identified (names follow) . . . Fifteen 
of these poor people were executed at a place called 'la Prele.' 
They were buried by their fellow-citizens on September 12th 
or 15th. Almost all had their hands tied behind their backs; 
some were blindfolded. ... In the streets and houses during 
the day the town was sacked and most tragic scenes took place. 

"In the morning the enemy entered the house of M. and 
Mme. Lingenheld, seized the son, thirty-six years of age, who 
was wearing the brassard of the Red Cross, tied his hands 
behind his back, dragged him into the street and shot him. 
They then returned to look for the father, an old man of seventy. 
Mme. Lingenheld then took to flight. On her way she saw her 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 285 

son stretched on the ground, and as the unhappy man was 
still moving some Germans drenched him with petrol, to which 
they set fire in the presence of the terrified mother. In the 
meantime M. Lingenheld was led to la Prele, where he was 
executed. 

"At the same time the soldiers knocked at the door of the 
house occupied by M. Dehan, his wife, and his mother-in-law, 
the widow Guillaume, aged seventy-eight. The latter, who 
opened the door, was shot point-blank, and fell into the arms of 
her son-in-law, who ran up behind her. 'They have killed me !' 
she cried. 'Carry me into the garden.' Her children obeyed, 
and laid her at the end of the garden with a pillow under her 
head and a blanket over her legs, and then stretched themselves 
at the foot of the wall to avoid shells. At the end of an hour 
the widow Guillaume was dead. . 

"Side by side with this carnage, innumerable acts of vio- 
lence were committed. The wife of a soldier, Mme. X., was 
raped by a German soldier in the passage of her parents' house, 
whilst her mother was obliged to flee at the bayonet's point" 
(Rapports et Procfrs-Verbaux d'Enquete de la Commission Insti- 
tute en Vue de Constater les Actes Commis par I'Ennemi, pp. 
27-29). 

Occasionally, even a German began to feel uncomfortable. Thus 
(The Crimes of Germany, pp. 20, 33), Private Hassemer, 8th Corps, 
writes in his diary on September 3, 1914: 

"Sommepy (Marne) : Horrible massacre. The village burnt 
to the ground, the French thrown into houses in flames, civilians 
and all burnt together." 

From another German soldier's diary : 

"In this way we destroyed eight houses with their inmates. 
In one of them, two men with their wives and a girl of eighteen 
were bayoneted. The little one almost unnerved me, so innocent 
was her expression." 

Truly it is not pleasant to descend into Hell. But if, to spare our 
own feelings, we refuse to do so, how can we hate Hell as it must be 
hated ; how can we persist as we must persist if the world is to be 
protected against such unspeakable depravity, which crowns its own 
offence by claiming God as its "unconditional and avowed ally" ! 

T. 

(To be continued} 



.EMENTARY ARTICLE 




HIGHER AND LOWER NATURE 

IN the last section is the statement that at first we do not know the 
difference between higher and lower nature, especially on the border- 
land where the contest rages. That statement requires elucidation 

and amplification. 

Men and women live in a perpetual fog of self-deception and self- 
created illusions and delusions. They do so chiefly because they want 
to. They want to because they would have no peace from the urgings 
of their consciences if they did not. The same thought in another and 
simpler form is this : we all know what we ought to do, but we pretend 
that we do not because we do not want to do it. We cloud the question 
deliberately, dragging in any side issue or extraneous circumstance that 
will prevent a clear cut decision. As these general statements are not 
very convincing, or very clear, I shall use some homely illustration to 
explain my meaning. 

A crude example would be this : We love hot bread but having 
weak digestions, we ought never to eat it. So we seek for every possible 
excuse to stifle our conscience and indulge our appetite. We go to a 
meal when, on a wheatless day, only hot corn muffins are served. The 
rest is easy. It is a patriotic duty to observe the wheatless day ; of 
what importance is our digestion in comparison with the great issues 
of the war, and our pledge not to eat wheat bread ; ergo, we eat the hot 
muffins. We may be uneasy, particularly after the indigestion has begun, 
but few consciences are proof against such reasoning. We entirely 
ignore two facts ; one that we ought not to eat hot muffins ; and the other, 
that there was no reason why we should have eaten the hot muffins 
except that we wanted to. All the rest was pure buncombe. We 
deliberately tried to fool ourselves. 

We all do this sort of thing all the time and every day. The 
variations are infinite, but at heart they are always the same. I have 
seen a person eat candy, who should not have done so, and apparently 
convince himself that he did it to keep it away from a child for whom 
it would be bad ; he sacrificed himself for the sake of the child. Yes, 
we are just as crude and silly as that. 

She likes to have friends to dinner and her husband does not. Does 



16 



HIGHER AND LOWER NATURE 287 

she go ahead anyhow and invite them because she wants to and in spite 
of his dislike? No indeed. She only asks them because he needs dis- 
traction, or because he ought to make friends that would help him in his 
profession, or what not. If he objects when he hears they are coming, 
does she tell the truth and say, she asked them because she wanted to? 
Again no. She argues with him, and tells him about all her good and 
disinterested motives, and she goes to bed full of resentment and in tears 
because she is so misunderstood. By this time she may be in some 
genuine perplexity as to the facts, for they lie buried under hours or 
perhaps days of dishonest thinking. 

A friend asks us to take a walk, and we do not want to; we want 
to stay home and read. Do we say so. Dear me, no. We tell him the 
first cock-and-bull story that comes into our head, that we have letters 
to write or something anything; and say we are sorry we cannot go. 
And we justify it on the ground of politeness, or that we did not want 
to hurt his feelings. This is a little different from the other cases, for 
we may face the issue frankly and not even pretend to believe our own lie. 
So that is not a very good illustration. Let us seek another, and one 
on a little higher plane. Here is a type which I often see. 

A man makes a good resolution about some fault, let us say, that 
he will not criticize others. He sees someone do something wrong or 
do something badly. He is bursting with the desire to tell about it, 
but remembers his good resolution. Does he keep quiet? Not often. 
He decides that it would be better for the sinner's little guru to know 
about this fault so that he can help the sinner to cure it; or the sinner's 
friends ought to be told for the sinner's good ; or maybe some individual 
ought to know about it so as to guard himself from the result of the 
sinner's weakness. There is always some justification, some reason, 
other than his love of scandal. Practically no one ever acknowledges to 
himself that he is a vicious and malicious gossip, and that that is the 
real reason he speaks evil of others. 

Or let us take something not so unpleasant. I once decided that 
I would try not to defend or excuse myself. It was extraordinarily 
interesting and very humiliating to watch the gyrations of my mind 
under that strain. I think I kept the resolution for as much as forty 
minutes, during most of which I was alone. But the funny thing was 
not my unconscious, automatic and immediate breaking of this admirable 
rule, but the silly reasons I gave myself when it was not unconscious. 
I remember once deliberately excusing and defending myself because I 
was afraid a person who was interested in me would be disappointed 
and grieved if he thought ill of me where I was not guilty. At my 
office it was easy. Of course it was my duty there not to let my 
subordinates think I had made mistakes or done stupid things ; that was 
not self-defense or self-excuse; it was simply and obviously good busi- 
ness. I discovered that my mind could invent forty thousand good and 
sufficient reasons why it was my plain duty to defend and excuse myself. 



288 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

I also made another very interesting discovery, and that was that I was 
nearly always, no, practically always, actually guilty. We are very rarely 
unjustly accused. The best, or the most, we can say for ourselves is 
that sometimes, though rarely, we are not guilty of just the fault that 
is brought to our attention, or that it did not express itself in just the 
way pointed out. But that is more than sufficient to enable us to cloud 
the real issue. How many, many times we deeply resent a scolding, and 
lose its benefit, because the particular detail selected was one we felt 
to be unjust. I feel that I must make this point clear by illustration, 
for it is one of the commonest of our weapons of self-defense and of 
self-delusion. Let us take a liar. He knows he is a liar and is ashamed 
of it. It is a sore point with him, and therefore he particularly dislikes 
being reprimanded for it. He tells some story full of inaccuracies and 
exaggerations, is found out and scolded about it. The chances are that 
the person scolding him will, in the arraignment, speak of at least one 
detail where he feels that he was within the bounds of truth. That is 
enough for the lower nature. He is being unjustly accused, unfairly 
scolded. The fourteen lies he did tell are forgotten in his self-righteous- 
ness over the little bit of truth. The issue is clouded, the scolding wasted, 
the opportunity lost, and he goes off full of resentment and self- 
justification. How very often have I seen this operate. Nine times out 
of ten when you speak to a person of his faults, the whole effect of 
the lecture is completely lost because he does not think himself guilty 
of the particular illustration you happen to use. You scold a servant 
for being late. They usually are late, and it may be a chronic fault, 
but on that particular occasion it was the cook who was not ready. They 
go off inwardly triumphant and outwardly indignant because they were 
unjustly accused. We are all like that; the only difference is that some 
are more so than others. Any little fragment of excuse is seized upon 
for complete self-justification. The real facts are carefully ignored, and 
kept wrapped up in the cotton wool of self-deception and self-delusion. 

I knew one man who read novels because he liked to read them, 
but who justified it on the ground that he wanted to improve his literary 
style. Lots of people drink because it is necessary for their health. Did 
not the doctor recommend it? I defy any one to think of any sin which 
people do not commit and then justify. The Germans justify the sinking 
of the Lnsitania and the murdering and raping of women. Cannot you 
hear countless Germans telling themselves that they were not doing wrong 
to do those things, for was it not the order of their superiors, and is it 
not their duty to obey their superiors? 

The nastier the fault, the more we seek this kind of justification. 
People guilty of treachery or disloyalty of any kind invariably have 
convincing reasons why this course was justified. When you come to 
think of it many novels deal with this theme. They describe the doing 
of something wrong and the temptations and reactions of the sinner, and 
his method of justifying his act. 



HIGHER AND LOWER NATURE 289 

We do things we should not because we are tired, or hungry, or 
bored, or early, or late, or glad, or sorry, or scared, or whatnot. I mean 
we do wrong things which we want to do, and use these conditions as 
our excuses. They are pretty feeble excuses but they serve. 

This effort of deliberate self-delusion is not confined to the lower 
planes from which I have drawn my illustrations, and, of course, it is 
the more serious the higher up it is carried. It also becomes more subtle 
and more difficult to illustrate and trace. The whole purpose of self- 
examination, of which the devotional books make so much, is designed 
for no other purpose than to enable us to pierce through the self-created 
fog of illusion and deception with which we have surrounded our motives. 
Self-examination is a subject to itself of which more anon. This section 
is to show its necessity. 

The mind is the great slayer of the Real. We habitually use our minds 
to obscure and nullify the promptings of our consciences, the admoni- 
tions of our friends, the advice and directions of our superiors, whenever 
we do not like what our consciences or friends or superiors say to us, 
and that is nearly always. We even pretend to ourselves that we do 
like to be scolded and that we are grateful, and that we will try to 
benefit by the experience, while all the time our minds are busy excusing 
and explaining and defending ourselves to ourselves, until any possible 
benefit is lost in a cloud of side issues and irrelevancies. Of course I 
am writing about things as they are, not things as they ought to be. I 
confess that it is deplorable, and also, that fortunately for all of us, 
there are people who do not behave this way. But do not run away 
with the idea that you are one of them. I have known a few, a very 
few, who honestly try to profit by the scoldings they receive. They not 
only recognize and accept the existence of their fault, but they are really 
grateful to the person pointing it out. Such people have travelled a 
long distance on the road to saintliness. 

Which one of us prays a really honest prayer? Which one of us 
knows what a really honest prayer is? Who goes before the Master 
seeing himself as he really is, stripped of all disguise? It is said that 
only a disciple who is far along can do it, and that the first time he 
sees himself as the Master sees him it is more than his consciousness can 
bear. C A. G. 



"Set me some great task, ye gods, and I will show my spirit!" "Not 
so" says the good heaven, "plod and plough." Emerson. 




Egotism in German Philosophy, by George Santayana, has a distinctly alluring 
title to those who wish to see Germany discovered and beaten in every field of her 
activity. But a careful reading of the book leaves one almost completely disap- 
pointed with the inability of Germanized American philosophy to penetrate the 
cardinal viciousness of that by which it is still too inherently dominated. Genera- 
tions of American philosophers have gone to school in Germany and learned their 
philosophy in German, and the mark of Cain is on them. 

Dr. Santayana, true to form, has written with great brilliance of phrase, dis- 
playing at once wit, and, where he desired it, merciless condemnation, which reveals 
his own personal animus against German "transcendental, metaphysical idealism." 
He defines egotism, technically, as "subjectivity in thought and wilfulness in 
morals ;" and he indicts the German people with the phrase "There is no social 
or intellectual disease to which, in spots, they do not succumb, c\s to an epidemic : 
their philosophy is an example of this." But in an extraordinary way his own 
philosophy excuses them. 

Although his central theme purports to be a discovery of Egotism in German 
thinking in order to prove that "The whole transcendental philosophy, if made 
ultimate, is false, and nothing but a private perspective," he is himself so imbued 
with the materialistic outlook on life, that probably unconsciously he plays right 
into German hands. The best parts of the book, containing less of criticism and 
more of descriptive narrative, are those chapters which survey the sweep of German 
philosophy with its setting in Protestant theology, the "heir of Judaism," and 
the revelation of the "Seeds of Egotism in Kant," siezed upon and developed by 
Fichte and Hegel. Dr. Santayana sees the Protestant limitation in setting up self- 
will and private judgment on the foundation of a more or less fixed revelation; 
the result is "to retain, for whatever changed views it may put forward, the names 
of former beliefs." This duplicity is sanctified by the secret feeling that the 
categorical imperative is "omnipotent." "God, freedom, and immortality, for 
instance, may eventually be turned into their opposites, since the oracle of faith 
is internal ; but their names may be kept, together with a feeling that what will 
now bear those names is much more satisfying than what they originally stood for." 
Ruthlessness, furthermore, is the logical outcome of such a position, for "Kant 
expressly repudiated as unworthy of a virtuous will any consideration of happi- 
ness, or of consequences, either to oneself or to others. He was personally as 
mild and kindly as the Vicar of Wakefield (whose goodness he denied to be 
moral because it was natural), but his moral doctrine was in principle a perfect 
frame for fanaticism. Give back, as time was bound to give back, a little flesh 
to this skeleton of duty, make it the voice not of a remote Mosaic decalogue, but 
of a rich temperament and a young life, and you will have sanctified beforehand 
every stubborn passion and every romantic crime. In the guise of an infallible 
conscience, before which nothing has a right to stand, egotism is launched upon 
its irresponsible career." Again, "the categorical principle in morals, like the ego 
in logic, can easily migrate." 



REVIEWS 291 

Fichte and Hegel, building upon this inherited tradition of self-assertion, pro- 
claimed that "The German people are called by the plan of Providence to occupy 
the supreme place in the history of the universe." In this formulation of history. 
Egotism found its complete expression, and a reformulation of the perverted 
Messianic Kingdom ideal, whose adherents of old rejected and crucified the Christ. 

But the source, though perverted, of the ancient ideal was a revelation from 
on High ; the source of the German idea lies in a categorical imperative "Some- 
thing native and inward to the private soul . . . quietly claiming to rule the 
invisible world, to set God on his throne and open eternity to the human spirit. 
The most subjective of feelings, the feeling of what ought to be, legislates for the 
universe." Truly, "Egotism could hardly go further," Hence, though "self-asser- 
tion and ambition are ancient follies of the human race," the Germans "think 
these vulgar passions the creative spirit of the universe." 

So far Dr. Santayana, dealing in a general way with general principles, is right 
and just. His expressions are often extreme, for he is constantly carried away 
by desire for effective rhetoric; and it is only by holding to his main purpose that 
at times one can steer clear of manifold self-contradictions. When, however, he 
comes to Nietzsche, apologizing for him, excusing him for his "keener and more 
heroic" romanticism, we discover the German in Dr. Santayana's thinking, the 
fruits of admitting for years German dominion and of growing up intellectually 
in a Germanized atmosphere. 

Dr. Santayana specifically disclaims close connection with German philosophy, 
"I write frankly as an outsider"; but when he adds that his object is to describe 
German schools "intelligibly, and to judge them from the point of view of the 
layman, and in his interests," we assert that he failed of his last purpose, and 
seems unable to assume the position of the former. The kernel of German 
philosophy is that the German begins with himself and then ends with himself. 
Many philosophies begin with the present human consciousness, but they arrive 
at other states and conditions of consciousness. They start with an outlook that 
is included within their own narrow experience and they arrive at some com- 
prehension of the experience of a whole universe. From a recognition of their 
own will, and the right exercise of it, they discover the harmony of co-operating 
and uniting with the wills of others. They recognize, in substance, another and 
an outside world, more real than they are except in so far as their self-consciousness 
enables them to partake of it. 

But German transcendentalism, starting with the self's cognition of itself, 
never goes outside, but draws everything to itself. External experience is brought 
back into the ideas of it, and these are actually identified with that experience. 
These ideas in turn are drawn in and identified with the fact that the ego has the 
ideas. The Ego then feels "I am I," and adds to this the vague feeling that it is 
striving or tending towards something or other. Which sequence of thought, being 
reversed, means that the Personal Will, or Personal Geist, absorbs its ideas, its 
ideas absorb their outer experience of the phenomenal world; and this phenomenal 
world includes all outer things, whether past, present, or future. Therefore, "Earth 
and heaven, God and my fellowmen are mere expressions of my Will, and if they 
were anything more, I could not now be alive to their presence. My Will is abso- 
lute. With that conclusion transcendentalism is complete." 

Though Dr. Santayana rejects such a system of philosophy as "a forced 
method of speculation, producing more confusion than it found and calculated chiefly 
to enable practical materialists to call themselves idealists and rationalists to remain 
theologians," how does he criticize it, and what does he offer as better? 

The only philosophic grounds of Dr. Santayana's criticism lie in his chapters on 
"Egotism and Selfishness" and "Heathenism." An animal's will is a heathen will. 
He defines Heathenism as a religion of the will, the faith life has because it is 
life, and in its own aims just because it is using them. German philosophy is 



292 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

therefore heathen ; God becomes vital energy ; freedom, personality ; immortality, 
social progress. Happiness is not for wild animals ; happiness is only for those 
who, in Nietzsche's phrase, are "tamed," and Nietzsche thought "the pursuit of 
happiness low, materialistic, and selfish." 

Now Dr. Santayana, despite his criticism, is heathen in his own way. Whereas 
the crude Egotism and Heathenism of Fichte and Hegel and Max Stirner repel 
him, he is prepared to forgive Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. He himself defines 
happiness as "the union of vitality with art." In other words, this animal will to 
live and enjoy, the blonde beast roving lustful and free, is all right if restricted 
within the prescribed limits of refined and artistic expressions. Admitted that Art 
in its true and spiritual sense would be a safe guide, does not this standard, as 
things now are, leave it to each individual to determine what is, and what is not, 
an artistic expression of his particular vital energies? Is this not exactly a 
return to German self-will and egotism under a new guise? 

Dr. Santayana claims that the blonde beast must learn wisdom from experience, 
a thing which German empiricists never do. But all systems of philosophy, 
including mysticism, and every effort to emancipate the individual from the rule 
of authority and tradition, can be labelled egotistic, on the principles employed by 
Dr. Santayana, because, though these systems are based on experience and not on 
subjective ideas, the interpretation of all experience is based on the needs and 
interests of each human being, a return once again to the standard of the personal 
ego. Dr. Santayana, on the other side, would have us by no means return to 
obedience to a revelation or to an ideal, for, again, he would let instinct rule, 
instinct tamed by art. 

It is Dr. Santayana's own materialism which makes him unable to distinguish 
between the self-will of the animal personality and the higher spiritual will of a 
creative and creating spiritual universe. He is writing solely of the personal, 
selfish, will-to-live, to be, to have. German philosophy is a glorification throughout 
of this lower will, selfish, sensual, devilish; and Nietzsche is its chief prophet. 
The refinements of art to such a will are merely raising the degree and intensity 
of gratification by a species of self-control and restraint, calculated to give a 
higher form of pleasure. Nietzsche pretends to "drop the distinction between good 
and evil and transcend ethics altogether." Dr. Santayana comments that "Such a 
thought would not have been absurd in itself or even unphilosophical." We realize 
how far this is apart from the laws of the spiritual will when we remember that 
Christianity came not to destroy the law but to fulfil it, and that sacrifice is the 
cardinal principle of all spiritual, as also of all noble, courteous, and honorable 
living. 

This book then, criticizes German philosophy for one form which its evil 
expresses, while defending another and, in a measure, a subtler form of exactly the 
same source of evil. False principles of German thinking are criticized by another 
set of false principles, which are a by-product of the very same root from which 
German philosophy springs. The final impression, therefore, is thoroughly unsatis- 
factory; and on a careless or unguarded reader the book might well have a dis- 
tinctly pernicious influence, despite the Tightness, in a way, of its primary intention. 
Though Dr. Santayana disclaims a direct philosophic contribution, the present 
volume appears to fail in being such far more by reason of its inconsistent think- 
ing, than by any lack of studied brilliance or desire to address the professional 
philosopher. Perhaps its most disquieting feature is the new demonstration it 
offers of the subservience of even so-called independent American philosophy, to 
the German models which it has for so long admired. 

JOHN BLAKE, JR. 




Readers of THE THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY are invited to send questions to 
be answered in this Department, or to submit other answers to questions already 
printed where their point of view differs from or supplements the answers that 
have been given. 



QUESTION No. 204 (Continued). What are the first steps toward becoming 
conscious of the invisible world f Is there not something that one may do to develop 
the vision for and the powers to function in the spiritual world? 

ANSWER. There are several worlds now invisible to us, but of these it is only 
one that we should strive to become conscious of, viz., the inner world, or the 
"Kingdom of God." And the first steps toward that end are plainly stated in all 
great religions of the world. It can, without exception, be summed up in these 
words : "Purify your heart" ; because it is only "the pure in heart" that shall see 
God. This first claim on all who want to scale the heavenly ladder it is very 
difficult for people of the present age to comply with, because it doesn't commend 
itself to our lower nature, nor is its indispensableness much understood. But unless 
it is met to some considerable extent, it is not only futile but in some cases even 
dangerous to try to climb higher. In some unexpected place of the ladder a step 
is rotten, and the climber will fall down and injure himself, or perish. Therefore, 
give full attention to the fulfilment of this first demand. Keep the commandments, 
"live the life" ; live up to your highest ideal of the perfect man, or strive ear- 
nestly to do so always ; and in time you will come to stand high. 

Certainly there is something that must be done in order to develop the vision 
for and the powers to function in the Kingdom of God. Meditate! Meditate! 
Meditate! Unless you have acquired the power of continual meditation no vision 
for, nor any powers to function in that world can develop. And while striving to 
improve your meditation, you are strengthening your moral nature, thus making 
it easier to keep your heart clean ; "for you have no conception of the pozver of 
meditation." In this way the heavenly ladder is gradually ascended, and when the 
disciple at last enters the Kingdom he will find that all powers, needed in that 
world, have developed while he was climbing. 

Needless here to describe any special course of training in order to attain to 
continual meditation, since it has often been exceedingly well expounded in detail. 

T. H. K. 

ANSWER. Some of these first steps have already been taken although not 
clearly recognized, perhaps, at their true value : there is one's consciousness of 
the now visible world, which has been achieved in the past ; this, surely, is the 
first step, is it not? Then there is knowledge that the invisible world exists; not 
proof to silence the noisy mind, but direct knowledge of that world which we 
consciously enter through meditation or in prayer ; this knowledge is the second step. 
The third step is a very long one, even though it is necessarily and logically 

93 



294 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

derived from the second step ; the invisible world is not somewhere else, con- 
sciousness of it is not gained through some queer, fourth dimensional telescope; 
the invisible world is here and now, and we are living in it at every moment. 

By the grace of our Masters, it is not necessary to make the entire conquest 
of each one of these steps before passing to the next ; indeed, there can be true 
vision of the outer world only after consciousness of the inner world is attained, 
for the outer is but the vague and distorted shadow of the inner reality. If this 
be true, if the material world is but a maya, an illusion, what must be said of 
the psychic world which is, to most of us fortunately, a part of the invisible world? 
Light on the Path describes this psychic or lower astral world as a plane of 
unequalized forces where confusion necessarily prevails : A disciple, truly, would 
not expect to gain vision of eternal things by contemplating this psychic scrap- 
heap where the counterfeits and shams of the universe are piled in chaotic 
profusion. 

It is a very definite part of the invisible world of which we wish to develop 
clear, personal consciousness ; the spiritual world, the world of the Masters, these 
are but clumsy terms for designating a very definite and purposeful way of life, 
but, at least, they convey the impression of a world where wisdom and order 
prevail. The fourth step is the ordering of our lives so that they may be in 
rhythm with the life of those Beings in the spiritual world who are eager to aid 
us with their heritage of wisdom and of transcendent joy. 

Does this seem somewhat vague and indeterminate, then ask some older 
student at what point you should begin, or write to the Secretary T. S., or to 
any of the contributors to the QUARTERLY with whose methods of expression you 
feel sympathy and understanding, addressing the contributor in care of the Editor. 

Why should there not be something of personal guidance when an earnest 
student desires personal consciousness of the invisible world? Is it not conceivable 
that this is the goal of all previous lives and experiences? 

We have been told that the Masters understand our problems and difficulties 
because they have passed through every one of them. If this be true, it seems a 
fair deduction to assume that there is an unbroken line of earnest students and 
disciples reaching from the newest member of the T. S. all the way up through 
the different grades of self-conquest and of knowledge to our Masters themselves. 

There is, then, a point in the personal consciousness where contact may be 
made with the world where the Masters unceasingly work for humanity. This 
point is probably overlaid with much rubbish of careless thinking and self-centred 
action, but the point is there, and that the Masters are occasionally able to make 
connection with our minds through this point, in spite of the rubbish, is perhaps 
proven by the question itself. P. 

QUESTION No. 218. How can one cultivate the right kind of intensity of feel- 
ing and how learn to distinguish between the important and the unimportant things 
of the average life so as to avoid expending feeling on trifles? 

ANSWER. Cultivate the practice of referring all things to the Master as a 
centre. In His eternal light, many of the fretting details of every day will fall 
away into their due perspective of insignificance. Study His standard of value 
insensibly it may become your own. J. H. 

ANSWER. Would not a good test of the "right" kind of feeling be to ask 
oneself what the Master's feeling would probably be and to follow this same idea 
on and ask oneself whether this or that particular thing would be considered 
important or unimportant by the Master? If this were faithfully carried out I 
should think it would be one of the first steps towards learning to ask the Master 
directly and gaining the power to hear his answer. T. M. 



295 

ANSWER. Feeling is a reward, not an end. When it is not spurious it springs 
from love and love comes from obedience obedience to the highest that we can 
see. If we loved the Masters as we want to love them, we should obey their least 
wish with eager gladness. Our duties are the Master's will for us, that is what 
makes them duties. The testimony of all who have really tried it, is that the way 
to gain love is to act as if we loved as we want to love. Then, in time, the love is 
given. 

True feeling is a precious gift and one not to be wasted. To learn to dis- 
tinguish the important from the unimportant requires a sense of proportion and 
perspective, and this in turn requires a fixed point to which to refer all things. 
What is the purpose of your life and what your true desire? When that question 
is answered truly, if all things be referred to that fixed point, the important and the 
unimportant will assume their proper proportions. J. M. 

ANSWER. Let us suppose the questioner is a Republican, or a Democrat, 
and very loyal to his or her cause could he or she not feel intensely, yet maintain 
a true balance between the important and unimportant things? Let a loyal 
political partisan become a candidate for office would not his political intensity 
govern his least acts, without necessarily interfering with them? Is the Cause of 
Christ less important? G. WOODBRIDGE. 



QUESTION No. 219. What is the rationale of intercessory prayer? I have 
thought that the answer to prayer must depend for its operation on the suppliant's 
own will? How can the will or petition of one man affect the will of another? 

ANSWER. Here is a crude illustration that may be suggestive. A man, knowing 
that his friend is in a financial strait, may deposit a sum of money, with his 
friend's creditors. The strain is thereby relieved ; but the friend may not be aware 
of the generous act, merely enjoying the freedom from the creditor's pursuit. 

I believe that intercessory prayer is similarly effective, and that individual as 
well as national catastrophies are averted or lessened by such prayer. Monasteries 
and convents exist in order to maintain perpetual prayer of intercession. 

S. M. 

ANSWER. The rationale of intercessory prayer would seem to be that of all 
vicarious atonement. There are a number of answers bearing on this point in the 
January, 1917, QUARTERLY, Question No. 210, in particular, one of great value, by 
Cave. 

No man lives to himself alone and it is a matter of every day experience that 
what one man is and does affects those with whom he comes in contact, making it 
easier or harder for them to do right. In other words, the action of his will affects 
the action of their wills. Prayer is an act of will and is a great power. We know 
that the Masters are always eager to help a man when they can do so without 
reactions that do him whom they would help more harm than good. May it not be 
that prayer makes force available on this plane which they can use without such 
harmful reactions? 

Mr. Judge, in Volume III of the Path has an interesting article on the Astral 
Light as a great mirror from which the thoughts of men are thrown back to earth, 
thereby influencing all men to a greater or less extent. This, if we add the intelli- 
gent guidance of the Masters, may contain a hint as to the mechanics of inter- 
cessory prayer. J. M. 



ANSWER. Having read this question, the thought occurs to me of an answer 



296 THEOSOPKICAL QUARTERLY 

of a nine-year-old to his father, when asked why he expected the father to do 
something for him that the youngster wanted very much. "Because you're my 
Father." That small boy, it seems to me, may have had a clearer understanding 
of intercessory prayer than most of us grown-ups. He did not depend upon any 
rational processes. He accepted a situation and sought to benefit therefrom. How 
many of us accept as a fact-situation that the Master loves us far more than the 
best of human fathers may love? Even grown-ups ask for what they really want. 
The inquirer may find his or her will affected by the answers to this question 
if effort be made to utilize them. Would this not be a case within the confines of 
the final clause of the question? How much trust and confidence and childlike 
faith does the inquirer put into the question of prayer? And in praying is St. 
Chrysostom's wise qualification "as may be most expedient for them" kept in 
mind and heart? G. McK. 

ANSWER. What do you believe? When you were a child did you never appeal 
to your father for aid? If you wanted something that was good for you did he 
not give it to you if he could, but, if you had starved your pet hawks to death, 
could he bring them back to life? Had he been able to use the Law, to do so, 
would it have been wise would it not have made you even more careless? If you 
merely had thought or whispered a request, could he have heard you? If you 
had not put intensity of desire behind a request, would he have given it active 
attention? Did you never ask another to intercede for you in home or school or 
business? Like all analogies these are crude, but they may prove suggestive. We 
should remember too that by our sins and neglect we have builded walls between 
us and our Heavenly Helpers. Will and sacrifice are pick and shovel. Try using 
them. G. WOODBRICGE. 



CORRESPONDENCE 

New York, December 17, 1917. 
Editor THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY: 

"Parenthood and Discipleship," by Mercy Farmer, an article which appeared in 
your last issue, contains a statement which, in my opinion, is not in accordance 
with the facts. It is alleged: "Nothing could have pleased the Devil more than 
to see those splendid, undisciplined, unorganized young Englishmen whose lives 
were so unhesitatingly thrown away in the second stage of the war those days 
oi the first of Kitchener's Army, when the British regulars were wiped out, holding 
the lines imperilled by their gallant, undisciplined comrades" (p. 162). 

Granting that the Devil would have been pleased if the writer's premises 
were correct, the best proof that they are not correct lies in the fact that Kitchener 
himself allowed those men to fight; and he would not have allowed it if they 
had been undisciplined and unorganized : he would not have thrown away their 
lives. They had received longer training and discipline than the majority of men 
in the British army who now, for the first time, go to the front. 

The writer's misstatement is an echo (of course unintentional) of the present 
tendency in the press to disparage Kitchener. The time will come when Great 
Britain, and even France, will recognize that they owe their continued existence 
to him, and that, though quite incidentally, the capture of Jerusalem and the 
success in Mesopotamia are due primarily to his insight, which, in its turn, was 
the fruit of his self-sacrificing devotion and theosophic breadth of vision. 

AN OLD MEMBER, T. S. 




APRIL, 1918 

The Theosophical Society, as such, is not responsible for any opinion 
or declaration in this magazine, by whomsoever expressed, unless con- 
tained in an official document. 

THE LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF THEOSOPHY 

"The Knowers of the Eternal tell of the Light and the 
Shadow ..." : Katha Upanishad. 

MAKING a comparison between Eastern and Western Psychology, 
last summer, the writer retold an ancient tale from the Chhan- 
dogya Upanishad which records that "the Devas and the 
Asuras, the angels and the demons both of them sprung 
from the Lord of Beings, strove together." That self-same struggle has, 
we believe, continued ever since. 

A great many times, in the long cycle of Theosophical writings, it has 
been pretty plainly said that, at the recurring periods when Cyclic Law 
makes it possible for the Masters of Wisdom to open the door of the 
heavens to mankind, they invariably have to weigh and consider a certain 
contingency: the fact that, as soon as the Lords of Light have sent forth 
a mighty current of spiritual power into the world, the Brothers of the 
Shadow are thereby enabled to release a commensurate power of the 
forces of evil ; so that every great spiritual movement invariably has its 
shadow ; every revelation has its counterfeit. It is as though the devils, 
having failed to stop the spiritual outpouring, were yet allowed to handi- 
cap and check it, by instantly producing a travesty of it, like enough to 
deceive all but the wise, and so charged with elements of disintegration 
that, in its dissolution, it would almost certainly besmirch and discredit 
the work of the Lodge of Masters. 

The Western Avatar gave his disciples the fullest warning of the 
imminence of this danger, this dark shadow menacing his own work, 
saying to them: "Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall 
come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many . . . 
For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great 
signs and wonders ; inasmuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive 
the very elect. Behold, I have told you before ..." 



20 



97 



298 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

It would be of immense interest and value to trace the invariable 
working of this law, in the case of each of the great spiritual movements 
which, having their origin in the Lodge, have resulted in the foundation 
of the historic religions; to see, let us say, how the teaching of the 
Buddha, that the lower self is an unreal wraith, was followed by a 
"shadow" teaching, that the Self is unreal, a teaching leading to the 
mechanical and materialistic cast of the whole of Southern Buddhism ; to 
see how the luminous teaching of the great Shankaracharya, concerning 
discernment between Self and not-Self, was gradually distorted into a 
system in which the discernment between Brahmans and non-Brahmans 
led to the strongest and most arrogant priestcraft in the world. 

To follow this up, would be of high interest and value; but, for the 
present, we shall limit ourselves to examining certain manifestations of 
the same law in the history of The Theosophical Society during the last 
forty years. When we have once gained a clear view of its operation, 
we shall find that many things, which may have seemed enigmatic and, 
perhaps, disturbing, will become very much more intelligible, and may 
even appear to have been inevitable. Demon est Deus inversus. 

Many of us hold that Mme. H. P. Blavatsky was the fully qualified 
and accredited Messenger of the Lodge of Masters, entrusted, in the 
years following 1875, with the high and splendid task of setting forth to 
the world a certain portion of the Secret Teachings. Many of us believe 
that she accomplished this great task with superb courage, selflessness 
and devotion ; and, further, with a scrupulous avoidance of any claim of 
"personal" authority, either for herself or for her writings. No great 
writer was ever more genuinely humble. 

But just because, as we believe, so powerful a stream of the force of 
the White Lodge did, in fact, pour forth into the world through her work 
and writings, it became practicable for the Lodge of the Shadow the 
Asuras of our Upanishad fable to let loose an equal force, not this 
time of Light, but of delusion and Maya ; to set up travesties of the 
Messenger, who, at first announcing themselves as mouthpieces, soon 
arrogated to themselves the authority of spiritual despots, at whose nod 
all Theosophists must tremble, as before the thunderbolts of Jove. 

One well-known instance of this is Mrs. Annie Besant, who is the 
president of a society which calls itself theosophical, but which is com- 
monly referred to as the Adyar Society because its headquarters is at 
Adyar, India. 

This Adyar Society, which is a travesty or psychic counterfeit of The 
Theosophical Society of which THE THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY is the 
organ, is constantly producing little psychic counterfeits of some phase 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 299 

of the real movement. Thus, in a pamphlet entitled "Theosophy and 
Pseudo-Theosophy," written by a member of the Adyar Society, we 
learn of a travesty so obviously a travesty that even the blind, who as a 
rule follow the blind unquestioningly, are forced to cry out that this must 
be of Satan, not of God. 

The writer of the pamphlet says: "You have seen in the August 
Messenger the announcement of the establishment of the Order of the 
Brotherhood of Service, of which Mrs. Besant is the 'Brother Server.' 
The idea is an excellent one, but one reads that members must pledge 
themselves to carry out the commands of the Brother Server without 
equivocation, and turn over all their property to the Order, to be disposed 
of as the Brother Server may direct. To take such a pledge means simply 
to recognize the Brother Server as an infallible autocrat, in other words, 
a pope . . . . " 

The writer closes his pamphlet with this paragraph : "It is high time 
that Theosophists, even at the cost of sacrifice of devotion to their leaders, 
should wake to the fact that the devil, when he cannot make use of the 
snares of the world and the flesh, cannot tempt with personal ambition, 
still has many a tool for turning the disciple from the Path, and I am 
convinced, this whole movement, backed though it is by Adyar, is one 
of them. It is one of the most subtle devices of 'Satan the Counsellor.' " 

We do not think that disciples are likely to be turned from the Path 
by any such crude device as that ! But we do know that the Powers of 
Delusion and Confusion strive by all means to blur and mislead the 
thought of the world, and that the existence of this so-called Order of 
the Brotherhood of Service will make it more difficult for genuine seekers 
after truth to find and identify the spiritual realities which such psychic 
counterfeits travesty. 

Another distressing perversion of great names and great truths is to 
be found in the Adyar Society's exploitation of Christianity. By some 
means or other they have formed branches of the "Old Catholic Church," 
an entirely respectable organization, the headquarters of which is in Hol- 
land. These branches, once established, seem in no way to be under the 
control of the Dutch hierarchy. In any case, Adyar has provided itself 
with Bishops, Priests and Deacons. We read of "Bishop" C. W. Lead- 
beater and of "Bishop" Wedgwood, of the Adyar Old Catholic Church, 
both of whom seem to officiate in America as well as in England. In all 
our experience we have rarely if ever heard of such vulgar and degrading 
travesties of religion as these representatives of Adyar are producing. 

The writer of the pamphlet already quoted (and for his own sake, 
as for the sake of the protest he is making, we must regret his style), 



300 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

begins his exposition of what he imagines to be new tendencies in the 
Adyar Society, by criticizing one of "Bishop" Wedgwood's lectures. He 
writes : "I myself heard him describe the process of spiritual rain-making, 
by which a properly 'ordained' priest, who has been spiritually vaccinated 
by some other priest he assured us that this was necessary, but that the 
private character of the man was a minor consideration can, by clothing 
himself in certain vestments adorned with brass fringes and ornaments 
for 'conducting the current' and by repeating certain prescribed formulas, 
produce a rain of spiritual power which would 'affect people for miles 
around,' including those engaged in secular pursuits at the time. I have 
always heard that God sends his rain on the just and the unjust, but this 
is the first time I have heard it seriously claimed by one pretending to 
be a Theosophist that he does so at the instigation of a man in 
livery ..." 

We take the same exception to the tone of the following passage, 
though, as the writer is a member of the Adyar Society, it is inevitable, 
perhaps, that his style should be as it is. "It need hardly be pointed out," 
he writes, "that this method of having an 'ordained' person dress up in 
colors and repeat rituals in order to get the Divine Cow to let down its 
milk for your benefit, while you go about your ordinary vocations and 
amusements, is glaringly in conflict with the law of Karma, which teaches 
that 'Every man is his own absolute lawgiver, the dispenser of glory and 
gloom to himself, the decreer of his life, his reward, his punishment.' I 
take it that while the term Theosophist is a pretty broad one, one can 
hardly be a Theosophist who either denies Karma or teaches some 
mechanical way of getting around it. That is what this whole ritualistic 
tomfoolery is for ; to provide a cheap and easy way of dodging the results 
of one's own actions, of indulging in spiritual sensualism by bathing in 
a shower of spiritual power produced by magical processes, the only 
evidence for the existence of which is the ipse di.rit of certain clairvoyants. 
I say tomfoolery, for here is the process actually described by the Bishop. 
The influence of the ritual pronounced by the ordained priest is gathered 
by an attendant of the astral or some other plane and carried up to the 
reservoir of 'power.' The power is then sent down through the priest, 
flowing along the brass fringe on his left sleeve and pours out of the 
brass ornament on the back of his gown ! The Divine Love is clearly a 
sort of electricity which flows along wires. This, according to these neo- 
Voodooists, is Theosophy ; this is the divinely appointed way by which 
the Lord blesses those who happen to be somewhere 'miles around,' 
instead of the old way of entering into one's closet and seeking Him." 

"All of this," the Adyar protestant goes on to say, "comes from the 
influence of C. W. Leadbeater and other clairvoyants who have succeeded 
in deluding themselves and in persuading others to accept as gospel truth 
whatever they put forward. It comes from the tendency to take up 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 301 

psychism and to preach it on every possible occasion, and to neglect the 
teachings and warning of the Founder of the Society and of books like 
Light on the Path, and, I may add, of the New Testament likewise 
. . . I have quite a little to do with the circulation of Theosophical 
literature and I know just what sort of stuff Theosophists read and are 
advising others to read. . . . You simply can't get them to read any- 
thing worth while. [And again the QUARTERLY must protest against such 
misuse of the words Theosophy and Theosophists]. They are after three 
things: knowledge (supposed) of the invisible world; learning how to 
become Invisible Helpers, which means doing while you are asleep what 
you are too lazy or selfish to do while you are awake ; and finding some 
new and easy way of feeling good and happy. According to recent 
announcements, Bishop Leadbeater for he is now a Bishop of the Old 
Catholic Church as well as a leader of the (Adyar) T. S. is prepared to 
furnish the various centers of the Star in the East with a very effective 
ritual. ..." 

But, lest we be accused of forming our view of this new movement 
in the Adyar Society from a criticism of it which is evidently not too 
friendly, we shall quote one or two passages from a pamphlet on "The 
Occult Investigation of the Mass and Anglican Orders, by the Rt. Rev. 
C. W. Leadbeater," which has recently been distributed among the clergy 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 

"We who are students," says "Bishop" Leadbeater, "have often heard 
of the great reservoir of force which is constantly being filled by the 
Spiritual Hierarchy in order that its contents may be utilized by members 
of the Adept Hierarchy and Their pupils for the helping of the evolution 
of mankind. The arrangement made by the Christ with regard to His 
religion was that a kind of special compartment of that reservoir should 
be reserved for its use, and that a certain set of officials should be 
empowered by the use of certain special ceremonies, certain words and 
signs of power, to draw upon it for the spiritual benefit of their people. 
The scheme adopted for passing on the power is called ordination. . . ." 

One passage more : "Bishop" Leadbeater tells us that his attention was 
first called to the magical distribution of divine power "by the celebration 
of the Mass in a Roman Catholic Church in a little village in Sicily. Those 
who know that most beautiful of islands will understand that one does 
not meet with the Roman Catholic Church there in its most intellectual 
form, and neither the priest nor the people could be described as especially 
highly developed ; yet the quite ordinary celebration of the Mass was a 
magnificent display of the application of occult force. At the moment of 
the consecration the Host glowed with the most dazzling brightness; it 
became in fact a veritable sun to the eye of the clairvoyant, and as the priest 
lifted it above the heads of the people I noticed two distinct varieties of 



302 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

spiritual force poured forth from it, which might perhaps be taken as 
roughly corresponding to the light of the sun and the streamers of his 
corona. ..." "Bishop" Leadbeater goes on to describe the effect of 
these forces on "the three higher subdivisions of the mental world, the 
first, second and third subdivisions of the astral," and even the causal 
bodies, of the Sicilians. . . . 

Now having our material before us, let us draw from it a certain 
number of conclusions. In the first place, we cannot fail to be struck with 
the fact that, while pretending to describe a spiritual process, this "vision" 
is, in reality, extravagantly materialistic ; what is seen, is seen through a 
dense, distorting psychic veil; or, more accurately, what is seen, is not 
a spiritual reality, but a grotesque fancy, a nightmare dreamed upside 
down and backwards, amid the waves of the psychic sea. There is not 
in it a grain of real spirituality ; there is nothing in it that could conceiv- 
ably arouse a true spiritual impulse or inspiration. 

One result of such a travesty must necessarily be to bring discredit 
on the name "theosophical," and, in that way, to render measurably more 
difficult the work of The Theosophical Society and the genuine attempts 
being made to show, in the Light of Theosophy, the deeper side of 
Christian teaching. And this, in our view, is exactly the purpose of the 
Powers of the Shadow, of the Brood of Confusion. Perpetually they 
foster and strengthen these psychic counterfeits of the teachings given 
forth by the Masters of Light. 

Particularly in recent years, invaluable light has been thrown upon 
the doctrine and purposes of the Western Avatar. Those whose memory 
of THE THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY goes back far enough, will remember 
that, perhaps a decade ago, a concerted effort was made to realize one 
of the ideals implicit in the Theosophical platform. We have, from the 
beginning of The Theosophical Society in 1875, advocated and practised 
the comparative study of all religions. In the old days, the formula was : 
"Aryan and other Eastern religions" ; the purpose of this phrasing being, 
to turn the main attention of Theosophical students away from Chris- 
tianity to the great religions of Egypt, India, China, Persia. And for this 
reason : only by thus renovating their religious sense, so to speak, could 
these Theosophical students possibly bring clear and fresh minds to the 
study of Christianity. 

In the year 1895, our Second Object was re-worded, thus : "the study 
of ancient and modern religions" ; the significance of the change probably 
being that, after The Theosophical Society had completed the first twenty 
years of its eventful life, the process of renovating the religious sense 
of Theosophical students had been so far completed, that a fuller attention 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 303 

might now be paid to the study of Christianity, not only with a fair hope 
of avoiding the pitfalls dug by old mental habits and prejudices, but with 
a still larger hope of reaching very definite and affirmative results. 

Some ten or a dozen years ago, the tendency thus indicated began to 
bear fruit ; and those who have followed THE THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 
through this somewhat protracted period will remember that much has 
been said of the Western Avatar; of the place which his work holds, in 
the larger work of the Lodge; of the relation of the Christian Orders 
and Rules to the training of Chelas; and much more, supported at 
every point by explicit quotations from The Secret Doctrine. For in the 
pages of that wonderful book, Mme. H. P. Blavatsky had presciently 
furnished all the material for the esoteric study of Christianity, which 
was in fact destined to take form only eighteen or twenty years later, 
long after Mme. Blavatsky's death. 

One may illustrate this prescient provision of material by quoting 
a few sentences from The Secret Doctrine (edition of 1888, Vol. I, page 
574) : "This was known to every high Initiate in every age and in every 
country; 'I and my Father are one/ said Jesus (John x. 30). When He 
is made to say, elsewhere (xx. 17) : 'I ascend to my Father and your 
Father,' it meant that which has just been stated. It was simply to 
show that the group of His disciples and followers attracted to Him 
belonged to the same Dhyani Buddha, 'Star,' or 'Father,' again of the 
same planetary realm, as He did." 

More than may at first sight appear, concerning the Western Avatar 
and his work, is implied in this brief passage ; but a wise pondering over 
it, and a careful study of many kindred passages in The Secret Doctrine, 
will reveal much to the thoughtful student, concerning the place of the 
Western Avatar in the Lodge and, incidentally, concerning Mme. H. P. 
Blavatsky's clear understanding and revelation of that place and work, 
a work which, as in the case of every Member of the Lodge of Masters, 
is of necessity continuous is, in fact, going on now. 

So it comes that, during the last ten or twelve years, as an essential 
part of the work for which The Theosophical Society was founded, much 
has been brought to light, much has been accomplished. Inevitably, there- 
fore, the dark shadow appears, the travesty, the counterfeit, the Maya 
unfolded and developed by the Powers that make for confusion, perver- 
sions of Theosophy, perversions of Christianity, and perversions of the 
real developments taking place within the Church Universal, in which 
certain members of The Theosophical Society are playing a vital part; 
developments to which attention has been called in THE THEOSOPHICAL 
QUARTERLY at least in such a manner that those who have the knowledge 
or intuition could divine the nature of the information being conveyed. 



LODGE DIALOGUES 



D. R. T.: Now you may ask your question, Little One. 

L. O. : I have two questions. 

D. R. T. : Ask me the first one. 

L. O. : I want to know how, in the outer world, where the clouds of 
illusion are forever circling and whirling, one may preserve truthfulness. 

D. R. T. : There is a greater difficulty than the clouds of illusion. In 
the outer world the minds of men are not one-pointed ; one door opens to 
the east and one to the west, and so soon as one of them is opened the 
other swings shut, so that but half a truth is visible at any time to their 
comprehension. 

L. O. : (eagerly) : Then I would place a large wedge in one door so 
that it could not shut, before the other opened ! 

D. R. T. (laughing) : Then the draft would blow out the little candle 
within. 

L. O. (after a pause) : Tell me then how to preserve truthfulness. 

D. R. T. : There is but one way in which you can preserve it, and 
that is from within without never from without within. That is why 
those who have no fixed centre of their own never can be truthful, no 
matter how hard they try. Therefore the secret of truthfulness is 
loyalty, loyalty to your own highest faith and principles, loyalty to your 
chosen cause, loyalty to those who are part of that cause. If you see 
yourself, your words, your actions, only as they are reflected back to you 
from the surrounding mirrors of other minds, you will find confusion, 
multiplied reflections, reversals, fanciful vistas and superimposed images. 
Your own knowledge of truth will be lost in bewilderment, and beginning 
with self-deception you will inevitably deceive others. Closing your outer 
eyes and opening wide your inner, you will discover the facts of your own 
nature and heart, relative always until you have attained but real and 
honest of themselves. Loyal to these and to all connected with them, 
loyal if need be to the death, refusing compromise or quarter to all that 
contradicts and injures them, you will preserve truthfulness. 

L. O. : Then of all virtues loyalty is the highest. 

D. R. T. : The French have an old proverb : Loyaute passe tout. 

L. O. : I have heard that Metchu Chan said that humility was the 
greatest of the virtues. 

D. R. T. : No, Metchu Chan repeated the occult teaching that 

304 



LODGE DIALOGUES 305 

humility is the foundation of all the virtues ; the virtue without which all 
the other virtues are spurious. Think it out for yourself, Little One, you 
will see. 

L. O. : I can see that without much thinking: where self-love and 
self-seeking enter in, the virtue disappears. 

D. R. T. : What is your second question ? 

L. O. : You are answering that without my asking. What you said 
of loyalty answered it. I did not know that my two questions were one 
at the root. When we had finished with what I had thought to be my 
practical question, and I asked that first because I know you like them 
best then I intended asking the question of my own preference : Which 
is the greatest of the virtues, as the man once asked which was the greatest 
of the Commandments. 

D. R. T. : And the answer, little brother ? 

L. O. : The answer was love, love of the Father, then love of what 
the Father loved (meditatively, while the other watched him) and that 
seems so close to what great Paul said in his letters here (indicating his 
book) "The greatest of these is charity." 

D. R. T. : Go on, you are working it out. But you see this : Love 
without loyalty is not love, loyalty is of its essence. Also you see this : 
Charity without loyalty easily degenerates. It has no centre or circum- 
ference, and overflows into sentimentality. Loyalty regulates these floods 
since it reflects the central sun ; is the manifest that shines with the light 
of the unmanifest. Loyalty springs from the radiant heart of Buddhi, 
and is the enclosing sphere of all the virtues. 

As D. R. T. ceased, the sun sank suddenly, and the air grew chill. 
They turned from the wide expanse of the desert. In the deep silence 
that fell, one became aware of the distant booming of cannon. The Little 
One turned. 

Good-bye, Great Brother, he said; some day, when I have learned 
your lessons, I shall help over there in the West. M. 



THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS 



VIII 

DOMINICANS (continued) 
St. Catherine of Siena, Part I 

RECORDS of the Saints have this in common with the Stanzas 
of Dzyan they are sealed to the multitude. They occupy no 
inch of the world's precious four-foot bookshelves. Antiquarian 
minds that stray upon such records toss them away as mediaeval 
and morbid. They are outside even of the large and charitable circle 
of the cultivated man with his motto : "nihil humani," etc. The Rousseaus 
and Tom Paines and Piers Plowmans of history and of belles lettres have 
their own places, together with Napoleon and Dante, in the world's esteem. 
But in any usual History of Civilization, the great Saints, Loyola, Teresa, 
Gertrude, might receive not so much as a foot note of consideration. 
They are thought to be outside of life mere stereotyped stone figures 
for the ornamentation of church altars and portals. 

In a very limited sense, this judgment of the world's is correct. The 
records of the Saints are a portion of the "hidden wisdom"; they are 
esoteric. A special training, the equivalent, perhaps, of technical prepara- 
tion, is necessary in order to read them profitably. As one begins to 
understand them, he understands also the reason of the world's disesteem. 
The writings of the Saints are not a portion of this world's goods because 
they are a bridge leading out of this world to larger and finer realms 
of life. 

There are, however, exceptions in this esoteric communion of Saints. 
Two, notably, have been secularized St. Francis of Assisi and St. Cath- 
erine of Siena. 

These two names are widely known through that secularizing proc- 
ess. But the two Saints themselves are really still as unknown and as 
esoteric as any others of their community. For, just as a spiritual fact 
cannot be truthfully expressed in mental terms the portrayal, clear and 
attractive as it may be, being mental while the fact itself is spiritual so a 
Saint and secularization are incompatible. The secularized product may 
be a gracious figure, but it cannot be a faithful likeness of the Saint. It is 
easy to see how ludicrous the failure is in the case of Jeanne d'Arc, for 
example. We may be unfamiliar with history but we have an instinct 
that the masquerading suffragette is a wretched caricature of that divine 
Messenger. The present popular and widespread notions of St. Francis 
and St. Catherine are equally erroneous. Those Catholic and cloistered 
souls are accredited as "social workers." They are venerated as antici- 



THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS, VIII 307 

patory points of light in mediaeval darkness, premonitions of the floodtide 
of science and sympathy that in our day has poured into city slums. The 
rescue of these two ardent Catholics from "the holy horde of saints," 
as Swinburne puts it, in order to present them as contemporary humani- 
tarians is a falsification. It denatures them. 

Until we study her life and her writings, St. Catherine seems out of 
place in the Dominican Order the Order which has as its motto: 
"Truth"; and imposes upon its members the obligation of study and of 
learning. 

"Truth" is the motto of many celebrated universities to-day. It is 
engraved on their seals and charters. It means, for the faculties and 
students of those universities, the sum total of things that the eye can 
measure and the mind compute. Generation after generation of profes- 
sors and students grind away in libraries and laboratories upon the 
confused mass of things knowable; their lifelong efforts only entomb 
them deeper in the prison of materialism, and do not effect the liberation 
which the university motto promises : "Veritas vos liberabit."* It may be 
that modern Dominicans have not entirely escaped the materialistic infec- 
tions of the age. Their long study of Aquinas's philosophy and theology 
may savour of intellectual rather than spiritual effort. The result may be 
somewhat barren. It is this prevalent academic conception of truth, out- 
side and inside the religious Orders, a narrow and distorted conception 
that at first clouds our perception of St. Catherine's fitness in the Domin- 
ican Order. In fact, she is, like her own later American disciple, St. Rose 
of Lima, the inevitable blossom upon that parent stem. Her low class 
origin and her illiteracy may seem to separate her widely from the high- 
born and learned St. Thomas and St. Dominic. Despite those external 
differences, she is their true daughter and sister. 

In the article on St. Dominicf mention was made of his and St. 
Thomas's method of study. They studied, literally, at the foot of the 
Crucifix, in conference, in union with their Living Lord. He was the 
"Truth" they were striving to discover the goal of all their endeavour, 
the motto of the Order. St. Catherine calls Him "the Sweet Primal 
Truth." Secular learning is valued by the Dominicans because, when 
unpolluted by materialism, it is like rays of light that emanate from Him. 
Followed back, these rays lead to His centre ; or, finding Him as centre, 
His disciple can then proceed along any of these rays free from the 
erroneous conclusions that invalidate so much of the work of materialistic 
scholars. 

The latter method was St. Catherine's. She reached union with the 
Master through the Cell of Knowledge. 

St. Catherine's Cell of Knowledge is an apartment of two rooms ; 
but no wall separates those rooms. One is the cell of self-knowledge; 
the other, the cell of the knowledge of the goodness of God. For sound 

' "Truth will make you free." This is the motto of Johns Hopkins University, 
t Number VII in this series. 



308 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

health, the soul must dwell in both rooms at the same time.* This double 
cell of Knowledge is a fundamental principle with St. Catherine. She 
repeats it to her disciples, and to people of the world with whom she 
came into contact. In a letter to a niece, she explains her teaching, with- 
out metaphor. "We cannot attain this virtue of humility except by true 
knowledge of ourselves, knowing our misery and frailty, and that we by 
ourselves can do no good deed, nor escape any conflict or pain ; for if 
we have a bodily infirmity, or a pain or conflict in our minds, we cannot 
escape it or remove it for if we could we should escape from it swiftly. 
So it is quite true that we in ourselves are nothing other than infamy, 
misery, stench, frailty, and sins ; wherefore, we ought always to abide 
low and humble. But to abide wholly in such knowledge of one's self 
would not be good, because the soul would fall into weariness and confu- 
sion; and from confusion it would fall into despair: so the devil would 
like nothing better than to make us fall into confusion, to drive us after- 
ward to despair. We ought, then, to abide in the knowledge of the good- 
ness of God in Himself, perceiving that He has created us in His image 
and likeness, and re-created us in grace by the Blood of His only-begotten 
Son, the sweet incarnate Lord ; and reflecting how continually the goodness 
of God works in us. But see, that to abide entirely in this knowledge of 
God would not be good, because the soul would fall into presumption and 
pride. So it befits us to have one mixed with the other that is, to abide 
in the holy knowledge of the goodness of God, and also in the knowledge 
of ourselves : and so we shall be humble, patient, and gentle." 

Her spiritual interpretation of the word cell does not indicate indiffer- 
ence to or condemnation of the advantages derived from a cloistered life 
within convent walls. Her choice of the third degree of St. Dominic's 
Order might lend countenance to an assertion that she disfavoured mon- 
astic seclusion. The Dominican Third Order Tertiaries, the members 
of it are called exists for men and women who wish to lead a religious 
life without abandoning their social or family or business duties. In the 
case of St. Catherine, whose life seems in large part directed from a 
higher plane, one cannot always offer reasonable explanations the influ- 
ence that determined her acts was sometimes from above, and sometimes 
it was a perfectly natural and legitimate influence of this world. Her 
family so vigorously objected to her becoming a Tertiary, and her mother 
made such constant complaint about her daughter's duty as Tertiary, that 
one can believe they would have prohibited absolutely her entrance among 
cloistered Dominican nuns. On the other hand, she appears such a servant 
of the Lodge that, the sacrifice of incarnation once made, it may have 
been expedient for her to live the open life she did. Be that as it may, 
she appreciated fully the advantages of seclusion, and advised many of 



1 "These are two cells in one, and when abiding in the one it behooves thee to abide in the 
other, for otherwise the soul would fall into either confusion or presumption. For didst thou 
rest in knowledge of thyself, confusion of mind would fall on thee; and didst thou abide in the 
knowledge of God alone, thou wouldst fall into presumption. These two, then, must be built 
together and made one same thing." Letter to Monna Aleaa. 



THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS, VIII 309 

those who sought her counsel to test their vocation in one or another of 
the contemplative orders. She instructed her close friend and companion, 
Alessa, in the doctrine of the cell of Knowledge, and she advised her to 
find an actual cell also, "that thou go not running about into many places, 
unless for necessity, or for obedience to the prioress, or for charity's 
sake." St. Catherine herself was in cloistral seclusion from her seven- 
teenth to her twentieth year. The active opposition of her family to her 
wish for a religious life ended when, at sixteen, she was accepted in the 
third Order of St. Dominic, a Tertiary. Thereafter they left her to her 
own way of life. With the consent of her spiritual adviser, a Dominican 
Father, she arranged for her abode a tiny room in the basement of her 
father's home. The window was screened so that nothing of the outer 
world might be seen. There she withdrew even from her family, speaking 
only with her adviser, and occasionally with a few other persons at his 
direction. She left the house only to go to Mass. She slept there on a 
bare wooden board. She gradually reduced her food, until water, salad 
leaves and bread crumbs became her diet though her physical system 
was also able to adapt itself to long fasts, unbroken save for the wafer 
taken in Communion. 

This three-year period of withdrawal from all worldly interests and 
activities culminated in the event which is known, by name, to people of 
cultivation, because it is a favourite subject with artists of all nations, 
Flemish as well as Italian the event known as the Mystic Marriage of 
St. Catherine. 

As the vocabulary of the Saints is still a foreign tongue to many, it 
may be expedient to make an effort to describe, without metaphor, this 
very significant event, which proved a turning-point in her life. We shall 
find assistance for this undertaking in the life of St. Rose of Lima, a 
South American girl, part Indian in blood, who, at the beginning of the 
seventeenth century, moved by religious aspirations, took St. Catherine as 
her model and ideal. . The life of St. Rose is a record of miraculous self- 
sacrifice and achievement that seems impossible and incredible, even 
repellent, to a mind familiar only with mundane life. The official judges 
of St. Rose's life seem to have been men who were versed in the Science 
of the Saints, and competent to observe and rightly to pronounce upon 
phenomena of the spiritual life. In the private annals of the Dominican 
Order, an opinion of St. Rose's contemporaries is preserved it is the 
judgment rendered by the theologians at the University of Lima. They 
agreed, in conference, unanimously, that "Rose, by a most direct method, 
attained to the prayer of union, almost without traversing the way of 
purgation, since the Master had drawn her Heart to His own from her 
infancy." It is not difficult to translate these facts concerning St. Rose 
into the language of theosophical metaphysics. We might say that, 
through a pure Karma, the personal Manas, acquired by her spiritual 
Monad when that Monad was reborn on earth at Lima, was so clean 
and docile that its incorporation with the Higher Manas, and with the 



310 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Higher and Eternal Principles was an easy and speedy process. Through 
the high grades of contemplation Rose came into union with spiritual 
Principles. As those Principles are not diffuse and vague forces, but, as 
forces, emanate from Individual Entities, we may say that Rose ascended 
to conscious and direct knowledge and union with the Master proper to 
her in the Celestial Hierarchy. 

St. Catherine's "Mystic Marriage" is only an effort to describe the 
life of union in words that may be apprehensible and suggestive to men 
and women who have entered upon the beginning of the Path. The three 
years of solitude in that basement room were a retreat for St. Catherine 
from affairs of outer life and a training for her in the ways of the inner 
world. They seem to correspond with the years St. Paul spent in the 
deserts of Arabia, after his call by the Master. For Catherine, it was 
a period of purification ; not purification in an elementary sense, but in 
the thorough way suggested by the precepts in Light on the Path. 
"These vices of the ordinary man pass through a subtle transformation 
and reappear with changed aspect in the heart of the disciple. It is easy 
to say, I will not be ambitious : it is not so easy to say, When the Master 
reads my heart he will find it clean utterly. The pure artist who works 
for the love of his work is sometimes more firmly planted on the right 
road than the occultist, who fancies he has removed his interest from self, 
but who has in reality only enlarged the limits of experience and desire, 
and transferred his interest to the things which concern his larger span 
of life." 

Many of her experiences during those three years are fortunately 
preserved to us in the letters she afterward wrote to other aspirants ; 
when necessary, she corrects or encourages them with facts from her own 
training, though she usually presents these facts as happening to a third 
person. What a lesson in purification of motive is taught by the follow- 
ing letter ! It indicates, without any uncertainty, that St. Catherine had 
progressed to the point of loving Divine things with an unadulterated 
love, free from admixture of self-love or seeking after spiritual things 
because of personal advantage they bring. The letter narrates that, to a 
soul in great distress and temptation, the devil once said : " 'What wilt thou 
do? for all the time of thy life thou shalt abide in these pains, and then 
thou shalt have hell?' She then answered with manly heart and without 
any fear, and with holy hatred of herself, saying: 'I do not avoid pains, 
for I have chosen pains for my refreshment. And if at the end He 
should give me hell, I will not therefore abandon serving my Creator. 
For I am she who am worthy of abiding in hell, because I wronged the 
Sweet Primal Truth ; so, did He give me hell, He would do me no wrong, 
since I am His' (creature). Then our Saviour, in this sweet and true 
humility, scattered the shadows and torments of the devil, as it happens 
when the cloud passes that the sun remains; and suddenly came the 
Presence of Our Saviour. Thence she melted into a river of tears, and 
said in a sweet glow of love : 'O sweet and good Jesus, where wast thou 



THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS, VIII 311 

when my soul was in such affliction?' Sweet Jesus, the Spotless Lamb, 
replied : 'I was beside thee. For I move not, and never leave My creature, 
unless the creature leave Me through mortal sin.' " It is evident to what 
extent St. Catherine had carried the purifying process since she obtained 
the promise given to the pure in heart "the Presence of Our Saviour."* 
The appearance of the Master to her and His converse with her was not 
limited to this one occasion. Her spiritual director drew from her the 
reluctant admission that the Master came frequently: "most times He 
came unattended, and conversed with her as a friend with a most intimate 
friend; in such wise that ofttimes the Lord and she recited the Psalms, 
walking up and down in her room, as two religious or clerics are wont to 
say the office together." 

The famous paintings by Bartolomeo, Memling and by others have 
popularized this experience of Catherine's. But as we are striving for a 
clear understanding of it, let us go back to the account given by her 
spiritual adviser, one Father Raymond. Father Raymond received the 
facts from Catherine herself. One day, during her meditation, the Master 
said to her: "I will this day celebrate solemnly with thee the festival of 
the betrothal of thy soul." Father Raymond then continues : "Whilst the 
Lord was yet speaking, there appeared the most glorious virgin, His 
Mother, the most blessed John the Evangelist, the glorious apostle Paul, 
and the most holy Dominic the father of her Order; and with these the 
prophet David, who had the psaltery set to music in his hands ; and, while 
he played with most sweet melody, the Virgin Mother of God took the 
right hand of Catherine with her most sacred hand, and, holding out her 
fingers towards her Son, besought Him to deign to espouse her to Himself 
in Faith. To which graciously consenting, the Only Begotten of God 
drew out a ring of gold, which had in its circle four pearls enclosing a 
most beauteous diamond; and, placing this ring upon the ring-finger of 
Catherine's right hand, He said: 'Lo, I espouse thee to Myself, thy 
Creator and Saviour, in the Faith, which until thou celebratest thy eternal 
nuptials with Me in Heaven, thou wilt preserve ever without stain. 
Henceforth, My daughter, do manfully and without hesitation those 
things which, by the ordering of My providence, will be put into thy 
hands ; for, being now armed with the Fortitude of the Faith, thou wilt 
happily overcome all thy adversaries.' Then the vision disappeared, but 
the ring ever remained on her finger, not indeed to the sight of others, 
but only to the sight of the virgin herself; for she often, albeit with bash- 
fulness, confessed to me that she always saw that ring on her finger, nor 
was there any time when she did not see it." 

Let us grant that the names Catherine gave to those persons present 
with the Master need not trouble us at all. She gave to the spiritual indi- 
viduals she saw the names that were most familiar to her just as the 
Jewish disciples gave the names of Moses and Elias to the Masters or 
Chelas who visited Christ on the occasion of what is known as the Trans- 

* "Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God," 



312 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

figuration. Is not the account a sober one? It has none of the high 
coloring of romance. Is it not entirely credible, if we believe in a spirit- 
ual world and spiritual citizens of that world? It would mark the attain- 
ment by a mortal of a high consciousness of that other world and of its 
people. It signifies, as in the case of St. Rose, the transfer of conscious- 
ness from lower Manas to the Higher Principles. Those Principles are 
embodied in the Master, as the lower Principles, and those only, are too 
often manifested through humans. St. Catherine is told to act manfully, 
without hesitation, "armed with fortitude." She is to act for the Cause 
which the Master represents. She has become united to Him, her mind, 
heart and will, her entire life being one with His. 

This union was achieved at her twentieth year. Her life preceding 
her seventeenth year was largely a struggle against the misplaced affection 
of her family they opposed her religious vocation. She was the youngest 
child of a prosperous tanner the youngest of his twenty-five children. 
As often happens in families, this youngest child was the darling of her 
parents. Her attractiveness of face and her joyousness of mood seemed 
prearranged to realize their ambitions for her. But to their gifts of orna- 
ments and fine clothing, and their suggestions of a promising marriage, 
Catherine replied with the obligations of a vow she had made in her 
seventh year the vow of a virgin life. This vow was made she was 
ignorant of its meaning as the result of the Master's appearance to her 
one day at the Dominican Church of Siena. That appearance was her 
call to the religious life. Her family tolerated her pieties and austerities 
perhaps as childish exaggeration and folly until these religious habits 
came into conflict with their kindly-meant plans for her marriage. To 
break her habits, and to bend her will, the family refused her any privacy, 
and gave her a servant's tasks to perform in the house ; this was in order 
to deprive her of time and place for prayer. But she was instructed 
interiorly, that, even without a private room, she could pray in the cell 
of her own heart. One of the most sympathetic of St. Catherine's modern 
biographers, Mrs. Aubrey Richardson, suggests that this punishment was 
a "bluff" on the part of the parents that prosperous tanners, with social 
and political aspirations, would not have risked the comeliness of their 
marriageable daughter by imposing a scullion's work upon her. What- 
ever their intention, however, Catherine accepted their commands with 
entire sweetness, and carried the religious atmosphere into her tasks, by 
playing that her mother was the Blessed Virgin and the brothers and 
sisters of the household were the disciples and friends of Our Lord. In 
time, the parents yielded to her quiet perseverance. 

The next opposition Catherine met was that of the Dominican Ter- 
tiaries. The evangelizing zeal of the Dominicans had attracted her to that 
order. But the Tertiaries were women of maturity and were averse to 
putting their habit upon a girl of sixteen. They too finally yielded. Cath- 
erine was ill. Her mother had been negotiating with the Dominicans, 
and probably was not an over-zealous advocate of the daughter's cause. 



THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS, VIII 313 

Catherine alarmed her mother one day, in a state of extreme weakness, 
by declaring that St. Dominic would take her out of the world altogether, 
if the mother did not obtain the desired permission from the Sisters. 
Thus spurred, the mother gained the consent of the authorities, on condi- 
tion that the applicant be not comely. The long illness had done Catherine 
the service of altering her joyous features, and she passed successfully 
the scrutiny of her interrogators. 

Her three-year seclusion immediately followed. She was born in 
1347. In 1367 she began to change her solitary mode of life and to go out 
into the world as a missioner of souls. 

SPENCER MONTAGUE. 

(To be concluded) 



A Source of life and strength! Many of thy mercies do we plainly 
see, and we believe in a boundless store behind. No morning stars that 
sing together can have deeper call than we for grateful joy. Thou hast 
given us a life of high vocation, and thine own breathing in our hearts 
interprets for us its sacred opportunities. Thou hast cheered the way 
with many dear affections and glimpses of solemn beauty and everlasting 
truth. Not a cloud of sorrow, but thou hast touched with glory; not a 
dusty atmosphere of care, but thy light shines through. And, lest our 
spirits should fail before thine unattainable perfections, thou hast set us 
in the train of thy saints who have learned to take up the cross of 
sacrifice. Let the time past suffice to have wrought over our own will, 
and now make us consecrate to thine. James Martineau. 



21 



WHY I JOINED 
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 



THREE times in my life a Hand has fallen on my shoulder and 
irresistibly pushed me where I would not go. The first time I 
was six years old, the second time I was sixteen, and the third 
was when I joined The Theosophical Society. 
These letters should be popular with those writers who enjoy rem- 
iniscence for they offer an orgy of it, and if one is commanded to 
reminisce it is idle to apologize for egotism I want to go back half a 
century and talk about that first spiritual experience, the first time I 
felt the Hand on my shoulder, because, of course, I began to join The 
Theosophical Society then, although I did not know it. On my sixth 
birthday our Rector sent me a volume of Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." 
It was very large and expensive, very purple and gold my first grown-up 
possession. There were many pictures. Inscribed on the fly leaf were 
the words "To my little fellow pilgrim." The book was a door opened 
in my life. I finished learning to read on it. I pored over the strange 
and piquing pictures for hours, till its allegory sank into my soul and 
became part of me. Then the inscription was my warrant I was a 
pilgrim too ! I decided to be perfect there should be no more naughti- 
ness, my burden had fallen from me, and sin was a thing of the past. 

No one could now convince me that it was not a genuine experience 
a call. For weeks and months I really struggled with my lower self, 
really gained some victories. The atmosphere of the nursery was not con- 
genial to this task. A beautiful, amused young mother who disliked "early 
piety" and an elderly nurse who liked it all too well, made up-hill going. 
The latter (who slapped us, poor thing, when we could not remember 
"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild") furnished an impossible standard from 
a dreadful little book, in which a preposterous early Victorian infant, on 
a couch of pain, discoursed to its elders without let up or hindrance, of 
things in general and religion in particular. There was a peculiarly dis- 
gustful woodcut in front, in which was depicted, simultaneously break- 
fasting in bed and admonishing her parents, a little girl who robbed piety 
of all charm. Nevertheless, for a time I really forsook a life of open 
crime, really modified myself, really knew what it was to be happy inside. 
Sometimes the inner happiness swept me along like a great wave. It was 
always easy to be good out of doors. There was a great copper beech 
on a lawn and then an ivied wall crowned with broken glass in the genial 
English way. Sometimes one might have soapsuds and a pipe under the 
beech tree. On still days the bubbles would float and float till they 
passed over the old wall and disappeared over the graves on the other 
side. Then in the beauty some secret was whispered, and help was close, 



314 



WHY I JOINED THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 315 

and life and death, gardens and graves, equally unterrifying. Surely that 
wind of the Spirit that bloweth where it listeth swept me then ! 

It is wonderful to look back into one's own childish soul and realize 
how much children know that they could give no account of. It is 
possible at six years old to be quite (though inarticulately) positive that 
one's elders are making a tragical mess of things, are pawing about among 
delicate spiritual mysteries with rude or silly hands, and that one is a 
pawn in a badly played game. In these days of fastidious infant psychol- 
ogizing it is hard to remember that only fifty years ago most children 
were artlessly divided into the good or the bad according to whether they 
did, or did not, aggravate the adult world. There were generations of 
children at the mercy of kindly and well-meaning people, who yet held 
immutable views of God, of death, of immortality, that would make a 
Hun blench. The end of my poor little saintship came in one great slam- 
bang backslide. I always lied more easily than I spoke the truth, but 
I never confused the weaving lie of fancy with the unclean lie of policy 
although at six, and often afterwards, I availed myself of both. The 
ruler of the nursery paused for no such subtle distinctions a lie was a 
lie and the Lord abominates a liar. "What are Dominates?" "It means 
to hate." "Not love me any more?" "No." I accepted my fate, what 
could I do else ? It was long before I learned once more that the Master 
was other than a nervous, irritable being, whose love waned if you 
banged the door, and waxed if you kept your pinafore clean. So much 
for the first time the Hand touched me. 

The next time I was sixteen and living in a boarding school, a well- 
meaning and, in many ways, an excellent school, with a high moral code 
and record of which it was justly proud. If it had stopped there and 
not tried to mix its moral code up with its misconception of things spirit- 
ual, we might have done very well. I remember best the awful Sundays, 
when, the blessed restraint of classes removed, our headlong, emotional 
principal had her wild way with us. One of her tenets, and a wise one 
within reason, was "store the youthful memory with spiritual words." 
This she did regardless of the youthful spiritual digestion. There were 
prizes offered to the girl who could say the whole Gospel of St. Matthew 
first ; to the girl who could repeat fifty hymns without a break ; to the 
girl who could best write the sermon from memory. Sunday was one long 
weary verbal competition. Even the servants came under the harrow 
"Oh, miss! 'ow we do 'ate them 'ims" was the wail of the kitchen. Our 
walk through the lovely English village to the incomparable Norman 
church was our only interlude of peace. 

England is the queen of my heart. I would have her without spot 
or blemish. When I remember what her Church can be at its best it makes 
me ill to know how far short she can fall. The living in that particular 
village was held by a bird-brained kinsman of the autocratic, choleric, 
godless old lord of the Manor; he was a harmless enough idiot, ruled 
with a rod of iron by his patron; if there were any hungry souls among 



316 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

his people hungry they remained so far as his personal ministrations were 
concerned. Sunday morning service was a joy to us, but a sinful joy. 

When Lord C loudly cleared his throat and said "a-hem" it meant 

that something was wrong with the panic-stricken organist, or the scuf- 
fling school children, or the awed villagers. When he wheeled right about 
face and stared f rowningly at the sheepish young ploughmen in their 
clean smocks, they visibly gave themselves up for lost ; and when he gave 
three imperative raps with his gold-headed cane, we nudged each other to 
watch the clergyman start, redden, and bring his feeble discourse to an 
abrupt close. We naturally regarded the service as a dramatic interlude 
in a dreary day, but being starved of spiritual food in church and stuffed 
like Strasburg geese with it in school is not exactly the road to spiritual 
health. 

Then, in the midst of all this, the Hand touched me again. There 
came a letter from a friend a few years older than myself telling me she 
was about to go as a missionary to Africa. There were a few words of 
grateful consecration, through which her joy shone like a lamp, and a 
prayer that I, too, might find a path for my life. I read the letter twice 
and when I looked up the world was swinging round the other way. The 
moment is indelibly printed. I can see the great bare school room, with 
its crowd of chattering, tiresome girls and distracted under governesses. 
Huge box trees crowded close to the windows. They made a greenish 
light, summer and winter, and we detested them. Suddenly I saw them 
for the first time and loved them "every bush and tree's afire with God !" 
The girls had grown real infinitely real and infinitely lovable. All values 
had shifted like glass in a kaleidoscope. A school-room maid came in 
with a great tray of bread and butter. This was always a signal for an 
outbreak of mordant school-room wit and tonight it was greeted with 
the usual bitterness. I did not join because I was seeing bread and butter 
for the first time. How beautiful it was ! How good God was ! What a 
world to wake in ! I was limp with gratitude. There was no trace of 
priggishness in it yet that woke later but that night I was newborn 
newborn and innocent and I walked with God. Sudden conversion cannot 
be a c sudden as it seems. That letter could only have been the match 
to light a fire my unknown Self had laid in readiness, while my outer self 
led the life of a rebel? I only know it happened and that for months 
utter rapture ruled me. Not only rapture, but a determination to change, 
to work with fear and trembling for salvation. Father Benson in his 
story "An Average Man" tells of a sudden conversion that surely rings 
true. In it the convert is also an utterly commonplace person, but some- 
thing is done to him, an irresistible force takes him in charge, and for 
a while there is no world, no flesh, no devil they are held back that an 
act of recognition may be made. Then they are released again that the 
conflict may begin the conflict that is to decide if the called is also the 
chosen. But the shock of conversion is so dynamic that the most invet- 
erate backslider must move by its propulsion for a time. 



WHY I JOINED THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 317 

For many months I lived this wonderful new life. I formulated, and 
abided by, strict rules. I wore a footpath of prayer through the jungle 
of my nature. I aimed at perfection and struggled for it. The gov- 
ernesses were charmed the most aggravating girl in the school had 
suddenly become manageable. The girls watched, at first with ribaldry, 
then with a sort of awed embarrassment, and finally with a frank division 
into those for me and those against; and a wave of religious emotion 
swept the school up to the Christmas holidays. These, my first real test, 
damaged me considerably. I wore my first trained skirt and was allowed 
to put my hair up and the world was too much with me. With the 
renewed discipline and social isolation of school some of the lost ground 
was regained, but not the first fine rapture and with each return to the 
entrancing outer world I slipped further and further. Backsliding is one 
of the saddest things to remember it is so ungrateful and there is such 
a miserable sameness about it. The worst of all is the lying the pre- 
tending to oneself that it has not happened, that the spirit has not left 
the forms. It was a great relief after a year or two to renounce the 
pretense and come out frankly with my new shibboleth "With the best 
will in the world it is clear that I have no genuine vocation." After all a 
little moderation was best. I would start afresh and eat my cake and 
have it too, just like everyone else! 

What a pity it is there are not enough saints to go round. They are 
such helpful people for beginners to watch. One saint might have saved 
me then. I knew in my heart that the religious life is not a matter of 
minor modifications, a trimming off a little here and adding on a little 
there, but a forsaking, a turning away from, a volte face. I thought then 
and think still that I was unfortunate in the so-called religious people 
around me. I heard the language of extreme religious fervor spoken by 
those who, to my cruel young eyes, were not sufficiently hard at work on 
their own characters. Over-emotional Sundays were followed by very 
peevish Mondays. I grew weary of people who could so easily resist my 
temptations, so glibly question my cakes and ale ; of people who accepted 
the Bible with a mulish verbal insistence based on ignorance, and who, 
while professing to yearn for an eternity of bliss, clung to the things of 
this life like cats to a hot brick. I found an impudent formula for it all 
that relieved me immensely "They spend their days resisting the sins 
that do not tempt them." Being young and silly I thought this was an 
epigram and repeated it ad nauseam. That I was not lynched goes to 
prove that my elders were further advanced morally than I gave them 
credit for. I am ashamed to have to tell all this. My heart melts when 
I recall how good they were after all and how much I owe them. But 
that is the way I reacted to them and in that mood I turned my back on 
grace. 

Then came a season of being "clever," as one of a group of young 
people who loftily discussed philosophies, rearranged the universe, and 
tried not to be too unkind to the Deitv. With many polysyllables we "fled 



318 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Him down the labyrinthine ways" of our silly little minds, as is the way 
of young people who think themselves clever. Dates elude me, but 
somewhere about this time a book on Theosophy came my way. I 
accepted the twin doctrines of karma and reincarnation with delight or 
rather recognized them with delight and then pigeonholed Theosophy 
as something that would come in handily by and by, when this entrancing 
business of being young was finished with. To "experience" was my 
cry, to make haste and get a lot of living done. Life took me at my 
word. Sorrow came and loss, as well as much joy; it is natural to me 
to be consciously happy and the faculty rarely failed me. I fear this is 
contrary to all accepted rules that I should have been haunted and 
restless with the sense of all I missed, but I am trying to tell the truth, 
and truly my cup ran over. The Master was very patient with me ; 
He knew I would come back ; He knew that it was written. 

About ten years ago a friend tossed me the "Ocean of Theosophy" 
with a careless "Have you time to waste on a pipe dream?" I read, and 
once more the world was swinging the other way it was the Hand again ! 
The immediate result was a renewal of the old rapture, a setting to the 
old task, and an orgy of books. The reading was not done for the sake 
of conviction as far as I understood I accepted. I cared nothing about 
the squabbles of societies, or that my friends called me a Buddhist and 
many worse names, neither was I curious about magic and mysteries. 
There was one objective in all my search where did my own religion 
come in? What think ye of Christ? The books I read! Christian 
apologetics are a branch of literature I abhor, but needs must when one's 
angel drives what about miracles? what about creeds? what about 
prayer? With no one to help me I was in a bad mess. So-called occult 
books will furnish tons of rubbish. Devotional looking volumes with 
mystic runes on the cover were found to contain rules for adding to one's 
income ; for overcoming one's fellow man with the power of the glance ; 
for increasing one's social fascinations. Other books were quite beyond 
my understanding. I tried "Isis Unveiled" and decided that that way mad- 
ness lay ; I waded through various scholarly but unsympathetic books on 
Buddhism and found counsel darkened ; read the "Voice of the Silence" 
it might have been Choctaw. My husband said, "You have carte blanche 
on books, but I entreat you not to join any of these societies, I implore 
you not to discover that you are Cleopatra or the Queen of Sheba." He 
need not have feared such things intrigued me not the golden thread 
led somewhere to someone what think ye of Christ? 

My debt to certain books must be acknowledged. The "Creed of 
Buddha" and Mrs. Besant's "Esoteric Christianity" both brought light. 
Two lines from the "Light of Asia" kept me happy for weeks : 

"Slow grows the splendid pattern that He plans 
His wistful hands between." 



It was like stepping back a few paces from a puzzling impressionist pic- 
ture and seeing the splotches of paint fall into order and beauty. Then 
the word "wistful" there, how perfect it is! Of all books the one that 
helped most then and helps most still is Charles Johnston's translation of 
the "Gita," with its incomparable commentary. Here was struck the note 
that my soul longed for not the difference but the likeness-, not new 
dispensations, but one eternal divine intention; the certainty that for us 
men and our salvation God ever becomes man that man may grow to God. 
God bless those who bring us the old, old scriptures and show us that 
God has always "so loved" the happy world. 

There are more ways than one of being an idiot. In all my new 
happiness my cry of triumph was "Praise be, I don't have to join any- 
thing." I had watched so many people in their dizzy maze of joining and 
unjoining this, that, and the other cult ; had seen so many names signed, 
and diplomas handed out, an.d little badges worn, and withal so little 
regeneration, so little spiritual health. "As for me," I said fatuously, "I 
am a free lance." But God be thanked I was not free. The Hand on my 
shoulder was irresistible. The Master had prepared a place for me. 

There is a beautiful house with an ugly door; nothing marks it 
exteriorly from its dreary fellows but the Cross it holds aloft ; it is a school 
for saints. It extends a grave welcome to spiritual dunces, being used 
to them. It has no bonds the ugly door opens easily, but the beauty of 
holiness enmeshes. The new scholar there, moving about in worlds 
unrealized, is apt to proffer what he calls "help." This is accepted with- 
out a smile, and his lumbering efforts are directed. Who shall say what 
magic is in that house ? Or what love ? The peace that passeth under- 
standing reigns in the dim basement and bare halls. One's feet may find 
on its many stairs the small old path that leads to the Eternal, and in the 
midst of it there blooms like a golden flower the Altar of the Living 
Christ, for that school has for Master Jesus Christ the great Theosophist 
the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. 

It is good to be even the dunce in that school. There the age-long 
question "What think ye of Christ?" finds reverent answer, and back- 
ward souls are taught their letters. My prayer is that I may waste no 
more time, but that, even at the eleventh hour, learning to love much, 
much may be forgiven me. L. W. 



"Let a man be true in his intentions, and the point is gained, whether 
he succeed or not." Carlyle. 



ALSACE AND LORRAINE 



PART II. 

THE problem of the history of Alsace and Lorraine is distinctly 
a problem of nationality. We have seen that neither race nor 
language determine nationality. What, then, does? Or, more 
precisely, what made France a nation ; what were her distinctive 
characteristics ; and why did Alsace and Lorraine share those, rather than 
incline to her German conquerors ? 

This question must receive a definite and adequate answer before 
the German claims about France in general, and Alsace-Lorraine in 
particular, can be met and refuted. Nor can the total irrelevancy of the 
German position be made clear without in some measure settling this 
question. Granted even, for a moment, that the racial and linguistic 
claims of Germany be true (which they are not) the question of Alsace- 
Lorraine would still in no way have been settled if these provinces 
declared and knew themselves to be members of the French nation. That 
they have explicitly so declared themselves gives a final emphasis to this 
argument. 

But the Germans will not state the problem in this way. They have 
systematically reconstructed and rewritten the history of France in order 
to demonstrate that in the beginning the whole of France was not merely 
German racially and in feeling, but also politically a part of Germany ; 
and that as time went on, and the personal ambition of "German kings" 
in France led to the separation of French territory from the "German 
Empire," border peoples, such as Alsace-Lorraine, clung as long as they 
could to the German Fatherland, so that not till Louis XlVth were they 
finally torn from the homeland of their choice (17th century). This 
"German Empire" is the Frankish realm of Charlemagne ; and the 
Germans claim that the Franks were German i. e. of Germanic race 
and that Charlemagne spoke German, and had his capital in the German 
town of Aachen 

If this had been so, it would still have to be asked what made 
France different from Germany, and why does all France go back to 
Clovis and Charlemagne, Roland and Oliver, as the founders of their 
nation ? 

The answer to this question cannot be found with any definiteness 
by referring to the standard English encyclopedias, which are practically 
committed to the German interpretation of the history of France. In 
the Britannica, for instance, Charlemagne is described as king of the 
Franks and Roman Emperor, and in this article he is not called specifically 
German, the author of it being a Frenchman. But if we turn to the 
article "Franks," we find that they are sweepingly designated "a group 



3*o 



ALSACE AND LORRAINE 321 

I 

of Germanic peoples ;" while the New International Encyclopedia speaks 

of them as "a confederation of Germanic tribes which appeared in the 
lower and middle Rhine in the third century after Christ." The inevitable 
impression from this reading is that Charlemagne made himself king 
over a confederation of German peoples, which first appeared on the scene 
of history shortly after 200 A. D. And the article on "France" confirms 
this idea, frequent reference being made to the German elements in her 
early population, as contrasted with the "Gallo-Roman." 

This general impression is reflected in popular opinion, which believes 
Charlemagne to have been a German Emperor, and that somehow France 
grew out of the French part of his Empire. But such a construction of 
the facts of history is not accurate, nor is it to be found in the majority 
of French historians. Duruy's popular text-books of French history 
give no such picture. German text-books of French and German history 
do. And it is a fact that the German version of the early periods of 
French history have been accepted in this country as the authorities. 
(For proof, see the extensive bibliographies cited by writers in our 
encyclopedias and text books. Most of our scholars have German degrees, 
not French). 

There is a school of French historians, founded by Fustel de 
Coulanges, born in 1830, and represented by no less brilliant and perhaps 
somewhat more poised scholars such as Gabriel Monod (d. 1912), Jacques 
Flach, and Louis Dimier, who repudiate this interpretation of history as 
"hostile prepossessions," and who try by a rigid adherence to the actual 
facts of history, as far as we possess them, to write the truth about early 
French history. The works of these men have never received much 
recognition outside France, though their accomplishment is acknowledged 
as "most remarkable," and as showing thorough scholarship. Fustel, to 
be sure, reacted against the distortions of the extreme German school 
too far in an opposite direction, but his research is substantially sound, 
and has never been seriously refuted. 1 

This problem, then, is not a question of championing France as 
against Germany ; it is a question of scientific accuracy and historic fact. 



1 Fustel de Coulanges, Institutions Politiques de L'Ancienne France, 6 volumes; Nouvellts 
Recherches; and two articles in Revtte Historique, vols. II, p. 460 ff., and III, p. 3 ff. 

Jacques Flach, Origines De L'Ancienne France, 3 vols., and Les Affinites franfaises At 
L' 'Alsace Avant Louis XIV, the latter a very suggestive little book. 

Gabriel Monod, Source De L'Histoire Merovingienne and Etudes critiques sur les source* 
de 1'histoire carolingienne. See also two articles, one in the pub. of the Ecole Pratiques DCS 
Hautes Etudes for 1896 Du role de I'opposition des races et des nationality dans la dissolution 
de I" empire carolingien very valuable; and the other in the pub. of L" Academic Des Sciences 
Morales Et Politiques for 1899 La Renaissance Carolingienne. cf. Lecon, XXIV in Guizot's 
Histoire de la civilization en France, p. 249 ff. for the first departure from the racial theoriei 
supported in France by Augustin Thierry, Michelet in the first volume of his Histoire de France, 
and many other French historians. Fustel ignored apparently his predecessor Guizot. For 
indefinite compromises between the two theories, see the brilliantly worded chapters of Klein- 
clausz and Luchaire in Tome Deuxieme of Ernest Lavisse, Histoire De France. It is this 
indefinite position which, reflected in the encyclopedias, probably accounts for the pro-German 
result. The Germans are never indefinite. 

Louis Dimier, Les Prejuges Ennemis de L'Histoire De France, 2nd ed. 1917. Thii 
book most nearly represents my point of view on the Franks. Its basis is Fustel. 



322 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

The basis of the feeling which persists today that Alsace and Lorraine 
are French and not German, goes back step by step to the very roots of 
their existence in the past. Rodolphe Reuss, perhaps the most eminent 
historian of Alsace, himself an Alsatian, writes in his L' Alsace au XVI lie 
Siecle "It is not today nor yesterday that this French influence has 
made itself felt in our province ; it was discretely proposed, then invoked, 
then imposed decisively by a natural development and, so to say, forced 
by the general history of the XVIth and XVIIth centuries. The begin- 
nings were accidental, the first developments modest, and the origins have 
not yet been sufficiently studied in an impartial and critical manner up 
to this time" (1897, Vol. I, p. 42. Itals. mine). These origins, if pushed 
back through the maze of the Middle Ages, lead directly to the Empire 
of Charlemagne, of which Alsace and Lorraine formed the heart and 
center. And since the Germans with absolute unanimity proclaim Charle- 
magne and the Franks to be German, and therefore the whole bias of 
Alsatian and Lorraine thought and feeling to be naturally pro-German, the 
falsity of this claim must be exposed, as has been the ethnological claim. 

The universality of this pro-German bias in America the belief that 
Charlemagne and his kingdom of Franks were German is the outcome 
of a combination of causes. The primary one is, of course, the calculated 
and successful dissemination of the German attitude. This has been 
rendered easy by the further, notorious, fact that American scholars have 
received their training in German universities, where degrees are far 
more easily obtained than in France. 

But at the heart of the Germanized formulation of French history 
lie certain facts of German scientific methods and scholarship which, 
once more, it would be well to realize. It is to the point, therefore, to 
survey for a moment the work of German historians and scholars, in 
order to discover the circumstances under which their version of history 
came to be written. 

The traditional, uncritical belief which was held in France till the 
17th century was that the Franks originated somewhere in Pan- 
nonia, 1 and were related to the Latin race. This tradition in itself is 
witness to the extent to which the French did not feel themselves to be 
German, and is traced all the way back to Gregory of Tours (d. c. 594), 
the great contemporary historian of the Franks, and to the chronicles 
of one who calls himself Fredegarius, and who traces them through Virgil 
to Troy (Aeneid, i, 246 ff. See M on. Ger. SS. Mer. II, Liber II, 4a and 
III, 2a). Beginning in the 17th century, German research proved con- 
clusively that the Franks first appeared (the usual word used is "origi- 
nated") in north Germany, and while not Teutons, were most probably 
of Teutonic race. They thereupon claimed to be the originators of France, 
and, through other tribes also German, to be the regenerators, and 
therefore the best, in every nation in Europe. 

1 Gregorii Turoneruis Episcopi, Historic Froncorum, Liber II, last par., sec. 9. 



ALSACE AND LORRAINE 323 

Now German scholarship, such as it is, has recently been in many 
instances the first to expand a given field of research. The search for 
and determinization of sources as the last word in scientific procedure, 
is preeminently a German characteristic. This natural mental process has 
been methodically developed into a science by Germans ; and it has been 
carried by them to extreme and ridiculous lengths repeatedly, as every 
student knows. Nevertheless, it has resulted in the discovery and editing 
of countless invaluable manuscripts, and the resurrection of rudimentary 
information about the past. 

In the patriotic reaction that followed Prussia's recovery after Napo- 
leon's defeat in 1815-18, Baron von Stein inaugurated a collection of 
documents and sources relative to German history from its inception, 
which bears the imposing title of Monumenta Germania Historica, and 
which now exists in thirty-seven large folio, and eighty-two, seven hun- 
dred page, quarto volumes, or one hundred and nineteen in all. This 
tremendous work, which is indeed a monument to German industry in 
itself, is a most important source for modern scholarship on related sub- 
jects, since it reproduces and edits manuscripts spread all over Europe, 
and not readily accessible. 

But this work is typically German in its tacit assumptions and pan- 
German comprehensiveness. It claims to be an expression of truth-loving, 
truth-seeking science, unprejudiced and unbiased. But its motto engraved 
on a sort of heraldic device is Sanctus amor patriae dat animum The 
sacred love of the Fatherland giveth the spirit, truly a noble device, but 
hardly in conformity with scientific detachment. Indeed, Stein quite 
plainly intended that this work of scholarship should arouse a patriotic 
spirit in Germany by turning the attention of teachers and students to 
the greatness of "Germany's" past. J. R. Seeley, M. A., an English 
author, makes much of this brilliant idea. He describes Stein as "the 
regenerator of the Prussian Monarchy and the founder of the doctrine 
of German unity" (Life and Times of Baron -von Stein, vol. II. Pt. IX, 
chap. II, p. 456), and quotes letters written by Stein explaining his pur- 
pose. To Count Munster, Stein wrote (Nov. 20, 1812), "My wish is that 
Germany should become great and strong, that she may recover her inde- 
pendence, her self-government, and her nationality, and may assert them 
in her position between France and Russia ; that is the interest of the 
nation and of all Europe" (Pt. VII, chap. I, p. 172). In 1815, in a letter 
to the Bishop of Hildesheim, he wrote : "Since my retirement from public 
affairs I have been animated by the wish to awaken the taste for German 
history, to facilitate the fundamental study of it, and so to contribute to 
keep alive a love for our common country and for the memory of our 
great ancestors" (p. 457). The society to accomplish this work was formed 
in 1819, and Seeley points out that "the significance" of the above-chosen 
motto "can hardly be understood by those who have observed how new 
and fresh was the feeling of patriotism at that time in German breasts" 
(p. 458). Pertz himself, its famous editor, writes of his first interview 



324 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

with Stein (April 18, 1820), "he presented the idea of the undertaking, 
that of awakening patriotism through a knowledge of national 
history . . ."(p. 461). 

This spirit would not of necessity bias the almost mechanical editing 
of texts, but it does apply directly to the choice of manuscripts to be 
included. The interpretation of ancient history depends absolutely on the 
texts used, and used in a right spirit of proportion. No one could object 
to undertaking scholarly work from motives of patriotism ; but to permit 
these motives to misuse or distort facts, and to evolve theories of history 
based on a desire to aggrandize one's own country is dishonest. 

The outcome of the attitude of Stein and the scholars who followed 
his lead was that the Monumenta confound French with German history. 
Based on the false premise that race or language determine nationality, 
they tacitly claim as German history nearly a thousand years of French 
history. There are detailed collections of MSS. dealing with the so-called 
Germanic tribes which invaded Gaul and other parts of the Roman Empire ; 
but there is no presentation of the long history of Gaul preceding these 
invasions. With the presence of Teutonic tribes in Gaul, Gaul apparently 
became quite of a sudden Germany, and the 1500 years of Celtic and 
Roman civilization is manifestly considered incidental and unimportant. 
At least, that is the logic of the selection of facts presented by the Monu- 
menta. To gain in any degree an accurate or complete basis for the study 
of this whole period, recourse must be had to the splendid French collec- 
tions, as Bouquet, Migne, Guizot, and Duchesne. The Monumenta are 
neither fair nor historic in their assumptions. Pan-Germanic schemes 
were afloat even in Stein's day. 1 

The fact is that Teutonic tribes were first known through contact 
with Rome in Gaul and tvest of the Rhine. The Merovingian and Caro- 
lingian dynasties covered in their northern part what is now the eastern 
and southern portion of the German Empire; but then, before a German 
Empire had been conceived, they were Frankish kingdoms carrying on 
almost continuous warfare with Teuton marauders and invaders. The 
center of these kingdoms was not trans-Rhine in Germany, but was in 
Gaui. The fact is that trans-Rhine history at this time was practically 
non-existent for the simple reason that north Europe was a wild and 
uncouth wilderness. As Lorenz and Scherer admit in their Geschichte 
des Essasses (History of Alsace) the clash between Romans and Germans 
at Belfort then a Celtic town was the first detailed and authentic his- 
tory of the Germans, and "Here on the floor of Alsace, German History 
has its beginning" (p. 1). Be it noted that it was as invaders. France 
had had a continuous civilization several hundred years before this, at 
base Celtic and completed by a Roman superstructure. German history 

1 Though source-worshippers, the German students of the history of Germany in Gaul (!) 
do not attempt, as a rule, to go back of Theodosius the Great. See any source guides, as Potthast, 
Molinier, Wattenbach, Ebert, and Gross. A study of this earlier period would detract from 
German accomplishment, revealing, at the same time, the disruptive and destructive activities of 
most of the invaders, cf. C. H. Hayes, Germanic Invasions, p. 7, etc. 



ALSACE AND LORRAINE 325 

proper can hardly be said to emerge out of the vaguely reported vicissi- 
tudes of wandering German tribes until after the break-up of Charle- 
magne's empire. The northern portions of this empire were Prankish 
conquests of Germans, whom Charlemagne clearly recognized as his most 
dangerous enemies. This northern and eastern section broke, or was torn 
away from the regnum Francorum after Charles the Bald (d. 877), became 
more and more German, and throughout the ages has continued to be 
France's hereditary enemy. German national history began long after 
French, and to add to this history that of all the countries fought over by 
German tribes would be as logical as to incorporate, let us say, all Chinese 
or Mexican history into that of the United States because our armies and 
emigrants once set foot on their respective soils. 

The Monumenta have no more right to include this Gallo-Frankish 
period and people as integral parts of a German Nation (though they did 
profoundly affect the first Germanic Empire when it first took shape as 
the Holy Roman Empire under Otto I, a Bavarian king) than, let us 
imagine, a future democratic England might claim President Wilson as an 
early and illustrious English president, and our generation an English and 
wnAmerican generation. Clovis was as much a Frenchman of his time, 
and not German, as President Wilson is an American of our time, and 
not English. 

To be consistent the Monumenta should have collected with equal 
zeal documents relating to other kingdoms, conquered and ruled over by 
Teuton tribes much more directly German in point of time and in feeling 
than the Franks. The Visigothic kingdom in Spain (507 to 712), with its 
high state of culture and civilization, and its splendid legal code, might 
have proved almost as great an ornament to Pan-German exclusiveness as 
that of the Franks. But France was nearer ; the history of the border- 
lands Belgium, Alsace and Lorraine was always a debatable question ; 
there was a semblance of fact, in that the Franks originated in Ger- 
many, to uphold the claim ; and after all, the Franks, and Clovis, Charles 
Martel, and Charlemagne, must have been German because they were 
great ; so all these reasons led to the assumption being made automatic- 
ally and almost unconsciously, as it were, that with the Franks France 
was German. And there has been an endless output of "scholarship" to 
prove this impossible hypothesis. German vanity could not bear to part 
with nearly a thousand years of what she calls her history, and particularly 
to yield that history, with all its great personages, to France. 

But the facts are against her. French national spirit was born when 
Roman genius unified her Celtic civilization. It was the first in Europe 
in point of time and in point of civilization ; and the German was, and is, 
the last. 

We have instanced the Monumenta as typical of German Egotism 
because it is merely a skeleton of history, with practically no opinions 
expressed. But German histories prove the case by the very use they 
make of the Monumenta and by their outspoken, unblushing pro-German 
bias. Dahn's eleven volumes on Konige der Germanen is an accomplished 



326 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

example. Wetzer and Welte's Kirchenlexicon speaks of Charlemagne 
directly as the first great German Emperor. Instances such as this might 
be multiplied to the limit of one's reading capacity of German histories. 
They are all alike in kind, differing amongst themselves only in degree. 1 

This German interpretation of French history has for some reason 
never been offset in the popular belief either by the French histories, or 
by an adequate study of the facts. Popular books as well as school 
histories and encyclopedias are responsible for this in part. Bryce, in his 
Holy Roman Empire, describes the Franks in the same terms as the 
Saxons, Alamanni, and Thuringians (p. 34). In speaking of the appeal 
of Pope Gregory the Third to Charles Martel, he says, "It is at least 
certain that here begins the connection of the old imperial seat with the 
rising German power" (p. 39). But the word "German" here is mislead- 
ing, and the confusion is representative. It refers back to the original 
"loose confederation of Germanic tribes," and forward to the Holy Roman 
Empire as represented by Otto the Great, Bavarian king (crowned 962 
at Rome), and his successors. Now the first reference bridges a gap of 
at least five hundred years, longer than this country has been known 
to Europe. During that time the West Franks had settled northern Gaul, 
mixed with the Celts, accepted Roman civilization, and became Roman 
citizens. Surely no one could correctly describe the product of these 
centuries in the same terms as the original immigrants. Otto the Great 
was possibly an East Frank of Bavaria, but was more probably a Swabian 
(Suevi). In either case, his generation were, comparatively, but new- 
comers from the German forests ; he fought France for the possession 
of Alsace and Lorraine, with only partial success ; and he did not belong 
in any way to the French people, nor share their already distinct national 
traditions. And he lived two hundred years after Charles Martel. 

Such loose uses of the term German are responsible for much that 
amounts to inaccuracy in scholarly as well as popular thinking; and the 
only excuse that can be offered for scholarship outside Germany is that 
preconceptions and prepossessions are the most insidious foes of scientific 
accuracy and judgment. Nor is there a more confused period politically 
i.i history than this late Carolingian. But the key to interpretation may be 
sought in the rise of national consciousness, which but few even of the 
French historians have attempted to trace seriously (cf. Monod and Flach, 
op. cit. Also Guizot). 

The unique position of the Franks in its true light has few champions 
outside France. Madison Grant, in his chapter on European history, 
already quoted as saying that Europe had become "superficially Teutonic," 

1 Cf. the quiet use of UHS and unser in Heinrich von Sybel's Kleine Historiche Schriften; 
first three paper*. For some of the most illustrious parallels on this phase of the German 
historians, see Mullenhoff, Deutsche Altertumskunde; V. A. Dederich, Der Frankenbund, with 
Louis Will's use of him in Le Grande Encyclopedie, vol. xvii; E. Dummler; Waitz in his eight 
volume Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte; O. Gutsche and W. Schultze, Deutsche Geschichte von 
der Urseit bis au den Karolingern, 2 vols. ; and W. Junghans, trans, by G. Monod under the 
title Histoire Critique des regnes de Cliilderich et de Chlodovech. cf. Fustel's acute criticism, in 
Chap. Ill of La Monarchic Franque, of Junghans' misreadings. 



ALSACE AND LORRAINE 327 

says with a bland lack of logic, and with typical carelessness, two pages 
later (op. cit. pp. 162-4-5), "Charlemagne was a German Emperor, his 
capital was at Aachen, within the present limits of the German Empire, 
and the language of his court was German. . . . Europe was Ger- 
many, and Germany was Europe, predominantly, until the Thirty Years' 
War" (1618+). His widely-circulated book was published in 1916, and 
shows the degree to which American science has gone to school in Ger- 
many. As an earlier example of the typical success attending Germany's 
method of popularizing the pristine glories of her "Empire," Walter C. 
Perry's book, The Franks, published in London. in 1857, might be cited. 
This book is referred to in the bibliographies of German encyclopedias. 
"If the Greeks and Romans are rightly called the people of the past, the 
Germans, in the wider sense of the appellation, have an undoubted claim 
to be considered the people of the present and the future. To whatever 
part we turn our eyes of the course which this favoured race has run, 
whether under the name of Teuton, German, Frank, Saxon, Dane, Nor- 
man, Englishman, or North American, we find it full of interest and 
glory. . . . For many obvious reasons, and among others from the 
circumstance that the French preceded the Germans in the field of litera- 
ture, it has happened that the great leaders and monarchs of the Frankish 
nation have been far more closely connected with modern France than 
is warranted by historic truth. It will be observed that in the following 
pages we everywhere speak of the Franks exclusively as Germans, as one 
of the many offshoots of the mighty Teutonic race, which for more than 
a thousand years has been steadily advancing towards universal dominion 
over the political, social and moral world" (pp. 1-4-5). Truly this "Bar- 
rister-at-Law" had learned his lesson well, for we read on the title page 
"Doctor in Philosophy and Master of Arts in the University of Got- 
tingen" ; and he quotes freely from the then published volumes of Pertz' 
Monumental 

How "exclusively" the Franks are Germans will now briefly be exam- 
ined, it being remembered that Alsace and Lorraine were for centuries 
Frankish territory. 

Somewhere between three hundred and one hundred B. C., several 
tribes, probably belonging to the ancient Istaevones of Tacitus, settled 
about the northern reaches of the Rhine. 2 They were probably a van- 
guard which had been driven before the advancing Saxons, Alamanni, 
and Suevi (Sweben-Bavarians. Cf. Brockhaus' Konversations-Lexicon, 
vol. VI, "Franken"). The Franks, as they came to be called, did not 

1 Cf. The Franks, by Louis Sergeant, 1898, a standard handbook. The author says that 
"the Franks were not a tribe of Teutons, though they were indisputably Teutonic" (p. 11), and 
he considers the Frank kingdoms to be Germanic. His book is typical; he has read the sources 
unintelligently, and speaks of their history as "rich in fable but poor in history." Monod, on 
the contrary, considers the Carolingians are "more clearly characterized than the majority of 
historic periods" (L'Histoire Carolingienne, p. 2). 

'Tacitus, De Moribus Germanorum, II. Cf. the Historiarum and Annalium throughout 
Cf. the monograph of V. A. Dederich, Der Frankenbund, esp. pp. 42-44. Also Waitz, Deutsche 
Verfassungsgeschichte, esp. Vols. I, II and III. Waitz is a thorough German. Cf, also 
summaries in encyclopedias. 



328 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

actually clash with the Empire until 240 A. D. Before that time 
there were interchanges between them and their Celtic neighbors, running 
over a period of at least two hundred years, or about as long as the United 
States have had interchanges with Canada. 

Now the essential point, and one totally ignored by the German 
writers as to its primary importance, is the fact that France as a self- 
conscious unit was already in existence at the time when the Franks finally 
entered Gaul. 1 The loosely scattered CV/fic-speaking, non-Teuton, tribes 
of the first century B. C. in Gaul were by no means to be dignified by the 
name of Empire, as an over-enthusiastic Celtic scholar, M. d'Arbois de 
Jubainville tries to demonstrate ; 2 but they had been spread all over France, 
Belgium and Holland, Alsace-Lorraine, and even well beyond the Rhine 
since a thousand years B. C., and had a well-developed type of civilization 
and religion. Because of this superior culture they had overcome and 
absorbed the primitive Iberians and Basques. The prominent character- 
istic of this people, and that which Caesar noted, was their spirit of 
independence. Local tribes rarely combined, except for temporary con- 
federations in order to overcome a mutual enemy, and were sure to 
separate in time. The country for that period was populous and pros- 
perous, but there was no political stability on which to found a sense of 
nationality. 

It took the conquest and co-ordinating genius of Caesar to fuse this 
body of loosely organized tribes into a nation, and Caesar is in a certain 
sense the founder of the French nation. By giving the Gauls the political 
unity of the Roman Empire, by making them a self-governing, practically 
independent group in the body of nations which composed the Roman 
Empire ; by arresting to a large extent internecine strife and by defeating 
decisively the common enemy Teutons ; by introducing Roman laws, 
Roman culture, Roman ideals Caesar turned the spirit of independence 
of the Gauls into the positive creation of a new self-consciousness of 
unity, power and worth. This creation dated, be it noted, shortly after 
58 B. C. South-east France had been a Roman province as far back as 
the 2nd century B. C., and Aix had become a Roman center in 123 B. C., 
Narbonne in 118. The Roman policy of according complete liberty, 
requiring only military service and a tax, soon led the people to seek for 
themselves the superior Roman institutions, and the great Pax Romano, 
followed over all Gaul almost immediately upon the successes of Caesar 
in the north and in Britain. Administrative centralization and municipal 

1 Cf. Walter Schultze, Deutsche Geschichte von der Urseit bis zu den Karotingern, Vol. II, 
p. 3. "Hardly in another province of the World-Empire had the Roman nature (Wesen) per- 
meated so fully and so decidedly, had the native national Elements made themselves so dependent 
and useful, as in the quite late-conquered Gauls." But this admission bears no fruit; the Franks 
are "planted" in Gaul perhaps from the year 8 (p. 38), but because they belong to the great 
German stem, they are unaffected by centuries of Roman culture and Roman assimilation, they 
are still as German as the latest comers out of Teutonic fastnesses, in fact, as Hindenburg him- 
self; which is, at least, the logic of his claim, and is typically German. 

*Cf. chiefly Premiers Habitants de I' Europe. 2 vols. esp. Vol. II, Chap. Ill, pp. 254, 297 ff., 
and pp. 386, 387. All M. d'Arbois' voluminous writings on the Celts should receive careful con- 
sideration. 



ALSACE AND LORRAINE 329 

autonomy, religious ties, brotherhood in arms, prosperity these made 
Gaul whole-heartedly loyal to Rome for more than five centuries or for 
nearly four times as long as the United States have had individual exist- 
ence. All the emperors favored Gaul ; Lyons, the political capital, became 
the center for the great Roman roads, Caligula visited Gaul and founded 
literary competitions there. Antoninus (A. D. 138-161) came from Nimes, 
Claudius and Caracalla from Lyons. The last-named emperor extended 
Roman citizenship to all Gaul, and the people felt themselves to be, and 
called themselves, Romans, and their language Romance. In the fourth 
century there was a "veritable renaissance" in Gaul, literature flourished 
everywhere, the best specimens being the polished verse of Ausonius and 
the refined panegyrics of Eumenius. 1 Christianity entered Gaul from the 
very start ; tradition declaring that it was the Marys and Lazarus who 
first brought it there. 

It was as an integral part of this state that Alsace and Lorraine 
formed the bulwarks against successive incursions across the Rhine of 
Teutonic barbarians who were still mostly nomadic tribes without his- 
tory or culture. For this very reason, and because its own soldiers as 
Roman Legionaries defended the Empire, their patriotism showed more 
intensity, and "the Alsatian population lost, naturally all independent polit- 
ical existence, and absorbed itself into the powerful universal empire" 
(Histoire d' Alsace, pp. 15-16. Rod. Reuss). 

The West, or Salian, Franks, began raids across the Rhine about the 
middle of the third century, and finally were introduced, and planted 
definitely as a colony in Gaul, in the year 277. They lived beyond the 
Meuse, and on the lower reaches of the Scheldt, entered into alliance with 
Rome, became thoroughly Romanized, assisted the Roman armies, and 
remained a peaceable center for nearly tzt'o hundred years, while the great 
tribes of East Germany were in motion. It was from these Romanized 
Franks, at the end of the fifth century, that came Ae'tius and the army 
that at last broke the power of Attila the Hun (451), and later Clovis, 
whose people, originally half Frank, half Celto-Roman, were and had been 
an integral part of the Roman Empire for longer than all but the oldest 
American families have inhabited the United States. "The idea of race," 
says Fustel de Coulange, "does not occupy a single place in the thought 
and spirit of that time, and we can practically affirm that it is absent from 
it" (La Gaule Romaine, p. 108). These Romans, for Romans they con- 
sidered themselves, had all their interests in Rome, regarded the German 
influx of Alemanni, Burgundians, and Visigoths as their worst enemies ; 
and it was as an agent of Rome that Clovis took up arms in the defense 
of his people. 

The weakening of the Roman power and the withdrawal of Roman 
legions left these outlying people to shift for themselves, the Roman 
authority being loosely maintained at this time by Syagrius, son of a for- 

1 T. R. Glover, Life and Letters in the 4th Century, Chap. 5, on Ausonius, etc. Also J. W. 
Mackail, Latin Literature, III, Chap. VII. 

22 



330 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

mer Roman governor, over virtually the whole of France and Belgium 
north of the Loire. This power Syagrius had assumed on his own initia- 
tive, and Clovis, his rival and much the stronger man of the two, raised 
an army of maybe 3000 men, and in A. D. 486 overcame Syagrius ; and 
soon thereafter made himself ruler of the whole of France. 

Now there are certain points to keep clear in mind. These Franks 
who formed the first cradle of the French kingdom, were not conquerors 
of Rome, did not invade the Roman Empire, and did not break with the 
central Roman power, the Emperor. They were an integral part of the 
Roman Empire, which, because Roman troops and generals were needed 
elsewhere, had to protect and govern themselves. They exercised in the 
name of the Empire the military authority. In 476 the succession of the 
Western emperors ceased ; following Gibbon we speak of the Eastern 
Empire, but in fact at the time no such distinction was made. The 
Emperor Anastasius sent Clovis the insignia of a Consul from Constanti- 
nople, which he assumed with great solemnity at Tours. 1 He died a 
Roman Consul. The Frank money was stamped with the head of the 
Emperor as before, and continued to be so until, in the north, Theodebert I 
substituted his name in 593 (which act Procopius called "audacious), 
while in Marseilles Clotaire II (613-629) discarded the superscription of 
Heraclius (610-641) and substituted his own (La Grande Encyclopedie, 
Vol. XVII, p. 1137). 

Nor did Clovis convert Gaul to Christianity (Greg. Tur. op. cit. II, 
30-31). It had been Christian for more than two centuries. Gregory 
of Tours describes the conversion of Clovis himself and the baptism of 
amplius tria milia, more than three thousand of his soldiers. The real 
significance of this act was in the deliberate dedication of France to 
Christianity, the acceptance of Christ as the real King of France. The 
Merovingian kings were hereditary monarchs as far back as we have any 
traces of them, they believed God to be the source of authority and power ; 
and Pepin d'Heristal "each year, at the commencement of Lent, went 
barefooted in search of the hermit Wiro at Mons Patrius, where he puri- 
fied his conscience and asked him, in the silence of a retreat, how he 
might rule his kingdom in a manner agreeable to God." (Dictionaire de 
Theologie Catholique, Witzer & Welte, trans, by I. Goschler, vol. IX, 
p. 153. Cf. also La Monarchic Franque, chap. II, of Fustel de Coulange, 
with the sources). 

Clovis conquered in rapid succession his neighbors, colonies of Visi- 
goths and Burgundians who had at first attacked, and then settled in, 
south-west Gaul and Aquitaine respectively. Both these also had been 
incorporated parts of the Empire for more than half a century in some- 
what the same way as the Franks ; and in subduing them Clovis not 
merely overcame hereditary German enemies in the persons of the rulers, 
but put a temporary stop to civil war and rebellion within the Empire, 

1 Greg. Tur. Hist. Francorum, II, 38. See Fustel's thorough and convincing study in 
L'Invtuion Gtrmanique, p. 499 ff. 



ALSACE AND LORRAINE 331 

and protected the large mass of the people who were Gauls and Roman 
citizens like himself. His real war was against the newly arrived Ala- 
manni, trans-Rhine German barbarians ; and he led a well-trained, Roman- 
modelled army against them. Their defeat was sealed at the famous 
moment when Clovis accepted Christ. Clovis was king of all Lorraine 
as well as Alsace, and he himself built the wooden church at Strasbourg 
in Alsace, on whose site is now the cathedral. Charlemagne rebuilt its 
nave, and Louis the Debonnaire placed it under the protection of the 
Virgin (Grandidier, P. A., Histoire de I'eglise et des eveques princes de 
Strasbourg, I. p. 154, 162 ff, and 258 ff. ; and Essais historiques et topo- 
graphique sur I'eglise cathedrale de Strasbourg, pp. 5, 10 and 11). 

The impulse Clovis gave brought the whole of Alsace and Lorraine 
within the direct sphere of his influence, protecting them from German 
invasion, and establishing anew Roman institutions. Though Clovis' king- 
dom broke up into many parts, and the German invasions met with success 
at many points, yet it was the Frank power which grew, and it was the 
Frank laws, religion and kingdom which finally reached its climax in 
Pepin and Charlemagne. 

The underlying reason for this is not far to seek. The great upheavT 
als of the period were political upheavals. Conquests by an army do not 
permanently alter a race of people. The Frank kings and their armies 
fought with each other or with German invaders, as with the Danes, Avars, 
and later the Moslems ; but though they overthrew the imperial adminis- 
tration, they did not alter the internal organization of the cities. As Mr. 
George Burton Adams says in his exceedingly interesting and clear, but 
not always reliable book, Civilization During the Middle Ages: 

One fact of very great importance for all this long period of 
conquest, but one easy to be overlooked in the history of more stirring 
events, is that the life of the provincial, on the country lands and 
in the towns, goes on much the same as before. He is subjected to 
a rapid change of masters ; he is deprived now and again of a part 
of his lands; he must submit to occasional plundering; life and 
property are not secure. But he lives on and produces enough to 
keep the world alive. He takes himself no part in the wars. He has 
apparently little interest in the result; indeed, the coming of the 
German [include Frank here] may be often an improvement of con- 
dition for him. He had not been altogether prosperous or secure 
before. At any rate he keeps at work, and he holds to his language, 
and to his legal and economic customs, and to his religion, and he 
becomes thus a most important but disregarded factor of the future 
(Chap. IV, p. 76). 

In the foregoing paragraphs an attempt has been made to disprove 
'the German claims about the early history of France, and to show that 
Germany's assertion that the Franks are German, Charlemagne a German, 
France German, Alsace-Lorraine German, is a distortion of the truth 
absolutely unwarranted by the available facts. And these pretensions 
spring directly first, from the general extravagance of the German racial 
claim, and second, from the necessity of creating a support to inflate the 



332 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

nevvly-created German patriotism of 1820, led by Prussia. And the result 
of this was to foster a colossal self -appreciation, with its direct corollary 
arising from the Napoleonic era the disparagement of France. The 
quiet assumptions of German histories that the presence of German tribes 
on the soil of France warrants the appropriation of centuries of French 
history could not even be justified if France had been in the same inchoate 
and barbaric state as Germany itself; but this is not the fact. For a 
thousand years Gaul had known itself as Gaul, and despite the political 
upheavals incident to the German invasions, occurring throughout the 
Merovingian and post-Carol ingian periods, Gaul remained distinctively 
itself, and, overcoming these disruptive factors, evolved one of the 
greatest empires in history. 

Alsace and Lorraine, therefore, had formed this age-long association 
with France, and it is as such that they entered upon the long vicissitudes 
of the Middle Ages. Charlemagne's Empire was divided into three strips, 
running roughly north and south. The name Lorraine is derived from 
Lothaire, grandson of Charlemagne, who received the "middle" kingdom 
of the three partitions of the great Emperor's dominions at the Treaty 
of Verdun in 843, though the actual date when the Latin name took form 
was from the second Lothaire in 855. (Cf. for treaty of Verdun, Nithard, 
in Patrologia Latin, vol. cxvi, col. 45-76. Cf. Amiales Bertiniani, an. 843. 
The Rhine, as usual, formed the boundary between Alsace and the Eastern 
Kingdom.) Present-day Lorraine is but a piece out of the heart of this 
great kingdom, which extended from the North Sea clear to the center 
of Italy, including the Netherlands, Rhineland, Switzerland, and Lom- 
bardy ; though the "regnum" of Lothaire II comprised only the northern 
part of this Middle Kingdom. 

The treaty of Verdun did not in the least degree separate Lorraine, 
with the Middle Kingdom, from France; rather it divided the Empire 
of Charlemagne into three kingdoms ; and after the further division in 
855 between the son of Lothaire I and his great uncles, Lorraine still 
remained the central seat of government and the residence of the king. 

At the death of Lothaire II, Charles the Bald, king of Western 
France, received the throne of his great-nephew by election, following an 
ancient French custom. Since the Pope Adrian II sustained the cause of 
Charles' brother, Louis, called the German, the Lorraine bishop stated that 
the king of France was "the elect of God and of the people," their unani- 
mous choice, the "legitimate" heir to the throne, chosen because he had 
Carolingian blood. So Charles the Bald was solemnly crowned and con- 
secrated king of Lorraine on the 9th of September, 869, in the cathedral 
of St. Etienne in Metz, and was also recognized by Alsace (see the 
Annales Bertiniani, M. G., SS. I, p. 483 and ff. ; and Melchoir Goldast, 
Collectio constitutionum imperialium, vol. I, p. 195). 

Louis the German seized by force part of this kingdom, which 
Charles renounced in the Treaty of Mersen (he. cit. 870), but the three 
original kingdoms were again reunited under Charles the Fat. This whole 



ALSACE AND LORRAINE 333 

sequence of historic events, culminating in the seizure of Louis, is con- 
sidered by Germans to prove the incorporation of Lorraine into "the 
German Empire," though that Empire did not exist till William I created 
it with the help of Bismarck. If you dispute this fact so speaks German 
logic then in any case Charlemagne and his Empire were German, so 
however you look at it Lorraine is German ! 

The threads of the subsequent history of these provinces are so 
tangled that a detailed analysis of them would take several pages. Conflict 
between the sorely harassed French kings and their Germanic enemies 
led frequently to the erection of independent kingdoms, or duchies; at 
one time directly favorable to France, at others the result of an occupatio 
bellica under German dominion ; but at all times tending to create one of 
those feudal estates which were the outcome of this complexity of peoples 
and unbalanced sway of forces which was typical of all Europe at this time. 
The Dukes of Lorraine became vassals of the Counts of Champagne. They 
were also, at times, vassals of the Holy Roman Empire for some of the 
smaller feifs, and by virtue of that feudal connection, frequently appeared 
at the German Diets. But essentially in their ducal capacity the Lorraine 
sovereigns were free. At the same time the powerful bishops of Toul, 
Metz, and Verdun were "princes of the empire on behalf of their ecclesi- 
astical sees, and they were quite independent of the ducal sovereigns in 
the midst of whose possessions their cities were located." (Ruth Putnam, 
Alsace and Lorraine, p. 105.) 

Essentially, the result of six hundred years, from 950 to 1550, was 
to emphasize in both Alsace and Lorraine two fundamentally important 
principles. The first is that the native peasants tended throughout to 
reproduce the original, indigenous Celtic and French stock, the German 
and foreign element fading out ; so that Alsace as well as Lorraine in 1871 
were less German than they had ever been. This follows well-recognized 
ethnological law, and accounts in part for the systematic way that Ger- 
many today massacres or deports the populations of conquered nations ; 
experience having shown that the native stock always reasserts itself in 
time to the detriment of the conqueror. The second principle is that 
feudal serfdom, and the incessant conflicts which perpetually raged on 
the land of these border provinces, developed in the peasants and towns- 
men alike a desire for complete independence from any imperial authority. 
Practically, this was attained by many of the cities or landed "free-holds," 
and the suzerainty of the Holy Roman Emperors was much of the time 
purely nominal. The less prejudiced German historians Lorenz and 
Scherer even admit this aspiration on the part of Strasbourg (op. tit., 
3rd ed., p. 221).; while there were ten free imperial cities known as the 
Decapolis, which were virtually self-determining bourgeois republics. A 
typical controversy illustrative in every way of Lorraine feeling, took 
place at Nuremberg in 1542 (Aug. 26). Duke Anthony of Lorraine, son 
of the Rene whose countship had been raised by Francis I to a dukedom, 
protested the rights of the Empire, and denied any feudal obligations to 



334 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

the Emperor (Charles V) ; but rather that Lorraine was "free and inde- 
pendent" and would "remain so forever," which, to make it emphatic, is 
repeated three times in the text. On the payment of a small sum of 
money, this agreement was ratified by Ferdinand I ; later again, at Spire, 
July 28, 1543, by Charles V; and renewed by the Emperor Rudolph at 
Prague, Jan. 2, 1603. 1 

In 1552, at the Convention of Friedwald in Hessen, German Protes- 
tant princes ceded Metz, Toul, and Verdun to Henry II, King of 
France in exchange for subsidies to carry on war against Catholic Austria. 
In the Treaty of Westphalia, 1648, Alsace was ceded to France after 
being conquered by the German Prince, Bernard de Saxe- Weimar for 
France, and in the interest of a Protestant Germany, arrayed against the 
Catholic Emperor and the Archduke of Austria. Louis XIV was slow to 
push his claims in Alsace, and his policy of tact and forbearance did more 
to inflame pro-French feeling than even renewed contact with French poli- 
ticians and peoples. In 1681 Strasbourg, a free, independent city, opened 
her gates to Louis without resistance, and became under his tolerant rule 
a strong French center. The republic of Mulhouse, a part of Helvetia, 
asked, and received, incorporation into France in 1798. 

This bare sequence of events does not indicate the strength of the 
pro-French undercurrent which had definitely set in, and which the suc- 
cesses of Louis XIV brought to immediate realization. These two prov- 
inces, when not independent, had been bound by loose ties to the Holy 
Roman Empire, of which the House of Austria was the head, and no por- 
tion of them made any part of the so-called "German Empire." This 
Empire, founded in 1871 by Prussia, had to put Austria out of Germany 
in 1866 before it cleared the way to the Rhine, and approached either 
Alsace or Lorraine. 

In 1871 these provinces had been an incorporated part of France for 
over two hundred years; Lorraine fully three hundred and twelve (1559, 
Treaty of Cateau Cambresis), and large parts of Alsace, since 1648, 
or two hundred and twenty-three years. Canada, once French, has 
belonged to Great Britain since 1760, or sixty-six years less than the least 
time which Alsace-Lorraine have formed a part of France, yet, said the 
Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeituttg recently, "In taking back Alsace and 
Lorraine Germany accomplished an act of supreme national and historic 
justice." (Quoted in the New York Times.) Would the world today 
accept a like statement as adequate from France if she were to seize 
Canada ? 

To sum up, then, the purpose of this section has been to show that 



1 Heinrich von Sjrbel, the well-known German Historian, in Deutschtands Reclit auf Elsass 
und Lothringen, extracts a diametrically opposite meaning from this text. He is certainly wrong 
as to the date, 1539. Kleiite Historische Schriften, p. 470. Cf. the scholarly, careful, and able 
discussion of H. A. Godron in Memoirs de la societe d'archeologie, Lorraine, 1874, 3rd series, 
Vol. II, p. 252 ff. Especially pp. 277, 278, and 280. Sybel's work, published in 1880, written 
in 1871, is aggressively pro-German, and cleverly inaccurate. 






ALSACE AND LORRAINE 335 

the German claims are fundamentally false as regards their interpretation 
of the history of Alsace and Lorraine, and false on four major counts. 

1. The affinities of Alsace-Lorraine are a problem of nationality, 
that is, of national sentiment and feeling. 

2. France, inhabited by a highly civilized non-German peoples 
the Celts existed historically for a thousand years before the Teuton 
invasions affected the population, and was a self-conscious unit for half 
that time under Roman leadership. 

Alsace-Lorraine formed an important part of this unit. 

3. The Franks, who gave the name to France, while possibly of 
Teutonic origin though not themselves Teutons, were for 500 years an 
integral part of this Celtic civilization ; and it was they, and not invading 
Teutons, who formed the Frank Empire and established the nationality 
of France. 

Alsace-Lorraine was the heart of that Empire, sharing completely its 
national feeling. 

4. The Teutons, who did conquer Alsace-Lorraine and large parts 
of France for a time, were displaced ; and they were barely related to 
the modern Prussians, who in their turn are at least 40 per cent Slavs. 
It is the Prussians who for three generations have claimed these provinces 
for themselves on the grounds of their Germanism. The Prussians first 
entered France in 1792. 

Alsace and Lorraine, then, by racial inheritance and geographic set- 
ting, first developed into independent national communes, with an indi- 
vidual patriotism, and a strong national consciousness ; and, then, as time 
went on, and because of their long-established affinity with the French, 
by temperament and habit, by mutual self-respect and the intimacy that 
is born of insight and understanding, by the need France had of a 
boundary and the need the provinces had of a Mother country, by all the 
blood ties created by comradeship in arms and association through long 
centuries of governments and peoples, the spirit of both Alsace and 
Lorraine grew into the corporate body of the Kingdom of France, just 
as had the Normans, the Bretons, or the Provengales before them. 

ACTON GRISCOM. 
(To be continued} 



"In comforting others shalt thou be comforted; in strengthening 
others shalt thou find strength; in loving shalt thou be loved." Amiel. 



EASTERN AND WESTERN 
PSYCHOLOGY 



VI 
SALVATION THROUGH LOVE 

WE have taken as a simile of the work of Salvation the period 
when, as is supposed, a multitude of living beings, that had 
hitherto dwelt in the water, came forth, in virtue of a tremen- 
dous concerted effort, an extraordinarily forceful response to 
the powers of Evolution, and, passing through the neutral zone between 
low tide and high tide, finally established themselves as dwellers in the air, 
in the sunlight. And we have seen that our problem is exactly like that ; 
it is a question of raising ourselves, of co-operating with the powers that 
are striving to raise us, from this world of our material desires to the 
spiritual world, where we are to establish ourselves, dwellers in a finer air, 
in a sunlight that shall be everlasting. That finer world is there already ; 
we do not need to create it, any more than our supposed aqueous 
ancestors needed to create the open world under the blue dome of the 
sky; and, not only is it there, but strong spiritual forces, already estab- 
lished there, are ceaselessly urging and aiding us to emigrate thither, just 
as the older forces urged and aided the water-dwellers to come forth into 
the light. And, as we have seen, the unanimous testimony of the world 
is, that these forces invariably meet us with the touch of consciousness, 
of personality, of enlightened and solicitous love. 

The practical question then arises and it is the only really practical 
question in the world : How are we to respond to these upraising spiritual 
powers? How are we to gain a hold upon them, in order that we may 
effectively pull ourselves up? By what part of our being are we to take 
hold? Or, since it is absolutely certain that the effective part of the lifting 
must be done by these spiritual forces, how are we to arouse and urge 
ourselves to co-operate with them, to such a degree as will make their 
task possible? 

We shall find many answers ; but, on looking closer, we shall find 
that they are all but variants of the one answer. They vary, because our 
temperaments and moods vary, and one answer will appeal to one temper- 
ament, while another answer will apply to another. But we shall find that 
what is actually accomplished, is identical in all cases: it is, to arouse 
and enkindle in us that divine power which springs from the very unity 
of all Life, from the oneness of the Universe itself ; that power which 
draws together, draws toward that unity, all the temporarily scattered 
fragments of divine Life, so that they may once more enter into unity. It 
is said that love is strong as death ; but this divine Love is infinitely 

336 



EASTERN AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY, VI 337 

stronger than death, since death is but an accident of Time, while Love 
is an expression of that divine oneness which is the very essence of 
Eternity. 

As these practical methods came to take form in the East, they 
grouped themselves into three "ways," with a fourth "way" which syn- 
thesized them, and brought the essence of them all together into a single 
"ambrosia," a single quality of "living water." 

The first of these three "ways," as they are enumerated, is the Way 
of Works; that is, salvation through the perfect performance of all the 
Works of the Law, which include not only all the steps and details of the 
ritual of worship, but also the whole of the moral and social law, every 
part of which was made to flow out of, and depend on, the ritual of 
worship. Thus the whole life, and every detail of life, was made to 
depend on the spirit of religion ; every act of life became an act of 
worship, so that all life, from before birth to the hour of death, and after 
death, was turned into worship. The ideal purpose was, in this way to 
make every act of life a conscious part of the operation of the infinite 
divine Life ; to link every act of man with the larger acts of God, and, in 
this way, through infinitely multiplied efforts and exertions of the will, 
to develop and train that will at all points into active and energetic 
co-operation with the will of God. In this way, precisely that vigorous 
co-operation would be brought about, whereby we should help the divine 
powers to help us to rise to the spiritual world, to enter into the Life 
immortal. 

This Way of Works, this doctrine of Salvation by Works, is, it seems, 
the essence of the Vedic hymns and ceremonies, which one may call the 
Old Testament of India. It is also, though in a less luminous form, the 
essence of the Old Testament of the Jews. And in both, the form grad- 
ually overwhelmed the spirit; the Works of the Law were gradually 
crystallized and darkened, until they became, not inspiring forces of Life, 
but "burdens grievous to be borne." The cause of this degeneration was 
the gradual and insidious infusion of egotism. 

How was this corroding egotism to be conquered? The answer, in 
India, was : by illumination, by light, by the Way of Wisdom. The cor- 
roding force of egotism rested on a delusion. To go back to our simile, 
the beings which were emerging from the water had undertaken a series 
of efforts and exercises to urge them forward, to fit them to dwell in air 
and sunshine. But, their whole natures still saturated with the habits and 
tendencies of sub-aqueous life, they had gradually and by subtle degrees 
perverted these exercises, until they simply reinforced their water-life, 
instead of raising them to air-life. What was necessary, then, was to 
break up that whole mood of pre-occupation with the old water-life, and 
to replace it by a firmly held vision of the coming air-life in the sunshine. 
It was necessary completely to displace the sense of the self of water-life, 
to replace it by a clear and inspiring vision of the new self of air-life, the 
self that should dwell in the sunshine. So the Way of Wisdom, of Illu- 



338 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

mination, was added to the Way of Works; the Way of Illumination, 
whose main purpose is, to enkindle a vision of the higher Self, a vision 
that shall have such driving power as will raise the whole life-force to 
that higher Self, or, to put the matter truly, a vision that shall make it 
possible for the solicitously waiting spiritual Powers to carry out the 
great transformation. This is the message of the Upanishads, of the 
Vedanta, which is, if one wishes so to call it, the New Testament of India. 
The Indian Way of Wisdom corresponds very closely to the Way of 
Faith, which Saint Paul so sharply opposed to the Works of the Law, 
whereby, he said, "can no living man be justified." 

Another method, another "way," was developed in India, which one 
may call the Way of Yoga, the way of union with the Divine, through 
the development of mystical powers. But it is not really a different 
"way," it is simply a different presentation of the one everlasting Way. 
For, as we saw that the Way of Works, in its purity, means simply the 
blending of man's will, at every point and in every least or greatest act, 
with God's will, to the end that man may be blended with God; so the 
Way of Wisdom is an enkindling and illumination of man's consciousness, 
until, at point after point, it shall become one with God's consciousness, 
man thereby once again being blended with God ; and the Way of 
Yoga is in no way different; it is a transformation of all our present 
powers into their divine counterparts and originals, whereby, exercising 
the powers of God, man is thereby blended with God. So all "ways" lead 
to God. 

But, just as, in the Way of Works, a subtle infusion of egotism 
gradually perverted and corroded and, we may say, fossilized the whole 
series of efforts and exercises, producing, in its last degeneration, a furious 
Phariseeism ; so, corrupted by the same egotism the love of the old self 
the Way of Wisdom was perverted by vanity and conceit, into a sense, not 
of the splendid vision of God, but of the superiority of one's own illumina- 
tion, with a patronizing or a haughty contempt for the blindness and 
ignorance of others ; and so, in like manner, the Way of Yoga, the way of 
mystical powers, tended to become a way of self-admiring mountebanks, 
of "Yogis of the market-place," as they are called in India; the whole 
assemblage of self-advertising prophets of the psychic world. For it is 
an inevitable law that this infusion of egotism corrupts the growth of 
spiritual powers and turns them into psychic counterfeits. 

So the practical question arises : Is there any way in which this many- 
sided degeneration can be hindered? Can we find some new way of 
expressing the powers of Life, which shall fight directly against the force 
of egotism, a prophylactic against the degeneration which egotism invari- 
ably causes ? 

The answer, as India found it, is given in a quaint, old-world tale, 
concerning Narada, (the Son of Brahma the Creator), and that mysteri- 
ous personage, Vyasa, who, it is said, collected the Vedic hymns and set 
in order the great poem of the Mahabharata, in which the Bhagavad Gita 



EASTERN AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY, VI 339 

is enshrined. Narada, says the tale, going forth on his divine way, visited 
Vyasa, the mighty Seer and Sage, who was dwelling in his mountain 
hermitage, the Ashrama, or holy retreat, of Badarika. With due rites, 
Vyasa welcomed him, bade him be seated, and asked him this : 

"O thou Prophet of the Mighty ! The soul of man seeks to escape 
from the grasp of allurement and pain, and craves deliverance from the 
bondage of this world. But the Karma Marga, the Way of Works, does 
not lead directly to the goal. The Way of Wisdom, Jnana Marga, truly 
does. Nevertheless, without the leaven of devoted Love, Wisdom accom- 
plishes but little indeed. Devoted Love is the only true way of salvation ! 
Therefore I humbly pray Thee to teach me the doctrine of devoted Love, 
the Bhakti Marga !" 

The divine Narada, looking into Vyasa 's heart, replied : 

"Great Sage and Seer ! Thou hast come down to earth for the redemp- 
tion of mankind. Thy present question is inspired by that desire alone. 
Through thy disciple Jaimini, in the Book of Vedic Rites, thou hast dis- 
coursed on the Karma Marga, the Way of Works ; and in the Vedanta, 
thou has thyself completed the inquiry into the Way of Wisdom. And 
now thou askest of devoted Love. Therefore I shall declare devoted Love 
to thee." 

And so Narada sets forth "that Love, which is inspired by the enthu- 
siasm of selfless devotion to the Master, the Lord." One version of 
Narada's teaching is found in the little tract, called the Bhakti Sutras of 
Narada, which follows this essay, and from which we may, in anticipation, 
quote a passage or two : 

"This way of devoted Love (Bhakti) is higher than the way of ritual 
Works (Karma), higher than the way of Wisdom (Jnana), higher than 
the way of mystic Powers (Yoga). For, while ritual works, and wisdom, 
and the search for mystical powers have each a further goal, devoted 
Love is its own reward. And devoted Love is better than these, because 
the Lord hates the proud, and loves the lowly and the humble. 

"But some say that wisdom is the cause and source of devoted Love, 
while others say that devoted Love and wisdom depend upon each other. 
But Narada says that devoted Love is the source and fruit of devoted 
Love. 

"So it is in the King's house : there are those who serve the King as 
his Ministers, or for the sake of reward ; there are those who love the 
King for Love's sake. And those who serve the King for the sake of a 
reward, neither bring to the King delight, nor to themselves assuagement 
of their hunger for reward. Therefore let those who seek for salvation 
firmly choose the way of devoted Love." 

So far Narada, Son of Brahma. By one of those happy coincidences 
which wait on spiritual reading, immediately after transcribing these 
words of the divine Kumara, we came upon the following passage : 

"The Lord being Greatness itself, he that succeeds in pleasing Him, 
possesses true nobility, and enjoys the most enviable favor in this life. 



340 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

How greatly do not worldlings feel themselves honored, when they draw 
upon themselves some mark of attention, some sign of good will from a 
monarch, from some great personage ! A soul in the state of grace should 
esteem far more the happiness of pleasing God. We can do so with a 
pure intention, and this is what we should wish most of all and should 
look upon here below as an inestimable treasure. And, in fact, our most 
ordinary actions being thereby consecrated to the service of God's infinite 
Majesty, become acts of divine love, and deserve for us eternal rewards. 
How important, therefore, is it not, to offer to the Lord not only our 
meditations, our spiritual exercises, but also our work, our leisure time, 
our conversations, our sleep, our meals ?" 

Is it not clear that we have between these two passages not so much 
a close resemblance as an identity, not only in the spirit of the teaching, 
but even in the details and similes ? Yet I think that neither is the Belgian 
Redemptorist Father Bronchain under obligations to Narada the Kumura, 
nor is Narada the Kumura under obligations to Father Bronchain. But 
both are under obligations to the eternal Spirit of Love. 

There is a very vital side of the Indian doctrine of devoted Love, 
which we may introduce in this way : Father Bronchain elsewhere writes : 

"When the Saviour appeared on earth, charity was practically extinct, 
but He spread it throughout the world as much by His example as by His 
doctrine. His love for us not only induced Him to come down from 
heaven to perform a mission of clemency and forgiveness in our regard, 
but, during His whole life, He preached to us by His conduct the kindness 
and benevolence we should show our fellow-men. How tenderly did He 
not love His Disciples ! He treated them patiently, forgiving their faults, 
instructing them patiently, putting up with their ignorance and defects, 
going even at night, relates Pope St. Clement, to visit them asleep and 
carefully cover them to secure them against the cold and the inclemencies 
of the weather ..." 

We have found that W 7 orks without devoted Love, Wisdom without 
devoted Love, the search after mystical powers without devoted Love, are 
all faulty and destined to fail. How is devoted Love to be enkindled? 
How is the revelation of divine Love to be made in such a way that it 
will cause our hearts to take fire and burn with the same divine flame? 
The answer, in East and West, is the same : by a divine Incarnation, an 
Incarnation in human form, of that very principle of divine Love, the 
Love of the Eternal ; the Power, that is, which rests upon the everlasting 
Unity ; the Power which, kindled in our hearts, will draw them into unity 
with their source, so that all shall be "united in the One." 

This doctrine of the divine Incarnation, the Avatar doctrine, is the 
very heart of the Bhakti Marga, the Way of devoted Love, as it is under- 
stood in India. Many of its aspects are so full of wisdom and inspiration 
that it will be well to set it forth at some length, so that a broad com- 
parison with the same teaching in the West may be possible. 

The One Eternal (Parabrahma), says the Indian teaching, should be 



EASTERN AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY, VI 341 

viewed in three Aspects: the Creator (Brahma), the Preserver (Vishnu) 
and the Transformer (Shiva). It is the Second Aspect, the Preserver, 
who is manifested in divine Incarn